Small Town Murder - A Big Ball Of Death - LaPlace, Louisiana

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

This week, in LaPlace, Louisiana, a woman being horribly murdered, in her own home, leads detectives to see if any other nearby towns have had any similar murders. Turns out, there are many other murders that are very similar. As a matter of fact, they have a serial killer on their hands. The FBI does a profile, that doesn't help too much, but he is eventually caught. Only problem is that his motivations are much different than most serial killers, and none of the physical evidence matches him. Do they even have the right guy??   Along the way, we find out that Louisiana is not where you want to live, if you hate water, that not all serial killers have the same desires, or motives, and that bringing up someone's mother can often get them to tell you the horrible things that they've done!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

This week, in Laplace, Louisiana, a brutal murder in a rural home causes detectives to notice that it's not the only recent local murder. And as a matter of fact, they seem to have a serial killer on their hands, one with a much different motive than they're used to for serial killers. Welcome to small town murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to small town murder. Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogalo.

I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Whistman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another, a crazy wild edition of Smalltown Murder. We have just a crazy insane. It's a serial killer this week. So don't have to tell you how crazy that is of a thought to have. So before we get into that, just want to definitely say, head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets for live shows because they are there.

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less than 100 tickets left. So get in there. It's a pretty good size venue too. You guys are doing great. You guys are awesome. Thank you for doing that. And then after that, we have Milwaukee and Minneapolis in September.

We have Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento in October, and then Terry Town in Boston in November. So get your asses in there. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you find all of that and more, like your merchandise and all that kind of stuff. Definitely listen to. our other two shows, which are crime in sports, which is hilarious and a lot of murderers lately, too.

So you want to check on that? And definitely listen to your stupid opinions where we hear people's reviews for places we'll never go and things will never use. And it's hilarious and just the funniest thing going. So check that out, a lot of fun. Then get yourself Patreon while you're at it. Oh, boy. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody, $5 a month or above, you get everything that we put out.

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Now, this week, which you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to talk about this crazy program in California that happened back in the day in like the 80s where these kids were, it was supposed to be like a good place for kids to go for sports and, you know, get off the streets and stuff like that, and what do you think happened?

It turned into a big abusive cult-like situation, so we'll get into all of that. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to do Corey Richens Part 2. Oh, what? She was not enough to contain with one episode, so we definitely have to do Part 2, which is absolutely crazy case out of Utah. Very recent murder case there where she killed her husband, then wrote a book about grieving for her children. Fascinating. Crazy stuff. It's wild.

We'll get into all that. Add more. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And in addition to that, you get everything we put out all three shows, all ad free with your Patreon. Add free. And on top of all of that, you get a shout out at the end of the show, too. Or Jimmy will mispronounce your name all sorts of ways. So that said, let's get into this with the disclaimer.

This is a comedy show. We're comedians. Jokes are going to be made and a lot of people are going to die. That's just the way it is. It would be very strange if there was no murder in a show called Small Town Murder. You might go, well, how does that work? Well, very easily. We think the humor kind of just takes the edge off of it a little bit.

Soffens it. Makes it a little less hard to deal with. And honestly, the people who are just like, and then he cut her head off. That's just a little creepy to me and a little more. It's a bit much. It's a little weird. So we try to take a little lighter approach to it. While all the facts are completely true, everything is as well researched as we could possibly, possibly do.

So if you think that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a wild story. because one thing we don't do is we never make fun of the victims or the victims families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags. And so that works. So here we go. I think it's going to be a crazy story.

And I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Clear the lungs here. Let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it.

I suppose so. We got to do it. We're going down to Louisiana this week. Oh, boy. Way down, I should say, because this is down down too. This is Laplace, Louisiana. It's spelled like Laplace. But it's Laplace, because they can pronounce nothing in Louisiana the way it looks.

It's just not allowed. They swear to God. It's in like the state charter. No word. It's a cordon blue of America. No word shall be pronounced the way it looks, sounds, or is spelled. There we go. That's rule number 12-B. Perfect. This is in southeastern Louisiana, only about 30 minutes outside of New Orleans.

Oh, so it's close to Florida, though. Yeah, well, close to Mississippi and Alabama. Yeah, there's a couple other states in between that. The panhandle goes under pretty far, but not all the way to Mississippi, not all the way over there anyway. About two and a half hours to Mobile, Alabama, if you want to head east, and about two hours and 15 minutes to Vill Platt, Louisiana, which was our Our last Louisiana episode, episode 646, the chopped swamp murders, which was chopped swamp. Chopped swamp. And that was a crazy one.

People just being found chopped up in swamps. This is in St. John the Baptist parish. Sure. No counties. There's parishes. St. John the Baptist. Area code 985. Now, what is Laplace now was originally settled by German immigrants in the early 18th century.

So early 17. Germans in Louisiana. Germans. Louisiana has a lot of different people because it's got the French history, obviously. It's got the Germans that came in. This was one of the main ports Italians came to as well. So there's still parts of Louisiana where Italian is the predominant ethnicity, like down by New Orleans and some of the suburbs there. So this is what happened. Now, the original, I guess the larger settlement was called Karlstein with a K, which is very German. It was one of... And ugly. And, yeah, Karlstein. It was one of the four settlements collectively known as the German coast. And it had been populated by German-speaking immigrants since 1721. My word. Yeah.

And the French and the Germans started intermarrying and all that kind of thing. They had a, ooh, the name, I don't know if it's Bonnet or Bonnet Carre, C-A-R-R-E with an accent. With a dash, yeah. was inspired. The name of that was inspired by the right angle turn of the Mississippi River near the settlement and its resemblance to a square bonnet. Because that's French for square bonnet, those words there. Bonnet, like a hat or is that like a tool? I guess.

I think like a hat, a square bonnet, I guess. 1879, a pharmacist planter and patent medicine purveyor named Basile Laplace arrived in New Orleans and established a large plantation in this area. And the Settlements Railroad Depot was named after Laplace, then the post office, and then the town itself finally got the name. Now, they've had a lot of problems keeping water out of shit here. That's an image. In the real estate report, several of the houses I was looking at said, never been flooded, exclamation point. That's, hey. What is this, a motorcycle?

