The Bayou Strangler

by Fred Rosen

  This time, he was handed a felony conviction, and yet Randolph was given a gift: a very light sentence of three years in prison, sentence suspended, with eighteen months of supervised probation.

  Back on the street, Randolph the pedophile met Dominique the serial killer.

  Cane fields are common to Southern Louisiana, where the warm climate nurtures the fibrous plant. It is one of the state’s best crops; fields stretch for miles. Finding them is no surprise, but discovering the naked body of a young black man lying in one is definitely uncommon. The corpse had been dumped, face down, in a cane field in Lafourche Parish, in a very rural area near a pumping station.

  The police cordoned off the area while the criminalists scoured the field around the body for evidence. Approaching the body a short time later, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office detective Tom Atkins noted that the victim was completely naked, except for the socks. He was still wearing white Champion-­brand socks.

  Detective Atkins looked at the body’s position. It was sprawled arms forward and down, legs stretched out. It didn’t look like Randolph had been there too long, but the heat and humidity had accelerated decomposition of the body. That made getting the corpse to the medical examiner all the more imperative. They didn’t want any more decomposition that could destroy evidence of homicide.

  Wearing surgical gloves, Atkins picked up and examined the guy’s wrists, which revealed ligature marks. The throat showed the same kind of ligature marks. At first glance, it looked like the victim had been bound and strangled. Also, the killer had positioned the body so that his buttocks stuck out.

  In addition to indicating MO, body position is a fact known only by the perpetrator and the investigative team on the scene. It is knowledge the detective can later use to his or her advantage during the questioning of a suspect. Since only the killer would know such an intimate detail, admitting it during questioning could help seal a first-degree murder conviction and put him in the death chamber. That is, as long as the court admitted as evidence the killer’s statement to the cops.

  Atkins made sure that the photographer on the scene got a close-up of the guy’s rectum. He also made sure to ask the criminalists to print the guy before bagging him. Soon after returning to his office, Atkins had the results of the fingerprint check.

  Atkins contacted Randolph’s family with the sad news of his death. Now it was time for the coroner to do his thing. Since his election fourteen years earlier, Dr. Robert Treuting had been the Jefferson County coroner. Treuting was a very popular official.

  Some states don’t require the coroner to be a medical doctor. Louisiana isn’t one of them. By Louisiana state law, the coroner must be a medical doctor. Indeed, the multitalented Treuting helped to design and build Jefferson Parish Forensic Center in Harvey, Louisiana, one of the most advanced forensic facilities in the country. As a member of the Jefferson Parish Community Justice Agency, the coroner and his staff are charged with death and sexual-assault investigations.

  By the time the corpse of Kenneth Randolph was placed on the forensic pathologist’s table, his toe tag had changed. He had been the anonymous “John Doe” when found. Upon his fingerprint identification, that was changed to “Kenneth Randolph,” giving him back his humanity. The date was October 6, 2002.

  The next morning at 9:50 a.m., forensic pathologist Brittany Somers began the autopsy. Detective Tom Atkins was present to lend a hand and gather evidence. The coroner collected oral and anal swabs and smears, pubic hair, head hair, right and left fingernail scrapings and clippings, and a purple tube of blood.

  Dr. Somers also collected hair from the left sock and parts of the body. Material like this that was gathered for the sexual assault kit could later be matched with the DNA of a suspect, providing the kind of direct evidence that would lead to a conviction. That is, unless the accused could afford a high-priced attorney who knew how to challenge the evidence.

  Randolph was cold to the touch. He had not made it the few weeks to his twentieth birthday. His corpse was well preserved, still in the middle stages of rigor mortis, which revealed that Randolph had been dead for only four or five hours, the time it takes for rigor mortis to fully set into a body.

  Somers looked at Randolph’s head for signs of injury, including lacerations or bludgeoning. Nothing appeared abnormal as she examined his close-cropped, coarse, curly, dark-brown hair. But there was a long, horizontal linear abrasion on his forehead, extending down his neck and to his chest.

