Morbid - The Heaven’s Gate Tragedy

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

On the afternoon of March 26, 1997, the San Diego County Sherrif’s Department received an anonymous call through 911 reporting a mass suicide at an address in Rancho Santa Fe, California. A single sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the address and knocked on the front door, but got no response. Finding a side door to the home unlocked, the deputy entered the house and was horrified to discover nearly forty bodies of adults, all of whom appeared to have taken their own lives in what appeared to be some kind of ritual.Not since the terrible mass deaths at Jonestown decades earlier had Americans seen such a bizarre and ultimately tragic occurrence and few were able to understand how such a thing could have happened in the modern age. What could have caused so many people to willingly give up their lives, and who was he enigmatic man who’d convinced them to do it?ReferencesAyers, B. Drummon. 1997. "Families learning of 39 cultists who died willingly." New York Times, March 29.CNN. 1997. Applewhite sought cure for his homosexual urges. March 29. Accessed January 6, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/US/9703/29/applewhite/.Lamotte, Greg. 1997. Heaven's Gate 911 call eerily calm. April 18. Accessed January 5, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/US/9704/18/cult.911/index.html.Locke, Michelle. 1997. "Comet cult's stairway led to downfall." Record Searchlight (Redding, CA), March 31: 1.Miller, Craig. 1997. "Web page business supported sect's life." North Country Times (Oceanside, CA), March 28: 1.Perry, Tony. 1997. "Cult left no survivors, police say." Los Angeles Times, April 1: 3.Perry, Tony, Michael Granberry, and Anne-Marie O'Connor. 1997. "39 dead in apparent suicide." Los Angeles Times, March 27: 1.Purdum, Todd. 1997. "Videotapes left by 39 who died described cult's suicide goal." New York Times, March 28.Steinberg, Jacques. 1997. "From religious childhood to reins of a U.F.O. cult." New York Times, March 29.Weinraub, Claire, Christina Ng, Acacia Nunes, and Haley Yamada. 2022. Surviving member of Heaven's Gate cult reflects on mass suicide 25 years ago: 'It meant everything'. March 14. Accessed January 7, 2026. https://abc7.com/post/cult-next-door-diane-sawyer-special-heavens-gate-2020/11642749/.Wilkens, John. 2017. "Cilt sought to 'exit' via spaceship." Los Angeles Times, March 20: B2.Zeller, Benjamin. 2014. Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion. New York, NY: New York University Press.—. 2014. "Anatomy of a mass suicide: The dark, twsited story behind a UFO death cult." Salon, November 15. Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash, and my microphone is traveling away for me. And I'm Al-Aid, and my microphone is staying right in front of me. My microphone, oh, and this is morbid. My microphone loves to just, like, drift off away for me. It's like, ooh. It does. It's like, don't speak. She says, no.

She says, no, just what you're thinking. It's true, she does. You know what I mean? Ash sings now. She's a singer. Did it sound like that? Did it sound like I was like a real professional? It did.

It's gorgeous. Wow. I have a sore throat, so that's interesting. Oh, no, it's still sore. It's a little scratchy, yeah. Please stay away from me. Well, I'm leaving in the country soon. No, don't get sick for your vacation.

I would be so fucking pissed, let me tell you. You dare do that. No, I think I'm going to be fine. I'm going to take some, this is not professional advice, but I am going to take some Zicam. It always gets me. Some zinc. Or Zocam, Zicam.

Zikam. It's the one that has zinc in it. Zink. Yeah. You know, again, not professional medical advice. No, never. It's like I said the other night. I'm just a podcast girl. I'm just a podcast girl, okay? When I was making that sleepy girl mocktail, you had magnesium to it, but like, obviously

you should talk to your doctor. So I was like, I'm not telling you to do this. I'm just a podcast girl. Yeah, that's all I know. I'm not a doctor. And I barely know that. So really? Honestly. Honestly. Honestly. But yeah, it's been a wild day today. We had a meeting with like a very cool person today. Yeah, we did. I thought you were about to just go for it. I was like, wow. I'm just edging everyone.

Go watch the rewatcher. You'll get that joke. I forgot we were there. I was like, hey, you might want to explain that. If you watch the rewatcher, it's a running joke. Okay, I didn't just pull that out of my butt. But yeah, it was a cool meeting. And hopefully it will lead to something cool that you guys will know about.

And we'll let you know when that happened. That's the goal. Until then, that was annoying of me to do. But I was excited about it. I'm excited about it too. Yeah. Anyway. But you know what? I think I'm really, you know, just stalling the beginning because this case is a very sad case.

Very, very, very sad. And we are on part two of the Bayou Strangler, Ronald Dominique. A sad case, but definitely one worth telling. And I think you're doing a really great job so far. Oh, thank you very much. I hope so. You're welcome. Yeah, this is just one of those cases. We're in part two now. So I believe, I mean, I believe at this point we're at close to 10 murders. Wild. He's like pretty prolific and just awful. And again, we're going to see more and more the way that this was portrayed in the media was pretty shameful.

A bunch of bullshit. Pretty shameful. And, you know, in the end, the justice gets served legally. But it's really unfortunate that the entire time it wasn't. It was just a fucking mess. It's just really upsetting. But let's continue. Now we are on to 2002 at this point.

Wow. So it's pretty rare. We've talked about this before for a serial killer to de-escalate. Yeah. Much harder for them to de-escalate. Right. Or to stop killing for, you know, long periods of time. But it does happen.

