True Crime Campfire - Compos Mentis: The Murder of Lauren Giddings

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Our neighbors. We see them every day, usually just for a few moments—long enough to say hi as we head inside with our groceries, or out to walk the dog. For those of us who live in apartments, we’re sometimes uncomfortably close to each other’s lives: sharing cooking smells, overhearing intimate moments, getting annoyed by small inconveniences. Such close proximity, for total strangers. And as much as we may come to know about the small details of our neighbors’ lives—which night of the week they make curry, which day they wash their clothes—we have no way of knowing what’s going on behind closed doors. Or behind their eyes. Usually it’s nothing to worry about. But sometimes…Sources:https://abovethelaw.com/2011/08/the-collected-writings-of-stephen-mcdaniel/https://www.macon.com/news/special-reports/lauren-giddings-murder/article28616875.htmlhttps://abovethelaw.com/2011/08/the-plot-thickens-say-hello-to-hacksaw-mcdaniel/?rf=1https://abovethelaw.com/2014/04/you-are-the-devil-law-grad-pleads-guilty-to-dismembering-classmate/?rf=1https://www.wvgazettemail.com/ga-police-seek-remains-of-dismembered-law-grad/article_5a7a38c9-d8b5-59aa-ab38-ee9ac93758bc.htmlhttps://www.macon.com/news/special-reports/lauren-giddings-murder/article28616902.htmlhttps://www.macon.com/news/local/crime/article222386260.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Our neighbors. We see them every day, usually just for a few moments. Long enough to say hi as we head inside with our groceries or out to walk the dog. For those of us who live in apartments, we're sometimes uncomfortably close to each other's lives, sharing cooking smells, overhearing intimate moments, getting annoyed by small inconveniences.

Such close proximity for total strangers. And as much as we may come to know about the small details of our neighbor's lives, which night of the week they make curry, which day they wash their clothes, we have no way of knowing what's going on behind closed doors, or behind their eyes. Usually, it's nothing to worry about, but sometimes... This is Compos Mentis, the stalking and murder of Lauren Giddings. So, campers, for this one, we're in Macon, Georgia, June 29, 2011. People were starting to worry about Lauren Giddings.

Lauren was a law student at Mercer, and she'd been busy lately studying for the bar exam. That's why nobody thought too much of it when they didn't hear from her for a few days after a fun night at the bar with some friends. She'd also been to her sister's wedding in Baltimore the weekend before, and it wasn't until one of her Baltimore friends texted her some wedding pictures, and she didn't text back, that people started to worry that something was wrong. No way would Lauren not respond to those wedding picture texts. That just wasn't like her. Lauren wasn't a Southern girl by birth, but she always said she was. one at heart. She was super outgoing, the type to never meet a stranger, and she always answered a

text from a friend. Lauren's Baltimore buddy tried calling her, but her phone went straight to voicemail. Now that was way out of character, so worried the friend called Lauren's sister Caitlin, and Caitlin messaged one of Lauren's best law school buds, Ashley, to see if she'd heard from her. Ashley'd actually seen Lauren the previous Friday. They'd gone out with some other stressed out soon-to-be lawyers to blow off some steam before hunkering down to study for the bar. Now it was Wednesday, and through the haze of highlighter pen fumes and caffeine, Ashley realized she hadn't seen or heard from Lauren since then. Huh. Her first thought was, I bet she just forgot to charge her phone. It made sense. They were also hopped up on Red Bull and existential dread that they could barely remember their own names. All the

brain cells were busy remembering statutes. So she stopped by Barrister's Hall, Lauren's apartment complex, to check on her. A lot of the law students lived there. It was convenient to campus, and it was nice to live near people you knew from school. Lauren's car was in the parking lot when Ashley got there, but nobody answered her knock. Okay, Ashley thought she's probably just taking a study break to go jogging. She sort of shrugged it off and went home to dive back into her books. But then hours later, Lauren's sister called again. The family still couldn't get hold of her. They were really starting to worry. And Ashley got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had a spare key for Lauren's place, she told him.

Did they want her to go over and check inside? Ashley didn't want to go alone, so she picked up her boyfriend on the way, and as she fumbled with the key to Lauren's door, Ashley stopped for a minute and looked at him. She said, are you ready for whatever we're going to see in there? She didn't know exactly what to expect, but her gut was telling her it wasn't going to be good. She held her breath and opened the door,

and nothing seemed off. It was dark, no lights on, but Lauren's purse, keys, and cell phone were all there. Her laptop computer was sitting on her bed. As Ashley and her boyfriend walked around the apartment, checking things out, they noticed something odd. On the calendar, Lauren had circled June 30th, the next day as moving day. She was planning on moving to Atlanta to live with her boyfriend. But although there were a few small signs of preparation for the move, most of the artwork had been taken off the walls, for example,

there were no boxes full of stuff. No bubble wrap, no packing tape. none of the normal stuff you'd expect to see lying around the apartment of somebody getting ready to move. And it wasn't like Lauren to procrastinate on something that big and important. Yeah, and I think studying for the bar in the middle of a move is maybe the most badass thing we've ever encountered on her show. No kidding, right? It was time to acknowledge that something was up. Ashley called Lauren's family who called her boyfriend David.

