July 3, 2025 • 59 mins
Located in Jefferson Davis Parish, the town of Jennings, Louisiana wasn't a particularly well-known place -- in fact, many people in the US would probably have lived their entire lives without ever hearing of the town until a few years ago. You see, Jennings had a secret, a dark criminal underbelly that seethed just below the surface. Over the course of several years, multiple women were murdered under mysterious circumstances, inspiring journalists and federal investigators alike to dive into the increasingly strange connections between each homicide. And today the question remains: What happened to the Jennings 8?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, we return to you with a classic episode,
a bit true crime, a bizarre series of unfortunate events
take us to Jefferson Davis Parish.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Guys, that's right, the town of Jennings, Louisiana wasn't a
particularly well known place at the time. In fact, a
lot of folks living in the US probably would have
lived their entire lives without ever having heard of it
until just a few years before we published this episode
on who killed the Jennings Eight.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
It's a story of potentially some really bad stuff involving
possibly corruption within a local police force and someone trying
to cover up the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Some real underbelly small town America underbelly stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, or you could look at it as a bunch
of super unfortunate and very sad deaths that we're not
related at all.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Let's see what you think, folks.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Noel, our good friend, writer die colleague Matt Frederick is
on adventures but will be returning soon. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer. Today
it is Seth Nicholas Johnson, So give him an audible
hello when you get the chance in the meantime, and
most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff
(01:56):
they don't want you to know, Noel. I figured we'd
start off today's episode with an email from one of
our listeners. This comes to us from Claude G. Claude says, hey, guys,
I just listened to our latest episode about the possible
inspiration for True Detective. We did that one a while back.
Yep this, and Claude says, I enjoyed the episode, but
(02:20):
was wondering if you had heard of another theory about
the inspiration for the show. I was raised in Jennings, Louisiana.
I live a few minutes away now but still go
there multiple times a week. Jennings Claim to Fame, Unfortunately,
is a multiple murder case titled by the media the
Jennings eight. Showtime has recently done a five part series
(02:40):
on it, and mentioned True Detective in one of the episodes.
My family and I are personally connected to the story,
as one of the victims was a cousin of ours. Anyway,
I was curious to see if you guys have heard
of the connection to the TV series and our case.
Thanks for your time, Claude, this is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We did know a little bit of this, but we
wanted to explore the case today. It's something that many
people have heard of but are maybe not intimately familiar with.
And for this sort of episode, we do need to
have a disclaimer at the top of the show.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
It's true on today's episode dives into some pretty disturbing stuff,
stories of true crime, murdered drugs, and corruption. And the
episode contains at times quite graphic descriptions of violence and assault,
and it might not be suitable for all listeners. So
to start, what are the Jennings eight? In order to
(03:36):
answer this question, please travel with us to Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Here are the facts Jefferson Davis Parish. It's located in
southwest Louisiana and it's a small place.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
A parish is Louisiana's version of a county. It has
a little more than thirty thousand residents. The parish is
a town called Jennings. It's the largest town in the area,
but the population is still just a little over ten
thousand according to the twenty ten census. It's home to
some notable individuals. I found one mysterious story here a
(04:15):
guy named Father Eugene John Herbert, who was a Jesuit missionary.
He disappeared in Sri Lanka in nineteen ninety during the
country's civil war. He has nothing to do with this
show today, as far as we know. Before the events
disclosed in today's episode. Jefferson Davis, which was named after
the former president of the Confederacy. It was one of
(04:36):
those places you probably wouldn't be too familiar with unless
you lived in the area. It made the news a
couple of times for things like corrupt ticketing by local
law enforcement. You know, we've all heard that thing where
if you're a stranger to town, you're driving by and
you've got plates from outside of the area, Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Big old red flag on your back.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, and that's happened. You've driven through some of those
areas in your travels, maybe to Athens or Augusta.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Sure, I mean, you know, I mean, I would I
would imagine there'd be an argument to make that it's
some form of profiling, but it's just, you know, it's
the rules kind of it's it's like something you should expect, probably.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And it's kind of difficult to prove too. Like many
rural areas, you wouldn't see Jennings often in the national news.
In fact, you could live your entire life here in
the United States never know this place existed.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Jefferson Davis isn't particularly large. In fact, it's not particularly
wealthy either, and like so many other places in the
United States these days, it had a pretty seedy underbelly.
In the absence of prosperity, economic opportunity jobs. You it's
(05:54):
a vacuum that is typically filled with drugs and crime
and other types of black market trading, which grew into
kind of an open secret in Jefferson Davis. Everyone knew
what went down on South Main Street, but it wasn't
necessarily something that was going to get shut down by
(06:15):
the cops, you know, on the regular right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Absolutely, yeah, it was an open secret, especially in South Jennings.
Life in this small parish seems set to continue as
it always had, and even to continue along a bit
of a slow economic decline until that is, residents began
finding the bodies. We're going to explore the initial murders,
(06:42):
or the discoveries of the bodies even before they were
termed murders. On May twentieth, two thousand and five, there's
a fisherman, a retired men named Jerry Jackson, who discovers
the first body. It's floating in a canal off Highway
eleven twenty six on the Outskirts Jenning's. This body is
identified as one Loretta Lynn Casson Chasson Lewis. Lewis had
(07:09):
been seen alive three days earlier.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Because of the amount that her body had decomposed, authorities
weren't able to conclusively determine her cause of death, but
they suspected asphyxiation. And as you'll recall from our previous
episode on the Smiley Face murder theory, drowning as homicide
can can be a pretty tough nut to crack. It's
(07:32):
very difficult to prove, just like it's hard to prove
that it cop pulls you over because you had out
of state place.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yet the court of public opinion was already in full swing,
and there's some pretty nasty victim blaming that happens, especially
in the media, because, according to the residents in the know,
Lewis was living what was often euphemistically described as a
quote high risk lifestyle. She was addicted to crack cocaine.
(08:01):
She was another casualty of the drug trade running along
that quarriter of I ten and she had turned to
the sex trade to feed her addiction. And at first
this was seen as a tragedy, and it is, But
less than a few months later, residents and law enforcement
started to recognize that this discovery wasn't just a singular tragedy.
(08:25):
It was something else, the beginning of a pattern.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It's right, a group of friends hunting bullfrogs, which is
the thing that you do, and Jefferson Davis for fun.
They found the corpse of a thirty year old Mestine
Patterson Emmstine Patterson a few weeks later, floating in a
different canal. This particular victim's cause of death was a
bit easier to figure out. Her throat had been cut,
(08:51):
her body brutalized. Two men, a Byron Chad Jones and
Lawrence Nixon, are held for a brief amount of time
on charges of second degree murder, but these charges were
of course dropped and they were.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Released, and so we have two. We have two discoveries
in two thousand and five years pass. On March eighteenth,
two thousand and seven, another body is discovered, that of
twenty one year old Kristin Gary Lopez. She is discovered
in a canal, and like the Lewis case, medical examiners
(09:29):
cannot conclusively nail down a cause of death, and like
in the Patterson case, two people are briefly detained. This
time it's a guy named Frankie Richard who is described
alternately as a retired oil rig worker, strip club owner,
and a PEMP, along with his niece Hannah Connor. These
(09:52):
two are later released, just like in the Patterson case
due to lack of evidence.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, that's right. And over the next year, half four
more bodies turned up in and around Jennings, all fitting
the same profile, the same unfortunate kind of forgotten demographic,
poor young with a history of drug addiction. Rap sheets
a mile long, typically charges involving the sex trade or
(10:23):
other criminal activities. We have Whitney des Bois, it was
twenty six, Laconia Muggy Brown twenty three, who, like Patterson,
had her throat slit as well Crystal Say benoit Zeno
twenty four, Brittany Gary seventeen, who was the cousin of
(10:44):
Kristin Gary Lopez. Most of these bodies showed almost no
signs of trauma, and the medical examiner's ruled asphyxiation as
the cause of death.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's interesting other than the muggy case with the slit throat,
so the law has to respond again. Jeffers Sin Davis
Parish has a small population. This death rate, this murder rate,
is insane. So in December of two thousand and eight,
the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff's Department, under the leadership of
(11:15):
one Sheriff Ricky Edwards, announces that they're forming a task
force to investigate what they're now openly calling murders. His
task force is referred to as Multi Agency Investigative Team
or MAIIT. They include local officials, state officials, and some FEDS.
Their results leave much to be desired. In August of
(11:37):
two thousand and nine, an eighth victim is found, Nicole Gillery,
twenty six years old. The body is discovered off I
ten in the adjacent Acadia Parish. Later that fall, Sheriff
Edwards notes that these deaths may be the work of
what they describe as a common offender, a single person
(11:59):
committing the hides. In other words, although they would hate
to use the phrase, I'm sure a serial killer. So
that's where we're at at that point. Between two thousand
and five and two thousand and nine, eight women have disappeared,
only to be found dead. Shortly thereafter, the task Force
more than doubles their reward for information from thirty five
(12:19):
thousand dollars to eighty five thousand dollars, and the victims
become collectively known in the zeitgeist as the Jeff Davis
eight or later the Jennings eight. But this is only
the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
In January of twenty ten, the New York Times reported
on the deaths, and this article caught the attention of
a New Orleans based journalist named Ethan Brown. In twenty eleven,
Brown went to Jennings to do his own digging, his
own interviews, his own investigations. Brown becomes obsessed with the
(12:56):
story and convinced that there's more to it than what
is already been reported.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And we'll explore Brown's investigation after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. So as this journalist Ethan
Brown pours over public records, as he interviews numerous people
(13:23):
affiliated with the victims, as he interviews members of the
task force and even suspects in the crimes, he begins
to think this was not, in fact the work of
a serial killer, but of someone else. And it starts.
It starts when he begins connecting dots between the victims,
because remember, this is a small town, and there's a
(13:45):
reason we have stereotypes about small towns. One of the
most common stereotypes about small town is that there are
no real secrets, that everyone knows everyone somehow, and a
lot of our fellow listeners tuning in today probably have
lived in a small town and can attest to that,
you know. And then also there's the argument that every
(14:05):
town you live in becomes smaller the longer you live there.
