Fred dinenage (narrates): On 31 may, 2001,
22-year-old Charlotte Murray pace had just graduated
from Louisiana state university
and was looking forward to moving to Atlanta
to begin a new career.
But she had no idea that someone was watching her,
and he had plans of his own.
A lot of his victims,
he had stalked them for days, weeks, sometimes months
to get a feel for what they were doing
and what would be the best way for him to get them.
He kept an eye out on these women and then pounced.
32-year-old Derrick Todd Lee
had already stalked and killed at least three women,
before he took away the future of the recent graduate.
Charlotte Murray pace was very athletic
and she fought Derrick Todd Lee through that whole house.
He stabbed her 81 times with a flathead screwdriver
before he raped and killed her.
Lee would go on to kill another three women
before DNA evidence finally brought an end
to his brutal and heartless career of murder.
What was the motive for Derrick Todd Lee?
It wasn't simply sexual pleasure.
That would be easy. It was much more about anger.
It was about power. It was about control.
Derrick Todd Lee had been unmasked
as one of the world's most evil killers.
(Theme music)
In October 2004,
35-year-old Derrick Todd Lee was sentenced to death
for the murder of Charlotte Murray pace.
She was one of seven confirmed victims
of the serial rapist and murderer.
Detective, David mcdavid had been on the trail of the killer
since 1998.
He had always been determined to prove
that Lee had murdered 28-year-old randi mebruer
in Zachary, Louisiana,
her death had brought fear to the community.
You had a lot of tension here, you had a lot of women
and their daughters that were scared.
You had people buying guns, you had people buying tasers,
you had a lot of women taking self-defence classes.
Most of Lee's murders happened in nearby Baton Rouge.
Writer, Susan Mustafa
recalls the panic his killing spree caused
in the state capital.
Before Derrick Todd Lee everybody felt safe in Baton Rouge.
People didn't lock their doors, they didn't lock their windows.
Nobody was afraid to be out and about.
When the killings started happening
and the women in Baton Rouge realised
they weren't safe in their homes,
everyone was just terrified to go anywhere.
Lee's violent and deadly attacks meant that no woman was safe.
David mcdavid had a tenacious desire to put the killer behind bars,
but even as a hardened detective
he was fearful that Lee might strike closer to home.
The way he attacked women and the brutality he attacked them,
I was worried and scared for my family.
It was something in my career
I hoped we was able to solve this case
before he got close to my family, which he was probably,
you know, half a mile away from some of these attacks,
away from my family where they lived at.
It worried me real bad.
This killer's story begins
in the small town of st francisville, Louisiana.
Derrick Todd Lee was born on 5 November, 1968.
His life was unconventional from the very start.
Derrick Todd Lee had a childhood similar to most children,
with the exception that his father went to prison
for the attempted murder of his father's ex-wife.
His mother later remarried
and she and Derrick Todd Lee's stepfather raised him
but for the most part, he had a normal childhood.
Lee had a low IQ
and didn't perform well academically.
He soon became a social outcast at school.
There is one particular detail that is rather sad
and that's that he used to suck his thumb in class
and he used to call his teacher, "mamma".
So, this really does highlight
that he's kind of looking for an authority figure
to be protective of him,
he's looking for a mother figure outside of the family.
Even as a young child,
Lee had developed a sinister trait
that would become a defining factor in his career of murder.
Derrick Todd Lee began peeping into homes,
looking at women, from a very early age.
I think six, seven years old
he was caught peeping in his cousin's window
and over the years he was arrested several times.
Now, this is a really significant red flag for me
because when we see people engaging in this kind of behaviour
what they are doing is that they are gaining gratification
and they are gaining enjoyment
through watching other people without their consent,
so, we've got this sense of power over others
from doing something to them that they are not aware of,
that they would not be happy with
and this is something that we see in the backgrounds
of quite a lot of serial killers.
By the age of 16,
Lee had become well accustomed
to being on the wrong side of the law.
As well as peeping through windows,
he had arrests for burglary and assault.
You now, have a boy who's really on the edge,
a volcano almost.
He's very sexually precocious. He's very rebellious.
But he's also got that violent streak.
Here is somebody who does not live by the rules.
Here is somebody who wants to get what he's after
and rules and laws and all of those things
that prevent the rest of us from behaving in these ways
does not prevent Lee from doing these things.
