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World's Most Evil Killers S06E07 Derrick Todd Lee
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00:01On the 31st of May 2001, 22-year-old Charlotte Murray Pace had just graduated from Louisiana State University
00:11and was looking forward to moving to Atlanta to begin a new career.
00:15But she had no idea that someone was watching her, and he had plans of his own.
00:21A lot of his victims, he had stalked them for days, weeks, sometimes months,
00:27to get a feel for what they were doing and what would be the best way for him to get
00:32them.
00:32He kept an eye out on these women and then pounced.
00:3632-year-old Derek Todd Lee had already stalked and killed at least three women
00:41before he took away the future of the recent graduate.
00:45Charlotte Murray Pace was very athletic, and she fought Derek Todd Lee through that whole house.
00:53He stabbed her 81 times with a flathead screwdriver before he raped and killed her.
01:01Lee would go on to kill another three women before DNA evidence finally brought an end
01:07to his brutal and heartless career of murder.
01:10What was the motive for Derek Todd Lee?
01:14It wasn't simply sexual pleasure.
01:17That would be easy.
01:18It was much more about anger, it was about power, it was about control.
01:24Derek Todd Lee had been unmasked as one of the world's most evil killers.
01:54In October 2004, 35-year-old Derek Todd Lee
01:59was sentenced to death for the murder of Charlotte Murray Pace.
02:03She was one of seven confirmed victims of the serial rapist and murderer.
02:09Detective David McDavid had been on the trail of the killer since 1998.
02:14He'd always been determined to prove that Lee had murdered 28-year-old Randy Miebra
02:20in Zachary, Louisiana.
02:22Her death had brought fear to the community.
02:25You had a lot of tension here, you had a lot of women and their daughters that were scared.
02:30You had people buying guns, you had people buying tasers, you had a lot of women taking
02:34self-defense classes.
02:37Most of Lee's murders happened in nearby Baton Rouge.
02:42Writer Susan Mustapha recalls the panic his killing spree caused in the state capital.
02:48Before Derek Todd Lee, everybody felt safe in Baton Rouge.
02:52People didn't lock their doors, they didn't lock their windows.
02:56Nobody was afraid to be out and about.
02:59When the killings started happening and the women in Baton Rouge realized they weren't safe
03:05in their homes, everyone was just terrified to go anywhere.
03:12Lee's violent and deadly attacks meant that no woman was safe.
03:16David McDavid had a tenacious desire to put the killer behind bars.
03:21But even as a hardened detective, he was fearful that Lee might strike closer to home.
03:27The way he attacked women and the brutality he attacked them, I was worried and scared
03:32from my family.
03:32And, you know, it's something in my career, I hope he was able to solve this case before
03:38he got close to my family, which he was probably, you know, half a mile away from some of his
03:44attacks away from my family, where they lived at.
03:47It worried me real bad.
03:52This killer story begins in the small town of St. Francisville, Louisiana.
03:59Derek Todd Lee was born on the 5th of November, 1968.
04:03His life was unconventional from the very start.
04:08Derek Todd Lee had a childhood similar to most children, with the exception that his father
04:16went to prison for the attempted murder of his father's ex-wife.
04:21Um, his mother later remarried, and she and Derek Todd Lee's stepfather raised him.
04:29But, for the most part, he had a normal childhood.
04:35Lee had a low IQ and didn't perform well academically.
04:39He soon became a social outcast at school.
04:43There is one particular detail that is rather sad.
04:46He used to suck his thumb in class, and he used to call his teacher Mama.
04:50So this really does highlight that he's kind of looking for an authority figure to be protective of him.
04:57He's looking for a mother figure outside of the family.
05:01Even as a young child, Lee had developed a sinister trait that would become a defining factor in his career
05:09of murder.
05:11Derek Todd Lee began peeping into homes, looking at women from a very early age.
05:18I think six, seven years old.
05:20He was caught peeping in his cousin's window.
05:23And over the years, he was arrested several times.
05:27Now, this is a really significant red flag for me, because when we see people engaging in this kind of
05:33behavior,
05:33what they are doing is that they are gaining gratification, they are gaining enjoyment through watching other people without their
05:40consent.
05:41So we've got this sense of power over others from doing something to them that they are not aware of,
05:48that they would not be happy with.
05:50And this is something that we see in the backgrounds of quite a lot of serial killers.
05:57By the age of 16, Lee had become well accustomed to being on the wrong side of the law.
06:03As well as peeping through windows, he had arrests for burglary and assault.
06:09You now have a boy who's really on the edge, a volcano almost.
06:14He's very sexually precocious, very rebellious, but he's also got that violent streak.
06:21Here is somebody who does not live by the rules.
06:25Here is somebody who wants to get what he's after.
