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Steven Lorenzo: Florida Man Who Lured Two Gay Men To His House And Killed
Steven Lorenzo, the 63-year-old man from Tampa, Florida, was sentenced in federal court to a maximum of 200 years in Florida prison in 2006 for the 2003 double murder of two gay men, Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz. The incident has left Tampa’s LGBTQ community in shock for the past few decades.
Earlier on December 6, 2022, he had withdrawn his non-guilty plea for murdering the two men and asked for the death penalty. He was convicted of drugging and raping men who were afterward brutally murdered by Lorenzo and another man, Scott Schweickert, who drugged them.
Lorenzo’s Plea For The Sentence To Death: Justice For Victims
Recently in February 2023, the court consented to Lorenzo’s plea for the sentence to death. For about two decades, the family and friends of the victims were begging for mercy and justice. With the new judgment that was released by the court a few days back, their wait is soon coming to an end.
Lorenzo was serving a 200-year federal sentence for drug-related charges that date back to 2005. According to the prosecutors, Lorenzo has drugged several men making them unconscious so that he can subdue, torture, and sexually abuse them.
On Friday, February 24, Christopher Sabella, a Jude in Florida sentenced Lorenzo to death after his confession of torturing and killing two gay men in 2003.
From the records, it was reported that the two gay men, Galehouse and Wachholtz, disappeared on back-to-back nights in December 2003 after their visit to a gay nightclub in Tampa.
Lorenzo and Scott Schweickert, his co-defendant in torture and murder cases chatted with the victims in order to lure them to his Seminole Heights home where he has planned to kidnap, enslave, and sexually torture the 26-year-old men.
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As per Schweickert’s testimonial, it was stated that they had already planned to either kill or sell the two gay men once they are done with them. Schweickert, who is also serving a life sentence for his part in the murders, vowed on the witness stand. He gave detailed testimony on how they seduced, tormented, and finally killed the men.
He revealed that after sexually torturing Galehouse, he moved him to Lorenzo’s garage and dismembered him using an electric saw. Later, they took the body parts in a garbage bag and disposed of them in several dumpsters all across Tamba bay. Until today, his body parts were never recovered.
In the case of Wachholtz, he stated that after sexually torturing him, they put the victim’s body in the back of his Jeep Cherokee and drove to the apartment complex west of Tampa, and left the body there wrapped in a sheet.
During the investigation, the officers found the DNA of both the victims from Lorenzo’s garage and home. They even recovered some photographs of the victims bound and bloodied.
As mentioned above, Lorenzo pleaded for the death penalty in December 2022 after withdrawing his non-guilty plea. Now, after years of ridiculing the death penalty, court delays, and denial, Lorenzo has pleaded guilty to the 2003 double homicide. Although his plea was quite shocking for those present in the courtroom, the friends and family of the victims of the murder commended that it was long unsettled.
Jason Galehouse, a 26-year-old young man from Sarasota was working at a flower shop alongside studying interior design at Hillsborough Community College. He had recently moved to Tampa, where he lost all his dreams in the hands of the murderer.
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From the statements, it is clear that the young man was a regular at the gay nightclub 2606. He used to visit the place with his friend and the day he vanished he was with his roommate, who saw him alive for the last time while he left with two white men.
Michael Wachholtz was kidnapped the next day and was spotted alive for the last time in his apartment near the nightclub.
As per Lorenzo’s plea, he represented himself and refused to have a designated attorney. And now, Governor Ron DeSantis will have to decide a date for Lorenzo’s last meal and execution.
