Serial Killer, Rapist, Mutilator | Crime Up Close | Born To Kill?
in the mid 90s a decade of disturbing homicides would begin in the city of Baton Rouge every time that we heard of the corner being called out it was a Here We Go Again scenario as the macabra discoveries accumulated citizens were left scared to walk the streets no one was safe and Baton Rouge became paralyzed with fear the hunt was on for a predator with a twisted desire for a grotesque brand of bloodshed head both of her hands had been uh severed and removed at the wrist but what was driving the mind of this most unlikely
monster they said don’t you know you’re living with a serial killer and was he born to kill I’m homicidal Mania Louisiana is a state celebrated for its southern hospitality and the City of Baton Rouge is certainly no exception down here you walk past somebody that you’ve never seen your life and you’ll say hey how how you doing how’s it going um that’s kind of the way that we are in the South however a warm welcome does not await in every part of
town the difference between North Baton Rouge and downtown and South Baton Rouge are night and day North Baton Rouge at that time and and even now is is a very dangerous place women who live high-risk Lifestyles walk up and down the streets freely drugs flow rampantly throughout that whole area and murder is a common occurrence one such woman was local Mother of two Donna Bennett Johnston she was addicted to crack uh for the most part wasn’t really anything else that kept her out that was the thing that kept her on the streets uh
looking for the next high and everything she was a mother still you know she just had a problem to me she was just you know great person great woman like uh everything that she did she just gave all her heart and soul to it you know she was one of them people they love deeply you know i’ I remember calling me in the evening times just out of the blue just to say I love you Justin had become accustomed to his mother’s disappearances some days she would just pop out and leave and would wake up the next morning and she would be gone but
all in all we just you know kept faith that she would be all right and one day she would you know get better but in 20 4 a chilling Discovery was made two residents were out looking for their lost dog on benur Road between Nicholson and Burbank this morning when they spotted what looked like the body of a woman lying in the drainage ditch on the south side of the bridge cause of death strangulation well I was uh I think it was a Friday um me and my little brother it was about probably about 2:00 we had just got to the basketball gym
we were in the middle of a game playing and uh I hear my phone ring it was my father’s ringtone and I knew something was wrong that’s when he told me they found your mama dead this morning all the sound in the room disappeared um I me there’s nothing that compares to hearing those words detective Todd Morris was called to the disturbing scene she was recovered here face down displayed on the side of this Canal bank there was a jacket covering her right arm and upon removing that it was discovered then that uh the suspect had
severed and taken her arm from the elbow down uh which was not located here at the crime scene there was also on her right thigh a approximately 3x 3in square area that had been removed and had been taken by the suspect investigators believe the victim to be the latest work of a serial killer who was snatching women from the streets of North battle Rouge it’s a a city’s worst nightmare it’s an investigator’s worst nightmare to know that you have a person that’s is going around doing these type of horrendous acts to innocent female
victims and what he’s capable of this sick individual is praying in our community praying on innocent females so you’re thinking okay when’s the next victim going to happen yet few would have dared imagine that this sadistic murderer had been claiming victims for a decade [Music] in 2004 the Louisiana City of Baton Rouge was overwhelmed by a succession of sadistic murders yet this most unusual story had begun 10 years prior in seemingly insignificant circumstances in March of 1994 Terry Le Mo a Baton Rouge native
would be introduced to a man who would change her life I was a manager at a um convenience store and I liked working the night shift one of my best friends comes in one night and tells me I’ve met this person that you just have to meet and she introduced me to Sean the feeling I got from him was um more like a a nerdy little guy and safe because he just had the look of um someone who had just walked off of a college campus you know somebody who um would be playing with the neighbor’s kids after my first meeting with Sean he
seemed like somebody I wouldn’t mind saying again then he started meeting me at my house and it went on from there as the pair’s relationship progressed Terry and Shawn began to learn more about one another he lived in a very nice house mostly things were all over the place you know dishes were not washed and you know things were here and there nothing was in its place so to say [Music] we were getting along so well together that there was just only one more test that he had to pass as far as I was concerned and that
was was he safe enough to live the rest of my life with I started a fight one night and uh slapped him on purpose to see what his reaction would be and he stomped his foot and said boys aren’t supposed to hit girls and girls aren’t supposed to hit boys that’s just the way it’s supposed to be and so I figured I’m safe however Terry had not learned everything there was to know about sha located just across the street from the convenience store was St James Place a retirement home for the elderly one of the residents was
