Original subtitles

- We heard that Derrick Todd Lee was caught.

It's like a weight had been lifted off of all of us.

- This man who perpetrated such horrific crimes was

behind bars where he belonged.

- And then other bodies start to turn up of women.

[lightning crashing]

- It has happened again.

- Strangulation.

- [News Reporter] Both were sexually mutilated.

- The scab hadn't even formed over Baton Rouge after Lee

and here you have another serial killer.

- Some of the things that were done

to some of these victims made Derek Todd Lee's murders look

like child's play.

- [Susan] He did not particularly enjoy killing a woman.

It was what he could do after that mattered to him.

- She had her arm severed at the elbow

and there was a four by four inch square

that had been taken from her thigh.

- I mean, there's only one way to stop him

and that's to get him as fast as you can.

- He did leave his DN behind.

- We knew that we were looking for a Caucasian offender.

- We need to either include or exclude the individual

who left this tire track there at the crime scene.

[brooding 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, yeah ♪

[brooding guitar music continues]

- At the Donna Bennett Johnston crime scene,

police found a very significant piece of evidence.

It had been raining the day before,

so when the killer drove up to the canal through the mud,

he left a very good impression of a tire tread.

The tire track led police to multiple men

in the Baton Rouge area who had bought

that particular brand of tire.

- Detectives were going to each and every house

to find that person.

And eventually, they showed up

at the home of Sean Vincent Gillis.

[high intensity music continues]

- We pulled up in the driveway at the residence.

I heard something in the backyard,

and I just immediately walked to the back of the residence.

There, I find an individual who is sitting

on the patio, listening to the Rush Limbaugh radio show.

I introduced myself to him,

I told him that Jeff was at the front of the residence.

- The first thing I wanted to do is I wanted

to put him at ease.

So I referred to the tires that we were looking for

as a red herring.

I wanted him to think that I thought it was a very bad lead,

and we were wasting our time following it up.

Once he was at ease,

I went through the questionnaire and asked him,

was he at that location?

And he told me that he had been the Friday or Saturday

before Miss Johnston's body was found there.

Then I went through the questionnaire with him,

as far as whether or not he knew any of the victims.

He told me, in fact, he did know Ms. Williams.

He told me that Ms. Williams had kept house for him

and that he was friends with her,

and that he was upset when he had heard

that she had passed away.

After we had asked the questions on the questionnaire,

and we had gotten the details

regarding the tire mark impressions at the crime scene,

my partner asked him for a oral DNA swab.

And he readily agreed to do that.

[high intensity music continues]

- And so I said, "We'd like for you to ride with us

to the Sheriff's Office."

I said, "You told Jeff that you was at the crime scene

of Donna Bennett Johnston.

You say you know one of our victims, Johnnie Mae Williams.

I think you can help us out.

You may be able to give us some information

about Johnnie Mae.

You may have seen something that might be beneficial

to the investigation and you might just not know it.

So we'd just like to talk to you more in depth

about how you know Johnnie Mae,

and then you being at the crime scene

of Donna Bennett Johnston."

When I asked him to ride down to the Sheriff's Office

with us, he says, "Okay, you mind if I smoke a cigarette?"

We said, "Sure, go ahead."

We're just talking with Sean casually.

He lights a cigarette, starts smoking it for a little bit.

And about halfway through, he just drops it on the pavement,

puts his foot on it and he says,

"Let's go get this shit over with."

- When we get him back to the task force office,

we read him his rights, and he agrees to talk with us.

We interviewed him for several hours,

trying to get him to make some type of confession

regarding any of the three crimes.

- [Jeff] The other thing we wanted to talk about,

the site out there on Ben Hur.

Have you ever been out to that site?

- Many times.

- [Jeff] Oh, you been to a-

- I mean, when I was younger,

it used to be a place we'd go to get mushrooms and stuff.

[Sean and interrogator laughing]

- [Jeff] Okay.

