Original subtitles

Several women were victimized in Baton Rouge.

[Dana] People that had high-risk lifestyles

that were killed.

There were women that were take from their homes and killed.

[Christopher] We knew we had a serial killer

operating in the city of Baton Rouge.

[Pat] I think that the fear at Baton Rouge at that point

was starting to get at a tipping point.

Remain calm. I know there's a lot of fear

in the city and I feel it.

I didn't even know he was a serial killer.

I believe I survived

because God needed to use someone

to bring justice for their loved ones.

[Reporter] A break in the Louisiana serial killer case.

An arrest warrant for Derrick Todd Lee

has been issued at East Baton Rouge Parish.

On the charges of first-degree murder

and aggravated rape.

[Dana] For the city of Baton Rouge,

it was a collective sigh of relief.

[Max] And then as soon as you can take a breath

and you realize that that's over, it's not over.

[Dana] We have these murders that are different

happening in downtown Baton Rouge.

Could we have another serial killer?

[Bryan] Katherine Hall was significantly cut

where you could actually see the bone.

[Max] On Johnnie Mae Williams,

we discovered her hands had been removed.

Donna Bennett Johnston, one of her arms

had been severed from the elbow down.

[Prem] You've got these ritualistic cuttings.

This is a totally different animal.

They absolutely know at this point,

this is serial killer number two.

[Dana] I couldn't even imagine what type of person

would do this.

It didn't make any sense.

[Bryan] And there was more female victims

popping up around town.

It was incredible to even contemplate.

And then the next one happened.

But could there be a third serial killer?

[music]

♪ Like a whisper in the hollow

♪ Tears fall down while they pray for tomorrow ♪

♪ Nobody knows Nobody sees ♪

♪ Search back of roads and cold city streets ♪

♪ There's evil in the dark ♪

♪ Blood on the hands and the devil will follow ♪

[music]

February of '04, the body of Donna Johnston was recovered

in a remote canal near LSU.

When they were working the Donna Johnston scene,

we discovered a tire track.

The tire that we were looking at

was ultimately identified was a Goodyear Aquatred 3.

When we identified the individuals

that had the tire from Goodyear,

one of those was Sean Vincent Gillis.

The following day, I went to see Mr. Gillis

at his residence.

That's when we asked him for his swab.

He readily volunteered to provide a DNA sample.

Sean agreed to come down to the office for questioning.

Before he got in the vehicle, he smoked half his cigarette,

and he threw it on the ground, and he said,

"Let's get this over with."

[music]

[Bryan] My first impression of Sean was

that he was an intelligent person, well-spoken.

He seemed at ease, but you could tell

there was some underlying tension.

[Bryan] The question then moved on to,

had he ever been out to that field

where Donna Johnston's body was found?

And he said, yes, he had been familiar

with that pasture out there,

that he used to go out there frequently

to smoke weed.

He said, in fact, couple nights prior,

that he had gone out there on his way home.

Gillis claimed that he had to use the restroom,

so he proceeded to this field

where the body was located

to get out and do his thing.

So he put himself at that location

where her body was.

We said, "Well, why would you go there

instead of going to your house?

[Max] It would've been very easy for him

to just go directly home.

It wouldn't have been hardly any longer to get there,

and it just didn't make sense.

[Bryan] He made some incredible statements

that really tied into the victims,

along with the fact that he said he knew Johnnie Mae

and she had frequently ridden in his vehicle with him,

and he had had sex with her.

He put himself at that location

where Donna Johnston's body was found.

Once he admitted that his car

had absolutely made the tire track

and that he had backed up

exactly where the car would have backed up to dump the body,

it became apparent that it was him.

It was obvious he was starting to panic

because of some of the things he said,

which was only pointing a finger more at him.

[Jeff] After several hours of questioning,

Mr. Gillis, he didn't confess to anything.

And he looked at me and he said,

"Jeff, you told me you'd take me home

when I'm ready to go home. And I'm ready to go home."

[Max] We were 99% sure it was him.

We had developed probable cause.

We certainly could have charged him at that point,

but we wanted to make sure

that we weren't wrong.

We put surveillance on Mr. Gillis

the minute he got home.

[Bryan] At this point, it was just a waiting game

for the crime lab to give us a word

whether his DNA was a match.

[Prem] Within four hours, they got a hit.

"We've got a match,

and the killer of these women is, in fact,

Sean Vincent Gillis."

[music]

[Bryan] "Sean's DNA has matched to all three of our victims.

It's him. Absolutely, it's him."

I drafted an arrest warrant for him

for the murder of Katherine Hall,

Johnnie Mae Williams, and Donna Bennett Johnston.

Once the warrants were signed, SWAT hits the house.

My name is Terri Lemoine

and I lived with Sean Gillis for nine years.

[Terri] April 29th, 2004,

I was off that night and home.

And for some reason, Sean came to bed

at the same time I did,

which was something he never did.

Not even 10 seconds after I had turned the light off,

[metallic banging]

there was what sounded like a crash in the kitchen.

And people were yelling,

and all of a sudden, the door got kicked in

to the bedroom.

And I'm standing in my bedroom, in my bed clothes,

with a bunch of policemen around me.

And I'm wanting to know what is going on.

I want to know what's going on right now.

The policemen turned around, and looked at me and said,

"You didn't know you were living with a serial killer?"

It was probably the most disturbing interrogation

[Pat] I've ever heard in my life.

Gillis liked to talk about what he did

in vivid detail.

He really enjoyed the attention.

Once we opened those floodgates, it was hard to shut him up.

I'

With a bunch of policemen around me.

I'm wanting to know what is going on.

And the policeman turned around and looked at me and said,

"You didn't know you were living with a serial killer?"

I looked over at Sean and he shrugged his shoulders.

And said, "Sorry, honey bunny."

[Terri] I met Sean Gillis, working the night shift

at a convenience store.

One of my friends decided that we should meet

because we had a whole lot in common.

Same likes, dislikes, movies.

He made me laugh too. He was a geeky guy,

the kind you'd wanna bring home to mom.

I basically worked most of the time.

I went to work at night from 11:00 to 7:00.

But Sean would always stay home

He didn't wanna go anywhere, didn't wanna do anything.

That makes me angry to think back.

Sean reminded me of someone who never wanted to grow up.

I didn't know how to feel,

because, in a way, it made me responsible

because I was taking care of Sean.

It made me feel like I was giving him

the wherewithal to do what he wanted.

When you have a lot of time to think,

you question a lot of decisions that you made.

And when the policeman turned around and said,

"You didn't know you were living with a serial killer,"

I just looked at him, I said,

"Boy, have you got the wrong house?"

I've told that to people over and over.

None of what they were saying made any sense.

There was no way possible.

Not Sean. No way.

We said, "We absolutely have him on Katherine Hall,

Johnnie Mae Williams, and Donna Bennett Johnston.

"He can't deny that."

We knew that he absolutely had more victims.

So our interview strategy was gonna be

we're not gonna press him real hard.

We knew, from his prior interrogation,

that, you know, he liked to talk.

He just got to a point

where he was kind of consigned to the fact

that he was caught.

And I said, "Why don't you tell us

any others, Sean."

And I remember he said, "Do you have a pencil?"

Once we opened those floodgates, it was hard to shut him up.

And he wanted to talk and talk and talk.

[Max] He really enjoyed the attention.

He identified several homicides that he had committed.

It seemed to be important for him

to have more bodies to his credit

than Derrick Todd Lee.

He knew that Derrick Todd Lee had already been arrested

and was in the process of going to trial.

He'd been following it.

[music]

[Max] In addition to the three homicides

that we were working,

he confessed to killing Ann Bryan,

Joyce Williams, Marilyn Nevils,

Hardee Schmidt, and Lillian Robinson.

All were women who were killed in the Baton Rouge area

in the years previous to catching him.

[Bryan] He was very meticulous.

He gave us names, places,

graphic details at each scene,

intimate details about each victim.

The Johnnie Mae Williams case,

he said that, one night, he and Johnnie Mae

were riding around,

and, you know they were doing their drugs, listening to music.

And he said he pulled off behind a restaurant

in the southeast part of Baton Rouge.

