Convicted murderer Stephen McDaniel's online blog site offered a preview of techniques he used while killing and dismembering his fellow Mercer University Law School graduate Lauren Giddings.
On April 21, a week before facing trial on a murder and child porn charges, McDaniel admitted murdering Giddings in her apartment June 26, 2011, then returning to scene a day later with a hacksaw and used it to saw off her head, arms and legs.
In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the porn charges and a sentence of life with the possibility of parole.
Had the plea deal not been struck, District Attorney David Cooke planned to use as evidence hundreds of posts McDaniel made on the "Operator Chan" website. He made the website posts under the user name S-0-L, or Son of Liberty.
Among other things, McDaniel wrote about politics and his firm belief in the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right for people to bear arms.
But in other posts, he attacked himself with comments such as "I consider myself to be a true cold-hearted monster." He also described a scenario in which masses of people were killed, referring to them as "human waste" and "leeches."
He also wrote about ways to kill someone, including chloroform to subdue them, suffocation and using baseball bats and piano strings.
One way to hide evidence, McDaniel wrote, was to dump a body in a trash bin. Giddings' torso was found in a green trash can outside the apartment complex where she lived next door to McDaniel.
After some of the posts, McDaniel would write, "this is all hypothetical of course."
In contrast to writing about murders and methods of getting away with them, McDaniel also blogged about his disgust for those who killed innocent people.
For example, he wrote that "the criminal stepped out of the protections afforded by society when he took a life in cold blood. As a member of society, he was bound to not harm his fellow man, but he did, so he needs to die."
In his confession, McDaniel wrote, "It is difficult for me to explain why I killed Lauren and attempted to conceal my deed the way I did. The difficulty in explaining it lies in my own inability to understand it myself. I know that it was very wrong; I am not delusional or without all morals or decency..."
Had the trial happened, Cooke said he would've used the blog posts to demonstrate McDaniel's violent nature.
Not only did McDaniel use his blog, he made more than 14,000 internet searches before he killed Giddings. He searched her Facebook, Twitter and other sites several times. Then, on June 24, the day before Giddings was last seen, McDaniel searched information on the same brand of burglar bar that Giddings used and ways to disarm it.
The night of Saturday, June 25, McDaniel searched through pornography sites and stories of Japanese characters who had the powers to guard the souls of the recently deceased. Then, hours later, after 4 a.m. on Sunday the 26th, McDaniel began looking at personal ads on Craigslist.
According to his confession, he sneaked into Giddings' apartment shortly after that. Around 4:30 a.m., he strangled her to death. He put her body in her bathtub and went back to his apartment next door.
His internet history shows that by 5:42 a.m., he searched for information about a blade, then soon after, he began watching the movie, "The Hangover Part 2."
All during the day, he was on and off the internet. At 11:18 p.m., he looked at the Bibb County garbage collection website. His confession states he went back to Giddings' apartment around midnight, sawed off her head, arms and legs and put some of her remains in the dumpster across the street outside the Mercer law school.
According to his internet history, McDaniel was on his computer until about 12:05 a.m., then didn't have any activity listed until 12:35 when he began watching a cartoon called "Lord Quadros" on YouTube.
That would've left him about 30 minutes to go back into Giddings' apartment and carry out the rest of the crime.
He took a break from the internet again at 1:49 a.m. for about 45 minutes and had no activity between 2:34 and 7:20 that morning.
Some of McDaniel's other searches included, "molesting a sleeping girl", the Arabian Knights story of "The Three Apples" that describes a man killing and dismember his wife, and searches related to sexual fetishes.
Prosecutors mentioned those searches during motion hearings and planned to introduce more during the trial.