The After Show: Her Last Call

Really? I can't wait for my daughter, total.

“Steuer? How do you feel? The Steuer is really young?”

Yeah, I've been watching over 1000 euros. Do you have any connections? No, just like Steuer. Wow! And that's easy. Of course, the taste is all automatic.

Suddenly, I feel like I'm so relaxed. Hold it and get to look teeth and unspand, Medvisal Steuer. Hi there, everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts and today we're going to continue a conversation about a story. 2020 has been following for years. It has stayed with me since I began reporting on

it in Florida and now we've got a few new developments to share. A 21 year old mom, up to, vanishes from her home. In the middle of the day, Denise Amber Lee's phone, her purse, her keys, all of that still inside her house. Her husband, who is at work at the time when his wife disappeared, comes home and finds

every parent's nightmare, there are two little boys left at home alone and his wife Denise is gone.

“Well as you saw on our 2020 episode, I think what really struck so many of us is how”

quickly this mystery turned into something that was so much more urgent. Just hours later, Denise finds a way to call 911 herself. Now this is a woman who has been abducted. She's in a car with her abducter at the time and she is doing everything she can to stay calm, to stay quiet, and to leave a trail. Let's listen to this heartbreaking moment when Denise has heard pleading to get back to her

family. Somehow, the unimaginable still happens. That's the part in this story that is so hard to sit with. Two days later, police find Denise's body in nearby woods, her family and her community as you can imagine completely devastated.

Well in my latest 2020 episode, we retrace those critical moments, the roads, the witnesses,

the calls. And now years later, I spoke with those little boys, Denise's boys, who are now grown up. Every milestone, there is something missing and it was our mom. I always write her name in the clay before every event, just like, "No, she's there with

me." Some people have called her mom a hero that she protected you too. I always say she sacrificed herself to make sure we were safe. Hearing the two talk about the milestones that their mom, Denise, missed, that is something that just sticks with me.

Well today on this episode, we're going to continue our reporting with an update on where this case stands now. How Denise's family is coping after their final chapter in the fight for justice. And we're also going to share some extended moments from our time with Denise's husband and sons, moments you didn't see in the broadcast.

But first, I spoke with 2020 producers, Denise Martinez Ramundo and Jeff Schneider about working

on this story together. All three of us were so moved by the story and I so enjoyed the conversation and I hope you will too.

“Denise, good to see you, I think I'm going to start with you because you brought this story”

to me. It was something that you, I think, discovered and obviously it had been a story that it happened in Florida. As a mom, your mom, I am too and oftentimes you and I have connected over these stories just because we're parents and when it is something that involves a parent, it really

kind of grabs us right away and tell me about for you when you first heard about this story at 21-year-old mom, going missing and of course tragically turns out to it. Her name turns out to be Denise, just like my name, we actually share the same breath year and, you know, so you kind of hit close to home, also reaching out, you know, here it is, you know, sharing the same name.

And what was really interesting is that as a mom, you know, she was taking leaving her two young sons behind six months into years old, I have young children, so to know that she had to be taken away from them and in her mind to maybe try to protect themselves, take the harm away from them. She was a young, stay at home mom, a very bright young woman Denise Amber Lee.

One of the things that we really, I thought brought home for viewers in this case was sort of 911 calls, how it all works, why that was so urgent. We have a series of 911 calls that really bring this kid napping to life, that we are experiencing and listening to it unfolding in real time.

progression and I think it was really important to bring that to the viewer.

So the audio is obviously really shocking to hear, but obviously, you know, in order for

“that to bring home to bring it to life, I think definitely Jeff, you know, and with the video,”

Lily was able to capture that. And for folks who may not have seen the episode and I'm telling you, you're going to want to go see the episode, but those of you who did, you'll remember, that Denise Amber Lee placed a 911 call from the care captors car. She was actually taken from her home and she very cleverly was able to get his phone and

to place a call to the police, just sort of not obviously signaling that she was calling the police, but giving enough information there, it's almost like something out of a TV show. And Jeff, what about you and your approach to this particular story? You knew the area.

