October 19, 2023 • 42 mins
On December 22, 2003, two gay men were reported missing to Tampa PD. The investigations into their disappearances, would open a Pandora's Box that would force the police, the media, and society to examine how their actions and negligence led to some of Florida's most sinister crimes.
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With additional research by: Kaz.
Featuring: Eric Schmidt and Dr. Scott (LA Not So Confidential).
This is a Studio BOTH/AND production:
truecrimebullshit.com / bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience: patreon.com/studiobothand
Resources include:
• The Charlie Project
• NAMUS
• Uncovered
• Clearwater Police Department
• The Tampa Bay Times: 1 2 3
Music by: Colour Book, Yehezkel Rez, Roniit, Raz Burg, Raz Burg, and Yotam Agam
Featured music by: Josef Salvat
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With additional research by: Kaz.
Featuring: Eric Schmidt and Dr. Scott (LA Not So Confidential).
This is a Studio BOTH/AND production:
truecrimebullshit.com / bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience: patreon.com/studiobothand
Resources include:
• The Charlie Project
• NAMUS
• Uncovered
• Clearwater Police Department
• The Tampa Bay Times: 1 2 3
Music by: Colour Book, Yehezkel Rez, Roniit, Raz Burg, Raz Burg, and Yotam Agam
Featured music by: Josef Salvat
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
This is a studio, both andproduction. Let's violate the world. Let's
bring our fantasies to realities. I'mextreme, calculated and loved. Easy to
make them vanish with no link tous in the least, easier to find
(00:35):
a loner guy less connection. Ido a chokehold from behind. You hold
him down, strap him up,not to be found again. He wasn't
going to be going back. Theseare quotes from America Online instant messages between
(00:57):
Master Scott, whom we now knowis to Scott Schweibert, and Dom Jude
or sub who we now know isSteven Lorenzo. Whenever I take on a
new case, the first question Ifind myself asking is how did we get
(01:23):
here? What series of events,both personal and anthropological, created an environment
for these crimes to have occurred?And in this case, the answer is
a lot more complicated than in othersI've covered, because in order to understand
these crimes, we have to understandnot just gay culture, but societies effect
(01:49):
on it. We have to understandpower dynamics and couples. We have to
take a look at law enforcements andmedia's roles in crime. It's often a
challenging, convoluted, and heartbreaking studyin humanity. And so it's hard to
know just where to start, becausemore often than not, beginnings are just
(02:15):
the reverberations from a coalescence of eventsthat came before. Few things rarely begin
anymore. Usually they just carry over. But for now, I guess we'll
start with December twenty second of twothousand and three. On December twenty second,
(02:40):
two thousand and three, there weretwo different missing persons cases filed with
a Tampa, Florida police department.The first was of twenty six year old
Jason Rodney Galehouse, a gay manwho had recently moved to Tampa from Sarasota,
Florida. Jason would reported missing byhis roommate at eleven twenty five am
(03:02):
on the morning of the twenty second. His roommate reported that on the night
of Friday, December nineteenth, he, Jason, and two of their friends,
a couple, had gone out barhopping in Tampa. The four of
them eventually ended up at twenty sixoh six, a gay bar on North
Armenia Avenue, in the early morninghours of December twentieth. Because the four
(03:28):
friends had driven to twenty six ohsix together, Jason didn't have his car
with him, and when it wastime to leave, Jason told his friends
that he didn't need a ride becausehe was going to go home with two
guys he'd met at the bar.It was the last time that Jason's friend
saw him, and unfortunately, noneof them saw either of the two men
(03:52):
that Jason left the bar with.Detective Carlos Lastra was the responding officer in
Jason's missing person case, and hetook the disappearance seriously. Immediately following Jason's
roommate's interview and AffA, David Lastrawent to Jason's place of work, a
flower shop where Jason was a floraldesigner, and upon interviewing Jason's boss,
(04:16):
he learned that Jason hadn't been towork in three days, which was very
unlike him. In a follow upinterview with Jason's roommate, the one who
had reported him missing, he toldLastra that he had known Jason for years,
that they were childhood friends. Backin Sarasota, he let Lastra search
(04:38):
the house that he shared with Jasonand another roommate, and when pressed about
Jason's life, he admitted that Jasonhad been to the hospital on two different
occasions for drug overdoses, but thathad been years prior. He said that
since then, Jason no longer usedGHB. JHB is a depressant drug that
(04:59):
slows down messages traveling between the brainand the body. It's also a party
drug and often referred to as thedate rape drug. But he said that
Jason did still occasionally snort cocaine andthat Jason had been going to twenty six
oh six every weekend for the pastseveral months. He said that Jason did
(05:20):
have a habit of using recreational drugsand hooking up with guys from the bars,
and he confirmed that after reaching outto friends, no one in their
friend group had seen nor heard fromJason since he left the bar that night.
(05:42):
The second missing person's report that wasfiled with Tampa Pedee on the twenty
second was for twenty six year oldMichael Wockles. Michael had recently moved to
Tampa from Tarpin Springs, Florida,about forty miles away northwest. He was
working as a waiter at Bahama Breeze. According to his former roommates, Michael
(06:03):
was a happy go lucky guy who'drecently reconnected with his estranged mother and had
begun dating again after a breakup theprevious year. They said that Michael had
started going out with men he'd metin internet chat rooms and that it was
something they worried about. But itwas Michael's new roommate, Fred van Denebel,
(06:26):
who reported him missing when he failedto return home from a night out.
According to reports, Michael was lastseen in his red nineteen ninety two
Jeep Cherokee leaving his Bay Club apartmentin Tampa's Rocky Point neighborhood between eleven PM
and midnight on December twentieth, almosttwenty four hours after Jason Galehouse was last
(06:49):
seen leaving twenty six oh six.It was unclear where exactly Michael was headed
that night. He spoke with severalfriends on his cell phone after leaving his
apartment, but only said that hewas going out for drinks. Michael's cell
phone and jeep disappeared with him,and there'd be no signs of Michael nor
(07:12):
any major leads in his case fortwo weeks following his disappearance. Now,
there are a few different things atplay in the production of this podcast.
