"I want to go home and hide my heart" "I want to go home and hide my heart in memory on pontchartrain" "I'm never leaving you again" "I want to go back and dry my tears step in gently through the years in memory on pontchartrain" "I'm never leaving you again when I was young, a young teenager," "I was raised on the east side of houma, which really was a wide open territory." "The oil field was starting to boom." "Houma started growing." "Okay, you take the... all you do is keep going straight..." " Going straight down..." " And you'll hit bourg." "That's where I was born and raised." "That's where Nicholas was born and raised at until we moved to montague." "* I used to know and keep on going further down... yes, about eight Miles down." "* * on pontchartrain" "* I'm never leaving you again *" "I was born in Lafayette." "I was raised in new iberia." "Then as we got older, you know, we moved to houma." "Terrebonne parish is a pretty large parish." "We have about 120,000 residents." "The parish seat is houma, and then we're pretty much surrounded by several different bayou communities." "We have five separate bayous, which basically, people have formed communities along bayous, a waterway that... and there's rows on either side." "And people make their living and live alongside those bayous." "Bayou blue is very quiet." "It's a rural area." "It's quiet." "It's almost like a ditch." "It's not big." "Bayou blue is closed in so much." "It's small." "It's a great community." "A lot of good people out there." "And I don't know if you know that or not, but that's the vision between lafourche parish and terrebonne parish is bayou blue." "Because we are on the Gulf coast and because we have had so much trauma, you know, with hurricanes and the oil spill, there is this sense of, we're in this together between us, and there is also a sense of, it's us against the world." "When I was a young man, we would fish and we would crab there, and there was plenty of land." "If you drive down there now, that wouldn't even be remotely possible." "It's just gone." "With it is going a way of life." "Ooh, a lot changed." "We got more drugs on the streets." "More everything, like... everything's changed because of, like, the law, okay?" "Like, the police department, you know." "You hear all what they doing and stuff like that." "And all these people going around, like, shooting people, killing people." " Break into their houses." " Breaking in, yeah." "And in... as I was saying, it's just not... you really... you can't say you're safe anywhere, 'cause you're not really safe nowhere." "I don't know, 'cause nobody never did me nothing, but then they found body, didn't they?" "I'm not afraid to stay." "I was born and raised down here." "I couldn't say it, but they had some strange stuff going on." "As you can see, this area is... it's out in the middle of nowhere." "The only traffic they have here is people that live in the local area of kraemer and chackbay." "And there's no..." "there's no sense of... there's a lot of hunting back here and a lot of sugar cane." "Right here, down this road here, was one, and the other was right here." "So as you can see, it's pretty much right across the street." "This one was 2002." "This is the convenience store I was talking about, up here to the left." "And queen bee bar lounge off of highway 90." "Old gravel road." "April of 2005." "August Watkins was dumped in this location..." "Right here, next to this yellow pole." "Right here." "I remember it like it was yesterday." "At the time, all I remember that... my little brother come up missing." "We haven't seen him, this and that." "And last time I talked to him, I stopped." "He was cutting some hedges on the tree for someone, you know?" "And I stopped and I asked him..." "I say, "you all right?"" "You need anything?" "You need any money, anything?"" "He told me no." "He said, "man"... he said, "I'm all right."" "I said, "well, if you need anything", maybe just come by my house, man."" "And that was the last time I talked to my little brother when I told him that, you know." "This is where August Watkins was found April of 2005." "I happened to be the on-call detective at the time." "Called me, they said they had a black male that was located off of highway 90." "Well, I'm thinking it's off of highway 90, not down this little side road right here." "When I get here," "August Watkins is laying facedown right here on the ground." "He was located by some people." "I don't recall their names right now, but they were looking for a loved one who was missing, and they were checking all the side roads, and they stumbled across August Watkins, who was dumped right here." "And when we talked to the detective, we went in there, looked at the picture, and it was him." "He was facedown in the ditch on one of the pictures." "Swoll up, because the way they had him leant... he was leant head-down in the ditch where all the blood probably rushed to his head so that, you know, it swoll him all up." "And I was like, "man, I can't really look at that,"" "at the time." "Through the investigation, made contact with family members, found out where he hung out, which... he was from houma as well." "And that's when it all began, really, after this one." "I remember it was hot, this scene." "It was right before Katrina." "Yeah, it was in August, wasn't it?" "It was August of 2005." "Probably..." "I don't know..." "ten days." "I don't know what... what day..." "was it ten days before Katrina?" "It wasn't... wasn't long." "It was within two weeks, I think, before Katrina." "Very, very hot, where we're going." "We responded when we got the call." "We knew we had a missing person." "It appeared to be Wayne Smith before we pulled him out of the water, so we activated the task force." "We were out here for about five hours processing the crime scene before we got a positive identification that it was Wayne Smith." "I mean, right now, it... it's pretty full with lilies and overgrown grass, but if you see the area behind