“What was said?” In other words, was there a fight?
The conversation couldn’t have been more normal. Since it was cool, he advised her to open the windows and kill the air-conditioning, and Denise said she’d already done so.
“She told me she planned on giving our oldest son a haircut today.” Again, no red flag.
The first note of concern came at three o’clock when he got off work. He called her cell phone as he left work, to see if there was anything she needed him to pick up on the way home. No answer. That was odd—but there were plenty of reasons why she might not answer. Maybe she was changing a diaper. She would call back. It was a twenty-five-minute drive from his job to his home. He expected her to call back, but she did not.
Phone records would indicate that Nate was growing worried already. He called Denise’s cell eight times during the twenty-five-minute drive.
That worry grew to out-and-out concern as he pulled his car onto their street. Even before he pulled into the driveway, he could see that the windows—the ones she’d said she’d opened—were now shut.
“What time did you get home?”
“About three-thirty. The boys were in the crib together, and Denise was gone.” He tried to stay calm, not to freak, but he couldn’t help it. She’d never left the boys alone before, and there was no good scenario that explained the facts.
No red flags, but procedures still needed to be followed. Nate had to wait outside while the house was searched.
Inside the house, it was hot. With the windows closed, and the air turned off, the place had heated up. The windows had been pushed down but not latched, as if someone had closed them in a hurry.
A high chair had been moved onto the back patio and there were wispy tufts of blond hair on the floor in front of it, a sign that Denise had been playing barber just as she said she would.
Then the husband saw that she’d left her purse, keys, and cell phone behind; he immediately called 911.
Sergeant Jernigan noted that the front door had two locks. The top one was a dead bolt, the bottom one a regular lock. The bottom lock could be locked from the inside by turning a latch. The dead bolt could be locked only from the outside and required a key.
When Nate Lee had arrived home, the front door had been locked from the inside and pulled shut from the outside. Denise’s key had not been used. Jernigan then looked at Denise’s cell phone, checking for outgoing and incoming calls, to see which people Denise had been in touch with that day. There were several calls back and forth with her husband. She had called one friend, Natalie Mink, that morning. (It turned out Denise left a message and never got through to Natalie.)
Having determined that Denise was no longer there, and that she was gone under suspicious circumstances, Jernigan called a criminal investigator to the scene. He turned out to be Detective Christopher Morales, who would become the case’s lead detective.
At 4:38 p.m., the following message went out over law enforcement’s computer system: MISSING 21 YRO FEMALE DENISE AMBER LEE THIN BUILD BLUE EYES DIRTY BLONDE HAIR 5-2 UNK CLOTHING HER HUSB ARRIVED HOME AT 1530 HRS FOUND THEIR 2 TODDLER CHILDREN ALONE, VEH AND KEYS PURSE STILL AT HOUSE CANNOT LOCATE HER REQUESTING BLOODHOUND.
Morales took a look around the house. No signs of a struggle. No indications of a sex crime. The woman was simply gone. He spoke briefly to the woman next door, and took a look behind the Lee house, where there was a heavily wooded area. There was a lot of scrub, palmetto brushes looking like Oriental fans. There were few nearby houses. The area was kind of desolate.
Morales then returned to the North Port police station, where he organized the search for that Camaro.
At 5:02
P.M.
, a BOLO (be on the lookout) was dispatched for the late 1990s-model green Camaro and Denise Lee, a twenty-one-year-old white female. The BOLO also included a description of a “possible suspect,” a white male, thirty to forty years old, tall, with light brown hair.
The possibility that the crawling Camaro and the woman’s disappearance were separate and unrelated had to be taken into consideration. Eyewitnesses had been wrong before, and some became overzealous when relating their memories, caught up in the drama of the moment. So, four minutes later, all Sarasota County all-terrain vehicle (ATV) operators were requested to report for duty because of the vast wooded areas surrounding the missing woman’s house. There was still a chance that she’d merely wandered off.
A Charlotte County bloodhound-and-handler team arrived on Latour Avenue at 5:21
P.M.
DFC Deryk Alexander’s dog started his search at the front of the house. Finding no trail, he circled the house and sat down in the driveway—very close to the spot where Jenifer-Marie Eckert saw the green Camaro park.
With all of the police activity, neighbors who were home came out of their houses to see what was going on. With her heart pounding, Yvonne Parrish told police about the car she saw speeding away.
“It’s really, really scary that this happened just two houses away,” she later explained.
At 6:14
P.M.
, two and three-quarters hours later, another 911 call was received. Kathy Jackson, brand-new on the job, answered the phone at the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office. She had just passed the dispatcher-training course. Little did she know that the call she was about to handle would change her life, and not at all in a good way.
“911. What is your emergency?”
On the other end of the line was a frightened young woman, whose words seemed disconnected, not quite in response to the operator’s question.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just wanna go—”
“Hello?” the operator said.
There were unintelligible sounds on the other end, sounds of feminine anxiety and terror. The woman was speaking, but not into the phone, not to the operator.
The operator then heard words that could be understood, the words of a man saying, “Why’d you do that?”
