Original subtitles

[indistinct chatter]

[interviewer] Okay. Now, y'all, don't be too noisy on me.

-First of all... okay. -[dog barks]

Oh, crap.

[girl] Mama, come get your dog. Mom.

[interviewer] Can you make the dog quit barking?

Don't let him bite me, either. I'm afraid of getting bit.

Okay, all right, um, Tracee,

um, we interviewed Frankie Richard.

Okay, y'all, listen.

Uh, we interviewed Frankie Richard,

and he said that you were the one who basically

told them a story about him that caused him to be arrested

and named as a person of interest

in the deaths of all these women.

Uh, tell me what you think about that.

Um, yes, ma'am, I did.

Um, the detect--

Jennings detectives wouldn't leave me alone,

and they kept bothering me; I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't-- Every time somebody would say something,

they'd come, so I just told 'em the story that I heard

on the street so they would leave me alone.

And I too-- I put, um, Frankie Richard and Hannah...

and Hannah, uh, Conner in jail... and... for about a week,

and I couldn't live with myself,

and I went back and told 'em that I lied, that, um,

that I just made up the story.

And I also put myself in jail for three months,

until they couldn't find where I was.

[interviewer] Well, uh, what did you tell the detectives

about Frankie?

Um, I just told 'em the story that I heard on the street.

I'd rather not go into details.

[interviewer] Well, um, so what is the truth?

The truth is I know nothing. I don't know nothing.

The truth is I don't-- I-I don't know who it is.

♪ low, tense music ♪

[Frankie] Tracee wrote the statement

that she seen me...

...beat Kristen,

and made Hannah

hold her head underwater...

...because she wouldn't perform oral sex on me.

I never

had sex

in any kind of way with Kristen.

Kristen called me "Uncle Frankie."

Kristen stayed at my mother's house.

My sister took care of Kristen.

Kristen was family.

[Tracee] I lied on Frankie.

I lied on Frankie and went back and told the people that I lied.

I made up a story so the Jennings detectives

would leave me alone.

These people led me to what they wanted me to say.

Like, I really didn't know where Kristen was dumped.

You know, they led me to where her body was found,

and then I recognized it from the TV.

They led me to what they wanted me to say,

and I just wanted to be left alone.

[interviewer] What do you think's happening

to these girls?

[Tracee] I have no idea.

What do you think should be done to figure it out?

That, uh, Jennings--

That they need to get on their J-O-B.

Jennings police needs to handle their business.

They should have never let it go this far.

They need to investigate inside the police department.

Something has to be done. Somebody's hiding something.

♪♪♪

[Frankie] The police in Jennings

would do anything and everything

in their power

to get rid of me.

To shut me up.

Because they tried every fucking thing they could

to blame me for it.

And they couldn't make it stick

because it wasn't fucking true.

♪♪♪

[Frankie] My mom and dad split up when I was six months old.

My mom said my dad was an asshole, and my...

dad said my mom was a bitch.

Who you gonna believe?

♪ ominous music ♪

♪♪♪

I started dealing weed when I was around 14.

Then it got into the coke,

got into the meth,

got into the pills.

Just kept escalating, you know?

But, uh, I always had a job

in the oil field.

We sold pussy...

...any and every fucking way we could.

I did not...

...pimp them girls.

I... introduced them

to older men

that wanted to spend some money

on a young gal.

I'm making sure they're getting their money.

making sure they're not getting hurt.

I did my job.

And I would take my money

and buy drugs and give it to 'em.

You know, I'd smoke it with 'em. You know?

Or I'd do the drugs with the girls.

Those girls was my friends,

and I would never do nothing to hurt 'em.

Poor little Kristen.

I was not there.

Did not have nothing to do with her death.

And if I was there, it wouldn't have happened.

Not without it happening to me, too.

But they finally got Tracee Chaisson to say that

me and Hannah killed Kristen.

Then...

they pick up Hannah.

[Hannah] As far as Tracee's story goes,

me and Frankie killed Kristen

while we were riding around getting high in Connie's truck.

[Frankie] They got Hannah in jail for two weeks.

Second-degree murder charge.

Telling her, "Hannah,

Just say your uncle did it,

made you help him clean it up.

We gonna give you a manslaughter charge,

and if you get any time at all,

it'll be... you'll be out in two years."

