The killer was insecure around women, particularly women who displayed any sort of sophistication. Most women would have thought him awkward, but dismissed him as harmless. However, in some he might have developed an obsessive interest—to the point where they would have cause to become afraid. There was evidence he had stalked his victims before attacking them. And though the killer was sometimes impulsive, the murders seem to have been planned.
The profilers hoped that the killer would give himself away. They believed that he would be preoccupied with news of the killers and was likely to display anxiety, irritation and even intense anger at the coverage. He might even openly criticize any progress made in the investigation and blame the murdered women for their own deaths.
With the growing publicity surrounding the Baton Rouge serial killer, enrolment in self-defence classes soared, along with sales of guns and pepper spray. Attendance at Louisiana State also climbed with students turning up to class rather than staying at home where they feared being abducted and murdered.
The task force investigators began using roadside electronic billboards to keep the public up to date with the investigation. First two, then six in 2003, covering the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas. However, after 18 months they seemed no closer to catching the killer. The task force then drew flak from Dr Robert Keppel, the noted criminologist who had been involved in the investigation of the Green River killer and Ted Bundy. He identified four major mistakes made by the task force.
He criticized their use of the media. Releasing details of the killer’s shoe prints might induce him to destroy the identifying footwear, making it more difficult to prove the case against him if and when he was caught. And revealing the DNA links between the victims might also hinder the investigation, Keppel said, as the killer would take more care about leaving behind genetic evidence in future crimes. Keppel was no fan of psychological profiling, which he believed only overloaded the investigation with extraneous information. Detectives should not be looking for the type of unusual character suggested by the profile, but rather the type of man who blends in and is easily overlooked. The task force should comb its files as they probably contained the killer’s name already. Keppel maintained that investigators usually came across the name of the killer in the first 30 days of an investigation, which was overlooked as a deluge of fresh information flooded in.
In March 2003, the Baton Rouge serial killer struck again. The next victim was Carrie Lynn Yoder, a 26- year-old post-graduate student at Louisiana State. She lived alone at 4250 Dodson Avenue not far from Charlotte Pace and Gina Green. On 3 March, she told Lee Stanton, her boyfriend of three years standing, that she was going to the Winn Dixie grocery store on Burbank Drive. They arranged to talk again later that night or the following day. When she did not call he began to worry. On 4 March, he drove by her house and noted that the lights were on and her car was outside, but he left it at that. The next day, as he still had not heard from her, he went back to the house. The back door was open and he went in. Her keys, purse and cell phone were on the counter. Everything else seemed to be in order, except for a wall-mounted key rack near the front door. It was hanging by one screw as if it had been dislodged in an altercation. Stanton called the police.
Searching the house, they found a well-stocked fridge and cupboards, indicating that Carrie Yoder had returned from the store before she went missing. Questionnaires were handed out at the Winn Dixie. Meanwhile helicopters searched the area.
Ten days after Carrie Yoder went missing, an angler found her body in the Atchafalaya River near the Whisky Bay Bridge—not far from where Pam Kinamore’s body had been dumped eight months before. She had been badly beaten and she had put up a fierce fight before she had been strangled. DNA evidence showed that she was the fifth victim of the Baton Rouge serial killer.
On 17 March 2003, the family and friends of the victims staged a demonstration on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol in Baton Rouge demanding that something more should be done. The task force’s response was to tell the public that they should ignore the composites previously circulated. They were now looking for a man of any race or description. Nor should they only be on the look out for white pick-ups. The killer might be using a vehicle of any type as no white truck had been spotted in connection with Carrie Yoder’s murder.
On 24 March, Melinda McGhee, a 31-year-old mother of two, disappeared from her home in Atmore, Alabama. She worked as a nurse in a nearby nursing home. She called her mother and her husband from there some time before 8.30 on the morning of her disappearance. In her home, there were signs of a struggle, but no evidence of murder and no DNA that could identify the perpetrator. Although Melina McGhee’s home was some 220 miles from Baton Rouge, it was easy to get to up the Interstate and there were striking similarities between McGhee’s disappearance and those of Kinamore and Yoder. However, no body has been found.
