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George Vincent Brown Jr. was sentenced to life in prison in November 2011 after Jennifer Johnson, 31, was found strangled in the garage of an abandoned home in Lakeland, Fla., three days after she called 911 from the trunk of her car.

Johnson dialed 911 early on Nov. 15, 2008, and reached a Plant City, Fla., police operator. She told the dispatcher she was locked in a trunk but could not say where the car was. No officer was sent, and the call was not investigated. Lakeland is about 30 miles east of Tampa.

Investigators said Johnson vanished after a night out in Tampa and was last seen with Brown, her former boyfriend and the father of her young daughter. Police said Brown knocked her unconscious, put her in the trunk of a car and later killed her.

Plant City police Capt. Darrell Wilson said the emergency line recorded two calls from Johnson's phone. The first dropped almost immediately. On the second, which ran about a minute and a half, Johnson said she was in the corner of her trunk as rap music played in the background, but she could not answer the dispatcher's repeated questions about her location.

Wilson said the dispatcher never asked what kind of car she was in or who was with her. Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy called the recording "chilling and disturbing."

The handling of the call drew scrutiny after about 700 pages of investigative records were released in April 2009. The police chief described "an absolute breakdown" in communications. Two employees resigned. One retired. The dispatcher who took Johnson's call, Amanda Hill, was fired.

Johnson had reported Brown to police before her death. Records cited a 2005 complaint that he threatened her and struck her with a gun, and a 2006 report that he punched her while she was pregnant. Brown was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. In November 2011, a jury recommended against the death penalty and a judge sentenced him to life in prison.