Cops Had Never Seen Horror Like This. The Shocking Story of Lauren Burk

A freshman student left a dorm and headed for the library, but she never made it there. What happened next became one of the biggest investigations in the city’s history, and before long, the case reached the federal level. Even with every major law enforcement agency in the state working to find answers, investigators still couldn’t crack the case until a chain of strange and unexpected events finally led them to the shocking truth.

Lauren Burk was born on August 11th, 1989 in Marietta, Georgia. She was the youngest of three children, and even from an early age, Lauren had a way of making people feel comfortable around her. She was kind, open, and easy to talk to. The kind of person who could make friends with almost anyone, and always tried to help the people around her.

 In high school, she got into sports and became especially interested in lacrosse. But Lauren also had a creative side, and when it came time to think about her future, she wanted to choose a path that would let her use that part of herself. She eventually decided on graphic design, and enrolled in Auburn University in Alabama. The school was about 2 hours from her family home, which meant Lauren could still visit her parents regularly.

 And on top of that, her older sister was already studying there at the time, which mattered a lot to Lauren. Having someone from her family nearby made the transition feel easier. She also had a boyfriend named Shawn, whom she had started dating back in high school, and he enrolled at the same university as well.

 From the very first weeks of college, Lauren began making new friends, joined the lacrosse team, and slowly started settling into this new chapter of student life. Lauren moved into an off-campus dorm, while her boyfriend lived in a residence hall on university grounds. On March 4th, 2008, when Lauren was 18, she went to Shawn’s dorm to visit him.

 After that, she was planning to head to the library, where she was supposed to study with her friends. At around 8:00 p.m., Lauren said goodbye to her boyfriend and walked out to the parking lot where she had left her car. About an hour later, at 9:08 p.m., police received a call. A witness driving along the highway near the town reported seeing a young woman standing in the middle of the road.

 She had no clothes on, and to the witness, it looked like she was injured. After that, several more 911 calls came in from the same area. People were reporting an injured young woman on the road, crying and waving at passing cars, and some callers even said they heard gunshots. Within 4 minutes of the first call, an officer who happened to be nearby arrived at the scene.

 He saw a young woman lying in the middle of the road. Her body had been covered with a jacket, and she was showing no obvious signs of life. Some of the witnesses were trying to help her, while others had used their cars to block the road off and stop traffic. The officer began giving her first aid, and a few minutes later, paramedics arrived.

 They found that the young woman was barely breathing, but she still had a faint pulse. As she was being loaded into the ambulance, officers noticed blood on her body and a wound that looked like it may have been caused by a gunshot. Doctors confirmed that she had suffered at least one gunshot wound. The bullet had passed through the side of her body, apparently damaging both lungs, and despite everything the medical team did to save her, the young woman died.

Since she had nothing on except for socks, and there was no purse or ID anywhere nearby, investigators had no idea who she was. Detectives began checking missing persons reports, while other officers tried to understand what had happened on that road. There were no surveillance cameras in the area, so for the moment, everything depended on witnesses.

Several people told police the same thing they had already told the 911 dispatcher. They had been driving along the road when they saw a young woman with no clothes on, crying, waving her arms, and clearly injured. A few of them decided to go back, so they pulled into a church parking lot to turn around.

 But when they returned to the stretch of road where they had seen her, she was already lying on the road. The witnesses parked their cars across the lane, so no one would run her over, then called 911. But only one of them actually ran over to the young woman and tried to help her.

 Even though there had been plenty of cars on that road, none of the drivers saw how she ended up there. Several people heard gunshots, but no one actually witnessed the attack. Still, police did get one important lead. Remember the drivers who decided to turn around in the church parking lot? They told officers that a black Honda had been sitting near the exit with the passenger door wide open and blocking the way.

 The drivers stayed there for a few seconds, then slammed the door shut and sped away. While officers were still taking witness statements, another 911 call came in. This time, about a fire outside one of the university dorms. When firefighters arrived, they found a black Honda burning in the parking lot. Since witnesses had seen a similar car near the place where the young woman had been shot, detectives immediately connected the two scenes.