- He did go into further detail

regarding his vehicle being present

at the Johnston crime scene.

And in particular, how he had backed the vehicle up.

- [Jeff] Did you pull all the way in the gate or...?

- I pulled into the gate and hung to the left

and parked behind.

They got some trees and bushes there.

- [Jeff] So did you go through the gate?

- Yeah.

- We suspected that the vehicle that was backed up

to that canal held Johnston's body,

and she was dumped out of the back of the car.

And that matched the map he was showing us

with regards to the tire mark compressions at the scene.

- [Jeff] Okay, so you actually pulled in

and turned towards the canal then?

- No, actually, I backed into the canal.

I pulled and then backed, killed my headlights,

opened the door, hopped out, did my business,

shook, looked around, made sure no one saw me,

and hopped back in the car, and took off.

- [Jeff] I hear you, man.

- I mean, it's one-

- Jeff interviews him for a while,

getting some background information, trying to talk to him.

He lays out some scenarios, talks about his past,

and talks about him, his car.

And then after they had some conversations for a while,

and interview back and forth, really,

we were just waiting for the crime lab

to finish up the analysis on his buccal swab,

which had been submitted earlier that day.

- I'm trying to figure out why you would go there

and not just go home.

- Basically, I mean, like I said,

I did just did not think of wanting to wait

for another light or anything.

There was some traffic at the time,

and normally, you can make a right turn there,

but if there's traffic, you can't.

You gotta wait and wait.

- Do you know where Donna's body was found

around right here?

- I just know it was somewhere in a ditch.

- Would it surprise you if I told you

she was found right here?

- No, it wouldn't, or we wouldn't be talking.

- So why do you think it, why, I don't understand.

Why do you think it wouldn't surprise me?

- I mean, it wouldn't surprise me

because that's only why are we talking.

- Do you know why we're talking?

- We're talking because you had some tire tracks

that possibly came from my car there.

- We made a collective decision that we didn't have enough

to hold him any longer.

So we agreed to take him back home.

However, since we had talked to him,

we felt that he was a good suspect,

and we didn't want to let him out of our sight.

So because of that, we put him under constant surveillance,

very tight surveillance, so that we would know

if he left his house or not.

[brooding music continues]

- We put our narcotics agents all around his neighborhood

in covert positions so that we have basically eyes

on his residence.

- We also had a conversation, too, on the way back

from the Sheriff's Office to his house that evening.

And we were discussing chess,

and I was a beginning chess player.

And I had studied openings and some of little bit

of the middle game and the end game.

And he asked me, he said,

"What's your favorite part of the game?"

And I told him that I found openings very interesting

because there was a lot to know in the openings

on how to respond to your opponent's move.

And he told me that he preferred the end game.

[high intensity music]

- We get that phone call from Dr. Joni Baccata and she says,

"It's a match."

His buccal swab that had been taken earlier

and that profile from Sean matched to the three profiles

from the crime scenes of Katherine Hall,

Johnnie Mae Williams, and Donna Bennett Johnston.

- When I heard the news, I felt very elated.

The Lee investigation took 10 or 11 months.

This took a little over a month,

and I realized that we would be able to put this to bed

as soon as possible.

- We're all excited, and we said,

"Now we have scientific evidence connecting Sean

to three crime scenes."

Of course, then we transitioned immediately though

into being okay, we need a search warrant for the residence.

We need an arrest warrant for Sean.

And we divided those tasks up with the task force members

to start preparing those documents,

to get 'em for the judges.

We contact the SWAT team, put them on standby,

give them the information, the address,

so they can devise a plan.

We'll have the SWAT team execute the arrest

and search warrants for us later that evening.

[playful guitar music continues]

- My name is Terri Lemoine,

and for nine years, I lived with the serial killer,

Sean Vincent Gillis.

[brooding music continues]

I worked in a convenience store,

and I worked the night shift.

