THE MUTILATOR OF BATON ROUGE

Article BY LORI BELL

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A sadistic madman terrorize Baton Rouge, Louisiana, luring and asphyxiating high risk women and leaving a trail of desecrated bodies. This vicious murderer evaded law enforcement for nearly a decade until investigators tracked him down, only to discover he was more twisted than they ever imagined.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 4th, 1999, 30 year old prostitute Katherine Hall walked North Street waiting for her next John. A car approached, the driver seemed charming so Katherine got in and they drove to a nearby Field.

He demanded oral sex from her, but then started to assault her. A zip tie was put around her neck. Katherine fought back grabbed the door, jumped out of the car and made a run for it. He managed to capture her again.

The man knocked her to the ground, beat her and stabbed her 16 times to finish the job. But he was not finished. After he killed her he took off her clothing and he mutilated her. Her clothes were tossed onto a barbed wire fence and her body was disposed of.

A local hunter found Hall’s remains the following afternoon on Poujeaux Road in southeast Baton Rouge. Detectives responded and noticed the killer carefully positioned a body at the base of a dead end sign. How he disposed of her was like throwing out the trash. He was already thinking about her body being found and this was very clearly a message to law enforcement.

This killer seem to view Katherine Hall’s murder as a joke. There were severe postmortem slash wounds and stab wounds. Detectives arrived to the conclusion that she was cut an additional 21 times which showed a certain degree of rage and hatred toward to the victim.

Investigators hoped forensic evidence retrieved from Hall’s body would lead them to the sadistic criminal. There was DNA transfer underneath her fingernails, and within her teeth and she had hair fibers, but the DNA evidence didn’t match any profile in the database so it was filed away. Katherine’s killer remained a mystery to police. They arrived at the conclusion that this was probably not the suspect’s first homicide and most likely would not be the his last homicide.

In Scotlandville, Louisiana, on November 12th, 1999, 36 year old prostitute Joyce Williams walk the asphalt along Highway 19, just north of Baton Rouge. A John pulled over and pick her up. He seemed friendly. The two sang along with the radio as they drove across the Mississippi River.

Finally they pulled over in a remote area and Joyce got out to go to the bathroom. It’s at this point that he attacked her and put the zip tie around her neck. Williams fought back but her attacker kicked her feet out from under her then tightened the zip tie until she stopped breathing. He took her body and ultimately disposed of it on a levy right by the Mississippi River.

Bird Hunters found Joyce’s dead body two and a half months later. Officers were shocked by the degree to which her body had been dismembered. Her head, torso, and a severed leg had each been placed in separate garbage bags.

Authorities offered a $1,000 reward for any information that led to the arrest in the case. Could the man who strangled and dismembered Joyce Williams be the same person who mutilated Katherine Hall? Because the bodies had been disposed of in different jurisdictions, cops treated them as unrelated murders.

In the meantime, yet another sex worker had gone missing. Lillian Robinson, in January of 2000, was a 52 year old prostitute, and she was going to become the next victim. Lillian’s killer had dumped her body in the Atchafalia Basin, 35 miles west of Baton Rouge.

Cops wouldn’t find Robinson’s remains until March, after two fisherman, several miles down river, spotted her body floating in the water. To investigators it appeared Robinson’s killer abused her corpse. He decided to engage in the practice of necrophilia, which is to have sex with dead people.

The murder of Lillian Robertson seemed connected to the death of Catherine Hall and Joyce Williams. All three had been solicited, strangled to death, and violated post mortem. But since the bodies were recovered in three separate jurisdictions, each murder was treated as an isolated crime.

The cases grew icy cold, especially after a different killer started preying on women in the same geographical location. Derrick Todd Lee was targeting women and killing them and disposing of them. By May 2003, DNA evidence collected lead to the horrific slayings of eight women.

So when he was actually arrested everyone breathed a sigh of relief thinking that this was the serial killer that everyone was looking for. But it was a short time, when he was in custody, that the murders began again so it was very clear that there was more than one serial killer operating at this time in this area.

In Zachary, Louisiana, on October 11th, 2003, two boys were playing in the woods and found a woman lying face down off a trail. She was dead. Authorities responded and were shocked by the state of the victim’s body.

What they found was that there were obvious signs of incredible, forcible trauma, by a sharp object, so she had been mutilated repeatedly post-mortem. The victim’s hands had been severed and could not be located so cops assumed the killer took them as a memento of the crime, which is incredibly high risk in terms of taking trophies back with him.

The body was identified as 45 year old Jonny Mae Williams. The mother-of-three worked as a house cleaner but occasionally turn tricks to support her drug addiction. At the scene of the crime investigators found a piece of critical forensic evidence.

