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Thread: Alex Zwiefelhofer Charged Federally in 2018 FL Murders of Serafin and Deana Lorenzo

  1. #1
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    Alex Zwiefelhofer Charged Federally in 2018 FL Murders of Serafin and Deana Lorenzo



    FBI: Soldiers set up deadly robbery to fund foreign fighting

    By Michael Kunzelman And Yuras Karmanau
    AP

    The two former U.S. Army soldiers met in Ukraine, where they joined the same far-right paramilitary group. After getting deported, they planned to take a boat from Miami to South America. They wanted to fight the socialist Venezuelan government and kill “communists.”

    That’s what Alex Zwiefelhofer told the FBI agent and police detectives who questioned him about the fatal shooting of a Florida couple in April 2018. Federal authorities believe Zwiefelhofer and fellow Army veteran Craig Lang arranged the deadly robbery of Serafin and Deana Lorenzo to finance the Venezuela trip.

    Nearly two years after the killings, Zwiefelhofer, 22, is awaiting trial in Fort Myers, Florida, on federal charges punishable by a death sentence, while Lang, 29, faces the same charges as he fights his extradition from Ukraine, where he married a woman last year and is now under house arrest. One of his attorneys has said it could take years for the extradition case to be resolved.

    In the U.S., authorities portray Lang and Zwiefelhofer as cold-blooded killers. In Ukraine, a defense lawyer blames the U.S. government for not doing more to help Lang and other veterans adapt to life off the battlefield.

    “The man was just searching for a spot on the world map to catch a bullet and die,” Lang’s attorney, Dmytro Morhun, told The Associated Press. “But he has found a new life, a new love, a new family” in Ukraine, Morhun said.

    Lang, a North Carolina native, was discharged from the Army in 2014. Zwiefelhofer, a Wisconsin native, was discharged in 2018 after going absent without leave in September 2016.

    The two met in Ukraine in 2016. Zwiefelhofer told authorities that he and Lang joined Right Sector, an ultranationalist group fighting Russia-backed separatists. Right-wing volunteer battalions played a key role in the separatist conflict that erupted in 2014 in eastern Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

    The fighting attracted thousands of volunteers from the U.S. and Europe. Some foreign combatants were driven by white supremacist ideology, but soldiers who served with Lang in Ukraine said they never heard him express any racist or extremist views.

    A woman who fought alongside Lang in Ukraine described him as “calm and reasonable” but said he had personal problems connected to a divorce and child custody battle. “He went to fight in Ukraine because he had no other place to go,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Elena, for security reasons.

    In 2017, Zwiefelhofer and Lang traveled to Africa but were detained by Kenyan authorities when they tried to enter South Sudan. They eventually were deported to the U.S.

    Brian Boyenger, a veteran of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, said he spent a few months with Lang on the front lines in Ukraine.

    “He conducted himself as a disciplined and professional soldier,” Boyenger wrote in a Facebook message. “The things he is accused of were a surprise to me.”

    On the night of April 9, 2018, the sheriff’s office in Lee County, Florida, received 911 calls reporting gunfire in the community of Estero. Deputies searched the area but didn’t find any sign of a shooting.

    Eight hours later, deputies responding to another 911 call found a red truck riddled with bullet holes. Serafin “Danny” Lorenzo Jr., 53, was shot seven times. Deana Lorenzo, 51, had 11 bullet wounds.

    Investigators determined the Lorenzos withdrew $3,000 in cash and drove more than two hours from their Brooksville, Florida, home to buy guns from somebody listing them for sale on a website called Armslist. The seller, “Jeremy,” told them to meet at a church in Estero. “I’m at the church,” Serafin Lorenzo wrote in his last text message.

    Investigators used cellphone records and social media messages to link the suspects to the killings.

    Google records showed Zwiefelhofer’s online searches included the phrase “How to Smuggle Myself to South America,” an FBI agent said in an affidavit. Zwiefelhofer also searched for video of a movie scene that depicted shooters ambushing a vehicle using the same tactics employed by the gunmen who attacked the Lozenzos’ truck, the agent said.

    An unidentified “associate” of Lang’s told detectives that they had traveled to Bogota, Colombia, several months after the Florida shootings, according to the FBI agent’s affidavit. Lang joined a Venezuelan resistance group that had a safe house in the mountains of Cucuta, Colombia, near the Venezuelan border, said the associate, who told investigators he left Lang in Bogota.

    Zwiefelhofer was arrested in Wisconsin in May. He admitted to traveling to Florida with Lang in April 2018 but denied going to the area where the Lozenzos were killed, the FBI agent’s affidavit said.

    Zwiefelhofer pleaded not guilty in December to charges related to the robbery and killings and the alleged plot to fight the Venezuelan government. His trial is set for August.

    Lang doesn’t have an extradition trial date. Morhun, his lawyer, said his client would appeal if the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office approves Lang’s extradition. If that fails, Morhun said he would ask the European Court of Human Rights to review the case. He argues that Lang shouldn’t be extradited because he could face capital punishment, which Ukraine abolished two decades ago.

    Lang could taste freedom in Ukraine before he sees a prison cell in the U.S. His lawyers planned to ask a court this month to reduce his house arrest to “nighttime house arrest.”

    https://apnews.com/2e48df3827465cd1e0c789df4a85265d
    Last edited by Steven; 05-11-2021 at 12:04 PM.

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    Prosecutors to consider death penalty in soldiers’ case

    AP

    FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Federal prosecutors suggested on Monday that they will seek the death penalty against one of two men accused in the shooting deaths of a Florida couple so they could finance a trip to Venezuela to fight the socialist government.

    Attorneys for both sides held a video hearing for defendant Alex Zwiefelhofer, who along with fellow Army veteran Craig Lang is accused of arranging the deadly robbery of Serafin and Deana Lorenzo in April 2018 to finance the Venezuela trip.

    U.S. Attorney Josephine W. Thomas suggested a discussion with defense attorneys to determine how they would proceed with the case in regard to the strongest mitigating factors to help determine how they intend to proceed. Thomas said there are a lot of aggravating factors, and with the facts of the case, it’s likely prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

    Defense attorney D. Todd Doss said he didn’t feel prepared for such a discussion because of an inability to investigate the case, as well as the defendant’s history.

    The two sides agreed to having the case continued to the December trial term with a special status conference scheduled for November.

    https://apnews.com/3b6287f1b9f8cfdf493627421bf435ba

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    The DOJ Will Waive The Death Penalty For The American Who Fought With Extremists In Ukraine And Allegedly Killed A Florida Couple

    Waiving the death penalty for Craig Lang could speed up his extradition from Kyiv, where capital punishment has been off the books for 20 years.

    By Christopher Miller
    BuzzFeed News

    The US Department of Justice will waive the death penalty in the case of Craig Lang, an Army veteran who fought with a far-right paramilitary unit in Ukraine and whom authorities have charged in the killing of a married couple in southwestern Florida in April 2018.

    The case is being watched closely by US officials and experts studying far-right extremism who have been increasingly concerned about Americans who travel to Ukraine to train with far-right militant groups and gain combat experience.

    During a status hearing held via Zoom in Fort Myers on Monday, Jesus Casas, assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Florida, told the court that the government has decided to waive capital punishment in hopes of expediting Lang’s extradition from Kyiv, where he currently resides under a limited house arrest.

    Ukraine is sensitive to the issue of capital punishment, which it abolished in 2000. Lang and his lawyers have involved the European Court of Human Rights, which ordered a stay on Lang’s extradition until it could review his case. An ECHR spokesperson did not say when the review would be completed.

    Casas said during Monday’s hearing that the US government would still seek the death penalty against Lang’s coconspirator, Alex Zwiefelhofer, a fellow Army veteran who also fought alongside far-right extremists in eastern Ukraine and who has been in US custody since 2019.

    Lang, 30, and 23-year-old Zwiefelhofer are accused of using a false persona to lure Serafin “Danny” Lorenzo and Deana Lorenzo to a nighttime meeting at a business complex in the town of Estero, where the couple hoped to buy firearms from the men and resell them for a profit. Instead, Lang and Zwiefelhofer allegedly gunned down the Lorenzos in a dramatic attack, left them to die, and stole $3,000.

    After killing the couple, the former soldiers planned to use the money to flee by yacht to South America, where they wanted to “participate in an armed conflict against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” and kill “communists,” authorities alleged. The escape didn’t go according to plan, however, and Zwiefelhofer was later captured in his home state of Wisconsin and transferred to Florida, where he is awaiting trial set for December. Lang managed to make his way back to Ukraine, but he was eventually detained by Ukrainian authorities in August 2019, after returning from a short trip to Moldova. Border guards stopped him after seeing that an Interpol warrant had been issued for his arrest.

    In a text message, Lang’s lead lawyer in Ukraine, Dmytro Morhun, declined to comment on the new development Monday.

    A relative of the Lorenzos told BuzzFeed News Monday that they were pleased with the development. In April, the relative, who asked not to be named out of concern for their safety, said they don’t want the death penalty for Lang; they just want him to be returned to Florida to face trial. “We just want him to pay,” said the relative.

    Bjorn Brunvand, a US court-appointed lawyer for Lang, told Judge Sheri Polster Chappell that he had “made inquiries” about Lang’s possible extradition but said it’s still unknown when, if ever, Lang will be in US custody.

    Given the uncertainty around Lang’s status, Casas told Judge Chappell that the government is pursuing Zwiefelhofer’s case on a different track.

    Attorneys for the government, Lang, and Zwiefelhofer agreed that the pandemic had slowed their progress in gathering the things needed to prepare for trial. Zwiefelhofer’s lawyer, D. Todd Doss, said he needed more time to travel to meet with witnesses and gather documents for his client’s defense.

    Lang and Zwiefelhofer first met in Ukraine, where in 2016 they joined the far-right extremist group Right Sector. Notorious for its neo-Nazi membership and alleged human rights abuses, it grew out of an alliance of right-wing militant groups formed during Ukraine’s Euromaidan uprising in 2014. Right Sector later restyled itself as a volunteer fighting battalion after Russia annexed Crimea and sparked a war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

    Other Americans who fought in Ukraine told BuzzFeed News in interviews that Lang and Zwiefelhofer grew increasingly radical in their far-right views and behavior during their time in the country.

    The two men left Ukraine in 2017 after fighting eased and then tried their luck joining forces in South Sudan. They never made it and instead were detained and deported back to the US, where authorities alleged they would eventually regroup and plan their attack on the Lorenzos in order to fund more foreign fighting adventures.

    Since then, Lang has been either in a detention facility or under some form of house arrest in Ukraine. He currently lives in Kyiv with his fiancé and their toddler and must wear an ankle monitor. He said in a court hearing attended by BuzzFeed News in February that he teaches English lessons to Ukrainians online to support his family.

    At the same court hearing, Lang claimed that the US government wanted to also prosecute him for alleged war crimes carried out on the battlefields of Ukraine.

    “Any separatist or Russian soldier that I have killed would be a murder charge,” he told a Ukrainian court. “Understand that any soldier I may have captured would be a kidnapping charge.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...for-craig-lang

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