[Hannah] I don't know if the police

had a personal vendetta against him,

or maybe they were getting pressure from the community

to finally make an arrest

on one of these cases, or solve a case,

that they didn't even care

if they were arresting the right person,

or if they were arresting someone

because of a lie.

They just really, really wanted me to...

tell them that Frankie did it.

That would have been the second witness

saying they seen me kill Kristen.

They'd have lost me.

She never did it, because it wasn't true.

No charges. Walk out.

Scot-free.

[Scott] As 2007 goes on,

information is coming fast and frequently.

It's a really dizzying time because you've got

Kristen, then Whitnei, then you've got

the arrest with Frankie and Hannah.

And then Frankie and Hannah are released.

Even if we didn't know at this point

how these murders were connected,

it was very clear that all the players involved,

there were definite concrete connections

between all of them.

Whatever's happening is-is happening

within this group of people.

And then, on May 29, 2008,

a fifth female body was found.

[reporter] A routine patrol down Racca Road

turns up a gruesome discovery early Thursday morning

by Jennings police.

[officer] Discovered the body of a black female

laying in the middle of the road.

[reporter] Authorities say they have reason to believe

she was murdered elsewhere and dumped here,

where she was found partially nude around 3 a.m.

It's an area that's become a dumping ground for bodies.

Within the last two years, five women have turned up

in this rural part of the parish.

All are said to have lived high-risk lifestyles.

We're on Racca Road, just east of Highway 102,

which comes out of Jennings.

In the early morning hours of May 29 of 2008,

Officer Mike Janise was on patrol

and came driving down this road, and he located

the body of Muggy Brown.

Laconia knew the other four girls.

She'd been paranoid, and she got it in her mind

that she would have been the next victim.

She knew something bad was gonna happen.

Laconia,

she was a very nice person, sweet person,

and she loved her family, and loved her child.

I had no problem with it till she start

running with the wrong crowd

and smoking crack.

If she was doing drugs,

she was getting out on the street,

'cause she never would bring none home.

[Roger] Many nights I begged her.

I said, "Don't go out there on them streets tonight, baby.

Stay home until these people find

whoever this is doing this killing, man."

But it never sunk in, you know.

She... "Oh, um, I can handle myself, Papa.

Ain't nothing gonna happen to me."

"Baby, you can't say that.

Look at the girls that you know that went before you."

[Bessie] That Friday night, about 8:30,

she said, "Maman, I'm going

to my friend's house-- they got a-a gumbo."

I said, "Okay, baby."

She said, "I'll be back before, before 12."

I said, "Okay, Laconia."

I said, "You be careful out there."

And then she said, "Maman, I want you to

promise me something." She said,

"If anything would happen to me, promise me

that you would raise Jahiema."

I said, "Yes, I would."

I said, "But why is you talking like that, Laconia?"

She said, "It-it just something

that came to my mind."

I said, "Something came to your mind?"

She said, "Yes." I said, "Girl, I don't like that,

stop saying that."

And that was it.

And it was her last words.

[insects trilling]

[Kindra] They said Mr. Janise found my sister,

back down on Racca Road.

But why you back there at five o'clock in the morning?

Who told you to go back there,

and then when you went back there, you identify a body?

So how you know a body was back there?

I never knew a police officer

go back there five-something in the morning.

[Cormier] Officer Janise was working

at the timeframe when Muggy was found.

It would not be uncommon for him to be in that area

since it was part of his area within the city to patrol.

[Kindra] We went to Racca Road.

The detective from the sheriff department told us

we couldn't go identify my sister.

They say we couldn't because her body was decomposed.

And I say, "Her body was decomposed?

Why her body was decomposed?"

Her throat was cut and bleach was poured on her.

I don't understand why they had to pour bleach on her,

and why they wouldn't let us see the body.

He did say my sister was rolled up in a red carpet.

Okay, come on, now, 'cause when they picked her body up,

parts of her flesh was on the ground,

birds was eating my sister face.

♪ quiet, tense music ♪

Something strange.

Something they're not telling us.

♪♪♪

Muggy left behind a very respectful young man, Jaheim.

He's tall, got all of her...

got all of her attitude, all her ways.

[train horn blows]

And when you're looking at Jaheim,

you're looking at Muggy.

He go back there w-where they found her at.

