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Hey, weirdos, I am Af. And I'm Milena. This is Morbid.

She's got chocolate in her mouth.

Sorry. We were doing room silence first, and I thought I had enough time to eat the... Where she kiss that was in my mouth, but I was letting it melt in my mouth.

Then I tried to talk, and it was just a whole thing. So really just, Nore.

It's not my narration, so I figured I could just sit here and eat some fucking... Here she kiss it.

She's like, I can do whatever the fuck I want today.

It's Wily up in here today. I don't know what they put in my Jersey Mike sub, but I feel cryzeye. I've just been saying silly things. She's been wily, my friends. Like, wily.

Wily, my friend.

Like, Wily. Wily, reckless and straight up cuckoo.

All of those things. I don't know. We don't really have a whole... I mean, it's a holiday break for everyone else. Christmas was yesterday.

Sorry if you can hear the deck they're making in our fucking- Yeah, I apologize.

Fucking neighbors. My neighbors, they're working, so they got you going off.

I don't know if it's them, per se.

You never know.

That's true. I don't know.

Either way, here we are. All right. And we're here to bring you some content.

Daddy made you your favorite open wide.

Here comes the content.

They're like, Shut up and give it to me.

I know. I'm sorry. Okay. No, not you. Just us. I get it, man. I totally get it. But this is a Carter. I'm coming at you straight off of an old timey case with something from the 2000s.

Oh, shit. I didn't realize that. We were chatting earlier.

I didn't know that. Look at me. This is Elaina. I'm looking at you. And I'm bringing you a case that is not in the 1800s or the early 1900s.

Here's to looking at you, kid.

That's where I usually am in a place of, Here's looking at you, kid.

But I know it's true.

No, I'm in a Y2K place.

Oh, that's funny. I'm in the oldies for my case. We switched. Actually, I don't know if mine comes up before yours or after.

I don't know anything. I don't know when anything comes out because either way, this is a two-parter. We're going to be talking about Ronald Dominique, the Bayou Strangler.

I don't know this one.

It's sad that you don't because a lot of people don't. I think it's because of who he chose as victims. Oh, no. The police, everybody investigating this and the press did not put enough emphasis on finding this guy, best enough. Because the people that he chose as victims, he knew that the investigators were going to look at and say, Well, they're high risk in what they're doing, or it's probably their own fault because they did this.

The victims that people consider less dead.

Exactly. They get blamed for their own just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, don't worry, he does eventually get caught. But a lot of people lost their lives along the way, and a lot of them were not treated well in the press. So this case is not... A lot of people don't know about it, and it wasn't discussed in the press. Respectfully at all.

That's really frustrating.

And it sucks. In the spring of 2005, law enforcement officials in Southern Louisiana had a growing, growing number of murder victims, and they had started to suspect that they were connected. They were thinking, okay, I think we do have either a serial killer or serial killers. Shit. Because the victims were all men, mostly in their 20... They were all men and boys, I should say, because some were younger. Mostly in their 20s and 30s, but there was a couple that were lower than that. Not children per se in under 10 or anything like that, but there was some 16, 18, 19 boys. They were all around that age, and they were all vulnerable targets that the killer or killers were clearly actively preying on, and they were thought to be on the fringes of society, a lot of them. Some of them were known to be actively struggling with substance abuse use or have a history of substance abuse struggles. A lot of them were known to police as doing sex work, either for their job or doing it sometimes just as a desperation thing. And they had all been strangled and dumped in secondary locations.

Oh, wow. And they were all locations like marshes, byues, like a sugarcane field. Oh, wow. A few of them were... And all those locations were used multiple times. Okay. So eventually, Ronald Dominique would be connected to the murders. His count at the end would be the deaths of at least 23 men and boys. Wow. That's what blows my mind that this is not more well known because- Yeah, that's nuts. That's a large amount of victims.

And that's at least '23?

Yeah, that's what they know about. It was in a pretty small span of time, all things considered.

This was in the 2000s?

Where we began in the spring of 2005. That's when they really started connecting everything. I can't believe I don't know about this. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. Now, over the course of a decade, Ronald Dominique developed into one of the worst and most prolific serial killers in American history. But like I just said, his story and those of his victims remain largely unknown and ignored by mainstream media. That's so much stuff. It's really wild. Let's talk about Ronald Dominique. Where the fuck did he come from? Seriously. What? So little is known about Ronald Dominique's life before his first run in with the law. We know he was born January ninth, 1964. He's the youngest of six children to working class parents in Thibodeau, Louisiana. And to Capricorn. Yeah. I know. I don't love it. No. Thibodeau is a small city about halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. His family appears to have been pretty active and committed to their local church. At a young age, we can at least I'm going to point to something that was a very big trauma in his life. At a very young age, Ronald told his parents that he had been sexually abused by a priest at the church.

Oh, no. They reacted horrifically and didn't believe him.

I never understand that.

How do you not believe your child?

How do you believe somebody outside of your family?

You believe this random guy- Who is said to be doing this. Instead of your own child? I don't get that. God is. No one's ever going to explain that to me, so don't even try. I don't get it. No. I don't get it.

I do not understand that.

They just were like, Yeah, it must be lying. That's fucked up. Oh, my God. That's a big trauma. Ronald entered Thibodeau High School in the fall of 1979. In that span of time, that's the big trauma that happened. Outside of that, there's really nothing of note. Yeah, but that alone. But that alone is like, whoa.

