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Read a transcript of David Lee Onstott's confession that was kept from the jury that convicted him of second-degree murder yesterday.
Listen to his confession in these audio files.
Editor's Note: The transcript and audio report contain offensive language. The pdf is 35 pages long, and the full audio report is 44 minutes.
TAMPA -- Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ronald Ficarrotta sentenced David Lee Onstott today to life in prison for the second-degree murder of a 13-year-old Ruskin girl.
Onstott, 40, also received a concurrent five-year sentence for failing to register as a sexual offender. He received time served for battery.
"By your own words, you pose a danger to the community," the judge said. "You are a volcano."
Kelly May asked the judge to impose the harshest possible sentence on the man who killed her daughter, Sarah Lunde, in April 2005.
"I just beg of you," she said, "Don't let him out. Please."
She said, "This animal has been let off time and time again."
Before he was sentenced, Onstott spoke to May.
"And for what it's worth," he said, "I'm sure she don't want to hear it, Kelly, you know, my condolences. I'm sorry."
The mother shook her head.
"No, you're not," she said.
After the hearing, Mark Lunsford, who came to court to support May, said, "another one bites the dust."
Lunsford's 9-year-old daughter Jessica was kidnapped, raped and murdered in February 2005, two months before Onstott killed Sarah. Jessica's killer, John Couey, now sits on death row.
May wasn't upset that prosecutors took the death penalty off the table for Onstott, a decision made after a judge threw out his confession.
"Life in prison is death," she said.
Earlier today, Ficarrotta ordered the public release of Onstott's murder confession to detectives, which was not given to the jury that found him guilty of second-degree murder.
The contents of the confession were not aired at Onstott's trial during the past two weeks because Ficarrotta had ruled the statement inadmissible. The judge said detectives had ignored Onstott's requests for an attorney during questioning.
An attorney for the Tampa Tribune argued today that the tape be made public, and Ficarrotta granted the motion. The confession will be released to media outlets today.
Onstott was found guilty Thursday evening of second-degree murder and battery, lesser charges than the first-degree murder and attempted sexual battery for which he stood trial.
Jurors deliberated for nearly 13 hours over two days.
Kelly May, Sarah's mother, arrived at the courthouse about 35 minutes before the sentencing.
Lunsford was there to greet her.
He said he had come to the courthouse to support May.
"How are you doing?" he asked her.
"Better," she said.
Return to tampabay.com later this morning to hear the confession.
-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer
[Photo: Ken Helle, Times]
Onstott was accused of killing Sarah Lunde in April 2005. No physical evidence or eyewitnesses tied him to the case. Onstott seemed to incriminate himself in multiple statements. He was charged with first-degree murder, but jurors convicted of him a lesser charge.
The jury also found Onstott, 40, guilty of battery. He originally was charged with attempted sexual battery.
Jurors deliberated for nearly 13 hours over two days. They reached a verdict about 5 p.m. today.
Before the verdict was read, the courtroom filled with prosecutors and public defenders. Hillborough State Attorney Mark Ober and Public Defender Julianne Holt both were there.
Onstott will be sentenced at 10 a.m. Friday.
After the verdict, Sarah's mother was relieved.
"It's over," she said.
She said she almost passed out before the clerk read the verdict.
"I hope that every day he wakes up it's the same hell that we've gone through for the last three years," she added. "Every day."
-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer
[Photo: Melissa Lyttle, Times]
TAMPA -- Jurors in the first-degree murder trial of David Lee Onstott have been deliberating for more than nine hours.
They have asked for electronic equipment and headphones -- presumably to listen to the recorded conversations offered by the state as evidence of Onstott’s guilt -- and surgical gloves.
The trial is now in its ninth day. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon and were excused for the evening after they wrote to the judge in a note that, “It might be a long night.”
Onstott, 40, is charged with first-degree murder and attempted sexual battery. He is accused of killing 13-year-old Sarah Michelle Lunde of Ruskin in April 2005.
Prosecutors said Onstott came to Sarah’s home looking to have sex with her mother and ended up killing Sarah.
There is no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses that tie Onstott, a registered sex offender, to the death. Onstott, however, made incriminating statements during several conversations.
-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer
The jury in the David Onstott murder trial has begun its deliberations. They left the courtroom at 1 p.m. today.
