- At just 19, Lea Porter set off to Denver, Colorado, eager for a fresh start in life.
- When she suddenly vanished, her family launched a desperate search to find her.
- Their hunt for answers soon uncovered a chilling and heartbreaking truth.
Lea Porter and her older brother Maxx fought like siblings do – but they had a closer bond than most.
The 19-year-old student was bubbly and sociable, and often described her big brother as her ‘best friend’.
But in 2014, when Lea left home for uni to study massage therapy, things drastically changed for the impressionable teen.
After meeting her new boyfriend, a 38-year-old tattoo artist, Lea went down a dark path, experimenting with drugs and dropping out of her course.
Despite moving in together, their relationship fizzled after six months and they split, leaving Lea without a place to stay.
Turning to her friends, Lea posted on social media to see if anyone was able to put her up while she found a new home.
But over the coming days, Maxx grew worried when he was unable to get hold of his sister, who he normally spoke to every day.
After multiple unanswered messages and calls, he phoned his mum, Rene, who hadn’t heard from Lea either.
They reported Lea missing and Maxx joined in the search for his beloved sister.
Meanwhile, Lea’s mum did some sleuthing of her own.
She went through Lea’s phone bill, calling every number on the list.
One number appeared over and over. It belonged to Christopher Waide, then 23, an old high school friend of Lea’s.
The ex-military man and criminal justice student told Rene that Lea had been at his apartment the night she’d disappeared but had left abruptly, getting into a white ute that came to pick her up.
He said he hadn’t seen her since, and even joined the online search effort, posting to Facebook, Please Lea come back to us.
Police brought in Christopher for questioning. He told officers he and Lea had gone out to eat at a local market before returning to his house to play video games.
But she’d received a text message and had left with someone who picked her up in a ute.
Searching Christopher’s home, police found it was a total mess.
The kitchen bench and floor were covered in clothes, food containers and rubbish.
But amid the chaos was a knife that had been cleaned with bleach, as well as a 7-Eleven store receipt for latex gloves and bleach from the day after Lea went missing.
Christopher claimed he’d cut his hand the week before, and that’s why he’d cleaned the blade.
The sheets and pillowcases from his bed had also been removed.
Then Christopher spoke about his psychic interests, including how he’d done a tarot card reading with Lea before she’d left.
He’d been convinced the cards she’d pulled indicated she was pregnant.
Detectives suspected he had more to do with Lea’s disappearance than he was letting on.
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But with no body, there was little they could do.
Frustrated, Lea’s brother Maxx took matters into his own hands.
Believing Christopher was to blame, Maxx, along with his friend Eric, booked a tarot card reading with Christopher, under the guise of getting answers about what had happened to Lea.
‘I’m seeing no intention of physical harm towards Lea,’ Christopher said, turning over some cards.
What Christopher didn’t know was that Maxx was recording the meeting – and he pushed Christopher to tell him the truth.
‘You tell me right now what happened to my sister,’ he demanded.
‘You have every right to be angry with me,’ Christopher began.
Then Christopher told Maxx that Lea had tried to attack him with a knife, demanding he give her money.
Shockingly, he said he’d grabbed her by the throat until she went limp, before stabbing her in the sternum. He’d then put Lea’s body in a dumpster.
Furious, Maxx told Christopher he’d been recording their talk, and forced him to call the cops.
‘I’d like to confess to a murder,’ Christopher told the operator. It took police just seconds to arrive as they were nearby, having been tracking Christopher for days.
Christopher Waide was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, but he claimed it was self-defence.
A military trained man claiming self-defence against a petite teenager wasn’t going to cut it though.
Police searched an area of landfill for 40 days to find Lea’s remains, but only found some of her possessions in a pillowcase – her phone, wallet, ID cards and clothes.
Still with no body, police offered Waide a plea deal, downgrading his charge to second-degree murder, which he accepted.
In November 2015, Christopher Waide, 25, appeared in Adams County court, Colorado, where he was sentenced to 48 years in prison.
In court, he apologised to Lea’s family.
‘All I can say is from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry,’ he said.
Speaking to ABC, mum Rene said how proud she was of her son’s actions to help bring Lea’s killer to justice.
‘Maxx is a hero, because he did that for his sister because he loved her so much,’ she said.