That alone and then compounded by the fact that his parents didn't believe him. Exactly. Then if his parents didn't believe him, how much longer did that go on? Because they didn't.

Exactly. When you read a lot of sources about this, like books and such, and we'll obviously link all the books like we always do, but a lot of them point to the fact that he struggled with his own sexual identity for most of his life. Okay. And growing up in a religious home. Obviously, he was trying to hide that. People believe that they were probably catching on to that. They took him saying that about the priest as just an extension of that.

Because they probably believed that he was mentally ill for being gay.

They believe you're gay, so we're not going to believe you about this. Who knows? That's what really wraps all this into such an awful ball of trauma because it's like there's so many layers to it for him as a kid.

Yeah, you definitely feel bad for the child.

You feel bad for the child. When you find out what an adult he is, you're like, Wow, you're a fucking monster. It's just like, holy shit. Right. But in high school, he was involved in clubs. He sang in the glee club. He was in the chorus. He enjoyed being a part of that. But he was bullied and harassed pretty relentlessly at school by his peers, according to an old school he like an acquaintance, just a fellow student. Sure, somebody who knew him. Fellow student. They said, They heard he was gay, and they wanted him to admit it, and he didn't. He was pretending that he wasn't, and he would not openly admit it. Which, here's the thing, I don't I don't understand being like, I just want you to say you're gay. Why? Why the fuck do you care?

Exactly.

Never once have I been like, I need to know this person's sexual preference.

Well, it's like you don't know their sexual preference better than they do. Maybe he wasn't.

It's also not my fucking business.

Maybe he hadn't discovered it yet. Maybe he doesn't want you to know.

Also, it's like, as long as it's a consenting adult, I don't give a shit who you are attracted to. I Why would I care?

The only reason that these people wanted to know is probably so that they could bully him for it.

So they could bully him. That's the thing.

And just have concrete shit to bully him on.

That's what annoys me. It comes out as like, they just wanted him to admit it. Everybody acts like, Oh, you wanted him to admit it? It's like, Oh, okay. So if he admitted it, that was going to be like, Thank you. Oh, we're good. No, it was so you could relentlessly torture him more. And it's like, What the fuck? Right. What is wrong with you? And it's not just Ronald Dominique, obviously. It's like any kid that this happens to. I don't get that. Or even adults when they're like, This guy just needs to admit that he's gay.

Why? Why? What effect does that have on your life? What bearing?

Were you forced to actively admit that you were straight? No. Were you forced to actively admit anything like that? No. No. Exactly. Nobody cares. It's just like, what the fuck? It's such a weird mindset for me.

I don't get it. Society is wild. I don't get it.

It's just a strange, very alien mindset to me. But either way, he was also considered... He struggled with his weight a lot. He was very overweight when he was younger and into adulthood, which, of course, as a teen, puts a target on your back. Oh, yeah. The harassment from schoolmates definitely led to some depression, poor self-esteem. He definitely had underdeveloped social skills by that point. It stuck with him for decades at that point. Not necessarily the poor self-esteem and all that. I'm sure he's a serial killer. I'm sure he got something out of that. He figured that out. But social skills, he did not have. Right.

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Now, after graduating in 1983, he enrolled in Nickel State University, and he decided to major in computer science. Oh, wow. But he dropped He stopped out after only a year or two. Also, wow.

So he didn't stick with it.

Also, wow. Now, his criminal history began in the late spring of 1985, when he was arrested for making sexually harassing phone calls to his neighbors. Now, looking at this in hindsight, like back then in the '80s, I was like, Oh, my God. It was weird, silly, crazy. It's just like, now we look at it with all the knowledge we all have. What did that mean? We know that this sexually deviant behavior is similar to many sexual predators who eventually escalate to sexual violence. It is very much a precursor to that. There is study after study after. A peeping tom is not just a peeping tom. No. That is the first foray into, if it is not stopped, becoming violent. That is just how it goes. But at the time, it was seen like a nuisance. It was a crunk call. That's silly, a weird nuisance. He paid a $75 fine.

Wow.

And that was That's wild. No jail. Now, by the time he reached his early 20s, he was working odd jobs, really didn't have a lot of connections to people, not a lot of friends, not like a social group. And according to her former roommate with whom he shared an apartment in 1985, Ronald Held, quote, didn't have many friends, and he didn't keep friends. Okay. So it doesn't look like he was able to maintain a relationship either, which is like, that's a typical, and we'll see there is an FBI profile that comes out later. That is always typical on an FBI profile of a serial killer where it's like, he's not going to have a lot of connections. He's not going to be able to... And it checks.

I was going to say.

A lot of the time it checks, not all the time.

We've seen plenty.

It's like the antisocial behavior. Yeah. But he also never fully felt comfortable, like we mentioned, with his own sexuality and often felt that he was an outsider in all communities. So he was just like, he was convinced himself that he didn't belong anywhere. When he became an adult, it wasn't necessarily people treating treating him poorly. Obviously, he went through high school and he dealt with all that. That's rough.

But a lot of people come out of that.

