Serial Killer Stalks Baton Rouge

Ed Piglia doesn't want his sister's murder at the hands of a serial killer to fade from the front pages and he's hoping two billboards offering a $75,000 reward for the killer's conviction will ensure that won't happen.

Refusing to rely solely on the police and FBI, Piglia and his family have mobilized to find clues that could lead them to the man who killed Pam Kinamore and two other women.

"We're just so afraid that without the pressure, this thing will become stagnant and go out of the newspapers altogether," Piglia said from his home in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans about an hour's drive from Baton Rouge.

"I can't let it rest until this individual is caught," he said.

The billboards — paid for by Kinamore's friends — went up Wednesday offering the reward for information leading to the conviction of the man who slashed Kinamore's throat, strangled Gina Wilson Green and stabbed Charlotte Murray Pace.

Both billboards — one near Kinamore's home and another near her antiques store — were emblazoned with a huge picture of Kinamore and the words "Justice for Pam. Justice for All."

Money from local residents poured in to pay for the reward and relatives and friends of the three women are sharing information, hoping to find a link that will lead them to the serial killer.

"It's possible we will never find a logic that will help us understand the process he uses," said Ann Pace, the mother of victim Charlotte Murray Pace.

Ann Pace said she has e-mailed and telephoned the families of Green and Kinamore and helped organize meetings between her daughter's friends and the other families to compare what they know about the women, "trying to see if there's any common ground."

They have scoured the names of gyms, beauty salons and stores frequented by the women, hoping to pick up on a link.

Nothing sticks out, except the DNA evidence police said links all three murders.

"We have not been able to come up with any thing that is common for all three, and believe me, we're trying," Ann Pace said in a telephone interview from her Jackson, Miss., home.

The families plan to meet in person sometime soon, possibly Sunday, but Ann Pace knows it's possible they will never find a connection between the three women and the killer.

"I think whatever connections there are to be made are floating in his sick, revolting, evil head," she said. "We're trying to apply traditional reasoning and rational techniques to an irrational person."

Pace, a 22-year-old recent graduate of LSU, lived three doors down from Green when the 41-year-old nurse was found strangled in her home on Sept. 24. Pace was stabbed to death on May 31, two days after she moved to a townhouse in another neighborhood that she had rented for the summer. It doesn't appear that the two women knew each other.

Kinamore, 44, a decorator and antique store owner, was abducted from her home on July 12. The killer slit her throat and dumped her body at an exit off Interstate 10 about 30 miles away from Baton Rouge.

Police won't comment on the details of the investigation. Nearly three dozen murders of Baton Rouge women over the last decade remain unsolved, and police have said they are scouring the evidence to see if any of them are connected to Kinamore, Pace and Green. The FBI is working with local authorities.

"To sit back and think that my sister's murder might go by the wayside like some of the others did, I couldn't live with that," Piglia said.

He's received at least one phone call from the mother of a woman killed about five years ago whose murder was never solved. That mother was hoping to find some link to Kinamore's case that might find her daughter's killer.

Kinamore's family has appealed to Gov. Mike Foster, asking for him to pressure agencies to devote more manpower and resources to the case.

Baton Rouge police last week said they are looking for a white pickup truck in connection with Kinamore's murder.

Anne Pace believes someone could help find the killer. She said her daughter was strong and put up a tremendous fight, so the killer should have strange injuries.

"He is hideously brutal. She fought so hard to live, and she was capable of putting up one hell of a fight," Anne Pace said.