More Bayou Justice: Bayou Justice, #2 4c2952

Copyright © 2021 HL Arledge. All rights reserved. No one may reproduce or transmit any part of this book in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or via any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the publisher, excluding brief quotations in a review. The respective copyright holder of each photo retains copyright. The author included these adhering strictly to Fair Use guidelines. For photographs where the publisher could not identify the source, we will amend proper credits in future updates and editions as ed by the copyright holder. More Bayou Justice: South Louisiana Cold Case Files Published by Bogart Books www.bogartbooks.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Murder Among Steel Magnolias

Nanette Krentel

Huey Courtney

Frankie Richard

Honey Island Swamp

Jean Michael Crapeau

Devil Swamp

The Breland Murders

James Copeland

Ben Kinchen

Debbie Lindsey

Rachel Davidson

Donna Arceneaux

Jane Clement

Janessa Hartley

The Nurse

Albany Bars

The March

Murder at the OK Bar

Catfish and Hostages

Hunter Horgan

Kimberly Womack

David Bell

Port Allen Homicides

Corey Kitts

Frenier Beach

Thomas Hotard

Deckey Moate

Audrey Moate

Sheriff Hebert

Jackson Lejeune

The Voodoo Murder

Jeff Tircuit

Something Fishy

Bayou Manchac

Typhoid Tessa

The April Fool Hit

Donna Kimmey

Peter Rigwood

K. J. Griffin

Justin and Amédé

Kearney Foster

Angela Bond

Falsely Accused

John Day

The Pool Room Gang

Kinchen Bridges

Gordon Anderson

Oscar er

The Mad Man

Charlotte and Melinda

Pam Kinamore

Barbara Blount

The Psychics

Uncle Dudley

Prayers

End of Watch

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Further Reading: Bayou Justice

Also By HL Arledge

About the Author

About the Publisher

Dedication

Idedicate this volume to D.C. Arledge, a writer, and a poet, who served a lifetime in law enforcement. He left us on a Sunday, June 27, 2021. Although he and my dad were first cousins, I grew up calling him “Uncle Dudley.”

Acknowledgments

My heartfelt thanks to my wife and my family, who have endured my ions for journalism, broadcasting, research, and crime. I also want to recognize the tipsters. Without the retired law enforcement community and others willing to share their insights off-the-record, there would be no Bayou Justice broadcasts, newspaper columns, or books. Thank you all.

Introduction

In 2019, Bogart Books published Bayou Justice: Southeast Louisiana Cold Case Files , making the book available from all major booksellers. Reader response remains overwhelming, and I am forever grateful for your . As promised, book two picks up where that publication left off, re-examining more cases involving missing persons, unsolved mysteries, and hair-raising murders from the backwoods and swamps of South Louisiana. In this volume, we recount a murder in the house where Hollywood filmed the movie Steel Magnolias. We revisit the disappearances of Audrey Moate, Jane Clement, and Sunday School Teacher Barbara Blount. We dissect the murders of David Bell, Pam Kinamore, Nanette Krentel, and others, including a macabre strangulation, a political poising, and a social media enticed murder involving the Ku Klux Klan. We recount the last day of an accused serial killer’s life, explore an 80year-old fishing mystery, investigate an alleged voodoo murder set in a ghost town, and follow Cajun chef and humorist Justin Wilson as he investigates the death of a musical legend. In this book, readers will also discover that New Orleans legend Marie Laveau was not the person most believed her to be. I started my newspaper column, Bayou Justice, in late 2017 to ensure the family of crime victims that they were not alone. Someone still sought justice for their loved ones. With law enforcement agencies overloaded, underpaid, and understaffed, I believe the media can reach people the police do not know to interview. Too often, cold cases fade with time. New atrocities draw away the seasoned investigators’ attention, taking with it all hope family had of finding closure and justice for their loved ones. Regarding the subjects of my column and books, at Crime-Con, an international true crime conference held recently in New Orleans, I interviewed selfproclaimed crime experts, those who worked in law enforcement, assisted the FBI, authored books, hosted television shows, created films, and appeared as featured experts in court and the media, and I asked each of them why readers devour true crime. Award-winning Investigative Journalist M. William Phelps of the New York Times answered, “We are fascinated by psychopaths, how they think, what motivates them, and what they’ll do next. If we figure this out, we can be one step ahead of them or someone like them.”

“Also, there’s an element of wanting to know what’s going on in our neighbors’ houses,” he said. “In our collective nosiness, we’re a society consumed with and captivated by bad news.” Best-selling Author Caitlin Rother said, “I think readers wonder what motivates other people to commit such horrible acts against another, even loved ones. We can’t fathom doing such things, so we want some insight into the psychology of killers. Maybe we hope to learn how to protect our families and ourselves, but we are also fascinated by aberrant behavior and the many paths twisted perceptions can take. It’s like not being able to stop watching a traffic collision that you know is about to happen. It grips your attention and you can’t look away.” “I also suspect that many people who read and watch true crime are trying to process hardship or trauma in their own lives,” she added. “Somehow, reading about the victims and how their families handled a terrible tragedy resonates with them; it helps them process their own experiences and grief, and at the same time, escape from them.” Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Professor of Forensic Psychology, agreed, “True crime invites obsession for good reasons. People read terrible things to reassure themselves that they are safe, and these factual crime reports offer a puzzle people want to solve. Doing so gives them a sense of closure and a challenge that stimulates the brain. These experiences in combination can become addictive.” I understand that perspective. After 40 years in journalism, I covered horrendous cases and expected law enforcement to close them quickly. Sometimes, justice came fast, but some cases still haunt me. The best example of this is the 1987 murder of a beautiful 26-year-old bank teller named Selonia Ophelia Smith Reed. Her family called her Loni. Because I featured her horrendous murder in my column (and in the first Bayou Justice book), two men will soon stand trial for the crime. Loni’s former husband, Reginald Lathan Reed, 61, and Jimmy Ray Barnes, 63, await trial in 21st Judicial District Court for her murder largely because of the renewed focus Bayou Justice brought to the case. The newspaper column drew

the attention of the district attorney’s office, and soon after the book’s release, a Tangipahoa Parish grand jury indicted both men, charging them with seconddegree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in a 34-year-old brutal cold case homicide. Hammond residents know Reginald Reed as a former city mayoral candidate, but before his arrest, few knew the name, Jimmy Ray Barnes. However, Jacqueline Smith, Loni’s younger sister, told me she will never forget that name. On August 20, 1987, shortly after 10:30 that evening, “Jackie” stepped outside her sister’s Apple Street home for a smoke. As she approached the edge of the porch, a shadow moved near the front steps, startling her. Jackie screamed, and Loni ran out from inside the house. “Leave us alone,” Loni said to the shadow. “Why are you here?” Jimmy Ray Barnes, whom Loni described to Jackie as a neighbor and the local handyman, stepped into the light emanating from the door. Grinning, he said he had taken his dog for a walk and that the dog had gotten away. Loni pulled Jackie back into the house and locked the door behind them. Loni’s son, six-year-old Reggie, Jr., stood outside his bedroom door, concerned about the commotion. “Loni, that guy outside,” Jackie said, “Is he the reason you asked Dad to buy you a gun?” “It’s late,” Loni replied. “Let’s just go to bed.” Three days later—on a rainy Sunday morning, August 23, 1987—police found Selonia Smith Reed’s car parked near John’s Curb Market, a convenience store on East Thomas Street, three blocks from the Hammond police station and within walking distance of 1314 Apple Street, the house where Jackie met Jimmy Ray Barnes. Inside Loni’s car, police found her body slumped in the enger seat, the handle of an umbrella protruding from between her legs. Before or after sexually assaulting Loni with the umbrella, her assailant beat her face profusely and, wielding an instrument slightly larger than a Phillips screwdriver, stabbed her chest and neck over a dozen times.

Before exiting the car, her attacker scrawled something over Loni’s bloodspattered body, writing by squirting a white substance that Coroner Dr. Vincent Cefalu said refused to melt in the August heat. Loni died, Dr. Cefalu said, from three stab wounds, one in the right middle lobe of her lungs and another in the right atrium of her heart. Investigators questioned Jimmy Ray Barnes days after the murder, along with Reginald Reed and 100 other people, including Loni’s friends and family and her co-workers at Citizen’s National Bank. Around the clock, police worked feverishly to close the case but failed. The brutal murder remained unsolved more than three decades. A decade after the murder, Reginald Reed announced his candidacy for mayor of Hammond. By then, Jimmy Ray Barnes had fled the state, and the Hammond Police Department had seemingly abandoned their investigation. In October 2018, Hammond Police Chief James Stewart told me how retired investigators closed the Selonia Reed case on their way out, marking the homicide “cleared by exceptional means”—meaning investigators had identified the likely perpetrators, but would never find the evidence to win a conviction in court. That changed in January 2019. That month, Hammond Mayor Pete Panepinto dismissed Chief Stewart, and Assistant Chief Thomas Corkern notified me that the Selonia Reed case was active again, this time with the district attorney’s office, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the Louisiana State Police, partnering in the investigation. District Attorney Scott Perrilloux told The Daily Star newspaper that relatively recent developments in DNA Matching allowed investigators to reconsider the case. “I was able to assign this to someone who went back and reviewed all of the prior investigative materials,” he said. “And we feel like it is now a prosecutable case.” Questioned soon after, Claudette Matthews—Reginald Reed’s sister—explained to investigators why she believed Jimmy Ray Barnes left the state, and in an interview with me, she recounted that information.

“Jimmy Ray Barnes left Louisiana in the 90s, just before my brother announced he was running for mayor,” she said. “Before that, Reginald shot Barnes in the back of his neck, supposedly on accident, after inviting him on a fishing trip to Bayou Manchac. I believe Reginald threatened to kill him and feed him to the alligators if he broke his silence about Selonia.” “Jimmy Ray Barnes’ mother took him to Big Charity after he was shot,” Claudette said, “And she helped him leave town when he got out.” On June 3, 2004, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta, Georgia booked Jimmy Ray Barnes into the Fulton County jail, charging him with possession and attempting to sell cocaine. Two weeks later, their local drug court released him with time served, and Jimmy Ray Barnes fell off the grid. “Last thing I heard,” Claudette Matthews ed, “His family said Jimmy Ray was homeless, living under a bridge somewhere.” In 2019, church volunteers in Atlanta, Georgia complained to television station PBS-Atlanta about local police officers rousting the homeless and questioning vigorously anyone living under bridges within the city limits. “This is what I’ve heard,” camp resident Tony Hines told PBS. “I heard if you get caught living under a bridge, you are going to jail.” In the end, neither the Atlanta Police Department nor the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office dismantled any vagrant camps. Instead, they interviewed camp residents, asking questions, looking for someone. The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office booked Reginald Reed in Hammond on June 21, 2019. They booked Jimmy Ray Barnes the following day. During pre-trial, I sat with Loni’s family, as a manacled Reginald Reed shot me with a make-believe finger gun. “Is he shooting at me or you?” Loni’s sister, Gwendolyn, asked. And that night, Jackie Smith’s phone rang. News of the grand jury and Reginald Reed’s arrest had reached her nephew’s home in San Antonio, Texas. Reggie, Jr., asked Jackie, “Why now, Auntie, after 32 years?” Jackie replied, “Baby, you were only six years old when you lost your momma.

You didn’t need to lose your daddy, too. I think God’s been waiting all this time, just waiting until you were strong enough to handle what comes next.” As we await justice in this case and others, I thank you for reading this book, and I thank you for doing your part to solve the many mysteries documented here. Coming from different backgrounds, each of you may hold some pertinent morsel of information unknown to investigators but relevant to some cold case. Not seeing the puzzles police are working on, you may hold a small seemingly insignificant piece that, dropped into the whole, could bring justice to someone’s family. At least, I hope so.

Murder Among Steel Magnolias

In 1990, an 11-year -old girl selling candy for a school fund-raiser vanished. Later, a man confessed to strangling her in a Natchitoches, Louisiana house Hollywood made famous one year earlier. Investigators today still search for Averie Evans’ body, while her confessed killer walks free. Researching and writing true crime daily, I hear occasional complaints from my wife. Don’t get me wrong. Janna remains devoted to true crime and wine, but sometimes she needs a break. “I’ve got an idea,” Janna said at the end of summer one year. “Forget the blood and gore for a few days, and let’s do the Blush and Bashful Weekend in Natchitoches.” “The what?” I replied. Natchitoches (pronounced Nak-i-tish) is a small Louisiana town three hours north of our home outside of Baton Rouge. Most know Natchitoches as “the meat pie capital of the world,” but that fall, I had no clue how to define a “Blush and Bashful” weekend. “Fans of the movie, Steel Magnolias, are coming to Natchitoches from all over the world,” Janna said, “celebrating the 30th anniversary of the filming there.” Hearing this, I searched the web, hoping to find something I might enjoy doing in Natchitoches. “There’s a Dolly Parton lookalike contest,” she said, “And—get this—an armadillo cake baking contest.” “Are there any museums or historic landmarks in Natchitoches?” I asked. “There must be,” she said. “During the filming of the movie—in the summer of 1989—all the movie’s stars lived in town, and Shirley MacLaine hunted ghosts on the grounds of the Cherokee and Melrose plantations.” “Dolly ate at Mariner’s restaurant on Sibley Lake, and Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, and Daryl Hannah shopped all over town.”

“Aha!” I said, pointing at my phone. “The event’s website says their horse and carriage tour visits every Steel Magnolias filming location, except one—Truvy Jones’s house and beauty shop.” “That can’t be right,” Janna said, scowling. “Dolly played Truvy, the town gossip. They can’t ignore her house, plus her beauty shop is the main location— wait—why did you say ‘aha’?” She saw me grinning, rolled her eyes, and said, “Please don’t tell me somebody committed murder in Truvy’s house.” At 7:28 on a Tuesday afternoon, November 6, 1990, Joann Evans called the Natchitoches Police Department to report her 11-year-old daughter missing from their eastside neighborhood. With tears in their eyes, several times in the week following Averie Evans’ disappearance, Richard and Joann Evans spoke to reporters from the living room of the family’s small one-story house on Shady Lane. Rick Evans had been in a Monroe hospital when Joann called about Averie’s disappearance. “Who would ever think something like this would happen?” he asked. “Our searches have turned up nothing,” Rick said, “All we can do now is sit by the phone and wait.” “But we’re her parents. We’re not giving up,” Joann added, her voice firm, despite the tears. “I don’t care how long it takes. We will find her,” she said. Averie, Joann said, stood 5-feet-tall and weighed 101 pounds. She had brown, shoulder-length hair. Her mom last saw her riding away on her 20-inch white, pink, and purple Murray bicycle with beads on the back spokes. Joann said there was nothing unusual about the afternoon Averie disappeared. Averie came home from school and wanted to sell her candy. She played violin for the string orchestra at Natchitoches Junior High and was very enthusiastic about the group, her mother said. Joann said Averie did not sell any candy the weekend before because their family had gone fishing. Averie promised her mother that she would not be late. “We had somewhere to

go later,” Joann said. “She was always very prompt, reliable, so I didn’t see any harm.” Rick said they never worried about their daughters going into the neighborhood alone. “She had been in the neighborhood selling those candy bars off and on for three or four weeks,” he said. “I wish I knew what happened.” Joann expected Averie home before five that Tuesday afternoon, and a neighbor, Truey Flenniken, said she should have made it. Averie left her house at the corner of Fifth and Stephen Street at 4:30, and the bicycle ride to her house should have taken less than four minutes. “We have lived here for 11 years, and I don’t anything like this happening,” Truey told Greg Kendrick of The Shreveport Times. Truey bought three candy bars that afternoon while Averie visited with her daughter, Sonya. “At 4:30, Averie got up from watching TV and told Sonya that she had to go,” Truey ed. As she walked to the door, Averie said she had two more candy bars left to sell, and she knew where to sell them “real quick” on her way home. Neither Truey nor Sonya ever saw Averie again. Truey said Averie and Sonya attended school together and were very close. “If she were in trouble or planning to run away, she would have told our little girl,” Sonya’s mother said. “Averie is bright and ambitious; not the kind of girl to run away,” Rick Evans agreed. “We read her diary after she disappeared. Our daughter was looking forward to the coming days.” Joann, Truey, and Sonya told police that Averie left both homes wearing a lightweight black sweater and blue jean vest over black jean slacks. The disappearance of this small community’s 7th-grade honors student stunned the small Louisiana town, but the city and people of Natchitoches rallied to assist. Hundreds of volunteers distributed posters to tourists, while others posted

them in business windows and on light poles throughout the town. Others remained home behind locked doors, praying. At a meeting of the Natchitoches City Council the following Monday, Hazel Mayfield announced that she and others had opened an Averie Evans Reward Fund at City Bank & Trust where volunteers could contribute. “The police have no leads yet,” she said, “And we thought that perhaps some money might entice someone to come forward.” Natchitoches Police Chief Keith Thompson thanked Mrs. Mayfield, adding that he welcomed help from the public. He urged anyone in the vicinity of Stephens and East Fifth Street on the day of Averie’s disappearance to call him if they saw anything suspicious or unusual. “I don’t care if it even sounds silly or stupid. Please call,” he said. According to Chief Thompson, his officers worked round-the-clock to find Averie—along with the Natchitoches Parish sheriff’s deputies, the Louisiana State Police, the Northwestern State University campus police, and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Natchitoches Mayor Joe Sampite said all the city’s citizens found common ground in their sympathy for the Evans family. “We’re all greatly saddened,” he said, “Averie’s disappearance has shocked the entire city.” During his 30 years in Natchitoches, the mayor said he has never heard of a local case in which a child disappeared for no apparent reason. Chief Thompson agreed, saying he had not seen such a situation in his 16 years as a Natchitoches police officer. “I’m just sick about it,” said another Fifth Street resident, Phyllis Andry, explaining that she lived in the same housing project as Rick and Joann Evans. She said the project was not typical of public housing complexes in many cities. The Natchitoches Parish Housing Authority kept grounds and housing units in new condition, and it maintained well-groomed flower beds in the yards.

The neighborhood, composed of duplex buildings, provided homes to a mixture of lower-income people, both black and white, along with senior citizens and displaced families. Chief Thompson confirmed they rarely received calls from East Fifth Street. “It’s like a ghost town there,” Phyllis explained, “Nothing ever happens in our neighborhood.” She said she never imagined a young girl disappearing while selling candy bars. “Not here, at least. It doesn’t happen,” she said. “What is it, dope, or what? What makes people do these things? I can’t understand it.” While the police searched, Phyllis said she and others took a novel approach to find Averie. “They say if you get together and pray, the message gets up there quicker,” she said, “That’s what we’re doing.” Volunteers Dennis Skinner and Curtis Stoddard, both missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, led the flier effort. They placed leaflets, with Averie’s photo and description, on car windshields across the city. “She is a nice girl who is bound and determined to make something of herself,” Stoddard said. “I think everybody is willing to do anything to help get her back.” “I’m glad there are people in town that care,” Glen Monsour told fellow volunteers. “I have two little girls myself,” he said, “And I’ve never hesitated about them walking down the street. Now, not only am I scared but my kids are scared too.” “I had never heard of this happening [around here] before,” Averie’s Sunday school teacher, Potsy Weaver, added. “Averie is a bright girl. [Her disappearance] makes you reconsider allowing children to sell things door-todoor.” Joann Evans said she and her husband were trying to remain optimistic and had gained strength from the faith of Averie’s older sisters, ages 14 and 10. She said she had problems adjusting to Averie’s absence. However, she found solace by looking at photos and surrounding herself with Averie’s belongings.

“I tidied up her room today,” she said. “I’m keeping it neat and tidy for her.” She said when doing so, for a split second, she wondered why her daughter did not have any clothes to wash. “I just can’t imagine where she is,” Joann said. “I miss talking with her, and I really miss the hugs and kisses goodnight.” One week after Averie vanished, Chief Thompson told Donna Whitton Faulkner of the Alexandria Town Talk that Averie’s disappearance baffled his officers. He said his investigators were no closer to finding Averie after a week than on the day she disappeared. He said they had no leads in the case. “We’ve invited any and all help on this thing,” the chief said. “From a law enforcement standpoint, you try to theorize as many possibilities as you can. So far, nothing has developed.” Detective Thomas Delrie said the town wanted to help. Concerned citizens inundated the department with telephone calls, he said, suggesting leads or volunteering to help search. Solid leads, however, were scarce. “We’re doing everything possible,” Detective Delrie told reporters. “We haven’t ruled this a runaway or a kidnapping. We don’t want to see the public panic about this until we know more.” On the phone, Detective Gary Swindle reminded callers that investigators had not yet found Averie’s bicycle. “That may be a good sign,” he repeated often. “If a stranger is going to snatch a child in broad daylight, I don’t think he is going to take the bicycle as well.” However, this failed to comfort residents. By mid-November, many became outraged, fearing for the safety of other children. “We feel helpless,” said Angela Key, who also lived in Averie’s neighborhood. “Everybody’s heart goes out to the family, but this could have happened to anybody’s child, and the fact that they don’t have any leads makes it that much more appalling.” “People don’t just vanish into thin air,” she said. “Somebody somewhere knows

something about this little girl.” Angela said she worried about sending her 6-year-old daughter to school alone. “I told her not to even go to the bathroom by herself,” she said. “I’ve got seven kids,” Vella Helire told a reporter. “Yesterday, one of mine didn’t come home until after dark, and I was frantic.” “It may be my child today,” Joann Evans said. “But whose child will it be tomorrow or next week?” “Something happened to our daughter,” Rick Evans added, “Something outside Averie’s control. Police need to stop what they’re doing and figure out what happened and why.” Rick and Joann and the other concerned townspeople did not know that Chief Thompson had lied when he said no leads had developed. The FBI had tied his hands. He could reveal nothing about the note his office had received from a man claiming to be Averie’s abductor. On November 12, an anonymous author mailed the Natchitoches Police Department a six-line hand-printed note claiming to detail Averie’s fate. Chief Thompson received the letter on November 14. According to court documents released years later, the author of the note wrote that he felt sorry for his crime. He said that all evidence against him, including Averie’s body, had gone “up in ashes to heaven” and that Averie was now with God. The author also provided a partial description of the clothing and jewelry Averie wore the day she vanished. The following week, the FBI began collecting printed handwriting samples from everyone living in the Evans home. They interviewed the family extensively about the contents of the note, and they persuaded Averie’s parents to undergo extensive polygraph testing. One week later, at 10:18, Saturday morning, December 1, less than a month after Averie’s disappearance, the Natchitoches Police Department arrested her father

at the Natchitoches Christmas Festival of Lights. Rick Evans had been working with volunteers, distributing Averie’s fliers on the banks of the Cane River when police confronted him. The newspapers reported the next day that “Richard Evans, 32, was charged with resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, and public intoxication, authorities reported.” But Chief Thompson later clarified that his office arrested Rick not for being intoxicated, but for violating a festival ban on alcohol consumption. The police, and subsequent news reports, did not mention what Rick talked to the public about that morning. As he distributed fliers, he described the actions of the FBI. He told concerned citizens about the anonymous note, explaining that it included no details not readily available to anyone involved in the search for Averie. Rick remained in the Natchitoches Parish Jail until Monday morning when a judge set his bond at $750. However, the FBI raided the Evans family home two days later. “I’m glad my wife isn’t here to see this,” Rick Evans told reporters as four FBI agents searched his home. Rick agreed to the search. The FBI had no warrant. Inside the home, agents confiscated a personal letter written to Averie by one of her sisters. They also took an address book, and a log Joann maintained, tracking events related to her daughter’s disappearance. Rick said the family planned to celebrate their missing daughter’s 12th birthday the following Saturday. He also said I had upset him that the investigation seemed focused on the family’s lifestyle and personal matters rather than finding Averie. Outside the home, FBI agents assigned to the case said Averie’s father was overreacting, and that they had no suspects. One agent said they had not determined whether someone abducted Averie or she ran away, but later itted that the FBI did not track down runaways.

“I guess they’re doing their job,” Rick told reporters. However, in the weeks prior, he said, he and his wife have undergone lie detector tests, several interrogations, and handwriting analyzes. “They told us they must do this, but they don’t realize what we’re going through,” Joann Evans told reporters later. “This doesn’t help Averie. It just makes us look bad.” When Joann explained to reporters about the handwriting analyzes and the anonymous note, Chief Thompson finally confirmed the note’s existence but refused to comment on the content, prompting the FBI to intervene. “This is still an ongoing investigation,” said FBI agent Ed Grimsley, the special agent in charge, and he described his office’s investigation into the family as routine. “This case is unusual because there is not much to go on,” he said. “Generally, by this time, we could determine whether this was a kidnapping, a runaway, or some other crime, but we have no way of knowing if she is still alive. We are just going on the assumption that she is.” Grimsley said the special team, which at the height of the investigation numbered over 20 agents, would remain in Natchitoches until they had exhausted all leads. Asked about his arrest, Rick Evans said that his alcohol addiction was a personal issue that surfaced unwillingly in the investigation. He explained he had separated from Joann and was in a detoxification program in Monroe when Averie disappeared. “I’m not ashamed to talk about it now,” he said. “Despite what we were going through, it would have never caused Averie to run away.” Joann and Rick told reporters they had reunited to search for their daughter and that Averie’s party would go on in her absence. Joann invited several of her daughter’s friends. She planned to set up a cake and presents among multiple portraits of Averie. “It’s not going to be cheerful,” she said. “Even the FBI agents asked me why I’m doing this. But I have to believe she is still out there somewhere and will be coming home to her presents.”

Interrogating the Evans family, the FBI uncovered one clue. Averie’s sister, Mandy, told them of a neighbor who bought candy from the girls often. She said he seemed odd, always asking questions about where they lived. He lived, she said, in a famous house, Truvy’s house and beauty shop in the movie, Steel Magnolias. FBI agents found the house Mandy described at 453 Henry Street; a home occupied by 41-year-old Phillip DeSelle and his wife, Dottie. DeSelle told FBI Special Agent Len Hatten that he ed Averie. He said he bought candy from her on at least two occasions. However, he insisted, he did not see her the day she disappeared. Agent Hatten did not search DeSelle’s home, but he left the residence with a sample of DeSelle’s printed handwriting. Soon after, DeSelle telephoned Agent Hatten, saying the suspense of waiting for the handwriting analysis to complete kept him awake at night. Over the phone, he told Hatten that “his conscience bothered him, and he had to tell someone.” DeSelle confessed to writing the six-line anonymous note, but he denied killing Averie Evans. He told Hatten that he wrote the letter to try to alleviate the Evans family’s anxiety. He said he once lost a son and later found him, so he understood the horror of not knowing. The Sunday edition of The Alexandria Town Talk described the affidavit used by the FBI to get search warrants for DeSelle’s house and car. The document quoted Averie’s sister and stepsister, saying Averie had sold DeSelle candy several times, and that he had once asked for her address and phone number. On December 6, Mandy Evans told the FBI that she once went to DeSelle’s house with Averie. “Amanda Evans further advised that she felt the man was weird by his verbal questioning of them on where they lived,” the affidavit said. On January 14, a judge signed the warrant allowing a search of DeSelle’s house and car before January 24. Ultimately, the FBI found nothing in DeSelle’s home or car to tie him to Averie

Evans or her disappearance. However, before the search began, evidence suggests that Agent Hatten explained to DeSelle how police had located Averie’s bicycle in Sibley Lake. He may have also disclosed how the district attorney could charge DeSelle with first-degree murder. Found guilty, DeSelle could have received the death penalty. Agent Hatten likely suggested that DeSelle confess in writing, saving his wife, Dottie, and the Evans family from enduring a trial. On January 15, DeSelle slashed both his wrists with a razor, leaving behind a type-written confession addressed to Agent Hatten. An off-duty police officer discovered DeSelle bleeding on a roadside near his parked car and transported him to a hospital, saving his life. While the accused lay unconscious in the intensive care unit, the FBI presented the search warrant to his wife. In the home, they collected a cursive sample of DeSelle’s handwriting. They needed to that he inked the hand-scrawled note at the bottom of the typed confession. This note to Agent Hatten read, “Thanks for giving me a choice.” As part of a plea bargain, Phillip Louis DeSelle confessed to strangling 11-yearold Averie Evans to death on his kitchen floor on November 5, 1990. However, investigators have never recovered Averie’s body, and—beyond his confession— police found no evidence linking DeSelle to any crime. A first-degree murder conviction required the finding of Averie’s body. Hence, the court dropped the first-degree murder charge against him in exchange for his pleading guilty to second-degree kidnapping and manslaughter. Unlike the anonymous note, DeSelle’s typed confession did not claim he had burned the body. This note said he placed Averie’s body in a dumpster near the lake where investigators recovered Averie’s bicycle. However, searching the Mundy Sanitary Landfill in DeSoto Parish, where the refuge emptied, investigators never found a body. Before the judge, Attorney Mike Henry said he had no proof, but believed the

sexual desire motivated the homicide. “As far as what went on the day of the murder, we have no proof of a sexual assault,” Henry said. “There is no evidence that she was ever inside DeSelle’s house.” Sentenced to a 50-year prison sentence, DeSelle became eligible for parole in 2007. At his hearing, the parole board asked him why he killed Averie Evans. He said he was having a bad day and snapped. The board denied his parole. However, in January 2015, the State of Louisiana released the confessed killer. He walked out under a “good time law” that allowed inmates to reduce their sentences with exemplary behavior and participation in self-improvement courses. State lawmakers changed the law in 1997, today requiring violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences. “He’s an evil man. He never showed any remorse or regret,” said Averie’s aunt, Erin Keyser, after being notified of DeSelle’s release. “Our only recourse is to warn people,” she said. “The main thing is to protect the children, that no other family will have to go through this devastation,” Keyser said. The family requests that anyone knowing the location of Averie’s body s them through their “Justice for Averie” social media page.

Nanette Krentel

Nanette Krentel’s house on Philip Smith Road in rural Lacombe, Louisiana, burned to the ground on July 14, 2017. Inside, investigators found the charred remains of Harley, Nanette’s Chihuahua, along with the bodies of Baby Kitty and Smokey, Nanette’s beloved kittens. From the evidence collected, investigators believed all three pets died of smoke inhalation, but someone had doused at least one of the three with gasoline before the fire started. Investigators also found Nanette’s body among the ashes. However, police insist the 49-year-old beauty did not die from smoke inhalation or from her burns. As I write this, years after her death, investigators still debate whether Nanette Krentel committed suicide or someone else shot her in the head with a smallcaliber handgun. Initially, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office treated her death as a suicide, halting the crime scene investigation after finding two handguns near the body. Five days later, ballistic tests proved neither gun killed Nanette, and police again cordoned off the crime scene with barricades and yellow tape, looking for another weapon. They found over 30 in the ruins, but none definitively fired the slug that killed Nanette. The following September, St. Tammany Coroner Charles Preston reported finding no smoke or burn debris in Nanette’s respiratory system and declared her death a homicide. The fire, he said, reached Nanette only after she stopped breathing. That same afternoon, Sheriff Randy Smith issued a news release saying his agency did not the coroner’s conclusions. Later, reacting to an outraged public during a press conference, the sheriff recanted his earlier statement and insisted his officers never stopped investigating Nanette’s death as a homicide. “We are diligently working on this case, and our detectives will continue to work until we have all of the answers,” the sheriff said. On November 8, 2019, The Huffington Post published an interview with an unnamed investigator in Smith’s office. “We don’t understand the coroner’s ruling,” the source said. “This is all for naught. We know what happened. There is no mystery. This [death] is a suicide.” Lori Rando, a member of Nanette’s close-knit senior class at Archbishop

Chapelle High School in Metairie, told “People Magazine Investigates” that her best friend, Nanette, exhibited signs of depression after her husband itted having an affair. “The last few months of her life, she started pulling away,” Rando said. “There was less and less between Nanette and her friends and family.” Considering the suicide theory, let us recount Nanette Krentel’s last day and consider what happened if she killed herself. According to a Walgreen’s parking lot security camera, coupled with Nanette’s credit card and cell phone location services, Nanette’s Mercedes SUV went through the drive-through at a McDonald’s on Northshore Boulevard in Slidell the morning of the fire. She bought a $7 breakfast and had Harley with her in the front seat. Family said the long-haired Chihuahua went everywhere with Nanette and even in the grainy video, they said they could easily identify the animal. However, declining multiple requests from Nanette’s family, police refused to make the surveillance video public. At 9:11 that morning, a security camera on Phillip Smith Road recorded the Mercedes headed back to the Krentel home. Nanette’s phone records listed an outgoing call to K-Mart at 10:03 that morning. Store clerks said a woman claiming to be Nanette, phoned about a prescription refill. These clues tell us Nanette had a hardy breakfast and ordered new medication hours before killing herself. In the early afternoon, according to someone who did not know Nanette or her husband, Nanette accidentally called her phone. Her cell phone records confirmed the call at around 1:30 in the afternoon. One hour later, a neighbor called 911 to report the Krentel house fire. Given this information, if Nanette had killed herself after getting off the phone with K-Mart, she then had roughly three hours to start fires in at least two rooms after dousing the house, security camera equipment, and her pets with gasoline.

Next, she entered the master bedroom with three handguns. Eventually, she decided which one to use and put a bullet into her right temple. The slug never left her skull. The gun she used fell into a hidden location, making the other two handguns easier for police to find. Nanette stopped breathing long before the fires reached her bedroom, meaning she somehow diluted her accelerant to make it burn slower than regular gasoline. These slow-burning fires would also have to accelerate after she died, though, as the flames had engulfed and destroyed the home by the time Nanette’s fire chief husband arrived at three that afternoon. Does the sheriff’s office’s suicide theory seem plausible given these facts? Perhaps she loved her cheating husband enough to off herself. Then, it is conceivable that she did not want to leave her house for the other woman, but why pour gasoline on the security cameras, and why would a reputed animal lover not put her pets outside before starting the blaze? Wednesday morning, September 14, 2017, the St. Tammany Parish Coroner Dr. Charles Preston ruled Nanette Krentel’s death a homicide. The next day, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith said his office had cleared her husband, District 12 Fire Chief Steve Krentel, of any wrongdoing. Weeks earlier, Dr. Preston told reporters he found no soot in the victim’s airway, even at a microscopic level, leading to the “strong argument” that Nanette died before the fire started. Following that announcement, Sheriff Smith said in an emailed press release that his office did not “necessarily ” the coroner’s conclusion. First Responders found Nanette Krentel, 49, dead on July 14, her body lying face-up on the master bedroom floor, burned beyond recognition in a fire the Louisiana State Fire Marshal says someone intentionally set in multiple locations. Weeks later, on the day of her memorial service, the coroner disclosed DNA tests confirmed Nanette’s identity, and her autopsy proved she died when a smallcaliber bullet entered her skull above the right temple without exiting. This time, Preston backed his homicide confirmation with two autopsies, one conducted by his pathologists, and a subsequent private autopsy performed by a pathologist hired by Nanette’s family. The latter autopsy included reconstruction

work of the victim’s skull by the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Lab at Louisiana State University. Speaking after Preston at the news conference, Sheriff Smith insisted his office had always investigated Nanette’s death as a homicide case. However, he said, her husband cooperated fully with investigators from day one and police had quickly ruled him out as the murderer. According to Smith, Steve Krentel itted to an affair before his wife’s death, but provided a solid alibi for the murder and ed a polygraph test. Nanette’s family and friends said Nanette wanted to end the marriage after discovering the affair, but Steve Krentel claimed the couple had worked through their problems and that he had left the other woman. Television’s “People Magazine Investigates” studied the case last November. After speaking with Sheriff Smith, their team accepted Krentel’s alibi and searched elsewhere for a suspect, ultimately turning their attention to Steve Krentel’s son, Justin. Family reported issues between Justin and his stepmother. However, according to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, Justin also had an alibi. Police say Justin had left the state shortly before Nanette’s killer came into her home. The television documentary also considered Steve Krentel’s brother, Brian Krentel. He had a lengthy criminal record and, according to Nanette’s family, suspected Nanette of sending him to jail on a drug count in 2015. “Brian was definitely somebody that I was worried about because Brian had a strong contempt for Nanette,” Steve Krentel said on the program. Steve Krentel described his wife as proficient with firearms, saying she owned four or five guns and went nowhere without one. Besides the three handguns near her body, police reported finding three dozen firearms in ruins of the fire. A relative of Nanette’s told me that Nanette learned to shoot because she felt deathly afraid of Brian Krentel. She told the relative that he was the reason she carried a gun and had security cameras installed in the home. Nanette confided in the relative that Brian Krentel had threatened to burn the Krentel home with her inside.

However, as with the other Krentels, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office also cleared Brian. The 25th Judicial District Court had Brian Krentel under electronic monitoring during the fire. However, sheriff’s detectives said they viewed surveillance camera footage of him at his parents’ house, approximately 15 miles away, the same day his sister-in-law died. Unfortunately, investigators discovered that someone accidentally deactivated the GPS signal from Brian Krentel’s ankle bracelet before the day of Nanette Krentel’s murder. Ironically, coincidentally, or unbelievably, Steve Krentel reported that someone had accidentally deactivated the surveillance system at his residence the night before the murder. Regardless, the television documentary suggested that the person responsible for Nanette Krentel’s death used gasoline to ensure that the fire destroyed the surveillance equipment, anyway. Perhaps that suggests the perpetrator knew someone had disabled the cameras? To summarize, someone shot Nanette in the head and burned her home before her husband’s fire district had time to put out the blaze, and the sheriff reports that all potential suspects have ironclad alibis. That leaves two possibilities: (1) the murderer was a stranger who happened by the rural 100-acre residence and coincidentally knew a great deal about setting fast-burning fires, or (2) perhaps someone with an alibi contracted Nanette Krentel’s killing.

Huey Courtney

In my earlier book , I briefly covered the shooting of Huey Courtney in Holden, but I have since found more details. Although the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office catalogs this case as closed, I see it as a still unsolved double murder. The Associated Press circulated the following report on June 10, 1986: “Two men shot and killed each other at a residence north of Holden Saturday night, according to Livingston Parish Sheriff Odom Graves. Killed were Larry F. Van Hoose, 47, of Albany, and Huey P. Courtney, 55, of Holden. “The sheriff said Van Hoose apparently went to Courtney’s home around 10:30 Sunday night, June 9, and the two men, both armed with pistols, shot each other in Courtney’s living room. “Detectives have been unable to establish a motive for the shooting but are continuing their investigation.” Larry Van Hoose opened a seafood distributorship in Albany after moving to Louisiana from Florida, where his family buried him. His obituary there described him as a commercial angler and a military veteran. He had also served as a Florida sheriff’s deputy in the 1960s. His Albany barber said Van Hoose told him he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. On June 19, 1986, The Denham Springs News reported: “The Holden shootout that left two men dead earlier this month likely stemmed from an obscene telephone call, according to a spokesperson for the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. “The bizarre incident in which one man was partially handcuffed in an attempted citizen’s arrest resulted in the shooting deaths of 55-year-old Huey P. Courtney and 47-year-old Larry Van Hoose, Albany. “Chief Criminal Deputy Willie Graves said Courtney’s wife told detectives the shooting occurred after the Courtneys received two obscene telephone calls the night of June 7.”

Huey’s wife, Alma Courtney, answered the first call, the newspaper said, while her husband answered subsequent calls. Graves said Courtney spoke in a low voice to imitate a woman and established a date with the caller, giving him a time to meet at the Courtney residence.” Graves said, “We’re assuming [the crank caller] was Van Hoose, but we don’t have evidence of that. We only know what Mrs. Courtney reported.” At 10:30 that evening, Alma Courtney told detectives, her husband hung up the phone and went outside to wait for the caller to arrive. He took with him a.38 caliber pistol and a pair of handcuffs. Outside, Larry Van Hoose spoke with Huey Courtney briefly before he pulled his gun and attempted to handcuff Van Hoose. According to Detective Graves, Huey walked back inside the home, handcuffed to Van Hoose, and told his wife to phone the sheriff’s office. As Alma Courtney walked away, she told police, Larry Van Hoose produced another.38 caliber pistol. The two men then allegedly shot and killed each other on the scene. “When Mrs. Courtney turned back,” Graves said, “Both men were falling to the floor.” He said the two men fired eleven shots and suffered multiple gunshot wounds. “They only found two shots in the wall,” Graves said. Huey Pierce Courtney lived at the end of a long gravel road, approximately one mile from the intersection of Highways 441 and 1036. In the weeks that followed his death, I interviewed three neighbors who lived near the beginning of that gravel road. All three heard the rapid-fire shots that night. One said she thought the shooter fired a machine gun. Huey Courtney’s neighbors also described the dark blue or black car speeding from the residence following the shooting. Over three decades later, police still have not discovered who drove that car, and Alma Courtney told police no one else visited her home that night.

Frankie Richard

On February 1, Frankie Richard—infamously a suspect in the serial murder of at least eight women in Jennings, Louisiana—sent me the following text, “Good morning, old friend. I wanted you to know that I just got out of jail, and I’m staying at my daughter’s house in Jennings.” And later in the conversation, he said, “I’m doing as well as I can. They tell me I died three times. I’m in a wheelchair, but not for long. After some physical therapy, I’ll be all right.” On March 17, he had sent me another text, “Hey Buddy, I’m out of physical rehab, and I’m coming to Baton Rouge in about a week. We need to talk.” Frankie Richard died in his sleep on Sunday, March 22, 2020. The night before he died, he wrote, “Say, Big Man, I made it to Baton Rouge. Give me a call.” On the phone, he told me he was eager to get back to work writing his book. He said the world needed to know the truth about Jennings. I told him I could not meet right away. He said, “Don’t worry. We have time. I’ve got money coming and plan to buy a house out here.” That night, on his niece’s couch in Denham Springs, he died in his sleep. I first met Frankie Richard on a Monday afternoon, July 29, 2019. After weeks of discussion through social media, we met at a Denham Springs rental property off Eden Church Road, where he had lived secretly in seclusion for over a year. “I got out of Jennings after my mother died,” he told me. “I lived in Morse, but the press found me there after a while, so I moved in with family here and told everybody I was in Baton Rouge. Life got peaceful when people couldn’t find me no more.” Frankie described his health as bad, saying he did not know how much longer he had to live and wanted to get the truth recorded while he still had his faculties. Frankie told me he wanted to document his knowledge of the unsolved murders and the events that led up to those, including all he knew about dirty cops, prostitution, and organized crime in Jefferson Davis Parish, including the route of a drug cartel that extended from Louisiana across Texas and into the Midwest.

Before that first meeting ended, I agreed to help Frankie document what he knew; ultimately organizing and editing his recollections into manuscript form. Two weeks later, Frankie sent me a text saying he had moved back to Morse. He assured me he planned to continue working on his book, but that he had to “take care of some business” first. In Morse, he bragged to friends and family about the book project, and then— according to local police—he overdosed on tainted heroin. A relative of Frankie’s told me that week, “He started running his head. That is why they gave him the bad dope. He thinks they won’t take him out because of what he knows. He’s just been lucky so far.” According to an affidavit dated September 11, 2019, Morse Police responded to a 911 call that evening, a woman saying Frankie had gone into convulsions. Arriving at the home, officers allegedly found a meth pipe and torch, along with other drugs, including crack cocaine, oxycodone, methamphetamine, and Xanax. The woman at the house, according to the police report, told investigators that Frankie Richard had been paying her in Roxicodone pills to have sex with other men. This will sound eerily familiar to some. In 2007, the Jennings Police Department labeled Frankie a person of interest in the unexplained deaths of eight alleged prostitutes. The victims: Loretta Lynn Chaisson-Lewis, 28; Kristen Gary Lopez, 21; Ernestine Marie Daniels Patterson, 30; Whitnei Dubois, 26; Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno, 24; Laconia “Muggy” Brown, 23; Brittney Gary, 17; and Necole Guillory, twenty-six all knew each other. And, according to the Jennings Police Department, between May 2005 and August 2009, at least seven of them walked the streets, working for Frankie Richard. When doctors released Frankie from the hospital last September, police locked him in the Acadia Parish jail under an $86,000 bond. Coincidentally, that is one thousand dollars more than the Crime Stoppers reward offered for information on the Jennings homicides. Another coincidence: Frankie’s arrest came on the day the Showtime cable

network aired part one of “Murder in The Bayou,” a five-part documentary series on the Jennings 8. Showtime based the documentary on a book by journalist Ethan Brown, who said Frankie Richard had relationships with six of the victims and that he was the last witness to see two of those victims alive. “Murder in the Bayou” retraces the stories of the eight women who lived near the small town of Jennings, Louisiana. Each died between May 2005 and August 2009, and someone dumped their bodies into bayous and drainage canals alongside the rural back roads of Jefferson Davis Parish. However, the documentary pointed out, in 1998, near the same rural town, police found another woman, Sheila Comeaux, savagely beaten and left for dead— hospitalized for a year before eventually succumbing to her injuries. Sheila’s daughter, Lakesha Myers, told Showtime cameras that even though the brutal attack occurred seven years before those of the Jennings 8, she believes someone in Jefferson Davis Parish can connect her mother’s death to the other victims. From 2005 to 2009, residents of that parish found the bodies of eight women in or around Jennings. All the women moved in the same social circles and lived what Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards deemed a “high-risk lifestyle” that included drugs and prostitution. Lakesha Myers believes her mother led a similar lifestyle and worked as a police informant—as did the other victims. Sheila Comeaux died on March 19, 1999. Loretta Lynn Chaisson-Lewis died six years later, shortly after telling family that the Jennings police arranged for her to spy on a drug deal for them. She was 28-years old. An angler found her nude body floating in a canal five miles outside of Jennings in the east fork of the Grand Marais off Louisiana Highway 1026. Although examiners reported finding significant amounts of cocaine and alcohol in her system, Loretta’s cause of death remains unknown.

On June 18, 2005, the body of 30-year-old Ernestine Marie Daniels Patterson turned up in a canal near Louisiana Highway 102, just five miles south of Loretta’s location. Like Loretta’s, examiners found drugs in her system. However, someone had also cut her throat, and the wounds on her wrists suggested she fought violently before death. Police today classify Ernestine’s case as a homicide. Police believe 21-year-old Kristen Gary Lopez died on March 18, 2007. Like Loretta, they found her nude body in water, wearing a single sock on her left foot. Decomposition, police say, prevented an official cause of death determination. A driver spotted 26-year-old Whitnei Dubois’s naked body hurriedly discarded near the side of a public road south of Welsh on May 12, 2007. Again, examiners found drugs in her system but listed the cause of death as undetermined. On May 29, 2008, another driver found Laconia Shontel “Muggy” Brown, 23, near a roadside with her partially nude body doused in bleach. Like Ernestine, someone had slit her throat. She had seven slashes on her neck and another three cuts behind her right ear. On September 11, 2008, hunters reported a foul smell in a wooded area. Investigating, authorities found the skeletal remains of 24-year-old Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno. Because of the body’s state of decomposition, examiners did not identify the skin and bones as Crystal’s until November 7. The examiner listed her cause of death as undetermined. A video camera recorded 17-year-old Brittney Gary at a dollar store on November 2, 2008. Two weeks later, police found her body near a highway in Jennings. In both cases, Crystal’s and Brittney’s, a police officer claimed to have identified the victim by a tattoo. However, the medical examiner found both bodies too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death. In 2007, while Frankie Richard was in jail on an unrelated rape charge, police reportedly questioned him regarding the murder of Ernestine Patterson and later regarding the death of Kristen Lopez. In the Lopez case, they ultimately filed second-degree murder charges.

Later, police dropped both the rape and second-degree murder charges when both witnesses against him recanted, one insisting that police investigators had coached her to lie. “I have told them everything that I know, and that is not a lot when it comes to what happened to them girls,” Frankie told reporters after his release. “But God knows I didn’t do that.” The now-former sheriff, Ricky Edwards, said in a recorded interview that Frankie knew the victims and met with two of them just days before they went missing. However, the former sheriff said, Frankie was in a rehabilitation center in Shreveport when one victim died—and locked in jail when another went missing. In December 2008, 14 local, state, and national law enforcement agencies formed a multi-jurisdictional task force to investigate the Jennings deaths. Police hoped establishing this team would ease the fears of Jennings residents and assure the victims’ families that investigators had not forgotten their loved ones. Unfortunately, the task force had the opposite effect. The team was barely a month old when the Louisiana State Police reportedly investigated two of its . Ultimately, a state ethics board fined veteran Detective Warren Gary $10,000 after Gary purchased a truck allegedly used to transport one body. Later, Jennings PD fired another task force agent, Detective Paula Guillory, after she reportedly misplaced $3,000 confiscated in a raid. Interviewed on the Showtime documentary, Loretta Elizabeth LaCoste named the task force’s Chief Investigator in a wrongful death suit. She said Parish Jail Warden Terrie Guillory was among those who shot and killed her boyfriend in his Lake Arthur home in June 2007. The boyfriend, Steven Thomas Gunter, was an informant on the police payroll. On August 19, 2009, seven hours after family in Jefferson Davis Parish reported her missing, highway workers discovered the body of 26-year-old Necole Jean Guillory at the bottom of a hill near Egan Ballpark in Acadia Parish. Necole was the only victim found outside of Jefferson Davis Parish and the only victim killed after the creation of the task force. Examiners have released no official ruling on Necole’s cause of death.

