Original subtitles

- [Tony] In around 2002,

we start having this strange

plethora of murders taking place.

[static hissing] - The body of a woman

found murdered on Pride Port Hudson Road.

- [Angela] We had almost 30 unsolved murders

and that's just women.

- [Reporter] Sheriff detectives say

they found the nude body of a 43-year-old woman.

- This was developing a pattern.

- This is a white female.

- [Susan] He raped her.

- [Woman] She was stabbed ever 80 times.

- [Susan] He beat her.

- [Woman] She had been strangled.

- [Woman 2] I mean, everybody was scared.

We all were in danger, [camera shutter clicking]

'cause he was going after all ages.

- [Avery] Authorities were looking for

a white male and a white truck with peeling paint.

- [Pat] We went back and pulled victims

that died under certain circumstances,

and we pulled all the records

to see if we had any DNA.

- I was able to identify a male DNA profile.

- [Susan] The murders of Gina Wilson Green

and Charlotte Murray Pace had already

been linked by police.

Within days, Pam Kinamore would be

added to that list, making it three,

the unfortunate number that makes for a serial killer.

[dark guitar music] ♪ They call me

♪ The Butcher in the Bayou

♪ They call me

♪ The Butcher in the Bayou

♪ They call me

♪ The Butcher in the Bayou ♪ The Butcher in the Bayou

♪ The Butcher in the Bayou

[dark guitar music]

[twanging guitar music]

- [Avery] In August of 2002,

that's really when kind of tensions

got high here in Baton Rouge.

- Everywhere you went, people were suspicious.

They were beginning to, basically, unravel.

[thunder rumbling]

- [Greg] It was one of those things

where people were just, literally,

seeing that happen and think, "Who's next?"

- [David] It was pretty tense here for a while

and people were scared.

- [Woman] I don't think that I would ever walk alone.

Ever since that happened,

that's just made us more aware of stuff like that.

- [Pat] As soon as you put out word

that you potentially have a serial killer,

there's a panic that goes through

a community that's hard to stop.

Let us pull together today

to show a force of strength

and send a message to this offender.

No more victims.

- [John] Police received information

that they believed that a white man in a white truck

exited the Whiskey Bay exit on I-10 West,

with a nude woman in his car.

And of course, two of the victim's bodies

were found out there.

And all of a sudden then

the investigation focused on white guys

driving white pickup trucks.

- [Casey] I had male friends

that had white trucks and they said

they hated to go get gas.

They hated to get out at the gas station

to pump their gas, because people saw them

in their white truck and wondered

if it could be them.

- [Woman 3] It became a very frenzied environment,

law enforcement and The Advocate, the newspaper,

you know, were very concerned about

starting rumors or making everybody more fearful

that we might have a serial killer,

because media was going crazy.

- Sheriff detectives say they found the

nude body of a 43-year-old woman.

[overlapping reports]

- [Reporter] The silent witness.

- [Avery] Every single day,

some story about the serial killer

or even the potential of another victim,

'cause anytime another woman died,

immediately the question was,

is it the serial killer?

[dramatic music]

[dial ticking backwards]

[twanging guitar music]

- [Rachel] I'm Rachel Ehricht,

I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

and my mother was Ann Bryan.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom,

she was a very interesting person.

My mom was born with only one hand,

but she was very talented.

She could play the piano, she could drive, she could sew.

She painted, she was a very active artist.

Here's some of my mother's paintings.

These are some zinnias, this is a special painting,

I always loved this painting.

In fact, she sold it one time and I made her

go back and get it from the person

just 'cause I liked it a lot.

And these are some sunflowers,

she loved to paint sunflowers.

We have several sunflower pictures that she painted.

This is from 1976.

She did sell a lot of her paintings.

[melancholic music]

She was living at St. James Place,

it's a retirement center here.

She had moved into there because

two or three years before, she had fallen

and she had broken her left shoulder,

which meant that she couldn't

use her left hand at the time,

and since she didn't have a right hand,

she was totally incapacitated for a while,

so she moved there.

We went over there that afternoon,

in fact that day, and she was happy,

everything was good.

And, you know, the next day

we found out that she had been murdered.

