Killer of stay-at-home mom whose death led to 911 reform is executed

Michael King kidnapped Denise Amber Lee from her Florida home in broad daylight in 2008. If it weren’t for a botched 911 call, Lee may have survived the ordeal.

Florida has executed a death row inmate for the rape and murder of a stay-at-home mom whose death exposed the vulnerabilities of the 911 system nationwide and led to reform within the industry.

Michael King, 54, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, March 17, for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 21-year-old Denise Amber Lee. King abducted the married mother of two young sons from her home in broad daylight on Jan. 17, 2008, less than an hour before Lee’s husband returned from work.

Lee may have survived the ordeal if not for the 911 dispatchers who failed her.

A driver who heard Lee screaming for her life and saw her struggling in the backseat of King’s car called 911 and stayed on the line for nine minutes, giving dispatchers real-time updates on Lee’s location as police swarmed the region looking for her. But through a series of mistakes and apparent incompetence, the dispatchers never got the information to police who were seconds away.

Within a few hours of the call, King took Lee to a wooded area, fatally shot her in the face and left her body in a shallow grave.

Now just over 18 years later, King was pronounced dead in Florida’s execution chamber at 6:13 p.m. ET on Tuesday. As he died, Lee’s widower, oldest son, parents and siblings stood as witnesses, all dressed in pink for her favorite color.

King did not apologize or ask for forgiveness as he spoke his last words, according to media witness The Associated Press.

“Since finding Jesus in prison, I have tried to live as his disciple obeying the two great commandments: To love God with all my heart, my mind and all my being, and to love my neighbor − to include everyone − my family, Denise Lee’s family, everyone in the gallery,” and the execution team, he said in in what the AP said were nearly inaudible words relayed by Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ office.

Here’s what you need to know about the execution, how 911 dispatchers botched Lee’s rescue and more about who Denise Amber Lee was.

Denise Amber Lee’s family speaks out after execution

After he witnessed the execution, Denise Amber Lee’s father called his daughter a “hero” and Michael King “a coward.”

“The only thing that made him brave that day is that he had a 9 mm gun to my daughter’s head,” said Rick Goff, a police detective who was a sergeant with the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department at the time of the murder.

He said his daughter showed so much bravery in the back of King’s car, planting her wedding ring and many of her hairs in the vehicle so that investigators would be able to definitely prove that she had been it. The evidence proved critical at trial.

“She took a killer off the street,” Goff said. “She saved a lot of people’s lives by what she did.”

Denise Amber Lee’s husband, Nathan Lee, said that he was glad the execution was over so his family can focus on moving forward. His oldest son, who was 2 when his mother was murdered, said the execution gave him a sense of closure.

“I, unfortunately, didn’t get the opportunity to know her and be raised by her,” Noah Lee said.

Her younger brother, Tyler Lee, said the fact that King didn’t apologize or show any remorse “really shows the true coward he is.”

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 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 Lee’s father, a local sheriff’s sergeant, 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 Denise Lee sobs and begs for her life.

“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 from a 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 Department settled in 2012 for $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.

Today, Nathan Lee runs the 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, including Florida. His wife’s case is so infamous in the industry, he said that “trainers and dispatch centers all over the country tell all new hires about Denise.”

“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.”

More about who Denise Amber Lee was

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 recently told USA TODAY that 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 the couple’s parents wanted them to get married, he said. His proposal wasn’t all that romantic but it says everything about how Denise and Nathan were perfect for each other.

“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.”

Who was Michael King?

Michael King was a 36-year-old, out-of-work plumber who had no serious criminal history at the time of Denise Lee’s murder. He grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, with three brothers, and had moved to North Port, Florida just days before before he killed Lee.

King’s relationships with women were troubled, with his own wife walking out on him and calling him meek and deceitful, according to an archived news story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network.

King had faced allegations of sexual harassment from various women, and one woman said he had raped her, but none of the accusations were reported to police, the Herald-Tribune reported.

Family members reported that King could tell tall tales, was somewhat dim-witted and acted like an “oddball” at times. They attributed his behavior to a childhood sledding accident in which King’s head crashed into a metal barn support − an injury that caused buzzing in his head at night even as an adult, his family told the newspaper.

King’s attorneys had recently argued for a stay of execution to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing concerns over how the state is carrying out lethal injections. The state’s Attorney General’s Office dismissed their claims as “nothing more than stalling for time.”

His last meal before being executed included pizza, ice cream and soda.

Among the witnesses to the execution were Denise Lee’s husband, parents and siblings.

“The word ‘closure’ is thrown around so loosely. You don’t get closure in these situations,” Nathan Lee told USA TODAY ahead of the execution. “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.”

Florida’s rapid execution rate continues

Michael King’s execution is the seventh in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Florida alone as the Sunshine State continues a rapid rate of carrying out executions.

Last year, 47 inmates were executed in the U.S., a number that hadn’t been seen since 2009. Of those executions, a state record 19 were in Florida, or about 40 percent. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis began signing more death warrants than any other governor in Florida history last year, and the uptick remains steady.

DeSantis has said that the inmates being executed are the worst of the worst and that he wants to bring closure to victim who’ve waited sometimes decades for justice.

The next execution in the U.S. is that of James Duckett in Florida on March 31. Duckett was convicted of raping and murdering 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee in 1987 while he was a 30-year-old rookie police officer in Mascotte, about 30 miles west of Orlando.