Remember old shipflower Dennis Raider, BTK, over in Kansas there. He killed 10 people over a 15-year period. And then he just settled into life as whatever the hell he was and ended his reign of for a long time, to be honest. So it's like, that happens. Also, Gary Ridgway, who the Green River Killer, we haven't covered him yet. I know a lot of people want us to. Trust me, it's coming. That's an Elena case for sure. Yeah, and it's coming up. So stay tuned for that. But he also kind of dramatically slowed his activities after marrying his third wife in 1988. So it does happen. Oh, yeah. I've read like a little bit about that case. And you're right. Yeah.

Now, can confirm. You're like, yes, you are correct. It's unclear. what caused Ronald Dominique to stop killing between 2000 and 2002, but he did. At the time, he'd been working two jobs and had become involved with the Lions Club and other community activities. So maybe he found some kind of degree of social acceptance that he was looking for, didn't quite feel the same urges he felt, who knows? Maybe he was just like his mind was elsewhere. Or maybe he just didn't get caught for those specific ones. That's a very plausible thing too. So it's like, who knows. But from what we know, there's nothing between those two years connected to him.

Whatever the case may have been, though, Dominique's hiatus came to an end on October 5th, 2002, when he met 20-year-old Kenneth Randolph. A neighbor in Homer, remember, he had moved to Homa, who fit the killer's victim type pretty perfectly. On October 6th, Kenneth Randolph's body was discovered face down in a remote cane field in rural Lafoucheon. perish. I've looked all these up, so I'm trying to see them as well as I can. Sounds good to me. He was completely nude, except for a pair of white athletic socks. Oh, God. Unlike the previous victims, this body appeared to have been posed by the killer as well. This is a little graphic. A little graphic. Just a little upsetting, just so you know. He was posed so that his, like, buttocks stuck out. So it was obviously done to appear very crass.

Like that was in and it was supposed to be like a humiliating way to post someone I fucking hate this guy so much He's fucking gross he's disgusting just to I I don't understand the depravity to do that to another person to do anything like this to another person and then to To stage someone like that the the humiliation that he's trying to inflict it's like I feel like he is humiliated by who he is as a human being and who his soul is so yeah just puts it on other people Yeah. But detectives also noticed that he had the victim had marks on his wrists, which indicated that he had been bound for at least some period of time. And there were also marks around his neck, which has become kind of a hallmark here. Yeah. The autopsy was conducted a few days later by Dr. Brittany Summers, who collected the usual hair and fiber evidence and also conducted a rape kit that they hope could maybe be used for a DNA comparison if they ever got a suspect.

Yeah. Dr. Summers concluded that Kenneth Randolph had only been dead. five or six hours when his body had been discovered in the field. So very fresh. And he had superficial abrasions on his arms and legs and a large horizontal abrasion stretching from his forehead to his chest. Wow. There were abrasions on his wrists from where he'd been bound and one of his wrists had bled, indicating that the legature was tied really tightly and had cut into the skin and he was alive for it, obviously. Finally, Dr. Summers concluded that the cause of death, was strangulation evident by a, quote, hemorrhaging on the underlying soft tissue surrounding

the hyoid bone. Oh, okay. Despite the obvious ligature mark on Randolph's neck, Dr. Summers was unable to determine whether he died from a ligature or manual strangulation. Hmm. Which there's a pretty decent ligature mark on his neck. So I don't know if it was just she couldn't tell whether he died from that or whether he put his own manual pressure onto it.

I don't know. That's like strange to me. Maybe they're like signs of both so she couldn't say which one he had died from. Yeah, because I suppose like the hyoid bone thing, like maybe that could bring it into place. It's just interesting that they weren't able to pin it. But less than two weeks after the discovery of Randolph's body in the cane field, another young black man had gone missing from Homa. On the evening of October 12, 2002, so not long after it.

Not at all. Shelly Weston wasn't too. too worried when her boyfriend, 26-year-old Anoka-Jones, hadn't returned after he, I guess he had just come home a few minutes earlier than that, and he had brought his bicycle in the apartment, and then he was like, oh, I'm just going to go outside for a smoke. Oh. So at first, she wasn't super worried because apparently, like, he would say he was going to go out for a smoke, and that didn't always just entail going out for a smoke. So, like, if he didn't come back right away, it wasn't too alarming. But then several hours had passed, and she was like,

that's different. Maybe he went somewhere. I don't know. Like he does this sometimes. Like she was like, I guess it's a little weird, but she wasn't super worried at first. Okay. So she kind of just went to bed and she was like, he'll come back in. But when she woke up the following day, he still wasn't home. And she hadn't heard from him. So she became very alarmed and reported him missing right away. But but then it was already too late. I don't know. Jones's body was discovered under the interstate 310 overpass, following morning. He was discovered by Officer John Smith. He was a patrol officer who just happened to be driving in the area. Wow. Officer Smith immediately noticed drag marks leading from the body to the edge of the road, which indicated that he was obviously dumped there. Otherwise, looking around the

scene, there was really nothing else to indicate what had happened or the cause of death right away. Now, at the time of the discovery, Jones was clothed, but his shirt had been pulled halfway up his torso, and his pants had been pulled down to mid-thigh. There was a small amount of dried blood around his mouse and surface abrasions on his torso in hands, which also could be partially from dragging. Right, I was just going to ask you that. Now, like the other victims, Anoka Jones' because of death was asphyxia by strangulation, and the manner of death is considered to be homicide. So right away, it's fitting right in. Now, through interviews with Jones's friends and family, Investigators learned that several hours before he'd gone missing from his girlfriend's apartment,

