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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 6: the bodies of young African American men began turning up
Speaker 6: in the cane fields of New Orleans suburbs. The victims,
Speaker 6: many of them trans and street hustlers, had been brutally
Speaker 6: raped and strangled, leaving Louisiana's gay community rattled. When no
Speaker 6: leads were found and the murders continued, detectives Denis Thornton
Speaker 6: and Don Bergeron came together as a task force partners
Speaker 6: and were in indefigatable in their decade long effort to
Speaker 6: track down the killer. In two thousand and six, DNA
Speaker 6: evidence finally linked the murderers to a suspect, the unassuming
Speaker 6: Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for
Speaker 6: years working as a pizza delivery man and a meter reader.
Speaker 6: But who was he and what had led him to
Speaker 6: commit such heinous crimes. With direct access to the investigation,
Speaker 6: Dominique's confession and all the sights where bodies were dumped,
Speaker 6: author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of the murderer,
Speaker 6: providing horrifying and fascinating account of his troubled, disturbing, broke
Speaker 6: in life and his brutal crimes. The book we're featuring
Speaker 6: the season is The Bayou Strangler, Louisiana's Most Gruesome serial Killer,
Speaker 6: with my special guest, journalist and author Fred Rosen. Welcome
Speaker 6: back to the program, and thank you very much again
Speaker 6: for joining us on True Murder. Welcome Fred Rosen, Dan, it.
Speaker 4: Is always a distinct pleasure to be on with you,
Speaker 4: especially today when Justin Trudeau met with Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: Wow. I won't even go there, Fred, going there? Okay ah,
Speaker 7: that's all politics. We have to get to business of murder. Yes, sir,
Speaker 7: Thank you very much Fred for joining me with this
Speaker 7: your latest release, The bay You Strangler, Louisiana's most gruesome
Speaker 7: serial Killer, and incredible as you as you note the
Speaker 7: choice of victims means that many man, many people. Most
Speaker 7: people don't know who this is. But thanks to Fred
Speaker 7: Rosen and the Bayou Strangler, we're going to get to
Speaker 7: hear about it tonight. What brought you to this story, Fred,
Speaker 7: before we get started.
Speaker 4: What brought what brought me to the story Dan back
Speaker 4: in late two thousand and eight, when Dominic was finally sentenced,
Speaker 4: was the fact that I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 4: I went, excuse me, this guy killed twenty three men
Speaker 4: and it's not in the press. It's not in the media.
Speaker 4: I was astonished. I just I couldn't get over it.
Speaker 4: And so I said, well, you know, I got to
Speaker 4: find out what's going on here.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 7: As you take us to New Orleans and New Orleans
Speaker 7: Parish October third, nineteen ninety eight, and you called the
Speaker 7: Nabors but the Quarter, and you talk to just we
Speaker 7: just introduce Ronald Joseph Dominique, this five foot, five hundred
Speaker 7: and sixty pounds, thirty six years old, and you talk
Speaker 7: a little bit about him before we talk about Oliver Lebanks,
Speaker 7: who's twenty seven years old. And again this parish and
Speaker 7: a gay bar called the Rawhide. You take us right
Speaker 7: away to this incredible incident and interaction and these people colliding.
Speaker 7: So tell us a little bit about how you open
Speaker 7: up and start this incredible story in Orleans Parish, October third,
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: Well, I started it there because Rominique was very, very
Speaker 4: eloquent in describing the individuals that he killed when they
Speaker 4: subsequently got him, and I was fascinated by the the
Speaker 4: m o basically what he would do. What he did
Speaker 4: was he he just went into the quarters, as he
Speaker 4: called it, the French Quarter, and he's a he's a
Speaker 4: game man, and he was looking for a guy to
Speaker 4: have sex with. But at the same time he had
Speaker 4: something really wrong with him that made him get extremely
Speaker 4: violent with these individuals. And the the mo o that
Speaker 4: he uses, which is to say to a guy in
Speaker 4: a bar and you know, and in this case it's
Speaker 4: a gay bar, he'd say to the guy, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm interested in, you know, doing this sexual act or
Speaker 4: that sexual act, and then they would agree on a price.
Speaker 4: And then what happens is he the he and and
Speaker 4: and his victim left the bar and they start walking
Speaker 4: through the through the French Quarter. Do they walk right
Speaker 4: by Jean Lafitte's black blacksmith shop Lafitte, of course, with
Speaker 4: the pirate atriot who helped defend America from the British
Speaker 4: during the War of eighteen twelve in eighteen fourteen, and
Speaker 4: he takes him to his car and they start doing
Speaker 4: you know, sexual stuff. And then the next thing you know,
Speaker 4: Dominique gets really angry because the guy is trying to
Speaker 4: do anal sex with him, and for various reasons, he
Speaker 4: doesn't want this, and that's the point, at least that's
Speaker 4: what he will subsequently tell please that he just loses it.
Speaker 4: But the fact is he went, well, they're doing this
Speaker 4: in the car. Dominique has like a jack candle under
Speaker 4: the seat, so he's already ready to do something, and
Speaker 4: that's exactly what he does. He takes the jackcandle, he
Speaker 4: hits the guy in the head, and he kills him.
Speaker 4: But the interesting part about this individual is that rather
Speaker 4: than dump the body someplace where people won't find it,
Speaker 4: which is what most murderers I think would do, he
Speaker 4: decides he's going to do it in public. And he's
Speaker 4: got all kinds of reasons for doing this, and so
Speaker 4: he rides around the airport with this body in the
Speaker 4: back seat and what I did, Dan was I drove
Speaker 4: exactly the same route so I could describe it in
Speaker 4: a book for the reader. So you know, I want
Speaker 4: you know, you got to see this stuff, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? And you know you got to breed
Speaker 4: when you're writing. You know this, when you're writing true crime,
Speaker 4: you got to breathe the same air as the bad
Speaker 4: guy because then you get it, you get the feeling
Speaker 4: for it. And just doing that really gave me an
Speaker 4: appreciation for how this guy was able to do what
Speaker 4: he did for so many years.
Speaker 7: You talk about, just to elaborate a little bit, it's
Speaker 7: not only that he had places he could dump these bodies,
Speaker 7: but rather he wanted these bodies to be found. But
Speaker 7: this is the value where decomposition is quick and alligators
Speaker 7: can do your job like nobody else in terms of
Speaker 7: destroying forensic evidence. Isn't that true?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yes. One of the things that I discovered years
Speaker 4: ago on some other books is that when you if
Speaker 4: you dump a body. Number one, if you dump a
Speaker 4: body in warm water, it's going to decompose, and it's
Speaker 4: sort of sense of it. You know, it's going to
Speaker 4: decompose that much quicker. My god, if you dump it
Speaker 4: in a by you, the alligators would get rid of
Speaker 4: it and there'd be no evidence, not dominate. He wanted
Speaker 4: the body to be found because of his inferiority complex,
Speaker 4: and he wanted the body to be found, and so
Speaker 4: he would search out a place where he could dump
Speaker 4: the body without anybody seeing him. But it was still
Speaker 4: in public, next to a throughway or a freeway or road,
Speaker 4: whatever it might be. And that's what he does. And
Speaker 4: in this particular case and in all the other cases
Speaker 4: of the other twenty two men that he kills, you.
Speaker 7: Talk about the next day and by sees the body,
Speaker 7: like you say, below the freeway ramp and calls police.
Speaker 7: He's dumped in Jefferson County. So Detective Dennis Thornton, from
Speaker 7: one of the mental figures in this book, he is.
