Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Bayou Serial Killer” Pt. 2 - Ronald Joseph Dominique

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Ronald Dominique didn't feel any remorse as he dumped his twenty-third victim in the Louisiana swamp in 2006. Instead, he only felt sorry for himself. He made the long drive back to his mobile home and did the only thing that made him feel better. He plotted another murder. Sponsors! Pair of Thieves - Get 20% off your first order at PairOfThieves.com/KILLERS Ring - Get a special offer on a Ring Starter Kit right now at Ring.com/SerialKillers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Though it was autumn in Homa, Louisiana, it was still scorching hot outside. In 2005, a band of men labored to build a collection of homes in the expanding suburbia. After an afternoon of roofing,

One of the new hires, a tall young man, steps away to take a smoke break. As he sits under the shade of a cypress tree, he sees someone walking toward him. The stranger is a short, squat, middle-aged man. He's here to read the electricity meter. While he works, the two strike up a friendly conversation. The laborer chats without paying too much attention. The man before him is so unremarkable and meek, he hardly makes an impression. Then, without warning, the stranger steers the conversation toward drugs and money.

At those words, the construction worker gets more interested. He's always eager to make some extra cash. The stranger claims to have plenty. They exchange numbers and make plans to meet at the meter reader's home the next day. Unfortunately, the meeting isn't what the laborer expected. Days later, his body will be found. half submerged in a ditch and bloated by the Louisiana sun. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson.

This is Serial Killers, a Parcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we conclude our discussion on the chilling murders of the Bayou Strangler, Ronald Dominique. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing.

Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. And if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. We also now have merchandise. Head to Parcast.com slash merch for more information. Last week, we discussed Ronald Dominique's young life, his family, and the escalation of his violent attacks from sexual assault to murder in the span of only four years. Ronald was born in Tibado, Louisiana in 1964. As a child, he was bullied mercilessly by his

classmates for being short, overweight, and effeminate. It caused him to repress an enormous amount of anger and feel ashamed of his sexuality. In 1993, at the age of 29, his rage erupted for the first time when he raped a homeless man at gunpoint. After spending a short but traumatic stint in jail, Ronald's crimes escalated. He began killing his victims after sexually assaulting them to ensure they couldn't report him to police. This week, we'll dig deeper into Ronald's psychology after 2005 and the final seven of his 23 total victims. We'll discuss his arrest and the fascinating full confession that led to his present incarceration in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he serves eight consecutive life sentences. Ronald Dominique's 16th victim was found on February 20th,

2005. Leon Paul Lorette was found dead of asphyxiation under a bush at a local airbase. As was the case for many of the Bayou Strangler's victims, evidence was sparse. The huge, heat and humidity of rural Louisiana accelerated the rate at which the victim's bodies decayed, destroying evidence before it could be discovered by police. The following month, police finally organized a coordinated task force to capture the killer. The force consisted of 14 police officers from local parishes, several state police, and even the FBI. It had taken nearly a decade from July 1997 until March 2005,

for police to publicly acknowledge that a serial killer was active in the area. But now authorities were prepared to devote their full focus to finding the Bayou Strangler. The first job of the task force was to find traceable connections between the strangler victims. So far, all they knew were the basics. The victims had all been male between the ages of 16 and 50. Most were believed to be homeless, and many were known to have struggled with drug addiction. The bodies were dumped, usually right off the side of the road, in a 60-mile radius between the small community of Homa and New Orleans. While there were plenty of commonalities among the appearances and lifestyles of the victims, there weren't many social connections.

None of the victims knew each other, and most were last seen in entirely different areas from where their bodies were found. Ronald's strategy for dumping his victim's bodies was among the most important factors that kept him on the loose. for so long. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. According to psychologist Dr. Deborah Sherman Coughlin, most serial killers try to dump bodies as quickly as possible so as not to be seen near the victim. Those that have long murdering careers take a little more time and go deeper and secluded areas. The longer the body goes without detection, the longer evidence has to degrade.

