The Murder of Lauren Giddings

 

Despite not being common for Lauren Giddings, no one in the law library had seen for days and were becoming worried.

Her studies almost completed at Mercer and preparing to take the bar exam while living in an apartment across from her college, Lauren was clueless, despite having a sharp mind, that someone was watching her.

"She never mentioned being in fear for her safety," said sister Kaitlyn Wheeler. "She mentioned on one trip a year before when she came home she felt things had been moved around, someone had been in her apartment."

Lauren's studies kept her busy and she wasn't curious about the incident, so it was not surprising that Lauren was unknowingly someone's prey.

When fellow graduate Stephen McDaniel, who lived across from the law school, asked her out, Lauren declined when she told him she was dating someone else.

A weekend come and gone, and Lauren could not be found anywhere. At first her family wasn't concerned as Lauren repeatedly told them she would be studying 24-7 for the bar exam. Lauren's friends, on the other hand, were already on the case looking for answers to Lauren's sudden disappearance, one even calling police, who showed up at Lauren's apartment, and after seeing no signs of a break-in, left immediately.

Missing for just four days, Stephen McDaniel was one who was involved in searching for law student.

Her sister, Kaitlyn, in desperation, asked a friend to gain access to Lauren's apartment with a hidden key.

"She went in and called me back and said that all of her stuff was there: purse, keys, the car was still out front, wallet, school I.D.," said Kaitlyn, causing her friends news to be a game-changer with red flags.

When police were called, the case would take a dramatic turn.

"There was no witness it was just a matter of interviewing anybody who lived at that complex or anybody who associated with Lauren," said Macon Police Sgt. Scott Chapman.

Lauren's missing-person case would become more sinister as investigators investigated the outside of the building.

"So started looking a little close around the outside and discovered the trash bag that was in one of the Dumpsters, once they were able to open the bag and look in and discovered her body," said Bibb County Sheriff's Lt. Randy Gonzalez. "We just found her torso. There was no limbs attached and of course her head was missing as well, so she just had a torso."

At the crime scene, there was two breaks for investigators: (1) a dumpster that was supposed to be collected that morning, happened to be running late, was found to have Lauren's remains and DNA evidence when police discovered it. (2) then there was Stephen McDaniel's weird performance in his interview with Crime Watch Daily at Macon, Georgia affiliate station WGXA-TV. Investigators found McDaniel's reaction upon hearing that Lauren's body found highly suspicious. But McDaniel instead told reporter he wished he had let Lauren borrow of his guns for protection.

It didn't deter investigators, who looked closer at McDaniel, a 25-year-old law graduate described as “quirky” but “intelligent” by friends, learned McDaniel seemed creepy with an obsession with zombies, and would repeatedly ask friends how to commit the perfect murder.

Then the evidence started piling up!

"He had in his possession both a master key and key to her apartment and he had a flash drive that belonged to her that contained hundreds of her personal photos," said Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke. "His computer history showed an interest in her Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Sometimes he would be searching for images of her around the same time that he was looking up violent pornography. Of course we found her underwear in his apartment."

The most damning evidence—which Lauren probably had no idea—was when police say McDaniel somehow had free access to her apartment for awhile and was apparently stalking her.

"The linchpin in all this was when we found deleted video he had used to survey her home," said D.A. Cooke. "The night it appears that she was murdered and that was found in a camera in his possession, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. He had took a wooden pole and had duct-taped or somehow fixed that camera to the end of the pole and then held the pole up really high to peek inside her window."

When Lauren's remains were found, McDaniel was arrested on unrelated burglary charges, and police jumped at the chance to interrogate him. Within only a few weeks, McDaniel was charged with the murder of Lauren Giddings.

After years of surmounting evidence against him, McDaniel accepted a plea deal of guilty to murder where he confessed to the lurid details in court, telling the court how he entered Lauren's apartment at 4:30 a.m. Wearing a mask.

He explained: "She saw me and said very calmly, 'Get the [expletive] out.' I leaped across the bed onto her and grabbed her around the throat."

"He pled to breaking into Lauren's apartment, to strangling her, to moving her to the bathroom, to taking her body apart, to hiding it, to ripping up evidence and putting it down the toilet, cleaning up everything and then acting like she was still alive," said Kaitlyn Wheeler.

McDaniel said that during the struggle Lauren pulled the mask from his face, and pleaded "Stephen, please stop!"

After Lauren was dead, McDaniel dragged her body to the bathtub where he left her. He later returned sometime that night, dismembering her body with a hacksaw blade. Police found the cover of the blade with Lauren's DNA at McDaniel's apartment.

"He told us that the rest of the remains were placed in a different dumpster but by the time he told us that there was no way to recover her remains," said David Cooke.

The rest of Lauren Gidding's remains have never been recovered.

Stephen McDaniel was sentenced to prison with a life sentence—the only justice Lauren Giddings and her family have gotten.