Murder With My Husband - 162. Denise Amber Lee - The Located Missing Person

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

On this episode of MWMH, Payton and Garrett discuss the devastating kidnapping of Denise Amber Lee and how despite the suspect and victim’s whereabouts being known, it wasn’t such a happy ending. New Podcast Rise N Crime https://linktr.ee/risencrime Social Media Links https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Denise_Amber_Lee nbcnews.com/id/wbna25004049 deniseamberlee.org/About/Story afte.org/uploads/documents/swggun-flvking.pdf heraldtribune.com/story/news/2012/07/16/911-calls-handling-to-be-put-on-trial/29109015007 toosad4words.blogspot.com/2009/10/denise-amber-lee-timeline-january-17.html heraldtribune.com/story/news/2012/07/20/dispatch-worker-admits-regret/29109724007/ macabredaily.com/articles/the-horrific-kidnapping-and-murder-of-denise-amber-lee Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yes, you energy, energy for everything. Captain Banner now to learn more. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Peyton Mourlin. And I'm Garrett Mourlin. And he's the husband. And my husband. Well, if you are listening to this, that means that our first rising crime episode has dropped as well.

I think there is an update over there on the Lori Valow trial, just an update on the tiley and JJ case altogether. So go check it out now. There will be links all over in the description. Again, if you want to check out our new podcast hosted by Peyton's mom, called rise and crime. Everything that's happening in true crime news today. Also just a reminder, if you subscribe on Patreon

or Apple subscriptions to the podcast, you get binged, murder with my husband, and rise and crime, all ad-free, and the bonus episodes, so everything is bundled together. It's like progressive auto insurance. Yes, we're basically progressive auto insurance like paint. Bundle and save. Yep.

All right, are you ready for your 10 seconds? All right, a couple of things for, I guess, my 10 seconds. The H away has actually kind of been off our back. Maybe they heard one of the episodes, I guess we'll never know. But we haven't been fine by them in a long time. So, we also did just stop checking our mail. So I also have been going to physical therapy, just for my ankle. It's no big deal.

Just, you know, trying to hold the right way. So I've been doing that. No pickle ball. Just been sitting at home, working with Peyton. And also I realized I think I'm a little scared to not like scared, but every time so we drive in the car and Daisy wants to hang out the window every single time in the car, which does she the dog. And so Payton holds her as you know, she puts her head out the window. And I'm just, I can just see, I can just, I can just picture her jumping

out like every single time we do it. Yeah, like enough that you get scared even roll the window down. Like we can't do that. And so, which is weird because I'm not that type of person. I don't know why, but it just worries me with her. I just feel like she's gonna spasm into, you know, jump out the window. Her intrusive thoughts are good.

Yeah, exactly. She's gonna be like, wait, I do want to jump out of here. Yeah. So it makes me think like what's, what's it gonna be like when I have kids? Like I do not not the last thing I want to be is that over protective parent? So I just got to get it out now while we have Daisy.

It's only gonna get worse. So when we have kids one day, I'm like, yeah, jump out the window. Garrett, everything about you that you don't like is only an attend fold when you have a child. Jump out the window. It's fine. You'll be okay. You'll learn. All right. Our episode sources are Wikipedia and B.C. News. DeniseAmburly.org, aft.org, Harold Tribune. All right. So the way we live has changed so much in the last 25 years. There's probably no other point in human history where the human experience has involved so rapidly over such a short period of time. Do you ever think about that? Well, regardless of where you may stand on how technological progress has

affected life in the 21st century, one thing I'm sure pretty much everyone can agree is a positive byproduct of this is that it's getting a lot harder to kidnap someone and get away with it. I think everyone but kidnappers would agree that this is a good thing. There are cameras pretty much everywhere now. We all carry mobile devices with GPSs, pin pointing, our movements, even our cars have GPSs. If we see something, we can say something instantaneously, so long as we have at least one bar of cell signal. Today's story takes place in 2008, though, and it concerns an abduction. One that if this story had taken place 50 years earlier may have forever remained

