Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  To Turner’s family: “I hope the hate and anger they have can be cured with the memory of Henry. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t. I am sorry.”

  He showed the jury a leather brace he had been wearing throughout the trial, a brace that could be triggered by remote control to shock him into stupefaction, should he try to escape.

  The judge gave the jury their final directions and then sent them to their deliberation, where once again they efficiently performed their solemn duty. In just longer than an hour, the jury was back.

  Stephen Stanko hung his head as the verdict was read.

  “‘Today, November 19, 2009, we recommend that Stephen C. Stanko be sentenced to death.’”

  Stanko’s head nodded up and down a bit, and then was still.

  JUSTICE DONE

  Outside the courtroom, Henry Lee Turner’s son Roger Turner spoke to reporters. “This has been a long time coming definitely, and so it’s definitely closure for me, even though, you know, I don’t have my father anymore.”

  Had he given any weight at all to the defense team’s insanity case?

  “No, he’s of sound mind. He knows right from wrong. The insanity defense is just the last in a long line of con games he played. It’s so outlandish, that it seems to me completely fabricated.”

  What questions still lingered in his mind?

  “Why Dad? I mean, dadgum, he was seventy-four years old, eight days before his seventy-fifth birthday. I mean, come on, he befriended him!”

  Roger thanked the members of the Ling family who attended the trial. He’d been there for every minute of every day, and he appreciated them “showing up.”

  Was he shocked by Stephen Stanko’s apology?

  “No, I expected it. I’m glad he did it. It doesn’t take back what he did, but I accept it.”

  Where to, from here?

  Roger Turner eloquently replied: “We breathe in and out, and make every day matter.”

  Outside, also doing press, Gregory Hembree thanked Brana Williams for doing such a great job. No, he wasn’t surprised that the jury gave Stanko the thumbs-down. As long as the defendant stuck to the insanity defense, there could be no mercy. Yes, there was still an appellate process to endure. Stephen Stanko was out of appeals for the Laura Ling murder, but he could still appeal for Henry Turner.

  The next stage in Stanko’s legal process, Hembree noted, was the PCR, or post-conviction relief. At that hearing, Stanko would claim his lawyers were ineffective, and that their failure to defend him properly had denied him due process. That hearing would be handled by the South Carolina attorney general. Whatever decision was made at the PCR would then be appealed to the state supreme court, which was the end of the road.

  Answering a hypothetical question, Hembree said it was feasible that Stanko would be executed for Laura Ling before he exhausted the legal process for Henry Lee Turner.

  No, there was no way for him to predict how long the appeals process would last.

  “They are two independent cases,” he said. “They operate independently from one another.”

  “Did you ever have any doubts?”

  “No.”

  “Were you ever worried that the jury would listen to the defense’s frontal-lobe theory?”

  Hembree said he’d seen that kind of defense before, not just in the first Stephen Stanko trial but in other cases as well, and he felt it faulty at its base.

  “It is a misapplication of science,” Hembree said. “The science is valid, the application is invalid. The application is not generally accepted in the medical community.”

  Hembree called the testimony of the doctors Gur, Wu, and Thrasher, etc., a “dog and pony show.” Dr. Thrasher was there because the defense needed a local doctor to confirm what the outsiders were saying. Some of the other doctors popped up testifying in cases around the country, Hembree said, and “their story is always the same.” PET scans were valid and helpful in multiple ways, Hembree said, but he did not believe they could be used to determine if a person was insane.

  Hembree was aware that, had he chosen to, he could have tried to get all of the PET scan evidence declared inadmissible because it wasn’t accepted in the medical community. That might have worked. There had been cases in which that had occurred. Hembree recalled one recent trial in Texas in which a federal judge declared evidence inadmissible because the witnesses’ application of science was unreliable.

  The solicitor chose not to go that route with Stephen Stanko, but he did have an expert lined up—an utmost authority—who would testify that PET scans could not be used in the way the defense was trying to use them. Hembree, however, could tell the jury wasn’t buying it, anyway, so he didn’t bother to refute the testimony about the frontal lobe.

  The best argument for not attacking the evidence was that it didn’t create a big appellate issue. The argument for attacking was that there might be a juror or two who were easily swayed by anything that seemed scientific— but Hembree knew the two juries that convicted Stanko were smarter than that.

  Just because a man doesn’t care about the difference between right and wrong does not mean that he lacks understanding of the distinction. A guy might believe his neighbors were aliens or Nazis and that he was saving the world by shooting them, and that guy might be legally insane.

  But Stephen Stanko wasn’t like that. He might have liked the fact that murder was wrong, but he knew it wasn’t right. Stanko’s flight into Georgia was evidence of that. The fact that he’d later claimed he killed Henry Turner in self-defense was evidence of that.

  Psychiatrists said that he was antisocial. Well, all that meant was that Stanko didn’t like to follow the rules. That not only wasn’t an excuse, but it correctly described almost every criminal out there. Every defendant Hembree prosecuted had some form of antisocial disorder.

