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Florida brute who fatally beat housekeeper and left her gagged, unconscious body in a motel closet sentenced

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A Florida man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for fatally 
beating and strangling a motel housekeeping manager, whose battered and 
unconscious body was found by her husband.

Stephen Havrilka, 34, was handed a life sentence Monday after he pummeled 
the 46-year-old woman and shoved a towel down her throat at the Rodeway 
Inn in Venice in April 2021, according to police and local outlets. 

Authorities said the brute, who had stayed at the motel for nearly a week, 
attacked Tina Stradler when he followed her into a room she was cleaning. 

Stradler’s bruised and bloodied body was discovered in a closet by her 
wheelchair-bound husband, who went searching for her when a series of text 
messages went unanswered for nearly an hour — after the couple agreed to 
remain in touch whenever she entered and left a room.

“She texts me when she starts the room so I will know,” Tina’s husband, 
Gerald Stradler, told WFLA. 

“Nobody had seen her. Then when I went and finally opened the door, I 
found her.”

The devastated husband called for help and a worker removed the towel from 
Stradler’s mouth and rendered CPR until she was taken to a local hospital, 
according to Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman.  

The mother of four, who also had two grandchildren, was pronounced dead 
later that day.

https://nypost.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/98031696.jpg?resize=1536,1024&quality=75&s
trip=all

Stephen Havrilka, 34, was given a life sentence on Monday after pleading 
guilty to second-degree murder.

Deputies uncovered video surveillance that captured Havrilka entering the 
motel room around 8:50 a.m. — just one minute after Stradler had gone 
inside and texted her husband. 

The tattooed killer was seen leaving 14 minutes later carrying a white 
towel and his shoes, deputies said, before he was apprehended by five 
officers a short distance away from the motel. 

“We could never discern a motive,” Assistant State Attorney Karen 
Fraivillig told People. 

“However, he is an extremely violent person with prior episodes and I 
think he just wanted to kill another human being. He needs to go away 
forever. There was no relationship between the defendant and victim.”

Havrilka, who has a lengthy and violent criminal history that includes 36 
prior arrests, several felony convictions and four stints in prison, 
pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, according to the Miami Herald.

He was also slapped with another life sentence for an incident in the 
Sarasota County Jail in 2024, the Herald-Tribune reported.

“In the same hotel, there was a violent man, a murderer, who was just 
released from jail over brutally assaulting his own mother, and in a rage-
fit, decided he would then go for mine,” Stradler’s family wrote in a 
letter read by Fraivillig in court, according to the Herald-Tribune.

“To sum up what all has been taken from her, and from us, is quite 
frankly, impossible to subdivide into measurable increments.”

https://nypost.com/2025/02/06/us-news/florida-brute-gets-life-sentence-
for-savagely-beating-gagging-housekeeper-to-death/

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Florida brute who fatally beat housekeeper and left her gagged, unconscious body in a motel closet sentenced Mora Giovanni <mgiovanni@hco.org> - 2025-02-13 04:09 +0000

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