Prosecutors portrayed Sternko as a cold-calculated psychopath at the trial, but his lawyers at the time claimed he was crazy when he committed rape and murder.
The US expands how it runs
Most death row inmates faced one method of execution in modern history. Now there are many alternative ways to die.
South Carolina executed a conman-turned murderer who was convicted of killing two and raping his girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter.
Stephen Stanko, 57, is the father of three, and is the Air Force Master Sergeant, who was executed by a fatal injection on Friday, June 13th, and 74-year-old Henry Lee Turner, retired. Stanko was separately sentenced to death for the murder of her 43-year-old girlfriend.
He added: “Not a day, not a day, not a single (the victim) was not in my thoughts or prayers. If my executions help with the closure and the process of grief, then I hope they can all move forward with it being completed.”
Stanko became the 23rd inmate to die in the United States this year, and the third in South Carolina. He was declared dead at 6:34pm
Prosecutors portrayed Sternko as a cold-calculated psychopath at the trial, but his lawyers at the time claimed he was crazy when he committed the murder. His current lawyer argued that South Carolina’s enforcement method was cruel and extraordinary punishment for violating the US Constitution, arguing that he should be spared because of the controversiality that was refuted by state authorities and rejected by courts.
Here’s what you need to know about Stanko’s execution, including his final meal and many of his final words:
Stanko’s final meal, last words
It took Stanko’s lawyers a few minutes to read his extensive final words.
“What I hope and pray for is known and understood about me — and that we are not a momentary sum of all death row inmates and prisoners in the world,” writes Stanko, who served death row inmates for 20 years. “We will execute people in this country during moments in their lives… I have lived for about 20, 973 days, and I have only been judged one.”
He said he was a young man, honors student, athlete, president of the Spanish club, and was in the math team and engineering club. As a young adult, he volunteered at an orphanage, coached youngster baseball, and said he “saved a child who was drowsed in Augusta.” And in the death line he said he had led the prisoners and formed a relationship with God.
“I don’t brag about this, I say it.
He added that his surviving victims and their families hope to forgive him. “Executions may help them. Forgiveness will heal them,” he said.
To read Stanko’s complete final words, see here.
Stanko’s final meal, serving him on Wednesday, consisted of fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cake, baked potatoes, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea.
Stanko’s final breath came in a busy week for the death penalty in the United States, with four executions between Tuesday and Friday. The two were executed on the same day, June 10th. Anthony Wainwright of Florida is a Gregory Hunt with Nitrogen Gas by a fatal injection and Gregory Hunt in Alabama. Oklahoma executed John Hanson on Thursday, June 12th with a fatal injection.
What did Stephen Stanko do?
In the middle of the night on April 8, 2005, Stanko attacked her girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter.
The girl later sobbed and clenched a white teddy bear when Stanko testified about the hours of attack after she locked her body in her knees while Stanko strangled her mother in front of her mother. attack
“I said, ‘God, take me, take her,'” the girl testified that the people in the courtroom cried, the newspaper reported. “I fought so hard, but she stopped making noise. That was it.”
After he killed his 43-year-old girlfriend, Stanko drove 25 miles north through the Conway house of one of her friends, Henry Lee Turner.
Stanko escaped the scene and caused a national manhunt that made national headlines. Four days after the murder, federal authorities tracked Sternko down to Augusta about 200 miles west, where he hobnobbed with Masters golf fans, introduced himself as Stephen Christopher, and lied about his wealth. Sternko had already begged the woman, moved with her, and even went to church with her on Sunday before he was captured, authorities said.
“She said he was the nicest and most polite young man,” the woman’s grandmother told Knight Lidder at the time. “You’d never know he was a scam.”
Stanco’s lawyer, Charles Gross, said experts diagnosed the prisoner with brain damage.
He stated that issues caused by brain damage can be managed in controlled environments like prisons, “using his years on death row inmates productively, repenting his crimes, seeking God’s forgiveness, helping other prisoners, and writing about his experiences.”
Grose added:
Stanko is called Conman, Psychopath
The archive news reports cite court testimony and interviews describe Sternko as a con man who had the trick to involving women.
According to archived news accounts, it included various lies from Sternko that he was a billionaire, who owned multiple burger restaurants, earned an engineering degree from a well-known university, and made extensive deals in oil and real estate.
“He needs grandeur,” said one forensic psychologist who observed as a witness, according to a 2006 report from Myrtle Beach Sun News. Another simply said: “Mr. Stanko is a psychopath.”
Stanko was skilled in some attractive people, but others did not purchase his act.
“He was smooth, he was smooth,” John Gomer, a colleague of Stanko’s murdered girlfriend, told Sun News. “It’s a puzzle for everyone I know he had – it was a mystery that he was able to have so much control over her.”
Her ex-husband told the paper that he met Stanko at her home.
“I didn’t like him. He knew I knew what he was,” he said. “When we saw each other, I could feel there was nothing here. But at the same time, you’re told he’s okay, and you want to believe it.”
He said Stanko admitted that she probably had a criminal past as part of her plan to gain her trust. “It snowed… obviously it pulled her in. It was all a barrage of barrage, part of the seduction,” he said.
Stephen Stanko has a criminal past and helped write a book from prison
It is unclear how much Stanko from his criminal past shared with his girlfriend. He served in prison for over eight years in 1996 for attempting to kill Ann and another girlfriend.
According to a police report obtained by Knight Ridder in 2005, he was living with a Goose Creek woman when he began debating his involvement in the theft and fraud.
The next morning they fought again, and Sternko washed away the bleach and placed it on his mouth, tied his wrists and ankles before he left. The woman reported, Knight Rider said Stanko tried to suffocate her, but she could get free and get help.
Stanko pleaded guilty to assault and battery with intent to kill and lure 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-authored a book called “Living in a prison: A History of Correctional Systems with Insider Views.” On Amazon, the book is called “a rigorous exploration of our correctional system” in terms of Stanko’s “on the harsh reality of prison life.”
Who was Stephen Stanko’s victim?
USA Today was unable to contact any of the families of any of the Stanko murder victims.
Although archived news reports are limited as to who they are, both Stanko’s girlfriend and Henry Lee Turner were said to be people of trust and caring.
Her ex-husband told Taiyo News that her mother of three has a sense of humor. “She was a cheerful, intelligent, caring woman who was a very good mother,” he told the newspaper.
Turner’s daughter, Debbie Turner Gallagley, told Sun News that her dad met Sternko when he and his girlfriend went to Turner’s house to help with computer problems.
“He’s a very reliable person and is very welcoming,” she said. “He loved to invite people to their homes for food.”