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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, Dck. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, This is your
Speaker 5: host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most
Speaker 5: shocking Killers in true crime History and the authors that
Speaker 5: have written about them. First, he bound and beat his girlfriend,
Speaker 5: a three year old librarian. Then he went after her
Speaker 5: teenage daughter, warning her scream and I will kill you both,
Speaker 5: before knocking her unconscious. When the teenager awoke, he proceeded
Speaker 5: to rape her, and in a final horrifying act of depravity,
Speaker 5: he forced the girl to watch as he slit her
Speaker 5: mother's throat. But the killing didn't stop there. Stephen Stenkoe
Speaker 5: was described as a perfect gentleman who seemed so pleasant
Speaker 5: and so normal, But behind Stenko's mild mannered appearance, round
Speaker 5: spectacles and quiet intelligence was a cold blooded ex convict
Speaker 5: who kept a grizzly scrap book on serial killers and
Speaker 5: convinced everyone he was a nice guy until he killed
Speaker 5: and killed again. A well orchestrated manhunt caught up with Stenko,
Speaker 5: who tried to get away with his crimes by pleading insanity,
Speaker 5: but the jury saw through his ruse and the ruthless
Speaker 5: killer was sentenced to death. The book this evening they
Speaker 5: were featured is A Psycho Killer's Vicious Attack Watch Mummy
Speaker 5: Die by veteran journalist and best selling author Michael Benson.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to the program, and thank you to agreeing
Speaker 5: to this interview. Michael Benz. Thanks, thank you, Michael, great
Speaker 5: book once again. Congratulations on doing it again scaring the
Speaker 5: hell out of the public.
Speaker 6: So there we go. And so one of the questions
Speaker 6: I always ask, and I think it's of interest to people,
Speaker 6: how and why did you decide to write a book
Speaker 6: about Steven Stanko and this particularly interesting murder trial and case.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing that I learned about Stanko after
Speaker 4: I found out about about the murders on the Internet,
Speaker 4: was that he had himself written a book while in prison,
Speaker 4: and it was that sort of Jack Henry Abbott angle
Speaker 4: that first attracted me to the case. I wasn't into
Speaker 4: it very long though, before I realized that the true
Speaker 4: point of my story had to be the evil that's
Speaker 4: within Stephen Stanko. You know, he's one of those rare
Speaker 4: psychopaths who has the looks in charisma to start new
Speaker 4: relationships and be socially active even as he's running for
Speaker 4: his life. And in that sense, I think he reminds
Speaker 4: a lot of people of Ted Bundy. Watch Mommy Die
Speaker 4: is not just about Stenko's most haineous act, although we
Speaker 4: certainly deal with that at length, but it is also
Speaker 4: a character analysis of a lady's man, a con man,
Speaker 4: a sex criminal, and a murderer who could have had
Speaker 4: it all in the straight world, but who instead lives
Speaker 4: today on South Carolina's death Row.
Speaker 6: Now, yes, what you're saying too is very interesting too,
Speaker 6: because for many books we do get inside the killer
Speaker 6: to a certain degree. But in this particular case, because
Speaker 6: of the research that you've done and this particular killer's character,
Speaker 6: we really do see incredibly the development of a serial killer,
Speaker 6: and the development of this particular serial killer and how
Speaker 6: he became who he became ultimately so very fascinating and
Speaker 6: a little bit.
Speaker 4: He becomes a serial killer in increments.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, it's a real development, real behind the scenes
Speaker 6: on how this could possibly happen, and his motivation and
Speaker 6: his mindset so incredible. Now you start off the book
Speaker 6: with the nine to one to one call from Penny Ling.
Speaker 6: But let's, as we spoke beforehand, let's first describe Stephen Stenko,
Speaker 6: the main character in this book. Tell us about Stephen Stenko,
Speaker 6: what you found out about his early life so we
Speaker 6: can store our definite portrait of this killer.
Speaker 4: And Stanko was born in nineteen sixty eight and he
Speaker 4: was born on the island of Cuba. As a little unusual,
Speaker 4: he was born in Guantanamo Bay. His dad, William Stanko,
Speaker 4: was a master chief in the navy. And Stephen had
Speaker 4: two brothers, two sisters. And you know, before we start
Speaker 4: blaming the household for creating a psycho killer, all of
Speaker 4: his siblings turned out okay. One died in an accident,
Speaker 4: as you'll hear about. But you know, he's the only
Speaker 4: one who came out creepy. When he was little. His
Speaker 4: dad was transferred to the Naval Weapons station in Goose Creek,
Speaker 4: South Carolina, which is a town suburb really of about
Speaker 4: seventeen thousand, just north of Charleston, South Carolina, and that's
Speaker 4: where Stenko grew up. Now, you know, every book I write,
Speaker 4: the research is never one hundred percent fulfilling. And one
Speaker 4: of my frustrations when writing Watch Mommy Die was that
Speaker 4: we still don't know much about the Stanco family chemistry.
Speaker 4: But what we do know isn't good. The Stankos didn't
Speaker 4: talk about it. The only evidence we have is from outsiders,
Speaker 4: people who for whatever reason found themselves inside the Stanko
Speaker 4: home watching the family interact. So it's not the best evidence,
Speaker 4: but it's what we have to go on. According to
Speaker 4: one witness, no one was happy in the Stanko house.
Speaker 4: One witness said it was grim. The dad ran such
Speaker 4: a tight ship, as you might expect from a military dad,
Speaker 4: but it went beyond just militaristic. It was so regimented
Speaker 4: as to suck the joy from life. Now, one witness
Speaker 4: said that the dad seemed to times to be a
Speaker 4: cruel man, and that was that was the word that
Speaker 4: the witness he was cruel. One thing is for sure.
Speaker 4: The rules were stringent and enforced with punishment. Now, I
Speaker 4: can't really blame that on Stanko's problems because up until
Speaker 4: the time he was a teenager, he thrived on it.
Speaker 4: He uh, you know, he loved the disciplined atmosphere. He
Speaker 4: entered high school the guy who had everything going for him.
Speaker 4: He was tall and good looking, and he was good
Speaker 4: at sports, baseball, football, Plus he was smart. His teachers
Speaker 4: got dreamy thinking about him, and you know, I've seen
Speaker 4: this happen, and they knew the boy was going to
Speaker 4: go far and they were going to be able to
Speaker 4: say they knew him when. And Sanko himself was just
Speaker 4: you know, his mister confidence. He just assumed that he
Speaker 4: was one of the best in the briest. He was
Speaker 4: going to attend the Air Force Academy and become a
Speaker 4: fighter pilot, and after that, the sky was the limit.
Speaker 4: He was going to join NASA, become an astronaut, he
Speaker 4: was going to go into politics, become president of the
Speaker 4: United States. As a teenager, the moon literally seemed to
Speaker 4: be within Stenko's reach, and he had the drive to
Speaker 4: do it. His father had seemed to that. You know,
Speaker 4: Dad drove Stephen with ridicule. Stanko's father was never satisfied
Speaker 4: with anything Stephen did. He was never good enough, and
Speaker 4: pleasing his father became all important to Stanko. It was
Speaker 4: like an obsession. He was already as impeccably neat as
Speaker 4: he could get. It had been years since he'd received
Speaker 4: a demerit over his appearance. He would look kempt when
Speaker 4: he got up in the morning, he'd look kempt when
Speaker 4: he got home at night. And when it came to
Speaker 4: school working studies, he worked really, really hard, but he
Speaker 4: could never satisfy his father. Stanko believed that the only
Speaker 4: way to shut his dad up was to become rich
Speaker 4: and famous. Well, then the whole chemistry changed. Tragedy struck
Speaker 4: Stanko's brother, Billy, who was older and had already moved
Speaker 4: out of the parents' house and into a place of
Speaker 4: his own, died in a house fire. Maybe it was
Speaker 4: our sin, nothing they could prove anyway, Steven's bright future
Speaker 4: instantly dimmed. Since there was a pecking order in the
Speaker 4: Stanko family, and Stanko believed that as Billy was older
Speaker 4: and now gone, he Stephen would move up one notch
Speaker 4: in his father's estimation, sort of like a battlefield promotion.
