"Murder 360" The Bayou Strangler

1 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:07,320 <i>I can't explain to you why a person</i> 2 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:08,880 would do something like this. 3 00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:14,560 Some glitch, some wire 4 00:00:14,680 --> 00:00:16,360 that didn't hook up to the right spot. 5 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:21,680 It seemed like every time we turned around, 6 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:23,440 there was another body. 7 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:26,400 So in a 12 square mile, you had nine victims. 8 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:34,760 <i>The person was trying to rub our face into it,</i> 9 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:37,240 knowing that he's gonna get away with it. 10 00:00:37,360 --> 00:00:40,480 <i>We were looking into one of the most prolific</i> 11 00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:42,560 serial killers in Louisiana history. 12 00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,120 This is a serial killer you've never heard of. 13 00:00:52,280 --> 00:00:54,840 <i>And she kept repeating, he's going to kill me.</i> 14 00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:56,120 And he shoots my daughter. 15 00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:00,520 <i>That's about the only time in my career</i> 16 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:02,120 that I just wanted to shoot him. 17 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:12,040 <i>You can run.</i> 18 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:13,360 You can't hide. 19 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:21,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 20 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:32,000 <i>The thing about Louisiana is that when you travel</i> 21 00:01:32,120 --> 00:01:34,640 from parish to parish and town to town, 22 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:37,400 you get different culture. 23 00:01:37,520 --> 00:01:40,400 <i>And that is what's so great about the state.</i> 24 00:01:40,520 --> 00:01:43,840 <i>Kenner is its own little tiny metropolis</i> 25 00:01:43,960 --> 00:01:46,160 <i>on the outskirts of New Orleans.</i> 26 00:01:46,280 --> 00:01:48,800 <i>Kenner has its own culture as well.</i> 27 00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:52,000 And I think that's fed by a lot of the different 28 00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:54,000 immigrants that call Kenner home. 29 00:01:54,120 --> 00:01:56,560 <i>It's the area that's right before you hit what's called</i> 30 00:01:56,680 --> 00:01:58,320 <i>the Bonne Carre Spillway, which is</i> 31 00:01:58,440 --> 00:02:01,480 <i>this long stretch of roadway that heads toward</i> 32 00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:04,840 <i>Baton Rouge and areas west.</i> 33 00:02:04,960 --> 00:02:07,960 Crime in Kenner has actually been down 34 00:02:08,080 --> 00:02:10,520 since the early and mid-'90s. 35 00:02:10,640 --> 00:02:13,720 You know, we average maybe four a--four a year of homicides. 36 00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:22,720 <i>My participation in these investigations</i> 37 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:26,080 <i>stemmed from three homicides we had here</i> 38 00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:27,720 <i>in the city of Kenner.</i> 39 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:33,000 <i>Back in the late '90s, young males were</i> 40 00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:37,960 dumped in various parts of the city of Kenner on the roadside. 41 00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:45,080 A man named Manuel Reed was found strangled. 42 00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:49,120 <i>He was thrown in a business trash bin in Kenner,</i> 43 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:51,800 <i>but he had been strangled and raped.</i> 44 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:57,080 These three were unique because the bodies 45 00:02:57,200 --> 00:02:59,840 <i>were disposed of where they were gonna</i> 46 00:02:59,960 --> 00:03:01,400 <i>be found the next morning.</i> 47 00:03:01,520 --> 00:03:03,440 So they were positioned to be found. 48 00:03:03,560 --> 00:03:07,000 It wasn't like somebody was trying to hide these bodies. 49 00:03:07,120 --> 00:03:09,560 <i>You know, we had no idea that we were dealing with,</i> 50 00:03:09,680 --> 00:03:11,280 you know, some-- something larger. 51 00:03:11,400 --> 00:03:14,480 <i>We worked it as trying to find--identify the victim.</i> 52 00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:15,720 <i>Where did he come from?</i> 53 00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:17,440 <i>You know, what-- try to find out</i> 54 00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:19,640 <i>how the perpetrator got here in the city of Kenner</i> 55 00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:22,080 <i>to discard a body.</i> 56 00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:26,040 <i>The victims were similar in age.</i> 57 00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:28,520 <i>And then we started asking around.</i> 58 00:03:28,640 --> 00:03:31,000 So with the local parish sheriff's office, 59 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:34,080 had something similar in St. Charles Parish. 60 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:37,080 <i>So we started to compare notes and talk.</i> 61 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:40,120 By this time, I think it was our three, 62 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:44,880 and the sheriff's office had an additional three 63 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:47,320 <i>all within, you know, with a two-year frame</i> 64 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:49,240 <i>where bodies were just discarded,</i> 65 00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:50,880 <i>where someone would find them,</i> 66 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:54,600 <i>either near a dumpster or near a roadway.</i> 67 00:03:54,720 --> 00:03:58,280 So that's kind of when we started thinking that 68 00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:00,120 it may be the same person. 69 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:03,200 <i>We were trying to see if it was a,</i> 70 00:04:03,320 --> 00:04:06,440 <i>like a certain type of individual that was preying</i> 71 00:04:06,560 --> 00:04:09,440 <i>on these--these people.</i> 72 00:04:09,560 --> 00:04:11,120 <i>The Christmas decorations are up</i> 73 00:04:11,240 --> 00:04:13,160 <i>in this St. Charles Parish home,</i> 74 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:14,800 <i>but all over the living room are pictures</i> 75 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:17,360 <i>of 19-year-old David Mitchell, who was murdered.</i> 76 00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:20,880 <i>It's been hell every single day.</i> 77 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:22,360 <i>Every night, I can't sleep.</i> 78 00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:24,640 I toss and turn because I can't--you know, 79 00:04:24,760 --> 00:04:26,800 I don't have any closure. 80 00:04:26,920 --> 00:04:28,320 I don't know what happened, 81 00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:31,040 how it happened, why it happened or anything. 82 00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:33,280 <i>It's been--it's been living hell.</i> 83 00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:35,960 <i>David was a happy-go-lucky person.</i> 84 00:04:36,080 --> 00:04:37,920 <i>He was always jolly.</i> 85 00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:40,800 <i>He could never hurt a flea or anything.</i> 86 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:42,120 He had to be center stage, you know? 87 00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:44,280 He had to be the clown and his dancing. 88 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:47,120 And he always made people laugh and everything, you know? 89 00:04:47,240 --> 00:04:53,760 Everything I did, you know, I did for him. 90 00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:55,160 I took him everywhere I went. 91 00:04:55,280 --> 00:04:56,720 I bought him clothes. 92 00:04:56,840 --> 00:05:00,560 I just did everything I could because I-- 93 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:05,080 <i>Like, that was a part of me.</i> 94 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:11,640 Some of these cases started as missing person cases. 95 00:05:11,760 --> 00:05:14,840 <i>So Oliver LeBanks was 27 years old.</i> 96 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:17,800 <i>He was doing the job that a lot of people</i> 97 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:19,280 do in New Orleans, which is work 98 00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:20,880 in the hospitality industry. 99 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:22,720 <i>He worked at a French Quarter restaurant.</i> 100 00:05:22,840 --> 00:05:24,480 <i>He was a dishwasher there.</i> 101 00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:25,600 <i>He was a family guy.</i> 102 00:05:25,720 --> 00:05:28,280 <i>He had five daughters.</i> 103 00:05:28,400 --> 00:05:32,520 His body was found in Metairie, and he had been strangled. 104 00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:37,360 <i>What is similar about all these crimes?</i> 105 00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:40,160 Early on, we were able to determine that some of them 106 00:05:40,280 --> 00:05:42,000 were coming out of the city of New Orleans, 107 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:45,480 <i>last seen in the city, mostly African Americans, you know,</i> 108 00:05:45,600 --> 00:05:48,080 <i>really come from poor areas of the city.