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Police Say Image Helped Crack Cold-Case Killing

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By VALERIE KALFRIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 1, 2007

TAMPA - For about two years, Tampa police homicide Detective Eric Houston searched for evidence to prove something investigators long suspected.

Kimberly Mack, a 27-year-old mother of four who vanished in May 2000, was thought to be dead. Her boyfriend at the time, David Eugene Lee, 'was a suspect, but there was no one to say he did it,' Houston said.

That is until Friday, when Houston showed Lee - already in a federal prison in Louisiana on a cocaine charge - a satellite image he had found of a Ruskin field taken about the time Mack disappeared.

Shortly after seeing the picture, Lee described how he killed Mack during an argument over money, Houston said Wednesday. In a plea agreement, Lee also indicated where he buried her with a backhoe after the first grave he dug was too shallow, Houston said.

He said Lee, 38, will be charged with felony manslaughter by culpable negligence, to run concurrently with his federal sentence for cocaine distribution.

All that's left is to bring Mack home.

Investigators so far have not uncovered her remains, but Houston said he isn't ready to quit.

The field looks different from in 2000, when it was lush with trees. Now it is earmarked for houses, with 9 feet of fill dumped atop it, Houston said.

For Mack's family, a resolution is long overdue. Her mother, Louise Miller, 59, is rearing Mack's children, now ages 8 to 14.

'It's hopeless. They'll never find her,' she said Wednesday, shaking her head. 'I just want it all to be over. That's what I want.'

Reached by phone, Lee's mother, Rose Lee, declined to comment Wednesday.

Mack was one of six children, 'cheerful, friendly, always laughing,' said her mother, a Hillsborough County school bus driver.

Mack worked in the lunchroom of Franklin Middle School. One day in May 2000, she visited Miller with the children, then never came again. Miller said she phoned David Lee, whom she didn't know well, but he didn't know anything.

'Something told me to call the police,' she said.

Police found Mack's unlocked Geo Prism near Progress Village, Miller said. Her purse and identification were gone.

In April 2000, investigators had charged Lee, a truck driver, with felony cocaine trafficking, saying he delivered 123.9 grams of cocaine base to a confidential informant, court records state.

But after Mack disappeared, Lee did also, leaving the drug charge unresolved, Houston said.

Assigned to review old homicides, Houston caught a break in 2006 when he learned Lee's daughter was graduating from high school in a ceremony at the University of South Florida.

'We put eyeballs on her, and when she got up to get her diploma, here comes David Lee bopping through the parking lot,' Houston said.

The statute of limitations for the drug charge had expired. However, Houston persuaded federal prosecutors to take the case because Lee had a valid Florida driver's license in another name, proving, Houston said, that he was trying to elude authorities.

Lee pleaded guilty to the drug charge this year, records show.

Houston said he caught another break when Lee's brother, in trouble with police, described what happened to Mack. According to Houston, Lee and Mack fought because Mack took about $40,000 from him. As they argued, he put an arm around her throat and pulled her out of a doorway, killing her, Houston said.

As the years passed, Miller said, she tried to have her daughter declared legally dead so the children could receive government benefits. She was unsuccessful.

She doesn't discuss the disappearance with them.

'I don't want to believe that their mama is dead and she ain't never coming back, because then they might ask what happened,' she said.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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