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Stephen McDaniel pleads guilty in murder case

http://www.macon.com/2014/04/21/3057637/mcdaniel-to-plead-gu...
racy hell dysfunction
  04/21/14


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Date: April 21st, 2014 4:01 PM
Author: racy hell dysfunction

http://www.macon.com/2014/04/21/3057637/mcdaniel-to-plead-guilty.html

In the late hours of June 25 or early hours of June 26, Stephen McDaniel broke into Lauren Giddings’ apartment and fatally choked her on the floor of her bedroom.

He used a master key and was wearing gloves and a mask.

“I walked to her bedroom door and stood there, observing her sleeping. As I took another step, the floor creaked, and she awoke. She sat up in bed,” McDaniel wrote in a statement confessing his actions on the night Giddings was killed in 2011.

The statement accompanied his guilty plea to malice murder in Giddings’ death Monday morning and his sentence of life in prison.

Written at least partially by McDaniel, typed on one of his lawyers’ laptop computers, the statement chronicled the events of Giddings’ last night:

Seeing McDaniel in her apartment about 4:30 a.m. on June 26, 2011, Giddings told him to leave.

“I leaped across the bed onto her and grabbed her around the throat,” McDaniel wrote. “We tumbled out of the bed to the floor.”

In the tussle, Giddings pulled the mask from McDaniel’s face and said, “Stephen? Please stop.”

But, McDaniel said he continued to strangle her with his hands around her throat until she stopped moving.

He moved her body to her bathtub and went back to his apartment, where he stayed throughout the day.

That night, he returned and dismembered her. He wrapped her limbs and head in several black trash bags and threw them in a dumpster at Mercer’s law school across the street, according to the confession.

He cut up the mask, gloves and his shirt. He flushed them down his toilet.

McDaniel wrote that he put Giddings’ torso in the apartment complex trash can just before daylight on June 28, about two days before it was discovered.

During Monday’s hearing, District Attorney David Cooke outlined much of the case that prosecutors would have presented at McDaniel’s trial, which was set to begin April 28 in Henry County.

He said McDaniel used a camera to perform surveillance on Giddings just before she was killed. A flash drive that once held hundreds of personal photos — that Giddings had written in a June 22 email was missing — was found in McDaniel’s apartment. The photos had been deleted, but they were recovered as part of a forensic analysis.

An autopsy ruled that Giddings’ death was due to “unknown homicidal violence,” Cooke said.

No signs of sexual assault were detected, he said.

McDaniel, in his statement, also denied performing a sex act on Giddings.

“She was wearing the pink running shorts when she died and I never removed them,” he wrote. “They were found on her torso just as I had left them.”

McDaniel’s statement also describes his activity in the days after the slaying.

He said he rarely slept, but used his computer extensively. Although he skipped a bar exam preparation class on June 27, he went to class June 28 and June 29.

Joining the group of friends and classmates who searched for Giddings on the night of June 29, 2011, McDaniel wrote that he was “in a dream-like delusional state” in which he believed Giddings was still alive.

McDaniel wrote that looking back on the weeks leading up to Giddings’ slaying and the days afterward, he describes himself as being “divided in mind, unable to account for how I could have committed these horrible acts and, at the same time, also be able to carry on daily routines.”

“It’s difficult for me to explain why I killed Lauren and attempted to conceal my deed the way I did,” he said. “I know that it was very wrong; I am not delusional or without all morals or decency.”

McDaniel said “something in my makeup — my psychology, my neuropathy, my own particular pathology, perhaps — must explain it.”

He expressed remorse, saying he grieves Giddings daily, but doesn’t expect forgiveness from her family.

“There is no way I can ever deserve it,” he said. “If I could take back what happened, I would do so.”

As part of McDaniel’s plea deal, prosecutors dropped the sexual exploitation of children and burglary charges filed against him.

The wrongful death lawsuit Giddings’ family filed against McDaniel in federal court also is expected to be settled this week, said Floyd Buford, one of McDaniel’s lawyers.

Giddings’ mother spoke during the brief plea hearing, as did two of her childhood friends.

McDaniel’s family wasn’t in the courtroom.

McDaniel didn’t speak on his own behalf during the hearing.

Cooke said he doesn’t expect McDaniel to ever be released from prison. He must serve 30 years before being considered for parole.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2548522&forum_id=2#25421028)