Speaker 1: I walk the street line.
Speaker 2: Shackle change, ohsome gird, it's calling my name.
Speaker 3: There is no mercy and this being a tentery juice
as the hill stream game Wrangle three, I'm here by me.
Speaker 4: Or die.
Speaker 3: Inside these walls, inside the wild.
Speaker 5: And when the girls.
Speaker 4: Out.
Speaker 5: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast
one d and forty two years in the making, the
complete story of America's bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman, and
today I'm going to cover the crime and conviction of
resident of Death Row inside of Bloody Angola, and that
is a man by the name of Gregory bou Brown.
And we're going to go back to the early evening
of October fourth of nineteen ninety eight in the town
of Clinton, Louisiana for this one and for those that
may not be familiar, Clinton, Louisiana is a small community
in South Louisiana, and although it's proximity to Baton Rouge,
the capital city, is relatively close, it's a very rural
area of the state. Its population is just a little
over one thousand residents, and it is just what you
would envision a quaint little town. Still to this day
in twenty twenty five. Things like the story I'm about
to tell you about, they just didn't happen in Clinton,
especially back in the late nineties. So I'm gonna tell
you about a guy by the name of Gregory Brown
who went by the street name of Boo, and Boo
not a nice guy. He was a guy who was
very familiar with what you would call the street life.
And actually this guy only had one eye because a
couple of years prior to this incident, in nineteen ninety six,
he was involved in a gang related shootout where someone
impure a Christmas story Ralphie style shot his eye out.
Speaker 1: So by this.
Speaker 5: Time in nineteen ninety eight, he was knee deep in
a full fledged life of crime. So it was on
October fourth of nineteen ninety eight the Boo, along with
the guy by the name of Jonathan Booth, another guy
by the name of Brian Risen, another guy by the
name of Brian Williams, and a fifth guy by the
name of Eldrick Thompson, they decide it would be just
a great idea to travel from Baton Riage to Clinton
to rob a drug dealer by the name of William
Moore who went by the street name little Man. So
they hop into a nineteen eighty four Gray Chevy van
and off they go to head to Clinton, Louis Enna,
the small town. At around five point fifteen pm, they
arrive at a trailer home in Clinton, which they believed
to be the home of William Littleman Moore. Jonathan Booth
enters the residence. He's unarmed and he's encountered by a
guy by the name of Davy Thompson, no relation to
Eldrick Thompson, who is one of the assailants in this story.
So Davy Thompson confronts Jonathan Booth, and Davy Thompson was
coincidentally a correctional officer and he asked Davy basically where
is little Man, to which the response was he ain't here.
Booth then exits the trailer, but he returns, and this
time he is armed with a handgun and he attacks Thompson.
They start fighting. There is a struggle for the gun
and Thompson manages to disarm Booth.
Speaker 1: However, by this.
Speaker 5: Time Boo Brown enters the trailer and he shoots Thompson
in the thigh as he sees him get control of
that gun. Now Boo also by accident, shoots Booth in
the upper arm his own friend. And at this point
both Boo Brown and Thompson they jump back in the
van with the other three guys and they hal ass.
They realize the heat is up. Now we're firing shots
in a small town.
Speaker 1: In this trailer.
Speaker 5: Surely somebody's heard that we need to get the hell
out of here, and that's just what they do. They
get back in the van, they take off, screeching tires
to get the heck out of Clinton, Louisiana, and they
only get about three blocks before they get in a wreck.
And what caused this was they were in such a hurry.
They were in a stop sign and they hit a
white twed of camery and that Camery was driven by
a sixty eight year old named Sarah Cheney. Now, due
to this wreck, the van becomes inoperable and all five
men they actually have to crawl out through the windows
of that van to get out of the van. But
once they get out, they start hearing sirens headed to
the shooting scene. Because as they were making their escape,
that correctional officer, he struggles across the street where his
mother lived, stumbles into her house his brother sees him
who happened to be at that house, and he tells
his brother call police, I've been shot. So police were
already on the way and they could hear those sirens
in the background, and these guys, they're pretty sure that
they're going to come across this wreck, and so they
haul ass on foot and they run into some nearby
woods that had a lot of coverage.
Speaker 1: It was kind of some deep woods, if you will.
