Cold Case Files - Murder in the Bayou: Monster in Bayou Pigeon

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

In 1991 Curtis "Cochise" Smith, 29, heads out for diapers in Plaquemine, Louisiana and vanishes. Twenty-five-years later, a body surfaces in the bayou and Cochise's murder case reignites. A local with a long rap sheet becomes the prime suspect.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.Homes.com: We’ve done your homework.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Quince: Go to Quince.com/coldcase for free shipping on your order and 365-day returnsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, cold case listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple+,

for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now on to the show. The following episode contains intensely disturbing accounts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. When Cochise didn't come on, yeah, we know something was wrong. In Bayou Pigeon, there's total darkness. We got some places that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You know what the weather was that night?

It was rainy. He reached to turn on that light when he did pow. When they told us that he made a confession, that's enough evidence for me. I think he loved the challenge of, you can't catch me. We did everything that we possibly can to find Coach Eason. It never happened. Somebody calls us and says, look, there's a barrel washed up in the bayou.

After all these years, we thinking, oh, shit, this may be the one. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. February 21st, 1991. It's a gray rainy day in Iberville Parish. 29-year-old Curtis Cochise Smith is spending a quiet day with family.

Chrisann Georgetown is Cochise's sister. It was a normal day. I was at home. Cochise was living with me and my parents. Brett Stossi is the sheriff of Iberville Parish. Cochise was in the process of trying to acquire some diapers for his baby and he had contacted his boss and he was trying to acquire some diapers for his baby, and he had contacted his boss, then he was trying to get some money to go make sure he could make that run for the baby. Ronnie Herbert is the chief criminal deputy of Iberville Parish.

Coach East was doing our jobs, you know, that type of work. Nothing where he was gonna make any money from it. He did say he got $10 to get some diapers for the baby. The grocery store is less than a mile away, but one hour later, Cochise still hasn't returned. When Cochise didn't come home, yeah, we know something was wrong. Cochise did not stay away from home. Cochise was gonna come home to see his only child.

We went out looking for Cochise. We checked where my mom's house was. We checked in the cane field and stuff like that, but turned up nothing. Three days later, my mother reported that Curtis was missing. Cochise and his siblings grew up in a loving home. Cochise was my older brother. My mom and dad had 10 kids in the house, six boys and four girls.

Cochise was the fourth boy. I'm the baby girl, so we were about like three years apart. I can remember back when I first got my bike, and a little girl had ran into my bike, and I told her, you ran into my bike and a little girl had ran into my bike and I told her, you ran into my bike. So Cochise got off of his bike and took the girl bike and threw it in the ditch. So Cochise, he was very protective of me. Even into his 20s, Cochise decides to stay close to home on the bayou. At 27, a new woman enters his life.

Cochise and Lydia, they met because me and Lydia's mama was friends. Lydia was a good girl. She was a good sweet girl. His world was Lydia. Cochise never let Lydia go without anything. It don't matter how he got it, he got it for her. That was her first boyfriend. So you know when your first love, that is a bond. By August of 1990, Cochise is working as a roofer,

as he and Lydia welcome a son, Gerald, into the world. When she had the child, Cochise would take the baby for a walk in a stroller. Coachee would feed the baby. Coachee would change the baby. That was Coachee's heart. I lived my whole life in Iberville Parish. My daddy was always a public servant. He worked as a detective.

He worked as a detective. He worked as a chief deputy. Louisiana's known for three of the top murder cities in the United States. Um, Iberville's not one of them, but you could get yourself in some trouble. As soon as the family said no, there's something really wrong, we went out to try to track his last day. On March 4th, the Sheriff's Office reached back out to the family. The first thing you want to do is get the family members. Nobody knows that person better than a family member.

You want to know who they hang out with. You want to know the clothing they're wearing. You know, is there any mental issues going on with them. When Coach Eastwood was last seen, he was wearing gray sweatpants, a white pullover shirt, and he also had on a blue jacket, and he had an umbrella with him because it was raining that night. You go looking back at the history, is there anybody recently or within the past made any threats toward him? Cochise has been missing for 13 days when investigators speak directly to Cochise's girlfriend Lydia.

