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The Jeff Davis 8 Police Coverup · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. OK, it is May 20th, 2005 in Jennings, Louisiana.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It is one of those suffocating southern afternoons. The humidity
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: is so oppressive. It literally feels heavy in your lungs,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you know, just sticking your shirt to your back before
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you even step outside.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That classic Louisiana heat.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So a local fisherman named Jerry Jackson is standing
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: on a bridge just looking for a quiet afternoon on
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the water. He's staring down into the murky water of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a nearby canal, and he spots something pale just kind
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of churning below the surface. At first, his brain tries
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to normalize it. There had been this weird local news
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: story about mannequins being stolen from shop windows, so he
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: just assumes that a discarded piece of plastic bobbing in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the current.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a completely standard psychological defense mechanism. When
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: you're confronted with something deeply traumatic or just out of place,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: our brain's desperately try to rationalize the abnormal into something mundane,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: just to protect us from the shock, you know?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that rationalization shatters completely just a few moments
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: later for him. Because as Jerry looks closer, this visceral,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: unmistakable detail just forces him to face reality.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: What does he see?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: He sees a massive, dark swarm of buzzing flies hovering
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: directly above the shape in the water.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Plastic doesn't attract flies. So the horrifying realization sets in, it,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: not a mannequin, it is the decomposing body of 28-year-old
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Loretta Chasson.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: That is just, that's a horrific way to find someone.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It really is. And when Jerry Jackson made that discovery,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: he inadvertently kicked off one of the darkest, most twisted
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: mysteries in modern American history. Because over the next four years,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: seven more women would be found dead in this exact
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: same small Louisiana parish.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Seven more.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So today our deep dive is tearing through a
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: massive stack of source materials. You know, we've got case files,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: forensic notes, and actual whistleblower testimony regarding the tragedy that
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: became known as the Jeff Davis 8.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: And let me tell you, the deeper we dig into
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: these documents, the more it looks like the real monsters
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: weren't just lurking in the swamps.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So true. But to get into this, we really need
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to set the scene for you listening at home. What
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: is it about this specific town that matters so much?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Right. So to truly understand what happened to these eight women,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: You have to first understand the geography. Jennings isn't just
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a quiet rural town. Geography is basically a critical character
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: in this narrative.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Well, Jennings sits squarely on the Interstate 10 corridor, right
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: in that stretch between Houston and New Orleans.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: OK. Yeah. I always hear about the I-10 corridor in
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: true crime cases. But how does that actually shape the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: environment of a small town? Like, why does a highway
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: matter so much to a murder investigation?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: It matters because I-10 is like one of the most
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: prominent arteries for drug and human trafficking in the entire
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: United States.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: When you have an interstate physically bisecting a rural, economically
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: depressed area, that highway acts like a pipeline. Millions of
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: dollars in illicit transit are just constantly moving through.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So it brings in a lot of outside crime.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Cartels and syndicates, they need way stations, places to
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: stash goods, swap drivers, or lay low outside of major
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: metropolitan jurisdictions.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: That creates a deeply entrenched local underworld. You basically get
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: a shadow economy operating right underneath the local businesses.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And consequently, the relationship between the residents and the local
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: police becomes highly fractured. When the local economy is that
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: thoroughly intertwined with the listed activity, trust in law enforcement
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: drops to practically zero.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So it's essentially a pressure cooker. I mean, everyone in
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: town knows everyone else. Rumors fly faster than actual news.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: But the moment a badge shows up to ask questions,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the entire community just goes completely silent out of pure self-preservation.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And you see that exact dynamic play out immediately with
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Loretta's death. She's pulled from the canal and the coroner
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: rules her cause of death as undetermined.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Undetermined.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she is found in a state of decomposition. The
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: toxicology report shows some drugs in her system. And the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: police just, they just stop. They barely investigate.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: They basically shrug it off as an accidental overdose of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a woman with a troubled past and case closed.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Which is, I mean, that institutional apathy sets a very
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: dangerous precedent. Definitely. When law enforcement signals to an underworld
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: that they simply do not care about a specific demographic
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of victim, they essentially declare an open season.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And less than a month later, the violence escalates. 30-year-old
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Ernestine Patterson is found dead in another murky canal just
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: five miles away from where Loretta was discovered.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Odd.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: But there is no way for the police to brush
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: this one off as an accidental overdose. Ernestine's throat has
