Derrick Todd Lee (November 5, 1968 – January 21, 2016), also known as The Baton Rouge Serial Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least seven women around Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, between 1998 and 2003.
Before his murder charges, Lee had been arrested for stalking women and watching them in their homes. Despite this arrest, he initially was overlooked by police because they incorrectly believed the killer was white. Lee was linked by DNA tests to the deaths of seven women in the area in Louisiana and in 2004, he was convicted in separate trials of the murders of Geralyn DeSoto and Charlotte Murray Pace. The Pace trial resulted in a death sentence.
Newspapers suggested Lee was responsible for other unsolved murders in the area, but the police lacked DNA evidence to prove these connections. After Lee's arrest, it was discovered that another serial killer, Sean Vincent Gillis, was operating in the Baton Rouge area during the same time as Lee.
Lee spent twelve years on death row at Louisiana State Penitentiary before dying of heart disease at a hospital in 2016.
Early life
Childhood and teenage years Derrick Todd Lee, who was known by his middle name, was born in St. Francisville, Louisiana, in the northern Baton Rouge metropolitan area, as the second of two children to Samuel Ruth and Florence Lee. Samuel and Florence were living with the latter's mother at the time, and weren't married, with Samuel abandoning the family during Lee's childhood to get back with his separated wife. Samuel had a number of mental health issues, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, and a record for domestic violence. In 1991, Lee's father was arrested in Gretna, Louisiana, for the attempted manslaughter of his second ex-wife, after he aimed an empty gun at her and repeatedly pulled the trigger. He was found incompetent to stand trial while in jail, after officers noted his refusal to wear clothes and misuse of toilet water, resulting in him being committed to a New Orleans psychiatric ward to receive treatment for psychosis, until he was deemed rehabilitated in 1998.
Florence was seventeen years old at the time of Lee's birth and did not list Samuel as the father on the birth certificate, raising her two children along with her husband Coleman Barrow, whom she married around 1970. Lee grew up in Independence, a predominantly Black area of houses and mobile homes at a former plantation near Louisiana State Highway 965, east of St. Francisville, spending most of his childhood around maternal family who also lived there. Lee's mother was described as short-tempered and domineering, while Lee's stepfather co-parented him and his older sister whenever he was off work. Lee was known to be a restless child, described as "a hyperactive", and as Lee's mother had a strict rule about not playing inside, he spent most of his free time with neighboring relatives, thus developing a close relationship with his uncle, grandfather and cousins.
Beginning at age nine, Lee developed an unusual interest in observing others, sometimes startling Independence residents through his unmoving, still state while doing so. He made a hobby of birdwatching, but was also involved in several incidents where he was caught peeping at girls, mostly his cousins as well as his sister, through the windows of their homes. Lee remained a bedwetter until his early teens and engaged in thumb sucking until high school. He took special education classes and attended speech therapy at West Feliciana High School. IQ tests taken throughout his teenage years varied between 70 and 91 points. Lee reportedly felt embarrassment for being in special education and was regularly bullied by his peers for this. Lee regularly got into confrontations at school, with most ending without physical violence. Lee dropped out of school in the eleventh grade.
Marriage In 1987, he and his girlfriend, Jacqueline Denise "Jackie" Sims, moved to Zachary, Louisiana, where Lee found employment as a pipefitter. He worked with the construction company he trained under until 1988, and got married the same year. Lee continued working in construction for several different employers for the next several years, either in pipefitting or as a cement truck driver, which both his biological and stepfather worked as before him. Over the following fifteen years, he worked for Exxon, Turner Industries, Formosa Plastics, and various smaller construction firms, with long periods of unemployment, including the months before his arrest.
Following the birth of his son, Derrick Todd Jr., at the end of 1988, Lee and his wife grew distant. He started keeping away from home for days on end, frequenting bars, barbecue restaurants, and bible studies around West Feliciana Parish, where he would pick up women for sex. In February 1990, Lee twisted Sims' arm during an argument and expelled her from the house, after which she filed a restraining order against him. Lee's behavior intensified after their daughter Doris was born in November 1992, when he abandoned his family shortly after the birth. Sims named him in a request for an absent parent form and after Sims prepared to file a case against him for criminal neglect of family in early 1993, Lee returned and made a brief attempt at reconciliation for a few months, but he resumed his physical abuse of Sims in June of the same year. He was imprisoned for burglary shortly after and would not keep contact with his wife or children for over two years. While Sims found out about his infidelity through rumors, she did not confront Lee about this, later stating that she "quit caring and went on with her life", though remaining unaware of his later murders.
