A husband faced a devastating reality after sending a message to his wife that went unanswered, raising alarms.
A man in Florida was shattered to find out his wife had been killed in a brutal attack.
Gerald Strader shared with local news outlets that he and his wife communicated frequently through text messages while she worked as a housekeeping manager at the Rodeway Inn in Venice, Florida.
This routine was meant to ensure her safety while she tended to hotel rooms, a job she had held since 2019.
However, one day in 2021, her silence became worrisome.
Strader noted, “She texts me when she starts the room so I will know. Normally if it is a really bad room, she would say ‘it’ll just take me longer or can you get this for me.”
Typically, the doors are propped open when a cleaner is working in a room.
But when he arrived, the closed door led him to a harrowing discovery.
His wife was found beaten, left unconscious, and hidden in the room’s closet with a towel in her mouth.
Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman expressed the horror any spouse would feel, empathizing with Strader and acknowledging the unimaginable nightmare he lived through.
She was a mother of four and a grandmother to two.
In a subsequent press briefing, Hoffman remarked, “No homicide scene is pleasant, but certainly when a spouse is the one that finds you and has to take the CPR instructions from dispatch, I can’t imagine how difficult that was for him.”
The suspect, a 30-year-old man, had been staying at the hotel for around six days when the incident occurred. Authorities confirmed that he and the victim were strangers.
Investigators believe Stephen Havrilka followed Tina into the room shortly after she entered to clean.
Commenting on the suspect, Hoffman said, “I can only imagine that he may have spent his days perhaps observing her at the Rodeway Inn.”
He also mentioned that Havrilka had ‘neo nazi alliances.’
Havrilka faced charges of second-degree murder. His extensive criminal record included 34 prior felony charges, 19 felony convictions, 16 misdemeanor charges, 10 misdemeanor convictions, and four times in prison.
Havrilka pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder charge and received a life sentence, as per the documents filed in February 2025.