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: been violently slashed. It is undeniably a homicide.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And this is where the dynamic of the town actually
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: surprises you. Despite that pressure cooker silence we just talked about,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the sheer brutality of Ernestine's murder actually prompts the community
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: to come forward.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: The silence actually breaks.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: It breaks. Witnesses start pointing fingers at two specific local men,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Byron and Lawrence, and the details these witnesses provide are
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: just staggering.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Let us say.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Lawrence's own wife goes to the police and tells them
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that these two men brought a bloody industrial-sized trash bag
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to her house.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: You're kidding.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: No, and she admits on the record that she literally
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: took a garden hose and washed human blood off her
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: own front porch after they left.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: From an investigative standpoint, you literally couldn't ask for a
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: better roadmap.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, you have a direct witness statement, you have
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a specific physical location where evidence was destroyed, and you
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: even have a secondary location.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the witnesses lead police to an abandoned house where
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the men supposedly left a jagged hunting knife.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: See, that is an incredibly clear path to an arrest.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Wait, I have to stop you there, though, because looking
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: through these timeline notes we have, the mishandling of this
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: evidence is completely baffling. Oh, no.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: What do they do?
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: A witness admits to literally hosing away a bloody crime scene,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and the police just nod and walk away.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: They walked away.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: They wait 16 entire months before they bother to send
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: forensics out to test that porch for DNA.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: 16 months.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: A year and a half of rain and weather on
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: a porch that was already hosed down, and they completely
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: ignore the abandoned house with the hunting knife?
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: That is just.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: The charges against the men are quietly dropped? I mean...
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: How does a police department fail to secure a front
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: porch when the homeowner is confessing to tampering with it?
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: It looks like an unbelievable oversight, but if you look
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: at the statistical data from that specific department at the time,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: it's not an anomaly at all.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: No, it is a reflection of staggering systemic incompetence. At
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: the time of Ernest Dinger's murder, the local authorities in
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: that parish had an abysmal 7% homicide clearance rate.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Wait, 7%?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Seven.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: That is insane.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: To put that into perspective for you, the national average
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: clearance rate for homicides, you know, murders that actually result
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: in charges, is around 60 percent.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So in Jennings, over 90 percent of killers are simply
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: getting away with it.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. And when incompetence operates at that massive
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: of a scale, it breeds absolute terror in the community.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: The locals look at these two dead women in the canals.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: They look at the police doing practically nothing and just
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: dropping charges. And a terrifying conclusion sweeps through the town.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: That a serial killer is hunting them.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And that rumor might have just faded into local legend,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: except the violence began to accelerate. So moving chronologically to 2007,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: two more bodies are discovered, practically back to back. Okay.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: You have Kristen Gary Lopez and Whitney Dubois. Both of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: these women struggled with addiction. Both were involved in sex
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: work to survive. And once again, despite the suspicious circumstances,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: both of their causes of death are officially ruled completely
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: undetermined by the coroner.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Of course they are.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: But as you comb through the investigative files, a glaringly
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: obvious common denominator starts to emerge here.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: This is where we need to introduce a figure named
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Frankie Richard. Yes. He is a notorious, deeply entrenched player
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: in the Jennings underworld. Basically running a lot of the
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: local street level illicit activity. If you draw a string
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: board of these victims, Frankie sits right at the center
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of the web.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: He was one of the very last people seen with Loretta,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: our first victim.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: He was one of the last people seen with Kristen,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the third victim. And he was the absolute last person
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: seen publicly arguing with Whitney, our fourth victim, right before
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: she vanished.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: So let me make sure I'm tracking this for everyone listening.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You have four dead women. Three of them are directly
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: tangentially tied to one notorious underworld figure. Correct. The town
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: is absolutely panicking about a serial killer. So the local sheriff,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Ricky Edwards, decides to hold a press conference to address
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the panic.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And what does he say?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Well, instead of announcing a manhunt, he does something bizarre.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: He tells the public they aren't dealing with a serial killer,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: but rather a serial dumper.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: A serial dumper? Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I cover a lot of cases, and I have never
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: heard that phrase. Is he just making up terminology to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: avoid saying the word serial killer?