David was worried. He hadn't spoken to Lauren in days, despite the plan for her to move. in with him on the 30th. Lauren's buddy Ashley gathered up their little squad, and Ashley's boyfriend volunteered to go look around the law school, just in case she'd gotten sucked so deeply into her studies that she'd lost all track of time. Meanwhile, Lauren's other friends went over her apartment with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything that might give them some idea of where she was.

They noticed food wrappers from Zaxby's in the trash and a receipt from around 6 p.m. on Saturday. Okay, so she'd been home on Saturday night. They also noticed that one of her windows was unlatched. Faint alarm bells started ringing in the backs of their minds. Lauren had told her friends that she'd been feeling uneasy lately, hunted, like somebody was stalking her, watching her. And they knew that when Lauren interned with the public defender's office,

she spent time visiting prison inmates. Could one of them have taken a special interest in her after he got out? Lauren's friends opened up her laptop and noticed that she'd sent an email to her boyfriend David on Saturday night around 10 p.m. It said, I cannot wait to get out of this town. Macon Hoodlems tried to break into my apartment Thursday night. It was terrifying. I haven't been able to really sleep since. I need a gun. My only defense was 911 on my cell phone. So scary. Well, that was upsetting. Between that and the unlashed window, things were started to look a little ominous.

Lauren's family called the police, and her dad, feeling like he was going to lose his mind if he had to sit there in Baltimore and wait for the news, decided to make the 11-hour trip down to Macon. The police did a cursory search of the apartment, just like Lauren's friends had. To the naked eye, it didn't seem like anything was amiss. Just looked like Lauren had walked out of the front door and hadn't come back. But by now, she'd been out of contact long enough to get a missing person's investigation started. And her friends and family were all telling them that there's no way in hell she'd go off

somewhere without telling anybody. This was a woman who stayed connected to the people she loved. Lauren was a bright light in all their lives. She was gorgeous, for one thing, blonde with big blue eyes, and she always wore pink. Lauren had a fluffy little one-eyed Pekingese dog called Butterbean, and she liked to dress Butterbean up to match her outfits, just like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. That's just so flipping cute. I don't know what to do about it. Butterbean.

Little one-eyed dog. It was Butterbeam. He is so cute. Butterbeam. I'll post them. Oh, my God. And also like Elwoods, she was a force to be reckoned with. She read and studied voraciously, and she was smart.

When she passed the bar, she wanted to be a public defender. She wanted to help give voice to people who might not have one otherwise. And now she was missing. The people who loved her were frantic, and as far as they could tell, there was exactly nothing in Lauren's apartment to give them any clue to what might have happened to her. So, knowing, of course, that evidence is often invisible to the naked eye, the police brought in an experienced forensic investigator named Steve Gatlin. When he arrived at the scene, he huddled up in the parking lot of Lauren's apartment building to gather some equipment and talk to his staff about what he wanted to do inside. And as they were standing there, a summer wind suddenly picked up and blew across the parking lot, and with it, came a smell. Foul. Sickly sweet. Like rotting meat, but worse. Any detective, any forensic

tech, anybody who's ever been around death knows that smell. There's nothing else like it in the world. Gatlin followed the stench to the apartment complex as garbage cans, and when he opened the one that smelled the worst, he saw two bags. One was full of regular-looking household garbage, but the other... The other held the naked, dismembered torso of a Caucasian woman. Looking down at it, as horrified as he was, Gatlin realized how incredibly lucky they'd just gotten. The police cars at the apartment complex had blocked the garbage truck for making its usual pickup, and they'd just driven on like half an hour earlier. If that hadn't been the case, and it's bizarre.

If that hadn't been the case, this body would have been on its way to a landfill by now, and they might never have found it. Gatlin and his team did their best to block the scene by pinning up tarps as they looked for the rest of the body. and back inside the apartment, CSIs sprayed down the bathroom with luminal and hit the lights. Gatlin later said it was like a light switch. The whole bathroom glowed. The bathtub just lit up. They'd never seen anything like it. Blood all the way up to a couple inches from the edge. Like it looked like somebody had just filled the tub with blood. Oh my God. It's just terrifying. But other than that, the forensic team didn't find much.

