The killer of Erin Corwin was "lying in wait" for her to come for a preplanned romantic tryst, investigators say, drastically elevating the charges and penalty for her vicious murder.
If true, the pretty 19-year-old Californian was betrayed in the most classic and horrific of ways -- by an illicit lover, and, in this case, her very own next-door neighbor, Christopher Lee.
Corwin went inexplicably missing this summer after telling her husband she was going to Joshua Tree National Park for a couple of hours. Her car was later located a few miles shy of that location.
Following an intensive weeks-long search for the newly pregnant woman, Corwin's decomposed corpse was finally located on August 16th less than two miles from her home at the bottom of an abandoned mineshaft.
Her paramour, the long suspected Lee, was taken into custody the very next day in Alaska where the former marine and his childhood-sweetheart/wife Nichole had recently moved together.
Nichole Lee has now been labeled "a person of interest" in the ongoing murder investigation.
Homicide victim Erin Corwin was believed to have been secretly seeing Christopher Lee, and even carrying his baby, for months. But those in the know also claim that Lee expressed grave concerns about how his own spouse would react if she found out.
At his arraignment, prosecutors further disclosed that Lee had conducted several online searches on how to "dispose of a dead body." The avid hunter and ex-soldier stood shackled and unshaven in court on Tuesday.
Lee's allegedly temperamental wife has been under intense scrutiny herself ever since making some shadowy observations regarding the inability of authorities to bring murder charges against someone if a missing person can't be found.
She is said to have additionally hinted that the whereabouts of Corwin's remains would "never" be discovered and that detectives "missed" important evidence when they first came to the couple's home to execute a search warrant.
Christopher and Nicole Lee have one child by marriage. It's not clear what will become of their offspring if both parents are to be charged now.
E.R.
