32-year-old William Frank Lee of Hopkins was a carpenter who was moonlighting at L&B, Inc., on North Shorecrest Road, nailing together shipment crates. "I don't know exactly what happened but there was boards -- 2x4's laying around everywhere and some of them had blood on them. Looked like a couple of them had been used as a weapon."
Mincey said Lee's wife dropped him off that night around 6 p.m. He said around 10:30 a deputy drove by and saw Lee working. Then around midnight, after not hearing from her husband, Lee's wife pulled up to the shop with their 2-year-old son. "She saw what was a person laying on his back. The only clothes he had on - the only items he had was his socks and his tennis shoes," Mincey said. "I don't think she realized to start off with that that was her husband. She couldn't tell, I don't believe."
When Richland County deputies arrived they found a naked body that had been badly beaten, shot with nails and then set on fire.