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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In October 1981, a 30-year-old single mother living in Carmel, California, was brutally murdered inside of her own home.
she was found strangled to death and the case shocked the quiet and upscale community of Carmel for many years there were few leads and the case went cold but in 2020 thanks to advancements in DNA technology investigators were able to link DNA from the crime scene to a promising suspect
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 276, The Murder of Sonia Herrick-Stone. ♪♪
Thank you.
In the fall of 1981, Sonia Carmen Herrick Stone was a 30-year-old single mother living with her daughter in Monterey County, California, a place about 120 miles south of San Francisco. While researching for this episode, I wasn't able to find out much about her background or childhood, but here's everything I could find.
Originally from Quebec, Canada, Sonia moved to the city of Carmel in Monterey County, California sometime during the 1970s. That's where she met and married a man by the name of Michael Stone in 1976. The two eventually had a daughter together, but something in their marriage just wasn't right. They ended up splitting up and getting divorced.
By October 1981, Sonia lived alone with her four-year-old daughter, Sasha Stone. Even after splitting up with her husband, she remained in Monterey County. That became her home. Based on the little I could find out about her, Sonia was a loving and doting mother to her only daughter. She wasn't going to let being a single mother ruin her daughter's chances of growing up to live a happy and good life.
She also wasn't going to let her relationship with her ex-husband ruin anything. We'll be talking about him a little later on. So to take care of herself and her daughter, Sonia worked in sales and merchandising for the legendary jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss.
The morning of October 15th, 1981 started like any other. Sonia and her daughter woke up early. Sonia packed her daughter's lunch and then dropped her off at school. But what exactly happened after that, no one but Sonia and her killer knows. And the events of that day would evolve into a four-decade pursuit of justice.
Later that day, 30-year-old Sonia was found brutally murdered inside of her home while her daughter was still at school. Her friend, Carol McBride, was the one who found her and called the police. More on her in just a moment.
An autopsy would later reveal that she had been strangled to death with her own pantyhose. It was also initially reported that she had been sexually assaulted, but that will come into question later on, so remember that detail. The testimony was that her back door was unlocked, so we are presuming that it is likely how he gained entry. Deputy District Attorney for Monterey County, Matthew Leroux, told People magazine,
we didn't find any other signs of forced entry and we don't think she would have let him inside, end quote. So that detail is telling. Whoever killed Sonia didn't have to break in and we know that she wouldn't let a stranger into her home. That just wasn't the kind of person that she was. So the killer must have seen that the back door was unlocked and took advantage of that.
He probably also knew that Sonia was a single mom and she was likely alone. It was also clear early on into the investigation that Sonia had likely been attacked right inside of her front door. This is what DA Lareau had to say about that. Quote,
We think it was likely she was walking into the house when she was attacked, end quote. So now that's another layer to this crime. Whoever had done this was either waiting inside of the house as Sonia dropped her daughter off at school that morning, or he followed her inside. He could have been just lying in wait for her inside of her very own home.
Usually, when someone is murdered like this, the police look at those closest to the victims. Did she have any enemies? Was she fighting with anyone around the time of her murder? So in this case, the first suspect was Sonia's ex-husband, Michael Stone. Naturally, he has to be the first suspect. He's the ex-husband, and he's also the father of her child.
And history tells us that homicide victims are usually killed by the people who are closest to them. Killing by complete strangers is rare. They happen, yes, but history tends to tell us that they are far less common.
That's why the authorities tend to look at the people closest to the victim first. Then they expand their search out. So what better suspect than an ex-husband? Michael Stone was also one of the first people to be notified about what happened. As soon as Sonia's body was found, the police called him. At the time, he was living and working in Marin County, about 150 miles north.
At first, the police told him that there had been an accident, so he immediately made the three-hour drive down to Carmel to see what happened. The authorities didn't initially tell him that she had been murdered. Now, why did they choose to say that there had been an accident? I don't know. Because it was very clear from the crime scene that this was a homicide, not an accident.
Maybe it was because the police already considered him a possible suspect. Again, I don't know. I got there and learned I was one of the suspects, Michael Stone said in a news article by the union.
He also said he was told that his wife's father was looking for him and he had a gun. The worst thing was that Sonia's mother wanted my daughter, who was only four at the time, to go and live with her. She told the police that she thought I was a child molester. End quote. More on that statement in just a moment.
