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The Bayou Strangler · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:23
  In January nineteen sixty four, Ronald Dominique was born. His parents lived in
• 0:29
  a trailer park along with baby Ronald and his five older siblings, and the
• 0:34
  family struggled financially throughout Ronald's childhood and teenage years. There wasn't much joy to
• 0:40
  be found at school for Ronald. Ever since he was a kid, he'd
• 0:43
  struggled to make friends. He wasn't interested in any of the things that the
• 0:48
  other boys his age seemed to be. He didn't have any talent at playing
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  sports, and when he got older, he didn't have any interest in partying
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  drugs or alcohol. The other kids at school thought that he he was weird
• 1:00
  because he was a poor communicator and always seemed sad, so, like most
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  kids do, they made fun of him, which only got worse when they
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  found out that he was gay. During his late teens, Ronald had started
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  sneaking out to visit a nearby gay bar, but he was spotted there by
• 1:17
  some of his classmates. Interestingly, the classmates who saw him there gave no
• 1:22
  explanation as to why they had also been at the same gay bar. Despite
• 1:27
  his difficult circumstances, Ronald was determined to succeed graduating high school and then making
• 1:34
  it to college. However, he only made it halfway through his computer science
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  degree before he gave up and decided to drop out. Because he never got
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  a degree, the only jobs that he was able to apply for were unskilled
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  labor, and because he had a problem with authority and never wanted to commit
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  to anything, he struggled to hold down a job at all. In June
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  nineteen eighty five, Ronald was arrested for the first time, but it would
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  not be the last. The charges against him were for sexually harassing someone over
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  the phone, but he was only made to pay a fine of seventy five
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  dollars. For almost a decade, he stayed on the right side of the
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  law, getting more minimum wage jobs and then quitting them. During the periods
• 2:17
  of time where he was unable to support himself, he lived with one of
• 2:22
  his older sisters or his mother. The next incident took place in August of
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  nineteen ninety six, when a partially clothed teenage boy threw himself out of a
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  window of Ronald's sister's home. When approached by concerned neighbors, the boy told
• 2:37
  him that he had been sexually assaulted by Ronald, who had then tried to
• 2:40
  kill him before he managed to escape through the window. The victim went to
• 2:45
  the police, resulting in Ronald's rest. However, when the time came for
• 2:49
  the case to go to courts, the victim was nowhere to be found.
• 2:53
  When investigators discovered that they didn't even know the boy's real name, the charges
• 2:57
  against Ronald were dropped. In July. The next year, Ronald found another
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  victim. This time the boy wasn't able to escape. Nineteen year old David
• 3:07
  Mitchell was hitchhiking home from a family birthday party when Ronald offered him a ride.
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  David's partially clothed body was found two days later, dumped in a ditch.
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  When the autopsy revealed the presence of ditchwater inside his lungs, but no
• 3:23
  evidence that he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the medical examiner
• 3:27
  ruled the cause of death was accidental drowning, a decision that David's family strongly
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  disagreed with. For one, David had always been a very strong swimmer,
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  and the water level of the ditch was really low. According to David's father,
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  it was impossible for his son to have drowned in such shallow water unless
• 3:46
  there was foul play. Also, David's pants had been pulled down, which
• 3:51
  seemed unlikely to have happened during an accidental drowning. Over the next five years,
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  Ronald settled into a pattern. He preferred younger men. His youngest victim
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  was a sixteen year old boy, while his oldest was forty six, but
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  he didn't mind whether they were gay or not. The majority of his victims
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  were African American. He located his victims in two ways. Either he would
• 4:15
  approach them in gay bars and invite them home with him, or he would
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  offer them a ride in his pickup truck while they were out walking. He
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  had a few strategies that he'd use to convince men to come home with him,
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  always focusing on offering them things he thought that they could not resist.
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  If they were an addict, he'd offer them drugs or alcohol. If they
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  needed somewhere to stay, he'd offer to let them sleep on his couch,
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  and sometimes he'd tell them that he had a girlfriend and offer them the opportunity
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  to take part in a threesome. Once the victim accepted David's invitation, it
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  always went the same way. He'd take them back to the trailer where he
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  lived and then physically overpower them until he managed to tie them up. Then
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  he would sexually assault them, strangled them to death, and then disposed of
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  their bodies in several remote locations where they would remain undiscovered for days or weeks.
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  In April two thousand and five, investigators began to realize that several of
• 5:13
  the murder victims were connected. They had started to notice the similarities in the
• 5:16
  way that these young men were being tied up, assaulted, and strangled,
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  and suspecting that they had a serial killer on their hands, the police departments
• 5:26
  officially handed over the case to the FBI. By two thousand and six,
• 5:30
  Louisiana was terrified of the serial killer that had been publicly nicknamed the Bayou Strangler,
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  but for almost nine years, investigators had been unable to find the killer.
• 5:43
  Finally, there was a break in the case when a man named Ricky
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  Wallace came forward claiming that he had been assaulted a few months earlier. He
• 5:50
  told the police that a man had invited him to come back to his trailer
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  with him, promising that they could have a threesome and take drugs. However,
• 5:59
  once he got insight the trailer, there was no sign of a girl.
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  Instead, the man asked if he could tie Ricky up, explaining that
• 6:05
  his mystery girlfriend was into bondage. By this point, Ricky was not enjoying
• 6:11
  the situation he was in, but the man let him leave without a fuss.
• 6:15
  When investigators asked if Ricky knew the identity of the man, he gave
• 6:19
  them a name, Ronald Dominique. The police weren't sure how seriously to take
• 6:26
  Ricky's story. He was a drug addict and they'd had issues with him in
• 6:30
  the past. However, they were desperate for any leads in the case,
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  so they questioned Ronald and took a sample of his blood, which he gave
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  willingly. That blood sample turned out to be worth its weighting gold when it
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  provided a match to seamen samples that had been left behind on two of the
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  Bayou Strangler's victims. A warrant was put out for Ronald's arrest, and he
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  was located in a homeless shelter. On the first of December two thousand and
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  six, when he was asked why he moved out of his sister's house and
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  in to the shelter. Ronald responded that he'd known he was going to be
• 7:02
  arrested soon, and he didn't want to cause any trouble for his sister,
• 7:06
  so he decided to move out right after the sample of his blood had been
• 7:10
  taken, considering that he had evaded police for almost a decade. Once Ronald
• 7:15
  was in custody, he made things very easy for investigators at the police station.
• 7:20
  He confessed to killing twenty three men, confirming his involvement by providing details
• 7:28
  that had not been released to the public. Despite admitting to being a serial
• 7:31
  killer, Ronald wasn't entirely willing to take accountability for his actions. He alleged
• 7:38
  that the men he'd killed had all agreed to be tied up and assaulted because
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  he'd offer to pay them with money or drugs. He claimed that if any
• 7:46
  of the men had not wanted to be tied up, he'd do exactly what
• 7:48
  he had done with Ricky Wallace, let them walk free. When investigators asked
• 7:54
  Ronald his motive for the murders, he admitted that he had just wanted to
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  assault his victims, but he was forced to kill them to prevent them from
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  surviving. As witnesses He claimed his arrest for sexual assault in nineteen ninety six
• 8:07
  had an enormous impact on his mental health, and he refused to spend any
• 8:11
  time in prison again, even if that meant he needed to kill. Ultimately,
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  Ronald did not succeed in avoiding jail time, but he did succeed in
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  assaulting and killing enough men that he received a sentence of eight life imprisonment terms
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  without the possibility of parole. Today, he is still behind bars at Louisiana
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  State Penitentiary, where he will remain for the rest of his natural life.
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  That is ten Minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime. My name
• 8:48
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• 8:50
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• 9:22
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• 9:24
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• 9:28
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• 9:33
  com And this one comes from Trent in Lincoln. Hello, Joe. I
• 9:37
  know you've covered stories of people like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy in past
• 9:41
  episodes, but those were all longer episodes. I do like to hear the
• 9:45
  long ones on occasion, but I more like the ten minute ones. Any
• 9:48
  chance you'll cover some of those in a shorter form I hope, So thanks
• 9:52
  Trent in Lincoln and Trent, I think you might be a mind reader,
• 9:56
  my guy. Yes, I'm going to do both of those actually, John
• 10:01
  Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy in future episodes, but in the ten Minute Murder
• 10:05
  fashion. I'm going to shorten them dramatically because those episodes I've done it's been
• 10:09
  a couple of years since I did those, but those were, you know,
• 10:11
  thirty minutes, forty five minutes. Those were longer, longer things.
• 10:15
  So we're going to do it in ten minutes. Fingers crossed that I can
• 10:18
  make that happen. I know I will be able to, but I hope
• 10:22
  that I can do it in a way that is makes sense because there's so
• 10:26
  much information in those stories to relate to you that hopefully I can do it
• 10:31
  justice in ten minutes, and that's going to do it for this episode.
• 10:33
  Thank you again for listening to Ten Minute Murder