Ronald definitely took his time dumping the bodies. Though they weren't always well concealed, they were always away from the sight of their death. They were usually open to the elements, which accelerated their decomposition. The lack of physical evidence on the decayed bodies was a constant annoyance for investigators. It made it hard to put together a comprehensive list of victims. Since the Bayou Strangler did not use an identifiable murder weapon, it wasn't always clear whether the individuals were strangled or died from asphyxiation under other circumstances.

Authorities wanted to avoid attributing the wrong victims to the strangler. While police did their best to lay the groundwork for the investigation, the body count continued to climb. A month after the task force was formed, in April of 2005, two more bodies were discovered. bringing the total number of suspected victims to 18. The first victim added to the list that month was 31-year-old Homa resident, August Terrell Watkins III.

His corpse was found off the side of the interstate, but the body was so mangled and damaged by the sun that the cause of death couldn't be determined. Even so, according to new protocol instituted by the task force, any male victims found without bullet or stab wounds were tentatively linked to the Bayou Strangler. He had recently been forced to move out of the home he shared with his ex-girlfriend and was presumed to be homeless. He was tall, handsome, and in need of money.

One source reports that August's new girlfriend was approached by a white man in a truck. She informed police that the man told her he was looking for August. Unfortunately, she couldn't remember any details about his truck or what he looked like. We know Ronald often picked his victims up in his truck to drive them to more secluded locations, and on at least one prior occasion, he made promises to return at a later time to pick up a victim and take him to get drugs. Unfortunately, white men in trucks are a dime a dozen in Louisiana. Police weren't able to follow the lead anywhere useful. Just a couple of weeks later, on April 28, 2005, police found the body of 23-year-old.

old Kurt Cunningham floating in a ditch. Cunningham lived in Tibado, the small community where Ronald grew up, but he had last been seen in Homa on April 8th. His last known location was remarkably close to property owned by Ronald's sister, where he lived in a trailer at the time. Like August's, Kurt's body was extremely decayed. By the time it was discovered, he'd been dead for at least 20 days. Once again, all the potential evidence was too badly decomposed to be of any use to police. Kurt's cause of death could not be determined. Though there was no usable physical evidence on the bodies, the cluster of locations where the bodies were found enabled police to narrow down the killer's hunting ground. By the end of

April 2005, all the drop sites had been analyzed. Authorities were now almost certain their murderer was operating in Terrebonne Parish, whose central city was Homa. Authorities were starting to catch on to Ronald's habits. His entire life, Ronald never lived very far from the town in which he was born. He seldom traveled out of the area to find victims. There's a myth that serial killers and other violent predators often traveled to distant areas to avoid detection, but this is rarely the case. According to Dr. Scott Bonn, a criminology professor, most of the same.

The most killers have specific, well-defined geographic areas of operation. The areas rarely extend more than a two-hour drive from where the killer lives. In Ronald's case, this was his home in Homa. The furthest we know that Ronald traveled for a victim was New Orleans, which was only about 90 minutes from where he lived. Even in those cases, Ronald still followed the typical patterns of a serial killer. It wasn't until he'd already gotten away with the murders of five victims. that he began to expand his search for targets.

At the end of the day, serial killers are like any predator, they're creatures of habit, and prefer safe, familiar hunting grounds. Despite the increased media coverage and police presence around Homa in 2005, Ronald, now 41, didn't slow down the rate of his killings. He was too driven by desire to stop at this point. Dr. Joni Johnston, a forensic psychologist, suggests that serial killers may develop an addiction to killing in search of a thrill or rush. She writes, quote,

It isn't too much of a stretch to see how a serial murderer might commit the first kill during a period of stress, feel an emotional high during the crime, experience a gradual buildup of tension again. The escalation and frequency of killing can be similar to the tolerance seen in physical addiction. Though Ronald might have been willing to slow down the rate of his killings, he did feel the pressure to some extent. Now that efforts to catch him were in high gear, he couldn't help but be afraid. His entire career as a serial killer had begun because he couldn't stand the idea of his sexual assault victims reporting him to police. Ronald's 19th victim was Alonzo Hogan, a 34-year-old homeless man who was often seen around Homa. Ronald spotted Alonzo riding his bike through an isolated area of town and pulled his truck over.

