TAMPA, Fla. — Jason Galehouse and Michael Waccholtz vanished after visiting a nightclub one night apart from the other in 2003. Nineteen years later, Steven Lorenzo confessed to sexually torturing and murdering them.
Now, he's making an unusual request of the courts: he's asking for the death penalty. On Monday, a judge set his sentencing hearing to the week of Feb. 6. Lorenzo, who is representing himself, waived his right to a jury.
This means his sentencing will come directly from the judge.
Galehouse's mother, Pat Williams told 10 Tampa Bay, she hopes Lorenzo is sentenced to death. Williams has stage four cancer and was unable to attend court Monday, but plans to be there for the sentencing.
Ahead of that sentencing, Lorenzo sent the judge a 147-page handwritten letter, which detailed Lorenzo's role in the killing of Galehouse and Waccholtz, giving a thorough idea of the events that unfolded on those fateful December nights.
In the document, Lorenzo repeatedly refers to himself as a "bondage master," explaining his fetish for "sexual bondage session encounter[s]."
He claims Galehouse and Waccholtz both willingly came to his house to engage in a sexual encounter.
In the death of Galehouse, Lorenzo said his co-defendant, Scott Schweickert, "either lost control of himself or he greatly erred in what he was doing."
The letter continues, stating Schweickert, without warning, began repeatedly punching Galehouse in the genitals area with his fists.
Lorenzo said at this point, he and the other men watching this interaction hit a "point of no return," and then made "a very quick, hasty, and a not, at all, thought out desperate decision immediately made by all."
That decision cost Galehouse his life.
"In less than a minute, it was quickly determined that suffocation would be the most human way to do it," the letter read.
On the night Wachholtz was invited over, Lorenzo said he and Wachholtz were both drinking alcoholic mixed beverages. Lorenzo said he was also consuming crystal meth and GHB, a commonly used date rape drug.
Lorenzo said he offered drugs to Wachholtz, who accepted, saying, "[the drugs] would relax him."
"During this bondage session, which lasted no more than twenty minutes, an inhalant was also given to Mr. Wachholtz by the defendant," the letter read, "without Mr. Wachholtz's consent, while he was bound."
In the letter, Lorenzo details how a bondage device was placed on Wachholtz's genitals and caused him pain. He described how Schweickert attempted to remove the metal device before the man apparently lost consciousness.
Shortly after, Wachholtz, "unexpectantly and suddenly, without warning, ceased and stopped moving."
"The combination of drugs and alcohol that was provided to Mr. Wachholtz, by the defendant, proved to be a lethal combination for him," Lorenzo's letter read.
Lorenzo also detailed how Galehouse and Waccholtz's bodies were disposed of.
Throughout the 147-page document, Lorenzo highlighted ways in which he felt his case has been mishandled. He also made a plea for the death sentence.
"The defendant takes full and complete responsibility for both of these deaths and implores this honorable court to impose a death sentence upon the defendant," Lorenzo wrote.
He told a judge on Monday he wrote the letter because he doesn't want a death sentence to be overturned in appellate courts.
"You want me to sentence you to death but you want me to fairly sentence you to death?" the judge questioned.
"That's right and that's what I said to you in the beginning, I trust you to be fair," Lorenzo responded.
State prosecutors say roughly eight witnesses are expected to speak against Lorenzo during sentencing, including his co-defendant Schweickert.
Loved ones of the victims explained that they are ready for this to be over.
"You’re reliving everything and hearing the things he’s done. It has just gotten harder every time," Galehouse's friend, Tyler Butler, said.