No hairs, no fibers, no fingerprints anywhere. It looked like, somebody had wiped the place down, like especially the bathroom. They didn't even find Lauren's fingerprints, which obviously is not normal. So somebody had seriously cleaned up. Obviously, the investigators hadn't been able to positively ID the body yet, but they knew it was a young white woman,

and they felt certain it must be Lauren. And they were worried. I mean, this kind of thing, dismemberment is rare. It takes planning, it takes premeditation, and it takes a seriously, seriously fucked up mind. So the detectives knew that a killer like this probably is not going to stop it just one. They had a sick feeling that they might

have a serial killer in their midst, or a fledgling one anyway. One just beginning to spread his wings. They started trying to get an idea of the people in Lauren's life, trying to figure out who would have done this to her. The first most obvious suspect was her boyfriend David, and it didn't take long for the investigators to get a little bit of an earful about him from Lauren's friends. They weren't too fond to David. They felt like he was a flick. He was a flake in a commitment fob. Lauren had wanted to move in with him long before now, but he'd always shut her down, just flat out refused.

He'd changed his mind recently, sure, but they wondered whether David was really into Lauren as much as she was into him. It felt to some of them like he'd finally just give in about letting her move in with them. Like maybe there was reluctance there. Maybe he was regretting saying, yes. Overall, their relationship struck Lauren's friends

is pretty toxic. Lots of fighting, you know, on again, off again. And then there was the age difference. David was 20 years older than Lauren. Just, I mean, that's a pretty big age difference. She met him when she interned at his law firm, which, I mean, you know, lots of people made it work for sure, but... Yeah, I know what you mean. There's a power dynamic there that could be kind of gross, especially when you add in a 20-year age gap.

Exactly. The impression of some of Lauren's friends was that David was a playboy, and Lauren was trying to get him to settle down. Maybe he didn't want to settle down. Maybe they fought about it. Maybe he got ugly. Yeah, campers, just a tip. You're not going to fix him. You don't got to. He's not going to commit to you that he's not going to commit to you. It's fine. Mm-mm. So the investigators brought David in for questioning, and he was cooperative. He copped to the commitment phobia thing, said it was his fault their relationship had been on again, off again. He said he'd been in California the weekend Lauren went missing. And this was odd.

He hadn't tried to call her or contact her the entire time she was missing. Not even when he got back to Atlanta. And something about his demeanor hit the detectives wrong. He just didn't seem all that upset. The investigators were starting to think they had a live one, but that didn't last long. David had proof that he couldn't have killed Lauren. Hotel, airline, and restaurant receipts proved he'd been 2,000 miles away when she died. It was an ironclad alibi.

Ah, damn. Damn. But there were a lot of men in Lauren's life, plenty of possible suspects to check out. One was Joe, a guy she dated briefly during one of her and David's off-again periods. Joe was one of her classmates at law school. A funny, gregarious guy, kind of the class clown. They had fun together. Joe was way into Lauren, and he might not have appreciated getting unceremoniously dumped when David decided he wanted her back.

Mm-hmm. Not only that, but Joe had been there that last Friday night when Lauren went out bar-hopping with her friends. She stayed over at his place. He was roomies with her friend Ashley's boyfriend, and Ashley was staying the night, too. In his bedroom. Uh-huh. Joe said he and Lauren had been together on Friday. In fact, they both had a few drinks and started hooking up.

But he said he stopped her because he knew she was back with her boyfriend. How noble of him! Or maybe he just didn't want to be second choice. Joe said they did spend the night together, but nothing sexy happened. And then in the morning, Lauren had gotten up to go to the pool at her country club. That was it. That was the last time he saw her. So Lauren's credit card records confirmed that she'd made it to the country club on Saturday morning.

The card statement also showed that she'd bought dinner at Zaxby's later that night. They pulled surveillance footage from the Zaxbys and saw her going through the drive-thru. but frustratingly, they couldn't tell if Joe was in the car with her. Once again, we are foiled by pathetic, greeny-ass surveillance footage. So can I just say for the record, if y'all can't find a surveillance camera that works, just don't bother having one, because it's just going to end up pissing off the entire true crime community later on, okay? And we're sick of it.

We can't take it anymore. If there is one constant in true crime, it is shitty surveillance footage. It just, oh. That and it's never a mannequin, but some of it. always thinks it is. Like, when have you ever seen a mannequin out in, out, out anywhere? I know. Who just like dumps a mannequin? That's almost weirder than dumping a body. Okay, this is, this shows how bad my self-preservation instincts are, because if I saw a mannequin out in a field, I would absolutely go look at it. Because, oh, yeah, oh, me too.

