The Creepy Neighbor – Part Two [06]

Stephen McDaniel thought he could outsmart the authorities. But this law school student accidentally told on himself... and it was all caught on camera.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M HM. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the authors and participants and do
not necessarily represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media,
or its employees. Listener discretion is advised from my Heart
Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Monster presents Insomniac. I'm Scott Benjamin,

(00:26):
and everything I'm about to tell you is real. Every
time someone in my life dies, I feel like I
always want to know exactly what's going on with their
dead body. I'm always curious as to what stage of
the process they're in as far as getting ready for
their funeral. I wonder about the little details, too, the

(00:48):
various steps of body transportation, the vehicles used by the
corner and the funeral home, the facilities the body is
stored in, how they clean and embalm, how they addressed
the deceased for the funeral, the person's hair and makeup,
all of the steps along the way. I know it's strange,
yet I can't seem to get through a funeral without

(01:08):
wondering all of these things. The deceased person occupies my
thoughts in this way for weeks afterwards too, if not months.
It's something I've been obsessed with for many years, maybe
as long as twenty, and I can't seem to stop.
I know that Diane is something we all face at
some point in our lives, some sooner than others. But

(01:29):
I want to know the details now ahead of time,
not that it will matter so much when I'm actually gone.
It's a person's final appearance before they're put into the
ground forever. This is insomniac. It was Thursday, June eleven,

(01:59):
around nine a m. Making Police detectives that just pulled
their cars into the parking lot of the Barrister's Hall apartments,
inadvertently blocking the rollaway garbage bins as they did so.
They were there to follow up on a missing person's report.
As he made his way from apartment to apartment, Detective
Scott Chapman eventually knocked on Stephen McDaniel's door and the

(02:20):
two spoke about his missing neighbor. A short time later,
Lead Detective David Patterson also interviewed McDaniel in his squad car.
After Stephen was back in his own apartment, the detectives
made a grim discovery around a m A Torso, soon
to be identified as Lawrence Torso, was found in one

(02:44):
of the roll away trash cans next to the apartment building.
A short time later, Stephen McDaniel, still unaware of the
discovery of lawrence remains, was driven to the Making Police
Departments Detective Bureau, where he gave a video recorded state
and to Detective Patterson. When Stephen was asked for consent

(03:05):
to search his apartment along with the other tenants of
the eight unit department building, Stephen declined. He made an
excuse that he had several firearms in his apartment and
he didn't want anyone near them. As they spoke to Stephen,
suspicion continued to grow in the minds of the detectives,
and his entire afternoon was filled with interviews. The police

(03:30):
continued to pressure Stephen to allow them into his apartment
for a search, and even told him that everybody else
who lived in the building except for him, had given
consent to search. Eventually, Stephen gave into the pressure and
allowed Detective Patterson to look in his apartment to search
for the missing woman. At that point in the interview,

(03:52):
Detective Patterson asked Stephen to stand up and lift his
shirt to check for any marks he might have on
his body. There were two red scratches on the right
side of his abdomen, scratches that Stephen couldn't account for.
He didn't know where or when he received the scratches,
but Patterson mentioned that the marks looked like fingernail marks.

(04:16):
The scratches were photographed, and then they departed the police
station headed to Stephen's apartment for a walkthrough. It was
now mid afternoon on j about one PM, and McDaniel
was still unaware that the torso had been discovered. He
assumed the trash had been removed earlier that morning before

(04:36):
the detectives had arrived. Back at Stephen's apartment, Detective Patterson
and an investigator from the District Attorney's office conducted a
walk through to supposedly look for Lauren, although they were
already fairly certain that it was her torso they had
found earlier that morning. They noted that Stephen owned a

(04:59):
samurai so, several large knives, a semi automatic rifle, and
a pair of handguns. There was also a large cooler
near the front door. Until now, Stephen was allowed to
stay while they searched his apartment, but at some point
Stephen was asked to leave to allow them some room

(05:20):
to conduct their business. That's when, as Steven headed toward
the Mercer Law School campus on the other side of
the street, a local news crew waved him over, leading
to one of the most bizarre news interviews you'll ever see.

(05:47):
It was around two pm on the afternoon of June
eleven when McDaniel told Michelle Cassada, a reporter with Makon's
Fox affiliate w g x A t V, that he
would do an interview. As the interview began, Stephen was
still unaware that more than four hours earlier, Lauren Giddings
Torso was discovered in a trash camp beside his apartment building.

