Police: Seventh Murder Linked to La. Serial Killings Suspect

BATON ROUGE, La. – The man arrested in the serial murders of six Louisiana women has been linked by DNA evidence (search) to another slaying, police said Wednesday.

Derrick Todd Lee (search) had previously been called a suspect in the disappearance of Randi Mebruer (search), 28, who vanished from her home in Zachary, north of Baton Rouge, in April 1998.

Zachary Police Chief Joey Watson said the state police crime lab matched DNA found at Mebruer's home to Lee's genetic sample.

"That investigation has finally given us the physical links that we hoped for and are satisfied we found," Watson said. Police declined to elaborate.

Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Lee on a count of first-degree murder. He already is being held in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on murder charges in other slayings.

A phone call to Lee's public defender was not immediately returned.

Police previously have said DNA evidence links Lee to the murders of six women since 2001.He has been charged in three killings, and trials for one murder and another attack on a woman are scheduled for May. He has pleaded innocent.

It was the Mebruer case that led to Lee in the serial killings investigation.

An investigator with the attorney general's office working on the case took the crucial DNA sample that police said initially connected Lee to the serial murders, bypassing the task force that had been hunting the killer for 10 months.

The search unnerved women across Louisiana until Lee was caught in Atlanta in May. During the hunt, police launched a DNA dragnet in which they took cheek scrapings and swabbings from more than 1,000 men.

Police said they are still trying to connect Lee to the 1992 murder of Connie Warner, who lived only a few blocks from Mebruer in the small community that hasn't seen another murder since Mebruer's.

Warner's mother, who attended the news conference announcing the DNA match to the Mebruer murder, said she has no doubt that Lee is responsible for her daughter's killing as well.

"We've believed that for a while," Betty Brooks said.