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Worst coverup by a killer? Jury quickly convicts Omahan in death of real estate agent

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OMAHA — In a case that might go down as the most obvious trail of evidence left behind by a killer, a jury has found an Omaha man guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of real estate agent Mickey Sodoro.

The “mountain of evidence,” as prosecutors put it, piled so high that jurors deliberated less than two hours Wednesday before convicting Ross Lorello, 44, in the Dec. 28, 2020, death of Sodoro.

Lorello

Lorello shot Sodoro, 70, within three minutes of the two entering a home that Sodoro was going to rent to Lorello near 193rd Avenue and W Street.

Lorello will be sentenced in May to life in prison.

Prosecutors Brenda Beadle and Mike Jensen had urged jurors to convict Lorello for “cowardly” shooting Sodoro in the back of the head. But the verdict didn’t answer this question: Why did Lorello kill the longtime, well-known real estate agent?

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Beadle and Jensen offered their most plausible explanation: Lorello had such bad credit and so little money that he was desperate to find a home after being told to leave the house of his ex-girlfriend and her father.

The half-baked scheme: Kill Sodoro so Lorello didn’t have to pay the down payment, dump his body and then show everyone that he had already signed paperwork to rent the house. Then try to throw off authorities by saying that Sodoro must have disappeared after he left the rental home.

It didn’t work, in part because it wasn’t well thought out, and in part because of a neighbor’s intervention.

Omaha resident Casey Freyer had sold the house to Sodoro and moved down the street. That December night, he had spotted Sodoro idling in his Chevy truck outside the house. Freyer asked if Sodoro wanted him to go get the extra set of keys that he had recently found.

That would be great, Sodoro said. So Freyer went to fetch them.

Sodoro

When he returned, he found a stout-looking man inside the house but no Sodoro. In those three or four minutes, Beadle said, Lorello already had shot Sodoro in the back of the head.

“Holy cow,” Beadle said. “He just put a bullet in the back of some man’s head — and the doorbell rings. How chilling is that?”

And how panicked must Lorello have been, Beadle asked.

So panicked that he waited for Freyer to leave, then hopped in Sodoro’s truck and drove it to a nearby street before returning to the rental home (a path captured by neighbors’ Ring cameras); left a fingerprint on the inside handle of Sodoro’s truck; dragged Sodoro’s body into a crawl space; and left a palm print in the bathtub.

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He left to dump Sodoro’s winter coat, shoe and other items at a gas station down the street, again on camera, then returned to try to find a blood-spattered sweatshirt he had left behind.

Beadle said, however, that Lorello was so worried Freyer might come back that he rushed through without remembering that he had stuffed the sweatshirt under a shelf in the pantry. On it: a blood spot that came back as a match to Sodoro’s DNA.

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That wasn’t the end of the trail of evidence uncovered by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. Another neighbor’s surveillance camera showed two men going into the W Street address and, a few minutes later, “only one coming out,” Beadle noted.

As Beadle replayed the distant video of the two men entering the home — the last moments of Sodoro’s life — Sodoro’s widow, Cheryl, wept in the courtroom.

And then there was the data trail. An examination of Lorello’s electronic devices turned up a Google search for Sodoro’s real estate website before it had been announced that Sodoro was missing or dead. An examination of Lorello's ex-girlfriend’s Ford Edge entertainment system traced his path from her home to the W Street home, to the gas station, back to the home and back to the gas station.

Still later, Lorello used his phone to look up YouTube videos on how to patch drywall. Beadle noted that patching drywall would have come in handy if Lorello had had time to cover the hole in the drywall that led to the crawl space where he had stuffed Sodoro’s body.

Alas, he didn’t.

Outside court, Mike Riedmann, president emeritus of NP Dodge real estate, said he had worked with Sodoro for 30 years.

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Riedmann said the crime was senseless in that it robbed Sodoro and his family of many years of retirement. Also: “There was no chance (Lorello) would get away with it,” he said.

In addition to telling his office staff that he was meeting Lorello, Sodoro had taken a photo of Lorello’s driver’s license and emailed it to staff to make sure his colleagues knew the name of the prospective renter. Riedmann said he also had bent over backward to rent the home to Lorello, telling him he would lease the place to him, despite his bad credit, if he showed up with the first and last month’s rent.

“All the young (real estate agents) loved to follow Mickey,” Riedmann said. “He had a whole network and he was always sharing his knowledge.

“And he would give guys a break who needed it. It makes this especially cruel. He was a hell of a good guy.”

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