They came across a hair and the hair fiber they found they sent to the FBI lab. They did a DNA profile sequencing on it and it came back matching the hair which was found at a previous murder site. Law enforcement new the same person who killed Williams was also responsible for the death of Katherine Hall.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on February 26th 2004, 44 year old Donna Bennett Johnston was standing on the corner of Geronimo and Prescott. The mother of five was drunk. Even though she had been arrested for drug possession and solicitation before, Johnston wasn’t actively working the streets until a charming man pulled up and offered her a ride.

He had murder in mind, he was going out, hunting stalking and looking for a woman. At that time he had a camera, a saw, and a knife. He drove her to a remote location, which was a chemical plant, and he put a zip tie around her neck.

Intoxicated, Donna couldn’t put up a fight, when she stopped breathing, the man removed her clothes. He took her naked body and placed it in the trunk of his vehicle. He was going to take photographs of her, and posed her body in different configurations. He mutilated her body cutting off her arm. When he was finished with Donna, he then dropped the body in a ditch.

Between 1999 and 2004, five women were savagely murdered in Baton Rouge , Louisiana . Law enforcement now knew they were dealing with a serial killer.

On February 22, 2004, two people driving on Benitor Road, spotted Donna Bennett Johnston’s nude body on a ravine embankment. They looked over and thought it was nothing more than a store mannequin, but suddenly realized it was a human body.

CSI techs arrived an hour later and processed the scene for evidence. They were able to get hair fibers which they positively matched to the previous killer. Within days a multi -agency task force was formed to investigate the murder spree.

They identified several key connections between the killings. All of the victims led high – risk lifestyles, had ligature marks around their neck, and had been stabbed multiple times after death. In addition, all of the victims had been solicited in North Baton Rouge, and transported to remote locations where their bodies had been disposed of in similar positions.

As neighboring jurisdictions sent their cold case files to the task force, the homicides of Lillian Robinson and Joyce Williams were added to the list of cases fitting the profile. All detectives needed was a big break, which was what they got from Johnston’s crime scene.

They found tire marks and tracks very close to where Johnston’s body was found. Tire tracks, much like finger prints, are unique that of themselves. Detectives took the impressions, plaster casings of the tire tracks, and were able to go to some of the dealers. The dealers were able to narrow down that particular model and tred pattern of that particular tire, and the vehicle it would have gone to and who it had been sold to.

This particular tire track belonged to about 90 particular vehicles in that area. They got the name Sean Vincent Gillis for the first time through that vehicle search. In Baton Rouge, on April 28, 2004, police visited Sean Gillis at his home, and swabbed him for DNA.

They notified him that they were conducting an ongoing investigation concerning multiple homicides which had occurred in the area. At that point, Gillis said some interesting things. One that he was out that night when Donna was murdered, two, and more significantly, that he had pulled over to the side of the road very close to where those tire tracks were and where the body was found.

He actually placed himself at the scene. He additionally volunteered the fact that he knew one of the victims. According to Gillis, Jonny Mae Williams was a friend who sometimes cleaned his house. He even spent Thanksgiving with her family several years before.

They asked him to come down to the police station for further investigation, and he complies. They asked him many, many questions, but they got very few answers. They actually had to release him. Police put him under round – the- clock surveillance while they waited for test results to come back from the DNA swab.

What they observed is a man who looked more like an average Joe than a serial killer. He went home, he was calm, cool and collected in the sense that he then made dinner for his partner Terry. By this stage Gillis may have felt that the police didn’t really have much on him.

But detectives remained hopeful that DNA analysis would prove the 41 year old convenience store clerk was their man. On April 29, 2004, authorities prepared to take down Gillis after the DNA tests came back connecting him to the murders of Katherine Hall, Jonny Mae Williams, and Donna Johnston.

Baton Rouge police weren’t going to take any chances even though they had him under surveillance. They were going to use a SWAT team. Now that Gillis was in custody, police wanted to know exactly who he was.

Gillis was born on June 24, 1962, in Baton Rouge. His father was an alcoholic and also had mental health issues. But more than that, he was very abusive and violent to him and his mother. When Gillis was approximately one year of age his father held a gun not only to his head, but his mother’s as well.

Norman Gillis spent the next 16 years in and out of mental health facilities. Sean was raised entirely by his mother and grandparents. By the time he became a teenager, his personality had changed dramatically. His entire life was going to take a very, very disturbing turn.

With that he started smoking Marijuana and peeking in people’s windows. Mostly a loner, Gillis graduated from high school in 1980. He then started working at a convenience store. He also had a job at a 7-Eleven that didn’t last very long.

Gillis spent most of his time at his house sequestered away from the world. He certainly spent a lot of his time on his computer looking at pornographic sites, but more specifically sites where women were being abused and also dismembered.

