The listing said, “For Sale: Lot of Guns,” and Serafin Lorenzo was interested.
“Leaving the country soon,” Jeremy’s listing said. “Looking to sale all my guns as I can’t take them with me.”
Less than 24 hours after inquiring, Lorenzo and his 51-year-old wife, Deana, were on the road from Brooksfield, Fla., late on the night of April 9, 2018, to meet Jeremy at an address just off Corkscrew Road in Estero. At 10:44 p.m., Lorenzo texted: “I’m at the church.”
Minutes later, the Lorenzos were dead.
[Video from WINK News
Police wouldn’t find Lorenzo and his wife in the church parking lot until the next morning. Next to Lorenzo’s body was a bill of sale for 15 firearms — and a cellphone that would send the FBI down a wild path stretching halfway around the world leading to the alleged perpetrators.
Starting with little more than the online gun listing and the texts to Lorenzo from a Walmart burner phone, authorities say they learned the gunmen were two ex-Army soldiers bent on joining right-wing paramilitary groups involved in armed conflicts worldwide. The gun listing was true in one respect: They were leaving the country — to go to Venezuela to fight the government with the resistance, prosecutors say. The guns were coming with them. They allegedly just wanted the Lorenzos’ $3,000 to fund the journey.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors identified the ex-soldiers as Alex Zwiefelhofer, 22, and Craig Lang, 29, in an indictment charging them with a host of federal crimes tied to the double homicide in Estero. The 33-page complaint traces the soldiers’ zigzagging paramilitary campaigns across the world, starting in Ukraine and, in Lang’s case, finally to Venezuela, revealing how some military veterans have been drawn to extremist causes overseas.
Video courtesy WINK TV News[/vc_message]