it where you can actually see some of the murky water and just the algae on top," "that's pretty much what it looked like then on that day." "And his body was about five feet from the bank in the middle of the bayou area, and he was facedown, and you could see..." "you could see his arms." "You could see the back of his head." "You could see his back and part of his buttocks." "And you couldn't see his legs or his feet." "So you could definitely tell that it was a human being." "At that point, you couldn't tell if he was black or white." "We pretty much assumed it was a male, but, obviously, until we pulled him out, we couldn't... you know, we didn't confirm that until then." "I knew something was wrong." "He usually called every night." ""Grandma?"" "I said, "what you want, Wayne?"" ""Had to do it, but I'm on my way."" "But he never came." "And that day, we asked his ma to call." "His mama called me and say, "ma, Wayne at your house?"" "I said no." "She said, "it's getting late." "Wayne ain't showed up yet."" "He always the type... he always been the type to be at home." "He will always be at home, and he never misses school." "And so he called back." "He said... she called back." "She said, "ma!"" "I said, "what you want?" "It's going on 2:00"..." " "And my baby ain't here yet." - "Wayne ain't here yet."" "I say..." "I said, "well, he gonna show up."" "So 2:00 came." "Wayne ain't showed up, so we went to bed." "8:00 came." "We all got in the front door, calling each other." "Wayne ain't showed up yet." "We went looking in kraemer, whatever you call it... went out there looking through the bayou out there in the cane fields." "We're looking out there looking for a body, looking for a body, 'cause he never showed up." "That's a question we all still wonder." "Where was he?" "But they found his body in the ditch in the little bayou." "It was a... it was a bayou case." "You know, it was some killings that stretched... that were, like, centered around houma." "And I had stumbled across just an Internet comment somewhere talking about a string of possible serial killings in the new Orleans and Jefferson parish area in, you know, years prior." "And so we just started saying, well, what if... you know, what if there is a connection here?" "On October 5, 1998, we were called to this location in reference to a found body." "At the time, there was a body, which is later identified as the body of Mr. Oliver lebanks protruding from out of this vegetation from his upper torso and head onto this gravel road here." "He had no shirt on, and he was one of the initial ones with no shoes." "We backtracked lebanks through his brother into the French quarter in the city of new Orleans in a corridor area, I believe, at the intersection of St. Ann and burgundy streets near a gay bar." "And that seemed to be a common thing for at least two, if not three, of our bodies, going back into new Orleans and/or the French quarter." "The thing that stands out the most is that in the beginning, we talked about his victims being gay or being bi or whatever." "What we really had to get..." "wrap our heads around was the fact that we knew that the majority or a great portion of the victims were not gay." "And he is, and he is a rapist, and how does he get them to comply and do what he does to get them to end up where we find them, dead in a secluded area?" "Even though we're, you know, an hour away from each other, we don't generally work cases together, so on any given day, he doesn't know that we're working a murder;" "We don't what murders they're working;" "So you don't so much share information." "But we had heard pretty much through news media and through the grapevine that they were possibly dealing with an active serial killer from Jefferson, kenner area, St. Charles, and lafourche, which is the parish closest to us," "when they had a couple of bodies popping up." "We knew that it was just probably just a matter of time before it started happening in terrebonne parish, and sure enough, you know, it did." "*" "He don't usually... yeah, he's not a..." "he don't like taking pictures." "No." "He don't like nothing like that." "If you lucky, you get your picture from him." "I just want to say, the pictures that I got," "I treasure, because you ain't got that many." "This one." "That one." "That one." "That one." "That one." "No." "That one." "I got that one in my room." " September 8, 1996." " Yeah." "And we were smashing the cake in each other's face." "And he was playing the guitar a little later." "And he was sitting..." "just standing there." "This is another one, back on his bicycle." "This is the one..." "From my wedding." "From the wedding." "This is the one that's my treasure picture." "It's a good picture." "He got a smile." "It look, you know..." "he's, you know..." "I got a phone call for hurricane Katrina and Rita from my brother Nick, and he asked me how I was doing and he asked how my mama was, and to see how everything went, and ever since... that was the last phone call I got from him" "till the day that my brother called me and told me that he was missing." "In 2005, that's when hurricane Katrina hit here, and it kind of pushed us back a good six months for working the case, 'cause you just didn't know when the next body was gonna pop up somewhere." "Michael Vincent was the first one." "Then we had Kenneth Randolph in 2002." "August Watkins, he was found in April of 2005." "Right after August Watkins, we found Nick pellegrin and Kurt Cunningham as well." "And I want to say our last one was, uh..." "Sutterfield in 2006." "I said, "Mike, you know, 23 kids, come on, now."" ""You're telling me you couldn't catch this man way before that?" "It took that many people?"" "Come on." "You know, I don't understand that." "A murder is bad enough." "You know, you have a murder in a neighborhood, and they talk about it for the next ten years." "You know, so what happens when you have 20 of those?" "I guess, at the time, we were thinking it was more like ten, but even