00:00:00
I would tell her how much I miss her and that I love her and that she's the reason why I am who I am today.
00:00:11
She was the first one in our family to go to college. Fiercely intelligent. And fiercely.
00:00:18
Her opinion. Her phone was off. I immediately was like, this isn't right. Didn't take her car, didn't take her purse.
00:00:26
We realized there was something wrong. first thing you look at who's closest to her romantically or geographically
00:00:33
i said are you ready for whatever we're going to see when we walk in there he had a thumb drive of
00:00:41
lauren's he had all of her pictures we had a sick individual we had to find there's another level
00:00:47
of evil here i didn't know who to trust this happened to lauren who's next It was a summer morning in the heart of Georgia.
00:01:02
Heat rose thick and damp among Macon's grand old antebellum mansions as the sweaty morning traffic crawled by.
00:01:12
Something in the air that morning. Something off. Maybe just the trash truck. This was a 90-degree day toward the end of June.
00:01:21
and there was a hot wind blowing that day. Joe Kovac was down at the local paper, crime reporter there.
00:01:28
And all of a sudden... I can remember the buzz in the newsroom. Oh, this would be big.
00:01:35
Big and disturbing. Like sometimes things can be in the South, said Joe. It was a shock.
00:01:41
A shock to the system, yeah. But there's something else about the South, something sweet, magnetic.
00:01:55
It draws people in. And Macon, with its storied history and its cherry blossoms, is its very heart.
00:02:03
It's slow, relaxing. Everyone here is welcoming. Even for a New Yorker named Ashley Mueller, who signed up at the Mercer Law School here.
00:02:14
You never meet a stranger, I guess, in the South. That's what makes it so wonderful and comforting.
00:02:22
It's where she met Lauren Giddings. When we found out we both were from the North, we just instantly connected on that.
00:02:31
But then, why wouldn't she want to connect with Lauren? She was bigger than life.
00:02:36
She was infectious. I mean, you couldn't be around her for more than five minutes and not already be having a good time.
00:02:44
She was the adored eldest of three sisters. Youngest, Sarah. We would always go and run together.
00:02:52
Caitlin in the middle. She was more like a bookworm. She loved to read, academics.
00:02:58
Lauren grew up in Maryland, halfway between Baltimore and D.C., with her friend Katie O'Hare.
00:03:03
She was a riot. The things that would come out of her mouth sometimes didn't have a filth jar.
00:03:09
Why did she go south to go to school? She loved the south. She was a country girl at heart.
00:03:15
And when she got there, she loved it. She didn't want to come back up here. And Lauren certainly knew what she wanted. Wanted to be a lawyer.
00:03:23
But not one of those corporate types or even a crusading prosecutor. Lauren wanted to be a public defender. A voice for the poor and the accused.
00:03:33
Why did she want to do that? She always wanted to help people. Always. And Mercer Law School, perched on its hillside in one of Macon's sweet spots, seemed just right for her.
00:03:45
She was a fan of Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace graduated from there. Oh, well. Lauren found a great apartment right across the street from the law school.
00:03:53
It was full of aspiring lawyers. Her next-door neighbor was a classmate. Even the maintenance man was a student.
00:03:59
And soon she was everywhere, running in the park, active in her church, eventually president of her law school's Federalist Society.
00:04:09
She was hard to miss. She showed up in her pink outfit. Always pink? Always pink. Or even seersucker.
00:04:18
And always with her dog, Butterbean. Fluffy, blonde-haired, just like she was. And she carried it around all the time?
00:04:26
Always. She basically was Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, so we always kind of jibed her for that.
00:04:34
It was no surprise she attracted a lot of men. She always had people kind of infatuated with her.
00:04:43
That's how she was. Like David. She interned at his law firm in Atlanta. He was 20 years older, but their relationship seemed pretty serious.
00:04:53
Until, apparently, it wasn't. Being in school is hard and they weren't living in the same city or anything
00:05:00
And besides Lauren was a flirt, I mean she liked attention And she got it from a classmate named Joe
00:05:09
He was more like goofier side and you know her age So they became an item But there was something about David, some chemistry that drew her back
00:05:21
And she gave Joe the bad news Lauren was up front and told Joe, and that was that.