06:28And rules and laws and all of those things that prevent the rest of us from behaving in these ways
06:34does not prevent Lee from doing these things.
06:40Age 20, Lee got married, but that didn't mean that he planned on settling down.
06:46Soon after they married, her father was killed in an explosion at a plant near Baton Rouge.
06:54And there was a lawsuit, and they got a lot of money from the lawsuit,
07:01which Derek Todd Lee immediately began spending.
07:04He had flashy cars.
07:06He had gold chains.
07:08He liked to dress well.
07:10And even though he was married, he didn't have a problem in the world using his wife's money
07:16to attract other women.
07:19There is something about him that is very attractive.
07:25There is an element, a twinkle in his eye, if you like, that a lot of women find interesting.
07:32He's quite a dangerous person because he can appear to be charm syndrome man.
07:38He can sweet talk his way.
07:40He can get women to let their barriers down for him.
07:47In April 1993, David McDavid was a uniformed police officer in Zachary, Louisiana.
07:55The vicious attack on a teenage couple in a local cemetery had always remained fresh in his memory.
08:02They were doing what teenagers do, making out.
08:05One of our police officers was driving down the roadway, saw a dome light on,
08:08went into the cemetery, and came up on both the kids who had been attacked brutally with a hack blade.
08:16Both of them lived, but the boyfriends still today won't talk about it.
08:22My understanding is he sleeps with the light on.
08:25That was a pretty brutal attack.
08:29The girl who survived the assault, Michelle Chapman, tried to help David and his colleagues identify her assailant.
08:37We brought in a police sketch artist.
08:39He spoke to Michelle, was able to get a photograph of the attacker.
08:44David didn't know it yet, but this would be his first glimpse of Derek Todd Lee.
08:50Over four years later, David, who was now a detective, would meet the killer face-to-face for the very
08:56first time.
08:58July of 1997, we got a call.
09:01They had a prowler over in Oak Shadows.
09:03A black male was peeping in the window of a house of a single white female who had a daughter
09:08at home.
09:09The call we got, if I remember correctly, he was standing in, like, a kid pool, looking into a window
09:15at the apartment complex.
09:17We went to that location and saw him run across the roadway and go south, back toward the cemetery and
09:25graveyard area.
09:26Lee's car was known to the police from previous arrests, and David and his colleagues soon found it parked in
09:33the vicinity of the crime.
09:34We blocked the vehicle in, we backed out of the surveillance, we caught him coming across the roadway from the
09:40graveyard, and we made an arrest on him.
09:43In January 1998, 29-year-old Derek Todd Lee was given two years probation for spying on women.
09:52But, crucially, he didn't go to prison.
09:56And, three months later, a woman would be dead.
10:07In the spring of 1998, Derek Todd Lee had been regularly in and out of trouble with the police in
10:15Zachary, Louisiana.
10:17The 29-year-old peeping Tom was about to escalate his perversion into murder.
10:25On the 18th of April, Randy Miebra's three-year-old son was found looking for his mother outside the family
10:33home,
10:33when a neighbour came over to find out what was wrong.
10:37The neighbour saw him, and she went to the house and saw blood covering that house,
10:43and she called police, and the police came, and they found the bedroom was covered in blood.
10:52They found Randy Miebrauer's contact lens on the floor.
10:56They found clumps of her hair mixed with blood in the hallway.
11:00They knew instantly that something really bad had happened to Randy.
11:06Detective David McDavid was called in to search for the missing 28-year-old nurse.
11:12My partner called me and said, look, we have a lady missing.
11:15We had blood in the house.
11:17The child was left at the house.
11:19He had went next door to the neighbour's house.
11:21They came up to the house, saw all the blood, backed out, called us.
11:25And I told him on the way, I said, you know who it is.
11:27It's going to be Derek Todd Lee.
11:29As part of the investigation into Randy's disappearance,
11:34David, once again, found himself face-to-face with Derek Todd Lee.
11:38The 29-year-old was a person of interest as he lived just a few blocks from Randy's home.
11:44Lee agreed to a voluntary search of his house.
11:48I'll never forget that night I was in the area.
11:51You know, he was kind of pacing back and forth in the area in the house.
11:55And I thought somebody was watching him.
11:57When I was searching his closet area, all of a sudden my hair stood on the back of my neck.
12:02And I turned and he was right there behind me.
12:05So I kind of pushed him back, told him to step back.
12:08You're too close to me.
12:10It just bothered me that he was that close to me.
12:12And I don't know if I was getting close to some evidence or what.
12:15Right after that, he told us to leave the house.
12:17He didn't want us there no more.
12:19He gave us consent to search, but he also had the right to revoke that consent.
12:24And I guess either I was getting close to something there in the closet, but he asked us to leave.