so, there was..." "there was no doubt that if it was true that there was a serial killer, that it was... it was huge, you know?" "At the same time, if it's somewhat speculative to begin with and we're in the first year after this disaster hit the Gulf coast..." "Katrina and Rita down there... it wasn't our top priority, you know, so..." "And it was..." "I mean, it was certainly complicated by the fact that it wasn't an easy story to report." " No." " It don't... no." "My kid, okay, yeah, he might've did a little drugs or whatever." "Who didn't when they was at that age, okay?" "That's another thing they trashed my kid down with." "You know, they put it in the newspaper all the time, talking about his..." "you know, his back history." "Okay, how you like that if everybody gonna put back their back history and splatter after you just got killed by a serial killer?" "Come on, now." "And he's not here to defend himself, either." "Saying that he was on drugs, all he did was in and out of jail for drugs, fighting, and always on the streets and stuff after curfew and stuff, saying that he's no good and that he was homosexual when he's not," "when he had girlfriends all at the time." "And supposedly he got a kid, so, you know, I'm..." "I don't want..." "that's what I want to tell you." " My kid is not bisexual." " No." "Thatthat's one question that better get out there." "That dude had to rape my kid to do it." "That was the only way I could see." "He had two main areas where he picked up most of the victims, and one of them was pretty much the main drag that leads you into houma, which is highway 182." "It's also known as new Orleans boulevard." "And it's lined, at the end of street, with several motels..." "low-budget motels... that are known for drug activity, prostitution, transients coming in and out looking for work, so he would pick them up there." "And he also had a second, what we called a target area, that was in a neighborhood called mechanicville, which is primarily populated by black residents." "He did prefer the black male." "The short, stocky, thin, young black male was his preference, but if there was nothing available... like he said, availability... he would look for something similar, and if they happened to be white," "then they happened to be white." "Chris..." "I don't think Chris would've let him got the ups on him." "If he had to... had to do Chris, either drug him or some kind of way" "Chris went to sleep and put his trust in him." "And some kind of way, he put..." "he slipped the handcuffs on him." "And..." "I don't like to talk about it, the way they found him." "You know, we had to close the casket when we buried him, you know." "He... he's... he liked the street." "Chris liked to go..." "Chris liked to be out in the streets at a certain time." "Chris liked to go home when he was ready." "You know, his old lady didn't tell him... he didn't keep a job." "And so he went out in the street and figured he could get it out in the streets, you know." "Countless times when we were investigating this for several years, we'd have the victims' faces and their biographical information in bills up on the wall, and we were trying to determine, if this is the work of one man," "how could this man overtake all these men?" "We would meet at the lafourche parish detective bureau, handle different leads, discuss different things that we were doing, and we were just doing that for months and months and months, and the break came when one of the people in our task force," "bill null, who was a probation and parole officer... he was basically in charge of gathering information on known sex offenders and things like that." "And he came to us with some information from one of his parolees." "Ricky was under my supervision back then for a drug problem," "I believe it was;" "I'm not sure." "But anyway, he was on parole at the time." "His mom called me and told me that Ricky was having nightmares about being tied up, and she thought he was involved with the serial killer." "Yeah, I knew a guy, Chris deville." "That's a big dude, man." "That was a big old dude." "I don't know how he killed him." "I was walking down the street, man, over there by the dog park over there, just walking." "I seen a vehicle pass me by two or three times maybe." "Maybe the third or fourth time, he stopped." "Showed me a picture of a woman." "Told me I could make some money, you know, doing this, doing that." "Fell for that." "Got in the truck." "We started going to bayou blue." "Shit." "After we get there, he tell me some kind of stuff, that I had to get undressed, get tied up, and get wrapped in a towel, laying on my stomach." "Oh, no, son." "Oh, no." "None of that." "So he try to talk me into it." "I told him, "you can talk a hole in your head"," "I ain't getting tied up."" "And then guess what..." "what he did." "Anyway, we got into an argument while we was in the trailer, 'cause he really didn't want to take me back." "He really wanted me to get tied up." "No, that ain't gonna happen." "So I had to use, um, force a little bit to get him to bring me back, open the door and bring me back, you know." "That was that." "He bring me back." "But he kept running his hand down the side of the door panel as if there was something down there, you know." "I told him if he do that again," "I would hit him with this bottle and smash the accelerator." "So he stopped doing it." "By the time he got be back where I was," "I just got out of the truck and left." "I never said nothing else about it." "So Ricky told me that they... it was a stand-off of maybe 25, 30, 40 minutes." "But after a good time in that trailer, the guy finally agreed to bring Ricky back, and he dropped him off near the point of where he had picked him up." "To this person who's a street person who needs a ride, needs my help anyway, how would you like to have sex with a woman?" "You being heterosexual." "And, of course, if you look at the Ricky Wallace story, that's what happens." "He picks up Ricky." "He leads Ricky