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: He is absolutely making it up. And the mechanics behind
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: why he's doing it are deeply cynical.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: This is a classic bureaucratic sleight of hand. By officially
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: classifying the perpetrator as a dumper rather than an active,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: targeted serial murderer... The department can categorize the cases differently
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: in their own internal crime statistics.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: They are manipulating their own abysmal 7% clearance rate by
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: pretending these aren't high-priority homicides.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: That is so messed up.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: It gets worse.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: It introduces intense victim blaming. By calling it dumping, the
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: sheriff is heavily implying that the victims' high-risk lifestyles naturally
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: resulted in their deaths, basically absolving his department of the
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: responsibility to protect them.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: So he's saying it's their own fault.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The underlying message to the public is, you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: these women put themselves in a position to be disposed of.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: So this isn't a failure. of policing.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: But all that actually does is embolden the true perpetrators.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Because it signals to the killers that law enforcement doesn't
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: view these women as human beings worth defending.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: But if you thought the passive incompetence and the victim
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: blaming were bad, we are about to cross a terrifying line.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, we really are.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: We are transitioning straight into active malicious corruption because the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: call wasn't just coming from inside the house. The police
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: were the ones holding the phone.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the evidence room scandal. And honestly,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: this remains one of the most structurally shocking facets of
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: this entire case file.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: OK, let's lay out what happened. A Jennings police sergeant,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a guy apparently trying to actually do the right thing,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: hears chatter from two inmates inside the jail. Right. They
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: tell him that a lead sheriff's investigator who is sitting
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: on the actual murder task force is actively destroying evidence
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: on behalf of Frankie Richard.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And the specifics of the allegation are incredibly bold. The
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: investigator allegedly purchased the exact pickup truck that Kristen, the
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: third victim, was murdered in.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. He buys this potential murder weapon from the suspect's associate.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: personally washes it inside and out, and then flips it
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: for double the profit.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Just unbelievable.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: And the sergeant who hears about this knows his own
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: department is too corrupt to handle it, so he bypasses
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the chain of command completely. He takes this information straight
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: to an outside private investigator and the FBI.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Good for him.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Right. So this corrupt, truck-flipping investigator is dragged before a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: state ethics board. They find him guilty of ethical violations.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: He gets slapped with a $ 10, 000 fine and is finally
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: removed from the murder case.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: But then.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: But then. The department places him in charge of the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: sheriff's evidence room.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: You cannot make this up.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the sergeant, who actually blew the whistle and tried
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: to stop him, he's fired and slapped with criminal charges
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: for malfeasance.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: It's a complete inversion of justice.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: It's like catching a casino dealer, rigging the roulette wheel,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: slapping his wrist, and then promoting him to be the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: head of casino security while you throw the guy who
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: reported him in jail.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: How does a community even process that level of betrayal?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, why would a police investigator take such
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a massive career-ending risk to help a local street thug
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: like Frankie Richard?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: The answer to that lies in the dangerous, often hidden
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: mechanics of confidential informants or CIs. A confidential informant is
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: essentially an unregulated asset for law enforcement. Frankie was incredibly
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: well connected in the local drug trade.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Right. We established that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: So if he was acting as a CI for the police,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: feeding them information that allowed them to make other busts,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: it creates a toxic, symbiotic codependency.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: How does that actually work in practice, though?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Well, when a handler cultivates a high-level CI, they are
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: relying on that person for their own career advancement, their
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: arrest stats, and their intelligence flow.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Handlers will often go to extraordinary lengths to actively cover
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: up their CI's ongoing crimes just to keep them on
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the street.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: But in doing so, they inadvertently create an untouchable monster.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: The CI realizes he can commit any crime, even murder.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: because the police are financially and professionally motivated to clean
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: up his messes and protect him from prosecution.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So the monster realizes he has a get-out-of-jail-free card, and
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the summer of 2008 becomes an absolute bloodbath.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Three more women are found. Laconia Muggy Brown is found
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: with her throat slashed, and her body has been meticulously
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: doused in bleach to destroy any trace of DNA.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Horrific.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Soon after, Crystal Zeno is found completely skeletal in the woods.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And then... 17-year-old Brittany Gary is found asphyxiated.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And as the body count rises, the institutional walls start
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: closing in on the victim's family in very direct, terrifying ways.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: It isn't just apathy anymore. It's intimidation. After Muggie is found,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the local coroner does something extraordinary.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: This detail gave me absolute chills. The coroner secretly contacts
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Muggie's family and warns them. He tells them outright, quote,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the police killed your daughter. And sheriff's deputies are following
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: me right now.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: And you have to understand the credibility here. This isn't
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: just some paranoid local official. This is the exact same
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: coroner who previously blew the whistle on a police shooting
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: cover-up in the same town.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A deputy had claimed self-defense, but this coroner proved
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: forensically that the victim had never even fired a gun.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So he knows exactly how far the department is willing
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: to go to protect its own. Exactly. And those suspicions
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of direct law enforcement involvement are heavily amplified by the
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: rumors swirling around a man named Deputy Danny Berry.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: OK, let's talk about Deputy Danny Berry, because this is
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: where the story descends into pure nightmare territory.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: He works at the local jail. Witnesses state he allegedly
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: spent two days in a motel with 17-year-old Brittany right
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: before she was found dead. Right. But the really dark rumor,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and this is one echoed by several local sex workers
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: in these files, is that this deputy had a literal
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: sex dungeon inside his home with walls entirely lined in
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: thick plastic sheeting.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: That is just terrifying.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Even Frankie Richard, the protected informant, goes on the record
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: publicly accusing Deputy Barry of being the real killer.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: But when the murder task force looks into Barry, they
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: pull him in, interview him for exactly 15 minutes, and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: then just let him go.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: It is a completely performative investigation. They check a box
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: so they can just say they looked into it.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand the logistics here, though. The public
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: is furious. They are rioting enough that the state actually
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: steps in.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: They bring in the FBI and the Louisiana State Police
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to form a multi-agency task force. How do the local
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: cops not just get immediately benched? Why didn't the outside
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: agencies kick the corrupt locals out of the room?
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Because of jurisdictional authority, which was the fatal flaw of
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: this entire endeavor from the start. How so? In the
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: United States, local law enforcement holds primary jurisdiction over crimes
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: committed in their territory unless it crosses state lines or
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: involves specific federal statutes.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Right. OK.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, they brought in state and federal alphabet agencies for resources.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: But legally and structurally, the task force was still overseen
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: by the very same local sheriff's office that was accused
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: of the corruption.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It's like bringing in an independent auditor to investigate corporate fraud,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: but giving the corrupt CEO the legal power to decide
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: which filing cabinets the auditor is allowed to open.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Precisely. When the prime suspects are holding the administrative keys
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: to the investigation, no outside oversight can possibly succeed. Wow.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: The local authorities control the flow of information, they control
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: the physical access to the evidence room, and they control
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: the narrative presented to the FBI.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the absolute tightening of this horrifying web.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: August 2009. The eighth victim is found in the brush,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: 26-year-old Nicole Guillory. Now think back to our very first victim, Loretta,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: from 2005. The night she disappeared, she was seen leaving
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: with two other women. One was muggy victim number five.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: The other was Nicole.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: So the circle of victims is incredibly tight. They all
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: knew each other. They all navigated the same dangerous underworld.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: But Nicole's family connections reveal something even darker. Nicole is
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: the cousin of a man named Terry Guillory.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And Terry just happens to be the warden of the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Jefferson Davis Parish Jail.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge detail.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Huge. And Warden Terry possesses this deeply disturbing, almost psychic
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: knowledge about these dead women that defies any logical explanation.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Let's rewind to when Loretta, victim number one, first went missing.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Warden Terry showed up at her mother's house asking where
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: she was, confidently stating that she was missing.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: The problem? No one had reported her missing yet. Her
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: body hadn't been discovered in the canal. There was absolutely
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: no public knowledge of her disappearance.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: So he knew she was gone before the system did.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the exact same psychic phenomenon happens again with