Mm-hmm, that's how my nephew, Jaheim,

honors his mother.

To go on Racca Road to go fishing.

She talk through him

and he listen.

'Cause he feel her presence.

He say, "My mother's there.

I talk to my mama.

And she speaks back... through my heart."

♪♪♪

[water lapping]

[reporter] The discovery of the latest body

comes as disturbing news.

Many say there's no doubt in their minds

that the murders are somehow connected.

It's quite disturbing to... for a small town like this,

to have that many young women murdered.

[older man] When one murder happened,

everybody was

frustrated, terrified.

Then another one, then another one.

My sisters, man, they-they get all upset, man,

everybody just getting scared, nervous.

They just don't know what to do.

Man, I'm locking my doors, you know.

[younger man] Whoever doing the killing,

he got his picks. He's going for

users, i-it's not like no order that he's going, man.

It's just, women that use drugs, narcotics.

He a sick person, tell you that much, though.

[Roger] When the first girls got killed, we thought it was

a serial killer going around town,

killing all drug fiends.

Dopeheads and addicts.

That's what I thought, for a moment there.

So, me and my friend, they...

we, we went out, trying to capture this

serial killer that we thought was on the loose.

♪ suspenseful music ♪

♪♪♪

We rolled the dark roads, we rolled the back roads

and we went down all...

the lands in Jeff Davis Parish, man,

from one end to the other, in my truck.

And we had

two .45s, I had a 9mm

and a shotgun.

And we loaded up with ammo.

And we went out there, brother.

♪♪♪

Who would've ever thought, man?

That it was about to happen to us?

[Cormier] We now had the fifth female victim

that was recovered within

Jeff Davis Parish, within a couple year period.

Speculation began to...

spread around

law enforcement

and within the community in general

of who could be responsible.

And some people

began to believe that... this was one offender

that was responsible for all of these deaths.

Well, yeah, th-there's a lot of speculation out there.

Uh, we do believe, behaviorally, that they are...

related to one offender at this point.

Um... we don't have, uh, forensic evidence

to put... everything together.

Uh, we're not naive. We do believe, right now,

as far as the investigation goes,

that it is one offender, behaviorally, at this time.

As, as we get evidence, we will make those connections.

One thing we don't want to do is,

if they're not all related, to give somebody an alibi

because we've said that it is all one person and so forth.

So, we're being very cautious

to protect the integrity of the case.

For the future.

[Scott] The public certainly had a mind of their own

in, in regards to whether or not to call these

killings the work of a serial killer.

You had so many different commonalities

to all of these cases that... at the time,

when you were looking at it...

it was hard to not draw that conclusion.

When KPLC TV asks Ricky Edwards,

"Are we dealing with a possible serial killer?"

he doesn't commit to that, but he says,

"What we may be dealing with

is a serial... dumper."

[Edwards] The word "serial"

is probably applicable. Uh, it doesn't help us

in our investigation one way or another

whether it's described as serial or not.

But it's an anomaly in the way that they are disposed,

so, that is a, a-- One of the major

links that we look at, behaviorally.

Yes, all of these girls were dumped,

but... "serial dumper,"

i-it just seems like an incredibly

flip term to be using about...

people... dying.

Especially after using...

"high-risk lifestyle" and that being

sort of a flash-point kind of phrase.

It just made these girls sound disposable.

I-I have been accused of saying "lifestyle"

and all of this, one family became irate.

I don't use that term anymore.

Uh, I respect these ladies.

Uh, they had some serious problems in their lives.

I'm a true believer that each one of these ladies

did not deserve to die, contrary to what

some of the rumors and speculation are out there.

And we're going to do everything in our part,

uh, as far as my office and as far as this team,

to bring those responsible to justice for these ladies.

[Scott] Now you got to keep in mind that,

as sheriff, Ricky Edwards is a beloved figure

in Jeff Davis Parish.

There was always people who didn't agree with what

he was doing, but those people were definitely in a minority.

This guy wins his elections outright every time.

He's a well-known man in the community.

Churchgoer, family man, he's got ten kids.

H-He knows everybody.

He knows your mama, he knows your brother.

And in Louisiana,

the sheriff is basically...

king of his own fiefdom.

There's nobody that he reports to.

He's basically got the call

on how he wants to run his department.

The buck stops with the sheriff.

[interviewer] You have anything else you want to say, Sheriff?

That's it.

[birds crying faintly]

[Sarah] It was right after Hurricane Gustav.

[frogs croaking]

And it come over

the radio that Ricky Edwards said

there was another body found.

♪ low, suspenseful music ♪

♪♪♪

They couldn't tell if it was male or female.

[insects trilling]

Didn't know if it was black or white.

The body...

was not identifiable.

[Cormier] When the body was located and recovered,

uh, it was a severe amount of decomposition,

to the point of being skeletal remains.

It took several weeks before

a positive ID could be determined,

uh, and DNA had to be used to,

to complete that process.

Not 20 minutes after the radio broadcast

that there was another body found,

I'm hearing on the streets that it's Crystal.

And I called my sister, and my sister said

she didn't know what was going on.

So my sister called Crystal's mother

and asked her and the detectives were there

at the time... telling them that they thought

that it was her.

In that amount of time,

how did her name get put out there

if you didn't know who that was already?

She wasn't even reported missing.

How did the...

sheriff's department know that it was

Crystal Shay Zeno

that they found?

Crystal was a good person.

She always wanted to be a mother

and whenever she finally had Armani,

you know, she thought her life was complete.

And the drugs got her again.

I'd seen Crystal two weeks before

she was murdered. She was dressed nice.

She told me she was, uh, slinging dope

for one of the local boys.

Told her, I told her to be careful.

And she told me she was.

Whenever I found out Crystal was dead,

it hit hard because

it happened to our family.

You know, it wasn't just, uh,

"I knew them, I knew the girls."

It happened to one of my family members.

I knew all the victims.

They were dopeheads. They were crackheads.

They all got high together.

They all hung out together.

They all ran together.

These girls...

that's what they did.

They didn't have jobs, they didn't have, uh, no income.

That was their way of getting high.

So I can't call them prostitutes,

and I'm, I refuse to call them prostitutes.

How do you label them like that?

Why? Because they're from the south side of town

and they have a drug problem.

So, automatically, they're no good.

♪ ominous, percussive music ♪

♪♪♪

[Scott] When people would ask me

about the girls or about the killings,

it didn't have anything to do with, like,

"Can-can you believe what a tragedy this is?"

or, "What's happening?" Like, there

wasn't... uh, an emotional connection

between what had happened to these girls

and the fact that it was happening

in our hometown.

I started thinking about

what these murders meant to the community...

and it felt like

it didn't mean very much at all.

♪ quiet music ♪

I-If we were talking about...

girls from prominent families--

and let me tell you, girls from

prominent families do drugs, too.

So do the boys, so does everyone.

But if we were talking about...

those girls' families,

the city would be... in an uproar.

♪♪♪

These are six human beings

who are children of God like anyone else,

who-who deserve to have

their situation taken seriously

by everyone.

But more importantly

was the hope that...

there wouldn't be a seventh.

[train horn blows]

[news anchor] Tonight, investigators are searching

for answers after six women are killed

and another is missing.

[news anchor 2] It's going on four days

since anyone has seen or heard from

17-year-old Brittney Gary.

She was last seen walking the five or so blocks home

from the Jennings Family Dollar Store Sunday evening.

We have video surveillance from

the Family Dollar Store

with her making a purchase

at about 5:30 in the evening.

[news anchor 2] At this point, police don't suspect foul play.

But Brittney's mother feels differently.

[Teresa] Well, as everyone knows, there's been

six murders here in Jennings already.

Nothing, nothing has been solved.

They haven't found anything, they don't know anything still

about the other six and I don't want my daughter

to be number seven. [sobs]

So I'm asking anyone out there, if you have seen

Brittney, please, I'm begging you, please call me.

[sobs]

♪ eerie music ♪

[Teresa] She went to the Dollar Store

and when she got ready to leave, I said,

"Right there, then right back."

When 30 minutes had passed, I started calling

her phone. [shuddering breath]

And it would just ring and go to voicemail.

Brittney always answered my call.

That day, she didn't. [sniffles]

And I knew immediately something was wrong.

[sobs]

[news anchor] A missing child is any

parent's worst nightmare.

And Teresa Gary is living it.

So far, clues about Brittney's disappearance

have turned up nothing.

About the first four days I didn't sleep.

So I started looking and I didn't stop.