Anoka Jones and a friend had been confronted on the street by two men who had pulled up alongside them in a gray truck. Now, according to Jones's friend, Ron Gibbons, Jones ran as soon as the men got out of the truck, so he ran away. Because apparently in the truck, there was a very known drug dealer that was riding in the backseat. And I guess this, I'm not going to name him because, you know, this drug. dealer denied any knowledge of or having any participation in Anoka Jones's murder after this, because he was obviously brought in after that. Right. But he rattled off a list of other associates,

anyone he knew who could have been responsible for the murder. And he offered up hair and saliva samples. And he said anything else detectives needed to get him off this list of suspects. Wow. So he was like, I did not do this. That's very surprising. Isn't that wild? all that being a well-known drug dealer. Yeah, and they were able to cross him off the list, like he didn't do it. I mean, that's nice that he helped. I'm glad he at least helped a little bit. Now, despite being pointed in the direction of drug dealers, detectives in Lafouche Parish

had a feeling that Jones's murder had nothing to do with drugs. Meanwhile, investigators in other parishes around New Orleans had begun reading through reports of unsolved murders in surrounding jurisdictions, and they started noticing the connections between their unsolved cases and those as far out as Homa. Now, remember, one of the things about Ronald Dominique that we are going to talk about a lot and mention a lot is that he made sure he killed in different jurisdictions. He not only killed people in marginalized communities and people he knew were going to be vulnerable, he also moved it around a lot to really make it a mess to investigate. He really made this as fucking horrific as he could.

for everyone involved. Makes sense. For example, detectives working the Kenneth Randolph case in Jefferson Parish arranged to speak with the friends and families of Anoka Jones, hoping they might discover any common associates, any enemies that they both might have had that maybe led to their murders. Unfortunately, other than some shared habits and lifestyles that the two men maybe had in common, they really didn't have a whole lot in common. In most cases, the murder of a dozen people under very similar circumstances, circumstances would likely cause public outrage.

You would think. An intense pressure on the police to get the person responsible. Of course. I mean, we've seen it a million times when it's a different kind of victim. Every, but sometimes the pressure is bad when it's a different kind of victim because they get so pressured that they make mistakes. Or they rush to grab someone who might not have done it. Right. Here, in the case of Ronald Dominique, the victims were all marginalized men of color from

impoverished communities. And the way the media was portraying it was they led quote unquote high risk lifestyles. Which is not a fucking thing. So there was no internal or external pressure on investigators to catch this person. It's like, why wouldn't you just want to anyways? Yeah. And again, like I said before, this was all made even more complex and garbled by the fact that Dominique committed these crimes in multiple jurisdictions.

sometimes as much as 60 or 70 miles apart. Wow. So he just drove around. Getting close departments to even work together can be hard. Right. Never mind getting that kind of thing. Like you're contending with a lot. A complex system and also contending with egos. Pride.

Pride with, you know, people not keeping accurate records or not keeping, you know, a good chain of custody on evidence, or not interviewing the right people, not having the record they need. Human error. Human error. And you're doing it with miles apart trying to put these together. Just like statewide. Yeah. Now, Anoka Jones was the 12th man killed by Ronald Dominique.

And eight months would pass before he killed again. And it's like he should have been stopped at this point. The fact that so many more people had to die because this just wasn't top priority is so fucking disgusting. That's what kills me. And it's like this ass-hast. this monster took moments of de-escalation. Right.

That's your time. Use that time. Hone in. Really hone in. Stop the next room from happening. And it feels almost like they didn't, I mean, I will say they didn't have a lot of evidence to go on either. He didn't leave a lot of these scenes. So I'll say that for them.

Like, it's not like they had all this evidence and they were just ignoring it. But it's like, you got to put the nose to the grindstone and you got to try to stop that next thing from happening. Like, where's the task? Force being put together. And also warn the connect. That's a good thing that you say that because we will talk about that. Ah. I'm glad you mentioned it because I said the same thing.

I was like, Task Force. Yeah. At this point, 12 murders in. Like time to set up. Task force time. Right? And also it's like you're not warning the correct communities of people. To be vigilant.

Like you're leaving pieces out of the puzzle because you want people to feel like they want to help more, which is even sadder. But you're not warning the right people. So the right people don't have their guards up. And it's so interesting to me because, Obviously, we're talking about quote-unquote high-risk lifestyles, which we don't even think is a thing. No. That's what they were claiming.

And it's how it was labeled. But it's like, you know, sex work is considered, quote-unquote, high-risk. And even police forces will warn sex workers. And then they'll band together and look out for each other once something. Like, we've told those kinds of stories. Of course. So it's like, why didn't it happen here? Because it's people could have looked out for one another.

And this is the gay community. It's the black community. Like, they could have looked out for one another. And would have. Exactly. That's the thing. It's like you didn't even give him a fighting chance. And it's why? It's fucked up. And it's, and there's points when the next murder happens and you say that could have, you could have at least tried to stop that from happening. Absolutely. And it's like, and we're going to hear some comments about these things that are really distressing the way that they were looked at. And it's just like, oh no. But it's, you need to, you need to hear it because you need to hear how awful this was and why a lot of people don't know about it. Right. That's wild to me that a lot of people, I didn't. I didn't. Until you brought it up, I had never heard of Ronald Dominique. Yeah, and it's like shameful. Maybe, like heard his name like on a TV show or something like that, but not as much as I should have known.

