S1: E25 – The South Louisiana Serial Killer, Part 2

During the early two thousands, women in bad and Rouge lived in constant fear of the South Louisiana serial killer.

Police found Gina Wilson Green strangled to death on September twenty fourth of two thousand and one, and her home in May police found Charlotte Murray Pace stabbed to death.

He had just completed her MBA at LSU and with the proximity of the Pace in Green murder scenes, female students were terrified.

That terror grew when Pam Kinnemore became the third victim.

Kinnemore disappeared from her Badenburge home in two thousand and two. Days later, her body turned up in Whiskey Bay under the Iten after investigators determined that the suspect was most likely as serials formed a task force their goal to find the man who had spread so much fear across South Louisiana.

With at least five victims. The task force had a big job to do, but it would be a small police department outside Baton Rouge that ultimately would solve this case. I'm slung glass and this is the conclusion of the South Louisiana serial killer. On American homicide. A note that this episode contained some graphic content. Please take care while listening.

You know, people wanted to saw because, I mean it was very bad at the time, very scary.

Detective David McDavid attended that meeting.

Women here they were afraid. They afraid to go out walt, they were afraid to go shopping, They were afraid to go anywhere by themselves. You saw parents questioning if everyone to send their daughters to LSU because several of the crimes happened close to LSU campus.

Detective McDavid worked for the Zachary Police Department, a small city about fifteen minutes north of Baton Rouge.

Zachary's on the Outskirts I mean, we've probably in my career had ten or lesser.

Murders, and he felt like one of those murders might be the work of the serial killer. The case involved a divorced mom named Randy me Brewer. In nineteen ninety eight. The police found a trail of blood at her home, but no sign of Randy. Based on the evidence, the police believed Randy was killed and then removed from her home.

The body was dragged from the bedroom throughout the house and through the dining living room area, and you could see where the body was set outside the front door, and her child was left there at the house.

Police believe Randy's three year old son was asleep at the time his mother was murdered.

The child had walked over to the neighbor's house and wanted to come over and play, and the neighbor, you know, let's go ask your mama, and he said, well, my mom was not there. The neighbors walked in and were blood in the house everywhere. You know. One thing that really bothered us is the killer looked in on the child. You could see where he went into the bedroom with the blood droplets on the child's door.

The police never found Randy's body, but they found the killer's DNA at the scene.

I told my partner said, you know who it is. There was no doubt in our mind it was Derrick Toddley.

Derek Toddley. He was the suspect in Randy's murder, and he was also someone the Zachary PD had dealt with for years.

He was committing burgeries as a juvenile, breaking in the homes, peeping tom but he also had a violence side to him. He beat up on some people, so he spent a little time in jail, but you could see the pattern progressedly getting worse as time went on, and he just get more violent.

Derek Toddley went from being charged with peeping into women's homes to stalking and beating up multiple women. The Zachary Police got a tip that Derek Toddley had something to do with Randy mean Brewer's murder, and since they had previously arrested him for peeping into homes in this same neighborhood where Randy lived, detectives questioned him and searched his home.

The whole time. You know, he acted like he was in you know, he didn't do nothing wrong. The look he had. You could tell he was you know, he was just evil. Just talking to him, my hair stood up on the back of my neck.

Halfway through their search of his home, Derek Toddley told the cops to leave. He lawyered up and stopped cooperating with their investigation, and that's where things ended. Detective McDavid told the Battermange PD how they never had enough evidence to charge Lee, but they kept an eye on him, and based on how the serial killer was operating, he believed it was Derek Todd Lee and Lee drove a white truck.

Trucker had saw a white truck on the Whiskey Bay Bridge with what appeared to be a white male with a nicket female in the passioner's side, and you know that's what was given to the FBI profilers who come up with a profile.

Detective McDavid shared why he thought Derek Todd Lee was the serial killer. If you remember, the serial killer was thought to be a white male with a white truck, but the bat and Rouge team did not pursue the lead because Derek Todd Lee was black and didn't fit the profile.

People look at the serial killer as a white male and that's where people got thrown off. In this case, here they were looking for a white male. It bothered me somewhat, but there was no doubt in our mind it was Derek Toddley. We knew that he was doing stuff. If we could get his DNA owness and connect him to the crime, I knew we can get him arrested, get him off the street. So he began to be our main focus.

