Between September 2001 and March 2003, five women were killed in and around Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, and the State Police Crime Lab found the same man's DNA in each case. A multi-agency task force collected cheek swabs from more than a thousand men. The man it was looking for was not among them. He was Derrick Todd Lee, 34, of St. Francisville, a laborer with a record of burglary, stalking and peeping into women's homes, whom detectives in the small town of Zachary had suspected for years in the disappearance of one woman and the death of another.
His DNA was taken on May 5, 2003, under a court order obtained by investigators working those Zachary cases. Three weeks later the result came back as a match to the task force's profile, and on May 27 he was arrested in Atlanta. Lee was convicted of two murders in 2004: the second degree murder of Geralyn Barr DeSoto in West Baton Rouge Parish and the first degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace in East Baton Rouge Parish, for which a jury chose death. He was never tried for the other killings linked to him by DNA. He died of heart disease on January 21, 2016, still on death row at Angola.
Lee came from St. Francisville, in West Feliciana Parish, north of Baton Rouge. Much of what the public record shows about his early life comes from the experts who examined him for his capital trial, as the Louisiana Supreme Court summarized their testimony in 2008. He was placed in special education and given speech therapy in grammar school. Nine IQ tests from his first six years of school averaged 75.5, according to a psychologist called by the State; a defense psychologist gave him an adult test in 2004 and recorded a full-scale score of 65.
He worked with his hands. Former co-workers testified that he was a skilled pipefitter who could read blueprints. He went to truck driving school, finishing with an average of 88 percent, and scored 91 percent on the state's written test for a commercial driver's license. The Advocate described him in 2016 as a married father of two who had worked in construction and as a truck driver. The Louisiana Supreme Court noted that during the years of the killings he kept two households, one for his wife and children and one for a girlfriend, and that there were reports he was violent toward both women.
His criminal record began early and grew. An Associated Press timeline published after his arrest listed a prison sentence in July 1993 for a burglary committed in November 1992, of which he served two years. The Advocate reported that this sentence followed an incident in which a resident found him inside a bedroom of a Zachary home. From September 1995 to January 2000, AP reported, he was arrested several times in Lake Charles, Zachary and other Louisiana towns on charges that included battery, peeping and stalking. In April 2000, according to the same AP timeline, he was convicted of fleeing an officer and sentenced to two years, and a judge revoked his probation on an earlier stalking charge; The Advocate's account of 2000 says he was imprisoned for aggravated battery after attacking a girlfriend in a West Feliciana Parish bar. He was released in January 2001. The Supreme Court's list of his record covered burglary, attempted burglary, stalking, aggravated battery, trespassing and a "Peeping Tom" arrest. A woman from St. Francisville later said publicly that he had stalked her from 1999 to 2001.
Zachary, a town of subdivisions north of Baton Rouge, is where police first came to know Lee. In August 1992 Connie Warner, 41, vanished from her home in the Oak Shadows subdivision. She was reported missing on August 22. Detectives found blood on the floors of several rooms, including the bedroom, and the washer and dryer had been moved, which suggested to them that she had struggled as she was dragged out. Her father, Jack Brooks, said later that the family believed she had been put in her own car, driven away and the car brought back to the driveway. Her body was found about two weeks after she disappeared, badly decomposed, off Pittsburg Avenue near Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge. Brooks said that shortly before she died his daughter had reported a peeping Tom.
Zachary police knew Lee as a prowler in that part of town. In a 2016 account to The Advocate, Zachary Police Chief David McDavid described his department's long history with him. In 1992, he said, a man found Lee inside his home on East Eagle Drive. In February 1997 an officer found Lee near the Oak Shadows subdivision, and later that year police arrested him at a cemetery after a peeping complaint. McDavid also said that in 1993 a teenage girl and another teenager were attacked in a cemetery by a man carrying a bush blade; both survived, and the girl later picked Lee out of a photo lineup, but by then the time limit for prosecution had run out.
On April 18, 1998, Randi Mebruer, 28, disappeared from her home in Oak Shadows, around the block from where Connie Warner had lived. The Advocate's timeline gives the date as April 19. Her young son was left asleep in the house. Investigators found a trail of blood and a pink garbage bag that later yielded DNA. Her body has never been found.
Lee was the main suspect in the Mebruer case from the start, according to Zachary detectives Ray Day and Dannie Mixon, as the Louisiana Supreme Court recounted. But the police had nothing that would support an arrest. Sergeant Day told reporters in 2003 that Zachary lacked enough evidence to arrest him in either the Warner or the Mebruer case. The State Attorney General's Office joined Zachary police in working the two cases.