Because I'm like, for sure, I'd go poke at it with a stick. And take a picture so I can post it on Instagram. Oh, for sure. Come on. Of course, obviously. Back to the surveillance footage. Like, I feel like we all have very high-quality cameras on our persons at all times. Yeah. Like, if we can all carry cell phones with, like, HD cameras, I feel like maybe Zaxby's could have sprung for a nicer camera. I know. It's like suddenly it's a business buying it, like a multi-million dollar business, and suddenly it's 1985.

I just don't get it. They wipe it every day at five. They don't just keep their footage. God. So, anyway. they couldn't be sure if Lauren had gone about her Saturday by herself or with Joe. And because everybody else in their friend group was neck deep and bar exam prep, none of them could give Joe an alibi. They did know that Lauren, or at least Lauren's email account, had sent David a message on Saturday night around 10.

The Macon hoodlums tried to break into my apartment email. But anybody could have sent that, really. Anybody with access to Lauren's computer, they couldn't rule Joe out just yet. but they needed to cast a wider net than that. They started by interviewing Lauren's friends and neighbors at Barrister's Hall. There was a guy she often went jogging with who said he'd seen her on Friday. There was a maintenance guy they wanted to talk to, but they both had alibis quickly and easily confirmed.

And then there was Lauren's neighbor and law school classmate Stephen McDaniel. Stephen didn't exactly look like the platonic ideal of a lawyer. He had long, unkempt curly hair like mid-90s Eddie Vedder, He looked kind of like the sound guy for the local metal band. You know, the one whose bassist keeps getting arrested for trying to sleep with underage girls. You know, we all know that guy. You all know what I'm talking about. Stephen had lived across from Lauren for three years, and they were in a couple of clubs together at the law school.

Stephen seemed eager to help. He told the detectives that he'd last seen Lauren the week before. He'd been studying for the bar, too, so he hadn't had much chance to lift his head up lately. It was a relatively short interview. Stephen said he hadn't seen or heard anything suspicious around the time Lauren went missing. He'd really just been studying, pretty much 24-7 along with everybody else. He wished he could help more. Lauren was such a nice girl.

Less than a day into the investigation, the Barrister's Hall apartment complex had become a zoo. Media everywhere. They saw the tarps, they saw the forensics fan, and despite the investigators' best efforts, they got when that a body had been discovered. And this campers is bloody awful. Back in Maryland, without any context or confirmation, Lauren's family heard the same thing, that a body had been found in Macon, Georgia, across from Mercer College. And they knew immediately it had to be Lauren.

God, the media sucks sometimes, doesn't it? How fucking irresponsible. Yeah. It's horrible. And, you know, I get that you want to get your scoop, but you can't make sure the investigators have talked to the family before you broadcast that. Y'all suck. You just suck. when Lauren's dad arrived in Macon after an 11 hour dry

bless his heart he found the lead detective and asked if he could identify the body but the investigators told him no one said look father to father you don't want to see her like this it was only then that the gravity of what had been done to Lauren really hit Mr. Giddings and his face went white I can't even imagine what that must have felt like I can't even begin to imagine so instead of an identification they asked Lauren dad for a DNA sample for a mitochondrial testing, and that test would later confirm to nobody surprised that the dismembered torso in the trash bag was that of Lauren Giddings. So, like I said,

the apartment complex was crawling with reporters by now, and for the most part, Lauren's neighbors were avoiding the cameras, all except Stephen McDaniel, who'd just come from his interview with the police. When one of the reporters asked him if he knew the missing girl, he told her, yes, yes, she was a friend of his. He said, we don't know where she is. I mean, the only one of the reporters asked him if he knew the missing girl, he told her, he the only thing we can think is maybe she went out running and someone snatched her. We went over, one of her friends had a key, we went inside and tried to see if anything was amiss, but I mean, she had a door jam that was sitting right by it, but there was no sign that anyone broke in. I mean, the door was locked when everybody got there.

Stephen seemed deeply concerned, bewildered at what could have happened to his good friend Lauren. He looked like he hadn't slept in a few days, too. He shook his head a little, said, we just don't know where she is. and then the reporter said what about in the courtyard I think that's where they recovered the body almost before the sentence was out of her mouth

Stephen McDaniel went white it's a hell of a thing if you watch the interview you can actually pinpoint the exact moment when his soul drops out of his body like a bad transmission you sure can't a moment before he'd been chatty Kathy

and now he just went catatonic see the discovery of the body had leaked to the press before Stephen went in to talk to the police, and he just got back. So he had no idea they'd found Lauren's torso. For a few seconds, he just gaped at the reporter like a stunned goldfish. Then he said, body? The reporter said, sir, are you all right? Stephen waved her away. He said, I think I need to sit down. He staggered a few feet away and plunk down on the curb, his head and his hands. C.S.I. Gatlin

saw the whole thing. Huh, he thought. That was odd. He tried to talk to Stephen, but he acted like he didn't even hear. He just sat there on the curb with a thousand-yard stare. Yeah, way to hold it together, man. Smooth. Stephen had been agreeable and cooperative all day until now.

