Serial killer suspect back in Louisiana

ATLANTA, May 28 (UPI) -- The prime suspect in the serial slayings of five Louisiana women was returned to Baton Rouge on Wednesday to face murder and aggravated rape charges.

Derrick Todd Lee was flown to Baton Rouge after he waived extradition at a hearing in Atlanta where he was arrested Tuesday night without incident. A small plane arrived with Lee at Baton Rouge about 2 p.m. CST and he was escorted to jail to await his first court appearance.

Lee, a 34-year-old truck driver from St. Francesville, La., was identified as the prime suspect Monday when Louisiana officials announced DNA had linked him to the five slayings, the focus of an intensive, 10-month-long investigation in southern Louisiana.

"It's been a long, tough road for all of us," said Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade at a news conference Wednesday. "We always tried to keep our eyes on what we needed to keep our eyes on ... that was the victims."

Englade praised the work of federal, state and local investigators who cooperated on the investigation but he said the second phase begins now with the arrest of a suspect.

"We've got a lot of work left to do. We've got a lot pieces left in the puzzle that we have to put together, but we are committed to do that because we have that obligation," he said.

Lee, dressed in blue coveralls and wearing handcuffs, waived his extradition rights in a brief appearance earlier Wednesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks.

A tip led to Lee's arrest outside a tire store about 8:30 p.m. EST Tuesday by two detectives from the Joint Atlanta Police-FBI Armed Robbery Task Force, FBI Special Agent Joe Parris said.

"They found Mr. Lee, approached him, asked him for identification, and he produced identification in his true name and identity and he was taken into custody," the agent said.

Lee was on foot on the store property on the west side of the city, Parris said, but it was not known immediately why he was there. Atlanta police said that they narrowly missed Lee earlier at a homeless shelter and a motel in the city during the manhunt.

Lee was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated rape Monday after DNA tests linked him to the strangulation of Louisiana State University student Carrie Lynn Yoder in March near the Baton Rouge campus. The warrant also links him to the four other serial killings in the area.

U.S. Marshal Richard Mecum said Lee had been working in Atlanta for the past week as a day laborer on construction projects.

Lee, his wife, and their two children fled St. Francisville shortly after he gave a DNA sample to investigators May 5 in another murder investigation. His wife and their children were not with him in Atlanta and authorities are not sure of there whereabouts.

Lee is also a suspect in two previous killings at Zachary, La., authorities said.

A state attorney general's investigator working on one of those cases obtained the DNA swab that eventually linked Lee to the serial killings. Lee is a suspect in the slaying of Connie Warner in 1992 and the killing of Randi Mebruer in 1998 at Zachary. Police said they never had enough evidence to arrest Lee in those cases. The first of the serial slayings was at Baton Rouge in 2001.

The DNA swab from Lee was awaiting analysis along with hundreds of others obtained by investigators in recent months when circumstances gave it more importance. A new sketch of a suspect in a 2002 slaying released Friday caused Zachery police to push for an urgent analysis of Lee's DNA.

A federal-state task force was formed last year after DNA testing linked the slayings of Yoder, Gina Wilson Green, Charlotte Murray Pace, Pam Kinamore, and Dene Colomb to the serial killer who FBI profilers said was a stalker who used his charm to gain the confidence of his victims.