00:05:29
A little bit brokenhearted on Joe's part. I think so. He really liked her. Yeah.
00:05:35
Who wouldn't? Anyway, at graduation time, May 2011, David was there to cheer her on.
00:05:45
It was a big event for the whole family. We went out after her graduation with her friends and got to know everybody.
00:05:51
And just a month later another celebration up north her sister wedding I did want to say how special this wedding is Lauren was maid of honor And then back to Macon for the final hurdle the bar exam
00:06:07
A busy and scary time for a young lawyer to be. Absolutely. But first... It was everybody's kind of last hurrah.
00:06:15
It was Friday night, end of June 2011. The graduates gathered at a local bar for one last blowout before hunkering down to study.
00:06:24
They closed the bar, went to Ashley's boyfriend's place. Lauren's ex-Joe was his roommate.
00:06:31
Eventually, we just all kind of decide we're going to go to sleep now. I mean, mind you, there was alcohol involved. Surprise, surprise. Right.
00:06:42
Lauren stayed the night in Joe's room. And the next day, everybody was moving a bit slowly.
00:06:49
I did not see Lauren that morning. I didn't see Joe that morning either. We just kind of assumed they were in the room together.
00:06:57
And then it was time to buckle down. All of the friends, Joe included, went off to cram.
00:07:03
Really, you kind of just go into this hole and study constantly and don't really have any contact with anybody.
00:07:10
So it took a few days to realize no one had heard from Lauren. I immediately was like, this isn't right.
00:07:21
alarm bells for one friend while another steals herself to enter Lauren's apartment
00:07:27
I said are you ready for whatever we're going to see when we walk in there because
00:07:32
at that point in time you just have this almost sort of dread It was photos from that wedding trip up north that set off the alarm.
00:07:56
The selfies Katie O'Hare snapped and then, nine days later, texted to her friend down in Macon, Lauren Giddings.
00:08:04
They were kind of like funny, so I know she's going to respond to me and be like, oh my gosh, if you post that online, I'm going to get you.
00:08:13
But no response. Was she studying too hard to look at a few photos? Katie tried again the next day.
00:08:21
And the day after that. And again, no response. That's not normal for her and I.
00:08:28
We would talk a lot. Katie called Lauren's cell phone. And her phone was off. And I immediately was like, this isn't right.
00:08:38
So I called her sister, Caitlin. And I said, Lauren's phone's off. She has been answering me for days.
00:08:45
Have you heard from her? No, she had not. So Caitlin reached out to Lauren's law school friend, Ashley.
00:08:53
Her sister contacted me over a message on Facebook. Hey, like trying to get in touch with Lauren.
00:08:59
Have you seen her? Like let her, can you let her know we're trying to get in touch with her?
00:09:02
Like we haven't heard from her. This was Wednesday. And now thinking back, Ashley hadn't seen Lauren since that pre-study party Friday night.
00:09:11
Ashley went to Lauren's apartment. Her car was there. She knocked at the door. When she didn't answer, I didn't think anything of it.
00:09:18
I assumed she was running. I assumed she was studying somewhere. So she let it go. But then a few hours later, her sister contacted me again and said, hey, this is an emergency.
00:09:31
We've been trying to call her and she still is not answering. Now Ashley began to worry. So she and her boyfriend returned to Lauren's place and used a spare key to go inside.
00:09:43
First, she warned her boyfriend. I said, are you ready for whatever we're going to see?
00:09:48
when we walk in there because at that point in time, you just have this almost sort of dread.
00:09:55
It was dark by then. We had to walk pretty far back into the apartment to find a light to turn on.
00:10:03
Searched her bedroom, she's not in there. What they did find was quite puzzling.
00:10:08
Her purse, her keys, her cell phone, her ID, all on the couch, her laptop on her bed.
00:10:15
As if she'd just gone out for a run or something. Exactly like that. But no her.
