Police call off driveway dig after failed search

JACKSON, La. -- After two days of digging up concrete slabs, police did not unearth the body of a missing woman they believed might have been buried by the man suspected in the south Louisiana serial killings.

East Feliciana Parish Sheriff Talmadge Bunch called off the search Friday after splitting open parts of two driveways and inspecting a third concrete area. All three concrete slabs were poured by the man accused of being the serial killer, Derrick Todd Lee, who once worked for a concrete company.

"We checked out three leads, and it turned up nothing so we're going to wait and see if we get more leads," Bunch said.

Bunch said a friend of Lee's told them Lee poured all three concrete driveways at night, within a few days of the disappearance of Randi Mebruer, 28, of Zachary, missing since 1998.

Police ripped up a slab with a backhoe Thursday night at a home where Lee once stayed with his girlfriend, finding a 4-inch fragment that turned out to be an animal bone, according to authorities.

On Friday, they moved on to inspect two more driveways a few miles away and not far from Lee's St. Francisville home.

Cadaver dogs searched the area on and around the first concrete slab, near a barn, but turned up nothing.

Police checked a second slab down the road, in front of a run-down wooden house where Lee's girlfriend once lived, and LSU scientists used ground penetrating radar to X-ray the concrete after the dogs' handlers said they didn't determine anything conclusive about the driveway.

The radar search raised enough questions that police spray painted a section of the driveway and used a jackhammer to open it up, with the sheriff and other detectives tossing aside large chunks of concrete as they searched for signs of Mebruer's body. Again, the search turned up nothing.

Lee's DNA sample matched the DNA profile of the serial killer, according to police. He faces charges of murder and rape in the deaths of five women in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the attempted murder and attempted rape of a sixth woman in St. Martin Parish, and kidnapping and burglary. He is being held in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison without bond. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty.

The public defender's office has been assigned to handle his case, but Mike Mitchell, head of the office, hasn't returned calls seeking comment.

Zachary Police Chief Joey Watson has said he long suspected Lee was responsible for the disappearance of Mebruer, as well as the 1992 slaying of Connie Warner, 41, and the 1993 machete attack of two teenagers in a cemetery who were not killed.

Police are digging into other cases. In at least a half dozen parishes, investigators are reviewing a timeline of Lee's crimes and travels or sending evidence to the State Police Crime Lab to determine if Lee is connected to any unsolved murders, attacks or rapes.

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On the Net

Homicide Task Force: www.brgov.com/TaskForce/default.asp