DA: McDaniel Visited Websites About Dismemberment, Cannibalism

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – The Stephen McDaniel murder trial is pushed back again. This comes after attorneys for both sides met today to talk about new evidence discovered in the case.

Alleged killer Stephen McDaniel was back in the courtroom on Friday. This time because of his internet searches. Prosecutors say he visited erotic websites that featured cannibalism.

McDaniel’s defense lawyer Frank Hogue says this evidence led him to file a motion requesting the judge order the state to show exactly what sites it plans on using in trial.

“We were preparing, we had a case in mind that we were going to try. We knew what their evidence was. Two weeks ago that was knocked off of the rails with all of this new stuff,” Hogue said.

“We’re just weeding through what looks like will be tens of thousands, you can imagine on any given computer how many clicks are going on throughout a day, and that’s what we’re dealing with,” he said.

Judge Howard Simms asked for both sides to come to an agreement on releasing that information.

Due to the large amount of evidence discovered from a computer analyst, Judge Simms says he had no choice but to delay the trial, which was set to begin on February 3rd.

District Attorney David Cooke says McDaniel also visited another website. On it were illustrations of a murder where the woman’s body was dismembered, similar to how mercer law grad Lauren Giddings’ remains were found.

Her torso was discovered in a nearby dumpster where she and McDaniel lived back in 2011.

“Well those are simply some topics that are of interest that we intend to introduce. We’ve continually given them an idea of the direction that we’re going and I think we’re all on the same page and will continue to be on the same page,” Cooke said.

Judge Simms also granted a motion brought up by the Macon Telegraph’s legal team. The defense wanted to look through unpublished photos that could show how secure the crime scene was at the time of the initial investigation.

“We’ll look again at the published ones, see if there is a better argument that we can make to get access to the unpublished ones that we’d like to look at, but right now we don’t get to do that,” Hogue said.

Both the state and defense will have to look through the newspaper’s published photos to see if there is any evidence that can be brought to trial.

Hogue says at this point he has no more motions in the works. A new trial date for McDaniel case has not been set.