Speaker 4: And that, I think everyone will agree is an extremely
Speaker 4: odd and selfish interpretation of events, and very revealing when
Speaker 4: it comes to how Stenko's mind worked. Even then, anyway,
Speaker 4: Stanko's dad did not give him more respect after Billy died.
Speaker 4: In fact, he acted meaner towards Stephen than he ever
Speaker 4: had before. Stenko complained that it was as if his
Speaker 4: dad thought he was responsible for Billie's death. And to
Speaker 4: be fair to the dad, everyone has the right to
Speaker 4: be cranky when they lose the sun in a fire
Speaker 4: or otherwise, and it's entirely possible that he was meaner
Speaker 4: to everyone in general. But Stephen didn't see it that way,
Speaker 4: couldn't see it that way. It was absolutely selfish in
Speaker 4: every possible way, and he noticed only that his father's
Speaker 4: attitude changed towards him. So Stenko lost the eye of
Speaker 4: the tiger when it came to his brilliant future. The
Speaker 4: death took the wind right out of Stephen's sales, and
Speaker 4: he began to look for easier ways to get by
Speaker 4: in life. Now, instead of schoolwork, he dedicated his intellect
Speaker 4: to working on schemes, convoluted plots to get ahead, convoluted
Speaker 4: plots to get rich. He took the SAT exam didn't
Speaker 4: do that great and was rejected by the Air Force Academy.
Speaker 4: So when high school was over, instead of becoming a
Speaker 4: fighter pilot but an astronaut in president of the United States,
Speaker 4: Stanko took a couple of courses at the community college
Speaker 4: and began to steal cars. So it's quite a plummet.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now by the time he's in his early twenties, she's
Speaker 4: on probation for grand theft Audact. This leads up to
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety two. He's about twenty three or twenty three
Speaker 4: or four years old, and his life takes a turn
Speaker 4: for the better. He gets a job as a sales
Speaker 4: rep for a telecommunications company, and there in the office
Speaker 4: he meets a woman named Elizabeth McLendon who's a single
Speaker 4: mom with a son in grade school. Liz had a
Speaker 4: quality that Stanko found most seductive. She was extremely good looking,
Speaker 4: of course homecoming queen, Plus she was also ambitious. After
Speaker 4: her divorce, she'd returned to school, earned a degree that
Speaker 4: was out there banging heads at a man's world, trying
Speaker 4: to make something out of herself. Liz thought at first
Speaker 4: that Steve and was shifty and something about his eyes.
Speaker 4: She didn't quite trust him, but he wouldn't leave her alone,
Speaker 4: and he eventually wore her down and worked his way
Speaker 4: into her heart, and Stephen and Liz had a lovely romance,
Speaker 4: during which he gave her a detailed autobiography. He was
Speaker 4: only about forty percent true. See that house, I used
Speaker 4: own that house, he'd say, See that boat that used
Speaker 4: to be mine too. I had to sell them because
Speaker 4: some woman down in Georgia ripped me off. That's what
Speaker 4: kind of stuff he would say. And Liz fell into
Speaker 4: his spouth, totally unprepared for I guess we all are,
Speaker 4: which we are tendencies to trust people, especially if they're
Speaker 4: good looking. Right, And by the time she figured out
Speaker 4: how he was a con man emotionally speaking, she was
Speaker 4: in so deep that extracting herself was complicated, you know,
Speaker 4: she later said, I mean, speaking to her today, she's
Speaker 4: filled with wisdom about him. She would say that she
Speaker 4: would boast about everything. Every nook and cranny of his
Speaker 4: psyche was exaggerated. She once told me that if an
Speaker 4: ant crawled across his foot, he would claim it was
Speaker 4: a ladybugger. Yeah, it's nothing. He had the magnifying glass
Speaker 4: on every little thing. So Sanko had the had the
Speaker 4: soul of a con man. You know, he was a
Speaker 4: smart guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, go ahead, So how did how did she manage
Speaker 6: to extract herself from the relationship? What would precipitate, Well.
Speaker 4: We're gonna get to that. I mean, he he spends
Speaker 4: eight and a half years in prison and that pretty
Speaker 4: much breaks up the relationship.
Speaker 6: Sure, so anyway, he was sorry, sorry, I'm sorry for interrupting.
Speaker 6: What was he explain what he was convicted for? Or
Speaker 6: if if we're gonna we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna get to that. I mean, he's it's just where
Speaker 4: we're leading up to that. He was. He was still
Speaker 4: on probation for stealing cars when he starts the relationship
Speaker 4: with Liz, And although he continued to make money through
Speaker 4: illegal means, she didn't know it. You know, his methods
Speaker 4: became more sophisticated. He stopped just physically stealing cars, and
Speaker 4: now he got a job of the use car lot,
Speaker 4: sold cars to people and kept the money. Now he
Speaker 4: was going around to friends and neighbors looking for investment partners,
Speaker 4: people who would go in with him on a used
Speaker 4: car business. He would tell him they could make a
Speaker 4: bundle if they invested now, but it had to be
Speaker 4: now because there was a limited window of opportunity. They
Speaker 4: shake on partners and make excuses as to why the
Speaker 4: investment lacked. Profits have here more complicated lies, creating tangled webs,
Speaker 4: and Stanko's companies were always on the verge of making
Speaker 4: a mint right up until the instant they became valueless.
Speaker 4: Sure so, I mean he was used to an incredible liar.
Speaker 4: He would tell one series of lies to one person,
Speaker 4: including another other set of lives to the next person,
Speaker 4: and he'd remember what he told to who so that
Speaker 4: he wouldn't contradict himself. There are a lot of people
Speaker 4: who can't lie for five minutes without betraying themselves. You know,
Speaker 4: Stanko could go for weeks, but and it was a
Speaker 4: big butt. He didn't know when to stop. He couldn't stop.
Speaker 4: He was a very good liar, but not a perfect one.
Speaker 4: He would eventually lie himself into a corner, and sadly,
Speaker 4: violence would erupt a second that jig was up. He
Speaker 4: felt trapped and he would lash out. When you look
Speaker 4: at the mechanics of a con Stanko was very good
Speaker 4: at some aspects of the technique, but comically poor. At others,
Speaker 4: he could convince anyone of anything, but any con artists
Speaker 4: will tell you that the most important rule is after
Speaker 4: the con is complete and the cash is in your pocket,
Speaker 4: get the hell away from the victim, get away from
Speaker 4: the mark help. Stenko repeatedly screwed up his life because
Speaker 4: once the con was done and the money was in
Speaker 4: his pocket, he was horrified to discover that he was
Speaker 4: working with or living with the people he just conned.
Speaker 4: So and when he did lash out violently the first
Speaker 4: time Liz was his target, it was his own frustration
Speaker 4: over the mess he made of his life. It led
Speaker 4: to the attack that would put him behind bars for
Speaker 4: almost a decade. Yeah, Living Stephen's relationship had become tumultuous
Speaker 4: by that time, even caught committing fraud and Liz paid
Speaker 4: for his lawyer. They broke up temporarily and stopped being
Speaker 4: romantic permanently when stink out during one fight, put his
Speaker 4: hands on her throat, and then after a period of separations,
Speaker 4: she let him come back, and for that she would
Speaker 4: never be able to forget herself. It was just throw
Speaker 4: up to February next.