12:30David and his colleagues continued to search for clues at Randy's home.
12:35And an unusual-looking item caught their eye.
12:39We were collecting evidence that next day, and there was a pink trash can liner outside the front door of
12:44Randy Muir's house.
12:45And we kind of found it odd.
12:46Why is this, you know, pink case, you know, garbage can case was out here bag.
12:52And we knew that her car had been used to evidently remove the body because it had been moved and
12:58the keys were missing.
13:00We really didn't know we had evidence on that bag.
13:05With all the evidence collected, the case went cold.
13:09Without a body, it was difficult to press charges on any suspect.
13:14But David was determined to get Lee off the streets and behind bars.
13:19In March 1999, he revisited the cemetery attack of the young woman and her boyfriend from 1993.
13:30I had got a photo line-up of Derek Todd Lee.
13:33I presented it to her, and she picked him out without hesitation, picked him out.
13:37That is the guy that attacked us in the cemetery.
13:39I prepared a warrant for his arrest.
13:42I brought the warrant down for a judge to sign, and I was told the statute of limitations had ran
13:47out.
13:48I think it was after five years.
13:49It was another frustrating turn of events.
13:52David was certain Lee was responsible for a long list of crimes across Zachary, but he couldn't prove it.
14:00You had the attack in the graveyard.
14:02In July of 97, where he was peeping in the area, was arrested and charged.
14:07And then in 1998, you had the murder of Randy Mubber.
14:10So every time you looked back around there, he was always in that area.
14:15From 92 to 98, he was committing crimes in that area.
14:19And that's where our focus was, is on Derek Todd Lee.
14:22If you could draw a circle in that area, he was always there, from 92 to 1998.
14:28Derek Todd Lee remained a free man, but his luck was running out.
14:35In January 2000, whilst he was still married, he was arrested for assaulting a girlfriend
14:41in the parking lot of a bar just north of Zachary,
14:45after she found him flirting with another woman.
14:48He ended up quite brutally attacking her.
14:52And what this says to me is that he is the one who is in control.
15:00It doesn't matter that he's been engaging in this entirely inappropriate behaviour with other women.
15:05How dare she question me will be the way that he sees it.
15:10I'm the one who decides what happens in this relationship.
15:13I'm the one who calls the shots.
15:14You do not have a right to call me out on my behaviour.
15:17Still on probation for the Peeping Tom incident two and a half years earlier,
15:24Derek Todd Lee was finally sent to jail.
15:29Derek Todd Lee spent a full year in prison for beating up his girlfriend in that parking lot.
15:35And when he got out of prison is when he began killing in Baton Rouge.
15:43Derek Todd Lee had changed his hunting ground from Zachary to Baton Rouge,
15:48and now he had murder on his mind.
15:51With the new area came a new victim.
15:54In September 2001, he chose 40-year-old Gina Wilson-Green,
15:59who told her mother just two days before she was attacked that she felt like someone was watching her.
16:06On the night of September 23rd, Derek Todd Lee forced his way into her house.
16:13He strangled Gina, he beat her, and he raped her.
16:18He placed her in her bed, and she would be found two days later by her co-worker,
16:24who got concerned when she didn't show up for work.
16:29This victim was beautiful and successful and ambitious,
16:35and it was scary for those who lived in the area because the killer had attacked her in her home.
16:44Detectives had no leads, and just four months later, Lee would strike again.
16:50On the 14th of January 2002, 21-year-old Geraldine DeSoto was found lying in a pool of blood by
16:59her husband.
17:00Geraldine DeSoto lived across the Mississippi River and West Baton Rouge Parish.
17:05She lived in a trailer.
17:08You know, she had been going to LSU and studying in that,
17:12and obviously he gained her trust.
17:16The killer knocked on her door.
17:19And asked for a phone.
17:22And we know this because Gerilyn was hit in the head with that phone so hard it caused a skull
17:29fracture.
17:30She ran down the hallway.
17:32She knew that her husband kept a gun in their bedroom.
17:36She fought with Derek Todd Lee with that gun,
17:40and we know because there were etchings in the ceiling from that gun.
17:43He chased her back down the hallway, where he stabbed her viciously over and over and over again until she
17:51was dead.
17:53Due to previous domestic disturbances, Gerilyn's husband was the number one suspect for her murder.
18:03Detectives had yet to make the link that an active serial killer was at large in Baton Rouge.
18:10Derek Todd Lee appeared to be targeting similar victims.
18:15He had a wife, he had a girlfriend, but the women that he killed, the women that he attacked so
18:21viciously,
18:21were the women who would reject him.
18:24They were the women he couldn't have.
18:25And I think that's why he went after those particular women.
18:30They were beautiful, they were intelligent, they were independent.
