Agencies had pointed task force to Lee earlier
By JOSH NOEL, PENNY BROWN ROBERTS, KEVIN BLANCHARD and JAMES MINTON
Advocate staff writers
A lab technician working late on Sunday was the first person to learn of a solid link between Derrick Todd Lee and the south Louisiana serial killings.
The technician had been asked to rush the processing of Lee's DNA swab on Friday, after Zachary police recognized the sketch of a man who beat and tried to rape a Breaux Bridge woman, and whose tactics resembled those of the serial killer.
The sketch struck the Zachary police as closely resembling 34-year-old Lee, someone they had run into many times.
And just like that, after a 10-month search, police had a name to attach to the brutal and elusive killer.
It wasn't the first time, however, that a police agency had tried to lead the serial killer task force to Lee.
Officers with at least three agencies have said they notified the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force about Lee or his crimes during the past 10 months.
Some officials with those agencies also took pains to say they have no interest in criticizing the task force by speaking publicly.
Zachary
Zachary Police Department officials said they first gave Lee's name to the task force last summer.
DNA indicates two women -- Dené Colomb in November and Carrie Yoder in March -- were slain by the serial killer since then.
Lt. David McDavid said investigators presented Lee and "two or three" other names during a roundtable discussion between the task force and area law enforcement agencies shortly after the task force was formed in August.
All the men on the list had committed or were suspected of having committed similar crimes. At the time, Lee had been charged with stalking, being a Peeping Tom and burglary, and was a suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Randi C. Mebruer of Zachary.
McDavid said more than 10 law enforcement agencies were at the session, but he doesn't recall if St. Martin Parish authorities, who are investigating an attack in Breaux Bridge in which Lee is accused, also were present.
"I don't know how much emphasis was put on him after that," McDavid said. "Our own focus on Derrick Todd Lee has run hot and cold over the years."
Lee's swab, taken May 5 in the Mebruer investigation by an attorney general's investigator working with an East Feliciana Parish sheriff's deputy, "apparently sat on a shelf for three weeks," Zachary Police Chief Joey Watson said. "Our DNA was not a priority."
On Friday, when Zachary investigators saw the sketch of the suspect in the Breaux Bridge attack, they called the State Police Crime Lab, where Lee's DNA sample was being stored.
"We saw glaring comparisons with that photo and our suspect; we thought it sounded like Derrick Todd Lee," Watson said. "So our officers called the crime lab and said, 'Hey, we think that's our guy. How long are you going to sit on this? Could you speed it up a bit?'"
As for whether his investigators suspected Lee in the serial killings at that point, Watson said: "I'm not going to say they didn't make the connection. I'm sure they did."
The crime lab personnel worked on Lee's DNA during the weekend and by Sunday night had matched it to the serial killer's, Watson said.
The technician "was very familiar with the (serial killer's DNA) profile, and when she saw the numbers come up, she immediately knew she had a match," Watson said. "She notified the task force, who notified us to let us know that what we had submitted had kind of helped them."
West Feliciana
West Feliciana Parish sheriff's Capt. Spence Dilworth said Lee's name was on a list of several suspects turned over to the task force in March, after the death of the killer's fifth and most-recent confirmed victim, Carrie Yoder.
The reason Dilworth's agency did so, and the timing, were not available Wednesday.
Dilworth, head of the department's criminal investigation unit, and West Feliciana Sheriff J. Austin Daniel said they do not believe anyone with the department called the task force to say Lee resembled the composite sketch released last week in St. Martin Parish.
"I don't know Derrick Lee," Daniel said, adding that his and Dilworth's comments should not be taken as criticism of the task force.
"Nobody in the world wanted to find the serial killer more than (Baton Rouge Police Chief) Pat Englade," Daniel said.
St. Martin Parish
When the serial killer task force was first notified of the Breaux Bridge assault remains in question.
St. Martin Parish sheriff's Maj. Butch Dupuis said at a news conference Friday that his agency informed Baton Rouge police of the attack in July. Then, on Sunday, a spokeswoman for that agency, Capt. Audrey Thibodeaux, said the information was given to the task force shortly after its formation in August.
However, Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade said his task force did not hear of it until April 2.
Thibodeaux acknowledges that the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office did not enter information on the attack into a federal crime database monitored by the task force.
In the attack, on July 9, a man talked his way into the woman's house, beat her and tried to rape her. She was saved when a relative arrived at the home and interrupted the attack.
The Sheriff's Office and the task force said the attacker was a serial killer suspect when they released his sketch and description on Friday. On Tuesday, the sheriff's office named Lee as the suspect in a warrant accusing him of attempted first-degree murder and attempted aggravated rape.
State Police seized a gold Mitsubishi Mirage from Lee's St. Francisville house on Monday. The car matches one used by the Breaux Bridge attacker -- down to a dent in the hood and a "Hampton Has It" license plate, officials said.
But questions about when the task force might have been told about the Breaux Bridge attack and how that might have affected the investigation remain.
The Advocate gave the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office a list of questions about the matter at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Sheriff's Office did not respond to the questions:
- What led to this past Friday's announcement of the Breaux Bridge suspect?
- What was the nature of the July discussion between the Sheriff's Office and task force?
- Did the task force seem to disregard the Breaux Bridge information because the attacker was black and they were looking for a white suspect?
- Was there an original sketch made of the Breaux Bridge attacker in July? Had the sketch released Friday been redrawn?
- Had the task force been formed when the Sheriff's Office advised authorities in Baton Rouge of the Breaux Bridge incidents?
- What was the time frame of the investigative events?
Task force spokeswoman Mary Anne Godawa did not respond to messages Wednesday night about the claims of the three agencies.
But earlier Wednesday, she said the task force came across Lee's name for the first time on Sunday, when it surfaced twice, and in different contexts.
The first time, in the late afternoon, it didn't seem any more promising than any other lead. Godawa said his name "was brought to our attention," but would not say by whom.
"It was so new, it hadn't even been prioritized," she said.
About two hours later, the head of State Police, Col. Terry Landry, called the task force to say that Lee's DNA profile matches the killer's.
The name rang a bell, Godawa said, and investigators found Lee's name in their stack of tips they had not yet sorted.
"We finally got lucky," she said. "He'd had 10 months of luck. That day it was our turn."
This comes from The Advocate article "Agencies had pointed task force to Lee earlier".
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