CenLAw
Kellye, the true crime enthusiast, and Kyler, her willing partner, delve into intriguing cases from Central & Northeastern Louisiana.
From small-town cases to nationally known crimes, they bring you stories that hit close to home, always with that Louisiana connection.
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CenLAw
THE Baton Rouge -Serial Killer- Derrick Todd Lee
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Derek Todd Lee's shadow loomed over Baton Rouge, leaving a chilling legacy of fear and death in his wake. Are you ready to confront the darkness and peel back the layers of a serial killer's twisted psyche? Join us on a harrowing journey through Derek Todd Lee's life—from an abusive childhood to his deadly charm. We'll trace his evolution from petty crimes to a string of brutal murders that eluded law enforcement and terrorized a community. This episode promises an unflinching look at the man behind the monstrosity and the innocent lives tragically cut short.
The pursuit of a predator is a maze of misdirection and missed opportunities. Imagine a killer slipping through the fingers of justice, time and time again. We'll dissect the faulty FBI profile that sent investigators chasing ghosts while Lee continued his deadly spree. The haunting tales of his victims paint a vivid narrative of loss and resilience, as we grapple with the complexities of criminal behavior and the relentless quest to bring a murderer to justice. The terror that gripped Baton Rouge is palpable in this episode, as we piece together a chilling pattern of violence that was hidden in plain sight.
Capturing Derrick Todd Lee was only the beginning of the end. Witness the courtroom drama, the legal battles, and the emotional toll on the families seeking closure. We'll delve into the intricate details of Lee's trials and convictions, and the reverberations of his crimes that linger to this day. As we reflect on the impact of Lee's demise and the legal intricacies that followed, this episode isn't just a recount of a murderer's actions—it's a testament to the courage of survivors and a community's quest for justice. Join us for this compelling chapter in Louisiana's dark history, and share your thoughts on a case that continues to haunt the bayous of Baton Rouge.
Source Material:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20150210033102/
- http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/derrick_todd_lee/4.html
- https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/derrick-todd-lee-s-death-at-hospital-closes-long-ordeal-although-with-some-frustration-for/article_55cdaba6-31b0-5fe8-99a8-187c5f29b8f6.html
- https://books.google.com/books?id=SAluKqe13h8C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=Samuel+Ruth+and+Florence+Lee.&source=bl&ots=d6iCjOjdkD&sig=ACfU3U0-0z9Xp3loqvxJc0XEdiYgW0E47A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_1fn-w-n3AhX5JzQIHfq6BqEQ6AF6BAgUEAM#v=onepage&q&f=true
- https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/17850522/derrick-todd-lee-dr-mike-aamodt-radford-university
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All🎶created by: Uncle Sawyer
This podcast may also contain discussions of sensitive topics, including sexual assault, rape and graphic violence. Listener discretion is advised, as content may be triggering for some individuals. From the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was a dangerous place to be a woman dangerous place to be a woman. There were at least two active serial killers, and last episode we covered the "ther Baton Rouge serial killer. This week we will be discussing the Baton Rouge serial killer. We've spoke about him in at least two other episodes and now we will have the opportunity to take a deep dive into this serial killer's murderous rampage that took quite a while to solve, not only because of the random victims, but because the FBI profile, whom usually would be trusted, implicitly had them looking in the exact wrong direction. Join us now for another serial killer deep dive on today's episode CenLA.
Kellye:Hello, yes, we're back, thank goodness, and I'm sorry. Let me just start off by saying that I never meant to take almost a full month off of this podcast, but we had all of the life that happened. My oldest child had to have her tonsils removed. We had many other life things that had to be taken care of and took priority, and then, you know, we all, pretty much at some point in the last month, have had some kind of viral sinus respiratory infection or another. So basically we've we've had to heal and my voice was completely useless for almost a two-week span, completely, um, and I still have a little bit of that scratchy that I can hear. I don't know if y'all will be able to, especially since I've been gone for so long, but we're back now and I apologize from the deepest, biggest part of my nosy, nosy heart. Um, I'm going to try to make sure it doesn't happen again and I will be keeping to my two week schedule, hell or high water, no matter how bad I sound, um, and I hope you guys can forgive me and and be okay and not have given up on me yet. Um, but even if you have, that's okay, because I still enjoy telling these stories, I love having you guys along and I love being able to get feedback from others. Um, but know, even if not, that's OK too.
Kellye:So not too much else going on in the world CenLAw podcast the podcast. There have been some crazy things happening down here in Louisiana these past couple weeks. We've had tornadoes, we've had all kinds of crazy crime stuff. I'm talking, you know, vehicular manslaughter. We've had trials, we've got upcoming trials, we've got appeals and just all kinds of awesome, but I can't actually touch on them the majority of them yet, but they will be coming down the pipe.
Kellye:Um, also, keep the requests and suggestions coming. I have an email from a repeat suggester, um a couple of emails actually a few, I guess, I should say and those are all on the list already as well. Wonderful suggestions, and I think what I'm gonna do now for the next couple episodes is kind of stay in this serial killer area. Um one, because the way my life is going right now and the amount of stress that is over encompassing everything I feel like doing cases that are more broadly known, is going to make my podcast life easier and not take away from the fascination and value of it. Because, although all of these crimes have been covered at least 10 other podcasts, at least 10 different episodes, networks, all of those things I still think they're really incredible stories, especially in considering that Louisiana doesn't seem the type. I guess I was just surprised that so many serial killers existed in Louisiana, especially within the last couple decades.
Kellye:So, on that note, we are going to get started with today's episode, and if anybody was paying attention to my TikTok a couple days ago, you know, already know who this is going to be about. That's right, the one, the only, the absolute waste of human space, Derrick Todd Lee. Now, I say waste of human space. I think everybody has an opportunity to not be, well, obviously, a serial killer, but I think everybody has that point in their life or that tipping point that comes with just kind of going with what you're given or trying to do better. And there's those two type of people in the world and, unfortunately, whether it be because of his low IQ or possible mental instability based on his background, we'll never know. Instability based on his background, we'll never know. Um, but this story is incredible. It spans across what? 92 to 2004, so 12 years or so, um, and I say and we'll get into that here in a minute, but everybody, strap in, hold on to your butts If this ends up being longer than it probably will be. So I'm going to plan on it being one episode, but if not, I will release them back to back, not week but day, just because I've missed so much time here recently and I feel like you guys deserve that. So let's get into it. Y'all ready, all right?
Kellye:So, Mr. Derek Todd Lee, he was born in November, November 5th of 1968. He was the second of four children and he and his next youngest sibling, his sister, they were full siblings. The other two siblings in the home were half. So he and his sister were the only two from the same father. All of the other children were all born from different fathers and, from what I understand, his childhood was not completely horrific. I guess Now there were allegations of severe physical abuse. When his mother remarried she met a man named I believe it was Coleman Barrow, was that right? And she kind of looked the other way, like she knew that the abuse was happening and she never did anything to stop it. So that kind of created that initial violence or aggression or aggravation or hatred towards women because his mom just kind of stood by and let this abuse happen and never stood up for him.
