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at times a perpetrator's dna is the only clue at a murder scene but what happens when you don't have a
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suspect to compare it to this case made forensic history when scientists saw in these genes literally
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the killer's physical description [Music] [Music] in the 1600s baton rouge and louisiana
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got its name from french settlers it means red stick and referred to the pole marking the hunting area of local indian
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tribes to this day baton rouge is one of the most racially diverse cities in the
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country pam kinamore knew the town's history well by birth and by profession
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pam operated an antique store pam loved life every day she couldn't wait to do all the things
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that she wanted to do she was fun she was exuberant she was enthused she was intelligent
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shortly before midnight on a friday in july 2002 pam's husband byron called police to
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report his wife missing he said when he got home the front door was wide open his wife's keys were there
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but pam was gone strangely the bathtub was full of water it looked like she had been taking a
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bath and also there was there was some blood on a rug under the bed and the bedroom
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that hadn't been there before forensic testing revealed the blood on the carpet was pam's
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it appeared that she left her keys in the door inadvertently and an intruder walked in while pam was in the bathtub
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the couple's son was sleeping overnight at a friend's house and couldn't shed
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any light on what had happened investigators also had to consider whether pam had simply
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run off but her mother refused even to consider that possibility i told him i said i'm sure your next
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thought is she might have had a boyfriend i said i'd give you my word of honor if
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she had a boyfriend i would have known and that would be the first name i would give you
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pam never looked at another man byron was her sweetheart pam's family posted missing posters and
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billboards all over the city and offered a 75 000 reward for information as to her whereabouts
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for four days the search continued pam's body was discovered in the marshland under the whiskey bay bridge
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about 60 miles from her home there was a telephone cord found near her body it's amazing that it was found it was
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found by some surveyors she'd just been dumped at whiskey bay the coroner's office
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took her into custody the medical examiner discovered pam had been stabbed to death
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she had also been sexually assaulted pam was a beautiful young woman and uh she had a lot of admirers and i thought
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well you know maybe somebody just had a crush on her and took her off and i guess we wanted
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hope and i never dreamed that she was murdered do you know what it's like to know you'll never have any more
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memories that hold us happy times are gone forever so that's what it's like to lose your job
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the medical examiner determined that pam had been killed on the night she disappeared
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pam's husband byron had an alibi and it was corroborated by others so he wasn't considered a suspect
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but police got a tip from a potential eyewitness he thought he saw pam slumped forward in
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a white pickup truck on the night she went missing just a mile from where the body was discovered
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this is a very desolate piece of interstate very dark not many vehicles at all we get off this exit ramp it
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really leads to nowhere where her body was found the witness described the driver as a
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young white male police began to look for a white male in a white truck as the investigation went
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on they they were pretty focused on a white male and a white truck unfortunately there were 35 000 white
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pickup trucks registered in the baton rouge area it's like a swarming army of white
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pickup trucks in louisiana if you put them in to end it would probably circumvent the world
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[Music] at pam kinnamore's autopsy pathologists found biological evidence that she had been sexually assaulted
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and it also contained the dna profile of her killer naturally investigators wanted to know
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if this perpetrator had been apprehended before we had already taken his dna profile
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and searched it into the fbi's codis database which was a national database of
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offenders as well as evidence from other cases and we knew then that at that point that he had not been linked
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to any other crimes but this dna evidence did tell police something important the same man who killed pam kinamore
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killed two other women several months earlier i had never had experience with a serial
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killer you know other than seeing it tv shows so all of a sudden this was something that baton rouge hadn't hadn't
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dealt with before and i hadn't dealt with before two months earlier charlotte murray pace
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a graduate student at louisiana state university had been sexually assaulted and killed in her apartment she was
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stabbed 81 times her throat was cut she was missing part of her ear it was it was very violent horrible attack
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all the people all the women in the world he picked murray why i'd give anything to know why and i
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don't know if you can know why because i wonder if he could articulate why if he knows why
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himself like pam kinamore's case there were no signs of forced entry this person was absolutely vicious this
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person was absolutely the worst type of human being you ever want to encounter also in that same neighborhood
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gina greene a nurse was sexually assaulted and murdered in her home in all three cases
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the common thread was the telephone either the killer took the victim's telephone or
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used the cords to restrain his victim this led to speculation the killer asked his victims for
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assistance everything he touched he took with him those were his trophies if it didn't
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take much for him after he killed it to wipe down the doorknob he knew everything he touched
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when residents of baton rouge learned a serial killer was on the loose they took
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every possible precaution at night the streets were all but empty but it wasn't enough
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i can tell you the worst thing that i can imagine could happen in fact happen several months later the killer struck
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again twenty-three-year-old danae kalam never returned home from visiting her mother's grave
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her body was discovered 26 miles away from the cemetery she was sexually assaulted and beaten to death
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a witness reported seeing a white male in a white pickup truck near the cemetery
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just like pam kinamore's case and the killer wasn't through the body of 26 year old carrie yoder a
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doctoral student at lsu was found near the whiskey bay bridge not far from where pam kinamore's body was discovered
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dna tests confirmed the same man sexually assaulted and presumably killed all five women he was very intelligent i
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think he was doing a lot of as i call it surveillance work he was stalking his victims he knew their
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movements methods of movement and he was gonna be tough to catch desperate for a lead
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police called the fbi in washington d.c and asked for a criminal investigative analysis of the crimes we thought this
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was more someone who followed women who watched women from afar and when he interacted with women
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it would be shortly into that interaction before they felt uncomfortable with him
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the fbi predicted the killer was anti-social and earned a below average income the fbi profile we had folks come in and
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that was the whole gist that we were looking for a white male somewhere 20s and 30s single white male
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although 90 percent of all serial killers are white the fbi says they made no prediction
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about the race of the baton rouge serial killer despite the perceptions of local
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officials and information carried in the media i know that there's been some confusion
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about that i know what was written and i know it was in the paper and it just simply wasn't there
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nevertheless the local police obtained dna samples from over 1 000 men most of them white
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between the ages of 20 and 40 most had a history of criminal activity i just felt like
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they needed to find that killer we were going to have more women killed but not one of them was a match
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that's when molecular biologist dr tony frudakis called investigators with a
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warning that eyewitnesses and behavioral profiles are not always right that type of information is oftentimes
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faulty wrong sometimes people lie sometimes they're just flat out mistaken so dr frudakis made police an offer he
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said he'd perform a brand new dna test and promised he could identify the killer's physical characteristics
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to be honest with you i didn't really believe i thought right off the bat this
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guy must be some quack how can he do this but he purported that he can determine the race
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of folks from dna and i say there's no way in the world he can do that this new
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test called dna witness ascertains the exact ancestry of an individual based on information in their
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dna it's rooted in the fact that all humans are descended from a common gene pool
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so instead of measuring the pigmentation genes that control pigmentation of the skin
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we can make an indirect inference about your skin shade through a very precise knowledge of your ancestral background
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so the baton rouge police gave dr fardakas the go-ahead the results made forensic history and
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changed the course of the investigation i've never met the guy but i'll tell you
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he's onto something based on statements from two eyewitnesses baton rouge police were
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searching for a white male driving a white pickup truck in connection with five unsolved murders
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with little to lose investigators joined forces with the molecular biologist to perform a new
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test on the killer's dna it's brand new technology a lot of these people are unaware of what it can do we
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have to go into the human genome and screen through large numbers of people in order to find these
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positions of dna so that we can harness their power and use them for the purposes we're using them
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to test dr frodakis's claims investigators sent him 20 dna samples and asked him to identify the race of
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each one he nailed him to a t on everybody even to the percentages of what black white
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indian whatever you had in him so he was able to do it when he passed that test dr frudakis went to work on the killer's
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dna the results the dna test showed the killer was not a caucasian the crime scene dna sample corresponded
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to an individual that was 85 percent sub-saharan african and 15 native american at first police couldn't believe it
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i remember the phone line just going silent for a few minutes i guess they had to digest it kind of threw you off
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because you know traditionally a serial killer is usually a white male and when it became a black male it just
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just it threw everybody out police now realized the so-called eyewitnesses were wrong
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and they realized something else around the same time of pam kinnimore's murder about 60 miles outside of baton
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rouge someone knocked on the front door of a woman named diane alexander and asked to use the phone
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when her back was turned the man ripped the phone cord from the wall and tried to strangle her
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as she fought for her life her son came home unexpectedly the attacker ran away still carrying the telephone cord
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the phone cord was actually already sticking out of his vehicle and her son was able to describe the
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vehicle very well and describe the phone cord sticking out of it and police remembered finding similar
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telephone cord near pam kinamore's body was it possible that the killer took diane alexander's telephone cord
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with him when he killed pam kinamore to find out forensic experts compared the telephone
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cord found with pam kinamore's body to the ripped piece of cord from diane alexander's home by performing a
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fracture match comparison although plastic stretches when pulled the ends usually remain intact
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they actually took the remaining cord from diane alexander's house and were able to match it to the cord that they
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found at pam kennamore's dump site in a police lineup diane alexander identified her attacker as 34 year old
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derek todd lee he had previous arrests for burglary stalking women and peeking into their homes
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if lee was the baton rouge serial killer diane alexander was fortunate to be alive
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derek todd lee a manual laborer married with two children was identified by diane
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alexander in a police lineup as the man who assaulted her in her home but he denied he was the baton rouge
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serial killer lee's dna sample was sent immediately to the forensics lab for testing
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it matched the biological samples from all five victims just a sense of relief joy come over me
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you know and it's like i had to smile i said we got him derek todd lee was arrested and charged
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with first degree murder the first thing i would tell him is he's a coward he picked on women that he took
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advantage of their good nature after his arrest investigators learned that lee's dna
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matched skin cells under the fingernails of yet another murder victim an lsu student 21 year old geralyn de soto
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prosecutors believe lee followed his victims so he knew when they would be home alone
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he would knock on the door asked to use their phone and once inside overpower them i don't know how he
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picked him out he hasn't talked we do know that a black male was spotted sort of hanging out in a couple of the
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neighborhoods but we don't know for sure that it was him and we like i said we
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haven't had the benefit of his you know if he's telling us what his thoughts were
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fortunately for investigators he left crucial dna evidence behind at lee's trial the sole survivor diane
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alexander identified lee as the man who tried to kill her and dna from perspiration found on ms
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alexander's blouse after the attack matched lee's dna profile forensic proof he was the perpetrator
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this is the real deal and now this lady has come to you and face you it pointed you out
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it was devastating derek todd lee was convicted of first degree murder and was sentenced to death
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the death penalty is too good for him they should execute him a little bit at a time
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i mean to do you know rape was not enough murder was not enough to corner called it
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these murders he said aren't overkill some of the victims families are angry
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that police relied so heavily on the eyewitness accounts of a white male in a white pickup truck and the fact that
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most serial killers tend to be white the profile itself was of course wrong it was erroneous
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but it was also accepted by the task force as it was given the force of fact when what it is is an educated guess i
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think they were getting tons of tips from every direction it wasn't you know
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they were getting thousands of tips so i certainly wouldn't say that you know
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they i think they did the best that they could and they worked very hard in this case dr tony frudakis made
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scientific history it was the first time this biogeographic testing was ever used in a criminal case
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the technology now has a 99 accuracy rate and new tests can even predict eye color with 92 percent accuracy
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if it can tell you the race it might be able to tell you exactly who you're looking for
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but if it tells you the name and the address and phone number it's time for me to leave this place it's just dna is
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too good then this new test also shows the limitations of behavioral profiles and the fallibility of so-called
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eyewitnesses i don't think it's too far out there to say that in the future
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there probably will be much less crime than there is today because people are going to realize
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that when they commit that rape or they commit that murder they might as well take their driver's license out of
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their wallet just toss it right there on the ground because they're going to get that
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information anyway if people are going to commit violent crimes they need to be accountable and we need to take whatever
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means is necessary to hold them accountable and that just makes the police the job of a police
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officer so easy i think we need to take advantage of science as much as we can when it's for valid reasons
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[Music] [Music] [Music] you