Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  During the last months of 2006, Mike continued to call. For weeks, she ignored the calls, but finally she talked to him. She said if they were ever going to live together again, it had to be up there. She couldn’t be in North Port anymore. It just wasn’t home.

  And she was working again for her dad, and that wasn’t going to change. She knew Mike didn’t want her to work, but she had to. Life was too boring, otherwise.

  He began to visit her frequently and talked about buying a house in Homosassa. By January 2007, they were back together, at least on weekends. It was at this point that Jennifer first realized that money was an issue for King. What up until then had appeared to be a bottomless well of funds started to dry. He admitted that he couldn’t afford to buy a house and needed to rent. He sold a couple of his cars. He tried to sell his house in North Port, but it wouldn’t sell.

  By the end of January, she and Mike had rented a house—the same house where the police were currently asking her questions. He moved his furniture from the house on Sardinia up to the rented house in Homosassa, which was why the house down there was empty. Jennifer watched Matt, who went to school in Homosassa. Mike was still working at Babe’s Plumbing in Venice and had to get up at 3:30 A.M. to get to work on time.

  Eventually he quit his job at Babe’s and went to work for the local Homosassa Roto-Rooter. When he lost that job during the summer of 2007, he took his son and they left for Michigan. Jennifer had no clue how long he was there. A long time. Longer than a month.

  When he did come back, he didn’t try to get a regular job but instead hatched a buying-and-selling cars scheme. They were together until Thanksgiving, 2007, when they broke up for good.

  On that day, he needed to wear one particular pair of jeans, even though he had many identical pairs, and was taking forever to wash and dry them. She knew he was just stalling. He didn’t eat any Thanksgiving dinner and wouldn’t help clean up. She told him to get the heck out of her life and he started to scream, so much that she was embarrassed that her father was hearing it. Since they came in her truck, he and Matt walked the four miles home. When she finally returned home, Mike and his son, along with his car and a lot of their belongings, were gone.

  There was another car at the house, a green Camaro. It was part of King’s buy-and-sell scheme. The car had damage on the front end, so King put the black “bra” on it to cover the damage up, and hoped to sell the car for a profit.

  Jennifer searched her hiding spots, where she kept the money bags from her father’s store, and discovered King had stolen cash. The bags had been moved. Inside, the big bills were gone, but the small bills were left behind—so the bags still appeared full. More than $1,000 was missing. Jennifer called King’s mom, who was in Michigan at the time, and told her about the stolen money.

  “If you hear from Michael,” Jennifer said to Patsy King, “tell him to return the money, no questions asked, and he can be on his way.”

  She waited and waited, and nothing happened. She called her father and asked him what to do. Jennifer’s dad said she should call the Citrus County sheriff’s department. She explained to a deputy that she had to go to work the next day and was fearful King would return and clean her out. The next morning, as expected, King showed up with a U-Haul rental truck and began to load up his stuff. Lawn mower, propane tank. Three or four 4-wheelers. Later he called and denied taking the cash from the money bags.

  “Somebody must’ve broken in,” Mike said, adding that he would help her pay the money back. She talked to the deputies again. They told her King said she made the story up about the missing money, that she’d probably taken the money for herself. They wanted her to take a lie detector test.

  The last time she saw King was two weeks after Thanksgiving. She told him he was a pathological liar, but there was still hope for them. All he had to do was go to her father, admit that he took the money, and make arrangements to pay it back. He again denied it and left—and that was that. He called her at midnight on the dot, New Year’s, but she didn’t pick up. He didn’t leave a message. The last time she spoke to him was January 12, five days before the murder.

  She said, “What do you want?”

  He said, “Do you still love me?”

  She repeated, “What do you want?”

  He said he wanted to thank her, you know, for the good times. She asked where he was working. He said he was still plumbing. She asked where, and he said some odd name she’d never heard before. She didn’t ask from where he was calling.

