Lea Chali Porter

Lea Porter

Lea Porter was born on December 28, 1994, in Pueblo, Colorado. Lea was the second of two kids, her brother being Maxx Porter, and their mother Rene Jackson. Lew grew up having a very close relationship with her brother, they were each other’s best friends and were always hanging together. As a kid, Lea really loved dressing up in costumes and performing in front of the family, in most occasions she would have her brother joining her. She was just a very happy kid.

Later when teenagers, Lea and Maxx continued their friendship. They would hang with the same people, go to the same places, just do almost everything together. They only difference between them is that Maxx was a really good student and Lea paid a lot more attention to her social media life. She would post pictures of literally everything she did and liked, her music, movies, what she was eating and her locations during the day… everything would be posted on Facebook. People who knew her also say Lea was a very naïve person, the kind that trusts people without even knowing them.

Maxx left for college to study Massage therapy and Lea would try to follow him and pursue the same major in 2013, after graduating high school. She also felt like she needed a change of environment, move to a different place. Her mother, Rene Jackson, would support this idea and pay for not only Lea’s studies in Trinidad College but also for a place for her to live in Trinidad. She was trying to do what’s best for Lea, little did she know soon her daughter’s life would drastically change.

While attending college, Lea met who she thought would be the love of her life; a man named Jesse McSorely, a sketchy Tatto artist. When Les met him, Jesse told her his name was Jesse Main and that he  was 25 years old but soon she would find out he was actually 38 and his last name was McSorely. Lea would think little of this though and would immediately forgive the ¨little¨lies. A friend of Lea, Mallory Nixon, said Jesse looked like ¨everything a parent wouldn’t want for their daughter¨.

Just two weeks after meeting Jesse, Lea would call her mom and tell her it wasn’t necessary for her to continue paying for her rent because she was moving in with McSorely. Rene didn’t like this at all but Lea was committed to make it happen, and nobody would make her change her mind. Shortly after this, Lea would receive the news of his brother Maxx moving away to California to open a business, this affected Lea more than everybody would imagine.

After Maxx moved away, Lea would go from being a smiley girl committed to her studies to a depressed person missing classes all the time. She would eventually say good bye to college life and drop out in mid 2014. On the other hand, Lea was also having issues in her relationship with Jesse. They would argue every single day, yell at and disrespect each other. Lea’s friends asked her to just leave him and go back home with her mother but instead of taking this as advice; Lea thought her friends just didn’t understand her or what she was going through. She was lonely.

In the middle of this terrible stage, Jesse gave 19-year-old Lea Porter heroin. He told Lea, that it was what he used when feeling bad, that it would help him every time. So Lea started using some, then a bit more, and more and more until she became an addict.

What happened on June 3, 2014?

One day, Lea and her friend Mallory Nixon were going to a concert together, it was a long ride and Lea decided to talk to her about her addiction and how she wanted to get out of it. Lea also accepted she couldn’t do it alone, so Mallory offered to help her. Mallory took Lea to Narcotic Anonymous meetings and gave her all her support for a while until she saw Lea strong enough to do it alone.

Things were starting to look bright again for Lea. Sadly they would take a dark turn again when on June 3, 2014, Jesse McSorely decided to break up with her. He wanted to live with his family in Maryland and do rehab himself. He asked Lea to move out of his apartment that same day. She didn’t take this well at all.

Lea immediately posted on her social media accounts she needed help to find a place to live urgently, she was homeless. Her brother Maxx saw this post later that night and called Lea but she didn’t pick up the phone. He left her voice messages, text messages over the phone, on Facebook, etc. but never got a reply. The next day, Maxx decided to call Jesse and ask him about his sister, McSorely said he didn’t know anything about Lea since the previous day.  Maxx reports Lea missing.

As a routine in this type of case, the first person to be questioned is the boyfriend.  So police interviewed Jesse McSorely. After only 90 minutes of talking to him they knew he wasn’t guilty. Jesse was very cooperative and honest, he told the police about him and Lea arguing the day before on June 3 because he was leaving to Maryland. McSorely also showed police the last text messages him and Lea had shared, where she told him she would spend the night with a friend but Lea didn’t answer to that text. He understood Lea probably needed space so he waited until next morning, June 4, to text her again but he got no answers. Then he got a call from Maxx asking for Lea which made him really afraid because Lea and Max were still best friends and Lea was used to tell him everything, if Maxx didn’t know where she was, then that was a serious problem.

It was determined by the police after talking to Jesse that Lea had probably run away to one of her friend’s house and she was hiding there.

Lea Porter‘s murder

Christopher Waiden has admitted to accidentally choking Lea to death. This version is believed to be false.

Christopher Waiden

Same as Lea Porter, Christopher Waiden grew up in the small town of Cotopaxi, Colorado. Waiden was never a popular boy growing up, his classmates found him strange.

When asking around about Christopher, Maxx Porter found out people from school knew about a journal he had when he was younger. A journal when would write about his fantasies of kidnapping and raping women.

