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[train horn blows]
[insects chirping]
♪ ominous music ♪
♪♪♪
[Teresa] They claim this is the route that Brittney took
the day that Brittney disappeared.
There's a camera at the door right there.
That's the only camera, is right there,
that caught my daughter that day.
I'm trying to imagine what Brittney saw
because they said she looked so scared.
What she was thinking at that... at that time.
What was going through her mind.
♪♪♪
Seems like either she saw
something on her way to the dollar store...
or on her way out.
So it was like... [sputters] That was it.
She just vanished in thin air.
Gone.
Jennings is just one
crooked-ass town.
I've never seen a town
be so incompetent,
pathetic.
We just want something,
some type of justice.
I think law enforcement knows everything.
Law enforcement have a story.
[Edwards] We do believe right now,
as far as the investigation goes,
that it is one offender, behaviorally, at this time.
That is how the "story" is told and believed,
but I don't believe that for one second.
Let me do tell you,
there is no serial killer
in Jeff Davis Parish.
There never was.
♪ somber music ♪
♪♪♪
[insects chirping]
[Ethan] For years, approaching Jennings,
I would get a kind of sick feeling
because, after years
of working on the case,
everything that I knew from talking to the families,
about the homicides themselves,
created this weight in my stomach where I'd feel
physically ill.
♪ intriguing music ♪
♪♪♪
When I began looking at the case in 2011,
the case was very quiet,
all eight of the homicides were unsolved,
and there was a lot of apathy in town.
The folks in Jennings, in Jeff Davis Parish,
generally, early on,
had essentially resigned themselves to the idea that
this impossible-to-understand case
with a likely serial killer
at the center of it was never going to be solved.
[indistinct chatter]
The relationship
between the town and law enforcement was complex,
and I also believed,
divided along socioeconomic lines.
On the north side of town,
where you had more middle-class and upper middle-class folks,
there was a comfort level
with law enforcement that was very high.
You would have people say
th-things like, "They're doing their best."
You know, "God bless them.
They're trying. They're out there.
What else can they do? It's a small town."
On the south side, what I began to hear
was murmurings of
law enforcement misconduct
or perhaps something far worse.
[Scott] Early in the summer of 2007,
the Jennings Daily News gets a tip that we need to look into
the chief investigator Warren Gary.
That there was an issue with him
purchasing a truck from an inmate
and then selling it to make a profit.
Now, right off the top, there's nothing inherently illegal
in that situation, but what we are told is that
that truck may have been
the crime scene where
Kristen Gary Lopez was murdered.
[reporter] Former Chief Criminal Investigator Warren Gary
found himself under investigation
after he bought a truck from jail inmate Connie Siler
and later sold it for a profit.
Some believe that truck may have had a connection
to the death of one of the women.
Numerous witnesses discussed how Kristen was riding
in a white Chevy Silverado prior to her death
with Connie Siler, an associate of Frankie's.
Frankie, Frankie's goddaughter Hannah Conner,
and Tracee Chaisson.
[interviewer] What, if anything, do you know about that truck
that Connie Siler sold?
I don't know nothing about the truck. All I know is that...
it's, um,
that it was sold to a detective.
[interviewer] You know anything about anybody's body being put
-in it or anything like that? -Mm-mm. No. I don't.
Connie Siler, the owner of the Chevy Silverado
sold the truck for about 7 or $8,000
to a chief investigator of the sheriff's office,
Warren Gary, and then Gary resold it
for approximately $15,000.
[Scott] This is a potential crime scene,
and now it's been sold for profit
and given to a private citizen
and law enforcement didn't want to believe anything
was going on wrong with Warren Gary
-and that truck situation. -[Cormier] What I see is that
it was an opportunity for somebody to make some money.
Uh, buy a vehicle, sell the vehicle, and make a profit.
[Ivey] I don't think Warren Gary
had the knowledge at the time that
the vehicle would have any evidence in it.
[Chris] Ultimately, he is put
before the Louisiana Board of Ethics, and he's fined $10,000,
but he's cleared of any criminal charges,
and actually becomes head of the evidence room
for the sheriff's department,
which just felt like a really bizarre move.
