State of Florida v. Robert Lee Kessler

Robert Lee Kessler, 74, is on trial in Hillsborough County Circuit Court in Tampa, charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a dead human body in the November 2021 death of Stephanie Crone-Overholts. She was 47, from Erie, Pennsylvania, and had moved to the Tampa area about a year earlier. Her remains were found in McKay Bay. Kessler has pleaded not guilty, and he is presumed innocent. A jury was selected on October 26, and opening statements were given on October 27.

The State says it can put him at the bay: surveillance video from the Port of Tampa and a Pep Boys parking lot, her blood in her car, a van and his home according to police, phone data, and fishermen who say they saw a man dumping bags and bins from the 22nd Street Causeway. Two of them testified that the single photograph police showed them resembled the man they saw. Kessler has chosen not to attend his trial, so no witness has identified him in the courtroom. What the State may not be able to show is how she died. Her remains were recovered in pieces, and the cause and manner of death waited on a forensic anthropologist.

That is the question of this trial: the State must prove who killed Stephanie Crone-Overholts when it cannot fully show how she died. That burden is the State's alone. It is also the oldest pending case in Hillsborough County, nearly five years old, against a defendant who is reported to be blind and frail and who has been held in the Falkenburg Road Jail since his arrest. We are not here to convict Robert Kessler, and we are not here to acquit him. We are here to watch whether the process can prove its case fairly.