Police evidence reveals that this man’s body was found in one of Lee’s favourite dumping grounds, along CR 484, the day following his murder. The distance from the truck stop to where he was shot to death was about 20 miles – maybe 15 minutes’ driving time at best.
The scenario can only be that Lee and another woman, who has never been positively identified, were hitching a ride and Humphreys stopped his car. Within a short distance after leaving work he picked up the two women then met his death.
Tyria denied any knowledge of being in the dead man’s car that day; she said she knew nothing of the murder until police later questioned her about Lee’s movements. She claimed never to have met anyone called Charles Humphreys, but she was unable to account for her movements during the time in question.
In an affidavit following Lee’s arrest, Tyria described what had happened during the last few months she was with Lee:
She came home with an older pickup truck – David Spears’s vehicle – approximately late May or early June 1990, and a day or two later came home with an older brown car – Charles Carskaddon’s 75 Cadillac.
The next car she came home with was a Pontiac Sunbird – Peter Siems’s car – which she told me a couple of stories of where she had gotten it approximately in June of 1990. At that time, she showed me approximately $600 in cash in $100 bills. She later took myself and my sister to Sea World.
She kept the car until July 4, when I was driving it back through a dirt road to see an Indian reservation. On the way back out, I lost control and rolled the car through a gate and a fence. We got out and Lee told me to run. At that time, I thought the car might blow up.
A couple of people came out and Lee told them not to call the cops because her father lived just down the road. We then returned to the car and Lee tore off the license plate from the back and threw it in the field. She then got in the driver’s seat and I got in the back seat and she drove until the tire went flat. When we got out, she tore the plate off the front of the car and threw it into a field. We then ran to a wooded area and at that time I knew the car must have been stolen.
In the wooded area, Lee washed some blood off herself which she had gotten when the car rolled over and had got cut on some glass on her right arm. We then went on down the road and at some time she threw the keys and the registration into a field or woods.
We were approached by a couple of people whom I believe were with a fire department or something like that. They asked if we were the ones in the wreck and Lee said no and I agreed.
We went down the road to a house where a gentleman gave us a ride to State Road 40. We were then picked up by a lady with kids and she gave us a ride to what I believe was a store. That was as far as she was going. There was a road that went back off of 40.
We were then picked up by a gentleman who took us to some kind of military base where we all went in. We had to give our names. Lee said a name for me and I gave my last name. After leaving there, the gentleman gave us a ride all the way to Daytona Avenue behind our house in Holly Hill.
The next car I saw Lee with was a 4-door small blue car – Charles Humphreys’s property – in approximately late August to early September 1990. I came in from Casa del Mar and Lee was on the bed with a couple of briefcases and some boxes going through it. We later drove to Bellair Plaza where we threw something away in a dumpster.
A day or two later, I heard the news of the murder and they [the police] showed me a picture of the dead man’s car, which was the same one Lee had.
Tyria left her job at the Casa del Mar Motel, and in the fall of 1990 they moved into room number 8 at the Fairview Motel at Harbor Oaks on US 1 along Daytona Beach. Tyria was unemployed and the two women were living off Lee’s earnings.
The staff at the local convenience store got to know Lee and Tyria as regular, sometimes troublesome, customers. Brenda McGarry recalled that Lee would often approach men in the 50-to-60 age range while they topped up their cars with petrol. ‘She was very masculine and aggressive,’ she said. ‘Always flexing her muscles and talking about needing to get over to 92, which I thought was a bar or something. It never registered that it was a highway.’
The owners of the Fairview soon tired of them and once again they moved, this time to the nearby Belgrade, a Yugoslavian restaurant owned by Velimir Isailovic and Vera Ivkovich. Vera allowed the women to rent a room at the rear of the premises for $50 a week. Then the problems started.
Contradicting Lee’s later statements to police that Tyria rarely drank and was as pure as the driven snow, Vera confirmed that, ‘Lee and Tyria were drunk most nights… they invaded the quiet dignity of the Belgrade restaurant, night after night singing and making a racket in their room, their loud music upsetting the customers.’
In his deposition, Velimir Isailovic recounted bad times:
Two, three days after she [Lee] check in she said, ‘Can you give me a ride to my job?’
I said, ‘OK.’ Because she don’t have car. She don’t have nothing. She stay in the room. She gave money if she go to work. Put her in my pickup truck. Say, ‘Which way are you going to go?’
She says, ‘Going south to the New Smyrna Beach.’
And I ask her, ‘Do you know where you are going to go, do you know the street address?’ Because she tell me she got cleaning business. I think she is going to go somewhere to clean house or something like that.
She say, ‘Keep going.’
I start to laughing, I say, ‘I think, you don’t know where you are going to go.’
She say, ‘I know, turn right to the 95.’
I say, ‘Why don’t you tell me, I don’t have gasoline to go too far.’
She say, ‘OK, if you catch 95, exit south and stop.’
Again, I don’t have in my mind nothing wrong. I ask, ‘How are you going to go from here?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m walking.’
I drop her on 95 exit south. I come back home and I tell my wife, ‘Look she don’t have any business. She does not work anywhere. You know where I put her? Right on 95. Some kind of monkey business, yet.’ But what kind we don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know how long she going to stay out that day, that time. Probably several hours. Not too long.
Three, four, five hours she come back. She bring – give my wife very small money, $30, $40. I don’t know. Not too much. She go in the room, buy beer, drink beer all night long. I say, ‘I don’t know how come she has got money to buy beer, but she don’t have money to pay the rent and food.’ Start to make me really mad and confused.
But, anyhow, I quit to give her any favour. She say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
I say, ‘Nothing at all, you start to lie, you don’t have any job, you don’t have any business.’
‘Oh yes, I got good business, good for this and that, can you give me a ride?’
I say, ‘No. I told you no any favour for you any more.’
She say, ‘Can you give me ride to Winn-Dixie store?’
Said, ‘No.’
She start to bring $10, $20 to my wife. I say, ‘That’s enough. Better tell her to go out.’ That’s three weeks. Two or three days before Thanksgiving, I think. The other girl left first.
Now, with both women’s composites plastered across newspapers and screened on TV, Tyria bailed out. She went home for Thanksgiving and Lee left their lodgings on 10 December, begging and borrowing her way back into the Fairview Motel.