Randi Mebruer

Randi Jane Mebruer, a 28-year-old White female, spent the evening of April 18, 1998, on a simple errand to a video store with her young son before returning to their home in Zachary, Louisiana. A home health nurse, Randi lived on Saul Avenue in the Oak Shadows subdivision. The next morning, her son, then three years old, wandered to a neighbor’s house and said his mother was lost. When adults entered the Mebruer home, they discovered a scene of terrifying violence and immediately contacted authorities.

Investigators found blood on the floor and signs of a significant struggle that appeared to have started in the bedroom, where the headboard was stained with blood. Drag marks on the carpet led from the bedroom toward the kitchen, and blood drops continued out to the carport. A pink plastic bag stained with Randi's blood was also found at the residence. Police believed she had been violently assaulted, murdered inside her home, and then her body was removed by her attacker. Her car was still parked at the house, but Randi, her keys, and a pair of five-pound dumbbells were gone. She has never been found.

The Zachary Police Department’s investigation initially looked at those closest to Randi, including her ex-husband, but he was eventually cleared as a suspect. For years, the case remained cold, a painful and unanswered question for her loved ones and the community. The investigation took a dramatic turn in 2003, as law enforcement across southern Louisiana hunted for a serial killer responsible for a string of brutal murders. A tip from an acquaintance of a man named Derrick Todd Lee, who had been discussing Randi's disappearance, prompted Zachary police to seek a DNA sample from him in May 2003.

In February 2004, DNA evidence recovered from Randi's home was conclusively matched to Lee, a man already identified as the Baton Rouge Serial Killer. Lee had a criminal history that included arrests for stalking and being a "Peeping Tom" in the very same Zachary subdivision where Randi lived. Following the DNA match, authorities formally charged Derrick Todd Lee with the first-degree murder of Randi Mebruer. Over the years, investigators conducted extensive searches for Randi's remains based on tips related to Lee, including excavating a concrete slab at a house where he once stayed and draining a six-acre pond he was known to frequent, but these efforts were unsuccessful.

Derrick Todd Lee was apprehended in Atlanta in May 2003 after fleeing Louisiana as investigators closed in. In 2004, he was convicted in separate trials for the murders of Geralyn DeSoto and Charlotte Murray Pace. He received a life sentence for the DeSoto murder and a death sentence for the murder of Pace. He was sent to death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

Before Randi Mebruer's case could proceed to trial, Derrick Todd Lee died of heart disease in a hospital on January 21, 2016. His death brought an end to the legal proceedings, leaving Randi's case officially classified as solved with the primary suspect deceased, but without a trial or a conviction. For her family, the finality of a courtroom verdict was never realized, and the most agonizing question remains unanswered. As of January 2016, the case is considered closed by law enforcement, though Randi Mebruer’s body has never been recovered.