Derrick Todd Lee

Derrick Todd Lee (November 5, 1968 – January 21, 2016), also known as The Baton Rouge Serial Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least seven women around Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, between 1998 and 2003.

Before his murder charges, Lee had been arrested for stalking women and watching them in their homes. Despite this arrest, he initially was overlooked by police because they incorrectly believed the killer was white. Lee was linked by DNA tests to the deaths of seven women in the area in Louisiana and in 2004, he was convicted in separate trials of the murders of Geralyn DeSoto and Charlotte Murray Pace. The Pace trial resulted in a death sentence.

Newspapers suggested Lee was responsible for other unsolved murders in the area, but the police lacked DNA evidence to prove these connections. After Lee's arrest, it was discovered that another serial killer, Sean Vincent Gillis, was operating in the Baton Rouge area during the same time as Lee.

Lee spent twelve years on death row at Louisiana State Penitentiary before dying of heart disease at a hospital in 2016.

Early life

Childhood and teenage years Derrick Todd Lee, who was known by his middle name, was born in St. Francisville, Louisiana, in the northern Baton Rouge metropolitan area, as the second of two children to Samuel Ruth and Florence Lee. Samuel and Florence were living with the latter's mother at the time, and weren't married, with Samuel abandoning the family during Lee's childhood to get back with his separated wife. Samuel had a number of mental health issues, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, and a record for domestic violence. In 1991, Lee's father was arrested in Gretna, Louisiana, for the attempted manslaughter of his second ex-wife, after he aimed an empty gun at her and repeatedly pulled the trigger. He was found incompetent to stand trial while in jail, after officers noted his refusal to wear clothes and misuse of toilet water, resulting in him being committed to a New Orleans psychiatric ward to receive treatment for psychosis, until he was deemed rehabilitated in 1998.

Florence was seventeen years old at the time of Lee's birth and did not list Samuel as the father on the birth certificate, raising her two children along with her husband Coleman Barrow, whom she married around 1970. Lee grew up in Independence, a predominantly Black area of houses and mobile homes at a former plantation near Louisiana State Highway 965, east of St. Francisville, spending most of his childhood around maternal family who also lived there. Lee's mother was described as short-tempered and domineering, while Lee's stepfather co-parented him and his older sister whenever he was off work. Lee was known to be a restless child, described as "a hyperactive", and as Lee's mother had a strict rule about not playing inside, he spent most of his free time with neighboring relatives, thus developing a close relationship with his uncle, grandfather and cousins.

Beginning at age nine, Lee developed an unusual interest in observing others, sometimes startling Independence residents through his unmoving, still state while doing so. He made a hobby of birdwatching, but was also involved in several incidents where he was caught peeping at girls, mostly his cousins as well as his sister, through the windows of their homes. Lee remained a bedwetter until his early teens and engaged in thumb sucking until high school. He took special education classes and attended speech therapy at West Feliciana High School. IQ tests taken throughout his teenage years varied between 70 and 91 points. Lee reportedly felt embarrassment for being in special education and was regularly bullied by his peers for this. Lee regularly got into confrontations at school, with most ending without physical violence. Lee dropped out of school in the eleventh grade.

Marriage In 1987, he and his girlfriend, Jacqueline Denise "Jackie" Sims, moved to Zachary, Louisiana, where Lee found employment as a pipefitter. He worked with the construction company he trained under until 1988, and got married the same year. Lee continued working in construction for several different employers for the next several years, either in pipefitting or as a cement truck driver, which both his biological and stepfather worked as before him. Over the following fifteen years, he worked for Exxon, Turner Industries, Formosa Plastics, and various smaller construction firms, with long periods of unemployment, including the months before his arrest.

In 1996, not long after Lee's return from prison, Lee's father-in-law died in a workplace accident during an explosion at an Amoco plant. His wife received a $250,000 settlement, which Lee appropriated and spent on expensive cars, clothes, jewelry and alcohol at bars to impress women. He used a portion of the money to buy a house and 1-acre property south of St. Francisville. Lee gambled away over $5,000 at Casino Rouge. Lee entered a stable extramarital affair with another woman, Consandra Green, whom he met at a bar in 1997. Green gave birth to his third child, Dedrick, in July 1999.

Prior criminal record Lee was first arrested on November 8, 1981, aged thirteen, for breaking into a candy shop. He was convicted of simple burglary and sentenced to probation and to pay restitution to the shop. At age sixteen, Lee was arrested for attempted second-degree murder for using a knife during a fight with another teen, who was left uninjured, but the matter did not go to court. In February 1986, a relative of Lee reported him to police for repeatedly peeping through the windows of his home, as well as that of a female relative. In September 1988, Lee was convicted for unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling. In May 1990, Lee got into a fight with his father-in-law, leading to an arrest for disturbing the peace. The same year, Lee was questioned by police after neighbours overheard an escalating argument where Lee accused his mother of owing him money. Lee's sister also filed a complaint against her brother due to an incident in which he had removed a glass pane from her window to unlock her front door after being forbidden from coming inside.

In July 1993, Lee was sentenced to four years of hard labor at East Baton Rouge Parish prison for simple burglary. He successfully filed for parole in July 1995 and moved to Lake Charles, in the western part of the state, where he was arrested two months later on a Peeping Tom offense. He was given a 120 days prison sentence, which was suspended and replaced with two years of unsupervised probation. Three weeks after the decision, Lee was arrested alongside a cousin and their friend for stealing clothes from Salvation Army donation boxes. He was initially charged with burglary and theft, but the charges were downgraded to misdemeanors.

Michael was the prime suspect, with police finding out about his alcoholism, frequent fighting with his partners, and a death threat he had made against another ex-wife who had followed his car once. Michael's girlfriend provided an alibi for the night and he was released due to a lack of evidence, receiving custody of his son, though local police continued to keep him under informal watch for years.

Geralyn Barr DeSoto On the morning of January 14, 2002, 21-year-old Geralyn Barr DeSoto was fatally stabbed in her house in Addis. Lee, who had been fired from another workplace four days earlier, had asked DeSoto to let him in so he could use a phone, which he used to bludgeon DeSoto in the head from behind. DeSoto was able to flee to the bedroom and retrieve her husband's shotgun, which was not loaded, before Lee caught up to her again. Lee wrestled the gun from DeSoto, who ran for the backdoor before being repeatedly stabbed in the back and chest with a hunting knife after Lee caught up to her, dying from a slit throat. Lee stomped on her body before leaving the scene.

Pam Kinamore On July 12, 2002, 44-year-old Pamela Piglia Kinamore was murdered after being abducted from her home on Baton Rouge's Briarwood Place, shortly after returning from her antique shop in Denham Springs. Lee had entered through the unlocked front door and kidnapped Kinamore as she was sitting in the bath. After being beaten and tied-up, Kinamore was driven to the Whiskey Bay, part of the Atchafalaya Basin in Iberville Parish, where she was raped before having her throat slit, nearly beheading her. Her husband identified Kinamore's body from a golden earring, as she was otherwise too mutilated. A silver toe ring had been taken from her body by Lee, who gifted it to his wife.

Carrie Yoder On March 3, 2003, 26-year-old Carrie Lynn Yoder was murdered after being abducted from her home on Baton Rouge's Dodson Avenue. Yoder was raped and beaten before she was strangled to death. Her body was found at the Whiskey Bay ten days after her disappearance. Police therefore administered thousands of DNA tests to Caucasian men in and around the general area of the murders. Having no leads, police then allowed the now defunct company DNAPrint Genomics to access DNA left at the crime scenes. DNAPrint Genomics generated an ancestry profile indicating that the suspect was 85% African, thus changing the course of the investigation. Police then knew they were searching for a black man for the January 2002 slaying of Geralyn Barr DeSoto after DNA evidence was found under DeSoto's fingernails. and the police sketch based on Alexander's description, the police went public with the information. Police in the nearby town of Zachary, Louisiana recognized the man from a recent peeping tom incident it had investigated. Police in Zachary called the police in Baton Rouge to let them know the name of the suspected perpetrator. Additionally, the Zachary Police Department also let the Baton Rouge Police Department know that it had a DNA sample from Lee due to a prior murder investigation from six to eight months earlier. The DNA lab ran and compared the samples, and they were a match to Derrick Todd Lee. During the manhunt, John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, added the Baton Rouge Serial Killer to his Top 10 Fugitives of 2002 at No. 3. Lee had already fled the state on May 10, after police got Lee to submit a voluntary DNA sample, taking his children out of school before ordering them and his wife to go to Detroit for a while. Lee travelled through Michigan, Illinois and finally Georgia via bus. On May 27, after a five-day manhunt, law enforcement found him hiding at a motel in Atlanta. After two failed arrest attempts at a homeless shelter and another motel, Lee was apprehended in Atlanta's Polar Rock neighborhood. Lee waived extradition, and he was returned to Baton Rouge on five murder charges.

Besides the seven confirmed murders, Lee is also a suspect in the murders of 41-year-old Connie Lynn Warner in August 1992, and 23-year-old Christine Moore in May 2002, as well as the December 2002 disappearance of 65-year-old Mari Ann Fowler. The 1997 murder of Eugenie Boisfontaine was initially also investigated for Lee's involvement, due to the proximity to the murder of Gina Green, although found DNA evidence did not match his in 2005. Lee was placed on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. On January 21, 2016, Lee died from complications with heart disease, after being transferred to Lane Memorial Hospital in Zachary a few days earlier.

Alexander v. Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. Dianne Alexander's survival and description of Lee assisted investigators in his arrest. Alexander felt she deserved the Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. public reward offering of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of Lee. On or about August 14, 2003, Alexander contacted Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. and inquired about the offer. It was then that Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. informed Alexander that she was not eligible to receive the reward.

On February 22, 2006, Alexander hired Attorney L. Clayton Burgess to pursue the case. Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. claimed that the reward offer expired on August 1, 2003, and that, although Alexander had gone to the police, she did not contact Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. before August 1, 2003. Furthermore, Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. claimed that she [Alexander] did not use the tipster hotline and thereby did not comply with the "form, terms, or conditions" required by Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc. The case was decided in Lafayette Crime Stoppers Inc.'s favor.

In popular culture Lee was portrayed in an episode of the docudrama series Obsession: Dark Desires, which aired in March 2014 and centered on his stalking of surviving victim Collette Dwyer whose tips to police about Lee were not fully followed up. In 2022, he was featured in a four part A&E series called "Butchers of the Bayou" along with fellow serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis, who worked the same area as Lee.

"Crying baby" rumor In early 2003, an urban legend began to circulate that Lee was using the taped sounds of a crying baby to lure victims to the door. The Baton Rouge Police were quick to deny that the information was coming from their office. Fueling the rumor were season 3 episodes of the television series Criminal Minds titled "Children of the Dark" and "Tabula Rasa". Lee and the "crying baby" rumor were mentioned in both episodes.

Snopes reported on this urban legend.

Son's arrest On November 21, 2018, Lee's son Dedrick, then 19, was arrested for negligent homicide for accidentally shooting 16-year-old Valentae Brooks in Jackson, Louisiana. The shooting had occurred eight days earlier at Lee's house. In June 2019, Lee was convicted of negligent homicide, principal to attempted robbery and obstruction of justice. He was released from jail two months later in August as most of his original sentence was deferred.