Read Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle Online

Authors: Michael Benson

Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (12 page)

EXTRANEOUS MATERIAL
Solicitor Gregory Hembree was a thorough researcher. He tried to read every document pertaining to the case, but he had not read Stephen Stanko’s journals in their entirety. He’d read enough to get the gist, and he would be shocked if there was anything in there that he would not have anticipated.
The comedy act that Stanko wrote was lame, based on a bizarre premise that free people and prisoners have basically the same feelings and concerns.
There was the serial killer research, which was pretty interesting preceding, as it did, a murder spree. Then there was the anti–law enforcement stuff in which Stanko was being persecuted unjustly. It all got to be
the same,
and he stopped reading. Stanko was always the hero, and that turned the veteran prosecutor’s stomach a little bit.
Hembree decided not to use the serial killer stuff in his case. What he’d read made it seem like the work of an intelligent but amateur criminologist. There was nothing overt to indicate premeditation. Maybe he had whacked Laura and Penny over the head in imitation of Ted Bundy, and maybe he had used knots to bind his victims, which he’d learned from BTK, but he didn’t put it in writing. Plus, there was no indication in Stanko’s crime spree that he had learned any expertise, or any lesson at all, from his hours of researching serial killers.
When the time came, Stephen Stanko had been a hotheaded killer—disorganized, even—not the cool customer he might have hoped to be. For all of his intelligence, he had not been that clever—leaving a living witness, botching his bondage first try, and fleeing in a thoroughly traceable manner.
Also, the solicitor was thinking only in terms of the evidence he needed to get the lethal needle in the monster’s arm. The serial killer material and the comedy act were extraneous to the case he intended to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Stanko’s actions vividly spoke for themselves.
Hembree thought the manhunt went well. Because Penny Ling survived, the BOLO went out many hours earlier than Stanko thought it would. That was the key. If only police had included Henry Lee Turner on their list of people who needed immediate protection, he might still be alive. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There were too many directions for Stanko to go. He had ripped off and angered many people.
In many cases when a killer was on the run, police could assume that he would contact someone he knew, a friend or family member. But this killer had forged new relationships so quickly, he didn’t need to return to the familiar, and could head anywhere. There were a lot of potential targets that deserved protection before Turner.
Financial woes were only part of the problem, the prosecutor understood. When you looked at Liz and Laura side by side, you saw the pattern. Hembree was convinced that in both cases some sort of rejection by a woman started the violence. It was a typical personality trait for criminal men: the inability to take no for an answer.
Gregory Hembree also took a look at Stephen Stanko’s family, to see if there were any indicators of what might have caused him to kill. But he saw no clear answers. He’d dealt with people from really messed-up homes, mind-bogglingly messed up, and Stanko’s upbringing couldn’t compare. Stanko’s youth was normal.
The solicitor grew up in a military household himself and heard no stories about Stanko’s youth that wouldn’t have described accurately a whole generation of welladjusted Americans.
“Some families make the Stankos look like
Leave It to Beaver,
” Hembree said, evoking a wholesome 1960s TV show. Stanko’s dad was ex-navy, kind of old school, ran a tight ship, but that might describe a million households in America.
“Shoot, we’ve had whole generations of people growing up with their daddies like that,” Hembree said.
A million dads are noncommunicative to a degree, or have some difficulty expressing affection, but their children do not turn into murderers. Maybe William Stanko’s expectations for his sons were a little high.
“But it wasn’t like he was beating the crap out of his children or anything,” Hembree said.
Hembree checked out Stanko’s siblings. None of them turned out a train wreck. They were pretty normal, with normal ups and down and range of success. The solicitor could see the house-fire death of Stanko’s older brother as a contributing factor to his personality disorder, but he couldn’t see it making him a killer.
Stanko’s worst crimes were all misogynistic, not logically caused by a male sibling’s death. It was more likely that Stanko saw his entire existence as spin control.
