The Detective's Daughter

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Speaker 3 It was bad enough that it happened at all, the horrible thing. But doubly shocking for a West Florida community that no one was able to stop it.

Speaker 3 The young mother, abducted from her home, driven down busy roads, winding through residential neighborhoods in broad daylight, screaming for her life.

Speaker 4 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 3 People saw her for sure. 911 centers lit up, including one call from a driver giving play-by-play of a nightmare of a crime in real time.

Speaker 5 He's going slower than I am, which is not like something's going on.

Speaker 3 And even one call from the victim herself, who was able to put out an alert as her kidnapper was at the wheel. Call 911.
That's what we're all trained to do, isn't it?

Speaker 6 For a long time we blew it.

Speaker 6 I say we because I'm part of the sheriff's office.

Speaker 3 Young Denise Amber Lee never wanted to be known as anything but a loving mom and devoted wife. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 She was a 21-year-old, truly happily married woman. She met her future husband Nate Lee in high school.
He hung with the cool kids, the ball players.

Speaker 3 Denise was more the studious type, a bookworm, and math ace.

Speaker 3 When she finally overcame her shyness senior year and was bold enough to ask out the guy who'd caught her interest, they both learned that opposites really did attract.

Speaker 7 One of the main things about Denise was she was pretty quiet.

Speaker 7 She just wasn't a very outgoing person and she actually talked to me first and

Speaker 7 I always thought that was the most ironic thing ever because

Speaker 7 as quiet as she was and people find out that she's the one that approached me.

Speaker 3 It's like being the girl asked the guy to dance.

Speaker 7 It's like, man, I should have just known right there that she's the one.

Speaker 3 Three weeks after their first date, the couple marked Valentine's Day together with a pledge of what was to come.

Speaker 7 It was kind of awkward because we had just met and you know Valentine's Day was already there and we both didn't know what you know, you know, what we should do. We were falling in love.

Speaker 7 I ended up getting her just a little probably $40

Speaker 7 ring with a heart on it.

Speaker 3 Denise never took that ring off and not long after she got another one when Nate asked her to marry him.

Speaker 7 Just everything about her was perfect and we hit it off right from the start and we ended up starting a beautiful family.

Speaker 3 Noah came along first, then Adam a couple of years later. Denise had her hands full raising children, so she put off getting her college degree.

Speaker 3 Nate meanwhile was juggling three jobs to make ends meet. There was way more love in their young household than money.

Speaker 7 We were going through what most people would say some tough times. You know, we had two little kids and we were young.
Money wasn't necessarily on our side. It didn't phase us.

Speaker 7 We knew we were going to be fine and we knew we were, you know, going to grow old together.

Speaker 3 They'd rented a house in Northport, Florida, a bedroom community 40 miles south of Sarasota. It was close to both their parents, but in a mostly rural setting that appealed to them.

Speaker 3 Denise's father, Rick Goff, a sheriff's detective, wasn't entirely comfortable with the feel of the subdivision, a little like a new construction ghost town after the sizzling housing market had sputtered.

Speaker 3 Were you worried about the house being out in the sticks? Yes.

Speaker 6 As soon as myself and my mother saw it, we go, we're not really happy about this house out here. But it's brand new, three-bedroom, two-bath house, real cheap rent.

Speaker 6 And back then, that's what they could afford.

Speaker 3 The quiet, partly-built community suited Nate and Denise just fine. A perfect, safe haven, they thought, for their growing family.
At least until the afternoon of January 17th, 2008.

Speaker 3 That day started off routinely. It was drizzling outside as Nate left for his job as an electric meter reader.
Denise was home with the boys.

Speaker 3 They checked in with each other periodically on their cell phones. When do you think the last time was that you talked to her?

Speaker 7 It was 11.09.

Speaker 7 I have the phone records. And it was only about a five-minute conversation.
We were just talking about, you know, what we normally talk about.

Speaker 7 And I remember asking her that morning to make sure you open the windows so we don't, you know, turn the air off, save some money. And she said she already had.

Speaker 3 Nate didn't get a chance to call again until he got off work at three that afternoon. The phone rang, but there was no answer.
Unlike Denise to be out.

Speaker 7 It took me about 25 minutes to get home from there, and I ended up calling eight times in that 25 minutes.

Speaker 3 You wondering?

Speaker 7 I didn't start getting nervous until

Speaker 7 I turned on our street.

Speaker 3 As he was pulling into his driveway, he noticed right away the windows, the ones Denise said she'd opened, were now shut.