And a friend of mine showed up at the store one night

with this little guy with her and said,

"Terri, this is Sean.

Sean, this is Terri.

Y'all have to meet each other.

Y'all will get along just fine."

We had same likes and dislikes and things like that,

and found out we had a lot in common.

Mostly, Sean would show up at the store every night

and usually just sit there all night with me.

And we'd talk all night long.

And that went on for quite a while.

I kept telling him he needed to show me where he lived

and all that, but he never did wanna show me his house.

Well, finally, the day that I got off of work,

he was with me and I told him,

"No, you're not gonna bring me home.

You're gonna bring me to your house."

And he goes, "No, you can't come to my house."

I said, "Yes, we're going to your house."

And I understand why he didn't wanna show it to me then,

because the house was pretty much a wreck.

You could really tell that one person, one guy, lived here

and it was a guy who didn't know how

to take care of a house.

I pretty much told him I'm going

to clean your house for you.

I'm going to make it a home again.

And that's pretty much what I did.

I moved in and redid the whole house.

- Terri was quite formidable and a strong personality

in her own right.

She had been involved in an incident at a strip club

in which she had beaten a man with a pool cue

because that man was attacking one of her friends,

and that man later died.

So I don't think Sean would consider going against someone

who had that much power.

[brooding music continues]

- Sean was affectionate.

He was good to Terri's children.

He didn't really work a whole lot.

Terri worked for the most part.

- At first, he wasn't doing anything.

He would just have his mother send him money.

And I told him that he was too old for that to be going on,

that he needed to get a job.

I got him a job working at the same store that I was working

at for a while, but he couldn't keep that.

And he ended up going to a DVD store

and working there for a while.

But he never could keep a job

for any amount, any amount of time.

It was basically a friendly relationship.

It wasn't a very much of a love relationship.

It was more like a brother and sister.

We never had an intimate relationship,

actually brought it up to him one time.

And he said that my mother told me

that that was not a nice thing to do,

that it was a nasty thing to do,

so I don't do that.

And far be it for me to say something about his mother, so

I just let it go as that.

That night, I was watching a movie.

I couldn't tell you what it was,

but Sean actually turned his computer off,

and came and sat down next to me,

and watched the movie with me.

And I looked at him and I said,

"Did your machine break or something?"

I said, "You usually don't spend time with me like this,

just watching a movie, you know?"

And he said, "No, I just wanted to spend some time

with my honey bunny,"

which was a name that he used to call me.

And so we sat and we watched the movie that evening.

And then, I got up to go to bed

and he actually came to bed at the same time I did,

which was another thing he had never done.

It was odd.

- I was running emergency services for the Sheriff's Office,

which included the SWAT team function.

So I was there when that house was hit.

We had, at that time, an excellent SWAT team.

They did a good job entering the house

and securing the house.

And then the detectives come in behind them

and they seized the evidence,

and anybody they want to talk to,

they take them into custody.

- I heard a big bang in the front of the house

and policeman had burst through the door,

[police siren blaring]

and came and gotten us, and arrested Sean.

And I wanted to know what was going on, immediately.

And one of them looked at me and he said, "You didn't know?

You're living with a serial killer."

And I just laughed at the man.

I laughed out loud.

I said, "Boy, have you got the wrong house."

You know, because there's no way

that Sean could kill anybody.

- Sean is brought back to the Sheriff's Office,

along with Terri Lemoine.

And of course now, the focus has transitioned

to trying to obtain a confession from Sean.

- If we asked you some questions,

would you be willing to answer those questions?

- Do you understand yes and no?

- Pardon?

- Yes and no.

- Is that the only things you would want to answer?

- No, I'm just saying do you understand,

yes, I would, and no, I wouldn't.

- Absolutely.

- Sean finally, you know,

come around and started talking about his involvement.

Once we explained that we had his DNA

from our three victims, he couldn't refute that.

So now, he just needed to explain his actions.

