TWO LESSONS LEARNED FROM LOUISIANA:
1) THE POLICE CAN’T ALWAYS PROTECT YOU! YOUR SAFETY IS YOUR RESPONSIBIITY!
2) Do NOT wait tilla serial killer threatens your town, buy a self defense weapon NOW and learn how to use it – responsibly!

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LA: … Women are buying guns faster than the hunting shops can stock them.
…

Serial killer case has Baton Rouge seeing ‘ghosts’
Megan K. Stack – Los Angeles Times
Sunday, August 4, 2002

Baton Rouge, La. — The fear festered for months: Women had
disappeared in broad daylight, had vanished from home and from shaded
trails — and turned up dead. They were students and wives,
improbable victims. It wasn’t until last week that police gave the
fright a name: A serial killer is loose.

DNA evidence indicates the same man has killed at least three women
in the last 10 months, and investigators are re-examining 30 other
unsolved deaths to see whether those women were his victims. As the
heat of summer presses this shadowy landscape of overgrown glades, a
controlled panic has seized Baton Rouge, a city with more than
200,000 people.

Women are buying guns faster than the hunting shops can stock them.
Jogging paths are desolate. The easy interactions of these laid-back
streets have been replaced by terse responses and lowered eyes.

”You don’t know what he looks like,” said math teacher Donna Allen,
28. ”Everybody’s on edge, paranoid. You jump at every little
noise.”

The killer could be anybody, and so women here say they see him
everywhere. His victims had no obvious common trait, so many women
fear they could be next.

”If we had a picture of him, at least we’d have something to look
for. But right now he’s a ghost,” said Police Chief Pat
Englade. ”And we’re seeing ghosts all over Baton Rouge.”

Gina Wilson Green was the first to die. The 41-year-old nurse was
strangled at home last fall near the campus of Louisiana State
University. Police were baffled — there were no broken windows,
jimmied locks or busted doors.

In May, graduate business student Charlotte Murray Pace was stabbed
to death at her townhouse in the afternoon. As in the Green case, the
home of the 22-year-old Mississippi native showed no signs of forced
entry.

Pace was living a few doors from Green when the nurse was killed, but
the two apparently didn’t know each other. Pace was slain just two
days after moving to a new house four miles away.

Earlier this month, police tested the DNA evidence and found that the
same man had killed Green and Pace. Investigators have refused to say
whether the women were raped. But Englade acknowledged last week that
at least one was sexually assaulted.

Then Pam Kinamore disappeared. She was 44, an antique dealer and real
estate broker, the mother of a 12-year-old son. Investigators think
she came home from work late July 12, only to be snatched away. Her
body turned up four days later in the woods off I-10. Her throat had
been slashed.

A few days later, investigators announced that Kinamore was slain by
the same man who had killed Green and Pace. Once again, he was linked
by DNA, they said.

FBI investigators are helping local authorities profile a suspect.
But in the meantime, imaginations are running wild.

”I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never seen the community
afraid like this,” police Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa said.

After Kinamore’s death, police got a tantalizing tip. A few hours
before sunrise the night Kinamore disappeared, a driver saw a man
pulling off the interstate in a white pickup. A naked woman was
slumped in the passenger seat. Police hypnotized the witness and drew
out more details: It was a Chevrolet, with a Louisiana plate that
might have included the number 8.

Word moved fast. The next morning, 69-year-old nurse Rosalie Sweet
drove to aerobics class gripped by fright.

”I saw 25 white trucks, white trucks on every corner, and I was
scared,” she said.

So far, police have been unable to find the pickup.