South Carolina executes a man serving death sentences in 2 separate murders
June 13, 2025
A South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders has been put to death by lethal injection in the state’s sixth execution in nine months. Stephen Stanko was executed Friday for shooting a friend then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005. The 57-year-old inmate was serving another death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate showed the bullets nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.
