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Stolen Condoms Help Catch Killer Behind Law School Grad's Gruesome Murder, Dismemberment
Lauren Giddings was 27 when she vanished after a night out with friends, her torso later found in a trash bin steps from her Macon, Georgia apartment building.
Georgia officials had the tough task of sifting through several possible suspects to learn who was behind the gruesome death and dismemberment of an aspiring public defender.
Lauren Giddings mysteriously disappeared in the summer of 2011, after hanging out with friends.
Who was Lauren Giddings?
Giddings, 27 at the time she vanished, grew up in Maryland and in June of 2011, had just graduated from Georgia’s Mercer University School of Law with big dreams. She was the eldest of three sisters and had many interests aside from law, including running, church, and serving as president of the school’s Federalist Society.
“She was infectious,” classmate and friend Ashley Muller said on "The Watcher" episode of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen. “You couldn’t be around her for more than five minutes and not already be having a good time.”
Remembered as a bubbly woman who always wore pink and brought her little dog, Butterbean, wherever she went, Giddings' loved ones said they grew concerned when the Macon County, Georgia-based woman failed to respond to texts and calls.
What happened the last night Lauren Giddings' friends saw her?
Giddings enjoyed a night out with friends at a local bar on Friday, June 24, 2011, a last hurrah before the group planned to study for the bar exam. At the time, Giddings lived in an apartment complex just across the street from the school she'd just graduated from, a building she shared with other law students and fellow grads.
There, the festivities continued into the following day. Giddings had just rekindled her relationship with a man named David. She’d previously interned at his Atlanta-based law firm. David was 20 years her senior, and Giddings recently broke things off with a classmate named Joe to pursue her relationship with the older man, according to Giddings’ friends.
“He [Joe] really liked her,” said Giddings’ friend, Katie O’Hare. “Who wouldn’t?”
After celebrating Friday night at the bar, Giddings returned with her friend Muller to an apartment belonging to Muller’s boyfriend and Giddings’ ex-boyfriend, Joe. The former beau would later tell detectives that Giddings spent Friday night at his residence and left Saturday morning to visit the pool at a nearby country club.
Activity on Giddings’ bank card would place her at the country club on Saturday, June 25, 2011, and later at a Zaxby’s fast casual chain restaurant at 6:08 p.m.
Lauren Giddings' loved ones realize something's wrong
On Wednesday, June 29, 2011, Giddings’ sisters contacted Muller when Giddings uncharacteristically stopped responding to messages and calls.
Muller told Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison that she felt a sense of “dread” when she and her boyfriend used a spare key to enter Giddings’ second-story apartment. There was no sign of its sole occupant, but a handful of items there — including Giddings’ identification, laptop, purse, and keys — indicated she didn’t plan on being away for long.
Macon officials were called in, and a preliminary search of the missing woman’s laptop showed that an email was sent from her account that Muller described as an “eerie” message to David. In the email, sent on Saturday at 10:13 p.m., Giddings told her boyfriend that someone had been “trying to break into her house” the previous night.
A Gruesome Discovery
On the morning of Thursday, June 30, 2011, Macon police crime scene investigator Steve Gatlin arrived at Giddings' apartment in Macon to search for clues. As he left, he detected “a foul odor” in the breeze outside.
He followed the smell to a trash bin mere steps from the apartment complex.
“We open it up, looked in there, and I saw two trash bags,” Gatlin told Dateline: The Smoking Gun. “And then I went to the bigger one, which is a large-sized package. It was a trash bag that, as soon as I reached down and felt it... it had some human remains in it.”
Inside, Giddings’ torso was found.
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During a follow-up search back inside the victim’s apartment, officials used luminol to reveal evidence of blood in the bathtub.
“It was like a light switch. I mean, the whole bathroom glowed,” Gatlin told Morrison. “The whole tub, all the way up to almost two inches from the top, had the same glow.”
