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WRAL TV Reporter Publishes Book On Raleigh Murder

By Reid Jackson, The Raleigh Telegram

Sunday, May 30, 2010

RALEIGH - On April 6th, WRAL-TV’s Amanda Lamb released her new book "The Evil Next Door" which will be featured on several national television shows. The book depicts the tragic story of Stephanie Bennett who was murdered in 2002.

Bennett was an innocent 23 year old woman whose life was cut short suddenly and unexpectedly by a complete stranger.

Her murderer, Drew Planten, a clever scientist and an employee of the North Carolina State Fertilizer Laboratory, managed to evade authorities for three years by concealing his DNA, which would eventually prove to be the decisive evidence that put him behind bars.

Lamb originally covered the case with WRAL in 2002, but wanted to shed more light on the people who helped solve the case. The suspect later killed himself before the case went to trial.

“I was compelled to write ‘Evil Next Door’ because despite what you see on television or at the movies, stranger murders are very rare,” she said. “This crime gripped the entire community. People were afraid and anxious and wanted it solved. It took more than three years to do this.”

The fact that the victim in the case was an innocent woman made the case all that much more tragic, said Lamb.

“Stephanie Bennett was an all-American girl, the girl next door,” said Lamb. “She could have been anybody's daughter-and thus, the grief and the pain the family went through was totally relatable to the average person.”

Amanda has specialized in reporting crime for nearly sixteen years and offers a certain insight in to the world of crime and the judicial process that is rather valuable and unique.

Non-fiction and crime are two words rarely found together in popular culture, but with this book and her previous work “Deadly Dose,” Lamb hopes to expose a more realistic perspective on our legal system.

Lamb adds, "What I always hope for when I write a true crime book is that it will show the public just how hard the investigators and prosecutors work and what really goes on behind the scenes of a murder investigation."

Since releasing the book, she has made television appearances on shows like Oxygen's “Captured,” truTV’s “Forensic Files,” and will soon appear on the Discovery Channel's “Discovery Investigates.”

Meanwhile, Lamb is already hard at work on her third true-crime book which will also focus on a Triangle area crime.

The specific details of the book are not yet public as the case in question has not yet rendered a verdict, but the book is set to release in exactly one year and is sure to make an interesting addition to Lamb's already fascinating collection of non-fiction.

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