48 Hours: NCIS - Weapon of Choice: 5

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Now that Erin had finally been found, it was time to arrest Chris Lee. The only problem was, he had skipped town. Once NCIS and local investigators find him, Chris was facing a grueling trial back in San Bernardino County. But at the trial, Chris's defense attorneys claim new information about Erin—that nobody saw coming.Listen early and ad-free by subscribing to 48 Hours+ on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4aEgENoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Since Erin's body had been found in a desert mine, authorities were finally able to charge someone for her murder. And Chris Lee was suspect number one. Before finding Erin's body, police were able to arrest Chris for possession of a potato gun. He had made bail and was told not to leave San Bernardino County. This way, authorities could keep tabs on him

as they continued to search for Aaron. Investigators knew Chris was staying at Isabelle Megley's horse ranch before he was picked up for the potato gun. So they made their way to the ranch after they found Aaron's body. By the time investigators arrived, Chris and his family were gone, breaking the conditions of his bail.

Christopher Lee and Nicole Lee did disappear, and nobody really knew where they went. The family, they were planning to leave the area. How are they going to do this? Were they going gonna move themselves? Were they gonna contract a moving company? We needed to know that information. And so that's when Cliff asked me if I could,

I could assist with potentially trying to locate Lee in coordination with San Bernardino. NCIS Special Agent Clifton Randolph Jr. and NCIS Analyst Ashley DeChelfin scoured their military database to gather everything they could on Chris and zeroed in on where he might have gone. But since Chris had just been honorably discharged,

getting an exact location proved to be difficult. If you move in the military, usually there are contractors that can move you and those are military records part of your permanent change of station. However, with outside contracted military moves, it takes a little more digging to locate how someone is going to move. Once a Marine moves on their own accord into civilian life, the military no longer keeps track of them. So NCIS personnel sifted through

more than just military records. Well, if he left 29 Palms, how did he leave? We did a little bit of research and found that he had rented a car and appeared to have driven up to Washington State and then crossed over into Alaska. Eventually, NCIS was able to pinpoint where Chris had gone, back to his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska.

Soon after, local authorities arrested Chris after finding him driving his mother's car. While searching the vehicle, they found blue climbing rope, several knives, and a handmade garant. During all of this, investigators made sure to keep lore. Aaron's mom updated. It probably wasn't 30 minutes after I got that phone call saying that it was definitely Erin that I got another phone call saying Chris was arrested in Alaska. Anchorage, Alaska is Christopher Lee's hometown. He was a small boy here once, playing in the snow, learning survival techniques like hunting and fishing.

As a teenager, he played football in his high school varsity team. Once Chris graduated, he prepared to leave Snowey Anchorage to join the Honorable Marine Corps. It's also here in Anchorage, Alaska, where Chris Lee was arrested for murder. I think he was confident enough that they would never find Aaron's body that he could just go on with life. I'm CBS News correspondent, Natalie Morales, and this is 48 Hours NCIS, episode five, Weapon of Choice.

5. Weapon of Choice. Numb. I felt numb. You just go through the motions. You just do what you have to do. Lor had been preparing to hear the worst for weeks. When she and her husband Bill finally got the call that they found her daughter's body, She did her best to stay strong for her other children. You know, it's midnight and we're just, Bill and I discuss, you know, there's no reason to wake them up. A few of her kids still lived in the house. A few had moved out and started their own families.

They might as well have a good night's sleep. So we decided we'd wait until the next morning to call them. The weight of it all was unbearable. A few weeks after they confirmed it was Erin's body in the mine shaft, Laura and her family were able to properly grieve. In the middle of September of 2014, we had a candlelight vigil at the barn where she had kept her

horse. A final goodbye in honor of Erin Corwin's life. The barn was located at the East Tennessee Riding Club in Oak Ridge. It's small, tucked away off the side roads. There were posters hung all over the walls, collages of Erin and her favorite things in life, her animals and her family. It was dusk. Everyone held a candle and sat on the bleachers. Anyone who wanted to share a few words about Erin was invited to do so. A couple of her friends spoke. One of the youth leaders from church spoke. And the minister that baptized her as a child said the prayer over it.

