Knives, a stained mattress and photos of a headless torso were displayed for jurors Tuesday as the trial began for a former Florida youth pastor charged with the murder and dismemberment of a 16-year-old boy 28 years ago.
Authorities didn’t bring charges in the death of Fred Paul Laster until 2017, after DNA samples in the cold case allegedly pointed them to Ronnie Leon Hyde, 65, a former counselor and Hyde family friend, who has pleaded not guilty.
In a Jacksonville courtroom, Hyde’s attorney Ann Finnell told jurors that while Hyde suffered from mental illness and they would see photographs of Hyde’s Jacksonville Beach home that “rival anything you’ve seen on the TV show Hoarders,” there was no evidence of the teen’s blood or hair in the residence where prosecutors allege that Laster was killed.
But prosecutor Alan Mizrahi said Hyde “violently murdered” the victim, and was almost caught in the act of disposing the body behind a Lake City dumpster, where Laster’s severed torso was discovered in 1994, along with a flannel shirt bearing Hyde’s DNA.
When the victim’s body was found on June 5, 1994, by the dumpster behind a BP gas station, “the head had been cut off, the hands had been cut off, both legs had been cut off, so it was just the torso of the body,” testified Brian Retz, who was then a detective for the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.
Laster’s family told investigators that Hyde had picked him up that same week, and they never saw Laster again, the outlet reports. Information presented to jurors on Tuesday also alleged that Hyde had been a foster parent to the teen, even declaring him on his taxes as a dependent.
According to an arrest warrant, a woman walking her dog had spotted the torso behind the dumpster at the gas station off Interstate 10. Investigators later found blood-smeared items including the flannel shirt, plastic bags, two knives and a mattress topper with what appeared to be hair, bone and tissue.
The torso was sent to the Jacksonville Medical Examiner’s Office and was found to be that of a male younger than 25. Subsequent examinations further narrowed the victim’s age, but a positive identification wouldn’t come until years later.
In the meantime, in 1995, a missing persons report filed with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office showed that Laster’s family hadn’t seen him for nearly eight months. At the time, they believed he may have been traveling with a band.
Not until 2014, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children first published information about the torso on its website, did Laster’s family contact the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.
Detectives then sent DNA samples of family members to the University of North Texas Human Identification Laboratory and in February 2016, lab workers confirmed a familial link with the remains.
From there, the investigation quickly turned to Hyde, a social acquaintance of the Laster family. In one troubling allegation, Laster’s sister recalled the two of them spending the night with Hyde and says she woke to find Hyde nude and attempting to wake her brother, according to the arrest warrant.
Laster’s brother alleged that Hyde owned a set of knives consistent with those found in the dumpster, and said that Hyde had been taking nursing classes.
“This leads to the belief that Hyde has anatomical knowledge and would be familiar with joints, bone structures and bodily organs placement, which would be of value to him during dismemberment of a body,” Columbia County Sheriff’s deputy Jimmy Watson wrote in the warrant.
In April 2016, investigators pulled trash from the curb of Hyde’s Jacksonville Beach home, including several used nasal swabs. Testing by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement matched DNA from the nasal swabs to DNA on the flannel shirt found in the dumpster. After the DNA link was established, Hyde was arrested and two of his properties were searched by the FBI.
In court, Laster’s sister Dawn Williams recalled that she had attempted to file a missing persons report, first in Nassau County and then in Jacksonville, and even called Hyde looking for help.
“I called Ron’s house and asked him where Freddy was, or I asked him where Freddy was, or what did he do with my brother,” she said, according to First Coast News. “And he laughed.”
Prosecutor Mizrahi asked her, “Did he say anything else?”
“No,” she replied.
The trial is expected to last about one week.
Just goes to show that ANYBODY can fall prey to the devil/Demons when they try to ‘go it alone’!
This is yet another reason why we can’t trust these loser priests nor pastors. They’re ALL sick pathetic pedophiles. ALL of them!!