Police, experts doubt that Gillis killed only eight
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By JOSH NOEL Advocate staff writer
If Sean Gillis can be believed, he killed for the first time at the age of 31. Not many people believe him, however. "I'd bet my medical license he killed before the age of 31," said Helen Morrison, a Chicago psychiatrist who has studied and interviewed dozens of serial killers.
"I'd assume his first killing was before that -- in adolescence," she said. "Most serial murderers begin earlier and increase in their late 20s or early 30s."
By all accounts, Gillis has been cooperative since his April 29 arrest, admitting to not only the three killings Sheriff's officials say DNA ties him to, but five others, including two that seemed unrelated and might never have been solved if not for his confession. But sources close to the investigation and Gillis' girlfriend have said Gillis steadfastly insists he killed eight women -- no more, no less.
According to his timeline, he killed for the first time in 1994 then stopped for five years. He says he killed five more women in 1999 and 2000 then stopped again, for three years. Finally, Gillis has said, he killed twice more, in October 2003 and February 2004.
Both the on-again, off-again pattern of the killings and his supposed late start are suspicious to both experts and law enforcement officials. "We can't go by what he tells us," said Sgt. Ike Vavasseur, commander of the Baton Rouge Police Department's Homicide Division. "We go by what we can prove."
Widening parameters
Gillis, 41, was initially thought to be killing only women with "high-risk lifestyles" -- those addicted to drugs and who had worked as prostitutes. The task force that arrested Gillis was created after the killings of three women who lived such lifestyles -- Katherine Hall in 1999, Johnnie Mae Williams in 2003 and Donna Bennett Johnston in 2004. Authorities have said DNA evidence connects him to the killings.
However, Gillis' subsequent confessions have changed the initial perception.
In addition to confessing to killing Lillian Robinson, Joyce Williams, and Marilyn Nevils -- women whose lives could be considered high-risk -- authorities have said Gillis confessed to killing 82-year-old Ann Bryan in her retirement community apartment and Hardee Schmidt, a 52-year-old married mother of three who lived in a subdivision.
"The Schmidt and Bryan cases make you widen your parameters some," said East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Lt. Col. Greg Phares.
The warrant for Gillis' arrest in the Schmidt case accuses him of abducting her on May 30, 1999, while she jogged in Pollard Estates. He drove into her with his car to subdue her, strangled her, sexually assaulted and beat her, the warrant says. He dumped her body the next day in a St. James Parish bayou.
Based on Gillis' claims to have killed Schmidt, the door suddenly is opened to the killings of Melissa Montz, Christine Moore and Eugenie Boisfontaine -- three cases Police Chief Pat Englade said detectives are reviewing.
Montz and Moore, both LSU graduate students, were abducted while jogging near campus and found weeks later dumped in south Baton Rouge. Montz was killed in 1985, when Gillis was 23 years old (and apparently living in Baton Rouge according to city records), and Moore in 2002.
Boisfontaine, 34, disappeared in mid-June 1997. Though it is unknown if she was abducted from her home or in public, a jogger found her driver's license and credit cards on a jogging path near the LSU lakes, where she often walked and jogged. Her body was found that August in Bayou Manchac in Iberville Parish. Like Schmidt, she had blond, shoulder-length hair and was athletic. Also like Schmidt, her body was found in water.
The Police Department had two detectives assigned to the task force that arrested Gillis, but all the department's 12 homicide detectives -- among whom the cold cases are spread -- are looking into his background, Vavasseur said. They also are reviewing evidence to look for a match to Gillis, particularly by DNA. "I don't think anyone is willing to accept (that Gillis stopped at eight), and I don't think the public wants us to," Vavasseur said. "The whole homicide division is considering him."
Vavasseur said he is particularly skeptical about Gillis committing his first killing when he was 31 years old. "You don't just wake up one day and begin killing," he said. "Even if that wasn't my opinion, it would be our obligation to re-examine these unsolved crimes."
Detectives also are paying close attention to the unsolved killings of several other women who lived high-risk lifestyles. About six such women were killed in the Midcity area east of downtown in 1999 and 2000 -- a time Gillis has already admitted that he killed. Police formed a task force in 2000 to determine whether a serial killer was responsible for the deaths, but disbanded without reaching a conclusion.
Though Gillis hasn't claimed responsibility for those killings, "he's made admissions he's driven through those parts of town," Englade said. DNA evidence from those cases is being re-examined in the State Police Crime Lab for potential matches to Gillis, he said. Also, FBI behavioral scientists are comparing details of the killings to those Gillis has already confessed to.
But detectives are staying open-minded about other cases, too. Much as they did for another serial killer suspect from the Baton Rouge area, 35-year-old Derrick Todd Lee, detectives are assembling a timeline of Gillis' life, Englade said. Because Gillis apparently has lived in Baton Rouge for most of his life and spent relatively little time in prison, the possibilities are wide, he said.
"He's stood pretty firm on (eight)," Englade said. "We suspect there are more, but until there is evidence, this is where we are."
Addiction
Mac McIlwaine, a former FBI profiler who lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., said the gaps between killings in Gillis' confessions give him the most pause. "The bunch-ups are strange, but other things may have precluded him from going on the hunt," McIlwaine said. "But it also sounds like this guy was pretty smart and able to cover his tracks."
Morrison, the Chicago psychiatrist, said she is less suspicious of the gaps. She called serial killing an addiction, and said that once the need is satiated, the behavior can stop for years, especially after the first kill. "They feel better but they can't exactly tell you what that means," she said. "It's not until they get the need again that they start doing it on a typical basis."
She said there are two reasons Gillis might not admit to more killings if he has committed more: Either he's not being truthful or he doesn't remember them all. Morrison said serial killers have used confession as an opportunity to get out of their jail cells and possibly get outside, directing detectives to homicide scenes.
The interrogation can be "a big power thing" for an accused serial killer, she said. Killers only like to reveal information at their own pace, and will often clam up if leaned on too heavily, she said.
Morrison also said that serial killers form memory differently than most people, which could cause certain killings to become obscured. Either way, investigators face a challenge, she said. "Unless they're capable of getting some great DNA, they won't get all the ones he's done," she said.
One person who believes that Gillis stopped at eight is his girlfriend of eight years, Terri Lemoine. The day after his arrest, Lemoine said Gillis told her on the phone that he had killed eight women. In another phone call a week later, she asked him whether there were any more. He said there were not. "Why would he lie at this point?" Lemoine asked.