The Zachary PD continued to do surveillance on Derek todd Lee. In the following spring, he was back to his old trecks.

I got a call from lady here in town and she stated she'd been jogging every morning. A white truck was following her, So, you know, we did some surveillance there. We never did see him, but you know, we showed her a picture and she swore him down. That was him that was following her in a white truck.

Investigator searched around her home and found some bootprints right outside her window, leading them to believe someone had been peeping.

Evidently he saw her and kind of got attached onto her and was watching her, probably finna make his movie. He was very careful and how he got in the area and got back out without being seen.

Law enforcements suspected Derek Toddley, but once again they didn't have enough to arrest him, so they tried a different approach. They still had that DNA evidence from Randy meet Brewer's house and wanted to test it against Dereck todd Lee's but they needed a judge to sign off on a subpoena to get that swab. So they put together a timeline of the unsolved murders and compared it to what was going on in Derek todd Lee's life.

What vehicle he was driving, what job he was working at? Was a body found during that time? Was he fired from his job? Was he laid off? So with that I began seeing a pattern with Dereck todd Lee.

The pattern showed the traumatic events in Dereck Toddley's life, like getting fired or filing bankruptcy. Well, they all happened right before the serial killer struck. Was it simply a coincidence? Detective McDavid didn't think, So.

I knew Rodney in there was Derek todd Lee.

His team presented the information to a judge and the judge ordered Derek Toddley to be swapped. Almost three weeks later, Active McDavid got a phone call from the Task Force.

Look, we just want to let y'all know the DNA. Y'all got his a confirmed match.

Derek todd Lee's DNA match the DNA found on all five victims. I mean, the small group from Zachary Louisiana had unmassed the South Louisiana serial killer.

This has been the most serious case, tough case that I've ever worked on. I mean the stuff he did where he dumped the bodies at and the bayou's and waterways. I mean, he was smart and just the stress and what this area went through, in the Baton Rouge area and the citizens of the state went through because I mean, he was everwhere, com many crimes. He just didn't know where he was going to show up next.

And that was their next problem. Nearly three weeks had passed from the time they swamped his DNA to when they got the results. So when police went to arrest Derek Toddley, home appeared to be abandoned and a foreclosure notice was stuck to the front door.

I think the day we got his DNA, he took off.

The man believed to have killed five women in South Louisiana over the course of eighteen months, had again slipped out of reach. That's when the Baton Rouge police chief went.

On TV an arrest ward has been issued for the arrest of Derek todd Lee. He is to be considered armed and dangerous and authority should be notified immediately.

That began a nationwide man hunt.

I said, look, I'm days. If he knows he's about to be called, he's probably from the kill again. Y'all need to find him.

Just one day into a nationwide man hunt for Derek Toddley, police arrested him without incident in Atlanta, and when his mugshot hit the news, all of South Louisiana couldn't believe it.

Well, none of this matches anything the police had told us for a very long time, and it just didn't piece together and it didn't make sense.

Journalist Melinda de Lott had covered the story for nearly a year. Most of that time, she reported that the police were looking for a white male in a white truck.

The police in Baton Rouge led people down a lot of rabbit trails that ended up not being credible, so they got a lot of blowback about that. The police chief and a lot of other people who had been very engaged in that case got very defensive of what they had done and how they had handled it. There

At the time of his arrest, Derek Todd Lee was thirty four years old. He was married, He even had children and a girlfriend on the side. Here's Prosecutor Dana Cummings.

And I found that really bizarre that somebody that was actually married in relationships was doing that.

The profile said that this was someone who would be a loner, and this was a man who was surrounded by women. You've a married father of two who also had a girlfriend on the side, charged with killing a handful of women in South Louisiana.

You know you can understand people that do things in like heat of passion. Somebody walks in and finds their spouse cheating, you can understand that you don't like it, but you can understand that they may lose it, and they may get emotional, and they may do something that they regret later. But I don't remember anything that I learned of him to say, oh, well, no wonder, no wonder he did that.

Derek Toddlee was born in South Louisiana. His troubles began at the age of eleven, when he first started peeping into the windows of girls. Growing up, he attended special education classes. He later dropped out of school and married his high school sweetheart. A year later, she accused him of abusing her. Journalist Melinda Delotte interviewed people who knew Derek Toddley.

People said nice things about him.

His neighbors, for example, called him polite, friendly, and well dressed.

So despite how he came across to people, he clearly had a background of some disturbing behavior regarding women, because he had been arrested before for trespassing and peeking in the houses and stalking as part of the peeping Tom kind of allegations and then he was accused of beating up a woman, like some sort of fight in a bar. He was convicted and he was sentenced to jail for

By two thousand and four, Derek Todd Lee's DNA connected him with the murders of two more people, another LSU grad student and a twenty eight year old woman from Zachary. There was now seven women that Lee was accused of killing, but prosecutors decided to only try the cases they believed had the best shot at winning.

I'm John Stinkfield. I'm prosecutor and los Ana. Since nineteen seventy one, I specialized in trying capital murder cases in East Batton, Rugs Parish, and I had three people actually executed that I prosecuted.

In the fall of two thousand and four, Derreck Todd Lee stood trial for the murder of Murray Peace. She was the twenty two year old LSU grad who was sexually assaulted and stabbed eighty one times. John Sinkfield was the Lee prosecutor.

I give the knowledge. It's like a gold miner. A gold miner's got to work where there's goal. A murder prosecutor's got to work where their murders. In Baton Rouge was a good place for my career.

In this case, the prosecutor was seeking capital punishment.

And I had no problem asking these jurors to return a death penalty against derreck todd Lee based on the evidence that I thought proved beyond a reasonable doubt until Moorrow certainty that he had committed all these crimes.

Throughout his trial, Derek Todd Lee sat quietly and appeared motionless. He was represented by a team of public defenders.

You may have heard bad things about public defenders, but not in this case. He had a top notch team.

In fact, neither the lead defense attorney nor the prosecutor had ever lost a capital case.

They set it up as a mano a mano contest, almost like a sporting event, and headlines were two very experienced lawyers will face each other off tomorrow in the Batteryge court room. Neither one of them has ever lost a capital case. In this case, one of them is going to lose.

After weeks of jury selection and a short delay from a hurricane, the case involving the murder of Murray Pace began in October two thousand and four.

In that trial, I had some hard decisions to.

Think, specifically whether to calls my witnesses who reported seeing someone outside of Murray Pace's home.

There's three or four witnesses that claimed have seen Derrick Todd Lee in that area around her condo in the day's previous to the assault and murder, but they had given some descriptions that didn't exactly match, so they had some vulnerability, I thought, and then I made a decision one night during that trial not to use the eyewitnesses, to go just with the DNA.

For the first few days of the trial. That's what the prosecution did. They called witness after witness to speak about the DNA evidence.

We put on the DNA evidence, only have them put on a defense saying that our criminalists who were examined the DNA evidence were young and inexperienced, that there were some sloppy procedures in the lab, that a swab was found in one of the boxes, which was related to the cases that our computer systems that analyze this evidence was old and out of date, and there was some attempt, you know, like possibly to frame him or something like that.

As the defense attacked his DNA evidence, it left the prosecutor second guessing his strategy.

I've eliminated three or four five witnesses, and I put on this powerful case of the DNA only to sit there and pray that my career wasn't going to go straight out the window because I had never seen a DNA defense like that, and you're praying that the jury don't buy.

The prosecution saved their star witness until the very end. That's when they called the forty six year old nurse named Diane Alexander.

Diane Alexander explained what it was like, in her words, to be attacked by Dereck Todd Lee and survived.

Diane reported being attacked by Derrick Todd Lee during the summer to and two. It happened inside her home about an hour outside that en rouge, and her testimony was huge for prosecutors. Although we don't have that audio. Diane described the attack on a series called La Gospel Beats.

There was a knock at the door, so when I opened the door. There was this fair, complexed young man standing outside my door.

Diane said she didn't recognize.

The man, and he said, Hi, my name is Anthony. I'm looking for the Montgomerys and I'm supposed to do construction for them.

Diane told him he must be at the wrong house. She didn't know the Montgomerys, and.

He said, do you think your husband might know? And I knew my husband was at work, but I just told him my husband doesn't know who these people are.

And then he asked Diane one more time, are you sure your husband doesn't know who those people are?

I said, look, my husband's not home.

The blue all hell broke loose. He was strong, he was bigger. He pushed his way in her door and attacked her. Within just a few seconds or minutes, he had her down, trying to strangler with a phone cord.

His intentions was to rape and kill me. That was his intentions.

Over the next few minutes, he struck Diane on her head and stomped on her chest, all the while he threatened to stab her in the eye with his knife.

And in my left ear, he whispered. He said, I've been watching you.

And then all of a sudden, the sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway made him.

Freeze, and not long after my son showed up.

Diane's son was a college student who came home early that morning. He chased the man but lost him. He reported seeing his mother's attacker drive off in a gold colored sedan with a big telephone court hanging out the window. In a dramatic moment, the prosecutor asked Diane for her attacker, who claimed his name was Anthony, was in the courtroom that day.

She looked right at Dereck todd Lee and she said, that's him.

It was powerful testimony, but things wouldn't go as smoothly. During cross examination, jurors heard several DNA experts describe how Derek todd Lee's DNA was found on the victim murray pace. As you can imagine, that testimony was complex, but when Diane Alexander took the stand, she provided something no other witness could do. She described how Derek tod Lee was able to get inside her home. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings.

So he goes to the door and he's asking her questions and asking her I'm looking for somebody, and she said he was very very polite at first, well spoken, I mean, that's the way he came across. And then when he said, well, ask your husband, and I think she said he's not home or something to that effect, and that's when he just changed his personality, forced his way into the trailer and started attacking her, just viciously,

And Diane's testimony came with another key piece of evidence.

He used a cord, a phone cord to try to strangle her, and that phone cord when he left, he grabbed it and.

Took it with him.

As a matter of fact, the son who came home described a cord hanging out of the vehicle. And that's important because three days later he attacked Pam Kinnemore.

Diane Alexander was attacked on July ninth. Pam Kinnimore was attacked and killed July twelfth. Pam's body was later found in Whiskey Bay.

They're looking out there at Whiskey Bay and on a like a roadway there is a cord, and sure enough they were later able to match it to the cord that was back at a Diane Alexander's house. So that was a nice little piece of evidence, because, you know, it was fine to have the DNA, and DNA is such incredible evidence, but it was also nice to have a little bit different piece of evidence that will corroborate that.

During her time on the stand, Diane was calm and spoke matter factly. Here's lee Prosecutor John Sinkfield.

After she testified, if I'd had any doubt about the DNA part of the parts of the elements to myself, I said, this case.

Is over, but it wasn't. During cross examination, Diane slipped up. She gave conflicting information about what Derek Tidley wore the morning he attacked her. The defense also questioned why Diane told medical personnel she couldn't remember any details about the attack. Diane explained that she was hospitalized for five days and was in and out of it. Things got so tense during cross examination that Diane asked the defense lawyer, why are you trying to confuse me?

I was stepping up in my office. Then well, you know, wonder what the opportunities like in Minnesota, or you know, for a guy with my accent are, because if I lose this case, I may be out of here.

During closing arguments, prosecutor John Sinfield reminded the jury of what he called the silent witness.

Dereck Todd Lee's DNA. When Derck Todd Lee pushed his way in her door and attacked her, he picked the wrong woman that day, over and over again. She was stout, She fought back, and she scratched him. And when she scratched him, she got skin cells with DNA off of him. If you take the population of the Earth and multiplied by five hundred and fourteen thousand times, you wouldn't find another DNA match to Dereck Todd Lee. He was one person out of three point six quadrigon.

The defense never called any witnesses. They simply picked apart the prosecution's case, suggesting that there were errors collecting and processing that DNA.

We put on seventy witnesses, one hundred pieces of evidence and two hundred photographs of that trial. And then, of course we had Diane Alexander, which explained what it was like, in her words, to be attacked by Derrick Todd Lee and survived. She was the only person alive that had survived.

In their closing arguments, the defense questioned how a special education drop out like Derreck Todd Lee could murder all these women without leaving behind a fingerprint, a tire track, or any trace of evidence. They also reminded the jury that for years the Zachary Police Department placed Derreck Todd Lee under heavy surveillance, So with all those eyes on him, how could he have killed Murray Pace or any of the other victims. But Prosecutor Sinkfield got in the final word.

I told him, let me tell you something. What I'm about to say is not politically correct, but I'm gonna say it anyway. You see Obama like Charlotte Murray Pace. She's beautiful, smart, she's accomplished, she's well dressed. Men will kill each other over a woman like her, and some men will kill her just for a few minutes of sexual gratification with her. And that's what the evidence has shown that Derrick Todley did. There's no doubt that she lost her life in a fight. Fight's not over yet.

After less than eighty minutes of deliberation, the jury returned on the count of first degree murder. They convicted Derek Tudley.

When the verdict came out, the real issue I think is this he going to receive the death belt.

Throughout the trial, the defense claimed Dereck Toddley was mentally challenged and that would take the death penalty off the table and trigger an automatic life sentence. Here's prosecutor Data Cummings.

They tried to say he's mentally challenged and should not be executed.

In two thousand and two, the US Supreme Court ruled that executing anyone with an intellectual disability was unconstitutional.

And so we had a long hearing about whether or not he was actually mentally and capable. There were various reports about his IQ, but it was just so clear that he could pull off these crimes without being seen. I mean, that did take planning, and that did take a certain amount of intelligence.

An hour and a half later, the jury returned. They all agreed that Derek Toddley should die by lethal injection. As he was let out of the courtroom, the usually stoic Derek Toddley erupted. Journalist Melinda Delott was there that day.

He held up a vee for victory kind of and he shouted to his family something about God, don't sleep, and they don't want to tell you about the DNA that they took. I don't know that we ever really got a good explanation, but clearly he was trying to get at that suggestion that somehow law enforcement planned at the DNA evidence that convicted him.

Outside the courtroom, Lee's lawyer addressed the media.

His lawyer said he wasn't surprised by the verdict, but that Derek Childley cried after he left the courtroom. We did not see that.

Prosecutor John Sinfield also spoke to the media.

The question they asked me was were you worried to just make you nervous? Rather than saying yes, I was about to jump off the seventh floor of the courthouse, my answer was goodnight. The South lose in a serial killer got South Louise Ina justice. He got the depth hilt.

Here's audio from Murray Pece's mother, An from that press conference.

I think we thought when it came back so quickly, I.

Just can't believe it's finally happened.

I'm overwhelmed.

Throughout the trial and even during the press conference, Anne was surrounded by the families of the other victims. In a separate trial, Derrek tud Lee was convicted of murdering LSU student Jarrelyn Desto. He was sentenced to life in prison, and just like during her daughter's trial, Anne was there to support Jarrelyn's family.

We formed like a sort of fraternity that you don't want to be in, where everybody felt very close to everybody else, because who in the world understands that but us. We called it the Casablanca question of all the gin joints in all the world. Did he pick my daughter?

And why?

That's one of the questions you never have an answer to.

And planned to be there the day Derek Tuddley was executed, but that day never came.

For interrupting your program with what will be a sigh of relief for many families here in South Louisiana.

Sirra Kuler Derek Toddley died at a hospital in Zachary this morning.

He had been there since Saturday.

Derek Toddley was forty seven years old. He'd been on death row since that conviction. A decade ago. In twenty sixteen, Derek Toudley died in prison. His cause of death was heart disease. And for and Pace, that news was bittersweet.

All of it was truly like stepping off the edge of a cliff into an alternate universe in which you had no control whatsoever.

She told a local newspaper. The end of the fight feels like a loss, feels like I'm armored for battle, only to find you have no opponent. The years of legal wrangling over Derek todd Lee's execution came to an abrupt ending.

We had spent eleven years in court, which means every time your life gets a little bit normal, you're snatched back into the nightmare.

With the nightmare over and finally began the healing process.

It was like literally falling off the edge of the world, and all of a sudden you came to live in a new world that was darker and hotter and had sharper edges, and that stays with you. You don't get to leave that world when it's over.

Anne had Murray's remains cremated. The reason she's just heartbreaking. She said it was the only way she could get rid of every molecule Derek Toddley left on her daughter. She sprinkled her daughter's ashes in life London, Paris, and Egypt, places Murray always wanted to visit, but never got the chance.

I can truly say I've never had a day that I don't think of her more than once, sometimes several times. And I think, you know when somebody you love like that dies, that some of you goes with them.

I don't think they go along.

I think you keep the memories and send the rest with them.

Next time on American Homicide, after a teenager's death was ruled a suicide, her mother goes on a decade's long crusade to find the truth. Will had to Ancher, j Alaska for the case of who killed Bonnie Craig, I'm slung glass. That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod.