Stancil on way to Wayne
By John Joyce
Published in News on April 16, 2015 1:46 PM
Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce said claims made by Kenneth Stancil III during a telephone interview with a local television station Wednesday -- that he killed three people in addition to Ron Lane -- are unsubstantiated.
Stancil, however, could potentially face the death penalty for killing his former print shop teacher whether or not he is linked to any other killings.
"At this point we don't have any information that makes us think he is linked to any of our open cases," Pierce said.
Stancil made the claims during a telephone interview with WRAL-TV, saying he felt no remorse for killing Lane on the campus of Wayne Community College Monday.
He claimed to have killed two black men and an Hispanic male over the previous four years, saying he stabbed them to death.
Pierce reiterated there were no facts known to his office to substantiate Stancil's claims.
"If he comes back with details more specific to who these people were and where these things took place, we will investigate that," Pierce said.
Stancil is expected to arrive back in Wayne County sometime today after waiving extradition during a hearing in a Florida courtroom Wednesday.
District Attorney Matt Delbridge said Stancil will be given a first appearance on an open count of murder where he will be given the opportunity to request court-appointed counsel or to hire his own attorney.
He could, conceivably, forgo his right to counsel and simply plead guilty, Delbridge said.
"He could express that opinion, that he wants to plead guilty, but that certainly won't speed things up for him," Delbridge said.
He said a plea agreement, were the case to unfold that way, would be done at the discretion and at the pace of his office, not at the will of the defendant.
Following the first appearance, a hearing will have to be held to determine whether or not to try the murder case as a capital offense.
"That will happen down the line," Delbridge said.
Stancil was arrested early Tuesday morning by beach patrol officers while sleeping on a beach in Daytona Beach, Fla. He brandished a knife but did not resist, according to reports.
His arrest came less than 24 hours after Lane's murder, a period during which the college was locked down and thoroughly searched by a contingent of area law enforcement agencies.
According to Goldsboro police, Stancil walked into the third-floor press room at Wayne Community College at 8:09 a.m. Monday, shot Lane once with a pistol grip shotgun and immediately fled the scene.
Stancil traveled south on I-95 to Lumberton, where he abandoned the motorcycle and made the rest of the trek to Florida by other means. It has since been reported that Stancil hitchhiked the rest of the way.
A video has since gone viral of Stancil confessing in a Florida courtroom later Tuesday, telling a judge he "ridded one less (expletive) child molester from the world," and saying he did so to protect his younger brother.
The Wayne County Sheriff's Office said Lane, openly homosexual, had never been accused, investigated or charged with any sexual offense whatsoever.
It has also been reported that Lane's longtime partner, Charles Tobin, 28, committed suicide a year ago. Tobin was first reported missing in July 2014, and his body was found in the woods by a hunter in November.
The sheriff's office maintains Tobin's death was definitively ruled a suicide following a thorough investigation and that Lane was never suspected of any wrongdoing in that matter.
Stancil is scheduled to arrive back in North Carolina today and will be processed into the Wayne County Detention Center, where he will be held without bond.
Pierce said Stancil will be placed on a 14-day classification hold before it is determined where in the jail he should be housed.
"For 14 days he will be held in what we call 'classification' -- basically solitary -- where we investigate and classify inmates before housing them."
Jail administrator Maj. Fane Greenfield elaborated on the classification process.
"We're going to classify him to see if he is a danger or a safety issue, is he going to be dangerous to us to hold," Greenfield said.
"We aren't going to (treat) him any different than we would any other violent criminal," he added.