But many, many, many, many, many people come out of there and they find their own thing. You find your group. You find your people. It's like he had convinced himself that the world was against him. It's like, wasn't people actively doing it? He was just creating that for himself. Back in those days, no one really recalled Ronald dating anyone, having any romantic relationships. His former roommate didn't even remember him bringing anyone to the apartment. No guests, nothing, no friends, nothing. Basically, whether it was his poor social skills or what we now know, he was very unkept. So he was not put together at all. Ronald's night, he spent a lot of nights at bars in and around Homa, which we'll talk about Homa more because he moves there in Louisiana. He spent a lot of time in bars around there, and he wasn't there drinking and and meeting people. He was just playing pool and, for lack of a better term, lurking on the fringes of everything. And he found himself wanting to step into Louisiana's gay scene at the time, get involved, meet some people. But he didn't have pure intentions with it. It wasn't like he was looking to involve himself to find friends, get into relationships, form connections.

After his arrest, we find out that his presence in these... Which at the time, it was a very small, openly gay community in Southern Louisiana in the '80s. It was a much more menacing implication that he had where he was trying to get involved in it. That makes sense. That's where he was basically creeping among the most vulnerable and at risk in the community to find his first victim.

That's what he was doing. And building some... Courage is not the right word, but you know what I mean? Building the gumption to do it.

To actually do it, yeah. Which is really when you look back on it.

So creepy.

It's got so many... It's so spooky. To menace it. I don't like it. It's like you just think of him just creeping around in those bars, trying to make connections, but for the most horrific of purposes.

It reminds me of Jeffrey Daumer, the way he would just lurk at bars.

Exactly. In 1994, Dominique popped up on police radar again because he was arrested for drunk driving. But it was two years later that we finally got a little look into the violent part of him. At this time, police were called to his apartment after neighbors saw a man climbing down from Dominique's apartment window. This reminds me of Jeffrey Daumer, too. Yeah. This man was screaming, He's trying to kill me. Oh, my God. When Sheriff's deputies arrived, the quote, Partially clad young man told the officers that Ronald had raped him and would have killed him if he had not escaped out the window. Oh, my God. Now, this man is partially closed, climbing out a window, screaming, He's trying to kill me, said he was raped and he would have been killed if he didn't escape. Ronald was arrested for sexual assault and held on a $100,000 bond, which he definitely couldn't pay. So he sat in the County Jail, luckily, for three months pending a trial. Now, a conviction for sexual assault and attempted murder would have put Ronald in a federal prison for a long time. Yeah, absolutely. We would have said, goodbye, see you later.

Fortunately for him, and Unfortunately for the rest of society, when the trial date finally arrived, the complainant didn't show up. Oh, no. And they couldn't locate him.

And that's so sad because- Think about the time period. And think about the time period and just what had happened in general. Horrific. A lot of people wouldn't show up to face somebody that had done that to them. That's horrifying.

In every way, that can be horrifying. And they couldn't find him, which also you're like, What happens? Where did he go? I know.

I hope he's okay.

In November 1996, the judge in the case continued the case indefinitely, and the district attorney dropped the charges. That is awful. So he had those charges just dropped. Wow. He raped and tried to kill a man who had to escape out of his window, and he got away with it.

That's why the justice system is so broken.

You would think if this person, if the victim had been treated with a lot of respect and compassion and felt like they had a support system, then maybe they would have shown up. It makes me sad that we don't know for sure, but I don't know if they felt that way.

They probably didn't because they didn't have the victim advocacy programs that they do now.

Because this is the early '90s at this point. It's like the early '90s in Louisiana, it's like there was not a lot, like you said, in the way of advocacy. After that close call, Ronald did manage to avoid police for several years, actually. It was in 2000 that he got arrested again for disturbing the peace.

That makes you wonder, in between, during those years, what happened?

What was going? Was he just being more subtle about it?

It's like- Because he very clearly would have killed that man had he not escaped, which makes me question, one, had he done that before? And two, was he doing it in the meantime and somehow was just able to get away with it?

That's what I wonder. But then you look at and we'll mention him at some point, you look at Dennis Rader.

Who stopped for a long time.

Old shit flour there. You look at him, he stopped for a long time. Years and years and years. And just went on with his life before.

It is strange.

But either way, he He had the fine for disturbing the peace and managed to avoid going before a judge, but he was arrested again two years later after slapping a woman at a Mardi Gra parade. The fuck? In lieu of jail time or a fine, he was offered the opportunity to participate in an alternative sentencing program. Okay. This required people to meet and maintain certain expectations, basically, for the program. He had to maintain a job, display good behavior, and it was all in order to avoid the harsher penalties that honestly should have come. Yeah.

Get a job and don't slap women anymore, and we'll excuse the one time you did.

It's totally fine. The fuck. He managed to meet the requirements of the program, and six months later, the offense was completely discharged from his record.

Broken justice system.

We see It's like so many times. It's bad. Now, following this whole thing and successfully getting that taken off of his record, Ronald Dominique appeared to be somewhat getting his life together a little bit for a minute, or at least trying to. During the day, he got a job at a produce company in Homa, but the job wasn't enough to really make ends meet. So he found a second job as an evening delivery driver for Domino's Pizza. No. Yeah. And when he wasn't working, he was like, he He told people that he knew that he really wanted to be a productive member of society. So he became a full member of the local Lions Club, which also reminds me, this reminds me a little bit of John Wayne Gacy with the, I need to be involved in the community, pretend that everything's fine. When you see how he does it, he lures people into his clutsches, only to surprise them by binding them and killing them. Wow. It's very John Wayne Gacy. Those guys are very. And also Jeffrey Domer and also Dennis Rader. He's a big combination of many. Yeah. But in the Lions Club, he became a popular figure at regular Bingo Nights.

Much like Gacy.

Yeah, exactly.

Obviously not Bingo Nights.