Aged 20, Lee got married
but that didn't mean that he planned on settling down.
Soon after they married
her father was killed in an explosion at a plant
near Baton Rouge
and there was a lawsuit
and they got a lot of money from the lawsuit,
which Derrick Todd Lee immediately begins spending.
He had flashy cars, he had gold chains,
he liked to dress well.
Even though he was married
he didn't have a problem in the world
using his wife's money to attract other women.
There is something about him that is very attractive.
There is an element, a twinkle in his eye, if you like,
that a lot of women find interesting.
He's quite a dangerous person
because he can appear to be charm syndrome man,
he can sweet talk his way,
he can get women to let their barriers down for him.
In April 1993,
David mcdavid was a uniformed police officer
in Zachary, Louisiana.
The vicious attack on a teenage couple
in a local cemetery,
had always remained fresh in his memory.
They were you know, doing what teenagers do, making out.
One of our police officers was driving down the roadway,
saw a dome light on,
went into the cemetery and came up on both of the kids
who'd been attacked brutally with a hack blade.
Both of them lived,
but the boyfriend still today he won't talk about it.
My understanding is he sleeps with the light on.
That was a pretty brutal attack.
The girl who survived the assault, Michelle Chapman,
tried to help David and his colleagues
identify her assailant.
We brought in a police sketch artist.
He spoke to Michelle,
was able to get a photograph of the attacker.
David didn't know it yet,
but this would his first glimpse of Derrick Todd Lee.
Over four years later,
David, who was now a detective, would meet the killer, face-to-face,
for the very first time.
July of 1997 we got a call,
they had a prowler over in oak shadows.
A black male was peeping in the window of a house,
of a single white female who had a daughter at home.
The call we got, if I remember correctly,
he was standing like in a kid pool
looking in through a window at the apartment complex.
We went to that location and saw him run across the roadway
and go south back toward the cemetery
and graveyard area.
Lee's car was known to the police from previous arrests
and David and his colleague soon found it parked
in the vicinity of the crime.
So, we blocked the vehicle in, we backed out and did surveillance.
We caught him coming across the roadway
from the graveyard
and we made an arrest on him.
In January 1998,
29-year-old Derrick Todd Lee was given two years' probation
for spying on women,
but crucially, he didn't go to prison,
and three months later, a woman would be dead.
In the spring of 1998,
Derrick Todd Lee had been regularly
in and out of trouble with the police
in Zachary, Louisiana.
The 29-year-old peeping Tom
was about to escalate his perversion into murder.
On 18 April,
randi mebruer's three-year-old son
was found looking for his mother outside the family home,
when a neighbour came over to find out what was wrong.
The neighbour saw him
and she went to the house and saw blood covering that house,
and she called police and the police came
and they found the bedroom was covered in blood,
they found randi mebruer's contact lens on the floor,
they found clumps of her hair mixed with blood in the hallway.
They knew instantly
that something really bad had happened to randi.
Detective David mcdavid was called into search
for the missing 28-year-old nurse.
My partner called me and said, "look, we have a lady missing.
"We have blood in the house. A child was left at the house."
He had went next door to the neighbour's house,
they came to the house
and saw all the blood, backed out, called us.
And I told him on the way, I said, "you know, who it is,
"it's going to be Derrick Todd Lee."
As part of the investigation into randi's disappearance,
David once again found himself face-to-face
with Derrick Todd Lee.
The 29-year-old was a person of interest as he lived
just a few blocks from randi's home.
Lee agreed to a voluntary search of his house.
I'll never forget that night I was in there and,
you know, he was pacing back and forth in an area in the house,
and I thought somebody was watching him.
When I was searching his closet area,
all of a sudden the hair stood up on the back of my neck
and I turned and he was right there behind me,
so, I kind of pushed him back, told him to step back,
"you're too close to me."
It just bothered me that he was that close to me,
and I don't know if I was getting close
to some evidence or what,
right after that he told us to leave the house,
he didn't want us there no more.
He gave us consent to search,
but he also had the right to revoke that consent
and I guess either that I was getting close to
something there in the closet,
but, he asked us to leave.
David and his colleagues
continued to search for clues at randi's home,
and an unusual looking item caught their eye.
We were collecting evidence that next day
and there was a pink trashcan liner
outside the front door of randi mebruer's house
and we kind of found it odd, "why is this pink case,
"garbage can case was out here bag?"
