Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  The judge ruled that they would cross that bridge when they came to it. He was not going to assume that an impartial jury was impossible to seat in Sarasota County. If that did turn out to be the case, he would rule that the trial could be held elsewhere. For now, the judge said, the case would move forward.

  It was noted that the courtroom was not large, and it might be too small to handle the number of spectators and media that were expected. The victim had many friends and loved ones who intended to observe every minute of the proceedings.

  The judge ruled that “provisions would be made” for Denise Lee’s supporters to sit in the courtroom. They would not, as some feared, be forced to watch the trial via TV monitor in an “overflow room.”

  Jury selection would prove to be particularly cramped. A pool of one hundred jurors was expected on the first day. Those people, plus the family members, would already fill the courtroom. Where would everyone else sit?

  The judge said, “We will have to make arrangements.” Before the jury was selected, the judge noted, some spectators might be allowed to sit in the jury box.

  Schlemmer moved that evidence discovered at King’s home and obtained during a jailhouse conversation be ruled inadmissible. Detective Christopher Morales, Lieutenant Kevin Sullivan, and Deputy Daniel Cameron testified on these matters.

  Sullivan said that on the evening of Michael King’s arrest, he arrived at the scene on Interstate 75 moments following the traffic stop by Trooper Eddie Pope. The defendant had already exited his vehicle and asked for an attorney. Sullivan said he took King on a ride-along in hopes of finding Denise Lee, but the efforts were in vain. King said he hadn’t been able to see during his abduction and didn’t know locations. Sullivan said that King was not read his Miranda rights and that the defendant told him that he had also been kidnapped.

  Detective Morales explained that King clearly did not know about the 911 calls from his cousin Harold Muxlow and Harold’s daughter Sabrina, or else he would have realized that no one was buying his claim to be a victim. Morales said that many questions were asked of King during the ride-along, that no attempt was made to provide King with an attorney, although King asked for one on at least two occasions.

  Deputy Daniel Cameron testified regarding the conversation he had with the defendant during October 2008 on the caged roof of the Sarasota County Jail during which King admitted to having met Denise Lee.

  Denying the motion regarding evidence seized at King’s home, Judge Economou said that after Denise King made her 911 call on King’s cell phone, police were justified in entering his home. When police saw evidence of abduction in King’s home, a search warrant was acquired, after which evidence was seized—evidence that police had reasonable cause to believe was pertinent to the victim’s abduction.

  The judge ruled that it was appropriate to suppress some postarrest statements made by the defendant. In his ruling, Economou said, “Neither Lieutenant Sullivan nor Detective Morales read Miranda rights to the defendant at the traffic stop or during the ride-along—the defendant was in custody at the time—nor did they provide the opportunity to have an attorney contacted.” The ruling to suppress included any and all statements made by the defendant up until the time he was finally read his Miranda rights at the NPPD station late on the evening of January 17 and into the early-morning hours of January 18. This included the statements he made to Harold Muxlow, who was brought into the interrogation room to pump his cousin for information. The judge also ruled inadmissible the statement made by King to the deputy on the jail rooftop.

  (Before faulting the officers for not reading King his rights or allowing him to get an attorney, readers should keep in mind that any eventual prosecution of this man was not the priority of law enforcement at that time. Finding Denise Lee was their priority. In that sense, they chose the best course of action.)

  As the prosecution prepared its case against Michael King, it was Suzanne O’Donnell’s job to be in charge of the hundreds of pieces of evidence.

  “I was the evidence gal,” she recalled.

  From O’Donnell’s POV, this was a complicated case because of the multiple crime scenes: the Lees’ house, the Camaro, King’s house, the burial site. She had to edit the evidence down to a manageable amount, prioritize, and eliminate the redundant.

  A crime scene investigator’s motto is “When in doubt, bag it.” Evidence had been taken from Harold Muxlow’s house, for example, and none of it was pertinent to the crime. Not everything in the Camaro was relevant, either. King had paperwork in there that had nothing to do with the crime.