And maybe. Right. Like, because they don't do anything. Like, this is not told. Now, on the afternoon of Saturday, May 24th, 2003, 18-year-old Detrell Woods left his mother's house in Homa, telling his cousin he was going to stay with his girlfriend for the night. Now from the moment his friend Gary Birdwright had arrived to pick him up, Detrell's mother, Margaret Woods, said she had a feeling something bad was going to happen to her son. Oh, wow. And she actually tried to convince him not to go out that night. Oh, that's so haunting. That's a mama. And I, oh, my heart breaks for her. And to not be able to convince him and then have your worst fears confirmed.

He's like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? Yeah, of course we've all. Yeah, he's like, whatever. I'm 18. And again, Detrel's like, Detroit. Well, it was just like, mom, it's fine. Like, don't worry about it.

And then he reminded her, I left my bike at Gary's, so if nothing else, I need to go get it back. And he's like, I promise you, I'm going to be back tomorrow. Oh, God. And he told it that. I promise you I'll be back tomorrow. The next day, two men riding dirt bikes in a cane field off Highway 56 and Bayou Blue discovered Detrell Wood's body laying next to his bicycle. Laying next to his bicycle.

Oh, my God. So he had gone to get his bicycle. Yeah. And he was probably coming home. Yep. Now, when they'd finally managed to find a telephone, the two dirt bike riders told police they had, quote, found a black man who was dead and puffy. That's what they said. Oh.

Now, unfortunately, when detectives arrived at the scene, what they were describing was that decomposition was well underway. It appeared as if the man had been in the field for much longer than he actually had been. So because we're dealing with the elements? I think it was mostly the elements, but it was very interesting. Because they were like, it really looks like he's been here longer, but he hasn't. Now, among the first things that Homa City Detective, and let me just preface this, his name rhymes. It's a little, it's, it's, it's going to give you a little giggle.

A little, I don't want anyone to think I'm laughing at anything, like, inappropriate. It's just this name rhymes. His name is Detective Simon Fryman. So, already. It's a pretty awesome name. Go, Detective Fryman. So there's your quick little, like, take a breath for a minute. because this is very heavy.

So take a breath. Thank you, Detective Simon Frangman for having that name. But coming right back into it, one of the first things that he noticed was that Woods wasn't wearing any shoes, yet he had no dirt on the bottom of his feet. So that indicated that he was already dead when his body was left in the cane field. He obviously didn't walk out there. And also, the tires on his bike appeared clean, and there weren't any tire tracks in the dirt, Which also suggested that whoever had dumped his body had also carried the bike to the scene instead of rolling it there.

Yeah. That's interesting. And that does give you insight into the kind of possible build or strength that this person has. Absolutely. They're not only bringing his body out there. But the bike too. But holding the bike, not rolling the bike. And it's like that's an interesting.

To me, that's like, huh. Like that should give you, when you look at Ronald Dominique, when they finally catch him, he's a big guy. He's a big guy. He's very intimidating. So it's like that was very telling. It's something small, but it's something. It's something. It gives you something. You know, that's like a little bit insight. I think I'm assuming they caught that, I would hope. But like that would be first on my mind is like, I think we're looking for someone that's like big and strong. Right. Right. Now, the preliminary autopsy found no signs of trauma or injury to Detrell's body. And there were no signs of defensive wounds, like the preliminary autopsy. Okay. Also, it didn't appear as though he'd been bound at either the wrists or the ankles. The only evidence pointing to murder was that Detrell Woods had been manually strangled, which was the cause of death. Okay. That's why the preliminary autopsy, like taking one look at the body, the outside, that's what a preliminary one usually is.

They didn't see anything that would stick out to them because, one, he was already in a strangely accelerated. state of decomposition. So that's kind of throw it off a little. But also that's why you didn't see any like outside injuries is because he was manually strangled. That makes sense. Which again is strange as well because he wasn't bound. Yeah, we're going back and forth. So it's like how did that happen? But then again, this is an 18 year old young man. Going up against Ronald. Going against this very large man. Yeah. So I guess I can see that. He could probably do it pretty quickly. Now, according to the few friends that he, that he, that, they were able to speak to, Detrell was described by them as slow in his learning capabilities.

Okay. Which just goes to show you he was vulnerable. Yeah. He was part of that whole Ronald Dominique is a little monstrous bitch. And he goes after marginalized and vulnerable people who, and it's just like fucked up. When you hear that, you're like, that's so fucked up. It is. Like that's, oh, it just makes me so.

angry. But it's another level of fucked up upon every other level that he's already checked off. It really is. And it just like, it makes, you know, it makes Detrell so much more vulnerable to like asshole predators like this. It's really upsetting to think about. But like nearly all of Dominique's victims, Detrell Woods had been somewhat known to police for like some minor offenses. And according to detective, and this is the part that's really going to get your blood boiling everybody, so get ready. According to Detective Dennis Thornton, when it came to investigating the murders of people they considered on the fringes of proper society, I will say.

They described it as, quote, the attitude was, don't break your neck. They were like, don't put yourself out investigating these kind of murders. Don't put yourself up. Like, don't break your neck trying to investigate these kind of situations. Any person that gets killed in your jurisdiction, you should break your neck. Like what? You should do your fucking damnedest because that's the job. up you took.

Well, and they didn't say like, and they didn't say, you know, try your hardest for like these certain kinds of people. No, just don't break your neck over it. It's like, don't, don't put yourself out. Wow. And it's like, they're not even being subtle about that. No, not at all. He said that with his whole chest.

Like, he said the quiet part out loud. That man just said, yep, this is the attitude everybody had. And he said, hello, I'm a racist. Like, what the fuck? Like how, like, you got to start thinking about it. You're like, because we look at these serial killers and we're like, how do you, how does a human being get to that point where they just have no humanity left in them? Like how is that part of the human species, that person? But then you see that inside of them.