An alternate juror, Richard Bulick of Ruskin, who was released when deliberations began, said he would have found Onstott guilty of premeditated murder. He said he was persuaded by tape-recorded statements of Onstott's that appeared to implicate him. The state's case was "pretty strong, considering there was no physical evidence," Bulick said.
Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer
TAMPA -- Attorneys are presenting closing arguments this morning in the first-degree murder case against David Lee Onstott, who is accused of killing a 13-year-old girl in Ruskin in April 2005.
Assistant Public Defender John Skye tried to debunk the incriminating statements prosecutors presented as evidence of Onstott's guilt.
Skye called it "wishful thinking" on the part of the state to claim that Onstott told his mother "I killed her" during a secretly recorded conversation they had at the jail on the day Sarah Lunde's body was found.
Many parts of the conversation were unintelligible -- including that part, Skye said.
"You can't hear that, I submit," he said.
Skye said it was also unclear what Onstott was referring to when he told his estranged wife in a recorded jail phone call that he had broken every one of the Ten Commandments. Skye said Onstott could have been talking about his child that a former girlfriend had aborted.
"It's kind of cryptic," Skye said of the comment.
Skye took aim at a former jailhouse guard's contention that Onstott admitted to him that he had choked Sarah to death. He noted that former Deputy Brian Herndon did not tell anyone about the confession until 11 months later and had not recorded the statement in his notes.
The defense attorney said Herndon was not telling the truth.
Prosecutors will argue that Onstott, a registered sexual offender, came to Sarah's home early April 10, 2005, looking to have "a booty call" with Sarah's mother. Her mother wasn't home, and a struggle ensued with Sarah, prosecutors contend. They say Onstott choked Sarah in her mobile home and then beat her head severely somewhere else.
Her body was found April 16, 2005, in an abandoned fish farm pond about a half-mile south of her home.
The jury will deliberate this afternoon.
-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer
TAMPA -- The David Lee Onstott murder trial has wrapped up for the weekend, and today's testimony featured a powerful moment -– a recording of a jailhouse phone call where Onstott talks of having broken all 10 commandments. (Click here to listen.)
Although Onstott, 40, has been stoic and stone-faced in court throughout the trial so far, the recording of the intense phone call finally moved him to tears.
First, prosecutors brought his ex-wife, Rhonda Crouse (left), to the stand. She’d been married to Onstott from 2003 to 2004 but had separated from him by April 2005, when the body of Onstott’s alleged victim, 13-year-old Sarah Lunde, was found.
The recording played in court was of a collect call that Onstott placed to Crouse from the Hillsborough County Jail after he’d been arrested on murder charges. All of those calls are recorded.
Here’s how it played out:
Throughout much of the 10-minute call, Onstott is sobbing and rambling. Crouse tells him not to lapse into self-pity: “It’ll separate you from God.” Onstott says he’s searching for the Lord.
“Don’t struggle with the Lord,” Crouse says. “The most important thing right now is your salvation.”
Their conversation is dotted with Biblical references as Onstott mourns his lot in life and Crouse offers spiritual guidance.
Finally, Onstott says: “You know, I’ve broken every commandment now.”
“Yes. Every single one,” Crouse answers.
“Every single one,” he repeats.
“There was only one left, and then you did it,” Crouse says.
During this recording, the 12 jurors are listening intently, some of them closing their eyes to concentrate, others busily taking notes.
In the courtroom, Onstott is looking increasingly upset. He’s closing his eyes and rubbing his hand on his forehead. On the stand, his ex-wife sits there with her eyes shut.
On the recording, a computerized voice warns the caller, “You have one minute left.” A sobbing Onstott tells his wife, “I’ll always love you. I’m sorry … may God bless every step you take, everything you do.”
The call ends.
In court, Onstott cries. He wipes the tears from his eyes.
Afterward, Onstott’s public defender has few questions for Onstott’s ex-wife.
Prosecutor Jay Pruner asks Crouse just one more question: “Is one of the Ten Commandments ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ “
“Yes,” she answers.
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Earlier testimony this morning focused on the crime scene where Sarah’s body was found face-down in a pond in April 2005.
It’s a bleak and desolate place, an abandoned tropical fish farm off 30th Street SE in Ruskin where contractors have been dumping chunks of concrete and other construction debris for years. The property’s owner, Chris Proctor, said there are about 85 pools on 10 acres, but they can’t be seen from the street because the heavily wooded property is overgrown with Brazilian pepper trees. A dirt road leads into the property.
Prosecutors are making the point to the jury that Onstott, who worked in construction, was one of the few people who regularly visited the ponds or even knew they were there. Proctor testified that only Onstott, Onstott’s father and one other contractor had permission to dump materials onto the property, filling in the ponds.
Also, two crime lab technicians with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement testified that they couldn’t match Onstott’s muddy tennis shoes or his truck’s tires with any shoe prints or tire tracks from the scene. This is a weakness in the state's case against Onstott. And Onstott's public defenders are repeatedly making the point that, since investigators in the Sarah Lunde case were focused on Onstott, they never tested anyone else's shoes or tires.
Prosecutors keep noting that, since Sarah's body wasn't found for a week, any shoe prints or tire tracks left by her killer may have been disturbed by other trucks driving around the property at the time. They have just had a concrete contractor and one of his crew members recount for the jury how, during the week that Sarah's body went undiscovered, they were driving around the ponds in dump trucks and pickup trucks with trailers attached. These would be full of debris from old driveways or sidewalks that they had torn out. The trucks would circle around a pond, back up to it and dump their load.
It was days later when Sarah's body rose to the surface of one of the ponds and was found by a search-and-rescue canine team.
Today's testimony concluded with former Hillsborough jail deputy Brian Herndon, who was monitoring Onstott while the suspect was on suicide watch just after being charged with Sarah's murder. The deputy told jurors that Onstott described to him how he killed Sarah by putting her in a choke hold.
"He said he went to his ex-girlfriend’s house for a booty call. Once he was inside the house he was involved in an argument with a little girl. They got into a physical fight and he choked her," Herndon said.
He showed how Onstott had demonstrated the choke hold. Sitting on the witness stand, Herndon put one arm across his own neck.
"He said the last thing he remembers hearing is her breathing … her gasping for air … and then he just blacked out," Herndon said.
Onstott's lawyer, Assistant Public Defender John Skye, sharply questioned Herndon about why the jailer didn't tell his supervisor or investigators about Onstott's statements for nearly a year.
"I actually thought it was common knowledge," Herndon said. "He told me he just came back from talking to the detectives."
The trial will resume Monday. Prosecutors will play a recorded conversation between Onstott and his mother while Onstott was in jail.
-- Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer
[Times photos | Ken Helle]
The murder trial of David Lee Onstott, who’s accused of killing 13-year-old Sarah Lunde in Ruskin three years ago, is continuing today.
This morning’s key witness was Darryl Daoust, above, a gum-chewing 18-year-old with curly hair and a goatee. Daoust was a friend of Sarah’s older brother Andrew Lunde at the time that Sarah was killed. Daoust testified this morning that when he was 15 and Sarah was 13, they had sex twice at the Lunde house when Sarah’s brother and mother weren’t around.
Onstott’s defense attorney, Assistant Public Defender John Skye, questioned Daoust about his relationship with Sarah, getting Daoust to acknowledge that he didn’t admit to detectives that he had sex with Sarah until they confronted him with DNA evidence from Sarah’s bed a year after her death.
Skye was hammering away at Daoust's credibility because Daoust also recounted an incident that prosecutors say incriminates Onstott in Sarah's death.
Daoust repeated a story that Andrew Lunde testified to the previous day -– that the two boys drove to Taco Bell about midnight on Saturday night, April 9, 2005, to get Sarah some food, and when they got back to the Lunde home Sarah was gone, the front door was wide open, and there was an empty beer bottle on a table by the door. "When we walked in, the carpet was kind of folded over in the entryway there, and there was a beer bottle to the left," he said.
Prosecutors say that Onstott showed up at the Lunde house drunk to have sex with Sarah Lunde's mother, but that he found Sarah home alone instead, struggled with her and killed her.
Like Andrew Lunde, Daoust testified that after Sarah disappeared, Onstott then showed up in the middle of the night, picked up the beer bottle and left. (Click here for a time line of the events surrounding the murder.)
Next, two Hillsborough County sheriff’s officials -- Capt. J.R. Burton and Detective Lisa Croissant -– testified that a week after Sarah disappeared, after a big search, a search-and-rescue dog found Sarah’s decomposed body face-down in a pond in an abandoned fish farm in Ruskin.
