A Florida mother’s blood-curdling final screams as her abductor readied to kill her have been captured on tape.
Denise Amber Lee, 21, should have been home caring for her two young sons – Noah, two, and Adam, six months.
Instead, when her husband Nathan returned from work, his children were alone and his wife was nowhere to be found.
He frantically dialed 911.
Hours later, it was Lee herself making a haunting 911 call that hinted at her terrifying whereabouts.
Barely able to speak and struggling to catch her breath, she pleaded: ‘Please let me go, please let me go.
‘I just want to see my family again!’
As it turned out, Lee was making the muffled 911 call from her captor’s car, and she using the abductor’s phone.
Denise Amber Lee, 21, should have been home caring for her two young sons when she was abducted and killed
Lee’s husband Nathan (right) called 911 after returning home to find his wife missing and his two children alone
On the afternoon of January 17, 2008, a neighbor noticed Michael King ‘slowly circling’ Denise’s neighborhood in a dark green 1994 Chevrolet Camaro.
King had abducted Lee from her home in Florida and drove her to his cousin’s house between 5:30 and 6 PM, where he requested a shovel, a gas can, and a flashlight, as detailed in court records.
As King prepared to take off, his cousin heard a girl’s voice cry out ‘to call the cops.’
When King’s confronted him, the abductor said to not ‘worry about it.’
Lee’s dramatic 911 call was placed at 6.14pm, according to court documents.
In the call, exclusively released by ABC’s 20/20, she was heard saying: ‘Please, my name is Denise.
‘I’m married to a beautiful husband and I just want to see my kids. Please.
‘I just want to see my family again.’
Lee was abducted from her Florida home by Michael King in January 2008
Dramatic footage revealed the 911 call she placed while in her captor’s car
Police said they ‘absolutely knew’ Lee had been abducted
But she never did.
King sexually assaulted, shot and killed Lee before dumping her body in a shallow grave in an area of undeveloped land.
Chris Morales, the deputy chief of the North Port Police Department, revealed his reaction to Lee’s haunting 911 call.
He said: ‘When that call came in, we absolutely knew that she was abducted.’
As the chilling conversation continued, so did Lee’s pleas for mercy.
King’s voice could be heard in the background while she screamed: ‘Please let me go!
‘I’m sorry, please let me go!’
Retired Charlotte County sheriff, Bill Cameron, had the duty to play the 911 call for Lee’s father, Rick Goff, who was an experienced sheriff’s detective.
Rick Goff, Lee’s father, recalled hearing his daughter’s voice on the 911 call
Former Charlotte County sheriff Bill Cameron was tasked with playing Lee’s father the call
Cameron recalled the gut-wrenching moment.
He said: ‘I played it for him. He cried and he said, “That’s her”.
‘That was horrible for me and horrible for Rick.’
Speaking to 20/20, Goff described Lee’s death as ‘tough to deal with.’
He remembered the 911 call: ‘She’s trying to save her life, get back to her kids.’
However, Denise’s call was also the cause of controversy and change.
Despite making that desperate plea to police, authorities were unable to trace the 21-year-old’s phone signal in real time.
Authorities did not utilize a 911 call made by Jane Kowalski, who was traveling from Tampa to Fort Myers when she heard ‘terrible screaming’ coming from King’s Camaro.
Noah and Adam Lee, now teenagers, remember their mother as a hero
Lee’s sons still honor their mother to this day
Noah (left) and Adam (left) were only two and six months old when their mother was killed
In court, Kowalski said that she had never heard screaming ‘like that in my life.’
She called 911 describing King’s appearance, as well as a the dark Camaro he was driving.
Kowalski even offered King’s location on the 911 call.
However, her call was not dispatched to the police searching for Lee.
Police identified King as the murderer after finding Lee’s hair and belongings at his home and near the crime scene.
In April 2008, the Florida Legislature unanimously enacted the Denise Amber Lee Act, mandating at least 232 hours of training for 911 operators in the state.
Lee’s children, now teenagers, remember their mother as a hero.
Noah Lee said: ‘I always say she sacrificed herself to make sure we were safe. We came first.’
Adam, who was only six months old when his mother passed away, shared that he writes her name in clay before every baseball game he plays to ‘feel that she’s there with me.’
He said: ‘I’m doing it for her and for my dad because we’re a part of her and I feel like people hearing from us can kind of see how important she was [and] how amazing she was.’
The episode airs on 20/20 on ABC at 9pm Eastern Time on Friday October 10, 2025.