♪ suspenseful music ♪

I put up fliers,

me and a couple of my friends.

hundreds and hundreds of fliers.

[news anchor] Volunteers resumed the search for

17-year-old Brittney Gary.

[Teresa] For two weekends in a row,

we formed a search party.

[woman] Okay, we're gonna spread out in a straight line.

-Straight... -We'll go straight thisaway.

-Okay. -[Teresa] I'm not gonna

think the worst. I'm not.

[interviewer] But you can't just sit at home?

No, I can't. I can't be still. I can't.

♪♪♪

[exhales]

On the second weekend,

on the Saturday,

they came to get me,

and they said they think they found Brittney.

♪ quiet, ambient music ♪

[Edwards] We do have a missing 17-year-old, Brittney Gary.

We do believe, but I do not have confirmation at this time,

that this is the identity--

that-that Brittney is this person.

[reporter] Authorities do report tattoos on the body

are a match of those of Brittney Gary.

Meanwhile, word is already spreading

throughout the town of Jennings,

gossip she was found beaten to death.

♪ melancholy music ♪

♪♪♪

This is where Brittney was.

This is where my baby was.

They found her laying right here,

on her side.

Mm-- they said with her hands folded like this.

They had placed her like that, on her side,

like she was asleep.

[exhales]

♪♪♪

She was identified by her tattoos.

What tattoos?

[laughs softly] There were no tattoos visible.

She had been out there from the 4th to the 15th.

There was nothing to Brittney. Nothing.

You know the Mardi Gras mask?

That was all there was,

was a piece of...

[crying]

...just black bone.

It just looked like...

And she had the most beautiful eyes.

But she didn't have any eyes.

[sniffles]

She had maggots crawling out of her eyes, I guess.

And they were coming out of her nose

and what was to be her mouth.

[sniffles]

[exhales]

♪♪♪

[sniffles]

[sniffles]

[sighs]

May you rest in peace.

[Stacy] I was asked to perform a funeral ceremony.

The funeral director told me he couldn't find a preacher

to do the job.

This little girl was 17 years old,

and nobody wanted to bury her

because they said that she was a prostitute.

Because they said that she was not t-the type of child

that most people would like.

And that's wrong.

Jesus took on prostitutes, he took on bad people,

he lived with the bad people.

And why couldn't the preachers in this town

even acknowledge it?

So I said, "Yeah, I-I'll perform the ceremony.

I'll, I'll bury the young lady."

-[people crying] -Brittney was number seven

in a line

of unnecessary, uncalled-for deaths.

I found out

that this young lady had been associated

with six other young ladies,

and they had all been killed various ways,

bodies left to rot,

and nobody had found the killer.

It infuriated me.

Jefferson Davis Parish Police,

if you had captured him long time ago,

my daughter would not have died! Lord...

-[woman] That's right. -...what is wrong

with this situation?

My first thought was,

"Something's wrong."

Something's wrong because somebody had

to leave some type of evidence behind,

in all of these killings,

that someone could have now found the killer,

maybe even before this young lady, 17 years old,

had died.

And they hadn't.

Save somebody from going through it again.

Demand from whoever it is out there,

"Just turn yourself in."

Demand from the police, "Do the work."

Demand from the judges

and the judicial system, "You better find him."

Demand from your congressman, "You better get this done."

Call somebody, be a nuisance,

but don't let this little girl die in vain.

Someone should have held the mayor

and-and the chief of police

and-and the sheriff

and-and the state police

and-and the FBI accountable.

I don't think I've ever seen any mother

hurting that much.

I've been doing funerals a long time.

But the pain in that woman's face

was something I had never witnessed before.

The sadness

that still lingers in Jennings

is that there is no closure.

And there are parents, there are families,

there are cousins, there are sisters, there are mothers

that still don't have closure.

And until they find the person/persons who did this,

it's gonna be that way.

♪ quiet, tense music ♪

[Edwards] This area is not a remote... remote area.

The person that's involved in this is somebody that drives

the roads of this community day in and day out.

They're in the gas stations,

they're frequenting the same places

that these ladies frequent, and they are mixing in.

This is not a green-eyed monster

that we're looking at.

♪♪♪

[Teresa] It was said that

Frankie Richard...

killed Brittney.

Had something to do with it.

Frankie Richard

got a lot of blame

in Jennings, Louisiana for a lot of things

that happened and took place that he had no part of.

