Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Still holding her teddy bear, Penny Ling hugged her family members and then walked over to the prosecution table to give a hug to the solicitor and his assistants.

  Outside the courthouse, Gregory Hembree was asked about the death sentence. He said, “We’ve already won. Stephen Stanko is never going to be a free man. He may victimize someone in the prison system, but he’ll never victimize another free citizen.”

  Penny’s dad, Chris Ling, told one reporter that Penny was his hero. He called Stanko a coward and a bully. That was the reason he was a model prisoner during his previous incarceration. He lacked the nads to stand up to someone his own size.

  Chris Ling applauded the jury for putting aside all of the psychological mumbo jumbo to get to the crux of the matter.

  Another reporter asked Penny if she was bothered by the fact that Stanko never apologized to her for what he had done. She shook her head no, saying she was “beyond an apology.” She couldn’t say she’d ever be able to forgive what Stanko did to her mother, but she did forgive him for what he did to her. She refused to go through her life with hate in her heart, never able to move on.

  TO LET DIE

  On August 15, 2006, the parties met in court without the jury to set up the ground rules for the penalty phase of the trial. William Diggs moved that no testimony regarding the murder of Henry Lee Turner be allowed, that this case was about the Lings alone. Evidence regarding the shooting of the man in Conway would be prejudicial to the jury.

  Argument ensued and Judge Deadra Jefferson said she was going to need time before announcing her decision. She said that previous South Carolina Supreme Court decisions had allowed such evidence because the burden of proof was less strict in the sentencing phase. “Case law seems to offer that the purpose is not to introduce guilt. The supreme court seems to indicate it is relevant to his character,” Judge Jefferson said.

  Among the scheduled prosecution witnesses were relatives of Henry Lee Turner, as well as Horry County police officers who had investigated the Turner murder. And, Gregory Hembree added, he wanted to show the jury photos taken at the Turner crime scene, including those showing the victim facedown on the mobile home’s floor.

  Hembree argued that the jury needed the complete picture: “Stanko knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.”

  Arguing for the defense was Gerald Kelly, who pointed out that since Stephen Stanko had never been convicted of murdering Turner, he was, according to the law, presumed innocent of that crime. Kelly said that it had not even been proven that Turner was murdered, and that allowing the Turner evidence would “virtually guarantee” that his client would be sentenced to death. “If you want to hang him out to dry, then that’s what will happen,” Kelly continued. “No human force can stop it if this is allowed. What kind of foolishness is this? The solicitor is going to stampede the jury into believing Stanko killed Henry Lee Turner. You can’t take the quack out of a duck.”

  Judge Jefferson eventually said she did not want to create a record that might have an effect on a subsequent murder trial in Horry County. The Turner stuff was out. She then called the jury into the courtroom and explained that they had to sit through what amounted to a second trial, with opening statements, testimony by witnesses on either side, and closing arguments. They were to determine if the defendant should be executed or receive life imprisonment without hope of parole. If they chose death, Judge Jefferson noted, “your decision must be a unanimous one.”

  In his opening statement before the jury, Hembree said, “Justice is the very last thing that the defendant wants—and justice in this case is to sentence Stephen Stanko to death.”

  Kathleen “Kelly” Crolley then testified that she worked in Surfside at her family’s furniture store, and Stephen Stanko came into the store in 2004 and looked at desks for his wife. He said they were building a house on Pawleys Island. As he was browsing, he received several calls on his cell phone.

  “Could you hear his side of the conversation?” asked Hembree.

  “I could. I gathered from what I heard that he was collecting money for some sort of charity.”

  “Did you ask him about his charity work?”

  “Yes. When he got off the phone, I asked him about it. He told me he had a young niece with cancer, and she was hospitalized at the Medical University of South Carolina.”

  Crolley told Stanko that she had a soft spot in her heart for that hospital. Her baby was born prematurely there, and everyone did a great job.

  He told her that he’d taken a year off from his job as a lawyer to start the “Children’s Cancer Research Foundation.” He didn’t buy any desks, but the store ended up giving him a hundred dollars and she gave him another twenty-five.

  “What, if anything, did you subsequently learn about the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation?”

  “I learned that he made it up, that it never existed,” Crolley testified.

  Regarding her role at the trial, Crolley later remembered, “My little part seemed so insignificant.” She was there to tell the jury what a snake Stanko was, capable of exploiting children’s cancer.

  For the penalty phase, the defense once again brought in its panel of legal experts, including the doctors James Thrasher and Thomas Sachy, who repeated their theories.

  The defense then offered numerous blasts from Stephen Stanko’s past in their attempt to demonstrate that his life was worth saving. It was like an episode of This Is Your Life. Stanko appeared downright entertained as “blasts from his past” took turns testifying.

  The nostalgia program began with three Goose Creek High School employees. On crutches, with a cast on his leg, Gerald Kelly did the questioning. First witness was John H. Fulmer, who had also been the defendant’s assistant principal and football coach.

  Fulmer described Stanko as a good high-school student who didn’t have a behavior problem. To demonstrate how normal Stanko was, photos from his senior yearbook were shown to the jury.

  There was Stanko with the homecoming queen. There he was with the Odyssey of the Mind, the school’s science club.

  William Diggs showed the jury a newspaper clipping about that club. They’d taken first place in a local competition. (Stanko smiled with nostalgia when viewing those photos.)

  Academics? Stanko scored 1120 on the SAT, belonged to several academic clubs—and had no disciplinary history. Fulmer called the defendant “beneficial to the school” and “a model student.”

  Referring to the yearbook, which the defense attorney still held, the man said, “I can go through that yearbook and pick four or five people that I thought would have been trouble—but not him. He was a well-dressed, good-looking guy, even in high school. He was never in trouble. He was not a loner but a popular guy. There were no oddities. He didn’t fit the profile of a student headed for trouble.”

  Stanko was a member of the Beta Club, which required its members to be honest, just, cooperative, responsible, industrious, humble, and charitable.

  “Beta Club people don’t usually go to jail,” the principal added. “If Stephen had stayed the way he was in high school, he would have been a successful college student with a good career. He was in the top twenty-five in his class.”

  Stanko’s old chemistry and physics teacher, Clarice Wenz, verified for the defense that she was a onetime Teacher of the Year winner, who’d also received a Sigma Xi award for teaching chemistry. Regarding Stanko, Wenz said, to the best of her recollection, she met him when he was a junior. Maybe he was a sophomore, but she was pretty sure he was a junior. She’d been his teacher, yes, but she really got to know Stephen better when she sponsored the Odyssey of the Mind team, the one that won the local contest and went to the state competition. He’d been over to her house. He was typical of your brighter-than-average and better-looking students. There was no indication that he would ever do anything negative.

  Kelly handed Wenz a note and asked her if she recognized it. She did. It was a note written by Stephen and s
ome of his friends back in the day, expressing appreciation for her efforts.

  “Could you read the note aloud, please?”

  “Certainly.”

  Gregory Hembree could have easily stopped this process, objecting to the fact that, through the note, the defendant was being given the opportunity to testify without the risk of cross-examination. But the solicitor held his tongue. He didn’t think This Is Your Life was hurting his case. It didn’t matter what Stanko was. It was what he’d become: a monster who needed to be put down.

  After reading the note, Wenz continued praising Stanko. It wasn’t just that he was smart. He was a hard worker as well. He hardly ever goofed off, had tremendous potential, and could have gone into any field he wished. She said Stanko was “a student who not only stood out for his achievements at school, but also in the way he interacted with me and his peers.” He got along, too. He had many friends, and he worked well with others, both when it came to schoolwork and extracurriculars.

  “Did you ever meet Stephen’s parents?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Never?” Kelly sounded incredulous.

  “No.”

  Hembree had one question in cross-examination: “Was there any indication that the defendant was mistreated at home?”

  “Oh no,” Wenz said. “He had good manners and was polite. He seemed well brought up.”

  The third Goose Creek High School witness was attendance clerk Wanda Brooks, who had lived right across the street from the Stankos on Kenilworth Road. Stephen visited her house as a kid so often that he felt like he was one of her own. She said he was very friendly and outgoing.

  “How would you describe the house that Stephen grew up in?” Kelly asked.

  “Very unfriendly. I talked to his mother sometimes outside.”

  “What was it like inside the house?”

  “I didn’t go inside the house very much,” Brooks said.

  In an apparent attempt to blame Georgetown County for the murder and mayhem at the Ling residence, Pam Harrelson was called to the witness stand and described herself as a former employee of the South Carolina Department of Parole, Probation and Pardon Services. She testified that when the defendant was released from prison in 2004, he was supposed to report monthly to the agency’s office in Conway. Stephen Stanko complied until December 2004, missed his January 2005 meeting, and did not report after that.

  “Ms. Harrelson, did your office receive any complaints about Stanko’s behavior following his 2004 release from prison?” Gerald Kelly asked.

  “Yes. There were several calls.”

  “And what was done in response to those complaints?”

  “I believe that, according to our policy, those complaints were referred to the police.”

  “Do you recall the name of the person making those complaints?”

  “Yes, her name was Connie Price.”

  Connie Price took the stand and testified that she was from Socastee, South Carolina, and had been a frequenter of the Socastee library, where Laura Ling worked, in 2005.

  As recently as two days before Laura Ling’s murder, Price had been making phone calls complaining about Stephen Stanko’s “bizarre behavior.”

  Although it was true that she never filed an actual incident report until after the murder, Price had spoken in person, two days before Laura Ling’s death, to a Myrtle Beach police officer about scams she thought Stanko was running. She could tell the officer was not impressed by her story because he took very few notes. She told the cop that Stanko was posing as an attorney, and had conned her out of money by agreeing to, for a fee, help her with a medical malpractice suit. “Plus, he was acting erratically,” Price concluded.

  “What did you mean by ‘erratically’?” Gerald Kelly inquired.

