Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Cribb worked as a criminal investigator with the Florence County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) and then returned to Georgetown County in the same capacity. He was first elected Georgetown County sheriff in 1992, and had been reelected three times.

  He loved to learn more about being a cop, and had graduated from courses at the Carolina Command College, National Center for Rural Law Enforcement (NCRLE), and the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.

  He was also a joiner of clubs and fraternal societies. He was an Elk and a Mason. Plus, he was a member of the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and was a past president of the South Carolina Sheriffs’ Association (SCSA).

  Within minutes of Penny’s 911 call, an all-points bulletin (APB)was on the air, and Sheriff Cribb was heading a manhunt that would make newspaper headlines across the United States. Stanko was described in the police “be on the lookout” (BOLO) as six-foot-three and 192 pounds, with medium-length dark hair and glasses with silver aviator frames. He might be headed toward North Carolina, the bulletin stated. Sheriff Cribb secured a warrant for Stanko’s arrest, accusing him of murder, criminal sexual misconduct, and car theft.

  CRIME SCENE

  From the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO), the lieutenant in charge of criminal investigations, William Pierce, arrived at the Ling home. He worked in plainclothes, always a neatly tailored suit. With his burly physique, shaved head, and trimmed goatee, he had the aura of a stern, single-minded pursuer of justice.

  Pierce started with the sheriff’s office in August 1990 as a reserve deputy, and became a deputy sheriff assigned to the Uniform Patrol Division two years later. In 1997, he was assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division to cover Waccamaw Neck and Pawleys Island. In 2002, he went to school in Atlanta to become a polygraph operator. After an internship with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, (SLED), Pierce conducted lie detector examinations all across South Carolina.

  Since 2003, when he was promoted to lieutenant, he had investigated crimes in addition to his polygraph duties. But none of his experience could prepare him for the Ling murder scene. It was worse than anything he could have imagined. He knew immediately that they were after a monster. The carnage was something that a civilized human being would be incapable of doing.

  Not knowing for sure that the living witness would survive, Lieutenant Pierce examined the scene as if forensic evidence against the killer would be essential.

  The emergency people had somewhat contaminated the scene in their understandable urgency to treat the seriously wounded Penny, but other than that, the home was as the killer left it.

  Laura’s body was still on the floor between the bed and the wall, her hands were still bound together behind her back with a pair of silk neckties. Near the body was a small lamp, with a glass globe that had been broken during the violence. On the lamp shade were what appeared to be bloodstains. Pierce also found droplets of blood in the hallway, and in the bathroom.

  The entire lamp was bagged as evidence. Swabs were made of each discovered blood droplet. All of the evidence was sent to Senior Agent Bruce S. Gantt Jr., at the SLED crime lab, who would determine to whom the blood belonged and how it probably got there. All in all, swabs were made from blood found in Laura Ling’s bedroom, and the hallway wall, as well as in the bathroom, especially on the medicine cabinet.

  Driving Laura Ling’s red Ford Mustang, her savings in his wallet, Stephen Stanko drove northeast on Route 17, switching to a northwesterly heading in Forestbrook on a major thoroughfare alternately called Black Skimmer Trail, the Edward E. Burroughs Highway, and Route 501. He got off at Singleton Ridge Road, in Conway, South Carolina.

  He pulled into the driveway of Henry Lee Turner, his old buddy from the library, on Kimberly Drive in Conway. Turner lived in a white “single-wide” mobile home on a cul-de-sac in the Coastal Village Mobile Home Park. The mobile home had bluish green shutters and wooden stairs at the side and back doors.

  Stanko had been there several times before, once with Laura when Henry was having computer woes. It was about six-thirty in the morning. Turner was asleep, but he got up to answer the door.

  Stanko said, “My dad just died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Steve,” Turner said.

  “I just—I just need someone to talk to.”

  “Well, come right on in.”

  Turner attempted to console him. Stanko agreed to get them breakfast and borrowed Turner’s keys so he could drive Turner’s truck to McDonald’s and purchase food.

