A native of Daytona Beach, Florida, born in 1951 and adopted as an infant, Stano suffered persistent learning and "adjustment" problems in his early school years, complicated by a lack of coordination that resulted in frequent falls. After several years in a Virginia military academy, he graduated from high school in Daytona beach and went to work in his adoptive father's filling station, also working as a cook and waiter on the side. He met a lot of women, but they universally rejected him, increasing Stano's deep resentment toward a world of "bitches." Sometimes they laughed at Stano, but he also recalled that some "pulled my hair" or "threw beer bottles at me." Years later, after killing 41, he would confide to homicide detectives that "I hate a bitchy chick." According to his own confession , Stano claimed his first two victims in New jersey, during 1969. He drifted into Pennsylvania in the early 1970s and murdered half a dozen women there before returning to his native Florida, launching a one-man crime wave that would claim another 33 lives between 1973 and 1980. Devoted to the hunt, Stano preyed chiefly on prostitutes and hitchhikers, though one of his victims would be a high school cheerleader. They ranged in age from 13 to the mid-thirties, dispatched by means of gunshots, knives, and strangulation. None were raped , and state psychiatrists suggest that Stano drew his basic satisfaction from the simple act of murder. As one homicide detective summed the killer up, "He thinks about three things: stereo systems, cars, and killing women." In April 1980, Stano was arrested after an intended victim managed to escape his clutches in Daytona Beach. In custody, he launched a marathon confession, directing officers to the buried remains of 24 identifiable victims and two skeletal "Jane Does," all in Florida. By December 1983, Stano had provided details of 41 murders, drawing eight life terms in Florida. His ninth conviction -- for the murder of 17-year-old Cathy Scharf at Port Orange -- earned him a death sentence , and he came within hours of the chair before an indefinite stay was granted on July 2, 1986. At this writing, Stano is still on death row, awaiting execution , and authorities believe that they have finally heard the last of his confessions.