“He was a BSer like a lot of these guys. He would always have these deals, you know?” He got a special deal on his house in North Port; he knew a guy involved with car auctions; he was always getting deals on cars—that sort of thing. Dalton never got involved in any of that because it had nothing to do with his plumbing business. “I sort of had to separate myself,” he said.
The policemen said they’d heard King got in trouble moonlighting on his own, using one of Dalton’s trucks. Dalton said that wasn’t true. He never took the truck home, unless he had a job to do at night, and the lot was locked up by the time he was finished. Even then, a lot of times he would park the truck nearby and go home in his own vehicle. He drove a red Corvette for a while, and a motorcycle; then he dated a girl in Ocala and she had a “hopped-up” black Mustang.
The policemen went through King’s personnel file. One of the last papers in there was a phone message from a woman named Kelly, asking Mike to call her back.
On January 22, Lieutenant Ed Fitzpatrick supervised a search of heavy brush on either side of Plantation Boulevard. A large truck containing a crime scene command center was parked by the side of the road.
Incongruous to the desolation was a manhole cover, a fire hydrant, and a fresh and even sidewalk along the road, only a few yards from the crime scene, an indication of tract housing planned for but never built.
Fitzpatrick and the officers under his command performed what was called a “line search.” The men stood shoulder to shoulder and moved slowly through an area, methodically covering every square inch. In this case, they started close to the grave site and moved outward. There were two teams of six and seven officers working simultaneously.
At some point during the search, Fitzpatrick was alerted that the other team had a possible hit on something—an item that could be seen on the other side of a fence from where they’d been searching. Approximately a quarter of a mile from the burial site, on the other side of the street, pieces of clothing were discovered. Something white was snared to a tree limb.
The lieutenant did not approach the items but rather ordered the area around the items secured as a crime scene, a process that took approximately ten minutes.
The items turned out to be a pair of light blue men’s boxer shorts and a pair of red panties. The item on the tree branch turned out to be a bra strap. A close look at the strap revealed dark red stains that could have been blood.
Fitzpatrick called in Pam Schmidt, who photographed the site thoroughly and then collected and processed the evidence. A thorough search of the area was impossible because of the thickness of the foliage in places. Heavy equipment was needed.
That equipment—an excavation shovel with claw—arrived a week later, January 29, and was used to pull out the vegetation. While the machine was “skimming” the earth, it unearthed a half-buried piece of cloth. Pam Schmidt was called back to photograph the item, a woman’s shirt with one strap broken. Schmidt dug up the shirt, also removing a big hunk of the dirt in which it had been embedded. During this process, the rest of the bra was also recovered.
A blond woman named Anitra Fritz told police that sometime the previous week—she wasn’t sure what day it was—when she was either coming back from her babysitter’s or the post office, she was driving east on Tropicaire Boulevard in North Port when she passed a slow-moving westbound green Camaro with a “bra” on the front, which was going in the opposite direction from her.
The car must have made a U-turn, because the next thing she knew, it was right behind her. She feared the driver was stalking her. She had her baby in the car and didn’t know if her husband was home, so she didn’t go there. Instead, she turned off Tropicaire onto Imbe Street and decided to go to the home of a friend whose husband was a cop. The Camaro followed. She made a second turn, onto Leryl Avenue; this time, he didn’t follow, so she returned to Tropicaire.
When she got home, she told her husband she thought she’d been followed. He was not concerned. She didn’t think it was the day of the murder, but it was close to that day. When she learned about the murder, she was frightened to see how much she resembled the victim. She could have been the one who got abducted.
Anitra added that she had psychic abilities and felt the killer had a girlfriend who was a petite blonde who’d been pregnant but had an abortion, and he flipped out.
A man named James Navin (pseudonym) told police that he believed he might have witnessed the moment when Michael King chose Denise Lee as his target for the day. It happened at five minutes before two in the afternoon, about thirty minutes after Rob Salvador last saw King at the firing range, and about twenty-five minutes before a neighbor saw a man in a green Camaro at the Lees’ house.
The witness claimed he saw both King and Lee waiting in line at the North Port Post Office. Police asked him how he could be so sure, and he said he recognized them from photos he’d seen on television the day after Denise Lee disappeared.
“I turned around and looked at the girl behind me and it was her, and she was holding a good-sized box.” James said King was farther back in the same line. “He caught my attention because he was, I don’t know, grisly. He had strange-looking eyes when he looked at me, a lot of white in them.”
Doubt was cast upon James Navin’s observations, however, when it was pointed out that, as far as anyone knew, Denise mailed no box, and she went nowhere without her kids.
The police quickly filed this information in the round receptacle labeled “urban legends.”
How Michael King chose Denise Lee as his victim remained a mystery.
News of Denise Lee’s murder sent reporters mining for background information. One fruitful dig occurred at the online social network Myspace, where Denise’s account painted a picture of her busy life as a young mom, an occupation not just mentally challenging but physically demanding as well. In August of 2007, Denise wrote: Something so simple as going to the mall to buy a pair of sunglasses is a thousand times harder when you have two boys under tow. They shopped a little, retreated to the car so she could breast-feed Adam, and returned to a mall bench for a break. Noah ran around a play area and twice was knocked down by older boys. Adam needed a new diaper, but changing it became tough. Every time she took her eyes off Noah, he ran across the mall. She ended up changing the diaper, with Noah sitting on the hanging table. In jcpenney, she tried on sunglasses, but Noah again made a run for it. An old man told her she sure had her hands full and checked the bottom of her stroller to make sure she didn’t have a third kid in there. But it was still fun, she concluded. Any time I get to leave the house is a treat for me.
CHAPTER 9
FUNERAL
Denise Lee’s funeral was handled by the Lemon Bay Funeral Home in Englewood and held on Wednesday, January 23, at the First United Methodist Church in Punta Gorda, the same church where Nate and Denise were married three years earlier.
As expected, there was quite a crowd—friends and family, of course, but also many strangers, attracted by the media attention. Every police officer in the area was there. It was the biggest funeral in the region’s history.
As the Reverend John Bryant, the church’s pastor, read “The Lord’s Prayer,” Nate Lee and Rick Goff sat in the front pew, each holding one of Denise’s two boys.
The pastor said, “Today I extend my heartfelt sympathy and love to Nate, little Noah, and Adam, who probably don’t know what I’m saying now, to mom Susan, to Rick, to Amanda and Tyler, grandparents, and to the extended family and friends of Denise.”
Rick Goff kissed a large photo of Denise on his way to the pulpit, then said Denise was a wonderful, special, downright extraordinary person. She was so smart—honor roll in tenth grade—but also so nice. Not a mean bone in her body, always a bright smile; when she smiled, everyone else smiled, too. Her happiness was contagious, a physical manifestation of positive vibes. She could have used her charm to get what she wanted, but she didn’t want that. She was too concerned with how she could be helpful in
a situation and was always a willing worker. As a teenager, she behaved like a girl beyond her years, and it didn’t surprise her father when she became a wife and mother so quickly after she graduated from high school. She always seemed like a fully mature woman who was ready for responsibility. As a student, she couldn’t have been more organized and prepared. Rick was familiar with his daughter’s study habits because she took a course he taught in law enforcement, during which his lectures touched upon a myriad of controversial subjects. Yet, the papers Denise wrote were thoughtful and contemplative. Plus, she was humble. You could try to tell her how great she was, but she would laugh it off with a delicate touch of self-depreciative humor.
“She’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever known. She’s my baby girl, and I’m going to miss her,” he said. He didn’t know how the family would get along without her. They would need enormous strength. “The Lees are an awesome family, and thank you. I love you, baby girl, and I know you’re home,” he concluded.
Goff was thinking things he hadn’t said aloud. He’d seen trouble coming. It was that damned neighborhood the kids had moved into—a new housing development that was only partly filled. Many of the houses around theirs were empty, as the developer had failed to anticipate a shrinking market. There were even empty lots where houses were planned but never built.
One of the reasons the Lees had decided to settle in that section of North Port was rents were cheap. The relatively low cost of living had made North Port a rapidly growing community, population fifty thousand and getting bigger every day. But who were these newbies? A big question mark, that was who.
When it was his turn, Nate Lee called his wife amazing and selfless. His father-in-law stood by his side and placed a hand on his shoulder when his voice filled with emotion. He recalled moving into the house in the North Port Estates section of North Port, about forty miles from Sarasota, more rural than suburban. Nate and Denise called it “living in the sticks.” They were close to their parents—but not too close. Nate had three jobs; Denise was home with the boys. Times were tough, but certainly not bleak. They were happy together in their new rented home—three bedrooms, two baths—in North Port.
They just didn’t have much money. All in all, affluence was a secondary concern when you have as much love in your hearts as Nate and Denise had.
Besides, they were poor now, but that didn’t mean they were going to be poor forever. They were smart and eventually life would grow easier. They knew. There was no hurry. They were very, very young—time was their security blanket. They had all of the time in the world.
“We were going to grow old together,” Nate recalled.
As 2008 dawned, Denise found herself a woman with her hands full. Taking care of a two-year-old and a six-month-old was a full-time job, 24/7. She could never take her eyes off either one of them. Plus, she was still breast-feeding the little one.
Nate trusted her completely and could concentrate fully on the things he needed to do because he knew that the boys were safe and happy with their mother.
And they were a handful. The oldest was two when the youngest was born. He remembered her going online and googling “potty training.”
“It didn’t work,” the widower recalled.
Those boys were going to be the smartest kids in pre-K and kindergarten, Nate knew. That was because, when she wasn’t feeding them, she was teaching them: the ABC’s, counting from one to ten.
She could never be alone. “She even had to bring the boys with her when she went to the mailbox,” he remembered.
Plus, he was well taken care of. When he got home at night, Denise was busy fixing dinner. And, in addition to all of that, she’d gone back to school and had plans to become a speech therapist.
“We were living the American Dream,” Nate said. He used to joke and say that he didn’t notice her in that first class they had together at school, but it was a fib. “I knew exactly what seat she sat in,” he said.
He concluded by making a promise to his wife: “I will be as strong as I can be. I love you so much, Denise, and I will talk to you every day. Your boys will know who their mother was. They will know you.”
Reverend Bryant concluded the ceremony by offering “The Wind Beneath My Wings” as a final song in remembrance of Denise’s spirit. As they recessed, mourners filed past Denise’s royal blue casket.
A half hour later, a thirty-mile funeral procession began, 150 cars long, headlights on, to the easternmost section of Gulf Pines Memorial Park, where Denise Lee would be interred.
There were rose petals in the road. Fire trucks led the way, their lights going around. Spectators lined the road and saluted as the hearse carrying Denise’s coffin drove by. Elementary schools emptied so students could stand outside and watch.
State troopers pulled up in front of the cemetery and parked so that they were blocking the southbound lanes of traffic on State Route 776. The long parade quietly entered.
Nate Lee’s mind was haunted by memories. Nightmares. Alternate realities. What if? What if? After the ceremony at the cemetery, he found himself thinking about how the bad thing had started.
The creep showed up at the house and somehow managed to get in. He must’ve had a gun, threatened to hurt the boys. Denise would have done anything to protect those boys—even leave with a man with a gun.
But how had he gotten into the house?
Then he had a thought, a horrible thought. The killer drove a ’95 green Camaro. Lee drove a ’94 green Dodge Avenger. The cars resembled one another. Maybe Denise saw King’s car pull into the driveway and thought Nate was home.
Someone had shut the windows but not latched them. Two possibilities: the creep did it so neighbors wouldn’t hear screaming, or she did it so the boys wouldn’t be able to wander off while she was gone. She knew she was going away and leaving them behind.
Part of him didn’t want to focus on what Denise must have been thinking during those desperate last hours. But the bigger part of him couldn’t help but dwell there.
He was always blown away by how competent she was, even during that horrible crisis. She left so many clues— evidence to both facilitate her discovery and to help catch the creep if she was never found.
All during that time, she must have been bolstered by confidence, thinking her father, the cop, would make sure that the search for her was as massive and efficient as possible.
Leaving the ring in the back of the killer’s car was pure genius. That was the first ring he ever gave her and it had grown tight. The ring didn’t accidentally fall off into the Camaro’s backseat, that was for sure.
Part of him would have liked to shrug and say, “It was fate, and these things happened, and it must have all been part of God’s master plan.” But the bigger part of him knew she should have been saved but wasn’t. And he knew who was to blame: certain employees of the CCSO.
CHAPTER 10
THE PROSECUTORS
Assistant State Attorney (ASA) Lon Arend would helm the prosecution of Michael King, with a supporting cast of his colleagues Karen Fraivillig and Suzanne O’Donnell.
Arend did his undergraduate work at Florida State University, and earned his law degree at the University of Florida. He’d been a prosecutor for fourteen years, including eight as chief prosecutor in the DeSoto County office. He became the Sarasota region’s chief homicide prosecutor.
The trio of Arend, Fraivillig, and O’Donnell were no strangers to big cases, having successfully countered the insanity defense in the disturbing murder trial of Elton Murphy.
Elton Murphy—now there was a sick dude. “One of the scariest individuals I’ve ever encountered,” O’Donnell recalled.
Fraivillig added that to understand that thoroughly weird case, you needed a little background on the fabric of the area. Sarasota County was a beautiful little section of Florida, but it did have its pretensions. Nothing sinister, of course, but Sarasota was a community that liked to cast itself as artsy. There was opera, ballet,
and a formation of art galleries on the main drag. Just how artsy Sarasota really was could be argued, but art and culture were important facets of its self-image.
So it hit the town where it lived when downtown Sarasota art gallery owner Joyce Wishart was found hacked to death in 2004 on the floor of the Provenance Gallery on Palm Avenue—posed to shock, and missing her vagina.
The killer had apparently taken the victim’s female parts with him, maybe to dabble in cannibalism or necrophilia, or maybe just to remove DNA evidence from the crime scene.
Didn’t work.
Cops found DNA foreign to the victim at the crime scene—a piece of skin under the body, and blood droplets—and inevitably that was what solved the case. The vagina was never found.
At first, police thought there might be a connection between the grisly murder and the Sarasota Film Festival, which had attracted upward of thirty thousand strangers into town.
The case broke eight long months later when Elton Murphy was caught in Texas, where he had fled, committing a burglary. There was a DNA hit, and they had their man.
During interrogation, Murphy was deemed to be a little wacky and was examined by four psychologists, one of whom worked for the state. Murphy was found incompetent to stand trial.
The case lingered and lingered, until Arend decided he wanted to bring the case to trial—even if it meant butting horns with a formidable insanity defense. Arend concluded that Murphy was seriously mentally ill but not legally insane, and he was fairly certain a jury would see it the same way.
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