He killed to let the world know he had the capacity to kill, the cojones to take a life.
He hurt women to let all women know that when he was in a relationship, he was the one in charge. The master. King of the Castle. He saw himself as a rich and slick intellectual. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a handsome superior man, merciless and impeccable.
At about three-thirty on the afternoon of April 13, state court judge Richard A. Slaby signed a search warrant allowing law enforcement to have at Henry Lee Turner’s truck in search of evidence. There was, the judge ruled, reasonable cause to believe evidence in a double homicide might be hidden somewhere in the Mazda. The warrant allowed police and crime scene personnel to search for biological and trace evidence, including—but not limited to—blood, hair and fibers, any sharp objects that could be used as a weapon, any firearms, parts of firearms, ammunition, or firearm-related items.
Police could also look for any “documents, receipts, or personal effects” that would link Stanko to the death of Henry Turner or Laura Ling. The warrant made special note of a missing piece of jewelry, the shape of which matched a bruise that had been found on Laura Ling’s body.
The warrant required that an itemized list of the evidence found and seized be made and presented back to the judge for review within ten days.
Goldfinch Funeral Home prepared Laura Ling’s remains for eternal rest. The work was done at their Beach Chapel, one of three funeral homes along the coast run by George H. Goldfinch Jr., this one on Pawleys Island, on the other side of Brookgreen Gardens State Park from Murrells Inlet.
Visitation was kept short, held on April 13, from six to eight in the evening. Goldfinch put an obituary up on its website, which was almost identical to the one that ran in the local paper. It noted that Ling’s birth and death dates were July 10, 1961 to April 8, 2005. It gave her education and work history, details of the planned services in her honor, and listed her survivors as her sons and daughter, her mother and her sisters, Catherine Hatfield, of McKinney, Texas, and Victoria Loy, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. A nephew, McLean Hatfield, of McKinney, Texas, and Laura’s ex-husband Chris Ling, of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, were also mentioned. It concluded: Memorials may be made to Socastee Public Library.
On April 14, Ling’s remains were transported by hearse from the Beach Chapel to the Precious Blood of Christ Church, a somewhat progressive Roman Catholic church on Waverly Road, also on Pawleys Island. A mass of Christian burial was held; after which Ling’s remains were transported to Northwest Dallas to the Hillcrest Mausoleum & Memorial Park. Another ceremony was held at an A-framed pavilion/pier that protruded into a man-made lake. Ling’s remains were then entombed.
A page on the Goldfinch website was set up for people to share their remembrances and feelings regarding Laura Ling. Many of the entries were from people Ling knew in Texas who fondly recalled the laughter she brought. One entry came from one of Ling’s former students from the days when she taught Sunday school in Texas.
But not all of the writing was from the Lone Star State. Janis Walker Gilmore, of Pawleys Island, was Laura Ling’s tennis buddy, who recalled that she volleyed as she did everything, “flat out.” Janis and Laura were not just casual tennis players who volleyed for exercise. They played United States Tennis Association (USTA) team tennis together for a couple of years.
Janis remembered Penny hanging around the courts waiting for her mother to finish, sometimes killing time by reading the latest Harry Potter book.
Laura was incredibly bright and funny. She once said to me, “You have it all—the big house, the husband, the nice kids, the money—I’d like to hate you, but you’re just too damned nice!” That was Laura, Janis recalled.
Linda O’Quinn, a schoolmate of Laura Ling’s during her master’s program at the University of South Carolina, recalled that Ling was as beautiful on the inside as on the outside.
Simultaneous to the South Carolina services for Laura Ling, on April 14, was a hearing in the Georgetown County Courthouse, with Stephen Stanko in attendance. Part of Georgetown’s Historic District, that courthouse was one of the oldest in the country, built in 1824 to replace the wooden one that burned in 1819. Designed with security in mind, the walls were six feet deep. Along the front were six impressive pillars and a balustrade.
