Ms Suzanne
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Susan Basile is listed as Gerald stano victim.Apparantly her body was never found?I do not see her listed as a missing person on any of the sites.Does anyone know more on her?What she looked like.Discription ect....Would someone know how to get her on the missing person's websites if she is still missing?
Paper: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL)
Title: WAITING FOR STANO TO DIE
Date: March 22, 1998
Saturday dawned bright but cold, the sort of day that promises warmth but never delivers.
John Maher, 39, flew home from Chicago. His old friend, John Anderson, 41, waited at gate 54 of Orlando International Airport for Maher's flight.An hour late, Maher exited the jetway and his eyes met Anderson's immediately. Anderson's tanned lifeguard's face lit up with a smile. His goatee, sunglasses and blue windbreaker contrasted with Maher's polo shirt and clean shave.
``John,'' Anderson said.
They clasped hands, exchanged hellos. Anderson had learned Maher would need a lift from the airport and decided at the last minute to surprise him. They drove together to the Ponce Inlet home of Maher's mother and stepfather, Gerry and Leonard Friedman.
Although baptized in good spirits, Maher's arrival carried a more serious undertone.
He came, bluntly put, to watch a man die.
He's seen men die before, as a Navy SEAL in the Gulf War. But that was business, a matter of his former profession.
``This is personal,'' he said, striding through the airport toward baggage claim.
If things go as planned, Maher and 23 others will gather early Monday morning inside the viewing area of the death chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke.
Unless he wins a stay of execution, Gerald Stano will walk into the chamber at 7 a.m., a window separating him from the witnesses, and corrections officers will seat him in the electric chair.
Stano, in the first of 41 confessions, admitted 18 years ago to murdering John Maher's sister, Mary Carol Maher. By his claims, Stano could be the most prolific serial killer in American history, worse than Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.
For John Maher, watching the execution is no longer about vengeance. Time took care of that, he said. It's about an end to frustration with a system that countenances cruel delay.
``I'm doing it in support of my family,'' he said. ``We held inside of us that anger for many years. I didn't let go until I realized it only affects me.''
Stano's execution has been a long time coming for the families of his victims. Some, like John and Edith Scharf of Port Orange, didn't live long enough to see his sentence carried out. If Stano dies Monday, he dies specifically for murdering their daughter, Cathy Lee Scharf, in 1973.
``It's a very frustrating thing,'' said Michael Basile, 47, of Ponce Inlet. ``When Stano was up the last time (April 29, 1997), everyone assured me, `This is the time.' A year later, he's still breathing. It's debilitating. I decided after a lot of soul searching not to apply (for a seat as a witness). It's just too trying.''
Basile's 12-year-old sister, Susan, was Stano's youngest victim and by accounts at the time the most difficult for him to admit. Over a period of weeks in September and October 1982, a Daytona Beach police sergeant, detective Paul Crow, coaxed from Stano the story of Basile's disappearance. Whatever bond Stano formed with Crow -- friend, confessor or confidant -- it yielded a bumper crop of murder confessions.
Stano, formerly of Holly Hill, may have recognized Susan from the Starlite Skate Center on South Nova Road where he skated, sometimes fresh from a killing. He told Crow he picked her up as she exited a school bus on June 10, 1975, in Port Orange. He told Crow he enticed her with a ride to the rink.
Instead, he strangled her and left her body in a patch of woods, covered with palm fronds, his signature method of disposing of his victims. Her body was never found and the site has since been built over.
``We didn't know for seven years what had happened,'' Michael said. ``She disappeared, fell off the face of the earth. We had no inkling.''
His father, Sal, a retired letter carrier now 74, and his mother, Marjorie, 72, were devastated, Michael said.
Susan was the baby of the family. Michael and his sister Sharon were pretty much grown when Susan was born. Their mother and father doted on her, Michael said. He remembered her as a beautiful girl and a great student who enjoyed trips to Disney World.
Port Orange police at first believed she had run away, but Michael knew better.
``That was not even a remote possibility. They were almost the Cleaver family. She was 12 years old, her main thing in life was going to the skating rink and that factored into her death,'' he said recently.
Despite a community search and public pleas for information, Susan's body was never found.