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Speaker 2: I lost the terms conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 4: Maybe six now and Liz. Liz is sick of the
Speaker 4: Stanko drama. You know, she's onto him, the criminal activity,
Speaker 4: the lying, she's paying bills. So he stood too close
Speaker 4: to her. She pushed him away. He lost his temper.
Speaker 4: There was a tussle that broke up, and Pete appeared
Speaker 4: to have returned. She went to sleep, but in the
Speaker 4: morning the fight resumed. Liz was in bed crying when
Speaker 4: she heard Stanko rummaging around in a closet and she
Speaker 4: could smell chemicals. She knew how anal he was, and
Speaker 4: she felt, all good, Maybe he's going to clean something well,
Speaker 4: that wasn't his plan. Stanko took chemicals from various cleaning liquids,
Speaker 4: soaked a cloth with them, and came into Liz's room.
Speaker 4: He jumped on her and held the cloth over her
Speaker 4: mouth and nose. She fought as hard as she could,
Speaker 4: and there was no doubt in her mind that he
Speaker 4: was trying to kill her, no matter how already tried. However,
Speaker 4: he couldn't get her to pass out. You could see
Speaker 4: the wise. She could see the wildness of his eyes.
Speaker 4: During the attack, she managed to bite him on the
Speaker 4: left hand. She heard him say it always works in
Speaker 4: the movies, why isn't it working now? And he was
Speaker 4: talking about the chemicals over the mouth trick, And that
Speaker 4: was how she knew that he'd been planning this attack.
Speaker 4: He'd been thinking about it ahead of time. So she
Speaker 4: told him that if he just let her go, she
Speaker 4: wouldn't call the police. He said he didn't believe her.
Speaker 4: Unable to kill her by asphyxiation, Stanko tied her up
Speaker 4: good and tight and made her sit on the toilet
Speaker 4: as he showered. He told her the bad guy in
Speaker 4: his back he is in control. Because he took a
Speaker 4: shower he was humming and singing, acting as if everything
Speaker 4: was perfectly normal, and that might have been the thing
Speaker 4: that scared Liz the most. I mean she still shivers
Speaker 4: when she talks about it. He could just flick a
Speaker 4: switch and his old personality was back. So yeah, apparently
Speaker 4: the bad I left at that point because a kinder,
Speaker 4: gentler Stenko came out of the shower. He packed a bag,
Speaker 4: released Liz's bondage, and left, thinking probably that this was
Speaker 4: all going to blow over. She was going to forgive him,
Speaker 4: but she called a neighbor and then she called the
Speaker 4: police and Stenko was quickly apprehended, arrested, tried, and sentenced
Speaker 4: to a decade in prison for assault with intent to
Speaker 4: kill and kidnapping. The incident with Liz becomes particularly chilling
Speaker 4: when we see how similar it is to the tragic
Speaker 4: events of two thousand and five. Clearly, Stenko saw the
Speaker 4: attack on Liz as an incomplete murder, something he was
Speaker 4: going to have to make up for when he was
Speaker 4: next to Freeman.
Speaker 6: So tell her audience about his incarceration.
Speaker 4: YEA, Well, he's in prison from nineteen ninety six to
Speaker 4: two thousand and four. He serves eighty five percent of
Speaker 4: his of his sentence fifteen percent off for good behavior.
Speaker 4: He was never a discipline problem. And it's what Stenko
Speaker 4: did well in prison that made him extraordinary. And like
Speaker 4: I said, when I first heard about the case, this
Speaker 4: was the thing that I thought was most interesting. While
Speaker 4: in prison, he wrote part of a published book called
Speaker 4: Living in Prison, a history of the correctional system with
Speaker 4: an insider his view. The book was Stanko's idea. Almost
Speaker 4: as soon as he went into prison, he began taking
Speaker 4: notes and writing a manuscript about his prison experiences, starting
Speaker 4: with how he was processed into the system and how
Speaker 4: he learned, sometimes the hard way, how to get by
Speaker 4: in different situations. And just as a professional writer might,
Speaker 4: he wrote an outline for the entire work, perfected a
Speaker 4: few sample chapters, and wrote a query letter that he
Speaker 4: sent to publishers. And the query was so good that
Speaker 4: Stenko received an immediate positive response from a small New
Speaker 4: England press, and he found an editor who was interested,
Speaker 4: and she thought it might well. They were doing a
Speaker 4: series of books on different different social situations for high
Speaker 4: school kids, and she thought that a prisoner writing about
Speaker 4: being in prison would would be perfect for that series.
Speaker 4: So she said that the manuscript would carry more way
Speaker 4: to be teamed up with a college professor or there's
Speaker 4: some other kind of scholarly type. But he was on
Speaker 4: his own. She wasn't going to recommend anybody, so said
Speaker 4: he started sending query letters to college professors, and sure
Speaker 4: enough they were interested as well. There were some bumps
Speaker 4: in the road. The first manuscript was supposed to be
Speaker 4: geared for, you know, high school students, but was written
Speaker 4: in a very adult manner. They forgot about the it
Speaker 4: was part of the series, and they wrote the book
Speaker 4: they wanted to write, which never works in publishing. Rule
Speaker 4: number one. Family wants to be a professional writer, you know,
Speaker 4: write what they want you to write, now what you
Speaker 4: want to write, because they're not going to change their mind.
Speaker 4: That's right. It's just a tipt And I think that
Speaker 4: most people who have been a professional writer for any
Speaker 4: amount of time and run into that very problem. Sure,
Speaker 4: I know the specifications to hit them as perfectly as
Speaker 4: you possibly can. So anyway, that writer quits and then
Speaker 4: he's brought back, and there's a shake up in the lineup,
Speaker 4: and some people are on board for a while, and
Speaker 4: then they come back and they just write the forward.
Speaker 4: Eventually the book finally comes out, and by the time
Speaker 4: it does, the co authors are Wayne Gillespie and Gordon A. Cruz.
Speaker 4: Cruise was an assistant dean at Roger Williams University when
Speaker 4: the book was written. He's now a tenured professor at
Speaker 4: Marshall University, and Gillespie was a criminal justice professor at
Speaker 4: East Tennessee State University. So they fit the bill find
Speaker 4: and by the time the book comes out, even though
Speaker 4: that Stanko was the driving force behind it, he's only
Speaker 4: written the last three chapters of the book comes out
Speaker 4: as a hardcover library bound. I have a copy. I
Speaker 4: understand that when Watchbommy Died came out, cells of Stanko's
Speaker 4: living in prison also went up, So I guess I
Speaker 4: earned him some royalties. Actually I know and like Gordon Cruz,
Speaker 4: so he gets the royalties. That's fine. I don't think
Speaker 4: Stanko's getting any royalties in prison. But anyway, Yeah, he
Speaker 4: wrote the last three chapters of the book that came out,
Speaker 4: the prisoner's narrative, the prison environment, and surviving in prison. Still,
Speaker 4: when he gets out of prison after eight and a
Speaker 4: half years in he's a published author and he thinks that,
Speaker 4: you know, unlike ninety nine percent of the other prisoners,
Speaker 4: he's moved up socially during his time inside, and that
Speaker 4: now the the re entry into the free world is
Speaker 4: going to be completely seamless. Well, of course it did
Speaker 4: you know? It didn't work out that way.
Speaker 6: Now, he once he gets out of prison, he's not
Speaker 6: shy about telling people that he's in prison. But there
Speaker 6: is a butt to this as well. He doesn't tell
Speaker 6: them about the kidnapping charges. He tells them what what
Speaker 6: does he tell him about his staying Well, he said,
Speaker 6: I was just in.