Yeah, I mean, and I'm also a dad, so with two kids, and I immediately, when I read the story when I learned about the story, I put myself in Nathan's shoes and her husband. You know, I just, yeah, her husband, and I just really wanted to capture kind of what he was going through and what he was feeling, and, you know, these locations were all

“so very important, like where their house was, you know, it was in the middle of nowhere.”

It was back on a tucked in, you know, street where it felt safe, you know, and so that was really something that was important for me to try to get across with the visuals is just where everything took place, the relationship to each other and stuff like that. And then, you know, also the strength of this family, how strong or, you know, sue the mom taking in the children in the middle of this nightmare, you know, like you mentioned,

having to go, she had to go get formula because Denise was still breastfeeding. Yeah. Yeah, there was something about that tender idea that she's still a breastfeeding mom and had to leave her children behind because she was kidnapped. And in the story, we learned a lot about the two of them, Denise and Nathan.

They were very young when they got married. They had these children pretty quickly and Nathan was a very devoted dad working very hard and he comes home and, you know, his wife's keys and her cursor there, but she's not to be found anywhere.

He's the first person actually to call 911 in this story.

So let's remind our listeners and let's take a listen. You know, it's party emergency? Yes. I'm at the tour Avenue. I just got home to work in my wife. I can't find her. My kids were in the house and I don't know where he is. I've looked every single place and I don't know. How old are your kids sir?

Um, my oldest is two and my youngest is six months. No, I know. I don't know where my mom is. Are vehicles in a driveway? Yes. Did she have any medical conditions?

No. I'm a person here. I don't have phone here. I don't, I don't, I don't know. Okay. What is her name? Denise. That call is just so chilling because you can hear the desperation.

You can also hear the panic in his voice. Jeff, you talked about being a dad and of course Denise, you're a parent too and I think for all of us as we were going back and looking at this story and I had an opportunity to meet her two now older sons or fathers a police officer and we'll talk about that and her parents.

This was a hard one to report Denise and I'm an even your face now as we're watching and talking to you about it. I mean, this was a hard one, wasn't it? Yes, definitely. I mean, in that nine one call, you hear even the son asking, "Where's Mommy?" you know, my little one is starting to talk, almost go getting close to the two year old age and you know, they realize and just hearing that the panic on his voice,

the little young son asking for his mom, you know, it was hard, you know, to report on it. So we had covered the story back in 2008 but we didn't have her nine one call and even though it's heartbreaking and you know, hard stopping but it really shows how brave she

“was and I think it was important for us to do this story, showing, making our viewers”

listen to that nine one one call to show the impact that her case has had on the number one system going forward. Yeah, and that became kind of a theme for us, Jeff, in this story. We're going to examine nine one one calls and operators and we went actually to a nine one one office there to kind of find out how they work because this case would eventually change a lot in Florida

when it comes to nine one one cases. We have to dig through a lot of video file reporting

and as Denise said, this is the first time we had actually had an opportunity to broadcast

this particular nine one one call. Yeah, yeah, both me and Denise, you know, go through all the case files that we can get our hands on, you know, we try to get everything, we listen to everything, we make notes on it all, you know, and we we're listening to everything and we're keeping all that

we can really know what to, what how to film certain things, you know, the locations and everything like that.

“Yeah, especially when it's a case like this one that happened several years back and”

then we try to see what we can do to bring something new to it, fresh eyes. Well, there's so much more to this story to report and to tell you all about how we put it all together Denise Amber Lee and the case of the missing mom down in Florida, we're going to talk more about it in just a moment. We're going to take a break so don't go anywhere. Today I want to tell you about our friends at Mikko. Mikko has built an air purifier

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code 20, T-W-E-N-T-Y for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombas.com/20 and the code T-W-E-N-T-Y at checkout. We are back now with Denise Martinez Ramundo and Jeff Schneider, producers on this story with me for 2020. They covered the Denise Amber Lee case and it was driven by consequential 911 calls. I want to get into all of them but we heard that call from Nathan a little earlier. Now, there was a call from Denise herself and I want to play for all of us a clip from that.

