trip him up. They figured if the killer didn’t think the police knew it was missing, he’d be more likely to hold on to it. If they caught him, and found the laundry basket in his possession, it would only make their case stronger.
Autopsy Revealed
Cause of death—strangulation.
On June 20, 2002, Stephanie Bennett’s autopsy went public. The gruesome details terrified the community and reignited the pressure on the police department to catch the killer.
The report from Dr. Gordon LeGrand at the Wake County Medical Examiner’s Office was much more specific than the sketchy details that had been previously released to the public by police. Even the sterility of the medical terminology couldn’t lessen the impact the report would have on the public.
“This one I remember more than others,” LeGrand said. In all of his years performing autopsies, LeGrand said he always remembered the women and the children the most. They were always the saddest cases that touched him more deeply than others. “Here was somebody living in an apartment, going about her life and there is a psychotic deviant lurking around.”
First, the autopsy report set the scene—it stated that Stephanie had been found nude, lying on her back in the bedroom adjacent to her own. She had a pair of pale blue women’s underwear stuck in her mouth. The underwear had apparently been used as a gag to prevent her from screaming during the attack.
The report went on to describe the state of the body. There was a thirteen-inch ligature mark around Stephanie’s neck. Her wrists and ankles also had marks on them consistent with the use of restraints. The doctor stated the double red lines on Stephanie’s wrists might be from handcuffs, although he couldn’t say for sure. The only real injury on Stephanie Bennett’s body was a pronounced bruise above her right eye, but LeGrand also noted some minor evidence of self-defense, small scratches here and there. There was also clear evidence of sexual assault including dried semen on the body.
“In all likelihood, he surprised her and got her before she could do much,” LeGrand said.
There were key details in the report that gave investigators clues as to how the crime was committed. They used these details to create a theory of what happened that night in Stephanie’s apartment—a theory they hoped would help them eventually zero in on a suspect.
Because the maintenance employee believed the front door to the apartment was dead-bolted when he entered the day Stephanie’s body was found, investigators assumed the killer most likely came through the window in Emily’s bedroom. A window screen was missing from the window and placed on the ground outside, and while the window was closed when police arrived, it was not locked.
Lieutenant Morgan believed that on the night she was attacked, Stephanie—who would’ve probably still been tired from her weekend trip to Greenville to visit Walter Robinson—was probably sound asleep when the killer entered through Emily’s bedroom window.
Investigators considered whether the killer had come to the front door and was let in by Stephanie, after which he dead-bolted the door again, but after much examination, it didn’t seem plausible. In this scenario, the killer would have had to have been someone Stephanie knew well for her to open the door to him. By all accounts, she was a very careful girl who always locked the door and would never have opened it to a stranger, especially not at night when she was already concerned about safety at the apartment complex.
Investigators also considered whether the killer could have forced his way in through the front door. But, again, this seemed unlikely and too risky for someone trying to keep a low profile in an apartment complex where young people came and went at all hours of the night and could have spotted him easily beneath the light of the front door. Another theory involved the killer picking the lock on the
Autopsy Revealed
Cause of death—strangulation.
On June 20, 2002, Stephanie Bennett’s autopsy went public. The gruesome details terrified the community and reignited the pressure on the police department to catch the killer.
The report from Dr. Gordon LeGrand at the Wake County Medical Examiner’s Office was much more specific than the sketchy details that had been previously released to the public by police. Even the sterility of the medical terminology couldn’t lessen the impact the report would have on the public.
“This one I remember more than others,” LeGrand said. In all of his years performing autopsies, LeGrand said he always remembered the women and the children the most. They were always the saddest cases that touched him more deeply than others. “Here was somebody living in an apartment, going about her life and there is a psychotic deviant lurking around.”
First, the autopsy report set the scene—it stated that Stephanie had been found nude, lying on her back in the bedroom adjacent to her own. She had a pair of pale blue women’s underwear stuck in her mouth. The underwear had apparently been used as a gag to prevent her from screaming during the attack.
The report went on to describe the state of the body. There was a thirteen-inch ligature mark around Stephanie’s neck. Her wrists and ankles also had marks on them consistent with the use of restraints. The doctor stated the double red lines on Stephanie’s wrists might be from handcuffs, although he couldn’t say for sure. The only real injury on Stephanie Bennett’s body was a pronounced bruise above her right eye, but LeGrand also noted some minor evidence of self-defense, small scratches here and there. There was also clear evidence of sexual assault including dried semen on the body.
“In all likelihood, he surprised her and got her before she could do much,” LeGrand said.
There were key details in the report that gave investigators clues as to how the crime was committed. They used these details to create a theory of what happened that night in Stephanie’s apartment—a theory they hoped would help them eventually zero in on a suspect.
Because the maintenance employee believed the front door to the apartment was dead-bolted when he entered the day Stephanie’s body was found, investigators assumed the killer most likely came through the window in Emily’s bedroom. A window screen was missing from the window and placed on the ground outside, and while the window was closed when police arrived, it was not locked.
Lieutenant Morgan believed that on the night she was attacked, Stephanie—who would’ve probably still been tired from her weekend trip to Greenville to visit Walter Robinson—was probably sound asleep when the killer entered through Emily’s bedroom window.
Investigators considered whether the killer had come to the front door and was let in by Stephanie, after which he dead-bolted the door again, but after much examination, it didn’t seem plausible. In this scenario, the killer would have had to have been someone Stephanie knew well for her to open the door to him. By all accounts, she was a very careful girl who always locked the door and would never have opened it to a stranger, especially not at night when she was already concerned about safety at the apartment complex.
Investigators also considered whether the killer could have forced his way in through the front door. But, again, this seemed unlikely and too risky for someone trying to keep a low profile in an apartment complex where young people came and went at all hours of the night and could have spotted him easily beneath the light of the front door. Another theory involved the killer picking the lock on the
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