Speaker 4: For some white collar stuff, you know, say, some white
Speaker 4: collar crimes. And my wife he refers to live as
Speaker 4: his life, which just irks her to know. End, my
Speaker 4: wife was getting a little mouthy, and I had to,
Speaker 4: like I had, I had to tire her up for
Speaker 4: a little while so that she's a left or else
Speaker 4: she wouldn't gonna let she wasn't gona let me pack.
Speaker 4: I couldn't pack and leave because she was in my face.
Speaker 4: So I had to do something, say the horror, horrific
Speaker 4: details of the crime. He doesn't tell people, but he
Speaker 4: tells everybody he's just out of prison because he can't
Speaker 4: brag about the book without saying that he was a prisoner. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it's funny that you know, there are different
Speaker 4: levels of resistance when a fellow like myself goes into
Speaker 4: an area and tries to talk to people. And I
Speaker 4: was getting a very negative reaction for a while from
Speaker 4: some people every time I mentioned Stephen Stanko and I
Speaker 4: want to write a book about Stephen Stanko. And it
Speaker 4: didn't occur to me for a long time, and things
Speaker 4: got a lot better once it did occurred to me
Speaker 4: that they thought I was writing a book with him.
Speaker 4: This was his next book, and he was writing about
Speaker 4: the murders and I was his co author. And I said, no, no,
Speaker 4: I'm writing about him, not with him. If I'm writing
Speaker 4: with somebody's with the police and the victims, I'm not
Speaker 4: on his side in any way. And then they said, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: we'll talk to you now.
Speaker 6: One of the people, the person that he bumps into
Speaker 6: very soon after being in prison, is a woman named
Speaker 6: Laura Ling. So tell us about their meeting, where Laura
Speaker 6: Ling was working and the ruse that Stephen Sankco employed
Speaker 6: to gain her trust.
Speaker 4: Well, he gets out it's July two thousand and four
Speaker 4: at this point, and he goes to the Myrtle Beach
Speaker 4: area of South Carolina, where of course it's gorgeous in
Speaker 4: the summertime. And he feels at this point, and understandably so,
Speaker 4: that his true calling is to be a writer. You know,
Speaker 4: with one book out, his best bet is to write
Speaker 4: another book as quickly as possible. All he needs is
Speaker 4: the home base. So you know, he spends a few
Speaker 4: days in a rooming house with the landlady's the mother
Speaker 4: of one of his people in his cell block in prison. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but then he's then he's out on his own. He's
Speaker 4: sort he's sort of homeless. So he's wandering from library
Speaker 4: to library, and he finds the library that has a
Speaker 4: pretty librarian. It says, this is perfect. And that was
Speaker 4: how he met Laurel. And she was she was beautiful librarian,
Speaker 4: and she was a single mom living with her equally
Speaker 4: beautiful fifteen year old daughter. And mother and teen daughter
Speaker 4: lived in Mural's Inlet, South Carolina, just north of Myrtle Beach,
Speaker 4: which was the longtime home of action mystery writer Mickey Splain.
Speaker 4: And after a few months of working with Laura on
Speaker 4: the material that he's putting together for his second book.
Speaker 4: They have a begin a romance, and it comes to
Speaker 4: a point where she brings him home to meet the
Speaker 4: daughter to see if it's okay if he moves in
Speaker 4: with them. So Henny is so pleased that her mother
Speaker 4: is happy because she's a divorced woman's loneliness. And he's
Speaker 4: so pleased that she said, I don't care if the
Speaker 4: guy's in next cotton. It seems like a nice guy
Speaker 4: to me. He can move in. So Stanko moves in
Speaker 4: with the two of them, and in light of what happened,
Speaker 4: and we can only imagine how Stanko's mind must have
Speaker 4: been squirming during that process. You know, he must have
Speaker 4: been like humbered, humbered in the now because novel Lolita
Speaker 4: moving in with Lolita and her mother. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: a two fer, he's thinking.
Speaker 6: She had also brought introduced him to her parents and
Speaker 6: also told her parents that he had been out of prison.
Speaker 6: But she was very impressed that he was an author.
Speaker 6: So tell us she was, well.
Speaker 4: That's right, she's a librarian. You know. He walks up
Speaker 4: to her and he says, let me introduce myself. I'm
Speaker 4: stephen Stenko the author. You know, she's in a branch
Speaker 4: library in South Carolina. I don't get any offers. So
Speaker 4: she's pretty impressed right off the bed he has some
Speaker 4: celebrity status. First thing she does, she goes on the
Speaker 4: Internet and make sure that he's telling the truth. And
Speaker 4: there it is Amazon Dockhoum's got It for sale Living
Speaker 4: in Prison by Steven Stanko. So yeah, she has no
Speaker 4: there's absolutely no hesitance on her part to help him
Speaker 4: with his research, even though the nature of his researches
Speaker 4: is maybe not the best thing for our next kind,
Speaker 4: let's put it that way. I know, well, while spending
Speaker 4: the days at the small branch library with Laura Ling
Speaker 4: and she's working as his research guy, he researches a
Speaker 4: study of serial killers. Sure you know I mean. And
Speaker 4: then this catches my attention too, because it looks like
Speaker 4: something I might write. You know. He wants to write
Speaker 4: a book about sort of a serial killer hall of fame.
Speaker 4: And he says fame, not shame. This is true of
Speaker 4: many psychos. He doesn't distinguish between fame and notoriety. So
Speaker 4: and he would have categories the Deadliest Killer the Green
Speaker 4: River killer because he had the most killed, the most perverse,
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Dahmer, the wildest crime scene of virtual tie, I mean,
Speaker 4: the Black Tally Avenger and the Gainsville Ripper. Now, in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, Stanko's takes for very much like
Speaker 4: those of your average true crime reader. And you know, Dan,
Speaker 4: I'm sure the large percentage of your listeners right now
Speaker 4: would not have found Stanko's research esoteric. At Hall, he
Speaker 4: dug ted Bundy and Zodiac and Son of Sam and
Speaker 4: Jack the Ripper. You know, he researched Arthur Shawcross, the
Speaker 4: Genesee River Killer, and d T. K the buying torture
Speaker 4: kill guy from Wichita, Kansas. And in some cases he
Speaker 4: wrote his theories about serial killers in a notebook, but
Speaker 4: he also made photocopies of the newspaper and magazine articles
Speaker 4: on the subject. To me, he pasted them into a scrapbook,
Speaker 4: very very neatly, you know, as his father would have
Speaker 4: approved of. So you know, later after Sanco was captured,
Speaker 4: was Sheriff A Lane Crib of Georgetown County in sown,
Speaker 4: South Carolina, who gave personal attention to Stanko's writings and clippings.
Speaker 4: After his arrest and all the papers were confiscated. Sheriff
Speaker 4: Lane noticed that the tone of Stanko's work changed over time.
Speaker 4: It started out being encyclopedia of serial killers, but it
Speaker 4: turned into a guidebook for someone learning how to become
Speaker 4: a serial killer.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yes, Stenko had started to kill someone once, Liz McClendon,
Speaker 4: but he stopped before finishing the act and did an
Speaker 4: eight year stretch in prison despite letting his victim live.
Speaker 4: And that must have been a source of great frustration
Speaker 4: for him. He must have wondered how it would have
Speaker 4: felt to take a life and how it had feeled
Speaker 4: to play god in that way. And like any smart guy,
Speaker 4: he was doing his homework. He was learning how to
Speaker 4: kill and his research assistant, the beautiful Laura Ling, was
Speaker 4: going to be his first victim. Now even.