into believing that he's going to have sex with a white female." "He even has a picture to show." "This woman has a story to go behind it." "The woman has been abused before, but really wants to have sex with a guy like you, Ricky." "Let me take you to her." "Let's meet her." "Progressively, let me buy you a beer, you know." "And dawn and I started going back and forth with, would everybody believe this?" "Would a guy on the street believe this story?" "And that's the remarkable part of the story, is that, is this the same m.O. That he's doing or something or a variation of to allow him to achieve all this?" "And, obviously, there's a lot of truth to that, because Ricky, you know... and this was getting him to admit that, you know... that he almost bought it." "Yeah." "Yeah." "I knew of a guy that was killing people, but it didn't dawn on me then, because I wasn't... actually, I wasn't thinking that clearly on no account." "And then when I thought about it..." "Hmm, it's too late." "But when I heard this guy..." "this guy got killed who I had known a long time, that's when I decided..." "That's when I decided I was gonna come forward, let somebody know what happened to me, 'cause I had already knew that it was him who picked me up." "How I know that?" "I just..." "I feel it." "That eerie feeling." "It's... some things you just don't pass by." "You just... you can feel it inside out, no matter what it is." "That's what it was for me." "I just knew it." "Ooh, I just knew it." "It was so true." "I was there." "So I had gone by, picked Ricky up, and listened to his story." "And I told him I wanted a statement, which he agreed to, but on the way to the police department to take his statement," "I asked him if he could show me where this guy lived, and he told me yes, so we had driven by Ronald Dominique's house." "We had picked Ronald up together, brought him into this room." "We still did not have a handle on how Ronald was acquiring his victims." "There was all types of theories that we were trying to examine to see how was the abduction and the pickup accomplished?" "And then, of course, when we saw Ronald... dawn can maybe speak to it..." "I think our doubts were, okay, this is just another person we have to go through and so forth, and then as time went on and, of course, we got the DNA hit, well, then, that changed everything." "And at 12:05 this morning, December 2nd, after nearly eight hours of interrogation, terrebonne parish detectives and Jefferson parish detectives escorted Ronald Dominique from the inner interrogation room of the sherriff's office into the corridor of the courthouse." "A visibly shaken Dominique with a cane struggled to make the 100-foot trip." "I got it." "I got you." "Just take your time." "Sources close to htv say that only days ago," "Dominique suffered a heart attack, which is why he is currently in this condition, but say, "don't be fooled by the posture"," ""for only days before, his condition was fitting for that of a serial killer."" "Watch your step." "Watch your step." "I got you." "I got you." "A press conference is scheduled for Monday, and htv will be there with all the details." "Once again, suspected serial killer is arrested in terrebonne parish." "How many victims have died at the hands of Ronald Dominique?" "Only time will tell." "One fact, however, is that several agencies worked hand in hand to catch a killer." "I'm Martin folse, and we'll be back with congressman Bobby jindal right after a short break." "*" "Initially, he started off..." "Dennis started off with the killings in the new Orleans area, in Jefferson parish, and Dominique's initial response was, he killed to protect himself, that he felt, during these sexual encounters with these men," "that they were going to rape him and going to harm him, so he jumped the gun and basically accidentally overpowered them and killed them." "When we talked to Dominique, I mean, one of our biggest questions was," ""how did you lure them?"" "And that was one of the ruses that he used, was the picture of the female and talking about having heterosexual sex with her." "But he also commented that when he approached a potential victim and talked... and he would have, you know, a five-minute conversation with them, and in that time, he would determine if he thought they were homosexual or heterosexual," "and then he would throw out his ruse." "And he said if he thought they were homosexual, he would ask them if they wanted to have homosexual sex, and if he thought that they were heterosexual, then he would use the ruse of the female having sex with him" "or even, "hey, would you like to go smoke some weed together?"" "He... in his own words, he would kind of size them up before approaching them about leaving with him, so it wasn't just a matter of, "hey, hop in the car."" "He would kind of size them up and determine which ruse he was gonna use before they ended up getting in the car with him." "They found him on the 9th." "He died that Saturday, the night that he left, the night he really got killed, that was the 6th, okay?" "And then when the 9th came, that's when detective dawn and... the one from lafourche parish, that other detective," "I can't remember his name..." "but he was..." "I liked him." "I could tell you what, I did like that cop." "But anyhow, he's the one that came." "We met at my son's house, and he the one that came out and told us, yeah, they found the body, and it was my son." "Nick's case was a little different than the other bodies as far as the contact he... he had prior contact with Dominique, and he was the only victim that we know of that... that that occurred." "Nick actually lived in this neighborhood right here on your right." "A few days before Nick went missing, he was doing some construction work on a friend's house in one of our bayou areas, and he came across Dominique." "Dominique was actually reading meters at one of the houses where Nick was doing work at." "And, according to Dominique, they struck up a conversation." "Dominique