He said they were just sitting there,

listening to music,

and he said Johnnie Mae actually fell asleep.

He said something just took over.

And so he said, "I just slipped it around her neck

and killed her."

[music]

[Max] As soon as you can take a breath

and realize that that's over, it's not over.

[Reporter] Many plenty other cold cases

that have remained unsolved.

[Johnnie] He started choking me,

put both of his hands on either side of my neck,

and he just started squeezing.

[Reporter] A suspected serial killer

is behind bars tonight.

I think I survived because I had a purpose.

[Bryan] Once Sean Gillis started confessing,

he talked and talked.

He gave us names, places, intimate details.

It was probably the most disturbing interrogation

I've ever heard in my life.

With Katherine Hall's body,

the most striking thing was the cuttings.

He talked about when he cut Katherine Hall's leg,

he said he cut it deep

and he said it kind of laid open.

He said that the moonlight had hit her bone

and "It was so white, I just wanted to touch it."

Sean told us that he had the perfect situation

with his relationship with Terri.

He would drive her to work and drop her off,

he said, which basically gave him

eight free hours to roam the streets,

and he actually called it hunting, "to go hunting."

[Reporter] Sean Gillis has confessed

to the murder of at least eight women.

[Reporter 2] Gillis led members of the task force

to locations

where he allegedly hid the bodies of his victims.

[Terri] After going to court

and listening to how some of the things occurred

one thing I had found out was that

he had dismembered one of his victims

on the kitchen floor.

And I made a point to go home

and tear up my floor in the kitchen.

And as I was pulling it up, underneath the tile,

there was still big spots of blood.

It made me feel guilty

and then it made me feel angry

because I was feeling guilty.

And everybody told me I wasn't supposed to feel guilty.

How can you not?

So many people have asked me,

"How could you not know?"

Why would I know?

If your husband stays gone for an odd amount of time,

and you're gonna think he's off

I'll say the word, actually killing someone?

First thing you're gonna think about is,

"Oh, he might be seeing another woman."

This was a letter that Sean wrote to me

right after he was arrested in 2004.

"My dearest Terri,

thank you so much for the last eight years.

I wish we had 80 more.

I have never loved a woman so much

that each day from you seems like a year.

The closer my time daws near, the less courage I have.

I do not wanna die this way.

I know there is something wrong with my brain,

but no one gives a damn to check it out.

Well, it's not over until it's over.

Love you so much, Honey Bunny. Sean."

Excuse me.

I know I can't change anything that happened.

I mean, I would if I could.

Sean took away the lives of those people.

I can't let him take away mine also.

[Reporter] The first full day of testimony underway

of the first-degree murder trial

of accused serial killer Derrick Todd Lee.

[music]

[Ann] The trial itself was surreal.

It's like being caught in a story that can't be true,

but you can't get out of it.

[Dianne] My being in the same room

with Derrick Todd Lee

wasn't strange for me

because I had prayed.

I prayed and asked God to let me face him,

and let me look him in the eye

so that he would know that I know

what he had done to me.

[Prem] God bless Dianne Alexander.

Dianne Alexander spoke for the dead.

She spoke for all the women who came before her

who had lost their lives in a violent way.

She was the voice of the dead through her life.

[Ann] She is unflappable.

And she identified him absolutely positively

with no reservations,

and that's the deal.

She is the nail in his coffin.

[music]

[Ann] And when the verdict came down,

we were so happy,

and you get such an intense relief.

We thought when it came back so quickly...

I'm sorry.

I just can't believe it's finally happened.

I'm overwhelmed.

[music]

[Anchor] Authorities say Derrick Lee

and serial killer Sean Gillis together

have killed 15 women,

but there are many, many other cold cases

that have remained unsolved.

Authorities say about 60 women

have been murdered in and around Baton Rouge since 1992.

With the trial of Derrick Todd Lee

and the trial of Sean Vincent Gillis,

we have two serial killers being tried

for killing women in Baton Rouge.

At the same time, they got homicides that's not solved yet

[Bryan] They're both in jail now.

There's still a lot of unsolved homicides.

There's also more female victims popping up around town.

We had quite a few high-risk lifestyle women

killed in the same general area,

Florida Edwards and also Sylvia Cobb.

[Dana] I think that law enforcement was concerned

that because they were both posed, both bound

in areas that were frequented

by drug users and prostitutes,

that these victims may have been murdered by the same person.

[Prem] It was incredible to even contemplate,

but could there be a third serial killer

here at Baton Rouge.

[Reporter] It's been more than two years and four month

since LSU grad student Murray Pace

was brutally murdered.

[Reporter 2] Louisiana investigators are searching

for more possible victims

of alleged serial killer Derrick Todd Lee.

In 2002, while law enforcement is investigating

the deaths of Gina Green and Murray Pace,

there were a lot of murders in downtown Baton Rouge,

under somewhat different circumstances.

I think it was just concern that,

"Oh, we've got another dead woman here.

I mean, what is going on?"

And then the next one happened.

[music]

[Christopher] We got a phone call

from a local resident that observed a female body

near the south side of the old Dillard's store.

This was the place where the body was discovered

on that morning.

Ten feet from the building south of the structure.

She was in a flower bed,

just about this area here.

The victim is laid on her back.

Her legs was positioned between the two smaller trees.

Her shirt was pulled above

her breast area near her throat.

[Dana] She was laid out in the flower bed.

It appeared that she had been posed.

[Christopher] It was obvious she was strangled

because there was blood on her T-shirt.

It appears that the shirt that was on her body

may have been used as a ligature

to choke and strangle the victim.

[music]

[Dana] She was found in downtown Baton Rouge

closer to where Sylvia and Florida were found.

The three murders had several things in common.

All three of the victims

appeared to be sexually assaulted.

And all three of them were in areas

where there were drugs, prostitution, high-risk areas.

[music]

We processed the crime scene and the victim was identified

as Renee Newman.

DNA was ultimately run on the evidence found

on Florida Edwards' body

as well as evidence on Renee Newman's body.

They connected those two,

but they didn't know who the killer was.

[music]

[Christopher] Working as a homicide detective,

you really wanna solve every case that you work.

You wanna bring closure to the families.

It takes a toll on you as an investigator.

You always thinking about the case that you're working.

You always thinking, "What is i I could've done different,

what clues I may have overlooked."

While investigating Renee Newman's homicide,

we received a tip that maybe Sean Vincent Gillis

may have known her.

That prompted us to interview Sean Gillis

relative to that investigation.

Sean was very forthcoming

with the previous murder investigations.

I would actually say in the ones involving Renee Newman

and also the ones done in Baton Rouge,

since he was accused of killing high-risk lifestyle women.

[Christopher] Sometimes it takes a killer to know a killer

and Sean can shed life

not only on himself as being a killer

but also any additional killers that he may know.

Sean told me that, while he was out there

searching for a victim,

he observed another hunter, another serial killer.

[Bryan] He said, "I'm telling you,

when our eyes locked,

we both knew exactly why we were there.

[music]

[Christopher] Sean would not tell me

what the other hunter looked like.

I guess maybe they've got some kind

of strict code of conduct

when it comes to killers recognizing other killers

not to divulge who the other person was.

He refused to give that

and that's when the interview stopped.

[music]

[Johnnie] I am Johnnie Martinez.

I decided to catch my bus

to go to the store to get me some medications.

I get off of the bus,

but the store is still a ways around

from where the bus is.

On the right-hand side,

there's a big bush, wooded area.

And as I'm walking down the pathway,

I see a man coming down towards me.

He was walking towards the bus stop.

He said, "You have some extra change?"

When I reached out to give it to him,

he grabbed my wrist.

He threw a punch, kind of dazed me a bit.

And when I look,

he was drawing me towards those big old woods.

And I was helpless.

There was nothing I could do

to prevent him from taking me in there.

He was a lot larger than me, real kind of big-looking guy.

He had droopy cheeks like Droopy the dog.

That's how I remembered him, by his cheeks.

I determined that I would give him

the same eye each time he went to punch me

because I saw him with the other eye

and I wanted to make sure that if

I would get out of there alive,

that I wanted to be able to identify.

I think I survived because I had a purpose.

God only knows what your purpose is.

And he presents it to you at that point in your life.

He started choking me,

put both of his big fat hands

on either side of my neck and he just started squeezing.

[Dana] Johnnie decided the best way to survive

was to tell him,

as he tried to sexually assault her,

that she had AIDS.

She did not have AIDS,

but she was hoping that would keep her

from being sexually assaulted.

Once he couldn't rape me,

there was not much he could do but steal my purse.

She decided that she had a chance

to survive if she just played dead.

I take a little breath

and close my eyes.

And I feel him get off of me.

And once he got off of me,

I waited a few more seconds.

And he was gone.

[Reggie] I get a call and the call is in reference

to someone that was beaten, possibly attempted rape,

really in bad condition.

And they said, "Hey, the person that's injured

you know,

and she says she knows you well."

And I said, "Well, who would that be?"

And it was Johnnie.

And, you know, I was shocked.

[Reggie] Johnnie worked at a fast food restaurant

that, during our patrol hours,

I would go over there and eat.

And me and Johnnie became really good friends.

[Reggie] I immediately got dressed

and I went to the hospital.

I can tell you this, I walked into the room

and I stood to the back of the room.

And when I saw her,

pretty much, tears came from my eyes.

[Johnnie] I had one big swollen eye

with knots on the side of it.

I had marks all on the side of my neck.

I looked just like a monster.

My friends came to visit me

after it happened.

They were all crying,

and it hurt me more

because I didn't want them to cry for me.

[Reggie] We knew that her purse was missing.

She said she had a debit card

and it had, possibly, $700 or so on it.

So we asked her to make the phone call.

[Dana] He took her purse,

and he went to an ATM,

and he used her card at the ATM.

And they have a beautiful picture of him using the card.

So this was the break we was looking for.

[Johnnie] I threw the picture down.

I said, "Man, that's the guy."

That was him.

He said, "You sure?" I said, "I'm positive."

Remember I told you he had droopy cheeks?

Look at his droopy cheeks on there.

She immediately identified the guy,

the best feeling ever.

[Dana] Police identified him as Jeffery Guillory

and found that he had frequented,

I think, a halfway house

that was in close proximity to where she was attacked.

We found that Guillory was from Lake Charles,

was from a family of 10.

He had several convictions

including burglary and drug convictions.

[Christopher] So our detective got a warrant for his arrest

for that particular case with using the ATM machine

with a stolen credit card.

[Dana] When he was arrested

for the attack on Johnnie Martinez,

police took his fingerprints

as well as his DNA.

[music]

[Dana] The DNA evidence that was taken from Florida Edwards

as well as Renee Newman

was in the system, and it was a hit.

[Christopher] It was also able to match

Jeffery Guillory's fingerprint

to that of a beer can left at crime scene

of Sylvia Cobb on North Arcadian.

[Reporter] Jeffery Lee Guillory was charged today

for the murders of three women,

Florida Edwards, Sylvia Cobb, and Renee Newman.

[music]

[Dana] Investigators questioned him

about Sylvia Cobb.

They questioned him about Renee Newman

and they questioned him about Florida Edwards.

[Christopher] He denied knowing the females,

but he was engaged in the conversation.

[Christopher] I showed him eight photographs

of the victims that was killed in that same area.

Jeffery said he did not know any of the women.

But he eventually said he knew Sylvia Cobb.

The body of Sylvia Cobb was found

in the same general area, in an abandoned house.

This is all kind of close to downtown Baton Rouge.

[Christopher] He knew her but he had never been

at the house where her body was discovered.

At times, he would smile and he was not intimidated.

He seemed so calm and so cool.

[Dana] He was totally unruffled.

He just continued to deny any involvement.

We had Jeffery DNA at a crime scene,

so as an investigator, I'm thinking

that he's gonna admit to what he did

because we could prove that his DNA was there.

I'm thinking that he's gonna man up

and say, "I was there. I did kill the victims."

[Christopher laughing]

[Christopher] He never did admit to it, you know,

so what do you get from that?

How do you assess a person

who don't wanna admit to the truth?

Still, he's a killer, and I knew he was

because of the fact that we were able to trace him

to these three crime scenes.

Authorities call Jeffery Lee Guillory

a suspected serial killer,

making him the third man accused of that title

in the Baton Rouge area in the last 10 years.

[Reporter] Guillory's fingerprints were found

at the scene of Sylvia Cobb's murder

but says DNA evidence

links Guillory to both Newman and Edwards.

The mother of one alleged victim

is still in Baton Rouge tonight.

Ora Lee Jackson, was at a loss for words

after news of today's arrest in the death of Sylvia Cobb.

I cried and seemed that I couldn't

get that together, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep.

And I said, "Well, thank you, Jesus.

They found the killer."

[music]

[Dana] Johnnie Martinez came to trial

in order to make sure

that Jeffery Guillory would never be able

to harm another woman.

[Dana] Finally, we have our guy

for these murders that occurred in 1999,

2001, and 2002.

[Christopher] With the arrest of Jeffery Guillory,

now we have a third serial killer

that's taken off the streets of Baton Rouge.

I think that Jeffery's also responsible

for the other homicides that took place in Baton Rouge.

A proximately 13 females

with high-risk lifestyle was murdered

in the same manner.

I think he's also responsible for those murders as well.

[Bryan] The arrest of serial killer Derrick Todd Lee,

serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis,

and serial killer Jeffery Guillory,

all in Baton Rouge,

all within a very short time period.

[Dana] The whole city was relieved,

but the amount of loss

and the amount of sadness, it's hard.

[Prem] There was such grief

for the mothers of those women,

such grief,

that I don't think that that sorrow has ever gone away.

[Ann] The families of the victims

of Derrick Todd Lee was a huge support

from sharing that common horror.

We felt very connected.

We weren't alone.

We had each other.

[music]

[Ann] I don't want to be overcritical of the police

because I really do think they did the best they could.

I do think that.

[Ann] Before AFIS, before CODIS,

before all those systems

kind of created a network

for law enforcement,

things were very isolated.

You could commit crimes

in two counties in the same state.

They wouldn't connect.

That would be the question there.

They're dropping this name that he's a serial killer.

None of this really makes sense.

[Ann] They were still utterly convinced

that Randy's ex-husband was the person who had killed her.

[Mike] I told them

that the whole time while you're investigating me,

the person responsible is still out there.

And he killed six more women after that.

In 1998,

they did not run Derrick Lee's DNA,

and think how that would've changed the world.

Why didn't you ever try to get a DNA sample?

Had that been the perfect world of now,

Derrick Todd Lee, he would've been caught right away.

We wanted to get Derrick Todd Lee's DNA.

It was early on in the DNA era

as what DNA could do

and never had training on DNA up to the end,

and really never understood it, what it could do.

I mean, I understand what fingerprints can do.

But being a small agency,

we didn't know a whole lot about DNA.

It was frustrating.

There's probably mistakes we made too,

and like I say, throughout my years

of working investigations

from '94 to 2010, it taught me a lot.

And I think more communication

would've been better on this case,

and maybe we could've stopped some murders.

[music]

[Ann] That's a thing that you can't think about too much,

the fact that, had they run that DNA in 1998,

that Murray, Gina,

Pam, Carrie, Dene,

all of them would be alive

'cause he would've been caught.

It's just one of those horrible turns of life.

[music]

[Christopher] The wounds of that time

are still open, it's not healed yet.

The wounds are still fresh today

as it was back in the '90s

and 2000s as well.

It still haunts the city

because that's a dark part of our history.

[Ann] There are so many women

who had been murdered

whose cases were unsolved.

And that's one thing you think of with ours,

that we were fortunate to know what happened,

and to know who and what and why,

as much as you can know why.

[Man] Eugenie Boisfontaine.

Dianna Williams.

Tannis Walker.

Patricia Harkins.

[Dana] It's upsetting to read so many names

of so many victims

that were killed during that period of time.

And it's also upsetting

that their killer was never made answerable

for those murders.

It may have been Jeffery Guillory.

It may have been Derrick Todd Lee.

It may have been Sean Vincent Gillis,

or it may have been somebody totally unrelated.

But their families have even less answers

and have never received justice.

[music]