00:10:19
No her. And Butterbean, her dog, had been at home with her parents in Maryland. So the fact that Butterbean wasn't even there wasn't concerning to us.
00:10:29
The fact that she wasn't there hours later, you know, that's when it became real.
00:10:35
Something else occurred to them. Lauren was due to move out the next day, June 30th.
00:10:40
But... Nothing was packed in boxes, but it definitely looked like she was getting her stuff together to be able to pack it.
00:10:49
She'd already told her friends her plan was to move to her boyfriend David's place in Atlanta, an hour and a half up the highway.
00:10:56
I mean, that was supposed to be the plan. That was Lauren's plan. Even though some of Lauren's friends thought they weren't right for each other.
00:11:04
I don't know if I want to use the word flaky, but her relationship with David was flaky.
00:11:09
Lauren's family called David. He said he hadn't talked to her in days. I remember specifically him, like, hanging up and then calling back, like, a couple minutes later, like, wait, like, what's going, you know, like, what is going on?
00:11:21
Back at the apartment, Ashley rounded up Lauren's law school friends, including that ex-boyfriend, Joe, with whom she'd spent the night last time any of the friends saw her.
00:11:32
Joe immediately went to the law school to search the law school for her. Well, the other friends took a careful look around the apartment.
00:11:39
They found some food wrappers and in her car, a receipt from a Zaxby's restaurant drive-thru.
00:11:47
It was timestamped Saturday, 6.08 p.m., the evening after that pre-study party. But now it was Wednesday night The Zaxby was at that point in time four days old So where did she go For a run Did she have some sort of accident
00:12:05
Or was it something even worse? Lauren's friends knew she spent time visiting prisoners
00:12:10
when she was an intern at the public defender's office. That would make you wonder about some of the people she encountered.
00:12:15
She encountered all sorts of people. You know, she would visit the jail often. Maybe someone took an unhealthy sort of liking to her.
00:12:24
And then they remembered something Lauren said the night of that last pre-study party.
00:12:28
She had thought someone had been stalking her, but we didn't really pay much attention to it because of who Lauren was.
00:12:36
She was a girl who always had admirers who stood out. Just about everybody who lived in the apartment complex knew Lauren,
00:12:44
including, of course, her fellow student and next-door neighbor, and he wanted to help search for her.
00:12:50
He asked about window locks. Somebody check her windows to see if they're open or locked?
00:12:55
Yeah, I think one might have been unlocked. Friends also checked Lauren's computer
00:13:00
and discovered that her last online activity was an email sent Saturday night. This was disturbing.
00:13:08
It was an email to David. It was eerie. What did it say? Essentially that she thought someone was trying to break into her house a night prior.
00:13:18
I think she referred to the person being a hoodlum, making hoodlum. The ultimate fear, that some evil stranger had taken their friend, Lauren Giddings.
00:13:34
We started systematically taking each room and trying to find any evidence that we could,
00:13:40
using all the techniques and science that was available to us at the time. investigators search Lauren's apartment with a forensic tool that reveals a critical clue.
00:13:51
Hiding in plain sight. It's like a light switch. There is a special torture to being far away when a loved one is missing.
00:14:13
go to sleep that night? No, I basically had the laptop in front of me and my cell phone and
00:14:18
kept going back and forth. Around 2 a.m. Thursday, Lauren's sister woke up their dad.
00:14:24
He has a hundred questions and I didn't have an answer to any of them. I didn't know anything,
00:14:30
you know. Her apartment was empty. Her stuff was there. Unable to sit and wait for answers,
00:14:36
Lauren's dad packed up his car and started the 11-hour drive to Georgia. Macon police, now part of the sheriff's department,
00:14:44
looked around Lauren's apartment the night before, but by morning with still no sign of her,
00:14:48
detectives were called in. And with them, crime scene investigator Steve Gatlin.
00:14:53
Do crime scene techs go work on missing persons cases normally? Not normally, but this was something that was a little different.
00:15:00
She was a social animal and she would, you know, they don't just vanish, right? Exactly.