He'd even let the police bring a cadaver dog into his apartment earlier that day. the dog had shown some interest but not enough to tell if it was like oh a body or oh rotting trash true crime campfire tip number 5,422 always trust the doggos amen but now he was acting like such a giant fucking weirdo that the investigators decided they'd better take another crack at him so back to the station he went for his second police interview of the day and campers this second interview is just delightful. Or, you know, the creepiest thing you've ever seen in your life. You know, depending on how odd of a person you are. It's delightful to me. I'm very odd. One comment on the YouTube video said, The police were playing good, cop, bad cop, and Stephen was playing lobotomized perp.

And boy, if that ain't true. Stephen responds to every question with a voice like a stoned robot and answers almost every question with, I don't know. At one point, the detective says, look at me when you talk to me, son, okay? And Stephen kind of slowly raises his head to look at him and doesn't look away. Like something out of the conjuring, it's creepy as hell. Oh, God, it is. Then the detective starts putting on the old hayseed, good old boy who's much too dumb to

solve this case thing, which is by far my favorite tactic. There's nothing better than watching. a murderer who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room get outsmarted by somebody he thinks is inferior. It's like getting a pony for Christmas. When the detective asked Stephen if he felt guilty about hurting Lauren, he just said, I didn't do it in his confused robot voice. And my impression, as bad as my impressions usually are, is pretty fucking spot on guys.

Oh no, it's like dead on, yeah. I didn't do it. His whole affact was just bizarre. It seemed obvious he was trying to build an insanity defense, but if this dude was crazy, he was crazy like a fox. Which, it should be said, is not the same thing as smart. During his first interview earlier that day, before they found Lauren's torso, Stephen had told the detectives he was a virgin, saving himself from Mowage. Now, as he sat in his second interview looking like a stuffed frog while the detectives tried to wring something out of him other than, I don't know. CSI's searched his apartment

and found condoms in his dresser drawer all different sizes and brands a veritable plethora of prophylactics So the detective asked him You know if you're saving yourself for marriage and all How come you've got enough condoms to open a free clinic And Stephen paused for a few seconds You could practically see like the rusty gears turning in his head

And finally he confessed that he'd stolen them From two of the other apartments in his complex. Campers, we're right there with you. So, this pause in my head, it has to be, must be Stephen weighing his options. Does he admit to having previous access to his neighbor's apartments, or does he pretend he was planning on losing his precious virginity? Yeah, and obviously he made the wrong decision.

I mean, like, the wrongest possible decision he could have made. But it's so much worse than you think. It's so much worse, because not only did he just admit to stealing condoms from his neighbors, which is super freaking weird and creepy. Right. But in doing this, he also chose to admit that he had the means to get into an apartment that wasn't his. Holy shit. Yeah.

This dude thought he was smart. Yeah, he's a champ, this one. So they knew they couldn't charge him with murder yet, but they could certainly put the habeas on him for burglarizing his neighbors because he just admitted to it. So score. So now they knew they at least didn't have to let creepy McCrepo go home that night. And as the weirdest interrogation in the history of crime limped along,

the CSIs kept searching Stephen's apartment. And it didn't take them long to hit paydard. Two things happened almost simultaneously. One team of investigators were searching the apartment maintenance room, and they stumbled upon a grim-ass sight, a hacksaw hanging from the tool wall with bits of blood and flesh still stuck to the teeth. Oh, God. It's awful. And they questioned the maintenance guy, obviously, and he said he'd never seen that hacksaw before. It wasn't one of his, and they'd already established that this guy had an airtight alibi, so they were inclined to believe him.

They discovered that the only two people authorized to have keys to that maintenance room were the maintenance guy and the apartment manager, who was like a lady. They both had master keys that could open any door in the complex, including people's apartments. Now, right as they were having this conversation with the maintenance man, the team of CSI searching Stephen McDaniel's apartment came upon a pair of keys. The first one, which bore the Georgia Bulldogs logo, was a third master key. Now, they didn't know how Stephen had gotten it, but with this key, he could open any door in the complex. and sitting next to that was a shiny key they could tell was brand new

had probably just been cut in the past few weeks and when they tried it in Lauren Giddings' apartment door it swung right open Stephen McDaniel had a copy of their murder victim's key and that wasn't all they found in Stephen's underwear drawer they discovered a pair of green women's underwear a DNA test would later confirm that they belonged to Lauren

our boy had kept a trophy and last but not least under the sink they found the packaging for the same brand and style of hacksaw as the one they'd found in the maintenance room because you know you'd want to keep that packaging for reasons right like what the hell was he thinking

anyway a theory of the crime was taking shape Stephen must have used the duplicate key to let himself into Lauren's apartment killed and dismembered her and then disposed of her body in the apartment apartment complex trash. It was enough to put the grabbis on him, and on August 2nd, they charged him with murder.

