MURDERED: Stacey Stanton
00:00Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers, and today there is no grit. That's because wewere supposed to take the holiday week off, but I know you True Crime Junkies well enoughto know that I have to give you a little something. So today I'm actually joined by someone special,Delia D'Ambra, who some of you might recognize as the host of another Audio Chuck True Crimepodcast called Counter Clock. Hey guys, I am so happy to be here and ready to talk all thingscounter clock, but I do want to let those of you know that have listened to season one ofcounter clock. I am still actively working the Denise Johnson unsolved homicide. So it's somethingI'll always be doing, but as I waited for leads to pan out and law enforcement to do their job,
00:52I started investigating another murder and it has been taking up my life for the last year or so.Yeah. So we've got season two actually coming out this week on September 10th. And I mean seriously,season two of Counter Clock is such a banana's case. So to fill all you Crime Junkies out therein season two is actually on a 30 year old homicide, which I don't know how you keep doing this,but somehow takes place back in your hometown of Manio, North Carolina. So we're back in theOuter Banks where the Denise Johnson case also happened, which is just kind of crazy. Yeah. SoI am back home. I cannot seem to get away from the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It is a crazy casethat a lot of people for 30 years have thought was closed and a man was convicted in 1991. So it's
01:44kind of like open and shut for a lot of people, but there is so much more to this story. I know.I'm so excited to tell everyone. So let's fill in all of our Crime Junkies on the story of StacyStanton.So our story begins on February 3rd, 1990. It's 1.45 in the afternoon, and there's thiswaitress named Tina, who's just been informed by the hostess of the diner that she works at indowntown Manio, North Carolina, that her coworker, 28 year old Stacy Stanton, is late for herafternoon waitressing shift. So the hostess tells Tina that Stacy should have been there by now.She's getting kind of worried about why she's late, but I mean, not worried enough like thinking
02:58something happened, just thinking maybe she slept in, maybe she had too much fun the night before,which was a Friday night. So Tina decides, you know what, like she's only a few blocks away.I'm going to go check on her at her apartment. And when I say a few blocks away, like her housewas just a couple of streets away, which is literally like a five minute walk from the diner.So when Tina arrives, she sees a newspaper on the top of the staircase to Stacy'ssecond story apartment, and she picks it up. And she has to go inside this small, like outdoorenclosed porch. And then from there enters both the porch door and the actual front door ofStacy's apartment. And you've actually seen the crime scene photos, you've seen reports on this
03:40case. What did Tina walk into? Yeah, so when Tina walks inside of this like super small apartment,it is two bedrooms, but its orientation is really small. So she walks in and she goes down a smallhallway and then goes to the left and passes a very small living room. And she's calling out forStacy this entire time. Like, Stacy, where are you, you know, just waiting for some sort ofresponse. So while she's walking past the living room, Tina drops the newspaper that she pickedup in its plastic bag. She says she dropped that in a chair in the living room. And she makes herway towards like the back of the apartment where there are two bedrooms thinking like maybe she'sasleep. Right. So she's going towards the bedrooms. And she's looking around. And so she kind of ends
04:26up there. But then she doesn't see Stacy, like there's no reply. Stacy's not in the apartment.So Tina says she kind of walks back, makes her way to the living room area. And that's when shediscovers Stacy's body sprawled out in her small living room space, just blood everywhere. So thisis something that's tripped me up for a while now. Like, I don't understand. She had to walkthrough the living room to even get to the back bedrooms. How did she do that? Put the newspaperdown, but not even register Stacy because it's not again, she's not like covered up by something.She's not like in a corner. I mean, you said sprawled out. Yeah. So that's a very good question.And it's a question that I think every listener and anyone who like knows and learns about this
05:06story is going to ask, but will sort of be answered in the show. But really, I mean, her story iswhen I was going in, like I wasn't expecting to see a dead body, like in the dimmer lit area ofthe living room sprawled out. So she caught it on the way back. So it's questionable, but that'sher story. So she obviously discovers Stacy and I assume then calls 911. Right. But she does notcall 911 from Stacy's phone in the apartment. Tina actually goes back to the diner. So sheleaves the death scene, right? She goes back to the diner a couple blocks away and tells the hostess,Hey, I went to Stacy's apartment and I think Stacy fell or she's been hurt. There's bloodeverywhere. Like Tina's kind of hysterical because she doesn't know what happened. So she goes back
