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Background

Stephen McDaniel was born to Mark and Glenda McDaniel on September 9th, 1985, in Lilburn, Georgia.
He grew up with four sisters and spent most of his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia.

When he got older, he attended Mercer University and Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia, and looked like he had a promising future.

One of his professors said, “He was really bright.” He also felt McDaniel was an underachiever, saying, “I honestly sensed he was a lot smarter than the effort he put in.”

Even though Stephen seemed harmless to his teachers and classmates, he had a dark side.

In his private life, he was the type of kid many today would describe as an incel. He was a loner, pale, skinny, and unattractive. Even though he was smart, he was awkward with poor communication skills, and he didn’t have luck with women.

His lack of success with women led him to online forums where he talked about how much he disliked them. He also spoke about how he wanted to torture them.

Obesession

At some point, the 25-year-old developed an unhealthy obsession with his neighbor and classmate, 27-year-old Lauren Giddings.

Giddings was the first person in her family to attend college. She had recently received her law degree and was studying to take the bar exam. She planned on becoming a defense attorney.

Giddings was the president of her school’s Federalist Society chapter, and McDaniel was her Vice President.

They were not only classmates, they were also neighbors. They both lived in the Barristers Hall apartment complex, blocks away from the Mercer campus.

This gave McDaniel the opportunity to integrate himself into Giddings’s life. He met her parents when they came to town and was there for her when her dog died. He tried to date her, but she rejected his advances.

Because he lived next door, he could watch her like a hawk.

Just like Giddings, he had recently graduated from law school.

Giddings was about to move out on June 30th and McDaniel was leaving Macon in mid July to move back with his parents.
After fantasizing about punishing women for years, he decided to take action.

Murder

On July 26th, 2001, at around 4:30 am, McDaniel accessed Giddings’s apartment using a key that gave him access to each of the units in the complex.

He entered her apartment just hours after Giddings had emailed her boyfriend saying, she thought “Macon Hoodlums” had recently tried to break in.

McDaniel strangled her to death using his bare hands, then dragged her body into the bathroom.

He returned the next day and dismembered her body using a hacksaw. He placed her torso in a garbage can outside the apartment.
He knew the garbage collection schedule, and he was expecting it to be picked up soon.
The rest of her body was thrown into a dumpster on the Mercer campus.

Investigation

For several days after the 26th, the Giddings family reached out to her, but they didn’t get a response. They thought she was busy studying for the bar exam, so they decided to be patient.

After three days without a response, she was reported missing on June 29th.

Giddings concerned friends decided to let themselves into her apartment with a spare key. McDaniel saw them go into the apartment, so he followed behind, acting like a concerned friend.

Giddings car was in the parking lot and her purse, phone and keys were in the home, but nothing was out of the ordinary.

Police showed up to the apartment to meet her friends and investigate her missing persons report. Things took a turn for the worse when a luminol tes by police revealed a large presence blood in her bathroom. Authorities surmised that Giddings was dead.

The next morning their hunch was confirmed to be accurate. The garbage men missed their scheduled pickup and detectives were able to locate her torso in the trash behind apartment.

Investigators took McDaniel and several other people from her apartment complex to the police station to give statements, but they didn’t tell them about the torso they found.

During the interview McDaniel revealed he was a virgin and was saving himself for marriage, something that would come back to hurt him later.

McDaniel was the only one who didn’t agree to have his apartment searched. This immediately made authorities suspicious of him.
He told police, “It’s the lawyer in me,” and “I’m just always protective of my space.”

At some point, he allowed two investigators to walk through his place, but only if he was present.

When they did the walk through McDaniel was nervous, sweating profusely and drank multiple bottle of water. Police noticed condoms, underwear, swords, keys and some guns but nothing unusual was out in the open.

After authorities checked his place, McDaniel continued to hang around outside the apartment complex as police searched the other units and looked for evidence that would lead them to the killer.

It didn’t take long for the media to show up at the scene to report on the case.
Surprisingly, McDaniel agreed to be interviewed by WXGA’s new anchor, Michelle Casada, and he learned something shocking, the trash wasn’t picked up on time, and Giddings torso was recovered.

Interrogation and Arrest

At that point, McDaniels probably knew his life was over. He was brought in for questioning hours after his news interview.

The interrogation lasted more than a dozen hours, and it’s clear that McDaniels wanted to make himself look crazy.
Several investigators took a crack at him, and one even mentioned McDaniels media interview saying, “Your ass stood out there on the news and ran your mouth but now you’re here and you don’t fucking know?”

Despite intense pressure, he didn’t admit to the murder.
He did slip up when detectives pressed him on why he had condoms when he claimed earlier in the day that was saving himself.

He admitted to stealing the condoms from his classmate’s apartments.
He was arrested for burglary, and authorities got a search warrant for his unit.

McDaniel was held in jail for five weeks while the police continued investigating and gathering evidence.

By the time the investigation concluded, they had a ton of evidence. They located the master key that gave him access to all the units, he also had a key for Giddings unit. They also found Giddings’s underwear in his apartment. They found the hacksaw used to cut her up and a flash drive stolen from Giddings apartment. His browser history revealed incriminating searches like how to have relations with a dead body.

In August 2011, they charged him with Giddings’s murder. He was facing the death penalty.

Later the FBI recovered deleted files from his computer. They located illegal child media on his devices and they had video he recorded from outside Giddings apartment hours before she was killed.

Conviction

The evidence was overwhelming. In 2014, McDaniel was offered a deal he couldn’t refuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop the exploitation of children charges and give him life with the possibility of parole after 30 years if he confessed.

This gave him the opportunity for parole one day and he didn’t have to go to prison with those child exploitation charges on his paperwork.
He agreed to the deal and gave a one page written confession of what happened the night of Giddings death.

Despite the confession, the rest of Giddings’s body was never found, and many detectives and Giddings’s family members still don’t feel that they know the whole story.

On the other hand, some of McDaniel’s family members think he is innocent.

Since 2014, McDaniels has appealed his conviction several times. In 2018, his father tried to use GoFundMe to raise money for legal expenses, but the listing was removed.

McDaniel is incarcerated at Hancock State Prison in Hancock County, Georgia.

He will be eligible for parole in 2041 when he is 56. Due to the brutality of his crime, many legal experts don’t think he will ever be released.