 When they ran the license plate, they learned the car was registered to a man named Jim Burke. Police called him, and he told them that the car was registered in his name, but his daughter, Lauren, was the one who had been driving it. He also said she was a student at Auburn University and detectives immediately began wondering whether she could have been the young woman who had died on the road.

 They asked Jim to come to Auburn and a few hours later he confirmed that the victim was, in fact, Lauren. Now that investigators knew who she was, they began reconstructing the timeline of that evening, trying to understand what had happened to her. After speaking with her boyfriend, detectives learned that Lauren had left his dorm 

at around 8:00 p.m. Her car was parked nearby and she was supposed to drive to the library where her friends were waiting for her, but she never showed up. Before long, they started to worry and tried calling her, but Lauren didn’t answer. Sometime later, she finally picked up a call from one of her friends. He asked why she still hadn’t come to the library and Lauren quickly said she had forgotten about their plans.

 When he asked if she wanted to move their study session to the next day, she said, “I don’t know.” and then hung up. From the sound of it, Lauren was in the car and at the time neither her boyfriend nor her friends thought too much of the call. Meanwhile, the medical examiner confirmed what investigators had already suspected. Lauren had been shot.

The bullet had passed through both lungs, causing severe internal bleeding and with an injury like that, she had almost no chance of surviving. But that was not the only thing they found. Her body was also covered in abrasions and experts believed she may have jumped from a moving car. Inside her black Honda, which had burned almost completely, investigators found a .

38 caliber bullet along with the remains of clothing that appeared to belong to Lauren, as well as other personal items. So, detectives began to form a rough picture of what may have happened. Most likely, Lauren had been abducted by an unknown attacker after leaving her boyfriend’s dorm and walking to her car.

Maybe he had been waiting somewhere nearby, or maybe he had somehow gotten inside the vehicle. After that, he may have threatened her with a gun, taken the wheel, and driven her out of town. Since about an hour passed between the time Lauren left the dorm and the first 911 call, the attacker must have spent some time driving her around or sitting somewhere in a parking lot.

 Because the direct route from the dorm to the place where Lauren was found would have taken no more than 15 minutes. Because Lauren had no clothing on except for her socks, detectives initially wondered whether the attacker had sexually assaulted her, but the medical examiner found no evidence of that.

 So, investigators began considering another possibility. Maybe he had intended to assault her and was trying to take her somewhere isolated, but Lauren managed to jump out of the car. It’s possible he shot her in the back as she opened the passenger door, but even after being hit, she still managed to get out.

 As for her car, investigators believe the attacker most likely drove it back to campus and set it on fire to destroy evidence. For the residents of Auburn, what happened was a complete shock. The town was considered very safe, and murders there were almost unheard of. The university was at the center of life in Auburn with nearly 25,000 students, and now all of them were worried about their own safety.

 What made the situation even worse was that police had no real idea who could have done this, and the local department was under intense pressure. National media outlets began covering the case, and a social media group created by Auburn students gained around 10,000 members in less than a day after Lauren’s death. Because of that, police decided to request help from other agencies.

 From the very first hours, the FBI, state police, the US Marshals Service, and the county sheriff’s office all joined the investigation. One of the first people detectives looked at was Lauren’s boyfriend, Shawn. They learned that the two of them had argued that evening, but Shawn insisted it had not been anything serious and that small arguments like that happened between them fairly often.

 Police checked his alibi and confirmed that Shawn clearly could not have abducted Lauren and driven her out of town, so he was removed from the suspect list. But Shawn himself still blamed himself for her death because that night he had not walked her to her car. He could never have imagined that something terrible could happen to her on campus.

 And after Lauren died, he could not stop punishing himself for it. Before long, police started looking at another possible suspect. As we remember, one of the witnesses had covered Lauren with his jacket and tried to help her before paramedics arrived. But then, that man simply left the scene, leaving his jacket behind with her.

When the first officer arrived on that road, the man was still there. But after Lauren was taken away in the ambulance and officers began speaking with witnesses, he was nowhere to be found. Police started trying to figure out how to identify him, but before long, the man came to the station on his own.