18:33And this is very deliberate.
18:35He is killing women, who he sees as behaving in ways that women shouldn't behave.
18:41He believes that women should be docile and compliant and do what men tell them to do.
18:49Another four months passed until Lee claimed a third Baton Rouge victim.
18:55On the 31st of May, 2002, 22-year-old Charlotte Murray Pace was found dead in her apartment by her
19:04roommate.
19:06Charlotte Murray Pace lived on Stanford Avenue, just a few houses from where Gina Wilson-Green had lived.
19:13She had just graduated from LSU.
19:15She was looking forward to moving to Atlanta to start her career when this killer knocked on her door.
19:25Charlotte had defensive wounds, which suggested she doggedly fought for her life during the hideously vicious attack.
19:33That case there was a very violent case.
19:35I saw the photos.
19:36He stabbed her many, many times.
19:38In each case, he would come angrier and angrier.
19:41You can tell by the brutality on the cases.
19:43When he killed Charlotte Murray Pace, he stabbed her 81 times with a screwdriver.
19:50Now, that's a degree of overkill.
19:52That indicates something.
19:54Indicates, perhaps, the level of rage he's feeling.
19:57It's part of what makes Derek Todd Lee so chilling.
20:03That level of arrogance, that level of brutality against a woman who's already been effectively beaten to a pulp and
20:15raped, then to stab her 81 times is horrific.
20:19There's no other word for it.
20:20It's depravity of a very high order.
20:23This level of violence shows an absolute contempt for the victim, a hatred for the victim.
20:28And when we look at the kind of person that Charlotte was, she was independent.
20:33She was successful.
20:34She was somebody who could, well, stand on her own two feet.
20:37She didn't need a man.
20:38This is the kind of woman that Lee absolutely detested.
20:46Detectives in Baton Rouge began to think the murders may be connected.
20:51When Charlotte Murray Pace was killed, the fact that she had lived on Stanford Avenue, so close to Gina Wilson
20:57Green, really gave police their first inkling that they might be dealing with a serial killer.
21:03The police may have finally been putting the pieces together, but Derek Todd Lee was nowhere near finished.
21:12His reign of terror was only just beginning.
21:22By the summer of 2002, 33-year-old Derek Todd Lee had raped and murdered possibly four women in Louisiana.
21:32One in Zachary and the other three in Baton Rouge.
21:37And it was in the state capital on the 12th of July, where he chose to kill for a fifth
21:43time.
21:45Pam Kittlemore had an antique shop in Denham Springs, Louisiana.
21:49Derek Todd Lee had been doing surveillance on her.
21:52Followed her home that night.
21:53From what I understand, she left a key in the door, and he attacked her in the house.
22:00She went to take a bath, and it was there in the bathtub that Derek Todd Lee walked in and
22:06got her.
22:07There was a struggle.
22:09They found drops of blood in the bathroom.
22:12Different little things through the house were askew.
22:14And Derek Todd Lee took Pam Kittlemore naked from her home, put her in his vehicle.
22:22As he was driving down Airline Highway in Baton Rouge, away from her house, he was weaving.
22:28And a woman behind him noticed that.
22:33They pulled up to a red light.
22:35A woman in that pickup truck turned around and looked at the woman that was behind them.
22:41And she said that there was something about the way Pam Kittlemore looked at her that she felt like she
22:49needed help.
22:49And so she called police, and she gave the police a partial license plate.
22:55But the police didn't catch up with Derek Todd Lee.
23:0144-year-old Pam Kittlemore was about to become his fifth victim.
23:07He drove underneath the bridge into a wooded area that's near the bay,
23:13and there he raped and stabbed and slashed Pam Kittlemore, almost beheading her.
23:19And there he killed her.
23:23Her body was found four days later by a fisherman.
23:28And when Pam Kittlemore was killed, everybody realized we have a serial killer in Baton Rouge,
23:36taking women from their homes, killing women in their homes, and terror just overtook the city.
23:43Local TV reporter Jim Shannon remembers the collective fear that spread across the Louisiana state capital.
23:51The men were worried about the women, the women were worried about themselves.
23:56Record gun sales were made in Baton Rouge at that time.
24:00Record amounts of ammunition that was being bought.
24:04Gunsmiths couldn't get enough guns in here, and they couldn't get enough ammunition
24:07for the demand that Derek Todd Lee made in this community.
24:14The loved ones of Lee's latest victim were desperate for the killer to be caught.
24:21Pam Kittlemore's family spent money to buy billboards to put up their own reward.
24:28They had their own reward for whoever could identify who killed Pam.
24:32And that was a piece of the frustration that the family members were going through at the time.
24:41By August 2002, investigators knew for certain that a serial killer was responsible for three of the Baton Rouge murders.