Speaker 5: And while police are at the scene for the initial shooting,
local authorities get the call that the van that they
were looking for that it had been involved at a wreck,
and they knew these are the suspects in that shooting
because that van was described as the getaway vehicle, and
so they take off into those woods once they get
to the scene in pursuit of these five guys, and
in very short order they arrest Brian Risen, who was
one of the five. He's caught actually at a car
wash not too far away, and he's trying to solicit
a ride to Baton Ridge from someone that was out
there washing their car. That person knew something wasn't right
called police and they end up catching him there. Now
they continue to look for the other four guys. In
about fifteen minutes after they arrest Brian Rising, something very
horrific happens. So a guy by the name of Ike Roberts,
he is in his shed and he's working on a
gate for his horse stall, and his wife, Sharon, she
was in the house at this point, thank god. When
Boo Brown, Eldrich Thompson, and Brian Williams, three of the
four that are still not arrested, they approach mister Roberts.
Boo was shirtless at this time. He was very sweaty,
he was out of breath, and mister Roberts noticed this
right away and knew this guy's been running from something.
So Boo decides he's going to be the spokesman for
all these guys, and he basically says, hey, man, we
need a ride to Baton Rouge. And Roberts, who's a
fifty five year old man, lived in Clinton his entire life.
He knew everyone who lived in Clinton, small town. He
went to school there, born and raised there, and he
knew one thing for sure. He didn't know none of
these cats and they were not from Clinton, Louisiana. So
basically he says, no, I'm not giving you a ride anywhere.
Speaker 1: And he was honest with him.
Speaker 5: He said, I don't know who you guys are, but
you're coming over here out of bruth You came through
the woods to my house. You're running from something, and
I'm not going to help you get away from it.
So they offer him money. First, they start out with
four hundred dollars, then five hundred dollars. They go all
the way up to twelve hundred dollars to bring them
to Baton Rouge, and this guy still declines. Mister Roberts says, no,
I don't want to do this. So they realize they're
not getting a ride from him, and at this point
they get pissed off and they grab some rope and
they decide to tie him up. Now while attempting to
do this, one of the men, Eldrick Thompson, he notices
Roberts truck, which was in nineteen ninety gray Ford Diesel,
and he asked mister Roberts where the keys were. Mister
Roberts told the three men that the keys were inside
the truck, which, y'all, this should tell you something about
Clinton Louisiana in the late nineties. It was nothing to
leave keys inside your vehicle. You just didn't have to
worry about shit like this happening. You'd leave your doors unlocked,
your windows up, whatever, You didn't have problems like this.
So these guys, they're from Baton Roudage, where you did not,
even in the late nineties, leave your keys in your car,
probably surprising them that they could just go to the
truck and the keys were in it. But okay, at
this point, one of the men, he goes, he jumps
into the truck and he attempts to start that vehicle. However,
due to these morons not knowing how to start a diesel,
they couldn't even get the truck started. See, with a diesel,
you have to turn the key slightly and wait a
few seconds because you're heating up the glow plugs. Then
you turned the key the rest of the way. But
these folds didn't even know that, they had no idea
how to do it. So they're trying to start this
diesel like you'd start a regular gas truck and it
won't turn over.
Speaker 4: Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today?
Speaker 5: Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you
what happened in New York.
Speaker 4: It cannot be as crazy as the case I told
you about yesterday in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: You know what, we should do a podcast.
Speaker 4: About it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly
covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week.
Speaker 5: We cover trending crimes from all over the country and
even sprinkle in a few globally.
Speaker 4: Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to
your podcasts.
Speaker 5: Simply by searching crime wiar Weekly or clicking the link
in the description of this past So Boo Brown he
sees all this going down, and he fucking loses it.
He goes into a complete fit of rage. When that
truck would not get started, he picks up a sixteen
ounce claw hammer full one pounder, and with the help
of both Thompson and Williams, he starts beating mister Roberts
with that hammer. The three men then take a rope
they tied around mister roberts neck, and Thompson and Williams
hold mister Roberts down while Boo Brown starts slamming this
hammer into mister Roberts. Now about midway through this assault,
Thompson and Williams they release their hold on Roberts and
they start making their way back to mister Roberts truck.
It's obvious that Boo Brown has us under control by himself.
He's going to beat the shit out of this man
with this hammer. So they make their way to that
truck and this time they manage to get it started.
