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Data Delay May Have Hurt Search For North Port Woman

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BY JOHN DAVIS

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: February 28, 2008

SARASOTA - SARASOTA - A delay in updating a state computer database may have cost authorities their earliest chance to save Denise Lee on the night of her disappearance.

The database, containing vehicle registration and other records, is a key tool of law enforcement agencies, but it failed to identify a car owned by Michael King, who is charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing Lee on Jan. 17.

Officials say that in December, King had submitted a registration for his 1994 green Chevrolet Camaro that included his North Port address, but that information had not been entered in the database. There can be a 90-day lag before the database picks up such changes.

As a result of the Lee case, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles are working to shorten the lag time for updating database records to as little as one week for vehicle registration information.

The database problem is the latest to emerge in the aftermath of the multiagency law enforcement effort to save Lee, the daughter of a Charlotte County sheriff's deputy.

An internal investigation also identified serious flaws in Charlotte County's emergency communications center, which mishandled a key 911 call from a driver who saw someone who might have been Lee screaming in the back of what is thought to have been King's Camaro.

King was not arrested until 9:16 p.m. Jan. 17, almost six hours after Lee was reported missing. Lee's body was found two days later. She was in a shallow grave and had a gunshot wound to the head.

Within 30 minutes of the time Nathan Lee called 911 to report his wife missing, police were hunting for a green Chevrolet Camaro seen earlier in her driveway.

They quickly searched a state database called the Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution for all green Camaros registered to owners in North Port.

King's car was not among the three found in the database, even though his green Camaro was registered to his North Port address.

Authorities checked on the three green Camaros from the FACTS database before 5:30 p.m.

They did not identify King and his Camaro for another hour, after Lee reportedly grabbed King's cell phone and called 911.

North Port police did not know why King's vehicle information was not in the database, and they searched the database repeatedly after Lee's disappearance, to no avail.

On Tuesday, the FDLE confirmed that King's vehicle information did not show up because of the delay in updating the FACTS database.

The state pays a private company, LexisNexis, $865,200 a year to maintain the FACTS database and provide access to 1,209 users. The database contains voter and criminal records as well as information from the motor vehicles department.

According to the company, the state has the ability to update information in the database as frequently as it wants.

"We are always looking for ways to improve our systems and services," wrote FDLE spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha in an e-mail. "Although the FACTS system has been designed to be an investigative tool, we're starting to see it expand to be used in some response situations as well, as the North Port Police Department demonstrated."

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