Speaker 7: And you also talk about this New Orleans metro area
Speaker 7: and it's per capita homicide rate. Tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about that. And as you do introduce who this
Speaker 7: Dennis Thornton, Detective Dennis Thornton is.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, the New Orleans has the highest per
Speaker 4: capita murder rate of any place in the United States
Speaker 4: of America. And that's to begin with. So one more body,
Speaker 4: you know, more or less is not going to make
Speaker 4: much of a difference except to two relatives. And if
Speaker 4: you're lucky enough, are concerned. The detective and Thornton, Dennis
Speaker 4: Thornton is unique. He is he is a detective and
Speaker 4: now he's actually a captain. But back then, you know,
Speaker 4: he was a you know, detective and with a degree
Speaker 4: in criminal master's degree in criminal justice. So you've got
Speaker 4: a guy who's got street smarts, academic smarts, and most
Speaker 4: importantly he has he's blind to what the the profession
Speaker 4: is of the victim. A victim is a victim. He
Speaker 4: doesn't care whether the victim is a male prostitute, a
Speaker 4: female prostitute, or any you know, or anything of that nature.
Speaker 4: And he doesn't care if the victim is gay or straight.
Speaker 4: Oly knows is it's a victim. And quite frankly, that's
Speaker 4: pretty unique in my experience with the police departments that
Speaker 4: I've worked with, because in most cases when prostitutes are killed,
Speaker 4: the police departments don't knock themselves out because these aren't
Speaker 4: tax paying citizens. Dan, you know what. But when you
Speaker 4: once in a while you get a cop like this
Speaker 4: one and he doesn't care, you know, only knows is
Speaker 4: that one of the ten commandments has been violated and
Speaker 4: he's going to go after the guy as long as
Speaker 4: it takes.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about that, he doesn't realize. But this
Speaker 7: is not this killer's first kill. Yes, And so you
Speaker 7: go through the people that were first seen. The first
Speaker 7: victims was David Mitchell nineteen. And what you also mentioned
Speaker 7: he is not only does he not care about age,
Speaker 7: he doesn't care about profession. As we'll see in this story,
Speaker 7: which is again even more unique, he doesn't care about race.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, you know that that's a great point. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because you know, I certainly concentrated more on the on
Speaker 4: the sexuality situation, but no, he does not care about
Speaker 4: race at all. And look, I'm not going to tar
Speaker 4: and feather every police officer in the Southern United States.
Speaker 4: But the fact of the matter is there are many
Speaker 4: bigots in the United States. Many of them are in
Speaker 4: the Southern States, and some of them are police officers.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said before.
Speaker 4: But the uniqueness of this story is that the first
Speaker 4: on the case is nothing like this. And that's what
Speaker 4: got me. In contrast to the fact that our media
Speaker 4: wouldn't cover it.
Speaker 7: Well, those are issues we could debate all night and
Speaker 7: day in terms of, you know, certain segment of society
Speaker 7: and are more some people in some states, But for
Speaker 7: this purpose when what we do get to see is
Speaker 7: an extraordinary effort by an extraordinary officer. And that's what's
Speaker 7: incredibly interesting because we haven't met the other central figure
Speaker 7: in this book as well, and again just right out
Speaker 7: of central casting. So let's get to David Mitchell nineteen.
Speaker 7: He's last seen on July thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven in
Speaker 7: another parish, Saint Charles Parish, and Dominique say is living
Speaker 7: nearby in boot Or, but I'm not sure the pronunciation.
Speaker 7: So tell us tell us how this is found. And
Speaker 7: we didn't mention exactly what police in the condition of
Speaker 7: the body. And again this is something that we'll talk
Speaker 7: of mo and signature. What do they find in terms
Speaker 7: of David Mitchell and what did they find before that
Speaker 7: with Lee Banks in terms of what police find at
Speaker 7: the scene, Well, what.
Speaker 4: The police find is there's a constant consistent in in
Speaker 4: this case, and what they find in every single instance
Speaker 4: is that these are what cops call body dump jobs.
Speaker 4: The individual is murdered over here and then transport it
Speaker 4: over there and dumped in public. And they find what
Speaker 4: is consistent is the individual is strangled. Uh, there might
Speaker 4: be a certain element of suffocation if that didn't work enough,
Speaker 4: you know, if the if the strangling didn't work enough,
Speaker 4: and uh and and and it can't and it can
Speaker 4: also be bludgeoning. But the it is a very consistent
Speaker 4: m O. Now, the difficulty is what profilers whole linkage?
Speaker 4: How do you link Okay, how do you link a
Speaker 4: a murder in one parish? And of course this is
Speaker 4: in Louisiana has a unique system. It's a county. Parish
Speaker 4: is a county, So how do you link it from
Speaker 4: over here to over there? This is this is not
Speaker 4: an easy thing to do. And today we we have
Speaker 4: more sophisticated methods uh of geographic profile. But they didn't
Speaker 4: employ that year. All they knew was the body is dumb,
Speaker 4: the dude is suffocated, and blah blah blah, and we'll
Speaker 4: see what we can find out. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 4: You know, it doesn't get any you know, it doesn't. Again,
Speaker 4: it's a question of making that linkage, and that's going
Speaker 4: to take quite some time.
Speaker 7: Now, we're talking about an error at least where DNA
Speaker 7: cognizance and aware of and advancements in DNA testing and technology.
Speaker 7: What evidence of any hair fiber souvenirs taken robbery motive?
Speaker 7: What evidence was left at that crime scene?
Speaker 4: Well, the only thing that police, if the only evidence
Speaker 4: that they would be lucky enough to get, would be
Speaker 4: mitochondrial DNA, which is not an absolute. Uh Mitochondrial DNA
Speaker 4: is a essentially a partial identification. It's not as as
Speaker 4: conclusive as as the other kind of DNA. The name,
Speaker 4: the name of the scientific name escapes me at the moment.
Speaker 4: But uh so, this wasn't a situation where the DNA
Speaker 4: would necessarily lead to the to the capture of the
Speaker 4: bad guy. And of course you've got to have a
Speaker 4: bad guy. You gotta you know guy, you know, and
Speaker 4: you know, there's a few TV series that get it
Speaker 4: right that when you're going to do something of that nature,
Speaker 4: you've got to get a if you get the guy
Speaker 4: in custody, you've got to get yourself a search warrant.
Speaker 4: In the United States to do that sort of thing,
Speaker 4: it's not an easy thing to get, you know, And
Speaker 4: so the police have constitutional restrictions essentially until they can
Speaker 4: show that there's a reason to get the DNA from
Speaker 4: whoever the bad guy might be. But again we go
Speaker 4: back to the same thing. It doesn't do any good
Speaker 4: to you know, you can get the DNA off the body,
Speaker 4: but if you have nothing to compare it to, what
Speaker 4: good does it do. You've got to have yourself a
Speaker 4: you know, you've got to have yourself a suspect, and
Speaker 4: that is not happening. There is no suspect. And Dominique
Speaker 4: is a really smart guy, very feral, as many serial
Speaker 4: killers or as you know and the listeners know. And
Speaker 4: he moves from living in the New Orleans area back
Speaker 4: to go back home to home of Louisiana, which is South. Well,
Speaker 4: that complicates the matter because now he's going through another
Speaker 4: half a dozen powershes how he you know, how are
Speaker 4: you going to link something like that? Again, the only
Speaker 4: way you could link it would be you'd really have
Speaker 4: to have a geographic profiler in the case. And that
Speaker 4: is a that is a that is a very um
Speaker 4: uh oh courant a method of profiling. You know, people
Speaker 4: have got to forget what they see on a TV
Speaker 4: show like Criminal Minds. That's a bunch of crap. You
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Dan, It's it's all crap. I
Speaker 4: mean the FBI's Behavioral Science uh division serial killers, So
Speaker 4: unlike the these dudes, Uh they they advise police officers
Speaker 4: by and large, and a lot of the time they're wrong.
Speaker 4: So essentially, when you're trying to track down a serial killer,
Speaker 4: as in this case, it's a it's it's the old
Speaker 4: fashioned method of shoe leather and and and investigation. It's
Speaker 4: that's the way it is.
Speaker 7: You talk about Dennis Thornton because he's the first person
Speaker 7: on these cases, and what he notices that there are
Speaker 7: some tire tire marks made and he also noticed and
Speaker 7: and thinks that this is quite important is the ligature
Speaker 7: marks on the wrists, and he notices how the wrists
Speaker 7: are tied. And his conclusion is tell us what his
Speaker 7: conclusion is in terms of this early again, despite all
Speaker 7: the FBI profile that you say is cookie cutter and
Speaker 7: they end up being cookie cutter. What does Dennis Thornton,
Speaker 7: this really really dedicated cop, what does he come up
Speaker 7: with in this early assessment of the ligatures on the wrists.