  Somers pulled the dead man’s eyelids up and looked in his eyes, where she observed “conjunctival congestion with petechiae and confluence hemorrhages.” Strangulation. There were numerous small abrasions around his thighs and a linear red contusion on the right buttock. On the wrists, the pathologist saw a large contusion surrounding the right one and a smaller one on the left.

  It looked like Randolph’s wrists had been tied up with something, the right wrist tighter than the left, which accounted for the wrist’s hemorrhage. The body abrasions might indicate that the killer forced Randolph down onto his chest and forehead, so he could have easy access to his anus. That would account for the numerous scrapes on his thighs and the cut on the right buttock.

  The coroner’s lawful duty is to determine the cause of death. Picking up her scalpel, Somers cut into the neck and confirmed a “hemorrhage on the underlying soft tissue” surrounding the hyoid bone. The bone itself was intact, but there was a hemorrhage farther down the throat on the epiglottis, beneath the vocal cords of the larynx.

  Everything else was normal; nothing unusual in the body cavities and organs. Somers wrote in her summary, “It is my opinion that Kenneth Randolph Jr. died as a result of strangulation. While a ligature mark was obvious, a component of manual strangulation cannot be excluded. The manner of death is homicide.”

  That meant that for whatever reason, the killer had not only choked Randolph with some sort of rope, he had also choked him with his hands. It was unclear which came first, though an educated guess might be that if the rope didn’t do the job, the killer resorted to his hands. The autopsy had also proven that Randolph had been raped before death.

  The contents of the sexual assault kit and Randolph’s clothing were turned over to Detective Atkins for tests.

  Dominique’s kill total was now up to eleven. He walked up to a house in Houma and rang the doorbell.

  “You called for a pizza?” he said brightly to the man who answered the door.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Big Julius and Noka Jones

  Houma and Lafourche Parishes, October 12–15, 2002

  Dominique had been living in Terrebonne Parish for almost three years. It was a backwater place that would become infamous as the home base of the new millennium’s most horrific serial killings.

  In town at a shabby apartment complex on Fremont Street, Shelly Weston was waiting in Apartment B for her boyfriend to come back inside after smoking his cigarette. She called him “Noka” for short. His full name was Anoka T. Jones. Small and muscular at five-foot-seven and 137 pounds, Noka was an affectionate man.

  Like many born into poverty, crime followed Noka—or he followed crime. His first conviction, in 1996, was for conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs. He followed that up a year later with convictions for simple theft and battery. In 1997, he was arrested again for the same offenses and was convicted once more.

  Noka dodged one court warrant after another. Noka, though, loved Shelly Weston. Maybe that would make a difference in the long run.

  When she got off work on Saturday afternoon, October 12, Weston went grocery shopping. Coming home between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., Noka helped her put the groceries away. Then around eight, Noka left on his bicycle to get a pack of cigarettes.

  Trolling for his next victim, Ronald J. Dominique was driving in the area.

  As the Sonoma drifted down the street, Dominique spied a slim young black ma
n on a bicycle just up ahead. The guy hadn’t seen him yet. He had to make sure not to frighten him, lest he bolt or refuse the offer. Dominique expertly turned the wheel of the Sonoma to the right, coming up parallel to the guy on the bike.

  As his foot eased up on the gas pedal to match the cyclist’s slower pace, he reached over and rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “Hey, can we talk?” Dominique asked smoothly.

  Noka looked inside and saw nothing dangerous about the pudgy white guy. Hitting his brakes, he pulled his bike over to the curb. Straddling the seat of his bike, Noka and the guy began to chat through the open window of the Sonoma. Soon they had finished their conversation and Noka began riding again.

  He rode at a fast clip up the block and back to his house. He had money on his mind. That always motivated him. As he came in the front door, his girlfriend noticed that Noka already had a cigarette, like he was ready to light up.

  “Where you going?” she asked.

  “I’m just going to stand outside and smoke a cigarette,” Noka said.

  “Okay,” she replied. “No harm in that.”