</i> 109 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:50,040 Some of the ones here in Kenner, 110 00:05:50,160 --> 00:05:53,480 they were just last seen in, you know, neighboring parishes, 111 00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:56,520 <i>walking the streets with no detail of, you know,</i> 112 00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:58,800 <i>the exact time, the exact, you know, date</i> 113 00:05:58,920 --> 00:06:01,320 <i>that someone was last seen.</i> 114 00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:06,800 <i>The characteristics of every victim</i> 115 00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:09,320 were they would walk the streets. 116 00:06:09,440 --> 00:06:12,880 <i>I mean, they were young, same physical build,</i> 117 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:14,560 <i>no gunshot wounds.</i> 118 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:18,440 <i>They were all, you know, strangled, some form.</i> 119 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:21,400 <i>A lot of them didn't have broken bones or bruising</i> 120 00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:24,480 <i>that you would see whenever there's a struggle,</i> 121 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:26,640 which was interesting for investigators. 122 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:28,080 A lot of them didn't have a lot of money. 123 00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:29,480 Many of them were vulnerable. 124 00:06:29,600 --> 00:06:30,920 They were all men. 125 00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:33,040 <i>And I think that was one of the tells</i> 126 00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:34,960 <i>that made them say, hey, wait a second.</i> 127 00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:37,200 <i>We need to connect these cases.</i> 128 00:06:37,320 --> 00:06:39,440 We need to get a task force together and figure out 129 00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:41,120 what happened to these men. 130 00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:46,360 <i>The three victims that are found in the city of Kenner,</i> 131 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:49,600 <i>the three victims found in St. Charles Parish,</i> 132 00:06:49,720 --> 00:06:54,720 <i>and three victims in Jefferson Parish were relatively close.</i> 133 00:06:54,840 --> 00:06:58,680 So within a 12 square mile, you had nine victims, 134 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:01,880 two of them being dumped within several feet of each other, 135 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:04,840 <i>months apart.</i> 136 00:07:04,960 --> 00:07:06,440 <i>Serial killers are rare.</i> 137 00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:09,320 Well, I thought they were rare until this period of time, 138 00:07:09,440 --> 00:07:11,480 where apparently there were enough 139 00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:15,240 <i>going around South Louisiana to make everyone take note.</i> 140 00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:17,480 <i>We really didn't get a good grasp</i> 141 00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:20,840 on the kind of person that was--that was doing this. 142 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:24,600 But the geographical layout was, 143 00:07:24,720 --> 00:07:28,280 <i>it was someone that was gonna be from within this area.</i> 144 00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:32,120 Was it someone that was comfortable in his environment 145 00:07:32,240 --> 00:07:34,240 that, you know, didn't care to be caught? 146 00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:37,520 <i>Or was he just good enough to get away with it?</i> 147 00:07:46,400 --> 00:07:48,440 <i>All of a sudden, Metro New Orleans</i> 148 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:50,880 doesn't get any more of these dumped bodies of-- 149 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:53,680 of the same, you know, type victim. 150 00:07:53,800 --> 00:07:56,520 <i>They all started coming down several miles</i> 151 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:00,840 <i>in lower Louisiana in and around the city of Houma.</i> 152 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:03,320 <i>Terrebonne Parish is one of the most beautiful parts</i> 153 00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:06,200 of Southeast Louisiana, small highways that are 154 00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:08,280 lined by sugarcane fields. 155 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:12,120 It's just calming when you're driving down there. 156 00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:13,400 <i>It's peaceful.</i> 157 00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:15,280 <i>It's quiet.</i> 158 00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:19,960 I grew up in Houma, and it's a very close-knit community. 159 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:23,720 The people there have very big hearts. 160 00:08:23,840 --> 00:08:26,200 But at the time, it seemed like every time we turned around, 161 00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:28,760 there was another body. 162 00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:32,360 Some of these guys had decomposed 163 00:08:32,480 --> 00:08:36,080 to the point they couldn't have these open casket funerals. 164 00:08:36,200 --> 00:08:38,240 They really never got to say goodbye to these people 165 00:08:38,360 --> 00:08:40,080 <i>in a proper way.</i> 166 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:43,600 <i>The rapes themselves, that horrified the families,</i> 167 00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:47,040 <i>it really just tore them to their core.</i> 168 00:08:47,160 --> 00:08:51,400 Some of them didn't have extensive families 169 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:53,840 to sound the alarm about the cases and anything 170 00:08:53,960 --> 00:08:55,480 falling through the cracks. 171 00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:56,920 <i>My impression was, there were a lot</i> 172 00:08:57,040 --> 00:08:58,920 <i>of crickets in the community.</i> 173 00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:01,760 <i>People just didn't seem to make much of an impact at all.</i> 174 00:09:01,880 --> 00:09:05,720 I mean, I'm still shocked, and I'm still surprised by that. 175 00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:09,280 <i>So, you know, it was really kind of an eye-opener for me.</i> 176 00:09:09,400 --> 00:09:11,480 <i>And the fact that, you know, a lot of people</i> 177 00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:16,040 weren't jumping on TV talking about how horrified they were 178 00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:18,960 <i>that this had happened, I think that was</i> 179 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:21,120 <i>shocking to me as well,</i> 180 00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:24,600 <i>just because of the nature of the crimes.</i> 181 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:27,880 The victims were not all but mostly homosexual. 182 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:30,880 <i>It didn't have the grip that killing</i> 183 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:32,520 <i>young, beautiful women does.</i> 184 00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:35,120 There were two other serial killers 185 00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:37,040 loose in South Louisiana... 186 00:09:38,680 --> 00:09:40,640 <i>Who are getting most of the publicity.</i> 187 00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:43,760 <i>They were Derrick Todd Lee and Sean Gillis.</i> 188 00:09:43,880 --> 00:09:47,400 Both of them were attacking, kidnapping, raping, and killing 189 00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:48,920 young, attractive women. 190 00:09:57,840 --> 00:10:02,360 I remember Datrell Woods just because I was there. 191 00:10:02,480 --> 00:10:05,480 I remember he was young. 192 00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:08,680 The killer dumped him with his bicycle in a sugarcane field 193 00:10:08,800 --> 00:10:10,320 out behind a church. 194 00:10:10,440 --> 00:10:13,400 <i>And it was summer, and it was hot.</i> 195 00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:15,000 <i>And he'd been there.</i> 196 00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:17,000 <i>And it wasn't a pleasant scene.</i> 197 00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:19,760 So I remember going to the-- 198 00:10:19,880 --> 00:10:24,040 to his house and talking to his parents after he was found. 199 00:10:24,160 --> 00:10:26,920 And his--there were a lot of-- 200 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:29,600 <i>there was a lot of family there and a lot of heartache.</i> 201 00:10:33,400 --> 00:10:36,320 <i>It was very sparse, and it was very spread out</i> 202 00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:38,320 <i>over so many parishes.</i> 203 00:10:38,440 --> 00:10:41,560 <i>It wasn't until the end there that it seemed to escalate</i> 204 00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:43,880 and the bodies seemed to start piling up. 205 00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:48,720 Some were found with-- missing a shoe. 206 00:10:48,840 --> 00:10:51,000 <i>Some had no shoes.</i> 207 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:52,960 <i>And they were trying to say that that was the trophy</i> 208 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:55,600 <i>that this killer was-- was keeping, was a shoe.