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Crimes

On December 19th, 2003, Steven Lorenzo and his buddy Scott Schweickert lured 26-year-old Jason Galehouse to Lorenzo’s home for a sexual encounter.

They tied him up, and Lorenzo strangled him. The men dismembered the body and dumped it in different trash bins around the city.

Their thirst for blood was insatiable, so they decided to hunt for another victim the next night.

They convinced 26-year-old Michael Wachholtz to leave a bar and hang out with them. They drugged him, violated him, and ended his life. He was wrapped in a sheet and left in his jeep. He was found a few weeks later.

Arrests

Lorenzo was arrested in 2005, but not for murder; he was charged with using the drug GHB to facilitate crimes of violence.

He was accused of meeting several men at bars between 2000 and 2004. There, he drugged the men before taking them back to his home, where he violated them.

The men reported waking up naked and in pain with little to no memory of what happened to them.

Schweickert was also arrested for federal drug charges, and he spilled the beans on the two murders.

Legal Proceedings

When Lorenzo went to trial on the drug charges, he claimed the sex was consensual, but the jury didn’t buy it. He was convicted in federal court of using drugs to facilitate crimes of violence and received 200 years in prison.

Schweickert got 40 years for his role in the federal drug case.

With the federal cases resolved, the state put its efforts into building murder cases against Lorenzo and Schweickert.

In 2012, the state indicted Schweickert, and four years later, he pleaded guilty to the two murders. He agreed to testify against Lorenzo and was sentenced to life without parole.

A conviction against Lorenzo wasn’t as easy.

Even though authorities had Galehouse’s DNA in Lorenzo’s home and pictures of Wachholtz’s dead body on his computer, it wasn’t enough to prosecute Lorenzo right away.

As the state continued building a case against Lorenzo, he vehemently denied that he killed Galehouse and Wachholtz.

By the time the state was ready to try Lorenzo in 2023, he gave in and pleaded guilty.

At his sentencing hearing in early 2023, the victim’s mothers finally got a chance to tell Lorenzo what they thought of him.

When Lorenzo spoke, he was not interested in serving life in prison and happily asked for the death penalty.

The judge gave him what he wanted and sent him to Florida’s death row.

Now 67 years old, Lorenzo is still awaiting the ultimate punishment.