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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Stalmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journal an author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Hello, this is your host Dan Zupanski for the program
Speaker 6: True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime History
Speaker 6: and the authors that have written about them. My special
Speaker 6: guest this evening is Amanda Lamb with her book we're
Speaker 6: going to be profiling this evening is Evil next Door.
Speaker 6: Good evening, Amanda, How are you.
Speaker 5: Good evening, Dan, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6: Just for a second, I'm courtesy of our telephone service here,
Speaker 6: I'm having a little couple of technical errors here at
Speaker 6: the more technical difficulties. So this let me get past
Speaker 6: that and we'll introduce the program like we normally do
Speaker 6: by giving me I get a chance to be able
Speaker 6: to read the back, a cover of your book, a
Speaker 6: very good description of your book, and intro for program
Speaker 6: this evening. On May twenty one, two thousand and two,
Speaker 6: twenty three year old Raleigh, North Carolina resident Stephanie Bennett
Speaker 6: was found murdered in her apartment. Despite ample DNA evidence
Speaker 6: at the scene, investigators could find no matches in their
Speaker 6: criminal databases. Two years into the investigation, Detective Ken Copeland,
Speaker 6: known as the garbage Man for leaving no stone unturned
Speaker 6: in his search for evidence, and his partner Jackie Taylor,
Speaker 6: joined the case. After culling through the entire file with
Speaker 6: fresh eyes and re interviewing witnesses, they released a description
Speaker 6: of a suspect neighbors had seen nearby, a man who'd
Speaker 6: once lived just next door to the murder scene. But
Speaker 6: the suspect refused to hand over a DNA sample, wiping
Speaker 6: down anything he touched and even planning decoy samples. This
Speaker 6: is a gripping story of how a team of aggressive
Speaker 6: detectives doggedly tracked down a killer under suspicion for a
Speaker 6: killing spree that that investigators believe might have spent years
Speaker 6: in cross state lines and brought closure to an innocent
Speaker 6: young woman's grieving family. Evil next Door, The untold story
Speaker 6: of a killer Undone by DNA my very special guest,
Speaker 6: Amanda Lamb. Welcome to the program, Amanda.
Speaker 5: Thank you, am Now, what.
Speaker 6: Why did you decide to write about this case in particular.
Speaker 5: Well, I've been a television reporter for twenty years, and
Speaker 5: I've covered crime pretty exclusively for the past eight and
Speaker 5: I've covered a lot of crimes where I've been there
Speaker 5: for the crime and then been able to follow it
Speaker 5: all the way through the judicial system until somebody is
Speaker 5: arrested and ultimately convicted. And this is one of those
Speaker 5: cases that I had followed very closely. It was a
Speaker 5: three and a half year investigation prior to anything coming
Speaker 5: to fruition. And this is one of those cases that
Speaker 5: really shocked Raleigh, North Carolina, where I'm a reporter, because
Speaker 5: it was a stranger murder. And as you know, Dan,
Speaker 5: probably from your research and your writing, that most people
Speaker 5: are killed by somebody they now, and in Raleigh, North Carolina,
Speaker 5: we don't have a lot of stranger murders. So this
Speaker 5: was really a needle in a haystack kind of a situation.
Speaker 5: I mean, this young woman was going about her life
Speaker 5: doing what most of us do, working, going home at night.
Speaker 5: She had no high risk behavior, and yet she was raped, tortured,
Speaker 5: and murdered in her own home. And so she really
Speaker 5: was truly what we call an innocent victim. I mean,
Speaker 5: she was somebody that did nothing to encourage this behavior,
Speaker 5: and yet the worst possible thing happened to her. And
Speaker 5: I think that just based on that, it intrigued me.
Speaker 5: And then as I researched the case and got to
Speaker 5: know her family and her friends, I learned more about
Speaker 5: her and she was just really a lovely young woman.
Speaker 5: She was somebody that could have been your daughter, your sister,
Speaker 5: your wife. She was just starting at her life. She
Speaker 5: had a lot of promise. She was kind, she was
Speaker 5: a hard worker. She really was somebody that I think
Speaker 5: anybody would have been proud to call their daughter, or
Speaker 5: their friend or their sister.
Speaker 6: Now, what was she doing in Raleigh, North Carolina? Tell
Speaker 6: us how about you know the circumstances she came to
Speaker 6: leave her hometown in Virginia. It's a mounty rocky mount
Speaker 6: Virginia right, travel to Raleigh, and who did she go with?
Speaker 6: And and tell us you know where she was living
Speaker 6: in Raleigh, what she was doing, where she was working,
Speaker 6: and what really Raleigh, North Carolina is like, you know,
Speaker 6: sort of is it a bigger center described.
Speaker 5: And for people that don't know, I mean, Raleigh is
Speaker 5: the capital of North Carolina, and so of course this
Speaker 5: is where our state government is, and it's become much
Speaker 5: more urban and certainly much more metropolitan in the last
Speaker 5: you know, two decades. We have an area called Research
Speaker 5: Rangle Park where we have a lot of pharmaceutical companies,
Speaker 5: we have a lot of technology companies. We also have
Speaker 5: Duke University like Forest University and other schools that attract
Speaker 5: a lot of PhDs and people that are interested in
Speaker 5: research and teaching and other fields. And so Raleigh to
Speaker 5: Stephanie Bennett was really a big city. I mean, she
Speaker 5: was from a very small rural town in Virginia, and
Speaker 5: her family was actually nervous about her going to Raleigh.
Speaker 5: I mean, to them it might as well have been
Speaker 5: New York City because it seemed so daunting. But she
Speaker 5: was a young woman who really wanted to be out
Speaker 5: on her own. She was a subcontractor for IBM, and
Speaker 5: it was a great professional opportunity for her to work
Speaker 5: in her fields and computers, and she had a serious
Speaker 5: boyfriend and had intended to get married, but before she
Speaker 5: did that, she really wanted to be out on her own.
Speaker 5: So she came to with two girls from college. One
Speaker 5: of them happened to be her best friend and stepsister
Speaker 5: from a very young age. And the three girls did
Speaker 5: what a lot of young women in their twenties did. Then.
Speaker 5: It's something that I did, and it's something that you know,
Speaker 5: young women still do today. You get out of college,
Speaker 5: you find some roommates that you can afford to, you know,
Speaker 5: share an apartment with, and you start your career. And
Speaker 5: that's that's basically what she was doing here in Raleigh
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 6: Was Stephanie worried about anything when she did live in Raleigh?
Speaker 6: Was was that part of her nature to be a
Speaker 6: little bit of a worry ward Maybe not.
Speaker 5: Even she was just a cautious young woman. I mean,
Speaker 5: this was not a girl that was out at the
Speaker 5: bars drinking every night and you know, going home with
Speaker 5: men and you know, doing again anything that we would
Speaker 5: consider high risk behavior. She was a cautious young woman.
Speaker 5: She lived in an area of Raleigh that had a
Speaker 5: lot of apartment complexes. In fact, I think the tally
Speaker 5: from police at the time was that there were five
Speaker 5: thousand apartments within like a five mile vicinity, and so
Speaker 5: it was a place where a lot of young people lived.