Prosecutors introduced into evidence four concrete patio blocks that were used to weigh down Sarah’s body in the pond. Sitting on a courtroom bench, Sarah Lunde’s mother, Kelly May, bit her knuckle and looked anxious. She plans to sit through the whole trial, although she says some of the testimony is difficult to hear.
Prosecutors also showed an aerial photo of the pond with Sarah's body in it, although the body was just a speck in the photo.
Onstott, dressed in a dark suit jacket and sitting at the defense attorney’s table at the front of the courtroom, watched all of this impassively, but occasionally with a quizzical expression crossing his face.
Another witness who testified this morning was Jimmy Dale Seaton, 43, who was escorted into the courtroom in an orange jail jumpsuit. He was recently jailed on charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment.
Seaton worked on the same construction crew as Onstott at the time of the April 2005 murder. They were framing houses.
Sarah Lunde disappeared late on a Saturday night. Her family reported her missing that Monday. Sheriff’s detectives questioned Onstott for hours that Monday night because he was a registered sexual offender who had been seen at the Lunde home that weekend. Early that Tuesday morning, Onstott showed up at Seaton’s efficiency apartment in Ruskin asking if he could stay there.
Seaton testified that he went to work. When he got back from work, Onstott was still there. Onstott was intently watching the television news, flipping between stations to catch reports on the Sarah Lunde case, Seaton said.
“He was going from channel to channel on the news stations. He kept turning it up to where he could hear it … it was about that little girl, Sarah Lunde. He had his ear down by the TV,” Seaton said.
Onstott didn’t want Seaton to open his door or tell anyone that Onstott was there. Neighbors started knocking on the door to check on Seaton, who usually kept his door open. Each time one of Seaton’s neighbors came to his door, Onstott hid in the bathroom, Seaton said. Finally, Seaton called the Sheriff’s Office.
Seaton also testified that Onstott had once demonstrated a choke hold on him that Onstott said he used on rowdy bar patrons when he was a bouncer. Seaton demonstrated the hold for the jury, holding his own arm up to his throat. Prosecutors told the jury yesterday that, after Onstott was charged with Lunde's murder, he told a jail guard that he had killed Lunde with a choke hold.
This afternoon, FBI forensics expert Maureen Bottrell testified that she compared the dirt on Onstott’s Nike tennis shoes, which investigators confiscated, to a series of soil samples from the fish farm where Sarah’s body was found. For two of the soil samples, she said she couldn’t rule out the possibility that it was the same as the dirt on Onstott’s shoes.
However, Onstott’s defense team pointed out that the FBI cannot say that the dirt on Onstott’s Nikes is from the fish farm.
Assistant public defender Anna Frederiksen-Cherry asked the FBI expert: “Is there any way for you to tell this jury how many other places in the world would have the same type of soil that we’re talking about?”
“I cannot,” Bottrell answered.
Most recently, the trial featured photos of Sarah’s dead body in a fish pond and gruesome testimony about the condition of her body and the contents of her stomach. Christina Roberts, a forensic pathologist and former Hillsborough County medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Sarah, said the girl died of crushing blows to the head that fractured her skull.
Roberts said it was impossible to tell whether Sarah had been raped or strangled because her body was too bloated and decomposed. This is an issue in the trial because a jail guard is expected to testify that Onstott told him he strangled Sarah.
-- Mike Brassfield, Times staff writer
TAMPA -- The trial of David Lee Onstott, accused of killing 13-year-old Sarah Lunde in April 2005, began this morning with a prosecutor and a defense attorney telling a jury about the evidence in the case -- and the lack of evidence.
Continue reading "Onstott murder trial begins in Sarah Lunde case" »
TAMPA -- Eleven are women. Five are men. At least three have children close in age to victim Sarah Lunde, who was 13 when she was killed in 2005.
A 12-member jury and four alternates were chosen today to try David Lee Onstott, left, on charges of first-degree murder and attempted sexual battery. It took nearly two days to pick the panel.
Prospective jurors were asked whether they had been victims of violent crimes. Those who said they had did not wind up on the jury. Likewise, over the course of two days, the jurors were asked about their exposure to media reports on the case and excluded if they knew too much.
Opening statements are expected to begin tomorrow.
--Alex Zayas, Times staff writer
 This Just In offers local breaking news, traffic reports and weather conditions from the staff of the St. Petersburg Times and tampabay.com. Check back often for the latest news from around the Tampa Bay area.
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