By Elaine Silvestrini
The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA – A federal judge this morning refused to overturn a jury’s convictions of Scott Schweickert in the drugging, torturing and killing of two men.

Schweickert is to be sentenced Monday for conspiring with Steven Lorenzo to drug two men, Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz, with the intent to commit a crime of violence. He also is convicted of giving the drug GHB to Wachholtz with the intent to commit a crime of violence.

Lorenzo is serving 200 years in federal prison for those and other charges. Schweickert faces up to 40 years in federal prison. In addition, the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office plans to announce soon whether it will bring murder charges against Lorenzo and Schweickert.

Schweickert’s attorney, Pedro Amador Jr., had argued that U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday should overturn the jury’s convictions because the circumstantial evidence in the case was inadequate.

However, in a three-page ruling issued this morning, Merryday found the evidence in the case supported the jury’s finding.

Summarizing the evidence, Merryday wrote:

“When Schweickert initially encountered Steven Lorenzo on the internet in late October, 2003, Lorenzo’s personal history featured an array of sadistic episodes, all or many of them expedited by GHB clandestinely administered to a victim. Lorenzo and Schweickert for several weeks studiedly discussed by e-mail, between themselves and with others, their mutual interest in bondage and considered procuring persons for domination and torture.

“The plan to which Schweickert and Lorenzo finally agreed, the plan that pervades and animates their protracted exchange of e-mail, and the plan by which Lorenzo tantalized Schweickert with boastful accounts of Lorenzo’s carnal successes features the surreptitious administration of GHB (supplemented by a brand of ethyl-chloride called “Maximum Impact” ) to an unsuspecting victim. This plan, to which Lorenzo and Schweickert mutually dedicated themselves, motivated their meeting for the first time on December 7, 2003, and describes the technique by which the pair promptly killed two persons on successive nights two weeks later.

“In short, Lorenzo promoted the plan to Schweickert (and others), Schweickert adopted the plan (and discussed it with others), and Lorenzo and Schweickert convened in Tampa and hurriedly executed the plan. Everything known about Lorenzo and Schweickert’s actions demonstrates the pair’s slavish conformity to the plan, which was to ambush, disable with GHB, and torture an unwary and unknowing victim for Lorenzo’s and Schweickert’s libidinous gratification – and afterward ‘to make him disappear.’

“Wachholtz was disabled by GHB (and “Maximum Impact” ) and tortured, Lorenzo and Schweickert apparently were gratified, and Wachholtz, by then dead, “disappeared” (until discovered, grossly decomposing, in the rear of his Jeep). Lorenzo and Schweickert celebrated the accomplishment of their plan by posing Wachholtz’s lifeless body around Lorenzo’s house for a series of macabre photographs.”

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