Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  In 1985, the death sentence was back, now with a separate trial to follow the defendant’s conviction, using the same jury after a brief cooling-off period.

  The toxicology report on Laura Ling was not released by SLED until more than a year after Laura Ling’s murder. According to tests performed by forensic toxicologist Tim W. Grambow, there was no alcohol, barbiturates, or opiate painkillers in Laura Ling’s system. She did, however, test positive for a “potentially toxic” level of amphetamines. Prone to weight fluctuation, Laura was frequently dieting, and perhaps she was using stimulants to “burn fat.”

  Two months later, Grambow released the findings for Penny Ling that revealed she had no intoxicating substances in her at the time of Stephen Stanko’s attack.

  STANKO SPEAKS

  Sitting in jail, waiting for his trial to begin, Stephen Stanko was interviewed by Troy Roberts, of CBS News. He affected remorse, his voice wavering as he pitched the notion that he never wanted to hurt anybody. He had a split personality. There were two of him: good and evil. Jekyll-Hyde on a wonder ride. It wasn’t fair to punish the good half for what the bad half did. He couldn’t hurt anyone on purpose. It wasn’t in his makeup, in his moral code. The last thing he remembered he’d been arguing with Laura Ling and she slapped at him, knocking his cigarette out of his hand and in between his glasses and his face, burning him. He felt a swelling anger and then . . . nothing. He couldn’t remember anything after that. The next thing he knew he was in the shower and he had blood on him. He put a towel on and went into the big bedroom, where he felt for a pulse on both women, and didn’t find one on either. So he packed and left and contemplated suicide.

  Although he claimed to have no memory of being violent, he did recall conning people on a regular basis, ever since he was a teenager and found himself in community college rather than the Air Force Academy. He felt like he was in a race, racing to become successful. Since he wasn’t the fastest, he had to cheat to have any chance of winning. Once he started cheating, he couldn’t stop. He wanted everybody to know that, no matter how his trial turned out, he had to believe that the gray matter inside his head was of value. Scientists could study him, do test after test on him, and maybe learn something about this thing that was going on inside him, this switch in him that sometimes was flicked and turned him into someone else. Maybe they’d find something that would help other guys down the road who might be suffering with the same malady. Maybe even help find a cure.

  Of course, science could make use of his brain whether he was dead or alive, and he wanted to live. At first, not so much, but now yes. He’d been of two minds—no pun intended—when he heard he had a brain defect. It was good news, because it explained so many things about his past behavior and why he’d done bad things. On the other hand, it wasn’t curable. He was always going to be a guy with a brain defect. It was a downer if you looked at it that way. But now, he knew; he knew why he destroyed the things he loved: Laura, with whom he shared an unconditional love, a woman he still thought about every day, and Henry, who had been a friend and, yes, even a “quasi father figure” to him. Man, Henry was “good people.” Stanko thought and thought and tried to figure out the trigger. It was conflict, that much he was sure of. The only time it had ever happened was when he was confronted with violence. Someone would throw a set of keys at him or slap his face, burn him with a cigarette, and boom, something in his brain, the chemistry in his brain, just changed.

  Stanko thought back to his years with Elizabeth McLendon. Same thing. He kept screwing up, running sloppy con games, big on ambition, short on endgame. He wanted to be forthright about his flimflam past. He did a lot of stuff without a license. He recalled the lies he used to keep his marks off his butt: He was a paralegal. He was a corporate attorney. Check’s in the mail. FedEx lost it. Lies on top of lies. No check ever arrived. He remembered that stuff clearly. But not the violence. He wished he could remember the violent things that had happened, but he couldn’t. He’d asked himself, there was so much conflict and violence in prison. How come he hadn’t killed anybody when he was behind bars? He eventually came to the conclusion that it was because of witnesses. Every time he got into a fight—and by his count there had been thirty-nine of them—there had been too many people around.

  That Mr. Hyde part of his brain was reluctant to emerge under such circumstances.