What is the address to chat? Northport, online, Sarasota just had Denise A. Lee on the phone advice that she was taken by an unknown subject. Oh, that call was just so distressing. What were your thoughts about how much of it to play and whether even to play it? We gave it a lot of thought to that. In our previous reporting,

“we had her dad and ourselves describing the call. I mean, after listening to the call, I think we”

felt it was important for us for the beer to hear how brave she was and how she handled herself

in that situation. It was really important in her 911 call that she's relaying critical information

about the person who has her, he's saying, "I don't know you, please take me back home." She says, "Take me back home to my house in Latour, trying to give this patchers information about where her home is so she could identify her, they could identify hopefully him." And that was really critical because they will eventually use that information and they will convict him later on. Yeah, it was so amazing to me. I mean, this is a 21-year-old woman,

about trying to figure out a way to get herself out of this, but that she had the presence of mind even in the middle of all that fear to throw out these little breadcrumbs to police. And also, too, of course, to try to plead with this abducter, but then another call came through that actually helped identify who her actual killer was. Let's take a listen to that call. I just got to call for my dad and his cousin came over his house with a girl in the car and she was

tied up, he called, a shovel, a gas tank, and saw him out. What's the cousin driving? A green Camaro? What's the cousin's name? Michael King. Put out a bowl of FHB2, please, for dark green Camaro. Who do you think is driving that Camaro? Michael King.

“Oh, my gosh, I think for all of us, this was not only upsetting, but maybe even infuriating when you”

think about this young woman is missing every second counts. This young girl calls because her father didn't call, and she gives police a little bit of information, and this is the first time we

actually hear a name, Michael King, and that was critical, Jeff, right? It was, and, you know,

when we talked with the police and the detectives, they had said that Denise is call, when they got the 911 call from Denise, they started to trace it, and then they got this other call from that girl that we just heard, and that they had a name, and then they eventually got the name back from the phone that they were tracing from Denise's 911 call, and it matched up, and both, you know, it was Michael King. So, they knew they had their guy, and it was just,

you know, you talk about the the research that we were doing when we, when we first started this, you know, we tried to dig into who was this guy, who was Michael King. Yeah, what was right? What was his connection to Denise Amber Lee, which was nothing? Which was nothing, and there was, you know, we couldn't find any criminal background with him, and so that randomness

“just made this even more chilling. Yeah, Denise, I think that's what got me the randomness,”

because we do so many of these stories and oftentimes we kind of see it coming, right? It's either the spouse or relative or some disgruntled, you know, employee or worker with someone, but in this case, it's just one of those things, those random crimes that all of us fear. That's what makes it, the, at this case, really, really scary, because if somebody randoms somebody that had no connection whatsoever to her, and, you know, somebody who turned out to be a father, you know,

he had a young son, and he had his most recent group, and he had said that she was shocked,

that's everybody else to hear that he was him, and that she would never have imagined that

he would be capable to do something like this. Yeah, as I said, the 911 calls played such a role, Denise makes a call, this young woman makes a call, and then there's another call that comes in that could have changed everything. A woman named Jane Kawalski, who you had me meet Denise, and I drove along with her, so she could point out to me where she was driving. She happened to be in town on her way to go visit a relative, and she saw a car with someone banging on the back

window in the car, and, and she said she was on the phone with her sister, and she could hear this screaming, it was almost like a kid's voice, she couldn't make it out, and she knew something was wrong. She could see that this guy was driving in this person was banging very, very, very, frantically. Let's take a listen to this one. You can't get more specific than that. This woman is giving all this detail in real time.

She's telling them where she is. I mean, I think all of our jaws just dropped. Denise, let's talk about how you found Jane, you brought her to Florida. I got a chance to get in the car, Jeff, you were shooting, to talk to her about how this all played out for her, and she was a very interesting woman, very strong woman, who felt very strongly about trying to do the right thing. She even wanted to follow the car, but they lost her after a while.

