The Sturmfels were from New Jersey. Robert was fifty-six and Georgette fifty-five, and the house on the cul-de-sac in Palm Coast was where they spent the winter. On the night of December 20, 1989 a man dressed entirely in black and carrying a .22 caliber rifle parked in a wooded area nearby and walked around the house several times.
He shot Robert Sturmfels twice through a window while he sat in a recliner. Georgette was on the sofa and tried to get out of the room, and he shot her. Then he shot Robert again. Then he saw Georgette through a door and shot her again. By another account Robert was hit five times, and Georgette was still alive after the first shot, so he reloaded and shot her in the head. Afterward he went inside.
What he took was a clock, two lamps and a videocassette recorder. They were found at his house. He had meant to give them to his girlfriend for Christmas. His girlfriend's cousin was the reason police looked at him so fast: she told them he had come home soon after the killings and said he was wrapping some presents.
A few hours later he shot into the home of Joseph and Mary Rector, who lived nearby, while they sat watching television. Joseph was hit and got out of the room, and the couple hid in a closet until they heard the back window smash. They ran for their car as he fired at them from inside the house, and every shot missed. They drove themselves to a hospital. When police went through the house they found it ransacked.
He had killed before. On November 20, 1986 he murdered Charles Martin Miller, and he was convicted of that too.
Louis Bernard Gaskin was born in Flagler County on March 11, 1967. He was known as Pappa. The press called him the ninja killer, because of the black clothing he wore to avoid being recognized.
He was arrested on December 30, 1989. At first he denied everything. Then, in a taped statement, he confessed, said the killings had been completely random, and spoke of urges to kill; he admitted the Miller killing in the same round of questioning. He was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, three armed robberies, three armed burglaries, two burglaries, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He was sentenced to death on June 19, 1990; one account instead describes a two-month trial that ended in July 1990.
He was there for thirty-three years, at Florida State Prison in Raiford. An appeal in 2002 failed.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on March 13, 2023, as Florida resumed executions after a pause that had lasted since 2019. His lawyers argued that putting a man to death after three decades on death row, much of it in conditions he described as solitary confinement, was cruel and unusual. The Florida Supreme Court rejected that, and disputed his account of the confinement. The United States Supreme Court declined to intervene the day before.
He woke at a quarter to five on the morning of April 12, 2023 and ate at 9:45 a.m.: barbecue pork ribs, buffalo wings, pork and turkey neck, shrimp fried rice, french fries, water. His sister visited. He did not ask for a spiritual adviser. No relative of the Sturmfels arranged to attend.
Asked whether he had anything to say, he said: justice is not about the crime, it is not about the criminal, it is about the law. He referred to the appeals in his case and finished, look at my case. Some of it was hard to make out.
The drugs went in at 6:02 p.m.. The warden checked whether he was conscious at 6:05 and got no response. His breathing stopped at 6:07. A doctor came in at 6:14 and declared him dead a minute later. Around twenty-three people watched, among them the circuit judge and the state attorney for the district where he had been tried.
It was the hundredth execution Florida had carried out since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.