In his book, Ethan Brown cited three anonymous sources who said an elected U.S. Representative hired some of the murdered women to perform sex acts at local motels. Brown described Frankie Richard as a pimp working out of the motel bars. In the Showtime documentary, Brown referred to the bar at the Boudreaux Inn as an ATM for withdrawing drugs and sex, and he described Frankie Richard as the bank manager. In 2020, Toby Leger, one owner of the Boudreaux Inn, said most of the information in Brown’s book and documentary regarding his businesses was false. “It wasn’t a coincidence this book came out in an election year,” Toby said. “The smear campaign served its purpose,” he said. “The guy lost reelection.” In 2019, Frankie Richard itted to Showtime interviewers that he knew and worked with seven of the nine victims discussed in the documentary, but he insisted he did not kill any of them. “I had nothing to do with them girls’ deaths,” he later told me. “They lost their life because they heard something, saw something, and knew something they whatn’t supposed to know.” Sunday, the Livingston Parish Coroner’s Office told family that Frankie Richard, whom doctors had described as having Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, likely died of natural causes, therefore, they explained, no one would perform an autopsy.

Honey Island Swamp

At various times, the Honey Island Swamp has been a haven for pirates and bootleggers and a hideout for Civil War draft dodgers. In an earlier book, I recapped the adventures of Train Robber Eugene Bunch and his death at the hands of a bounty hunter, and many readers wrote, asking why I did not tell them more about the rich history of the swamp, including the fabled swamp monster or the marshland’s reputation as a corpse dumping ground for serial killers and the New Orleans Mafia. Those stories could fill much more than a newspaper column or a chapter in a book, but I will make the attempt. Most of the swamp is accessible to hunters and swamp tours in the 21st century, but in the last century and those before, Honey Island and the surrounding swamp was a no-man’s-land. When the country was young, Native Americans roamed the region, as did pirates and thieves. Lawlessness dominated the area, primarily because no government would assert itself in the area. Considered by many to be one of the most pristine swampland habitats in the United States, the Honey Island Swamp covers an area that is over 20 miles long and nearly 7 miles across, with 35,619 of its 70,000 acres governmentsanctioned as a permanently protected wildlife area. Animals that live in the Honey Island Swamp include alligators, raccoons, owls, wild boars, nutria, snakes, turtles, bald eagles, and black bears. Covering much of the lower Pearl River in eastern St. Tammany Parish, Honey Island Swamp is both mysterious and beautiful. Before logging operations reshaped the landscape, immense cypress trees filled the forest, along with vast and varied flora and fauna. Younger and smaller cypress trees grow there today, and occasionally someone unearths a sunken giant from the river, trees the locals call “sinker” cypress. Sadly, the honeybees that gave Honey Island Swamp its name have also vanished. Folklore says the locals settled a dispute over whether the swamp belonged to the Louisiana or Mississippi territories by floating an empty barrel down the

Pearl River. When the barrel took an easterly path, the swamp became part of Louisiana. One of the swamp’s best-known inhabitants, Pirate Jean Lafitte, helped Andrew Jackson defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Another pirate, Pierre Rameau, born Kirk McCullough in Scotland, ed the British after Jackson turned down his offer to help. Author Maurice Thompson immortalized Rameau in the history-based novel, “The King of Honey Island,” published in 1892. Thompson wrote: “Pearl River, as far up as Honey Island, afforded a waterway by which vessels of a considerable draft could bear the plunder of the cavaliers to New Orleans, through the Rigolets and Lake Pontchartrain; and the traders who managed these vessels shared in the rich profits.” “Indeed, no small part of the traffic of the city came from this and somewhat similar sources. With the Lafittes, the de Jourdains, and the Mascots on one side, and the confreres of Pierre Rameau on the other side, New Orleans was fed by constant streams of ill-gotten wealth.” An old Indian path called the Black Wolf Trail once stretched from Bay St. Louis through the Pearl River Marsh. Along this trail, Rameau and his crew, the Screech Owls, preyed on travelers, raiding vessels before vanishing into the swamp’s dense waterways. Rameau, known in New Orleans society as Colonel Phillip Loring, served as scout and spy for the British, providing General Edward Pakenham with maps and details of American defenses. Both Rameau and Pakenham died in the Battle of New Orleans. Before the train robber, Eugene Bunch, lesser-known but no less dangerous criminals, used Honey Island as a base of operations, among them John A. Murrell in the 1820s and James Copeland in the 1850s. An in The Daily Picayune, October 18, 1881, says of the swamp:

“Hunters on its borders speak of it with dread, as of an ill-omened region, filled with bears, panthers, and catamounts, and dotted with imable cane breaks and dangerous lagoons, which even the wild Indian would be hardly safe in crossing.” “Tales are told of hunters, having ventured too far in this swamp, becoming entangled and lost, while others foolhardier advanced into the vary dens of the inhabitants of the forest and were confronted by Bruins and their cubs, and then arid there fought for dear life.” “Most of these hunters came out victorious, while others were glad to escape with mangled bodies, to remain crippled for life.” Another article described an incident in which two shots brought down a 300pound bear after the beast attacked two hunters. Interviewed, the hunter who fired the fatal shot said he had killed over 100 in the swamp that year. In time, highway construction, logging, and drainage siphoned some of the mystery from the swamp, but hunters and fishermen still today relish the chance to visit the deepest and darkest areas of this vast wilderness. The swamp is famously the home of the Honey Island Swamp Monster, described as a foul, bipedal ape-like creature, seven feet tall, with gray hair and yellow eyes. The first claimed sighting was in 1963 by Harlan Ford, a retired air traffic controller, and hunter. In 1974 the monster gained national fame after Ford, and a friend claimed to have found unusual footprints in the area, as well as the body of a wild boar with a slit throat. In 1979, Ford told me his sightings drew media attention after he made casts of footprints showing webbing between the creature’s toes. Photos of the casts on the news prompted tales of apes from a derailed circus train mating with alligators and giving birth to the monster. Ford said his nieces and nephews had strapped webbed feet to the bottom of boots to scare each other, an incident that prompted one reporter to claim Ford faked the prints. Years later, hunters killed a monster alligator in Honey Island Swamp with larger feet than the footprint casts Ford had made. Aside from size, the gator’s footprints matched the ones Ford found precisely.

Ford said studying the creature prompted him to abandon hunting and take up wildlife photography. He continued to look for the creature until his death in 1980. Years later, family found a reel of Super eight film among Ford’s belongings. The blurry image scurrying through the trees resembles the beast in footage of the Sasquatch or Bigfoot images from the Pacific Northwest. Investigators may never definitively count the multitude of human corpses dumped in Honey Island Swamp. When discovered, most are partial skeletons with nothing left for identification, but I do know of an incident from 1976 when sheriff’s deputies found a man and his hired bodyguard in the trunk of a flaming car, both shot in the back, their faces burned beyond recognition. However, one man still breathed and lived to testify against the monsters who mangled them.

Jean Michael Crapeau

On August 6, 1976, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office told reporters that the slaying of one man, and the disfigurement of another, both found in the Honey Island Swamp, might link to a narcotics ring operating out of Brownsville, Texas. Firefighters found the body in the car’s trunk, burned beyond recognition after of the Pearl River Fire Department doused the flames. They also found a second victim near the back seat of the vehicle severely beaten. Sergeant Philip Casnave said the second man—whom police knew as Henry Flash—had a broken back with a bullet in it, and someone had snapped his neck. Casnave said firefighters found the second victim after an ambulance transported the man in the front seat—later identified as Dean Weisner of Brownsville, Texas—to Charity Hospital in condition critical. Three months earlier, New Orleans police found the body of James Moraites, 21, in the rear seat of another burning car. Daniel Nigro, 27, Metairie, and Sandra Marisco, 23, New Orleans, told police they had given a ride to Moraites, known only to them as “Jimmy,” and the car, they said, accidentally caught fire on the highway. Moraites’ companions told police they tried to pull him from the burning car, but the truck driver who reported the fire saw Nigro and Miss Marisco watching the car burn from across the street. Investigators later discovered that Moraites had died in Jefferson Parish in a drug deal gone wrong. Nigro and Marisco had been driving his body to the swamp when they burned the car instead. Sergeant Casnave said this earlier event had law enforcement across the state on alert when someone identifying himself only as “Scott” phoned the sheriff’s office about an abandoned automobile off old U.S. 11, three miles into the Pearl River Game Management Area and near the Mississippi-Louisiana state line. Arriving on the scene, Casnave checked the Texas license plates and found the vehicle ed to John Curtis Riley of Harlingen, Texas. One month earlier, Riley died in an airplane crash south of the Texas border, and the wreckage included a flaming cargo of narcotics.

Using dental records, investigators eventually identified the body in the trunk as that of John Curtis Riley, Jr., a male escort working in New Orleans. On August 18, 1976, the 22nd Judicial District Court issued arrest warrants for two Pearl River men wanted in connection with the Honey Island Swamp murder of Riley and the savage beating of Weisner. St. Tammany Parish Sheriff George A. Broom told reporters in a press conference that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had issued a nationwide alert for Claude Luke Craddock, 20, and Jean Michael Crapeau, 24. “We have reason to believe they are not in the locale because we’ve been unable to locate them for questioning in the past couple of days,” said Broom. Broom said the arrest warrants for Craddock and Crapeau were for one count of murder each, two counts of armed robbery, one count of attempted murder, and one count of aggravated arson. The sheriff said Weisner had communicated with investigators and told them someone had robbed his companion of $10,000 in cash. Broom said his department considered theft the motive for the murder and attempted murder, but one of his investigators had traveled to the Brownsville area regarding the connection to the narcotics ring. Four years later, fingerprint checks run on a bogus port application in New York City resulted in the arrest of Claude Luke Craddock. According to the FBI, agents arrested Craddock traveling to South America. Besides the charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, and aggravated arson, Craddock also faced federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Before the New York arrest, under the alias Terry Lee Walters, the FBI tracked Craddock through Houston, several locales in Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia. In New York, the FBI arrested him under the name of Perry Edward Stout without incident. The arrest resulted from a fraudulent port application. “Stout” initially appeared before a magistrate, who set bond at $10,000 in the port case. As police booked him, they fingerprinted him, setting off red flags

with the FBI. The next time he appeared before the magistrate, he faced federal unlawful flight charges and an additional $260,000 bond. In 1983, during the first-degree murder trial of Claude Luke Craddock, a 33year-old Dean Weisner testified that Craddock and an accomplice murdered his partner and left them both for dead in Riley’s burning car. Weisner, who said he is blind in one eye after Craddock beat him, said he was Riley’s bodyguard. He said he and Riley ed Craddock and Crapeau on August 5, 1976, after they failed to sell 100 pounds of marijuana in New York City. He said he met Craddock and Crapeau on a 12-hour bus ride from Mexico City to Brownsville, Texas when they discussed setting up a marijuana sale in Louisiana. Riley had s to get the marijuana and to sell it, Weisner said. When the deal in New York went sour, Weisner said he called Craddock to talk about making a narcotic deal in Louisiana. Weisner said Craddock and Crapeau met him and Riley at the Union seventy-six truck stop in Slidell and they followed the pair’s pick-up truck to the Honey Island Swamp in eastern St. Tammany. After using cocaine, Crapeau went into a nearby trailer and came out with a gun and began firing, Weisner said. He said the first shot went over their heads, and he and Riley started to running toward their car. Weisner testified that the second round hit him in the back, and when he looked, he saw Riley dropped by gunfire. Weisner testified that Crapeau then beat him. “I was beaten on the head with a heavy object until I fell to the ground,” he said, “Craddock put rags in our mouths and put me in the back seat and Riley in the trunk,” he said. Weisner testified that he heard a vehicle drive off and got out of the burning car, took two steps, and ed out. The next thing he ed was waking up in the hospital. Weisner denied that he had made a deal with prosecutors to trade damaging testimony against Craddock in return for immunity from prosecution in connection with bringing 100 pounds of marijuana into St. Tammany Parish.

Another witness. Jack Condon, 33, testified that he had a sexual relationship with Crapeau and had stayed at Crapeau’s mobile home near the murder scene. Condon said Craddock frequently visited, and he heard Craddock talking to Weisner on the telephone several times. Condon testified he heard Craddock and Crapeau talk about getting Weisner and Riley to bring marijuana to Louisiana on credit. “Once they get here, if they won’t trade, we’ll take it from them and leave them in the swamp,” he said Craddock had told Crapeau. Dr. Paul Gard, a pathologist, testified Riley died of a bullet wound to the back and produced the bullet from Riley’s body. The bullet, according to Director Ronald Singer of the Jefferson Parish crime lab, matched the one taken from Weisner’s body and seven spent casings found near Crapeau’s home in Honey Island Swamp. Convicted, Craddock received life imprisonment. The judge said the 1976 Louisiana death penalty law was in effect when Craddock murdered Riley but the courts had since declared the law unconstitutional. The judge refused to sentence Craddock to death. Weisner testified Craddock poured the gasoline into the car and set it on fire with two men inside. However, he said, Crapeau shot both men before the fire. Today, although his family insists that he is dead, Jean Michael Crapeau officially remains a fugitive.

Devil Swamp

Before going to prison , Raymond “Chuck” Foster imagined himself as a Ku Klux Klan leader. His dream ended November 12, 2008, when the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested him for killing a female recruit following her indoctrination, running with a torch through Devil’s Swamp. At 44 years old, Chuck considered himself the Klan’s “Imperial Wizard” in Louisiana. It is unknown what the organization thought of him. In 2001, Chuck began recruiting for an organization he sought to establish. He called it “the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” and based his operations in Watson, Louisiana. Failing to recruit ers in Watson, Chuck rented a post office box in Denham Springs—the headquarters of the Louisiana KKK in the 1970s. In that decade, desegregation in schools, restaurants, and other public facilities eroded Klan leaders’ powers until the local organization disappeared. However, that changed with the rise of David Duke. After graduating from LSU, Duke flirted with several far-right parties and founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, one of the many—and often schismatic—Klan splinter groups. Duke modernized the Klan, changing his title from Imperial Wizard to National Director. He replaced white robes with business suits, itted women as full , and eschewed the Klan’s traditional bias against Roman Catholics. In time, the continuous conflict between Klan groups led Duke to withdraw from the organization and reincorporate as the National Association for the Advancement of White People. In 1989, David Duke launched a political career. He became a state representative and sought seats as a congressman, governor, and president of the United States. Simultaneously, the Klan in Louisiana died once more. In 2002, David Duke pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion, paid a $10,000 fine, and moved to Big Spring, Texas. He resided there for 15 months, in federal prison, before returning to Louisiana.

In 2003, Chuck Foster took advantage of Duke’s absence and dubbed himself Louisiana’s new KKK Imperial Wizard. However, the people of South Louisiana ignored his hip fliers. The David Duke era had embarrassed the state and soured its residents on hate. Chuck started an Internet newsletter, targeting former Klansmen and neo-Nazis across the nation. Insisting the government would soon take our guns, he asked readers to establish “chapters” of his Southern White Knights in their home state. By year’s end, Chuck’s newsletter claimed active chapters in Livingston Parish, Savannah, Georgia, Homosassa Springs, Florida, and Marion, Ohio. In 2004, Chuck’s Southern White Knights made national headlines. Jeremy Parker, the Ohio chapter’s sole member, responded on social media to someone promoting an event ing Martin Luther King, Jr. Parker shared, “I sure would hate to see anything happen here,” along with instructions for making a pipe bomb. The post prompted the newly founded Department of Homeland Security to bring him in for questioning. Soon after, the Southern White Knights disbanded. Most abandoned Chuck, ing a relatively large Klan group, the Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, that group boasts nine chapters in eight states, none active, and none in Louisiana. Chuck moved to Walker in 2006 and started “the Dixie Rangers Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” When that failed, he moved to St. Tammany Parish, close to David Duke’s former residence. In Slidell, he launched “the Sons of Dixie” and again solicited and chapter affiliations through social media. No one cared until 2008—when the Democratic Party nominated a black man for United States president. Before the November election, Chuck had eight local and dozens of Sons of Dixie Brotherhood affiliation applications. When 43-year-old Cynthia “Cindy” Lynch applied to open a chapter in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chuck insisted that she first come to Louisiana where his chapter could indoctrinate her. She stepped off a Greyhound bus in Slidell on a Wednesday, November 5, 2008. Law enforcement officials said two Klan group picked her up there and

transported her to a campground near the Pearl River. At least eight of the Klan group anxiously awaited her arrival, including Chuck. After a series of rites, including the shaving of her head, the Klan took Cindy to a camp on a sandbar that was accessible only by boat. There, the initiation continued. St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain told the Times-Picayune that the sandbar rituals included lighting torches and “running naked in the woods.” The following Monday morning, two Klansmen asked a Bogalusa store clerk what they could buy to remove blood from clothing. The clerk recognized both men, Chuck’s son, Shane Foster, 20, and another member of the Klan group, Frank Stafford, 21, and phoned the sheriff’s office. A rapid investigation ensued. St. Tammany and Washington Parish deputies tly raided the campsite, arresting five Klan hiding further in the woods. Chuck initially escaped but turned himself in later that day. Investigators found weapons, Confederate battle flags, KKK banners, five white Klan robes, and one black Imperial Wizard robe. They found Cindy’s corpse in a weedy ditch about a half-mile from the sandbar. Frankie Stafford later testified at Chuck’s trial. He said that Cindy cried tears of joy the night of her initiation, but something happened overnight. She angrily cursed Foster the next morning, yelling, “I want out.” Chuck pushed her down and shot her in the head using a.40 caliber handgun. Later, he used a knife to dig the bullet out of Cindy’s body and ordered his followers to dump the body and set fire to her Cindy’s belongings. The Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office charged “Imperial Wizard” Raymond “Chuck” Foster with second-degree murder. They also charged his son, Frankie Stafford, and five other Klan —Random Hines, 27; Danielle Jones, 23; Alicia Watkins, 23; Timothy Michael Watkins, 30; and Andrew Yates, 20—with obstruction of justice. In court, Chuck apologized to Virginia Lynch, Cindy’s mother, as both cried. Louisiana District Judge Peter Garcia sentenced Chuck to life in prison. Frankie Stafford served four years, but the others walked free.

The Breland Murders

Saturday morning, January 23, 1909, just after daybreak, sheriff’s deputies T. B. Johnson and Avery Blount—the first officials to arrive—walked the horrendous crime scene on Genesee Road between the towns of Tickfaw and Natalbany, each replaying in their minds Friday night’s brutal triple-murder. The bodies of two women remained slumped in the front seat of the carriage where they had died. Someone had set the horse free, and the younger of the two women appeared headless. “This is where they found Buzzy Breland,” Deputy Blount told Deputy Johnson, pointing to a spot of blood on the ground. “Marian Baham and Alphonse Faust, come up on this mess just after nine last night. They got Wilbur Nesom and Mitchell Martin out here and found Buzz and an infant baby still alive. They took both to Breland’s sister’s house in Natalbany, but both died before sunup.” “The baby, too?” Deputy Blount asked. “I think the cold got the baby,” Deputy Johnson said. With heads bowed, both deputies walked around the crime scene, scanning the ground and nearby shrubbery, interviewing neighbors who had gathered, including many from the group who found the bodies the night before. By 1909, local law enforcement had grown to expect this level of violence in Tangipahoa Parish. Homicides occurred so often in the late 1800s and early 1900s that newspapers referred to this region of Louisiana as “Bloody Tangipahoa.” Deputies T. B. Johnson and Avery Blount both had relatives murdered in the new century, and Buzzy Breland’s father, John Paul Breland, died in an earlier “Bloody Tangipahoa” incident in 1897. When the lawmen reconvened at the wagon, Deputy Johnson said, “It seems plain to me that one of the victims witnessed Joe Everette’s killing last Tuesday at New Zion Cemetery. That’s just below Little River Station.” “The youngest lady there,” he said, pointing to the almost headless body. “She was Everette’s widow. The family spent most of the day with Everette’s body at Zion Church.”

“That’s sounding right,” Deputy Blount said, nodding his head. “Breland’s wife was Josephine Everette’s mother. It looks like the Breland’s were taking her and the baby to live with them.” “The ambush looks well planned,” Deputy Johnson continued. “The murderers ambushed them just as soon as they rounded that bend in the road.” The Breland family had been going to John Oliver “Buzzy” Breland’s home near Natalbany. Breland walked behind the horse and buggy, leading a cow, while Mrs. Breland drove the buggy. Josie Everette nursed her four-month-old daughter in the seat next to her mother. A pig and three chickens filled the backseat of the carriage. The women, poorly dressed for freezing temperatures, wore only two thin garments, shoes, and a sunbonnet, while Buzzy, sweating from the walk, carried his tattered coat over his arm. One assassin hid behind a pine tree on the left-hand side of the dirt path, while at least one other set up in the brush on the opposite side of the trail, all facing the curve in the road, waiting for the family’s horse and buggy to come around the bend. Deputy Johnson found four empty.32 caliber rounds in the ditch behind a pine tree on the left side of the road. With the shells in his hand, he told Deputy Blount that the first two shots came from a revolver. The first shot, Deputy Johnson believed, perforated a spoke of the wagon’s front left wheel, and the other hit the bottom of the buggy. Those shots, he said, aimed only to disable the vehicle. When the carriage stopped, the assassins on the other side of the road opened fire with a shotgun, gouging through Breland’s shoulder as he ran to the front of the buggy, trying to calm and possibly detach his horse. Deputy Johnson also found the assassin’s footprints in the mud behind the pine tree. Buzzy Breland had fallen on his back six feet in front of the first hitman’s hiding place. As he fell, a second assassin fired on his wife, riddling her body with buckshot. “At this point,” Deputy Johnson told Deputy Blount, “I think Mrs. Everette pleaded for her life, and when she saw her prayers were in vain, she asked the

murderers to spare her baby because they took the infant from her mother’s breast, and wrapped it up in Buzzy Breland’s coat and laid it at the foot of that pine tree.” As Deputy Johnson pointed to the pine where the baby’s body once laid, Deputy Blount looked past the large portion of the woman’s head blasted earlier into the ditch two feet from the tree. As he stared down, Deputy T. B. Johnson said to him, “There’s one more piece of evidence you need to look at, Avery.” And he pointed to the footprint in the mud behind the pine tree. “That’s a fairly unique boot, wouldn’t you say?” Besides being a local constable and Deputy Sheriff, Avery Blount also ran a nearby dry goods store. Among other items, his store carried clothing and footwear, which he bought at wholesale prices, and he took pride in knowing a good pair of boots when he saw them. “The pointed toe on these boots is really unusual,” Deputy Johnson continued. “Have you sold boots like these to anyone that you can think of?” At that, Deputy Blount raised his foot, placing it next to the print in the mud. “Well, just look at that,” Deputy Johnson said. “The killer wore boots just like yours, Avery, and size eight, too. Just like yours.” Deputy Johnson slid his revolver from its holster and pointed it at Deputy Blount. “Avery, I left out something important. Before Buzzy died, he told Wilbur Nesom that you were one of the men that ambushed him.” On September 13, 1910, headlines across the country described how a 21st Judicial District judge gave a man three life sentences for shooting and killing a family of four during an ambush and how a man lived on the run in the swamps of southeast Louisiana, surrendering days before dying of starvation. Another man, however, died at the end of a noose, while the leader of the assault walked free. From New Orleans, the Associated Press recounted: “Three sentences of life imprisonment, the second to begin at the close of the first and the third to commence at the expiration of the two preceding, have just

been imposed upon Garfield Kinchen, in the Amite courthouse, for participation in the murder of J. O. ‘Buzzy’ Breland and his family over six months ago. “Kinchen pleaded guilty to three indictments for murder in the first degree, and in imposing sentence, the court in Tangipahoa Parish specifically provided that the sentences were to be consecutive and not concurrent. “On this decision, statisticians now are busy. Thirty-one years of age at present, doctors say Kinchen may live 40 years beyond when the allotted three-score and ten will . Presuming that he died at 71, he then will begin his second term, and here the mathematical sharps become bewildered. Shall this sentence commence from the time of his new birth, in infancy, or shall it start at the age of 31 years, as in the first case, or shall it begin at 71 years, when he presumably will be legally dead? “Such, too, is the problem in the third sentence, and concerned citizens could question the courts on the subject. In fact, the entire proceeding is open to legal elucidation. “On the whole, the tendency is to allow him 40 years on each life sentence, thus making an aggregate of 120 years. This stay, at least, will cover one life period, and perchance a couple. Fortunately, there were only three indictments; otherwise, the case would have been even more complicated.” “So, Gar’ Kinchen now is wearing stripes in prison outside Baton Rouge, but the State will soon transfer him to a convict farm at Angola, there to remain for the balance of his three lives. Still, the pardoning power, which here is vested in a board of pardons, is almost as overworked as those of the Governor in Tennessee, and Kinchen may breathe the air of freedom long before finishing his first sentence. “The murders for which the court is punishing Kinchen were undoubtedly the most brutal ever perpetrated—even in bloody Tangipahoa Parish, long notorious for homicides of the most cowardly description, resulting in the parish’s formation of a vigilance committee, which has somewhat discouraged the playful pastime of treacherous homicide. “On his way to a new home, ‘Buzzy’ Breland, an old man, was leading a cow along a lonely country road about dusk. Accompanying him, in a buggy, were his wife and his daughter, who had just witnessed Ben Kinchen murder her

husband the week before. His daughter carried her infant daughter in her arms. None in the entourage suspected danger, and none prepared to resist sudden attacks by highwaymen. “Suddenly, from the dark of the woods, shots from heavy guns rang out, and Breland fell, mortally wounded, in his tracks. With the one man of the party disposed of, the murderers rushed on the two women and the baby, shooting the defenseless women dead and leaving the infant freezing to death beneath an oak tree, and then the assassins fled in the dark. “Just before he breathed his last, two couples out courting found Breland, and with his dying breath, Buzzy accused Avery Blount, Ben Kinchen, and Garfield Kinchen of the crime. “Eventually, the court convicted Blount and hung him before he could file an appeal. The court also convicted Ben Kinchen, but then later acquitted him. Garfield Kinchen escaped to the swamps shortly after Blount’s hanging. He hid in a cemetery for several months until he ran out of food.” “In time, nearly dead from exposure, Garfield Kinchen surrendered, and within an hour, he was sentenced to life for three indictments. “Incidentally, a life sentence in Louisiana permits the release of a well-behaved prisoner in 16 years, so Kinchen may get out in 45 years, after all. It is next to impossible for a man to live over 15 years in a Louisiana prison. “Illustrative of the reputation of Tangipahoa, the last railroad stops before entering the parish is Hyde Station, where engers find significance in the call of the railroad conductors, ‘Hide! (Sic) Next stop, Tangipahoa!’ “In all fairness, the local newspapers have reported no murders in Tangipahoa Parish for almost a week, and, as a Hammond man told a reporter yesterday, ‘Things is getting mighty dull around here.’” Coming this far, I wanted to examine—somberly—the real perpetrator of the Breland quadruple homicide and the subsequent curse that followed Ben Kinchen following his acquittal.

James Copeland

Police in Livingston Parish caught two murderers and child rapists back in 1979. District Attorney Duncan Kemp won convictions against both perpetrators, but justice from the perspective of the victim’s family has gone unserved. Often, in my newspaper column and within the chapters of these books, the antics of criminals prove humorous. I must warn you; this is not one of those reports. The descriptions that follow are graphic and painful to read but necessary to understand the gravity of this family’s pain. Please stop reading now if you expect a happy conclusion. At approximately nine on a Saturday morning, July 7, 1979, a man cutting firewood in the woods near the Magnolia Beach outside of Denham Springs, discovered the body of a young boy dressed in a pair of cutoff jeans and notified the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. The coroner’s examination that followed found that someone had sodomized the child several times before blasting him with a shotgun. Near the body, police found the single-barrel 20-gauge shotgun, three spent shells, and a pair of gloves. Twenty-four hours after the body’s discovery, Linda Owen Scardina phoned the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office to file a missing person’s report on Joseph “Cook” Owen, her eleven-year-old son. The description she provided matched that of the child found murdered in Livingston Parish. With no leads, investigators from both parishes went door-to-door in the child’s Mullen Drive neighborhood in Central, hoping to trace little Cook’s location in the last hours before his death. When two officers knocked at the door of 19-year-old James Copeland, Copeland told them the photos looked like one boy who shot fireworks near his home on the 4th of July, adding that he may also have seen the child later in the week on the 5th or 6th of July. With no other leads, the officers later returned, inviting Copeland to the sheriff’s office for more questioning. Copeland agreed but said he first needed to leave a note for his roommate, George E. Brooks, Jr., explaining where he had gone.

At the sheriff’s office, Copeland initially told Deputies W. E. Robertson, Jr, and Dillard Stewart that his gay life partner, George Brooks, had killed Cook, but later itted to doing it himself. He said the child had come to Copeland’s house a little after dark on Friday, July 6, 1979. Copeland said he and “his wife” wanted to have sex with the child and took Cook into a bedroom. He said that Brooks took off the child’s pants, and Copeland took off the child’s underwear; that both he and Brooks took turns holding Cook’s arms while the other sexually abused the child. Shortly after midnight, Cook said he felt ill, and the men let him go to the bathroom. Inside, he tried to escape through a window, but Copeland prevented his escape by kicking in the bathroom door. The two men then drug the child back into the bedroom, where they sexually abused him until three in the morning. Later, they carried him to their car with his hands tied and a gag over his mouth. Leaving the house, Copeland picked up his loaded shotgun from a corner in the living room. Brooks later testified they initially brought the gun as a hollow threat to keep Cook quiet. They drove “almost to Watson” and stopped the car. After leading Cook out into a dark field near a stack of cut firewood, Brooks removed the boy’s restraints, and Copeland shot him twice in the head after his first shot missed. Brooks carried the gag and rope back to the vehicle, and Copeland threw them over the highway bridge as the two reentered East Baton Rouge Parish. Copeland confessed to these events multiple times, and the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office videotaped at least two confessions, including one at the crime scene. During one confession, Deputy Stewart asked Copeland, “When you left your house, did you know you were going to kill the boy?” Copeland replied, “No. It wasn’t until afterward. I’d thought about it earlier, but I really didn’t want to. It wasn’t until the last minute that we decided to do it.”

“The reason we did it,” he said, “There wouldn’t be no witnesses at all or nothing like that. It was on the way. It was on the way there to the field that I decided we might as well go ahead.” Copeland concluded two recorded confessions by agreeing that the investigators made no threats, promises, or coercion against him, adding, “I did this confession of my own free will.” The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office charged Copeland with first-degree murder, aggravated rape, crimes against nature, and being a fugitive from Livingston Parish. At trial, jurors reviewed two color photographs of Cook’s body. In the first photograph, neither the child’s head nor the wound was visible because of the angle and distance from which the picture was taken. However, the second photograph revealed the severity and extent of the gunshot wounds; approximately half of the right side of the child’s face was gone. The photo also showed blood spattered on both feet, and his right leg and arm. On the witness stand in Amite, Copeland testified the victim forced him into “homosexual prostitution” at 11-years-old, and Defense Attorney James Duke told the jury, “You and I grew up in a different situation than James Copeland. James never had anybody to tell him the rules of life.” Assistant District Attorney William Quinn countered with, “James Copeland is an unmitigated liar, and he is the killer of Joseph Cook Owen.” In the subsequent trial of George E. Brooks, Defense Attorney Timothy Higgins conceded his client was guilty of aggravated kidnapping, a “horrible rape,” and second-degree murder. District Attorney Duncan Kemp added that although Brook’s followed Copeland’s lead, he was just as guilty in “the whole deviate plan.” Brooks told the jury, “Whatever we have done, whatever James made me do, I still love him. I would do anything for him even though he never cared that much for me.” In 2021, Angola resident James Copeland is the second-longest serving death row inmate in Louisiana history. He has filed multiple appeals causing multiple

hearings and costly trials, all of which continue today, but the greatest injustice is the fact that the legal system repeatedly forces Cook’s family back to court to relive this nightmare. On October 17, 2011, the same system commuted George Brooks’ death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The district attorney wanted to continue fighting for the death penalty, but Cook’s family asked him to stop. “We are completely exhausted,” a family member told me. “We could not possibly see ourselves dealing with these appeals processes another ten years from now. We prefer never having to hear these names again unless it is in an obituary.”

Ben Kinchen

When the District Court in Springville convened at 8 o’clock on the morning of April 22, 1910, Ben Kinchen’s trial for the murder of Joe Everette began. That morning, sheriff’s deputies escorted Kinchen in through the rear door, connecting through an underground tunnel to the Livingston Parish jail. Kinchen —reportedly then the wealthiest man in Livingston Parish at the time—stepped into the courtroom, grinning broadly, waving to family and friends as he entered. At this coroner’s inquest, Robert Rogers testified that one year earlier, on the day Joe Everette died, he was hauling logs about a mile from New Zion Cemetery. He said he knew both Ben Kinchen and the Everette family. Around 1:30 the afternoon of the shooting, Rogers told the jury he heard shots coming from the direction of the graveyard. About six or 6:30, headed home, he ed the scene of the shooting and saw Joe Everette lying in the road dead. A small crowd of family and friends huddled around as Rogers examined the body. He found a bullet wound on Everette’s left side and another in his neck. Rogers discovered the third wound when he helped Walter Everette and others load the body into his wagon for transport to Walter Everette’s house. There, he said, he watched Everett undress the body and clean the wounds, removing from Joe Everette’s person—a small knife, a book of cigarette papers, and some tobacco in a pouch. Rogers also picked up Walter Everette’s spade. He said he found it lying “four or five feet” from the body. The clerk of court then handed the witness a shovel, and the witness confirmed that it looked like the one he found near the body. “It looks the same,” he said, “Except the bloodstains ain’t as bright as before.” As Rogers stepped down, the prosecution called Walter Everette to the stand. “I’m a brother to Joe Everett and John Everette,” he began. “Harry Everette is my son.” “On January 19, 1909, my two brothers, along with Mike Stewart, Buzzy Breland, myself, and several others, were at Zion Hill graveyard digging a grave for Kinch Wagner. Ben Kinchen rode up after we had been there for some time that morning. Eventually, he came inside the gate, spoke to the crowd, and

stayed a while. He didn’t offer to dig, but the rest of us kept working on the grave, first one and then another, until we finished.” “After the funeral, I walked out of the graveyard alone and met Leo Stevens with my brothers Joe and John. I say, ‘Boys, come and let’s go home,’ and Joe says, ‘Wait, I left my coat. I have to go back. I will meet you at the house.’” “As we started out, we met Ben Kinchen, and he said, ‘I heard you boys cursed me for not helping dig. How about saying it to my face?’” “John said, ‘No, Ben, we don’t want any trouble,’ but Ben said, ‘I do want trouble, gents, and I ain’t afraid of nobody.’” “John stepped from behind me, and as he did, I said, ‘Ben, please, let’s don’t make trouble here.’ But Ben said, ‘take another step, John, and I’ll blow your liver out.’” “Leo Stevens then stepped between them, saying, ‘Boys, come on and let’s go,’ and we left Ben and started back walking. Just before we got to the corner of the graveyard, Joe came out with his coat. He hollered for us to wait, and Ben said something to him. Then, I heard the shot, and Joe started screaming.” “I ran back, carrying the long-handled shovel I’d brought to dig the grave, just as Ben turned his gun on John. That’s when I swung the shovel, knocking Ben over the head.” John Everette also testified, backing up Walter Everette’s story. However, two of Ben Kinchen’s employees, John Williams and Jim Bankston, told the jury a different tale, insisting that Walter Everette attacked Ben Kinchen with the spade first, forcing Kinchen to pull the gun in self-defense. The weapon fired in the scuffle, they said, accidentally killing Joe Everette as he walked out of the church into the cemetery. The coroner’s jury refused to indict Ben Kinchen, ruling the killing “selfdefense” and prompting Buzzy Breland—a grave-digging witness never called to testify—to yell out, accusing the jurors of accepting payoffs from Ben Kinchen. Three days later, as Buzzy Breland escorted his family from the same graveyard,

this time following Joe Everette’s funeral, shooters ambushed Breland on a secluded road between Tickfaw and Natalbany, killing him and his wife, along with Joe Everette’s widow and her infant daughter. G. W. Neesom, a Tickfaw storekeeper, who arrived at the scene of the slaughter within sixty minutes of the assault, told sheriff’s deputies that Buzzy Breland lived nearly six hours after being shot and had identified his slayers before he died. The evening of the slaughter, Neesom said Breland named his assailants, Ben Kinchen and Jim Bankston. The following morning, he claimed to have misspoken. Breland, he said, had actually named Garfield Kinchen, Ben Kinchen’s brother, and a man named Avery Blount, who coincidentally was also a storekeeper and Neesom’s biggest competitor in Tickfaw. Within months, a Tangipahoa Parish court tried and hung Avery Blount in Amite, solely on the testimony of G. W. Neesom. The following year, Sheriff Clay Shaw charged Ben Kinchen as an accessory before the fact in the Breland murders. The state held that on Thursday, January 21, 1909, Ben Kinchen met his brother and Avery Blount and planned the killings after Breland’s outburst in the courtroom. That jury found Ben Kinchen guilty. However, another jury acquitted him in appeals court. The second jury took eleven minutes to reach a decision, and when Jury Foreman H. L. Hilburn read the verdict, “not guilty of conspiracy to murder the Breland family.” Judge Robert Ellis, who presided, told the jury he did not approve. “I hope you arrived at your verdict honestly,” he said, “but for the record, your verdict differs from my opinion.” At that, Ben Kinchen stood, and, beaming, he said, “Of course, it is an honest verdict, Judge, because I am not guilty.” Garfield Kinchen hid in a swamp nearly a month before surrendering to sheriff’s deputies, ultimately pleading guilty under the provision that prosecutors would not request a death sentence. After a jury found Garfield Kinchen guilty, Judge Ellis tagged him with three life sentences. On September 8, 1910, Garfield Kinchen became a resident of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. On October 6, the following year, he escaped and

state police officers recaptured him two days later. On October 9, 1911, the prison guards gave him 25 lashes for escaping. Leveraging his wealthy brother’s political connections in Baton Rouge, a judge granted Garfield Kinchen parole on April 11, 1916. After receiving three consecutive life sentences for the murders of four people, Kinchen served less than six years.

Debbie Lindsey

Following a tip from future homicide victim Rachel Renee Davidson, on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, detectives from the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested an Amite man charging him with second-degree murder in the Valentine’s Day stabbing of a 44-year-old Amite woman who could neither speak nor hear. A month earlier—on February 17—Robert Foy called the sheriff’s office, reporting his daughter, Debbie Ann Foy Lindsey, had gone missing, absent from her home since February 14. After a search of her neighborhood proved futile, family and friends posted “Have you seen me?” fliers in convenience stores throughout three parishes. At the Quick Stop in Wilmer, Louisiana, Rachel Davidson saw the flier and called Crime Stoppers, who notified the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office. In the interview that followed, Rachel told investigators she had met a woman at a party around Valentine’s Day and drove her to a house on Strahan Road in Amite. Rachel said her enger, Karen Birch, introduced her to Debbie Lindsey that night. Weeks later, Rachel informed investigators, she saw Karen again and asked about Debbie. Karen, Rachel said, told her that Debbie was dead, murdered by David Bryan Morris, a man Rachel had met the same night she met Debbie. Karen also described, according to Rachel, the clearing in the woods where she said David Morris dumped the woman’s body. Searching that location, sheriff’s deputies uncovered Debbie’s badly decomposed remains, and, when an autopsy proved someone had stabbed her upper body multiple times, detectives go an arrest warrant for David Bryan Morris. Soon after, Morris sat in the parish jail in Amite under a $5 million bond. On the day following his arrest, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Spokesperson Patti Giannoble told reporters that Detectives believed the perpetrator had killed Debbie Lindsey in one location and moved her body after the murder. Without mentioning names, Giannoble described how interviews with witnesses and friends led detectives to Morris, whom she said was as a neighbor and

acquaintance of Debbie Lindsey. The motive for the killing, she said, had not been determined. Responding to questions, Patti Giannoble told reporters she did not have information whether Debbie’s attacker had sexually assaulted her or whether police had found the body nude. She also explained that she did not know if detectives had located the murder weapon or why investigators believed Lindsey’s assailant had moved her body after killing her elsewhere. Careful not to mention Rachel Renee Davidson, Giannoble explained investigators found Lindsey’s body while conducting a routine, but systematic, walk-through of the woods. Within a year of his arrest, a grand jury ruled investigators did not have enough evidence to try David Morris and ordered the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office to release him. Robert Foy died from a heart attack shortly after David Morris’ release, and before another year ed, Washington Parish sheriff’s deputies found 28-yearold Rachel Renee Davidson, dead, and, like Debbie Linsey, someone had stabbed her upper body multiple times. Ten years after Debbie Lindsey’s murder, Rachel Davidson’s mother called the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office. She told Cold Case Detective Mike Sticker that she believed the same man who killed Debbie Lindsey also murdered Rachel, and she asked Detective Sticker to reopen the investigation. Chief Sticker had recently grown weary of retirement and had returned to the force precisely to tackle cold case crime. As of this writing, he is still on the job. “It’s important that the families of victims know we haven’t given up,” the detective told me. “Many of their stories are heartbreaking,” he said. “They need justice, but they also need closure. That’s why I came back.” In 2013, Detective Sticker ed fellow officers in Washington and St. Tammany Parishes, prompting law enforcement in three parishes to look anew at the murders of Rachel Davidson and Debbie Lindsey and apply the latest advancements in forensic technology. “I was shocked, really, after ten years,” Flo Foy of Robert, Debbie Lindsey’s

mother, told reporters in July 2013. “The detectives seem so sincere. I really hope they will find something.” “Lindsey couldn’t work,” her mother said, “But she’d give you the shirt off her back.” Flo said Debbie divorced once and “went from one boyfriend to another.” She said Debbie lived with a 28-year-old man the week she disappeared. “He claimed he filed a missing person’s report,” she said, “But he never did. The sheriff’s office told me he didn’t.” In August 2013, police again picked up David Morris, then thirty-nine and living in Baton Rouge, this time, along with Karen Birch, 33, of Tickfaw. Tangipahoa Parish deputies took Birch into custody, while East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested Morris. Investigators booked both into the Tangipahoa Parish Jail on two counts of second-degree murder. Flo Foy spoke again to reporters following their arrests. “I’m glad they got them,” Foy said. “Now, my daughter can rest in peace, and my husband can, too.” Unfortunately, though, this was not to be. Justice remained just out of reach for Debbie and Rachel. In 2014, history repeated itself, and once again, a grand jury refused to indict, setting Karen Birch and David Morris free, innocent until proven guilty. “The families must know we’re still kicking it,” Chief Sticker told me. “Law enforcement has not given up on these cases.” he said. “There are new advances in DNA and forensics every day. Before this is over, we might just surprise a few people.” Presently, Cold Case Detective Mike Sticker is working more than a dozen cold cases from Tangipahoa Parish.

Rachel Davidson

At 4:30 in the afternoon , September 29, 2005, the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office received several 9-1-1 calls from the unincorporated community of Thomas, Louisiana. The caller on the other end identified himself as Charles Timothy Martin. He said he called to report the death of a friend, 28-year-old Rachel Renee Davidson. According to family in Ponchatoula, Rachel, employed as a server at the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) in Covington over ten years, rented the house and 10,000 square foot lot less than a week before her death, moving from the Bedico Creek area because of the family’s displacement by Hurricane Katrina. She moved to Washington Parish to be closer to her son, who lived in Franklinton with his father. When emergency responders arrived on-scene at 30174 Cleve Kennedy Road, Rachel’s sisters reported, police found Rachel’s near-naked body in a state of decomposition, wearing only a t-shirt, and lying face down on a mattress and box springs atop her bedroom floor. Where her naked half kneeled on the floor, someone had encircled her lower body with lit votive candles; and scattered throughout the otherwise orderly home, family found tiny silver crosses on the floors. Investigators interviewed the original caller, Charles Timothy Martin, along with a subsequent caller, Daquay Accardo Cerigny. According to Chief Deputy Mike Haley, both subjects told police they had been with Davidson the day and night preceding her death. Rachel’s sisters told me that “Tim and Daquay” said to them that the last time they saw Rachel—the morning of September 30—she was “snoring in her bed.” They also told police that the night before, Rachel had been doing drugs and had sex with at least two men. “The interviews indicated ongoing drug use,” Chief Haley’s report stated. “Davidson was discovered the following morning deceased in her bedroom after subjects failed to make with her.” Rachel’s family said the sheriff’s office investigated the crime scene for only two days before lowering the tape and labeling Rachel’s death an overdose.

“This was seven years prior to the current sheriff taking office,” Chief Haley reminded me. “The detectives who worked the case are no longer employed here.” “The original investigation,” he said, “concluded that the scene was consistent with the statements given by the two subjects interviewed.” However, he reported, investigators did elect to leave the case open “pending any further evidence.” That evidence came in the form of pathologist Dr. Michael DaFatta’s Autopsy Report: “The body is clothed in a white t-shirt with the words ‘Southern Lady’ imprinted on it. There is no other clothing on the body. Other property removed from the decedent consists of a black necklace with a gray metal cross as well as one earring from the right earlobe.” “The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished, 62.5-inch white female whose appearance is consistent with the given age of 28 years. The weight of the body is estimated to be 140-150 pounds. The body is in a state of moderate decomposition, as evidenced by a black and bloated face, greenish body coloration from the upper legs and above, marbling, a foul odor, and skin slippage.” “The forearms and the lower legs are in a better state of preservation. Long, wavy brown hair covers the scalp. There is a tattoo of a rose on a vine on the mid-abdomen and letters tattooed on the outside right calf. There is a scar on the inside right ankle. There is also insect activity on the insides of the upper thighs.” “The eyes are bloated and decomposed, as well as the ears and nose. The mouth is edentulous on the top with a false plate in place... The upper and lower extremities are present intact. The hands and forearms do not show any areas of trauma, and the nails are not chipped.” There is something wrong with this picture. The “friends” who phoned the police said Rachel had been snoring 12 hours before the police arrived. They also claimed she took part in group sexual activity 24 hours earlier. However, the coroner describes the body as blue, green, and bloated with portions of the body infested with insects. These facts do not line up forensically.

Consider the five stages of decomposition:

24-72 hours after death, the internal organs decompose. 3-5 days after death, the body starts to bloat, and blood-containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose. 8-10 days after death, the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes, and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas. Seven weeks after a death, nails and teeth fall out. One month after death, the body starts to liquefy.

Dr. DaFatta started Rachel’s autopsy at noon on September 30, 2005—less than 24 hours after her alleged time of death. The toxicology report found evidence that Rachel had smoked marijuana and drank alcohol shortly before her death, but no lethal dose of any substance. The examination found less than.05 micrograms of Hydrocodone mixed with Oxymorphone and approximately 2.3 micrograms of oxycodone. Dr. DaFatta did not find an overdose of drugs to be the cause of death. Instead, he recorded, “Blunt force trauma of flank areas and lateral chest areas bilaterally” along with “posterior and left temporal scalp contusions.” As a final note related to the cause of death, the pathologist wrote that the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office considered the case open, “pending further studies and investigation.” Fourteen years later, the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Division reviewed the Rachel Davidson cold case and reported: “An independent interview by a medical examiner questioned the death certificate. The blunt force trauma to the chest, skull, and flank was determined to be bruising with no reported internal damage. The trauma could have been a

subsequent contributor but unlikely to be a primary cause. The source of the trauma has yet to be determined.” “Follow-up interviews were done with the two original witnesses. The witnesses have not had with each other since shortly after the 2005 incident. One witness, Daquay Cerigny, gave a statement wholly consistent with one given in September of 2005. The other witness, Tim Martin, presently incarcerated in Mississippi, refused to cooperate with any efforts in the follow-up investigation.” “Today, the cause of Rachel Davidson’s death remains undetermined.” However, investigators confirmed something in 2018, not known in 2005. Shortly before her death, Rachel Renee Davidson phoned Crime Stoppers in Tangipahoa Parish and ultimately provided the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office with information about a missing person case in Amite. Rachel’s call resulted in a homicide discovery by the sheriff’s office, and, like Rachel’s, the 2003 murder of Debbie Lindsey also remains unsolved.