  There was a bedpost found in the car’s backseat, and O’Donnell wanted it to be relevant. But she couldn’t tie it in, and the jury would never get to see it.

  Her work was made easier by the “phenomenal job” done by the evidence techs, who had packaged and sealed each piece individually in clear plastic.

  She knew of some trials where it took forever to introduce evidence. Each bag had to be cut open in front of the jury and the item removed so they could see what was inside. At King’s trial, no scissors would be necessary. She could just hold up each package. Witness, jury, everyone, could see what was inside.

  The techs prepared the evidence in other helpful ways. Denise’s clothes found near the burial site were mounted on cardboard so that the jury could tell what they were. Otherwise, they would have just looked likes clumps of indistinguishable cloth.

  CHAPTER 14

  KING’S WOMEN

  To best prepare for trial, the police and the state attorney’s office wanted a complete picture of Michael King’s sexual history. So, in addition to the already interviewed Jennifer Robb and Tennille Ann Camp, they sought out and interviewed every woman they could find who had been intimate with the accused.

  Stephanie Sloan (pseudonym) was thirty-five when she met Mike King in the fall of 2005. As was true of all of King’s women, she was diminutive—four-eleven—but in great shape, 117 pounds of nothing but muscle. Her sister had a Pilates studio and she took excellent care of her body. That autumn, she had just married her husband, John—and Mike was a friend of John’s. Not close friends, but they used to work together—“side jobs, plumbing, automotive, stuff like that.”

  During the first six months of their marriage, the Sloans lived in Venice and didn’t see much of King. After that, King started coming around—sometimes in his white truck, sometimes in a red sports car—to pick up John for jobs. He’d come in the house and talk.

  The odd thing was that Mike was paying John really, really well. For one day’s work, Mike would pay $300. She asked John why he was getting so much, but John was hard of hearing and uneducated and didn’t know.

  After a while, Mike started showing up at the Sloans’ house with his new friend, a guy named Carlos Saenz. Stephanie wasn’t thrilled because those two would show up when John was gone and she was home alone. Stephanie was usually drinking, because that was her lifestyle at the time.

  On those occasions, Mike would say unpleasant things about John; that before he got married, he “bought prostitutes and was a bad person.” Stephanie believed him and got mad at John. Then, when Mike went to the bathroom, Carlos would say, “He’s very interested in you, Stephanie. He wants you as his girlfriend.”

  She and John were having some problems, and she agreed at some point to go over to Mike’s house. Mike said he wouldn’t try anything—the liar. Stephanie realized that hindsight was twenty-twenty. Mike had manipulated the situation from the start.

  Mike had set John up, sent him to a job, so he wouldn’t be around when Mike stole his wife away. She stayed over one night. Maybe two. While she was there, John called and talked to Mike. John said Stephanie was missing and asked Mike to help him look for her. Mike said he didn’t know where she was.

  Mike’s son, Matt, and Mike’s parents were there. Stephanie felt awkward. Mike and Stephanie rented movies. Knowing she was an alcoholic, he bought her beer. When they got back from the beer run
, she went into the bedroom alone, drank, and watched the movies. Mike was in and out.

  Mike kept going on and on about what a bad guy John was; the stories got worse and worse, until Stephanie couldn’t believe them anymore.

  No, that’s not true, she finally told herself. She suddenly saw everything in a new light. Mike was obsessed with John and determined to tell lies about him.

  Stephanie came out of the bedroom once or twice and chatted with Mike’s mom a little bit. Once, she and Mike were in the bedroom and the son came in. That was really awkward.

  She wasn’t sure which bedroom she was in. It seemed small to be the master bedroom, but, on the other hand, it had its own bathroom.

