Carrie Yoder's body found in Whiskey Bay

WHISKEY BAY - Authorities have told the parents of 26-year-old Carrie Yoder that a body found floating off Interstate 10 earlier in the day was that of their daughter, a source close to the family said Thursday evening.

"They have essentially indicated that it is Carrie," said Yoder's doctoral professor and mentor at LSU, Bill Platt. "We are very certain of who the body is. Platt said he was sitting with Yoder's parents early Thursday evening when what he called "official sources" relayed the news.

He said "pieces of identification" the family provided to police were used to tentatively identify the body.

A fisherman discovered the body about 2:30 p.m. near the Whiskey Bay boat launch about 30 miles west of Baton Rouge - a few hundred yards from where the third known victim of the south Louisiana serial killer was found.

Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force spokeswoman Mary Ann Godawa would not confirm whether the body found was Yoder's.

Since Yoder's disappearance, the task force investigating the serial killer has assisted with the case but had not linked her to the other slayings. As of Thursday night, they still had not.

The body was taken to a laboratory in LSU's Geosciences building marked "Forensic Anthropology." Dental x-rays were being taken inside to confirm the corpse's identity, said Don Moreau of the East Baton Rouge Coroner's Office.

Moreau said an autopsy to determine cause of death would probably last throughout the night.

The body was found one day after a "vigil of hope" was held at LSU, and featured the first public comments from Yoder's parents. "The mood after the vigil was so upbeat," Platt said. "All that has been really dashed now."

Platt also said the family has established the Carrie Lynn Yoder Memorial Scholarship Fund and has begun accepting donations.

He said the family will hold a private memorial service in Baton Rouge this weekend. In front of an onslaught of news media from across southern Louisiana, officials at the scene provided few clues about the identification of the body.

Yoder, a third-year doctoral student in ecology, disappeared March 3 from her Dodson Avenue home just south of LSU.

Platt said he spent Thursday afternoon with Yoder's boyfriend, Lee Stanton, who reported Yoder missing on March 5.

"Everybody is just sort of hanging in there," Platt said. The body was found in water between eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 10, which are each about 20 feet above the surface.

Iberville Parish Sheriff Brent Allain declined to say whether the body was nude, but did say that it was extremely discolored. "We don't even have any idea how long the body has been in the water," Allain said.

Dozens of officials from surrounding parishes, including East and West Baton Rouge, Iberville, Pointe Coupee and Lafayette, parked at the edge of Bayou des Glaises most of Thursday afternoon while the media was kept about a quarter-mile away.

Officials combed the scene with at least two boats. As investigators worked the crime scene, several trucks pulling fishing boats drove away from the popular boat launch.

Allain alluded to recent crimes as the reason the body was taken to Baton Rouge. Iberville Parish Sheriff's Office is the lead agency investigating the case for now, Allain said, because the body was found in that parish.

The same was true when Pam Kinamore's body was found last July just west of Thursday's crime scene. Kinamore's body was lying in a washout on the bank of the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel. She had been abducted from her Briarwood Place home in Baton Rouge, and her throat was cut.

During the last 18 months, authorities have linked her killer through DNA to the murders of Gina Wilson Green and Charlotte Murray Pace in the Baton Rouge area, and Trineisha Dene Colomb of Lafayette.

Colomb, 23, was beaten to death; a rabbit hunter found her body near Scott on Nov. 24. In Baton Rouge, Green, 41, was found strangled in her Stanford Avenue home Sept. 24, 2001. Pace, 22, was found stabbed to death in her Sharlo Avenue town house May 31. Kinamore was abducted July 12 and her body was found four days later.

Godawa said the task force would meet this morning to discuss Thursday's developments.

Donations can be made to the Carrie Lynn Yoder Memorial Scholarship Fund through the LSU Foundation at 3838 W. Lakeshore Drive, Baton Rouge 70808.

Not yet, officialy.

However, her body was found just a few hundred yards from where another victim's body was found.

That poor woman. Her poor family....the area must be terrified.

One of our neighbor's children was murdered a few years back & even though they caught the guy within a day, we were scared out of our wits for quite some time. I can only imagine what they're experiencing.

Oh, I'm sure it's very tense. And with a serial killer, a predator, wandering around looking for someone who has dropped her guard for a second, it's got to be terrifying. I know that we were told by the cops to live our lives normally, but that was impossible. I remember waking up at every noise outside our window, every creak of the house, for weeks. Things didn't start getting back to normal (if you can call it that) until the killer of our neighbor's child was convicted and put away, but this area isn't even there because the killer hasn't been caught. I just hope everyone has increased their security measures, but feeling safe won't be possible until whomever is doing this is caught--and I hope that's very very soon.

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