00:15:05
To just disappear with no trace of not talking to anyone, it was unlike her. So Gatlin looked up at Lawrence's front door, second floor, left side.
00:15:14
Nothing seemed to miss. Out front, a garbage truck lumbered up, but, blocked by the police cars, was unable to empty the complexest trash bins.
00:15:24
The truck moved on. By then, Lieutenant Gatlin was in the apartment, looking around.
00:15:30
It just looked like somebody walked out and shut the door. Puzzling. The day was hot already.
00:15:36
A humid breeze scuttered across the yard. When we started coming down the stairs here, that's when the wind kind of hit you in the face.
00:15:44
Yeah. And you could smell something. You could smell a foul odor. A recognizable foul odor.
00:15:52
Pretty much. That was a smell Lieutenant Gatlin was all too familiar with. He followed his nose to one of the trash bins outside the apartment.
00:16:01
We opened it up, looked in there, and I saw two trash bags. He pulled out the bag on top, ripped it open.
00:16:09
Typical household trash. And then I went to the bigger one, which is a large-sized package.
00:16:15
It was a trash bag that as soon as I felt down and reached down and touched it and felt it,
00:16:21
I felt like it had had some human remains in it. And then to his growing horror, he realized it was just part of a body,
00:16:31
a woman's torso, nothing else. We started recording everything off with crime scene tape,
00:16:38
They even used sheets to put up barriers on the other side of the fence so the news media and the general public couldn't see what we were doing because at that time, with this investigation, they didn't need to know yet.
00:16:48
No. Just in case. We didn't want to mess anything up if it got out too quick what we had found.
00:16:53
And meanwhile, better take a closer look at that apartment. We started systematically taking each room and trying to find any evidence that we could using all the techniques and science that was available to us at the time.
00:17:08
One of those tools was luminol, a spray that turns blue when it comes in contact with blood.
00:17:14
Lieutenant Gatlin sprayed it in Lauren's bathroom. And it was like a light switch.
00:17:19
I mean, the whole bathroom glowed. What did you think when you saw that thing light up that way, that tub?
00:17:25
I probably can't say on camera. I'll clean it up. I was thinking, oh, crap, because the whole tub, all the way up to almost two inches from the top, had the same glow.
00:17:34
But this was strange. When they dusted for fingerprints and checked for hairs and fibers, they didn't find much at all.
00:17:41
Did somebody wipe everything down? Because you would think you would find other people's fingerprints and things like that.
00:17:48
This wasn't going to be easy. Police had already rounded up Lauren friends and her neighbor didn want them to know about the discovery Took them all downtown to record their statements And well they were there There was a call to our newsroom Reporter Joe Kovac covered the story for the Macon Telegraph
00:18:07
There had been a body found outside an apartment upon Coleman Hill. Police had tried to keep their discovery quiet,
00:18:15
but it didn't take long before the news was online. And back in Maryland, where Lauren's family had gathered.
00:18:22
My uncle came in. He asked, you know, have you heard the news? And we were like, no, we haven't.
00:18:28
I mean, we're in Maryland. Tell us what you're talking about. And he said, well, they found a body.
00:18:35
And at that point, you know, it was just hysterics. Was it her? Must be. Downtown investigators resorted to method.
00:18:44
Who's closest to her, romantically or geographically? start close as they say close to the victim but how close oh they had no idea
00:18:58
you're thinking about your friends and you're questioning your friends you're never asking
00:19:07
them hey did you do something to lauren but you're you're wondering in your mind
00:19:15
Can't stop that wondering. I know. I mean, who do you trust? You can't really trust anybody.
00:19:22
And that's terrifying. Police look at the men in Lauren's life. Her boyfriend, David, and her ex, Joe.
00:19:30
They wondered, could there have been a love triangle gone wrong? Some people react badly to that sort of thing.
00:19:36
Very badly sometimes. Lauren Kitting's father was on the road to Macon when he heard the terrible news.
00:19:56
It was likely Lauren whose body they found. And so he went to police headquarters to meet with now retired chief of police Mike Burns.