For one, I am a gayman around the same age Michael and Jason
(07:33):
would be now, so it's hardnot to experience this investigation or see the
people involved through a personal lens.Second, and more critical, the only
way to discuss this case holistically isto share as best I can the gay
experience and gay culture written large.It's a defining factor in both this story
(07:58):
and in the spaces we'll discussing,and despite how media often portrays it,
homosexuality is not a monolith. Sothroughout the season, I'll be playing conversations
I've had with gay men across thecountry and of all ages about their experiences
and how those experiences have defined theirrelationship with homosexuality, their relationships with other
(08:22):
gay men, and their identity asa whole. This is a part of
a conversation I had with an oldfriend, Eric Schmidt, about drug and
alcohol abuse amongst gay men. Drugand alcohol abuse runs pretty rampant within the
gay community, or at least itdid when you know, when we were
(08:45):
I think it's I think it stilldoes, and you know, I for
me, I can only imagine thatthat comes from or I will speak for
myself, like when I have overin or putting myself in risky positions with
substances. It was because I didn'tfeel comfortable in my own skin, or
(09:11):
I had self loathing or lack ofconfidence and was just afraid and needed something
to take my head away from mybody. I guess yeah, And I
wonder if that has been your experienceas well. I absolutely, I would
(09:33):
say absolutely. I think I thinkalso, you know, again going back
to that, like we don't wedon't date as teenagers, we don't learn
how to form intimate relationships with peopleas teenagers, and then drugs and alcohol
sure do make that easier. Ithink a lot of my drug use was
(10:00):
was very wrapped up in the perceivedintimacy of either getting high with somebody,
using with somebody. The sex thatwe were going to have while we were
while we were high absolutely went handin hand with me being able to move
(10:24):
into a sexual space that I youknow, didn't get in the shallow,
into the poolong. That's always allgrowing up, you know, being gay
was bad, Gay intimacy was bad, Gay sex is bad. If you
yeah, it's going to kill you. It'll kill you, or you'll get
(10:45):
gay bashed. It's God will hateyou. Your parents will leave you.
Like, at least in the eightiesand nineties, like everything that was hammered
into by everyone around you for themost part was that being gay and having
gay sex and having gay relationships wasonly going to lead to heartbreak, death,
trouble, and so yeah, likebeing intimate in any way or vulnerable
(11:13):
with other gay men was terrifying.And I think for me that was like
I need to be drunk to bein this space because I can't acknowledge what
this space represents. Yeah, andunfortunately, I you know, that got
me in trouble when I when Igot to San Francisco, my my drug
(11:35):
use absolutely got me in trouble,and it slid out of control very very
quickly, and was tied to thefirst time in my life that I felt
attractive, the first time in mylife that I was starting to understand myself
and my body sexually. It wasjust unfortunate that so much that was tied
(12:01):
up in drug use. But itwas the drug use that made me comfortable
enough to figure myself out. Unfortunately, then I had to figure out how
to get out of the the druguse. It's interesting you saying, you
know, the first time you feltattractive. Like I remember moving to San
(12:24):
Francisco very young, I think itwas eighteen, and thinking I'm going to
finally have my gay community, Likethis is a space where I can be
safe and have like a brotherhood andshare experiences and everyone knows what I've been
through, and so we're going tolook out for each other, and like
(12:46):
you can find that, or Iwas able to find that, But mostly
what I felt was a lot ofthe things we're talking about, like predation,
bitchiness, people like sub categorizing orsubculture ring and other ring every gay
person they could. You know,gay people like to put people in boxes.
And it was just like the predationin particular was like I had never
(13:11):
felt sexy or attractive because you know, whether girls knew I was gay or
not, I think their spidy senseswere always up. And so it was
like, you know, I hadnever felt wanted or attractive until I was
around gay men. But a lotof that was applied through what felt predatory
(13:33):
or you know, I'm going tohurt you so you can't hurt me,
and so then like you know,you internalize that as like the only way
I can be attractive is if someone'slike taking my control away from me,
or taking my power away from me, or treating me like shit. Yeah,
(13:56):
the things that I think the thingsthat like the pop teenage girls go
through in middle school and hopefully figureit out. But yeah, and I
don't mean to laugh about it.It's just what you describe is is what
I think is taken away from soso many queer people is that you don't
(14:22):
have the formative years. This stuffjust isn't there. And then by the
time it happens, you're old enoughthat you have access to money, and
you have access to alcohol, andyou have access to drugs, and and
just it all gets I think forso many gay, gay men or queer
people, it gets really jumbled up. And I think for a lot of
(14:46):
us it takes a long time tocome out the other side of them and
see ourselves as like who we reallyare. We see ourselves as the attractive
person that we are, the giving, the generous, the sexual, the
you know, all of all ofthe things that we can be. And
you know, it's unfortunate that sometimesthese realizations come really late in the game.
(15:13):
I mean, I look at picturesof myself in my New York years,
in my twenties, in my earlytwenties, my late teens, in
my early twenties, and I'm like, who is an adorable little boy?
Why was he not dating? Whywas he not out there? Like?
How did I not? How didI not know how valuable I really was?
(15:35):
And at forty eight years old,I could look back as as somebody
that is mostly sober, that youknow, is in a stable relationship.
I look back and I'm like,oh, that poor kid, Like I
wish I wish you didn't have totravel through all the bullshit you were going
to go through before you got tothis point. Well, and how could
you know your value if you knowall of society was telling you you had
(15:56):
none? Right. The first significantlead in either case occurred on January sixth
of two thousand four, just severalweeks after Michael and Jason were both reported
(16:18):
missing. On December twenty second,Michael Wocholtz's red Jeep Cherokee was discovered parked
at the Camden Bay Point Apartment Complex, a Memorial highway on the outskirts of
Tampa between Old Tampa Bay and theTampa International Airport. A passer by had
noticed that the jeep had been parkednear the leasing office for quite some time,
(16:41):
and upon further investigation, they sawwhat appeared to be a body in
the trunk, and sure enough,when Tampa police investigators arrived, they found
the decomposing body of a man wrappedin a sheet in the trunk of the
jeep. It took several days toconfirm that the body was in fact,
(17:06):
Michael Wachold's. An autopsy was conductedon January seventh, but due to the
state of decomposition, the medical examinercould not determine a cause of death.
People feared that they may never knowwhat happened to Michael. Investigators were fairly
(17:30):
conservative about not jumping to any conclusionsregarding whether this proved that Michael's death was
a homicide, but what they werecertain of was that someone else had to
be involved. Someone had to havedropped Michael's car off at that apartment complex.
Two theories emerged amongst the general publicand media, one that Michael had
(17:55):
been murdered, and two that Michaelhad overdosed on drugs and that someone,
out of fear and hoping to remainanonymous, drove his jeep and body to
the parking lot. Tampa police werealso careful not to jump to any conclusions
connecting Michael's death and Jason Gailhouse's disappearance. The lead detectives in each case continued
(18:19):
to share information with one another,but had no strong evidence connecting the two
cases. Lastra and to block thetwo lead detectives in Jason's case continued canvassing
the gay areas of Tampa, interviewingJason's friends and family, and eventually looking
into other Tampa crimes that could beconnected. And soon those three tactics would
(18:45):
align in a way that changed theinvestigations into both Gaelhouse and Wokle's dramatically.
On January twenty eighth of two thousandfour, Tampa Peedee pulled missing persons reports
for two other local cases of missinggay men, James Mark Shoemaker and Bradley
(19:08):
Lee Williams. James Shoemaker was lastseen at a Tampa gay bar, the
Parthenon, on October twentieth of nineteenninety five. James was thirty years old
at the time, and much likeJason Galehouse. On the night that James
disappeared, he had been driven tothe Parthenon, so he didn't have his
(19:29):
car with him. Unfortunately, noone recalled seeing him leave the bar that
night, and he's never been seennor heard from since. James was reported
missing several days after he was lastseen. Extensive air service and K nine
searches were conducted in the investigation intoJames's disappearance, and numerous potential witnesses were
(19:52):
interviewed, but there were no signsof James, nor was there any solid
information reguarding his whereabouts. Bradley LeeWilliams was last seen on June eighth of
two thousand and one near the sixtythree hundred block of Southwest Shore Boulevard in
(20:14):
Tampa. The following day, hemissed a shift at his job at the
local post office. However, accordingto the Charlie Project, Bradley wasn't reported
missing for over a week and ahalf after he was last seen, due
largely in part to his friends andcoworkers assuming he'd just quit his job.