[dramatic sting]

[melancholic music]

Someone had entered into her apartment,

there was no signs of a break-in,

and they had entered into her apartment

and it was very contained,

it was all in her bedroom.

There was no signs of any force

or any blood or anything outside of her room.

He just stabbed her, from what I understand,

like 84 times, might have been 94,

there was all kinds of numbers that were flying around.

I'm not sure how many times it was.

About that time I just, you know, lost it.

[chuckles mirthlessly]

[melancholic music]

This is the magnolia that my mother painted.

She loved to paint Southern paintings,

she liked magnolias and swamp scenes especially.

We feel like there's a part of her

everywhere in our house because we have

her paintings everywhere.

This was one of her special paintings,

I love this magnolia painting.

At first they thought it was a random thing

and then they said that they thought that

it was very deliberate, that they felt like

someone [stammering] had walked those halls before.

And then, you know, we met with them every day

for several days and then it just-

Then it got to be once a week or whatever,

and then it just...I don't know,

it just kind of went, it went cold after about a year.

[gentle piano music]

[dial clicking forward]

[trumpet intro music]

- [Announcer] You're watching WAFB 9 News at 10.

- Tonight we talk with Pam Kinamore's mom, Lynn Marino.

She talks about how unhappy she is

with the investigation and exactly how she feels

about the serial killer himself.

- This man has gotten in and out of

all of these homes or gotten all of these

intelligent, smart, physical women by sheer luck.

I just can't believe that he could

be that lucky in all aspects.

- [Greg] Pam Kinamore's mom propelled

this case to get the national attention

that it needed to bring the FBI in.

The local police department, they were very slow

in bringing in outside resources.

They denied that, but there was some pushback

in bringing in an outside agency,

you know, to help Baton Rouge,

but we needed the help.

- [Susan] A multi-homicide task force

was formed in Baton Rouge,

comprising the State police, the Baton Rouge police,

the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's office,

the FBI agencies from jurisdictions

all over where the murders had happened,

all formed this task force.

- [Jeff] We also brought in resources related

to our Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,

also known as ViCAP.

In particular, we had a couple of analysts

who actually traveled to Baton Rouge

for the better part of the next 10 months.

They worked in the analytical section of the

task force with State and local analysts as well.

- [Mark] My name's Mark Safarik,

I'm a retired FBI criminal profiler.

And in 2002, my partner and I traveled

to Baton Rouge to assist the Baton Rouge task force,

looking for a serial killer.

When people look at these cases in hindsight,

they tend to group all the homicides together,

but you have to recognize what information

we had when we arrived in 2002.

We basically only had the first three homicides

and that is not only the forensic information

that was available, which wasn't very much,

but the victimology of these different women,

as well as what we had from witness statements.

- [Pat] We were briefing all our people

as to what was going on, on a daily basis.

We knew we were looking for leads,

we were asking the public to help us

if they had any information about anything

that was suspicious, which was, in retrospect,

it created a landslide literally on top of us.

- You have to have a way that you say,

okay, here's the group we really wanna focus on now,

here's the next group and these are the lowest priority,

we have to work them, but they're the lowest priority.

That's what the FBI's behavioral profile

will help a law enforcement agency do.

It's really designed to sort of filter down

from, say, 100% of potential suspects,

let's focus on people that fit into this section

first and then we'll work our way around.

And I think that's what we were really

trying to do down there.

- [Pat] We had less than a hundred people

on the task force that handled over 25,000 leads.

It's pretty damn impressive.

And those guys, literally, I had to tell them

to go home at night, I mean, literally,

"Go home, you've been here for 17, 18 hours,

go lay your head down for a few minutes."

They were so dedicated because they, like me,

felt like every day we don't get this guy in jail

could be another person that dies.

[dramatic sting]

[twanging guitar music]

- [Susan] As the weather turned colder in November,

things seemed like they had calmed down a little bit.

We had not had a murder in the area

for a couple of months and people

started to relax just a bit.

- [Female Reporter] Six months ago,

this is what you would've found in just about

any self-defense or personal-protection

class offered in Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge Police say they are concerned

that some women may be letting their guards down.

- [Sterling] My name is Sterling Colomb Jr,

and my sister, Trineisha Dene Colomb

was murdered by the serial killer.

