Episode 6: Thin Walls
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Someone fatally stabbed Stacey Stanton inside her apartment on February 3rd. This was violent. It was brutal. It was brutal.

On February 3, 1990, someone brutally murdered 28-year-old Stacey Stanton inside of her second-story apartment in North Carolina, then cleaned up and disappeared. Residents of Manteo have lived in fear. For 30 years, Stanton's killer has had one face and one name. North Carolina investigators and Manteo police believe that someone is Clifton Spencer.

but his prejudice. They absolutely had tunnel vision that it was the black man who killed the white woman. Keeping an innocent man convicted. They even know now some of them old skogies or them good old boys, they know this man didn't do that. And covering up more than one crime. I feel bad for that guy. I just really seriously don't think he did that.

This is Counter Clock, the investigation into the murder of Stacey Stanton. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. Every time a person withdraws money from an ATM, there's a record left behind. It's usually a timestamp on the receipt designating when the cardholder accessed their funds and how much money they took out. These timestamps are reliable.

On February 3, 1990, at 12:46 and 12:47 in the morning, a man named Leslie Austin took $200 out of his bank account in two separate transactions. He used the ATM at a Wachovia bank on US 64 in Manteo. That bank is a three-minute walk from Stacy's apartment building and Leslie's grandparents' home on Ananias Stair Street.

Leslie's grandmother, Mary Midgett, and his parents were Stacy's landlords and lived on the same piece of property as the apartment building. Leslie declined an interview for this podcast, but on February 21, 1990, the police spoke with him and wrote down what he told them. As it turns out, the information he recalled at the time is very key to knowing what Stacy was doing before her death and where Mike Brandon may have been around the time Stacy was killed.

On Friday, February 2nd, around 8:15 in the evening, Leslie says he saw Stacey pull her car into the driveway between his grandparents' house and the apartment building they owned. As he and Stacey stood in the driveway together, he asked her how she was doing, and she responded that she wasn't very good. Her life was all messed up. Leslie says after that conversation ended, he went inside to watch a movie with his girlfriend.

When he last saw her, Stacey was standing in the driveway alone. He says a half hour later, around 9 o'clock, he heard someone coming up to the back door of his grandmother's house. As he got closer to check it out, it sounded like whoever the person was was talking to themself. When he got closer to the back door and turned a light on, he could finally make out who it was. It was Stacey. She told Leslie she needed a spare key to her apartment.

And because his family had a spare set, he got the extra key, went outside and unlocked the apartment's door. But he says he didn't go inside. Before I go any further in his statement, I just want to stop for a second and address something pretty glaring to me about Leslie's interaction with Stacey. He said that when she was at the back door, she was looking for a spare key to her apartment. My question is, where was her personal copy of the apartment key?

If she'd driven her car into the driveway, why wasn't her apartment key on that set of keys? Had she given it to someone or lost it while out drinking? Those are questions I'll probably never be able to answer, but it's an interesting detail to me. Leslie doesn't mention anything about seeing Richard Fugate at Stacey's apartment, so I tend to think that Richard may have shown up after Leslie got that spare key and let Stacey back into her apartment.

During the second interaction that Leslie had with Stacy, letting her into her apartment, he says that during that time he saw a black man walking toward the apartment building from the general direction of downtown. He says that Stacy yelled at the guy, "Cliff, is that you?" And the guy replied, "Yeah." He says the black man and Stacy went into her apartment together and that he stayed at the bottom of the staircase and watched the porch door to Stacy's unit close.

He then rejoined his girlfriend back in his grandmother's house to finish their movie. Leslie says by 11 o'clock he'd driven over to the beach and dropped his girlfriend off at her house. On his drive back to Manteo, he says he noticed police officers had pulled some people over in a parking lot. One of the people being arrested was a friend of his. He told his buddy being put in the back of the patrol car that he'd help him make bond, but he just needed to get some money first.

Leslie says when he went home and asked his parents for money to bond out his friend, he got an ATM card and went to the Wachovia Bank right around the corner. Now, the second half of Leslie's statement to police is what I find even more interesting. He says roughly a half hour before he went to the ATM to make his withdrawal, he saw Mike Brandon walking alone on a sidewalk headed towards downtown.

I have a hard copy of Leslie's ATM receipt from that night, and it shows that he made his withdrawal at 12:46 a.m. He says he saw Mike about a half hour before that, which would be somewhere in the ballpark of 12:25 a.m., give or take. He says when he saw Mike, he waved at him, but Mike didn't gesture back. Leslie says Mike was walking with his head down, so it was likely that he just didn't see him.

