Derrick Todd Lee | Making A Serial Killer | Forensic Files

[Music] we weren't looking for someone with horns we were looking for someone who
looked just like anyone else and that's what made it so difficult he raed have it over South L
he put a lot of fear in his area for a long time the followers felt like he would have a demeanor that would be very
unassuming the level of violence at some of these crime scenes it was just horrific I kept having a dream she was
sending me a message that said Mama come get me Mama come get me if he hadn't been caught he would
have continued to kill till maybe somebody killed him in the process [Music] [Music]
[Music] [Music] Murray as a child was a little ball of energy we always said her first words
were I will not and you can't make me instead of Mama and Daddy but she was just a funny little curly-headed girl
and she just never stopped running when she was all and the older she got the more she did more of the
same she finished high school when she was 16 College when she was 20 and had her MBA by
22 she was maybe the youngest person to ever receive an MBA at LSU she was starting her life I mean she was
vivacious and fun and beautiful [Music] Murray had accepted a job in Atlanta with Deo and TCH uh top six accounting
firm for their internal audit department and that's what she wanted to do she could hardly wait to move to Atlanta and
wanted to move that summer but her job did not start until the fall so she stayed in Bon Rouge working at
LSU the last time she was with me at this house she was leaving and she she turned to me and smiled and did her
cheek did like that cuz she never wanted you to kiss her on the mouth cuz it would mess up her lipstick and I kissed
her on the cheek and it was like I took a snapshot in my mind and I just can immediately see her entirely it was just
a moment that just stayed with me forever in May 2002 Murray is getting ready for a friend's wedding when
there's a knock at the door from a man she doesn't know Murray had been apparently sitting
on the couch and there was a plate of her lunch was still sitting on the edge of the
couch what we surmised was that the man came to the door and he talked his way in and then once he got in he attacked
her she was raped and she fought back and she fought back really hard Murray's case was so
violent in the end he stabbed her 81 times I had asked to see the autopsy pictures and the crime
scene pictures and I knew that was going to be horrible but I felt compelled I felt like I had to know what had
happened to her they had asked us what color her hair was was and I thought it was such an odd question and then I
could see that it was because there had been so much blood that that was all you
could see another thing I guess that always Disturbed me was in the bathroom where
she must have tried to escape him were blood drops they could tell dropped straight down in front of the
mirror where they presumed he held her to show her what he had done to her and then he
uh apparently tried to rape her while she died you can't help but think when did
she know that no help was coming and that she would die and this that this was the end of
everything she'd hoped [Music] Gina green was 41 years old she lived on Stanford in a nice little house she was
a nurse had a lot of friends was very social she just didn't show up to work one day
and she was found strangled in her bed and there was a lot of fear around that murder because it was so close to campus
apparently Gina green felt that she was being watched before she was murdered and had relayed that to her friends and
I think some family members so that's that's what started it [Music] all Cur told me they thought it was
someone who had done some work around her home it was suspected that he was her murderer I was very concerned because
she was by herself a lot going to and from places I had purchased a firearm on her behalf but she didn't not have it
before she was murdered [Music] similar patterns exist but we're looking at it from years later from all the
pieces being put into place if you have a person that's able to gain the confidence of their victim that throws
off an officer that throws off an investigation to look for one type of person versus the other we knew there
was no one who even came close to having any animus against her but we thought she'd been attacked by a stranger I
didn't think about Gina green at that time there had in fact been another murder nearby between Gina's and
Murray's geryn Doo was killed in Addis 10 miles outside Baton Rouge the second murder Mur is as brutal
as the first murder you have a person that can sit back and look at I was able to do the first I did the second I
haven't been captured I haven't been caught so therefore why not go further with the third Jin's murder in Addis is
investigated by a separate police force to Gina's and Murray's neither teams are
aware of another similar case four years ago in nearby Zachary Randy M uh was a a single mother who uh
lived along over there in Oak shadows and had a child there living with her the neighbor found her 2-year-old
son wandering around outside by himself and knew that Randy would not have let that happen and was concerned and when
they called the police the police went in and she was gone just absolutely gone we go inside the house there's
blood all over the house we've seen blood in the bedroom where there was a struggle in the
bedroom we seen where somebody appears to have been drugged throughout the house out to the door we found one of
