Episode 539: Ronald Dominique: The Bayou Strangler (Part 3)

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna, I'm Ash.

And this is morbid.

I don't know why I woohooed, it just felt raw. You're in a good mood. Because we realized we're painting the walls in the pod lab, Oh mama, we're not just painting the walls.

We're overhauling the pod lab and we're pretty excited about it. Yeah, the pod lab got like a little dorm room, yes.

We were in a state and we were like, Oh, it's fine now, I feel like we're both. I'm like, elevating my style game and I feel like I see the same in you. Oh, thank you. yeah, not that your style game needed elevating, but.

But it just feels, you know, it's chaotic, it's out of control, uh-huh. So we decided last week, we're like, fuck that, let's make this our trankful beautiful.

Trankful, full of trankful, full of trank. I don't know, I'm tired.

I didn't sleep well last night. But tranquil, just like, you know, like Vibey Room, that we can just face all the bullshit head on. But yeah, we're excited, so I think we're like, a little like, eee, excited, yeah, a little punchy. I know I'm hyper fixated on this until it's done.

So but the other thing, and I know you guys have, like, cause we record these, like, um, stupidly ahead of time, um, like, way ahead of time. So sometimes we can't be like us on top of things, you know, that happen in the world. As much as we wish we could, we could, but we can't. Uh, and so I posted. I don't remember even what it was. Was it a couple of weeks ago that I did this?

Yeah, I was on vacay, so it was like two weeks ago, it was like two weeks ago. I posted a TikTok where I watched Saltburn finally.

I took ashes. I'm so happy, cause I really didn't think I was going to get a chance to do it. And I was like, Eh, it's not really high on the priority list. Like, I don't know if I really even want to watch it.

It's hard when you have kids because your kids, literally your children, cannot walk into the room while you're watching that movie. And I can't. We can't watch movies unless it's at night, like when the kids are asleep. That's the only time John and I can watch a movie. And that is a long one to sign on to, and it's long. So one night, I don't know what it was.

Oh, it was John wanted to watch a certain football game and you said, Ooh, no thanks. And he was like, You know what, I'm going to go in the other room and watch this football game.

So that I think I was like, stressed out about something. And he was like, you know what you watch, watch something, watch your New York housewives, or watch something like a horror movie. And just like, Zone out, I'm going to watch football in there.

And he was putting something together. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to try Saltburn? And I just like, put it on, this is the hour.

And I filmed a reaction video. I was dying at it. I loved it, that's the thing I loved it.

I think I like it, I loved it, I still am like, like, I don't dislike it, and I think I might love it. But it's one of those movies where you're like, How did I feel? I will say I? So there's obviously there's the scenes that everybody knows about.

The scenes, I was like, all right, like they, they were shocking some of them. But like, at the end of it, I was like, Wow, I loved that movie and I did not see this coming.

Like, I am so glad that you brought it up to me and I'm glad that finally I decided to listen. I was, I was like, pretty positive that you were really going to like it and like, see it for what it was. It's one of those movies where I don't think I've ever seen another movie like that, no.

It gave me weirdly. It's a mishmash of so many different movies for me and I can't pinpoint them all. I saw a guy on TikTok saying that, a hint of cruel intentions in there. The guy on TikTok said that it's. It gave me that for sure.

I had that, it also gave me, like, a little bit of the skulls energy. I haven't seen that. It brought back an era of movies for me that I was like, ooh, like, I'm into this. I liked, I liked the whole thing.

I was in beginning to end. No, I think, I think, I I think I've decided that I really, really liked it. I felt bad for Oliver in the beginning. Oh, yeah, you do.

I was shocked by Oliver at one point, like, I'm not like, I'm not one of the girlies who's like, and boyies who's like an Oliver. I respect it, I get it, yeah, and I'll tell you, I got it. In one scene. When he's in the tux, when he's in the suit, the tux. And he's sitting with the mom. And he's like, You look fucking beautiful. And he, like, has a drink in his hand.

I'm like, I get it, girl, that's exactly. It's so funny that that's the scene for you, because that's the scene where he, you can see that he's a pure psychopath. Yep, that was the scene. I was like, I get it.

The rest of it, I was like, I'm good. When you were like, Yeah, I'm into it, yeah. And then by the end you're kind of like, Wow, okay, go after what you want, I guess, you know, manifest.

You know, Manifest? I was like, Shit, that's on another level. I had to update you guys because I saw everybody being like, I just want to hear you talk about it now. And I was like, I got to tell you I loved it. Now I want to see like the Pretty ones or something like that.

Emma Stone is in it. I do not want to see that. I've heard that that is again, you want to watch it by all means. You're like, Fuck you. I don't want to disparage people from watching movies because, like, it might not be for me.

Like, I'm not one of those people. I don't know anything about it. I've just heard a lot of people talking about it. There's the the idea behind that movie is a little distressing to me. Oh, is it?

Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not my cup of tea. We'll talk later. But like, I'm curious to see how everybody else thought about it. Cause maybe I'm, you know, it's. The idea didn't appeal to me, but maybe somebody else will like it.

A lot of people have been recommending it to me. Yeah, see, I've had people tell me not to see it really, yeah.

Cause, they said it was really like, disturbing. Oh, the the idea behind it, all right.

I'll look it up later and then we'll, we'll discuss from there. Yeah, it's strange, there's a lot of strange movies coming out right now, yeah.

But, you know, well, there's this apparently there, I don't know, apparently, apparently. I don't know like a lot about it, but I want to look more into it. But there's energy like that, just like like with the planets and everything that we've never experienced before, like in this entire span of the Earth.

I believe it, cause I'm feeling some type of way right now. Yeah, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. it doesn't feel bad to me.

It feels like fresh, like it feels like I'm like, Oh, clean it all out, clean it all out, and I'm, I'm, let's go. I'm so happy about that for you. I have the worst end of the world anxiety that I've ever had in my entire life.

No, I'm like, let's go until the asteroid hits us. Cause, yeah, there's been plenty of times that you, I mean, just go online and you'll be like, Wow, asteroid coming at us. Like, it's just that. There's plenty of times where there's plenty of times where John has been like, We deserve the asteroid. Yeah, we, we definitely do, but that makes my anxiety worse.

If I think about that too hard, that's why you gotta just just live, you know? Get your coffee and sliv, make your pod lab the way you want to make it. You know, all that shit. But, uh, you know, we are in part three of a case right now. Yes, let's get to it.

And we've had, we've, we've chitty chattied and now we have to get into. But the good news is we are in part three and he gets apprehended, he's going to get got fuck, yeah, we're fine.