I mean, you have a guy who was just in trouble,
a-and in enough trouble that the state decided
to fine him for it, regarding something
that could be a piece of evidence being sold.
And now he's head of the evidence room.
It just felt kind of like a little...
It-it felt like a "fuck you."
"We know that something has to be done,
but this is our investigation.
We're gonna run it how we want to,
and-and we're not gonna let anybody from-from the outside
influence that in any way, shape or form."
[Ethan] When I looked into the Warren Gary truck sale,
specifically through the D.A.'s file on Kristen,
it became clear
that there were enormous
contradictions between
what Sheriff Edwards was saying,
and what was in their own files essentially.
They were seemingly telling outright lies.
And what's even more disturbing about that is
that the falsehoods that were being pedaled
about Warren Gary and the truck
are not just about the truck.
They're also about Warren Gary's
alleged relationship
to one of the main suspects--
Frankie Richard.
♪ haunting music ♪
Several months after Kristen's homicide
in March of 2007,
two female inmate witnesses approached
Sergeant Jesse Ewing of the Jennings Police Department
with statements about the truck.
[Hannah] What this lady
on this recording is saying is not true.
That-that is...
...insane that this lady
that I don't even know...
thinks that I would just confess something like that to her.
Like, what would I gain from that?
♪♪♪
[Ethan] When you listen to the Jesse Ewing tapes,
and there are direct and credible allegations
about the involvement
of the sheriff's office chief investigator in the case,
that sense of...
well, this is a small-town
sheriff's office trying to do their best
and making some mistakes
sort of flies out the window.
Because Jesse Ewing feared
corruption in Jeff Davis Parish law enforcement,
he released these statements
to a private investigator, who sent them on to the FBI.
[Kirk] He didn't feel comfortable
going to anyone locally, not even his superiors.
So he gave it to me, and I delivered it
to the appropriate individuals.
The result of those statements
was not a deepening investigation
of Frankie Richard or Warren Gary,
who had already been essentially found guilty of misconduct.
It was a major state police investigation
into Jesse Ewing.
Arrested yesterday by Louisiana State Police,
a veteran of the Jennings Police Department stands accused
of obstruction of justice and malfeasance in office.
[newswoman] The charges
Jennings Police Sergeant Jesse Ewing faces
centers around the ongoing investigations
of the unsolved murders of four Jeff Davis Parish women.
[Ethan] At the time, the public
was entirely unaware
of the content
of those tapes.
All the public knew was that
Jesse Ewing was in trouble
for basically breaking the chain of custody on evidence.
Jesse Ewing then essentially pled out
to a malfeasance in office charge,
and Frankie Richard remained free.
[interviewer] What do you say about whether that truck
was involved in the case and whether evidence
may have been lost when it was washed or whatever?
[Edwards] I-I would think that there's forensic evidence
found even after vehicles are washed.
Uh, it happens all the time.
It's not a guarantee, but I'm not exactly sure
how important that truck is.
Nevertheless,
Warren was disciplined by the ethics board
to the maximum that could be done
and he was taken off the case.
We moved forward.
[Ethan] The official narrative of the murders
when I arrived in Jennings was that it was most likely
a single perpetrator, or a serial killer.
But when I began to learn of the misconduct
in the Jeff Davis 8 case,
like Warren Gary selling a key piece of evidence,
it seemed to me that
something was going on here that couldn't be,
necessarily, boiled down to a serial killer case.
Typically, in a serial killer case,
the victims would not know one another.
In this case, the Jeff Davis 8 had myriad connections.
For example, seven of the eight of the women
were connected to Frankie Richard
who's been in the Jennings underworld for decades
as a pimp, a drug dealer, a street hustler.
They engaged in sex work for him.
When Frankie
and Frankie's niece Hannah had been arrested
and charged, it became a classic
"we got 'em" moment
for Ricky Edwards,
the then sheriff.
But the collapse of the case
received little to no coverage.
