Stephen Stanko, who killed 2 and raped his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter, is executed

USA Today

13-06-2025

Stephen Stanko, who killed 2 and raped his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter, is executed While prosecutors painted Stanko as a cold, calculated psychopath at trial, his attorneys at the time argued that he was insane when he committed the rape and murders.
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US expands execution methods
Most death row inmates faced one execution method in modern history. Now, there are many alternative ways to die.
South Carolina has executed a conman-turned-murderer convicted of killing two people and raping his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter.
Stephen Stanko, 57, was executed by lethal injection on Friday, June 13, for the murder of 74-year-old Henry Lee Turner, a retired Air Force master sergeant and father of three. Stanko was sentenced to death separately for the murder of his 43-year-old girlfriend, whom USA TODAY is not naming to protect her daughter's privacy as a rape survivor.
Stanko became the 23rd inmate put to death in the U.S. this year and the third in South Carolina. He was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m.
While prosecutors painted Stanko as a cold, calculated psychopath at trial, his attorneys at the time argued that he was insane when he committed the murders. His current lawyers argued that his life should have been spared because the execution methods in South Carolina amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution, an argument refuted by state officials and rejected by courts.
Here's what you need to know about Stanko's execution.
Stanko's execution just one of four this week
Stanko's final breaths came during a busy week for the death penalty in the U.S., with four executions between Tuesday and Friday. Two were executed on the same day on June 10: Anthony Wainwright in Florida by lethal injection and Gregory Hunt in Alabama by nitrogen gas. Oklahoma executed John Hanson by lethal injection on Thursday, June 12.
What did Stephen Stanko do?
In the middle of the night on April 8, 2005, Stanko attacked his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter as she slept in her bed at home in Murrells Inlet, an unincorporated seaside community just south of Myrtle Beach.
The girl later sobbed and clutched a white teddy bear as she testified about the hours-long attack, according to coverage by the Sun-News. At some point, worried about her mother, the girl broke free and found her lying on the floor in another room.
The girl testified that Stanko then hit her over the head and she blacked out. When she woke, he raped her again and then pinned her body to the bed with his knee while he strangled her mother in front of her.
"I said, 'Please God, take me and not her,'" the girl testified as people in the courtroom cried, the Sun-News reported. "I fought hard but she stopped making noises, and that was it."
After he killed his 43-year-old girlfriend, Stanko then drove 25 miles north the Conway home of one of her friends, Henry Lee Turner, whose body was found fatally shot about 24 hours later.
Stanko fled the scene, setting off a nationwide manhunt that made national headlines. Four days after the murders, federal authorities tracked Stanko down about 200 miles west to Augusta, where he was hobnobbing with Masters golf fans, introducing himself as Stephen Christopher, and lying about his wealth. Stanko had also already wooed a woman, moved in with her and had even gone to church with her on the Sunday before he was captured, authorities said at the time.
"She said he was the nicest, most courteous young man," the woman's grandmother told Knight Ridder at the time. "You would never know he was a fraud."
Charles Grose, Stanko's attorney, said that experts have diagnosed the inmate with brain damage, 'likely from numerous brain injuries including from a troubled birth, a blow to the back of the head as a teen while shielding a classmate from an assault, and repeated traumas from serious sports-related head injuries.'
He said that problems resulting from the brain damage were manageable in a controlled environment like prison and that he "productively used his years on death row to repent of his crimes and seek God's forgiveness, help other inmates and write about his experiences.'
Grose added: 'While nothing excuses Stephen's terrible crimes, his execution will not make South Carolina safer.'
Stanko described as conman, psychopath
Archived news reports citing courtroom testimony and interviews describe a con artist who had a knack for reeling in women.
Stanko's various lies included, according to archived news accounts: that he was a millionaire, he owned multiple hamburger restaurants, he had an engineering degree from a prestigious university, and he made bigtime deals in oil and real estate.
"He has a need for grandiosity," one forensic psychologist observed on the witness stand, according to a 2006 report in the Myrtle Beach Sun-News. Another one simply said: "Mr. Stanko is a psychopath."
Although Stanko was adept at charming some, others didn't buy his act.
"He was smooth and he was slick," John Gaumer, a colleague of Stanko's slain girlfriend, told the Sun-News. "It's a puzzle to everyone I know what it was that he had − that he was able to exercise so much control over her was a mystery.'
Her ex-husband told the paper that he met Stanko at her home.
"I didn't like him. He knew that I knew what he was,' he said. 'When we looked at each other, I just could sense that there wasn't something right here. But at the same time, you are being told that he is OK, and you want to believe that."
He said that Stanko had admitted to having a criminal past, likely as part of a plan to gain her trust. "The snowing ... obviously it drew her in. It was all part of the barrage, the seduction," he said.
Stephen Stanko had criminal past, helped write a book from prison
It's unclear just how much of his criminal past Stanko shared with his girlfriend. He had served more than eight years in prison for kidnapping and trying to kill another girlfriend in 1996.
He had been living with the woman in Goose Creek when they got into an argument about his involvement in theft and fraud, and she told him he had to move out, according to police reports obtained by Knight Ridder in 2005.
The next morning, they fought again, and Stanko soaked a washcloth with bleach, put it over her mouth, and tied up her wrists and ankles before he left. The woman, who told police that Stanko had tried to suffocate her, was able to break free and get help, Knight Ridder reported.
Stanko pleaded guilty to charges of assault and battery with intent to kill and kidnapping, and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, according to online court records reviewed by USA TODAY.
During Stanko's time in prison for that case, he became an author and co-wrote a book called "Living in Prison: A History of the Correctional System with an Insider's View." On Amazon, the book is described as "a rigorous exploration of our correctional system" from Stanko's perspective "on the harsh realities of prison life."
Who were Stephen Stanko's victims?
USA TODAY was unable to reach family members of either of Stanko's murder victims.
Archived news reports about who they were are limited, but both Stanko's girlfriend and Henry Lee Turner were described as trusting and caring people.
Her ex-husband told the Sun-News that the mother of three had a great sense of humor. "She was a vivacious, intelligent, compassionate woman who was a very good mother," he told the newspaper.
Turner's daughter, Debbie Turner Gallogly, told the Sun-News that her dad met Stanko when he and his girlfriend went to Turner's house to help him with computer problems.
"He's a very trusting person, a very welcoming person," she said. "He loved inviting people into his home for meals."