It's never even been flooded. It's never been down. Never been. Let's see. From 1850 to 1883, the levy on the east bank of the Mississippi. Mississippi flooded several times. In 1850, a flood created the Bonnet-Carré crevasse, a levee breach that was more than a mile wide. That's big.

Wow. Several major floods were exacerbated by this crevasse near Laplace. The Laplace crevasse. And one resulted in the severe flooding of New Orleans in 1871. Laplace did that. Yeah, Laplace did. They finally closed that off in 1883 and completed the last word. levee. In 1983, a violent F4 tornado devastated a lot of the town. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew

spawned an F3 tornado that killed two people here. So they get tornado runoff of a horrible hurricane. That's amazing. Holy shit. In 2012, 5,000 houses were damaged by flooding in Laplace during Hurricane Isaac. In February and March, 2016, several tornadoes touched down in Laplace damaging hundreds of buildings and cutting the power off. And then... No wind blows straight through here. No. And then 2021 Hurricane Ida fuck this place up to... Just decimates.

Whenever there's something coming, you are in deep shit in this place. Reviews of this town, we've never been here. All the reviews should be, it's great until the wind starts blowing and then it's not good anymore. If it's breezy, go inside. Here's five stars. All the five star reviews have something sort of negative in them, which is really... really funny. It's really weird. I have lived in Laplace my whole life. It could be better because after all the hurricanes, they don't, after all the hurricanes, they don't redo everything, which I think

they should. They just leave shit and tatters. Fix? Do you mean repair? Redo everything. Other than that, Laplace is a great place. So other than the fact that it gets blown apart by wind every few years and they don't fix it at all, it's terrific. All the cord out buildings and nothing up to code. It's great. Great. Three stars. Laplace is a sort of quiet yet chaotic neighborhood. If I could change anything about it, I would get rid of the, quote, gangbangers and quote, gangs. I don't know why those are in quotes. It makes no sense. Also, quiet chaos sounds horrifying. Quiet, yeah, quiet yet chaotic. That's a ninja. Yeah. They cause nothing but mess and problems. So you're saying you have a negative outlook on gangs and gang bangers. as opposed to most places.

If only we could get some gangs in here, we could really clean this place up. Gangs and gangsters, PR is just fucking horrible. It's not good. It's not good PR. It's some work to do. Two stars here. Most of the people are rude and mean.

Okay. Whenever new people move to Laplace, they usually say how mean the people are, and I agree with them. I'm not, yeah. Overall, the area I live will most likely not have many new people. people coming in. I feel as if we are ranked in the middle compared to everywhere else in the

country. Think again, it's... I feel as if? I feel as if. There's plenty of statistics available. This person's going on feel. I don't think I'll be moving back to that area in Laplace in the near future. And then finally, one star. Laplace used to be a suburban town, but it's gotten a bit rough over time. The constant construction makes the traffic terrible at all times of the day. Well, it's better than just leaving the hurricane remnants about, strewing about the town. People in this town, population, 29,1,29. It's a pretty decent-sized place. It's definitely grown recently as well.

More women than men, 51.2%. Women, median age here, just about right around the national average, 37.2. Everything's kind of average. 50-50 is married people in the rest of the country here. It's 49%. So it's all about the same. same race in this town, 39% white, 51.3% black, 1.3% Asian, 6.6% Hispanic. Religion, 43.7% are religious here. Wow. Which is lower than the national average, actually.

And the number one religion with a bullet. It's really up there by a lot is. What do you think, Jimmy? It's Catholic. It's Catholic. Yeah, it's in New Orleans. Yeah, it's the New Orleans area. So it's all that kind of French Catholic shit. the Italians too coming in there with their Catholic crap and there it is. So that's what it is. We got 0.0% Jewish. Unemployment here, a little bit high. Median household income just below the national average, 65,000, 459 a year. It's about 69,000 normally here.

And cost of living, 100 is regular average. Here, it's 90. So almost. So it's a little more affordable. A little more. I mean, you're not making as much money either, so it's fine. No, but just about the same as everywhere else. The housing is the really cheap thing.

Well, cheap compared to the rest of the country. Median home cost here, $191,600. That's fairly affordable. Still get a median home cost of under $200 grand in America in 2026. That's pretty impressive. But are they up to code? That means it's probably a shithole is the problem. So let's find out if it's a shithole or not.

or what we have here with the Laplace, Louisiana Real Estate Report. All right, here we go. House number one is a very small house. It's a little box of a house. It's not a trailer, though. It's an actual house here. Two-bedroom, two baths. So technically a T-Bull for each and every beehole here.

887 square feet, so small. How do you get? It's real small. And the yard is small. It's just a little box of a house and a little box of a yard. That's all. It's very smart. It's good for old people, it seems like.

They don't want to get around too much here. This house built in 1987, $74,000 for that. It's a house. Yeah, 74, $5,000 price cut just went down on that one as well. Sub-thousand square feet, though. That's tough, man. But still under $75,000. That's not bad.

I mean, a truck costs more than that now. Yeah, I guess you can get an apartment that's 900 square feet. That's two-bedroom, two-bath. Yeah. It'll work. I mean, if you have like three kids, it might be a problem. That's tough. Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,400-square-foot house, kind of your average family home.

It's all brick, which is pretty cool looking. Inside, needs some updating. It's got the old-school countertops and those crappy sinks that look like they're in, like, an extended stay. It's not great when it comes to that. Built in 1970. This house is in foreclosure. Let someone else's pain be your profit, everybody. $194,900

$900 for that. Trash and treasure. There's something there for everybody. And finally, four bedroom, four bath, T-bow for each and every beehole, 6,339 square feet. Big house with big columns in the front.

It's not a big lot, or else I would say it's like a plantation-looking house, but it's just like a mini kind of plantation-style house, I guess, with the columns and all that. It's got to have a C, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, Christ. Yeah.

Jesus. 6,000 square feet to air condition that? Good luck when it's hot always. It's got like the dual staircases and the big marble and all that kind of thing. Very nice on the inside too. 650,000 bucks, which... Very doable if you're... Yeah.