Yeah, but he seemed to Carmen to be a positive member of society at this point. He was at least... He at least was putting on the facade.

Imagine knowing you played Bingo with that man.

That's fucked. Oh, my goodness. What police and community members He didn't know at this time because, again, like I said, he was putting on the façade. Clearly, it wasn't real. An active and positive community number. But police in the community would soon find out that by 2002, the man who was now that popular Bingo collar and pizza delivery driver around town, had already raped and murdered at least 11 men. Wow. And he would go on to rape and murder 12 more by the time he was finally caught. Oh, my God. Eleven men and boys he had already raped and murdered at this time.

And the fact that you can just do that at whatever point in your life.

And then go pull numbers for Bingo.

Exactly. And deliver somebody's pizza.

Yeah.

Like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

So we're going to start talking about this case. We're going to back up now to 1997, 1998. Okay. That's when the murders at St. Charles Parish happened. So on July 12, 1997, 19-year-old David Mitchell Jr. Year, attended a birthday party with his mother, Latrice Mitchell, and his aunt, Rita Aubrey. At some point, there was an argument that broke out between David and another guest. So his aunt dropped him off at his grandmother's house in Honville, Louisiana, where he was going to wait for his uncle to come pick him up and drive him the five miles back to his house in lulling. Okay. His aunt later said, My brother didn't show up, so I guess he decided to try to hitchhike back to his mom's. Now, when the family hadn't heard from Mitchell the following day, they He assumed he'd maybe stopped off at a friend's house, stayed the night. There was no real cause for alarm at first.

Yeah, and probably trying to cool off after whatever fight this was.

And the following day, David Mitchell didn't report for work. And when his mother checked his bedroom, his ID badge and wore clothes were still on the bed untouched, and that was not like him. He would go to work. And it also wasn't like David to miss work, and it wasn't like David to stay out all night. Not check in. They were trying to think in their heads like, Okay, maybe We missed him mentioning that he was going to a friend's house or something. They were already a little on edge because he wasn't one to just do that. Right. So Latrice Mitchell did call the police his mother to report her son missing. While waiting for an update, Latrice Mitchell, his mother, got her update unexpectedly because her son's photo flashed across the television screen in a local news segment about a drowned body of a young Black man found in an industrial area of Louisiana Highway 3160.

So they had already found him, most likely at the time that she reported him missing?

They didn't know it was him. That's the thing. They had only found an unidentified young Black man. And when she called, they didn't know that they had already found him. Oh, my God. But that's how she found out.

That's horrible.

Horrific. So now it begins this whole authority shrugging these families off. Now, the The authorities were just... They were like, meh. Police immediately classified David Mitchell as leading a high-risk lifestyle. And despite being found with his pants around his ankles, having no drugs or alcohol in his system, and being known as a good swimmer, his death was labeled an accident and the case was closed.

And what are they talking about high-risk lifestyle in his case?

That's what kills me here, is that high-risk is a legitimate term. It's an actual term that can be used for things like, you grew up in an abusive household, something that's totally beyond your own control of your own circumstances, just something that is happening to you.

Like innocuous shit.

Exactly. But here, it was totally weaponized by so many people involved in this case to make it seem like these people were doing things that led to their own murder. They did something that they deserved this, almost. They weren't saying that, but they were saying it by implying that.

Yeah, they were saying the quiet part out loud.

Exactly. They were implying that somehow this was their own fault. That's bullshit. He still got killed. Why are we pretending that they're still a person? Yeah, they're still a killer out there. They still have people who give a shit about them. That's such a weird callous way to look at when the investigator is looking at this way. It's like it doesn't matter what. This is a person. Right. This is someone's family, and you need to investigate what the fuck happened. It's your whole job. Now, tragic as it was, the death of David Mitchell didn't strike law enforcement as anything more than an unfortunate accident. Wow. Pants around his ankles, and it was an accident. No. But within a year, his death would get a second look because it was in the wake of two more deaths of a similar nature, neither of which were accidental and really couldn't be explained or termed as accidental. In mid-December of 1997, 20-year-old Gary Pierre's body was discovered in a wooded area of Mantes, which is an unincorporated area of St. Charles Parish. Unlike Mitchell, Pierre had been sexually assaulted, confirmed. His body showed signs of having been bound at some point prior to his death, and he died by asphyxiation due to neck compression.

Oh, wow. Now, according to the investigators, Pierre, of course, they had to say Pierre was, quote, heavily involved with drugs. Okay. Despite having been tied up, raped, and strangled, his death at first was was initially classified not as murder, but as unclassified.

How is that unclassified? What more do you need to classify that as a murder?

When you think about that this really happened and this really happens, that a person can be raped, tied up, raped, and strangled, confirmed.

And you sit there and say it's unclassified.

And the investigators can say, We don't know what happened here because he had a drug problem at one point.

What?

That's wild.

That's unreal. And just what a slap in the face to his entire family and anyone that ever loved him.

Because all you want is to... I don't give a shit what was going on in his life. Who cares? What was going on in his life. I want to know what happened here. What happened here. What the fuck? So like David Mitchell, Gary Pierre's death had been largely forgotten about until the end of July 1998, when Charles Parrish investigators discovered another body. Oh, my God. That of 38-year-old Larry Ranson in a remote area off Louisiana Highway 3160. I don't know if it's 3160 or 3160. I don't know. I'm just sorry. I looked up every pronunciation for everything, and I just didn't look up that. But it was not far from where David Mitchell's body was discovered, almost exactly one year earlier. Ranson's body was fully clothed, and aside from having been, quote, kicked in the groin, the only trauma was the asphyxiation that had caused his death. As in the case of Gary Pierre, Larry Ranson was believed to have struggled with drugs, which police believed was somehow linked to his death. They could not.