It was convenient.

♪♪♪

[Frankie] What, possibly,

could that baby have done to deserve that?

I mean, any of them girls.

And, uh, what, she was, what,

16, 17 years old when she died?

I mean, come on, man.

I know I did not have nothing to do

with that one, either.

[Edwards] His name keeps coming up

in every single one of them.

Sometimes it's from the streets and so forth,

and-and so forth.

We have interviewed Frankie, uh,

nobody has been ruled out.

We keep everybody in.

Ricky Edwards.

Piece of shit.

He sent a, a helicopter for one hour

to the opposite end of town.

When all these girls had gone missing,

and they found them on the other end of town,

he sent a helicopter to the north side.

One hour.

One hour. [chuckles]

So I guess he thought he would pacify me with that hour,

and all he did was piss me off.

Oh, it was, "Miss Teresa, what do you want from me?

What do you want me to do?"

"I don't want you to do shit.

You ain't been doing nothing. You haven't done anything."

♪ quiet, tense music ♪

♪♪♪

But I tell you what I'm gonna do.

That pretty little office you stand in?

With that pretty little carpet you stand on?

I'm gonna unravel that son of a bitch thread by thread

until I put you on your ass.

Nothing was done and nothing ever got kicked off

until they took Brittney.

And then all hell broke loose,

'cause you took something that belonged to me.

♪♪♪

[insects trilling]

♪♪♪

[Scott] Not long after Brittney was found,

my publisher had asked me to follow up on a, an old story

with Ricky about the murders.

I pull him aside, and it's...

Ricky Edwards and I in the police jury room.

Just me and him.

What I'm gonna say is he said, she said,

and you'll have to take that at face value.

I asked him about this information for this story,

and he,

in his very Ricky way,

said, "Well,

we've decided not to release

that particular bit of information.

But I don't know why I should give you anything.

Because we believe that t-the story you wrote

ended up getting Brittney killed."

The only story I had really done

in between Crystal and Brittney

was that Kirk Menard, who's a private investigator,

had decided to put his own bank account together

that people could donate money to

and that it would act as a reward for information,

So that's the only story that there was,

but that somehow, that story... and whatever it was,

supposedly caused somebody to panic

or to do whatever,

and-and Brittney dies because of it.

Everybody I've ever talked to has said, "No, that,"

you know, "that doesn't sound like that's true at all,

uh, and it sounds like he was telling you that

to throw you off the case or to-to put you in a position

that you would stop asking questions."

And if that was the case, it fucking worked,

because, yeah, that...

What am I supposed to do with that?

So, either it's true

and you've got to carry that with you,

or Saint Ricky is the kind of guy who would say that

to a person to get them to stop doing what they're doing.

But I lost confidence

in my ability

to tell this story.

And if maybe that conversation with Ricky

had never happened,

I would've just kept going on.

That was a huge breaking point for me.

Um...

especially leading into the press conference

that Ricky Edwards called later in the year

where they finally formed a task force.

[reporter] Sheriff Ricky Edwards called

a press conference today

to announce a permanent task force

dedicated to solving the mystery.

[Edwards] The formation of this group today will allow

eight to ten people to work full-time

and exclusively to these cases.

We will continue to search for leads,

utilizing every resource that is available to us.

The state of Louisiana forms

the multiagency investigative task force

which is made up of sheriff's offices

from the surrounding areas,

state police, the FBI

and the attorney general's office.

Why on earth did it take seven bodies

to get a task force together?

It takes seven bodies before you realize--

Seven bodies that are very intricately connected.

Their murders are very concretely connected.

I don't know if they were expecting there

to be applause or support, and that is not what happened.

[woman] Why haven't we, in two years,

been contacted by local law enforcement?

And-and we will do that, and I, and I assure you

we'll follow up on it.

[woman] And I'm standing before you today,

in front of the media,

because I want justice for my sister,

and I am saying that we have not been contacted.

[Scott] The family members

just started to erupt saying

nobody from the sheriff's department is talking to them.

They're not answering their calls,

they're not giving them updates,

they're not letting them see their family members' bodies

before they get buried.

If "serial dumper" was the place where people started

to-to question what law enforcement was doing,

then that press conference was the point where...

people chose sides, basically.

Like, if you were pro-law enforcement,

you were pro-law enforcement. If you weren't,

you probably weren't gonna be convinced that somebody

from law enforcement wasn't involved in this kind of stuff.

[Edwards] Once we get the truth, then we can bring

the individual, or individuals, to justice.

[Cormier] When the task force was formally formed,

Ricky Edwards decided to...

even though they weren't all sheriff's offices cases

originally, he kind of took the lead on that,

for-for good or bad.

The FBI was there to assist

and state police was there to assist,

but it was made

very clear that Ricky Edwards

and the Jeff Davis Parish Sheriff's Department

were at the head of this task force.

They were in charge.

They had about a quarter of a million dollar budget

to work on it.

They put up a... a tipline.

Sherriff Ricky Edwards says they've received

at least five important phone calls,

and they're conducting several interviews today.

But what we kept hearing was that people would say,

"I-I-I called the task force, I talked to the task force,

or they didn't-- but they didn't get back to me."

That they didn't want to hear it.

I heard that a lot from people

who were trying to give information

and just weren't allowed to.

[Kindra] I don't know, what's the problem?

I really appreciate it if y'all would step up

and take the responsibility of these murders.

My sister was the fifth victim.

I don't know who is really doing this,

and we is scared for our life. The whole community is scared.

♪ atmospheric piano melody ♪

♪♪♪

They know something about these girls,

but they not saying

what really happened.

They need to stop sitting there

covering up for each other.

Uh, there's a lot of people want to say "cover up"

and all of this. I have never, nor will I ever,

as I don't believe any sheriff in this state would cover up

any wrongdoing in our offices.

None of us are above the law, nor do we want to be.

[man] That's one of the most disturbing thing

could ever happen in a small community

like this, and nobody knows nothing.

Somebody has to know something in this community.

It's too small of a community.

Somebody had to have seen something.

[young woman] What I think it's gonna take is for a

"higher class citizen," so to speak,

to have something happen to them

before it really kicks into gear.

[Scott] Nobody was giving them anything,

and it made them feel like nobody was

working on the cases.

And then, August 19, 2009,

a body is found

dumped along the side of Interstate 10.

[traffic passing]

[reporter] But there's people saying that a woman's been

missing since Sunday from Jennings.

Right. At two o'clock

our task force started interviewing the person

who came in to report her missing.

And about 30 minutes into the interview

of getting the information,

we got a call from Acadia Parish

that roadway workers found a body.

Acadia Parish is part of our task force,

so we've been working very closely together

-on these cases. -[reporter] Okay, any word yet

on whether the two are related, or...?

[Edwards] It's very early.

I guess we want to assume that it could be.

Uh, we-we're taking precautions, but we're also taking action,

I guess, it would be proper to say.

She's identified relatively quickly.

Necole Jean Guillory,

who is also a resident of Jennings,

also a known associate

of a lot of the people in this group.

Necole is a little different

than a lot of our other victims, though,

in that she... felt

that she could be a potential victim.

♪ quiet, ambient music ♪

♪♪♪

Necole told me-- I had wanted to make her a birthday cake,

and I asked her what kind of icing she wanted,

and she said, "Mama," she said, "it doesn't matter."

She's like, "I'm not gonna be here to see my birthday."

And that was all she said, then she wouldn't say nothing else.

That she just said she wouldn't be here for her birthday,

and she wasn't.

[Scott] There was some footage that the family released

not long after she was found,

of her kind of w-walking through town,

in which she is... she would pull on her hair a lot.

She had a lot of nervous tics.

She certainly seemed like she had

a bad feeling of what could happen to her.

[reporter] Necole's body was found here,

dumped on the side of I-10

in Acadia Parish.

[Scott] I mean, this is just brazen.

A body being left on the side of Interstate 10

after the formation of the task force.

No, I do not believe that it's just one person.

I mean, slinging dead weight over your shoulder,

walking up an overpass?

How the hell are you gonna do that?

Can you do it?

So how was it done?

Necole was a good girl, in her own way.

She just got mixed up with the wrong people,

the wrong crowd, um...

I don't know when it went bad.

I don't.

[sniffles]

Whatever I say, get your kids away from all of that.

Don't turn your back on them, no matter what they do.

It's hard, you know, and you get tired of it,

but your children need you because you may never,

never seem 'em again, you know?