Frankie and his goddaughter were simply free.
[train horn blowing]
Beyond Frankie and Hannah,
there were other credible suspects, and yet,
when other murders occurred, a theory of a single killer
was pushed aggressively.
In one of the cases, Ernestine Patterson,
two men-- Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon--
had actually been arrested on second degree murder charges.
Those cases fell apart and the charges were dropped.
I think Law Nixon
and Byron Chad Jones killed my daughter.
But Ricky Edwards let them go because there was n--
because they said they couldn't find no evidence.
And we still don't know what happened.
The D.A.'s office obviously has the-the charging responsibility
in every... in the...
They determine who and...
to prosecute and when to prosecute.
In that particular case,
the D.A.'s office decided not to prosecute.
The charges were dismissed at that time.
[insects chirping]
♪ slow music ♪
[Ethan] What I found out about
Ernestine's Patterson's case
from reading her case file was
frustrating and strange and bewildering,
because of the way in which
the investigation was conducted.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] Ernestine Patterson was discovered
on June 18, 2005.
She was unusual because
she was not really in the clique of the women
who surrounded Frankie.
[Evelyn] She wasn't no bad girl.
She was a good child.
She never was in no-no... any trouble with the law or nothing.
And she tried to raise her four kids
b-by herself.
We did not know she was doing
the drugs then, 'cause she would come here.
We didn't know she was doing no drugs.
[Ethan] There was a large file
that detailed the witness interviews that were conducted
in this case, and they had not
been scrutinized by the media
or anybody else outside of the police.
The sorts of witness statements
that came in
described something fairly simple.
That Ernestine was out the night of her murder,
engaged in sex work in South Jennings,
and that she hooked up with two men--
Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon--
at an abandoned house on a garage alley.
And that she was held down
and stabbed to death.
Nixon's girlfriend, Lucinda Kagy, said that
both men appeared at her house
and that she saw firsthand
Lawrence carrying an industrial-size garbage bag.
It seemed to be weighty, that the garbage bag was
laid upon the porch,
had blood coming out of it.
Nixon's then girlfriend sprayed the porch down,
and the bag was then placed
into a white car and driven off.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
One witness told law enforcement
that a jagged-edged hunting knife
was left in an abandoned home
on a garage alley.
It's unclear from the case file
if that tip was followed up on by law enforcement.
And what's even more strange--
the floorboards on which
the bloody garbage bag was placed were not tested
for the presence of blood
until 16 months after the incident,
which was too late to be valuable.
Unsurprisingly, when they were tested,
no blood was detected on them.
♪ soft, suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[Cormier] Your ultimate goal
and your best-case scenario would be
to-to test items as quickly as possible,
but, like, sometimes,
you can't control that for different reasons.
And so, you just have to do the best you can with it.
And hopefully, it gets tested.
But I just can't comment on evidence on this case,
because there are open cases, so...
I know there's a lot of information out,
but I prefer not to discuss evidence.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] We don't know why it took
nearly two years to test the floorboards.
We don't know why the jagged-edged hunting knife
wasn't pursued the way it should have been pursued.
And we don't know why, ultimately,
a decision was made to drop the case.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
On the surface, the details
of Ernestine's case are unexpected.
There seemed to be multiple credible suspects,
and even potential forensic evidence,
in contrast to the official police narrative--
that all eight of these women
were likely the victims of a serial killer.
Which leaves us wondering what the police knew
about Ernestine's potential connection
to the other girls.
So just as Ernestine's murder
is a mystery,
there's also another mystery,
which is the mystery of the investigation itself,
and why the case collapsed.
It's not at all clear.
The women of the Jeff Davis 8
had long criminal histories.
These were criminal histories that were not for things
like murder or assault with a firearm.
These are things like drug charges, minor theft,
writing bad checks.
The constant churn
of these women through the criminal legal system
put them in constant contact with the men
in Jeff Davis Parish law enforcement.
When I interviewed witnesses in this case,
or family members...
and when I reviewed police reports
and task force reports,
certain names of law enforcement came up repeatedly.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] When the women of the Jeff Davis 8 were arrested,
they were often held at the Jeff Davis Parish Jail.
