Serial Killer, Rapist, Mutilator _ The Baton Rouge Serial Killer

Serial Killer, Rapist, Mutilator _ The Baton Rouge Serial Killer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
In the mid nineties, a decade of disturbing homicides would
begin in the city of Baton Rouge.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Every time that we heard of the corner being called out,
it was a here we go again scenario.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
As the macabre discoveries accumulated, citizens were left scared to
walk the streets.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
No one was safe, and Baton Rouge became paralyzed with fear.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
The hunt was on for a predator with a twisted
desire for a grotesque brand of bloodshed.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
Both of her hands had been severed and removed at
the wrist.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
But what was driving the mind of this most unlikely monster?

Speaker 5 (00:38):
They said, don't you know you're living with a serial killer?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
And was he born to kill mamma? Louisiana is a

(01:18):
state celebrated for its southern hospitality, and the city of
Baton Rouge is certainly no exception.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Down here. You walk past somebody that you've never seen
your life, and you'll say, hey, how you doing, how's
it going. That's kind of out the way that we
are in the South.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
However, a warm welcome does not await in every part
of town.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
The difference between North Baton Rouge and downtown and South
Baton Rouge are night and day.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
North Baton Rouge at that time and even now is
a very dangerous place.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Women who live high risk lifestyles walk up and down
the streets freely. Drugs flow rampantly throughout that whole area,
and murder is a common occurrence.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
One such woman was local mother of two, Donna Bennett Johnston.

Speaker 6 (02:24):
She was addicted to crack for the most part, wasn't
really anything else that kept her out. That was the
thing that kept her on the streets, looking for the
next high and everything. She was a mother still, you know,
she just had a problem. To me, she was just
you know, great person, great woman. Like everything that she did,

(02:49):
she just gave all her heart and soul to it.
You know, she's one of them people that love deeply.

Speaker 7 (02:55):
You know.

Speaker 6 (02:55):
I'd remember calling me in the evening times, just out
of the blue, just to say I love you.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Justin had become accustomed to his mother's disappearances.

Speaker 6 (03:10):
Some days she would just pop out and leave and
would wake up next morning she'd be gone. But all
in all, we just you know, kept faith that she
would be all right and one day she would, you know,
get better.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
But in two thousand and four, a chilling discovery was made.

Speaker 8 (03:34):
Two residents were out looking for their lost dog on
ben Hur Road between Nicholson and Burbank this morning when
they spotted what looked like the body of a woman
lying in the drainage ditch on the south side of
the bridge. Cause of death strangulation.

Speaker 6 (03:49):
Well, I was I think it was a Friday, me
and my little brother. It was about probably about two o'clock.
We had just got to the basketball jump. We were
in the middle of a game playing and I hear
my phone ring. It was my father's ring tongue, and

(04:13):
I knew something was wrong. That's when he told me
they found your mama dead this morning. All the sound
in the room disappeared. There's nothing that compares to hearing
those words.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Detective Todd Morris was cool to the disturbing scene.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
She was recovered here, faced down, displayed on the side
of the canal bank. There was a jacket covering her
right arm, and upon removing that, it was discovered then
that the suspect had severed and taken her arm from
the elbow down, which was not located here at the
crime scene. There was also on her right by a

(05:14):
approximately three by three inch square area that had been
removed and had been taken by the suspect.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Investigators believed the victim to be the latest work of
a serial killer who was snatching women from the streets
of North Baton Rouge.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
So a city's worst nightmare is an investigator's worst nightmare
to know that you have a person that's going around
doing these type of horrendous acts to innocent female victims
and what he's capable of. This sick individual is praying
in our community, praying on innocent females. So you're thinking, Okay,
when's the next victim.

Speaker 5 (05:49):
Going to happen?

