He wooed the women with his muscular build and honey-coated words. “You didn’t feel the stress of poverty when you were around him,” says Tina, a prostitute who confided that she was so taken with Lee that she only charged him half-price. “That man, with that body and that smile, could charm the drawers off any woman.” But Lee also offered clues to a more sinister side. He incessantly asked women at the motel whether they lived alone, and relied on ruses-like offering to check their appliances-to try to get inside their rooms. If they found him vaguely unsettling, they soon discovered why: Lee, 34, was arrested in Atlanta last week, the sole suspect in a spate of serial murders in Baton Rouge, La., that reminded authorities of a Ted Bundy-like killer who smooth-talked his way into women’s homes.
Though Lee’s capture finally calmed nerves in Louisiana, it also unleashed a chorus of criticism. How, some asked, could authorities have taken so long to focus on Lee, whose lengthy rap sheet depicted a proclivity for sexual and occasionally violent crimes? Part of the problem, it seems: while Lee is black, authorities relied for months on an FBI profile that assumed the serial killer was white (though the profile was amended in March to encompass all races). “A tremendous number of phone calls with leads that could have been followed up did not come in when they profiled the serial killer as a white man,” says Zachary, La., police chief Joey Watson, whose detectives provided the crucial link to Lee.
Coming on the heels of another highly publicized profiling bungle involving sniper suspect John Muhammad, this latest misjudgment further defies the stereotype of serial killers as white loners. “The danger in these cases is you get too constricted a view … of who you’re looking for,” says former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary. The fact that the Louisiana victims were of different races should have been a clue from the outset: “Black male serial killers are much more likely to cross racial lines.”
For at least a decade, police had their eyes on Lee. His alleged crimes-some of which resulted in prison time-range from peeping Tom violations to attempted murder. (Among buddies, says family friend Otis Wilson, Lee would admit that he “peeped and masturbated,” even at times spying on his aunts.) The cops in Zachary considered Lee a suspect in the murders of two women-Connie Warner in 1992 and Randi Mebruer in 1998-who were killed near a cemetery that he frequented. But police could never compile the evidence necessary to arrest him.
The Mebruer case proved critical in connecting Lee to the serial killings. Last summer, authorities linked three of the serial victims to a single murderer. Seeking a DNA match, a multi-agency task force gathered cheek swabs of more than 1,000 men. But despite being told by a Zachary police detective that Lee was a suspect in the Warner and Mebruer killings-which shared traits with the serial murders, like the killer’s seizure of “trophies,” such as rings, from victims-authorities took no sample from Lee. It wasn’t until last month that he was finally swabbed-not by the task force, but by the state attorney general’s office, acting on a tip from Zachary cops who were separately investigating the Mebruer murder.
One week ago, a lab matched Lee’s DNA to evidence from one of the serial victims, and by extension, to four others. By then, Lee had fled, prompting a frantic manhunt. Two days later, authorities nabbed Lee, who is now a suspect in a growing number of murders, in front of a tire shop in Atlanta. (Lee’s public defender, Bruce Unangst, could not be reached for comment.) “He was very docile,” said Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington. “He acted somewhat relieved it was over.” As did, without doubt, the countless women he might have continued to prey upon.
