Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (18 page)

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Authors: Michael Benson

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“Two of my customers were borderline crooks themselves,” Stanko pointed out. One was named Chuck Thornwald. He was going through a divorce and not paying his bills. The repo man was after Thornwald’s trailer, and he’d been lying to his creditors and his family.
The other slightly crooked customer, Stanko explained, was R. C. Criswell (pseudonym), who was two months late on every bill he had.
“Criswell lied to me about almost everything I asked him,” Stanko told Lewis. Crenshaw sold one of the cars to his parents. It was a cash deal, and the Crenshaws put that money into the bank account that had Stanko’s name on it.
Regarding lies he’d told Crenshaw, Stanko cleared up a couple of things. There never was any money from Thornwald or Criswell. There was no chop shop.
One time, by mistake, Stanko drove off from the McElveen lot with a car that belonged to a woman named Teddy Monette. He wanted to make it clear that that was not a theft. That was simply a mistake.
One night, Crenshaw brought over to the house a guy named Aldo Bassi, and Stanko simply retold all of the lies he’d told Crenshaw. So any information the sheriff’s department got from Bassi should be taken with that in consideration.
He was really sorry about all of the lies he told, but what could he do? He’d painted his way into a corner and had to scramble. Elizabeth found out about the lies and was really pissed off.
It was right after the meeting with Ray Crenshaw and Aldo Bassi that Stephen Stanko went home, and Elizabeth was at him, relentlessly arguing with him, following him from room to room so she could let loose with a steady stream of insults.
It was the same old thing out of her mouth. She said he didn’t care for her. She said he had to leave. She spewed the “usual hateful comments and threatened to call the police. A couple of times, I had to physically move her to get her out of my face,” Stanko told the cop.
He said he went into the sunroom, and she followed him in there. She punched him, then kicked him. She threw various objects at him. “Finally we both ignored each other and went to sleep,” he explained.
When he woke he packed his belongings into a couple of suitcases. She wanted him gone, he was leaving. But despite his compliance, the bickering continued.
His brain was swirling. All he could think of was keeping her from fighting so he could finish packing and get the hell out of the house. He put a combination of Clorox and 409 on a hand towel. He thought this would knock her out, and get her out of his hair.
“Never believe the movies,” he said to Lewis.
The chemicals didn’t render her unconscious, so he told her he was going to tie her up to keep her from attacking him. He would release her before he left.
“I never wanted to hurt her in any way,” Stanko said. “In the past ten years, she is the only person I have truly loved, and who has shown me love. I love her, and I just can’t go on hurting her. Or anyone else.”
While he was shaving, and she sat bound on the floor, he remembered he tried to comfort her. His attempt to soothe his bound girlfriend continued as she sat on the toilet during his shower and then as he was dressing.
He untied her about ten minutes before he left, just as he had promised he would. He was nothing if not a man of his word. She cried and waved good-bye to him as he drove off. Stanko drove up Route 176 to Columbia, then took I-26 to Spartanburg to Greenville, where he checked into a Days Inn. Twice he called Detective Lewis, and police came and picked him up at the hotel.
No, he had no sexual relations while at the Days Inn. No, he carried no weapon. No, he didn’t rob anyone. He felt better, now that he’d gotten it all off his chest, and was certain it wouldn’t happen again.
That concluded the interview. A written statement was prepared and Stanko signed every page. He was returned to his cell and never again heard anyone mention helping him.
With Stephen’s arrest, William Stanko turned his back on his son for good. The two would never speak again.
THORNWALD AND CRENSHAW
Later, on February 22, 1996, after statements were taken from Liz McLendon and Stephen Stanko, the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office expanded their investigation, interviewing a couple of Stanko’s secondary victims.
By 6:30
P.M
., Chuck Thornwald, who’d been mentioned by both Stanko and McLendon during their interrogations, sat in the sheriff’s station, ready to tell everything he knew about Stanko. His questioner was the BCSO’s Beverly Johnson. Thornwald was just a kid. A female questioner seemed like a good fit.
Thornwald told Johnson that his full name was Charles K. Thornwald, and he was nineteen years old. He was a high-school graduate and lived in an apartment building on Dorchester Road in Archdale, South Carolina.
No one told Thornwald that Stanko had called him a “borderline criminal.”