  “It is a misleading diagnosis,” Hembree opined. “They’re admitting that he is not insane by South Carolina standards, yet arguing that he wasn’t responsible for his actions, nonetheless—he’s not insane, but he is.” It was a desperate defense, and the Stanko juries rejected that whole line of reasoning out of hand. You could tell by the swiftness of deliberation at both trials.

  The defense was allowed to present their PET scan testimony at both the guilt and penalty phases of both trials, and all four times it didn’t help the defense one iota. Using the PET scans as part of the penalty phase was “really improper,” Hembree said, “but we didn’t care.”

  Again, the juries weren’t buying, anyway, and ignoring it saved a potential appellate problem down the road. Once the jury rejected in the guilt phase the evidence about the frontal lobe, and Stanko’s defense reintroduced the same stuff during the penalty phase, it had no steam left at all.

  What did he mean by “dog and pony show”?

  Some of the defense’s expert witnesses had testified for a fee to almost identical data in other cases. Just a couple of months before the second Stephen Stanko trial, Dr. Joseph Wu testified in a Sarasota, Florida, court that Michael King brutally murdered beautiful twenty-one-year-old Denise Amber Lee because of his brain injury. Wu examined PET scans of King’s brain and found that the frontal lobes weren’t sparking normally, probably because of a sledding accident King had had when he was six. Jury didn’t go for it.

  In civil cases, Dr. Wu had had better luck. In 2008, between Stanko’s trials, Dr. Wu successfully testified that a Michigan bus driver whose bus was struck by a train when he tried to drive around the lowered crossing guards was not liable for damages because PET scans showed that the lights in his frontal lobes had been dimmed—in this case by post-traumatic stress disorder.

  As recently as February 2010, Dr. Ruben Gur testified that a Florida man, Kemar Johnston, should not receive the death penalty for the murders of Alex and Jeffrey Sosa because of malfunctioning frontal lobes.

  Gur also testified in a Texas case that juveniles should never be sentenced to death because their frontal lobes were not yet fully deve
loped, which was why teenagers struggled with impulse control.

  Gregory Hembree was right. There was a pattern.

  Immediately following his second death sentence, Stephen Stanko was moved from the jail in Horry County back to death row at the Lieber Correctional Institution, in the town of Ridgeville, Dorchester County, where he was expected to stay until sometime in 2010, when he would be returned to Horry for his PCR hearing.

  As he was returned to death row, he was asked if he had any requests.

  “I only need one thing,” Stanko said. “A Bible.”

  Maybe the request was for cosmetic purposes. Or, maybe, like so many condemned men before him, he turned to the main source—and sought loopholes.

  “CAN’T KILL HIM TWICE”

  Many South Carolina taxpayers, who picked up the tab for the second trial, thought the whole thing a waste of time. Redundant, they said.

  The man was already sentenced to death. A second death sentence? What the hell did that mean? Some thought that was why the county held the trial over a weekend, when it was least apt to be noticed by the public.

  Some, with clenched jaw, wondered why the animal wasn’t dead yet.

  Yet, some said the trial was necessary. A second death sentence was valuable, like insurance—the very redundancy citizens complained about might stifle future mercy toward the chameleon killer, might guarantee or even speed up his execution.

  On February 17, 2010, Graeme Moore, of News Channel 15 in Grand Strand, Pee Dee, and the Border Belt, reported that the accounting for Stephen Stanko’s second murder trial was complete. The people of South Carolina had shelled out $215,000 to convict an already-condemned man. Most of that was slated to go toward paying for Stephen Stanko’s defense.

  According to Hugh Ryan, at the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, William Diggs and Brana Williams together charged $84,000 as their trial fee, and billed another nine grand for the expert witnesses they hired. The victim’s family was also provided free room and board by the state.

  Melanie Huggins, the Horry County clerk of court, said that her office had spent close to $30,000 on room and board for the jurors, as well as other “routine expenses.”

  The reporter interviewed Brana Williams, and she frankly blamed the solicitor’s office for the hefty price tag. A plea deal would have been a bargain! She said, “Taxpayers could easily have been saved the cost of a second capital-murder trial if they had offered Stanko a life-without-parole opportunity.” Williams complained that the prosecution refused to bargain at all. If Stephen Stanko accepted the lesser punishment, South Carolina would be two hundred grand richer.

  The announced tab didn’t include all of the expenses for the trial, which had been held on a weekend. It didn’t count the overtime that had to be paid the court employees and the cost of operating the courthouse extra hours.

  Gregory Hembree defended the trial. How could you take something as aggravating as a history of violence and turn it into a mitigating factor? What sort of justice would there be if Stephen Stanko’s sentence was lessened from death to life without parole because he’s committed a second murder in another county? Henry Turner’s family deserved every bit as much closure as Laura Ling’s family had gotten—and that necessitated a trial and a conviction.

  “If that’s your father that’s been killed, what’s that worth to you?” Hembree said. “I mean, is it ten thousand dollars that you’re willing to invest in that trial as a taxpayer? Is it fifty? Is it one hundred?”

  EPILOGUE

  Stephen Stanko’s father passed away on November 12, 2010.