Speaker 3 Inside, he found his sons, six-month-old Adam and two-year-old Noah, lying together in a crib. Denise was nowhere to be found.
Had you ever known her to leave the children alone? No.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 3 That is. So when do you start to freak?

Speaker 7 I started freaking about then.

Speaker 7 And then I looked at the windows. I noticed it was hot in the house.
And I noticed the windows were pushed down, but they weren't shut and latched.

Speaker 7 They were just like pushed down, like somebody pushed them down in a hurry.

Speaker 3 Bad sign. Denise's cell phone and keys were lying on a chair.
Wherever she'd gone, she'd left in a hurry. Nate called 911.

Speaker 9 North Port Emergency?

Speaker 10 Yes, I'm at 7912 Latora Avenue.

Speaker 11 I just got home from work and my wife, I can't find her. My kids were in the house, and I don't know where she is.
I've looked every single place.

Speaker 3 That 911 call made at 3.29 p.m. would be the first of many made that day related to Denise's disappearance.

Speaker 7 They asked me, was her money missing, this and that, and he signed a forced entry,

Speaker 7 and everything looked normal. It's just the only thing that wasn't normal was the fact that obviously Denise wasn't there.

Speaker 3 The next obvious person to call his father-in-law, Rick, who happened to be a 25-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department in neighboring Charlotte County.

Speaker 3 Rick, it turned out, had also been trying to get a hold of Denise that day. He'd left a message inviting them all over to dinner.

Speaker 3 When he saw Nate's cell phone number pop up, he figured it was the kids calling back.

Speaker 6 And I go, hey, you guys want to come over and eat?

Speaker 6 That's the first thing I asked him, sending a call, and he goes, I can't. Denise is missing.

Speaker 3 It's the first year hearing this.

Speaker 6 And I'm like going, what?

Speaker 6 I go, Nate, you got to explain what you mean by that. And

Speaker 6 he says, I'm telling you, she's missing. She's not in the house.

Speaker 3 Rick knew firsthand how law enforcement tends to look at spouses reported suddenly missing skeptically.

Speaker 3 He was intent that late afternoon on convincing the Northport police, who were running the investigation, that this missing person report was different and they needed to hit it immediately.

Speaker 6 And I go, listen, nothing else. I know my daughter.
Can we get my helicopter and my dogs out here right across a different jurisdiction? I go, I can have them out here, no, no problem.

Speaker 6 I already called my people, my chief, and stuff, and they're all anything I need.

Speaker 3 What are you allowing yourself to think at this point?

Speaker 6 I knew she was, something happened to her bad.

Speaker 3 Detective Rick Goff knows a thing or two about finding people. His job at the time, tracking down fugitives in criminal cases.
But they didn't usually involve his daughter.

Speaker 3 This became a crisis in your law enforcement family, the people you worked with for 20 years.

Speaker 6 They came out of the woodworks to help. My chief, my sheriff, all of them came down.
Just

Speaker 6 everybody.

Speaker 3 When police got to the Lee residence, they started knocking on doors and got their first big tip of the day from a neighbor.

Speaker 12 I was by myself the whole time, so I kept thinking it could have been me.

Speaker 14 I don't know if he would have stopped here.

Speaker 3 Jennifer Eckert was staying with relatives in the house next to the Leeds.

Speaker 3 She told police she'd seen a white male sitting in a dark green Camaro parked in Denise's driveway at around 2.30 p.m., just one hour before Nate had arrived home.

Speaker 12 I came outside and he sat there for, I'd say, a good 15 minutes. And so I went back inside and then about 10 minutes later he left.

Speaker 3 By 5 p.m., an hour and a half after Denise was reported missing,

Speaker 3 police had the description of a suspect in vehicle and issued a regional bolo, be on the lookout alert.

Speaker 3 But it was the next lead in the case, a stomach-churning 911 call that would confirm their worst fears.

Speaker 6 We just wanted to verify that was her voice and made sure it was

Speaker 6 what we thought it was. And

Speaker 6 first thing was her screaming.

Speaker 3 It was Denise Lee, his daughter. Rick was pleading for help from everyone he could think of, including the media.

Speaker 3 Howie Grace, a friend and photojournalist, remembered getting a call from Rick that evening.

Speaker 6 He was crying.

Speaker 3 And that struck me because

Speaker 3 as long as I've known him, I've never really known him to show emotion, let alone to show emotion of that magnitude. I said, what's going on? He says, my daughter's been kidnapped.

Speaker 3 On his way over to Northport to cover the story, the photographer saw firsthand what Rick meant about people coming out of the woodwork to help.

