THE GHOST OF BATON ROUGE: DERRICK TODD LEE

Article BY LORI BELL

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Investigators examined the terrifying case of a serial killer nicknamed “The Ghost of Baton Rouge .” A predator who stalked, beat, and savagely murdered six women in a 60 mile radius surrounding the state capital of Louisiana. This savage criminal evaded the manhunt for nearly two years, until a small time police force took a bold gamble and brought the murderer to justice.

On Stanford Avenue in Baton Rouge, LA, on September 23rd, 2001, 41-year-old nurse, Gina Green, returned home from a night out with her sister. She tried to go to sleep, but she couldn’t completely relax. She confided to her mother she felt extremely uncomfortable being alone.

At 3:45 am the security system went off and startled Green out of bed. She checked all the windows and doors, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nearby, cloaked in darkness, a predator watched, angry that the alarm foiled his plans. But, he would return the following night to execute his sick fantasy.

On September 24th, 2001, Gina Green was home alone. Somehow a man slipped into her home and confronted her in the hallway. She was taken to her bathroom where she was beaten, raped, and strangled to death.

The following afternoon, after Green failed to show up for work, a coworker stopped by. He discovered her lifeless body in her bedroom and called 911. Homicide detectives arrived on the scene and immediately recognized signs of violent struggles.

Gina’s earrings and shoes were strewn in different rooms. A clump of hair laid on the floor. Her shorts, cellphone, and purse were missing. Her blouse was collected by detectives and tested for DNA, but there were no matches found in the system.

Just days after the murder, investigators located Green’s cell phone by a warehouse five miles from her home. They were able to recover her purse, and her shorts, dumped behind a trash bin. Unfortunately , none of this evidence would lead detectives to any particular suspect.

So the case was treated as a one-off murder. Geralyn DeSoto was Home Alone getting ready to go on a job interview when she heard a knock at the door. The 21 year-old had no idea the man on her front porch was a stalker who had been passing by her house everyday. She let him in.

Her husband returned home at 7 p.m. and found her body lying in a pool of blood. She had been beaten and stabbed multiple times in a very violent manner. She had also been stomped. Apparently there were bloody boot prints that were found there as well.

Investigators found no evidence of sexual assault. When they looked in the palm of her hand they were able to see she had broken fingernails, and her fist was clenched. They thought maybe she had used it to fight him off.

They collected her fingernail clippings to determine whether or not the subjects DNA could be found underneath. Months would pass before law enforcement connected the DNA found under Geralyn DeSoto’s fingernails to her killer.

Meanwhile, the Baton Rouge Police Department was now dealing with two murders within a span of four months. Another woman had already been marked for death. Charlotte Pace live just three doors down from Gina Green. Charlotte was so traumatized by Gina’s murder that she actually moved to try to get as far away as she could from the scene of the horror.

In Baton Rouge, on May 31st, 2002, Charlotte returned home from the car wash and was eating a sandwich on the couch, when there was a knock at her door. The man on the other side seem nice, but he had been studying her for months waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

She was attacked, raped, and brutally beaten. It was very savage and extremely violent. Around 2 p.m. Charlotte Pace’s roommate came home and made the sickening discovery. Charlotte’s nude body was discovered on the floor in her bedroom. Everything was covered in blood.

Blood was sprayed all over the place. She was stabbed 81 times between screwdrivers and a knife. In addition, her throat had been slashed all the way across, and her skull had been crushed as well. Even though they couldn’t connect these crimes, police were worried there may be a serial killer operating in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

By the summer of 2002, Southern Louisiana was in the midst of yet another killing spree. There were 60 unsolved murders of women in Baton Rouge since 1985. Because of the recent uptake in rapes and homicides, investigators formed a multi-agency homicide task force.

The recent killings of three women, Gina Green, Geralyn DeSoto, and Charlotte Pace, had the task force fearing the worst. That being a serial killer was running rampid in Baton Rouge. Based on demographics and victimology, the FBI made a determination that the killer would be a white, 25 to 35 year old male, who was physically fit and strong.

The task force actually put together a composite sketch showing a white male with a long nose, and a long face. When the sketch went live, tips poured in from all over the region. The task force was inundated with calls. They became bogged down with trying to follow up on them.

But there was one particular caller whose statements piqued investigators curiosity. A tip came in from an individual who stated that he saw a white pickup truck driven by a white male, along I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

The tipster said it look like a female passenger was dead. He couldn’t get the license plate, but he said there was a fish decal on the tailgate. Law enforcement would remain on the lookout for the white pickup.

In the meantime, because they had already had the Killer’s DNA on record, police launched a DNA Dragnet. They stopped and swabbed local men in hopes of collecting enough DNA to find a genetic match. They tested 1,000 men, all of them were white males, and none of them were a match.

On Jeffery Broussard Road, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, on July 9th, 2002, 46 year old nurse, Dianne Alexander was home getting ready for work. Her husband, a delivery truck driver, was away on a run. There was a knock at the door, the man outside told Alexander he was lost and needed directions.

He asked if he could use her phone, but he also asked her if her husband was home, and she said no she was alone. He instantly turned, he did a 180°. He forced his way into the mobile home, grabbed Dianne by the throat, and threatened her with a knife.

He attempted to rape her, but was unable to sexually perform. Out of frustration and rage, he took a telephone cord, and not only does he beat her but also strangled her as well. Dianne Alexander was fighting for her life. Then something unexpected happened.

Dianne’s son, Herman arrived home and the attacker fled. One thing he was able to say is that he wasn’t driving a white pickup truck. The unidentified vehicle that he saw was a gold vehicle, it had a sticker that said Hampton, and it also had a dent on the front hood. There was also a beige telephone cord that was hanging out of the window.

Paramedics rushed Alexander to the hospital. She was too badly injured to give police a description of her attacker. But, investigators found valuable evidence at the crime scene. There was DNA transfer onto her dress. The DNA would take weeks to analyze.

At Briarwood Place, Baton Rouge Louisiana, on July 12th 2002, 44 year-old Pamela Kinamore returned home from a long day working at her antique shop. Her husband wouldn’t be back till late. She drew a bath and began to relax. She was completely unaware that she left her house keys in the back door.

At approximately 11:45, Byron Kinamore arrived at his home, he fully expected to be greeted by his wife, Pamela, And yet when he entered through the door it was eerily silent. He looked around the house, but couldn’t find Pamela.

He walked into the bathroom, and he saw the bathtub full of water, but no body. He walked into their bedroom and there he began to notice spots of blood, he started to notice the room itself was slightly disheveled, something was terribly wrong.

Police launched a missing-persons investigation, but four days later just west of Baton Rouge a survey crew found a badly decomposed, nude body in the water underneath Whiskey Bay Bridge. The body was identified as Pamela Kinamore.

She had been raped, her throat was slit open, and she had been strangled. A few hundred feet from Pamela’s body, detectives found a beige telephone cord. This is the same telephone cord that was cut from Dianne Alexander’s home. The DNA that was recovered from Pamela’s body matched the DNA from three other murders.

On July 15th, 2002, Dianne Alexander was finally able to give the detectives a very comprehensive, extremely detailed description of the suspect. He had neatly trimmed hair, a pencil thin mustache, and most critically, he was African-American.

A composite sketch was generated by law enforcement where Alexander lived. He was a sharp contrast to the FBI profile, which predicted that the suspect was a white male. But it would take several months for the new sketch to make its way into the hands of task force investigators. For the time being the attack on Dianne Alexander was being treated as an unrelated crime.

By the fall of 2002, DNA testing linked a single killer to the brutal murders of four women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As the investigation dragged on, panic ensued in Baton Rouge. Many women were afraid to go out at night. Everybody was in a high state of alert. There was pepper spray being sold, defense items being sold, and guns being bought.

Making matters worse, the police task force was not collaborating with the local police in Zachary, Louisiana, which had been tracking these killings since the beginning. Although the task force seemed to be holding onto the impression that a white male had been committing these serial rapes, the fact was that the Zachary Police Department believed that the same African-American male that committed crimes against Dianne Alexander was actually responsible for all of these rapes and murders.

For the Zachary Police Department, one named top the short list of suspects, Derrick Todd Lee. He had a history of peeping, and breaking and entering in that particular area. Zachary police were convinced that he was a serial killer on the loose. But who exactly was this man?

He was a big man, he was 6ft 1in, about 210 to 220 lbs, physically fit, very imposing, and yet that’s not the aura which he generated. Nobody came away with the impression that he was capable of being sadistic, mean, or brutally violent.

Lee had a very low IQ, he was a loner. His stepfather, unfortunately, was a very harsh disciplinarian. His stepfather was very much centered on Bible studies and corporal punishment. He dropped out of high school and drifted from job to job throughout the 80s.

In 1988, Derrick Todd Lee married Jacklyn Sims. He became the father of two kids, and provided for them, but on the other hand he had a dark side that he was hiding. He was actually doing crimes like peeping and torturing dogs and cats.

He was beating his wife and he violated her protective order. He was not the man he presented himself to be. In the 90s, Lee spent time in and out of prison for crimes ranging from trespassing to burglary to stalking. With his checkered background, Derrick Todd Lee seemed like exactly the kind of person who could perpetrate these heinous murders.

On West Gardiner Street, Grand Couteau, Louisiana, on November 21st, 2002, 23 year old Trinesha Colomb was at St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery visiting her mother’s grave side. Afterwards she returned to her car and was never seen again.

The following morning Colomb’s wallet and ID were found inside her car, which was still in the exact place where she parked it. Just two days later her body was found by a hunter in a wooded area. She was beaten and raped and murdered.