We're going to get to the point where he gets got, I love it. And when we last left you, I was talking about how they needed a fucking task force for this and people were screaming for it. I mean, even investigators were trying to get it done, and it just wasn't getting done.

Right, finally, they got a task force good, so as state officials work to assemble their team. Ronald Dominique, he was back out on the streets. This guy would not stop.

Even when they were breathing down his neck, he wouldn't stop. That's scary. On April 28th, 2005, less than two weeks after after the discovery of August Watkins, a farmer discovered the partially clothed, decomposing body of a 23 year old man. My God. His name was Kurt Cunningham and he was found in a drainage ditch about 50 yards from the side of Highway 307..

Now, according to the investigators, it seemed like his body had been lying face down in the muddy water in this ditch for about five days. Wow, and this made it very difficult to determine a cause of death, yeah, and a time of death.

It was it really messed with stuff. And as a result of the time lapse and decomposition, the coroner could only kind of speculate about the cause of death. And they thought it was asphyxiation, which fits right into the pattern. But he couldn't be completely certain, and he felt that it had likely happened within the previous couple of weeks.

But otherwise, like all the other scenes, there really wasn't any other apparent trauma to the body. Like it was very rare that there would be another trauma to the body that was obvious upon first glance. Um, they didn't find any bullet wounds, no punctures, which again not likely in the other ones either. So, like Ronald Dominique's other victims, Kurt Cunningham kind of bounced around, is how it was described.

He bounced around from home to home. That's sad. He'd been arrested a few times, you know, just for like, you know, pretty minor offenses, like nothing crazy, disturbing the peace kind of thing, you know what I mean, like, just things like, whatever.

And at the time of his death, he was living in Thibodeau, the small town where Ronald Dominique had been born and raised. Actually, now in the press, Kurt Cunningham was yet more proof that a serial killer was preying on men in the Houma area. Yeah, they hadn't at this time really put together, like the larger picture, that there were actually more victims than they even knew at this point.

Which is wild, yeah, cause they are all killed the same way, yes, and there's so many.

Yeah, there's so many now. In mid-may, the front page of the Shreveport Times featured mug shots of Lee, Rett, Cunningham, Woods, Barnett, Watkins and Jones, and they were above a headline.

That said, serial killer theory floats around case. The article described the similarities between the cases, all noting, of course, that the victims all led what they described as high-risk lifestyles. And Quote hung out on the streets, and you know how we feel about that, they made sure to include quote. On average, they were involved with drugs in some way, and they generally were known to trade sexual favors for food, shelter rides, alcohol or other drugs.

They also all had circulatory systems and brains and souls, and people who love them. But yeah, much of the other stuff, let's focus on the shit that doesn't matter in this situation. Because they were killed.

Exactly like, that's what drives me crazy. It's like, whether they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing whatever they were doing, doesn't matter. They were killed.

They don't deserve to be killed, and I don't care what they were doing. They're not even they're not even publicizing it. In a way of like, if you are involved in this kind of scene, like, look out, like, like, they're not, they're doing it in a shameful way, exactly.

It's basically to be like, so, you know, like, it's just like, I guess that's what happens, and it's like, no, like you said. If they had said it like, here's what they had been doing. But they are people, right? They have people who love them. They in no way deserve this or ask for this to happen to them.

But we are sharing this. In case you happen to be in a similar situation, right? or you run with similar crowds, look out.

Please just be more aware of who you're interacting with. Exactly because we care that everybody stays alive. Like that's, there's a way to do that, there is.

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She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next?

Depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia or a corrupt police coverup.

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

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So, despite the not-so-subtle inference of victim-blaming there, the article did also, luckily attempt to emphasize the more human costs of what was happening here. Well, that's good, um. Kurt Cunningham's father, Richard Cunningham, shared photographs of his son with the reporter, and he acknowledged his son's mistakes. Which makes me sad that he even had to, yeah.

Like, it's not about that, it's not, it's not about any mistakes he made in his life. Um, what he said was quote Kurt was on a path and when he was too young to wake up, but he was a victim, not a criminal. He didn't try to put his problems off on nobody and wouldn't ask for help unless he was really bad off.

And it's like, don't worry, like, don't worry about that, like, you know, nobody who is a decent person should give a shit about that. And it's like, I hate that you had to say that, like, thank you for saying that, but I hate that you had to say that.

Right, it should just be like, this is the kind of person he was. Yeah, this was my son, and this could be yours.

And this is what he meant to us. Yeah, but a quote from, And this one's gonna, I mean, when I tell you the rage when you hear this. A quote from a local Houma resident easily summed up the public sentiment around the murders at the time and their effect of on feelings of safety in the area. They said With so much audacity, this resident, who is not named, quote I don't see any panic here. Whoever it is, attacking men who are involved in drugs and prostitution. It's almost like somebody's trying to get the trash off the street, that's weird.

Cause they didn't come and get you. So I am exactly I'm without words, can you imagine?

That's the most callous shit I've ever heard in my life. That's beyond callous. You should be so fucking ashamed of yourself. That's crass, callous, cold. Somebody's trying to take the trash out, essentially by killing innocent men.

That gave me chills and like a that just like chilled my blood because I'm sorry, are you a fucking murderer like Jesus Christ? Like, it's not like there's a guy on the side of the street who's like us. So basically, anyway, just just piss me off.

No, I don't blame you. So, the public sentiment around the murders of marginalized men may have been casual and dismissive at best. But behind the scenes, at this moment, detectives on the interagency task force were really going nose to the grindstone for this case. They were behind the scenes really working on it. That's good, um, according to Detective Dennis Broughton. I believe it is.

The idea was that every time there was a killing, the evidence would go to the same lab, take the same path, and we do the same core investigative work. So they were really trying to make sure nothing got fucked up, right. Still, they didn't have a lot to work with. There was not a lot left at these scenes.

There was really nothing they could go on, which is really crazy when you think about how many people he's murdered at this point and he's been able to stay. And like, how personal the manner is in which he kills these people like, he's, I hate to say this, but like, right up on them, like squeezing life out of them.

Yeah, that's one of the most personal things you can do, like ways you can do it. Fingerprint like a. And it's not like this is like the 1800s, when it's like, we're not up at like we're in the early 2000s right now.

Yeah, at this point we've got the DNA. Yeah, I mean, it's still in its infancy, infancy, really. You would think there's something.

But I'll wait, Yeah, I'll wait, don't worry. Unfortunately, that didn't change much when the next victim was discovered.

