The former roommate of a prominent LGBTQ+ activist was sentenced to life in prison for his 2022 slaying in which he strangled the victim to death and left his body in a dumpster near the apartment they once shared.
A Florida jury found Steven R. Yinger, 38, guilty of first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, grand theft motor vehicle, grand theft and criminal use of a personal identification number on Friday in the death of Jorge Diaz-Johnston — the brother of former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz.
He was also found guilty of violating his probation, WCTV reports.
Prosecutors have claimed that Diaz-Johnston, 54, let Yinger move into his Tallahassee apartment after meeting at an alcohol rehab program.
But after Yinger stole his car and he found other items missing, Diaz-Johnston urged him to move out on Jan. 3, 2022, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Diaz-Johnston, who helped usher in the 2015 legalization of gay marriage in Florida, was found dead in a landfill in Baker, Fla. just days later.
A medical examiner determined he was strangled to death, and prosecutors said they believed Yinger dumped his body in a public garbage collection site near their apartment.
From there, the body was picked up by trash collectors and taken to the landfill.
“What Jorge did was genuine Christian love to try to give this man a leg up and an opportunity,” Don Diaz-Johnston, the victim’s husband from whom he was estranged at the time of his death, said in a statement following the verdict.
“And Jorge knew that that level of kindness and generosity can thaw the coldest of hearts. But the truth is it can’t turn the blackest of hearts.”
The Post has reached out to Yinger’s defense attorney, Zach Ward, for comment.
After Diaz-Johnston’s body was found strewn among the trash, a witness told investigators he had been planning to kick Yinger out for “allowing a friend (who is addicted to the street drug methamphetamine)” to frequent the home before he mysteriously disappeared, according to an affidavit obtained by Law & Crime.
Yinger then told family and friends conflicting stories about Diaz-Johnston’s disappearance.
In court last week, Assistant State Attorney Adrian Mood showed jurors the bin that Yinger carried the victim’s body in, saying he treated Diaz-Johnston “like a piece of garbage,” the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
But Yinger’s defense attorney argued that the evidence against his client was circumstantial, saying investigators did not find his DNA at the crime scene.
Ward claimed Yinger was acting strangely and lied to detectives after Diaz-Johnston’s murder not because he was guilty; but because he was struggling with drug addiction.
“Now that doesn’t mean, of course, that he murdered Mr. Diaz-Johnston,” Ward argued, according to WCTV.
“More importantly, it doesn’t mean the state can prove that he murdered Mr. Diaz-Johnston.”
But the medical examiner testified that when being strangled, a victim will go unconscious before dying, and the perpetrator must continue strangling them for several minutes in order to kill them.
“He had ample time to reflect on the life he was snuffing out,” Mood told jurors in his closing argument.
“The son, the brother, the uncle, whose life he was erasing and then throwing away like common garbage.”
Yinger was previously sentenced in 2019 to three years in prison for petit theft, grand theft and using an anti-shoplifting device, records obtained by Law & Crime show.
Diaz-Johnston, meanwhile, was a key plaintiff in a historic 2014 lawsuit challenging Florida’s then ban on gay marriage.
His brother served as mayor of Miami from 2001 to 2009.
