Jury Sees Car at Center of Murder Trial

SARASOTA, Florida–In the Florida death penalty trial of Michael King, the jury view took place Wednesday of the dark green Camaro belonging to the defendant.

Jurors slowly walked around the car that had been brought to the courthouse at the request of prosecutors.

While some jurors took notes, the defendant was seated at a table, shackled at his ankles, but his confinement was hidden from jurors because of a skirt in place around the table.

In other testimony, Robert Salvador admitted he had gone to a shooting range with the defendant the morning of the murder of Denise Lee and had personally placed King’s 9 mm pistol back in the defendant’s car when their target practice concluded.

The defense, on cross-examination, focused on Salvador’s lack of truthfulness when originally questioned by police and even suggested to Salvador that he met King close to the murder site later that afternoon and shot Denise Lee himself. “Absolutely not!” Salvador answered. He allowed to stand, however, the question asking Salvador if he killed Lee.

That exchange created a vigorous argument by attorneys out side the presence of the jury. The result was an instruction to the jury from Judge Deno Economou telling them to completely disregard the majority of that line of questioning by the defense.

Chilling 911 Call from Victim Played in Court

SARASOTA, Florida – The trial of Michael King, a man accused of kidnapping, raping and killing a 21-year-old Florida mother continues today with testimony from a crime scene technician.

On Tuesday, a jury reading transcripts followed along in silence as the more than 5 minute 911 call made by victim Denise Lee was played in court.

Lee was inside the defendant’s Camaro when she used his cell phone to call a 911 operator and screamed: “My name is Denise and I just want to see my beautiful husband and kids again.” She also answers the 911 operator when asked, “do you know this guy?” Crying into the phone, Lee yells “NO.”

Prosecutors say Lee had been abducted by King and was shot to death with one bullet to the head shortly after this call. Family members of Lee left the courtroom before the tape was played, but Lee’s father Detective Rick Goff stayed, telling me after court, “Its my daughter…I’m not going to leave.”

In other testimony Jane Kowalski pounded the witness stand with her fist, demonstrating the banging of what she thought was a child’s hand against the passenger window of a dark Camaro, accompanied by horrific screaming. The vehicle had pulled up to her left as she was traveling south on US 41 in Sarasota on January 17th — the date Lee was killed.

Kowalski’s emergency call to authorities was also played in court and the Charlotte County 911 operator seemed to verbally repeat to others in her dispatch room what Kowalski said as she described every street the Camaro was passing, but that information was never communicated to law enforcement on the ground in the area.

Tammy Treadway, who heads up Animal Services with the Sarasota Sheriff’s department, testified her golden retriever “actively engaged” in a rural site in the North Port area the evening of January 18, 2008.

Crime scene investigators soon found sand and dirt out of place and blood saturating the earth. Investigators had found the burial site of Denise Lee.