Forensic Files - Season 10, Episode 15 - Tight-Fitting Genes - Full Episode | Forensic Files

at times a perpetrator's dna is the only clue at a murder scene but what happens when you don't have a
suspect to compare it to this case made forensic history when scientists saw in these genes literally
the killer's physical description [Music] [Music] in the 1600s baton rouge and louisiana
got its name from french settlers it means red stick and referred to the pole marking the hunting area of local indian
tribes to this day baton rouge is one of the most racially diverse cities in the
country pam kinamore knew the town's history well by birth and by profession pam operated an antique store
pam loved life every day she couldn't wait to do all the things that she wanted to do she was fun she
was exuberant she was enthused she was intelligent shortly before midnight on a friday in
july 2002 pam's husband byron called police to report his wife missing he said when he got home
the front door was wide open his wife's keys were there but pam was gone strangely
the bathtub was full of water it looked like she had been taking a bath and also there was there was some
blood on a rug under the bed and the bedroom that hadn't been there before forensic testing revealed the blood on
the carpet was pam's it appeared that she left her keys in the door inadvertently and an intruder
walked in while pam was in the bathtub the couple's son was sleeping overnight at a friend's house and couldn't shed
any light on what had happened investigators also had to consider whether pam had simply
run off but her mother refused even to consider that possibility i told him i said i'm sure your next
thought is she might have had a boyfriend i said i'd give you my word of honor if
she had a boyfriend i would have known and that would be the first name i would give you
pam never looked at another man byron was her sweetheart pam's family posted missing posters and
billboards all over the city and offered a 75 000 reward for information as to her whereabouts
for four days the search continued pam's body was discovered in the marshland under the whiskey bay bridge
about 60 miles from her home there was a telephone cord found near her body it's amazing that it was found it was
found by some surveyors she'd just been dumped at whiskey bay the coroner's office
took her into custody the medical examiner discovered pam had been stabbed to death
she had also been sexually assaulted pam was a beautiful young woman and uh she had a lot of admirers and i thought
well you know maybe somebody just had a crush on her and took her off and i guess we wanted
hope and i never dreamed that she was murdered do you know what it's like to know you'll never have any more
memories that hold us happy times are gone forever so that's what it's like to lose your job
the medical examiner determined that pam had been killed on the night she disappeared
pam's husband byron had an alibi and it was corroborated by others so he wasn't considered a suspect
but police got a tip from a potential eyewitness he thought he saw pam slumped forward in
a white pickup truck on the night she went missing just a mile from where the body was discovered
this is a very desolate piece of interstate very dark not many vehicles at all we get off this exit ramp it
really leads to nowhere where her body was found the witness described the driver as a
young white male police began to look for a white male in a white truck as the investigation went
on they they were pretty focused on a white male and a white truck unfortunately there were 35 000 white
pickup trucks registered in the baton rouge area it's like a swarming army of white
pickup trucks in louisiana if you put them in to end it would probably circumvent the world
[Music] at pam kinnamore's autopsy pathologists found biological evidence that she had been sexually assaulted
and it also contained the dna profile of her killer naturally investigators wanted to know
if this perpetrator had been apprehended before we had already taken his dna profile
and searched it into the fbi's codis database which was a national database of offenders as well as evidence from other
cases and we knew then that at that point that he had not been linked to any other crimes
but this dna evidence did tell police something important the same man who killed pam kinamore
killed two other women several months earlier i had never had experience with a serial
killer you know other than seeing it tv shows so all of a sudden this was something that baton rouge hadn't hadn't
dealt with before and i hadn't dealt with before two months earlier charlotte murray pace
a graduate student at louisiana state university had been sexually assaulted and killed in her apartment she was
stabbed 81 times her throat was cut she was missing part of her ear it was it was very violent horrible attack
all the people all the women in the world he picked murray why i'd give anything to know why and i
don't know if you can know why because i wonder if he could articulate why if he knows why
himself like pam kinamore's case there were no signs of forced entry this person was absolutely vicious this
person was absolutely the worst type of human being you ever want to encounter also in that same neighborhood
gina greene a nurse was sexually assaulted and murdered in her home in all three cases
the common thread was the telephone either the killer took the victim's telephone or
used the cords to restrain his victim this led to speculation the killer asked his victims for
assistance everything he touched he took with him those were his trophies if it didn't
