Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Baton Rouge Serial Killer” Derrick Todd Lee Pt. 1

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Ever since he was a little boy in the ‘70s, Derrick Todd Lee liked to peep. He would stare through the window of his neighbor's house, watching women undress. But the older he got, the more Derrick ...realized that peeping wasn't enough for him. He wanted to hold complete power over these women. And soon, that urge turned deadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussions of voyeurism, domestic violence, rape and murder that some listeners may find disturbing. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. On the night of April 18, 1998, 28-year-old Randy Me Brewer sat on the couch watching TV. Her three-year-old son, Michael, never made it through an entire movie, and tonight was no exception. The hero got the girl, there was a huge musical number, and Michael slept through it all. As a single mom, Randy was more than happy to have a night in. It was a cool spring evening, the perfect temperature to stay inside and watch a sappy movie,
Starting point is 00:00:55 even if she had to watch most of it by herself. At least, she thought she was alone. Randy had no idea that on this particular night, she had become someone else's entertainment. 30-year-old Derek Todd Lee was watching her through the window. His face nearly invisible in the darkness. He had been there for hours, sitting completely still, staring at Randy and her son. Derek had sat through the movie with Randy. He even noticed little Michael doze off somewhere in the middle.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Then after the credits rolled, Derek saw Randy carry her son off to bed. The living room was empty for only a moment. Then, to Derek's excitement, Randy returned and sat back down on the couch to watch the lottery draw. Derek gazed at her as she listened to the winning numbers, then carelessly tossed her ticket across the room. It wasn't her lucky night. But Derek felt fortunate to find her. Randy was going to be the star of his show. All he had to do was wait for the perfect moment to strike.
Starting point is 00:02:02 Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is serial killers. a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we'll take a look at Derek Todd Lee, otherwise known as the Baton Rouge serial killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone.
Starting point is 00:02:34 You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In today's episode, we'll tackle Derek's quick descent into crime as a young boy. We'll watch as his childhood obsession with peeping morphs into something far more sinister. Next time, we'll explore how Derek stalked and murdered multiple women in the Baton Rouge area. After a series of distractions led the police in the wrong direction, it would take years for them to finally bring Derek to justice. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.
Starting point is 00:03:10 This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for. for a killer. The hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the unit bomber, it's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So if you're hiring, I've got news for you. You can skip the lengthy investigation and the tiresome process of sorting through hundreds of resumes. Just use ZipRecruiter. Try for free. At ZipRecruiter, dot com slash killers because not only does zip recruiter have the technology to match you with potential
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Starting point is 00:04:25 Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the Commerce Platform.
Starting point is 00:04:45 that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash killers. That's Shopify.com slash killers. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest, and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks.
Starting point is 00:05:20 You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not Crime Beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. It isn't unusual to feel jealous of someone else, to want their clothes, their job, even their lifestyle. But envy often overlaps with other sensations, feelings that are little more unsettling.
