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An Hour Before Kidnapping, Suspect Visited Gun Range

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By John Davis of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Mike Wells of The Tampa Tribune and Chip Osowski of News Channel 8

Published: January 23, 2008

Updated: 01/24/2008 07:45 am

SARASOTA COUNTY - About an hour before authorities say Michael King abducted Denise Lee from her North Port home, he was at a Sarasota County gun range with another man, practicing his shooting with a 9mm pistol, the same type of weapon that killed Lee.

Documents obtained from the Knight Trail gun range on Rustic Road, next door to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office shooting range, show Michael King's signature at 11:58 a.m. on Jan. 17.

He paid $11.95 in cash to get in and borrowed bullets from Robert Salvador, a 41-year-old contractor who worked odd jobs with King from time to time.

They fired rounds for about an hour, Salvador said.

"We left at the same time, and he said he didn't have any plans," Salvador said. "I got the impression that he was getting himself moved in to his home.

"He was acting like he was moving back in his home and wanted to get back on his feet," Salvador said.

The two parted on Laurel Road about 1:30 p.m.; Salvador headed to a remodeling job and King headed south on Interstate 75.

Twenty minutes later, according to a witness interviewed by North Port police detectives, King was at the post office at U.S. 41 and Biscayne Drive, where he stood in line behind Lee.

Forty minutes after the witness said he saw the two near each other, King's green Chevrolet Camaro was seen parked in Lee's driveway.

King, 36, is now charged in Lee's abduction and murder. Investigators say he sexually assaulted her and drove her to a wooded area near Toledo Blade Boulevard and I-75, where she was found in a shallow grave with a gunshot to the head.

As family and friends attended Lee's funeral Wednesday, law enforcement officials tried to determine why they were unable to find Lee in time to save her.

A series of 911 calls from the North Port area gave investigators strong clues about Lee's location Jan. 17 after her husband reported her missing. She was seen in King's green Camaro at least twice, with her location reported to 911 dispatchers.

But law enforcement response was delayed by communication problems. In one critical instance, there were problems relaying a call from a female driver who said she saw a woman screaming and banging on the window of a car on U.S. 41 near the Sarasota-Charlotte county line.

Charlotte County Sheriff John Davenport released a statement Wednesday saying his deputies sent out a "be on the lookout" alert at 6:35 p.m., after that 911 call. The alert would have gone out to law enforcement officers across Southwest Florida, informing them of the sighting of the car with the woman in distress.

But at least three agencies that would have received the alert -- North Port police, Longboat Key police and Punta Gorda police -- said they did not get a 6:35 bulletin. North Port officers might have been able to reach Lee in time had they quickly been made aware of the sighting.

According to Davenport, the alert was for a green Camaro, which matched the description of King's car.

The 911 call that preceded the bulletin came from Janet Kowalski at 6:30 p.m. Kowalski said she saw a woman struggling and screaming in a car as a man drove her south on U.S. 41. Kowalski has since identified the driver as King.

As Kowalski made the 911 call, dozens of law enforcement officials were chasing down leads in Lee's disappearance. By this time, Lee had managed to dial 911 on King's phone and dispatchers recorded her pleading with him not to kill her, police reports show.

During Kowalski's call, Charlotte County was sending 10 deputies to North Port to aid in the search. It was unclear Wednesday whether they received the the alert or whether it had enough detail to trigger recognition that Kowalski's distressed woman might be Lee.

None of the deputies, or the other officers working the case, responded to the area where Kowalski reported the woman in distress.

King turned north on Toledo Blade Boulevard in Charlotte County and disappeared, until he was apprehended by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper almost three hours later on the same road.

In his statement, Davenport pointed out that dispatchers did not have all the details that have since become public about Kowalski's 911 call.

"The information gleaned from investigators includes more details than the original 911 call," he said.

North Port police Chief Terry Lewis declined to answer questions about the Kowalski call or when North Port officers knew about it.

According to emergency communications expert Paul Linnee, communications difficulties between jurisdictions come up frequently across the nation, with dispatch centers for municipalities each operating under their own procedures and guidelines.

"Every county has a border," said Linnee, a 911 consultant and expert court witness from Minnesota. "So there's always going to be issues of coordination and sharing information."

Linnee pointed out that the 911 operator on the Kowalski call would only be aware of an "apparent crime in progress." Even the alert issued an hour and a half before did not say Lee had been kidnapped, only that she was missing under "suspicious circumstances."

"It's the classic situation," he said, noting that it would take "imagination" of a dispatcher to connect a green Camaro on an alert to the Kowalski call.

The type of alert Davenport said his office issued is designed to alert law enforcement officers across a large area of important information, similar to the Amber Alert system used for a missing child.

Each agency creates its own procedures to handle the dissemination of an alert, but typically the information is sent out to deputies and officers on the road and to 911 dispatchers.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporters Todd Ruger and Zac Anderson contributed to this report.

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