Erin Corwin’s best friend testified in Joshua Tree Superior Court yesterday that Corwin’s lover had arranged a secret special day in the desert for just the two of them, one that Corwin hoped would end with a marriage proposal and plans for the two of them to move to Alaska. Instead, investigators say, her lover, Christopher Lee, 25, strangled the 19-year-old Corwin with a garrote and dumped her body down a mine shaft east of Twentynine Palms last June. The prosecution questioned 11 witnesses—including Corwin’s husband, best friend, neighbors, and law enforcement involved in the investigation—during yesterday’s preliminary hearing on charges that Lee murdered Erin Corwin with special circumstances of lying in wait. Judge Rodney Cortez decided there was enough evidence to continue Lee’s case to an April 22 arraignment, moving it one step closer to a jury trial. Managing editor Tami Roleff was in the courtroom, and lays out some of the evidence prosecutors presented against Christopher Lee…
Erin Corwin sent text messages to her best friend, Jessica Trentham, the week before she disappeared, about the surprise Christopher Lee was planning for the two of them. “The location is only half the surprise,” Corwin texted. “He said he’s honestly not sure how I’m going to react … Seriously, I don’t know why he would drag me to a very special place … for a big dumb surprise.” Corwin also mentioned that Lee planned to do some hunting on their romantic get-away, and intended to bring his gun. Neighbor Aisling Malakie testified about how Lee talked on numerous occasions that he knew how to dispose of a body. “He said he had the perfect way to hide a body. He could easily kill someone and hide the body.” Malakie’s husband, Conor, said he saw a propane tank in Lee’s Jeep Cherokee the day Corwin went missing, and said that Lee told him he wanted to blow up a mine shaft. Detectives testified that a propane tank (as well as two containers filled with gasoline) was found at the bottom of the mine shaft with Corwin. Detective Michael Woods offered new details about finding Corwin’s body seven weeks later at the bottom of a mine shaft. “What appeared to be a female, very decomposed. She had a pair of blue denim shorts on, a pink shirt, a pink and black colored brassiere, pink underwear.” He also offered a new detail about her cause of death from the coroner’s autopsy. “During the external examination, he located a piece of black cord, possibly nylon, with two pieces of rebar tied to each end, and those pieces of rebar were approximately 6 inches in length on each side. And this device, which we refer to as a garrote … was wrapped around her neck.” Investigators said they found a similar device in a Chevy Suburban Lee was driving in Alaska when he was arrested. Deputies also found a blue, red, and white climbing rope with Corwin, and in Lee’s Jeep. The coroner was unable to determine if Corwin had been shot or stabbed, or if she had indeed been pregnant, as she had told people, due to the decomposition of her body. Woods then offered the coroner’s official opinion on Corwin’s death. “The cause of death was homicidal violence with possible strangulation and blunt force trauma.”
Highlights from all the witnesses:
Christopher Lee and Erin Corwin were neighbors in an apartment complex on the Twentynine Palms Marine Base when they met, and soon Corwin fell in love with Lee and started a romantic relationship with her Marine neighbor. Their affair was discovered by another neighbor, and eventually both of their spouses also learned of the betrayal.
Corwin’s husband Jonathan Corwin testified in court April 2 that he broke off all communication with the Lees when he found out about the affair in the early spring, but they were starting to rebuild their friendship in June when Erin disappeared. He said the morning she disappeared, he was still in bed at 7 a.m. when she came in dressed and he kissed her goodbye. He told her he loved her, and watched her leave in her blue Toyota Corolla out the bedroom window.
Starting about 4 p.m., when she had not returned, he tried calling her cell phone between 10 and 15 times, but it went straight to voice mail. Believing he had to wait 24 hours before reporting her missing, he waited until Sunday morning, June 29, to report her missing to the Sheriff’s department.
The second witness in Lee’s preliminary hearing was Corwin’s best friend, Jessica Trentham, who lives in Tennessee, . Trentham testified that she and Corwin kept in contact several times a week through phone conversations and text messages, and that she still had the text messages saved on her phone. She had sent screen shots of her text messages from the last week or so of Corwin’s life to San Bernardino County deputies, and read some of them out loud. Corwin was very excited about a secret planned excursion Lee was planning for the two of them on Saturday, June 28. “The location is only half the surprise,” Corwin texted. “He said he’s honestly not sure how I’m going to react … Seriously, I don’t know why he would drag me to a very special place … for a big dumb surprise.” Trentham asked Corwin, using emoticons, if the surprise could be an engagement ring. Corwin’s response: “Maybe!!!!!!” Corwin didn’t know much about where they were going, but did tell Trentham, “It apparently takes two hours just to get there. A long slow drive. Good talking time, though.”
Corwin’s neighbor, Aisling Malakie, testified how she found out about Corwin and Lee’s affair on Valentine’s Day. “Erin was laying on the couch, and Chris was leaning over her, kissing her.” Months later, she said, she finally told Lee’s wife, Nicole, about the affair. Malakie also testified that Lee had asked her husband, Conor, to go with him that morning; Lee said he was going to go hunting coyotes. But Conor backed out at the last minute.
Aisling Malakie also testified that she heard Lee say on numerous occasions, “He had the perfect way to hide a body. He could easily kill someone, then kill a coyote, and dig a hole, put the body in first, cover it with dirt, then put a coyote over it and cover it with dirt. So that if they looked for body heat, they would find the coyote first and stop digging.” She said she couldn’t remember how they started talking about how to hide bodies in the desert, though.