Gina Wilson Green was a nurse. She was 40 according to the Louisiana Supreme Court and WBRZ, and 41 in some 2003 reports. On September 24, 2001, she was found strangled in her bed at her home on Stanford Avenue, near LSU. A task force profile later gave the date of her death as Sunday, September 23. Her cellphone was later found in an alley. Her sister, Sheree Bryant, said after Lee's arrest that whoever did it had damaged five families' lives forever.
Geralyn Barr DeSoto was 21 and lived with her husband in a mobile home in Addis, across the Mississippi River in West Baton Rouge Parish. On January 14, 2002, she registered for graduate classes at LSU. That afternoon, according to the State's account to the United States Supreme Court, a man came to her door and asked to use her telephone, forced his way in and attacked her. She fought him. She was beaten and stabbed, and her throat was cut. Her husband found her that evening. For more than a year her death was not connected to the others.
Charlotte Murray Pace, known as Murray, was 22. She had just earned an MBA at LSU, the youngest in her class, and was preparing to start work with Deloitte & Touche in Atlanta. A family friend described her family as wonderful people. On Friday, May 31, 2002, she washed her BMW at a car wash, which recorded her there at about 11:52 a.m., and went back to the townhouse on Sharlo Avenue south of LSU where she had just moved. Her friend Rebecca Yeager arrived at 2 p.m. and found her body. Pace had been raped and stabbed many times, according to the pathologist, Dr. Michael Cramer. Investigators noted that she had fought back. Her home was three doors from the house where Gina Wilson Green had died. Julia Naylor of the State Police Crime Lab took swabs from Pace's body and developed a DNA profile from them.
On July 9, 2002, a man knocked at the door of a woman's home in Breaux Bridge, in St. Martin Parish east of Lafayette, and asked to use the phone. He forced his way in, beat her and tried to rape and strangle her. Her son arrived home and the man fled. She survived and helped police with a composite sketch. The case was not linked to the Baton Rouge killings until after Lee's arrest, when DNA tied him to it.
Three days later, on Friday, July 12, Pam Kinamore, 44, disappeared from her home in Briarwood Estates in Baton Rouge. She was a wife and the mother of a 12-year-old, and she ran an antiques shop in the antique district of Denham Springs, where a neighboring worker described her as cheerful and talkative. Her husband came home late, saw her car in the driveway and found the house wrong: her keys, watch and wallet were on the kitchen table, and her bath water stood untouched. There was no forced entry. Workers for the state transportation department found her body on July 16 under the Interstate 10 bridge near the Whiskey Bay exit. Her throat had been cut. Her family offered a reward of 100,000 dollars.
On July 29, 2002, investigators announced that DNA linked the deaths of Green, Pace and Kinamore to one man. The public now knew there was a serial killer in Baton Rouge.
Local, state and federal agencies formed the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force. It took tips on a toll-free line, and by February 2003 the tip line had received some 1,200 calls. Sightings of a white pickup truck near the Whiskey Bay exit had been released to the public that July, and much of the search that followed turned on the idea of a white man in a white pickup.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, at Quantico, prepared an offender profile. In September 2002 a CNN anchor described the police account of it as a man likely white, 25 to 35, who seemed harmless, wore a shoe size of 10 to 11, and could lift about 175 pounds. A Baton Rouge police spokeswoman, Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa, said on air that the man "blends in with the community." The longer profile the task force published in December 2002, as printed by WAFB, did not state a race. It described a physically strong man of average or below-average income, impulsive and unable to take rejection, who followed and watched women, had poor social skills with women he found attractive, might have a history of trespassing, burglary and peeping, and might be moody and abusive toward women at home.
Newsweek reported in 2003 that authorities relied for months on an FBI profile that assumed the killer was white, and that the profile was amended in March 2003 to cover all races. Zachary's police chief at the time, Joey Watson, told Newsweek that leads were lost because of it. Lee did not fit the picture in another way: Pam Kinamore's mother, Lynne Marino, pointed out after his arrest that the profile spoke of a man who had trouble with women, while Lee was described by people who knew him as charming.