24:50DNA collected from Pam Kittlemore's body matched the same DNA recovered from Charlotte Murray Pace and Gina Wilson-Green.
24:59They decided to pool together their resources to see if they could crack the cases.
25:04A multi-agency homicide task force was set up in Baton Rouge.
25:09That included Baton Rouge PD, it included the sheriff's department, it included the FBI, the state police,
25:18but it also included members of other parishes that joined Baton Rouge where bodies had been found and where murders
25:25had taken place.
25:28Zachary Police Detective David McDavid was sure that Derek Todd Lee was responsible for the Baton Rouge killings,
25:35as well as the murder of Randy Miebra on his own patch.
25:40He shared his findings with the task force.
25:44We came together with all the agencies involved.
25:46We showed our cases and our evidence, our photographs of them.
25:50They showed theirs on a big projector screen.
25:53Pretty much their cases matched up to ours.
25:56And I said, hey, this is our guy here.
25:58You need to look at him.
26:00You know, this is similarities here.
26:03But the task force had set their sights on a different suspect.
26:09Witnesses near to the Charlotte Murray Pace and Gina Wilson-Green crime scenes
26:14had told police they'd seen a white man in a white pickup truck around the time of the murders.
26:21They opened it up and they looked at the file.
26:23They saw he was black and they said, no, our killer is a white man in a white pickup truck.
26:27And they closed the file.
26:29Because of that, several more women would die.
26:35Because of their certainty that a white man was committing the murders,
26:39the task force missed an opportunity to capture Derek Todd Lee,
26:44just three days before the murder of Pam Kinnamore.
26:50On the 9th of July, 2002, Diane Alexander was attacked at her home in Brobridge,
26:5835 miles west of Baton Rouge.
27:01She'd been overpowered by a man who'd knocked on her door and asked to use the phone.
27:07He forced his way in to her home.
27:10He beat her.
27:11He tried to rape her.
27:13He took a computer cord that led to a phone and he cut that cord
27:18and he was trying to strangle her with that cord
27:20when he stopped for a minute and he heard her son pulling up in the driveway.
27:28Lee fled from the scene of the crime.
27:31Six days later, once she'd recovered from her ordeal,
27:35Diane Alexander gave detectives a description of the man who'd attacked her.
27:40It's the first time, indeed the only time,
27:43in Derek Todd Lee's reign of terror, if you like,
27:47that he's made a mistake.
27:50There are obvious clues to what's going on.
27:55They have a suspect, then they get a sketch of what the suspect looks like,
28:00and that, of course, illuminates a number of police officers in the area
28:05to the fact it looks awfully like Derek Todd Lee.
28:10They had done a photo sketch,
28:12and we had done a photo sketch from Michelle Chapman on Derek Todd Lee.
28:16If we saw both photographs at the time,
28:20they were very, very much similar.
28:23Had her son come back,
28:25ten minutes later, she would have been dead,
28:28and there would have been no description of Derek Todd Lee.
28:32That's the most significant moment in the case.
28:35But it was not connected to the Baton Rouge murders
28:39because Diane Alexander's assailant was black.
28:43And by this time, police in Baton Rouge were looking for a white man.
28:50During the search for the elusive killer
28:52that the press were now calling the ghost of Baton Rouge,
28:561,200 white men in white pickup trucks
29:00had their mouths swabbed for DNA.
29:03During the height of the killings,
29:05they were swabbing people left and right.
29:10Hundreds of people were being swabbed and tested.
29:13That was just something that happened.
29:15When you got pulled over, if you were a white male,
29:16and if you were in a certain age group,
29:19you were going to get swiped.
29:22With the task force hunting for the wrong man,
29:25Derek Todd Lee was able to continue his killing spree undetected.
29:30In November 2002, four months after the murder of Pam Kinnamoore,
29:36the body of 23-year-old Tranesha Dene Colom
29:40was found in a wood just outside Lafayette,
29:43over 50 miles west of Baton Rouge.
29:47Tranesha was visiting her mama's graveyard over there.
29:51Derek Todd Lee happened upon her,
29:53attacked her, and killed her in the graveyard there.
29:55She had been raped, she had been beaten,
29:58her head had been bashed against a tree.
30:01She suffered a horrible end at the hands of this killer.
30:06Police immediately realised
30:09that this could be connected to the Baton Rouge cases.
30:14DNA found on Tranesha's body
30:17identified her as another victim of the ghost of Baton Rouge.
30:24Lee killed for a seventh time the following spring,
30:28this time back in Baton Rouge.
30:3026-year-old Carrie Lynn Yoda
30:32was kidnapped from her apartment on the 3rd of March 2003.
30:37Her body was found 10 days later.