Alonzo eagerly chatted with Ronald, hoping he was going to be offered money. Ronald propositioned the desperate man and likely offered him money in exchange for sex. Once Alonzo agreed to be tied up back at his camper, Ronald took his time abusing and strangling him. He took the body to a ditch where he tried to drag the corpse into the water to be partially submerged, but had trouble in the dark. Alonzo was not a heavy man, but Ronald was having chest pains caused by his chronic heart condition. It was all he could do to get the body out of his car. Dragging it into the steep ditch in the pitch black was another matter. He ended up leaving the body outside of the water

and went home that night to nurse's aching muscles. It was found on the following day, July 2nd, 2005. This was significant, as it was the first strangler victim in some time that was found within a day of the murder. Detectives were optimistic that they could at last extract some physical evidence from the corpse. There were clear markings on Alonzo's wrist that had suggested he had been bound or handcuffed. However, after hours at the scene and in the lab, the forensic department found nothing. Ronald was too careful. He always used protection when sexually assaulting his victims and did his best to touch

his targets as little as possible. If the victims bled, as they often did when struggling against Ronald's strangulation, he made sure to collect the blood in a bag and dispose of it in a separate location. Once again, police were one step behind the biostrangler, and it had disastrous consequences. A month after the murder of Alonzo Hogan, the body of Wayne Smith, a 17-year-old boy, was found in a similar ditch. The corpse was so decomposed it was unrecognizable. His mother later said,

quote, I put something in the ground, and I really don't know if my child is dead or not, because I did not get a chance to see my baby. The community was unraveling. People stopped going out alone at night. They paid attention to every unknown car and person who passed through town. And just as police thought they were making progress on the investigation of Wayne Smith's murder, they were struck with tragedy. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.

The entirety of Terrebonne Parish was flooded. In some areas, the water was 10 feet deep. Needless to say, all local officers, officers on the Bayou Strangler Task Force were reassigned. Thousands of people were stranded in their homes and needed to be rescued. Thousands more needed medical treatment and disaster aid. For six months, every active investigation in the parish was put on hold. There was too much to do elsewhere, but while police were busy tending to victims of the storm,

Ronald was still on the loose. Coming up, Ronald's murders become personal for police. Now back to the story. September 2005 was a tough time for residents of Teribone parish. Hurricane Katrina had just struck and police were working overtime to provide aid to thousands of victims. But for Ronald Dominique, the Bayou Strangler, it was the ideal time to kill again. That month, 40-year-old Chris DeVille's body was found abandoned in a sugarcane field on the edge of Homa. it was a particularly hard pill for the detectives to swallow. Chris was the brother of an officer in the home of police department.

When he went missing in early September, his family assumed he had traveled north where the hurricane damage was less extensive and there was working electricity. After his corpse was discovered, the entire department went into a period of mourning. It was agonizing knowing that while they were doing their best to provide disaster relief

to as many citizens as they could, there was a murderer making sure people were suffering instead. Killing an officer's brother meant nothing to Ronald. By now, all the killings were starting to blur together. He never remembered the names of his victims, though he did sometimes have nightmares where he vividly saw their final agonized expressions. Two months after killing Christaville,

he sought out another target. 21-year-old Nicholas Pellegrin. Nicholas was in construction and was working in a suburban area of Homa. Ronald happened to be working that month reading electricity meters. He walked from house to house on the lookout for potential marks. When he saw Nicholas, Ronald later confessed he was overcome with the desire to have sex with him. He engaged Nicholas in some casual conversation before deploying his usual tactic of moving the discussion toward drugs. With some prodding, Nicholas let slip that he could get Ronald some marijuana for a good price.

