American Homicide - S1: E24 – The South Louisiana Serial Killer, Part 1

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Baton Rouge Police hunt a serial killer targeting women near the LSU campus. Most baffling is how the killer got inside the victims’ homes without forcing entry. A controversial tactic lands investigators their first big clue.  Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey sis, it's Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls. We've had 400 episodes of conversations, growth and healing. So we're celebrating. Join us for a special episode with internationally recognized yogi, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, as she shares wisdom on mindfulness, movement, and motherhood. I waited later to have children and I still have exactly what I knew that I wanted. You don't want to miss this special episode. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more.

This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find, because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling

true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are your ears bored? Yeah. Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn, and say que?

Yeah. Then tune in to Locatora Radio Season 10 today. Okay. Now that's what I call a podcast. I'm Fiosa. I'm Mala. The host of Locatora Radio, a radiophonic novella. Which is just a very extra way of saying.

A podcast. Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Set Up. The Set Up follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life,

well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilama painting. We can do this together. to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilama painting.

We can do this together. Listen to The Setup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine this. You're a college student and you're walking to campus. That's when you come across a sign stapled to a tree. And that sign contains a warning. The sign said killer on the loose. Please be careful. Love, mom. You keep walking and see a second sign with the same message, then a third and a fourth.

By the time you reach campus, you've lost count. reach campus, you've lost count. Parents were warning their kids to be careful because there was a serial killer who was focused on women. What a way to communicate. In a time before you could send a text, parents were so desperate to reach their kids. Anything to warn them of the South Louisiana serial killer. These women were all attacked in their homes. And the most baffling part?

There was no forced entry into any of the houses. You got a serial killer talking his way into women's houses. How's he doing this? That's when the terror began. Today we're in Baton Rouge for part one of The Serial Killer of South Louisiana. I'm Sloane Glass and this is American Homicide. A note that this episode contains some graphic content.

Please take care while listening. On the shores of the mighty Mississippi, in downtown Baton Rouge sits the campuses of Southern University, A&M College, and Louisiana State University. During the school year, 40,000 students pour into this area, with the majority of those on the LSU campus. It's a fairly large campus, so it can take you a good half an hour to 40 minutes to get from one end of the campus to the other.

Journalist Melinda DeLau is an LSU grad who worked for the Associated Press. It's a very green campus, buildings from different eras, but it's a very lush campus like the big towering oak trees, Spanish moss hanging off of them. Over 1200 oak trees line the LSU campus, giving some much needed relief from the heat and humidity that Enroute is known for. line the LSU campus, giving some much needed relief from the heat and humidity that Enrouge is known for. And then around the outside of the campus there are a whole set of different lakes. There's a very large lake called University Lake and then there are smaller lakes that are sort of attached

to that. And during weekends in the fall the LSU campus transforms into something completely different. I think what people think of is the tailgating scene on campus for SEC football games. That's obviously huge here. So it's a fun campus to be at. Baton Rouge is the home to the LSU Tigers. Tailgating on Saturdays is a rite of passage for students. Campus is filled with thousands

upon thousands of people cooking, drinking, dancing, playing games, whatever they want to do before LSU plays. The action then moves inside Tiger Stadium which resembles the Roman Coliseum. It's bigger than the Superdome for New Orleans Saints game so our professional team in the state has a smaller place to play than the college football team. Back in 2001 the LSU Tigers won their first two games. It was looking like it was going to be a good year but then came the September 11th attacks. The campus, like the rest of the nation, was shaken. And then, a few days later. Gina Green was found murdered in her home and she lived on a street that went right next to LSU's campus.