Speaker 5: She lived in a first floor apartment, which I think
Speaker 5: in hindsight, you know, most people would say that's not
Speaker 5: very safe. But again, this was you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 5: and it just didn't seem like Raleigh, North Carolina, was
Speaker 5: a place that you needed to be worried about something
Speaker 5: like this happening. And so, you know, I think that
Speaker 5: she was again just going about her life, doing the
Speaker 5: normal things that people would do, and yet she did
Speaker 5: have this cautious treat in her and at one point
Speaker 5: there was a report that somebody had been kind of
Speaker 5: peeping into windows in the apartment complex, and that made
Speaker 5: her uncomfortable, and so uncomfortable that she wrote an email
Speaker 5: to her aunt about it and talked about, you know,
Speaker 5: I think I'm going to give up my lease at
Speaker 5: some point soon and move out. And she had wanted
Speaker 5: to be closer to her boyfriend, who was attending graduate
Speaker 5: school in South Carolina, about four hours away, and so
Speaker 5: she talked about moving to South Carolina and leaving that
Speaker 5: apartment complex.
Speaker 6: In fact, she didn't have much time left. Actually she
Speaker 6: was it was maybe a month.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was about it looked like it was about
Speaker 5: a month I think left on her lease before she
Speaker 5: would before she would leave, and she had already, you know,
Speaker 5: talked to the other girls about it, and you know,
Speaker 5: she was ready to go. There were just there were
Speaker 5: some break ins, there were some vandalism, and there were
Speaker 5: just a couple of things in the apartment complex. But
Speaker 5: the thing that really upset her was this peeping tom.
Speaker 5: And it was later discovered, and we're not sure how
Speaker 5: much Stephanie knew, but it was it was discovered that
Speaker 5: this peeping tom had actually been looking at her particular window.
Speaker 5: She did not see this, but another neighborhood reported it,
Speaker 5: and so that would naturally alarm anybody, and of course
Speaker 5: it alarmed her with good reason.
Speaker 6: Now, she lived with her stepsister and a really good friend.
Speaker 6: And part of the feature that you explain is that
Speaker 6: they were always together basically, no matter what, just a
Speaker 6: despite work schedules, there's always somebody around. What was this
Speaker 6: particular feature of this weekend in May that was unusual?
Speaker 5: It was unusual because again, like you said. They were
Speaker 5: always together. They were three best friends that did everything together,
Speaker 5: but as their lives kind of became more complicated. One
Speaker 5: had a boyfriend back in Virginia. Stephanie had the boyfriend
Speaker 5: in South Carolina. Her stepsister had gone home for a
Speaker 5: funeral back to Virginia, and so on this particular night,
Speaker 5: they Stephanie was alone. And Stephanie really didn't like to
Speaker 5: be alone. She didn't like to stay alone. She wasn't
Speaker 5: used to that. I mean again, she'd grown up in
Speaker 5: a small town, in a close knit community, and that
Speaker 5: wasn't her preference to be alone. So on this particular night,
Speaker 5: she was alone. She had spent the weekend visiting her
Speaker 5: boyfriend in South Carolina and come home, and she had
Speaker 5: gone to work on Monday morning, just like she always does.
Speaker 5: And that night, she'd come home from work and had
Speaker 5: a conversation with one of the roommates, Emily, on the phone,
Speaker 5: and she'd also had a conversation with her boyfriend on
Speaker 5: the phone, and they had talked about her getting an
Speaker 5: apartment in South Carolina, and he said that he needed
Speaker 5: some information from her and that she needed to fax
Speaker 5: it so that he could take it to the apartment
Speaker 5: complex to fill out the application, and so she told
Speaker 5: him that night that she would try to do that
Speaker 5: from her office the next day. So this was again
Speaker 5: an unusual thing for her to be alone in her
Speaker 5: apartment that night, and for all intentsive purposes, though it
Speaker 5: appeared like any other night in the beginning.
Speaker 6: Right now, the next day of May twenty first, who
Speaker 6: is the first person that notices something is.
Speaker 5: A miss Well again and her boyfriend and she had
Speaker 5: had this conversation about her sending this information for the
Speaker 5: apartment application, and so he emails her. He calls her,
Speaker 5: he's not able to get up with her, and you know,
Speaker 5: he thinks that's a little bit unusual, and at some
Speaker 5: point contacts her stepsister, and the stepsister immediately says, you know,
Speaker 5: something's not right here because this is not Stephanie. Stephanie's
Speaker 5: the person that returns phone calls, returns emails. And again
Speaker 5: we're talking ten years ago. People didn't have blackberries, and
Speaker 5: they weren't immediately you know, they weren't as readily able
Speaker 5: to get up with somebody by email as people are today.
Speaker 5: But it was still a time. I mean, she worked
Speaker 5: at IBM. She was on the computer all the time.
Speaker 5: So eventually they discovered that she hadn't shown up for work.
Speaker 5: The stepsister did, and the stepsister then started calling around.
Speaker 5: She even had a friend go by the apartment and
Speaker 5: you know, looked to see if somebody was home. Of course,
Speaker 5: nobody came to the door. And so at that point,
Speaker 5: the stepsister then contacts the management of the apartment complex
Speaker 5: and gives them permission to go into the apartment to
Speaker 5: unlock the door, because she was on the lease and
Speaker 5: she was able to give them that permission.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And the thing too, is another point was that
Speaker 6: her car was there.
Speaker 5: Correct, her car was there, and so that was an
Speaker 5: immediate red flag. This was not a girl who didn't
Speaker 5: show up for work and not call somebody. This was
Speaker 5: not a girl who didn't return calls from friends and family.
Speaker 5: This was a responsible girl. She over and over and
Speaker 5: over I heard, you know, Stephanie did what she was
Speaker 5: supposed to do. Is Stephanie was a very reliable, responsible
Speaker 5: young woman. And so immediately they knew something just wasn't
Speaker 5: right here in this scenario.
Speaker 6: Now, he gave permission to the manager to be able
Speaker 6: to go into the apartment, and what did he find?
Speaker 6: And then what did he do.
Speaker 5: Who's actually a female manager, and she had one of
Speaker 5: the maintenance staff opened the door. They went in and
Speaker 5: they found Stephanie in not in her bedroom, but in
Speaker 5: the bedroom of one of the roommates, and she had
Speaker 5: been sexually assaulted and murdered. And at the time they
Speaker 5: didn't know how she had died. It was later discovered
Speaker 5: that she was strangled, but there were clear marks on
Speaker 5: her neck and around her wrists and ankles where she
Speaker 5: had been tied up. And so it was just, you know,
Speaker 5: as you can imagine for somebody that doesn't know somebody
Speaker 5: even it was just an awful, awful scene to witness that,
Speaker 5: and of course it was very difficult and emotional for
Speaker 5: that manager to see that, and then she immediately called
Speaker 5: the police.
Speaker 6: Now the person that's one of the well is the
Speaker 6: first responder, is Lieutenant Chris Morgan and Major Crimes Task Force.
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Speaker 6: Can you tell us a little bit about this man's character?
Speaker 6: What was he like?
Speaker 5: He's a veteran cop, he is, he's an old school cop.
Speaker 5: I mean, Chris had been a coup for almost thirty years.
Speaker 5: And I actually wrote another book with Chris called Deadly
Speaker 5: Deus prior to this book, where he was the lead
Speaker 5: investigator up until the end this case. He actually retired
Speaker 5: before it was completed, but he was absolutely passionate about it.
Speaker 5: And Chris is again he's an old school cop. He's
Speaker 5: somebody that he's got a big personality, a big stature.
