Coroner's Journal (31 page)

On July 9, 2002, three days before Pam Kinamore would be abducted from her home, a young clean-cut black man who identified himself only as “Anthony” presented himself at Diane's door. He seemed harmless enough, standing there on her porch, claiming he was lost and trying to find “the Montgomerys,” friends of his who lived in the area. He requested the use of her telephone. He also asked about Diane's husband, and upon learning that she was alone, he barged into the house. She tried to close the door, but the muscular Lee quickly overpowered her.

Then, in a blitz attack, he grabbed her by the throat, dragged her inside, and pinned her against the door. He produced a knife and threatened to stab her in the eye. His level of excitement was readily betrayed by his profuse sweating. He then pushed her skirt up and tried to rape her. Diane stated that he could not get an erection. By this time, Lee's victim was confused and probably impaired from the lack of blood flow to her brain from the chokehold he had on her. He left her for a moment, to return with a phone cord, which he wrapped about her neck and began to strangle her. Death was imminent.

But Lee was interrupted when a car suddenly crunched its way into the gravel driveway. It was Diane's son. Lee had to bail, but not before one last savage assault: he stomped his half-conscious victim prior to making his escape.

Diane's son, Herman, had missed Lee, but he had caught a glimpse of Lee's car.

Diane was hospitalized with a skull fracture and other blunt-force injuries. Lee's whisper was still in her ears: “I've been watching you.”

Lee took the phone cord with him. It was collected as evidence at Whiskey Bay, 450 feet from the recently discovered body of Pam Kinamore.

The high point of her testimony came when Diane Alexander pointed a finger at Lee and said that she was absolutely sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that Lee was her assailant on that fateful day.

It was what the families of the murdered women wanted to hear. They applauded so loudly that Judge Richard Anderson had to issue a warning about such outbursts.

In August of 2004, Derrick Todd Lee faced charges for the murder of Geralyn DeSoto. He pleaded not guilty before the 18th Judicial Court, in West Baton Rouge. As the case unfolded, it was apparent that Lee had evidently resorted to his usual ruse in order to subdue Geralyn. He showed up at the door of her mobile home and asked to use her phone. He even made a call to a number he knew at Exxon.

She was hit so hard that she sustained brain trauma, but she was a fighter, just like Charlotte Murray Pace. But just as with Pace, he stabbed Geralyn to death and slashed her throat. He stabbed her twice in her back and twice near her breast. A reconstruction of the scene indicated that Geralyn had tried to make a dash for her bedroom, where she had a shotgun.

Lee was linked to her death by the DNA under her fingernails. It was his. There was no rape kit, as one had not been done. But the prosecution had Lee in the area, Lee's bloody bootprint, Lee's knife, which was compatible with Geralyn's stab wounds, and Lee's DNA. The jury came back 11-0 on a guilty verdict of second-degree murder. I say 11-0, in that they had eleven guilty votes and one juror simply did not vote. That came as a surprise but then again, only ten guilty votes were needed to convict Lee.

I think it's significant to point out the fact that Amanda Landry, the nonvoting juror, did not vote that Lee was not guilty. She did not vote at all. She reported that she “needed one more thing” to convict him, but she didn't know what that one thing was. She also stated that “they didn't need my vote.” That seemed odd to lots of folks I know. The evidence seemed overwhelming, to me, but it's important to never count those chicks before they hatch. I think Landry's most profound remarks centered around the desire she had expressed of always wanting to be on a jury. That statement was quickly followed by “Never again.” I guess it's possible for those criminal justice TV dramas to give some false expectations to jurors also. I'm not suggesting this happened in Amanda Landry's situation. But one should be careful of what they wish for.

In August of 2004, Lee was sentenced to life without parole.

Two months later, on October 14, 2004, it took a Baton Rouge jury less than eighty minutes to find Lee guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Charlotte Murray Pace. The defense rested its case without calling a single witness. It was the second murder conviction for thirty-five-year-old Lee. Both Pace and DeSoto were in graduate school, both women were stabbed, and both had telephones taken from their homes. During the Pace trial, prosecutors presented DNA evidence linking Lee to five other raped and murdered women in Louisiana.

The jury rejected claims by defense attorneys that the twice-convicted killer was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for the death penalty. In December 2004, it took them only about ninety minutes to decide on a death sentence by lethal injection.

The pain of the survivors is unimaginable. Most who heard the survivors' statements during the trial could not listen without sobbing. During the Charlotte Murray Pace murder trial, her father, Casey Pace, testified that he was “shocked a heart can keep beating when it hurts that bad.” Her mother, Ann, told jurors, “There's no peace in sleep. No joy in holidays. It's changed everything I thought myself to be. It's changed the world. It's a harder, darker world, a more frightening place than I ever thought it could be.”

In addition to the crimes for which he's been convicted—the murders of Charlotte Murray Pace and Geralyn DeSoto—Lee has also been indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Trineisha Dené Colomb of Lafayette and booked on first-degree murder in the deaths of Gina Wilson Green, Pam Kinamore, Carrie Lynn Yoder, and Randi Mebruer. He is booked but has not been tried for those crimes. The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney said he intends to seek three more indictments if necessary.

Lee now resides in a cell on death row in the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, under the care of Warden Burl Cane. That's in Lee's home parish of West Feliciana, but I doubt they are doing anything there to make him feel at home. It's said that one of the worst things about prison for the criminal is that they have to live with people who are of the same sort as themselves.

In December, before the death penalty was announced, Charlotte Murray Pace's sister, Sam, looked straight into the eyes of the shackled thirty-six-year-old Lee, in an orange prison jumpsuit in court. She'd be there to watch, she said, as “the first cold drop of saline hits your veins.”
Good for her!

In February 2004, Zachary detectives said that DNA from a specimen found on a trash-can liner found at Randi Mebruer's home matched Lee's. It had been tested in 1998 only for fingerprints and blood types. Another first-degree murder charge was added to Lee's record.

Chief Pat Englade retired on October 15, 2004, during that year's mayoral campaign. He cited job stress as one of the reasons for his decision.

Bobby Simpson lost his bid for reelection as mayor of Baton Rouge. He was the first incumbent candidate in decades not to be reelected to a second term. He was beaten by Kip Holden, the first black person ever to be elected to that post.

Captain Paul Maranto, who was the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's representative on the task force, has been fired after being arrested for unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling, stalking, and hit-and-run. He has been ordered by the judge to seek help. I wish him well.

Sergeant Ike Vavasseur, who served on the task force and was one of the detectives involved in the initial search for links to the prostitute murders, is now commander of the Baton Rouge Police Department's Homicide Division.

Lieutenant Keith Bates is now chief of staff for Baton Rouge PD. He was one of the detectives involved in the initial search for links to the prostitute murders.

Mike Foster served out his eight years as governor. We don't hear much about him lately, but when we do, it's not very flattering. I take all that with a grain of salt. After all, this is Louisiana and politics are politics.

Mike Wolf, of WJBO radio, who vehemently condemned the actions of Lynne Marino during her quest to find justice for her child, is no longer with WJBO.

Jerry Fowler, now a widower, is out of prison.

Randi Mebruer's son lives with his father, Michael Mebruer. The ten-year-old knows that Derrick Todd Lee is the man who took his momma away forever. The continuing search for her body has been unsuccessful to date.

Lee Stanton, who was Carrie Lynn Yoder's boyfriend, graduated from LSU. The ceremony was attended by her parents.

Lynne Marino is still a victim's advocate. God bless her.

Ann Pace is still one of the most courageous women I've ever met. She remains an inspiration.

Baton Rouge, as we had suspected, was plagued by more than one monster. I wasn't there for this killer's capture, but I was on the receiving end of many of his victims. In April 2004, as Lee was awaiting trial, a SWAT team arrested a second serial murderer, Sean Vincent Gillis, a forty-one-year-old white male, at his home in Baton Rouge, for killings he committed over a period of ten years. Investigators said DNA evidence linked him to the killings of Katherine Hall in January 1999, Johnnie Mae Williams in October 2003, and Donna Bennett Johnston in February 2004. He was booked into Parish Prison on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of ritualistic acts, including mutilating their bodies after death. He is currently accused of or has confessed to killing eight women:

 

 

Gillis was indicted on a count of first-degree murder and faces the death penalty for the strangulation of Donna Bennett Johnston. He was also indicted in Lafayette for the murder of Mary Nevils, was linked by DNA to three of the victims, and has confessed to the other killings. Some of the family members of the victims are not completely convinced that he is the killer and have adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

To say that Gillis or any serial killer is a strange duck is always a gross understatement. But there are some things that stand out in this case. For one thing, a geographical profile for where Derrick Todd Lee would have been residing was off by thirty miles or so; but that same profile was right on in Gillis's case. Ironically, it was based on some of Lee's victims. And while Gillis seemed to have a marked preference for stalking black victims in areas far from where he himself lived, the murder that led the task force to him, and to his arrest, was that of Donna Johnston, who was white, and he dumped her body by a bridge on Ben Hur Road, which is close to his home. She was found naked and face down. He left a tire track at the scene that was unique; there were only ninety sales of the Goodyear Aquatred 3 tire in the Louisiana area, and it was only manufactured for three years. Gillis's name came up on the sales list. Police went to his home, not far from the dump site of the latest victim, and swabbed him. They staked out his home until the rush job on the DNA was completed. It linked him to the murders.

Gillis's rap sheet was most unimpressive, yet his collection of reading materials included
Silence of the Lambs, Son of Sam,
and
The Hillside Strangler.
He had also been clipping news reports of some of Derrick Lee's homicides.

In an interview with Josh Noel of the
Advocate,
Gillis said that he felt the urge to kill only at night, and that in the four years when he worked the graveyard shift he never killed anyone.

Gillis was calm about the whole arrest. He elected to spend his last evening of freedom at home, awaiting the inevitable knock at the door. And when asked why he confessed, his simple answer was: “Because I did it.” Not so simple was the chilling statement he made about the victims: “They were already dead to me.”

The statement didn't surprise me. For one thing, these victims became objects and were devalued once under his control. It's always a hip shot in trying to understand what a serial killer means, for lots of reasons. On a gut level, a normal human is repulsed by the way these murders devalue life. One explanation for the statement is that if they were dead to him already, there was nothing wrong with killing them.

On Ben Hur Road there is a fading memorial to Donna Bennett Johnston. It's a heartbreaking collection of beads and wreaths. The saddest part is the weathered sign that just says MOM.

What are the odds of having four serial killers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over the same time span? I have no idea, but we evidently have a fourth one. He's here now, still out there, still unknown, and still killing as of July 30, 2004, the date of his latest attack (at the time of this writing). He's been unofficially labeled the Black Prostitute Killer. His mode of operation and victim selection fit seven or eight murders, beginning in 1999.