The murder of Dennis Amber Lee in Florida exposed vulnerabilities in the nation’s 911 system and led to reforms within the industry. Now, her killer, Michael King, is about to be executed.
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Dennis Amber Lee was fighting for her life in the back seat of her kidnapper’s car. Michael King kidnapped her in broad daylight from her Florida home, then raped her, blindfolded her and tied her up. Still, when King briefly got out of the car, Lee managed to grab his cell phone and call 911.
“Please, my name is Dennis,” a panicked Lee told the 911 dispatcher. “I’m married to a beautiful husband and I just want to see my kids again.”
Lee’s 911 call was one of four made within minutes. The other call came from a driver who said he heard Lee’s cries for his life and saw her struggling in the back seat as King drove. The caller remained on the line for nine minutes, giving the 911 caller real-time updates on Lee’s location as police swarmed the search for him.
Authorities had everything they needed to save Lee and arrest King. However, due to a series of mistakes and apparent incompetence, the 911 dispatcher was unable to relay the information to police, who were seconds away.
Lee’s body was found naked in a shallow grave two days later. The 21-year-old housewife with two sons was shot once above her right eye and died.
Almost 20 years later, Florida plans to execute Dr. King on Tuesday, March 17th. King’s death brings to an end a case that made national news, exposed vulnerabilities in Florida’s 911 system and beyond, and led to reforms within the industry.
Lee’s husband, Nathan Lee, said of the execution in an interview with USA TODAY on Friday, March 13, that he was “ready for this to be over” and “I don’t want to think about this man anymore.”
Here’s what you need to know about the case and the execution, who Denise Lee was, and how her young husband dedicated his life to preventing mistakes like the one that took his wife’s life.
Who is Dennis Amber Lee?
Denise Amber Lee is the daughter of a sergeant with the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department and grew up with her siblings in Englewood, Florida, just south of Sarasota on the Gulf Coast.
She met her future husband while they were both taking a calculus class at a local community college. Nathan Lee said he knew right away that Dennis was the perfect fit for him.
“Obviously she was beautiful… She was intelligent, she was really smart, and I could see that she was a little goofy. I really liked that,” he told USA TODAY. “Once we started dating, I knew right away early on. I knew I had met my future wife.”
He said that’s how she saw him. “As if I was the most important person on earth to her,” he recalled.
When Denise became pregnant, her parents wanted them to get married. Although his proposal wasn’t all that romantic, it says everything about how the young couple made sense together.
“We were just sitting on the couch in my apartment and I almost asked her, ‘What do you think about the whole marriage thing?'” he recalled. “She was like, ‘You can get married.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s okay to get married.’ So we went to Walmart and got her an engagement ring. ”
He said, “It sounds really cheesy, but we didn’t care.”
“She just wanted to marry me and I wanted to marry her,” he said. “We didn’t care how fancy it was. She just loved me.”
Dennis wanted to become a lawyer, but that was put on the back burner when the couple married and had their first son, Noah, when he was 19. Our second son, Adam, was born about 18 months later. After that, Dennis wanted to have a daughter and was considering a career as a child speech therapist. As she researched why it took her oldest son a while to start talking, she became passionate about it.
“She loved children. I don’t think she realized how much she loved them until they were born,” Nathan Lee said. “The moment she first held Noah in her arms, she fell in love. Same with Adam. She was definitely born for it.”
What happened to Dennis Amber Lee?
On the afternoon of January 17, 2008, 21-year-old Dennis Amber Lee was at home in Northport, Florida, doing what she loves while caring for her sons, 2-year-old Noah and 6-month-old Adam. Her husband, Nathan Lee, worked one of three jobs that supported the family.
A man named Michael King was driving through the neighborhood looking for the victim when he spotted Lee cutting Noah’s hair on her front porch.
Although no one saw what happened, Dr. King was able to kidnap Lee at gunpoint. When her husband, Nathan Lee, returned home less than an hour later at around 3:20 p.m., he found the house locked. Also inside were the wallets, keys and phones of his sons and Dennis Lee. Realizing something was terribly wrong, he called 911. Dennis’ sheriff’s father was a sergeant and helped police with the large-scale response.
