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Authors: Michael Benson

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The police photographer at the Turner murder scene was Sergeant Jeff Gause of the Horry County Police Department. (Courtesy Horry County Police)
After photographing Turner’s home in detail Sergeant Gause drew a schematic of the layout, including the position of the body, to help investigators put the photos in context. (Courtesy Horry County Police)
X-rays of Turner’s upper body taken during his remains’ post-mortem procedure vividly confirmed that there were still two slugs in him.
(Courtesy Horry County Police)
Dust patterns on the carpet indicated that one of Turner’s longarms was missing. (Courtesy Horry County Police)
Stanko had such a baby face. One of the reasons he was a successful con man was that strangers couldn’t imagine him doing anything bad.
(Photo by Elizabeth McLendon Buckner)
Elizabeth McLendon Buckner as she appears today. (Courtesy Rick Buckner)
Stanko, here looking contemplative over Thanksgiving dinner, had a neatly trimmed beard for a while during his time with Liz McLendon. (Photo by Elizabeth McLendon Buckner)
The first victim of Stephen Stanko’s violence was his longtime girlfriend and fellow Goose Creek resident, the beautiful Elizabeth McLendon. (Courtesy Sharon McAlister)
A KILLER’S TOUCH
MICHAEL BENSON
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of my sources for this book have asked to remain anonymous, and so I can only thank them privately. The others I would like to gratefully acknowledge here. Thanks to Assistant State Attorneys Lon Arend, Karen Fraivillig, and Suzanne O’Donnell; Tekla Benson; the Honorable Deno G. Economou; Laura Forti at Turner Broadcasting; Rick and Sue Goff; Jane Kowalski; James D. Martin, assistant general counsel, Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Trooper Edward Pope and Lieutenant Patrick Riordan, of the Florida Highway Patrol; Wendy Rose, community affairs manager for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office; Alfred L. Thompson, correctional services assistant, Florida Department of Corrections; Tami Treadway, Saratoga County Animal Services supervisor; and Cortnie Watts, criminalistics specialist for the North Port Police Department.
Also, special thanks to my agent, Jake Elwell at Harold Ober Associates, super editor and man of ideas Gary Goldstein—and, as always, to my wife, my world, Lisa Grasso.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Violent crimes exact their toll on cops and bequeath a painful residue—something akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome. Peace officers are a courageous and stubborn lot, proud by nature, and not many would admit to weakness of any sort—but this one did.
“I’m not going to be able to give you an interview,” he said, a veteran of ten-plus years on the force.
“Why not?” the writer asked.
“I get nightmares. I don’t ... I don’t want to relive this again. I want to get my point across about this—but I can’t. I still get nightmares.”
In all of the cases he’d handled, all of those crime scenes, two still stuck in his psyche and probably would never let go. One was the very first unnatural-death scene he saw, a suicide by hanging. The other was the murder of Denise Amber Lee.
At night, he would close his eyes and return to that dungeon, that rape dungeon.
Creepy
wasn’t the word for it.
Evil
was the word. There was evil there. His hands shook the entire time he was there. His hands began shaking now, just from thinking about it....
The author has used a novelist’s methods but not his license. Although this is a true story, some names will be changed to protect the privacy of the innocent. Pseudonyms will be noted upon their first usage. When possible, the spoken word has been quoted verbatim. However, when that is not possible, conversations have been reconstructed as closely as possible to reality based on the recollections of those who spoke and heard the words. In places, there has been a slight editing of spoken words, but only to improve readability. The denotations and connotations of the words remain unaltered. In some cases, witnesses are credited with verbal quotes that in reality only occurred in written form. Some characters may be composites.

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