ESTERO, Fla. (WINK)—A brutal double murder that went cold for eight years has finally been solved, with two killers now serving life sentences for the execution-style deaths of a married couple lured to Southwest Florida by a fake gun sale.
Danny and Deana Lorenzo, military veterans from Hernando County, came to a shopping center off Corkscrew Road in Estero in April 2018, believing they were meeting someone to purchase firearms they found listed online.
THE “BONE-CHILLING” SCENE
The next morning, investigators with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office discovered what they describe as one of the most gruesome crime scenes they had ever witnessed.
“I will tell you, it was a bone-chilling scene,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said.
Lt. Sarah Rodriguez with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said the case still haunts her eight years later.
“This wasn’t your normal run-of-the-mill homicide or suspects that were committing this crime,” Rodriguez said.
The Lorenzos bought and sold items online as a side business. Detectives said they traveled to Estero thinking they were going to buy several guns from someone who posted on the website Armslist.
Danny’s sister, Beverly Doucet, said her brother told her about the deal before he left.
“He told me about this great deal that he found. And I knew that he always found great deals. But I’m like, ‘Danny, I don’t know about this,’” Doucet said.
Danny reassured his sister that he would be safe. It was the last conversation they ever had.
“I’m so thankful that I had that last moment with him, but you just never know,” Doucet said.
Investigators said Deana was sitting in the car while Danny was filling out a bill of sale when gunfire erupted.
“It was absolutely an ambush attack on them,” Rodriguez said.
The bodies weren’t discovered until the next morning. Marceno said he still gets chills thinking of the scene.
“I mean, we’re talking about probably the biggest case that’s ever hit this county,” Marceno said.
For the first time, investigators showed WINK Investigates the truck the Lorenzos were driving, which was filled with bullet holes. The precision of the shots suggested the shooter had military training.
“The grouping was so tight that I had said, ‘ This is someone who is a very trained professional. This is military,” Marceno said.
Rodriguez said the case became personal for her.
“This was a really good family. And when I took a second to actually sit there with the family and learn about them and really get to know them, you realize how important it was to solve this,” Rodriguez said.
But solving the crime took eight excruciating years.
“For that investigation to pretty much go cold, and it became a case of ‘whodunit,’ and you worry about that,” Marceno said.
The suspects made one critical mistake that eventually broke the case wide open.
“That was the moment that I knew that this case blew pretty much wide open,” Rodriguez said.
THE CRITICAL MISTAKE
For almost two years, the murders remained unsolved.
Rodriguez, the lead detective on the case, said new technology helped them track down the killers.
“It was a mistake that they essentially took the personal SIM card from a personal phone and put it into a burner phone, and that burner phone is what they were utilizing to speak with Danny about the arms list sale,” Rodriguez said.
The suspects didn’t realize the SIM card kept an IMEI number, a 15-digit code unique to every phone.
Investigators tracked the killers’ journey from Miami to Estero, marking the first time the sheriff’s office ever used that technology.
Once investigators subpoenaed the phone records, they found a match: Alex Zwiefelhofer, an AWOL soldier from Wisconsin.
“Something deep within me said, okay, the feeling that I originally felt when I crossed that tape on that scene on April 10, and what I’m feeling now, there was something that was there,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez soon discovered articles about Zwiefelhofer and another former soldier, Craig Lang, who were captured trying to cross into South Sudan to fight against a military faction.
She saw Lang’s name again while checking hotel logs near Miami International Airport.
“When I scanned through the manifest, Craig Lang’s name popped up on it, and immediately that was the moment that I knew that this case blew pretty much wide open,” Rodriguez said.
Zwiefelhofer was already in custody in Wisconsin on an unrelated charge.
Lang, however, was fighting in the war in Ukraine across the globe.
INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT
Craig Lang (pictured on the right) and Alex Zwiefelhofer (pictured on the left)
“We can go to Wisconsin and pick up our one suspect. But Lang is in Ukraine,” Marceno said.
The sheriff’s office called Capt. James Ronciske, a then-special agent in the FBI’s Tampa field office.
“I dealt with a number of extradition cases, but never to this level, and never involving a country that was currently at war. So that added, obviously, an extra wrinkle to try to get him back,” Ronciske said.
Investigators believe Zwiefelhofer and Lang killed the Lorenzos to fund their mercenary aspirations.
“After the murders and the robbery, (Lang) went to Mexico, then to Colombia, and then he went back to Europe and went to the Ukraine,” Ronciske said.
Lang became something of a celebrity overseas as an American foreign fighter who married a Ukrainian woman.
The FBI had to convince the courts in Ukraine and the European Court of Human Rights to bring him back to the U.S. to face justice.
“So much of the investigation is out of my hands. We’re talking about a different country,” Marceno said.
In June 2024, Lang was brought to Lee County.
“The second that he touched on our soil, and I got that phone call, was a highlight of my career,” Rodriguez said.
Lang and Zwiefelhofer were both convicted of the murders and sentenced to life behind bars.
“You kill someone in Lee County, it doesn’t matter where in the world you go, we are going to hunt you down, and you will be charged to the fullest extent of the law, no matter where you go,” Marceno said.
Doucet said the long wait for justice was worth it.
“Yes, we can’t bring my brother back, and his wife, which is horrible, and I wish this never happened, but I’ll tell you what, and we feel like we have new family members,” Doucet said.
Doucet said she doesn’t have hate in her heart and has already forgiven her brother’s killers. She is relieved they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.