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ARREST MADE! Sketch Released of LA Serial Killer Suspect
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EmmaPeel



Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 472
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bingo--highlighted is the case I remembered, although I believe I saw it on Unsolved Mysteries. So that was him too. I remember it was reported the guy either used a machette or a long hook on a pole used for cutting sugar cane. I never forgot the sketch because it was of this really scary looking light-skinned black. It was like out of a slasher movie.

What's bad is apparently one of the victims was later able to identify him as the attacker, but apparently the statute of limitation had already run out??



Killer suspect arrested and released again and again

By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS
proberts@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff writer

JACKSON -- As dusk settled over La. 68, David McDavid watched a back hoe plunge its claw into the front yard of a tin-roofed home Derrick Todd Lee once shared with girlfriend Consandra Green.

Again and again, the mechanical scoop encountered nothing but clumps of dark, black earth.

As the hole grew deeper and the pile of excavated dirt taller, the Zachary Police Department lieutenant and others at the scene Thursday evening reached the inevitable conclusion: They weren't going to find the remains of Randi Mebruer that night.

There are more leads to follow and more sites to search. McDavid and others who suspect Lee killed Mebruer have a solemn purpose that keeps them on the hunt: Ensuring that he doesn't slip through the system again.

Lee is being held without bond in Parish Prison as the suspected serial killer on kidnapping, burglary, rape and first-degree murder counts, and is wanted in Lafayette and St. Martin Parish on more counts. East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau said he will seek the death penalty.

Lee's arrest in the serial killings isn't his first foray into the criminal justice system. Not by any stretch.

Indeed, as details of his apparent lifelong lawlessness continue to emerge, victims, law enforcement officers and the public alike are asking the same question: How could a teenage Peeping Tom who graduated to abuse and perhaps rape and murder have eluded justice for so long -- and ultimately escaped the attention of a regional task force looking for someone just like him?

"The criminal justice system failed in the case of Derrick Todd Lee," said Cecile Guin, a forensic social worker with the LSU School of Social Work. "Everybody -- his family, his neighbors, law enforcement and even the judicial system knew there was something wrong with this guy. And no one was proactive enough to get him off the streets."

'A dark side'

Outside the Rosedale Down Apartments in St. Francisville, a then-15-year-old Derrick Todd Lee climbed up a pole to get a better view inside a second-floor apartment, former Police Chief Kenny W. Simmons remembers.

Moments later, the young woman living there caught a glimpse of a young boy peering in her window. She called police, who dispatched a nearby patrol car. Lee jumped off the second-floor balcony to escape, Simmons recalls, but got caught.

It was one of the first in a lengthy string of juvenile offenses for the boy who was raised by extended family, according to the veteran law enforcement official. Juvenile criminal records are not open to the public, so no additional information about that case or others is available.

"I've known Derrick for 20 years," Simmons said. "We've had trouble with him for quite some time. He was always into something."

As the boy grew into a man, Lee earned a reputation in his hometown for several distinguishing characteristics. In the construction business, he was known as one of the better concrete finishers in town, finding work that took him all over the Felicianas and East Baton Rouge Parish. Among acquaintances, he was considered a quintessential ladies' man with a predilection for flashy trucks.

Though Lee never seemed to hold the same job for very long, former employers consistently remember him as someone who -- despite being less-than-dependable -- never caused problems and often made passes at the women in the workplace. Said former Feliciana Redi-Mix manager Patrick Crain: "He was always flirting."

But police and deputies saw another side of Derrick Lee -- the one who never outgrew his teenage fetish; the one who was moving on to more serious crimes like burglary, assault and stalking.

"He had a dark side that we saw," said Zachary Police Chief Joey Watson. "We just didn't know how truly dark it was."

Inside just the St. Francisville courthouse, there are eight manila folders of criminal cases bearing the same name in various forms: Derrick Lee, Derrick T. Lee, Derrick Todd Lee. Though the crimes vary, each one tells much the same story: Over and over again, Lee appeared in municipal court for misdemeanors. And over and over again, the cases were dismissed, or he pleaded guilty and paid a small fine.

