Death Visits Jeff Davis Parish

10/4/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Loretta Lynn Chaisson Lewis was 28 years old when she was found dead on May 20, 2005. The scene was a canal in rural Jefferson Davis parish in Louisiana. This marked the beginning of a 4-year killing spree that police believed was the work of a "common offender".

An FBI poster with the pictures of the victims

Necole Jean Guillory was found on August, 2009 near Interstate 10. She was the last of eight murder victims. What prompted the onset of the killings, as well as why they ended can only be known with the identity of the killer.

Jennings has a population of approximately 10,000 persons, which leads one to believe someone out there knows something. Police still receive tips about the case, but none have resulted in new evidence or suspects. The name of the victims are: Loretta Lewis, Ernestine Daniels Patterson, Kristen Gary Lopez, Whitnei Dubois, Laconia “Muggy” Brown, Crystal Benoit Zeno, Brittney Gary and Necole Guillory.

There was a thread of commonality between these women. They knew each other, or in some cases were related. Kristen Gary Lopez and Brittney Gary were cousins. They shared a common background of poverty, mental illness, drug abuse and prostitution. They also hung out in the south side of Jennings, known for its high crime rate. According to the book, Murder in the Bayou, "all eight of the victims snitched for local law enforcement about the Jennings drug trade."

A common meeting point was the Boudreaux Inn, where drug deals were carried out and prostitutes would meet their clients. It's closed and shuttered now.

David Deshotel a.k.a. Bowlegs, a 29-year-old drug dealer dated two of the victims. In April, 2011 he was shot in the leg, and left with a limp. Carvell O'Brien of Jennings was booked with attempted second-degree murder for this shooting. Carvell died in 2019 at the age of 36.

Boudreaux Inn, Louisiana

Three months after Deshotel was shot, author and private investigator Ethan Brown interviewed him in the evening, and the next morning he found out the man was shot multiple times in the upper body. If he was shocked by this unexpected turn of events, it grew when he arrived at the crime scene and found people wandering in and out of the house.

The police had not secured the scene, and it was obvious any type of evidence that could have been recovered was lost. He wrote that later he learned this was the norm for investigations in Jennings. With more research he came across allegations that officers had sex with some of the victims. It also appeared evidence was tampered with. A truck where one of the victims had her throat slashed, disappeared from the parish entirely. A sergeant and prison nurse who voiced their concerns, found themselves without a job.

Brown wrote, “that most if not all of the Jeff Davis 8…witnessed other murders. Indeed, women who provided information on the first few cases wound up victims themselves.” They were killed in different ways. Some were asphyxiated and two had their throats slashed. For the most part, the bodies were found in isolated, rural areas, often near large ditches or drainage canals, in rural Jefferson Davis Parish. Guillory’s body was in a more visible area in neighboring Acadia Parish.

Frankie Richard and Hannah Conner c.2007

In 2014, Ethan Brown published his book. Jefferson Davis parish sheriff, Ivy Woods made a post on the department's website pointing out that it was mostly fiction because it insinuated corruption in the sheriff's office. Many of Brown's contacts in Jennings also turned on him, and one who was connected to the case told him, "I’ve already heard more than once that you’ll never get that book out. You can take that however you want to."

From then on, Brown decided it was prudent to interview witnesses outside the parish, and he refused to get out of his car. Brown spent several years investigating the murders and the socioeconomic factors that divided the town.

In 2019, Frankie Richard, a former strip club owner, pimp and drug dealer who was connected to the eight murdered women was arrested on drug charges, and for soliciting prostitution. He died on March 22, 2020 age 64. Along with his niece Hannah Conner, they were considered persons of interest in the murder case as far back as 2007.

In 2008, an investigation comprised of 14 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies attempted to solve the crime, however their premise was they were looking for a serial killer.

Ultimately based on his interviews and investigations, Brown wrote that there are multiple suspects in the case, which would disprove the theory the women were the victim of a serial killer. Family members of the victims suspect the police are actually responsible for the deaths.

Chances are these murders are doomed to remain cold cases, unless perhaps advanced DNA analysis can point to one or more possible suspects.

Between 2017 and 2019, three men were murdered in Port Allen, which is about 90 miles from Jennings. The victims were Fatrell Queen (1979-2017), Dedrick Jackson (d.2019) and Larry Profit (d.2019).

Frankie Richard said shortly before his death in 2020:

No serial killer got them young girls in Jennings. Them people responsible kill snitches up and down I-10. In Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, Hammond, just all over, but killing black guys don’t put you on national news unless you’re a cop. In all of these communities, people are afraid to get involved. Somebody knows something about these killings. They are either scared of the cartel – scared of being killed themselves – or somebody’s paying them off.

Police respond to a murder scene in Port Allen, Louisiana c.2022

Tara Snearl, Fatrell Queen's mother questioned the investigation into her son's murder. The police didn't find his body for several hours, until it was finally located inside a closet. When she asked them about the delay, they said since he was hidden it took them a while. She pointed out the closet where his body was found didn't have any doors.

Despite telling her there was no sign of forced entry, she said both front and rear doors were damaged when she arrived at the property. She didn't see any effort to conduct an investigation, as if they knew who had committed the crime. They didn't question any of her son's family or friends, and left behind his bloody clothes and a shell casing in the closet. To her knowledge they never checked security camera footage from any of the business places nearby.

Tara Snearl said she didn't believe rumors he acted as a confidential informant for a federal drug task force.

In January, 2019 Dedrick Jackson was shot in front of his home. In November, 2019, Larry Profit, 62, a community activist asked attendees at a Port Allen City Council meeting if the murders of Jackson or Queen had been solved by Chief Brown.

Profit's body was found the following morning, lying on the road where Jackson had died. His neighbors heard gunshots, but no one called 911.

In the spring of 2020, police arrested four, young, black men and charged them with first-degree murder in the shooting of Dedrick Jackson. They were released two months later due to the grand jury citing a lack of evidence in the case.

Port Allen has a population of almost 5,000 persons. The citizens of Port Allen are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town, and the per capita income in 2022 was $27, 621. The crime rate in Port Allen is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, with 27 crimes per one thousand.