They exchanged numbers, and Ronald called him up a few days later. He invited Nicholas to his trailer to deliver the drugs. Once he was inside, Ronald held him at gunpoint and tied him up. When Nicholas flaunt back with his legs bound, Ronald choked him with a piece of rope. To dump the body, Ronald traveled back to the residential area where he met Nicholas and tossed his corpse in the tall grass at the end of a gravel road. A resident found the body a week later and called the police. With the sheer number of bodies being found every month,

detectives worried full-scale panic would soon break out. They got dozens of tips each week from concerned homeless citizens, but none of them led anywhere. Some officers worried if progress wasn't made soon, the killings would escalate even further. The murder of 17-year-old Wayne Smith in particular worried detectives. He was the youngest victim in a while. Could children be at risk soon, too?

Luckily, police caught a break in November of 2005. A probation officer named Bill Null was tasked with gathering information about known sex offenders to assist in the investigation. He didn't find anything on the registry, but he did receive a disturbing phone call while searching. The mother of Ricky Wallace, a recovering addict who reported to Officer Null, called him in a panic. She was terrified after one of her son's friends was found strangled in a drainage ditch. Ricky had discussed rumors about the Bayou Strangler with his mother, and afterward began to have vivid nightmares about being tied up and abused.

His mother got a strange feeling that Ricky might know something about the murders he wasn't telling her. Officer Null drove down to Ricky's head. house to question him. He was told a chilling tale. One night a few months prior, Ricky was walking down the street past a park when he noticed a truck passed by him several times. After at least four passes, the truck finally pulled over. A short, chubby, balding man leaned out of the window. He pulled out his wallet and showed Ricky a picture of a young woman. He told Ricky the woman was begging to have sex with someone exactly like him. The office was. He often. to pay Ricky to have sex with the woman while he watched.

Ricky agreed and got into the man's truck. The stranger took him to a shabby trailer in Bayou Blue. Of course, the woman was nowhere to be found. The mysterious man told Ricky that to meet her, he first had to undress, tie himself up, wrap himself in a towel, and lay down on his stomach. Ricky was willing to do almost anything for the money, but being tied up was too much.

He refused. The man tried to talk Ricky into it for 40 minutes until finally, Ricky told him, quote, you can talk a hole in your head. I ain't getting tied up. His final refusal sparked an argument. Ricky demanded the stranger take him back to the park, but the man wouldn't let him leave.

It seemed he desperately wanted to follow through with the sex, but couldn't go through with it without tying the man. man up. Being a careful and fearful man, Ronald needed his victims to be restrained before he felt comfortable, even if he was holding them at gunpoint. Studies regarding the psychological impacts of bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism, or BDSM, found that those who identified as the dominant partner, the partner consensually restraining the other partner, were found to enter an altered state of consciousness, identified in one 1991 essay as flow. While in flow, the dominant partner experienced a state related to focused attention,

a total loss of self-consciousness, and a feeling of achievement and success. Ronald was a low-achieving individual who was neither well-liked nor extremely successful. He reported feeling powerless to change his day-to-day situation. The bullying and poverty he experienced in his youth made a difficult for him to feel in control of his life. Given that, it's easy to see why tying his victims up was appealing and essential to his assaults. It made him feel powerful and confident. It was a way to take control. Of course, it's important to note that the BDSM scene values consent and compassion very highly.

For two mature consenting partners, there's nothing wrong, deviant, or inherently violent about it, but Ronald was not engaging with kink in a healthy or normal way. Ricky continued to argue with the stranger about being tied up. Eventually, after Ricky physically threatened him, the man agreed to drive him back to the park.