Gina Green was 40 years old and lived alone. She was raped, she was strangled, and I don't think people expected to hear that there would be a murder right off campus in an area that people walk and bike and jog around every day. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings. Gina Green, she was a nurse, a supervising nurse, and she just didn't show up for work one day. And one of her colleagues went out to check and he found her deceased in her bed. There wasn't like a jilted ex-boyfriend that they suspected or anybody that had a reason

to kill Gina Green. She was well loved and respected and there was just no reason to think that somebody had it out for her. We always look at the significant other first. Gina was divorced, but had a good relationship with her ex-husband. And then there was the strange part. There were no signs of forced entry at Gina's home.

Making it even stranger, her ex-husband did tell a local TV station that a week before Gina was murdered, she had this weird feeling that she was being watched. So that was a little, that was a little scary. Although the killer managed to get in and out of Gina's home unnoticed, he left behind one important clue. There was a shirt that she had been wearing when she was attacked and found a blood spot.

The blood stain was not Gina's. So whose blood was it? The police ran it through their DNA database. Back then, there weren't so many people in a database that you could just run it and get a good match. And so they ran it. They tried to find who it belonged to, but they didn't have that. With no suspects, the police made no arrests, which rattled LSU students and their parents.

You know, it was very close to campus, you know, and every mother and father that sends their child to LSU thinks that they will be safe, and people in Baton Rouge were terrified. One of those mothers was Ann Pace. Her daughter Murray was a graduate student at LSU and Murray was a trailblazer. She skipped half of high school and jumped right into college. My daughter lived three houses down from Gina Green and when she died Murray she was very concerned she was frightened because they lived so close to each other. She left high school when she was very concerned, she was frightened because they lived so close to each other. She left high school when she was 16 and went to college and by the time she was 22 she had a BS and an MBA.

She was very smart, very focused and very determined. But all her life I always thought her superpower was the ability she had to make friends and they loved her back. In the spring of 2002, Murray graduated and planned to stay on campus through the summer. So she moved into a new apartment a few miles away from her old place. Then two days after she moved in. Murray Pace was found by her roommate, just horribly attacked, stabbed 81 times. Her throat was slit.

She was nude. That's prosecutor Dana Cummings. She had been just beaten to death. This is really hard to hear, so if you're squeamish, I would fast forward for the next 15 seconds. Someone used a knife and screwdriver to stab Murray 81 times in her chest, stomach, ears, even her eyes. The trauma she took was so bad, you could see her spinal cord. She fought hard. She fought really, really hard.

Murray had defensive wounds on her arms, hands, and wrists. They also found DNA evidence that Murray had been sexually assaulted. And this didn't happen under the cover of night. The sun was still out. It was early afternoon. And it was just kind of an eerie thing because there was a plate of grapes and a sandwich that was half-eaten that was just sitting on the arm of her chair. Murray had been waiting for her roommate to come home that afternoon so they could drive to a friend's wedding. And that's when she was attacked. Apparently

he got in and out without being seen. So she was attacked in her apartment when he knew she was alone. And once again, just like with Gina Green's murder, the police found no signs of forced entry at Murray's apartment. So how did the killer get inside? The police didn't know, but they had a clue. One of Murray's friends told the police that the previous day she was talking with Murray on the phone. That's when a mysterious man knocked on Murray's friends told the police that the previous day she was talking with Murray on the phone.

That's when a mysterious man knocked on Murray's door. He said he was looking for someone who lived at her address. Murray said she didn't know that person and quickly shut the door. But Murray told her friend she got a real creepy feeling from this guy. She was like uncomfortable, but it didn't disturb her to the level that she was just really calling the police or anything. So was that man scoping out Murray and her apartment and did he return the next day? The police didn't know for sure but now there were two reports of women being sexually

assaulted and murdered in their homes with no signs of forced entry. Baton Rouge was scared. I mean, the people in Baton Rouge were scared. Baton Rouge was scared, but I can't stop thinking about Murray's mother, Anne. Imagine finishing high school so young and college and she'd had a job with a big six accounting firm in Atlanta. And then it was all gone. Without knowing why, Murray's mother went in search of how. I went and saw all the crime scene and autopsy pictures because I thought if she endured it,

I need to know what happened to her. I need to know exactly what happened to her. I need to know exactly what happened to her. And then you wonder, when did she know during that fight? When did she know she was dying? When did she know that nobody was going to come and save her? And you feel like that's your job. It's your mother. Only couldn't do it. You couldn't protect her from that either. So. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago Mafia for all these years

It doesn't make any sense. He was a firefighter paramedic. How the hell can he be a hitman? I Need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody Anybody that knows anything about this? I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand. I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Kirk County from Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Podcasts is available now.

Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamyrus, the widow of the king of the Masanggedi people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. To hear the full story of Tamyrus's bloody revenge, listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood available now.

New episodes of Noble Blood every Tuesday. Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad? Your mom

wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more.

And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me not only with women but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me listen to cheekies and chill season 4 as part of the Michael to the podcast network available on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts.

So no and I hearts Mike with the podcast network present the setup a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey in and Christian of our. The Set Up, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Yen and Christian Navarro. The Set Up follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life. Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me?

He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Delano painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take.

Fernando is never going to love you as much as he loves this doll. Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Gina Green was beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death inside her home. Then Gina's former neighbor, Murray Pace, was killed in a similar manner. And both incidents happened near the LSU campus.

Little was known about who was behind these murders. However, law enforcement did have one major lead. They revealed that DNA found at both murder scenes belonged to the same person. I think everybody needs to be aware that we've got a situation now that involves two women linked to an individual. That was the Baton Rouge police chief. And just three days after he said that, a woman vanished from her home. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings.

Pam Kinnamore disappeared. Her family came home and she was just gone. Pam and her family lived right outside Baton Rouge and one Friday night the 44 year old returned home from work. But her husband only found Pam's car in the driveway and Pam's purse and wallet inside the house. And most eerie, her keys were found dangling from the lock of her back door. Based on the evidence at her house, you could see she was all set up to take that relaxing bath that everybody wants to take. And then she just disappeared. The water was probably still warm when the murderer came into her home.

And investigators noticed something else. There was this rug and this rug had a blood spot on it. Well, several blood spots on it. We had a DNA analyst that was like eight and a half months pregnant. She was working this case. So she crawled around on that rug and checked every spot that she could. Most of them were Pam Kinnamore's blood, but she found one that wasn't. And she lifted that spot and she actually called me and said, I got him.

I got him. He's there. He's there. Meaning the DNA on that bath rug matched the DNA found on the other victims. In other words, the same person was linked to all three murders. It was like, oh my gosh, here's another one. A few days later, they found Pam Kinnamore, some 30 miles outside Baton Rouge. Journalist Melinda Delac covered the story.

Her body was dumped off the interstate in a place called Whiskey Bay. Whiskey Bay is an exit that when you take it, it kind of feels like you're just driving into the swamp. You're like, where am I going? Because there's nothing else you would find. There's no rest stop or something. They're just dirt and gravel road.

Whiskey Bay is a popular spot for fishing, but once the sun sets, the area turns pitch black. Over the years, it's a place where numerous bodies have turned up. Pam Kenamore's body was found with long cut marks on her neck. She'd been strangled and sexually assaulted. There was also a piece of a landline telephone cord sitting a few hundred

feet from Pam's body. Was she strangled with that cord? The police didn't know. This was the third woman in the area that was killed. Fears of a serial killer began to spread and he was not predictable. His behavior was escalating. Pam Kenamore was kidnapped from her home. She was beaten and she was raped and again no signs of forced entry. And that was the one common thread that made all of Baton Rouge uneasy. If nobody has a sign of forced entry, was this just somebody who could talk his way in and seemed non threatening? So who seems non threatening? Maybe it was somebody who was in a uniform. Like, is it the FedEx driver? Is it a delivery guy who's got a florist delivery outfit on. And so that also then translated to, could it be a police officer?