05:56and talks to the hostess and is like, you need to call 911 because lo and behold, the hostess isMonday through Friday, a sheriff's deputy in Dare County. But on the weekend, she's likehostess of a diner. So Tina's thinking, you're a deputy, call for backup. And that's what happens.So the 911 call gets placed from the diner to the manual police department and then likethe greater jurisdiction of Dare County. So you're thinking the reason she went back to thediner because that doesn't make sense in my mind. Like if I see someone and you said it's a bloodyscene. So you also said maybe she fell or something like that doesn't make sense to me if it's such abloody scene. So part of me can see like, okay, I want to get out of here. I don't want to make
06:38this call from this apartment. Even if I think it's an accident, there's not someone else in there.But like, does it make sense that she goes all the way back to the diner? Is that the best placeto make the 911 call? Or because she knew the hostess was a deputy? I think it's both of thosethings. So we're also talking about 1990. So it's landlines. She certainly could have used Stacey'slandline. I mean, given that it was in service, which we don't know, but I would imagine thatwould be. But so she doesn't use Stacey's landline. So she goes back to the diner where there's alandline. And I think her reasoning is I knew that my hostess and friend was a sheriff's deputy.And maybe she could, you know, figure it out. But what's super interesting is when Tina goes back
07:18to the diner and the 911 call is placed, the hostess and Tina go back to the apartment together.And there's no police there. There's no first responders. And it's at that point that thehostess, aka sheriff's deputy, goes inside and actually goes in and stands over Stacey's body,says that she doesn't touch her, but she stands over the body. And at that point, again, there'sno law enforcement there. But like within a minute or two of those two women returning to the scene,law enforcement shows up and then the whole, you know, scene unfolds.Well, in the scene, you actually detail the crime scene pretty extensively in the first,like episode, I believe, of season two. But what I think is really interesting to me is,
08:05I mean, there's so much located at that scene. I mean, everything from like the position ofStacey's body, the way it was like sprawled out in her living room is really interesting and raisesa lot of questions. The blood spatter. The blood spatter. I mean, things that were physicallyfound there. But what I find also really fascinating is, I mean, you mentioned you'reback in your hometown, we actually get some of the same characters back becausethe same state Bureau of Investigation Forensic Tech that processed Stacey Stanton's scene,is the same man who in 1997 would process the homicide scene of Denise Johnson, right?Right. So again, like small town, small space, you know, major crimes in that area,
08:45you're going to get some overlap of law enforcement characters just period. SoDennis Honeycutt is the SBI tech who inspects Stacey Stanton's crime scene. And so, you know,if you haven't listened to season one, I really, you know, can't encourage people enough to goback and binge season one, because when you listen, you'll hear his name and so many othernames of people that are involved in both of these cases in terms of like, you know, localjurisdictions and, you know, state Bureau of Investigation agents. And so that familiarity,I think, is really going to help people kind of navigate the story and all of the characters.Yeah. I mean, like you said, there are a lot of the same players and not just like forensic
09:25techs and maybe some investigators, but even the people who process Stacey's body and do her autopsywould in later years be the same people who work on Denise Johnson and do her autopsy.And one of the things like when you first told me about this case before you like were evenstarting your investigation, one of the things that blew my mind was the fact that, you know,we had already covered Denise Johnson. And you told me, you know, Stacey Stanton was brutallystabbed and attacked inside her apartment. She was a waitress. She's a waitress. Police weren'table to determine what kind of motive that there would be because she seemingly was murdered forno reason. Nothing was taken from her apartment. And she wasn't sexually assaulted, which again,
10:11for people who listen to season one, this is a really familiar story. Yeah, the circumstancesare very similar in terms of like the crimes and how they were committed. But the forensic side ofthis case is really I think what a lot of people and myself will find extremely intriguing. Soyeah, you said the motive is very murky and that's pretty much what police kind of came out with.They can't really pinpoint it to anything. But what's super interesting is that just days intothe investigation, police actually had two suspects in their sights, one of which whose namewas on items found in Stacey's apartment, but he was pretty quickly ruled out, which is interesting.Well, it's interesting because he was only quickly ruled out. But honestly, before they could even