Well, Michael Stone might have looked like a good suspect in the beginning, but he was officially cleared by the police very early on in the investigation. He was over 150 miles away at the time of the murder, and he simply couldn't be in two places at once. He was all the way up in a different part of the state when we know that Sonia was attacked and killed.
But that didn't mean he didn't live under a massive cloud of suspicion for a very long time.
Aside from dealing with the trauma of losing his former wife and the mother of his daughter, Michael had to endure rumors for years that he murdered his wife. Again, even though he was cleared by the authorities very early on, there were a lot of people out there who still thought that he did it.
He also had to deal with other rumors, rumors about possible child abuse. Carol McBride, Sonia's close friend who found her body, told police officers she didn't think that he was fit to take custody of their daughter after Sonia's murder.
Michael Stone was unfit to care for his daughter and that Sonia and Michael had been separated. A Monterey County Sheriff's deputy police officer reported in his police report. She also accused him of child abuse. In May 1980, Sonia reportedly took her daughter to their family physician. Sonia went to him because she had suspicions that her ex-husband might have been abusing her.
Beyond the doctor, she also told her friend Carol McBride about her suspicions. However, according to the doctor's report, there was zero indication of child abuse or any other type of wrongful conduct on behalf of Michael Stone.
Now, I don't know where these rumors started from. I don't know why Sonia thought that her ex might be abusing their daughter, but she was obviously worried enough to take her to the doctor to get checked out. So there was at least some cause of concern. This might have also been another reason why the police considered Michael Sohn a possible suspect in the beginning.
So after Sonia's murder, their daughter spent eight days under the care of Child Protective Services. She went to CPS and not her father because of these abuse allegations. But once it was discovered that there was no abuse, that these were all alleged rumors, the child went to go live with her father. However, that living arrangement didn't last forever.
Sasha only lived with her dad for a little while until she eventually went to go live with a relative in Canada. So at this point, Michael Stone was considered a possible suspect in Sonia's murder, but cleared. And he was accused of possibly abusing his daughter, but he was cleared of that as well. He didn't do either.
It's also worth mentioning that Michael also moved to Canada sometime after Sonia's murder. He probably wanted to get away from all the rumors and all the speculation surrounding this case. With the ex-husband being ruled out, the authorities were back at square one, going back to Sonia's house.
The two biggest pieces of evidence at the crime scene were number one, the pantyhose found still tied around Sonia's neck, and number two, a broken fingernail. The pantyhose was important for a couple of reasons. We know they belonged to Sonia the victim, so her DNA and fingerprints were likely to be all over them.
but since her killer had used them to strangle her, there was a small chance of finding his DNA. The other key piece of evidence at this scene was a broken fingernail. One of Sonia's nails on her left hand had been broken, and there was a small amount of blood on the finger itself. So on top of suggesting she fought back, this was another possible place to recover the killer's DNA.
If she had managed to scratch him and draw blood, there was a small chance of recovering some DNA from there as well. But even before any type of testing could be done, the Monterey County Police already had a promising suspect in the case, 25-year-old Michael Scott Glazebrook.
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At the time of Sonia's murder, Michael Glazebrook had recently moved into the home directly across the street from her. In fact, he had just moved in about two or three months before all of this happened. He moved there with his wife. He quickly became a suspect in the murder after detectives spotted a three to four inch vertical scratch down his right cheek.
The police had gone door to door, speaking with every one of Sonia's neighbors. And when they talked to Michael, they immediately saw the mark on his face. They already knew about the broken fingernail, so they wondered if the scratch on Michael's face could have come from attacking Sonia. But when detectives questioned him about the crime, he had an alibi.
He said he was at his father's house and wasn't anywhere near Sonia's place that morning. Although, it's worth mentioning here that the alibi would eventually change several times. At first, he said he was at his father's house, but then he said he was at school. So, which one is it? When the police asked him about the mark on his cheek, he seemed to come up with different stories about how he got it.
One story was that he got it from playing softball. Another was that he got it from cutting plexiglass in his garage. Then eventually, there was a story about getting into a fight. Much more on this scratch on his cheek a little bit later on. At this point, the police felt like they had enough to bring him in. So on December 18th, 1981, the police went out and arrested Michael Glazebrook.
They told him he was under arrest for two outstanding traffic warrants, but sometime after that, he was officially charged with Sonia's murder. He lived across the street from her. He had that mark on his face. He gave the police inconsistent statements about how exactly he got it. He just looked like a good suspect.
