Valentine’s Day is also the birthday of ninety-three-year-old Maria Serrato. She used to enjoy her day of dual-celebration, but she now hates what is supposed to be a day of love.
On February 14, 1986, Maria discovered her thirty-three-year-old daughter, Marilu Geri, shot to death on the floor of her Houston home. For the past thirty-eight years, instead of looking forward to her birthday and to receiving flowers for Valentine’s Day, Maria lays flowers on her daughter’s grave.
Marilu Geri’s murder is still unsolved, but Maria believes she knows who is responsible. She is certain her daughter’s husband, Stephen, on the day of love, killed the woman he supposedly loved, for financial reasons.
Marilu and Stephen Geri
Marilu Serrato and Stephen Geri married in 1983. Stephen was an insurance agent, and Marilu worked for him. They had an office in downtown Houston, but the couple worked primarily out of their home in the affluent Sugar Land section of the city.
The Geris’ business was successful, but, according to Maria, the marriage had problems. She says the couple fought frequently; Stephen denies they did so.
Are Looks Deceiving?
At 8:15 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, 1986, Stephen called Maria from his downtown office, asking her to call Marilu to see if she needed help preparing for the dual lunchtime birthday/Valentine’s Day party. Maria knew the party was primarily for her but had told her daughter to call her if she was behind schedule.
Immediately after speaking with Stephen, Maria phoned Marilu. She was surprised when she did not get an answer. Maria then drove to the home and grew concerned when she found the front door ajar. After calling out but receiving no response, she entered the home. Near the back door, she came upon a parent’s nightmare: Maria found her daughter lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood. She called 911 at 10:06 a.m.
Maria Finds Marilu Murdered
Paramedics tried to revive Marilu by injecting her heart with medication, but she was determined to have already been dead upon arrival at Ford Bend Community Hospital. This procedure done in could faith hindered the investigation into her murder, as it rendered it impossible to determine the exact time of her death.
The Time Of Death Is Indeterminable
An autopsy found Marilu had been shot four times, three times in her head and once in her side. Two shots came from a .380 caliber gun, the other from a .22 caliber pistol.
Shot To Death
Stephen Geri believes robbery was the motive for Marilu’s murder, contending between $25,000-$40,000 in jewelry, fur coats, and other valuables were stolen, but police found the home showed no signs of a break-in. Maria says every item of value she knew her daughter to own, was not taken.
In the master bedroom, police found Marilu’s jewelry box open and several pieces laying in front of it. Maria believes it was simply the jewelry Marilu had laid out to wear that day.
Stephen’s Claims
Stephen said he normally worked in his home office during the morning but had changed his routine because it was Valentine’s Day and his mother-in-law’s birthday. He told police he started working earlier, awakening at 5:00 a.m., in the hopes of finishing in time to attend the party. He claimed he worked on the computer for an hour while Marilu was still sleeping. When he left his home at roughly 6:30 a.m., Stephen said the security system was activated.
After making a stop at a 7-11 for coffee, Stephen said he visited the post office. He then went to a doughnut shop, then to a glass shop, and from there to his downtown office from which he called Marilu at approximately 7:30 a.m. She was awake, and Stephen said they talked about Maria’s party for approximately five minutes. From then until 10:06 a.m., when Maria found Marilu’s body, Stephen was placed at his downtown office by multiple people. Other people confirmed the venues he claimed he visited prior to 7:30.
Stephen believed his willingly providing police with a detailed alibi of his movements for the day would clear him as a suspect in his wife’s murder. It did not.
Stephen Provides A Detailed Alibi
Private Investigator Bill Elliott believes the times Stephen says he made the stops are in question and that the discrepancies left him enough of a window to kill his wife.
Stephen’s first stop, the 7-11, was only two blocks from his home, less than a five-minute drive. Elliott says there is a conflict as to the actual time Stephen arrived at the store. Stephen claimed he arrived between 6:35-6:40 a.m., but Elliott contends the employees working that morning were certain Stephen did not arrive until shortly after 7:00. Elliott believes the disputed twenty-five-to-thirty minutes would have allotted Stephen enough time to dispose of evidence after killing Marilu.
Raising further red flags in Elliott’s eyes was his finding that on February 15, the day after Marilu’s murder, Stephen had returned to all of the locales at which he had stopped the morning before and reminded people he had been there. Some even said he asked for receipts for his purchases from the day before.
