Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  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 truc
k 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.

  LAB RESULTS

  On June 24, 2005, Senior Agent Bruce S. Gantt Jr. released his horrifying findings regarding some of the blood evidence discovered at the Ling scene.

  Gantt concluded that he had thoroughly examined the small lamp with the broken glass globe found in the vicinity of Laura Ling’s body. The brown stains on the lamp were indeed blood, and that the blood was most heavily concentrated at the lamp’s base. Some were consistent in “size, shape, and distribution” with “medium-velocity impact stains,” commonly associated with a blunt-force–trauma incident. Others were comprised of “expirated blood,” such as that blown out of the nose, mouth, or wound with blood pressure supplying the propelling force.

  Gantt had also examined a piece of luggage that had been found in the Mazda in Augusta. It was a tan canvas suitcase with a fabric-style exterior. The bag, Gantt determined, had spattered bloodstains on the inside, but not on the outside. The best theory here was that the suitcase had been in the vicinity of Laura Ling as Stanko beat her, with the lid open, so the blood spatter only struck the inside. Later, Stanko had brought the suitcase with him as he fled, first placing it in the red Mustang, and then moving it into the Mazda, thus providing a perfect chain of evidence linking the Ling crime scene with the scene of the arrest hundreds of miles away.

  Three days later, Anne Pitts, in Horry County, received a report from the SLED trace-evidence department signed by Senior Agent Jennifer M. Stoner, who had also performed tests on a gunshot residue (GSR) kit used on Henry Turner’s remains. The kit indicated that small quantities of metals were detected on the palm and back of the victim’s left hand.

  Although gunshot residue was most often found on the hands of the shooter—where primer, powder, and other projectile material was deposited by the discharge of a firearm, it could be found on the victim, near the point of entry for point-blank shots, or sometimes on the hands of victims who assumed a defensive posture as the shots were fired.

  The evidence in this case had been removed from Henry Lee Turner’s body, using the adhesive disc-type sampling collection method, and later examined through a scanning electron microscope.

  After the tests were completed, Senior Agent Stoner concluded that the metal “may be associated with gunshot residue.”

  May be associated? Not that Pitts had to worry about proving Turner was shot, or that Stanko had shot him, but the picture of Henry Lee Turner holding his hands out to protect himself, perhaps to beg for mercy, Pitts thought, was very vivid and might be just the thing to creep inside the mind of an uncertain juror.

  On July 18, 2005, Anne Pitts received the SLED report from the firearms department signed by SLED senior agent F. Dan DeFreese. This report said nine items had been tested, the first four all found in Henry Turner’s pickup truck at the scene of Stanko’s arrest: the Taurus .357 revolver, the unfired .38 Special cartridge bearing the headstamp RP, five unfired cartridges (which as a group counted as one item) of the same caliber stamped Winchester, and the fifty-round ammunition box.

  Items five and six were the bullets removed from Henry Turner’s body, seven was a bullet investigator pulled from the wall of Turner’s mobile home, and the last two were the spent .38 Special RP cartridges found in the victim’s dresser drawer.

  After receiving the items from the Richmond County crime lab, SLED’s first order of business was to determine if the gun was in working order.

  The revolver was test-fired and found to be functional. The bullets fired during the test were recovered and compared microscopically with the two bullets found in the corpse and one dug from Turner’s wall.

  The wall bullet was to
o mangled for a useful comparison, and the official report was that the bullets found in Turner’s chest could have been fired by the revolver found in Turner’s truck, or by another similar firearm.

  Pitts found the wishy-washy wording disappointing. She would have preferred that ballistics conclusively matched the bullets to the gun to the exclusion of all other guns.

  Not that Pitts worried about the strength of the case, but she hated anything that a defense attorney might be able to latch onto.

  The SLED report continued that debris consistent with blood or body tissue was found on the chest bullets. Not a shocker there. Also on those bullets was fibrous debris resembling synthetic textile fibers. This material was separated, air-dried, and rebagged to be transferred to the appropriate lab. The firearms people didn’t do blood and fibers, and vice versa. The wall bullet also had a foreign substance, but nothing of any curiosity, just the plaster and drywall type material one would expect.

  The report concluded by saying the test-fired bullets had been submitted for entry into the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS). If the bullets matched any connected with other crimes, Horry County police would be notified.

  But there were no matches. As far as the cops could tell, Henry Lee Turner was the only person ever shot with that revolver.

  The next day, July 19, the SLED DNA analysis team delivered their report to Detective Pitts. The blood found on various surfaces in Turner’s bathroom and on the floor of his bedroom had undergone short tandem repeat (STR) DNA analysis and, disappointingly, all were DNA matches with the blood of the victim. It would have been great if the killer had bled at the murder scene, too. Sometimes they did. Victims fought back.