Gay sex slave
She was fine with the plea deal for Schweickert if it leads to a death sentence for Lorenzo. In an interview, Williams said she was disappointed by how long it's taking to resolve the case. "It was a complicated case and we had to a take a methodical approach in order to secure convictions," said Mark Cox, a spokesman for the State Attorney's Office in Tampa.Ĭox declined to comment on when Lorenzo might be charged or whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty. Part of the delay was due to a Miranda rights issue that was later resolved. Schweickert was indicted on the murder charges in 2012 and prosecutors announced their intention to seek the death penalty. Though jurors convicted them of related crimes, the pair still was not charged with murder. Jurors saw pictures of men bound and naked, eyes shut, in a Seminole Heights bungalow and heard testimony of sex and torture. They charged Schweickert with drugging Galehouse and conspiring with Lorenzo. Prosecutors charged Lorenzo with drugging nine men.
Police accused Lorenzo and Schweickert and said there were other victims who survived. They drove to a Tampa apartment complex and left the Jeep in the parking lot. Schweickert said he helped Lorenzo wrap the body in a tarp and place it in the back of Lorenzo's Jeep. The two men took off his clothes, taped his mouth and bound his arms and legs with handcuffs. Schweickert admitted to holding Wachholtz down while Lorenzo put a solvent-soaked rag over his face until he passed out. The next night, they went back to the club and invited Wachholtz to Lorenzo's home, where Lorenzo spiked Wachholtz's drink with GHB. After Galehouse died, the two men dismembered him with an electric saw and dumped his body parts in trash bins throughout the city. Schweickert admitted to throwing his body over Galehouse's legs to stop him from kicking. Schweickert went to the bathroom and when he returned, Lorenzo had Galehouse in a sleeper hold. The men bound Galehouse to the bed and Schweickert had rough sex with him, the plea states. According to the plea, Galehouse agreed to go to Lorenzo's house on Powhatan Avenue to engage in sadomasochistic sex. 19, 2003, the men went to Club 2606, a gay club on Armenia Avenue, where they met Galehouse. "According to our plan and agreement, once we became tired of, or bored with, a 'permanent slave,' Steven Lorenzo and I would either sell the permanent slave to another practitioner of homosexual sadomasochism or kill" him, the plea agreement states. They developed a plan to meet single gay men and make them "permanent slaves." Schweickert met Lorenzo online in 2003 and the two men talked about their interest in "bondage, torture and sadomasochistic sexual activity with men," according to the plea agreement. Schweickert is serving a 40-year sentence. Lorenzo has not yet been charged but he is already serving a 200-year sentence in federal prison for giving nine men, including Wachholtz and Galehouse, the "date rape" drug GHB with the intent to commit violence, and for conspiring with Schweickert to distribute the drug. In the plea agreement, Schweickert agreed to testify against Steven Lorenzo, a man he long ago implicated in the two men's killings.
Standing stoic in Circuit Judge Vivian Corvo's courtroom, his disheveled, grey-flecked hair and scraggly beard belying his age, Schweickert admitted to killing Galehouse and Wachholtz after using them as sex slaves. Schweickert was sentenced to life in prison. Schweickert, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Williams' son Jason Galehouse and another man, Michael Wachholtz, also 26, who died a similarly grisly death. I have the city dump with my son ground up like hamburger meat in the dirt. "I don't even have a grave, a body or a tombstone. "I look at it every single day," she said. TAMPA - Fourteen years after her son was killed in a crime that shocked Tampa Bay, Pam Williams finally got to stand face to face with one of the killers.Īt a Tampa court room lectern, as television news cameras rolled, Williams held up a framed photo of her son and asked Scott Paul Schweickert to take a long, hard look.