</i> 209 00:10:55,720 --> 00:10:57,560 So we were working every angle, trying to find out 210 00:10:57,680 --> 00:11:00,840 if, in fact, you know, we can prove that that was, 211 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,000 like, a trophy item the person's taking. 212 00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:10,920 <i>The task force was put together</i> 213 00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:15,120 <i>when they realized that we have these dead people</i> 214 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:18,600 that all have a common denominator in that 215 00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:20,040 they have been tied up. 216 00:11:23,200 --> 00:11:29,320 So from 1998 to 2005, we had the nine here 217 00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:32,200 <i>in Metro New Orleans and then the ones coming up</i> 218 00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:34,200 <i>in the Lafourche and Terrebonne.</i> 219 00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:38,600 So we probably had somewhere around 19. 220 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:43,480 <i>And it was full, you know, 8 1/2x11 printouts</i> 221 00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:45,880 <i>of a mug shot of a person's head.</i> 222 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:48,920 And every time we would-- would find one, 223 00:11:49,040 --> 00:11:52,520 <i>another victim would go on.</i> 224 00:11:52,640 --> 00:11:55,960 <i>That was the frustrating part that was kind of early on.</i> 225 00:11:56,080 --> 00:12:00,240 Just the number of victims is the hardest thing. 226 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:03,520 <i>One of his dumping sites in Lafourche Parish</i> 227 00:12:03,640 --> 00:12:06,440 <i>was on the bank of a drainage ditch</i> 228 00:12:06,560 --> 00:12:10,200 <i>right next to the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office.</i> 229 00:12:10,320 --> 00:12:13,600 Guess the psychology of it is, 230 00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:16,720 <i>the person was either trying to rub our face into it</i> 231 00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:20,040 <i>where he can actually kill someone, discard them in a--</i> 232 00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:23,960 <i>a place to be found, knowing that</i> 233 00:12:24,080 --> 00:12:25,960 <i>he's gonna get away with it.</i> 234 00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:28,200 <i>Or was the person comfortable enough</i> 235 00:12:28,320 --> 00:12:30,080 that he might be a law enforcement officer, 236 00:12:30,200 --> 00:12:32,560 that that would cause no red flags, 237 00:12:32,680 --> 00:12:35,520 him being in and around some kind of police complex? 238 00:12:35,640 --> 00:12:38,080 <i>You know, we working, you know, day and night</i> 239 00:12:38,200 --> 00:12:41,720 <i>trying to develop a suspect, only, you know,</i> 240 00:12:41,840 --> 00:12:47,040 to wake up the next morning to, we have another victim. 241 00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:48,680 <i>It might be a sugarcane field.</i> 242 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:50,680 <i>It might be under an overpass.</i> 243 00:12:50,800 --> 00:12:53,400 <i>It might be in a ditch.</i> 244 00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:56,080 <i>No defensive wounds or no-- no evidence of a big struggle.</i> 245 00:12:56,200 --> 00:12:57,640 <i>Because some of these people were</i> 246 00:12:57,760 --> 00:12:59,360 <i>decent sized, you know, men.</i> 247 00:12:59,480 --> 00:13:02,480 <i>Even though they were-- they were young at age,</i> 248 00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:04,520 <i>they were, you know, pretty much tall and big in stature,</i> 249 00:13:04,640 --> 00:13:06,200 <i>some of them.</i> 250 00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:07,720 They weren't always found right away because it 251 00:13:07,840 --> 00:13:09,760 was really remote places. 252 00:13:09,880 --> 00:13:14,080 <i>In South Louisiana in the summertime,</i> 253 00:13:14,200 --> 00:13:17,440 <i>in the heat and the daily rains,</i> 254 00:13:17,560 --> 00:13:19,360 <i>it would degrade a body.</i> 255 00:13:19,480 --> 00:13:22,240 <i>It would degrade a dump site pretty quickly.</i> 256 00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:25,400 <i>So there wasn't always DNA to find.</i> 257 00:13:25,520 --> 00:13:28,040 <i>We had the attorney general's office,</i> 258 00:13:28,160 --> 00:13:30,080 <i>the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab,</i> 259 00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:31,920 <i>probation and parole working it.</i> 260 00:13:32,040 --> 00:13:34,160 <i>You know, it was overwhelming at the time.</i> 261 00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:36,840 You know, we would get working, you know, leads 262 00:13:36,960 --> 00:13:39,640 <i>and people call in, giving us some kind of tip.</i> 263 00:13:39,760 --> 00:13:42,440 <i>Somebody gave a tip of, you know, white guys,</i> 264 00:13:42,560 --> 00:13:44,880 <i>you know, Black guys of different ages.</i> 265 00:13:53,080 --> 00:13:55,160 Investigators were making some progress 266 00:13:55,280 --> 00:13:57,000 in trying to figure out what happened to these people. 267 00:13:57,120 --> 00:14:00,240 But at that point, Hurricane Katrina hit. 268 00:14:03,640 --> 00:14:06,760 And everything just kind of went crazy. 269 00:14:06,880 --> 00:14:09,800 <i>With Katrina's worst on its way, the last wave of people</i> 270 00:14:09,920 --> 00:14:11,880 <i>fled New Orleans overnight, thousands of them</i> 271 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:14,680 <i>looking for any place safe.</i> 272 00:14:14,800 --> 00:14:18,160 <i>There was still a lot of chaos, I guess, going around.</i> 273 00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:23,480 A lot of those people from New Orleans evacuated to Houma. 274 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:28,640 <i>We had, in just a few days, what officials compared</i> 275 00:14:28,760 --> 00:14:30,400 <i>to ten years' worth of growth in Houma.</i> 276 00:14:30,520 --> 00:14:32,960 <i>Our infrastructure wasn't up to it.</i> 277 00:14:33,080 --> 00:14:36,480 <i>We just had this inundation of people coming from all over.</i> 278 00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:38,600 They're hoping, of course, not to watch their homes 279 00:14:38,720 --> 00:14:40,560 or their neighborhoods blow away. 280 00:14:40,680 --> 00:14:42,960 We are on the outer edge of this storm, 281 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:45,880 and you can see what we're dealing with here. 282 00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:48,840 <i>We kind of had to slow down a little bit</i> 283 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:52,480 because duties, you know, was spread all over the place 284 00:14:52,600 --> 00:14:54,560 at that time. 285 00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:57,160 <i>We weren't really impacted</i> 286 00:14:57,280 --> 00:14:59,680 <i>in the way of storms by Katrina.</i> 287 00:14:59,800 --> 00:15:02,160 But just a few weeks later, Rita come through. 288 00:15:02,280 --> 00:15:05,200 <i>And it did--it did have a lot of damage locally.</i> 289 00:15:05,320 --> 00:15:08,760 <i>And so the communities were trying to recover from that.</i> 290 00:15:08,880 --> 00:15:12,480 How many bodies went unreported, went undiscovered? 291 00:15:12,600 --> 00:15:15,160 How many more are buried somewhere, 292 00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:18,920 discarded, perhaps, in a more organized way in the bayou? 293 00:15:19,040 --> 00:15:21,600 <i>We know that Katrina was so destructive</i> 294 00:15:21,720 --> 00:15:25,120 <i>that there were bodies lying around the bayou.</i> 295 00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:28,920 <i>It wouldn't have been uncommon to come across a body</i> 296 00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:30,800 <i>that was exposed to the elements.</i> 297 00:15:30,920 --> 00:15:33,160 <i>In the task force meetings,</i> 298 00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:35,640 we knew the perp wasn't 100% successful 299 00:15:35,760 --> 00:15:37,960 in one contact, one kill. 300 00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:40,600 <i>Whoever's doing this is not 100% successful.</i> 301 00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:44,600 <i>Every contact with a person is gonna end up with a victim.</i> 302 00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:47,240 <i>That's where the probation and parole aspect came in.</i> 303 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:49,320 <i>So we had the probation and parole agents,</i> 304 00:15:49,440 --> 00:15:51,640 <i>when they met with people they were supervising,</i> 305 00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:55,360 they would ask, is anything out of the ordinary happening 306 00:15:55,480 --> 00:15:57,680 in and around this area? 307 00:15:57,800 --> 00:15:59,320 <i>I think one of the turning points</i> 308 00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:03,080 <i>was when one of the victims got away.</i> 309 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:05,480 Ricky Wallace was one of those victims. 310 00:16:26,800 --> 00:16:28,680 He told a story about a white guy 311 00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:30,800 in a pickup truck that approached him 312 00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:32,640 <i>while he was walking down the street.</i> 313 00:16:32,760 --> 00:16:37,480 <i>Said he had a family member that was a victim of abuse.</i> 314 00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:40,760 Showed a picture of, you know, some--we later learned that 315 00:16:40,880 --> 00:16:42,600 it was a family member of the perpetrator 316 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:46,600 he was using and lured him in where she'll pay you for sex. 317 00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,720 She's a domestic violence victim. 