a mystery. But this abduction was witnessed by multiple people resulting in a flood of calls to 911 as the abduction was still happening. Resulting in a race against time to rescue the victim. So Denise and Nate Lee loved to tell the story of how they met. They were both still in high school when in her senior year, Denise finally worked up the nerve to ask out her crush, and it was Nate. He hung around the cool kids and the jocks, and he seemed to exist in a totally different

world from Denise. But then, after their first date, they just knew. They knew they were each other's person. Even though they'd only just met, they were already falling for each other and Valentine's Day was fast approaching, so Nate went out and bought Denise a ring. Don't worry, it wasn't an engagement ring, it was a $40 ring in the shape of a heart, a token of Nate's affection for Denise. But the next ring Nate would buy Denise was an engagement ring. After they married, whenever Denise would tell the story,

she'd show off the heart-shaped ring Nick got her after their first date. A ring that once she put it on her finger, that special Valentine's Day she never took off. They were only still in their late teens when they married in 2005 a year after they met. And it was a beautiful marriage. They were young, but they were really mature, well-adjusted people, so they were great partners to each other. And close with one another's families, and not long into their marriage,

they welcomed their first child Noah. And in 2007, their second son, Adam, came along. This was a lot for Denise, who was still finding out she could no longer juggle both college and being a mom, so she withdrew from college to focus full time on her family. Her degree would have to wait. But also, she couldn't be a mother to two boys and also juggle a job, so Nate had to work three jobs to make ends meet for the family. His main job was a meter reader for the power company. But then he was also a part-time stalker at the Windixi supermarket.

And during the summer, he was a little league umpire. You said stalker and that really threw me for a loop for a second. Stalker. I mean, he was stalker. Shows. Yes. Okay, got it. He was a stalker. He was a part-time stalker, professional stalker. That's what I thought you said. What are you talking about? So Nate was working constantly. They found a house to rent in the town of Northport, Florida, which was one county over from where they both grew up near Sarasota on the west coast of Florida. The house they were renting was way out in the sticks, though, like on the edge of civilization. Just beyond the development was swampy land. And this made Denise's parents

somewhat uncomfortable, but the rent was dirt cheap for a newly constructed three-bedroom two-bath house. So it was affordable for their family, and it allowed them to more easily budget and save up to eventually buy a house, which they were planning to do. Now it was the morning of January 17th, 2008. It was drizzling and still dark outside, and Denise was in bed when Nate left for work. Denise would stay home that day as she did every day with her two boys, who at this point were two years old and six months old. Denise was somewhat shy and now she had her hands full raising two kids so she almost never went out without her husband or kids. Her life revolved completely around her family. That morning, Denise took

two-year-old Noah out on the back porch and gave him a haircut and then at around 11am, Nate called, as he often did during his workday to check in on Denise and they talked for about 5 minutes. Nate reminded her to make sure that she opened the windows because it was a cool, breezy January day and they could save some money on their electricity bill by not running their AC. But Denise was a step ahead of him, the windows to the home were already open. They said, I love you to each other

and then they went back to their day. Nate then became busy with work and wasn't able to call again until 3 p.m. after his shift ended. But when he called this time, the phone just rang, which was unusual. He became concerned at this point as he got into his car and began driving home. It wasn't like Denise to not answer his phone call. He called again from a cell and there was still no answer.

The drive home took about half an hour and Nate called the house seven more times during the drive. And the phone rang without an answer each time. Well, I mean at this point he's just so worried. So he finally arrives home and the doors were all locked when he got there. He walked inside the house and everything was quiet. He called out for Denise, but there was no reply. Her keys, purse, and cell phone were still in the house. So he looked on the porch in the backyard around the house, but she wasn't to be found in any of those places. Okay. Their sons were both there though, and they seemed okay.

They were both in their crib together, but she's missing. So this is all very unusual. Denise never, ever left the children alone. This is something she simply wouldn't do. Her clothes had been laid out like she'd been getting ready to take a shower maybe and was interrupted. And the windows, which Denise had opened that morning, were all closed now, but they weren't latched.

It seemed to Nate like someone had pushed them all down in a hurry. Yet the air conditioning was off and it was hot and stuffy inside the house. So at this point Nate really begins to freak out. He had no idea what in the heck was going on. He rang up Denise's mother, but she had not heard from her either, not a word. So Nate's next phone call was to 911. Oh, I can't see that feeling, I just cannot imagine.

