Police, DA set meeting on Giddings
As Lauren Giddings’ family plans for her funeral this week, Macon police are scheduled to meet with the district attorney Tuesday to discuss all they know about the slaying of the Mercer University law school graduate.
Giddings’ torso was discovered June 30 wrapped in plastic in a garbage bin beside her Georgia Avenue apartment building. The 27-year-old Maryland native’s torso was released to her family for cremation last week.
The FBI is analyzing more than 200 pieces of evidence collected during the investigation, including evidence from a sexual assault kit. Police collect evidence on the possibility of rape in every homicide involving a woman, said Jami Gaudet, a Macon police spokeswoman.
Macon Police Chief Mike Burns has said the meeting with the DA will be “to discuss everything (police) know” about the case.
Giddings’ obituary announcing her upcoming funeral in Maryland on Saturday listed June 26, a Sunday, as the day she died. That was the day after she was last heard from in a late-night e-mail to a friend in Atlanta, a few hours after she is thought to have bought food at a fast-food drive-through just blocks from her apartment.
Giddings’ sister, 24-year-old Kaitlyn Wheeler, told The Telegraph via e-mail Sunday that her family had chosen June 26 as the date Lauren died so that a date could be included in her obituary “because we don’t know any other date to pick.”
“Hopefully we will know the truth at some point, but for the obituary we had to make the decision,” Wheeler wrote. “It is NOT a date given to us by the police.”
In the same message, Wheeler went on to write that “I personally think it was just one person that did this to my sister but I haven’t been told one way or the other.”
In an interview that aired live Monday on The Telegraph’s “NewsTalk Central” morning show, Wheeler said her sister’s funeral will bring “us some sort of closure.”
“It’s also a step toward reality,” she added.
Asked about her thoughts on how police have done their jobs in the case, Wheeler said, “They have kept in touch with us extremely well. I wouldn’t say that they’ve given us all the information that we wanted, of course, but we’d rather them keep the integrity of the investigation safe than keep us happy.”
Sister met McDaniel
Wheeler said she at least knew of her sister’s next-door neighbor and fellow graduating classmate, Stephen Mark McDaniel of Lilburn.
On the day after Giddings’ remains were recovered, police said there were two “persons of interest,” and that one of them was McDaniel, 25.
Police have since shied away from using the “person of interest” wording and have refused to say if there was still another possible suspect at large.
McDaniel has been jailed on unrelated burglary charges since July 1. A bond hearing is scheduled for Thursday in his case.
Wheeler said she had met McDaniel and seen him in passing when she visited Macon for her sister’s May 14 graduation.
“We got there on a Thursday night (May 12) and her graduation was Saturday morning. So Thursday night, we went out to a local bar in Macon, and while we were out, we saw him. And Lauren made the statement, like, ‘Oh, good,’ like, ‘I invited (him) out because I knew we were all coming. So I’m glad he came out because he normally does not come out with that group of friends.”
On the matter of the contents and the origin of the last-known e-mail Giddings sent, Wheeler said, “I do believe it came from Lauren, but if someone told me different, I wouldn’t argue with them. I have read it over and over. Some things do seem a little peculiar, but ... if I’d read it normally I wouldn’t have questioned it.”
Wheeler, in a Monday e-mail to The Telegraph, wrote that the exact wording of Giddings’ final e-mail is “not something we will be sharing” now.
Wheeler, during the “NewsTalk Central” interview Monday, did, however, say that her sister, as has been speculated, had not expressed any concerns for her safety at the apartments.
“And she didn’t say that in the e-mail either,” Wheeler said.
More than a month after Giddings died, authorities haven’t recovered all of her remains, said Leon Jones, Bibb County’s coroner.
No firm timeline detailing Giddings’ final hours has been made public, and authorities have refused to discuss whether their investigation has formulated one.
Several of McDaniel’s professors and friends have called McDaniel’s attorney, Floyd Buford, and expressed their support for him, Buford said Monday.
In his month of incarceration, McDaniel’s only phone calls have been to his lawyer. Buford and his family have been his only visitors, according to the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s very difficult for him to be behind bars,” Buford said.
The emotionally charged subject of Giddings’ slaying hung in the air last week as recent Mercer law graduates took the bar exam in Atlanta, said David Whitmire, a classmate of Giddings and McDaniel.
“There was still an effect,” he said.
Whitmire, 58, a former University of Georgia chemistry professor, said he was at the law school June 30 for a bar-exam preparation class when someone heard that police were at the nearby Barristers Hall apartments where he was a neighbor to Giddings and McDaniel
Many of the students then moved to an area where they could see the police officers’ activity, he said.
“I did not know anyone was dead,” Whitmire said. A couple of hours later, Whitmire saw a hearse pull up.
Telegraph staff writer Liz Fabian contributed to this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398. To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.
This story was originally published August 2, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Police, DA set meeting on Giddings."