10:55really vet him and he's ruled out because like he basically like comes to them in the firstcouple hours of the investigation, gives them this alibi and points police in the direction of a guylike who was last known to be with Stacey. So basically, he just comes to them was like,hey, no need to look at me. I was doing something. Go look at this guy. Yeah. And it just so happensthat the guy that he points to is a black man from a small world town about 30 minutes fromManio called Columbia. And the guy he points to was a known drug user and he had been acquaintanceswith Stacey. So he wasn't like a complete stranger to Stacey. Pretty much right off the bat,the white police officers and detectives from the state Bureau of Investigation,
11:35they took interest in this guy from Columbia and put all of their eggs in one basket and pursued himas their prime suspect. And this was like within five hours of Stacey's body being found. Sovery, very quickly that all that came together. Yeah. And what I think is so fascinating aboutthis case is that if anyone were to look up newspaper articles or even Google Stacey Stanton'scase or lived in town in 1990, that's the story that they know. She was murdered within hours theyhad their guy story over. Like, I mean, they pinpoint him within hours, within days theyhave him arrested. Ultimately, he's convicted like they convicted this black man of murderingthis beautiful white woman. And that's been the end of the story. It's been done. But that's not
12:23the end of the story. Right. That is literally just the beginning of the case. And as I dug deeper,I found out there are so many twists and turns and really revelations that have come forwardin the 30 years since that I think turn all of what the Outer Banks of North Carolina has knownabout this case like completely on its head. Yeah. I mean, your year long deep dive into this case.I mean, to me, the biggest thing is that you found that the forensic evidence used againstthis man to get a conviction does not match up. Yeah. So as I looked really closely,there's everything from hair fibers to eyewitness statements that contradicts everything that theauthorities like hung the whole case on as to how and why this man committed the murder.
13:12But like none of it adds up. And when I started taking my deep dive, so many people came forwardand I was able to track down so many people, including prominent legal players in the originalcase from 1990, who say they no longer feel that this case is solved and that like a wrongfulconviction took place. And these are critical people that like have done a 180. Right. Andwhen you say prominent legal figures, you're not saying like, you know, this guy's defenseattorney. It's people who were on the other side of the table who in 1990 were rooting for hisconviction. Now in in 2020 are like, yeah, maybe we got it wrong. And people in the community whomade statements back then, whether out of fear or like just foggy drunken memories who now are like,
13:57no, nothing. What I said was true, which ultimately could mean that the real killergot away with it. And it's possible that maybe a killer still out there. Yeah. And that's exactlywhat I've been trying to get to the bottom of. And like to be honest with you, by the end of theseason, I think we'll all be able to make up our minds as to what the truth really is. You'regiving me goosebumps. So all of our listeners can go listen to the first two episodes of counterclock season two, which start this week on September 10. And in episodes one and two,Delia really goes deep into the details of the crime scene itself. But one of the things thatI think makes this season so special is that you actually got in touch with and have been
14:44able to talk to multiple times the man who was convicted of this and who is still convicted ofthis. And he actually walks you through his side of the story. And it's a story that I don't eventhink our listeners or anyone would even believe. Yeah, I think you really have to hear this storyfrom the people who lived it to actually believe it just because it is so, so hard to like processand understand. Definitely go follow counterclock on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.And I really, I don't want to give too much away, but I can't stress enough how important it isto binge season one before Thursday, because this is the first time you're hearing Stacy Stanton'sname. But I can tell you, it is not the last time that you will hear Denise Johnson's name.
15:43Don't forget to go follow counterclock on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.And visit counterclockpodcast.com. When the first two episodes of season two drop, we're also goingto have pictures that go along with them. And you can find all of that information on the website.Again, that's counterclockpodcast.com.Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
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