00:20:06
He wanted to identify his daughter. We told him no. And then he was insisting he wanted to identify his daughter.
00:20:14
So I cleared the room, told him that it wasn't Chief the father. It was father the father.
00:20:21
He didn't identify. I tell him that's not the last way you want to remember your daughter.
00:20:28
And then Chief Burns told Lauren's father what they found and that he didn't need to see that.
00:20:34
He just sort of stared at me. And he said, I agree. And that was pretty much the end of the conversation.
00:20:43
Wow. You give a lot of death notices, but that was tough. I mean, I got a son and three daughters, and it was tough.
00:20:53
But who, who would commit such a violent crime, dismember a victim, and uncover his tracks so carefully,
00:21:01
like someone had planned it, was killing to satisfy some sick craving? Did you think that morning maybe we were dealing not only with a sick individual,
00:21:11
but potentially a serial killer? That was one of our concerns, that somebody, a serial killer, could have gotten off the interstate, killed her, got back home the interstate, and was gone.
00:21:22
Yeah, or could still be lurking around town somewhere. That was another concern.
00:21:28
Meanwhile, Lauren's friends and neighbors were sitting in separate interview rooms without their cell phones, cut off from the news outside, answering questions.
00:21:37
Among them, the apartment complex's maintenance man, also a law student, who said he hadn't seen Lauren for a while.
00:21:45
Her neighbor said he hadn't seen her either. Stephen, the law student right next door who helped try to find her.
00:21:51
You've been home all week, right, all weekend? Mm-hmm. And you said that the last time you've seen Lauren was?
00:22:01
either last week or the week before. But it's been a few days. Yeah. Stephen didn't exactly look like a lawyer to be,
00:22:12
but he'd been her neighbor for three years and served with her in the local branch of the Federalist Society,
00:22:18
so he certainly knew her. But like everyone else, he said he'd been busy studying.
00:22:22
With Bar Prep, we just work on it and work on it. There were more friends, and cops talked to all of them, even a running buddy, who joined the party that Friday night at the bar.
00:22:35
You kind of hung out with her for a little while. I was there with her for probably 45 minutes that night.
00:22:43
But he said he hadn't seen Lauren since. Do you know where Lauren is? No. Nobody was immune from suspicion, even among that group of friends.
00:22:53
You're thinking about your friends, and you're questioning your friends. You're never asking them, hey, did you do something to Lauren?
00:23:03
But you're wondering in your mind. Can't stop that wondering. No. I mean, who do you trust?
00:23:13
You can't really trust anybody. And that's terrifying. Did that include Joe? Yes.
00:23:21
I'm ashamed to admit it, but yes. Joe, the ex. What did you learn about him? They dated for a couple months and Lauren called it off.
00:23:33
But he didn't call it off. Joe told detectives Lauren spent the night in his room Friday night,
00:23:39
but she left the next morning. Said she was going to the pool at a local country club.
00:23:45
But did she make it there? Detectives checked. And? We was able to trace down her credit card when she'd made a purchase at the same pool.
00:23:55
And that Zaxby's receipt her friends found? That was Timestamp 1636. ...Saturday. So they pulled the video.
00:24:03
Hard to tell which was Lauren's car. And if anyone was with her. Joe, for example, had he rejoined her?
00:24:09
Impossible to tell from this. Really no one could vouch for him, because we were all doing our own thing.
00:24:15
We were all studying. It seemed pretty certain Lauren was still alive and well at 10.13 p.m.
00:24:22
Because that's when she sent that strange email her friends found on her computer.
00:24:27
Essentially that she thought someone was trying to break into her house on a night prior.
00:24:33
The recipient of that email was the man she intended to move in with, David. Now the detectives wondered if they were dealing with a love triangle gone wrong.
00:24:43
Had David found out about Lauren's night with Joe? Some people react badly to that sort of thing.
00:24:49
Very badly sometimes. Yeah. So down at the station, detectives question David on tape.