Speaker 6: Sorry the other person got introduced him. Maybe this is
Speaker 6: jump inhead just a little bit. Is that he was
Speaker 6: introduced to seventy four year old Henry Lee Turner through Ling,
Speaker 6: Henry Turner.
Speaker 4: Becomes his friend. Henry Turner is another guy who hangs up,
Speaker 4: hangs out at the library a lot. The retired man
Speaker 4: lives in a trailer, nice little bachelor pad and is
Speaker 4: trying to become computer literate. One of the things that
Speaker 4: Laura Ling did in her spare time was she taught
Speaker 4: elderly people how to use computers, and that was the
Speaker 4: connection there. And I think one time when she went
Speaker 4: over to Henry Turner's place to help him with his computer,
Speaker 4: she brought Stanko along with her and.
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Speaker 4: And then Henry and Stanko hit it off, and then
Speaker 4: they ended up riding motorcycles together and then playing pool
Speaker 4: and having a good time. But yeah, he's pertinent because
Speaker 4: he becomes Stanko's other murder victim, right, so even he's
Speaker 4: got ahead.
Speaker 6: Oh sorry, what I thought was interesting too, is that
Speaker 6: you've put in your book just to show the psycho
Speaker 6: pathology of this guy and the lack of shame. Is
Speaker 6: that in September he sent a proposal for a grant
Speaker 6: and I guess with Laura Lyn's help to work with
Speaker 6: underprivileged kids for the National Justice sort of a scared
Speaker 6: straight type program.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and that's sort of what living in prison
Speaker 4: was as well. I mean, he he could, he could
Speaker 4: definitely reinvent himself as a as a boon to society
Speaker 4: at will. And that's just that's just an example of it.
Speaker 4: I mean, even when he is writing, even when he's
Speaker 4: writing his serial killer books or if you know, taking
Speaker 4: his notes for it. Anyway, don't think he ever got
Speaker 4: downe to actually doing a manuscript. But as he was
Speaker 4: working on that, he was still pulling cons in the
Speaker 4: in the in the area. He couldn't help it. He
Speaker 4: needed to manipulate people. I've heard say that psychopaths can
Speaker 4: actually be functional better in prison because they are all
Speaker 4: opportunities to manipulate people have been taken away. That's why
Speaker 4: the only time Stenko isn't a com man is when
Speaker 4: he's in prison. He has to actually create a product,
Speaker 4: and that's the book. Now, outside of prison he can
Speaker 4: just lie and say there's a product and sell that.
Speaker 4: So anyway, in December of two thousand and four, he's
Speaker 4: been out for about six months, and like that, he
Speaker 4: walks into a furniture outlet store in Surfside Beach, South Carolina,
Speaker 4: and he scammed the owners out of a couple hundred
Speaker 4: dollars because he says he's working for a charity for
Speaker 4: children's cancer, and he claims his niece was sick with
Speaker 4: cancer and that's why he'd become personally involved with the cause.
Speaker 4: And the scam was so heinous to pretend that you're
Speaker 4: gathering money for children's cancer, but to keep the money
Speaker 4: yourself that the woman who gave him the money later
Speaker 4: testified during the penalty phase at both of Stanko's trials,
Speaker 4: giving evidence that life in prison was too good for him.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean, lack of shame was his forte.
Speaker 6: And the thing as I found interesting too, is that she,
Speaker 6: despite these obvious red flags, like I'd like to give
Speaker 6: you some money, even though he never asked for any
Speaker 6: money for the charity, because she felt so was he
Speaker 6: was such a great guy that She said, well, can
Speaker 6: I give you a check? And what's the name of
Speaker 6: the charity? He said, well, why don't you just make
Speaker 6: out that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're just picking out to Steve Stango, that'll be fine. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she noticed the flags much too late, but luckily
Speaker 6: she was still alive to reminiscent.
Speaker 4: Oh, you know, we're just very lucky that. You know, tall,
Speaker 4: good looking guys are generally not psychopaths, because they certainly
Speaker 4: make more functional psychopaths than their shorter and uglier counterparts.
Speaker 6: Yeah, now, now tell us that. Now you begin the
Speaker 6: book very dramatically because you tell us about the nine
Speaker 6: to one to one call from fifteen year old Penny Ling.
Speaker 6: And so let's go back to I mean, what precipitates again,
Speaker 6: You've you've you've laid it out basically that when he
Speaker 6: gets completely frustrated and it seems like a wall in
Speaker 6: front of him, it becomes violent. So what precipitate him
Speaker 6: getting into this mindset? And then tell us about the
Speaker 6: nine to one one call from fifteen year old Penny Link?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, brings us up to that day, the day
Speaker 4: that his killing spree begins. And you know, if you
Speaker 4: add Stenko, I mean the problem, The problem with describing
Speaker 4: the incident is that the only witness who would tell
Speaker 4: the truth is dead. You know, Penny isn't sure how
Speaker 4: things start, you know, and she's been knocked unconscious and
Speaker 4: in a groggy state for for quite a bit of it.
Speaker 4: Stanko says, well, they're nothing to forget what Stanko says,
Speaker 4: because it's just horrible. But as was true, you know,
Speaker 4: when Stanko was living with Liz, his cons became increasingly
Speaker 4: complex and a never growing number of people were angry
Speaker 4: with him, and it got to a point where as
Speaker 4: Liz had done, Laura Ling is paying his bills. He's
Speaker 4: on the verge of losing her apartment because she can't
Speaker 4: afford him, and they're having a fight. You know. Senko
Speaker 4: says it's because she caught him with the daughter, and
Speaker 4: that that that's that's the lady buck crawling across the foot.
Speaker 4: That's not that's not in reality. It's the fact that
Speaker 4: he's found himself painted into a corner by his own
Speaker 4: lives and he's fighting with the woman he lived with,
Speaker 4: only this time it's Laura Ling and not lives McClendon
Speaker 4: and pretty Pennies down the hall sleeping peacefully and instantly
Speaker 4: in her bedroom, and just after midnight, Stanko's ties up
Speaker 4: Laura Ling and beats her, and he goes down the
Speaker 4: hall tells Penny that if she screams, he's gonna kill
Speaker 4: them both, and she runs to see her mother and
Speaker 4: sees her mother tied up in the bedroom, and then
Speaker 4: he hits her over the head and when she wakes up,
Speaker 4: she's being raped, you know. He places her in the
Speaker 4: master bedroom so that he can watch his He savagely
Speaker 4: beats Laurea Ling with his fist, beats her face in
Speaker 4: until his knuckles her bloody, and then he makes her
Speaker 4: watch as he strangles her to death. And one of
Speaker 4: the one of the one of the miracles that one
Speaker 4: of the miracles of the story is that Penny survived
Speaker 4: the attack at all, because when Stanko was done, Laurel
Speaker 4: Ling was already dead, and he flipped the teen daughter
Speaker 4: onto her stomach, lifted her head by the hair, and
Speaker 4: twice slit her throat, one wound above the other. And
Speaker 4: if the knife had gone into her neck a few
Speaker 4: millimeters deeper, the girl would have been dead. And looking
Speaker 4: at it from Stanko's point of view, not killing Penny
Speaker 4: with the number one flaw in the execution of his
Speaker 4: game plan that day, he thought Laura and Penny were
Speaker 4: both dead and this was the reason why his flight
Speaker 4: lacked urgency. He thought he had left no witnesses.
Speaker 6: Instead, they think they were dead. What what? What made
Speaker 6: him bleed?
