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How Did a $50,000 Bank Theft Lead to the Stack Murders?

How did the Cynthia and Sean Stack murders happen? A missing $50,000, a daughter's questions and a visit to her apartment explain the case.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 30, 2026

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Everything Sucks: A True Crime-ish Investigative Podcast

The front door was still open. A neighbor had seen it that way the night before, with a stranger standing in the doorway. On the morning of July 18, 2018, she looked inside Cynthia Stack’s Orlando apartment and saw Cynthia slumped on a futon.

How did the Cynthia and Sean Stack murders happen? Cynthia had been trying to find $50,000 missing from her father’s bank account. His banker, Amelia Bissoon, had moved the money into checks made out to her own son. The money was gone. As Cynthia pressed for answers, Bissoon’s husband, Joshua Ramsawmy, went to the apartment. He was later convicted of shooting Cynthia and her son Sean.

How did the Cynthia and Sean Stack murders happen?

In the 911 call played on Everything Sucks: A True Crime-ish Investigative Podcast, the caller described Cynthia’s open door and said she was not responding. The caller had been walking her dog, Bella. She could not see Sean.

Officers found Cynthia on the living room futon and Sean in the bathroom. Shanique Woodley, host of the episode “6: The Murders of Cynthia & Sean Stack,” said investigators found 9mm shell casings near both bodies. She said the autopsies showed Cynthia had been shot once in the head and Sean three times.

The front door showed no sign of force. Woodley said valuables remained in the apartment, though both victims’ phones were missing. That made an ordinary burglary seem unlikely. Investigators still had to work out who had come through the open door.

Orlando police arrested Ramsawmy and Bissoon on July 27, nine days after the bodies were found. Both faced murder charges at first. The case that followed centered on a bank account, a family asking where its money had gone and a man a neighbor had noticed outside their home.

Where did Gerald Stack’s $50,000 go?

Gerald Stack wanted to set aside $50,000 for his grandson Sean. He had a brain injury that affected his memory, Woodley said, and he trusted Bissoon, his personal banker at Chase. The trouble began when she handled the money without putting it where Gerald expected.

On March 29, 2018, Bissoon tried to get a $50,000 cashier’s check issued from Gerald’s savings account. Woodley described a teller who grew uneasy with the request. Gerald was not at the counter, and the amount needed approval above Bissoon’s own limit. A manager also declined to complete the withdrawal without Gerald present.

Later that day, two cashier’s checks for $25,000 each were issued anyway. Neither was made out to Sean. Both named Bissoon’s young son, Julian Hewitt. Ramsawmy deposited the checks into an account he opened with Julian at another bank.

That payee name matters. It put Gerald’s money in an account controlled by the banker’s family, rather than in a trust for his grandson. Gerald’s request to help Sean was real. The account he believed held the $50,000 was not there.

The next day, Bissoon helped open a separate account for Sean and transferred $10,000 into it, Woodley said. That account did not explain the missing $50,000. It did, however, give Bissoon access to Sean’s address, where he lived with Cynthia.

Why did Cynthia Stack confront the banker?

By July, Cynthia wanted to know what had happened to her father’s money. On July 9, she contacted another Chase branch and asked an employee to look into it. Woodley said Gerald told that employee he thought there should be a $50,000 trust account for Sean. The employee could not find one.

Three days later, Gerald went to a branch with Cynthia and Sean. They reviewed his transactions and found the two March cashier’s checks. Gerald could explain his wish to provide for Sean. That much was clear. He could not explain why the checks were made out to Bissoon’s son.

Cynthia spoke to Bissoon by phone while the family was at the bank. Woodley said Cynthia demanded that the money be put back. Bissoon had a problem she could no longer keep inside her branch: the family was looking for the account itself.

“Anytime they tried to cover their tracks, they created more tracks and more evidence.”
— Shanique Woodley, on Everything Sucks: A True Crime-ish Investigative Podcast

The bank had already reviewed Bissoon’s handling of the withdrawal in April. During that review, she said Gerald had waited in his car while the checks were processed. Woodley said she had also used a coworker’s login to add a note suggesting Gerald sometimes forgot transactions. The bank’s review closed after Gerald confirmed that he had requested $50,000. Confirming the request was different from finding the money.

Bissoon later offered detectives another explanation. She said the checks were made out to Julian for safekeeping, Woodley reported. She also produced a notarized statement saying the funds did not have to be repaid. Woodley said Bissoon acknowledged writing the document herself, without Gerald asking her to. By then, Ramsawmy had withdrawn much of the money.

What happened before the shooting?

Woodley said Bissoon told her friend Jay Persaud she had taken Gerald’s money and wanted someone to scare Cynthia away from reporting her. Ramsawmy gave Persaud $1,000 and pain pills, according to the episode. Persaud told investigators he took them without intending to find anyone.

On July 16, Ramsawmy bought a 9mm handgun at a pawn shop in Winter Garden. The following evening, he went to Cynthia and Sean’s apartment on West Jefferson Street. Woodley said the neighbor saw a short man she did not recognize at the open doorway around 6 p.m. The neighbor thought he looked upset.

When she returned around 11 p.m., the door was still open and the man’s car was still there. She did not hear anything that told her a shooting had taken place. The next morning, the door was open again.

The timing and length of the visit stand out. Ramsawmy later acknowledged going to the apartment, Woodley said, though his account of the conversation changed during questioning. Investigators also found late-night searches for Bissoon and Julian on a laptop at the apartment. Cynthia was still trying to work out where her father’s money had gone.

The episode does not establish every word said inside that home or the exact moment each shot was fired. The neighbor’s account places a man at the doorway for hours. The scene and autopsies show that Cynthia and Sean were shot inside. The trial resolved who was responsible for their deaths.

How did investigators link Joshua Ramsawmy to the killings?

Investigators could follow the money from Gerald’s account to the checks and then to the account Ramsawmy opened. They also had the pawn-shop purchase, the neighbor’s account of the visit and the evidence from the apartment. Each piece connected a different part of the same week.

Woodley said the neighbor identified Ramsawmy from a photograph. In an interview, Bissoon gave detectives an account of his gun purchase and his trip to the Stacks’ home. The recording played in the episode labels the interview speakers only as unidentified. In it, one speaker said Ramsawmy had spoken of “handling” the situation. Asked directly who killed Cynthia and Sean, that speaker answered, “Josh.” The recording alone does not identify the speaker by name.

Ramsawmy’s own explanations changed too, Woodley said. He first denied buying a handgun. He later said he had bought one for protection and thrown it into water near Daytona Beach. He acknowledged visiting Cynthia and Sean after investigators challenged his denial. He did not give detectives a settled account of what happened there.

The gun’s fate is less clear from the episode than those changes in his story. Bissoon described Ramsawmy taking it apart; Ramsawmy described throwing it away. Neither account should be treated as a recovered weapon. The jury had the financial trail, the visit and the other evidence presented at trial to weigh.

What happened to Bissoon and Ramsawmy?

Ramsawmy was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed his judgment on July 19, 2022.

Bissoon had also been arrested on murder charges. Woodley said she later agreed to testify against Ramsawmy and pleaded guilty to theft and identity-theft offenses. She received a three-year prison sentence. Woodley’s view is plain: she thinks Bissoon’s punishment was too light. That is her judgment, separate from the jury’s finding against Ramsawmy.

Chase apologized to Gerald and returned the $50,000, as the bank confirmed at the time. The repayment could restore the balance in his account. It could not restore the reason he had wanted to set the money aside: Sean was his grandson.

The full episode of Everything Sucks: A True Crime-ish Investigative Podcast is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.