She was like trying to do her part as a citizen.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it's always really important for us to be able to go back and find

this people that are so key to the story. I mean, obviously Jane, so something that in her mind

“looked like a kidnapping. And you know, I think it was really important for you to have you”

right with her, so she can really point, you know, I'm in this lane, he's crossing over. I mean, I think to be able to really capture that in, I and understand it from herself. I mean, I mean, you, so she even showed you how, how loud the banging on the window was. I mean, that was, it was quite something, so that she really knew somebody was in trouble. And so I mean, I think it's really, you know, unfortunately, you know, you know, her call comes to the dispatch center.

We're actually her, you know, the agency where Denise's father works for, so it was people

was that we learned that there was a snap food in the 911 call center, which just complicated this story all the more. We talked about Denise's sons who are now young men, almost a grown man. We had a chance to meet them and to talk with them. They're very, very amazing young men. We're going to share some extended moments for my interview with them when we come back. So stay with us. This episode is supported by the podcast, Dr. Death. There are people you're told to trust,

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“now of this story. But also the 911 calls that played such a key role in this in this case and”

sadly led to a delay in police being able to track down Denise. We also went to those detectives who were on this case. And Chris Morales was one of them. He was lead detective on the Denise Amber Lee case. Jeff talked to us a little bit about that because we had to not only track him down, but take him back to these locations of where this all played out. And it's a story that he hasn't forgotten either. No. And after this case, he wanted to figure out what they could do better,

how they could improve, how they could not have this happen again. And he spearheaded this real time intelligence center. And when we went and talked with him and sat him down to interview him, you know, he took us into the intelligence center. And we just felt like this is where we need to talk to him. Well, let's take a listen to what he told us. What's behind me here is our real time intelligence center. There's over 150 pieces of intelligent equipment that's placed throughout our

city. I can tell you right now if we were able to take all of this behind me and go back and time and implement it into 2008. I strongly believe in my heart that we would have had Denise Amber Lee. I also had an opportunity, which was pretty amazing. Was to talk to her sons Adam and Noah. One of them had just graduated from high school. The other one is a chef. And they were really pretty amazing to talk to Denise. Yeah, I mean, one thing when I started working on the story,

I mean, I realized the six months all in the two-year-old are probably teenagers. Now, I want to hear from them. I want to know how this, you know, what life has been for them, you know, obviously their mom was taking away from them when they were so young. And, you know, in, you know, we'll talk about how their dad has gone on to speak about her mom's story.

“But I wanted to hear from them. And I think it was very moving. And I think they were very”

eloquent. And they say themselves, they say, you never, you usually don't get to hear about,

you know, like the kids, you know, from like the impact that it has on them. And I think that was really, really moving to hear what they have to say. Adam and Noah were talking to us for the first time publicly about this case. And we have a bonus clip from our interview. So let's take a listen. When you think about the two of you now having grown up, you had each other. Did that create a special bond between the two of you? Yeah, you know, even as we take our separate paths in life,

that keeps us bonded forever, you know, knowing that you was going through the same thing, definitely health helped me. There's a monument in a park that is basically attribute to your mom. Do you spend any time there? I still make an effort to visit and kind of say my piece, you know,

“almost like she's there. If I don't go there, I go to the cemetery. So you feel some connection to her?”

I used to wear a cross on one of my necklaces. I left it there with her. At the cemetery.

Stuffed part of me with her. Because I'll always have a part of her with me.

know her even though you don't remember her? All these stories and, you know, everything I hear,

you know, she's still been a perfect mother despite her not being here. I always try to

“dedicate a part of my success to her without her. You know, what would I be, you know?”

I have to tell you, this was very hard for me sitting across from these two young men. I mean, you could hear Noah weeping there and just, oh my, even just listening to it again, now powerful words from these two. And it was interesting to hear them talking about, you know, visiting her and the jewelry. And of course, having talked to Denise's husband who now has been remarried, Nathan, but who still so clearly carries a lot of pain having lost Denise. Nathan though,

one of the things that I just thought was so remarkable, Denise was that Nathan had given Denise

a ring when they first started dating, not a very expensive ring, but it was like a little heart.