They got back in the truck, but the ordeal still wasn't over. The stranger started running his hand along the door. It looked to Ricky like he was reaching down there to grab something and, judging by the man's expression, it wasn't anything good. Now fully on alert, Ricky took an empty bottle from the cup holder and held it up. He threatened to bash the stranger's head in if he didn't keep his hands on the wheel.

The stranger backed down. After a long, tense drive, he dropped Ricky back off at the park and sped away. Ricky figured the man was just a strange pervert. He didn't think to tell police until he'd heard. heard they were looking for a serial killer. Ricky, like almost all the victims, didn't know Ronald personally, so he couldn't give Bill the killer's name. But before he took Ricky to the station to make an official statement,

Bill thought to ask if Ricky remembered where the mysterious stranger lived. For once, the remoteness of the bayou worked to law enforcement's advantage. There are only so many places to go in Bayou Blue. Ricky remembered exactly where the stranger had taken him. Ricky led Bill right to Ronald Dominique's trailer. For the first time, police had a suspect. After eight years and 22 victims, the Bayou Strangler had finally slipped up. The task force surrounded Ronald's trailer in late 2005 to bring him in for questioning.

They had no idea how the Bayou Strangler might react to police outside his door and weren't going to take any chances. But when their suspect opened his door to police with a smile, they were a little surprised. The man in front of them didn't look anything like they expected. At this time, Ronald's health was failing. He used a cane to walk, and had just suffered a heart attack. He definitely didn't look like he could overpower and brutally murder 22 grown men. On top of that, he was immediately cooperative with law enforcement. He readily agreed to go to the station to answer,

When police told him about the complaints against him, Ronald was quick to defend himself. He claimed the bondage was part of a consensual sex act. Further confusing investigators, Ronald also agreed to provide DNA samples. Ricky's story had made police sure Ronald was the culprit, but his cooperation and physical stature gave them second thoughts. After Ronald gave police samples of his DNA to test against any fibers found on past victims, he was returned to his Bayou Blue camper. Back at home, Ronald was miserable. He'd been expecting the visit from police for a long time. Despite his precautions, he knew he had

been pushing his luck with each additional murder, but he couldn't stop himself. When he was brought to the station, he figured his only option was to cooperate. He used the same strategy for deceiving investigators that he used for luring in his victims. He appeared at, and he appeared as meek and non-threatening as possible. His only hope was that his DNA samples wouldn't link him to any of the victims. After all, most of the bodies had been left to fester in the Louisiana weather for days before they were discovered. Maybe the officers had nothing. Once again, Ronald got lucky. Due to an unusually high number of open murder cases in Louisiana in 2005, the state crime labs were backed up testing DNA samples.

Police had found some body hair on the corpses of Oliver LeBanks and Manuel Reed, who were murdered by Ronald in 1998 and 1999, but to get the hair analyzed, they had to go through a third-party company. That company was swamped to, and informed detectives that the wait could be up to a year. The task force was crushed. They decided to hold off on arresting Ronald, and instead placed him under 24-hour surveillance. It was imperative that they were.

to gather enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. After the deaths of 22 men, police wanted to be absolutely certain they could put the killer away for good. Of course, keeping eyes on Ronald at all times wasn't easy, and it wasn't cheap. After a year of surveillance, in October of 2006, the task force was running short on funds. Local police took turns following Ronald on their own time, but were not yet. no longer able to do so around the clock. This gave Dominique exactly the window he needed to kill again.

We'll cover that next. Now back to the story. In late 2006, Louisiana law enforcement tried their best to surveil their number one suspect in the Bayou's triangular killings, 42-year-old Ronald Dominique. Unfortunately, they were running out of funding and manpower, and they still didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. After a year of constantly looking over his shoulder, Ronald figured out police were no longer watching him in October 2006. The cars that used to sit outside his trailer every morning were gone,

and he knew law enforcement would have arrested him if they had anything on him. After holding himself back for so long, he was desperate to feel the rush of a kill again. If the police really had left him alone, they were going to regret it. For his last murder, Ronald didn't make any major changes to his formula. He targeted a 27-year-old man who lived an itinerant life, Christopher Sutterfield. In the past, Christopher had been arrested for public intoxication, theft, drugs, and aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon. His most recent brush with the law had been in April for being in contempt of court. But in the month since then, he'd kept himself on the straight and narrow.