Speaker 5: He's a good old boy on one hand, and then
Speaker 5: on the other hand he's quoting Shakespeare. Just a very
Speaker 5: intelligent guy, a guy that had a lot of street smarts,
Speaker 5: you know, just sometimes went with his gut, and that's
Speaker 5: not always popular in today's world where we want everything
Speaker 5: nailed down with facts and DNA and specific scientific evidence,
Speaker 5: and Chris was more kind of an off the cuff
Speaker 5: kind of guy. Most of the time he was right.
Speaker 5: He wasn't always right, and he would be the first
Speaker 5: person to admit that, but quite a character and just
Speaker 5: passionate about the cases that he covered, to the point
Speaker 5: where again he would admit he just got very very
Speaker 5: close to the victims' families and to the victims themselves.
Speaker 5: I mean, Chris was a guy that you walked into
Speaker 5: his office and he had pictures of the victims up
Speaker 5: on the bulletin board behind his desk, And when I
Speaker 5: would ask him why he did that, he said, because
Speaker 5: I wouldn't always remember who I'm working for. And at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, that's who he was. He
Speaker 5: was somebody that just would do anything, you know, go
Speaker 5: to the mat for these victims and their memories and
Speaker 5: try to do whatever he could to solve these cases.
Speaker 5: And at the time that he responded to this scene,
Speaker 5: Chris had twin daughters that were in their late teens,
Speaker 5: and so you can imagine this was just devastating for
Speaker 5: him because all he could think about was you know
Speaker 5: this could be my daughter. I mean, Stephanie was in
Speaker 5: her early twenties, twenty three years old, and it was
Speaker 5: just he said, it was actually the worst thing he's
Speaker 5: ever seen. Which it's interesting because again, you, as a
Speaker 5: journalist and someone who's covered these cases before, knows that
Speaker 5: there are a lot of crime scenes that are very
Speaker 5: bloody and very very hard to even imagine somebody doing
Speaker 5: that to another human being, and this was not one
Speaker 5: of those scenes. This was not a bloody scene, but
Speaker 5: it was it was just heart wrenching to see this
Speaker 5: young woman who had been just so violated and tortured
Speaker 5: up until the moment she died.
Speaker 6: You said that there was marks where she had been
Speaker 6: tied and bound. There was another thing that Morgan, Chris
Speaker 6: Morgan noticed about the strangulation itself that he thought was unusual.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, and this was later discovered from the autopsy,
Speaker 5: but that it was done with something called a garret,
Speaker 5: which is a French type of a restraint, if you will,
Speaker 5: that has a piece of wood or some other bar
Speaker 5: in it that you actually used to tighten and release
Speaker 5: around the person's neck. So again, it's more than just
Speaker 5: cutting off somebody's air supply it's slowly killing them and
Speaker 5: at that point that person obviously knows what's happening, that
Speaker 5: they're dying, and it's just a it's a it's a
Speaker 5: you know, absolute torture is what it is. And this
Speaker 5: was somebody that Chris immediately thought, this is not somebody
Speaker 5: who knows this woman. And this because it didn't appear
Speaker 5: to be a disorganized crime or crime of passion. This
Speaker 5: seems to be something that was well planned, well organized
Speaker 5: by somebody that knew exactly what they were doing. And again,
Speaker 5: very frightening to think about that kind of a person
Speaker 5: in a place like Raleigh, North Carolina that rarely ever
Speaker 5: has a.
Speaker 6: Crime like this and now is on the loose as well.
Speaker 6: And what I also what Morgan had said as well,
Speaker 6: which is evidence of what you're saying, is that when
Speaker 6: using the garage, that this is somebody that had some
Speaker 6: sort of pre planning or at least understands strangulation. It's
Speaker 6: very disturbing to realize that that they have this method.
Speaker 6: It's not yeah, you say, it's not in the.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, I've covered several domestic cases where the
Speaker 5: assailant has tried to smother or strangle somebody and not
Speaker 5: done so successfully and ended up using other means. And
Speaker 5: the reason is because those of us who watch television,
Speaker 5: you watch a lifetime movie, you think it's very easy
Speaker 5: to cut off somebody's air supply with your hands or
Speaker 5: by putting a pillow over their face, and that's just
Speaker 5: simply not the case. It's much harder than a look.
Speaker 5: So this was a guy who really knew what he
Speaker 5: was doing and brought his implements with him. There was
Speaker 5: nothing left at the scene, and that was the other thing.
Speaker 5: So the restraints were gone from the ankles and from
Speaker 5: her wrists, and the implement that was used to strangle
Speaker 5: her was also gone. So this was somebody who pre
Speaker 5: planned this very carefully.
Speaker 6: Now, what did police conclude in their investigation about how
Speaker 6: we got into the building or what was involved with
Speaker 6: him attacking Stephanie Bennett in her own home. What do
Speaker 6: they conclude?
Speaker 5: Well, what they surmised that he had come in through
Speaker 5: a window. There was a window in this extra bedroom
Speaker 5: that belonged to one of the roommates, Emily Metro, the
Speaker 5: friend that was not the stepsister, and she was out
Speaker 5: of town visiting her boyfriend at the time and the window.
Speaker 5: It's still unclear whether the window was unlocked and left
Speaker 5: open or whether the window wouldn't lock. There was a
Speaker 5: faulty window lock, and so there was some question as
Speaker 5: to exactly what happened with that window. But they found
Speaker 5: things under the window, some pine needles that could have
Speaker 5: come off the bush on the outside of the window
Speaker 5: where he came in. They also found some things that
Speaker 5: had been on the window sill that had been moved,
Speaker 5: and so the thought was that he had to move
Speaker 5: them in order not to knock them over. The belief
Speaker 5: is that he probably had been watching the apartment and
Speaker 5: knew that she was alone that night, and so therefore
Speaker 5: he could even maybe if the window was slightly a jar,
Speaker 5: heard her talking on the phone about being home alone,
Speaker 5: and been monitoring that. The thought is that he could
Speaker 5: have come in while she was still awake and then
Speaker 5: waited until she went to sleep. Before he went into
Speaker 5: her room, the covers of her bed were pulled back
Speaker 5: very neatly and folded very neatly on the floor, So
Speaker 5: investigators believed that she was in fact asleep when he
Speaker 5: did enter her room, and that he then pulled back
Speaker 5: the covers and restrained her somehow she slept with pillows
Speaker 5: kind of around her in the U shape, and the
Speaker 5: pillows were found in that shape. So there was a
Speaker 5: half a glass of iced tea next to the bed.
Speaker 5: She was reading a Harry Potter book that was left
Speaker 5: open on the nightstand, and so again she had a
Speaker 5: night just like any other night where she did what
Speaker 5: a lot of us do. We get into bed, we
Speaker 5: read a book, we have a drink next to the bed,
Speaker 5: and we go to sleep, and then of course was
Speaker 5: awoken to this awful scene. She had one slight defensive
Speaker 5: mark above her eye and also a few scratches around
Speaker 5: her knee area. And they think that maybe that's Tho's
Speaker 5: occurred when he initially startled her in her bed before
Speaker 5: he restrained her, and then of course she was no
Speaker 5: longer able to fight back.
Speaker 6: Now they found plenty of DNA evidence in plenty of places,
Speaker 6: I will say, on Stephanie's body, correct ample DNA evidence.
Speaker 6: He left his seamen at the scene. How do police
Speaker 6: proceed with this case from there?
