The Bayou Strangler

The true story of Louisiana serial killer Ronald Dominique’s ten-year murder spree, the men he slayed, and the detectives who hunted him down. In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New Orleans. The victims—many of them transient street hustlers—had been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the killer’s identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast Louisiana’s gay community rattled and authorities desperate for a break in the case. Then, Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task force partners, indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer. In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes? With direct access to the investigation, Dominique’s confession, and all of the killer’s body dump sites in throughout the state, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer), Rosen provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his victims.

Soon to be a Showtime documentary, Murder in the Bayou is a New York Times bestselling chronicle of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Southern parish that is “part murder case, part corruption exposé, and part Louisiana noir” (New York magazine). Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each woman’s final hours delivering a true crime tale that is “mesmerizing” (Rolling Stone) and “explosive” (Huffington Post). “Brown is a man on a mission...he gives the victims more respectful attention than they probably got in real life” (The New York Times). “A must-read for true-crime fans” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), with a new afterword, Murder in the Bayou is the story of an American town buckling under the dark forces of poverty, race, and class division—and a lightning rod for justice for the daughters it lost.

“Rigor mortis had set in by the time police arrived,” Special Prosecutor Tony Clayton told the jury, watching their eyes as they viewed the photograph of the bloodied arm of Geralyn Barr DeSoto. Geralyn’s clenched fist, frozen in death away from her body, held her secret. “Geralyn was trying to tell us something. She was telling us how hard she fought. She was telling us who her killer is. ‘Right here,’ she said. ‘Right here I have the killer. Just open my hand. Just open my hand, and you’ll know who did it to me.’” Two months later: “Charlotte Murray Pace fought from one room of that apartment to the other,” Prosecutor John Sinquefield told jurors as they blinked tears away. “She clawed, she hit, she fought. As her young, strong heart pumped its last blood out of the holes he cut out of her, she fought. And in the fight, he took her life, her body. But he could not take her honor. She preserved her honor by the way she lived and the way she died. That fight is not over, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Charlotte Murray Pace has brought her fight to you.” These crimes are vividly depicted in this first comprehensive book about Derrick Todd Lee. I’ve Been Watching You—The South Louisiana Serial Killer dramatically tells the story of Lee’s life and follows the timeline of his reign of terror over South Louisiana. Readers will become intimately acquainted with the seven victims who have been linked to Lee by DNA, along with the frustrated investigators who could not catch this diabolical killer. This recounting also details the murders of ten other women who were not connected by DNA, but whom these authors believe should be included on the list of Lee’s victims due to strong circumstantial evidence. There are many unanswered questions regarding these series of killings. How did Lee find his victims, and why did he choose them? Why didn’t the Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force believe he was the killer when his name was brought repeatedly to its attention? What evil possessed him to rape and murder so many women? All of these questions are answered as I’ve Been Watching You journeys for more than a decade through the small towns and swamps of South Louisiana to create a graphic accounting of Lee’s vicious rapes and homicides. I’ve Been Watching You vividly paints the portrait of this monster and the beautiful women who died as a result of his twisted compulsion to kill.

The inside story of an upstate New York serial killer who abducted, raped, and murdered women and hid their bodies in his home. In the late 1990s in Poughkeepsie, New York, prostitutes began to go missing off the streets of the old Hudson River town. Due to the women’s nomadic lifestyles, which many people condemned, few in the town noticed they were gone besides their families and Lieutenant Bill Siegrist, who suspected that a serial killer was behind the disappearances. Local prostitutes described a strange man lurking around, leading Siegrist to Kendall Francois, an overweight, slovenly middle school hall monitor nicknamed Stinky. Police brought in Francois for a lie detector test, which he passed, and they were forced to release him. Area women continued to disappear. In a shocking twist of fate, Francois was finally arrested when a woman he had raped managed to escape from his house and ran into a roadblock set up by Siegrist. She led the police back to Francois’s home, and the hall monitor soon gave a full confession and cut a deal with the prosecution. By then, cops in Tyvek suits had already found eight bodies concealed in the attic and crawl space of Francois’s house of horrors. To this day, one victim is still missing. From the author of numerous true crime books, including Lobster Boy and Deacon of Death, this is the frightening story of a brutal murderer whose neighbors never suspected what was going on behind his front door.

