The 911 call that would finally bring a killer to justice began not with a frantic plea for help, but with the calm, chilling voice of a murderer dialing the police himself. Christopher Wade, a 23-year-old criminal justice student, had just confessed to a group of young men in a Denver park that he had killed 19-year-old Lee Porter, his former high school friend who had come to him for help escaping a heroin addiction. But what Wade did not know was that one of those men was Lee’s older brother, Max, who had secretly recorded every word of the confession on his cell phone. The recording, released for the first time, captures Wade’s detailed account of the killing, a confession that would shatter a family’s hope and expose a dark, twisted fantasy life that had been hidden for years.
Lee Porter was never the kind of girl to let anything get her down. Her mother, Renee, remembers her as the family clown, a young woman who from childhood would create skits and funny shows to entertain anyone who would watch. Growing up in Pueblo, Colorado, Lee and her big brother Max were more than siblings; they were best friends, sharing the same close-knit circle of friends and spending nearly all their time together. Max had always been Lee’s hero, and she did everything he did, so when he went off to college in the small town of Trinidad, she followed him there to study massage therapy, just like her brother. At first, everything was great, but Lee suddenly changed after Max graduated and moved to California and she broke up with her boyfriend. She became deeply depressed, a shift that surprised and worried her mother, who had always seen her daughter bounce back from adversity. Renee told her, “Lee, I’m scared for you. I’m scared that you’re going through something that you’re not telling me, and I don’t know how to help you.” The frustration grew so intense that Renee asked Lee to leave her house during one visit. That was the last time she saw her daughter alive. Renee later said, “I have a hard time forgiving myself for that.”
What Renee did not know was that her daughter had started using heroin, a secret Lee had confided to her brother Max. When she told him, he freaked out, asking why she was doing that to herself. The troubled teen then dropped out of college and decided to start over in Denver, where an old high school friend named Christopher Wade had offered her a place to stay. Wade, a 23-year-old criminal justice student, had reconnected with Lee on Facebook several months earlier, liking and commenting on her posts, and they began communicating by text and phone. He offered to act as her accountability buddy to help her beat her heroin habit, presenting himself as a knight in shining armor. But Wade would not be able to save this damsel in distress. When Lee’s family could not reach her for two days, they grew frantic. Max called his mother, saying, “Mom, I have been trying to get a hold of Lee. She won’t respond.” Renee called Christopher Wade, who told her that Lee had left the same day she arrived, getting into a white truck after receiving a message late that night. The family reported Lee missing to Westminster police, and Wade repeated the same story, adding that they had gone to Boston Market, talked, and played video games before she left. But police found Lee’s car, packed with her belongings, still in Wade’s apartment complex parking lot.
Security video from the Boston Market confirmed part of Wade’s story, and he allowed police to search his apartment without a warrant, finding no obvious signs of a struggle. Wade seemed to cooperate, even leading the search for his young friend by posting missing posters on Facebook and giving an interview to a local TV station, pleading for her safe return. But Max knew the dark side of Wade from high school, where he had heard disturbing stories about Wade writing a journal about capturing girls and keeping them as 𝒔𝒆𝒙 slaves. The people who went to school with him said he was creepy, and several had reported him to school administrators for writing about murdering, raping, and hiding bodies. Police also discovered that Wade had been discharged from the army for mental illness after telling military psychiatrists he had tried to kidnap, rape, and murder a teenage girl when he was in high school. The psych report stated that he entered the girl’s home near midnight with two knives, walking down a hallway toward her bedroom before her sister appeared, causing him to flee. A second police search of Wade’s apartment uncovered bondage 𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒏, search terms for child pornography, and a duffel bag full of size 14 women’s panties that Wade claimed were his own. Cops also found large pools of blood mixed with bleach on his mattress, but they could not match it to Lee without her body.
Police had hope when they learned Lee’s cell phone was emitting signals from a local landfill, and they questioned Wade for a third time. When a detective asked if there was any chance Lee was in the landfill, Wade took a big sigh, started almost crying, and said he had been having dreams that Lee was found in a landfill. He then asked for an attorney, ending the interview. An excavation began at the landfill, where authorities moved 50,000 tons of trash, debris, and dirt, searching for Lee’s body. They found all of her personal belongings, including her wallet, cell phone, clothing, and jewelry, but not her body. Renee described her heart dropping, saying she felt her daughter was gone. Without a body, it would be hard to prove murder in court, as doubt could be placed in a juror’s mind about the possibility of Lee walking back through the door. But what police did not know was that Max had been working the case on his own since flying into Denver soon after Lee disappeared, befriending Wade on the phone. Max made Wade think he could trust him, that he was helping them look for her, and it worked. They ended up going to a park where Max and three friends sat down at a table with Wade, who offered to do a tarot card reading. Max secretly recorded everything on his cell phone, starting with the reading, and then confronted Wade point blank, saying, “You need to tell us right now, dude. I know you know. I need my sister back. I’m going to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 myself without my sister.” Eventually, Wade broke down and admitted, “Okay, yeah, I know. You did something really, really bad. I will forgive you. I just need to know.”
In the recorded confession, Wade claimed that Lee tried to stab him with a knife when he refused to get her drugs after they had 𝒔𝒆𝒙. He said he sidestepped her thrusts, grabbed her, twisted her around, and placed his hand at her throat, squeezing until she went limp. He said he thought her muscles would relax when she went unconscious, but she kept fighting, and then it was like a rubber band snapped, and she went completely limp. He checked her pulse and found nothing, then laid her on his bed, covered her in a blanket, and put trash bags over her head. He cleaned up the blood with rags, put them in a duffel bag with her body, and disposed of her in a dumpster. When Max asked if he had raped her, Wade denied it, but Max knew about his high school fantasies. Wade said he would turn himself in, but Max told him, “No, you’re going to jail right now. You killed my sister.” Max jumped over the table and attacked him, but his friends pulled him off. Wade then called 911 himself, saying, “I’d like to confess to a murder.” At the same time, Max called his mother, who was driving on the freeway, and he was hysterical, saying, “Mom, Lee’s dead. Christopher killed her.” Renee herself called 911, screaming, “My baby. My little baby. That guy just admitted he killed my daughter.” Wade was arrested at the park and later repeated his confession to police, who credit Max with cracking the case. Getting a confession from Chris was huge, though police do not recommend that approach due to the danger. Max said, “I was so proud of my son. There’s a really good chance he’d still be walking around if we didn’t do that work.” Instead, Wade will spend 48 years behind bars after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and sexual exploitation of a child for the images found on his computer. Neither the cops nor Lee’s family believed Wade’s claim that she tried to stab him and that he killed her in self-defense. They believe this was a cold, calculated murder, that he lured her there to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her. Nor do they believe his story that he disposed of her body in the same dumpster as her belongings. Renee said, “I don’t believe she’s in the landfill. I want her found more than anything else in this world. I would give up my own life to find her right now. She needs to come home with us. She needs to be somewhere near her family so Lee Porter can rest in peace.”