30:41Carrie Lynn's body was found in Whiskey Bay,
30:44near where Pam Kinnamoore's body had been found months before.
30:47She had been beaten, she had been raped.
30:51She, like the others,
30:53had experienced a horrific death
30:56at the hands of this maniacal killer.
31:03DNA on Carrie's body linked her to the other victims.
31:08When the task force was offered the services
31:10of a genetics expert to analyse the killer's DNA,
31:14the results shocked them.
31:16The profile suggested the murderer's ancestry
31:19was 85% African.
31:22That changed the whole course of the investigation.
31:26At that time, they realised perhaps
31:29Diane Alexander's attacker had been their killer,
31:33and the composite that Diane Alexander had helped police create
31:38started going up on billboards around Baton Rouge.
31:41The police did press conferences saying,
31:45yes, we know, we told y'all the killer was white,
31:47but now you need to be looking for a black man
31:50to attack you, not a white man.
31:53So that pretty much told us then,
31:55hey, we were looking for an African-American male
31:58involved in these cases.
32:00And of course, my thoughts on that is Derek Todd Lee.
32:06In May 2003, armed with a subpoena,
32:11David and his colleagues knocked on Derek Todd Lee's door
32:14and were able to obtain a swab of his DNA.
32:21Three weeks later, the results proved
32:24that Lee was the ghost of Baton Rouge,
32:27responsible for the murders of Gina Wilson-Green,
32:30Charlotte Murray Pace, Pam Kinnamore,
32:34Trenesha Dene Colum, and Carrie Lynn Yoder.
32:38Police everywhere were just astonished
32:41that it turned out to be Derek Todd Lee,
32:43except for David McDavid, who had suspected him all along.
32:48When I walked in, he had all these dignitaries here,
32:51sheriffs, chiefs, and a lot of people there.
32:55I said, what's going on?
32:56I said, well, we just want to let y'all know
32:58that DNA y'all got off Derek Todd Lee
33:00has been connected to all the cases
33:02in Baton Rouge and Lafayette area.
33:05And it was a relief all for me.
33:08I mean, because it's something in my career
33:10we hope to solve this case.
33:11But also, in the back of my mind,
33:14you know, I said, hey, all along,
33:15we had this piece of pie,
33:17and here it is today.
33:18We solved it.
33:20You know, I smiled,
33:21but I knew we had work to do.
33:22We had to find him.
33:23We had to get him off the street
33:24before he killed again.
33:26But Derek Todd Lee was no longer in Louisiana.
33:30He'd taken off soon after the DNA swab was taken.
33:34The task force had their man,
33:36but now they had to track him down.
33:39Fast.
33:46On the 26th of May, 2003,
33:50a warrant had been issued
33:51for the arrest of serial killer Derek Todd Lee.
33:55Three weeks after a swab of his cheek
33:57had yielded undeniable proof that he was the killer,
34:01the 34-year-old had fled town.
34:03But he was soon tracked down,
34:05500 miles away from Baton Rouge in Georgia.
34:10The U.S. Marshals called me that night from Atlanta,
34:13said, hey, look, we know he's in this area.
34:16I said, I'm telling you something,
34:17you better find him.
34:18He knows the gig is up, the game is up.
34:21He's going to kill again before he gets caught.
34:23And luckily they found him,
34:25I think walking down the street
34:27close to a college area there in Atlanta,
34:29that night.
34:30I was able to arrest him
34:31and get him off the street
34:32before he killed again.
34:33Derek Todd Lee was arrested
34:35on the 27th of May, 2003,
34:39and extradited back to Louisiana.
34:41The killer was finally in custody,
34:44much to the relief of everyone
34:46in and around Baton Rouge.
34:49When Derek Todd Lee was arrested
34:51and brought back here from Atlanta,
34:53he was the most talked-about item anywhere,
34:57in coffee shops and restaurants and bars.
35:00Everyone in Baton Rouge just sighed a huge sigh of relief.
35:04I mean, we were so happy
35:06that we didn't have to be afraid anymore.
35:09Lee was in custody,
35:11but he wasn't saying a word to detectives.
35:13Even without a confession, though,
35:16the police were finding out more and more
35:18about the killer by the day.
35:20When the investigators figured out
35:23that he was the prime suspect,
35:26they executed search warrants
35:28and found different items,
35:30cell phones, keys,
35:31and other things that belonged to the victims
35:33that helped convict him.
35:36Derek Todd Lee always took an article,
35:38but mostly his was keys.
35:40And what he was doing,
35:41based on my experience,
35:43he had these items
35:43so he could relive them cases
35:45over and over again.
35:46That's what a serial killer does.
35:47They go back and relive these cases
35:49over and over again
35:50for sexual gratification.
