LETTER TO ANN PACE, THE MOTHER OF CHARLOTTE MURRAY PACE (DIED: MAY 31, 2002)

            On this date, May 31, 2002, Charlotte Murray Pace was found dead in her townhouse on Sharlo Avenue in Baton Rouge. The remains were of a 22-year-old LSU graduate student named Charlotte Murray Pace. A roommate discovered her body at about 2:00 p.m. on May 31, 2002. She had been stabbed to death. Evidence showed the victim put up a fierce struggle before succumbing to her wounds. It was likely that her killer was also wounded during the attack. Like in Green's case, an autopsy showed evidence of sexual molestation.

Pace had recently moved before her death and lived for only two days at the house where her body was discovered. Her previous address was only three doors away from Gina Green. Investigators found no evidence that they ever knew each other.

Several items were missing from Charlotte's possession. According to police reports, a brown and tan Louis Vuitton wallet with keys to Pace's BMW were stolen. The wallet contained her driver's license, as well as other personal effects. A V-Tech cellular phone and a silver ring were also taken. The killer did leave behind one thing police hoped would lead them to the identity of the killer, a footprint.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/baton_rouge/2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Todd_Lee

Charlotte Murray Pace

           She was murdered by The Baton Rouge Serial Killer, Derrick Todd Lee. He was convicted on October 14, 2004, for the May 31, 2002 rape and murder of LSU graduate student Charlotte Murray Pace. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

Ann Pace of Jackson holds a sign with photos of her daughter, Charlotte Murray Pace, who was murdered at her home in Baton Rouge in 2002, in an area designated for protesters outside Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. (Rick Guy/The Clarion-Ledger)

COMMENTS AND CONDOLENCES:

            We, the Victims’ Families For the Death Penalty, have a message for the mother of the victim, Ann Pace. We empathize and sympathize with you for the loss of your daughter, we comfort you and hope you can continue to fight for justice. Similar to you, Ann Pace, we show support to all victims and their families who want justice done. We do respect and love some of your news letters on the internet.

Here are some of Ann Pace’s quotes:

QUOTE 1: Ann Pace of Jackson stood alone with a sign bearing pictures of her daughter who was killed by a man named Derrick Todd Lee in 2002. Charlotte Murray Pace was 22. Her mother described her four years, so far, of waiting for Lee’s execution as “hideous.” While she said Lee’s death may not bring closure, she thinks it may bring peace. “I have this constant awareness of him breathing air, visiting with his family, doing all those things that he denied so many people, that he denied my daughter,” Pace said. “(Once he is dead), he will not be at my table. He will not be in my head. Then, it will be all about Murray and not about him.”

QUOTE 2: Feel-good idealism without reference to reality is dangerous. In a perfect world, capital punishment would be unnecessary. This is not a perfect world, but a real world with very real threats. - Death penalty letter 'idealism' 5:20 AM, Apr. 16, 2011 

QUOTE 3: WHEREAS the majority of those convicted and given the death sentence lacked adequate education and adequate financial resources. This seems to imply that murder(s) is somehow mitigated because the murderer may be poor and uneducated? Is an innocent victim less dead because the offender is uneducated and poor? Such a position is also insulting to the many who honorably strive with those limitations without murdering a single other soul. - Death penalty letter 'idealism' 5:20 AM, Apr. 16, 2011 

QUOTE 4: WHEREAS we the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference, an organization of interfaith leadership (on whose authority?), call for an immediate moratorium on sentencing human beings to death in the name of the state and in the name of justice. I, as a human being with all the authority invested in my human beingness, call for a moratorium on the murder of innocents and for an expedited application of the death penalty as the only commensurate and appropriate sentence for one who purposefully and wantonly destroys innocent life. - Death penalty letter 'idealism' 5:20 AM, Apr. 16, 2011 

QUOTE 5: I believe the death penalty to be a useful tool for law enforcement. Think how many admissions of guilt are obtained by taking this possibility off the table. - Death penalty offers 'safety' 2:30 PM, Mar. 26, 2012  

QUOTE 6: I also believe it is the only appropriate punishment for some crimes and that some people are dangerous in any venue. Even in jail, they are a threat to their fellow inmates, to those who must guard them, and potentially even to visitors to the prison.

A female guard was killed in Monroe in January 2011 and another in Washington State in the same month. What about those states where the death penalty doesn't apply? Reoffending within the prison or after escaping carries no real-life penalty.

If you have multiple life sentences without parole, what's another? - Death penalty offers 'safety' 2:30 PM, Mar. 26, 2012  

QUOTE 7: I believe the death penalty should be used sparingly for heinous, forensically supported crimes. In these cases, I truly believe that our foremost responsibility is to ensure our own safety and that of our children and our communities. - Death penalty offers 'safety' 2:30 PM, Mar. 26, 2012