  Stephanie eventually got drunk and passed out. The next thing she knew, her pants were down and Mike was having sex with her. She was on her belly and he was coming at her from behind. She only vaguely remembered that part. It was brief—she knew that much. She couldn’t tell at the time if he finished or if he stopped because she woke up. (The next morning, she discovered that he had ejaculated.)

  The next day, or maybe the day after, she called John, crying and upset. “Please come get me,” she said. And she went back home. Mike was at work. Later, her mother-in-law told her that Mike King was a weirdo, and she shouldn’t believe a word he said.

  After that, John and Stephanie didn’t have anything more to do with Mike King for a long time, but they did see him again in January 2007. It was a matter of desperation. The Sloans were down on their luck, living in their car. John called Mike to ask if he could borrow a tent. John started hanging out with Mike and Carlos again after that, and another guy—she didn’t remember his name, scrawny fellow, younger, maybe twenty, and usually stoned. Sometimes John wouldn’t come home at night.

  One time, John and Stephanie went over to Mike’s house, and Mike, Carlos, and the scrawny guy were getting ready to go out. Stephanie remembered Mike bragging about this girl, who was very young, like fourteen or fifteen. They were all talking about little girls and sex and stuff like that, very graphic—talk that made Stephanie feel uncomfortable.

  “It was gross,” she recalled. She seemed to remember Mike saying that a bunch of young girls were coming over to his house and doing Ecstasy. There was a fifteen-year-old girl in particular that Mike talked about. A sexy strawberry blonde who was very mature for her age and dressed provocatively. The girl’s parents lived up north somewhere, and they told Mike they were coming to take their daughter back. Stephanie couldn’t remember the young girl’s name, but she thought it might begin with an A.

  A beauty salon in Venice, Florida, where Michael King was a regular, was the scene of some other noteworthy behavior. The owner, Patti Paull, said King was quiet and unassuming, but there was one skeevy moment.

  King showed up at the beauty parlor one day accompanied by a young female, who he boldly claimed was only fifteen years old. Patti had never seen a man brag about being with an underage girl before.

  It almost didn’t compute.

  She tried to reassure herself that all was not as it seemed, that the “fifteen-year-old” was his niece or daughter, something like that. However, those efforts went by the wayside when King began to passionately kiss the girl by the parlor’s front desk.

  King later bragged that the girl was from Tennessee and he’d met her on a dating service.

  Now, as part of the murder investigation, cops looked more thoroughly into the Venice incident and learned that the seemingly underage girl in the beauty parlor did indeed have a name that began with A.

  She was Amy Sue Speranza (pseudonym). From her description, Amy was a Denise Lee look-alike. They found her because King himself had called the cops on her. She had stolen a car from him once and cops had to tow it back.

  Police ran a check on Amy Sue. At first, they couldn’t find her, but they did find the number of an ex-husband at his new residence in Kentucky. They gave the guy a call, to see what he knew about his ex-wife’s fling with the suspected killer.

  The husband, Robert Bryant (pseudonym), wasn’t informed of what the call was about, and police got to the info they wanted in a roundabout way. Robert asked if Amy Sue was in trouble, and the officer said no. They had a situation regarding an acquaintance of hers and he couldn’t get in touch with her directly.

  Robert wanted to know if he was in trouble, and if it was about the car that was stolen. The cop said he wasn’t in trouble, but it did have to do with the car.

  He said he met Amy Sue three or four years before in a bar called the Starlite and they dated. She was a tiny thing. A blonde. Five-two. Hundred pounds.

  At that time, she had two kids and lived in low-income housing. Bryant lived in Clinton, Tennessee. They dated for half a year, then split up.

  “She had a habit of jumping from man to man,” Bryant said. He couldn’t handle the cheating, so they broke up. Still, he was in love with her.

  She had a crummy childhood, she’d said—molested when she was ten by her stepfather. She ran away when she was fourteen and got married when she was still underage.

