Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (19 page)

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Authors: Michael Benson

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“CERTAIN IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN”
The day after giving his statement to Detective Darrell Lewis, Stephen Stanko was taken out of isolation and had his first taste of what it was like living among “murderers, rapists, and thieves.”
At six-three, 200 pounds, Stanko had size going for him, but that lent him no security. He still felt like easy prey to the vultures he was in with.
He was terrified, and the other inmates lacked fear. He liked to think he was a civilized man, and they were ruthless. To put it in his own dramatic and romanticized terms, for the next six months, he spent part of his time fighting a judicial battle, and the remainder fighting a social one.
Stanko was assigned a court-appointed attorney. His meetings with her were weekly, fifteen minutes long, and always discouraging. No one with a public defender ever pleaded not guilty.
The first thing she ever said to him was “It doesn’t look good. You gave a complete statement. There’s not much I can do.”
The second meeting was no better. His lawyer told him he was facing eighty-five years, and that was after they dropped the assault charge from “intent to kill” to “high and aggravated.”
According to Stanko, Liz McLendon was on his side and joined his campaign to have the charges against him lessened. Stanko told his lawyer that he had doubts if the fifteen-page statement he gave was legal. He’d been duped into giving it. But his lawyer ignored him. She was convinced that his fate was “cast in stone” and the only effective strategy would be to emphasize the “first-time violent” nature of his offenses in order to work out less jail time.
Looking back on it, Stanko realized that his lawyer’s tunnel vision when it came to plea bargaining didn’t mean she was a bad lawyer. That was simply the way the game was played. Public defenders were so overloaded with cases that fighting for a client was out of the question. They bargained for the best deal and moved on to the next case.
One thing his lawyer did do for him, however, was arrange for examinations at a local mental hospital by a pair of psychologists. Those exams yielded a “borderline narcissistic” diagnosis, but nothing that called in to question his competency to stand trial. His choice was simple: ten years or eighty-five years.
In April 1996, the Berkeley County grand jury indicted Stephen Stanko for kidnapping; assault and battery, with intent to kill; nine counts of breach of trust, with fraudulent intent for stealing cars; and two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses.
His court hearing was held on a Monday morning. The solicitor gave the judge the gruesome details of his crimes against Liz—chemicals, attempted asphyxiation, bondage, and terror—while Stanko’s lawyer emphasized his education and work history.
Victims were given a chance to make a statement—Liz and two others. Stanko was given an opportunity to speak in his own defense, and he made a plea for mercy, noting that his “assault” and “kidnapping” had resulted in no blood and no broken bones, and no weapons were used. (This ignored the fact that a rag soaked in toxic chemicals pressed over a person’s face could easily be construed as a weapon.) He apologized to Liz for the violence, and to the other two victims for the cars he stole. He still lied. He always lied. All of their property had been returned, he later claimed, so no harm done. “I spoke honestly and calmly as possible,” he recalled. Except for the part when he lied. Ask Ray Crenshaw if there was “no harm done.” He was still out thousands of dollars.
Stanko pleaded guilty, as per his lawyer’s instructions, and received a ten-year sentence. That worked out to ten years for the kidnapping and assault, and three to five years running concurrent for the nonviolent crimes (“breach of trust,” “obtaining property”). He had been expecting three to five years for the violent, and ten for the nonviolent, but they’d been reversed by the court. When Stanko agreed to the plea deal, he understood that he’d serve between three and five years, but due to a new “truth in sentencing” law, and the fact that kidnapping was a no-parole offense in South Carolina, he had to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence—eight and a half years—before he could be released. That time would be spent in the MacDougall Correctional Institution.
Stanko would have thought that his transfer from the detention center to the penitentiary would have been immediate. Not the case. Some say the most effective part of any punishment is the dread that precedes it. If that’s the case, then Stanko got four days’ worth, stewing some more, wondering about the hell they called MacDougall and the next decade of his loser life.