You guys got to stop just sitting on that.

So they labeled it unclassified.

Oh, my God.

Come on.

It's like, what are you investigating right now?

It's also like, okay, so if you're concentrating on that part of it, that's a link between them.

Yeah. Between all three of these.

So why are we not looking at something going on here?

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Now, unfortunately, there is a limited amount of information about Dominique's first three victims that we just mentioned, but their demographic profiles are significant, and they'll become more significant as these murders continue. All three are black men of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Two of them, Pierre and Ranson, are known to be either gay or bisexual, and at least two Pierre and Ranson, have some history, allegedly, of substance abuse or addiction. Okay. Again, these pieces of personal information are only important in the sense of showing that there is a pattern in a victim profile that will continue. It also shows that the investigation was heavily biased against them because of prejudices of some kind or another at multiple times during the investigation.

It sounds like multiple prejudices.

Yeah. Because initially, St. Charles Parish investigators assumed the high-risk lifestyles of these men were at least partially related to their deaths. Really, little effort was put into solving these deaths. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. But in February 1999, the Pierre and Ransing cases were finally reclassified identified as murders and investigated as such. Unfortunately, by that time, Ronald Dominique had already killed three more times. Wow. Now, we're going to move into the murders that happened in the New Orleans suburbs from 1998 to 1999. The afternoon of October third, 1998, was unseasonably hot, even for Louisiana. Ronald Dominique drove the half hour or so from Hanville to the French Quarter. He was hoping that the excitement, the activity of the French that whole neighborhood, would be enough to blow off some of his steam. He was basically looking to pay for sex that night. Okay. In New Orleans, French Quarter, especially at this time, Sex or anything else for that matter, was relatively easy to find down there. It was like a big party. I was going to say big party scene. I was going to say big party scene. That afternoon, Ronald made his way to Rawhide, which was a well-known bar in the corner, and he took a seat at the bar next to 27 year old Oliver Labanks.

Oliver had come to the bar with his brother and a couple of friends, but he didn't really like Rawhide, and he wasn't really into this whole thing. So while they were dancing and mingling and doing whatever, he just took a seat at the bar and had a beer. He was like, I'm just hanging out. Now, after making some small talk, it was apparent what Dominique was looking for. So they worked out the specifics of a transactional sexual experience between the two of them, and the two men left the bar in the direction of Ronald's car. Okay. Now, it was dark by the time they reached the car, and it was in the parking lot of the Jack's Brewery, and it was mostly an empty parking lot because it was closed at that point. In the back seat of Dominique's Chevy Malibu, Lebanx, they began the transaction. But suddenly, without warning, Ronald flipped him over, and despite him protesting and fighting to defend himself, he began raping Oliver Le Banks. Oh, no. Now, when he finished, Dominique grabbed the tire iron from the floor and bashed Oliver Le Banks twice in the head with it, causing a concussion immediately.

Then he wrapped his hands around his throat and began strangling him. Oh, my God. At some point, the force required to manually strangle someone became unsustained symbol. He wrapped a belt around Oliver Le Banc's neck and pulled it so tightly that the clasps cut into his neck. Jesus. He choked him for several minutes until he was sure he was dead.

That is terrifying because when you see a picture of this man.

He's a big guy. He's very intimidating.

I'm not saying that in the sense of weight. I'm saying just build. He's an intimidating guy. He's a big build. It would be so easy for him to overpower someone.

Yes, that's the thing.

It's so scary. And just what he's capable of anyways.

Just ruthless. I mean, that is brutal what he did.

It just sounds like everything happened so fast.

That's the thing. It sounds like it was just within an instant, everything turned.

These had no chance to even defend themselves.

Now, Dominique drove Oliver Le Banks's body to a remote stretch of road near Zepherfield, which was home to the Triple A Minor League, New Orleans, Zephy's. My God. And dumped his body under a dark overpass. And then he drove back to his trailer in Homa, and Oliver's body was discovered the next morning by a passerby who reported it to police. Now, to show again that this pattern is that Ronald Dominique was establishing for his chosen victims. Oliver Labanque was Black. Obviously, he is choosing a very specific victim, had a history of substance abuse struggles in the past, and was known to engage in sex work from time to time just to get money for things he needed or wanted. Now, these facts, again, I would just want to make sure everybody knows these facts do not define Oliver Labanks as a person. No. But they give insight into Ronald Dominique's fucked up worldview and the way he is choosing his victim. His victim profile. He had a victim type now, definitely. We're at that point. But even with all these patterns and similarities between victims and methods of murder, the press picked up on the fact that there was substance abuse history and the fact that he engaged in sex work sometimes.

They're reporting on Oliver's murder, focused largely on his being, and I quote, a gay prostitute. That's what they just called him. Jesus Christ. And, quote, an uneducated and unvalued transient kitchen employee in some mind this job. Oh, my God. That was an actual quote used to describe the victim.

That just made my heart like, oh, my God.

It's so shameful. It is wild. It's like, who wrote that? Luckily, in the years since his murder, Le Banks's friends and family have attempted to correct this narrative, which is gross that they even have to do that. That they're even in that position. That shouldn't be their fucking job. That should be the job of journalists that are writing these things.