So he Brown starts to note that all these victims
are connected. Noel, you mentioned that they had that demographic
in common, right, and they had similar issues with addiction
and money. But he also finds that in addition to
that first point, secondly, they had all served to some
(14:29):
degree or another as police informants. What are they called cis.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, confidential informants. That's right. And that's the thing. I
mean a lot of times, folks that are doing this
kind of informing they know each other and they're aware
of each other and maybe have each other's backs in
that respect, because it is such a dangerous situation to
be in. Two were actually related and another two lived
together for a time. In eight fourth, we've got multiple
(14:57):
relatives who told Brown the vicvictims had appeared unusually anxious
or frightened before disappearing.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, and that fourth point, to be fair, is a
little maybe a little more subjective, because these people were
living hard, difficult lives. You know, there were probably plenty
of normal reasons to be anxious or frightened. But still
it fits the pattern. Let's pause here now, I know
what you're saying, folks. Didn't you all just have a
(15:28):
commercial break? Well, we do, but we also have an
important announcement. You see, our good pal and colleague, Matt
Frederick has actually returned from his adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Matt, I materialized, I'm here.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I didn't know we could all do. I thought that
was just a ben power.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, I heard you guys talking about Ethan Brown, and
I was like, oh man, I gotta get in there.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
That's I mean, it is crazy that you showed up,
but we're glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It's also a very niche fascination that to have triggered
your spidey sense.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I mean, I have been reading about this case ever since.
I believe it was a listener mail, right, claud Yeah,
sent us down this rabbit hole and it Yeah, it's
been disturbing me ever since. So thanks so much for
sending it to us. And also no, thank you, but
thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yes, we we opened the show with Claude's email, and
now we're I don't think we need to catch you
up on any of this, Matt, because you know it
pretty well. Uh So, now we're at this point where
Brown is making connections. Right, He's already He's connected some
stuff about He's cooperated some statements from relatives. He's noticed
(16:37):
that there is a web of connection between the victims.
He also finds another key connection, the Boudreaux in just
off of Interstate ten. It connects Houston to New Orleans.
Could you tell us a little bit about that one?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Uh yeah, so this is like one of the hubs
or possibly the hub of a whole drug and sex
like sex trade drug what do you call it? Not empires,
but just where drugs are distributed pretty heavily. Police are
always there busting people for various things, generally for the
(17:10):
sexu rate or for drugs. Surprise, surprise. And several of
the victims that have been identified in this case or
you know that are that are out there that he
is kind of bringing together here, they've received complaints based
on their behavior at this location. When you say, when
we say complaints based on their behavior, we're talking, you know,
(17:32):
generally about sex work.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Well, yeah, also loud hotel parties. Yes, that's occurring here.
Depending on where you've spent time in the US or Bride,
you've probably seen motels like this before, typically right off
the interstate, a little beaten down right. Yeah, and they
(17:55):
you know, they don't have the best reputation, and they've
earned that not the best reputation.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, and here's the deal too. It's a lot of
times a community of its own a motel like that.
So a lot of the the victims here are sharing
this this web of people that they all are acquaintances with.
And again it's like, you know, it's it's also small town, right,
(18:22):
It's a this whole this whole place we're talking about
is small town. So all those rules apply, and in
this case, within the drug trade itself, within the sex trade.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I mean, it's true a lot of those very let's
call them affordable hotels, I guess for lack of a
better term, people stay there for long periods of time.
They rent rooms weekly, and often there is a like
you said, Matt, kind of a hub where it's people
kind of go in and out, like you know, John's
will show up to this particular motel, to a particular
room to get you know, sex work services, and same
(18:53):
with with drugs, and like you said, it becomes almost
this community where everyone knows each other, everyone is aware
of each other's kind of cummings and goings.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right exactly. These are good points because the victims also
share a web of mutual acquaintances. The thing about these
small town rules, the stereotype I mentioned earlier about everyone
knowing everyone, is that this kind of rule applies to
the criminal side of a small town as well, and
it applies in the drug trade. That's what leads Ethan
(19:24):
Brown to interview a friend of the victims self professed.
The man we mentioned earlier a strip club owner named
Frankie Richards, and in his interview with Brown and with others,
Richard paints Jennings in a grisly light. The drugs, the
sex work, and the crooked cops, he argues, are operating
(19:48):
more or less openly in Jennings and have been for
some time before the killings begin. So Brown also finds
that the rot in Jennings Luisi does not stop at
the dirty banks of the canals. In twenty fourteen, an
amazing piece he wrote on medium dot com, we have
(20:09):
a quote that helps walk us through his opinion on
the law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Since the early nineteen nineties, there have been nearly twenty
unsolved homicides, including the slain eight women in Jefferson Davis Parish,
A statistic and a competent sheriff's department that would be
regarded as both a ridiculously low clearance rate and an
astonishingly high murder rate for a small area.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, but Brown does not attribute these disturbing statistics to
incompetence alone. As a matter of fact, he explicitly calls
out law enforcement in this article.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yes, he says, quote one fact is clear. Local law
enforcement is far too steeped in misconduct and corruption. And
this extends to the task force, which is dominated by
detectives and deputies from the sheriff's office to run an
investigation with the integrity that the murdered women and their
families deserve after nearly a decade in which no one
has been brought to justice.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And we'll have more on law enforcement, plenty more actually
in a moment, but let's let's follow Brown a bit further.
Let's let's learn more about these suspects. So Brown finds
that the suspects have something similar going on with their
web of relationships. While there are different suspects for different
(21:36):
cases or different you know, specific murders, the suspects seem
increasingly interrelated. Even Frankie Richard was briefly charged in two
thousand and seven for the murder of Lopez, but the
charges were dropped when the witness statements were conflicting and
then when a key piece of physical evidence was mishandled.
(21:58):
And it's definitely yeah, and Natt, you have you have
some insight on Frankie Richards. Correct.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, it comes from a series titled Murder in the Bayou,
and there are just quotes there from Frankie Richard that
just I wonder how much of it makes me feel
as though he's like doing something morally wrong. And I
(22:26):
just feel like there's some some semblance of distrust in
him just in general because of that, or it's just
because of the way he words things. And I don't
know how much of that can actually be attributed back
to you know, the Jennings eight murders, right, And I
don't think any of it can, because it's just a
feeling that I'm getting and reading these things, and I'm
(22:49):
gonna read this quote. You'll understand what I'm saying, but
it's going to be a little bit. I'm gonna use
different words for what he's saying. My most memorable way
of making a living was selling p We sold p
any and every effing way we could. I did not
pimp them girls. I introduced them to older men that
(23:11):
wanted to spend some money on a young gal. I'm
making sure they are getting their money, making sure they
are not getting hurt.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Broker in sex is pimping, right, That's not the quote.
That's just a fact.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I know. Well, and also just the way again,
like maybe it's reading it. Maybe it's just I'm imagining
him saying that, and just that the way he so
nonchalantly is talking about it and then reflects back on
it as in like, oh man, this was a great
time in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well he's also he's he's a free man, but he's
he's lived a hard life. If you hear any audio
with him.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, and you know, and I'm not discounting that he's
led a hard life. It's just I'm just talking specifically
about personal feeling for sure. And and then here's one
more quote. Just when we're talking about Frankie Richards, a
family member of his, a niece and goddaughter named Hannah,
talked about her uncle in this way, and this is
(24:10):
a quote again from that same series. Uncle Frankie was
like the guy you didn't mess with, you know, he
took care of business. Which again it's more of like
a character witness kind of thing. It has nothing to
do with whether or not he actually did any of
these crimes. It's just perhaps is one of the major
reasons why he was a suspect, along with all the
(24:31):
other evidence that was involved. But you can just maybe
there's just this air about him that would make him
look good for it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and he was. He did have knowledge, carnal and
otherwise of people who would later go on to be
murdered in this course of events. There were other people
charged in these cases, as we said, the men charged
in the Patterson case Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon.
(25:00):
He got off because of what may have been police incompetence,
you could call it that, But it's sort of a
glass half empty, glass half full situation because our journalist
Brown learned that the sheriff's office did not test the
alleged crime scene until fifteen months after Patterson's murder, and
(25:22):
they were unable to demonstrate the presence of blood. Surprise, surprise.
If you wait more than a year, that kind of
organic evidence can get increasingly more difficult to detect. He
also found evidence that other street level criminals in Jenning's,
especially people who were associated with Frankie Richard, were suspected
(25:44):
in some of the other murders, but nothing came of it.
This task force was conducting exhaustive interviews, nothing came of it.
The law found no credible suspects. And here's the thing, though,
corruption or incompetence because what Brown starts calling the jeff
Davis Eight didn't just give info on the drug trade
(26:07):
to the police when they were cis. They apparently gave
authorities information about other women in the trade and the
community who would later turn up dead and be part
of the Jefferson Davis Eight murders. Laconia Brown, the fifth victim,
was interrogated about the two thousand and five killing of
(26:27):
Ernestine Patterson, you know, as you will call the second victim.
Brown said that he had Brown is not Ethan Brown.
Our journalist is not related to Laconia Muggy Brown. But
he found a task force report where one of the
witnesses claims that Brown spotted the body of Loretta Lewis,
(26:48):
the first victim floating in that canal before the fishermen
found her body there in May of two thousand and five,
and then in two thousand and six, detectives who are
looking into that first murder also interrogated Kristen Gary Lopez,
who later becomes the third victim, and Brown correctly false
(27:11):
the task force for not immediately noticing this troubling cavalcade
of red flags. Here's what literally was happening women were
being questioned in murder cases and then shortly thereafter they
were turning up dead.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It's really tough because you never want to believe that
law enforcement, you know, could possibly even just be turning
an eye of what blind eye, right, You never want
to believe that that could be happening. And we're certainly
not saying that is what's happening, but just from the
reporting of Ethan Brown, it definitely is making me personally
question a lot of this stuff. And then you move
(27:49):
on to the last victim, Nicole Gillory. She's, you know,
another person who had a rap sheet that was pretty
extensive with charges that were repeatedly dropped, which is something
that should pique your interest in what's called as a
nole prosequi. It's a ruling from the District Attorney's office,
the DA, and it just means to be unwilling to pursue.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah. So we're we're prosecutors, and we're we're not saying
that there's no sand to the charges, but for one
reason or another, usually internal, we have decided not to prosecute.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, and it could be we don't want to put
resources into this, or for one reason or another it
could be that maybe there's something happening behind the scenes
with this person that's being charged as let's say, a
CI or something.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This is often used as a way to uh, It's
often used as way to trade favors. You tell us
about this other unrelated case off the books, and then
we'll make this, you know, this possession charge something small
time go away. Guillory's mother, Barbara, noted that her daughter
(29:03):
was increasingly paranoid in the days leading up to her disappearance,
and one Task Force witness told Ethan Brown that giy
Nicole Gilery had said she knew who killed the other girls,
the other seven women. To this day, Barbara Guilery believes
her daughter was murdered not by a serial killer, but
(29:24):
by someone inside law enforcement because her daughter knew too
much about the ongoing corruption. We even have a quote
from Barbara here which is pretty You can tell that
she has certitude about Yes, this is not something she suspects.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
She used to tell us all the time. It was
the police killing the girls. That's what Barbara said. And
we would reply Nicole a name, something writes a letter
and leaves it somewhere, let us know. We can help you, no, Mama,
it's too far gone, it's too big. I'd rather y'all
(30:02):
not know nothing. That way, nothing can happen to y'all.