Starting point is 00:05:54 Frustrated desire can easily turn to coveting, and coveting is ever so slightly different. It comes with the same yearning, but that feeling becomes desperate, almost impulsive. It's more than simply wanting to have something. It's about craving it, needing it more than anything else. Derek Todd Lee was known to covet women, typically young brunettes. He wanted these women, and more than that,
Starting point is 00:06:21 that, he needed to have them, to control them, and eventually to destroy them. That part of his journey came later in his life. It took years for him to turn into the man known across Louisiana as the Baton Rouge serial killer. But even as a child, something about Derek seemed different. Derek was born in 1968 in St. Francisville, Louisiana, a city about 30 miles away from Baton Rouge. The entire Lee clan lived in a small collection of houses and mobile homes off of Blackmore Road, known locally as Lee's Quarters. There, Derek lived among dozens of siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts, all within a stone's throw of each other. From the little we know about Derek's early childhood, he spent most of his time outside with other
Starting point is 00:07:13 family members his age, playing basketball and fishing in the shallow creek that ran behind his house. But as he got older, something changed. Whatever idyllic carefree life he lived as a kid was muddled by a new interest, one that his family didn't quite understand. His female cousins noticed it first, though they couldn't prove anything for sure. At night, while the girls were undressing in their homes, they swore they saw someone outside gazing at them in the dark. Soon, rumors began circulating that nine-year-old Derek was peeping on a his own cousins. Every evening he stood outside in the shadows as still as a statue and stared. Although the behavior was unsettling, Derek's relatives may have thought he was just sexually curious,
Starting point is 00:08:01 which isn't uncommon in young children. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. A 2010 article in American family physician detailed that three to five-year-old kids often try to look at other people's genitals or touch their own genitals in public. According to experts, this is normal in young children as they try to make sense of their bodies and the others around them. But nine-year-old Derek was already pushing the limits of acceptable sexual behavior for his age group. The same article states that older children who continue to display odd sexual behavior may have another problem. Sometimes
Starting point is 00:08:48 this is a sign that the child was abused by an adult at a young age. But as far as we know, Derek was never harmed by his family, so it didn't seem like anything could easily explain why Derek kept watching his cousins undress. Sadly, the Lee family didn't seem to look into the issue further. They whispered about his peeping, but that was it. Even Derek's cousins didn't cause a fuss about his bizarre fascination with them. The whole family likely swept this issue under the rug and treated it as nothing more than sexual curiosity. They probably thought it would just resolve on its own as Derek grew up. But this hands-off approach didn't work. As Derek got older, he only developed more unsettling habits. And slowly, this behavior started to form a pattern.
Starting point is 00:09:36 On November 8, 1981, three days after his 13th birthday, police arrested Derek for stealing from a local candy store. Because it was his first crime, his penalty was relatively light, nothing more than a brief period of probation. Because there was no real consequence for his action, Derek had no reason to regret the theft. And for him, it was like a switch was flipped. It had felt intoxicating to invade a space, to take things that didn't belong to him. Peeping on his cousins came with its own thrill, but this was something else. Burglary was more destructive, more violent. And Derek liked that. By the time he was 16, Derek had developed a vicious temper. In one instance, in 1984, he attacked another boy with a knife,
Starting point is 00:10:25 slashing and thrusting the blade with the full force of someone ready to kill. This was far more serious than a candy store theft. But bizarrely, this moment only prompted another empty threat from the police, an attempted second-degree murder charge that was eventually dropped. Something was ramping up. up within Derek's mind. The stealing, the violence. It all came to a head in his teenage years. And there's a term for this phenomenon. The National Institute of Justice called it the age crime curve, which can be used to demonstrate how prepubescent children who commit violent
Starting point is 00:11:02 crimes are likely to continue committing crimes into early adulthood before an eventual drop in overall criminal activity. While the NIH points out that roughly half of these young offenders stop by early adulthood, some do persist, and those that do often experience a severe increase in violence during the period of transition from teenager to adult. Derek, who showed no signs of stopping as he got older, seemed to fall into the latter group. In 1985, 17-year-old Derek spent more time crawling and peeping in the local neighborhoods. Eventually, this extracurricular took priority over school, and he dropped out. Derek saw classes and homework as a distraction.
Starting point is 00:11:47 Without them, he had more time to go out at night and watch his cousins undress in the darkness. But soon, this wasn't enough for him anymore. He was ready for something new, so Derek slowly wandered beyond Lee's corridors to see who else was out there. Surrounded by new homes to peep into, Derek perfected his method.
Starting point is 00:12:09 He chose a girl, usually someone he noticed on his way to school or who caught his eye at the store. He'd figure out where she lived, which wasn't hard in a small city like St. Francisville. Then at night, Derek arrived at her house, settled himself behind a bush or a tree, and watched through a window. But he didn't just do it for one night. Sometimes he'd watch a woman for weeks at a time. In his mind, it was the perfect crime. After all, he thought peeping didn't hurt anyone. He didn't lay a hand on these girls.