Less than two months later, No. On July 2nd, 2005, the fully clothed body of 28 year old Alonzo Hogan was discovered in a cane field off Highway 306 in St. Charles Parish. According to the coroner, he had been raped and strangled. But there was no additional evidence on the body or at the scene to conclusively link Hogan to any of the other bodies either.

Right, that was one of the other issues they were working with. Not only was there nothing to connect these bodies to a killer, there wasn't anything to connect these bodies to each other. Interesting to say that like these were killed by this, these people were killed by the same person.

Other than the strangulation, other than that strangulation, there was no physical evidence to say this was the same person or this was, you know. And they were in so many different places that it was hard to connect them, cause they were probably sitting there. Like, how could this guy be everywhere exactly? So this was putting detectives absolutely no closer to catching this killer.

And in the absence of evidence leading to the killer's identity, detectives continued working to connect those victims. They were like, if we can't find him right now, we got to connect them and maybe it'll lead to him. Cause there's gotta be something here. But that work was interrupted by yet another murder, just two months after the discovery of Alonzo Hogan's body, this time in Terrebonne Parish.

I hope I said that right. I looked up the pronunciation, I bet you did. It's like, Terrebonne, Terrebonne.

Oh, you, I know exactly where you learned the pronunciation from the French guy, my guy, I can tell I love that guy. So on August 16th, the body, and this one is so young. The body of 17 year old Wayne Smith was discovered in a drainage ditch off Bayou, Grand Caillou.

Like Kurt Cunningham, Wayne Smith had been in the water for several days. This made his identity and the cause of death a big challenge for investigators and technicians with the coroner's office. Um, it kind of seems like this was on purpose and like Dominique was trying to fuck with the investigators in the corner. Like, it seems like this wasn't an accident, that he was doing this, he was doing it intentionally.

That makes sense. Eventually, detectives were able to luckily use dental records and an image of Wayne Smith's tattoo to confirm his identity. But the cause of death, which they did believe was strangulation, was officially listed as undetermined because they just couldn't confirm it. Detectives interviewed friends and neighbors, all of whom were absolutely baffled that this happened to Wayne, 17,??

You have your whole life ahead of you. And they were baffled as to what could have possibly led Wayne to maybe join the company of what would end up being his killer. And none had seen or heard anything that would lead to an answer. They're like, this doesn't, doesn't make sense that he would just go with someone like this.

Now, at the time of his death, Wayne Smith was a senior, uh at Ellender Memorial High School. And despite having a little bit of a history of behavioral issues at one point, he had begun taking his future much more seriously. As of late. So again, everybody makes mistakes. He had made his little mistakes, he's in high school.

And he had done it when he was young, yeah, and he was already in his senior year, already taking steps on the right path, right, that's, that's a pretty big thing.

Smith's mother told reporters Quote he was taking welding and had totally changed his life over. I didn't even get to see the body before Wayne's burial because of what that man did to his body. And then she said, I buried a box. Oh my god, that's unthinkably horrific.

That cuts so deep, I feel so horrible. Your 17 year old child. And whoever, whoever wakes up one day and thinks that that's going to happen to them. Like, that's going to be your news. At the end of the day, you couldn't fathom that.

And just the fact that, like, she didn't get to say goodbye, yeah, and buried a box, oh my God, I like that makes me want to cry.

Now, despite the lack of physical evidence, detectives working on the task force had started finally making connections between some of the victims. And this was starting to finally create a larger picture about how this serial killer was operating. Several of the victims were picked up, what they found they? They ended up finding out that several of them were picked up at the Sugar Bowl Motel, which is a place known to police. For several reasons. And this led, we all know, like, places like that.

Yeah, of course. And this led to investigators to theorize that their killer was likely offering something to lure their victims into the vehicle. They were thinking either drugs or money or something else, right? That's what the investigators were thinking.

They'd started making what felt like real progress at this point in the summer of 2005.

But then remember, this timeline is the summer of 2005. So everything got sidelined very unexpectedly by Hurricane Katrina on August 29th, one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the Gulf Coast. So remember, this was still happening, and Ronald Dominique was still terrorizing Louisiana while residents were dealing with the trauma and devastation of Katrina.

It's like, how did he even manage to get around it? His entire community is dealing with one of the worst things you could ever deal with. Just devastation, yeah, and he is traumatizing them even further.

Like, it's just wow, it's beyond, it's beyond unbelievable.

So, as law enforcement and other state and federal organizations across Louisiana work to clean up the physical, social and psychological damage of Katrina. Ronald Dominique used the chaos to his advantage. He quickly ended up picking up another victim. He killed 40-year-old Homar resident Chris Deville. To investigators, Chris Deville was just one more name on a seemingly endless list of missing people in the wake of Katrina. Because that's the other thing, a lot of people were missing.

So many people ended up going missing and he used this because you don't know where they went. You're, you're blaming it on Hurricane Katrina when it's actually this guy, Ronald Dominique, but that's not the only reason that he wasn't. Chris DeVille wasn't immediately recognized as one of Dominique's victims.

He also didn't really fit the pattern as much as the other people did. He didn't have any criminal history to speak of, he had stable employment. He had very close and maintained very close relationships with all his family and friends, which a lot of the other victims had close relationships with friends and family. But some of them there was like a little bit of a pattern where it was like an in and out kind of thing.

Sure, and they'd go through hiccups and whatnot. This one just seemed a little more stable in that part of his life, yeah, he's also a little bit older.

He was a little older, too, so, but still, Chris Deville was one of Dominique's victims. His storm ravaged remains were found in mid-October, when a mid-October.

Wow, when a farmer in Napoleonville spotted his skull in a field off Highway one, what? The rest of his body was discovered a short time later at a drainage ditch. Because he had been through the storm like he had killed him, and left his body to be ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

It's incredible that he was ever even found. Yeah, it really is like, Wow, now. Like the more recent victims. The state of the remains made it impossible for investigators to determine the cause of Chris Deville's death. But the best the coroner could say was that he died sometime in September.

Wow, now. According to family members, Deville was last seen at his mother's house in early September when he'd stopped by to help clean out her refrigerator after Katrina. But he hadn't been seen since he left her house that afternoon. Oh my God now. As the body count continued to rise at this point, investigators on the task force were reaching a point of frustrated exhaustion. Because every time they take a step forward, it's like 15 steps back.

And every time they take a step forward, he kills someone else and it just adds another layer to it. And it was made worse by those higher up on the command chain, demanding closure of this case. So they're feeling pressure now. Yeah, sometimes that's not going to help.