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yet few would have dared imagine that this sadistic murderer
had been claiming victims for a decade. In two thousand
and four, the Louisiana city of Baton Rouge was overwhelmed
by a succession of sadistic murders. Yet this most unusual

(06:15):
story had begun ten years prior, in seemingly insignificant circumstances.
In March of nineteen ninety four, Terry Lemoyne, a Baton
Rouge native, would be introduced to a man who would
change her life.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
I was a manager at a convenience store and I
liked working the night shift. One of my best friends
comes in one night and tells me, I've met this
person that you just have to meet, and she introduced
me to Jehan. The feeling I got from him was

(06:56):
more like a nerdy little guy and safe, because he
just had the look of someone who had just walked
off of a college campus, you know, somebody who would
be playing with the neighbor's kids. After my first meeting

(07:21):
with Sean, he seemed like somebody I wouldn't mind seeing again.
Then he started meeting me at my house and it
went on from there.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
As the pair's relationship progressed, Terry and Sean began to
learn more about one another.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
He lived in a very nice house. Mostly things were
all over the place. You know, dishes were not washed,
and you know, things were here and there. Nothing was
in its place. So to say, we were getting along
so well together that there was just only one more
test that he had to pass as far as I

(08:07):
was concerned, and that was was he safe enough to
live the rest of my life with. I started a
fight one night and slapped him on purpose to see
what his reaction would be, and he stomped his foot

(08:27):
and said boys aren't supposed to hit girls, and girls
aren't supposed to hit boys. That's just the way it's
supposed to be, and so I figured I'm safe.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
However, Terry had not learned everything there was to know
about Sean. Located just across the street from the convenience
store was Saint James's Place, a retirement home for the elderly.
One of the residents was eighty two year old and Brian.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
She was a sweet, sweet lady. She had a loving family.
She had spent her life being respected by those who
knew her.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
On the evening of the twentieth of March, Anne was
due to be visited by her nurse for a regular checkup.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
The exterior door that led to her apartment had been
left unlocked, and Anne had left her door slightly ajar
so that the nurses could give her her medication.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Upon arriving at Anne's room in the early hours of
the next morning, the nurses were to encounter an atrocious scene.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Her body was discovered the next morning by some workers
at the retirement home. This was an eighty two year
old woman who had been brutally, brutally attacked, and the
things that had been done to her were unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Police had no clue as to what a motive would
be or why anybody would want her dead. It was
a mystery at that time, even for a seasoned police
officer to see a crime of that sort of violence
in that heinous You could look at those guys and
know something really bad happened here.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Just the thought of who would do something like this
to a woman like Anne Bryan had police mystified.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Terry LeMoyne's new love interest, Sean Vincent Gillis, was a
man with a troubling family history. His difficulties began with
a traumatic incident involving his father, Norman and his mother, Yvonne.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Norman got drunk and Yvonne came into the house and
Norman had a gun to her young son's head and
threatened to kill Yvan and to kill Sean. Norman was
taken away from the family and put into a mental institution.

Speaker 9 (11:12):
Sean's father was a troubled man. He certainly drank a lot,
He experimented with some medication and stuff, and had created
a lot of difficulties in his life.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
At high school, the young Sean would be mentored by
his teacher Robert Bumm.

Speaker 10 (11:34):
I started here in the seventies and I taught here
for thirty years. I met Sean, basically liked him. He
wasn't super popular. He probably was a fringe kid a
little bit because he didn't play sports and wasn't elected
to any offices. But he was a good kid to

(11:55):
have in class because he did his work and didn't
cause in trouble at all.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Never despite outward appearances, Robert believed that Sean was far
from a happy child.

Speaker 10 (12:09):
Most of the kids who went to that school their
parents showed up for everything, and his parents never came.
He absolutely had to take care of himself because I
don't remember never have anybody at home that he mentioned
that was waiting for him. I think you know when
a kid is kind of as a family like he had,

(12:31):
because they brought out a lot of anger and low
self worth. Wasn't he question about it?

Speaker 1 (12:40):
In meeting Terry Lemoyne later in his life, Sean had
finally found someone with whom he could share his insecurities.