82-year-old Anne Brian she was a a sweet sweet lady she had a loving family she had spent her life being respected by those who knew her on the evening of the 20th of March Anne was due to be visited by her nurse for a regular checkup the exterior door that led to her apartment had been left unlocked and an had left her door slightly a jar so that the nurses could give her her medication upon arriving at Anne’s room in the early hours of the next morning the nurses were to encounter an atrocious scene her body was discovered the next
morning by some workers at the retirement home this was an 82-year-old woman who had been brutally brutally attacked and the things that had been done to her were unbelievable police had no clue as to what any motive would be or why anybody would want her dead it was a mystery at that time even for a seasoned police officer to see a crime of that sort of violence and that and that heinous you can look at those guys and know something really bad happened here just the thought of who would do something like this to a
woman like Anne Brian had police mystified Terry Le Mo’s new love interest sha Vincent Gillis was a man with a troubling family history his difficulties began with a traumatic incident involving his father Norman and his mother Ivon Norman got drunk and Ivonne came into the house and Norman had a gun to her young son head and threatened to kill Ivonne and to kill Shawn Norman was taken away from the family and put into a mental institution Sean’s father was a troubled man she certainly drank a lot he he
experimented with some uh medication and stuff and that created a lot of difficulties in his life at high school the young sha would be mentored by his teacher Robert bum I started here in the 70s and I taught here for 30 years I met Shawn basically liked him he wasn’t super popular uh he probably was a fringe kid a little bit uh cuz he didn’t play sports and wasn’t elected to any offices but he was a good kid to have in class cuz he did his work didn’t cause any trouble at all never despite outward appearances Robert
believed that sha was far from a happy child most of the kids that went to that school their parents showed up for everything and and his parents never came he absolutely had to take care of himself cuz I don’t remember him ever having anybody at home that he mentioned that was waiting for him I think you know when a kid is kind of has a family like he had because it brought out a lot of anger and U low self-worth wasn’t any question about [Music] it in meeting Terry Le Moy later in his life sha had finally found someone with
whom he could share his insecurities what they saw in each other was someone who could provide what they each needed and so they fit very perfectly like that yet Shawn still had vices that he would try to hide from Terry sha was an avid pornography person he he I would catch him now and then that had a pretty big impact on our [Music] relationship the fact that Terry worked at night in a abled sha to live out his fantasies she had no idea what he was doing and he would spend a lot of nights out just driving around and looking for
women one woman walking those very same streets was Katherine Hall Katherine Hall had a what we call a high-risk lifestyle and she was known to be involved in prostitution from time to time for women who make their living through sex in North Baton Rouge it’s a very dangerous occupation you become an easy Mark for anybody who is looking to harm a woman on the night of the 4th of January 1999 the risks associated with Katherine Hall’s lifestyle would prove too great to overcome Miss Hall was found at the end of a dead end Street and uh she had a
severe post-mortal mutilation of her body and she was placed under a sign that said uh dead end it was obvious to police that this was an no typical murder the number of stab wounds the viciousness with which she was attacked all indicated that the person who had done this was full of Rage toward women as investigators began working the case they were deeply troubled by the circumstances of Katherine Hall’s Discovery her body you know was displayed you know in a manner which to be found it wasn’t discreetly hidden and she had you know substantial
amount of postmortem cuttings uh to her body as well as um uh ligature marks the only evidence authorities were able to recover was found across town but offered little encouragement the only real Clues police had were her jacket and her personal items but there were no fingerprints found there were no forensics to indicate at that time who had killed this woman detectives were well aware that the signs being left by this killer were ominous the crime scene would indicate to me that the it would not be the person’s most likely first homicide and
it probably wouldn’t be the last as authorities began to chase down leads in the hall case they soon found themselves at a dead end we really didn’t have development any leads at all after Catherine Hall um we continued you know to try to follow up on that information that we had uh trying to backtrack her whereabouts and who she might have come in contact with although the investigation was going nowhere fast fears that the killer might soon strike again were mounting if he is doing these types of Acts now is he going to stop or is he going to
continue on meanwhile the cracks that had begun to appear in the relationship between Terry Le Moy and sha Vincent Gillis were beginning to widen he would come home at 5:00 in the evening and I would be just going to sleep to go to work at 11:00 at night because I worked from 11:00 to 6:00 in the morning so we didn’t see each other too much I would go to bed and there were times when I would get up and find him gone and ask where he had been and he couldn’t give me an answer naturally you think the worst I’m