In fact, in many parts of his life, things were looking up. Rather than living on the bypass road where he'd been for years, he'd moved into a room at the A Bear Motel in Homa. He shared a room with his friend, Leonard Allen, and Allen's girlfriend. Christopher had even started dating. Brandy, Bambi, Liner was also a resident of the motel where he stayed. For the first time in his adult life, Christopher seemed to be carving out a stable life for himself,

until it was cut short. On Saturday, October 14th, 2006, Christopher went drinking with his roommates and girlfriend. They went to several bars before returning to the hotel together. His friend said Christopher was happier than he had ever seen him. After the group returned to the hotel, Christopher went outside to smoke. He wandered around the parking lot alone, buzzed and happy.

While he was enjoying the night air, an old truck rolled to a stop next to him. It was Ronald. He leaned out of the driver's side window and called Christopher over. Christopher hesitated to answer, but the man appeared harmless and friendly. He walked over to see what the stranger wanted. Ronald started chatting with Christopher and claimed he had some drugs back at his trailer if Christopher was willing to pay. Christopher accepted.

He wanted to make the night special. Besides, Ronald seemed too sickly to be dangerous. He climbed into Ronald's truck. Just then, his girlfriend, Bambi, came out of the motel room to look for him. He told her that he was going somewhere with a friend and that he'd be back soon. Bambi watched him drive away into the night. Christopher's body was found the next day, October 15th. It was dumped on the ground off the side of an interstate not far from his hotel.

He had been restrained, assaulted, and asphyxiated, just like all the other victims. Police declined to comment publicly about whether the new death could be the work of the Bayou Strangler, but privately they'd made the connection. It was a bitter blow for the task force. Once again, their lack of resources allowed the Strangler to terrorize the town of Homa. The public was outraged, particularly Christopher's family. Luckily for police, they managed to terrorize the town of Homa. Luckily for police, they managed to keep from the press that they had been surveilling a suspect for almost a year.

If it had leaked, things might have completely boiled over. Meanwhile, after the murder of Christopher, Ronald's personal life was crumbling beneath him. His health was worse than ever. He was completely dependent on his cane to walk and could barely stand on his own. Until October 2006, he had been living on his sister's property because he had been living on his sister's property, because he needed somebody to help care for him when he was ill. But the constant police presence took a toll on the relationship. The strain of taking care of Ronald wore on his sister.

He was constantly miserable and never took responsibility for his own actions. She didn't know if he was guilty, but some days she seriously wondered. The emotional labor, combined with the feeling that she was constantly being watched in her own home, was too much. She asked Ronald to move out in October. He moved to the bunkhouse, a Homa homeless shelter. After nearly a decade of stalking and killing homeless men, Ronald became one himself. His new living arrangement was ideal for police. The bunk house was privately operated by Sergeant Bobby O'Brien, an officer in the Homa Police Department.

Meanwhile, the results from the DNA analysis came back. It confirmed Ronald's DNA matched the body hair found on two victims of the Bayou Strangler. The results weren't airtight, however. The DNA match was mitochondrial, which is inherited maternally. That meant the DNA only confirmed the killer was a member of the Dominique family, not Ronald himself. A clever lawyer could convince a jury it was far from incontrovertible proof. With Ronald ill, only semi-mobile. and living in a shelter run by one of their own,

police felt confident enough to step back. They decided to continue searching for evidence to build the case against Ronald. They couldn't allow him to get off on a technicality caused by a premature arrest. For his part, Ronald had no idea a police officer owned the shelter where he now stayed. The officer had employees at the shelter