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: victim number six, Crystal Zeno. Ow. When her remains were
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: found in the woods, they were completely skeletal, unidentifiable to
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the naked eye. But Warden Terry personally goes to Crystal's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: mother and tells her it's Crystal.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: How could he possibly know that?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: When she asks how he can know the identity of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: skeletal remains, he claims he identified her based on a
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: very intimate tattoo.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And then, completely unprompted, he looks at the grieving mother
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and says, quote, I didn't kill her.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Which demands an immediate question. You know, why is the
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: warden of the local parish jail so intimately entwined with
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: the lives and deaths of these marginalized women?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: The answer lies in the informant network. It is an established,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: documented fact in these case files. that all eight of
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: these victims at one point or another were actively working
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: as confidential informants for the police. All eight of them?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And Warden Terry ran a vast network of those informants
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: from within his jail.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, task force witnesses alleged his jail was operating essentially
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: like a brothel where officers could pull female inmates out
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: of their cells and assault them with zero consequences.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: These women were trapped in a system explicitly designed to
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: exploit their vulnerability.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Completely trapped.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: But then, after four years of terror, we hit the sudden,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: jarring climax of the story. It's late 2009. The multi-agency
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: task force is spinning its wheels, the public is demanding answers,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and Sheriff Ricky Edwards issues a sudden, highly unusual mandate.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: What was it?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: He orders all investigators on the task force to submit
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: their own DNA samples.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: A mass swabbing of his own police force. Ostensibly to
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: rule out accidental contamination of crime scenes.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: But the results of this... DNA tests are kept entirely secret.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: They have never been released to the public or to
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the victims' families to this day.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: But here is the kicker. The very moment that DNA
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: mandate comes down from the sheriff, the murders completely stop.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: They just abruptly end.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: It was like someone threw a circuit breaker. They didn't
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: arrest a serial killer. There was no grand trial. No
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: one was held accountable. They just demanded DNA from the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: cops and the monster vanished into thin air.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: You know, in criminology and behavioral analysis, a sudden unexplained
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: cessation in serial crimes is a very specific data point.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: What does it usually mean?
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: When a string of highly organized serial murders abruptly stops
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: without a capture. It generally means one of three things. One,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the killer died. Two, the killer was incarcerated for a
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: different unrelated crime.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Or three, the killer realized the investigative net was finally
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: closing in on them and the operational risk simply became
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: too high. If the killer was operating from within the
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: police department or being actively shielded by it, a mandate
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: for the officer's DNA would be the ultimate undeniable signal
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: that the internal shield was cracking.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: They had to stop or they would be exposed.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: It's absolutely chilling. So where does that leave you listening
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to this today?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Well, a silence hanging over Jennings right now is heavy.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: The key players in this underworld, Frankie Richard, his associates
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Stymie and Deputy Danny Berry, they're all dead now.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: They took whatever dark secrets they had straight to the grave. Recently,
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: a new sheriff, Kyle Mears, was elected and he has
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: promised to pull these cold files back out to revisit
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: the forensic evidence and to finally push for justice.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: That's something at least.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: It is. But the clock is ticking and biological evidence
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't age well. Especially in an evidence room run by
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: the very people historically accused of hiding it?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: It's a tragic reality that highlights the mechanics of corruption.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: When we look at the Jeff Davis 8, we aren't
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: just looking at an unsolved mystery. We are looking at
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a total systemic failure.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: These were incredibly vulnerable women. They struggled with severe addiction.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: They engaged in survival sex work. And they gave vital
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: information to the police immediately. in the desperate hope of
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: securing some kind of protection or leniency.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Only to find out that the system they trusted to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: protect them wasn't a shield at all. It was a
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: deadly trap. Yeah. Which brings us back to that secret
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: DNA mandate in 2009. It's a thought I want you
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: to mull over long after this deep dive ends. If
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a town is terrorized by a brutal killer for four
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: years and the murder stopped the exact moment a police
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: department demands DNA from its own officers.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Does a secret DNA test solve a crime?
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Or does it just successfully cover it up forever?