For a gathering such as this, the cost of security was surprisingly light. The great bulk of that security was outside, carefully scrutinizing admission. Positively and absolutely no riffraff. Once members of the gallery entered Augusta National, they were secure.
That kind of setup made Stephen Stanko eager. He could drink, meet people, maybe a woman, and plan out his next move. The Augusta locals would be oblivious to a white man with spectacles wearing a golf shirt and khaki pants. Stanko pulled Henry Lee Turner’s Mazda onto the exit ramp for Augusta National and trolled for locations.
SEARCHING
A warrant to search Henry Lee Turner’s home was requested by Investigator Scott Bogart, and granted by a judge, allowing law enforcement to go over the entire house with a fine-tooth comb.
The warrant also allowed the police to search Turner’s small yard and the items in it. Police were particularly eager to search the tan-colored “pop-up” camper parked behind the home, and the red Mustang in the driveway. As it turned out, the search of the camper would bear little fruit. The Mustang was another story....
Things stood just as they had when Roger Turner first noticed, with horror, that his dad’s truck was missing. The only difference was that the entire lot on the cul-de-sac had been sealed off with police tape to prevent curiosity seekers from accidentally contaminating potential evidence.
The search warrant was purposefully open-ended, allowing crime scene specialists to search for and collect just about anything, including biological and trace evidence that might be pertinent to the murder.
Cell phones and computer equipment were subject to seizure—although an additional search warrant would be necessary to search for information stored within those phones and computer hardware.
Police were obliged to seize and process any and all “firearms, shell casings, parts of firearms, projectiles, and live bullets” that might be found.
Investigators Bogart and Pitts performed the search. Among the items seized and processed were an Enterprise Car Rental notepad; a green beer bottle; two cigarette butts; assorted papers and books; a glass mug, with flowers painted on it; a six-pack, with two bottles missing, of a beer called Yuengling Lager; a silver camera; credit cards; two nickels; an Old Timer knife; two spent .38-caliber casings; the bloody pillow silencer; a .22-caliber rifle; a twelve-gauge shotgun; sixteen blood swabs, taken from various spots near to where Turner’s body was found; the victim’s electric razor; a lead projectile resembling a bullet (the test shot); and a Dell personal computer.
From the Mustang, police found a briefcase with assorted papers belonging to Stephen Stanko, including the college-ruled notebook in which Stanko had written his “comedy routine.” (During the course of the investigation, several cops would read the so-called comedic material. None laughed.)
There was also a black folder, manila folders, a cup, bag, and receipt from a Bojangles’ fast-food restaurant, a gray vehicle floor mat, and two blood swabs taken from the steering wheel and the gear shift.
The warrant ordered, as they all do, that a complete inventory of items gathered at the scene be made and presented back to the court. That list was compiled by Bogart and Pitts and returned to the court by the middle of the afternoon of April 9.
On Saturday morning, April 9, Laura Ling’s remains were autopsied at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Kim A. Collins, out of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, noted aloud that the deceased had suffered a puncture wound to the throat. She had been severely beaten about the face and strangled.
There was one bruise on Ling’s face that was of particular evidentiary value. It had a well-defined and unusual shape, and appeared to have been made by a ring, which, if located, might help link the killer and his victim.
During the autopsy, Dr. Collins located and described every wound on Ling’s body. It was a lengthy process. The killer had been prolific with his punishment, and there were many wounds to chart.
That same morning, Henry Lee Turner’s remains were autopsied, in the same hospital as Ling’s. Dr. Kim Collins was in attendance for both postmortem procedures.
Before the surgery, X-rays were taken of his upper body. These pictures would prove to be vivid evidence of the lead slugs inside Henry Lee Turner’s chest.
It turned out that under his blue jeans, purple polo shirt, and black athletic shoes, Turner had been wearing what the coroner referred to as “patriotic boxers” and white socks. Full dentures were still in the victim’s mouth, and a bloody white handkerchief was found in one of his pants pockets.
There was an old adage about crime scenes: A killer always takes away part of his victim, and the victim always takes part of his killer. The search for trace and biological evidence linking killer with victim was exhaustive. Fingernail clippings were taken from each hand. The bloodstained bullets were removed.
Dr. Collins believed Turner had been shot first in the chest, then in the back.
Following the autopsy, the victim’s clothes and dentures were bagged as evidence, items to be scrutinized further by county and state forensic scientists. That evidence—plus the bullets, and a gun residue kit—was officially passed from the Medical University of South Carolina to the Horry County Police Department, at 8:40 P.M. on Saturday. The receiving officer was Detective Neil B. Livingston.
Back in Murrells Inlet, law enforcement was going over Laura Ling’s home carefully, looking for useful information. Police discovered a file cabinet filled with the killer’s paperwork. In the cabinet were his files on serial killers, the product of his hours of real research in the Socastee library. Every file was carefully examined.
In addition to his writings, they found hundreds of clipped magazine and newspaper articles about notorious killers, a scrapbook of deviant violence.
The two largest files were on two killers Stanko obviously found special: Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal.
Sheriff Cribb examined the clippings and read Stanko’s copious notes. Cribb was the first to wonder if what Stanko was really doing in the Socastee library was learning how to become a serial killer.
“We found a lot of information about serial killers,” Cribb said. “He just seems real interested in serial killers, and now he’s starting out, heading that way.”
THE MASTERS
Viewing the world through the windshield of a pickup truck, Stephen Stanko carried out his game plan. The sign said: WELCOME TO AUGUSTA, GEORGIA: HOME OF THE MASTERS. He visited a series of local bars, drinking and mingling with golf fans.
At the first bar, he expressed an interest in going to the tournament and watching Tiger smack it around. Forget about it, he was told. There was no point in going anywhere near the golf course because the event was sold out, and sneaking on was about as easy as robbing Fort Knox.
One of the bars Stanko visited was Rhinehart’s Oyster Bar on Washington Road. A seafood restaurant, there was nothing fancy about it. Rhinehart’s ambience was “beyond casual.” The restaurant’s logo/spokesman, “Buford Pickens,” wore overalls.
Maybe Stanko pretended to drink more than he did, to maintain a maximum manipulative advantage over his newfound drinking buddies. Or, perhaps because of his adrenaline level, he was partially immune to the effects of alcohol.
It was at Rhinehart’s that Stanko met a woman named Dana Laurie Putnam. She thought she noticed him first, but soon they made fervent eye contact and . . . sparks!
Her hair was black,