The Baton Rouge Killer Wasn’t Alone

On May 27, 2003, Derrick Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge Killer, was finally in cuffs. Cue the collective sigh of relief from Baton Rouge. The boogeyman was behind bars, and surely, the nightmare was over. Case closed, right?

Well, not so fast.

Because even with the “prime suspect” tucked away in a jail cell, the killings didn’t stop. Imagine the collective facepalm among investigators when they realized, Hey, wait a second, these other murders? Yeah, they don’t match Lee’s MO at all.

Then came the moment every true crime junkie lives for and every investigator dreads: the horrifying realization that Baton Rouge wasn’t dealing with just one monster. There was another predator stalking the streets.

This revelation sent them straight into the orbit of Sean Vincent Gillis—a man who would make Derrick Todd Lee look almost… ordinary.

A Troubled Beginning

Sean Vincent Gillis entered the world in Baton Rouge in 1962, and chaos was already waiting for him, arms wide open. His father, Norman Gillis, was no stranger to instability—mental illness and alcoholism had him in a chokehold. But things really escalated shortly after Sean was born. In what can only be described as a true “what the hell” moment, Norman pulled a gun during an argument with his wife, Yvonne. The target? Not her. Not himself. Nope—it was baby Sean.

Thankfully, no one was physically hurt during this domestic horror show, but Yvonne got the wake-up call she needed: Norman was a clear and present danger. So, Norman packed his bags (or maybe just slithered out the door), and Yvonne became a single mom, raising Sean with help from her parents.

Yvonne held things down, keeping a steady job at the local news station and doing her best to give Sean a normal life. On paper, it looked like he was thriving. He was polite, earned good grades, and had friends. Gold star for parenting, right?

Well, maybe. Or maybe Yvonne just didn’t see the storm clouds gathering inside her son.

The neighbors and school friends, however, were a little less oblivious. According to them, Sean was running with a group of kids dabbling in devil worship. That’s not exactly the kind of extracurricular you’d put on a college application. And then there was the garbage can incident.

At 3 a.m. one night, Sean’s neighbor, Carolyn Clay, was jolted awake by a racket outside. There stood Sean, pounding on garbage cans like he was auditioning for Blink 182. Carolyn would later describe him as “an angry young boy,” which feels like the understatement of the century.

When another neighbor asked Sean why he took his rage out on innocent bins, he reportedly said it was because he didn’t have a girlfriend. That’s right—poor Sean’s love life, or lack thereof, was apparently trash-can-smashingly frustrating.

His budding criminal career officially started at 17, though nothing major at first. Just the usual menu of youthful mischief: traffic violations, DUIs, possession of marijuana, and contempt of court. But even then, the seeds of something far darker were clearly being planted.

And those seeds were about to grow into a nightmare.

A Life Spiraling Into Darkness

When Sean turned thirty, his life veered straight off the rails and into the abyss. Still living at home with his mom, Yvonne, Sean dabbled in odd jobs—emphasis on odd because he couldn’t hold one for long. Instead, he spent most of his time growing a pornography collection that could only be described as concerning.

Meanwhile, Yvonne was thriving. She landed a new job in Atlanta and decided it was time to leave her 30-year-old man-child to fend for himself. Big mistake. Sean didn’t use this newfound independence to, you know, get his act together. Instead, Yvonne had to regularly send him money just so he could scrape by. This financial lifeline didn’t soothe Sean’s mounting resentment, though. To him, his mom’s move was abandonment, plain and simple. His reaction? Standing at his windows in the dead of night and screaming into the void, terrifying the neighbors.

Then, in 1992, Sean’s antics got even creepier. A neighbor caught him peeping through their window. When confronted, Sean calmly explained that he was just looking for his cat. Sure, Sean. A likely story. From that point on, the neighborhood collectively side-eyed him like a hawk watching a mouse.

But not Terri Lemoine. To Terri, Sean was a charming young man who treated her with respect. They started dating, and while Terri found Sean’s disinterest in sex a little odd, she didn’t think much of it. What she didn’t realize was that Sean’s lack of interest in their bedroom was directly tied to his much more sinister hobbies.

Thanks to the rise of the internet, Sean discovered an endless buffet of disturbing content—rape, murder, dismemberment—you name it. And it didn’t stop there. In a particularly chilling moment, Sean shared pictures of dead women with Terri. Shocked but inexplicably unfazed, Terri brushed it off and continued their relationship for another decade.

She couldn’t have known that Sean’s fascination with violent imagery wasn’t just an obsession—it was the blueprint for what was to come.

The Horrific Murders

According to Sean Vincent Gillis, his killing spree began for a simple, almost laughable reason: he was stressed. Most people under stress might binge-watch TV or take a walk. Not Sean. His version of stress relief was breaking into the home of 82-year-old Ann Bryan, a resident of an upscale retirement community in Baton Rouge, with the intention of raping her. When Ann screamed, Sean decided that raping her was too much trouble, so instead, he stabbed her. Not once. Not twice. Over fifty times.