Speaker 3 Everyone from Highway Patrol to the Marshal Service was on the lookout for Denise. It started the moment I got off the interstate.
They were searching.

Speaker 3 They were visually flashlights in the cars and stopping everybody or anybody who looks suspicious.

Speaker 3 At 6.14 p.m., the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office received a bizarre 911 call from a cell phone from someone claiming to be Denise Lee. The missing person herself.
How could that be?

Speaker 3 Nate was home with his father-in-law when they got word about the call.

Speaker 7 And Rick, I remember Sans said something like, if kids are playing jokes, he thought it was somebody just calling in to be funny.

Speaker 15 But that call was very real and there was nothing funny at all about Denise's plight. Somehow she'd managed to sneak her abductor's cell phone away from him while he drove.

Speaker 3 She dialed 911.

Speaker 15 That call from a terrified Denise has been sealed by the prosecutor's office as evidence. Only a handful of people have heard her voice.
Among them, her father, Detective Rick Goff.

Speaker 6 We just wanted to verify that it was her voice and made sure it was

Speaker 6 what we thought it was. And

Speaker 6 first thing was her screaming.

Speaker 3 Does it get more awful than that to hear

Speaker 3 your child out there and you can't do anything? Yeah.

Speaker 6 The first words is she's been kidnapped.

Speaker 3 Rick says that during the phone call, Denise managed to dupe her abductor into thinking she was having a conversation with him, begging him to take her home.

Speaker 3 But in fact, all the while was passing on key information to the 911 call taker.

Speaker 3 Information like the make of the vehicle she was in, a green Camaro, which confirmed the tip police got earlier that day, and the fact that her kidnapper was a stranger to her.

Speaker 6 She's making it seem like she's talking to him.

Speaker 6 You know, she's answering a 911 operator's questions by laying on the phone and listening to it.

Speaker 3 Giving some sort of a description of the guy.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and her baby's at home alone and her address.

Speaker 6 But she's giving the exact address to the 91 operator, but she's making it sound like she's talking to him. I mean, she was really smart.
He never knew it.

Speaker 6 Until like seven minutes into the call, then he finally figured his phone wasn't there, and he he searched and found it missing.

Speaker 3 According to police records, the kidnapper can be heard saying, where's the phone? With Denise replying, I don't know, before the call abruptly ends. Tell me what's going on with you at that moment.

Speaker 7 I was 100% sure that they were going to get her. you know, cell phone.
Well, they can track her. They can figure this out.

Speaker 3 But it wasn't that simple. The kidnapper's phone was an inexpensive throwaway, not equipped with the kind of GPS tracking device police can usually lock onto to locate the whereabouts of a cell.

Speaker 3 The only thing police were able to get were pings from nearby cell phone towers. That meant she was somewhere in the area.
They were finding haystacks, not needles.

Speaker 3 But if they couldn't find where the phone was, they could at least find out who it belonged to. From the phone number, they were able to identify the owner, one Michael Lee King.

Speaker 3 Denise's family drew a a total blank on that name.

Speaker 7 I've tried to look at this from every possible scenario and have answered every single question and dug as deep as I possibly could dig. And I've never, ever been in contact with this person ever.

Speaker 7 And I know Denise had never been in contact with that person ever.

Speaker 7 It's just scary to think that it was something that ran in somebody, he could have been following her for for weeks, months.

Speaker 3 That awful 911 call from Denise Amber Lee had given the police a major lead. But the authorities still did not know where their man and his green Camaro were.

Speaker 11 Police emergency operator, Sarah said a campaign.

Speaker 3 At 6:23 p.m., nine minutes after Denise's call, the 911 board lit up again.

Speaker 3 This one was from the suspect's own family.

Speaker 10 His cousin came over his house with a girl in the car, and she was tied up.

Speaker 14 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 14 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 14 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 14 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 9 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 9 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 9 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 9 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

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Speaker 3 January 17th, 6.23 p.m.

Speaker 3 Almost four hours since a green Camaro was spotted in the driveway of Denise Lee's home. Three hours since her husband Nate had reported her missing.

Speaker 3 Denise herself had just called 911 from her abductor's cell phone, pleading for help, when the Sarasota County authorities got their second 911 call from a witness.

Speaker 10 Go ahead, call her. Yes, what's the problem?

Speaker 3 Sabrina Muxlow, the daughter of the suspected kidnapper's cousin, called in with a disturbing story she'd just heard from her father.

Speaker 3 Minutes before, Michael King had stopped by her dad's house in Northport with a girl tied up in his car.