(06:11):
On camera, McDaniel looks more than a little bit disheveled,
crazy eyed, and his hair a mess, presumably because his
friend Lauren Giddings was missing, but he was able to
keep it together fairly well for the first part of
the interview. His concern for her well being was all
in act. Of course, However, he was about to be

(06:32):
slapped in the face by the reality of his situation.
As the reporter presented McDaniel was some new information. This
was the first time he was aware that a body
had been discovered on the property. Of course, Stephen knew
Laurence Torso was there all along. That's where he left
it two days earlier, but he had no idea that

(06:52):
the body had been found. What unfolded within that brief
interview would be remembered and screwanized by everyone who saw
it on television that evening, including the detectives that were
now on the case. His strange on air performance, combined
with the rest of his theatrics on display throughout the day,

(07:13):
made Stephen an immediate person of interest in the case.
As we played the audio for you, you'll hear when
Steven goes silent that appears to go into shock as
he absorbs the news and the new reality of the situation.
Here's that interview. I'm no, no, no one has seen

(07:33):
her sincerity. I haven't seen anything. I'm We've always seen
a noise outside, but just people walking by pretty much.
And she just recently graduated the person. Yeah, she and
I were we were both j D students. Um we
graduated back in May. What kind of person was she?
I mean, how did you? What did im? She's as

(07:55):
nice as can be. I'm very personable, very much people person.
Do you know any and the enemies. You might have
had somebody that might want to hurt her. No, I'm
we're we don't know where she is. I'm the only
thing we can think is that maybe she went out
running and someone snatched her. Because I'm we went, we
went over. One of her friends had a key. We

(08:16):
went inside and tried to see if there was anything amiss.
But she had a door jam that was sitting right
by it, so there's no sign that anyone broke in.
I'm door was locked when everyone got here. We just
don't know where she is. And what about in the
like the parking lot area. I know they've been doing

(08:37):
a lot of I think that's where they had recovered
the body or whatever they recovered from there. Had you
heard and it had just seen anything there? Had just
get anything there? I mean, we don't know if this
is a stake person, you know what I mean, Like
they said about a body to earth here, we don't
know if the stake person. So that's how we're trying
to ask people if they know who lived there? Are

(09:00):
you okay there? I think I need to sit down. Okay. Remarkably,
Stephen returns to the interview just a few minutes later
with some of the worst acting you've ever seen, as
the attempts to pretend to be upset that Lauren might

(09:21):
be dead again. It's all in act. Why would anyone
do this or anything? H I started something. Maybe I
could have helped. Okay, do you want us to dumper

(09:45):
them in? H Are you holding out any more? Right now?
All right? Hi? Hi? Hope if they founded on on
the property somewhere, yeahardy thing about a body and that

(10:07):
he were talking to that. As far as any of
us knew, they were still trying to just find her thing.
We got an email this morning from some people that
live on the other side of Kroeger, on the other
side of the river that they had seen her in
the past running in that area. We thought maybe someone
had snatched her over there, or maybe she got hurt

(10:28):
or something. After looking through Steven's apartment in the afternoon
and his unusual behavior on local television that evening, the
detectives wanted Stephen brought in once again for questioning. On
the night of He was interrogated throughout the evening until

(10:52):
the early hours of the next day, July one. Surprisingly,
especially from a recent criminal law graduate, there was no
request from Stephen to have a lawyer present during his interrogation. Also,
there was no confession or no admission of guilt, but
the police already had more than a strong suspicion that

(11:14):
he was the one. Throughout the two hour interrogation, Stephen
is the opposite of how he acted in front of
the television camera earlier that day. Most of his answers
are one word yes, and occasionally and is added to
the mix, all delivered in a monotone, robotic manner, nothing

(11:37):
at all like the talkative character they had encountered earlier
in the day. The police did, however, catch one break
during his interrogation. Stephen admitted to stealing condoms from two
other apartments in the complex. It wasn't much, but it
was enough to hold him. He was placed under arrest

(11:59):
for two counts of burglary and held in the bib
County Jail after receiving a search warrant from McDaniel's apartment.
The authorities were able to collect Steven's various knives and guns,
but also a few other key pieces of evidence, a
master key to the entire apartment complex and another key

(12:22):
specifically for Getting's apartment. A stolen flash drive that belonged
to Gettings, one that contained hundreds of her personal photos,
a pair of panties with getting the DNA found in
McDaniel's bedroom, sock drawer, a large bloody sheet, and a
washing machine in the apartment complex is laundry room, and