Investigators look for answers
Macon and Bibb County authorities questioned multiple people who were in Giddings' life or crossed paths with her, including neighbors such as fellow law grad Stephen McDaniel. Friends and loved ones cooperated with authorities, including the men with whom Giddings had been romantically involved.
David, Giddings’ Atlanta-based partner, said he was golfing in California on the weekend of the murder, as seen in a recorded interview obtained by Dateline. Investigators wondered if David could have been upset upon learning that his girlfriend spent the Friday evening before she disappeared with her ex-boyfriend, Joe.
David described his relationship with Giddings as “fluid and continuous,” saying they’d only recently rekindled their romance after months of having little-to-no communication.
“Because when I felt the pressure of the commitment, I just kind of backed off,” David told investigators.
Meanwhile, Giddings’ next-door neighbor, McDaniel, spoke to local news outlets about her going missing. One recorded interview captured a reporter telling McDaniel that remains were found, and Gatlin called McDaniel’s reaction to the news “very odd."
The investigation continued, and upon a search of the community laundry room and its adjacent maintenance closet, authorities discovered a hacksaw with what appeared to be blood “on each end of the sawblade.”
“Obviously, someone had rinsed it off, but didn’t do a thorough job,” Gatlin told Dateline.
The maintenance man gave an alibi to investigators, and it held water.
Focus turns to Stephen McDaniel
McDaniel had lived next door to Giddings for three years and was a member of the same Federalist Society chapter as Giddings. In his first interview with detectives, McDaniel said he was prepping for the bar exam around the time of Giddings' death, as many of their acquaintances had been. He even let police search his apartment as the murder investigation continued.
Due in part to his “odd” reaction in a news interview, in which Gatlin said McDaniel was “staring off into space,” detectives took him in for a second round of questioning. At some point, McDaniel mentioned being a virgin, which struck Gatlin as peculiar since a search of McDaniel’s apartment yielded unused condoms.
Investigators confronted their witness.
“The atmosphere changed a little bit,” Macon Police Chief Mike Burns told Dateline. “He got quiet.”
McDaniel confessed to stealing the prophylactics, and it was enough for authorities to hold him on charges of burglary. But as their murder investigation continued, officials discovered women’s underwear, later found to belong to Giddings, inside McDaniel’s dresser.
They also found two keys in McDaniel’s bedroom, including a master key that would have given the neighbor access to the maintenance room. The other was a key cut to size for Giddings’ apartment.
That wasn’t all.
“We found packaging for that same type of hacksaw in his apartment,” said Gatlin. “Same size and brand and everything.”
David and Joe, the men with whom Giddings had at one time been romantically involved, were cleared of any involvement in the murder.
On August 2, 2011, Stephen McDaniel was charged with first-degree murder.
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Investigators track down more evidence
David Cooke, who was then the district attorney for the Macon Judicial Circuit, sought more evidence since he feared the case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, he told Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
“I was worried that, unless we had more, that this would be a case where everybody knew that he did it, but nobody could prove it,” said Cooke.
It helped prosecutors that a new search of the defendant’s laptop included disturbing content, but would it be enough for a conviction?
“It’s obvious that he has a fascination with sadistic pornography,” Cooke told Dateline’s Morrison. “Murder, torture, dismemberment.”
A home video by McDaniel showed the suspect peeping in at Giddings on Friday, June 24, 2011, the night she spent celebrating with friends. The angle of the recording led prosecutors to believe that McDaniel used something like a long stick to get the shot he wanted.
It confirmed for investigators what Giddings wrote her boyfriend on the night of Saturday, June 25, 2011, when she said someone tried breaking in the night before.
Who killed Lauren Giddings?
In the spring of 2014, McDaniel pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life behind bars. He confessed as part of a deal with prosecutors, admitting he strangled Giddings to death and left her torso in the apartment complex trash bin while leaving her other remains in dumpsters elsewhere.
“It was an obsession for him,” Cooke explained. “His dream was to commit murder and to get away with it.”
McDaniel will not be eligible for parole until 2041.
Despite extensive searches, the rest of Giddings’ remains have never been found.
Watch all-new episodes of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