Think about it. Someone was getting in and out of the homes of these women without being caught. Was that person a cop? Everybody had theories about who it could be, but clearly the thought that somebody might just be wearing a uniform, whether it's a police uniform or some other kind of uniform, became one of the theories that stuck for a while because it seemed to make some sense to people who were trying to make sense out of a situation that was nonsensical in a lot of ways. It didn't help that the police didn't say much about their investigation. Or even worse, the man they dubbed the South Louisiana serial killer.

If you're living in a place that's very terrified because three women have been murdered and all linked through DNA, hearing the police say we have an ongoing investigation so we can't answer that question isn't necessarily going to comfort people who live there. The families got vocal and held rallies and press conferences of their own. With the help of the media, they tried to find any connection between the victims.

These overlaps that we found, they're thin. They're very thin. The only thing that seemed to be a common thread that was nerve wracking to everybody is there was no forced entry into any of the houses. And so what did that mean exactly? By that time, another school year was beginning. And that's when those homemade signs started popping up around the LSU campus.

The sign said, killer on the loose, please be careful, love, mom. Computer printed in all caps, the laminated signs took root throughout the LSU campus. They were tacked to the trees along one of the lakes that most students use for exercise and it got a lot of media attention because there was a serial killer. In the summer of 2002 as the students filled up the many dorms and apartments near the LSU campus the general feeling was fear. It was clearly a tense time and I think the police were genuinely frustrated that they couldn't catch the person. DNA linked the killer to three known victims but at the time Baton Rouge had a backlog of more than 30

unsolved murders of women and some of these cases dated back a decade. So the fear that this killer could strike again was coupled with the belief that there may have been a lot more victims than they knew about. During the summer of 2002, law enforcement joined forces with several other agencies to create a task force. I think it was more than three dozen different people involved, but it was a lot of different law enforcement agencies. And they got the FBI involved to do some sort of analysis of who could commit these kinds

of murders. This task force held daily press conferences and revealed their first huge lead. On the night that Pam Kenmore disappeared, a truck driver was driving on the interstate near the Whiskey Bay exit. And that's where he saw something almost unbelievable. Somebody who was driving saw a woman slumped against the door of a white truck. The eyewitness said the woman appeared to be nude and dead. And then that truck took the exit at Whiskey Bay and it happened to be the

same time period when Pam disappeared. Here's audio from the sheriff's office in East Baton Rouge Parish. The fact that it was a female who was nude, the timing several hours after the abduction of Pam Kenamore, exiting at the place where we found her body, we feel it's a very great likelihood that that was in fact the truck containing Ms. Kenamore. likelihood that that was in fact the truck containing Ms. Kinnamal. So the eyewitness saw a white guy driving a white truck that night. And quite frankly, you know, that profile is the most generic profile you could have. So

I think anybody who was white and drove a white pickup truck got scrutiny. There were 27,000 white trucks in Baton Rouge and all of the drivers got side-eyed. Some of them even took spray paint and wrote on the side of their trucks, I'm not the serial killer. They were stereotyped. We had stories of people who sold their trucks because they didn't want to be connected to this. People were nervous about white men and white trucks. And the only way for these guys to prove they didn't do it was to offer up a sample of their DNA. They did a DNA dragnet at the time and they swapped all these men.

I think it was nearly a thousand at the end of the day. It may have even been more than that. Some of them voluntarily getting swabbed, others, you know, sort of encouraged to do so, just to prove that they weren't a serial killer. All of this took time and a lot of patience. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings. I mean, I remember going out to eat and, you know, sitting by the window and a white truck drives up

and you're immediately thinking, who's that guy in that white truck, which is ridiculous, because we got a billion of them in Baton Rouge. But, you know, that's all you've got to go on, then that's what you go on. That little bit of information only amped up the uneasiness. There were so many suspects and it went on for so long. It's just like this monster that you can't understand. And he seemed to prey on people that he obviously had to stalk to some degree because they were alone.