Donna Arceneaux

Dr. Michelle Thomas is a published author, a Pentecostal evangelist, and a life coach in high demand, traveling coast-to-coast, counseling the lost, and preaching the word of God. On October 21, 2017, attending a conference in Florida, Dr. Thomas broke for lunch, and sitting down to check her social media s, she read a friend’s public cry for help. Before flying to Florida, Michelle spent time with that childhood friend, Donna Arceneaux, in Louisiana. The two attended the Washington Parish Fair, laughing and joking, as Michelle helped Donna fight the devil inside her—depression— created and nurtured by the abusive men in Donna’s life. Donna told Michelle that she left her husband after repeatedly suffering physical abuse, only to begin a relationship with another, primarily mental, ab. This man, Donna said, controlled her every move, governing where she went and with whom. Shortly before Michelle’s visit, Donna had walked away from that second relationship and was living alone, afraid to turn her porch lights off at night. In Florida, now a week later, Michelle phoned Donna, hoping to council her over the telephone, but Donna seemed more troubled than before. Crying, she said her abusive boyfriend, who lived across the street, would not leave her alone. Michelle promised she would return to Louisiana on Monday and she would counsel the couple. Donna seemed hopeful by the end of the call, but before Michelle’s flight landed the following Monday night, Donna was dead. Her obituary read, “Donna Smith Arceneaux was a cosmetologist and hairstylist, the owner and operator of Bella Donna Day Spa in Franklinton. Donna enjoyed being in the outdoors and hunting and fishing. She loved listening to country music and spending time with her children.” She had two sons, Scott Jenkins and Brennon Dendy, and one daughter, Adriel “Ellie” Arceneaux. The Wednesday morning following Donna’s death, journalist Kim Chatelain reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Police found a 40-year-old Washington Parish woman shot to death in her bed

early Tuesday, October 24, and an investigation is underway to determine the circumstances of the shooting. “Donna Arceneaux suffered a gunshot wound to the chest in what is currently being treated by investigators as an unclassified death, the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office reported. “According to a news release provided by the sheriff’s office, shortly after midnight, the sheriff’s office received a 911 call reporting a shooting at Arceneaux’s home on Louisiana Highway 16 south of Franklinton. On arrival, deputies determined that two friends of the victim, who had been unable to her, went to the residence and found her in the bed with a gunshot wound to the chest. “Detectives and deputies, on the scene all day Tuesday, gathered evidence as part of an ongoing investigation, but no further details on the incident were released as of this morning,” the reporter explained. “The Louisiana State Police Crime Lab has also been on-site processing the scene for evidence,” she said. “The St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy today, according to the Sheriff’s report.” The State Police lab’s toxicology report revealed Donna had drunk wine with her prescription medication, clonazepam, a type of anti-epileptic drug sometimes prescribed for anxiety. A common side-effect of the drug is often “depression or suicidal thoughts or behavior.” “It is always tragic when any person loses their life in such a manner,” Washington Parish Sheriff Randy “Country” Seal told television reporters, adding, “I now ask you to with me in prayer for the victim’s family and friends.” “Our detectives will continue to investigate this shooting death,” the sheriff said, “until we resolve the matter.” The coroner’s office never made public the results of Donna Arceneaux’s autopsy, and in 2020, a member of Donna’s family asked the Louisiana State Police to take over the investigation. According to St. Tammany Chief Deputy Coroner Dr. Michael DeFatta’s report,

Donna died from a “perforating gunshot to the left chest.” An entrance-type gunshot wound to the left breast measured 1.5 cm x 0.8 cm and was located 2 1/2 inches left of the midline, 9 inches from the top of the shoulder. The bullet traveled through the skin and soft tissue of the left breast, severing the left anterior fifth rib and damaging the left lobe of Donna’s liver, along with her spleen, left lung, and heart. The bullet continued through the body, exiting her back on her left side and creating an exit wound measuring 1.0 cm, 2 1/2 inches left of the midline, also 9 inches from the top of her shoulder. The pathologist’s report also described blood transfer on Donna’s legs, deposited there after the bullet pierced her heart. Flying from Florida and driving from New Orleans, Dr. Michelle Thomas discovered Donna’s body just after midnight, October 23, 2017. Donna’s neighbor met Dr. Thomas with a key and opened Donna’s home. The two found blood on the bed and linen and a bullet hole through the mattress. Donna’s nude body laid on the floor, three feet from the bed, near the bedroom door, her skin blackened and her eyes still open; her upper body frozen in a slightly raised position. In 2020, according to the Louisiana State Police, what the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office initially described as an “unclassified death” became, officially, designated an unsolved homicide.

Jane Clement

In the fall of 1959 , on closing night for the Southeastern Louisiana College stage play “Suspect,” news reporters from three Hammond newspapers had questions—not for the play’s lead, Carol Cook of New Orleans—but for a Baton Rouge actress in a ing role, 18-year-old Hannah Jane Rowell. “Miss Rowell,” one reporter shouted, “Is it true that an agent from MetroGoldwyn-Mayer has ed you?” “When are you leaving for Hollywood, Miss Rowell?” another asked. Three days earlier, a New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist leaked details of Jane’s springtime lunch in the French Quarter with Hollywood Director and Screenwriter Nunnally Hunter Johnson. According to the columnist, Johnson came to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, scouted area talent, and caught Jane’s performance in an earlier production at Southeastern. “Do you have news to share, Miss Rowell?” the first reporter persisted. “Okay,” Jane said, “I do have something to say.” The 5’4” beauty stood at the edge of the stage, twisting her nearly black hair as he spoke, wiping her eyes with a blue-laced handkerchief. “I am leaving Southeastern after this semester,” she said. “Are you crying, Miss Rowell?” the reporter asked. “Tears of joy,” she answered. “But it’s nothing to do with Hollywood. I have abandoned this motion picture foolishness and accepted my sweetheart’s marriage proposal. He was a track star at the University of Texas, and today is a high school coach and teacher in Baton Rouge.” “But what about tinsel town, Miss Rowell?” a reporter asked. “We read you were going to be the next Ava Gardner.” “Next year,” Jane concluded, “I will become Mrs. Wilton Clement.” As she predicted, the following year, she did marry, and the marriage produced two children, an infant and a toddler left behind when Jane Rowell Clement

vanished in 1963. When she disappeared, Jane’s estranged husband told police she had abandoned her family for Hollywood. However, since her disappearance, almost 50 years ago, Jane Rowell Clement has not appeared in any motion picture. She has appeared nowhere. Jane’s mother, a Mississippi school teacher, gave birth to Jane in Jefferson County in 1941. Jane’s father worked days as a farmer and nights as a moonshiner. Before Jane’s seventh birthday, the family moved to Baton Rouge, where her mother and father died before Jane’s twelfth birthday. Jane and her four orphaned siblings shuffled between aunts, uncles, teachers, and family friends throughout their childhood. Despite this tragedy, Jane developed into a bright, personable teenager. Her mother, during her last years at the hospital, had kept a diary, which Jane saw as an inspiration. At Istrouma Junior High School, Jane took top honors. Reporting on school events for the Baton Rouge Advocate, she quickly became popular among her peers, who selected her homecoming queen. Besides writing, Jane loved drama and the stage. At Istrouma High School, she set a record as the only person to win “Best Actress” three consecutive years for her portrayals in annual school productions. She starred in “Blithe Spirit,” “Our Town,” and “You can’t take it with you.” After she left Southeastern, Jane directed plays at Istrouma High School and worked again for the newspaper. Subscribing to correspondence courses and home studies, she worked to improve her craft and sold fiction to several pulp magazines. On Christmas Eve 1962, a fight with her husband over Jane’s writing became physical. The next morning, Jane’s doctor itted her to the Baton Rouge General Hospital for treatment of deep bruises on her neck and back. The doctor discharged her on New Year’s Eve, but she never again lived with Wilton Clement. A Baton Rouge court granted her a legal separation on March 18, 1963, along with custody of the children and the residence on Sorrel Avenue.

Alone with her children, Jane started a novel, work left unfinished when she disappeared, and—curiously—Jane authored a lengthy letter to be given to her infant daughter when she became of age. Jane told her brother that she feared living alone. Her brother, Wylie Rowell, visited her and the children often, sometimes spending the weekend. Still, as a precaution, Jane asked a friend, Mrs. Dudley Jeffers, to telephone her daily and to notify Wylie if the day came when she did not answer. Saturday morning, April 6, 1963, Wylie drove up from New Orleans and spent the night at Jane’s. Sunday morning, Wilton Clement picked up the children for his scheduled visitation, and, according to Wylie, Clement and Jane argued before he left. After lunch that Sunday, April 7, 1963, Wylie, a friend of his, Gerald Sanders, and Jane went on an outing across the river. Later, Wylie departed for New Orleans, unaware that he would never see his sister again. Ten days later, Mrs. Jeffers called Wylie long-distance. Jane had not answered her telephone for several days. At first, Mrs. Jeffers assumed Jane had left for New Orleans with Wylie, but, she said, she eventually grew worried and called Wylie to confirm. Wylie left work, driving frantically to Baton Rouge, and met Mrs. Jeffers at Jane’s house, facing two locked doors. Wylie broke the glass in the back door, unlocked it, and entered the kitchen. On the clothes dryer, he found a hamper of mildewed clothing and half a pack of cigarettes. Everything else in the house appeared as he had left it, less than two weeks earlier. Jane’s makeup and clothing appeared in place, excluding the clothes she wore that Sunday. The only thing missing from the house was a pink bedspread. Wylie ed it because he had slept on the couch and used it for cover. Both the Baton Rouge city police and the sheriff’s office responded to Mrs. Jeffers’ call. Before the search concluded, the district attorney presented evidence to a grand jury that, even today, has never been made public. Investigators questioned Wilton Clement within an hour of Jeffers’ call. Clement

said he last saw Jane on Monday, April 8. He had returned the children the night before, but, he said, Jane called him that morning to come back and get them. He said she had a job offer, working for a wealthy club owner on Bourbon Street, and she needed to meet the man for lunch. Clement said he had tried to call Jane later but got no answer. He assumed she had taken the job and was staying at her brother’s in New Orleans. Neighbors reported nothing unusual. Police dispatched bulletins regarding her disappearance across the country and ed Jane’s friends and casual acquaintances in Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Alabama. None spoke to her after April 7, 1963. For months, Jane’s aunt, Mrs. Mary G. Baker in Natchez, Mississippi, ran a newspaper ment in The Advocate offering a $300 reward for information concerning her niece’s disappearance and whereabouts without receiving a single response. In December 1963, police found the body of a woman near the Benbrook Lake Dam outside Fort Worth, Texas. Jane’s physical characteristics matched those of the estimated six-month-old corpse, but Jane’s dental records did not. In 1965, columnist Jim Crain sat down with Wylie Rowell to talk about Wylie’s sister and her strange disappearance. “It’s the sort of thing you never get over,” Wylie said. “There has been no peace for our family since it happened. It is worse than someone you love dying,” he said. “It’s a nightmare, never knowing what happened, or how and why it happened.” Wylie gazed into a cup of black coffee at Café Du Monde for a few moments before he could continue, Crain reported. And then he said, “I know one thing for sure. My sister loved her children too much to run away.” “What do you think really happened to her?” Jim Crain asked. “Murder,” Wylie Rowell replied. “I’d stake my life on it.”

Wylie G. Rowell died in 2008 at age 72. “I met my uncle at a café when I was in college,” Jane’s daughter, Janet, told me in April 2020. “He gave me some photos. He never got over my mother’s disappearance. They must have been really close.” Janet said that Wylie “appeared to be on drugs of some sort” that day. Years later, her uncle apologized. He said he had been so nervous meeting her for the first time. He left his box of family photos. When he returned to the café later in the week, the box was gone. “My mother’s family was a little crazy,” Janet said. “Her father shot himself. Wylie had a drug problem, and Patsy, my mom’s older sister, ran away years before my mother disappeared.” Janet said her mother named her after the last woman to help raise the Rowell children, a Baton Rouge schoolteacher named Janet Robinson. Robinson told Janet that she saw Jane years after her disappearance at a gathering of people in Pascagoula, Mississippi. However, the woman resembling Jane disappeared in the crowd before Robinson could reach her. Questioning the couple the woman had been sitting with, both confirmed the woman’s name was Jane. “Wylie, and maybe the police, think my dad did something to her, but a more easy-going, mild-tempered man, you will never find,” Janet said. “I didn’t know my mother, but I know my father. She may have been murdered, but he wasn’t responsible.” In 2020, an 87-year-old Wilton Clement still lived in Baton Rouge and insisted that Jane ran away to Hollywood. If he is correct, perhaps we can identify one or two of her descendants today. In 1993, another Hannah Jane Rowell, then 29-years-old, mysteriously disappeared from her home in Eureka, California. In 2017, a 35-year-old Jane Clement, who looks identical to the Hannah Jane Rowell Clement, who vanished in 1963, completed filming of a dark comedy entitled “Dead Ringer.” Although this Jane Clement now lives in Hollywood, the fashion-model-turned actress was born in the United Kingdom.

Janessa Hartley

One day before her 57 th birthday, a masked man shot and killed Janessa Hartley as she dropped a friend two blocks from her own home, at a Brookshire Avenue residence in their Sherwood Forest neighborhood. The Baton Rouge Police Department is still looking for her killer today. Just after 8 that evening, January 15, 2019, “Nessa” Hartley sat in the front seat of her Honda CR-V, a sports utility vehicle, talking, when a shadow near a tree became a man, waving a gun near her driver’s side window. “We were looking down a gun barrel,” Nessa’s friend, Linda Donnelly, later told Crime Stoppers. “All we could see of the person was his eyes. He had a hoodie over his head and a cloth across his face.” “At first, your brain doesn’t process it,” she said. “We were trying to figure out if it was a joke, somebody playing a prank on us.” Surveillance cameras at the home of Kenny Williams, Linda Donnelly’s neighbor and fiancé, filmed the assault. The man hid behind a large tree before approaching the car, and he appeared to shout something after attempting to open the driver’s side door. Jonathan Ricard, who lives in the house across the street from where the shooting occurred, said he heard raised voices and a man telling someone to “get out the car.” Then he heard one gunshot and a woman yell, “He shot me.” Linda said she and Nessa never heard their attacker speak. “He was just standing there, staring at us. We couldn’t figure out what he wanted. We felt protected inside the car,” she said, “And we were scared to get out.” Linda said Nessa revved the engine to frighten their assailant away. Instead, he fired a bullet through the driver’s side door. After hearing the shot, Jonathan Ricard phoned 911. Nessa collapsed in the driver’s seat as the gunman pulled again at the door handle. Linda slid the SUV into reverse, and the vehicle backed down the drive.

The masked man raised his gun again, as the car bounced out into the road, and the driver of a ing van—nearly hit by the SUV—honked his horn. At that moment, Linda began blowing the SUV’s horn and screaming for the neighbors to help. The masked man lowered his gun and ran across Linda’s lawn in the van’s direction as it drove away. Nessa’s SUV continued across the street, backing into Jonathan Ricard’s driveway. Linda put the car in neutral. It paused slightly, then rolled back into the street. BRPD Detective Walter Griffin told Crime Stoppers what happened next. “On arrival, I saw a small SUV next to the sidewalk. There was a deceased female in the driver’s seat.” This differs slightly from that reported by the Baton Rouge Advocate the morning after the shooting. That report said, “At the scene Tuesday night, Hartley’s body could be seen lying on the ground next to an SUV with its driver’s side window shot out. The vehicle appeared to have run off the road. Her body was lying in the grass on the driver’s side.” “After [Linda Donnelly] exited the vehicle,” Detective Griffin explained, “Her fiancé came out, and then several neighbors came out. All focused their efforts on helping the victim. They were trying to perform all life-saving techniques when our officers arrived. At that point, we started collecting evidence, working the scene, interviewing any witnesses that may have seen the actual incident.” After interviewing Linda, Detective Griffin noted in his report, “They had gone out for a typical night out with the girls. They had dinner to celebrate Janessa’s birthday. They drove home, and nothing unusual happened. It was a routine drive home. No incidents of road rage or anything of that nature. They didn’t cut anyone off. No one cut them off. They didn’t have any words with anybody at a red light or anything of that nature.” Linda later told WAFB-TV that she believes Nessa’s murder was only a carjacking gone wrong. “We were sitting in the car. The engine was on. Her foot was on the brake, so the lights were on. When a car es by, they see the lights. That’s an easy carjacking,” Linda said. “This, to me, was a random carjacking. People don’t

want to say that can happen here, but it can happen anywhere.” In another television interview, BRPD Detective Ross Williams agreed, explaining that this neighborhood acts as a thruway between two major roads. “Some of the side streets that cut through from Old Hammond Highway to Goodwood are the ones that access the thruway,” Williams said. One of those cut-through roads is Havenwood Drive, he said, which intersects with Brookshire Avenue, very near the address where Nessa and Linda were sitting in the Honda CR-V that night. Nessa was born the fourth child of Lee and Jackie Hargroder. Born and raised in Baton Rouge, she graduated from Redemptorist High School in 1980. In 1984, she married Peter Hartley and started a family. Pete and Nessa became parents to three children: Jake, Megan, and Seth. She worked for years as a classroom assistant at St. Thomas More Preschool in Baton Rouge before retiring in 2014. “She was so kindhearted and loving to everyone she encountered. She was a beautiful person inside and out,” Camilla Ponson, the preschool’s receptionist, told newspaper reporters the day following Nessa’s murder. “It’s so tragic,” she said. “I still can’t really believe it happened.” Camilla Ponson said Nessa retired to spend time with her grandchildren. She had five at the time of her death. “Nessa and I have been dear and close friends for 36 years,” Linda Donnelly told reporters. “We shared our lives and raised our families together. Her children and grandbabies were her world. This senseless crime has devastated all of those close to her.” Janessa’s family declined to talk to me about the crime. Her daughter, Megan Cotten, said only that the Baton Rouge Police Department still had no leads in the case.

The Nurse

Three years after her death at age 98, a New Orleans newspaper suggested that Louisiana’s most beloved Yellow Fever nurse had murdered the two husbands she outlived. Five years after the nurse’s death, a fiction author slandered her name further, saying the healing brought in her lifetime came through black magic and charlatanry, rather than the cleanliness and Godliness principles the woman taught anyone who listened. At fourteen years old, her mother drafted her into the nursing profession at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. According to the Louisiana Courier, “These famed quadroon nurses, whose services are so consciously useful when the pestilence visited New Orleans, freely gave their kind attention to the wounded British, and worked at their bedsides night and day.” Besides enemy soldiers, the newspaper reported, these women nursed forty men who survived both the battle and the amputation of their legs or arms, and they watched twelve men die on the operating table. In the 1800s, sanitary measures in New Orleans were primitive. When the gutters flowed at all, the flow included human excrement. No one removed trash or the dead bodies of dogs from the streets. The ground was pitted with holes where stagnant water accumulated in the summer rains and made warm homes for mosquito eggs. Yellow Fever frightened the residents of all cities along the Mississippi River. Initial symptoms included fever, chills, and headaches. As the disease progressed, the pulse of the infected slowed and weakened. Their gums bled, and they found blood in their urine. In the last stages, jaundice set in, yellowing skin and eyes, followed by black vomit. Attempting to subvert panic, physicians falsified death certificates, and newspapers conspired to hide the facts of the looming plague until people began falling dead on busy French Quarter streets. Doctors then knew of no specific treatment for Yellow Fever. The only people in New Orleans who showed any competence with the fever were a group of black public health nurses and a guild of privileged, young white men who called themselves the Howard Association.

Like the Red Cross, the Howards gave food, medicine, money, and help during civic disasters. They grounded their home-based medical care and neighborhood public health campaigns on those experienced nurses and nursemaids of color whom they recalled raising them and attending their families through multiple illnesses and deaths. As New Orleans’ worst Yellow Fever epidemic engulfed life in the summer of 1853, the Howards made these women of color the backbone of community healing and help. In a time when the concept of germs and the name Louis Pasteur were unknown, the nurse’s successes through cleanliness, prayer, and keeping sick patients separated from the healthy amazed the Howards. The woman who led those nurses is the subject of this chapter. According to that nurse’s daughter, in an 1890 interview, as a young woman, her mother married at St. Louis Cathedral and was very close to Pastor Père Antoine. She lost two children to Yellow Fever and vowed to the pastor and God that she would dedicate her life to fighting the disease if God would spare her next child. When she died, the retired nurse had fifteen children and grandchildren. On June 17, 1881, her obituary read: “Besides being very beautiful in her youth, she was also very wise. She was skillful in the practice of medicine and was acquainted with the valuable healing qualities of indigenous herbs. “She was very successful as a nurse; wonderful stories are told of her miracles at the sickbed. Throughout the multiple Yellow Fever and cholera epidemics that plagued our city this century, she was always called upon to nurse the sick, and she always responded promptly. Her skill and knowledge earned her the friendship and approbation of the educated. Whereas those ignorant of the powers of prayer and cleanliness falsely attributed her success to unnatural means. “In 1853, when a committee, appointed in a mass meeting at Globe Hall, requested her on behalf of the church to minister to the fever-stricken, she went out and fought the pestilence where it was thickest, and many alive today owe their life to her dedication.

“Throughout her life, the sick had but to come to her, and she would make their cause her own, often undergoing great sacrifices to help them. “Besides being charitable, she was also very pious and took delight in strengthening the allegiance of souls to the church. She would volunteer at the jail, ministering to the condemned in their last moments, endeavoring to turn their last thoughts to Jesus. And whenever she found a prisoner wrongly accused, she would labor incessantly to obtain a pardon or at least a commutation of the sentence. At the same time, she sought more evidence of innocence and was generally successful.” In April 1886, a New Orleans Item newspaper reporter translated for the nurse’s French-speaking daughter and three granddaughters, a work of fiction written by George Washington Cable. Cable’s folk tale used the nurse’s real name and described her as a voodoo practitioner. The author wrote that a white snake granted the nurse magical healing powers, and he claimed the snake lived in a box beneath her bed. Cable also described the nurse dancing nude and hosting wild orgies on the banks of Bayou St. John. Hearing this tale for the first time, the nurse’s family became outraged. From the newspaper article that followed: “None of the four women waited until the reading was over. Several times angry laughs of derision and angry cries of interrupted the reporter. ‘It is a lie. It is a lie!’ the family cried.” When the reading was over, the women were quite beside themselves with rage. The daughter, Madame Philomène Legendre, was walking up and down the room with quick, sharp steps, attempting to express herself in English, and then relapsing into deafening French. The reporter did not try to repeat her French words. “Snake in a box, indeed!” cried Madame Legendre angrily. “What for they say that about her after she dead? She was too good. Many people would not now hold up their heads so high if she had not been good. What did she know about a snake in a box? She worshiped God and went to church with her prayers. This story is all a lie from beginning to end. Nobody ever saw her dance like that story says. People have come here from all over the world to see her, and they never saw anything like that.”

With “teeth closed and lips quivering,” the reporter wrote, “she walked furiously across the narrow room, before appealing to this writer.” “Can we not stop this?” the nurse’s daughter asked. “Surely, the courts must protect her name. People come here, and they tell lies. My mother never did them any harm. How can they be allowed to write such bad things about her?” Madame Legendre paced the floor another ten minutes, and then she stopped and looked at the reporter. “There are powerful men in this town who knew my mother. I will go and see them, and they will stop them dragging her name around and telling any more lies.” “But you cannot stop them from talking far away from here,” the reporter said. “Cable, for example, lives in Florida, and selling his work as fiction, he prevents you from taking legal action against him.” “Yes,” Madame Legendre said, “But the truth is on our side. I can tell everyone that he lied and that people can’t rewrite history and destroy a good woman’s reputation on a whim.” Madame Legendre died in 1897. Most called her mother “the Widow Paris,” but the nurse’s birth certificate names her Marie Laveau.

Albany Bars

The saloons in Albany , Louisiana, have a rough history. On August 19, 1967, in a gunfight outside the OK Bar and Grocery, two gunmen corralled and killed proprietor Mike Erdey, Jr. In 1943, a Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputy shot through the wall of another Albany establishment, killing a Holden farmer headed to Tangipahoa Parish with a load of beans. And in 1955, the Louisiana State Police Organized Crime Unit raided four Albany bars, searching for gambling paraphernalia. In the 1943 incident, a man named Rainey ran a bar on Highway 190, and at four on a steamy summer afternoon, Saturday, June 26, Rainey served his third round to two young men, as they argued over who should or should not be drinking that afternoon. The 22-year-old from Springfield complained that the 20-year-old from Doyle was underage, while the other threatened to tell Livingston Parish Sheriff P. R. Erwin that he had caught one of his deputies drinking beer on duty. Moments later, a Holden farm laborer, 23-year-old Norwood Courtney, pulled off Highway 190 with a load of beans destined for the Farmer’s Market in Hammond. Norwood told his 20-year-old brother, Clinton, to wait in the hot truck, while he grabbed them a cold beer. Inside the bar, Norwood found Deputy Robert Thaddeus Fayard tussling with the boy from Doyle while Rainey stood behind the bar, laughing. As Norwood approached, Doyle punched Deputy Fayard in the face, and Fayard fired his pistol into the ceiling. Doyle ran over Norwood in his escape. Both men fell to the floor as a second shot blew past them and through the screen door of the bar, where Clinton Courtney stood. Robert Fayard told Sheriff Erwin that all three young men had been drinking in the bar when he stopped by. He claimed all three were “resisting arrest” when Clinton Courtney died. After interviewing the other witnesses, the sheriff charged his deputy with murder. Following a televised hearing of Senator Estes Kefauver’s Committee to Investigate Organized Crime, broadcast from New Orleans in 1952, Governor Robert F. Kennon appointed a war hero, Colonel Francis C. Grevemberg to the

position of Superintendent of the Louisiana State Police. Grevemberg then formed a task force that moved from parish to parish raiding bars, searching for illegal gambling and organized crime. Grevemberg’s task force raided the Albany bars the night of October 23, 1954. Grevemberg’s team expected slot machines but found none. For that reason, the results of their Saturday night raid did not make headlines until February 10, 1955, when the State Board of Tax Appeals dismissed two petitions filed by Grevemberg against Livingston Parish tavern operators. In the same hearing, they continued the third petition and took a fourth under advisement. One of the petitions sought to revoke and prevent the issuance of beer and liquor licenses to Mike Erdey, Jr.’s OK Bar on the Albany-Springfield Highway, citing alleged violations of gambling and state liquor laws. The board dismissed that petition when the prosecution’s star witness itted lying twice under oath. Dismissing the petition against Erdey, the board chairman said that there was no doubt in his mind that a “skin game” had been operating in Erdey’s bar the night of the raid. However, since the testimony of the main witness cast doubt on the whole case, they had no choice but to dismiss the charges. “Georgia Skin,” the chairman explained, was played with a box arranged so that only one card comes out of the box at a time. Players bet among themselves that the card they name will still be in the box when the game has ended. Henry Johnson, named as the operator of the card game, refuted his testimony repeatedly before the board. Initially, Drew McInnis, the lead attorney for state police, had declined to call Johnson, but the attorney for the Defense insisted otherwise. Johnson, who first testified that he was working for Mike Erdey on the night of the raid, later changed his story, saying he had never worked for Erdey. He also testified that he had caused the skin box to be made before saying he did not own the box and did not know where it came from. Confronted with his conflicting testimony, Johnson apologized, explaining that he had always been a compulsive liar. Sergeant Phillip Monteleone, Trooper W. D. Bullock, and Trooper J. E. Jourdan, each testified that they found the card game operating in the back room of

Erdey’s establishment. All three said that Johnson, the night of the raid, told them that he was operating the game for Erdey in exchange for a 25 percent commission. Erdey, called to testify by his attorney, Warren Comish, itted that he knew there was a card game going on, but claimed that Johnson did not run the game for him, and he insisted he received no cut from the game. Erdey also testified that he had since closed down the back room of the bar, which catered to blacks, and now only served whites in the establishment. After the dismissal, Colonel Grevemberg said, “Johnson has disgraced his own race. We don’t know whether he lied when he told troopers he was operating the game or not.” The second gambling case charged that Steve Bates, operator of Bates Bar and Grocery, permitted two games, one for dice and one for cards, to operate in his establishment. The board dismissed that case when Bates’ attorney submitted a medical certificate saying his client could not attend court as he was hospitalized with a bullet wound. A petition asking for the revocation of the license of Julia Szari, Albany, operator of the Old Rainbow Tavern, for allowing minors on the premises, was dismissed when the board was unable to determine whether the principal commodity of the combination tavern and restaurant was beer or something else. Szari itted that she could not say whether she made more money from beer or food. “Some days I sell plenty of food, and other days I sell a good bit of beer. Some days I don’t sell anything at all,” she said. Sergeant Monteleone testified that he found two 14-year-old girls and one 17year-old boy at a dance in Szari’s tavern on the night of the raids. The three juveniles testified that they were in the bar, but they had gone with relatives and had not bought any intoxicating beverages. The board took under advisement the case of Elizabeth and Frank Novak, who, it is alleged in the petition, permitted their minor son and another juvenile into their Pelican Bar. Mrs. Novak explained that it was a long-established custom of people in

Livingston Parish to bring their youngsters into saloons and taverns, but, she said, her bar “went the state law one better” and never served alcohol to persons under 21. The state minimum age at the time was 18. The board dismissed the case but cautioned the parents against bringing juveniles to taverns. Grevemberg added, “It’s a difficult thing to run a bar and stay within the law. I want to caution you, parents, to control your children and keep them out of these establishments.” Before leaving the courtroom, Julia Szari assured the board that she was keeping a close check on juveniles since the incident and required all boys to show their draft registration cards before serving them. Then she added, “But tell me how I can get the ages of the girls.” On September 17, 1983, Philip “Punk” Wascom, a 22-year-old purse-snatcher from Holden, entered the Old Rainbow Tavern and stole a then 80-year-old Julia Szari’s handbag, after first breaking her arm by hitting her with a barstool and stabbing her multiple times. She died at Seventh Ward General Hospital after telling investigators what happened. On August 9, 1967, according to one witness, Frank Brent McCarroll shot and killed Mike Erdey outside his OK Bar and Grocery store. The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office initially charged a second man in the homicide, R. W. “Dick” Cogley, but he was released on a $15,000 bond and ultimately agreed to testify for the prosecution. The court denied McCarroll’s bond. On June 23, 1968, Cogley told the court that he saw McCarroll shoot Erdey in an argument over a civil rights march. The trial ended in a hung jury. Three jurors voted to have the murder charge reduced to manslaughter. Nine voted for acquittal. Frank McCarroll remained free until December of 1975, when he and his brother, Earl McCarroll, and a third man, Bobby Moore, were convicted on multiple counts of aggravated assault. These charges stemmed from an event following the 21st Judicial District’s primary election when the shotgunwielding trio stormed a Hammond restaurant and held ten defeated political candidates as hostages for over an hour.

The March

Just over an hour after midnight, on a Friday night, August 18, 1967, someone shot 50-year-old Mike Erdey, Jr., three times in the back. One of the men arrested accused another, Frank McCarroll, of the crime, but officially, the murder remains unsolved today. Witnesses at two trials agreed on one point: the slaying had something to do with a civil rights march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge. Two days after Erdey’s murder, Livingston Parish Sheriff Taft Faust told The Hammond Daily Star his office had arrested five persons with a connection to the shooting: Frank Brent McCarroll of Albany, R. W. “Dick” Cogley of Springfield, and from Holden, Delmas Norred, along with Mr. and Mrs. Lamar Blount. According to the sheriff, on the night of the murder, all five traveled in three cars from the Sunset Lounge in Springfield to Mike Erdey’s OK Bar and Grocery near the Hungarian Settlement, south of Albany. Back at the Sunset, Faust said, the group had created a “general disturbance” by “wielding guns,” and shouting “threats and intimidations” before leaving to find Erdey. Cogley incited the disturbance at the Sunset, the sheriff said, when he described an argument he had earlier with Erdey earlier because Erdey “refused to harass Negroes participating in a civil rights march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge.” The march, historically the Bogalusa Civil Rights March of 1968, far from peaceful itself, incited riots in Hammond, Albany, Livingston, Satsuma, Walker, and Denham Springs. Perhaps, before we can assess who really killed Mike Erdey, we must first understand what happened in the week leading up to his murder. The 105-mile march, organized by civil rights activist A. Z. Young, started in Bogalusa on August 10, 1967, and ended with a rally on the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge on a Sunday, August 20, 1967, the day after Mike Erdey’s murder. Two days before the murder, Wednesday, August 16, 1967, as the Bogalusa crusaders paraded toward Baton Rouge, they found trouble in the small unincorporated town of Holden where angry residents there attacked them. More than fifty state troopers, nine on horseback, protected the six black men

walking that day. The protest rally had left Bogalusa over 100-strong, but 80 had deserted their ranks following a shooting four nights earlier in Hammond. According to the state police, a group of black men shouting, “We want beer!” shot into a crowd of white men barring their way to a tavern that Sunday night, August 13, wounding five white men in the process. White witnesses to the shooting described a racial brawl at the same combination bar and service station, the Riverside Inn, earlier that evening. These witnesses said a black man, who had been refused service, cursed and struck a white man, before bar patrons beat and kicked him into unconsciousness. Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Tom Sanders told The Daily Star that eleven black people later returned to the bar, demanding beer. They were told they could be served, he said, but only outside the building. When the strangers ignored the warning and approached the door, several white men blocked their entrance. Three black men in the group, according to the sheriff, opened fire before fleeing the scene in two separate cars. Sanders said the attackers carried two pistols and a shotgun. Shortly after the shooting, a crowd of furious white men gathered outside the inn. Some were armed, but the sheriff said, one of his deputies persuaded them to go home. Nearby, sheriff’s deputies found two abandoned vehicles, possibly used by the attackers. Inside one of the trucks, they discovered a revolver, a.22 caliber automatic pistol, and a sawed-off shotgun. State troopers arrested a black woman near the scene of the shooting. She told the officers she arrived with the men but got out of the car before they entered the bar. She did not want to be involved. Troopers said she later helped police identify all of the assailants. After interrogating the woman, state police and sheriff’s deputies raided the nearest black bar, located 20 miles from Hammond in the city of Covington. Inside, police arrested twelve black men and women. Those arrested with assistance from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office were identified as James Walker, Harry Stevenson, Henry Lott, Ernest Lott, Jesse Morman, Barbara Daggs, Placide Ordonez, Wilfred Weaver, Larry Sylvan, Paul

James, and Yvonne Harry. Additionally, a man named W. J. Walker was held as a material witness. That night, Colonel Thomas Burbank, the Louisiana State Police Director of Public Safety, drove to Hammond from Baton Rouge to meet with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff. Before leaving, he told reporters that several of those jailed took part in the civil rights march before it stopped in Hammond for the night. However, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Tom Sanders told Colonel Burbank, “The ones we arrested haven’t been regular marchers. I’d say they were more like curiosity marchers,” the sheriff said. But A. Z. Young, who had organized the march from Bogalusa, denied that any of his followers were involved in the shooting. He told the sheriff, “All of our people were here with me and your state police.” The marchers had camped that Sunday night at Greenville Park High, an allblack school in Hammond. Inside the school’s ballpark, a ring of cars formed a circle in the ball field like covered wagons in the Old West. Park lights illuminated the camp, and thirty-five state troopers armed with riot guns protected the campers. The troopers on duty that night said no one left the park before the disturbance at the Riverside Inn. Across town, police escorted the wounded white men to Seventh Ward General Hospital, where, the next day, staff refused to reveal their patients’ condition to The Advocate, saying only that all five remained hospitalized. Later, Sheriff Sanders would identify the wounded men as Billy Russell, Ernest Foy, Austin Ochsner, James Stanger, and Richard Hano. By sunrise Monday morning, Colonel Ray Heard of the State Police Crime Laboratory had given paraffin tests to each of the men arrested and determined that none had fired weapons the night before. An hour earlier, Colonel Burbank arrived at the camp to escort the marchers out of the area before their scheduled departure at ten that morning. However, overnight, all but 20 had left in cars for Bogalusa, leaving only A. Z. Young and nineteen ers to continue the march into Livingston Parish.

In the late afternoon, August 14, two men visited Mike Erdey, a local businessman known for his political connection. During his re-election campaign, Louisiana Governor John McKeithen had visited Mike Erdey’s OK Bar, and Mike Erdey knew the sheriff and district attorney well. His visitors wanted Mike to pressure his s to remove police protection from the marchers as they moved through Albany. “You do this,” one of the men said, “And we’ll put an end to this business right here in Livingston Parish.” However, Mike Erdey refused, telling his visitors they were playing into the hands of the publicity-seeking marchers. “That’s what they want,” Mike said, “Ignore them, and this will all be over in a couple of days.” The two men, identified by one witness as Frank Brent McCarroll and Dick Cogley, stormed out of the OK Bar and Grocery angry. The next morning, August 15, as A. Z. Young’s men entered Albany, fifteen white men plowed over the state troopers and pelted marchers with rocks. No one was seriously injured, but two white men went to jail. Colonel Heard ordered black riot helmets and shotguns for his troopers that night, and the number of marchers dropped again, this time from 20 to 6. The next afternoon, near the main crossroads on U.S. Highway 190 in Holden, the attacks started again. “But we broke it up as soon as it started,” State Police Captain William Jourdan told The Advocate. Interviewed by the newspaper, A. Z. Young said Major Tom Bradley, in charge of the detachment of state police that morning in Holden, told him as they approached the town that he still “didn’t think we had adequate protection.” Overnight, Holden Ku Klux Klan improvised and erected a roadside sign outside of town. The makeshift billboard read, “The South is gonna rise again” with a Confederate flag at the sign’s center. Young said the group stopped briefly at the sign, but March leaders “talked about it and decided to go ahead.” That day, the State Police protective force included fifty-four officers—eight mounted on horses with carbines ready in their saddle scabbards. The six remaining marchers, now walking in columns of two, found the highway through Holden lined with white men along both sides.

Sheriff Taft Faust said the yelling and name-calling turned physical when a white youth named John Mack struck a marcher with his fist, prompting others to in. A. Z. Young said the marchers would eventually be reinforced by men driving in from Bogalusa. Ultimately, though, those reinforcements did not show until Young reached the Baton Rouge city limits. “Who can blame them,” Captain Jourdan told The Advocate, “Bying Klan country would be a wise idea for the whole bunch.” Young told The Advocate he paced the march to arrive in Baton Rouge the following Saturday for a rally to be held Sunday on the steps of the capitol. Following the melee in Holden, Young directed the marchers to load into trucks and retreat back to Albany, where they spent the night in black homes and woke to crosses burning on the lawns of the families who welcomed them. In Livingston the next day, onlookers pelted the marchers with bottles, and in Satsuma, seventy-five white men overtook 175 police officers. This time, four men, including a state trooper, found themselves hospitalized with head lacerations. Eight men saw jail time. That night in Walker, where the marchers slept again in volunteers’ homes, no crosses burned, but shortly after midnight, a new hardware store and two houses lost windows to buckshot. One was the home of a Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Donald Cowart, his wife, and their three-year-old daughter. The night before Mike Erdey died, State Police Major Tom Bradley told A. Z. Young that his men were done protecting his entourage. He insisted that Young by Denham Springs and continue the march inside East Baton Rouge Parish. If he refused, Bradley told him, “March into Denham Springs at your own peril.” Bradley said his men would not be escorting them. However, Young refused to back down, insisting his march would continue that Friday morning through Denham Springs with or without a state police escort. The next morning, surprising everyone, Governor McKeithen sent 100 National Guard troops to escort the marchers safely out of Livingston Parish.

Murder at the OK Bar

On August 21, 1967 , Sheriff Taft Faust charged Frank Brent McCarroll, 30, and Dick Cogley, 27, with the August 19, 1967 slaying of Mike Erdey, 50, operator of the OK Bar and Grocery on the Albany-Springfield Road. Both were arraigned on January 15, the following year and plead not guilty. The murder occurred in the early morning hours of August 19 after Erdey and several others had argued earlier in the week about the civil rights march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge as it ed through the parish that week. A guilty-as-charged verdict in the case would bring a death sentence, the first in more than a decade in the parish. Other possible verdicts included guilty without capital punishment—a mandatory life sentence—manslaughter, and not guilty. The jury got the case at 5:08 on a Monday evening, June 17, 1968, after a lengthy charge by District Judge Ben Dawkins. The charge included two special ones requested by Defense Attorney Barbee Ponder of Amite concerning strength jurors should accredit to the testimony of accomplices. Barbee Ponder, in his closing arguments before the jury, contended the state produced no witnesses who saw anyone but Dick Cogley shoot Mike Erdey. Frank Brent McCarroll took the stand in his defense, Saturday morning, contending that Cogley “asked me to take the rap” for the shooting. He said he was at the scene of the shooting and heard shots but did not see who fired them. Earlier, Cogley testified to driving McCarroll to the bar and seeing him shoot the bar owner. McCarroll said he left the scene with Cogley and drove around after the shooting and that it was during this ride that Cogley asked him “to take the rap.” McCarroll said Cogley promised to get him off provided he accepted responsibility for the shooting. Cogley said in his testimony that McCarroll told him he had thrown the weapon, a 32-20 pistol, “into the river” as they rode from the crime scene. McCarroll testified that he never owned such a 32-20 pistol, so the state devoted time Friday afternoon to show the box of 32-20 shells, Deputy James Lott found on McCarroll’s dressing table following the shooting.

Distrist Attorney Leonard Yokum and Asstistant District Attorney Erlo Durbin worked to refute the testimony of Wendell McCarroll, a cousin of the defendant, called by the Defense. Albany residents Alex Galladora, John Paul Galladora, and Grady Johnson, all testified as rebuttal witnesses, calling Wendell McCarroll a liar. Galladora testified he was at the bar for “a sociable drink” when he heard shots. Wendell McCarroll, he said, ran into the bar and told him, “Don’t go out there, Mr. Alex, Frank Brent has shot Mr. Erdey.” Johnson said he was at the door of the bar when Wendell McCarroll came in and told him, “That damn Frank shot Uncle Mike.” John Galladora, a 21-year-old who testified he had been playing poker on thirds for the bar owner at the time of the shooting, said Wendell McCarroll told him, “Don’t go out there, Frank Brent just shot Mr. Mike.” He said he rode with the defense witness to the hospital, where he recounted multiple times how defendant shot Mike Erdey. Sheriff Taft Faust testified that Wendell McCarroll told him that he looked from the door after the shooting and saw Frank McCarroll standing over Erdey’s body. Ponder argued that Cogley testified against Frank Brent McCarroll “to save his own hide.” He intimated that Cogley’s attorney, Ossie Brown, a Baton Rouge attorney and candidate for Congress, “city-slickered” the district attorney’s office into a deal. He said, “This case has got large political aspects. This is a football.” In January, Judge Ben Tucker had freed Cogley on a $15,000 following a preliminary hearing, but elected to hold McCarroll without bail. Durbin said Cogley would stand trial later. “We chose to put the trigger-man on trial first,” he said. “Dick Cogley will be tried on some Fourth of July when there is heavy snowfall in Livingston Parish,” Ponder said in court. “You can bet he’ll never see court as long as Taft Faust is sheriff and Erlo Durbin is in the district attorney’s office.” Ponder argued that Cogley snatched Mike Erdey’s own pistol and shot him with it. “This boy (McCarroll) didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ponder said. “He was picked up so Cogley could have someone to blame this killing on.”

Durbin told the jurors, “Every week I hear someone say if you want to kill someone, kill them in Livingston Parish.” He urged jurors to put aside everything but the facts, considering the case only as good citizens. “You may belong to some secret organization that has been injected into this case,” he said, “but I want you to put aside everything except that you are good citizens and will do your duty on the jury stand.” Ponder, during the week-long trial, pressed for mistrials at several points but Judge Dawkins denied his motions. The last motion came in Ponder’s closing argument when Dawkins asked Ponder to confine his argument to the testimony in the case. The trial began Monday, but selected only two jurors. The court seated the last juror Wednesday morning after the jury venire was exhausted, and the judge called a special of fifty additional prospects. Witnesses included Dr. Frank Genovese, who testified that Erdey had three bullets in his back. Ray Hurd of the State Police Crime Laboratory testified the bullets came from a 30-20 pistol. Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies testified, along with Mrs. Mary Ann Bankston, who saw McCarroll and Cogley arrive at the bar and approach Erdey. She heard shots and ran for help. The trial ended in a mistrial, Saturday morning, June 22, 1968. The jury felt McCarroll shot Erdey, but they did not believe they murder was premeditated. The district attorney’s office then reduced the charge to manslaughter and tried again. The second trial started on a Monday, September 29, 1968, and after two days of jury selection, witness testimony began the following Wednesday. That afternoon, Mrs. Fanny Hampton, a resident of Boutte and a native of Maurepas, testified that she was a waitress at the Sunset Lounge near Springfield on the night Mike Erdey was killed. She testified that she saw McCarroll hold a pistol to the temple of the lounge proprietor, at the same time that a man she identified as Delmas Norred of Holden held a gun to the proprietor's mid-section. This happened, she said, after the proprietor, Clarence Brownlow, whom she called “Ro-ho,” had gone into an apartment ading the bar and returned with a shotgun which he placed under the bar.

Mrs. Hampton also stated that, after the proprietor persuaded all customers to leave the premises at closing time, she heard the defendant, Frank Brent McCarroll, say, “Let's go over to the OK Bar and raise hell.” Ray Heard, supervisor and chief chemist of the Louisiana State Crime Lab, testified next. He identified two bullets presented by the state as being 32.20 caliber bullets. He stated that the two bullets had been delivered to him by deputies Tom Kent Stewart and James Lott on August, 23, 1967. The two deputies, he said, identified the bullets as having been taken from the body of the deceased Mike Erdey. Thursday morning, the fourth day of the trial, Deputy Lott took the witness stand. He testified to searching McCarroll’s home on the morning of the shooting and finding “about a half box of 32.20 cartridges and some.45 caliber.” The Defense questioned whether Lott had a proper warrant for the search. When Lott said that he did, counsel demanded to see the warrant. A search by the court clerk failed to produce the warrant and the Defense objected to itting the testimony of Lott as evidence. When the court overruled the objection, Lott’s testimony was allowed. Clarence “Ro-ho” Brownlow also testified that Thursday, stating he was the proprietor of the Sunset Lounge. When asked If anything unusual had happened at the Sunset Lounge on the evening of August 18, 1967, he answered, “Nothing much.” When pressed he itted “a couple of women had a fight” at the place. Asked if he had a shot gun in the bar, he said, “Yes,” that night he had gone into the kitchen and brought a shotgun. However, his wife took it from him and returned it to the kitchen. He itted seeing McCarroll at the Sunset Lounge that evening, but when asked if McCarroll had a gun, he said, “I don't know. He might've, but I don't know. I was pretty loaded.” At that, District Attorney Leonard Yokum sprang from his seat. “Your honor,” he said, “I must plead surprise at this witness’s testimony. I would like to retire the jury and let this witness hear a statement that he made shortly after the shooting.”

With the jury retired, the state brought out a tape recorder, but the defense counsel objected, insisting that the jury be called back to hear the tape. The jury was returned. On the recording, Sheriff Taft Faust questioned Clarence Brownlow on the morning of August 19. Brownlow stated that two men held pistols on him prior to closing on the night of the shooting. On the tape he said that McCarroll had taken the shotgun from under the bar and removed the shells. However, he said that a man named Lamar Blount had held a pistol to his temple and that Delmas Norred held a pistol “in his belly.” After the tape was played, Brownlow verified the tape’s authenticity, but under direct questioning, he itted McCarroll was the man who held the pistol at his temple. That afternoon, Mary Ann Bankston of Albany testified to being at the OK Bar on the evening of Mike Erdey’s murder. She witnessed an argument between Mike Erdey and Dick Cogley earlier in the evening and saw Erdey order Cogley out of the place. She also placed Cogley and McCarroll outside the OK Bar at the time of the shooting. She stated that Erdey and she were standing outside the building when Cogley and McCarroll drove up. The witness testified that she turned to go back inside the building and heard shots fired as she opened the door. She said that a pellet hit the door facing and “sprinkled splinters in her hair.” She said Erdey, Cogley and McCarroll were the only persons she saw outside the building. After Mrs. Bankston stepped down, Archie Gordon of Holden testified for the state. He said the night Erdey was killed he left the Sunset Lounge and drove his truck to the OK Bar. He said there were four engers in the truck with him at that time. Gordon said that when he arrived at the OK Bar, he saw McCarroll, Cogley and Erdey in front of the bar. He told the court that he heard gunfire but did not see who fired the shots. Minutes after the shooting, he ed, McCarroll had a

gun in his hand, but Cogley did not. John Roberts of Harvey, Louisiana, testified next, explaining that he was known in barrooms as John Green. He testified to being at the OK Bar with Cogley earlier in the day. He said Cogley and Erdey had an argument in front of the bar but that the two men did not engage in fisticuffs. However, he said, Cogley swung at Erdey with a protective hard hat. Roberts said he and Cogley left the bar and went to the Sunset Lounge. Roberts told the jury that he did not go inside but remained in the truck for a short time before entering for a pack of cigarettes. He said he observed a ruckus in front of the Sunset Lounge which involved guns. He left the Sunset Lounge in a truck driven by Archie Gordon and returned to the OK Bar. At the OK Bar, he saw Cogley, McCarroll and Erdey standing alone in front of the place. He testified that he heard shots and saw the flash of a gun muzzle. Afterward, he saw McCarroll holding a gun. Afraid, he ran into the woods with a person he identified as Delco Sanders. Defense Attorney Ponder asked Roberts if he had come to the courthouse that morning armed, and whether a parish deputy had taken a.22 caliber revolver from him. Roberts confirmed this, saying he had been threatened by relatives of the defendant. The state then called Sheriff Taft Faust. Faust testified that he had received a call on the morning in question reporting that Erdey had been shot. He went to the OK Bar where he learned that Erdey had been pronounced dead on arrival at Seventh Ward Hospital. The sheriff said he launched an immediate investigation and called some 20-25 witnesses in the case. He said he searched for a 32.20 pistol connected to the case without success. The state asked to introduce as evidence the bullets removed from the body along with the taped interview with Brownlow and closed its case.