Kellye:So as early as age 13, he was arrested. That was in November of 1981. He got arrested for burglary and vandalism of a local candy store called the Sweet Shop, and I did not mention, but now I will. He was born in St. Francisville, Louisiana, and he stayed in Louisiana, from what I can tell, pretty much his entire life. I don't think he ever moved outside of the state and I don't think he actually spent any significant amount of time outside of the state until, um, when they were trying to get a hold of him after they issued the arrest warrant. So, uh, in 81 he got arrested at age 13 in the St Francis attempted murder. Now, this stemmed from a fight that he had had with another teenager, and during the midst of the fight he had pulled out a knife, a knife, a knife and attempted to stab said teenager, stab said teenager. And the only bad part about that was he must have done it in a way that it wasn't able to be proven, and so all that ever happened was they interrogated him and then let him go so fast forward another four years, 1988. Hey, um, he got arrested for an attempted burglary which was eventually reduced to an unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling and all of these things.
Kellye:He learned quite early in life that his good looks, his flashy cute smile, would go a long way, cute smile would go a long way, and that he would. He was able to either talk his way out of or flirt his way out of, or, you know, charm, if one would go so far as to say as much his way out of trouble. And he learned that early in life. So by age 20, after the unauthorized entry plea that literally got in probation, he he ended up that same year. In September of 1988, he married his wife, Jackie Sims, and they had actually dated all through high school. They met when they were 13. And the reason they got along it was kind of like Jackie was kind of a loner. She was very smart, very, very proud and, you know, a very good student from everything that I could see. But she was very reserved, like she wasn't very outgoing, she didn't want to be around a lot of people, and so her and Lee actually got along really well and by the age of 20, they ended up getting married. She was about six months younger than him, so there's 1920. And they got married in a place called Solitude, Louisiana.
Kellye:Now when I read that I was intrigued. It's like what the hell is this place? Because I mean like we have a lot of weird names in Louisiana, as most states do have their their weird you know, off the wall odd names. But like Solitude and Slaughter, those are both towns in Louisiana and they're weird. You know off the wall odd names, but like Solitude and Slaughter, those are both towns in Louisiana and they're within a few miles of each other, right, so solitude and slaughter, and they're all down there in kind of in West Feliciana Parish. But the interesting little fun facts that I found out about Solitude, Louisiana that town is only about 22 minutes, even though it's only 4.2 miles from Angola, yeah, the state penitentiary. 22 minutes, though, because it is nothing but like gravel back road BS to get out to Angola, which I get it, and there's only like one lonely road in and one lonely road out.
Kellye:And the coolest thing, or the most interesting thing that I could find about Solitude Louisiana as of a couple of days ago, there is a place, a restaurant. It's called the Jungle Inn and I will post pictures on TikTok. I'll probably do a video and include it on TikTok, also put it on Twitter and on the website, but it's called the Jungle Inn and they have the most drool-worthy menu. Okay, get this. Four words. Ready? Loaded shrimp, etouffee, potato. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I am a potato fan. I love a tato, and when I saw that my stomach immediately started to be like wait, wait, where is that? How far away are we? Let's get the directions? Just sounds absolutely amazing, amazing, absolutely amazing. And you can get that topped with like fried fish and fried shrimp. Are you kidding? But they're only open three days a week. They're open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, five to nine pm, and I think they're I'm sorry Thursday and Friday. They're open five to nine. Saturday, they're only open eleven to nine. They're open eleven to nine thirty. So coolest thing about them, though, is they often frequently that's the same word, anyway. They frequently deliver lunch as a catering order to Angola, yeah, so like they call in their orders and roll out there to the prison to deliver them food at the prison, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Kellye:There's also a place called Bailey's Bar and Grocery, or Bar and Grocery and Grill, not sure, but literally there's nothing else out there, and the only other thing that I found of any significance is there's a plantation. It's called Solitude Plantation, and it was recognized as a historical monument or historical landmark back in I want to say 97, 98. And it was registered privately. You have a hard time locating it. I think I found it, but I'm not really sure. Time locating it. I think I found it, but I'm not really sure. Uh, they say that it's one of the very, very few houses that still have like the creole gothic vibe, which I found fascinating. Uh, there are only so many of those type of plantations with that type of architecture in the entire state like four or five, I think, is what it said, which is really cool. Don't know why anybody would build a plantation of such like essence in a place called Solitude, but there you have it and, like I said, it's about 19 minor miles from Slaughter. So I don't know why Lee and Jackie decided to get married there, but that's where it happened. That was in 1988.
Kellye:So, again, within a couple months of that happening about six months of that happening at age 21, he got arrested again and he pled guilty to trespassing, but he was only sentenced. In the plea deal he was sentenced to therapy, like voluntary therapy, like he had to show up. They let him go and then, hey, yeah, come on back for therapy. How well do y'all think that went over? Yeah, it didn't. It didn't go over because he didn't show up. So again, he got away with literally not even a slap on the wrist. Again, he got away with literally not even a slap on the wrist.
Kellye:He just got to go so real quick before we get too much further into his now married, slowly accumulating a record life. I'm going to talk about his family one more time, because I talked about the stepdad being physically abusive and I want to talk about, real quick, the, his biological father, who, according to everything that I read and the citations and resources that I'll have on the 70s, 71, they never got married. The bio dad and his mom. They never got married and he ended up going back to his ex or first wife and then divorced her and there was a series of domestic violence that happened throughout both marriages as well. As in 1991 he actually was arrested for an attempted manslaughter of his second wife and, according to sources, he had severe mental issues and by the end it wasn't. It was probably not mid-90s or if it was mid to late 90s. He was actually institutionalized because he was incompetent to stand trial and eventually regained competency, but never really was not a mental case. So that's the background that he's coming from and the environment that he was prone to, even if it was only for a little while between him being born and his younger sister being born and as early as nine years old, there were peeping Tom rumors that surrounded Lee.
Kellye:He was a little slow. According to everybody that knew him, he was in special ed. His IQ tested at the highest was a 91, but the normal range between 70 and 75. And his mom was only 17 when he was born and he was already her second child. They lived with their mom's mom, his grandmother and you know he was ridiculed and bullied a lot. He was still a thumb sucker while he was in school, at school age, and he got made fun of a lot for that. He got picked on a lot. He was still a thumb sucker while he was in school, at school age, and he got made fun of a lot for that. He got picked on a lot and he realized early the benefit of lying about things that he had done. So instead of, you know, admitting things and taking responsibility for his actions, he just would never accept it and he would never admit to it. So he learned that from a very, very early age. So Initially our Baton Rouge strangler was actually referred to as the Baton or, I'm sorry, originally our Baton Rouge serial killer was known as the Baton Rouge strangler.
