Police looking at purchases McDaniel made at Wal-Mart

As the investigation into the slaying of recent Mercer University law school graduate Lauren Giddings nears its three-week point, Macon police have yet to publicly tip their hand regarding pertinent details of the case they are trying to build.

Other than to say the body of the 27-year-old Giddings had been dismembered and also to declare her next-door neighbor a “person of interest,” police have divulged few particulars.

Aside from saying they think Giddings bought takeout from a fast-food eatery blocks from her downtown apartment June 25, the Saturday evening she was last heard from, police have remained tight-lipped, as they almost always are in homicide cases, whether they have arrested anyone or not.

They have -- after it was independently confirmed by one of Giddings’ downstairs neighbors in The Telegraph last week -- revealed that Macon detectives found a master key June 30 inside the residence of Giddings’ neighbor and fellow law school graduate Stephen McDaniel. The key, which unlocked all other apartments, turned up the same day Giddings’ remains were discovered.

McDaniel, a 25-year-old Lilburn native who started undergraduate studies at Mercer in fall 2004 before beginning law school in 2008, has not been named a suspect in Giddings’ death. He remains jailed without bond on two burglary charges unrelated to Giddings’ slaying. Detectives have scrutinized purchases of items McDaniel made at a Macon Wal-Mart store around the time of Giddings’ death, but according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation, it isn’t clear whether the items McDaniel bought have any bearing on the Giddings probe.

Giddings’ torso was found in a trash bin June 30, wrapped in plastic. McDaniel was charged in the predawn hours July 1, accused of a pair of burglaries in which he allegedly took two condoms from other apartments in the complex two winters ago.

Although phone calls made by inmates at the jail are recorded and are subject to monitoring, there’s been no request for McDaniel’s calls to be monitored, said Sgt. Sean DeFoe, a Bibb County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

After nearly three weeks and a trio of news conferences, two of which Mayor Robert Reichert attended, police say they continue to await for forensic-test results from an FBI lab in Virginia.

They have not said how Giddings was killed, or when or where, or if they even know. They have declined to say whether any of Giddings’ severed limbs have been located. In searching for her remains, they have combed parts of downtown, its storm drains, the city dump and around the Barristers Hall apartments at 1058 Georgia Ave. where Giddings lived.

If there is a more precise time frame for when Giddings was last known to be alive, police haven’t released specifics of it.

Most notably, the existence of an e-mail or some form of electronic message Giddings is thought to have sent to a friend sometime about 10 p.m. June 25.

But authorities have not disclosed the message’s contents or whether they know for certain that Giddings sent it.

Giddings’ eldest sibling, her 24-year-old sister Kaitlyn Wheeler, said by phone from Maryland on Monday that she and her family “are very confident in the law enforcement and the FBI. We feel like they are doing a great job.”

Wheeler said her family remains “completely shaken” by Lauren’s death and that in her mind whoever killed her big sister is probably “a psycho.” But until an arrest is made, Wheeler said, “we don’t know where to direct the anger.”

She added, “We’re impatient, but we’re not in a rush.”

She wants police to do a thorough investigation “and be 100-percent correct.”

Wheeler said her mother, Karen Giddings, and grandmother attended a Monday memorial service for Lauren at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, where Lauren graduated in 2006, to be “surrounded in everything Lauren was involved in.”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.

This story was originally published July 19, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Police looking at purchases McDaniel made at Wal-Mart."