Denise Amber Leewas in the back of her abductor's car, fighting for her life.Michael Kinghad raped her, blindfolded her and tied her up after kidnapping her from her Florida home in broad daylight. Even so, when King briefly got out of the car, Lee managed to grab his phone and dial 911.
"Please. My name is Denise," a frantic Lee tolda 911 dispatcher. "I'm married to a beautiful husband, and I just want to see my kids again."
Lee's call to 911 was one of four within minutes of each other. Another came from a driver who heard Lee screaming for her life and saw her struggling in the backseat as King drove. The caller stayed on the linefor nine minutes, giving a 911 dispatcher real-time updates on Lee's location as police swarmed the region looking for her.
Authorities had everything they needed to save Lee and capture King. But through a series of mistakes and apparent incompetence, 911 dispatchers never got the information to police who were seconds away.
Lee's body was found two days later, naked in a shallow grave. The 21-year-old stay-at-home mom of two sons had been fatally shot once above her right eye.
Now almost 20 years later, Florida is set to execute King by lethal injection on Tuesday, March 17. King's death will bring to a close a case that made national news, exposed the vulnerabilities of the 911 system in Florida and beyond, and led to reform within the industry.
"I'm ready for this to be over," Lee's husband, Nathan Lee, said of the execution in an interview with USA TODAY on Friday, March 13. "I don't want to have to think about this guy anymore."
Here's what you need to know about the case, the execution, and more about who Denise Lee was and how her young husband dedicated his life to preventing the kind of failures that cost his wife her life.
Who was Denise Amber Lee?
Denise Amber Lee was the daughter of a sergeant with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Department, and grew up with a brother and sister Englewood, Florida, just south of Sarasota on the Gulf Coast.
She started dating her future husband when they connected while in the same calculus class at a local community college. Nathan Lee said he knew pretty quickly that Denise was the one for him.
"Obviously she was beautiful ... She was intelligent, she was really smart, and I could tell she was a little bit goofy, which I really liked," he told USA TODAY. "Once we started dating, I knew really quickly very early. I was pretty sure I met my future wife."
He said it was the way she looked at him. "Like I was the most important person on the planet to her," he recalled.
When Denise became pregnant, both their parents wanted them to get married, he said. His proposal wasn't all that romantic but it says everything about how the young couple made sense together.
"We were just sitting on our couch in our apartment and I pretty much asked her, 'What are you thinking about the whole marriage thing?'" he recalled. "She was like, 'I'm fine getting married.' And I'm like, 'I'm fine getting married. So we went down to Walmart and got her engagement ring."
He said that "it sounds really cheesy, but we didn't care."
"She just wanted to marry me and I wanted to marry her," he said. "We didn't care how fancy it was. She just loved me."
Though Denise had wanted to become a lawyer, that took a back burner after the couple married when she was 19 and had their first son, Noah. Their second son, Adam, came about 18 months later. Denise wanted a daughter after that, and was considering a career as a children's speech therapist, something she had become passionate about as she researched why her oldest son was taking a bit longer to start talking.
"She loved kids. I don't think she realized how much she loved kids until she had them," Nathan Lee said. "As soon as she held Noah in her arms for the first time, she fell in love. The same with Adam. She was definitely made for it."
What happened to Denise Amber Lee?
On the afternoon of Jan. 17, 2008, 21-year-old Denise Amber Lee was at home in North Port, Florida, doing what she loved: taking care of her sons, 2-year-old Noah and 6-month-old Adam. Her husband, Nathan Lee, was working one of his three jobs that supported the family.
A man named Michael King was driving around their neighborhood, apparently looking for victims, when he spotted Lee on her front porch, trimming Noah's hair.
No one saw what happened, but King was able to kidnap Lee at gunpoint. When husband Nathan Lee arrived home less than an hour later around 3:20 p.m., he found the house locked. His sons were inside, and so were Denise Lee's purse, keys and phone. Knowing something was terribly wrong, he called 911. Denise's sheriff's sergeant father helped deploy a massive police response.
Roughly four hours after the kidnapping − as police swarmed the area looking for her − Denise Lee was able to use King's phone to call 911. Unbeknownst to him for more than six minutes, the line was open and the dispatcher could hear everything. The recording of the call is harrowing and gut-wrenching as Lee sobs and begs for her life.
Advertisement
"I just want to see my family. Please let me go," she screams. "God help me!"
For over six minutes, the dispatcher sounds at times indifferent and at times annoyed. She says "Hello" 13 times amid Lee's hysterical cries, and continuously asks for her name, location, what her address is, and how long she's been gone from her home, even though it's apparent that Lee cannot speak freely and even after Lee gives her some of those answers. The dispatcher does not express empathy or offer words of comfort and at one point, she asks Lee if the kidnapper can turn the radio down.
About 15 minutes later, another 911 call comes in froma woman named Jane Kowalski, who sees Denise Lee slapping the back window of King's car and hears her screaming for help.
For many minutes, Kowalski relays the car's precise location, information that could have led officers straight to her. But 911 dispatchers didn't get the critical information to the many officers frantically searching for Denise Lee. The dispatcher who took the call wasn't entering the information into a computer, which angered her fellow dispatchers, and a dispute among the three is largely responsible for the failure, said Nathan Lee, who later filed a civil lawsuit over the matter that the Charlotte County Sheriff's Departmentsettled in 2012for $1.2 million.
As part of the settlement, the sheriff's office did not admit any wrongdoing. Two of the dispatchers were suspended for a few days, Nathan Lee said.
Before King killed Denise Lee, there was another missed opportunity to save her life.
Before Lee's call to 911,King made a stop at his cousin's houseand asked him for a gas can, a shovel and a flashlight. Though the cousin saw Lee in the back of the car and heard her holler, "Call the cops," he did nothing as King loaded up the items and then drove away with her. Both the cousin and his daughter later called 911 separately, but it was far too late.
The cousin later told police that he thought Lee was one of King's "psycho" girlfriends. He didn't face charges in the case.
Nathan Lee dedicates himself to improving 911 industry
Today, Nathan Lee runsthe Denise Amber Lee Foundation, which is dedicated to improving 911 system across the country. Lee travels throughout the nation and tells his wife's story to dispatchers in hopes that no one goes through what his wife did.
As a result of the foundation's work and lessons learned from Denise Lee's murder, he said a number of states have passed legislation beefing up training requirements for dispatchers. His wife's case is so infamous in the industry, he said that "it's very rare to find a dispatcher that hasn't heard the story."
"Trainers and dispatch centers all over the country tell all new hires about Denise," he said, adding that the industry has been very supportive and that dispatchers have some of the toughest and most traumatic jobs in the country.
Inciting change has been a comfort amid the sea of grief, Nathan Lee said. Anger over the missed opportunities to save his wife's life was part of her whole family's grieving process, he said.
"You lose someone, and you're already dealing with the loss. And then you add on top of it how she was killed, the horror she went through ... It haunted me for a really long time," he said. "Then you sprinkle on the 911 stuff and all these opportunities where she should have been saved."
Now he knows that countless people have been helped as a result of Denise Lee's story.
"She mattered and she's making a difference," Nathan Lee said. "And that's all you can do after this. Just hope that she didn't die in vain."
When is Michael King's execution?
Florida is set to execute Michael King at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 17, at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.
King's attorneys areasking the U.S. Supreme Courtfor a stay of execution, citing concerns over howthe state is carrying out lethal injections. The state's Attorney General's Officehas dismissed their claimsas "nothing more than stalling for time."
Among the witnesses to King's execution will be Denise Lee's husband, oldest son Noah, parents, brother and sister, according to Nathan Lee, who said he's hoping to feel some relief afterward.
"The word 'closure' is thrown around so loosely. You don't get closure in these situations," he said. "The day he was sentenced we were all standing out in front of the courthouse, and we all knew that when this day comes we need to be there. We need to be there for Denise in solidarity."
Contributing: The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Denise Amber Lee called 911 from kidnapper's car. It didn't save her.