(12:43):
a hack saw with human flesh attached, which was found
in a locked storage closet in the laundry room. Blood
on the saw was tested and it matched getting the DNA.
Packaging for the hacksaw was also found in McDaniel's apartment.
By August second, two thousand eleven, the police had discovered
enough evidence to charge Stephen mc daniel with the murder

(13:05):
of Lauren Giddings. He would remain behind bars for three
years waiting for his trial. The prosecution was going for
the death penalty, but that's when the computer and camera
evidence was found by the FBI, the deleted stalking videos
and the child porn. They were a late discovery. It

(13:27):
was these stalking videos and sexual photos of miners, combined
with the other physical and circumstantial evidence against him, that
would force McDaniel, three years after the fact, to make
the decision to plead guilty to the murder of Lauren
Giddings and accept a sentence of life in prison. A
death penalty case can typically take between five to seven

(13:49):
years to go to trial, but the District Attorney's office
was willing to withdraw its request for the death penalty
for faster closure because the trial could have dragged on
for months. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors also
agreed to drop the charges of sexual exploitation of children
and the burglary charges against Stephen. Those were filed as

(14:11):
a result of the investigation, but unrelated to the murder anyway.
In return, they got exactly what they wanted. Stephen would
be imprisoned for the rest of his life, and in
order to remain out of court, he had to handwrite
a confession detailing the last hours of Lauren Getting's life

(14:31):
and exactly how he disposed of her remains. In April,
Stephen wrote a one page confession describing Lauren's final evening
alive and how he later dismembered and disposed of her body.

(14:58):
At four thirty a m on Sunday, June two thousand eleven,
Stephen entered Lauren's apartment using his master key, and he
soundlessly defeated the burglar bar that she had propped against
her door. He watched her sleep. As he approached the bed,
a floorboard creaked and Laurence sat up alarmed. She saw

(15:20):
the master intruder and calmly said get the out. In
his own words, McDaniel said, I leaped across the bed
onto her and grabbed her around the throat. We tumbled
out of bed onto the floor, and in her struggle
to get away, she moved her legs and lower body
under the bed, preventing her from getting away or kicking me.

(15:46):
The two continued to fight, and Lauren was eventually able
to remove the mask from her attacker's face and she
recognized him immediately Stephen. She said, please stop, but he
didn't stop. He continued to choke her until she stopped moving,

(16:07):
which he guessed was about fifteen minutes later. He then
dragged her into the bathroom and left her body in
the bathtub. After that, Stephen went back to his own
apartment and spent most of the afternoon on his computer.
That evening, he returned to her apartment with a hack

(16:27):
saw and began to dismember her body in the bathtub.
Her head, arms, and legs were removed, wrapped separately in
several black trash bags, and then thrown into Mercer Law
School dumpster. The mask that Stephen had warned during the attack,
as well as his gloves and shirt, were cut up

(16:48):
and flushed down the toilet. Just before dawn on Tuesday June,
Stephen returned to Lauren's apartment to wrap her torso in
five have black plastic garbage bags and then dump it
in a trash bin just outside of their apartment building.
He attended a bar exam preparation class that same day

(17:11):
and the next day too. Then on the night of
Wednesday June, Stephen joined a group of Laurence friends and
classmates in search for the missing woman, knowing full well
that he had killed her, but he later said he
was in a dreamlike delusional state where he believed Gettings
was not dead. Then on Thursday, Stephen searched for ways

(17:37):
to erase his brows in history, just a short time
before Lawrence Torso was discovered by the making detectives yards
away from his front door. Her head, arms and legs
were never found. Stephen McDaniel was convicted on April, nearly

(18:00):
three years after the murder of Lauren Giddings. He was
housed at the prison in Butts County, Georgia, which is
the state's diagnostic and classification center for new inmates, until December,
when he was transferred to Valdosta State Prison in southern Georgia,
and that's where he is today. The earliest Stephen will

(18:23):
be eligible to request parole is in the year he'll
be fifty six years old, but given the calculated and
brutal nature of his crime, he's unlikely to ever be released.

(18:43):
In a rural South Carolina prison in a convicted killer
orchestrated a crime that would earn him the nickname the
Meanest man in America. That's not an easy title to achieve,
but he deserved it. The details of his life will
show you that he was rotten to the core from
the time he's just a kid, and he only got

(19:05):
worse as you were older Next time on Insomniac. Insomniac
is a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV,
written and hosted by Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins,

(19:28):
Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and Josh Than. Music composed by
Makeup and Vanity set and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow
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(19:49):
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