No, and they were fairly certain they knew how the killer was getting his victims to go with them for the most part. And so many of them showed signs of having been bound. But there was no other evidence of a struggle. Which is what was a little confusing to them at first. Because they're like, they're not struggling, seems like they're going willingly. Why are they bound?

Yeah, like, what's going on, like, where does that come into play, like if there's? And so they started begging the question, like, if there was a possibility that they were being willingly tied up, why were so many people willingly agreeing to be tied up by this person?

Like, what, what was he doing to get them in that position? It just seems a little out of the ordinary. No, it does so as detectives pondered how the killer seemed to subdue his victims with such ease. Is it just because he's like a really big guy?

No, he has a way of doing it. Okay. Um, as this was happening, recent Parolee John Banning was relaying an incredibly strange story to his parole officer. His parole officer was Tom Lambert, who also happened to be part of the serial killer task force. Oh, wow.

Now, according to Banning, he had been walking down the highway when he said. A white guy in a pickup truck pulled to the side of the road and waved him over to the driver's side window. Creepy, the guy offered to give Banning a ride and even offered a beer. But the weirdest part was when he pulled out a picture of a partially nude woman and asked, How'd you like to fuck this attractive white girl? What the fuck?

Banning said, And this is all according to Banning. by the way, yeah, Banning said. Sure. But as soon as they got back to the guy's trailer, he said, Everything felt wrong. And I believe this, like I believe Banning's story.

Yeah, um, he said. Everything felt wrong immediately. Okay, and he said there were old clothes and Christmas decorations everywhere, even though Christmas was several months away. What the fuck?

And when the guy said he was going to need to tie banning up before the woman arrived. He was like, Um, I don't know about this. And he was like, Nah, I'm out. And he ran out of the trailer, cause he was like, I don't know, like, not happening with me.

So, he said, he ran towards the highway, where he hitched a ride back home, completely unaware he had just escaped. One of the worst serial killers in American history. Holy shit. So what Ronald Dominique seems to be doing, according to banning? And it does fit. Why some of some of these men, that's the other thing, not all.

Cause there are some of these men who have family members, mothers, other family members who have come out and said, and I want to respect that. That they've said there's no way that, like, they either had a significant other, or, you know, there was no way they would have agreed to this proposition. So I want to be clear about that, that this seems like it could have been a way that some of these happen. But this is not a blanket over everybody. Like, I'm sure he had different ways of doing this with each victim to make it work for him. But this seems like it could have been true for banning. I think that is, he had no reason to lie about this.

He was just like, This happened to me. Like you just said, it does account for some of the cases. So and again, he has no reason to lie about it, right? Like, why would he make this up?

And why would it fit so well? And not every victim was bound. not every victim was bound, but most of them were bound. Yeah, okay.

Um, now. After Banning relayed the story to his parole officer, he offered to show Lambert where the man lived in Bayou. Blue. Okay, and that's the other thing. He doesn't just say the story, he brings the receipts, so.

And eventually, what we find out is, yes, Ronald Dominique did use this technique, sometimes, not always once again, but sometimes he did now. A few weeks later, Lambert called Dennis Thornton and told him the story about the man in the trailer. Which prompted Detective Thornton and Don Bergeron to take a trip out to the property. When they'd arrived, Bergeron popped open the mailbox and flipped through the mail. The letters all seemed to be addressed to a woman, but then he reached. She reached an envelope addressed to Ronald J. Dominique.

Now, a few days later, detectives brought Ronald Dominique in for questioning. This is the closest we've gotten here. They'd explained they received a complaint from Banning, but Dominique brushed it off, telling Bergeron and Thornton quote I'm gay. Tying up John was just part of a sex game.

Nothing more than that, okay. To further demonstrate his innocence, Ronald willingly agreed to allow technicians to take a cheek swab for DNA. Oh, once they'd finished questioning Dominique, the detectives gave him a ride home and thanked him for his cooperation.

Later that afternoon, it occurred to Dennis Thornton that, while they had checked and rechecked the sex offender registry several times, at this point, they'd only checked for individuals who'd been convicted of sex crimes. And Thornton checked it again. I know where we're going, and if you remember Way back, I think it was part one. This time he looked at arrests for which there were no conviction, and he found exactly what he was looking for Ronald Dominique's arrests for sexual assault in the 90s.

He had several.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, no, it's hysteria.

It's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely?

Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Now, investigators on the task force were fairly certain this was their guy. They were like, this is it? They just felt it. But if they were going to get a conviction, they needed to. You know, they needed. More than a few suspicious coincidences and a complaint of a near miss sexual assault from a man on parole. At this point, to be honest.

Unfortunately, that's just the way it is. It just wasn't going to hold up in court, to be quite honest. And they set about doing it, and they did it, and they did it, and they did it.

Now, while Thornton and Bergeron tried to find connections between Dominique and the victims, Ronald Dominique was back out on the streets. So he knows that they're. This man got brought in for questioning and did a cheek swab, he knows they're onto him, and he still went back out. He was confident that he was many steps ahead of the investigators and there wasn't any danger.

And just like he's like an animal, he's so fucking bold that way, like he is an animal, you're right, he's like, uncontrollable.

He's unhinged, That's really scary. On November 5th, 2005, Ronald was out reading meters around because, remember, he still has a job. Of course, he's a meter reader.

He was reading the meters, so he was out reading meters around L.a. Forge Parish when he ran into 21-year-old Nick Pellegrin that afternoon. Pellegrin was in need of money and had signed up for some day labor. Which is what had brought him to this house that Ronald Dominique was reading a meter for in the first place. Confident in his approach, Dominique offered money in exchange for sex, to which, according to him, Pellegrin agreed. But first, he said, he needed to finish up his day of work.

The two men made arrangements for Dominique to return later that afternoon, and he did, and returned several hours later. And he drove Nick Pellegrin back to the trailer. On Dominique's sister's property. That he was staying on, the fact that he's also staying on his sister's property and doing these things on her property. Like what? Four days later, a truck driver discovered Nick Pellegrin's fully closed body in a remote wooded area in La Forge Parish, just south of Thibodeau.

Like all the others before him, Pellegrin had been raped and strangled, and there was no additional evidence left at the scene. The discovery was a serious blow to Thornton and Bergeron because they had hoped their careful, strategic interview of Dominique would be enough to at least put something in his head to make him stop looking for his next victim, right? They were hoping they had planted in his head, like, we're onto you buddy, like, don't make any stupid moves.