Speaker 10 And the girl came out of the car out of the car, and my dad's cousin went and put her back in the car. And when she got out, okay, where's your dad's house?

Speaker 10 It's in North Florida.

Speaker 3 Sabrina told the operator her father wanted to remain anonymous, but she gave the police the street where he lived.

Speaker 18 Where would he be going with this female?

Speaker 10 He came over to my dad's house, borrowed a shovel, a gas tank, and found out.

Speaker 18 Okay, we've been looking for this female. You are just so wonderful to call us and give us this information.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 3 At that point, Denise had been just four miles from her home. Investigators were now getting a better picture of their suspect, where he lived, who he was.

Speaker 3 And then, just as Sabrina hung up, police got yet another 911 call from a witness, the third that day.

Speaker 3 This one came from a driver, Jane Kowalski, traveling on US 41, which runs along Florida's west coast. Her call, clocked in at 6.30 p.m., was made on a cell phone just beyond the Sarasota County line.

Speaker 3 So it was routed to a different 911 call center in Charlotte County.

Speaker 4 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 5 Well, I'm on 41 going south, and I'm going to do a cross street right now. It's at, I'm on Chamberlain.

Speaker 5 I just crossed Chamberlain. I'm on 41 going south.
And I was at a stoplight, and a man pulled up next to me, and there was a child screaming in the car.

Speaker 11 What kind of vehicle is he in?

Speaker 5 It's a blue Camaro, like a Camaro, like in the 90s or early 2000s or something.

Speaker 3 Jane Kowalski described what she thought was a child screaming and banging on the window in the car next to her. In the darkening light, she thought the Camaro was blue or black.

Speaker 4 Complete,

Speaker 4 just terrifying, screaming, loud. I mean, I've never heard anything like that.
So I looked over at him and I saw the man, and I sort of gave him a look, like, what's going on in your car?

Speaker 3 You made eye contact.

Speaker 4 Oh, absolutely. Well, all of a sudden, after that, a hand came up and started banging on the passenger window

Speaker 3 at the time she knew nothing about the search underway for denise lee but called into 911 because she thought she was witnessing a child abduction the vehicle had a

Speaker 5 white male white male driver and there was a child screaming in the car so during the call the operator seemed to be getting it all down and realized the importance of what she was hearing and banging on the window like black Okay.

Speaker 4 I've got everybody hollering at me and.

Speaker 3 But she also sounded distracted. Just one second.

Speaker 3 And slow to respond.

Speaker 5 He's going to turn left on Toledo Blade. He's turning left right now.
Do you want me to turn? Try to follow him or...

Speaker 5 Okay, does he want her to follow him?

Speaker 11 Okay, can you turn?

Speaker 5 Oh, oh, he just turned on Toledo Blade. I don't know if I can catch up.
There's a bunch of traffic and I can't over.

Speaker 15 In her 911 call, Jane Kowalski describes this kind of slow-motion standoff with a suspicious driver. She's in front, he's behind.

Speaker 15 They're only doing 35 miles an hour, and the traffic is just piling up behind them. She wants him to pull out ahead of her so she'll be able to read his license plate.

Speaker 15 But then they come to Toledo Blade Boulevard and he takes a quick left. Jane can't make the left turn.
She goes straight. She's lost him.

Speaker 3 Within 16 minutes, from 6:14 to 6:30 p.m., police had received three 911 calls related to the case.

Speaker 3 One from Denise, another placing her in Northport at the home of King's cousin, and a third from a witness driving alongside her on a main highway.

Speaker 3 And yet, the authorities, even with a helicopter above and patrol officers in three counties on the lookout, they could not locate that green Camaro and his screaming captain.

Speaker 3 Maddeningly, police were just a step behind their suspect. At 6.42 p.m., they showed up at Michael King's home and realized he'd been there and gone.

Speaker 8 They found duct tape we know that had some long strands of hair on it. They found apparent signs that someone had been held there.
More importantly, they found the house was empty.

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, back at the Sarasota call center, one more 911 call came in at 6:50 p.m.

Speaker 3 It was the fourth call from a witness that day, and it was made from a payphone.

Speaker 11 911, what's the location of your emergency?

Speaker 11 I'm not sure exactly what the emergency is exactly, but I think there's somebody that's been

Speaker 11 taken without the uh

Speaker 11 that don't want to be where they need to be. Uh-huh.
And they're in a 95 Green Camaro from Northport somewhere. Okay, and how do you know this?

Speaker 11 I know.