Starting point is 00:12:43 They were doing what they usually did. It's just that Derek happened to be watching. But he wasn't as subtle as he thought. While his family ignored his voyeurism, the people beyond Lee's quarters were alarmed. Girls complained about seeing a strange boy staring at them through their windows, and unlike Derek's cousins, these families called the authorities. In 1986, a St. Francisville woman noticed 18-year-old Derek
Starting point is 00:13:11 staring at her through her bedroom window. She told her brother who called the police, and they swiftly tracked Derek down. For some reason, he wasn't arrested. Derek didn't receive jail time or even probation. Authorities let him off with a warning. For the third time in his young life, Derek had been given nothing more than a slap on the wrist for his crimes. That was probably because peeping usually isn't treated as a serious offense.
Starting point is 00:13:40 In the eyes of law enforcement, if no one is harmed, the crime couldn't be that terrible. And Derek was no exception. Authorities treated his behavior as nothing more than an annoying problem. At this point, you'd think that 18-year-old Derek would have learned his lesson. Surely it was time to cast aside his strange behavior and become a regular law-abiding citizen. And for a brief moment, it looked like Derek was doing just that. In 1987, he found work as a pipe fitter in the nearby town of Zachary, and in addition to the job, his personal life was thriving.
Starting point is 00:14:16 He fell in love with Jackie Sims, an old friend from Lee's quarters. Jackie was smart, quiet, and treated Derek with kindness that he rarely received from others. In 1988, the two got married, and by 1992 they had a son and a daughter together. Derek's life was shaping up to be as normal as anyone else's. At least, that's what it looked like from the outside. Derek and Jackie's relationship wasn't actually harmonious at all. Derek went out all the time, leaving Jackie at home to care for their two young children nearly every night.
Starting point is 00:14:55 She never questioned what he was doing or where he was going. It was just easier that way. When he was home, Derek was a terror to be around. His temper flared up at random, and Jackie bore the brunt of it. He started threatening her and eventually physically assaulting her. On one occasion, Jackie filed a restraining order against her husband, though she didn't maintain it for more than a few months. Because of the friction and abuse, the couple preferred their time apart.
Starting point is 00:15:23 Jackie looked forward to the long, unexplained periods of time when her husband disappeared. And when he went out, Derek was free to do as he pleased. Most of the time he met up with his cousins at local bars, but not every night. Sometimes he went out alone because he still felt that familiar desire to find someone who he could watch. As a child, peeping had come from a place of fascination, but as an adult, it was different. Suddenly, it was sexual, forbidden in a way that was erotic. Soon, Derek likely noticed a new sensation, watching women undress, Perhaps wasn't enough anymore.
Starting point is 00:16:05 He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to destroy them. Coming up, a suspicious killing may have been Derek's first murder. It's October 20th, 2018, one day until the end of the world. I'm on the compound of a secretive religious organization, interviewing a long-time member. Their leader has predicted that tomorrow will be the beginning of the apocalypse. The prediction? Yes, I am prepared.
Starting point is 00:16:37 It will purify life from a lot of illusions. When I started working on this story, I was hoping to profile a unique apocalyptic group that had survived through many failed doomsday predictions. But the end of the world was just the beginning. The only way to get to heaven was to allow him sexual activity with me. I didn't specifically give my consent. I was frozen at the time. The angels, they arranged that he is supposed to have sex with his stuff.
