He killed Boise’s ‘Cat Man of Bella Street’ in 1976. Now, he’s on Florida’s death row

Those who have lived in Boise long enough might recall what was considered one of the most infamous crimes at the time: the killing of Enrico Flory, the “Cat Man of Bella Street,” in June 1976.

Flory, 76, who earned the moniker because he cared for a dozen or more stray cats, was found dead in his house in Boise’s North End, just behind Lowell Municipal Pool.

It was a seemingly routine unattended death of a heart attack.

In reality, though, four neighborhood teenagers held Flory down, suffocated him with a pillow and stole Flory’s Social Security money. The crime became front-page news.

“If that happened now — four juveniles killing a helpless old man for what turned out to be $48 left over from Social Security money — you can bet that we’d get national attention,” Charlie Etlinger, an Idaho Statesman reporter who covered the case extensively at the time, told me in a phone interview Monday. “You know that NBC show would do a show on him. All these media entities looking for pieces that might be of interest to the public would write about it, because it was horrendous.”

One of those boys, Steven Wolf, who was 15 years old and considered the group’s ringleader, was sentenced to death last week in Florida.

Wolf, now 62, was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering a woman in his van in November 2018.

“This is a horrific, vicious rape and murder committed by an animal,” Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward told the Miami Herald last week. “He’s where he belongs. On death row.”

It took jurors less than five hours to unanimously find Wolf guilty on charges of first-degree murder, sexual battery and tampering with physical evidence, according to Keys Weekly.

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, an officer with decades of experience, called it “one of the most heinous crimes we’ve seen” and said Wolf is “probably a serial rapist and murderer who got away with it for years.”

In fact, it appears Wolf got his start in Boise — nearly 50 years ago.

‘Cat man of Bella Street’

In 1975, Etlinger had written a feel-good Christmas feature story about Flory, who lived alone, took in stray cats, befriended children in the neighborhood, and wrote letters to Idaho prisoners and visited them in prison. So beloved among prisoners, Flory had been invited to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and when prisoners learned that Flory didn’t have a refrigerator, they took up a collection and bought him a new one.

“And then six months later he’s murdered,” Etlinger said.

Even though Flory’s death was initially ruled of natural causes, four neighborhood teenagers were arrested after a couple of them bragged about killing him.

The boys, whom Flory had befriended, were Darin McLenna, 16; Rory Brooks, 17; Demetrio Esquivel, 14; and Wolf.

As McLenna told detectives at the time, three boys held down Flory, while a fourth held the pillow to Flory’s face. McLenna told detectives that Brooks was the one holding the pillow when Flory died, but Wolf may have been holding the pillow earlier in the attack.

Wolf was considered the ringleader of the quartet, and he and Brooks were the instigators of the murder, according to Etlinger’s reporting at the time of police and court testimony.

While police were investigating Flory’s death, Wolf and Brooks were being arrested on suspicion of kidnapping two women on Bogus Basin Road and raping one of the women on a dirt road in the Foothills.

It’s unclear from the court record what happened with the rape and kidnapping charges once Wolf and Brooks were charged on Sept. 2, 1976, with first-degree murder in Flory’s death.

Wolf and Brooks were originally charged in juvenile court, but a magistrate judge later ruled them eligible to be tried as adults, a hot topic at the time. Etlinger said a wave of juvenile violence was sweeping the country, even leading to cover stories in Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report on the topic of whether juveniles should be charged as adults in more serious cases.

“It was important at the time because the Idaho Supreme Court had to decide on whether to have the juveniles prosecuted as adults,” Etlinger said. “And so that set a precedent, and then you have to put it in the context of what was going on nationally as well: Should juvenile murderers be treated as adults.”

Wolf appealed the decision to be tried as an adult, which delayed his trial for two years.

Escape from jail

While waiting, Wolf escaped from the Ada County Jail in 1977 by sawing through a bar in his fourth-floor cell and scrambling down the wall using bed sheets and electrical conduit. He was captured six days later and returned to jail.