Speaker 9 (12:49):
What they saw in each other was someone who could
provide what they each needed, and so they fit very
perfectly like that.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yet Sean still had vices that he would try to
hide from.

Speaker 11 (13:04):
Terry.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
Sean was an avid pornography person. He he I would
catch him now and then. That had a pretty big
impact on our relationship.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
The fact that Terry worked at night enabled Sean to
live out his fantasies. She had no idea what he
was doing, and he would spend a lot of nights
out just driving around and looking for women.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
One woman walking those very same streets was Catherine Hall.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Catherine Hall had a what we call a high risk
lifestyle and she was known to be involved in prostitution
from time to time.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
For women who make their living through sex in North
Baton Rouge, it's a very dangerous occupation. You become an
easy mark for anybody who is looking to harm a woman.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
On the night of the fourth of January nineteen ninety nine,
the risks associated with Catherine Hall's lifestyle would prove too
great to overcome.

Speaker 12 (14:26):
Miss Hall was found at the end of a dead
end street and she had a severe post mortal mutilation
of her body, and she was placed under a sign
that said dead end.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
It was obvious to police that this was an o
typical murder. The number of stab wounds, the viciousness with
which she was attacked all indicated that the person who
had done this was full of rage toward women.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
As investigators began working the case, they were deeply troubled
by the same circumstances of Catherine Holl's discovery.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
Her body was displayed, you know, in a manner which
to be found. It wasn't discreetly hidden, and she had,
you know, a substantial amount of post mortem cuttings to
her body, as well as ligature marks.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
The only evidence authorities were able to recover was found
across town, but offered little encouragement.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
The only real clues police hide were her jacket and
her personal items, but there were no fingerprints found. There
were no forensics to indicate at that time who had
killed this woman.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Detectives were well aware that the signs being left by
this killer were ominous.

Speaker 12 (15:49):
Crime scene would indicate to me that it would not
be the person's most likely first homicide, and it probably wouldn't.

Speaker 5 (15:56):
Be the last.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
As authorities began to chase down leads in the Hall case,
they soon found themselves at a dead end.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
We really didn't have about many leads at all.

Speaker 12 (16:09):
After a Catherine Hall.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
We continue to you know to try to follow up
on that information that we had, trying to backtrack her
whereabouts and who she might have come in contact with.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Although the investigation was going nowhere fast, fears that the
killer might soon strike again were munting.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
If he is doing these chapter backs now, is he
going to stop or is he going to continue on?

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Meanwhile, the cracks that had begun to appear in the
relationship between Terry Lemoyne and Sean Vincent Gillis were beginning
to widen.

Speaker 5 (16:54):
He would come home at five in the evening and
I would be just going to sleep to go to
work at eleven at night, because I worked from eleven
to six in the morning, so we didn't see each
other too much. I would go to bed, and there
were times when I would get up and find him

(17:16):
gone and ask where he had been, and he couldn't
give me an answer. Naturally, you think the worst. I'm thinking,
who's the other woman you're going to see?

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Sean's behavior would continue to arouse suspicion.

Speaker 5 (17:32):
One morning, when he picked me up, there was a
horrible smell in the car, and I asked him what
on earth was that odor? And he told me he
had hit an animal on the way to picking me up,
and there was still blood on the car, and that's

(17:55):
what the bad smell was. So I didn't think twice
about it, and I said, well, please wash the car,
and I got out of the car, came into the
house and went to bed, and he told me he
was leaving to go wash the car, and nothing else
was ever spoken about it.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Sean also began to develop a fascination with computers, exploring
the darkest corners of the Internet.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
This is when Internet was just beginning and he was
just mesmerized with a computer.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
What got him interested was his obsession with going to
websites that featured the bodies of dead women. He became
obsessed with these bodies. He saw them on a daily basis.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
One time he told me, come see these pictures. He said,
this happened in Baton Rouge, and he showed me a
write up about a woman that had been found in
a ditch, and that shocked me so much. I just
told him I don't want to see. Don't want to
see anymore.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Outside of his online interests, Sean kept a small group
of friends with whom he would fall in and out
of touch. One such acquaintance was Johnny May Williams.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
He met her in the store where he worked. She
would occasionally come over and clean his house. They got
high together. They enjoyed each other's company. Johnny May was
a very special person. She was known to all as
a great cook. She would do her friends and neighbor's hair.
She was a loved woman.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Johnny May's decision to go out onto the streets of
north Baton Rouge in January of two thousand and three
left her family anxious for her safety. That night, she
did not return home, as a predatory killer continued to
stalk the streets. In the nineteen nineties, a killer had