“I’m sorry,” the woman could be heard to say. “I just want to see my family.”
It took the operator a moment to figure it out. The woman was speaking to her attacker, or abductor, or whatever he was.
“Hello? Hello?” the operator said.
A sound could be heard from the man, perhaps unintelligible words, perhaps just an animalistic growl.
The woman said, “Oh, please. I just want to see my family again. Let me go.”
The operator: “Hello?”
The man: “What the fuck is going on?”
The woman: “Please let me go. Please let me go. I just want to see my family again.”
The man: “No fuckin’ problem.”
The woman: “Okay.”
The operator: “Hello?”
The man’s accusatory tone could be heard, but his words couldn’t be understood.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, her voiced reduced by terror into an infantile whine.
The man said, “I was gonna let you go, and then you go and fuck around.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman repeated. “Please let me go.”
The man: “Now we got to go in the next street because of him.”
The man was unaware that the phone had been connected to the emergency operator. He was scolding the woman for alerting people in their vicinity of her distress. Perhaps they were in a car.
“Now I want to bring you in there again,” the man said. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“Please let me go, please. Please—oh, God, please.”
The man could be heard scolding more. Only the end of the statement could be understood: “... in front of my cousin Harold!”
The operator tried again: “Hello?”
The man: “I told you I would.”
The operator: “Hello?”
The woman: “Help me!”
The operator: “What’s the address?”
“Please help me!”
“What’s the address where you’re at? Hello?”
“Please let me go. Help me. I don’t know.” Perhaps she was trying to answer the operator’s question without her attacker knowing it.
The man said, “Calm down.”
The operator: “Hello?”
The woman: “Please let me go.”
The operator: “What is the address that you’re at? Hello, ma’am?”
The woman, now talking to her attacker: “Where are we going?”
The man replied, “I got to go up and around now because of him.”
The woman asked, “Up and around where?”
The man answered incredulously, “Didn’t you see?” Then, after a phrase the operator couldn’t make out, the man added, “Exactly right four or five streets over from your house.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, meaning she hadn’t seen. “Tell me where?”
She was very clever, trying to get the man to state their location and destination while the 911 operator listened in.
The operator: “What’s your name, ma’am? Hello?”
The woman: “Please ...”
The operator: “What’s your name?”
“Please, my name is Denise. I’m married to a beautiful husband and I just want to see my kids again.”
The operator: “Your name is Denise?”
Denise, again talking to her attacker: “I’m sorry.”
By this time, the operator had things figured out. Denise had called 911, but her attacker didn’t know it. She was trying to give the information the operator requested without her attacker realizing what was going on.
“Please, God, please protect me.”
The operator: “Are you on I-75?”
Then the male on the other end of the line could be heard saying, “What did you do with my cell phone?”
Denise replied, “I don’t know. What do you mean?” There was an unintelligible phrase, followed by her saying, “Protect me.”
The operator: “Where are you at? Can you tell us if you’re on I-75?”
Denise said, “I don’t know where your phone is. I’m sorry.”
The man: “You be honest with me... .”
Denise: “Can’t you tell me where we are?”
The operator: “Are you blindfolded? If you are, press the button.”
Denise: “I don’t have your phone. Please, God.”
The man: “Look around and think. Well, not that ... that’s too little.”
Denise: “I don’t have it. Sorry.”
Operator: “Denise, do you know this guy?”
Denise: “I don’t. I don’t have it. I’m sorry. I don’t know where your phone is. I’m sorry.”
More words from the man, but the operator couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Operator: “Denise, do you know this guy?” Then, aside to someone at the dispatch center: “She might have the phone laid down and not hear a thing I’m saying, too. He keeps saying about the phone and she ...”
Denise: “I don’t know where it is. Maybe if I could see I could help you find it. No, sir.”
Operator: “Denise ...”
Denise: “I’m looking for it. Uh-huh.”
Operator: “How long have you been gone from your house?”
Denise: “I don’t know.”
Operator: “Do you know how long you’ve been gone from your house? What’s your last name?”
Denise: “Lee.”
Operator: “Lee?”
Denise: “Yeah.”
Operator: “Do you know what street?”
Denise: “I don’t know where your phone is.”
Operator: “Your name’s Denise Lee?”
Denise: “Uh-huh.”
Operator: “Can you tell at all what street you’re on?”
Denise: “No.”
Operator: “Do you know this guy that’s with you?”
Denise: “No.”
Operator: “What’s your address? What’s your home address? Do you know?”
The man’s voice could be heard again: “I told you (unintelligible) cell.”
Denise: “I don’t know. Please just take me to my house. Can you take me to my home? On Latour, please.”
Operator: “Can you see, or do you have a blindfold on?”
Denise: “I can’t see. Where are we?”
There was more unintelligible anger from the man.
Operator: “Can they turn off the radio or turn it down?”
Denise: “I can’t hear you. It’s too loud. Where are we?”
Man: “Give me the phone.”
Denise: “Are you going to hurt me?”
Man: “Give me the phone.”
Denise: “Are you going to let me out now?”
Man: “As soon as I get the phone.”
Denise: “Help me.”