So they felt a little like they felt like guilt. They were like we wanted to stop him before he could do this. Which, of course, it's not their fault. Yeah, like they can only do so much. They need a strong case.

Now, Thornton called the lab to find out at this point because he's so mad and he's like, Fuck, like somebody else just lost their life, like, what the fuck? So Detective Thornton called the lab and was like, Where are you in the process of analyzing that DNA that was taken from Dominique? Because even though he gave it willingly, people are hubris is a thing, and maybe he did it.

Thinking he's indestructible, yeah. So, after demanding a rush on the analysis, the DNA sample came back as a match to the hairs found on Oliver Lebanks's body. Okay, seven years earlier.

I knew there had to be a hair, I knew it, but but it was a mitochondrial match.

Okay, meaning it could easily have been explained away as being from a relative of Dominique's mitochondrial DNA. We've talked about this before, but I think it's been a long time since we talked about it. Yeah, it's ringing a bell, but.

Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from your maternal side, so any person whose direct, whose direct maternal line intersects with your own could be a match to mitochondrial DNA. So it involves a lot of people. Yeah, Thornton and Bergeron knew this wouldn't be enough for a conviction.

They knew in their heart this is the guy, of course, and this is proving it, but they need even more. But legally, this isn't going to hold up.

But it was enough to convince the higher-ups to commit more resources to the investigation. Okay, because they were getting more leads, they're getting hotter on the trail now. Soon after, Ronald Dominique was being monitored 24-7..

Nice, and investigators were determined to catch him before he could kill again. The press immediately latched onto the murder of Nick Pellegrin, correctly assuming him to be yet another victim of the serial killer that was stalking the Bayou. Pellegrin's mother, on the other hand, was steadfast in her belief that her son had not been killed by the serial killer. But had in fact been murdered by some of his friends, quote unquote to whom he owed money for drugs? Oh, no.

His mother, Veronica, said. Quote They were all on drugs, they all did drugs together, they did everything in the book together. Oh, she was very angry with investigators for not believing her when she said it was these friends who did it.

And if she really believed that, then I get why she was frustrated. Yeah, it was like, you're going the wrong way again. There was also a lot in this investigation being held close to the chest. So she also didn't have all the information to work with on her side that we have right now, with the benefit of hindsight.

Right, so, just like, remember that. And she had obvious reason to believe otherwise, she knew more about Nick Pellegrin than we did, yeah.

And she knew more about her son and less about the investigation than we know, right? So it's like, you know, you can see why she got frustrated, absolutely now. It's unclear how aware Ronald Dominique was of the police, like intense police surveillance and scrutiny that he was under at this moment. But it's very likely he had some idea because he suddenly stopped all illegal activities for almost a year.

Wow, a whole fucking year, a whole year. Detectives on the task force used this time to increase the speed with which the evidence was being processed and analyzed. Thank goodness, because they were like, finally, we get a minute to actually focus on the evidence and like, get it going.

Right, we like, and they were running because they were like, we don't know when he's going to suddenly crack and do it again. So we got to get the shit in, yeah. In that time, another mitochondrial DNA match was made, this time to the semen collected from Angel Mejia's body in 1999..

Okay, boom, that's something right there. Now that we have two mitochondrial DNA matches, it's like, that's at least something. So Dominique's resistance to the urges driving him to kill finally did fail him.

On October 15th, 2006, he picked up 27 year old Christopher Sutterfield on the side of the road in Houma. And, uh, where are the police? Not sure how this happened, not sure everything was the same.

Uh, Sutterfield had been discovered fully closed. He had ligature marks on his wrists and neck, and he'd been raped and strangled before being dumped in a drainage ditch off Highway 69 in southern Iberville Parish. I don't know if they had eased up on the surveillance because they were trying to, like, focus on the evidence. And he had gone a year without doing anything, so they maybe they were easing back. Thinking he knows we're onto him, so like, I don't know.

I can't for sure say how this occurred, but it's awful that it occurred. Um, that was the only difference was that obviously, obviously. Dominique was becoming more conscious of the risks because he had driven, in this case, more than two hours northwest to Iberville Parish in order to dump Christopher's body. What the fuck so he was?

Obviously he was, he was, he knew what was going on. Otherwise, despite the considerable distance, investigators immediately handed the case over to the task force. That's good. Who made the difficult decision that they were going to arrest Dominique. Rather than wait for a nuclear DNA match, that might never turn up, yeah.

And then how many more people have to die before you get that, that's the thing. And they were like, we can either wait for that nuclear DNA to, like, really nail him, or we can arrest him now. And like, hope for the best and hope that we'll get a confession out of him, right? And it's like, we got to stop him.

You got to weigh your options. Luckily they went with arrest because they were like, we can't let him keep killing people like this is, it's getting out of hand. So many people we're up to, like over 20, aren't we?

It's unbelievable now. While Thornton and Bergeron worked to get an arrest warrant for Ronald Dominique. He was actually having a falling out with his sister, who'd grown tired of the police surveillance and asked him to leave her property. Without anywhere else to park his trailers and nowhere else to stay, Ronald found a room in a single room occupancy in Houma. This place was somewhere typically relied on by oil rig workers and other short term renters. It was just somewhere you need to stay all the way, somewhere else.

It was Ronald's sister who actually directed Detective Thornton and Bergeron to her brother's new address. When they knocked on her door to serve the warrant. And she was like, No, you can go find him here. Yeah, and having to deal with that, like, and not, and obviously not knowing exactly what was going on, yeah.

Now, further complicating matters. Someone had leaked the information about the arrest to the press, who were already at Ronald's sister's house when the detectives arrived and followed them to the place where he was actually staying right now. Fortunately, Ronald went willingly and quietly with Detective Thornton and Bergeron, who marched him out of the building. In front of a horde of reporters, all shouting questions and snapping photos as they put him in the back of a car. Now in the interview room, Dominique appeared calm and confident at first as Thornton and Bergeron began the interrogation process. He thinks he's a hundred steps ahead.

Oh yeah, just the fact that he gave that cheek swab alone tells you that. They had arrested him on warrants for the murders of Oliver Lebanks and Manuel Reed. So Thornton's plan was to keep the conversation to those murders only, and hope that in discussing those that, Dominique would reveal other information about other victims. Like accidentally. So, Ronald told detectives that he'd met Oliver Lebanks at a French Quarter gay bar and said Lebanks had quote wanted to fool around. Now, remember, this is coming from Ronald Dominique.

Yeah, so we doubt it. Who is a first class monster of the highest order and a piece of shit, yup? So whatever comes out of his mouth, take it with a big old grain of salt.