Speaker 4: Well, he certainly feels that the ligatures are indicative of
Speaker 4: the individual being restrained, which of course makes it easier
Speaker 4: for the bad guy to commit the crime. It also
Speaker 4: becomes what is known as signature behavior, the thing that
Speaker 4: one of the things that makes a serial killer unique.
Speaker 4: And of course that sort of detail is known only
Speaker 4: to the investigating officer, which they can use later on
Speaker 4: if they get lucky enough to get the bad guy
Speaker 4: into an interrogation room. And the literature marks are are
Speaker 4: of course extremely important, and they they also determine that again,
Speaker 4: the the you know when you when you strangle somebody,
Speaker 4: it's pretty interesting. What happens is blood vessel, blood vessels
Speaker 4: burst in the eye. Got to say that slowly, it
Speaker 4: almost rhymes. And you might also have uh in this situation,
Speaker 4: the hyoid bone in the throat might be broken. So
Speaker 4: Dennis is really paying attention to this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 4: he's really he's really I mentioned in the book, I said,
Speaker 4: he's really being my I mentioned my Croff Holmes, who
Speaker 4: is Sherlock Holmes's older brother. And he's really being a
Speaker 4: true detective. And I also want to just point out
Speaker 4: that this is not usual. We'd like to believe that
Speaker 4: every police, every detective, is capable of this. Uh. Huh,
Speaker 4: that's not the case. If that was the case, we're
Speaker 4: not having this conversation because he would dominic would have
Speaker 4: been caught a lot earlier on some of the other parachutes.
Speaker 4: But it's because of Thornton's observations of the signature behavior,
Speaker 4: of the ligature marks of the way the individuals are
Speaker 4: murdered that he begins to understand not only you know,
Speaker 4: what the mo is of this guy and how he
Speaker 4: does it. And I think, and I'll just tell you
Speaker 4: that one of the things that I had a learning
Speaker 4: curve on Dan on this one was, you know, these
Speaker 4: guys that Dominie picked on, many of them were in
Speaker 4: very good shape. I mean, these were, you know, strong individuals,
Speaker 4: but he was able to use He actually was a
Speaker 4: lot stronger physically than he looked. So once he got
Speaker 4: the guy under him, he could use his weight to
Speaker 4: keep the guy there, tie him up to whatever he
Speaker 4: wanted to do with the guys. I mean, thank god,
Speaker 4: he didn't torture or anything like that, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I mean, that wasn't his thing. That wasn't
Speaker 4: his thing. He had some.
Speaker 7: Other things in mind, right, you talk about in your book.
Speaker 7: Because we got to go through a little bit of
Speaker 7: this incredible body count in terms of we talked about
Speaker 7: David Bitchell, it was nineteen years old, was on last
Speaker 7: scene on July thirteenth, ninety seven, But then we have
Speaker 7: five months later Gary Pierre, twenty years old in Saint
Speaker 7: Charles Parrish, and then seven months later Larry Larry Ranson,
Speaker 7: who was again again dominique changes victim of choice in
Speaker 7: terms of age. And you also point out that these
Speaker 7: bodies are dumped close together, so Thornton really has his
Speaker 7: hands filled on trying to understand this mentality of this
Speaker 7: guy that seems to be taunting police, not only leaving
Speaker 7: the bodies to be discovered, but now going back to
Speaker 7: a familiar dumping site, and the FBI, like you say,
Speaker 7: comes in, but it's not really doing anything at that time.
Speaker 7: You talk about how though, after Lebanks that things accelerate
Speaker 7: and he's not waiting as long. Fifteen days after Lebanks
Speaker 7: is Joseph Brown, who's sixteen years old, and one month
Speaker 7: later Williams, a young man named Williams. Now yes, at
Speaker 7: what point? And then you talk about Manuel Reid found
Speaker 7: twenty one years old, found May nineteen ninety nine. Then
Speaker 7: Angel Megia, June thirtieth, nineteen ninety nine. So what does
Speaker 7: Thornton think? How much are this? Is the state disturbed
Speaker 7: by this or are they What is the progress of
Speaker 7: this investigation? Tell us a little bit about what the
Speaker 7: status is around this time with this many victims.
Speaker 4: It's really sad, actually, now that you mention it, there
Speaker 4: is no status. I mean, they're not making Thornton is
Speaker 4: during the best that he can within his parish, and
Speaker 4: if you hear us about a similar killing in another parish,
Speaker 4: will put it together. Certainly means he's going to hear
Speaker 4: about all the killings that are happening. And as far
Speaker 4: as the state is concerned, they don't care. Like I said,
Speaker 4: these are not tax paying citizens. Most of them are.
Speaker 4: Most of these individuals are gay. And I might add
Speaker 4: I somebody pointed this out to me, a friend of mine,
Speaker 4: Jim Seely afterwards, that some of these individuals could also
Speaker 4: have been bisexual, you know, but the state is not.
Speaker 4: And and again I wouldn't be critical of the State
Speaker 4: of Louisiana on this one because they're not putting it together.
Speaker 4: If you have a you know, they're not putting it together.
Speaker 4: If you've got a body that's you know, dumped over here,
Speaker 4: and then there's one over here. They don't, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not like it's not like, uh, you know, Morisco
Speaker 4: Pargeta is sitting there reading all of the uh, you know,
Speaker 4: all of the bulletins that are coming in from all
Speaker 4: over the place, you know what I mean. And and
Speaker 4: so Dennis is of course puzzled by this. And and
Speaker 4: we all know that serial killers have quote unquote cooling
Speaker 4: off periods and where they don't do anything. In the
Speaker 4: Dominiqu's case, in some of those cooling off periods, he
Speaker 4: gets a little bit in trouble with the cops for
Speaker 4: some minor stuff, which again is fairly difficult for serial killers.
Speaker 4: But as far as the state putting it together, uh,
Speaker 4: the state is not at this point in time by
Speaker 4: the late nineties, they're not interested. They're really you know,
Speaker 4: they're not interested. Nobody's put it together yet.
Speaker 7: You talk about in ninety nine though, the media gets
Speaker 7: involved and puts out a again inaccurate account with calling
Speaker 7: it the shoeless shoeless body could be could be work
Speaker 7: of a serial killer. And as a result, you talk
Speaker 7: about you talk about this this killer feeling the heat
Speaker 7: and moving to Homa again, this is fifty eight miles
Speaker 7: only southeast of New Orleans. There is a sketch there's.
Speaker 4: Dan did that the fifty eight or did I put
Speaker 4: it in the book? I don't remember you put it
Speaker 4: in the book.
Speaker 7: Fifty eight miles?
Speaker 4: He thank God for Google maps. Keep going.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you talk about in ninety nine the New
Speaker 7: Orleans Times published a sketch and shortly after Dominique quit
Speaker 7: his job and drove his trailer to Homa. Which is
Speaker 7: who is he staying with in Homer there? And oh boy,
Speaker 7: and we're talking about another parish. And that's where we
Speaker 7: introduce this the main character in your book again, another
Speaker 7: heroic figure, Detective Don Bergeron. So tell us about his
Speaker 7: decision to move to somewhere else. Yeah, introduced Don.
Speaker 4: Great question. It isn't okay. Dominique has never commented about
Speaker 4: why he made that move, but I think it's pretty
Speaker 4: clear that since the murders will beginning to get some attention,
Speaker 4: and as you point out, they called a couple of
Speaker 4: bodies showed up shoeless, and that turned out to be
Speaker 4: that wasn't signature behavior. It was just what happened. And
Speaker 4: though the idea you know that the title the Shoeless
Speaker 4: serial Killer sounds pretty good. Not as good as so Sam,
Speaker 4: but she was a serial killer. So anyway, he decides
Speaker 4: that he's going to take his uh. He's got himself
Speaker 4: a motor home, and he's got himself a uh he's
Speaker 4: got like a car that he uses to pick up
Speaker 4: the victims. And so what he does is he hitches
Speaker 4: he hitches one up to the other and goes south.