  Informed of Stanko’s statements, Solicitor Greg Hembree was concise in his assessment: “Stephen Stanko is a remarkable liar,” Hembree opined.

  Hembree went on to describe Stanko as a man incapable of remorse, a “cold-blooded killer.”

  A review of Stanko’s disciplinary records from his first stint in prison indicated that he hadn’t gotten into thirty-nine fights during those eight and a half years. He hadn’t gotten into any prison fights. Zero. Some might say this was because he was never confronted by women, little girls, or old men—that he was frightened of getting into a violent altercation with a strong young man. A fellow could get hurt that way. Hembree couldn’t help but conclude that Dr. Jekyll was a tad reluctant as well.

  PART III

  FIRST TRIAL

  The bailiff said: “Call the case of The State of South Carolina versus Stephen C. Stanko. All rise. Circuit Court Judge, the Honorable Deadra L. Jefferson presiding. The court is now in session.”

  The judge entered and sat, the courtroom sitting with her. She was a forty-one-year-old African-American female, and a local product through and through. Known in her youth as “Dee Dee” Jefferson, she grew up on Simons Street, attended Charleston public schools, and earned her B.A. in political science and English in 1985 from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She earned her J.D. at the South Carolina School of Law in Columbia. After a stint as a clerk for a judge, and some time in private practice, she was elected by the South Carolina General Assembly to the position of resident family court judge in 1996. She became a circuit judge in 2001 and had served in that position since. She prided herself in her impartiality, and believed in following the law—balanced with common sense. She personally saw herself as a judge who relied on “a great level of discernment in seeing that there is something more to a case than my eye can see. People are not just throwaways. You can’t send everyone to prison. There is just not enough room.” Despite her self-opinion, she was seen by her colleagues as a “tough judge” when it came to sentencing. Of the 112 jurists in South Carolina who sat on the state’s circuit, appeals, and supreme courts, Jefferson was one of the youngest.

  The defendant was brought in last for security reasons. He’d been transported from the detention center to the courthouse in a police prisoner transport vehicle, which was basically a cage on wheels. His hands were cuffed in front of him and he wore a thick leather belt with an electrical device that could instantly drop him with a lightning-bolt shock if he tried anything funny.

  As a spectator entered the courtroom from the back, the defense was on the left and the prosecution on the right, closest to the jury, which would sit in a box along the right-hand wall. One thing that made this courtroom a little different was that the stenographer—a female, with long red hair—sat in her own box directly in front of the witness stand, where she could hear the testimony good and loud.

  The bailiff read the charges: one, murder; two, assault; three, criminal sexual conduct; four, kidnapping; five, battery with intent to kill; and six, armed robbery.

  During the first days of the trial, Stephen Stanko was without a jacket or tie. He wore a crisp white dress shirt, buttoned all the way to the top, brown suit pants, and freshly polished brown dress shoes. Later, he would be allowed to wear a jacket and tie.

  During preliminary hearings, Judge Jefferson determined that Stanko was mentally competent to stand trial, but that an insanity defense would be allowed.

  Now, at the start of August 2006, she called for voir dire. Four hundred prospective jurors had been summoned, a far greater number than normal because of the case’s notoriety.<
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  During voir dire, William Diggs attempted to question a potential juror as to her views on the insanity defense. Greg Hembree immediately objected. Judge Jefferson sustained the objection and ruled that Stanko’s defense team could ask potential jurors whether they could consider affirmative defenses “and list them all,” but they would not be allowed to ask if they would consider the specific affirmative defense of insanity. After a lengthy sidebar, Diggs informed the court that he was “abandoning” asking potential jurors questions specifically regarding the insanity defense.

  Following several days of voir dire, twelve jurors and two alternates were in place.

  Because of the numerous media outlets covering the trial, including 48 Hours, the jury was sequestered during the trial—isolated from other people, newspapers, and television news.