got Nick's number during their meeting." "And on the night that he went to pick him up, he stopped at a pay phone, called Nick's phone to let him know that he was on his way to pick him up." "That's the only case that we know of where Dominique had prior contact with one of his victims, and that happened to be Nick pellegrin, and it was definitely special circumstances." "I knew Nicky pellegrin." "I supervised Nicky." "I believe he was on for a minor drug problem, but he was not a bad kid." "I never had a problem with Nicky." "In fact, I was surprised that he was a victim, because I didn't know that Nicky hung out in houma." "Nicky had always been around montague when I knew him." "Nicholas pellegrin." "Yeah, that was my cousin." "They found his body over there in thibodaux over there." "I was staying in montague at the time." "It's a little town a little further down here, about maybe 35 minutes, 40 minutes." "A little further... you blink your eyes, you miss it." "You can tell I'm a cajun." "This is a homeless shelter for people that ain't got..." "outside to eat." "You know, they ain't got no food to eat, you know." "They ain't got no home." "What's it like..." "It depends what you make out of it." " Right." " You know what I mean?" "You can make bad and you can make good out of it." "I just been chilling out, you know, trying to stay out of trouble." "Going to help my friend work on his van." "You know, enjoy life and enjoy spending time with just good people, you know what I'm saying, 'cause trouble is real easy to get into and hard to get out of." "It's definitely hard to get out of." "And he was helping his daddy tear down the trail or something." "That's supposedly how my son ran into him." "They exchange each other..." "got each other's cell and crap like that." "And then one night, 'posedly, he happened to call him..." "On a Saturday." "Yeah, it was on a Saturday." "They call... he called up, and then that night... from the mall, 'cause he was at the mall when he called him." "And then after that... that's when he was missing, ever since that." "And that was the last time we heard." "And they walked the levees looking for him, 'cause they said he was probably out there." "And they searched and searched and searched." "The way they found him..." "The description that we... you know, he had..." "when I saw that..." " the body of him." " The body..." " don't look like him." " Don't even look like him." "My son had to go, said that it was him." " Me?" " Me either." " I don't know." " I didn't think it was him." "It's like, you know, a mother always supposed to know, like, have a feeling that she's... you know, I don't know how to say that, but..." "I don't know." "I just think they got him somewhere." "Sometimes I think like that, that they got him out there and they holding him, and maybe one day, I might see him." "But I know that ain't happening." "I might just going a little crazy sometimes, but it's not that." "It's just..." "I guess I'm wishing like it." "I'm going back in." "Oh, yeah." "Yeah." "And it went around all the way... yeah." "It looks different, though." "It is." " These were not here." " No." "These portables were not here." "This trailer park was here." "Dominique lived in bayou blue, which is one of the bayou communities in terrebonne parish." "He had a camper set up there behind his sister's property, and that's where he lived." "But he also had a separate camper that not many people knew about." "And it's not here anymore, obviously, but this is the area where Dominique's camper was." "This was primarily the kill site for most of the later victims." "It doesn't look like we are, but actually, like I said, two Miles that way, we're in the center of houma." "The courthouse square is a mile up the road." "We are actually in the city, one of the most heavily populated areas in the parish, so at night, to Ronald and to the victims he was bringing back here, this was completely secluded." "Anybody could scream at the top of their lungs and not a soul would hear them." "You go two Miles up the road, and half the town would hear you." "This is where he would actually have the sexual encounter and eventually kill them, and then he would load them back in his vehicle, drive back out to the street, and then dump them in one of the places that he dumped them." "*" "First, they found some shoes." "I don't know if that was his, 'cause they said one of the shoes was on and one was off." "I don't know." "Found some shoes in the bayou." "Then they said a working man found his body." "So I don't know what went on." "I don't know what and what." "Primarily... one of the victims, which is Wayne Smith, was picked up at a convenience store at the corner of Payne and east street." "And Dominique actually followed him home two streets over where he could put up his bicycle and then he hopped into the car with Dominique." "He came into mama's." "She was living on roselawn." "He came there." "He had a bicycle." "And somebody had to be waiting on him, because he got out the way too quick." "When they went up to his mama's, she went out there to see how he got there." "They was gone." " He wasn't there." " I knew." "I knew that it was him when we went down there, because when we was getting ready to go and walk across the bridge," "I got weak, weak, weak, so..." "And the smell was... it was a terrible smell." "But, I mean, if he had just got there, why the smell was so long?" "And it was only one day." "He was missing overnight." "And he had a piece of meat on his bone." "We couldn't see him." "The cemetery in the back of this house where he buried at, Cemetery..." "Graveyard." "That's from the church to the back back there." "You don't have to hold my hand." "Yes, I do." " All right, the gate's locked." " It's locked?" "Yeah, the graveyard gate is locked." "We should've went around to the graveyard." "The graveyard gate's locked." "And you can't through it." "Can't we just go around?" "Through the back?" "This is... it's this