And from the early to mid 2000s,
one of the key jailers
at the jail was a man named Danny Barry.
[Richard] Mr. Danny Barry took care of the inmates
up on the third floor of the sheriff's department.
He treated us bad.
Especially those that he knew and saw
on the south side, he would treat you bad.
He would mace you, uh, for no reason.
He'd come down the hall and just stick his can of Mace in there,
and he would mace the whole cell, just to be an ass.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
When I was a free man back then,
and I was doing drugs,
many a nights, we would run the streets of Jennings
on the south side of the tracks.
Well, and Mr. Danny Barry was out there.
You'd see him parked on the side streets,
smoking his crack.
♪♪♪
[Roxanne] I owned a house on Craig Street,
and it became a-a safe haven
for the girls.
Danny Barry-- he would come to the house,
looking for his wife.
She would come there for us, and get one of the girls to go
visit her home in... in the country where
he lived, but-- where they both lived,
to smoke drugs and have sex.
And that's what it was all about--
drugs and sex.
♪♪♪
[Ethan] He was
seen by numerous witnesses
over the span of several years,
picking up sex workers
and taking them back to his trailer outside of Jennings.
♪♪♪
Danny Barry would go downtown,
lure the girls in, get 'em high,
bring 'em to his trailer, and they'd have fun.
Sometimes he wouldn't let 'em go.
♪♪♪
[Teresa] Danny Barry
had this nice little room in his trailer...
lined with Visqueen.
♪♪♪
Who in the hell lines their walls and their celling
and their floor with Visqueen for just no reason?
[Ethan] Danny Barry's trailer was well known
to sex workers in Jennings.
It was known as a kind of
sex dungeon with
chains and other materials
that would be associated with a kind of dominant
and submissive sexual culture.
This was a trailer well known
to sex workers in the area.
On November 2, 2008, Brittney Gary,
who at 17 years old was the youngest
of the Jeff Davis 8,
was at the South Andrew Street drug house
where many of these women
would congregate at and do drugs at
and pick up men at.
And then later, Brittney left
the South Andrew Street home, walked on foot
to the Family Dollar store...
purchased minutes for her cell phone.
She made a brief four-second call to Otis Brown,
Laconia "Muggy" Brown's cousin,
asking to be picked up at the Family Dollar.
Otis refused to pick her up.
This was...
the last known communication of Brittney.
At least one witness told law enforcement
that soon afterward, she was seen getting into a vehicle
with Danny Barry.
All of this was discussed with law enforcement,
specifically, task force investigators.
[insects chirring]
On or about November 4, 2008...
...Brittney's body was dumped
off of Keystone Road.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
The Jeff Davis 8 case, across the board,
is challenged by a lack of physical evidence.
So what you have is witnesses,
witnesses are gonna guide the case.
And task force witnesses
repeatedly told its investigators
that they needed to look at Danny Barry
as a suspect in this case.
But when Danny Barry
was eventually interviewed by the task force,
it was a remarkably short interview,
lasting somewhere around 15
or 20 minutes in total.
[Ethan] It was an interview
that would have made sense
if they had not received any information at all,
or if the information was vague
or unsubstantiated,
but it was none of those things.
It was consistent information
from firsthand witnesses,
placing Danny Barry in South Jennings
picking up sex workers
and having direct relationships
with the Jeff Davis 8.
[Richard] Mr. Danny Barry was believed
to be involved in the...
th-the murder of the eight women.
And to this day, it's possible that he is,
but Mr. Danny Barry is dead and gone now.
But that doesn't ex-excuse him
for anything that maybe he done, you know.
[Ethan] We may never know
what Danny's involvement was in this case.
But Danny was not the only person
from the Jeff Davis Parish Sheriff's Office
who was mentioned repeatedly by witnesses.
There was also his boss,
warden of the parish jail, Terrie Guillory.
♪ ominous music ♪
♪♪♪
[Chad] We grew up knowing Terrie Guillory.
