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41 years later, killings solved

A former sheriff's deputy convicted of murder confessed, but that confession was lost.

By KAMEEL STANLEY
Published July 19, 2007

Investigators say a suspected serial killer who died in prison 12 years ago murdered two Pinellas County women who disappeared more than four decades ago.

The women - 21-year-old Nancy Leichner of Largo and 20-year-old Pam Nater of Clearwater - vanished Oct. 2, 1966, after a scuba trip in the Ocala National Forest.

Their bodies never were found.

A witness account and the recent discovery of long-mishandled confessions of the killer, a former Martin County sheriff's deputy, finally solved the mystery.

"To be honest, it's a bittersweet satisfaction, because you don't know where the remains are," said Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Ken Adams, the lead detective of the multicounty team responsible for solving the case.

The disappearance of the young women baffled law enforcement for decades. The case remained cold so long that some had lost hope.

"As time went by, I started to think nothing was going to happen," Tampa resident Susan Leichner-Schonder, Nancy's younger sister, told the Orlando Sentinel. "My father passed away not knowing, and Pam's parents both passed away not knowing."

Detectives worked on the case periodically, but nothing ever surfaced until 2004, when a new cold case team started reviewing it again.

Investigators slowly dug up the evidence that pointed to murderer Gerard J. Schaefer, who died in 1995 after being stabbed by a fellow Florida State Prison inmate.

Schaefer was serving a life sentence since 1973 for the torture and murder of Susan Place, 17 and Georgia Jessup, 16, both of Fort Lauderdale.

By combing through records, old evidence and interviews, Adams and his team started forming the links to Schaefer, who often bragged about his exploits.

"He liked to do doubles," Adams said. "He liked blonds and brunets."

Perhaps the most significant find - notes a fellow inmate took detailing Schaefer's confessions to him - never came to light even though they had been requested in a separate 1985 missing-person's case.

The notes of Charles Sizelove, who was serving time at the Avon Park Correctional Facility in the 1980s, described Schaefer's account of the Alexander Springs murders.

Schaefer told Sizelove he took Leichner and Nater by gun and knifepoint and killed them.

Officials don't know why the notes never got to Lake County until this investigation. The cold case team requested the records from St. Lucie County, where Schaefer had been convicted of the Fort Lauderdale killings.

"By just backtracking and looking at this stuff - this is how you've got to do it," Adams said.

Investigators also interviewed Brent Hoover, who was canoeing in the area that day.

Hoover, who was 11 then, identified Schaefer as a man he saw following the two women that day on the lake, Adams said.

It is unclear how many women Schaefer may have really murdered or kidnapped. He was 20 when Nater and Leichner disappeared.

But his own boasts suggest he killed again. He told some people that his first murder was in 1963, when he was 16 or 17 years old.

Through the years, Schaefer appeared to taunt and challenge law enforcement.

In 1983, he sent a letter to every sheriff in the state, asking them to check their records to see if he was a suspect in any open cases.

In the letter he sent to Lake County, he specifically asked about "those two that 'disappeared' from the Ocala Forest," Adams said.

"He was playing a game back then, wanting people to ask about it," the detective said. "He bragged at one time that he could give law enforcement 34 bodies or burial sites."

[Last modified July 18, 2007, 22:17:12]