Joseph Zieler: The Cape Coral Monster
The Cape Coral Monster:AccusedJoseph Zieler·VictimsLisa Story·Robin Cornell
Case at a glance
- When
- May 9–10, 1990
- Where
- Cape Coral, Lee County, Florida
- Perpetrator
- Joseph Adam Zieler
- Outcome
- Convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in May 2023 and sentenced to death; sentence upheld by the Florida Supreme Court in April 2026
The case
In May 1990, 11-year-old Robin Cornell lived with her mother, Jan, in a townhouse in Cape Coral, Florida. Lisa Story, 32, a hospital coworker of Jan’s, had just moved into the spare bedroom and was looking after Robin on the night of May 9 while Jan was out.
Jan came home at about 4 a.m. on May 10 and found the back sliding door open and the living room ransacked. Robin and Lisa were both dead. Each had been sexually assaulted and suffocated. Investigators collected DNA and other evidence, including a keychain with a horseshoe charm that did not belong in the home, but they had no suspect. The case went unsolved for more than 26 years.
In August 2016, Joseph Zieler was arrested for shooting his grown son with a pellet gun, and a DNA sample was taken. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement matched it to the 1990 evidence, and he was charged with the murders that fall. At trial he claimed he had once been intimate with Robin’s mother. A jury convicted him in May 2023 and voted 10 to 2 for death. On June 26, 2023, after striking his own lawyer with his elbow in the courtroom, he was sentenced to death. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the sentence in April 2026.
Case photographs
Where it happened
Cape Coral, where Robin Cornell and Lisa Story were killed
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Jason Neal has been writing true crime since 2019 and is the author of the True Crime Case Histories book series.
The full written account of this case is in True Crime Case Histories: Volume 14: Book · Paperback · Audiobook