Read Online Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle by Michael Benson - Free Book Online Page B

but he hadn’t gotten off to a great start. The early tee times produced the lowest scores, because those golfers completed their round before the weather became too bad. Tiger had a later tee time and shot his round in the thick of it. After the first round, he was seven strokes behind the leader, a relatively unknown Chris DiMarco.
    This was perfect, Stanko thought.
    The Masters oozed class out of its pores. It was played on the Augusta National Golf Club golf course, a fairytale beautiful setting for golf. The winner received a green jacket—along with a truckload of money, of course. Augusta had undulating greens and water features spanned by arching bridges. There was no rough (long grass), only pine straw. With azaleas and magnolias in bloom, the Masters tournament was, for those attending or watching on TV, a rite of spring.
    TV announcers were not allowed to refer to “the crowd.” Too vulgar. Spectators at the Masters formed “the gallery.” They were the most affluent and polite fans in golf, perhaps in all of sports.
    The gallery had a code of ethics, just as the golfers did. If a woman left her folding chair next to the green with her purse on her seat, she could be certain both chair and purse would be there when she returned.
    For a gathering such as this, the cost of security was surprisingly light. The great bulk of that security was outside, carefully scrutinizing admission. Positively and absolutely no riffraff. Once members of the gallery entered Augusta National, they were secure.
    That kind of setup made Stephen Stanko eager. He could drink, meet people, maybe a woman, and plan out his next move. The Augusta locals would be oblivious to a white man with spectacles wearing a golf shirt and khaki pants. Stanko pulled Henry Lee Turner’s Mazda onto the exit ramp for Augusta National and trolled for locations.

SEARCHING
    A warrant to search Henry Lee Turner’s home was requested by Investigator Scott Bogart, and granted by a judge, allowing law enforcement to go over the entire house with a fine-tooth comb.
    The warrant also allowed the police to search Turner’s small yard and the items in it. Police were particularly eager to search the tan-colored “pop-up” camper parked behind the home, and the red Mustang in the driveway. As it turned out, the search of the camper would bear little fruit. The Mustang was another story....
    Things stood just as they had when Roger Turner first noticed, with horror, that his dad’s truck was missing. The only difference was that the entire lot on the cul-de-sac had been sealed off with police tape to prevent curiosity seekers from accidentally contaminating potential evidence.
    The search warrant was purposefully open-ended, allowing crime scene specialists to search for and collect just about anything, including biological and trace evidence that might be pertinent to the murder.
    Cell phones and computer equipment were subject to seizure—although an additional search warrant would be necessary to search for information stored within those phones and computer hardware.
    Police were obliged to seize and process any and all “firearms, shell casings, parts of firearms, projectiles, and live bullets” that might be found.
    Investigators Bogart and Pitts performed the search. Among the items seized and processed were an Enterprise Car Rental notepad; a green beer bottle; two cigarette butts; assorted papers and books; a glass mug, with flowers painted on it; a six-pack, with two bottles missing, of a beer called Yuengling Lager; a silver camera; credit cards; two nickels; an Old Timer knife; two spent .38-caliber casings; the bloody pillow silencer; a .22-caliber rifle; a twelve-gauge shotgun; sixteen blood swabs, taken from various spots near to where Turner’s body was found; the victim’s electric razor; a lead projectile resembling a bullet (the test shot); and a Dell personal computer.
    From the Mustang, police found a briefcase with assorted papers