Further examination of the vehicle revealed a pair of prescription spectacles under the front seat and, in the boot, the impression left by a toolbox which had apparently been removed. The car was dusted unsuccessfully for fingerprints by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and then towed into the Volusia Country Sheriff’s Office compound for safekeeping before it was removed to the Orlando Regional Crime Laboratory where it was analysed by Daniel Radcliffe.
The next find came on Wednesday, 13 December. Jimmy Bonchi and James Davis, who were out scavenging for scrap metal along a dirt road off Interstate 95, made a gruesome discovery. They had found Richard Mallory’s corpse at a spot roughly five miles across the river from where his car had been discovered.
Volusia County deputies who responded to the 911 call saw a body that was skeletonised from the collarbone to the top of the head. Wild animals and insects had enjoyed a feast. The bulk of the putrefying corpse lay under a piece of cardboard with only the fingers showing. It was fully dressed in jeans and a pullover, the belt slightly askew. Detective James Malady, who arrived shortly after the body was called in, noted that the pockets of the jeans had been turned inside out. A set of dentures lay on the ground next to the corpse.
Charles James Lau, an investigator with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department, oversaw an immediate autopsy of the unidentified body and recovered four bullets from its torso. The hands of the victim were removed and transported to the crime laboratory for latent-print examination because, as Lau explained, ‘When we have an unidentified body, you can’t roll the fingerprints because of the decomposition.’
At Lee’s trial, James Downing, the Daytona Beach medical examiner, described the removal of the body to a local funeral home on the night of 13 December. ‘Ordinarily, bodies were sent to Halifax Hospital, but the decomposition of this body was too severe,’ he said.
On the following day, the clothing was removed and sealed in a bag. ‘I don’t believe he had any underwear on,’ Downing told the jury. ‘I did not notice the zipper,’ he added when questioned as to whether or not Richard Mallory’s zip was closed or fastened. Dr Arthur Botting certified his death.
Several months of investigation into Mallory’s sordid lifestyle and somewhat shady acquaintances produced no real leads. Police learned that he had last been seen at his shop on 30 November by Jeffrey Davis, the son of Jackie Davis, Mallory’s last girlfriend. Officers were also able to locate a customer to whom Mallory confided his plan to visit Daytona Beach for a couple of days. Notes and phone numbers in the dead man’s apartment led investigators to two dancers at local strip clubs, Chastity Marcus and Kimberly Guy, and Doug Lambert, Chastity’s boyfriend.
Initial suspicion revolved around Chastity who was described as ‘as hot as a firecracker’ by the manager of the strip joint where she worked. She told the cops all about Mallory and his sick perversions. She introduced them to other girls who had been abused by this sexual pervert. Even Mallory’s former girlfriend Jackie Davis told officers that he had been incarcerated for sex offences for ten years. But the cops slammed them all down and the case went cold.
By the middle of May 1990, the murder of Richard Mallory had been all but forgotten by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department. There was, seemingly, no reason to believe it was anything other than an isolated homicide.
Mallory’s sister in Texas and his brother in New Jersey wanted nothing to do with Richard’s business. A Mr Townley took over the repair equipment that had been dumped, moved the shop several doors from the original site, and Mallory Electronics became Johnny’s TV & VCR of Palm Harbor. Jackie Davis took charge of Mallory’s cremation and scattered his ashes in nearby woodland.
But did anyone other than Lee know about the killing of Richard Mallory? In various quarters, it has always been accepted that Lee’s lesbian lover had no knowledge at all of Mallory’s murder. Indeed, after Lee’s arrest for murder, Tyria initially told investigators that she had no inkling that Lee had been involved with any murder until they crashed murder victim Peter Siems’s car on Wednesday, 4 July 1990 – almost a full seven months after Mallory was killed. She then watered down her story when pressed, saying that Lee had told her about the murder of Mallory but she didn’t believe her.
Now, however, we can learn the shocking truth. Tyria knew about the murder of Richard Mallory because Lee had told her. In fact, she told her the very same day Lee had killed the man. Lee gave Tyria a scarf and jacket belonging to Mallory – it had ‘Richard’ printed inside the jacket collar – and she showed her a camera, a radar detector and toolbox which had mysteriously come into her possession. And, if all of this was not sufficient to raise Tyria’s suspicions from non-belief to that of shock, she could have hardly failed to notice the blood-spattered car seat while she was driving round in Mallory’s car for an hour.
Tyria would later say:
She [Lee] came home early one day in December with a two-door Cadillac with tinted windows and a gator plate [a Florida number plate] on the front. We used this car to move from Ocean Shores Motel to [an apartment on] Burleigh Avenue. Later that night after I came home from work, Lee told me she had shot and killed a guy that day. She later told me she had covered his body with a piece of carpet… and left the car in some woods off John Anderson. And, when we moved in on Burleigh, she had gotten some things in which she showed me something with the name ‘Richard’ on it. She gave me a grey jacket and scarf, which I believe she had gotten from that car.
Richard Charles Mallory was shot to death very close to Ormond-by-the-Sea at around 5am on the morning of Friday, 1 December 1989, but now, for the first time, we can follow the sequence of events thereafter.
After blasting Mallory to death, Lee then drove his car to the Ocean Shores Motel in Holly Hill where she met up with Tyria. Using Mallory’s Cadillac, together they moved their possessions to a low-budget or ‘efficiency’ apartment on Burleigh Avenue. They went back to their old apartment in the car, collected up their two pets – a dog and a cat – and returned to the new apartment. Tyria rode off on her moped, while Lee threw a 12-speed cycle into the back of the car and dumped the vehicle within a short distance of Burleigh Avenue where it was later found by police. She cycled back to the new apartment where she gave Mallory’s grey jacket and scarf to Tyria, explaining in the same breath that she had ‘shot and killed a guy that day’.
At 2.25pm on Wednesday, 6 December, Lee, using the alias of Cammie Marsh Green of 1 High Ridge Road, strolled into OK Pawn and Jewelry Inc, 305 Dr Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard, Daytona Beach. She was about to pawn a Minolta Freedom camera and a Radio Shack Micronta Road Patrol Radar Detector, formerly the property of Richard Mallory. The ticket number 3325 recorded the transaction, and the manager, Linda Miller, handed over $35. Lee’s obligatory thumbprint on the document would later prove part of her undoing.
The murder weapon was found after Lee’s arrest. For four days police searched Rose Bay, and the rusty gun was located in the south-east corner between the sea wall and the first set of pilings supporting the bridge. Donald Champagne, ballistics expert and retired from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, identified it as a .22-calibre, nine-shot pistol with six grooves and a right-hand twist. ‘A popular weapon.’