GUILTY NY - Michelle Lee, 24, NYPD criminologist, brutally murdered, 27 April 2009

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What if it was someone looking for the room mate? Hmmm......
 
The reader comments on one of the first Daily News sites that was posted said this is the 3rd girl from this school that was killed. Do we have any info on the other two? TIA
 
Pegatha said:
The nature of her job is what makes this so interesting to me. It is almost ironic. She wasn't just shot. She was burned, stabbed, strangled. Think of all the forensic evidence that was created by this horrific crime that will need to be investigated. It is almost like, someone who knew something about forensics, wanted to confuse the real cause of death, by throwing in all these different injuries or else generate a lot of work for the criminologists. If it is a disgruntled boyfriend then it is like he did it to throw what she did for a living back in her face. I'm not sure this makes sense but I don't know how to explain it better. It just bugs me.
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I wonder if she dated someone from school, too. Or someone in the same line of work.
 
Houndacres said:
The reader comments on one of the first Daily News sites that was posted said this is the 3rd girl from this school that was killed. Do we have any info on the other two? TIA
Click to expand...


In Feb 2006, Imette St. Guillen was a graduate student at John Jay when she was murdered in NYC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imette_St._Guillen

Stepha Henry was a John Jay graduate, and she went missing in May 2007 in Florida. According to AMW, she has been recovered, but I just see evidence they charged someone.

"Police say Williams picked up 22-year-old Stepha Henry the night of May 29, 2007 and took her to Peppers Cafe Nightclub in Sunrise, Fla. He originally told investigators he had left the club early and that Stepha stayed behind. But police were able to recover the dark-colored Acura Integra Williams was driving that night, and say they have found substantial evidence that led prosecutors to charge Williams with Stepha's murder."

I had to google Stepha. I had not heard of her case, and I live in the area.
http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/case.cfm?id=45754
 
When I first heard about the case, I was pretty sure it was a crime of passion from someone that Michelle knew well.

However, as more information came out about how she died, I'm thinking that the murder was perpetrated by a passing acquaintance or someone that she didn't know too well. The co-worker angle would fit about right. It would be someone who was aware of crime lab techniques and know how to stage evidence so that it wouldn't look like there was a struggle.

If the details from the newspaper articles are correct, the person who murdered her probably stayed around after she had possibly died from the initial head trauma when she was hit by the iron. He/she possibly stayed for hours afterwards to clean up the crime scene. That would be enough time to also wipe out any fingerprints, vacuum the premises, and clean up any blood.

After she had died, this person then stabbed her and burned her with the iron possibly in an attempt to make the investigation murkier. He/she had to be pretty confident that he/she had cleaned up pretty good because if he/she really wanted to destroy evidence, he/she had all the opportunity to leave the hot iron on top of the bed. After 20-45 minutes, the iron would have started a fire and that would have destroyed the bed and the body. However, he/she elected not to do that and left the crime scene intact in such a way that Michelle appeared to be sleeping.
 
mae said:
In Feb 2006, Imette St. Guillen was a graduate student at John Jay when she was murdered in NYC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imette_St._Guillen

Stepha Henry was a John Jay graduate, and she went missing in May 2007 in Florida. According to AMW, she has been recovered, but I just see evidence they charged someone.

"Police say Williams picked up 22-year-old Stepha Henry the night of May 29, 2007 and took her to Peppers Cafe Nightclub in Sunrise, Fla. He originally told investigators he had left the club early and that Stepha stayed behind. But police were able to recover the dark-colored Acura Integra Williams was driving that night, and say they have found substantial evidence that led prosecutors to charge Williams with Stepha's murder."

I had to google Stepha. I had not heard of her case, and I live in the area.
http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/case.cfm?id=45754
Click to expand...


I had been following Stepha's case up until the arrest. I thought that her body was never found. :confused:
 
mae said:
In Feb 2006, Imette St. Guillen was a graduate student at John Jay when she was murdered in NYC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imette_St._Guillen

Stepha Henry was a John Jay graduate, and she went missing in May 2007 in Florida. According to AMW, she has been recovered, but I just see evidence they charged someone.

"Police say Williams picked up 22-year-old Stepha Henry the night of May 29, 2007 and took her to Peppers Cafe Nightclub in Sunrise, Fla. He originally told investigators he had left the club early and that Stepha stayed behind. But police were able to recover the dark-colored Acura Integra Williams was driving that night, and say they have found substantial evidence that led prosecutors to charge Williams with Stepha's murder."

I had to google Stepha. I had not heard of her case, and I live in the area.
http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/case.cfm?id=45754
Click to expand...