  Not everyone on the Coastal Village street was asleep. John Marvin Cooper, who lived next door on Kimberly Drive, was up and having his coffee when he heard a car pull into Henry Turner’s driveway. He looked out the window and saw a red Mustang, and a guy with glasses getting out. He didn’t think much of it. He’d seen the man with the glasses visiting Henry before.

  It was sometime between seven forty-five and eight o’clock when the man, who he could now see was wearing a baseball cap and a shirt with some sort of purple logo on the front, exited Turner’s house, got into Turner’s 1996 black Mazda pickup, and left. Cooper thought that was odd. Cooper left for work at eight-fifteen; as he did, he waved at Turner. He wasn’t curious enough to ask why the bespectacled visitor was driving Turner’s truck. Didn’t seem like any of his business.

  It would turn out to be important that while Stephen Stanko was out getting breakfast, Turner called his son Roger on the phone. Turner told his son that Stanko was upset about his father’s death and was going to be staying with him for a while.

  Minutes after Cooper left for work, Stanko returned in Turner’s truck, carrying a bag of McDonald’s.

  After eating, and while Turner was in the bathroom shaving in front of the medicine cabinet’s mirror, Stanko pulled out a gun and, using a pillow as a silencer, shot Turner dead, once each in the chest and back.

  The pillow had kept the shots quiet, so Stanko went about his next task deliberately, thoroughly. He searched Turner’s home for things that might have value to him on his trek toward freedom, or his trek toward oblivion. Whatever it turned out to be, there’d be a trail of death.

  Stanko stole another gun and some more money. Now armed, and even more financially flush, he left Laura Ling’s car in the cul-de-sac outside Turner’s house and drove away in Turner’s 1996 Mazda B2300 two-wheel-drive extended-cab pickup truck. To make the truck easy to identify, it had a Shriners tag on the front and two Shriners decals on the back.

  At nine-thirty Friday morning, Stephen Stanko called the Socastee library and talked to John Gaumer, Laura Ling’s boss. He identified himself. He was, after all, in that library all the time and was known there.

  “Laura’s probably not going to make it into work today. She’s not feeling very well this morning,” Stanko said.

  “What are her symptoms?” Gaumer asked.

  “Copious vomit,” Stanko said. “We’re thinking it’s something she ate.”

  Gaumer said he was sorry to hear that and hoped she felt better. Stanko thanked him and hung up.

  FIRST RESPONDERS

  At nine o’clock Friday night, Henry Lee Turner’s neighbor John Marvin Cooper finished his shift and came home. He and his family did their normal thing. He did notice that the red Mustang was still in Turner’s driveway, and the truck was gone.

  “I just assumed he (Turner) was out,” Cooper later said.

  The Coopers went to bed at about eleven-thirty, but didn’t have a restful night.

  At 11:05 P.M., Myrtle Beach police officer Robert Kelly Todd Jr. was home on Temperance Drive and had just started watching the news when there was an urgent pounding on his door. Todd answered it, and standing there was a nervous and upset Roger Turner.

  Turner said that he’d been watching the news, too, and they flashed a “Fugitive Alert” for Stephen Stanko. On TV, they said the guy had already killed two people. (Either the newscast incorrectly reported that Penny Ling had died or Roger misheard.) Roger s
aid that was the same guy who was staying with his dad.

  To further amp up Turner’s anxiety, his dad was supposed to have come to a cookout earlier that evening and he never showed up. He’d tried to call his father’s landline and his cell, but no answer, and both answering machines were full.

  Turner said he didn’t know what to do and asked Todd for help. Todd said he would call the Horry County police to see what he could find out, and after that, they’d drive over to Henry Turner’s home to see what was up.

  Turner told Todd where his dad lived, and Todd suggested they meet up at the McDonald’s near there and then go to the house together. Roger Turner said okay and left, heading for McDonald’s.

  Todd placed the call. At first, he tried to talk to guys from the Horry County police with whom he’d worked. Frustratingly, none of his friends were on duty, so he asked to be put in touch with the road supervisor, who turned out to be Sergeant Jimmy Edwards.

