145. Smells Like Mass Murder Times Two - The Limb Collector (Baton Rouge Serial Killers - Part Four)

Jul 14, 2020

In this episode, the last of a four-part series on what came to be known as the "Baton Rouge Serial Killers," we meet Sean Vincent Gillis - the "other" of the two evil men who rained terror upon women in South Louisiana in the late 90s and early 2000s.  The "original" killer, whom Melissa dubbed "The Key Collector" (because of his penchant for keeping victims' keychains as souvenirs) was Derrick Todd Lee, whose murders, arrest, conviction and death while awaiting execution were chronicled in the first three parts of the series.  Gillis was arrested for the rape, murder and mutilation of three women in the Baton Rouge area in 2004, a full year after Lee was finally brought down.  But Gillis, unlike Lee, once he knew his goose was cooked, became a complete chatterbox, and with little or no coercion by law enforcement, immediately admitted to five - five! - additional murders of five additional female victims over the previous decade.  Gillis' crimes were in many ways even more gruesome than Lee's, as Gillis tended to keep body parts of his  victims - whom he dismembered in his house- in the freezer (hence Melissa's dubbing Gillis "The Limb Collector") - all while his girlfriend - unbelievably - remained clueless until the night he was arrested.  Give a listen as Melissa retells Gillis' awful story - how he was nearly set free when the police inadvertently violated his Fifth Amendment rights - and how Gillis actually kept a file on Derrick Lee, his horrific namesake, so he could compare notes.  Shivers...