Melinda Deslatte, The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- A woman stalked by serial killings suspect Derrick Todd Lee said she repeatedly tried to give investigators his name in the months three women were murdered, but she says she was turned away because police said they were looking for a white man.
“Every time one of these women was killed, I knew it was him,” Collette Dwyer, a firefighter from St. Francisville, said at a news conference Tuesday. “I called people and no one listened. I called a lot of people.”
Lee, who is black, was arrested in May after a nearly yearlong search for the killer linked to the murders of six south Louisiana women through DNA evidence left behind on their bodies. Police say a DNA sample pointed to the 35-year-old Lee, who remains in prison awaiting trial for two of the murders. He has pleaded innocent, and prosecutors say they intend to seek the death penalty.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade, who led the task force hunting the serial killer, confirmed to The Advocate newspaper that Dwyer gave the task force Lee’s name. Englade told the newspaper that he did not know if investigators told her they were looking for a white man, but he said a state trooper and an FBI agent followed up on her tip.
Englade did not return phone calls Tuesday after the news conference.
Sterling Colomb, brother of serial killings victim Trineisha Dene Colomb, said police should have acted on every tip they received during the investigation. Colomb was the fifth known victim of the serial killer.
“They didn’t want to listen to anybody’s tips. They were looking for a white guy,” Colomb said after listening to Dwyer’s statements.
Police formed the task force in August 2002, shortly after connecting a third woman’s death to a single killer. Thousands of tips poured into a hot line, and police started a massive DNA dragnet, swabbing at least 1,200 men to track the killer.
But they spent many months of their investigation looking mainly for a white man. In March -- seven months after the task force was formed and after two more women were killed -- police broadened the description, saying the man could be of any race.
Dwyer said she called the state police, the attorney general’s office, the district attorney’s office, the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office and her local police department, each time providing Lee’s name. She was directed to call the task force, but she said her phone calls to the task force went unheeded.
“No one listened,” she said. She said she even tried to call the husband of one of the serial killer’s victims, but the phone number was changed.
Ultimately, it was an attorney general’s investigator who wasn’t connected to the task force who independently took Lee’s DNA and matched it to that of the murderer.
Dwyer said Lee stalked her for two years beginning in 1999. In detail, she recounted Lee’s advances, saying she was so terrified that she moved out of her home for six months and stayed with different people.
In one incident, Dwyer said, Lee walked into her apartment uninvited and sat down to explain that he was interested in dating her.
“Anywhere I went, he was there,” Dwyer said.
Dwyer spoke from her attorney’s office Tuesday, saying she felt she owed the victims’ families an apology and she felt persistent guilt over having been unable to help. She said her counselor told her she should talk about her experiences.
“I’m not here to criticize anybody’s job or what they’ve done. I just think we have a major communication gap,” Dwyer said, sitting next to her husband and two attorneys.
Englade has met with Dwyer and her lawyer Karl Koch and told The Advocate that Dwyer was looking for a reward. Several rewards, some as high as $100,000, were offered during the search, but no reward money was ever divvied up.
“If she’s entitled to it, of course she should get it,” Koch said.