A Florida man has been charged with 1st-degree murder after allegedly killing and setting fire to an unnamed man who beat him at cards for thousands of dollars.
21-year-old Michael Psilakis, of Hudson, was arrested last week on weapons charges. According to The Tampa Bay Times, police investigated a burned-out car and body found in woods near a nature park.
The dead man has not been identified, in line with Florida’s Marsy’s Law designed to protect the privacy of crime. However, he is claimed to have won several thousand dollars from Psilakis (pictured below).
A witness told police that he had played cards with the victim and alleged murderer a few days previously. Psilakis lost $1000 to the dead man during that time.
The following day Psilakis texted the witness several times. After losing another $2500 to the victim, he asked the witness if he should kill the man, referring to him in racially derogatory terms.
The victim was last seen in his Ford Taurus with Psilakis and later reported missing. When questioned by detectives, Psilakis had ‘a large burn-blister’ on his lower leg, with ‘blood seeping through his tube socks.’
Another witness told police that she had discovered $20,000 in a safe used by Psilakis, as well as bloody underwear belonging to the alleged killer in her washing machine.
The police found a stolen handgun in his car, as well as internet searches ‘for phrases including “can u shoot through a seat” and “how to treat burns,” according to news reports.
Psilakis is currently in prison without bond, and there is no court date yet.
Multiple murder cases in the recent past
The world of card-playing can be a dangerous place, several murders taking place during or after poker games.
In 2014, Donald Leonetti – a 45-year old Missouri City businessman known as the ‘King of Shirts’ – was murdered during a high-stakes poker game by Eric Norris (pictured below).
Reports at the time described how ‘two masked men with rifles forced their way into the private poker game inside a Stafford shopping center,’ and the armed raiders escaped with around $20,000 in cash. But they killed family-man Leonetti (pictured below) as he attempted to stop the robbery.
Norris, then 26-years old, last year changed his plea to guilty mid-trial after a video recording of his original police confession was deemed admissible in court.
Norris was still allowed to accept a previously turned-down plea deal, which would see him serve a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Another recent case, this time in Ireland, saw a man stabbed to death on New Year’s Day. Again after winning a sum of money from his killer at poker.
40-year old Polish national Marek Swider was killed by 39-year old Tomasz Paszkiewicz after winning about €500 from his fellow countryman.
According to witnesses, Paszkiewicz was unhappy about losing, one witness testifying in court: “Then, Mr. Paszkiewicz grabbed all the money and put them into his pocket and Marek said: ‘Wait, that’s all my money. I won them.”
Paszkiewicz offered Swider outside, and minutes later, Swider returned, clutching his stomach, shouting: ‘That stupid guy stabbed me. Call ambulance’, according to witnesses.
Paszkiewicz, a meat factory worker, was sentenced to nine years in jail for manslaughter.
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