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....City Police Chief Pat Englade said after the news conference that detectives "are still going full-bore" to re-examine unsolved murders dating back to the early 1980s -- Gillis' late teens. An FBI profiler might be flown in to help, he said.
"I think there are going to be more, but I don't want to stick a number on it," he said. "As long as he wants to talk, we'll talk."
However, Gillis' lawyer, public defender Bert Garraway, asked for the talking to end Friday. Garraway said he called Sheriff's Col. Mike Barnett about 3 p.m. and asked that detectives stop questioning Gillis without a lawyer present. "He assured me he would and he and I understand each other," Garraway said. "So far I don't know who has questioned the guy or about what."
Garraway, who was assigned the case Friday afternoon, said he'll probably meet with Gillis for the first time today.
Englade said that detectives have taken Gillis from Parish Prison to conduct the interviews, but he would not say where. All the questioning has been legal, he said. "We followed the book and Miranda was absolutely done," he said. "He was Mirandized and Mirandized." Police must recite the Miranda warning before questioning suspects to tell them of certain rights.
A SWAT team arrested Gillis at his home at 545 Burgin Ave., early Thursday morning. Investigators said DNA evidence linked him to the killings of Katherine Hall in 1999, Johnnie Mae Williams in October and Donna Bennett Johnston in February.
He was booked into Parish Prison on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of ritualistic acts, accused of mutilating their bodies after death.
Sudden resolution
The Sheriff's Office formed a task force to investigate the killings of Hall, Williams and Johnston based on several commonalties, particularly their "high-risk lifestyles" and the fact that their bodies had been mutilated. All three had been arrested for drugs, alcohol or both.
However, few suspicions had ever been uttered about the killings of Bryan and Schmidt being related to each other or to the "high-risk" killings. Bryan lived in a retirement community and Schmidt in Pollard Estates with her husband and children.
Both deaths have long-confounded investigators, with a total of three arrests being made in the two cases. All three suspects ended up being released for a lack of evidence.
Englade said Friday that detectives have not been able to find Gillis' name in their files as a suspect in either case, but continue to look.
Gillis also was not asked for a DNA sample in the investigation of another series of serial killings in the Baton Rouge area, Englade said. Derrick Todd Lee, 35, is scheduled to stand trial May 10 in those crimes.
Bryan was found stabbed to death March 21, 1994, inside her apartment at St. James Place on Lee Drive, about a third of a mile from Gillis' home.
According to a warrant for Gillis' arrest, he told police he intended to rape, not kill, Bryan, but stabbed her and cut her throat when she screamed. Investigators found the bloody imprint of a large hunting knife and shoe prints on the carpet near her body, the warrant says. Bryan died of a wound to her throat, but there were numerous stab and slash wounds on her body.
During interviews with detectives, Gillis cited details of the attack, including the wounds to Bryan's body and the weapon used, neither of which had been made public, the warrant says.
Bryan's daughter, Rachel Ehricht, said she is skeptical of the confession, and would prefer police had arrested Gillis based on physical evidence, such as DNA. After two previous arrests in the case that ended with the suspects being freed -- in 1994 and 1996 -- she said she had "been down this road before. You have to reserve your enthusiasm," she said. "I'd love to have closure and if this is it I'm truly thankful."
She said Englade and Detective John Colter visited her at home about 10:15 p.m. Thursday to tell her and her family of the confession.
Stalker
Schmidt was kidnapped about 5:30 a.m. May 30, 1999, -- a Sunday -- while jogging in a Baton Rouge subdivision. Her body was found three days later in St. James Parish.
According to a warrant for Gillis' arrest in her case, he told police he saw Schmidt jogging in south Baton Rouge about three weeks earlier, and had been driving in the area in the early morning hours ever since to look for her.
When he finally found her on Quail Run Drive, he ran into her with his vehicle to knock her into a ditch, the warrant says. He used a "heavy duty plastic wire wrap" to choke her and drove her to a park in the Highland Road area, where he sexually assaulted her, the warrant says.
Gillis put Schmidt's "dead naked body" into the truck of his vehicle, drove home and left it there. The next day, Gillis took Highway 61 to St. James Parish and dumped Schmidt's body into a bayou, the warrant says.
Semen was found in the body during an autopsy, but authorities have not said it is linked to Gillis. No physical evidence, such as DNA, ties Gillis to either crime, but both Englade and Phares said that should not be a matter of concern. "A confession is actual evidence," Phares said. "Many people are in penitentiaries, and rightly so, on confessions."
Englade said "other supporting evidence" will bolster the cases once they reach the courts, but he declined to name it. However, Englade did say the State Police Crime Lab has been asked to re-examine evidence in both cases to look for a DNA match to Gillis. "Things have changed so much in the last 10 years, it's time to re-evaluate all that stuff," he said.
Based on the confessions, police booked Gillis Friday on counts of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and stalking in Schmidt's case and first-degree murder in Bryan's.
Gillis' father
No one at Gillis' home answered the door Friday even though lights were on in a front room. In a window in the carport, a sign taped to the door invokes an "Area 51 warning." "Restricted area," the sign says. "Use of deadly force is authorized." Area 51 is a government site in Nevada where some people believe the United States conducts experiments on UFOs.
A woman answering the phone at the home said, "We have no comment" and hung up.
However, reached Friday at his home in Lathrop, Calif., Gillis' father, Norman E. Gillis Jr., said he had no idea his son had been arrested in the murders of five Baton Rouge women.
"Oh my God," he said. "I haven't heard anything about it."
Norman Gillis Jr. married Sean Gillis' mother, Yvonne Marie Bourgeois, in Mamou in November 1960, according to a petition for separation filed in court in East Baton Rouge Parish. The couple immediately moved to Baton Rouge, and Sean Gillis was born in 1962.
In April 1963, Norman Gillis Jr. abandoned the family after seeking treatment for alcoholism, the petition says. A divorce was granted in September 1965.
Norman Gillis Jr., now 68 and retired from hospital administrative work, said the last time he saw his ex-wife or son was when he visited for two days when the boy graduated from Redemptorist High School in 1980.
"The family has been estranged for quite some time," said Norman Gillis Jr., who described himself as a recovered alcoholic. "I haven't seen or heard from Sean since then. He wanted to go his own way."
"He was just an ordinary boy," Norman Gillis Jr. said. "I was out of contact, he was out of contact. He was only about a year old when I left. I had no influence in his life. His mother was the sole influence in his life."
Norman Gillis Jr. said he has no plans to contact his son.