You know, you never think it's gonna happen to you.

Never think it's gonna happen to you

and feel sorry for all the families,

everyone in Baton Rouge was being cautious.

She was supposed to come spend the weekend

with me in Baton Rouge.

And my father called me

and asked me if I heard from her.

And I said no, but she was 23 years old,

she was grown, so we didn't really

dwell on it too much.

But then the next day came and we still

haven't heard from her,

and we got a call saying that they found her car

by my mom's grave, in Grand Coteau, Louisiana.

We started searching for her in that area

and we didn't find her.

About three days later, we was all sitting

at my father's house in Lafayette.

Family, friends, we was all gathered around

and we got a call saying that they found

a body in Scott, Louisiana,

which is about 20 miles from Lafayette,

and it ended up being her.

[slow melancholic music fading]

[dramatic music]

- [Susan] The killer drove Dene 20 miles

to the town of Scott, Louisiana,

which is sparsely populated, wooded areas everywhere,

people like to hunt there.

And he took her to an isolated spot

located off of Vernode road.

He bashed her head into a tree, he raped her,

he beat her, and he killed her with his fist

and left her there.

- [Sterling] At the scene of her death

they had her footsteps and the killers footsteps,

so we know she was alive out there.

The assumption was that he must have

followed her at the graveyard,

abducted her, and took her to

the site where she was murdered.

- [Pat] She was actually killed

in the Lafayette area, which was,

again, completely out of the realm

for what we were dealing with,

and she was also a black female.

So we had moved on [stammering]

from one side to the other,

to a completely new crime scene,

60 miles from Baton Rouge,

and none of this, to any of us, made any sense.

- [Sterling] My dad called me,

he said, "We know who murdered Dene,

but we don't know who murdered her."

And I was like, "What do you mean?"

He said the serial killer DNA

linked Dene to the case.

And I was amazed, I was like...

I didn't believe it at first.

- [Pat] If it wouldn't have been for DNA

I'm not sure we would ever have linked these cases

from the victimology that we had put together

or any connection between the victims.

There was nothing to link these ladies together.

It was literally all over the place,

trying to figure out how this guy was going

from victim to victim and choosing his

victims in the various places he was.

- [Susan] The panic level skyrocketed

after the death of Dene.

[fast-paced dramatic music]

The fact that now the killer was moving around

and wasn't just killing in one small area,

which is what people had expected before,

this killer was attacking all over south Louisiana.

- [Casey] It did make you look around

to wonder, could it be someone

that I've come in contact with?

And so, you know, that fear that was there

really kind of disrupted that idyllic feeling of,

you know, Southern hospitality and friendliness

that we had in our community.

[fast-paced dramatic music]

- [Kristie Dalton] It was a panic because a lot of people

had to change how they lived their life.

I mean, people were getting concealed weapons

and it was just, the concern was

protect yourself because there's a monster out there.

- [Greg] I did a story where, literally,

we got to the gun shop and the line

was out the door, down the stairs,

and around the building of people wanting

to buy a firearm to protect themselves.

A lot of women wanting to finally say,

okay, if somebody was to come into my bedroom

in the middle of the night, what would I do?

How would I react?

[twanging guitar music]

- [Jim McClain] It was a feeling of being scared.

A lot of ladies who were taking classes,

they were getting concealed weapon permits,

but also people carried them in their vehicle.

Anything that gave them relatively

fast access to some type of deterrent.

Some people weren't ready to buy lethal deterrents,

so we sold chemical weapons and things like that.

We tried to take the time to sell it.

Mace sales, we were probably selling

five to 600 units of mace a day, it was crazy.

[gentle guitar music]

Take a little breath,

let it halfway out, squeeze.

[gun firing]

Much better.

[slow guitar music]

- My name is Jeff Methvin.

I'm a special agent with

the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 2002, I was a member of the multi-agency

homicide task force.

We brought certain resources to the

multi-agency homicide task force.

In particular, we brought our profilers in

from the behavioral analysis unit.

About a month and a half into the formation

of the task force, the profilers developed

a profile of an unknown offender.

[sinister music]

- [Mark] The profile, generally, is based on

what we can infer from the victimology,

from our assessment of the forensic evidence,

the physical evidence, the behavioral evidence

left at these crime scenes.

We were absolutely certain that this guy

was following these women,

stalking these women for a period of time.

That takes a more organized, thoughtful offender,

who's thinking about his crimes,

has a plan of how he's gonna approach this,

but still is sort of engaging in this,

what we would describe as, impulsive behavior.

- [Pat] Typically in these situations,

these guys will hunt in different places.

There's even a term used for that,

they call it a Geographical Profile,

where they can pretty much tell where they think

the guy is living at that point

because he's hunting in these areas

that may be close to where he's living.

But in this case, all that went completely out the window,

no similarities to any of those at all.

- So the goal is essentially to infer

various aspects about the offender,

and one of those, of course, is going to be race.

What do we think the race of this offender is?

And that is based on a lot of things.

So it's based on statistical analysis,

most serial killers in the United States are Caucasian.

Secondly, most of these victims were white females.

You know, approaching a middle-aged,

white female in a middle class neighborhood

would probably be easier for

a white male than anybody else.

In addition to that, we're also taking into account

what the investigation has developed.

In the Gina Green homicide case

and in the Charlotte Pace homicide case,

there are witnesses that came forward

that said they saw a white male

hanging around this area where these women

were killed and that this white male

was driving a white truck.

We also had a witness that came forward

in the Pam Kinamore case,

who said, "I was following this white truck.

It was being driven by a white male,

and I saw a woman who appeared to be

either unconscious or incapacitated.

And the truck got off at the Whiskey exit,

which is where Pam Kinamore's body was found.

That's pretty significant when you have

different witnesses, in different homicide cases,

telling you the same information.

- [Greg] They released the profile

in the newspaper in full.

It painted this big picture of a killer.

And they were careful in it to say,

you know, this is not gonna be the exact person,

but this is what we're thinking,

but sometimes I think it might have done

more harm than good because no matter

how many disclaimers were in it,

people still focused on it and said,

"Okay, well, I was suspecting my neighbor,

but he doesn't fit this part of the profile,

so it's not him."

- [Mark] And then the families can use the media

to essentially get back at law enforcement

for not doing their job, as they perceive it.

- I am pissed off.

- [Woman] That's right.

- I'm tired of hearing, "We don't have anything.

We have nothing new to tell you today, John."

- [Pat] Getting up in front of the camera every day

and berating me was what was happening every day,

and we're trying to still keep everything

in perspective and keep going down the road,

while these side-shows were going on.

- What would it hurt to bring in these experts

and let them listen to the evidence

and let them share their ideas,

let them share their insights?

The other day it was admitted

by the task force spokesperson

that they're learning as they go.

We don't have the privilege to learn as we go.

We need to learn from people who have been there before.

- [Sterling] We gave them a hard time

'cause we wanted to find out who killed our loved ones.

You know, nobody knows how that feels but us.

You know, you gotta go through it to know how it feel.

So we stayed on him 'cause we wanted results.

We wanted to catch this guy,

we wanted this guy to go down for what he did.

So we had rallies, we used to do rallies

at the Capitol in Baton Rouge just to try

to catch this guy, you know,

keep everybody to stay safe, you know.

- [Lynn] They said at a recent press conference,

you know, they busy and things are moving along.

How can things be moving along,

since my daughter, who was the fourth victim,

the third victim linked to DNA,

there's now a fourth victim linked to DNA.

We heard in August that an arrest was eminent.

Why would you say that if you didn't

have anything to back it up?

- We are trying to solve these cases

the best we can for these families,

for the victims, to bring them justice,

to bring justice for the families.

- It's all about chits, baby.

And that's what it boils down to, check.

I say, check to the politicians.

I say, check to the serial killer, straight up.

And if he wants to, don't come and step to a woman,

come and step to a man.

- It's a fine line that law enforcement walks

working with the families, you know,

keeping them in the loop of the information,

and also with the media.

How much information are you releasing to the media?

- [Greg] I do remember looking at the front page

of the paper and it said, you know,

"37 Unsolved Killings" and you saw the women's faces.

