A Florida death row inmate who drugged, tortured, and dismembered two young men two decades ago is fighting for the right to be executed as quickly as possible, a chilling twist in a case that has haunted Tampa’s gay community for years. Steven Lorenzo, now 64, told a judge he wants to be “euthanized” so he can “come back in another form” and “get myself a new body.” His words came during a sentencing hearing in February 2023, where he pleaded guilty to murdering Jason Gailhouse and Michael Wholtz, both 26, in consecutive nights of horror in December 2003.
Lorenzo’s request has set up a critical competency hearing scheduled for December 11, 2025, in Hillsborough County. The court must decide whether he is sane enough to voluntarily waive all appeals and choose execution. His own lawyers are fighting to keep him alive, while victims’ families are divided on whether the state should grant his wish.
The hearing will determine if Lorenzo, a self-proclaimed “bondage master” who ran a “chamber of horrors” in his Seffner home, gets to control his final chapter.
Lorenzo and his co-conspirator Scott Schweickart operated a systematic scheme between 2000 and 2004, luring gay men from Tampa nightclubs, drugging them with GHB, and torturing them for hours. Seven survivors later testified about waking up disoriented, with memories of being restrained and violated.
But for Gailhouse and Wholtz, the abuse ended in death. Lorenzo admitted in a 147-page handwritten confession that he and Schweickart drugged, bound, and suffocated Gailhouse when the victim began screaming and threatened to call police. They dismembered his body in a garage, stuffed the remains into construction bags, and scattered them across Tampa in random dumpsters.
“I believe the faster I am euthanized, the faster I can come back in another form,” Lorenzo told Judge Christopher Sabella during his 2023 sentencing. “That’s why I want to be executed fast. I don’t want to sit on death row for 10 to 15 years waiting to be put down.”
He claimed reincarnation as his motivation, but investigators and prosecutors see a man still manipulating the system. In federal prison for drug and assault charges since 2005, Lorenzo spent years delaying his state murder trial with bizarre motions and claims of sovereign citizenship. Only in 2022 did he abruptly confess, seeking to bypass a trial and speed up his own execution.
The families of the victims endured two decades of agony. Pam Williams, Jason Gailhouse’s mother, told the court: “You are the scumbag of the earth. I don’t have a grave.
I don’t have a tombstone. All I’ve got is ground up hamburger meat in the ground because of you.” Ruth Wahultz, Michael’s mother, demanded an eye-for-an-eye punishment.
Yet now, some are uncertain. Williams has said she doesn’t care how Lorenzo dies as long as he is never released, while Wahultz wants him to suffer the same powerlessness her son felt.
Lorenzo’s legal team has filed automatic appeals despite his objections, as Florida law requires a competency determination before an inmate can waive further challenges.
Psychiatrists will evaluate whether his belief in reincarnation constitutes a delusion that impairs his judgment. If the court finds him competent, his execution could be scheduled within months. Florida has carried out executions relatively quickly for volunteers, with lethal injection as the method.
If deemed incompetent, Lorenzo will remain on death row indefinitely, confined to a private cell with amenities he considers more comfortable than federal prison—a system he openly admits he is trying to manipulate.
The ethical questions are profound. Victims’ advocates argue that allowing an inmate to dictate his execution sets a dangerous precedent.
“The death penalty should never be about convenience or comfort,” one legal analyst noted. “It should be about justice, not about giving a killer one final act of control.” Prosecutors who worked the case for two decades are conflicted.
They secured the death penalty but now watch Lorenzo try to game the system one last time. “He spent years drugging men, stripping them of autonomy, torturing them while they were powerless,” the analyst continued. “Now he wants to decide when and how he dies.”
Jason Gailhouse’s body was never found. His remains were picked up by sanitation workers and buried in landfills. All that remains is blood stained into the cobblestone floor of Lorenzo’s garage.
Michael Wholtz’s body was discovered in his own Jeep near his apartment, weeks after his death. The medical examiner found drugs in his system and signs of prolonged torture. Lorenzo claimed Wholtz’s death was an accidental overdose, but the evidence showed otherwise.
For the seven survivors who testified, Lorenzo’s confession was validation that their ordeals were real, but it also reopened old wounds.
The competency hearing on December 11, 2025, will be a public spectacle. Lorenzo is expected to appear and explain his reasoning again.
He may argue that death row offers better living conditions—private cells, televisions, more freedom of movement—than the federal general population where he spent 18 years. “I’m 64,” he told the court. “I could be on death row for 10, 15 years before I’m executed.
But the conditions on death row are more comfortable than in the federal system.” Critics call this a cynical ploy. Lorenzo is not seeking punishment but an upgrade, they say, while still controlling his own narrative.
Florida’s death row houses nearly 300 inmates, with appeals that can stretch for decades. Some die of old age before they are executed. If Lorenzo is found incompetent, his appeals will proceed automatically, and he may live out his remaining years in that comfortable cell—paid for by state taxpayers.
That outcome, many believe, would be a perverse victory for a man who spent two decades evading full accountability. “He wants to leave this world on his schedule, in his way,” said a close observer of the case. “But the families of his victims never got that choice.”
The case has drawn national attention due to its brutality and the bizarre legal twist. Lorenzo’s own confession read like a nightmare: “We had a pow-wow. We decided quickly and without much discussion that Jason had to die.”
He described the dismemberment with clinical detachment, saying they used tools to cut the body into pieces small enough to fit into construction bags. He drove around Tampa, dropping the bags in random dumpsters. “All that remained of Jason was blood on a cobblestone garage floor,” the confession stated.
The horror of that night remains seared into the community’s memory.
Scott Schweickart, Lorenzo’s accomplice, avoided the death penalty by testifying against Lorenzo. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison and is eligible for release in 2045.
In his testimony, Schweickart described how they discussed turning victims into sex slaves or selling them. Gailhouse and Wholtz were experiments to test whether they could commit murder without getting caught. Schweickart’s cooperation was the key that finally led to murder charges in 2012, nine years after the killings.
But Lorenzo then spent another decade obstructing justice.
As the December hearing approaches, the question remains: Should the state grant a killer’s dying wish? Some legal experts argue that granting his request avoids years of costly appeals and honors his acceptance of responsibility.
Others caution that allowing an inmate to volunteer for execution undermines the seriousness of capital punishment. “The law requires that the state ensure the decision is made rationally, not out of delusion or a desire for better prison conditions,” one professor said. The outcome will set a precedent for future cases in Florida.
For Pam Williams and Ruth Wahultz, the waiting continues. They have already waited 22 years for justice. Now they watch as Lorenzo tries to dictate his final hours.
“I just want him gone,” Pam Williams told reporters. “I don’t care how. He took my son’s life, my son’s body.
He left me nothing. Let him face his maker, but I want it over.” The competency hearing will finally determine whether Steven Lorenzo gets to control his own ending—or whether the state will force him to endure the same helplessness he inflicted on his victims.
True Crime Matters, which reported extensively on the case, described Lorenzo’s final words in court as “calm, steady, almost relieved.” He showed no remorse, no hesitation. He simply wanted to speed up his own death.
But the legal system moves slowly, deliberately. On December 11, a judge will decide if Steven Lorenzo is sane enough to choose death. And no matter the outcome, two families will still be left with memories, missing graves, and the horror of what happened in a Seffner garage twenty-two years ago.