They should be the ones. How do you write something that callous?

According to a friend and former employer, Mar Paulson, he said, He was not a badass in any way. Ollie had five children. He had responsibilities and a good future in front of him. But he had one weakness. While he'd been clean for some time, a long time, Ollie was a recovering drug addict.

Which is good for him for recovering.

He got clean. He was getting... He had a job. He was working towards a better future. He's a father. It's so sad that these people even have to come out to try to defend the person that was violently ripped away from them. What was that headline? They literally said, let me go back to find it, an uneducated and unvalued transient kitchen employee in some mindless job.

Unvalued?

He has five children. He clearly has friends. He has a mom. He has family.

And these family and friends have to come forward and be like, Hey, assholes of the world, he's more than his demons.

He's very valued.

They have to actually be the ones to say it. It's like, That's so shitty.

Oh, that makes my heart hurt for him. Yeah, it sucks. To die like that horrifically and then just to be chalked up to nothing in the paper. Whoever wrote that can go fuck themselves.

The thing is, too, I don't see anyone coming. I didn't find anything about anybody that wrote shit like this or said shit like this about it, coming out and being like, wow, I was wrong. That's a real person, and I should have realized that. Yeah, because they're all hiding behind their shitty headlines. You know what I mean? It's like, Why do you let that float out there?

How do you write something like that, hand it into your boss, and then go home with your family for the night?

With your family. And it's like, What the fuck? And hearing someone who cared about him refer to him as Ollie Yeah. That kills me.

I don't even know what the word is. It humanizes the situation so much.

It's just that one thing. He wasn't Oliver Labanque, the victim of Ronald Dominique. He was my friend, Ollie. He was Ollie. In five kids' father.

That's the to think that he had five children. That's awful.

It's really sad.

They lost their dad like that.

For detectives, there was very little evidence at the scene. According to the autopsy, Oliver had been bound at the wrists and raped before being murdered. But the killer left no fingerprints and had worn a condom, so they didn't have anything left. So detectives didn't have a lot to work with here. What they did have was a single hair from a white man left on the body. But until they had a suspect to match it to, it just sat there useless in evidence. They didn't know it was from a white man. That's all they could tell.

And this is like mid to late '90s at this point, so DNA hadn't even really come that far.

So it's like this is just sitting here until we have a comparison, essentially. But detectives on the Oliver Le Banc's case wouldn't have to wait long for their killer to strike again. Unfortunately, it would be in another jurisdiction, and a long time would pass before the connection between the victims was made. That was the other thing that Ronald Dominique did, was he went to different jurisdictions and parishes- Knowingly. Knowing that it was going to take a while for them to connect these because connecting different cases like that in different counties and parishes and jurisdictions can get reckless because it can really derail a case. It's like you really have to have solid evidence to make sure you know that these are connected. He knew that. Just two weeks after Oliver Le Banks's body was discovered under the overpass, the partially closed body of 16-year-old Joseph Brown, was discovered on October 19, 1998. He was found on the western end of Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Kenner, which is a suburban community about 10 or 15 minutes outside New Orleans. To investigators at the scene, it looked like Brown's body had been, quote, pretty much dumped out of a car by the side of the road.

Wow. Like trash. Yeah.

He'd suffered, and this is really sad, this one really got me. He'd suffered several severe lacerations in wounds to his head, and a bloody plastic bag was discovered near his body, which investigators suspect that the bag had been placed over his head as he was beaten to death.

My God.

Yes.

This guy's a fucking monster. There's no words. Like, beyond.

Joseph Brown had grown up in, and I looked up the pronunciation of this place in Louisiana, and it is pronounced Bootey, Louisiana, about 15 minutes from Kenner. Of course, the press labeled him a troubled teenager, not just a child who was brutally murdered. On the night of his murder, Joseph had been out with some friends in Bootey, and no one seemed to know how he'd gotten to Kenner or what he was doing there. The coroner ruled Brown's death a homicide by strangulation. He had also been beaten over the head, but I think he actually died by- Exfixion. Strangulation. Which obviously, a teenage boy dying by strangulation is pretty unusual.

Yeah, one might say.

But otherwise, there weren't really clues to who were where he was killed. But again, they were just like, Well, he was a troubled kid. And it's like, Well, troubled kids don't always get strangled, so I think we should look into that. What the fuck? It's just this is a really, really frustrating case in this sense.

It's like takeout troubled. He's a kid. He's a kid. That's all you should be focused on right now. He's a dead child.

Sixteen. Sixteen. I mean, that's young.

That is young. And plenty of people are troubled kids that grow into amazing adults, and he didn't get that chance.

It doesn't mean they deserve to get beaten and strangled to death. Exactly. Jefferson Paris detectives who were working the Oliver Le Banks case got called in November when the body of 18-year-old Bruce Williams was discovered in an industrial park in Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans. Like Oliver La Banks, Williams was known to police as a sometimes sex worker primarily worked in New Orleans proper. On the evening of November 27th, Williams was seen by friends in the French Quarter, and also like La Banks, he had been raped and strangled. So he's got a very much an M-O here. Now, this is an unusual number of young male rape/murder victims being discovered in the greater New Orleans area. At one point, one of the detectives was like, This is more murders than we have for an entire year. This is a lot. And there's a lot of murders in New Orleans. I was going to say. It's not like they have- It's not unknown to them. But these were happening so quickly. He was like, At the end of the whole thing, he was like, That stretch is more than we can sometimes have in a year.

