Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Sheriff’s deputies now had Michael King bent over the front of the car. Pope asked one more time where the girl was.

  “I’d never seen an expression on a man’s face like the one King had then. It was cold, completely devoid of compassion or remorse,” Pope explained.

  King uttered something nasty—“Pure evil,” the trooper recalled—and a couple of officers had to get between Pope and the suspect, who was promptly taken into protective custody.

  The location of the arrest was communicated to the search helicopter—which was on the ground being refueled. The pilot agreed that he’d go back up as soon as he could and search the vicinity of the arrest for “hot spots.”

  Pope knew that Denise had to be someplace close to the arrest. There was wet blood and DNA-type material on the car—material that would have flown off or dried if King had driven very far before being stopped.

  With a report that a wet shovel had been found in the Camaro, the search for Denise Lee donned a grim heaviness. In addition to searching for the missing woman by air, a dive team was readied to search nearby bodies of water.

  Alive or not, Denise was someplace where it was wet. Trouble was, after a rainy day, that could be almost anywhere.

  Moments after the traffic stop, Detective Lieutenant Kevin R. Sullivan, of the North Port Police Department’s (NPPD) Criminal Investigations Bureau, arrived at the scene. By the time he got there, the suspect was already out of the car and had asked for a lawyer. Sullivan thought he looked familiar.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” Sullivan asked.

  King replied that they had previously met through family.

  “Are you okay?” Sullivan asked.

  King assured him that he was. “I’m a victim here, too,” he said. He explained that he, like Mrs. Lee, had been kidnapped, and he was eager to do whatever he could to help law enforcement.

  “Tell me what happened,” Sullivan said. He decided to play along and treat the man as a victim.

  Observing the scene was Detective Christopher Morales, of the NPPD, who had also just arrived.

  King agreed to a ride-along, sitting in the back of Sullivan’s car, to look for Denise. Sullivan hoped to keep the man talking. The man was in custody, so no harm could come from the little game they were playing. During the ride-along, a fog lowered over North Port, cutting visibility. King said, “A guy took me and that girl, and I was tied up and had a hood over my head.... He let me go at my car and I just drove off.”

  The game did not bear fruit. In an attempt to throw the investigation a curveball, the suspect took the officers on a wild-goose chase, clear on the other side of town, as far from the scene of his arrest as they could get. Up and down. Back and forth. Till past 11:00 P.M. King had no idea where they were most of the time.

  While they drove around, King was silently hopeful that his cousin Harold would keep his mouth shut. One statement from Harold Muxlow, and King’s lies were exposed. He didn’t know both Harold and his daughter had already spoken to police.

  Trooper Pope was beat, but the adrenaline was still flowing. He couldn’t get rid of the driving voice in his head. He needed to get back out there and look for Denise.

  Just before 11:00 P.M., the aerial search had to be called off because of the now-heavy fog.

  Cops were sent out to locate and interview friends and relatives of the arrested man. One such person was Jennifer Robb, King’s ex-girlfriend, who lived in Homosassa, Florida, about fifty miles north. She was hoped to be a good source for info regarding King’s relatives. Jennifer wasn’t home, so patrols in Citrus County were informed that she was probably driving a red Nissan Frontier pickup, with black trim. It had a soccer ball bumper sticker on the back just above the license plate, and a decal at the top of the windshield that read ANGEL IN DISGUISE.

  Police were also looking for a forty-one-year-old friend of King’s named Robert “Rob” Salvador, who lived in Venice.

  Cortnie Watts, who had already participated in the processing of the Lee house, was now called to the scene of King’s arrest to photograph and collect evidence from the green Camaro. Watts had a routine that she followed. She always started at the outside of a scene and worked her way inward in ever-diminishing concentric circles. She created evidence swabs of the blood spatter on the car’s spoiler, collected and bagged as evidence long, dirty-blond hair found both on the hood and rear of the car, and swabbed a mucus-like glob of material on the hood.

  The passenger-side door handle, Watts noticed, was covered with a sandy mud. She photographed the car’s interior—in particular, the red gas container, which sat on the passenger seat.

  While she was doing this, Detective Michael Saxton was dusting the car’s exterior for fingerprints. On the outside of the driver’s-side window, he discovered a partial palm print, which he lifted with tape and placed on a white card.

  The Camaro was secured with crime scene tape. That is, tape was placed over the space between the car doors and the rest of the car so that the doors could not be opened without breaking the tape. It was towed back to the NPPD and parked in the “evidence garage.” Watts followed the tow truck in her own vehicle. The decision to move the vehicle at that time was made because the wind had picked up, and there was concern a new rain might wash away evidence.

  Watts stayed with the car until quarter to one in the morning of January 18.

  She returned to the car on January 19 and took tire ink standards from all four tires, using Sirchie fingerprint slab ink, with a roller and a glass slab. She put ink on the roller and rolled ink onto the tires. She put brown craft paper under each tire and, with the help of Sergeant Scott Graham and Property Evidence staff assistant Deb Hill, rolled the Camaro over the paper so an ink impression of the tire treads was made. Still using Graham and Hill’s assistance, she pushed the vehicle out of the exam room and into a gated area in the police department’s parking lot. A vehicle cover was placed over the car and locked into place with a padlock to secure the evidence.

  Seeking a motive, police asked Denise’s family and friends if they knew Michael King. They all shook their heads. No one had ever seen or heard of him before.

  Michael Lee King was brought to the NPPD at 11:30 P.M., and put in an interrogation room. He sat in a corner, his hands cuffed in front of him, and told Detective Morales that he was born on May 4, 1971. King described the traffic stop and how Trooper Pope had repeatedly screamed, “Put your hands on your head” and “Where’s the girl?” The trooper, King noted, was angry, pushing King’s head up against the car, telling him that police had already been inside his house and had seen stuff.

  King said he’d asked for a lawyer “all the way through” his apprehension, but he had been ignored.

  Morales said, “When I got there, you were saying that you were the hostage.”

  King said he remembered saying that to somebody and complained that he hadn’t been read his rights or given a chance to lawyer up.

  Morales did read King his Miranda rights at that time, pausing after each line to verify that King understood what he was being told. King said he did, adding that he did not want to give Morales a statement. He just wanted an attorney—and he needed to use the bathroom. He was escorted out.

  When King returned to the interrogation room, he was left alone until, around midnight, a cop King knew wandered into the interrogation room to “shoot the breeze.” When was the last time they’d seen each other?

  King said, “About three years ago.”

  “Still doing plumbing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here or up north?”

  “Here. There ain’t nothing up north.”

  “The last time I saw you, I think we ran into each other on the street. Didn’t you say you had a live-in girlfriend or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were having some kind of issues that the cops couldn’t help you out with. What was that all about?”

  “She took off in my car, went to Te
nnessee. Knoxville. I had to go all the way up there and pick it up.”

  “How long did you date her?”

  “Not too long.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Oh, shoot. Jen ... Jennifer, something like that. Amy, it was Amy Sue (pseudonym).”

  “I remember a Jennifer. I don’t remember an Amy,” the cop said, nice and chummy. He asked the name of King’s ex-wife.

  “Danielle.” He had been married to her for ten years, but she didn’t work. She just played games on the computer all day.

  “Yeah, I remember when you first came down here, with the jet skis and everything. It was 2003. All the trouble and shit with your neighbors—that’s how I remember that stuff. So what have you been doing lately?”

  “Not too much. Just hanging in there.”

  “How’s everybody treating you? It was a madhouse when I showed up. I didn’t know what was happening.”

  “When I first got pulled over, the friggin’ guy was mad or something. He wouldn’t let me talk. He’s just screamin’, ‘Where’s she at? We found duct tape.’ Like that. I tried to tell him my side, but he didn’t want to hear my side. ‘Just tell me where she’s at?’ I said I wanted a lawyer present.”

  “Who was the cop talking about? I’m kind of lost.”

  “I don’t know. I said I wanted a lawyer present, and he said, ‘You ain’t gettin’ one.’”

  “He told you that? Wow.”

  “I got bad luck. I ain’t pickin’ up nobody anymore.”

  “Who’d you pick up?”

  “Guy on the side of the road.” King told his story: The second the guy got in the car, he pushed King’s head down and threw a hood over his head. “I couldn’t even freakin’ move, man.”

  “You look like you put on a few pounds since the last time I saw you. This guy must’ve been pretty big.”

  “Between you and me, I’ve never been in a fight in my life. He was a jerk.”

  The cop changed the subject: “Yeah, I remember Jen. I don’t remember no Amy.”

  “Yeah, Amy was something else. They said she was on cocaine. I thought she was straight, turned out she was just out of detox. Met her through friends. I picked her up, went all the way up to Tennessee to pick her up. The only reason I got mad at her was she took the car.”

  He said the house on Sardinia was the only place he stayed when he was in North Port. Although for a while, he was living in Homosassa, and then he’d been back to Michigan a few times, visiting his family.

  “When was the last time you were in Michigan?”

  “Three, four days ago. I got back Saturday.”

  “So you just got back. How was it up there? Cold?”

  “Ice-cold, yeah. I was looking for work up there, filled out a bunch of applications, but it’s slow right now. I got to see my kid. He wanted to stay up there, so I let him stay with my brother.” He explained that his house had no furniture. His furnishings were at an old girlfriend’s house. He didn’t want the drama, so he just left it. That was Jennifer, the one in Homosassa. “I figured I’d just keep walkin’.” She and his son didn’t get along at all.

  After a pause, King said, “I was hijacked. Crazy shit. It was the worst thing.”

  “Are they helping you out? Is that what you’re waiting on?” the cop asked.

  “They read me my Miranda rights and explained what it meant.”

  “You can do whatever you want. What is it you want to do?”

  “I can just sit here all night. I can’t tell them nothing. I don’t know anything. I wouldn’t mind going home.”

  “You got a girlfriend now? Got anyone waitin’ on you?”

  “Yeah, Tennille. Met her because she played bingo with my mom. She wanted to move in, but I said I don’t want that right now. She’s pretty nice. She’s got no kids. But I been through a lot of shit. I just want to work.”

  “You still having problems with your neighbors? I remember you used to have a real feud going.”

  “No, when I wave, they wave. Just hi/bye. No problems anymore.” There had been someone coming into his house while he was away. There wasn’t anything to steal, so he didn’t call the cops; however, someone was going inside and doing whatever. The front door was always jimmied open. Probably kids.

  The cop left. For a time, King was alone to ponder his dilemma. He sat motionless, with head bowed. When the cop returned, he brought King something to eat and some water. King was thirsty, but he didn’t feel like eating.

  In the meantime, police had picked up Harold Muxlow and had questioned him at greater length about his cousin borrowing a shovel, and about the bound woman attempting to escape in front of his house.

  Harold said he didn’t intervene because he didn’t think it was any of his business, that it was just another one of good ol’ Mike’s “crazy relationships.”

  Then police had an inspired idea. They put Harold in the interrogation room—just the two of them—and taped the conversation with a surveillance camera.

  “What the hell you doin’?” Harold asked King.

  King said, “I got hijacked. I couldn’t, I tried to put 911 on the phone and everything. And here I am. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything, or he’d’ve took everybody out.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know, man. He was saying, ‘I’m gonna kill them all.’”

  “You were afraid of this guy?”

  “Dude, he was big. It don’t make no difference. I don’t fight.”

  “They say somebody on the street seen you and somebody called. I got cops at my house, and I’m like, what the f ***? What am I supposed to do, you know?”

  “No, you did the right thing. I couldn’t have called without him knowin’.”

  “Was he colored? Mexican?”

  “He had a ski mask on. I don’t know.”

  “How did you get involved with these people? You just got back into town, right?”

  “I pulled over. I thought they were broke down or something. As soon as the door opened, something hit me in the head with the heel of his palm—so hard I saw white specks. Then something got pulled over my head, tight here,” King said, gesturing with his cuffed hands toward his neck. “I think he knew somethin’. Karate or somethin’. One time, he hit me in the gut and I couldn’t even breathe.”

  “When you were at my house you should’ve written something down, let me know what’s going on.”

  “I should’ve thought of something, dude. He said, he promised, if we did everything, he said he was going to let this girl go.”

  “I don’t get it. What would he gain? Holding on to you. Holding on to her. What would he gain? I can’t see what gain there would be.”

  “Maybe he was sick, man. Maybe his was a totally different world from ours. You could tell by the way he talked and the shit he said.”

  “Just one guy?”

  “Well, there had to be somebody else. He was talking to someone on the phone. ‘Where you at now? Where you at now?’ I couldn’t hardly hear him. They put earplugs in my ears.”

  “Why’d they let you go and not her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. They probably let her go, too. Shouldn’t they? I don’t know.”

  “If they do find her ...”

  “Then I can get out of here,” King said with a note of hope.

  “If they find her—I mean, I hope they find her alive... .”

  “Thank God!” King exclaimed.

  “But if something did happen to her, they got forensics now, and they can tell.”

  “That’s good. That’s good. That’s what I need, man. They find her—I’m good to go.”

  “What did you need the flashlight for?”

  “He told me. That and the shovel and the gas can. I don’t even have a f***in’ riding mower. He just told me to say that.”

  King began to describe what his abductor did to him, making him lie on the ground, take his shoes off. Put cuffs o
n him.

  “The guy or the cop?” Harold asked.

  “It was the same,” King replied.

  They talked about King’s problems with women. It was one thing after another.

  Harold said, “They say this girl got snagged. They took her right from her house. She had two kids, two little ones. They didn’t take money. Nothin’.”

  “That’s crazy,” King said.

  “How this girl get in your car, though?”

  “I pulled over and they weighed me down, and that was it, you know. Stupid, man, just stupid.” King complained about the rough treatment he’d received when arrested.

  “Can you blame him? Twenty-one-year-old girl kidnapped and you’re the last one seen with her. When the guy let you go, you should’ve flagged down a cop right away.”

  “There’s a lot of things I should’ve done,” King said with a sigh.

  “What would your brother Gary have done?”

  “He thinks faster than I do. He’d’ve taken the guy. He was in the military.”

  “What did the guy have? A gun? A knife?”

  “I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “It’s not good, dude. You’re not in a good situation. So what did this guy want with a shovel for?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him, and he didn’t tell me.”

  “You’d better take a lie detector test, dude. If you don’t, you are going to be screwed. It looks bad. I keep thinking what if it was my daughter that got snagged. How would I feel? Now, if they find her alive—”

  “Thank God.”

  “But if they don’t, the parents are going to need relief. They got to find her body. Otherwise, you got to live with that—live with that for a long time. Otherwise, her parents always be wondering, ‘Where she at? Is she still alive?’”

  “Right.”

  “Is she buried somewhere? You would want to know. I would want to know. It would haunt you for the rest of your life until you find out exactly... .”

  King told Harold how he’d tried to use his cell phone, to call Tennille, his girlfriend, but the guy caught him and threw the phone into the backseat where the girl was.