What began as an ordinary morning for a man from Florida quickly turned into a nightmare when his beloved wife failed to respond to his texts.
Tina Strader, 46, was a hardworking housekeeping manager at the Rodeway Inn in Venice, about an hour’s drive from Fort Myers.
She had just started cleaning room 205 on April 9, 2021, when she sent her usual check-in message to her husband Gerald.
The couple had set up the simple yet effective safety protocol – a routine text whenever she entered another room at the motel to clean.
But when his follow-up messages went unanswered, concern quickly turned to panic and a desperate search was started that led to a heartbreaking discovery.
‘She texts me when she starts the room so I will know,’ husband Gerald explained to WFLA. ‘Normally if it is a really bad room, she would say, “It’ll just take me longer or can you get this for me.”‘
‘Nobody had seen her,’ Gerald, 56, recounted. ‘Then when I went and finally opened the door, I found her.’
The horrendous sight before him was seared into his memory forever as he found his his wife, bruised, bloodied, and lifeless, shoved into a closet with a towel stuffed down her throat.
The assailant, identified as 34-year-old Stephen Havrilka, had been staying in nearby room 209 of the same motel for nearly a week.
Surveillance footage later revealed how just one minute after Tina entered room 205, Havrilka followed.
Fourteen minutes later, he emerged, carrying a towel and his shoes.
What happened inside those four walls in such a short timespan was hard to comprehend.
Authorities said Havrilka had no prior connection to Tina but Sheriff Kurt Hoffman speculated that he had possibly been watching her in the days leading up to the attack.
‘I can only imagine that he may have spent his days perhaps observing her at the Rodeway Inn,’ Hoffman stated grimly.
‘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,’ said the Sheriff.
Just moments after Tina’s body was discovered, reports flooded into 911 of an erratic man behaving aggressively just two miles from the motel.
It took five deputies to subdue and arrest Havrilka, a man with a shocking criminal past consisting of four stints in prison from a combination of 34 prior felony charges, 19 felony convictions, and ties to neo-Nazi groups.
His violent history painted a chilling portrait of a man who should never have been free to strike again.
Havrilka pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 2021 attack and was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.
In an unrelated case, he also received an additional life sentence for a brutal jailhouse assault.
The murder of Tina Strader shattered not just her family but the entire community.
A GoFundMe was set up to help cover Gerald’s day-to-day living with his wife no longer around to earn a wage.
Known for her kindness and unwavering dedication, she was beloved by guests and colleagues alike.
‘She was the biggest giver, biggest heart and biggest genuine soul of anybody I’ve ever known in my entire life and I’m sure that I will ever know,’ her grieving husband told WTVT.
During Havrilka’s sentencing, Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig read a statement from Tina’s four children and two grand children, capturing the devastation felt by the family following the crime.
‘The last thing my mother tasted was cotton. It was a dry towel that was shoved in her mouth, down her throat, and which ultimately led to her death,’ the court heard.
‘Our mother will never be at our weddings. She will never be able to meet her grandchildren, kiss their heads, tell them stories, tell them fond memories she used to share about being pregnant with us.’