The case was mostly circumstantial, and the prosecutor wanted to nail this guy to the wall. So they went through all the evidence with a fine-tooth comb. Stevens' defense team believed that the search warrants the police used were improper. They also argued that his apartment wasn't secured properly, meaning somebody could have planted evidence and framed him. after all, aside from the underwear, they'd found none of Lauren's DNA in Stephen's apartment and none of his DNA and hers. And you'd expect to find some, especially in a murder as brutal as this one, with the dismemberment and all.

One of the few clever things Stephen did in this case was to dismember Lauren in her own apartment instead of his own. That contained all the blood evidence to Lauren's place and left his place clean in case it was searched. If only he had the sense to extend that thinking to stuff like master keys and stolen underpants, he might have gotten away with it. But no, thank God. And of course, he also made sure to get rid of the hacksaw somewhere other than his apartment, too. And I don't know if he was trying to frame the maintenance guy by putting it in the shit or what. I think I would have just tossed it in a river somewhere, but whatever. That's just me. Well, especially since

he didn't clean it that well, it seemed like he was probably trying to frame somebody. Right. Not everybody realizes that investigations can continue even while a murder trial is going on. Back when they first arrested Stephen McDaniel, the investigators had seized his computer and searched it. At the time, they didn't find much. But while Stephen was on trial, they discovered new software that could pull deleted data from a computer hard drive. So they searched again. And this time, yikes. They found a gold mine of disturbing new evidence.

Violent, sadistic porn. Like, we're not talking about BDSM here. here. We're talking murder and torture, pictures of dismembered bodies. Now, obviously, that doesn't prove anything, but it did give them a little window into Stephen McDaniels' mindset around the time of Lauren's murder. And then campers, they searched Stephen's digital camera and found maybe the creepiest thing I've ever seen in a murder case. Yeah. It was a video of Lauren's apartment, shot from outside her window through the blinds. He was watching her. filming her, refreshing his memory about the layout of her apartment.

He duct taped the camera to a long stick to take the video. And y'all, that video was shot the night Lauren was murdered. Oh my God, all right, so let's all take a moment. Just let the goosebumps calm down. It's like a horror movie. Yep. Once they found that video, it was all over for Stephen's defense. and he and his attorney knew it.

They finally rolled over and took the plea deal. Interestingly, one of Stephen's defense attorneys had been one of Lauren's teachers at the law school. He knew she was opposed to the death penalty and he said he felt like he was honoring her by getting the prosecution to take it off the table. Wow, yeah, I don't know about all that. I mean, I'm not pro-death penalty myself just because our justice system is so flawed and we've sent innocent people to the needle and that's not okay with me. You know, if we can't make a perfect system and nobody can, then we probably ought not to be killing people in my view. Not that some people don't deserve it because they do. But really, dude, you think any aspect of you defending Lauren's murderer is honoring her?

Like, I get that somebody had to do it. And defense attorneys are a vital part of our system. Everybody deserves a competent defense. I totally get that. I'm just saying, I think it's a stretch to say he was honoring her in any way. Right. Just doesn't sit right. So for future reference, attorneys I'm friends with and I'm friends with a lot of them,

And I know some of y'all listen, if somebody kills me and dismembers my body, you can go ahead and defend them in court if you must, but don't give yourself any ass-pats about how much you're honoring my memory by doing it, okay? Thanks. I'll be on the front road wearing at them. Anywho, so Stephen finally confessed, and it was grim, y'all. Late on the night of the murder, he put on a ski mask and a pair of gloves and quietly let himself into Lauren's apartment.

She was sleeping. This was the culmination of months of obsession, with violent sex, with control, with Lauren herself. He stood for a while and watched her sleep, listened to her breathing. And then, I don't know if the floor creaked a little, or if he made some kind of little noise in the back of his throat, or if that's sixth sense we all have left over from our caveman days, just kind of flashed into life and hit the alarm. But Lauren woke up and saw him standing over her bed, which is everybody's worst nightmare. and she screamed, and he leapt on her. And in the middle of the struggle, Lauren pulled off the mask.