Leslie says after he got his cash from the ATM, he went downtown to bail his friend out of jail. He estimates it took about an hour at the courthouse to get his buddy out. But as he's leaving, he bumps into Mike a second time. This time, he and Mike have a brief conversation. Leslie says he asked Mike if he was going to get toasty, aka drink too much, and Mike responded, "No."

Leslie says he told Mike not to get too toasty and then they walked away from each other. Mike was walking in the direction towards the Green Dolphin Pub and Leslie was headed away from downtown to go back home. Leslie told investigators that he arrived back home by 1:15 or 1:20 in the morning. What's interesting to me about Leslie's statement is that his sightings of Mike occur at the same point in time that Mike is supposed to be at Joni Newman's house.

Remember, according to everyone vouching for Mike, he left the pub a little before midnight and went straight to Joanie's house. According to a convenience store clerk who sold beer, cigarettes, and V8 juice to Mike and Tina's friend Terry, Mike and Terry came into the store at 12:10 a.m. Patty, Tina, and Joanie all say the two men returned from their beer run and hung out at Joanie's until Terry and Tina left at 12:45 in the morning.

So, how is it possible that Mike is walking around downtown Manteo and is seen by Leslie at 12:25 and again near the downtown courthouse sometime around 1 in the morning, if he's supposed to be at Joni's during that time? Joni said she went to bed at 1:15 and she swears Mike and Patty were in her living room together at that time. So something isn't adding up with these two stories.

Either someone is lying, or possibly people's memories are not exact on the time they did things, which is entirely possible. However, Leslie's timeline I think is fairly reliable, because he's basing his two sightings of Mike off of the timestamps on his ATM receipts. And those don't lie.

But those receipts alone are only one part of the picture. In reality, the whole hour from midnight to one in the morning on February 3rd is just so fuzzy and murky to me. No wonder police had such a hard time piecing it together, if they even tried to piece it together. If they had, I think they would have uncovered the same impossibility about Mike's story that I just did. But who knows? Maybe they did. And if they did, they just decided not to do anything with it.

Again, you have to remember, by the time they even interview Leslie Austin on February 21st, they've already zeroed in on Clifton Spencer as their prime suspect. And they've gone to the DA trying to get an arrest warrant for him at least two times already. Leslie's testimony only barely places Clifton at Stacey's apartment, a fact that Clifton doesn't deny.

The rest of Leslie's memory about where Mike Brandon was completely contradicts a lot of what Mike, Joni, Patty, and Tina had already told investigators. Along with Leslie's statements, another eyewitness who lived on the same property as Stacey gave the SBI some interesting information too. Information that proves Stacey was alive up until 1.15 in the morning on February 3rd.

This witness's name is Michael Moore, and he lived in an apartment unit that shared a wall with Stacey's. Here's a voice actor to read through his statement to investigators about what he heard and saw in those early morning hours. I moved in next door to Stacey just a few months ago, last November, I think. I've been over to her place a couple times. On Friday night, I got home from work around 10 to 11, so like 10.50, I think.

About 20 minutes later at 11:15, I went upstairs to the third floor apartment to see my friends, Todd and Donna. I stayed there hanging out until maybe like midnight or 12:30. Then I left and I walked back down to my apartment. I didn't notice Stacy's car parked in front of our building when I got home from work, but when I was upstairs with Todd and Donna at their place, I heard a car door slam.

It was loud enough that I went over to their window and looked outside, but I didn't see anything. When I was back in my place around 1 o'clock or 1:15 in the morning, I definitely heard Stacy's voice through the wall of my apartment. I knew it was her because she's got a distinctive voice. She's not from here. Right after I heard her talking, I heard someone walking down the staircase outside.

A downside to Michael's statement is obviously that last bit he just mentioned, taking cough syrup and being knocked out.

I can see why maybe police might have seen his testimony as weak, but I don't think we can completely ignore the information Michael provides. I think that would be a huge mistake. If he heard what he said he did, that means Stacey was alive at 1:15 or even as late as 1:30.

He said he heard her talking with someone inside of her apartment during that time. He knew it was her because of the distinct tone of her voice. He also said he heard footsteps going down or maybe coming up the staircase, which to me means someone else was definitely there. The question is, who? I've thought about it, and it's possible it could have been Clifton returning to Stacey's apartment to tell her that he hadn't found any crack.

But he says when he got to Stacy's with no drugs, he knocked and she didn't answer, so he kept her money and went to Wayne's. He didn't speak with her or go inside. So there would have been no conversation between him and Stacy that Michael could overhear. Also, at this time, according to Leslie's memory, it's possible Mike was out walking around in downtown and not at Joanie's house.