one, because that's the flower Angie left." "This is where he's buried." "I'ma get another flower." "He need new flowers." "He don't have a headstone right now where he buried." "See, they'll probably get one." "I don't know what holding her back." "So this is where the graveyard at where he buried." "I come to see him here." "I wish we'd come, but we can't see him." "But hurt no more." "That's all." "I mean, he taking out people children that, you know, they love." "I mean, that's..." "I mean, you just took the loved ones of people life." "So I wonder how your family will feel, you know..." "If something happened to him." "No, I wouldn't..." "I wouldn't want nothing to happen to him." "I mean, whatever gonna happen to him," "God gonna handle it." "So I mean, that's God will." "So when we met with the families, the eight families in our jurisdiction, we told them, we don't normally offer any guarantees, but I told them that I could guarantee them three things." "One, that he would be convicted;" "Two, he would get the death penalty ;" "And three, that it'd be about 12 to 14 years before he was executed." "We had, on the other side, mark rhodes and... the district attorney in terrebonne parish." "They were professional." "And they had more concern, I believe, for the welfare of the families than they did for their own personal gain or political career." "But they knew that to pursue this case all the way through may end up with the family not having closure... what was gonna happen for years and years to come." "He definitely feared jail." "I don't doubt that for a second." "Which is one of the reasons why I feel like he got exactly the worst punishment that was available." "A death sentence for Mr. Dominique would have actually been, for him, probably less traumatic." "And I know that sounds hard to believe, but at his age and if his health improves, 'cause he does have some health issues, if he spends 30 years in the general population of Angola, it's gonna be a very, very tough life for him." "And that's what the families wanted." "I mean, they did not forego the death penalty out of compassion." "I want to make that clear." "These people were... they wanted the worst possible penalty, and in this case, they felt that life in prison was... and I couldn't disagree with them." "I couldn't, and I wasn't about to try to talk them out of it." "I don't... type of guy, eye for an eye, but I'm a type of guy if you do wrong, you should get punished fully." "That's why I wanted to give him life." "I didn't want lethal injection." "Let's just let him sit there every day and think about all the life he done took from the people that love 'em, children and all." "I think that just a wish, a lethal injection, you know, so..." "A lot of people were looking for them to lay there and kill him." "Well, it's not like that." "I'm not looking for them to kill him." "I'm looking for him to go to prison for a couple of life sentences or whatever and let him... you know, if you kill him, what good it gonna do?" "That's what he want." "Let him feel the way we feel, you know?" "So to me, he should've got the death penalty." "Mark rhodes say that he talk to all the families and we all agreed to that." "No." "He's lying." " We wanted the death penalty." " We wanted the death penalty." "But he kept telling me, oh, it's best this way, because he's gonna have nine consecutive lifes, and this bullcrap he kept feeding us." "The way I feel..." "I don't know if I feel it for all the people... but the way I feel, they should just let him go, let him suffer... let him go to prison and suffer." "Like, he killed those kids." "We don't what... where they die, but for sure Wayne didn't die straight." "Because right now they say he's in Angola." "How the hell we know he's not in Angola?" "He's still sitting in his little room again like he was in Ashland jail watching TV where nobody could touch him." "How do we... how can I ever get that kind of proof exactly?" "Is he with..." "really with the public?" "'Cause I tell you, I think if he was, somebody would've done killed him already." "Yeah, 'cause they have family members out there..." "I'll tell you, that what the deal was." "But they never told us." "I think Dominique admitted it about all them 23 kids that he killed, but that's... but he... he don't want to go with the population." "Yeah." "Do you seek the death penalty or do you seek life in prison?" "And it's important for people to know that in Louisiana, life means life." "There is no 20 years, you're eligible for parole." "The sentence in Louisiana for murder is life without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension." "Nobody gets out when they do a life sentence." "Now that we have eight very solid life convictions, unless you have a victim that is very adamant about going forward with the death penalty," "I think you will see them rely upon the eight life sentences we have here, and just... you know, if he has 8, 10, 12, or 23 life sentences, so what?" "It's still a life sentence." "He'll never see the light of day, and he will die at Angola state penitentiary." "I was amazed." "At the same time, I was handling another case in the neighboring parish of a mother who killed her two children and the family pet and attempted to kill herself." "And both these cases were happening at the same time." "The case of the mother got significantly more publicity in the state than Ronald Dominique's case did." "And I never understood why." "I think that there was a sense that because it was happening so far down the bayou, you know, that the rest of the country just wasn't really that interested in it." "The really defining moment as far as national media coverage or lack thereof for us was the first night we were in New York times' own paper, and we call up to the New York time thinking," ""we've got your story for tomorrow."" "And they... their response to us was," ""well, we're not actually interested in that." "That's a regional story."" "And we just... we didn't even