The largest grain you could possibly find now. So Dominique is claiming that Oliver Lebanks approached him. I doubt that I no, no, no, no, no, for almost a fact.

It didn't happen, Dominique claimed. It was entirely common for this to happen in the quarter. You know, offers of sex happened often. There's these like everyone, like, don't worry about it, like he's acting, like, I don't know why.

You're don't be scandalized and wanting to keep him talking. Neither detective was going to challenge that. They were just like, Yes, absolutely, let's keep going, uh, so, Ronald's claimed after the two had finished, you know, fooling around in the back seat of his car. Lebanks, he claimed, had pulled a knife on him, indicating that he was planning to rape Ronald if he didn't hand over all his money. Supposedly acting in self-defense, Ronald claimed he grabbed the tire iron from the floor and swung it at Lebanks his head, according to Dominique, things escalated, and he wrapped the seatbelts around Lebanks his neck and began choking him.

When he realized he'd killed Oliver Lebanks, Ronald told detectives he drove around for hours until he found the dark overpass where he dumped to Lebanks. His body, then returned home. I just want to be clear he's a lying sack of shit 100, and that's not how that happened. No, of course, it's not. I'm sure some of those injuries are how Oliver Lebanks was injured, but no, I don't believe it. Well, look at Oliver's build and look at Ronald, uh, Dominique's build. I don't think he was that threatened in my opinion.

And I just don't, I don't believe any of it, I don't believe it. No, and neither should you. So Thornton and Bergeron could see that Dominique was definitely like, they were like, okay. So we can see exactly what he's going to do from here on out, he's going to do the self-defense angle, right?

And he's going to claim that all of these men just attacked him, That's crazy, people just attack and you left and right. So they were careful about how they asked their questions because they were like, we, I will give it to them. They were like, we have him.

We cannot lose him. We got to be really strategic about this. We can't fuck this up now. Moving on to Manuel Reed, Dominique claimed he'd also met Reed in a bar, and Manuel Reed had approached him with an offer. Same thing.

I want you guys to look up Ronald Dominique and tell me that these men are approaching him. The answer is a big old no, I don't know about that. Maybe in his own mind, that's what was happening, but it wasn't. And again, Manuel Reed walked up to him and asked if he would like to fool around.

So the exact same story as Oliver Lebanks. Isn't that wild? It's crazy. Isn't that such a weird coincidence? It's worth noting.

Ronald demonstrated a certain degree of discomfort when discussing sex with the detectives. He would bounce back and forth between, like, childish euphemisms, almost like very juvenile euphemisms, yeah, and then oddly clinical language, like, really.

Like, there was no in between. It was very strange, they said. It was like uncomfortable how he was, because he seemed uncomfortable at times, and then he would seem very like clinical about it.

And then, like, get like, too comfortable. Yeah, they just couldn't get comfortable with how he was talking about it. Weird. It's clear that he's obviously paying men like some of these men for sex, but he claims that they solicited him every single time.

That is just not true, which he repeatedly refers to as fooling around, like he uses the term fooling around all the time. Okay again, just showing how uncomfortable he is, even in this space, yeah.

Now, Dominique's description of the murder of Manuel Reid is very similar to that of Oliver Lebanks. He claims. They went back to the car and began having sex. This is according to Ronald Dominique, but Reid began, quote unquote, sexually assaulting him. At a certain point. No, that doesn't even make sense.

So, he said, he grabbed the tire iron from the floor and hit the man in the head. Once he'd incapacitated, Manuel Reid Dominique tried to claims he tried to tie the man's hands. So quote he wouldn't hurt me no more, I'm sorry, what?

Come on, according to Dominique, Reid came to a few minutes later and managed to get his hands free of the ropes. Which is when Ronald Dominique wrapped the rope around his neck and began choking him. Thornton made note of these details as particularly significant. Because I don't know if anybody else has picked up on this big gaping hole in all of his stories, regardless of the self-defense framing that he thinks is like airtight here. If he brought the rope and tire iron, knowing he could use them, that says pre-meditation, Why do you bring rope?

Exactly why you got a tire iron just lying on your floor at all times? But why is the rope? There is the real, and why can you just grab it? Why is it so close to you that you know where it is?

And the tire iron, it's like you, you would think that if, which, obviously it's not the case. But if you had gone through that traumatic experience with Oliver and you killed him with that tire iron, you you still have that, that's the thing like, it's like you still have the tire iron, you wouldn't get rid of that. And again, it's like you went through that traumatic situation and you're just like, right back out doing the same thing.

Yeah, I don't think so. Not worried about it at all. Also, if you're in a car, you don't need to tie anybody's hands up or do anything like that. Or choke them with seatbelts. You kick them out of your car and you drive the fuck out of there. And none of this happened.

The fact that he brought rope and a tire iron with him tells you everything you need to know that he was planning to bind someone, he wasn't. You don't just have rope hanging around. Just Willy Nilly, No. With Manuel Reed dead, Ronald again drove around for a while until he found a dumpster where he left Manuel Reed's body.

And then he just returned home. So it's like, you're already fucked up, like no one believes you, and you already fucked up. When you said these men approached you, no one believed you there.

Exactly. And then, second to say, it's self-defense when you brought weapons with you. Sorry, I don't believe it now. Ronald Dominique had essentially admitted to killing two men at this point, like he had admitted to it in self-defense, was the caveat.

But Thornton felt that he'd built a pretty good rapport with him at this point. And he was like, you know what, I'm being the good cop. I feel like he's buying it. So he's like, I think I could get him to confess to more here, like he's pretty easily giving us these two.

He's lying, but he's about why. But, like, eventually we'll get to the truth. So he returned back to the interrogation room and the two detectives sat down with Dominique again. And decided to take a chance that he might be willing to keep going. So, Detective Thornton said Quote I know you're suffering, but I think you'll agree.

There are others. Am I right in saying that? And Ronald paused for a minute. What seemed to the detectives to be an attempt to stall, they said, before replying Most probably, I just don't remember.

Most probably so. They were like, Hmm, and so they proceeded gently here, and Detective Thornton and Bergeron tried to get Dominique to confess. But after having alluded to his guilt, he seemed preoccupied suddenly with what his sister would think of him.

All of a sudden, he was like, and he started begging the detectives to apologize to her on his behalf. So he suddenly just switched gears and wouldn't focus on what they were trying to do anymore, right? So they were like, OK, we're not going to push.