Speaker 3 The man on the phone tried to remain anonymous, the information he provided a little disjointed. But he seemed to know something about what was going on in that green Camaro.

Speaker 3 And he was able to add a detail about the car. It had what auto enthusiasts call a bra on its front.

Speaker 19 Is he going to hurt the girl?

Speaker 11 You saw them, though? Yes.

Speaker 11 And where was she?

Speaker 11 In the car. In the car?

Speaker 5 Was she okay?

Speaker 3 The mystery caller routine didn't work for long.

Speaker 3 Police were able to figure out pretty quickly that the caller was Harold Muxlow, King's cousin and the father of the young woman who called 911 earlier in the hour.

Speaker 3 When they went knocking on Harold's door, they got him to reveal more about that encounter at his driveway.

Speaker 20 Lawnmower broke down and is stuck in a ditch and needs gas

Speaker 20 and a shovel.

Speaker 3 At about 6 p.m., the cousin said, Michael King had stopped off at his house to borrow a gas can, shovel, and flashlight.

Speaker 3 After grabbing that stuff from his tool shed, Muxlow said he watched the woman who would turn out to be Denise struggle with King for about 30 seconds.

Speaker 3 At one point, she even got outside the car and yelled, call the cops, before King shoved her back inside.

Speaker 20 So I turned back around, started walking down there, he said, oh, don't worry about it, and he took off.

Speaker 8 King had told him not to worry about it, and Harold Muxlow sort of chalked it up to another one of Michael King's sort of crazy relationships, although it bothered him enough to call his daughter, but apparently not enough at the time to intervene.

Speaker 3 The car, the suspect, suspect, and Denise Lee were gone again. A missed opportunity that bitterly eats at Denise's father, Sergeant Rick Goff.

Speaker 6 I don't know, he

Speaker 6 he did what he did, knowing he's got a young daughter himself. What if it was her in the car? He needs to think of that.
You know,

Speaker 6 could have been his daughter in that car.

Speaker 3 After Harold Muxlow's 911 call, the flurry of leads ended. For the next two and a half hours, nothing more was learned about Michael King's whereabouts.
Until finally, at 916 p.m.

Speaker 3 when a trooper pulled over a 95 green Camaro with a black bra in front. King was behind the wheel, but Denise was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 3 A state trooper pulled over the green Camaro about seven hours after it had first been sighted in Denise Lee's driveway.

Speaker 3 Michael King was picked up about four miles from the point where the concerned driver had reported seeing what she thought was a child screaming for help in the back.

Speaker 3 When he stepped out of his car, King was soaking wet from the waist down. In his pocket, a cell phone with the battery removed.
A muddy shovel was lying inside his car.

Speaker 3 Detective Rick Goff remembers getting the call that night around 9.30 that King had been pulled over. To him, this wasn't just any routine case.
The victim was his daughter.

Speaker 6 I had hope. I was standing here listening to the radio.
They're stopping a green chimera at a mask detag.

Speaker 3 But in what had become an all-too-familiar pattern that day, police were too late. Denise was nowhere to be found.
King had his own explanation for what had happened that day.

Speaker 3 Hours after his arrest, he told a rambling account of his story to his cousin, Harold Muxlow, who the police had allowed into the interrogation room for a visit.

Speaker 3 They recorded the conversation on a surveillance camera.

Speaker 13 You're not married and hiding, like

Speaker 3 King said that both he and Denise had been victims of a kidnapping. King said he'd been blindfolded, so he couldn't tell for sure where the kidnapper had left Denise.

Speaker 8 He led them to an area not far from his home as a possible area where the abduction had taken place.

Speaker 3 But the areas King took police to turned up nothing. The police, unconvinced by King's story, charged him with kidnapping.

Speaker 3 After all those 911 calls and their suspect finally in cuffs, Denise was still missing. We're hoping she's alive.

Speaker 13 We're hoping.

Speaker 3 For two days, scores of volunteers joined officers in searching for her.

Speaker 3 Until finally, a canine unit stumbled upon a shallow grave in a marshy field just half a mile from where King had been arrested. Denise had been shot in the head.

Speaker 6 Denise is thankful that all your efforts brought her home.

Speaker 13 She was still dead, but she was trying to be their God.

Speaker 3 Denise's father and husband reached out to all those who had searched and prayed with them. But how much grief can anyone bear losing Denise like this?

Speaker 8 I'm going to miss her so much.

Speaker 12 I don't know how I'm going to go through the rest of my life without her.

Speaker 3 The horrific end to Denise Amber Lee's young life left a community in shock.

