Police Find Dismembered Body Outside Apartment of Missing Law Grad
Updated: Police in Macon, Ga., discovered a dismembered body on Thursday outside the apartment building of a missing Mercer law grad after a friend reported her missing.
Police were working to identify the body, Macon.com reports. The missing woman, 27-year-old Lauren Giddings, had recently graduated and was preparing for the bar exam.
Giddings had worked as a law clerk at the Bibb County Public Defender’s Office from June 2010 until her graduation, the story says. Formerly, Giddings worked as a project assistant at King & Spalding’s discovery center from July 2007 to August 2008, law firm spokesman Les Zuke tells the ABA Journal. The office of about 230 lawyers and consultants works on document review and discovery in the firm’s litigation matters.
A neighbor who was identified as a classmate of Giddings’ was arrested early today and charged with a two-year-old burglary of a different apartment in the same building, 13WMAZ reports in a separate story. The neighbor, Stephen McDaniel, was also identified as a “person of interest” in the homicide investigation, according to 13WMAZ and 41NBC.com. Police cautioned in a press release that the investigation is ongoing, and “no one is being excluded at this early investigative stage.”
McDaniel told 13WMAZ before his arrest that he and a group of friends searching for Giddings had entered her apartment on Thursday and looked at emails on her computer. He said they indicated she was afraid because someone recently tried to break in.
McDaniel told Macon.com he was studying for the bar exam Wednesday evening in his own apartment in Giddings’ building. “I hadn’t seen anyone or heard anything,” he said.
Story updated at 9:50 a.m. to include information from 13WMAZ, at 10:45 a.m. to include the town where the apartment is located and at 11:45 a.m. to indicate that McDaniel is a person of interest in the investigation.
