September 12, 2023 • 33 mins
Robert and Georgette Sturmfels, spending the winter holiday season in their cozy Florida home, are blissfully unaware that their lives are about to be irrevocably shattered. Tragically, their lives abruptly end on December 20, 1989, as they become the victims of a chilling double homicide. In this episode, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve into the horrifying details of the Sturmfels' murders. They meticulously unravel the case, from the suspect's choice of a 22-caliber rifle to the unsettling finality of the crime scene. The conversation goes beyond the murder itself to examine its broader implications, such as the weapon's surprising lethality, common misconceptions about gunshot wounds, and the cold-blooded nature of the perpetrator.
Time codes:
00:00:00 — Joseph Scott Morgan starts off with a touching reflection on Christmas. From stress to joy, his sentiments evolve over time, especially as he becomes a grandfather.
At 00:01:20 — The tragic case of Robert and Georgette Sturmfels is introduced by Joe Scott. Their murder in Florida sets the stage for a disconcerting episode.
00:04:20 — Diving deeper, Joseph Scott Morgan paints a vivid picture of the Sturmfels' murder. He describes the horrific scene in disquieting detail.
00:05:20 — Louis Gaskin, the suspect, is discussed by Dave Mack. He outlines Gaskin's ruthlessness and the premeditation behind the crime.
00:06:20 — Weaponry is the topic as Joe Scott and Dave debate the lethal nature of a 22-caliber rifle used in the crime.
00:08:00 — A lesson in firearms ensues as Joseph Scott Morgan distinguishes between long arms and pistols, explaining why the latter is more easily concealed.
00:10:20 — Unveiling the crime, Dave shares how Louis Gaskin meticulously planned, and executed the murders of the Sturmfels couple.
00:12:20 — Debunking Hollywood myths, Joseph Scott Morgan explains that gunshot wounds are not just dramatic effects; victims often realize they've been shot and experience pain.
00:13:00 — Gaskin's own words add horror to the narrative as Dave recounts the unsettling sounds Mrs. Sturmfels made during her final moments.
00:14:20 — Joe Scott dives into the world of forensics, explaining how a gunshot through glass has implications on bullet behavior. He describes how the bullet’s trajectory and energy are affected upon impact.
00:17:04 — Joseph Scott Morgan elaborates on snipers and the adjustments they have to make due to the influence of gravity on bullets, especially when glass is involved.
00:20:36 — The episode’s atmosphere becomes tenser as Morgan and Mack discuss Gaskin's execution of Mr. Sturmfels and his chilling confession.
00:21:00 — The term "death wheeze" is introduced as Joe Scott explains the physiological impact of a gunshot wound to the lungs.
00:24:01 — Dave summarizes Gaskin's crime spree; from killing to covering the bodies with blankets and burglary.
00:24:35 — Gaskin, dressed in all black and carrying a 22 rifle, drives to the home of Joseph and Mary Rector, where he shoots at them after waking them up.
00:26:20 — Dave Mack discusses the gunshot wounds and how the Rectors managed to escape.
00:28:20 — The hosts ponder Gaskin's motivations, diving into the psychology behind these appalling acts.
00:33:40 — The episode concludes with Joseph Scott Morgan revealing the final fate of the killer, a grim but just end to a twisted journey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I can't help myself.
As tried as it is. I used to really loathe
the thought that Christmas was around the corner, because it
always meant buying gifts, and it always meant me having
(00:31):
to spend money, and it meant rushing about and waiting
to the last minute to accomplish those tasks. But something
has changed in me. I'm a grandfather now, and now
I cannot wait for Christmas to come around because the
circle is complete. Can you imagine going to Florida to
(00:55):
celebrate perhaps Christmas with your wife. You're hanging out a
house you live in New Jersey. You've escaped the cold weather,
and you're headed down south to sunny Florida, and you're
just going to relax and enjoy the Christmas season. And
on the night of December the twentieth, nineteen eighty nine,
(01:17):
a couple were seated in their home in Flagler County, Florida.
And there's a beautiful window with little panes that have
been placed in the window of Christmas images, Santa Claus
and Christmas trees, and all of a sudden, that window
just explodes. You're sitting in your chair, you're watching television
(01:38):
and it explodes as a result of bullets passing through it,
and suddenly your life ends. Today we're going to talk
about the brutal homicides of Robert and Georgiatt sternfalls on
the night of December the twentieth, nineteen eighty nine. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave mac. Are
(02:07):
you a fan of Christmas? Do you like Christmas? Yes?
I do you do? Yeah? Well I do too, man.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I've actually never been asked that question as an adult.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Really yeah. And it's a different way of looking at it.
When you're a kid they ask you that question. Of
course on forty out of your mind, of course I
like Christmas. But as an adult you start to I
don't know, it's just me. I sit there and I think,
oh god, it used to be such a labor But now, man,
when you get grandbabies, it's such a cool thing. It
really is for me at least.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And also one of the things about Christmas specifically that
causes our memories as we get older to get bigger
and more loving, is because it tends to remind us
of very special times when we were a child, and
our parents were younger, and our grandparents. It reminds us
of those times and that's a very warm thing. So
(02:57):
there's multiple things going into the whole Christmas sphere beyond
just the active gift giving that as an adult, it's
which credit card to we used to buy this with?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, I hate to beat that cynical about it. I
truly do, and I've tried to get past that. I
really have Dave, and I'm chief among sinners in that area.
But you know, now, you get a little bit older
and you get a few miles on the tires and
you think, wow, this is really a great opportunity to
be together as a family and to celebrate, right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And that's what I mean. As you get older, you
recognize those things. When you're younger, you don't because you're
a kid. But then even when you first have children,
you remember this. When you're a young parent, there's a
lot of stress involved with Christmas. It's only after you
get older. And that's why I have such a loving,
wonderful feeling when I think of Christmas. It reminds me
of my mother and my grandparents and people that are
(03:47):
no longer with us. And that's why it's so special.
And of course, you know you mentioned grandchildren. This is
the time for Pop Paul to show off. What do
you mean you can't have a pony?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
You're absolutely right. And I wonder thinking about Robert and Georgiette.
They had made the trip down from their New Jersey
home to spend the holiday season down in what they're
referred to as the Palm Coast down there, and they're
just minding their own business. And this is what's so horrible.
(04:17):
The case is horrible anyway, all right, But what is
so horrible is that this kind of peaceful thing that's
going on, and you're sitting there and I can't imagine
the horror I saw the crime scene photos from this,
by the way, particularly this blown out window I was
referring to. You're sitting there in your chair. You're there
(04:39):
with this person that you're spending the rest of your
life with, and all of a sudden, your world just
crashes in on you. Literally, in just a few moments,
your life comes to an end in this home that
is just kind of a it's not like home in
New Jersey. It's a home that you've come to in
Florida to stay and spend part of the year, and
(05:03):
I just I can't begin to imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Dave going to Florida. It's almost a right of passage.