The search relied on DNA. Investigators asked men named in tips for cheek swabs, and most agreed. By February 2003, the Christian Science Monitor reported, nearly 1,000 men had been tested and close to 800 cleared. Fifteen refused at first. One of them, a Baton Rouge welder, S.K., was named in a court record by a clerical error. He was not a suspect, and when a judge ordered him to give a swab, his DNA did not match. After Lee's arrest he sued to have his sample removed from police files, arguing that police had lacked grounds to take it.
The Zachary detectives tried to put Lee's name in front of Baton Rouge. On July 24, 2002, before the task force was formed, Zachary officers met Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade and other investigators. McDavid, then a lieutenant, kept a diary entry of that meeting and later told WAFB that his department had said Lee was its prime suspect in two murders. Zachary detectives were never asked to join the task force. The St. Francisville woman who said Lee had stalked her told reporters that she, too, gave his name to the task force, through McDavid, and was dismissed because investigators were looking for a white man. Englade's office answered in November 2003 that investigators had checked a white truck a caller had linked to Lee and that Lee had not been DNA tested because of task force priorities.
Trineisha Dené Colomb, 23, known as Dené, lived in Lafayette. Her father, Sterling Colomb, described her as a reader who dreamed of traveling; she was due to join the Marine Corps in February 2003. Her mother, Verna, had died seven months earlier. On November 21, 2002, Colomb's car was found in Grand Coteau, north of Lafayette, less than a mile from her mother's grave. Investigators believed she had gone there to visit the grave. Her family reported her missing the next day. On November 24 a hunter found her body in a field off a remote road in Scott, about 20 miles from her car. She had been beaten to death.
At first investigators did not think her death was part of the series, because she was Black and the other known victims were white. On December 23, 2002, they announced that DNA linked her to the killer. She was the fourth known victim and the first outside the Baton Rouge area. "I never dreamed my daughter would be killed by a serial killer," her father told WAFB.
Carrie Lynn Yoder, 26, was working toward a doctorate in biological sciences at LSU, researching coastal ecology. Her parents, David and Lynda Yoder, lived in Florida. On Monday, March 3, 2003, she disappeared from her home on Dodson Avenue, south of the campus; she was reported missing on the Wednesday. Her body was found ten days after she disappeared, on March 13, in the water near Whiskey Bay, not far from where Pam Kinamore had been found. WAFB reported that she died of strangulation. DNA from her body matched the man who had killed the other four women. Her father later described her as "very intelligent, well spoken, always happy."
That same month a Florida company, DNAPrint Genomics, said publicly that its new test could estimate a person's ancestry from trace DNA. WAFB reported on March 29, 2003, that police had first sought a white man and had since opened the search to all races. A task force spokeswoman would not say whether it had contacted the lab. A forensic statistician who was consulted on the case, Charles Brenner, wrote in 2004 that the task force's March announcement had come shortly after an ancestry analysis by DNAPrint, and that he had reached essentially the same conclusion from the standard crime-lab profile.
The break did not come from the task force. In the spring of 2003, Zachary police and the Attorney General's Office, still working the Warner and Mebruer cases, set out to get a sample of Lee's DNA. They had no probable cause for a search warrant. Instead they used a document called a subpoena duces tecum, an order to produce evidence, signed by Judge George H. Ware Jr. of the 20th Judicial District Court. The application relied on five factors, the Louisiana Supreme Court later wrote: Lee's earlier peeping arrest in Oak Shadows, where both Zachary women had lived; his criminal record; the fact that he had not been in custody at the times of the crimes; and a report from a friend that Lee had complained of police "harassing him" about a missing woman.
On May 5, 2003, officers went to Lee's house and took cheek swabs; the State's brief names Danny Mixon as the man who swabbed him, and CBS News described the person who took the sample as an attorney general's investigator. That same day his two children were withdrawn from school in St. Francisville, with word that the family was moving to California. Lee left Louisiana. U.S. Marshal Richard Mecum later said that on May 6 he bought a bus ticket to Chicago, stayed there at least two days, came back to Louisiana on May 8, and then could not be traced for a time.
At the State Police Crime Lab, analyst Natasha Poe began testing the Lee swabs on May 20 and finished on May 23. They matched the task force's profile. The Advocate gave May 25 as the date the result was confirmed.
On May 23, 2003, before the result was announced, the task force helped St. Martin Parish release a modified sketch of the man who had attacked the woman in Breaux Bridge, along with a description of a gold Mitsubishi Mirage linked to one of the incidents. Tips came in that afternoon. One caller thought she knew the man because of the car. Another said, "His name is Derrick Todd Lee and he used to live on Highway 61." Over the next day the task force received four tips naming him.
