I Would Find a Girl Walking Read Free Page A

except blondes, brunettes and redheads.”
    Walking into a state prison in August 1985, especially to see a death row inmate, was intimidating to say the least, and oppressive, to put it best. One door after another clanged shut, until I suddenly felt like a prisoner myself. The interior of the interview room was bare and sterile. Inside sat Gerald Stano, a slightly pudgy man handcuffed behind a small table, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. He didn’t seem embarrassed by his restraints; quite the contrary, he appeared amiable, and even cheerful.
    He immediately started asking me about people he knew at the News-Journal , from when he had worked in the mailroom. There, employees called inserters took the newspapers as they rolled off the press and inserted advertising sections into the finished product. For $3.50 an hour, it was mindless work, shuffling one part of the newspaper into another.
    It was very conversational at first, which put me at ease. I certainly hadn’t wanted to walk in and immediately start asking him about the people he had killed. So the chat about the paper was an icebreaker. He seemed confident, even flattered by the attention. It was a break in his daily routine, which he complained, time and again, was so monotonous.
    He was clean shaven. Later, he told me that he shaved every day, not that prisoners had to, as some inmates even sported long beards and mustaches. But he seemed to take as much pride in his personal appearance behind bars as he did on the outside.
    The initial discussions I had with Paul Crow were about the crimes to which Stano had confessed. I had only seen Stano from a distance once when I walked by Paul’s office and saw him sitting inside.
    I realized it would take a while to draw things out of Stano, just as it happened with him and Paul. Paul had already warned me that Stano relished playing cat and mouse to prolong the giving of information as long as possible. It was the thrill of the game for Stano, making him think he was in charge.
    He didn’t feel comfortable with some things that I asked him about in letters. The death of Susan Basile, one of the few—if not only—victims he had known personally, gave him bad dreams, he said. Like other serial killers, Ted Bundy for instance, Stano seemed to have preferred perfect strangers as his prey.
    I went to the prison three or four times. It was always on a Thursday, since I typically had off Thursdays and Sundays, so I had to go on Thursday to comply with prison regulations on interviews. On some weeks that I didn’t go, he would write that he was disappointed—although he always knew days in advance when I would be there for an interview because it involved clearance by prison officials.
    We made the agreement that I would send him a series of questions that he would answer, but pretty soon the letters from him took on a different, more personal tone, commenting on the weather or a visit from his parents. I had his complete confidence and support, especially because I had the backing of Paul Crow, who had vouched for me as being trustworthy. Stano’s letters were more like letters to a friend than to a reporter. He urged me to be careful, and even sent me a get-well card after I had surgery.
    He knitted a scarf and hat for me for Christmas 1985, sending it through his attorney. It was bright orange and white, the style more fitting for wintry northern climates than the sunny south. I knew all along he had been gifting other inmates with many of his “creations,” such as baby blankets. It was, after all, a change to the tedium of prison life. He had his radio and a small black-and-white television, his primary source of entertainment. Once he wrote me that he had watched the Junior Miss Pageant, which had been broadcast from Daytona Beach.
    What intrigued me most about him was that he could have killed so many women over a seven-year period and then resumed his daily life with total normalcy. And also, the irony