Read Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle Online

Authors: Michael Benson

Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (7 page)

A day later, when Turner’s body was discovered, the poster was updated. The photo of the Mustang was replaced with one of the Mazda, and the line
Armed and dangerous, Con man
was added.
Detective Troy Allen Large was armed with the McDonald’s receipt they’d found, and he had located an eyewitness who saw the wanted man returning with a bag of McDonald’s. Using the receipt, which was stamped with the time, as well as the date, Detective Large was able to access and seize surveillance video from the store that showed the killer navigating the fast-food restaurant’s drive-through.
THE BLUE MARLIN
Behind the wheel of the black pickup, Stephen Stanko left the cul-de-sac in which Turner had lived and headed west—378 to Interstate 20, into the city of Columbia. He’d had a busy night and could really go for a beer. He began looking for an appropriate place to eat and have a drink or two. He stopped at a bar-restaurant on Lincoln Street, not far from the state capitol or the University of South Carolina campus, a steak house called the Blue Marlin.
It was the kind of place that bragged about the quality of its food:
Blue Marlin produced a cuisine that captured perfectly the strange and perhaps mystical concoctions of the Low Country.
The story went that the menu evolved from the days of the plantation owners, when the owners, up till then fed with bland European-type fare, smelled and were enticed by the spicy aromas coming out of the Low Country. As their peoples possessed kindred spirits, the Blue Marlin also worked some Louisiana Delta into their cuisine, a strong Cajun and Creole influence.
Perfect, Stanko thought. He could eat and sit in at the bar for a couple—shoot the breeze. He had a wallet full of Turner and Ling’s cash and was eager to spread it around a little. He was a big man—and big men made the party happen. Finally he had some noticeable affluence, and he could affect a lifestyle he felt was owed to him, a style long overdue. He changed his shirt before going in. He sat at the bar and drank steadily. Repeatedly he bought a round for the house, and quickly became a popular guy. How could one act less like a killer on the run? Though he was even then the subject of a nationwide manhunt, he did not hide. He was boisterous and social. When
ever
Steve is here, it’s happy hour!
One of the people Stephen Stanko met at the Blue Marlin was Erin Hardwick, from Lexington, South Carolina. He said his name was Steve and bought her and her friends drinks. Round after round. They wondered where he got all the throwing-around money—and someone asked him
“I’m in commercial real-estate development,” Steve responded. “I just closed a deal. We’re building a commercial high-rise building, right here in Columbia.”
He added that he owned, or co-owned, a lucrative smattering of Hooters franchises.
“In South Carolina?” she asked.
“Throughout the Southeast,” he replied.
Everyone noticed that he had an injured hand. When they asked him how he did it, he offered a variety of stories. His first tale was that his car broke down and he punched it in anger. To Hardwick, he said he’d participated in the Cooper River Bridge Run a week before and had taken a spill near the end of the race. Later, he switched again, saying he punched a guy who was hitting on his date.
Observing this activity from a more objective point of view was Jane Turner, no relation to Henry, who was a friend of Erin Hardwick’s. Turner was at the Blue Marlin with her date. She remembered Stanko bragging that he was a real estate agent from New York who was in South Carolina to “close a big deal.” His exaggerations increased as the night progressed. She remembered him doing shots and flashing money. When Turner and her date left, she recalled feeling that leaving Erin in the bar with
that man
might not be the best idea. But Hardwick assured her she’d be fine, and Turner did leave.
Since the Blue Marlin was a steak house more than a saloon, it closed earlier than the taverns of the region. Stanko had been running a tab since a certain point. He asked the bartender what he owed.
“One-eighty,” the youthful bartender Ryan Coleman answered. Coleman remembered Stanko bragging that he was the vice president of some company or another. Whatever, the guy had a wallet full of Benjamins. Stanko gave him three $100 bills and told him to keep the change.