He had the means and the opportunity, no motive, but the means and opportunity to have committed a crime like this. This should have been a slam dunk case, as they say. But police and prosecutors already had one really big problem, the blood found on Sonia's broken fingernail.
Since this happened in 1981, they didn't have the type of DNA testing available to say whether the blood on Sonia's fingernail came from Glazebrook or not. Sure, it made logical sense that it probably did, but without the forensic testing, there was no way to prove it back in the early 1980s. This would be something that would eventually haunt them.
There was also another problem, how he was arrested and charged with murder. The Californian, a local newspaper, reported that he was denied bail, brought in under the pretense of a traffic violation, and denied permission to call his wife while in jail.
Now, these mistakes weren't enough to release him altogether, but when the case eventually went to trial, the judge criticized the police and the prosecutors for how they handled the case. And as we're about to find out, this was just the beginning of prosecutors' problems. It's hard to say exactly how these mistakes looked in front of the jury.
The first trial against Michael Glazebrook got underway in November 1982, about a year after the murder. The first issue was over the alleged sexual assault. Now, I mentioned earlier that it was initially reported that Glazebrook had in fact sexually assaulted Sonia. Well, two state medical experts gave contradictory testimonies about that at trial.
One forensic serologist, Dr. Edward Blake said that he found no evidence of a sexual assault, but Dr. Boyd Stevens, a coroner and medical examiner from San Francisco said, no, she was sexually assaulted. Both of these people claim to be experts in sexual assault cases.
But both of them came up with very different conclusions. So if experts can't agree on whether or not a sexual assault took place, what else would they disagree about? This creates reasonable doubts in the jury's minds. And remember, reasonable doubt is all that's needed to acquit someone. Issue number two, a flaky witness.
One of the star witnesses for the prosecution was a woman named Michelle Wilson, a friend of Michael Glazebrook. She was supposed to testify, saying that he told her he was inside of Sonia's house on the day of the murder. She was essentially the only witness who was supposed to testify, saying that he admitted to the murder.
So that was a really big part of the state's case. She was the only witness. But the start of the trial a year later, by the time it started, Michelle Wilson completely recanted her story. According to her, she didn't remember him saying that to her. So now the prosecution had virtually no witnesses placing him inside of Sonia's house that day.
It also made the state look bad. Here was this woman completely recanting her story. It just didn't make them look very good in the eyes of the jury. As part of the defense, Glazebrook's parents, Walter and Jean, testified. They both said that they never saw any scratches on their son's face.
But that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, right? These were probably two parents who just wanted to protect their son. We also know he provided very conflicting statements about how exactly he got it in the first place. So that brings us to problem number three.
Dr. Robert Cushing was the emergency room doctor who treated Glazebrook the day after the murder, and he testified that the injury could have come from a fingernail, but it was also possible it came from something else. So although this emergency room doctor, Dr. Cushing, couldn't rule a fingernail scratch out, he also couldn't rule it in either.
So the prosecution had a big problem on their hands because they weren't able to tell the jury exactly how he got the mark on his face. To me, it makes sense that the victim probably scratched him, but it's not a guarantee. It is possible he got it from somewhere else. And if the jury has any doubt about how he got it, well, that's a problem for the state's case.
To make things even worse, key evidence had been destroyed.
Some of the original detectives had destroyed their own handwritten notes, the notes they took at the crime scene. So there was no way to go back and see what was originally reported in these handwritten notes. Now, they were destroyed because they were being digitized, they were being uploaded to the computer. But when this happened, the original handwritten notes were never saved.
Of course, most of the notes were probably accurate after being put onto the computer, but there was no way of making sure. Instead of destroying the original handwritten police reports, they should have kept them until at least the start of the trial. So this was just yet another thing that the defense used in order to increase this reasonable doubt.
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In the end, the case against Michael Glazebrook was handed over to the jury with some serious flaws.
There was no forensic testing available to prove his DNA was underneath the victim's broken fingernail. No witnesses saw the murder take place. The one witness that the prosecution had recanted her story. There was conflicting evidence as to whether Sonia had been sexually assaulted or not. And there were some serious credibility issues. Glazebrook may have been unconstitutionally denied bail, but
He was lied to about why he was put under arrest in the first place, those traffic violations, and he was never allowed to call his wife after he was put in jail. These were legal mistakes that could have potentially caused the entire case against him to be dropped. So all of these issues likely created doubt in the jury's mind.