Then you see the people outside of that who are supposed to be fighting against this and are supposed to be. And it's like, how the fuck are you? Like, you're just like, oh my God. Like it's upsetting to think that people in power like that. people in authority can have those kind of like biases and thoughts. Like some people are worth it and some people aren't. Like that should never cross your mind. Who the fuck are you to decide? That's the thing. Who the fuck are you? That's the thing. Like who what makes you? I don't. What makes you any better than anybody else? I don't get it. And I'm like, I know, none of us are

perfect. No. None of us have a squeaky clean from day one fucking repute. It's like, Everybody has made mistakes. Everybody has stepped out of the line a little bit. Everybody has done something regretful in their life. If you say you haven't, you are lying and enjoy your ignorance. But everybody. So it's like for you to be able to judge someone else so harshly while sitting there with dirt on you too is so wild to me. Because I'm like, we're all fucked up.

We're all unclean everybody. We're all just doing our best. Most of us are out here trying to do our best. Right. But it doesn't look like you are. when you're acting that way to your fellow human. No. And you talk to like these, you read about these family members and friends of these young men.

Right. Most of them that I have read, all of the ones that I've read that have spoken about it, have said that these men were trying to, like, get themselves back on track. They had families. Yeah. They had kids in most cases. They were working. They were just trying to, like, get themselves above water.

And it's like, everyone's. Right. Everyone's been there. Well, and also, everybody is somebody, somebody. Exactly. I think that's the attitude that you should have if you're an investigator. Yes. Everybody is somebody, somebody. And because you're somebody somebody and you have a somebody,

how do you not look at it like that? How do you not see that? Because working in the morgue, that's how we looked at every single person who came in there, is this is somebody somebody somebody, so you treat it like it's your somebody. Exactly. Because I would want somebody to treat. all meeting my somebody as there's somebody in that situation right so it's just and it's also just like I don't understand why if we're going off but I don't understand why you go into this line of work if that's

not how you think I know like I don't know sometimes why are you here sometimes it's a power thing it is it absolutely it's not it's not some people are there to help and to be the person that like takes care of people and it's there to you know stop danger and keep people safe and then some of them get into it because they like the power. Yeah, it's an ego thing. Like, we've all been around those kind. We sure have. So we've always met those. She said that with a heavy hand. So we all know those kinds. Oh, that's just really sad. And I can't imagine having to read that later as somebody's family member. And just knowing that they were like, we're not going to break your neck to figure it. It's so gross. And it's like, wow, okay. I'm glad he got,

like, called out for saying that. Yeah. Now, a year and a half passed before. for Ronald Dominique killed again. So see, another de-escalation moment. And he goes like boom, bum, bum, boom. One of those, there's like six days in between them. And then it's like, boom? Yeah, he drops off. And then he stops for a while.

And they're not making headway. And it's like take these opportunities to make the headway. Right. But he had been laid off from his job at Caro Produce in January of 2004. But he quickly found another job with a maintenance company. And he worked there for six months. And then he left there for another job, not keeping a job, the classic serial killer. A maintenance guy, can you imagine that guy going into your fucking house?

Yeah. And then he got a job as a meter reader for an electric company, which was a job that required him to spend considerable time driving the back roads of Bayou Blue in the surrounding area. Now, one of those areas was Deolamans, which I think I said that right. I looked it up a million times, Deolamans. An unincorporated region that fell in both. St. Charles and LaFouche parishes. Oh, okay. We're in Louisiana.

Yeah, yeah. In late October, Hurricane Matthew hit the greater New Orleans area. There was 80 mile an hour winds. I mean, it caused havoc, and especially in the landscape in Deolamans, this unincorporated area. So when the storm had finally passed through, Jeff Murrow had gone out to survey the damage around town. Okay. You know, just one of the residents just going around.

Right. That's when he noticed the body of a young man lying beside a pool. or excuse me, a pond about 20 minutes from his home. So Jeff Murrow headed back to his house to get his neighbor. His neighbor was Don Jerome, who was a criminalist with the St. Charles Sheriff's Department. So he was like, you're a good push and a half. Yeah. They both returned to the pond, and he helped survey the scene.

Now, during this, like, initial examination of the body at the scene, Jerome was unable to find any identification on the victim. this man's body was extremely wet, quote unquote, which indicated that the killer had dumped this man's body during the hurricane. Oh. This suggested that he was desperate to get rid of this man's body. Yeah. Once detectives arrived on the scene, Jerome took photographs and searched for any evidence on or around this man's body but found nothing. Now, the autopsy was conducted the following day, and during this, Dr. Frank Johnson determined, quote,

Whoever had killed the victim had used a lot of force. Oh, wow. Also, Johnson discovered the victim had suffered blunt force trauma to his shoulder, lower back, and buttocks, and clotted blood was in the muscles of the neck, which was indicative of very strong strangulation. Wow. Very aggressive. Despite all this evidence of violence, the cause of death was listed as accidental cocaine overdose. What? Yep.

Why? I want you to hear that again. Dr. Frank Johnson said that the victim was killed using a lot of force. That's a quote. And then said that there was blunt force trauma to his shoulder, lower back, and buttocks, and clotted blood in the muscles of the neck indicative of strangulation. But the cause of death is accidental cocaine overdose. How?

