Five Days

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts. Some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.

0:51 Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ You're back with another episode of Unspeakable, and I have a special guest in the house with me today. SA Hello, special guests. Hey everyone, it's Jimothy. It is It is the Jim Chapman Jimothy as I call him, and he's sitting in on this one with me today because we've got something a little different, because we're going to be letting y' all know about this upcoming Derek Todd Lee series that we have been painstakingly working on for a hot minute. Yeah, I would say the better part of a year. We have discussed this series, talked about what we wanted to do with it. It required a lot of a lot of work on everybody's part, and it is a little bit different than what you're used to from Unspeakable. This is a very highly produced, just an awesome series. I couldn't be prouder of how it turned out. From the storytelling, which is obviously top notch when we're dealing with kJ, to the back end work that was involved in this that we're going to get into a little bit today.

2:00 I'm just flat out excited. I am too, And so let's start here. If you're not from Louisiana, I want to clue you in because you may not be familiar with him. We assume, because we're from here, that everybody knows what we're talking about, because I would be hard pressed to believe anyone under the age of twenty five, I guess maybe, but anyone over the age of I guess of twenty five. If you say the words Dereck Todd Lee, they immediately know exactly what you're talking about. And it brings you back to a moment in time where all of us were basically seriously frozen with fear because women were being hunted.

2:41 They were absolutely being hunted in our area. They were dropping left and right, And I say that with the utmost respect. I don't mean that in any way other than our wives and our sisters and our daughters were going missing and nobody knew who was next. And it was all in a very all in South Louisiana, you know, which We've got our waterways and our bios and it's an easy place for someone to go missing. Yeah, it really is. And we want to get into today a little bit about how this series is going to be different. And look, Kelly did a live on DTL and of course I don't know how many hundreds of people attended that. It was a two day event.

3:28 Three we had to do it third night, open it up again. Maybe five hundred or so people total. Uh, But even if you were at that live, this is going to be a lot of what you've never heard. Oh if you came to the live right now, stop if you're going, oh, man, already know this, No you don't know. You don't Because that live show I had two and a half hours to try to impart on you a lot of people's lives and what happened to them. But there was no way I could tell you every single thing into and a half hours no way. This series is a long one, a very long one, but every story is different. It's not something being drug out.

4:10 I mean I literally need hours to tell you everything that was going on. Yeah. As a matter of fact, the entire series is about thirteen hours in length. These are broken up into thirty to forty minutes segments and it is absolute fire. Now there's going to be some things that are going to be a little bit different and actually some big advantages to Patreon members. Right. First thing I'll tell you is this, we wanted this to not just be episodes. We wanted this to be a listening experience. We wanted you to feel what these women were feeling and men, because there are men involved in these stories.

4:52 We want you to smell it and taste it and hear it much like it actually went down. Yeah. So one of the things that I did just yesterday actually is I went through and I listened to the first four episodes, and look, I recommend this to everybody. Wear some headphones if possible. I know a lot of people listen to it in the car. If you do that, turn it up, because, as Kelly just said, this is actually a listening experience. I put on my AirPods, and I actually laid down in my bed and I closed my eyes and I literally thought or felt that I was right there in the moment as it was happening, and it was amazing.

5:37 The detail in this really mattered to me, as it should matter to you. The small things matter just as much as the big things. And I had if you were at my house with me, my family would they wanted to just get me for this. But it was a hot mess because I had notebooks and binders. I was working out of two computers and notebooks galore, because I was comparing and trasting all sorts of different accounts. Jim knows we had people that were. Actually a part of this, the real real victims, real investigators, the actual people involved. Many hours spent speaking with them and trying to make this as cohesive and as real as I possibly could, because this, like I said, this was just we lived it. Jim, how old were you when this was going on?

