The Bayou Strangler

by Fred Rosen

  “Was it the same place where you brought the other three you just told us about? Yes or no?” Thornton asked.

  “Yes,” Dominique answered.

  He went on to describe how he choked Lirette with an extension cord. Then he put his clothes back on.

  “I brought him by the air base and dropped him off.”

  Thornton looked down at the cassette.

  “Okay, we’re gonna take a short break. Stop the tape.”

  When he said short break, Thornton meant it. He turned the tape over and then turned the recorder back on.

  It was important to document Dominique’s MO again for the indictment. They needed to give the parish district attorney everything possible to gain a conviction.

  “Do they ever ask for money in advance?”

  “I usually put it on the side. Like on the bed thing where they could see it. After we finish fooling around, he told me he wanted three hundred bucks and I told him I didn’t have that much, that all I had was thirty dollars.”

  “Is he still tied at this point?” asked Bergeron.

  “Yes, ma’am. He told me that he was gonna go to the cops.”

  So he had no choice but to strangle him and get rid of the body.

  “I just panicked,” Dominique confessed. “I was scared that they wouldn’t believe my story and they’d bring me to jail.”

  “When they’re tied up and you’re having sex with them, before they even say something you don’t like, do they ever tell you, ‘Hey, untie me?’”

  “No, ’cause they wanna hurry up and get it over with so they can get their money.”

  “Alright, when he tells you that he’s gonna go to the police, can he see you?” Thornton asked, regarding Lirette.

  “No, he’s face down. I just hold the extension cord and put it around his neck.”

  Bergeron noted it was the second time an extension cord was mentioned as a method of execution.

  “Do you wrap it all the way around, Ronald?”

  “I just pull it around,” Dominique said simply.

  “Everything you’re stating here has been truthful and to the best of your knowledge?”

  “Yes.”

  And the recorder was turned off.

  They could see he was hungry. Dominique had something to eat. They allowed him some time to rest and then, once again, they brought him into the interview room and turned the tape on. It was still just Thornton and Bergeron; their superiors and the other detectives who were part of the task force were watching through the two-way glass, hearing everything thanks to a microphone secreted in the interview room.

  They had established their rapport; had anyone else come in, there was a good chance Dominique would clam up. Thornton continued.

  “Okay, Ronald, you are aware we’ve been talking to you about some incidents involving your encounters with black male subjects that you’ve agreed to talk about, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, tell us a little bit about the guy at the fence.”

  “I just remember we fooled around. Like the rest of them, he was gonna call the police and then after I strangled him, I dropped him off.”

  “Where?”

  “The fence on LA 7.”

  “Do you remember if he had clothes on or not?” asked Bergeron.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What kind of fence was it?”

  “I think it was a barbed wire fence. They had a lot of barbed wire there.”

  “Now, Ronald, I know you’re trying hard, but is there something in your mind that stands out about him?” Thornton asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Once again, Dominique was getting tired and less cooperative. This looked like the time to take a real break.

  “Can you think of anything else, Ronald?”

  “No, sir.”

  The tape was turned off at 11:29 p.m.

  That night, while Dominique slept in his cell, Thornton and Bergeron had a conversation with Terrebonne Parish’s district attorney.

  Dominique had talked a lot, enough to up his indictment from two murders to all eight of the men from Terrebonne Parish. That left another fifteen that they knew he was also responsible for killing. Still, the detectives were excited and relieved that their serial killer had confessed.

  No longer would Ronald J. Dominique be able to roam the bayous searching for victims to strangle. Thornton and Bergeron had nailed him good! But now they needed to be looking forward, toward indictment and prosecution. They did, conferring with Terrebonne Parish district attorney Mark Rhodes. He would be prosecuting Dominique.

  They talked long into the night about how to proceed. After all these years of investigating him and not knowing who he was, they finally had their serial killer behind bars and he wasn’t going anyplace but court.

  They knew that if the state sought the death penalty against Dominique, he would have no incentive to continue cooperating. They wanted to clear all twenty-three murders and give much-needed closure to the victims’ families. A joint decision was reached to make a deal with Dominique. It was simple.

  The next day, he was to lead them to all twenty-three dump sites.

  If he would do that, and plead guilty to eight of the murders, they would give him a life sentence. They couldn’t make all the cases airtight, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to bring closure to the families of the deceased while punishing Dominique. For him, it was a much better deal than going to Louisiana’s death chamber. Damn good deal!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Cockeyed Caravan

  It didn’t take long for Dominique to agree to the deal. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he wanted to live. Patti Labelle impersonation aside, the guy did tend to be a little dramatic about wanting to cash it all in.

  The next morning began one of the strangest road trips in American criminal history. About half a dozen unmarked police cars containing detectives and forensic specialists began the somber ride through the bayou.

  “We organized a caravan,” said Thornton. “We had Dominique take us to the places where he dumped the bodies. He remembered the locations. We wanted him to take us and not the other way around.”

  With good reason. They didn’t want a smart defense lawyer saying they had put words in the suspect’s mouth, or thoughts in his head, for that matter; that they set him up in some way to admit guilt to murders he didn’t actually commit. They had him for all twenty-three—if things went right. Twenty-three individuals who were fathers, brothers, uncles; twenty-three men whose families were still coping with their loved ones’ deaths.

  If Dominique were a nineteenth-century gunslinger, he would have twenty-three notches on his gun.

  All day on December 2, 2006, from morning till night, the cockeyed caravan wound its way silently through the Southern Louisiana parishes to all twenty-three dump sites. Dominique had a new role; he was their tour guide through hell and back. Thornton and Bergeron were tired from the questioning, but anxious to make the cases. And now they were trying once more to speak for the dead.

  Driving through the parishes, Dominique pointed out the dump sites from the car. Sometimes, they would take the handcuffed killer out of the car, and have him point something out or approach a dump site. Then he would lumber forward. At no time did he show any remorse, absolutely no emotion about what he had done. He appeared to be the very definition of a sociopath.

  The detectives knew Dominique was telling the truth about murdering all twenty-three men because only the killer would have such exact knowledge of the dump sites, where evidence of the murders had been collected by the forensic teams. Dominique didn’t talk much; he would just point out the places, and the police and techies would examine them.

  By the end of the day, they had gone to all twenty-three b
ody-dump sites. That is a lot of grief. Dominique’s memories echoed inside Thornton’s own head. He had seen it from the other side: he had felt the cop’s frustration at identifying the victims soon after they were murdered. Now that he was finally bringing them justice, Thornton felt an intense sense of relief.

  The detectives still had a tremendous amount of work to do. When the caravan arrived back at the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, Thornton and Bergeron hustled the handcuffed, confessed killer back into the interview room. Before they went in, they agreed that it was time to clear up a few details that had been bothering both of them. To get Dominique to open up this time, they would give him his say on things and in the process, get what they wanted.

  Going inside the room, the detectives sat down, once again across from Dominique, who sat in his chair, hands still cuffed. He showed no expression, except perhaps for indifference. Thornton turned on the tape recorder.

  “Well, Ronald, what else do you wanna talk about?”

  Now that is a great opening line.

  “I’m not a bad person,” Dominique insisted. “When I was younger, I was molested twice. I’ve been teased by family members and people that was supposed to be friends. I was accused by two people of raping them and it wasn’t true. I had to serve time in jail. I got beat up when I was there, for no reason, by a person that killed somebody.

  “I proved I was innocent and I got out. I was angry. I did something to some of the guys and then I got raped by a guy and I protected myself and I killed him and then another one tried to rape me and stab me and I killed him. I took all the anger out on the rest of the guys and I shouldn’t have took it out on them. I know I took them from their family and hurt their family.”

  Sounded good, but Thornton and Bergeron knew better. The guy killed twenty-three individuals deliberately and he wasn’t a bad person? Any pain he felt was learned. That’s what sociopaths do: they learn emotions; they don’t feel them.

  “That I should’ve seeked help, but I didn’t know how and I’m very sorry.”

  The detectives didn’t have to say what was on their mind. “Sorry” isn’t going to bring your victims back. Instead, Thornton asked him if there was anything else he wanted to add, maybe talk a little bit more about his anger? Maybe he could tell the detectives what made him so angry that he had to kill continuously?

  It wasn’t necessarily important for the indictment, but for a detective it was invaluable information on what made a killer go way over the top. This was a unique opportunity to understand what motivated the worst serial killer of the new millennium to go out trolling for other human beings to murder.

  “People call me a fag, queer, and all kinds of stuff that’s not called for,” said Dominique firmly.

  “And you’re forty-two years old, right?” Bergeron asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, when all this was going on, who would call you those words?”

  “Nephews, friends.”

  “Your family?” Bergeron said.

  “My family, some of them,” Dominique answered readily.

  Bergeron was doing an absolutely brilliant job building rapport with the serial killer.

  “And what is your sexual preference?”

  “First, I tried to get married,” he answered. “They teased me and that didn’t work. So I couldn’t bring nobody home ’cause I was scared they’d tell them, ‘What are you doing with a queer?’ Then after that, they called me queer and a fag.”

  “When did they start picking on you?” asked Bergeron.

  “It seems like it’s been forever.”

  “Did they pick on you when you were younger?”

  “My little brother used to call me things. He used to do things and my mama always took up for him and blamed me.”

  “When you were younger, did your family know you were gay?” asked Thornton.

  “I don’t remember exactly when, but probably before I was twenty.”

  “And it was a rough time in jail?” chimed in Bergeron.

  “Yes.”

  He said that he had been raped in prison, that he was never going back.

  “When you got out, is that when all this other stuff started?” Bergeron asked.

