“With advanced technology and the work of California Department of Justice criminalists, detectives now have a set of investigative tools that were not available to them in past decades.  We applaud law enforcement departments for taking a fresh look at unsolved cases and calling upon the work of California DOJ criminalists to assist them.” – CSLEA President Alan Barcelona

MONTEREY COUNTY – On June 12, 2023, Michael Scott Glazebrook, 67, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1981 murder of Sonia Carmen Herok-Stone, 30, of Carmel

On October 15, 1981, Herok-Stone was found murdered in her home while her four-year-old daughter was at school. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with her own pantyhose. Herok-Stone had a broken fingernail with blood beneath it, indicating she had scratched her killer before her death.

Glazebrook, then 25, lived across the street from Herok-Stone. He was initially identified as a suspect on October 16, 1981, when a detective conducting a neighborhood canvas observed that he had a three to four-inch vertical scratch down his right cheek. Glazebrook made inconsistent statements about when and how he got the scratch. He told the detective he got it cutting plexiglass in his garage, but he told his parents that he got it in a fight at Monterey Peninsula College.

Glazebrook was previously charged with Herok-Stone’s murder in 1982, but the case was dismissed in 1983 after a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The case was reopened in 2020. The renewed investigation included forensic testing that was not available at the time of the original trial. Criminalists with the California Department of Justice testified that DNA consistent with Glazebrook was found underneath Herok-Stone’s broken fingernail and on a swab taken from her right breast.

In February 2023, a jury convicted Glazebrook of first-degree murder and found true a special circumstance allegation that the murder occurred during the commission or attempted commission of rape. The special circumstance made Glazebrook eligible for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, which the judge imposed.