When somebody comes up missing, you certainly want to speak to the significant other because anything's possible. Detectives meet with the young mother in her home. She was crying, saying her baby is going to grow up without a daddy. And Lydia says she received a phone call from him, but that phone call he made was made from a pay phone, which was located outside of a store called National Food Store. That's where he went to go buy the item for the kid. Because back in the early 90s, there was no cell phones in this area. But there was a pay phone, and I remember it specifically, because I've used that phone myself in the early 90s.

Lydia tells police that there was nothing unusual about the phone call. Investigators, however, learn about another call from Cochise. They needed to know, did somebody want to hurt him? Cochise made a phone call to my mama from the grocery store. Cochise told that family, if anything ever happened to me, go find Tommy.

Tommy Francis come from a very wealthy family. Tommy had family that were elected officials. I knew him, knew him well. I didn't go to school with him, but I remember Tommy Francis was very athletic in running. Tommy still to this day holds a record at Louisiana State University for track, running the mile. Once he got into the real world and was working, he built homes. He built different homes. Tommy Francis built my first home. Tommy also owned an ice business.

But Tommy was very manipulative, very conniving. He could sell a burning man gas. You know, just the type of person he was. But Tommy also had some problems with domestic violence. Tommy knew who he could pick on. Tommy picked out a certain group of people that he would control and threaten and abuse. Tommy puts Cochise to work, just doing our jobs, you know, just blue collar work.

Just get out there and we'll shove one digger ditch. Cochise's family knew that Tommy could be a volatile person. The Sheriff's Office learned that Cochise had been making some calls trying to get some funds, and we speculated that he had contacted his boss, Tommy Francis, and he was trying to get some money to go make that run for the baby. They trailed Lephys with Cochise missing,

and Tommy Francis was one of the last people that saw him. That's when they really said, holy shit, we need to dig into this a little further. On March 5th, the Sheriff's Office decided it was time to talk to Tommy. And we brought Tommy in, then he told them I saw Cochise earlier that day. He hadn't been here in a little while. He wanted to borrow some money from me. He was very cooperative.

As a matter of fact, they did a search for one on the place. They found nothing. They couldn't find anything they could hang their hat on. He walked around with them and he said, oh yeah, check this, check that. I got nothing to hide. I didn't do anything wrong, you know. After coming up empty with Tommy, investigators go back to the streets to find any clues they can.

Coach East was not the type of person that a lot of people knew. I mean, he ran in a small circle. I think they had exhausted everything. Nothing came in, no more new leads. I think at that point in time, they were out of standstill. We have no body. We've run down all the leads and we have a grieving family, but we don't have a lot of direction for the law enforcement to go in.

By the summer of 1991, all leads have vanished and the Cochise case goes cold. It was hard not knowing where my brother Cochise was at. It was my brother Cochise was at. It was not sleeping, waiting for to see if Cochise gonna call, come home. It was hard to feel normal without Cochise because a piece was missing. I can't imagine, you know, look I got three kids of my own and I have four grandkids and I can't even imagine getting a phone call that any one of my kids or grandkids or my wife or anybody would come up missing. I'd be totally panicked for me.

Cochise case being left open is disturbing to the family. But in those years, they had other murders. We had bodies, We had trials. And even though Cochise's case was always right there, it just wasn't on the top burner. It's now March 1995, four years after Cochise goes missing. On March 9th, Sheriff's Office received a call from a woman and she said that she had some information

about the Cochise case. She had a call from a woman and she said that she had some information about the Cochise case. She had a beauty shop and this guy would just drop in at any given time, day or night, and he would call her and make threats toward her. And she said he talked about how he might have killed Cochise. Dieyette Emaile owns a beauty shop in Plaquemine, the seat of Iberville Parish. I lived in Plaquemine my whole life. This is back when I was cheerful and happy and no fear, no fear.