  First, though, Noka brought his bicycle inside the house. He relied on the bike for transportation, as did many of Houma’s poorer residents. Like every night, Noka hugged and kissed Weston.

  “I love you,” he said quietly.

  Then he was out the door. Weston didn’t worry about it when she went to sleep and Noka wasn’t there. “Going out for a smoke” wasn’t to be taken literally. What it really meant was that sometimes he wasn’t back until late. He had things to do.

  Noka Jones didn’t have to worry about the long-term effects of smoke on the lungs of his twenty-six-year-old body. He was in the fatal back seat of Dominique’s black Sonoma.

  It was about ten o’clock and the highway was crowded with cars going up to the Big Easy for the night. The other side of the highway was also crowded, because everyone knew that Houma had better Cajun and Creole cooking than New Orleans, and at half the price, no less. Or, you could just drift into one of the bars where, for less than ten bucks, you got a full plate of shrimp fresh from the Gulf, with mayonnaise and ketchup to make your own remoulade sauce.

  Dominique didn’t know whose body was in the back seat. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name, or even if he’d said his name. Who cared? Covered by a blanket, Dominique had the right idea—to get rid of it. Last thing he needed was for a cop to stop him with a body in the back. He had left Houma for Lafourche. Some miles farther on, he was almost in his home parish.

  He got on Interstate 310 toward New Orleans and drove down the now-familiar ramp, passing the black-and-white Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office squad car parked at the foot waiting for speeders. Inside the Sonoma, Dominique’s groin was throbbing. The thrill of having the body in the back seat and driving past the cop who was unaware of what had happened was just tremendous.

  If he could have slowed down to make the thrill last longer, he would have, but to do that would be to invite attention. He kept going, made a left, and disappeared from view.

  The next morning, Officer John Smith was on active patrol in the Boutte area. At about 10:30 a.m., he happened to see out the window of his squad car a black man wearing a blue shirt and black shorts, lying motionless. Smith was on a dirt road under the Interstate 310 overpass, on the northbound side. The officer parked and walked slowly toward the victim.

  Looking down at him, still not touching anything, Smith saw dried blood around the victim’s mouth. He was lying forward on his stomach and Smith could also see a small laceration on his lower back. Smith bent down and took his wrist pulse; nothing. He tried the jugular vein; still nothing. No surprise there. The body was rigid; rigor mortis had set in.

  Smith saw drag marks on the dirt road. They appeared to have been made by the victim’s hands, after being dragged in an eastward direction. He saw that the victim’s shirt was raised midway up his chest, while his shorts were down to the mid-thigh area.

  Smith was a patrol officer, not a manhunter. His job was to take the initial observations and then bring in the pros. It was time to turn it over to the detectives and criminalists. Smith called it in, advised the parish detective bureau and the patrol supervisor of what he’d found, then moved to secure the crime scene. Quickly, he set up the yellow crime-scene tape that would keep unwanted eyes away from a full murder investigation.

  Answering Smith’s summons was Detective James DeFelice. DeFelice observed not only the drag marks made from the victim’s hands but also tire impressions that would be consistent with a car. DeFelice deduced that the killer drove in, pulled the body out of the car by the feet so the hands dragged in the dirt, and then dumped it and drove away.

  The killer did nothing to disguise the body or the dump site.

  Criminalists arrived and used latent-fingerprint-lifting tape on the legs, arms, and right hand of the deceased in an attempt to collect any small trace of fiber or hair that might be present and could later be matched to the perpetrator. Detective DeFelice, meanwhile, had no idea he and Dennis Thornton had something in common: they were searching for the same killer.

  DeFelice hadn’t seen the sketch of the Louisiana serial killer, knew nothing about him, and had no reason to attribute this homicide to anyone other than a run-of-the-mill murderer. The first thing to do was figure out who the victim was. A search of his pockets turned up nothing. DeFelice left the scene to the criminalists, marking off bits of evidence with their red cones.