Speaker 5: Well, of course DNA is the best evidence you can have,
Speaker 5: but it's also the worst evidence if you have nothing
Speaker 5: to match it to. And in this case, he clearly
Speaker 5: knew what he was doing. He knew that he was
Speaker 5: leaving DNA all over the scene, and he didn't care.
Speaker 5: And he didn't care because his DNA was not on file.
Speaker 5: In North Carolina, we have a law now, we have
Speaker 5: a law that if you are convicted of a felony
Speaker 5: that your DNA immediately goes into this database. And so
Speaker 5: if we had had that law, it really wouldn't have mattered.
Speaker 5: We didn't have it at the time, but it wouldn't
Speaker 5: have mattered because he had never been convicted of a
Speaker 5: crime and he knew that. He knew that. So they
Speaker 5: were very frustrated. It was a needle in a haystack situation,
Speaker 5: and they started just basically going through these apartment complexes.
Speaker 5: Every single man anywhere in that vicinity was asked to
Speaker 5: do a mouth swab, was a Q tip, which they
Speaker 5: would then test at our State Bureau Investigation lab to
Speaker 5: see if the DNA was a match. And so it
Speaker 5: was just this constant process of elimination, but really with
Speaker 5: no end in sight, because it could have been anybody.
Speaker 5: I mean, the suspect was any man that had any
Speaker 5: access to that apartment complex, which again could have been anybody.
Speaker 6: Now you mentioned the Peeping Tom. Maybe I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 6: a little bit, but do police when do police make
Speaker 6: a connection that the Peeping Tom may have been the
Speaker 6: same person? And what is the initial sort of description
Speaker 6: for other police at least I know they didn't release
Speaker 6: a composite right away, But what exactly did the police
Speaker 6: have as any kind of suspect at all?
Speaker 5: Well, initially, clearly, I mean, the Peeping Tom is initially
Speaker 5: looked at as the suspect and there is a very
Speaker 5: early composite of him that involves a hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses.
Speaker 5: Actually that was a later composite. The earlier composite didn't
Speaker 5: have all those details. But there was an earlier composite
Speaker 5: of the of the Peeping Tom, and for some reason
Speaker 5: they started to move away from that, which was a
Speaker 5: fatal mistake because it eventually the investigation lagged for several years,
Speaker 5: languished really until these investigators came on and started to
Speaker 5: read look at that theory. And it makes sense because
Speaker 5: the bottom line is not all Peeping Tom's rape, but
Speaker 5: all rapists are Peeping Tom's at some point, is what
Speaker 5: you will hear from any kind of forensic investigators and
Speaker 5: in this case. They did revisit this, but it took
Speaker 5: about two years to go back to the peeping tom
Speaker 5: And when they did and they started talking to more people,
Speaker 5: they got a better description. And that description included tall,
Speaker 5: lanky sunglasses, walking, a big dog, hooded sweatshirt, I mean,
Speaker 5: pretty specific stuff to the point where they were able
Speaker 5: to start to zero in on who this person might be.
Speaker 6: Now, the people that came on board and looked at
Speaker 6: this case with new eyes and a new perspective were
Speaker 6: Ken Copeland and his partner Jackie Taylor. Tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about these and how they infused this new
Speaker 6: energy into this investigation.
Speaker 5: Correct, When Chris Morgan retired and he was very frustrated
Speaker 5: that he couldn't solve this case. It was actually one
Speaker 5: of the most difficult things about his retirement that he
Speaker 5: left without solving this case. He tapped Ken Copeland to
Speaker 5: handle this case and actually a lot of people thought
Speaker 5: Ken didn't have enough experience at the time to do that.
Speaker 5: Chris saw something and Ken that he really didn't have
Speaker 5: it himself. Was this very methodical way of approaching a case,
Speaker 5: looking at every single thing, not throwing anything away. And
Speaker 5: in fact, he dubbed Ken the garbage man, because Ken
Speaker 5: picked up every scrap of evidence or every scrap of
Speaker 5: potential evidence and looked at it. Things that Chris would
Speaker 5: have said, I'm moving on, I'm not looking at that.
Speaker 5: That's the kind of stuff Ken looked at. Ken was
Speaker 5: a former marine. He's a Native American, first person in
Speaker 5: his family to go to college. Ken had really risen
Speaker 5: up through the ranks of the Raleigh Police Department and
Speaker 5: made his family very proud. But a very humble guy
Speaker 5: and a guy that was very easy to talk to
Speaker 5: for the average person, and that also bode well, you know,
Speaker 5: for being an investigator because he was able to get
Speaker 5: people to open up to him. Jackie was a female investigator,
Speaker 5: kind of an anomaly in the Raleigh Police Department at
Speaker 5: the time and was kind of a mother hen to
Speaker 5: the other detectives. But again, her special strengths was interrogating
Speaker 5: slash investigating people or interviewing people because she was a
Speaker 5: woman who had this kind of motherly nurturing way about
Speaker 5: her and people would open up to her. So they
Speaker 5: were a great combination. They were a great team with
Speaker 5: the way that they approached the case, and they went
Speaker 5: back through thousands of pages of documents that had been
Speaker 5: amassed over this two year period and tips and leads,
Speaker 5: and they just started looking through all this stuff and
Speaker 5: they came back to the peeping tom. They just said,
Speaker 5: this is what makes sense. And they started to piece
Speaker 5: together the descriptions and they started to reinterview some people,
Speaker 5: and their big break actually came from just doing good
Speaker 5: old fashioned police work knocking on doors, and they ended
Speaker 5: up at the apartment complex, not where Stephanie lived, but
Speaker 5: apartment complex about fifty yards through the woods from where
Speaker 5: Stephanie lived, and they got the tip that really led
Speaker 5: them in the right direction.
Speaker 6: How did they did get an original tip that this
Speaker 6: guy lived in the Dominion apartments at one time? So
Speaker 6: then the officers at Copeland and Taylor went to the
Speaker 6: apartment tell us it was real fascinating how it almost
Speaker 6: didn't happen as well.
Speaker 5: I mean they were talking exactly. I mean it was
Speaker 5: very casual. The apartment complex where Stephanie lived. The father,
Speaker 5: her father, Carmen, had file the lawsuit ement against the
Speaker 5: apartment complex basically saying they were negligent in their security
Speaker 5: procedures and that's why his daughter was a victim. And
Speaker 5: so as a result, that apartment complex had really shut down.
Speaker 5: They were no longer talking to the police. So Ken
Speaker 5: and Jackie went next door and they did what they
Speaker 5: always do, you know. They chatted, They drank tea, they
Speaker 5: ate cookies, they hung out.