Whoever was at Stacey's at 1:15 in the morning, I think, could have been her killer arriving. And if Stacey was alive at 1:15, that leaves the next few hours for her murder to take place, while Michael was so conked out on cough syrup that he slept through the entire attack. It's really hard for me to believe that an attack like the one Stacey endured was done silently. I have to think there was some sort of screaming or something that would have been heard through those thin walls.

But somehow it was silent. Or at least no one heard it because no one came forward to report that kind of disturbance. Including Leslie Austin's family, who was living in the home a few feet away.

With all of this in mind, I circled back to Don Beachum and Ray Griggs' statements to police. I wanted to see if I could glean any more information from them because they'd told investigators they were at Joanie's house around 2 in the morning. And because Stacey's apartment is so close to Joanie's, my hope was that maybe they'd seen something since they were right there.

I mean, after all, Ray said he left the bar to go to Joanie's on a bicycle. So you would think, being out in the open like that, he would have seen something if he was in the general vicinity of Stacey's apartment building. Dawn's statement was really no help to me. And because she doesn't want to talk with me on record now, my only option was to reevaluate Ray's statements to police. And what he says about that night, and particularly his history with Stacey, made me have so many more questions.

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In the one interview Ray Griggs had with the SBI, he told them about his interactions with Stacey at the pub, when he saw Clifton arrive and leave, and how he and Don went to Joni's to attempt to pick up his sister. But later on during their questioning, agents asked Ray how he knew Stacey or where she lived. Here's a voice actor to read Ray's response to that question. I used to be neighbors with Stacey. I lived in an apartment next to hers.

I was there probably, I don't know, maybe like a year. I moved out three or four months ago. The apartments have thin walls and you can hear people talking and like music and stuff like that. You couldn't tell what people were saying or anything like that, but I mean, you could, you just hear their voices. I go over to Stacy's on occasion. We were just friends though. I mean, no intimate relations. I mean, I had the opportunity, but I never did. I remember she kept vodka around her place. That's what she mostly drank.

That and maybe a few beers, like Budweiser's. She didn't keep Bush beer around. It's more for blacks than whites. I mean, I'm not being prejudiced or anything. Ray also told the investigators how he felt about Clifton Spencer. The first time I saw him was Friday night at the pub. I never talked with him before that. I was apprehensive of him. I mean, I don't know, just something about him.

So, Ray and Stacey weren't strangers. They were neighbors for a year. He knew the same thing about the apartment building that Michael Moore had: that the walls were thin. Because he'd lived in the exact same unit Michael moved into. What I found most interesting was his statement about having been over at Stacey's a few times.

He didn't deny having been inside the apartment, but he made sure the police knew he never had sex or any kind of physical relationship with Stacey. He also volunteered his thoughts on Clifton, saying despite never speaking to the man prior to Friday night, Clifton just made him feel apprehensive. Ray went on in his interview to say that he was one of the reasons Mike and Patty had gotten together.

Patty and Mike got to know one another when Patty would visit Ray's apartment. Mike was usually coming and going from Stacy's next door, and eventually Patty and Mike started getting together behind Stacy's back. Patty told authorities in her statement that the affair started in late September of 1989. By Christmas time, her and Mike were officially seeing each other and sleeping together.

She said one night they even stayed together in Stacey's apartment while Stacey was out of town visiting family in New Jersey for the holidays. Patty said Stacey had tried to get Mike to join her in New Jersey, but Mike refused. By the time Stacey returned from New Jersey in January 1990, the love triangle was in full swing.

According to Patty, when Stacey came back to Manteo in January, she found Mike and her together in a van outside of the Green Dolphin Pub and got upset. Patty told the SBI that Stacey got into the van to confront Mike about cheating on her, and somehow the fight moved from outside of the bar to Stacey's driveway. At the height of fussing over Mike, Patty said she picked up a wooden board and hit Stacey with it.

That only escalated the fight, but eventually Mike broke the two women up, and Patty says the next day her and Stacey talked it out at the bar and everything was fine after that. But you can probably understand why I have a hard time believing that, though. I've never swung a board at another person before, but I've got to think an ongoing love triangle and such a physical attack can't be smoothed over in less than a day with just one conversation at a bar.

Patty assaulting Stacey in that way was a clear sign to me of animosity between the women. So I decided to dig into Patty's background a little more. And when I did, I found that she has a criminal history in Dare County. The clerk's office has several arrest records and court documents for her for incidents in the 1990s. It took a few weeks for them to come from the state archives because they're so old they'd been transferred onto microfilm.

When I looked at the records, I couldn't find anything that said Stacey pressed charges against Patty for the wood board throwdown. But several other women on the Outer Banks had gone to law enforcement after being attacked by Patty. Patty had been arrested two times, once in 1991 and another time in 1994. One of the reports is from the Dare County Sheriff's Office, and the other is from the Kill Devil Hills Police Department.