In 1996, not long after Lee's return from prison, Lee's father-in-law died in a workplace accident during an explosion at an Amoco plant. His wife received a $250,000 settlement, which Lee appropriated and spent on expensive cars, clothes, jewelry and alcohol at bars to impress women. He used a portion of the money to buy a house and 1-acre property south of St. Francisville. Lee gambled away over $5,000 at Casino Rouge. Lee entered a stable extramarital affair with another woman, Consandra Green, whom he met at a bar in 1997. Green gave birth to his third child, Dedrick, in July 1999. By November 2002, Lee and Sims had filed for bankruptcy, after going $85,000 in debt.
Prior criminal record Lee was first arrested on November 8, 1981, aged thirteen, for breaking into a candy shop. He was convicted of simple burglary and sentenced to probation and to pay restitution to the shop. At age sixteen, Lee was arrested for attempted second-degree murder for using a knife during a fight with another teen, who was left uninjured, but the matter did not go to court. In February 1986, a relative of Lee reported him to police for repeatedly peeping through the windows of his home, as well as that of a female relative. In September 1988, Lee was convicted for unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling. In May 1990, Lee got into a fight with his father-in-law, leading to an arrest for disturbing the peace. The same year, Lee was questioned by police after neighbours overheard an escalating argument where Lee accused his mother of owing him money. Lee's sister also filed a complaint against her brother due to an incident in which he had removed a glass pane from her window to unlock her front door after being forbidden from coming inside.
In 1992, Lee was arrested in Zachary after he was found inside the locked home of a man with two daughters. In 1993, a pair of 15-year-olds were slashed with a bladed object while at one of Zachary's cemeteries, with Lee later being identified as the likely assailant from the description of one of the victims.
In July 1993, Lee was sentenced to four years of hard labor at East Baton Rouge Parish prison for simple burglary. He successfully filed for parole in July 1995 and moved to Lake Charles, in the western part of the state, where he was arrested two months later on a Peeping Tom offense. He was given a 120 days prison sentence, which was suspended and replaced with two years of unsupervised probation. Three weeks after the decision, Lee was arrested alongside a cousin and their friend for stealing clothes from Salvation Army donation boxes. He was initially charged with burglary and theft, but the charges were downgraded to misdemeanors.
In July 1997, in Zachary, a woman called police over a man prowling and peeping around her house. Lee was arrested at a cemetery, where one of the arresting officer recognized him from an earlier incident where he was given a ride by police when his car was found broken down outside the same grounds.
Stalking incidents In 1999, Lee started stalking 36-year-old Collette Walker after seeing Walker at her workplace at a seafood market. On June 21, Walker was approached by Lee at a parking lot near her home in St. Francisville. Lee twice asked Walker out for a date, then asked if she could give him a ride, all of which she declined. Two days later, Lee followed Walker into her apartment and only left after getting a fake phone number. Walker said that while Lee was not openly hostile, he was insistent to meet her again and nonchalant while touching things inside her home.
On July 3, 2002, Lee sexually harassed a woman he had followed through Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Lee had tried to pull the victim towards him by the arm while he masturbated under his clothes.
Murders
Randi Mebruer On the night of April 18–19, 1998, 28-year-old Randi Jane Mebruer (née Cieslewicz) disappeared from her home in Zachary, Louisiana. Her house had been stalked several times in the past by Lee during his nightly voyeur prowls. That night, Lee, who had been laid off from his latest job two days earlier, left his usual hang-out, Liz's Lounge, after an argument with his girlfriend. Via Louisiana Highway 964, he drove to Mebruer's house, broke into her bedroom, where he attacked Mebruer in an attack that caused severe bleeding. After incapacitating her, Lee dragged Mebruer to the driveway, where she was raped. Her body was never found, disappearing along with her keys and a pair of five-pound dumbbells. Her disappearance was reported by her ex-husband Michael Mebruer Sr., who had arrived from Mississippi the following morning to pick up their three-year-old son, who had slept through the events.
Michael was the prime suspect, with police finding out about his alcoholism, frequent fighting with his partners, and a death threat he had made against another ex-wife who had followed his car once. Michael's girlfriend provided an alibi for the night and he was released due to a lack of evidence, receiving custody of his son, though local police continued to keep him under informal watch for years.
Gina Wilson Green On September 23, 2001, 41-year-old Gina Wilson Green was strangled to death in her home on Baton Rouge's Stanford Avenue. Green had complained about feeling unsafe, leading her to place cans of pepper spray at each window. She had been raped and undressed in the kitchen and placed on her bed after being killed. Green's mobile phone was found several weeks later in a trash can at a nearby alley. Because the murder had occurred near Louisiana State University, there was heightened vigilance among students and staff. Green's murder was counted among a number of other killings recorded in and around Baton Rouge, although not yet linked to that of Randi Mebruer. Green's ex-husband was questioned as a suspect, as well as a painter who had issued threats against Green due to a financial dispute.
Geralyn Barr DeSoto