Once you reach a certain age, you go there for
the comfort of the warmer climate and everything else and snowbirds.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. And with regard to the Strumfells, they are fifty
six and fifty five years old. They're just relaxing. It's
an evening. It's the two of them. It's quiet, they're
just watching TV. But outside their window lurks a ninja. Now,
this man, Lewis Gaskins has been referred to as the
(05:36):
quote unquote ninja killer that somehow romanticizes the fact that
this guy is a cold blooded killer that decided to
do his Christmas shopping while committing the most heinous act
of murder one can imagine. Backing up here, a twenty
two caliber rifle. I've always thought of that weapon as
(05:56):
one step up from a pellet gun. I've never thought
of a twenty as the type of killing machine that
it really is. Am I correct in assuming that a
lot of people think the same thing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, you are, Because when you look at the spectrum,
and there's a spectrum of pistol and rifle cartridges out there.
It's on the low end as far as the size
of this. It's point two two and so it's it's
very tiny. But also keep this in mind, we fire
around in the military, I say we as a form assaultier.
(06:28):
We've fired around in the military called five point five
to six millimeter. But if you convert that over to
caliber instead of a millimeter, Dave, that's point two to three.
It's roughly the same diameter as the twenty two. It
has more bulk to it a bit the point two
two three, and it's also got more propellant with it
(06:53):
as well. In the shape of it too, it's got
this kind of conical shape, the point two two three.
With the rifle rounds being fired from a twenty two caliber,
I think back there's a variety of different types of
twenty two rounds. You've got like a twenty two short
that when you hear it fire you can barely make
(07:14):
out the sound. Many times it sounds it's a few
decibels higher than say firing a pellet rifle. Pellet rifle
will have that sound to it like that twenty two short.
It cracks the wind it's fired but when you go
above that and you get into a standard twenty two
and then certainly into a twenty two long rifle, that
(07:35):
round has a lot of power. What I can't figure out, Dave,
is that you got a perpetrator that shows up to
a scene. And this is not standard. You see it
in the movies all the time. All right, this is
not standard. You got a perpetrator that shows up to
a scene wielding a long arm. And a long arm
is a rifle or is a like a rifle. You
(07:58):
have to fire it from your shoulder, and the military
they refer to them as shoulder fired arms, and so
you have to nestle this thing into your shoulder. Now
you can fire it, Audie Murphy, I guess if you
want to from your hip, But standardly you put the
butt of the stock into your shoulder and you open up,
you fire, and you have more accuracy. But it doesn't
(08:20):
give you a lot of portability. With a pistol, you
can conceal it. Look, man, if you're walking down the
street and you're carrying a long arm, you're walking down
the street and you're carrying a rifle, I'm going to
take notice of you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Bottom line as you mentioned carrying that rifle in broad
daylight would bring about a lot of attention. But in
the case of Lewis Gaskin, on this particular night, it
was dark. It was bedtime, and he was not necessarily bedtime,
but it was all dark. He's wearing all black. He
parked his car a ways away, and the home where
(08:57):
Robert and Georgia at Strumfells you know we're staying, was
actually their winter home. It wasn't a rental. Back then
they didn't have airbnbs. So if you had a place,
a house or whatever in Florida from New Jersey, that
was your winter summer home. However you wanted to look
at it. It was your escape from New York. And
that's why it was even more than just sitting at
(09:17):
a house at night, Joe. This was not just a house.
It was their getaway home. This was their peaceful environment.
They probably looked forward for months before they could go
to their winter or to their Florida home, their escape.
In their living room, in particular, mister Sternfel's George or
(09:38):
Robert rather is sitting in his recliner and I'm picturing
this man watching. You know, you got the TV on
you're just relaxing, and you mentioned the blast of the window.
Lewis Gaskins had parked his car down a ways from
the house. He walks up to the home and he
has his plan. He does not want to come in
(10:00):
in there while they're sleeping. He doesn't want to sneak
up on him that way. He needs them up and
about so that he can take them out from outside.
That's the part about this that really shocked me, Joe,
that Lewis Gaskin planned on shooting out the window to
take out the stern Fells. And when he takes that
(10:22):
first shot with his twenty two caliber rifle, he shoots
directly through the window and hits mister Sternfels in the chest.
He then shoots a second time and sees Georgett's stern
Fells as she starts to try to get out of
the room. She's headed to the hallway when Gaskin shoots her.
(10:43):
He then breaks out the window the rest of the way,
pulls the screen break, gets out the window and goes in.
He then puts another shot in the head of mister Sternfells,
who had been trying to get up again. By the way,
he had been shot twice. He's still trying to get
up Joe, and all like to think of is his
last moment was what in the world just happened? Bam bam,
(11:06):
bam so fast. His wife is trying to crawl her way,
and Lewis Gaskin goes around the house. He's looking in
windows to find to where she is. He wants to
take her out before he goes in as well, and
he gets in the house and shoots her in the head.
So we've got two murdered individuals.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And in that moment, those final moments of their lives,
as they are bleeding out, as Missus Stemfells is lying
in the hallway, Gaskins enters the home and robs them,
literally robs them, and their lives were exchanged for lamps, VCRs,
cash and a bit of jewelry. Just because you're shot
(12:02):
doesn't mean that your life immediately hinds. That's again a
lie that Hollywood has sold you. Gunshot wounds are painful.
There's an awareness many times that people have been shot.
There are other times when people are shot, in fact,
particularly with a high velocity round, where it will pass
through the body and they won't have an awareness, but
for the most part, depended upon where you were shot,
(12:24):
there is a high probability you're going to feel it.
In the case particularly of missus Sturmfels, she had an awareness.
I think something came up about what was it, Dave
about a dog.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You mentioned the noise that she made as she was dying.
He actually compared the gurgling sound to that of a dog,
a dog that you were taking out. The reason we
know a lot of what took place, Joe is this
career criminal. By the way, he was a young guy.
You know, Gaskins was only what twenty two years old
at the time of these murders, and he already had
(13:00):
a rap sheet. But we know that he picked this
house randomly. It could have been anybody, could have been
you or me, just happened to be the storm fellas
that night and he parks his car away. He goes
up to the house and says he circled the house.
He walked around it six times, six times. He walked
around the house before just you know, making the plan.
(13:21):
He already knew he was going to shoot from the outside.
And Joe, when you do that, when somebody shoots through
a window, to hit a target. And I boy, I
want to apologize to the families right now of anybody
who's ever been the victim of a violent crime. I
am not trying to act like this is nothing. The
man was murdered. And I don't know another way to
(13:42):
actually say this than to ask the bullet goes through
the window, does that not change its trajectory? Does it
take glass with it as it enters the body as
it goes? I mean, you're talking about going through screen, glass,
clothing before ever hitting the body.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
You're right on all those points. And let me break
this down from forensics perspective, when around is fired through
what's referred to as an intermediate target, and that essentially
what that means is just imagine that you're standing staring
out a window and a rock flies through from the
outside and strikes the window and then happens to hit you. Well,
(14:22):
that glass window gives way, right, and that window acts
as almost kind of a barrier, not much of a barrier,
but a barrier nonetheless, and you are subsequently struck by
the rock. Now, the question would be would the rock
maintain first the same level of energy as when initially
(14:45):
thrown before striking the intermediate target and would it stay
or remain on the same path. Well, the answer to
both of those questions is no and no. So what happens,
well when around when even a bullet is fired and
it's strikes intermediate target. You mentioned the screen, You mentioned
the glass that is going to bleed energy of the round.
(15:09):
So as that explosion takes place in the barrel, the
muzzle velocity, which is kind of significant in a twenty
two rifle. All right, it's spinning. We know that because
of the rifling that is within the structure of the bullet.
It twists. It either twist to the left or twist
to the right, either way as it is spinning. It's
(15:30):
like a football if you've ever seen a football that
is thrown, and it's kind of what they refer to
as a wounded duck where it kind of flutters in
the air. That means that the spin is not present
in the bullet as it should be, because if thrown correctly,
the bullet will maintain that tight spin as it travels
(15:50):
down range, and it will maintain all of those ideal
ballistic characteristics. Bullet works the same way as it's flying
through the air, and it strikes glass, the screen the glass,
it's going to bleed off energy, and then depended upon
the position of the shooter that is when the round
(16:11):
is first fired and their position relative to the intermediate target.
Remember he could see them through this glass and he
fires at them, the pitch of the round is going
to change. There's a high probability it will probably drop
down because gravity is working on the bullet as well
as this intermediate target. So even as a bullet is
(16:32):
traveling through the air, it's fighting against this downward pull
of gravity all the while. Now, the initial energy that's
generated in that blast will defeat gravity just for a
few seconds, but after it's traveled out of the end
of the barrel, gravity takes hold and it begins to
pull it down. That's why when you see people fire
(16:54):
around at a great distance, like snipers, they have to
elevate and adjust for bullet drop. The short of the range,
it doesn't have as much of an effect. But then
you throw glass into it and it does begin to pull,
and it pulls downward. And as it pulls downward, it
even deflects further downward with the striking of the glass.
(17:17):
And so if you were aiming save for instance, at well,
let's just say you had a target where you're aiming
just below. If you think of a silhouette of a person,
one of those that you see at a firing range
that has a head on it in the shoulders and
that sort of thing. Let's just say that you were
aiming at the chin of a target and you're firing
through a piece of glass. There's a high probability that
(17:39):
you will not hit the chin. You might hit center
mass in the chest. It'll drop down to where the
breastbone is, the sternum. Once the glasses, it is blown out.
If you fire another round at that point, now you
don't have an intermediate target any longer. But I like
what you did when you mentioned the nature of the glass.
Glass is fascinating. We can learn a lot from it.
(18:00):
First off, you mentioned the nature of the glass flying
through the air well. Glass is just sitting there being glass,
all right, and once this energy is introduced into it,
it's very brittle, as we all know, it's blasted outward.
It doesn't have optimum aerodynamic qualities. So you've got static
(18:20):
glass that's sitting there and a bullet meets it, it
blows it out. And for a few inches, maybe a
foot or two, you'll get the glass blasted out, and
for that moment in time, you'll see it turn into
like little flecks of shrapnel. And sometimes a glass will
actually burst so that it creates almost a powder. But
(18:40):
then you'll get the heftier fragments that will travel down range. Dave,
I've actually had cases where people have been shot while
seated in a car with the driver's side window up.
Now that's safety glass. Their entire courses taught in glass
and forensics. But I've seen a shotgun blast go through
(19:00):
a car window where the glass, along with the pellets
from the shotgun are embedded in the body. So you'll
find you'll be picking bits of glass. But in this
particular case, I think that there's sufficient distance that the
lack of aerodynamicism in the glass, the glass will have
essentially shatter and fallen away. But you'll see it all
(19:22):
over the floor.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And when this actually transpired, Joe, we had mister Sternfel's
got up after the first shot. It says he stood
up and that caused an immediate second shot from Gaskins
that dropped him. In this process, missus sturnfell, she actually
realizes what's happening after the second shot, and that's when
(19:45):
she goes to move to get out of the room,
and that's when Lewis Gaskins shoots her for the first time.
Right there, when she realizes something bad has just now
happened in this house. My husband has been shot twice. Boom,
Now she is hit. Storm fells and I don't know
how this is even possible. After being shot twice, he
(20:05):
actually tries to make it to his feet a third time,
Joe to get to his wife, and that's when we
now know. Gaskins grabs his knife from his pocket, cuts
the screen out, comes into the house, and then shoots
him right in the head to kill shot.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
He executes him, Yeah, he does. In this confession that
Gaskin makes, he states, like putting down a dog or
something to that effect. First off, how do you know
what it's like to put down a dog? And that
gives you a real insight, doesn't it that?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It does? I did that pass me. I'm glad you
brought that up.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I don't know, maybe you were out shooting dogs before
you decided to take out humans. I have no idea,
but I do know this, he said, that that Georgette
was actually gurgling like a dog. And if that's the case,
this is what I know that because I've seen it.
It seems this is more than likely a shot that
would have passed through her lungs, and you you get
(21:00):
this kind of fine pink aspirit that issues forth out
of your mouth and these death throws, if you will,
And she's crawling down the hallway, and so there's this
trail of kind of frothy blood that's been left behind her.
And you can still see this many times at the
scene when you arrive, and you can certainly see it
(21:20):
still issuing from the nose in the mouth, and this
is this kind of hyper arated blood because of this
gurgling that's taking place. You've been shot in the lung,
so they've got this death wheeze that's going on. And
then he walks up after he's Gaskins has made entry
into the home, and he shoots her in the back
of the head and executes her. And at this point
(21:43):
that he goes about beginning to burglarize the home. And
if I remember correctly, Dave, I think that it was
for the purpose of getting Christmas presents. If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
The saddest part of crime is the motive evading factor
that began this whole What took place? Yeah, it was
December twentieth and the criminal needed to go Christmas shopping.
What did criminals do? They don't go to the store
and shop. No, that's the easy thing to do. Askin
actually went out hunting for his Christmas presence. That's why
(22:20):
some of the things he stole were fairly odd. Who
steals a lamp? Who goes into a house, kills two
people and steals a lamp? That makes no sense. He
stole a VCR. He stole several other items, and he
took them all to a friend's house to still. Here's
got some Christmas present? I need to stash here for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The conflating of the joy of Christmas with multiple homicide
and burglary is something that I never thought that I
would have a discussion about. So you've rained down holy
(23:09):
hell on the home of these two innocent people. They're
just in this place that obviously they found joy in.
They've traveled down from the North, the cold North, at
this particular time of the year. Remember it's December nineteen
eighty nine, they've left their New Jersey home to come
and fly south for the winter, and there they are
(23:31):
and their life ends in this little home. Apparently that
wasn't the end of this night of terror that Gaskins
decides to perpetrate on this local community.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Now, to give it a very quick overview, we mentioned
Gaskin burglarizes the home. Joe after the kill shot on
mister and Missus Strumfels, shooting them both in the head.
He covered their bodies with blankets and then burglarized the house,
making lamps, VCR's cash, jewelry, things like that. I don't
(24:04):
know what goes on in a person's mind or their physiology.
I would imagine you've got a little adrenaline rush going on.
There's going to have to be something along those lines
to push you to the next part of the adventure,
which is a couple hours later. Gaskins, again just arbitrarily
picking a place, drives up to the home of Joseph
(24:24):
and Mary Rector and he finds them in the first murder,
we talked about how he got them in the living room.
He was able to goes around the house several times
to make sure he knows exactly where they are, and
he does the same thing here at the home of
Joseph and Mary Rector. He sneaks up there in his
all black ninja outfit with his twenty two rifle. He
(24:48):
walks around the house and he notices that they are
in the den slash living room. So what he does
this time is he cuts the phone line, and as
he's getting ready to go up and do his dirty work,
the Rectors decided to sign for bed, So he cuts
the phone line. They turn off the lights and head
to the bedroom. Now this was not the plan. You know,
(25:09):
I mentioned earlier that he didn't want to go in
and sneak in the middle of the night and shoot
people in their bed. There had to be some terror here.
He wanted them to know that he was going to
kill them and rob them. He wanted them to know that. Otherwise,
wouldn't it make sense to sneak into a house, catch
people unawares, do your business, and leave. So what he does.
They've turned the lights off, they've gone to bed, so
(25:31):
he starts throwing logs rocks at the side of the
house on the roof, trying to wake them up. After
a couple of times of doing this, Finally, Joseph Rector, honey,
I got this. He gets up to go and see
what's going on, and it's when he gets back in
the den that's when Gaskins starts shooting again. That's when
(25:53):
he actually shoots from the outside. He shoots directors. But
in this particular case, mister and missus gascon. Yeah, they
were scared, they were shocked, but they managed to escape.
They got out of the house, they got in the car,
and Lewis Gaskin's while they're taking off down the road
in their car, he's shooting at them. He's shooting at
their car. They go to the hospital. But you know what,
(26:15):
bless their hearts, Joseph and Mary Rector, they were actually suspects.
They didn't make any sense. Their story didn't make sense
to the local police.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You hear a story like this, where can you imagine
you're sitting there and you're talking to the police and
you're telling on.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Ninja guys, somebody dressed all in black in the middle
of the night.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, and he's throwing items at our house and we
heard these noises. I get up and of course, speaking
for mister Rector here, and he gets shot. He shot
one time. Now, how in the world they were able
to escape that home, I have no idea. And they
were able to get to their car and get on
the road. And as in this you talk about being embolden,
(26:53):
can you, And it's like something out of some crazy
Hollywood trope. He steps out into the road and begins
firing at their car as they're driving away. I can
only imagine if you're this man and woman the Rectors,
and you're thinking, what in the world have we done?
You're thinking, who could I have harmed to this degree?
(27:14):
Where my car is now, I've been struck by a bullet.
I'm in fear that my life is at its end.
My wife is here in the vehicle with me. We're
heading out, maybe she's driving. We're trying to make it
to a point of safety. And then they're saying that
in some way we're involved in this. I don't know
in recent memory if I remember hearing someone being drawn out.
(27:35):
And that's the really kind of dark part of this.
A while back you mentioned the word hunting. You're literally
drawing your prey out so that you can essentially bag them.
Was it all about taking from these people or was
it taking their lives? Is that what you're about, because
it kind of sounds that way to me. It sounds
(27:56):
as though that, yeah, you're going to take these worthless
trees trinkets from the home, but you were more about
trying to hunt them and kill them. And I really
wonder what the motivation behind that was. And it's quite
striking to me. He had an awareness. I think he
had an awareness that he had done wrong. You'd mentioned
(28:18):
going back to Stormfells. He covered their bodies with blankets.
We talk about face covering and depth investigation, and that
sometimes gives us one of two answers here when we're
looking at trying to understand who may have done this.
First off, it gives you an idea that they may
have been known by the perpetrator, or the perpetrator has
(28:39):
an awareness of their guilt because they're shame involved in it,
and so they're going to cover the bodies because they
know what they've done. I mean, this is you don't
get to use this term very often anymore, but this
is dastardly what has taken place, and their lives are
at an end, just laying there on the floor in
that home.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Back to the storm Fells, when mister Sternfelt is shot,
it says, in the first time, the shot in the chest,
he comes up out of the chair. He gets shot
a second time and that drops him back down. But
somehow he is able. I don't know how, And that's
why I wanted to ask you, if you're shot twice
by a twenty two, what is allowing him? I mean,
(29:20):
the guy shot in the chest, at least we know
that what kind of wound is he going to have?
What's going on inside his body with that twenty two shot,
that still allows him to get back up and to
try to get to his wife.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
All of this is going to be depended upon placement
of the shot, the location anatomically obviously, if an individual,
let's just say you're shot in the torso, if you're
hitting the heart, it's going to bring your life to
an end pretty quickly. But again, like Georgette Sternfell, she's
shot in the long dave. That is a languischine way
(29:56):
to die. To be gut shot or shot in the lung,
you're not to die immediately, so you're still struggling, You're
still able to uptake oxygen at that point in time,
and there's evidence of that with missus Sternfeld, because you know,
she's bleeding out, wheezing, you know, in the hallway, she
still had life in her And to that point with
(30:17):
her husband Robert, you're thinking, well, yeah, he was shot
in the chest, but was it a lung strike with him?
You can be shot initially and it not strike any
major organs. That does happen in fact, or if it
strikes an organ it might not be as catastrophic as
other gunshot wounds might be. Now he shot twice, we know,
(30:40):
and then he is executed. Now and when I say executed,
that's a term that we kind of throw around quite
a bit relative to folks will say an execution style shooting.
And what does that mean. Well, traditionally, what that means
is that you're going to walk up behind somebody and
shoot them in the back of their head with you
and a doe at you universal you being the perpetrator
(31:03):
shooting them in the head. And that's quite fascinating. But
you know, all through this drama that night, that dark,
cold night, you're thinking about his preparation. You've got a
guy that's dressed all in black. He's trying to, for
whatever reason, blend into the night he shows up with
a weapon in hand, now certainly an interesting weapon, to
(31:26):
say the very least to commit such crime. A twenty
two caliber rifle. You don't hear that very often. And
he is standing outside of the house. He's not certainly
man enough to break into the house and go toe
to toe with an older couple. He doesn't even have
that kind of intestinal fortitude. He stands outside the house
(31:47):
and fires through glass and shoots them. They were innocent
victims sitting there in their chair, I mean, just completely
unaware that their life was about to end, and the
same way with the rectors. To a lesser degree. They survived.
But you feel the safest at night, don't you, Dave,
When you all snuggle down in your bed, you've turned
(32:08):
the lights out, you're getting ready to close your eyes,
maybe to get some sleep, and then all of a
sudden you're hearing something raining down on your house or
glass is breaking out. And how evil do you have
to be in order to draw somebody out, probably in
their pajamas, and then shoot them down. And you're in
a position of cover where you're going to do this.
(32:29):
It's not like you're going to head with somebody that's
armed and you're firing at them like this, and that's
what makes this so very ominous. I think, you know,
you kind of dig through this and you think about, well,
what was this, Why would you be motivated at this
point in time to do it. Gaskin's made an interesting quote, Dave,
(32:50):
and this is him saying this. He admitted this to
the police when they questioned him, and he stated that
the night that he committed the heinous acts, that, in fact,
and I'm paraphrasing, that the devil had more of him
that night than God did. And that's certainly an interesting
(33:10):
point because this was in fact pure evil. On April
the twelfth, twenty twenty three, Lewis Bernard Gaskin, otherwise known
as the Ninja Killer, was pronounced dead at Florida State
Penitentiary at six fifteen pm after dying from lethal injection.
(33:33):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I can't help myself.
As tried as it is. I used to really loathe
the thought that Christmas was around the corner, because it
always meant buying gifts, and it always meant me having
(00:31):
to spend money, and it meant rushing about and waiting
to the last minute to accomplish those tasks. But something
has changed in me. I'm a grandfather now, and now
I cannot wait for Christmas to come around because the
circle is complete. Can you imagine going to Florida to
(00:55):
celebrate perhaps Christmas with your wife. You're hanging out a
house you live in New Jersey. You've escaped the cold weather,
and you're headed down south to sunny Florida, and you're
just going to relax and enjoy the Christmas season. And
on the night of December the twentieth, nineteen eighty nine,
(01:17):
a couple were seated in their home in Flagler County, Florida.
And there's a beautiful window with little panes that have
been placed in the window of Christmas images, Santa Claus
and Christmas trees, and all of a sudden, that window
just explodes. You're sitting in your chair, you're watching television
(01:38):
and it explodes as a result of bullets passing through it,
and suddenly your life ends. Today we're going to talk
about the brutal homicides of Robert and Georgiatt sternfalls on
the night of December the twentieth, nineteen eighty nine. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave mac. Are
(02:07):
you a fan of Christmas? Do you like Christmas? Yes?
I do you do? Yeah? Well I do too, man.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I've actually never been asked that question as an adult.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Really yeah. And it's a different way of looking at it.
When you're a kid they ask you that question. Of
course on forty out of your mind, of course I
like Christmas. But as an adult you start to I
don't know, it's just me. I sit there and I think,
oh god, it used to be such a labor But now, man,
when you get grandbabies, it's such a cool thing. It
really is for me at least.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And also one of the things about Christmas specifically that
causes our memories as we get older to get bigger
and more loving, is because it tends to remind us
of very special times when we were a child, and
our parents were younger, and our grandparents. It reminds us
of those times and that's a very warm thing. So
(02:57):
there's multiple things going into the whole Christmas sphere beyond
just the active gift giving that as an adult, it's
which credit card to we used to buy this with?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, I hate to beat that cynical about it. I
truly do, and I've tried to get past that. I
really have Dave, and I'm chief among sinners in that area.
But you know, now, you get a little bit older
and you get a few miles on the tires and
you think, wow, this is really a great opportunity to
be together as a family and to celebrate, right.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And that's what I mean. As you get older, you
recognize those things. When you're younger, you don't because you're
a kid. But then even when you first have children,
you remember this. When you're a young parent, there's a
lot of stress involved with Christmas. It's only after you
get older. And that's why I have such a loving,
wonderful feeling when I think of Christmas. It reminds me
of my mother and my grandparents and people that are
(03:47):
no longer with us. And that's why it's so special.
And of course, you know you mentioned grandchildren. This is
the time for Pop Paul to show off. What do
you mean you can't have a pony?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
You're absolutely right. And I wonder thinking about Robert and Georgiette.
They had made the trip down from their New Jersey
home to spend the holiday season down in what they're
referred to as the Palm Coast down there, and they're
just minding their own business. And this is what's so horrible.
(04:17):
The case is horrible anyway, all right, But what is
so horrible is that this kind of peaceful thing that's
going on, and you're sitting there and I can't imagine
the horror I saw the crime scene photos from this,
by the way, particularly this blown out window I was
referring to. You're sitting there in your chair. You're there
(04:39):
with this person that you're spending the rest of your
life with, and all of a sudden, your world just
crashes in on you. Literally, in just a few moments,
your life comes to an end in this home that
is just kind of a it's not like home in
New Jersey. It's a home that you've come to in
Florida to stay and spend part of the year, and
(05:03):
I just I can't begin to imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Dave going to Florida. It's almost a right of passage.
Once you reach a certain age, you go there for
the comfort of the warmer climate and everything else and snowbirds.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah. And with regard to the Strumfells, they are fifty
six and fifty five years old. They're just relaxing. It's
an evening. It's the two of them. It's quiet, they're
just watching TV. But outside their window lurks a ninja. Now,
this man, Lewis Gaskins has been referred to as the
(05:36):
quote unquote ninja killer that somehow romanticizes the fact that
this guy is a cold blooded killer that decided to
do his Christmas shopping while committing the most heinous act
of murder one can imagine. Backing up here, a twenty
two caliber rifle. I've always thought of that weapon as
(05:56):
one step up from a pellet gun. I've never thought
of a twenty as the type of killing machine that
it really is. Am I correct in assuming that a
lot of people think the same thing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, you are, Because when you look at the spectrum,
and there's a spectrum of pistol and rifle cartridges out there.
It's on the low end as far as the size
of this. It's point two two and so it's it's
very tiny. But also keep this in mind, we fire
around in the military, I say we as a form assaultier.
(06:28):
We've fired around in the military called five point five
to six millimeter. But if you convert that over to
caliber instead of a millimeter, Dave, that's point two to three.
It's roughly the same diameter as the twenty two. It
has more bulk to it a bit the point two
two three, and it's also got more propellant with it
(06:53):
as well. In the shape of it too, it's got
this kind of conical shape, the point two two three.