These weren't, you know, shootings over drugs,

these weren't, you know, shootings over domestic violence,

these were women going about their lives

and being murdered in a violent and brutal way

and then happening again,

and then you start to see that they're unsolved

and that started getting people really uneasy.

- [Greg Phares] You can't contend that this

is not a big issue for the public, it is.

And so you have to balance the public's need to know

with the need to keep a lot of the details

of your investigation under wraps.

- [Pat] That so much misinformation was going out,

we had to control the media, to some extent.

I made numerous trips to the TV stations

in Baton Rouge and asked them

to please vet their information

that they were putting out.

They would go interview some person

on the side of the road that said

he knew who did it, and he'd mention a name

and the next thing you know,

people are going crazy in Baton Rouge again.

- [Greg] It became a battle between

the investigators and the media.

They looked at us as trying to hamper

what they were doing,

we looked at them as trying to hamper

what we were doing.

There was probably something in the middle.

A lot of times when the investigators

wouldn't give us enough information

that we thought the public needed to know,

we would go around and find our sources

and then that was a way that we were able

to get the information out to the people.

Picture Baton Rouge and just the surrounding areas

at that point, just on edge

[gentle guitar strumming] and we have another

LSU student that has disappeared.

- [Susan] On March 3rd, Carrie Lynn Yoder,

who loved ballroom dancing,

and she was an environmentalist

who studied the wetlands of Louisiana.

She was an adventurous, beautiful young LSU student

who lived right outside of the gates of LSU.

Her boyfriend called police to tell them

that he thought his girlfriend was missing.

- And then there's a body found at Whiskey Bay.

[dramatic sting]

[trumpet intro music]

- [Announcer] You're watching WAFB 9 News at 10.

- Good evening, I'm George Sells.

My partner, Donna Britt has the night off.

This could be a major development

in the serial killer case.

The body of a woman has been found at Whiskey Bay.

Let's check in with WAFP's Greg Meriwether

on the scene, where authorities have

removed the body within the last hour.

Greg? - Hello, George.

We have learned from our own eyes

that this is a white female and she was found nude,

floating face down, by a fisherman.

We are told by, I want to say an official

close to the investigation,

this was the quote that I was given that,

"This is who we were looking for,"

so I'm gonna leave that at that

and we're gonna try to track everything down

and run everything down for you.

- "This is who we were looking for."

[static hissing] [sinister music]

- [Susan] They would find Carrie's body

not but a few hundred yards from where

Pam Kinamore's body had been found the previous July.

To go from such a friendly, laid-back town

to this terrifying place to live,

it was just a horrible experience for everybody,

not just the families, not just the women

who were killed, but everybody in south Louisiana

had been affected by this serial killer.

Carrie Lynn Yoder's DNA was linked

to the other victims.

Police still did not have a clue

as to who this killer was.

- [Tony] And then there was a guy named Dr. Frudakis

out of Florida, who purported,

and I thought it was junk science,

but he knew what he was talking about.

That said he can take that DNA and tell the race

of the person from the DNA.

- [Pat] I'm trying to figure out if DNA technology

can tell me that, based on a DNA sample

we got from either the Murray Pace case

or the Pam Kinamore case.

- Remember we were looking for a white male

and so the guys on the task force,

we kind of put in to the test.

So we sent a bunch of placebos

to see whether or not he can nail our races.

He nailed each and every one of them.

I'll tell you I got a little white in me,

I didn't know I had all that,

but we all are mixed in Louisiana,

I'll tell you that now.

But at any rate, we knew we were now

not looking for a white male,

we were probably looking for a black male.

So it changed the whole trajectory,

the whole concept of what we were looking for.

I'll tell you, as a result of our ignorance,

lots of ladies lost their lives

because we narrowly tailored our search,

our investigation to a white man and a white pickup truck,

which was totally, totally, totally wrong on our part.

[dramatic music] [police siren blaring]

- [Pat] And so any information we get where

it's either black or white, we have to include those,

both of those, in our investigations from now on.

So we literally changed the course

of the investigation at that point.

[soft twanging guitar music]

- [David] Basic detective work is you go back,

you look at the area where this instance happened,

has there always been a common denominator

or person in that area that keeps

going back here committing crimes?