“You are here in regard to a stolen vehicle, is that correct?” Johnson asked.
“Yes,” Thornwald replied.
He said he’d gone to a used-car joint called McElveen Pontiac at the beginning of December 2005. He wandered among the cars for a moment before, as anticipated, a salesperson approached him and asked if he was in need of assistance. It was Stanko.
He said he was looking for a Trans Sport, and everything went swimmingly, until the subject of money came up. He was too young to be financed, so Thornwald left, feeling irritated. The trip to McElveen appeared to be a complete waste of time.
Not so fast. About a month later, just after the new year, Stanko called him and said, in essence, “Psst, have I got a deal for you.” He said he was opening up his own used-car dealership, and he had a business partner named Ray Crenshaw.
The dealership he worked for might not give teenagers financing, but he would. Thornwald was all ears.
“I’ve got an S10 pickup that I could let you have for only nine grand,” Stanko said. Thornwald wasn’t completely green, and asked where the car came from. “It was bought from a government auction,” the salesman assured him.
Stanko invited him to come look at the truck. Thornwald did—and he liked it. Stanko said it would be ten grand altogether—after financing.
Thornwald paused, and Stanko quickly threw in that he would finish making the payments on the teenager’s current car. Thornwald again paused, and Stanko said, “Wait.” He produced all of the legal forms necessary to make the transaction legal.
That did it. Thornwald said it was a deal, they shook hands, and the teenager drove the truck home.
“When did you first suspect that everything was not on the up-and-up?” Johnson asked.
“When I tried to switch my insurance. The company said that the lien holder had no information on me.”
“What did you do?”
“I called Steve,” Thornwald replied. Stanko told him, in effect, that he’d had trouble getting financing for Thornwald, but—since he was nothing if not a man of his word—he was going to finance the teenager “in house.”
Thornwald said that was fine. Stanko told him it meant some more paperwork, and the next Saturday, the pair re-signed a bill of sale that changed the lien holder.
“The following Tuesday, Detective Lewis informed me the truck was stolen, and I returned it,” Thornwald said, and that concluded the interview.
At 8:30
P.M
., Detective Darrell Lewis took an oral statement from Delray Crenshaw, who said he was thirty-four years old, had an associate’s degree, and the crime he was reporting was “breach of trust.”
The respondent knew Stephen Stanko because Steve and Elizabeth were his next-door neighbors. That was no exaggeration, either. Crenshaw and his wife shared a fence with them. He and Stanko hit it off and had talked for a while. They discussed going into business together, specifically about opening up their own used-car dealership.
It was the day after Christmas, 1995, when Stanko called him and asked if he was still interested in doing that
thing.
Crenshaw said sure, so Stanko told him to drive over to McElveen. There was something he needed to tell him in person.
This part of Ray Crenshaw’s story synched up with Stanko’s version pretty well, Detective Lewis thought.
Crenshaw’s story jibed surprisingly well with Stanko’s, although their money figures differed. Crenshaw said Stanko told him that McElveen’s used-car manager, a guy named Ricky Davis, was going to an auction and for about $4,500 he could purchase some used cars for them to sell. Crenshaw asked how much he needed.
“Just eighteen hundred dollars, and I’ll put in the rest,” Stanko said. Crenshaw gave him the money, but Stanko later explained that they could get a better price per car if they bought more cars, and Crenshaw contributed again to the used-car kitty.
At first, Stanko said the cars would arrive at Ricky Davis’s warehouse in a week or so. Then he explained there was a delay. That guy Davis wanted in on the deal. That was the delay.
Then came more delays, and more excuses. On January 25, 1996, Ray Crenshaw visited Stephen Stanko to find out what was up, and Stanko said that for $2,080 he could get Crenshaw a Yukon for Crenshaw to drive. Stanko said that the Yukon could be delivered directly to them, rather than to Davis, because he had gotten them their “wholesaler’s license.”
A few days after that, Stanko said the cars had arrived and were parked on McElveen’s lot. They picked up a 1994 Sonoma. Around that time, Stanko told Crenshaw that they’d made their first sale, selling a 1994 Escort to a kid named Thornwald.
That car, Stanko said, “was still in the shop.” A day or so later, Stanko told Crenshaw that Thornwald had his car, and a second car, a 1995 green-and-silver Sonoma pickup, had been sold to a fellow named R. C. Criswell.