And we knew that her car had been used
to evidently remove the body
because it had been moved and the keys were missing.
We really didn't know we had evidence on that bag.
With all the evidence collected, the case went cold.
Without a body,
it was difficult to press charges on any suspect.
But David was determined to get Lee off the streets and behind bars.
In march 1999,
he revisited the cemetery attack of the young woman
and her boyfriend from 1993.
I had got a photo line-up of Derrick Todd Lee.
I presented it to her and she picked him out.
Without hesitation, picked him out.
"That is the guy that attacked us in the cemetery."
I prepared a warrant for his arrest.
I brought the warrant down for a judge to sign
and I was told the statute of limitations had ran out.
I think it's after five years.
It was another frustrating turn of events.
David was certain Lee was responsible
for a long list of crimes across Zachary,
but he couldn't prove it.
You had the attack in the graveyard,
in July '97 where he was peeping in the area
and was arrested and charged.
And then 1998, you had the murder of randi mebruer.
So, every time you looked back around there
he was always in that area.
From '92 to '98
he was committing crimes in that area
and that's where our focus was, is on Derrick Todd Lee.
If you draw a circle in that area he was always there,
from '92 to 1998.
Derrick Todd Lee remained a free man,
but his luck was running out.
In January 2000, whilst he was still married,
he was arrested for assaulting a girlfriend
in the parking lot of a bar,
just north of Zachary,
after she found him flirting with another woman.
He ended up quite brutally attacking her
and what this says to me
is that he is the one who is in control.
It doesn't matter
that he's been engaging in this entirely
inappropriate behaviour with other woman.
"How dare she question me," will be the way that he sees it,
"I'm the one who decides what happens in this relationship.
"I'm the one who calls the shots.
"You do not have a right to call me out on my behaviour."
Still on probation
for the peeping Tom incident 2.5 years earlier,
Derrick Todd Lee was finally sent to jail.
Derrick Todd Lee spent a full year in prison
for beating up his girlfriend in that parking lot,
and when he got out of prison
is when he began killing in Baton Rouge.
Derrick Todd Lee had changed his hunting ground,
from Zachary to Baton Rouge
and now he had murder on his mind.
With the new area came a new victim, in September 2001,
he chose 40-year-old Gina Wilson green,
who told her mother,
just two days before she was attacked,
that she felt like someone was watching her.
On the night of September 23,
Derrick Todd Lee forced his way into her house
and he strangled Gina, he beat he and he raped her.
He placed her in her bed
and she would be found two days later
by her co-worker
who got concerned when she didn't show up for work.
This victim was beautiful,
and successful and ambitious
and it was scary for those who lived in the area
because the killer had attacked her in her home.
Detectives had no leads and just four months later,
Lee would strike again.
On 14 January, 2002,
21-year-old geralyn desoto
was found lying in a pool of blood, by her husband.
Geralyn desoto lived across the Mississippi river
in west Baton Rouge parish.
She lived in a trailer,
you know, she had been going to lsu and studying and that
and obviously he gained her trust.
The killer knocked on her door and asked for a phone
and we know this because
geralyn was hit in the head with that phone so hard
it caused a skull fracture.
She ran down the hallway,
she knew that her husband kept a gun in their bedroom.
She fought with Derrick Todd Lee with that gun
and we know because there were etchings
in the ceiling from that gun.
He chased her back down the hallway
where he stabbed her viciously over and over and over again
until she was dead.
Due to previous domestic disturbances,
geralyn's husband
was the number one suspect for her murder.
Detectives had yet to make the link that an active serial killer
was at large in Baton Rouge.
Derrick Todd Lee appeared to be targeting similar victims.
He had a wife, he had a girlfriend,
but the women that he killed,
the women that he attacked so viciously
were the women who would reject him,
they were the women he couldn't have
and I think that's why he went after those particular women.
They were beautiful, they were intelligent,
they were independent and this is very deliberate.
He is killing women
who he sees as behaving in ways that women shouldn't behave.
He believes that women should be docile and compliant
and do what men tell them to do.
Another four months passed
until Lee claimed a third Baton Rouge victim.
On 31 may, 2002,
22-year-old Charlotte Murray pace
was found dead in her apartment by her room-mate.
Charlotte Murray pace lived on Stanford Avenue,
just a few houses
from where Gina Wilson green had lived.