John, Aaron's husband, was there as well. But he didn't say anything. He held his candle, looking stoic. Beyond her friends and family, Aaron's tragedy touched so many. There were so many people, hundreds of people there. I hugged so many necks of people I didn't know. The support that we got from complete strangers is just unbelievable.

Lor was able to see the beauty in strangers empathizing with her. It gave her strength in the midst of her nightmare. The body of a pregnant Oak Ridge woman has been found. 19-year-old Erin Corwin had been missing for nearly two months. Friends remembered Erin as a shy teenager who loved animals. We need to remember that she's a person first. She's a daughter, a sister, a wife, a friend. Beth Ford Roth, who covered Erin's case for public radio,

remembers how media outlets all over the country clung to this story. When you see a photograph of Erin Corwin, you know why. Because she was sweet, naive, pregnant, marine wife, a teenager from Eastern Tennessee, a family who loved her. There was the obvious, salacious nature of it all. But Beth believes it was more than that. She's a small town girl. She doesn't have a lot of experience with men.

And this is a crazy situation that she found herself in. She looked to the wrong person to help her get out of it. Most of us have fallen for the wrong person when we were young. Most of us have made rash and dramatic decisions in our teenage years. But most of us get to learn and grow from them. I think if women are honest with themselves and they look back at how innocent or naive they may have been at that age, it could have been any one of us, but we got to move on. We got to suffer the heartbreak and then move on.

And Erin never got that chance. She'll never get that chance. Police and NCIS had done their part, and now it was up to the judicial system to do theirs. It was time to get a conviction and hopefully some justice for Aaron. Lore remembers the grueling wait for trial to start. It took almost two and a half years for the trial to happen. Started October 2016.

During that time, Chrisley had been held in a San Bernardino County jail. He was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to murder before the start of the trial. Lore headed back to San Bernardino to be there in person. Her sister accompanied her. Aaron's father Bill would not attend. I don't think I could have contained myself. Unable to do that, that would have put more stress on my wife. She had enough stress with going to the trial herself, but to worry about how I would handle it would not be any better. I attended every moment of the trial.

The San Bernardino County Superior Court is only 60 miles outside of LA and 90 miles outside of 29 Palms. The courthouse itself looks like any major municipal building, massive and old, with large imposing pillars at the front. The courtroom looks like a church, rows of wooden pews facing forward toward the bench where the judge presides. rows of wooden pews facing forward toward the bench where the judge presides. Chris walked in wearing a white button-down shirt, a blue tie, khakis, and a clean-shaven face. Chris sat down calmly on the defense side of the courtroom.

Lor thought he looked different. Chris lost a ton of weight. Lor had met Chris years ago during the investigation. So when she first saw Chris enter the courtroom, she was shocked by his appearance. I don't know that I would have recognized him if I was just walking down the street and saw him. He almost kind of looked scary.

It kind of looked scary. Based on court transcripts, there was a long list of witnesses who were called to testify for the prosecution. This included Erin's mom, Lore, her husband, John, her hometown best friend, Jesse, and the Malakies, Aaron's neighbors who live downstairs. Lore's family expected her to report back about the trial daily, but some of the information was so dense, it was hard for her to keep all the facts in her head. During a break in the proceedings, Lore and her sister looked around the room. They noticed a woman sitting behind them,

just a few feet away, writing on a notepad fervently. It was reporter Beth Ford Roth. That first day it just poured out of me. Beth published daily updates from the trial on her blog. To sit so close to Erin's family members, she was their daughter, their wife, and then also to sit in the same room with the man

who ended her life. And I was filled with so much emotion, I didn't know what else to do, so I wrote it down. Beth had initially started as a public radio reporter covering the case, but she had become so attached to Erin's story, she decided to continue reporting on it through a personal blog she created called Justice for Erin Corwin. Laura's sister approached Beth after court one day and said thank you. Because of her blog,

Laura did not have to retell every detail of the trial to the rest of the family. Instead, she could just send them over to Beth's website. When I was attending the trial and writing the blog, my older sister was following it on the blog. She hadn't heard the story before. And she called me one night after the day of the trial, and she said, oh my God, Bethie, that could have been me.

And I said, I know, it could have been me. Beth attended trial every day. She said, in a strange way, the courtroom reminded her of a wedding. Instead of the bride's family on one side and the groom's family on the other, it's Laura's family and friends on one side and on the other side. It's the family, friends of Christopher Lee, the defendant. Not far from her was the prosecutor. My name is Sean Doherty. I'm a deputy district attorney with San Bernardino County, and I was the trial prosecutor on the case of People v. Christopher Lee.

prosecutor on the case of People versus Christopher Lee. Sean Doherty has been an attorney for over 20 years and has exclusively worked on homicide cases since 2009. As soon as he heard of Aaron's case and moved him, Doherty asked to be assigned to the case. The theory of my case is that Chris Lee was about to discharge from the Marines, that he had planned and told his wife that they were going to move their family back to Alaska.

But there was a hitch. As a result of his relationship outside of his marriage with Aaron Corwin, she had become pregnant and she had told him he was the father, which would interrupt not only his marriage but his plans. Chris Lee backed himself into a corner and the only way out was to kill Aaron. Prosecutor Doherty appeared to have a plethora of evidence at his disposal. He started by showing the video footage from inside the mine where Aaron was found. And then it sort of stayed on that image.

And it was kind of hard to make out because of the fact that Aaron had been there for six weeks in the heat. And jurors were covering their mouths. I was looking down. Aaron's mother was looking down. Even the defense attorney would look up and then look down. But Beth noticed one person who didn't look away. Christopher Lee was forward looking like this the entire time. And I was thinking, I never met Erin. I can't look at this. The jurors never met her. They can't look at this.

At the very least, he had a friendship with with her and he was almost like looking at his handiwork. With pictures and visuals, prosecutor Doherty was able to ensure that the jury would see the gruesome end Erin met. They stayed on a photograph of her hand and you could see the nail polish. You couldn't really recognize her, but you saw the fingernail polish. And all of a sudden it was like, oh yeah, she's a 19-year-old girl. Beth kept an eye on Chris Lee through it all.

He just did not show any emotion that someone who was friendly with Erin, let alone someone who had an intimate relationship with her would have had. I couldn't believe it, but then a guilty man doesn't know how an innocent man would act. Prosecutor Doherty continued on, establishing Erin as a sweet young girl who could be easily influenced. Then went through each piece of evidence in great detail. The fact that Chris's story changed multiple times during initial questioning. Before Chris was even brought to the station, he was caught lying to the police when they first asked him questions outside of his apartment building.

They inquired about his neighbor, Erin Corwin, and Chris Lee's initial response was, I don't even know her. I know who she is, but that's about it. Later that day, they found out that there in fact was a relationship, and he more than knew her. Once Chris was brought in for questioning, he admitted to the affair with Erin. In that same interrogation, he would get tangled up in another lie. At first, Chris stated he did not cross paths with Erin at all that day she went missing. He just happened to be in the desert doing his own thing.

But then there were the tire tracks found by her abandoned car. When investigators looked at those, they looked visually similar to Chrisley's Jeep. They told him that they had that evidence and asked him if he wanted to change his story. Chris changed his story again. He at that point said, I didn't see her that day, I did see her car. In that same interrogation, Chris was asked if they would find anything suspicious in his search history if they checked. Chris Lee indicated that he had been searching for the best way to get rid of a dead body.

During the interrogation, Chris claimed that he and some fellow Marines had a benign conversation about how to dispose of a body. Chris said his internet search was out of pure curiosity. Chris started to describe the different tactics he had found online. Here's a bit of that recording from the interrogation room. What were the results when you found out pigs? Pigs body was feeding it to pigs. Chris continued on with his findings, describing one scenario that was particularly relevant to the trial. He also mentioned burning a body with tires,

or getting a body extremely hot. And then later in the interview, it indicated that tires can become extremely hot when they're set on fire. And remember, tires were found in the mine shaft with Aaron's body and a propane tank, the same mine Chris had talked about earlier with friends in town.

He was excited about having discovered these mines that he felt no one knew anything about. But it wasn't just tires and a propane tank found in the mine. Authorities also found a soda bottle with DNA evidence. And on the mouth of the Sprite bottle was both Chris Lee's DNA and Aaron Corwin's DNA. The matching DNA evidence was especially damning. Bit by bit, all the evidence was mounting up against Chris. For prosecutor Daugherty,

there was no way Chris could explain all this. All the circumstantial evidence was somehow explainable. It would make him essentially the unluckiest man in the world. From changing his story to the tire tracks that matched his Jeep, to the DNA evidence placing him at the scene of the crime, things were not looking good for Chris. Then the defense decided to do something very unusual, put their defendant, Chris Lee, on the stand as their one and only witness.