But when his family didn't hear fromhim on Father's Day June seventeenth, nine
(20:37):
days after he was last seen,they knew something was wrong. After several
attempts to get a hold of him, they reported him missing to Tampa PDE.
When police arrived at Bradley's house,it was clear that he hadn't been
there in quite some time. Histwo cats and pet parakeet were on the
(20:57):
brink of starvation. In the searchof his house, police found Bradley's wallet
and cell phone and determined that hiscar had disappeared with him. Tampa PEDI
eventually recovered his car, which hadbeen abandoned in a strip mall parking lot
on Kennedy Boulevard and Tampa, abouta block down the street from the Metropolis
(21:22):
Gay Club. Bradley was thirty yearsold, six foot two, and weighed
approximately one hundred seventy pounds at thetime of his disappearance. Both Bradley Lee
Williams and James Mark Schumacher's cases remainunsolved and have gone cold. In going
through those records and several other policereports involving Tampa's gay community, Tampa PEEDI
(21:47):
compiled a list of ten individuals andrequested driver and vehicle information and criminal histories
for all ten. Three of thosenames were redacted from the files sent to
us, including one which was markeddeceased with a notation that his death was
under investigation by Tampa Homicide. Twowere Bradley Williams, and James Shoemaker four
(22:12):
were Tampa area gay men with ahistory of drug and alcohol related charges,
and the tenth was Mark Allen Thompson. Mark Alan Thompson was thirty years old
when he disappeared from Clearwater, Florida, a coastal city just twenty five miles
(22:37):
west across Tampa Bay from Tampa.Mark was last seen just after midnight on
November one of two thousand and one. He was leaving the Pro Shop Pub,
a gay bar on Cleveland Street indowntown Clearwater, after celebrating Halloween there
with friends. Mark's mother, whohe was living with at the time,
(22:57):
reported that he'd never made it homehome that night. The following evening,
the night of November one, shereported him missing after he failed to show
up to work that day. Fourdays later, Mark's nineteen ninety eight Ford
Ranger pickup truck was found abandoned atan undisclosed location in Tampa. Mark was
(23:18):
never found, and his case remainsopen. Between nineteen ninety five and December
of two thousand three, police determinedthat there were at least five unsolved missing
persons cases involving gay men who werelast seen in or near Tampa area gay
bars, and in the midst oftheir investigations into the disappearances of Jason Galehouse
(23:44):
and Michael Walkole's Tampa peade, werestarting to wonder if these disappearances could all
be connected and it wasn't just thesemissing persons cases. There was talk amongst
Tampa's gay hustlers of horrendous assaults andsex work gone terribly wrong. These chats
(24:08):
give a glimpse into the minds ofScott Schweipert and Stephen Lorenzo. The chats
lay out their ideas and their plans, and their desire too, as they
said, quote pray on the vulnerabilityof their victims. Most importantly, your
(24:30):
honor will hear from Master Scott himself, Scott Schweibert. He'll tell the court
how he and mister Lorenzo were linkedtogether by Limit Expander, that is the
screen name of an individual who linkedthese two gentlemen together. You will learn
how their friendship, if you callit that, progressed. You'll learn that
(24:53):
mister Lorenzo considers himself to be theexperienced bondage master, and that mister was
a novice. Both men, throughthe course of their we'll call it relationship
from October to December of two thousandand three. Ultimately had the same goal.
They wanted to find unsuspecting young menwho were alone in bars. They
(25:18):
befriended them and then invited them backto Stephen Lorenzo's house, which was on
Powhattan Avenue within the city of Tampa, for some drinks and a conceptual bondage
session. However, mister Schweikert andmister Lorenzo had different plans. Once the
young men were to get back tomister Lorenzo's house, they were going to
(25:41):
and I quote from the chats,use and abuse them to see how far
mister schweiker and mister Lorenzo would goand to see how well they would work
together. On January twenty seventh oftwo thousand four, Tampa Pedee detective John
(26:11):
Columbia made his way to a localchurch on Kennedy Boulevard, several blocks from
Metropolis, the gay club where BradleyWilliam's car was found after he disappeared.
Columbia was looking for a gay manwho went by Cubo, a man who
frequented the church for free lunches.There had been talk around the gay hustler
(26:34):
scene that Cubo and a friend ofhis had been attacked by a man that
they'd each gone home with to havesex in exchange for drugs. According to
a bartender at the gay bar Kikiki, Cubo and one of his friends were
gay street hustlers, and each ofthem had a separate encounter with this man
(26:57):
who picked them up, offered themdrugs, took them home, and then
assaulted them. He beat them,raped them, and covered their faces with
saran rap. The bartender told Cuboand his friend to report the incident,
(27:18):
but they refused, citing their owncriminal histories and a general fear of the
police. When Columbia discovered that Cubohad left town for the day, he
continued returning to that church daily andhopes to track him down and get the
full story. On the twenty ninth, while he was at the church for
(27:41):
the third day in a row lookingfor Cubo, he got a call from
an unknown man. The man toldhim that he met an Italian man at
Club twenty six O six on aSaturday night in May of two thousand three.
After talking for a while, theman agreed to go home with this
Italian man. They drove in separatecars to his house, which was near
(28:03):
the save a lot on West HillsboroughA in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa.
The caller told Columbia that upon arrivingat the Italian man's house, he
was poured a glass of wine andthey talked about their lives while sipping that
wine, and then he blacked out. The next thing he remembered was waking
(28:27):
up at six am, naked andtied to the man's bed. When he
asked to be untied, the mantold him that he wasn't free to leave,
and then he said that he wasgoing to take his car park it
in a random parking lot and thatno one would ever find him. The
(28:52):
man kept him there tied to thebed for eleven hours, and then,
without any theatrics, he simply untiedhim and let him go at five pm.
The caller described the man as short, with a white car and an
Italian sounding name. He said theman told him he'd previously been self employed
(29:17):
as a handyman. Fortunately, thecaller had the wherewithal to write down the
address of the house as he wasleaving that night. He told Columbia that
the man lived at two thirteen WestPowaton Avenue and that he could certainly pick
him out of any lineup. Healso told Columbia that he'd previously reported the
(29:42):
incident to detective to Bloc that hewanted the man prosecuted, but nothing ever
came of it. After the phonecall and the stories about Cubo and his
friend, Columbia began going through oldpolice reports involving assaults in the Tampa gay
community, and he found drug facilitatedsexual assaults of at least four men reported
(30:07):
in the Tampa area. Police hadseveral different suspects that they were looking at
for these assaults, one of whomwas a man well known in Tampa's gay
BDSM scene, a man named StephenLorenzo. And it turned out that Stephen
Lorenzo lived at two thirteen West PowatonAve And then the other thing, which
(30:36):
maybe you could help me with it, because I'm I can't, you know,
it's hard not to project while I'mdoing this just as a gay man.
