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Crane-Climbing Killer Gets Life

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON

sthompson@tampatrib.com

Published: February 13, 2009

CLEARWATER - A local murder suspect who drew national attention in 2005 for perching himself atop a crane in Atlanta for 56 hours was found guilty today and sentenced to life in prison.

After deliberating for roughly an hour and twenty minutes, a Pinellas County jury convicted Carl Roland, 45, of first-degree murder in the May 24, 2005, strangulation of his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Gonzalez, a 36-year-old mother of two.

Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Before sentencing Roland to life without the possibility of parole, Circuit Judge R. Timothy Peters heard from Gonzalez's family and friends, who blasted the defendant for taking a mother away from her children.

"I hate you, Carl Roland," said Gonzalez's mother, Cindy LeVan. "Maybe one day I will find the strength to push that hate aside for what you have done, but I will never forgive you, when all you had to do is walk away.

Roland showed little reaction.

On May 24, 2005, Gonzalez's daughters found her in a retention pond behind their Oldsmar apartment complex after Roland had knocked on their door and he and Gonzalez had walked off together. The next day, Roland was found atop the crane, 350 feet in the air above busy Peachtree Street.

In closing arguments Thursday, Assistant State Attorney Fred Schaub touched on the evidence introduced during Roland's three-day trial, including DNA tests that showed Gonzalez dug her fingernails into Roland as she tried to pry his large hands from around her neck. Six of her ribs were broken during the attack, Schaub said.

As evidence of Roland's premeditation, Schaub noted that the day before the slaying, Roland had tried purchasing a gun but couldn't take the firearm home with him because there was a cooling-off period.

Roland's defense attorney, John Thor White, questioned whether trying to buy a gun the day before a strangulation was evidence of premeditated strangling.

He said it was difficult diagnosing a person's "state of mind" and trying "to get into somebody's head."

Schaub didn't think it was that difficult at all.

"It was first-degree murder," Schaub told the jury before deliberations. "This killing was personal. ... He was brewing and thinking about it prior to this day."

Schaub said after the strangulation, Roland went to Georgia, where he went to a Barnes & Noble in Atlanta for a coffee before climbing the crane.

"He decided to climb on top of a tower and 'I'm gonna take my life' ... but he didn't take his life," Schaub said. "Why would he climb up on that crane if he didn't commit that crime? Maybe he wanted to convince the world he was nuts."

In Atlanta he told four people - including a construction worker, a police officer and an emergency medical technician - that he had just killed a girl, Schaub said.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336.

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