Kellye:He started off his criminal career, like I said, with petty crimes, the vandalism, burglary and I say petty, but you know he pulled a knife in a fight and a couple more in 1989. He had a trespass. That was the one. He was sentenced to therapy. He didn't show up. And then later that same year he had a disturbing the peace. He didn't show up. And then later that same year he had a disturbing the peace, didn't go to jail, just had a fine. And again a month later got into a bar fight. Disturbing the peace, no jail, just a fine.
Kellye:And these things just slowly kind of built and he had hard time, a hard time keeping steady work. Uh, he was mostly a laborer by trade, like he would. He did pipe fitting, he did concrete work, I think he drove a truck for a little while, but for the most part he had a hard time keeping steady employment. And at the end of 89, or 90, he was, you know, trying to find his place. And he had been married to his wife now for two years and I believe they had already had two children at that point, or at least one child at that point, and the initial problem started because, you know, their, their stuff started kind of trying to break down a little bit. Know, their, their stuff started kind of trying to break down a little bit and he started, like I said, at nine age nine there were rumors of him being a peeping tom and that thrill-seeking behavior in his that was a an established behavior from early in his life that just continued to snowball.
Kellye:It had to. You had to do more to up the ante to get the same kind of feeling or effect that it gave you initially, right? So stalking has to turn into something else. That has to lead to something else. Now, when he initially had different people come to the different police stations and say, hey, this guy's been outside my daughter's window, I need you to do something about this. And without any kind of concrete evidence, they can't just go arrest him. They can go and reprimand him, they can go and tell him. You know, hey, these people say that you're harassing their daughter. You need to stop. And this continued to happen. He was always involved in these kind of peeping Tom, stalkerish behaviors.
Kellye:Now, the really crazy part is that I guess because he was decent looking and his mannerisms weren't overtly aggressive I mean because people still quoted, as are still quoted as him being like a decent guy, like he was a. He had a friendly personality, even though he was a womanizer, and I think that had a lot to do with his later propensity for violence was when he got rejected, and then he started not even giving them a chance to be rejected. But that's just my unprofessional professional opinion. So they believe, according to all of the sources, that in 1992 he murdered his first victim. Her name was Connie Warner. That was on August 23rd of 1992. She was from Zachary, Louisiana, which is a place that apparently was one of his favorite hunting grounds, and Miss Connie Warner was 41 years old at the time of her death.
Kellye:She was found nude and abandoned in a ditch by a trash truck driver, I believe, and at autopsy they found that she had major skull fractures and they surmised that she was beat to death with a hammer and then her body was dumped elsewhere. When they went back and returned to check on her house, there was no sign of forced entry, but her vehicle and things were still there. So she had to have been taken from her home, and that was in the Oak Shadows subdivision in Zachary. Now, another unfortunate turn of events there was no DNA because her body had been dumped within a couple days of Hurricane Andrew coming through Louisiana and her body wasn't found for almost five months, or four months for sure. And so you combine the hurricane weather on top of decomposition and outside everything, all of the circumstances. There was no possibility. And we're in 1992, very infant stages. There was no DNA to connect, to collect. If there was, it was so minuscule they didn't figure they'd ever be able to use it. So they ended up putting that in the cold case shelf and leaving it for a while.
Kellye:So that same year, in November of 92, he was Lee, now was 23 years old he got arrested for another burglary and for resisting an officer. Now, that house that he got arrested for burglarizing was a house that was on the same street as Connie Warner, just a couple of doors down. Now another funny not really funny, but incredible part of this is he got out on bond for that burglary. Right while he was out on bond he had committed another robbery. And then not just another robbery, but he also assaulted two teenagers that were like sitting in a car, parked quote-unquote outside of a cemetery, out right in front of that same subdivision, Oak Shadows, and he took a freaking farm tool it was uh like like a long rake basically and beat them with it. Now they both survived, permanently maimed and forever scarred mentally from this event. But they both survived. But this was all like he was on bail for another crime. So in the interim from from November 92 until May of 93, when he was actually sentenced, he committed two major crimes in that in that in between. So he was sentenced to four years in prison but he only served two. He was released in July of 1995 at age 26. And within a couple of days he took his family and they moved to Lake Charles. Now, on September 6th of 95, he got another peeping Tom or a peeping arrest. On September 24th he got another arrest for theft. So they went back on September 26th. So it was the 6th, the 24th and then the 26th they went back to St Francisville. He was like I'm not doing this, I don't like it over here, I get caught too much. So they moved back.
Kellye:Now, after they moved back to St Francisville, Jackie, his wife, her biological father and her only father that I'm aware of, I don't think she had any steps, but he ended up getting killed in a factory incident and she got a quarter million dollar settlement which suited lee just fine, because now not only was he cute and kind of charming, but now he he could dress the part, he could put on his fancy clothes, he could get his fancy jewelry and he could fund all of his womanizing partaking. And unfortunately, Jackie was not the stand by old man kind of woman. She was very much so I don't care what you do, as long as it doesn't bother me type woman. So she realized that he was going out and like cheating on her and sleeping around, like he even had an established girlfriend here in just a year or so and she was okay with it because she was like, well, if he's not here, he's not in my hair bothering me, if he's not here, he's not in my hair bothering me. So he'd go out, circle all the bars, pay all the women, do his womanizing schemes and then he'd come back. She actually ended up later, um, filing for like abandonment of family and duties and all that, and then he would come back and they'd get along for a little bit, but then he'd leave again. So he was almost it was like an in and out type of thing and he had the freedom to go and do whatever, because she didn't ever really check up on him, she didn't keep track of him, she kind of. And I think she said later in an interview I just kind of turned my head and looked the other way because I didn't want to have to deal with it.
Kellye:So they moved back to St Francisville in September of 95, the end of September, and by February of 97, he's 28 years old and he gets a DWI. Hilariously, eight days later he passes his CDL commercial driver's license test and he also the same day got caught in the act of peeping and even though he was identified by the eyewitness, the police didn't charge him. Tell me this man was not good at talking his way out of a situation. He had to have been masterful, which makes you wonder about that. 75 IQ, maybe he was just a bad test taker. 75 IQ, maybe he was just a bad test taker, anyway. So before we get on to the next portion here, I want to stop and mention that that was um. This is, this is February. He gets a CDL. Um, the other uh charges from Lake Charles. They didn't file the information on time and they were statute limitations. So he got off on those, no problem. In may of 97 he was hired by a company called Readi mix to drive big cement trucks right.
