The Bayou Strangler

by Fred Rosen

  Regarding the deceased, Bergeron cared not one wit about their sexual orientation. To her, it was only relevant insofar as what it told her about the killer and his own sexual preferences. All of the deceased were entitled, just like anyone else, to the same efforts by the law to bring their killers to justice. Made no difference if they were gay or straight; they were victims.

  Serendipity came into play when Thornton and Bergeron met at the first task-force conference in Baton Rouge in April 2005. That she and Thornton would not only get along but complement each other was a stroke of luck or the divine, depending on perspective and belief. Thornton and Bergeron became the lead detectives on the case, while officers representing the cream of the crop of Louisiana law enforcement rounded out the task force.

  They were acutely aware that the serial killer could strike at any moment—that time was severely limited. Both cops had the ability to do what was necessary in a serial-killer investigation to get the bad guy: think outside the box. Creative policing strategies and interviewing techniques would be crucial in bringing the perpetrator to ground. Thornton and Bergeron were particularly well suited to the job.

  “We are leaving Baton Rouge,” Thornton later recalls, “ready to go to work together, and Kurt Cunningham’s body shows up floating in a ditch in Lafourche Parish.”

  Just as the state was in the process of organizing its Houma-based task force, the serial killer struck yet again.

  Twenty-three-year-old Kurt Cunningham lived in Thibodaux. Unlike most of the other victims, he was white. Last seen in Houma on April 8, Cunningham’s partially clad body was discovered twenty days later in a ditch off Highway 307 in Kraemer. The intervening days between death and discovery meant that Cunningham was not a “fresh kill.”

  While the coroner could not say for certain the cause of death was asphyxiation, he couldn’t rule it out either. Thornton and Bergeron immediately suspected their serial killer had struck again. To systematize their investigation and take advantage of all their resources, the detectives developed a standard protocol on how to work the crime scene.

  “The idea was that every time there was a killing, the evidence would go to the same lab, take the same path, and we’d do the same core investigative work. Working the crime scene, every member of the task force had a role,” says Thornton.

  And then there was thinking outside the box.

  “We started experimenting, getting prints from Cunningham’s skin,” Thornton relates. “The lower humidity level allowed us to remove the prints. I saw this on CSI.”

  Someplace, CSI star and producer William L. Peterson must be smiling. His TV show was helping to solve a real-life serial-killer case! Whether it was art imitating life or the other way around made no difference. The task force was engaged in trying to put together a forensic link between the victims and their killer.

  Thornton and Bergeron were deep into the Cunningham investigation when the killer struck again. This time, the victim was Alonzo Hogan. He was a twenty-eight-year-old black man, last known to reside on Highway 1 in Raceland. Hogan’s body was discovered fully clothed on July 2, 2005. Had Dominique’s MO changed or was this an isolated departure from the norm?

  He hadn’t changed his choice of dump site. True to form, the killer had dumped Hogan in a cane field in St. Charles Parish off Highway 306. Yet nothing showed up at the crime scene that could link the new victim forensically to the others. As for the autopsy, the coroner said that Hogan had been strangled and raped.

  Well, that was a link, but it was frustrating not be able to establish a direct link. Poring over old reports, looking at new ones, re-questioning relatives of the deceased and friends for any clues, Thornton and Bergeron worked from April through August 2005, trying to discover the killer’s identity. Even pooling resources, it was to no avail. Nothing worked.

  Then, as if to rub their faces in it, the killer murdered yet again.

  Once more it was a Houma resident, Wayne Smith. His fully clothed body was discovered on August 16 in a ditch off Grand Caillou Road. Smith’s manner of death was ruled “undetermined” by the coroner. Strangling or suffocation could not be ruled out. Last known to reside on Roselawn Avenue, Smith, an African American, was all of seventeen years old, the youngest-known victim of the serial killer.

  Just as with the previous murder, it was the same established autopsy protocol, the same evidence-collection protocol, and the same lack of leads. Bergeron took Thornton out into the parish so he could better get the lay of the land. They started speculating about where the killer might be living.

  If they tried searching every trailer and house in the parishes, it would take them years. Obviously, they needed to narrow the field. While they had access to proprietary databases, they had very little in terms of physical hardware to use in the field. For example, the entire task force only had access to one GPS tracking unit. That meant one person dedicated to showing up at the dump site to get the proper GPS coordinates.

  Much of the task force’s work was going back into the past and reading the records of the old murders—trying to come up with a methodology to approach them in a new, fresh way, in hope of answers. As Bergeron recalls, they went through the records of killings in the southern part of the state, the ones that were unsolved. They needed to differentiate between the crimes their killer committed and the ones that weren’t linked.

  One of the things they noticed was that nearly all of the victims had been picked up on the streets. Some were gay hustlers, some were not, but they had all been raped. She checked at the gay bar in Terrebonne Parish to see if anyone remembered anything suspicious. Nothing. No one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ronald J. Dominique

  Assumption and Terrebonne Parishes, 2005

  Though four or five victims had worn no shoes, the sheriff’s conclusion that shoelessness was signature behavior turned out to be incorrect. The rest of the victims had been wearing shoes.