Gillis tried to pursue a career in computers, but found it difficult to hold down a steady job. He did find a steady girlfriend, Terry Lamoyne, who managed a local convenience store. The two moved in together in 1995, and she obtained a job for Gillis at that same store.

He worked day shift and she worked night shift. They rarely saw each other. One of the other frustrations for Terry is that they weren’t having sex at all. He didn’t seem sexually aroused by her. He started taking long drives where he was gone most of the night. Of course Terry thought he was having an affair.

One morning, Gillis picked up Terry following her shift at the store. She noticed a foul odor in the car, as well as blood stains. His explanation was he hit an animal. More than once Gilles invited Terry to view pornographic images, depicting dead and naked women. He actually showed her some of the web sites that he was looking at, and on these web sites were women being raped and violated and dismembered.

None of this meant Sean Gillis was a killer, but once his DNA profile came back, little doubt remained. Still Terry Lemoyne didn't believe her mild-mannered boyfriend could ever commit such heinous crimes.

Terry went down to the police station and demanded time with Gilles to ask him and look him in the eye, whether he was responsible for killing these particular women. Surprisingly enough, he says “Yeah that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

Soon Gillis made a full confession to Baton Rouge detectives and FBI. He laid it all out, all about how he committed murders and perpetrated these crimes, each and every single one of the women, and the crime locations.

Gillis says that he would watch them first of all, then would stalk and prey upon particular women and lure them into his car. He described how he strategically planned out each of their homicides, how he very much enjoyed trying to play these mental chess games with the police, trying to outsmart them.

When he was asked how many women he actually killed, initially he claimed four or five, but later on he finally settled on a number of approximately 8. Gillis told law enforcement, in detail, about the murders of Ann Bryan, Hardee Schmidt and Marilyn Nevils, three women they never suspected he killed.

82 year old Ann Bryan, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was his first victim. On March 20th 1994, she was sleeping in a nursing home, which was coincidentally directly across from the convenience store where Gillis worked.

She left her door open so her caregivers could come in and administer medicine without waking her up. Gillis entered her bedroom and then he tried to rape her, and because she started to fight back, he then stabbed her multiple times to silence her forever.

Gillis encountered 52 year old Hardee Schmidt in May 1999, while she was out jogging. He intentionally struck her with his vehicle and was going to knock her body down into a ditch. He went down, took a zip tie, put it around her neck, dragged her back into the vehicle using the zip tie around her neck, took her to an isolated location, and raped her repeatedly. Once he killed her he was going to put her body into the car and it was going to remain in the vehicle for several days. Long enough for Gillis’ girlfriend to notice the smell.

On October 30, 2000, Marilyn Nevils was walking down the street, and unfortunately for her, Gillis was there too. He engaged her in conversation, and offered her money. So very similar to what was seen with the other victims, and she got in the car.

He took her to a location, attempted to kill her, she fought back very violently. She got out and initially escaped, but unfortunately he was able to catch up to her, beat her over the head, and subsequently murdered her.

He took her body, tossed it into the car, then went to a car wash where he hosed her down. Then he took her back to his home where he showered with her. Then he realized he was in a rush he had to go somewhere, probably to meet Terry, so he put her in the car. Then he just dumped her body in a degrading way.

As cops continue to unravel the disgusting details of his crimes, they were shocked by the depths of Gillis’ depravity. He told detectives that he masturbated with the severed hands of one of his victims, Jonny Williams.

He also admitted to cannibalizing the bodies of Johnston & Williams. He actually took Williams back to his home and he started to dismember her on his kitchen floor and chopped up her body parts. He ended up cutting off her nipples and began to eat her flesh. He desired her legs.

In August 2007, Gillis pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Williams. He was sentenced to life in prison but still must face the music for crimes he committed in East Baton Rouge. In East Baton Rouge courthouse, on July 21st 2008, Gillis went on trial for the first-degree murder of Johnston. Prosecutors sought the death penalty.

The defense team was going to throw everything they could on the wall to see what stuck. They were going to claim that his father holding a gun to his head at one year old was a very traumatic thing. It changed his life and probably caused him to kill women. It was certainly significant that he suffered domestic violence in his childhood, but it didn’t excuse the behavior and it didn’t excuse his choices because the violence was premeditated.

On July 31st, 2008, Gillis was convicted of Johnston’s first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The reason he escaped the death penalty, was due to the fact that the jury deadlocked on the death penalty phase. In one final act of justice, Gillis received a third life sentence for the murder of Nevils.

Gillis without a doubt had a strong intense hatred for women. His favorite hobby was stalking, praying, and abducting and mutilating women. That is where when he feels more powerful, more dominant. Gilles is currently serving multiple life sentences at the infamous Louisiana State penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana.