Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Crews was slightly nauseated by the way Stanko had fooled him years before into believing he was basically a white-collar criminal, but who was a monster, instead.

  Now that the truth was out, Crews wanted the details. The author didn’t just sit and watch. When court was adjourned, he was social and did some informal research.

  “I got to meet his victims and victims’ family,” Crews recalled, “and realized how bad something like this hits them. It is stuff I teach every day in my class, but a reminder for me as well.” Sometimes he sought them out and sometimes they approached him.

  One afternoon during the trial, Liz Buckner approached Crews in the parking lot outside the courtroom. He remembered that she chewed him out once on live TV for profiting off a tragedy, and his first thought was that he was going to receive a second dressing-down. Instead, Liz impressed upon him the sickening details of Stanko’s attack on her, and details of the buildup to the attack that were obviously similar to Stanko’s buildup to murder.

  “It was a direct parallel,” Crews recalled. “He had trouble with anger every time he was confronted. This is classic sociopathic stuff. He builds this box, and I think he really believes half of the lies he tells. Like any con man, he is convincing because he has himself convinced. If he says he’s an attorney, he believes it.”

  His murders were cons gone bad. He killed his marks. It wasn’t that he killed the people he loved most, it was that he killed the people he used most. Crews thought how lucky Liz was to be alive. She survived because of the killer’s blunder, not because of his mercy.

  Crews never caught Stanko in a lie, and Stanko never made a promise to Crews that he didn’t keep. Of course, Crews was conned by Stanko in that he didn’t reveal or give any indication of his own capacity for violence. But, on the other hand, Crews’s interaction was different from others in that the book was real. It wasn’t like the used-car lot he claimed to own, the charities he claimed to collect for, or the legal services he claimed to provide. Stanko really did write a book, and it really had literary and scholarly merit. In that sense, who could expect Gordon Crews to see through to the real Stephen Stanko?

  According to Dr. Michael Braswell, there was probably a solid reason why Stanko went from flimflam to legit when incarcerated, and back again when freed. One of the surefire ways to treat a person with an antisocial personality disorder was to give their lives a lot of structure, structure such as is offered by institutionalization. If provided with enough structure, antisocials were unable to manipulate the situation, which, in turn, allowed them to partake in nonmanipulative activities. Now looking back, Crews wished he had spent more time asking Stanko about topics other than his difficulties in prison, or assimilating into society following his release. Crews wished he’d spent time finding out what made Stanko tick. He’d worked with the man for years and knew nothing about his childhood. The only family member Stanko ever referred to was his mother. He mentioned no siblings. Crews had the definite impression that Stanko was an only child. He did allude to his dad once—who, he said, was dead—but it was a subject that for reasons unexplained angered him.

  “His mother was his only supporter,” Crews remembered. “She was top dog, behind him four hundred percent. I’ve got letters from her yelling at me because I wasn’t moving fast enough.” Stanko was impatient when it came to the collaboration. Crews’s part of the writing, or editing—or whatever it was—was never happening fast enough for him, and he enlisted his mother’s help to quicken the pace. When Crews and Stanko had problems with the editor at Greenwood Press, because they hadn’t produced a manuscript that was suitable for high-school students, Stanko’s tone became desperate. “Please, you’ve got to publish this. This is my life,” Stanko would say.

  “He didn’t understand the system,” Crews recalled, “didn’t know that publishers will end up doing whatever they want to do, which was pretty much what happened.”

  As a rule, the hallways were cleared and secured before the defendant was led into or out of the courtroom. There was one time, however, Crews observed, when there was a mix-up.

  “The timing was screwed up or something, and everyone ended up out in the hallway together,” Crews said. Stanko and Penny Ling’s father for an awkward moment found themselves standing only a few feet apart.

  The situation didn’t last long. As soon as the guards saw their error, they got Stanko out of there, and didn’t bring him back until the hallway was cleared.

  With the exception of that one error, the courthouse had its act together. They had a system designed to keep parties from opposite sides of criminal trials from encountering one another. They were kept in separate rooms—defense here, prosecution there.

  Which door a witness used to enter the courtroom depended on which side he or she was on. The victim’s family, for example, was always escorted in through a side door, which assured that they would never be in close proximity to the defendant, his supporters, or his counsel.

  During the trial, as all spectators do, Crews spent a lot of time observing the jury. It seemed to him that the panel felt no sympathy for the defendant—or defense counsel, for that matter.

  They looked at the solicitor when he was speaking as they would a friend or trusted neighbor who was explaining something to them. But they looked at the defense counsel with suspicion. This man William Diggs wasn’t from their part of the world. He used too many words.

  The prosecution knew how to make the jury cry. The defense counsel could only, at best, confuse them. At worst, the jurors clenched their teeth and balled their fists. Sometimes they had no idea what the defense was talking about and they didn’t like it.

  If it wasn’t a done deal, it was the next thing closest to it.

  “I remember turning to my wife and saying, ‘Look at that jury,’” Gordon Crews recalled. They hated Stephen Stanko’s guts.

  Not relying solely on eyewitness testimony, the prosecution presented damning scientific evidence as well.

  Testifying for the people was SLED agent Robin Taylor, the division’s lieutenant supervisor of DNA casework.

  “You are a forensic scientist?” asked Gregory Hembree.

  “Yes,” Taylor replied.

  Taylor said that her lab had received a wide array of biological evidence from the Ling crime scene, via the Georgetown County investigators. Among that evidence were blood swabs taken from the Ling crime scene, from the blade and handle of the pocketknife taken from the defendant at the time of his arrest, and the gear shift and steering wheel of the red Mustang. The swabs from the car had proven to be, unfortunately for the prosecution, insufficient for reliable interpretation.

  “I also processed Penny Ling’s Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit, head and pubic hair—pulled to include the follicle—from both victims, pubic combined, and vaginal, oral, and rectal swabs, plus fingernail scrapings and miscellaneous body fluid.” Taylor tested the droplets of blood found in the hallway and bathroom of the Ling home after Penny’s rape and Laura’s murder.

  There was a concentration of blood on the medicine cabinet, perhaps indicating that the killer, bleeding from the hand, was rummaging around in search of first-aid materials.

  “Did you identify the blood found on the knife blade pulled from the defendant at the time of his arrest?”

  “Yes, I did. That blood’s DNA profile was a match for the control blood sample from the victim Laura Ling.”

  “There is no doubt?”

  “The chances of an unrelated individual having a DNA profile identical to Laura Ling’s is one to twenty quadrillion,” Taylor replied.

  “Was semen among the evidence found at the crime scene?” Hembree asked.

  “Yes.”

  “On which swabs was the semen found?”

  “It was found on the vaginal and outer-anal swabs.”

  “Was DNA profiling able to identify that semen?”

  “Yes, the semen belonged to Stephen Stanko,” Taylor stated.

&nbs
p; During cross-examination, William Diggs asked about the fingernail scrapings that had been taken from both Penny and Laura Ling.

  “Were you able to positively identify Stephen Stanko’s DNA in those scrapings?” Diggs asked.

  “No,” Taylor said.

  On redirect, Hembree asked if the scrapings had yielded only the DNA of the victims.

  “No, there was a second contributor to the DNA,” Robin Taylor said.

  “Could Stephen Stanko be ruled out as that contributor?”

  “No, he could not.”

  Dr. Pamela Crawford, a forensic psychologist, testified that she had given the defendant a lengthy interview following his arrest. She’d examined his medical history and interviewed friends and family members regarding his behavior over time, and she had come to the conclusion that he had a “personality disorder with narcissistic and antisocial features.” He had a “grandiose sense of self-importance,” lacked empathy, and took advantage of others. “For his achievements and talents, he requires excessive admiration.”

  “Did you find in this defendant any mental disease?”

  “No. He has a personality disorder,” Dr. Crawford answered.

  “Did you find any mental defect?”

  “No.”

  A chilling look into Stephen Stanko’s cunning came with the testimony of John Gaumer, Laura’s boss at the library. He said he’d received a phone call at 9:30 A.M., only a few hours after the murder.

  The call was from Stanko, who said he was calling on Laura Ling’s behalf. She probably wouldn’t be making it to work that day, Stanko calmly said, as she was still recovering from a bout of food poisoning.

  The prosecution concluded its case by replaying a portion of Penny Ling’s 911 tape. The last thing the jury would hear before the defense took their turn would be the horrible sound of the shattered little girl, her life horribly and irrevocably altered by the monster who sat before them.

  DEFENSE CASE

  One thing Stephen Stanko and his defense team agreed upon was the importance of science. “Science is the one thing on my side,” the defendant said before his trial. He was mentally ill, and he could prove it. It sounded crazy, but he had the pictures to prove it.

  To demonstrate Stanko’s insanity for the jury, William Diggs would bring in a team of medical experts to explain to the jury that Stanko wasn’t responsible for his bad acts.

  First up was Dr. Bernard Albiniak, whose job it was to make understandable and credible the science—the latest technology—upon which the defense’s theory precariously perched.

  Dr. Albiniak explained that he earned his Ph.D. in 1976 from the University of South Carolina. He was a forensic psychologist, and a professor at Coastal Carolina University, teaching courses in substance abuse, statistics, research methods, and health psychology. During his career, he had been a forensic consultant in a variety of criminal proceedings.

  His testimony concerned positron emission tomography (PET) scans of Stanko’s brain taken at the Medical University of South Carolina. He explained what PET stood for, a reference to a nuclear medicine imaging technique that produced a three-dimensional image. The PET camera detected radiation from the emission of positrons. Point was, the resulting image not only showed the physiological makeup of the brain, but also revealed the level of activity in each portion of the brain.

  How were PET scans taken? As was true of other internal examination methods, a preparatory radioactive “tracer” was introduced into the body, usually via direct inoculation into the bloodstream. The PET scan system indirectly emitted gamma rays in pairs that could be captured in an image. The tracer was allowed to remain in the body for a waiting period before the scan was taken. Flat images were captured at minutely varying depths within the target organ, and a computer subsequently assembled those slides into a 3-D image. The scan created a picture that didn’t just illustrate the size and density of a human organ, but also made sort of a map of its functional processes.

  Now that the jurors knew what PET scans were, they needed to be told what the scans of Stanko’s brain meant.

  On Thursday morning, Dr. Thomas Sachy took the stand. He was a young man, as far as experts go, with a thick head of brown hair, prematurely graying a bit at the front and top. He had a gentle voice. He explained, under William Diggs’s questioning, that he was a forensic psychiatrist and founder of the Georgia Pain and Behavioral Medicine center, which specialized in the use of neuropsychiatric imaging techniques and other concepts of behavioral neurology. In other words, he looked at photographs of the brains of people with mental problems, and tried to determine if he could see illnesses, injuries, diseases, or other abnormalities. He moonlighted as a public speaker, giving talks to interested groups in pain management, forensics, or other aspects of neuropsychiatry.

  Dr. Sachy offered the jury a summary of his education and professional career: certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in both general and forensic psychiatry; two Bachelor of Science degrees, in electrical /computer engineering and general studies from the University of Calgary; master’s at Georgia State; medical degree in 1995 at the Medical College of Georgia; licensed to practice two years later.

  “Do you belong to any professional organizations?”

  “Yes. American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, American Neuropsychiatric Association, and American Psychiatric Association.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I am in private practice in Georgia,” Dr. Sachy said. He treated patients of all ages, from children to geriatrics. As a pain specialist, he said, he relieved suffering and discomfort during a medical or surgical procedure, or because of a disease or condition.

  “Dr. Sachy, how would you describe Stephen Stanko’s brain function?”

  “Stephen Stanko’s brain function was highly unusual. There were parts of his brain that were not as active, compared to other parts of his brain.”

  For Dr. Sachy’s testimony, a TV screen was set up so that the jury could see. On it were two colorful PET scans, one of a “normal” brain, one of Stanko’s brain. Dr. Sachy said Stanko’s mental difficulties could be seen.

  This testimony set a precedent in South Carolina—the first time in the state that PET scan evidence had ever been used as part of the defense case in a criminal trial.

  Areas of red indicated high levels of brain function. The normal brain had plenty of red in the frontal lobes. Stanko’s had none, the witness emphasized.

  “We can see particularly right here,” Dr. Sachy said, pointing to the darkness and shadows that were Stanko’s frontal lobes, “he’s less functional as compared to a normal brain.”

  Those lobes were inactive, leaving him with diminished impulse control, he explained. There was also a matter of weight. If you removed Stanko’s brain and weighed it, you’d find his brain weighed less.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because his brain has too much water in it.”

  “You say the defendant’s brain weighs less than the normal brain—but what about its size?”

  “It is smaller. He has a condition known as hypofrontality. He has a decreased function in the medial orbital frontal lobes of his brain.”

  “How small?”

  “His left frontal lobe was in the smallest two to three percent of the population.”

  “Could you explain the significance of that in terms the jury could understand, Doctor?”

  “Sure. It is this frontal area of the brain that makes us essentially human, prevents us from bad behavior, from being impulsive and aggressive. Because of brain damage, he cannot control his impulses when he becomes angry.”

  The doctor pointed at the center of his own forehead. “My brakes are right here.”

  People with damage to the frontal lobe of their brain, Dr. Sachy explained, were prone to fits of anger and violence. Due to brain damage, the “emergency brakes” between impulse and action are missing.

  “Because of Mr. Stanko’s frontal-lobe
damage, he lacks the ability to appreciate the difference between right from wrong, predisposing him to psychopathic behavior.”

  “What, if any, are your conclusions regarding the functionality of Steve’s brain?”

  “I’m one hundred percent sure that his brain is just not working right.”

  “Your diagnosis?”

  “He is a psychopath.”

  “Does he choose to be that way?”

  “No. Neither Mr. Stanko nor the other psychopaths I’ve examined have ever made a conscious decision to be psychopathic. It is a malady that has been forced upon them by bad luck, or God, or genes, or what have you.”

  “He was insane?”

  “He met the moral and legal definition of insanity. It’s my opinion that Mr. Stanko had diminished capacity twenty-four/seven, but at the time of this act, he was beyond that. He was insane.”

  “Yet, he is an intelligent man?”

  “Oh yes. His IQ is one forty-three.”

  “That classifies him as a genius?”

  “Yes, but it is entirely possible for a person to be intellectually smart, yet still exhibit mental problems beyond human control.”

  “How long would you estimate Mr. Stanko has suffered from damaged frontal lobes?”

  The doctor said that Stanko’s medical history showed that he’d suffered from brain problems since birth, nearly killing him as an infant. At that time, doctors documented that the defendant had “possible cranial damage.”

  The defendant’s medical records were “crystal clear.” There was “no question” that he was born with “some form of neurological dysfunction.” He’d had a temporary blockage in his windpipe at birth—caused, according to his medical records, by “early vomiting”—and suffered from jaundice. Either could have been the culprit.