thinking who’s the other woman you’re going to see Sean’s Behavior would continue to arouse suspicion one morning when he picked me up there was a horrible smell in the car and I asked him what on Earth was that odor and he told me he had hit an animal on the way to picking me up and there was still Blood on the uh the car and that’s what the the bad smell was so I I didn’t think twice about it and I I said well please wash the car and I got out of the car came into the house and went to bed and he told me he was leaving to
go wash the car and nothing else was ever spoken about it sha also began to develop a fascination with computers exploring the darkest corners of the internet this is when internet was just beginning and he was just mesmerized with a computer what got him interested was his obsession with going to websites that featured the bodies of dead women he became obsessed with these bodies he saw them on a daily basis one time he he told me come see these pictures he said this happened in Baton Rouge and he showed me uh a write
up about a woman that had been found in a ditch and that shocked me so much I I just told him I don’t want to see I don’t want to see [Applause] anymore outside of his online interests sha kept a small group of friends with whom he would fall in and out of touch one such acquaintance was Johnny may Williams he met her in the store where he worked she would occasionally come over and clean his house they got high together they enjoyed each other’s company Johnny may was a very special person she was known to all as a great
cook she would do her friends and neighbors hair she was a loved woman Johnny May’s decision to go out onto the streets of North Baton Rouge in January of 2003 left her family anxious for her safety that night she did not return home as a predatory killer continued to stalk the streets [Music] in the 1990s a killer had begun snatching women from the Louisiana capital of Batton Rouge in 2003 45 year-old Johnny may Williams had disappeared from the streets it would be 9 months before the mystery of her whereabouts was
answered I received a phone call if we had another victim in remote cor our Parish this was in October of 2003 a young boy who was out riding in the woods near his home and his dog disappeared so he went looking for his dog and instead this young boy founder body upon examining the body detective Morris was confronted by a morbid Revelation her remains were not covered up she had been there for some time um there was a jacket on near her right hand uh and once you got up close and started examining her remains you can
see that uh both of her hands had been severed and removed at the [Music] wrist the apparent similarities to the hall case were ominous the manner of death which which we’ve identified as a strangulation ligature marks were identified and now you’re thinking back to your Catherine Hall vict with the postmortem cutting and some dismember took place the results of the autopsy would identify the body as that of Johnny may [Music] Williams the thought that they were dealing with a deeply depraved killer had Todd Morris on
edge this type of signature raises great concern for us and obviously he is uh uh progressing what he may be doing with the body and taking the body parts with him so we knew we had a very unique uh individual who we were trying to identify sha Vincent Gillis was a man whose life often strayed beyond the bounds of the ordinary well he certainly had a very close bond with his mother she was a woman who wound up in a very difficult situation and she worked very very hard to try do everything she could to provide for Shawn um in a way that
was best for Shawn in 1992 Ivon Gillis would leave town to pursue her career leaving the house to her now 29-year-old son at the time he was very angry that his mother had left him he felt aband and he really did not have the coping skills to deal with life on his own neighbors reported hearing him outside banging on garbage cans in the middle of the night howling at the moon um so he had a difficult time when she left but it also presented him an opportunity to do what he wanted that’s when he began to really spend a lot of
time on his computer delving into the darker side of life that fascinated him so much 12 years on from Sha’s mother’s departure Baton Rouge was in the midst of a string of horrific murders the latest body discovered just a few blocks from the Gillis house the recovery of the remains of Donna Bennett Johnston found missing an arm and dumped in a drainage ditch plunged the city into a State of Shock Donna Bennett Johnson was a brutal crime scene you could tell that whoever had committed this crime had done it in
in in Fury people began locking their doors locking their Windows women began taking self-defense classes there was such a range between the types of women that were killed that no one was safe and Baton Rouge became paralyzed with fear while the Katherine Hall and Johnny may Williams cases had gone cold investigators were encouraged by the evidence available at the John Crime Scene It looks like uh a vehicle had backed up to that location and uh perhaps backed into the area and maybe she was in the vehicle and then dragged
and thrown into the canal and that vehicle left tiar compressions on the ground we obained the list of the people who had purchased that particular Tire more encouraging still DNA evidence retrieved from the body of Donna Johnston was matched to that found on the other victims we had his DNA profile on three of our victims um and now we have a tire track that we’ve identified that’s left at a crime scene detectives now believed it was merely a matter of time before they would get their man there was some excitement among the uh