Kellye:So here's where we're going to venture back to our Eugene Boifontaine episode. And the more I read about lee, the more I'm convinced that he's the one who murdered her. Now we only have one victim so far, but we'll see. In the rest we'll see the similarities and the very consistent mo and all of it. All of it just seems to match up and the location and where she was at. And now the biggest gap in his murder extravaganza here they say it's from 92 to 98, which is six years. Okay, if you put Eugenie in there in 1997, June of 1997, that breaks that down to only a five years between the first and the second, and then it puts it only over right under a year between the second and the third, which in my mind makes a little bit more sense. And because of the location and because of the different places that he bounces in between, it actually makes all the sense because he wouldn't have wanted to do two back-to-back in the same place, because that's how he, that's kind of how he did things. He, he jumped from one town to the other and kind of spread them out that way. So it took them longer to realize that it was all the same person, which again, 75 IQ. I'm not buying it.
Kellye:So June of 1997, Eugenie was missing, murdered. She was found in Iberville, Manchac Bayou; We've talked about this. Her body had been out there for two months, so probably was closer. I think you know she was missing in June. Her body was found in August. So she lived on Stanford Avenue, which we already know. Her cause of death was a blunt force trauma to the back of her head, because that was really literally all they could find of her.
Kellye:They did get DNA which was later, in the Killing Fields, determined to not be Lee's. However, that doesn't mean anything in my book, honestly, because she was out there for almost two or over two months in the elements. I'm surprised they found any dna at all. But the fact that they did, and then it wasn't his, doesn't mean anything to me. It doesn't because everything else freaking fits. Her body was dumped. She was further, far away from her house, far enough away, and you will again, we'll see this with later victims. But she was on the same road. She lived alone. She jogged around the lake. She was on lsu campus. She was an old LSU student. She lived out doors down from these other victims. It just all of it computes, it all makes sense. So if the husband didn't do it, it was definitely derritably. So we can move forward now, now that I've got my conspiracy theory out there.
Kellye:So 1997, in July, the very end of July, he got seven counts of peeping and was sentenced to six months and I think he served all of that and ended up getting back out in 98 or so. Most of that got out for good behavior in the beginning of January and he had a criminal and burglary criminal trespass and burglary and that was since to two years probation and the psych eval. Now he actually did go to this one, but it was man like. It was mandatory. He didn't have an option to not to. If he hadn't, he would have been put back in jail because it would have been a violation of probation and his doctor had such raving things to say about him. He was such a good person like not a good person, but he was a good client, he was a good patient.
Kellye:So that was in april of 1998, um three days after he was sentenced to two years probation, he ended up murdering Randy Mebruer. Now her body was never found, but they could make assumptions based on what they found at the crime scene. The reason and the way that she was noted to have had something terrible happen was her three-year-old son was found wandering down the street covered in blood. Now he was perfectly fine, so chill the motor. However, when the friend who found him wandering took him back to the house to help him find his mom, ring took him back to the house to help him find his mom, he walked into a bloodbath, which is also, eerily enough, the name of a novel that was written about Derrick Todd Lee, but we'll get to that in a bit.
Kellye:So, Randi, like I said, her body was never found, but there was DNA that they found at the scene on a pink trash bag that had been left by the door, and the pictures of this crime scene are just brutal. She was obviously attacked in the same bedroom where she and her son had been sleeping together like not in, not in the same bed or anything, but they were in the same room sleep and she'd obviously been dragged for there and they could tell that because there was a trail of blood on the carpet that led all the way to the living room. They could also tell that she had been hit incredibly hard in the back of the head, so hard in fact, and this is how they know, and in the picture you can see it for yourself she was hit so hard that both of her contacts were knocked out of her head and onto the carpet and they were still in the position where they had come out of her eyes onto the carpet. And guess where she lived, guys, oak Shadows. Oak Shadows, subdivision yes, spitting distance of Connie Warner's house. So, like I said, they did find DNA on one of the trash bags, but then they, you know, saved it away, put it away and saved it for later.
Kellye:And funnily enough that he was actually interviewed as a suspect in this murder, because the people and the officers and investigators around Zachary absolutely knew who he was because of the peeping arrests and all of the other things that he'd been getting into trouble for over the years. He was the first thought, he was the first and pretty much the only suspect, even though they did work their investigation to all ends, work their investigation to all ends, but they had no physical evidence. They actually confiscated his shirt and pants and I think maybe his shoes too. I don't remember if they took his shoes, but I know they took his pants for sure when they did that interview. But nothing came of it.
Kellye:So August of that year he got another stalking and unlawful entry charge and that was with a lady named Colette Walker. There's also an ID episode from her perspective of the whole situation and her remembering watching these news broadcasts of all these women going missing and then being found dead and the way that they were and all of these things that had happened, and her immediate thought was, oh, that sounds like something he would do. But then, because of the FBI um analysis that came out and the profile, she was like, oh, then it can't be him. And again, we'll get to that in a second. So he was arrested on that. Basically, he forced his way into her apartment and was trying to convince her to go on a date with him. She eventually got him out and then she filed press charges. They sent out a warrant for stalking and then he got arrested and then his family bailed him out and then she filed press charges. They sent out a warrant for stalking and then he got arrested and then his family bailed him out um, that was at the beginning of December in 99 and then on the 17th of December he pled guilty. He had six months but he got credit for time served because he was in jail from August until December and then he was put again on two years probation. Funnily enough, after that happened, same freaking day, his girlfriend called the police because he was threatening to kill her, which were charges she later dropped.
Kellye:Now this is where it starts to kind of speed up. So far we have Connie Warner and Randi Mebruer that are both confirmed to have been victims, and I'm assuming it was Eugenie as well. So two, maybe three, before we ever get into the year 2000. Now, 2000 was pretty uneventful for him. He probably had a couple of other little dinghies here there and off jobs in jobs, off jobs, and by 2001 September 24th he had done it again.
Kellye:41 year old Gina Wilson Green, who also lived on guess where she lived guys, stanford avenue. And I've got an excellent map of the victims and the pinpoints and I'll put that on the website as well as on uh twitter. And she was on Stanford Avenue, just a couple houses down from where Eugenie was abducted or where she lived at at the time that she went missing and then was found dead. She, miss Gina Green, was found um strangled. She had been sexually assaulted and raped and her body was found to have been well she. Her autopsy said that she was asphyxiated by strangulation. She lived alone, she was a divorcee you sound familiar and she lived right off of the LSU campus. So it didn't take him long. That was in September. September 24th, she lived off of Stanford Avenue.
Kellye:And then, January 14th of 2002, Geralyn DeSoto, age 2. She lived off of Highway 1 in Baton Rouge. She was found dead in her apartment. She was hit over the head with a phone. She was stabbed three times and her throat was cut from ear to ear and if that wasn't bad enough, he stomped her body after she was already dead. So just vicious, taking out all of the anger and aggression. And they did recover DNA from that scene. And they did recover DNA from that scene. She was actually a I think it was pre-med student at LSU, so she was actually currently enrolled. So again, another one of those connecting fibers.