So when it came time to a decision, they were split. They were a hung jury 9-3 for not guilty. And in a criminal case, the jury's decision has to be unanimous. So the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial. On the surface, this was a massive victory for Glazebrook.
If the jury voted unanimously for guilty, that would be the end of it. He would probably be sentenced to prison for a very, very long time for murder.
But since the jury couldn't agree, he walked free. However, that didn't mean he was completely off the hook. A hung jury meant that prosecutors could retry him. The rules of double jeopardy didn't apply. A retrial was technically legally possible.
But in 1983, were prosecutors going to have better luck the second time around? That's the question that went through everyone's mind. They still couldn't prove whether the blood found on Sonia's finger belonged to him or not. They still didn't have any credible witnesses. They still had conflicting reports about the sexual assaults.
what would have changed for prosecutors to be successful in a second trial? And if they retried him and they lost, that would be the end of it. If he was found not guilty, the rules of double jeopardy would apply, case closed.
So instead of rushing to a second trial, the authorities held off. There is no statute of limitations for murder, so there was no rush in refiling charges. And when I say no rush, I mean virtually nothing happened in the case for another 37 years.
Three, almost four decades went by. Throughout that time, Michael Glazebrook went one way in life and Sonia's family went another. He went on to become a father, grandfather, worked as a school bus driver and photographer. And Sonia's daughter, Sasha, grew up without her mom around. Sonia's co-workers at Levi's, her friends, had to live not knowing who killed her.
Her death left behind so many unanswered questions. No one stopped suspecting that Glazebrook probably had something to do with her murder, but without solid evidence, prosecutors didn't want to risk it. They would probably only get one more chance at a conviction, so they needed to be ready. There were also people out there who still suspected the ex-husband.
He was technically cleared by the authorities, but that didn't mean everyone believed him. He still lived under a cloud of suspicion for a very, very long time. We're also talking about first-degree murder. When someone is killed in the way that Sonia was, people want answers. They also want justice.
So when that doesn't happen right away, people need someone to blame. For many years, Sonia's murder had a profound effect throughout Monterey County. This was a very brutal crime on a completely innocent victim. This was a single mother. She had a good job working for Levi's. She was raped and killed while her four-year-old daughter was at school.
There was just something so disturbing about this crime that left people really scared. Over the years, different detectives from Monterey County were assigned the case, but all of them ran into the same issues, the lack of forensic testing.
In 1983, at the time of the original trial, there was no DNA testing. So what they were able to do with the evidence from the crime scene was just check it for blood type and those type of genetic markers, a Monterey County detective told KSBW News Station. But all of that was about to change in 2020.
In 2020, cold case investigators decided to take another look at the case through the lens of new forensic testing. They knew they had DNA in the case, the DNA found on Sonia's broken fingernail, as well as her sexual assault rape kit. But they also knew nothing could have been done with it back in the early 1980s.
To put that into perspective, in the early 80s, when this crime took place, DNA testing was becoming much more modern, but it wasn't very good and it wasn't widely used. It wasn't like every police department across the country was doing it. But fast forward to 2020, virtually every law enforcement agency was doing some type of advanced DNA testing.
They had next-gen sequencing. They had the beginnings of forensic genetic genealogy. There were a lot more resources when it came to DNA evidence in 2020 than what they had back when Sonia was killed.
So in 2020, they submitted the DNA that was found underneath of her fingernails for testing, and here were the results. Criminalists with the California Department of Justice found that DNA consistent with Michael Glazebrook was found underneath her broken fingernail and on a swab taken from her right breast.
So they found his DNA on her fingernail from the struggle and they had DNA on her body suggesting that she probably was sexually assaulted. That is two places in which his DNA was found on the victim's body.
that's going to be pretty hard to explain away by any type of innocent explanation. So, armed with the forensic evidence they were missing back in 1982 and 1983, Monterey County detectives brought their case back to the district attorney, who eventually agreed to file charges. The DNA found at the crime scene should be enough to convince a jury that he was the guy.
The new case was prosecuted by the Monterey County District Attorney's Office Cold Case Task Force, which was established in 2020 to investigate, solve, and prosecute cold case homicides throughout the county.
This was one of the first cases that they successfully prosecuted. Immediately after the DA agreed to file charges, several Monterey County detectives set out with an arrest warrant to pick up Michael Glazebrook in August of 2021. And as they executed the arrest warrant, all the detectives wore Levi's jeans as they took him into custody. Sonia worked for the jean company when she was murdered.