6:27 I was around twenty eight. I was eighteen, freshly eighteen years old on LSU's campus, and a lot of the hunting, and there's no other word to use, that's not for theatrics hunting of these women you know I was right there in the mix, Yeah, right there. And I know you were newly married, right you just got married? Well I had been. I had been married four years by that point. Did y'all have to trufford by the No, it was just prior to us having our first child. So we were concerned. I was concerned. My wife actually fit that profile pretty. Pretty yours truly does. Don't want to give away I don't want to give away too much, but the dark hair and well always it was nerve ruck.

7:12 Yeah, it was. And so to really give you perspective on this, it didn't affect one perish and we're perishes here, not counties. It didn't affect one parish. It didn't just affect two. It affected multiple perishes. Imagine one human being, one human being on this planet, instilling fear amongst that many people. Yeah, and it's like a needle in a haystack. It really is. I agree, one hundred percent. So let's get into the production of this a little bit and what you can expect. Number one we have I would call it an award winning score on this one, a musical score that is set in the background of this series. Uh.

7:56 And when I tell you that you put those headphones on and you lay back and you feel like you're there everything from the breathing, you know, there's a I'll give you one snippet of something that you can look forward to. Uh, there's an aspect of a story that really stuck out to me where Kelly is describing a woman jogging around what's none as Lsu Lakes and you can actually hear the feet hitting the ground and you can hear the from the you know, breathing as you're as you're running. That's how much you will feel like you were right there in the moment. And that is something that you can really look forward to. And it goes a lot to the storytelling speaks a lot to that and the backend work that was involved.

8:40 So if you're from here, and if you're not, I want to tell you this, majority of the time, if you look up this case or the or what was going on here, the media focused, the typical general media focused on a relatively short period of time in comparison to Evy, everything that this guy was doing. And I'm gonna tell you everything from minor petty thefts up through you know, the most brutal of endings of people's lives that you could possibly imagine, because everything to me mattered. I'm gonna start with his birth, just so y'all know.

9:21 I'm starting with his birth and I'm going all the way through everything. So if like, like we said, you know, we had hundreds of people that came out to the live show, and I had so much fun doing the show, and people really enjoyed it. And so when I promoted the live show, so many people said, please live stream it, please live stream it. Well we weren't. We didn't have the capabilities at that time, based on just where we were with the show and and the way that it was set up in the place that we had the show. That just wasn't an option. It wasn't because we didn't want to. Just wasn't an option for us at that time. Well, now that's when we put our heads together, and I'll give credit hats off to Jim. He was like, you know, there was so much to this you never even really could touch. What if we put it into a series. And at first I had some pushback. I was like, now I've told the story, and then he was like, no, man, everybody needs to hear it in its totality, right, you know, it's so much more than you can I don't know, keep saying that, but you won't believe it.

10:18 Yeah, there's just a lot of details. None of it is moundane. Yeah, failures of the court system, overlookings of the judicial system that hindsight's twenty twenty. But when I lay this out for you, you're gonna go, this is unbelievable. Yeah, this is unbelievable. This guy was even you know, walking around, that's right. So one of the things that you can look forward to if you're a Patreon member. And I do want to mention this even before we get into that, this does not take away from Unspeakable's regular series episode you can call that Unspeakable Original that will still drop every Wednesday.

10:59 So this is an extra drop. This is just another drop on another day. This particular series DTL will drop every Monday. You'll have Unspeakable Original every Wednesday that will be dropping as usual. And then on Fridays, of course, we always drop a preview of Crime Aire weekly, So you're gonna have actually three days now of kJ talking on all kinds of different topics. And so I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that you're still gonna get your unspeakable. With Oh yeah, this is this is in addition to and look, you're my friends, okay, and that's why I want, I want. We wanted to talk. And I hope you're listening to me because I'm hearing you. I'm listening. I'm reading your messages saying please release more episodes a week.

11:51 Please. This is just a huge push. And effort to give you more and give you exactly what you wanted. Yeah, So we're also going to be dropping this series on the Patreon. Now, it's important to mention this is an extra series. Uh So, if you're a Patreon member at the I think it's the fifteen dollars level, there's fifteen the middle or the highest level. Yeah, if you're if you that are higher, you're going to get this series early in commercial free. Now, not only are you going to get it early in commercial free, you're also going to get it three days early. So the Patreon versions of DTL will drop every Friday early and commercial free on Monday, the regular episode with the commercials will drop, you know, everywhere you listen Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever, exactly.