I know. He reported to the 911 operator that he just returned home from work half an hour earlier and his wife seemed to be missing. This information was transmitted to the Northport Police Department, and when Nate got off the phone call with 911, he next called Denise's father, Sergeant Rick Goff, who happened to be a 25-year veteran of the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. So Sargent Gough himself had called the house earlier that afternoon to invite the couple over to his place for dinner, but since no one answered, he left a message. And he assumed now that that's why Nate was calling him.

So when he answered the phone, he opened with, hey, you guys want to come over and eat? Nate told him he couldn't because Denise was missing. Nate's father-in-law couldn't comprehend this at first. You've got to explain what you mean by that, he said. I'm telling you, Nate replied she's missing. He explained that he'd arrived home from work to find her completely gone without explanation the kids just sitting in the crib. When he got off the phone with his son-in-law, Sargent Goffa immediately contacted the Northport Police Department. He wanted

to use his poll as law enforcement officer to make sure this department knew the gravity of the situation. He knew how law enforcement operates, how they're sometimes pretty slow to handle missing persons. He also expected that they'd look at Nate as a suspect and he knew his son-in-law and trusted that Nate would never harm his daughters. So he didn't want them wasting time on Nate. He told the Northport PD that his daughter would never just up and leave and that she may be in danger. This was not a typical missing person or missing spouse kind of situation. He believed Denise may have been taken.

They need to get helicopters and dogs out to the area. He believed Denise may have been taken. They need to get helicopters and dogs out to the area he told them. Toronto. You going hard? Yeah. Sargent golf then called his own people at the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office and he then called his friend Howie Grace, who worked as a photo journalist for the local NBC affiliate hoping to get the media involved. Meanwhile, Detective Chris Morales of the North Port Pety drove down to the Lee Residence to begin his investigation. And keep in mind, the North Port Police is not just a different police agency from the

one Denise's father worked for, but it's in a completely different jurisdiction as well. North Port is in Sarasota County and Sargent Gough worked for Charlotte County the next county over. Northport is in Sarasota County and Sargent Gough worked for Charlotte County the next county over. Now, inside the house, Detective Morales found no signs of forced entry or any kind of struggle. The couple's two young sons appeared to be unharmed.

Denise's dad and Nate's parents were at the house at this point in the investigation. And while a helicopter was circling the area looking for Denise, the Northport police were very obviously regarding Nate as a suspect, asking him about their marriage, how often they argued. And this was frustrating for everyone, Nate's parents and in-laws knew this was impossible. It was impossible that Nate would do anything to hurt Denise. Which is so hard because statistically, it's usually the husband, but also if it's not in this case, there is, they don't have the time.

No, they do not have the time to be looking at him as a suspect. Right. But then when police canvass the neighborhood, they learned something interesting from the leaves next door neighbor. Between one and two o'clock that afternoon, the neighbor was watching TV when they happened to glance through their front window and noticed a suspicious car that was quote, creeping up and down the road going very slowly.

It was a green Chevy Camaro, the neighbor said, with a black car bra, you know, a car bar rise. So this green Camaro with a car bra was seen trawling the block, circling the street four or five times. And this made the Lees neighbor suspicious as it should. So they walked outside to get a closer look, thinking maybe the driver was lost or something. You know, trying to give the driver

the benefit of the doubt. They made eye contact with the guy behind the wheel, but he then pulled into the Lees driveway. And the neighbor concluded, oh, he must just be a friend of the leaves. So they went back inside their house. And then 15 minutes later, they went outside again to check their mail and noticed the green Camaro pulling out of the leaves driveway and then driving away. Now, once this information was obtained by the neighbor, it was pretty clear to everyone at this point that Denise Lee had probably been abducted by whoever was driving that Camaro.

It was about 5 o'clock at this point, and it was already getting dark. The Northport police drafted a Bolo, a Beyond the Lookout Bulletin, and forwarded it to other agencies in the area through a teletype machine. And this was over an hour and a half after Denise had been reported missing. The Bolo Teletype was received by the Florida Highway Patrol, the US Marshals, and other neighboring police departments, including the Charlotte County Sheriff's Department. But what they didn't know at the time was Charlotte County's Dispatch Center had just sent their teletype operator home for the day, purely for budgetary reasons, namely so they wouldn't have to pay her overtime.