Now, while this is happening, while Thornton and Bergeron are interviewing Dominique, they're letting him have his moment of. Like, worrying about his sister. Because they don't want to push him out of this mindset. A team of crime scene technicians were conducting a thorough search of the two trailers on his sister's property in Houma. Oh, his poor fucking sister dude. Yeah, to have to have your like to be watching this on your property.

Yeah, they knew it was common for serial killers to keep quote unquote trophies. Yes, but the technicians were unable to find anything belonging to Dominique's victims. Interesting.

So Thornton asked Ronald Dominique about this because they were connected with him, and he said, just maybe. So, like the way he asked, this was, he said to him, just maybe. They left any articles of clothing or jewelry around, like, you know, like you've admitted that you knew these people, like, did they leave anything around?

Right, like, just not making it a big deal. Like we're not trying to look for evidence, we just want to know, want to know.

Did they leave shit at your place, like, is that something? And the detectives were hoping they could find more physical evidence than what they that could use that they could use. Excuse me to connect him to these victims outside of his words right now. But Dominique was adamant that he'd always thrown everything away. Then Detective Thornton tried another direct approach.

And this was, I really think this was a good idea. Because, remember, there were a couple of men, at least one or two, who were on a bicycle. Yes, yeah, and so he just said, What about a bicycle?

You ever throw a bicycle away, like just pulled that one right out, because he was like, I know there's a bicycle, yeah. And Ronald thought for a minute and then said, Maybe once or twice.

So fuck, dude, can you imagine sitting across the table from him and he's just like, maybe? And he's like, I don't know.

I don't remember, but the thing was Detective Thornton. It was working, yeah, but how he was, how he was talking to him was working, like casual.

It seemed to be working because suddenly, Ronald Dominique seemed almost eager to tell him more, really. He continued to avoid outright confessions of murder, but his responses to the detective's questions unquestionably implicated him in more deaths.

Okay, he was not going to confess right away, but he was implicating himself. Yeah, like, maybe I threw a bicycle away once or twice, yeah, and neither two victim that we just talked about had one.

Yeah, like, I threw everything away, right? There were references at one point to the storage shed in which he'd left Michael Barnett's body. Oh my god, the bike he dumped alongside Datrell Woods's body.

Yup, and the unique and other unique aspects of all the other murders. He was able to pull out of his ass now, knowing they'd finally gotten him to somewhat crack. Detective Thornton and Bergeron pulled out the file of photographs and went through all 23 victims with Ronald Dominique. And they were like, You tell me who this person is, you tell me where you put them.

You tell me everything. Over the course of their six-hour conversation, the detectives went through the photos one by one, with Dominique providing details of each murder, including the vehicle he was driving at the time, where he was living, what he'd done to each victim. In some cases, he'd recognized them as sex workers or referred to them as addicts in need of money. Instead, he'd lure them into the vehicle with a promise of money or money in exchange for sex. In other cases, like if the victim was not a sex worker and presumed to be what he said, presumed to be straight. Ronald would show them a picture of a nude or mostly nude woman and ask if they would be interested in having sex with her.

But once the victims were in the car, it always unfolded the same way. Ronald would tie them up, rape them, strangle them, and then leave their body in a convenient location nearby. And he just cracked, How scary is it that, like, a couple hours before, he's like, I don't remember, No, I don't know anything.

And then he remembers everything down to the vehicle he was driving at the time, every detail where he was working, what he was doing. That's so scary and he just cracked, like.

That shows you how persistent those detectives were. They sat and drew this out of him slowly, six hours.

Wow, yeah. The following day, December 2nd, news of the arrest hit the Louisiana papers. And although law enforcement was very careful not to reveal that Dominique was a serial killer, the press had no reservations about comparing him to other recently captured serial killers. Like Derek Todd Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis. The usual shock followed a few days later, with everyone remarking that Ronald Dominique didn't seem like the kind of guy who would do something like this.

Shelter manager Raymond Borg told reporters You wouldn't suppose this dude could do what they say. He looks like somebody from a church, and I was like, I don't know. People who go to church can be dickheads, too. Yeah, I get it, though.

Dickheads everywhere I get that you're like, he looks like, he's just like some regular dude, yeah. Other residents at the shelter where Dominique was staying were as surprised.

One resident said he didn't look scary. If they hadn't arrested him, he could have stayed here 20 years and nobody would have thought anything about him. That's crazy, which is horrifying now. Within a few days of his arrest, Terry Bone Parish District Attorney Joseph Waits had announced that he intended to seek the death penalty for the murders committed in at least his district.

And it was likely that the other district attorneys would do the same, they would all follow. I would think that fact gave law enforcement leverage in the form of a plea deal, okay?

If Dominique would take them to all 23 dump sites and confess to at least eight murders, eight of the ones that they felt like they had the most for. Then, the D.A. would take the death penalty off the table. Okay, now. Ronald jumped at the opportunity. And on the morning of December 2nd, 2006, a caravan of like half dozen police cars drove from one end of the state to the other. As Ronald, Dominique showed them precisely where he'd left each of the bodies. Now, everyone on the task force and in the state attorney's office knew they were never gonna be able to convict Dominique on all 23 counts.

It's just it's unheard of. That's a lot. Faced with a very difficult decision to risk going to court or forfeiting some of the charges. State's attorney, Mark Rhodes, made the decision to charge Dominique with the eight strongest cases. That just in order to get a serial killer off the streets. And the plan had the added benefit of sparing a lot of family members the pain of a long, drawn out trial appeals.

Yeah, all this shit, that's a lot. But first, they did get the approval from the families of each victim, which they all gave without hesitation. That's awesome that they actually did that.

Like, went to each family and asked, I love that, that was part of it. And like, kudos to those family members. That were like, nail him on these eight, like, nail him on the I know he did it, like, I can, you know what I mean?

Like, kudos to them for being able to, like, think that way through this because it would be hard. Absolutely like, if you are one of the cases, that is not one of the eights.

You want justice. You're gonna feel like you didn't get the full, you know, or you could feel that way. And it's like, it's nice that they were seeing the forest through the trees here. It takes a big person, by the way. If you're hearing little like bonks every now and then, sorry.

John's throwing a tennis ball at the wall outside with the dogs, and I think he forgets that the wall is right here. Love you so much, love you all. But I just think that like, good for them.

Like, these family members have been through the fucking mill, yeah, and they're badass they really are. As the task force worked to confirm the details provided by Ronald Dominique, district attorneys in the various parishes raced to get their cases together to prosecute the killer.