If you're doing well. When you see the house, you go, Jesus, that's not a bad deal for that. Yeah. It's not too shabby. It really isn't. Things to do here. All right. This is fun.

We have the St. John the Baptist. parish and Dewey Festival. And Dewey. And Dewey, a sausage. Yeah. We're going to do it. October 16th through the 18th. They have a

rides and a gospel schedule that we'll get into. Oh, Antooie. And Dewey. Dewey with a D. Wait, is that a D? Yeah. And Dewey.

A-N-D-U-I-L-E. I thought you were saying all that title for St. John and then and Dewey. Oh, and Dewey. And a guy named Doey. No, no, this is a sausage festival. He's got a whole sausage fest.

That's good shit. Nice. Appearing this year at the 2006 And Dewey Festival will be the 2025 And Dewey Queens will be here. Oh. The queens of the And Dewey Festival. Who are they? I saw a picture of them. There's a teen queen and then an adult queen.

And the adult. Dahlqueen looks like she partakes in some sausages, though. She looks very happy with herself. Good for her. Yeah, you go get her, good for you. Good for you. Eat those sausages. Taylor Swift tribute, they'll have also.

Oh, the tribute. A tribute, not Taylor Swift, but some blonde chick pretending to be Taylor Swift. There's a petite princess party. Sure. Which all sausage festivals have a petite princess party, usually. It's normal. A TikTok takeover. the fuck it

I don't know what goes on there the app yeah yeah the app I don't know how you take over an and Dewey sausage festival being a flash dance or a flash mob what do they do that was like

some horse shit I don't know there's also a kids tent I don't know what goes on in there let's find out though Friday October 17th the MC for the day is Kelly Ray okay they're going to have a house DJ

DJ Scotty yeah also performing Amanda Shaw and the cute guys. And the cute guys. The Guillory brothers will be there. On Saturday, Kelly Ray will be emceeing again. We have the house DJ for the day.

Will be Captain Charles. Yeah. Just Captain Charles. Performing will be T-N-N-N-A, T-E-N-N-A, shot time. G-Funk will be there from 3 o'clock to 415. He coveted 3 p.m. to 4-15. slot will be. Wasn't that the guy from the special sauce? Oh, Christ. There's so many funks. I'm not sure. It's hard to say, really. DJ Jubilee will be there.

Sick. Universal language. And then with a two-hour set from eight to ten, they must be the headliners, the Kings of Neon. Oh, because. Yeah, exactly. We just change a letter. Oh, this sucks. That's not good. This is all knockoff horses. It's all knockoff. It's all knockoff shit. Sunday, October 19th, the MC will be uptown Angela that day. Because downtown Judy Brown was busy. Well, yeah, she's probably dead by now, for Christ's sake. She's in a retirement home in London or something. She's got to be 68, 70 years old by now, right?

I bet she's 75. Kurt Loder's almost dead, isn't he? Yeah, I think so. Because she was, yeah, she's got to be. She's got to be 60. Downtown Julie Brown. Got to be 60. Oh, for sure.

She's in 60 years old. 100% for sure. Who else? Raj Smove will be there. That's the house DJ for the day. Jerry's brother. Yeah. The Adam Liger band.

Okay. Peyton Falgost. Falgust band, like Goose. Like Goose. Falgust band. Change your name. Your name in a band after it. The coveted 315 to 3.45 PM slot will be occupied by...

30 minutes slot. the hot eight brass band and tribe called gumbola. Gumbolia. It's not called quest. It's all tribe called combolia. We can't get quests. We get the gumbolias. It's 345 to 430.

Partners in crime or end crime. Oh, yeah. Five to five 30 juvenile? I don't think so. Not that. He's from there. Well, he's got a half hour 5 p.m. slot.

That seems like he's really falling down. J.U.V. Yes. I don't know, man. It can't be juvie. Chuby's not doing this shit, is he? Then from 6.8 p.m., the funky with the pH monkeys. Okay.

And there's also a gospel schedule as well. It might be juvie. That would be hysterical. I'll go, but I'm only doing a half hour, he said. I'm not going any more than that. Your old Wayne will not be there with me. No, he will. It's not a hot voice.

This is a juby. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here. Property crime here is about two and a half times the national average. God damn. They weren't kidding about gangs and gangbangers. That is a lot. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, just under three times the national average. It gets worse.

Shit is dangerous around here. That's why juvenile is only doing a half hour set. He goes, if I do 45, I'll get killed out there, yeah. You can only leave your car unoccupied for a half hour at a time or else it's gone. That's wild, man. He knows it. So that said, let's talk about a shitload of murder. Here we go.

A lot. Let's start out in 1997. All right. 97, the internet is new. It's an interesting time, yeah. This is like, you know, some people, like, had the internet and some people, like, didn't. and it was like a, I don't know what goes on there, you know, and people are still on like chat rooms and shit in 97.

This is such a weird time. Yeah. This is pre-Lymewire and pre-Napster. Oh my God, Napster's not even there yet. Two more years for that, really, to come out. This is really when the internet is figuring it out at this point in time. And during this time, Laplace is actually a very safe place. Sure.

It's a lot safer. This is a doors unlocked kind of community at this point in time. Is that right? Yeah, just as less than the same. 30 years ago. People, a lot of the old people around there would just keep their life savings in their houses. Just sitting there in a jar.

In cash, they'd have it in safes. They'd have it in sometimes in like, you know, tucked into books and shit like that. They didn't trust banks. This was still, old people still not trusting banks from the Depression. So they're doing that. So this is, it was a very kind of old school feeling place still in 1997. Still felt like the 50s or something here. So let's jump to Gonzalez, Louisiana, which isn't far away, on April 10, 1997.

And there's a woman named Lillian Philippe, or Filippe, I'm not sure. Now, Lillian's an older lady here, and she is supposed to pick up her sister-in-law. Her sister-in-law is Viola Brow-Felip, and they were supposed to drive together to catch a bus to go to a religious retreat in Mississippi. Oh. That morning. This is 8 a.m. Lillian is supposed to be there to pick her sister-in-law up.

