Gaiser was arrested Wednesday and charged with solicitation of capital murder.
At Stern's Bellaire home on Thursday, vehicles crowded the driveway and street -- a show of support for the woman who someone apparently wanted dead.
"It's good news that they caught somebody," said a friend of Stern. "Yeah, of course it's good news." Stern was shot last month in a parking lot in the 5600 block of North Braeswood where she was staying while her house was being remodeled. She managed to escape to a nearby gas station seeking help. Freddie Romero is a mechanic there. He held her hand until help came. Fast forward two weeks, and he gets a cryptic phone call. "She said, 'Are you the guy who saved this lady's life?'" Romero recalled. Romero says the female caller was angry and mumbling something about affairs and the wounded woman Romero had helped two weeks prior. "She said, 'You shoulda let this b*-- die. Now she's made my life a living hell,'" Romero said. According to court documents inside the Criminal Justice Center, Gaiser paid a man $10,000 to kill Stern. When he took the money and didn't follow through, Gaiser allegedly hired another man to take out Stern and the original hitman. A confidential informant tipped off police after the shooting on North Braeswood. When Stern was shot last month, it was not the first attempt at her life. In February, when the family returned to their Bellaire home, they found that someone had shot up some of their furniture. Then in April, someone rang the doorbell late at night. When Stern came to the door someone opened fire through the glass. She was not hit. In another bizarre twist, Stern's husband, prominent attorney Jeffrey Stern, has also been arrested. That happened apparently while authorities were serving a search warrant on Gaiser. Stern is charged only with unlawfully carrying a weapon. No one at Jeffery Stern's law office would comment on the issue, and attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.Your feedback is important to us! Please complete a brief survey so we may continue to improve abc13.com