  Todd explained that he was a Myrtle Beach cop and asked the dispatcher to have Edwards give him a call. Edwards called back, and Todd told him about Roger Turner’s worries. Todd said he would do a drive-by to see if it looked like anyone was home. Todd drove to the McDonald’s, picked up the waiting Roger Turner, and cruised slowly past Henry Lee Turner’s home.

  “Look in the driveway. There’s the Mustang Stanko stole,” Turner said.

  Todd turned his car around and parked so that they could see if someone was leaving the house. He called Sergeant Edwards and said he believed he’d found the stolen Mustang.

  “Can you read the plates?” Edwards asked.

  “Yes,” Todd replied, and read off the numbers.

  Edwards quickly verified that this was indeed Laura Ling’s automobile. The verification was made at 12:25 A.M., Saturday, April 9. “I’ll be right there,” Edwards said, and soon joined Todd and Turner outside.

  They approached the house and looked behind it. A look of horror crossed Roger Turner’s face. “My father’s pickup truck is gone,” he said.

  Edwards told Todd to get the man’s son out of the area, so Todd drove Turner back to the McDonald’s. There they were joined by a lieutenant. The three sat in the restaurant until word came.

  The first responder to the interior crime scene was Officer Thomas McMillan, of the Horry County Police Department’s (HCPD’s) Special Emergency Response Team (SERT).

  All McMillan knew as he stood outside the mobile home was that Turner’s son had called in, saying his dad was missing, that he’d missed a family meal, and something was wrong. That, plus the stolen car out front, was enough to give him a solid notion of what he would find inside.

  Through Roger Turner, the anxious son, keys were located. McMillan entered the mobile home from the left side door. He called out and got an eerie silence in return. The officer could feel the heaviness to the silence—the utter stillness that so often surrounded death.

  He began his search at the Kimberly Drive end. Standing with his back to the street, he was in a narrow hallway, with a closet to his right and a bed on his left.

  McMillan moved to the left, along a wall. In the plasterboard wall, there was what appeared to be a bullet hole. There was no telling how old it was, but still it was a further harbinger of the dreadful. He stepped lightly past the foot of the bed to get to the doorway that led to the rest of the home.

  In front of him now was the living room, which comprised about half of the total square footage. To his left was a bathroom. It was clearly a bachelor pad, more disheveled than filthy, with stacks of things covering just about every surface space.

  There was a pool table, and even that was being used as surface space for piled-up papers and magazines. There was a couch, along the right-hand wall, and a chair with a pair of side tables.

  At the far end of the living room, he looked to his left into a tiny kitchen. There was an empty bottle of beer here. A full six-pack there, a couple of cigarettes in an ashtray. There’d been a little party going on.

  McMillan looked to his right, and there was a doorway leading to the bathroom/bedroom suite that made up the far end of the mobile home.

  The door was closed. The SERT officer knocked hard and called out one last time, using his command voice. No response. McMillan stepped back and kicked the surprisingly flimsy bedroom door open and right off its hinges.

  With a bang, the door fell flat—damn near striking the body lying on the floor.

  McMillan stepped through the doorway at the far end of the living room when he saw the body, which he presumed to be that of Henry Lee Turner. It lay just beyond the fallen door. The body’s head, facedown, was pointed toward the Kimberly Drive end of the home, and the feet were in the doorway to the victim’s private bathroom.

  The victim was wearing a purple polo shirt, blue jeans, and black athletic shoes. Looking past the body, McMillan saw Turner’s bed, and, beside it, his personal computer on a small table. Behind the investigator was Turner’s dresser, with a large mirror mounted on top of it.

  McMillan looked in every space in the home. That meant he had to step over the body and into a small bathroom, where blood droplets were visible to the naked eye. There was no one hiding.

  The SERT officer advised that the home was clear, and there was one apparently deceased victim inside. It was 3:33 A.M. Only then did he concentrate his attention on the body, which was facedown, bullet hole in the back. McMillan was now joined by EMT officer Walter Gable.