Since everyone was having such a good time, largely on account of Stanko, it was way too early for the party to end. Taking several Blue Marlin customers and the bartender with him, festivities traveled a somewhat meandering path to another local tavern.
Coleman went along with the party, but it wasn’t because he liked the guy. He didn’t. When one of Coleman’s friends implied that Stanko was full of shit, Stanko obnoxiously threw a handful of cash in the air—“Making it rain,” he called it—and turned the air blue with a torrent of profanity. Coleman felt almost compelled to go along. With $120 of Stanko’s money in his pocket, he was on the hook to buy a couple of rounds, at least.
Erin Hardwick stayed with the party till the end, and before they parted, Stanko gave her his e-mail address. Well fortified with alcohol, Stanko got in the pickup and hit the road.
Stanko listened to the car radio as he resumed his flight westward on Interstate 20. A sportscaster talked about the Masters golf tournament under way that weekend in Augusta, Georgia. That is, if weather allowed. The town was hustling and bustling with bored golf enthusiasts. The rain caused play to stop on several occasions. The first round had started on Thursday, but had to be completed on Friday. The second round began on Friday, but most of the players were still out on the course when rain halted play once again. There was plenty of downtime and business was great in Augusta’s drinking establishments. There was talk of more rain, so there was no telling if the tournament, one of the most prestigious on the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) tour, would be completed by Sunday, as scheduled. That meant a
bonus
night of partying for those so inclined. A Monday finish was very possible.
Everyone considered Tiger Woods to be the favorite to win, but he hadn’t gotten off to a great start. The early tee times produced the lowest scores, because those golfers completed their round before the weather became too bad. Tiger had a later tee time and shot his round in the thick of it. After the first round, he was seven strokes behind the leader, a relatively unknown Chris DiMarco.
This was
perfect,
Stanko thought.
The Masters oozed class out of its pores. It was played on the Augusta National Golf Club golf course, a fairytale beautiful setting for golf. The winner received a green jacket—along with a truckload of money, of course. Augusta had undulating greens and water features spanned by arching bridges. There was no rough (long grass), only pine straw. With azaleas and magnolias in bloom, the Masters tournament was, for those attending or watching on TV, a rite of spring.
TV announcers were not allowed to refer to “the crowd.” Too vulgar. Spectators at the Masters formed “the gallery.” They were the most affluent and polite fans in golf, perhaps in all of sports.
The gallery had a code of ethics, just as the golfers did. If a woman left her folding chair next to the green with her purse on her seat, she could be certain both chair and purse would be there when she returned.
For a gathering such as this, the cost of security was surprisingly light. The great bulk of that security was outside, carefully scrutinizing admission. Positively and absolutely no riffraff. Once members of the gallery entered Augusta National, they were secure.
That kind of setup made Stephen Stanko eager. He could drink, meet people, maybe a woman, and plan out his next move. The Augusta locals would be oblivious to a white man with spectacles wearing a golf shirt and khaki pants. Stanko pulled Henry Lee Turner’s Mazda onto the exit ramp for Augusta National and trolled for locations.
SEARCHING
A warrant to search Henry Lee Turner’s home was requested by Investigator Scott Bogart, and granted by a judge, allowing law enforcement to go over the entire house with a fine-tooth comb.
The warrant also allowed the police to search Turner’s small yard and the items in it. Police were particularly eager to search the tan-colored “pop-up” camper parked behind the home, and the red Mustang in the driveway. As it turned out, the search of the camper would bear little fruit. The Mustang was another story....
Things stood just as they had when Roger Turner first noticed, with horror, that his dad’s truck was missing. The only difference was that the entire lot on the cul-de-sac had been sealed off with police tape to prevent curiosity seekers from accidentally contaminating potential evidence.
The search warrant was purposefully open-ended, allowing crime scene specialists to search for and collect just about anything, including biological and trace evidence that might be pertinent to the murder.
Cell phones and computer equipment were subject to seizure—although an additional search warrant would be necessary to search for information stored
within
those phones and computer hardware.