Speaker 3 The tragedy of it is huge.

Speaker 2 The

Speaker 3 senselessness of it is huge.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the fact that there's still no connection between King and the victim.

Speaker 3 How had it come to this? And who was this man accused of killing her? Over the next few days, the police would learn more about Michael King.

Speaker 3 He was a 36-year-old out-of-work plumber who had stopped showing up at his workplace three months before. He'd first moved to Florida in 2002 following a bitter divorce in Michigan.

Speaker 3 On the morning of January 17th, just two hours before he was spotted in Denise Lee's driveway, he'd been firing off rounds at a local gun range, his signature on a sign-in sheet.

Speaker 3 But Michael King had no criminal history, just a few complaints filed by neighbors who suspected him of playing pranks. Patty Paul, who owns a beauty salon in Venice, Florida, says King was a regular.

Speaker 3 She described him as a quiet, unassuming customer. Though she did tell the police about one disturbing incident, King had shown up at the salon with a girl he claimed to be 15 years old.

Speaker 17 I thought, okay, maybe it was a niece or maybe it was his daughter. And then they started to kiss at the desk, which made us all pretty uncomfortable because she did look to be young.

Speaker 17 He told us he met her in Tennessee off the internet.

Speaker 3 Police interviews with other witnesses would reveal a pattern of disturbing behavior. Reports that King exposed himself to a woman while on the job and even one allegation of rape.

Speaker 3 None of these incidents were reported to police at the time. Days after Denise Lee's disappearance, investigators were finally getting a handle on the man they had chased.

Speaker 3 And then a bombshell of a question would stop them in their tracks and throw them back into the crucial hours of their initial search.

Speaker 4 I called them and said, you know, I'm the 911 caller who called in. Do you need any more information from me? And

Speaker 4 they didn't know who I was.

Speaker 3 A shocking revelation about one of those 911 calls that could have saved Denise's life if only it had been responded to.

Speaker 14 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 14 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 14 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 14 Listen Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 21 This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.

Speaker 3 We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Catherine Andrew.

Speaker 22 I got to sit in the driver's seat.

Speaker 19 I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

Speaker 21 That's Andrew, a real United pilot.

Speaker 6 These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

Speaker 22 It felt like I was the captain.

Speaker 3 Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.

Speaker 19 That's how good leads the way.

Speaker 9 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 9 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 9 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 9 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 3 The horrific story of Denise Lee, a 21-year-old mother abducted and killed by a stranger, gripped this community in West Florida.

Speaker 3 The question everyone was quietly asking, how could it have ended so badly when there were so many chances to make it right?

Speaker 11 Why don't you have an

Speaker 3 Four 911 calls from witnesses, including one from the victim herself and two from the accused killer's family, all placing Denise just a few miles from her home, an area swarming with law enforcement.

Speaker 3 There was even that one 911 call from a driver who had watched the crime unfold in real time.

Speaker 11 Screaming, screaming, screaming.

Speaker 5 And not a happy scream like, get me out of here scream.

Speaker 3 At the time, the driver, Jane Kowalski, thought it was a child screaming. But when she saw Michael King's picture on the news the next day, police say this man kidnapped her.

Speaker 3 She realized what she'd witnessed was the kidnapping of Denise Lee.

Speaker 4 I didn't know who she was, but I definitely recognized him. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe it.

Speaker 4 And I ended up calling the Northport Police Department and said, you know, I'm the 911 caller who called in. Do you need any more information from me? And they didn't know who I was.

Speaker 3 They just drew a blank on

Speaker 13 what 911 call?

Speaker 4 Exactly, because my 911 call didn't go to them. It went to the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 15 Jane had just crossed over the Sarasota County line when she made that call, so it was routed to neighboring Charlotte County, where Denise's father, Rick, works as a sergeant.

Speaker 15 But as it turned out, that call never did get forwarded to Northport police or anyone else looking for Denise because a dispatcher never sent it out.

Speaker 3 In fact, it took two more days of Jane calling back before investigators in Northport were able to track down her 911 call. It was a firestorm about the Kowalski.
A 911 call, huh?

Speaker 4 Exactly. Because I basically,

Speaker 4 my understanding, was the last person to basically see her alive, even if it was just her hand, and, you know, had the location of where she was. And

Speaker 4 if someone would have responded to that call, I mean, the outcome could be different.

Speaker 3 In an internal investigation, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office found that the operator had made the connection between the 911 call and the search for Denise Lee.

Speaker 3 The operator's job was to give the information to police dispatchers, the ones talking to deputies on their radios out in the field.

