Butchers of the Bayou

On May 31, 2002, Charlotte Murray Pace, an LSU graduate, is found raped and stabbed to death in her home. The brutality of the crime scene reminds police of the unsolved case of Gina Wilson Green, who was found raped and murdered in her home, not far from LSU, in 2001.

The investigation focuses on a white guy with a white pickup truck. In March 1994, Ann Bryan is found murdered in her home at the St. James Place retirement community. Despite attempts to catch her killer, the case goes cold.

After Derrick Todd Lee was arrested, police were able to connect him to other cold cases. At that time, Baton Rouge had approximately 60 unsolved cases of missing or murdered women in the area from the previous 10 years.

The tire track found at the Donna Bennett Johnston crime scene provided police with a long list of potential suspects–everyone in the Baton Rouge area who had purchased an Aquatred tire. Detectives were going through the list of potential suspects, eliminating them through alibis and inconsistencies, until finally they showed up at a house of Sean Vincent Gillis.