On Monday, May 26, at a 10:30 a.m. press conference, Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade named Lee as the prime suspect in the deaths of at least five women. An East Baton Rouge warrant charged him with first degree murder and aggravated rape in the death of Carrie Yoder. The FBI issued its own warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Lee was described as 6 feet 1 inch and about 210 pounds, last known at an address on Highway 61 in St. Francisville. Police searched his house, his mother's house and a girlfriend's apartment in Jackson and found the house apparently abandoned. A store clerk in St. Francisville who had sold him things almost daily for two years told WAFB, "He was so nice. He talked to everybody."
Lee had gone to Atlanta. He was working for a downtown construction company, finishing concrete, and had cashed a paycheck the Friday before. For about a week he had lived in a single room at the Lakewood Motor Lodge in southwest Atlanta, paying 135 dollars in cash. Residents found him friendly. The manager, Bubukutty Idicalla, called him handsome; another resident said he "talked about the Bible a lot" and had led a Bible study at a birthday party for the manager.
He made two calls to the Baton Rouge area from the manager's cellphone, and investigators traced them. On Monday, the day his photograph was released, he left the motel before marshals arrived; another resident drove him to a train station, believing he was going home to see a sick mother. The next evening, Tuesday, May 27, at about 8 to 8:30 p.m., Atlanta police and federal agents found him at a tire shop. He was unarmed, showed identification and did not resist. "No struggle, no, fortunately," Mecum said. Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington called him "a very dangerous person." The arresting officer of record was Chris J. Johnson, an East Baton Rouge homicide detective, working with the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and Atlanta police. The same day St. Martin Parish issued a warrant charging Lee with attempted murder and attempted rape in the Breaux Bridge attack.
The next morning Lee waived extradition in an Atlanta court. He was flown back to Louisiana that day and booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on first degree murder and aggravated rape charges in the deaths of Green, Pace, Kinamore and Yoder, with second degree kidnapping and aggravated burglary added in the Kinamore case. Lafayette Parish issued a warrant in the Colomb case. He pleaded not guilty to every charge.
Relief in Baton Rouge was mixed with anger. "He has messed up five families' lives forever," said Sheree Bryant. Carrie Yoder's father said it was a relief to know "there won't be any more victims." Lynne Marino said Lee's earlier arrests for stalking and peeping should have led police to test his DNA years before, and said she believed there were many more than five victims. Mayor Bobby Simpson said the mood of the task force had swung from "unbelievable relief to anger" at critics, whose criticism he called unfair. Ann Pace said lives might have been saved if police had widened their idea of the suspect.
Over the following months the cases against Lee were sorted parish by parish. On June 19, 2003, the West Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office announced that DNA tied him to Geralyn DeSoto's death. The State Police lab's results had been inconclusive; a private laboratory in New Orleans, Reliagene Technologies, tested fingernail clippings from the scene and reported a conclusive link. Her aunt said the family had long suspected a serial killer and had been told there was no DNA evidence.
On June 25 an East Baton Rouge grand jury indicted Lee for the first degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace. District Attorney Doug Moreau chose to try that case first, because his office considered the evidence there the strongest, and to offer evidence of the other killings at the same trial. His first assistant, John Sinquefield, called the approach "a serial prosecution." In September 2003 a Lafayette Parish grand jury indicted Lee for the first degree murder of Dené Colomb, and the Lafayette district attorney's office said it would seek death. On December 8, 2003, a grand jury in Port Allen indicted him for the murder of Geralyn DeSoto, and West Baton Rouge also said it would seek death.
In February 2004 Zachary police said that retested evidence from the Mebruer house had matched Lee's DNA, and an arrest warrant accused him of her presumed murder. "Although her body has not been found, we believe she was probably murdered," Chief Joey Watson said. Two days later police named Lee the prime suspect in Connie Warner's death and sent sheets and clothing from her case, never before tested, to the crime lab. No DNA link to Warner was reported.
In July 2003, while in custody, Lee had a procedure to correct an irregular heartbeat at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.
The first trial was for Geralyn DeSoto, in Port Allen, before a West Baton Rouge jury of six men and six women. A grand jury had charged first degree murder; on the eve of trial the State reduced the charge to second degree murder, which carried a mandatory life sentence and, under Louisiana law at the time, required only ten of twelve votes. Prosecutor Tony Clayton presented the case over three days. The State's evidence included DNA from under DeSoto's fingernails, a bloody boot print that the State said matched boots Lee owned, and a knife consistent with the weapon. Prosecution witnesses identified the boots and a pocketknife as Lee's. The woman attacked in Breaux Bridge testified and identified him in court; prosecutors said her attack closely mirrored DeSoto's.