Speaker 3 But instead of entering the tip into a computer database during the call, the operator shouted it out across the aisle. And the dispatchers, who said they heard her, never actually sent the tip out.

Speaker 3 In the chaos that night, they simply forgot.

Speaker 8 One of of the dispatchers thought that her radio wasn't working. She was wrong.
The radio was in fact working.

Speaker 8 And in some cases, people had assumed that the information went out by other people helping. The ball was basically dropped all around.

Speaker 3 John Davenport, then sheriff of Charlotte County, suddenly found himself confronting attacks on his department's competence.

Speaker 23 The assumption is that Charlotte County screwed up and could have saved this girl's life. That's what everybody's thinking.
And I'm telling you that until the facts come out here,

Speaker 23 that's the wrong assumption to make.

Speaker 3 It didn't help the sheriff's case that at the time the 911 call came in, there were deputies from his office stationed on the very road Jane Kowalski was driving along.

Speaker 3 One deputy even said in a sworn statement that he was parked on the side of Toledo Blade Boulevard at 6.35 that night, the very road King had turned onto when Kowalski lost him.

Speaker 3 Denise and her captor may have driven right past the deputy.

Speaker 7 I swear every time I hear the story, it seems like there's another cop car that was in the vicinity. I've heard one, I've heard two, I've heard five.

Speaker 3 So they're blasting past units that could have stopped it right then and there. Yeah.

Speaker 7 There's not a doubt in my mind that'll be here. Not a doubt in my mind.

Speaker 3 Davenport took issue with all the coulda, woulda, shouldas that have swirled around his department's handling of that 911 call.

Speaker 3 After all, he said, deputies were already on the lookout for a green Camaro that day, with or without Jane Kowalski's tip.

Speaker 24 Was it a missed opportunity? Certainly it was. Would it have changed the outcome? We'll never know.
I don't think it would have because we had officers in that area looking for the green Camaro.

Speaker 24 They didn't find it.

Speaker 3 If his department could be accused of anything, the sheriff said, it would be for trying too hard that night.

Speaker 24 Because it was one of our own and we knew it and all the resources were being sent,

Speaker 24 it was chaos. It was stressful.
And in the course of trying to do too much, frankly, I think they missed the call.

Speaker 3 After his internal investigation, Sheriff Davenport ordered remedial training for four of the call center workers and a few days' suspension for the two dispatchers involved.

Speaker 3 For Denise's husband, the punishments amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

Speaker 3 For Denise's father, a longtime veteran of the sheriff's office, the knowledge of that fumbled 911 call cut extraordinarily deep.

Speaker 6 She was beating on the window so hard and screaming, trying to get help, which is a smart thing to do because by that time she knows she probably wasn't coming back for as long as someone blew it.

Speaker 6 I say we because I'm part of that sheriff's office.

Speaker 3 The family's shock soon turned to anger. Denise had done everything she could to save herself that day, but had the police.

Speaker 3 And then more details emerged about just how hard Denise had fought for her life. It wasn't just the 911 call she'd managed to leave behind.

Speaker 3 Clues of her awful ordeal had been planted in that now infamous green Camaro.

Speaker 3 On January 23rd, six days after Denise Amber Lee had been kidnapped from her home and brutally murdered, a funeral was held, the biggest the town had ever seen.

Speaker 6 She's my baby growing. I'm going to miss her.

Speaker 6 I don't know how we're going to get on without her.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of police officers came out to support the daughter of one of their own.

Speaker 6 A 30-mile funeral procession. There was people who put rose pedals in the road.
All the fire trucks are backed out of the fire station with the lights going.

Speaker 6 Elementary schools are out there

Speaker 6 standing and watching her go by. The people working on side roads saluting the hearse.

Speaker 3 Amidst the family's grief, the questions of Denise's ordeal that day still haunted them. Questions like, why did Michael King choose Denise in the first place?

Speaker 3 How could he have gotten her into his car?

Speaker 7 He has a 95 Green Camaro and I have a 95 Green Dodge Avenger. Anybody that knows cars knows that those cars look very similar.

Speaker 7 So, you know, he could have pulled in the driveway and she might have thought it was me and who knows what happened then.

Speaker 3 And there was the question of those windows. Why had they been shut? Nate speculates it was one of Denise's final acts of motherhood.
saving her children from a monster.

Speaker 7 He could have shut the windows because he didn't want to hear her screaming, people hear her screaming, or she shut them.

Speaker 3 So the kids could wander off.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that would have been the first thing out of her mouth was, let me just make sure my kids are okay and make sure they don't get out.