Kellye:And I don't know if I mentioned this. But up until this point and further on, until we get to one of the last victims. They were all white women, but if you've noticed, the age ranges are crazy. So you've got 41 year old, 41 year old, 21 year old. So Randy was 28 and you got Charlotte Murray Pace, the next victim. She was 21. Geralyn DeSoto was 21. Gina Green was 41.
Kellye:And then you have two other victims that were well into their 40s and then another, like it's just, he's all over the place with the age. So I don't think it had anything to do with age so much as it did just being a woman. And now I'm not sure if he specifically was targeting white women, because he always targeted, like rich posh, well-to-do women, and I don't know if that was him, you know, taking out the anger and aggression on somebody he thought would think they were better than him. Maybe I don't know, it's hard to know for sure because you know psychos, but it's interesting because usually when you have serial killers they stick to either a certain age group or they stick to a certain race or they stick to you know, there there's something specific. But he was really just women and the convenience or the frequency area like the same locale, so they were in his comfort zone, I guess, is a good way to put that.
Kellye:So, speaking of Charlotte Murray Pace, she was a 21-year-old student that was on Sharlo Avenue in South Baton Rouge and one of her roommates came home to an actual massacre. Now, Charlotte was in excellent shape. She ran three or four times a week. She was 21 years old, prime of her life, and she was a fighter. If you know nothing else about her, everything points to her having fought to her very last breath.
Kellye:And we say that because this is the only victim of his that was just completely and utterly violated, mutilated, overkill, okay, and this is in the middle of his, his killing series. So it's weird, but it makes sense, because if she was fighting him then he would get more angry and more violent. So she was stabbed over 80 times with a flathead screwdriver, then he beat her with a clothes iron and slit her throat. She was also sexually molested and they believe that he raped her post-mortem, but not like hours later, just after she was dead and could no longer struggle, because apparently he couldn't get that shit done while she was alive, because she wasn't having it so good for you, girl. One of the quotes that stood out was her body was so violated.
Kellye:I never forgot that scene for the rest of my life. Her address was three doors down from the prior victim, Geralyn DeSoto, and all of these are around the LSU lakes. That who was that? Oh yeah, Eugenie used to go jogging around where her ID and things were found under a light pole, but he didn't do that one, let's see.
Kellye:DNA was also found at this scene. Obviously, because that bad of a struggle, that much of a fight put up, you're going to lose things and he did. DNA was found at that scene as well and a footprint with, uh, like a 10 to 11 size shoe, a Rawling tennis shoe, and I guess she pissed him off enough that he barely waited a month and a couple days to kill again. And, unfortunately, miss Pam Kinamore. She went missing in early july and her body was found later under Whiskey Bay bridge, which is, if you go on i-10 coming straight out of Baton Rouge, you'll go over Whiskey Bay and that's. It's right before Atchafalaya National Forest and we'll hear that name again. So Whiskey Bay Bridge, not Atchafalaya, but same thing. So her throat was slashed and she was raped and they found DNA.
Kellye:Now, all of these houses, ever, all of his victims, victims none of their houses showed any sign of forced entry, and here in a minute we'll figure out why. But that was another common factor and, if you remember, Eugenie's house had no signs of forced entry. So now, July of 2002 is when the FBI finally broke down and was like look, this is obviously got to be a serial killer. These are all women within the same literal mile and a half two miles of each other, except for the two up in Zachary right. They didn't even include them in their initial profile.
Kellye:So the FBI profile that came out, though because of misleading tips and misinformation that they were given, came out to say that it was a white male, 30 to 40, and all of the other aspects of their profile were pretty close to accurate. But the biggest problem was they said it was a white male in a white truck. Problem was, they said it was a white male in a white truck that was what an eyewitness said because they were associating these murders with a rape that had happened in Mississippi. Now, this was a massive misstep on the investigators part, and they admitted as much later, later. Um, but up to that point, the FBI criminal backgrounds and profiles that were created were pretty dead on, because, you know, it's not an exact science but it's a psychological behavior, um, that can be pretty well, you know, documented, and there's good reason behind it, good science behind it for the most part. But they were just completely and utterly wrong in this point, um, and I think that had more to do with the, the eyewitnesses, that they were just completely and utterly wrong in this point, um, and I think that had more to do with the, the eyewitnesses that they were taking as fact, that were in truth and honestly had nothing to do with it. So it kind of gave derrita lee a free pass. However it is, it is funny, kind of funny to note. They're not really funny, but I remember I told you at this time in baton rouge there was at least two, and I think three actually overlapped of serial killers that overlapped at the same time in Baton Rouge. Two of them were black, one of them was white and the white guy, sean Vincent Gillis, we covered last episode. So I mean, so Derrick Todd Lee at this point got kind of a free pass, like I said, because he's a black guy rolling around, not in a white truck, and nobody's suspecting him, except for the people, the investigators up in Zachary, who have suspected him since Randi Mebruer died, murdered, because they again, they never found her body and he would never give up that information, even after he was arrested.
Kellye:Now, that was in July of 2002 when they released the profile, and then in September, September 21st of 2002, this is when Trenisha Colomb I think it's Colomb Colomb is it Colomb? She was a Marine, she was 23 years old and she went missing on November 21st first. Now her body was later found nude, dumped in a wooded area of St Landry. Her cause of death had been a bludgeoning and this was the first one to have ever, but a couple, couple new things. She was the first black woman, and only black woman. She was the only one that was attacked, not in her home, she was actually attacked as she was visiting her mother's gravesite at a cemetery and he attacked her there and then took her body to St Landry, parish and dumped her, and this was the only murder that committed outside of the Baton Rouge area. So a lot of, a lot of firsts there. She was raped, she was beaten, her throat was cut as well, um, and or no, I'm sorry, I'm gonna fuck that, scratch that. Sorry, kayla. So she was bludgeoned, she was raped. Um, I don't have it noted that they found DNA on her, but again, this is one of those ones that it absolutely was him. So now we get to.
Kellye:We get to Dianne Alexander. She was living alone in her apartment when that was November of 2002. So back in June he had got hired at Exxon. He had got hired at Exxon and a little over a month later Dianne Alexander was at home by herself and she went to the door after someone had knocked. It was Mr. Lee. He asked if he could use the phone, so she went and got it. When she opened the door to hand it to him, he forced his way in. He then continued, or proceeded to beat and strangle her with the phone cord and then attempted to rape her. However, Dianne's son arrived and scared him off, so he took off and fled. Now this is the first time that a victim has been left alive. This is finally when the perception of a white guy in a white truck gets shifted. Now we know it's a black man, because this fits the MO perfectly. There's no forced entry. He was trying to rape her. She was going to be strangled. He was beating the shit out of her.