her uh contacts in the ground there like where she'd been beaten some more in the
blood stain Randy's body was never found and a killer never convicted her husband
was the Prime Suspect there was some violence inside the relationship he faed a polygraph when he fell a I wasn't
convinced uh you know my thoughts were why would he leave his child there as a as a father myself that bothered me a
lot the police are looking at the person who last saw you alive so police are naturally going to go to a husband a
spouse a significant other first to identify where were you at the time we believe this crime takes place there are
enough cases in which that person is the person that's committed the ACT but a broader thinking must take place
McDavid had another suspect in mind a local peeping Tomy first encountered a year before ry's murder Derek toddle and
in 1997 one of our officers said you know I've dealt with him a lot in the neighborhood where he's hanging out by
stop signs had gloves in his hand had a knife in his pocket he said he always parked his vehicle across the street at
the the lounge and he has a you know kind of a a cream colored uh Chevrolet pickup with some type of uh painting on
the backo there was kind of this just you know minimization of peeping and what that meant this is a non- cont is what I
used to hear all the time this is a non- contct you know thing to worry about without realizing that you know again in
some respects it's kind of a Gateway and that's you know a significant number of
people who start out peeping will will escalate or graduate to more serious offenses
and I just told him I said I know what you're doing we don't get you sooner or later and we put some much his pressure
on him here we know with surveillance and looking at him and he finally just drifted off has Derek toddle drifted
away from being a suspected peeping Tom and zacher to commit murders around nearby Baton Rouge and will police be
able to connect him to the deaths of Gina green geryn doo and Murray Pace before another woman is killed
Gina green geryn doo and Murray Pace have been brutally killed in their own homes the police forces investigating
the crimes are yet to establish a link or identify a suspect unknown to them four years prior
in nearby Zachary a a young woman named Randy mewer had vanished police suspected a local
peeping Tom had been involved Derek toddle his mom was very young when she had him she was
17 his dad seemed to have some very difficult psychological problems as well as being violent and he was incarcerated
after attempting to murder his ex-wife Derek's IQ was calculated to be below 75 there was almost equal parts nature
and nurture you know we have this person who is a relatively low functioning person from an IQ standpoint you know he
goes to to school he's calling his teacher Mama He's you know developmentally delayed he gets teased
about this and then I think you have this abuse on top of that and I think that this rage he felt is something that
has been festering him for a long period of time Derek also grew up in a racially
divided 1970s Louisiana the United States has a history in which race is a major part that then creates
in our mind a framework of how we respond or interact with that person there was this town it seemed like that
even though some progress had been made there was a lot of segregation and if I am raised in a place in which that line
is drawn that these people are over here those people are over there that becomes
my own function of life it becomes pretty clearly known that he has started abusing animals at a
relatively early age and we know that that is a huge red flag not everybody who becomes a serial
killer hurts animals but there certainly is a larger representation among individuals who hurt animals that go on
to hurt people at age 11 Derek was is also caught peeping into his neighbor's Windows it was taken very lightly oh
he'll outgrow it oh this is silly you know he he likes to sneak around it's a joke he likes to sneak around and see
other people and we now know that voyerism can be a Gateway you know to some other pretty serious sexual
behaviors because one of the things it suggests is the development of a paraphilia or a kind of a deviant sexual
interest and going around and peeping in people's windows that is non-consenting
behavior that end of itself as a sexual offence and I think at the time we thought of
that back then as again harmless he was arrested for peeping for I mean dozens and dozens of times with
no consequences [Music] whatsoever 11 years after Derek toddle was first arrested for peeping police
are still trying to understand who killed Gina green JN doot and Murray Pace apparently Gina green felt that she
was being watched and there were reports with Murray that there was somebody that
was watching outside the apartment as well we wondered if he had noticed Murray when he killed Gina green cuz
they lived on the same street and not very far from each other I think he did surveillance on them where he watched
them and figured out their routines and saw what they were doing [Music] 6 weeks after the murder of Murray Pace
the police have a breakthrough DNA testing confirms that Gina's murderer is the same as Murray's but Derek toddle
isn't a suspect he mystified law enforcement and there was a prevailing Theory at the time that serial killers
were white and and there are reasons to follow this Frame of Mind the victims are white and usually we find crime