Stanko waived his right to a bond hearing, and was held without bail. The judge signed an arrest warrant for a charge of armed robbery. The affidavit explained that there was reasonable cause to believe Stanko stole Turner’s vehicle, cell phone, and two of Turner’s guns after the murder. After all, Stanko had been walking toward Turner’s truck when he was arrested in Augusta.
The solicitor, already thinking in terms of the death penalty, wanted to pile on as many charges as possible, just to be safe.
THE MAZDA
At quarter past five on Thursday afternoon, the search warrant for the Mazda, signed by Judge Richard A. Slaby, made its way to the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office VPB, where the truck waited. A copy of the search warrant was made and placed on the vehicle’s dashboard.
An hour later, Investigators James Gordon and Shannon Mitchell began executing the warrant, starting with an inventory of the vehicle’s contents. Photographs were taken of the truck from every angle.
One never knew what would turn out to be important later, so the photographic coverage of the truck was complete. Gordon noted that the vehicle had no easily discernible damage to its exterior.
There was no ignition key, so investigators had to break into the car. The interior was gray—gray cloth seats and gray carpeting. The floorboards were covered with red mats, which were removed and bagged as evidence. You could learn a lot about a suspect by what came off the bottom of his feet.
A closer examination of the cabin’s interior revealed an unknown brown substance on the inside of the driver’s-side window. A quick McPhail’s Reagent Hemident (MRH) test, involving a reagent and a sterile Q-tip, was positive for blood. A swab of that blood sample was made and taken as evidence.
The odometer read 107,019. The trip meter read 240.1 miles—a precise measure of the suspect’s meandering flight.
The investigators opened up the cooler in the bed and found inside, resting in a couple of inches of water, nine unopened Coors Light beer cans and an unopened can of Pepsi. Also in there was a metal flask, with a logo for Canadian Club imprinted on it. In the flask was an “unknown fruitlike alcoholic beverage.”
An inventory of the glove box taught investigators more about the victim than his alleged killer. That compartment held the vehicle registration, in the name of Henry Lee Turner, a small notepad with handwritten notes and numbers scribbled in it, a screwdriver kit, a green Dick’s Sporting Goods lanyard, four packs of crackers—such as you might get at a restaurant when ordering soup, all unopened—a cell phone charger, flashlight, some miscellaneous auto parts and tools, a gift card to Henry Turner, a rusty and dusty pocket jackknife, multiple unused straws, and a combination padlock.
Sitting up on the dashboard was a pair of bifocal glasses in a soft black case. Beneath the steering wheel, on the driver’s-side floorboard, along with the red mat, was a child’s shirt, white with black trim, unknown stains, and the words
ZOEY BETH
.
On the passenger-side floorboard, police discovered a Krystal fast-food restaurant bag, with three empty burger boxes and no receipt, three unopened Miller Lite beer bottles in a six-pack container, a key ring with no keys but with a Ford Mustang electronic door/trunk lock fob, a yellow folding knife, and a leather pouch containing a Marlboro Country Store bottle opener.
Also down under the passenger seat was a generic plastic grocery bag containing a Kmart receipt printed at nine-fifteen in the morning on April 11 at a store in Martinez, Georgia. The receipt indicated the purchase of a Nokia cell phone. Also in the bag was a brochure from a piano store and the business card of the store’s proprietor. There was an empty Mountain Dew soda pop bottle in the bag, and an empty Burger King Styrofoam coffee cup. The bottle and the cup were both swabbed at their lips, and that evidence saved for future possible DNA testing. There was an empty pack of cigarettes, a discount brand, a business card from a jewelry and repair shop, with a handwritten name across it, and a receipt from Amelia’s Buds & Blooms, dated April 11, for a “single rose BV.” Another receipt was from Harrington Sports, Inc., also dated April 11, for the purchase of three shirts. The customer, as written on the receipt, was the “Kristopher Family.” Also down there on the floor was a pair of fingernail clippers, a plastic Honey Bun wrapper, three ink pens, candy, a business card for a sewing and vacuum cleaner store and a matchbook from Golden Egg Pancake House.