What? Yeah. I don't, like, how did they get away with that? How did they get away with a lot of this stuff? Was there even any cocaine in this person's system? Like, what? No idea. Blunt force trauma to cocaine overdose? Yeah. Yeah. And in the middle of a hurricane. What? Like, it's like, is there even any damage to the heart whatsoever?

Doesn't make any sense. What? No, and again, we still don't know who this person is. So fingerprints taken by the coroner turned out to be a match for 46-year-old Larry Matthews. Police reports described him as, quote, somewhat homeless, which I was like, The fuck does that way to describe someone. And Matthews apparently had few connections in the area. And according to his brother, though, there was no one who would have wanted to hurt him.

No. And a day later, however, detectives in Tibado got a call from Homa police saying that they had a man in custody by the name of Jim Jarmine. And this man named Jim Jarmine had information about the murder of Larry Matthews. Huh. Now, according to Jarmine, he had been visiting a friend in Tibado a few nights earlier when Larry Matthews showed up at the house and the two men got talking about drugs. This is according to Jim Jarmine, by the way.

Who's currently being held. Now, according to Jim Jarmine, Matthews told him he knew where he could get some drugs and some sex workers. But in order to do so, he'd need to borrow Jim Jarmond's car. So Jarmine agreed and gave Matthews the keys, but Matthews never returned. Which is why Jarmine contacted police and actually filed a police report for his missing car. Okay. It's a very strange story.

Don't know if that whole thing, that is all from Jim Jarmine. We do know that apparently he filed a police report because his car was missing because he thought Larry Matthews had run off with it. Okay. So using the information provided by Jarman, detectives were able to trace Larry Matthews' movements back to a party where he'd left from. But beyond that, they really had nothing to work with. A day later, the car Matthews had left in was found to be in the possession of four young men who fled after being pulled over and the car was impounded and then returned to Jim Jarman. This is strange. So they claimed that there appeared to be no signs of violence or foul play at the scene or in the car.

And so detectives stuck with the cause of death provided by the coroner, and the case was officially close. That's the wildest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. Truly wild. Tramma. Nope, cocaine. Nope, cocaine. And indicative of strangulation. Nope, cocaine.

So Ronald Dominique waited less than two weeks to kill again. Like we said, he goes through these bursts. In late October 2004, the owners of Gator Storage, which was a self-storage business in Bayou Blue, they got a complaint from a customer. who was saying there was a bad smell coming from one of the units. So they went out to check the offending unit, and they found out that it wasn't held by padlocks and chains, which was typical of a storage unit. Yeah.

It was held shut with only a twist eye. What? So the woman noticed the smell right away, and she also noticed a dark fluid resembling blood seeping out from under the storage unit door. That's absolutely terrifying. So she opened the door to the unit, and she was confronted with the dead body of a man.

And she believed to be middle-aged maybe in his 50s. Oh, God. So Homa police were dispatched to gator storage, and they were accompanied by the Terrebonne, I believe that's how you say it, I hope I said it right, Teribone parish sheriff's deputies. They immediately learned that the business

had very little, if any, security measures in place, especially for a storage business. Yeah. There were no cameras, no alarms. Come on. No other technology that they could rely on for any helper leads, which is probably why this one.

was chosen. In fact, the only thing detectives had to work with was the list of 50 or so names of renters that were provided to them by the owners of Gator Storage. Wow. And they ran through every name on it and they still had no idea who the man in the storage shed was or how he got in there in the first place. Okay. So the body was initially labeled a John Doe. It was transported to the coroner's office. Due to the heat and humidity in the storage unit, the state of DeComp was very far along, much too far along to determine really much of anything. Other than that this victim was a white male and in his early 20s. Wow.

So they thought he was in his 50s. That's how decomposed his body was. And that there was no signs, obvious signs of trauma to the body, but again, that's tough. Autopsy technicians move the body to refrigeration, hoping an identification would come and provide some more details. Now, a couple days later, Homa police receive a call from a local business owner named Francis Barber. She was concerned that she hadn't seen or heard from her friend, Michael Barnett. The last time she'd seen him was on Friday, October 24th,

when he left her apartment on his bicycle telling her he had plans to meet a girl at a nearby fire station. Detective showed Barber a sketch of a dragon tattoo that they had actually taken from the body they found in the freezer, or excuse me, in the storage unit. Yeah. And Barber confirmed that it was indeed Michael Barnett's tattoo, saying, quote, I'm positively sure Michael has that tattoo. I remember seeing it many times. Now, while detectives finished up their interview with Francis Barber, Detective Simon, our friend Detective Simon there, went to the fire station to talk to anyone who was on duty that night that the man was said to be on his way there. But no one remembered having seen him.

No one saw anything out of the ordinary that night. So it didn't appear that he had made it there. Right. Now, they only had a kind of tentative identification at this point. The tattoo's a pretty good identity, but you can't use it as, like, word, you know. But investigators interviewed Michael Barnett's friends and family, hoping it would lead them to physical evidence they could use to confirm the identification. In the process, they learned that Barnett had come to Louisiana from Mississippi several years earlier and had on and off again relationships with his friends and family. But they, too, had grown concern about him when several weeks had passed.

and they hadn't heard from him. They were like, yeah, it's like, you know, it's on and off, like how everything's going, tumultuous shit, like, you know, every family, whatever. But they were like, we were worried when we hadn't heard from him itself. Like, it wasn't, that wasn't normal. Yeah. Now, according to two of Barnett's friends, he'd recently moved in with a new roommate named Dorian Bates, and they felt certain that Dorian was involved in whatever happened

to their friend. Okay. Which is interesting. Meanwhile, another detective, Don Bergeron, had really. received a warrant for Barnett's apartment. And she was hoping that there they would be able to find fingerprints or other physical evidence to confirm this identification, finally. But it seemed Barnett had very few belongings at the time of his death.