Ann Bryan, a woman who had likely survived life’s ups and downs with grace and strength, was brutally murdered by a man who claimed he was simply overwhelmed. Sean fled the scene, leaving behind a crime so horrific it shocked even seasoned investigators. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning.

For years, Sean went on to leave a trail of carnage across Baton Rouge—a series of murders that showcased not only his brutality but also his dark, twisted humor. Former District Attorney Prem Burns recalled one victim found posed on her back near a “Dead End” sign. “Which I thought was his humor, in a very sick kind of way—‘dead end,’” Burns explained.

One of Sean’s most chilling kills was that of 52-year-old Hardee Schmidt in 1999. Hardee was out jogging when Sean spotted her, and for reasons that only make sense in the black hole of his mind, he decided he had to have her. Over the next three weeks, he obsessively stalked her until the opportunity arose. Sean ran Hardee down with his car like she was roadkill, then used heavy-duty plastic wire to drag her into the vehicle. What followed was as depraved as it gets: he raped and murdered her, leaving her body in the trunk of his car for two days before dumping her like garbage into the bayou.

And yet, Sean wasn’t done.

His eighth and final known victim, 43-year-old Donna Bennett Johnston, would be the one who led authorities to his door. Donna’s body was discovered in a drainage canal in Baton Rouge, and the sheer brutality of the crime was almost beyond comprehension. Sean had raped her and then mutilated her body in ways that were grotesque even by his standards. Her breasts were slashed, a tattoo on her thigh was gouged out, and her left arm had been severed at the elbow.

It was Donna’s murder that finally ended Sean’s reign of terror, but only after years of death and destruction. Sean Vincent Gillis may have started killing because of “stress,” but what he left behind was a city that would never forget the horrors of his so-called relief.

Caught by Tire Tracks

Once investigators wrapped their heads around the fact that Baton Rouge wasn’t haunted by just one serial killer, they revisited Donna Bennett Johnston’s crime scene with fresh eyes—and a new determination to find this second predator. There, in the muck and chaos of the drainage canal, they discovered something crucial: tire tracks.

It wasn’t just any ordinary set of tracks. These belonged to a specific tire model that, as luck (or karma) would have it, had only been manufactured for a short three-year window. Even better? Only 90 sets had been sold in Baton Rouge. That’s not exactly a needle in a haystack; it’s more like finding a neon sign pointing directly to your suspect.

With this lead in hand, detectives followed the trail until they arrived at Sean Vincent Gillis’ doorstep. Calm and polite—because of course he was—Sean agreed to provide a DNA sample. And that’s where his story started to unravel.

The DNA was a match. Sean’s genetic calling card had been left at multiple assault and murder scenes, tying him to a string of unspeakable crimes. But what truly nailed him was what investigators found next: his computer.

Sean’s hard drive was a digital horror show. Among the 45 pictures of Donna Bennett Johnston’s mutilated body were countless other photos—images of previous victims, some known to police, others whose stories hadn’t even come to light yet.

It wasn’t just a confession; it was a grotesque scrapbook of his atrocities, laid bare in the cold, unfeeling glow of his monitor. Sean Vincent Gillis wasn’t just guilty—he was methodically documenting his evil, as if preserving it for posterity. And that computer, more than anything else, sealed his fate.

Justice Served

Sean Vincent Gillis was slapped with several counts of first-degree murder, but even from behind bars, he couldn’t resist feeding his dark, twisted ego. In letters sent from prison to a friend of Donna Bennett Johnston’s, Sean offered up chilling, almost casual confessions that read like they were plucked straight from a horror novel.

“She was so drunk,” he wrote about Donna. “It only took about a minute and a half to succumb to unconsciousness and then death. Honestly, her last words were ‘I can’t breathe.’ I still puzzle over the post-mortem dismemberment and cutting. There must be something deep in my subconscious that really needs that kind of macabre action.”

If Sean thought his prison pen-pal musings were going to stay private, he was dead wrong. These letters were introduced in court, turning the final nail in his defense into an iron spike. Unsurprisingly, the jury didn’t take kindly to his graphic and disturbingly introspective admissions. He was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life in prison.

Today, Sean Vincent Gillis resides at Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he will likely die. There, he spends his days doing the one thing he can’t escape: living with himself. A man who claimed stress drove him to murder now has a lifetime to sit in solitude and reflect on the horrors he inflicted on others.

Baton Rouge may never fully heal from the terror Sean and his ilk unleashed, but at least now, the streets are free from one more monster. And Sean? Well, he’ll rot away in the shadows, just where he belongs.