Is anyone else having a hard time believing this was the straw that broke the camel's back? I mean, there was a lot of other circumstantial evidence like the underwear and the hacksaw packaging found in his apartment. Not to mention other evidence we don't have the full details on, like the possible blood stains and earring in his car. I just can't believe that if he didn't confess after the other evidence was brought to light, that this would be the one thing to make him confess. I obviously don't know but have a sneaking suspicion that there was more to it than surveillance video (given his internet search/forum history and images found in his apartment).
This later article indicates there WERE other "recent developments"(
bbm) -- but that, yeah, the recovered surveillance was the final straw:
...McDaniel’s long spiral back to reality, or perhaps the realization that he might not have covered his tracks enough, hit critical mass late last year.
Experts combing his computer began unearthing a trove of potentially damning evidence. He had gone online, investigators learned, researching ways to disable a burglar bar like the one on Giddings’ apartment door. Prosecutors said he also looked up garbage pickup schedules around the time Giddings was killed.
As it turned out, the morning after she was reported missing, police found her torso less than two hours before a trash truck would have hauled it away with that week’s refuse.
About two weeks ago, he granted his lawyers permission to go to prosecutors and discuss a plea. Then McDaniel, 28, changed his mind.
“He stepped back and went back into trial mode,” Franklin J. Hogue, one of his attorneys, said Tuesday.
“And then the evidence just kept pouring in.”
Videos that McDaniel made looking through Giddings’ living room window the night she died were among images discovered on his digital camera.
When his defense team presented him with those findings, Hogue said, “He then realized ... there’s no viable defense theory we can give...".
from:
http://www.macon.com/2014/04/22/3060135/mcdaniel-thought-he-was-gonna.html
I guess I never got beyond the general range of, say, 75-80 percent toward the "guilt" side -- and for me, that left reasonable doubt, which is the standard I was trying to go by. I just didn't see the "early" evidence (that we knew of) adding up to beyond that. I think a lot of the most damning evidence
did come toward the end -- we had just begun to get hints of it, and then the gag order came.
I have to say -- and I know this is something many will not like -- that I had my concerns about some of the "early" evidence stuff having been cooked a little, in some way. The underwear, and, for a while at least, the keys. Can I prove it? No. Do I still wonder about it? Yeah, I do. I think it is a
possibility that there is a piece or two of earlier evidence that got prominent placement that the prosecution might well be extra-glad it doesn't have to take to court.
I am not sold on anything like that having happened, just still wonder a bit. (And also -- for all I know, there could be "early" evidence that we never knew of that is just as damning as damning can be.)
It's not that I ever felt that LE was saying, "Quick -- we need to pin it on somebody -- this guy's kind of strange, so HIM!"
I felt that that LE felt pretty confident that SM was the likely perp, but forensic evidence turning up was slim...and maybe someone gave it a little boost of some sort. Sometimes, in cases like that -- you know, "framing a guilty man", well, it does happen. This was such a very high-profile case, locally (as you, MaconMom, know) -- and Lauren had friends closely connected to the mayor, and there was a LOT of pressure, I feel. (Just want to add here -- not in any way saying that there was anything wrong AT ALL with anyone who cared about Lauren pulling every string they could tug. It was the thing to do. Good for them.)
This later evidence, though, that we are just learning about -- computer evidence and surveillance, garbage schedule search .... sounds as if there is a good bit.
I'm a bit puzzled -- seems that back during the pre-trial hearings, before the gag order hit, it was the
GBI that was beginning to talk about new discoveries in the computer scrutiny. Now what we're getting seems to have come from the
FBI ... when the last we had heard, the prosecution was waiting only on one or two tests from the FBI, something about mitochondrial dna (because we speculated it had to do with the hairs
* found). So-- I wonder, after the GBI
started finding stuff on his computer drives -- did the prosecution (maybe with a great big whoop) ask the FBI for help in that area, too? And they found even more, and the camera stuff as well?
I feel pretty confident that this computer/camera evidence is truly of recent finding -- not something somehow "held back" -- because otherwise surely the prosecution would have whipped it out way back when the death penalty was on the table and deals were likely being proffered.
Lord, why did it take so long to find that stuff?
It just seems providential, doesn't it? Especially if evidence WAS slim, and then this all came to light.
I don't know. I'm just glad they found it. I never wanted SM to walk if he killed Lauren.
I will admit, though, that after holding down that fence for so long, I did begin to HOPE he was not guilty -- that it was not he who killed Lauren. Heck, maybe I always hoped that. I know some would say that's bad, because then that would mean all that wasted effort, and the family would have had to go through maybe more years of wondering and maybe never get answers, etc. And yes, that would be awful. (And as my daughter once said to me: "But even if HE didn't kill her, Mom -- SOMEbody did.") But, in the end, you feel what you feel.
MaconMom, I'm sure you didn't want me to write this tome in response to your post, LOL. Sorry -- I started out in response to you, but I kinda then just jumped off into some things I needed to say, needed to work through.
* I AM curious to know what kind of results they got with those hairs...