Back then, Ivory Guillory, his brother, was on the force.
So them two was two of the main cops around town.
He was always a friend of the family from when I was a kid.
Growing up, he'd always taken care of us.
[Chad] He did anything he could
to help me out growing up.
I mean, he never was bad to us.
He always did to help us, always helped.
Everybody loved Terrie Guillory back then.
[Barb Ann] When my son Donovan was young,
Donovan always wanted to be a cop.
And Terrie would pass by
and let him turn the lights on or whatever, in the car.
Or Terrie would take him for a ride in the car.
And they just always called him Uncle Terrie.
[Sarah] I've known Terrie
for a very long time, you know.
Anybody, if you needed a favor or whatever, call Terrie,
you know, he'll help you.
Everybody thinks they can trust this person on the police force.
I know that Crystal did.
Crystal trusted him.
[Ethan] Terrie Guillory was the warden
of the parish jail during the period
of the Jeff Davis 8 homicides.
His ex-wife at the time,
Paula Guillory, also worked for the sheriff's office
as an investigator.
Terrie knew most, if not all of the Jeff Davis 8.
He was even connected by blood
to victim number eight, Necole Guillory.
[Barbara] Terrie is
my nephew by marriage.
And Necole is Terrie's cousin.
Necole told me one time that Terrie made the comment
that if she wouldn't be kin to him,
that he would...
sleep with her.
And he said, uh,
it didn't matter anyway, he said.
N-Necole said that he told her
that th-they weren't close cousins anyhow.
But that's bullshit.
Necole's second home was the jailhouse. [chuckles]
I don't know too much about what went on in jail.
But they told me that Terrie could be mean to some of 'em.
You know, if they wouldn't do what he wanted to do,
he-he could pretty well--
you know, he could make 'em-- make their life miserable.
[Ethan] Outside of the jail,
Terrie Guillory was someone
that the Jeff Davis 8 called on for help
whenever they were in a bind.
He was a go-to person for help because,
according to south side residents,
he would engage in kind of trades with you.
If you gave Terrie some information
about a drug dealer, he might let a ticket go,
he might let a drug charge go.
[insects chirring]
The Jeff Davis 8,
as women who cycled in and out of the jail
fairly constantly--
they were intimately aware
of the dynamic that Terrie had
with residents of the south side.
[woman] If Loretta or myself
or anyone of the crew
break the law in any kind of way,
be in a bar or something and the cops will get called,
Terrie Guillory was always on the scene
when it came down to...
the-the junkies and the prostitutes.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
Terrie Guillory was more than willing to...
to lend his hand.
But things didn't...
they didn't get dealt with right.
Not like a normal police officer would have dealt with it.
He had a thing for Loretta, Terrie Guillory.
He had a-he had a thing for Loretta.
Of course, not too many men didn't.
She was gorgeous, beautiful, very intelligent,
but very addicted to crack.
[Barb Ann] Loretta and Terrie had-had to have some
kind of relationship-- I don't know.
I'm not gonna speculate.
I'm not gonna guess.
But there had to have something.
I-I don't know what, because
when she got-- Loretta got released
that last time that she was in jail
before she got killed, Terrie Guillory brought her home
to my house.
Them fuckers never gave me a ride home.
I've been to jail a lot of times.
I don't care if it's the middle of the night,
cold as hell-- nobody offered me a ride home.
♪♪♪
[Nick] Loretta, the relationship
with Terrie, uh, a lot of it
was hearsay, you know,
but there had been sexual relations
between the two throughout the years.
And I... I do know that for a fact.
When I was probably 11, 12 years old,
and that would have put Loretta at 14 or 15,
he picked us up in a city police car,
and we went to his house.
Uh, I mean, I ended up spending the night
at his house one night with her on the couch.
I was on the couch.
I mean, I went to sleep, but I remember waking up
in the middle of the night and...
she was coming back down from his room.
Uh, they-they had sex.
She had told me, you know.
Of course, what other reason would he pick us up
and bring us to his house for,
you know, when we were out after curfew?
She was young.