Starting point is 00:17:06 sex with his students. He is an amazing teacher, and also he's a sick f***. This is Revelations, a Spotify original from Parcast, premiering Sunday, October 3rd. Now back to the story. By 1992, 24-year-old Derek Todd Lee had all the trappings of a happy domestic life in St. Francisville, Louisiana. It seemed like he had cast aside the perverse habits of his youth,
Starting point is 00:17:38 but beneath the surface, Derek seemed to still feel his dark urges, and he started acting out in other ways. Derek usually met up with his cousins at the local bar and boasted about as many dalliances with other women. Just how much truth there was to the stories no one ever knew. But eventually, he began a steady affair with a woman named Consandra, and she often joined Derek and his cousins for drinks. At this point, Derek seemed to imagine himself as a Lothario,
Starting point is 00:18:08 a man who had a seductive control over all the women he came across. He was living out fantasies he'd always had while peeping on women from the shadows, but now he had a role in the show. The thrill of this gave Derek an ego boost. He imagined himself as the kind of man who took what he wanted, who didn't just watch from the sidelines. That likely pushed him to flirt with women at bars, maybe even spend the night with one or two of them,
Starting point is 00:18:35 and eventually this belief in his own sex. appeal put pressure on his other interests. Derek's obsession with watching women on dress grew more intense. Peeping was no longer a mere curiosity for Derek. Now it became an extension of his sexual fantasies. He wasn't visibly aroused during these late-night watches, but he likely felt an erotic thrill when spying on women. At this stage, Derek's continued peeping fixations started to align with voyeuristic disorder.
Starting point is 00:19:06 The DSM-5 states that this condition fits under the category of paraphylic disorders, in which subjects have intense, abnormal, sexual desires. Voyeuristic disorder is relatively common and has several specific criteria. One is that the subject must achieve sexual arousal from the act of watching an unknowing stranger undress. Another is that this sexual arousal must directly affect the subject's personal life. whether that be through issues with work or his home life. Derek seemed to fit neatly within those parameters. He spent his evenings away from his family and friends
Starting point is 00:19:44 looking for new windows to look in, searching for a new rush. Adding to Derek's perverse thrill was the fact that he had access to a whole unfamiliar set of women. As he drove to and from work in the small town of Zachary, he passed by an entirely new population who had never heard of him, who wouldn't be expecting him. Zachary wasn't a particularly exciting place, but it was about 16 miles away from Baton Rouge,
Starting point is 00:20:10 so it served as a quiet escape from the city. The town was largely suburban with rows of neat brick houses. For this reason, it was a popular place for single adults and young families, especially young mothers and women living on their own. For Derek, it was the perfect place for him to go from passive viewer to active participant. While most of his behavior aligned with voyeuristic disorder, at this point, Derek changed course. Usually voyeurs never move past the act of peeping. The action itself satisfies that sexual need, so there's no urge to get closer to their victims.
Starting point is 00:20:49 But Derek wasn't content to sit back and watch. Not anymore. Some details about Derek's murderous career are a little fuzzy. It is widely speculated that 41-year-old Connie Lynn Warner was Derek's first kill, but it was never confirmed. Even so, it's not hard to recognize a certain signature to this case that feels familiar. Connie lived in Zachary. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and fair skin. She was a single mother living with her teenage daughter, Tracy, in a quiet suburb full of starter homes. The pair had lived there for four years without any issues.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Then Derek noticed her. Sometime in the summer of 1992, Connie spotted a strange man staring in her windows. This may have been Derek. After all, he wasn't always subtle in his peeping. Unfortunately, Connie didn't get a good look at the stranger who was watching her. So when she called the police and made a report, all she could tell them was that she'd seen a man peeping on her. But nothing ever came of the complaint.
Starting point is 00:21:52 After she made the report, Connie didn't see the man watching her. her again. Connie and Tracy continued living their lives, assuming that the bizarre moment had passed, but it was only the beginning. On the weekend of August 22nd, Tracy left to spend a few days with her boyfriend, so Connie was home alone. Because of this, we don't have much information about the events that followed. Again, it's never been confirmed that Derek was the person who killed Connie. Derek's DNA was never found at the scene, and this case was never. solved, but for many people there was no mistaking it. This was the work of Derek Todd Lee. We can't comment on the accuracy of that statement, but this case certainly fits Derek's style.