inform him of Ronald's comings and goings. Ronald was effectively back under 24-hour surveillance. Still, even if he had known, he might have been too distracted by his other problems to care. He wasn't fit to work, was estranged from his sister, one of the only people who had stuck by him his whole life, and worried it was only a matter of time before he was arrested. His health was so bad that attempting escape wasn't really an option. He was trapped. Law enforcement worked throughout the rest of October,

and November to tighten up their case. Despite the extra time as moved to the homeless shelter provided them, they couldn't find further physical evidence on the bodies of other strangler victims. The corpses were all too old and too badly decomposed. Rather than give Ronald another chance to kill while they gathered more evidence, authorities finally went to a judge

for an arrest warrant on December 1, 2006. They planned to charge Ronald with the murders of the victims they recovered DNA evidence from Oliver LeBanks and Manuel Reed. A group of plain-closed detectives from the task force quietly led Ronald away from the bunkhouse at 3 p.m. Three hours later, he had been processed and charged. Ronald Dominique's interrogation began that evening. The 42-year-old shuffled into the police station with the help of his cane. As always, he was docile and cooperative when faced with authority. detectives took a soft approach with Ronald at first.

He answered their questions calmly, though never with eye contact. He didn't deny encountering the two men police accused him of murdering. He didn't even deny that he'd killed them. Instead, he bizarrely claimed each case was self-defense. Without much prompting, he confessed at length to meeting all the men whose pictures were placed in front of him. When faced with the slightest bit of anger or agitation from detectives, He cowered and broke down. What followed was a series of gruesome stories

interspersed with periods of sniffling and weeping. Ronald gave specifics about many of his murders, though he claimed not to remember some. After killing so many, he had trouble keeping track. There are a number of reasons Ronald might have confessed so willingly. The first was the sheer inevitability of his capture. He likely realized that at this point, there wasn't much he could do to save himself.

Prior to his arrest, Ronald claimed to have been so miserable he contemplated suicide. At several points, he hoped his heart condition would progress enough to send him to the hospital and prevent him from going to prison. Another reason may have been an intense feeling of shame. Though shame and guilt are often referred to interchangeably, Dr. Neil Burton differentiates between the two. He writes that guilt is a feeling of tension. remorse or regret in regards to a specific external action.

On the other hand, shame is directed inward. Feelings of shame can often lead to defensive responses, including denial of responsibility. It doesn't seem like Dominique felt a lot of guilt while he was killing, considering he never tried to turn himself in. But he still may have experienced shame. Dr. Burton cites a study which links feelings of shame with recidivism in criminals. shame encourages defensiveness, which leads to aggression. In this way, Ronald may have been in a cycle fed by his regret. His anger at himself made him lash out and continue killing.

Whether or not he felt shame, it was pretty clear Ronald felt no guilt. Even though he confessed to killing the men, he maintained it was the victims who had been at fault in every case. For example, Ronald recounted the night he killed Mitchell Johnson, whose body was found in 1999 for detectives. Though he didn't remember Mitchell's name, Ronald referenced the location in which he dumped the body, the city of Kenner.

Mitchell's body was the only one of his victims found in that area. Ronald told investigators that he met Mitchell in New Orleans. He claimed Mitchell approached him in a bar and offered to have sex with him for money. According to Ronald, Johnson asked for $20. Ronald agreed. He told detectives, quote, We went where my car was parked,

and we got in the back seat, and we pulled our clothes down to our knees, and we started fooling around. Then after, he got on top of me, pulled a knife out, and told me I better give him all my money, and he was going to kill me. According to Ronald,

he reached down and grabbed something, whatever he could get his hands on, and hit Mitchell. Then, frightened and frenzied, Ronald started choking Mitchell until he realized the miss. man was no longer breathing. After that, Ronald said he was traumatized.