Oh so you know, I wonderand it comes up with keys too,
like is there an anti LGBTQ cultureat play here? Like? Is
(30:59):
there a self loathing internalized homophobia atplay the idea of gay men targeting other
gay men, Like there's two obviousbuckets. One is that's because who they're
sexually attracted to. The other isit's some sort of internalized homophobia. Well,
you know, you and I havea bit of a generational difference in
(31:22):
our ages, and it's you know, a question like that requires me to
do some discernment while also respecting theintersection of identities. This is doctor Scott
from the La Not So Confidential podcast. He's a licensed clinical psychologist who works
in forensics with law enforcement in LosAngeles. He specializes in identity development and
(31:48):
specialized populations. You'll be hearing morefrom him throughout the season, But this
is a conversation we had in ourpre interview about how to communicate about gay
culture and BDSM. I only thinkthat the generation that's maybe post twenty five
years, what would that make themsillennials, those are probably the ones that
(32:12):
have more of a tendency to befree of internalized homophobia. My generation nobody
got away from it. You know, even even my friends and colleagues that
are like have been like. Eventhose that are driven by activism and driven
by you know, reclaiming the wordqueer, and that doesn't just because you
(32:37):
inhabit that space doesn't mean that you'refree of internalized homophobia. In fact,
you may be running away from itin that way versus running to it.
But that being said, I don'tknow if that's the driver here, and
that falls a little bit into itleans a little bit more towards And this
(33:00):
is no reflection on what your questionis, but like sort of the junk
science we had about the schizophrenogenic motherwhen we used to say, well,
if the male child did something,or if the male child is mentally ill,
it's mom's fault, right, Yeah, So there may be something that
plays at it, but I wouldtend more especially you know, psychopathy trumps
(33:22):
everything, you know it just likewhen psychopathy like there is in Lorenzo,
when it's that high a level,there's no room for internalized homophobia because he
doesn't have a functioning amygdala or afunctioning medulla that processes the Lindix system messages
about empathy and compassion. He's likegive a shit, yeah, so he's
(33:44):
not going to be hampered by it. So if that's something that you'd like
if that's a kind of a response, then I can offer. I'm happy
to do that. Yeah, Ithink for me, like I've been spending
a little bit of time trying topaint a picture of gay culture and how
it in many ways is a productof societal perspectives. I just don't know
(34:06):
if that's a feudal device or notin this Well, it could be for
the victims, yeah, I meanI think that that'd be because it is
a rarefied environment which those victims werefound, right, Yeah, and that
you know part of I mean Iwould say this, I like, with
these crimes only being a couple ofdecades old rather than fifty or sixty years
(34:30):
old in the gay community that existedat that time, which was very very
drug driven. Now there's a lotless drugs involved or chem sects in the
BDS now. But look there,and this may be this may be too
much for your audience, but alot of what drives this I think,
(34:52):
I mean, I won't speak forthe women and the lesbians that have their
own version the BDSM community, butthere's so much of this that has to
do with daddy issues, so muchof a josh you know, like that
idea you know, even kids today. I say when I say kids,
(35:15):
when younger generations today have more freedomand efficacy in exploring their sexuality, they
don't have the baggage that I have. There's still something that's about a child
in that developmental period knows that theyare different, and they know that they're
different because it's just because kids aresmart. Toddlers are smart, and they
(35:37):
pick up if there's something that's notquite the same about them and the way
their gaze looks at other individuals aroundthem, and parents consciously or unconsciously pick
up on that and then they replayconsciously or unconsciously all that back to their
kids. So my experience as aclinician is that so many of these people
(36:00):
are are working out. Look,every relationship we have is working out family.
It's working out family baggage. There'sno escaping it. Right. But
within the leather community, you know, you'll hear this among guys, it's
like, well, yeah, I'mthe daddy, but you know, even
daddies need daddies, And you know, it just goes on. There's this
like hierarchy, not hierarchy, butthere's a chain of attempts at reparenting by
(36:25):
using these tools of bondage and disciplinethat you know. I think it ends
up being a version of sexual alchemyfor the people that participate in it,
whether they realize that's what they're doingor not. Now, it's important to
(36:46):
paint a picture of Tampa in thelate nineties and early odds, and an
even broader picture of gay culture atthe time. Throughout the nineties, Tampa
peed was under fire or what theACLU called discriminatory police stings which targeted gay
men. They accused the police forceof using entrapment tactics to arrest gay men
(37:12):
and then use those arrests for publicity. And that is just a microcosm of
how gay men were treated by lawenforcement and society writ large. At the
time. Police and cities across thecountry seemed to quietly adopt a tough on
gaye policy, and assaults on gaymen weren't generally taken seriously, if they
(37:37):
were even reported. The relationship betweenthe gay community and law enforcement was fraught
at best. Gay men rarely feltsafe reporting any gay related crimes to the
police, and while society's views onhomosexuality were very slowly changing, much of
(38:00):
the trust had been completely eroded bythe gay bar raids of the sixties and
seventies, the complete dismissal of theAIDS crisis in the eighties, the denial
of basic human equality from both thechurch and the state in the nineties and
onward. So Stephen Lorenzo felt hecould operate in the open and with impunity
(38:28):
because he'd essentially been told by societythat he could. But the gay community
always rises up. We thought weknew what it all looked like. We
were looking out on the greatest view. We were raised to take a stemp.
(38:51):
We were always to keep a notethem mind. We believed we just
say alone through I'm one hundred milesan hour, sitting in my palace without
any power, alone in the dark. We're known in the dark. I
thought we could always try a bitharder. But if the dice don't want
(39:14):
a roll in your favor, itfalls apart. The fantasy falls apart,
And this is oh fantasies, Andtime is up, down, dully and
on down. It's very a trivyroad. Hoppen save bres from on the
(39:35):
doors a million it. I heardyou better on your own, But I
ain't gonna face this i'n't need you. This episode was written, researched,
edited and produced by Me Your HostJosh Hallmark, with additional research by Kaz
Resources. Included the Charlie Project,Nameless uncovered, the clear Water Police Department,
(39:59):
the Tampa Bay t and the TampaPolice Department. This episode featured Eric
Schmidt and Doctor Scott from La NotSo Confidential. To support this investigation,
go to Patreon dot com, slashStudio both and. This episode included music
by color book Y has Calrez,Ronite yourtomagm and Rasberg with featured music by
(40:22):
Joseph Salvat. Voices were forgotten.All the tracks were given up only for
moment. No, it was nonear enough but a take it as it
comes, that take it as uponly can. Let's take it all and
(40:42):
run worth it goes, because thisis a fantasisons duntuli and on downs very
of a turvy road. Open sabredsfrom the oh a millionaire. I'll put
you better off on your own?But am I gonna face this? So
(41:07):
I've been needing you. I don'tknow we with them putting the skin together,
putting the skin together, I havebeen eating you, and I don't
know you will eat me? Wheredid the stains together? Put the skin
together? So we need you?So I've been needing it. I don't
(41:52):
know that the putting the skins together, putting the stain together. I believe
you. I don't know you believeimages? What are the stime to get
others? What the stage? So? I mean, I don't know about
(42:14):
the images. But it's staring together, but it's shame together now believe I
don't know it willie images. Whatis it sign to get the others?
What is said together? So he'syou
This is a studio, both andproduction. Let's violate the world. Let's
bring our fantasies to realities. I'mextreme, calculated and loved. Easy to
make them vanish with no link tous in the least, easier to find
(00:35):
a loner guy less connection. Ido a chokehold from behind. You hold
him down, strap him up,not to be found again. He wasn't
going to be going back. Theseare quotes from America Online instant messages between
(00:57):
Master Scott, whom we now knowis to Scott Schweibert, and Dom Jude
or sub who we now know isSteven Lorenzo. Whenever I take on a
new case, the first question Ifind myself asking is how did we get
(01:23):
here? What series of events,both personal and anthropological, created an environment
for these crimes to have occurred?And in this case, the answer is
a lot more complicated than in othersI've covered, because in order to understand
these crimes, we have to understandnot just gay culture, but societies effect
(01:49):
on it. We have to understandpower dynamics and couples. We have to
take a look at law enforcements andmedia's roles in crime. It's often a
challenging, convoluted, and heartbreaking studyin humanity. And so it's hard to
know just where to start, becausemore often than not, beginnings are just
(02:15):
the reverberations from a coalescence of eventsthat came before. Few things rarely begin
anymore. Usually they just carry over. But for now, I guess we'll
start with December twenty second of twothousand and three. On December twenty second,
(02:40):
two thousand and three, there weretwo different missing persons cases filed with
a Tampa, Florida police department.The first was of twenty six year old
Jason Rodney Galehouse, a gay manwho had recently moved to Tampa from Sarasota,
Florida. Jason would reported missing byhis roommate at eleven twenty five am
(03:02):
on the morning of the twenty second. His roommate reported that on the night
of Friday, December nineteenth, he, Jason, and two of their friends,
a couple, had gone out barhopping in Tampa. The four of
them eventually ended up at twenty sixoh six, a gay bar on North
Armenia Avenue, in the early morninghours of December twentieth. Because the four
(03:28):
friends had driven to twenty six ohsix together, Jason didn't have his car
with him, and when it wastime to leave, Jason told his friends
that he didn't need a ride becausehe was going to go home with two
guys he'd met at the bar.It was the last time that Jason's friend
saw him, and unfortunately, noneof them saw either of the two men
(03:52):
that Jason left the bar with.Detective Carlos Lastra was the responding officer in
Jason's missing person case, and hetook the disappearance seriously. Immediately following Jason's
roommate's interview and AffA, David Lastrawent to Jason's place of work, a
flower shop where Jason was a floraldesigner, and upon interviewing Jason's boss,
(04:16):
he learned that Jason hadn't been towork in three days, which was very
unlike him. In a follow upinterview with Jason's roommate, the one who
had reported him missing, he toldLastra that he had known Jason for years,
that they were childhood friends. Backin Sarasota, he let Lastra search
(04:38):
the house that he shared with Jasonand another roommate, and when pressed about
Jason's life, he admitted that Jasonhad been to the hospital on two different
occasions for drug overdoses, but thathad been years prior. He said that
since then, Jason no longer usedGHB. JHB is a depressant drug that
(04:59):
slows down messages traveling between the brainand the body. It's also a party
drug and often referred to as thedate rape drug. But he said that
Jason did still occasionally snort cocaine andthat Jason had been going to twenty six
oh six every weekend for the pastseveral months. He said that Jason did
(05:20):
have a habit of using recreational drugsand hooking up with guys from the bars,
and he confirmed that after reaching outto friends, no one in their
friend group had seen nor heard fromJason since he left the bar that night.
(05:42):
The second missing person's report that wasfiled with Tampa Pedee on the twenty
second was for twenty six year oldMichael Wockles. Michael had recently moved to
Tampa from Tarpin Springs, Florida,about forty miles away northwest. He was
working as a waiter at Bahama Breeze. According to his former roommates, Michael
(06:03):
was a happy go lucky guy who'drecently reconnected with his estranged mother and had
begun dating again after a breakup theprevious year. They said that Michael had
started going out with men he'd metin internet chat rooms and that it was
something they worried about. But itwas Michael's new roommate, Fred van Denebel,
(06:26):
who reported him missing when he failedto return home from a night out.
According to reports, Michael was lastseen in his red nineteen ninety two
Jeep Cherokee leaving his Bay Club apartmentin Tampa's Rocky Point neighborhood between eleven PM
and midnight on December twentieth, almosttwenty four hours after Jason Galehouse was last
(06:49):
seen leaving twenty six oh six.It was unclear where exactly Michael was headed
that night. He spoke with severalfriends on his cell phone after leaving his
apartment, but only said that hewas going out for drinks. Michael's cell
phone and jeep disappeared with him,and there'd be no signs of Michael nor
(07:12):
any major leads in his case fortwo weeks following his disappearance. Now,
there are a few different things atplay in the production of this podcast.
For one, I am a gayman around the same age Michael and Jason
(07:33):
would be now, so it's hardnot to experience this investigation or see the
people involved through a personal lens.Second, and more critical, the only
way to discuss this case holistically isto share as best I can the gay
experience and gay culture written large.It's a defining factor in both this story
(07:58):
and in the spaces we'll discussing,and despite how media often portrays it,
homosexuality is not a monolith. Sothroughout the season, I'll be playing conversations
I've had with gay men across thecountry and of all ages about their experiences
and how those experiences have defined theirrelationship with homosexuality, their relationships with other
(08:22):
gay men, and their identity asa whole. This is a part of
a conversation I had with an oldfriend, Eric Schmidt, about drug and
alcohol abuse amongst gay men. Drugand alcohol abuse runs pretty rampant within the
gay community, or at least itdid when you know, when we were
(08:45):
I think it's I think it stilldoes, and you know, I for
me, I can only imagine thatthat comes from or I will speak for
myself, like when I have overin or putting myself in risky positions with
substances. It was because I didn'tfeel comfortable in my own skin, or
(09:11):
I had self loathing or lack ofconfidence and was just afraid and needed something
to take my head away from mybody. I guess yeah, And I
wonder if that has been your experienceas well. I absolutely, I would
(09:33):
say absolutely. I think I thinkalso, you know, again going back
to that, like we don't wedon't date as teenagers, we don't learn
how to form intimate relationships with peopleas teenagers, and then drugs and alcohol
sure do make that easier. Ithink a lot of my drug use was
(10:00):
was very wrapped up in the perceivedintimacy of either getting high with somebody,
using with somebody. The sex thatwe were going to have while we were
while we were high absolutely went handin hand with me being able to move
(10:24):
into a sexual space that I youknow, didn't get in the shallow,
into the poolong. That's always allgrowing up, you know, being gay
was bad, Gay intimacy was bad, Gay sex is bad. If you
yeah, it's going to kill you. It'll kill you, or you'll get
(10:45):
gay bashed. It's God will hateyou. Your parents will leave you.