Stanko said that he had picked up a number of checks in payment and gave Crenshaw some cash to keep him happy. Crenshaw suggested that those checks be deposited in the bank account he’d opened for the business, so that there could be money for repairs and other overhead.
Stanko said he couldn’t do that. He’d already made arrangements for the checks. No, he hadn’t taken them to the bank himself. Instead, he said, he’d given them to a coworker whose wife was the branch manager at a local bank.
Later, Stanko explained that those checks were slow to clear because that same wife was suspicious that one of the checks wasn’t good. Stanko said that relations between him and the guy Davis were not good. Stanko asked Crenshaw to help him move cars from McElveen’s lot to their own so that Davis wouldn’t be able to put them in his warehouse, where Stanko feared they would never see them again. Together, they moved two 1995 Centuries. On his own, Stanko moved another Century and a 1993 Firebird.
Stanko sold a car to Crenshaw’s cousin. Crenshaw, who was beginning to get suspicious, thought this was a safe purchase. He knew his cousin had the same insurance as his parents had, and the insurance company would check the car’s VIN number, which would tell them if the car was stolen.
Crenshaw was no longer easily placated. He hadn’t received his Yukon. The original cars from the Davis auction had never shown up. Crenshaw threatened to rat Stanko out at McElveen’s, but Stanko begged him not to, saying he would lose his job.
As for those original cars that Crenshaw had helped purchase, Stanko said Davis had moved them from his warehouse to another lot called Blue & Gold. Crenshaw went to that lot and asked about the cars. Nobody there knew anything about them. To that, Stanko said that the cars weren’t at Blue & Gold anymore and had been transported to an illegal chop shop on Old Back River Road in Goose Creek.
A couple of times, Crenshaw recalled, he and Stanko had driven together to the chop shop. On those occasions, an African-American gentleman came out and talked to Stanko, but Crenshaw could not hear the conversations. Stanko told Crenshaw that “these people were dangerous,” but he still assured him that they would get their cars.
Crenshaw had had enough. He talked to a friend of his who was a policeman. The cop said there were two Berkeley County deputies who could help him. Then he mentioned the police involvement to Stanko, and Stanko called him off. He said he knew someone who knew the captain, and they’d get better results from a higher-up. Stanko’s lies began to involve law enforcement. He told Crenshaw he couldn’t have his cars because “the chief” had them.
When Crenshaw expressed anxiety over where his money ended up, Stanko maintained that his own stress level was sky-high over the whole mess also.
Stanko told Crenshaw the stress was getting to him. He passed out—
boom,
completely lost consciousness—on one occasion after talking with Ricky Davis.
On February 19, Crenshaw visited a friend, Special Agent Aldo Bassi, who visited Stanko and interrogated him at length. Afterward, Bassi told Crenshaw that he suspected Stanko himself was the crook,
not
the people he’d been dealing with.
There was another full day of running around, going from place to place where the cars were supposed to be, but weren’t. For part of the time, Crenshaw’s cousin and another guy were with them, and Stanko always moved the adventure to a new location with a fresh lie.
Crenshaw called Stanko at eight o’clock, Tuesday morning, and Stanko agreed to meet him at McElveen. Crenshaw went there, but Stanko did not. At half past nine, Stanko called Crenshaw
collect.
Crenshaw accepted the charges.
Stanko had given up on the scam. Crenshaw confronted Stanko directly, and Stanko admitted to him that there was no Ricky Davis involved, or the chop shop, or anybody else. It was just him, just Stanko. Crenshaw asked where the cars that had arrived had come from, and Stanko admitted that they were stolen. In fact, he had stolen them. Now he could only think about one thing—getting away. Running away.
“Where’s the money?” Crenshaw asked.
“There is no money,” Stanko replied, adding that he had no intention of going back to jail. He said he was leaving, and he instructed Crenshaw to “help Elizabeth,” because she knew nothing of his scheme and was completely innocent.
Crenshaw first called Bassi, who was busy and said he’d call him back; then he called Elizabeth, who was “very upset and crying and saying that Steve attacked her.
“My wife, Natalie, called 911 and then went next door to be with Elizabeth to wait for the police,” Crenshaw told Detective Lewis.

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