Investigation Details

The family didn’t agree with this at all but there was nothing they could do, except for starting their own investigation. Maxx Porter returned to Colorado and started asking questions to everybody Lea may possibly know; family, friends, acquaintances. Rene Jackson herself asked the telephone company to release Lea’s phone call records. If she had call somebody that afternoon, the number would be there. When looking at Lea’s call record from that last month, Rene found a number Lea was calling and getting calls from more often evet time, more so on June 3. She made the phone call and the person picking up was Christopher Waide. He told Rene than him and Lea had become very close on that last month, because Lea had asked him for help to stop using drugs. Lea’s mother thought this was very strange, since she knew that boy attended high school with Lea but they never talked back then. Lea was more on the ¨popular side of high school and Waide was an outcast. Rene was even more surprised to hear about Lea’s addiction problems, she had no idea her daughter was struggling with that at all. In fact, Maxx Porter didn’t know about Lea’s drug problem either. Christopher told Rene that Lea had contacted him to have a place to spend the night on June 3, and she made it to his apartment but once there, she received a phone call and left immediately

Rene and Maxx thought this was important information for the police so they contacted them with Christopher to see if there was anything else they could find. This, instead of helping, would only make things worse.

When interviewing Christopher, police saw him as just a regular guy. He had been in the military forces, he practiced Jiu jitsu, nothing out of the ordinary. So again, after talking to him, investigators decided to call off the search for Lea because now they had even more reasons to believe she wasn’t the innocent girl her mother and brother were portraying her to be.

During the time the investigation was stopped, Lea’s family and friends made sure the case became a popular one, and shared Lea’s information all over the internet to see if they could find any valuable information about where she could be. Some of them were also giving news interviews. Actually, one of the more public figures was nonetheless Christopher Waide. Who showed inconsistencies every time he talked to the media. It’s only then that police asks him for permission to search his house.

What police expected to find when searching Waide’s place was a typical military house. Where everything was in order and fully organized. But they found a completely different scenario. There was rotten food all over the kitchen, dirty clothe all over the place and empty bottles everywhere on the floor. What impacted them the most was his bed, a single dirty mattress lying on the floor without sheets or covers at all; a knife lyring in the corner of the room with the handle covered in tape and the blade with what seemed to be bleach. His laptop search history full of violent sex sites and child pornography.

Detectives asked Christopher Waiden if he and Lea had any romantic involvement. He first said no but then accepted they had sexual relations the night of June 3. She seduced him and they ended up in bed. But right after her phone rang and she left. Police also asked him why his bed didn’t have sheets on. He confessed that he took the sheets off tight after Lea’s mother Rene called him the first time. He believed that if police searched his place and found Lea’s DNA there, he would probably be pointed as guilty of something. After that, Police could only charge him for having child porn in his computer. Christopher asked for a lawyer.

After this interview, police got a warrant to search for Waide’s place again. This time they brought Luminol with them to specially see if they could find blood traces. It was a shock to see there were blood traces all over Christopher’s room and bathroom. Specially the bathtub. They also found a bloody t-shirt next to a 7/11 receipt that proved Christopher had bought a pair of latex gloves and bleach in the morning of June 4. It was clear he had done something very bad to Lea but sadly without a body, they couldn’t charge him for murder.

At this point, Maxx Porter couldn’t believe what was happening. Why was Christopher Waide still free? Once again, he decides to take action himself. Maxx strategy was to make Christoher believe he was his friend and that even when nobody else did, he believed in his innocence. Maxx knew Christopher was a tarot lover so he called him and asked if he could read the cards to him. They got together. Once there, Maxx turned on his cell phone audio recorder and starts asking Christpher questions about his sister. He begs him to please tell him what had happened that night, that he couldn’t live without his sister and was about to commit suicide himself. It’s here when Waiden gives Maxx a new version of what happened on June 3.

According to Chrostopher, when Lea arrived to his flat that night, they had sex but right after she started asking him for money to buy heroin. When he said no, she grabbed a knife and tried to stab him. In self defense, he grabbed Lea by the Neck and tried to just leave her unconscious but accidentaly ended up killing her. He then proceeded to roll Lea and her thins with the bed sheets and throws her in the trash. After this confession, Christopher Waide himself called 911 and accepted he had killed Lea Porter.

Police immediately started looking for Lea’s body in a landfill but after a 45-day search eveyhing they found was her cellphone, purse, clothes, shoes and wallet. No trace of 19 year-old Lea Porter’s body.

Trial

During Trial, Waiden repeated his version of what had happened on June 3 and why he killed Lea. He said he confessed because the Tarot cards told him to. He also confessed that he had planned to commit suicide after that but that Lea’s spirit had asked him not to. Christopher Waiden was offered a plea deal for playing guilty to second-degree murder and sexual explotation of a child.

Verdict

Even without being able to find Lea’s body, Christopher Waided was sentenced to 48 years in prison for the murder of Lea Porter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Christopher Waide serving time?

Chritopher Waide is serving time at Colorado’s Sterling Correctional Facility, and he’s known as Prisoner #170598.

Where is Lea Porter’s body?

Lea Porter’s body has never been found.