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Authors: Michael Benson

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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 too 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.

On July 22, forensic technician Patti B. Ruff in the SLED Evidence Processing Department, who had tested items of evidence from the Ling scene for blood and semen, filed her report, which had been reviewed and approved by her supervisor, Lieutenant Emily B. Reinhart. Among the items that tested positive for biological evidence were a candle, a black bra, pajama bottoms, a sleeveless top, a pink suit coat, with a matching shirt, a beige suit coat, a comforter, and a quilt. Items that tested negative included a silk necktie, a pair of white panties, leather belt, bath towel, and one pink and one white bra. She also tested the Goose Creek High School ring and verified that the material in the grooves was dried blood.

Although Stephen Stanko’s two murder trials would eventually take place years apart, the grand jury hearings for the Laura Ling and Henry Lee Turner murders took place on back-to-back days in August 2005. The indictments for the Ling crimes were submitted in Georgetown County by the Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office on August 24. Indictments for the Turner murder were submitted to a Horry County grand jury on August 25.

Late that summer, in September, Joe Harper, a subrogation specialist at the Armed Forces Insurance Exchange (AFIE), wrote a letter to Horry County sheriff Phillip E. Thompson explaining that AFIE insured the victim, and was cutting a check, to go to Henry Lee Turner’s estate, for $4,296.91. The money was to cover the costs of cleaning up and fixing the mobile home after the murder. The check was made out to the executor, daughter Debbie Gallogly. More than three grand of that money went to pay the bill of Crime Scene Services (CSS), of Monroe, North Carolina, cleaners of crime scenes. For that fee, CSS removed blood, body fluids, and fingerprint dust from the walls and floor of Turner’s back bathroom and bedroom. They disinfected the entire home, always a good idea when there has been a death. The bedroom door was repaired. The CSS workers wore protective gear—masks, gloves, and boots—as they removed, transported, and disposed of “five boxes of biohazard.” The bedroom and bathroom carpet and pad were replaced and the walls of those rooms were freshly sheetrocked and painted. Using estate money, Gallogly also repaired the bullet hole at the other end of the mobile home caused by Stephen Stanko’s test shot.

For those in charge of making sense of Stephen Stanko’s actions, the dust had officially settled and it was time to figure out what had just happened.

Who was Stanko?

What made him tick?

Why did he switch from a charming good-natured flimflam man into a homicidal maniac?

Had there been a harbinger? What caused the switch?

Was it organic or inorganic, nature or nurture?

PART II

GOOSE CREEK

Stephen Christopher Stanko was born January 13, 1968, on the island of Cuba, son of William Stanko, a master chief in the U.S. Navy stationed at Guantánamo Bay.

When William was transferred, his family moved with him, and Stephen grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Goose Creek, South Carolina, with two brothers and two sisters. The community was home to the Naval Weapons Station and Strategic Weapons Facility, where his dad worked.

At first, the Stankos lived in the Menriv section of Goose Creek, where the navy’s housing development was located. Later, they upgraded to a ranch-style redbrick home, with a finely manicured lawn, on pretty Kenilworth Road.

Goose Creek, part of the urbanized northern suburbs of Charleston, was a small city with a population just under 30,000; yet its footprint crossed a county line. Part of the city was in Berkeley County, part in Charleston County. It had only officially been a city since 1961, but the area had been unofficially called Goose Creek, because of the area stream with that name, since at least the mid-1700s. Just to the east, on the other side of North Rhett Avenue, was the weapons station, and beyond that, the Francis Marion National Forest.

William ran a tight ship. Everyone obeyed, including their mom, Joan. The atmosphere in the home was sometimes hard for outsiders to deal with. There was a perceived weightiness to the Stanko aura. Hard for some to breathe, hard to relax in the Stanko house.

Stephen had one older brother, William Jr., a younger brother, Jeff, and sisters Peggy and Cynthia. The Stanko siblings coexisted under difficult circumstances in a very cold environment. One of Stephen’s relatives once referred to that abject home as “like suicide.” It was volatile. The siblings, it’s been said, felt trapped, no escape.

According to one friend, Stephen felt that his dad preferred his older brother, Billy. William Jr. had been eight years old when Stephen was born. Stephen was the second brother, and he believed he got short shrift. Yet, Billy was considered a little bit wild by Stanko standards. Rode a motorcycle. Who knows what else?

When Stephen was fifteen years old, Billy died in a house fire, maybe arson, in St. George, a small town near Interstate 95 in Dorchester County. Billy Stanko was twenty-three when he died, and the Stanko home grew even heavier, now heavy with sadness.

Before then, Stephen had been a “golden boy,” the kid who had everything going for him. With the exception of the typical adolescent faux pas, when he tried to grow a mustache before he was ready, his appearance was always impeccable.

He was Stephen “all-American” Stanko, and he appeared luminous back then, born with his own inner light. Teachers’ eyes twinkled when they discussed him.

He was
brilliant.

That boy was going to be something someday. He was even athletic, played football and baseball. Go Gators. The boy could do anything he wanted to do with his life, his coaches bragged.

Despite his active lifestyle, his youth was basically injury free. One time he’d been knocked cold when hit in the forehead by a beer bottle, but that was about it.

And what Stephen wanted was what his father wanted: admission into the Air Force Academy, where he hoped to become an aeronautic engineer, designing and building state-of-the-art military aircraft.

Befitting a boy who seldom lost, Stanko carried a quiet confidence with his perfect posture. But all of that changed after his brother’s death. If Stephen thought he would step into the position of number one son in his father’s eyes after Billy was gone, he was deeply disappointed. Dad turned his back on him, wouldn’t have anything to do with him, like he
blamed
him.

Stephen’s inner light flickered and dimmed.

In 1985, when he was a high-school junior, Stanko took the SAT college admission exam. He scored a 500 in verbal and 620 in math, not spectacular, putting him in about the eighty-fifth percentile. He asked for the results to be sent to four colleges: the Air Force Academy, Clemson, University of South Carolina, and Furman.

Stephen was a senior at Goose Creek High when his already fading self-luminescence extinguished forever. A slender envelope from the Air Force Academy arrived. Inside, a brief note: he had
not
been accepted.

Stephen had been certain that the Air Force Academy was his destiny—so much so that he had turned down scholarships at other schools in anticipation of his acceptance. Then the balloon popped.

About-face. He would later wonder, with bewilderment, how he had gone from the mountaintop to free fall so suddenly. How—if he was supposed to be a genius—could he do such stupid things?

According to Stanko, this was the time in his life when he became “lost,” his moral compass spinning. His life plummeted at a frightening pace. Instead of going to a prestigious institute of learning, he took a few classes at the local community college.

When that didn’t work out, Stanko turned to a life of crime.

By the early 1990s, Stephen Stanko was on probation for multiple charges of grand theft auto.

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