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Speaker 5: Eighteen plus out in the apartment office, and so Ken
Speaker 5: starts talking very casually about this description that was becoming
Speaker 5: much more clear of this peeping tom. And he said,
Speaker 5: anybody know this guy, big guy, lanky, kind of strange,
Speaker 5: didn't look you in the eye, wore sunglasses, walked a
Speaker 5: big dog, and a woman walks out from the back
Speaker 5: office and says, I know him. That's Drew Planton. He
Speaker 5: used to live here and he's a strange bird. And
Speaker 5: so all of a sudden, after years of investigating this case,
Speaker 5: they had a name. All of a sudden, they had
Speaker 5: this name to go with this this description, and it
Speaker 5: was the turning point in the case to get that name,
Speaker 5: and then they were able to again corroborate some of
Speaker 5: this information. But they went to another apartment of a
Speaker 5: woman that had lived there for a long time, and
Speaker 5: they said to her, do you know this man? Have
Speaker 5: you heard this man? And she said, well, that's the
Speaker 5: man that killed that girl. And he said, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: well you know, how long have you thought this? And
Speaker 5: she said, I know, we were talking about it. You know,
Speaker 5: I don't remember when, but the crime scene takes was
Speaker 5: still up, so you know, basically, right after this murder happened,
Speaker 5: neighbors were talking about the sky and somehow, even in
Speaker 5: all the interviews that they did, in all the canvassing
Speaker 5: that they did of that neighborhood, that name never came
Speaker 5: up in the early stages of the investigation. And it
Speaker 5: was two years later, a lot more than two years actually,
Speaker 5: by the time that you know, Jackie and Ken got
Speaker 5: to that name.
Speaker 6: Right now as a result of having Drew Planting as
Speaker 6: a suspect. Tell us about the police's approach of this.
Speaker 6: What was their strategy to be able to speak with him,
Speaker 6: And obviously they're trying to look for a DNA sample,
Speaker 6: So what was their first approach and what was Drew
Speaker 6: Plantin's first reaction and how did he act when police
Speaker 6: confronted him and spoke to them.
Speaker 5: Initially, they went to his apartment a couple of times,
Speaker 5: or the address that they believed to be his apartment,
Speaker 5: and they got in a response. Nobody came to door.
Speaker 5: There was a big dog that they heard on the
Speaker 5: other side of the door, So they felt pretty confident
Speaker 5: that they had the right apartment because they had gotten
Speaker 5: the information from the Department of Motor Vehicles. They didn't
Speaker 5: think the picture looked like the composite, but they thought,
Speaker 5: you know, we're still going to check this out, and
Speaker 5: they were doing it in between all of their other
Speaker 5: murder cases that continued to go on. So they finally
Speaker 5: got some information about where he worked, and it turns
Speaker 5: out he was a scientist who worked for the Agriculture
Speaker 5: Department for the State of North Carolina in one of
Speaker 5: their laboratories. So they decided they would confront him at work,
Speaker 5: and they went to his office and they asked for him,
Speaker 5: and Jackie specifically remembers him coming down the stairs at
Speaker 5: the office and there was a glass partition and she
Speaker 5: was looking at him and she said it was uncanny.
Speaker 5: It was exactly how they described him. I mean, he
Speaker 5: had this gaunt look about him. He was just this tall,
Speaker 5: lanky man, long kind of straggly hair and looking down
Speaker 5: at the ground. And when he came up to them,
Speaker 5: he you know, put his hand out to shake his
Speaker 5: hand once they introduced himself, and Ken said, on one hand,
Speaker 5: he looked like you could just knock him over with
Speaker 5: a feather, that he was just so frail. But on
Speaker 5: the other hand, he said, his handshake was like a
Speaker 5: death grip. It was like a vice. It was so strong.
Speaker 5: And Ken, you know, again, this big guy, he's a marine.
Speaker 5: He looks like a marine, you know, big muscular guy.
Speaker 5: And so for Ken to say that his handshake was
Speaker 5: that strong really meant something. And right away they felt
Speaker 5: like they had to look into the guy, that something
Speaker 5: was not right, that everything about him seemed very strange,
Speaker 5: and that they were possibly standing there talking to the
Speaker 5: person who had killed Stephanie Bennett.
Speaker 6: Now tell us a little bit. Let's for the audience.
Speaker 6: Let's give a little bit of background on Drew Planton,
Speaker 6: and also tell her audience about Drew Planton's mother and
Speaker 6: what her occupation is, because that's going to be important.
Speaker 6: I think it is important to the story.
Speaker 5: It is absolutely yet. Drew Planton grew up in Michigan.
Speaker 5: He was one of four boys, and his mother actually
Speaker 5: had moved the family from New Jersey when they were
Speaker 5: younger amid allegations of domestic violence from their father. She
Speaker 5: was basically somebody who pulled herself up by the bootstraps,
Speaker 5: put herself through college through excuse me, through law school,
Speaker 5: became a lawyer, and became very active in this community
Speaker 5: in Michigan in dealing with domestic violence issues and even
Speaker 5: open to domestic violence shelter. Drew Planton was always a
Speaker 5: very reclusive, shy, antisocial young man, very bright, did well
Speaker 5: in school, but really didn't have many other interests and
Speaker 5: no friends to speak of outside of school, and he'd
Speaker 5: done a couple of odd jobs in Michigan, but nothing
Speaker 5: really stuck, and then he eventually had interviewed for this
Speaker 5: chemist position over the phone in Raleigh and gotten the job.
Speaker 5: And so he had left Michigan in the late nineties
Speaker 5: and gone to Raleigh, which was a completely foreign territory
Speaker 5: for him from the area around Landsting, Michigan where he
Speaker 5: grew up. But his mother felt like, you know, this
Speaker 5: was a good opportunity for him to kind of start
Speaker 5: his life. And he had some connections to Raleigh. He
Speaker 5: had a brother that had gotten married there, and he
Speaker 5: had another brother in the western part of the state,
Speaker 5: so there were some connections to North Carolina. But again,
Speaker 5: even once he moved to North Carolina, there's no indication
Speaker 5: that he had any friends or any social life, or
Speaker 5: really any connection with anybody outside of the workplace. And
Speaker 5: even in the workplace, he was very reclusive. After that
Speaker 5: first meeting with the detectives, they asked if they could
Speaker 5: meet him at his apartment and have an interview, and
Speaker 5: he agreed to do that, and that in itself was
Speaker 5: just another kind of a red flag for Jackie and
Speaker 5: Ken because when they got to the apartment, he let
Speaker 5: them in, but just very just a few feet in
Speaker 5: the door it was clear he didn't want them to
Speaker 5: look around. It was also clear that he had prepared
Speaker 5: very carefully for the interview and that he was not
Speaker 5: going to give up any information that he didn't have
Speaker 5: to give up. I mean again, his mother's a lawyer,
Speaker 5: and they knew that about him. And during the interview
Speaker 5: there were a few things that were inconsistent with what
Speaker 5: they knew to be true, and they immediately started to
Speaker 5: be suspicious about him. He said, for example, that he
Speaker 5: never wore glasses, but the DMV records showed that he
Speaker 5: had a restricted license. He said that he had never smoked,
Speaker 5: there was evidence that he had smoked, and there we
Speaker 5: was just many little things. But ultimately at the end
Speaker 5: of that interview, they said, will you give us a
Speaker 5: DMA sample? And they said, we know your mother's a lawyer.
Speaker 5: You can think about it for a couple of days
Speaker 5: and let us know. And the deadline that they gave him,
Speaker 5: they waited for that email to come. Ken said, it
Speaker 5: was like watching, you know, a pot of water boiler,
Speaker 5: waiting for that to boil. And he stood around his
Speaker 5: computer and at precisely five o'clock on the deadline day,
Speaker 5: he sent them one line that said, I will not
Speaker 5: give you my DNA, and so at that point it
Speaker 5: was game.
Speaker 6: On, right, So how do they well you can talk
Speaker 6: about Joanne Riley, and how did they go about thinking
Speaker 6: that they might, at least in the beginning, how they
Speaker 6: were going to get a DNA sample from. How did
Speaker 6: they proceed? Whether does he put under surveillance?
