A Little Less Mess: [Louisiana] The Baton Rouge Serial Killer - Derrick Todd Lee

**Cara** (0:21)
Hey everyone, welcome to Bless This Mess and The True Crime Podcast. I'm Cara, Jess Cara. This is A Little Less Mess. It's our regular episodes, minus all the banter and silliness and my husband. So it's just me, I tell our case of the week, and just very straightforward. So if you like this type, I do try to put them out weekly. I'm trying to get better at that on schedule. So look out for those. If you wanna hear the episode with me and my husband, where we are silly and go off track and everything, those are the numbered episodes in the feed, and those come out usually on Thursdays each week. Before we get started, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who's written us a review. We appreciate you. Also, our Patreons. If you do wanna join Patreon, it's patreon.com/bless this mess podcast. It's only $3 a month, and you get the regular episodes 24 hours early and ad free, as well as we do a semi-regular shoot the poo, which is just me and my husband talking about our lives. Sometimes we go through a true crime documentary, things like that. We're also on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, where I share our dinners each night. I know that's not true crime related, but that just seems to be what everyone's enjoying. So I do share some true crime documentary recommendations, as well as our dinners.
This week we are in Louisiana. We have been covering the serial killers that were operating in the area, in the Baton Rouge area from the mid 90s to the early 2000s. And so we have done two of the serial killers so far. We'll do the other one next week. So I'm going to start with the first one, which is Derrick Todd Lee. All right, so let's get into it. The story of the Baton Rouge serial murders began as a series of isolated investigations across southern Louisiana, leaving multiple homicides unresolved for over a decade. So in 1992, Connie Warner vanished from her home in Zachary, Louisiana. Her body was found a week later near a lake. She died from a skull fracture. Because Hurricane Andrew struck the region two days after her disappearance, physical outdoor evidence was destroyed. Lacking forensic leads, police focused on Connie's ex-boyfriend and her daughter's boyfriend. Both faced years of interrogation and suspicion before being cleared. In April of 1998, a second crime occurred one block from Connie's former home. Randy Jane Maybror was abducted from her residence. Her three-year-old son walked to a neighbor's house alone the next morning to report her missing. Police found a blood-stained house, but Randy's body was never located. Detectives focused on Randy's ex-husband, screening and interrogating him before ruling him out. Lacking a body or weapon, the case went cold. In September 2001, Gina Wilson Green was found raped and strangled inside her home near the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge. Because Gina lived alone, detectives vetted local transients and professional acquaintances without success. Forensic technicians extracted and preserved a semen sample from the scene.
Now, in January 2002, Jerelyn Barr De Soto was murdered inside her mobile home in Addis, Louisiana. She was beaten, stabbed, and her throat was slashed. Police immediately arrested her husband, Darren De Soto, based on a neighbor's report of a past argument. Darren was held under suspicion until initial DNA testing proved a foreign contributor killed Jerelyn.
Now, in May 2002, Charlotte Murray Pace was attacked inside her Baton Rouge townhouse. She fought her attacker across multiple rooms before being stabbed over 80 times. Forensic scientists extracted DNA from the skin tissue of Charlotte trapped under her fingernails during the struggle. The markers matched the DNA profile found at Gina Wilson-Green's crime scene, confirming that a single unidentified serial killer was operating in the area.
The body count continued to rise. In July 2002, Pamela Kenamore was abducted from her home. Her body was found with her throat slit near the Whiskey Bay off-ramp of Interstate 10
In November 2002, Trenisha Dene Colom was abducted from a cemetery in Grand Coteau and bludgeoned to death. In March of 2003, Carrie Lynn Yoder was kidnapped from her LSU apartment and strangled. Her body was left at the same Whiskey Bay site. A multi-agency task force was formed, but investigators relied heavily on a profile from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, stating that the killer was a white male between 25 and 35 years old. This was supported by a witness who, under police hypnosis, claimed to see a white man driving an old white pickup truck near a crime scene. But if you are familiar with that area, most work vehicles, a white pickup truck can be seen at any time. Based on this profile, the task force collected DNA swabs from over 1200 white men. Investigators received multiple citizen tips naming a specific individual, but because that suspect was black, they dismissed the tips and did not test his DNA for months. The investigation was further complicated because other serial killers were active in the Baton Rouge area at the same time. Sean Vincent Gillis, a white male, murdered eight women between 1994 and 2004 Because Sean matched the FBI profile, his crime skewed the task force data, causing police to treat separate murder patterns as the work of one person. A third killer, Jeffrey Lee Guillory, was also active, creating further forensic overlap. The breakthrough in the case finally came from a surviving victim and new technology. In July of 2002, a man entered the home of Diane Alexander under the ruse of using her phone. He attacked her, but Diane fought back, delaying him until her son arrived and scared the assailant away.