Kellye:All of these things line up. She was in the same general area and now they had an eyewitness to do, an actual sketch of the person that they were looking for and not the incorrect FBI behavior profile. Okay Now, do you remember when I mentioned Colette back in 99, I think that's the ID episode. I think it's world's most evil killers. Anyway, Colette sees the news cast of Diane's story and then she sees the sketch and she says, oh my God, it is him. And then she calls and tells them about her stalking events that she had with um Lee and the fact that she had to press charges against him. And then he moved away and you know she didn't really have to deal with it after that because she moved to Mississippi or wherever she went to and this kind of came full circle because Colette had lived in the same area as Randi Mebruer up there in Zachary. So now they're finally tying all this shit together.
Kellye:Tanisha dies in November. She's murdered in November and then, in March of 2003, Carrie Lynn Yoder, a 26-year-old doctoral candidate at LSU who also lived alone. She only lived a few miles from Gina Green and Charlotte Murray Pace. She went missing from her home and was found March 13th. Guess where she was Whiskey Bay Bridge, within literal steps of where they had previously found, within steps of where they had found Pam Kinamore back in July of 02.
Kellye:And you see what I'm saying about him like skipping around, he goes from one place to another and kind of back and forth it. Because in this instance he murdered and dumped Pam Kinamore in Whiskey Bay Bridge and then he went back to Trinieshia and dropped her in St Landry parish, and then when he murdered Yoder, he dropped her at Whiskey Bay Bridge. And like you see, he does this like back and forth, kind of teeter-totter to where it doesn't, you know, keep everything in one spot and make it easier to catch on. So I just again I'm gonna reiterate this I don't believe the 75 IQ test. I think he was just a bad test taker in my opinion, especially when you look at the trial stuff here in a bit and the testing he did in that situation.
Kellye:So she had been beaten, Ms Carrie Lynn Yoder, 26. She had been beaten and strangled. She had fractured ribs and lacerated liver. She was also raped fractured ribs and lacerated liver. She was also raped. She had enough DNA that they did get a good confirmation. Now they confirmed earlier from one of the earlier victims that this was all the same person and that's. I think that was back in 2002 when they released the profile because they realized all the DNA match.
Kellye:So once they did that and had all of that part of the puzzle put together, by the time Carrie Lynn Yoder was murdered in March of 03, they were like we gotta do something about this. And this was right after they had got the call from Colette, they got the sketch from um Dianne, so now they had a lot more to go with. And finally they start talking to the investigators in Zachary, because from the very beginning, when randy had been murdered back in 97, 98, whatever was they kind of wrote them off and were like let us do our investigation, we know how to do this better than you. And it kind of came full circle and they had to come back and say, hey, you guys, you did it. You know, because the Zachary Investigators actually pulled an old gumshoe investigator out and with his just boots-to-the-ground police work he ended up putting these things together in a way that he ended up, oh, okay, so I'm pretty sure he ended up getting a cup or something from derrick todley and asking for a subpoena to be able to get his actual dna. And that's how they eventually came to request his dna and, oddly enough wouldn't, wouldn't you know? It turned out to be a match to all of these women and to diane, and then she confirmed him in a photo lineup. But all of that was irrelevant. They had dna. And also, oddly enough, the same day that he gave his dna sample to the zachary police investigators, his wife pulled both their children out of school and told everybody they were going to live with family in Los Angeles. Except they didn't, they actually went to Illinois, I believe, first by the time they got the confirmation on May 25th of 03, that the DNA was a match and they realized that they knew exactly who the Baton Rouge serial killer was. Now they couldn't find him and I believe he skipped town, went to Illinois first and then he went to another part of the country where his family wasn't. Like I said, I think this was probably the first time he ever actually went anywhere outside of Louisiana, because I mean, like he had family in other places he probably visited, but, like in any length of time, he majority of the time he just spent his life in Louisiana and he ended up in Atlanta and the reason they found this out.
Kellye:You remember how I told you he had girlfriends and stuff earlier. Well, he had one steady girlfriend. Her name was Cassandra. He ended up actually having a child with her that he gave his name to. His name was Diedrich, I believe, diedrich Lee, and that was the most steady girlfriend he had outside of his wife relationship. They had gone back and forth and she actually had called the police on him a few times and always dropped the charges, of course. But she was standing at her in her home when the police were executing a search warrant on her house that she had been sharing with lee. And on may 26, while they were doing this, lee called her and when he called the police were present, looked over her shoulder, saw the area code was from an atlanta area code. They told the atlanta police and they picked him up that same day or within that same 24 hours.
Kellye:Right now everybody could take a big deep breath and sigh of relief that the serial killer of Baton Rouge was caught, except, unfortunately, they still had two more out there. But they didn't put that part together quite yet, although Sean Vincent Gillis and I did mention this in my episode last. He actually was taking note and collecting newspaper clippings of Derek Todd Lee and whatever everything that happened, and he felt like it was a competition and he had to one up him. When he realized that Derek had killed one more or Lee had killed one more person than he had, he had to go out and commit another murder. Yeah, that's, that's what we're dealing with here.
Kellye:So May 27th of 2003, derrick todd lee was arrested. He didn't fight extradition, so he was pretty quickly transferred back to louisiana. He'd already was had enough of his fill of being outside of the boot. He was ready to go back. Now this all happened pretty quickly. He never talked. He never could. He never admitted to anything. Like I said, from early childhood, he realized like deny till you die was his way to go um, unfortunately he didn't manage to talk. Well, unfortunately for him, he didn't manage to talk his way out of these charges, though like he seemed to do his entire freaking life. For whatever reason, they just wouldn't let these ones go um.
Kellye:Now the in cases of serial killers and you'll see this in a lot of cases, especially when it comes to trials and the prosecutors and what they decide to actually charge and try because, logically, it makes the most sense to go with what you have the strongest chance of winning. It makes the most sense, obviously, you're not going to go in there with the flimsy circumstantial case when you have a rock-solid DNA dang near eyewitness case. Instead, if that's the options that you have, you're going to go with the strong case. You're not going to lead with the flimsy case, right, so that's what they did. Gonna go with the strong case. You're not gonna lead with the flimsy case, right, so that's what they did.
Kellye:And in his case, derek Todd Lee's strongest, the strongest case they had against him was Gerilyn DeSoto and her murder trial started in August, and that was August 5th of 2004. It lasted for four days and then the prosecution rested, and that was after Derek Todd Lee's son identified the boots that they had matched to the footprints from outside of her house. And on August 10th of 2004, the jury came back after two hours and found him guilty of second degree murder. I know, I know you're asking like oh well, why didn't they first do it? Well, because that's the evidence that they had and they were good with that for that case. Now, second degree murder comes with an automatic life without parole sentence. We know this with the LWOP. We've been around long enough or you guys, hopefully, have listened to enough of my episodes to know Second degree murder automatic life without parole, probation or suspension of sentence, no benefits, and swiftly.