And it happened within this small period of time. A period of months. So detectives on the La Banks and Williams cases called actually the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which I'm glad they finally took that.

That's great.

Because they wanted to create a profile of what was clearly a serial killer in the area. Unfortunately, the profile created by the FBI people were... It was pretty generic, and it was a little useless. It wasn't completely useless, but it was like, okay, thank you for that.

Was it in the early days of profiling? I don't really know when that even started, to be honest.

Yeah, and This was just like, I mean, it wasn't useless in the end. You look at it in the end and you're like, yeah, that was actually exactly dead on. But it's just so many people that fit in this that it's really hard. They said their killer was a white male, mid-30s, difficulty faulty with social skills, probably didn't have a lot of friends.

Almost like every serial killer that we have ever covered.

Yeah, and a number of other vague characteristics that were just not unique enough to really help. But there was one aspect of the profile that would help investigators narrow down their search. According to FBI profiler Tom Kolby, LeBanks and Williams killer, he believed, lived near the airport. So he was like, Bring your net in closer to the airport.

I wonder what made him think that, especially because it was all spread out.

Well, they thought They got this because the locations of the string of body dumping sites, they were all near the airport. Like, they were in a certain area that made sense. And while detectives in and around New Orleans worked with federal agents to develop a profile of what they were now believing was a serial killer, Ronald Dominique was back out on the hunt for a new victim.

Here, it just goes and goes and goes.

On May 30th, 1999, the partially clothed body of 21-year-old Manuel Reid was discovered in the dumpster behind a business in Kenner. Reid had grown up in New Orleans, and like the other victims, he did have a history of struggling with substance abuse and was known to police as a sometimes sex worker. But also like the other victims, Reid had been raped and strangled. Now, the scene repeated itself exactly one month later when the body of 21-year-old Angel Mejia was discovered by a dumpster in an industrial area of Kenner. Detectives at the scene immediately noticed that Mejia fit what was by now seen as their serial killer's preferred victim profile. As a Black man, he was already a member of a marginalized community, but he was also living on the streets at the time of his death. He didn't have any set address. That's awful. Which put him at greater risk of exploitation by men or monsters like Ronald Dominique. He had also been raped and strangled. But this time, Dominique had broken his pattern a little because he left him in a relatively well-lit area in front of a very regularly used business dumpster.

Do you think he was just getting bolder because he wasn't getting caught?

They thought he was just getting sloppy. Slopy, got it. They really thought he was just getting sloppy. Although they didn't know it at the time, the FBI's profile, like we said, generic as it was, was pretty accurate because Ronald Dominique was a white man in his 30s at this time with very poor social skills. And what they found out was that he was actually living about 10 miles from the New Orleans International Airport. So they were actually dead on.

That's wild. Isn't it?

Profiling is really wild.

Gideon out here.

Right? Like many serial killers, he'd hunted for his victims in and around the place he was most familiar with and where he felt most comfortable. But again, with the murder of Angel Mejia, Dominic had apparently been going out of his way to either... It looked initially, they were like, Is he going out of his way to have his victim be discovered that quick? Or is he sloppy? They couldn't figure that one out because initially, like you said, they thought he was just being bold.

You're not getting me.

But then later they're like, I think he was just being sloppy.

Which he probably got sloppy because he wasn't getting caught.

It was probably the same way to get there. It's the same thought process. Yeah.

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Since the discovery of Oliver Banks in October 1998, detectives in and around New Orleans had worked very quietly on the case that would eventually be linked back to Dominique. For one thing, the murders had been committed in, like I said before, different jurisdictions, so connecting them, they needed more evidence for it. It was also important to investigators that while the cases were open and ongoing, the pertinent information be kept close to the chest. They wanted it kept from the press, the public. They They didn't want to create panic or create a situation where misinformation was running rampant that could harm or hinder the investigation because now they're finally doing it. Unfortunately, these attempts at keeping it quiet and working behind the scenes became much harder in late June 1999. When operating on misunderstood, leaked information, the press began speculating on a possible serial killer operating in New Orleans. Now, it's unclear where journalists in the New Orleans area got this information. But by the end of June, reports started circulating about a potential serial killer who already claimed three young men whose shoeless bodies were dumped in isolated areas around New Orleans International Airport. The article linked the murders of Angel Mejia, Joseph Brown, and Manuel Reid, who is unidentified in the article.

They don't even use their name. They link them to a single killer, and they claimed that all three of these victims were all, quote, dark-skinned men, and they claimed falsely that they that all had cocaine in their systems at the time of their death. The article also makes a lot about them being shoeless when they were found, despite the fact that it is neither relevant nor true. Oh, good. Before long, television news stations had picked up the stories. Internet detectives were like a booming thing at the time. They were not just started. They were all focusing very heavily on this removal of the shoes as the killer's signature. It wasn't true. They weren't all missing their shoes, so this was bullshit. So now the entire Internet is shitting their pants over this false thing, and the entire press is shitting their pants over this false thing, and everybody's wondering what it means. It doesn't mean anything because it's not true.

And you're not focused on the right shit here.

You're not focused on the fact that they are young black men in marginalized high-risk areas, high-risk lifestyles, dealing with basically the most vulnerable, essentially. Yeah. And it's like you're not- It's not about the shoes or lack their up. You're not focusing on... And many of them You are part of the gay community.

You're not telling the right people the information to keep them safe.