Like, at least in the eightiesand nineties, like everything that was hammered
into by everyone around you for themost part was that being gay and having
gay sex and having gay relationships wasonly going to lead to heartbreak, death,
trouble, and so yeah, likebeing intimate in any way or vulnerable
(11:13):
with other gay men was terrifying.And I think for me that was like
I need to be drunk to bein this space because I can't acknowledge what
this space represents. Yeah, andunfortunately, I you know, that got
me in trouble when I when Igot to San Francisco, my my drug
(11:35):
use absolutely got me in trouble,and it slid out of control very very
quickly, and was tied to thefirst time in my life that I felt
attractive, the first time in mylife that I was starting to understand myself
and my body sexually. It wasjust unfortunate that so much that was tied
(12:01):
up in drug use. But itwas the drug use that made me comfortable
enough to figure myself out. Unfortunately, then I had to figure out how
to get out of the the druguse. It's interesting you saying, you
know, the first time you feltattractive. Like I remember moving to San
(12:24):
Francisco very young, I think itwas eighteen, and thinking I'm going to
finally have my gay community, Likethis is a space where I can be
safe and have like a brotherhood andshare experiences and everyone knows what I've been
through, and so we're going tolook out for each other, and like
(12:46):
you can find that, or Iwas able to find that, But mostly
what I felt was a lot ofthe things we're talking about, like predation,
bitchiness, people like sub categorizing orsubculture ring and other ring every gay
person they could. You know,gay people like to put people in boxes.
And it was just like the predationin particular was like I had never
(13:11):
felt sexy or attractive because you know, whether girls knew I was gay or
not, I think their spidy senseswere always up. And so it was
like, you know, I hadnever felt wanted or attractive until I was
around gay men. But a lotof that was applied through what felt predatory
(13:33):
or you know, I'm going tohurt you so you can't hurt me,
and so then like you know,you internalize that as like the only way
I can be attractive is if someone'slike taking my control away from me,
or taking my power away from me, or treating me like shit. Yeah,
(13:56):
the things that I think the thingsthat like the pop teenage girls go
through in middle school and hopefully figureit out. But yeah, and I
don't mean to laugh about it.It's just what you describe is is what
I think is taken away from soso many queer people is that you don't
(14:22):
have the formative years. This stuffjust isn't there. And then by the
time it happens, you're old enoughthat you have access to money, and
you have access to alcohol, andyou have access to drugs, and and
just it all gets I think forso many gay, gay men or queer
people, it gets really jumbled up. And I think for a lot of
(14:46):
us it takes a long time tocome out the other side of them and
see ourselves as like who we reallyare. We see ourselves as the attractive
person that we are, the giving, the generous, the sexual, the
you know, all of all ofthe things that we can be. And
you know, it's unfortunate that sometimesthese realizations come really late in the game.
(15:13):
I mean, I look at picturesof myself in my New York years,
in my twenties, in my earlytwenties, my late teens, in
my early twenties, and I'm like, who is an adorable little boy?
Why was he not dating? Whywas he not out there? Like?
How did I not? How didI not know how valuable I really was?
(15:35):
And at forty eight years old,I could look back as as somebody
that is mostly sober, that youknow, is in a stable relationship.
I look back and I'm like,oh, that poor kid, Like I
wish I wish you didn't have totravel through all the bullshit you were going
to go through before you got tothis point. Well, and how could
you know your value if you knowall of society was telling you you had
(15:56):
none? Right. The first significantlead in either case occurred on January sixth
of two thousand four, just severalweeks after Michael and Jason were both reported
(16:18):
missing. On December twenty second,Michael Wocholtz's red Jeep Cherokee was discovered parked
at the Camden Bay Point Apartment Complex, a Memorial highway on the outskirts of
Tampa between Old Tampa Bay and theTampa International Airport. A passer by had
noticed that the jeep had been parkednear the leasing office for quite some time,
(16:41):
and upon further investigation, they sawwhat appeared to be a body in
the trunk, and sure enough,when Tampa police investigators arrived, they found
the decomposing body of a man wrappedin a sheet in the trunk of the
jeep. It took several days toconfirm that the body was in fact,
(17:06):
Michael Wachold's. An autopsy was conductedon January seventh, but due to the
state of decomposition, the medical examinercould not determine a cause of death.
People feared that they may never knowwhat happened to Michael. Investigators were fairly
(17:30):
conservative about not jumping to any conclusionsregarding whether this proved that Michael's death was
a homicide, but what they werecertain of was that someone else had to
be involved. Someone had to havedropped Michael's car off at that apartment complex.
Two theories emerged amongst the general publicand media, one that Michael had
(17:55):
been murdered, and two that Michaelhad overdosed on drugs and that someone,
out of fear and hoping to remainanonymous, drove his jeep and body to
the parking lot. Tampa police werealso careful not to jump to any conclusions
connecting Michael's death and Jason Gailhouse's disappearance. The lead detectives in each case continued
(18:19):
to share information with one another,but had no strong evidence connecting the two
cases. Lastra and to block thetwo lead detectives in Jason's case continued canvassing
the gay areas of Tampa, interviewingJason's friends and family, and eventually looking
into other Tampa crimes that could beconnected. And soon those three tactics would
(18:45):
align in a way that changed theinvestigations into both Gaelhouse and Wokle's dramatically.
On January twenty eighth of two thousandfour, Tampa Peedee pulled missing persons reports
for two other local cases of missinggay men, James Mark Shoemaker and Bradley
(19:08):
Lee Williams. James Shoemaker was lastseen at a Tampa gay bar, the
Parthenon, on October twentieth of nineteenninety five. James was thirty years old
at the time, and much likeJason Galehouse. On the night that James
disappeared, he had been driven tothe Parthenon, so he didn't have his
(19:29):
car with him. Unfortunately, noone recalled seeing him leave the bar that
night, and he's never been seennor heard from since. James was reported
missing several days after he was lastseen. Extensive air service and K nine
searches were conducted in the investigation intoJames's disappearance, and numerous potential witnesses were
(19:52):
interviewed, but there were no signsof James, nor was there any solid
information reguarding his whereabouts. Bradley LeeWilliams was last seen on June eighth of
two thousand and one near the sixtythree hundred block of Southwest Shore Boulevard in
(20:14):
Tampa. The following day, hemissed a shift at his job at the
local post office. However, accordingto the Charlie Project, Bradley wasn't reported
missing for over a week and ahalf after he was last seen, due
largely in part to his friends andcoworkers assuming he'd just quit his job.
