American Homicide - S1: E25 – The South Louisiana Serial Killer, Part 2

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

With all of Baton Rouge looking for a white guy who drove a white truck, a small police department in Zachary, Louisiana, unmasks the South Louisiana Serial Killer, Derrick Todd Lee. But a delay in DNA processing allows the suspect to roam free.    Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us: [e-mail]. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos.

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levetown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are your money skills total trash? Well Well trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve. Think, Matt, if your emergency fund

was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now. Ouchies. Investing, it is ultimately a necessity, but you've got to keep that emergency fund accessible. It needs to be cash parked in your savings. It's time to learn and how to money is here to bring the knowledge. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up? I'm Laura, host of the podcast, Quartzside with Laura Corenti, a masterclass case study of the business of women's sports. I'll be chatting with leaders like tennis icon, Alana Kloss. I don't do what I do only for women. I do it for everyone. And I want the whole market. And innovators like Jenny Nguyen.

I would say 50% of the people that come visit the Sports Bra aren't sports fans. They come to be in community. They come to be part of this culture. Quartzside with Laura Karenty is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Quartzside with Laura Karenty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. During the early 2000s, women in Baton Rouge lived in constant fear of the South Louisiana serial killer. Police found Gina Wilson-Green strangled to death on September 24th of 2001 in her home. In May, police found Charlotte Murray Pace stabbed to death. Pace had just completed her MBA at LSU,

and with the proximity of the Pace and Green murder scenes, female students were terrified. That terror grew when Pam Kinnamore became the third victim. Kinnamore disappeared from her Baton Rouge home in 2002. Days later, her body turned up in Whiskey Bay under the I-10. After investigators determined that the suspect was most likely a serial killer, police formed a task force, their goal to find the man who had spread so much fear across South Louisiana. With at least five victims, the task force had a big job to do. But it would be a small police department outside Baton Rouge

that ultimately would solve this case. I'm Sloane Glass and this is the conclusion of The South Louisiana Serial killer on American homicide a note that this episode contains some graphic content Please take care while listening in 2003 the Baton Rouge PD was actively hunting a serial killer Someone who was able to get in and out of victims homes without forcing entry able to get in and out of victims' homes without forcing entry. DNA connected him to five women, but authorities did not know who the killer was. So they asked

for help. The Batamouche PD invited detectives from numerous suburban police departments to a meeting to share information about other unsolved cases. They hoped hearing about those cases could unlock a connection. You know, people wanted this solved because I mean, it was very bad at the time, very scary. Detective David McDavid attended that meeting. Women here, they were afraid.

They were afraid to go out and walk. They were afraid to go shopping. They were afraid to go anywhere by themselves. You saw parents questioning if they were going to send their daughters to LSU because several of the crimes happened close to LSU campus. Detective McDavid worked for the Zachary Police Department, a small city about 15 minutes north of Baton Rouge. Zachary's on the outskirts.

I mean, we've probably, in my career, had 10 or less murders. And he felt like one of those murders might be the work of the serial killer. The case involved a divorced mom named Randy Mebrewer. In 1998, the police found a trail of blood at her home, but no sign of Randy. Based on the evidence, the police believe Randy was killed and then removed from her home. The body was dragged from the bedroom throughout the house and through the dining and living room area.

And you could see where the body was set outside the front door. And her child was left there at the house. Police believe Randy's three-year-old son was asleep at the time his mother was murdered. The child had walked over to the neighbor's house and wanted to come over and play. And the neighbor, you know, let's go ask your mama. And he said, well, my mama's not there. The neighbors walked in and there was blood

in the house everywhere. You know, one thing that really bothered us is the killer looked in on the child. You could see where he went into the bedroom with the blood droplets on the child's door. The police never found Randy's body, but they found the killer's DNA at the scene. I told my partner, I said, you know who it is. There was no doubt in our mind it was Derek Toddly. Derek Toddly. He was the suspect in Randy's murder, and he was also someone the Zachary PD had dealt with for years. He was committing burglaries as a juvenile, breaking into homes, peeping time,

but he also had a violent side to him. He beat up on some people, so he spent a little time in jail, but you could see the pattern progressively getting worse as time went on and he just getting more violent. Derek Toddly went from being charged with peeping into women's homes to stalking and beating up multiple women. The Zachary Police got a tip that Derek Todd Lee had something to do with Randy Meenbrewer's murder. And since they had previously arrested him for peeping into homes in the same neighborhood where Randy lived, detectives questioned him and searched his home. The whole time, you know, he acted like he was innocent, you know, he didn't do nothing wrong. The look he had, you could tell he was, you know, he was just evil, just talking to him.