In November 1992, Lee committed one of just two crimes that would land him in jail before being fingered as a serial killer. In the Fenwood Hills neighborhood in Zachary, Lee parked a ten-speed bicycle in the front yard of Rob Benge's house and went in -- leaving the kitchen door open.

When Benge returned, Lee walked out of the bedroom and said he was looking for someone named Monroe. He reached out for a handshake. When Lee realized the family was phoning police, he fled the house and was arrested in a nearby Azalea Rest Cemetery.

Although Bert Garraway has represented hundreds of clients in his 33 years as a public defender in East Baton Rouge Parish, Lee stands out in his memory.

"He was so damned likable," said Garraway, who represented Lee in the case. "A lot of the people I'm appointed to represent talk in grunts and hand signals. He was a cut above the average guy. He was pleasant, cooperative, and had above-average intelligence. He showed up for trial in a suit and tie. I kind of liked him, to be quite honest."

Garraway believes the fact that Lee "didn't look like a criminal" might have helped him repeatedly beat the system. Although Lee was found guilty of that crime, the attorney remembers that the jury was hung up for quite some time -- partly because the accused was "so believable."

"I hate to use the word charming, but he really was," recalls jury foreperson Mary Durusau. "He was just someone who was likable. It was the first time I've seen a burglar who tried to make friends with the person whose home he'd just burglarized and try to talk his way out of it."

Jail time

Out on the street while awaiting trial, however, Lee was growing ever-more violent. Just a few months after that break-in, in January 1993, Lee and Thomas Whitaker Jr. were accused of breaking into the home Melvin Foster. According to a police report, they stole cash and beat the 74-year-old man with a stick.

Two months later, in April, then-15-year-old Michele Chapman and a friend were attacked in a cemetery by a man wielding a cane knife or a machete. Her ankle still bears scars from the attack.

The attacker fled and dropped his weapon in the rain after an officer happened upon the scene. The Zachary Police Department made no progress on the case until after it was the subject of an America's Most Wanted episode. McDavid -- suspecting Lee might have been involved -- contacted Chapman in 1999 and asked her to come in for a photo lineup. She identified Lee as her attacker.


Another year went by before Chapman was told the District Attorney's Office had decided there was not enough evidence to convict him -- particularly because the weapon had been dropped in the rain, washing away any fingerprints. Now she's been told its too late to prosecute the case.

"If they had gotten him way back then, think about how things might be different," Chapman said. "He had all of these Peeping Tom cases, and all he got was a slap on the wrist. It was happening over and over again, and then he started stalking. He's definitely fallen through the cracks."

Lee's activities came to a two-year halt, however, when 19th District Judge Curtis Calloway sentenced Lee to prison in July 1993 in the Fenwood Hills break-in.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections sent him to Lake Charles, where he spent time in Phelps Correctional Center and CINC Inc. -- a three-story state-approved halfway house in an industrial area near the airport. He was released in July 1995 and remained under supervision with the Probation and Parole Office for two years.

After moving into a run-down beige home with carports on both sides in a high-crime area known to locals as "the flower streets," it didn't take Lee long to land back in trouble.

In September 1995, Lee was arrested in a peeping incident during which he also resisted arrest. Although he was on probation at the time and pleaded guilty, he received a suspended sentence and paid a $200 fine on the peeping charge and the resisting arrest charge was dropped. He was also put on unsupervised probation.

That same month, Lee and a neighbor were arrested for stealing clothes and a suitcase from the Salvation Army Thrift Store bin. Again, Lee pleaded guilty, received a suspended sentence and paid a $150 fine. Again, he was put on unsupervised probation.

Lake Charles City Court Judge John S. Hood handled both cases, neither of which he recalled after seeing news reports of Lee's recent arrest.

"What has scared me is that they say he's being investigated for a murder that took place in 1992," said Hood, referring to Connie B. Warner, whose body was found in a ditch near Capitol Lake in August 1992. "That means that when he came through my courtroom, he was possibly a murderer. That's pretty unsettling. But how was I to know?"

Lake Charles case

Lee is now under investigation in the July 1998 death of 45-year-old Rose Theresa Born, who operated the Paradise Donut and Sweet Shop on 18th Street just a few blocks west of where Lee was caught peeping, Dixon said. The department is awaiting test results from the FBI lab on evidence from the crime.

Officers in the cold-case unit for the Lake Charles Police Department have since discovered that Lee bragged to acquaintances about setting out at a specific time each night for his voyeurism, said Lake Charles Police Chief Don Dixon. Just in case he was caught, he had concocted a story about his car breaking down.

"The two arrests he had while in Lake Charles certainly would not register on the Richter scale," said Dixon, former FBI senior resident agent who served as an agent for 30 years. "And the system would bog down if every case went to court. The DA is overwhelmed, and the judges are overwhelmed -- they literally have cases pending from years and years ago.

"But we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere sooner or later and not plead down. And crimes of violence should fit into that category."

'Red flags'

Lee's peeping and violence continued -- a lethal combination that law enforcement veterans contend should have been noted by someone.

"A Peeping Tom should wave some red flags," Dixon said. "It goes along the line of a sexual predator. I pulled his rap sheet, and it appears to me there was clearly a progression."

In April 1998, 28-year-old Randi Mebruer disappeared from her Oak Shadows Subdivision home in Zachary, leaving evidence of a bloody struggle.

A few days after the killing, an employee told Jackson businessman James Odom that his neighbor, Derrick Todd Lee, started talking about the missing woman from Zachary.

"The man never said that Lee had killed this woman, but said, 'I'll never be convicted, because they will never find her body,'" Odom said in a written statement for The Advocate.

Odom, who has lived in East Feliciana Parish for more than 50 years, contacted the Zachary Police Department. "I also told them that I had suspicions that Randi Mebruer was buried under a slab of concrete because at that time I heard that Derrick Todd Lee drove a concrete truck," Odom wrote.

Zachary police say they interviewed Lee two days after the disappearance, but that he asked them to leave.

"Our focus on Derrick Todd Lee has run hot and cold over the years," Watson said. "He was not the only suspect, but it always seemed to come back to him. But there never seemed to be enough probable cause to get a subpoena or to charge him."

Investigators even contacted one of Lee's former employers -- Feliciana Redi-Mix in Zachary -- about the prospect of gathering DNA evidence from the truck he drove or the hard hat he might have worn. But Lee had left that job two months earlier.

The following summer, women living in the St. Francisville Square Apartments started noticing a man hanging around the complex.

On two occasions, he showed up uninvited at the apartment of Colette Walker, and once followed her in the door. On another occasion, he followed her to the Exxon station where she worked. Two other women spotted him hiding in the bushes out front and peeping in windows, according to a police report in the court records.

Walker reported him to the St. Francisville Police Department. Another woman in the office doing community service at the time mentioned that one of her relatives had been a victim in the Zachary cemetery incident, and that Lee was a suspect in that case.

Simmons, the former police chief in St. Francisville, called the Zachary Police Department, and learned that Lee was also a suspect in the Mebruer case. Dannie Mixon, an investigator with the Attorney General's Office, advised Simmons to keep Lee under surveillance.

"I said, 'I'm not going to have a girl go missing from St. Francisville while I'm the police chief when this same guy is a suspect in the case of a missing girl from Zachary," Simmons said. He called his investigator -- Archie Lee, who had Derrick Lee in his sights at that very moment.

Although the Attorney General's Office wanted police simply to tail Lee, Simmons said, the St. Francisville Police Department arrested him on a stalking charge. He received a suspended sentence for the misdemeanor -- even though authorities knew he was a prime suspect in the Mebruer disappearance.

To make the situation worse, Lee slipped through the system in a way that would have ramifications for the subsequent serial killer investigation.

Had a Louisiana State Police DNA program been up and running, Lee's DNA would have been on file and could have been matched in some of the murder cases. But a lack of funding delayed implementation of the Sept. 1, 2000, law for nearly two years, according to the State Police Crime Lab.

"This guy's been watched by every agency," Simmons said. "Every one of us knew this guy was trouble. Did he slip through the system? Absolutely he did. It was shoddy work."

The Attorney General's Office has declined to discuss details of the investigation.

In January 2000, Lee argued with his girlfriend at Liz Lounge in the town of Solitude in West Feliciana Parish. At issue: His advances toward another woman. A cowboy-boot-clad Lee made his argument by kicking and stomping Consandra Green. He fled and ran a law enforcement roadblock before being captured.

He was charged with aggravated battery, attempted first-degree murder, criminal damage to property and aggravated flight from an officer.

All but the aggravated flight charges were dropped, and Lee was sentenced to prison for two years. A judge also revoked his probation on the previous stalking charge and ordered him to serve nine months.

"He tried to run over a deputy with his car," said Randy Holden, chief of uniform patrol for the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office. "He's been in trouble all his life, but the case was plea bargained down by the district attorney. Why, I don't know. But after we make the arrest, it's out of our hands."

Then-District Attorney Charles Shropshire did not return numerous calls to his office and home in Clinton seeking comment for this story.

Former Assistant District Attorney Richard Howell said that most of the cases he saw at that time involved repeat offenders and that Lee was not someone who "fell through the cracks."

"Rap sheets don't tell you anything," Howell said. "The reason there were no convictions could be because the cases were no good."

But current District Attorney Samuel D'Aquilla -- then a Jackson defense attorney who represented Lee -- suggested that Lee should have been dealt with more harshly.

"I'm not going to criticize the prior administration," D'Aquilla said. "Why was he charged so many times and nothing was done? I can't say. Undoubtedly he didn't learn his lesson the few times he did go through the system. Some people deserve a chance and some don't. But when you've been through the system a couple of times and you're still doing the same thing, you need to be put away for a while."

What might have been

Lee was put away for a while -- at Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson -- beginning in April 2000. Sitting in his prison cell in Unit 1, Dorm A, he wrote a request to 20th Judicial District Judge George H. Ware Jr., asking that his sentence for aggravated flight and stalking be shortened.

"I do not want any more life of crime," Lee wrote. "I want to commit myself to good behavior."

It does not appear those words were heartfelt.

Eight months after being released, Lee -- back at work as a truck driver for J.E. Merit -- was again arrested, this time for simple battery in a domestic dispute with his wife. A police report notes he repeatedly "hit her in the head with his fists."

At the time, in September 2001, Louisiana law again required authorities to sample his DNA and enter it into the database of unsolved crimes. But the program -- which later would be used by detectives trying to match DNA recovered from the victims of the south Louisiana serial killer -- still was not up and running.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline Lee dropped the complaint against her husband.

Over the next 2½ years, Lee allegedly committed even more heinous crimes. During that period, six more women were murdered, and a north Breaux Bridge woman was severely beaten by man who also tried to rape her.

At least two small-town law enforcement agencies familiar with Lee's criminal history -- the Zachary Police Department and the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office -- say they turned over his name as a possible suspect to the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force.

Said Simmons: "We've been blowing our horns here the whole time about Derrick Lee."

But because the Task Force has declined to discuss the investigation, it remains unclear what might have become of those tips. Task Force spokeswoman Mary Anne Godawa has said Lee's name first surfaced a week ago; she has not addressed claims that he might have been suggested as a suspect before then.

A chat over lunch

What ultimately targeted Lee as a suspect in the serial killings was a bit of serendipity -- and some good old-fashioned police work.

After the Baton Rouge serial murders began to make news, Odom, the Jackson businessman, had suspicions that Lee might be involved, but dismissed them because the task force said it was looking for a white man.

When the group released information in March this year that the serial killer might not be Caucasian, Odom began thinking about Lee again. In late April, he asked his son, Joel Odom -- a detective with the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office -- who was working on the Mebruer case.

The following day, Joel Odom had lunch with attorney general investigator James Piker, who set up a meeting with fellow investigator Dannie Mixon.

Mixon told Odom from the beginning that his primary suspects were Mebruer's husband, Mike Mebruer, and another man. But when Odom told him the same story he had given the Zachary Police Department five years ago, Mixon became more interested.

The following Monday, on May 5, a DNA sample was obtained from Lee. Three weeks went by before the results were in: Lee's DNA was a match to that of the suspect in the serial murders.

"I cannot tell you how I felt," James Odom wrote. "I was so excited, so happy, and then, I realized that this man had been a suspect in my mind for five years. … My heart goes out to the families of the victims. I wish we could have gotten this guy a lot sooner."

Lee is one of many

Despite all of Lee's encounters with the law, law enforcement officials and others say his story is fairly common in the criminal justice system.

"As far as criminals were concerned, I'd have put him at about a three on a scale of one to five," Watson said of Lee's activity prior to being identified as the suspect in the serial murders. "He had a rap sheet, but it's not the worst I've ever seen. I could show you some long enough to wrap around the building."

East Baton Rouge District Judge Bonny Jackson declined to discuss any specifics of Lee's case, because it is being prosecuted here. But she said generally that plea agreements and dropped charges are simply the nature of the system.

"Sometimes the state has a weakness in its case, and rather than walk away completely, negotiation takes place," she said. "Sometimes what a person pleads is closer to what the charge should have been in the first place, and that's an example of the system working."

Attorney Jim Boren surmises that supervised probation -- combined with professional treatment -- might have made a difference. But he notes that Louisiana's probation office as it currently exists lacks adequate staffing and funding to do the job.

"Those are charges that you might call precursors to more serious crimes," Boren said. "A person who is a burglar, who is a Peeping Tom, and who is involved in domestic violence -- those are all pretty strong indicators that unless something is done, that person is going to reoffend."

Guin said a panel is needed to review the criminal justice system and tell the families of victims and the public how Lee slipped through the cracks for so long.

"They were looking for the serial killer, he had this rap sheet, and he should have been in some law enforcement database somewhere," she said. "And if he was, how in the world is it possible that he was never a suspect in these murders?"
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EmmaPeel



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PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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rd



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PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

quote

In September 1995, Lee was arrested in a peeping incident during which he also resisted arrest. Although he was on probation at the time and pleaded guilty, he received a suspended sentence and paid a $200 fine on the peeping charge and the resisting arrest charge was dropped. He was also put on unsupervised probation.

end quote


This guy is on probation for sex offenses, commits more sex offenses, and is released instead of being jailed. Pray tell what good it does to be on probation? I would mention that all people on probation should be electonically monitored, but Louisana didn't even have the money to take a DNA sample... for two different crimes. Many women died because of this. Try putting a price tag on those women's lives.

rd
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EmmaPeel



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2003 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Racial Profiling
Will a New DNA Test Shatter Serial Killer Myths?
June 13

A brand-new forensics tool that helped identify the race of the suspect in the Baton Rouge, La., serial killings could forever change how investigators break big cases.

Tony Frudakis, head of a forensics laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., claims to have perfected a new DNA technology called SNIPS, or single nucleotide polymorphism that breaks the ethnicity of a murder suspect down by percentage. In more than 3,000 blind tests of the SNIPS technology, Frudakis' lab has not yet confirmed a single error, he says.


A victim's neighbors circulated the flier, themselves after police refused to consider that a black man could be responsible for the serial kilings. Derrick Todd Lee, right, was eventually arrested.


Frudakis offered the technology to authorities in Louisiana looking for the Baton Rouge serial killer. And the new DNA test led to a break in the case.

As far back as September 2002, a police profile suggested the suspect was likely a white man aged 25 to 35. Even just before the arrest of suspect Derrick Todd Lee, a black man, authorities were following an FBI profile that pegged the killer as most likely white.

After studying DNA found at one of the crime scenes, Frudakis concluded that the Baton Rouge serial killer had about 80 percent African affiliation and 15 percent Native American affiliation. In other words, the killer was not white after all.


Investigators shifted their focus and eventually arrested Lee, 34, in May in connection with the slayings of at least five women in southern Louisiana beginning September 2001.

In an exclusive Primetime interview, Frudakis gave ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer and famed crime writer and ABCNEWS consultant Patricia Cornwell a tour of his lab.

"I think (SNIPS is) so revolutionary that I'm still reeling from it a little bit, because I keep up with all of this and I didn't know they were doing this," Cornwell said.

Looking Beyond Traditional Profiles

The break in the Baton Rouge case came after months of frustration, largely stemming from criminal profiles that pegged the killer as a white man.

The contrary clues were there. Just after the slaying of Charlotte Murray Pace in June 2002, for instance, two witnesses said they told authorities they saw a black man watching the victim's house on the day of the killing.

One witness and her neighbors even made a composite sketch of their own -- which bore some resemblance to Lee -- and circulated it on their own while police pursued potential white male suspects.

But police maintained the slayings were not the work of an African-American man, witness Karen Savoie said. "They felt this would not be a black person because it was a very messy crime and that blacks don't have a tendency to commit that violent or messy of a crime," she recalled.

Cornwell believes authorities were victims of an outdated assumption that serial killers are generally white male loners.


"We've got to get away from this whole law enforcement profiling," Cornwell said. "If you're working on laboratory rats or robots, it might work. But the fact of the matter is these killers, their patterns, are just as varied as yours and mine might be."

At First, All-White DNA Samples

Investigators had taken DNA samples from more than 1,000 white suspects in hopes of clues in the search for the killer. In fact, before his arrest, Lee was forced to submit a sample for DNA testing in a case not linked to the serial slayings.

Then, on May 23, after months of telling the public to be on the lookout for a white man, authorities announced they were searching for a light-skinned black man in his late 20s or early 30s, but also left open the possibility that he could be of multi-ethnic or Asian descent. Four days later, after a massive manhunt and a series of tips, police found and arrested Lee in Atlanta.

Lee who has a criminal history including arrests for stalking, peeping into homes, burglary and attempted murder faces charges of murder and rape in the deaths of five women in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the attempted murder and attempted rape of a sixth woman in St. Martin Parish, and kidnapping and burglary.

If convicted, Lee could face the death penalty.

Authorities also suspect he may have been involved in the 1992 homicide of Connie Warner of Zachary, La., and the 1998 abduction of her neighbor Randi Mebruer. Mebruer's body has never been found.
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rd



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2003 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is very good news, Emma! Just what was needed, a political correctness antidote for crime solving. Thanks for the info.

rd
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jane



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2003 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rd, the police taking the profiling to such an extreme was obviously misguided - but I seriously don't think the motive was political correctness.
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rd



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 3:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

jane, in both the Washington sniper and Louisiana serial killer cases, they explicitly excluded the potential of a black suspect. They simply don't want to go there. It's too politically dangerous in areas with large black populations. Sorry, but that's what political correctness is.

rd
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jane



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I believe that serial murders and mass murders (by one individual as opposed to some politial regime) are a fairly recent phenomenon - they just didn't happen much in the past. There was Jack the Ripper in Victorian London and not much between that time and the Boston Strangler.

There were many theories at the time about who Jack the Ripper was, and none of them that I know of speculated that he was black - and Victorians never worried about political correctness (and yes, there were blacks in London at the time, although not as numerous as today).

Most notorious serial murderers and mass murderers have been white males - the only exception I can think of is the guy that serially killed quite a few black youths in Atlanta a few decades ago.

IMO, the police were just being too inflexible about profiling.
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rd



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The way they excluded blacks was to exclude mentioning or considering eyewitnesses in both cases that saw a black man at the scene just before or after a murder. In the DC case, a man was seen hurriedly leaving the area. In the LA case, a man was seen watching the house prior to a woman being killed.

Rather than get specifics of these eyewitness reports that would provide an objective basis for determining the merit of the eyewitness reports, the reports were simply excluded from consideration. They didn't want to go there. There were thousands and thousands of other reports that were discounted, but not because the person sighted was black.

rd
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jane



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK rd, police don't like to arrest black people. That's why there are none in prison or on death row.
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EmmaPeel



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jane wrote:
I believe that serial murders and mass murders (by one individual as opposed to some politial regime) are a fairly recent phenomenon - they just didn't happen much in the past. There was Jack the Ripper in Victorian London and not much between that time and the Boston Strangler.

Oh, no you can bet there were serial murders since Cain killed Abel. Ever since there's been dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, mental illnesses, etc. But there was no way to track the killings or link them together. And a person could easily move anonymously on to another town. Many times, like today, the victims are those who would be least missed by society. The prostitutes, the street people doing what ever they had to stay alive.

But I think even some of the more notorious gun slingers could have been serial killers. They enjoyed shooting down people...just like the snipers in DC. It was a power trip. They got to play god.

There's some interesting facts on serial killers here: http://strangerbox.topcities.com/killers2.html

And RD is right. It's a combination of outdated LE/FBI profiling ideas and resistance to racially profile non-whites. LE has become very PC. In the sniper case we saw it when the black chief (who is very vocal against profiling as it pertains to traffic stops) HAD EVIDENCE and witnesses who had seen two black men high-fiving it after one of the earlier shootings and driving off in a black car. Despite this, they kept to the profile of a white van and white/hispanic suspects--even after they had Muhammed as a suspect and had spoken to an ex-wife of his.

In Louisiana there were several witnesses who had seen a black man in the area of a killing and in one case were attacked but got away. Still they fixated on a white man because it was a serial killer and he was attacking white women (among known attacks). And they thought a black killer wouldn't leave that much of a mess (!!??) It wasn't until one of the last attacks when a black female was killed did they change the profile to race other than white. In the story above, some neighbors of one of the victims ran into a dead end through the police and had to make their own sketch of who they saw and passed it around.

Profiling is one tool, but nothing more. Crimes are not solved by profiles--they are there to merely narrow the type of suspect they are after. Crimes are solved by old fashioned detective work. Even forensics and DNA is not going to tell you who the serial killer is, unless have a DNA sample in the database or he leaves a fingerprint and has one on file. The Louisiana serial killer FIT the profile of the types of crimes he had committed. They need to quit looking at race in the profile pretty much altogether because criminals are aware police are looking for patterns. They can't control their sexual lusts--and they are going to start out small, and increase the violence to satisfy those lusts, but they certainly can and will change their MO, race of victim, etc. Anything to throw police off the track. Serial killers (particularly the successful ones) are not robots. They are usually above average intelligence and most are not the disgruntled, loner type. They often come across as totally unlike who someone would suspect as a serial killer because they have learned how people expect a rational person to act and put on a chameleon act--it until it's to late. We can clearly see that in the case of this killer.
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EmmaPeel



Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 472
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
There were many theories at the time about who Jack the Ripper was, and none of them that I know of speculated that he was black - and Victorians never worried about political correctness (and yes, there were blacks in London at the time, although not as numerous as today).

And you just gave the answer Jane. There wasn't very many blacks around there at the time. There were a lot of other immigrants, however. (Personally, I think it's highly likely that he was a Jewish immigrant from Poland, called Aaron Kominsky.) The point is--whites do not have some defective gene that makes them susceptible to being a serial killer. It's all about population percentages. The reason 80+% of serial killers have been white was because over 80% of the population was white! As the minority population rises, we will see more minority serial killers. We had one down here in Texas that was an Mexican illegal alien and transient that road the rails and became known as the railway killer. Both Louisiana and DC are heavily mixed populations and in some areas whites are the minority. They should not have been narrowing the search to white guys! Especially when you had witnesses saying otherwise.
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

alll very well said, Emma. Along the lines of the percentages reasoning, people need to look at how few serial killers came out of that 80% population as well. One black and one hispanic compared to the white ones we know about are not all that far off proportionately.

rd
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jane



Joined: 22 Sep 2002
Posts: 3225

PostPosted: Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sheesh, Emma, I'm not suggesting that whites have a serial killer gene! Serial killers are a very small minority of the whole population anyway. I'm not saying the perception that serial killers are white is accurate - but the well-known cases generally involved white perpetrators, so the perception has been there, even (or especially) among LE, accurate or not.
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