Speaker 4: And I believe that the reason he did that is
Speaker 4: because he was getting a little bit too hot for
Speaker 4: him in New Orleans, no pun intended. And he goes
Speaker 4: back to Homer and he moves he well, he doesn't
Speaker 4: move in, but he's in the what he pulled the
Speaker 4: driveway or the back, you know, the driveway of his sister,
Speaker 4: who lives in a neighborhood called by you Blue, and
Speaker 4: individuals who live in the in these areas are known
Speaker 4: by that names. In other words, if you live in
Speaker 4: the by your Blue neighborhood, you're by your blue man.
Speaker 4: If you live in a buy you blue you know
Speaker 4: red neighborhood, you're known as by you blue red, whatever
Speaker 4: it might be. So he moves, he moves in with
Speaker 4: the sister. And what's really interesting again about motivation, you know,
Speaker 4: which is what everybody wants to know about, is that
Speaker 4: he has faced Dominique has faced an incredible amount of discrimination.
Speaker 4: I don't know if discrimination is the right word. Ridicule,
Speaker 4: ridicule for being dead and from his family, but he
Speaker 4: seems to have a pretty good relationship with a sister,
Speaker 4: and so that's why he goes there. But I think
Speaker 4: it's very the cultural differences are very important in this
Speaker 4: story because if this was a gay individual growing up
Speaker 4: in San Francisco, for example, or New York City, I
Speaker 4: don't think we'd have this conversation because the individual would
Speaker 4: have been more accepted. But you're talking about a place
Speaker 4: where a lot of individuals are not many of them
Speaker 4: are not well educated. And Dan, if I may, I'd
Speaker 4: just like to tell you that what I did when
Speaker 4: I went to the town to start, you know, to Homa.
Speaker 4: Interrupt me at any point, because I just go on
Speaker 4: and on. But I went to Homa, Dan, And you know,
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan of Westerns. So in Westerns, people
Speaker 4: will you know you wanted Marshall wants information, goes into
Speaker 4: the saloon. So I went into a local bar Dan
Speaker 4: you know, And I asked, I asked around when I
Speaker 4: went there to investigate this case, and I went, everybody
Speaker 4: knows Bernald J. Dominic. No, they're no. I looked at
Speaker 4: him like they were crazy. How do you kill twenty
Speaker 4: three people, most of them in your parish. You never
Speaker 4: heard of them? And of course only Fred Rosen. This
Speaker 4: was two thousand and nine when I was doing this,
Speaker 4: and Barack Obama had just been elected, and of course
Speaker 4: Louisiana was not a state that voted for the president.
Speaker 4: So of course after they these individuals said they'd never
Speaker 4: heard of him, and I knew they were lying. I said, gee,
Speaker 4: what do you think of Barack Obama? Gee? That was
Speaker 4: not the smartest thing to do. I was lucky I
Speaker 4: didn't get a fight.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 4: But but but thing is from there after I left
Speaker 4: that bar, and it was during the day, so I
Speaker 4: don't even know if I had a you know, I
Speaker 4: probably had a cup of coffee. Alant this rinked before five.
Speaker 4: This this despite what Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett sent about.
Speaker 4: And so I went to see Don Berger on and
Speaker 4: that opened up all kinds of doors.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, you also talked about at this time in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety nine, Michael Right el Visent vanishes New Year's Eve
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety nine. Body found next day dumped on a
Speaker 7: barbed wire fence marks wrisk And then you say that,
Speaker 7: and you say, and we're gonna stop for a break,
Speaker 7: just for a second. But suddenly the killing stop for
Speaker 7: two years. And at the same time, we've got the
Speaker 7: BTK killer in Kansas. He usus as an opportunity Fred
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Speaker 7: about don Bergeron and you talked about her being a
Speaker 7: relative novice as a police officer, but someone wanted her.
Speaker 7: There was a task force formed with Dennis Thornton, and
Speaker 7: someone spoke very highly of Don Bergeron and saw something
Speaker 7: in there, and she was on the task force. Tell
Speaker 7: us about this task force that is formed, and tell
Speaker 7: us what happens in the career killing career of Ronald Dominique.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing we should talk about because two things.
Speaker 4: Two things. First, I'm gonna buy those sheets and second
Speaker 4: I'm from Brooklyn, so there you go. Maybe it'll autograph
Speaker 4: them for me. And but what happens is Bergeron is
Speaker 4: her pre chet calls are the fire cracker because she
Speaker 4: is a she's a natural she's a real natural. She
Speaker 4: doesn't discriminate. She she understands people. In fact, one of
Speaker 4: the things that she told me was that she had
Speaker 4: she was on some some detail that dealt a lot
Speaker 4: with individuals who, according to Dawn, they were Occajuns, and
Speaker 4: that it was fairly common, according to Dawn, in the
Speaker 4: Cajun culture, where there was a certain amount of insects.
Speaker 4: So this is somebody who had experience with sexual crime.
Speaker 4: And you know what, if I was casting this, yeah,
Speaker 4: she it beat Mariska Hargeta in a heartbeat. And so
Speaker 4: what happens is when they decided that you already have going.
Speaker 4: Dominique has laid off killings for a couple of years.
Speaker 4: The reason being he got in trouble. He insulted a
Speaker 4: woman in public, and he went after her and eventually
Speaker 4: he was tried and convicted and blah blah blah. Another
Speaker 4: the cops actually had the bad guy in custody, they
Speaker 4: didn't know it well. Don Bergeron meanwhile, is paying attention
Speaker 4: to the bodies that are accumulating terror Bone Parish, which
Speaker 4: is where she is in Homer, And eventually the state
Speaker 4: police realize, uh, you know what, we got a lot
Speaker 4: of bodies here. So they formed a quote unquote Tanskport
Speaker 4: and the tankports includes detectives from the various parishes. The
Speaker 4: first person, of course they signed up or signed up
Speaker 4: was it was Dennis Thornton. And when he meets Bergeron,
Speaker 4: there is a chemistry between them and they really complement
Speaker 4: each other quite well. And so at that point they
Speaker 4: get together. And and I should also mention that in
Speaker 4: the task Force there is a parole officer which becomes
Speaker 4: key to solving our case. And so and and and
Speaker 4: there's actually a parallel uh uh in this case to
Speaker 4: the Dahmer case that we'll talk about, and not involving
Speaker 4: certainly not involving cannibalism, but something else. In any case,
Speaker 4: Bergeron and and Thornton become the two lead investigators on
Speaker 4: this thing.
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Speaker 7: He terms and conditions eighteen plus. Now you talk about
Speaker 7: Dominique doing various jobs. He's worked various jobs in his life,
Speaker 7: and now he's a pizza delivery guy, which gives him
Speaker 7: opportunities to learn the city and he continues his killing spree.
Speaker 7: Talk about Kenneth Fitzgerald Randolph, he lived near Dominique nineteen
Speaker 7: years old. You also talk about this person being a
Speaker 7: pedophile as well, like a convicted pedophile and he meets
Speaker 7: Dominique again. What is the state of the bodies that's
Speaker 7: consistent with the other bodies, not that anybody's making a
Speaker 7: link between these are making all of the links with
Speaker 7: these people, all these victims. Tell us what those shared
Speaker 7: characteristics are? And when do they make this definitive link
Speaker 7: between all of these perishes that he has killed in.
Speaker 4: Well, once the the the the the link is certainly
Speaker 4: the the m O. They're all they're all strangled, Okay,
Speaker 4: they're all and they're all dumped essentially in public, and
Speaker 4: and they realize that this guy is he's taunting the cops.
Speaker 4: He's really taunts. He's trying to say, hey, I'm a
Speaker 4: lot smarter than you guys, Come come and get me.