Speaker 3 The day of Denise's funeral, the police also got a lab report showing a match between King's DNA and DNA found on the wife and mother's body.

Speaker 3 In addition to kidnapping and murder, Michael King would also be charged with rape. King pleaded not guilty to all those charges.
And there was more evidence in the backseat of that Camaro.

Speaker 3 Clues that the murdered detective's daughter may have intentionally left behind. Strands of her sandy brown hair torn out by the roots and stuck under the seat.

Speaker 3 She knew they needed the root paw of the hair, huh?

Speaker 7 You know, she used to love Law and Order and she watched all those shows all the time.

Speaker 3 Also, in the back seat of that car, they found the heart-shaped ring she always wore. The one Nate had bought for her on their first Valentine's Day.

Speaker 7 You know, the ring didn't necessarily come off very easily, so it's not like it just fell off.

Speaker 7 I know she placed it there. And it's the only ring I know she would have been 100% I would have been able to identify because that ring

Speaker 7 it was the most sentimental

Speaker 7 thing I've ever you know it was just

Speaker 3 it was as though she was telling investigators it was me I was here what does that tell us about her

Speaker 7 just to think that her going through all that that she was still able to think of whatever she could do to if case that she didn't get found.

Speaker 7 I'm sure she knew that, you know, my dad's doing everything he can.

Speaker 7 And he was.

Speaker 3 Denise seemed to have done everything she could to save herself. But as Nate believes, the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office failed her.

Speaker 3 After the revelation of a missed 911 call, the county sheriff, John Davenport, was standing firm behind his decision not to fire his call center workers.

Speaker 24 Those people, there's no punishment I could ever give them that they're not already facing themselves and living with themselves over all of this. They feel terrible about this.
Terrible.

Speaker 3 But if they choke under pressure, maybe they're not the right people.

Speaker 24 I have total confidence in the people that have been involved in this. I truly do.
And they've been under pressure many times before, but they didn't make the mistake. They did this time.
We all have.

Speaker 3 For Nate, that answer simply wouldn't cut it.

Speaker 7 If you have heard Ms. Kowalski's call, you heard severe incompetence.

Speaker 23 That is unacceptable.

Speaker 3 Do you think they're complicit in your wife's murder?

Speaker 7 I mean, I hate to say that the sheriff's office is responsible for my wife's death because, you know, they didn't pull the trigger, but they could have stopped him.

Speaker 3 In 2009, Michael King was found guilty of kidnapping, rape, and murder. He was sentenced to death and now sits on death row.

Speaker 3 That same year, Nate filed a lawsuit against the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, claiming negligence. The sheriff's office denied the allegations.

Speaker 3 The party settled in 2012 for a reported $1.25 million.

Speaker 3 Nate also founded the Denise Amber Lee Foundation and travels the country educating 911 dispatchers and encouraging the passage of legislation that would regulate and mandate training.

Speaker 3 His father-in-law, Rick Goff, took up a cause of his own. He helped pass the Denise Amber Lee Act, a Florida law that standardizes training for all call center workers.

Speaker 6 And like I said, Denise had confidence in the system, because that's why she died 911.

Speaker 6 And she's trying to get her life saved. And then

Speaker 6 Jane Kowalski,

Speaker 6 she had confidence in 911 that night, and she

Speaker 6 tried to get Denise saved, and that didn't happen.

Speaker 6 So, I don't know that's all. We just want to instill confidence back in the system.

Speaker 3 Despite the failings of the Sheriff's Department he's devoted his career to, Rick Goff still works there. He's even been joined by his son, who is a detective, like his father.

Speaker 6 It was tough, you know, the first couple days going back. People ask me every day, how you doing? How you doing?

Speaker 6 To me, there's no good day because she's not here.

Speaker 6 Some days are worse than others.

Speaker 6 Some days are all right, but there's no good days because she's not here.

Speaker 3 Denise had done so many things right that day, leaving behind her own clues, secretly calling 911, screaming for help.

Speaker 3 But in the end, none of it was enough to save her and bring her back to her family.

Speaker 12 Gotcha.

Speaker 3 Nate, the boys, how are they doing?

Speaker 7 It's very unfortunate that they're not gonna,

Speaker 7 you know, really

Speaker 7 gotten to know her.

Speaker 13 Denise, Dace, okay,

Speaker 13 okay.

Speaker 7 But they've got part of the niece in them.

Speaker 7 Noah, you ready? Whoa! That's the most comforting thing I can think about.

Speaker 13 Oh, my goodness.

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