12:46 And we're we're doing this, you know, because we want you to be able to listen ahead of time, and then you'll get them early and then you're going to be ahead of the game and you can. Get more as you want. Plus you're still going to get your bonus episodes that I work on that drop here and there. So as far as content goes, your mama's putting in the hours, guys. So yeah, and it's important to mention. If you are an entry level member on Patreon and you want to get this series, I know you can go on Patreon, you show upgrade. There's an upgrade button or something on the main page. Yeah, and you just upgrade to that metal level. If it's something that you do. Want to get this series early and commercial free in three days early.

13:30 Typically it's twenty four hours early for unspeakable original drops. This one, we're giving you even I guess more juice because we know once you hear the very first episode, you're going to be ready for number two, ready for number three. I love to how it. Escalates. The series just flat out escalates the entire time. So we'll give you that background information and then you're just going to be right there with me. Something too. That was important to me as far as storytelling goes, is I wanted to go to these scenes of a lot of these crimes. I wanted to be there and I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. And so I'm going to have more insight and perspective to give you the listener that I that if you, if you know these stories, I don't think that it was imparted upon all of us exactly how it went down, and not out of out of malice or anything like that. It's just there was, you know, a story to be told. And if a woman was murdered, oh, this woman was murdered, well, proximity and where this took place, what it looked like all of this. Jim even rode with me to some of the locations. We rode together and we circled around. Matter of fact, I think they thought we might have been case in the place at one point, because neighbors came out.

14:50 Looking at us, and look, they know where they live, yeah, and they know what went down in that house you were looking at. And I will tell the listeners one thing. And one of the places we visited was a graveyard in which an attack took place by Derek Toddley. And there's a big difference between telling a story and then telling a story after you've been there and you've seen it, and you smelled it, and you rolled on those rocks and you. Grave looked, you looked, your eyes lay where this killer stood, and you can see the path that he took with total clarity. So my goals are to give you all of it in its minute moments and also in its grandiose moments. And I'm also going to be putting a whole lot of photographs, a bunch of photographs, not only in current times, but in previous times, crime scene.

15:49 Photos and files. I'm gonna really try to if you want to know, If you want to know and it matters, and you like all of that, you're gonna really be blessed with the documentation that I was able to get. And from from the people the investigators that wrote them. Was this is not documentation you can get on the internet. No, he one in particular, one investigator brought his entire file to me and let me look through the file. And so. I just I hope you feel this as much as I have, because I took these killings personal even though I was not, you know, related to these victims.

16:32 I took it personal. Well, you always do. I mean Kelly, Kelly dives into these stories to such an extent that she feels like she knows these people. I want to know them, yeah. Once, yeah, And so from that perspective, that's how she tells it. And I'm going to tell you I'll tell everyone this, and this is one of the primary reasons we're doing this episode. This is far none. And y'all know that I have produced a lot of podcasts. I've been very blessed to produce some pretty successful podcast in my day. I will tell you this is barn none the best series I have ever been involved in. Everything from the storytelling to the production is something you would expect out of a billion dollar company. I shit you not on that, Folks. When you listen to this, you will think you're listening to a Netflix documentary but better.

17:37 And Netflix puts together some pretty damn good documentaries. So get ready for this. Get excited for this. I feel like this is a new season of Yellowstone No. Most like people just looking forward to it. They can't wait to hear it. I'm telling you you your mind is going to be blown. I was in the room during this storytelling. I was behind the scenes, you know, editing this stuff after the fact, and I still couldn't believe what I was hearing when I listened to it. If I got one request, I got five hundred. Please do a series on this. Please do a series on this. And it's kind of funny. And I'm gonna go like kind of personal here, and I hope you don't get upset with me, but I kind of thought people might be burned out on him.