Conor Malakie took the stand next. He testified that Lee told him the affair with Corwin “wasn’t anything serious and would end when he left” for Alaska in July. Conor Malakie said the morning Corwin disappeared, he was talking with Lee next to Lee’s Jeep Cherokee, and looked in the Jeep’s window and saw a propane tank and other items covered by a tarp. Malakie said he Lee asked why he had a propane tank, and Lee said “he was going to blow up a mine shaft.” He did not see any blue climbing rope in the Jeep. Malakie said he couldn’t go hunting with Lee after all, as he had guests who were still sleeping in his home. But he called Lee a little later and said his friends were gone, and Malakie said Lee told him “to meet him outside the park.” But when Malakie went to the entrance, he didn’t see him, and drove around the park looking for him but never found him. About 2 p.m., when Lee was not back yet, Malakie tried to call and text Lee, with no response. He said Lee finally returned between 3 and 5 p.m. When Malakie asked how it went blowing up a mine shaft, he said Lee replied, “It didn’t go off.”
Deputies Danny Millan and Cathy MacKewen testified that after they took the missing person report from Jonathan Corwin, they went next door to Christopher Lee’s apartment to ask him about Erin Corwin, and that he denied knowing her, except to say “hi” and “bye.”
Corwin’s car was found Monday morning, June 30, by an employee of the Twentynine Palms Water District. Detective Mauricio Hurtado testified that he saw footprints in the dirt road lead from Corwin’s car to another vehicle that had been parked nearby, and that the other car’s tire tracks matched the tires on Lee’s Jeep. Hurtado also testified that a friend of the Lees said that he and Lee had gone exploring in the desert past the Twentynine Palms airport. The detectives recovered photos of the sites they went to from the friend’s phone. A cave expert from Twentynine Palms saw the photos August 6 and said they were taken near the Rose of Peru mine complex, which is where Corwin’s body was recovered 10 days later.
Sheriff’s Corporal Robert Whiteside described the search operation and how they eventually retrieved Corwin’s body when they found it. They found a propane tank and blue climbing rope with red and white diamonds on it in the mine shaft with Corwin, along with an unburnt, home-made torch, made of a wood, with a green t-shirt tied around the end with white twine. White twine was found in Lee’s Jeep.
Detective Jonathan Woods testified about a fellow Marine who said that he and Lee talked about how to hide a body in the desert, and discussed hiding a body in the salt mines in Amboy. That location was nixed, though, when they realized there were probably surveillance cameras there. The other Marine said that Lee was taking notes, and came back the next day looking for the notebook.
Woods also discussed some of the items that were found in and near the mine shaft: a propane tank, blue climbing rope, zip ties, pieces of black plastic, about 6 to 8 inches long with black electrical tape.
The detective offered new details about finding Corwin’s body seven weeks later at the bottom of a mine shaft. “What appeared to be a female, very decomposed. She had a pair of blue denim shorts on, a pink shirt, a pink and black colored brassiere, pink underwear.” He also offered a new detail about her cause of death from the coroner’s autopsy. “During the external examination, he located a piece of black cord, possibly nylon, with two pieces of rebar tied to each end, and those pieces of rebar were approximately 6 inches in length on each side. And this device, which we refer to as a garrote … was wrapped around her neck.” Investigators said they found a similar device, with black plastic handles, in a Chevy Suburban Lee was driving in Alaska when he was arrested. Deputies also found a blue, red, and white climbing rope with Corwin, and in Lee’s Jeep that looked like the rope found in the mine shaft with Corwin.
Woods said the coroner was unable to determine if Corwin had been shot or stabbed, or if she had indeed been pregnant, as she had told people, due to the decomposition of her body. Corwin did have multiple fractures to the back of her skull, and a broken clavicle, although he was confused about whether they happened before or after her death. Woods then offered the coroner’s official opinion on Corwin’s death. “The cause of death was homicidal violence with possible strangulation and blunt force trauma.”
Detective Michael Walker, testified about finding rebar under the front passenger seat of Lee’s Jeep, and that Hurtado had found white twine in the Jeep.
And finally, the last witness, Detective Daniel Hanke, testified that Lee said during an interview at the Sheriff’s station that he didn’t tell Deputies Millan and MacKewen the truth about knowing Erin Corwin because “he didn’t feel it was pertinent to the investigation.” According to Hanke, Lee said that both Jonathan and Erin were having marital problems, and he and Nicole were having marital problems, and that he and Erin would run to each other during these times. Lee said his relationship with Corwin was “a make-believe life.” Hanke said Lee changed his story about when he had last seen Corwin, first saying that it had been a week prior to her disappearance, then in her car in her carport the morning she went missing, then seeing her parked on the dirt road where her car was found. The detective said Lee’s computer had a search history of how to dispose of bodies. In addition, Hanke said Lee asked him some unusual questions, whether he was good at his job as a homicide detective; what his clearance rate was; and how good the Sheriff’s department was at finding bodies in the desert.
After almost five hours of testimony, Judge Rodney Cortez decided there was enough evidence to continue Lee’s case to an April 22 arraignment, moving it one step closer to a jury trial. Lee is being held without bail on charges of murder with special circumstances of lying in wait.
