Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death

by Louis Cataldie

  In addition to the crimes for which he’s been convicted—the murders of Charlotte Murray Pace and Geralyn DeSoto—Lee has also been indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Trineisha Dené Colomb of Lafayette and booked on first-degree murder in the deaths of Gina Wilson Green, Pam Kinamore, Carrie Lynn Yoder, and Randi Mebruer. He is booked but has not been tried for those crimes. The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney said he intends to seek three more indictments if necessary.

  Lee now resides in a cell on death row in the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, under the care of Warden Burl Cane. That’s in Lee’s home parish of West Feliciana, but I doubt they are doing anything there to make him feel at home. It’s said that one of the worst things about prison for the criminal is that they have to live with people who are of the same sort as themselves.

  In December, before the death penalty was announced, Charlotte Murray Pace’s sister, Sam, looked straight into the eyes of the shackled thirty-six-year-old Lee, in an orange prison jumpsuit in court. She’d be there to watch, she said, as “the first cold drop of saline hits your veins.” Good for her!

  JUSTICE: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

  In February 2004, Zachary detectives said that DNA from a specimen found on a trash-can liner found at Randi Mebruer’s home matched Lee’s. It had been tested in 1998 only for fingerprints and blood types. Another first-degree murder charge was added to Lee’s record.

  WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO . . .

  Chief Pat Englade retired on October 15, 2004, during that year’s mayoral campaign. He cited job stress as one of the reasons for his decision.

  Bobby Simpson lost his bid for reelection as mayor of Baton Rouge. He was the first incumbent candidate in decades not to be reelected to a second term. He was beaten by Kip Holden, the first black person ever to be elected to that post.

  Captain Paul Maranto, who was the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s representative on the task force, has been fired after being arrested for unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling, stalking, and hit-and-run. He has been ordered by the judge to seek help. I wish him well.

  Sergeant Ike Vavasseur, who served on the task force and was one of the detectives involved in the initial search for links to the prostitute murders, is now commander of the Baton Rouge Police Department’s Homicide Division.

  Lieutenant Keith Bates is now chief of staff for Baton Rouge PD. He was one of the detectives involved in the initial search for links to the prostitute murders.

  Mike Foster served out his eight years as governor. We don’t hear much about him lately, but when we do, it’s not very flattering. I take all that with a grain of salt. After all, this is Louisiana and politics are politics.

  Mike Wolf, of WJBO radio, who vehemently condemned the actions of Lynne Marino during her quest to find justice for her child, is no longer with WJBO.

  Jerry Fowler, now a widower, is out of prison.

  Randi Mebruer’s son lives with his father, Michael Mebruer. The ten-year-old knows that Derrick Todd Lee is the man who took his momma away forever. The continuing search for her body has been unsuccessful to date.

  Lee Stanton, who was Carrie Lynn Yoder’s boyfriend, graduated from LSU. The ceremony was attended by her parents.

  Lynne Marino is still a victim’s advocate. God bless her.

  Ann Pace is still one of the most courageous women I’ve ever met. She remains an inspiration.

  ANOTHER SERIAL KILLER

  Baton Rouge, as we had suspected, was plagued by more than one monster. I wasn’t there for this killer’s capture, but I was on the receiving end of many of his victims. In April 2004, as Lee was awaiting trial, a SWAT team arrested a second serial murderer, Sean Vincent Gillis, a forty-one-year-old white male, at his home in Baton Rouge, for killings he committed over a period of ten years. Investigators said DNA evidence linked him to the killings of Katherine Hall in January 1999, Johnnie Mae Williams in October 2003, and Donna Bennett Johnston in February 2004. He was booked into Parish Prison on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of ritualistic acts, including mutilating their bodies after death. He is currently accused of or has confessed to killing eight women:• Ann Bryant, an eighty-two-year-old white female who lived in St. James Retirement Center. Murdered in March 1994.

  • Katherine Hall, a thirty-year-old black woman with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered January 1999.

  • Hardee Schmidt, a fifty-two-year-old white female who was abducted while jogging near LSU. She was similar in profile to Lee’s victims. Murdered May 1999.

  • Joyce Williams, a thirty-five-year-old black female with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered January 2000.

  • Lilian Robinson, a fifty-two-year-old black female with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered February 2000.

  • Marilyn Nevils, a thirty-eight-year-old white female from Abbeyville, Louisiana, with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered November 2002.

  • Johnnie Mae Williams, a forty-five-year-old black female with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered October 2003.

  • Donna Bennett Johnston, a forty-three-year-old white female with a high-risk lifestyle. Murdered February 2004.

  Gillis was indicted on a count of first-degree murder and faces the death penalty for the strangulation of Donna Bennett Johnston. He was also indicted in Lafayette for the murder of Mary Nevils, was linked by DNA to three of the victims, and has confessed to the other killings. Some of the family members of the victims are not completely convinced that he is the killer and have adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

  To say that Gillis or any serial killer is a strange duck is always a gross understatement. But there are some things that stand out in this case. For one thing, a geographical profile for where Derrick Todd Lee would have been residing was off by thirty miles or so; but that same profile was right on in Gillis’s case. Ironically, it was based on some of Lee’s victims. And while Gillis seemed to have a marked preference for stalking black victims in areas far from where he himself lived, the murder that led the task force to him, and to his arrest, was that of Donna Johnston, who was white, and he dumped her body by a bridge on Ben Hur Road, which is close to his home. She was found naked and face down. He left a tire track at the scene that was unique; there were only ninety sales of the Goodyear Aquatred 3 tire in the Louisiana area, and it was only manufactured for three years. Gillis’s name came up on the sales list. Police went to his home, not far from the dump site of the latest victim, and swabbed him. They staked out his home until the rush job on the DNA was completed. It linked him to the murders.

  Gillis’s rap sheet was most unimpressive, yet his collection of reading materials included Silence of the Lambs, Son of Sam, and The Hillside Strangler. He had also been clipping news reports of some of Derrick Lee’s homicides.

  In an interview with Josh Noel of the Advocate, Gillis said that he felt the urge to kill only at night, and that in the four years when he worked the graveyard shift he never killed anyone.

  Gillis was calm about the whole arrest. He elected to spend his last evening of freedom at home, awaiting the inevitable knock at the door. And when asked why he confessed, his simple answer was: “Because I did it.” Not so simple was the chilling statement he made about the victims: “They were already dead to me.”

  The statement didn’t surprise me. For one thing, these victims became objects and were devalued once under his control. It’s always a hip shot in trying to understand what a serial killer means, for lots of reasons. On a gut level, a normal human is repulsed by the way these murders devalue life. One explanation for the statement is that if they were dead to him already, there was nothing wrong with killing them.

  On Ben Hur Road there is a fading memorial to Donna Bennett Johnston. It’s a heartbreaking collection of beads and wreaths. The saddest part is the weathered sign that just says MOM.

  AND ANOTHER

  What are the odds of having four serial killers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over the same time span? I have no idea, but we e
vidently have a fourth one. He’s here now, still out there, still unknown, and still killing as of July 30, 2004, the date of his latest attack (at the time of this writing). He’s been unofficially labeled the Black Prostitute Killer. His mode of operation and victim selection fit seven or eight murders, beginning in 1999.

  The community seems pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. Maybe it’s battle fatigue. Maybe it’s because of the victims’ profile. I don’t know. What I do know is that if we as a community do not learn from the past, we set ourselves up to repeat it.

  FIFTEEN

  Conclusion

  “SO, WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED, LOU?”

  I guess the corollary of the Tin Man’s question in the Wizard of Oz for me is: “If Baton Rouge is such a bad place, why do you stay?”

  There are lots of reasons, family roots being a big one. Dorothy was right, there’s no place like home, and this is home. I don’t think Baton Rouge is so bad that it can’t be fixed. Actually, I think that fix is happening now. We have a new mayor—Kip Holden. He’s a good guy and a good leader. I recently saw him go to the crime scene of an especially tragic shooting in which three police officers were shot—one fatally. He was there at a time of crisis. He’s involved. I respect that. I think we all do. We also have a new police chief by the name of Jeff LeDuff. He has presence and is the kind of leader who is able to gather support not only from his officers but also from the community. Incidentally, I think he is the first African-American police chief we have ever had. I hear the police department’s morale has improved. So changes are in the wind. My bottom line: I have faith in the people of this parish.

  As I glance back over these pages, the crime scenes jump out at me in vivid detail. I don’t see cases or case numbers. I see an elderly grandfather who is a World War II hero going out into his backyard and putting a bullet through his head because he doesn’t want to be a burden to his family. I see a small Vietnamese woman huddled into the corner of the convenience store, holding up her hands, trying to block the hail of bullets from the gun of the armed robber who kills her for no good reason. I see the body parts of someone’s grown son, scattered for a half-mile along the railroad tracks after he was hit by an express train en route to the Super Bowl in New Orleans. I see the faces of six children who died in a fire, their little faces staring back at me as I remove the burned rubble from their little bodies.

  Sometimes I wonder if maybe I have seen too much. There are hundreds of bodies of sons and daughters, husbands and wives, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, filed away forever in my brain.

  Some of these people placed themselves in harm’s way. Some others I don’t have an explanation for . . . and never will. In practically every area of town I drive through, I can pick out spots where I have examined bodies. For a while, it was like some ghastly tour in the realm of death that I chose not to share with anyone. The places and the memories are still there, but they have no power over me any longer. Usually they just sadden me. My nightly bicycle ride takes me past the office of a colleague who killed himself there several years ago. He was a good man. As I pass by, I always say a prayer for him. Maybe the prayer is for me.

  I have seen the casualties of those who lost loved ones, scars that never heal and leave them asking the unanswerable—why? I still have people stop me at the mall and on the street to thank me for what I did and to give some follow-up about themselves and their families. Baton Rouge truly is an oversized small town. Not everyone is satisfied with the job I did, but I did it to the best of my ability. I tried to be a true public servant; that may sound hokey, but it’s true.

  I’ve seen people at their worst and people at their best. A moment of rage due to betrayal (real or imagined), a drink too many, an extra hit of Ecstasy, a cocaine run, a fit of jealousy, passion, a moment of depression and hopelessness—any of these negative emotional experiences can result in homicide, suicide, or accidental death. I sort of understand. I don’t condone the behaviors, but I understand the cause and effect.

  What I do not understand is the sociopath who kills for the fun of it . . . because he likes it. I don’t understand the pedophile. I don’t understand the child-murderer. I don’t understand the serial killers and rapists. I just know they are evil. I have sensed that evil still lingering about the death scene. I’m neither psychic nor psychotic, but there is no other explanation for what I have witnessed on such occasions.

  I’ve also seen the toll this takes on responders. Pick one—EMS, fire, police, coroner. Look close and you’ll see the scars. Some may be just superficially sealed over—like a scab trying to cover an infected wound. It’s an expensive cover-up. Callousness, failed marriages, depression, chemical dependency, alienation of family, cynicism as a permanent character trait, identification with the perpetrator and the subsequent attitude that the end justifies the means, suicide . . . yes, even homicide. I’ve felt the rigid, steel-clad silence at a murder scene as I strained to pull the dead lover of a policeman’s ex-wife out of the trunk of his car. There were no police lights flashing in the darkness because the killer was one of their own. Intense . . . It’s all there, just look a little closer sometime and you may see it. It’s also avoidable, to a large degree. And I’ll say it again: If you don’t process all the pain, it will process you. Anyone who doesn’t believe that has missed one of the lessons I have tried to offer in this journal. I don’t want any responder to end up a corpse in a bathtub.

  I’ve seen Buddy and Betty Knox, Jim and Edith Moore, and others who were among the founders of the LOSS group, get out of bed at all hours of the night to head to a crime scene, responding without question to four words from me: “I’ve got a suicide.” I’ve seen them share their pain and their hope as they help others navigate through a disaster.

  What do you say to a grieving wife and mother who finds her husband dead in his bedroom, having killed himself with a shotgun blast to his head? Or it’s 2:30 P.M. and the kids are in school, and a horror awaits them at home. Who is there to prepare the way for them? People like those of the LOSS team. They stay the night in a bloody trailer with a grieving wife who has no family or close friends in the area to stay with her. And never once did I ever hear any hesitancy in their voices. As an aside, I’ll just mention that Jim Moore is seventy years old, but I’ve never seen him flinch from his self-appointed duty.

  I’ve seen a town come together over the body of an abandoned child. Folks still put toys on her little grave. There was a play cell phone there on her headstone just yesterday when I went by to visit. Christine Noel Love has been adopted and not forgotten.

  I’m reminded of memorials that family members have erected to their lost loved one. Most of the memorials are temporary and in time melt back into the landscape. Still, you don’t have to go far to find a cross on the side of the road. While sometimes fleeting, some of those memorials really stick out in my mind. The teddy bear and toys that marked the tragic death on College Drive a half-mile from my home are particularly haunting. It’s where a baby of less than one year of age was catapulted from her stroller when a drunk driver hit her. The driver sped away with the stroller still lodged under the car’s bumper. It was December 19, 2002—Christmastime—baby’s first Christmas. Her Christmas gifts were placed at the site of her death as a memorial.

  The media has hurt—and at times helped. Greg Meriweather, who does the street scene for Channel 9, is a straight shooter who is really interested in making a difference, not in merely sensationalizing. He’s done some neat things, like trying to get people to keep their kids away from homicide crime scenes. When we had four infants die as a result of rollover in a parent’s bed, Phil Ranier, a TV health reporter, came forward. He interviewed one mother, and the story made such an impact that we went many months without another rollover fatality. It’s not all about death.

  I’ve worked alongside a lot of cops, both uniformed and detectives. The really good ones approach each crime with the same intensity
and dedication. It doesn’t matter to them if the victim is a “throwaway.” Each person gets the same attention. Those are the great ones. They seem to rise above the political and departmental pressures of the moment to do their job. They don’t talk about it much, and they don’t go around patting themselves on the back. This is serious business and they are serious men and women.

  I have struggled for years with that little saying “Let go and let God.” It actually used to irritate—then frustrate—me. Truth is, it pissed me off. I never was very good at letting go. I like order, and since this is the time for true confessions, I must admit that I’m something of a control freak.

  I’ve tried to figure it out and answer the “Why?” question. With all my philosophy, religious study, and intellectualization, I have only been able to come up with one answer: “Because.” There must be an explanation, but it transcends all the reasoning power that I have been able to muster. In the end I have had to let it go and give it over to God. No, I don’t think of God as my “fall guy,” but as the ultimate source of reason and wisdom.

  “Let go and let God.”

  I hope I can keep it there.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It was during the worst times, in the midst of the troughs of the serial killer’s reign, when I met Patricia Cornwell. She came to Baton Rogue offering help and was generally rebuked by the serial killer task force and local government. I remember the mayor telling me that she was just here to write a book. He was as wrong about that as he was about his chances for reelection. She came to help and she brought expertise and experts with her. They, too, were welcomed like seeds upon the rocks.

  I can’t say I was much better initially. There was a media feeding frenzy going on. My policy to date had been to deny major media interviews and keep this at a local level. I didn’t want to empower the killer any more than was already done. I just wanted to get the facts out. And we had some really sincere reporters, like Greg Meriwether and Avery Davidson, whom I have found to be most responsible in their reporting. In short, I didn’t need those national guys to dispel rumors and get the right messages across.