Starting point is 00:22:39 And as such, it offers an interesting insight into the kind of killer that Derek quickly became. We do know that the perpetrator didn't force his way into the house. It's possible that he knocked and that Connie opened the door not expecting a stranger. Then the night, the night The nightmare began almost immediately. The stranger assaulted Connie mercilessly, pulling out chunks of her hair and dragging her from room to room. The struggle left a gruesome trail of blood from the bedroom to the kitchen and finally to the garage. There, the assailant threw Connie onto the hood of her own car and then into the back seat, leaving streaks of blood on the interior. Inside the car, Connie vomited from the blunt trauma of the attack, but her attack
Starting point is 00:23:26 Attacker wasn't done. Eventually, he took Connie somewhere else where he could kill her. He dragged her out to his car and disappeared into the night. No one knew about the horrific events that had taken place inside Connie's home for at least a day. But about 48 hours later, Tracy returned home from her trip. It was around 9 p.m. on August 24th, when the teenager got back to her house and found it eerily empty. Alarmed, Tracy called her grandfather. who came over to check what was wrong.
Starting point is 00:23:58 When the pair spotted the blood and clear signs of a struggle, they called the police. Officers arrived and their search of the house discovered more alarming clues. Connie's bedroom was in a state of disarray. The mattress had been shoved to one side, and the sheets were a tangled mess in the middle of the bed. On the carpet, police found Connie's glasses and a pair of women's underwear, stained red with blood. Despite all this, police didn't initially consider the case a homicide. The vomit in the car suggested that Connie was still alive when she was taken. This shred of hope kept Tracy glued to the phone for the next few days.
Starting point is 00:24:38 Every second she hoped that the police would call with the news she wanted to hear that her mother was alive. But an unexpected event halted the investigation. On August 26, four days after Connie's murder, Zachary was rocked by Hurricane Andrew, a deadly Category 5 hurricane. The storm raged through the town with 150-mile-per-hour winds, leaving a path of destruction behind. The entire state of Louisiana turned into a muddy mess, and it washed away any lingering evidence outside Connie's house.
Starting point is 00:25:16 But that wasn't the worst of it. On September 2, 1992, a truck driver spotted Connie's. his body next to Capitol Lake near downtown Baton Rouge. It's likely that Derek killed Connie at the banks of Capitol Lake. It's been speculated that he beat her until she died. Then he abandoned her body at the edge of the water. The police were only able to determine that Connie died of a skull fracture, but that was it. Her body had decomposed very quickly in the rain, and the storm had washed away any useful evidence.
Starting point is 00:25:51 There was no DNA, no fingerprint. no footprints. For Tracy and her family, this was the worst possible news. Not only had Connie been taken from them, but it seemed there was no hope of catching her killer. It's possible that Connie's killer was some other stranger, a man with an obsessive streak who wanted to murder a woman in her own home. But it's not hard to imagine Derek as this person,
Starting point is 00:26:19 reeling from his first kill. We may never know for sure if Derek, Todd Lee was the man who brutally murdered Connie Lynn Warner. But what we do know is that shortly after this event, Derek's behavior changed drastically. For the next six years, Derek carved a path of violence and chaos through his small patch of Louisiana. From 1992 until 1998, he was arrested multiple times on peeping Tom charges
Starting point is 00:26:47 and even served jail time for burglary. He threatened, harassed, and stole from countless people. By 1998, Derek's stints in prison had begun to affect every part of his life. His marriage had been rocky for years, and things with his girlfriend weren't much better. He also couldn't seem to keep a job for more than a year, and he started to lose confidence. He went from feeling like an irresistible ladies' man to feeling frustrated and inadequate. It was unacceptable. 30-year-old Derek wanted to find something to regain his old sense of self, the way he used to see himself.
