Dateline: The Watcher - A complete investigation overview of the Lauren Giddings murder case, explored

Dateline: The Watcher featured the brutal murder case of Lauren Giddings, a 27-year-old Georgia resident pursuing law at Georgia’s Mercer University School. Giddings was an aspiring woman who dreamed of becoming a public defender.

On June 24, 2011, Lauren Giddings and her friends were out late at night, celebrating before their upcoming bar exam. Giddings lived in an apartment across from her law school. As her friends told Dateline, she had recently rekindled her relationship with David, an Atlanta-based lawyer who was 20 years her senior. Giddings has just broken up with her classmate Joe, who was now dating her friend Muller.

The official synopsis for Dateline: The Watcher reads as follows:

Lauren Giddings was smart, charismatic and a newly-minted law school graduate. She had dreams of becoming a public defender, then she was brutally murdered. Her killer tried to pull off the perfect crime, but a secret recording exposed the truth.

What happened to Lauren Giddings? Was she ever found?

Here is the complete investigation overview of the Lauren Giddings murder case.

Dateline: The Watcher- Here's a complete overview of Lauren Giddings' brutal murder case

Lauren Giddings' friends found an empty apartment on June 29

As Lauren Giddings' friends told Dateline, she was staying at Joe's residence the night she went missing (June 24). After Lauren's sister failed to reach her, she contacted Muller and Joe and asked her to search Lauren's apartment on June 29.

Muller and Joe found an empty apartment with all of Lauren's belongings, but no sign of its occupant. A quick search of Giddings' laptop revealed that she had sent an 'eerie' message to David about someone trying to break into her apartment on June 25.

Macon officials found Dateline victim's dismembered torso on June 30

On June 30, Macon police crime scene investigator Steve Gatlin arrived on scene to search for clues, which is when he felt a 'foul odor' in the wind outside. The odor led the officials to a trash can outside of Lauren Giddings' apartment. Gatlin discovered two trash bags and one of them contained Giddings' torso.

Gatlin reminisced about this chilling moment to Dateline as:

“We open it up, looked in there, and I saw two trash bags. And then I went to the bigger one, which is a large-sized package. It was a trash bag that, as soon as I reached down and felt it... it had some human remains in it.”

A follow-up search for Lauren Giddings' remains led them inside the apartment. The officials used luminol to reveal evidence of blood in the bathtub. Gatlin revealed how Giddings' bathtub glowed like a light switch, suggesting that her body was cut into pieces here.

A recorded interview unveiled a key witness

The Watcher (Image Via Facebook/@DatelineNBC)

In the wake of this gruesome discovery, the Macon officials questioned Lauren Giddings' friends and neighbours. This is when they came across a strange footage of a fellow law grad Stephen McDaniel.

McDaniel came into the spotlight due to discrepancies in his statements and his relative indifference when the police questioned him about his neighbour's discovered torso. Additionally, a chance search of the laundry room in Lauren Giddings' apartment revealed a hacksaw with blood “on each end of the saw blade.”

As Gatlin revealed to Dateline: The Watcher, this was key evidence and the Macon police quickly shifted their attention to Stephen McDaniel. A search of McDaniel's apartment revealed women’s underwear in his dresser, belonging to Lauren Giddings. Additionally, they found certain evidence like 'packaging for that same type of hacksaw in his apartment', a master key which would have provided him access to the laundry room and a replica of keys to Lauren Giddings' apartment.

Stephen McDaniel was charged with Lauren Giddings' murder on August 2, 2011

Additional evidence from McDaniel's laptop helped Macon officials build a strong case against him. As David Cooke, Macon Judicial Circuit's district attorney, told Dateline:

''It’s obvious that he has a fascination with sadistic p*rnography. Murder, torture, dismemberment.”

An additional home video showed McDaniel peeping into Lauren Giddins' apartment on the night she went missing and he was charged with first-degree murder on August 2, 2011.

McDaniel finally pleaded guilty in 2014 and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He confessed to strangling the Dateline victim to death, following which he scattered her remains in dumpsters elsewhere. Despite numerous efforts, Lauren Giddings' remains have not been found yet.

You can stream the Dateline episode on Peacock.