Lorenzo's Computer Yields Lurid Photos
Published: Nov 1, 2005
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TAMPA - Whether his activities were murderous or merely kinky, Steven Lorenzo loved to photograph his work.
Investigators found hundreds of thousands of digital images on Lorenzo's computer, including many of still unidentified men in various states of bondage, secured with ropes, chains, leather straps and plastic ties, according to evidence presented Monday in Lorenzo's trial.
Jurors were shown images of one man who has been identified in Lorenzo's indictment as "Victim #4," a street hustler, who was photographed naked and tied with ropes and straps on Lorenzo's bed with bruising inside his thighs. Lorenzo is accused of slipping him GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, and sexually torturing him in December 2002.
Lorenzo is standing trial on federal charges of drug-facilitated crimes of violence against nine men, including two who were killed, Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz. Tampa Police Detective Charles Massucci testified investigators found images of Wachholtz on Lorenzo's computer, but jurors were not shown those images.
The prosecution alleges that Lorenzo engaged in a sex life of sadomasochistic bondage that escalated from male partners who were willingly submissive to the selection of unsuspecting victims.
Massucci said he spent more than a year looking at the computer images, trying to identify the men who were shown. Many of the images show the men's feet posed in various ways or close-ups of their genitals or buttocks.
Among those not identified was a man whose photographs Lorenzo labeled as "Bobby." The undated photographs show a man with a wedding ring and a tattoo whose face is partially visible in just one of a series of pictures. Toward the end of the series, Bobby is seen positioned in Lorenzo's bathtub with a ligature on his penis and a discoloration of his stomach "indicating lividity to me," Massucci said.
The detective didn't elaborate on what he meant and whether Bobby was believed to be dead in the photographs. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines lividity as "a dark blue staining of the dependent surface of a cadaver, resulting from the pooling and congestion of blood."
Through the testimony of Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Scott Albrecht, the prosecution also presented a printout of an online conversation between Lorenzo and another alleged victim who confronted him on the Internet.
"I know the truth, and so do you," the man wrote in an instant message conversation. "You're a rapist."
According to the printout that was seized during a June 2, 2004, search of Lorenzo's home, Lorenzo dismissed the man by writing, "You're a mess. ... You're just a bitter queen."
The man, listed in Lorenzo's indictment as "Victim #1," told Lorenzo, "You went out of your way to pick me up and rape me."