Sure. And she doesn't show up. Uh-oh. Lilian's showing up for religious retreat pickups. That's a thing you do. She's doing it. There's a plan and everything else. So Viola calls Lillian can't get a hold of her.

So then she calls Lillian's husband's brother. Okay. So Lillian's brother-in-law. This is Dr. Doyle, Lipe or Philippi or whatever the hell it is. Dr. Doyle arrives at the house by 8.30 a.m. So this is a pretty swift operation here. No shit.

She's supposed to be there to pick her up at 8. By 8.30, there's someone coming over to check on her. Doing welfare checks 30 minutes later. What if she had diarrhea? You know what I mean? This is like pre-self. She could be just on the toilet going, hold on. It's still happening.

When you're into religious stuff, you'll shit will the Lord tells you the shit. You just go. That's the problem. If the Lord says... There's no diarrhea time. Thou shalt shitteth. You shalt shitteth. That's it. You just go. You got to go. And for as long as it comes. And there's no stopping that. The Lord sees fit. That's what I do. Once it's happening, it's happening. So he arrives. He sees Lillian's cars in the driveway.

And the door is unlocked. The alarm systems must have been deactivated because he opens the door and doesn't go off. So there's no beeping or anything like that. So he said something felt wrong. Now, first, it might look like she's getting ready to go. So she has the door unlocked. She deactivated the alarm to go outside. Ready to go. Her car is there or whatever.

But he said something felt wrong. He walked into the hallway, looked around and said, something's not right. And he went back outside the house and called the cops. Oh. Which seems excessive, right? Seems like you should at least explore and see if there's a problem first before you start calling cops. I mean, that's how much you know some.

There's nobody in my life that. knows me that well. They would for a short trip over my body. Yeah. Where is this dickhead? As soon as you walk in the house,

something's wrong. It's clean in here. Look at it. There's nothing on the counter and all the dog shit's been picked up. Something's wrong. Blankets folded. What is this shit?

That damn puppy in his habits. Things are folded. So he calls the cops. A cop. comes here. This is Officer Dowell Bren of the Gonzalez Police Department. He arrives. And now the doctor, Dr. Doyle here, goes back inside with the cop. Probably the cop needs backup. And Dr. Doyle's going to bring Dr. D. D. Everyone come with me. Yeah. This seems odd. You'd think you'd say you stay outside in case it is a crime scene. I don't want, you know, Doc, hold me. People who aren't. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what he wants here. They walk in and they finally get to her bedroom and they find her inner bedroom on the floor at the foot of her bed. She's covered in blood. Blood everywhere. Near her are two very telling items. There's a broken trophy near her head covered in blood. Yeah. And a butcher knife also covered in blood right next to the bed.

So it looks like she's been bludgeoned with this trophy till it broke and then stabbed the rest of the way with this butcher knife, which is a horrible way for this lady to go down, obviously, here. Now, they find other things around. They look around. They see that in the bedroom closet, the doors are open and there's a safe in there that's open. And as they're walking back out of the room, they see in the bedroom that her purse is in the, or in the bathroom, her purse is in the bathroom and has clearly been gone through. It's been rifled through. So the officer exits, pulls old Dr. Doyle out of there, secures the scene, calls for backup.

They find that the alarm system has been deactivated. They find that the phone lines have been cut. We got cut phone lines. Yeah. Is that how it was deactivated or did they like put the code in? Not sure about that. But either way, it's not, it's totally off. It's not operating anyway.

And the phone lines are cut, which probably in 97, the phone lines probably fed the. That's how you communicate. Exactly. And they know that she had an envelope that had $120 in it. I don't know if that was for the truth. trip or what it was, but people know that she had an envelope with $120 cash that's not there anymore. Wow.

So imagine knowing exactly how much everybody you know has, like, in cash in their bedroom in an envelope. It's on the person. That's so specific. So it must have been for the trip or something like that. Yeah, it was communicated. That's what they need for the trip. Yeah.

Now, they look around, that's the inside of the house, what they come up with. Now, looking around the outside of the house, someone notices a hole on the rooftop just a hole up there, but not a, like, not a, you know, crudely punched out hole or any shit like that. Like a, it was a vent. It was a vent. Now it's not a vent anymore. So they're like, there's an attic vent that's been removed. And they also find a wrought iron chair placed on top of the air conditioning unit on the front porch,

which looks like someone climbed up on top of that to get onto the roof and then go down into the vent. Now, they have a forensic scientist examine the vent hole, and they say that it would be very difficult for anyone to get through the vent hole. It's very small. It's very small. It's very, very small. So they're like, not a lot of adult men, even an average or even slight size guy is not fitting through that hole. Not even close. Like, no way.

So they said that would be very difficult. Like, you'd need maybe a child. And Dewey. Yeah, or maybe a child or teen And Dewey. We're not sure. Miss grown-up And Dewey, not fitting through that hole. No. So they also notice, and this is pretty good police work, honestly, they notice that there is a blade of grass in the attic, a fresh blade of grass.

Wow. They literally find a fresh blade of grass in the attic. Yeah, but a blade of grass in fucking Louisiana is the size. of a tree branch. It's a big blade. They grow fat blades of grass. But to find one blade of grass in the attic and that that, that's still green and was very recently attached to the, you know, another in the lawn, they noticed that someone had obviously

entered from the outside there and left a big fat Louisiana grass blade. Palm leaf in their wake. So it's at this point that they form a task force because. after this murder, they start thinking about some things. Detectives and Gonzalez are already aware of another murder nearby in a town called Paulina. Sure. And they'd also heard about a guy named Victor Rossi getting murdered in St. Amant. They heard about it.

Similar profiles. Older people, you know, older than 60, homes ransacked, phone wires cut, weapons of opportunity, also, not a brought in weapon. Nothing brought with them. things that were from around the house. So they make some phone calls. They call a couple of different parishes. They call Ascension Parish. They call St. James Parish.