understand what that meant." "I mean, people in other parts of the country aren't interested in killings of this magnitude?" "I... that doesn't make sense." "For me, personally, as a prosecutor, yeah, it would've been a prosecutor's dream, you know?" "23 homicides, one of the nation's top serial killers." "Drag this to trial..." "would've drug on for days." "The media would've been everywhere." "You know, it would've been great for everybody involved if your definition of "great" is, you know, notoriety and public... being in the public eye and all of those things." "But nobody involved was interested in that." "I would've liked it..." "you know how on TV when they go to court... you see, this is how I wanted to hear it." "For him to get up there..." "Get on the stand." "And explain how you already met him... you know, everything." "What was, you know..." "even if it could've been, what was their last word?" "Would... you know, stuff like that." "But you didn't get that." "They just wanted it to hurry up and end." "Like, you know, kill the case, shut, cling-cling, that's it." "That's what Mr. mark rhodes did, you know?" "He, you know... you don't think we would've wanted to hear what that man had the good to say?" "I think... to me, he deserved my answers... my... to answer my damn questions, 'cause he pissed me off, you know?" "I hate that man." "All he did was keep his head down." "It looked like he was laughing." "To me, you know, it's not a joke, this." "This is my son." "I carried that kid." "I brought him up, you know?" "And somebody just gonna take him like that?" "And he's living it up in a corner?" "And now all these cops are getting rewards, you know?" "It just pisses me off." "It was just like a big old disaster, you know?" "They was... you know, this person getting killed, you know, then you turn around, there's another one;" "There's another one, you know?" "And, like, it was just..." "I thought it wasn't gonna end, the way it was going." "I could take you to Michael barnett and datrell woods' dump sites." "That's the mini storage." "And datrell woods was the kid..." "he was the youngest kid." "He was found in..." "in a sugar cane field." "They're right next to each other." " Turn before or after?" " Just turn right there." "You see that little gravel..." "Road right there?" "Yeah, that's it." "And then right where that truck is." " Church's towing business?" " Mm-hmm." "This is the body dump site for datrell woods." "He was one of the serial killer victims." "He was... he went reported missing on may 24, 2003, by his family." "And we found him two days later here with his bicycle at the edge of the cane field." "After the autopsy, his cause of death was unknown, so at... he was added to the list of potential serial killer victims, and later, when we did our interview of Dominique, he did specifically remember datrell" "and the whole scenario of picking him up and his entire encounter with him." "It's not... wasn't uncommon on a few of these scenes to be able to be standing at one murder scene and literally looking at another one in eye sight a distance away, like this one." "These buildings behind us directly to the side, that is a set of mini storages, and actually, another body was placed there." "The difference between most of the sites we're visiting and that one is that he actually placed the body inside of one of the mini storages." "He said he came across the mini storages;" "One of them was unlocked and unoccupied." "It was completely vacant." "He found it, opened the door, placed the body inside, and closed it." "Obviously, that one was not found within a few days, so we had issues with major decomposition and identification upon finding that body." "Michael barnett... he was one of our first white male victims." "And he had some previous history for being involved in drug activity and did not have a steady life that we were able to track." "And with a three..." "a three-week gap between the last time he was seen and the time he was found, it was pretty difficult." "The mere fact that the victims were street people... and so it's a segment of society we don't like to talk about, anyways, and we don't like to... these were the hardest cases, you know?" "These were the people that it's hardest to help in life." "And the fact that Dominique was gay is..." "I mean, that just... it's..." "I'm sure that that made it a harder story for people to talk about and to think about." "But I don't know that any of that explains the fact that there wasn't even an initial response." "Maybe the oil spill proves me wrong or maybe the oil spill changed things, but I think it goes back to the remoteness of houma, and I think that has to do with the very day-to-day way that life is lived down there." "I don't know that my kids will get to see some of the places that I reported on down there." "I do believe that the rest of the country doesn't really comprehend what coastal erosion is and what the ramifications are." "And I understand Katrina fatigue and b.P. Fatigue." "I get all of that." "I get all of that." "But when you've lived here your whole life and you're starting to see the real impact, it is a very scary prospect." "Families stay here." "My grandchildren will be here." "I'm just not sure here will be here anymore." "I don't know if it's happening anywhere else." "I don't know..." "we don't have anybody to compare ourselves to." "Itit gives everything this immediacy, and I just don't know how well that translates to the rest of the country." "And maybe they weren't college students, but they were still members of the community, right, and they were still our people." "And why did they not deserve this attention that these other cases would get around the country?" "And I think..." "I think that they would be a real..." "I think it's an important question." "I don't know that there's an answer, but if you find somebody, please tell me, you know?" "They said that his body was decayed, so they couldn't show her." "But, I mean, how would