00:24:56
We found a body. We don't know if it's her or not. I just heard that. Okay. The worker told me on the way down.
00:25:02
All right. So I need your help. You've got it. Well, somebody knows something. David told the detectives he was far away the weekend Lauren disappeared.
00:25:16
He had taken a golf trip to California. Said he hadn't talked to her in a while.
00:25:22
So you're telling me the whole time you were going to California, you didn't call her, check in with her, nothing.
00:25:28
No. Then you land in Atlanta and just go back to your apartment or house, and you didn't even call her and tell her you were home or anything?
00:25:36
No. Really? Mind you, the detectives had already heard from Lauren's law school friends.
00:25:44
People that she goes to school with says that y'all had problems. We've never had.
00:25:49
Recently. Well, in March, we kind of stopped talking, and then through May, and that's when her graduation,
00:25:57
she sent me an email saying, would you at least please come? I just asked, but that's what they do.
00:26:01
No, I understand that. No, but it's because it's never been, like, fluid and continuous,
00:26:07
because when I felt the pressure of the commitment, I just kind of backed off. But, of course, they couldn't just take his word for it.
00:26:14
They asked David for proof, receipts, documents to show he was away in California
00:26:19
when Lauren was murdered. So, did he just hand them over or what? He didn't have them with him.
00:26:25
David was free to leave the police station. They'd follow up with him, of course.
00:26:30
And back at the apartment complex, they found something. But what did it mean? One of the men investigators
00:26:41
have already interviewed is about to attract their attention all over again. I thought it's odd, very odd.
00:26:48
And then, a discovery in a maintenance closet at Lauren's complex. It looks like blood.
00:27:09
Lauren Giddings' friends and neighbors had spent hours at police headquarters answering questions,
00:27:14
but getting no answers back themselves. So when police dropped them off near the apartment, they were surprised by quite a scene.
00:27:23
It was completely blocked off. News reporters were there. Sheriff's office was there.
00:27:27
Crime scene was there. The TV people knew a body had been found. That's why they were here.
00:27:33
But some of those who'd been down at police headquarters weren't quite up to date.
00:27:37
Like Stephen, her fellow law student and next door neighbor. He's telling, you know, yeah, we've been trying to look for Lauren.
00:27:44
and we've been out trying to find her. We don't know where she is. Stephen seemed relaxed and chatty
00:27:51
as he talked to reporters, until... The reporter happens to mention, well, you know, while you were downtown
00:27:57
with the police giving your statement, along with her other friends, she says oh and you know they found a body And his face goes ashen and I think he says body and then he goes to pieces
00:28:17
The reaction that he gave, that's odd. It's very odd. Lieutenant Gatlin checked on him.
00:28:23
He was sitting on a cooler outside of our command post. Someone was trying to talk to him, and he just stared like he was staring off into space.
00:28:32
Was it just surprise or what? Stephen had already allowed detectives to bring a cadaver dog into his apartment
00:28:40
and it did show some interest, but it was hard to know if it meant anything. But that combined with Stephen's odd behavior,
00:28:49
it was enough to take him back downtown to the station for another chat. The questions are a little more pointed now.
00:28:56
Was you friends with Lauren? Yes. Look at me when you talk to me, son. Okay. Was you friends with her?
00:29:03
Yes. Every answer was yes, no. Hands on the table. We had to tell them to look at us when you talked to us.
00:29:10
Stephen, did you hurt Lauren? No. I know this is hard for you to tell it, but it's weighing on you right now, ain't it, Stephen?
00:29:21
I didn't do it. Stephen didn't budge. He insisted he had nothing to do with the murder
00:29:27
and didn't know who did. As he talked, investigators combed through his apartment.
00:29:33
No blood, no sign of any trouble. But this was interesting. They found some condoms in his dresser drawer.
00:29:43
Wouldn't be unusual, of course, for a guy Stephen's age to have condoms, except Stephen had told investigators he was a virgin and saving himself from marriage.
00:29:53
Interesting. So the detectives interview him, sort of change course, and says, why do you have condoms?