He was definitely not at the age
that you should be sleeping with a 14, 15-year-old.
Yeah.
[woman] I remember an incident.
I was incarcerated with Loretta.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and...
and I could hear noises.
So I jumped down from my bunk,
and when you opened the thing, you could see,
you know, it was big enough for you to see.
And looking through this little hole,
and she was in the last cell,
and you could see Terrie Guillory
with his pants halfway down,
having intercourse with Loretta Chaisson
in the last-- The door was closed,
but he was doing it through the thing.
And after that, she got whatever she wanted.
And poor thing would cry. She hated herself.
She felt since she was a little girl that's all she was worth.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[birds chirping]
[Barb Ann] Before everybody even knew
Loretta got killed,
I got a knock on the door and it was Terrie Guillory.
And he says, "Hey, Barbara,"
or whatever the heck he said.
And he's like, "Have you seen Loretta?"
And I said, "Well, no.
Why, is something the matter?"
"Oh, no, no. I'm just checking on her."
"Okay."
What the hell you checking on her for?
Little while later,
at one of my son's friend's house-- Donovan's--
Jesse Ewing, city police, was over there,
and Donovan overheard the call on the radio
saying they found a female's body in the canal.
Nick and I left my house
and came all the way down
to the highway where the bridge was.
Well, after about 20
or 30 minutes,
they start walking up the embankment on the side
of the bridge...
[Nick] And all of a sudden, we seen a couple
of heads popping up coming from underneath the bridge,
and they were carrying a body bag.
Yeah.
The whole time I'm standing there thinking
what the fuck did Terrie Guillory come
to my house looking for Loretta for?
Bam, here's a body.
Why did Terrie Guillory know this
before anybody said anything to-- you know,
about Loretta being missing-- no one was worried.
I mean, uh...
It would hurt, uh... [sighs]
It hurts my heart if-if he is involved,
which, I mean, it's-it's hard to point away from it.
It's hard to say he's not.
♪ quiet, tense music ♪
♪♪♪
Crystal babysat for Terrie.
I believed she was a babysitter.
But I believe there was more to it than that.
Yes, I believe Terrie Guillory slept with Crystal Benoit.
I sure do.
♪ somber music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno--
victim number six-- was a latecomer
to the world of...
South Jennings sex work and drugs.
But she fell in right with the other women
in their social networks.
In the weeks before Crystal was killed,
her connections to Frankie Richard
and his family only deepened.
She partied with Frankie's brother,
Billy, and the Richard home
on McKinley Street became a kind of
part-time residence for her.
On the day of her murder, Crystal walked
to the Phillips 66 gas station,
and made a phone call to Terrie Guillory.
It is unclear
what the content of that call is.
Numerous witnesses have said
that soon after Crystal made the call to Terrie,
she got into a white truck
with a group of men connected to Frankie Richard,
who were known as Frankie Richard's hands-on men.
"Hands-on men" means
pretty much what it implies,
meaning that these are the men
who will actually harm people.
They will have their hands on a victim.
That is the last time that she was likely seen alive.
Two weeks later, Crystal's body
was found by hunters
in a wooded area off of Lacour Road.
And her body was heavily decomposed.
I was informed by Crystal's family
that Terrie Guillory showed up to the Benoit family home
and said that "Crystal is dead,
but I didn't kill her."
That was, apparently, an unprompted remark.
Nobody asked Terrie, "Did you kill Crystal?"
Nobody accused Terrie of killing Crystal.
It seemingly didn't come up at all.
Terrie simply said, "I didn't kill Crystal."
♪ ominous music ♪
♪♪♪
[Sarah] When I got wind of all this,
I called Terrie Guillory.
Terrie Guillory said that he seen one of the tattoos
on her back, that he knew it was her.
From the conditions I heard they found her body in
after they found her,
there was no way he-he could have saw a tattoo.
There was nothing there.
The hunters didn't even know it was a body
until they seen the skull.
They thought it was a dead coyote.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] Just like almost all of
these other cases, there was not a lot
of physical evidence, but there was
one witness
that came forward.