Of course, we wanna know how he chose his victims,

what led to all the postmortem cutting and dismemberment.

[TV static hissing]

- And it's not as simple as he was explaining earlier

about, it's like you're looking

and it's someone else doing it,

kind of a out of body experience thing.

It wasn't, it was, but it wasn't...

I've done out of body stuff before.

I mean, I've played with that,

- Right.

- to where it just, you know, and lucid dreaming,

things like that.

This wasn't that,

but this was like that brought to another level.

Okay, it's like I could direct what was going on.

I fully know what's going on.

But at the time, you had no emotion whatsoever about it.

[suspenseful music]

- When asking Sean,

"How do you bring a victim back to your residence?

Where is Terri at?"

And we learned that that Terri was the night clerk

at a local convenience store.

And she always worked nights.

Terri had seizures,

which prohibited her from being able to drive.

So Sean would always bring her to work,

and then he would pick her up after her shift was over.

So Sean knew that he could bring a victim back

to the residence there, was not gonna be interrupted

because Terri was working and she relied upon Sean

to pick her up and bring her home after each of her shifts.

- Someone told me that he had been killing people

all over town and that he had killed a bunch of women.

And I told them I need to talk to him

'cause I'm not gonna believe this unless he tells me that.

They did let me talk to him.

And I asked him,

I very seriously

looked at him and asked,

"Did you do all the things that they're telling me you did?"

And he just looked at me and smiled,

cute little smile and shook his head from side to side,

and said, "Yeah, honey bunny, I'm sorry.

I did that."

At first,

I couldn't believe it.

I had to step back and think for a while.

And I just shook my head yes, and turned around, and left.

And it's like all my walls came tumbling down

because nothing was ever gonna be the same anymore.

My whole world had changed.

[car accelerating]

[brooding music]

- We know we have his DNA profile at three crime scenes

from the bodies of three victims, which he can't refute.

And so we're looking for other evidence which might tie him

to the crimes to see if he might have any evidence

from our victims at his residence

while the interview process starts.

- I was actually one of the crime scene people that went

and processed Sean Vincent Gillis's house.

And that was the other thing that was weird.

He lived right in the area

where Derek Todd Lee was actually killing his victims;

not very far from the LSU campus,

definitely not very far from Gina Green's house,

and not very far from the apartments

that Charlotte Murray Pace lived in.

We processed the scene,

and so, it was just like anything else.

We looked for specific things that are, what we call,

in our search warrant.

So there's certain things

that law enforcement has already know about at that point.

Sometimes it might be through interviewing of the suspect,

but there's certain things that they're looking for,

and they'll include all that information

to the search warrant.

And so, we'll look for that when we're processing the scene.

- One of the things that I noticed

when we were searching Mr. Gillis's residence,

is the large number of like swords and cutting implements,

saws, things like that.

It turned out that we were told

that his wife had a fascination with swords,

like fantasy type swords and things like that.

But there were also saws, and knives, and things.

- Those swords are Terri's and none of them,

none of them were used in anything.

They're hers and they're decorational things, basically.

I'm sure if forensics is probably gonna want to go over 'em,

but I'm telling you, none of that cutlery was used.

- Did you ever use any kinda saw?

[TV static hissing]

They were pretty clean cuts.

Do you still have the saw?

You threw it?

- I threw it.

- What kind of saw was it?

- Hacksaw. - Hacksaw?

- Sean even had photographs

of Donna Bennett Johnston posed in the back of his car.

[suspenseful music]

And in one of the photographs,

which we uncovered at his residence during the search,

it had his partial license plate in the car also too.

And Sean had a file.

He kept the photographs,

he kept all the newspaper articles at his house.

He had some photographs of his victims,

and of course, Sean just laid out the specific details

about each individual victim,

and what he did with the victims.

And of course, that matched up to the crime scenes.

- I almost decapitated Johnnie.

For all intents and purposes, I did.

[TV static hissing]

[brooding music]

- Sean Vincent Gillis grew up off of Lee Road

in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

in a middle class, average subdivision.

- One time he told me he had a father, but his father quote,

"Wasn't quite all there,"

which I assumed meant that he had a mental problem.

- When Sean Gillis was young, his father tried to kill him.

He told his wife that he was going to kill him

and that he was going to kill her.

She escaped out of the bathroom window

and ran to call police.

Her husband, Sean's father, Norman,

was taken to a mental institution.

He would spend many years of his life

in and out of mental institutions.

Sean's mother, Yvonne, raised him.

She loved him.

She doted upon him.

She was a good mother to him.

Occasionally, she spanked him,

but no more than any other child

who grew up in that era got spanked.

- I think it was abusive in the way of being left alone.

Not having someone to talk to or someone...

'Cause mom worked all the time,

and he didn't have any other family members

to take care of him or anything.

So I think Sean was always looking for somebody to talk to.

- He worked in a convenience store,

in a Southern part of Baton Rouge.

And I know police officers actually went in

and knew who he was.

He was a clerk and they would stop

in the middle of the night, and they said he was, you know,

he was a strange little dude.

He'd give him coffee, whatever they wanted,

and they'd hold conversations.

He said the conversations were a little distorted,

but nothing hinging on rape and murder.

[somber music continues]

- Gillis, somewhat unlikely,

was I think a true psychosexual serial killer

in the mold of Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy,

others like that.

He needed a body for his particular preferences.

And so, he was the type of guy that if he thought too much

about what he was actually doing,

it was a nightmare scenario.

[brooding music continues]

- Early on in this investigation,

you realize we're dealing with a sick individual

who could do this type of cutting and dismemberment

to another human being.

We hadn't had any homicides like that

in the Baton Rouge area.

And we had multiple victims,

and there was a lot of stabbing, cutting,

dismemberment, body parts removed from the crime scene,

and never recovered.

Sean told us where he discarded the various body parts.

You know, we used cadaver dogs.

We went and did exhaustive searches trying to locate

those missing body parts from our victims.

Sean directed us throughout East Baton Rouge Parish

to Lafayette, to other parishes,

of where he picked his victims up,

where he took them, where he strangled them at,

and then the ones that he brought back to his residence.

And then described the acts that he did to the victims

and then how he would go and discard the victim's remains

at various other locations throughout the parish.

- One of the victims he brought back to his house.

He's bathing the victim.

He's showering with this dead person in the shower!

Soaping them up, washing them, holding them;

I mean, it's a very unusual type of activity.

- We showered, shall we say,

I showered with the corpse.

Did a few funny little things to me

that were funny at the time.

You know, I'm saying, sick, funny things,

like held her up and just let her slowly slide down the wall

and pick her up again, let her slowly...

I did that a couple of times.

[TV static hissing]

[brooding music contiues]

- I don't know what he did to who.

The policeman told me that he had dismembered some of them,

took their hand or their arm.

- There was gonna be a hand taken.

I wanted to get a whole arm.

And so, I was whack, whack, whacking.

I know I must have done some hell of a lot of damage

to her shoulder and in the neck area.

'Cause I was also trying to see

if I could get the head off too.

And then I gave it just a few good, with all my might,

swinging away over my head, chopping down,

and pretty much just shattered the bone,

rather than cut it, you know?

And at that point, it was clear.

It was just hanging by the meat

on the other side of the arm.

I took the machete, turned it over,

and with the machete head, since it was so dull,

had to saw the rest of the way.

[brooding music]

[clock ticking]

- I'm taking you to the bathroom in the hall.

The police told me that Sean had brought one

into the shower.

And this is the shower, this here.

This is basically the main bathroom of the house,

and I don't use this bathroom at all.

I use the one attached to the bedroom.

I've never showered in here, and I use the other one,

so, keeps me sane.

[Terri chuckling]

I found out by the police that someone had been dismembered

on the floor here, right in front of the sink.

And when I found that out,

I immediately tore out the floor and redid it.

And I never found out who it was

or what exactly was done to her.

People ask me, "How can you live in that house

after you know what happened in that house?"

I don't think of that happening here, because

this is my home.

- This was where I tried a little cannibalism.

Okay, human patty does not taste good.

I don't advise it.

I perfectly got a nipple off.

- What did you do with it?

- I chewed on it a while, just...

- Did you swallow it?

- No, no.

This ended up being flushed down the commode at my house.

And I chewed on it, and chewed on it, and chewed on it.

It's like, damn, skin is pretty tough, you know?

I mean, literally, I've got bad teeth that are razor sharp.

Barely scratched them.

[suspenseful music]

- That was when I made the decision to never see him again.

You know, even during his trial or anything,

I would be there only if the police called me to be there.

Because those were, in my thoughts,

decisions he made to do, wasn't something he had to do

or something that just hit him all of a sudden.

To me, you decide to do these things

and no, I can't forgive that.

[upbeat music]

- [News Reporter] You're watching WAFB 9 News at noon.

- East Baton Rouge Parish authority say

with the early morning arrest of Sean Vincent Gillis,

they have solved the murders of three local women.

And they believe Gillis might have killed even more women.

- When Sean started telling the story and confessed,

and after the three victims,

which he knew we had physical evidence tying him

to those scenes, he then began to talk about other victims.

The task force had pulled unsolved homicide reports

from not only our agency, the Baton Rouge City Police,

other surrounding agencies,

where we knew victims remains had been discarded.

We felt like the same individual was involved

in those homicides too.

- Sean Vincent Gillis continues to confess to murders

and detectives are linking more murders

to Baton Rouge's second suspected serial killer.

Detectives now confirm Gillis is responsible

for the deaths of 81 year old Ann Bryan

and 52 year old Hardee Schmidt,

mysteries that have long alluded us.

[somber music continues]

- One of Gillis' victims was Hardee Moseley Schmidt.

She was totally different from his other victims.

She was married to an attorney.

She lived in an upper middle class neighborhood

called Pollard Estates in Baton Rouge.

Her father was a judge.

She was from a very well respected family in this area.

On May 30th, 1999, Hardee went out for her morning run,

through her safe neighborhood,

when Sean Gillis struck her with his vehicle.

- Hit her, she flew off in the air,

and landed face down, you know, in the ditch.

She was lifting herself up.

I came walking behind and straddled her.

And she was saying something like, "Oh, my back,"

or something, something like that.

And you know, I callously said something like,

"Don't worry about your back."

And then put the thing on her and lifted her up

by the wrap and her shirt.

- He decided the best way to kill

would be using a plastic zip tie because you pull it,

it locks, person can't escape,

and it's not as messy or as bloody.

Because for Sean, it wasn't about killing.

It was about what he could do with the bodies

after they were dead.

- Mrs. Schmidt, that was a very beautiful woman.

And I said, I almost had intercourse with her,

but at the moment, right before penetration,

I couldn't.

- You lose your erection?

- I went from, yes,

I went from arousal of when I was caressing,

squeezing the breasts, and making love to a corpse.

And at that point realizing I'm not making love to a woman.

I'm playing with a corpse.

[somber music continues]

- [Susan] Then he drove to pick his girlfriend up from work.

- One morning, he had come to pick me up from work

and there was a terrible smell in the car.

And I asked him what that was,

and he told me he had hit an animal

on the way to pick me up.

And I was so tired at the time,

I didn't even think twice about it.

We got home and I said, "Please, just wash the car."

And I came inside, went to bed.

[cars accelerating]

- Depending on who you talk to,

there are certain people that believe

that he was responsible for certain murders,

and some people that don't.

I remember talking to an investigator

that was kind of uneasy with some of the things

that were going on.

And he said, you know, we would show him pictures.

And he would say, "I did that one."

We'd show him another picture, he said, "I did that one."

And he said that he almost got the opinion

that maybe he was trying to impress the investigators

with giving them more of what they wanted.

I don't wanna say it was over zealous investigators

clearing cases, but the more pictures they showed him,

the more he confessed to certain things.

And there are family members of some of the victims

that he's not tied to directly,

that he's confessed to killing that just don't buy it.

They just don't believe that that's happened.

- [News Reporter] According to the arrest warrant,

Gillis told detectives he came here, to St. James place

in the early morning of March 21st, 1994.

The warrant says Gillis told detectives

he entered Anne's home to rape the 81 year old,

but she started screaming when he touched her.

Gillis then told detectives he cut her throat

to stop her screaming and began stabbing her.

- I truly believe that he killed those three women,

but you know, in the back of my mind,

I just don't believe he killed my mother.

I just don't think he did.

There was lots of things that he didn't know about,

things that he said different things about.

There was things about her nightgown that he didn't know

and things about her.

There was just a lot of misinformation that he gave.

- First victim, Mrs. Bryan.

She was there, she aroused me, period.

Honestly, it was just gonna be some sort of sexual thing.

Just watching her sleep,

and that should have been enough.

No, I had to go a step further.

I had to also touch her.

- I think these guys somewhat like to compete

against one another.

And once they are captured

and once they are put through the judicial system,

I think they try to boast

to say that I'm some great serial killer.

- I think that he was trying to one up Derek Todd Lee,

and he admitted to it just to try

to make himself look better than,

I don't know if better's the right word,

but I still firmly believe that he was confessing to murders

that he did not commit.

At the time, Derek Todd Lee was only linked to six murders.

- First, when Sean's describing these acts that he's done,

you know he's a sick individual.

And it's evident by what he did to all of his victims.

And for hear him just to sit there and describe it,

just matter of factly, you know,

he was reliving the moment.

We felt like he was adlibbing on some things,

which of course, suspects do sometime.

Because this was his moment now,

you know, he wanted to tell his side of the story,

how he chose his victims, what he did,

because he was unique.

He was different.

We know he's a sick individual to do the acts

that he did upon another human being.

[Sean whispering]

- Probably the strangest guy I've ever witnessed

in an interrogation in my life.

And I've interviewed hundreds of people.

And there was no question in my mind

from the moment Gillis started talking

that he was so out there somewhere

and enjoyed the killing to the point of

just, it was a thrill for him.

- It's... at one point, I could control it.

It's beyond my control, at the moment.

Has been.

[TV static hissing]

- To say he's psychologically unbalanced

is an understatement.

He was very deranged, and I don't think he planned it all

where he was getting his victims.

I think it was just whenever the urge hit him,

whoever was convenient, nearby to pick up

and sexually assault, and brutalize, and torture.

I mean, that's what he did.

[TV static hissing]

- [News Reporter] Guilty.

It a took Baton Rouge's jury less than three

and a half hours today to bring in a new conviction

against serial killer, Sean Gillis.

[suspenseful music continues]

- I mean, Sean got convicted of second degree murder.

In Louisiana, that is a life sentence,

and it means your natural life.

Sean will never get out

of Louisiana State Penitentiary's house that he is there.

We do have the death penalty in Louisiana.

And then sometimes you think,

if anybody deserves a death penalty, well,

Sean would be one for the way that he mutilated his victims.

- There are a lot of people shaking their heads

in absolute disbelief.

- There are families probably still in tears

because a jury saved a man's life tonight,

but not just any man,

a convicted, self-professed killer, Sean Vincent Gillis.

- For whatever reason, he was not sentenced to death,

so it's interesting.

I think he's currently housed on death row,

but that's primarily so he can be safe.

- [News Reporter] Shock is not a strong enough word.