00:30:00
The atmosphere changed a little bit. He got quiet. I guess he was thinking. And then he says, I got them from so-and-so's apartment.
00:30:11
An admission that he stole condoms? Yes, he admitted right out of the apartments of two of his neighbors.
00:30:19
So we charged him a burglary. And well, they held him. They took a good hard look all around the apartment complex.
00:30:26
This is like a community laundry room for the residents. So it's got washers and dryers in there.
00:30:33
And inside? This is a maintenance room. They found this other door, a maintenance closet, locked up tight.
00:30:40
They used a key, looked inside, and found something. A hacksaw with something on it.
00:30:48
It looks like that's blood on each end of the saw blade, where obviously somebody had rinsed it off but didn't do a thorough job.
00:30:57
But wait a minute. Who had a key to the closet? The maintenance man. He had a master key to all the apartments in the complex
00:31:06
and the door where they kept supplies in the laundry room. Should you bring him in for questioning?
00:31:11
We brought him back in. The maintenance man said he didn't buy that hacksaw and provided an alibi.
00:31:19
But by then the investigators knew. the maintenance man wasn't the only one with keys.
00:31:25
Because in Stephen's apartment... We found two keys on his dresser that stood out.
00:31:31
One of them was a brand new key, and the other was a key with a Georgia Bulldog in the moment.
00:31:37
They tested the Georgia Bulldog key. It was a master key to the complex, including a maintenance closet.
00:31:44
And that second key... Was cut to fit her apartment. That was a key to her apartment.
00:31:49
To her apartment. To her apartment. Yes. A key to Lauren's apartment. Why on earth would Stephen have that?
00:31:57
They got more search warrants to Stephen's place, and this time found women's underwear.
00:32:03
Test results proved they were Lauren's. And then they found this. We found packaging for that same type of hacksaw in his apartment It was the same type as the one found in the maintenance Same size and brand and everything Now they felt certain they had their man They cleared Lauren boyfriend David and ex Joe
00:32:26
No surprise at all to Lauren's friend. I never thought it was David. I never thought it was Joe.
00:32:33
They eventually cleared the maintenance man too. And on August 2nd, five weeks after Lauren disappeared,
00:32:40
Stephen McDaniel, the quiet young law school grad, was charged with murder. He maintained his innocence, pleaded not guilty.
00:32:49
And really, a crime so awful, a dismembered victim? Stephen had seemed so harmless, had no criminal record.
00:32:58
The evidence against him was circumstantial. The district attorney wasn't confident.
00:33:04
I was worried that unless we had more, that this would be a case where everybody knew that he did it, but nobody could prove it.
00:33:12
So, time to take a harder look at the evidence. A defendant who seems quite confident.
00:33:22
There was a certain swagger that he and his team had. I think they felt that they could win it.
00:33:29
But investigators are about to discover something. A certain piece of deleted video.
00:33:34
What was it like to see that? I knew we had it. Do they, though? Lauren Giddings Law School
00:33:53
Lauren Giddings Law School friends couldn't make sense of it. How was it possible their odd, nerdy classmate, Stephen McDaniel,
00:34:00
could do such a horrible thing? He was trying to make it seem like he was this innocent bystander and a friend of Lauren.
00:34:10
When David Cook, who was then the Bibb County DA, had taken over, it was already a death penalty case.
00:34:16
But he wasn't so sure it should be. After all, they had no evidence to prove the cause of death.
00:34:23
And this was a gruesome crime, yet none of Stephen's DNA was found in Lauren's apartment.
00:34:29
And aside from the underwear, none of Lauren's DNA was found in Stephen's place.
00:34:34
And the circumstantial evidence they did have? A good defense attorney could raise reasonable doubt.
00:34:40
Perhaps claim Stephen had been framed. He could reasonably argue that the crime scene, particularly his apartment, wasn't adequately secure.
00:34:50
Uh-huh. Sure. And that other people had access. Indeed they did. And therefore, you can't prove I did it.
00:34:58
Yeah. So there was a certain swagger that he and his team had. I think they felt not unreasonably that they could win it.