She had just graduated from lsu,
she was looking forward to moving to Atlanta
to start her career
when this killer knocked on her door.
Charlotte had defensive wounds,
which suggested she doggedly fought for her life
during the hideously, vicious attack.
That case there was a very violent case
and I saw the photos.
He stabbed her many, many times.
Each case he would become angrier and angrier,
you can tell by the brutality on the cases.
When he killed Charlotte Murray pace,
he stabbed her 81 times with a screwdriver.
Now, that's a degree of overkill, that indicates something.
It indicates perhaps the level of rage he's feeling.
It's part of what makes Derrick Todd Lee so chilling.
That level of arrogance, that level of brutality
against a woman who's already been effectively...
Beaten to a pulp and raped,
then to stab her 81 times is horrific.
There's no other word for it. It's depravity of a very high order.
This level of violence shows an absolute contempt for the victim,
a hatred for the victim
and when we look at the kind of person
that Charlotte was,
she was independent, she was successful,
she was somebody who could well stand on her own two feet,
she didn't need a man.
This is the kind of woman that Lee absolutely detested.
Detectives in Baton Rouge
began to think the murders may be connected.
When Charlotte Murray pace was killed,
the fact that she had lived on Stanford Avenue
so, close to Gina Wilson green
really gave police their first inkling
that they might be dealing with a serial killer.
The police may have been finally putting the pieces together,
but Derrick Todd Lee was nowhere near finished.
His reign of terror was only just beginning.
By the summer of 2002,
33-year-old Derrick Todd Lee
had raped and murdered possibly four women in Louisiana.
One in Zachary and the other three in Baton Rouge.
And it was in the state capital, on 12 July,
where he chose to kill for a fifth time.
Pamela kinamore had an antique shop
in denham Springs, Louisiana.
Derrick Todd Lee had been doing surveillance on her,
followed her home that night.
From what I understand, she left the key in the door
and he attacked her in the house.
She went to take a bath and it was there in the bathtub
that Derrick Todd Lee walked in and got her.
There was a struggle.
They found drops of blood in the bathroom,
different little things through the house were askew
and Derrick Todd Lee
took Pam kinamore naked from her home,
put her in his vehicle.
As he was driving down airline highway
in Baton Rouge away from her house,
he was weaving and a woman behind him noticed that.
They pulled up to a red light,
a woman in that pickup truck
turned around and looked at the woman
that was behind them
and she said
that there was something about the way
Pam kinamore looked at her
that she felt like she needed help and so she called police
and she gave police a partial license plate.
But the police didn't catch up with Derrick Todd Lee.
44-year-old Pam kinamore
was about to become his fifth victim.
He drove underneath the bridge into a wooded area
that's near the bay and there he raped,
and stabbed and slashed Pam kinamore,
almost beheading her and there he killed her.
Her body was found four days later by a fisherman.
And when Pam kinamore was killed everybody realised,
"we have a serial killer in Baton Rouge
"taking women from their homes, killing women in their homes,"
and terror just overtook the city.
Local TV reporter Jim Shannon, remembers the collective fear
that spread across the Louisiana state capital.
The men were worried about the women,
the women were worried about themselves.
Record gun sales were made in Baton Rouge at that time.
Record amounts of ammunition that was being bought.
The gunsmiths couldn't get enough guns in here
and they couldn't get enough ammunition for the demand
that Derrick Todd Lee made in this community.
The loved ones of Lee's latest victim
were desperate for the killer to be caught.
Pam kinamore's family spent money to buy billboards,
to put up their own reward.
They had their own reward for
whoever could identify who killed Pam,
and that was a piece of the frustration
that the family members were going through at the time.
By August 2002,
investigators knew for certain that a serial killer was responsible
for three of the Baton Rouge murders.
DNA collected from Pam kinamore's body
matched the same DNA recovered from Charlotte Murray pace
and Gina Wilson green.
They decided to pool together their resources
to see if they could crack the cases.
A multi agency homicide task force was set up in Baton Rouge
that included Baton Rouge pd,
it included the sheriff's department,
it included the FBI, the state police,
but it also included members of other parishes
that joined Baton Rouge where bodies had been found
and where murders had taken place.
Zachary police detective,
David mcdavid was sure that Derrick Todd Lee
was responsible for the Baton Rouge killings,
as well as the murder of randi mebruer on his own patch.
He shared his findings with the task force.
