Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

Derrick Todd Lee

Aftermath

Derrick Todd Lee, mugshot
Derrick Todd Lee, mugshot

So far, Lee has been convicted of the second-murder of Geralyn DeSoto and the first-degree murder of Charlotte Murray Pace. He's in a cage on death row at Angola.

Months after Lee's arrest, then-Louisiana Attorney General Richard Ieyoub dragged a reluctant Dannie Mixon to a press conference and presented him with an award.

Mixon avoided questions and the spotlight. He described himself as "just another flatfoot doing my job."

It took until 2004, but the State Police crime lab finally compared Lee's DNA to the DNA found at Randi Mebruer's house in Zachary. They matched.

Mebruer's body has never been found. Her disappearance still haunts Sgt. Ray Day.

After Lee's arrest, tips and leads about Mebruer's whereabouts flooded in. Day and his colleagues dug up Lee's yard near St. Francisville, they busted up the driveways of houses where Lee was known to have stayed and where witnesses had seen him pouring concrete late at night, and they even pumped 15 million gallons of water out of a pond where Lee fished.

Nothing.

Ray Day knows Lee killed Randi Mebruer. "But where is she?" he asks. It's a question he wishes Lee would answer. "I want to talk to him just for my own peace of mind."

Lt. David McDavid isn't a psychologist, but he knows a lot about human nature—mainly the bad side. Of all of the investigators, it's probably McDavid who knows Derrick Todd Lee best.

McDavid has a theory about Lee's behavior.

"He was a ladies' man," McDavid says. "He tried to be slick, but once he got into that peeping, I think he just got progressively worse."

For a very different view of this investigation from the perspective of the Baton Rouge police/FBI investigation, click here.

Copyright Chuck Hustmyre

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