Yeah. And they say, do you have anything, any unsolved homicides on your end? Anything like that? Because we're just trying to see if this is all one guy or what's going on here. And they said, oh, yes, we do. Plenty. We have unsolved, too. So let's start out where this whole thing started, these murders.

Yeah. October 27th, 1996. So this was April of 1997 was the Lillian Philippe murder. This is October 27, 1996 in St. Amont, or St. Amant, Louisiana. There's a man here, not an old guy, either, 41. Victor John Rossi is his name. He owned an auto repair shop in Prairieville. And so he's a small business owner, very well known in the community.

Sure. Yeah, he's a guy who owns the local shop in a small town. And he employed a lot of, you know, local mechanics and things like that and all this type of thing. And now on the night of October 27, 96, Rossi's front door was unlocked. They believe, or somebody found away in otherwise, but they couldn't find any forced entry. So they believed the door might have been unlocked. And Victor Rossi was asleep on his couch. Okay.

He had fallen asleep. Somebody had walked in there, found a baseball bat that belonged to Victor Rossi. Rossi and absolutely just beat him to death with it. Destroyed him, yeah. Beat him to death, then ransacked the house and took about $8 or $900 in cash. That's the thing about having, about them not bringing a weapon with them to kill people. The things that are in your house that are capable of killing you are the most painful. Absolutely.

And you don't want to get beat with your own shit. That's the worst. That's even worse. Yeah. If you were like conscious while it was going on, At one point, you'd be like, is that my, you know, hey, that's mine. What the fuck? That's my Ken Griffey, you bastard.

Why you beat me with my Griffey bat? Yeah, that is not cool. So, yeah, that's tough for your trophy. Like, I won my bold high game. That was such a happy night. God damn it. You fucking jerk. I had a, I pulled a 197, no.

Well, it's fucking horrible. So that's what happened here. They take the money. So the investigation into Victor Rossi's murder. did not go anywhere, really. Yeah. He's a well-like guy. He has no enemies.

They don't have any suspects. If you don't have any enemies or really anybody that's real close to you like that, it ends pretty fast. They don't have anybody to talk to. Pretty quick, yeah, yeah. They talk to the main people around him. They all have alibis, and that's that, pretty much.

So they didn't know what to even do about it. They do interview a couple people during this time that were given, you know, suspects that they thought were possible suspects, a couple of mechanics that had worked for him, things like that. In that business, you're going to have some tumultuous separations for sure. But you're going to have some dirt bags in there that you have to fire for stealing air filters or something and selling them on the side.

Some unreliables that showed up late a bunch of times and then when you fired them, they weren't happy about it. They work around metal, so we know how that works. Those aren't the best people. A car is mostly metal. So all your tools are metal. It's just metal. Huge percentage metal.

Huge percentage of metal. So they interview a couple people and they gave statements and they were all cleared. Okay. So they couldn't find anybody. They were looking for like, as someone been fired recently, as somebody had a big blow up with him. Somebody with an expensive bill that didn't want to pay it because that can get crazy. That too. Yeah.

Maybe he told you it was one thing and it turned out to be a whole transmission and now it's a, you know, who knows. And now I want to fight you. Yep. Now the murder weapon is there, is left. behind, soaked in blood, and they get fingerprints and DNA that doesn't belong to Victor Rossi off of this bat. Wow. So that's something.

In 96. That is something. Yeah, not bad. Then March 19, 1997 in Paulina, Louisiana. Barbara Bourgeois, I'm going to say. Sure. Or I would think B-O-U-R-J-E-O-I-S, bourgeois. That sounds French.

Yeah. She's 58 years old, recently widowed. Oh. Now, Barbara, this I feel terrible for Barbara, because she lives alone, recently widowed. She works for the St. James Parish school system as a special education teacher, which those people are fucking angels. I'm telling you, those people have a level of patience. And they're amazing people, people who can work with kids. And she really was, her whole life was dedicated to helping kids that need the support and things like that.

She was named, the school board named her high school support employee of the year the last year. Wow. Yeah. So she's like a teacher's assistant, special education teacher here. Everybody remembers her as very generous, which by her job, she obviously is very generous. Her daughter said, my mother was one of those people that she was always willing to give. She gave so much to her family, her husband, and to our children. Of course, the love.

There's no greater love than a mother. So she's a nice lady. And the sheriff, Willie Martin, Jr., this morning, is asked by neighbors to check on the whereabouts of Barbara. Because she hasn't been around. So he goes into her house and finds her on the living room floor of her room. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not good. is March 9, 1997.

So she has severe facial injuries and other injuries, including cuts on her wrists and hands. It looks like a struggle has taken place here. She wasn't, like, beaten while she slept or anything like that. A lot of defensive wounds. The responding officer put it thusly. And I don't think I've ever heard anybody. We've done almost 700 small-town murders. I don't think I've ever heard of a crime scene described.

this way. Quote, here we go. It was just a ball of death. A ball of death. A ball of death, which by the way, would be a great name for this episode. Because that is a lot. What even is a ball of death? I don't even know. Just it's all encompassing death sphere. I'm not sure. He said, never dreamed I was going to see what I was going to see when I walked into that residence. I could see the bottom half of this woman lying on the floor. We saw the knife immediately. There was a vacuum cleaner right next to the body that was also covered in blood. Hmm.

Strange. A knife and a vacuum cleaner. Apparently, she had been beaten severely with a vacuum cleaner. With the vacuum? With the vacuum. And then stabbed. Wow. So trophies, vacuums, baseball.

These are not normal murder weapon. I mean, baseball bat can be, but. Yeah. But this is just shit in the house. How many vacuum murders have we had take place in this show? That'd have to be a Kirby or something. One of those hannister? Yeah.

You can pick up and back. If it's a whole big thing, it's kind of awkward. I'm not, I can't beat somebody with a shark though either. Yeah, those Dyson's will break into 100 pieces. Oh, God. It's all plastic. It's all plastic. With 97, you get a good, and an older person, you get a good old school heavy metal canister vacuum.