We came together with all the agencies involved
and we showed our cases
and our evidence, our photographs to them,
they showed theirs on a big projector screen.
Pretty much their cases matched up to ours.
And I said, "hey, this is our guy here.
"You need to look at him.
"You know, this is similarities here."
But the task force had their sights set
on a different suspect.
Witnesses near to the Charlotte Murray pace
and Gina Wilson green crime scenes had
told police they'd seen a white man in a white pickup truck
around the time of the murders.
They opened it up and they looked at the file,
they saw he was black and they said,
"no, our killer is a white man in a white pickup truck,"
and they closed the file.
Because of that several more women would die.
Because of their certainty
that a white man was committing the murders,
the task force missed an opportunity to capture Derrick Todd Lee,
just three days before the murder of Pam kinamore.
On 9 July, 2002,
Diane Alexander was attacked at her home in breaux bridge,
35mi west of Baton Rouge.
She had been overpowered by a man who had knocked on her door
and asked to use the phone.
He forced his way into her home,
he beat her, he tried to rape her,
he took a computer cord that led to a phone
and he cut that cord
and he was trying to strangle her with that cord
when he stopped for a minute
and he heard her son pulling up in the driveway.
Lee fled from the scene of the crime.
Six days later,
once she had recovered from her ordeal,
Diane Alexander gave detectives
a description of the man who had attacked her.
It's the first time, indeed the only time,
in Derrick Todd Lee's reign of terror,
if you like, that he's made a mistake.
There are obvious clues to what's going on.
They have a suspect.
Then they get a sketch of what the suspect looks like.
And that, of course,
illuminates a number of police officers in the area
to the fact it looks awfully like Derrick Todd Lee.
They had done a photo sketch
and we had done a photo sketch from Michele Chapman
on Derrick Todd Lee.
If we just saw both photographs at the time,
they were very, very much similarity.
Had her son come back ten minutes later,
she would have been dead
and there would be no description of Derrick Todd Lee.
That's the most significant moment in the case.
But it was not connected to the Baton Rouge murders
because Diane Alexander's assailant was black
and by this time police in Baton Rouge
were looking for a white man.
During the search for the elusive killer,
that the press were now calling 'the ghost of Baton Rouge'
1,200 white men in white pick-up trucks,
had their mouths swabbed for DNA.
During the height of the killings,
they were swabbing people left and right.
Hundreds of people were being swabbed and tested,
that was just something that happened.
When you got pulled over, if you were a white male,
and if you were in a certain age group,
you were going to get swiped.
With the task force hunting for the wrong man,
Derrick Todd Lee was able to continue
his killing spree undetected.
In November 2002,
four months after the murder of Pam kinamore,
the body of 23-year-old trineisha dene colomb
was found in a wood, just outside Lafayette, over
50mi west of Baton Rouge.
Trineisha was visiting her mamma's graveyard over there,
Derrick Todd Lee happened upon her
and attacked her and killed her in the graveyard there.
She had been raped, she had been beaten,
her head had been bashed against a tree.
She suffered a horrible end at the hands of this killer.
Police immediately realised
that this could be connected to the Baton Rouge cases.
DNA found on trineisha's body identified her as another victim
of the 'ghost of Baton Rouge'.
Lee killed for a seventh time the following spring,
this time back in Baton Rouge.
26-year-old Carrie Lynn yoder
was kidnapped from her apartment on 3 march, 2003.
Her body was found ten days later.
Carrie Lynn's body was found in whiskey bay,
near where Pam kinamore's body had been found once before.
She had been beaten, she had been raped.
She, like the others,
had experienced a horrific death
at the hands of this maniacal killer.
DNA on Carrie's body linked her to the other victims.
When the task force was offered the services
of a genetics expert to analyse the killer's DNA,
the results shocked them.
The profile suggested the murderer's ancestry
was 85% African.
That changed the whole course of the investigation.
At that time,
they realised perhaps Diane Alexander's attacker
had been their killer
and the composite that Diane Alexander
had help police create started going up on billboards
around Baton Rouge.
The police did press conferences saying,
"yes, we know we told y'all the killer was white,
"but now you need to be looking for a black man
"to attack you not a white man."
So, that pretty much told us then hey
we were looking for an African American male
involved in these cases.
Of course, my thoughts that it's Derrick Todd Lee.
In may 2003, armed with a subpoena,
David and his colleagues knocked on Derrick Todd Lee's door
and were able to obtain a swab of his DNA.