So the Bolo would go completely unnoticed by Charlotte County for the next two hours. And these two hours were crucial as it was already early evening and daylight time was extremely limited. I think it seems illegal. Right. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, unsure of which direction to take in life? We all face those moments of uncertainty where the right path seems elusive. But guess what? There's a solution that can help you find clarity and confidence. And that's therapy. As you guys know, I talk about therapy all the time.

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visit at his Northport home. It was from his cousin Michael King. Michael told his cousin Harold that he needed to borrow a few items because his lawnmower had gotten stuck in his front yard. Specifically, he needed a flashlight, a gas can, and a shovel. I don't really know what you would need a flashlight or shovel for if your lawnmower was stuck, but go ahead. So Harold rustled around in his garage and gathered all the items that his cousin Michael had asked for. Michael took the items,

thanked him, and made a beeline back to his car. And then, as Harold was walking back into his house, he suddenly heard a woman's voice cry out from inside of his cousin's vehicle. Call the cops, the voice screamed. Oh my gosh. Harold turned around and then approached his cousin. What's going on here? What was that? Michael, who appeared to be fumbling with something in the back seat, lifted his head and answered, nothing, don't worry about it. Harold began walking back toward the house,

but he was too disturbed by what he'd heard. That's insane. He turned around again to Ward Michael's car, and that's when he saw Michael arched over the center console, pushing down on the head of a woman who was stuffed in the back seat. He then saw the woman's knee pop up like they were struggling. Michael King sat back down in the driver's seat and immediately drove away, and Harold knew this was very much out of the ordinary. This is not an everyday occurrence to see your cousin shoving a woman into the back of his car. Something tell me he called the cops.

Something was clearly wrong here. So suspicious of what his cousin was up to, Harold got into his own car and drove to Michael's house to see if there really was a lawn mower stuck in his front yard. And guess what? No lawn mower. There was not a lawn mower. It was all a lie. And Michael King had not returned home like he said he would. Harold was too bothered by all of this to ignore it, but he wasn't sure what to do.

He told his daughter Sabrina about it and Sabrina called 911. Now at 6.14 pm, another call was placed to 911 and was rooted to the Sarasota County Emergency Call Center. The caller was a woman who was upset and crying and it sounded like she was inside of a vehicle. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I just want to go. She could be heard saying on the other end of the line. The woman sounded terrified. I'm sorry, I just want to see my family again.

Please, she was pleading, let me go. Please let me go. Please let me go. She kept repeating these things. And then a man's voice could be heard on the 911 call asking, where's my effing phone? And the woman just kept pleading, please let me go. The man could then be heard saying, no effing problem, I was gonna let you go,

then you go effing around in front of my cousin Harold. Now I gotta go to the next street because of him. What does that mean? Now on the phone, the dispatcher's like, what's your name? Ma'am, what's your name? She says, my name is Denise. I'm married to a beautiful husband.

I just wanna see my kids again. Please, please protect me. The operator asked Denise questions, and Denise seemed to be trying to answer them in a way that wouldn't alert the man who also sounded to be in the car of what was really going on. The operator asked where they were, and Denise asked the man, where are we? He didn't answer. But the operator soon saw that the call was bouncing off the North Port cell tower.

The male voice again insisted, what did you do with my cell phone? I don't know where your phone is, Denise Cried. I'm sorry. Are you being honest with me? He asked, I don't have your phone, she told him. She then asked the man if he was going to hurt her. Give me the phone, he can be heard saying. Are you going to let me out? She asked as soon as I get the phone, he said, help me Denise cried and then the call abruptly ended. Now Denise's father, Sergeant Rick Gough, listened to this 911 call and it was harrowing for him. It was Denise. They had found her, but she's obviously in trouble. No doubt he confirmed it. Despite being restrained in the backseat of her abductors' vehicle, she was somehow able to get a hold of his cell phone and call 911.