Susan's disappearance left her stoic father, the provider and protector of his family, feeling helpless, Michael said. ``He couldn't help his daughter or take her body home to bury it,'' he said. ``The only time I've ever seen him cry is the day we realized she wasn't coming home. He's a real strong, silent type who tried his best to shield my mother from all this.''
His mother collapsed emotionally and even after 23 years finds talking about her lost daughter very trying, Michael said. It takes nothing to bring her to tears even today. At the time Susan disappeared, she was absolutely bereft, he said.
``She'd look out of the window all day waiting for her to come home,'' he recalled. ``It was just the most horrific feeling. My mother deteriorated before my eyes.''
Michael walked the Boardwalk each night for six months looking for his sister, hoping against hope that she'd turn up. Eventually, worn down by grief and his parents' deteriorating state, he moved to North Carolina where he met his future wife, Jo Ellen.
In October 1982, his sister Sharon phoned him with news Stano had confessed.
His family rarely talked about Susan's disappearance and only last year, when Stano's execution seemed imminent, did Michael seek details. He and Jo Ellen had returned to Volusia County in 1988. He plays bass in a rhythm-and-blues band. She is active in the county Turtle Patrol.
``My wife knew I was in avoidance. She tried to get me to open up. It was part of our relationship that she wanted to know what happened,'' he said.
Jo Ellen went to Crow and learned the details of Susan's death. Michael refused to hear them, even from his wife. Still, he expressed only gratitude for Crow, who went on to become police chief in Daytona Beach.
``I have only the greatest respect and admiration for him. If he hadn't been able to get Stano to open up, we would have never known. We're always in his debt,'' he said.
But hardship and bad news hadn't finished with Michael and Jo Ellen Basile. On Jan. 26, her father, 70-year-old Joel Rivenbark of Wallace, N.C., was murdered by an 18-year-old man from his neighborhood who had asked to use Rivenbark's telephone, they said.
As a younger man, Basile believed in an eye for an eye but gave little thought to capital punishment. Since then, he's taken on a harder edge. Forget deterrent effect, this is about vengeance, about a promise made by the state to its citizens, he explained.
``I'm adamant and clear-eyed about what should be done and what has to be done,'' he said. ``As brutal as this society is and as unsophisticated as a lot of life is, I just feel it's a necessary part of this society to punish those people who do these horrendous things. There has to be retribution for people who are so anti-social,'' he said.
Not long ago, before his father-in-law's death, Michael and Jo Ellen went house hunting, he said. He scheduled an appointment to see a home for sale that he knew belonged to the woman who as a little girl had been his sister Susan's best friend, the last to see her alive.
``Here's a grown woman with children and you think of what my sister's life would have been. She was beautiful, smart. No telling what she could have done. Even if nothing out of the ordinary, she would have had a productive life. That image stayed with me a long time,'' he said. ``Your life is filled with this kind of stuff. You'll never get away from it.''
As the Basiles concealed their grief, Friedman and her family confronted theirs openly.
Mary Carol Maher was a 20-year-old student at Daytona Beach Community College, part-time waitress and holder of nine swimming records at Mainland High School. Her body turned up, again concealed beneath palm fronds, in a wooded lot off the Bellevue Extension shortly after she disappeared in January 1980.
``Mary Carol was so well known, she was an astute student with a strong personality. If he could have gotten Mary Carol, he could have gotten anyone,'' said her mother, Gerry Friedman, 59.
As a single mother, Friedman raised four children -- two boys and two girls, including Mary Carol. They lived the adage, all for one and one for all, her mother said.
Friedman said she instilled in her children a desire to succeed. A scholarship at Clemson University awaited Mary Carol, the same school her older brother John attended. Mary Carol planned on becoming an anesthesiologist, her mother said.
``She was very determined, a hard worker, the kind you wanted as anchor person on a relay, to come through strong at the finish,'' said her former Mainland swimming coach, Tim Huth. ``You knew she would have enough to finish off the opponent and win the race.''
Her death changed forever the composition of her family, her mother said.
``I think they still have a certain amount of rage and loss,'' she said. ``Each one of my children has a different personality. They all seemed to fit. Once you lose a piece of the puzzle, it's hard to make it work. That void is something they haven't adjusted to.''
