Kidnap suspect faces choice of his life

Depending on how he pleads today, the man can either go to prison for 15 years or risk life in prison if he loses at trial.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 21, 1999

LARGO -- Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Brandt Downey on Monday gave kidnapping suspect Gregory Royster four days to make the decision of his life:

Royster

Accept a plea deal and 15 years in prison for helping kidnap a Safety Harbor couple last year, or go to trial and risk a lifetime behind bars if he loses.

Royster is apparently taking the 15 years.

Royster, 22, who lived in Hillsborough County, is scheduled to enter either a guilty or no contest plea today before Downey on charges that he participated in the October 1998 robbery and kidnapping of Carol, 76, and Gerald Leary, 77.

The plea deal actually calls for a 30-year sentence with 15 to be suspended.

The couple spent 13 terrifying hours in the trunk of their Cadillac as Royster and another person drove the vehicle to a rural area near Ocala, where the car was abandoned, police said. The couple said their kidnappers left them for dead.

Downey made the offer to Royster during a hearing Monday at which the Learys recounted their ordeal. The judge, after hearing the couple's testimony, rejected a defense request to offer Royster a sentence below state sentencing guidelines.

Those guidelines call for a sentence between 91/2 years and life.

"I can't imagine the terror," the judge said Monday. "Another couple of hours and we could be here today on two charges of first-degree murder."

Defense lawyer Charles Halloway told the judge that Royster suffers from a borderline personality disorder that causes him, among other things, to act impulsively. Halloway also said Royster was not the ringleader in the kidnapping.

Instead, he said, his client was a follower and another suspect, Marty Lee Lunsford, was the mastermind behind the kidnapping.

But prosecutor Kendall Davidson told Downey that Royster brought a gun to the Learys' home when they were kidnapped.

Mrs. Leary was doing the dishes at home when someone rang the doorbell. Several people, she testified, forced their way through the door.

While her husband was tied up by gunmen, Royster led Mrs. Leary through the house, demanding that she hand over anything valuable, she testified.

The couple was then dumped in the trunk of their car and taken on a wild ride north toward Ocala. At one point, Florida Highway Patrol troopers attempted to stop the suspects for speeding.

When the suspects refused to stop, the troopers ended the chase rather than put other motorists in danger.

After the car was abandoned in a woods near Ocala, the Learys said they kept from becoming dehydrated by swallowing drops of condensation on the inside of the trunk.

Later, a deputy, who was called to the area after a resident noticed the car, heard Gerald Leary banging on the trunk with a golf ball.

"I'm not vindictive," Mrs. Leary told Downey. "And I have sympathy for his family. But he was an adult, it was his own choice. He knew what he was doing and he should pay. I'd like to get my life back to a semblance of order."

Said Gerald Leary, "They could have left us in the house and just taken off with all their ill-gotten wealth."

Also charged in the kidnapping and awaiting trial are Leslie Jeanne Hudgins, 42, of Clearwater; and Lunsford, 19, of Tampa.

Hudgins' daughter, Sonya M. Little, 19, also of Clearwater, pleaded no contest earlier this year to charges of being an accessory after the fact. She received a sentence of four years' probation and is cooperating with prosecutors.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.