Darryl Littlejohn is on trial right now for the rape and murder of Imette. He was the bouncer at a club she went to. Before his arrest for the murder of Imette he was arrested for another rape and was serving that sentence when he was charged with Imette's murder.

It seems most likely that whoever did this to Michelle knew they had time - no one else was going to be coming home. They spent a lot of time in the apartment between the actual crime and then the desecretion of the body. THe unnecessary stabbing and iron burns are very interesting. It seems logical to assume that the person who did this was trying to confuse LE on the cause of death and the nature of the crime.

I wonder if the superintendent and other maintenance men working in the building have been interviewed. Was there any construction or remodeling going on? All of those people have the opportunity to become familiar with the routines of these two girls. If it was the super or maint. man one of the girls could have mentioned the roommate was going out of town.
A lot of people would open the door if the super or landlord knocked.

I don't but that's just me. My super. has come to my door before when I was home alone and I wouldn't let him in. I hardly know him. I am not going to let him into my apt while there is no one else there. No way.
 
An ex-boyfriend who conned thousands of dollars from his NYPD girlfriend was arrested Thursday in her grisly murder, sources told the Daily News.

Gary McGurk, a handsome Irish soccer player at CUNY John Jay College, is accused of stabbing his former girlfriend Michele Lee in the throat and searing her chest with a hot iron after she was dead.

Read more: "Former beau Gary McGurk busted in grisly slay of NYPD CSI Michele Lee" - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_..._busted_in_nypd_csi_slay.html#ixzz0GEXlqIMF&A
 
Wow! Just wow!

What a creep. I'm so glad LE caught this guy.

This poor young woman.

fran
 
Thank God they found out who did this to her. Prayers for her family and loved ones.

I will be interested to see what she wrote about this in her diary.
 
Lovejac said:
Thank God they found out who did this to her. Prayers for her family and loved ones.

I will be interested to see what she wrote about this in her diary.
Click to expand...

Lovejac,
I agree about the diary. It sounds like it was a key piece of evidence in helping lead the detectives to this creep. Thank-goodness she kept a diary, considering she did not share information about the relationship w/ friends or family. I am so thankful they caught this creep. If they had not, I have a feeling he would have been a repeat offender.
 
How sad that she let this man into her life.
"Investigators don't believe Lee was the first to fall for McGurk's con job. McGurk was a "professional student" who bilked unsuspecting young women to bankroll his life in the U.S., they said."
I hope they aren't suggesting he killed any of his other con suspects. I wonder what made him turn on her so violently. I always suspect drugs when someone behaves in such an inhuman sort of way.
 
NoEWunNoze said:
An ex-boyfriend who conned thousands of dollars from his NYPD girlfriend was arrested Thursday in her grisly murder, sources told the Daily News.

Gary McGurk, a handsome Irish soccer player at CUNY John Jay College, is accused of stabbing his former girlfriend Michele Lee in the throat and searing her chest with a hot iron after she was dead.

Read more: "Former beau Gary McGurk busted in grisly slay of NYPD CSI Michele Lee" - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_..._busted_in_nypd_csi_slay.html#ixzz0GEXlqIMF&A
Click to expand...

Wow, so it was the same guy they thought all along. The ex with "cancer" and the ex she had been giving money to

"The brazen student told Lee he was broke and suffering from cancer, and that he could not afford or get medical insurance, so she gave him money.

​
 
Gary McGurk, a 23-year-old Irish soccer player at John Jay College in New York, has been arrested by New York police in the horrific murder of his girlfriend — who worked for the city's Police Department.
He is being held on second-degree murder charges after his arrest Thursday night in the heavily Irish-American neighborhood of Woodside, Queens. Police sources said that once they were sure McGurk was their leading suspect, they acted quickly to prevent him from fleeing to his home in Ireland.


http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ir...er-of-NY-Police-Dept-girlfriend-45839327.html
 
Police say they found the guy who killed, burned, and stuck a knife in young CSI lab tech Michelle Lee. We order the verbs that way because NYPD believes Gary McGurk, who was the lab tech's boyfriend, killed her with a blow to the head with an iron, then burned and stabbed her to make it look like a more exotic, intruder-related crime than the domestic dispute that it now appears to be. McGurk sounds like a real peach; an Irish immigrant, professional con man, and until last year a soccer player on the John Jay College squad (which has a fine forensics program; this may be how he met the criminologist Lee), he had allegedly conned Lee out of thousands of dollars with the story that he was dying of cancer (which appears to be false).

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/05/lab_tech_murder.php
 
I have been lurking on this case, but I don't understand why they only chared him with 2nd degree?
 
Does anyone know what he studied at John Jay? I know they are a part of CUNY and a school of criminology but they also have other programs like psychology, etc.

There was a CSI: NY kind of like this once ;\
 
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