My hair stood up on the back of my neck. Halfway through their search of his home, Derek Toddly told the cops to leave. He lawyered up and stopped cooperating with their investigation. And that's where things ended. Detective McDavid told the Batamouche PD how they never had enough evidence to charge Lee, but they kept an eye on him. And based on how the serial killer was operating, he believed it was Derek Toddly. And Lee drove a white truck.

A trucker had saw a white truck on the Whiskey Bay Bridge with what appeared to be a white male with a naked female in the passenger side. And you know, that's what was given to the FBI profilers who come up with a profile. Detective McDavid shared why he thought Derek Todd Lee was the serial killer. If you remember, the serial killer was thought to be a white male with a white truck. But the Baton Rouge team did not pursue the lead because Derek Todd Lee was black and didn't fit the profile. People look at the serial killer as a white male, and that's where people got thrown off on this case here. They were looking for a white male. It bothered me somewhat, but there was no doubt in our mind it was Derek Todd Lee.

We knew that he was doing stuff. If we could get his DNA evidence and connect him to the crime, I knew we could get him arrested, get him off the street. So he began to be our main focus. The Zachary PD continued to do surveillance on Derek Todd Lee, and the following spring, he was back to his old tracks. I got a call from a lady that was here in town and she stated she'd been jogging every morning and a white truck was following her. So you know we did some

surveillance there. We never did see him but you know we showed her a picture and she swore him down that was him that was following her in a white truck. Investigators searched around her home and found some boot prints right outside her window, leading them to believe someone had been peeping. Evidently, he saw her and kind of got attached on to her and was watching her and probably was going to make his move. He was very careful in how he got in the area

and got back out without being seen. Law enforcement suspected Derek Todd Lee, but once again, they didn't have enough to arrest him. So they tried a different approach. They still had that DNA evidence from Randy Mead Brewer's house and wanted to test it against Derek Todd Lee's, but they needed a judge to sign off on a subpoena to get that swap. So they put together a timeline of the unsolved murders and compared it to what was going on in Derek Todd Lee's life.

What vehicle he was driving, what job he was working at, was a body found during that time, was he fired from his job, was he laid off. So with that, I began seeing a pattern with Derek Todd Lee. The pattern showed the traumatic events in Derek Todd Lee's life, like getting fired or filing bankruptcy. Well, they all happened right before the serial killer struck. Was it simply a coincidence? Detective McDavid didn't think so. I knew right then and there it was Derek Todd Lee. Detective McDavid didn't think so. I knew right then and there it was Derek Todd Lee. His team presented the information to a judge and the judge ordered Derek Todd Lee to be swabbed.

Almost three weeks later, Detective McDavid got a phone call from the task force. Look, we just want to let y'all know the DNA y'all got is a confirmed match. Derek Todd Lee's DNA matched the DNA found on all five victims. Meaning the small group from Zachary, Louisiana, had unmasked the South Louisiana serial killer. This has been the most serious case, tough case that I've ever worked on. I mean, the stuff he did, where he dumped the bodies at

in the bayous and waterways, I mean, he was smart. And just the stress and what this area went through and the Baton Rouge area and the citizens of this state went through, because I mean, he was everywhere committing crimes. He just didn't know where he was gonna show up next. And that was their next problem. Nearly three weeks had passed from the time they swapped his DNA to when they got the results.

So when police went to arrest Derek Toddly, his home appeared to be abandoned. And a foreclosure notice was stuck to the front door. I think the day we got his DNA, he took off. The man believed to have killed five women in South Louisiana over the course of 18 months had again slipped out of reach. That's when the Baton Rouge police chief went on TV. An arrest warrant has been issued

for the arrest of Derek Todd Lee. He is to be considered armed and dangerous, and authorities should be notified immediately. That began a nationwide manhunt. I said look I'm telling you something if he knows he's about to be caught he's probably going to kill again. You'll need to find him. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward.