To Elliott, it appeared as though Stephen was trying to tighten up his “alibi defense.”
Bill Elliott
Private Investigator
Stephen Geri was found to be a spendthrift. Although he was making a good living, he was deeply in debt, with over $120,000 in cash judgments against him in Harris County.
In 1984, two years before Marilu’s murder, Stephen had purchased life insurance policies on both their lives. Combined, the policies totaled $435,000.
Elliott believes the life insurance policies were Stephen’s motive for murdering his wife. Marilu’s parents agreed, and the policies became a bone of contention between them and their son-in-law.
In Debt
In December 1986, ten months after Marilu’s murder, Stephen tried to collect on his late wife’s policies. Maria and her husband, Miguel, took him to court to try to prevent him from doing so, arguing he was the cause of Marilu’s death. Stephen countered that the Serrato’s were trying to collect the money for themselves.
As the hearing commenced, the two sides reached an out-of-court settlement in May 1987. Oddly, each side says the other requested the settlement, as do the lawyers for each party.
The judge ordered the court records pertaining to the case be sealed, and he also issued a gag order preventing either party from discussing the terms of the settlement.
Maria and Miguel Serrato
Maria’s Parents
Shortly after the settlement with his former in-laws, Stephen Geri was indicted for the felony theft of a $200,000 loan from a Houston Savings Association. It was alleged he supplied false information on his loan application.
I have not been able to find the results of that lawsuit.
Stephen’s Legal Troubles
Thirty-eight years after the fact, investigators still consider Stephen Geri a person of interest in Marilu’s murder, but they have stopped short of calling him a suspect. He owned several handguns, but ballistics tests showed none were used to shoot his wife.
If Stephen did murder Marilu, he received a tremendous stroke of luck when the medications injected into her body prevented determining the time of death. If he did not kill his wife, then the inability to determine when Marilu died has made him most unlucky, because, in the eyes of many, he is still under a cloud of suspicion.
Stephen Is Still A Person Of interest
Stephen remarried after Marilu’s death and appears to have continued to have success in the business world and to have done a lot of philanthropic work.
He now lives in San Antonio with his wife Karen.
Stephen And Karen
I found nothing in my research suggesting Marilu was unfaithful or involved in any illicit activities, nor did I find any mention of someone other than Stephen being a person of interest in her murder. Nothing I found suggested that authorities believe Stephen may have hired a hitman to kill Marilu.
No Other Suspects
I could also not find what specific drugs were injected into Marilu by the paramedics which prevented her time of death from being determined. A member of my Facebook group who is an RN and attorney with EMS and Emergency/Critical Care experience informed me that the most common pharmaceutical used by EMS in resuscitative efforts is Epinephrine. It is generally injected intravenously but, in a situation like this, he can see and understand why they elected to perform an intracardiac injection. He says it is about the only medication that can be and is injected directly into the myocardium.
Epinephrine
Marilu’s father Miguel passed away in 1992. Maria is still living, celebrating her ninety-third birthday this Valentine’s Day while also lamenting the loss of her daughter from thirty-eight years ago.
Authorities have said recently that DNA evidence found at the crime scene is being re-examined in hopes of identifying further clues. No details have been released regarding the specific DNA evidence being studied.
A $20,000 reward is offered for information leading to the identification of the killer of Marilu Geri. If you have any information relating to her murder, please contact the Houston Police Department Homicide Division at 713 308-3600.
Who Killed Marilu?
Shortly after Marilu Geri was buried, her headstone was smeared with mud and vandalized. It was later stolen and has never been found; it has also never been determined who stole the headstone.
Her new headstone reads her maiden name, Marilu Serrato.
Headstone Stolen
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187611753/marilu-serrato#
SOURCES:
- ABC Affiliate Channel 13, Houston
- Houston Chronicle
- KPRC-TV Channel 2, NBC Affiliate, Houston
- True Crime Daily
- Unsolved Mysteries
I remember this from unsolved mysteries.
I believe he did it.
The EMTS was luck it was protocol.
I think whatever illegal 🔫 he had was what he was counting on.
The whole driving around thing was very odd.
And since we don’t know her time of 💀it was probably around 5-6 am