Oh, what the hose with the thing? that you drag behind it? Oh, yeah. Those things are crazy. Those are wild. So she apparently had died from head injuries, possibly during the struggle. Now, in this one, this is the strange thing here. There's no sign of a robbery. No? Things have been rifled, but nothing has really been taken. What is that? That's interesting. They believe that possibly, looking at the crime scene, that they think that maybe the level of fighting and struggle and noise that possibly occurred from the fighting and struggle might have scared the intruder away, basically. Okay.

He got her dead and was like, people probably heard that. Too much. He got her dead and was like, people probably heard that. horrible crime scene, and it was apparent to us that she fought for her life. Right. So, obviously, this is a lot of murder so far. It's pretty heavy, yeah. Pretty heavy.

And all under the same MO, looks like robbery. Once again, her phone lines are cut. Yeah. All of that goes on. They've all been killed with weapons of opportunity. Yeah. No people too lazy to bring their own murder weapon. Sure.

That's crazy. Imagine that. Imagine being such a... No count. You can't even bring your own murder. You're like, they'll have something there. Yeah. You treat it like a like a potluck.

Everybody else will bring enough. There'll be plenty there. Someone will have a pen. It'll be there. It's fine. Yeah, someone leaves a house with like, you know, cigarettes and no lighter. Someone will have a lighter. Somebody will have one.

I don't know how people live like that. Chaos. It's chaos. It is a ball of death. That whole mess. It's a wild chaotic lifestyle. Imagine living like that. It's too much, man.

It's too much. So if I was going to murder someone, you goddamn better well believe, I'm going to bring the best murder weapon I can. Yeah. You know, one that I'm really comfortable with, one that I really think can work. I'm not going to just be like, if they got a Kirby laying around, I'll think they're. I'll wing it. I'll wing it as I go.

That seems like a real risky way to go about things. Real fucking laissez-faire. Yes, and. Yeah, very, real improv way to do it. So then there's more murders. More. May 9th, 1997, Laplace, Louisiana. Oh, boy.

9.46 a.m. Okay. James Acuri Jr. A.R.C.U.R.I. Okay. Yeah. He stops by his parents' house. Now, he is a sheriff's deputy. He's a cop. Oh, yeah. And he stops by his parents' house because his sister had called him at work, worried that their

parents weren't answering the phone. So she knows he's out and about as a sheriff's deputy. She said sometime in your rounds, could you stop by, check on mom and dad? So they're going, he stops by the house. His parents are Salvador, Joseph, Arcuri, and Luella are curie. His dad goes by Sam. Salvador, he goes by Sam. Yeah.

So Sam is 76 years old. Luella is 69 years old. So they're older, retired people. They've lived in Laplace for years. They operated a business, so they weren't even retired. They had retirement age is what I meant to say. They're very well known in the community. Sam was a retired, self-employed Gulf Oil distributor.

He had a gas station that he owned. They really made it sound fancy in the newspaper. Golf oil distributor, that's a, that's a gas station? He owned a Gulf Station. That's a Gulf Oil distributor. But I guess you're like, it's like a franchise. So that would be like if you're like a, you know, a cold cut distribution facility would be a subway franchise. Because you can't just be an oil distributor who'd fucking, you know what I mean?

Yeah, you'll just sell barrels out of the side of your house. That's not. That's an oil distributor. That's what I'm thinking. But that's what they call it. He ran the Gulf Station that adjoined Bumstein's restaurant. Oh. Now occupied back in 97 by Bertha's chili peppers.

So well. Those will sell better than bumsteins. Bumsteins to Bertha's chili peppers. The Arcuri's were parishioners of the St. Joan of Art Catholic Church, where they're described as outstanding members of the community all their lives. Nice people. The St. John Parish registrar of voters said that anybody who grew up in Old Laplace knew them. You know these people because they own the gas station. Right.

You own a gas station. Everybody knows you. Like we said. So their son normally visits his parents each morning, but this one, he came a little earlier because of his sister calling him about it. So he shows up and he found the front door ajar, which is never a good sign. No. You know, especially in Louisiana. There has to be some weird animals like one of those neutrias or something will run in your house.

Some shit will come in. The bugs are the size of flying dogs. You don't want to have the door open. No. He walks in and he says, mom, mom, and he's found his dad. His dad was on the ground and not looking well. So he checks his father's pulse and found no pulse. So he's yelling, mom, mom, and he finds her in the kitchen.

She's also covered in blood, clearly been brutally assaulted. And she is unconscious, but has a faint pulse. Small pulse. So she's still alive. And he calls dispatch, obviously, because his father is dead in the hallway of the home. His mother is dying on the kitchen floor. Everybody's covered in blood. And he says, quote, there was a lot of blood in the kitchen area, a lot of blood in the hallway,

and a lot of things overturned indicating there were some sort of struggle. This is another cop. On the father's forearms, we noticed some defensive wounds. Obviously, he was trying to defend himself as best he could. But he's, you know, 76 and... What are you going to do? Yeah. ...attacked.

So the officers arriving at the scene found a blood-stained hammer near Sam's body. Oh. And a large cane knife, a sling blade. Not a knife that you pull out of a cane to cut cane. Right. You know, like the movie Sling blade, I call it a sling blade. That's what we're talking about here. Covered in blood.

Ouch! That had been... used on mom. Wow. Yeah, a sling blade. That's so hard to operate that indoors? Indoor. Yeah, you got to have some ceiling clearance.

You can't have any eight-foot ceilings on that. Or walls or anything. Those are really awful fucking tools. Yeah, and a sling blade, the only times I've ever heard of this being used in a murder are of two very abusive people in a movie. Yeah. People that deserved it. This didn't seem like it was deserving.

Or it was actually, well, I guess, yeah, he'd, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, He told the story. He didn't, they didn't show that. No, no, no, yeah. He just told it in the institution or whatever. Yeah. So they think whoever was here waited in the garage for them. Like, waited all night for them to get up in the garage.

They had removed a window pane to get in. With a knife, they removed the putty from the window. Wow, one of those windows. Think about that. Yes, with putty with pains. Yeah. And they, he carefully removed the putty with a knife and soundlessly removed a window pain and got in the garage. Apparently, somebody, I guess they woke up at one point.