Speaker 4: Well? He says that he fell for a pulse and
Speaker 4: didn't feel in either of them. Right, you know, he
Speaker 4: thought he left no witnesses. He Uh and Penny. Moments
Speaker 4: after he's gone, he steals squirrelings red carn red mustang
Speaker 4: takes off. She manages to dial nine one one. She
Speaker 4: reports the crime, and the man hunt for Stanko starts
Speaker 4: almost immediately. But Stanko's now in a red Mustang that
Speaker 4: he's stolen from his murder victim, and he drives north
Speaker 4: to Conway, South Carolina, to visit his other friend, seventy
Speaker 4: four year old Henry Turner.
Speaker 6: Right for now, what does he? What does he? What
Speaker 6: does he say to mister Turner? What? What story does
Speaker 6: he give?
Speaker 4: Turn He knocks on the door. It's very early in
Speaker 4: the morning at this point, maybe maybe gone, maybe even
Speaker 4: a little before dawn. And Uh, Turner comes to the
Speaker 4: door and says Stephen, what are you doing here? And
Speaker 4: Stanko says, my dad just died, and Turner says, oh, come,
Speaker 4: come right in, Come right in, And they decide to
Speaker 4: have breakfast together, and Turner says, you can stay here
Speaker 4: for a couple of days if you want, because well,
Speaker 4: it take as long as you want. And Stanko says,
Speaker 4: let me borrow your truck. I'll go to McDonald's and
Speaker 4: get us breakfast. Now, what Stanko doesn't know is that
Speaker 4: while he's going to get the egg mcmuffins right, Turner
Speaker 4: gets on the phone and calls his son and says,
Speaker 4: my friend, Stephen Stenko's dad just died. He's gonna be
Speaker 4: staying with me for a couple of days. It turns
Speaker 4: out to be a key factor. Sure, So after breakfast,
Speaker 4: Stanko rummages around the Turners like in the bathroom, shaving,
Speaker 4: still getting ready in the morning. Stanko goes to where
Speaker 4: Turner keeps his gun three fifty seven revolver, grabs a
Speaker 4: pillow as a makeshift silencer, and shoots Turner twice, once
Speaker 4: in the chest, once in the back. Experts disagree as
Speaker 4: to which was first, right leaves him down his okay, sorry, no, no,
Speaker 4: go ahead sorry. Lee's Henry Turner dead, face down in
Speaker 4: the bedroom of his house. Now Stanko leaves the red
Speaker 4: Mustang in front of Turner's house and steals Turner's black
Speaker 4: pickup trucks right and takes it, takes off again. And
Speaker 4: so Turner's son knows that Steven Stanko's staying with his dad.
Speaker 4: And because Henny Ling managed to call nine one one
Speaker 4: very quickly, there's already a bulletin on the TV. There's
Speaker 4: a man hunt for Stenko faces on TV. Be on
Speaker 4: the lookout, you know. Turner's SONSYS does not vote well
Speaker 4: for dad safety and calls the police immediately, and that's
Speaker 4: how they discover Henry Turner's body.
Speaker 6: Now, where is where is the Steves headed next?
Speaker 4: Well, she would think that he would just be trying
Speaker 4: to get as far away from Conway, South Carolina as possible,
Speaker 4: just driving, stealing cars every ten miles, you know, trying
Speaker 4: not but not at all. He doesn't seem to be
Speaker 4: in that much of a hurry. He drives to Columbia,
Speaker 4: South Carolina, and stops at a bar. It's called the
Speaker 4: Blue Marlin, and he is the life of the party,
Speaker 4: he buys drinks. He's talking loudly, and he's bragging, telling
Speaker 4: everybody what a great man is. He's in real estate.
Speaker 4: He says, I'm a big time wheeler dealer. I own
Speaker 4: twelve Hooters franchises throughout the Southeast. People say, so, how'd
Speaker 4: you hurt your hand, Steve, since he's got no skin
Speaker 4: on him and his knuckles, and he changes the story
Speaker 4: a couple of times. One time he says, oh, I
Speaker 4: was running a marathon and I fell. Another time he
Speaker 4: deep he burned his hand trying to fix his car.
Speaker 4: Another time somebody said something nasty to his day. He
Speaker 4: had to punch the guy. Anyway, He runs up one
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty dollars cab, buying beers for everybody, and
Speaker 4: he pays the bartender with three one hundred dollars bills
Speaker 4: and says, keep the change. I I didn't mention. During
Speaker 4: the his flight, he stops and empties out Henry Turner
Speaker 4: and Laureling's bank accounts. So he's lovely with cash. Sure,
Speaker 4: so he's uh. He seems like he couldn't seem less,
Speaker 4: like he's hiding or running away. He's acting.
Speaker 6: He wants to be remembered, even meets some people and
Speaker 6: gives them his email addresses Eric Carter, Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's he's uh, he's what you call hiding out
Speaker 4: in the open. When when the Blue Marlin's ready to
Speaker 4: close for the night, Stanko said it's too early for
Speaker 4: the party to end, and a group of parties, including
Speaker 4: the bartender who's got one hundred and twenty dollars of
Speaker 4: his money in his pocket, say okay, let's go to
Speaker 4: this place that stays open late, and they go to
Speaker 4: a new tavern and continue drinking, And when the knight
Speaker 4: finally ends, Stanko gives his actual email address to a
Speaker 4: woman he'd met here. Drop me a line sometime, baby.
Speaker 4: And he hits the road again, and he's still in
Speaker 4: Turner's pickup truck, but he's not sure what to do.
Speaker 4: Turns on the truck radio and the announcers talking about
Speaker 4: Tiger Woods leading the Masters tournament in nearby Augusta, Georgia,
Speaker 4: which is due west. Now. The Masters, for those who
Speaker 4: dear listeners who don't know, the springtime golf tournament held
Speaker 4: annually in augusta most prestigious golf tournament there is. It's
Speaker 4: played on a kind of fairy tale type course walled
Speaker 4: off inside of a not so great section of town,
Speaker 4: and TV announcers aren't allowed to call the spectator the crowd.
Speaker 4: That's too vulgar. That's called the gallery. There's kind of
Speaker 4: lotti do and it's been raining, so everybody who went
Speaker 4: to see the golf is in a bar someplace waiting
Speaker 4: for the rain to stop. So the town is just
Speaker 4: filled with white guys in golf shirts and cargo pants.
Speaker 4: And he's absolutely going to blend and it's wild. It's
Speaker 4: wild in Augusta that he needs Dana Putnam, Dana Putnam,
Speaker 4: who was a beautiful woman celebrating her thirtieth birthday, and
Speaker 4: they hit it off and they drink and flirt, and
Speaker 4: he says he's got to leave, and she says, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: you're in no condition to drive. You got to think
Speaker 4: he's not in any condition to drive. At this point,
Speaker 4: she invites him home to sleep on her couch, and
Speaker 4: that's what he did. In the morning, he picks up
Speaker 4: his vehicle and return his pickup, but he still doesn't leave.
Speaker 4: He goes with Putnam the church, he meets her parents.
Speaker 4: He visits her on Monday and gives her a single
Speaker 4: yellow rose, tells her he's sick of Bimbo's and he's
Speaker 4: looking for a woman he could stay with long term.
Speaker 4: So he's got he's got everybody kind including himself, because
Speaker 4: you know, he really should be trying to get away.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's in Augusta having a meal in a restaurant,
Speaker 4: and he has no idea that there are twenty four
Speaker 4: hour news channels that are putting his face up on
Speaker 4: the screen every five minutes. So it's Jana Putnam's mom
Speaker 4: who eventually sees Stanko's picture in the paper, and she
Speaker 4: called her daughter with the bad news. She's you know,
Speaker 4: if he's there, get the heck away from him, and
Speaker 4: if he's not called the police. Well, he wasn't there.
