The Horry County police were trying to sew up locations where Stanko might have left incriminating evidence. They entered the library where Ling worked, spoke briefly to the man in charge, and then sealed off Ling’s office. Crime scene technicians were called to go over Ling’s workspace. On the cops’ way out, they confiscated the library’s copy of Stanko’s book, Living in Prison.
They’d rarely had such a busy day. In addition to processing their murder scene and searching for a killer on the run, they had to deal with protection for those who feared they might be next. An officer was sent to stay with Turner’s girlfriend, Cecilia Kotsipias, who lived in Charlotte, North Carolina.
A lot of info was coming in by phone, and all of it had to be sifted for credibility and usefulness.
Some potentially interesting info came from Jeff Kendall, Stanko’s boss at Stucco Supply. He’d fired Stanko a week before and had to call him on Tuesday to order him to stop telling people he still worked there.
Kendall was still patting himself on the back for hiring Stanko. Not everyone would take on an ex-con. Kendall was the one who had given him a chance. Didn’t work out—but at least he’d tried. He recalled Stanko as a “smooth talker”—wording that found its way onto Stanko’s wanted poster next to “dangerous” and “con man”—as a guy who’d shown no hesitation or shame when talking aloud about prison. If he didn’t talk about prison, he couldn’t brag about his book, and that was where Stanko’s monologues frequently led.
Sunday was the day that Tiger Woods made one of the great shots in golf history. In the morning, Tiger finished his third round three strokes ahead of DiMarco. During the afternoon, the fourth, and final, round was a head-to-head matchup between the two.
Surprisingly, DiMarco didn’t fold and remained in the chase, even regaining the lead. On the sixteenth hole, however, Tiger hit “the Shot,” pitching from the rough to the top of a hill on the green. Gravity took over and the ball changed directions ninety degrees, taking a sharp right-hand turn, and rolled downhill toward the hole. The ball paused dramatically at the lip of the cup. To the delight of the golf ball’s manufacturer, the Nike swoosh was clearly visible on the TV close-up, just before the ball plopped into the hole.
Verne Lundquist, who was calling the action for CBS-TV, said, “Here it comes. . . . Oh, my goodness! Oh wow! In your life, have you seen anything like that?” TV audiences saw Tiger victoriously punching the air.
After seventy-two holes, Woods and DiMarco were tied, and Woods won with a birdie on the first hole of a sudden-death play-off. Like most of America, Stephen Stanko watched the action on TV.
That day, Horry County police received a call from a very tiny voice that said she had known the wanted man, and she thought maybe her story would help somehow.
So responding officers went to visit Harriet Cunningham (pseudonym), who turned out to be an elderly widow living in an assisted-living apartment complex.
“You know Stephen Stanko?” one responding officer asked.
“Oh yes, I am his client,” Cunningham said.
“When did you last see him?”
“I had him over for dinner, the night before the murders.”
“Client? What was your relationship, Mrs. Cunningham?”
“Steve was helping me to get the check the Veterans Administration owed me, a check for more than two hundred thousand dollars,” she explained.
It was a service for which she’d paid a $1,300 fee. The big check, she said, was owed her because she was the widow of a war vet. She knew her rights. It had been “on its way” for three weeks. The big ol’ check had been scheduled to arrive via FedEx on April 10, but it hadn’t arrived. When she heard about the horrible murders on TV, she became fearful that Stephen had stolen the check and was using the money to go on the lam. She called her sister in Georgia and then called 911. She feared that maybe he would come back and make her endorse the check over to him. She needed protection. The responding officers tried to reassure her. They were fairly certain that there was no check, and Mrs. Cunningham had been the victim of a simple con.
Following the interview with Mrs. Cunningham, a press release from the HCPD, released on April 11, said: As a result of our initial investigation, we believe that Stanko has targeted senior citizens in the past in an effort to scam them out of money.
MONDAY
On Monday morning, April 11, Dana Putnam went to work on Telfair Street in Augusta. Stephen Stanko visited her there, and brought her a single yellow rose. He told her he was leaving the Augusta area on Tuesday morning, but that he would be back, and he would call her frequently while he was away.
He said he wanted to be with her for a very long time, and this startled her. It wasn’t that she doubted his sincerity. She just thought it too fast.
She met him less than forty-eight hours before and he was getting serious.
Still, she didn’t discourage him, and they parted with stars twinkling in their eyes. After he was gone, Dana called her mother, Janice Putnam, and told her all about it.
That same morning, Erin Hardwick—the woman Stephen Stanko had befriended at the Blue Marlin restaurant and bar in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday night, the first night of his flight—followed her morning routine and turned on the Today show. At first, it was just Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, then—
Holy . . . !
Hardwick stared at the TV screen with unblinking eyes. Her heart leapt and she could feel a swirl of butterflies in her stomach. They were showing a photo of Steve. It was him.
She couldn’t wait to tell somebody. When she got to work that morning, she was full of the news. The guy she met Friday night was wanted for rape and murder!
Hardwick reported her encounter to the police; she told them that he talked to everyone in the bar and was making friends left and right. Another piece of the Stanko puzzle fell into place. The pieces were assembling, all right. Trouble was, the picture wasn’t clarifying.
Stanko was a curious one, a criminologist’s fascination. He was social yet deadly. It was like the Southeast had been revisited by Ted Bundy. The killer’s combination of social skills and depraved behavior was very rare.
That’s why he was attracting so much attention from the press. Stanko was likely a psychopath who could maintain a rapidly fluctuating social life, attracting men and women into his circle of cash and alcohol (and sometimes romance), even when fleeing for what he must have known was his life.
Michael Polakowski, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Arizona, looked at the pattern of facts emerging regarding Stanko and said, “This guy is unique, especially given the timeline. To develop all these relationships is pretty extraordinary.”
In the meantime, also Monday morning, Horry County judge Brad D. Mayers signed an arrest warrant stating there were reasonable grounds to believe Stephen Christopher Stanko had murdered Henry Lee Turner.
While that was going on, Melanie Huggins, Clerk of Court for Horry County, was signing three subpoenae, all requested by Investigator Scott Bogart.
The first was to be served on the Internet service known as America Online, and required AOL to provide “any and all” information for the account named oneknight68.
That info was to include all e-mails, e-mail addresses, location, or IP addresses. The IP stood for Internet Protocol, a unique number assigned to every device connected to the Internet.
The subpoena explained that the e-mail address belonged to Stephen Stanko, who was a fugitive from justice, and that the info was only being sought to facilitate in Stanko’s apprehension.
If,