[soft twanging guitar music]

And that's the way I looked at it.

We had the incident in '92 with Connie Warner,

incident in 1993 with the kids in the graveyard,

and then we had the murder again

in 1998 of Randi Mebruer.

So that was some tough things that we couldn't

just turn our head away from because you always

had that one area where this suspect

was going and committing crimes.

We're turning on Saul Avenue,

this is where all it happened at,

as far as the Connie Warner case

and the Randi Mebruer case here.

We got a lot of complaints during that timeframe too,

that a male was coming through the fence line back here.

That's more trees and that back there,

and he was coming up down these fence lines here,

peeping in these windows.

From what our indication was he was using that tree line

to get in here, or a lot of times he would park

over at the Junction Lounge and come through

the graveyard and to come in this area.

We know the first house down there on the right

was getting a lot of calls

about a peeping Tom there also,

and that lady there happened to be

a single lady with a child.

[foreboding music]

We had a meeting at the Fraternal Order of Police

building in Baton Rouge and their murders

in Baton Rouge were newer,

so we really weren't part of the task force,

but we were getting a lot of tips

and we'd give them to them,

but we never was part of the task force.

And when we began talking,

one of their cases, and if I remember correctly,

it was the Gina Wilson Green case,

where a lot of her articles were found

close to where Connie Warner's body was found

and I just found that odd,

it wasn't just circumstantial,

he was going back, reliving that sexual gratification.

I kept telling them, I said,

"I'm telling you the peeping Tom is our guy,

this is our guy right here, look at him hard."

- [Pat] Everybody, at this point during this task force,

was trying to hand off cases to me.

I had enough cats to herd myself

and I did not need any more at that point,

so we kind of threw the onus back on them

to, you know, if you believe this case is connected,

I'm telling you what you need to do

and this is the way you need to do it.

Send your sample to the crime lab,

tell them you'd like it compared

to the sample that we have of our suspect,

and if it matches, we will be in touch

with you and let you know.

Zachary was one of hundreds of police departments

that did exactly the same thing.

- [David] I was frustrated somewhat.

I knew that there were people in the task force

who I grew up with, knew.

Kept telling them, "Hey, look, you need to talk

to McDavid, you need to talk to McDavid.

They might have something up there."

And they were trying to get us involved more,

it just never would happen.

I think the focus was on different things

and you know, eventually it all came to a head.

[twanging guitar music]

- [Susan] David McDavid had been investigating

the death of Randi Mebruer and Connie Lynn Warner.

[twanging guitar music]

He called in the Attorney General's office

to send an investigator to help him

try to catch this killer.

Dannie Mixon was the investigator that was assigned

to the cold case of Randi Mebruer.

- [Todd] Danny Mixon was an excellent investigator.

He was an old flat foot cop.

He said, "We're not gonna solve anything

behind this desk, let's go beat the bushes."

And Dannie was like that, he was determined,

he was a very smart, intelligent individual.

And he taught me a lot about investigative work

and how we're gonna connect the pieces

of this puzzle to be able to come up with

a suspect and be able to solve a crime

and bring some closure to our victim's family.

- [David] Dannie come up with a good timeline

with the suspect we were looking at.

Did he have a job at the time?

Was he working?

What kind of vehicle was he driving?

When did he get laid off work

versus when the murders happened,

when the abductions happened?

So he was able to come up with a great timeline.

- Dannie began laying out the groundworks

to obtain a subpoena duces tecum

for a DNA swab of the suspect who he thought

was possibly involved with the Connie Warner homicide

and the abduction of Randi Mebruer.

[thunder rumbling]

Myself, Ray Day from Zachary Police Department,

Danny Mixon and Chris Rober,

we went to his residence in East Feliciana

to execute that and obtain his DNA swab.

[dramatic sting]

Dannie identified himself, who we were,

showed him a copy of the subpoena that we had

to obtain his DNA swab and we entered into his residence.

He didn't seem too alarmed at that time.

He just asked, "What's it about?

How can you take this from me?"

And Dannie conversed with him,

he just told him to sit down

which he complied and he didn't resist or hesitate,

just complied and did as Dannie asked him.