Speaker 4: And uh so they they once don Once, Thorns and
Speaker 4: Bergeron get together. They realize that all of these cases
Speaker 4: are tied together to buy the mo and they realized
Speaker 4: that the individual they're seeking is someplace within the Terrbone Parish.
Speaker 4: But the question becomes, Okay, how do we find this person?
Speaker 4: And I got to tell you something, it's so ironic.
Speaker 4: One of my best friends for forty years, and I
Speaker 4: had no idea he grew up in Homer, Louisiana and
Speaker 4: Terrbone Parish. It wasn't there any time. But you know
Speaker 4: when I spoke to him about it, his name is
Speaker 4: Frank Amston. He's a film director. And that's why was
Speaker 4: so fascinating. Again that you know, this is, like I
Speaker 4: call it an out of the way place. And I
Speaker 4: also would add that this is about, oh maybe a
Speaker 4: year before the deep border horizon blows up. I'm going
Speaker 4: to go from Mexico with the big oil spill. Well
Speaker 4: that's literally right outside the door. So the detectives get
Speaker 4: together and now they start putting it, putting the pieces
Speaker 4: together and realize the individual that they're seeking is someplace
Speaker 4: within her parish. Then the question becomes, how do we
Speaker 4: get to do.
Speaker 7: Now there is some sightings and there is again they
Speaker 7: have to follow up every lead, as police have to do,
Speaker 7: but there is some interesting lead in terms of a
Speaker 7: place called the Sugar bul Motel. So tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about the Sugar Bowl Motel and what Thornton
Speaker 7: or where's it Bergeron I'm not sure realizes later in
Speaker 7: terms of the importance of this location.
Speaker 4: Well, this particular location as a place where some of
Speaker 4: the victims had been picked up in the vicinity, either
Speaker 4: in the parking lot or outside the parking lot of
Speaker 4: the Sugar Bowl Hotel in Homa. And so what they
Speaker 4: decide to do is basically stake the place out. But
Speaker 4: it doesn't work because you're dealing with an individual who
Speaker 4: is pretty damn smart, so as soon as he realizes
Speaker 4: they're on the scent, he goes the other way. And
Speaker 4: so they don't have the you know, it's it's not
Speaker 4: like they're going to stake it out, you know, and
Speaker 4: the guy's going to come and try to pick somebody up,
Speaker 4: and the cops are there and you know, and and
Speaker 4: and so forth, that doesn't happen. That's what they're hoping
Speaker 4: is going to happen. But that's not what happened. And
Speaker 4: it's extremely frustrating to them. And the saying that came
Speaker 4: across to me was as Dawn explained, how they had
Speaker 4: to shadow the guy, they had to uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the stakouts and so forth. A lot of this is
Speaker 4: on their own time because for whatever reason, the state
Speaker 4: was not giving them the overtime, so they did it
Speaker 4: on their own time, which took away from the time
Speaker 4: they would spend with their families. And again, I think
Speaker 4: that's that so indicative of their of their dedication. And
Speaker 4: again to to catching the killer without caring about the
Speaker 4: sexual aspect or the racial aspect didn't make any difference
Speaker 4: to these two jobs. They were. You know that this
Speaker 4: is a lone ranger in Tonto. Basically, you know, these
Speaker 4: these people don't care about race, they don't care about sex.
Speaker 4: All they care about is somebody is getting murdered and
Speaker 4: we're going to get him.
Speaker 7: You're talking about now, two thousand and five August and
Speaker 7: a Hurricane Katrina happens, so that disaster and an incredible
Speaker 7: historical disaster there, but an interesting person in that Thornton
Speaker 7: and bergeron again thinking outside of the box. Thornton thinks
Speaker 7: maybe we should contact those people that were sex offenders,
Speaker 7: and then somebody says he thinks, why not contact parolee
Speaker 7: And so again I mentioned you alluded to probation officer
Speaker 7: and becomes a hero and other hero in this Tom Lambert,
Speaker 7: and he also is on the task force. So he's
Speaker 7: a probation officer of John Banning. So tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about John Banning, what information they get from him,
Speaker 7: because he's important.
Speaker 4: What happens is he's an individual who is picked up
Speaker 4: by what by by Dominique. And what Dominique would do
Speaker 4: with straight guys is he would get he would show
Speaker 4: them pictures, uh, you know, like nude photos of women,
Speaker 4: or suggest the photos and say, hey, listen, I got
Speaker 4: this girl back in my trailer. You want to mess
Speaker 4: around with her or whatever. So that's how he loures
Speaker 4: this dude back to his trailer. But once he gets
Speaker 4: back to the trailer and Dominique tries the whole deal
Speaker 4: with you know, he tries to get sexual with him,
Speaker 4: He tries to bind him, and so forth. That's what's interesting,
Speaker 4: which is the guy breaks out of the trailer and
Speaker 4: he eventually tells his his parole officer about it. And
Speaker 4: so when Thornton and Bergeron ask the parole officer, hey,
Speaker 4: have any of your and and this guy was a
Speaker 4: you know, it was a pro league and he says,
Speaker 4: and so Thornton and Bergeron say to the parole officer, hey,
Speaker 4: any of your guys know anything about some weird guy?
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah. And the next thing you know, this
Speaker 4: paro league comes forward and tells the parole officer about Dominique.
Speaker 4: And then and this part is actually at a movie,
Speaker 4: which is they they they he tells them where it is,
Speaker 4: and they go and they open up the mailbox and
Speaker 4: they say and they look at the mail and it
Speaker 4: says Ronald J. Dominique, but it being bought a boom,
Speaker 4: as Tony Soprano would say, They have their suspect. And
Speaker 4: then they conduct and then they run arent go ahead.
Speaker 7: So you talk about this. They have the mitochondrial DNA,
Speaker 7: they know that's not enough. So what's the next step
Speaker 7: to be able to get the nuclear DNA that they need.
Speaker 4: In order to get nuclear DNA, you have to you
Speaker 4: have to what he caught. You've got to get a warrant. Well,
Speaker 4: there's a couple of things that happened here. What happens
Speaker 4: is they let the f behind them what's going down,
Speaker 4: and then the FBI next thing you know, they've got
Speaker 4: helicopters going over the guy's house, which is sort of
Speaker 4: a you know, a tip off, but they're pretty sure
Speaker 4: they got them. You know, this is the guy. And
Speaker 4: so it becomes a question of not only getting the
Speaker 4: nuclear DNA. That's not enough. You also have to be
Speaker 4: able to get the guy some other forensic evidence and
Speaker 4: or having the individual in a room where you you
Speaker 4: know where where where you interrogate the individual. And so
Speaker 4: what they're what they're hoping to do is get some
Speaker 4: sort of match of nuclear DNA, but it really is
Speaker 4: not going to happen so easily.
Speaker 7: And so.
Speaker 4: In fact, Thornton says, all we had was a mitochondrial
Speaker 4: DNA match, and there are lots of pressure to arrest them.
Speaker 4: We knew that once we got in the interrogation room
Speaker 4: was anybody's get what he might say. To make matters worse,
Speaker 4: there's been a media leakage, which is the last thing
Speaker 4: that they wanted, So they've got to get the guy
Speaker 4: into custody, then get the warrant and get the DNA.
Speaker 4: But it's even more important two guy to confess to
Speaker 4: the crime because a good defense attorney can always challenge
Speaker 4: a mitochondrial DNA match. So it's really a question of
Speaker 4: trying to set a trap for the guy, as they
Speaker 4: did with the Sugar Bowl motel, which didn't work, and
Speaker 4: he slips away from that, and they were really owed
Speaker 4: because while they're surveilling and he went out to kill
Speaker 4: somebody else. So now it's like, Okay, what do we do.
Speaker 4: We've got a minochondrial DNA match to one of the victims.
Speaker 4: We don't have nuclear but do we let the guy
Speaker 4: keep doing what he's doing or do we take a
Speaker 4: shot interest And that that is the major decision that
Speaker 4: they have to make.
Speaker 7: You talk about one more killing, but there's two more killings.