the task force members knowing that we were linking these crimes together um so you know we knew we were headed in the right direction as the investigation gathered Pace agent Jeff methvin from the FBI began to narrow down a list of potential suspects the tire mark impression leads were encouraging because uh we knew that our this tire had been at our crime scene and we knew we had a list of people who had purchased this tire in our area and the number one on there was Mr Gillis one morning after I’d gotten home from
work two detectives showed up at the door and wanted to speak with Shawn and uh he walked outside with them which I thought was rather odd why didn’t why couldn’t they talk to him in here in front of me and then he came in and said they want me to go downtown and so we walked out outside and we were standing in the driveway walking toward our vehicles and and ask can I can I smoke a cigarette before we go and of course we said sure um he smokes about half of his cigarette um uh drops on the driveway places his foot on
it to extinguish it and uh he said uh let’s go get this over with at the sheriff’s department agent methvin would question sha Vincent Gillis on his connection to the Donna Bennett Johnston crime scene do you know why we’re talking we’re talking because you had some tire tracks that possibly came from my car there and from those tracks it appears she was unloaded from that vehicle and thrown into that Canal she was not unloaded from my vehicle after the initial interview and gillis’s denials Det detectives were
forced to release him while they continued to build their case having taken a sample of his DNA he came home and uh he cooked we sat down together he didn’t even turn the computer on and we watched a movie together and we spent the evening together and about the end of the evening I said okay I said uh I said what happened I said who’d you kill and uh he said nothing he said he just wanted to spend the evening with you later that same night authorities finally got the news they’d been waiting for we received word from the Louisiana
State Police crime lab that the nuclear DNA profile we had obtained from Gillis uh actually matched the DNA profile from the Katherine Hall and Donna Bennett Johnson crime scene the couple’s romantic night in was to be interrupted by a visit from the task force they burst through the door kick the doors in in every room in the house threw a smoke bomb in here and a bunch of police officers came in and arrested sea I demanded to know what was going on immediately and then that’s when they said don’t you know you’re living with a
serial killer [Music] for Terry the accusations were impossible to comprehend I laughed at him and told him boy do you have the wrong house yet it would not be long before Terry finally saw the true face of the man she had shared her life with I went downtown to the station and I looked at him through the little window and I said tell me that you do what they said you did and Shawn was a goofy looking guy and he just snotted his head and he said I’m sorry honey bunny but [Music] yeah and my whole world just [Music]
ended questioning Gillis began to divulge the chilling details of his crimes and offer an insight into his Twisted mind how did this come to be me does the word monster come to [Music] mind the ligature marks found on his victims would also be explained Don had some type of on her neck or something what what what was it big nylon TI loock [Music] demonstration okay is that simple Mr Gillis told us that uh he had a name for the zip ties that he used to commit his homicides objectification is exactly how I look at it I called my
weapon that sometimes the objectifier because it would turn them from a woman to the object that I would then deal with his primary goal was to uh to kill the victim as soon as possible because it was not the Act of Killing that he was interested in I’m talking about manipulating dead bodies it’s interesting term you used that’s exactly the way I looked at it and would it surprise you that the control of another being’s limbs is a part of it in almost every case where the sexual murderer engage in necrofilia they also
had a partner necrofilia is basically just another deviant sexual arousal pattern this was arousing to him this was really erotic to him and if he wasn’t apprehended it would have continued shockingly the true depths of gillis’s depravity would be revealed when he confessed to further murders including that of Anne Brian in 1994 Mr Gillis had started confessing to the crimes that we were looking at him for and throughout the following week or so he started confessing to other crimes tell me an approximate number
four 5 six 7 it was not surprising to me I anticipate there would probably be more than what he told us about I honestly don’t count I don’t count C I don’t sha Vincent Gillis would go on to admit to the unsold slayings of four more women shockingly bringing his total number of victims to eight gillis’s confession would also explain the truth behind the smell that overwhelmed his car when he collected Terry from work one morning it was until he was arrested that I found out that uh one of his victims was in the trunk of the
car that car still sits in my yard I don’t drive so it still just sits there I guess that’s one of the few times Terry did get to ride with a body in the car without knowing it I mean because that mean she was woman had just been dead you know a few hours earlier the acts that Gillis confessed to engaging in prior to disposing of her body were more shocking still she had beautiful legs one thing that I recall about her and I wanted to keep those legs the legs H I used a sharp knife to cut um I remember trying to get her arm off as
