Killer close to death he sought

Convicted of a 1999 Osceola County murder, he refused legal help.

For years, Glenn Ocha has longed to die.

He once begged a police officer to shoot him. He tried to hang himself in a holding cell. He confessed to murder, then asked detectives how long he would have to wait to be executed.

Now, Ocha, 47, is about to get his wish.

On Tuesday, the convicted killer is scheduled to become the first person put to death in modern times for a crime committed in Osceola County. No appeals are pending.

Ocha, who prefers to be known as Raven Raven, pleaded guilty to killing Carol Skjerva, 28, a stranger who gave him a ride to his Buenaventura Lakes home from a nearby bar, Rosie's Pub, on Oct. 5, 1999.

Ocha told authorities he had sex with Skjerva, then strangled and hanged her after she made a disparaging remark about his anatomy, court documents show. He cleaned the kitchen and drank a beer while she died. Afterward, he stuffed her body into an entertainment center in his garage.

Skjerva's friends and family said they miss the trusting young woman who was engaged to be married and eager to have children. Skjerva had moved to Florida to study to become a flight attendant. She was working at a convenience store just before her death.

"We still think about her every single day," Skjerva's aunt, Brenda Scott, 49, of Spokane, Wash., said last week. "She was loved. She still is loved."

Skjerva's former fiancé, Brian Lewis of Osceola County, said he does not plan to attend the execution despite a handwritten invitation by Ocha.

"I just put it in God's hands and let the universe take care of it," said Lewis, 39, a single father of a 14-year-old boy Skjerva was helping raise. "I forgave it a long time ago. There's nothing I can do to change it. I've just moved on with my life."

Ocha -- whose first name is spelled "Glen" in some criminal records -- would not consent to a death-row interview.

Throughout the legal process, he refused to let his attorneys present evidence that might have saved him from lethal injection. He fired his lawyers and implored two judges to order his execution without delay.

The tactic is not unusual, and courts have ruled it permissible, said Mark Gruber, an appeals attorney whom Ocha dismissed. Judges have twice deemed Ocha competent to proceed on his own.

"It's not unlike a terminally ill patient deciding to face the inevitable," Gruber said.

Ocha's history includes childhood abuse by his mother, alcoholism and drug abuse. He took Ecstasy and had been drinking the night of the murder, court records show.

A 10th-grade dropout, Ocha displayed artistic talent -- he was engraving beer mugs at the pub the night of the slaying -- but couldn't hold a job, said one of his ex-wives, Bridgette McStoots, 39, of Kentucky. His behavior alienated most of his family, including a 26-year-old son, who a relative said does not acknowledge his father.

McStoots said she never saw Ocha's violent side. But she knew he had served time for the 1984 attempted murder and robbery of a Kentucky motel manager, Kiran Patel.

"I was mesmerized by him because he played guitar and he was artistic and he was very sweet and romantic to me," said McStoots, who met Ocha when he was shopping for art supplies at a Louisville store where she worked.

Gita Patel has another view of the man who shot her brother-in-law. Ocha told McStoots he shot Kiran Patel because Patel stole some of his belongings and because he didn't like "foreigners," McStoots said. But Gita Patel says Ocha pumped a bullet into her brother-in-law's brain when Patel tried to collect on an overdue room bill. He survived but had to learn anew to walk, eat and recognize numbers and letters, she said.

"He's like a 12-year-old kid in a 43-year-old body," said Gita Patel, also 43, whose family now runs a different motel near Louisville. "If we tell him things, he can do things. He helps with the laundry."

Ocha recognized his own explosive temper -- and displayed it through profane name-calling -- in several letters to Circuit Judge Frank Kaney, now a senior judge. Ocha warned that he would kill again if he did not receive the death penalty.

"I knew I was gona [sic] kill a woman long before it happened," he wrote in an undated letter to Kaney. "I had thought of it every [sic] since my last wife [McStoots, whom he blamed for sending him back to prison on a probation violation]. I knew I couldn't get ahold of her, so someone who looked like her to me was just as good."

In 1982, Orlando police arrested Ocha after a woman accused him of raping her and telling her he wanted to get her pregnant before he killed himself.

The case was dropped because the victim was not available to testify, court records show.

Ocha will be the 60th person executed in Florida since the 1976 reinstatement of the state's death penalty. He is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The last Central Florida killer executed was Linroy Bottoson, 63, on Dec. 9, 2002.

Susan Jacobson can be reached at sjacobson@orlandosentinel.com or 407-931-5946.