Derrick Todd Lee

Connie Warner

Derrick Todd Lee was 23 years old when Connie Warner was murdered. 

Three months after Warner's death, Zachary cops arrested Lee near Oak Shadows subdivision after a local man came home and caught Lee inside his house.  The man had two daughters, neither of whom happened to be home when Lee broke into their house.

Derrick Todd Lee

Two months later, police arrested Lee again for breaking into a house and beating a 74-year-old man before making off with the man's cash.

Then, on a rainy night in April 1993, Zachary police officer Troy Eubanks spotted a car parked in the cemetery next to Oak Shadows.  He saw a couple of kids making out.  He pulled his patrol car in behind them.

Eubanks shone his flashlight into the car.  It was a couple of kids, all right, but they weren't making out.  They were covered in blood, but still alive.  A three-foot-long cane knife lay on the ground beside the car.  The attacker had fled at the sight of Eubanks' police cruiser.

Police sketch of suspect

Later, the female victim worked with a police sketch artist.  The drawing of the man who attacked her that night in the cemetery looked a lot like Derrick Todd Lee.  Years later, she picked Lee out of a photo lineup.

Lee spent a year in prison for burglary.  Then, in September 1995, cops in Lake Charles, La., picked him up for peeping into windows.  He was fined $200 and placed on two years unsupervised probation.

Copyright Chuck Hustmyre