Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  When Harold Muxlow stepped off the witness stand, Fraivillig breathed a sigh of relief. Harold had not been an easy questioning to prep for. He was essential to the state’s case, and yet he came loaded with baggage. It was anticipated that the jury—just like everyone else—was going to judge Harold. They would hear his story and think, He could have done more. The trick to eliciting his testimony in the most effective way, Fraivillig realized, was to get him to talk about the things he did without asking him too much about the things he did not do. Reacting to an emergency immediately and correctly might have been beyond his behavioral scope. Michael King was his cousin. Harold Muxlow was a man who would think long and hard before calling the cops on a relative, regardless of how troubling the circumstances. Even if King hadn’t been related, Muxlow might have reacted slowly, Fraivillig believed. He was from a segment of society that didn’t want to get involved. There are Good Samaritans, and then there are those who wouldn’t stop if they saw a baby crawling across a highway.

  Plus, Harold Muxlow had a chip on his shoulder. He felt that he had been mistreated and scrutinized with unwarranted suspicion by police during the first hours and days after the murder. So he had an attitude, too. Add to that mix the victim’s family, who were extremely resentful toward Harold. They felt Denise would still be alive if he had done the right thing immediately. He was a tough witness all around. Fraivillig was glad she’d finished with Harold Muxlow.

  Shawn Johnson testified that he lived in Fort Myers and for the past few years owned his own restoration company. On the afternoon of the murder, while driving south on U.S. Route 41, on his way home from work, he’d seen the green Camaro. He heard the screams of the captive inside it, heard her cry “Help! Help me!” He could tell it was no joke. He called 911 when he got to Fort Myers, and he was invited to the NPPD to look at photos. From an array of photos, he picked out one. That was the guy. He signed the photo. Now, in the courtroom, Karen Fraivillig showed him that photo array, one photo signed.

  “That’s the photo you chose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see that person in the courtroom today?”

  “I do. He’s sitting right there, in the blue shirt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Nothing else, Your Honor.”

  On cross, Jerry Meisner asked if Shawn Johnson was certain the cries came from a female. He said he was. Could he tell if the cries came from a child or an adult? He said he knew it wasn’t a child.

  “This encounter didn’t last very long, did it, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Just as long as it took for the light to turn green.”

  Meisner emphasized that the police had not asked him if any of the photos looked familiar, but rather to “pick one”—thus indicating they wanted him to choose one of the photos.

  On redirect, Karen Fraivillig asked, “Did law enforcement coach you before you identified the photo?”

  “No.”

  “Did you pick out King’s photo as a result of any suggesting or coaching?”

  “No one in any way coached me. They asked me, can I pick someone out, and I said I could.”

  “Was it a long process?”

  “Very quick. I looked at each photo for about five seconds and made my pick.”

  “And there is no doubt that it is the defendant you saw driving that car?”

  “None at all.”

  Judge Economou said, “Any recross, Mr. Meisner?” “Just one question, Your Honor. Mr. Johnson, you don’t think the phrase ‘pick someone out’ is suggestive?” (After all, the perp’s photo might not have been there at all.)

  “No,” Johnson said.

  Christian Wymer testified that he was a road deputy for the CCSO and was driving alone, no partner, on the day of the murder. Wymer described the events just before the defendant’s arrest, how he was staked out on a grass median watching cars, looking for the suspect’s Camaro. He told the jury that Trooper Eddie Pope pulled up next to him. When the suspect’s car passed, it was Pope who chased it down and stopped it. Wymer testified that less than a minute later, a second state trooper pulled up next to him on the grass median and informed him that the stop had been made and the car was the correct vehicle.

  On cross-examination, Jerry Meisner asked if at any time he saw anything being thrown out of the vehicle. No, he had not. Yes, Christian Wymer had proceeded to the place where the Camaro had been stopped. When he got there, Michael King was still in the car. Did Wymer look at the ground around the Camaro? Yes. Did he see a nine-millimeter gun? No.

  Trooper Eddie Pope took the stand and said he was a six-year veteran on the force. At the time of Denise Lee’s murder, his routine duty was “aggressive driving” patrol. His beat was comprised of the interstate highways in Charlotte County. On January 17, 2008, he knew Michael King was wanted and Denise Lee was missing. He was looking for the defendant’s Camaro.

  Lon Arend showed Pope a photograph of the I-75 Toledo Blade intersection and he correctly identified it. He said he was headed southbound on I-75, heading toward North Port, when he saw a NPPD car parked on the grassy median. He pulled up next to it in his unmarked Lincoln so they could watch the traffic heading in either direction.

  It was a little after nine o’clock when he spotted the Camaro. He pulled over the green Camaro on Interstate 75, near that thoroughfare’s 177-mile marker. He ordered Michael King out of the car five times before he got out. During the first four commands, Pope could see the driver bent over the console and he couldn’t see his hands. The fifth command came with an addendum: “... or I’ll fire!” That did the trick. As soon as the driver exited the car, Pope could see that the subject matched the description of the wanted man.

  Arend asked if maybe the defendant hadn’t heard him. Was his radio on loud? Was there much noise from other cars? No and no.

  “Do you see the man who got out of that car in court here today?” Arend asked.

  “Yes, the man in the blue shirt.”

  “Does he look the same today as he did on the night of his apprehension?”

  “No, his appearance has changed some. His hair was a little longer, for one thing.”

  “Did you eventually get close enough to touch the man?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was there anything unusual about his condition?”

  “Yes. From the waist down, he was soaking wet and muddy.”

  Trooper Pope described the arrest and initial search. A crime scene was established. The car and immediate surroundings were taped off to prevent evidence contamination. No one, including himself, entered the car until the crime scene technicians arrived.

  On cross-examination, Jerry Meisner asked Eddie Pope if when he patted Michael King down as he lay on the asphalt, with his hands cuffed behind his back, had he found any weapons? No. No nine-millimeter gun? No. No bullets? No. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until days later that he helped with a thorough search along the side of the road. No gun. No bullets.

  No further questions.

  CHAPTER 16

  DAY TWO

  Day two began with the jury out. The state requested, on behalf of the victim’s family and loved ones, that TV stations be banned from playing Denise Lee’s 911 tape. Also, the family was concerned that photos of Denise’s remains would be shown on TV.

  Judge Deno Economou said because the request would have needed to be made before the trial started, he couldn’t change what the media could and couldn’t do at this late date. The judge did say, however, that he would request that the media show appropriate taste and consideration. The judge ruled the tape would be played in court, but not until the afternoon. There would be a warning in case anyone needed to leave.

  The prosecution’s first witness of the day was Jane Kowalski, who told Karen Fraivillig that she was a computer consultant from Tampa.

  Jane felt prepared to give her testimony. She had already met with Fraivillig and together they listened to the 911 ta
pe. There was more on there than Jane had remembered. All of the repetition, giving the same answers over and over again, it drove her nuts. Fraivillig had been very specific with Jane Kowalski about what she would be asking, and there had even been a run-through. Fraivillig called it a “dress rehearsal.” Jane said it was a “prep.” Fraivillig told Jane not to be scared, and Kowalski laughed. Being scared wasn’t part of her personality.

  Now, on the witness stand, Jane Kowalski was brimming with confidence. Some witnesses might have had trouble looking at the defendant, but not Jane. He was the one who should be scared.

  The witness testified that she called 911 that day from her car, reporting disturbing noises coming from a car stopped next to hers at a red light in North Port.

  Asked to describe the noises, she testified, “It’s not going to sound like glass, but bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! But even harder than that.”

  “Do you recall the weather and the time of day?”

  “Yes, it had been raining, and had just stopped. It was dusk. There was still light. It had just started to get darker.”

  “What, if anything, did you hear coming from the car?”

  “I heard the most horrific screaming.”

  “Where were you when the screaming started?”

  “I was already stopped at the red light.”

  “Where was your window?” Karen Fraivillig asked, referring to the driver’s-side window being up or down.

  “Cracked,” she said, just open enough to let a little air in.

  “Was there anything obstructing your view?”

  “No.” The car was definitely a Camaro. She admitted, however, that at the time, in the gloaming of the waning day, she thought the car was blue.

  Using a map of the location, the witness showed the jury exactly where she was, and where the Camaro was, when she heard the sounds.

  “Could you describe the screaming?”

  “Horrific. Terrified. I had never heard anything like that in my life.”

  “Loud?”

  “Loud. You would think at first—it’s only natural to think at first that someone is goofing around, but that was not the scream of someone fooling around. It was panicky and terrible.”

  “Did you hear words or just screams?”

  “Just screams.”

  She looked in the defendant’s direction in his car and made eye contact. He turned around and started pushing something down in the backseat. A hand appeared in the window, banging at the glass—the same banging noise she’d heard earlier. Jane was on the handless cell phone with her sister at the time; the banging was so loud, her sister thought someone was banging on Jane’s window.

  “I told her to get a piece of paper and a pen in case I had a chance to get the license plate number.”

  Jane hung up on her sister and called 911. The suspicious car pulled in behind her and slowed way down; so did she. Soon they were forming an uncomfortably slow parade. Twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. The Camaro pulled away from her tail and turned left. She had to go straight, and that was the last she saw.

  The witness identified a recording of the 911 call she had made, in which she described the action in real time. Fraivillig asked her how she knew this was the same tape she heard, and she noted that she had signed and dated the tape after listening.

  As the recording played, jurors squirmed. They heard the focus shift from the screaming captive to the safety and whereabouts of the caller herself, who had pulled over in a mall parking lot miles from the Camaro.

  Jane testified that several days after the incident, she spoke to Detective Christopher Morales, of the North Port Police Department, and was shown a photo lineup. Police gave her no instructions, didn’t coach her in any way, and she was able to make an identification.

  “And is the person whose photo you identified in that lineup in the courtroom today?”

  “Yes. He’s sitting right there in the blue shirt,” the witness said, pointing at the defendant.

  She then identified a photo of the defendant’s Camaro and ID’d it as the car she’d seen on the day of the incident.

  “Since the incident, have you received any requests for interviews from the media?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you at any time receive any compensation for those interviews?”

  “Never.”

  On cross, Jerry Meisner took a tact that might have insulted some jurors’ intelligence. He sought to weaken Jane Kowalski’s testimony by establishing that she could not positively ID the screaming person as the victim. She saw only a hand, no face.

  How much did it really mean when she ID’d a photo of Michael King’s Camaro, when she thought it was blue at the time? She admitted that all Camaros from that time period looked alike—and it was true, she never did get an opportunity to read the license plate number. Was the Camaro alone, or was it being followed by another car? She hadn’t noticed. She admitted that she’d seen a photo of Michael King on the TV news before she ID’d him in the police lineup. However, she insisted she was IDing the man in the car, not the one on TV. And though she hadn’t received payment from any media outlet for any of the interviews she had given, she did once get free airfare and hotel accommodations when she was booked to appear on a show in Los Angeles.

  In retrospect, Karen Fraivillig felt Jane Kowalski had been a fabulous witness. Feisty. She knew what she knew, and she wasn’t going to let a defense attorney convince her otherwise. It was so rare, Fraivillig opined, to put a witness on the stand as articulate as Jane was. The same heightened communication skills apparent on her 911 tape had also illuminated her trial testimony.

  With her testimony given, Jane Kowalski took a seat in the courtroom, right behind the defendant. She couldn’t believe how still and blank he was. “They must have had him on some serious drugs,” she later said.

  Kathy Jackson—a short, soft-spoken woman with curly hair—was called to the stand. She snuck a quick glance at the nearly motionless defendant. Only his icy blue eyes moved, flicking upward and from side to side nervously. He surveyed the courtroom without moving his head or neck.

  Karen Fraivillig questioned Jackson. After a couple of false starts, trying to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear, Jackson testified that she was forty-six years old and lived in Iowa City, Iowa. In 2008, she had lived in Sarasota, where for eighteen months she had worked as a 911 operator for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.

  “What do you currently do for a living, Miss Jackson?” Fraivillig asked.

  “I work for the University of Iowa’s police department.”

  Jackson testified that yes, she was the one who talked to the victim when she used her attacker’s cell phone to call emergency. She’d been given an opportunity earlier in the day to listen to a recording of that call. Yes, the recording was genuine and reflected the events as they occurred. Yes, that was her voice on the recording.

  The recording was accurate, but not as clear as it might be. Jackson remembered the call being much clearer and the voices easier to understand than as recorded.

  She knew the recording in Fraivillig’s hand was the same one she’d listened to, because she had initialed it. Everything was just as she remembered it, unfortunately. There were no additions or deletions. She had also read the transcript of the call, and it, too, was accurate.

  She remembered the call drawing much attention at the 911 center. By the time it was over, “every 911 dispatcher in the room” was involved, feeding Jackson questions to better determine the caller’s location.

  After six minutes of screams, there was nothing. The call had terminated. “When the call hung up, it was devastating. We still had hope, but you just had a feeling that the chances of saving her went way down. Denise’s voice haunts me. I’m just hoping this trial will bring some closure to that.”

  She said the stress she felt over what had happened forced her to completely change her life, to remove herself as best as possible from all memory of Denise Lee�
�s pleas for help.

  She developed emotional problems, falling into what she called a “deep depression.” Within days of Lee’s murder, Jackson was looking for another job. The woman’s voice as she begged to be allowed to see her family again was stuck inside her head. She feared it would never leave, and she would carry Denise Lee’s last moments with her forever like a scar.

  She eventually quit her job and moved more than a thousand miles away, to be back with her own family for a fresh start.

  “It was a call you get once in a lifetime and never want to get again,” she said.

  Jackson had words of admiration for the victim, who had been a very brave woman indeed, trying to steer authorities to her location without alerting her kidnapper.

  “She did everything right to save herself,” Jackson said, now weeping on the witness stand. “It breaks my heart to think how she tried so hard, and we still couldn’t save her.”

  Her testimony given, Jackson dabbed away her tears with a handkerchief and threw her purse strap over her shoulder. She exited the courtroom, a small smile on her face, relief that the ordeal she had been dreading was over. Outside, she was overheard saying she felt better. At least part of the weight had been lifted.

  “It feels like justice is going to be served,” she said.

  The jury left the courtroom right after Kathy Jackson, and the subject inside turned to the heart-wrenching Denise Lee 911 call that the jury was scheduled to hear that afternoon.

  The prosecution moved that, because of the low quality of the tape, and the fact that much of it was unintelligible upon first hearing, the jury be supplied with a copy of the transcript. Testimony had verified the transcript as accurate.

  There was argument regarding the transcript. The defense did have some items deleted, such as when the transcription characterized sounds on the tape as “screaming” and “crying.” Judge Economou agreed to delete those words. The jury would have an opportunity to judge for themselves what the sounds were and what they meant.