I heard about the Cochise case just being a local in this area. Everybody was talking about it and knew about it. I wish I could go back to the day I never met this guy. The sheriff's office received a call from D&E mail saying that she knew who informed Cochise or killed him. And she said that, let me tell you, Tommy Francis had something to do with Cochise's coming up missing. When I first met Tommy, he was very kind, gentle, soft spoken, very helpful.

And I was going through a divorce with my ex-husband. I was a single mom, and Tommy would always show up at my beauty shop to stop in and say hello. He would come in and, um, let me help you. For instance, my grass was not getting cut. My house was for sale. My ex-husband wasn't helping me to cut the grass. I was at work all the time cutting hair, and Tommy was there to offer that. And then one time I started to notice that I thought I'd seen somebody in my window, and it kind of startled me.

I don't know if that was him or not in my window, but I'm kind of getting worried because he's starting to show up. And I knew he was stalking me. I realized that while I was at work, he was inside my house, going through my things, stalking. I didn't confront Tommy because I was beginning to be fearful. Despite her concerns, Dieyette is too afraid to cut off contact. As Tommy becomes more comfortable with her, he begins exposing a much darker side of himself. When Tommy started revealing himself to me

and telling me these stories of how he murdered somebody, I definitely knew Tommy's telling the truth. Diez finally works up the courage to call authorities. In the hopes of getting Francise to admit killing Cochise, Diez agrees to wear a wire. I was beginning to get scared, really scared, and I wanted him caught. So they sent a female officer in with me,

and they put a white wire in my bra, and they had a little thing in my ear. I was told to invite him over, cook the gumbo. The police officers were sitting in my attic. They're sitting in a van down the street. I'd be scared to death to send somebody with a wire because you can't just sit in the living room and say, talking to this microphone.

She needed to get up close to him. I had to be brave. I had no other choice. choice. On the recording, Francis admits to killing Cochise by himself and even brags about how badly he to him. He told me the whole damn story of what he did, word for word, gruesome detail. I felt nauseated. I felt paralyzed like I couldn't even move. Frances is confident that he won't be caught because police will never find the body and has no sympathy for Cochise's family.

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see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. Despite having a full confession from Francis, authorities make the decision not to arrest. They didn't have a body.

I mean, up until lately, you hadn't seen a crime without a body even being attempted to be prosecuted in the deep south. No body, no crime. They told me if I did this, they would be able to put him behind bars fairly quickly. And I kept waiting. I kept waiting. I kept questioning the cops. they would be able to put him behind bars fairly quickly. And I kept waiting, I kept waiting. I kept questioning the cops. I kept saying, what's it gonna take? What else?

I was always looking over my shoulder, constantly worried, a nervous wreck. He was wanting more from the relationship, and I wasn't willing to give more. And he got mad and he vandalized and tore up my entire shop. I was so mentally broken at that time, thinking this man is going to kill me. This man is coming after me.

Six long years go by. Then the police get a possible break. In 2001, Tommy was arrested and brought into the Iberville Parish Jail, where he was booked in a felony theft charge. And he actually had to do some amount of time while he was incarcerated. And the pressure mounted on him. And then lo and behold, he gave a full-fledged admission to what he had done.

And this time, he turned the tables a little bit from the story he had told. He had to kill Cochise to self-defense. So Tommy says Cochise actually shows up to the house, comes in the house, and pulls a gun out of him. And then I saw him pull a gun out, took off, ran in the hall, and I grabbed my gun. My gun was in the closet closet and I shot at him.

Tommy at that time is now claiming self-defense, but Tommy had enough time to retreat to the bedroom, come out with a rifle, so that didn't even make sense. I put cover sheets in the barrel. I put a weight in the barrel, just a couple of metal weights. Part of the confession was you have to show us what you did and where you did. And Tommy brought law enforcement officials out there to the scene. This is by your pigeon.

And we'll be pulling up on Francis' camp right here up on the right. Looks like it's abandoned now. But this is where he told the detectives that he dropped off Cochise in the barrel. Tommy brought the barrel to Bayou Pigeon and eased it out in the water. I backed up and I pushed it out in the water. He said he watched it go about midway to Bayou. The barrel sunk about 10, 15, 20 feet out, something like that.

And I got back in the truck and I lived. Just an eerie feeling to know that this guy would commit a heinous crimes like this and dump somebody's body in a drum and just throw it off in that bayou right there. Dive team goes down, cadaver dogs, sonar, looking for the barrel, looking for anything that they could find at the pigeon location.

And nothing was able to be found at that time. He's out. I think it was a game with Tommy. Tommy loved the challenge of, you can't catch me. When they told us that he made a confession, that he killed Cochise, that's enough evidence for me. With no body, however, Frances is ultimately released from prison.

And for years, I've waited for this arrest that never came. And I would wake up with nightmares that, you know, he's coming after me, he's going to kill my child, he's going to do something. It was just, it was a nightmare. In March of 2002, less than a year after Francis' release, tragedy strikes Plaquemine once again. Plaquemine City Police received a call from a woman

who said she hadn't heard from George Barrett since the second of March. She sent a 15-year-old son out to look for him. George Barrett III is George's son. I was at home and my sister called and said that I needed to go to my dad's house, something was wrong. And he went in the house and came back out and said, Mom, Grandpa not responding. George Barrett was found laying on the floor with a single gunshot wound to the head.

My dad was known to the community. He was a carpenter, handyman, somebody they can trust. That's the kind of guy my dad was. When you walk into the residence, there was a living room. To the immediate right was his bedroom. I see a half-eaten sandwich, and the TV was on. And they found a shell casing.

It was a small caliber, you know, 22. Searching the home, investigators make a curious discovery. The light bulb in the bedroom was unscrewed. It had a pull card to turn the light on and turn it off instead of a wall switch. There was no forced entry. There was nothing out of place. George knew who killed him. And I think that George Barry came in, made his sandwich, sat down and ate his sandwich, turned the TV on, went into the bedroom. He reached to turn on that light. When he did, pow, it was a setup.

And then it was learned through that investigation that he too was an employee of Tommy Francis. You know, hey, if it walk like a duck and it quack like a duck, it's a duck. It didn't take long for one and two to add up. And they said, Tommy had killed the second victim. They're waiting on fingerprint analysis from the light bulb, waiting on ballistics, wanted to find a gun that may have shot the bullet, but they couldn't locate anything. 13 years pass before a random encounter reignites the Cochise case in 2015.

Aubrey St. Angelo is an Iberville Parish detective. We learned that a barrel was discovered in the parish of Natchitoches. A fisherman had been fishing and noticed that the barrel was starting to decompose itself. That fisherman reported that he had seen what appeared to be human remains exposed in the barrel. Tommy had made a statement that he had put Cochise in a barrel, and somebody called and said, look, there's a barrel washed up on a riverbank in the bayou. And we thinking, oh, shit, this may be the one. I became involved with the investigation

of Curtis Cochise Smith when it was told to us that we would be reopening the investigation. There was a lot of people definitely afraid of Tommy Francis. People that I know of was scared to death of him. It was time to figure out how to get him. Tommy, he traveled. He was a truck driver.

And lo and behold, Tommy had a friend who had a camp up there in Natchitoches, Louisiana. So we thinking, holy crap. He could have told De'Ette, drop his body off and buy you a pigeon, but he may have dropped him off in Natchitoches. That person that they found in the barrel was determined to be of African-American descent.

I was at work, and I got the call. And there was, you know, the police found the barrel. It could have been Cochise, but there was a possibility that it wasn't Cochise. Plaquem and P.D. waste no time sending a team of investigators to Nakatish. It was a metal barrel, which was consistent with what Tommy Francis had allegedly put Curtis Smith in. That body was encased in concrete. There were some jagged fibers attached to the concrete. It was a bluish, greenish-looking fabric.

When Coach East was last seen, he was wearing a blue jacket. We extracted some of the dental remains and we had the tooth grinded up and sent to a lab to be compared against familiar DNA. The police called me to come up to the courthouse to take a DNA. And they asked me, do I know where his son is? I said, yes.

So me and his son went to the police station and they took DNA of me and Gerald. While investigators wait for the DNA results, they comb through reports searching for something they may have missed. We went through all these statements. We started finding these people, find who's still living,

and we bring them in and say, okay, we'd like to re-interview you. We did a bunch of interviews, and I talked to Arlene. Arlene Randall was a lady who Tommy had a relationship with. Tommy ultimately told Arlene Randall that he had killed Curtis

over a stolen air compressor, and that he was pretty angry about it, and that's how he was going to get his justice. He was going to be the judge. And Arlene knew that George Barrett was taking Tommy to court. Arlene agrees to come in and speak with detectives. George was actually suing Tommy for $8,000 because he was hurting on his job.

But of course, Tommy doesn't have work with comp insurance. Tommy told her, he's not gonna come to court. He's not gonna make it. I talked to George and I said, please be careful. You don't know who you're dealing with. I said, I'm telling you, George, please don't turn your back. Uncovering that information during Orlean's interview was very powerful because it gave us a motive,

Tommy Francis. He would have a motive to murder George because he didn't want to have to pay George. Investigators continue to re-interview witnesses and find that Arlene is not the only woman in Tommy's life who's ready to talk. We was able to establish the fact that Tommy had another

mistress by the name of Melina Goche. He had told her what he had did to George and how he went into a back window and he laid in wait. He had unscrewed a light bulb. The investigators had found that the light bulb was loose, making the house dark for when George came home. The light bulb information had never been released to the public.

So the only person who would have known that would be the person who unscrewed that light bulb. And that would have been Tommy Francis. Tommy told her how he did it, that he unscrewed the light bulb and he shot him. And it all ended up. I mean, everything she told us, the scene that we saw, it was exactly what she said, Tommy told us.

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We've done your homework. 25 years after the murder investigation of Curtis Cochie Smith began, investigators have zeroed in on one suspect involving two murders, Tommy Francis. Then, news arrives that threatens to derail the case. The barrel that was located in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the DNA was tested against that of family members of Curtis Smith,

and the DNA returned negative results of that being anyway related to Curtis Smith and the DNA returned negative results of that being anyway related to Curtis Smith. It was like a punch in the guts. We need some closure. Me and my family, we need some closure for Cochise. Despite the devastating news, investigators and the Iberville Parish DA close in on Francis. We sat down with the district attorney's office and we laid this whole case out. We felt it was enough evidence to go forth with a charge of second-degree murder for Coach Heath and for George Barrett.

We learned Tommy was out of state. Tommy was driving an 18-wheeler. We knew he was in Texas, so we started pinging the phone and we was watching him. He crosses the Louisiana border. We pull up at times, he's in the truck, parked, he had a little shaved pull. So we get on the horn, start hollering at him, get out, get out, get out, get out.

And he gets out and there was no confrontation or nothing. So I get him in my unit and I read him his rights. And that's when I tell Tommy, I say, Tommy, you do realize today was the last day of freedom for you, right? 25 years after Coach Jesus' disappearance, Tommy Francis was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

We got a phone call from the police saying they had arrested Tommy Francis. It was a weight, a big weight off my shoulder that he had been arrested. While in jail awaiting trial, Tommy Francis is diagnosed with cancer. He was brought to Hunt's Correctional Center because they have a medical facility there. They have a hospice center. I remember getting the call and the fact that he passed away in prison. I remember getting the call and the fact that he passed away in prison. And it was kind of like, you know what?

Look, you was going to have to face Judgment Day anyway. No. Dying of cancer was not enough for this creature. He was evil. He was evil. Dying was a blessing for him. He tortured people. He tortured people for years.

I miss my dad a lot, particularly when, say when I'm around my male buddies, they talk about the different things that they go and do with their dad, and I'm the only one in the crowd that my dad is not here to do those things with. My mother died without knowing what happened to her son.

Her baby, Coach Ease, she never found him. If I had, I'd give him all my money. I'd give him my life just to have him here. I wish she could walk through that door and say, here I am, sis. You don't have to worry no more. I don't know if I would be around, but I hope that whoever takes my place in the department in the coming years are able to locate Cochise. I can imagine that would be the greatest feeling in the world

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