  “Yes, ’cause I was angry, because I didn’t do it and I was put in jail and treated bad and was beaten,” Dominique continued, his voice breaking.

  “And you were still being picked on when you were doing this?” Thornton said, referring to the murders.

  “Yes, by family members.”

  “People you lived with?”

  “No. There’s only one sister I lived with. She don’t. But her son picks on me, her daughter’s husband picks on me, and her son’s friends call me all kind of things.”

  “You obviously told them to stop,” said Thornton sympathe­tically.

  “It don’t help.”

  Thornton didn’t speculate that Dominique’s persecution complex was part of what propelled him to kill. Neither did Bergeron. That wasn’t their job. Their job was to get the entire truth, and get their conviction. Dominique claimed the killings were justified, on the pretense that the victims would report him to the police. They knew that wasn’t true.

  “You indicated earlier that a lot of these men, or all of them, you picked them up and took them back to your trailer. They wanted you or they were gonna have sex with you. They were gonna go to the police. They wanted more money. That’s not totally true, is it?” Thornton demanded.

  “Yes.”

  The cops had it right; Dominique had been lying all along.

  “Some of them were straight and some of them wasn’t,” Dominique continued. “Some of them I picked up by showing them a picture of a girl. I asked them if they wanted to fool around with the girl. I told them that the girl had got hurt, raped, and they had to be tied up before she comes over. But it wasn’t true.”

  “How many guys did you use that picture on that got into the truck with you?” Bergeron asked.

  “I’ll say six or seven.”

  Translation: six or seven of his victims were straight.

  “It didn’t matter to you whether they were straight or not?” Thornton said.

  “No, I was just mad. I just took it out and I had no reason.”

  “And they would think they would get the girl if you tied them up?”

  “Yes. After they was tied, I told them it wasn’t true, it was me.”

  Thornton caught Bergeron’s eye and they both thought the same thing. When Dominique told the victims the truth, they knew they were in trouble.

  “Either they thought they was gonna have sex with a woman for money, or with me for money.”

  “But in essence, all of them got what type of sex?” said Thornton.

  “Raped,” Dominique finally admitted.

  “Against their will?” Bergeron asserted.

  “Yes.”

  “And then what’d they get?” Thornton asked.

  “Strangled,” said Dominique simply.

  Bergeron thought about it. Some of the victims must have shouted, or at least tried to, and Dominique would have stopped it in some way. She asked the killer if anything was shoved in the victims’ mouths to keep them quiet.

  “A towel if they hollered.”

  That would explain how any of the victims he murdered at his sister’s house who did try to scream out could not be heard. Dominique had been very, very smart.

  “Are you glad it’s stopping?” Thornton wondered out loud.

  “Yes,” Dominique answered. “Just as soon as we got to the camper, they took off their clothes and I start taking mine off and things just happened.”

  If they didn’t want to be tied up, he’d just let them go. He was not crazy. He knew that if they were not immobilized, he could not kill them without a struggle. The last
thing he wanted was for a potential victim to run out of the trailer naked and call the cops. After his encounter with parolee John Banning, who got away, Banning’s parole officer had talked to him at Bergeron and Thornton’s request, which had finally led to identifying Dominique as the serial killer.

  “What else do you have to say, Ronald?” said Thornton.

  “I just want everybody to forgive me. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to.”

  He sounded like he meant it. But even if he was capable of remorse, it was much too late.

  “Okay, Ronald, everything you stated here is truthful to the best of your knowledge?” Thornton added.

  “Yes.”

  “This statement is now ended. It’s December 3, 2006. It’s 2:53 a.m. End of statement,” said Thornton, and Bergeron turned the tape recorder off.

  EPILOGUE

  Terrebonne Parish, September 24, 2008

  Assistant District Attorney Mark Rhodes of Terrebonne Parish had drawn up Ronald J. Dominique’s case. Richard Goorley of the Capital Assistance Center of Louisiana represented Dominique. Within two years of his arrest—which is not a lot of time in a capital murder case, let alone one involving twenty-three victims in numerous parishes—they made a deal.

  The idea was to get Dominique off the streets. And his statement wasn’t enough to convict him on twenty-three counts of murder without forensics to back up each one.

  Now, lots of things can happen to serial killers who avoid the death chamber and get life instead. Albert DeSalvo, a.k.a. the Boston Strangler, was murdered by another inmate when he was in general population. Same thing happened to Jeffrey Dahmer. So who’s to say what prisoners at Angola would do to Dominique once they got a hold of him?

  Rhodes and Goorley made their deal: Ronald J. Dominique would plead guilty to the eight counts of murder on which the state figured they had him over the proverbial barrel. Rhodes told all the victims’ families that while he was confident he could get a guilty verdict on all eight counts, he was equally confident it would be tied up in appeals for twelve or fifteen years or more if they charged him with all twenty-three murders.