The defense, led by public defender Tommy Thompson, rested after about three hours. It did not dispute the DNA. It tried instead to point to DeSoto's husband, D.D., with witnesses who described him as abusive; detectives testified that he had been a suspect and had been cleared. "Are we going to try this case on emotion and media hype?" Thompson asked the jury.
The jury deliberated about an hour and forty minutes and found Lee guilty of second degree murder on August 10, 2004, by a vote of 11 to 1. Lee stood leaning on the defense table and did not react. DeSoto's parents wept. "All I wanted was 10. The fact that we got 11, I'm happy," Clayton said. Families of other victims welcomed the verdict but said they were uneasy that it was not unanimous. Dené Colomb's brother, Sterling Colomb Jr., said the families had become "a big family." Lee was sentenced to life in prison at hard labor without parole, probation or suspension of sentence.
The capital trial for the murder of Charlotte Murray Pace was held in Baton Rouge before State District Judge Richard Anderson of the 19th Judicial District Court. It began on September 13, 2004. Lee's lawyers had asked to move it; the trial court put off the question until a jury was chosen. Of 125 prospective jurors questioned, 123 knew at least something about the case, and the defense put more than 5,000 pages of media coverage into the record. The defense had asked for 216,000 dollars for experts and investigators and received 37,000; six requests, including for a blood spatter expert, a fingerprint expert and an investigator, were denied.
The lead prosecutor was John Sinquefield. Julia Naylor was the State's first witness. She testified that the DNA profile from the swab of Pace's body was Lee's and put the chance of a random match at one in 3.6 quadrillion. Under cross-examination she acknowledged that the State Police DNA unit had not been accredited when the samples were tested, though it was accredited by the time of trial, and that she did not know its error rate. Defense lawyer Mike Mitchell suggested that a power surge during testing could have affected the results.
Judge Anderson had ruled in March 2004 that the State could present evidence of other crimes to prove identity, motive, plan, system and intent. The jury heard about the deaths of Gina Wilson Green, Pam Kinamore, Dené Colomb and Carrie Yoder and about the attack in Breaux Bridge. Crime lab analysts testified to each DNA match: Angela Ross for Green, Julia Naylor for Kinamore, Carolyn Booker of the Acadiana Crime Lab for Colomb, Natasha Poe for Yoder. A telephone cord from the Breaux Bridge attack was matched to a cord found near Kinamore's body. Mary Ellen O'Toole, an FBI criminal investigative analyst, testified that the crimes shared a consistent method. The woman from Breaux Bridge testified again.
The evidence closed on October 12, 2004. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of first degree murder, The Advocate reported, about 80 minutes after it received the case.
In the penalty phase the defense argued that Lee was intellectually disabled. Under the United States Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia and Louisiana's statute, that would bar a death sentence, and the burden was on Lee to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence. The notice came late: during jury selection, Mitchell announced that an expert had found Lee to be mentally retarded, the term then used in law, and Sinquefield said he had been asking for 13 months for notice of any such claim.
Four experts testified. For the defense, Dr. Drew Gouvier, an LSU psychologist and neuropsychologist, reported the full-scale score of 65 and deficits in communication and self-direction, and placed the onset in childhood. Dr. Sarah Deland, a forensic psychiatrist at Tulane, interviewed Lee for about six hours and concluded that he was mildly retarded; she believed his account that he had paid someone to take the commercial license exam for him. For the State, Dr. Donald Hoppe, a psychologist, said the adult test result had a 95 percent confidence range of 62 to 70, averaged the nine childhood scores to 75.5, and pointed to Lee's driving school and license test results; he said Lee qualified under no definition of the condition. Dr. Robert Blanche, a psychiatrist, examined Lee for about three hours and also found he was not retarded. A former co-worker and a former supervisor described him as a capable pipefitter and "a regular guy."
Lee's sister testified about their childhood. She broke down while apologizing to the victims' families and said she had never stopped praying for them. Lee cried as she spoke. When the jury left the room he stood and said, "The jury only got half the story. I didn't kill none of them women."