  Did he have a gun? Sure, she replied. He had a little brown pistol. The box for it was in the house somewhere, but he never kept the gun in the box. He was afraid the kids would get at it. She’d seen him clean it. He had it wrapped in a towel and in a closet. She was pretty sure he took it with him when he left for North Port.

  Could they come in and take photos of her house? Sure, no problem. To get into the house—which was white but needed a coat of paint, or at least a hosing off—they had to climb up five rickety wooden steps. Although the house itself wasn’t of the best construction—a mobile home attached to a small structure of permanent construction, with a living-room ceiling on a slant—it was nicely furnished, and the living room featured a large flat-screen TV.

  In a storage area in the corner of a bedroom, they found a set of weights for lifting, an electric keyboard, which looked like it hadn’t been played in a while, and a box for a single-action semiautomatic nine-millimeter Parabellum pistol. When they opened the box, they found no gun, just a single shotgun shell and the nine’s instruction and safety manual. The box indicated that the gun had been purchased from Kassnar Imports of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

  There were lots of photos of King, holding and kissing a little girl, fishing and lounging on a boat in the ocean, and one of him just standing there wearing what appeared to be the same sleeveless camouflage-colored shirt that he’d been arrested in.

  Jennifer had learned about Denise Lee’s murder when her aunt called her up.

  “Your Michael, what was his last name?” the aunt asked.

  “King.”

  “In that case, you’d better turn on the TV,” the aunt replied.

  She couldn’t believe it. How could the man she knew and cared for behave this way? There must have been some mistake. She couldn’t believe that Michael would just randomly pick a woman to rape and kill.

  Jennifer Robb still had feelings for Michael King—no matter what he did. She always would have feelings for him. He did so much for her family when they were together. He was a family guy. If Michael had been with her right then and there, she wouldn’t even feel nervous. She would feel completely safe. If anything, she felt guilty; it was clear to her that Michael needed help. There was something wrong with him to make him do these things. He needed help, and no one recognized that fact.

  She’d never heard him mention any Denise. When she saw the photo of the slain woman on TV, she knew right away that she’d never seen her before.

  Did King ever mention the name Coralrose?

  Jennifer thought for a moment, failed to recognize the murdered little girl’s name, and shook her head.

  The cops noted that when King was arrested, he had dyed hair. Did he do that when he and Jennifer were together? She said that he did. King went to the “hairdresser’s” and had it done. Jennifer didn’t like it and told him so. “I said he looked like a guy who likes other guys,” she said.

  Wasn’t it true that he also shaved his chest and pubic hair? Yes, but she didn’t think that was odd because she shaved down there also. She told him it was cleaner, so she figured he was just trying to be like her.

  Police located and interviewed Michael King’s current girlfriend, Tennille Ann Camp, who said she and King had been seeing each other off and on for about a year. They started dating in December 2006, but they broke up and King went back to his old girlfriend, a woman named Jennifer Robb, who lived in Homosassa. Then they got back together, late in 2007.

&nb
sp; Although she and Mike were both from Michigan, that was just a coincidence. They hadn’t known each other “up north.” They met because she, like King’s parents, lived in Ellenton, and she played bingo with his mom. His parents were snowbirds, and they only lived in Florida during the winter.

  She had stayed with Mike the previous Tuesday night. She called him on the phone on January 17, at 11:00 A.M. She asked him how his appointment with the lawyer had gone that morning and he said fine. He was filing for bankruptcy, hoping to keep his house. He said he was watching TV at his house with his friend Rob [Salvador]. She asked him if he wanted to go to the Fifties and Sixties dance the next week, and he said he’d like that. He seemed normal.

  She talked to him again, at 3:45 or 4:45 P.M. (a time that police knew was during the abduction and attack of Denise Lee). Tennille asked him what he was doing and he said his parents had dropped off a trailer full of stuff at his house and he’d been going through that. He said he’d talk to her later. Again, he seemed perfectly normal. When she called back a couple of hours later, her call went straight to his voice mail.

  Mike had been in Michigan for Christmas, and Tennille flew up there to be with him at that time. On the evening of King’s arrest, Tennille talked to his mom, who, apparently unaware of what had occurred, said she had a bed and a mattress for Mike, and to let him know if Tennille saw him. Tennille believed that King last saw his parents on Wednesday, the day before the murder.

  She said Mike was a quiet guy, and he didn’t seem to be the type to do something “like this.” “Not that I know of,” Tennille added.

  She described a typical date as going out to dinner—he liked Applebee’s—or shopping at Walmart or something like that. Sometimes they’d “cuddle up together and watch movies.”

  He liked to fish and to work on cars. She knew that King had been married when he was in his twenties and that his ex-wife lived in Las Vegas with her boyfriend. Mike had a son, Matty, who turned twelve on Monday and lived up north with an uncle.

  Tennille said sex with Mike was frequent but not unusual. Sure, oral—but no bondage, no role-playing. They’d had sex twice during the previous week—Sunday night and Tuesday night—both times at his house. He didn’t use a condom, but that was okay because she had her tubes tied. Plus, she was on the pill to be sure.

  CHAPTER 7

  JANUARY 20, 2008

  Dr. Daniel Schultz began the postmortem procedure on the remains of Denise Lee at 8:30 A.M., January 20. In attendance were NPPD criminalistics specialists to process any discovered evidence.

  The only thing she wore was jewelry: a gray-metal necklace with a heart-shaped pendant around her neck, and a wedding ring on her left ring finger. Her ears were pierced, but she was missing an earring, which would at some point be discovered near the grave site.

  Two pieces of duct tape were removed from the back of the victim’s head. Those pieces were stretched out and placed on a board so they could be photographed, then bagged as evidence.

  Once everything was removed from the body, it was measured and weighed. Five feet two inches, 109 pounds. Speaking aloud for the record, Dr. Schultz listed the wounds he found on the body’s exterior.

  There was a bruise and abrasion on the back of the left arm and on the wrist. These looked as if they might have been caused by someone squeezing the arm and wrist with a powerful hand.

  There were other bruises as well, apparently from hard impact with objects. On the legs, there were more bruises, shaped like handprints, in places where the killer had gripped her cruelly hard to control her during the attack. Four bruises that were lined up along the victim’s inner thigh represented fingers that had dug deep into the flesh.

  The bruises were not healing—and, of course, would never heal. The pathologist could tell by their purplish hue that they had been suffered short moments before the woman expired.

  The body was flipped over and the back observed. There was an abrasion to the scapula and a yellow discoloration that might indicate this wound was caused postmortem.

  The body exhibited blunt-force trauma to the chin, along the angle of the jaw; plus, there was a contusion and abrasion on the left side of the face.

  Also on the cheek was a pattern of abrasions that ranged in size from five millimeters to one centimeter. The bruises were parallel to one another, along a line, and separated by a three-millimeter gap.

  The abrasions were surrounded by a maroon contusion, the color indicating that the wound was caused several hours before, but probably on the day of death.

  Dr. Schultz now took a look at the gunshot wound. The entrance wound was on the right side of the face, and the exit wound, which was larger as expanding gases exited along with the bullet, was on the back left of the head.

  He could tell that the killer had not just fired the gun from point-blank range, but had pressed the gun firm against the woman’s temple before pulling the trigger.

  The entrance and exit wounds were carefully photographed, measured, and described. The bullet had done collateral damage. The shot had been fired so it traveled parallel to and directly behind the left eyebrow. The bullet passed immediately adjacent to the left eyeball with such force that the left eye had been exploded outward. There were fractures of the skull at the exit wound, and also at both sides of the left eye socket.

  A sexual assault kit was used to take internal and external swabs from the victim’s mouth, vagina, and anus. The doctor created the swabs and then handed them off to a technician, who in this case was NPPD criminalistics specialist Pamela Schmidt.

  Dr. Schultz described aloud the condition of the victim’s private area, a sad necessity because of the crime’s sexual nature. Looking at the vagina, the pathologist noted bruising on both sides of the labia minora. There was also bruising along the lower left portion of the vagina. Being a veteran investigator of sex crimes, Dr. Schultz recognized that these wounds were caused by insertion trauma, either the rough penetration of the vagina with a foreign object, or were caused when the victim struggled as she was about to be raped. They were a clear indication that a sex crime had occurred, as such bruises were extremely rare in cases of consensual sex. There were also injuries around and in the anus. There was a skin tear at the edge of the anus, measuring ten millimeters by two millimeters, with a contusion. This wound, like those on the vagina, was caused by insertion trauma—again, a wound that would have been extremely unlikely if the anal sex had been consensual. The wounds to both vagina and anus were caused before death.

  DNA testing on the autopsy evidence received top priority. A test that normally might have taken weeks was done pronto. Those tests revealed that Denise Lee had indeed been raped, and the rapist was Michael King.

  Back at the site of the shallow grave, Sarasota County deputy Anthony Egoville was searching with a metal detector. Squatting down and carefully moving the grass out of the way with his gloved fingers, he discovered a shell casing only a few feet from the sand pile. At first glance, he guessed it was either a thirty-eight caliber or a nine millimeter. (It turned out to be a nine.) He didn’t touch the casing, but rather he placed a marker at the spot and someone from forensics collected it.

  At the NPPD, an SCSO polygraph expert administered a lie detector test to Robert Salvador, the man who’d gone target shooting with Michael King only hours before Denise Lee’s abduction. Robert said he had no knowledge of Denise’s ordeal and passed with flying colors.

  It was also on Sunday that law enforcement finally returned Jane Kowalski’s phone calls. The call came from the case’s lead investigator, Detective Christopher Morales himself.

  She intended to be fully cooperative, but first she was going to give him an earful. Considering her importance as an eyewitness, his callback was way past overdue.

  Her memory was pretty good as it turned out, but they didn’t know that. For all they knew, precious details might have been lost due to the delay.

  She was still at her grandmother’s, but ... “I’m c
oming home today,” she said. “I’ll stop by in North Port on my way.”

  Morales said that would be fine.

  Once the police had her, they did do a thorough job with her. With videotape rolling, Jane Kowalski sat down with two detectives and discussed “every little thing” she had seen on the evening of the murder.

  They showed her a photographic lineup and she picked Michael King out of the pack without hesitation.

  “Is that because you saw him on TV?” they asked.

  “No, that’s the guy in the car,” she replied.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE VICTIM’S CLOTHES

  On January 21, 2008, NPPD detectives interviewed Joe Dalton, who was Michael King’s boss at Babe’s Plumbing Inc., in Venice. According to Dalton, King began work there on September 14, 2004, and quit on June 20, 2007. He quit because he was going to take over a Roto-Rooter franchise in Port Charlotte, he claimed. He came in one Monday morning and said he’d met a guy over the weekend who was going to give him a Roto-Rooter franchise. Dalton didn’t want to stand in the way of a man making better for himself and said “Good luck to ya.”

  King was rehired by Dalton on September 13, 2007, and worked until October 15, 2007. The Roto-Rooter deal apparently was fiction, because between June and September of 2007, Dalton knew, King worked at another plumbing company called Hill & Hill, which was just on the other side of the bridge, and owned by a guy named Seth Hill. When he came back looking for his old job, Dalton said sure. King had always been a good employee. Dalton always received positive feedback regarding King. He was clean and courteous, was willing to work at night if a job came up, always volunteered, never complained. Never once was there a complaint about Mike King.

  One of the detectives asked about the time a woman said Michael King had exposed himself to her in September of 2006. Dalton said he never heard anything about that. When King left the company the second time, he said he had some estate business to take care of up in Michigan. Then he never heard from him again. Dalton said that he was surprised to see King’s mother interviewed on TV after the murder. One of the times Mike went back to Michigan, he said, was to attend his mother’s funeral.