The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday that the homicides of three Baton Rouge women who lived “high-risk” lifestyles might be connected.
Lt. Col. Greg Phares would not release names of suspects and said the Sheriff’s Office does not necessarily consider any suspects to be serial killers.
“We’re not going to use the term ‘serial crimes,'” he said at a press conference Wednesday.
The Sheriff’s Office has set up a task force to investigate possible connections in the three homicides. Representa-tives from the Sheriff’s Office, Baton Rouge Police Depart-ment, the FBI, the state Attorney General’s office and the State Police compose the task force.
Homicide cases the task force is investigating include those of Donna Bennett Johnston, 43; Johnnie Mae Williams, 45; and Katherine Hall, 30.
Sheriff’s officers said Johnston’s body was found strangled in a drainage ditch Friday off Ben Hur Road — between Burbank and Nicholson drives — one mile south of campus. Officers would not release other details about the conditions of Johnston’s body.
Randal Calais, who manages an oil field near Ben Hur Road, told The Advocate in a Saturday article that he saw Johnston lying face-down and naked.
Williams’ body was found nude, strangled, beaten and mutilated in a wooded area in northern East Baton Rouge Parish near the town of Pride in October.
Hall also was found nude, beaten, strangled and mutilated in the Vignes Lake subdivision off Hoo Shoo Too and Tigerbend roads in the southeastern part of the parish in January 1999.
Parish Coroner Shannon Cooper said the main similarity in the three cases is the manner in which the women were killed.
Arrest records for the three women led the Sheriff’s Office to the “high-risk” lifestyle label for the three women.
“High-risk” lifestyles include women walking the streets late at night, getting into cars with men they do not know, doing drugs and being arrested for prostitution.
Task force members said the lives of the “average homemakers and businesswomen” in Baton Rouge are in stark contrast to “high-risk” lifestyles associated with the three women in these cases.
No forensic evidence — including DNA or fingerprints — has been linked in any of the cases, Phares said.
He also said similarities exist in the areas in which the bodies were found. The “character” of the areas and the manner in which the bodies were found were similar, he said.
“[The areas were] somewhat isolated, and the bodies were not well hidden,” Phares said.
Williams and Hall were found near construction sites and were known to walk the streets in the neighborhood near the intersection of Acadian Thruway and North Street, according Sheriff’s Office records.
Task force members have not ruled out the connection of other unsolved East Baton Rouge Parish female homicide cases to the Johnston, Williams and Hall cases.
Some community members have asked questions regarding a connection between these three homicides and accused serial killer Derek Todd Lee.
Phares said Lee is not a suspect in the Johnston or Williams cases because he was in Sheriff’s Office custody at the times they were killed. Lee was arrested in May.
Lee has not been ruled out as a suspect in Hall’s death, Phares said.