Outside of our command post. we were trying to talk to him and he just aired like he was staring off into space. he was shaking and he just step it s a karen off into space. finally at we gave him a painful a sternum stimulant stimuli to check the scene to see if their conscious are alert. so i parked him up a little bit? it woke him up all of a sudden like he came to life and said, what happened? we don t know what was going on in his mind that made him act like that. was it just a price? or what? stephen had already allowed detectives to bring a cadaver dug into his apartment and did show some interest. but it is hard to know if it meant anything. but that combined with stephen s odd behavior was enough to
Student and next door neighbor. he s telling we ve been trying to look for lauren. we ve been out trying to find her. we don t know where she is. when stephen started talking to the local station, he said was chatty. but then the reporter broke the news to stephen that a body had been found. here s what happened then. i think that s where they had recover the body, or whatever they recover from there. a body? had you heard. stephen stopped as if struck. are you okay, sir? i think i need to sit down. i thought it was odd. very odd. lieutenant gatlin checked on him. he was sitting on a cooler
inside this is the maintenance room. they found this other door. a maintenance closet, locked up tight. they used a key and looked inside. and found something a hacksaw with something on it. it looks like there is blood on each end of the saw blade. we re obviously something but he had to rinse it off but didn t do a thorough job. but wait a minute, who had a key to the closet? the maintenance man. he had a master key to all of the apartments in the complex. and the door where they kept supplies in the lunchroom. did you bring them in for questioning? we brought him back in. the maintenance man said he didn t buy that hacksaw. and provided an alibi. but by then the investigators knew, the maintenance man wasn t the only one with keys. because, in stephen s apartment we found two keys on his dresser that stood out. one was a brand-new key. the other was a key with a georgia bulldog. they tested the georgia
Take him back downtown to the station for another check. new questions. a little more pointed now. were you friends with, lauren? look at yes. look at me when you re talking to me, son. okay? were you friends were there. yes. every answer is yes. we told him to look at as when you re talking to us. stephen, did you hurt lauren? no. i know this is hard for you to tell it. but it s wean on you right now, isn t it, stephen? i didn t do it. stephen didn t budge.
He insisted he had nothing to do with the murder and didn t 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. wouldn t be unusual of course, for a guy stephens each to have condoms. except, stephen had told investigators he was a virgin. and saving himself for marriage. interesting. so, the detectives sort of change course and and said, why do you have condoms? that was where he changed a little bit. he got quiet. i guess he was thinking. and then he said, i got it from so-and-so s apartment. and a mission that he s still condoms? yes. he admitted it right out of the apartments of two of his neighbors. so we charged him with burglary. and while they held him, they took a good hard look all around the apartment complex. this is like a community laundry room for the residents. it s got washers and dryers.
Separate interview rooms without their cellphones. cut off from the news outside. answering questions. among them, the apartment complex maintenance man, also a law student. who said he hadn t seen lauren for a while. her neighbor said he hadn t seen her either. stephen, the law student right next door who help trying to find her you ve been home, all week right? mom. but you said the last time you ve seen lauren was either last week or the week before. but it s been a few days. yeah. we stephen didn t exactly look like a lawyer to be but he d been her neighbor for three years. and served with her in the local branch of the federalist citing. but like everyone else he said he d been busy studying. with harper prep we
The attorney should be thrown. did you believe that the prosecution was particularly worried about your challenges? yes, i did think they were. this, the defense attorney had known and admired. i was her teacher in a transition course from law school into law practice. a fact he tool stephen before joining his defense team. stephen was all right was it with it. anyway that s why we he knew lauren herself was opposed to the death penalty so. he took it as a victory lap. the da withdrew it. but then technology. the georgia had searched stevens computers. but now they had new software. the de-asked him to take
Into our apartment in the middle of the night and that he attacked her. stephen said he strangled lauren to death then dismembered her body. put her torso in the trash bin of the apartment. the other remains in the law school dumpster. over the years, police and volunteered search for countless hours. even dug up a landfill. but never found anything. lauren s loved ones, including boyfriend david, looked on as stephen was sentenced to life in prison. he will be paroled eligible in 2041. stephen, the da believes, had been planning to kill for a long time. and took pleasure in what he did to lauren. it was an obsession for him. his dream was to commit murder and to get away with it. and he almost succeeded. had the police not turned up to check out was then a missing persons case. had their cars not prevented a garbage crock truck from picking up a bin outside the apartment. the body would ve never been discovered and we never would have captured his stephen mcdaniel. and we never would ve gotten justice. and now memories. of a friends last party. i remember hugging her, saying goodbye
Conclusion of the water. lauren giddings s law school friends couldn t make sense of it. how is it possible there odd, nerdy classmate, stephen mcdaniel, could do such a horrible thing? he was trying to make it seem like he was this innocent, bystander. and a friend of lauren. when big county district attorney david cook took over it was already a case. but he wasn t sure it should be. but after all they had no evidence to prove the cause of death. and this was a gruesome crime. yet none of stephen s dna was found in lauren s apartment. and aside from the underwear, none of lauren s dna was found in stevens. police and the circumstantial evidence they did have a good defense attorney could raise reasonable doubt. perhaps clearly steven had been framed. he could reasonably argue that the crime scene, particularly his apartment, was it adequately secure.