  But in analyzing the old reports, Bergeron noticed an actual common thread: the killer had picked up three or possibly four of his victims at the Sugar Bowl Motel or close to it. It was one of his trolling grounds.

  And every one of the victims had previously been convicted of at least one crime—everything from low-level misdemeanors to felonies. Then there was the Lake Houmas Inn. Bergeron knew prostitutes and drug dealers hung out there. She knew some people will do anything for a hit of crack. A “user” needs to get dope, whatever it takes. If the killer offered drugs for sex, he’d get quite a few takers.

  Thornton had his own perspective.

  “I looked at this in two parts,” Thornton explains. “He literally put Mitchell Johnson a few feet away from LeBanks. And the FBI profiler—he had originally told us that the killer lived near the airport.”

  That would turn out to be right. Boutte, where Dominique lived at the time, was only miles from the airport.

  “The FBI came back in 2005, when the task force was formed, in a different way. There was a different tempo. All the evidence went to the same lab, the same path, the same core investigative work at the crime scene. Everyone had a role,” Thornton continued.

  Cunningham and Smith had been murdered in the brief time the task force had been operative. What’s more, those killings had been reported—publicly. The task force was no longer cloaked in anonymity. Results were expected both inside and outside law enforcement. The bosses wanted the case solved and the newspapers wanted a follow-up story to the killings.

  Everyone was tense, hoping the next lead would be the one that closed the case.

  In the task force squad room where they were working—office space donated by the sheriff of St. Charles Parish—they had charts and maps posted on the walls, with thumbtacks to literally pin down logistics. Working methodically, Thornton and Bergeron had the feeling they might be getting closer. Then Moth
er Nature intervened and, for a time, shut the task force down.

  On August 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, calling to mind the line from John Lennon’s song “Beautiful Boy”: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

  Katrina was one of the five deadliest hurricanes in US history. A Category 3 hurricane at landfall, it hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. In all, 1,836 people were killed. It was the costliest natural disaster ever to ravage the United States, with damages totaling $100 billion. When the Mississippi levees gave in to the flood waters, half of New Orleans was submerged. Even Yancy Derringer—who saves New Orleans from threatening flood waters in the twentieth episode of the eponymous Desilu TV series—couldn’t have done anything about it.

  The city lost electricity and fresh water, becoming for a time a lawless black hole. Millions of people were homeless, fleeing on Interstate 10. Some made it down to Houma, where things were safer. The bayous had overflowed and the flood waters had taken out some houses and businesses that had the misfortune to be on the flood plains. The damage, however, was comparatively light.

  The recovery process following the storm was stymied by the federal government’s strange inaction. All along the ravaged coastline, Louisiana residents waited in vain for President George W. Bush to send in federal assistance. They were left to pick up the pieces themselves. Fortunately, picking up the pieces in Houma was easier than in New Orleans.

  Once the flood waters subsided, the people of Houma assessed the damage, called their insurance companies, and went on with their lives. Thornton and Bergeron were desperate to jump-start the investigation before the killer struck again. They didn’t have to wait long.

  Chris DeVille was a forty-year-old African American who had a place on Roselawn Avenue in Houma. He wasn’t the typical victim that this serial killer preferred. His family background was completely different.

  Chris DeVille came from an intact family. People cared for him. His brother, in fact, had been a cop. Whether that meant another change of MO or not was hard to say. Like Alonzo Hogan, DeVille’s body was fully clothed, dumped in a ditch off Highway 1 in Assumption Parish.

  Meanwhile, the bosses were applying the pressure to Bergeron and Thornton. Whether in person or phone conferences, the message was clear: solve the case. They had taken long enough to establish a task force and now the higher-ups felt it was taking too much time to get a suspect in custody.

  But worse for Bergeron and Thornton than this pressure was the stress they put on themselves to solve it.

  “I was so tired by the end of it,” says Bergeron.

  “Dawn and I wondered about one thing that was particular. The guy seemed to pick on black males, seventeen to forty, with toned bodies. They seemed to be guys capable of taking care of themselves,” Thornton adds.

  They figured the killer must have immobilized them by tying them up. But why would the victims submit to that? Still, Thornton figured that the risk to whoever was killing was minimal. The only risk was to the victim. The killer was using instrumental violence; he had the ability to hurt, and did it in order to show his power and aggression.

  Their quarry may have known about the task force, but by then it made no difference. Dominique had developed a pattern of killing that overwhelmed common reason.

  John Banning, like many in Southern Louisiana, had recently served time on a minor drug offense and was on parole. His parole officer was Tom Lambert, who, by chance, was also a member of the serial-killer task force. Banning was looking to score some money. He was also pretty horny. Dominique spotted Banning walking along the highway. He drove over in the black Sonoma, pulled in in front of him, and opened the passenger-side window.

  “Hey, want a beer?” Dominique yelled. “Where you going up the road?”

  Banning came closer, leaning in on the passenger side, looking Dominique over. Dominique, in turn, had sized him up quickly. The selection process was hit or miss. Dominique figured this guy, correctly, for being a straight dude. That’s when he whipped out the picture that he had ready to lure his straight victims.