35:53As the investigation into Lee's past continued,
35:57his DNA linked him to a sixth victim.
36:00When Derek Todd Lee was arrested,
36:03his DNA had been found
36:05on five of the victims.
36:07Pam Kinnamore, Charlotte Murray Pace,
36:10Gina Wilson-Green,
36:11Carrie Lynn Yoder,
36:12and Denae Cologne.
36:13After Derek Todd Lee was arrested,
36:16his DNA was tested against DNA
36:19that had been found
36:20underneath Gerilyn DeSoto's fingernails.
36:23And everyone was surprised
36:26when that DNA matched
36:28because everyone had thought
36:29that her husband had killed her.
36:31And Zachary Detective David McDavid
36:34was about to get an unexpected result
36:37over five and a half years in the making.
36:40proof that Lee had killed Randy Meebra
36:43in April 1998.
36:48We didn't know a whole lot
36:50about DNA evidence
36:50being from a small agency.
36:52But once we were able
36:54to connect his DNA profile
36:55to all the other cases,
36:57we had them,
36:58please check our evidence
37:00and see if we had any DNA evidence
37:02on any of our stuff we submitted.
37:04And sure enough,
37:05we found semen
37:06on the pink trash bags
37:08that came back to Derek Todd Lee
37:09positive for his profile.
37:11And I was able to do
37:13arrest warrant for murder
37:14for him on that case.
37:16Despite the validation
37:18for the police,
37:19Randy Meebra's body
37:21has never been found.
37:25Investigators wanted justice
37:26for all seven of Lee's victims
37:28and began to prepare
37:30for the trials.
37:31But the killer's defense team
37:33were hoping to use
37:34Lee's lack of intelligence
37:36to their advantage.
37:38People will look
37:39at the case of Lee
37:40and highlight the fact
37:41that he had quite a low IQ.
37:44And very often,
37:45defense teams
37:46will try and use this
37:47as some kind of mitigation,
37:50claiming that this individual
37:52isn't responsible
37:53for what they did
37:54because of their low IQ.
37:56But I'm in no doubt
37:57that this guy
37:58knew exactly what he was doing
38:00and he knew
38:01what he was doing was wrong.
38:03Derek Todd Lee
38:04was deemed fit to stand trial.
38:06They argued that
38:08although he wasn't intellectually
38:11maybe as smart as others,
38:14he was street smart.
38:15He had maintained jobs.
38:16He had lived like anybody else does.
38:19And he was smart enough
38:21to plan out every single one
38:23of these murders.
38:25So it was ruled
38:27that he was deemed fit
38:28to stand trial.
38:30In August 2004,
38:33Lee was in court,
38:34charged with the January 2002
38:36murder of Geraldine De Soto.
38:39There were two trials
38:40held for Derek Todd Lee.
38:42The first one
38:43was in West Baton Rouge Parish.
38:45Prosecutor Tony Clayton
38:46tried Derek Todd Lee
38:48for the murder
38:49of Geraldine Barr De Soto.
38:51He was charged
38:52with second-degree murder
38:53because there were
38:54no underlying felonies
38:55and he was convicted
38:57and sentenced
38:58to life in prison.
39:01Lee was safely
39:02behind bars for life,
39:04but the community
39:05of Baton Rouge
39:06wanted him to pay
39:07an even heavier price
39:08for his murders.
39:10Prosecutors were determined
39:11that Lee should get
39:12the death penalty,
39:14and the following month,
39:15September 2004,
39:17he was back in court,
39:19this time charged
39:20with the capital murder
39:21of Charlotte Murray Pace.
39:23Reporter Jim Shannon
39:24was a regular
39:25in the East Baton Rouge courthouse.
39:28I covered every bit of it.
39:30The media circus,
39:33as it was,
39:34was because you had
39:35crews from New Orleans,
39:38Baton Rouge,
39:39and Lafayette,
39:40and Lake Charles.
39:41All of South Louisiana
39:42was covering this case
39:44because everybody,
39:45or many of the victims
39:47had families
39:48in all of those
39:48different areas.
39:50Jim had the opportunity
39:51to see the serial killer
39:53up close.
39:56When you would see
39:57Derek Todd Lee
39:58come into the courtroom,
39:59he would be dressed
40:00extremely well,
40:02closely shaved,
40:03trimmed up,
40:04so to speak.
40:05So he was very
40:08cognizant
40:09of what he looked like
40:10and what he wanted
40:10to present as himself.
40:13On the 12th of October,
40:152004,
40:17after just 90 minutes
40:18of deliberations,
40:20the jury returned
40:21an overwhelming verdict.
40:24Derek Todd Lee
40:24was convicted
40:25of the murder
40:26of Charlotte Murray Pace
40:27and the jury
40:28sentenced him to death.