Here's Beth Ford Roth again. When his name was announced, there was sort of electricity in the courtroom because no one had any idea that he was going to testify. With the defense having only one witness, who happened to be the defendant himself, it seemed there was hardly a case to be presented. It didn't make any sense to Beth why they'd bring Chrisley to the stand.

The evidence against him was so overwhelming. What could he possibly say? Maybe they're just trying to make him human enough. It was shocking, to say the least. Beth wasn't wrong. The defense tried to humanize Chris in front of the jury. Chris seemed ready to take the stand. He was wearing his crisp white shirt and a blue tie and khaki pants and his hair was

cut short and he was handsome. And he had a charisma about him that wasn't captured in any photograph I'd seen before. The defense started to question Chris Lee. Asked about his childhood, what his hobbies were, to make him seem like he could be anyone's kid. Although his hobbies were things like blowing things up, they were trying to make him seem like an oh gosh golly kind of guy. He loved his wife and he loved his daughter and he loved his country.

And that's the only thing that meant anything to him was to be a Marine and to protect his country. The questioning went on like this for a while. Nothing about the actual case. Nothing about Aaron. The defense pushed for the jury to sympathize with Chris, the young patriotic Marine. I had a good feeling in this case, just based on how the evidence played out, that he was going to have to testify

and he was going to have to either explain away all the circumstantial evidence against him or admit that he did it, but come up with some reason for why he did it. And that's exactly what happened. The defense attorney asked Christopher Brandon Lee, did you kill Aaron Corwin? And Chris said, yes, I did.

That was the first time that he admitted he had done it. The courtroom was still reeling from Chris admitting that he killed Aaron. It was at this stage of the trial when everything came out in the open. It was like slow motion. To admit to the crime within a half hour of taking the stand after lying about it for years was just, I mean, my hand was shaking trying to take notes and trying to stay in the moment and realize this was actually really happening. He was confessing.

There was the truth according to Chris Lee. And then there was what really happened. Christopher Brandon Lee made sure to match his story with the evidence that was found. According to Chris Lee, on Saturday, June 28th, Erin met Chris by the Marine base. She climbed into Chris's passenger seat. There was a particular

place Chris wanted to take Aaron. He had scouted the spot less than a week earlier, but it was a long drive and he wanted to be sure he had the route down because they weren't heading to an official trailhead. They were on their way to a remote abandoned mine. Aaron had told her friend Jesse over text she was excited. This all seemed very romantic to her. He was planning a trip with Erin. Maybe he told her it was a big surprise, but he actually was going to tell her that they shouldn't

be together anymore. And he was moving back to Alaska, and he was going to stay with his wife. Chris says he got the breakup over with in the car. Basically, he claimed that he told Aaron, when I moved to Alaska, it's over between us, and that they listened to music for two and a half hours until they reached the point where the mine was.

Despite breaking up with Aaron, they continued on with the trip. Chris Lee told the jury that he took Aaron out to this area because he wanted to blow up a mine shaft, which was sort of curious because why would Aaron be excited about accompanying him to blow up a mineshaft? It's not every girl's dream to watch this, you know, hunk of man shoot a propane tank and watch it blow up.

Chris said Erin was not phased by the breakup. She just wanted to spend time with the person she was in love with. It was going to be a chance just for the two of them to spend the day together, alone. Erin didn't get a chance to get out often to use the car. And this was a chance for her to spend time with him and to be together. Chris drove to a mine in the desert.

He unloaded the car, a propane tank, lighter fluid, a torch. When they reached that area, Chris tried to blow up a propane tank. This is his way of explaining why there was a propane tank down in the mine shaft. According to Chris, he threw the propane tank down the mine and a lit torch so that it would blow up. But it didn't blow. He had forgotten to put the lighter fluid on the torch, so it didn't burn hot enough. And that was just one more sign for him that his life was not going the way he wanted it

to and he felt desperate and so he decided to play Russian roulette. Remember, Chris was supposedly still very depressed. It wasn't abnormal for him to drive around with a gun in the back seat, as he liked to hunt and shoot at rattlesnakes and coyotes in the desert. After ending his relationship with Aaron, and having failed to successfully blow up the propane tank, allegedly this was the last straw.