  In April 2010, Stephen Stanko responded to the author’s request for an interview with a three-page letter. He said that the author’s letters to him were returned by the SCDC because on death row he wasn’t allowed to receive stamps or self-addressed stamped envelopes. He appreciated the invitation to participate in this book, but was disappointed that the author was not seeking a full-fledged collaborator.

  Stanko requested a copy of the book proposal and table of contents, and stated his expectations that the book would end up a “complete and honest finished work.”

  He informed the author that he remained a busy, busy guy, with five literary projects in various stages of completion. Three of his projects were about death row—two serious, one “comical.” Other topics included sentencing reform and correctional psychology/sociology. There was a novel in the works, too. Since the end of his second murder trial, now three writers had contacted him regarding projects. He hadn’t decided with whom to work, if anyone yet.

  At the bottom of the first page—which was written in near-perfect printing, with minimal syntax or spelling errors, and no repetition—he wondered if the author was aware that he had hypergraphia (overwhelming urge to write, not a disorder but indicative of brain changes associated with epilepsy and mania).

  Regarding this book, Stanko wrote that he would appreciate a fair shake. He understood that his life was an incredible story. He finally asked for money, assuring the author that any funds sent would be used toward the book, meaning the author’s book, and not for his own personal needs. Unless you have such a giving heart that you provide me some funds for that. Adding, Ha ha.

  Stanko opined that laughter was the absence of terror and terror was sadly the absence of laughter. He wrote that the past two years, since the passing of his mother, he had learned humility. These days he had a more humble heart—but added that he still had far to go.

  As of 2011, Liz Buckner would like to have reported that the Stephen Stanko affair was completely behind her, but sadly that was never going to be the case. It would always be there, part of her fabric, who she was. She worked to prevent it from affecting her self-esteem and confidence, even after all these years.

  For the most part, the battle had been a victorious one. She did not wallow in self-pity. At times, he came into her mind, but it was a fleeting moment, maybe caused by something familiar. Songs—like “One Night a Day” by Garth Brooks and “Someone Like You” by Van Morrison—would call up a flash of memory.

  Sometimes a sound or a smell would trigger something, and a memory would momentarily jam her stream of consciousness. She still thought of Stephen every time she passed a Baskin-Robbins ice cream place. Bananas Foster was his favorite flavor.

  When she did think extensively of Stephen Stanko, she did it on her own terms, while she worked daily on her own book about him, based on her personal experiences, a warning to women about the dangers of dating a psycho.

  She realized that some of the damage caused by Stephen Stanko was permanent. He took her life away. She was no longer the trusting person she had been in 1992 when she met him. She was never going to be that person again. She was guarded now, wary of people. She worked, which involved a lot of travel, a lot of being in the spotlight. She was the creative mind behind a marketing consulting business. She traveled and met with new people every day. She shared nothing of her private life with her business acquaintances. She knew lots of people who didn’t even know she had a son. When not working, she preferred solitude. Socially, there were walls up, protecting her against the theoretic strangers out there who would try to take advantage of her the way Stephen had. She didn’t venture out. She was solitary.

  Liz might have given up on her dreams of being an FBI profiler years before, but that did not mean her ambitions toward crime busting were completely stifled. By making public every detail she could recall about Stephen Stanko, she hoped to make her contribution to the great pool of knowledge, and hopefully give the FBI experts in Quantico, Virginia, an assist in figuring out what made killers tick.

  Putting it all down on paper began not long after Stanko attacked her in 1996. She’d experienced anxiety after the attack and had sought psychological help. Her counselor suggested, as therapy, that she keep a journal, and she eventually filled up notebook after notebook. For a long time, she considered her journals private—ideas she was externalizing but nonetheless
keeping private. The unrealistic goal back then was to make Stephen Stanko a part of her past and not a part of her future. Soon she realized there was no getting rid of it—no matter how many journals she filled.

  The notion to try to publish her story developed after the murders, when Liz realized she had to do everything she could to educate women regarding men without consciences. If she could keep one potential victim safe, her labor would be worth it.

  She didn’t know why, but the Charleston area had grown more dangerous for women over the years. She didn’t know where these women-haters were coming from, but it was frightening, because it wasn’t always like that.

  Her own conscience still troubled her sometimes. What if she had written her own book while Stephen was serving his eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence, maybe—just maybe—Laura Ling would have read it and it might have saved her life.

  And not just Laura, but all of the gullible women in the world who love and trust too much, who love and trust bad men—she might have stopped it from happening again and again and again. It was sickening to watch the TV news, to see how many women were being victimized. There was too much of it. Much more than there used to be, although she didn’t know why. It seemed like every day you turned on the news and there were more attacks on women and children.

  During the stretch of 2005 to 2010, when Liz worked most regularly on her book, she threw everything out and started over a couple of times as she refined and learned to better express her message. For a time, she planned on calling the book, Four Years to Life. Sometimes she thought of calling the work, The Man Behind the Monster, because so much of the media attention on Stephen had focused on the monster and she was one of the few who knew both sides of the story.