And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Um, Gilbert King? I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer

and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, season two.

Jeremy. Jeremy, I wanna tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, season two, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through

the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy.

And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The

Girlfriends Spotlight. Our first two series introduce you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice, showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be. And we're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriends Spotlight. Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity. Like Tracy, who survived a terrifying attack. I remembered that feeling of, OK, this is how I die.

And turned that darkness into the most incredible journey. I want to take over the world and just leave this place better than I found it. Which took her all the way to Paris for the Paralympic Games. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So come and join our girl gang. Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay.

It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. Seven thousand bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery.

But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo Clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think. The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysen Campbell. Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Just one day into a nationwide manhunt for Derek Toddly, police arrested him without incident in Atlanta. And when his mugshot hit the news, all of South Louisiana couldn't believe it. Well, none of this matches anything the police had told us for a very long time. And it just didn't piece together, and it didn't make sense. Journalist Melinda Dallott had covered the story for nearly a year.

Most of that time, she reported that the police were looking for a white male in a white truck. The police in Baton Rouge led people down a lot of rabbit trails that ended up not being credible. So they got a lot of blowback about that. The police chief and a lot of other people who had been very engaged in that case got very defensive of what they had done and how they had handled it. There was just a lot of mishmash of emotions.

It was relief for the families because I knew how much they needed to see somebody arrested for this. And there was just a lot of frustration vented at the Baton Rouge Police Department because this police officer in Zachary is the one who sought the DNA swab of Derek Todd Lee and ended up being the person who connected all the murders. At the time of his arrest, Derek Todd Lee was 34 years old. He was married. He even had children and a girlfriend on the side. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings.

I found that really bizarre that somebody that was actually married and in relationships was doing that. The profile said that this was someone who would be a loner, and this was a man who was surrounded by women. You have a married father of two who also had a girlfriend on the side, charged with killing a handful of women in South Louisiana. You know, you can understand people that do things in like heat of passion. Like somebody walks in and finds their spouse cheating. You can understand that.

You don't like it, but you can understand that they may lose it, they may get emotional, and they may do something that they regret later. But I don't remember anything that I learned of him to say, oh, well, no wonder. No wonder he did that. Derrick Todd Lee was born in South Louisiana. His troubles began at the age of 11 when he first started peeping into the windows of girls. Growing up, he attended special education classes.

He later dropped out of school and married his high school sweetheart. A year later, she accused him of abusing her. Journalist Melinda Dallott interviewed people who knew Derek Toddly. People said nice things about him. His neighbors, for example, called him polite, friendly, and well-dressed. So despite how he came across to people, he clearly had a background of some disturbing behavior regarding women.

Because he had been arrested before for trespassing and peeking into houses and stalking as part of the Peeping Tom kind of allegations. And then he was accused of beating up a woman, like some sort of fight in a bar. He was convicted and he was sentenced to jail for that one. You know, hindsight's always 20-20, but like obviously there was a trail of some arrest records that probably could have drawn some attention if they knew they were looking for a black man. By 2004, Derek Todd Lee's DNA connected him with the murders of two more people, another LSU grad student and a 28-year-old woman from Zachary.

There was now seven women that Lee was accused of killing. But prosecutors decided to only try the cases they believed had the best shot at winning. I'm John Sinkfield. I'm a prosecutor in Louisiana since 1971. I specialized in trying capital murder cases in East Baton Rouge Parish, and I had three people actually executed that I prosecuted. In the fall of 2004, Derek Todd Lee stood trial for the murder of Murray Pace. She was the 22-year-old LSU grad who was sexually assaulted and stabbed 81 times.

John Sinkfield was the lead prosecutor. I give the analogy it's like a gold miner. A gold miner's got to work where there's gold. A murder prosecutor's got to work where there are murders. Baton Rouge was a good place for my career. In this case, the prosecutor was seeking capital punishment. And I had no problem asking these jurors to return a death penalty against Derek Todd Lee based on the evidence that I thought proved beyond a reasonable doubt into a moral certainty that he had committed all these crimes.