Now, when he first explained all of this, he said he only brought this.22 rifle. Well, there were enough gun experts out there to say, you can't play Russian roulette with a rifle. It has to be a revolver. So suddenly, there was a revolver there. So he took the revolver and he told Aaron, I'm going to play Russian roulette. And Erin said, well, I can't watch this. And so she, in 110 degree weather with sandals on, walked into the mine shaft. There were actually two mines in the area near Chris and Erin. There was one that was a horizontal

mine shaft that was more like a cave, but then there was another mine that was like a deep rabbit hole. Chris said the horizontal mineshaft is the one Erin walked into. And that she just waited in there and then came back out when he was unsuccessful with ending his life playing rush roulette. After hearing the gunshot, that's when Erin walked out into the sun. Erin came over to Chris and wanted to go home.

During Chris's testimony, Beth was sitting behind Lor in the courtroom. I watched sort of the back of her head, just trying to imagine what is going through her mind. Lor's eyes were fixed on Chris as he spoke. Over the course of the trial, prosecutor Sean Doherty had a feeling that the defense would call into question Aaron's character, tried to dehumanize her as they had humanized Chris.

Dougherty made sure to prepare Lore for something like this. Sean had prepared me. He said that he, you know, may put some allegations against Aaron. And I had said from the very beginning that if they're going to try to dig up dirt on Aaron, they're going to try to dig up dirt on Aaron, they're going to have to make something up. But I never dreamt they would make up what they made up. In Chris's testimony, Aaron became so upset from watching him play Russian roulette that

she broke down. He said she told him that she wanted a life with him and his daughter, that the three of them could run away together. Chris talks about how he and Erin went on this ride and everything, and how Erin was talking about them getting together as a family, and he says, well, I'm not gonna do that to my daughter. Aaron's like, well, but I love her.

And he actually said he was jealous of the relationship that Aaron had with his daughter. And it was at this point in Chris's jealousy that he allegedly pieced together the story. He found out something terrible, something that would throw him into a fit of rage, something that had warranted murder. Chris asks Erin, or he says he asked her, whether or not she had been molesting his testing his daughter and Aaron, I guess, according to his version, kind of stammered a little bit and then he got louder and asked her again and she supposedly said yes.

The courtroom was shocked, silent. Beth sitting in one of the front rows, shook her head in disbelief. Chris testified that at that point, two hours from the nearest phone, no cell reception, 110 degree weather, that pregnant Aaron Corwin, 19, decided to confess that she had molested his daughter. With no way of rescue or no way of responding if he was going to act negatively, that she blurted out, this is what I did. The jury now face their decision

with new damning information. Did Erin abuse Chris Lee's daughter? And anybody that knows Erin knows that there's no way. There's just no way. Absolutely no way Erin would do anything like that. Next time on the final episode of 48 Hours NCIS, is there any truth to Chris's story? From CBS News and CBS Studios, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Original reporting by 48 Hours

producer Paul LaRosa. Anthony Batson is the senior producer for 48 Hours. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio. Special thanks to 48 Hours executive producer Judy Tigard, CBS Studios Senior Vice President Rob Luchow, and Paramount Audio Vice President Megan Marcus. Our podcast was written and produced by Jay Venables, Isabelle Kirby McGowan, Kara Shillen, Max Johnston, Megan Nadalski and Ian Enright. Additional reporting and recording by Isabelle Kirby McGowan, Jay Venables

and Megan Nadalski. Our executive producers are Megan Nadalski and Ian Enright. Theme and music by Epidemic Sound. Original music from Goat Rodeo with additional music from Paramount. Final Mix by Rebecca Seidel. Ian Enright is our fact-checker. Our production manager is Megan Nadalski. I'm Natalie Morales. If you're enjoying this show be sure to give it a rating and review. It helps more people find it and hear Morales. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to give it a rating and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. If you liked 48 Hours NCIS, check out the rest of our 48 Hours podcasts by searching

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