NATCHEZ — For years, Amy Sanders said she has felt like her sister’s killer has snaked tentacles into her life.

That ended Thursday.

Derek Todd Lee, the infamous Baton Rouge serial killer who was convicted of two murders and linked to the deaths of seven women in all, died Thursday in a Baton Rouge hospital of undisclosed causes. He had been sentenced to death by the courts but died before the system could take his life.

Sanders’ sister, Gina Wilson Green, was one of Lee’s victims, though hers was not one of the deaths for which he was convicted.

Green was later buried in Natchez, where her mother, Margaret Wilson, and other sister, Sheree Bryant, lived.

“It’s been 11 years since he was found guilty and sentenced to death, and 14 years since my sister died,” Sanders said. “It was like insidious tentacles in our lives trying to cope with it, but the tentacles of the appellate process, which is horrendous on the victim’s family and friends, have been stopped today.”

Green, 41, was found dead at her Baton Rouge home on Sept. 24, 2011, after she missed work. She had been strangled. Lee was linked to her killing by DNA evidence.

Bryant said she was “numb” after hearing the news Thursday, and that it “was something that we have been looking for a long, long time.”

“He has lived way too long, and right now I am on an emotional roller coaster. I am happy he is gone, but at the same time have a lot of emotion for my sister,” she said.

“There have been a lot of tears shed, and a lot more tears to be shed.”

Lee made “big holes” in the lives of more than one family, Bryant said.

“Gina was the rock of our family — she was a loving woman, sister and daughter, she was a nurse who was always there to take care of her patients. My sister was awesome, she was fabulous,” Bryant said.

“God did it like he needed to see it done. Instead of us having to go through a death penalty, I thank God He did what He did and how He handled it.”

Both sisters said they planned to mark the news with flowers — in Sanders’ case, they would be placed on Green’s porch and accompanied by a balloon release from her children; Bryant commissioned a wreath to place on her sister’s grave.

The news could have never been anything more than bittersweet — and heavy on the bitter — but the graveside visit will be marked with an extra note of sadness.

Buried next to Green is Wilson, who died in 2012.

“I wish my mom could have seen this day,” Sanders said.

Now, all that remains is seeking closure in a world that no longer contains the man that for so long they’re called “that monster.”

“It is a healing day for me,” Sanders said. “It all stops.”

Lee had been sentenced to life for killing Geralyn DeSoto, 21, in January 2002, and to death for killing Pace four months later. Both women’s throats were cut.

DNA evidence linked him to at least five other killings from 1998 to 2003, officials said.

Privacy laws mean the Department of Public Safety and Corrections cannot discuss why Lee was taken to a hospital Saturday for emergency treatment, DPS Spokesperson Pam Laborde said. She added that an autopsy would be conducted to determine the cause of his death.

In September the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Lee’s conviction in Pace’s killing, rejecting claims that his lawyer should have brought up more evidence of mental illness.

“Given the compelling evidence that Lee committed five brutal murders marked by exceptional violence and unsuccessfully attempted another, he cannot show that counsel’s failure to present additional evidence that he may suffer from other mental disorders, whether or not related to his troubled upbringing, deprived him of a fair sentencing hearing or resulted in an unreliable recommendation of death,” Justice Scott J. Crichton wrote in a concurring opinion.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.