Once Wolf lost his appeal to be tried as a juvenile, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in November 1978 and was sentenced to no more than 30 years in prison. Brooks, meanwhile, ended up being convicted of second-degree murder.

Wolf was eligible for parole after five years. It appears he was released on parole at the end of 1989 or beginning of 1990.

But after being out for 13 months, Wolf’s parole was revoked in January 1991 because he tested positive for amphetamines, according to an Associated Press article in the Idaho Statesman. Wolf was sent back to prison, and his release was delayed until July 25, 1991, and his parole was extended to December 1997.

The court record is unclear after that, and the trail of newspaper articles about Wolf goes cold.

In 2004, Wolf got in trouble with the law again, this time on a series of drug charges. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, which was suspended, and he was placed on probation.

Idaho Department of Correction records show that Wolf was on supervised probation beginning in December 2004, according to IDOC spokesperson Jeff Ray. While on probation, in 2005, Wolf was arrested on misdemeanor charges of “frequenting,” referring to frequenting a place where drugs are sold, as well as resisting and obstructing officers. He was sentenced to three days in Ada County Jail.

Court records show Wolf was making regular $52 payments toward his $10,000 court-ordered restitution. Payments stopped, though, in November 2009. Wolf’s probation expired in December 2009, according to Ray.

And that’s the last we hear of Wolf — until, that is, the 2018 rape and murder in Florida.

Wolf’s beginnings in crime

In 1980, Etlinger’s extensive reporting was published in a 10-page special section in the Idaho Statesman about “The Cat Man of Bella Street” case and the issue of rising juvenile crime.

In it, Etlinger painted a stark, unflattering portrait of Wolf.

According to Etlinger’s reporting at the time, Wolf had been in escalating trouble with the law since age 12: petty larceny twice, vandalism, three instances of second-degree burglary, runaway, two more counts of petty larceny and second-degree arson, leading up to the kidnapping and rape charges.

Wolf reportedly abused Flory’s cats, pouring gasoline on them and lighting them on fire, according to Etlinger’s reporting.

Wolf had received psychiatric and psychological counseling, and was diagnosed as a “sociopath” — someone who lacks empathy or remorse for perverse or impulsive acts, according to the 1980 special section by Etlinger.

“Wolf impressed you as somewhat of a little runt, a little sneak thief,” 4th District Magistrate Judge L. Alan Smith, who as Ada County Juvenile Court judge in 1976 presided over Wolf’s numerous juvenile cases, is quoted in Etlinger’s 1980 report on the case. “You could tell he’d sneak around your back to do something. … That’s the way I viewed him. Just a little sneak thief — he’d grow out of it.”

Wolf, apparently, didn’t grow out of it.

According to police and prosecutors in his Florida rape and murder case, Wolf kidnapped 51-year-old Michelle Osborne, tied her up and strangled her with a rope before raping her with two objects. The county medical examiner ruled the cause of death as ligature strangulation in combination with anal and genital trauma, according to the Miami Herald article.

Prosecutors say Wolf dumped Osborne’s naked body in the woods. A fisherman found her body that afternoon and called police. Almost a week went by, however, before detectives were able to identify Osborne by matching her fingerprints. She was homeless and lived in Wisconsin before moving to the Keys, investigators said.

Police found Wolf living in a van in a Kmart parking lot. They also found blood inside the van, and detectives later found blood-soaked sheets thrown out in dumpsters throughout town, according to the Miami Herald.

“This is clearly not a good guy. And that’s just what we know of,” Ramsay, the Monroe County sheriff, said in January following Wolf’s conviction, according to the Herald. “He’s been charged with murder two different times. Is this a serial killer? A serial rapist? How many other victims are there?”

During the penalty phase of Wolf’s trial, jurors took less than 90 minutes to unanimously find the murder to be “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel” and decide that Wolf should be sentenced to death. The judge on June 29 ruled in agreement with the jury.

“Mr. Wolf, you have not only forfeited your right to live among us,” Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones said, according to Keys Weekly, “you have forfeited your right to live.”