Fred Rosen - The Bayou Strangler: Louisiana’s Most Gruesome Serial Killer

The Bayou Strangler

Louisianas Most Gruesome Serial Killer

Fred Rosen

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright 2017 by Fred Rosen

Cover design by Mauricio Daz

978-1-5040-3949-9

Published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com

For my daughter, Sara, whose love and support during the writing of this book made it possible

AUTHORS NOTE

This story is based on primary, on-the-scene reporting in the bayous of Louisiana; the investigative transcript of the case; and extended interviews with the primary detectives. Some names have been changed in the interest of privacy. But every single victim is as he was.

FOREWORD

2017

Some stories take longer to come together than others. This is one of them. That its about the serial killer who killed more victims than any other serial killer in the United States during the past two decades, well, youd think that would have been enough to generate books, movies-of-the-week, films, TV-magazine broadcasts, and podcasts.

But that didnt happen. The sexuality of the killer and his choice of victims got in the way.

Ive written four books about serial killers. This is the fifth. What I have discovered is that when the victims are prostitutes, society, including law enforcement, really doesnt care that much about them. But supposing the serial killer is gay and he targets gay men, most of whom are sex workers? That is rare.

Media outlets stayed away from the specifics of this story, of which there are many. One would hope that the sexuality of the bad guy and the victims wouldnt make any difference. But it does when it comes to press coverage, which always reflects public perceptions. If the serial killings also happen in Louisiana, the state with the highest per capita murder rate, who would care? Whats one more victim in Louisiana to the media, let alone twenty-three?

I dont look at Louisiana as the murder capital of the United States. Its the place where, as a teenager, I had turtle soup and Shrimp Creole Agnew (named after the corrupt vice president who served President Richard Nixon) at Brennans, one of New Orleans best restaurants, and where I once made the mistake of ordering a drink called a hurricane in the French Quarter. It put me on the floor!

During that and subsequent trips, I discovered that no other state has Louisianas unique DNA in its gumbo and touffe. Louisiana has very heavy French, African, Spanish, Native American, and French Canadian influences, helping to account for its Cajun character. The state has a one-of-a-kind parish system, with really exotic names, instead of counties. Yet despite all of these unique cultural influences, there is a supposition in the northern and western parts of the United States that Southern cops are prejudiced.

In the late 1960s, this stereotype was best exemplified by Rod Steigers Oscar-winning portrayal of Sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night . During the 1970s, Clifton James, as the stocky, loud, and blustering Sheriff J. W. Pepper, faced off opposite Sir Roger Moores first and second turns as 007 in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun . James Best, one of televisions finest character actors, took over the stereotypes mantle as Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard , which ran from 1979 to 1985.

On the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth.

The detectives on the case of the centurys worst serial killer were anything but ignorant, racist idiots. Central casting would have a problem with this one. The Southern detectives on this case have advanced college degrees, allied with street smarts and a healthy lack of prejudice toward gay men.

There were in particular two detectives, a man and woman, who were willing to spend years of their lives hunting the bad guyliterally hunting the serial killer through two millenniain order to bring justice and humanity to each and every one of his twenty-three victims. That is a story that had gotten lostuntil now.

Never before have I seen such dedication to justice. Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron truly speak for the dead.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
Ernest Hemingway

PROLOGUE

W alt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, 2006

Why do serial killers always seem to have a middle name or initial? Detective Dawn Bergeron knew the answer to that one.

Its because the arrest warrant, a legal document that a judge signs off on, always contains the killers full legal name , including a middle name and/or middle initial, if there is one. But before you can get a warrant, you need a suspect. Or suspects.

His big black feet clomping, Mickey Mouse strode by on his way to a character breakfast, which cost a little bit more than regular admission. Bergeron was more than happy to give her daughter, Justine, a special breakfast on their vacation at Disney World.

Bergeron was wearing what she usually wore away from the jobjeans, a T-shirt, and black and brown Doc Martens. At work, she dressed more formally, in a pantsuit and blouse. Despite the Doc Martens, business had found her. Bergerons business was homicide.

She had borrowed the Disney computer to check in on what was happening with her most pressing case. She opened an email from her task-force partner, Lieutenant Dennis Thornton of Jefferson Parish, fifty-eight miles from Terrebonne Parish, where Bergeron worked. Mickey Mouse would have blushed if he could have seen the arrest warrants for murder she was downloading from the email attachments that Thornton had sent to her.

Thornton has been on this case longer than anybody , she thought.

She began signing the forms that would, at last, bring the two-millennia-spanning manhunt to a close. Bergeron regularly worked out of the major crimes and juvenile division of the Terrebonne Parish Sheriffs Office, in the southern part of Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. Tall, curvy, and Southern Louisiana beautiful with tawny skin and high cheekbones, her horn-rimmed glasses could not disguise the slightly dark and exotic look of Bergerons French relatives; you could see it in her eyes.

Her T-shirt swelled over large, voluminous breasts with a tattoo on the left breast that was only visible if she wore something extremely low-cut, which she seldom did. She had learned that it was the confidence built up in a suspect that made them talk. Big breasts were too distracting; at work, the jacket helped.

Bergeron was angry. She had wanted to cancel the vacation. She hadnt seen much point in going if they were close to finally arresting the serial killer, but she felt she owed it to her daughter. It had been a long haul; she and Thornton had been working twenty-two-hour days. Louisiana is a poor state; the task force didnt even have enough money for their overtime.

Instead, theyd surveilled the killer on their own time. They even let him know they were on his trail. With that much attention on him, he no longer had carte blanche to kill.

A real Disney World vacation would be good, shed thought, no matter the results of the pending Sutterfield DNA tests. So she had gone, with assurance that nothing would happen until she returned. Wrong! But it was a good wrong. They had just gotten two mitochondrial-DNA hits from victim Oliver LeBanks. The semen in his rectum had been genetically linked to their prime suspect. Yet still they hesitated to pick up their killer.