Now at this point, they shout out at Boo to
tell him, hey, man, come on, we got this thing started.
Let's get the hell out of here before we kill
this guy. But Boo he just ignores them, as if
he doesn't even hear them. He's just in this whole
nother world at this point, continuing to just slam this
hammer into mister Roberts head, arms, shoulders, whatever.
Speaker 1: Over and over and over again.
Speaker 5: So Thompson and Williams they wait a second and then
they're basically like, screw this, we got to get out
of here, and they leave in mister Roberts truck, leaving
Boo who was still in the process of beating mister Roberts.
So go ahead and share this with you before we
move on in this story. Mister Roberts he lived throughout
this ordeal, but barely. His injuries included a depressed skull fracture,
a concussion, a broken left arm, a broken left hand,
and the damage to his forearm which he was using
to block all of these blows from that freaking claw hammer.
It was so severe that damage to his forearm that
it required surgery in the insertion of a plate with
seven screws in it to repair his forum. As a
matter of fact, the attack was so severe that mister
Robert's right ear was torn completely off with the claw
end of that hammer. He spent the next three days
in the hospital and now is permanently disabled. That's how
bad they beat this guy. They were trying to kill him,
attempted murder, so Boo Brown. He comes out of this
rage for a second when he realizes these guys have
started the truck. They backed it up, and they're taking
off down the street, and he thinks, oh shit, my
friends are leaving me. So he climbs off of mister
Roberts and he takes off running down the street trying
to catch his friends in that truck, and mister Roberts
he somehow manages to get up. He runs into his
house and he tells his wife to call nine to
one one and as soon as he gets that out
of his mouth, he collapses right there on the floor.
So police get this call and they respond to the
Roberts residence and they put out a bulow a be
on the lookout for mister Roberts truck, as well as
the fact that the truck was being driven by at
least two black males. So just twenty or some minutes later,
a reserve deputy who was actually friends with mister Roberts
and he knew the truck very well, he hears the
bolo come out. He had a scanner on him and
he goes looking. He was in the area and he
comes up to a major highway it's known as Plank Road.
It's about six miles away from Clinton, and as sheer
luck would have it, he spots the truck. But one problem,
he was in his personal vehicle. He didn't have his
police CB on him, so he had no way to
call this in and say, hey, I've got eyes on
this truck. And this was nineteen ninety eight y'all. Cell
phones were not prevalent.
Speaker 1: At this time.
Speaker 5: So he follows the vehicle and the vehicle eventually comes
to a stop in a residential neighborhood and the guys
are just sitting there in the vehicle, and he sees
a resident outside of a home and he tells that resident,
hey call police. As soon as he says that. Long
story short, Williams and Thompson were arrested without incident by
this reserve officer. So let's get back to Boo Brown
who was stranded after his friends left him and he
was left running down the road. And this guy was
totally unfamiliar with the town of Clinton. He had no
idea where he was at. So where does he end up? Well,
these small country towns, in many cases, family all live
on the same road a lot of times the road
itself is named after the family Clinton, no different than
any town in small town America. And so he runs
to the first house that he sees, which was eighty
five year old widow Myrteral Roberts, who also happened to
be mister Robert's mother. Now, the first thing that Boo
Brown does is he goes up to her vehicle and
he pulls on the door handle, attempting to steal her vehicle.
It was a nineteen ninety one to four pickup, but
he was unable to do so because the truck's doors
were locked. However, he did leave a nice bloody fingerprint
on that door handle that would service evidence in his
trial later. So at this point, he continues to Miss
Roberts's back door, and I don't know if he peeked
in and saw her that she was in the house,
or if he just figured she was in the house,
but he kicks the door in, and he leaves a
nice muddy shoe print on that door, which would be
also used in the trial later. Now, once inside of
the home, he comes face to face with the eighty
five year old Miss Myrtle Roberts, and he throws her
to the ground, just grabs her with such force as
a matter of fact, that she breaks her wrist as
she hits the ground. Eighty five year old woman, simply disgusting.
He then demands the keys to her car, which this
poor lady, she's in total shock. You've got this guy
in your house. You have no idea who he is.