I didn't have a chance to tell her that I loved her

or goodbye or anything, you know?

[sniffles]

[sighs]

I just wish somebody would do something,

say something,

just get it over with.

Yeah, Necole. [sighs]

Oh, one day, my baby, one day.

[Scott] Two months after Necole's body was found,

there's a second press conference,

in which they raised the reward,

and then Ricky Edwards doubles down

on the single killer theory,

that a single offender

was involved in all of the slayings.

♪ low, ominous music ♪

[Kindra] The police thought

it is a serial killer that's out there,

that killed all eight girls,

and I don't understand why this,

in this small town of Jennings,

and why nothing got solved.

We follow every lead. We follow every gossip.

We follow every rumor.

[Teresa] Our town's so small.

How can you not have any evidence?

A piece of hair, a piece of skin, something.

There's eight women dead.

Who really doing this to these girls?

Is it somebody on y'all force?

Necole said the police.

She told everybody the police was involved in it.

She didn't name no names, but she said the police.

[Edwards] If there's a lead involving a specific officer,

we get an outside agency

to come in and investigate that lead.

If it involved members of the task force,

then I have, in the past,

I've gone to other agencies to do that.

I think the police are covering up something.

I do.

You got to be in law enforcement

to clean up like it was cleaned up.

Small town, big mystery. At least eight women

in Jennings, Louisiana

have been found dead in the past few years.

It is a town of about 11,000 people.

Could there be a serial killer among them?

[Scott] 2009 was the year the story

of the Jeff Davis 8 went national.

♪ quiet, eerie music ♪

♪♪♪

[Campbell Robertson] "Every few months

for the last four and a half years,

someone driving the back roads

here in Jefferson Davis Parish

has come across a body.

♪♪♪

They fit the same pattern.

The bodies have been those of young women

raised by extended families in the nearby towns

of Lake Arthur and Jennings.

At some point, the women lost their footing

and succumbed to the undercurrent of drugs

and prostitution

that has been steadily eating away at the parish.

Since May 2005,

there have been eight such discoveries in this quiet

countryside of rice and crawfish farms

in southwestern Louisiana.

The most recent was in August."

When I talk to some of these families,

some of the mothers, particularly...

...the lack of progress in the case

and the missteps, um,

s-seem to cause them to question

a lot more than just this case.

Um, I remember them telling me this whole,

this whole parish is messed up.

As they watch this unfold, more murders, nothing done,

mistakes, rumors, theories.

I think it caused them to look

at the whole town,

if not the whole parish.

They just had lost faith

in the whole system.

♪ ominous music ♪

♪♪♪

[Ethan] When I read Campbell Robertson's piece

about the Jeff Davis 8,

I became fascinated.

And at that time,

there were billboards on I-10 featuring

the faces of the Jeff Davis 8.

When I began looking at the case in 2011,

it was two years after the last homicide.

The case was very quiet.

All eight of the homicides

were unsolved.

The serial killer theory had been advanced

in such a profound way

by law enforcement, which meant that,

if this was indeed a serial killer,

then it was

an unknowable mystery.

♪♪♪

As I continued to investigate the murders

of these eight women,

it didn't take very long at all to figure out

that the serial killer theory didn't make a lot of sense.

In a serial killer case, typically,

the victims would not know one another.

In this case, all of the victims

knew each other quite well.

And more importantly,

most of them shared a pimp:

Frankie Richard from South Jennings.

When I read the Campbell Robertson

article, another thing that had

caught my attention was it had

highlighted instances of law enforcement's negligence

and misconduct.

Shortly after...

...Kristen Lopez's body was found,

Warren Gary, who was the chief investigator

in the sheriff's department, bought

a Silverado pickup truck

from a woman named Connie Siler.

Connie Siler was an associate of Frankie's.

Numerous witnesses discussed

how Kristen was riding in the Chevy Silverado

prior to her death.

There are many conflicting statements

about Kristen's death, but I think it's fair to say

that no one disputes the fact

that Kristen was riding in that Chevy Silverado

before she was killed.

Warren purchased the truck

and washed the truck,

so it was cleaned out of evidence.

The case of the Warren Gary truck

is disturbing,

but as I interviewed

the victims' families and friends

and dug into the records...

...I realized that I was coming across something

that was far deeper...

...and more complex...

...than I'd ever imagined.