318 00:16:49,840 --> 00:16:52,360 She's afraid of men. 319 00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:56,160 Actually got into the pickup truck with the perpetrator, 320 00:16:56,280 --> 00:16:58,040 <i>actually let him bring him to a trailer.</i> 321 00:17:00,400 --> 00:17:02,400 <i>And once he got into the trailer,</i> 322 00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,080 he said, well, before the girl comes in, 323 00:17:05,200 --> 00:17:08,200 being that she's afraid of men, I have to tie you up. 324 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:14,200 And he said, there's no way I'm gonna do that. 325 00:17:14,320 --> 00:17:16,120 <i>At that point, Ricky was like,</i> 326 00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:18,760 I'm out of here, no, and ran. 327 00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:20,000 And he got away. 328 00:17:21,960 --> 00:17:23,640 <i>Well, he was on parole.</i> 329 00:17:23,760 --> 00:17:26,640 <i>So the next time he saw his parole officer, he says,</i> 330 00:17:26,760 --> 00:17:29,600 look, the weirdest thing just happened to me. 331 00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,400 <i>So we drove by, got a bunch of license plate numbers</i> 332 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:34,880 and ran some records, everything from that address, 333 00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:38,360 <i>and came up with all the residents there.</i> 334 00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:41,400 That led police eventually to Ronald Dominique. 335 00:17:50,440 --> 00:17:52,880 <i>Ronald Dominique lived on his sister's property</i> 336 00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:56,320 in a trailer in the front yard. 337 00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,960 <i>We started some surveillance on him,</i> 338 00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:02,160 <i>and it didn't amount to-- to anything.</i> 339 00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:07,000 He worked at a oilfield supply company 340 00:18:07,120 --> 00:18:09,200 doing some kind of just manual labor, 341 00:18:09,320 --> 00:18:11,360 <i>and other than that, didn't really have a life.</i> 342 00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:15,200 He didn't leave the house, didn't go to no bars, 343 00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:16,440 didn't frequent anywhere. 344 00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:18,360 He would just sit at home. 345 00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:20,400 <i>So we still didn't have anything</i> 346 00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:24,520 <i>to tie him in to these bodies.</i> 347 00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:26,560 <i>Found out basically that he was a loner.</i> 348 00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:29,720 And going back, we found out that, you know, in high school, 349 00:18:29,840 --> 00:18:31,760 <i>didn't really have any friends.</i> 350 00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:33,760 <i>He had a couple of jobs.</i> 351 00:18:33,880 --> 00:18:35,920 <i>One was as a meter reader.</i> 352 00:18:36,040 --> 00:18:37,560 What did he do positive in the community? 353 00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:39,720 Well, he called bingo, might have 354 00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:44,160 <i>helped some neighbors with groceries and mow their lawn.</i> 355 00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:46,640 <i>We knew he was arrested previously,</i> 356 00:18:46,760 --> 00:18:48,160 <i>accused of raping a male.</i> 357 00:18:48,280 --> 00:18:50,120 <i>So he was high on our radar with just that</i> 358 00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:53,160 <i>but didn't have anything to connect him,</i> 359 00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:55,440 you know, with the crimes in itself. 360 00:19:04,520 --> 00:19:07,280 <i>And then we realized that the sister previously</i> 361 00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:08,640 lived right here in St. Charles Parish, 362 00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:10,960 within a few hundred feet 363 00:19:11,080 --> 00:19:13,720 <i>of the St. Charles Parish homicides.</i> 364 00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:15,360 <i>You know, the three bodies, you know,</i> 365 00:19:15,480 --> 00:19:17,280 <i>where they were dumped in St. Charles Parish.</i> 366 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:19,960 <i>So all the homicides moved at the same time</i> 367 00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:22,880 <i>this family moved, and Dominique followed them</i> 368 00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:24,280 <i>to live on his sister's property</i> 369 00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:27,520 <i>outside of the city of Houma.</i> 370 00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:29,880 When he realized that the police were following him 371 00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:31,880 and that his arrest was probably imminent, 372 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:35,680 <i>he left his sister's property,</i> 373 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:37,320 <i>and he moved into the Bunkhouse,</i> 374 00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:41,040 <i>which is a homeless shelter there in downtown Houma.</i> 375 00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:42,960 <i>We had the FBI there.</i> 376 00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:44,800 Their surveillance team actually 377 00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:46,320 was--was assigned to it. 378 00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:49,040 <i>So 24 hours a day, we had someone,</i> 379 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:51,240 <i>you know, watching him in his residence.</i> 380 00:19:51,360 --> 00:19:53,200 And it is-- yes, it's binoculars. 381 00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:55,600 <i>It's--you know, it may be cars on the ground,</i> 382 00:19:55,720 --> 00:19:59,240 <i>people walking, even aircraft in the air if he was mobile.</i> 383 00:19:59,360 --> 00:20:01,800 At that point, when we identified the killer, 384 00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:03,800 there was not gonna be any other victims. 385 00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:10,880 So we just sent two people to--to make contact with him. 386 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:12,960 You know, one female investigator 387 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:15,840 from Lafourche Parish and one from-- 388 00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:18,200 a male from Jefferson Parish. 389 00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:21,600 <i>And they interviewed him.</i> 390 00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:23,400 <i>It was very civil.</i> 391 00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:25,600 <i>It was almost like he expected it</i> 392 00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:27,400 <i>and he was waiting for them.</i> 393 00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:28,800 <i>And he answered questions.</i> 394 00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:31,640 Wouldn't admit to anything 395 00:20:31,760 --> 00:20:33,840 but did consent to a buccal swab, 396 00:20:33,960 --> 00:20:36,320 which is a swab of his saliva. 397 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,240 They took that DNA sample from him 398 00:20:38,360 --> 00:20:40,920 and found that it matched DNA that was found 399 00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:43,520 on Oliver LeBanks and Manuel Reed. 400 00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:47,320 <i>That's when they had enough</i> 401 00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:49,120 to charge him with those two murders. 402 00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:53,520 Good evening, everyone. 403 00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:56,680 I'm Katie Moore, and welcome to the WWL Louisiana news at 5:00. 404 00:20:56,800 --> 00:20:58,320 <i>It was a Friday, and I remember</i> 405 00:20:58,440 --> 00:21:00,000 <i>going into the newsroom and them saying,</i> 406 00:21:00,120 --> 00:21:01,240 <i>okay, this arrest has been made.</i> 407 00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:02,760 So we went down to the homeless shelter 408 00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:04,160 to try and talk to people, 409 00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:06,040 <i>and they said that they were stunned</i> 410 00:21:06,160 --> 00:21:10,520 because he was very quiet, very nice. 411 00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:13,920 <i>They said, you know, he could have lived there for 20 years</i> 412 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:17,200 <i>and nobody would have thought he did anything wrong.</i> 413 00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:20,520 <i>He was that unassuming.</i> 414 00:21:20,640 --> 00:21:24,280 <i>At the Bunkhouse in Houma, a handful of homeless men</i> 415 00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:27,120 <i>spent three days with 42-year-old Ronald Dominique.</i> 416 00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:29,880 <i>Until Wednesday, Dominique lived in these trailers</i> 417 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:31,320 <i>that crime scene investigators</i> 418 00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:33,200 <i>combed through looking for evidence.