Throughout his trial, Derek Todd Lee sat quietly and appeared emotionless. He was represented by a team of public defenders. You may have heard bad things about public defenders but not in this case. He had a top-notch team. In fact, neither the lead defense attorney nor the prosecutor had ever lost a capital case. They set it up as a mano-a-mano contest almost like a sporting event and headlines were two very experienced lawyers will face each other off tomorrow in Baton Rouge courtroom. Neither one of them has ever lost a capital case. In this case one of

them is gonna to lose. After weeks of jury selection and a short delay from a hurricane, the case involving the murder of Murray Pace began in October 2004. In that trial, I had some hard decisions to make. Specifically, weathered a call to my witnesses who reported seeing someone outside of Murray Pace's home. There's three or four witnesses that claimed to have seen Derek Todd Lee in that area around her condo in the days previous to the assault and murder.

But they had given some descriptions that didn't exactly match. So they had some vulnerability, I thought. And then I made a decision one night during that trial not to use the eyewitnesses to go just with the DNA. For the first few days of the trial, that's what the prosecution did. They called witness after witness to speak about the DNA evidence. We put on the DNA evidence only to have them put on a defense saying that our criminalists who examined the DNA evidence were young and inexperienced, that there were some sloppy procedures in the lab, that a swab was found in one of the boxes which wasn't related to the cases. That our computer systems that analyzed this evidence

was old and out of date. And there was some attempt, you know, like possibly to frame him or something like that. As the defense attacked his DNA evidence, it left the prosecutor second guessing his strategy. I've eliminated three or four eyewitnesses, and I put on this powerful case of the DNA only to sit there and pray that my career wasn't going to go straight out the window,

because I had never seen a DNA defense like that. And you're praying that the jury don't buy it. The prosecution saved their star witness until the very end. That's when they called a 46-year-old nurse named Diane Alexander. Diane Alexander explained what it was like, in her words, to be attacked by Derek Todd Lee and survive. Diane reported being attacked by Derek Todd Lee during the summer of 2002. It happened inside her home, about an hour outside Baton Rouge.

And her testimony was huge for prosecutors. Although we don't have that audio, Diane described the attack on a series called LA Gospel Beats. There was a knock at the door. So when I opened the door, there was this fair-complected young man standing outside my door. Diane said she didn't recognize the man. And he said, hi, my name is Anthony. I'm looking for the Montgomery's, and I'm supposed to do construction for them.

Diane told him he must be at the wrong house. She didn't know the Montgomery's. And he said do you think your husband might know? And I knew my husband was at work but I just told him my husband doesn't know who these people are. And then he asked Diane one more time. Are you sure your husband doesn't know who those people are? I said, look, my husband's not home. And boom, all hell broke loose. He was strong.

He was bigger. He pushed his way in her door and attacked her. Within just a few seconds or minutes, he had her down trying to strangle her with a phone cord. His intentions was to rape and kill me. That was his intentions. Over the next few minutes, he struck Diane on her head and stomped on her chest.

All the while, he threatened to stab her in the eye with his knife. And in my left ear, he whispered, he said, I've been watching you. And then, all of a sudden, the sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway made him freeze. And not long after, my son showed up.

Diane's son was a college student who came home early that morning. He chased the man, but lost him. He reported seeing his mother's attacker drive off in a gold-colored sedan with a beige telephone cord hanging out the window. In a dramatic moment, the prosecutor asked Diane if her attacker, who claimed his name was Anthony, was in the courtroom that day. She looked right at Derek Todd Lee and she said, that's him. It was powerful testimony, but things wouldn't go as smoothly during cross-examination. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield

in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert King, I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad, is oh he's a killer, he's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here. Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley Season 2, Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in

Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast.

Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends is back with something new, The Girlfriends Spotlight. Our first two series introduce you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice, showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be.

We're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriend Spotlight. Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity. Like June, who founded an all-female rock band in the 1960s. I might as well have said, we're gonna walk on the moon.

But she sure showed them who's boss and toured the world. They would just be gobsmacked, and they would rush up after the set and say, not bad for chicks. So come and join our girl gang. Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything. So things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. 7,000 bodies out there or more.

