Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle by Michael Benson Read Free Book Online

still on the floor between the bed and the wall. Stanko got up and looked down at his lifeless girlfriend. He then looked down at Penny; his eyes still filled with raging ire, he said something truly bizarre.
    “Look what you did to her!” he screamed at the girl. “And I loved her!”
    The killer flipped the teenager over, forcing her into a prostrate position. He lifted Penny’s head, and, producing a knife, twice slit her throat.

    Stephen Stanko took a shower, and when he re-dressed, he felt in vain for a pulse in Laura Ling and her daughter. He later claimed he felt suicidal at that moment, but his actions suggest he was a man with plans for a future.
    Believing Laura and Penny dead, he tarried: calmly removing a gold bracelet from Ling’s lifeless wrist, then packing a bag. He emptied out her purse and pocketed her car keys. He went into her wallet and took all of the cash and her ATM card. Only then did he leave the house.
    As was true of many famous murderers, Stanko had turned violent, not under a full moon, but under the slenderest silvery sliver—on the eve of the new moon. Those were the darkest nights of the month, and killers on the run liked their nights dark.
    His first stop was Ling’s bank, where he used her card to empty her account of seven hundred dollars. A surveillance camera captured him, his face composed, as he made the transaction at the drive-through machine.
    Penny was not dead, however. Why Stanko couldn’t find her pulse is one of the mysteries—and miracles—of this story. She regained consciousness and even made it to a phone. Bound, with blood still flowing from her neck wounds, Penny called 911.
    She later explained that she had no idea how she had the strength to get to the phone or how she dialed the three numbers and hit send. Next thing she knew, there was an operator talking into her ear and she was explaining that she had just been raped and she feared her mother was dead.
    “When he left, he took my mom’s car keys,” Penny said.
    “What kind of car does your mother drive?”
    “It’s a red Mustang.” She further ID’d the car for police, so the manhunt could start immediately. The conversation between Penny and dispatch lasted for sixteen minutes, until first responders arrived at the scene on Murrells Inlet Road, at about 3:00 A.M .
    They found a scene of unspeakable horror, the teenager beaten and bleeding from her neck. Blood spattered on the wall. Laura Ling, still in her red plaid pajamas, on the bedroom floor, her body facedown and wedged between the bed and the dresser.
    Her hands were bound behind her back with a gray-and-black necktie, so tightly that the medical examiner later discovered ligature marks where the silk dug into the flesh.
    As Penny had feared, Laura Ling was dead. The men asked Penny about the man who killed her. She told them everything she knew. It was Stephen Stanko, the author, the ex-con, her mom’s live-in boyfriend.
    He was an out-of-work writer working on a book. He was an ex-con who wrote a book about prison. He always seemed like a nice guy, and he just snapped. Penny had no idea why.
    The wounds to Penny’s neck were serious but not life-threatening. He had slit her throat, just as she said, twice, one above the other. The deepest cut came at the insert point of the bottom slash, where his knife caused a puncture wound that resembled a horizontal tracheotomy incision.
    In Penny’s room, on the bed on its side, next to a stuffed toy zebra, was a white lacey purse on its side. Beside it was a pile of its contents. The purse was Laura’s. The killer had spilled it out, looking for the keys to the Mustang.
    When the ambulance arrived, Penny was taken away. Her mother was left behind. Laura’s body needed to be photographed and examined thoroughly by detectives before it could be removed to the morgue for autopsy.
    At the hospital, after her neck was stitched up, Penny was visited by a female cop, with a rape kit. Penny said she