- [Angela] I remember the day that

Detective David McDavid came in and had a sample

that he had collected from a black male.

And in his gut he felt that he was quite possibly

the Baton Rouge serial killer.

But he didn't want it to get mixed up

with all the other hundreds of samples

that the task force was bringing in.

So he was asking about what was the best way

to submit it so that it would get analyzed.

And I said, "Well, if you don't want it

to get mixed up with any of the other cases,

just go ahead and submit it under Mebruer

and I'll put the sample on Tasha Poe's desk

and she can analyze it when she gets in."

- [Natasha] As I was looking through the different samples,

I saw that pattern that we're so used to looking for now,

'cause this has been 10 months into the process

that we had been looking for this profile,

we had literally memorized this pattern.

So when I was looking through the samples,

I realized, oh, this is this really, really old

homicide that I was working.

And this was a 1998 case that had been submitted

by the Zachary Police Department.

So this profile that popped up was in that case

and I was like, oh, oh my gosh,

it's gonna actually be connected

because Zachary PD, you know,

I will give them a fair shake in this,

they honestly believe their case was connected

to the serial killer case.

When they submit cases to us and they submit

evidence and reference samples,

when they submit the reference sample,

there's always a name associated with it.

When I went back to look at the case file

to see what sample this was,

that was when I realized it was a reference sample

and I was like, oh my God,

I actually know who the serial killer is now

'cause I have a name associated

with that actual reference sample.

[dramatic music]

It's not in evidence in a piece of case,

it's not a vaginal swab or a plastic trash bag,

you know, it actually belongs to a person.

So the first thing I did was I called my boss

and I told her, I said, you know,

"I know who the serial killer is."

And she told me certain things I needed to do,

she said, "Do not tell anyone, do not call anyone.

I'm gonna call the captain over the crime lab

and let him know and I'll call you back."

And then the next thing I know I'm getting a call

that says, "The serial killer task force

will be at the crime lab in about an hour,

so be prepared for questions."

Right now there's no way to differentiate the two.

- [Pat] I can remember when the call came in,

we were at the corner of Winbourne and North Foster

and one of the guys that answered the phone says,

"You, you, what?"

And I said, "What happened, what happened?

Don't tell me you got somebody else-"

He said, "No, we got a match."

I said, "No, tell me you're not-

You serious?"

And he said, "Yeah, we got a match."

So we scurried back to the State Police Crime Lab

and we sat down with them, I said, "Y'all sure?

They said, "We're absolutely sure."

- [David] I was sitting at home, it was on a Sunday,

I'll never forget.

My phone went off and I called him back

and he said, "Hey Mac, we're at the

task force building down here in Baton Rouge,

we need you to come here soon as possible."

I said, "Okay, what's going on?"

"Well, we'll talk to you when you get here."

I said, "Okay."

So I walk in, I look around,

it's all your dignitaries and all these big people here

and I said, "Well, what's going on?"

Y'all's DNA has just connected the serial killer,

you know, to, you know, all the cases here in Baton Rouge

and I just-

It was a sense of relief.

I don't think everybody was, you know,

thinking a small town like Zachary

had that piece of pie that would connect this case,

and eventually in the end we did.

[tense music]

- [Female Reporter] Members of the serial killer

task force, with law enforcement agents

from the state, local, and federal levels

walked side by side as Police Chief, Pat Englade

announced the big break in the case of the serial killer.

- I remember we had gotten a notice

that they were gonna make an announcement

in the serial killer case.

Of course, we had no name at that point,

we did have a really not so good sketch of a person.

And I remember seeing Pat Englade

and I'll always remember his words.

- An arrest warrant has been issued

for the arrest of Derrick Todd Lee.

He is to be considered armed and dangerous

and authorities should be notified immediately.

- [Greg] I just remember thinking,

get to the television station 'cause,

you know, this is a, you know,

the break that so many people in this community

have been waiting for.

- [Archer] I get this call and it's the local sheriff here

saying they have developed a suspect

in the serial killings of these women

and it's Derrick Todd Lee.

I was wowed for a minute

because of the fact that Derrick grew up here,

although he was a few years younger,

I had known him all of his life.