take much for him after he killed it to wipe down the doorknob he knew everything he touched
when residents of baton rouge learned a serial killer was on the loose they took
every possible precaution at night the streets were all but empty but it wasn't enough
i can tell you the worst thing that i can imagine could happen in fact happen several months later the killer struck
again twenty-three-year-old danae kalam never returned home from visiting her mother's grave
her body was discovered 26 miles away from the cemetery she was sexually assaulted and beaten to death
a witness reported seeing a white male in a white pickup truck near the cemetery
just like pam kinamore's case and the killer wasn't through the body of 26 year old carrie yoder a
doctoral student at lsu was found near the whiskey bay bridge not far from where pam kinamore's body was discovered
dna tests confirmed the same man sexually assaulted and presumably killed all five women he was very intelligent i
think he was doing a lot of as i call it surveillance work he was stalking his victims he knew their
movements methods of movement and he was gonna be tough to catch desperate for a lead
police called the fbi in washington d.c and asked for a criminal investigative analysis of the crimes we thought this
was more someone who followed women who watched women from afar and when he interacted with women
it would be shortly into that interaction before they felt uncomfortable with him
the fbi predicted the killer was anti-social and earned a below average income the fbi profile we had folks come in and
that was the whole gist that we were looking for a white male somewhere 20s and 30s single white male
although 90 percent of all serial killers are white the fbi says they made no prediction
about the race of the baton rouge serial killer despite the perceptions of local
officials and information carried in the media i know that there's been some confusion
about that i know what was written and i know it was in the paper and it just simply wasn't there
nevertheless the local police obtained dna samples from over 1 000 men most of them white
between the ages of 20 and 40 most had a history of criminal activity i just felt like
they needed to find that killer we were going to have more women killed but not one of them was a match
that's when molecular biologist dr tony frudakis called investigators with a warning that eyewitnesses and behavioral
profiles are not always right that type of information is oftentimes faulty wrong sometimes people lie
sometimes they're just flat out mistaken so dr frudakis made police an offer he said he'd perform a brand new dna test
and promised he could identify the killer's physical characteristics to be honest with you i didn't really
believe i thought right off the bat this guy must be some quack how can he do this but he
purported that he can determine the race of folks from dna and i say there's no way in the world he can do that this new
test called dna witness ascertains the exact ancestry of an individual based on information in their
dna it's rooted in the fact that all humans are descended from a common gene pool
so instead of measuring the pigmentation genes that control pigmentation of the skin
we can make an indirect inference about your skin shade through a very precise knowledge of your ancestral background
so the baton rouge police gave dr fardakas the go-ahead the results made forensic history and
changed the course of the investigation i've never met the guy but i'll tell you
he's onto something based on statements from two eyewitnesses baton rouge police were
searching for a white male driving a white pickup truck in connection with five unsolved murders
with little to lose investigators joined forces with the molecular biologist to perform a new
test on the killer's dna it's brand new technology a lot of these people are unaware of what it can do we
have to go into the human genome and screen through large numbers of people in order to find these
positions of dna so that we can harness their power and use them for the purposes we're using them
to test dr frodakis's claims investigators sent him 20 dna samples and asked him to identify the race of
each one he nailed him to a t on everybody even to the percentages of what black white
indian whatever you had in him so he was able to do it when he passed that test dr frudakis went to work on the killer's
dna the results the dna test showed the killer was not a caucasian the crime scene dna sample corresponded
to an individual that was 85 percent sub-saharan african and 15 native american at first police couldn't believe it
i remember the phone line just going silent for a few minutes i guess they had to digest it kind of threw you off
because you know traditionally a serial killer is usually a white male and when it became a black male it just
just it threw everybody out police now realized the so-called eyewitnesses were wrong
and they realized something else around the same time of pam kinnimore's murder about 60 miles outside of baton
rouge someone knocked on the front door of a woman named diane alexander and asked to use the phone
when her back was turned the man ripped the phone cord from the wall and tried to strangle her
as she fought for her life her son came home unexpectedly the attacker ran away still carrying the telephone cord
the phone cord was actually already sticking out of his vehicle and her son was able to describe the
vehicle very well and describe the phone cord sticking out of it and police remembered finding similar
telephone cord near pam kinamore's body was it possible that the killer took diane alexander's telephone cord
with him when he killed pam kinamore to find out forensic experts compared the telephone
cord found with pam kinamore's body to the ripped piece of cord from diane alexander's home by performing a
fracture match comparison although plastic stretches when pulled the ends usually remain intact
they actually took the remaining cord from diane alexander's house and were able to match it to the cord that they
found at pam kennamore's dump site in a police lineup diane alexander identified her attacker as 34 year old
derek todd lee he had previous arrests for burglary stalking women and peeking into their homes
if lee was the baton rouge serial killer diane alexander was fortunate to be alive
derek todd lee a manual laborer married with two children was identified by diane
alexander in a police lineup as the man who assaulted her in her home but he denied he was the baton rouge
serial killer lee's dna sample was sent immediately to the forensics lab for testing
it matched the biological samples from all five victims just a sense of relief joy come over me
you know and it's like i had to smile i said we got him derek todd lee was arrested and charged
with first degree murder the first thing i would tell him is he's a coward he picked on women that he took
advantage of their good nature after his arrest investigators learned that lee's dna
matched skin cells under the fingernails of yet another murder victim an lsu student 21 year old geralyn de soto
prosecutors believe lee followed his victims so he knew when they would be home alone
he would knock on the door asked to use their phone and once inside overpower them i don't know how he
picked him out he hasn't talked we do know that a black male was spotted sort of hanging out in a couple of the
neighborhoods but we don't know for sure that it was him and we like i said we haven't had the benefit of
his you know if he's telling us what his thoughts were fortunately for investigators
he left crucial dna evidence behind at lee's trial the sole survivor diane alexander identified lee
as the man who tried to kill her and dna from perspiration found on ms alexander's blouse after the attack
matched lee's dna profile forensic proof he was the perpetrator this is the real deal and now this lady
has come to you and face you it pointed you out it was devastating derek todd lee was convicted of first
degree murder and was sentenced to death the death penalty is too good for him they should execute him a little bit at
a time i mean to do you know rape was not enough murder was not enough to corner
called it these murders he said aren't overkill some of the victims families are angry
that police relied so heavily on the eyewitness accounts of a white male in a white pickup truck and the fact that
most serial killers tend to be white the profile itself was of course wrong it was erroneous
but it was also accepted by the task force as it was given the force of fact when what it is is an educated guess i
think they were getting tons of tips from every direction it wasn't you know they were getting thousands of tips so i
certainly wouldn't say that you know they i think they did the best that they could and they worked very hard
in this case dr tony frudakis made scientific history it was the first time this biogeographic
testing was ever used in a criminal case the technology now has a 99 accuracy rate and new tests can even predict eye
color with 92 percent accuracy if it can tell you the race it might be able to tell you exactly who you're
looking for but if it tells you the name and the address and phone number it's time for
me to leave this place it's just dna is too good then this new test also shows the limitations
of behavioral profiles and the fallibility of so-called eyewitnesses i don't think it's too
far out there to say that in the future there probably will be much less crime than there is today because people are
going to realize that when they commit that rape or they commit that murder they might as
well take their driver's license out of their wallet just toss it right there on the ground
because they're going to get that information anyway if people are going to commit violent crimes they need to be
accountable and we need to take whatever means is necessary to hold them accountable and that just
makes the police the job of a police officer so easy i think we need to take advantage of science
as much as we can when it's for valid reasons [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A behavioral profile caused the Baton Rouge Police Department to search for the wrong man. The real perpetrator may have eluded arrest, had it not been for a molecular biologist who painted DNA picture of the suspect.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Baton Rouge serial killer Derek Todd Lee identified through groundbreaking DNA testing after multiple murders of women.

Key points

Pam Kinamore's Mysterious Disappearance. Pam Kinamore goes missing under suspicious circumstances, leading to a frantic search.
The Discovery of Pam's Body. Four days later, Pam's body is found in marshland, revealing a tragic fate.
DNA Evidence Links to Serial Killer. Forensic testing reveals DNA from Pam's body matches two other victims, indicating a serial killer.
Derek Todd Lee Identified. Derek Todd Lee is identified as the prime suspect after DNA evidence links him to the murders.
Scientific Breakthrough in Forensics. Dr. Tony Frudakis uses new DNA testing to identify the killer's characteristics, changing the investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It’s amazing that it was found; it was found by some surveyors.

3:31WatchJan 14, 2022

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