Police were obliged to seize and process any and all “firearms, shell casings, parts of firearms, projectiles, and live bullets” that might be found.
Investigators Bogart and Pitts performed the search. Among the items seized and processed were an Enterprise Car Rental notepad; a green beer bottle; two cigarette butts; assorted papers and books; a glass mug, with flowers painted on it; a six-pack, with two bottles missing, of a beer called Yuengling Lager; a silver camera; credit cards; two nickels; an Old Timer knife; two spent .38-caliber casings; the bloody pillow silencer; a .22-caliber rifle; a twelve-gauge shotgun; sixteen blood swabs, taken from various spots near to where Turner’s body was found; the victim’s electric razor; a lead projectile resembling a bullet (the test shot); and a Dell personal computer.
From the Mustang, police found a briefcase with assorted papers belonging to Stephen Stanko, including the college-ruled notebook in which Stanko had written his “comedy routine.” (During the course of the investigation, several cops would read the so-called comedic material. None laughed.)
There was also a black folder, manila folders, a cup, bag, and receipt from a Bojangles’ fast-food restaurant, a gray vehicle floor mat, and two blood swabs taken from the steering wheel and the gear shift.
The warrant ordered, as they all do, that a complete inventory of items gathered at the scene be made and presented back to the court. That list was compiled by Bogart and Pitts and returned to the court by the middle of the afternoon of April 9.
On Saturday morning, April 9, Laura Ling’s remains were autopsied at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Kim A. Collins, out of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, noted aloud that the deceased had suffered a puncture wound to the throat. She had been severely beaten about the face and strangled.
There was one bruise on Ling’s face that was of particular evidentiary value. It had a well-defined and unusual shape, and appeared to have been made by a ring, which, if located, might help link the killer and his victim.
During the autopsy, Dr. Collins located and described every wound on Ling’s body. It was a lengthy process. The killer had been prolific with his punishment, and there were many wounds to chart.
That same morning, Henry Lee Turner’s remains were autopsied, in the same hospital as Ling’s. Dr. Kim Collins was in attendance for both postmortem procedures.
Before the surgery, X-rays were taken of his upper body. These pictures would prove to be vivid evidence of the lead slugs inside Henry Lee Turner’s chest.
It turned out that under his blue jeans, purple polo shirt, and black athletic shoes, Turner had been wearing what the coroner referred to as “patriotic boxers” and white socks. Full dentures were still in the victim’s mouth, and a bloody white handkerchief was found in one of his pants pockets.
There was an old adage about crime scenes: A killer always takes away part of his victim, and the victim always takes part of his killer. The search for trace and biological evidence linking killer with victim was exhaustive. Fingernail clippings were taken from each hand. The bloodstained bullets were removed.
Dr. Collins believed Turner had been shot first in the chest, then in the back.
Following the autopsy, the victim’s clothes and dentures were bagged as evidence, items to be scrutinized further by county and state forensic scientists. That evidence—plus the bullets, and a gun residue kit—was officially passed from the Medical University of South Carolina to the Horry County Police Department, at 8:40
P.M
. on Saturday. The receiving officer was Detective Neil B. Livingston.
Back in Murrells Inlet, law enforcement was going over Laura Ling’s home carefully, looking for useful information. Police discovered a file cabinet filled with the killer’s paperwork. In the cabinet were his files on serial killers, the product of his hours of real research in the Socastee library. Every file was carefully examined.
In addition to his writings, they found hundreds of clipped magazine and newspaper articles about notorious killers, a scrapbook of deviant violence.
The two largest files were on two killers Stanko obviously found special: Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal.
Sheriff Cribb examined the clippings and read Stanko’s copious notes. Cribb was the first to wonder if what Stanko was really doing in the Socastee library was learning how to
become
a serial killer.
“We found a lot of information about serial killers,” Cribb said. “He just seems real interested in serial killers, and now he’s starting out, heading that way.”

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