She knew, she knew, she knew, and that's why they
killed her.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Brown found other similar reports and still at this point,
this is all you know. Witness testimony, and witness testimony
can can be unreliable, right, it can trend toward anecdote
to memory is a tricky, treacherous thing. But when you
find multiple reports corroborating similar accounts, it becomes something you
(30:34):
cannot ignore. Gail Brown, for instance, a sister of Muggy Brown, said,
shortly before her sister was killed, she told her family
she was investigating a murder with a cop, and this
cop was I believe, supposed to give her five hundred
dollars for information. But Gail also believes law enforcement murdered
(30:55):
her sister. So what's going on here? Why is a
task force composed of local and state level and federal
authorities pushing a narrative about a serial killer when multiple
relatives and surviving witnesses are saying the same people or
some of the same people investigating these murders are the
same people who committed them will explore this after a
(31:19):
word from our sponsor, and we're back sort of.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yes. I mean we've been talking about how there are
all these witnesses and within this room one of ours
has left. We have gained a witness that's me, and
we've lost a witness, which is Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, I'm starting to wonder what you guys are getting
up to.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Well, you know, it's interesting when you were not here
recently and the two of us were in the room
and we were talking with everyone who's also gathered here
right now, just about you know, your mysterious ways. You know,
I don't want to surprise you, Ben, but I think
we are starting to develop some mysterious ways of our own.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Perhaps it's a sketchiness by osmosis, right, yes, proximity. And
you know I noticed this didn't happen until Seth you started,
you started producing this show.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
He's our guy on the inside, and he's he's got.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
This weird kind of malevolent smirk on while he's he's knitting.
What this is true? Yeah, Seth, Seth is knitting.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
You think that's knitting, dude, I don't know. He is.
He is stringing together thought Tulpa's right now, he's making
a weapon.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I like it. I don't know, no, I like it.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I like it.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
It reminds me of the Three Fates story. Right, well, well,
it's beIN a golden thread in there for us man,
you know, the fate of heroes something, so it will
pick up. We do not know whether our good compatriot
Nole is related to our journalist here Ethan Brown, but
hopefully noah, we'll be returning soon. And here we arrive
(33:10):
at the point Brown has to ask himself, is this
a matter of incompetence or is it a matter of insidiousness?
You know, is it just a bunch of people who
are terrible at their jobs or is it something more malevolent?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Well? Yeah, and you know what we recall in the
beginning there it definitely or you at least have to
give a bit of the benefit of the doubt and say, okay,
this is if something is happening, it's probably incompetence. And now,
as he's gone further and further and further into this,
he's thinking it's.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
More corruption, right, And along the way he is starting
to get warning signs, little threats, cryptic hints. We should, also,
of course, to be completely fair, say that it's easy
for someone on the outside without knowledge of law enforcement
(34:00):
investigative processes, to say something is incompetent because law enforcement
has to labor under a distinct set of rules. And
there's one primary disadvantage that law enforcement always has, which
is in theory, law enforcement has to play by the
rules and the bad guys do not. Yes, So if
(34:21):
there's something that seems off kilter, if there's something that
seems like it doesn't add up, just like any anytime
you investigate something like this, you have to realize that
what can appear to be conspiracy can often be explained
by incompetence or mistake or user error. Essentially, yeah, or just.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
A regulation didn't allow for one thing or another.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
To happen right right, or because of a technical problem
with a chain of command for evidence. For instance, someone
that everyone knows is a murderer walks free. That happens. Yeah,
that happens because the law is not perfect. So Brown
does his due diligence and he says, you know what,
(35:08):
this could have been incompetence. But incompetence does not explain
the enormity of what's happening here in Louisiana. He says,
what appears to be incompetence might be out and out corruption.
And this is when he begins to learn what we
should call the oral history of the dark side of Jennings, Louisiana.
(35:31):
The old street heads, people have been in and out
of the system for decades. They tell him that corruption
in this in this little part of Louisiana dates all
the way back to the nineteen seventies when cops got
involved on the other side of the drug trade where
they were you know, they were selling the drugs or
getting a.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Viig right, Yeah, or at least allowing it to occur
with some beneficial thing.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
But then he keeps going down the rabbit hole about
the local law enforcement, right, and we've got a.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Quote, Yeah, we've got a quote. As he's going down
the rabbit hole, he learns more and more. We pulled
just a few examples I thought were powerful to show
you that if there is corruption related to the murder
of the Jefferson Davis eight, then this corruption itself is
(36:24):
part of a larger pattern. It didn't happen out of
the blue. That's again, if law enforcement is responsible for
the murders. Here's the quote. Brown writes. In March of
nineteen ninety two, local men burglarized the sheriff's office, making
off with a staggering three hundred pounds of marijuana. When
investigators interviewed one of the burglars, according to court documents,
(36:47):
he named a surprising pair of accomplices, Frankie Richard and
a man named Ted Gary. Ted Gary is interesting because
he was the chief deputy sheriff at the time. Brown
notes that there were no charges ever brought against Richard
and Gary.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Mm and let's just keep going here because there's another
quote quote. Three years later, in nineteen ninety three, Sheriff
Dallas Cormier pleaded guilty and federal court to one count
of obstruction of justice after he was charged with crimes
ranging from improper dealings with inmates to using public funds
(37:25):
to buy trucks, tires, and guns for himself.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
And then, in October of two thousand and three, eight
female cops on the Jennings force filed a civil rights
lawsuit against the Jennings police chief, Donald Lucky de Luche,
and then a bunch of other male cops and the
city of Jennings itself, and they said there were widespread
acts of sexual violence and harassment. Amongst the allegations in
(37:53):
the complaint, there were things like a captain who would
shake his genitals at female officers and say things like,
you know, I like to lick as you said, Matt
p I can numb it all night. People forced oral
sex on female officers, a lieutenant who waived a knife
at a female officer saying that you know, he was
(38:15):
going to cut her up. And then in January twenty thirteen,
think about this, this goes back from nineteen ninety these
specific examples to twenty thirteen. Twenty thirteen, a former police chief,
Johnny Lassiter, gets hit with a ton of charges after
Louisiana State Police find forty five hundred dollars in cash,
(38:38):
eighteen hundred pills, more than three hundred and eighty grams
of cocaine, and pounds of marijuana missing from the department's
evidence room. Wow, the evidence room, by the way, is
a sieve.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, it's exactly well. And who knows how many officers
were actually involved in the you know, movement of all
those materials that were found missing, right, I mean the
sheriff is blamed there in that case, because this is
your evidence room.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
And I think it's so intellectually lazy and tempting when
we hear these stories to say, well, all cops are bad,
or all these people, everybody who works at this department
from the bottom up, they're all rotten. It's jerks all
the way up and jerks all the way down. That's
not true. In this case. There's a there's a former
(39:30):
sergeant named Jesse Ewing. In two thousand and seven, he
hears that two female inmates at the city jail want
to talk because they say they have knowledge about the
murders and that higher ranking officers were directly involved at
least in the cover up of the murders. At this time,
(39:53):
again in two thousand and seven, if we remember our timeline,
there are four victims.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
And this has really got Ewing. You know, he's got it.
It's got his mind really stirred up because he's already
had a lot of suspicions about stuff that's been going on,
or things that he's felt were possibly going on. He
was concerned that the recording of you know, the interviews,
the tapes of these two particular inmates, might you know,
disappear in the same way that all this stuff like
(40:18):
the drugs, the cash, all those things in the evidence
locker and the evidence room, all that stuff have been disappearing.
He was thinking, somebody's just going to erase this from
the records. So he ends up giving the tapes to
a private investigator named kirkman Nard, and then he in
turn sent them on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
office in Lake Charles.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
This plan backfires. It turns out that Ewing is right
not to trust his fellow officers and his colleagues because
the tapes end back up with the Task Force m
ai T and Sergeant Ewing is concerned that there will
(40:59):
be reprisals if he goes through the regular channels. That's
why I went through a PI to the FBI. It
turns out he was right, because as soon as those
tapes end up at MAIIT, the Jefferson Davis District Attorney
Office charges this sergeant with malfeasance in office as well
as a trumped up charge of sexual misconduct. One of
(41:24):
the female inmates who's on the audio tapes says that
he touches her inappropriately while they are recording these charges
are later dismissed. The tapes contained specific information about the
murders of Dubois and Lopez, including allegations that law enforcement
(41:47):
helped cover up the role of one Frankie Richard in
at least one of the murders. So we get to
a bit of secondhand information here, but it's interesting walk
with us on this. So one of the people on
the tapes, who remains publicly unidentified today, says that she
heard from a different person working in the sex trade
(42:10):
that Richard and his niece Hannah Connor are the ones
who killed Whitney Dubois. And Furthermore, this sex worker, Tracy,
says that she was there the night it happened. She
saw it occurring. She says they'd all been getting high
and when Dubois refused Richard's sexual advances, he got aggressive.
(42:32):
He started fighting with her, and when she started fighting back,
he got on top of her and began punching her.
According to this inmate, that that's when the niece held
held Dubois's head back and drowned her. Ordinarily, you could
see why this should be treated with skepticism, right, Yeah,
(42:54):
Like I'm an inmate in a jail, I'm telling you that,
I'm telling you something someone else said to me and
I wasn't there, and it's just another person that I
know from the streets who's probably gonna be in jail later.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Well, yeah, and if you think about the cost benefit
thing there, right, are you going to get? What are
you getting in return for giving information like that?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
And if it comes back that, oh wait, this person
says that they didn't say that, well then I mean
all you have to say is, well, they must be mistaken,
because that's what they said to.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Me, right And on the yeah, it's hearsay. What's the motive?