  “How’d you like to fuck this attractive white girl?” Dominique asked. “She’d really like to make it with a guy like you.”

  Like many men, Banning began thinking with a certain part of his anatomy below the waist. Dominique certainly didn’t look dangerous. Relaxed, comfortable, and horny, Banning got in the Sonoma. Dominique drove through the parish, past the town square where the Union soldiers had met their fate, then took a left up to Bayou Blue Road, where he took a second left.

  “Don’t be surprised that I want to tie you up,” he told Banning matter-of-factly.

  What was that about? the parolee must have wondered.

  “There’s a stigma in the world about being gay,” said Dominique out of nowhere.

  How did Banning respond? Well, when Dominique pulled into his sister’s driveway, he stayed. On the other side of his sister’s house were the electric and water lines attached to Dominique’s trailer. Feeling he needed to get away from the shipyard, he had recently gotten it towed back to his sister’s house.

  Then, once he and Banning were inside the trailer, Dominique began the con.

  “I’ll tie you up now. Take off your clothes,” he told Banning.

  Where was the girl he promised? Banning must have wondered. It didn’t feel right; something was way off. Banning looked around and noticed the trailer was full of old clothes. There were Christmas decorations up all over the place, though it wasn’t Christmas. And there was a portable toilet. There were even what looked like jugs of urine beside it. But it was the stuff on the floor that really bothered Banning.

  Stacks and stacks of gay pornography.

  Banning turned to leave and Dominique didn’t stop him. The trailer door clattered behind him. Banning began running toward the highway. He had the feeling that something strange had just happened, as if he had just walked over his own grave. Reaching the street, he thumbed his way back to Houma.

  In such a way he became that rarity in American criminal history: a survivor of the new millennium’s worst serial killer, who, as it happened, had still not been apprehended.

  Thornton and Bergeron discussed it for hours. The notion that an intended victim might escape had occurred to them.

  “Supposing he picks someone up he can’t handle?” Thornton wondered out loud.

  “And they don’t want to stay, what then?” Bergeron added.

  Thornton figured if the victim was already bound, the killer could kill him, probably with little resistance. But if the victim was unbound and decided he wanted to leave, then the killer would find himself in a spot. Would he just let him go? Until they found someone who’d gotten away, they could only guess.

  Thornton and Bergeron had already been through the department’s archives of sex offenders, with no results. However, they hadn’t considered parolees as part of their investigation. Not as suspects, but witnesses. When they realized this oversight, Thornton approached parole officer Tom Lambert to inquire if it was possible to go through his client list systematically, one by one, to ask each of the parolees if they’d lately encountered anyone especially bizarre, say, or someone who insisted on bondage prior to sex. Lambert readily agreed and went back to his office. He began calling, one after another, the men on his list of fifty parolees.

  When he got to John Banning, the story clicked.

  “It was a few weeks ago,” Banning told Lambert. “I was walking down the highway, when this guy came along in a black Sonoma truck. He was a fat white guy. He came over to talk to me and told me he could fix me up with this gorgeous white girl. He showed me a picture of her, so I got in the truck and he went off.”

  “Where to?”

  “Bayou Blue,” Banning answered.

  He offered to take his parole officer out to the place. Lambert phoned
Thornton and told him what he had discovered.

  “We’ll be right there.”

  Thornton grabbed his suit jacket, motioned to Bergeron to follow him, and filled her in on the way outside to their car. Once they arrived on Bayou Blue Road, they were met by Lambert and Banning in the church parking lot across from Dominique’s sister’s house. Banning pointed to the trailer. Cautiously, Thornton and Bergeron approached it.

  Dressed in business suits, they stood out glaringly in the run-down neighborhood. Given how quiet the street was at midday, however, it was unlikely anyone noticed. Thornton opened the mailbox at the curb and Bergeron reached in. She pulled out the mail, thumbed through it for a moment, then held up an envelope.

  “Ronald J. Dominique,” she said with a bright smile.

  PART THREE

  CLOSING IN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Surveillance

  Terrebonne Parish, November 2005

  With their visit to Bayou Blue Road, Thornton, Bergeron, and the task force now (finally!) had a suspect.

  But that in itself meant nothing but a suspicion. They still had to put a case together. And not just put it together, but make it airtight to guarantee a conviction. They could not run the risk of the serial killer being acquitted.

  Bergeron and Thornton discussed it. How were they going to nail this guy? They decided to begin the process by bringing in the suspect—that was all Dominique was—for questioning. So far, the detectives had nothing that tied him directly to any of the murders. You need evidence for a conviction. Yes, direct evidence was best, but circumstantial evidence could also put the guy behind bars. Or in the death chamber.

  Bergeron and Thornton went back to Bayou Blue Road and knocked on the trailer door. Dominique opened it. The detectives were looking at a short, portly, disheveled middle-aged man in a white T-shirt. Could this be their serial killer? Was he the man, evil personified, who had raped and killed twenty-one victims? Bergeron wondered.