(20:07):
begun snatching women from the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge.
In two thousand and three, forty five year old Johnny
May Williams had disappeared from the streets. It will be
nine months before the mystery of her whereabouts was answered.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
Our recieve de Fancall, who had another victim in remote
Corporate Parish. This was in October of two thousand and three.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
A young boy who was out riding in the woods
near his home and his dog disappeared, so he went
looking for his dog and instead, this young boy found
about it.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Upon examining the body, Detective Morris was confronted by a
morbid revelation.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Her remains were not covered up, she had been there
for some time. There was a jacket one near her
right hand, and once you get up close and start
examining her remains, you can see that both of her
hands had been severed and removed at the wrist.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
The apparent similarities to the whole case were ominous.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
The manner of death, which we've identified as a strangulation.
Ligature marks were identified and now you're thinking back to you,
Catherine Hall victim where the post mortem cutting, as I
just remember it took place.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
The results of the autopsy would identify the body as
that of Johnny may Williams. The thought that they were
dealing with a deeply depraved killer had Todd Morris on edge.

Speaker 4 (21:54):
This type of signature raises grave concern for us. And
obviously he is progressing what he may be doing with
the body and taking the body parts with him. So
we knew we had a very unique individual who were
trying to identify.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Sean Vincent Gillis was a man whose life often strayed
beyond the bounds of the ordinary.

Speaker 9 (22:24):
Well, he certainly had a very close bond with his mother.
She was a woman who wound up in a very
difficult situation, and she worked very very hard to try
and do everything she could to provide for Sean in
a way that was best for Sean.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
In nineteen ninety two, Yvonne Gillis would leave town to
pursue her career, leaving the house to her now twenty
nine year old son.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
At the time, he was very angry that his mother
had left him. He felt abandoned and he really did
not have the coping skills to deal with life on
his own. Neighbors reported hearing him outside banging on garbage
cans in the middle of the night, howling at the moon.
So he had a difficult time when she left, but

(23:14):
it also presented him an opportunity to do what he wanted.
That's when he began to really spend a lot of
time on his computer, delving into the darker side of
life that fascinated him so much.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Twelve years on from Sean's mother's departure, Baton Rouge was
in the midst of a string of horrific murders. The
latest body discovered just a few blocks from the Gillis House.
The recovery of the remains of Donna Bennett Johnston, found
missing an arm and dumped in a drainage ditch, plunged

(23:52):
the city into a state of shock.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Donna Bennett Johnson was a brutal crime scene, tell that
whoever had committed this crime had done it in fury.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
People began locking their doors, locking their windows, women began
taking self defense classes. There was such a range between
the types of women that were killed that no one
was safe, and Baton Rouge became paralyzed with fear.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
While the Catherine Hall and Johnny may Williams cases had
gone cold, investigators were encouraged by the evidence available at
the Johnston crime scene.

Speaker 12 (24:30):
It looks like a vehicle had backed up to that
location and perhaps backed into the area, and maybe she
was in the vehicle and then dragged and thrown into
the canal, and that vehicle left tire mark impressions on
the ground. We attained the list of the people who
had purchased that particular attire.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
More encouraging still, DNA evidence retrieved from the body of
Donna Johnstone was matched to that and on the other victims.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
We had his DNA profile and three of our victims,
and now we have a tire track that we've identified
that's left at a crime.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
SAYN detectives now believed it was merely a matter of
time before they would get their man.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
There's an excitement about the task force members knowing that
we were linking these crimes together, so you know, we
knew we're hitting in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
As the investigation gathered, pace Agent Jeff Methvin from the
FBI began to narrow down a list of potential suspects.

Speaker 12 (25:41):
The tire mark impression leads were encouraging because we knew
that this tire had been at our crime saying, and
we knew we had a list of people who had
purchased this tire in our area, and the number one
on there was mister Gillis.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
Morning after I'd gotten home from work, two detectives showed
up at the door and wanted to speak with Sean,
and he walked outside with them, which I thought was
rather odd. Why didn't why couldn't they talk to him
in here in front of me? And then he came
in and said, they want me to go downtown.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
And so we walked outside and we were standing the driveway,
walking toward our vehicles, and Sean asked, I smoke a
cigarette before we got and of course we said sure.
He smokes about half of a cigarette, drops on the driveway,
places his fin on it to extinguish it, and he said,
let's go get this over with.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Have the Sheriff's Department agent methvin would question Sean Vincent
Gillis on his connection to the Donna Bennett Johnston crime scene.

Speaker 13 (26:56):
Do you know while we're talking, we're talking because you
had some tire tracks that possibly.

Speaker 7 (27:06):
Came from my car there, and from those tracks, it
appears she was unloaded from that vehicle and thrown into
that canal.

Speaker 13 (27:19):
She was not unloaded from my vehicle.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
After the initial interview and Gillis's denials, detectives were forced
to release him while they continued to build their case.
Having taken a sample of his DNA.

Speaker 5 (27:36):
He came home and he cooked, We sat down together.
He didn't even turn the computer on, and we watched
a movie together, and we spent the evening together. And
about the end of the evening, I said, okay, I said,
I said, what happened? I said, who'd you kill and

(27:57):
he said nothing. He said, I just wanted to spend
evening with you.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Later that same night, the authorities finally got the news
they'd been waiting for.

Speaker 12 (28:11):
We received word from the Louisiana State Police Prime Lab
that the nuclear DNA profile we had obtained from Gillis
actually matched the DNA profile from the Catherine Hall and
Donovan and Johnson crime say.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
The couple's romantic night in was to be interrupted by
a visit from the task Force.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
They burst through the door, kicked the doors in in
every room in the house, through a smoke bomb in here,
and a bunch of police officers came in and arrested John.
I demanded to know what was going on immediately, and
then that's when they said, don't you know you're living

(28:55):
with a serial killer.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
For Terry, the accusations were impossible to comprehend.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
I laughed at him and told him, boy, do you
have the wrong house.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yet it would not be long before Terry finally saw
the true face of the man she had shared her
life with.

Speaker 5 (29:21):
I went downtown to the station and I looked at
him through the little window, and I said, tell me,
did you do what they said you did? And Sean
was a goofy looking guy, and he just snarted his
head and he said, I'm sorry, honey, Bonnie, but yeah,

(29:46):
and my whole world just ended, I see, to a
rich alo.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Under questioning, Gillis began to divulge the chilling details of
his crimes and offer an insight into his twisted mind.

Speaker 14 (30:06):
How does the word monster come to mind?

Speaker 1 (30:15):
The ligature marks found on his victims would also be explained.

Speaker 15 (30:20):
Don't I had some type of or a neck or sign?

Speaker 5 (30:24):
What?

Speaker 14 (30:25):
I want to bring my own tie lock demonstration? Okay,
that's simple.

Speaker 12 (30:37):
Mister Gillis told us that he had a name for
the zip ties that he used to commit his homicide.

Speaker 11 (30:43):
Conjectrification is exactly how I look at it.

Speaker 13 (30:46):
I called my weapon that sometimes the objective ire because
it would cond them from a woman to the object
that I would then deal with.

Speaker 12 (30:56):
His primary goal was to kill the victim as soon
as possible, because it was not the act of killing
that he was interested in.

Speaker 15 (31:04):
I'm talking about manipulating dead bodies. It's interesting term he used.
That's exactly the way I looked at it. And would
it surprised you that the control of another being's limbs.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Is a part of it.

Speaker 16 (31:25):
In almost every case where the sexual murderer engaged in necrophilia,
they also had a partner. Necrophilia is basically just another
deviant sexual arousal pattern. This was arousing to him, This
was really erotic to him, and if he wasn't apprehended,
it would have continued.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Shockingly, the true depths of Gillis's depravity would be revealed
when he confessed to further murders, including that of Anne Bryan.
In nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 12 (31:58):
Mister Gillis had started confessing to the crimes that we
were looking at him for, and throughout the following week
or so, he started confessing to other crimes.

Speaker 15 (32:06):
Tell me an approximate number five, six, seven.

Speaker 12 (32:19):
It was not surprising to me. I anticipate there would
probably be more than what he told us about.

Speaker 14 (32:25):
I honestly don't count. I don't count who I don't.

Speaker 5 (32:32):
Sean.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Vincent Gillis would go on to admit to the unsold
slayings of four more women, shockingly, bringing his total number
of victims to eight. Gillis's confession would also explain the
truth behind the smell that overwhelmed his car when he

(32:54):
collected Terry from work one morning.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
It wasn't until he was arrested that I found out
that one of his victims was in the trunk of
the car. That car still sits in my yard. I
don't drive, so it still just sits there.

Speaker 13 (33:21):
Yes, that's one of the few times Terry did get
to ride with a body in the car without knowing it.
I mean, because I mean she was wanting had just
been dead, you know, a few hours earlier.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
The acts that Gillis confessed to engaging in prior to
disposing of her body were more shocking.

Speaker 14 (33:39):
Still, she had beautiful legs.

Speaker 13 (33:43):
It's one thing that I recalled about her, and I
wanted to keep those along on the legs, huh, And
used a sharp knife to cut and I remember trying
to get her arm off as well. I remember of
my unfortunately did.

Speaker 14 (34:00):
Occur in the else on my kitchen floor.

Speaker 13 (34:04):
Don't know how much bloodsh're found, but I clean and
clean and clean their place.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Although Shawn Vincent Gillis had finally been apprehended, the question
of what might have driven him to such unspeakable violence
still loomed large. In two thousand and four, the arrest
of Shawn Vincent Gillis brought to a close his ten

(34:31):
year reign of terror. With Gillis having confessed to the
murders of eight women, investigators and associates alike began looking
for an insight into the mind of a man capable
of the truly monstrous. Defense attorney Kerricacheer recalls his client

(34:54):
as someone seemingly at odds with himself.

Speaker 9 (34:57):
The certainly or two different Shawn Gillis's, and two different
Shawn Gillises will reveal through the course of our investigation.
I think that's the nature of the great story of
doctor Jackeline mister Hide. You know, how could the wonderful
doctor jackyal become the horrendous mister Hide.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Terry Lemoyne was forced to reflect on a man she
realized she never truly knew.

Speaker 5 (35:24):
I had somebody that was going to be there. Someone saved,
someone lovable and they turned into someone yee, I didn't know.
Never think you know everything about anybody, ever.

Speaker 17 (35:55):
Never.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
The question of what might have compelled Shawn Vincent Gillis
to commit such crimes was one that fascinated those who
searched for an explanation.

Speaker 12 (36:10):
He had a great interest in a particular website that
he would go to and it had crime scenes from
all different crimes. Bodies would be laying there and the
police tape would be up and things like that. So
in retrospect, I don't think he was more enjoying it
just to do it, as he was feeding some type
of desire that he had to have his own crime scene.

Speaker 16 (36:34):
One other thing about Gillis's he photographed a number of
his victims, and he did this because he was creating
his own pornography. What he would do is take a
look at those pictures and use that as a stimulant
to fantasize about what had happened.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Gillis himself would claim his twisted and violent perversions had
been evident for some time.

Speaker 15 (37:00):
I tried to kill my cousin wants to field her birth.
So how were you, Oh, we're about twelve thirteen. What
about funeral homes?

Speaker 14 (37:16):
Funeral homes?

Speaker 15 (37:17):
This will go back to the childhood.

Speaker 13 (37:19):
I spent a lot of time and my grandmother the
funeral home across the street, and now my cousin. I mean,
we would do morbid things like sleep in the golfers.
A lot of people can't.

Speaker 14 (37:27):
Belete that, but we do it.

Speaker 16 (37:29):
The number of individuals that harbor these very perverse, sadistic
fantasies is much much larger than the small number of
people who actually act them out. The individual who acts
out and begins a series of murders has harbored these
fantasies for fifteen twenty years, and unfortunately, once they get

(37:50):
away with it with one individual, they become then emboldened.

Speaker 17 (37:56):
Anyone who has these extreme inclin nations typically figures out
a way to compartmentalize. Typically people who are driven by
sexual compulsion or there's a sexual element to their murders
that becomes addictive.

Speaker 13 (38:14):
Yeah, I know right from wrong as well as you do.

Speaker 14 (38:16):
I know you do, but there.

Speaker 13 (38:18):
Are certain times when it fuzzes out, and it's really
not that I don't know it anymore. It's like it
doesn't matter anymore. This is on my universe.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
I'm God.

Speaker 13 (38:31):
There, I am God.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
At the trial, the question of Gillis's mental health was
much discussed.

Speaker 9 (38:42):
There are forms of mental illness that are genetic and
can be inherited, and there are indications a boy chawans
for the having a lot of mental health treatment.

Speaker 17 (38:57):
So I think he would inevitably think about what he's
seen in his father, and then think about what have
I inherited? What is this why I'm like I am?

Speaker 1 (39:08):
That's where it is ultimately Sewn Vincent Gillis would be
convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without
the benefit of parole. So was Shawn Vincent Gillis simply
a man acting out his darkest fantasies or was his
compulsion to kill hardwired.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
I don't believe that Seawn Gillis was a natural born killer.
I believe that he had some kind of psychosis inherited
from his father, and I believe that that, combined later
in life with the obsession that he developed for the
bodies of dead women, compelled him to find some of

(39:52):
his own. That makes him pretty unique as far as
serial killers go.

Speaker 16 (39:59):
I don't think was a born killer, but in my view,
there's a very strong neurobiological component. He probably doesn't understand
why he did it at every level, but he knows
very well that he did it because it was sexually stimulating.

Speaker 9 (40:15):
I don't think you can find any one thing that
brought about the events of Sean Gillis's life. I know
that through the course of our investigation, we found that
he had brain dysfunction that would make it hard for
him to resist impulses.

Speaker 17 (40:36):
Nothing about him indicates he was necessarily born to kill.
I think he conditioned himself into becoming a killer, developing
a arousal to extreme types of treatment of women that involve
violations and death.

Speaker 12 (41:00):
Kids all the time, you know, as they're growing up
and they're learning about life, that there are dragons to slay,
and mister Gillis is an example of that. Whether or
not he was made or nurtured to be what he is,
the end result is he was a dragon and we
needed to stop him.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
During his interrogation, Giddess would offer his own opinion on
the nature or nurture debate.

Speaker 11 (41:33):
At one point I could control it. It's beyond my
control at the moment. I'm amostle maniac. I don't mean
to be.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Although Justin Bennett lost his mother in the worst possible circumstances,
he has found peace of mind.

Speaker 6 (42:01):
The way I feel now, I honestly have forgiven what
he's done. That's his life, his burden, and I can't
let it eat me up and inside forever.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
In spite of the damage done by the years she
shared with Sean Vincent Gillis. Terry Lemoyden has rebuilt her life,
closing the book on a story far stranger than fiction.

Speaker 5 (42:30):
Never in my life would I have thought that that
geeky looking person that came to that store that night
would turn out to be the person that he turned
out to be. But it's a chapter of my life
that's given me quite an education.