Condemned serial killer dies in
hospital, not death chamber
Baton Rouge serial murder suspect Derrick Todd Lee appears
in Fulton County Superior Court for an extradition hearing …
NEW
ORLEANS (AP) — Serial killer Derrick Todd Lee was sentenced to be executed
years ago, but instead he died Thursday in a Louisiana hospital.
Lee, 47, was taken from prison to the hospital early Saturday
and died shortly before 9 a.m. Thursday, Department of Public Safety and
Corrections spokeswoman Pam Laborde said in an emailed statement.
He had been sentenced to life for one murder and to death
for killing 22-year-old Charlotte Murray Pace, who was stabbed 81 times and
bludgeoned with an iron in May 2002. DNA evidence linked him to at least five
other killings, officials said.
"It's good that he is not there to take up space that
will now be filled up by remembering Murray and loving Murray," Pace's mother,
Ann Pace, said through tears in a telephone interview Thursday from her home in
Jackson, Mississippi.
Ann Pace
(L) and Lynne Marino, mothers of two of the victims allegedly killed by
suspected Louisiana serial killer …
She
said Lee's death has brought "a tidal wave of memory" and, in a way,
has taken her daughter again. Pace, who has attended every court hearing since
Lee's 2004 conviction, written to legislators and spoken to prisoners, said
Lee's death made her realize that "all of that was just my way of wanting
to keep being Murray's mom. ... I no longer have that way to fight for Murray —
to keep being her mother."
Privacy laws mean the Department of Public Safety and
Corrections cannot discuss why Lee was taken to a hospital Saturday for
emergency treatment, Laborde said. She added that an autopsy will be conducted
to determine the cause of his death.
Lee had been sentenced to life for killing Geralyn DeSoto,
21, in January 2002, and to death for killing Pace four months later. Both
women's throats were cut.
In September the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Lee's
conviction in Pace's killing, rejecting claims that his lawyer should have
brought up more evidence of mental illness.
"Given the compelling evidence that Lee committed five
brutal murders marked by exceptional violence and unsuccessfully attempted
another, he cannot show that counsel's failure to present additional evidence
that he may suffer from other mental disorders, whether or not related to his
troubled upbringing, deprived him of a fair sentencing hearing or resulted in
an unreliable recommendation of death," Justice Scott J. Crichton wrote in
a concurring opinion.
Pace said relatives of Lee's victims have stayed in touch
with each other. She heard from one Wednesday, just keeping in touch, she said,
and from others after Lee's death was announced.
DNA evidence linked Lee to five additional killings from
1998 to 2003; Diane Alexander survived a July 2002 attack to testify against
him in both trials.
In his first trial, Lee was convicted of second-degree
murder, which carries an automatic life sentence. Jurors voted 11-1 to convict
him of first-degree murder, which can bring a death sentence. Because the vote
was not unanimous, he was convicted of the lesser charge.
WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge later reported that the juror who
voted not guilty had become ill during deliberations, was unable to fully
participate and had to cast a vote of not guilty by default.
Lee should have been executed "in punishment for the
horrible, horrible things he did," Pace said. "And it will not be.
But it is what it is. And he is gone. And that has to be enough.
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