The jury deliberated for just over 90 minutes. It found unanimously that Lee had not proved intellectual disability, found as the aggravating circumstance that Pace was killed during an aggravated rape or attempted aggravated rape, and recommended death. As he was led out, Lee shouted that his DNA had been taken eight times and suggested that it had been planted, and he flashed a V sign. Ann Pace said she felt the victims had finally been given "some moment of peace and justice." Sinquefield had told the jury that Lee was a serial killer trying to hide behind a claim of mental retardation. Another defense lawyer, Bruce Unangst, had told it that evil "is not defeated by sticking a needle in an arm." The Department of Corrections recorded Lee's arrival at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on October 14, 2004. After denying a motion for a new trial, Judge Anderson formally sentenced him to death on December 10, 2004.
Lee appealed the DeSoto conviction on two main grounds. He argued that a conviction by a non-unanimous jury violated the Sixth Amendment, and that the DNA evidence should have been suppressed because it had been taken by subpoena, not by a search warrant from a neutral magistrate. The Louisiana Court of Appeal, First Circuit, affirmed on May 16, 2007, in State v. Lee, 964 So. 2d 967. Relying on the United States Supreme Court's 1972 decision in Apodaca v. Oregon, it held that a verdict by less than a unanimous jury did not violate the Sixth Amendment. It held that the subpoena was a permissible way to obtain the sample, and that evidence linking Lee to other 2002 crimes had been admitted in error but that the error was harmless. The Louisiana Supreme Court denied review on March 7, 2008, in State v. Lee, 977 So. 2d 896.
Lee's lawyers, among them Jeffrey Fisher and the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, asked the United States Supreme Court to hear the case, raising both the unanimity question and the DNA search. In its filings the State, represented by the West Baton Rouge district attorney's office, defended the conviction. The Court denied certiorari on October 6, 2008. The DeSoto conviction stood.
The Louisiana Supreme Court decided Lee's direct appeal in the Pace case on January 16, 2008, in State v. Lee, No. 2005-KA-2098, 976 So. 2d 109. The opinion is the fullest public account of the case.
On the DNA swab, the court took a different view from the First Circuit. It held that taking a cheek swab was a search under the Fourth Amendment, that the subpoena under Louisiana's Code of Criminal Procedure lacked the probable cause and sworn support a warrant requires, and that Lee's apparent consent was not voluntary. It nonetheless held the evidence admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine: once the sketch went out on May 23, 2003, tips naming Lee came in independently, and the task force's standard procedure would have led it to swab him.
The court found no abuse of discretion in keeping the trial in East Baton Rouge Parish. It described the press coverage as largely factual and noted that 40 prospective jurors, about a third, had been excused for cause. It found no abuse of discretion in the funding rulings, noting that the DNA linked Lee to the crime conclusively. It held the other-crimes evidence admissible. On intellectual disability, it held that the jury's unanimous finding was "neither irrational nor arbitrary," saying that the defense examples could as easily be read as malingering before testers combined with illiteracy or a learning disability, and that the complexity of the crimes and Lee's two years of avoiding capture did not suggest a slow man. It reviewed the sentence for proportionality, describing Lee as a 33-year-old man who had raped and killed a 22-year-old woman and had been proved responsible for the deaths of at least four other women. It affirmed the conviction and the death sentence.
In February 2008 Lee's lawyers, through Marcia Widder of the Capital Appeals Project, asked the court to reconsider. They argued that the publicity had "clearly poisoned the pool of prospective jurors" and described the panic in the parish during the ten months after police warned of a serial killer.
State post-conviction proceedings went on for years in Judge Anderson's court. In 2010 he twice gave Lee's lawyers more time; they cited 596 bags of evidence, and prosecutor Dana Cummings said the defense was making the case more complicated than it was. In November 2012 Anderson refused to send evidence to a private laboratory, ordering that any defense examination take place at the clerk of court's office so the chain of custody would be kept. "A lot of waste of time," Dené Colomb's father said of the appeals. "Ten years is a long time."
In August 2014 Anderson denied Lee's petition for post-conviction relief. The petition, filed by Gary Clements, argued that Lee had been incompetent to stand trial, that he was mentally ill and brain-damaged and could not be executed, that a juror had brought a Bible into deliberations, that his trial lawyers had been ineffective, and that the defense had lacked money and time. Anderson found nothing in the record to support the competency claim, writing that Lee "was able to communicate with his attorneys and with the Court during all proceedings," and found that Lee could not show he was prejudiced by the juror's reading or quoting from the Bible.