He throws you to the ground. You think he's trying
to kill you, and he probably is. And he's asking
you where your keys are, and she can't even articulate
it to him. At this point, her whole mind is
in panic. She has no idea where her keys are
in her mind, so Boo he realizes this lady can't
even articulate where the keys are, and he starts freaking
out at this point, and he's just ransacking this eighty
five year old woman's home looking for those keys, and
missus Roberts. She lays motionless on that floor. She's afraid
to move and understandably so, and Boo knows that his
time is numbered here. He doesn't have a whole lot
of minutes to sit in this house because he's pretty
sure that the guy he just beat the shit out
of with the claw hammer is calling the cops or
the guy's wife has walked out there and seen him dead.
He had no idea, but he didn't want to hang
out long, so he realizes he's not going to be
able to find these keys, and he's freaked out because
he doesn't want this eighty five year old woman to
call police. So he tears the phone from the living
room wall. And this is back in the days when
you still had a house phone and it was usually
hooked up to a wall, especially if you were older,
and he removes it from that home, actually takes it
outside and he hides it and then he leaves. Now
Miss Roberts, she also lives throughout this ordeal, thank god,
but she's injured and a neighbor actually finds her on
the floor just minutes after the attack, and that neighbor
ends up police and Miss Roberts actually ends up at
the same hospital as her son. Now at this point,
the frustration is at an all time high for bou Brown.
His third robbery attempt in the same day and all
three attempts failed, So this jackass. He moves on to
the next house that he comes across, which was the
home of sixty two year old William Gay and his
sixty year old wife of forty five years and and
William he had retired from Georgia Pacific, Ann was a
registered nurse. Together, they had raised three children. They had
only lived in that home for a year when Boo
came across them. But these were really good people, just
sad what happened to them that I'm about to tell
you about, because they were really good people. So we're
gonna fast forward a few hours to tell you what
we know of what happened. Police in East Baton Ridge Parish,
they get a call of a car on fire in
East Baton Ridge Parish, a red nineteen ninety three Ford Escort,
and they put out the fire and after they put
out the fire, they see there's a plate on the
back of that car. They run the plate and it
comes out that that vehicle belonged to William Gay. They
have an address there when they run the plate, and
they reach out to police in Clinton and they tell them, Hey,
we just find a car in Baton Rouge with two
bodies in it that were pretty sure are the bodies
of the people that this car belongs to. You may
want to go do a welfare check on them now.
The bodies sadly were identified of that of William and
and Gay. In the meantime, police and.
Speaker 1: They go to the home of the Gays and they.
Speaker 5: Discover the garage door open. They find an unopened can
of beer as well as a spilled wineglass on the patio,
and in interviews with neighbors, that was the last time
they were seen alive. They were out on the patio,
you know, just chilling, and they were actually cooking a
roast and they were waiting on that roast to finish cooking.
And the way that we know that is that that
roast was still in the oven, the oven was still on,
and that roast was burnt to a crust. Now, an
autopsy would reveal that both William and his wife Anne
were shot execution style at close range, with mister Gay
being shot three times, once in the chest and two
times in the abdomen, and Miss Gay had been shot
two times, once in the neck and once in the abdomen.
So police at this point they they head to the
hospital and they have pictures of Boo to show mister Roberts.
They knew that Boo was responsible for a lot of this,
but they needed that positive identification, right.
Speaker 1: Mister Roberts, more.
Speaker 5: Than happy to do this, says, yeah, that's the guy
that attacked me. Now, at this time in the process,
Boo was the only one left of the five individuals
yet to be apprehended. So he may say, well, how
did Jonathan Booth get caught, because he was the one
that was shot in the initial aspect of this story,
if you'll remember at that first robbery attempt, and I
haven't told you anything about him, Well, he split off
from everybody else in this story in the beginning after
that wreck when they all had to climb out the windows,
he split off. He went a whole different direction because
Booth knew somebody that lived in Clinton, an acquaintance, and
that acquaintance only lived about a mile from where that
wreck occurred. So he headed there and he hid in
that acquaintance closet. That acquaintance didn't know that. That acquaintance
comes home, opens a closet door and there's Booth in
there with a gunshot in his shoulder area, arm area,
and that person called police and he got arrested. So
at this point, everybody's in jail except for Boo. So
a warrant gets issued for Boo's arrest, and they go
to Boo's apartment that he shared with his wife and child.