Speaker 4: He was at in a restaurant having breakfast. So Putnam
Speaker 4: called the cops, and the next time Stanko called her
Speaker 4: to tell her how much he loved her. The police
Speaker 4: were listening in and by the time he walked out
Speaker 4: of the restaurant and into the parking lot, the multiple
Speaker 4: law enforcement agencies were on the scene and he was
Speaker 4: arrested without resisting, which brings us up to the trial.
Speaker 6: How did the police proceed with the questioning of Stephen Stankos.
Speaker 4: Would I say that again? How did the.
Speaker 6: Police proceed with the questioning of Stephen Stankos? You say
Speaker 6: he was arrested without incident, but how did they proceed?
Speaker 6: What was he did he lawyer up immediately? How was
Speaker 6: his how did he react to being arrested?
Speaker 4: And well, you know, he he seems convinced from the
Speaker 4: start that he's going to be able to talk his
Speaker 4: way out of it. Pretty soon he realizes that he
Speaker 4: has left a line of breadcrumbs from the crime to himself.
Speaker 4: He even left his first stone car at the scene
Speaker 4: of the second murder. I mean, it's just following the following.
Speaker 4: The chain of evidence is very easy, and he's going
Speaker 4: to be convicted. He eventually realizes this, so he lawyers
Speaker 4: up with an insanity defense. In mind, something wrong with him,
Speaker 4: His brain just doesn't work right, and he's really sorry
Speaker 4: all this stuff happened, but it's not his fault because
Speaker 4: sometimes he loses control of himself. So yeah, the defense
Speaker 4: was an insanity claim, and the jury and end up
Speaker 4: seeing a series of doctors who showed them PET scans
Speaker 4: PET standing for positron emission tomography and three D pictures
Speaker 4: that show in colorful light the parts of a person's brain,
Speaker 4: not only their structure, but how they are functioning. If
Speaker 4: the part of your brain is not functioning, that doesn't
Speaker 4: light up as brightly. And Stanko's frontal lobes, where his
Speaker 4: impulse control was supposed to live, had shriveled up and
Speaker 4: ceased to work. According to the pet scans, his frontal lobes,
Speaker 4: in terms of just size, were among the smallest two
Speaker 4: or three percent of the population. And those frontal lobes were,
Speaker 4: as his lawyers explained, what made him human or what
Speaker 4: made other people human. He didn't have them, so there
Speaker 4: was insanity. You could see nothing theoretical about it. There.
Speaker 4: It is insanity. The defense theory was that Stanko's frontal
Speaker 4: lobe was injured when he was in an accident as
Speaker 4: a teenager. He got hit in the forehead with a
Speaker 4: beer bottle, so it's the best thing to come up.
Speaker 4: But they also throw in some testimony about a tatoot
Speaker 4: john de he'd had as a newborn baby, hoping that
Speaker 4: might infer that that was when his frontal lobes died.
Speaker 4: But I think they didn't seem to really have an
Speaker 4: accident that fits the pet scams. So the prosecution had
Speaker 4: a quick response, you know, junk science. You know, maybe
Speaker 4: the science was good, but the application was way out
Speaker 4: of sync with reality. You know. Defence shrinks interviewed Stanko,
Speaker 4: but the things he said were not always helpful. That
Speaker 4: was when he said, for example, that the little Penny
Speaker 4: had come on to him and they were having an affair,
Speaker 4: and that's when Penny's mom found out about it, and
Speaker 4: that's how the trouble started. Sure, so I think the
Speaker 4: most the most dramatic part of the trial was when
Speaker 4: Penny testified.
Speaker 6: That was interesting is that she brought the same teddy
Speaker 6: bear and you we glossed over a little bit, but
Speaker 6: the very caring and very diligent police officers, sergeants and
Speaker 6: everybody involved in the investigation of this and right away
Speaker 6: when Penny was obviously her mother was murdered, this police
Speaker 6: officer recognized that he just went out of his way
Speaker 6: bought a teddy Bear and gave it to Penny. And
Speaker 6: very interesting imagery when you talk about Penny testifying trial
Speaker 6: to help put this guy away and she's still clutching
Speaker 6: that teddy bear.
Speaker 4: Right, it was an EMT. But the rest of your
Speaker 4: story was absolutely correct. And they had not seen each other.
Speaker 4: The ant and Penny had not seen each other since
Speaker 4: she was taken to the hospital, and he gave her
Speaker 4: the teddy bear the next day, and she immediately held
Speaker 4: the teddy bear up to show him that he had it,
Speaker 4: and she clutched it while she was on the stand,
Speaker 4: and she was also wearing a scarf, and her testimony
Speaker 4: ended with could you please over your scarf? And she
Speaker 4: does and the jury gets to see the scars from
Speaker 4: herself with thrown and unbelievably, Penny's father, Christopher Ling, who
Speaker 4: was a big man with a large jaw, was there
Speaker 4: for the entire trial and for her testimony. And while
Speaker 4: she is testifying, his eyes are burning holes in the
Speaker 4: back of Stanko's neck. You know, how he could listen
Speaker 4: to what he was listening to without attacking Stanko took
Speaker 4: the strength of ten men. You know, Penny's testimony would
Speaker 4: have been dramatic enough without her father in the room
Speaker 4: listening to it. You know, she was very brave, and
Speaker 4: afterwards her father couldn't stop talking about what a great
Speaker 4: daughter he had. You know, she had one hundred times
Speaker 4: with the spine of the Jellyfisher was on trial and
Speaker 4: she was his hero. During the second trial, he testified
Speaker 4: on Penny's behalf so that she wouldn't have to go
Speaker 4: through the ordeal again. And the only time during the
Speaker 4: second trial that Christopher Ling left the courtroom was during
Speaker 4: the playing of his daughter's ninety one one call. He'd
Speaker 4: heard it quite a few times at that point and
Speaker 4: just didn't want to hear it again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's very she was yelling about her mother. Was
Speaker 6: just you've captured that out book in it it's incredible.
Speaker 6: Why was why was there a second what? What necessitated
Speaker 6: a second trial? Just a hung jury? What happened?
Speaker 4: No? No, the second trial is for Henry Turner's murder.
Speaker 4: Oh right, sorry, Yeah, they were tried separately because even
Speaker 4: though they were in the same district and the same
Speaker 4: principles were the prosecutors and the defense attorneys, they happened
Speaker 4: in separate counties, so they were tried separately. And there
Speaker 4: was you know, after he was convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 4: death in the first trial, there was a there was
Speaker 4: a little bit of an uproar saying, do we really
Speaker 4: need the second trial? How can you can execute him twice? Sure,
Speaker 4: but the argument against that was, you know, doesn't Henry
Speaker 4: Turner's family deserve closure just as much as Laura ling family,
Speaker 4: And nobody had a good rebuttal to that, and it
Speaker 4: ended up costing the taxpayers two hundred and ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: But Stanko was convicted twice and as two death sentences,
Speaker 4: So what was his You know, if either of his
Speaker 4: sentences is ever lowered for whatever reason to life in prison,
Speaker 4: reduction of the other sentence would have to be considered
Speaker 4: as well. So, in an odd way, having two death
Speaker 4: sentences is to Stenko's advantage, but not much of an advantage.
Speaker 4: Chances they are good he's.
Speaker 6: Going to be executed and the insanity won. How did
Speaker 6: they quant I mean, I know there's not very many
Speaker 6: insanity defenses are ever accepted at trial. But what did
Speaker 6: they say? What was the answer to his idea of
Speaker 6: insanity to say he was he knew right from wrong?
Speaker 4: What was the final the jury believed that he understood
Speaker 4: the difference between right and wrong, he just didn't care.