18:25 That's that's a truth. That's the truth. I really did because. Because you had told that you had dove into that story, yes, for that live to such a degree that it's not that you get burned out, but you were like, I already know the story, but I forgot Kelly, that you know the story right. And I totally I'm telling you, I lost sight of that. I'm not perfect. I lost sight of that. And yeah, and it's human. Yeah, And Jim, you know, looked me in the face and was like, girl, just because you know, five hundred people heard you tell a two and a half hour story does not mean that all of your listeners got to hear it, and it was like a light bulb went off and I was like, oh my god, you're right. That's right. And then, and not only that, even the five hundred that hurt it, you had to condense an entire, an entire, horrific ten year time period in the state of Louisiana. You had to condense that into two and a half hours. Now we're looking at over thirteen hours of content total for this series, and there's no condensing.

19:31 You're going to get all the facts. There were things about victims that you were like, and look, I had to push because you know, Kelly likes to bring in details I do. She likes to bring in details. She gets pissed when she can't bring the details. And I had to continuously remind Kelly that, hey, we've got limited time here. You can't go off on an hour tangent on one particular victim because we've got to tell all their stories and we've only got two hours to do it, essentially. And there's a fun line between in my mind, artistically, if I want to say at that lant that sounds kind of cheesy, but there's a fine line between making sure I honor the victim in complete coverage and then you know, getting through the story. And so I've done my best to give you as much as I can.

20:17 I hope that you can see these houses. I hope that you can feel the air. I hope you feel the rain, you know, because if you can't, that's part of the human experience. And why this affected so many people is because it could be me. Oh my god, I stood on that street. Oh wow, I walked that very path. You know. She looks like me. Yeah she Oh wow, she had she had a business three miles from my home. Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana.

21:00 You know what, we should do a podcast. About it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country, and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts. Simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this podcast. You know, and then come to find out, guys have if you've ever heard of six degrees of separation, we've all hopefully heard that that saying before, but. Or Kevin Bacon or can I.

21:42 Believe it or not? Before? Well, it used to there used to be a say you'd say, name a movie with Kevin Bacon and you can talk any actor into that movie within six movies. Yeah, well it's true. Hey, to show you how strange it is. Well, well, my point was this that once I started telling, you know, some local friends of mine. What I was doing, they knew these people or they won. My dad's best friend, his wife was very good friends with one of these victims. I never knew that because I was young. Why would I even think to ask that? But then you start, you start looking and listening, and you realize just how completely and totally connected we all are.

22:28 Hell, Jim, we we were meant to be friends real quick. I know we're talking about this. Series, but our our paths we learned crossed back from childhood. Yeah, and we never knew it. We shared the same friends, didn't do it. We went to the same high school. Yeah, just years ago. He graduated before I ever got there. Yeah, I'm much older. You've old you, old man. But we went to the same high school. He knew my grandpa. Jim knew my grandpa like you know, and so just that type of connection between he and I and look at us today. You know. He sold pain to companies that I went to and dealt with and and worked for. Not in a big scale, but like I did some voice acting. I said one line anyway, and he sold paint to Are you ready?

23:14 You may recognize this line from from a Hallmark movie? Ready here, let me help you with that. But like he got the part. Yeah, but you know, he sold paint to that same company. Like we just we talk about it all the time, like God was trying to make us friends. Yeah, we just had to get our and we come to find out we live literally across the street from each other. I never knew it. So there's that you know, and and that human aspect. I'm just trying to tell you I want these women to matter. They still matter, And there's pieces and parts of my own personal life that you're going to get to hear throughout this series that directly uh connected to these women.

23:59 That's right. And another exciting thing about this series is the interviews that we were able to do with people boots on the ground. The investigator, David McDavid. Is out one of the. Main characters, if you will, in this story, investigator from Zachary, Louisiana. He was the chief of police at one point, then he became the mayor of Zachary. He started in the reserve program as a kid and is now mayor of Zachary. He's gone through everything and mad respect for that man, mad. Respect and he was very integral in the Derek Todd Lee story. We interviewed him, we recorded that interview. You're going to get that, Kathy font No tell me.