Yeah you heard me right, This student was married and
had a kid. But of course Boo, he wasn't going home.
He knew better than that. He knew police knew where
he lived, so he's hiding out. He ain't going there now.
Two days later, after some really good police work and
detective work, police discover that Boo had an alternate residence
in Baton Rouge that was kind of secret. So they
go there and they find Boo Brown's father in a
pop a lock employee attempting to gain access to a
Chevrolet Camaro that was parked behind the house. So they
go inside the house and the officers find the residence
is completely empty, virtually empty of any of its contents.
There's a broom and a mop in the living room area,
and they could tell that the house had been recently
cleaned and sanitized. A neighbor informed the investigators that Brown's
father had already made two trips to the house and
removed items from the inside of the house. During their search,
officials also discovered a trash can sitting on the front porch,
and inside that trash can they discovered two pieces of
duct tape, a telephone with a smear of blood on
the handset and later that was determined to match Brown's DNA,
And they also found a piece of gray telephone cord
that had been cut, and that telephone cord was similar
in color and consistency to the cord that was found
binding the hands of Anne Gay in the backseat of
the vehicle that was found burned. So they got a
ton of evidence out of here, but it looked like
Bu Brown was getting the hell out of town and
his dad knew something about it.
Speaker 1: That's what it looked like.
Speaker 5: So on December twenty third of nineteen ninety eight, a
confidential informant contacts the US Marshall Service and they informed
the Marshall Service that Brown was in the Baton Ridge
area to visit his wife and child. And this informant
states that Brown was hiding inside a single family, single
story pink house in back and urge shouldn't be too
hard to find a pink house. A search warrant gets
issued for later that day and Boo Brown thankfully was
arrested inside of that home. He had been a fugitive
at this point, surprisingly for eighty two days, so he
got away for quite a while. So on July twenty
second of nineteen ninety nine, a grand jury indicts Gregory
Brown Boo for the October fourth, nineteen ninety eight first
three murders of William and Anne Gay, and.
Speaker 1: They're going to seek the death penalty.
Speaker 5: Legendary prosecutor Prim Burns comes out and says, we're going
for the death penalty in this case. Trial commences. Of course,
it took a while, but on May sixth, the jury
returns two verdicts of guilty as charge in the first
degree murders of and and William Gay against Bou Brown. Now,
both of those verdicts and death penalty sentences were on
the same day, so we know how it works with
death penalty cases.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The appeals are.
Speaker 5: Insane with these types of cases. And look, it's a
death penalty case.
Speaker 1: I get it. You don't want to put anybody to
death that is innocent.
Speaker 5: And you know, since DNA has come around, there have
been a few people that were let off. So I
get the appeals. You want to make sure you got
the right guy. I don't get the years and years
and years and years that it takes, but I understand
that you want to make sure you got the right
guy in jail.
Speaker 1: I get that, or you know, in death row.
Speaker 5: In this case, appeals finally get exhausted. But as I
told you last week with the Corporal Betty Smother's murder,
the defense they always go to this mentally not capable
of getting the death penalty stuff, and they went that
way with Boo Brown.
Speaker 1: They were turned down.
Speaker 5: This thing goes all the way to the Louisiana Supreme Court,
and the Supreme Court says bullshit. He's completely mentally capable
of this, and they uphold those death penalty verdicts and
said the one eyed multiple murderer still today sits on
death row twenty plus years after his conviction. Inside of
Bloody Angola. There you have it. Thank you so much
for listening. Check out the Patreon commercial, free early releases,
and more patreon dot com slash Bloody and Gola podcast.
You're enjoying the content here, check out crime Wire Weekly.
Kelly Jennings and myself released this every Friday. All you
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which makes it easy for you to find go check
it out and follow it. I think you'll enjoy it.
And until next time for Bloody and Gola, a podcast
forty two years in the making, the complete story of
America's bloodiest present Peace.
Speaker 2: A Wall Street Line, Shackle Change, Oh Goosome gird, It's
calling by name. There is no mercy and it's been
a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Rangol the
three I'm in be.
Speaker 3: By me to die inside these walls, inside the wild,
And when the girls.
Speaker 1: I know, it's so.
Speaker 3: Bloody.
Speaker 5: Angle, obody, Angle
Speaker 1: A