She recognized him. She said, Stephen, what are you doing? And he strangled her. And a little while later, he moved her body to the bathtub, went and got a hacksaw, came back and dismembered her. A task that forensic experts say is an enormous undertaking, takes real serious time and effort, not to mention a strong stomach. someone with the slightest drop of human empathy would have a real hard time doing that.

And once he'd finished, Stephen McDaniel put Lauren's body parts and trash bags and deposited them in various trash cans and dumpsters around the apartment complex and the law school across the street. And it's worth noting again that if the police cars hadn't prevented that trash truck for making its regular pickup on the day Lauren was reported missing her torso may never have been found. And by the way, sadly, Lauren's body has never been fully recovered. only pieces remained of the girl they called Elle Woods who was working so hard to pass the bar move in with her boyfriend and start her career as a lawyer

now in case any of you are like us and have been worrying about Butterbean by the way Lauren's little one-eyed dog her family took her in and loved and spoiled her every day of the rest of her life they also started a softball tournament called the Butterbean as a way to honor Lauren which I bet she would have loved

as for Stephen McDaniel he was sentenced to life and prison as part of his plea deal. He won't be eligible for parole until 2041, so he'll serve at least 30 years in prison. The DA thinks he was a budding serial killer, and I could not agree more with that. This kind of premeditated, fantasy-driven murder, these killers don't usually stop at one. I think if he hadn't been caught, he'd kept right on killing. Yeah. Now, campers, there is a whole other dimension to this case that we were saving for last, specifically that But in addition to being a creep and a murderer, Stephen McDaniel is also an insufferable twat.

After the trial, some internet sleuths started digging up whatever they could dig online, and who boy? Yeah. He posted on one message board with the handle S-O-L, calling himself a trueborn son of liberty. Nerd! When I say S-O-L, I mean shit out of luck, but he meant son of liberty. Yeah, that's more appropriate for Steve. He bitched about his family, his quote, Waste of Space Sister,

bragged about meeting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and in one post from 2010, goes into great detail about how he'd murder those assholes from the Westboro Baptist Church, who, to be fair, I think we've all probably thought about firing into space with a cannon, but, you know, not in this kind of detail. He said, quote,

I'd go outside, grab my kids, out of my car, pop in a fresh mag, and proceed to slaughter the entire bigoted group. Never once doing so much as uttering a sound. When they are all dead, and they do need to be all dead, I'd sit down on the ground with my gun several paces away from me and just rock back and forward on the ground eyes wide and blank. Afterwards, I'd remain in this state for at least a day. No talking, no communication, blank, unfocused stairs. I do not fall asleep either. Eventually, when some new stimulus is introduced, a family member I haven't seen, a picture of my brother, or something like that, I shake my head from side to side, blink rapidly, and look around

in a panicked manner, asking where I am, what's going on, if my family is okay, why I'm there, and when they ask, I'd say I had no memory of anything that happened after I arrived at the service. Hey, first of all, why would they show you a picture of your brother? Like, that's so weirdly specific, anyway. So this is pretty much exactly what he tried to pull when they brought him in for questioning about Lauren's murder, remember? Yeah, exactly. He'd planned it out in advance. He went on to say, quote, they probably initiate charges, at which point the family will need to get a lawyer to argue that I had no knowledge of my actions and were not acting of my own volition when I acted.

Keep the story consistent. And whenever I'm asked about what happened, I look down and put a sad, look on my face relating what I was told happened, as I have no memory of it. I might end up institutionalized for a while so they can try to figure out what caused the blackout, and they might take my guns from me as well as the ability to purchase more, but if I talk to the story, it's doubtful I'd end up in prison. Of course, this is all hypothetical. And I would like to point out, this is Katie, um, people think like going to an institution is like a get out of jail free card. It's fucking not. It's actually harder to- Yeah, it sucks in those places. It's harder to

get out of that one of those in prison like yeah you don't want to go to one of those places i assure you and also this is fucking nonsense like what he's saying like everybody would see through that just like the detective did like no one is going to buy that nonsense that's not what really happens when people dissociate you fucking twat anyway so on a movie message board he wrote quote yes i can watch a man disemboweling himself by crawling across a room while his intestines are clamp to a hook and not even feel the slightest disgust. I am that desensitized to gore and torture. Okay, what the hell movie is he talking about there, Katie?

Is it one of the Saw ones or something? Because that sounds gnarly as hell. See, I don't watch torture porn as a rule. I don't think it's compelling horror, but I think it's either one of the Saw ones, which is just very vanilla horror, Stephen, or maybe hostile. But either way, it's one of the, it's just, seeing how many ways you can, like, kill a person is just not interesting to me. I need psychological horror, but yeah, he's an idiot.