Three weeks later,
the results proved that Lee was the 'ghost of Baton Rouge',
responsible for the murders of Gina Wilson green,
Charlotte Murray pace, Pam kinamore,
trineisha dene colomb, and Carrie Lynn yoder.
Police everywhere were just astonished that
it turned out to be Derrick Todd Lee except for David mcdavid,
who had suspected him all along.
When I walked in, he had all these dignitaries here,
sheriffs, chiefs and there was a lot of people there.
I said, "what's going on?"
They said, "well, we just want to let y'all know the DNA
"all got off Derrick Todd Lee has been connected to all the cases
"in Baton Rouge and Lafayette area."
And it was a relief off of me,
I mean, because it's something in my career
we hoped to solve this case
but also, in the back of my mind,
you know, I said, "hey, all along we had this piece of pie
"and here it is today.
"We solved it".
You know, I smiled, but I knew we had work to do.
We had to find him,
we had to get him off the street before he killed again.
But Derrick Todd Lee was no longer in Louisiana,
he had taken off soon after the DNA swab was taken.
The task force had their man,
but now, they had to track him down, fast.
On 26 may, 2003,
a warrant had been issued for the arrest of serial killer,
Derrick Todd Lee.
Three weeks after a swab of his cheek had yielded
undeniable proof that he was the killer,
the 34-year-old had fled town.
But he was soon tracked down, 500mi away from Baton Rouge,
in Georgia.
The us marshals called me that night from Atlanta, said, "hey, look,
"we know he's in this area."
I said, "I'm telling you something, you better find him.
"He knows the gig is up, the game is up.
"He's going to kill again before he gets caught,"
and luckily they found him,
I think walking down the street
close to a college area there in Atlanta
that night and was able to arrest him
and get him off the street before he killed again.
Derrick Todd Lee was arrested on 27 may, 2003
and extradited back to Louisiana.
The killer was finally in custody,
much to the relief of everyone in and around Baton Rouge.
When Derrick Todd Lee was arrested and brought back here from Atlanta,
he was the most talked-about item anywhere,
in the coffee shops and restaurants and bars.
Everyone in Baton Rouge just sighed a huge sigh of relief.
I mean, we were so happy
that we didn't have to be afraid anymore.
Lee was in custody,
but he wasn't saying a word to detectives.
Even without a confession though,
the police were finding out more and more
about the killer by the day.
When the investigators figured out that he was the prime suspect,
they executed search warrants and found different items,
cell phones, keys,
and other things that belonged to the victims,
that helped convict him.
Derrick Todd Lee always took an article,
but mostly his was keys.
And what he was doing based on my experience,
he had these items
so, he could relive them cases over and over again.
That's what a serial killer does,
they go back and relive these cases over and over again
for sexual gratification.
As the investigation into Lee's past continued,
his DNA linked him to a sixth victim.
When Derrick Todd Lee was arrested,
his DNA had been found on five of the victims,
Pam kinamore, Charlotte Murray pace, Gina Wilson green,
Carrie Lynn yoder and dene colomb.
After Derrick Todd Lee was arrested his DNA was tested against
DNA that had been found
underneath geralyn desoto's fingernails
and everyone was surprised when that DNA matched
because everyone had thought that her husband had killed her.
And Zachary detective David mcdavid
was about to get an unexpected result,
over 5.5 years in the making.
Proof that Lee had killed randi mebruer
in April 1998.
We didn't know a whole lot about DNA evidence
being from a small agencies,
but once we were able to connect his DNA profile
to all the other cases,
we had then the police check our evidence
and see if we had any DNA evidence on him in our
stuff that we submitted.
And sure enough,
we found semen on the pink trash bags
that came back to Derrick Todd Lee, positive for his profile
and I was able to do an arrest warrant
for murder for him on that case.
Despite the validation for the police,
randi mebruer's body has never been found.
Investigators wanted justice for all seven of Lee's victims
and began to prepare for the trials.
But the killer's defence team
were hoping to use Lee's lack of intelligence
to their advantage.
People will look at the case of Lee
and highlight the fact that he had quite a low IQ
and very often defence teams will try and use this
as some kind of mitigation,
claiming that this individual isn't responsible for what they did
because of their low IQ,
but I'm in no doubt
that this guy knew exactly what he was doing
and he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Derrick Todd Lee was deemed fit to stand trial,
they argued that although he wasn't intellectually
maybe as smart as others,
he was street smart, he had maintained jobs,
he had lived like anybody else does
and he was smart enough to plan out every single one of these murders.