Baptist deacon, family man, pillar of his Florida community . . . and serial killer of prostitutes: chilling true crime from the author of Lobster Boy. By day, Sam Smithers was the deacon of his Baptist church in Plant City, Florida, a respected neighbor to many, and a devoted husband and father. But after the sun set, he became something else: a violent attacker—and killer—of prostitutes. Smithers’s twisted double life came to light when a local woman who had hired him to take care of her property found him in her garage, cleaning an ax—and then discovered a puddle of blood. Through exclusive interviews with Smithers’s wife, who described her spouse as nothing but a doting husband and father, author Fred Rosen learned why this man of God, raised in an intensely religious Tennessee home, was the last person anyone would suspect of committing these savage crimes. Rosen reveals the details behind the deaths of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach after Smithers picked them up in Tampa—and the fate of a man who seemed holier than thou, but was actually guilty as sin.

We could swear some people are incapable of murdering another human being. Serial killer Ronald Dominique was also known as the Bayou killer was such a man. With an exterior that seems almost normal and some would say pitiful, this serial murderer was on a mission, not one anyone could have ever imagined... Some killers are truly surprising to find. Ronald J. Dominique is one such killer. Read this book to find out about how he came to be one of the most terrible people to walk on this planet. They say that the perpetrators of the very worst of deeds are often the people you

Faulkner County native Red Hall was a serial killer who confessed to murdering at least twenty-four people. Most of his victims were motorists who picked him up as he hitchhiked around the United States. In the closing months of World War II, he beat his wife to death and went on a killing spree across the state. His signature smile lured his victims to their doom, and even after his capture, he maintained a friendly manner, being described by one lawman as "a pleasant conversationalist." Author Janie Nesbitt Jones chronicles his life for the first time and explores reasons why he became Arkansas's Hitchhike Killer.

Terror stalks the streets of Bayou Breaux, Louisiana. A suspected murderer is free on a technicality, and the cop accused of planting evidence against him is ordered off the case. But Detective Nick Fourcade refuses to walk away. He’s stepped over the line before. This case threatens to push him over the edge. He’s not the only one. Deputy Annie Broussard found the woman’s mutilated body. She still hears the phantom echoes of dying screams. She wants justice. But pursuing the investigation will mean forming an alliance with a man she doesn’t trust and making enemies of the men she works with. It will mean being drawn into the confidence of a killer. For Annie Broussard, finding justice will mean risking everything—including her life. The search for the truth has begun—one that will lead down a twisted trail through the steamy bayous of Louisiana, and deep into the darkest reaches of the human heart.

A New York Times Bestseller & the Basis for the Hit Showtime Docuseries Murder in the Bayou is a New York Times bestselling chronicle of a high-stakes investigation into the murders of eight women in a troubled Southern parish that is “part murder case, part corruption exposé, and part Louisiana noir” (New York magazine). Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in Jennings, Louisiana, a bayou town of 10,000 in the Jefferson Davis parish. The women came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8, and local law enforcement officials were quick to pursue a serial killer theory, stirring a wave of panic across Jennings’ class-divided neighborhoods. The Jeff Davis 8 had been among society’s most vulnerable—impoverished, abused, and mired with mental illness. They engaged in sex work as a means of survival. And their underworld activity frequently occurred at a decrepit motel called the Boudreaux Inn. As the cases went unsolved, the community began to look inward. Rumors of police corruption and evidence tampering, of collusion between street and shield, cast the serial killer theory into doubt. But what was really going on in the humid rooms of the Boudreaux Inn? Why were crimes going unsolved and police officers being indicted? What had the eight women known? And could anything be done do stop the bloodshed? Mixing muckraking research and immersive journalism over the course of a five-year investigation, Ethan Brown reviewed thousands of pages of previously unseen homicide files to posit what happened during each woman’s final hours delivering a true crime tale that is “mesmerizing” (Rolling Stone) and “explosive” (Huffington Post). “Brown is a man on a mission...he gives the victims more respectful attention than they probably got in real life” (The New York Times). “A must-read for true-crime fans” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), with a new afterword, Murder in the Bayou is the story of an American town buckling under the dark forces of poverty, race, and class division—and a lightning rod for justice for the daughters it lost.

Features a chronicle of America's only known national parks serial killer, Gary Michael Hilton. This title explores the crimes with co-operation from the victim families and brings readers into what makes a serial killer through interviews with those who know him.