Husband finds wife lifeless with towel in mouth at motel, Florida cops say. Man sentenced
A motel guest followed a housekeeper into a room she was cleaning, then fatally attacked her and left her in a closet for her husband to find, Florida authorities said.
Tina Strader had stopped answering her husband’s texts that day in April 2021, so he went looking for her until he discovered her beaten in the closet, with a towel stuffed in her mouth, according to Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman.
Stephen Havrilka, 34, has now pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge and was sentenced to life in prison, documents filed Feb. 4 show.
He also pleaded guilty to a separate set of charges stemming from a jailhouse assault and received another life sentence on charges including aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. McClatchy News reached out to his attorney for comment but did not immediately receive a response Feb. 5.
Tina Strader was working at the Rodeway Inn in Venice the morning of April 20, 2021, when she texted her husband that she was going in to clean room 205, according to the sheriff’s office.
Strader and her husband had a practice to keep her safe when she was working.
“She texts me when she starts the room so I will know,” Gerald Strader told 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.’”
He sent her two follow-up texts that went unanswered, then he went looking for her himself, Sarasota County deputies said.
“Nobody had seen her and then when I went and finally opened the door, I found her,” he told WFLA.
In the room was his wife — bruised, bloody and not breathing — with a towel stuffed in her mouth, deputies said in an arrest affidavit.
Gerald Strader yelled for help from another employee, then they removed the towel and started CPR until medical help arrived, according to deputies.
But Tina Strader was pronounced dead later that day, the sheriff said.
Surveillance footage revealed Havrilka, who had been staying in room 209 for six days, had walked into room 205 a minute after Tina Strader had entered, deputies said.
He was seen walking out 14 minutes later carrying a towel and his shoes, according to the affidavit.
About five minutes after Strader’s body was found, 911 callers reported that a man under the influence, later identified as Havrilka, was acting erratically on a street corner two miles from the motel, Hoffman said. It took five deputies to take him into custody, according to the sheriff.
Havrilka and Strader didn’t know each other, the sheriff said.
“I can only imagine that he may have spent his days perhaps observing her at the Rodeway Inn,” Hoffman said.
The sheriff described Havrilka as a 19-time convicted felon with “neo-Nazi alliances.” In 2021, Hoffman promised to do everything in his power to help put Havrilka away for life.
Tina Strader was a mother and grandmother, her family shared.
“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,” Gerald Strader told WTVT.
During Havrilka’s sentencing reported on by WWSB, Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig read a statement from Strader’s children.
“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,” Fraivillig read to the court. “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.”
Venice is on the Gulf Coast of Florida, about a 70-mile drive south from Tampa.
This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Husband finds wife lifeless with towel in mouth at motel, Florida cops say. Man sentenced."