But she tried to communicate in a way that made her abductor think she was talking to him while simultaneously letting the operator know she was in danger and in need of help. Now around this time, another 911 call came into the Sarasota Dispatch Center, and the call was from Sabrina Muxlow, the daughter of Harold Muxlow. Again, she relayed where her father had told her about his cousin, Michael King, stopping by the house to borrow a gas can, a flashlight, and a shovel.

They're being a girl in the backseat of his car. The operator told her that they'd actually been looking for a girl and a shirt Sabrina that there was a helicopter Currently in the area and praise Sabrina for doing the right thing and calling even though it was her father's cousin Sabrina provided the address of Michael King's house and her father's house Which was only four miles from Denise's house where she'd been abducted from. So it seemed Denise was still in the area, still alive, and a massive search effort was underway by this time. I mean, and how often does this happen in missing persons cases where the person goes missing and you have multiple 911 calls coming in saying, here she is, she's with this guy, you already have your suspects name,

you already know where he lives, it was a race against time, because when you think about those items, Michael borrowed his intentions, certainly weren't. Oh, 100%. He's gonna kill her. And Denise, if she saw her abductor with a flashlight in a shovel,

must have known the level of danger she was in. But they knew who the abductor was, they had authorities all over looking for his green Camaro, and they knew the general area where Denise was. So for her loved ones, her husband, Nate, her father, Rick, her parents, it was a tense and frightening situation, but there was hope. Seems like Denise would be found and rescued. And it's like he's obviously in the town still. Right in the city. Right. But where? And at 6.30 p.m. another call. This would be the fourth call so far that day was made to 911 by a motorist named Jane Kowalski. This call, unlike the previous two, was rooted to the Charlotte

County 911 call center. Jane was calling from her car and was, she told the operator, stopped at a traffic light. She said she heard someone screaming and a commotion coming from a car that was in the lane next to her. The car she said was a green Camaro. That screaming Jane heard from inside the car sounded horrific. Oh man. She said it was terrifying. I've never heard anything like that in my life. She made eye contact with the man driving who then turned around and pushed down on something in the back seat. Immediately after this, Jane saw a hand rise up from behind the driver and begin banging on the passenger side window. Jane thought that the person in the back seat was a young child, so she believed that this was a child abduction. And she told the dispatcher this that she thought it was a child between 5 and 10. The light then turned green and Jane didn't go right away.

She was waiting for the Camaro to pass so she could get the license plate. But the driver of the Camaro also sat idle refusing to pull forward. So both cars were holding up traffic at this point. So Jane slowly rolled forward and once she was passed the Camaro the driver of the Camaro changed lanes and pulled behind Jane. She continued to drive slowly and the Camaro lagged behind her driving even more slowly. So the guy driving the Camaro as we know is Michael. He was aware of Jane knowing something wasn't right and he was trying to avoid her trying to make it so she couldn't see his license plate. Both cars continued to hold up traffic and then the Camaro changed lanes again and made a left turn onto Toledo Blade Boulevard toward I-75.

Now unfortunately there was too much traffic for Jane to suddenly change lanes as well and follow the car. She couldn't get over. And so the Camaro disappeared out of sight. And all together, Jane was on the phone with this batch for over nine minutes. Oh, and the ones are where the cops were. Right.

She was making her location known the entire time throughout the call. There were at least four patrol cars within a mile of time. Oh my gosh, no. But none of them was dispatched. One sheriff's deputy was stationed right on Toledo Blade, in fact, and the green Camaro passed right by him. Yet no one had sent the vehicle

description to him. And why? Why does this happen? Because when Mildred Step, the 911 operator who talked to Jane, ended the call, She was so excited that instead of logging the information into the dispatch system, she stood up from her cubicle and called out to the on duty dispatchers. It's about that vehicle that they're looking for. Okay, so did somebody else log it? So, Mildred, the 911 operator who took Jane's call didn't get around to entering the information into the dispatch system until 6.42 pm that would be 12 minutes after she answered James call four minutes after she hung up Okay, so if she had put that information in as she was getting it while the Camaro was still in traffic behind Jane It could have gone out immediately

