Speaker 1: Imagine this. You're a college student and you're walking to campus.
Speaker 1: That's when you come across a sign stapled to a tree,
Speaker 1: and that sign contains a warning.
Speaker 2: The sign said killer on the loose, Please be careful,
Speaker 2: love mom.
Speaker 1: You keep walking and see a second sign with the
Speaker 1: same message, then a third and a fourth. By the
Speaker 1: time you reach campus, you've lost.
Speaker 2: Count Parents were warning their kids to be careful because
Speaker 2: there was a serial killer who was focused on women.
Speaker 1: What a way to communicate in a time before you
Speaker 1: could send a text. Parents were so desperate to reach
Speaker 1: their kids, anything to warn them of the South Louisiana
Speaker 1: serial Killer. These women were all attacked in their homes,
Speaker 1: and the most baffling.
Speaker 2: Part, there was no forced entry into any of the houses.
Speaker 3: Serial killer popping his way into women's houses as he
Speaker 3: do lives.
Speaker 4: That's when the therape begin.
Speaker 1: Today, we're in Baden Rouge for part one of The
Speaker 1: Serial Killer of South Louisiana. I'm Sloan Glass and this
Speaker 1: is American Homicide. A note that this episode contains some
Speaker 1: graphic content. Please take care while listening. On the shores
Speaker 1: of the Mighty Mississippi in downtown Baden Rouge. Since the
Speaker 1: campus is of Southern University, a m College, and Louisiana
Speaker 1: State University. During the school year, forty thousand students pour
Speaker 1: into this area, with the majority of those on the
Speaker 1: LSU campus.
Speaker 2: It's a fairly large campus, so it can take you,
Speaker 2: you know, a good half an hour to forty minutes
Speaker 2: to get from one into campus to the other.
Speaker 1: Journalist Melinda Delatt is an LSU grad who worked for
Speaker 1: the Associated Press.
Speaker 2: It's a very green campus, buildings from different eras, but
Speaker 2: it's a very lush campus, like the big towering oak
Speaker 2: trees Spanish moss hanging off of them.
Speaker 1: Over twelve hundred oak trees line the LSU campus, giving
Speaker 1: some much needed relief from the heat and humidity that
Speaker 1: en Rouge is known for.
Speaker 2: And then around the outside of the campus there are
Speaker 2: a whole set of different lakes. There's a very large
Speaker 2: lake called University Lake, and then there are smaller lakes
Speaker 2: that are sort of attached to that.
Speaker 1: And during weekends in the fall, the LSU campus transforms
Speaker 1: into something completely different.
Speaker 2: I think what people think of is, you know, the
Speaker 2: tailgating scene on campus for SEC football games. That's obviously
Speaker 2: huge here, so it's it's a fun campus to be at.
Speaker 1: That en Rouge is the home to the LSU Tigers.
Speaker 1: Tailgating on Saturdays is a rite of passage for students.
Speaker 2: You know. Campus is filled with thousands upon thousands of
Speaker 2: people cooking, drinking, dancing, playing games, whatever they want to
Speaker 2: do before LSU plays.
Speaker 1: The action then moves inside Tiger Stadium, which resembles the
Speaker 1: Roman Colisseum.
Speaker 2: It's bigger than the Superdome for New Orleans Saints game,
Speaker 2: so our professional team in the state has a smaller
Speaker 2: place to play than the college football team.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and one, the LSU Tigers won
Speaker 1: their first two games. It was looking like it was
Speaker 1: going to be a good year. But then came the
Speaker 1: September eleventh attacks. The campus, like the rest of the nation,
Speaker 1: was shaken. And then a few days.
Speaker 2: Later, Gina Green was found murdered in her home. And
Speaker 2: she lived on a street that went right next to
Speaker 2: LSU's campus.
Speaker 1: Gina Green was forty years old and lived alone.
Speaker 2: She was raped, she was strangled, and I don't think
Speaker 2: people expected to hear that there would be a murder
Speaker 2: right off campus in an area that people walk and
Speaker 2: bike and jog around every day.
Speaker 1: Here's pase Cuter, Dana Cummings.
Speaker 4: Geena Green.
Speaker 5: She was a nurse, a supervising nurse, and she just
Speaker 5: didn't show up for work one day and one of
Speaker 5: her colleagues went out to check and he found her
Speaker 5: beceased in her bed. There wasn't like a jilted ex
Speaker 5: boyfriend that they suspected, or anybody that had a reason to.
Speaker 4: Kill Gina Green.
Speaker 5: She was well loved and respected and there was just
Speaker 5: no reason to think that somebody had it out for.
Speaker 1: We always look at the significant other. First, Gina was
Speaker 1: divorced but had a good relationship with her ex husband.
Speaker 1: And then there was the strange part. There were no
Speaker 1: signs of forced entry at Gina's home, making it even stranger.
Speaker 1: Her ex husband did tell a local TV station that
Speaker 1: a week before Gina was murdered, she had this weird
Speaker 1: feeling that she was being watched.
Speaker 4: So that was a little that was a little scary.
Speaker 1: Although the killer managed to get in and out Gina's
Speaker 1: home unnoticed, he left behind one important clue.
Speaker 5: There was a shirt that she had been wearing when
Speaker 5: she was attacked and found a blood spot.
Speaker 1: The blood stain was not Gina's, so whose blood was it.
Speaker 1: The police ran it through their DNA database.
Speaker 5: Back then, there weren't so many people in a database
Speaker 5: that you could just run it and get a good match,
Speaker 5: and so they ran it. They tried to find who
Speaker 5: it belonged to, but they didn't have that.
Speaker 1: With no suspects, the police made no arrest, which rattled lsu'
Speaker 1: students and their parents.
Speaker 5: You know, it's very close to campus, you know, and
Speaker 5: every mother and father this sends their child to LSU
Speaker 5: thinks that they will be safe, and people in Baton
Speaker 5: Rouge were terrified.
Speaker 1: One of those mothers was and Pace. Her daughter, Murray
Speaker 1: was a graduate student at LSU, and Murray was a trailblazer.
Speaker 1: She skipped half of high school and jumped right into college.
Speaker 3: My daughter lived three houses down from Gina Green, and
Speaker 3: when she died, Murray, she was very concerned. She was frightened.
Speaker 4: Because they lived so close to each other.
Speaker 3: She left high school when she was sixteen and went
Speaker 3: to college, and by the time she was twenty two
Speaker 3: she had a BS and an MBA. She was very smart,
Speaker 3: very focused, and very determined. But all her life I
Speaker 3: always thought her superpower was the ability she had to
Speaker 3: make friends. And they left her back.
Speaker 1: In the spring of two thousand and two, Murray graduated
Speaker 1: and planned to stay on campus through the summer, so
Speaker 1: she moved into a new apartment a few miles away
Speaker 1: from her old police Then two d's after she moved.
Speaker 5: In, Murray pace was found by her roommate, just horribly attacked,
Speaker 5: stabbed eighty one times.
Speaker 4: Her throat was slit, she was nude.
Speaker 1: That's prosecutor Dana Cummings.
Speaker 4: She had been just beaten to death.
Speaker 1: This is really hard to hear, so if you're squeamish,
Speaker 1: I would fast forward for the next fifteen seconds. Someone
Speaker 1: used a knife and screwdriver to stab Murray eighty one
Speaker 1: times in her chest, stomach, ears, even her eyes. The
Speaker 1: trauma she took was so bad you could see her
Speaker 1: spinal cord.
Speaker 4: As she fought hard. She fought really, really hard.
Speaker 1: Murray had defensive wounds on her arms, hands, and wrists.
Speaker 1: They also found DNA evidence that Murray had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 1: And this didn't happen under the cover of night. The
Speaker 1: sun was still out. It was early afternoon.
Speaker 5: And it's just kind of an eerie thing because there
Speaker 5: was a plate of grapes and a sandwich that was
Speaker 5: half eaten.
Speaker 4: That was just sitting on the arm of her chair.
Speaker 1: Murray had been waiting for her roommate to come home
Speaker 1: that afternoon so they could drive to a friend's wedding,
Speaker 1: and that's when she was attacked.
Speaker 5: Apparently he got in and out without being seen, so
Speaker 5: she was attacked in her apartment when he knew she
Speaker 5: was alone.
Speaker 1: And once again, just like with Gina Green's murder, the
Speaker 1: police found no signs of force to entry at Murray's apartment.
Speaker 1: So how did the killer get inside? The police didn't know,
Speaker 1: but they had a clue. One of Murray's friends told
Speaker 1: the police that the previous day, she was talking with
Speaker 1: Murray on the phone. That's when a mysterious man knocked
Speaker 1: on Murray's door. He said he was looking for someone
Speaker 1: who lived at her address. Murray said she didn't know
Speaker 1: that person and quickly shut the door. But Murray told
Speaker 1: her friend she got a real creepy feeling from this guy.
Speaker 5: She was like uncomfortable, but it didn't disturb her to
Speaker 5: the level that she was just really calling the police
Speaker 5: or anything.
Speaker 1: So was that man scoping out Murray and her apartment
Speaker 1: and did he return in the next day? The police
Speaker 1: didn't know for sure, but now there were two reports
Speaker 1: of women being sexually assaulted and murdered in their homes
Speaker 1: with no signs of forced entry.
Speaker 5: Bad and Ruse was scared. I mean the people in
Speaker 5: bat and Ruse were scared.
Speaker 1: Bad and Rouge was scared. But I can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about Murray's mother Anne.
Speaker 6: Imagine finishing high school, so young in college and she'd
Speaker 6: had a job with a big six accounting firm in Atlanta,
Speaker 6: and then it was all gone.
Speaker 1: Without knowing why, Murray's mother went in search of how.
Speaker 3: I went and saw all the crime saying and autopsy pictures.
Speaker 6: Because I thought, if she endured it, I need to
Speaker 6: know what happened to her. I need to know it,
Speaker 6: exactly what happened to her. And then he wondered, when
Speaker 6: did she know during that fight?
Speaker 3: When did she know she wouldn't?
Speaker 6: She was darn you know, when did she know that nobody.
Speaker 3: Was going to come in? Saber?
Speaker 6: And you feel like that's your job?
Speaker 3: Is there? Mother?
Speaker 4: Only couldn't do it. You couldn't protect her from that either.
Speaker 1: Gina Green was beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death
Speaker 1: inside her home. Then Gina's former neighbor, Murray Pace, was
Speaker 1: killed in a similar manner, and both incidents happened near
Speaker 1: the LSU campus. Little was known about who was behind
Speaker 1: these murders. However, law enforcement did have one major lead.
Speaker 1: They revealed that DNA found at both murder scenes belonged
Speaker 1: to the same person.
Speaker 7: I think everybody needs to be aware that we've got
Speaker 7: a situation now that involves two women linked to an individual.
Speaker 1: That was the bat and Rouge police chief, and just
Speaker 1: three days after he said that, a woman vanished from
Speaker 1: her home. Here's Prosecutor Dana Cummings.
Speaker 5: Pam Kinnemore disappeared, her family came home and she was
Speaker 5: just gone.
Speaker 1: Pam and her family lived right outside Baden Rouge, and
Speaker 1: one Friday night, the forty four year old returned home
Speaker 1: from work, but her husband only found Pam's car in
Speaker 1: the driveway and Pam's purse and wallet inside the house,
Speaker 1: and most eerie, her keys were found dangling from the
Speaker 1: lock of her back door.
Speaker 5: Based on the evidence of her house, you could see
Speaker 5: she was all set up to take with that relaxing
Speaker 5: bath that everybody wants to take and then she just disappeared.
Speaker 1: The water was probably still warm when the murderer came
Speaker 1: into her home and investigators noticed something else.
Speaker 5: There was the scrug, and this rug had a blood
Speaker 5: spot on it, well, several blood spots on it. We
Speaker 5: had a DNA analyst that was like eight and a
Speaker 5: half months pregnant.
Speaker 4: She was working this case. So she crawled.
Speaker 5: Around on that rug and checked every spot that she could.
Speaker 5: Most of them were Pam Kennimore's blood, but she found
Speaker 5: one that wasn't, and she lifted that spot and she
Speaker 5: actually called me and said, I got him, I got him.
Speaker 4: He's there.
Speaker 1: He's there, meaning the DNA on that bathrug matched the
Speaker 1: DNA found on the other victims. In other words, the
Speaker 1: same person was linked to all three murders.
Speaker 4: It was like, oh my gosh, here's another one.
Speaker 1: A few days later, they found Pam Kinnemore some thirty
Speaker 1: miles outside bat En. Rouge journalist Melinda Delatt covered the story.
Speaker 2: Her body was dumped off the interstate in a place
Speaker 2: called Whiskey Bay. Whiskey Bay is an exit that when
Speaker 2: you take it, it kind of feels like you're just
Speaker 2: driving into the swamp. You're like, where am I going?
Speaker 2: Because there's nothing else you would find. There's no rest
Speaker 2: stop or something there, just dirt and gravel road.
Speaker 1: Whiskey Bay is a popular spot for fishing, but once
Speaker 1: the sunsets, the area turns pitch black. Over the years,
Speaker 1: it's a place where numerous bodies have turned up. Pam
Speaker 1: Kennemore's body was found with long cut marks on her neck.
Speaker 1: She had been strangled and sexually assaulted. There was also
Speaker 1: a piece of a landline telephone cord sitting a few
Speaker 1: hundred feet from Pam's body. Was she strangled with that cord?
Speaker 1: The police didn't know. This was the third woman in
Speaker 1: the area that was killed. Fears of a serial killer
Speaker 1: began to spread, and he was not predictable. His behavior
Speaker 1: was escalating.
Speaker 2: Pam Kinnemore was kidnapped from her home. She was eaten,
Speaker 2: and she was and again no signs of forced entry.
Speaker 1: And that was the one common thread that made all
Speaker 1: of bad and rouge uneasy.
Speaker 2: If nobody has a sign of forced entry, was this
Speaker 2: just somebody who could talk his way in and seem
Speaker 2: non threatening. So who seems non threatening? Maybe it was
Speaker 2: somebody who was in a uniform, like is it the
Speaker 2: FedEx driver? Is it a delivery guy who's got a
Speaker 2: florist delivery outfit on and so that also then translated
Speaker 2: to could it be a police officer?
Speaker 1: Think about it, someone was getting in and out of
Speaker 1: the homes of these women without being caught. Was that
Speaker 1: person a cop?
Speaker 2: Everybody had theories about who it could be, but clearly
Speaker 2: the thought that somebody might just be wearing a uniform,
Speaker 2: whether it's a police uniform or some other kind of uniform,
Speaker 2: became one of the theory that stuck for a while
Speaker 2: because it seemed to make some sense to people who
Speaker 2: were trying to make sense out of a situation that
Speaker 2: was nonsensical in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that the police didn't say much about
Speaker 1: their investigation or even worse, the man they dubbed the
Speaker 1: South Louisiana serial killer.
Speaker 2: If you're living in a place that's very terrified because
Speaker 2: three women have been murdered and all linked through DNA,
Speaker 2: hearing the police say we have an ongoing investigation, so
Speaker 2: we can't answer that question isn't necessarily going to comfort
Speaker 2: people who live there.
Speaker 1: The families got vocal and held rallies and press conferences
Speaker 1: of their own. With the help of the media, they
Speaker 1: tried to find any connection between the victims.
Speaker 2: These overlaps that we found, they're thin, They're very thin.
Speaker 2: The only thing that seemed to be a common thread
Speaker 2: that was nerve wracking to everybody is there was no
Speaker 2: forced entry into any of the houses, and so what
Speaker 2: did that mean exactly?
Speaker 1: By that time, another school year was beginning, and that's
Speaker 1: when those homemade signs started popping up around the LSU campus.
Speaker 2: The sign said killer on the loose, Please be careful, Love.
Speaker 1: Mom computer printed in all caps. The laminated signs took
Speaker 1: root throughout the LSU campus.
Speaker 2: They were tacked to the trees along one of the
Speaker 2: lakes that most students use for exercise, and it got
Speaker 2: a lot of media attention because there was a serial killer.
Speaker 1: In the summer of two thousand and two. As the
Speaker 1: students filled up the many dorms and apartments near the
Speaker 1: LSU campus, the general feeling was fear.
Speaker 2: It was clearly a tense time, and I think the
Speaker 2: police were genuinely frustrated that they couldn't catch the.
Speaker 1: Person DNA linked. The killer took three known victims, but
Speaker 1: at the time, Adam Rouge had a backlog of more
Speaker 1: than thirty unsolved murders of women and some of these
Speaker 1: cases dated back a decade, so the fear that this
Speaker 1: killer could strike again was coupled with the belief that
Speaker 1: there may have been a lot more victims than they
Speaker 1: knew about. During the summer of two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: law enforcement joined forces with several other agencies to create
Speaker 1: a task force.
Speaker 2: I think it was more than three dozen different people involved,
Speaker 2: but it was a lot of different law enforcement agencies,
Speaker 2: and they got the FBI involved to do some sort
Speaker 2: of analysis of who could commit these kinds of murders.
Speaker 1: This task force held daily press conferences and revealed their
Speaker 1: first huge lead. On the night that Pam Kennimore disappeared,
Speaker 1: a truck driver was driving on the Interstate near the
Speaker 1: Whiskey Bay exit and that's where he saw something almost unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Who was driving saw a woman slumped against the door
Speaker 2: of a white truck.
Speaker 1: The eyewitness said the woman appeared to be nude and.
Speaker 2: Dead, and then that truck took the exit at Whiskey
Speaker 2: Bay and it happened to be the same time period
Speaker 2: when Pam disappeared.
Speaker 1: Here's audio from the Sheriff's office in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Speaker 7: The fact that it was a female who was nude
Speaker 7: the timing several hours after the abduction of Pam Kinnemore
Speaker 7: exiting at the place where we found her body. We
Speaker 7: feel it's a very great likelihood that that was, in
Speaker 7: fact the truck containing miss Kennibal.
Speaker 1: So the eyewitness saw a white guy driving a white
Speaker 1: truck that night.
Speaker 2: And quite frankly, you know, that profile is the most
Speaker 2: generic profile you could have. So I think anybody who
Speaker 2: was white and drove a white pickup truck got scrutiny.
Speaker 1: There were twenty seven thousand white trucks in bat and Rouge,
Speaker 1: and all of the drivers got side eyed. Some of
Speaker 1: them even took spray paint and wrote on the side
Speaker 1: of their trucks, I'm not the serial killer.
Speaker 2: They were stereotyped. We had stories of people who sold
Speaker 2: their trucks because they didn't want to be connected to this.
Speaker 2: People were nervous about white men and white trucks.
Speaker 1: And the only way for these guys to prove they
Speaker 1: didn't do it was to offer up a sample of
Speaker 1: their DNA.
Speaker 2: They did a DNA dragnet at the time, and they
Speaker 2: swabbed all these men. I think it was nearly a
Speaker 2: thousand at the end of the day. It may have
Speaker 2: even been more than that, some of them voluntarily getting swabbed, others,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of encouraged to do so, just to
Speaker 2: prove that they weren't a serial killer.
Speaker 1: All of this took time and a lot of patience.
Speaker 1: Here's Prosecutor Dana Cummings.
Speaker 5: I mean, I remember going out to eat and you know,
Speaker 5: sitting by the window and a white drug drives up
Speaker 5: and you're immediately thinking, who's that guy in that white drug,
Speaker 5: which is ridiculous because we've got a billion of them
Speaker 5: in Baton Rouge, But you know that's all you've got
Speaker 5: to go on, then that's what you go on.
Speaker 1: That little bit of information only amped up the uneasiness.
Speaker 5: There were so many suspects and it went on for
Speaker 5: so long. It's just like this monster that you can't understand.
Speaker 5: And he seemed to prey on people that he obviously
Speaker 5: had to stalk to some degree because they were alone.
Speaker 5: I guess from a criminal's perspective, it's high risk. You know,
Speaker 5: you're going into a house to take someone, and he
Speaker 5: seemed to be getting more comfortable as well.
Speaker 1: The public was desperate for answers, so were the police
Speaker 1: and that may have fewel their decision to do something
Speaker 1: unusual and controversial. In the summer of two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: the Baton Rouge Police Department created a task force to
Speaker 1: hunt the South Louisiana serial killer. Some forty investigators from local, state,
Speaker 1: and federal agencies made up this task force, and even
Speaker 1: with all that man power, it wasn't easy. While they
Speaker 1: had the killer's DNA, they didn't know who the DNA
Speaker 1: belonged to, and their only eyewitness was a truck driver
Speaker 1: who saw a white gye driving a white truck with
Speaker 1: what was believed to be the dead body of Pankinemore
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat. The witness said he was reluctant
Speaker 1: to even come forward. It was the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't even sure if what he saw was real.
Speaker 1: By the time he did a double take, the truck
Speaker 1: had pulled off at the Whiskey Bay exit. Here's journalist
Speaker 1: Melinda Delott.
Speaker 2: The person who provided this information initially just remembered a
Speaker 2: white guy who drove a white pickup truck.
Speaker 1: That's when the police did something a bit unconventional. They
Speaker 1: hypnotized the witness with the hope that he'd remember more
Speaker 1: from that night, and guess what it worked. The witness
Speaker 1: remembered that the truck had a Louisiana license plate, the
Speaker 1: back window was tinted, and there was more.
Speaker 5: It was revealed that the pate on the truck was aging,
Speaker 5: and the driver was a white man with a thin
Speaker 5: to medium build.
Speaker 2: A lot of this other information about what the witness
Speaker 2: alleged to have seen came out in some sort of hypnosis.
Speaker 1: Yes, they hypnotized the witness. It might sound insane, A
Speaker 1: lot of people felt that way, but it got them somewhere.
Speaker 1: And while hypnosis is not always ad miss in court,
Speaker 1: they already had DNA, they just needed a connection.
Speaker 2: I believe this is the only case I have ever
Speaker 2: been involved in covering where I recall hypnosis being used
Speaker 2: as a tool.
Speaker 1: But for a police department desperate for answers, it was
Speaker 1: a hell mary and it paid off because the eyewitness
Speaker 1: remembered more details about the person who drove the white truck,
Speaker 1: and that helped law enforcement put together not only a sketch,
Speaker 1: but a profile of the suspected serial killer. They said
Speaker 1: the killer was a white male between the ages of
Speaker 1: twenty five and thirty five, someone who was physically strong,
Speaker 1: but awkward around women, and had money troubles. So now
Speaker 1: we have this profile, which frankly doesn't differentiate this person
Speaker 1: too much from other profile killers still have DNA evidence
Speaker 1: and no arrests, and by the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, the killer would strike a fourth time.
Speaker 2: Her name is Denay Cologne. She was twenty three. She
Speaker 2: was beaten, she was raped, same as the other victims
Speaker 2: in this case.
Speaker 1: Denay was on leave from the army and listened to
Speaker 1: her last known whereabouts. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: They found her car, her purse, and her keys near
Speaker 2: the cemetery where her mom was buried, and her mom
Speaker 2: had died in the last year. A family member said
Speaker 2: she was known to go to that cemetery a lot.
Speaker 1: Denay Cologne had been visiting her mother's grave when she disappeared.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Denay's body turned up in a wooded
Speaker 1: area outside bad and Rouge. For investigators, this was noteworthy
Speaker 1: because Denay was the first known victim who lived well
Speaker 1: outside bad and Rouge. And there was something else.
Speaker 2: Dene Cologne was black. The other women were white, so
Speaker 2: there was clearly no racial specificity to the victims.
Speaker 1: And then came an announcement from law enforcement.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, the police in Baton Rouge started
Speaker 2: telling people that they should broaden the way they thought
Speaker 2: about who might be the murderer and that the profile
Speaker 2: that the police gave out may not be correct. It
Speaker 2: went from oh, you're looking for a white guy in
Speaker 2: a white truck too, well, maybe that's not who you're
Speaker 2: looking for after all, and it blew up sort of
Speaker 2: everybody's perspective about this case.
Speaker 1: People didn't know what to think, and they started questioning
Speaker 1: what the police and this task force were putting out there.
Speaker 2: You're already talking about a city that's on edge, and
Speaker 2: people who were nervous, and families of victims who were
Speaker 2: very frustrated, and this was not information that people were
Speaker 2: ecstatic to hear.
Speaker 1: In the spring of two thousand and three, that frustration
Speaker 1: turned to anger because the killer struck again a.
Speaker 2: College student by the name of Carie Lynn Yoder. She
Speaker 2: was the fifth murderer that was linked via DNA.
Speaker 1: The killer had returned to a familiar area, an apartment
Speaker 1: just off the LSU campus. That's where Carrie Yoder lived
Speaker 1: while attending grad school. That afternoon, she had returned from
Speaker 1: the grocery store and then vanished. Like the other victims
Speaker 1: before her, there was no sign of forced entry at
Speaker 1: her apartment. Her body turned up a week later.
Speaker 2: She was found in the same Whiskey Bay area where
Speaker 2: Pamkenimore's body was found and similar set of circumstances. Beaten, raped,
Speaker 2: strangled to death. And so I think it just restarts
Speaker 2: the whole process of people getting newly terrified. The person
Speaker 2: who did this just seems so angry. There's no rhyme
Speaker 2: or reason to where the murders are happening. You can
Speaker 2: be in your twenties or be in your forties and
Speaker 2: be at risk.
Speaker 1: That's when things went from bad to worse when the
Speaker 1: task force once again changed their profile of the suspected killer.
Speaker 2: They said, you know, it could be a white guy
Speaker 2: who's more dark complexed, or maybe a man of a
Speaker 2: mixed racial heritage, or perhaps a black man. This just
Speaker 2: made everybody think, well, hell, were they looking for the
Speaker 2: wrong person the whole time? And have they even been
Speaker 2: investigating what they needed to be investigating. Have they limited
Speaker 2: themselves in such a way that they were dismissing information
Speaker 2: that could have been relevant.
Speaker 1: So you have a serial killer who was able to
Speaker 1: easily get in and out of victims' homes without being caught,
Speaker 1: and all the police could say was that the suspect
Speaker 1: was a man aged twenty five to thirty five who
Speaker 1: drove a white Chevy truck, and that profile came from
Speaker 1: an eyewitness who had to be hypnotized. For over a
Speaker 1: year and a half, this suspect terrorized South Louisiana and
Speaker 1: frustrated the local, state, and federal agencies. Meanwhile, a small
Speaker 1: police department fifteen miles north of Baden Rouge believed they
Speaker 1: knew who the killer was.
Speaker 8: I told Macpartson, you know who it is.
Speaker 1: That's David McDavid. He was a detective with the Zachary
Speaker 1: Police Department. At the time, the Zachary pet had been
Speaker 1: investigating two unsolved murders in town, along with an attack
Speaker 1: on a couple. These cases had an eerie similarity to
Speaker 1: what was happening in Baden Rouge.
Speaker 8: The evidence that we were being shown and told about
Speaker 8: is the same thing that was happening here at our
Speaker 8: crime stings.
Speaker 1: So the police from Zachary put a presentation together and
Speaker 1: met with the team investigating the South Louisiana serial killer.
Speaker 8: We told them what we had as a little Jason.
Speaker 8: If he knows he's about to be called, he's probably
Speaker 8: finna kill again. Y'all need to find him.
Speaker 1: But the Vaton Rouge PD told law enforcement from Zachary
Speaker 1: they didn't think they were looking for the same guy.
Speaker 8: It bothered me somewhat, but I think a lot of
Speaker 8: it was we didn't work a lot of murders. You
Speaker 8: don't have him, maybe one or two murders here before
Speaker 8: FAV five ten years.
Speaker 1: But that didn't stop them. Somehow, some way, it was
Speaker 1: the small town PD from Zachary, Louisiana who would do
Speaker 1: what the task force couldn't.
Speaker 8: At the end of the day, you know, we're able
Speaker 8: to have the piece of the pie that saw the case.
Speaker 1: In the conclusion of the South Louisiana serial killer. We'll
Speaker 1: learn who the killer is.
Speaker 2: Everybody was talking about a white man in a white
Speaker 2: pickup truck. In neither of those two things handed out
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Anything, and we'll find out how this small town police
Speaker 1: department figured it all out. That's next time on American Homicide.
Speaker 1: You can contact the American Homicide Team by emailing us
Speaker 1: at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American
Speaker 1: Homicide pod at gmail dot com. American Homicide is hosted
Speaker 1: and written by me Sloane Glass and is a production
Speaker 1: of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, in
Speaker 1: partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by
Speaker 1: Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The series is also written
Speaker 1: and produced by Todd Gans, with additional writing by Ben
Speaker 1: Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is Kristin Melcurrie.
Speaker 1: Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Nico Aarruka. American Homicide theme song
Speaker 1: was composed by Oliver Baines of Noisier Music Library provided
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