But when his family didn't hear fromhim on Father's Day June seventeenth, nine
(20:37):
days after he was last seen,they knew something was wrong. After several
attempts to get a hold of him, they reported him missing to Tampa PDE.
When police arrived at Bradley's house,it was clear that he hadn't been
there in quite some time. Histwo cats and pet parakeet were on the
(20:57):
brink of starvation. In the searchof his house, police found Bradley's wallet
and cell phone and determined that hiscar had disappeared with him. Tampa PEDI
eventually recovered his car, which hadbeen abandoned in a strip mall parking lot
on Kennedy Boulevard and Tampa, abouta block down the street from the Metropolis
(21:22):
Gay Club. Bradley was thirty yearsold, six foot two, and weighed
approximately one hundred seventy pounds at thetime of his disappearance. Both Bradley Lee
Williams and James Mark Schumacher's cases remainunsolved and have gone cold. In going
through those records and several other policereports involving Tampa's gay community, Tampa PEEDI
(21:47):
compiled a list of ten individuals andrequested driver and vehicle information and criminal histories
for all ten. Three of thosenames were redacted from the files sent to
us, including one which was markeddeceased with a notation that his death was
under investigation by Tampa Homicide. Twowere Bradley Williams, and James Shoemaker four
(22:12):
were Tampa area gay men with ahistory of drug and alcohol related charges,
and the tenth was Mark Allen Thompson. Mark Alan Thompson was thirty years old
when he disappeared from Clearwater, Florida, a coastal city just twenty five miles
(22:37):
west across Tampa Bay from Tampa.Mark was last seen just after midnight on
November one of two thousand and one. He was leaving the Pro Shop Pub,
a gay bar on Cleveland Street indowntown Clearwater, after celebrating Halloween there
with friends. Mark's mother, whohe was living with at the time,
(22:57):
reported that he'd never made it homehome that night. The following evening,
the night of November one, shereported him missing after he failed to show
up to work that day. Fourdays later, Mark's nineteen ninety eight Ford
Ranger pickup truck was found abandoned atan undisclosed location in Tampa. Mark was
(23:18):
never found, and his case remainsopen. Between nineteen ninety five and December
of two thousand three, police determinedthat there were at least five unsolved missing
persons cases involving gay men who werelast seen in or near Tampa area gay
bars, and in the midst oftheir investigations into the disappearances of Jason Galehouse
(23:44):
and Michael Walkole's Tampa peade, werestarting to wonder if these disappearances could all
be connected and it wasn't just thesemissing persons cases. There was talk amongst
Tampa's gay hustlers of horrendous assaults andsex work gone terribly wrong. These chats
(24:08):
give a glimpse into the minds ofScott Schweipert and Stephen Lorenzo. The chats
lay out their ideas and their plans, and their desire too, as they
said, quote pray on the vulnerabilityof their victims. Most importantly, your
(24:30):
honor will hear from Master Scott himself, Scott Schweibert. He'll tell the court
how he and mister Lorenzo were linkedtogether by Limit Expander, that is the
screen name of an individual who linkedthese two gentlemen together. You will learn
how their friendship, if you callit that, progressed. You'll learn that
(24:53):
mister Lorenzo considers himself to be theexperienced bondage master, and that mister was
a novice. Both men, throughthe course of their we'll call it relationship
from October to December of two thousandand three. Ultimately had the same goal.
They wanted to find unsuspecting young menwho were alone in bars. They
(25:18):
befriended them and then invited them backto Stephen Lorenzo's house, which was on
Powhattan Avenue within the city of Tampa, for some drinks and a conceptual bondage
session. However, mister Schweikert andmister Lorenzo had different plans. Once the
young men were to get back tomister Lorenzo's house, they were going to
(25:41):
and I quote from the chats,use and abuse them to see how far
mister schweiker and mister Lorenzo would goand to see how well they would work
together. On January twenty seventh oftwo thousand four, Tampa Pedee detective John
(26:11):
Columbia made his way to a localchurch on Kennedy Boulevard, several blocks from
Metropolis, the gay club where BradleyWilliam's car was found after he disappeared.
Columbia was looking for a gay manwho went by Cubo, a man who
frequented the church for free lunches.There had been talk around the gay hustler
(26:34):
scene that Cubo and a friend ofhis had been attacked by a man that
they'd each gone home with to havesex in exchange for drugs. According to
a bartender at the gay bar Kikiki, Cubo and one of his friends were
gay street hustlers, and each ofthem had a separate encounter with this man
(26:57):
who picked them up, offered themdrugs, took them home, and then
assaulted them. He beat them,raped them, and covered their faces with
saran rap. The bartender told Cuboand his friend to report the incident,
(27:18):
but they refused, citing their owncriminal histories and a general fear of the
police. When Columbia discovered that Cubohad left town for the day, he
continued returning to that church daily andhopes to track him down and get the
full story. On the twenty ninth, while he was at the church for
(27:41):
the third day in a row lookingfor Cubo, he got a call from
an unknown man. The man toldhim that he met an Italian man at
Club twenty six O six on aSaturday night in May of two thousand three.
After talking for a while, theman agreed to go home with this
Italian man. They drove in separatecars to his house, which was near
(28:03):
the save a lot on West HillsboroughA in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa.
The caller told Columbia that upon arrivingat the Italian man's house, he
was poured a glass of wine andthey talked about their lives while sipping that
wine, and then he blacked out. The next thing he remembered was waking
(28:27):
up at six am, naked andtied to the man's bed. When he
asked to be untied, the mantold him that he wasn't free to leave,
and then he said that he wasgoing to take his car park it
in a random parking lot and thatno one would ever find him. The
(28:52):
man kept him there tied to thebed for eleven hours, and then,
without any theatrics, he simply untiedhim and let him go at five pm.
The caller described the man as short, with a white car and an
Italian sounding name. He said theman told him he'd previously been self employed
(29:17):
as a handyman. Fortunately, thecaller had the wherewithal to write down the
address of the house as he wasleaving that night. He told Columbia that
the man lived at two thirteen WestPowaton Avenue and that he could certainly pick
him out of any lineup. Healso told Columbia that he'd previously reported the
(29:42):
incident to detective to Bloc that hewanted the man prosecuted, but nothing ever
came of it. After the phonecall and the stories about Cubo and his
friend, Columbia began going through oldpolice reports involving assaults in the Tampa gay
community, and he found drug facilitatedsexual assaults of at least four men reported
(30:07):
in the Tampa area. Police hadseveral different suspects that they were looking at
for these assaults, one of whomwas a man well known in Tampa's gay
BDSM scene, a man named StephenLorenzo. And it turned out that Stephen
Lorenzo lived at two thirteen West PowatonAve And then the other thing, which
(30:36):
maybe you could help me with it, because I'm I can't, you know,
it's hard not to project while I'mdoing this just as a gay man.