About four hours after the kidnapping, Dennis Lee was able to use King’s phone to call 911 as police swarmed to find her. Before he knew it for more than six minutes, the phone was open and the dispatcher could hear everything. The recording of the call was harrowing and heartbreaking, with Lee sobbing and pleading for his life.
“I just want to see my family. Please release me,” she cries. “God help me!”
For more than six minutes, the dispatcher sounded at times disinterested and at other times irritated. She said “hello” 13 times as Lee cried hysterically, and it was clear that Lee was unable to speak freely, continuing to ask her name, location, address, and how long she had been away from home, even after Lee had given her some of those answers. The dispatcher offered no sympathy or comfort, at one point asking Lee if the kidnapper could turn off the radio.
About 15 minutes later, another 911 call came in from a woman named Jane Kowalski. Dennis Lee was seen banging on the back window of King’s car and he heard her scream for help.
For many minutes, Kowalski relayed the exact location of her car, information that could have led officers directly to her. However, 911 dispatchers were unable to get critical information to the many police officers desperately searching for Dennis Lee. Nathan Lee said the dispatcher who answered the call had not entered the information into the computer, which angered his fellow dispatchers, and that the failure was largely due to a dispute between the three. Nathan Lee later filed a civil lawsuit over the matter, which the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office settled in 2012 for $1.2 million.
As part of the settlement, the sheriff’s office admitted no wrongdoing. Two of the dispatchers were suspended for several days, Nathan Lee said.
Before Martin Luther King murdered Dennis Lee, there was another missed opportunity to save her life.
Before Lee called 911, King stopped by his cousin’s house and asked for a gas can, shovel and flashlight. A cousin spotted Ms. Lee in the back of the car and heard her scream, “Call the police,” but did nothing as Mr. King loaded up her belongings and drove away with her. Afterwards, her cousin and daughter called 911 separately, but it was too late.
A cousin later told police he thought Lee was one of Dr. King’s “psycho” girlfriends. He was not charged in the incident.
Nathan Lee is dedicated to improving the 911 industry
Today, Nathan Lee runs the Dennis Amber Lee Foundation, which is dedicated to improving 911 systems across the country. Lee travels around the country telling dispatchers his wife’s story in hopes that no one else will have to go through what he did.
As a result of the foundation’s work and the lessons learned from Dennis Lee’s murder, many states have passed legislation that strengthens training requirements for dispatchers, he said. His wife’s case is so notorious in the industry that “it’s very rare to find a temporary worker who hasn’t heard this story,” he said.
“Trainers and placement centers across the country are telling all their new hires about Dennis,” he said, adding that the industry has been very supportive and that temporary workers have some of the toughest and most traumatic jobs in this country.
Nathan Lee said he finds comfort in encouraging change amidst a sea of grief. Anger over the missed opportunity to save his wife’s life was part of the whole family’s grieving process, he said.
“You lose someone and you’re already dealing with that loss. Add to that the way she was killed, the horror that she went through… it really bothered me for a long time,” he said. “Then it’s interspersed with 9/11 and all the other occasions where she should have been saved.”
Now, he knows that countless people have been helped as a result of Dennis Lee’s story.
“She’s important and she’s making a difference,” Nathan Lee said. “And that’s all you can do after this. Just hope she doesn’t die in vain.”
When will Michael King be executed?
The state of Florida is scheduled to execute Michael King on Tuesday, March 17th at 6pm ET at the Florida State Penitentiary in Raeford.
Dr. King’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution, citing concerns about how the state administers lethal injections. The state attorney general’s office dismissed their claims as “merely buying time.”
Nathan Lee said he hopes witnesses to Martin Luther King Jr.’s execution will include Dennis Lee’s husband, son Noah, parents, brothers and sisters, and that he will feel a little more at ease after that.
“The word ‘closure’ is thrown around very loosely. You don’t get closure in situations like this,” he says. “We all stood in front of the courthouse the day he was sentenced, and we all knew we needed to be there when this day came. We needed to come together and be there for Dennis.”
Contributed by Sarasota Herald Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering cold case investigations and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