But then there was a shift change at 6.45, just three minutes after Mildred entered the information, so it kind of just got lost in the shuffle. No one acted on it. In fact, the North Port Police Department didn't even find out about this call until the following day. So in the span of just 15 minutes, 3911 calls were placed about Denise,

one of them by Denise herself. But despite this, and in spite of the helicopter in the sky and authorities in three separate counties across multiple agencies, being on the lookout, the green Camaro continued to elude them. And at the same time, Mildred Step was entering Jane's call into dispatch, where it would be ignored for a day. Police descended on Michael King's home in Northport and broke inside. No one was home. So it's crazy because as we're talking about this, this is all happening in like 15 minutes. Someone needs to find this freaking car. Right? It's frustrating. It's like they're moving fast because all this is happening so fast, but also nothing's happening.

People are literally seeing this car. Yeah, he drove past a cop. Oh my gosh, give me a break. So from what they could gather, Michael had probably just been at his house, but now was long gone. On the floor, they found duct tape with strands of hair on it, which means Denise had also been at the house. At 6.50 pm, yet another call came into authorities. This one was from Harold Muxlow himself. Remember, this is Michael King's cousin. He had stopped at a 7.11 store in his neighborhood and made an anonymous call to 911. So you can sense the denial in the words he uses. Not sure what the emergency is exactly. He said, but I think somebody has been taken without there.

Then he stopped and tried to come up with the right balance between communicating the relevant info to the operator and avoiding outright acknowledging that his own cousin probably abducted a woman. He arrived at, quote, they don't want to be there, meaning she didn't want to be in the car. He described the car as a 95 Camaro and told the operator that it was somewhere in North Port and then he hung up. So by this point, it's nearly 7 o'clock. Denise has been missing since before 3.30 pm, and since that time, five calls have been

placed to 911 about her. One from Nathalie, one from Denise Lee herself, one from the motorist, and two from Michael King's cousin and his cousin's daughter. They had patrol cars, helicopters, ATVs, volunteer searchers, and yet they could still not locate Denise or the green Camaro. And after this, two more hours would pass by.

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at Toledo Blade Boulevard near where the green Camaro was last seen. They were keeping an eye off for the vehicle. The Bolo Bulletin had gone out by this point and they had all the information they needed. They knew Denise Lee had been abducted and the abductor was Michael King. The question now was where were they and is Denise okay? At around 9.10 pm, the two cops saw Green Camaro matching the description from the Bolo, pulled onto I-75 from Toledo Blade Bolovard. They began following the vehicle in their separate cruisers and eventually Trooper Pope pulled it over. Trooper Pope positioned himself behind the door of his cruiser and drew his

gun, ordering the driver to exit, but the driver wasn't complying. He issued the order again and again, still the driver didn't budge. Trooper Pope then warned the driver that if he did not exit the car, he would begin firing into it. So that's when the driver's side doors swung open and outstepped Michael King. So the same night, this is all in the same night.

Moving backwards, wearing a camouflage shirt in jeans with his arms raised in the air. He was immediately handcuffed. And that's when Trooper Pope saw that Michael King's jeans were wet from the waist down and his shoes were muddy. Oh no. And when Trooper Pope looked inside the car, Denise was not there. Oh no. So this is not a good sign. I'm going to be so upset. On the spoiler of the car, the trooper observed what looked like blood spatter. Inside the car, he found a cell phone with the battery and SIM card removed. In the backseat was a blanket, a dirt-kicked shovel, and a heart-shaped ring. It was Denise's ring. The ring that Nate gave her when they first

started dating, the ring that she never took off. Back at the station, Michael King refused to talk. And over the next day, search teams scoured the area near where Michael King had been pulled over and arrested. They honed in on a construction site near Plantation Boulevard in Northport, where one of the searchers noticed a patch of ground that appeared to have been recently disturbed. Nearby were some small piles of dirt that looked out of place. On closer inspection it appeared that there was blood in the sand and on the ground. The following morning a forensics team converged on the area and began excavating the area of ground that appeared to have been disturbed and then