Speaker 7: He slips under their radar, And it's sad to see
Speaker 7: these dedicated police officers doing every they can and they
Speaker 7: know in their hearts of hearts that it's this guy,
Speaker 7: and yet they can't get the money for twenty four
Speaker 7: to seven surveillance on the guy till they get the
Speaker 7: DNA that sure surely tells you that he must be
Speaker 7: involve some family member. So it's almost a slam Duncan
Speaker 7: they finally get the money and he's still still eluding them.
Speaker 7: So it's a desperate scene that you described that these
Speaker 7: officers working for over eight years on this. Thornton over
Speaker 7: eight years on this and they know who it is
Speaker 7: and they know he has a record. He just hasn't
Speaker 7: been convicted. That people just didn't show up, so they
Speaker 7: know they have their guy. Oh yeah, tell us about
Speaker 7: you talk about another against verious film esque scene where
Speaker 7: Bergeron wants to make this arrest. She's been involved, she's
Speaker 7: in deep but she you talk about the sacrifice where
Speaker 7: these people are working overtime on their own money. I mean,
Speaker 7: they're not being paid for overtime work, so they're volunteering
Speaker 7: that time. But she has promised to take her kid,
Speaker 7: her daughter to Walt Disney World, so she calls to
Speaker 7: see if it's okay, if she can go and fulfill
Speaker 7: the promise she made to her daughter. Like wow, So
Speaker 7: tell us what she does and how in the end,
Speaker 7: finally he is arrested.
Speaker 4: Well, what happens is they're waiting to get a match
Speaker 4: on one of the victor victors name is Sutterfield. And
Speaker 4: Dawn goes to Disney World in Florida and she's with
Speaker 4: her daughter and she's she and she's in constant contact
Speaker 4: with Dennis Thornton. And what finally happens is they don't
Speaker 4: get a nuclear DNA match, they get a they get
Speaker 4: a minochondrial DNA match, and she's a Disney World and
Speaker 4: she is with her daughter, and then the decision has
Speaker 4: to be made. Okay, he's already he's already killed two people,
Speaker 4: even though we had the drag man out, and so
Speaker 4: that's in addition to the other twenty one. Okay, what
Speaker 4: do we do? And they make a decision that they're
Speaker 4: going to arrest this guy and try to sweat him
Speaker 4: during the interrogation, and so she leaves Disney World early
Speaker 4: with her daughter. And again this points out the sacrifices
Speaker 4: they're making in their personal life. And finally she comes
Speaker 4: back to Terreborne Parish and they find out that that
Speaker 4: Dominique has left his sisters and is living in some
Speaker 4: flop house someplace and for lack of a better term,
Speaker 4: Downtown Hall. Mom and the cops are not the cops
Speaker 4: for the immediate have become aware that they're going after the
Speaker 4: Southern Louisiana serial killer, and they go to arrest them,
Speaker 4: and they arrest them and they take them downtown to
Speaker 4: be interrogated, and that is when they get they're able
Speaker 4: to get the evidence that they need in order to
Speaker 4: charge him successfully.
Speaker 7: You chronicle this painstaking but brilliant cross examination here, this
Speaker 7: questioning of his suspect with the with the goal to
Speaker 7: not have him lawyer up, not speak to a lawyer,
Speaker 7: So they have to make him comfortable enough. And then
Speaker 7: there's the idea that he doesn't care who a victim
Speaker 7: is comes in handy this empathy in general. So they
Speaker 7: approach is very subtle, and they get and maybe you
Speaker 7: can tell us what their goal is in the beginning
Speaker 7: is to bit by bit make this case. So they
Speaker 7: do they'd single of two murders in particular, how do
Speaker 7: they approach this, as you write the masterful approach? What
Speaker 7: do they do to be able to gain the necessary
Speaker 7: information to at least say we've got two Well.
Speaker 4: It's what you said. They make a decision early on
Speaker 4: that they're going to use empathy. They're not going to
Speaker 4: pressure him they're going to be empathetic. They're going to
Speaker 4: be sympathetic. They're going to listen to him, they're gonna
Speaker 4: they're going to ask him questions, not just about the crimes,
Speaker 4: but his background. They're gonna they're going to draw him out.
Speaker 4: They're going to give him whatever you The only thing
Speaker 4: that they don't want to do when they first get
Speaker 4: him is they don't want him to go to sleep
Speaker 4: so fast because they want to get more information. Because
Speaker 4: despite the fact that they're going to put he talks
Speaker 4: about suicide and so forth, they're going to have a
Speaker 4: suicide watch in the individual. That's there's always a possibility
Speaker 4: the guy's going to do it. So the idea is
Speaker 4: essentially to act as therapists to lack of a better term,
Speaker 4: and allow him to tell them what his life is like,
Speaker 4: what his life is about. And as he does this,
Speaker 4: he starts confessing to the first couple of murders. But
Speaker 4: because these are these police officers are really humanitarians, that's
Speaker 4: not enough. They're not interested in just solving so unquote
Speaker 4: or putting closure, that's the best word on a couple
Speaker 4: of murders. They want to put closure in all twenty
Speaker 4: three and so they'd have to come up with a
Speaker 4: way to do that, and as you point out, without
Speaker 4: him lawyering up. And if anything, if there's any part
Speaker 4: of the story that's like a movie, this is the
Speaker 4: part because they're able to have a discussion with him
Speaker 4: that lasts really a couple of days in which he
Speaker 4: will wind up confessing to all twenty three murders. And
Speaker 4: then of course there needs to be a decision on
Speaker 4: the part of the prosecutor about what to prosecute and
Speaker 4: so forth and so on. But for them, and I
Speaker 4: will also say the prosecutor, the idea is to bring
Speaker 4: closure to the families. And I just feel as wonderful
Speaker 4: is how they treated these family, these the families of
Speaker 4: the victims. Again, they didn't look at this in any
Speaker 4: sexual way, which is, you know, and considering the you know,
Speaker 4: the discussion we've had in this country regarding the rights
Speaker 4: of gays and transgender people and so forth. And this
Speaker 4: is in two thousand and six, so this is eleven
Speaker 4: years ago. These two police officers are way ahead of
Speaker 4: their time, as well as the prosecutor, so to him
Speaker 4: extensively and really trying to be his best friend. They're
Speaker 4: able to draw him out.
Speaker 7: You also talk about how the chip away at this
Speaker 7: with the two first murders, getting him, as you say,
Speaker 7: to talk and sink himself with his his own words.
Speaker 7: He talks lamely about it doesn't seem too swift. He
Speaker 7: talks about a lame attempt at talking about this being
Speaker 7: self defense. Yet in the self defense he gave enough
Speaker 7: right and evidence to hang himself and convict himself of
Speaker 7: murder with those two and after they have enough for eight,
Speaker 7: they finally get enough for eight, and then they rather
Speaker 7: take a break, Like you say, they can't continue. They're
Speaker 7: very very careful. They want to make sure this sticks.
Speaker 7: But the thing that they realize is that now is
Speaker 7: the time that they've gained his confidence and befriended him
Speaker 7: and listened to his stories, his excuses for why he
Speaker 7: is the way he is. And I'll let you tell
Speaker 7: our audience to some of the things he said about
Speaker 7: his background that apparently are the reason for his later behavior.
Speaker 7: But they realize and then go into that room and
Speaker 7: say to him, listen, this really isn't about self defense,
Speaker 7: and they not so, not so or not, and not
Speaker 7: very much time they have him admitting what he was
Speaker 7: claiming about self defense as nonsense, don't they?