  The guy she married was named Speranza. She left Speranza and moved in with a guy named Bobby, with whom she had her first kid. That kid was now five and living with his grandmother. She subsequently had a little girl—despite the fact that she had stopped eating in hopes she would miscarry. She gave that baby away to her next-door neighbor so she could go out and get high. Father of the second child was a guy named David. Robert didn’t know the last name. The girl was six months old when Robert met Amy.

  She was okay at that point, had a job at a nursing home, and had both kids with her. After they broke up, she again hung out with the wrong crowd. In the summer of 2006, Robert had a hand amputated in a cabinet factory accident. They sewed it back on, but he never regained use of it and was disabled.

  A month later, Amy Sue got back in touch. Thinking of her as broken, Robert decided to try to fix her. She got pregnant, and he married her in November 2006—although he suspected she might have been pregnant even before she got back in touch with him. He’d just gotten an insurance settlement and she quickly scammed him out of that. They were together until she started talking to a guy named Mike, a plumber from down in Sarasota, Florida.

  She met Mike on a phone dating service line. He didn’t know which one. Mike came up from Florida, drove all night long, and she was gone. This was two weeks after they got married.

  “She’s a scam artist,” Robert said.

  Robert and Amy Sue had been living in a hotel, and he didn’t know she was gone until her grandmother and daddy came by to pick up her stuff. She called and said she was all right, but didn’t leave her number. She said she was all set. Mike owned his own business and was going to buy her a car. Mike had a son she watched while Mike went to work. Robert was left over Christmastime, feeling lonely.

  By the middle of January 2007, she was back.Because she was little and looked so young, she and her grandmother had concocted a story that she was underage. They used that as an excuse to get her away from Mike. She was actually a woman in her twenties.

  Robert never met Mike but heard he drove a pickup, was heavyset, and had blond hair. Amy Sue moved back in with Robert. Then she called Mike again, and he either picked her up again or sent her a bus ticket. She went off with Mike for a second time, in February 2007.

  The next time Robert saw her, she was driving a new car, which she said she had talked Mike into buying for her. She told him she was going to take the car, drive to Georgia to have an abortion, and then return. Mike gave her money for the abortion, but she took the cash and bought a large quantity of drugs.

  She played some of Mike’s phone messages for Robert. In these, he begged her to get in touch, just so he would know where she was, just so he would know she was okay. She also played a message from a man who sounded like a police officer, but Amy Sue insisted it was just one of Mike’s friends and they were “trying to fake her out.”

  Robert was star
ting to think she stole the car. He eventually got so suspicious he called the Sarasota police. He guessed the car must’ve been reported stolen, because police came later that day and took it away.

  Through Robert Bryant, North Port located Amy Sue in Tennessee. During an interview at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, she told police her last name was Bryant. She figured that was her name, anyway, since Robert, the man who’d lost his hand, was her most recent husband.

  She said she met Mike King on a dating phone line called Lova Light—like Lava Light, only with an o—that she’d learned about from a commercial on TV. The guys had to have credit cards and paid by the minute, but it was free for the girls. That was December 2006.

  She looked like a little girl, a point she emphasized in both manner and appearance. However, when she met Mike, she was really twenty-five. She put an ad on Lova Light, set up a voice mailbox, and King called. She talked to him once, for maybe ten minutes. He said he was lonesome and needed someone to spend Christmas with. She told him she was sick of her husband, who hit her, and she just wanted to get out of there and teach everybody a lesson. King said he was in Florida and offered to come get her. She said that sounded pretty nice; she’d never been out of Tennessee.

  He picked her up at her grandma’s on December 18 or 19. King was driving a gold or brown Blazer. Once in Florida, he took her shopping, and they went for walks.

  She thought he was strange. Not his looks. She kind of liked the way he looked. He had different personalities. He was controlling. Not violent, but domineering. She stayed at his house, for maybe a month. His son was there at the time. She got along with him okay. The kid just wanted to watch TV or play video games. Amy Sue tried to get him to ride his bicycle and go outside and “do the normal things that kids do.”