All former patients of the old state asylum. And nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery. But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysen Campbell. Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Jures heard several DNA experts describe how Derek Todd Lee's DNA was found on the victim Murray Pace. As you can imagine, that testimony was complex. But when Diane Alexander took the stand, she provided something no other witness could do. She described how Derek Todd Lee was able to get inside her home. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings.

So he goes to the door and he's asking her questions and asking her, I'm looking for somebody. And she said he was very, very polite at first, well-spoken. I mean, that's the way he came across. And then when he said, well, ask your husband, and I think she said, he's not home, or something to that effect, and that's when he just changed his personality,

forced his way into the trailer, and started attacking her, just viciously. Tried to rape her, but her son drove up, she had like a gravel driveway, and he drove up the driveway and Derek Tudley got up and ran. And her testimony was very compelling because the science is great. But to hear somebody actually describe how he operated and it just made sense in all the other cases.

And Diane's testimony came with another key piece of evidence. He used a cord, a foam cord, to try to strangle her. And that foam cord, when he left, he grabbed it and took it with him. As a matter of fact, the son who came home described a cord hanging out of the vehicle. And that's important because three days later, he attacked Pam Kinnamore. Diane Alexander was attacked on July 9th. Pam Kinnamore was attacked and killed July 12th. Pam's body was later found in Whiskey Bay.

They're looking out there at Whiskey Bay, and on a roadway, there is a cord. And sure enough, they were later able to match it to the cord that was back at Diane Alexander's house. So that was a nice little piece of evidence, because it was fine to have the DNA, and DNA is such incredible evidence. But it was also nice to have a little bit different piece of evidence that will corroborate that. During her

time on the stand, Diane was calm and spoke matter factly. Here's Lee prosecutor John Sinkfield. After she testified, if I'd had any doubt about the DNA part or other parts of the evidence, To myself, I said, this case is over. But it wasn't. During cross-examination, Diane slipped up. She gave conflicting information about what Derek Todd Lee wore the morning he attacked her. The defense also questioned why Diane told medical personnel

she couldn't remember any details about the attack. Diane explained that she was hospitalized for five days and was in and out of it. Things got so tense during cross-examination that Diane asked the defense lawyer, why are you trying to confuse me? I was sitting up in my office saying, well, you know, wonder what the opportunities like in Minnesota are,

you know, for a guy with my accent are because if I lose this case, I may be out of here. During closing arguments, prosecutor John Singfield reminded the jury of what he called the silent witness. Derek Todd Lee's DNA. When Derek Todd Lee pushed his way in her door and attacked her, he picked the wrong woman that day. Over and over and over again she was stout.

She fought back and she scratched him. And when she scratched him, she got skin cells with DNA off of him. If you take the population of the earth and multiply it by 514,000 times, you wouldn't find another DNA match to Derek Todd Lee. He was one person out of 3.6 quadrigon. The defense never called any witnesses. They simply picked apart the prosecution's case, suggesting that there were errors collecting and processing that DNA. We put on 70 witnesses, 100 pieces of evidence, and 200 photographs in that trial.

And then, of course, we had Diana Alexander, which explained what it was like, in her words, to be attacked by Derek Todd Lee and survive. She was the only person alive that had survived. In their closing arguments, the defense questioned how a special education dropout like Derek Todd Lee could murder all these women without leaving behind a fingerprint, a tire track, or any trace of evidence. They also reminded the jury that for years the Zachary Police Department placed Derek Todd Lee under heavy surveillance.

So with all those eyes on him, how could he have killed Murray Pace or any of the other victims? But Prosecutor Sinkfield got in the final word. I told him, let me tell you something what I'm about to say is not politically correct but I'm gonna say it anyway. You see a woman like Charlotte Murray-Pace she's beautiful she's smart she's accomplished she's well-dressed. Men will kill each other over a woman like her. And some men will kill her just for a few minutes of sexual gratification with her. And that's what the evidence has shown that Derek Todd Lee did.