  “He told me wild lies. Like he said that he was bringing in big guns to help me with my lawsuit. He said he was on his way to meet (former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate) John Edwards, and he was waiting on a package for me. He said (60 Minutes correspondent) Mike Wallace was going to help.”

  Price paid him close to $1,000 in legal fees before realizing he was “the biggest con artist in the world.” She told the jury that “the straw that broke the camel’s back” came when Stanko told her he needed to “get inside my house because he needed to check my wiring and make sure it was up to code.”

  “What did you think about that?” Kelly asked.

  “I thought he was crazy.”

  She said that she called many agencies—Horry County police, Horry County Solicitor’s Office, SLED, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals—complaining about Stanko, but none of them seemed able to focus on her.

  “I was getting the runaround,” she concluded.

  “Did anyone ever get back to your complaint?”

  “No, sir.”

  Price’s testimony, William Diggs felt, helped his case in a couple of ways, not just that the authorities had multiple reasons to get Stephen Stanko off the streets before he began his violent spree, but also Stanko had demonstrated mental difficulties during the buildup to that spree.

  Reinforcing Connie Price’s charges that no one was focusing on the defendant’s growing menace was the testimony of former assistant solicitor Karen Sauls. After a rundown of who she was—poli-sci degree from North Carolina State University in 1997, law degree from Saint Louis University in 1992, now assistant district solicitor—she testified that assistant solicitors were not intended to be investigators. If Connie Price had a complaint about Stephen Stanko, the police were the people she needed to contact.

  U.S. Marshal Thedus Mayo testified that she had contacted Pam Harrelson at the parole board regarding complaints about Stanko. Harrelson told her that warrants were typically issued only when there were serious breaches of parole conditions, such as when parolees absconded. Stanko’s failure to report, Harrelson told Mayo, was merely a “technical violation.”

  During the conference to determine the appropriate jury charges for the penalty phase, Judge Jefferson informed both sides that she intended to charge the jury on two statutory mitigating factors. William Diggs did not request a charge on any additional mitigating factors—in particular a consideration of “the age or mentality of the defendant at the time of the crime”—and told Judge Jefferson that he had no objection to the jury charges.

  Diggs argued before the jury one last time, trying to save his client’s life. He repeated his earlier statement that institutionalization often had a positive effect on psychopaths. The last time Stephen Stanko was in prison, he had written a book. He could be a leader in prison. “Stephen could be a good inmate. With his intelligence, he could help other inmates.”

  On Friday, August 18, 2006, after another two hours of deliberation, the jury gave word that they were through. Judge Deadra Jefferson called them into the courtroom and they took their positions in the jury box.

  “Has the jury reached a decision?” Judge Jefferson asked.

  “We have, Your Honor,” the forewoman said.

  “The defendant will, please, stand for the publication of the jury’s verdict,” the judge instructed.

  Stanko rose to his feet.

  The forewoman said, “The State of South Carolina, Georgetown County, versus Stephen Christopher Stanko, recommendation of sentence, death penalty.”

  Judge Jefferson took the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Stephen Stanko to death. The judge also sentenced Stanko to 110 years in prison on the other charges, including criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping, and armed robbery.

  Stanko was deadpan.

  William Diggs asked the court to set aside the verdict and allow Stanko to be tested further for his condition, adding, “It’s beyond a doubt that Mr. Stanko has this particular brain defect. It would be fundamentally unfair to go ahead with his execution.”

  Judge Jefferson explained that the prosecution in this case, as well as the court, agreed from the start of proceedings
that Stanko’s mental state was a question of fact for the jury. There had been plenty of time for tests, tests, and more tests.

  “It really came down to who the jury believed,” the judge added. “Did they believe the state’s experts, or the defense’s experts? There is no need for any more testing of Mr. Stanko.” The defense case had demonstrated that Stanko already had been examined by a slew of physicians and scientists. “I can’t imagine anyone else who would test him,” the judge concluded.

  Stephen Stanko’s execution was originally scheduled for October 17, 2007, but that date would be set aside because of Stanko’s appeals process, and the fact that he still faced trial for the murder of Henry Lee Turner.

  Gregory Hembree, glowing with his victory, fielded questions from reporters, saying he felt the death penalty was the appropriate sentence in this case. “I wouldn’t have sought it if we didn’t believe in it,” the solicitor said.

  Asked how long he felt Stanko had to live, he said it would be for quite a while. Appeals could take years. “Typically, it lasts between six and eight years,” he added.

  No, he didn’t think the jury ever took Stanko’s insanity defense seriously. “He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t just some loony tune who didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Also “doing press,” although far more emotionally, was Chris Ling, cheeks wet with tears, telling reporters that he had learned three important lessons during the trial: “Number one, the process works. We’ll be putting down a man who victimized old men and little girls. Number two, our probation system needs a total overhaul. It needs to be totally reviewed. And three, I’ve got the greatest daughter in the world, and I love her. Thank you,” Ling said.

  “What was the hardest part for you?” asked Michael Smith, of the Horry Independent.

  “I think that came on the first day of the trial. To see him uncuffed and wearing street clothes. It was hard for me to not get closer and closer to him,” Ling replied.