  The trial’s setting looked straight out of a movie, a beautiful small-town Southern courthouse—the one with the fresh white paint, thick pillars, balustrade, and six-foot-thick walls. The courtroom had unadorned walls, also painted white.

  With the exception of Stephen Stanko himself, the principals were typecast for their roles. As was often the case, the solicitor, Greg Hembree, was a good-looking guy, neatly kempt and impeccably dressed. Sitting next to him during the trial would be his equally well-groomed assistant solicitors Fran Humphries and Bo Bryan. In the meantime, across the aisle on the right side of the courtroom, defense attorney William Diggs had a long gray ponytail and a thick mustache. His second chair was filled by Gerald Kelly, who would have to power through the trial on crutches, with a cast on one leg.

  Stanko’s wrists were handcuffed as he entered and left the courtroom, but they were free when he sat at the defense table with his lawyers. Of course, there would be no time when he wasn’t under the watchful eye of Georgetown County deputies.

  The defendant wasn’t the only one closely observed. Security was tight across the board. Prosecution witnesses who had yet to testify were kept in a room together, and were not allowed to watch the proceedings, not even on a TV monitor. That was because no one wanted witnesses to be influenced by previous testimony.

  Kelly Crolley, who wasn’t scheduled to testify until the penalty phase, befriended Laura Ling’s daughter, whose horrors were unimaginable.

  Penny was impressive, unbelievably solid, Crolley observed. She seemed like a good kid, who really had it together—in spite of everything that had happened to her. As the young victim waited for her turn to testify, she worked on origami.

  Also waiting was Henry Lee Turner’s girlfriend, Cecilia, and Charles “Chuck” Petrella, the young paramedic from the Murrells Inlet Rescue Squad who treated Penny at the crime scene and gave her a teddy bear the next day. Now, in the courthouse, the paramedic and the teenager hugged, the first time they’d been together since the day after the attack. Penny had the teddy bear with her—she showed him brightly—and she promised she would have it with her when she took the witness stand.

  All of the witnesses were nervous, but there was a lot of laughter. The room had a small-town feel. Two witnesses, present for unrelated testimony, had once been married to each other.

  Also Dana Putnam was there, the woman who’d loaned her couch to the killer before calling the cops.

  Liz McLendon was there, now remarried and known as Liz Buckner. She was married in 2001 to a man who, understandably enough, did not care for his wife dwelling on the distant past and that really bad boyfriend she’d had. “I’m a victim of your circumstance,” Liz’s husband liked to say, which always made her laugh. Liz thought being a witness in a murder case was “just awful.” Listening to the details of what happened to Laura Ling and her daughter was especially difficult to Liz because, as Liz later remembered, “how closely it was related to what happened to me.” When she listened to everyone’s story, she put herself in Laura Ling’s place, which was a very stressful thing to do. She lost control of her emotions a couple of times. She met Penny Ling and they had long talks. Liz felt empathetic toward the teen victim, felt herself climbing aboard an emotional roller coaster, nonstop undulation until the trial was over.

  “I kept putting myself and my son in that situation, and I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh my, that could have been us,’” said Liz. Liz knew she shouldn’t but couldn’t help it: She felt guilt. Could she have taken steps to prevent Stephen Stanko from being released early on his kidnapping conviction? She wondered how things might have been different if Stanko had been forced to serve his entire ten-year stretch instead of being released a year and a half early. Would Laura Ling still be alive? Would her daughter be free of the emotional and physical scars Stanko left? “I felt I was carrying the guilt for everyone,” Liz recalled.

  When the jury—twelve, plus two alternates—was in place, Judge Jefferson sat at the bench and addressed the jury. She explained that this was the case of The People of South Carolina v. Stephen Stanko. She ran down the charges against the defendant, defining each charge as she went. She explained that their job was a very important one because of the seriousness of the charges against the defendant.

  “A person who is convicted of or pleads guilty to murder must be punished by death, or by imprisonment for life,” she said. It was the first death penalty case in Georgetown County in almost ten years.