It would need to be determined what items belonged to Turner and what to Stanko.
Sitting on top of the passenger seat was an Ozark Trail carry bag, with a towel on top of it. This had to be the suspect’s bag. He’d packed clean pullover shirts, pants (waist 36), socks, and boxer shorts. Also jammed in there were travel-size toiletries—toothbrush, electric razor, shampoo, etc. Stephen Stanko’s first-aid kit consisted of an open box of twenty Band-Aids, assorted sizes. The box was open and a couple of the Band-Aids, size unknown, were missing. Also in there were a spare set of keys to the truck.
Sitting on the seat next to the luggage was a brochure for Hot Spring portable spas, and the receipt from the Krystal run, which had been made at twelve-thirty on the afternoon of April 12, only a few hours before he was arrested.
The investigators shifted their attention to the cabin’s center console and found a Taurus .357 Magnum revolver, stainless steel, with brown grips, a two-letter six-digit serial number, six cartridges in the cylinder—five Winchester .38 Specials, and an RP .38 Special.
Among the items found in the center console near the gun were Henry Lee Turner’s checkbook, a pack of Jolt Caffeine-Energy Gum, which looked to the investigator identical to Chiclets, and a notebook labeled
Classified Colors.
Upon further examination, they found the name
Laura Ling
written on the inside of the front cover. Bingo.
The console contained a pair of silver-rimmed eyeglasses. There was something odd about them, solder at the joints, which upon further inspection revealed itself to be a home repair.
Under the glasses was Stanko’s 1986 Goose Creek High School class ring. Gordon and Mitchell knew about the unusually shaped mark on the victim Laura Ling’s face. Might have been caused by a piece of jewelry. The grooves on the ring were filled up with an unknown substance. The ring was quickly bagged and given top priority.
Buried at the bottom of the console was a private investigator badge, with
Henry Turner
inscribed on it. The investigators wondered if Stanko knew it was there. A flimflam man with any kind of official-looking badge was a dangerous animal. That badge, in Stephen Stanko’s possession, could have translated into deadly control.
Uninteresting items (napkins, a spark plug, Neosporin ointment) were pulled from the side compartments on both driver’s and passenger side. Neatly over the top of the passenger seat was another change of clothes, dress shirt, dress pants. In the cargo area behind the seats, police found, among other items, more clean clothes for Stanko, and a lot of Turner’s stuff, already there when Stanko stole the vehicle.
The evidence kept coming now. There was a fifty-cartridge box of Winchester .38 Specials, with five missing. Next to the ammunition was a green duffel bag, with what appeared to be blood splattered on it. Inside the bag was a receipt, for 8:00
P.M
. on April 9, from a Hooters gift shop, where Stanko bought a new shirt. It was a business expense, an addition to his wardrobe for his role as owner of several Hooters franchises.
There was a dark suit coat and, under that, a brown-handled folding knife, with brown stains on it. Those stains were tested on the spot and came up positive for blood.
A metal card holder contained Stephen C. Stanko’s business cards which read:
PARALEGAL AND EXOTIC DANCER
. This guy was a piece of work.
When every item in the truck had been logged in, and those deemed pertinent bagged for evidence, the investigators processed the truck for latent prints and biological evidence.
There were, in and on the truck, eleven spots of blood—and they field-tested those stains using McPhail’s Reagent, brand name Hemident. Blood swabs were made from all eleven areas, and these were individually packaged and sealed.
Gut feeling was that the spots would turn out to belong to the suspect, as they were consistent with the driver of the truck touching things while bleeding from a wounded hand.
Ten latent prints were developed from the truck, and each was transferred to a card, where the precise location of the print was noted. When the processing of the truck was completed, thirty-two items had been seized in compliance with the search warrant and bagged for evidence. The rest was photographed and left in the truck.
That thirty-two number was misleading as some of those “items” were actually a sealed bag with multiple items inside, items investigators felt would not cross-contaminate their neighbors. The thirty-two seized items were turned over by Investigators Gordon and Mitchell to Investigator DeWayne M. Piper, who delivered them to the Crime Scene Unit office for further analysis and, eventually, safe storage.
Gordon performed the “further analysis” on the Taurus .357 himself. The revolver and the six cartridges were processed for latent prints, using high-intensity light and the state-of-the-art Reflected Ultraviolet Imaging System (RUVIS). The gun and cartridges were placed inside a cyanoacrylate-fuming chamber, exposed to the special light, and yielded two prints.
Police ran a quick check on the gun and found that it had been purchased by Juanita Turner on February 22, 1999, from a pawnshop in North Myrtle Beach. The woman was identified as the victim’s daughter-in-law, wife of son Roger. The murder weapon, police learned, was one of four weapons purchased by the thirty-three-year-old Juanita, between 1995 and 1999. The other three were a .38 revolver, a 45mm derringer, and a .22 automatic.
In response to the subpoena requested by Horry County detective Scott Bogart, on April 15, Hilary Ware, of Google’s commercial litigation counsel, sent a list of Stanko’s e-mail activity during the pertinent time period. She included with the list a bill for twenty-five dollars to cover costs. Horry County paid the bill, but, unfortunately, they found the e-mail activity unhelpful.
At three in the afternoon on Monday, April 18, six days after Stephen Stanko’s arrest, Investigator DeWayne Piper called Anne Pitts, lead investigator in Horry County. Piper was concerned about matters of jurisdiction. Stanko had committed his murders in different counties in one state, and had been arrested in a third county in a second state. Pitts said that it was all right for him to turn everything over to Georgetown County, where the Laura Ling murder occurred, and investigators there would determine what belonged to which agencies.
Pitts had a question in return: “When you were searching the truck, did you find a lockbox or any will-related paperwork?” Piper said they had not. Pitts said she would be back in touch to discuss returning the truck to the Turner family, and that those arrangements had not yet been made.
In the meantime, Jim Gordon compared the prints found on the gun, and another print found on a phone card, to record inked prints from Stephen Stanko. He was able to get a positive match (ten-plus matching points) between the phone card print and Stanko’s left index finger. But, unfortunately, Gordon was not able to match any prints from the revolver.
After the arrest, Georgetown and Horry Counties largely worked independently. The Ling murder and the Turner murder were investigated and would eventually be tried separately.
At first, each had been in possession of evidence that best served the other’s investigation; so, with paperwork carefully chronicling the chain of possession, a swap was made. Georgetown County gave Horry County Turner’s checkbook and the other contents of the Mazda, and, in return, received Laura Ling’s Mustang and its contents, which for a few days had been parked and sealed off at a garage known as Squeaky’s Towing.
On Tuesday morning, April 19, Jim Gordon was back on the phone with Anne Pitts, who asked if a motorcycle key had been found in the truck. It had. She asked that it be returned with the vehicle, as the Turner family needed it. No problem.
On Friday, April 22, DeWayne Piper received a phone call from Debbie Gallogly, Henry Turner’s daughter. She said that in her official capacity as executor of her dad’s estate, she wished to reclaim his pickup truck, and would be leaving soon to get it.
Piper called Pitts to verify that Gallogly was the correct person to get the truck. Pitts said she was. A few hours later, Piper officially turned the Mazda and its access key over to Turner’s daughter, along with a copy of the property receipts, itemizing what police were keeping as evidence, and a copy of the executed search warrant.
On May 10, 2005, the U.S. Marshal’s Service gave the $10,000 reward to Dana Putnam. Accepting the reward, Dana said she was going to share the money with Penny Ling, who’d so bravely called 911, despite having her throat slit twice.

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