Mom strangled to death with pantyhose, officials say. Decades later, jury convicts man
Sonia Carmen Herok-Stone, 30, was alone when she was found dead in her California home on Oct. 15, 1981.
While her 4-year-old daughter was at school, Herok-Stone, of Carmel, was “sexually assaulted and strangled to death with her own pantyhose,” the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office said in a Feb. 8 news release.
When her body was found, “Herok-Stone had a broken left ring fingernail with blood beneath it, indicating she had scratched her killer before her death,” the district attorney said.
Decades later, it was the DNA taken from under her broken fingernail that helped a jury convict her neighbor Michael Scott Glazebrook, 67, of Seaside, of first-degree murder, the district attorney said. The jury also found the murder was committed “during the commission or attempted commission of rape.”
“It’s been a day that we have been waiting for for a really long time,” Herok-Stone’s daughter said in a news conference. “Sonia was a wonderful woman and we’re so happy to see justice for her.”
At the time of Herok-Stone’s death, Glazebrook, then 25, lived across the street from her, the district attorney said.
While canvassing the neighborhood the day after Herok-Stone’s death, a detective noticed Glazebrook had a 3 to 4-inch “vertical scratch down his right cheek,” the district attorney said.
When questioned about how and when he got his scratch, “Glazebrook made inconsistent statements,” according to the district attorney.
“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,” the district attorney said.
Glazebrook was charged in Herok-Stone’s death in 1982, but when the case went to trial in 1983, a jury came back with a 9-3 not guilty verdict, the district attorney said.
However, as the jury’s decision was not unanimous, a retrial was possible.
Nearly 40 years later, investigators reopened the case in 2020 and were able to use forensic testing not previously available, the district attorney said.
Investigators tested DNA found under Herok-Stone’s broken fingernail and right breast, the district attorney said. It was a match to Glazebrook.
After an eight-day jury trial in 2023, Glazebrook was convicted, the district attorney said.
Glazebrook will be sentenced in April and faces a potential lifetime prison sentence without the possibility of parole, the district attorney said.
Carmel is about 75 miles southwest of San Jose.
This story was originally published February 9, 2023 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Mom strangled to death with pantyhose, officials say. Decades later, jury convicts man."
