ALEXANDER v. LAFAYETTE CRIME STOPPERS INC.

• Decision Date: 02 July 2010
• Docket Number: No. 10-C-814.,10-C-814.
• Citation: 38 So.3d 282
• Parties: Dianne ALEXANDER, et ux. v. LAFAYETTE CRIME STOPPERS, INC., et al.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

38 So.3d 282

Dianne ALEXANDER, et ux.

v.LAFAYETTE CRIME STOPPERS, INC., et al.

No. 10-C-814.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

July 2, 2010.

In re Alexander, Dianne et ux.;-Plaintiff; Applying for Writ of Certiorari and/or Review, Parish of St. Martin, 16th Judicial District Court, Div. C, No. 70296-C; to the Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, No. 09-927.

Writ denied.

JOHNSON and GUIDRY, JJ., would grant.

KNOLL, J., would grant and assign reasons.

KNOLL, Justice, dissenting.

Finding under the provisions of La. Civ.Code art. 1944 and our civilian tradition Dianne and Herman Alexander are entitled to the rewards offered to the public by the Lafayette Crime Stoppers, the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, and the Baton Rouge Crime Stoppers, I would grant this writ and render judgment awarding the rewards to the Alexanders. Accordingly, for the following reasons, I dissent from the majority's writ denial.

To fully understand the significance of the present case, it is important to recall the tragic facts of the South Louisiana Serial Killer-Derrick Todd Lee case:

Charlotte Murray Pace, was a pretty 22 year old who had just graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) as one of the youngest recipients of a MBA degree....

On Friday, May 31, 2002, after leaving ... work, Pace washed her newly acquired 1999 BMW at approximately 11:52 a.m. and then went to her Baton Rouge townhouse at 1211 Sharlo that she shared with Rebecca Yeager, a close friend for six years, to await Rebecca's scheduled 1 p.m. arrival.... When Rebecca arrived at 2:00 p.m., she found Pace's almost completely nude body lying on the floor between the bedroom door and the bed. She observed blood all over the room, on the furniture, and all over the floor; the bed was made, but the bedspread was blood-soaked. She later also found blood in the kitchen and in the hallway to the bedroom. She saw Pace had many small holes in her chest and stomach, and Pace's throat was cut open. Unable to find the townhouse's portable phone, Rebecca used her cell phone to call a 9-1-1 operator and then flagged down a passing police car.

* * *

Dr. [Michael] Cramer's autopsy report enumerated 81 different wounds to Pace's body and opined that the cause of death was exsanguination. He theorized that two patterns of stab wounds were present: one resembling lesions caused by a flat bladed screwdriver and the other resembling incised wounds from a knife. He also found Pace sustained blunt injuries to the head with a fractured skull and blunt trauma to the eyeballs, together with multiple bruises to the upper and lower extremities. The heart, the liver and the lungs were perforated three times each; there was also a stab wound to the left area of the eyeball that penetrated into the cranial cavity after fracturing the left frontal bone. In addition, there was an impressive wound at the top of the neck with transection of the cartilage and the esophagus accompanied with a severed left jugular vein.

Dr. Alfredo Suarez, an expert pathologist who reviewed Dr. Cramer's autopsy report and the accompanying photographs, told the jury there were a number of defensive wounds on Pace's arms, forearms, hands and wrists inflicted as she attempted to ward off her assailant. He agreed with Dr. Cramer's opinion that Pace died as the result of exsanguination.

* * *

At the time of Pace's rape and murder, there were other unsolved violent rapes and murders of women in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas that caused the police to further investigate these homicides. Indeed, some time later when the DNA analysts in the State Police Crime Lab compared notes on DNA samples recovered from several victims of these unsolved homicides, it showed that a single perpetrator had committed the unsolved homicides of these women. The perpetrator was thus deemed a serial killer....

On September 24, 2001, eight months prior to Pace's death, Gina Wilson Green, an attractive, successful registered nurse 40 years of age, was found strangled and raped just three doors away from Murray's townhouse....

* * *

Approximately five weeks after Pace's murder, on July 8, 2002, Angela Ross and Julia Naylor, the two DNA analysts with the Crime Lab who had independently obtained DNA profiles in the Green and Pace murders, compared the DNA results in their respective cases. Immediately, it became apparent to them that the results from the DNA samples they independently examined in their respective cases indicated that a single perpetrator committed those homicides.

On July 9, 2002, Diane Alexander, an attractive nurse, was attacked at her home in Breaux Bridge, about 45 minutes west of Baton Rouge, in rural St. Martin Parish. On the morning of July 9, Alexander was getting ready for work when a black man, who identified himself as Anthony, knocked on her locked front door, asking for directions to the Montgomerys's. When Alexander said she did not know the Montgomerys, the man asked to use the telephone. He then asked her if her husband might know the Montgomerys. When she eventually informed him that her husband was not at home, the stranger's demeanor quickly changed. He forced his way into the mobile home and overpowered her. The intruder caught her by the throat, told her not to try anything because he was armed with a knife and that he would poke her in the eye. He then attempted to rape her, but he could not maintain an erection. He then bludgeoned her and attempted to strangle her with a telephone cord he cut from the home computer that was close at hand.

Alexander placed her hand between the telephone cord and her neck in an effort to stop her strangulation. She was passing in and out of consciousness when fortuitously her son, Herman, arrived at the residence. When the intruder heard Herman's car approach on the gravel driveway, the attacker ran out the backdoor. Herman saw the unfamiliar car at his parents's home. He described it as a gold Mitsubishi Eclipse with a “Hampton Has It” plate on the front and further noted it had a dent in the hood. He also observed a beige telephone cord hanging out of the car window.

When he entered the home, Herman found his mother on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. Alexander had a skull fracture and she was rushed via helicopter to a Lafayette hospital where she remained for five days. Crime scene personnel from St. Martin Parish secured evidence from the scene of the attack. Two significant items were preserved and logged into evidence for future forensic analysis: the severed end of the telephone cord that was cut from the computer and Alexander's dress with DNA evidence on it.

On July 15, 2002, Alexander gave a detailed description of her attacker to Detective Arthur Boyd of the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office. Through her description, a composite sketch of the attacker was made. The evidence from this crime scene and the sketch, which bore a striking resemblance to the defendant, would later become vital in resolving who the perpetrator was in the unsolved homicides of the women in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas. Despite the existence of this sketch, at this time the investigation leads were focused on an unknown white male driving a white pickup truck.

Just three days after Alexander's attack, Pamela Piglia Kinamore, a beautiful 44-year-old antique shop owner, was reported missing from her Baton Rouge home. On July 12, 2002, Kinamore's husband, Byron, arrived at their home in Briarwood Place at about 11:45 p.m. He found a full bathtub, spots of blood on a bedroom rug, and a minor dishelving of the bedroom furniture. His wife Pam was not at home.

Three days later, on July 16, 2002, a survey crew found a body just south of the Whiskey Bay exit on Interstate 10. Crime scene investigators also found a piece of telephone cord a few hundred feet from the body; later, forensic analysis would match this piece of cord to that cut from the home of Diane Alexander three days earlier. The body, which had been exposed to three days of summer heat, was initially unidentifiable. Only though the use of dental records was the body identified as being that of Pamela Piglia Kinamore.

An autopsy revealed that Kinamore had been strangled and three significant cut wounds, five and a-half, five, and four inches long, were evident in the neck. These neck wounds cut through the skin, the windpipe, below the larynx and the opening of the airway, and opened the right carotid artery and both jugular veins. A sexual assault kit was also utilized because there was physical evidence of forceful penetration of the vagina and the anus. Defensive injuries were seen on Kinamore's left hand, the right hand, the left elbow, the back of the forearm, the back of the arm, and the knees.

* * *

Through scientific testing a DNA profile was procured. Although the profile did not produce a complete set of markers because of the body degradation, it was sufficiently extensive to genetically identify Kinamore's attacker as the same person who murdered Green and Pace.

Thereafter, police officials realized they were looking for the same perpetrator in multiple murders and a Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force was...