Speaker 4: His ability to his actions after the murders demonstrated that
Speaker 4: he knew he had done wrong. And knew he had
Speaker 4: to get away, but he just didn't care. I mean,
Speaker 4: they basically said that being a being a psychopath is
Speaker 4: not being criminally insane, and that's generally how jury's feel.
Speaker 4: Sure what.
Speaker 6: Sorry, what was his demeanor at trial?
Speaker 4: How did he act through these two He was very stoic.
Speaker 4: I mean, even when he was being condemned to die,
Speaker 4: he would nod. He had his head a little bit lowered.
Speaker 4: He'd nod a couple of times, like yep, that's what
Speaker 4: they said, that's what they're going to do, and then
Speaker 4: he would go back to being pretty much motionless and expressionless.
Speaker 4: He was fairly blank. There was nothing to brag about,
Speaker 4: and you know he did. At one point, just before
Speaker 4: the sentencing, he spoke for the first time in the
Speaker 4: courtroom and apologized to everybody. But even then he began
Speaker 4: to ramble and started to talk about movies he'd seen,
Speaker 4: and he got he got off the track and really
Speaker 4: didn't help his case at all. If you know about
Speaker 4: William Dale Hudson, what about Yes, Yes, he was originally
Speaker 4: going to be writing a book about Stanker. I didn't
Speaker 4: know him, didn't know he had planned on writing a
Speaker 4: book about Staker, but while he was working on that book,
Speaker 4: he died under mysterious circumstances during the summer of two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine. He was he's the man in his fifties,
Speaker 4: as I am, and he left home on a business trip,
Speaker 4: called his wife while on the road to say he
Speaker 4: had a migraine who was pulling over and was later
Speaker 4: found by fisherman floating face down in the PD River.
Speaker 4: So I guess it was my good fortune. His misfortune
Speaker 4: was my good fortune because by the time I submitted
Speaker 4: my proposal for this book, uh, they no longer had
Speaker 4: an author to do it.
Speaker 6: Was he also a Pinnacle author.
Speaker 4: Had been I don't think it was exclusively Pinnacle, but
Speaker 4: he had.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, because I recognize that name from from a
Speaker 6: few years ago.
Speaker 4: But the interesting thing about Watch Mommy Die is that
Speaker 4: it is the first of my books to be released
Speaker 4: simultaneously in electronic form and book form, and it has
Speaker 4: gone to number one true crime on Kindle right on.
Speaker 6: Congratulations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's even it's even selling better than the Casey
Speaker 4: Anthony book. And her trial is going on right now.
Speaker 4: So that's good news, very good.
Speaker 6: It's it. You know, it's interesting too because it does
Speaker 6: indicate a little bit younger audience, and I know just
Speaker 6: from the true crime audience, it's not generally so young.
Speaker 4: Right right, Well, I also think that. I mean, you've
Speaker 4: obviously seen the book. It has a scary cover and
Speaker 4: a could his title. And here in New York, many
Speaker 4: people read on the subway. It started reading in public.
Speaker 4: Everybody looks around to see what everybody else is reading.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that anybody's eager to be sitting there
Speaker 4: being the one who's reading Watch Mommy Die. But if
Speaker 4: they have a kindle, you can read it on the
Speaker 4: subway without anybody knowing a little bit of a guilty pleasure.
Speaker 4: I think true crime is in a lot.
Speaker 6: Of cases maybe, so you could be right about that,
Speaker 6: because if you do see the cover, you might wonder
Speaker 6: what the person's mindset is as well. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 6: very got any book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you started by asking me about how I came
Speaker 4: across this subject. I tell you my next book. I
Speaker 4: came across because I was researching Stanka. One of the
Speaker 4: doctors who testified in his defense. One of the pet
Speaker 4: scan doctors, doctor Wu, also when I was researching him,
Speaker 4: also testified at the trial of Michael King in Florida,
Speaker 4: who is the subject of my next book to be
Speaker 4: released in the fall, called The Killer's Touch. So I
Speaker 4: follow I followed the defense witness and then came across
Speaker 4: my next book.
Speaker 6: What is the what is the claim to fame for
Speaker 6: Michael King?
Speaker 4: Well, Michael King, Uh, it was. It's a it's a
Speaker 4: It's a story about a young mother too in Northport, Florida,
Speaker 4: and Michael King is just driving around Caesar in the
Speaker 4: backyard or whatever, kidnaps her repeatedly. Ray takes her home
Speaker 4: into his self made dungeon where he repeatedly rapes her
Speaker 4: and then takes her into a wooded area naked and
Speaker 4: shoots her once through the head and buries her in
Speaker 4: a shallow grave. Now that would be sad enough, but
Speaker 4: much of the story concerns the area's nine one one system.
Speaker 4: The poor victim was spotted while thrashing in the back
Speaker 4: seat of the killer's car, and multiple calls came into
Speaker 4: that reporting a possible abduction. That the calls were not
Speaker 4: processed efficiently, the relationship between the calls was temporarily lost,
Speaker 4: and the police lost an opportunity to catch the guy
Speaker 4: before he killed his victim. So that's she was. She
Speaker 4: was also a policeman's daughter. Wow. So one of the
Speaker 4: most amazing things is that he was captured alive. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they brought him in and cuffs that in a bag
Speaker 4: and that's to their credit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely absolutely. How many books have you written in
Speaker 6: the in the non fiction genre and how many specifically
Speaker 6: true crime? Michael?
Speaker 4: Oh boy, I think that if you count the slender
Speaker 4: volumes I went through a few years when I was
Speaker 4: writing a book for books for children, so they each
Speaker 4: count the same, about sixty books altogether there. The last
Speaker 4: eight or nine have been true crime. I began my
Speaker 4: true crime career by ghostwriting a book about a serial
Speaker 4: killer and that Since then, I've done most of them
Speaker 4: for Kensington and one for Globe peakquat up in Connecticut.
Speaker 6: Who is the first? The serial killer? That the ghost
Speaker 6: writing book?
Speaker 4: What was it?
Speaker 6: Who was a serial killing? Anybody know?
Speaker 4: Well, it would be like kissing and telling. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't think. I don't think it's supposed to say because
Speaker 4: that was credited. Author may object to that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 4: I understand he's busy taking credit.
Speaker 6: Do you have a website, Michael.
Speaker 4: Well, no, but I I you know, if anybody wants
Speaker 4: to be my friend on Facebook just looking for the
Speaker 4: Michael Benson with the white Beard. I'm that guy, and
Speaker 4: I'd be glad to I'd be glad to converse with
Speaker 4: you about whatever you want right on.
Speaker 6: Now, what is the tentative title that you have for
Speaker 6: you said, I've forgotten what you said about the Michael
Speaker 6: King book.
Speaker 4: That's out, A Killer's Touch.
Speaker 6: A Killer's Touch, Great, I.
Speaker 4: Fix that's out in October.
Speaker 6: October, so we'll have to have you on in October.
Speaker 4: If that would be great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that'd be fantastic. Well, I want to tell people
Speaker 6: that they've been listening to Michael Benson and talking about
Speaker 6: his newest latest true crime soon to be bestseller, no doubt,
Speaker 6: and it is already as an e book on Kindle
Speaker 6: Psycho Killer's Vicious Attack, Watch Mummy de available everywhere where
Speaker 6: books are sold and on Kindle now. So it's number one.
Speaker 6: So thank you very much Michael for coming on again.
Speaker 6: You're a natural born storyteller with a fantastic book once again,
Speaker 6: and thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Well, you have a good night, Michael. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Chok and Uh and I love your show. Take care well.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you much, thank you. You've been listening
Speaker 6: to the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in
Speaker 6: true crime history, and the authors that have written about them,
Speaker 6: speaking about Watch Mummy Die from Michael Benson. Have a
Speaker 6: good evening, good night,