Russell Carrier
was a southwest Louisiana resident.
His sister, Barb Ann, was a kind of motherly figure
to many of the Jeff Davis 8.
Right around the time that Crystal was murdered,
Russell was out in the Lacour Road area.
He was addicted to crack cocaine,
and he would go into the very dense and wooded
and rural area around Lacour Road
to do drugs.
[Barb Ann] My brother was riding
on the back road, smoking crack,
when he came upon three black guys
exiting the wooded area where
Crystal's body was found.
[Ethan] The three men that
Russell said he observed
leaving the wooded area
where Crystal's body had been dumped were
Frankie Richard's hands-on men.
Russell Carrier knew these men directly
from the drug world in South Jennings.
He then told his family about this,
and he, according to his family, reported
seeing these three men coming out of the woods,
where Crystal's body had been dumped,
to the Jeff Davis Parish D.A.'s office.
[Cormier] We received information that
Mr. Carrier had information.
Now, I can't get into, you know, how much of that was verified
in what-what we had.
I know what was-was received, and what was used
through the investigation.
I can't-- I don't know what else might have been out there
that somebody said or didn't say.
[Hannah] October 10,
2010, my brother came banging on the door.
He said, "You need to come with me,
and you need to come with me now."
They found Uncle Russell dead.
♪ dramatic music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] Russell was struck by a train
in Jennings.
The family was told
that Russell simply laid down
for an unknown reason, and was struck
-by this train. -[Cormier] His death
has not been ruled a homicide.
I don't have any information that he was killed
by an individual.
The-the police report information
that-that had part of our investigation is that
he was struck by a train
while laying on the railroad tracks.
♪♪♪
[Barb Ann] The police said Russell committed suicide.
Fuck the police.
That was not in him.
My brother Russell did not lay down on the railroad track
and let a fucking train run over him.
Someone beat my brother to death and put him on the tracks
for the train to run over him
to hide what truly happened.
The cops, when I talked to them years later--
the case is still open-- [sniffles]
they're full of fucking shit.
[siren wailing in distance]
♪ suspenseful music ♪
♪♪♪
[Ethan] After Crystal's homicide,
there were now
six victims
with deep connections to Frankie Richard.
And many of them with Terrie Guillory.
The fact that the names
of Terrie Guillory and Frankie Richard
hover around these cases
complicates...
this sprawling and still open murder case.
In 2009,
a number of people claimed to have observed,
firsthand, Terrie Guillory and his ex-wife,
Paula,
socializing with Frankie
at the Richard family home on McKinley Street.
[Frankie] I'd been knowing Terrie Guillory
all his life.
I always felt like
he was somewhat...
...a friend.
Not the type of friend
that I would go...
...beat somebody up with,
or go rob somebody with.
But anytime Terry Guillory
came to our house,
where I was,
it was to conduct police business.
[Jessica] I've caught Paula's car
over there numerous times during the day,
at Frankie Richard's mom's house.
What'd she be over there for period,
unless he's working for you?
Or he's working for your husband.
Or you're buying coke. What you doing?
There's no reason for you to be over there.
[Ethan] Was Terrie Guillory ever
in-involved in the drugs or prostitution trade,
to your knowledge?
[Ethan] I do know that, yeah.
[Ethan] He brought you into law enforcement?
[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.
[Ethan] When the task force
was created,
there was an initial burst of optimism.
But the hope that the alleged relationships
that Terrie Guillory had with Frankie Richard
and the women of the Jeff Davis 8
would be investigated deeply were dashed when
Terrie's ex-wife, Paula Guillory,
landed a prominent place
on the task force.
There were eight dead women,
no justice for any of those women.
And investigations into Frankie unraveling
due to law enforcement misconduct.
It forces you to ask,
what was Frankie's relationship
with law enforcement?
Two witnesses who went to the task force
with information about Frankie Richard,
and with information about the Jeff Davis 8 homicides,
came away from that meeting and said they were told
by the task force,
"Don't worry about Frankie Richard.
Frankie Richard works for us."
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