40:30Had they not gotten
40:31a death penalty,
40:32they could have used
40:33any one of the other victims
40:34to try him again
40:36until they found
40:37a death penalty.
40:38They were determined
40:39to get Derek Todd Lee
40:40on death row.
40:44Although only convicted
40:46of two murders,
40:47DNA linked Lee
40:48to seven in total,
40:50and experts believe
40:52he could have been killing
40:53as early as 1992.
40:56In August of that year,
40:5823-year-old Connie Warner
41:00was bludgeoned to death
41:02with a hammer,
41:03just a few blocks away
41:05from the home
41:06of Randy Meebra.
41:07It was difficult
41:08to track down
41:09who might have killed
41:10Connie Warner
41:11because there was
41:12a hurricane
41:13in which all the evidence
41:14was washed away
41:15and they didn't find
41:15the body for seven days.
41:17Connie Warner's family
41:18knew in their hearts
41:19and from all the evidence
41:21I told them
41:22that he was involved
41:23in her case.
41:25If you looked out
41:26Randy Meebra's house
41:27right now
41:28and looked around
41:29the corner like that,
41:30you could see
41:30Connie Warner's house.
41:31The family knew.
41:32They knew he was involved.
41:34They were satisfied
41:35with the case.
41:36You know,
41:36they were satisfied
41:37with the convictions.
41:39Susan Mustapha
41:40went to speak
41:41with Lee
41:42in the Louisiana
41:43State Penitentiary
41:44in Angola
41:45while he was
41:46on death row,
41:47but she was met
41:48with short shrift.
41:50He certainly
41:50never showed
41:51any remorse
41:52or guilt.
41:53He never confessed.
41:54I sat outside
41:55of his cell
41:56and watched him
41:57and he climbed
41:58underneath the covers
41:59and wouldn't look
42:00at me.
42:01And then he finally
42:02sat up
42:03and he started
42:03playing with his
42:04toilet paper
42:05and refused
42:06to look at me
42:07the whole time
42:08I was there.
42:08He wouldn't talk
42:09to anybody
42:10and he never
42:11showed any signs
42:12of remorse.
42:14Derek Todd Lee
42:15spent less than 12 years
42:17on death row,
42:18but he was never
42:19executed.
42:20He died of heart disease
42:22on the 21st
42:23of January, 2016.
42:25He was 47 years old.
42:28My understanding
42:29was he was already
42:29in bad shape
42:30leaving from Angola
42:31and he died
42:32the next day,
42:33you know,
42:34and, uh,
42:36you know,
42:36he had to go
42:37meet his maker
42:37and, uh,
42:38you know,
42:38he had to answer
42:39for what he did.
42:40Lee's death
42:41was a relief
42:42for the man
42:42who'd invested
42:43a lot of time
42:44in making sure
42:45the killer
42:46was caught.
42:47I knew that he
42:48could not harm
42:48nobody else
42:49ever again,
42:50that he would never
42:51be able to escape
42:52from jail
42:53if he ever tried
42:54to harm anybody else.
42:56I think the good Lord
43:00took him
43:02and, uh,
43:03you know,
43:03and I think that,
43:04uh, you know,
43:06he had to answer
43:06for what he did
43:07and, uh,
43:08it just, uh,
43:09it was a relief.
43:10You know,
43:11I don't want to ever
43:11see nobody die,
43:12but this type
43:13of evil person
43:14had no business
43:15living on Earth.
43:19In the community,
43:20Lee's death
43:21was greeted
43:22with relief.
43:23The ghost
43:24of Baton Rouge
43:25had finally
43:26been exorcised.
43:28He was vicious,
43:29he was violent,
43:31he invaded
43:32people's homes,
43:34invaded their lives,
43:35and then took
43:35their lives.
43:37He wasn't even
43:38really human.
43:40He had an ego.
43:42When he was rejected,
43:43he killed.
43:46You know,
43:46there's other people
43:47who worked this case,
43:47but all alone,
43:48my gut feeling
43:49was him.
43:51We held
43:52that piece of pie
43:52and then we saw
43:53this case
43:54in one of the most
43:55brutal serial killers
43:55I knew of.
43:56You know,
43:57we stopped him
43:58from killing
43:58anybody else.
44:02Lee was extremely
44:04dangerous,
44:05a seemingly charming
44:06man who could
44:07talk his way
44:08into women's homes
44:09before raping them
44:11and ending
44:12their lives.
44:13He was brutal,
44:14callous,
44:15and ultimately
44:15remorseless
44:16in his quest
44:17to fulfil
44:18his sexual perversions,
44:20making Derek Todd Lee
44:23one of the world's
44:25most evil killers.
44:26the world's