well the dismemberment unfortunately did occur at my house on my kitchen floor I don’t know how much blood y’all found but I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned that place although sha Vincent Gillis had finally been apprehended the question of what might have driven him to such unspeakable violence still loomed large in 2004 the restr of sha Vincent Gillis brought to a close his 10-year reign of terror with Gillis having confessed to the murders of eight women investigators and Associates alike began looking for an insight into the mind of a man
capable of the truly monstrous defense attorney ker Kia recalls his client as someone seemingly at odds with himself there certainly are two different sha gillis’s and two different sha gillis’s were revealed through the course of our investigation I think that’s the nature of the great story of Dr Jackal and Mr Hyde you know how could the wonderful Dr Jackal become the horrendous Mr H Terry Le Mo was forced to reflect on a man she realized she never truly knew I had somebody that was going to be there
someone safe someone lovable and he turned into someone you I didn’t know never think you know everything about anybody ever never the question of what might have compelled sha Vincent Gillis to commit such crimes was one that fascinated those who searched for an explanation he had a great interest in a particular website that he would go to and it had crime scenes from all different crimes uh bodies would be laying there and the police tape would be up and things like that so in retrospect I don’t think he was more
enjoying it just to do it as he was feeding some type of Desire that he had to to have his own crime scene one other thing about um about uh Gillis is he photographed a number of his victims and he did this because he was creating his own pornography what he would do is take a look at those pictures and use that as a stimulant to fantasize about what had happened Gillis himself would claim his twisted and violent perversions had been evident for some time I tried to kill my cousin once to feel her [Music] so how old were you oh we were
about 12] 13 what about funeral homes uh funeral homes this will go back to the childhood I spent a lot of time and my grandmother had a funeral home right across the street and me and my cousin know me we would do morbid things like sleep in the coffins a lot of people can’t believe that but we do it the number of individuals that Harbor these very perverse sadistic fantasies is much much larger than the small number of people who actually act them out the individual who acts out and begins a series of
murders has harbored these fantasies for 15 20 years and unfortunately once they get away with it with one individual they become then emboldened anyone who has these extreme inclinations typically figures out a way to compartmentalize typically people who are driven by sexual compulsion or or there’s a sexual element to their murders um that becomes addictive yeah I know right from wrong as well as you do I know you do but there are certain times when it fuzzes out and it’s really not that I don’t know it anymore it’s like it doesn’t
matter anymore this is my universe I’m God there I am [Music] God at the trial the question of gillis’s mental health was much discussed there are all forms of mental illness um that are genetic and can be inherited and there are indications about Sea’s father having a lot of mental health treatment so I think he would inevitably think about what he’s seen in his father and then think about what have I inherited what is this why I’m like I am ultimately sha Vincent Gillis would be convicted of first-degree murder and
sentenced to life without the benefit of parole so was sha Vincent Gillis simply a man acting out his darkest fantasies or was his compulsion to kill hardwired I don’t believe that sha Gillis was a natural-born killer I believe that he had some kind of psychosis inherited from his father and I believe that that combined later in life with the obsession that he developed for the bodies of dead women compelled him to find some of his own that makes him pretty unique as far as serial killers no I don’t think Gillis was a Born
Killer but in my view there’s a very strong neurobiological component he probably doesn’t understand why he did it at every level but he knows very well that he did it because it was sexually stimulating I don’t think you can find any one thing that brought about the events of sha gillis’s life I know that through the course of our investigation we found that he had brain dysfunction that would make it hard for him to resist impulses nothing about him indicates he was necessarily born to kill I think he conditioned himself into becoming a
killer developing a uh arousal to extreme types of treatment of women that involve violations and death I tell my kids all the time you know as they’re growing up and they’re learning about life that uh they’re they’re there are dragons to slay and Mr Gillis is an example of that whether or not he was made or nurtured to be what he is the end result is he was a dragon and we needed to stop him during his interrogation Gillis would offer his own opinion on the nature or nurture debate at one point I could control
it it’s it’s beyond my control at the moment I’m a homicidal maniac I don’t mean to be although Justin Bennett lost his mother in the worst possible circumstances he has has found peace of mind the way I feel now um I honestly have forgiven what he’s done that’s that’s his life his burden and I can’t let it eat me up in inside forever in spite of the Damage Done by the years she shared with sha Vincent Gillis Terry Le Mo has rebuilt her life closing the book on a story far stranger Than Fiction never in my life would I have
thought that that geeky looking person that came to that store that night would turn out to be the person that he turned out to [Music] be but it’s a chapter of my life that’s given me quite an education