When the time to transfer did come he wasn’t alone. He was shackled at the ankles and belly to the prisoner in front and behind him, two feet of chain between men, and led with an impatient push or two by guards into a caged van.
Stephen Stanko’s first stop at MacDougall was the Reception and Evaluation Center, where he was stripped naked, thrown into a shower, shaved bald, and deloused.
There was a comprehensive and invasive medical examination. Bystanders—the audience!—were allowed to suggest what parts should next be examined.
Forms were filled out.
Stanko understood immediately that he was going to have to reevaluate his sense of privacy in order to survive in his new environment. There was no dignity—only humiliation that set in right away, and threatened never to let up.
And, obviously, any resemblance to autonomy flew out the barred windows. All decisions—from here on out—were to be made by others. All he had to do was listen to the commands of the Man, and do as he was told. Anything else resulted in
discipline.
When thoroughly received and evaluated, Stanko was assigned a number, and from then on, he answered only to that six-figure sequence. He waited in a holding area with the other rookies until he was assigned a six-by-nine cell with two roomies.
From then on, things became familiar, a routine: on weekdays a daily hour of recreation. No exercise on weekends. A shower every three-to-five days.
The only surprise interruptions came when he had to take one of many tests designed to pigeonhole the prisoner by intelligence and aptitude. These, along with the prisoner’s criminal record, informed officials where to best place him in the system.
For all of the sophisticated thinking he demonstrated during his psychological exams, Stanko would later suspect that he was destined to be grouped with the hard cores. He was guilty of kidnapping, a violent offense considered pretty hard-core. Violent offenders were caged exclusively in
maximum-security
prisons, which were hell by design!
Stephen Stanko spent four years in maximum security, and then, because he’d been employed and kept disciplinary free, he was transferred out. Under the new arrangement, Stanko’s jobs were more to his liking. According to Bob Ward, who was at the time the acting director of operations for the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC), Stanko’s prison jobs included being a library helper, a teacher assistant, and a chief clerk in the prison education building.
During his time in the prison library, Stanko not only read but wrote as well. He kept sort of a diary about his experiences. He researched the incarceration system, how it functioned and why it operated the way it did.
He learned the “why” behind some of the things that had happened to him. He wrote in a tiny and precise printing, both sides of the paper margin to margin, no negative space, no air on the page at all.
Stanko not only economized on paper with his writing style, he was prolific. Of course, he had plenty of time, but he managed to fill more than 2,000 pages, 1,000 pieces of college-ruled loose-leaf paper, with his observations.
By 1999, Stanko was ready to tell somebody about what he believed to be his literary accomplishment. He chronicled every minutia of life at MacDougall and then Turbeville Correctional Institution. He entitled the manuscript
After the Gavel Drops,
which was what it was about, what happens to the man
after
he’s taken from the courtroom in handcuffs.
As finally edited down for presentation,
After the Gavel Drops
consisted of fifty short chapters. Stanko, of course, would let any prospective publisher know that there was a lot more where that came from. Prison was his muse, and the pearls of wisdom flowed like “Ol’ Man River.”
Every word impacted poorly on the South Carolina corrections system.
In Stanko’s life, his manuscript was unique. It was, in no shape or form, a confidence game. There wasn’t anything flimflam about it. He created it and he was going to sell it.
Who’d’ve thunk?
Maybe this
was
the new Stanko.
The appeal, Stanko realized, was that he wasn’t writing a book about an average prisoner, he was chronicling the experiences of an inmate in a Southern prison who was white and highly educated. Readers were far more likely to buy a book written by him than by some dropout street thug.
He wrote a solid proposal and sent it out. He was prepared to collect rejection slips, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need patience. Greenwood Press in Westport, Connecticut, nibbled.