You're just being like, Well, they're all shoeless. What could this mean? And it's like, no. You need a big community of people to be looking behind their back now. Exactly. You need these people to be thinking that they could be next.

But even then the press really didn't give a shit.

No. It's like that shows you that it's like they weren't focusing on what's important, keeping actual people safe. Now, the decision to release or withhold information about public safety, like we've talked about before, it's based on a lot of factors that aren't always obvious or understandable to those outside of the investigation. It's just a fact of life. We've learned that time after time in many different cases. Oh, yeah. It's generally true, I will say, that an informed public will be better equipped to protect themselves in the event of an emergency. I fully believe that. But when attention isn't paid to the information that the public is being given, mistakes can be made that can jeopardize the case and actually put more people at risk. And that's what happened here.

I was worried that you were just going to say that.

You're not telling the right people what they need to hear, and you're missing out on entire communities of people that need to know that they are the ones that are being targeted.

And like you said, watch each other's backs. Yeah.

And the emphasis on the victims as blackmail drug dealers or users wasn't telling a complete story or an entirely accurate one. In fact, it misrepresented who was at risk. Specifically, like I said, marginalized men and boys of color who either were out as gay or were sex workers for their job at times. Those were the people that you were really think about what you're doing at night so you can be prepared to protect yourself. Overlooking or misrepresenting the reality of Dominique's preferred victims by, among other things, playing up these unfounded facts of the case meant that those that were most at risk were being given bad information. This became apparent in August of that year when police discovered the body of 34 Mitchell Johnson under the very same overpass where Oliver La Banks had been discovered a year earlier. Oh, wow. At the time of his death, Mitchell Johnson was living on the streets in Kenner, where he was last seen by friends on the night of his murder. Johnson Johnson's friends told police that they'd seen, a suspicious guy cruising around the neighborhood around the time Johnson went missing. They described the man as a white male, mid-30s, receding hairline and puffy cheeks.

That's exactly what Ronald Dominic looks like. So that's spot on. It wasn't much else of distinction to separate the suspect from hundreds of other puffy white dudes in their 30s living around New Orleans at the time. Meanwhile, the coroner confirmed what police already more or less knew, that Mitchell Johnson had been raped and strangled before being dumped, just feet from where Oliver Lebanx had been dumped. Now, the murder of Mitchell Johnson seemed to support the belief among the press that there was indeed a serial killer operating in the suburbs of New Orleans, and hoping to use the press to their advantage, finally, police released a sketch of the man seen in the area that night that Johnson disappeared. In their statement to the press, the suspect was described as, A serial killer targeting men in the area. Rather than a serial killer targeting Black and gay men, which investigators feared would negatively influence the public's desire to help.

That's so fucked that they even had to consider that.

We got to do better, everyone.

Yeah, to say the least.

Regardless of how they phrased it, the picture and the articles didn't produce any new leads. But they had to worry that if they mentioned Black men and boys and gay men and boys and sex workers, that the The public would be like, Well, I don't really care.

That's so messed up.

So it's like, in that sense, this whole thing, they were trying to do the right thing by making sure the public would give a shit by not mentioning the details. But still, it's When you think of the actual ramifications of that whole thing, it just makes you sick.

Sure does.

It really does. Now, it's unknown whether Ronald Dominique even saw the article or the police sketch, but just Just after it ran in early November, he quit his job with the county and moved his trailer further in Tohoma, which is that small city on the Bayou, about 60 miles from New Orleans. Okay. He parked his trailer on some property next to his sister's house on Bayou Blue Road and was happy to learn that the police sketch in various articles about a serial killer hadn't yet made their way southwest of New Orleans, so they didn't even know about it. Within a few weeks, Ronald found work as a laborer at Caro Produce Company.

The fact that this man was just handling people's produce, too. Something so disturbing about that.

Now, on January first, 2000, a driver called police in Lafouche Parish to report that they'd seen a man lying motionless by a barbed wire fence on the side of Highway 7. When police arrived at the site, they discovered the body of 23-year-old Michael Vincent. Michael Vincent had a record that included some drug charges, just to put him in that pattern, and he also had an unsettled way of living that, again, made him fit perfectly into Ronald's vulnerable victim profile. The autopsy showed that he'd been bound at the wrist and suffered several abrasions, but the cause of death was most certainly, quote, homicidal asphyxiation. The murder was not connected to the other murders of gay men and sex workers in the other parishes, which is wild. I think it's because he was found further out from New Orleans. Okay. Maybe, I guess. But the investigation into Vincent's death would be further complicated by the fact that while Ronald Dominique may have ended the 20th century with yet another murder, two years would pass before he killed anyone again. Interesting. He took some time between them.

Yeah.

And that's where we're going to leave you here. We're going to leave you with two years between killings, and it's going to get even... I mean, it just keeps getting bad and bad and bad. But I think we can all rest there for a moment.

Yeah, that was a lot of just tragedy.

In part two, we are going to talk about the 2002 murders in the Bayou. We are eventually going to in Bayou Blue as well. There's murders there between 2003 and 2005. We're going to talk about each of the victims. Okay. We're going to talk about his arrest and the court case that followed and eventually him going bye-by into prison forever.

Good. I'm excited for that part.

You have that look forward to, but I think we'll leave off there so we can all think about what the fuck we just listened to.

Holy shit.

And when we pick up, it's two years later.

All right. Well, with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you...

Keep it But not so weird that any of this because oh my God.

Yeah.

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