Published: December 04, 2008 10:29 am      

16 YEARS LATER, KILLER OF LIVE OAK COUPLE'S DAUGHTER FACES EXECUTION

When an 11-year-old girl in their hometown of Belding, Mich., was raped and murdered, her body dumped along the roadside, Clair and Pat McLauchlin responded by helping start a neighborhood watch program in the community.

The McLauchlins gave presentations at civic clubs and other organizations. Their daughter Missy, 10 at the time, helped get the word out. They'd use a slide show of Missy and her friend Daphney to illustrate different forms of unsafe behavior.

"I'd get to the one where they were playing on a railroad trestle and I'd say, 'And then you'll notice these kids on the railroad trestle,'" Missy's mother, Pat said. "I'd do a double take and say, 'That's my daughter up there.' I'd get a laugh from the audience and I would say, 'I've got to talk to her.'"

Fifteen years later Missy would suffer the same fate as the young girl whose death prompted the McLauchlins to start the program. On Dec. 30, 1992, Melissa Ann McLauchlin was raped by five men in North Charleston, then taken to Summerville, S.C., where she was shot six times and left for dead along the roadside.

Joseph Gardner, the gunman, has been on death row since 1995. Barring last minute appeals, he will be executed Friday at 6 p.m. by lethal injection.

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The McLauchlins, now of Live Oak, remember well the day a sheriff's deputy came to their Detroit home with the news. It was New Year's Day and Clair and Pat were watching the Rose Parade together on television. It was a family tradition. Their daughter Mandy, 12, was watching at a friend's house, and their son Richard, 21, was surely watching as well. After what happened next, it would be years before Pat could watch the Rose Parade again.

Pat said when the deputy entered her home he said, "I would rather be watching that parade."

"I said ’I'm not going to like what you have to tell us,' and he said, 'I just wish you'd get your husband out here,'" she recalls.

The deputy handed the couple a card with the name and number of a coroner in South Carolina.

Pat wanted to see her daughter.

"'No, identification is definite and you really don't want to see her,'" Pat remembers the deputy saying.

Missy's father, Clair, recalls the coroner recommended cremation.

The McLauchlins were in disbelief.

"I wanted to hit that deputy. I knew it wasn't his fault but I wanted to hit him," Pat said.

Details of the case unfolded over the course of several days.

"Every time the phone rang it was a little more gruesome," Clair said.

Missy had been shot five times in the face and once in the shoulder.

During an interview with a news reporter, Pat was interrupted by a phone call. It was the girl who had identified the body. She was relaying even more details about Missy.

"I got up. I raced to the bathroom and started throwing up," Pat said. "I think that's when it finally hit me."

Pat collapsed and her husband took her to the emergency room.

The McLauchlins worked closely with law enforcement and the news media in an effort to locate the suspects. They were interviewed by every major TV station in their area and also got invitations to Oprah, Montel Williams, Inside Edition and America's Most Wanted.

Matthew Carl Mack, a co-defendant in the case, fled to Detroit but was captured six days later. Gardener remained a fugitive.

The case quickly took on racial overtones. Gardner, Mack and another defendant ’

all black men ’ had been watching movies about murder and interracial sex the night before the crime.

As details of the case emerged, racial tensions rose. Black churches in South Carolina were threatened and the KKK petitioned the McLauchlins to lead a protest. Nonetheless, the McLauchlins urged residents to remain calm and refrain from any violence or retaliation.

During the broadcast of the Montel Williams show, Williams asked Missy's sister Mandy, 13 at the time, how she and her friends felt about her sister having been murdered by a black man.

"She said, 'We've been brought up to understand people are people, that color doesn't make any difference,'" Clair recounted his younger daughter saying.

A few days before he turned 62, Pat asked Clair what he wanted for his birthday.

"He said, 'The only thing I want for my birthday is news that they caught this man,'" Pat recalls Clair saying.

The Dorchester County sheriff called the day after Clair's birthday with news that Gardner had been apprehended. He was arrested in Philadelphia in 1994 after a woman at a post office saw his photograph. Gardner was arrested the Wednesday before a segment they had taped for America's Most Wanted was to air.

The McLauchlins sat through two trials -- Gardner's and Mack's. Other co-defendants were given plea deals for their roles in the crime.

"I've still got fingernail prints in my hand," Clair said of Pat's clenching his hand during trial.

Pat remembers when the jury returned a guilty verdict for Gardner.

"It had been raining," she said. "We were sitting in court waiting for the verdict. The minute the jury came in and (read the verdict), it stopped raining and the sun started shining through the courtroom."

Gardner eventually received the death penalty for his crimes.

"He was given a death sentence ... but when he took Missy’s life, he gave us a life sentence because it will never be over for us," Pat said.

The McLauchlins have lasting memories of their daughter.

Clair remembers Missy's boredom on camping trips in northern Michigan.

"She would say, 'Another dirt road? When are we going to get off this dirt road?'" he remembers.

Pat recalls Missy’s taking her grandfather literally when he told her to shake a leg. They were at her aunt's house playing cards.

"She stood there and started shaking her leg," Pat said of Missy, who was 7 at the time.

Pat said though Missy didn't like to cook, she enjoyed guiding her brother Richard through the kitchen.

"She'd be standing around in the kitchen and saying 'You need to do this,' or 'You need to do that,'’ Richard, who lives in North Port, Fla., remembered. ’Though she didn't like to cook, she'd say 'Make me something,' then tell me how to do it."

Missy loved to sing in the choir and she wanted to be a beautician.

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Gardner, 38, will be put to death at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C.

Clair and Pat will not attend the execution, but will be represented by one of the lead detectives in the case.

"Once the execution is over,’ said Clair, ’justice will have been served."