You know, my mom had driven him, in his wedding,

although I had put him in jail for peeping Tom,

you know, he had a troubled past,

but who would've thought that he

would be the one that was

presumed to be the serial killer?

- [David] I was happy, I was relieved,

but then again, you know, we got to catch this guy.

We got to go to work now.

[sinister music]

- [Pat] We went back to the task force headquarters

and I contacted District Attorney, Doug Morrow

and I told him I needed a ADA to help us

draw up a search warrant and arrest warrant

for Derrick Todd Lee.

And I started getting our troops ready to go,

as soon as the warrant was signed,

we were gonna be in a position to hit the house.

- [Natasha] The next morning, literally,

we hit three different residences

at the exact same time

because we didn't know where he was.

We had a unit that was going to hit his house,

there was also his parents' residence,

and then he had an apartment with a girlfriend,

if you wanna call it that,

in another town that we were also

gonna hit exactly the same time.

- [Archer] I personally knew his stepdad,

I knew his whole family.

So I called his stepdad that morning

and I said, "Mr Barrow, this is Archer Lee

from the Sheriff's office, the police department."

I said, "Listen, I just want you to listen

and not say anything.

The guys have the house surrounded,

we searched the house, we realized he wasn't there."

So their focus moved on to other places at that time.

[police siren blaring]

- [Pat] Immediately we start scrambling.

We bring his family in, start interviewing them

and right now he's on the loose,

as far as we're concerned.

We put everything in motion and we started

trying to work off phones,

we've developed phone numbers,

or a phone that he may have had,

his vehicle he's driving,

all the information we need to have

so we could put the information out

to all law enforcement to be on the lookout.

DEA came in with their electronic equipment

and we pinged him in a section of Atlanta, Georgia.

I called the chief of police in Atlanta

and I said, "Chief, we got a problem

and I need some help."

And he said, "You got it, what do you need?"

I said, "We're pinging this phone

and we're trying to locate this guy.

We've got a warrant for him for first degree murder.

He's a serial killer here in Louisiana."

But he had a special unit that he used

sort of like a Marshals task force that goes out

and they make these sweeps and go in.

- I was on the phone with the U.S Marshals

throughout the night in Atlanta.

And they told me, "Hey, he was last spotted

in a college town here."

I said, "Hey guys, you better get him.

He knows that he's being, you know, being sought after."

I said, "I'm sure he is getting calls.

He's probably calling back home to his mama."

I said, "He's gonna probably kill one more time

before he knows he's gonna go to jail."

I said, "You need to catch him."

And they caught him.

Thank God, they caught him.

[somber music]

- [Jeff] He was transported back

from Atlanta to Baton Rouge.

He waived any type of extradition hearing

and we flew him back on an FBI Learjet.

[somber music]

- [Pat] I probably got home three o'clock in the morning

and I was by myself in the house

and I literally just balled up and fell on the floor.

I had a breakdown.

I was so relieved that it was over with

that I can't express how I felt.

- I got real depressed.

[gentle piano music]

'Cause if they would've-

If they would've listened from the get go,

it wouldn't have been that many women.

And I still wouldn't have been hiding inside,

even though I wasn't hiding outside,

you know what I'm saying?

So it was a relief that they were gonna get him.

- I was actually at work and my boss called me

in the office and said, "They caught him."

And I was like, "What are you talking about?"

He said, "They caught the guy

who murdered your sister."

And when I saw his picture,

when I saw who it was, I was shocked.

It shocked us because they threw us off already

assuming that it was a white guy

and a white truck and it was totally opposite.

But I was happy because I didn't want this

to happen to anyone else.

You know, for us, it was just beginning, you know?

So we had to relive everything that happened,

but we was glad that...

sort of, you know, justice at that time was happening.

- After Derrick Todd Lee was incarcerated

people in Baton Rouge, just sighed this

huge sigh of relief.

People could go out of their homes again,

they could have normal lives again,

they didn't have to worry anymore.

[static hissing]

- [Announcer] You're watching WAFB 9 News at six.

- It has happened again, still again.

A woman with a history suggesting prostitution

has been found murdered.

- The cause of death?

Strangulation.

- [George] Both were sexually mutilated.

- Little did they know what was about to come next.

[fast paced orchestral music]