Speaker 4: Yes, And because and the reason is actually, as we're
Speaker 4: talking about it, what's interesting here is just that I
Speaker 4: would be doubtful Dominic has ever talked to other individuals,
Speaker 4: including therapist. There's no indication he ever had therapy where
Speaker 4: he's talking about the ridicule a couple of things. He
Speaker 4: talks about the ridicule that he faced with his family
Speaker 4: being gay. He talks about working on offshore and one
Speaker 4: of the oil platforms and being well. He talks about that,
Speaker 4: and then he talks about at some point he's behind
Speaker 4: bars for something and for some minor crime and he
Speaker 4: gets raped and it screws up his anus, and so
Speaker 4: he is he's afraid of anybody having anal sex with him,
Speaker 4: an he any and he And what's wonderful is that
Speaker 4: these police officers do not show any surprise in, you know,
Speaker 4: in the details of this, because there's a lot of
Speaker 4: details that make people very uncomfortable. Not these two cups. Now, uh,
Speaker 4: they're they're as sympathetic as as and and and I
Speaker 4: believe they were. They were really sympathetic. I don't think
Speaker 4: it was just a you know, an act. I think
Speaker 4: it's from these people are they're not sympathetic to the
Speaker 4: guy killing, but they're certainly sympathetic to an individual who
Speaker 4: claims he was in a rape. They're sympathetic to an
Speaker 4: individual who says he was denigrated growing up by everybody,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. And so then the real question
Speaker 4: comes in, Okay, how do we clear old twenty three.
Speaker 4: And that's where it gets, you know, interesting, where they
Speaker 4: make a deal. They talk to the prosecutor. Now this
Speaker 4: is a state and where they execute people. There are
Speaker 4: thirty eight states in the United States where they still
Speaker 4: have the death penalty on books, and Louisiana is one
Speaker 4: of them, and they use it. But the cops, Dennis
Speaker 4: Don and the DA decide it's more important to bring
Speaker 4: closure to these families. So they make a deal. If
Speaker 4: if Dominate takes them to all twenty three dump sites
Speaker 4: where the bodies were dumped, they will take the death
Speaker 4: penalty off the table and he'll just be sentenced just
Speaker 4: quote unquote to you know, a consecutive terms of life
Speaker 4: in prison. And of course they confer with the families
Speaker 4: on this, and I think in the annals of American
Speaker 4: criminal justice, this might be one of the best deals
Speaker 4: any venue has ever made with a bad guy, let
Speaker 4: alone a serial killer, because they're able to clear all
Speaker 4: twenty three and bring closure to the families. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's also the possibility, as everybody knows, that an individual
Speaker 4: like this goes behind bars and then maybe at some
Speaker 4: point some guy wants to kill him or something like that,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So in terms of quote
Speaker 4: unquote death, guess what to these people, that's not the
Speaker 4: most important thing or what. And again, what I love
Speaker 4: about this story is how the South always gets painted
Speaker 4: as a place where all they want to do is
Speaker 4: execute and the and the racist and so forth. This
Speaker 4: is this is about as far from that as you
Speaker 4: can get.
Speaker 7: You talk about another again film esque scene is that
Speaker 7: they take him to those dumb sites or he takes
Speaker 7: parton me. He takes them to the dumb site because
Speaker 7: as you as you mentioned it's it can't be the
Speaker 7: other way around because the defense attorney will poke big
Speaker 7: holes with it at in any kind of court case.
Speaker 7: So he has to take them and describe that scene
Speaker 7: for everybody. But he willingly does this. And what's his demeanor?
Speaker 7: Tell us a demeanor through some of this.
Speaker 4: He's pretty calm about all of this. He's pretty calm
Speaker 4: about this. I wouldn't say that he showed any sort
Speaker 4: of remorse. I mean, he's a serial killer, but he's
Speaker 4: extremely calm in taking them to these gun sites. But
Speaker 4: again I believe that because and it's pretty obvious that
Speaker 4: because they've established poor with him, he feels free to
Speaker 4: talk to them. And at one point he says to them,
Speaker 4: I'm not a bad person. When I was younger, I
Speaker 4: was molested twice. I've been teased by family members and
Speaker 4: people that was supposed to be friends. I was accused
Speaker 4: by two people of breaking them and it wasn't true.
Speaker 4: So here's a guy who obviously has had a screwed
Speaker 4: up background, and these two cops are probably the only
Speaker 4: ones that ever showed him any sympathy or empathy in
Speaker 4: his life. And I believe that's the reason why he
Speaker 4: was willing to make the deal. But he did and
Speaker 4: give closure to those families.
Speaker 7: He had trotted out this idea that these guys had
Speaker 7: asked for money and then asked for more money, So
Speaker 7: they dispelled that as apprehension was one of the things
Speaker 7: they dispelled. He had said things, though you talk about remorse.
Speaker 7: It's just interesting, he said, I just want everyone to
Speaker 7: forgive me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. It's December third,
Speaker 7: two thousand and six. Yes, regardless, the deal was for
Speaker 7: eight Kenneth Randolph, Michael Barnett, Leon Lorette, August Watkins, Kurt Cunningham,
Speaker 7: Alonso Hogan, Chris Deville, Wayne Smith, and Nicholas Pelegrin. Like
Speaker 7: you say, thirty relatives of victims were in the courtroom,
Speaker 7: and it was so interesting. Of course, dramatic victim impact
Speaker 7: statements weren't there.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, there were, I mean people talked about and
Speaker 4: again this is what got me was again this wasn't
Speaker 4: covered by the media like the local media, you know,
Speaker 4: the Times to Yun, I think it's home of today
Speaker 4: is the newspaper there, but not nationally. And these the
Speaker 4: relatives of the victim were able to address them and
Speaker 4: talk about what they had lost with their with their
Speaker 4: their their their loved ones. And it breaks your heart
Speaker 4: when you read it. It really does, and it really
Speaker 4: does break your heart. And I guess I guess as
Speaker 4: we're talking, then I you know, I would my question
Speaker 4: would my question would be why don't we have more? Uh,
Speaker 4: professionals in the in our criminal justice system that have
Speaker 4: the the kind of humanitarian instincts that these two detectives
Speaker 4: and the and the DA have, but particularly the detectives.
Speaker 4: You know, I always feel that it has more to
Speaker 4: do with how you raised And I didn't get into
Speaker 4: it with Dennis and Gone. You know, I didn't. You know,
Speaker 4: I Gone told me you know some information about our background,
Speaker 4: But it's pretty obvious to me that they were raised
Speaker 4: the right way to look at people, at this people.
Speaker 4: Yet you have to say to yourself, my god, if
Speaker 4: there were more individuals like this in the system, it
Speaker 4: would be a lot easier to clear cases. Let alone
Speaker 4: when somebody, you know, somebody like a dominique is in
Speaker 4: custody earlier for something else which is not as serious,
Speaker 4: maybe they would be more empathetic with him. We don't
Speaker 4: know if that could change what happened. We don't know,
Speaker 4: but we sure know that that in this case, were
Speaker 4: not for the fact that Dennis and Dawn were so
Speaker 4: open to talking with him and listening to him and
Speaker 4: feeling for him at the same time doing their job,
Speaker 4: we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Speaker 7: Well, you talk about humanitarian, but the media could have
Speaker 7: been interested in this story and the media is he
Speaker 7: could controlled by no one but the media. They think
Speaker 7: that the society in general doesn't care about these people,
Speaker 7: and they've probably proven right with the treatment society has
Speaker 7: for prostitutes in general, whether they're underage or not. Apparently
Speaker 7: they're sex trade workers or hookers. So how much empathy
Speaker 7: you're going to have for a gay sex trade worker
Speaker 7: or a prostitute, so you know. And the other thing
Speaker 7: is I think too that the courts had dealt with Dominique,
Speaker 7: and when a complaint in over a serious crime can't
Speaker 7: be found, sometimes a subpoena that person and force them
Speaker 7: to come to court, you know. So there was times
Speaker 7: when the court didn't assess this guy as dangerous whatsoever,
Speaker 7: even though it would seem in retrospect for some pretty
Speaker 7: serious charges as well. We got to talk about maybe
Speaker 7: just police training is good, but it's just a matter
Speaker 7: of look at the budget that they couldn't get because
Speaker 7: they couldn't get national attention, because it's New Orleans, because
Speaker 7: again the victim, again, they couldn't get funding. Seemed to
Speaker 7: me incredibly that they couldn't get even with the incredible
Speaker 7: events they had twenty four to seven surveillance. But like
Speaker 7: you point out, if it's if it's white victims or
Speaker 7: victims of a different occupation, you know, I think it's
Speaker 7: it's not just to be laid on a police force.