Yeah. So here we have him bragging about his complete lack of empathy for other humans. So that's nice, Stephen. About drug cartels, he wrote, if you have to send a message, cut off a head, cut out a heart, shove the heart in the mouth, and send it back to the cartel with a guy whose hands you cut off, eyes you gouge out,

and tongue you rip out. Every time they send someone else, you bury the corpse. Jesus Jones, dude. I mean, like, that was probably like completely unprompted, too, as like, nobody. Stephen McDaniel, put the heart in the mouths and rip out his to, like, what body parts are you leaving this person? Like, this is just going to be like a head in a jar by the time you're done with him. I mean, you can see he was preoccupied with this stuff, and that's definitely borne out by the mountain of torture porn and snuff movies and stuff they found on his computer in 2011. On another post, he wrote this about chloroform.

You want to select a compound that will act quickly once inhaled at rendering someone unconscious or at least compliant. Last for a long enough period of time that you can secure them for your work and not cause them to either feel nothing for extended time or to suffer catastrophic organ failure before you can do your work. Your work? About hitting a victim over the head, he opined. Blunt force trauma to the head could knock her out, but it could also cause brain damage or kill her. On a request for help, on a mock trial he was working on for school, there are plenty of law students that I could probably get to come and be jurors,

even without the offer of free food. The problem is that the professor explicitly stated that we cannot have law students as jurors. I've kept such poor contact with the few people I knew in undergrad that I probably couldn't reach them if I tried. This is the problem of being a social recluse. My level of human contact is negligible. Most of the time, that suits me well because that's what my personality. is like, get out, right?

This is one of those instances where it creates problems. Just one of them. Meanwhile, he's just telling his friends what he'd do to cartel members. Like, geez, don't talk about the cartel. Keep their names out of your mouth. Shut the fuck up. I'd love to turn his ass over to the cart. Oh, my God.

Have fun with this. Here. One of the other people on that message board confirmed that he showed up and Stephen treated him to Outback Steakhouse for his trouble. He said Stephen liked to stake well done because he was a germaphobe. That alone. God, no.

I mean, if we needed any more evidence that this dude was a psychopath, right? Yeah, that's not acceptable. Stephen also, Katie and Whitney are mean to me about how I like my steak. Don't message us. If you like your steak well done, it doesn't matter.

Just don't kill anyone and we won't talk about it. Yeah, we're going to get mailed out that. I guarantee somebody's me like, I like my steak well-done. Okay, fine. We love you anyway. I was just kidding. You love you despite your shortcomings. You're entitled to your wrong opinion about steak.

But I will not make you a well-done steak. Not in my house. Stephen also told people that in high school, he'd once stabbed a bully in the face and arm with a pen. But since nobody saw it, he didn't get in trouble because that's what school was like in the early 2000s. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. That's not what. I was like, you'd be arrested so fucking fast to even shut up. Yeah, he's just lying about that.

Past roommate said that he wore a chainmail shirt around the house because he was paranoid. Paranoid about what? Dragon attack? Saruman's army of orcs, a chain mail shirt. Nerd alert. Oh, my God. On another message board, he wrote this about romance. I know y'all want to hear this.

The problem with being a social recluse, with a fundamental disability to connect on a romantic level, is that we want so much to find that one special person with whom we want to grow old with, raise children with, spend the rest of our lives with, and yet we're incapable of going out and finding her. And he accompanied this post with a link to the Seither song Broken and then said, Makes me think of a person who has found that special person and wants to protect her against any pain she could ever feel, who is willing to endure any hardship to keep it from her, willing to fight against anything that would hurt her, but who can't because he's so mentally broken

that he can't tell her how he feels and can only watch from a distance. God, I hate him. I hate him so much. And his chain mail shirt, yeah, you and me both. It just reeks of in-cell, doesn't it? And last but not least, campers, Stephen was, of course, one of those exhausting classmates who always wants to debate. He once emailed everyone in the law school, a homeric, epic-length, pretentious, completely absurd political hypothetical, because he wanted to debate.

Instead, everyone dunked on him, and he blubbered about being bullied. Yeah, he did not get bullied enough. Not nearly enough. so we're all very lucky that this little wad of phlegm got caught on his first try aren't we and remember campers laura knew something was wrong before he murdered her she told her friends she'd been feeling like somebody was watching her and she was right so it's yet another example of why listening to your intuition is so important if you feel like you're in danger chances are you're right so that was a wild one right campers you know we'll have another one

for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons who've been very patient with us while we've been on hiatus. Thank you so much to Erica, Sarah, Heather, Kate, Nicole, and Kristen. And y'all, if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you

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