when you have xfinity xfi, you have peace of mind built in at no extra cost. advanced security helps keep your family protected online. pause wifi whenever for ultimate control with the xfinity app. and family-safe browsing gives parents one less thing to worry about. security, control and peace of mind. with xfinity xfi, it s all built in at no extra cost. lauren giddings law school classmates couldn t make sense of it. how is it possible their odd, nerdy classmate stephen mcdaniel
lauren s loved ones, including boyfriend david looked on as stephen was sentenced to life in prison. he ll be parole eligible in 2041. stephen, the d.a. believe, had been planning to kill for a long time and took pleasure in what he did to lauren. here is someone who told his friends for years leading up to this that he thought he would commit the perfect murder. it was an obsession for him. his dream was to commit murder and to get away with it. so he had been thinking about this for a long time? oh, yes. and he almost succeeded. had the police not turned up to check out what was then a missing person s case, had their cars not prevented a garbage truck from picking up the bin outside the apartment the body would have never been discovered. and we never would have captured stephen mcdaniel, and we never would have gotten justice.
stephen s place and this time found women s underwear. 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 room. same size and brand and everything. now they felt certain they had their man. they cleared lauren s boyfriend, david, and ex-boyfriend, joe. no surprise at all to lauren s friends. i never thought it was david. i never thought it was joe. they eventually cleared the maintenance man, too. and on august 2nd, five weeks after lauren disappeared, stephen mcdaniel, the quiet, young law school grad, was charged with murder. he maintained his innocence, pleaded not guilty, and really, a crime so awful, a dismembered victim? stephen had seemed so harmless, had no criminal record. the evidence against him was circumstantial.
yes. and what they found told us everything we needed to know about stephen mcdaniel. tell me more about that. some of it is so bad that it can t be captured in photographs or movies because it s so criminal. and it can only be drawn. wow. vile. and yet still not proof that he murdered lauren. so spring 2014, nothing was certain as lauren s family and friends prepare to go to macon for trial. it s like the rest of my life stopped. it was all about lauren in this trial. why do you think it was so important? she was my best friend. she meant the world to me. her family means the world to me. and finding the person responsible? getting justice served was all i cared about. and as the two sides were ready to face off in court with stephen still claiming his
we had to tell him to look at us when we talk to him. but i know that this is hard, but you need to tell it. but it is weighing on you right now, isn t it, stephen? i did not do it. steven did not budge. he insisted he had nothing to do with the murder, and did not know who did. as he talked, investigators combed through his apartment. no blood, no sign of any trouble. but this was interesting. they found some condoms in his dresser drawer. would not be unusual, of course, for a guy stevens age to have condoms, except steven had told investigators he was a virgin, and saving himself for a marriage. interesting. so, the detectives interviewed him, and changed course and said, why do you have condoms? that is where he changed, a little bit. he got quiet. i guess he was thinking.