Three inches below the surface. They found the naked body of Denise Amberby Lying on her side in a fetal position with single gunshot wound to her head It would later be determined at autopsy that the gun was placed against Denise's forehead and fired just above her left eyebrow which caused basically her eye to explode. A couple of days later, a 9mm shell casing was found in the grass not far away from where Denise had been buried. The 9mm gun was never found, but it was later learned that Michael King had been to a firing range just a couple hours before Denise was discovered missing and his friend had seen him with a 9mm fire arm, which established that King did in fact have the gun. And in the area of Denise's

makeshift grave, searchers found a shirt and a pair of boxer shorts later identified as belonging to the Lee household. The boxer shorts tested positive for sperm cells and those cells were later matched to Michael King. Denise's DNA was found inside both King's home, as well as in his car, and his semen and Denise's blood were found on the duct tape he used to bind her wrists. King was charged with first-degree murder, sexual battery, and kidnapping. I think it goes without saying here

the case against Michael King was about as strong and airtight as a case can be. This is so upsetting because I thought for sure this was going to be a survivor episode. Yeah. So Michael King still pled not guilty. He claimed that he too had been kidnapped, that he and Denise were kidnapped and tied up together,

which of course is just preposterous. King had been driving around, spotted Denise in her home alone, through the same open windows he used to gain entry into the house, abducted her, tied her up, took her back to his house, raped her, put her in his car with the intention of killing her, borrowed from his cousin, the tools he felt he needed to get rid of her, drove her through traffic to the isolated construction area,

shot her in the head, and buried her. Was there a reason? Mm, just wanted to rape someone. Oh my gosh. She didn't die right away, the autopsy found her lungs contained aspirated blood. Yeah. A trial, Michael's attorneys referred to a brain injury he had sustained as a child in a sledding accident. They claimed he had quote a divot in his brain and an IQ of 71. His family members told the court He was never the same after this injury and among the witnesses who testified were King's cousin

Harold Muxlow, Jane Kowalski, the witness from the road who was on the phone with 911 for nine minutes and an additional motorist who had been stopped at a traffic light when he heard Denise screaming for help from inside Michael King's Camaro. The witness didn't contact police at the time and later regretted it. August 28, 2009, the jury found Michael King guilty of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and kidnapping. The jury recommended a sentence of death by a vote of 12-0. On December 4th of that year, the judge followed the jury's recommendation and sentenced Michael King to die by lethal injection. King would later file in a pill in 2016, but the sentence was upheld. Now, the conviction of Michael King was only half the battle. The other half was how badly the ball was dropped in the way those 911 calls were handled. Specifically,

Jane Kowalski's 911 call at the Charlotte County 911 center. Yeah. Nate Lee, Denise's widow, were sued the Charlotte County 911 for their mishandling, which honestly probably cost Denise her life. And in 2012, he was awarded a one and a quarter million dollar settlement. It's hard because it's like, I don't want to blame anyone else because it is no one else. The person to blame is Michael King, but it's that sucks. I mean, nine minutes. Yeah, there's. And they were only a mile away. There's just so much to the story at that. Right. Gosh, dang it. He has since remarried and bought a house in nearby Inglewood, Florida. He also established the Denise Amber Lee Foundation

to help promote improvements in 911 dispatch and public safety systems across America. And in 2008, four months after Denise was killed, the Florida legislators signed the Denise Amber Lee Act in two law, which requires a minimum of 232 hours of training for new 911 operators in hopes of this never happening again. But that's the story of Denise Amberley. Thing, I really went through a roller coaster of like I thought for sure it was going to be a survivor story and it just fell apart. How is it not? That's the hard part is.

It should be. It should be a survivor story because five, nine, one, one calls were placed. One, including her. She had somehow got his phone. And I think this case is just especially heartbreaking because a lot of times in these cases, it's like, oh, but then we learned the husband was having an affair. Or there's always these things, but no, this was too happy people. Like this young couple who were two kids, desperately in love.

Hate when they have kids. I hate when people, I, she was kidnapped from her own home and it should have never happened. This should have never, ever happened. There's absolutely no motive. It's pure evil. Yeah. So let's take today to think about Denise, to think about her husband who survived, her two kids who survived, who were victims of this as well, who lost their mother, and let's keep the entire family

in our thoughts and prayers. All right, you guys, that was our episode for this week, and we will see you next time with another one. Don't forget to go listen to Rising Crime. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. Good bye.