Jurors Listen to Chilling 911 Calls In King Trial

SARASOTA | Jurors on Tuesday heard two 911 calls - one by Denise Lee and one by a woman who heard screams from help coming from a car - in the trial of the man accused of killing Lee.

Authorities say Michael King, 38, kidnapped, raped and murdered the North Port mother and then buried her in a shallow grave in the woods. Lee, 21 at the time of her death, left behind two young sons.

Lee's father, Rick Goff, hunched over in court and gritted his teeth as prosecutors played the tape of his daughter pleading for her life while giving clues to a dispatcher during the call, which lasted 5 minutes and 44 seconds.

Denise Lee had apparently found a misplaced cell phone and dialed the call without the knowledge of her captor, who is heard on the tape grumbling about the phone and demanding its return.

She manages to tell the dispatcher that her first name is Denise.

The dispatcher asks if the car is on Interstate 75.

"Can you please tell me where we are?" Denise Lee asks the man.

The dispatcher asks: Are you blindfolded?

In the background, the man asks a question. His voice is insistent.

The dispatcher asks: "Do you know this guy?"

The dispatcher asks: "How long have you been gone from your house?"

The dispatcher asks what her last name is.

"Lee," she says, in a quiet voice.

Does she know the guy?

"No," Lee says.

There is music playing in the background.

The dispatcher: What is your home address?

Lee: "Can you please take me to my home? Please take me home. On Latour, please.

Dispatcher: Can you see or do you have a blindfold on?

Lee: "I can't see. Where are we?"

The dispatcher asks if she can get the man to turn the radio down.

Lee tells him she can't hear what he is saying.

"Are you going to let me go now?" Lee says. "Oh, please."

And the recording ends.

The other 911 call came from Jane Kowalski, who heard someone screaming for help from a dark-colored Camaro as she waited for a stoplight on U.S. 41.

"I heard all this screaming and commotion," Kowalski said. "I've never ever heard anything like that in my life ... It was completely horrific. Terrified. Panicky."

Stopped at a red light, she said she had a clear view of the driver, and looked him in the eye.

"That man over there," she said, gesturing in the courtroom toward Michael King, "turned around and started pushing something in the backseat. Pushing something down."

The person in King's car - she thought it was a child - was banging on the passenger window so hard that the person Kowalski was talking to on her cell phone could hear it.

Kowalski, who was talking on her phone with her sister, wanted to dictate the license plate of the Camaro to her.

But when the light changed, the driver of the Camaro did not go. Kowalski rolled forward and the Camaro pulled behind her.

She called 911.

"I wasn't going to get his license tag," she said.

King followed her on U.S. 41 as she drove slowly, about 35 mph.

"I was watching him the entire time in my rearview mirror," she said.

Prosecutors played a tape of the 911 call in court.

"I'm not trying to be overdramatic here," she told the dispatcher. "But something's going on because he's going even slower now."

She gave the dispatcher a description of the driver, and of the car, and said he had turned off of U.S. 41 onto Toledo Blade Boulevard.

When she was later questioned by North Port Police, Kowalski identified King as the driver of the car.

King has never admitted any wrongdoing.