They picked up the newspaper and they made their morning coffee. Coffee had been made. So this isn't like immediately upon getting up. This is, they're doing their morning shit. And then they were attacked. they think somewhere around coffee time. Now, what they find in here is very interesting. Whoever was in here missed a lot in their robbery attempt.

Oh, what do you mean? It's a robbery, but they found $112,000 in cash in the house. Imagine. Think about that. You went through all that trouble and missed six figures sitting on the counter. In 1997, $112,000, too. That was a fuckload of money back. then and now we too.

It was hidden in encyclopedias on the bookshelf. They never thought. So the morons is what you say. Put it in the books. Put it in the books. This idiot'll never find it. Yeah.

That's exactly right. So this guy didn't think to go through the encyclopedias because he's a moron, like you said. He didn't say, hmm, I really want to see, you know what, I'm going to look up the life of a yak right now. I really need to find out about it and start flipping. What's the flag of Zimbabwe?

Thousands of dollars. Wow. Yeah. What is it? I haven't know. So they said it possibly, whoever did this may have been interrupted by the sun arriving. Oh. So that might have happened. He might have heard a car pull up, especially so it's a fucking sheriff's deputy car and went, holy shit, get the fuck out of here and took off.

Maybe he didn't have time to really ransack the house like they wanted to, which is horrible. Now, mom ends up dying in the hospital at about 2 p. So she makes it to the hospital, but they can't ever get her back. Can't revive her, yeah. Nope, which is horrible, obviously, here. The worst. Now, they dust the every surface in the house.

The only fingerprints that they find are the victims and victims' family members. Okay. They find no other fingerprints, but underneath Sam's fingernails, because he was fighting. They found unidentified male DNA. Okay. So now we have fingerprints and DNA from one scene. Yeah. We have DNA from this scene.

Starting to build something. It's at this point after all these murders that the FBI is now involved. Once they made the phone calls around to the other parishes to see if they had any murders and they said yes and they matched up with the MOs, they said, okay, this is a serial killer and they call the FBI. It's too many. It's too many. So the FBI has their own thoughts on this whole thing. What are they? They bring in profilers, the behavioral science unit.

Mine Hunter is what they bring in here. And based on witness statements by at least one person who thought they may have seen someone in the area, they think that he's a white male in his 20s or 30s, 5 foot 7 with a medium build with sandy blonde hair. That's an interesting size. That size would not fit through the attic vent. Right. Medium build right there, done. Can't do it.

So that's one thing. So we don't know how credible that witness. How accurate that is. Witness statement is. But the behavioral science unit puts together a profile of this guy. Yeah. They say, quote, he is nocturnal in nature. He's comfortable being out late at night and is probably engaged in late night activity on a regular basis.

Okay. He does something. Goes to the bar. Goes to the strip club. does something. They said it added that the suspect was familiar with Ascension, St. James and St. John parishes, possibly through his employment, past or present, or maybe residence or regular travels. So someone who comes through here often, it's not somebody coming from, you know, Michigan down here to do this. They have to know where they're going.

Grown up here or some shit like that. Exactly. Yeah. Also, the FBI suggested the subject may have abruptly changed his alcohol. drug or tobacco consumption. Radical change in his physical appearance might have been happening recently. And also unexplained cuts or bruises. They're amazing. How do you get to he may have stopped smoking recently? What? That's interesting.

Why do you say that? Well, I think they say that because at some scenes they found cigarette butts and at some scenes they didn't. They didn't. So I think that's why they're saying that. So he may have quit smoking recently or. He's not irritable and shit. Something.

I mean, that's extra irritable to beat a lady to death of a vacuum. You've got to be really pissy. That's super irritable. They're real good at this, though. Yeah. I'm shocked every time, especially when they come up with shit like that. It's like, oh, he's 5'7. You said 5'7.

You didn't say 5'4 to 5'9. You said 5.7. Very specific things like that always trip me out when they find you're like, God damn, that is so specific. It's not even funny. So, yeah, they radical change in physical appearance, unexplained cuts or bruises, or if he has shown someone maybe showing an undue interest in the investigation, possibly anyone who has bought a vehicle that is apparently beyond their means. Oh, something like that. Came into some money.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know someone who just quit smoking, lost a bunch of weight, is covered in cuts and bruises and is driving a Cadillac while they make $8,000 a year. Let us know about it, basically. Has a sweet caddy on dubs, holler at us. Give us a shout. Yeah. So five days after the Arcuri murders, five days later, same town, different street.

So again, we're here. Yeah. Joan Brock is 55 years old. Joan and Doug Brock live in a house together. In this house, there is, Joan is attacked. Doug is not home at the time. Okay. And there's no signs of forced entry.

They think possibly this person was allowed in for whatever reason. She is brutally murdered. We'll talk about that. The phone lines were cut. The safe was stolen. There's a small safe that was stolen that weighs a good amount, though, 150 pounds or something. Safes are not light at all. No.

And also a 1991 Nissan Maxima has been taken, which is... Oh, the Max. That's something you could track at least there. Now, in the backyard is where the attack happened. Oh. This happened in the backyard. She is, Joan has stabbed so many times in the neck that she was nearly decapitated. Oh, geez.

Essentially a Nicole Brown Simpson wound, exactly. Big throat cuts, huge stabs, nicks on the vertebrae in the back. That's how brutal the stabbing was. So it's a lot. Her car was later found in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn near the I-10 and I-55 interchange with the keys still in it. Someone just left it. Safe is gone, though. So they think someone took this with the safe somewhere and had somebody picked them up with the safe and left the car behind.

Or they had their car, whatever, something like that. So the investigators, this is the way they described it. Quote, somebody said, Miss Brock, she'd been dragged out of the house and her head was practically decapitated. And my body, when we got to the scene of the Brock case, the phone lines were cut, which was similar to the Arcurys. It appeared a sharp instrument was used, similar to the Arcurys, and the safe in her car were missing. Now, the autopsy on her, she suffered four major blowings. to the head by a sharp instrument such as a knife. Oh, boy.