TerRebonne, D.a. Joe Waits said We'll have to get together to see who can do it the fastest. As tends to happen in serial killer cases, police and sheriff's departments also looked at other unsolved cases they thought could maybe be connected to Ronald Dominique. Police in Thibodeau, for example, thought Ronald might've been responsible for the 1992 murder of Hunter Horgan. A 47-year-old Episcopalian priest whose body was discovered a few years a few yards from the flower shop where Dominique was working at the time, Wow, killed a priest.

Right? Police chief Craig Mellencon told reporters. Quote I think it's responsible for us to go look and see if we can connect Mr. Dominique to that killing. Yeah, now. As investigators and others in law enforcement prepared their cases against Dominique, the families of the victims struggled with the news of this arrest.

Nicholas Pellegrin's mother, Veronica, found little comfort in this arrest. She's the mother who thought that it was his friend's mm-hmm, she told reporters. He took my kid's life from me and I'll never forgive this man. Others just, and it's like, You know, that's the thing.

He took my kid's life from me. Nothing's gonna make me feel better. No, like this isn't. How do you move on from that? Closure isn't the word, Justice isn't the word.

We've talked to victims family members that say, like, there's really no word to make me feel better, I don't have my child anymore. I don't think closure is really a thing when it comes to your family member.

Murder specifically, exactly. And there was some people who were unfortunately disturbed by the gay aspects of the case. And they refused to believe that Dominique was the one who killed their loved ones because they didn't want to believe the aspect of he could possibly be bringing them in by offering sex. And obviously, I'm not gonna say who, which you know, like, just some people were disturbed by that part. Which also shows you like how big of a role that played in this case as well.

Because even on this end of things, there was stuff going on there. So it's like that was a big thing with how this was reported and how this was looked at in all angles. Yeah, truly.

The families of Christaville and Anoka Jones, both of whom were married with children, told reporters neither would have submitted to bondage. Sex with a man or a woman, like they just wouldn't have, like, not another person other than their significant other. Yeah, and you get it.

Like, that's like, they know their family member, you know, like, and that's why I said to put a blanket thing on all these cases and say this was the way he did this across the board, right? I don't believe that.

No, I don't think so either. I think he did have different ways of getting these people in there. Some of these men could have been lured in by like, Hey, I have a job and it will pay this much money. I just like, I have this job at this house, yeah.

Like, it could be something as innocuous as that, of course. And I almost think it's kind of like Ronald Dominique painting it the other way. A lot of the time, I think so.

It's another way for him to like, shame them. Exactly, almost.

So when you look at this case, know that he's a bullshitter and he's an asshole. Yeah, and we don't know how these men were lured, We know how he's saying that they were lured, yeah.

And he's claiming like, some of these were self-defense, when it's very crystal clear that not a single one of these murders was self-defense. So just like when you look at this case, know that that, like, you know, like he's the one saying this and he is not a reliable motherfucker. So it's like, you have to look at the family members, they know their family member.

If they're saying that they never would have gone with this person, then they wouldn't have I believe them over him. Yep, same.

And we won't know, that's the thing. Unfortunately, only he and the victim knows what happened in each scenario. And he's the unreliable one here, and he's the only one left.

Yeah, so sad. On September 24th, 2008, Ronald Dominique stood before a judge in district court and pleaded guilty to the murders of Kenneth Randolph, Michael Barnett, Leon Lirette, August Watkins, Kurt Cunningham, Alonzo Hogan, Krista Ville, Wayne Smith and Nicholas Pellegrin. Dominique never took his eyes off the floor, like a little bitch, that he is just gonna say, a little bitch.

As Judge Randy Betancourt read the charges, state's attorney Mark Rhodes told the judge Quote The lives of eight young men were taken from these families by the actions of the defendant. He knew nothing about them or their families, and he callously killed the victims and left a lifetime of pain as their legacy. Yep, when Rhodes finished his closing statement. Judge Betancourt sentenced Dominique to eight life sentences without the possibility of parole, and he is in Angola State Prison, a penitentiary.

Still alive? Yep, he is still alive. He was brought right into it's Louisiana State prison, but it's called Angola because it's in Angola. Oh, okay, he remains there today and he will stay there until he dies.

Wow, and let me tell you that prison is one of the most dangerous prisons in the entire world. Definitely in the country, you know what? As far as it's concerned in his case, good.

Maximum, maximum prison. And it is, wow, what an absolutely gut-wrenching case. It's a horrific case.

What an important one to tell, though, because the fact that I had never heard of that. Like, maybe rumblings here or there. But I don't know. Like I never knew any of the details of that case because the victims aren't coeds. Yeah, you know, they're not like, you know, and it's unfortunate, but to say that that way. But it's just like, that's the way it is. It's like they were treated like somehow they had invited.

They were treated less than. And it's like, no, like that is not the case, and you know, like that it because I, again, I didn't really know about this case, yeah.

Before, like, we started researching it and I was like, damn, and then just some of the things said along the way, oh my god. The fact that these people couldn't even rest after being murdered, like they weren't even treated like humans after they were murdered.

That's so gross. Caught being called trash after they were raped and strangled and their bodies dumped on the side of the road, they were still being called trash. That's heartbreaking.

Like, yeah, just that really blows my mind, it really does how you can have that little humanity, like, I'm sorry, like it's just so gross.

Yeah, if you can say that about anybody that was murdered, you don't have a single drop of empathy within your bones. But it's so nice to know that that motherfucker has eight life sentences that he's got to serve with no possibility of parole. And the most dangerous, one of the most dangerous prisons. I'm telling you guys, maybe, like, maybe we'll talk about it some more, but like, look up that prison.

Yeah, I don't know much about it. There's been some like news, you know, programs that have gone into it and stuff like, there's a lot of information about it. There's a lot.

That's a scary place. Well, because I don't believe somebody like Ronald could ever be reformed. No, no, I don't think so at all. No 20..

I mean, that we know of 23 times and still under surveillance. Doing it like that is on another fucking level, dude, fearless in that aspect.

With that, like, he just thought he was ahead of everybody. This is a case that, I think, I mean, so many cases stay with us, but this one's really gonna stay with me. There's a lot of victims in this case.

Yeah, and they were victims in several ways. Yeah, in the end, you know what I mean like.

They were treated really shitty. Yeah, damn, yeah. Well, hopefully we can do something like Haunted after this, you know? We love to palate cleanse every once in a while after a crazy one, but we have some wild cases coming up.

So yeah, you know, it's called morbid it is. We're not gonna get away from that. Exactly. Well, with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird as any of this. Because I believe in you so much more than that. I believe in you, I believe you and in you.