On Friday, September 18, 2015, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied Lee's writ application. It found no error in Anderson's ruling and no ground for an evidentiary hearing, and rejected the claims about counsel's handling of mental health evidence and about DNA testing funds. It noted that Lee had offered no evidence that he should have been excluded as the source of the DNA. Justice Scott Crichton wrote that the writ denial "marks the end of Lee's state court proceedings," and, according to the Associated Press, that given the evidence that Lee had committed five killings, the failure to present more mental health evidence had not deprived him of a fair sentencing hearing. Clements said he would take the case to federal court in Baton Rouge. "That's awesome. That's wonderful news," Ann Pace said.
Lee never reached the execution chamber. Early on Saturday, January 16, 2016, he was taken from Angola to a hospital for emergency care. The Department of Public Safety and Corrections would not say why, citing privacy law; WAFB reported that a source said his pacemaker may have failed. He died shortly before 9 a.m. on Thursday, January 21, 2016, at a local hospital, the department said. He was 47. Because he was assigned to Angola, the death came under the West Feliciana Parish coroner, whose office had the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner perform the autopsy. In March 2016 the West Feliciana coroner's office said he had died a natural death due to heart disease. It declined to release the autopsy report.
He had maintained his innocence throughout. Prosecutor John Sinquefield said Lee had committed some of the most horrible acts he had seen in more than 40 years of prosecuting. Tony Clayton said Lee never showed remorse. Former district attorney Doug Moreau said there was no doubt Lee had ruined many lives and that he did not want to gloat.
The families had followed the case together for more than a decade, and their reactions to his death differed. Gina Wilson Green's sister, Amy Sanders, said the family would never have to think about him again. Lynda Yoder said, "It's over, and we couldn't be happier," and spoke of the counseling and medication she had needed since her daughter's death. Melanie Barr, Geralyn DeSoto's mother, took no joy in it and said his judgment before God would be harsher than any earthly sentence. Ann Pace said his death had taken away the justice she had fought for: "Any sense of justice is lost; any sense of logic is lost." She said it had brought back "a tidal wave of memory" and had, in a way, taken her daughter again.
Pam Kinamore's brother, Ed Piglia, said Lee should have been executed years earlier and that the justice system had not kept pace with DNA science. Her brother-in-law, Ed White, said the family had feared Lee might someday be released, and had come to pray that he would repent and tell where other victims' bodies were. Their mother, Lynne Marino, had become a voice for victims' families. In June 2009 she asked a Louisiana Senate committee to limit appeals in first degree murder cases proved by DNA, calling DNA "the hand of God pointing to the perpetrators"; senators applauded, but no vote was taken. She died of cancer the year before Lee died. Michael Mebruer, Randi Mebruer's former husband, said the family had held on to the hope that Lee might say where her body was. "To have no hope at all is incomprehensible, really," he said.
In August 2008, at LSU's summer commencement, the university awarded Carrie Lynn Yoder's doctorate to her parents, who accepted her certificate and hood. They had set up a fellowship in her name in the biological sciences department. "Even in death, she met her goal," Lynda Yoder said.
Proven by final judgment: the second degree murder of Geralyn Barr DeSoto and the first degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, including, as the jury found, that Pace was killed during an aggravated rape or attempted aggravated rape.
Linked by DNA, never tried: the deaths of Gina Wilson Green, Pam Kinamore, Dené Colomb and Carrie Yoder, and the attack in Breaux Bridge. All five were put before the Pace jury as other-crimes evidence, and the Louisiana Supreme Court wrote that it was proven he was responsible for the deaths of at least four other women. He was charged in each but never tried, and he denied all of them. How the pending charges were formally closed after his death was not reported.
Attributed, never tried: the disappearance of Randi Mebruer, on the strength of DNA from her home; her body has not been found. Suspected only: the death of Connie Warner. McDavid said in 2016, "We believe in our hearts that he killed Connie, but we can't prove it." The 1993 cemetery attack on two teenagers is attributed to Lee by Zachary police through a photo identification, but he was never charged because the time limit had run out.
Other cases: in June 2003 investigators sent evidence for DNA testing from the case of Mary Ann Fowler, whom WAFB described as abducted outside a Port Allen sandwich shop on Christmas Eve of the previous year; no result linking her to Lee was reported. Lynne Marino said in 2003 she was sure there were "way more than five." No other killing was reported as linked to him by DNA.