Speaker 7: I think because I think there's a lot of blame
Speaker 7: to go a law around basically with this, Even with
Speaker 7: this case with twenty three victims, it seems like everyone
Speaker 7: has an idea of the more innocent victim seems to
Speaker 7: be the better victim.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that's that's that's very eloquent, and I agree
Speaker 4: with that. And I will also tell you that I
Speaker 4: had in trying to get this book published. It took
Speaker 4: a long time because I know an editor at a
Speaker 4: major house who said to me about the case, you're
Speaker 4: writing a book about Dominique. I said, yeah, she's She
Speaker 4: said he's gay and he picked on gay gay guys
Speaker 4: when uninterested. You know, you know, it's like, excuse me.
Speaker 4: You know, they think that readers and listen are are
Speaker 4: going to discriminate in that respect, as if it makes
Speaker 4: any difference. And I've always felt that, I've always you know,
Speaker 4: that's not the case. In fact, I did the first
Speaker 4: book years ago on an African American serial killer. And
Speaker 4: you know so, I mean, I've been warned for years
Speaker 4: don't write about black bad guys, okay, And here's a
Speaker 4: situation where we've got a guy who's gay taking on
Speaker 4: gay individuals over the publisher that well, you know what,
Speaker 4: and the media just went along with this. You know,
Speaker 4: there was a complicity. It's not a conspiracy. And I
Speaker 4: understand it, okay, I understand that. Look, when you start
Speaker 4: talking about a TV show, whatever TV show it might be,
Speaker 4: whether it's a it, whether it's you know, a magazine
Speaker 4: show or a you know, it's something, you know, a
Speaker 4: true crime reality show, you're selling. You know, you've got
Speaker 4: commercials you're selling, you know, breakfast, cereal, whatever. And people
Speaker 4: don't want to hear these kinds of details. At least
Speaker 4: that's what the individuals can power think. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's the case or not. All
Speaker 4: I know is that's not the way I was raised,
Speaker 4: you know, And I felt that it was my responsibility
Speaker 4: to speak for the dead, and and it just is
Speaker 4: dawn and denist it. And you know, what happens in
Speaker 4: the future, Maybe things will change a little bit. Since
Speaker 4: you know, the social climate is certainly in a state
Speaker 4: of flux here. You know. I sometimes I feel like
Speaker 4: the United States is way behind other places. However, that's
Speaker 4: that's the way it is. And I know I'm not
Speaker 4: supposed to get into politics.
Speaker 7: We talk about you talk about in the end of
Speaker 7: the book, because you really want to say that this
Speaker 7: book really couldn't be done without especially the help of
Speaker 7: Don Bergeron. Yeah, and Dennis Thornton, but especially Don Bergeron.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's very interesting to talk about this interaction
Speaker 7: you had for this book. And of course then you
Speaker 7: get to know her a little bit and find out
Speaker 7: a little bit more about her background. So tell us
Speaker 7: a little bit about this meeting, and just as you
Speaker 7: do in the book, tell us about this meeting between
Speaker 7: you and Don Bergeon.
Speaker 4: Well, we met, We met in her office, and I
Speaker 4: remember that she had a picture of the task force
Speaker 4: and this when we met. It was two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: so it was one to three years after they they
Speaker 4: h after the case was you know, they busted them,
Speaker 4: but and she was very, very very open. The only
Speaker 4: time I've ever received this kind of cooperation from a
Speaker 4: detective was in Florida, which has the first open records law.
Speaker 4: I believe, on the books of all fifty states. But
Speaker 4: the thing is she she really said, fred I'll take
Speaker 4: I'll give you all the I'll give you all the paperwork.
Speaker 4: And then and then she takes me to the dumb sites.
Speaker 4: And then in between doing that, we stopped in at
Speaker 4: some focal place to have lunch, and we ran into
Speaker 4: about old It must have been about eight cops there
Speaker 4: from the parish. And we sit down, you know, and
Speaker 4: and uh and uh uh. They wanted to see what
Speaker 4: my reaction was through a French pride alligator. Dan give
Speaker 4: me a break, you know, I mean, you know, so,
Speaker 4: you know, so they ordered it and I ate it,
Speaker 4: and of course I said, a taste like chicken. I
Speaker 4: probably should have said, being that I'm a Jewish boy
Speaker 4: from Brooklyn, I probably should have said, it's this kosher.
Speaker 4: But I didn't. And you know, she was just as
Speaker 4: friendly as could be. And that, by the way, that's
Speaker 4: the other thing, you know, I didn't hide what my
Speaker 4: religion is. And you know, there's still a little thing
Speaker 4: called anti Semitism that exists in the United States, particularly
Speaker 4: in certain states and particularly among certain individuals. Nobody cared
Speaker 4: about that there. They didn't care about that. Nobody said
Speaker 4: anything to me. I never got any vibes. She didn't
Speaker 4: say anything to me. We just we just hit it off.
Speaker 4: And I think it's because as we're talking, I think
Speaker 4: this case really really bothered her and it stayed with
Speaker 4: her and she wanted to get the truth out about
Speaker 4: what happened on how they brought this guy to ground.
Speaker 4: And so I feel like I was particularly lucky with
Speaker 4: my rapoor with her. And I'm not a judgmental person either,
Speaker 4: so you know, I think she probably picked up on that,
Speaker 4: and I think that as a result, we you know,
Speaker 4: we hit it off.
Speaker 7: Yeah, certainly, certainly. Fred I want to thank you for
Speaker 7: coming on and talking about the Bayou Strangler, Louisiana's most
Speaker 7: grewsome serial killer. For those people that don't know you,
Speaker 7: you point out in this book at the end or
Speaker 7: the publisher does you're the author of twenty five books
Speaker 7: now with the last one murdering the President. Yeah, twenty
Speaker 7: five twenty five books. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 7: the publishers of this book and where they might be
Speaker 7: able to get a hold of you. I know you're
Speaker 7: very very active and out there, so tell us for
Speaker 7: people that've been living under a rock. How they might
Speaker 7: contact you, get a hold of you, find out about
Speaker 7: your work, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Well, first, you can send up the bat signal. If
Speaker 4: that doesn't work right, actually Avengers HQ in upstate New York.
Speaker 4: But seriously, folks, if anybody wants to get a hold
Speaker 4: of me, it's you can just go on Facebook and
Speaker 4: send me an email. That's first. Open Roads Media is
Speaker 4: the publisher of this book. It's available in at barn
Speaker 4: you know bookstores, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. I don't
Speaker 4: even know any other bookstores that are around beside Barnes
Speaker 4: and Nobles, and of course Amazon dot Com is available
Speaker 4: also in as as an e book, And all you
Speaker 4: gotta do is just you know, click on the you
Speaker 4: know the links, uh to order it and those you
Speaker 4: know of course they'll send it right to your house,
Speaker 4: hopefully with your sheets. But seriously, it's it's, it's it's.
Speaker 4: It's available in bookstores, and it's available at Amazon dot com.
Speaker 4: It's available as an e book, and it's available as
Speaker 4: a hard copy. And one of the things I was
Speaker 4: particularly happy about, quite frankly, it was I felt it
Speaker 4: was reasonably priced I'm always big on that, Dan. I
Speaker 4: always work with the publisher when I have that opportunity
Speaker 4: to make sure it's reason to lead price because I
Speaker 4: know how hard our listeners work for their money all
Speaker 4: over the world, and I want to make sure that
Speaker 4: they get value for the dollar. That's very important to me.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, Fred, thank you very much once again coming on
Speaker 7: and talking about the Bayous Strangler. Hope to talk to
Speaker 7: you again real soon. You have a great evening. Thank you,
Speaker 7: Fred Rosen.
Speaker 4: Thank you Dan. I really appreciate it being on with
Speaker 4: you always. You, sir, are a great union Dame. I'll
Speaker 4: talk to you so Thank you.
Speaker 7: Bred. You make this all worthwhile. You have a great evening.
Speaker 4: You three bye bye bye.
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Speaker 4: Good night,