That same day, just past noon, police tracked down Jennifer Robb, King’s ex-girlfriend, at her home in Homosassa, Florida. The lawn had been mostly burned away, revealing a near-white sandy soil. There were children’s toys in the back, and a rusted burn barrel on the side.
As were all of King’s women, Jennifer was diminutive. She weighed 102 pounds, and was born January 29, 1976. She admitted to knowing King, and ID’d his photo. Cops asked, “When and where did you meet Mike?”
“February 2006, at a wedding in Ocala,” she said. “We were both alone and they had dancin’.” She approached him. He said he didn’t dance, but they got to talking.
Mike introduced himself, said he lived in Sarasota, was divorced, had a son. She said she was a single parent also—two kids, a ten-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl. They exchanged numbers.
After the wedding, three weeks went by, and she called him. They spoke regularly on the phone over the next month before arranging to get together.
No e-mails. She didn’t do computer. She had one, but they said it didn’t have enough megabytes to get on the Internet, so she just played games on it. Mike didn’t have a computer. Well, his son did—but it only was used for game playing as well.
For their first date, Mike drove up to Homosassa. She didn’t travel well. He arrived about 10:00 P.M. They met in a video store parking lot, each driving his and her own car. From there, he drove her—in his red Corvette—to Denny’s, where they had dinner. Afterward, they went to a dock, where it was dark and they were alone. Jennifer made jokes about being in such a vulnerable position with a “practical stranger.”
She couldn’t swim, but she didn’t let him know that. She told him, for all he knew, she might be the psycho and she could push him into the water. She asked if he could swim. The jokes made Mike nervous. He was so quiet.
They moved off the dock when a bunch of rowdy kids showed up and ruined the ambiance. They went to a different spot, on the other side of the parking lot, where they talked till dawn.
“Talked about this and that. I don’t know about what all—but I did most of the talking,” Jennifer explained.
Mike told her he was a “master plumber,” made good money. She said she worked at her dad’s pet store. She said he probably wouldn’t like her neighborhood, as it was all “trailer trash.” He said his mom lived in a trailer. She told him her son was biracial and asked if that was an issue. Mike said he had no problem with that. He and his family were familiar with biracial couples. With the morning light, he drove Jennifer back to her car. He had a long drive back down to North Port. He tried to give her fifty bucks. “I don’t need no money. I’m not strugglin’ that bad,” Jennifer said. He told her to spend it on her kids. She couldn’t argue with that, so she took the money.
They had a couple of dates after that, one at a flea market; then they got together at a park with their kids, so everyone could meet. He said he wanted to make sure Jennifer and his son, Matthew, got along because the kid had had issues with the women in his life.
Matt and Tyler were about the same age, so they hit it off. Mike and Jennifer did weekends together after that, including a trip to Disney. He picked her and her son up at her house. Her daughter stayed home with a sitter.
He couldn’t find her house. “I had to give him directions many times,” she said.
They all rode around in his white van and stayed in one hotel room; the boys in one bed, Mike and Jennifer in the other. “Lights were left on. Nothing happened,” she added.
But he was so calm—and he made her comfortable. Next day, Mike drove Jennifer and her son home. The babysitter, a friend of Jennifer’s sister, met Mike and told Jennifer, “He’s a cute one. You better hang on to him.”
In another circumstance, Jennifer might have been suspicious that Mike was still married or had another girlfriend, but she could tell by the way Matt talked that there was no one.
Still, he had everything going for him, and she couldn’t figure why he’d be interested in a poor mother of two—especially one who lived fifty miles away. She never would have a good answer for that one.
The relationship grew. Mike met her parents and they all went together to the aquarium in Tampa. Jennifer’s mother got sick, had to be on a ventilator, and Mike came to visit Jennifer at the hospital in Ocala. “He’d come sit with me,” she said.
That was when they became lovers. They were at her house. The kids weren’t there.
“I don’t know who came on to who,” she said, although she considered herself the dominant one. The sex was normal—very, very straight. She remembered having to tell him to loosen up. He said he was not “involved that much” with sex. When he was married, there wasn’t a lot of sex involved, and she believed him. The only unusual thing he liked was having his feet rubbed, and she didn’t think it that strange. He was “just shy,” when it came to stuff like that.
“Of course, there were some things I told him right off the bat I wouldn’t do, so don’t ask. Nothing with toys, nothing that wasn’t the natural way. He said no problem to that,” Jennifer remembered.
She tried to buy him a pornographic magazine once, but he said he didn’t want it. The only magazines he was interested in were about cars. “Cars, cars, cars,” Jennifer said. He was still quiet, unless the subject was something he knew about. “If it was plumbing or cars, he’d run his mouth,” she recalled.
Her mom complained that Mike didn’t know how to make conversation, but her dad had better luck. Jennifer told her mother she had to talk about a man subject. “That was what Mike could do.”
Mike was more affectionate toward her daughter than her son, she noticed. She was the more affectionate child. It never made Jennifer uncomfortable, though. He didn’t handle her in a weird way or anything, and he was never left alone with her.
Mike was with her parents a lot more than she was with his. Jennifer met his parents a total of four times, tops. He drove her down there and she had dinner with them. “His mom was different. She was okay. His dad was a really nice guy,” Jennifer opined.
She asked Mike what was the deal with his ex-wife; did he think he’d ever get back with her? He said no way. She was out of state. Maybe they spoke twice a year.
In July 2006, Jennifer’s mom got out of the hospital and she left her kids in Homosassa and moved in with Mike at his house in North Port. The first time she saw the house on Sardinia was when she was moving in. She remembered he had a stomachache. Turned out to be ulcers or something. His kitchen was done up nice, because his mother had done that, but the rest of the house was sparsely furnished, with little or nothing on the walls. The school across the street was under construction, but scheduled to open for the next school year. She admitted she was a little worried about money. She doubted her father was going to keep paying her if she stopped working at his store. Mike said not to worry and gave her a small diamond ring. She had no friends in North Port, and the only friend of his that she knew about was a guy named Rob. They had dinner at his house once, with Rob and his wife.
The police showed Jennifer a photo of Rob Salvador, King’s friend from the shooting range—and she said that was the guy. She remembered Rob and his wife had a lot of kids (six, police knew) and were deeply religious. Before they went over there, Mike warned his son to watch his language in front of them. Jennifer remembered thinking, sure, it was okay for Matt to curse around her.
There was also a guy named Carlos Saenz (pseudonym), who worked with Michael King. He was a funny guy, but not the type you’d want to hang around with, Mike said. He skipped work a lot and pulled the Hispanic card if they tried to fire him.