- Really, I see a evil, wicked man.

The Bible says there's no peace for the wicked.

And Sean Vincent Gillis got life in prison,

but I can I say this?

He better watch his back.

[upbeat music]

- Baton Rouge has changed a lot

and things have kind of gotten a little bit back to normal,

but nobody has forgotten what it was like

to live here in that decade

where these serial killers terrorized the community.

- Both these guys were all over the place and prior to DNA,

I'm not sure we would've ever connected those cases together

based on how we would investigate a crime.

[brooding music continues]

- What police didn't know was in the three years

that Derek Todd Lee operated inside of the city limits

of Baton Rouge, Sean Gillis quit killing

for those three years.

Derek Todd Lee was getting such a media presence,

and so much attention was being paid to his victims

that Sean just stopped killing.

But he kept a file on his computer

of Derek Todd Lee's victims.

- Sean described how he really did spend a lot

of time tracking the other unsolved homicides,

which were occurring in the Baton Rouge area.

Sean had a file and information on those homicides

at his residence.

He was very proud of his work,

and it was totally opposite

of what Derek Todd Lee's victims were.

- I was told early on, don't try to go in their mind.

You can't go there.

If you are trying to think like them,

you're defeated, because you can't.

Their minds go where places that yours can't.

- They both were so evil.

But just to know that the amount of fear

that Derek Todd Lee put into his women

as he was killing them,

then you think about Sean Vincent Gillis

and what he did to so many of the women,

thankfully, after they were dead.

The two are just evil monsters.

It's hard to pick,

if I was nailed to it, I would say

Sean Vincent Gillis was definitely more diabolical

in what he was doing,

but Derek Todd Lee doesn't get a pass in any means.

[high intensity music]

- Good afternoon to you, friends.

Greg Meriwether, here.

We're interrupting your program

with what will be a sigh of relief

for many families here in South Louisiana.

Serial killer, Derek Todd Lee, has died.

He passed away at Lane Memorial hospital

just a short time ago.

- I was pleased because to us, it was over.

No more trial, no more waiting,

'cause we were still going back and forth to court.

He was trying to get off death row.

So we were still going to court once a year, maybe,

for something, and so when that happened,

we was like, it's finally over.

[suspenseful music]

- I often take solace in the fact

that he died a heartbroken man.

But his heart should have broke for what he did

to all the families that he reeked havoc upon.

So God has way of fixing things, and I leave that to him.

- I know people say that forgiveness is good,

but it's hard for me to forgive this one

when that was my only sibling and the way it happened.

So I still resent Derek Todd Lee for killing my sister.

- I had to forgive him for peace of mind.

But my hardest question is if you tell God,

yes, I believe in you.

Jesus is my direction to heaven, that he forgives you.

Does God forgive somebody that bad?

[suspenseful music]

- If you look at this sort of from the 20,000 foot view,

in that seven to eight year period that Derek Todd Lee

and Sean Gillis were active,

there were approximately 60 women

who were murdered or went missing.

Well, Sean Gillis, we're pretty sure he did eight.

Pretty sure that we're close to what Derek Todd Lee did,

but even if you were to give both of these men,

say 10 victims, which is a lot,

that still leaves 40 women who were either murdered

or are missing.

What happened to those women?

[suspenseful music]

- There is no way to definitively know how many

of the unsolved murders are attributable to Derek Todd Lee

or Sean Vincent Gillis.

When Sean Gillis was being interrogated, he would say,

"Derek killed her.

I killed her.

That other guy killed her."

- I seriously think he's responsible for her

because he's, well, he frequented the area so much

and sometimes I'd see the car parked.

- Sean had even said that when he was out one night,

he matched gazes with someone

and said that they were just like him.

- The way he looked at me was kind of the way

I would look at someone that was about to not be someone.

- If some of those women were killed by another offender,

that guy is still out there.

[TV static hissing]

[high intensity music]