A Killer's Touch. Michael Benson
“Drive careful.”
“Oh, I shall. Thank you.”
“Bye-bye.”
The communications supervisor tried to establish a patch between North Port and Sarasota and Charlotte Counties so there could be interagency communication regarding the disappearance of Denise Lee. One dispatcher thought the patch needed to be completed before she should “air the call.” Only minutes after Jane Kowalski hung up, there was a shift change, and the new people on duty didn’t even receive the partial messages that the old shift had gotten. Eventually the information from the Kowalski call was put into the Lee file, when someone realized that the struggling child could be a diminutive woman, and the blue Camaro could be green. But still, deputies on the road were not told to respond to the Kowalski call.
Jane Kowalski sat in the parking lot, and sat and sat. She began to fume. She knew a little bit about 911 systems. She had, in fact, worked in the 911 industry. She’d worked for a company that developed 911 software and had been responsible for the software’s implementation.
“I had personally installed the system with my engineers,” she remembered. “I’d spent a lot of time in call centers and seen how they handled calls.” One of the reasons she’d been so precise in the information she gave was the time she spent in emergency call centers. She knew the information that was needed and had given it to them in a calm, concise, and accurate fashion.
She understood the philosophy of keeping the victim talking until the police arrived, which was a good rule if someone was breaking into your house or if you’ve been in an accident. Jane Kowalski was not the victim here, and the perp was miles away by the time she pulled into the parking lot and stopped.
If the dispatcher who’d taken her call had been using a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, one used by emergency systems everywhere, she wouldn’t have had to ask the same questions over and over again. (In reality, Charlotte County did have a CAD system. It simply hadn’t, in this instance, been used properly.)
“I was giving her exact locations,” Jane Kowalski later explained. There were five cop cars within a mile of her. If a CAD system had been in place, they would have been there by the time she hung up the phone.
Instead, she sat in the parking lot. When Jane called a second time, they didn’t know who she was, and the best she could get from the dispatcher was “if we need you, we’ll have someone contact you.” Rightfully feeling that she’d done all she could do, Jane started her car and continued on her trip to see her grandmother.
Later, piecing together what had happened, one deputy sitting in his patrol car estimated that he was sitting at one intersection just as Michael King drove past with Denise Lee in the car.
At 6:50 P.M., a man called 911—apparently, the father of the woman who had called earlier about Michael King borrowing a gas can and a shovel. Because he did not want to get involved with any investigation, the man did not give the operator the whole truth. Caller ID at the police station revealed that the man was making the call from a pay phone, which, he hoped, would further assure his anonymity.
Operator: “911. What’s the location of your emergency?”
Man: “I’m not sure what the emergency is exactly, but I think there’s somebody that’s been taken and they don’t wanna be where they need to be, and they’re in a ’95 green Camaro in North Port somewhere.”
Operator: “Okay, and how do you know this?”
Man: “I don’t know. Just ...”
He told the operator that the man dropped by to borrow a shovel, a gas can, and a flashlight. He asked what the items were for and the man said he had a lawn mower that had broken down and was stuck in a ditch. While they were pulling the requested items out of a tool shed, the caller saw the woman try to escape. She said, “Call the cops” before the visitor struggled with her for maybe thirty seconds and finally managed to push her back into the car and “took off.”
“Did the man say anything to you about the girl?”
“Yeah, he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”
“Okay, the car was a green ’95 Camaro?”
“Yup. With a black ‘bra’ on the front of it.”
“A black ‘bra’?”
“Yup. So ...”
“But you saw them, right?”
“Yes.”
“And where was she?”
“In the car.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who did they take?” the operator asked.
“Some girl.”
“Do you know who the guy is?”
“No.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“Nope.
“Okay, hold on, okay? ... Okay, do you know anything else?”
“Sure don’t.”
“Do you know when you last saw them?”
“Off of Biscayne.”
“Where?”
“Biscayne and Price. It’s hard to tell now.”
“Is he gonna hurt the girl?” the operator inquired.
“I have no idea.”
“You saw them, though?”
“Yeah.”
“And where was she?”
“In the car.”
“Was she okay?”
“She didn’t seem like she wanted to be there. Let me let you go.”
“Can you give me anything else?”
“No. If I find something out, I will.”
“Can I get your name and number?” the operator questioned.
“No. I want to be anonymous.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you back if I hear anything else.”
“Okay, let us know if you hear anything,” the operator concluded.
The caller hung up. The man’s attempt to remain anonymous was in vain. During Denise Lee’s 911 call, police heard King refer to his cousin Harold. As it turned out, King only had one cousin by that name, Harold Muxlow—and sure enough, he lived in North Port.
Early that evening the nearby Lee County emergency operator received a call from a man who identified himself as Shawn Johnson. Earlier in the day, he’d been leaving his job in North Port and heading to Fort Myers, where he was living at the time.
He was at a stoplight on U.S. Route 41 when he heard a cry for help. The intersection was Cranberry Boulevard (about three-quarters of a mile northwest of the spot from which Jane Kowalski called 911). Shawn said he’d rolled down his window and heard the cry again, several times.
The weather was nice, although it had rained earlier, and even though it was late afternoon there was still light enough to see.
Shawn didn’t know what to think at first. He thought maybe it was a joke. He looked over at the car next to him, where the cries seemed to be coming from. For a moment, he and the driver of that car were looking right at one another.
There was something about the sounds of the subsequent screams, and there were as many as eight of them, that made him think this wasn’t a joke.