Guilty Verdict In 2013 Murder

Fernando Romualdo

By Jano Tantongco
jtantongco@longislandergroup.com

A Huntington Station man is facing 25 years to life for murdering Sarah Strobel, a Walt Whitman High School graduate, nearly four years ago.

Fernando Romualdo, 29, was convicted by a jury Monday after a 15-day trial of murdering Strobel, who was 23 when her dead body was found by a hiker at the Froehlich Farm Nature Preserve in Huntington on Oct. 3, 2013, according to Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Suffolk DA Thomas Spota.

DNA evidence collected from the Strobel’s body matched the DNA sample Romualdo provided for the state database after he was arrested for raping a juvenile woman in June 2016, according to Clifford. Romualdo is also currently serving a three-year sentence at upstate Mohawk Correctional Facility for the rape conviction.

Spota said, “Today’s guilty verdict means this violent sexual predator will be behind bars for decades, and the sentence we will recommend will be the longest incarceration allowed under the law — 25 years to life in state prison.”

Sami Love, one of Strobel’s close friends, said in an interview Tuesday that she’s “grateful Mr. Romualdo is going to be locked away so that he can’t do anything like this to someone else.

Love, of Melville, said she was friends with Strobel for five years.

“It’s been hell. It made it really difficult for me to have friends and not fear that I was going to lose them traumatically and violently,” Love said. “She would be the person that I would be trying to talk to about this.”

Romualdo will be sentenced Aug. 1 in Riverhead.