I guess from a criminal's perspective, it's high risk. You know, you're going into a house to take someone. And he seemed to be getting more comfortable as well. The public was desperate for answers. So were the police. And that may have fueled their decision to do something unusual and controversial. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago mafia for all these years. It doesn't make any sense. He was a firefighter paramedic.

How the hell can he be a hitman? I need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand. I need to figure this out.

The shocking new true crime series, Crook County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts is available now. Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamyrus, the widow of the King of the Masangedi people. She refused his offer and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. To hear the full story of Tamirus's bloody revenge, listen to the latest episode of Noble

Blood, available now. New episodes of Noble Blood every Tuesday. Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonoro and iHeart's MyCultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life, he actually I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true. This is a con.

I'm conning you to get the gelato painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you

as much as he loves this job. Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Set Up as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all, it's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth.

I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more.

And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me not only with women, but also with men. What should I do? Okay, where do I start? That's not love.

He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill Season 4 as part of the My Kultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 2002, the Baton Rouge police department created a task force to hunt the South Louisiana serial killer. Some 40 investigators from local, state, and federal agencies made up this task force. And even with all that manpower, it wasn't easy. While they had the killer's DNA, they didn't know who the DNA belonged to. And their only eyewitness was a truck driver who saw a white guy driving a white truck with what was believed to be the dead body of Pam Kinnamore in the passenger seat. The witness said he was reluctant to even come forward. It was the middle of the night,

and he wasn't even sure if what he saw was real. By the time he did a double take, the truck had pulled off at the Whiskey Bay exit. Here's journalist Melinda Dallat. The person who provided this information initially just remembered a white guy who drove a white pickup truck. That's when the police did something a bit unconventional. They hypnotized the witness with the hope that he'd remember more from that night.

And guess what? It worked. The witness remembered that the truck had a Louisiana license plate. The back window was tinted. And there was more. It was revealed that the paint on the truck was aging and the driver was a white man with a thinned medium build. A lot of this other information about what the witness alleged to have seen came out in some sort of hypnosis. Yes, they hypnotized the witness. It might sound insane, a lot of people felt that way, but it got them somewhere. And while hypnosis is not always admissible in court, they already had DNA. They just needed a connection.

I believe this is the only case I have ever been involved in covering where I recall hypnosis being used as a tool. But for a police department desperate for answers, it was a hell Mary. And it paid off, because the eyewitness remembered more details about the person who drove the white truck. And that helped law enforcement put together not only a sketch, but a profile of the suspected serial killer.

They said the killer was a white male between the ages of 25 and 35. Someone who was physically strong, but awkward around women and had money troubles. So now we have this profile, which frankly doesn't differentiate this person too much from other profiled killers, still have DNA evidence and no arrests. And by the end of 2002, the killer would strike a fourth time. Her name is Denae Cologne. She was

Her name is Denae Colom. She was 23. She was beaten. She was raped, same as the other victims in this case. Denae was on leave from the Army and listened to her last known whereabouts. It's absolutely heartbreaking. They found her car, her purse, and her keys near the cemetery where her mom was buried and her mom had died in the last year. A family member said she was known to go to that cemetery a lot. Denae Coulombe had been visiting her mother's grave when she disappeared. Two days later, Denae's body turned up in a wooded area outside Baton Rouge. For investigators, this was noteworthy because Dene was the first known victim who lived well outside Baton Rouge. And there was something else.

Dene Cologne was black. The other women were white. So there was clearly no racial specificity to the victims. And then came an announcement from law enforcement. All of a sudden, the police in Baton Rouge started telling people that they should broaden the way they thought about who might be the murderer and that the profile that the police gave out may not be correct. It went from, oh, you're looking for a white guy in a white truck to, well, maybe that's not

who you're looking for after all. And it blew up sort of everybody's perspective about this case. People didn't know what to think. And they started questioning what the police and this task force were putting out there. You're already talking about a city that's on edge and people who are nervous and families of victims who are very frustrated.