With the rifle rounds being fired from a twenty two caliber,
I think back there's a variety of different types of
twenty two rounds. You've got like a twenty two short
that when you hear it fire you can barely make
(07:14):
out the sound. Many times it sounds it's a few
decibels higher than say firing a pellet rifle. Pellet rifle
will have that sound to it like that twenty two short.
It cracks the wind it's fired but when you go
above that and you get into a standard twenty two
and then certainly into a twenty two long rifle, that
(07:35):
round has a lot of power. What I can't figure out, Dave,
is that you got a perpetrator that shows up to
a scene. And this is not standard. You see it
in the movies all the time. All right, this is
not standard. You got a perpetrator that shows up to
a scene wielding a long arm. And a long arm
is a rifle or is a like a rifle. You
(07:58):
have to fire it from your shoulder, and the military
they refer to them as shoulder fired arms, and so
you have to nestle this thing into your shoulder. Now
you can fire it, Audie Murphy, I guess if you
want to from your hip, But standardly you put the
butt of the stock into your shoulder and you open up,
you fire, and you have more accuracy. But it doesn't
(08:20):
give you a lot of portability. With a pistol, you
can conceal it. Look, man, if you're walking down the
street and you're carrying a long arm, you're walking down
the street and you're carrying a rifle, I'm going to
take notice of you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Bottom line as you mentioned carrying that rifle in broad
daylight would bring about a lot of attention. But in
the case of Lewis Gaskin, on this particular night, it
was dark. It was bedtime, and he was not necessarily bedtime,
but it was all dark. He's wearing all black. He
parked his car a ways away, and the home where
(08:57):
Robert and Georgia at Strumfells you know we're staying, was
actually their winter home. It wasn't a rental. Back then
they didn't have airbnbs. So if you had a place,
a house or whatever in Florida from New Jersey, that
was your winter summer home. However you wanted to look
at it. It was your escape from New York. And
that's why it was even more than just sitting at
(09:17):
a house at night, Joe. This was not just a house.
It was their getaway home. This was their peaceful environment.
They probably looked forward for months before they could go
to their winter or to their Florida home, their escape.
In their living room, in particular, mister Sternfel's George or
(09:38):
Robert rather is sitting in his recliner and I'm picturing
this man watching. You know, you got the TV on
you're just relaxing, and you mentioned the blast of the window.
Lewis Gaskins had parked his car down a ways from
the house. He walks up to the home and he
has his plan. He does not want to come in
(10:00):
in there while they're sleeping. He doesn't want to sneak
up on him that way. He needs them up and
about so that he can take them out from outside.
That's the part about this that really shocked me, Joe,
that Lewis Gaskin planned on shooting out the window to
take out the stern Fells. And when he takes that
(10:22):
first shot with his twenty two caliber rifle, he shoots
directly through the window and hits mister Sternfels in the chest.
He then shoots a second time and sees Georgett's stern
Fells as she starts to try to get out of
the room. She's headed to the hallway when Gaskin shoots her.
(10:43):
He then breaks out the window the rest of the way,
pulls the screen break, gets out the window and goes in.
He then puts another shot in the head of mister Sternfells,
who had been trying to get up again. By the way,
he had been shot twice. He's still trying to get
up Joe, and all like to think of is his
last moment was what in the world just happened? Bam bam,
(11:06):
bam so fast. His wife is trying to crawl her way,
and Lewis Gaskin goes around the house. He's looking in
windows to find to where she is. He wants to
take her out before he goes in as well, and
he gets in the house and shoots her in the head.
So we've got two murdered individuals.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And in that moment, those final moments of their lives,
as they are bleeding out, as Missus Stemfells is lying
in the hallway, Gaskins enters the home and robs them,
literally robs them, and their lives were exchanged for lamps, VCRs,
cash and a bit of jewelry. Just because you're shot
(12:02):
doesn't mean that your life immediately hinds. That's again a
lie that Hollywood has sold you. Gunshot wounds are painful.
There's an awareness many times that people have been shot.
There are other times when people are shot, in fact,
particularly with a high velocity round, where it will pass
through the body and they won't have an awareness, but
for the most part, depended upon where you were shot,
(12:24):
there is a high probability you're going to feel it.
In the case particularly of missus Sturmfels, she had an awareness.
I think something came up about what was it, Dave
about a dog.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You mentioned the noise that she made as she was dying.
He actually compared the gurgling sound to that of a dog,
a dog that you were taking out. The reason we
know a lot of what took place, Joe is this
career criminal. By the way, he was a young guy.
You know, Gaskins was only what twenty two years old
at the time of these murders, and he already had
(13:00):
a rap sheet. But we know that he picked this
house randomly. It could have been anybody, could have been
you or me, just happened to be the storm fellas
that night and he parks his car away. He goes
up to the house and says he circled the house.
He walked around it six times, six times. He walked
around the house before just you know, making the plan.
(13:21):
He already knew he was going to shoot from the outside.
And Joe, when you do that, when somebody shoots through
a window, to hit a target. And I boy, I
want to apologize to the families right now of anybody
who's ever been the victim of a violent crime. I
am not trying to act like this is nothing. The
man was murdered. And I don't know another way to
(13:42):
actually say this than to ask the bullet goes through
the window, does that not change its trajectory? Does it
take glass with it as it enters the body as
it goes? I mean, you're talking about going through screen, glass,
clothing before ever hitting the body.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
You're right on all those points. And let me break
this down from forensics perspective, when around is fired through
what's referred to as an intermediate target, and that essentially
what that means is just imagine that you're standing staring
out a window and a rock flies through from the
outside and strikes the window and then happens to hit you. Well,
(14:22):
that glass window gives way, right, and that window acts
as almost kind of a barrier, not much of a barrier,
but a barrier nonetheless, and you are subsequently struck by
the rock. Now, the question would be would the rock
maintain first the same level of energy as when initially
(14:45):
thrown before striking the intermediate target and would it stay
or remain on the same path. Well, the answer to
both of those questions is no and no. So what happens,
well when around when even a bullet is fired and
it's strikes intermediate target. You mentioned the screen, You mentioned
the glass that is going to bleed energy of the round.
(15:09):
So as that explosion takes place in the barrel, the
muzzle velocity, which is kind of significant in a twenty
two rifle. All right, it's spinning. We know that because
of the rifling that is within the structure of the bullet.
It twists. It either twist to the left or twist
to the right, either way as it is spinning. It's
(15:30):
like a football if you've ever seen a football that
is thrown, and it's kind of what they refer to
as a wounded duck where it kind of flutters in
the air. That means that the spin is not present
in the bullet as it should be, because if thrown correctly,
the bullet will maintain that tight spin as it travels
(15:50):
down range, and it will maintain all of those ideal
ballistic characteristics. Bullet works the same way as it's flying
through the air, and it strikes glass, the screen the glass,
it's going to bleed off energy, and then depended upon
the position of the shooter that is when the round
(16:11):
is first fired and their position relative to the intermediate target.
Remember he could see them through this glass and he
fires at them, the pitch of the round is going
to change. There's a high probability it will probably drop
down because gravity is working on the bullet as well
as this intermediate target. So even as a bullet is
(16:32):
traveling through the air, it's fighting against this downward pull
of gravity all the while. Now, the initial energy that's
generated in that blast will defeat gravity just for a
few seconds, but after it's traveled out of the end
of the barrel, gravity takes hold and it begins to
pull it down. That's why when you see people fire
(16:54):
around at a great distance, like snipers, they have to
elevate and adjust for bullet drop. The short of the range,
it doesn't have as much of an effect. But then
you throw glass into it and it does begin to pull,
and it pulls downward. And as it pulls downward, it
even deflects further downward with the striking of the glass.
(17:17):
And so if you were aiming save for instance, at well,
let's just say you had a target where you're aiming
just below. If you think of a silhouette of a person,
one of those that you see at a firing range
that has a head on it in the shoulders and
that sort of thing. Let's just say that you were
aiming at the chin of a target and you're firing
through a piece of glass. There's a high probability that
(17:39):
you will not hit the chin. You might hit center
mass in the chest. It'll drop down to where the
breastbone is, the sternum. Once the glasses, it is blown out.
If you fire another round at that point, now you
don't have an intermediate target any longer. But I like
what you did when you mentioned the nature of the glass.
Glass is fascinating. We can learn a lot from it.
(18:00):
First off, you mentioned the nature of the glass flying
through the air well. Glass is just sitting there being glass,
all right, and once this energy is introduced into it,
it's very brittle, as we all know, it's blasted outward.
It doesn't have optimum aerodynamic qualities. So you've got static
(18:20):
glass that's sitting there and a bullet meets it, it
blows it out. And for a few inches, maybe a
foot or two, you'll get the glass blasted out, and
for that moment in time, you'll see it turn into
like little flecks of shrapnel. And sometimes a glass will
actually burst so that it creates almost a powder. But
(18:40):
then you'll get the heftier fragments that will travel down range. Dave,
I've actually had cases where people have been shot while
seated in a car with the driver's side window up.
Now that's safety glass. Their entire courses taught in glass
and forensics. But I've seen a shotgun blast go through
(19:00):
a car window where the glass, along with the pellets
from the shotgun are embedded in the body. So you'll
find you'll be picking bits of glass. But in this
particular case, I think that there's sufficient distance that the
lack of aerodynamicism in the glass, the glass will have
essentially shatter and fallen away. But you'll see it all
(19:22):
over the floor.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And when this actually transpired, Joe, we had mister Sternfel's
got up after the first shot. It says he stood
up and that caused an immediate second shot from Gaskins
that dropped him. In this process, missus sturnfell, she actually
realizes what's happening after the second shot, and that's when
(19:45):
she goes to move to get out of the room,
and that's when Lewis Gaskins shoots her for the first time.
Right there, when she realizes something bad has just now
happened in this house. My husband has been shot twice. Boom,
Now she is hit. Storm fells and I don't know
how this is even possible. After being shot twice, he
(20:05):
actually tries to make it to his feet a third time,
Joe to get to his wife, and that's when we
now know. Gaskins grabs his knife from his pocket, cuts
the screen out, comes into the house, and then shoots
him right in the head to kill shot.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
He executes him, Yeah, he does. In this confession that
Gaskin makes, he states, like putting down a dog or
something to that effect. First off, how do you know
what it's like to put down a dog? And that
gives you a real insight, doesn't it that?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It does? I did that pass me. I'm glad you
brought that up.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I don't know, maybe you were out shooting dogs before
you decided to take out humans. I have no idea,
but I do know this, he said, that that Georgette
was actually gurgling like a dog. And if that's the case,
this is what I know that because I've seen it.
It seems this is more than likely a shot that
would have passed through her lungs, and you you get
(21:00):
this kind of fine pink aspirit that issues forth out
of your mouth and these death throws, if you will,
And she's crawling down the hallway, and so there's this
trail of kind of frothy blood that's been left behind her.
And you can still see this many times at the
scene when you arrive, and you can certainly see it
(21:20):
still issuing from the nose in the mouth, and this
is this kind of hyper arated blood because of this
gurgling that's taking place. You've been shot in the lung,
so they've got this death wheeze that's going on. And
then he walks up after he's Gaskins has made entry
into the home, and he shoots her in the back
of the head and executes her. And at this point
(21:43):
that he goes about beginning to burglarize the home. And
if I remember correctly, Dave, I think that it was
for the purpose of getting Christmas presents. If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
The saddest part of crime is the motive evading factor
that began this whole What took place? Yeah, it was
December twentieth and the criminal needed to go Christmas shopping.
What did criminals do? They don't go to the store
and shop. No, that's the easy thing to do. Askin
actually went out hunting for his Christmas presence. That's why
(22:20):
some of the things he stole were fairly odd. Who
steals a lamp? Who goes into a house, kills two
people and steals a lamp? That makes no sense. He
stole a VCR. He stole several other items, and he
took them all to a friend's house to still. Here's
got some Christmas present? I need to stash here for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The conflating of the joy of Christmas with multiple homicide
and burglary is something that I never thought that I
would have a discussion about. So you've rained down holy
(23:09):
hell on the home of these two innocent people. They're
just in this place that obviously they found joy in.
They've traveled down from the North, the cold North, at
this particular time of the year. Remember it's December nineteen
eighty nine, they've left their New Jersey home to come
and fly south for the winter, and there they are
(23:31):
and their life ends in this little home. Apparently that
wasn't the end of this night of terror that Gaskins
decides to perpetrate on this local community.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Now, to give it a very quick overview, we mentioned
Gaskin burglarizes the home. Joe after the kill shot on
mister and Missus Strumfels, shooting them both in the head.
He covered their bodies with blankets and then burglarized the house,
making lamps, VCR's cash, jewelry, things like that. I don't
(24:04):
know what goes on in a person's mind or their physiology.
I would imagine you've got a little adrenaline rush going on.
There's going to have to be something along those lines
to push you to the next part of the adventure,
which is a couple hours later. Gaskins, again just arbitrarily
picking a place, drives up to the home of Joseph
(24:24):
and Mary Rector and he finds them in the first murder,
we talked about how he got them in the living room.
He was able to goes around the house several times
to make sure he knows exactly where they are, and
he does the same thing here at the home of
Joseph and Mary Rector. He sneaks up there in his
all black ninja outfit with his twenty two rifle. He
(24:48):
walks around the house and he notices that they are
in the den slash living room. So what he does
this time is he cuts the phone line, and as
he's getting ready to go up and do his dirty work,
the Rectors decided to sign for bed, So he cuts
the phone line. They turn off the lights and head
to the bedroom. Now this was not the plan. You know,
(25:09):
I mentioned earlier that he didn't want to go in
and sneak in the middle of the night and shoot
people in their bed. There had to be some terror here.
He wanted them to know that he was going to
kill them and rob them. He wanted them to know that. Otherwise,
wouldn't it make sense to sneak into a house, catch
people unawares, do your business, and leave. So what he does.
They've turned the lights off, they've gone to bed, so
(25:31):
he starts throwing logs rocks at the side of the
house on the roof, trying to wake them up. After
a couple of times of doing this, Finally, Joseph Rector, honey,
I got this. He gets up to go and see
what's going on, and it's when he gets back in
the den that's when Gaskins starts shooting again. That's when
(25:53):
he actually shoots from the outside. He shoots directors. But
in this particular case, mister and missus gascon. Yeah, they
were scared, they were shocked, but they managed to escape.
They got out of the house, they got in the car,
and Lewis Gaskin's while they're taking off down the road
in their car, he's shooting at them. He's shooting at
their car. They go to the hospital. But you know what,
(26:15):
bless their hearts, Joseph and Mary Rector, they were actually suspects.
They didn't make any sense. Their story didn't make sense
to the local police.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You hear a story like this, where can you imagine
you're sitting there and you're talking to the police and
you're telling on.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Ninja guys, somebody dressed all in black in the middle
of the night.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, and he's throwing items at our house and we
heard these noises. I get up and of course, speaking
for mister Rector here, and he gets shot. He shot
one time. Now, how in the world they were able
to escape that home, I have no idea. And they
were able to get to their car and get on
the road. And as in this you talk about being embolden,
(26:53):
can you, And it's like something out of some crazy
Hollywood trope. He steps out into the road and begins
firing at their car as they're driving away. I can
only imagine if you're this man and woman the Rectors,
and you're thinking, what in the world have we done?
You're thinking, who could I have harmed to this degree?
(27:14):
Where my car is now, I've been struck by a bullet.
I'm in fear that my life is at its end.
My wife is here in the vehicle with me. We're
heading out, maybe she's driving. We're trying to make it
to a point of safety. And then they're saying that
in some way we're involved in this. I don't know
in recent memory if I remember hearing someone being drawn out.
(27:35):
And that's the really kind of dark part of this.
A while back you mentioned the word hunting. You're literally
drawing your prey out so that you can essentially bag them.
Was it all about taking from these people or was
it taking their lives? Is that what you're about, because
it kind of sounds that way to me. It sounds
(27:56):
as though that, yeah, you're going to take these worthless
trees trinkets from the home, but you were more about
trying to hunt them and kill them. And I really
wonder what the motivation behind that was. And it's quite
striking to me. He had an awareness. I think he
had an awareness that he had done wrong. You'd mentioned
(28:18):
going back to Stormfells. He covered their bodies with blankets.
We talk about face covering and depth investigation, and that
sometimes gives us one of two answers here when we're
looking at trying to understand who may have done this.
First off, it gives you an idea that they may
have been known by the perpetrator, or the perpetrator has
(28:39):
an awareness of their guilt because they're shame involved in it,
and so they're going to cover the bodies because they
know what they've done. I mean, this is you don't
get to use this term very often anymore, but this
is dastardly what has taken place, and their lives are
at an end, just laying there on the floor in
that home.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Back to the storm Fells, when mister Sternfelt is shot,
it says, in the first time, the shot in the chest,
he comes up out of the chair. He gets shot
a second time and that drops him back down. But
somehow he is able. I don't know how, And that's
why I wanted to ask you, if you're shot twice
by a twenty two, what is allowing him? I mean,
(29:20):
the guy shot in the chest, at least we know
that what kind of wound is he going to have?
What's going on inside his body with that twenty two shot,
that still allows him to get back up and to
try to get to his wife.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
All of this is going to be depended upon placement
of the shot, the location anatomically obviously, if an individual,
let's just say you're shot in the torso, if you're
hitting the heart, it's going to bring your life to
an end pretty quickly. But again, like Georgette Sternfell, she's
shot in the long dave. That is a languischine way
(29:56):
to die. To be gut shot or shot in the lung,
you're not to die immediately, so you're still struggling, You're
still able to uptake oxygen at that point in time,
and there's evidence of that with missus Sternfeld, because you know,
she's bleeding out, wheezing, you know, in the hallway, she
still had life in her And to that point with
(30:17):
her husband Robert, you're thinking, well, yeah, he was shot
in the chest, but was it a lung strike with him?
You can be shot initially and it not strike any
major organs. That does happen in fact, or if it
strikes an organ it might not be as catastrophic as
other gunshot wounds might be. Now he shot twice, we know,
(30:40):
and then he is executed. Now and when I say executed,
that's a term that we kind of throw around quite
a bit relative to folks will say an execution style shooting.
And what does that mean. Well, traditionally, what that means
is that you're going to walk up behind somebody and
shoot them in the back of their head with you
and a doe at you universal you being the perpetrator
(31:03):
shooting them in the head. And that's quite fascinating. But
you know, all through this drama that night, that dark,
cold night, you're thinking about his preparation. You've got a
guy that's dressed all in black. He's trying to, for
whatever reason, blend into the night he shows up with
a weapon in hand, now certainly an interesting weapon, to
(31:26):
say the very least to commit such crime. A twenty
two caliber rifle. You don't hear that very often. And
he is standing outside of the house. He's not certainly
man enough to break into the house and go toe
to toe with an older couple. He doesn't even have
that kind of intestinal fortitude. He stands outside the house
(31:47):
and fires through glass and shoots them. They were innocent
victims sitting there in their chair, I mean, just completely
unaware that their life was about to end, and the
same way with the rectors. To a lesser degree. They survived.
But you feel the safest at night, don't you, Dave,
When you all snuggle down in your bed, you've turned
(32:08):
the lights out, you're getting ready to close your eyes,
maybe to get some sleep, and then all of a
sudden you're hearing something raining down on your house or
glass is breaking out. And how evil do you have
to be in order to draw somebody out, probably in
their pajamas, and then shoot them down. And you're in
a position of cover where you're going to do this.
(32:29):
It's not like you're going to head with somebody that's
armed and you're firing at them like this, and that's
what makes this so very ominous. I think, you know,
you kind of dig through this and you think about, well,
what was this, Why would you be motivated at this
point in time to do it. Gaskin's made an interesting quote, Dave,
(32:50):
and this is him saying this. He admitted this to
the police when they questioned him, and he stated that
the night that he committed the heinous acts, that, in fact,
and I'm paraphrasing, that the devil had more of him
that night than God did. And that's certainly an interesting
(33:10):
point because this was in fact pure evil. On April
the twelfth, twenty twenty three, Lewis Bernard Gaskin, otherwise known
as the Ninja Killer, was pronounced dead at Florida State
Penitentiary at six fifteen pm after dying from lethal injection.
(33:33):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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