So this was the detectives' way of honoring her when they arrested the man they believed was responsible for her murder over 35 years earlier, the man who almost got away if it weren't for new forensic testing. Once he was arrested in August of 2021, he was booked into Monterey County Jail on a warrant for murder and his bail was set at $1 million.
He wasn't able to pay it, which meant he remained in custody until trial. On August 16, 2021, Michael Glazebrook was appointed a public defender and appeared in court for his arraignment. He pled not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, just like he had years earlier. He stuck to the same story. He was innocent, and the scratch on his face had nothing to do with Sonia's murder.
Glazebrook's second trial was night and day compared to the first one. The biggest difference was, of course, the DNA evidence, something they lacked at the first trial. At the original trial, prosecutors couldn't prove how he got that scratch on his face, and they also couldn't prove that any of his DNA had been found on the victim. But now, they had two points of proof—
His DNA was found on her broken fingernail and his DNA was found on one of her breasts. It was all but game over for Michael Glazebrook at this point. If fashion is your thing, eBay is it. eBay is where I find all my favorites, from handbags to iconic streetwear, all authenticated, for real. This time, a little Supreme, some Gucci. I even have that vintage Prada on my watch list. That's why eBay is my go-to for all my go-tos.
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At the second trial, the jury had no reservations, and double jeopardy wasn't an issue because the first trial had been hung as opposed to not guilty. So this meant he could be tried again for the same crime. So in 2023, after an eight-day jury trial and six hours of deliberation, the jury found Glazebrook guilty of first-degree murder.
The jury also found true an enhancement that he personally used a deadly weapon in the commission of the crime and the special circumstance allegation that the murder occurred in the commission or attempted commission of the crime of rape. The trial was initially expected to last a few weeks, but in the end, it only lasted eight days.
According to people who were there to witness the trial firsthand, everything just moved really, really fast. The trial also included several victim impact statements, including statements from Sonia's daughter Sasha as well as her ex-husband. They both talked about how deeply this murder impacted their lives. Next came his sentence.
In June 2023, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The enhancements he was found guilty of made him eligible for a life sentence. We now know who killed Sonia almost four decades ago. The next question is why? What was the motive?
Prosecutors don't need to prove motive at trial, but I think everyone wants to know why a murder happens in the first place. At the time of the crime, Glazebrook was 25 years old, married, taking college classes, and worked as a carpenter. He lived in the house directly across the street from Sonia, but it's unclear whether they knew each other or not.
According to detectives, none of her friends or neighbors could say that they did. So it seems like they didn't. He might have only seen her a handful of times simply because she lived across the street from him. As far as a motive, Glazebrook is probably the only one who can answer that question. And as far as I know, he's never provided an explanation.
In fact, all the reports I could find still suggest that he's still maintaining his innocence and he claims to know nothing about the crime, despite the DNA evidence suggesting otherwise. The conclusion of the second trial meant different things for different people.
For Sonia's ex-husband, the conviction served as a relief, relief that he was no longer under this cloud of suspicion, despite being cleared by police decades earlier. And for Sonia's daughter, Sasha Stone, she told KSBW, "...it's been a day that we've been waiting for, for a really long time."
For those who knew Michael Glazebrook, the conviction came as a surprise. After murdering Sonia, he went on to live a relatively normal and unremarkable life. He even worked as a Salinas school bus driver for several years.
So a lot of people were surprised to find out that the man, the person responsible for taking their kids to school every day, was now a convicted murderer and convicted rapist. Immediately following his life sentence, Glazebrook's defense lawyers tried to appeal, but the appeal was denied by Monterey Superior Court Judge Pamela Butler.
The defense also had other complaints, like how a juror, who was also a lab technician, was biased and may have injected her thoughts into another juror. They argued that she was unable to put away outside information and only use the information given to her within the trial. That motion was also denied.
As it stands today, Michael Glazebrook's conviction has been upheld and he's currently serving his life sentence without parole. Modern DNA technology helped to solve the four-decade-old mystery of who raped and murdered a 30-year-old single mother. It also helped bring her killer to justice.
The wheels of justice might have moved very slowly, but in the end, the new forensic testing and the tenacity of the police and prosecutors in Monterey County paid off. None of this will ever bring Sonia back, but hopefully it provided her family and loved ones with some much-deserved answers and some closure. To share your thoughts on this week's episode, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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