Forensic Pathologists took DNA swabs and were able to match those DNA swabs with the other recent killings. Colomb was murder victim number five connected by DNA to the same killer. Lieutenant David McDavid of Zachary Police Department remained convinced the perpetrator was Derrick Todd Lee.

In Zachary Louisiana, a suburb 14 miles Northeast of Baton Rouge, there were a series of unsolved homicides that McDavid strongly believed were committed by Lee.

On August 23rd, 1992, Connie Warner vanished from her home. 11 days later her body was discovered in a ditch, by a truck driver. On April 18th, 1998, twenty-eight-year-old Randi Mebruer was snatched away from her home. Her body would never be found.

Zachary police questioned Derrick Todd Lee in both cases. There was not enough substantial evidence that linked him to any of those incidents, therefore they couldn’t charge him with any of those crimes. Lieutenant McDavid failed to convince his fellow officers that Lee killed then, and that he was killing now.

The lack of cooperation between law enforcement agencies, caused the investigation to stall. But the killer was still active. Trolling for his next victim.

On Dawson Avenue, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on March 3rd, 2003, Carrie Lynn Yoder, a 26-year old doctoral student at LSU returned home from running errands. She called her boyfriend just to talk, and it was the last time she had been heard from.

Two days later, after Carrie Lynn failed to answer her phone or return calls, her boyfriend stopped by her house. When he arrived he found the back door open, he walked inside and he saw blood on her purse, which was still there, and he found some objects that were slightly askew.

The search for Carrie Lynn Yoder ended just 10 days later in a place that already was familiar to homicide detectives. A commercial fisherman discovered her badly decomposed body only 10 yards from where Pamela Kinamore’s body was discovered in Whiskey Bay. The same dumping location. When the DNA analysis came back, it matched the profile of the other six victims.

Even though they had been investigating crimes for more than nine months, law enforcement didn’t have a single suspect in custody. But their luck was about to change. In April, 2003, Zachary PD received a complaint from a woman who was jogging who said she felt that she was being stalked.

They went to her residence and they found boot prints right by her window. Those prints were very consistent with an individual who was standing outside her window looking into the window. Police figured that their local peeping Tom, Derrick Todd Lee, might be in action again.

Fearing Lee had marked his next victim, the Zachary police chief made a bold move. Without notifying the task force, he got a court order to collect a DNA sample from Derrick Todd Lee. On Highway 61, in St. Francesville, Louisiana, on May 5th, 2003, police visited Lee at his house.

They swabbed his mouth for DNA and immediately sent a sample to the State Crime Lab. Amazingly, the DNA from Derrick Todd Lee matched all six murders. Police moved in to make an arrest. The police did not keep a very tight surveillance on Lee, and when they went to his house to arrest him, he was gone.

The suspected killer of six women was now a fugitive. The FBI announced a nationwide manhunt for Lee. On May 26th, 2003, Lee called a woman he knew in Baton Rouge. Investigators were able to trace the call to a phone in Atlanta, Georgia.

The police immediately released the picture of Derrick Todd Lee. There was an initial tip that came in that he was staying at a motel. Police executed a search but he was nowhere to be found. The hunt for Lee went on.

Two days later law enforcement got a tip that he might be at a local tire shop. They rushed in there, and looked to no avail. They didn’t find him in there, however, one of the members of the Fugitive Task Force had the idea to look beyond the perimeter they had set up.

And who do they see? Derrick Todd Lee standing there taking to a woman. Most probably she would have been his very next victim. Lee was quickly apprehended . He was immediately transferred back to Baton Rouge and charged with the murders of six women. Lee pled not guilty to all charges.

Prior to trial, Lee’s defense team presented arguments that their client was not mentally competent to stand trial. Psychological testing was performed. He was pegged with an IQ of approximately 65. Even though an IQ that low is often classified as mild mental retardation, a judge found Lee competent to stand trial. He was going to be tried separately for each of the six murders.

The first trial, on August 6th, 2004, was for the murder of Geralyn DeSoto. The trial lasted just five days, and revolved around DNA evidence linking Lee to the crime. On August 10th, the jury took less than two hours to secure a conviction. For the murder of DeSoto, Lee received life in prison.

One month later, he was back in court, facing first degree murder charges for the killing of Charlotte Pace. The death penalty was on the table. This time, in addition to DNA, prosecutors have a special weapon. The lone woman to survive one of Lee’s alleged acts.

Dianne Alexander would become the voice for all the voiceless women. The prosecutions case was so solid that the defense did not call one singe witness. On October 12th, a jury found Lee guilty of first degree murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection .

Derek Todd Lee became a serial killer because it was his choice. He had a hard life, but the fact is he was fantasizing about raping and killing women. He waited until he had the ability to carry it out. Though he wasn’t the most intelligent guy on the block, he knew enough to avoid detection, he knew enough to get away unnoticed, and he knew enough how to rape and kill women.

Derrick Todd Lee died on January 21st , 2016, of heart disease at a hospital in Louisiana, where he was transported for treatment from Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he had been waiting execution.