In June 1991, a year and a half after Stacey's murder, the Sheriff's Office arrested Patty for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. There's only a slim narrative of what actually happened that's available in public record, but it's enough to give you an idea of what Patty was capable of. According to the court document, Patty used a 10-inch pipe wrench to beat the victim's face in.

She hammered away so hard the court determined that the attack was meant to kill. In the court document, Patty is quoted as screaming during the assault, "I will kill the bitch." The victim walked away with a broken nose and a large hole in her face above her left eyebrow. Now, as soon as I read this, I pressed pause on my investigation.

I wanted to relay what I'd found out about Patty to our show's executive producer Ashley Flowers. She attacked a woman with a pipe wrench and beat her in the face and attempted to kill this woman. What? Yes. It says that Patty Rowe, aka Patty Brandon,

Oh, God.

So that is what Patty did to another woman. Oh.

- This does not look good for Patty. And in the event that she decides not to talk to us for the show or like doesn't want anything to do with us, like she can do that, but this is like in court records. This is her history and you can't change that. And it's just, to me, it's just so telling about somebody, what they're willing to do. - That is wild.

There's no information available in the public record about what exactly was going on between these two women that led up to the pipe wrench incident. But over the next year, the case got continued a few times because the victim didn't show up for the hearings. And eventually the judge dismissed the charges against Patty.

What's incredibly interesting about this assault is that the victim is listed as Barbara Jean Johnson, a name super similar to the Barbara Jean McGinnis who was inside the Green Dolphin Pub the night Stacey was killed. Remember, a woman named Barbara Jean McGinnis told investigators that she overheard Patty arguing with Stacey inside of the pub.

I tapped my sources again to see if maybe Barbara McGinnis got married or something and became Barbara Jean Johnson by 1991. But that's not the case. According to Susan Corrington, she and Barbara McGinnis dated one another for years, and they moved to the Outer Banks from California in the early 80s. Susan says Barbara McGinnis was not attacked by Patty in 1991.

To be even more sure, I showed the picture of Barbara Jean Johnson to Joni Newman, and Joni agreed with Susan that Barbara Jean Johnson and Barbara Jean McGinnis were two different people. What's unfortunate is that Susan tells me Barbara Jean McGinnis died in the last few years, so I can't interview her. In the mid-1990s, she moved away from Manteo to Virginia Beach. But don't forget about her just yet. She'll come back into this story in a future episode.

As I kept going through Patty's records, I saw that she didn't learn from her near-miss at prison time in 1991. No, she was suspected of attacking yet another woman in February 1994. This report is from Kill Devil Hill's police. It's three pages long, but 95% redacted. Captain John Taller from KDHPD, who some of you may remember from Counter Clock Season 1, is the person who gave it to me.

The report lists Patty as a suspect in an assault against a woman, but what's intriguing is that her brother Ray is also listed as an additional suspect. I was able to track down the victim of this assault, a woman named Renee Harrington, and Renee told me that she remembers living on the Outer Banks in 1994, but unfortunately, she suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2006, and all of her memories prior to then are almost non-existent.

She couldn't recognize a picture of Patty, and she doesn't remember any specifics of the attack. But just like in 1991, the case in '94 gets dropped, and Patty doesn't serve a single day behind bars for whatever she was suspected of doing to Renee. It's like every time police arrested Patty, she somehow got off the hook.

If you're keeping a tally at this point, between 1990 and 1994, records show Patty had a history of violently attacking multiple women on the Outer Banks. First Stacey with the wooden board, then Barbara Johnson, and eventually Renee Harrington. For several months, I've called many numbers and left messages for Patty. I've reached out to her on social media, but as of now, I can't get in touch with her.

Her and Mike's son, Mike Brandon III, is also off the radar. He's a grown man, 30 years old. And I've contacted everyone that I can think of who could put me in touch with him, but we still haven't connected. I can't get him to respond to social media messages either. Nothing. But even though Patty may have skirted the law, getting off scot-free for her crimes in the 90s, her husband Mike was much more well-known for his offenses on the Outer Banks back then.

His crimes were a lot more daring, more brazen. Someone had gone through the ceiling and tried to get into what was basically an evidence closet, evidence room. And outright unbelievable. Went through an awful lot of trouble, you know, chainsaw through the roof. We'll talk about those next time on CounterClock.

Be sure to follow CounterClock on social media and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. CounterClock is an AudioChuck original show. Ashley Flowers is the executive producer. And all reporting and hosting is done by me, Delia D'Ambra.

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