Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

Derrick Todd Lee

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

The big agencies formed a task force to hunt down the Baton Rouge serial killer.  They didn't invite the tiny Zachary Police Department to participate.

"It bothered us," McDavid admits.

The newly formed task force began taking DNA samples from hundreds—eventually thousands—of white males.

The serial killer struck again, this time outside Baton Rouge. 

Trineisha Dene Colomb
Trineisha Dene Colomb

Trineisha Dene Colomb was visiting her mother's grave in St. Landry Parish on November 21, 2002, when she disappeared.  Police found her car near the cemetery but could find no sign of Trineisha. 

Three days later, a hunter found her body dumped in the woods 20 miles from the cemetery.  She had been beaten to death.  DNA the killer left at the scene positively linked Trineisha's murder to those of Gina Wilson Green, Charlotte Murray Pace, and Pam Kinamore.

Guns, pepper spray, alarm systems—their sales soared in Baton Rouge.  Women took self-defense classes.  Cops saturated south Baton Rouge.  Detectives combed through sex offender records, re-interviewed witnesses, watched neighborhoods around LSU, and kept swabbing white males.

Tips poured into a special hotline the task force set up.  Someone said they saw a white male driving a pickup truck along I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette.  The caller said the woman in the passenger seat looked dead.  The truck had a Jesus fish on the tailgate. 

The task force focused on white males in pickups.

 

Copyright Chuck Hustmyre

 

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