Speaker 5: Well, initially they thought they could you get it from
Speaker 5: some kind of a public source, whether it be the
Speaker 5: handle of his car, some kind of a piece of
Speaker 5: trash that he threw down. But he was a scientist
Speaker 5: and he was pretty smart. He knew how not to
Speaker 5: leave his DNA. Whether he knew that they were following
Speaker 5: him or not is still up for debate, but he
Speaker 5: certainly knew that he was under suspicion from the Raleigh police.
Speaker 5: One of the things that Ken did was he made
Speaker 5: a connection with a woman who worked in the laboratory,
Speaker 5: who was supervising the laboratory where Drew Plainton worked, and
Speaker 5: her name was Joanne Riley. And Joanne became in some
Speaker 5: ways almost a you know, a detective. She was somebody
Speaker 5: that clearly wanted to help the police, but she was
Speaker 5: also somebody who clearly believed that Drew Plant was a
Speaker 5: sweet young man who was misunderstood, and she had a
Speaker 5: very motherly kind of relationship with him, or developed a
Speaker 5: motherly relationship with him over the course of the investigation,
Speaker 5: and she really felt like she would be helping to
Speaker 5: clear his name by helping the police get DNA. And
Speaker 5: they had all sorts of scenarios that they went through
Speaker 5: to try to do this. I mean, she had a
Speaker 5: day where she gave everybody popsicles, and then she went
Speaker 5: to take his popsicle sticks from his drawer because he
Speaker 5: kept all of his trash. Again, this is the scientist
Speaker 5: knowing that the DNA leaves the trail, and so he's
Speaker 5: throwing things away. He's not throwing anything away, he's washing
Speaker 5: things down, I mean to the point where they said
Speaker 5: he even cut up his trash and flushed it down
Speaker 5: the toilet. And so she went to retrieve these popsicle sticks,
Speaker 5: and he came into the lab and she heard him
Speaker 5: come in, and she was terrified because she was starting
Speaker 5: to believe, well, maybe I'm wrong, maybe he could be guilty.
Speaker 5: And she took those popsicle sticks and put them in
Speaker 5: the waistband of her pants so that he would not
Speaker 5: see her, and it ended up that they were never
Speaker 5: able to get DNA from that source. But there were
Speaker 5: several other incidents and ultimately Joanne's help was a big
Speaker 5: part of them, of them getting some DNA that led
Speaker 5: them in the right.
Speaker 6: Direction about the eventual like you said, there's all these
Speaker 6: missteps where the popsicle stick, she was there, she was
Speaker 6: in the drawer, he comes in, she has to abandon
Speaker 6: the operation. But now she has told police that he
Speaker 6: has gloves that he uses all the time, and the
Speaker 6: police ascertained that this may be their best bet. So
Speaker 6: what do they do? They know they there is a
Speaker 6: decision that they could swab the gloves, but what did
Speaker 6: they ultimately do?
Speaker 5: Well there and they're worried that if they take the
Speaker 5: gloves that he'll notice, and of course they're concerned that
Speaker 5: he could hurt himself, could hurt other people, or he
Speaker 5: could run. And what led up to this was they
Speaker 5: did have a lunch at a buffet restaurant the Joanne
Speaker 5: set up, and they had two undercover police officers there
Speaker 5: and during that lunch and he usually ate finger food
Speaker 5: and so they didn't think they were going to get anything,
Speaker 5: but at one point he picks up a fork and
Speaker 5: eats some banana pudding with it. Then he sticks the
Speaker 5: fork in his glass of water, wipes it down, and
Speaker 5: they leave the lunch and well, the police take that fork, thinking,
Speaker 5: you know, there may be nothing here, but we're going
Speaker 5: to get it tested. They take it to the SBI lab,
Speaker 5: and the scientists from the lab calls and says, I've
Speaker 5: got good and bad news. The good news is there
Speaker 5: are six chromsonal markers out of the sixteen needed to
Speaker 5: connect this DNA with the killer's DNA, and that's a
Speaker 5: great start. Won't hold up in court, but you're going
Speaker 5: in the right direction. The bad news was there was
Speaker 5: also other DNA on the fork, which meant the fork
Speaker 5: kidnapped properly washed by the restaurant. But long story short,
Speaker 5: that put them in the direction of knowing they had
Speaker 5: to get DNA from the lab because they knew for
Speaker 5: sure that was a place where his DNA would be
Speaker 5: found again. Even though he's cleaning up, he's wiping down services,
Speaker 5: he's literally picking his hair up off the ground when
Speaker 5: he brushes his hair if he leaves the strand. So
Speaker 5: they finally got the DA to agree to go into
Speaker 5: the lab and be able to take these gloves, and
Speaker 5: they replace the gloves with another set, and they tested
Speaker 5: the clubs and it was a match. And so at
Speaker 5: that point they decided we could wait or we could
Speaker 5: just go for it, because waiting again could cause these
Speaker 5: other scenarios of somebody getting hurt, or him hurting himself,
Speaker 5: or him running. And another little side bar to this
Speaker 5: is that they also tested his brother's DNA in the
Speaker 5: western part of the state because his brother had been
Speaker 5: charged with basically a peeping crime. He had set up
Speaker 5: a camera in a woman's bathroom in the architectural firm
Speaker 5: where he worked, so he had a history of sex crimes.
Speaker 5: And no two people's DNA are exactly alike, but brothers
Speaker 5: siblings are closer than any others. And so their thought was,
Speaker 5: we need to check his DNA to make sure it's
Speaker 5: not him. That he hadn't come and visited, so his
Speaker 5: DNA was not a match, and Drew Planton's DNA was
Speaker 5: a perfect match.
Speaker 6: Right now, when they we have the officer Sperlin and
Speaker 6: Mark Goody or Booty and tell us about the day
Speaker 6: that they actually run the DNA, they get enough DNA
Speaker 6: and they run Drew planton's DNA through there. And who
Speaker 6: do they call first, and.
Speaker 5: What's mean, you know, everybody again they've been working in
Speaker 5: this case for three and a half years, and they call.
Speaker 5: They call Ken, who is at the fairgrounds because he's
Speaker 5: working off duty security at our state fair. And you know,
Speaker 5: he's just overjoyed, and Jackie's jumping up and down, and
Speaker 5: the district Attorney, Susan Sperlin, as you mentioned, she's the
Speaker 5: one who gives the go ahead to say, you know what,
Speaker 5: we're going to take him down. We're not going to
Speaker 5: wait because we can't afford to wait. And Mark Boudet
Speaker 5: is this SBI agent who's done all of this elimination
Speaker 5: testing for years and now finally he's got the match,
Speaker 5: and so you know, there's just a lot of relief, excitement.
Speaker 5: You know, we're going in the right direction. And they
Speaker 5: surround the the agriculture lab and they called Joanne and
Speaker 5: they tell Joanne what's going on, and of course Joanne is,
Speaker 5: you know, upset. It's a match. It's a match, they
Speaker 5: tell her. But she knows at this point that she's
Speaker 5: you know, they've got it, and she's got to move
Speaker 5: forward and help the police and they tell her to
Speaker 5: find him in the building, and he's now kind of disappeared.
Speaker 5: It's after work hours, and she started to get nervous, thinking,
Speaker 5: I'm alone in the building with a killer, and so
Speaker 5: she comes out and they call her and they tell
Speaker 5: her to go back in. And now she's really upset
Speaker 5: because she really doesn't want to do this, and she
Speaker 5: starts to go back in the building and he's coming
Speaker 5: out and she holds the door open for him, and
Speaker 5: he's bringing his bike because at this point his car
Speaker 5: was not working. And the Ken Copeland was in the van,
Speaker 5: like a surveillance van with the SWAT team, and they
Speaker 5: weren't told who the arrest was or what it was about.
Speaker 5: All they were told is this is the person. You
Speaker 5: have to take them down. They may be armed, and
Speaker 5: so they bring him down to the ground and Ken says,
Speaker 5: you are under the arrest for the murder of Stephanie
Speaker 5: Renee Bennett. And these guys in flack jackets with helmets
Speaker 5: and you know, large semi automatic weapons are cheering and
Speaker 5: hugging and crying. Because this was such an emotional case
Speaker 5: for members of the Raleigh Police Department who had followed
Speaker 5: this for so long, and he was armed. They found
Speaker 5: a gun in his cargo pants, and they believed that
Speaker 5: Hadid had an opportunity to get to that gun, it
Speaker 5: would have been suicide by cop because he did not
Speaker 5: want to be taken down. He wanted to be killed,
Speaker 5: or it would have killed himself before he would have
Speaker 5: been taken into custody, you know, for what was about
Speaker 5: to come next. He knew was not going to be good.
Speaker 5: There was not going to be a good outcome.
Speaker 6: Here now a little bit later, and because I want
Speaker 6: to introduce this character too, because he's fairly important, is
Speaker 6: Michael Tigue, and he's the forensic psychologist, and he think
Speaker 6: about the gun, Drew having the gun, he had a
Speaker 6: little different twist on or a little different take and
Speaker 6: idea why he.
Speaker 5: Thought, well, he really, I mean, he felt that Drew
Speaker 5: Planton was a control person and that his last ultimate,
Speaker 5: you know, act of control would be to take his
Speaker 5: own life so that he would not be in a
Speaker 5: position of having to ever sit in a courtroom and
Speaker 5: answer questions or just listen to people talk about him.
Speaker 5: That that was the worst thing that he could imagine,
Speaker 5: was to be the center of attention. And so doctor
Speaker 5: Tigue witnessed the if you will, the interview that night
Speaker 5: where they had him in the interview room and Jackie
Speaker 5: and Ken and alternately came in and out, and Drew
Speaker 5: Planton never said a word. He was restrained and he
Speaker 5: was sitting in the room and he never said a word.
Speaker 5: He sat there and basically went into what appeared to
Speaker 5: be a completely unresponsive catatonic state. Now doctor Teague believed
Speaker 5: that it was he was making it up, that he
Speaker 5: had resigned himself to the fact that again nothing good
Speaker 5: was going to come of this, and that he had
Speaker 5: just decided to shut down. But it was, you know,
Speaker 5: up for debate as to whether he was literally, you know,
Speaker 5: in a catatonic state, or whether he had just decided
Speaker 5: I'm not going to talk and I'm going to act
Speaker 5: as though I can't communicate. But he was not communicating
Speaker 5: at all, and never did. He went to court the
Speaker 5: next day. They had to wheel him in. He was
Speaker 5: tethered to a wheelchair, and they said the reason for
Speaker 5: that was that, you know, he was not He wouldn't walk,
Speaker 5: he wouldn't go to the bathroom, he wouldn't eat, he
Speaker 5: was just acting completely unresponsive. And from there they sent
Speaker 5: him to the prison because they said they couldn't keep
Speaker 5: him in the jail, send him to the prison that
Speaker 5: had mental health facilities, which was just down the street,
Speaker 5: which was ultimately also the place that, had he been
Speaker 5: convicted or received the death penalty, it was the prison
Speaker 5: that he would have ended up in any way. So
Speaker 5: he went there almost immediately after his arrest.
Speaker 6: Now that was the first interview, and obviously he obtained
Speaker 6: to obtain the services of a lawyer at some point.
Speaker 6: Just tell us how police proceed with this. He's obviously
Speaker 6: gone for mental assessment. How the things work from there.
Speaker 5: Well, the next thing that happened is they received search
Speaker 5: warrants to search his apartment, and that was very eye
Speaker 5: opening because when they finally were able to get into
Speaker 5: his apartment, they learned a lot about him. He was
Speaker 5: a hoarder. He had, if you can imagine this floor
Speaker 5: to ceiling boxes full of pornography, many magazines and movie
Speaker 5: it had never been opened, video games, shoes, clothing, He
Speaker 5: had fetishes for many different things. Shoes was one of
Speaker 5: the things that they think that he was obsessed with
Speaker 5: for some reason, kind of shoes. Again, never opened up.
Speaker 5: A lot of items belonging to women. He had lists
Speaker 5: of other women, map quest directions to their homes, articles
Speaker 5: ripped out of the paper from the different murders, well
Speaker 5: Stephanie's murder specifically. But then they found something really interesting,
Speaker 5: which was they found a check and some items taken
Speaker 5: from a girl's house in Michigan. And they started to
Speaker 5: run all these names through their computers. And again, this
Speaker 5: is ten years ago. It wasn't quite as easy to
Speaker 5: google somebody, but they were getting hits from some of
Speaker 5: their law enforcement databases. And one of these women, it
Speaker 5: turned out, had been killed. A woman by the name Rebecca,
Speaker 5: had been killed in Michigan, had been murdered six years prior,
Speaker 5: and so all of a sudden they started to see
Speaker 5: this picture of this may not be the only incident.
Speaker 5: This guy may be a serial killer. And so they
Speaker 5: immediately contacted the Lansing, Michigan police and started trying to
Speaker 5: connect these cases. And they found a gun in the
Speaker 5: apartment in Raleigh with a ballistics that matched this basically
Speaker 5: what had become a cold case, Rebecca Husman's case in
Speaker 5: Michigan six years prior. And in fact, that detective said
Speaker 5: that he never put those files away. He said they
Speaker 5: sat on the corner of his desk and got dusty
Speaker 5: because he always knew that someday the case would be
Speaker 5: would be solved. And it was a woman, a young woman.
Speaker 5: She was a dancer at a local bar, and she
Speaker 5: was shot as she was getting out of her car
Speaker 5: at her apartment complex early one morning. Completely different m
Speaker 5: But there were other cases in the Michigan area that
Speaker 5: were similar to Stephanie's case, and they had a task
Speaker 5: force looking at all of the cases and they were
Speaker 5: never able to connect Drew Plant into those cases, but
Speaker 5: they always believed that there were other women and that
Speaker 5: Rebecca and Stephanie were just the two that they could prove.
Speaker 5: At that point, was.
Speaker 6: There enough evidence to be able to prosecute him for
Speaker 6: the Rebecca's murder as well?
Speaker 5: There was the ballistics was an absolute match, and they
Speaker 5: were also able to go back and find a sighting
Speaker 5: of him in the neighborhood where she was killed. The
Speaker 5: district attorney said that absolutely he was in line to
Speaker 5: be charged for that case and would have been charged
Speaker 5: for that case, but that was not to be because he,
Speaker 5: you know, he was in the prison, he started to talk,
Speaker 5: he started to get more privileges, he started to talk
Speaker 5: to the psychiatrist, and so he started to get more
Speaker 5: freedom in the prison and he was no longer under
Speaker 5: a suicide watch, and ultimately he took his own life.