And this was not information that people were ecstatic to hear. In the spring of 2003, that frustration turned to anger because the killer struck again. A college student by the name of Carrie Lynn Yoder. She was the fifth murderer that was linked via DNA. The killer had returned to a familiar area, an apartment just off the LSU campus. That's where Carrie Yoder lived while attending grad school. That afternoon, she had returned from the grocery store and then vanished. Like the other victims before her, there was no sign of forced entry at her apartment. Her body turned up a week later.

She was found in the same Whiskey Bay area where Pam Canamor's body was found. And similar set of circumstances, beaten, raped, strangled to death. And so I think it just restarts the whole process of people getting newly terrified. The person who did this just seems so angry. There's no rhyme or reason to where the murders are happening. You can be in your 20s or be in your 40s and be at risk. That's when things went from bad to worse. When the task force once again changed their profile of the suspected killer. They said, you know, it could be a white guy

who's more dark complexed, or maybe a man of mixed racial heritage, or perhaps a black man. This just made everybody think, well, hell, were they looking for the wrong person the whole time and have they even been investigating what they needed to be investigating? Have they limited themselves in such a way that they were dismissing information that could have been relevant? So you have a serial killer who was able to easily get in and out of victims homes without

being caught. And all the police could say was that the suspect was a man, aged 25 to 35, who drove a white Chevy truck. And that profile came from an eyewitness who had to be hypnotized. For over a year and a half, this suspect terrorized South Louisiana and frustrated the local state and federal agencies. Meanwhile, a small police department 15 miles north of Baton Rouge believed they knew who the killer was. I told my partner, I said, you know who it is.

That's David McDavid. He was a detective with the Zachary Police Department. At the time, the Zachary PD had been investigating two unsolved murders in town, along with an attack on a couple. These cases had an eerie similarity to what was happening in Baton Rouge. The evidence that we were being shown and told about is the same thing that was happening here at our crime scenes. So the police from Zachary put a

presentation together and met with the team investigating the South Louisiana serial killer. We told them what we had. I said look I'm telling you something if he knows he's about to be caught he's probably gonna kill again. Y'all need to find him. But the Baton Rouge PD told law enforcement from Zachary, they didn't think they were looking for the same guy. It bothered me somewhat, but I think a lot of it was we didn't work a lot of murders. You don't have maybe one or two murders here every four, maybe five, ten years. But that didn't stop them.

Somehow, some way, it was the small town PD from Zachary, Louisiana, who would do what the task force couldn't. At the end of the day, you know, we're able to have the piece of the pie that solved the case. In the conclusion of the South Louisiana serial killer, we'll learn who the killer is. Everybody was talking about a white man and a white pickup truck and neither of those two things turned out to be anything. And we'll find out how this small town

police department figured it all out. That's next time on American Homicide team by emailing us at americanhomicidepod.gmail.com. That's americanhomicidepod.gmail.com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me, Sloane Glass, and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans with additional writing by Ben Federman and Andrea Gunning.

Our associate producer is Kristen Malkuri. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreinch. Audio editing, mixing, and mastering by Nico Oruka. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser. Music library provided by MyMusic. Follow American Homicide on Apple podcasts and please rate and review American Homicide. Your five-star review goes a long way towards helping others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Join us for a special episode with internationally recognized yogi, Chelsea Jackson Roberts,

as she shares wisdom on mindfulness, movement, and motherhood. I waited later to have children and I still have exactly what I knew that I wanted. You don't want to miss this special episode. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now,

women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know

to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, it's your girl Cheekies and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite

podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys and as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheeky's. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill, season 4 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Set Up.

The Set Up follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life, Well, I guess I'm saying I like it. You like me? The Set Up follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilama painting. We can do this together.

Listen to The Set Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.