It was for Valentine's Day. She was wearing that ring when she was abducted. And she smartly, she left the ring behind in the car to give police a clue. And he actually got that ring back, not long before we did this interview. And Denise, that was really pretty remarkable. Yeah, when I reached out to him about doing the story, you know, he had mentioned to me there just a few months ago. He had gotten, you know, that ring back, you know, my Michael Kins,

appeals, had all been exhausted. So he was able to get this piece of jewelry bag, which again, it was so special. He said that it wasn't expensive, but he became one of her priceless possessions. And she left it in the car because she knew that Nathan would be able to identify it. So getting a bag was very special for him. Yeah. And just a remarkable man himself, Jeff. I mean, he has dedicated his life now to speaking out about 911 and how it laws changed in

Florida and other parts of the country where they strengthened the protocol for 911 calls. You know, I actually attended one of the events where Nathan was telling Denise's story too much of people that work in the 911 field. And I talked with the people after the people that were attending. And that her story, him telling her story, really made a difference, really impacted them. And, you know, it also impacted me. You know, I'm not going to forget this,

“you know, and I think that it's just really amazing. Again, I think I said the strength of this”

family was so important and just the way that they've turned their tragedy, you know, interaction is just this remarkable. This is a story that has resonated and just stayed with me for quite a while. My thanks to Denise and Jeff for such a thoughtful conversation and also some really pretty strong reporting here, helping us get the story to air. Well, before we wrap today, I want to share one more update about the story because it really adds a sense of resolution for Denise's family.

Michael King was convicted of killing Denise Amber Lee and sentenced to death back in 2009. And all these years later, 18 years after the crime in March of 2026, King was actually executed by lethal injection in a Florida prison after his final appeals were denied. We recently spoke again with Denise's family about what that was like for them and how they're continuing to move forward. Here are some extended moments from our time together after Michael King's execution.

Obviously, I wish I didn't ever have to go to that execution. I wish that my mom was still here. We had been waiting, you know, 17 years, almost 18 years for this to happen. When they open the curtain, King has strapped on the gurney, so I can see him blinking. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to

forget that, but we needed to be there for Denise. Seeing him for the first time in person,

my heart drops and it's a surreal experience. Michael King did read a statement that he didn't apologize for killing my mother. He didn't admit to it either. I would have rather heard nothing.

“And I think I just needed to see justice being served for my mom. You know, I'm kind of glad”

no was able to go because I think it was good for him, you know, to see that closure and see that functionality. Adam didn't want to. I supported that 100%. You know, now that that chapter is closed, I'm still dedicated to my life to, you know, making 911 the best it can be and keeping what happened to Denise from happening again. That was kind of like the one last dark light at the end of the tunnel that we just needed to get through. And now we're through it and, you know, we're just going to

keep, you know, trying to make a proud. Now that I'm 20 and my mom only lived 21, it's kind of crazy

should be super proud of who I am today. Their resilience, it is something I think most of us will

“remember. I'm still struck by the work that they have done in Denise's name, especially around”

911 trainings and accountability, such a big part of Denise's legacy. My thanks, of course,

as always, to you for joining us and you can stream 20, 20 episodes like this one any time

on Disney Plus and Hulu. Take care, everybody. Three decades ago, a young woman named Angie Dodge is found brutally murdered in her bedroom in

Idaho Falls. It was the probably the worst case I've ever seen. It is the one that sticks with me.

Please, zero in on a suspect and put a man behind bars. I don't know what the hell you guys want.

“Do you think we'd be wasted in our time and wasted in your time if we didn't think you're involved?”

But as the years passed, doubts emerge about whether the real killer was ever caught. That's when Angie's own mother and barks on a decades-long mission to uncover the truth. 23 years I've been trying to put this puzzle together and this center's missing.

“I've always been told the truth will come out. You can't hide the truth.”

Listen to the snare, the new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app and add free on Amazon Music. I'm Harvey Gianne and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights. I'm telling you a bedtime story. Except these stories are all real. We're talking brazen-heist,

devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Gianne every Monday.