The Defense objected to both moves. After a brief recess, the Defense called its first witness at 4:30 that Thursday afternoon. Attorney Barbee Ponder called Elvin Delco Sanders. Sanders testified that he was in the truck of Archie Gordon on the night of the murder and was across the street from the OK Bar when he heard a shot, and he confirmed that after he heard the shot, he ran into the woods with John Roberts. He said he had been at the Sunset Lounge before the shooting occurred and had seen McCarroll. He saw six or eight persons at the lounge but observed no untoward incident at the lounge. Sanders said McCarroll did not have a gun at the Sunset Lounge. After Sanders’ testimony, court adjourned for the day. The following morning, after deliberating 30 minutes, a jury of his peers found Frank Brent McCarroll “not guilty.”

Catfish and Hostages

On a Saturday night , June 5, 1982. I sat at a corner table in Lil’ Johnny’s Seafood restaurant on U.S. Highway 51 South, laughing with radio legend Terrell “Foots” McCrory and the café’s owner, Johnny Demarco. Behind Foots, a beer-drinker at the next table flipped open his wallet and said, “Beam me up, Scotty!” Foots choked on his beverage, and I said to Johnny, “Mr. Demarco, I guess you get all kinds in here?” Now, let me back up and explain how I the date. Working for what was then Louisiana’s oldest weekly publication, The Hammond Vindicator, I’d spent that afternoon at the opening of “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.” Theater Manager George Sullivan routinely gave me Saturday es to review movies in his theaters, and that same night, I dined free at Lil’ Johnny’s, reviewing his restaurant for the newspaper. If you have ever been a starving journalist—or a Ramen noodle-eating student at Southeastern Louisiana University—you know why such a day would not be easily forgotten. Before Johnny could answer my question, a grown man in a 60s style Kirk-shirt stood up from another table and zapped his toy Phaser at the guy with the wallet communicator, just as the server delivered my seafood platter. “Toy guns are welcome anytime,” Johnny said. “It’s the real ones I don’t want to see in here again.” “Again?” I asked. “Wait,” Foots said. “I’m ordering another round before he tells this one.” And that is the night I learned of the 1975 Hammond Hostage Crisis and just how colorful South Louisiana’s local politicians and contractors can be. Shortly after 7 o’clock on the evening of November 4, 1975, three men stopped at Lil’ Johnny’s to pick up an order of oysters for a party at Attorney Hobart Pardue’s home in Springfield. Frank McCarroll of Springfield and Bobby Moore

of Pumpkin Center entered the restaurant, while Earl McCarroll of Holden waited in the truck. Near the front entrance, laughing, and drinking, Moore and McCarroll spoke to several Tangipahoa Parish political candidates entering the building. The arriving former and would-be police jurors had been defeated three days earlier. They were attending a meeting in the restaurant’s banquet room to consider whom they might endorse in the final round. Moore and McCarroll had worked as contractors in and for the parish and knew all of the meeting attendees. Oysters in tow, the two men stepped into the parking lot, just as another defeated candidate approached the building. “Say,” Bobby Moore asked the man, “Why did you invite that bastard to your meeting?” He pointed to a truck ing 10 feet in front of the group with rival contractor Milton Blount’s name painted on the side. The politician insisted that his group had not invited Blount and joked Blount must be craving Johnny’s famous catfish. Inside, the politician told Johnny Demarco that the men walked away, talking about “getting help and coming back for Blount.” When Milton Blount entered the restaurant, Johnny asked him to leave and avoid trouble. Two hours later, Bobby Moore and Frank McCarroll returned. The “help” they brought back consisted of Earl, a pistol, and three loaded shotguns. The details that follow came from eyewitness testimony recorded in the court transcripts of the three trials that followed. According to former Police Juror Joe Joe Darouse, Frank McCarroll kicked open the banquet room door, pointed his automatic shotgun, and said, “This is no holdup, but if anybody moves, we’ll kill you.” And then he asked the room why they invited Milton Blount to their meeting. “I don’t threatening to kill anybody,” Frank later told the court. “I just wanted to take Blount in a fistfight.” Earl McCarroll added, “We didn’t go in there with any intention of terrorizing people.” When asked why his group wanted to fight Blount, he said Blount had ambushed Frank and shot at him several times. “We informed the Livingston Parish’s Sheriff’s Office, but they wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Phillip Robillard told the court that he realized something was wrong that night when someone jabbed a gun barrel in his back. Joe Joe Darouse said he spent that night at Seventh Ward General Hospital after being hit hard enough to lose his glasses. Also hospitalized, Aswell Robertson told the court that he had “a weak spell with his heart” when one of the men slapped his face. “Anytime they spoke to one of us, they put a gun in our face. I’ll soon be 65,” he said, “And I’ve never been so scared in my life.” “They had a gun stuck in my nose the whole time,” Speck Calmes testified, “What was I supposed to do?” Calmes later told J. P. Duncan of The Daily Star, “It was a lie. They didn’t want nothing of Milton Blount. That was an excuse. If they’d wanted Milton, they could have gotten him.” Calmes said that he and others at the meeting believed the purpose of the attack was only to disrupt the meeting. When asked who might want the meeting disrupted, he said, “I have no idea, but there’s no truth to the story that we were meeting there against the sheriff.” Another witness described for The Daily Star’s Mark Mathes, the three gunmen telling their hostages, “We’re here to break up these little political cliques, and don’t bother calling the law. They know we’re here.” When the assault victims reported the incident to U.S. Attorney Gerald Gallinghouse in New Orleans, they accused Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Frank M. Edwards of refusing to investigate the matter. After arresting the accused terrorists, Sheriff Edwards told The Daily Star, “Everyone in law enforcement knew about the bad blood between Blount and Moore.” And added that the “other rumors” related to the case were part of a “smear campaign” against him. Testifying in the federal grand jury investigation that followed, the sheriff told the court that he initially had trouble getting the investigation organized, because some of the victims refused to discuss the assault. The others held at gunpoint that night included: Johnny Demarco, Lee Bankston, Jimmy Haltom, Wilkie Brumfield, Richard Stilley, Mark Edwards, Bill Wheat, and Bruce Kinchen. Phillip Robillard said the gunmen held them almost 45 minutes, with the first two leaving at 9:45. Frank and Bobby, he told the court, left first to get the truck.

He said Frank told Earl, “Stand at the back door. If anybody moves, blow their G-D heads off.” Just before 10, Earl backed out the door, his shotgun still leveled at the hungry politicians. On December 19, 1975, following a six-hour trial, a jury found Frank and Earl McCarroll guilty on eight counts of aggravated assault, and Bobby Moore pleaded guilty to ten counts of the same. Frank and Earl later appealed and won after proving no one in the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office read them their rights. Earl McCarroll stood trial again on November 17, 1976. In his closing arguments to the jury, Assistant District Attorney Billy Quinn asked, “Does a good man have the right to commit aggravated assault and get away with it? If someone is mad at someone, does that give him the right to terrorize others?” He said, “Ours is not a society of the fittest. We have laws to prevent people from stomping around restaurants with automatic shotguns.” After only 15 minutes of deliberation, a seven-person jury found Earl McCarroll not guilty, saying his automatic shotgun had never been loaded, and he never hit anyone with it that night. “I am not surprised. I’m shocked,” Quinn told reporters, “All but three witnesses recognized him. The man itted to being there, and he itted to aiming a loaded shotgun at people.” Meanwhile, law enforcement in four states searched for fugitive Frank McCarroll. According to the FBI, McCarroll obtained driver’s licenses in Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri before Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies found him in January of 1978, hiding out in Holden, camping on the Tickfaw River. Quinn told The Advocate, “Honestly, I think Frank wanted to be picked up. He just got tired of running.”

Frank Brent McCarroll pleaded guilty one month later and served less than one year in the St. Helena Parish Jail.

Hunter Horgan

The Reverend Hunter H. Horgan, III, an Episcopalian priest and a native of Hammond, was found stabbed to death in his church office in 1992. Nearly two decades ed before anyone served time for the heinous crime, and today, many feel true justice went unserved. The Right Reverend R. Heber Gooden, assistant bishop of the Louisiana Diocese, ordained Hunter Horgan at six on a Wednesday evening, April 25, 1973, following a sermon from Reverend Urban T. Holmes, the dean of St. Luke’s Seminary in Sewanee, Tennessee. At the time, Hunter was the deaconcurate at Trinity Church. He was born in Meridian, Mississippi, but Hunter grew up in Hammond. He attended McNeese State College and graduated from Louisiana State University, where he earned a master’s degree in education. “Hunter is just well-liked, well-known–the kind of guy everybody re,” said Phil Ward, who was a camp counselor with Hunter in the mid-1960s. “...We were all surprised he became a priest, but then we weren’t.” After completing his seminary work at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, he worked as an aide to a United States senator, William Proxmire of Wisconsin from 1970 to 1972, leading the senator’s Inter-seminary Church and Society Program in Washington, D.C. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Senator Proxmire made national news with his Golden Fleece Awards, singling out parties responsible for government waste, questionable scientific research, and outlandish public works projects. His first award, for example, went to Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid when the National Science Foundation (NSF) granted them $84,000 to validate the existence of love in America. As Proxmire’s awards program launched, Hunter Horgan returned to Louisiana, accepting a position as a chaplain and faculty member at Trinity Episcopal School. Hunter served as assistant rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans and chaplain of Trinity Episcopal School from 1972-79. During this period, he was also the youth advisor for the New Orleans Convocation of Episcopal

Churches. He served as rector of St Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans from 1979 through 1989 when he arrived at St. John’s Episcopal as a supply pastor. Soon after, he became the church’s full-time minister. On the morning of August 13, 1992, Thibodaux Police Chief Norman “Nookie” Diaz told reporters that Reverend Hunter Horgan, then 47, was found beaten to death in the St. John Episcopal Church Hall. Diaz said Hunter had been stabbed and hit on the head several times. He also told reporters there had been no forced entry into the building. “We feel the victim—the pastor—let the person in,” Diaz said. Diaz said the church congregation had raised a $12,000 reward for information on the priest’s killer, but surprisingly, this resulted in no solid leads. Chief Diaz said police found Hunter’s gray 1990 Toyota Camry in the 1200 block of St. Charles Street, a half-mile from the church, parked with the license plate facing a fence. Inside the vehicle, the State Police Crime Laboratory found nothing out of the ordinary, Diaz said. Diaz said that Hunter, who also served as rector of the church and as Vicar of Christ Episcopal Church in Napoleonville, was last seen alive in the church hall at St. John’s between 5 and 6 on the evening before the church office manager discovered the body. That morning, August 13, 1992, parishioner Ron Graham entered the church hall and found Hunter’s fully clothed body lying face down on the floor with a trail of blood stretching from the hallway to the kitchen. It appeared, Graham told reporters, that his friend had been attacked and killed in his office the previous evening. “I feel most probably it was somebody he was counseling,” Graham said. “Maybe they revealed something to him that they didn’t want to be revealed, and they put an end to it.” Three days later, the Thibodaux Police Department asked other law enforcement agencies for assistance, including the Louisiana State Police, the state Attorney General’s Office, and the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office. Still, for decades,

police made no arrests in the case. According to the coroner’s report, the murder of Hunter Horgan was shockingly brutal. He sustained multiple blunt force injuries to the back of his head, resulting in four to five deep lacerations. At least one of the cuts from an unidentified blunt object was so fierce that it caused a depressed skull fracture that pressed bone inward into the brain tissue. His attacker violently subjected Hunter to multiple sharp force injuries to the right side of his face and neck. One injury at the base of his neck transected his carotid artery through and through. Either this injury or the head trauma alone would have been sufficient to cause his death. Additionally, the presence of numerous wounds consistent with defensive wounds on Hunter’s arm, wrist, and hand indicated that he was conscious and struggled vainly for his life during the vicious attack. When his body was discovered, one of Hunter’s tro pockets was askew with the inside lining sticking out, his wallet missing. Collecting latent fingerprints from various locations in the church hall, police found a bloody print on a small table located near Hunter’s body and another on a water faucet in the church hall kitchen near some drops of diluted blood. These investigative efforts, which included conducting over two hundred interviews and fingerprinting all of the church, according to police, yielded no suspects for several years. In 2007, Hunter’s brother, Porter Horgan, told reporters he had doubts the case would ever be resolved. Thibodaux Police, he said, wasted time trying to pin the murder on serial killers, including alleged South Louisiana mass murderer Ronald Joseph Dominique, who was arrested in 2006. Dominique worked in a flower shop across the street from Hunter’s church in the early 1990s and may have known him. Police attempted to get Dominique to confess to the crime, but he declined, saying he raped and asphyxiated all of his victims, but he never beat anyone to death. The Thibodaux Police Department’s use of psychic Sylvia Browne, best-known for her appearances on television talk shows, also upset Porter Horgan. The City of Thibodaux paid the California-based cognitive $400 for a 30-minute “reading” in which she claimed that “somebody with the street name of King directed gang people to do it.” When asked for a name, Browne declined, saying,

she was “concerned about the ethics of doing so.” Browne also told police, “The priest was killed by a young mulatto homosexual who was enraged by Hunter’s rejection of his advances.” She said, “Someone was in love with the priest, and he [Hunter] wasn’t predisposed to be in love with a man.” She said, “The priest was trying to help him.” Browne’s imaginings likely grew from a stereotypical assumption that Episcopal priests had to be celibate or gay. Hunter Horgan was neither. Hunter and his wife, Marda, had a son and a daughter, and three step-children. The pastor lived in an apartment in Thibodaux, while his wife lived in Metairie. The couple planned for her to move to Thibodaux after their youngest child finished high school. Marda never got that opportunity. “The Thibodaux Police Department is lost,” the minister’s brother told a reporter in 2007. “I don’t think they could track an elephant in fresh snow.” Porter Horgan said Thibodaux Police, mesmerized by the media attention the case received, missed the opportunity to make an arrest in the 90s and failed to interview the proper individuals and evaluate the right evidence. “For some reason,” he said, “important individuals were never interviewed at all.” In May of 1998, Thibodaux Police received information that resulted in Derrick Odomes becoming a suspect. Odomes, at the time of the murder, was a juvenile, 14-years-old, living approximately one block from the church. Investigators advised him that he was a suspect in the murder and interviewed him regarding his involvement. However, Odomes denied knowledge of the killing, saying he had never been inside the church and that he had never met Hunter Horgan. Following the interview, city police submitted Odomes’ fingerprint cards to the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory (LSPCL) for comparison with those at the crime scene, but the lab found no matches. In 2007, pressured by a local newspaper, investigators resubmitted the fingerprints to the crime lab. This time, technicians matched Derrick Odomes’s left thumbprint to a latent fingerprint lifted from the church hall water faucet in 1992. The lab requested that the police take additional “major case prints” from

Odomes for further comparison, saying the original prints lacked sufficient ridge detail in some areas. Officers collected full case prints utilizing a new “ink and tape technique” said to provide greater ridge detail. Using fresh prints, LSPCL analysts identified another match, this one to the bloody fingerprint found on the tabletop next to Hunter’s body. On September 26, 2007, Derrick Odomes was indicted for Hunter’s murder. At trial, the prosecution presented testimony that Odomes made threats sometime in the 1990s against a jail employee he had told about the crime. In 2011, Derrick Odomes received the maximum juvenile sentence under 1992 state guidelines. However, the seven-year sentence he received pales compared to the life sentence he was already serving. That sentence, issued under the state’s habitual offender law, resulted from the string of unrelated felony convictions Odomes earned after Hunter Horgan’s murder. Today, Odomes resides at a Louisiana Department of Corrections minimumsecurity facility in Baton Rouge.

Kimberly Womack

When her landlord found Kimberly Gail Womack’s nude and lifeless body in the bedroom of her mobile home, sheriff’s deputies told Kathryn Simpson that her mother had slipped in a puddle of chocolate syrup and hit her head. Following her mother’s cremation, investigators itted to Kathryn that someone murdered her mom. Born in Magnolia, Mississippi, September 6, 1959, and growing up in Kentwood, her father’s hometown, Kim Womack, likely never imagined being murdered in Pointe Coupee Parish before her 49th birthday. Kim’s death certificate recorded her cause of death as “blunt force trauma to head by assault” and a “left-sided subdural hematoma” (brain hemorrhage) induced by multiple blows to her skull. Dr. Alfredo Suarez performed the autopsy on orders from the Deputy Coroner, Dr. Ty Chaney, accomplishing little more than confirming the coroner’s initial observations. Dr. Harry Kellerman initially noted “multiple fractured ribs” and “multiple bruises on her upper and lower extremities as well as the mid-frontal region of the face” where dried blood had “emanated from her oral cavity and both nostrils.” Kathryn Simpson recalled a trail of blood leading from her mother’s kitchen into the bedroom where Kim Womack died. Days after her mom’s memorial at the Florida Boulevard Baptist Church, the Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s Office phoned Kathryn, asking her to make the drive from her home in Baton Rouge to their office in New Roads. On the road, she felt optimistic, confidant they had scheduled the conference to tell her who killed her mother. Instead, sheriff’s investigators only told her who did not do it. Even 12 years after the homicide, the sheriff’s office insisted that the man Kim Womack was dating—a married sheriff’s deputy—did not kill her. When the deputy, whom Kathryn says she had known all of her life, dodged her mother’s memorial, she grew suspicious. She asked 18th Judicial District Assistant District Attorney Tony Clayton to share the district attorney’s insights on the case.

“He let me see the information,” Kathryn said, “but I couldn’t get a copy. He said if the contents of the file reached the media, it would ruin the deputy’s life.” He implied to Kathryn that she “will never know” the full story of her mom’s death. Almost immediately, Kathryn said she went to the office of the deputy’s wife. “I slapped my mom’s picture down in front of her,” she said. “And I asked if she knew the woman in the picture.” Kathryn said she told the deputy’s wife that Kim Womack had an affair with her husband and that she had taken a road trip with the officer three weeks before she “turned up dead.” Kathryn described in detail the sheriff’s deputy’s “training event” in Lake Charles and explained how her mother had covertly accompanied him. The deputy’s wife said she would confront her husband that night and call Kathryn the next day. “I couldn’t wait for the call,” Kathryn said, “I called her the next morning, but she just wished me luck and said she would not be talking to me again.” Sometime later, an ornate lawn brick appeared on Kathryn’s mother’s doorstep. The sheriff’s office told Kathryn they had found it there, engraved with her mother’s name and the monograms “DFB.” Investigators said they could only guess what the initials represented. According to her death certificate, Dr. Kellerman pronounced Kim Womack dead at approximately 11:10 that morning, August 1, 2008, in her rented mobile home at 5448 Lazare Jarreau Lane, following an injury sustained “approximately July 31, 2008.” Dr. Kellerman wrote that the sheriff’s office had called him after neighbors reported that Kim Womack had “not been seen for a day or so,” and he described the crime scene this way: “When I arrived, I went into the trailer with a sheriff’s deputy. The trailer was in a state of disarray. A door from the bathroom going into the bedroom appeared to have been pulled from its hinges. A bedside table in the bedroom was on its side, partially blocking the bedroom entrance. I stepped over this to get into the bedroom. A nude female was lying crosswise across the bed. The decedent

showed swelling around lids of eyes and dried blood from the nose and also what appeared to be multiple contusions of all extremities.” “I did not touch the body, but released to the sheriff’s deputies,” he wrote, “Will treat this as it appeared to be, a homicide until proven otherwise.” “The sheriff’s office ed the state police crime lab to investigate this,” he added, “Big help in suspicious deaths.” Dr. Kellerman signed the autopsy report on August 3 and the Coroner’s Permission to Cremate on August 4, and Rabenhorst Funeral Home of Baton Rouge commissioned the Lafayette Crematory to incinerate the remains the following day. By g the Permission to Cremate, Dr. Kellerman, perhaps unknowingly, violated Louisiana state law. Louisiana R.S. 13:5716 states, “If the cremation of a body is requested, the funeral director shall immediately notify the coroner who has jurisdiction in the death. If, after the necessary investigation, the coroner is satisfied that no suspicious circumstances surround the death, he shall issue a permit for cremation. If the investigation reveals suspicious circumstances or the reasonable probability of the commission of a crime, the coroner shall deny the permit.” Clearly, “suspicious circumstances” are overtly apparent in Kim Womack’s autopsy and coroner’s reports; consequently, in cremating the body, the crematorium destroyed any evidence overlooked by examiners during the autopsy. Kathryn Simpson has filed a lawsuit hoping to force the Point Coupee Parish Sheriff’s Office to release all records related to her mother’s homicide. “But I hold nothing against the coroner’s office or any of the medical examiners,” Kathryn told me, “I believe they did all they could. I just pray they didn’t miss anything.”

David Bell

On New Year’s Day 2002 , officers with the Walker Police Department spread out across a field north of the railroad tracks at Louisiana Highway 447, searching for a gun. On New Year’s Eve, a 15-year-old boy pistol-whipped and robbed the owner of Estelle’s Sweet Shop. Chief Elton Burns said his officers canvased the nearby grounds for hours without finding the gun that the juvenile insisted he lost there. However, they did find something else of importance, a wallet belonging to David Bell, a local contractor, whom someone robbed and killed the week before Christmas. On December 17, 2001, an assassin shot 35-year-old David Wayne Bell in the head that evening between 9 and 9:30 inside his home office at 16595 Abbott Lane in Walker. Interviewed that night, Gretchen Marie Bell, David’s wife of nine years, told Livingston Parish sheriff’s detectives she found her husband lying in a puddle of blood after arriving home from visiting her sister. With her sister listening over the cell phone, Gretchen said she ran to a neighbor’s house and knocked. Getting no answer there, she hung up and called 9-1-1. David died the following day at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. Two years later, with investigators still stymied, David’s family hired private detectives and leased large billboards advertising a $10,000 reward for anyone who could answer the question, “Who murdered David Bell?” The night of the murder, according to Gretchen, she and David had dinner before David’s regular league night of bowling. While David bowled, she said, she went to her sister’s house, visiting until approximately 9:30 that evening. As she drove home, Gretchen said she tried to reach David on her cell phone without success before calling her sister and asking her to try. When her sister’s attempt also failed, the two women remained on the phone until Gretchen arrived home to discover the crime scene.

Jeff Oliphant, who bowled with David every Tuesday night in the now-closed Bowl-n-Putt at 744 South Range in Denham Springs, told me parts of Gretchen’s recounting of that night are untrue. “In the two years we bowled together, Gretchen never showed up at the bowling alley before that night, and she walked from one end [of the alley] to the other in front of the security cameras,” Jeff ed. “Our bowling sessions usually ended by 9, so I would say David left between 9:10 and 9:20, and she left a short while after he did.” Jeff Oliphant also believes that Gretchen never knocked at a neighbor’s door. Her closest neighbors, Jeff’s parents, lived across the street. Investigators said David Bell’s killer shot him as he opened his home office door from the inside, possibly answering a knock or responding to a sound outside. David Bell, the second-youngest of seven siblings, served four years in the air Force before returning to work in the family business–Bell Carpentry Works– with his brothers Jimmy and Joe. Family told journalists in 2004 that David had many friends, avoided confrontation with others, enjoyed NASCAR racing, bowling, and outdoor cooking, and was always willing to “swing a hammer” to help a friend or relative in need. Considering his popularity, David’s family said they had no idea why anyone would have killed him. Because of the missing wallet, Livingston Parish sheriff’s detectives initially suspected robbery. However, according to his brothers, David had valuable electronic equipment and NASCAR collectibles left untouched in his office. With no arrests made in the case by 2004, the reward on the billboards rose to $25,000, and reporters called the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office for comment. Detective Robert Ardoin told them his office still actively investigated the homicide. “It’s not a dead-end, but we’re not on anything that’s groundbreaking,” he said. He said investigators had not identified the murder weapon. Examiners found

only fragments of the bullet during the autopsy. The billboards asked that anyone with information call the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office, but the detective said the sheriff’s office had received no calls in the two years the billboards had been up. Ardoin said the sheriff’s office did not have a cold case officer, so cases remained opened until resolved. “If it’s ten years later and a tip comes in,” he said, “We grab it and go.” Ardoin refused to say that investigators had cleared anyone as a suspect, including Gretchen Bell, who was a Criminal Justice major at Southeastern Louisiana University when someone killed her husband. “Everybody’s a suspect until we can narrow it down,” the detective said. Three months after David’s death, Gretchen Bell filed lawsuits against State Farm, the Ozark National Life Insurance Company, and Stonebridge Life for a total of $275,000. In the filings, she said all three companies had refused to pay out her husband’s insurance policies. According to court records, Gretchen Bell dropped her claim against Stonebridge after it settled and paid her the full amount of the $25,000 policy. State Farm representatives told the court they hesitated to pay since David Bell had listed his mother as the secondary beneficiary. If law enforcement later showed that Gretchen Bell had her husband killed, they told the court, they would also be required to pay David’s mother. Ultimately, State Farm deposited $100,000 into the 19th Judicial District Court’s registry and asked the court to determine ownership. The court later consolidated State Farm’s proceeding with those of Ozark National, which deposited another $146,080.24 into the court registry. Darlene Bell, David’s mother, submitted a claim to the court, asking for the money, saying she believed Gretchen Bell hired someone to kill her son. In a January 2003 deposition, she said David had talked about leaving his wife because of infidelity, and that her daughter-in-law feared losing her only source

of income since Gretchen, a full-time college student, did not have a job. David’s brothers submitted a report developed by private investigators they had contracted, but the court ruled their findings “hearsay” and inissible. “I loved my husband, and I treated his family with the utmost respect,” Gretchen Bell told reporters following her deposition. “They have ruined my reputation as a human being and run off all my friends.” On August 22, 2003, the court awarded the money collected to Gretchen Bell. At the time of the award, she still lived in their home on Abbott Lane, along with her boyfriend, Dallas Arceneaux. David Bell was Gretchen’s third husband, but she told reporters she would never marry again. “David was my life, and that’s the way it will stay,” Gretchen Bell said. “One of these days, someone is going to talk, and these people are going to owe me one heck of an apology.” In 2005, as Gretchen predicted, someone finally talked. Darrell Vern Armstrong, III, 36, of Lafayette, told police that Gretchen Bell Arceneaux, 40, paid him and another man, $5,000, to shoot her husband. He said that he and the other man attended a planning meeting with Arceneaux in November of 2001 and that he watched Paul Marks, 46, of Holden shoot David Bell the following December. In 2007, a Livingston Parish grand jury indicted the alleged conspirators, charging all three with second-degree murder. After announcing the indictment, Assistant District Attorney Charlotte Herbert told reporters that, should a jury convict them, the law required the judge to sentence all three to life in prison without probation, parole, or suspension of sentence. Following the arrests, Livingston Parish Sheriff Willie Graves told reporters that detectives did not charge anyone in 2005 because they had no evidence to corroborate Armstrong’s confession, even though he ed a polygraph test at the time.

In 2007, the sheriff said his detectives interviewed other witnesses who ed Armstrong’s statements. Detectives picked Armstrong up again for questioning, and his story had not changed. After Armstrong ed a second polygraph test, Graves said, the district attorney’s office issued the warrants. According to the sheriff, Armstrong told detectives that he confessed to the knowledge of David Bell’s murder because he “wanted to right a wrong.” “We’re just thankful we had enough credible information to make an arrest and bring closure to this family,” Graves said. But before the trial in 2009, Armstrong recanted his story. After a discussion over a plea deal went sour, Armstrong’s defense attorney, Jasper Brock, told the court that his client made up the story at the urging of his uncle, Charles Smith, so that the uncle could get a deal with prosecutors in a different case. “To be honest, the whole thing blew me away,” Brock said. Armstrong told Brock he took Valium to the polygraph tests. Brock said he did not know which story his client told was the truth. “But if he tells me one is not true now, I can’t let him get on the stand, and neither can the state,” Brock said. The murder case never went to trial. Judge Robert Morrison charged Darrell Armstrong with Obstruction of Justice. I am unsure how much time he served, but he did not get the 40-year maximum permitted by the charge. The following July, Armstrong was arrested in Lafayette and charged with Criminal Damage to Property. After skipping bail on that one, police picked him up on the bench warrant in 2011. His last known arrest came in 2012. The Lafayette Police Department nabbed him again; this time for transfer to Pointe Coupee Parish. Charge unknown. Both Paul Marks and Gretchen Marie Bell Arceneaux walked out of the Livingston Parish Prison in January of 2009, and today, the murder of David

Bell remains officially classified as an unsolved homicide.

Port Allen Homicides

In May of 2020, the editor of The West Side Journal asked me to review three Port Allen homicides. Studying the facts surrounding the murders of Fatrell Queen, Dedrick Jackson, and Larry Profit, I found myself haunted by something accused serial killer Frankie Richard said to me shortly before his death. “No serial killer got them young girls in Jennings,” he said, “Them people responsible kill snitches up and down I-10. In Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, Hammond, just all over, but killing black guys don’t put you on national news unless you’re a cop.” Just after 5 that morning, November 2, 2017, a detective with the Port Allen Police Department ed Tara Snearl through social media. When Tara called back, the detective said there had been a shooting in a house Tara owned at 817 Burbridge Street. When Tara arrived at the house, investigators told her they had not been able to locate the sole occupant of the home. Tara’s son, 28-year-old Fatrell Queen, was missing. Shortly before noon, investigators informed Tara they had located Fatrell’s body in his bedroom closet, shot multiple times. The coroner’s office recorded his time of death as 11:17. Fatrell left behind a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. “He had just gotten custody,” Tara told news reporters in 2017, and she said Fatrell had a good relationship with his daughter. “It’s tough,” she said, “She still looks at his pictures and calls for Da-da.” When neighbors heard gunshots that morning, they called 9-1-1, and the police arrived quickly. In one direction, the house was within walking distance of Port Allen City Hall and the police station, and in another direction, the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office. The following day, Police Chief Esdron Brown told The West Side Journal that

his officers could smell gunpowder when they arrived at the house. Brown said they entered the building and found Fatrell Queen lifeless in the closet. “That’s not what they told me,” Tara said, “I asked them why they didn’t find Fatrell earlier or the coroner that morning. They said with his body in the closet; they didn’t find him until later.” Tara also noticed someone had damaged her son’s car. When she asked investigators about it, they explained they had searched the car for a body before locating Fatrell in the closet. “They smelled gunpowder that morning, and it was an open closet—no doors,” Tara said, “And they say they didn’t find my son for hours? Nothing they told me made any sense.” The police also told Tara they found no sign of forced entry, yet both the front and rear doors appeared to be damaged when she arrived at the house. “Something else strange,” Tara said, “They never seemed to conduct a proper investigation. They acted more like they knew who did it. They didn’t question any of the family, maybe one nephew, but none of his friends, and in that closet, they left behind the bloody clothes and a shell casing.” “There were many government buildings nearby, plus churches and schools,” she said, “But to my knowledge, investigators have never looked at security camera footage from any of those places. Something doesn’t add up.” Fatrell Queen loved football and basketball. He worked as a package handler for a retail warehouse. He had recently celebrated his birthday, and the court awarded him custody of his daughter. However, police described him as a career criminal. “That’s ridiculous,” Tara said, “They picked him up a few times, but he only spent time in jail once, years ago.” In March of 2014, a multi-agency task force arrested Fatrell and twenty-two others following a six-month sting operation. The “Mardi Gras Cleanup” ended with twenty-three suspects booked on various drug possession and distribution charges.

The task force arrested no drug suppliers, telling reporters they believed the drugs came from Mexico. “I think Fatrell did 30 days, and that was my choice,” Tara said. “He learned his lesson. He had to. His daughter was born right after. He couldn’t have got custody if he was having the problems they said.” Tara Snearl told me she did not believe the rumors that Fatrell worked as a confidential informant for a federal drug task force. Still, I feel it would explain the different interpretations of his record. In the years after the shooting, Tara Snearl fought to have her son’s case turned over to the Louisiana State Police. She also worked to see an independent Citizen’s Oversight Board established to monitor activities of the Port Allen Police Department and act as a communication conduit to the public, particularly for family of crime victims like Fatrell Queen and Dedrick Jackson. On a Tuesday afternoon, January 29, 2019, someone shot and killed 19-year-old Dedrick Jackson in front of his home in the 900 block of Avenue A in Port Allen. At the scene, Port Allen Police Chief Esdron Brown told reporters he believed his department was doing well solving crimes. “We actually only have one unsolved murder ... so that’s pretty good,” Brown said. “We just have one. We are thankful for that.” On a Wednesday night the following November, Larry Profit, a 62-year-old community activist, known for his stand against violence, asked attendees at a Port Allen City Council meeting which homicide Chief Brown had solved, the murder of Dedrick Jackson or the Fatrell Queen shooting. A erby found Larry Profit’s body just after sunrise the following morning, lying in the street near the 1200 block of Avenue A, the same road where Dedrick Jackson died. Neighbors recalled hearing gunshots at Profit’s home the night before but failed to call 9-1-1. Thirty minutes away, in the town of Abbeville, FBI crime statistics record the deaths of ten black men murdered in the last three years. Today, most of those homicides remain unsolved. Like Tara Snearl, the mothers in Abbeville are equally outraged.

“We died when they died. We felt the pain. We still feel the pain, and nobody wants to listen. Nobody wants to care. Nobody wants to help get these murderers off the street,” Denise Boudreaux told reporters. Someone shot and killed her son in May of 2020. Six months after Larry Profit’s murder, police arrested Kintel T. Brown, 23, Donald R. Nelson, Jr., 21, Reginald T. Franklin, 27, and Darrion D. Harrison, 19, charging each with first-degree murder in the shooting of Dedrick Jackson. A grand jury released all four two months later, citing a lack of evidence in the case. Denise Boudreaux said, “Something’s wrong with our system when people can kill your child and still run free, still making threats. Getting locked up, but when the television cameras are off, they’re back on the street hunting like animals. No, worse. Wild animals don’t hunt 24 hours a day. These monsters hunt 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.” “In all of these communities,” Frankie Richard told me, “People are afraid to get involved. Somebody knows something about these killings. They are either scared of the cartel—scared of being killed themselves—or somebody’s paying them off.” In an unusual move, on the morning of Fatrell Queen’s murder, 18th Judicial District Prosecutor Antonio “Tony” Clayton, 56, did not wait for investigators to bring the case to him. Instead, television cameras caught him at the crime scene, asking and answering questions himself. “Who’s ever out there, we’re coming for you,” Clayton said on camera, “We’ll get them. Trust me.” Clayton announced his candidacy for District Attorney three years later.

Corey Kitts

Following a grand jury investigation in February of 2013, the 18 th Judicial District court charged a 44-year-old Livingston Parish woman with first-degree murder in the death of her husband. Three months later, the court amended that charge to second-degree murder and added a conspiracy to commit murder charge when prosecutors discovered the woman had hired a hitman to shoot her husband while he slept. The former West Baton Rouge Parish business owner had moved to her Suma Lake Drive apartment in Satsuma, following her husband’s murder three years earlier. The initial police investigation began at 7:42 on a Wednesday evening, June 9, 2010, when Addis Police Department Patrolman Thomas Southon responded to a 911 call from a new homeowner at 3120 River Landing Drive in Addis, Louisiana. On the phone, Corey Kitts reported the theft of $4,000 and a suspicious vehicle previously parked across the street from his residence in an empty lot. Officer Southon had been parked a half-mile from the upscale River Landing subdivision when the dispatch came. He arrived at the home two minutes later, but no one answered when he knocked at the door. Perplexed, Officer Southon sat outside the home for 25 minutes until Corey’s wife arrived. Monique Kitts explained that her husband worked nights and had left for the plant. She owned All Aboard Daycare, a local childcare center, and had just arrived home from work, she said. She explained that she had withdrawn $4,500 out of the bank to pay bills. She placed $4,000 in the nightstand next to her sleeping husband and went to work. When Corey Kitts woke and began dressing for work, he found the money missing and recalled seeing a red Mazda parked nearby when he arrived home that morning. Monique Kitts told Officer Southon he could not enter the home to investigate

the burglary because she did not want to alarm her daughter. Officer Southon requested Corey Kitts’ phone number, but Monique said she could not give that out. She said she would call her husband and ask him to the police instead. Corey Kitts never called the police again, and the Addis Police Department did not follow-up to ask why. One month later, on a Friday afternoon, July 9, 2010, just before 1, another 911 call came from the Kitts residence. This time, Monique Kitts reported a possible burglary in progress, and, instead of a patrolman, the operator dispatched Addis Police Detective William Starnes, along with Major Paul Marionneaux of the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office. At the house, the officers found the door open and no evidence of forced entry. Inside, they found toppled furniture in the kitchen, broken glass, coins, and other items on the floor. Announcing their presence, they made their way through the house and heard someone yelling from the master bedroom. There, they found Monique Kitts, and her children, Dorey Kitts and Corey Kitts, Jr., crying. Corey Kitts lay on his back in the king-sized bed with three head wounds visible, one in his cheek, one in his neck, and another in his ear. Based on the location of the shell casings on the floor, the officers concluded a shooter stood next to the bed and shot Corey Kitts while he slept. An autopsy confirmed the three wounds came from a 9-millimeter handgun and that those wounds caused Corey Kitts’ death, but at that point, the case went cold and remained that way for three years. When Officer Richie Johnson, a colonel with the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, announced the grand jury investigation in 2013, reporters asked “why now,” amid rumors that the Addis Police Department had botched the investigation. Colonel Johnson, serving as Chief Investigator for the district attorney’s office, responded, “We have been investigating it, but we just weren’t ready [to prosecute] until this point.”

The break in the case, according to later court records, came when investigators began examining Monique Kitts’ cell phone history. This process did not take three years to complete, ing reports that the district attorney’s office picked up the case after the Addis Police Department dropped the ball. The sheriff’s office discovered that cell phone records for the period preceding and following the murder revealed frequent communications between Monique Kitts and two men, Karl Michael Howard and David Johnson. In 2006, David Johnson delivered milk for Kleinpeter Farms Dairy to two daycares, one owned by Monique Kitts, and another owned by her sister, where Monique worked before opening her business. Johnson told investigators the two became friends, exchanged telephone numbers, and ultimately developed a sexual relationship. In December of that year, Johnson said, Monique began making comments indicating problems at home. She jokingly suggested that she would be better off if her husband died, saying she could cash in his half-million-dollar insurance policy. Eventually, he said, the conversation became more solemn, and she asked Johnson to find someone to kill her husband. Johnson said he accepted money to facilitate the homicide-for-hire over several months, but had no intention of following through. In 2008, Johnson said, Monique asked Johnson if he thought their mutual friend, Karl Michael Howard, would kill Corey. Johnson introduced Howard to Monique months earlier when Howard needed someone to help him prepare his taxes. Johnson said he told Monique that Howard probably would kill her husband and asked her for $1,000 to broker the transaction. According to Johnson, he again took her money but did not speak to Howard about the hit. He speculated that Monique might have approached Howard directly at a later date. In addition to Monique and Howard, police arrested another man named Corey, briefly charging him in the conspiracy. Corey Knox testified that he and Karl Michael Howard had been friends over thirteen years and that Howard sometimes referred to him as “Cousin,” although

they were not related. Knox said Howard called in 2010 and asked if he wanted to make some money. Knox initially said yes, but when Howard told him he would have to kill someone, Knox told him, “Hell, no.” According to Knox, Howard persisted, telling him that it would be easy and that the door would be unlocked, but he still declined. However, he said, he and Howard drove by the Kitts residence on two separate nights before Corey Kitts’ murder. A night or two before, Knox said, they pulled up at the house, and Howard walked into the Kitts’ yard. Knox testified that he was unsure as to what took place after Howard entered the yard and that Howard returned quickly. According to Knox, on the day of the murder, Howard called him from the Jackin-the-Box on Plank Road and told him that his red Mazda was in the shop and that he needed a ride to collect money owed to him. Knox arrived between 8 and 9 that morning, driving his mother’s gray Durango, the vehicle later seen by a neighbor at the Kitts residence. Knox said Howard pointed out the house as they ed it. Knox backed up and parked his vehicle in front, and Howard left the car and walked along the side of the house. Howard—an obese man, who waddled side-to-side and shuffled while he walked —returned to the car two minutes later, Knox said, ready to return to Jack-in-theBox. There, he gave Knox two hundred dollars from a white bank envelope and thanked him for his help. Corey Knox—the only one involved with a prior criminal record—insisted he had no idea they had visited Corey Kitts’ home during the time of his murder. He also claimed not to notice the eighty-eight texts and social media messages exchanged between Karl Michael Howard and Monique Kitts before and after the murder. At trial, defense attorneys said the prosecution’s case boiled down to “two snitches,” Johnson and Knox, who lied to save themselves. They also questioned why Monique would want to kill her husband for a $549,000 insurance policy

when her husband earned $100,000 per year and could make that amount in five years at the plant. Monique O. Kitts and Karl Michael Howard are serving life at hard labor without the benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence, while Corey Knox and David Johnson remain free.

Frenier Beach

Halfway between Hammond and New Orleans, turning onto Frenier Road leads travelers to the western shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a 30-mile lake, surrounded at the road’s end by snake-infested swampland, a wilderness frequented by deer, alligator, black bear, and an occasional murderer. In 1956, Frenier Road ended at a rough beach, where trees draped in gray Spanish moss framed a small clearing. Nearby, fishermen pulled black bass from the lake, while others made their livings trapping alligator or large muskrat-like animals called nutria, or by picking and selling the moss from the trees. In the clearing, just after 8 on a chilly Saturday morning, November 25, 1956, Trapper Henry “Jack” Monaret discovered a 1953 model Nash Rambler, parked parallel to the lake, 12 feet from the water’s edge. As the trapper and his teenaged son, David Monaret, stomped through the clearing onto the road, their boots crunched gravel as they walked, causing the couple inside the blue sedan to raise their bodies and stare. The Monarets grinned. As embarrassed as the lovers, they detoured around the car and disappeared deep into the swamp. Returning home that afternoon, the Monarets saw the blue sedan again. This time, the trappers walked some distance away. The car had remained parked in the same location, but now someone had opened the front enger-side door. The next morning at 10:30, Jack and David Monaret ed through the clearing again—this time hunting rabbits –and were surprised to find the sedan still parked in the same location, this time without any movement inside. Concerned, the hunters walked close enough to see what appeared to be a bullet hole in the right rear window. Through the opposite window, Jack Monaret peered inside. The couple had folded the front seat backward, level with the rear seat forming a bed. On the bed, atop a pillow and sleeping bag, lay the blood-soaked body of a man. His head faced down on the driver’s side of the car. But the hunters found no one else in the car.

After hiking back to his car, Jack Monaret drove to the home of St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff Percy D. Hebert. “I’ve found a dead man in a car on Frenier Road,” Monaret told him. “I saw the car parked there earlier. A man and woman were in it, but now the girl is gone.” Within a half-hour that morning, the clearing at the end of Frenier Road filled with public vehicles, including those of Sheriff Hebert, deputies Dominick Milioto, Harry Troxlair, Homer Deslotte, Albert Vicknair, and Alex Oncle, and the parish coroner, Dr. Remy Gross. An hour later, the sheriff called for assistance from Louisiana State Police Troop B, and by evening the Louisiana National Guard and Wildlife & Fisheries officers arrived to help volunteers search the swamp for the missing woman. The investigators found the right front door of the sedan open, and both door windows closed. In the center of the window in the right-side rear door, six inches from the top of the glass, a small hole radiated outward with fragments protruding from the glass. The man lying on the makeshift bed wore a light sport shirt and dark tros. A clotted wound matted hair on one side of his head, apparently after drenching the man’s clothing and bedding. Dr. Gross believed someone had pressed the barrel of a small-caliber shotgun against the glass and fired. He found wading from the shell embedded in the base of the victim’s skull and estimated the victim had been dead between seven and thirty hours. On the ground between the automobile and the lake, Deputy Milioto collected a woman’s comb, a handkerchief, a vanity case, and other odds and ends typically found in a woman’s purse. However, investigators could not locate the handbag. In the car, beneath the victim, Deputy Vicknair identified a hunter’s sleeping bag and a pair of men’s rimless glasses with one lens broken. A partial loaf of bread, potato chips, and two empty cans of Vienna sausage littered the shelf behind the backseat.

The car’s keys still hung from the ignition. From the victim’s tro pocket, Dr. Gross recovered the victim’s billfold. Inside the wallet, he found four one-dollar bills, a gasoline credit card issued to Celotex Corporation, a for the Celotex facility in Marrero, and a Louisiana driver’s license. Tracing these, Sheriff Hebert identified the victim as Thomas Hotard, 46, of McDonough Street, Gretna, Louisiana. According to the license, he weighed 145 pounds, stood 5 feet 9 inches, had brown hair and eyes, and wore glasses. Dr. Gross ordered that the body be transported to the morgue in the parish jail building at Laplace for an autopsy. With the body removed, deputies continued their search. On the enger side, in the front floorboard of the car, they found several articles of a woman’s clothing, including a green skirt and blouse, gloves, a white slipover sweater, stockings and an undergarment, and a pair of tan high-heeled open-toed shoes, size four and a half, and a pair of women’s shell-rimmed spectacles. The clothing provided investigators with a mystery. If the woman, presumed to be Mrs. Audrey Hotard, had escaped from the murder scene, she did so, wearing no more than a bra and maybe a slip. Sheriff Hebert speculated that the assailant, whom he suspected of being “a swamp-dwelling sex-maniac,” had dragged the woman into the swamp after killing her husband. Searching the gravel road and the ground near the car police found two fresh footprints fifty yards out in the dust near the gravel road, possibly from a woman’s bare feet, pointed toward the highway. After comparing the prints with one of the shoes from the car, deputies found both to be the same size. Measuring the distance between the two footprints, deputies recorded them as 37 inches apart, suggesting the woman had been running. Perhaps, Sheriff Hebert believed, she had fled the killer and fought to escape. Finding no blood droplets near the footprints, the sheriff surmised that Audrey Moate could not have been in the car when someone shot Hotard, as pellets from the scatter-gun would have hit the woman.

Nearly a mile from the barefoot prints, sheriff’s deputies found the mark of a heavy work boot and what appeared to be a tire track from a motorcycle. Investigators made plaster casts of all prints and tire tracks. However, the sheriff told reporters, on the trail between the footprints and boot tracks, a path littered with shotgun shells of varying sizes, investigators found no bloodstains and no signs of a struggle. In the woods, investigators found remnants of a bright red shirt in a briar patch, and not far from the tire track, they discovered a muddy postcard addressed to Audrey Hotard at a Baton Rouge address. Later in the day, a retired tug boat captain, who said he lived in the woods nearby, approached Deputy Milioto, holding a key ring. “I ed through here earlier,” the man said, “Before all the cars came, and I found these on the road.” There were three keys on the ring, apparently for the ignition, door, and trunk of an automobile, but not a Nash Rambler. The deputy brought them to the sheriff, who suggested a hunter might have dropped them. As a precaution, Sheriff Hebert ordered Milioto to patrol the area and nearby towns, in case the keys matched an abandoned car somewhere. Returning to his office in Edgard, the sheriff phoned the Celotex plant and requested that someone who could identify the body meet him at the morgue. On the phone, the plant superintendent described Hotard as a highly-paid safety engineer, a father of two, and a Scoutmaster with the New Orleans Area Council of Boy Scouts. Next, the sheriff called the Gretna Police Department requesting that someone visit the Hotard residence and alert anyone in the home of the travesty. Deputy Milioto radioed to report that the discovered keys fit a dark-colored 1949 Oldsmobile sedan left between an Airline Highway service station and a café in Laplace, Stein’s Restaurant, located across the street from Airline Motors. Inside the car, the deputy reported finding several notebooks referencing the name, “Audrey Moate Hotard.” He also found a woman’s gray coat and a second pair of shell-rimmed spectacles.

Deputy Milioto said he also radioed the Department of Motor Vehicles in Baton Rouge, finding the car ed to Audrey M. Hotard. In a leather binder, the deputy found two small white cards, a gasoline credit card, and an employee’s badge issued by the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical plant in Gramercy. The identification badge had an employee number on it, but no name. Before leaving for the morgue, Sheriff Hebert phoned Kaiser, describing the badge found outside the car and providing the number. There, a plant manager confirmed his company issued the card to Mrs. Audrey Moate Hotard, 31, an assistant purchasing agent for the company. At the morgue, two people stood waiting for the sheriff when he arrived. One was the superintendent of the plant he had spoken to earlier; the other—an attractive woman—the superintendent introduced as Mrs. Thomas Hotard. However, her name was not Audrey. It was Beulah.

Thomas Hotard

At the morgue, having identified the body of Thomas Adolph Hotard, Percy Hebert, Sheriff of St. John the Baptist Parish, invited the dead man’s wife and his employer back to his office for a chat. The distraught wife, Mrs. Beulah Hotard, said she last saw her husband at dawn Saturday morning. She kissed him goodbye as he left for the plant. He had been working Saturdays at Celotex in Marrero for the past two years, she said. The plant superintendent interjected that Mr. Hotard did not work at the plant that Saturday and had worked only one Saturday in five years. Mrs. Hotard told the sheriff she could not understand why Audrey Moate had identification cards identifying her as Mrs. Hotard. However, she knew the woman well. “Audrey was intelligent and well educated,” she said. “During the strike at the plant, she roomed with us for six months.” Audrey and Mr. Hotard grew close, Mrs. Hotard said. Both worked Safety in the plant and taught R classes. Thomas Hotard served as a Scoutmaster, and Audrey Moate led Girl Scouts. They spent long hours together, Mrs. Hotard said, but her husband served only as a mentor. She said, “He was much older than Audrey.” “She did not help me with the housework when she was with us, though,” Mrs. Hotard said. “She preferred to be with my husband. Once, when I spoke to her about it, she said, ‘you know, a man and a woman can work together without any illicit relationship, and they can go outside just to talk.’” Mrs. Hotard said Audrey described her relationship with Mr. Hotard as merely a young woman’s iration for an older man. Mrs. Hotard said that rang true with her, and described her husband as “a typical home man his age”—seldom away from the house and no longer interested in pleasures of the flesh. After his guests departed, Sheriff Hebert cross-checked the address on the registration of Audrey’s impounded 1949 Oldsmobile with the Baton Rouge city Directory and called the telephone number associated with that address. A woman answered the phone.

Audrey’s mother, Mrs. Minnie Smith, said Audrey was not at home, but she expected her any time. She also told the sheriff that her daughter began using the Hotard name six months earlier. After her nervous breakdown, the mother said, her daughter’s doctor sent her to a clinic out-of-state. She returned five months later, holding an infant child she had adopted. “When Mr. Hotard heard the story about the little girl’s parents not wanting their baby, he offered to sponsor the child,” Mrs. Smith said. “Since he paid for everything, I think Audrey felt obligated to put everything in Mr. Hotard’s name. Mr. Hotard is a wonderful man.” Sheriff Hebert explained how someone had shot and killed Thomas Hotard— presumably while he lay in his car with her daughter—and that Audrey had vanished, possibly kidnapped. The mother turned pale and put her head down. When she raised it again, she told the sheriff he was mistaken and that Audrey would be home soon. She had last seen Audrey when she left for the plant early on Saturday. Asked what Audrey wore when she left home, the mother said she had on a green skirt, white slipover sweater, and tan open-toed shoes. She carried a gray coat and a black cloth purse. She left in her car, the 1949 Oldsmobile she bought for $200 when she got back from the clinic. Audrey divorced George Moate in 1954, the mother said. Since then, Audrey and her three children had lived with her in Baton Rouge. Audrey, she said, had never stayed away overnight before. Deputies later visited Mrs. Minnie Smith at home, interviewing the widow and her neighbors. Everyone questioned said Audrey led a quiet life. Excluding Saturdays, she spent evenings at home, even on Sunday. She was thoughtful, the neighbors said, always attentive to her mother and the children. Back in Edgard, the sheriff asked his investigators if anyone had found a black cloth purse at the scene. Scattered outside the Hotard’s car, they had found the contents of a handbag, but no bag. On the sheriff’s desk lay every other item Audrey’s mother had described. Dead

or alive, Audrey left the murder scene wearing little or no clothes. Ballistics tests revealed that Thomas Hotard died from a 16-gauge shotgun charge, either Number 7 or 8 birdshot, fired at close range through the right rear window of his blue 1953 Nash Rambler. The pellets deformed on impact with the safety glass, so their size could not be more closely determined. However, the number and weight of the shot recovered corresponded to those carried by 16-gauge shells. It was impossible to determine the exact time of death, the coroner reported. However, a squirrel hunter saw movement in Hotard’s car at approximately five that Saturday evening, and, that day, the couple had time to consume the bulk of groceries found inside the vehicle. Sheriff Hebert was anxious to talk with Audrey’s ex-husband, but he did not have to search for him. George Moate came to the sheriff’s office on his own. He had married Audrey when he was in the Navy, he said. They had been happy for a while but separated after returning to Louisiana from California. He had not seen her since they divorced, he said. He usually picked up the children from Minnie Smith while Audrey worked. “But we had no ill feelings,” he said. “Audrey was very smart; you might even say brilliant. I imagine she’s still out there somewhere.” After questioning him and hearing his of his weekend activities, the sheriff eliminated George Moate as a suspect, telling reporters, “The husband’s movements checked out; his alibi proved ironclad.” On the west bank of Lake Pontchartrain, the search for Audrey Moate, or her body, continued. At the sheriff’s request, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and several National Guard units painstakingly combed the vast swamp. The search included 200 men from the 225th Engineer Aviation Battalion, the 527th AntiAircraft Battalion, and the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana National Guard. When two days of intensive search proved fruitless, Sheriff Hebert and his investigators turned their attention to Audrey Moate’s effects. These included numerous letters from Thomas Hotard and an address book. The letters revealed nothing the officers had not already learned, but deputies

traced and questioned every person whose name they found in the address book. One by one, investigators cleared each of them of any implication in the murder or the disappearance. In Audrey’s office desk, investigators found a note to Audrey that said, “I’ll take care of you later.” The sender signed the memorandum, “Fathead.” Police never located the sender. However, since the rest of the note seemed friendly, investigators ultimately decided the “take care of you later” line and the signature were sexual references. Within 30 days of the Hotard murder, the body of a headless woman washed up on the lakeshore near New Orleans, but the coroner said the corpse did not belong to Audrey Moate. Police questioned all hunters and trappers who lived near, or frequented, the swampy area surrounding old Frenier Road, suspecting the shot that killed Hotard might have come from the gun of a small game hunter. No one in the swamp had heard or seen or knew anything of the mysterious slaying or the missing woman. Most of these hunters or trappers lived more or less solitary lives and could provide no alibis for the time of the slaying. However, after extensive interrogation, Sheriff Hebert eventually found all explanations satisfactory, except one. The man who turned in Audrey’s car keys was a trapper and moss picker named Wallace Nelson. The former tug boat captain had moved to the swamp from Port Allen after retiring and lived a mile from the crime scene. A prominent New Orleans attorney said he had been fishing on the lake the day of the murder and saw a scantily clad female on a small boat, squatting, holding herself as if trying to keep warm. The boat drifted with the motor off while a big man matching Nelson’s description towered over her. Nelson owned a single-barreled 16-gauge shotgun which, he told the officers he had not fired for more than a year. Sheriff Hebert impounded the gun for ballistics testing. Nelson had lied. Tests proved someone had recently fired the 16-gauge. However, testing also eliminated Nelson’s shotgun as the murder weapon.

Ballistics tests also cleared a 43-year-old French Settlement man. Police apprehended Clarence Gregoire, an ex-convict, after a Baton Rouge couple reported seeing Gregoire with a unique shotgun, one that fired from both ends. However, Gregoire insisted he had been in Texas at the time of the murder. When the gun’s test results came back, Livingston Parish released the man but donated the rare gun to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. Police later determined that Gregoire had stolen the gun from the Jai Alai burlesque club in St. Bernard Parish. In Amite, Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s deputies kicked in the door of a man named Fred, who refused to honor their search warrant. An anonymous letter to Sheriff Hebert named Fred as the murderer and described an incident in a Bourbon Street bar where Fred danced with Audrey and threatened to kill anyone who touched her. When New Orleans police confirmed the with a bartender, a judge issued the warrant to search Fred’s home for a shotgun, and they found one. As before, ballistics proved Fred’s gun had not been the murder weapon. On December 6th, 1956, at four in the afternoon, just 12 days after the Hotard slaying, the telephone rang at the home of George Moate’s mother. Answering the phone, the New Orleans housewife immediately recognized the unusual California-Louisiana mixed accent on the other end. “Mom, this is Audrey,” the voice said. “I’m in bad trouble, and I need help.”

Deckey Moate

By the mid-1960s, the Travelers Aid Society of New York had established a reputation for saving lives. The program protected stranded travelers, especially women and children, from those who might use and abuse them or force them into prostitution. On October 12, 1964, John Spain celebrated his tenth year working the Travelers Aid desk at John F. Kennedy International, having started long before the assassination gave the airport the new name. And John recognized runaway teenagers when he saw them. A young girl, a skinny little blonde, approached him that afternoon, with damp eyes and a red nose, visibly shaking and staring at the ceiling. On her face, John saw scant remnants of makeup, smudged lipstick, and specks of glue that once held false eyelashes in place. He poured her a cup of hot chocolate and offered her a chair. Ordinarily, the girls that approached John’s desk looked haggard, but this 17year-old girl also looked emaciated. She coughed over her cup and said she came from New Orleans. “Well, now,” John said, “why don’t we just place a call to your mother?” “My mother is dead,” the girl answered. “Murdered and dumped in a swamp, they say. Either that, or she just ran off and left me.” “Oh—uh, well...” John mumbled. “Then, I suppose your father...” She shook her head. “He doesn’t want me either.” “Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong about that,” John told her. “Just give me his number.” Moments later, John listened as Deckey Lee Moate, daughter of Audrey Moate, called home to New Orleans.

“Please let me come home,” Deckey said. “Daddy, I’ll be a good girl. I’ll go to Louisiana State. I’ll get married. Whatever you want. Just let me come home.” John learned later that George Moate divorced Deckey’s mother two years before Audrey Moate disappeared, but on the call that afternoon, he could hear George’s new wife in the background, telling George what to say. George told his daughter to go live with Audrey’s mother in Oregon. “How can I?” Deckey replied, “I have no money, not even for food. I’m sick, living on pep pills. I weigh 85 pounds.” She started to whimper, and John watched tears roll down her cheek. George Moate told Deckey she would be a bad influence on her little brother and her stepsisters and stepbrothers. Hours later, George wired the exact fare for a one-way bus ticket to Coos County, Oregon, and John drove Deckey to the station, giving her five dollars for something to eat on the road to Grandma Minnie’s house. Out west, Deckey enrolled at Oregon State University, majoring in Psychology, and worked after class, doing office tasks for Dr. Robert Meredith, head of the school’s chemical engineering department. In time, she saved her money and caught a bus back to Louisiana. At age 19, measuring 34-23-34, and wearing a low-cut blouse and a high-cut skirt, Deckey sauntered into the New Orleans Playboy Club and applied for work. “I loved being a bunny,” she said later. “Those cocktail outfits made me feel like a glamorous woman, instead of a scared mixed-up little kid.” Before Deckey found her confidence and bunny ears, she worked in multiple clubs on Bourbon Street and attempted suicide three times. In 1966, Deckey returned to New York, where she worked as a magazine columnist and took John Spain to lunch. Years later, she changed the spelling of her name to Dekki and moved to Hollywood, where Dekki Lee Moate lived a successful life and career as an

actress, writer, and movie producer. In 1989, back in New Orleans, working on a script about her missing mother, Dekki met a television producer interested in featuring her mother’s case on an episode of a new documentary show entitled Unsolved Mysteries. Audrey Moate vanished from the west shore of Lake Pontchartrain in 1956, leaving behind the gunshot-riddled corpse of Thomas Hotard, a married friend police identified as her lover. Before her death in 2019, Dekki left samples of her DNA with the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office, in case they ever found her mother’s body. In 1966, Journalist Tom McMorrow of the New York Daily News asked a 19year-old Dekki about growing up and about her suicide attempts. “Can you imagine what it’s like to be a little girl and have your mother become the victim of such a horrendous crime?” she asked. “I became some kind of freak to other kids. A girl said to me, ‘I wish my mother was dead, so I could be famous.’” “And the things people said about my mother when they didn’t even know her. My stepmother would say to me, ‘I know why you want out of the house. You want to go peddle your body, like your mother.’” “Let me tell you what my mother was like,” she said. “She treated my little brother and me with love and respect—not like idiots as some parents do. She never spanked us either. When we did something wrong, she’d sit down and talk to us quietly, helping us understand why it was wrong.” In 2003, Dekki told me she spent her youth roaming from “beatnik t to beatnik t” and from “town to town” and “barroom to barroom.” I asked her why. “I wasn’t sure then,” she said, “But, you know, they never found my mother’s body. Looking back, I think, deep down, I went to those places hoping to find my mom.”

Audrey Moate

Just after 4 in the afternoon, Thursday, December 6, 1956, Audrey Moate’s former mother-in-law answered the telephone in her New Orleans apartment. The voice on the other end said, “Mom, this is Audrey. I’m in very bad trouble, and I need help.” Mrs. Norma “Mary” O’Reilly Moate later told police her former daughter-inlaw’s accent was unmistakable and that Audrey always called her mom. One week earlier, the Associated Press reported: “St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff Percy Hebert said today he is beginning to believe Audrey Moate of Baton Rouge may be alive.” “Born Alta Audrey Smith, the divorcee has been missing since November 24, 1956, when she left her mother’s home at 2621 McGrath here in Baton Rouge for work at a plant in Gramercy.” “Some 200 Louisiana National Guardsmen searched swamplands near Laplace this week, but failed to find a trace of the woman, a 31-year-old mother of three.” “Her identification and clothing were found last Sunday inside and around the car of an Algiers engineer, 40-year-old Thomas Adolph Hotard Sr., shot to death in his auto, parked 30 miles from New Orleans.” “Sheriff Hebert said Mrs. Moate may have escaped from the killer but is afraid to come forward, thinking the investigators have implicated her.” When the call came into Mary Moate’s home at 923 Philip street, Mary replied, “Where are you, Audrey?” The caller responded with a click followed by a dial tone. “We were always close,” Mary told reporters the next day, “But I believe the real reason she called me was that she wasn’t on her house phone. She would have called her mother in Baton Rouge, but she wasn’t on a payphone either, and you just can’t borrow someone’s phone to call long-distance.”

In Baton Rouge, Audrey’s mother, Minnie Pearl Cook Smith, told reporters she was sure the call was not the work of a prankster. “Mom was a pet name used by my daughter when talking to Mrs. Moate.” Minnie Smith, with tears in her eyes, said that Mary Moate certainly would have recognized her former daughter-in-law’s voice. Minnie said she expected Audrey to her shortly. She said she was sure the reason her daughter had not called until now was that she did not have the money to make a long-distance call from the city. “She’ll call soon,” Minnie said, “She must call. I have her baby.” The child she referred to was Audrey’s 1-year-old daughter, Jacqueline. Minnie told reporters that Audrey had adopted the infant while undergoing treatment at a mental health facility in St. Louis, Missouri. However, police discovered that Audrey lived within walking distance of her mother, at 758 Napoleon Street in Baton Rouge, during the period she allegedly resided in Missouri. In Audrey’s car, sheriff’s deputies found bills for the maternity ward and doctor that delivered Jacqueline. Audrey rented the apartment and checked into the Baton Rouge hospital, using the same name, Audrey A. Hotard. Before Jacqueline, Audrey had two other children, Deckey Lee Moate, a 9-yearold girl, and George Howard Moate, her 7-year-old son. Both were living with the senior George Moate’s mother when Mary Moate received the mysterious telephone call. George, Sr., who had divorced Audrey and remarried two years earlier, told investigators, “Audrey is very smart; you might even say brilliant, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she’s not out there somewhere.” Tracing the call George’s mother received to a neighborhood near the New Orleans French Quarter, Detectives John Dreyer and James Alphonse formed a 20-man team and searched the area door-to-door, carrying photos of Audrey. Interviewed by Detective Alphonse, two waitresses at the Café Du Monde on Decatur Street described a haggard and disheveled customer matching Audrey’s

description who entered their shop the night before the call to Mary Moate. “She came in here Wednesday night, sat at the counter, and ordered donuts with coffee,” one waitress said. As she swallowed her first sip of coffee, the waitress who had served her pointed the other to a newspaper photo. Noticing this, the patron resembling Audrey slid some money across the counter and left without finishing her food. Ultimately, detectives interviewed a housewife who positively identified a photograph of Audrey Moate as a woman who came to her home and asked about renting a room. Mrs. Marie McKay of 1419 Tersichore Street in New Orleans identified a photo of Audrey Moate as the same woman who appeared at her home Thursday afternoon asking about a room to rent and to use her telephone. “She didn’t have glasses on,” Marie told Detective Dreyer, “But you could see marks where she had worn them. We could tell she had recently cut and dyed her hair. A reddish tint, not blonde like the photo.” Mrs. McKay said the woman stayed to eat dinner with her and her husband, Walter McKay. She said the woman gave a name that sounded like Mrs. Moate or Mrs. Moore and mentioned her mother living in Baton Rouge. In the days that followed, Sheriff Hebert’s office received countless letters written by persons claiming to know details of the murder-disappearance. All were anonymous but carefully checked out. A handwriting expert compared the writing in the letters to writing samples among Mrs. Moate’s personal effects. All tests returned negative or inconclusive. By year’s end, Sheriff Hebert received a report from “a responsible person,” describing a man and a woman resembling Audrey, seen leaving Frenier Beach near the time that Coroner Remy Gross believed Tom Hotard died. “This was a shadowy lead,” the sheriff said, “But it was checked out at all the landing and launching spots on the lengthy shoreline of the lake.” The search proved fruitless and caused some speculation that perhaps Audrey

had aided in the slaying and escaped with another man on the lake. But Sheriff Hebert told reporters he did not believe this as Audrey Moate had no apparent motive for killing Hotard. The sheriff also pointed out that a savings of Audrey’s remained untouched, and a payroll check Audrey collected the Friday before meeting Hotard—although missing—had remained uncashed. He said the footprints and articles of her clothing found at the death scene also ed her innocence. Sheriff Hebert asked officials at Audrey’s bank to allow inspection of the articles in her safety deposit box. Bank officials were adamant in their refusal, telling Sheriff Hebert that he would wait out the seven-year limit required for the presumption of death before entering the safety deposit box. Seven years later, the court awarded the safety deposit box to Audrey’s daughter, Deckey Lee Moate. It contained only the birth certificate of Jacqueline Eileen Moate, the daughter of Audrey Moate and Thomas Adolph Hotard. As the years ed, Sheriff Hebert averaged two or three trips a year to distant cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit, where tipsters claimed to see Audrey alive. Shortly after the call came for George Moate’s mother, Audrey’s mother, Minnie Smith, went to live with her sister, Mrs. Agnes Sutherland, in Coquille, Oregon. Minnie called newspaper reporters before moving, asking them to report her new address “for when Audrey came back looking for her.” Minnie took Jacqueline to Ojai, California, to be adopted by relatives. The baby grew up as Jacqueline Eileen Gustafson, the daughter of Audrey’s first cousin, John Henry “Jack” Gustafson, and his wife, Joyce Eileen Bunton Gustafson. On March 14, 1959, two-and-a-half years after the disappearance of Audrey Moate and the murder of Tom Hotard, in the clearing where Hotard died at the end of old Frenier Road, Mrs. Frank A. Martinez sat in the family car while her husband fished a short distance away. As she sat, knitting a pair of gloves, a man crept behind her, pressed a gun against the car window, and fired.

Sheriff Hebert

Thursday afternoon , July 23rd, 2020, I spoke with the last commissioned officer to investigate both the murder of Thomas Hotard and the disappearance of Audrey Moate. And I asked the retired St. John the Baptist Parish sheriff’s deputy if he had been following my work on the case. “I enjoy reading your column,” Lieutenant Wayne Norwood, told me. “But with this case, you needn’t bother. I solved it years ago, back in the 80s.” Wayne Norwood is sincere in his belief, but his proclamation reminded me of those that preceded it. No one “solved the case” more often than St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff Percy D. Hebert. Within days of finding Tom Hotard’s shotgun pellet-riddled corpse in his car on the west bank of Lake Pontchartrain, Sheriff Hebert told the Times-Picayune, “I can’t share the details, but this thing will be solved by the end of the week. I’m off to Bogalusa to wrap it up now.” A Bogalusa hunter had found a shallow grave near Folsom, and a dozen steps from there, a woman’s slip and purse, but ultimately neither the slip nor the bag belonged to Audrey Moate, and the grave held the body of a farmer’s mule. Five months later, Sheriff Hebert told reporters that a 62-year old New Orleans businessman reported witnessing the double murder of Thomas Hotard and Audrey Moate and, the sheriff said, the killer would be in custody soon. Jackson Lejeune “confessed” to meeting George Moate at the French Market in New Orleans. They had drinks at a bar on St. Charles Avenue, he said, before following Moate’s wife to Frenier Beach. According to Lejeune, he watched George pull a shotgun from the trunk of his car and shoot Tom Hotard. George, according to Lejeune, then killed Audrey in the swamp, burying her body there, while Lejeune waited in the car. Lejeune begged the sheriff to place him in protective custody before George Moate killed him. Sheriff Hebert and his deputies escorted Lejeune to several “gravesites” in the bog surrounding Frenier Beach, but each time, their digging found nothing. After George Moate’s alibi proved unshakable, a doctor from the southeast

Louisiana Psychiatric Hospital in Mandeville ed Sheriff Hebert, confessing that he had released Jackson Lejeune from the facility prematurely. The sheriff’s next big announcement came on March 14th, 1959, two years after the death of Thomas Hotard. Another attempted murder near Frenier Beach on the same day of the week in a similar fashion suggested a break in the case. As before, an assailant shot someone through the closed window of an automobile parked at the end of old Frenier Road. This time, however, the shooter made a mistake that resulted in a 10-year prison sentence. In the clearing nearest to the beach, Leonie Martinez sat in the family car while her husband, Frank, fished a short distance away. Knowing Frenier Beach was the scene of the Hotard murder, she rolled up the car windows and locked the doors. A man fired a.38 revolver through the glass and wounded Leonie before trying to open the locked car door. “Damn it. Open up and get out,” Leonie later quoted him as saying. Instead, Leonie leaned on the car horn until Frank Martinez popped out of the woods, a short-cut from the bayou where he fished. Panicked, her assailant ran to his car, backed it around, and sped off, while Frank shouted the car’s license number to Leonie, who wrote it on a newspaper in the car. At Charity Hospital, doctors treated a flesh wound in Leonie’s right shoulder, painful, but not severe, inflicting no permanent damage. One hour after the attack, Sheriff Hebert arrested the shooter at his swamp cabin near Reserve, less than five miles from the crime scene. Edmond Joseph Duhe, a 40-year-old bespectacled man who worked at a nearby sugar refinery, claimed he had fished all day and knew nothing of a shooting. As he spoke, the sheriff recalled seeing him at the scene of the Hotard murder, among a group of volunteers searching for Audrey Moate. Search warrant in hand, the deputies uncovered a vast hoard of pornographic

photographs in the house, along with five women’s purses, fifty lipstick applicators, and over a dozen sex magazines. In the trunk of Duhe’s car, they found more women’s purses, including one made of plain black cloth, matching the description of Audrey Moate’s missing handbag. Hours after his arrest, Duhe confessed to shooting Leonie Martinez but insisted he did not kill Hotard and knew nothing of Audrey Moate’s whereabouts. He itted owning a 16-gauge shotgun in 1956 but said he lost it hunting in 1958. The following day, sheriff’s deputies accompanied Duhe to the spot where he tossed the old Iver Johnson.38 short revolver that he itted using in the Martinez attack. However, deputies found the area dense and virtually impenetrable, the ground tangled and soggy, flooded in places. After searching fruitlessly for days, Sheriff Hebert enlisted the aid of a local junk dealer, who employed an eight-foot electromagnet, mounted on a hinge and dragline, to sweep through the swamp. The powerful magnet found Edmond Duhe’s revolver, along with many indistinguishable chunks of metal, several strands of barbed wire, a Civil War sword, a tractor motor, and several corroded rifles. Certain Duhe was involved in the Hotard murder and the disappearance of Audrey Moate; Sheriff Hebert commissioned the junk dealer to drag his magnet through “any and every accessible lakeshore, shrub, canal, and muddy bog within a thirty-mile radius” of Frenier Beach. That week, the junk man collected a steel truck motor, two car bumpers, several boat anchors, more guns, mountains of cans, and a blade from a sawmill, but Sheriff Hebert could connect nothing found to Thomas Hotard’s murder. Unperturbed, the sheriff persuaded Duhe to take a lie detector test. And after failing two polygraphs, Duhe agreed to visit a hospital in Baton Rouge, where doctors istered sodium amytal, a “truth serum” barbiturate reported to eliminate inhibitions. “Duhe responded poorly to the drug,” the sheriff told reporters later, but before

vomiting, when asked about the location of Audrey Moate’s body, Duhe mumbled something about a “commissary dump.” Knowing the sugar refinery where Duhe worked once maintained a dump, Sheriff Hebert ordered the bulldozing of the abandoned site, searching for Audrey Moate’s bones. Duhe, in manacles, watched the heavy machinery work, telling reporters on the scene that he did not recall saying anything about that location to police. Once leveled, the commissary dump revealed no bones of Audrey Moate or anyone else. Edmond Joseph Duhe pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Leonie Martinez and served ten years in the Louisiana State Prison at Angola. He died in 2003. In 1989, the television documentary series, Unsolved Mysteries, aired interviews with Lieutenant Wayne Norwood and Marvelle Caronna, the daughter of Ernest Acosta, a man who lived within a mile of the Hotard murder scene. According to Marvelle, who died in Livingston Parish in 2006, Acosta, before he died in 1980, told family that his late wife, Caroline Schloesser Acosta, murdered both Audrey and Thomas in 1956. Her father, Marvelle claimed, said her stepmother killed the couple outside the Acosta home in Reserve, Louisiana. Ernest Acosta, as the story goes, placed Hotard’s body in his car and drove the vehicle back to the lakeside clearing, and the couple hid Audrey’s body in a metal fish trap in their yard until the sheriff completed his search. The next day, they stuffed Audrey’s body into a 9-foot Civil War cannon and sunk it in the swamp. An identical cannon, he said, had been discovered in Ruddock in 1977. This cannon stood on display at the parish courthouse in Laplace until 2019 when local politicians had it dismantled in response to a statewide protest against Civil War monuments. According to Wayne Norwood, a museum curator in 2019, both Union and Confederate troops positioned guns of this size to protect railroads, and, he said,

railroad tracks ran next to Ernest Acosta’s home. Wayne also recalled interviewing Dr. Remy Gross, who was the St. John the Baptist Parish coroner in 1956. Gross insisted that Hotard’s assailant shot him inside the car. Therefore, Wayne Norwood said, if Acosta did tell his family this story, he lied. The retired deputy now believes Ernest Acosta killed Hotard inside the car on Frenier road before raping and murdering Audrey at his home. The only part of Acosta’s hearsay confession Wayne Norwood chooses to believe is the supposition that Acosta hid Audrey’s body in a 9-foot Civil War cannon before sinking it in the swamp. However, even that small part of the Acosta story cannot be genuine, as an iron Civil War cannon of this size would have been too heavy for Ernest and Caroline Acosta to move without heavy machinery. Moreover, if they had managed to sink the iron behemoth, Sheriff Hebert’s giant electromagnet would have discovered it back in 1959. No. The truth remains elusive and likely buried somewhere else altogether. Thomas Adolph Hotard’s family buried his body in the Jefferson Parish Garden of Memories in Metairie, Louisiana. His tombstone marks the day he died as of November 25th, 1956—Audrey Moate’s 31st birthday, and the day she disappeared. However, Audrey Alta Smith Moate’s tombstone is in the Norway Cemetery in Coos County, Oregon, where Audrey’s mother, Minnie Pearl Cook Smith, relocated after her daughter’s disappearance. Audrey’s marker records the day she died as of December 5th, 1956. Perhaps, Minnie Smith—who died three years before the Unsolved Mysteries television series began—knew something about her daughter’s fate that she chose not to share with law enforcement.

Jackson Lejeune

Recently, I received a thank you note from Arissa Pedroza, Audrey Moate’s granddaughter in California. Arissa also provided me with a previously unpublished photo of her grandmother and an unfinished manuscript authored by the case’s lead investigator, Sheriff Percy D. Hebert. The following excerpt is from that manuscript. Sheriff Hebert’s words point to a suspect rarely discussed and often written off. Jackson Lejeune said he witnessed another man kill Thomas Hotard and Audrey Moate. Investigators never found the alleged murderer, but Lejeune knew facts Sheriff Lejeune had not shared with anyone, making Lejeune himself the sheriff’s prime suspect. What follows is from the manuscript of Percy Daniel Hebert, sheriff of St. John the Baptist Parish: Held in the jail at Donaldsonville, a 62-year-old New Orleans man named Jackson Lejeune asked to see a priest. However, he slashed his left wrist before the priest arrived. A doctor treated him, and he went to the state hospital at Jackson for observation. Lejeune had a long, private talk with the priest there. Later that day, he told the hospital superintendent he wanted to talk to the sheriff at Laplace. The superintendent phoned me, and I drove to Jackson. That was on Monday, April 28, 1957. Lejeune was a gaunt, bald man, and he was a fast, smooth talker. He told me, “Hebert, I know who killed Mr. Hotard and that Moate woman. I was with the guy when he shot the two of them.” “Well,” I said, “You better tell me all about it. Who was the man?” “An old friend of mine. Name of Sampson Gallata. He killed the man, and then he took the woman and killed her, too, and buried her in the swamp.” Lejeune said he met Gallata at the French Market bar in New Orleans, Friday night before the murder. Gallata asked Lejeune to have a drink with him. They took Gallata’s Buick up Airline Highway to Laplace, stopping at several bars

along the way. “Gallata pulls into a parking lot by a restaurant, and we sat there and smoked,” Lejeune said, “He kept looking around for someone. Late, near daylight Saturday morning, he jumps and hollers, ‘That’s her.’ I look around and see this woman and man getting into a car. They drive off up the Hammond Highway, and we follow them.” I kept listening. Lejeune told me how Gallata followed the car down Frenier Road with the Buick’s lights turned off. He parked a hundred feet from the clearing. Then Gallata reached into the back seat for a shotgun and got out of the truck. “He went right up to the car window and raised that gun and boom. I hear this big noise,” Lejeune continued. “Then there’s a scream, and this woman comes running out of the car. He runs around and grabs her, and drags her back to the Buick. All the while, she’s crying and begging him not to kill her. He throws her in the back of the car, and I see all she has on is a kind of a slip, and it is torn. “I said, ‘Don’t hurt her.’ “He said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll kill you too.’ “He drives up the road a ways and stops the car. He gets out and grabs the woman, and pulls her out. He tells me, ‘You wait here.’ Then he walks off into the swamp, dragging the woman with one hand and holding the shotgun with the other. They went so far back I couldn’t see them through the trees. “I waited a long time, and then I heard a shot. Then there was another shot and another. He must have shot her three or four times. Then he comes walking back to the car. He throws the shotgun in the back and gets a shovel. Then he says to me, ‘Wait here and don’t make a move.’ “I must have smoked a pack of cigarettes waiting. He sure took a long time, burying that woman. Finally, he comes back to the car, throws the shovel in the back, and gets in. It was daylight by then, and he drove straight back to New Orleans.” Lejeune said Gallata took him to his room in the French Quarter. And before letting him out of the car, he threatened to kill him if he told anyone what had

happened. The next day Lejeune moved out of his room. He said he was afraid Gallata would come after him. Later he left New Orleans and went to Donaldsonville. I asked him what Gallata looked like. “A big guy,” he said. “In his forties. Maybe six-foot and two hundred pounds. He’s got sandy hair, and he gets awful mad when he’s crossed.” I asked about Gallata’s motive, and Lejeune told me Audrey Moate had been two-timing him. “She used to be his girlfriend,” Lejeune said. “Anyway, that’s how I got it.” “How come he buried the woman and not the man?” I asked. “Hebert,” Lejeune said, “you’ll have to ask Gallata about that.” Lejeune gave the impression of sincerity. Although he was intelligent, he could not read or write, meaning he had not pieced his story together from reading newspaper s. I signed Lejeune out of the state hospital and took him back to Laplace that evening. We drove him to Airline Highway and asked him to show us the restaurant where Gallata waited for Hotard and Audrey Moate. He picked out a restaurant, but not Stein’s. Gallata identified the 24-hour café across the street, the American Motors Restaurant. This information is significant as Stein’s closed at midnight. As I drove onto Highway 51, I sped up to 50 miles per hour. Without slowing down, I ed Frenier Road, and Lejeune said, “Wait. That was the road there.” He pointed out the clearing and the exact spot where Hotard parked his car but could not recall where Gallata buried the body. We dug for days in several areas that resembled the place he ed without success. The final line of the sheriff’s unfinished manuscript read, “I am writing this manuscript to ensure that someone picks up the case when I am gone.” P. D. Hebert died on February 9, 1974. However, the murder of Thomas Hotard and the disappearance of Audrey Moate remain unsolved.

The Voodoo Murder

In 1974, the United States government used eminent domain to seize the homes of all property owners in Montz, Louisiana. Soon after, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) built “an emergency levy” south of Laplace, where the little village once stood. However, a quarter-century before this landmark land appropriation, the town made national headlines for another injustice, the voodoo murder of Blanche Eve Bourgeois Montz. From the United Press syndicate, Thursday, March 16, 1950: “Authorities said today they are completely baffled in their search for the crazed killer who fatally shot a 41-year-old Montz housewife and brutally mutilated the sex organs of her lifeless body.” “Leo Montz, 47, found his wife dead in their river-level home yesterday evening at 4:45 after working at a paint plant all day. He said he last saw his wife at six that morning. Montz found her body face down in a pool of blood, pillowed by her folded arms. The shotgun lay next to the body with the muzzle near her head.” “Montz said he and his wife, Blanche, had no enemies. Since his surname matched that of the town, locals referred to him as the mayor, and they called Blanche the jolliest woman in the parish. Montz said he never knew his wife not to be singing or laughing with a big smile on her face.” “St. Charles Parish Sheriff Leon C. Vial, Jr., said he has not the slightest idea who murdered her. He said they had no suspects, and that the Montz’s neighbors are frightened and flabbergasted.” “According to the lawman, the slayer killed Mrs. Montz with a 12-gauge shotgun she used to kill rats. He said, ‘It looks like she was on her kitchen floor, on her knees, begging for her life when he fired.’ Fifteen minutes later, the sheriff said, her attacker fired a second blast into her groin.” “The sheriff said mothers should keep their children indoors and their menfolk close at home to protect them.”

The following day, the Associated Press reported: “Parish Coroner J. Earl Clayton confirmed Sheriff Vial’s earlier report that Blanche Montz died after the first shot hit her around 9:30 that morning. The second shot came 15 minutes later, according to reports from two relatives living next door. Joe Montz and his mother thought the shots came from teenagers hunting on the other side of a levee.” “The neighbors, who worked in their yard that Wednesday, saw no one enter or exit the home at any time that day.” “Dr. Clayton said the killer placed the shotgun muzzle above Mrs. Montz’s left shoulder and fired downward. The shot penetrated the heart and ripped the abdomen, killing her instantly.” “Hours after the woman died, he said, the slayer turned her body over, leaving it lying face down, and fixed her arms in a specific way.” That same day, The Hammond Vindicator printed: “Deputy Sheriff Ed Guidry of Norco said today his office expects to make an arrest in the mysterious shotgun slaying Wednesday of 41-year-old Mrs. Leo Montz by the end of the week.” “The suspect, Guidry revealed, is a Creole witch doctor.” “According to the deputy, among other clues not reported about the crime scene, a voodoo curse had been set up in the Montz home, laid out as a flask attached to a crude doll and suspended from the ceiling. The doll’s head pointed downward, revealing a name scrawled on its back.” “Deputy Guidry said he could not reveal the name, but said the man was their prime suspect. He said his office would make an arrest soon.” On the morning of March 18, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported: “A hitchhiker, picked up for interrogation in the murder of Mrs. Leo Montz in St Charles Parish, was released after questioning by police Tuesday.” “St. Charles Parish Chief Deputy Sheriff Edward Prejean said the man was taken

into custody in Houma and knew nothing about the killing.” “Sheriff Leon Vial reported earlier that his office had arrested the man on suspicion.” But that afternoon, the Associated Press confirmed Guidry’s voodoo claim: “Authorities now believe the murderer of Blanche Montz was a man into voodoo.” “Voodoo, the witchcraft that slaves brought over from Africa, is known to be practiced in the Montz area, Coroner Earl Clayton said, adding that some local Creole peoples make themselves up as voodoo doctors.” “Creoles are white descendants of early French and Spanish settlers. Mrs. Montz, a 41-year-old childless housewife, was not a Creole. However, Montz is a perfect setting for the weird rites of voodoo.” “Heavily wooded with ancient moss-hung oaks, the tiny farming village is one of the oldest settlements along that portion of the Mississippi River 30 miles upstream from New Orleans.” “Within sight of the house where the mysterious slaying occurred stands an ancient post office building, no longer used, its hand-hewn cypress shingles trailing a long beard of moss.” “Dr. Clayton said Mrs. Montz did not believe in voodoo-ism. However, he said, it is possible someone believed she was under a spell, or that she had put a spell on them. A neighbor may have killed her to free her from the spell or to free themselves, he said.” “The doctor added that the voodoo angle is only one of many authorities are investigating.” “This was a horrible, gruesome killing, he said, still insisting they found no clue to the killer’s identity or any motive whatsoever.” “Dr. Clayton said authorities are still investigating the possibility that another breed of man did the slaying. He said that authorities must consider science as well as superstition. Family intermarriage is common among Creoles, he said,

and interracial biogenetics is a funny thing.” “‘Sometimes cross-breeding works out for the best and improves the strain, but sometimes it causes mental instability. We are looking into the possibility that a cross-bred person of an unstable mind, possibly without a motive, killed Mrs. Montz without realizing that he had done anything wrong,’” the elected official said. On March 22, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported: “In New Orleans, Detective Captain William J. Dowie, head of the homicide squad, said his men are continuing to look for a slim, young man who posed with a copy of The New Orleans States headlining the Montz murder, one night after the event.” “Dowie said the man posed for a woman photographer with his shirt opened to show deep scratches on his neck. He said the man in the photograph was between 23 and 26 years of age, about six feet tall, and weighed about 140 pounds.” Leo Montz died on June 6, 1962. He had no children and never remarried. The government bought the Montz home from a cousin in 1974. Today, the murder of Blanche Eve Bourgeois Montz remains unsolved.

Jeff Tircuit

Just after 4 on a breezy Monday afternoon, January 13, 2020, an acquaintance discovered the lifeless body of a 63-year-old man, his arms bound, and his face bagged. Jeffrey Tircuit smothered to death inside his home at 7777 South Highway 1, directly across the street from the Addis Police Station. Two days later, a coroner’s report listed Jeff’s cause of death as asphyxiation and the manner of death, homicide. According to investigators with the West Baton Rouge Parish coroner’s office, Jeff had been dead a minimum of 24 hours before investigators examined the body. When WBRZ-TV aired the coroner’s homicide findings, Addis Police Chief Richard “Ricky” Anderson responded by posting “Fake News!” on the television station’s social media page, and added, “Nothing to indicate murder.” Amid wild rumors of Jeffrey Tircuit being tortured, bound with chains, ropes, and even police-style handcuffs, a website visitor goaded the police chief on Facebook. The viewer wrote, “Ricky Anderson, so, [when] a man [is] found tied up and dead, we’re gonna assume he did it himself?” And Chief Anderson publicly replied, “Ever heard of autoeroticism?” From a population of 328 million, two million people died in the United States in 2019. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded more than 17,000 homicides and 100,000 accidental deaths in 2019, and among those, 158 died from autoerotic asphyxiation. Police training academies once taught that autoeroticism—the act of deliberately lowering the brain’s oxygen supply to achieve heightened sexual pleasure— caused 500 to 1,000 unintentional suicides annually in the United States. However, in the last decade, new studies prove the total is less than 160 per year. People who engage in autoeroticism invoke asphyxiation through selfistered hanging, plastic face bags, or poisoning via chemical substances. Although the person committing the act provides a means to reverse the action

before smothering, missteps occasionally lead to accidental death. The intent is to reduce the oxygen without cutting it off completely. Jeff suffered from late-stage Parkinson’s disease. Bagging his own face with limbs self-bound by any apparatus would not have been an easy task, but perhaps Chief Anderson had information not shared with the coroner’s office. “We’ve got a dead body. We don’t have a murder,” the chief told another reporter. “There’s no blunt trauma and no signs of foul play.” If another person happened to be involved in Jeff’s death, Chief Anderson surmised, then the case could rise to the level of negligent homicide, but his office, he said, had yet to make such a determination. “There are too many what-ifs going on for anyone to say that we’ve got a murder,” he added. Chief Anderson also said the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab would determine more precisely the time of death, but preliminary information put estimates at three to seven days, he said. Chief Deputy Coroner Yancy Guerin confirmed that the state crime lab would investigate and that it would take some time. However, he reiterated that asphyxiation caused Jeff’s death and that his office ruled the death a homicide. The Chief Deputy Coroner also said the victim’s medical history suggested he could not bind himself, but refused to provide additional details due to the Addis Police Department’s ongoing investigation. On January 17, Assistant District Attorney Tony Clayton, with the 18th Judicial District, said his office would limit their involvement with the investigation until he received the case file from Chief Anderson. However, based on the details available to him at that time, he said, he believed foul play could be involved. Marlene Curcio, a friend of Jeff’s, told reporters from WVLA-TV, “I’m just heartbroken that this happened. I don’t know anybody that would’ve had hard feelings against him. He didn’t deserve it.” Marlene said Jeff’s disease made it impossible for him to fight off an attacker.

In late January, The Advocate reported that Chief Anderson changed his mind and agreed with the coroner and the district attorney that the evidence does suggest homicide, but added that whether the act stemmed from ill intent had yet to be determined. He explained that multiple charges fall under homicide statutes in addition to murder, including negligent homicide and manslaughter. Further DNA and crime scene analysis is required, he said, before investigators can make that determination. Providing few details regarding evidence at the crime scene, he said only that police found no forced entry into the home and that there may have been some sexual activity involved. Chief Anderson did not reveal whether the fingerprints on the decedent’s bindings belonged to Jeff. “We’re treating [the death] like someone was there [when he died], and we’re trying to find out who and what role they played [using] DNA tests,” the chief said. “This is going to be a long, drawn-out process to determine if someone was in that house with him. It could take months.” As I write this report, more than eight months later, Addis Police continue to lead the investigation with help from the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana State Police—while Jeff’s family and friends await justice.

Something Fishy

In 1936, Nick McCrory , 32, and a friend, 36-year-old Joseph Nuccio, vanished under suspicious circumstances near Lake Maurepas. For more than 80 years, descendants of both victims have suspected that the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office covered up their murders. According to the railroad and official maps, Nick McCrory and his three brothers, Maurice, Huey, and Ernest, lived in Akers, Louisiana. However, locals have always referred to the community near the as simply Manchac. The village of Manchac in Tangipahoa Parish cuddles Manchac, the channel connecting Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. Adding to the confusion, Manchac is often confused with nearby Bayou Manchac, the waterway connecting the Amite River and Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. At 3:30 on a Monday morning, November 30, 1936, Nick and Joe left Manchac in a motorboat, towing a small red lake skiff in the direction of their fishing camp. The camp sat on pylons, above water, near the mouth of the Amite River, 13 miles across Lake Maurepas. According to William Williams, night manager of a 24-hour restaurant near Manchac, the two arrived for coffee thirty minutes earlier and left with twelve sandwiches. They expected to stay at the camp three days, he said, “If they hit fish.” By Thursday night, Joe’s wife, Irma, grew worried. She locked up her small houseboat and walked 100 yards with her three children to Nick McCrory’s house. There, Irma told the brothers that Joe and Nick had never stayed out that long and that she feared something had happened to them. Believing the men had found the fishing exceptionally good, the brothers told Irma she had overreacted. However, they promised her that Charles McCrory, another brother, would bring his boat Saturday and search for them if necessary. Unfortunately, the alarm came before Saturday morning. Late that Friday night, J. W. Bates and Louis LeBlanc docked in Manchac after a fishing trip near the mouth of Blind River. Just before dark, Bates told William

Williams, the two men discovered Nick and Joe’s red skiff toppled. It had washed ashore four miles from their camp, and that they saw no lanterns burning inside the fishing shack. Saturday morning, Paul Tregre, a Manchac fisherman, led one of the three search parties that found Joe and Nick’s half-swamped motorboat. Someone had moored the craft to a piling near the camp with provisions still aboard. William Williams accompanied Paul, along with his brother, Clarence Williams. William told Paul there had been no recent trouble among groups of fishermen. “None that could for foul play,” the café manager said. “Neither man had any enemies other than the few everyone picks up in a chance argument now and then.” Nick McCrory’s brother, Maurice, trapper Dennis Rottman, and Ponchatoula Alderman Ora Jenkins followed in a second boat. At the same time, J. W. Bates and Louis LeBlanc traveled four miles north, returning to the spot where they saw the red skiff. As before, they found it capsized and splintered on the lakeshore. Finding no evidence of missing men in the water, all three teams met back at the camp where Joe and Nick had moored their motorboat. Three hours later, Paul Tregre and the Williams brothers boated back to Manchac. The others had docked near the mouth of Blind River and took Maurice McCrory’s car to Denham Springs, looking for Livingston Parish Sheriff Rudolph P. Easterly. Inside William’s café, Paul told reporters that he believed river pirates had ambushed Joseph Nuccio and Nick McCrory. “I believe they hit them just after they reached the camp and tied the boat,” he said. “When we reached the camp,” Clarence told them, “We saw the boat, half sunk, but still I loaded with provisions. We suspected right away that Joe and Nick met with foul play.” “The food was floating on the bottom of the boat,” added Paul. “Joe’s.22 caliber rifle and Nick’s shotgun were lying half in the water, with the rust of several days on the barrel.”

“Joe’s hobby—everyone around here will tell you—is his guns,” William inserted. “The first thing he would have done is unload the boat and put the weapons away.” “It’s about a three-hour trip from Manchac to the camp,” Paul continued. “When you make that trip early in the morning, you get cold and tired. The first thing you do when you get into camp is to build a fire and boil some coffee. We looked in the stove, and there weren’t any ashes. In fact, you could see that they hadn’t been in the place at all.” “We looked over the boat for shotgun slugs but didn’t find any,” said Clarence. “We didn’t find any blood either, but someone had tied the rope to the pile in a hard knot.” “It looked to us like Joe and Nick had stepped into the water, about to carry the food and guns into the camp, when someone attacked them, either from the shore or from another boat,” Paul explained. “The camp, where all three searching parties met, is about 30 yards from the lake,” he said. Relatives of Joseph Nuccio and Nick McCrory called both men good swimmers, and Paul Tregre that the lake is not beyond a man’s depth within a half-mile of the shore. “We went on down the shore,” Paul continued, “and found the little skiff just where Bates said it was, but it was obvious it didn’t wash ashore. We found tracks. Somebody pulled it aground.” “Fishing lines, with cork floaters tied to them, were hanging out of the boat and floating around in the water like spaghetti,” he said. “We can’t figure out how the skiff got there, but it’s a sure thing that they didn’t take it out to set their lines before they emptied the boat.” The following Sunday morning, Sheriff Easterly told The Denham Springs News that his investigation had begun that day. “Since it’s in my parish, I will make a trip to the camp,” he said, “And I’ll start questioning people around here who might have some knowledge of the case.” “If them boys met foul play,” he said, “Trust me. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Bayou Manchac

On Tuesday, December 8, 1936, headlines in The New Orleans States newspaper read, “Opinions conflict on missing fishermen” and “Accidentally drowned, says sheriff; Foul play, kin declare.” In the Shreveport Journal, the headlines over an Associated Press article read, “Fishermen missing for a week; Believed slain, bodies hidden.” One day earlier, according to The Hammond Vindicator, when a three-day search yielded no bodies, thirty-six exhausted volunteers and family became an angry mob in response to a statement from Livingston Parish Sheriff Rudolph P. “Rudy” Easterly. Following a late lunch with the group, the sheriff spoke to reporters while the searchers listened. The disruption started when, standing outside Middendorf’s café, Sheriff Rudy told the group that Joseph Nuccio, 36, and Nick McCrory, 32, had accidentally drowned. Joe and Nick left the village of Manchac one week earlier, bound for their fishing camp near the mouth of the Amite River. When they failed to return at week’s end, friends organized a search party. The searchers found Joe and Nick’s water-logged motorboat securely moored in front of their fishing shack. Inside the craft, they found rusted guns and water-soaked provisions. On the dock, the party found a dented and greasy bailing can, smudged with fingerprints, some too small to be Nick’s or Joe’s prints. The finding prompted searchers to wonder if a third party, perhaps a woman, had ed the men after they left Manchac. The search party also discovered a small red skiff, towed initially by the two men for setting trotlines, damaged and capsized, pulled ashore four miles upriver from Joe and Nick’s camp, surrounded by the muddy prints of bare feet. Family found no evidence the two men had entered their camp that morning and theorized that someone had attacked the two men as they docked at sunrise. At Middendorf’s that Monday afternoon, Sheriff Rudy tried to calm the angry mob he created. Waving his hands, he insisted he had not closed the case and had

just stated his opinion. “And that opinion is wrong,” shouted Maurice McCrory, Nick’s brother. “The water in front of the camp isn’t even waist-deep,” he said, “And both Joe and my brother were good swimmers.” Earlier that day, fifty men in twenty-five boats searched for the missing men or assisted the state conservation office, which launched a specialty rig and drug the waterway along the western shore of Lake Maurepas. The exhaustive search had yielded only a single raincoat, tangled in fishing line at the mouth of the Amite River, near the location of the battered red skiff. “I believe,” Sheriff Rudy said, “that the skiff overturned, sending one or both of the men into the water. Or one of them may have fallen overboard while setting lines, and the other went to his rescue.” “At the mouth of the river,” the sheriff continued, “the water is 10 to 12 feet deep. With the lake rough and the water that cold, I don’t see how they could have gotten out alive.” Maurice McCrory asked Sheriff Rudy if he had located the sixty crab pots his family reported missing from the camp. Maurice and his brothers had helped Nick and Joe retrieve and store the traps for winter two weeks before the men vanished. Dennis Rottman, the search leader, and Nick McCrory’s uncle-in-law asked the sheriff how the skiff landed ashore and who made the muddy footprints. Searcher Paul Tregre asked why the men left their provisions out in the weather and whose fingerprints were on the bailing can. However, Sheriff Rudy offered no answers, saying only that he was still investigating. Concerned about Sheriff Easterly’s assessment, Ponchatoula Alderman Fred Blasdell reached out to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office for help. By Tuesday afternoon, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Frank M. Edwards told reporters that Deputy Sheriff J. George McWilliams had resolved part of the

mystery. As State Conservation Officer Dan Lavigne worked his rig, dragging the lake for bodies, two teenagers stopped him. They reported finding the red skiff adrift the week before and pulling the boat ashore. Lavigne shared the information with Deputy McWilliams, who interviewed both brothers. Gibson and Harry Simoneaux told the deputy how they discovered the skiff less than two miles from Nick and Joe’s fishing shack. They pulled it aground near their own camp, thinking anyone looking for it would see it in ing. With that mystery solved, Officer Lavigne returned to the area the next day with explosive equipment on his boat in place of the dragging apparatus. Over the next two days, his craft followed the western shore of Lake Maurepas. Between the mouths of the Amite and Blind Rivers, his team exploded more than 100 pounds of dynamite in under 48 hours. Lavigne hoped to dislodge any bodies stuck on the bottom of the lake. The operation uncovered no bodies, but Officer Lavigne, assisted by fifty volunteers, did bring more fishing line to the surface, along with a bait bucket and a ripped fishing cap, both identified by Maurice McCrory as belonging to his brother. Hearing of these findings, Sheriff Easterly ed The Denham Springs News. “I’m convinced now that the men drowned accidentally, probably in a squall,” he said, “I’m certain there was no foul play.” Thursday morning, December 10, 1936, the body of Nick McCrory washed ashore on the west side of Lake Maurepas. The search party that found him included his three brothers, Maurice, Huey, and William McCrory. Millard McCrory, a cousin, and four others, Leslie Hebert, C. B. er, George Clark, and Milton Baham, accompanied the brothers. The following afternoon, 250 yards downstream and 100 yards offshore, Louis LeBlanc and Dennis Rottman found Joseph Nuccio’s body. Lodged in a cypress knee, only a portion of his scalp remained above water. Both days, Dennis Rottman placed a friend’s body in a skiff and traveled to Clio on the Amite River. There, Sheriff Easterly, and the Livingston Parish Coroner,

Dr. Montgomery Williams, examined the remains. According to Rottman, the coroner described both bodies as being “in a state of decomposition, showing no marks of violence.” The coroner told Rottman that “accidental drowning” was now the official cause of death for both men. However, Clarence Williams, who helped dislodge Joseph Nuccio’s body from the cypress knee, told The New Orleans States many still suspected foul play. “Joe had a deep gash in his back that looked like a knife wound,” he said. “The coroner could have said the cypress knee caused that, but he didn’t. He said there were no marks on the body, and that just wasn’t true.” “Sheriff Easterly said they would test the prints on that bucket (bailing can) and tell us who else was there that morning,” Clarence’s brother, William, added. “Then he says the bucket got lost. Somebody explain that.” Eight decades later, the families of Joseph Nuccio and Nick McCrory still await that explanation.

