Latest / Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast / A Little Less Mess: The Third Baton Rouge Serial Killer (Jeffery Lee Guillory)

Transcript

A Little Less Mess: The Third Baton Rouge Serial Killer (Jeffery Lee Guillory) · Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Everyone, Welcome to bless Us Mess Sae. I'm True Crumb Podcast.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Kara, Just Kara. This is a little less mess.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: This is our minisode. So if you're looking for our
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: usual porch banter and our weekly poor you can catch
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Stew and I on Thursdays for our main case episodes
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and on Fridays over on Patreon. But on Mondays we
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: skip the chit chat, we ditch the drinks, and we
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: get straight to the facts. So go ahead and grab
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: your coffee and let's get into it. Tonight, we are
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: going to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. If you know anything about
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Southern true crime, you know that between the mid nineteen
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: nineties and two thousand and four, the city of Baton
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Rouge was absolutely paralyzed by fear. Women were being murdered
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: in their homes, in abandoned buildings and on the side
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  Speaker 1: of the road. For a long time, the public and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the police thought they were hunting one man, but the
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  Speaker 1: truth was far more terrifying. Baton Rouge wasn't dealing with
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: one serial killer. They were dealing with three, all operating
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in the same city at the exact same time. We've
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  Speaker 1: all heard of Derreck Todd Lee. Most people know the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: name Sean Vincent Gillis, but today we're talking about the
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  Speaker 1: third man, the killer who hid in the shadows of
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the other two and whose victims waited the longest for justice.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: This is the story of Jeffrey Lee Gillery. To understand
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: how Jeffrey Lee Guillery operated, you have to understand what
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: it was like to be a woman in Baton Rouge
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  Speaker 1: in the early two thousands. Between nineteen ninety two and
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and four, dozens of women went missing or
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  Speaker 1: were found murdered in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas.
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  Speaker 1: The community was in a state of absolutely terror. Women
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  Speaker 1: were buying guns, traveling in packs, and refusing to go
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  Speaker 1: out at night. In two thousand and three, law enforcement
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: finally got a massive brick. DNA evidence linked several of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the murders to a man named Derrick Todd Lee. He
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: was arrested and the city collectively exhaled the Baton Rouge
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: serial killer had been caught. But then more bodies were
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: found and the DNA didn't match Derek Todd Lee. In
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four, police arrested Sean Vincent Gillis, tying
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: him to another string of horrific murders. Gillis confessed to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: killing eight women. Once again, the city thought the nightmare
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: was over. Two serial killers had been operating in the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: same area, and both were now behind bars. But there
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: was a problem. Even with Lee and Gillis locked up,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: there were still unsolved murders sitting cold in the files
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: of the Baton Rouge police department. There were still women
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: whose killers had not been found. Detectives realized a terrifying truth.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Derreck Todd Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis didn't act alone
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  Speaker 1: in terrorizing Baton Rouge. There was a third killer. Three
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  Speaker 1: of those unsolved cases belonged to Florida Edwards, Sylvia Cobb,
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  Speaker 1: and Renee Newman. Florida Edwards was thirty six years old.
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  Speaker 1: Her remains were found in July of nineteen ninety nine,
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  Speaker 1: hidden inside an abandoned building. Two years later, in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and one, the body of Sylvia Cobb was discovered,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and then on April eleventh, two thousand and two, forty
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  Speaker 1: six year old Renee Newman was found dead on the
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  Speaker 1: side of the road behind an old, abandoned department store
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  Speaker 1: in Baton Rouge. Like the others, she had been brutally
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  Speaker 1: beaten and strangled. For years, these women were treated as tragic,
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  Speaker 1: disconnected cold cases. Their families waited for answers, while the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: media focused heavily on the higher profile victims of Derreck,
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  Speaker 1: Todd Lee. Because these three women lived closer to the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: margins of society, their cases didn't generate the same massive
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: task force or daily headlines. But behind the scenes, evidence
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: had been collected at Sylvia Cobb's crime scene, investigators had
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: recovered a discarded beer can. At the scenes of Florida
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  Speaker 1: Edwards and Renee Newman, investigators had collected DNA profiles of
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  Speaker 1: the killer. For years, that evidence sat in an evidence locker,
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  Speaker 1: waiting for a match. That match finally came through a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: completely unrelated incident. In September of two thousand and six,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a Baton Rouge police officer pulled over a man for
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  Speaker 1: a routine traffic stop. The driver was a man named
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  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lee Guillery. During that stop, Gillery was arrested and
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  Speaker 1: as part of standard procedure, his fingerprints were taken and
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  Speaker 1: entered into the system. When those prints hit the database
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  Speaker 1: and alarm went off. Gilly's finger prince were an exact
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  Speaker 1: match to the prince found on the beer can left
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  Speaker 1: at the crime scene of Sylvia Cobb five years earlier.
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  Speaker 1: Police brought Gillery in for questioning. They sat him down
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  Speaker 1: on September twenty sixth, two thousand and six, and asked
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  Speaker 1: him about Sylvia Cobb, Florida Edwards, and Renee Newman. Gilery
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  Speaker 1: sat in the interrogation room and completely denied knowing any
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  Speaker 1: of the women. He told investigators he had never seen them,
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  Speaker 1: he didn't know him, and he certainly didn't kill him
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  Speaker 1: without a confession or enough concrete forensic evidence to tie
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  Speaker 1: him to the actual murders. At that exact moment, Gillery
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  Speaker 1: walked out of the police station. He was back on
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  Speaker 1: the streets, but it wouldn't be for long. In December
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, a woman named Johnny Rose Martinez
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  Speaker 1: was walking in Lafayette, Louisiana. Suddenly, she was viciously attacked
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  Speaker 1: by a man who tried to kill her and rob her.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Rose fought back and she survived. The man who attacked
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  Speaker 1: her was Jeffrey Lee Gillery. Gillery was arrested and charged
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  Speaker 1: with attempted second degree murder and second degree robbery. This
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: time he wasn't going anywhere. He was locked up awaiting
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  Speaker 1: trial for the attack on Johnny Rose, and while he
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: was sitting in a jail cell, science finally caught up
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  Speaker 1: to him. The Louisiana State Police Crime Lab had been
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: working tirelessly to retest the DNA evidence found at the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: crime scenes of Florida Edwards and Renee Newman. Because Gillery
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  Speaker 1: was now a known violent offender in the system, they
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  Speaker 1: ran his DNA against those profiles from the unsolved murders.
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  Speaker 1: It was a direct hit. The DNA found on Florida
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  Speaker 1: Edwards matched Jeffrey Lee Gillery. The DNA found on Renee
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  Speaker 1: Newman matched Jeffrey Lee Guillery. The third Baton Ridge serial
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: killer finally had a name. On December sixteenth, two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and nine, investigators officially arrested Guillery for the murders while
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: he was already behind bars. They interrogated him for five
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: straight hours. Once again, Guillery denied everything, but this time
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: police didn't need a confession. They had the DNA. Gillery's
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  Speaker 1: legal reckoning happened in stages. First. In twenty ten, a
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: jury found him guilty of the attempted murder and robbery
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  Speaker 1: of Johnny Rose Martinez over in Lafayette. For that horrific attack,
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  Speaker 1: a judge sentenced him to fifty years in prison, but
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors in East Baton Rouge were just getting started. They
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  Speaker 1: wanted him held accountable for the women he had actually killed.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: In December twenty eleven, Gillery stood trial for the two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and two murder of Rent Newman. During the trial,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: his defense attorneys tried to argue that his two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and six and two thousand and nine police interrogations shouldn't
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: be used against him, but the judge shot that one down,
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  Speaker 1: ruling that Guillery had spoken freely and voluntarily. The DNA
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: evidence was simply too strong to overcome. The jury found
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lee Guillery guilty of the second degree murder of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Renee Newman. He was sentenced to life in prison without
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the possibility of pearl. He is currently serving his time
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: at the David Wade Correctional Center in Louisiana. The story
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of Jeffrey Lee Guillery is often overshadowed by Derrick Todd
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  Speaker 1: Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis, but his crimes changed the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: landscape of Louisiana law enforcement forever. For decades, police departments
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in the South operated in silos. Baton Rouge police didn't
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: regularly talk to Lafayette police, Paris sheriffs didn't share files
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: with city cops. But the sheer horror of having three
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: serial killers operating the same geographical area forced agencies to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: wake up. They realized that killers don't care about city
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  Speaker 1: limits or jurisdiction lines. Because of the failures and the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: eventual successes of catching men like Gillery, Lee, and Gillis,
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  Speaker 1: task forces across the South finally started sharing data, sharing DNA,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and talking to each other. And while that change came
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: too late to save Florida Edwards, Sylvia Cobb, and Renee Newman,
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  Speaker 1: it meant that Jeffrey Lee Gillery would spend the rest
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  Speaker 1: of his life in a concrete box, unable to hurt
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  Speaker 1: anyone ever again. And that's our story for today. If
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you want more of the story, or just some porch
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: side company, join stew and me this Thursday for our
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: full length episodes. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple podcast
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: or Spotify or wherever it gets you popodcast so you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: don't miss out Until then, Stay safe, lock your doors,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and keep that porch light on. We'll see you next time.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Bye everyone. Don't you know it's bad life to be
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: supersticious by nothing else. It's working, and it's really learning,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm sick of It's worthy. I camag