Deep Sea Detectives

Journal entries and e-mails detail a lonely, bitter George S. Georgiou, who is ...

TARPON SPRINGS — George S. Georgiou had dreams — of being a private investigator, having friends, living in the country.

Instead, the 22-year-old spent years alone in his room, cleaning his guns and watching TV. He had no job, never attended school outside the home and lived an isolated existence closely controlled by his parents.

Georgiou called himself a "survivalist" and amassed a stockpile of weapons and ammunition. He thought it would be cool to kill someone, he told investigators, and he was angry at his grandfather over money owed to his father from his work at the family business.

Ultimately, police said, Georgiou took out his rage on his paternal grandparents, prominent Tarpon Springs business owners Steve and Flora Georgiou.

George S. Georgiou is accused of fatally shooting Steve Georgiou, 83, and Flora Georgiou, 78, in their house at 504 Chesapeake Drive on Jan. 4. He lived with his parents at nearby 764 Chesapeake.

Firefighters summoned to the home around 6 a.m. the morning of Jan. 4 discovered the bodies. Police said Georgiou set several fires in the home to try to conceal the killings.

Flora Georgiou's body was found in the laundry room, where it appears she might have tried to hide after she had been shot, according to investigators. She was shot four times and it appeared one of the fires had been set on or near her head.

Steve Georgiou's body was found just inside the front door. He had been shot five times, according to reports. Both of the Georgious had been shot once in the head and once in the chest.

Nearly 800 pages of court records released this week by the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office reveal new details about the way the couple died. The documents also provide glimpses of Georgiou's mental state in the years leading up to the slayings and for two months afterward. He was arrested in March.

Police seized 13 guns and more than 16,500 rounds of ammunition from the home Georgiou shared with his parents. He has been held in the Pinellas County Jail since his arrest on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.

The records released Wednesday include hundreds of pages of journal entries and e-mails written by Georgiou. They paint a picture of a bored and frustrated young man who said he had never had any friends, despised the way he looked and wasn't allowed outside at night alone. He had neither a job nor a car.

He had learned to shoot at age 10 and regularly carried a concealed weapon, or two, including to church and to the funeral of the grandparents he is accused of killing. He often wore camouflage, an NRA ring and cap and steel-toed combat boots.

Dive Detectives Solve Deep-sea Mysteries - cDiver.net - The ...

Posted 5 hours ago

New insights into important shipwrecks on the Great Lakes will soon be revealed thanks to the efforts of two divers from Port Ryerse.

Mike Fletcher and son, Warren, travelled the globe last year shooting six episodes of Dive Detectives, a documentary series on underwater mysteries shown on History Television.

At the end of March, the first episode will share compelling evidence that a giant rogue wave was responsible for sinking the legendary freighter Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975. Twenty-nine sailors perished.

In May, the final episode will shed new light on the sinking of the American warships Scourge and Hamilton in Lake Ontario near St. Catharines during the War of 1812. The warships are well-preserved in more than 300 feet of water. Dozens of sailors died in the mishap.

The Hamilton-Scourge segment persuasively argues that poor engineering was responsible for the ships sinking in a storm. It features never-before-seen footage of the wrecks’ interiors, shot with a remote camera no bigger than a shoebox.

It is said that humanity knows more about the distant universe than it does its own lakes and oceans. Dive Detectives capitalizes on this by sending the Fletchers on dangerous missions to uncover the truth about historic events.

Mike Fletcher, 55, is amazed at what his career has become since he purchased his first scuba equipment at age 12. Fletcher dropped out of high school to become a commercial diver and has never looked back.

“I have to say it’s gone beyond anything I ever imagined and anything my teachers ever imagined for me,” he said last week. “I was never a good student. I’m astounded where this has taken me and my good fortune.”

The U.S. Navy recently announced the discovery of the lost submarine USS Flier off the coast of the Philippines. For that, the Americans can thank the Dive Detectives. USS Flier sank with great loss of life during the Second World War after hitting a mine. That story airs in April.

The Fletchers also shot a segment last year off Tinian, a small island in the South Pacific that was the launch point for planes that dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, effectively ending Japan’s participation in the Second World War.

The Americans were prepared to continue bombing until Japan cried “Uncle.” Once Japan surrendered, the U.S. dumped a large amount of atomic ordnance into the ocean.

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