Speaker 3 (43:36):
You know?
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Maybe they just have some kind of vendetta against that
other person in the community and they want to get
them jammed up. The problem is this tracks with a
confession that that same person who said she was in
the room made earlier that same year. The two inmates
claimed there was a conspiracy of foot that Frankie Richard
and a high ranking member of the Sheriff's office named
(43:58):
Warren Gary worked together to destroy the evidence of Lopez's murders.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
And if that was true, they were probably working together
in some other capacity, or at least there was a payoff.
There was some benefit to Warren Gary if that is true,
and Gary himself was never actually charged. In fact, he
ended up getting promoted to run the evidence room. Yes, yeah,
that's true. Like think about that. It's again, it's it's
(44:32):
not confirmed all of this stuff, but like just the
perfect placement, if it were true, to be placed there
in charge of the evidence room. He ended up leaving
the Sheriff's office sometime around twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yes, and he's just there are multiple other suspects. Brown
found a multitude of allegations regarding the case, and these
allegations were in various parts of the task force reports,
but they were not made public until his research brought
them to life. So, mister Brown, if you were listening,
(45:08):
thank you for your courage and your diligent efforts. Here
enter a fellow named Danny Barry. Before dying in twenty
ten at the age of sixty three, Danny Barry worked
for the Sheriff's office for twelve years. Three separate witnesses
named him as a suspect in murders during interviews in
two thousand and eight. They claimed first that Barry and
(45:32):
his wife would drive around pick up women off the
street and then drug them, specifically spike their drinks. Some
of these women also said that Barry had a room
in his trailer cordoned off from the rest of the domicile,
that there were chains hanging from the ceiling. This was
a room people could quote not see in or out of.
(45:52):
Barry was interviewed by the Task Force on February twenty fifth,
two thousand and nine. He was not asked about any
of these allegations.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, of course not. But that is Oh gosh, it's
so tough. It's so tough with these kinds of things
because it just it's a cumulative effect, right, I mean what,
that's the same thing that happened to Ethan Brown here
too with that's happening to me, I think maybe to
you listening to this, to to to Ben and all
(46:23):
of us. Just it's a cumulative effect of feeling like
something is fully rotten in I was gonna say Denmark
with in Jennings and you know, for this guy to
be what what do we what was that quote there?
We said he was not a suspect in three murders.
He was brought up, was it they named him? He
(46:45):
was named by somebody as a suspect in three of
the Jennings eight murders. Uh, that's pretty weird. But then
there is a whole other twist that Ben you found
here something about one of the victor was present during
a police shooting.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
So yes, So it turns out that there's another connection.
So we have the hotel, the location through which they're
often connected. We have their acquaintances male female colleagues, fellow
drug users, and so on, and then we have an incident.
(47:23):
In two thousand and five, police fatally shot a local
drug dealer named Leonard Crochet. A grand jury investigated this
shooting and determined that there was no probable cause for
charge of negligent homicide on the officer's part or against
the police at all in the case, even though the
dealer was provably unarmed when he was murdered. Witnesses told
(47:46):
investigators multiple times that they believed police were killing victims
who knew about how this shooting went down. At least
one of the Jennings eight was in the room when
this when this fatal shooting occurred, and you can read
some read some pretty harrowing in depth accounts of that.
(48:07):
But if that is true, then it seems that these
victims were being murdered to cover up a dirty shooting, right, yeah,
and then how dirty is the shooting, Well that depends
on how dirty the law enforcement personnel were working there.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Well yeah, well here's we've kind of you know, if
you're to believe some of the picture that's been painted
here through this reporting, then you may think, wow, I
guess if you know they were gonna they if the
police officers who were involved with some of this stuff
did end up needing to take somebody out with whom
(48:46):
they were involved, then yeah, you can just imagine how
dirty the dealings actually were. And there's this other thing here.
A warden named Terry Gilory was trafficking some of the
in mates, the female inmates, for.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Sex or you know, maybe it's like Richard said, maybe
he was just introducing them to men who wanted to
exchange money.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
All right, old man who wanted money?
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah, unclean.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
And here's this other thing. Warren Gary, who we were
talking about up top there, he purchased a truck on
the cheap from a friend of Richard Richard, Frankie Richard
that we were talking about there. And this truck may
have been used in a murder and then later sold.
Just this is a thing. This is like a let's
(49:36):
just put that out there. I'm just saying kind of thing,
right right.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Also, Guillery is a cousin of that last victim, Nicole Gillery.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
And again a lot of this goes into things that
we would have to be we would have to call hearsay.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Oh, a ton of us is.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
There are very sketchy timelines, strange relationships. But right now,
despite these troubling things, there are no convicted murderers these
in any of these cases. And given the increasingly shady
activities of law enforcement in the investigation, it's no surprise
(50:23):
that the then Sheriff Edwards required all task force members
to get swapped for DNA if for nothing more than
to put the public at ease. Tut tut though, because
it turns out that the results of those DNA tests
were never disclosed to the public and have not been
at the time of this recording. This is where you
(50:43):
come in. Public knowledge of the story may help with
the case. You know, It's been covered pretty well in
several different venues, most recently in the twenty nineteen to
five part documentary Murder in the bio which you had
mentioned earlier, Matt. But these these murders remain unsolved. They're
numerous people pointing their fingers at folks in the sex trade,
(51:04):
folks in the drug trade, some people still pushing the
serial killer narrative, and of course people pointing their fingers
at former members of law enforcement. This is where we
want to hear from you now, Claude, to answer the
question you had asked us earlier, is the Jennings eight
or the Jefferson Davis eight an inspiration for True Detective
(51:27):
Season one? There are some notable differences, of course, because
True Detective Season one is clearly a work of fiction.
But the creator of the show, Nick Pizolato, says that
he was not aware of the Jennings case until after
(51:49):
True Detective was coming out, and he in fact tweeted
about this approvingly in twenty fourteen, when Ethan Brown in
his Medium article noted that this felt like a True
Detective story. So we don't. We have not found any statement,
at least from the creator of the show that he
(52:09):
was inspired by this. However, we will point out that
during the run of True Detective Season one, the creator
came under some fairly serious criticism, including plagiarism right for
some of I think it was specifically some of the
dialogue Rust Cole speaks right.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
And I can't remember the writer from whom it was
believed he was borrowing, but it was that it's the
weird fiction, Thomas Leggatti. That's it's h that's it. Yeah,
you know, there are similarities here, for sure, but this
whole the corruption within the police department thing feels a
(52:51):
little different to me. I'm having a hard time fully
recalling True Detective Season one. I think I need to
rewatch it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
It's fantastic. It's fantastic work, and I'm glad that it's fiction.
The problem here, and I don't know, not the not
the problem, but the complication here is that fiction has
has a complicated relationship with the truth. We have cases
where real life events become embellished and works of fiction,
(53:20):
But then we also have cases where works of fiction
create real life tragedies and crimes, such as the infamous
slender Man stabbings. Slender Man was, you know, is acknowledged
to be an urban legend created on the Internet. The
people who made slender Man say that they made it
and didn't quote unquote discover it.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Oh yeah, yes, but you know, in this case, it's
a it is that too. It's a lot of people
saying a lot of things without a ton of evidence
to back any of it up. And that's why we're
very much interested in what you think. To my money,
it feels like a combination of things that we've discussed
of people that may you know, may be implicated, you know,
(54:04):
in very small, very minor ways, and then others in
pretty major ways. And I still feel like that Frankie
Richards guy, he gives me just a bad feeling.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Frankie Richard, Yeah, yeah, he. Here's the thing. At least
eight people are dead, and the one of the big
questions is did they all know each other because they
just happened to run in the same circles, happen to
live in the same relatively small town or relatively sparsely
(54:37):
populated area, or were they all targeted?
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Right?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
We know that this murder rate is incredibly high for
the population and it's abnormal. There's no way around it.
No matter who you think is responsible, there's no way
around that. I am going to voice my opinion. I
believe that police corruption is heavily involved if you look
(55:04):
at the track record, and again this is no being
on the people currently working in law enforcement. But if
you look at the track record of things that had
happened over the course of the decades leading to these murders,
and if you look at how the murders were handled,
then it seems to be fairly obvious that there was
(55:25):
at least some corruption and cover up at play. And
you know, it's tempting to say, well.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Was this.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Were they killed by members of the drug trade? Where
they killed by members of law enforcement? We can get
past a certain threshold of corruption. The drug trade and
law enforcement are very close to being the same thing.
Their fingers on a hand. Now, I'm not saying there's
a case like that, because you know, I've never sold
weight on the Interstate ten corridor. I've never had to
(55:58):
pay off a Louisiana member of law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
I like that you're like specific, giving it such specifics.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
There, those are the specific I know.
Speaker 3 (56:11):
Your statement is just so specific.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Oh you think I've gotta say I seventy five that's
a different story.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
No, No, I just no, I'm just I'm just choking.
She was hoping you would say, I've never sold weight.
I've never.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
I've never sold weight on the it in corridor, and
I've never made a deal with the good folks in Jedting's.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Well, you know, sorry, I'm making light of it just
because it is uncomfortable talking about the deaths of individuals
like this, where corruption, like you said, has a track record,
and it seems it seems that it at least had
some handed.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
And Brown was onto something. Brown is onto something, he
was threatened, he did have to stay out of the
area for several months. It can be enormously dispiriting to
admit that this is a situation where the law has failed.
Has the law failed because it is imperfect, or has
(57:13):
the law purposely been made to fail? Here the fact
that I would argue that the fact that these crimes
remain unsolved presents us and presents you listening, an opportunity
to be part of the solution.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Yes, so contact us in whatever way you choose, or
whatever way you prefer the most. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. We're conspiracy stuff on
some of those conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. If you
don't want to contact us that way, you can you
can get join our Facebook group. That's a really great
way to have discussions. It's called Here's where it gets crazy.
(57:53):
A lot of fine people in that group, even finer
people running it. Right there we go, And if you
don't want to do that stuff, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std
WYTK and leave us a message, tell us your story.
If you want to protect your identity, call from a
(58:15):
burner phone or a Google Voice number or something like that,
because I do see your numbers when you call in.
Just a word of warning. And if you don't want
to do that, you can send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist, we return to you with a classic episode,
a bit true crime, a bizarre series of unfortunate events
take us to Jefferson Davis Parish.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Guys, that's right, the town of Jennings, Louisiana wasn't a
particularly well known place at the time. In fact, a
lot of folks living in the US probably would have
lived their entire lives without ever having heard of it
until just a few years before we published this episode
on who killed the Jennings Eight.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
It's a story of potentially some really bad stuff involving
possibly corruption within a local police force and someone trying
to cover up the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Some real underbelly small town America underbelly stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, or you could look at it as a bunch
of super unfortunate and very sad deaths that we're not
related at all.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Let's see what you think, folks.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Noel, our good friend, writer die colleague Matt Frederick is
on adventures but will be returning soon. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer. Today
it is Seth Nicholas Johnson, So give him an audible
hello when you get the chance in the meantime, and
most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff
(01:56):
they don't want you to know, Noel. I figured we'd
start off today's episode with an email from one of
our listeners. This comes to us from Claude G. Claude says, hey, guys,
I just listened to our latest episode about the possible
inspiration for True Detective. We did that one a while back.
Yep this, and Claude says, I enjoyed the episode, but
(02:20):
was wondering if you had heard of another theory about
the inspiration for the show. I was raised in Jennings, Louisiana.
I live a few minutes away now but still go
there multiple times a week. Jennings Claim to Fame, Unfortunately,
is a multiple murder case titled by the media the
Jennings eight. Showtime has recently done a five part series
(02:40):
on it, and mentioned True Detective in one of the episodes.
My family and I are personally connected to the story,
as one of the victims was a cousin of ours. Anyway,
I was curious to see if you guys have heard
of the connection to the TV series and our case.
Thanks for your time, Claude, this is fascinating.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We did know a little bit of this, but we
wanted to explore the case today. It's something that many
people have heard of but are maybe not intimately familiar with.
And for this sort of episode, we do need to
have a disclaimer at the top of the show.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
It's true on today's episode dives into some pretty disturbing stuff,
stories of true crime, murdered drugs, and corruption. And the
episode contains at times quite graphic descriptions of violence and assault,
and it might not be suitable for all listeners. So
to start, what are the Jennings eight? In order to
(03:36):
answer this question, please travel with us to Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Here are the facts Jefferson Davis Parish. It's located in
southwest Louisiana and it's a small place.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
A parish is Louisiana's version of a county. It has
a little more than thirty thousand residents. The parish is
a town called Jennings. It's the largest town in the area,
but the population is still just a little over ten
thousand according to the twenty ten census. It's home to
some notable individuals. I found one mysterious story here a
(04:15):
guy named Father Eugene John Herbert, who was a Jesuit missionary.
He disappeared in Sri Lanka in nineteen ninety during the
country's civil war. He has nothing to do with this
show today, as far as we know. Before the events
disclosed in today's episode. Jefferson Davis, which was named after
the former president of the Confederacy. It was one of
(04:36):
those places you probably wouldn't be too familiar with unless
you lived in the area. It made the news a
couple of times for things like corrupt ticketing by local
law enforcement. You know, we've all heard that thing where
if you're a stranger to town, you're driving by and
you've got plates from outside of the area, Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Big old red flag on your back.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, and that's happened. You've driven through some of those
areas in your travels, maybe to Athens or Augusta.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Sure, I mean, you know, I mean, I would I
would imagine there'd be an argument to make that it's
some form of profiling, but it's just, you know, it's
the rules kind of it's it's like something you should expect, probably.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And it's kind of difficult to prove too. Like many
rural areas, you wouldn't see Jennings often in the national news.
In fact, you could live your entire life here in
the United States never know this place existed.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Jefferson Davis isn't particularly large. In fact, it's not particularly
wealthy either, and like so many other places in the
United States these days, it had a pretty seedy underbelly.
In the absence of prosperity, economic opportunity jobs. You it's
(05:54):
a vacuum that is typically filled with drugs and crime
and other types of black market trading, which grew into
kind of an open secret in Jefferson Davis. Everyone knew
what went down on South Main Street, but it wasn't
necessarily something that was going to get shut down by
(06:15):
the cops, you know, on the regular right.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Absolutely, yeah, it was an open secret, especially in South Jennings.
Life in this small parish seems set to continue as
it always had, and even to continue along a bit
of a slow economic decline until that is, residents began
finding the bodies. We're going to explore the initial murders,
(06:42):
or the discoveries of the bodies even before they were
termed murders. On May twentieth, two thousand and five, there's
a fisherman, a retired men named Jerry Jackson, who discovers
the first body. It's floating in a canal off Highway
eleven twenty six on the Outskirts Jenning's. This body is
identified as one Loretta Lynn Casson Chasson Lewis. Lewis had
(07:09):
been seen alive three days earlier.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Because of the amount that her body had decomposed, authorities
weren't able to conclusively determine her cause of death, but
they suspected asphyxiation. And as you'll recall from our previous
episode on the Smiley Face murder theory, drowning as homicide
can can be a pretty tough nut to crack. It's
(07:32):
very difficult to prove, just like it's hard to prove
that it cop pulls you over because you had out
of state place.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yet the court of public opinion was already in full swing,
and there's some pretty nasty victim blaming that happens, especially
in the media, because, according to the residents in the know,
Lewis was living what was often euphemistically described as a
quote high risk lifestyle. She was addicted to crack cocaine.
(08:01):
She was another casualty of the drug trade running along
that quarriter of I ten and she had turned to
the sex trade to feed her addiction. And at first
this was seen as a tragedy, and it is, But
less than a few months later, residents and law enforcement
started to recognize that this discovery wasn't just a singular tragedy.
(08:25):
It was something else, the beginning of a pattern.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It's right, a group of friends hunting bullfrogs, which is
the thing that you do, and Jefferson Davis for fun.
They found the corpse of a thirty year old Mestine
Patterson Emmstine Patterson a few weeks later, floating in a
different canal. This particular victim's cause of death was a
bit easier to figure out. Her throat had been cut,
(08:51):
her body brutalized. Two men, a Byron Chad Jones and
Lawrence Nixon, are held for a brief amount of time
on charges of second degree murder, but these charges were
of course dropped and they were.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Released, and so we have two. We have two discoveries
in two thousand and five years pass. On March eighteenth,
two thousand and seven, another body is discovered, that of
twenty one year old Kristin Gary Lopez. She is discovered
in a canal, and like the Lewis case, medical examiners
(09:29):
cannot conclusively nail down a cause of death, and like
in the Patterson case, two people are briefly detained. This
time it's a guy named Frankie Richard who is described
alternately as a retired oil rig worker, strip club owner,
and a PEMP, along with his niece Hannah Connor. These
(09:52):
two are later released, just like in the Patterson case
due to lack of evidence.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, that's right. And over the next year, half four
more bodies turned up in and around Jennings, all fitting
the same profile, the same unfortunate kind of forgotten demographic,
poor young with a history of drug addiction. Rap sheets
a mile long, typically charges involving the sex trade or
(10:23):
other criminal activities. We have Whitney des Bois, it was
twenty six, Laconia Muggy Brown twenty three, who, like Patterson,
had her throat slit as well Crystal Say benoit Zeno
twenty four, Brittany Gary seventeen, who was the cousin of
(10:44):
Kristin Gary Lopez. Most of these bodies showed almost no
signs of trauma, and the medical examiner's ruled asphyxiation as
the cause of death.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's interesting other than the muggy case with the slit throat,
so the law has to respond again. Jeffers Sin Davis
Parish has a small population. This death rate, this murder rate,
is insane. So in December of two thousand and eight,
the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff's Department, under the leadership of
(11:15):
one Sheriff Ricky Edwards, announces that they're forming a task
force to investigate what they're now openly calling murders. His
task force is referred to as Multi Agency Investigative Team
or MAIIT. They include local officials, state officials, and some FEDS.
Their results leave much to be desired. In August of
(11:37):
two thousand and nine, an eighth victim is found, Nicole Gillery,
twenty six years old. The body is discovered off I
ten in the adjacent Acadia Parish. Later that fall, Sheriff
Edwards notes that these deaths may be the work of
what they describe as a common offender, a single person
(11:59):
committing the hides. In other words, although they would hate
to use the phrase, I'm sure a serial killer. So
that's where we're at at that point. Between two thousand
and five and two thousand and nine, eight women have disappeared,
only to be found dead. Shortly thereafter, the task Force
more than doubles their reward for information from thirty five
(12:19):
thousand dollars to eighty five thousand dollars, and the victims
become collectively known in the zeitgeist as the Jeff Davis
eight or later the Jennings eight. But this is only
the beginning of the story.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
In January of twenty ten, the New York Times reported
on the deaths, and this article caught the attention of
a New Orleans based journalist named Ethan Brown. In twenty eleven,
Brown went to Jennings to do his own digging, his
own interviews, his own investigations. Brown becomes obsessed with the
(12:56):
story and convinced that there's more to it than what
is already been reported.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And we'll explore Brown's investigation after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. So as this journalist Ethan
Brown pours over public records, as he interviews numerous people
(13:23):
affiliated with the victims, as he interviews members of the
task force and even suspects in the crimes, he begins
to think this was not, in fact the work of
a serial killer, but of someone else. And it starts.
It starts when he begins connecting dots between the victims,
because remember, this is a small town, and there's a
(13:45):
reason we have stereotypes about small towns. One of the
most common stereotypes about small town is that there are
no real secrets, that everyone knows everyone somehow, and a
lot of our fellow listeners tuning in today probably have
lived in a small town and can attest to that,
you know. And then also there's the argument that every
(14:05):
town you live in becomes smaller the longer you live there.
So he Brown starts to note that all these victims
are connected. Noel, you mentioned that they had that demographic
in common, right, and they had similar issues with addiction
and money. But he also finds that in addition to
that first point, secondly, they had all served to some
(14:29):
degree or another as police informants. What are they called cis.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, confidential informants. That's right. And that's the thing. I
mean a lot of times, folks that are doing this
kind of informing they know each other and they're aware
of each other and maybe have each other's backs in
that respect, because it is such a dangerous situation to
be in. Two were actually related and another two lived
together for a time. In eight fourth, we've got multiple
(14:57):
relatives who told Brown the vicvictims had appeared unusually anxious
or frightened before disappearing.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, and that fourth point, to be fair, is a
little maybe a little more subjective, because these people were
living hard, difficult lives. You know, there were probably plenty
of normal reasons to be anxious or frightened. But still
it fits the pattern. Let's pause here now, I know
what you're saying, folks. Didn't you all just have a
(15:28):
commercial break? Well, we do, but we also have an
important announcement. You see, our good pal and colleague, Matt
Frederick has actually returned from his adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Matt, I materialized, I'm here.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I didn't know we could all do. I thought that
was just a ben power.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, I heard you guys talking about Ethan Brown, and
I was like, oh man, I gotta get in there.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
That's I mean, it is crazy that you showed up,
but we're glad you're here.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It's also a very niche fascination that to have triggered
your spidey sense.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
I mean, I have been reading about this case ever since.
I believe it was a listener mail, right, claud Yeah,
sent us down this rabbit hole and it Yeah, it's
been disturbing me ever since. So thanks so much for
sending it to us. And also no, thank you, but
thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yes, we we opened the show with Claude's email, and
now we're I don't think we need to catch you
up on any of this, Matt, because you know it
pretty well. Uh So, now we're at this point where
Brown is making connections. Right, He's already He's connected some
stuff about He's cooperated some statements from relatives. He's noticed
(16:37):
that there is a web of connection between the victims.
He also finds another key connection, the Boudreaux in just
off of Interstate ten. It connects Houston to New Orleans.
Could you tell us a little bit about that one?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Uh yeah, so this is like one of the hubs
or possibly the hub of a whole drug and sex
like sex trade drug what do you call it? Not empires,
but just where drugs are distributed pretty heavily. Police are
always there busting people for various things, generally for the
(17:10):
sexu rate or for drugs. Surprise, surprise. And several of
the victims that have been identified in this case or
you know that are that are out there that he
is kind of bringing together here, they've received complaints based
on their behavior at this location. When you say, when
we say complaints based on their behavior, we're talking, you know,
(17:32):
generally about sex work.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Well, yeah, also loud hotel parties. Yes, that's occurring here.
Depending on where you've spent time in the US or Bride,
you've probably seen motels like this before, typically right off
the interstate, a little beaten down right. Yeah, and they
(17:55):
you know, they don't have the best reputation, and they've
earned that not the best reputation.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Well, and here's the deal too. It's a lot of
times a community of its own a motel like that.
So a lot of the the victims here are sharing
this this web of people that they all are acquaintances with.
And again it's like, you know, it's it's also small town, right,
(18:22):
It's a this whole this whole place we're talking about
is small town. So all those rules apply, and in
this case, within the drug trade itself, within the sex trade.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I mean, it's true a lot of those very let's
call them affordable hotels, I guess for lack of a
better term, people stay there for long periods of time.
They rent rooms weekly, and often there is a like
you said, Matt, kind of a hub where it's people
kind of go in and out, like you know, John's
will show up to this particular motel, to a particular
room to get you know, sex work services, and same
(18:53):
with with drugs, and like you said, it becomes almost
this community where everyone knows each other, everyone is aware
of each other's kind of cummings and goings.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Right exactly. These are good points because the victims also
share a web of mutual acquaintances. The thing about these
small town rules, the stereotype I mentioned earlier about everyone
knowing everyone, is that this kind of rule applies to
the criminal side of a small town as well, and
it applies in the drug trade. That's what leads Ethan
(19:24):
Brown to interview a friend of the victims self professed.
The man we mentioned earlier a strip club owner named
Frankie Richards, and in his interview with Brown and with others,
Richard paints Jennings in a grisly light. The drugs, the
sex work, and the crooked cops, he argues, are operating
(19:48):
more or less openly in Jennings and have been for
some time before the killings begin. So Brown also finds
that the rot in Jennings Luisi does not stop at
the dirty banks of the canals. In twenty fourteen, an
amazing piece he wrote on medium dot com, we have
(20:09):
a quote that helps walk us through his opinion on
the law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Since the early nineteen nineties, there have been nearly twenty
unsolved homicides, including the slain eight women in Jefferson Davis Parish,
A statistic and a competent sheriff's department that would be
regarded as both a ridiculously low clearance rate and an
astonishingly high murder rate for a small area.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, but Brown does not attribute these disturbing statistics to
incompetence alone. As a matter of fact, he explicitly calls
out law enforcement in this article.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yes, he says, quote one fact is clear. Local law
enforcement is far too steeped in misconduct and corruption. And
this extends to the task force, which is dominated by
detectives and deputies from the sheriff's office to run an
investigation with the integrity that the murdered women and their
families deserve after nearly a decade in which no one
has been brought to justice.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And we'll have more on law enforcement, plenty more actually
in a moment, but let's let's follow Brown a bit further.
Let's let's learn more about these suspects. So Brown finds
that the suspects have something similar going on with their
web of relationships. While there are different suspects for different
(21:36):
cases or different you know, specific murders, the suspects seem
increasingly interrelated. Even Frankie Richard was briefly charged in two
thousand and seven for the murder of Lopez, but the
charges were dropped when the witness statements were conflicting and
then when a key piece of physical evidence was mishandled.
(21:58):
And it's definitely yeah, and Natt, you have you have
some insight on Frankie Richards. Correct.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, it comes from a series titled Murder in the Bayou,
and there are just quotes there from Frankie Richard that
just I wonder how much of it makes me feel
as though he's like doing something morally wrong. And I
(22:26):
just feel like there's some some semblance of distrust in
him just in general because of that, or it's just
because of the way he words things. And I don't
know how much of that can actually be attributed back
to you know, the Jennings eight murders, right, And I
don't think any of it can, because it's just a
feeling that I'm getting and reading these things, and I'm
(22:49):
gonna read this quote. You'll understand what I'm saying, but
it's going to be a little bit. I'm gonna use
different words for what he's saying. My most memorable way
of making a living was selling p We sold p
any and every effing way we could. I did not
pimp them girls. I introduced them to older men that
(23:11):
wanted to spend some money on a young gal. I'm
making sure they are getting their money, making sure they
are not getting hurt.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Broker in sex is pimping, right, That's not the quote.
That's just a fact.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, I know. Well, and also just the way again,
like maybe it's reading it. Maybe it's just I'm imagining
him saying that, and just that the way he so
nonchalantly is talking about it and then reflects back on
it as in like, oh man, this was a great
time in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well he's also he's he's a free man, but he's
he's lived a hard life. If you hear any audio
with him.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, and you know, and I'm not discounting that he's
led a hard life. It's just I'm just talking specifically
about personal feeling for sure. And and then here's one
more quote. Just when we're talking about Frankie Richards, a
family member of his, a niece and goddaughter named Hannah,
talked about her uncle in this way, and this is
(24:10):
a quote again from that same series. Uncle Frankie was
like the guy you didn't mess with, you know, he
took care of business. Which again it's more of like
a character witness kind of thing. It has nothing to
do with whether or not he actually did any of
these crimes. It's just perhaps is one of the major
reasons why he was a suspect, along with all the
(24:31):
other evidence that was involved. But you can just maybe
there's just this air about him that would make him
look good for it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and he was. He did have knowledge, carnal and
otherwise of people who would later go on to be
murdered in this course of events. There were other people
charged in these cases, as we said, the men charged
in the Patterson case Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon.
(25:00):
He got off because of what may have been police incompetence,
you could call it that, But it's sort of a
glass half empty, glass half full situation because our journalist
Brown learned that the sheriff's office did not test the
alleged crime scene until fifteen months after Patterson's murder, and
(25:22):
they were unable to demonstrate the presence of blood. Surprise, surprise.
If you wait more than a year, that kind of
organic evidence can get increasingly more difficult to detect. He
also found evidence that other street level criminals in Jenning's,
especially people who were associated with Frankie Richard, were suspected
(25:44):
in some of the other murders, but nothing came of it.
This task force was conducting exhaustive interviews, nothing came of it.
The law found no credible suspects. And here's the thing, though,
corruption or incompetence because what Brown starts calling the jeff
Davis Eight didn't just give info on the drug trade
(26:07):
to the police when they were cis. They apparently gave
authorities information about other women in the trade and the
community who would later turn up dead and be part
of the Jefferson Davis Eight murders. Laconia Brown, the fifth victim,
was interrogated about the two thousand and five killing of
(26:27):
Ernestine Patterson, you know, as you will call the second victim.
Brown said that he had Brown is not Ethan Brown.
Our journalist is not related to Laconia Muggy Brown. But
he found a task force report where one of the
witnesses claims that Brown spotted the body of Loretta Lewis,
(26:48):
the first victim floating in that canal before the fishermen
found her body there in May of two thousand and five,
and then in two thousand and six, detectives who are
looking into that first murder also interrogated Kristen Gary Lopez,
who later becomes the third victim, and Brown correctly false
(27:11):
the task force for not immediately noticing this troubling cavalcade
of red flags. Here's what literally was happening women were
being questioned in murder cases and then shortly thereafter they
were turning up dead.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It's really tough because you never want to believe that
law enforcement, you know, could possibly even just be turning
an eye of what blind eye, right, You never want
to believe that that could be happening. And we're certainly
not saying that is what's happening, but just from the
reporting of Ethan Brown, it definitely is making me personally
question a lot of this stuff. And then you move
(27:49):
on to the last victim, Nicole Gillory. She's, you know,
another person who had a rap sheet that was pretty
extensive with charges that were repeatedly dropped, which is something
that should pique your interest in what's called as a
nole prosequi. It's a ruling from the District Attorney's office,
the DA, and it just means to be unwilling to pursue.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah. So we're we're prosecutors, and we're we're not saying
that there's no sand to the charges, but for one
reason or another, usually internal, we have decided not to prosecute.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, and it could be we don't want to put
resources into this, or for one reason or another it
could be that maybe there's something happening behind the scenes
with this person that's being charged as let's say, a
CI or something.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This is often used as a way to uh, It's
often used as way to trade favors. You tell us
about this other unrelated case off the books, and then
we'll make this, you know, this possession charge something small
time go away. Guillory's mother, Barbara, noted that her daughter
(29:03):
was increasingly paranoid in the days leading up to her disappearance,
and one Task Force witness told Ethan Brown that giy
Nicole Gilery had said she knew who killed the other girls,
the other seven women. To this day, Barbara Guilery believes
her daughter was murdered not by a serial killer, but
(29:24):
by someone inside law enforcement because her daughter knew too
much about the ongoing corruption. We even have a quote
from Barbara here which is pretty You can tell that
she has certitude about Yes, this is not something she suspects.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
She used to tell us all the time. It was
the police killing the girls. That's what Barbara said. And
we would reply Nicole a name, something writes a letter
and leaves it somewhere, let us know. We can help you, no, Mama,
it's too far gone, it's too big. I'd rather y'all
(30:02):
not know nothing. That way, nothing can happen to y'all.
She knew, she knew, she knew, and that's why they
killed her.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Brown found other similar reports and still at this point,
this is all you know. Witness testimony, and witness testimony
can can be unreliable, right, it can trend toward anecdote
to memory is a tricky, treacherous thing. But when you
find multiple reports corroborating similar accounts, it becomes something you
(30:34):
cannot ignore. Gail Brown, for instance, a sister of Muggy Brown, said,
shortly before her sister was killed, she told her family
she was investigating a murder with a cop, and this
cop was I believe, supposed to give her five hundred
dollars for information. But Gail also believes law enforcement murdered
(30:55):
her sister. So what's going on here? Why is a
task force composed of local and state level and federal
authorities pushing a narrative about a serial killer when multiple
relatives and surviving witnesses are saying the same people or
some of the same people investigating these murders are the
same people who committed them will explore this after a
(31:19):
word from our sponsor, and we're back sort of.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yes. I mean we've been talking about how there are
all these witnesses and within this room one of ours
has left. We have gained a witness that's me, and
we've lost a witness, which is Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, I'm starting to wonder what you guys are getting
up to.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Well, you know, it's interesting when you were not here
recently and the two of us were in the room
and we were talking with everyone who's also gathered here
right now, just about you know, your mysterious ways. You know,
I don't want to surprise you, Ben, but I think
we are starting to develop some mysterious ways of our own.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Perhaps it's a sketchiness by osmosis, right, yes, proximity. And
you know I noticed this didn't happen until Seth you started,
you started producing this show.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
He's our guy on the inside, and he's he's got.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
This weird kind of malevolent smirk on while he's he's knitting.
What this is true? Yeah, Seth, Seth is knitting.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
You think that's knitting, dude, I don't know. He is.
He is stringing together thought Tulpa's right now, he's making
a weapon.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I like it. I don't know, no, I like it.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I like it.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
It reminds me of the Three Fates story. Right, well, well,
it's beIN a golden thread in there for us man,
you know, the fate of heroes something, so it will
pick up. We do not know whether our good compatriot
Nole is related to our journalist here Ethan Brown, but
hopefully noah, we'll be returning soon. And here we arrive
(33:10):
at the point Brown has to ask himself, is this
a matter of incompetence or is it a matter of insidiousness?
You know, is it just a bunch of people who
are terrible at their jobs or is it something more malevolent?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Well? Yeah, and you know what we recall in the
beginning there it definitely or you at least have to
give a bit of the benefit of the doubt and say, okay,
this is if something is happening, it's probably incompetence. And now,
as he's gone further and further and further into this,
he's thinking it's.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
More corruption, right, And along the way he is starting
to get warning signs, little threats, cryptic hints. We should, also,
of course, to be completely fair, say that it's easy
for someone on the outside without knowledge of law enforcement
(34:00):
investigative processes, to say something is incompetent because law enforcement
has to labor under a distinct set of rules. And
there's one primary disadvantage that law enforcement always has, which
is in theory, law enforcement has to play by the
rules and the bad guys do not. Yes, So if
(34:21):
there's something that seems off kilter, if there's something that
seems like it doesn't add up, just like any anytime
you investigate something like this, you have to realize that
what can appear to be conspiracy can often be explained
by incompetence or mistake or user error. Essentially, yeah, or just.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
A regulation didn't allow for one thing or another.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
To happen right right, or because of a technical problem
with a chain of command for evidence. For instance, someone
that everyone knows is a murderer walks free. That happens. Yeah,
that happens because the law is not perfect. So Brown
does his due diligence and he says, you know what,
(35:08):
this could have been incompetence. But incompetence does not explain
the enormity of what's happening here in Louisiana. He says,
what appears to be incompetence might be out and out corruption.
And this is when he begins to learn what we
should call the oral history of the dark side of Jennings, Louisiana.
(35:31):
The old street heads, people have been in and out
of the system for decades. They tell him that corruption
in this in this little part of Louisiana dates all
the way back to the nineteen seventies when cops got
involved on the other side of the drug trade where
they were you know, they were selling the drugs or
getting a.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Viig right, Yeah, or at least allowing it to occur
with some beneficial thing.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
But then he keeps going down the rabbit hole about
the local law enforcement, right, and we've got a.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Quote, Yeah, we've got a quote. As he's going down
the rabbit hole, he learns more and more. We pulled
just a few examples I thought were powerful to show
you that if there is corruption related to the murder
of the Jefferson Davis eight, then this corruption itself is
(36:24):
part of a larger pattern. It didn't happen out of
the blue. That's again, if law enforcement is responsible for
the murders. Here's the quote. Brown writes. In March of
nineteen ninety two, local men burglarized the sheriff's office, making
off with a staggering three hundred pounds of marijuana. When
investigators interviewed one of the burglars, according to court documents,
(36:47):
he named a surprising pair of accomplices, Frankie Richard and
a man named Ted Gary. Ted Gary is interesting because
he was the chief deputy sheriff at the time. Brown
notes that there were no charges ever brought against Richard
and Gary.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Mm and let's just keep going here because there's another
quote quote. Three years later, in nineteen ninety three, Sheriff
Dallas Cormier pleaded guilty and federal court to one count
of obstruction of justice after he was charged with crimes
ranging from improper dealings with inmates to using public funds
(37:25):
to buy trucks, tires, and guns for himself.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
And then, in October of two thousand and three, eight
female cops on the Jennings force filed a civil rights
lawsuit against the Jennings police chief, Donald Lucky de Luche,
and then a bunch of other male cops and the
city of Jennings itself, and they said there were widespread
acts of sexual violence and harassment. Amongst the allegations in
(37:53):
the complaint, there were things like a captain who would
shake his genitals at female officers and say things like,
you know, I like to lick as you said, Matt
p I can numb it all night. People forced oral
sex on female officers, a lieutenant who waived a knife
at a female officer saying that you know, he was
(38:15):
going to cut her up. And then in January twenty thirteen,
think about this, this goes back from nineteen ninety these
specific examples to twenty thirteen. Twenty thirteen, a former police chief,
Johnny Lassiter, gets hit with a ton of charges after
Louisiana State Police find forty five hundred dollars in cash,
(38:38):
eighteen hundred pills, more than three hundred and eighty grams
of cocaine, and pounds of marijuana missing from the department's
evidence room. Wow, the evidence room, by the way, is
a sieve.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, it's exactly well. And who knows how many officers
were actually involved in the you know, movement of all
those materials that were found missing, right, I mean the
sheriff is blamed there in that case, because this is
your evidence room.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
And I think it's so intellectually lazy and tempting when
we hear these stories to say, well, all cops are bad,
or all these people, everybody who works at this department
from the bottom up, they're all rotten. It's jerks all
the way up and jerks all the way down. That's
not true. In this case. There's a there's a former
(39:30):
sergeant named Jesse Ewing. In two thousand and seven, he
hears that two female inmates at the city jail want
to talk because they say they have knowledge about the
murders and that higher ranking officers were directly involved at
least in the cover up of the murders. At this time,
(39:53):
again in two thousand and seven, if we remember our timeline,
there are four victims.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
And this has really got Ewing. You know, he's got it.
It's got his mind really stirred up because he's already
had a lot of suspicions about stuff that's been going on,
or things that he's felt were possibly going on. He
was concerned that the recording of you know, the interviews,
the tapes of these two particular inmates, might you know,
disappear in the same way that all this stuff like
(40:18):
the drugs, the cash, all those things in the evidence
locker and the evidence room, all that stuff have been disappearing.
He was thinking, somebody's just going to erase this from
the records. So he ends up giving the tapes to
a private investigator named kirkman Nard, and then he in
turn sent them on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
office in Lake Charles.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
This plan backfires. It turns out that Ewing is right
not to trust his fellow officers and his colleagues because
the tapes end back up with the Task Force m
ai T and Sergeant Ewing is concerned that there will
(40:59):
be reprisals if he goes through the regular channels. That's
why I went through a PI to the FBI. It
turns out he was right, because as soon as those
tapes end up at MAIIT, the Jefferson Davis District Attorney
Office charges this sergeant with malfeasance in office as well
as a trumped up charge of sexual misconduct. One of
(41:24):
the female inmates who's on the audio tapes says that
he touches her inappropriately while they are recording these charges
are later dismissed. The tapes contained specific information about the
murders of Dubois and Lopez, including allegations that law enforcement
(41:47):
helped cover up the role of one Frankie Richard in
at least one of the murders. So we get to
a bit of secondhand information here, but it's interesting walk
with us on this. So one of the people on
the tapes, who remains publicly unidentified today, says that she
heard from a different person working in the sex trade
(42:10):
that Richard and his niece Hannah Connor are the ones
who killed Whitney Dubois. And Furthermore, this sex worker, Tracy,
says that she was there the night it happened. She
saw it occurring. She says they'd all been getting high
and when Dubois refused Richard's sexual advances, he got aggressive.
(42:32):
He started fighting with her, and when she started fighting back,
he got on top of her and began punching her.
According to this inmate, that that's when the niece held
held Dubois's head back and drowned her. Ordinarily, you could
see why this should be treated with skepticism, right, Yeah,
(42:54):
Like I'm an inmate in a jail, I'm telling you that,
I'm telling you something someone else said to me and
I wasn't there, and it's just another person that I
know from the streets who's probably gonna be in jail later.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Well, yeah, and if you think about the cost benefit
thing there, right, are you going to get? What are
you getting in return for giving information like that?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
And if it comes back that, oh wait, this person
says that they didn't say that, well then I mean
all you have to say is, well, they must be mistaken,
because that's what they said to.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Me, right And on the yeah, it's hearsay. What's the motive?
Speaker 3 (43:36):
You know?
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Maybe they just have some kind of vendetta against that
other person in the community and they want to get
them jammed up. The problem is this tracks with a
confession that that same person who said she was in
the room made earlier that same year. The two inmates
claimed there was a conspiracy of foot that Frankie Richard
and a high ranking member of the Sheriff's office named
(43:58):
Warren Gary worked together to destroy the evidence of Lopez's murders.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
And if that was true, they were probably working together
in some other capacity, or at least there was a payoff.
There was some benefit to Warren Gary if that is true,
and Gary himself was never actually charged. In fact, he
ended up getting promoted to run the evidence room. Yes, yeah,
that's true. Like think about that. It's again, it's it's
(44:32):
not confirmed all of this stuff, but like just the
perfect placement, if it were true, to be placed there
in charge of the evidence room. He ended up leaving
the Sheriff's office sometime around twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yes, and he's just there are multiple other suspects. Brown
found a multitude of allegations regarding the case, and these
allegations were in various parts of the task force reports,
but they were not made public until his research brought
them to life. So, mister Brown, if you were listening,
(45:08):
thank you for your courage and your diligent efforts. Here
enter a fellow named Danny Barry. Before dying in twenty
ten at the age of sixty three, Danny Barry worked
for the Sheriff's office for twelve years. Three separate witnesses
named him as a suspect in murders during interviews in
two thousand and eight. They claimed first that Barry and
(45:32):
his wife would drive around pick up women off the
street and then drug them, specifically spike their drinks. Some
of these women also said that Barry had a room
in his trailer cordoned off from the rest of the domicile,
that there were chains hanging from the ceiling. This was
a room people could quote not see in or out of.
(45:52):
Barry was interviewed by the Task Force on February twenty fifth,
two thousand and nine. He was not asked about any
of these allegations.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, of course not. But that is Oh gosh, it's
so tough. It's so tough with these kinds of things
because it just it's a cumulative effect, right, I mean what,
that's the same thing that happened to Ethan Brown here
too with that's happening to me, I think maybe to
you listening to this, to to to Ben and all
(46:23):
of us. Just it's a cumulative effect of feeling like
something is fully rotten in I was gonna say Denmark
with in Jennings and you know, for this guy to
be what what do we what was that quote there?
We said he was not a suspect in three murders.
He was brought up, was it they named him? He
(46:45):
was named by somebody as a suspect in three of
the Jennings eight murders. Uh, that's pretty weird. But then
there is a whole other twist that Ben you found
here something about one of the victor was present during
a police shooting.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
So yes, So it turns out that there's another connection.
So we have the hotel, the location through which they're
often connected. We have their acquaintances male female colleagues, fellow
drug users, and so on, and then we have an incident.
(47:23):
In two thousand and five, police fatally shot a local
drug dealer named Leonard Crochet. A grand jury investigated this
shooting and determined that there was no probable cause for
charge of negligent homicide on the officer's part or against
the police at all in the case, even though the
dealer was provably unarmed when he was murdered. Witnesses told
(47:46):
investigators multiple times that they believed police were killing victims
who knew about how this shooting went down. At least
one of the Jennings eight was in the room when
this when this fatal shooting occurred, and you can read
some read some pretty harrowing in depth accounts of that.
(48:07):
But if that is true, then it seems that these
victims were being murdered to cover up a dirty shooting, right, yeah,
and then how dirty is the shooting, Well that depends
on how dirty the law enforcement personnel were working there.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Well yeah, well here's we've kind of you know, if
you're to believe some of the picture that's been painted
here through this reporting, then you may think, wow, I
guess if you know they were gonna they if the
police officers who were involved with some of this stuff
did end up needing to take somebody out with whom
(48:46):
they were involved, then yeah, you can just imagine how
dirty the dealings actually were. And there's this other thing here.
A warden named Terry Gilory was trafficking some of the
in mates, the female inmates, for.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Sex or you know, maybe it's like Richard said, maybe
he was just introducing them to men who wanted to
exchange money.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
All right, old man who wanted money?
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah, unclean.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
And here's this other thing. Warren Gary, who we were
talking about up top there, he purchased a truck on
the cheap from a friend of Richard Richard, Frankie Richard
that we were talking about there. And this truck may
have been used in a murder and then later sold.
Just this is a thing. This is like a let's
(49:36):
just put that out there. I'm just saying kind of thing,
right right.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Also, Guillery is a cousin of that last victim, Nicole Gillery.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
And again a lot of this goes into things that
we would have to be we would have to call hearsay.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Oh, a ton of us is.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
There are very sketchy timelines, strange relationships. But right now,
despite these troubling things, there are no convicted murderers these
in any of these cases. And given the increasingly shady
activities of law enforcement in the investigation, it's no surprise
(50:23):
that the then Sheriff Edwards required all task force members
to get swapped for DNA if for nothing more than
to put the public at ease. Tut tut though, because
it turns out that the results of those DNA tests
were never disclosed to the public and have not been
at the time of this recording. This is where you
(50:43):
come in. Public knowledge of the story may help with
the case. You know, It's been covered pretty well in
several different venues, most recently in the twenty nineteen to
five part documentary Murder in the bio which you had
mentioned earlier, Matt. But these these murders remain unsolved. They're
numerous people pointing their fingers at folks in the sex trade,
(51:04):
folks in the drug trade, some people still pushing the
serial killer narrative, and of course people pointing their fingers
at former members of law enforcement. This is where we
want to hear from you now, Claude, to answer the
question you had asked us earlier, is the Jennings eight
or the Jefferson Davis eight an inspiration for True Detective
(51:27):
Season one? There are some notable differences, of course, because
True Detective Season one is clearly a work of fiction.
But the creator of the show, Nick Pizolato, says that
he was not aware of the Jennings case until after
(51:49):
True Detective was coming out, and he in fact tweeted
about this approvingly in twenty fourteen, when Ethan Brown in
his Medium article noted that this felt like a True
Detective story. So we don't. We have not found any statement,
at least from the creator of the show that he
(52:09):
was inspired by this. However, we will point out that
during the run of True Detective Season one, the creator
came under some fairly serious criticism, including plagiarism right for
some of I think it was specifically some of the
dialogue Rust Cole speaks right.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
And I can't remember the writer from whom it was
believed he was borrowing, but it was that it's the
weird fiction, Thomas Leggatti. That's it's h that's it. Yeah,
you know, there are similarities here, for sure, but this
whole the corruption within the police department thing feels a
(52:51):
little different to me. I'm having a hard time fully
recalling True Detective Season one. I think I need to
rewatch it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
It's fantastic. It's fantastic work, and I'm glad that it's fiction.
The problem here, and I don't know, not the not
the problem, but the complication here is that fiction has
has a complicated relationship with the truth. We have cases
where real life events become embellished and works of fiction,
(53:20):
But then we also have cases where works of fiction
create real life tragedies and crimes, such as the infamous
slender Man stabbings. Slender Man was, you know, is acknowledged
to be an urban legend created on the Internet. The
people who made slender Man say that they made it
and didn't quote unquote discover it.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
Oh yeah, yes, but you know, in this case, it's
a it is that too. It's a lot of people
saying a lot of things without a ton of evidence
to back any of it up. And that's why we're
very much interested in what you think. To my money,
it feels like a combination of things that we've discussed
of people that may you know, may be implicated, you know,
(54:04):
in very small, very minor ways, and then others in
pretty major ways. And I still feel like that Frankie
Richards guy, he gives me just a bad feeling.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Frankie Richard, Yeah, yeah, he. Here's the thing. At least
eight people are dead, and the one of the big
questions is did they all know each other because they
just happened to run in the same circles, happen to
live in the same relatively small town or relatively sparsely
(54:37):
populated area, or were they all targeted?
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Right?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
We know that this murder rate is incredibly high for
the population and it's abnormal. There's no way around it.
No matter who you think is responsible, there's no way
around that. I am going to voice my opinion. I
believe that police corruption is heavily involved if you look
(55:04):
at the track record, and again this is no being
on the people currently working in law enforcement. But if
you look at the track record of things that had
happened over the course of the decades leading to these murders,
and if you look at how the murders were handled,
then it seems to be fairly obvious that there was
(55:25):
at least some corruption and cover up at play. And
you know, it's tempting to say, well.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
Was this.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Were they killed by members of the drug trade? Where
they killed by members of law enforcement? We can get
past a certain threshold of corruption. The drug trade and
law enforcement are very close to being the same thing.
Their fingers on a hand. Now, I'm not saying there's
a case like that, because you know, I've never sold
weight on the Interstate ten corridor. I've never had to
(55:58):
pay off a Louisiana member of law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
I like that you're like specific, giving it such specifics.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
There, those are the specific I know.
Speaker 3 (56:11):
Your statement is just so specific.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Oh you think I've gotta say I seventy five that's
a different story.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
No, No, I just no, I'm just I'm just choking.
She was hoping you would say, I've never sold weight.
I've never.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
I've never sold weight on the it in corridor, and
I've never made a deal with the good folks in Jedting's.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Well, you know, sorry, I'm making light of it just
because it is uncomfortable talking about the deaths of individuals
like this, where corruption, like you said, has a track record,
and it seems it seems that it at least had
some handed.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
And Brown was onto something. Brown is onto something, he
was threatened, he did have to stay out of the
area for several months. It can be enormously dispiriting to
admit that this is a situation where the law has failed.
Has the law failed because it is imperfect, or has
(57:13):
the law purposely been made to fail? Here the fact
that I would argue that the fact that these crimes
remain unsolved presents us and presents you listening, an opportunity
to be part of the solution.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Yes, so contact us in whatever way you choose, or
whatever way you prefer the most. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. We're conspiracy stuff on
some of those conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. If you
don't want to contact us that way, you can you
can get join our Facebook group. That's a really great
way to have discussions. It's called Here's where it gets crazy.
(57:53):
A lot of fine people in that group, even finer
people running it. Right there we go, And if you
don't want to do that stuff, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std
WYTK and leave us a message, tell us your story.
If you want to protect your identity, call from a
(58:15):
burner phone or a Google Voice number or something like that,
because I do see your numbers when you call in.
Just a word of warning. And if you don't want
to do that, you can send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
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