ABC’s Primetime Thursday will air its investigation of the south Louisiana serial killings tonight at 9 p.m. The program is set to feature a best-selling crime novelist as the principle authority on the case.
Primetime’s Dianne Sawyer interviewed author Patricia Cornwell, a former Charlotte Observer crime reporter and Virginia volunteer medical examiner, months before the task force identified Derrick Todd Lee as the alleged serial killer.
With Lee’s arrest, producers now hope to use Cornwell’s statements to explore the accuracy of the FBI behavior analyst’s profile and the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force’s description of the killer, media reports state. Lee, a black man who reportedly drove a gold Mitsubishi, is far from the white male, white truck descriptions police released earlier this year.
During Cornwell’s visit to Baton Rouge in March, she told a Reveille reporter she thinks profiles are dangerous because they cause people to eliminate those who are right in front of them. “People should be looking for anyone anywhere,” Cornwell said in March.
Thursday’s program also will evaluate whether or not task force members released enough information during the search and will highlight current forensic technologies, including those used at The Body Farm, Primetime producer Lee Hoffman told The Advocate.
The Body Farm is a University of Tennessee facility where researchers and forensic science students study how humans decompose.
The program will air in Baton Rouge on ABC affiliate WBRZ Channel 2, which appears on Cox Cable channel five.