There's no doubt that she lost her life in a fight. Fight's not over yet. When she clawed evidence from his skin, she said the fight to you. Who wins it? Your decision. After less than 80 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned. On the count of first-degree murder, they convicted Derek Toddly. they convicted Derek Toddly. When the verdict came out, the real issue, I think, is this, he can receive the death penalty. Throughout the trial, the defense claimed Derek Toddly was mentally challenged,

and that would take the death penalty off the table and trigger an automatic life sentence. Here's prosecutor Dana Cummings. They tried to say he's mentally challenged and should not be executed. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing anyone with an intellectual disability was unconstitutional. And so we had a long hearing about whether or not he was actually mentally incapable. There were various reports about his IQ, but it was just so clear that he could pull off these crimes without being seen.

I mean, that did take planning, and that did take a certain amount of intelligence. An hour and a half later, the jury returned. They all agreed that Derek Todd Lee should die by lethal injection. As he was let out of the courtroom, the usually stoic Derek Todd Lee erupted. Journalist Melinda Dallott was there that day. He held up a V for victory kind of sign and he shouted to his family something about God

don't sleep and they don't want to tell you about the DNA that they took. I don't know that we ever really got a good explanation, but clearly he was trying to get at that suggestion that somehow law enforcement planted the DNA evidence that convicted him. Outside the courtroom, Lee's lawyer addressed the media. His lawyer said he wasn't surprised by the verdict, but that Derek Chodley cried after he left the courtroom. We did not see that. Prosecutor John Singfield also spoke to the media. The question they asked me was, were you worried? Did this make you nervous? Rather than saying yes, I was about to jump off the seventh floor of the courthouse. My answer was, tonight, the South Louisiana serial killer got South

Louisiana justice. He got the death penalty. Here's audio from Murray Pace's mother, Anne, from that press conference. I think we thought when it came back so quickly... I'm sorry. I just can't believe it's finally happened. I'm overwhelmed. Throughout the trial and even during the press conference, Ann was surrounded by the families of the other victims. In a separate trial, Derek Todd Lee was convicted of murdering LSU student Jerilyn DeSoto. He was sentenced to life in prison. And just like during her daughter's trial,

Anne was there to support Jerilyn's family. We formed like a sort of fraternity that you don't want to be in, where everybody felt very close to everybody else, because who in the world understands that but us? We called it the Casablanca question of all the gin joints and all the world. How did he pick my daughter and why? That's one of the questions you never have an answer to.

And planned to be there the day Derek Todd Lee was executed. But that day never came. We're interrupting your program with what will be a sigh of relief for many families here in South Louisiana. Suicide killer Derek Todd Lee died at a hospital in Zachary this morning. He had been there since Saturday. Derek Todd Lee was 47 years old. He'd been on death row since that conviction a decade ago.

In 2016, Derek Todd Lee died in prison. His cause of death was heart disease. And for Anne Pace, that news was bittersweet. All of it was truly like stepping off the edge of a cliff into an alternate universe in which you had no control whatsoever. She told a local newspaper, The end of the fight feels like a loss. Feels like I'm armored for battle only to find you have no opponent.

The years of legal wrangling over Derek Todd Lee's execution came to an abrupt ending. We had spent 11 years in court which means every time your life gets a little bit normal you're snatched back into the nightmare. With the nightmare over and finally began the healing process. It was like literally falling off the edge of the world. And all of a sudden you came to live in a new world that was darker and hotter and had sharper edges. And that stays with you. You don't get to leave that world when it's over.

Anne had Murray's remains cremated. The reason's just heartbreaking. She said it was the only way she could get rid of every molecule Derek Toddly left on her daughter. She sprinkled her daughter's ashes in London, Paris, and Egypt. Places Murray always wanted to visit but never got the chance. I can truly say I've never had a day that I don't think of her more than once, sometimes several times. And I think, you know, when somebody you love like that dies,

that some of you goes with them. I don't think they go along. I think you keep the memories and send the rest with them. Next time on American Homicide... After a teenager's death was ruled a suicide, her mother goes on a decades-long crusade to find the truth. We'll head to Anchorage, Alaska for the case of who killed Bonnie Craig. I'm Sloane Glass. That's next time on American Homicide.

You can contact the 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 Kreinchak. 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. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season Two on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.

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Quartzside with Laura Karenty is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Quartz side with Laura Karenty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Your money skills total trash? Well trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve. Think Matt, if your emergency fund was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now.

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