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College students to re-examine deaths

Saint Leo University criminology students will help detectives reopen three cases.

By JAMES THORNER
Published September 10, 2005

Long before he downed his farewell steak dinner and went to the Florida electric chair in 1998, serial killer Gerald Stano confessed to murdering three women and dumping their bodies in rural Pasco County in the 1970s.

But did Stano - blamed for strangling, stabbing and shooting 41 women across three states - actually kill Diana Valleck, Gail Foster and Emily Grieve?

Homicide detectives have their doubts and are reopening the cases with the help of a team of 21 criminology students at Saint Leo University.

Combining the resources of the Sheriff's Office and the university was the idea of Barry and Kimberley Glover, professors of criminal justice.

The husband-and-wife team figured the students, using modern crime-solving techniques such as DNA analysis, could help heat up investigations that have long gone cold.

The Glovers will divide their weekend class into three groups, one for each victim. A Pasco deputy will advise each group and give members unprecedented access to evidence pulled from storage.

It includes Stano's taped confessions and transcripts of interviews with victims' friends and relatives. It also includes physical evidence such as clothing, bullet casings and fingernail scrapings that could turn up hair, skin and blood.

"It's bringing new life to the cases and bringing experience to the students," said Sgt. John Corbin, a sheriff's detective helping to coordinate the project.

On Friday, detectives and the Glovers displayed black and white photos of the long-dead women who were dumped beside Pasco roads in 1975 and 1977.

Diana Valleck was an 18-year-old stripper at Sportsman Bar in Tampa who was last seen hitchhiking from work on May 15, 1975. Her body was found four days later in Land O'Lakes, in a citrus grove north of State Road 54, half a mile east of Livingston Road.

Gail Foster, also an 18-year-old stripper, disappeared while hitchhiking on Sept. 26, 1977. Two days later her body was found in a grove near Old Pasco Road, west of Interstate 75.

Emily Grieve, 38, was a desk clerk at the Interchange Motor Lodge in Tampa, but the investigation suggested that she worked in prostitution. She was killed while hitchhiking on Oct. 10, 1977, and dumped off SR 54 west of Curley Road.

All three had been shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun, leading investigators to suspect the killer was the same person.

Enter Stano. He was arrested in the early 1980s for beating up a prostitute near Daytona Beach and began confessing to dozens of killings.

Police connected Stano to as many as 15 unsolved slayings of women in the Tampa Bay area. He bragged about cruising the highways of Florida with a plate reading "No Riders, Except Brunettes, Blondes and Redheads."

Prostitutes weren't his only victims. Sometimes they were students or women with car trouble. Valleck, Foster and Grieve were among the women Stano confessed to killing.

But the testimony of the mentally unbalanced killer contained too many inconsistencies for prosecutors. He was never charged with the Pasco crimes.

Corbin hopes the Saint Leo students, half of whom are working police officers earning their bachelor's degrees, can prove once and for all whether Stano killed one or more of the women.

DNA analysis could break the case, assuming human tissue remains on the women's clothing.

Kimberley Glover, an expert on serial killers, places little faith in Stano's guilt. She expects DNA to confirm her suspicions. Then comes the job of plowing through the list of other killers with similar operating methods.

"Our offender could be deceased, could be in prison on unrelated charges or he could simply be out there," Glover said.

Part of the reopened investigation will include tracking down family members of the dead women. That's no easy matter after 30 years.

If the current crop of students do not solve the cases by the end of the semester, the Glovers plan to roll the investigation over to new students next year.

"We'll continue to work this case until we've absolutely exhausted everything," Kimberley Glover said.

[Last modified September 10, 2005, 01:22:18]