Kellye:Thereafter, within the month, actually less than a month on September 13th of the same year, 2004, the murder trial of Charlottelotte marie pace started, and this one took a lot longer. There were a lot more motions filed. There were a lot more. There was a lot more tape to go through. They asked for change of venue, they asked for change of everything. They wanted people recused. I mean, they pulled out all the stops. Now the first day of the okay. So the jurors were. Jury selection was completed on September 29th.
Kellye:Okay, the first day of actual proceedings started October 4th. There were over 100 pictures of the crime scene and of Charlotte's body. So a lot of time 100, 100 pictures. Okay. Now on the 11th of October. We started on the 4th. Remember, 11th of October? Diane Alexander, the only surviving victim of the attacks, like Charlotte or Colette, had been a stalking victim, but not any actual assault. But she got on the stand and she looked him in the eye and she testified that is the man who beat me, tried to rape me and would have killed me if my son had not showed up. And on the 12th of October the jury, after 93 minutes, found him guilty of first degree murder and recommended the death sentence. Now you have a whole other trial when the death sentence is an option, because your sentencing is one thing. It's outside of the actual trial, which is also why they have to take at least a 24 to 48 hour break. I don't remember right this second which one it is, but I think it's 48. But either way, you have to have a cooling down time for the jury and the judge to be able to come back before they have actual sentencing. Now the jury recommended the death sentence before they have actual sentencing. Now the jury recommended the death sentence.
Kellye:The defense was trying their dangness to argue. Well, look at his mental health, look at all of these. You know his IQ is too low and this is an actual statute. You can't prosecute someone and have them serve and their sentence be the death penalty if their IQ is below the average for a non-handicapped person. So you have to be at a normal IQ level to be able to be eligible for the death penalty. However, they were able to use his ability to function in intense, you know, highly complex job positions, and this was about like the layouts and blueprints and the integral parts and schematics of the different jobs, as well as passing his commercial driver's license test. So good for you, buddy. But it came back to bite him in the ass because it proved that, even though his IQ testing because during the trial his testing rates for the IQ were at like 40, 41 and 45, where he was testing at 70 to 75 and 91 at his highest in his youth Now you know we do get dumber to a certain point, but he is still literally only 35, 36 at this point. He has not begun his downward descent into not remembering things. So he should have been testing either at the same level or maybe, you know, within a five or six point buffer on either side, but he was testing in the 40s, which is obviously below the special line, and the prosecution argued so well and had all these other proving evidence. It's not mitigating factors, it's the other one primitating, I don't know. Anyway, they could show that he did have a higher level of thinking, of complex understanding, and knew everything that he was doing and was eligible for the death sentence and the judge agreed sentence and the judge agreed and on december 11th, at age 36, derrick todd lee was formally sentenced to death.
Kellye:Now, after this, things kind of slowly wind down and are a little bit anticlimactic. Um, he was. He was sent off to angola, which was the same place that he had been, you know, committing these crimes and abducting these women within miles of in zachary, because zachary was maybe about 35, 40 minutes from angola. And they shipped him out and he kept him over there and that's where he stayed and they thought about doing other trials for these other people. But you've already got a death sentence, you don't need to do it again. And actually there was no trial for Trenisha and they kind of understood that.
Kellye:Diane for her charges, actually in february of 2005 she requested that they dismiss hers. Um, she, she said that she didn't want those hanging over her head, she didn't want to have to go through all of that. She'd already faced him in court, she had done what she needed to do for her own closure and just wanted to move on with her life. And they agreed, they dropped the charges, they dismissed them in may of 2005. At the end of may. He filed an appeal. They requested a new trial. Uh, all of those requests were denied. His appeal was affirmed and he stayed, his happy ass, in jail. Now there was a mandatory review by the supreme court, as is the case with all death sentences, and they came back and said nah, dude, you're staying in jail.
Kellye:So here's an interesting fact and thing. So back when these were still occurring, these murders were still happening, crime Stoppers had put up billboards, I mean, like there was, there were things everywhere. Call us if you see anything you know, let us know if you provide the tip that leads to the arrest of this person committing these crimes. I think it reward. And in march of 2006, diane actually diane alexander, the surviving victim of derrick todd lee, she sued crime stoppers because they refused to give her the reward because they said she was not eligible. Now, get this. The reason that she wasn't eligible was because she didn't report the, the tip, or she didn't allege who it was until after august of oh, hang on, what year was it she? Basically they're saying that she didn't make it within the timeline that she was. They were supposed to only have a time limit. You could only if you reported it before this date, then you would have got the reward. Um, let me see here, I gotta find it now. It's gonna piss me off. Oh, I didn't even mention this part, but I think I should and I'll probably just chop it back in.
Kellye:But while he had fled in between the time of May and when they finally picked him up at the end of May, so it was like, all right, so they took his DNA and he took off May 5th. They conclusively matched the DNA on the 25th, so it was 20 days after he had already left. And then he called his girlfriend from Atlanta number on the 26th of May and they got him on the 27th, so it was 22 days from the time that he gave them DNA to the time that they picked him up. Right, well, during that time he had been staying at a hotel in Atlanta, all right, that's where they ended up.
Kellye:Arresting him was at that hotel, I don't know some hotel where he was barbecuing for all of the other people who were staying there and having a gay old time, and they just couldn't believe that they were picking this guy up for murder. He was so friendly and he barbecued, right Right, he couldn't be a killer. He knows how to cook On a grill, of all things. All right, he's so friendly and just jovial and having a great time. Yeah, that's what happened Grilling on the barbecue for the people at the hotel, having a good time, yeah, so, after all was said and done, his entire well, depending on where you want to start, if you start with who they believe was his first victim, miss Connie Warner, it started in August 2000,. I'm sorry, august 23rd 1992. And his last victim was murdered on March 3rd 2003. He was arrested March 27th of 2003 and then convicted of second degree murder in 2004, in September of I'm sorry, october, oh my god, I can't talk August of 2004, and then convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death in December of 2004, even though that trial started in September.
Kellye:So basically, what it all boils down to is Crime Stoppers refused to give her the reward because one, she didn't directly give them the tip, because it's like directly to the group, and because they didn't give it to them, give them the tip within a certain amount of time. So in 2006 it was and I'm sorry, it wasn't ten thousand dollars, it was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars was the crime Stoppers reward. Okay, that's what she sued for, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court ruling that she did not get that reward. So they said they were going to further appeal and pursue the case, but nothing that I found ever came of that.
Kellye:Now the other interesting part after all of this came out in the wash when they were using the behavioral background profile from the FBI as a white man remember the white man, white truck they didna dragnets all over the state, and I'm talking. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of men were dna tested and because it was such an egregious error of just there was no possibility that it was a white man, obviously, obviously, and now they know it was a black man. They actually made a deal to destroy any of the DNA samples that were taken from those white suspects while they were searching for the Baton Rouge serial killer. And they, and they won, or they decided and made that deal and went forward with it and all of the DNA was destroyed from those white males in May of 2006. Now, I'm sorry, it was approved in June and it was destroyed later that month.