</i> 419 00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:34,880 <i>They were parked behind his sister's</i> 420 00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:36,720 <i>house on Bayou Blue Road.</i> 421 00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:38,160 Law enforcement agencies, 422 00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:40,080 including the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff, 423 00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:41,600 aren't releasing many details about the case, 424 00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:43,760 but we do expect to learn more next week, 425 00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:46,560 including how they linked Dominique to the murders. 426 00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:49,200 Everyone kind of knows everybody down there. 427 00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:52,720 And so I think when this case popped up, 428 00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:55,760 everyone was shocked because a lot of people knew him 429 00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:57,360 and a lot of people knew his family. 430 00:21:57,480 --> 00:22:01,320 And I don't think anyone ever would have expected 431 00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:04,720 that he could be responsible for something so heinous. 432 00:22:04,840 --> 00:22:07,160 A multi-agency task force announced the arrest 433 00:22:07,280 --> 00:22:09,520 of 42-year-old Ronald Dominique last night 434 00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,400 in connection with two murders in the late '90s in Kenner. 435 00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:15,400 <i>Investigators also believe he is the suspect</i> 436 00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:19,280 <i>in almost 20 other murders over the past 11 years.</i> 437 00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:21,880 <i>Two of the victims lived in Jefferson Parish.</i> 438 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:24,040 <i>Two more are from Lafourche Parish.</i> 439 00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,440 <i>Four resided in St. Charles Parish.</i> 440 00:22:26,560 --> 00:22:29,280 <i>And 11 of the victims lived in Terrebonne Parish.</i> 441 00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:30,880 The law enforcement task force 442 00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:32,880 would only say that forensic evidence 443 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:34,240 links Dominique to the two murders 444 00:22:34,360 --> 00:22:35,520 that he's currently charged with. 445 00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:37,400 <i>Both of the Kenner victims</i> 446 00:22:37,520 --> 00:22:39,360 <i>and about half of the others were found strangled,</i> 447 00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:42,240 <i>partially dressed, and missing shoes.</i> 448 00:22:42,360 --> 00:22:46,040 <i>The local people down in Terrebonne Parish</i> 449 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:48,840 put out a word to the public defender board 450 00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:50,880 that they needed a lawyer to come down 451 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:52,520 <i>and represent him because he was</i> 452 00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:54,320 <i>charged with a capital case.</i> 453 00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:55,880 <i>And that's what we did.</i> 454 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:56,880 <i>Of course, one of the first things we did</i> 455 00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:58,880 <i>was go and talk to Dominique.</i> 456 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,120 <i>At that time, I had handled dozens</i> 457 00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:05,520 and dozens of capital cases but never a serial killer. 458 00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:09,560 <i>I went in there to see him, and out of all my clients,</i> 459 00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:13,080 <i>he was probably the least intrusive.</i> 460 00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:19,040 I mean, he was--he was short and fat or obese. 461 00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,560 He was quiet. 462 00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:26,920 <i>He walked with a limp and with cane and really reserved.</i> 463 00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:30,080 <i>His demeanor was rather a passive demeanor.</i> 464 00:23:30,200 --> 00:23:31,600 <i>You know, there wasn't</i> 465 00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:33,400 <i>anything threatening about him.</i> 466 00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:35,080 If you look at a lot of serial killers 467 00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:36,760 through the years, they don't stand out. 468 00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:38,200 <i>They fit in well.</i> 469 00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:39,880 This guy fit in well at what he did. 470 00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:41,600 I mean, he didn't do anything. 471 00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:43,960 He didn't do anything to call attention to himself. 472 00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:46,160 <i>He never got in many arguments,</i> 473 00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:47,720 <i>you know, with the sister,</i> 474 00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:49,440 <i>with anybody else in the community.</i> 475 00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:53,040 <i>He kind of just stayed alone.</i> 476 00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:55,480 <i>Let's put it this way, he wasn't scary,</i> 477 00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:58,800 wouldn't scare anyone, and kind of taken aback 478 00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,120 by how someone that looked like he did 479 00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,240 <i>would be capable of committing all these offenses</i> 480 00:24:05,360 --> 00:24:07,080 <i>that he was accused of.</i> 481 00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:09,600 <i>He had a bad heart, fat and flabby.</i> 482 00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:11,800 There was nothing physically about him 483 00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:13,600 that would make you think that this person was 484 00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:20,040 capable of killing anyone at all, with his hands. 485 00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:24,360 <i>He looked like just some little guy that really</i> 486 00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:26,360 <i>had nothing going for him.</i> 487 00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,280 And then as we started to hear more and more details 488 00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:31,320 out of that serial killer task force, 489 00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:32,800 we started to realize that this was 490 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,280 much bigger than just two men. 491 00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:43,120 <i>When they had Ronald Dominique in interrogation,</i> 492 00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,000 <i>then it was like the floodgates opened.</i> 493 00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:09,800 He told police that he had killed Oliver LeBanks. 494 00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,000 <i>They went to a remote area, had sex,</i> 495 00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:17,600 <i>but the victim was apparently pretty rough on Ronald,</i> 496 00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:21,120 and Ronald struck him in the head with a tire iron. 497 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:23,040 <i>Once he knocked him out,</i> 498 00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,520 realized that he doesn't have to deal with this pressure 499 00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:27,200 or problem anymore. 500 00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:30,520 <i>And then he strangled him.</i> 501 00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:34,080 And then we learned that apparently, Ronald Dominique 502 00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:36,440 had confessed when he went in to police 503 00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:39,400 <i>and just frankly told them</i> 504 00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:41,360 <i>that, you know, he had killed</i> 505 00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:43,280 <i>up to 23 people.</i> 506 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,120 And I just--my mind was blown. 507 00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:51,680 <i>Most people who had come in contact with Ronald Dominique</i> 508 00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:56,240 were shocked to find out that he was accused 509 00:25:56,360 --> 00:25:59,240 of killing more than 20 people. 510 00:25:59,360 --> 00:26:01,280 <i>I mean, they were stunned.</i> 511 00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,640 <i>This man that people now were hearing</i> 512 00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:06,040 <i>may have been one of Louisiana's</i> 513 00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,880 <i>most prolific serial killers.