Despite the fact that this was not the first man he had killed, he claimed to be in a daze. He trembled, as he described to detectives, climbing back into the driver's seat and heading back home. Ronald would later dump Johnson's body in a dumpster in Kenner, which law enforcement found a few days later. From Ronald's point of view, it sounded as if he had no choice but to,

to brutally rape and strangle 23 men. In the recording of Ronald's confession, it's clear he was emotional when he described the incident. He cried, took deep shaking breaths, and struggled to get words out. But while the recollection truly might have made him upset, there's little reason to believe things happened exactly as he described. Claiming his crimes were the result of consensual sex gone wrong

was his go-to defense. Let's not forget that in 1996, when Ronald was first questioned by police after raping his second victim at gunpoint, he told a similar story. That tale, too, was filled with whining and sobbing. In fact, detectives noted during Ronald's interrogation that he seemed to have a rehearsed story for everything. In the words of Lieutenant Don Faray, a detective on the task force, every answer he gave you had an excuse, stuff that didn't need an exercise. explanation, he felt the need to complain and to explain. Still, though he obscured some details of the murders, Ronald did reveal some truths about himself. In the recorded confession, he does sound extremely emotionally affected by the story he's telling.

It almost seems like he believes it. It's possible he does. Lying is part of perfectly normal human psychology and is often triggered by shame or a desire to avoid conflict. Moreover, liars with underlying personality disorders often end up constructing such detailed narratives for their lives that they begin to believe them. It's still difficult to believe that Ronald convinced himself he was acting in self-defense for every one of his 23 murders. As psychologist Petra Garlip writes, this kind of pathological lying is a difficult

diagnosis to pin down. It's always possible that Ronald knew he wasn't the victim. and was simply a very convincing liar. Either way, his claims of self-defense fell apart over the next eight hours of interrogation. He was already on the verge of physical and mental collapse. After some cross-examination, he was reduced to a quivering mess. By the time detectives were finished with him,

on December 1, 2006, Ronald had confessed, not just to the two murders for which police had physical evidence, but all 23. Even then, there may be murders we don't know about. Ronald didn't keep a record of his crimes and acknowledged that there could have been more bodies that were never discovered or identified. It's hard to say what made Ronald break so easily. After his initial bouts of denial, he was never argumentative with investigators and didn't withhold information. It's possible that after years of hiding such a distressing secret, being arrested, gave him relief on some level.

He might also have been easily intimidated by investigators. Ronald spent his entire life living in fear. He was scared of his bullies, of strangers passing by on the street, of the world at large. Then there's the matter of his health. According to one newscast, he'd suffered from a severe heart attack only weeks before he was arrested. His quality of life was poor, and he likely wasn't capable of killing anymore anyway. Thanks to Ronald's confession, detectives were able to compile enough evidence to bring him to trial on nine counts of first-degree murder and forcible rape. On September 23, 2008, he was convicted of eight of the nine murders charged against him and was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences.

In 2008, at age 44, Ronald's well-deserved worst nightmare came true. He was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. He later told any journalist who would listen that he wished they'd just killed him. He bemoaned the fact that the state medical care had saved his life after he suffered several heart attacks while incarcerated. Today, the rural communities in Terrebonne Parish have calmed down since Ronald's conviction, but they're outside of the public eye once again and still suffer from the same discrimination and neglect that allowed Ronald to operate unhindered for nearly a decade. People are still careful when walking home alone at night, and no one hitchhikes anymore.

The small town trust in southern Louisiana has forever been replaced by uncertainty. Thanks to the Bayou Strangler, no one knows for sure they can trust the quiet, unassuming man living in the camper next door. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back more. Monday with a new episode. You can find more episodes of Serial Killers, as well as all of Parcast's other shows on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Several of you have asked how to help the show, and if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler,

a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Carrie Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Liebeskind. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Edmire. Serial Killers is written by Alyssa Thorne and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the... the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road.

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