Susan Basile is listed as Gerald stano victim.Apparantly her body was never found?I do not see her listed as a missing person on any of the sites.Does anyone know more on her?What she looked like.Discription ect....Would someone know how to get her on the missing person's websites if she is still missing?
Paper: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL)
Title: WAITING FOR STANO TO DIE
Date: March 22, 1998
Saturday dawned bright but cold, the sort of day that promises warmth but never delivers.
John Maher, 39, flew home from Chicago. His old friend, John Anderson, 41, waited at gate 54 of Orlando International Airport for Maher's flight.An hour late, Maher exited the jetway and his eyes met Anderson's immediately. Anderson's tanned lifeguard's face lit up with a smile. His goatee, sunglasses and blue windbreaker contrasted with Maher's polo shirt and clean shave.
``John,'' Anderson said.
They clasped hands, exchanged hellos. Anderson had learned Maher would need a lift from the airport and decided at the last minute to surprise him. They drove together to the Ponce Inlet home of Maher's mother and stepfather, Gerry and Leonard Friedman.
Although baptized in good spirits, Maher's arrival carried a more serious undertone.
He came, bluntly put, to watch a man die.
He's seen men die before, as a Navy SEAL in the Gulf War. But that was business, a matter of his former profession.
``This is personal,'' he said, striding through the airport toward baggage claim.
If things go as planned, Maher and 23 others will gather early Monday morning inside the viewing area of the death chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke.
Unless he wins a stay of execution, Gerald Stano will walk into the chamber at 7 a.m., a window separating him from the witnesses, and corrections officers will seat him in the electric chair.
Stano, in the first of 41 confessions, admitted 18 years ago to murdering John Maher's sister, Mary Carol Maher. By his claims, Stano could be the most prolific serial killer in American history, worse than Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.
For John Maher, watching the execution is no longer about vengeance. Time took care of that, he said. It's about an end to frustration with a system that countenances cruel delay.
``I'm doing it in support of my family,'' he said. ``We held inside of us that anger for many years. I didn't let go until I realized it only affects me.''
Stano's execution has been a long time coming for the families of his victims. Some, like John and Edith Scharf of Port Orange, didn't live long enough to see his sentence carried out. If Stano dies Monday, he dies specifically for murdering their daughter, Cathy Lee Scharf, in 1973.
``It's a very frustrating thing,'' said Michael Basile, 47, of Ponce Inlet. ``When Stano was up the last time (April 29, 1997), everyone assured me, `This is the time.' A year later, he's still breathing. It's debilitating. I decided after a lot of soul searching not to apply (for a seat as a witness). It's just too trying.''
Basile's 12-year-old sister, Susan, was Stano's youngest victim and by accounts at the time the most difficult for him to admit. Over a period of weeks in September and October 1982, a Daytona Beach police sergeant, detective Paul Crow, coaxed from Stano the story of Basile's disappearance. Whatever bond Stano formed with Crow -- friend, confessor or confidant -- it yielded a bumper crop of murder confessions.
Stano, formerly of Holly Hill, may have recognized Susan from the Starlite Skate Center on South Nova Road where he skated, sometimes fresh from a killing. He told Crow he picked her up as she exited a school bus on June 10, 1975, in Port Orange. He told Crow he enticed her with a ride to the rink.
Instead, he strangled her and left her body in a patch of woods, covered with palm fronds, his signature method of disposing of his victims. Her body was never found and the site has since been built over.
``We didn't know for seven years what had happened,'' Michael said. ``She disappeared, fell off the face of the earth. We had no inkling.''
His father, Sal, a retired letter carrier now 74, and his mother, Marjorie, 72, were devastated, Michael said.
Susan was the baby of the family. Michael and his sister Sharon were pretty much grown when Susan was born. Their mother and father doted on her, Michael said. He remembered her as a beautiful girl and a great student who enjoyed trips to Disney World.
Port Orange police at first believed she had run away, but Michael knew better.
``That was not even a remote possibility. They were almost the Cleaver family. She was 12 years old, her main thing in life was going to the skating rink and that factored into her death,'' he said recently.
Despite a community search and public pleas for information, Susan's body was never found.
Susan's disappearance left her stoic father, the provider and protector of his family, feeling helpless, Michael said. ``He couldn't help his daughter or take her body home to bury it,'' he said. ``The only time I've ever seen him cry is the day we realized she wasn't coming home. He's a real strong, silent type who tried his best to shield my mother from all this.''
His mother collapsed emotionally and even after 23 years finds talking about her lost daughter very trying, Michael said. It takes nothing to bring her to tears even today. At the time Susan disappeared, she was absolutely bereft, he said.
``She'd look out of the window all day waiting for her to come home,'' he recalled. ``It was just the most horrific feeling. My mother deteriorated before my eyes.''
Michael walked the Boardwalk each night for six months looking for his sister, hoping against hope that she'd turn up. Eventually, worn down by grief and his parents' deteriorating state, he moved to North Carolina where he met his future wife, Jo Ellen.
In October 1982, his sister Sharon phoned him with news Stano had confessed.
His family rarely talked about Susan's disappearance and only last year, when Stano's execution seemed imminent, did Michael seek details. He and Jo Ellen had returned to Volusia County in 1988. He plays bass in a rhythm-and-blues band. She is active in the county Turtle Patrol.
``My wife knew I was in avoidance. She tried to get me to open up. It was part of our relationship that she wanted to know what happened,'' he said.
Jo Ellen went to Crow and learned the details of Susan's death. Michael refused to hear them, even from his wife. Still, he expressed only gratitude for Crow, who went on to become police chief in Daytona Beach.
``I have only the greatest respect and admiration for him. If he hadn't been able to get Stano to open up, we would have never known. We're always in his debt,'' he said.
But hardship and bad news hadn't finished with Michael and Jo Ellen Basile. On Jan. 26, her father, 70-year-old Joel Rivenbark of Wallace, N.C., was murdered by an 18-year-old man from his neighborhood who had asked to use Rivenbark's telephone, they said.
As a younger man, Basile believed in an eye for an eye but gave little thought to capital punishment. Since then, he's taken on a harder edge. Forget deterrent effect, this is about vengeance, about a promise made by the state to its citizens, he explained.
``I'm adamant and clear-eyed about what should be done and what has to be done,'' he said. ``As brutal as this society is and as unsophisticated as a lot of life is, I just feel it's a necessary part of this society to punish those people who do these horrendous things. There has to be retribution for people who are so anti-social,'' he said.
Not long ago, before his father-in-law's death, Michael and Jo Ellen went house hunting, he said. He scheduled an appointment to see a home for sale that he knew belonged to the woman who as a little girl had been his sister Susan's best friend, the last to see her alive.
``Here's a grown woman with children and you think of what my sister's life would have been. She was beautiful, smart. No telling what she could have done. Even if nothing out of the ordinary, she would have had a productive life. That image stayed with me a long time,'' he said. ``Your life is filled with this kind of stuff. You'll never get away from it.''
As the Basiles concealed their grief, Friedman and her family confronted theirs openly.
Mary Carol Maher was a 20-year-old student at Daytona Beach Community College, part-time waitress and holder of nine swimming records at Mainland High School. Her body turned up, again concealed beneath palm fronds, in a wooded lot off the Bellevue Extension shortly after she disappeared in January 1980.
``Mary Carol was so well known, she was an astute student with a strong personality. If he could have gotten Mary Carol, he could have gotten anyone,'' said her mother, Gerry Friedman, 59.
As a single mother, Friedman raised four children -- two boys and two girls, including Mary Carol. They lived the adage, all for one and one for all, her mother said.
Friedman said she instilled in her children a desire to succeed. A scholarship at Clemson University awaited Mary Carol, the same school her older brother John attended. Mary Carol planned on becoming an anesthesiologist, her mother said.
``She was very determined, a hard worker, the kind you wanted as anchor person on a relay, to come through strong at the finish,'' said her former Mainland swimming coach, Tim Huth. ``You knew she would have enough to finish off the opponent and win the race.''
Her death changed forever the composition of her family, her mother said.
``I think they still have a certain amount of rage and loss,'' she said. ``Each one of my children has a different personality. They all seemed to fit. Once you lose a piece of the puzzle, it's hard to make it work. That void is something they haven't adjusted to.''
