Police Name Louisiana Serial Killer Suspect

Officials issued an arrest warrant and launched a nationwide manhunt Monday for a man they believe to be a southern Louisiana serial killer, the most significant steps yet in a lengthy and often frustrating investigation into a string of killings that has terrorized women across the state for a year and a half.

The warrant charges Derrick Todd Lee, 34, of St. Francisville, La., with first-degree murder and aggravated rape in the death of Carrie Lynn Yoder, 26, a Louisiana State University biological sciences graduate student.

Yoder was forced from her home in Baton Rouge on March 3, raped, beaten and strangled, police documents say. Her body was discovered 10 days later in a canal near Whiskey Bay, La. Yoder was the fifth and last confirmed victim of the serial killer, police said -- though there are dozens of women missing in southern Louisiana, and police have not ruled out the possibility that the killer might be linked to more deaths.

Authorities say a DNA sample taken from Lee this month -- they did not say how the sample was obtained -- matches the DNA of the serial killer, which was found on all five bodies. Officials immediately went looking for Lee, whose home in St. Francisville, about 30 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, has been abandoned.

The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Lee, a married truck driver, should be considered armed and dangerous, said Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade.

Relief and Anger

“He’s on the run now,” said Lynne Marino, 66, whose 42-year-old daughter, Pamela P. Kinamore, was found dead in July, making Kinamore the third woman linked to the serial killer. Marino spoke in a telephone interview from her home in Metairie, La., a suburb of New Orleans.

“Now he knows what it’s like to be stalked, because we’re going to get him,” Marino said. “We have been relentless in our search for this guy. And we aren’t going to stop now.”

A sense of cautious relief among victims’ families was tempered Monday by remnants of anger -- anger at police for a perceived lack of interest early in the case and anger at the media for what families considered a failure to sufficiently publicize the killings.

Police have pieced together an array of evidence, from photographs of victims’ purses and cellular telephones stolen from them during the killings, down to the make and retail value of the sneakers believed to have been worn by the killer. Investigators have received more than 22,000 tips and have taken DNA swabs from at least 1,000 men in the Baton Rouge area.

But a multiagency task force was assigned to the case only 10 months ago, victims’ families pointed out, nearly a year after the first killing.

Residents and survivors of victims had grown exasperated that police had not produced a suspect. They held rallies to combat the perceived lack of interest in the case, including one this month at the state Capitol, where supporters placed crosses on the steps to represent missing women, as well as a mirror affixed with the caption, “Will you be next?”

“We didn’t know what this lunatic was going to do,” Marino said. “I feel like they should have connected these dots a long time ago.”

Difficult Investigation

Others have been more supportive of the investigation.

“We were the first, and they have been there for us from the start,” said Sheree Bryant, 46, of Natchez, Miss., whose sister Gina Wilson Green, 41, was killed in September 2001 and was the first of the serial killer’s victims.

“They have been upfront and honest and have told us everything that they could tell us, within reason. There were a lot of times they couldn’t answer questions, and they were tight-lipped. But, hey, let them do their job. Look where we are today.”

Baton Rouge Police Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa declined to discuss the investigation Monday, saying only: “We haven’t slept in two days.” Police Chief Englade, in a message to the community posted recently on the task force’s Web site, acknowledged that “our citizens are feeling frightened, angry and helpless.”

Those feelings were particularly acute on the campus of Louisiana State University. Three of the five confirmed victims lived near the 650-acre campus, on the southern edge of Baton Rouge, nestled against the Mississippi River and dotted with elegant live oaks.

In response to the killings, women on campus have bought guns and pepper spray and have left their homes only in large groups.

“We all want all of our college experiences to be relaxed and carefree, and this has eliminated some of that element,” LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert said Monday.

“But it also caused the university community to be enormously supportive of the families of victims and each other, and to be more thoughtful about faculty and students here. In an ironic way, it was very rewarding to see the campus community respond so aggressively to take care of itself and each other. That was the silver lining that came at a very high price.”

The killer’s confirmed victims are Yoder, Kinamore, Green and Charlotte Murray Pace, 22, all of Baton Rouge, and Trineisha Dene Colomb, 23, of Lafayette, La. All of the victims’ bodies were discovered in the Baton Rouge area except for Colomb’s, which was discovered in a wooded area near Scott, La., about 60 miles west of Baton Rouge.

“I’m still sad because I don’t have my sister. They don’t write a book that teaches you how to walk these footsteps, if you understand what I’m saying,” said Bryant, Green’s sister.

“But I’m elated that they know who the guy is, that nobody else will have to deal with what we had to deal with. Thank God for DNA. That is the key to the whole thing. I’m just thrilled that they are going to get their man.”

The arrest warrant was issued three days after investigators released a sketch of a man who tried to rape one woman and approached two others last summer in St. Martin Parish, La. Those women were not killed. Lee resembles the man depicted in the sketch, but police said Monday that they have not connected him to those three incidents.