she know if that's her child?" "She'd never have..." "I mean, she had no closure towards it." "I mean, my little cousin, his mama, I know she grieving." "Datrell was..." "my cousin Christopher," "Tyrell, that's my mama nephew." "I mean..." "Yeah, that's my nephew." "Read the paper and think..." "I said, "oh, dear."" "Are..." "I got five people in there getting to me." "Five!" "How'd he get 'em all out of one family?" "I said I don't understand it." "And then they tell me about homeless." "I said, "I know Wayne wasn't no homeless."" "I said, "they need to be sued for putting that lie"" "in the paper,"" "'cause Wayne was not homeless." "He had too many aunts, uncles, and sisters and brothers for him to be homeless." "And he wasn't no..." "in the street that he called before he'd get in home." "He'd be at home every night." "And they all was up in this area, so I don't understand it." "Why did he have to pick this area?" "I ask myself that many times." "Never got no answer." " It's just..." "I don't know." " It's a hurting thing." "This guy on channel 10, folse, he had a program, do you know where your children at?" "And a lot of us don't." "Really." "Around here, they don't, you know?" "And I take my two grandchildren, bring 'em out the park, and I see a young girl, seven, eight years old, still out there in the park, you know." "Right now, time gonna change." "And time change." "6:00, it's dark." "Your child supposed to be at home." "Yeah." "So..." "They don't worry about it." "They just sat up there to me and wait till something happen." "You know how everybody wish?" "They wish, you know, they can get their last words or what really happened at that last moment." "But I'll never get it." "So that's why I leave it in God's hand." "I say, "God, come protect him,"" "and I say if God wants me to find out everything about it," "I guess one day, it might come out." "One day, it might." "I said, it don't bug me no more." "At one time, it used to kill me to find out, but..." "I still would like to know, but I'll never know." "That's just... just the way I am." "I figure I ain't never gonna know nothing." "You never do anyhow." "It ain't that easy to just say," ""well, I'm just gonna throw all this on the back burner."" "You know, my little brother gone." "It's... it's not that easy, especially when it's someone that you, you know, played with, you know, used to just... he's missing." "If he was here now, psh." "Man, you just don't know, man." "I-I miss my little brother." "I wish he was here." "I really do." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Mr. Dominique's, for a lack of a better phrase, killing spree was over about a ten-year period." "And his last victim was, unfortunately, 11 days before the DNA hit came in." "Mr. sutterfield was... his body was found on October the 16th, and I think the time of death would put it, you know, relatively close by the condition the body." "So unfortunately for Mr. sutterfield and his family, we were only two weeks away from apprehending him." "Now, we spoke a little bit, and I think we're gonna clear this up right now, Ronald, about all the other statements you gave before, you pretty much talked about what happened." "You indicated earlier that a lot of these men... all of these men that you picked up you brought back to a place and they wanted you or they were gonna have sex with you." "And... and then you basically said that it was either over being fearful that they were gonna go to the police or they were gonna hurt you or rob you... they wanted more money." "And that's not totally true, now, right?" "Don't we have to clear that up?" "Yes." "And what... what actually did happen to some of these guys?" "How did you actually pick them up?" "Some of them I picked up saying that... showing a picture of a girl." "And I said that they'd get to fool around with the girl, and the girl had got hurt." "They had to be tied before she came over." " They had to be tied." " Yes, but it wasn't true." "But why did you have to use a picture?" "It was the easiest way to get them in." "Could you have done it any other way?" "Some of them were straight." "Some of them weren't." "It didn't matter to you whether they were straight or not?" "No." "I just took it out, and they had no reason." "And what would they do then?" "They'd say they wasn't like that, and I'd still do it... rape 'em." "Were they all raped?" "Yes." "They were all raped." "And when we talk about rape, they all... they all thought that they were gonna either have, what... either have sex with a woman or..." " Or money." " Or money." "But they were... but all of them that we're talking about..." "They either thought they was gonna have sex with a woman and money or me and money." "But in essence, all of them got what?" "What type of sex did they get?" "Rape." " It was against their will." " Yes." " Okay." " And then what did they get?" "Strangled." "Were they all strangled, Ronald, pretty much in the same way?" "Yes." "Did any of them..." "when they struggled, did they attempt to fight you?" "Yes." " Are you glad you stopped them?" " Yes." "What would've happened had we not brought you in?" "I don't know." "I'm just trying to stop." "I didn't mean to do this." "Do you think it would've continued?" "Maybe so." "It just hurts." "I'm sorry." "I can't get it out of my mind, what went on." "These people, they're all dead now." "Yeah, they're not with their family." "End their suffering." "What else?" "Just want everyone to forgive me." "I'm sorry." "Okay." "Well, everything you've stated here is truthful to the best of your knowledge?" "Yes." "This statement is now ended." "It's December 3, 2006." "It's 2:52 A.M." "End of statement." "I don't know exactly how long it was before he was arrested again." "This dude a monster, man." "I want to go home and hide my heart" "I want to go home and hide my heart in memory on pontchartrain" "I'm never leaving leaving you again" "I want to go back" "I want to go back and dry my tears ry my tears step in gently"