stays in one 's race you put those together serial murders traditionally are white persons that you have the
wrong person being searched for in this case with no leads in their search for the killer the local police forces ask
the FBI for help one of the resources that the state and local law enforcement were really
interested in was our profiling unit from quanico uh they wanted them to weigh in and be able to tell them what
type of unknown offender we were looking for and so we brought in the uh profilers and they basically created a
profile of an unknown offender they did that by reviewing uh the crime scenes extensively talking to the detectives
they were looking for evidence of the offender's Behavior prior to the incident during the actual crime and
also any kind of post offense Behavior they may have engaged in to get away with the crime and things like that
the FBI Behavioral Unit releases a criminal profile of Murray and Gina's [Music]
murderer the profilers felt like the attacks were not what we would classify as a blitz attack which are surprise
attacks the profilers felt like there would have to be some type of interaction that occurred before these
attacks actually occurred he would have a demeanor that would be very unassuming
and that would not trigger people to think that he was suspicious in any way shape or form until it was too
late profilers also surmised that the offender would be someone who didn't take rejection well any hint of
resistance when he goes in and he completely I think escalates and you know the level of
violence as some of these crime scenes was just horrific clearly indicating this wasn't just about sex it was about
power rage domination and control there was so much violence associated with his
crimes that I think that rage completely took over him when he was no situations he thought he was going to
easily rape Murray and then when she fought back he couldn't take the rejection or that's our Theory and um
then he just lost it and stabbed her 81 times the profilers felt like this unknown offender was following the
investigation in the media and any significant releases in the media they felt like would cause him a great degree
of distress and or anger you can imagine for several months he's thinking hm I'm
not hearing about that they're looking for someone with my character istics wow this could give someone a pass to say I
can do more criminal activities he would have been aware that people were hearing about a repeat
offender in the community but I also feel like there was this compulsive nature in him that was very very strong
and that overrode any real sense of danger now it's very interesting even though these warning
signs by the police and Public Safety are saying that this person is out there that he stays relatively in the same
area this again is a factor of maybe there was something very much rooted in his place where he grew up his
environment where he grew up and wanting to do something about this rage or these
feelings that he has in his mind has him stay in this area to continue to commit
these crimes the day after the DNA breakthrough the killer appears to strike again this time
the victim survives Diane Alexander was a nurse that lived in brobridge and she was in the house and
somebody knocked at the door and he asked if she knew someone and he gave her a name she said no I don't know him
he said well ask your husband and she said well I you know I'm not married and that's when he flipped that's when he
pushed his way in the door he took a phone cord and cut part of it and was about to strangle her with the phone
cord when he heard her son driving up the gravel road and when that happened he took
off the profilers felt like this unknown offender had a great deal of impulsivity
which is essentially not caring about the outcomes of their action the the need is so great they don't care about
what happens afterwards and based upon that they felt like his impulsivity would have made him come into contact
with law enforcement at some point prior including various things with breaking and entering and also potentially
peeping and things like that Diane Alexander worked with the police to generate a sketch of the
suspect this time the suspect Bears a resemblance to Derek toddle but toddle is unknown to local
police 3 Days Later a fifth woman is murdered mured pam kinamore pam was 44 years old again like
all of these women beautiful successful Independent Women she lived out on um Brierwood in Baton Rouge that night she
was Home Alone the bath water was run and she you know she had everything laid out for a bath and so I don't know if
she had been in it or was about to when he came in and she she was just gone the only thing that was left behind
was some blood spots particularly on a living room rug her body was later found dumped in
Marshland under an Interstate 35 mil from Baton Rouge she had been left for 3 Days in
the hot Louisiana son so she had decomposed somewhat but there was still DNA on her
body he had raped her and the DNA was [Music] there when the DNA that was on the first
two victims matched the DNA that was on Pam it just changed everything we had a serial
killer it opened the door to a world and it it's a hotter darker sharper edged place than you ever imagined the world
to be the world is never ever the [Music] same Pam kenmore's decomposing body has
been found police quickly have a breakthrough a truck driver claims he'd seen a naked woman in the passenger seat
of a white pickup truck on the day Pam kinamore was abducted he believes the pickup was being driven by a white
male and so that just stuck that just that became the the number one suspect you know that was the description that
everyone would looked for for a very long time I think they had in their mind who
this person is and unfortunately I think that clouded their judgment and caused them to ignore you know some of the
clues that were there I remember hearing on the news that there was one man who wrote I am not the
serial killer on the side of his white truck that was the clue to Nowhere absolutely the clue to nowhere but
confusion everybody was talking about it all the time and people were taking self-defense classes they were you know
they were learning how to shoot guns um making sure they had mace everybody was taking Extraordinary Measures and for
good reason with Pam kenmore's murder the killer had upped the ante that's when he started actually removing people
removing the women um before killing them he's picking different women in different jurisdictions he's killing
them in different ways so how do you search for somebody like that how do you know when the next where he's going to
hit next and how he's going to hit next the eyewitness report means police are focusing their search on a white suspect
another factor is how the victims seemed willing to open the door to their killer
I think it's a demeanor I think it a presentation that allows to put people at Comfort levels that allow them to
allow guards to go down a step or two and move forward but I think opportunity applied with his charm coming together
his looks coming together his youthfulness at the time coming together that make for these crimes to take place
that's what made it so difficult we were not looking for someone that had some kind of massive deformity or that looked
like a demon or a vampire we're looking for someone who's part of society uh the
profile mentions that uh there's a good chance that uh he would live with uh other people potentially a Paramore in
that respect his life could be more or less normal from the outside but on the inside Derek Todd
ley's life is anything but normal his wife mistress and sister have all filed charges of domestic violence and
Battery against him so far every victim of the Baton Rouge serial killer has been
white until November 21st 2002 Trisha da colom had recently lost her mother and was grief
stricken she visited her mother's grave every day and she was out there alone a hunter
found her just discarded in in the brush she had been beaten badly um about her face and um again she was she was raped
as well for David McDavid DA's murder gives him another reason to suspect Derek toddle he remembers a rainy night in
1993 when two kids were attacked in a graveyard in Zachary there was a thing around Zachary go in the graveyard make
out and stuff and they were doing that in the graveyard and Suspect come across from the area of the sub Vision into the
graveyard had a big old can blade on him and saw them in the in the car and began
hacking them up with the cane blade luckily one of our police officers saw a dome light on the car and drove in there
and he ran off to the north nor both victims survived and worked with police to generate a sketch of the as
[Music] salant un be known us the statue of limitations I ran out on that case when
we went to get the warrant sign I was denied on that case but the police investigating the murders of Gina gern
Murray Pam and Trisha are not aware of this historic case in Zachary I think he was just elusive nobody knew really what
was going on you know that's something I learned throughout the case was you know
try to have open mind and work together cuz you never know who holds that piece of pie I think the problem was we we
would wouldn't really sharing information like we should with five murdered women a task
force of local state and federal agencies continue their desperate search over 20,000 tips are pouring in
over a thousand men are swabbed everyone in Louisiana is on the lookout for an elusive white killer in a white truck
you had people calling in tips they were asked to calling tips either an abusive
boyfriend who drove a white truck or who might have been of some kind of violence
or domestic violence cases involving females in that and it was a wide net this is where police work is essential
the human element has to be involved in deciding how many of these leads are you
going to look into with that attention you gain the ability to solve this crime but you also gain the difficulty of
separating the good from the bad related to the case oh it went on forever every
Friday we thought we had our guy was like okay this guy drives a y pickup truck he's got a bad history of domestic
violence or this or that um his behavior is very strange and the people around him think he's the serial killer and
then there would be you know somebody else would be killed and it was just it was
[Applause] horrendous sometime in probably the uh late winter early spring of uh 2003 uh
we had a meeting with members from the Acadiana crime lab and they told us about a company in Florida that told
them they could take a DNA sample and determine essentially the racial or geographic region where they came from
that would help with determining race it's Cutting Edge science but is yet to be fully vetted we ended up
making a decision we obtained uh samples from various members of the task force various investigators and we sent those
uh blind samples unmarked samples down to the company and after a short time they came back and uh they nailed every
single person we had sent them with regards to their potential racial characteristics the lab was then sent
the DNA of the unknown killer they identified him as African American I was surprised but only for a
short time it basically gave an explanation to me as to why all the people and all the leads we've been
following up on were really not coming to anything uh because most of those were for uh Caucasian uh males he
probably does take a moment of pause to say okay something is happening with this case that's moving this case closer
to me but I still have this urge inside of me to do these criminal activities and so he has to decide and he keeps
going with this here so that's where we have to believe believe that the urge is
stronger than rationale after a year and a half long Killing Spree the FBI are closing in on
their Prime Suspect cuttingedge DNA testing has confirmed the suspect as African-American and David McDavid is
raising his suspicions about Derek toddle the suspected graveyard attacker and peeping Tom who vanished from nearby
Zachary a few years before the murders we went back and looked at some of the cases that he was involved in if
you go back and look there was a burglary across the street in 1992 the homeowner came home and caught him in
the house and asked him what he was doing there he claimed he was looking for somebody and in 1993 case of the two
kids in the graveyard come up down his 7even the Peeping time in the neighborhood and in 1998 we had the
murder of Randy mewer so that kind of told us then that you know Derek tyy was our guy we were looking at him
disturbing details soon come to light about his life one of the things we start seeing among people who become
serial killers later is in adolescence what we call this adolescent hypersexuality it means there becomes
this compulsive nature to their sexuality it becomes a coping mechanism for them it becomes a drive for them so
it's almost like it it takes on a life of its own and that person feels a need to go out and Peep or do whatever things
particularly when they're under stress or they have some kind of problem in their environment and we do know that
that Derek toddle oftentimes there was a a pretty short period of time between him getting fired for jobs for example
or having arguments and there being these these murders [Music] [Music] with the net closing another woman is
[Music] murdered car Yoder was a an LSU student she was actually getting her PhD I think
in Marine Biology she lived in a little house close to campus I believe she just unloaded
groceries and brought her groceries in and I don't know if he followed her in or somehow got in her house and took
her again she just disappeared they found her body like 10 days later again by whiskey
Bay another month passes then on May 5th police obtain a court order to swab Derek toddle for DNA I believe uh Derek
Todd Le's biggest mistake was leaving his DNA at the uh crime scenes uh maybe uh he didn't know much about it he
wasn't sophisticated enough to know about it well what happened was is we got our
DNA we know we got a got signed by judge he asked me and another officer to do surveillance on his house and DK T was
back and forth he was running around town we finally called him back at the house and they brought him inside look
we got the subpoena showed it to him got us swabbed and uh you know we submitted
it to the crime lab with the DNA sample taken McDavid has to wait for days to find out if Derk
toddle is the killer I think it was on a Sunday just got through cutting grass at my house
and got a call from the task force look we need you down here well what's going on well we'll tell you when you get down
here I received a call I believe on a Sunday afternoon uh from the uh command post and I was told that the Louisiana
State Police crime lab had matched a swab with our unknown offenders DNA profile when I walked in you had all
these dignitaries here bunch of investigators there high ranking officials they said well y'all DNA they
just solved the C killer case which was a big relief when I heard that there had been a match I was elated
but I also understood that there was more work to do and that was locating him and placing him under arrest I said
oo I said y'all better catch him if he knows that you after him which he probably does I said he's about to he's
trolling he's about to kill again I spent that uh evening dictating an affidavit for a fugitive arrest warrant
and that was based on the fact that we had problem cause that he had LED from Louisiana to avoid being prosecuted for
these crimes Jeff's fears were correct Derek toddle tries to evade arrest my biggest concern uh after we
realized that he had fled the state of Louisiana is that that he may have killed someone else in another state the
time Factor was still there because now I knew he was on the Run knowing that we
were going to eventually find out and it was simple matter of him trying to stay
away from us as much as he possibly could they asked us to come on board help try to track him down went to
Chicago came back and went to Atlanta was setting up in an apartment over there to me the heat was on him here so
he had to go somewhere else he was about to you know start killing again I had heard that you know he' been
arrested I don't know if I heard on the news or I got a phone call I was relieved we were all lady when we found