But Bergeron did discover that Barnett lived in a group home in his youth. And this girl, like this detective, I'm like, girl, yes. She went for it. She did. Because she found out when he was younger, he lived in a group home. and she was like, hmm, I bet he saw a dentist there. So by the time she tracked the dentist down, he had retired and had sold his practice. Fuck.

But she was like, I'm going to talk to the new owner. So she talked to the new owner. The new owner kept all the old records and faxed Barnett's dental records to the home office department. And they were used to successfully identify the body discovered in the gator storage unit as being that of Michael Barnett. It was just so sad. But also you're happy that he was able to be identified.

Yeah. And I'm glad that that detective took all those steps. Like she went the distance to find those records. She put her fucking neck out for it. She did. Now, the local papers picked up on the story before detectives even knew the victim's name. And the press didn't hesitate to connect this latest victim to the serial killer stalking suburban New Orleans. This time, however, there was a break in the pattern, it seemed.

not only was Michael Barnett a white man. Yeah. But the killer had also gone out of his way to hide his body. He hadn't left him out in the open. Which he usually does. He's usually pretty conspicuous. Unfortunately, while detectives also agreed that this was most likely the work of this serial killer that they didn't know who it was at this point, they found themselves at another

dead end. You know, like they're not getting anything new here. They had managed to get as far as identifying this victim, but there was really no other evidence at the scene. The list of storage unit renters went nowhere. They looked into all of them. Right. So there was little else that they could do, but wait until the killer found another victim, basically, which is what they would end up doing a lot. Now, as it turned out, Homa detectives didn't have to wait long to see another victim. On the morning of February 20th, 2005, a father and son were out riding their dirt bikes with a friend in a grassy field behind the Homa Shrine Center, when,

one of them noticed some clothing laying on the ground. They went up to it to inspect further and realized it was in fact a person lying on the ground. But they couldn't tell whether he was alive. They thought maybe he was maybe just drunk and passed out sleeping it off on a field. They've seen that before, apparently, or they were like, I didn't know if he was dead or unconscious. Yeah, yeah. So they called the homopolis who were immediately dispatched to the scene. Detective Simon was among the first to arrive at what was, you know, now a familiar scene, unfortunately. the man was lying on his side, wearing only blue jeans and socks, and he had clear ligature marks on his neck and wrists. As he was bagging one of the victim's hands for processing,

Detective Fryman got a look at the young man's face and was shocked to realize that he knew who this person was. Oh, wow. This was 22-year-old Leon Lee Wrette, one of the suspects in the murder of Anoka Jones. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. And it was one of the last people to see Jones alive. What the fuck? And that's just by happenstance. It's wild. So like so many other of Dominique's victims, Leon had struggled to maintain stable

housing and had been arrested a few times for petty crimes. He would associate with some drug dealers in the area. Like, that's how police knew him. Yeah. Detective Fryman immediately tracked down all those known associates, but none of them had seen Leon for several days. And his family hadn't heard from him in that time either. Yeah.

Now, eventually, Freiman tracked Leon's movements to the Sugar Bowl Motel, which was a location that's pretty popular with sex workers and those looking to procure their services. According to two witnesses at the motel, Leon had been seen a couple of days before his death with another white guy driving an older-looking Chevrolet suburban. Okay. Now, while Fryman worked the streets trying to track down anyone who could help them find the killer, an autopsy technician began doing a job. primary analysis of Leon's body. As far as they could tell, Leon had been dead for about 24 to 36 hours before he was found. Hemorrhaging in both eyes indicated that the cause of death was likely strangulation, and there was evidence to suggest that he had been sexually assaulted. Oh, no. Now, according to the autopsy technician, quote, the victim was extremely drunk at the time of

his death, and it would not have taken much force to strangle him. Oh, that's really sad. So he was taken advantage up in a big way. Also, the autopsy confirmed that Leon, had been killed in almost exactly the same way as the other suspected serial killer murder victims. There was very little doubt at this point that he was part of this body count. Right. Now, we're going to go into the last phase of murders between 2005 and 2006 now. Once again, Ronald Dominique's choice of victims, which are marginalized, transient, you know, what the media was calling high risk.

vulnerable people and his propensity to move between jurisdictions as he killed had worked to his advantage, unfortunately. Right. He left almost no evidence at the scene of any of these men's bodies. And Leon's transient lifestyle made it incredibly difficult for detectives to just trace his movements. They were trying to figure out where he'd been, and it was hard. While this had allowed him to be, you know, successfully evade capture since the late 1990s, By 2005, it had also made him more brazen as well.

He was becoming way more brazen. I was waiting for that. Which is usually when they fuck up and they got caught. You would hope so. Now, also, Dominique's body count was rising, and everyone in and around New Orleans was beginning to take note every time any body was found anywhere. Finally. Now, by the time the body of 31-year-old August Watkins was discovered in a field behind the LaForche Work Release Center,

investigators knew there was no longer. It wasn't going to be possible to conduct this investigation quietly and out of the public eye. You know, they were trying to keep a lot of things quiet. I'm surprised they were able to for as long as they did. Me too. But it was honestly becoming detrimental because so much speculation was happening. Now, Watkins was a black man known to police for some petty crimes. And, you know, he had a history of like unstable housing and employment.

