Ex-Youth Pastor Charged With Murder, Dismemberment Of Teen Boy

A former youth pastor in Florida "violently murdered" a missing 16-year-old boy, whose dismembered body remained unidentified for more than two decades, prosecutors said this week.

Ronnie Leon Hyde, 65, was charged with first-degree murder over the death of Yulee teen Fred Paul Laster, newspaper The Florida Times-Union reported.

A woman who was walking her dog spotted the teenager's torso behind the dumpster of a BP gas station off the Interstate 10 highway on June 5, 1994, an arrest warrant indicated, according to People.

"[Laster's] head had been cut off, the hands had been cut off, both legs had been cut off, so it was just the torso of the body," Brian Retz, a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office detective at the time, told jurors at the Duval County Courthouse Tuesday, as per News 4 Jax.

His body sustained "25 sharp force trauma impacts with a total of 71 cut marks," forensic anthropologist Heather Walsh-Haney said.

Other items found at the scene included a red flannel shirt, knives, a black plastic bag, blood-stained bed foam, orange gloves with Laster's DNA and stickers typically used in the bottom of a tub.

The torso was sent to the Jacksonville Medical Examiner's Office, but only the victim's age could be identified and narrowed down.

Laster's family, who believed that the teen might have been traveling with a band, filed a missing person’s report with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in 1995.

They also called Hyde, a social acquaintance of the family and foster parent to Laster, since he was the last person seen with the teen.

"I called Ron’s house and asked him where Freddy was, or — I asked him where Freddy was, or what did he do with my brother? And he laughed," Dawn Williams, Laster's eldest sister, said.

The family later contacted the Columbia County Sheriff's Office in 2014 when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children first published information about the recovered torso.

Detectives sent DNA samples of Laster's family members to the University of North Texas Human Identification Laboratory, where lab workers confirmed in February 2016 the familial link between them and the remains found in 1994.

Authorities then turned their investigation to Hyde.

Investigators recovered several used nasal swabs from Hyde's Jacksonville Beach home in April 2016. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement discovered that the DNA from the swabs matched the DNA found on the flannel shirt found alongside Laster's torso.

Following the DNA link, Hyde was arrested on March 7, 2017. He was reportedly a mental health counselor at Crosswater Community Church in Nocatee and a youth pastor at the Strength for Living Church in Jacksonville at the time.

Hyde's DNA was also found on a bloody glove in the dumpster where Laster's torso was spotted, and items in Hyde's home that were similar to those found in the dumpster linked him to the crime, prosecutors said.

Hyde went to trial this week, 28 years after Laster's remains were found.

He "violently murdered" Laster and "betrayed the trust" of the teen's family, prosecutor Alan Mizrahi told jurors.

He was almost caught disposing of Laster's body, and his car was spotted driving away by a witness, Mizrahi added.

Hyde pleaded not guilty.

The similarities between the items recovered in Hyde’s home and those found at the crime scene were not enough to connect him to the murder and dismemberment of Laster's body, the defense said in cross-examination.

Hyde’s trial would last until Friday. Prosecutors were not seeking the death penalty.

He was also facing 25 possession of child pornography counts, aside from the murder case.

Hyde sexually abused two teens between 1986 and 1994, court records showed.