The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections said it could not comment on Lee’s medical condition because of privacy laws. An official cause of death has not yet been released, and an autopsy is scheduled.
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Lee was sentenced to death after he was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2002 killing of an LSU graduate student, Charlotte Murray Pace, 22, of Baton Rouge in 2004.
Authorities suspect Lee killed five other women – Trineisha Dené Colomb, Randi Mebruer, Pam Kinamore, Carrie Lynn Yoder and Gina Wilson Green – between 1998 and 2003, but he was never tried in those cases. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected his bid in September, putting him one step closer to execution. 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”. He was also convicted in the 2002 death of Geralyn DeSoto, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. According to news outlet WAFB, Lee was linked to the killing of five other women, which earned him the serial killer designation.
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Ann Pace, mother of Charlotte Pace, told CNN Baton Rouge affiliate WAFB that Lee “had an unwanted seat at the table”. He had been residing on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. She was beaten with an iron, stabbed more than 83 times, and raped. “He was sentenced to death by lethal injection and of course that didn’t happen, and he’s been sitting on death row for nearly 13 years”.