  McMillan also discovered a pillow, with gun residue on one side and blood on the other. Placing the pillow between the body and the muzzle, the killer had used it to serve as a makeshift silencer. It must have worked, because none of the neighbors—some of whom were only a matter of feet away—had heard the shots.

  The victim’s pants pockets had been pulled inside out. There was an electric razor, still plugged in, lying on the floor near the body. Photo ID found at the scene proved the body to be that of Henry Lee Turner, as suspected, born on April 16, 1930. He’d been a little more than a week shy of turning seventy-five.

  The cards were of plastic and laminated paper. They included Turner’s driver’s license, which said he was five-six, 185. Also there were Turner’s five Visa cards, his AAA club card, Social Security card, uniformed services ID, a concealed-weapons permit, a card establishing him as a VIP customer at Food Lion, and his VA and Medicare cards. Lastly, a business card for a local lawyer who specialized in motorcycle accidents.

  Judging from the extra bullet hole found in the wall, it appeared the killer had fired a test shot, perhaps to see if his pillow/silencer was effective. Turner was in his private bathroom. The killer fired the test shot from as far from Turner as he could get without going outside. If the pillow idea didn’t work, the killer could say, Oops, I was playing with your gun and it went off. Sorry about the hole in your wall. I’ll pay to have that fixed.

  But the pillow did work and the test shot was adequately silenced. Turner was shaving when his killer entered the back suite of rooms, with gun drawn, and fired.

  Crime scene specialists arrived on the scene and began processing it for evidence. The hole in the wall was probed and, after some digging, yielded a .38 Special bullet.

  In the back bedroom where the body was found an officer wearing gloves went through Turner’s dresser. In one drawer was found two spent .38 cartridge cases.

  The killer had picked up his ejected shells and had “hidden” them in a dresser drawer. Why bother? Didn’t the killer know how thoroughly the scene of a homicide was searched? Didn’t he care?

  At 4:34 A.M., Sergeant Jeff Gause arrived and observed the interior of the mobile home in detail. Gause took many photos of each space within the structure, and he later used these to draw a schematic of the space, like a simple pencil layout of the house, showing not just the location of each room, but each piece of furniture as well.

  By that time, the crime lab people were busy. There were eleven blood swabs taken from various locations near Turner’s
body—in the bathroom on the cabinet door, tub, air vent, and floor, and three locations on Turner’s bedroom floor. These would be taken to the lab and subjected to DNA testing.

  Five minutes after Gause, HCPD detective Anne Pitts arrived. She “caught” this one and became the Turner murder’s lead investigator.

  Dr. Dan Bellamy, the deputy coroner, arrived and pronounced Turner dead. The body was lifted and it was discovered that he had a bullet hole in his chest as well.

  There were no exit wounds.

  He was shot once in the chest, one in the back. The order of the shots would remain a point of contention, even among the experts.

  Dr. Bellamy took the body’s temperature and estimated the time of death as approximately nine o’clock on the morning of April 8. That done, the body was taken out and delivered to the morgue to await autopsy.

  Within hours of Penny Ling’s 911 call, long before they knew of Turner’s murder, police officers from neighboring Horry County Street Crimes Unit #2 were at headquarters for a special briefing. They were informed of the Ling crimes in Georgetown County. There was a connection with a Horry County library, so their job was to interview the county’s library employees to see if anyone had seen or heard from Stephen Stanko. Two officers were sent to Conway, and another pair to handle Murrells Inlet, Garden City, Surfside Beach, and Myrtle Beach. Their efforts were cut short that night, however, when a Myrtle Beach cop called and said he was with Turner’s son, and he thought that the red Mustang they were looking for was parked out in front of Turner’s house. So Street Crimes Unit #2 regrouped at a McDonald’s on Singleton Ridge Road and Route 544, just south of Turner’s home.

  After the SERT team discovered Turner’s body, Unit #2 was assigned to evacuate neighbors of the crime scene, until it could be secured.