Speaker 5: He hung himself in his jail cell with a sheet,
Speaker 5: and it happened basically, he was arrested in October, and
Speaker 5: this happened just a day after New Year's in two
Speaker 5: thousand and six, and so the case was just over.
Speaker 5: It just ended, and it was quite a bittersweet ending
Speaker 5: for a lot of people because for Stephanie's family, they
Speaker 5: felt like they never got any answers, and for the investigators,
Speaker 5: they felt like they had worked so hard to bring
Speaker 5: him to justice and yet they too would never get
Speaker 5: any answers as to why somebody would do this and
Speaker 5: why Stephanie, and maybe get some answers that would help
Speaker 5: them prevent something like this from happening.
Speaker 6: So I never spoke to any psychologists. They were not
Speaker 6: successful in speaking to him when he was at the
Speaker 6: institution whatsoever.
Speaker 5: Nothing was they did, But none of that information ever
Speaker 5: became public because the case ended once he killed himself,
Speaker 5: and had it gone to trial, there certainly would have
Speaker 5: been a psychiatric evaluation that would have been part of
Speaker 5: the court record, part of the public record, but as
Speaker 5: you know, with hipparegulations, there was really nothing that was
Speaker 5: ever made public from that situation. His mother did sue
Speaker 5: the prison system, saying that they were negligent in allowing
Speaker 5: him to come off the suicide watch. But again kind
Speaker 5: of going back to doctor Tiege's theory, this guy was
Speaker 5: very bright and his ultimate form of control was making
Speaker 5: sure that even to the very end, that he was
Speaker 5: calling the shots. And that's exactly what he did when
Speaker 5: he took his own life because he was able to
Speaker 5: stay out of the courtroom, never put himself through that,
Speaker 5: and also never give up any information that might have
Speaker 5: made some difference in terms of again preventing this from
Speaker 5: happening in the future and maybe giving Stephanie's family a
Speaker 5: little bit of peace. I hate the word closure. I
Speaker 5: don't ever use it because it doesn't ever happen. And
Speaker 5: they are people who are still very much grieving their daughter,
Speaker 5: the loss of their beautiful daughter, as do every family
Speaker 5: that does, every family that loses a loved one. But
Speaker 5: they did want answers. They wanted they wanted to know
Speaker 5: what this guy, you know, what made him tick, and
Speaker 5: they wanted to know more about what happened, and maybe
Speaker 5: they would have found out. Maybe they wouldn't have. I mean,
Speaker 5: if he didn't talk, I don't know that they ever
Speaker 5: would have gotten those answers. But I think that there
Speaker 5: was just a real or a bittersweet feeling as to
Speaker 5: how the whole thing ended.
Speaker 6: Well, it was a somewhat happy ending, and at least
Speaker 6: that they did find their men and and that their
Speaker 6: you know, their efforts were rewarded at least, and you know,
Speaker 6: it's not closure whatsoever, but at least when somebody's in prison,
Speaker 6: there is at least less unanswered questions who did it?
Speaker 6: It becomes not so much the issue what was the
Speaker 6: reaction from the family. What was the reaction? I mean,
Speaker 6: obviously it would be pretty obvious, but what was the
Speaker 6: reaction from say that the father, Carmen and Jennifer.
Speaker 5: The parents, Yeah, I mean, they were they were devastated.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously their goal was to see him brought
Speaker 5: to justice, whether that would be life from prison or
Speaker 5: the death penalty, depending on how the jury went in
Speaker 5: that case. But they they were clearly happy that he
Speaker 5: was off the street, that a dangerous person could no
Speaker 5: longer do this to anybody else's daughter. But they did
Speaker 5: hope to see this go through the court system and
Speaker 5: again find out some answers. And so it was just
Speaker 5: kind of the end, and I think that it made
Speaker 5: it very difficult for them to move beyond the situation
Speaker 5: because it just ended so abruptly. Like I said, Carmen
Speaker 5: Bennett had also filed this lawsuit against the apartment complex, really,
Speaker 5: I think in an effort to do something to be
Speaker 5: able to have some kind of justice for his daughter,
Speaker 5: you know. But again, they were very happy that the
Speaker 5: system had worked from a law enforcement standpoint and that
Speaker 5: this very dangerous person was off the street and would
Speaker 5: no longer be able to hurt anybody else. And you know,
Speaker 5: I think that there was still some thought that had
Speaker 5: had this gone on, had the investigation continued, that again
Speaker 5: they might have been able to solve a few other
Speaker 5: cases other than just Rebecca Huseman and Stephanie Bennett's, because
Speaker 5: it's very unusual for somebody to go that long period
Speaker 5: of time and you know, not kill in between, especially
Speaker 5: somebody that was as methodical and organized as he was.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it seems that if you look at the profile,
Speaker 6: that's and that's what police do these days. They look
Speaker 6: at and they go, yeah, certainly, you you know, people
Speaker 6: escalate in their crimes, and so when you see it
Speaker 6: a particularly organized and yet a very heinous crime scene,
Speaker 6: you realize that they didn't start with this one. It
Speaker 6: just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5: So doesn't exactly And the belief was that Rebecca Huseman's
Speaker 5: murder was probably an aborted attempt, an early attempt to
Speaker 5: do something similar, but it didn't work out, and that's
Speaker 5: why she was not sexually assaulted and she was simply
Speaker 5: shot because they believe maybe he panicked. But again, there
Speaker 5: was this time period in between the two and there
Speaker 5: was evidence that he had runted cars, that he'd gone
Speaker 5: out of town for the weekend, that he had done
Speaker 5: things that were very uncharacteristic of somebody who really didn't
Speaker 5: have any friends or any connections with other people. And so,
Speaker 5: as you know, there were small towns all over the
Speaker 5: United States where people are murdered and they are maybe
Speaker 5: drug addicts or prostitutes, they're homeless, and the investigations go nowhere,
Speaker 5: and their DNA is never put into a database, and
Speaker 5: because they don't have the resources or the technology in
Speaker 5: the particular town and so there may be other cases
Speaker 5: that we'll never know about, and I think that was
Speaker 5: really one of the major things that at least law
Speaker 5: enforcement and the district attorney were upset about that they
Speaker 5: were never able to pursue helping solve some of those
Speaker 5: other cases down the line.
Speaker 6: Rights an amazing tale. I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 6: Amanda for coming on the program and discussing your incredible book,
Speaker 6: A great story and a fantastic reer.
Speaker 5: Thank you Dan much, thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you. I just want to let people know
Speaker 6: you have been listening to Amanda Lamb talk about Evil Nextdoor,
Speaker 6: the untold story of a killer Undone by DNA, and
Speaker 6: you're also the author of Deadly Dose, so a couple
Speaker 6: of great books, no doubt for people to check out.
Speaker 6: So I want to thank you Amana for appearing on
Speaker 6: the program and the best of luck in your writing career.
Speaker 6: I'm sure it'll be be great and we'll be anticipate
Speaker 6: looking for your next book as well. So thank you
Speaker 6: very much.
Speaker 5: Thank you, have a great night, you.
Speaker 6: Too, good night, good bye. Even listening to the program,
Speaker 6: True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history
Speaker 6: and the authors that have written about them, have a
Speaker 6: good evening. Thank you,