</i> 514 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:13,080 <i>So police say that Ronald Dominique gave them details</i> 515 00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:15,200 about how he committed them. 516 00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:17,960 And what Dominique told police was that he went out 517 00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:20,760 late at night, prowling in search of men 518 00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:24,320 <i>who appeared to be in need of money.</i> 519 00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:26,480 <i>He would pick people up on Bourbon Street</i> 520 00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:28,480 <i>near the gay bar.</i> 521 00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:32,200 He would see them riding their bicycle down the road. 522 00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:37,520 He seemed to like Black men, slight Black men-- 523 00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:42,040 <i>not big, brawny guys, but lean, thin.</i> 524 00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:47,920 <i>Of his 23 victims, 18 of them were Black.</i> 525 00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:52,240 He would cruise, go to areas where street people, 526 00:26:52,360 --> 00:26:56,760 <i>hustlers would frequent, stop, talk to them,</i> 527 00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:58,840 <i>make a determination.</i> 528 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:01,840 If they said yes, he'd say, come on, get in. 529 00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,360 He would drive them to his trailer, 530 00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,800 <i>and he would say, well, look, I don't want you to hurt me.</i> 531 00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:12,280 So in order to not be hurt, I want to tie you up 532 00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:13,720 before we have sex. 533 00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:15,520 If he thought they were gay, 534 00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,280 he would proposition them for sex with himself. 535 00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:21,880 <i>If he thought they were heterosexual,</i> 536 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:24,000 he had a picture of an attractive woman, 537 00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:26,600 who he'd say was his girlfriend or his wife, 538 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:27,880 and he'd offered them money to come back 539 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:29,440 and have sex with this woman. 540 00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,000 <i>And he would use his niece's picture</i> 541 00:27:56,120 --> 00:27:57,920 <i>because she was an attractive young lady</i> 542 00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,560 <i>to entice men to come to his place.</i> 543 00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:04,160 That was the photograph he used to say, look, my wife 544 00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:05,720 wants to have sex with you. 545 00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:06,960 Here's what she looks like. 546 00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,520 If they agreed to be tied up, 547 00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:32,480 he'd rape them and strangle them. 548 00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:34,320 <i>You have to have a certain personality</i> 549 00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:37,800 to be able to strike up a conversation with someone, 550 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,760 make them feel comfortable enough to where 551 00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,360 they're willing to go to another location with you 552 00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:44,760 and spend time with you. 553 00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:46,520 And in this case, a lot of times 554 00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,400 he was convincing them to go to an offsite location for sex. 555 00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:57,640 The early victims, he would meet in an automobile. 556 00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,160 <i>The crime was committed in an automobile.</i> 557 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:02,280 <i>He would strangle him with the seat belt.</i> 558 00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:41,640 In Southern Louisiana, a shocking confession 559 00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,880 from an alleged serial killer. 560 00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,000 <i>Ronald Dominique was charged with 11 counts of murder.</i> 561 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:48,640 <i>Police say he admitted to killing</i> 562 00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,200 <i>23 men over eight years.</i> 563 00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:54,600 <i>The victims, which ranged in age from 16 to 46,</i> 564 00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,280 <i>had all been strangled or suffocated.</i> 565 00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,600 <i>When we go investigate people, we do.</i> 566 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,320 <i>We go back and try to find out people that knew him</i> 567 00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:11,120 when he was growing up, teachers, people he worked for, 568 00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,480 whoever he may have come in contact with. 569 00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:17,000 <i>He grew up in Lafourche Parish.</i> 570 00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,480 <i>He went to Thibodaux High School.</i> 571 00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,520 <i>He was not a popular guy.</i> 572 00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,720 My understanding is that he didn't-- 573 00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:28,760 he didn't come to terms with his homosexuality 574 00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,120 until late in his teens. 575 00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:35,280 <i>I'm told that he was bullied.</i> 576 00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:38,680 <i>So high school was rough for him.</i> 577 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:40,680 <i>And we found with Dominique, really didn't have</i> 578 00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:43,000 <i>any long-lasting friends,</i> 579 00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:45,400 teachers that really took to him. 580 00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,440 <i>Lower income, lived in a trailer in Bayou Blue.</i> 581 00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,160 Just regular, everyday, working folk. 582 00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:56,480 I don't think Ronald Dominique is a high IQ person. 583 00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:58,280 I really don't. 584 00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:00,640 I think he's a simple person that had a simple plan. 585 00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,880 <i>How he came up with the actual killing of someone,</i> 586 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,960 <i>I don't think it was the killing was the motive.</i> 587 00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:09,240 I think it was a sex act that was his motive. 588 00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:14,080 He always lived with either his mom or his older sister. 589 00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:18,440 Just didn't fit my preconceived idea 590 00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,560 of what a serial killer would be like. 591 00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:25,840 I mean, he was the most unthreatening individual, 592 00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:27,480 like, I could think of. 593 00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:11,840 There's two forms of pleasure 594 00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:15,080 involved in these homicides, 595 00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:16,440 perverse pleasures. 596 00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:18,840 <i>One is, of course, the sexual part.</i> 597 00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,720 <i>The other part was the-- the homicide part.</i> 598 00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:25,480 <i>He felt the only way he could become intimate</i> 599 00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,000 <i>with someone else was by tying them up</i> 600 00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:30,960 and then forcing himself on them, right? 601 00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,120 Again, power. Again, control. 602 00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,680 <i>But such low self-esteem</i> 603 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,880 <i>to think that the only way he could be close to someone</i> 604 00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:42,600 <i>was through this mechanism.</i> 605 00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:45,400 <i>He just kept talking and talking and talking.</i> 606 00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:47,360 And he admitted, and he provided 607 00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,120 details of all these murders. 608 00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:51,440 <i>I thought it was really weird, though,</i> 609 00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:54,560 <i>because our reporters had put together</i> 610 00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,000 from different sources, and they had gotten, 611 00:32:57,120 --> 00:32:59,920 like, a list of men that had gone missing 612 00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,440 <i>and then turned up dead, and we'd put together,</i> 613 00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,640 <i>before he was arrested, the list of possible</i> 614 00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:07,200 <i>serial killer victims.</i> 615 00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:09,240 <i>And we didn't have all 23, of course,</i> 616 00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:11,800 <i>because we didn't take into account the ones,</i> 617 00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:13,600 <i>like, in the Kenner area.</i> 618 00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:16,240 <i>We were more looking at our jurisdiction.</i> 619 00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:18,920 <i>And he admitted to every one on our list,</i> 620 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:21,560 but he didn't admit to any that weren't on our list. 621 00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,920 And I just find it highly suspect 622 00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,160 that we got them all right. 623 00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:29,440 I always wondered if maybe there were more 624 00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:31,960 or if he just decided to confess to everything. 625 00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:33,600 I don't know. 626 00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:35,400 I've always wondered if there were others. 627 00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:50,440 <i>One of the things that surprised me was the fact</i> 628 00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:54,360 <i>that he was able to not only strangle these people,</i> 629 00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,040 with the strength that took, but also to pick up 630 00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,400 the bodies, put them in his vehicle, 631 00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:01,640 <i>and then take them someplace and dispose of them.</i> 632 00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:03,720 <i>I was trying to figure out how he could do that because</i> 633 00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,360 <i>he didn't strike me as being that strong of an individual,</i> 634 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:08,360 even though the victims weren't that big, 635 00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,120 they probably weighed 145 pounds, somewhere around there. 636 00:34:12,240 --> 00:34:14,040 He didn't look like someone that you would consider 637 00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:16,680 <i>a serial killer or someone capable of killing</i> 638 00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,080 <i>23, you know, grown men.</i> 639 00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,160 In everyday life, Ronald Dominique was powerless. 640 00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,160 But when he was hunting and killing, he was very powerful. 641 00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,600 <i>It dawned upon me that he probably had</i> 642 00:34:38,720 --> 00:34:42,200 a big adrenaline rush when he was doing this. 643 00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:46,200 And that may have had some play in why he did it 644 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,600 <i>and why he was able to-- to move bodies around</i> 645 00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:51,040 <i>and that sort of thing.</i> 646 00:35:02,240 --> 00:35:05,280 <i>Six weeks before he was arrested,</i> 647 00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:09,520 he killed Sutterfield, according to the police. 648 00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:14,960 <i>He was able to subdue, tie up, and rape a full-grown man,</i> 649 00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:17,840 and then drag his body to where he dumped it. 650 00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:34,080 <i>Then when he was arrested,</i> 651 00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:36,680 he has a cane and he can't even walk upright. 652 00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:41,000 <i>He's having to be helped into the car by two officers.</i> 653 00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,480 <i>I just always felt like that was a show.</i> 654 00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:45,760 <i>I just couldn't see how physically,</i> 655 00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:47,400 <i>how he could have declined so much.</i> 656 00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:49,040 They said he had a heart attack, 657 00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:51,480 but I still felt like a lot of that was for show. 658 00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:56,400 He didn't amount to much of anything other than 659 00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,800 he worked in, you know, some kind of labor intensive, 660 00:35:59,920 --> 00:36:04,000 <i>menial job working in a supply business.</i> 661 00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:06,080 <i>He felt that he was inferior.</i> 662 00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:08,320 <i>Couldn't get a girlfriend or boyfriend.</i> 663 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,200 He was kind of, you know, little overweight. 664 00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:17,440 <i>Just really aimless life, no friends, no one</i> 665 00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,280 to be in love with or to love him. 666 00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:23,400 <i>Even when he came out of the closet</i> 667 00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:25,960 <i>and was part of the gay scene,</i> 668 00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,160 he really wasn't accepted there, either. 669 00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:36,720 Favorite thing was being a female impersonator. 670 00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,480 <i>He liked to dress up like Patti LaBelle and imitate her,</i> 671 00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:42,440 but he wasn't very good at it. 672 00:36:45,240 --> 00:36:48,040 <i>This female impersonation, this act,</i> 673 00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:50,160 <i>where he was inviting others to laugh at him,</i> 674 00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,000 <i>he's in control of that.</i> 675 00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:58,360 Now, whether this predated his--his sensibilities 676 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:00,440 when later on went on to kill, we don't know, 677 00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:02,640 but this is a marker. 678 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:04,000 Control is a marker. 679 00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:06,480 And we know that with the serial rapes, 680 00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:08,840 rape has nothing to do with love or affection 681 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:10,240 or intimacy or sex. 682 00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:12,160 It's a control issue. 683 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:15,720 <i>And yeah, the trappings of it were there in the act.</i> 684 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:25,400 So in the early to mid-'90s, Ronald Dominique had actually 685 00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,400 been arrested for rapes. 686 00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:32,120 <i>The story goes that it was at his sister's house</i> 687 00:37:32,240 --> 00:37:36,440 and that the victim jumped out the window 688 00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:41,520 and ran away yelling but that they never followed through 689 00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:42,840 with the case because they could 690 00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:44,480 never locate the victim again. 691 00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:46,720 <i>So nothing ever came of that.</i> 692 00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:49,440 <i>The second time he was arrested for a rape,</i> 693 00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,440 which was in 1996, he was convicted 694 00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:55,000 and ended up serving time in prison. 695 00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,320 <i>And while he was in jail, he was brutalized.</i> 696 00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,160 Police believe that that may have been Ronald Dominique's 697 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:06,320 trigger, that once he had to do the time in jail, 698 00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,280 he decided he wasn't gonna spend time in jail anymore. 699 00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:11,880 <i>So he would kill his victims so that they couldn't</i> 700 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,120 <i>tell police what he had done.</i> 701 00:38:14,240 --> 00:38:16,920 <i>Something happened to him that,</i> 702 00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:19,400 <i>whether or not it was a sexual fantasy</i> 703 00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,840 or it was something else that got him to come up 704 00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,880 with this plan and scheme that if he wanted to have sex 705 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,680 with a male, I guess he was intimidated 706 00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:30,240 and couldn't do it on his own. 707 00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:31,920 He had to kill him first. 708 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,160 It escalated to where he really enjoyed 709 00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:06,480 the entire process, from the rape to the murder. 710 00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:10,440 <i>It just got to where the interval in between murders</i> 711 00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:15,120 <i>became smaller and smaller, like he needed it more often.</i> 712 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,320 <i>I don't think that we knew until the following week</i> 713 00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,880 <i>that the number of victims would climb that high.</i> 714 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:43,600 You know, when we went to the news conference 715 00:39:43,720 --> 00:39:46,440 <i>that was law enforcement agencies</i> 716 00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:51,200 <i>talking about how deep and wide their investigation went,</i> 717 00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:53,520 <i>I think all of us were stunned.</i> 718 00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:56,800 And then to hear that law enforcement 719 00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:01,520 hadn't even connected all 23 of those killings. 720 00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:03,920 <i>Ronald Dominique did.</i> 721 00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:29,880 <i>When you hear that it's over 20 people</i> 722 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,960 that this man is accused of killing over that many years, 723 00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:35,760 it's stunning that they weren't able 724 00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:37,920 to catch up with him sooner, 725 00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:40,880 <i>especially given the similarities in the cases.</i> 726 00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,000 <i>But nobody knows about Ronald Dominique</i> 727 00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:45,600 <i>because he killed people who were marginalized.</i> 728 00:40:45,720 --> 00:40:50,400 He killed people who lived a high-risk lifestyle 729 00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:53,400 and didn't necessarily garner a lot of sympathy 730 00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:56,560 from people outside their family. 731 00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,400 <i>Each of them had a family that loved them</i> 732 00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:00,920 <i>and cared about them.</i> 733 00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:03,080 <i>These were people that were hurting.</i> 734 00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:04,640 <i>I mean, their loved ones, in spite of the fact</i> 735 00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:06,040 that their loved ones might have been 736 00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:08,320 homeless and street hustlers or whatever, 737 00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:09,880 they still loved them. 738 00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:13,240 And they were angry at what happened. 739 00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,000 <i>They had 22 unsolved murders.</i> 740 00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,760 You know, I mean, I don't know how-- 741 00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,800 how the guy did that for so long to get away with that. 742 00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:22,040 <i>I would want him dead.</i> 743 00:41:23,720 --> 00:41:25,160 I would want him dead. 744 00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,160 I mean, serving time in penitentiary, that-- 745 00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:28,840 that don't help. 746 00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:32,360 <i>I mean, he took a-- he took my child's life.</i> 747 00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:35,400 <i>We discussed the ins and outs of the case</i> 748 00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,320 <i>and came to the realization</i> 749 00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:42,000 <i>that trying eight capital cases</i> 750 00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:44,840 <i>in that parish alone would be burdensome,</i> 751 00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:47,320 not only on the parish's finances, 752 00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:50,920 but also on the families of the victims. 753 00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,440 <i>It would be decades before this would be over.</i> 754 00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:56,320 <i>The families would have to go through the trial</i> 755 00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:58,320 over and over. 756 00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:00,480 <i>They would have to hear all these horrendous details</i> 757 00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,520 <i>of what happened to their loved ones.</i> 758 00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,800 <i>And they were not about hearing those gory details.</i> 759 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:12,080 In the end, Ronald Dominique was 760 00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:13,840 offered a plea deal by prosecutors, 761 00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:16,880 <i>and he ended up taking it.</i> 762 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,320 He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty. 763 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,320 The prosecutor said at the time that he felt like, 764 00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:28,800 and some of the families felt like, that it would be more 765 00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,560 of a punishment for Dominique to be jailed 766 00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:34,280 <i>for the rest of his life than it would be for him</i> 767 00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:39,280 <i>to get the death penalty because he hated jail so much</i> 768 00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:41,480 <i>that they saw this as a bigger punishment for him</i> 769 00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:43,200 <i>than taking his life.</i> 770 00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:45,760 I mean, eight consecutive life sentences, that's-- 771 00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:49,160 yeah, that's one after the other. 772 00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:52,240 That's what you give a cat. 773 00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,120 <i>There's no need to waste the resources,</i> 774 00:42:54,240 --> 00:42:56,160 you know, to prosecute him anywhere else. 775 00:42:56,280 --> 00:42:57,600 You know, we just have open warrants for him 776 00:42:57,720 --> 00:43:00,760 if he ever does, you know, try to get out. 777 00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:03,480 <i>Each one of these victims had a life to live.</i> 778 00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,440 <i>And that got cut short because of Ronald Dominique.</i> 779 00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:11,520 They had the unlucky fortune or misfortune of, you know, 780 00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:13,240 <i>coming into his crosshairs.</i> 781 00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:15,280 <i>I think the most important thing that needs</i> 782 00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:17,200 <i>to come out of it is, how did this person</i> 783 00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,200 <i>fall through the cracks?</i> 784 00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,040 <i>What did we miss in order to stop this person</i> 785 00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:23,960 <i>from taking so many lives?</i> 786 00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:26,560 In this case, it's just horribly sad. 787 00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:28,120 I mean, he was preying on people 788 00:43:28,240 --> 00:43:32,360 that were some of our society's most vulnerable. 789 00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,160 <i>Even though Ronald Dominique is one of the most prolific</i> 790 00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,240 <i>serial killers in Louisiana history,</i> 791 00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,840 <i>many people have never even heard of him.</i> 792 00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:44,520 <i>This is the serial killer you've never heard of.</i> 793 00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:45,920 He was prolific. 794 00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:47,600 He got away with it for ten years. 795 00:43:47,720 --> 00:43:50,400 Nobody knows who he is. 796 00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:54,240 <i>These were somebody's children.</i> 797 00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,800 <i>And they were raped and dumped in mini storages</i> 798 00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:00,840 <i>and sugarcane fields and under overpasses.</i> 799 00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:02,640 <i>They deserved better.</i> 799 00:44:03,305 --> 00:45:03,874 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm