Derrick Todd Lee Victims

Case background and investigation

Between 2001 and 2003 a series of killings of women in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was tied together by DNA. According to a timeline published by WBRZ, Gina Wilson Green was found raped and strangled in her home on Stanford Avenue, near Louisiana State University, on September 24, 2001. Geralyn DeSoto, 21, was found dead at home by her husband on January 14, 2002. Charlotte Murray Pace, 22, was found stabbed to death in her apartment on May 31, 2002.

WAFB reported that in July 2002 the Louisiana State Police crime lab found the same unknown DNA profile at the Green and Pace scenes, and the Baton Rouge police chief announced that a single killer appeared to be responsible. That same month Pam Kinamore, 44, was taken from her home; her body was found days later near the Whiskey Bay exit of Interstate 10. Trineisha Dene Colomb, 23, was abducted from Lafayette in November 2002, and LSU graduate student Carrie Lynn Yoder, 26, was abducted in March 2003. WBRZ reported that DNA linked all of these cases.

On July 9, 2002, Diane Alexander was attacked in her home in Breaux Bridge and survived when her son arrived. She helped police produce a composite sketch.

According to CNN, police in Zachary, north of Baton Rouge, had long regarded Lee as suspicious in connection with two local cases from 1992 and 1998, and obtained a court order for a sample of his DNA on May 5, 2003. After the composite sketch was released, Zachary officers urged the task force to have his sample tested quickly. It matched. An arrest warrant for the murder of Carrie Yoder was issued on May 26, 2003, and Atlanta police arrested Lee the next day. He was returned to Louisiana that week. Wikipedia's account states that investigators had earlier focused on white men because of an offender profile and witness reports; that point is not confirmed in the other sources opened.

On August 10, 2004, a West Baton Rouge Parish jury convicted Lee of the second-degree murder of Geralyn DeSoto, and he received a life sentence. A second jury convicted him of the first-degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, and he was sentenced to death in October 2004. He was not tried for the other killings. WAFB reported that he was suspected in seven deaths between 1998 and 2003, including that of Randi Mebruer of Zachary, who disappeared in 1998.

Lee remained on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. A corrections department spokeswoman told WAFB that he died on the morning of January 21, 2016, at a hospital where he had been taken several days earlier. He was 47. The prosecutor in the DeSoto trial said Lee had denied responsibility to the end.