  Soon, the morgue attendants came and performed their routine tasks. The “John Doe” was wrapped in a clean white sheet, placed into a standard polyurethane body bag, and zipped up for transport to the county morgue. Back at headquarters, DeFelice ran the victim’s prints through the FBI and state computer database in an attempt to identify the victim.

  Up came the match: “Anoka T. Jones,” along with his criminal record. Now they had a name they could put to the John Doe on the coroner’s table. A good autopsy answers all the questions about how a victim dies. Its success, or failure, is dependent on the person performing the autopsy, and more importantly, on their considered observations.

  On October 14 at promptly 7:00 a.m., Tyler Bodie, the parish coroner, looked down at the body of Anoka Jones. He noticed the neck abrasions. Writing a short time later in his summary of the cause of death, Dr. Bodie said: “With the historical and investigation information presently available, cause of death as determined by autopsy and toxicological analysis is considered to be asphyxia by strangulation (neck ligature). Manner of death is considered to be homicide.”

  Detectives went over to Noka’s home, where they found his girlfriend still anxiously awaiting his return. They showed Somers a photograph of Noka’s face taken before the autopsy. Identifying it, she gave the cops the basic information about the bike and the cigarette, then broke down sobbing when they told her of the discovery.

  Leaving Noka’s girlfriend to her grief, the police next focused their attention on one of Noka’s friends, Leon Lirette. At the shabby house he shared with his mother, Lirette told them that the last time he’d seen Noka was on the evening of October 13 at about 9:00 p.m.

  “I had asked Noka to come over and help me move some speakers,” Lirette told detectives. “He did, and after we finished, he asked to use the phone. My mother let him. He spoke for a second, then hung up.”

  “I’ll see you later T-Paul,” he had said, using Lirette’s nickname, and walked out the door.

  Back in Houma, where Noka Jones had lived, the Terrebonne Parish detective squad had already sent out detectives to investigate potential criminal activity Jones might have been involved in. They came back with the information that Noka sold drugs for two local dealers, Josh Beymer and Barry Greenberg. He also owed them money, which could certainly be a motive to murder him, but not to rape him.

  They soon found a friend, Belle Grammand,
who spoke to Noka shortly before his murder. He called her on the phone at about 10:30 p.m. to tell her that he had some “shake” (crack cocaine crumbs) and to ask if she wanted to smoke some with him. She told him she no longer smoked and hung up the phone. Further investigation brought forth a “possible witness” by the name of Ron Gibbons.

  Gibbons told detectives that he was at the corner of Naquin Street and Hobson Street with Noka when a gray truck with its lights off approached them. When the truck stopped, two guys came out and confronted Noka, who took off running. In the back seat was “Big Julius”; Gibbons didn’t know his real name.

  Continued digging turned up the name of one of Noka’s known drug associates, Julius Bellows, a.k.a. Big Julius. Figuring he could be the prime suspect, the deputies seized Bellows’s car and began a search for trace blood evidence while detectives spoke with him. Big Julius claimed Noka used to come over to his house all the time to buy crack. But he denied any involvement in his former customer’s death. “If anyone says I did it,” he told detectives, “he’s a liar! I will give you hair samples, shoe samples, or anything if you want to clear me of any involvement.”

  Because he was cooperative, the cops believed him. Bellows was released from custody. Besides, still another suspect had emerged. He was Jesus Gonder, a.k.a. “Tricky.” Hailing from Houston, he was a twenty-seven-year-old black man with a record of small-time drug felonies. He also was pretty good at hiding out; they couldn’t find Tricky.

  Lafourche detectives pored over their interview reports and other evidence in their case files. At the same time, their counterparts in Jefferson were doing exactly the same thing on the body-dump job in their venue—that of Kenny Randolph.

  Thornton doesn’t remember who it was that first saw the similarities in the homicides and reached out, but he soon found himself in a room with detectives from Lafourche Parish, comparing notes on the murders of Anoka Jones and Kenny Randolph. Thornton saw the similarities. He figured, correctly, that the guy who killed Noka Jones was the serial killer he was hunting. Interviews were set up with friends and close relatives of both decedents to see if they had any common enemies.