Typhoid Tessa

Over breakfast at Paul’s Café in 1991, Louisiana political and musical historian Rube Rogers confirmed hearing a Tangipahoa Parish legend first shared with me by my great-grandfather, W. O. “Paw Bill” Courtney, back in 1974. Due to the unlikelihood of the tale, I have until now neglected retelling or attempting to validate the events. However, a reader in Tickfaw wrote to me during the COVID-19 crisis, asking if I had heard the story, thinking it a timely narrative for a world fight a pandemic. Reluctantly, I agreed to share what I have found and allow the descendants of those involved an opportunity to confirm or deny the details. The legend begins inside Campbell’s Opera House, on a Tuesday evening, April 7, 1925, after 37-year-old Benjamin Leon Goodman completed his acceptance speech for a third term as mayor of Amite City. A band began to play, and a beautiful woman half the mayor’s age sauntered from stage left. As she approached the podium, her loose-fitting translucent white gown fluttered in the breeze from the overhead fan. The lady, whom Goodman knew only as Tessa, a friend of his adopted son, congratulated him with an embrace and a kiss before walking off stage. As “Paw Bill” told it, Mayor Ben L. Goodman developed Typhoid Fever six days later and died shortly after, a victim of assassination by infection. However, Rube Rogers heard a slightly different anecdote. In 1924, Ben L. Goodman campaigned parish-wide for future Congressman Bolivar E. Kemp. Stumping in Ponchatoula, Ben met a 21-year-old strawberry picker named Tessa and offered her a job. Until 1925, Tessa worked at an Amite car dealership that Ben partially owned. That year, she volunteered to help with the mayor’s re-election bid and later accepted a position in the mayor’s office. As Rube heard it, Ben began an affair with Tessa shortly after the election and caught Typhoid Fever from her six months later.

Although I can prove nothing regarding Tessa’s employment, I can confirm that Mayor Ben Goodman died in the Touro Infirmary in New Orleans on April 16, 1926. He died from influenza caused by Typhoid Fever. The earliest report of his illness appeared in The Morning Advocate newspaper, January 29, 1926. The article from Baton Rouge read, “Friends of Ben L. Goodman will want to know that the Amite mayor is very seriously ill with Typhoid Fever and bedridden at his home in Amite.” On February 22, The State Times reported, “Ben L. Goodman, mayor of Amite, is convalescing with a serious case of Typhoid Fever.” On April 7, The New Orleans States announced, “Amite Mayor Ben L. Goodman, who has been ill three months, is now in New Orleans’ Touro Infirmary.” On April 17, the State Times delivered the worst news of all: “News came this morning of the death in New Orleans shortly after midnight of Ben L. Goodman, former Baton Rougean and popular mayor of Amite City in Tangipahoa Parish. Mr. Goodman’s body arrived in Amite at 3 o’clock this afternoon. The funeral will be Sunday afternoon at one. From his home in Amite, services will be conducted by the Masonic order. “Mr. Goodman, who was only 38 years of age, made a brave fight for his life during four months of illness. Two weeks ago, he was taken to the Touro infirmary in New Orleans. “Crowds in Amite bade him goodbye when he left for New Orleans. As he had formerly been in vigorous health, the news of his serious condition was a shock to family and friends.” Now, for the obvious question: Can someone visibly healthy be a carrier, knowingly or otherwise, of a deadly bacterium like Salmonella Typhi, the germs that cause Typhoid Fever? History teaches the story of “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, a cook responsible for the contamination of at least one hundred and twenty-two people before 1925. However, few realize that the Louisiana court system prosecuted a typhoid murder case shortly after Ben L. Goodman’s inauguration.

On June 19, 1925, Shreveport police charged 20-year-old Adelle Parsons Gill and her husband, 23-year-old George W. Gill, a law student of Loyola University in New Orleans, with murder. The charges came when laboratory tests found Salmonella Typhi in a swimming pool. Earlier, Adelle Parson persuaded another student, Robert Reed, to swim circles in the pool as she danced naked on an overhead diving platform. When the victim did not die quickly, George W. Gill later confessed, he bashed the man’s head on the side of the pool and tossed his body into Old River. The murder occurred at a Shreveport swimming resort called Pleasureville. Three months earlier, Chicago police charged William Shepherd, a chemist, and his wife, with the diabolical crime of murdering their adopted son, William Nelson McClintock, by istering typhoid germs to the child in a glass of water. On April 18, The New Orleans States reported: “Mayor Goodman was only 37 years old, and for a young man, he had a remarkable career in public life. He was born in Baton Rouge and received his early education there. Moving to Amite, he won political recognition through his popularity and election to the office of mayor. In his second term, he resigned from the mayoralty to accept the post of Commissioner of Public Parks in Baton Rouge under Mayor Alex Grouchy, Jr.’s istration. “Later, Goodman returned to Amite and was again elected mayor. A short while ago, he regained the mayor’s chair for a third term by a large majority. “Mr. Goodman married some years ago to the prominent Adaleen Saunders of Amite. She and their foster son, Robert ‘Bobby’ Goodman, survive him. The mayor was a fine young man, unusually popular. He was highly esteemed by a host of friends in Amite, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere. “Mayor Goodman was an ardent worker for the good of his section of the state. He was a strong opponent of the recent Blue Law forbidding moving pictures on Sunday in Amite, proclaiming it tended to retard the progress of the community. “Mayor Goodman was ill in New Orleans when the law came up for a vote. Deputy Mayor pro tempore, Dr. F. N. Murphy, knowing Goodman’s views on the subject, cast the deciding vote last week, defeating the measure.”

In my research, I also confirmed that a Ponchatoula strawberry farmer did have a 22-year-old daughter named Tessa at the time of Mayor Goodman’s inauguration. However, I will not reveal Tessa’s surname unless her family requests that I do so. That said, I do not know if this young lady, knowingly or not, carried Salmonella Typhi, the typhoid bacteria. I can only report that, according to the United States Census, only one 22-year-old named Tessa resided in Louisiana in 1925. And that young lady did live in Ponchatoula five years earlier.

The April Fool Hit

At 10:30 on the evening of the All Fool’s Day holiday in 1940, a family sat at their kitchen table eating a late dinner when a double-knock rattled the front door. “Who could that be?” Salvador Laurie asked his wife. “This late, some April Fool’s joke,” Henrietta answered. “Probably,” Sal agreed, stepping from the kitchen into the hallway. The children, Charles and Sal, Jr., ages 2 and 3, continued eating. A truck driver for the Standard Oil Company, Sal had just accepted a new route. That Monday morning, he had taken his family on a drive exploring the roads he would travel the next day. They stopped for lunch at the home of Henrietta’s mother, Mrs. E. J. Duplantis, at 688 Jefferson Avenue in Metairie. Henrietta and the children spent the afternoon there, while Sal went fishing with Avery Duplantis, Henrietta’s brother. That is why the Laurie’s ate their supper—fried catfish—so late. Henrietta heard the latch on the front door, watching Little Charlie crawling halfway down the hall and calling for his Daddy, just before the first shot rang out. As a seven-month-pregnant Henrietta scurried to the toddler, she smelled gunpowder and heard two more shots. She ran into the den with Charlie in her arms, now praying she was living an April Fool’s Day gag. Sal turned to face her as two more shots sounded. Blood spattered from the back of his head, and he fell face down on the floor. As a New Orleans police unit arrived at 2606 First Street, two neighbors waved them down. The couple told them they heard the shots before seeing an unidentified man walking away, buttoning a long, gray coat. The man crossed a side street to a parked coupe, jumped in, and sped up South Robertson Street out of sight.

“After the shots,” Henrietta told police. “I ran out the side door into the alleyway, and I heard a car drive off. It sounded like a Ford.” Henrietta told the patrolmen that Sal had no enemies in the world. A local newsman recorded one officer telling Henrietta that Sal’s death may have been a case of mistaken identity. However, the neighbors told investigators that someone had shot at Sal as he walked to his mailbox the week prior. Those two shots missed, they said, their story prompting investigators to ask Henrietta if the murderer may have been someone out for revenge. The coroner’s office said Sal died from “five shots to the head and back” with a.38 caliber handgun. “I don’t know what to do. Our third child will be here in July,” Henrietta told The New Orleans States on April 2. “We have been married four years, have been awfully happy, and during that entire time, I can think of only one case of someone getting really mad at him.” This event, she said, occurred months earlier, before Sal began working for the oil company. “At the time, he was delivering for a Canal Street department store and co-signed a note for a man who skipped town. Another man came to collect on the note, and they had some harsh words. We couldn’t pay that. My husband was making only $12 a week.” “Sal came home that evening and told me that the collector had called him a rat, so he cursed him,” Henrietta said to reporters. “The man told Sal, ‘I’ll get you; you wait and see.’” Avery Duplantis told police that Salvador just “wasn’t the type to have enemies.” “He was full of fun, didn’t get mad often, and when he did, he didn’t stay that way. We had a world of fun fishing yesterday, and he certainly didn’t act like a man with a worry in the world,” Avery said. On the morning of April 2, Detective Captain Alfred Malone told The New Orleans States he thoroughly searched the home. His findings suggested that both Sal and Henrietta Laurie feared for their lives. He said every door in the home had two locks, all of the windows had latches

with eye-bolts and wooden pegs driven in the frame to prevent the windows from opening. That afternoon, Detective Malone said Henrietta Laurie had confirmed that her husband had been “jumpy and afraid of something” for at least six weeks. On April 3, Detective Malone told reporters police arrested a saloon keeper with a gun he believed matched the bullets in Sal Laurie’s body. He requested permission to exhume, he said, but a judge denied the request, citing lack of cause. He said his department would not release the saloon keeper’s identity until they could file charges. On April 4, Chief of Detectives John Grosch announced to reporters that he had “taken personal charge of the case,” and that Detective Malone had accepted another assignment. And three days later, Grosch announced he had solved the case, and the “April Fool’s Day Slayer” had confessed. Grosch told reporters that the shooter intended to kill five more people, but now locked behind bars, he could no longer harm anyone. He said the saloon keeper had been released and was not involved. Chief Grosch had arrested a 30-year-old packing house fireman, Angelo Fratello of 3327 South Claiborne Avenue, at his home that morning on information furnished to police by a relative and booked Fratello on a murder charge. Fratello’s brother-in-law, Mike Tusa of 2200 South Claiborne Avenue, said Fratello had suffered “mean spells” the last five years, especially when drinking. Chief Grosch said Fratello and Laurie were childhood friends. He said Fratello believed Sal Laurie “hoodooed” him in their teens after Fratello refused to go through with a marriage arranged by Laurie. Angelo Fratello said for years he had suffered because of a curse placed upon him by Laurie and others, and that in desperation, he finally decided to “kill them all.” Chief Grosch said Fratello purchased a revolver on South Rampart Street, inquired of acquaintances as to where Laurie lived, and drove there Monday

night. Fratello told Grosch he parked his car, walked to the Laurie house, and knocked on the door. A moment later, Sal Laurie opened the door, and, without any exchange of words, Fratello began firing. “I just started shooting,” he was quoted by Chief Grosch as saying. “I don’t know how many times I shot him.” After the shooting, said Grosch, Fratello returned to his car and drove to a saloon at South Claiborne and Delachaise Street. The bar owner was one of the five persons Fratello intended to kill. When he found the owner was not there, he drove home and put his car in the garage. With the pistol in his pocket, Fratello told Grosch, he walked to the Napoleon Avenue lorry landing. There, he caught the ferry, intending to go to his place of employment on the west bank of the river and kill three additional people. Midriver, he said, he changed his mind and threw the pistol overboard. In Court, Angelo Fratello told Judge J. Arthur Charbonnet a similar story but in greater detail. “When I was a boy,” he said. “I went with Laurie to buy some bananas, and he introduced me to this hoodoo woman. When I wouldn’t go with her, they took me upstairs and rubbed hoodoo oil on my neck and wrists.” Fratello ran his right hand down the back of his neck and lifted it in the air. “Sniff, Your Honor,” he said. “You can still smell it on me.” Two months after Sal Laurie’s murder, Judge Charbonnet appointed a “lunacy commission” to declare Fratello insane. Afterward, the judge committed him to East Louisiana Hospital, known in 1940 as “the Jackson Asylum.” In 1941, another judge, Paul E. Chaser, ordered an interdiction. The city sold Fratello’s belongings and homologated his s to pay creditors. When he left the asylum in 1942, Angelo Fratello started life anew, never to be jailed again, well, at least not until his 1959 murder charge. When NOPD arrested Fratello for that murder, his uncle no longer ran the department. Detective John Joseph Grosch now worked as a special investigator

for New Orleans District Attorney Richard Dowling. However, this time, the New Orleans Police Department arrested Fratello at his place of employment, the Jefferson Music company, and in the presence of his employers, Vincent and Carlos Marcello. In his December murder trial, a jury found Fratello not guilty, much to the surprise of Judge George P. Platt. Fratello never saw the inside of a jail again and died of natural causes in January 1983.

Donna Kimmey

In our modern age, the skies become unfriendly when travelers refer to flight attendants as stewardesses. This faux pas, engers report, equals mislabeling crawfish as “crayfish” in South Louisiana. However, in the mid-twentieth century, the stewardess and hostess titles signified beauty and dedication to duty. The appellation described only the best-dressed and the best-groomed of young women, usually single, slim, and attractive. In 1962, Trans-Texas Airways (TTA) Stewardess Donna Janell Kimmey worked from the airport hub in Dallas, flying into Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. TTA ments that year depicted their attendants as the most courteous and most attractive “angels” in the air. Donna, a 22-year-old former beauty queen, wore the wings on her cap with pride. Shortly before Christmas that year, someone strangled Donna in a luxury motel in Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. Now, more than half a century later, police remain clueless as to who killed her. Donna Kimmey graduated high school in Huntington, Texas, in 1958. That year she worked as editor of the school newspaper and manager of the basketball team. Her classmates voted her “the most beautiful girl in Angelina County.” When Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, Donna bleached her brown hair in tribute, never dreaming her death would soon follow. The 310-room Hilton Inn faced Airline Highway, across the street from New Orleans’ Moisant International Airport. At ten that morning, December 17, 1962, a bellhop at the posh motel unlocked the door to a room in a connected suite of twelve leased by TTA for employees between flights. Ordinarily prompt, Donna Kimmey missed her morning flight to Little Rock, prompting airline officials to investigate. When no one answered the door, TTA District Manager Ralph Murphy ed the motel manager to open her room. Donna ed Trans-Texas Airways two years after graduation. Jo-Ann Gentry—the Houston stewardess who replaced Donna on the Little Rock flight—said Donna loved her job and life. Jo-Ann told police she and Donna had planned a European vacation for the fall of 1963. She dated whomever she

wanted, Jo-Ann said, and had “friends everywhere.” Inside the motel, TTA staff found Donna’s room in disarray. Police said later the disorder did not appear to be from a search for valuables. Investigators theorized that a scuffle had taken place in the room. On the still-made bed, a letter lay, half-completed with a ballpoint pen just below an unfinished sentence. Donna had been writing a naval officer who sailed from San Diego for duty in the Pacific a few days earlier. In a tiny bathroom, searchers found Donna’s body partially submerged in a tub of water, the top half of a two-piece nightgown bunched beneath her shoulders. The crew backed out of the room and phoned the sheriff’s office, who ed the Kenner Police Department and the parish coroner. Captain Richard Morris of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office told reporters that police could not locate the bottom half of Donna’s nightgown or any undergarments. They found her purse near the bed, but no wallet or luggage anywhere in the room. Captain Morris said both of Donna’s wrists appeared broken. “There are bruises on her face and neck like she had been choked,” he said. “At this time, we believe robbery was the motive, but the coroner is testing for rape.” The following Wednesday, Dr. Charles B. Odom, Jefferson Parish coroner, said tests found no evidence of a sexual assault. He said an autopsy indicated the cause of death to be asphyxiation due to strangling. Based on the autopsy findings, Dr. Odom reset the probable time of death at near midnight, Sunday evening. Two days earlier, he told Captain Morris her death could have come before seven that evening. Five motel employees who saw Donna that Sunday ed polygraph tests, including a restaurant waiter who delivered a cold plate lunch to her at 5:30 that evening. The police released four of the five, holding the black waiter “because he was the last person to see the stewardess alive.” When Dr. Odom revised Donna’s time of death, police released the waiter, who had spent three days in jail.

Dr. Odom found bruises on Donna’s throat. Her left hyoid—a horseshoe-shaped bone in the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage—had been fractured. The autopsy also found blood inside her windpipe. Dr. Odom said Donna did not drown, although water filled both lungs. “We think the killer strangled her and then tried to cover up. He drew water in the bathtub and placed her body inside to give the appearance of drowning,” Odom said. “Judging from the damage to the tissues, her attacker must have been an extremely powerful man,” he added. “She had no chance to cry out. The killer apparently grabbed her at the throat the minute the door opened and didn’t let go until she died,” Odom said. “There was no flesh or hair under her fingernails to indicate that she scratched or clawed her assailant. The attack was so swift and so violent that she was unable to resist. It would take a strong person to accomplish this. “Death comes only a matter of minutes when something cuts off the air to a person’s lungs, and unconsciousness comes even more quickly,” the doctor said. “She probably was unconscious within 60 to 80 seconds of the moment the assailant grabbed her by the throat.” The police found no new clues in the case until Friday, January 11, 1963. That evening, Kenner City Marshal Salvadore Lentini told a press conference that two young boys had discovered Donna Kimmey’s wallet. The wallet lay in a drainage ditch just off the Airline Highway in Kenner. Inside, he said, police found Donna’s TTA employee identification card. However, someone had taken the fifty dollars Jo-Ann Gentry said Donna usually kept on her. Captain Morris also ed the press conference, saying that police believed Donna’s assailant tossed the wallet from a ing automobile as he escaped. He also said finding the wallet provided the first new evidence since the bellhop found Donna’s body. Unfortunately, finding the wallet also marked the last time police made progress on the case.

In May of 1963, Jefferson Parish Chief Criminal Deputy George Gillespie told reporters, “We have nothing new, but the case is still very much open.” “We’ve spent a fortune on the case, and we’re still spending,” he said. “Four men have traveled to ten states, and we’ve given over fifty lie detector tests. Still nothing, but we’re not willing to give up.” In May of 1993, Tom Cavanaugh, a retired New York City detective, wrote a book naming Charles E. Terry as one of two Boston Stranglers, confessed serial killer Albert DeSalvo being the second. Under interrogation in June of 1963, Terry told Cavanaugh that he visited New Orleans in December of 1962. This information led Cavanaugh to believe that Terry killed Donna Kimmey, but he never found evidence to his theory. I do not believe Charles E. Terry strangled Donna Kimmey. I have a different theory, one exposing the monster I believe killed her and revealing where he lives in 2021.

Peter Rigwood

At ten that morning , December 17, 1962, a bellhop at the New Orleans Hilton Inn discovered the mostly nude body of airline flight attendant, Donna Kimmey, strangled in her motel room. The coroner found no evidence of a sexual assault. However, police believed Kimmey’s killer stole $50 from her wallet. On April 30, 1963, an Associated Press report from New York City announced: “Police say a former Seattle ranch hand itted to strangling an East Side barmaid last Saturday morning and another young woman in New Orleans. The Jefferson Parish District Attorney indicted him there earlier this year.” “NYPD arrested Richard Peter Rigwood, 20, inside a Times Square tavern,” the report continued, adding, “Police quoted him as itting to both the New York and New Orleans slayings.” According to the news report, Rigwood told Police Inspector Raymond Maguire he was sorry about the killings and did not know what made him commit them. Rigwood told Maguire he strangled the women shortly after meeting them because they refused to have sex with him. Attorneys Alfred Norick and Jack Rosenberg, Rigwood’s court-appointed counsel, ordered a psychiatric test, revealing that Rigwood suffered from emotional instability but was legally sane. Norick carefully explained to the accused his rights regarding the trial and the probability of his receiving the death sentence if the prosecution suggested that he committed similar homicides in Louisiana. On September 23, 1963, Rigwood pleaded guilty before Judge Charles Marks and Assistant District Attorney Alexander Herman. From the transcript: THE COURT: And is this plea being made voluntarily by you and of your own free will? THE DEFENDANT: Yes.

THE COURT: And do you plead guilty to the facts that on or about April 26, 1963, in the County of New York, that you did meet one Vincenza Marone, also known as Dolly, at a particular bar in the City of New York, and that you took her to her home in a taxicab? Do you plead guilty to those facts? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And do you also plead guilty to the facts that when you did get her to her home and her apartment, that this girl Dolly, or the deceased, Vincenza Marone, stated to you, “Aren’t you going to put me to bed?” and that you undressed her and put her to bed, and then you got undressed and got into bed with her? Do you plead guilty to those facts? THE DEFENDANT: Yes. THE COURT: Do you also it that Vincenza Marone, at such time, was awake and was not unconscious? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And do you also it that when you got into bed that you, as you stated, started making advances more or less to have intercourse with her and that she said, “No, quiet down,” and started fighting? Do you it those facts? THE DEFENDANT: Yes. THE COURT: And do you also it that when you tried to have intercourse with her, that she resisted you, is that true? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And that she said to you, “Don’t do it now,” and that she started fighting and kept saying, “Quit.” Is that what she said? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And did she start to fight you? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: And did you then start to choke her, the deceased, Vincenza Marone, also known as Dolly? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And that you put your forearm down on her neck, and you choked her in that position? Do you plead guilty to those facts? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And did you have what is known as an arm lock on her? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And did she start to scream and say, “Don’t. You have a family. You have a mother. How about your brothers and sisters?” or words to that effect. And that you then hit her on the head with some statue? Do you plead guilty to those facts? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And you then continued to choke her? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: At that time, was she bleeding from the mouth? THE DEFENDANT: Yes. THE COURT: And is that the time that you did have intercourse with her? THE DEFENDANT: No. THE COURT: Did you have intercourse with her? THE DEFENDANT: No. THE COURT: And did you then finish choking her? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: You used one arm as a level to pull the arm around her neck and increase the pressure upon the neck? Is that what you did? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: After you choked her, she rolled on the floor, and then you took her to the other room and put her on the couch, is that what you did? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And after that, did you go into the bathroom, take a bath and come out, see her at that time, and was she all bloody? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Did you then search the apartment to try to find $50 that you believed she had there? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: You did not find any money? THE DEFENDANT: No. THE COURT: You then went away from the apartment. Is that right? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Now, all these things that I have just asked you, and these matters, took place on that day in the apartment of this girl, Vincenza Marone, also known as Dolly. Is that correct? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Now, have you discussed this matter with your lawyers? THE DEFENDANT: Yes. THE COURT: And have you given them the same story, the same facts as you gave to me?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: And that you gave to the Assistant District Attorney, Mr. Herman, do you that? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Now, has anybody made any promises to you of any kind whatsoever with respect to this case? THE DEFENDANT: No, sir. THE COURT: Has anybody forced you to agree to plead guilty to murder in the first degree? THE DEFENDANT: No, sir. THE COURT: Has anybody used any duress of any kind or suggested to you that you should plead guilty to murder in the first degree in order to save your life? THE DEFENDANT: No, sir. THE COURT: This is an absolutely voluntary act on your part. Is that correct? THE DEFENDANT: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Given the recommendation of the District Attorney and the facts as submitted to the Court, the Court will accept a plea of guilty on the part of this defendant to the crime of murder in the first degree. Judge Marks sentenced Rigwood to life in prison. In many appeals, Rigwood said the District Attorney told him pleading guilty would get him out in 12 years on good behavior and protect him from the electric chair. A parole board released Rigwood in October of 1989. He married soon after and lived in Frewsburg, New York until his wife’s death. He then moved to Livingston, Montana, and lived with his sister until her death. In 2021, Richard Peter Rigwood lived in Marlboro, New York, having never stood trial for the murder New Orleans indicted him for in 1963. Incidentally,

that was the strangulation of 30-year-old Patricia A. Carlton. A friend of Rigwood’s found her body in his apartment after Rigwood left for cigarettes and never returned. He told police that the blood trickling from the side of her face startled him. Although someone murdered 22-year-old Donna Kimmey following a method of operation mirroring Dolly Marone’s murder, even down to the stolen $50, police never considered Rigwood as a suspect in the flight attendant’s murder. However, one week before Donna Kimmey died, New Orleans police found two more victims of strangulation. Two blocks from what would later be the Patricia Carlton crime scene, someone strangled 22-year-old Catherine L. Linden in an apartment on Elysian Fields. Next to her, police found the body of her 3-year-old son, Ricky. A line of blood had trickled from the right side of his mouth and dried.

K. J. Griffin

On March 17, 2016, police arrested Kevin “K. J.” Griffin while investigating a heroin distribution center, allegedly ran from the Best Western hotel in Hammond. Seven months after his arrest, someone in a Mitsubishi killed KJ in a Roseland drive-by shooting. His murder remains unsolved today. Like verses in a Hip Hop rap song, one of KJ’s associates said a local music producer hired the hit. In contrast, another insists a local racketeer retaliated against KJ after a cache of drug money disappeared. Kevin Griffin’s adult rap sheet started on September 15, 2013, three years and one week before his murder. That day, the parents of a 13-year-old girl Roseland girl told police a gang of six young men raped their daughter. Police booked the 18-year-old KJ with oral sexual battery and carnal knowledge of a juvenile, along with another 18-year-old, Trevon Robertson. On September 24, Roseland Police Chief Henry Wright told reporters a third suspect allegedly witnessed the attack. The 19-year-old Tevin Smith, he said, did not participate in the crime, but police considered him an accessory. Police did not arrest three juveniles also allegedly involved. Chief Wright said the sexual assault occurred after the young men left the movie theater, around two that morning in an abandoned mobile home behind a Roseland church on Garrick Lane. The location, he said, served as a local youth hangout, a place kids called “the Trapper.” The following year, an informant told St. Tammany Parish authorities of a loosely organized group distributing heroin in the western part of the parish and extending into Tangipahoa Parish. Soon after, a narcotics investigation codenamed “Operation Fishnet” was born. The 14-month-long investigation concluded in July 2015 with the initial arrest of fifteen suspects. The Narcotics Taskforce included investigators with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, Covington Police Department, and Mandeville Police Department. Of the fifteen arrested in two parishes, Operation Fishnet saw at least nine

charged with racketeering, four with attempt and conspiracy, and several with possession of various narcotics. Eight of those resided in Tangipahoa Parish. The raid seized five vehicles, several thousand dollars in cash, several hundred pills of pain medication, and an undisclosed amount of heroin. In a press conference on July 27, 2015, investigators summarized the operation: “During the course of the investigation, detectives learned that a Mandeville resident, Scottie D. Fisher, was distributing large quantities of heroin to persons in both Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes. Those persons, in turn, facilitated the distribution of the heroin to other areas.” Authorities said, to identify the co-conspirators in Fisher’s alleged network, the Narcotics Taskforce enlisted assistance from the Louisiana State Police, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement istration. Investigators obtained arrest warrants for eighteen suspects in St. Tammany Parish and six in Tangipahoa Parish. Investigators also obtained search warrants for two homes in St. Tammany Parish and another for the Mirage Barber Shop in Tangipahoa Parish. Those sought included several renowned athletes: Ryan O’Shea, who played for UNO and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles; Casey Kebodeaux, who pitched for Alabama; Ryan Adams, who also played for the Orioles; and Steven Korte, Jr., who played football for LSU. Korte’s father, a WWL Radio host, once played for the New Orleans Saints. Six months after the July raid, authorities arrested three others on charges stemming from a follow-up investigation related to Operation Fishnet. In January of 2016, narcotics agents from the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Unit and the Hammond Police Department learned that, for several months, addicts allegedly purchased large quantities of heroin and cocaine, in both crack and powder form, from hotel rooms at Hammond’s Best Western on Duo Drive. By March, investigators had set up surveillance equipment as undercover agents

began purchasing various quantities of heroin from different individuals inside the room. Subsequently, police identified three subjects allegedly connected to the illegal operation: 22-year-old DyKetria Lettria James of Roseland, 25-year-old Keyerica James of Amite, and the alleged ringleader, 20-year-old Kevin “KJ” Griffin, also living in Amite. Soon after, agents stopped a vehicle occupied by DyKetria James, KJ’s girlfriend, and her sister, Keyerica James. When both women denied consent to search the car, agents obtained and executed search warrants simultaneously for their vehicle and Room 211 at the Best Western. An examination of the vehicle revealed packaging materials and $1,700 in cash currency. Simultaneously, the room search allegedly disclosed 6.3 ounces of powder cocaine, ½ ounce heroin, ½ ounce crack cocaine, more packaging material, a digital scale, a 9mm handgun with an extended thirty-one round magazine, and $1,400 in U.S. currency in various denominations. When patrolmen from the Amite Police Department stopped KJ near the I-55 onramp in Amite, he jumped from his vehicle and ran. Inside the car, police found a single ounce of marijuana. Eventually arrested, KJ faced two counts of Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule II Powder/Crack Cocaine, Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule I heroin, Possession of Schedule I (marijuana), and Possession of a Firearm while in Possession of Control Dangerous Substance. Agents charged alleged operatives, Keyerica James and DyKetria James, with two counts of Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule II Powder/Crack Cocaine, Possession with Intent to Distribute Schedule I heroin, and Possession of a Firearm while in Possession of Control Dangerous Substance. Seven months later, at 4:45 Thursday afternoon, September 29, 2016, a drive-by (actually a drive-over and walk-up) shooter killed KJ Griffin on Faith Street in Roseland. A second victim, 25-year-old Devante Perry, survived and described the assailant, a light-skinned black male with tattoos down one arm.

Devante Perry said the shooter stepped outside his car, possibly a white Mitsubishi, and fired directly at KJ. An associate of KJ Griffin told me in 2019, “The police know more than they’re saying. The hit was a murder for hire. They’ve seen the text messages, and they tested DNA on a bloody shirt found in the car. They need information connecting the shooter with the one who hired him.” According to one associate, the man who hired the hit is a well-known Hip Hop music producer. Another insists a man connected to those charged as racketeers in Operation Fishnet contracted the kill. “[The murder contract] was over money stolen from [the racketeer],” the associate said, “Nothing more than that.” When I reached out to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, their lead cold case investigator, Detective Mike Sticker confirmed getting the case. He said he knew of Griffin’s past, but had just started reviewing his file. Detective Sticker said, he could not any connection between the homicide and the decedent’s past crimes or misdemeanors. “Having just taken over the case, I can’t say at this point,” the detective said, “It’s still too early to tell.”

Justin and Amédé

Cajun chef and humorist Justin Wilson considered the father of Zydeco music a dear friend. Justin played one of the artist’s records for me in 1979. Years later, researching the singer’s murder, I uncovered the full story of their relationship. In 1937, Independence-born Harry Wilson, Louisiana’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry, challenged his 19-year-old son to find a way to promote the sale of Louisiana rice worldwide. By mid-Summer, Justin E. Wilson, the vice-president of a newly-organized rice festival, convinced actress Dorothy Lamour to reign as queen over the event. He hired crop-duster planes to shower a 5-couple wedding with rice opening day, October 5, 1937. It rained that day, but that is a different story. The 1937 National Rice Festival in Crowley brought together some of the state’s finest Cajun singers and musicians. Auditions started two months earlier. That is when fiddler Dennis McGee introduced Justin Wilson to an accordionist, songwriter, and singer named Amédé (Am-a-dee) Ardoin. Justin booked the duo for the rice festival, but he did not stop there. He offered to work as their agent after the festival. He booked them at fairs and festivals throughout South Louisiana, including the St. Helena Parish Fair in Greensburg, the South Louisiana State Fair in Donaldsonville, and the Tangipahoa Parish Fair in Loranger. Justin Wilson had taken a significant risk. Newspapers called Justin’s former home “Bloody Tangipahoa.” Located between two parishes known for Ku Klux Klan activity, it was a place where Frenchspeaking black men did not perform at community fairs. “Uncle Harry” Wilson, Justin’s father, knew the area well. He served two nonconsecutive in the Louisiana House of Representatives representing the Florida Parishes. He also fought to see the town of Independence incorporated. Olivette Mintern Toadvin, Justin’s mother and a lady of French descent, lived much of her life in Tangipahoa Parish and knew first-hand the cruelties of racial bias.

Both warned their son not to bring Amédé into the Florida Parishes. Despite the warnings, the act “Amédé and Denus” saw great success in Loranger, and at every fair, they performed. As their agent, Justin could have found great wealth before becoming an entertainer in his own right. However, as the 1937 fair season subsided, someone attempted to murder Amédé Ardoin on a Friday night, March 11, 1938—his 40th birthday. Although s conflict regarding how long he lived afterward, most reports say Amédé died two months later, vocally and mentally incapacitated. In 2020, the city of Baton Rouge planted a lemon tree in the singer’s honor. According to legend, Amédé kept a lemon in his pocket during performances to preserve his voice. In 2018, the St. Landry Parish visitor’s center erected a lifesized statue of Amédé, holding a lemon. Known for his accordion mastery, high voice, and lonesome lyrics about poverty, prison, and life as a Creole orphan, Amédé molded traditional French music into a unique sound that influenced future generations. Today, the Grammy Awards include categories for both Cajun and Zydeco, the music Amédé Ardoin inspired. Born near Eunice on March 11, 1898, historians Amédé as a little man, barely five feet tall. He came from a family of sharecroppers, but relatives said Amédé preferred music to work in the cotton fields. In the early 1930s, Amédé Ardoin and Dennis McGee recorded Amédé originals, the Eunice Two-Step, Midland Two-Step, Opelousas Waltz, Prison Blues, and other songs, now considered Cajun standards. Among them, the uptempo, freewheeling Crowley Blues, introducing a sound that music historians say evolved into Zydeco. “People came in buggies from all over the state to see him,” Vincent Lejeune, Amédé’s friend, told author Michael Tisserand, writing his 1998 book, Kingdom of Zydeco. “Amédé could sing anything he wanted to. His voice would go through you. He could play some music; every woman in the dancehall would cry. They’d stop dancing. Sit down and wipe the tears. Oh, yes sir, he made the women bawl, and the men would hang their heads down,” Lejeune ed.

Lejeune said Amédé’s ability to create songs about anyone instantly also made him famous off stage—and it often landed him in trouble. Over the years, several dancehall patrons chased him away when off-the-cuff lyrics got too personal. Lejeune and others believe that is what got Amédé killed. Despite South Louisiana’s persistent racial segregation, white and black audiences loved to hear him sing. However, those racial boundaries may have caught up with him one night in Eunice, Louisiana. Although Amédé played private parties for over a decade, his primary income came from an upstairs dancehall called Abe’s Palace. In 1935, Abe Boudreaux sold the 2,000-seat dancehall to Didier Ardoin. Didier, no relation to Amédé, did not provide Amédé the protection Abe afforded him. The night someone attacked Amédé, leaving him for dead in a roadside ditch, fellow musicians said someone at Abe’s Palace poisoned his drinks. According to Dennis McGee and another musician named Douglas Chenier, Amédé refused a ride home after the show, saying he felt dizzy with a sick stomach. He hoped the walk home might clear his head. As one story goes, that night on stage, Amédé asked a waiter for a towel to wipe sweat from his brow. Instead, the daughter of a wealthy white farmer provided her silk handkerchief. When the lady took her handkerchief back, several white men shouted racial slurs and threatened to beat him. Dennis McGee went to his grave, insisting that this part of the story never happened. There were some boundaries, he said, black musicians knew not to cross if they wanted to live. However, the next morning, relatives did find Amédé in a ditch, badly beaten, with tire tracks on his throat. Friends and relatives said Amédé eventually walked again, but he could not speak. He wandered through the countryside, no longer the musician and poet they once knew. He died, Dennis McGee said, two months after the attack. In 1963, following his success on the Ed Sullivan Show, Justin Wilson returned

to St. Landry Parish. He asked Sheriff D. J. “Cat” Doucet to help him discover what happened to Amédé Ardoin. Amédé’s relatives told the two men that Amédé died in a mental institution in Pineville and that he had been buried there in an unmarked grave. Sheriff Doucet found the Central State Mental Hospital had no official record of Amédé’s residence or ing. However, a patient named “Amelie Ardoin” (Patient 13387) expired at the institution on May 30, 1941. This patient, possibly a woman, died 20 years older than Amédé. Justin Wilson died in 2001, never learning who killed Amédé Ardoin or why.

Kearney Foster

Retired Livingston Parish Chief of Detectives, Kearney Foster, a victim of the COVID nineteen virus, died October 12, 2020, with double pneumonia. This chapter recounts one of his earliest successes as an investigator. For 33 years, he served. Sheriff Odom Graves hired him in 1974 as a deputy and promoted him to one of the parish’s first four Detective positions shortly after. Kearney Foster retired in 2007, Chief of Detectives. The Denham Springs Kiwanis Club named him Peace Officer of the Year in 1977. Former Sheriff Willie Graves called Foster an essential part of the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office, saying he “served with distinction.” When Foster died, Sheriff Jason Ard described Foster as relentless. “Kearney Foster was a man of great skill when it came to investigations,” Ard ed. “If we had a homicide, there was no rest until it was solved.” In a news release following Foster’s death, the sheriff said, “He loved his family, his community, and politics.” Deputy Stan Carpenter ed, “He was a great investigator and a real stickler for detail. He hated to see things halfway completed. He loved working on big cases and would share his investigative knowledge with anyone. He always gave me sound advice, like ‘quit buying toys and buy property.’ I wished I would have listened to that one.” “The only person’s handwriting worse than his was mine,” Carpenter said. “You had to know him as he was one of a kind. He kept me grounded and never would let me get out too far before reeling me back in. I will always be grateful for his friendship, and I will never forget him.” Major Ben Bourgeois added, “Kearney was a supervisor that was strictly business. He was old school, boots on the ground when it came to detective work. Kearney loved being Chief of Detectives. Having his experience to assist and direct detectives on big investigations was a great asset to the LPSO. I believe all of us that had the opportunity to work for or with him learned things we still use today. Kearney will be missed by all of us who knew him.”

In September of 1986, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Detective Kearney Foster testified in court regarding a call the Sheriff’s Office received at 10:50 that evening on September 17, 1983. Detective Foster said someone had entered the Old Rainbow Tavern in Albany and stole 80-year-old Julia “Mom” Szari’s handbag. After first hitting her with a barstool, her assailant broke her arm and stabbed her multiple times. The Denham Springs News reported, “The detective said Szari didn’t respond when he took a lineup of photographs to her hospital room on September 20. Szari died of her wounds on October 9, 1983, without identifying her assailant.” Detective Foster said Szari described her attacker as a tall, thin man wearing a cap. She could tell them nothing more. Foster told the court that the sheriff’s office arrested two suspects matching that description but released both when their innocence became evident. He also said that Brian Penny, a convenience store clerk, selected 22-year-old Phillip “Punk” Wascom from a photo lineup. The clerk told Foster that Wascom cashed two checks at a Charter gas station in Hammond the night of the attack. Foster said he retrieved both checks and confirmed someone had drawn both on Szari’s . Possessing a checkbook did not prove murder. The victim failed to identify a photograph of Wascom before dying at Seventh Ward General Hospital. Without an eyewitness and only circumstantial evidence to their case, investigators knew they had to convince Phillip “Punk” Wascom to confess. That is when Detective Kearney Foster suggested to Wascom that Julia Szari would recover and identify him in court. In a videotaped confession, Wascom then itted to authorities that he committed the brutal beating and stabbing murder. Additionally, months later, he confessed the same to a fellow inmate at the Livingston Parish Prison. A 12-member 21st Judicial District Court jury heard Wascom’s taped confession in his 1986 trial. On the tape, they watched the first-degree murder defendant walking the scene of the crime. He described how he beat the victim with a barstool, stabbing and robbing her inside the Rainbow Tavern on U.S. 190 in Albany.

Jesse Lord, serving a life sentence for kidnapping, explained how he met Wascom. He said authorities placed him in the same cell block after his transfer from a penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Lord, working as an FBI informant, said Wascom itted his guilt. “He said he did it,” Lord said. “He said something about hitting her over the head with a stool.” He also noted that Wascom itted stabbing the victim numerous times before robbing her of her purse and a small tin cash box, where she kept the larger bills. Lord told the jury that Wascom said he had taken LSD, smoked marijuana, and drank whiskey before attacking the elderly woman. When Lord told him from the witness stand, “Phillip, you know I’m telling the truth.” Wascom pointed to Assistant District Attorney William Alford and said, “Tell it to him.” Defense Attorney Wayne Stewart pulled the defendant’s hand down and whispered in his ear. In Wascom’s first trial, prosecutors had difficulty fixing the time of the attack. The defendant said he hitchhiked from the Rainbow to Hammond. Lord explained that Wascom told him he drove from the scene in a truck he purchased for cash the day before and sold a few days later. Wascom told Lord that he went to a mobile home in Hammond, where he lived with two other men, cut up his clothes, and flushed them down the toilet. He said he cashed two checks at the store on U.S. Highway 51 in Hammond before buying drinks at the adjacent Western Lounge. On the witness stand, Lord said investigators had not promised any relief from his sentence in exchange for his testimony. In the taped confessions from October 1, 1983, Wascom told Detectives Kearney Foster and Dillard Stewart, he spent the whole night in the Western Lounge. On a later tape, he described entering the Rainbow Tavern. He ordered a half-pint of whiskey, a bottle of Coke, and a cup of ice. Julia Szari

went to the refrigerator to get the ice. “She was turning. That’s when I hit her with the stool,” Wascom said. “I think it was after I hit her with the stool that I grabbed her knife.” Detective Foster asked why he stabbed her, and Wascom said, “She fell and grabbed a broom,” and hit him in the leg. “I had to do it,” Wascom said on the tape. “It wasn’t a planned thing, what can I say?” he added. The defendant next related how he found only change in the cash . He took the victim’s purse with 70 to 80 dollars inside. Putting the bag under his shirt, he walked out the door. On the tape, he also itted cashing the checks at the convenience store the same night. Days later, he threw the knife into the Tickfaw River over the Courtney Bridge in Holden. For the court, Kearney Foster recalled how their early investigation stalled with the victim’s brief description and her failure to respond when shown several suspects’ photographs, including Wascom’s. Jurors found Phillip “Punk” Wascom of Holden guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing and recommended life in prison. They said the defendant’s lack of a prior criminal record and his history of drug abuse spared him the death sentence. Deputy Kearney Foster had testified that Wascom had no prior criminal record and had a lengthy history of alcohol and drug abuse. Wascom, 25, showed no emotion on hearing either the guilty verdict or the jury’s sentencing recommendation. He briefly hugged his defense attorney before deputies placed handcuffs on him and led him from the courtroom. In the informal discussion that followed, one juror related that Wascom’s intoxication at the time of the attack also affected their decision. “We had a problem with the sentencing,” the jury foreman commented. “You have to take many things into consideration,” another juror stated.

“I think you made the right decision,” Judge Kenneth Fogg told the in thanking them for their service. “I think justice was served.” The jurors said sheriff’s office detectives Dillard Stewart and Kearney Foster “did an excellent job.” In his closing argument, ADA William Alford said, “Detective Foster planted a seed and let it grow.” Detective Foster told Wascom on October 2 that Julia Szari would live and could identify him. Without this quick thinking, Alford said, Wascom may have walked free. Wascom confessed, the prosecutor said, “to minimize the effect on him.” Today, Phillip “Punk” Wascom serves a life sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

Angela Bond

In the fall of 1984 , sometime between Friday evening, October 18th, and Saturday morning, October 19th, a monster wielding an icepick and a two-tined fork stabbed 18-year-old Angela Bond until her breathing stopped. Babysitting at her home in Bogalusa, Angela died by her bed with her one-year-old and her sister’s six-month-old in the same room. At 9:30 the following morning, Angela’s sister, Decrease, and her boyfriend arrived to pick up her child. After knocking multiple times, Decrease entered the house through an open kitchen window. She found her sister’s body on the floor of her bedroom, naked and stretched out on her back at the foot of the bed. A large chair, possibly used to drive the icepick and fork further into her chest, covered Angela’s face. Decrease phoned the police from a neighbor’s home. The officers who arrived at the scene secured several items of evidence, including a shower cap found near the body and a stick used to prop open the kitchen window. The police could not lift any fingerprints from the residence. However, they subsequently secured other evidence, including hair samples, and the suspected murder weapons, the ice pick and fork. Decrease told investigators that Angela’s boyfriend, 27-year-old Anthony Johnson, had been in the home when she dropped off her child. Officers with the Bogalusa City Police Department arrested Johnson at his home just after 11 that morning. District Attorney Walter Reed indicted Johnson for the murder two months later. At the time of his arrest, Johnson, an orderly at Bogalusa Medical Center, wore a plastic shower cap that he voluntarily turned over to the police. While at police headquarters, Johnson recounted his version of the facts to Bogalusa City Police Officer Wayne Kemp. Kemp later testified at trial that Johnson told him that at approximately nine on the evening of October 18th, he and the victim argued, so he left and went to a nearby bar. Johnson told Kemp he returned to Angela’s around midnight but that she had locked the doors and would not let him in. Johnson claimed he then went home.

