I Would Find a Girl Walking by Diana Montané, Kathy Kelly Page B
Authors: Diana Montané, Kathy Kelly
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Halifax Fire Department assisted in combing the remote area for clues.
Shoveling the area, a slug was recovered. It was encrusted and appeared to be from a .38 or .45 caliber weapon.
One year later, in November of 1977, I covered the story of Mary Kathleen “Katie” Muldoon, a twenty-three-year-old student at Daytona Beach Community College. The young woman’s lifeless body was found in a water-filled ditch along U.S. 1 at New Smyrna Beach. She had been beaten, shot in the right temple with a small caliber weapon, and drowned.
In hindsight, why hadn’t the investigators taken two key pieces of evidence—spent shell casings—and begun to investigate the possibility that the two cases were related?
The problem was the location. City police investigate crimes only within their own jurisdiction, while sheriff’s deputies work only in the unincorporated areas of the county. This meant there was often no immediate sharing of information, a fact that hindered the investigation and ultimately helped Stano kill again and again without being captured.
And someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure Katie Muldoon was never seen alive again.
We published Katie’s photo in the paper: a pretty young woman with long brown hair, wearing a sweater and leaning against a brick wall, her arms crossed and a haunting look in her eyes.
Ramona had been looking forward to college. Katie had worked at a restaurant-bar to pay for woodworking classes at the local college. Both Ramona and Katie liked to work with their hands. Ramona liked to sew. Katie’s friends reported that she loved the feel of working with wood and had even named her golden retriever puppy Cedar. Her landlord, Ben Taylor, said that she was studious and dedicated, even “austere.” Why, then, had someone wanted her dead?
These seemed more like random crimes of opportunity. The killer encountered his victims either alone or in some type of distress or some degree of intoxication, and then he struck. Young women tend to think they are invincible and that they know it all. Little do they consider the ominous presence of the friendly stranger, stalking and waiting and ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity.
Katie had been reported missing five days earlier by Taylor, from whom she had been renting a room for about a month. She had come to Florida from Pennsylvania via a series of foster homes. Her parents had died when she was fourteen, and she was placed with various families until she became of age to be out on her own. Taylor, her landlord, said she was a good tenant.
Ramona Neal had reportedly been drinking heavily after her argument with her boyfriend, William Meadows, not at all an unusual practice for the graduating seniors who flocked to Daytona Beach.
On March 12, 1981, Paul Crow interviewed Gerald Stano about the murder of Ramona Neal. First, the sergeant read him his rights, and then turned on the tape recorder.
Stano had told Crow that he had picked up a “young lady,” as he invariably called his victims in his prissy and fastidious way, on the beachside in Daytona Beach.
“Can you tell on what location you found her and what she was wearing on the night in question?” asked the sergeant.
“Err . . . uh . . . the young lady was wearing a blue two piece bikini. She was picked up in front of the Holiday Inn Boardwalk, Daytona Beach, where there’s a little picnic grove with a canopy.” He almost seemed to be speaking in the third person as he related the events of that night.
Crow then wanted to know what the tone of their conversation had been. Stano said that he asked the girl if she wanted to get a little high. “You know, smoke a little weed, and she said, ‘Fine, sure.’ And she hopped in the car and I was also drinking at the time. I also had some beers in the car at the time so we were doing a little bit of both.”
And then they went for a ride. For Ramona, as with the others who felt comfortable with this
Shoveling the area, a slug was recovered. It was encrusted and appeared to be from a .38 or .45 caliber weapon.
One year later, in November of 1977, I covered the story of Mary Kathleen “Katie” Muldoon, a twenty-three-year-old student at Daytona Beach Community College. The young woman’s lifeless body was found in a water-filled ditch along U.S. 1 at New Smyrna Beach. She had been beaten, shot in the right temple with a small caliber weapon, and drowned.
In hindsight, why hadn’t the investigators taken two key pieces of evidence—spent shell casings—and begun to investigate the possibility that the two cases were related?
The problem was the location. City police investigate crimes only within their own jurisdiction, while sheriff’s deputies work only in the unincorporated areas of the county. This meant there was often no immediate sharing of information, a fact that hindered the investigation and ultimately helped Stano kill again and again without being captured.
And someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure Katie Muldoon was never seen alive again.
We published Katie’s photo in the paper: a pretty young woman with long brown hair, wearing a sweater and leaning against a brick wall, her arms crossed and a haunting look in her eyes.
Ramona had been looking forward to college. Katie had worked at a restaurant-bar to pay for woodworking classes at the local college. Both Ramona and Katie liked to work with their hands. Ramona liked to sew. Katie’s friends reported that she loved the feel of working with wood and had even named her golden retriever puppy Cedar. Her landlord, Ben Taylor, said that she was studious and dedicated, even “austere.” Why, then, had someone wanted her dead?
These seemed more like random crimes of opportunity. The killer encountered his victims either alone or in some type of distress or some degree of intoxication, and then he struck. Young women tend to think they are invincible and that they know it all. Little do they consider the ominous presence of the friendly stranger, stalking and waiting and ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity.
Katie had been reported missing five days earlier by Taylor, from whom she had been renting a room for about a month. She had come to Florida from Pennsylvania via a series of foster homes. Her parents had died when she was fourteen, and she was placed with various families until she became of age to be out on her own. Taylor, her landlord, said she was a good tenant.
Ramona Neal had reportedly been drinking heavily after her argument with her boyfriend, William Meadows, not at all an unusual practice for the graduating seniors who flocked to Daytona Beach.
On March 12, 1981, Paul Crow interviewed Gerald Stano about the murder of Ramona Neal. First, the sergeant read him his rights, and then turned on the tape recorder.
Stano had told Crow that he had picked up a “young lady,” as he invariably called his victims in his prissy and fastidious way, on the beachside in Daytona Beach.
“Can you tell on what location you found her and what she was wearing on the night in question?” asked the sergeant.
“Err . . . uh . . . the young lady was wearing a blue two piece bikini. She was picked up in front of the Holiday Inn Boardwalk, Daytona Beach, where there’s a little picnic grove with a canopy.” He almost seemed to be speaking in the third person as he related the events of that night.
Crow then wanted to know what the tone of their conversation had been. Stano said that he asked the girl if she wanted to get a little high. “You know, smoke a little weed, and she said, ‘Fine, sure.’ And she hopped in the car and I was also drinking at the time. I also had some beers in the car at the time so we were doing a little bit of both.”
And then they went for a ride. For Ramona, as with the others who felt comfortable with this
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