Yeah. Now, at the time of his death, Watkins had just been evicted from his apartment. And he had been sleeping in the stairway underneath the Holma tunnel. Oh, that's the saddest thing ever. I know. Like, now an autopsy confirmed that Watkins' cause of death was strangulation. Yeah. The discovery of August Watkins was meant that he was the 17th victim.

Wow. Wow. This prompted the Homa police chief Pat Boudreau to call a press conference. And he said, I think there is enough evidence to be concerned there is a serial killer in our area. 17 bodies, I would think. Wow, yeah, thank you for finally coming to that. He pointed to the unsolved murders of all these men in parishes around New Orleans and told the press that law enforcement officials from various agencies had been working together to determine whether the murders of Anoka Jones, Detrell Woods, Michael Barnett, Leon Lorette, and August Watkins were related. Chief investigator for St. Charles Parish, Sam Zina, told reporters, we think without question Jones fits into the group with Homa and LaForch as far as lifestyles.

and being found along the same corridor area. So they're at least coming forward with, you know, something. Finally. Now, in all the counties where Dominique's victims had been discovered, investigators did their best to coordinate with one another, like we were saying. Right. But what they really needed was an official, state-sanctioned, task force. I think someone mentioned that.

And it should have been happening so much earlier than this. Way earlier. And when you finally get that official. state sanction task force, you get all the resources that come with that. Exactly. And they needed it badly. And they needed it so much earlier than this. I mean, when they were hitting those long stretches of like eight months a year between murders, that task force should have been put into position so that they could use all that shit to move it forward. They were just sitting there with a stale case and letting another body appear out of nowhere. I didn't care enough. And it's like, what the fuck? Again, we've seen task force work so well before. And way sooner. Now, unfortunately, the federal authorities found the links between the cases, their high-risk lifestyles, quote-unquote, too tenuous to justify the cost of a statewide task force.

They were all killed in exactly the same manner and a lot of them were disposed of in the same manner. It's a polite way of saying that the victims, gay black men who some were involved in sex work, had a transient lifestyle, saying that they weren't exactly sympathetic enough to warrant the expense of similar task forces. Ones that at the time had been recently assembled to catch Baton Rouge serial killer Derek Todd Lee, whose victims were white college. co-eds. That's so fucked up. So that one, they're saying, they're saying quietly. They're making sure that one stays a little more subtle. But that's what they were saying. That's, it's just so sad. How does 17 young men not justify a task force? I don't get that. And how do you think that? I don't give a shit what the reasoning is. The fact that so many people had to get together and decide upon this and they all collectively came to the same decision. No one was like, what the fuck guys? Like you have to hope that

somebody sitting in one of those rooms was like, are you fucking kidding me? But they didn't have pull. Yeah. Now it's awful. Oh, that's so disheartening. It is. Now the increased press coverage of the case and the speculation from various outlets that the cases might be linked was precisely the kind of attention that they did need to move that needle in the right direction because people were starting to put these together. So following the discovery, of August Watkins, a small amount of resources was allocated to finally assemble a task force to catch this killer. So it was, as soon as they came out and said, you know what, I don't think, it's fine, it's tenuous. We're not really worried about it. That's when finally the pressure came

in where they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's 17 dead bodies here. Let's get it together. And finally, the right communities are hearing about it, too. And they're able to put pressure on finally because they're finally hearing that they're at this. So this included law enforcement from each of the parishes in which each of the victims were discovered. So this is a lot of parishes coming together for this task force too. That's great. And they started with Oliver LeBanks. Remember Oliver?

Yes. Like for some reason, Oliver, like, just like when you look up a, you look up pictures of these men, and I'm telling you, it's going to rip your heart out. Oliver has a very familiar face. He does. He reminds me of someone. But look up pictures of these men because I'm telling you it's going to, it's going to tear. And I don't mean crime scene photos.

I mean like photos of who they are. Who they were in their lives. And it's like that'll make you realize how, if you haven't already realized how horrific it is that they were completely ignored and just treated as trash. Yeah, completely dehumanized. Yeah. So they started with Oliver LeBanks and they went through the most recent victim, August Watkins, with this task force. And finally, we're going to see a little movement forward in this case. And that's where she's going to run up for part two.

off on part two. Oh my gosh. You know what though? That was a very heavy episode. So I think you're leaving you're leaving us with some hope, which I have to thank you for. And have hope because my God. In part three, we're going to have, we have some more heavy stuff coming up. But it's just, it's a lot taken all at once. Yeah. But we are going to get a little bit. We're going to get something at the end. We're moving in the right direction. I promise you we will finally see, but just understand how awfully this case was represented in the press when it was represented at all. I don't know how you couldn't at this point. It's wild to me.

Wow. And these poor families that had to sit around years and years and years and years and just think like, well, is the day ever going to come that I'm going to find out what happened to my kid? These families had to push just to get their family members treated like human beings. And then they also had to sit there. Like we have, in part three, we'll talk about it. These families would have to talk to reporters just to try to get it move forward. And they would have to be like, yeah, my son, you know, made mistakes. He had some tough struggles in life.

But, like, he was doing this. It's like, you shouldn't have to validate why your child or why this person that you love is a human being that deserves to be treated like a human being. Like, that's so sad that you have to validate that. Like, yeah, he made mistakes, but he was doing better. And it's like, that's okay that he made mistakes. So gross. still a person. So gross that people are put in that position. Yeah. It's just so upset. But no, I'm glad that we're going to get some kind of justice in part three. So stay tuned for

part three. Yeah. And with that being said, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. I don't have to tell you not to keep it this weird. Just really sad. God Almighty.