Kellye:Now there was an attempt by the defense to obtain seven pages from the original trial's transcript. There's not a whole lot of explanation behind that. I'm not sure if they were trying to file some other sort of appeal or some kind of mental something. There's no way of knowing. Not sure if they were trying to file some other sort of appeal or some kind of mental something. There's no way of knowing. But that's pretty much the end of all of his legal stuff. At that point he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. That was at the end of 2004. They didn't do any other trials or filing of charges against him after that. He was in Angola and that was his forever home until they got through all of the processes that they have to go through that are mandatory for death sentence cases, which basically puts them on death row for 10 to 15 years depending, unless you're in Texas.
Kellye:He started murdering at age 23. He had at least seven victims, possibly up to 10. I believe he murdered Eugenie. That's my opinion and only my opinion. No one else is responsible for that but me. That's just my opinion and I've listed all the reasons why I believe so, because I wasn't convinced when I did the Eugenie episode. But after I've done this and read through all of these things and all of the information, I'm convinced. So, going back to his youth and feeling bad for young child, adolescent, innocent Derek Todd Lee, it's still. It's still hard for me to accept that it was anything but his choice.
Kellye:Um, he was known to have done drugs. He was known to be an alcoholic. He frequented bars more often than he frequented his home, so he obviously had those issues with he obviously had those issues with dependencies. And then he also got his kicks from peeping and stalking and the aggression of which you know and that switch that he could flip that psychotic, on-off, charming, smooth, handsome womanizer to immediate beat you to a bloody pulp psycho. There were some signs as he grew up. He had actually been caught torturing a dog and her puppies and he was known to have been a bedwetter into late childhood, which is also an indicator.
Kellye:Now we're getting into the serial killer triad here and there now, and it wasn't in his youth so much. But he did have a past of dealing with arson because he had actually bought a vehicle in his girlfriend's name. He bought it for her, put it in her name and then, less than a month later, set it on fire for the insurance money. It didn't work. They didn't give him any money, but that does kind of show you the propensity for fire and violence, which will kind of put him into that triad of what we know to be now the kind of hey, these are the warning signs. If you see all three of these, it's probably time to put that one in therapy or somewhere safe.
Kellye:So between 92 and 2004, at least at the end of 2004, we knew that Derek Chodley could no longer kill anybody. Unfortunately for the city of Baton Rouge. He was not the only one out there Baton Rouge, he was not the only one out there, and his victims, like I said earlier, they ranged in age from 21 all the way to 44, I think was the eldest, and when you break it all down, they were all white women. They were all well off. They were all white women, they were all well off. They were all strong, independent women. And he took advantage of that and he used his brute strength and basically, oh, the other thing that he would use was their empathy. He actually had a recording of a baby crying and he would play that to get them to open their door, to have that as an entry. So that would explain the no force entry, because they just opened the door anyway. They wanted to see what baby was crying and why nobody was coming to help it. The goodness of these women is what got them murdered, which is pure evil, pure evil. And the fact that he got away with so much shit when he was younger. That should have been, you know, red sign, red flags all over the freaking place, and he should have been actually punished for these things. But he was just slapping the wrist. Slapping the wrist. Stop doing it. Stop doing it. Don't do it again. You're you know. Go home, do something else. It was never taken seriously and he used that to his advantage. And then the blunder of the profile that gave him free reign for a little bit. All the things worked out for him to be his worst and, gracefully for these families of these victims, they didn't have to wait for decades. He's not still sitting on death row in Angola In 2016,.
Kellye:In mid-January, reports came in that Derek Todd Lee had been transferred to the hospital in really bad condition. Not because of a fight or anything like that. The man had problems. He had evil on the outside and he had evil that apparently was rotting him to his core because he had major heart problems and heart disease, which, on January 21st, ended up taking his life, and he died in the hospital, still in custody of Louisiana State Penitentiary. Still in custody of Louisiana State Penitentiary, and they released to the papers that he had passed away of natural causes, which was the heart disease, on January 21st of 2016. Now most of the families they were either impartial or grateful that they didn't have to wait around for all of the shit to go through and to, you know, keep waiting and waiting and waiting. But now he was finally gone, that he could no longer hurt anybody, that he no longer had the ability, the capability or the the life to do take any other life or to make anybody else's life miserable ever again. So, began in a begin in 92, it ended in 2016. He spent almost 13 years in custody from the time he was picked up in atlanta, but only nine of those were as a convicted murderer. So he ended up having three children the one illegitimate child with candace and then the two with his wife.
Kellye:Um, I believe one of, uh, one of the children I think it was Dietrich, actually Cassandra's son that he released an article here recently about the whole situation and how he felt about it and tried to stay away from it, from what I understand. But what we know about him was he was vile, he he was vicious, he had an MO that was not normal in terms of like, same age group, same type of woman, whatever. But he did kind of fit a pattern of lonely women or women who lived alone, not lonely particularly, but good looking, well off. There were at least half of them that were either on LSU campus or affiliated with LSU campus, the map that y'all post up there. All of these women either lived next to each other or had lived next to each other. In fact I believe it was Charlotte. She had literally just moved two days before she was murdered and she had only lived in that house for two days and had moved from Stanford Avenue.
Kellye:So I mean, this was obviously his praying grounds, this is where he went to find his victims, because that was his comfort place, that was his comfort zone, that, and in Zachary, in Oak Shadows subdivision, and he bounced back and forth between the two and that's why it got stretched out as far as it did, between the bad FBI profile, between the in communication and just, you know, not really knowing how to deal with it. And then, on top of that, you also still have these other murders that are happening. I think it was something like 63 women from 90 to 2008, or 9 60 cis something. Women that had been brutally murdered, that had similar characteristics. Like you've got to be kidding me. I would have moved. I would have made my family move. There was no way you would have been able to convince me to stay my ass in baton rouge in late 90s, early 2000s period. Not a chance. So that is the unfortunate, horrible, disturbing case of Derek Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge serial killer.
Kellye:I thank you all for listening, I thank you for hanging out with me and I cut down as much as I could without losing any of the content. So I super duper appreciate you guys listening and coming back and still being a part of this incredible, awesome journey with me to telling these stories and being able to share those with people that can appreciate them and give me the feedback and be able to be the crime nerds that we are. So I love you all. I appreciate you all. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, comments, questions, concerns, shoot me an email. You can check out all of the sources listed in the episode notes below and you check out our socials. I've got a Patreon, I've got a website TikTok, twitter or just drop me a line in the email. I love hearing from you guys. Thank you so so, so, so much. I can't say it enough and I will see you guys next time. Take care out there.