Starting point is 00:27:24 a powerful, desirable man who could take anything he wanted. He started coveting again, and there was one thing he wanted to take more than anything, someone else's life. Coming up, Derek returns to a familiar place to kill again. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater,
Starting point is 00:27:56 on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern country rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Now back to the story. In 1998, Derek Todd Lee was spiraling. He couldn't hold down a steady job and his relationships with his wife, Jackie, and long-term girlfriend, Consandra, were on the rocks. With so much out of his control, the 30-year-old wanted a way to feel powerful again. It's impossible for us to say for certain whether or not Derek killed Connie Lynn Warner, but his behavior after her brutal murder marked a change in him. It was as if he had tasted
Starting point is 00:28:52 something new, something intoxicating, and he wanted more of it. This behavior change could suggest Derek had crossed a boundary from voyeurism to something far, far worse. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention discussed how voyeurism can sometimes pave the way to sexual and physical assault. It explained that voyeurism is inherently predatory since the person undressing is being used willingly as a tool of sexual gratification. The investigation also stated that many criminals who commit sexual sexual, assault have a history of voyeurism. Derek's potential escalation from peeping to murder is a perfect illustration of this path. Simply watching women undressed stopped satisfying him in the way it did when he was
Starting point is 00:29:43 younger. As an adult, he wanted to bring his fantasy into the real world. For him, that meant a combination of violence and murder, and he knew just where he wanted to indulge. In the spring of 1998, Derek prowled the Zachary neighborhood where Connie had lived. It may have been a coincidence, but the suburb was full of women, and it's entirely possible he felt he wasn't done there yet. On one of these trips, he found his next subject of fascination, a 28-year-old single mother named Randy Mebrewer. Randy just happened to live down the street from where Connie once lived.
Starting point is 00:30:20 Randy also just happened to look a lot like Connie, white with brown hair and brown eyes. When he first saw Randy, something stirred inside him. A feeling came bubbling up. He knew she was the one. In a short time, Derek had discovered exactly where Randy lived and that she lived alone. It's possible he spent weeks stalking her, watching her from the window, maybe even following when she picked up her three-year-old son Michael from daycare.
Starting point is 00:30:50 He didn't like to rush things. Derek possibly found it thrilling to watch Randy as he anticipated that final climactic moment. But by mid-April, he was done waiting. On the 18th, Derek was having a bad night. He and his girlfriend, Consandra, were fighting again. The pair had planned to spend the night out at a local bar, but Consandra cut their time short. She was tired of Derek flirting with other women, and she told him so. Around 10.30, she drove home in a huff, leaving Derek to fume by himself. Frustrated, Derek drove to another bar, but a change of scenery didn't calm him down. He only grew more irritated. In his mind, Consandra had no right to be angry with him.
Starting point is 00:31:35 He already had a wife who made things difficult for him. He resented that his girlfriend was causing him even more strife. As he sat in the bar, Derek's dark impulse crept up again, the urge to kill. He finished his beer, slapped some money on the counter, and left. He knew exactly exactly what would cheer him up. He drove out to Zachary, making a slow, deliberate way to Randi Street. Then he sat at the now-familiar spot outside her living room window and waited. There in the shadows he watched Randy, and everything she did for hours. He was there as she watched a movie, put her son to bed,
Starting point is 00:32:17 sighed when the lottery numbers didn't match her ticket. He was there when eventually Randy went to. bed. At that time of night, a heavy, impenetrable silence blanketed the subdivision. No one heard Derek open Randy's door and sneak inside. No one knew that a night of horror was just beginning. We don't know exactly what happened once he entered the house, but it's likely that he attacked Randy with untethered ferocity. Blood splattered onto Randy's sheets, her headboard, and the carpet in the hallway. At one point, he was a lot. He was in the room. At one point, he was, he was a hit her so hard that her contacts popped out of her eyes.
Starting point is 00:32:59 But Derek didn't want to rush the process, so he took Randy somewhere else, possibly out in the marshy landscape of the Louisiana backcountry. That's where he likely killed her. We don't know exactly how he did it, but when he was finally done, Derek fled. The neighborhood remained quiet for the rest of the night. No one had seen or heard a thing, but in the morning, everything came to light in horrific detail. Early on, Randy's neighbor, Kathy Morris, noticed something bizarre.
Starting point is 00:33:33 Across the street, she saw three-year-old Michael wandering around the front yard of his house alone. Kathy thought he had probably stuck outside without Randy noticing. So she walked across the street and asked Michael where his mother was. Michael looked up at the woman and in a small voice said that she was gone. Kathy told Michael that she'd help him find his mom. she had to be inside somewhere, she took the little boy's hand
Starting point is 00:34:00 and led him gently back toward his house, entering through the open kitchen door. Stepping into the sunlit kitchen, Kathy realized Randy wasn't there. But as she walked further into the house, she noticed a few red spots on the floor. That's when she started to really worry. Kathy continued inside, walking while holding Michael's hand.
Starting point is 00:34:23 She called out to Randy, but of course there was no reception. response. At the sight of more blood, she scooped Michael up and took him across the street to her own house. Something wasn't right, and Kathy anxiously told her husband what she had seen. Randy was gone, and Kathy was afraid that something terrible had happened. The couple called the police. As it turned out, Kathy had only seen a glimpse of the horrors that waited inside Randy Me Brewer's house. As the police examined each room, they found more and more. more carnage.
Starting point is 00:34:58 Randy's bed was marked with splashes of dark red, and on the floor, police noticed her contact lenses sitting in a dried pool of blood. In the kitchen, officers examined the blood splatter on the floor and found pieces of Randy's hair, judging from the streaks of red that wove through the hallway and into the garage. It looked like she'd been dragged out of the house.
Starting point is 00:35:21 The sheer brutality of the attack was alarming, even to the police. They took samples from around the house, including some unidentified bodily fluid, but there was little else to go on. No body, no sign of forced entry. But there was another part of Randy's story that made the authorities ignore the idea of a repeat offender or a serial killer, Randy's ex-husband. Originally, the police talked to Michael Me Brewer, Sr. as a formality. As the former spouse, he was an automatic person of interest in the case. But as As the police continued to interview him, they started to grow concerned.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Michael Sr. didn't have a good relationship with his ex-wife. Their marriage had ended on bad terms, and after Randy's death, he made a major misstep that piqued the suspicion of the police. Three days after Randy's attack, Michael Sr. tried to cash in her life insurance. Investigators saw this as a clear reason to suspect Michael. They doubled down on their suspicions, combing through his phone phone calls and trying to find any shred of evidence that could pin him to Randy's murder. But of course, their search ended in a dead end. And while the police investigated Randy's
Starting point is 00:36:37 ex-husband, Derek Todd Lee carried on as usual. He went home to his wife and made up with his girlfriend. He continued driving from St. Francisville to Zachary for work, weaving his car through the rows and rows of houses. He'd gotten away with murder for a second. in time. And it felt good. He wanted to do it again, and he wasn't going to let anything stop him. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with Part 2 on Derek Todd Lee, where we'll follow his murderous path as it weaves its way through Louisiana. For more information on Derek Todd Lee, amongst the many sources we used, we found Bloodbath by Susan D. Mustafa, Tony Clayton and Sue Israel,
Starting point is 00:37:36 extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler,
Starting point is 00:38:01 sound designed by Michael Motion, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Georgia Hampton, with writing assistance by Mallory Cara and Joel Callan, fact-checking by Cheyenne Lopez, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. The only way to get to heaven was to allow him sexual activity with me.
Starting point is 00:38:34 These are not the people that you would normally associate with a cult. Do you think I need to be worried for my safety? I definitely think you should be prudent. This is Revelations, a Spotify original from Parcast. premiering Sunday, October 3rd. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal.
Starting point is 00:38:56 One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snake-like lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your own. Podcasts.

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