Steven Lorenzo could be sentenced to up to 200 years for assaulting men that he used a date-rape drug to subdue.
By Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, Times Staff Writer
Published November 11, 2005
TAMPA - Jurors saw pictures of men, bound and naked, their eyes shut and their lips swollen as they lay inside Steven Lorenzo's home. They read online chats in which Lorenzo discussed drugs, bondage and rape. They heard emotional testimony from seven men who say Lorenzo drugged and assaulted them.
For two weeks, they watched as Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony E. Porcelli made his case that Lorenzo is a "predator," a "sadist" who committed "heinous and unspeakable acts."
It took jurors just three hours to agree.
After deliberating late Wednesday afternoon and again briefly Thursday morning, the jury found Lorenzo guilty of nine counts of administering GHB, a central nervous system depressant, with the intent of committing violence. He also was found guilty of conspiring with Scott Schweickert to distribute GHB.
Each of the 10 counts carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, so the verdict could keep Lorenzo, 46, in prison for the rest of his life.
Yet Lorenzo patted his attorney, Donald Harrison, on the back as U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara read "guilty" over and over again. He turned back and blew a kiss to his weeping sister Catherine Lorenzo, who sat next to Lorenzo's stoic-faced brother and father.
Lazzara will sentence Lorenzo on Jan. 27.
"We intend to seek the longest possible sentence we can get," Porcelli said. "That would be 200 years."
Harrison said he and Lorenzo will meet this weekend to discuss a possible appeal. "I did everything I could to raise reasonable doubt," he said. "Mr. Lorenzo knows that."
Jurors declined to comment after the verdict, but the evidence against Lorenzo was overwhelming. It depicted a sexual underground where Lorenzo took pleasure in luring "submissives" and inflicting pain on them.
Jurors heard from six victims - including a Massachusetts bartender, a Spanish foreign exchange student and a street hustler - who recalled how they met Lorenzo at a Tampa bar, then went back to his beige bungalow at 215 W Powhatan Ave. A seventh man said Lorenzo assaulted him in October 2004 at the Suncoast Resort in St. Petersburg.
All seven men said they took a drink from Lorenzo that made them pass out. When they woke up, they were bound and in pain from having been tortured and raped.
"Something in my head told me that my fear excited him," the bartender testified last week. He said Lorenzo hog-tied him with a "tourniquet noose" during the February 2000 assault.
Two of Lorenzo's victims, Michael Wachholtz of Tampa and Jason Galehouse of Sarasota, disappeared the weekend of Dec. 19, 2003.
Wachholtz's decomposed body was found two weeks later. Investigators found on Lorenzo's home computer a series of pictures taken Dec. 21 of a man, identified as the 26-year-old Wachholtz, who appears to be dead.
Galehouse, also 26 when he disappeared, has never been found. But investigators found in Lorenzo's detached garage a 3-foot by 3-foot section of concrete floor covered in blood that was later identified as Galehouse's blood.
Schweickert, scheduled to be tried in federal court next month, told investigators Lorenzo killed Galehouse and got Schweickert to help him cut up the body and dump it in trash bins around the city. Schweickert said Lorenzo killed Wachholtz the following night.
Lorenzo has not been charged with murder. But a state prosecutor sat in the courtroom this week during closing arguments.
In his closing statement to jurors, Harrison called into question the integrity of the federal case. He said the state initially declined to pursue the cases of the seven living victims, "and now the U.S. government is recreating these cases."
He also questioned the analysis of the DNA evidence, including a gas mask seized from Lorenzo's home that analysts said contained traces of Galehouse's blood.
Harrison conceded from the beginning that Lorenzo was into the "kink side" of homosexual sex and preferred being the "dominant" partner. But he said Lorenzo's partners consented to the sex.
He also pointed out that Porcelli presented no scientific proof that the seven living victims had GHB in their bodies after their encounters with Lorenzo.
Yet Harrison's attempts to cast doubt in jurors' minds could not overcome all of the government's physical evidence.
Porcelli presented duct tape, sex toys and a book entitled Killers Among Us that were found during a search of Lorenzo's bungalow. He showed jurors a Gatorade bottle and an eye dropper containing GHB, known as the "date-rape" drug, that were found under Lorenzo's kitchen sink.
Jurors also read several online chats between Lorenzo and Schweickert, in which Lorenzo discusses using GHB to take control of men.
"They have no idea where they are," Lorenzo wrote in an Oct. 15, 2003, chat with Schweickert, their first online encounter. "I am extreme, calculating and loving."
Less than a month later, Lorenzo and Schweickert agreed in an online exchange: "Let's bring our fantasies to reality."