  She gave the jury a brief course in how trials worked. Her job was to determine how the law was to be applied, and that everyone understood those applications. It was the jury’s job to determine what the facts were and to apply the law to those facts. They were a team. Their responsibilities were perfectly complementary. They were to base their decisions solely on the evidence—which consisted of the witnesses’ answers, not the lawyers’ questions—as well as any physical items that might be introduced by either side. They were not to come to any conclusion regarding the defendant’s guilt and innocence until they had heard all of the evidence. They were not to discuss the case with anyone, even fellow jurors, until the trial was over and it was time for them to deliberate. The defendant had a right not to testify on his own behalf—and should that happen, the jury was not to hold the decision against him. Sometimes they would be asked to leave the courtroom, and proceedings would continue without them. Despite this, they would miss no allowable evidence. First they would hear opening statements, then the prosecution’s case, the defense case, and closing arguments. Because this was a case with a defense of mental illness, there were four possible outcomes they could choose from: guilty, guilty but mentally ill, not guilty by reason of insanity, and not guilty. She thanked the jury for their service, and warned them that the trial might take a couple of weeks, so they should do their best to concentrate on the evidence just as hard on the last day of the trial as the first.

  “Okay, opening statements. Mr. Solicitor, you may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Gregory Hembree said, buttoning his jacket as he rose to his feet. He promised to show the jury that Stephen Stanko’s violent outburst during the spring of 2005 was not a onetime thing but part of a continuing pattern. They would learn that Stanko was a guy who did very bad things, but he didn’t feel all that bad about it afterward. The defense was going to claim that he was mentally ill, but there was no evidence to suggest that. Just because he engaged in criminal behavior, that didn’t make him crazy. Heck, if that was the case, you’d never be able to prosecute anyone for anything. He’d seen mentally ill and Stanko wasn’t it. Stanko didn’t do anything bizarre. He didn’t kill because a voice from his washing machine was ordering him to do so. He was a grifter who became violent when he was cornered. Simple as that.

  During his opening remarks, Stanko’s defense attorney Bill Diggs explained that the reason Stanko did the things he did was insanity. He couldn’t help it. He lacked the basic body part, part of his brain, that in other humans prevented people from doing unwise things. Once he had an idea he couldn’t inhibit himself, and the results were tragic in this case. Tragic, yes. His fault, no.

  “A
fter you have heard all of the testimony, I want you to look at the facts of this case. Would a normal person do the things Stephen is accused of doing? A healthy person? Steve looks normal. He looks healthy. Why would a human being do this to someone they love and depend on? How does someone in their right mind do these things?” Diggs said. “I suggest to you they don’t. Stephen Stanko has a brain defect that keeps him from knowing right from wrong. He is not an evil demonpossessed person. He operates as a person who borders on insanity all the time. My client was insane when he murdered Laura Ling.”

  Diggs explained that when he said insane, he didn’t mean psychotic or schizophrenic, but rather psychopathic to the nth extreme. Stanko said that he became so outraged during his April 8 argument with Laura Ling that the last thing he remembered was being burned by the cigarette. After that, nothing. Total amnesia. He must have been in some sort of fugue state.

  Diggs shrugged. Sure, you could take that with a grain of salt. Defendants will say anything to lighten their punishment. But the jury didn’t have to listen to anything Steve Stanko had to say. Diggs was going to present experts who had photographed Stanko’s brain. They were going to see hard evidence based on cutting-edge technology.

  “This will be as close as we can come to showing you what insanity can look like,” Diggs said.

  When opening statements were finished, Judge Jefferson instructed Solicitor Hembree to call his first witness. The prosecution called Lieutenant William Pierce, who testified regarding his initial observations of the crime scene. It was his unfortunate duty to introduce much of the case’s physical evidence, photos of Laura and Penny Ling after the attack. He held up, for the jury to see, the bloodstained gray-and-black tie that had been used to bind Laura Ling’s wrists behind her back.