So, it was rule
that he was deemed fit to stand trial.
In August 2004 Lee was in court,
charged with the January 2002 murder of geralyn desoto.
There were two trials held for Derrick Todd Lee.
The first one was in west Baton Rouge parish.
Prosecutor Tony Clayton tried Derrick Todd Lee
for the murder of geralyn bar desoto.
He was charged with second-degree murder
because there were no underlying felonies
and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Lee was safely behind bars for life,
but the community of Baton Rouge
wanted him to pay an even heavier price
for his murders.
Prosecutors were determined that Lee should get the death penalty
and the following month, September 2004,
he was back in court,
this time charged with the capital murder
of Charlotte Murray pace.
Reporter Jim Shannon was a regular in the east Baton Rouge courthouse.
I covered every bit of it.
The media circus, as it was,
was because you had crews from New Orleans,
Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and lake Charles.
All of south Louisiana was covering this case
because everybody,
many of the victims had families in all of those different areas.
Jim had the opportunity to see the serial killer up close.
When you would see Derrick Todd Lee come into the courtroom,
he would be dressed extremely well.
Closely shaved, trimmed up, so to speak.
So, he was very cognizant of what he looked like
and what he wanted to present as himself.
On 12 October, 2004,
after just 90 minutes of deliberations,
the jury returned an overwhelming verdict.
Derrick Todd Lee was convicted
of the murder of Charlotte Murray pace
and the jury sentenced him to death.
Had they not gotten the death penalty,
they could have used any one of the other victims
to try him again until they found a death penalty.
They were determined to get Derrick Todd Lee
on death row.
Although only convicted of two murders,
DNA linked Lee to seven in total
and experts believe he could have been killing
as early as 1992.
In August of that year, 23-year-old Connie Warner
was bludgeoned to death with a hammer,
just a few blocks away from the home of randi mebruer.
It was difficult to track down who might have killed Connie Warner
because there was a hurricane,
which all the evidence was washed away
and they didn't find the body for seven days.
Connie Warner's family knew in their hearts
and from all the evidence I told them
that he was involved in her case.
If you looked out randi mebruer's house right now
and looked around the corner like that,
you can see Connie Warner's house.
The family knew. They knew he was involved.
They were satisfied with the case,
you know, they were satisfied with the convictions.
Susan Mustafa went to speak with Lee
in the Louisiana state penitentiary in Angola
while he was on death row,
but she was met with short shrift.
He certainly never showed any remorse or guilt,
he never confessed.
I sat outside of his cell and watched him
and he climbed underneath the covers and wouldn't look at me
and then he finally sat up
and he started playing with his toilet paper
and refused to look at me the whole time I was there.
He wouldn't talk to anybody,
and he never showed any signs of remorse.
Derrick Todd Lee spent less than 12 years on death row,
but he was never executed.
He died of heart disease on 21 January, 2016.
He was 47 years old.
My understanding was he was already in bad shape
leaving from Angola and he died the next day,
you know, and,
you know, he had to go meet his maker
and he had to answer for what he did.
Lee's death was a relief for the man
who had invested a lot of time in making sure
the killer was caught.
I knew that he could not harm nobody else ever again,
that he would never be able to escape from jail
if he ever tried to harm anybody else.
I think the good lord... took him
and, you know, I think that...
You know, he had to answer for what he did.
And it was a relief.
You know, I don't want to ever see nobody die,
but this type of evil person had no business living on earth.
In the community, Lee's death was greeted with relief.
The 'ghost of Baton Rouge' had finally been exorcised.
He was vicious, he was violent, he invaded people's homes,
invaded their lives and then took their lives.
He wasn't even really human.
He had an ego, when he was rejected, he killed.
There's other people worked this case,
but all along my gut feeling was him,
we held that piece of pie and then we solved this case
and one of the most brutal serial killers I knew of,
you know, we stopped him from killing anybody else.
Lee was extremely dangerous,
a seemingly charming man who could talk his way
into women's homes before raping them
and ending their lives.
He was brutal, callous and,
ultimately, remorseless
in his quest to fulfil his sexual perversions,
making Derrick Todd Lee
one of the world's most evil killers.
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