 This happened around midnight on the same night Lauren was killed, and the police department had not even yet announced that they were looking for him. He turned out to be a student at the same university. According to him, he had not left the scene because he had anything to hide. He explained that he had stopped to help Lauren and covered her with his jacket, but once paramedics arrived, he stepped aside and waited.

 It was cold outside and without his jacket, he started freezing. Thinking there was nothing else he could do, he just went back to his car and left. Only after he got home and told his girlfriend what had happened, did she tell him to go to the police and give a statement. Detectives checked every step he had taken that evening and confirmed that he could not have been the abductor.

 So, he was also ruled out as a suspect. Police also spoke with witnesses who had been on campus around the time Lauren’s car was set on fire, but those interviews didn’t give them much. No one had seen anything clearly suspicious. A few people only remembered smelling a strong odor of gasoline several minutes before the fire started.

 At the same time, the media began spreading the idea that Lauren’s murder might be connected to another unsolved case. 2 years earlier in 2006, a student at the same university named Lori Slazinski had disappeared without a trace and her car was later found burned on the edge of town. That case had remained unsolved ever since.

 And now, after Lauren’s murder, reporters could not ignore the striking similarities between the two incidents. But, even that was not the end of it. The very next morning, a student from North Carolina named Eve Carson was abducted and later her car was found abandoned. The detectives working that case immediately contacted their colleagues in Alabama who were investigating Lauren’s murder.

 They considered the possibility that after killing Lauren, the same person may have headed north and abducted another student. But, that theory fell apart quickly. The two cities were at least a 7-hour drive from each other with no stops and the crime happened only 8 hours apart. So, the chance that the same person was responsible seemed extremely unlikely and investigators moved away from that theory.

Still, connections like that only made the public more focused on what was happening. And before long, Alabama’s governor made a statement about Lauren’s case. He announced a $10,000 reward for information and promised to provide law enforcement with every available resource. Police were getting a lot of tips, but none of them brought them any closer to finding the person responsible.

 The search for new evidence wasn’t getting them very far, either. Crime scene technicians carefully examined what was left of Lauren’s car, but they couldn’t find a single fingerprint or DNA sample because the fire had destroyed almost everything. Still, they noticed one detail that stood out. Among Lauren’s belongings inside the car, they found burned pieces of her wallet and purse.

 But, there was no sign of her bank cards. Detectives immediately contacted the banks where Lauren had accounts and requested activity records from her cards. The first thing they saw was that one of her cards had been used at a gas station just minutes after witnesses saw Lauren on the road. Someone had bought gas at a station located along the route from that highway back toward the university campus.

But, that wasn’t the only transaction. Shortly after police began following the bank card lead, they were notified about another use of Lauren’s card. This time, in Virginia. Someone had bought gas at a station near the Alabama border. And this time, police were able to get surveillance footage of the person using it.

 There was, however, one frustrating problem. The image quality was terrible. Detectives couldn’t make out much, except that the person using the card appeared to be a young, black man. Even so, they now knew the killer had likely crossed into another state, so they shared that information with their colleagues in Georgia. Detectives were trying to figure out who he was, though every possible lead seemed to hit a dead end.

 But then, they received a call they never saw coming, and it changed the direction of the entire case. While all of this was happening, police in Georgia had been working their own investigation into a string of robberies that appeared to have been committed by the same person. On March 5th, the day after Lauren was killed, a man ran up to a woman in the parking lot of a nursing home, pointed a gun at her, and demanded that she hand over her valuables.

 The next day, a similar incident happened in a nearby town. This time, a man matching the same description approached a woman in a store parking lot, pointed a gun at her child, and demanded money. The victims described him as a young black man, but police still had no way to identify him.

 Then, the very next day, he struck again, and this time, he made a serious mistake. The attacker ran up to a 72-year-old woman in a Walmart parking lot, hit her in the head with a gun, and forced her into her own car before trying to drive away. But he quickly realized a witness had seen what was happening and was running after the vehicle.

 At that point, the attacker jumped out in the parking lot, got into another car, and drove off. This time, detectives got surveillance footage that captured the man’s vehicle. When they ran the license plate, they learned that the car was registered in Lee County, Alabama. Right near the Georgia border. Police contacted their colleagues in Alabama, and those officers told them that a few days earlier, they had handled two similar robberies.

Detectives in both states sent out alerts for the suspect’s car and began figuring out their next move. But, just 30 minutes later, the case took an unexpected turn. A patrol officer in Phenix City, Alabama, right on the Georgia border, pulled a car over for speeding. After running the plates, he realized the vehicle was wanted in connection with the robbery spree.

 The officer asked the driver to step out and told him he was going to call investigators to the scene so they could ask him some questions. The driver got out of the car, but almost immediately, he suddenly attacked the officer and knocked him to the ground. Then, he jumped back into his car and took off. The officer called for backup and police launched a tense chase.

 The suspect tried to outrun police at high speed, swerving off the road and cutting off other cars along the way. At some point, officers also saw him throw something out the window that looked like a gun. The chase continued until his car suddenly came to a stop and the suspect took off running toward the woods, but officers caught up with him and he was arrested.

 The man turned out to be 23-year-old Courtney Lockhart. He was taken in for questioning and his car was turned over to forensic investigators. Almost as soon as detectives began questioning him, Courtney confessed to the string of robberies. But, he blamed everything on PTSD, which he said he had developed during his military service overseas.

Investigators learned that he had served in Iraq, but had later been kicked out of the army after a long list of disciplinary problems. He used drugs, got into fights, and at one point, even attacked a superior officer. So, at that point, investigators had a confession to the robberies and they thought their work was almost done.

In reality, though, this was only the beginning. While detectives were questioning Courtney at the station, forensic investigators were searching his car. And very quickly, they found an iPod and a phone. When they turned them on, they saw multiple photos of a young woman and realized the devices most likely belonged to someone else.

 By that point, police in Georgia had already heard about Lauren’s murder, but they weren’t completely sure what the victim looked like. So, officers immediately called their colleagues in Alabama. Those investigators then contacted Lauren’s sister, and she confirmed that Lauren had owned a phone and an iPod of those exact models.

 At that point, the detectives working Lauren’s case immediately headed to Georgia, while forensic experts continued reporting more discoveries from Courtney’s car. Inside, they found three empty .38 caliber shell casings, along with a t-shirt stained with blood. They also went back to the area where Courtney had thrown something out the window during the chase.

 And there, hidden in the grass, they found the gun. Just as they expected, it was a .38 caliber weapon, the same caliber used to kill Lauren. As soon as detectives began questioning Courtney about Lauren’s case, he admitted that he had killed her. But according to him, it had all happened by accident. Courtney said that on the day of the murder, he drove to the parking area near the dorms and sat in his car waiting for someone to rob.

 After some time, he saw Lauren walking toward her car. He ran up to her, pulled out a gun, and forced her into the passenger seat. Then, he got behind the wheel. Still holding her at gunpoint, he started driving around the city. At first, he demanded money, and Lauren gave him $200, begging him to let her go. But Courtney claimed he refused the money and told her he didn’t need it.

Then, according to him, he just kept driving and talking to her about how badly his life was going and how he couldn’t find a job. Lauren told him she could help him find work and kept begging him to let her go. But, the same man who had just been complaining about not having a job told her he didn’t need her help and that he already had one.

Later, detectives learned that he was, in fact, working for a construction company. Then, Courtney ordered Lauren to take off all her clothes. He explained this by saying he only wanted to keep control of the situation and make sure she wouldn’t try anything reckless. He insisted that he had never intended to sexually assault her and that this had not been the purpose of the abduction.

Around that same time, Lauren’s friends and boyfriend were trying to reach her. Courtney started worrying they might call the police, so he allowed Lauren to answer one call and told her to come up with an excuse. She did exactly that, saying she had forgotten about the study session and then hung up.

 Sometime later, according to Courtney, Lauren suddenly threw the door open and jumped out of the moving car. He claimed that in that same moment, he accidentally pulled the trigger. After that, he stopped near the church and watched for a while as Lauren ran through the road. Once he realized there was no way to get her back into the car without being seen by multiple witnesses, he slammed the door shut and drove away.

 He headed back toward campus, stopping first at a gas station to buy fuel, which he paid for with Lauren’s card. After parking Lauren’s car, he poured the fuel inside and tried to set it on fire. But, he couldn’t figure out how to light it without putting himself dangerously close to the fire. So, he walked over to his own car, which was parked nearby, grabbed a Burger King paper bag, and used that to start the fire.

 Before leaving, Courtney took Lauren’s iPod, phone, bank cards, and $46 in cash. But, for some reason, he claimed he left the $200 inside. After setting the car on fire, Courtney drove away. But, a short time later, he came back to watch it burn. Once he was sure the flames were not going out, he headed toward Georgia.

After hearing his story, detectives made it clear that they had serious doubts about some crucial parts of it. To them, the idea that robbery had been the main motive seemed strange, especially since, by Courtney’s own account, he had refused to take the $200 from Lauren and later left it behind in her car.

At the same time, detectives knew there was at least some truth to the part about money. Courtney was clearly struggling financially, and even though he had a job, he was living out of his car. But, because he had forced Lauren to take off her clothes, investigators believed something else may have been going on.

In their view, Courtney may have planned to sexually assault her. It was possible that, at first, he really had only been looking for someone to rob. But, after he came across Lauren, his plans may have changed. Investigators believed he may have been driving her out of town to a more secluded place, intending to carry out that plan.

But, Lauren jumped from the car, and that was when he shot her in the back. They did not believe the gun had gone off by accident, but Courtney continued to insist that it had. Before long, forensic experts examined the T-shirt with blood on it that had been found in Courtney’s car, and they discovered two DNA profiles, his and Lauren’s.

That gave investigators even more evidence tying him to the case, and they began preparing it for trial. As they did, detectives learned that Courtney had been seeing an Army psychiatrist up until the time he was discharged, and that psychiatrist had not found signs of PTSD. However, he did note that Courtney had a fairly low IQ, 86, and showed signs of immaturity along with problems making reasonable decisions.

 The trial began on November 8th, 2010, more than 2 years after Lauren’s murder. Courtney’s attorneys did not try to deny that he had abducted and killed her. Instead, they chose a different strategy. They tried to convince the jury that the shooting had been accidental, and that the entire situation had happened because of the mental health problems Courtney had developed after serving in Iraq.

The prosecution, on the other hand, tried to prove that Courtney had intentionally killed Lauren, and that he had planned to sexually assault her. At the same time, his attorney succeeded in keeping certain information away from the jury. The prosecution was not allowed to bring up the series of robberies Courtney had committed before and after Lauren’s murder, and they were also not allowed to discuss the reasons he had been discharged from the Army.

In the end, it took the jury 6 and 1/2 hours to reach a verdict. By that point, Lauren’s case was still receiving major media attention, and for everyone following the trial, the jury’s decision came as a painful surprise. They found Courtney guilty on only one count, and did not convict him of attempted sexual assault.

 But most importantly, they recommended life in prison instead of the death penalty, which is what the prosecution had been seeking. But then came another unexpected turn. Despite the jury’s unanimous recommendation, the judge decided to use a very rare rule that allowed him to override their decision. In the end, he changed Courtney’s sentence from life in prison to death, and Courtney was sent to prison to await execution.

That day, however, still has not come, and Courtney’s attorneys continue trying to challenge the sentence. Over the years, they have filed multiple appeals, but so far, none of them have succeeded. Still, every attempt to overturn the sentence is painful for Lauren’s family. They have to return to court again and again, fighting to make sure the sentence against their daughter’s killer stays in place.

They explained their determination this way. Courtney gave Lauren a death sentence with no judge, no jury, and no chance to defend herself. So, they will not give up until he receives the same. Share your thoughts on this story in the comments section, and don’t forget to press the like button if you enjoyed my video. Thank you for watching.