However, according to Kemp’s testimony, Johnson had “special knowledge” of the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death. Kemp said that Johnson told the officers he would not have killed her “like that.” Kemp asked Johnson what he meant by “like that,” and Johnson replied, “With the pick and the fork.” Kemp said he asked Johnson how he knew the weapons used. After a pause, Johnson answered, “Well, I just figured that’s what it was because she slept with them under her pillow all the time.” According to Kemp, he then asked Johnson how he knew the victim was in the bedroom. Johnson stated he did not want to talk anymore and that he wanted an attorney. The autopsy revealed the victim had been sexually assaulted and suffered multiple wounds, including five injuries to the neck. One punctured the jugular vein, and the icepick through her breastbone pierced her heart. The fork wound split Angela’s abdomen and cut into her liver. According to the pathologist, the latter two wounds required tremendous force. Investigators found no fingerprints on the icepick, fork, or other items taken from the house. However, they believed, hair samples taken from the plastic shower cap at the scene nearly matched those in the shower cap Johnson provided. On June 26th, 1985, as Johnson awaited trial, someone murdered Bevalina Brown. She died in the same Bogalusa bedroom as Angela Bond. Weeks later, on July 12th, someone killed a third woman in Bogalusa. Police found Regina Jackson’s body near an airport, three miles from Angela Bond’s bedroom. The district attorney’s office indicted a man named Matthew Brown for both murders. The following February, Anthony Johnson went to trial in the 22nd Judicial District Court. His lawyer waived Johnson’s right to an opening statement. During the trial, Robert Magee, who lived across the street from Angela Bond, testified to seeing Johnson’s car at Angela’s home around one in the morning on October 19th. Another neighbor Carl Magee testified that he saw Johnson drive

down the victim’s street, blow his horn, and wave. This event, he ed, occurred around 6, the morning he took out his trash. Johnson testified that on the night of the murder, at approximately 9:30 that night, he asked Angela if she wanted some crabs from a nearby bar. She told him she did, and he left to get them. After 10:30, he returned with the crabs and found the door locked. Angela said he had been out too long and to go home. Johnson went back to the bar, returning to Angela’s occasionally. However, each time, she refused to open the door. Johnson said he gave up around midnight and went home. The following morning, officers knocked on his door, waking him. Officer Phillip Collins, he said, told him they believed he stabbed Angela to death and that the crime scene looked awful. Before they reached the police station, Johnson testified, Officer Laverne Spikes told Johnson about the fork and ice pick. On the stand, Johnson denied telling the officers the victim slept with anything under her pillow. Officer Collins testified that he only told Johnson that the victim died. He did not, he insisted, mention the stabbing, and Officer Spikes testified that he never spoke to Anthony Johnson. Anthony Johnson maintained his innocence, saying that he did not have “special knowledge” of the murder; the police had told him about the knife and fork. Joseph Rogers, a former inmate in the Washington Parish Jail, testified for the Defense. While in jail, he said, Matthew Brown told him that he had murdered three women. He also said that police charged another man with one of the three. The prosecution stipulated that Matthew Brown had confessed to the murders of Bevalina Brown and Regina Jackson, but not the murder of Angela Bond. When the Defense put Matthew Brown on the stand, he refused to testify, asserting his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. A jury convicted Anthony Johnson of second-degree murder on February 25th, 1986, sentencing him to life in prison.

In 2004, after losing multiple appeals, Johnson enlisted help from the Innocence Project of New Orleans. The organization filed a petition for DNA testing. On March 26th, 2006, a lab confirmed that the DNA under Angela Bond’s fingernails did not come from Anthony Johnson. On February 21st, 2007, Anthony Johnson appealed again, this time winning a new trial. In addition to the DNA test results, the court found prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence. The suppressed evidence included statements two people made to police, each saying Matthew Brown itted that someone else “took the rap” for Angela Bond’s murder. The suppressed evidence also included testimony regarding the trash collection, critical in establishing when Johnson left Angela’s house. Trash pick-up occurred Friday morning, October 18th, and not Saturday morning, October 19th. On February 21st, 2007, Johnson bonded out awaiting trial. The prosecution appealed the order for a new trial and won in October 2007. However, in June 2009, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered the case back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing. Following that hearing, the court, on July 22nd, 2009, again ordered a new trial. By then, prosecutors had linked the DNA recovered from Angela Bond’s fingernails to Matthew Brown, then convicted and serving time for killing Regina Jackson and Bevalina Brown. At the new trial, evidence for the Defense seemed overwhelming. Brown had confessed to killing Angela Bond. A suspected co-perpetrator in the murders of Bevalina Brown and Regina Jackson also itted to a role in Angela’s murder. Two witnesses placed Brown at Angela’s home within hours of discovering her body, and neighbors testified that Angela had an affair with Brown. The state dismissed the charges against Johnson on September 15th, 2010.

Johnson filed a civil wrongful conviction lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in October 2010. Both parties settled for an undisclosed amount in 2013, and the state of Louisiana separately awarded Johnson $330,000 in compensation. However, officially, the rape and murder of Angela Bond remain unsolved.

Falsely Accused

On October 17, 1980 , a St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Deputy on routine patrol, found the body of 24-year-old Douglas Frierson under the East Middle Pearl River Bridge on United States Highway 90. Investigators immediately suspected the Dixie Mafia. Upon hearing of the murder, 29-year-old Gerald Burge called the sheriff’s office to tell them Frierson had been with him the night before and had left his house at about midnight. Detective Gary Hale completed the initial investigation of the murder and interviewed Frierson’s family and friends. Frierson’s brother stated that he saw Burge and Joe Pearson in the car with Frierson. Although the victim’s mother and sister did not initially place Frierson with Burge after midnight, the two changed their statements. Pearson was later imprisoned for a robbery conviction and then eventually confessed to shooting Frierson. In 1984, Pearson and Burge were charged with second-degree murder after Pearson changed his statement to say that he was with Burge when Burge fatally shot Frierson. In exchange for his testimony, Pearson was allowed to plead guilty to being an accessory after the fact. He received three years in prison and was immediately released. At Burge’s trial in 1986, Frierson’s mother testified that she had seen Burge pick up Frierson shortly before the murder and that Burge told her and her daughter details of the murder that only the perpetrator could know. Her daughter corroborated her testimony. Burge was convicted of second-degree murder at a jury trial in September 1986 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Immediately after Burge’s conviction, the detective who completed the investigation in the case questioned detective Hale, who was by then married to Frierson’s sister, about a tape of an interview with Burge that was missing. Hale revealed that he had kept the tape, as well as other notes about the case, in the trunk of his car, and had not turned them over to the prosecution or the Defense. These notes included the initial statement by the victim’s mother that

she had not seen who picked up her son that night, as well as statements by Pearson’s girlfriend and another man stating that Pearson had confessed to the murder. Hale also itted that he persuaded Frierson’s sister, who was now his wife, as well as Frierson’s mother, to lie on the stand. Based on this new evidence, Burge’s attorneys moved for a new trial, a motion that was granted based on the prosecution’s failure to turn over exculpatory evidence. In 1992, Burge went to trial a second time. Frierson’s sister and mother itted they had lied at the first trial. A jury acquitted Burge of all charges. Burge subsequently filed a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit and a jury awarded him $4.3 million in damages. The judgment was set aside on appeal and the case later settled for $5,030,000. The state of Louisiana awarded him $150,000 in compensation.

John Day

Historians consider Night Marshal James Gordon Anderson, the first Hammond police officer killed on duty. However, a decade before Anderson’s assassination, a street gang murdered another agent of the Hammond Police Department, and— in 1933—newspaperman George Campbell uncovered connections between these two murders. Friday morning, July 14, 1922, Thomas Gillian, Night Chief of the Hammond Police Department, sat in a small café near the Illinois Central tracks, drinking coffee. Next to him, City Impounding Officer John Madison Day sat, crunching bacon and talking about his father, Champion Day. “Poppa’s a dairy farmer,” Day said, “What’s he care about gangs or gambling and bootlegging?” “He’s a business owner,” Gillian said, “And last night, he had the city council all riled up. Now, Mayor (C. C.) Carter thinks I need a second night officer.” “Tom, what do I know about gangs?” Day asked. “And you act like my position’s not crucial. Stray cattle overrun this town when I’m out.” “Who says you’ll be out? Most of the shenanigans your dad went on about happens Friday and Saturday nights, and Chief er does the impounding himself on weekends.” Of course, we can only imagine their precise words. However, we do know Chief Gillian persuaded Day to take the commission. He worked his first and last shift as a night watchman for the city that weekend. Two days later, The New Orleans States newspaper reported: “Tangipahoa Parish is abuzz today with speculation on the meaning of a visitation by the Ku Klux Klan. From mouth-to-mouth, the word has spread. The Klansmen of the Invisible Empire from Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, and Livingston Parishes will gather in Hammond for a roundup of the town’s hoodlum gangs and undesirables. A parade of white-robed vigilantes ed through town Tuesday. Two days earlier, Town Marshals failed to stop the ‘pool room gang’ whose riotous debaucheries culminated in the murder, early Sunday morning, of John Day, 38.

“Day, commissioned by Night Chief of Police Gillian of Hammond to watch the gang’s activities, met them as they were crossing the railroad tracks shortly after midnight, Sunday. The gamblers sought to finish the night with a crap game after an evening of shooting pool and drinking liquor.” Tuesday, July 18, The New Orleans Item interviewed W. M. “Tootsie” Day, the victim’s elder brother. “The gang murdered my brother and then poured wine and whiskey over his body,” he said. “They placed his body on the railroad track, expecting that the train would over it. Investigators, they thought, would believe my brother fell asleep, drunk on the tracks. However, my brother never had a drink in his life.” “The gang went to the eating house in the railroad station and sat near a deaf and mute restaurant employee. He could not hear but could read their lips,” Tootsie Day explained. “After I learned of my brother’s death, the witness, a friend of mine named Bill Turner, wrote down how the gang said they killed John. We gave this information to the authorities, and they used it to get the hoodlums to it killing him.” Hammond Police Chief Oscar er solicited assistance from Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Lem Bowden and apprehended nine of the gang’s 11 . Everyone questioned by District Attorney Matthew Allen itted watching John Day die. However, not one “ed” who among them committed the murder. The nine arrested were: Frank Cangelosi of Baton Rouge, Robert Smith of Kentwood, and Luther Case, Ansil “Ed” Bickford, David Montgomery, Avery Montgomery, Bertrand Montgomery, Lee Wiggins, and Leon Wiggins, all of Hammond. According to their statements, on the way to the crap game, the party encountered John Day patrolling his beat. “There’s John Day, spying on us. Let’s beat him up!” one of the gang ed another saying as the group surrounded the watchman. “I’m not following you,” Day told them. “I’m watching these houses. My job is to protect this town.” The nine ed one gang member punching Day in the chin, while another bashed his skull from behind with a tractor battery. When Day fell to the

ground, the gang stomped his head and chest until he lost consciousness. They drenched him in moonshine and strawberry wine and left his body on the Illinois Central tracks. Later, the gang ate breakfast at the little Union Station restaurant inside the depot before going their separate ways. Lee and Leon Wiggins returned later, telling restaurant manager Joe Robinson, “There’s a man dead or drunk on the railroad tracks.” Robinson found Chief Gillian, and the two men drove Day to the town doctor’s home. John Day died later that Sunday morning, July 16, 1922, on a train headed to Charity Hospital in New Orleans. In the fall of 1922, two of the eleven gang stood trial for the murder of John Day and won acquittal when a gang member changed his testimony on the stand. A decade later, Night Marshal James Gordon Anderson saw those men murdered and apprehended the man who killed them. Newspaperman George Campbell believed an associate of the slain men shot James Gordon Anderson one year later.

The Pool Room Gang

Sunday morning, July 6, 1922, a gang of teenage bootleggers left John Madison Day, a 38-year-old night watchman commissioned by the Hammond Police Department, beaten and unconscious, lying across an Illinois Central Railroad track. Officer Day died before the train arrived. Hammond Police Chief Oscar er with Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Lem Bowden collected and held nine of the “pool room” gang’s 11 for five days. District attorney Matthew Allen said, “The hoodlums” itted groupstomping Day after their leaders punched the officer and caved his head in with a dry cell battery. Those first arrested were: Frank Cangelosi of Baton Rouge, Robert Smith of Kentwood, and Luther Case, Ansil “Ed” Bickford, David Montgomery, Avery Montgomery, Bertrand Montgomery, Lee Wiggins, and Leon Wiggins, all of Hammond. Although most of the gang remained silent, Luther Case eventually identified the two teenagers on the run as Day’s initial attackers. The sheriff telegraphed law enforcement agencies across the state to find and jail Wilmer Starns and Elmer Dunnington. The telegraph described Dunnington as “slight of build, light of complexion, very erect and good-looking” and listed Starns as “dark of hair and eyes, short and stocky of figure.” On July 24, a group of “knights” from the Ku Klux Klan arrived at an open-air baptism near Loranger, Louisiana. Armed with rifles, the Klansmen reminded attending Starns and Dunnington family that the boys would live longer if they surrendered to Sheriff Bowden. That evening, John Dunnington and Hebert Starnes delivered their sons to the Amite jail, insisting a jury would find both boys innocent. Four days later, Hammond Mayor C. C. Carter and “41 prominent Hammond citizens, among them, the president and board of all area banks” signed a resolution. The document demanded the town council Police Chief Oscar er “and his men” in wrapping up the John Day murder and clearing the town of “the pool room gang,” believed responsible for the gambling and bootlegging downtown. Most saw the proclamation as a request for the KKK to leave the area. However,

one month later, forty Klansmen began parading daily through the city carrying signboards. The signs invited residents to attend free self-defense classes at the Klan’s impromptu camp in a Ponchatoula ballpark. The Hammond Vindicator newspaper reported that 100 Klansmen trained 250 parish residents on Labor Day that year. On October 22, someone fired four shots into Edward Randall, 23, the son of former Hammond Police Chief Corsey Randall. Police found the body the following morning on the tracks where John Day died. Although Chief er charged Summer Robinson with the slaying, the Klan burned a cross on the spot that night. On December 17, Luther Case retracted his signed affidavit recounting Day’s murder. He now claimed Elmer Dunnington killed John Day in self-defense. Sheriff Bowden released Dunnington and Starns and charged Luther Case with perjury. Found guilty in May 1923, the Court released Luther Case for time served. In February 1924, Ed Bickford told friends that John Dunnington, Jr.–and not his brother, Elmer–had been with them that night at the tracks. He said John Dunnington, Jr., killed Day with the tractor battery. On February 23, Elmer Dunnington ed his father and brother in beating Ed Bickford in front of a Hammond bar. The incident ended when Bickford shot and wounded John Dunnington, Jr. Two sheriff’s deputies who had witnessed the shooting told Judge Robert Ellis that Bickford fired in self-defense. The Court dropped charges against Bickford. One week later, all three Dunningtons surrounded Bickford and his brother, beating them in the street. On April 29, 1924, Judge Ellis placed the three Dunningtons under a one-year $1,000 peace bond, a restraining order preventing them from coming near the Bickfords. Hearing the ruling, the senior Dunnington cursed the judge as Elmer Dunnington tackled Ed Bickford inside the courtroom and bit off one-third of his ear. On June 2, a jury released John Dunnington, Jr., finding only his father and brother guilty of disrupting court proceedings. Judge Ellis sentenced both to five years in the state penitentiary, but they served less than one year.

In 1925, Judge Ellis sentenced Elmer Dunnington to five years in Angola for embezzlement. When a parole board refused to release him in October 1928, Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long granted him clemency for thwarting a prison break. In the attempted escape, Dunnington killed fellow inmate Cleve F. Owen of New Orleans. On May 27, 1928, while Elmer still resided in Angola, John Dunnington, Jr., Walter Skeahan, and an unidentified third man committed armed robbery. The owner of Lee’s restaurant said they got away with $40, a watch, and three sandwiches. Many in town believed the “unidentified third man” was the senior Dunnington. However, the restaurant owner said he never saw the man’s face. On June 19, 1929, Judge Ellis sentenced Walter Skeahan and John Dunnington, Jr., to 10 years. Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long pardoned Walter Skeahan in 1931 and John Dunnington, Jr., in 1932. In January 1932, Hammond Night Marshal James Gordon Anderson witnessed the murder of Elmer Dunnington and arrested his assailant. One year later, another gunman shot and killed Marshal Anderson. On the evening of March 16, 1933, Walter Skeahan and three of Huey Long’s bodyguards shot and killed a black vagrant, accusing him of shooting Gordon Anderson. After the shooting, Skeahan fled to Baton Rouge. Police found him drunk in the streets two nights later. He served 30 days for a Prohibition violation and moved to Arizona, never again returning to Louisiana. He told relatives in Hammond his self-imposed exile stemmed from the Gordon Anderson shooting.

Kinchen Bridges

Ten years after the Hammond Police Department suspected brothers John and Elmer Dunnington of murdering Officer John Madison Day, Louisiana’s outgoing governor pardoned the brothers for their crimes. The governor also forgave and released Dunnington’s brother-in-law, Walter Skeahan, for assisting Elmer in the armed robbery of Lee’s restaurant. On the eve of the special election to replace the governor, newly-elected Senator Huey P. Long, volunteers from the governor’s office, worked to set up polling at Gem’s Restaurant on Cate Street in Hammond. The group included Elmer and Walter, avid ers of Long-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Oscar K. Allen; and Kinchen Bridges, Milton Bates, and Ray Jones, ers of Dudley J. Leblanc, the opposition candidate. The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office commissioned Hammond Night Marshal Gordon Anderson to serve as the official poll watch. His job was to keep the peace during the setup and election procedures the following day. Unfortunately, peace-keeping proved to be impossible. In the months before the election, anti-Long ers burned effigies of Long and his alleged yes-man “O. K.” Allen in the streets of Livingston and Tangipahoa Parishes. While some farmers saw “the Long Machine” as saviors for the state, others saw the party as gangsters who had infiltrated state government. Historians today consider the January 1932 election the most heated in Louisiana history. When the smoke cleared on election eve, two men lay dying from a gun battle in front of Gem’s Restaurant. From The New Orleans Item, January 19, 1932: Milton “Red” Bates, 45, wounded in a three-man political fight in Hammond Monday night where ex-convict Elmer Dunnington died instantly, declared in Touro infirmary Tuesday morning that he had known Dunnington all his life. “We were the best of friends,” he said. Bates was too weak to discuss the events that led up to the shooting, which took place between him, Dunnington, and Kinchen Bridges. Only the latter escaped unscathed.

One of Dunnington’s bullets struck Bates in the right hip, plowing up through his body to lodge finally in his left side. “I had nothing against him, and he had nothing against me,” muttered Bates, a former automobile salesman, now unemployed. He has a wife and three children in Hammond. “Elmer ran at me, shooting in the air, and was about to level his gun on me when I shot him. We fell together,” he said weakly. Hammond authorities are holding Kinchen Bridges pending further investigation. Milton Bates died six days later, and Walter Skeahan told police he left before the shooting. When Kinchen Bridges’ trial started March 23, only three witnesses to the shooting remained to testify. They were Ray Jones of Natalbany, Jake Hoover of Ponchatoula, and Hammond Town Marshal Gordon Anderson. Leon Dunnington testified to witnessing the initial argument but left before the shooting. Dunnington said Bates offered to bet Ben H. Bickham $500 the governor’s election would see a run-off. Bickham testified that he got angry and left the restaurant. According to Leon Dunnington, his exit prompted Bates to go as well. Exiting, he heard Bates say he and Bridges could beat any Long er in town. According to Ray Jones, when Bates and Bridges walked out of the restaurant, Bates remarked, “I can whip any O. K. Allen man.” Jones then quoted Elmer Dunnington as saying, “Don’t say that,” I am an Allen man, and you know you can’t whip me.” The argument waxed warm, Jones said, and “before long bystanders were running away and guns were roaring.” The argument grew heated, the witness said, with Bates advancing upon Dunnington threateningly. Both called to bystanders to get out of the way before they started firing. Jones said he did not see who fired the first shot. He said when he looked again, Bates had fallen. Dunnington stood over him in a stooping position until Bridges seized Dunnington from behind. At that moment, Jones said, more gunshots rang out, and Dunnington fell dead beside Bates, and the night policeman arrested Kinchen Bridges.

Jake Hoover gave testimony ing Ray Jones, saying he saw Bridges shoot Dunnington five times in the back. However, Dunnington, shooting at Bates, never turned toward Bridges. Dr. Luther Layton Ricks of Independence, the parish coroner, testified to finding six entrance wounds in the front of Dunnington’s body. He recorded five in his back, two in his hands, and one in his leg. Night Marshal Gordon Anderson said he witnessed the shooting from a distance. He saw Bridges fire what appeared to be several shots into Dunnington’s back. When he reached the men, he said, he found Bridges’ pistol empty. Anderson said he had arrested Bridges about 20 minutes before the shooting on a charge of fighting. However, he released the 20-year-old to his uncle when Bates promised to have Kinchen Bridges in court the following morning. Anderson said a freight train ed a few minutes later, and he went to the railroad to see if any “hobos” had gotten off. Later, noticing a crowd gathering at the restaurant, he started toward it when the shooting began. He said he did not see who fired the first shot. However, as he ran, he saw Dunnington standing between Bates and Bridges, with his back to Bridges. He said both Bridges and Bates appeared to be shooting at Dunnington. At the scene, the policeman said, he grabbed Bridges’ pistol and found it empty. He noted that Bates’ pistol, an automatic, was also empty, but Dunnington’s gun, he said, contained only three discharged shells. Following a mistrial and multiple appeals, a jury found Bridges guilty. Judge Nathan B. Tycer sentenced him to 12 to 20 years in the state penitentiary. However, the appeal process kept Bridges outside of Angola until the summer of 1933. On bail before the first trial, sheriff’s deputies arrested Bridges in Ponchatoula for stabbing a man in a bar. District Attorney Robert S. Ellis, Jr., concerned for his witnesses’ lives in between appeals, asked the judge to deny any subsequent bail. However, Kinchen Bridges had a wife and newborn child, prompting Judge Tycer to allow him to remain free.

Kinchen Bridges still walked Hammond’s streets on May 16, 1933. He is the man newsman George B. Campbell suspected of assassinating Night Marshal Gordon Anderson.

Gordon Anderson

At age 49, James Gordon Anderson served his community as a Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Deputy, a Hammond Town Marshal, and a Sunday school teacher. Following his death in 1933, a Hammond Vindicator newspaper column entitled “The Stroller” included a curious line: “I wonder how the judge is sleeping after a slayer’s special treatment got another man killed.” The front-page story in that edition recounted the events leading up to Night Marshal Gordon Anderson’s murder. On a Sunday afternoon, March 15, 1933, highway patrolman Delmas D. Sharp, 26, stopped a 25-year-old black man named Isadore Marsh as he stepped off a bus in Hammond. Sharp, son of former Livingston Parish Sheriff Simpson Harvey Sharp, suspected Marsh of carrying a concealed weapon but found none. Still, he charged the man for “being a suspicious character” and escorted him to Carter’s Garage to wait until local law enforcement could take him to jail. Hammond Mayor Charles Congreve Carter, 50, owned the garage and occasionally allowed law enforcement to use his empty storeroom as a holding cell. After Sharp had gone, Marsh slipped from the storeroom, exited a back door, and ran. The mayor’s brother-in-law, Garage Manager Randolph Corbin, 40, gave chase, firing a shot in the air, and Marsh surrendered. Monday morning, Hammond City Judge Joseph M. Blache, Jr., fined Marsh $50 for resisting arrest and set him free. Marsh told the judge he lived in Lutcher, and Judge Blache suggested he immediately return to his home parish. On the night of March 16, Mayor Carter and garage employee Walter R. Skeahan, 31, working late in the garage, heard two people arguing farther down the tracks. When a shot sounded, the mayor tossed Skeahan the shop pistol, a.3230 Smith and Wesson revolver, and both men ran toward the rapport. As they got closer to the ruckus, a second shot rang out. One of the arguing men fell, and Skeahan shot the second man in the arm as three officers with the State Highway Patrol stepped from the shadows and began firing.

Newspapers said Lester and Elizabeth Brackney “narrowly escaped being hit by a stray shot as they left their ballroom building on West Railroad Avenue.” Locals referred to the Porgiee’s building as “Brackney’s Ballroom” due to the large open room on the building’s second-floor where the couple held dances. A round broke the transom over the front door and lodged in the wood frame, showering Mrs. Brackney with glass as she ran from the ballroom. “Scores of people were on the scene within five minutes and hundreds more, alarmed by the fire siren, reached there shortly after,” the Daily Courier reported. “Many citizens saw the shooting or part of it, but no one could give any information as to the events preceding the fight on the tracks.” When the smoke cleared, two dead men laid over the tracks. Marshal Anderson had a bullet through his chest. Isadore Marsh, 4 feet away, his body riddled with bullets, died from a shot piercing his skull. On Cate Street, the highway patrolmen—Officers Delmas D. Sharp, 26; Herbert A. Schultz, 23; and John R. White, 19,—found Marshal Anderson’s car on Morris Street, parked between the main railroad track and the switch track with a bullet through the windshield. These officers theorized that Marshal Anderson had again discovered Marsh still in town and placed him under arrest. He may have been transporting back to the jail in the 100th block of South Hansen Avenue. They suggested that Marsh grabbed the marshal’s gun inside the patrol car, causing the weapon to discharge and pierce the windshield as Marsh escaped. They believed Marshal Anderson chased Marsh to the tracks, a scuffle incurred, and Marsh shot the marshal through the heart. Without additional evidence, this hypothesis became the official version of what happened. With that version in mind, reconsider that line from The Hammond Vindicator column: “I wonder how the judge is sleeping after a slayer’s special treatment got another man killed.” This ominous statement could be referencing Judge Blache freeing Marsh. However, there is no evidence that Isadore Marsh did anything to warrant a

newspaperman describing him as “a slayer” before Marshal Anderson’s death. Therefore, either the columnist knew something we do not, or the writer was not a reliable source. To assess the latter, consider the following editorial from The Hammond Daily Star, February 27, 1967: “This editorial is about the man who typed his stories at a desk next door. “He died this morning. Born George B. Campbell, locals knew him best by the title of his column, ‘The Stroller,’ which appeared in his weekly newspaper, The Hammond Vindicator. “A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, he was the son of John M. and Mary Moore Campbell. He attended public schools in Newburn in Dyer County in northwestern Tennessee and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “George was a newspaperman throughout his entire life. He started as a cub reporter for The Nashville American in 1902. In 1905, George became the compositor for the former New Orleans States. He moved to Hammond in 1907 to become editor of the former Louisiana Sun, a position he held for a decade. He became editor of The Hammond Southern Vindicator in 1917, working for Colonel James B. Adams, who launched the publication as The Hammond Graphic in 1892 and renamed it in 1897. “George bought publication when Adams retired in 1918, and within ten years, The Hammond Vindicator became the largest weekly in Louisiana. Today, the Vindicator is also the oldest weekly newspaper in the state. “George rotated two mottoes on the Vindicator’s front-page: ‘Land of Sunshine, Moonshine and Flowers’ and, to show that Campbell was willing to step on toes, ‘Let the Fur Fly.’ “George wrote his ‘Stroller’ column and served as editor of that paper until its sale in July 1966. He came from a family of newspaper people and, eighty-seven at death, lived to become one of the oldest newspaper editors in this state. “His ing is another marker in the decline of ‘personal journalism’ as George exemplified this approach to newspapering.

“His editorials could be biting and spirited: sometimes attacking corruption in state government; sometimes citing the evils of a growing federal bureaucracy; sometimes favoring a candidate he liked, and sometimes just trying to get a bumpy road repaired. “Until his last illness, he was a familiar personality, impeccably dressed, strolling about town or taking a Sunday drive about the countryside. “Trusted by the citizens of Hammond for more than four decades, George B. Campbell was ‘the Stroller,’ Hammond’s answer to Walter Cronkite.” The Hammond Daily Star purchased The Hammond Vindicator in 2003. Marshal James Gordon Anderson left behind a wife, Mary McCrain Anderson, and three sons: J. C. Anderson, Victor Anderson, and Dermott Anderson. He had one daughter, Mary Gordon Anderson. With the city hall closed for mourning, the funeral held visitation at the family residence. “The room and casket were banked with flowers, and hundreds of friends attended the service,” The Hammond Vindicator reported on May 19, 1933. “Hundreds of citizens of Hammond and the parish crowded the Anderson home at 604 South Orange Street. Reverend William Uptegrove Holley of the Federated Church and Reverend J. A. McCormack of the Methodist Church conducted the services,” the article said. Victor Anderson ed that people circled the block waiting to get in, including many black friends, all welcomed without incident. After a choir sang two hymns and the solemn ceremony concluded, the pallbearers, friends of the slain marshal, took him from his home for the journey to Centreville, Miss. Dr. E.L. McGehee, Mitchell, Carl Hyde, Rand, Joe Robinson, and Wood Spiller, escorted the fallen peace officer to his former hometown, Centreville, Mississippi. The burial took place at the Oaklawn Cemetery, a half-mile east of Centreville. The Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church hosted services there, conducted by Reverend Holley and Dr. F. L. McCue, minister of the Centreville church.

In later years, Gordon Anderson’s son, Vic “Gordon” Anderson, became a town marshal, as did his grandson, another Gordon Anderson. Grandson J. Thomas “Tom” Anderson, a local attorney, served Hammond as mayor, to date, the youngest to hold the position. When elected, Tom was also the youngest mayor in Louisiana history. He still owns the revolver believed to have killed his grandfather in 1933. Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy McGovern, Walter Skeahan’s nephew, holds the pistol that fired the initial shot into Isadore Marsh. According to Deputy McGovern, both guns are identical. I met Tom at the offices of The Hammond Vindicator in 1981. We did not discuss his grandfather. However, when Tom left, George Campbell’s daughter, Mildred C. Furbos, explained to me who “the Stroller” said murdered Marshal James Gordon Anderson in 1933.

Oscar er

Born September 22, 1880, Oscar E. er lived 81 years. His family buried him in Loranger’s er Cemetery, April 5, 1962. He killed several men in his lifetime, and multiple Louisiana courts found him guilty before political friends set him free. On Monday, October 19, 1925, Livingston Parish officials predicted having difficulty finding jurors willing to hear a case involving Doyle resident Oscar er, a man widely referred to as the “Bad Man of Tangipahoa.” One week earlier, the sheriff in Livingston charged er with the murder of a prominent Denham Springs dentist. er shot Dr. Joseph A. Cannon outside the home of Shell Hughes, near Livingston Station, October 11, 1925. Sheriff Louis Kimball locked er in the parish jail in Springville, then the parish seat. Judge Robert C. Reid ordered him transferred to New Orleans four days later. The Florida Parish Times newspaper in Amite reported: “Since the removal of er to New Orleans Friday, the consensus is that Judge Reid assumed a wise step, moving him, owing to the divided sentiment in Livingston Parish. The northern section of the parish is bitter toward er, while the southern area is inclined to sympathize with him. “A reliable source stated that er and a party played considerable poker during all of Saturday night, October 10. The party drank large quantities of whiskey, leaving them in ugly moods the morning of the murder. “Tangipahoa Parish residents now argue over Dr. Cannon’s murder, particularly in the section from Amite south to Lake Pontchartrain, where the accused is related to many good citizens. “Judge Reid called a special session of the Livingston Parish grand jury to investigate the killing by questioning a great number of witnesses. Relatives of the dead man in Ascension Parish are expending goodly sums in the prosecution of er. Judge Reid expects a fierce legal battle when the case goes to court. If the grand jury indicts er, the judge said, his trial will begin as soon as officials comply with the legal formalities.”

The New Orleans States newspaper interviewed er from his jail cell in New Orleans and reported: “Oscar er, former marshal of Hammond, is lodged in parish prison for safekeeping in connection with the slaying of Dr. J. A. Cannon, a renowned dentist of Livingston Parish. However, er insists he is nothing like the Bad Man of Tangipahoa that his enemies describe. “Wearing a smile of confidence as he went along, er recounted the incidents leading up to the killing of Dr. Cannon. His story stopped suddenly with the recital of how he punched young Charlie Murray, a man in the dentist’s company at the time of the shooting. “Just what provoked the shooting, he would not say. er said he had been ‘through the mill’ before, twice charged with homicide, and twice acquitted. The slaying of Dr. Cannon was the third time the law accused er of violating the fifth commandment.” “What overt act did Dr. Cannon commit to provoke you into killing him?” the reporter asked. After a moment’s silence, er grinned. “That’s something I do not care to discuss at this time,” he said. “I have learned from experience that it is not wise to say much. Too much newspaper publicity is not good for me.” er answered the reporter’s other questions without hesitation, weighing every word sagaciously and framing answers accordingly. The reporter asked er about his removal to New Orleans for “his protection.” er’s face reddened, and he told the reporter he was not afraid to meet the issue in Livingston Parish. Rather tall, raw-boned, with matted red hair and an untrimmed mustache of the same hue, er looked the role of a small-town marshal, a position he held two years earlier. He resigned after slaying a youth, he said, in self-defense. According to er, the decedent and several others assaulted him, trying to kill him. After er’s acquittal for the homicide, he and his wife moved to Livingston

Parish. They had no children. “The killing of the youth two years ago and the slaying of Dr. Cannon, were these the only homicides charged against you?” The reporter asked. “No,” he said, “About 12 years ago, I killed a man in a knife duel after he almost cut me to pieces,” er said. “I have many scars to show as a result of that encounter, and I was acquitted promptly.” Oscar E. er first made headlines in 1909. The defense in Avery Blount’s murder trial presented evidence that John Williams murdered the family of John Oliver “Buzzy” Breland instead of their client. Oscar E. er provided John Williams’ alibi. In October 1910, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office charged er and three others with perjury for lying under oath in the Avery Blount trial. The first trial ended in a mistrial when two jurors became ill. A second jury found er guilty in January 1911, and Judge Robert F. Ellis sentenced him to two years in jail. Two months later, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned er’s conviction. Judge Robert C. Reid represented er at his appeal. Four months later, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office charged Oscar er, 35, with stabbing 34-year-old Alfred Robertson to death following a dance on the Tangipahoa River. With er the only witness testifying at trial, a jury in April 1912 found him not guilty, ruling the death occurred during a consensual knife fight. From 1914 to 1918, Oscar er served in the United States Army in World War I. He became a Hammond Town Marshal in August 1921, and United States Marshalls arrested him one month later. After a brief hearing, Commissioner Reginald H. Carter released er, Hammond Mayor Congreve C. Carter, and Hammond Chief of Police C. S. Randall. The trio had refused to release two jailed bootleggers to federal revenuers. On Monday, February 6, 1922, er shot and killed William Harold Hamilton of Amite City on West Railroad Avenue in Hammond. Shortly after nine that night, er, standing outside Union Station, heard a shot fired from the

direction of Hanson Avenue. Investigating, he found Hamilton and his 25-yearold half-brother, Russell Lenoir, intoxicated, firing a revolver at a man named Charles Montgomery. er placed Russell under arrest after Montgomery identified him as the person who shot at him. er proceeded to the city Jail with both brothers. When the prisoner, Russell Lenoir, asked to remove his overcoat, Hamilton snatched his brother’s revolver from er’s hand. Russell Lenoir then seized er from behind and shouted for Hamilton to shoot. er, however, drew his service pistol first, shooting Hamilton in his side. The 23-year-old died 15 minutes later. Oscar er became Hammond’s Chief of Police in August 1922. Law Enforcement agencies arrested him three times that year, once for breaking a picket line, once for obstructing justice in another bootlegging case, and once for hunting quail out of season. Gretna police also charged er’s boss, Hammond Mayor Congreve C. Carter, in the quail hunting incident. er left the Hammond Police Department in 1923. According to the Baton Rouge States-Item, “er was asked to largely because he was targeted by a gang bent on slaying him. er made a fearless officer but was considered too free in the use of his gun.” In 1924, Amite police arrested er for illegally carrying a gun. The court fined him 100 dollars and sent him home. er shot Dr. Cannon six months later. As the 1925 interview progressed, er warmed up to the New Orleans State journalist, finally talking about the Sunday Dr. Cannon died. “Charlie Murray, Jr.—this 17-year-old kid—informed on me for shooting squirrel out of season,” he said. “But that’s not what led to the killing. The trouble started when Murray, who came up with Dr. Cannon, demanded that I turn over to him an automobile a friend left in my charge. “When I refused, Murray cursed me and called me a liar. Infuriated, I struck him.” er said he did not knock Murray down and denied beating the man further. According to witnesses, Dr. Cannon grabbed er’s elbow and insisted that he not hit Murray again. At that point, er pulled his pistol and shot the dentist.

“Did Dr. Cannon say anything to you when you struck Murray?” The reporter asked. “I don’t care to say anything about that just now,” er replied. The reporter continued. “Well, did Dr. Cannon commit any overt act that prompted you to shoot him?” “Next question,” er responded. The Hammond Vindicator newspaper reported that er’s revolver had three or four notches on the barrel, each representing a life er had taken. Asked about this, er smiled and said, “The sheriff of Tangipahoa Parish [L. H. Bowden] has my gun. Anybody can see it, and they will not find any notches on it. I have no weapon and never did have any with notches. I never boast about men I killed. I did what I had to do in self-defense.” As the interview ended, the reporter rose to leave. er touched his shoulder and said, “Please don’t write too much about my case. Say what I told you about Murray demanding the automobile, but don’t go very strong on the killing details. The papers have said too much already.” er said he had read published reports of Dr. Cannon’s death. “What I’ve read are garbled s,” he said, “Nothing at all right.” er hired Attorney Carter Rownd of Springfield to defend him at trial. The jury found him guilty. Judge Reid sentenced him to hang. Three appeals later, the Louisiana Supreme Court changed the sentence to life in prison. er entered the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in June 1927, and by 1929, trustee er routinely visited relatives in Tangipahoa Parish. In 1935, the governor pardoned er, commuted his sentence, and restored his citizenship. No longer classified as a felon, Oscar E. er ed the Baton Rouge Police Department two years later.

The Mad Man

On the night of January 18, 1932, an argument over Louisiana’s primary election resulted in what the Associated Press called “a three-cornered pistol battle.” Two months later, Kinchen Bridges, a 26-year-old Hammond man, stood trial in 21 st district court on a murder charge connected with the fatal wounding that night of Huey Long pardoned convict Elmer Dunnington. In the January battle, Dunnington shot and fatally wounded Milton Bates, uncle of Bridges. Minutes later, trial testimony revealed, Bridges shot Elmer Dunnington fourteen times in the back. The argument started, Ray Jones of Natalbany testified, when long-time friends Bates and Dunnington walked out of a Hammond restaurant. There, Bates remarked, “I can whip any O. K. Allen man.” “Don’t say that,” the witness quoted Dunnington as replying. “I am an Allen man, and you know you can’t whip me.” The argument “waxed warm,” the witness said, and before long, bystanders ran as gunfire roared. The March proceeding in Amite ended in a mistrial. Three months later, Judge Nathan Tycer sentenced Bridges to 12 to 20 years in Angola State Penitentiary. On September 13, 1934, Governor O. K. Allen commuted his sentence, releasing Bridges with time served. After another three months, Judge Tycer again sentenced Bridges to 12 to 20 years in Angola State Penitentiary, this time for stabbing a man in a Ponchatoula bar fight. Governor O. K. Allen commuted that sentence on December 17. On June 18, 1936, front-page headlines on The New Orleans Item read, “Ponchatoula Waitress Stabbed to Death; Kinchen Bridges Escapes Crime Scene.” The newspaper reported: “Mrs. Viola Carraway, a waitress at the Palace Hotel in Ponchatoula, was fatally stabbed at midnight while walking to the home of a sister, Mrs. Joe Brown, with whom she lived. She died as an ambulance rushed her to the office of a Hammond physician. She died at 5:50 that morning.

“Kinchen Bridges recently paroled from the penitentiary after serving part of a 12-year sentence imposed after a double killing on Cate Street in Hammond in 1932. Witnesses saw him walking with Mrs. Carraway a moment or two before they heard her scream. Moments later, her unconscious form was found on the concrete paving of the main highway through town. Bridges escaped afoot and is now being hunted by deputy sheriffs in the woods east of Ponchatoula. “Mrs. Carraway, mutilated by stab wounds of the back, indicating she was trying to flee from her slayer, died early this morning at the office of Dr. Wiggington, in Hammond. After being picked up from Pine Street, she was taken there by ambulance, where she had collapsed in a pool of blood. “Police do not suspect her estranged husband, Griffin Garraway, after questioning him at his home in Denham Springs. “The deadly attack was anticipated by the waitress, according to the testimony of one of her fellow employees. The witness stated that Mrs. Carraway had taken an ice pick from work and had put it into her handbag, saying, ‘Kinchen has been threatening to hurt me.’ “In the ambulance, she told her sister Kinchen Bridges attacked her. “Mrs. Carraway was 35 years old and the mother of a 15-year-old son.” Ponchatoula Town Marshal Octave Anglade told the Baton Rouge State Times that several men working a construction crew heard a man yelling, “Who took you home last night?” just before a woman screamed. Racing to her aid, they found Viola Carraway with multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen. On June 19, 1936, an armed posse, led by Deputy Sheriff Frank Edwards and Ponchatoula City Marshal L. A. Lavigne, surrounded Bridges’ car in a wooded area northwest of Ponchatoula. Deputy Edwards told reporters that his office considered Bridges a “mad man,” and deputies had orders to “shoot to kill” if they found the man armed. Instead, inside the car, they found Bridges with his throat cut, unconscious, but alive.

At the hospital, Bridges told doctors he had tried to commit suicide. At his trial in 1937, Kinchen Bridges pleaded insane. Considering a charge of premeditated murder, the jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding Bridges guilty. Judge Tycer sentenced him to life in prison. He died at Angola State Penitentiary on July 31, 1968. In March 1932, following his mistrial for Elmer Dunning’s murder, Kinchen Bridges moved from Kentwood to Denham Springs. However, one month later, he returned to Tangipahoa Parish and a jail cell. At the time of the Dunnington murder, Bridges had been out on bond. Ponchatoula police had arrested him after Christmas for stabbing another man in a bar. Following the mistrial, Ponchatoula Mayor Ronald Haight ordered the bond reinstated. Tangipahoa Parish Deputy Farley Bennett drove Bridges to the jail in Amite that day and learned something important. Along the way, Bridges told Farley that Elmer Dunnington’s brother, John, vowed to kill him to avenge his brother’s death. He also told Deputy Bennet that John Dunnington planned to kill Hammond Night Marshal Gordon Anderson. Bridges said his arrest by Anderson that night at Gem’s Restaurant prevented John Dunnington from killing Bridges and avenging his brother on the scene. Someone murdered Night Marshal Gordon Anderson on the night of May 16, 1933. On New Year’s Eve, seven months after the assassination, Farley Bennett, then an officer with the Hammond Police Department, shot and killed John Dunnington, firing five shots through the front windshield of Dunnington’s car. Hammond Night Marshal Bob Torrence and Police Chief George Smith both witnessed the shooting. According to the Times-Picayune that evening, no charges were filed against Officer Bennett. The newspaper reported, “Police gave no reason for the shooting beyond noting that Chief Smith had warned Dunnington to leave town earlier that evening.”

Charlotte and Melinda

When newspapers reported Charlotte Sauerwin’s murder in 1988, Johnny and Joyce Stafford came to see me. One year earlier, Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies found their daughter’s remains in a wooded area near her home, just as they had discovered Charlotte’s body. Johnny told me both girls, near the same age, knew each other in school. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” the former Louisiana Hayride musician told me, “Mark my word, a serial killer is working Livingston Parish.” Johnny last saw his daughter, Melinda Ann Stafford Schubert, on December 6, 1986. Two days later, he phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and reported the 24-year-old missing. On December 9, Tangipahoa Parish deputies found Melinda’s car, abandoned where Highway 190 meets Interstate 55 in Hammond. Someone had locked the car and taken her keys. On January 26, 1987, an anonymous tip sent Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies into the woods near Melinda’s apartment on Strawberry Lane in Albany. One hundred yards from her door, cadaver dogs found her skull and bones scattered across a 200-foot radius, along with articles of clothing and jewelry, identified by family as belonging to Melinda. Later, experts at the LSU School of Anthropology confirmed the bones belonged to Melinda. They also reported finding cut marks near her neck and down her spine, suggesting someone slit her throat. On April 3, 1987, Livingston Parish Chief Criminal Deputy Willie Graves told reporters that detectives from his office interviewed Melinda’s boyfriend and several friends and family , but had identified no suspects in the case. Melinda’s family buried her on April 5. One year later, not far from Charlotte Sauerwin’s abandoned car on Highway 449, bloodhounds found the 24-year-old florist’s partially nude body on cutover timberland off Cane Market Road in Walker. Someone, the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab reported, had strangled Charlotte before cutting her throat.

Police also reported someone had ripped the stereo system from Charlotte’s car and taken approximately 400 dollars in jewelry and the victim’s.380 Beretta handgun. Three weeks later, assisted by the Baton Rouge Police Department, the sheriff’s office prepared and distributed a sketch depicting a possible suspect in the murder. They described the man sought as a white male, age 40 to 45, about 5foot-11, and weighing 175 to 190 pounds. The man had brown, peppery-gray hair. When last seen, Wayne Sanders, the sheriff’s Chief of Operations, said, the man dressed neatly and drove a white mid-size automobile, displaying out-ofstate plates. Friends told sheriff’s office detectives that Charlotte met this man in the Walker laundromat. The man offered to help Charlotte and her fiancé secure a loan to purchase some land and later met Charlotte to see the lot. On August 14, 1988, Wayne Sanders told reporters that his office received multiple phone calls connecting Charlotte’s death, along with two others in the parish, to a Satanic cult. Sanders wanted to assure the public that any “cultic activity” in the parish was unrelated to the Charlotte Sauerwin murder. From there, the case went cold and remained that way for 22 years. In April 2010, a DNA database hit linked serial killer Roy Melanson, serving time in a Colorado prison for killing a 25-year-old photographer, to DNA found on Charlotte Sauerwin’s sock. At the time of Charlotte’s murder, Melanson’s appearance exactly matched the drawing and description circulated by police in 1988. Additionally, when Livingston Parish detectives Stanley Carpenter and Ben Bourgeois flew to the prison for a fresh DNA sample, they discovered Colorado police arrested the former Breaux Bridge native with Charlotte Sauerwin’s handgun in his possession. Police had also entered the pistol’s serial number into the FBI database. However, Livingston Parish detectives had not found it. Detectives working Charlotte’s case had written down the wrong serial number. The number scrawled in their report was one digit off. In the book, Smooth Talker: Trail of Death, Charlotte’s boyfriend, welder Vince

Lejeune, explained why the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office distributed the drawings resembling Melanson in 1988, but never legitimately considered the serial killer option. He said Chief Detective Kearney Foster believed Charlotte’s friends invented the laundromat guy to cover for her fiancé. Vince told author Steve Jackson that Foster routinely had him picked up to review gory crime scene photos, trying to convince him to confess. In time, according to Vince Lejeune, Foster convinced Charlotte’s family and their friends that he murdered his fiancé. According to the book, one person interviewed by Foster told Vince that Foster said in their interview, “That boy killed that girl, and I’m going to catch him.” By 2010, Kearney Foster had retired, leaving Chief Detective Stan Carpenter to tell Charlotte’s fiancé of the DNA hit. According to Vincent Lejeune, the detective explained the findings matter-of-factly without apology in the presence of Charlotte’s sister. Charlotte’s parents had died believing Vince had killed their daughter. Johnny Stafford had been right. A serial killer did rape and murder Charlotte Sauerwin. However, Melinda’s murder remains an unsolved and very cold case. Although Roy Melanson escaped a Texas prison before Charlotte’s death, the confessed serial killer remained incarcerated as some other monster killed Melinda Schubert.

Pam Kinamore

Before the arrest of confessed serial killer Derrick Todd Lee—a black man who drove a maroon pick-up truck—the Baton Rouge Police Department circulated a sketch and description of their prime suspect in over two dozen homicides—a white male driving a white pick-up truck. Two earlier witnesses provided investigators with this description regarding one specific crime, the murder of a Denham Springs shopkeeper named Pam Piglia Kinamore. When the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab identified the body of the 44-yearold former beauty queen on August 17, 2002, journalist Melissa Moore wrote, “The killings of more than two dozen women in and around Baton Rouge during the past decade remain unsolved. Although the killer or killers dumped most of the victims in secluded areas, only a few of the twenty-nine homicides have been conclusively linked by DNA.” Although police announced otherwise at the time, during Derrick Todd Lee’s murder trial, jurors learned that Pam Kinamore’s homicide might have been one of those cases not conclusively linked. After three days under the hot summer sun, her corpus delicti degraded. Unable to produce a complete set of markers from her genetic profile, medical examiners identified Pam’s remains using only dental records. The nightmare of Pam Kinamore’s abduction began at 9:30, on a Friday evening, July 12, 2002. That night, following her usual routine, Pam Kinamore locked the doors of Comforts and Joys, her antique shop at 108 Range Avenue in the Denham Springs Antique Village, and presumably drove home to 8338 Briarwood Place in Baton Rouge. At 11:45, Pam’s husband, Byron, arrived home, finding his wife’s car in the driveway. Inside, he found Pam’s wallet, watch, and keys in the kitchen, a bathtub filled with cold water, some furniture out of place, and spots of blood on a bedroom rug, but no Pam. Before morning, Byron called the police and reported his wife missing, and the

next day, he had to tell their 12-year-old son, Jacob, who had been away at camp. Two days after Pam disappeared, a 28-year-old Mississippi woman reported that a white man forced her into his white pick-up on Interstate 10 and raped her. Following the assault, she escaped somewhere between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. A police sketch artist created a composite drawing based on the victim’s description of the white man she described driving the white pick-up truck. On the following day, July 16, 2002, a Department of Transportation and Development survey crew found Pam’s naked body, baking in the sun south of Interstate 10’s Whiskey Bay exit. At the postmortem conducted by the Orleans Parish Coroner’s office, examiners found defensive injuries on both hands, her left elbow, and the backs of both of her arms and knees. Noting physical evidence of forceful penetration of the vagina and the anus, examiners utilized a sexual assault kit but obtained only minute traces of DNA using vaginal swabs. The autopsy proved someone strangled her before cutting her throat in three places, slicing through her skin and windpipe. Below the larynx, a sharp instrument pierced her right carotid artery and both jugular veins. One week later, another witness told police that she had seen a woman resembling Pam Kinamore, the night she vanished, slumped in the enger seat of a white pick-up truck being driven by a white male with a slight build. She said, just after 3 that morning, the vehicle sped westwards down I-10, before turning at the Whiskey Bay exit, where the survey crew found Pam’s body. On the upper left portion of the tailgate, the witness saw the shape of a fish, possibly the “fishers of men” symbol churches made prevalent in the 1990s. Later that week, police released their composite drawing of the suspect, along with a detailed description of his vehicle, a white late 90s model General Motors or Chevrolet single-cab pick-up truck with a poorly painted black rear bumper. The license plate, from an undetermined state, may have contained the

characters “JT341” but not in that specific order. Trineisha Dene Colomb, 23, of Lafayette, was found beaten to death in a field in Scott, Louisiana, on November 24, 2002, two days after family found her abandoned car near her mother’s gravesite. Again, witnesses reported seeing a white pick-up truck leaving the secluded area shortly before discovering her body. Soon after, the Baton Rouge Police Department, West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office, Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Louisiana State Police, and the FBI, formed a multi-agency murder task force, determined to catch the killer. At first, the task force actively solicited help from the public. However, Corporal Mary Ann Godawa of the Baton Rouge Police Department, task force spokesperson, said their tip line generated more than 6,500 leads before the end of August, more than their team could investigate thoroughly. After contracting FBI-trained criminal profilers, the task force took the unusual step of releasing their developed profile to the public. According to that profile, the killer was a white male between the ages of 25 and 35. He earned less than average income and generally avoided interaction with people. He may have been a construction or plant worker, someone with the strength to carry Pam Kinamore’s body through boggy terrain. The report said the killer might have been insecure around women, particularly those displaying sophistication. His victims, the profile suggested, dismissed him as awkward but harmless. Police said evidence suggested the killer stalked victims before attacking them and carefully planned their murders. The profilers believed that the killer might give himself away, eventually displaying frustration over the media coverage of his crimes and openly criticize investigators. However, under pressure from the public, the task force did not allow these forensic specialists time to test their theory. Back in April of 2002, Angela Ross, a DNA specialist with the Louisiana State Crime Lab, discovered DNA evidence linking the deaths of Gina Wilson Green and Charlotte Murray Pace, two women in their early 20s, murdered near Louisiana State University.

The following November, the task force collected DNA samples from 600 volunteers, followed by another 100 potential suspects that December. Six months later, a forensic specialist in Florida reported that some rare DNA markers in the Baton Rouge samples suggested that an African American may have committed one of the murders. The task force, now convinced their DNA evidence outweighed eyewitness testimony, abandoned their search for the subject in the FBI profile, along with the white male and his white pick-up truck. Although DNA did suggest a single murderer had perpetrated two of the crimes, investigators had no DNA match in any database maintained at the local, state, or national levels. The task force took steps to change this on May 22, 2003. On that day, police interviewed for a second time, Diane Alexander, who reported to the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office that a black man had raped her. From this interview and a prior interview with Diane’s son, another sketch artist produced two new drawings, which ultimately lead to the DNA testing of Derrick Todd Lee, booked for the rape of Diane Alexander and the murders of Geralyn DeSoto and Charlotte Murray Pace. Police also reported finding a telephone cord near the Whiskey Bay crime scene that they believed Lee removed from Diane Alexander’s home. If they are correct, the man in the white truck may have driven there working as an accomplice of Derrick Todd Lee. Checking Lee’s criminal record, there is one documented incident of the career criminal working with an accomplice. In 1993, a Tangipahoa Parish grand jury returned true bills against Lee and another St. Francisville resident, 33-year-old Thomas Whitaker, Jr., for aggravated burglary. According to the indictment, the pair beat Melvin Foster, a 74-year-old Independence man, and stealing less than $600. For the assault on Geralyn DeSoto, a jury convicted Derrick Todd Lee, sentencing him to life imprisonment without parole. For the rape and murder of Charlotte Murray Pace, a judge sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

On January 21, 2016, Lee died of heart disease at age 48, still awaiting execution. In time, investigators learned that multiple serial killers prowled the streets of South Louisiana in the years before and after Pam Kinamore’s murder. Among those later convicted and jailed were Derrick Todd Lee, Sean Vincent Gillis, Jeffrey Lee Guillory, John Allen Muhammad, and Ronald Dominique. Their victim counts total more than 70, but many area homicides and disappearances have not been definitively attributed to any of these monsters, leaving investigators to wonder.

Barbara Blount

On a Friday, May 2 , 2008, a 58-year-old Sunday school teacher named Barbara Blount disappeared from her rural home north of Holden, Louisiana. Relatives found her doors unlocked, her car missing, and her kitchen cabinets opened with pots and pans stacked on the kitchen floor. Later that day, sheriff’s deputies found Barbara’s car less than a quarter-mile from her home, concealed by foliage off Road 7, a narrow gravel trail leading to a hunting camp. For both the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, finding the car that day marked the last significant break in the case. More than a dozen years later, investigators have no clue what happened to Barbara Blount or why. As she did routinely, Kristie Blount phoned her mother at lunchtime on the day of Barbara’s disappearance, but, uncharacteristically, that day, her mother did not answer the phone. Three hours later, still no answer. Kristie phoned her cousin, who lived nearby, asking him to drive down the road to ensure that her mom was okay. Barbara’s nephew, Raymond, drove straight to his aunt’s home in the 38000 block of Louisiana State Highway 1036, six miles from Magnolia Baptist Church, where Barbara taught Sunday school. Raymond found the back door to the carport ajar, open approximately three feet. Near the steps, he saw Barbara’s portable house phone on the carport, and, inches away, the phone’s dislodged battery. Raymond described the scene to Kristie over his cell phone while she urged him to enter the house. Inside, he found his aunt’s cell phone and her glasses, two items Kristie said her mom rarely left the house without. Raymond walked room-to-room, calling for his “Aunt Barbara Ann” without hearing a response. On the dresser in her bedroom, he noticed the third item Barbara never left the house without—her loaded.38 revolver. Next to the revolver, stood a bottle of men’s cologne. It belonged to Raymond’s “Uncle Junior,” who died four years earlier.

Henry Euel Blount, Jr., grew up in Holden. He regularly drove to Barbara Ann Barber’s family home in Bogalusa until he won her over. When they married, the couple settled in Holden, where they raised two children, along with a few dogs, chickens, and cattle. Junior Blount died on June 25, 2004, at age 55. That morning, driving a gasoline tanker truck, owned by the Lard Oil Company, he picked up more than 8,000 gallons of fuel at the Chalmette Refinery. According to co-workers in Denham Springs, before the accident, Junior Blount had an impeccable driving record. However, leaving the plant that morning, investigators said Junior crossed the railroad track in front of a Norfolk Southern freight train. Signals marked the crossing but without automatic arms to stop traffic. Customarily, only light traffic moved through this intersection, but trains had the right of way even when the traffic light turned green. Ronnie Alonzo, a St. Bernard Parish School Board , was standing outside the school district’s istration building less than a block away when he heard the long train whistle. As he turned to look, the engine plowed into the tanker’s center. “It was slow motion, like something out of a movie. The train kind of lifted the tanker and turned it on its side,” Alonzo said. “And as it turned on its side, the tanker cracked. You could see the liquid coming out, and seconds after the liquid came out, the flames started rolling.” The resulting explosion sent flames between 50 to 60 feet into the air, and the billowing black smoke drifted overhead for days, visible throughout metro New Orleans. Junior Blount died in the explosion, along with train engineer Dennis Vinson, 58, of Covington, and conductor Anthony J. “Tony” Mills, 58, of Carriere, Mississippi. A third railroad employee, brakeman Charles LaBella, 58, of Chalmette, jumped to safety before the metal of the train melted. Interviewed in the Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Journal, a newspaper sponsored by the locomotive unions, union lashed out at Blount

following his death, threatening a lawsuit against his employer for “the murder of their brothers.” Left a widow, Raymond’s aunt mourned her husband’s death four years. Her children also mourned, but Kristie said in multiple interviews that her father’s death in many ways brought her and her brother, Ricky, closer to their mom. Both lived down the street, but still ate most of their meals in her home. In Barbara’s kitchen that afternoon, Raymond found pots and pans stacked outside cabinets, and the windows open. “Spring cleaning,” Kristie told Raymond, as he expressed concern about the cool breeze blowing through the house and the rain beginning to fall outside. Kristie told Raymond to close the windows. She had left work and was on her way home to help find her mother. Just up the road, a teenager recognized his former Sunday school teacher’s car partially hidden by trees and shrubbery near a gravel road, not far from Louisiana Highway 1036. When the teenager told his mother, Christine, she phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. At 4:15 that afternoon, sheriff’s deputies met Christine and her son at the crime scene, a quarter of a mile from Barbara’s home. There, they found Barbara’s silver four-door 2006 Toyota Camry parked 25 yards off the main road, partially concealed between two trees. Her keys, they found half-buried in gravel, approximately 20 yards from the car. By then, Kristie and Raymond had also called the police, but soon after, the case went cold. On the tenth anniversary of Barbara’s disappearance, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard called a press conference to ask the public for information that could help his detectives in the investigation. “Somebody knows something,” he said. “Even if you’ve given us information in the past, give it to us again,” the sheriff pleaded. “We don’t want to miss anything.” The sheriff said his investigators interviewed family and contractors who visited the property in 2008, and they even polygraphed some. They also

obtained DNA from one person of interest, but ultimately, they collected no viable evidence. “We still take this case very seriously, but it’s frustrating,” the sheriff said. “What happened to her? We have very few unsolved cases, so it’s important not to let this type of case go away.” Jason Ard, who was Sheriff Willie Graves’ chief deputy when Barbara vanished, said that robbery was not a motive in the case. Guns, jewelry, and other valuables, he said, were untouched and in plain sight within the home. He also described how the weather hindered the sheriff’s office’s investigation the day Barbara disappeared. “We had a horrible rain that day, and the whole road was covered with water,” he said. “It rained so much that water covered the floorboard of her car, and deputies today still talk about watching the water rise waiting for the tow truck. It came up that fast.” As the floodwaters subsided the following Monday, volunteers combed the woods on foot and horseback, searching for days amid hazardous weather conditions. In the years that followed, investigators searched the area with cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar. Hunters routinely walk those woods, but to date, no one has found anything of substance related to Barbara Blount’s disappearance. The available evidence suggests that Barbara Blount answered her door that morning with a phone in her hand. Since she did not respond instead with her revolver, the visitor may not have been a stranger, or he may have surprised her by approaching the house on foot. Perhaps, at gunpoint, the intruder forced Barbara to drive the quarter-mile to another waiting vehicle, leaving behind her glasses and cell phone, and dropping her home phone in the struggle. In this scenario, Barbara’s abductor sat in the enger seat, forcing her to drive. After parking near the man’s truck, Barbara ran, attempting to escape. When he caught up to her, she dropped her keys in the gravel. If it happened this way, it occurred just as two eyewitnesses ed and saw the frantic look on

Barbara’s face. In 2020, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard asked two social media celebrities to help find a missing Sunday school teacher and gave them full access to his office’s private case files. Inside those files, Woody Overton and Jim Rathmann, both former Livingston Parish deputies, learned that investigators interviewed two eyewitnesses, who saw Barbara Blount within minutes of her abduction, standing on the dirt road where police later found her abandoned car. She stood, talking to a man who has never been located, a man whose description no one released publicly until I interviewed the witnesses in 2021. According to Woody Overton, the sheriff’s office originally discounted the eyewitness report because the woman described as Barbara Blount did not wear glasses. However, she was wearing the tank top, pin-striped shorts, and purple Crocs Barbara Blount wore the day she vanished. When I located eyewitnesses Wesley and Terrie Collins, they were surprised the sheriff’s office had discounted their report. “All we wanted to do was help find this lady,” Terrie Collins told me. “I don’t understand why they haven’t found the man by now. Very few people traveled Highway 1036 in those days. Somebody knows who he is. We heard someone said he drove a white Chevrolet, but we saw him in a silver Ford.” “The truck wasn’t small either,” Wes Collins added. “It was a full-size truck, an F-100 or maybe a 150, but not a 4-wheel drive.” Wesley Collins grew up in Louisiana, but in 2008, he and Terrie lived in Fort Payne, Alabama. Before Barbara Blount vanished, Wes, Terrie, and their three youngest children visited relatives in Holden. They likely witnessed Barbara Blount’s abduction as they left the area, headed back to Alabama. “We usually took 1036 to the Interstate highway in Amite and went north from there. A rainstorm came that day, so we cut our visit short and headed out,” Wes said. “We had an 8-to-10-hour drive ahead of us, 463 miles.” On a Friday afternoon, May 2, 2008, Barbara Blount, a Sunday school teacher at Magnolia Baptist Church in Holden, left her country home, drove a quarter-mile down the street, and disappeared.

Soon after, a ing teenager recognized her car in the woods by Road 7, a dirt road into a hunting camp, and phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. On the dirt road, the concerned teen also found a set of car keys, several yards from the abandoned vehicle. As a deputy drove to the suspected traffic accident, Barbara Blount’s daughter and nephew phoned police and reported her missing. Back at her house, investigators found Barbara’s cordless home phone outside and her eyeglasses and cellphone just inside a locked door left open. Inside on a dresser, investigators found a handgun Barbara owned, but they never located her purse or wallet. Her daughter told police Barbara Blount never left home without her eyeglasses. “We saw her standing in the misting rain,” Terrie ed. “She had keys in her hand, and something else. I really thought it was her glasses. I can’t be sure, but that made sense to me, taking your glasses off when the rain started.” “We had just come around a curve,” Wes said, “and we were pulling our camper. We had to slow in that curve. That’s really how we happened to see her as clearly as we did.” Wes drew a map, showing the position of the three vehicles as they rounded the curve. Barbara Blount’s 2006 Toyota Camry sat in the middle of Road 7 where it ed Highway 1036 as if she had just pulled in to turn around. Barbara stood behind her car and in front of a silver Ford parked facing her on the side of Highway 1036. She stood facing the truck’s driver’s side door, talking to the driver. “It looked like she had just pulled over to talk to someone she knew,” Wes said. “I was driving, so I noticed more about the vehicles than the people talking. The truck was not new, but not real old, maybe 1998.” “When we came around that curve,” Terrie said, “the lady turned to look at us and smiled as you do in rural areas, but something seemed off, I got this eerie feeling like something wasn’t right.” “She may have been being lured,” Wes said, “but for sure, no violence had started. The man was still sitting in the truck.”

“After she smiled, I looked over at the guy,” Terrie said. “He wore mirrored sunglasses like state troopers wore back then, and he had light-colored hair, blonde or bleached with dark roots, almost in a bowl cut. His face was thin, kind of sunken in.” “Sallow,” Wes added. “The man kept a blank expression as we ed,” Terrie said, “but when I made eye , he kind of slumped in the seat and pushed his head back toward the door like he didn’t want us to see his face.” By week’s end, Wes and Terrie were back in Alabama, when Terrie read of Barbara Blount’s disappearance on social media and phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. Although Terrie did not know the victim, she described the lady perfectly, including the striped shorts and unmatched shirt she wore that day. Detective Chuck Watts instructed her and Wes to report to the Norfolk Police Department to review mugshots. The couple selected Barbara Blount from a collection of photographs, but none of the mugshots provided resembled the man in the silver Ford. Later, Wes and Terrie returned to Louisiana and escorted detectives to the scene where they saw the lady standing, and detectives confirmed the location was within yards of where they found Barbara’s empty car. Perhaps the man Barbara stopped to talk to was a friend, or perhaps a stranger uninvolved with her disappearance. If so, why has he not stepped forward, itting he was the last person to see Barbara Blount the day she vanished, and why is this man not assisting police in finding out what really happened to her in 2008? Like Wesley and Terrie Collins, I wonder.

The Psychics

Since I wrote the first word on Barbara Blount’s disappearance in 2008, people claiming to be psychic mediums have ed me, insisting that I share what they have allegedly seen. ittedly, I have avoided mentioning their claims in my reports because I have trouble believing such gifts exist outside the Holy Bible. Yes, I have seen evidence of “mother’s intuition” or similar in my lifetime. My wife, my mother, and all my grandmothers have shown me enough to warrant that belief. However, it is quite a different matter to foretell someone’s murder or provide details of their burial from miles away—as these self-proclaimed clairvoyants profess regarding the abduction of Barbara Blount. If I do not believe, you may wonder: why do I mention the matter here? I do so to appease the multitude of readers who do believe and continuously write, asking that I share such information, hoping someone reading my newspaper column will have and share tangible details that the claims of the so-called seers. A reader in Ponchatoula wrote, “Why does it matter whether you believe? All investigators have the same goal, to find Miss Blount and closure for her family and friends. If the shared dreams do not help, no harm, no foul. But should they lead to new information, why would you care what prompted someone to share it?” Reluctantly, I considered the question. Had any psychic mediums outside of television and movies helped law enforcement successfully? The answer surprised me. Although police rarely seek psychic assistance without a family insisting, and more seers fail than succeed, there are successes related to missing person cases I cannot explain away. In 2008, an Australian “spirit medium” named Debbie Malone solved a 5-year cold case. Prostitute Maria Scott disappeared in February 2003. Police believed she committed suicide. Malone dreamed that Maria Scott died from stab wounds on a farm and led police to the body and the knife used to murder her. Similarly, in 1961, detectives in Brooklyn asked a Dutch clairvoyant, Gerard

Croiset, to help find a missing girl named Edith Kiecorius. Croiset, living in the Netherlands, asked investigators to send him the girl’s photo, some of her clothes, and a map of the area where she disappeared. Croiset sent the map back with a location marked, saying police would find the girl’s body in a gray building, and they did. In 1996, police say psychic Philippe Durant pointed them to the location of a girl named Pamela Brown using a lock of the victim’s hair, a plumb line, and a map of the area where she vanished. A truck driver discovered the woman’s dead body before police arrived. However, the location matched the one marked on Durant’s map. In 2001, a DNA match convicted mechanic Edward Grant of killing a woman named Penny Serra thirty years earlier. However, in 1971, psychic Pascarella Downey “saw” the victim covered in motor oil by a man wearing a uniform. The name tag on the uniform began with the letter E. In 2016, Carol Pate solved a 29-year-old missing person’s case. Patsy Clark of Arkansas disappeared in 1987. Pate told the woman’s family to find a cow pasture surrounded by woodlands near the victim’s home. Police found the body there and are still looking for Patsy Clark’s murderer today. In New Orleans, on June 9, 1987, 27-year-old Andre Daigle left home to meet a friend for dinner, drinks, and billiards. No one saw Daigle alive again. New Orleans police told Daigle’s sister in Southern California they did not suspect foul play. However, the sister, Elise McGinley, ed psychic Rosemarie Kerr. Kerr touched a photo of Daigle and told Elise someone murdered her brother and dumped his body in a swamp. Later, Kerr led New Orleans police to that swamp, where the coroner’s office recovered the body. These events led to Kerr testifying in a New Orleans murder trial that convicted two men of killing Andre Daigle for sport. Rosemarie Kerr, the first psychic to testify in a murder trial, died in 2015. Now, consider Barbara Blount. Last seen by Wesley and Terrie Collins standing outside her car on Road 7, less than a mile from her home, talking to a sallow-faced, bleach-haired man in a silver Ford pick-up, Barbara vanished in 2008. Livingston Parish sheriff’s

deputies found her car near the same dirt road later that evening. A neighbor found her keys nearby, but investigators never found Barbara Blount. An avid reader of Bayou Justice insisted that I speak with a woman who professes to be a medium with three instances of success working with various law enforcement agencies in Florida. This woman said a sexual deviant half Barbara’s age abducted the Sunday school teacher and kept her a prisoner on his property for several years. A woman in Holden, a long-time friend of Barbara’s, dreamed repeatedly that a man killed her friend and buried the body on Road 3 within miles of the Blount home. In Baton Rouge, another clairvoyant envisioned Barbara buried under a slab of cement below a pen for domestic animals. Like Barbara’s friend, this alleged seer also saw Barbara entombed near her home on Highway 1036 in Holden. Have I now reviewed enough cases to believe mediums do help law enforcement? I remain unconvinced. Victors write their own histories. For every cognitive who successfully helped investigators, police exposed another as a fraud. Time vanquishes the losers, along with their stories. We should give that more thought before destroying any concrete kennels.

Uncle Dudley

On October 8, 1973 , the front page of The Denham Springs News featured a photograph of Dudley Charlie Arledge. The Livingston Parish Cattlemen’s Association had stormed the Livingston courthouse, irate that District Judge Grover Covington released four convicted rustlers on probation, rather than sentencing them to prison. In his defense, the judge said only that Dudley Arledge, a local parole officer, talked him into it. Fellow Parole Officer Morris Easley spoke next, defending Dudley and the four cattle rustlers. “I’ve experienced cattle taken off my own land,” Easley said, “But I think the judge made the right decision. In Livingston Parish, feelings are stronger against cattle theft than any other crime, but we have fewer repeat offenders with rustlers than other criminals. These boys deserve a second chance. If they violate parole, they go to Angola, and they know that.” The mob grew angrier, and Dudley Arledge raised a hand. “Who here can a convicted cattle thief stealing a second time?” he asked. “It doesn’t happen. But I’ll bet you know many who went to Angola and came back worse men than when they went in. If one of these boys turns out salvageable, I think this probation business is a success.” Before the night ended, Kelly Howze, President of the Cattlemen’s Association, agreed. “If we can save one rustler from the fires of hell and lead him up the road to heaven,” he said, “We have done a great thing.” Dudley distributed his business cards to the crowd and asked them to call him if they had further questions or concerns, and they did. However, their questions had nothing to do with cattle rustlers. They wanted to talk about other articles in the same edition of The Denham Springs News. At the top of the page, the headline read: “Grand Jury Report Expected,” and the accompanying story covered a money shortage in a parish controlled by Livingston Parish Sheriff Taft Faust. According to an audit, $9,151 (over $55,400 in today’s dollars) had gone missing. And, in the opinion section of the paper, readers wrote to complain that Chief Deputy Odom Graves brokered “Good Ol’ Boy” deals, allowing jailed criminals to come and go at their leisure. The concerned citizens calling on Dudley wanted him to run for sheriff of

Livingston Parish. Two years earlier, Dudley Arledge graduated from Loyola University with a degree in Criminal Justice, paid for by the New Orleans Police Department. Homesick, he left NOPD soon after, accepting a parole and probation officer position near his family in Walker. Dudley had enlisted with NOPD following his discharge from the armed forces in 1964. An Army buddy told him the department offered a program to help fund college for police officers seeking a law enforcement degree. And in 1965, parttime student, full-time patrolman Dudley Arledge hit the streets. Just after one on a Sunday morning, April 25, 1965, Patrolmen Dudley Arledge and William Roever apprehended a burglar, Nathaniel James. James, a former resident of Louisiana State Penitentiary, broke into the Chestnut Street apartment of 22-year-old Robert Ross. Ross, returning from a Tee Tee Red performance at the Sho-bar on Bourbon Street, found James stealing jewelry, and a scuffle ensued. Nathaniel James crashed through a second-floor window onto the street and hobbled away with a twisted ankle. When the patrolmen arrived 20 minutes later, Ross said the bandit was long gone. However, walking the neighborhood, Officers Arledge and Roever found the escapee hiding under a parked car. The New Orleans States-Item awarded them “Badges of the Week” four days later. At 8:30 on a Tuesday evening, July 20, 1965, Second District Officers Dudley Arledge and Frank McNeil responded to a call from Geraldine Adams at 4519 Annunciation Street. She reported her headlights reflecting off the top of an automobile floating in a pond on the riverside of River Drive. Diving into the water, the officers confirmed no one remained inside the automobile. However, the car owner’s wife had reported him missing. The following October, four Second District police officers captured a serial rapist whom newspapers described as being “at the very top of local crime ledgers’ most wanted list.” Most recently, he reportedly raped two students at gunpoint near the university. Once again, the newspaper awarded Dudley Arledge a “Badge of the Week,” along with Officers Richard Huth, Marvin Gates, Frank McNeil, and Francis Chapoton. On December 1, 1965, two purse-snatching teenagers grabbed a bag from Mrs.

Percy Davis, 49, near her home at 3914 Perrier Street. The woman screamed, alerting Patrolmen Dudley Arledge and Carl Wagner, who chased down and tackled the 16-year-olds, turning them over to the Juvenile Bureau. One week before Christmas that year, Andrew Louis, 29, of 1131 South Rampart, exited the backdoor of a finance company office on South Carrolton Street at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. As he did, Officers Dudley Arledge and Paul Lee stood waiting for the bandit with their guns drawn. On April 22, 1966, Officer Arledge was standing in the 8800 block of Palmetto when two men rounded a corner, saw him, and ran. The officer shouted to his partner, who jumped from the car. Both gave chase and apprehended the runners. Harry Stewart, 26, and Jake Taffaro, 43, it turns out, had just committed armed robbery, robbing a city bus driver. The following November, another pair of robbers, one armed with a.25-caliber pistol, had a 50-year-old cashier, Fay Thigpen, lie on the floor while they robbed her seafood shop on a Tuesday night. When the bandits stepped outside, Officers Dudley Arledge and Albert Ettiene stood waiting for them. One week later, the newspaper awarded Dudley another “Badge of the Week,” writing, “Patrolmen Arledge and Ettiene worked long hours in an investigation of a series of uptown university sector house burglaries. They nabbed the infamous burglar ‘John, the Baptist’ and developed leads on several in his mob.” In January 1967, a 15-year-old purse-snatcher slashed plain-clothed Patrolman Alfred Boudreaux with a switchblade knife and ran. Officer Boudreaux then shot the boy, leaving his partner, Dudley Arledge, writing up the report. A February headline read: “Infamous Burglar Convicted 4th Time,” and recounted Dudley Arledge’s latest arrest and the subsequent conviction of John “the Baptist” Chancellor. In March, James Williams, 24, and Robert Stewart, 38, robbed the Bernius Drugstore on Jeanette Street at gunpoint. Second District Officers Arledge and Chapoton recognized their descriptions and busted them at their homes. In April, Acting Police Superintendent Presley J. Trosclair, Jr., praised Dudley Arledge and Francis Chapoton for apprehending four men charged in the shooting death of a milkman. Trosclair said the two patrolmen investigated the

case on their own time and apprehended the men on their off-hours. On July 18, 1967, Patrolmen Dudley Arledge and Ernest Meisner arrested Calvin Blackburn, 27, and Felton Stewart, 29, with theft and possession of $59 in cold cuts, stolen earlier that evening from a Time Saver on South Carrollton. On December 5, 1967, a telephone repairman complained about a man named Henry Hawkins, 35, threatening him. When Dudley approached Hawkins for questioning, Hawkins threw a knife at the patrolman. The knife lodged in a wall inches from Dudley’s left ear. The last time NOPD Officer Dudley Arledge made headlines was in 1971 when he stopped a shootout on St. Charles Avenue between Joseph Williams, 23, and James Williams, 26, two brothers working for the Sewage and Water Board. In 1975, Livingston Parish Sheriff Taft Faust decided not to seek re-election, and Dudley agreed to run. However, the Livingston Parish political machine brought in a ringer from Springfield, Baton Rouge Police Officer Rudolph Ratcliff. With the outgoing istration’s opposition votes diluted, Chief Deputy Odom Graves easily won the sheriff’s seat. This week, Dudley Arledge, 81, died at his home in Walker.

Prayers

In 2020, I found myself praying more than usual. I prayed for the victims and potential victims of a plague, where, here in Louisiana, seven out of ten of those killed by the pandemic were black. I prayed for the families of victims and of the businesses that will never reopen, and I thanked God for the stock market crash the bailouts prevented. I took a knee for George Floyd, and for Americans who fear they might be the next to die from skin darkness. However, I also prayed for the dedicated career police officers, walking with new targets on their backs, put there by the “Abolish the Badge” and “Defund Police” movements. I prayed, too, for the veteran officers, still mourning friends killed in the line of duty, and I hurt with them when I saw the “Blue Lives Murder” t-shirts marketed online. In 2020, I prayed for a 77-year-old sheriff’s deputy killed by an African American in Mississippi. Deputy Sheriff James Blair died transporting a prisoner from a psychiatric evaluation at a mental health facility. In addition to working as a transport officer, James Blair also served as a constable in Lincoln County and worked in law enforcement in Pike County and Louisiana. The day Deputy James Blair died, a doctor had just completed his prisoner’s involuntary evaluation. Deputy Blair was helping the prisoner back into the patrol car when the inmate snatched the deputy’s service weapon and killed him with it. The prisoner fled, only to be apprehended the following day. James Blair served the public for over 50 years. He is survived by his wife and grandsons, whom they were raising following the death of his daughter. George Reynolds, undersheriff in Simpson County, told the Clarion-Ledger that

he never saw Deputy Blair in a bad mood. “He was very jovial, and he loved life,” Reynolds said. “It is a tragic loss for our department, a void no one will ever fill at the sheriff’s office. Every day was a life memory with him.” I also prayed for the family of a slain Baton Rouge police officer. Lieutenant Glenn Dale Hutto, 45, died of gunshot wounds in 2020. Witnesses say a murder suspect Hutto sought to question, killed him and critically wounded fellow officer Corporal Derrick Maglone. An African American male, witnesses say, ambushed both officers in a quiet neighborhood. The Baton Rouge Police Department promoted Hutto posthumously after he served the force with honor for 21 years. Before the ambush, according to affidavits obtained by the Associated Press, Ronnie Kato’s girlfriend of 18 years told police she escaped to her mother’s home on North Pamela Drive following a violent argument with her boyfriend. Inside the house, she heard her car horn beep and looked outside to see Kato. According to the documents, Kato kicked down the door and pistol-whipped her. When the girlfriend’s mother and stepfather intervened, witnesses report, Kato went outside and returned with a rifle, shooting and killing the stepfather. When Officers Hutto and Maglone arrived at the home, police believe, Kato turned the rifle on them. I also prayed for the family of Dave Patrick Underwood, an African American officer in the Federal Protective Service, shot guarding a federal courthouse during a protest in California. His sister mourned through social media, writing, “My brother was murdered on duty during the riots. Please stop this violence.” I prayed for the family of David Dorn, a retired African American police captain. Looters in St. Louis killed him, protecting a friend’s pawnshop. Dorn’s five children and ten grandchildren have a video of his death. One of the looters shared it on social media. I prayed for the family of Chris Beaty, an African American former offensive

lineman for Indiana University, who was shot dead in an alley in Indianapolis after leaving a violent protest. I also prayed for Korboi Balla, a black firefighter who poured his life savings into a Minneapolis sports bar, burned down by protesters. I prayed for Italia Marie Kelly, a 22-year-old black woman in Iowa, shot in the back while trying to escape a protest turned riot. Americans of all races and ethnicities are marching in solidarity for George Floyd, outraged over his death and those of others lost to police brutality. Our nation has the right to be angered by these injustices, but where is the outrage for the others. James Blair, Dave Patrick Underwood, Italia Marie Kelly, Glenn Dale Hutto, David Dorn, Chris Beaty, are among the few who lost their lives attempting to protect and serve their communities. How can we chant “defund the police” and still demand justice for the blue lives lost in the riots? Narratively, it is more convenient to pretend these homicides never happened, but if we are to say that all black lives matter—that all lives matter—we have to count everyone. Suspects die, and corrupt cops are exposed year-round. It troubles me that they make national news primarily in election years. As an aside, I believe that everything we know about politics is a lie. The financiers of both parties are continually scheming to play both sides against the middle, hoping we never realize that the left-wing and the right-wing belong to the same turkey. Even those veteran officers I mentioned earlier agree that police reform is desperately needed, but not by tossing the proverbial baby out with the bath. Perhaps, these officers suggest, the defund movement is someone’s political ploy to privatize and militarize our police force. Maybe, they reason, the owners of our politicians want to deregulate oversight and allot more tax money to government contractors and weapons manufacturers. If they are correct, I pray America is ultimately wise enough to see through the

scam and that God will help us find a better way. A long-kept notion, rooted in ignorance and fear, suggests that police departments are only useful if a subset of officers acts like thugs. According to myth, gratuitous brutality, a bad attitude, and the harassment of innocent people are essential parts of effective police work. Television demonstrates the belief in big cities like New York and Los Angeles. In Louisiana, police incidents are routine in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans newspapers. However, my time as an investigative journalist has proven that even small towns like Hammond are not immune to the problems caused by the misunderstood perception. I 1986 when someone butchered bank teller Selonia Reed and left her remains a block from the police station. A man phoned the Hammond, America radio show and told host Mary Pirosko, “Sometimes Hammond PD needs to kick butt in the streets to keep this town straight. The girl’s murderer would be in jail if some of these officers would knock a few heads like the old days.” Today, police brutality routinely dominates headlines nationwide, and we are no safer. Crime is far from down. According to a survey this year, voters in our state cite mass shootings as the most concerning violent crime in Louisiana, but not the crime most likely to happen. Mass shootings may be devastating, but these events are outliers. They do not reflect on the general safety of a city or state. In the survey, conducted by Safewise, a national and independent review firm, citizens of Louisiana reported that: 49% named mass shooting their top violent crime fear, compared to 38% nationwide. 31% think a mass shooting is likely to happen, versus 23% across the country. 6% reported that they, or someone they know, was personally affected by a mass shooting during their lifetime. The national average is 7%. In January, Louisiana saw its first mass shooting of the new year in Shreveport. No one died, but four were injured. In 2020 so far, there have been thirteen mass

shooting incidents in Louisiana, with nine people killed and sixty-three wounded. Louisiana had ninety-two mass shootings from 2014 to 2019, resulting in eightytwo deaths and 388 injuries. The year 2019 alone saw twenty-six mass shooting incidents. According to the FBI, Tallulah is Louisiana’s third safest city. They saw a mass shooting in 2019, where six were injured, and one died. There were 2,087 mass shooting incidents nationwide between 2014 and 2019, with 299 mass shooting incidents in 2020. This ing records guns only, not ing for nutcases blowing up motorhomes. Being robbed on the street is the violent crime that Louisianans think is most likely to occur—37% named it number one, compared to 27% nationally. Robberies in the safest cities ed for 16% of all property crime, with just twenty-four reported incidents. Statewide, robbery made up 18% of all property crimes. The most common violent crime in Louisiana was aggravated assault, comprising 72% of the violent crimes reported among the safest cities and 71% statewide. 20% reported experiencing violent crime in 2020, but only 12% across the country reported the same. Such surveys often cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime statistics to determine our safest cities. However, these statistics are only as useful as the filing officers in each local agency. According to those rankings, Lousiana’s top ten safest cities are Addis, Harahan, Tallulah, Youngsville, Mandeville, Scott, Minden, Jennings, DeRidder, and Westwego. The least safe are Opelousas, Hammond, Marksville, Bastrop, Crowley, Alexandria, Monroe, West Monroe, Leesville, and Walker. Hammond ranked number 53 out of fifty-four cities listed. Ponchatoula ranked 44, New Orleans ranked 42, Bogalusa ranked 41, Gonzales ranked 40, and Baton Rouge ranked thirty-nine. Denham Springs came in at 36, Slidell ranked 16, and

Covington just missed the top ten, coming in at 11. In 2020, I wondered how these statistics compared to the salaries of police officers in each city. However, those statistics did not help much this year. Hammond police officers collected an average salary of $54,500, and police officers in Jennings brought home $52,000. Jennings saw the top ten in the safest list. Hammond hit bottom. However, both cities are similar in population size. Both are semi-rural, and both made national news recently with police officers accused of corruption. I could not ascertain what the average city official earns in Louisiana. However, the average truck driver in our state brings home $64,000 annually. Neither of these groups wears a target on their chests when they work. None among them risk their lives for others. Law enforcement personnel across the board need more money, not just for salaries, but for training as well. Now, I am not advocating taking money from truck drivers to pay the police. However, I am not above saying our local politicians vastly overpay themselves —at least compared to police officers. The problem may not be money alone, but I still say salary influences the caliber of investigators and patrol personnel hired. We need to ensure our police departments are places good men and women want to work. There is a profound difference between an officer who will shoot, beat, stomp, or otherwise brutalize an innocent civilian and an officer who will run to the aid of someone under attack by criminals. We should not compare a lowlife with a badge running his hands all over a female motorist at a traffic stop to a dedicated officer frisking a known drug offender for weapons. There is no equivalence between a cop who films porn featuring himself tainting cupcakes for children and an officer who willingly takes a bullet in the line of duty. A recent letter to The Daily Star newspaper urged unconditional for law enforcement. I officers who believe the law applies to everyone, including those wearing uniforms. I officers who follow the law and department regulations, those who refuse to violate their oaths, no matter the provocation or temptation. I do not back those who think they have special privileges beyond

those they protect and serve. Likewise, I do not anyone shielding those officers whose behavior should bring shame to their department. Anyone who gives law officers unconditional es on their behavior has an unrealistic view of the police. These public servants are not magical miracle workers. They are merely human beings. A few are very good, some are very bad, and most are somewhere in between. In the years ahead, I pray we can ignore those who make every violation of the law a political issue. Let’s work together, each other, buy a cop a cup of coffee, and ensure the crime statistics in the years ahead significantly improve.

End of Watch

The “End of Watch” or “Last Radio Call” is a ceremony that follows a police officer’s death in the line of duty. In these ceremonies, all officers from the fallen hero’s unit gather around a police radio, as the dispatcher issues a call to the officer, followed by a silence and a second call. More silence follows, and the dispatcher announces that the officer has failed to respond. This chapter represents a Bayou Justice end of watch, ing some of southeast Louisiana’s fallen finest:

Henry S. Burkhalter End of Watch: Friday, April 7, 1899—Washington Parish Sheriff Henry Burkhalter, 45, was accidentally shot and killed when a deputy’s shotgun discharged. Sheriff Burkhalter was riding with a posse in search of several family wanted for murder. One of the deputies was dismounting his horse when his shotgun bumped the saddle. The impact forced one of the hammers down and caused the gun to discharge. The blast struck Sheriff Burkhalter in the chest. William Lattimore Lea, EOW: Tuesday, October 14, 1902—Kentwood Town Marshal William Lea, 47, was shot and killed in the act of revenge while patrolling the town at approximately seven in the evening. Several weeks prior, a man had been fined $50 after being arrested by Marshal Lea for selling whiskey. The man held a grudge against Marshal Lea, and earlier in the day, he and several friends got drunk and threatened him. Marshal Lea continued patrolling the town and was walking in front of the man’s store when someone shot him in the head with a.38 caliber rifle. John McGee, EOW: Sunday, September 29, 1912—Deputy Sheriff John McGee was shot and killed after arresting a man at a dance in the Calvert’s Quarters area of Hammond. Deputy McGee had been assigned to keep order at the dance and arrested a man who had started a disturbance. As they walked to the jail, the man pulled away from him and drew a revolver. Deputy McGee shot the subject in the leg as a crowd gathered around them as they stood in front of a house. A man in the house fired out of his door, striking Deputy McGee. Limus Walter Moak, EOW: Wednesday, March 23, 1921—Deputy Marshal

Limus Moak, 41, was beaten to death when he interrupted three men burglarizing an Amite pharmacy. All three subjects were arrested. Deputy Marshal Moak had served with the Amite Police Department for nine years, leaving behind a wife and three children. Robert Wesley Crain, EOW: Saturday, March 3, 1923 and Wiley Pierce, EOW: Saturday, March 3, 1923—Deputy Sheriffs’ Robert Crain, 35, and Wiley Pierce, 42, were shot and killed while attempting to arrest two men for making moonshine. One of the men produced a handgun and opened fire, killing both deputies. The suspects tried to hide Deputy Crain’s body under the carcass of a dead cow, and they buried Deputy Pierce’s body in a swamp. Both men were convicted of the murders and sentenced to death on March 23, 1923. J. Gordon Anderson, EOW: Saturday, May 13, 1933—Marshal Anderson, 50, was shot and killed during a struggle with a man he had just arrested near a Hammond garage. The 25-year-old suspect was shot and killed by other officers running to assist Marshal Anderson. The suspect had gone to the garage seeking vengeance on the owner who had fired him. Delos C. Wood, EOW: Saturday, July 21, 1934—Washington Parish Deputy Sheriff Delos Wood, 61, was shot and killed as he and several other deputies attempted to arrest a man at the man’s home. The suspect was convicted of Deputy Wood’s murder and sentenced to death. On January 11, 1935, an angry mob stormed his jail cell and shot him to death after the Supreme Court granted him a new trial. Hilton Hirem Morgan, EOW: Friday, August 20, 1948—Kentwood Town Marshal Hilton Morgan, 48, was shot and killed while attempting to break up a fight between several juveniles. One of the boys opened fire, striking Marshal Morgan. Despite being mortally wounded, Marshal Morgan, a WWI veteran, was able to return fire and killed the subject. Wilmer Phillip Trosclair, EOW: Sunday, May 2, 1954—Ponchatoula Police Officer Wilmer Trosclair, 33, was electrocuted after responding to a location on Highway 51 for reports of a downed electric wire. As he stepped out of his car to place flares, the line came in with his vehicle, causing his death. A erby notified police of the incident approximately 45 minutes later after driving past the scene and noticing Officer Trosclair on the

ground. Gus Gill, EOW: Saturday, July 12, 1958 and Jake Galloway, EOW: Saturday, July 12, 1958—Deputy Marshal Gus Gill, 67, and Deputy Marshal Jake Galloway, 68, both 15-year veterans with the Mandeville Police Department, were shot and killed after responding to a domestic disturbance. The male subject opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun, fatally wounding both officers. Oneal Moore, EOW: Wednesday, June 2, 1965—A U.S. Army veteran, Deputy Sheriff Oneal Moore, 34, was shot and killed when he and his partner were ambushed while on patrol. A pick-up truck pulled up alongside their patrol car, and an occupant in the truck’s bed opened fire, killing Deputy Moore and wounding his partner. Deputy Moore was Washington Parish’s first black deputy. Clarence Marigny, EOW: Thursday, July 20, 1967—Officer Marigny, 52, was shot and killed by a neighbor whom he had arrested several months earlier for stealing a lawnmower. The suspect located Officer Marigny while he was off duty and shot him in retaliation for the previous arrest. The suspect was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Officer Marigny was the first black officer to be killed in the line of duty in Covington. Earl Lucien Alfred, EOW: Wednesday, August 13, 1975—Sergeant Earl Alfred, 35, was shot and killed while responding to a robbery call at a Covington jewelry store. He was shot and killed with his gun as he struggled with the suspect. A 20-year-old store employee whom the suspect stabbed twenty-two times managed to crawl to Sergeant Alfred’s patrol car and call for help. The 26-year-old suspect was apprehended, convicted of murder, and sentenced to life. John William Bonnell, III, EOW: Tuesday, July 10, 1979—St. Tammany Parish Sergeant Bonnell, 23, was shot and killed during an undercover drug buy. Working with a confidential informant, he picked up a suspect to purchase narcotics during Operation Checkerboard. The suspect advised they would have to drive to New Orleans to get the drugs. The last thing the backup units heard Sergeant Bonnell say on his wire was, “Do we have enough gas to get to New Orleans?”

Damon L. Robichaux, EOW: Wednesday, July 21, 1982—A Trooper with State Police Troop A, Robichaux, 30, was accidentally shot and killed when his revolver fell to the floor and discharged, striking him in his chest. He had just been recalled to duty to provide an escort, and he was leaving his home when the incident occurred. Edward Toefield, Jr., EOW: Thursday, February 2, 1984—Deputy Sheriff Edward Toefield, 40, was shot and killed while attempting to arrest a bank robbery suspect in Amite. The man was wanted for robbing a bank in New Orleans and also for raping his daughter. Deputy Toefield encountered the man at the Hi-Ho Sam’s Restuarant and placed him under arrest. He was searching the suspect when the man pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Deputy Toefield. Richard Amacker Kent, III, EOW: Saturday, November 2, 1985—Deputy Sheriff Richard Kent, 37, was shot and killed after arresting a man who was attempting to break into a drink machine at Guy’s Grocery on Louisiana 38, east of Kentwood, just after 9 that evening. He served the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office for 18 years. Corbett W. Penton, EOW: Monday, February 6, 1989—Franklinton Assistant Police Chief Penton, 48, suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after a foot pursuit of a suspect. He had just arrested the man for ing a stolen check. As he escorted the man to his patrol car, the man suddenly broke free and fled on foot. Assistant Chief Penton pursued the suspect and apprehended him. Assistant Chief Penton collapsed after transporting the suspect to the jail. He served 21 years. Ronald M. Medeiros, Sr., EOW: Saturday, June 5, 1999—Killian Police Officer Ronald Medeiros, 55, was killed in a single-vehicle accident during a pursuit on State Route 22. During the chase, his patrol car went out of control, ran off the road, and flipped several times. He was assisting the Springfield Police Department in the pursuit. Officer Medeiros had served in law enforcement for 30 years. Randall James Spearman, EOW: Sunday, May 4, 2003—Police Officer Randall Spearman, 57, a 19-year law enforcement veteran, was struck and killed by the driver of a vehicle. He was directing traffic at an accident scene on LA 25, between Folsom and Covington at the time.

Hilery A. Mayo, Jr., EOW: Saturday, June 9, 2007—Deputy Hilery Mayo, 32, was killed in an automobile accident on Louisiana forty while he and another deputy responded to an emergency call. The patrol car left the roadway, went into a ditch, and then struck a tree. Deputy Mayo was killed, and the other deputy, who was riding in the enger seat, was seriously injured. Both deputies were wearing their seat belts. Linden “Beau” Raimer, EOW: Wednesday, June 13, 2007—Sergeant Beau Raimer, 35, was killed when a rotted pine tree fell onto his patrol car. He and a enger were in the funeral procession for Deputy Sheriff Hilery A. Mayo, Jr. when the accident happened. The parade was moving through Covington when a violent thunderstorm knocked down numerous trees from Slidell to Covington. A large pine tree hit his patrol car on 21st Avenue, crushing the top of the vehicle and killing Sergeant Raimer instantly. The deputy riding with him, who was also his fiancé, was taken to St. Tammany Parish Hospital, paralyzed from the chest down. James Ellis Foster, Jr., EOW: Tuesday, December 30, 2014—Denham Springs Patrolman James Foster, 39, along with two marked patrol cars, were responding with their lights and sirens activated on O’Neal Lane in Baton Rouge when a vehicle made a left turn in front of him at East Riverdale Avenue. Officer Foster’s motorcycle struck the car, and he was thrown approximately 80 feet to his death. Jason Michael Seals, EOW: Saturday, November 17, 2018—Slidell Police Officer Jason Seals, 35, succumbed to injuries sustained on September 25, 2018, when he was involved in a motorcycle crash while escorting a funeral procession. Vincent Nat Liberto, Jr., EOW: Friday, September 20, 2019—Mandeville Police Captain Vinny Liberto, 58, a 25-year veteran of the department, was shot and killed at the intersection of Causeway Boulevard and La. 22/U.S. 190 following a vehicle pursuit. He and another officer had pursued the vehicle until it crashed with other cars at the intersection. One of the men climbed out of the vehicle and opened fire, killing Captain Liberto and wounding the other officer. Captain Liberto was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

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Call them anything but closed cases. Who killed attorneys Margaret Coon and Donna Bahm?Why would someone butcher a 26-year-old bank teller?Did the mafia assassinate Senator Huey Long? What happened to the Grinch who stole shotguns? Louisiana's foremost expert on true-crime, and a thirty-year veteran investigative journalist, HL Arledge revisits those tantalizing questions, meeting the state's most colorful characters along the way.

From voodoo practitioners, mobsters, and train robbers to cult leaders, psychopaths, and crooked politicians, Bayou Justice, Arledge's twice-weekly newspaper column has covered them all.

The book Bayou Justice: Southeast Louisiana Cold Case Files revisits and updates the most infamous of those newspaper reports, offering convincing and controversial conclusions, and deconstructing evidence and widely held beliefs, revisiting each case with fascinating, surprising, and often haunting results. Read more at HL Arledge’s site.

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About the Author

HL Arledge is the author of Bayou Justice, a twice-weekly true crime newspaper column featuring exciting or notable crime-related stories often focusing on cold case files in South Louisiana; stories based on interviews with key players, among them: police investigators, lawyers, victims, and their families. HL Arledge is well established as a journalist, IT Professional, and story teller. Not only is he published in the periodicals and professional journals. HL works in Louisiana state government and lives with his beautiful wife in a farmhouse just north of New Orleans. HL Arledge also writes quirky crime fiction. Literary Agent Elizabeth Pomada said he should describe himself as Elmore Leonard with a southern accent. HL's short stories have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Read more at HL Arledge’s site.

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Bogart Books is both an independent publisher, specializing in books featuring a crime—real or imaginary—as its central focus. We aim to publish work that makes readers suspicious of everyone. Visit us at bogartbooks.com.