On June 18, 1999, acquisitions editor Emily Michie Birch, with Greenwood’s School and Public Library Reference department, sent Stanko a letter thanking him for his proposal. Birch wrote that Greenwood was publishing a series of books for high school and public libraries about living in alternative environments—and his book might fit into that category nicely. Birch envisioned a book “suitable for high school students” (and she used that phrase), but still real. She also wanted a section for friends and family members with loved ones in prison, explaining how to relate to them. She envisioned the prisoner paired up with a university-affiliated scholar so that it would have the equal academic weight of the other books in the series. Birch told him a college-connected psychologist or a sociologist would be best—although if he had a working relationship with a psychologist, that would be fine, too, regardless if he or she were a college professor.
She didn’t say anything about supplying him with an egghead coauthor, so he had to find his own. By August, Stanko had gotten nowhere. If Stanko couldn’t find someone, she might suggest a name. She thought it might be a welcome addition to the manuscript to get some feedback from politicians and corrections officers.
Thus, during the autumn of 1999, Stanko sent the table of contents for his manuscript to the criminal justice department at the University of South Carolina, the largest CJ program in the state.
Stanko’s package ended up on the desk of Dr. Reid H. Montgomery Jr., a professor there. Montgomery opened the package—a book proposal from a prisoner, you didn’t see that every day—and began to read.
Although the grapevine was secret, Liz McLendon had a contact who knew something about Stephen Stanko’s behavior in prison. Liz learned that Stephen was telling people that he was a lawyer and that he was inside on bum charges, some bogus white-collar crap, exacerbated by his nagging wife’s accusations.
Wife?
Liz thought, her hands balling into fists. Her role in the drama, the murder victim who refused to die, had been reduced in Stephen’s telling to that of a nagging wife who was way too quick to get bent out of shape.
Even years later, she would anger at the memory. She managed to get past a lot of the things he’d done to her, but tell the world they were married, that
irked
her.
In addition to that anxiety, Liz had to deal with her fears that, despite Stephen’s incarceration, he would find a way to harm her. As if to reinforce her terror, Stanko gave out Liz’s phone number to other inmates and the family of other inmates. She remembered this as a scary time.
Reading the book proposal, Dr. Reid Montgomery found that the first paragraph on page one was a two-word glossary of “unfamiliar terms.” The first word was “heart,” which in prison meant the ability to stand up to others, not to squeal, and to take punishment stoically. The second word was “suitcase,” which referred to the inside of an inmate’s rectum, in which drugs were smuggled.
The TOC gave a one-paragraph summary of each of the fifty chapters, beginning with “Reception and Evaluation” and ending with “The Convict Enigma,” in which Stanko talked about the fact that many ex-cons suffer from post-traumatic stress, making it difficult to reclaim a “life once held.”
The document concluded with a two-paragraph “About the Author,” in which Stephen Stanko described himself as a former honor student, former chemical representative and salesman who had spent forty-three months (1,309 days) inside, “journaling every event.” He had 2,600 pages written.
Dr. Montgomery was intrigued by what he read—but too busy to coauthor the book himself. He recommended Stanko try Dr. Michael C. “Mickey” Braswell, professor emeritus in the Department of Justice and Criminology at East Tennessee State University (ETSU), who’d been Montgomery’s collaborator on a book called
Prison Violence in America,
published in 1994. Dr. Braswell was also a book editor and knew how to doctor a manuscript from pedestrian to exceptional.
On November 1, 1999, Stanko wrote Dr. Braswell a letter from Turbeville prison to the professor’s post office box at ETSU. Stanko apologized for the handwriting, explaining that his typewriter had been “lost” during a recent institutional transfer. He referenced Dr. Montgomery and explained that the book was “tentatively accepted” by Greenwood Press. He gave Braswell the name of the acquisitions editor at Greenwood with whom he’d been dealing. She said they would want a book between 90,000 and 110,000 words in length, and he was busy whittling it down to that size.
This is my invitation to you to co-author the completed manuscript,
Stanko wrote.

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