The FBI profile: whether the profile itself said the killer was white is not settled in the reporting. A CNN anchor in September 2002 described it that way, and Newsweek reported that authorities relied for months on a profile that assumed a white killer; the profile text the task force released in December 2002 did not state a race. Officials also said tips had pointed to white men and a white pickup.
The DeSoto vote: the court filings say the State reduced the charge to second degree murder before trial and the jury convicted 11 to 1. Associated Press reports in 2016 said instead that the jurors voted 11 to 1 for first degree murder and that the lack of unanimity meant the lesser charge applied, and that the dissenting juror had become ill during deliberations, as WAFB reported.
The count of seven: news reports often say Lee was "linked to seven" women. That count combines the two convictions, the four other killings with DNA matches, and Randi Mebruer. Some reports, including a 2009 WAFB story, said he was believed to have killed at least eight.
While the task force was hunting Lee, other women were being killed in Baton Rouge by someone else. In 2004, before Lee's first trial, Baton Rouge police arrested Sean Vincent Gillis, 41, and booked him on three counts of first degree murder in the deaths of three women killed between 1999 and 2004, after his DNA matched evidence from their bodies. Those cases were investigated separately from Lee's.
1992: Zachary police say a resident found Lee inside his home on East Eagle Drive; AP lists a November 1992 burglary.
August 22, 1992: Connie Warner, 41, reported missing from Oak Shadows, Zachary; her body is found about two weeks later in Baton Rouge.
July 1993: Lee sentenced to prison for the 1992 burglary; he serves two years.
1995 to 2000: arrests in Lake Charles, Zachary and other towns for battery, peeping and stalking; a 1997 peeping arrest at a cemetery.
April 18, 1998: Randi Mebruer, 28, disappears from her Oak Shadows home.
April 2000 to January 2001: Lee in prison.
September 24, 2001: Gina Wilson Green found strangled at her Stanford Avenue home.
January 14, 2002: Geralyn Barr DeSoto killed at her home in Addis.
May 31, 2002: Charlotte Murray Pace killed at her Sharlo Avenue townhouse.
July 9, 2002: a woman survives an attack in her Breaux Bridge home.
July 12, 2002: Pam Kinamore taken from her Briarwood Estates home; found July 16 near Whiskey Bay.
July 24, 2002: Zachary officers tell Baton Rouge investigators Lee is their prime suspect.
July 29, 2002: DNA links the Green, Pace and Kinamore cases.
November 21, 2002: Dené Colomb's car found at Grand Coteau; her body is found November 24 in Scott.
December 23, 2002: DNA links Colomb to the series.
March 3, 2003: Carrie Lynn Yoder disappears; found March 13 near Whiskey Bay.
May 5, 2003: cheek swabs taken from Lee under a subpoena signed by Judge George H. Ware Jr.
May 23, 2003: modified Breaux Bridge sketch released; tips name Lee; lab finishes testing.
May 26, 2003: Lee named; warrant in the Yoder case.
May 27, 2003: arrested in Atlanta; St. Martin Parish warrant issued.
May 28, 2003: waives extradition; booked in Baton Rouge.
June 19, 2003: DNA links Lee to the DeSoto killing.
June 25, 2003: indicted for the murder of Pace.
September 2003: indicted in Lafayette for the murder of Colomb.
December 8, 2003: indicted in West Baton Rouge for the murder of DeSoto.
February 2004: DNA links Lee to the Mebruer scene; arrest warrant issued.
August 10, 2004: convicted of the second degree murder of DeSoto, 11 to 1; life.
September 13, 2004: Pace trial begins.
October 12, 2004: convicted of the first degree murder of Pace; the jury then recommends death.
October 14, 2004: received at Angola.
December 10, 2004: formally sentenced to death.
May 16, 2007: First Circuit affirms the DeSoto conviction.
January 16, 2008: Louisiana Supreme Court affirms the Pace conviction and death sentence.
March 7, 2008: Louisiana Supreme Court denies review in the DeSoto case.
October 6, 2008: United States Supreme Court denies certiorari in the DeSoto case.
June 2009: Lynne Marino testifies to the Louisiana Senate.
August 2014: Judge Richard Anderson denies post-conviction relief.
September 18, 2015: Louisiana Supreme Court ends Lee's state court proceedings.
January 16, 2016: taken from Angola to a hospital.
January 21, 2016: dies shortly before 9 a.m., aged 47.
March 2016: coroner's office gives the cause of death as heart disease.