On 8 April 2003, another name was added to the list of victims. This was not a new case, but one that had been overlooked before. On 10 February 2002, the naked body of Lillian Robinson, a 52-year old prostitute from St Martin Parish between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, had been found in the Atchafalaya River, near Whisky Bay Bridge. She had gone missing the previous month. However, the body had been in the water for more than a week and was so badly decomposed it was impossible to obtain reliable DNA samples.
Possibly another woman had fallen victim to the Baton Rouge serial killer in May 2002, when the car of Christine Moore, a 23-year-old student at Louisiana State, was found abandoned near River Road in Baton Rouge. She had left home to go jogging at a park, but never returned. Her body was found on a dirt road in Iberville Parish in June. Like Trineisha Colomb, she had been bludgeoned to death. Despite its similarities to the other killings, her death was not formally attributed to the Baton Rouge serial killer.
The investigation then took a surprising turn on 23 May 2003 when Fox News reported that the task force were looking into three incidents in which a young black man attacked women in St Martin Parish, though none of them were killed. A composite was produced showing a light-skinned African-American male who said his name was Anthony and, initially, tried to charm his victims. Until then, it was assumed that the Baton Rouge serial killer was white.
On 5 May DNA swabs had been taken from a man who resembled the composite and were sent to the crime labs for analysis. They matched the DNA taken from the body of Carrie Yoder and linked the suspect to three more victims of the Baton Rouge serial killer.
The DNA belonged to 34-year-old Derrick Todd Lee, who lived in St Francisville in West Feliciana Parish, 20 miles north of Baton Rouge. He had given the sample voluntarily nearly three weeks earlier, but later that day his wife Jacqueline Denise Lee took their two children out of school, saying the family were moving to Los Angeles. Packing up their belongings, they left their brick-built ranch house at 4273 US 61 in St Francisville and fled, first to Chicago, then to Atlanta.
On 26 May a warrant was issued for his arrest. The following day he was arrested in a tyre store in Atlanta. For a week he had been living in Lakewood Motor Lodge, where other residents found him to be a “very nice man” who grilled ribs and chicken at a party and set up a Bible study class. He even charmed a number of women there, inviting them back to his room for a glass of cognac. Lee waived extradition proceedings and was flown back to Louisiana voluntarily the next day. Initially he was charged with the murder of Carrie Yoder. However, by early June he was also accused of the rape and murder of Gina Green, Charlotte Pace, Pam Kinamore and Trineisha Colomb.
What confounded the authorities was that Lee did not fit the typical profile of a serial killer, specifically not the profile they had drawn up in this case. Lee was black, with a wife and two children and was outgoing and charming to everyone he met, not a solitary white male who was awkward, introverted and a bit of a loner.
He did, however, have a criminal record that stretched back to 1984 when he was caught peeping into the window of a St Francisville woman’s home at the age of 15. A string of arrests for peeping, stalking, as well as illegal entry, burglary, assault and resisting arrest continued until 1999. Then things got more serious. In January 2000, he was accused of attempted murder after severely kicking his mistress Consandra Green after an argument over Lee’s advances towards another woman in a bar. While fleeing the police, he tried to run over the sheriff’s deputy and got two years. After being released the following year, he was arrested for wife-beating, but the charges were dropped. It was said that his wife “lived in denial of her husband’s transgressions, which include stalking, peeping into windows and infidelity”. At one point, against his wife’s wishes, he moved a mistress into the family home. The police in Zachary, Louisiana, ten miles north of Baton Rouge, also suspected Lee in the murder of 41-year old Connie Warner in 1992 and the disappearance of 20-year-old Randi Mebruer in 1998.
The police were particularly eager to trace Lee’s wife Jacqueline. She was found by the FBI in Chicago in June with the couple’s two children. They had received an anonymous tip-off that more bodies had been buried under a concrete slab at the couple’s home and needed her consent to dig it up.