24:45 Yeah. So, Kathy Fontou is an absolute hero of mine and when you think end of mine, when you think about I just I'm a strong believer in being a woman's woman. Okay, we straighten each other's crown and we don't drag each other down. And when people make mistakes. I'm one of those friends that would rather tell you in person, in private. I don't want to drag you down in front of other people, just like I don't want that done for me. Well. Kathy font No was a warden at Angola and she isn't anymore, but she was at the time, and she actually hired me, and I look up to her, I admire her, and she actually was very a big part of who I am today.

25:29 She would probably roll rize at that, but. You never know how a one or two hour interaction with a young kid on a college campus can totally change the trajectory of their life. Yeah, and she was that person for me. And she was a warden at Angola to nail, Tough as nails, cute as a button. Yeah, A funny, funny story on that. When you know, I never I knew the legend of Kathy font No had a lot of respect for her before I ever met her. But you know, you develop a picture of someone in your head, and I developed this picture and just from hearing her reputation, I'm thinking this, this woman six foot tall, probably muscle bounds, yeah, maybe kind of butch, you know. And she walked in here, and this is an attractive woman and I'm like, wow, she's a little shitty and a little bit and uh, I almost stuttered when you walk in the room because I'm like, wow, I didn't expect a good looking woman to walk in here, And I don't mean that any kind of negative way, but it's that was her persona is just such a legendary persona, you know, being a warden at Louisiana's State Penitentiary in Gola, you would go, yeah, yeah, you developed this picture. But we interviewed her and she shared some insight into Derrek Toddley after his incarceration that you can't get anywhere.

27:00 First firsthand experience and real quick. You know, you said, you people build pictures of what people look like all the time. We don't. You know, I post pictures because I have to, you know, but you know, I'm not someone who wants my face on everything. But I posted a picture of Jim and I at a concert recently, and the comments were so funny because people go, wait a minute, Jim looks. I thought Jim was some skinny man with long blonde hair and a mustach. And Jim's bald, and you know, like solid ball. Like I shaved my head, not bald, like I got a what is it a fold over or something, a fold over stone cold bowl bald, not. Yeah, stone cold, Steve Austin or yeah. But get that when people people's one woman said Wow, it's so strange to see your face. I know, your voice, but to see what you look like. It's not what I you know, it's just not what I expect and so kind of interesting.

27:53 But that's that's the case here. And also I'm gonna tell you this, Derek Tidley doesn't look anything like what anybody thought he would look like. No, and so that's a huge part of that story. It's just why don't we build. These expectations and then they're totally shattered? You know, it's very interesting how the mind works. It really is. And you know, another interesting thing about the DTL story. Uh, and we don't talk too much about this in the series for obvious reasons, but Derek Todd Lee was one of three serial killers running around in South Louisiana at the same time, all at the same time. Imagine the pressure on investigators.

28:35 Yeah, and okay, so I know we're all watching the ed gean Netflix thing that's out right now. I watched the first one and I don't know. I couldn't get it. I finished it. I finished it, Yeah, some some parts of it. Yeah, it's too weird for me. Yeah. I watched it because I wanted to see what they what they expanded on, and maybe they took a lot of liberties in that show, but a couple of points it just got perverse just for the sake of perversion. It felt like, yeah, I wouldn't be interested in seeing mam and naked. Yeah, well you missed some other stuff too, it came out. I was like, eh, I'm good, but but no, like you know, the people that are caught up in that type of that's a big thing that again because of how horrific it was, Well, we had three of.

29:18 Them things running around, you know in South Louisiana and just investigators. How do you go look at at a at a death and then you go look at another death, and then you look at another death and you're like, well, is this the hallmark of this uncaught killer? Or is it the hallmark of this uncaught killer? And then they overlap. They had a job, they had a huge job cut out for them at that time, and we may we may need to extend series to talk about those guys too. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Uh It's just something folks that I cannot impress on you enough how awesome it is. And I know you would expect that from the people that produced it and the people that hosted it. But I'm telling you, when you hear this, you're going to be blown away, and you're going to know the amount of work involved, and you're going to know who. You're going to know so much about.

30:13 This guy and what I tell you in this story, and I mean this ten toes down chest out. I have a lot of college age listeners. I know that because they reach out to me and they ask me for sources and things like that. If you're in college and you're writing papers and you're you know, in criminal justice or something, this series will give you a ton of insight too, to expand upon and to learn from. And I know that's kind of a weird thing for me to pull out, but it's happening right now. I've had a couple of people reach out recently. One of my former student's message, I mean, she said, oh my god, thank you so much, because I had sent her a bunch of my sources for and she did her paper and Derek Tidley got one hundred percent to shout out. And then another friend of mine, jem I, got cited for the first time formally cited in a a writing right, yeah, and she sent it to me. She's like, look, you're officially a source. I was like, damn it, yes, you know, the academic and beloved it.

31:07 I loved it. Yeah, that is awesome. In the sultry heat of Louisiana, where the Bayous whisper secrets and the air hangs heavy with the scent of magnolias, a darkness lurked beneath the surface. Derek todd Lee was a man whose charm masked a sinister reality. He was a monster. Lee, a seemingly ordinary. Man with a disarming smile, led a double life that would unravel in a series of murders in the capital city of Baton Rouge and the surrounding areas. As the first reports of disappearances and murders began to surface, South Louisiana was thrust into a nightmare, igniting a frantic search for answers. The true horror was just beginning, and the hunt for a serial killer eventually known by just three legs, would reveal not only the depths of Derek Toddley's depravity, but also the resilience of those most affected by his evil acts. The families and the survivors this is DTL.

32:19 Look, we want to tell you right now. If you're listening to this on the regular feed, this episode number one is five days from today, so it drops Monday for you. Obviously, we drop our shows at midnight, so Monday at the stroke of midnight, which some people say, wait in that Sunday night. No, technically it's Monday, Moore. I'm one of those. I think it's Sunday. Yeah, it blows people's minds, but midnight. You're going to get that if you are a Patreon member though, as I told you, you're going to get this in two days. So if you're not currently a Patreon member, go join the middle level or above right now and you'll get to hear episode number one on Friday, two days from today. Now, if you're listening to this obviously on Patreon, well you're three days from today.

33:13 You too much math? Just yeah, just do your thing, people, do your thing whatever makes you happy, you know. I like to get down in the weeds with a time. So I hope y'all are excited. I hope that you are prepared and that you're ready to hear it all, and that you really enjoy this. And remember that these victims are real people, and that these stories are being told not with salaciousness, not with. Theatrics, just for the sake of it. I want you to know, and I hope that it can help mold you as an individual when you think about the criminal justice system, when you think about victims' rights, when you think about families of. Victims, all of that. That is why this has. Been so such a good experience for me, because it's going to give you a lot of insight that sometimes gets glossed over because people don't want to hear.

34:00 Right, And one more thing, Okay, share it, Yeah, Share this podcast on your social media, this series on your social media. If you enjoyed it, We want to get as many guys on it as possible. As y'all know. kJ is all about the victims, telling the stories of the victims, but nobody ever knows the victims. If not enough people listen to it and hear it, the best way you can get that out there is to share this podcast. If you're hearing this right now, you're already a fan. You're listening, you're loving unspeakable. We want to get it to the people out there that are not familiar with this show so that we can introduce them to the victims in these cases.

34:43 That's right, because they are us, we are them, and they matter. So thank y'all so much for this impromptu, I guess conversational piece that we gave you this week. And you can get ready because I got a lot more content come in your way. So until next time, I I'm Kelly Jennings. Do you want me to say, I'm Jim Chaplin, I'm Jim Chapman. And this has been a terrible ending. We're going to end it like that.