00:35:08
And sure enough, Stevens highly regarded Macon attorneys. It already accused the state of getting evidence from improper search warrants.
00:35:16
I think there were eight or nine searches of Stevens' apartment. And Lauren's underwear and the apartment keys and the hacksaw packaging.
00:35:25
all of that evidence that Attorney Frank Hogue should be thrown out. Did you believe that the prosecution was particularly worried about your challenges?
00:35:34
Yes, I did think they were. This, though defense attorney Hogue had known and admired Lauren.
00:35:40
I was her teacher in a transition course from law school into law practice. In fact, Hogue told Stephen before joining his defense team Stephen was all right with it.
00:35:53
Anyway, that's why Hogue knew Lauren herself was opposed to the death penalty. So he took it as a victory lap when the DA withdrew it.
00:36:03
And then, technology. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had searched Stephen's computers, didn't find much.
00:36:10
But now they had new software. The DA asked them to take another look. I thought there is no way that this guy committed this kind of murder and doesn have an internet history that would blow your mind So he asked the experts to look for anything related to Lauren Giddings for sex and violence And when they did it just exploded
00:36:34
It's obvious that he has a fascination with sadistic pornography. Murder, torture, dismemberment.
00:36:43
Vile. And yet still not proof that he murdered Lauren. So spring 2014, nothing was certain as Lauren's family and friends prepared to go to Macon
00:36:55
for trial. It's like the rest of my life stopped. It was all about Lauren and this trial.
00:37:03
And as the two sides were ready to face off in court with Stephen still claiming his innocence,
00:37:09
the FBI probed the secrets of Stephen's digital camera and recovered this. Oh my.
00:37:19
The video was him spying on her the last night she was alive. He was all stealth.
00:37:28
Must have taped his camera to a long stick, said the prosecutor, so he could peer through Lauren's window and into her apartment.
00:37:37
Chilling. Here was a predator in the final stage of planning. He was spying in there to see if she was home,
00:37:46
because that is the night I think he planned to kill her. Lauren was right. She did have a stalker.
00:37:55
Someone was trying to break into her place. What was it like to see that? I knew we had him.
00:38:01
I just, I knew we had him. Attorney Hogue had to agree. That would have been virtually insurmountable evidence at trial.
00:38:10
And so in late April 2014, Stephen cried uncle. He'd make a deal, plead guilty, and confess to murdering his neighbor, Lauren Giddings.
00:38:22
He admitted that he came into her apartment in the middle of the night and that he attacked her.
00:38:28
Stephen said he strangled Lauren to death, then dismembered her body, put her torso in the trash bin at the apartment.
00:38:36
The other remains in the law school dumpster. Over the years, police and volunteers searched for countless hours,
00:38:43
even dug up a landfill, but never found anything. Lauren's loved ones, including boyfriend David,
00:38:53
looked on as Stephen was sentenced to life in prison. He'll be parole eligible in 2041.
00:39:01
Stephen, the DA believes, had been planning to kill for a long time and took pleasure in what he did to Lauren.
00:39:09
It was an obsession for him. his dream was to commit murder and to get away with it.
00:39:16
And he almost succeeded. Had the police not turned up to check out what was then a missing persons case,
00:39:23
had their cars not prevented a garbage truck from picking up the bin outside the apartment.
00:39:29
The body would have never been discovered. And we never would have captured Stephen McDaniel.
00:39:35
And we never would have gotten justice. And now, memories of a friend's last party.
00:39:43
I remember hugging her and saying bye. In retrospect, does it matter now that you did that, that you hugged her?
00:39:54
Oh, absolutely. Memories for a family of a daughter and sister who loved to run.
00:40:02
I'm happy when I think about her. When I run, it pushes me to run farther. My daughter is named Lauren Magnolia after Lauren.
00:40:12
Memories of a vibrant woman, fully alive, Lauren Giddings. I would tell her how much I miss her and that I love her.
00:40:24
And that she's the reason why I am who I am today. I would tell her thank you. you