Larry Dale Lee, (16 October 1958 – 28 December 1999) was an American financial and economic journalist for BridgeNews who was found stabbed to death in his apartment in Guatemala City, Guatemala.[1]
Personal history
Larry Lee was born in
Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1993, Lee revealed he was gay, but he did not inform his family.[5][6]
Career
Lee started his journalism career working for his home town newspaper, The Prospect-News, in Doniphan, Missouri, and then he worked at The Webb City Sentinel while working on his graduate degree in journalism until August 1986.
In August 1998, Lee took a job as the correspondent for BridgeNews in Guatemala.[1] At the time, BridgeNews was the second largest Financial news agency behind Reuters and it had reporters in about 100 countries.[8][9][10] He was employed by BridgeNews at the time of his murder but he told friends he was in the process of selling his possessions and leaving Guatemala City for Mexico City and leaving journalism for a career in non-profit social services sector.[1][3][11]
Death
Lee had been working on a story about the Guatemala presidential election. He filed his last story for BridgeNews at 10:30 p.m. on 26 December 1999. He sent his last email shortly after midnight on 27 December. On 28 December, a friend came to check on him in his Zone 1 neighborhood, 13th floor apartment, and when Lee did not answer his door, the friend asked a janitor to check on him, and Lee was discovered dead. Police found Lee naked and his body slashed in his Guatemala City apartment. Lee had been stabbed in the back, throat and multiple times on the side.[1][5][6][7][10][11][12][13] The autopsy established the time of death to be on 28 December.[10]
Investigation
The police had no murder weapon, suspects and, since it was holidays and the neighborhood he lived in was quiet, no witnesses.[14] There were several lines of motivations that were being investigated surrounding Lee's murder:
Robbery: Since Lee was leaving Guatemala, he had advertised his possessions for sale. His phone was among the stolen items.[7] There was no security system in his apartment building and a friend who lived in Guatemala City said his neighborhood was dangerous at nights and few foreigners lived there.[3]
Jealous lover or hate crime: After Lee was murdered, police discovered that he was gay. This led them to look into his sexual preference as a possible motivation, in the event that he was leaving a possible lover or that someone had targeted him because he was gay.[5]
Journalism-related: The Committee to Protect Journalists has not determined whether or not the case was related to Lee's reporting on financial, social or political issues.[1] One of his most damning stories was about a former leader committing human rights abuses.[6][10]
Random crime: Another possibility is that he was not targeted for any particular reason, but rather that the crime came to him as a result of general lawlessness.[6]
Ten years after Lee's murder, the Guatemalan police had no leads, made no arrests and family, friends and co-workers had complained that the case was not thoroughly or competently investigated.[14] President George W. Bush brought up the issue of impunity in Lee's case, as well as other Americans killed in Guatemala over an 18-month period, but only 5 percent of urban murders are brought to a successful conclusion in that country.[6]