Oh so you know, I wonderand it comes up with keys too,
like is there an anti LGBTQ cultureat play here? Like? Is
(30:59):
there a self loathing internalized homophobia atplay the idea of gay men targeting other
gay men, Like there's two obviousbuckets. One is that's because who they're
sexually attracted to. The other isit's some sort of internalized homophobia. Well,
you know, you and I havea bit of a generational difference in
(31:22):
our ages, and it's you know, a question like that requires me to
do some discernment while also respecting theintersection of identities. This is doctor Scott
from the La Not So Confidential podcast. He's a licensed clinical psychologist who works
in forensics with law enforcement in LosAngeles. He specializes in identity development and
(31:48):
specialized populations. You'll be hearing morefrom him throughout the season, But this
is a conversation we had in ourpre interview about how to communicate about gay
culture and BDSM. I only thinkthat the generation that's maybe post twenty five
years, what would that make themsillennials, those are probably the ones that
(32:12):
have more of a tendency to befree of internalized homophobia. My generation nobody
got away from it. You know, even even my friends and colleagues that
are like have been like. Eventhose that are driven by activism and driven
by you know, reclaiming the wordqueer, and that doesn't just because you
(32:37):
inhabit that space doesn't mean that you'refree of internalized homophobia. In fact,
you may be running away from itin that way versus running to it.
But that being said, I don'tknow if that's the driver here, and
that falls a little bit into itleans a little bit more towards And this
(33:00):
is no reflection on what your questionis, but like sort of the junk
science we had about the schizophrenogenic motherwhen we used to say, well,
if the male child did something,or if the male child is mentally ill,
it's mom's fault, right, Yeah, So there may be something that
plays at it, but I wouldtend more especially you know, psychopathy trumps
(33:22):
everything, you know it just likewhen psychopathy like there is in Lorenzo,
when it's that high a level,there's no room for internalized homophobia because he
doesn't have a functioning amygdala or afunctioning medulla that processes the Lindix system messages
about empathy and compassion. He's likegive a shit, yeah, so he's
(33:44):
not going to be hampered by it. So if that's something that you'd like
if that's a kind of a response, then I can offer. I'm happy
to do that. Yeah, Ithink for me, like I've been spending
a little bit of time trying topaint a picture of gay culture and how
it in many ways is a productof societal perspectives. I just don't know
(34:06):
if that's a feudal device or notin this Well, it could be for
the victims, yeah, I meanI think that that'd be because it is
a rarefied environment which those victims werefound, right, Yeah, and that
you know part of I mean Iwould say this, I like, with
these crimes only being a couple ofdecades old rather than fifty or sixty years
(34:30):
old in the gay community that existedat that time, which was very very
drug driven. Now there's a lotless drugs involved or chem sects in the
BDS now. But look there,and this may be this may be too
much for your audience, but alot of what drives this I think,
(34:52):
I mean, I won't speak forthe women and the lesbians that have their
own version the BDSM community, butthere's so much of this that has to
do with daddy issues, so muchof a josh you know, like that
idea you know, even kids today. I say when I say kids,
(35:15):
when younger generations today have more freedomand efficacy in exploring their sexuality, they
don't have the baggage that I have. There's still something that's about a child
in that developmental period knows that theyare different, and they know that they're
different because it's just because kids aresmart. Toddlers are smart, and they
(35:37):
pick up if there's something that's notquite the same about them and the way
their gaze looks at other individuals aroundthem, and parents consciously or unconsciously pick
up on that and then they replayconsciously or unconsciously all that back to their
kids. So my experience as aclinician is that so many of these people
(36:00):
are are working out. Look,every relationship we have is working out family.
It's working out family baggage. There'sno escaping it. Right. But
within the leather community, you know, you'll hear this among guys, it's
like, well, yeah, I'mthe daddy, but you know, even
daddies need daddies, And you know, it just goes on. There's this
like hierarchy, not hierarchy, butthere's a chain of attempts at reparenting by
(36:25):
using these tools of bondage and disciplinethat you know. I think it ends
up being a version of sexual alchemyfor the people that participate in it,
whether they realize that's what they're doingor not. Now, it's important to
(36:46):
paint a picture of Tampa in thelate nineties and early odds, and an
even broader picture of gay culture atthe time. Throughout the nineties, Tampa
peed was under fire or what theACLU called discriminatory police stings which targeted gay
men. They accused the police forceof using entrapment tactics to arrest gay men
(37:12):
and then use those arrests for publicity. And that is just a microcosm of
how gay men were treated by lawenforcement and society writ large. At the
time. Police and cities across thecountry seemed to quietly adopt a tough on
gaye policy, and assaults on gaymen weren't generally taken seriously, if they
(37:37):
were even reported. The relationship betweenthe gay community and law enforcement was fraught
at best. Gay men rarely feltsafe reporting any gay related crimes to the
police, and while society's views onhomosexuality were very slowly changing, much of
(38:00):
the trust had been completely eroded bythe gay bar raids of the sixties and
seventies, the complete dismissal of theAIDS crisis in the eighties, the denial
of basic human equality from both thechurch and the state in the nineties and
onward. So Stephen Lorenzo felt hecould operate in the open and with impunity
(38:28):
because he'd essentially been told by societythat he could. But the gay community
always rises up. We thought weknew what it all looked like. We
were looking out on the greatest view. We were raised to take a stemp.
(38:51):
We were always to keep a notethem mind. We believed we just
say alone through I'm one hundred milesan hour, sitting in my palace without
any power, alone in the dark. We're known in the dark. I
thought we could always try a bitharder. But if the dice don't want
(39:14):
a roll in your favor, itfalls apart. The fantasy falls apart,
And this is oh fantasies, Andtime is up, down, dully and
on down. It's very a trivyroad. Hoppen save bres from on the
(39:35):
doors a million it. I heardyou better on your own, But I
ain't gonna face this i'n't need you. This episode was written, researched,
edited and produced by Me Your HostJosh Hallmark, with additional research by Kaz
Resources. Included the Charlie Project,Nameless uncovered, the clear Water Police Department,
(39:59):
the Tampa Bay t and the TampaPolice Department. This episode featured Eric
Schmidt and Doctor Scott from La NotSo Confidential. To support this investigation,
go to Patreon dot com, slashStudio both and. This episode included music
by color book Y has Calrez,Ronite yourtomagm and Rasberg with featured music by
(40:22):
Joseph Salvat. Voices were forgotten.All the tracks were given up only for
moment. No, it was nonear enough but a take it as it
comes, that take it as uponly can. Let's take it all and
(40:42):
run worth it goes, because thisis a fantasisons duntuli and on downs very
of a turvy road. Open sabredsfrom the oh a millionaire. I'll put
you better off on your own?But am I gonna face this? So
(41:07):
I've been needing you. I don'tknow we with them putting the skin together,
putting the skin together, I havebeen eating you, and I don't
know you will eat me? Wheredid the stains together? Put the skin
together? So we need you?So I've been needing it. I don't
(41:52):
know that the putting the skins together, putting the stain together. I believe
you. I don't know you believeimages? What are the stime to get
others? What the stage? So? I mean, I don't know about
(42:14):
the images. But it's staring together, but it's shame together now believe I
don't know it willie images. Whatis it sign to get the others?
What is said together? So he'syou
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