Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

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Authors: Michael Benson
Dana invited Stephen Christopher to accompany her, along with her parents, to services at the First Baptist Church of Augusta.
    As it so happened, the First Baptist Church accommodated shut-ins by broadcasting their Sunday services on local cable television. A recording of that Sunday’s telecast verified Putnam’s story. There they were—he, in a suit, and she, with her distinctive hairdo, in the very back pew on the right.
    Dana’s father, Charles Putnam, quizzed the man who’d suddenly appeared in his daughter’s life. Stanko repeated his stories about Hooters. Now he added that he had a collection of upscale automobiles.
    “Where did you go to school?” Charles Putnam asked.
    “The Citadel,” Stanko said. “I have an engineering degree.”
    Dana told her grandmother, Pauline Putnam Hicks, that this Stephen Christopher fellow was one of the nicest guys she ever met. Despite the fact that he was practically a stranger, Dana never considered that he might be other than he seemed.
    In fact, she was sweet on him, and his manner toward her became increasingly romantic. After church, he took her to a fancy restaurant, where he gave her a gold bracelet—the very bracelet he’d pulled off Laura Ling’s lifeless wrist.
    “I could fall for you. I could fall in love with you,” he said, looking deep into her eyes.

    The local Sunday newspaper ran Henry Lee Turner’s obituary, with a drawing of an American flag beneath his bold-type name, signifying that he was a veteran of the armed forces.
    Without the slightest hint of violence, the obituary copy said that Turner had passed away unexpectedly at home on April 8. It said he was born in Hyman, South Carolina, a son of the late Asbury Jackson Turner and Letha Alma Turner.
    In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his brother, A. J. “Junior” Turner. He had retired as a master sergeant from the U.S. Air Force after twenty years of service. He was a Mason, a member of the Omar Shrine Temple and the Jester Court #113.
    Turner was survived by his three children, Debbie Turner Gallogly, of Roswell, Georgia; Rodney D. Turner and his wife, Allison, of Lilburn, Georgia; Roger A. Turner and his wife, Juanita, of Myrtle Beach; six grandchildren, as well as his sister, Betty Dempsey, and her husband, Jack, of Bonneau, South Carolina.
    As per his wishes, his funeral would be held privately at sea, with arrangements made by Grand Strand Funeral Home and Crematory, of Myrtle Beach.
    Turner’s daughter, Debbie, told a reporter that her father was a very trusting person. “He loved inviting people into his home for meals,” she said.

    By Sunday, students living at Coastal Carolina University (CCU) were very nervous. The school was in Conway. Henry Lee Turner was murdered less than a mile south of campus, and just down the street from the school’s off-campus apartments.
    Just turn on any radio, on any local station, and the message was practically immediate. There was a killer on the road. He raped, murdered, and then murdered again.
    Last known location: Conway.
    Police were asking the public not to panic, but rather to “heighten their threat level.” Folks were to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious. They were to keep their doors locked. Obviously, picking up hitchhikers—a dangerous activity on a normal day—was particularly foolish now.
    Female students in particular were frightened and worried that this serial “sex killer on the loose” might take advantage of their convenient college campus.
    Ted Bundy and “the Gainesville Ripper” loved to kill Southeastern coeds. Maybe this deadly pervert planned to dine from that same malevolent menu.
    It bordered on overkill when authorities posted flyers around the campus and school housing “notifying” students of the already infamous rape and murders.
    “A bunch of us are really worried,” said one wide-eyed Coastal student. “I live off campus at University Place, sort of right here where it happened,

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