out that Derek toddle had been arrested in Atlanta and we knew that come hell or
high water he was going to be coming back to Louisiana to face Justice for what he had
done I was so shocked that he looked so ordinary you you'd think someone who could do that kind of thing would be
marked in some way you know would have some sort of scarlet letter that would identify them
but no they don't they don't at all in custody Derek Todd Le doesn't confess to his crimes or explain how he
chose his victims police plan to try him separately for each of the seven murders I think that the police were
willing to try him for every single of those seven until they got the death penalty the benefit of going with one
case is that if something goes wrong this monster is never going to be on the street again because we'll indict the
next one and then we'll indict the next one we will always have a safety net toddle first faces trial for the
murder of geraline Doo the charge in jyn Doo's case was second gr murder and he was found guilty
as charged he receives a life sentence the trial for the murder of Charlotte Murray pace is
next the trial was long it was I think five weeks weeks the physical evidence was strong the DNA evidence was really
strong and uh the jury didn't have a problem with it they came back quickly with a a verdict of guilty and then we
did the penalty phase and they found that um the appropriate penalty was the death
penalty he never confessed he never showed a bit of remorse he was just just kind of like a blank slate over
there I remember saying well we finally come to the end of it and I remember thinking we just begun that had just
that was nowhere near the end in a way we were as imprisoned as he was but on January 21st
2016 the case meets its ultimate end Derek toddle dies of heart disease so the victims are just left
with this open wound and being stuck in this perpetual incomplete hell it was almost like you
couldn't almost as much as you couldn't imagine the murders you couldn't imagine
that he had died you know he lives his life to the end and he never faces the Executioner
well this is what I tell everybody the real true judge has got him now and he got judged by that by God and that's who
ultimate made the the sentence for him I think he's in hell to be honest with you
uh you know what he did and how he did it was just truly violent he killed a total of seven victims that we can prove
through [Music] DNA before this happened I didn't worry if my back door locked I felt safe and
Rose I felt secure and all of a sudden that safe feeling is gone so I think that that was
taken away by Derek toddle and I you know I don't know that it ever returns I haven't slept in a bed in 20
years I kept coming home and got in the bed that used to be her bed and I kept having a dream that she was
uh on the autopsy table covered with a sheet and of course she couldn't move or anything but somehow she was sending me
a message that said Mama come get me Mama come get me and I couldn't sleep in there anymore so I
sleep on the sofa with the TV on so I don't ever wake up in the dark without a voice somewhere
murder challenges everything you ever thought you believed every assumption you ever
had it it is an almost unsurvivable loss [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Derrick Todd Lee, known as "Baton Rouge Serial Killer," terrorized Louisiana from 1992 to 2003. He preyed on women using an apparent charm to talk his way into the homes of his victims before committing sexual assaults and brutal murders. He eluded capture for years, baffling police by changing the manner in which he committed his crimes, with conflicting eyewitness reports also preventing his capture.

Eventually, advanced DNA testing would help police close the net. In this episode, we hear of the devastating emotional impact of Derrick Todd Lee’s crimes from the mother of one of his victims, along with first-hand accounts from the police and legal teams who tracked him down.

=============== Like, comment and subscribe if you’re ready for more true crime. Your favorite shows like World’s Most Evil Killers, Meet Marry Murder, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, Murdered At First Sight and Bloodline Detectives are all available to stream 24/7 for free via the FilmRise Streaming Network. You can access The FilmRise Streaming Network through most free App Platforms and Smart TV portals such as Amazon Fire TV, The Roku Channel, Android, iOS and many more.

Brief Summary

The episode details the brutal murders in Baton Rouge, focusing on Murray Pace and the investigation of Derek Todd as the serial killer.

Key points

The Killer's Profile. Profilers suggest the murderer is unassuming and blends into society, complicating the investigation.
Murray's Tragic Fate. Murray was brutally attacked and fought back valiantly, but ultimately lost her life.
DNA Breakthrough. DNA testing links multiple murders, revealing a serial killer on the loose.
The Elusive Killer. Derek Toddle's life is anything but normal, with multiple charges against him.
DNA Breakthrough. Cutting-edge DNA testing identifies the killer as African-American, shifting the investigation's focus.
Arrest and Trial. Derek Toddle is arrested in Atlanta, facing justice for his crimes.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Mama come get me.

A haunting message from a victim in a dream.

0:41WatchJul 26, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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