So there was beating first and then the stabbing. And one of the blows, Nick the vertebrae in her neck, one of the stabs. Now, she's married and her husband isn't home, like we said, Doug. And Doug said that he's so sad, not only obviously his wife is dead, but they just redid the kitchen. You just got stuff? I mean, it was done like yesterday. The last of the linoleum was stuck down yesterday.

And he said, this was going to be the first Thanksgiving with her new kitchen. She never got the chance to use it. That's a fascinating thing to save. That is wild. That's like saying, I just bought her a new vacuum and she'll never have a chance to clean the floor with it. That Maxima was brand new. Anything. Nope.

She never got a chance to use her kitchen. Jesus, man. She didn't even make a turkey in there. Yeah. Now, it's at this, after this, they really know they have a serial killer now. Yeah. I mean, it is painfully obvious that this is a serial killer. This is definitely the same person doing all this shit.

This freaks people out. I mean, everyone knows nuts in this place. This is not a, these aren't big towns. This isn't New Orleans. You don't expect, yeah, of course there's a murder last night. They're like, holy shit, what happened? But they're targeting people north of 40. Yeah.

When you're north of 40. Except for the one guy, way north of 40. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You feel pretty, pretty able to take care of yourself at 40. Yeah. At 70, it's different.

They're subduing them and overcoming them very easily. At 70, it's a lot. Yeah, 41, you are at the peak of your physicality at that point. You might not be, you might not be able to jump as high as you could when you were 25, but you can fucking pummel someone way better than you could when you were 25. You get old. You better appreciate it because that disappears by 42. I'm saying probably like 51.

I'm not sure I haven't got there yet, but by like 51 you feel like a pile of shit, I think. 45. I think about how five years ago I was so much more capable. I can't. I felt like a pile of shit since I was 31 to be realistic and honest, though. Let's be honest here. If I use a screwdriver for two hours,

I can't open my hand for two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. It is sad. I get the same shit. It's fucked up. Yeah, I like wintertime. I get my snow shovel in it and I feel real, feel good.

Oh, God. So everyone's freaking out. Yeah. People obviously buying alarms. Literally, all the stores in the area were sold out of alarms. You couldn't get an alarm system in this town. We're out of alarms. Yeah.

People who lived in the same house for 40 years and I've literally never locked. They don't even know if their locks work are now buying extra deadbolts and fucking locking it and shit like that. They painted them closed or painted them open. Now they got to paint them shut and we're never leaving the house again. Everything will be delivered through a vent in the attic. That's all we can do. So people who are afraid to be home alone.

They were afraid to answer the door. If anybody knocked on it, people were afraid to sleep because most of these, a lot of these murders took place while people were sleeping in the night. A detective later said there are people that shouldn't have to worry about going to sleep at nighttime and never waking up because someone. broke through, attacked and murdered them while they were sleeping in their beds. There's some people? Some people.

There are people that shouldn't have to worry about going to sleep at nighttime and never waking up. There are people. There's also people that should have to worry about it. That's a real funny way to say that. It's a strange way of saying that shit. There are some people here that shouldn't have to worry about this. Others, though. They just happen to not get the others.

Yeah, I was like, I was like, looking for more on the quote. I'm like, is this, there's no more on this quote. That's it. That's a crazy sentence. That's a wild one. How about no one should have to worry about going to sleep at night time? I fixed it, real easy. So the task force members are working 20 hours a day because this is an active, a very active serial killer. Yeah. So they have no fingerprints or DNA that link to anyone specific. They have fingerprints. They have fingerprints. They have. Fingerprints of DNA, but we got nobody. They have no eyewitnesses. They have a pattern.

They have a profile. They have an M.O. And a shitload of terrified people with hilarious accents. That's what they have down there. So that's it. They can't communicate it to the rest of the country. That's it. And their profile that they have doesn't really narrow it down very much.

White male, mid-20s to mid-30s, average height and build, light-colored hair, familiar with the parishes, likely employed or previously employed in the area. and possibly has recently purchased items he couldn't afford. And may or may not quit smoking. And may or may not have a cool hanging out of his mouth. We're not sure. Yeah, we don't know. So there's press conferences, and they release the profile, and they're asking the public about anyone in their lives

who has suddenly started spending money they didn't have. Yeah. Now, imagine how many people, maybe that just decided to run up their credit card that month or something, imagine how many people have been spending money that they're oblivion beyond their means. How often does that happen? And just became a suspect to this.

You have thousands of tips come in based on this profile. A white guy that's spending too much money. That could be anybody. Thousands of them. Most of them led nowhere. That's the problem. Most of them are just, you know, my cousin, he just bought a car. You know, I think he got fired last month and blah, but, okay, we don't care about your cousin.

I don't think he can afford this meada. Yeah, I really don't think so. It's well beyond his mean. He got the control. an RX7. It's not even a normal engine. It's a convertible. I'm saying that's an extra 5,000 I think. So, now July 7th,

1997. All right. It's 2 a.m. Okay. Leonce Millett Jr. and his wife, Joyce Millett, are in their house. It's in Gonzalez. They're both 66 years old.

Gonzalez is where the first murder we talked about happened. About 2 a.m., somebody cuts the phone. lines and breaks in. Uh-huh. Finds themselves a sling blade. Oh, boy. It seems to be a weapon of choice here.

The millets have a sling blade there? The millets have a sling blade in there. Everyone in this area has sling blades in their garage. It's just common. Is that where slim blade was filmed? Or no, it's Arkansas. Arkansas. But I mean, but it's right around the corner. It's all the same thing.

Yeah. Anywhere where you keep a sling blade in the garage is all, we'll call it. Let's call it sling blade country. Yes. That encompasses a lot. Slingblades and Baptists. That's it. Slingblade country, that can be Billy Bob Thornton in the movie.

That can be the weapons, the murders. It's all ties it. So they think he found the cane knife in a garage and waited. The millets awaken later on in the morning, just like the Arcuri's did. And this is when a confrontation happens. Okay. It's a violent confrontation. There's fighting.

The intruder forces Leon's mnemouth. Millet to open the bedroom safe. He's bleeding from knife wounds. So he's saying, the intruder is down there by the combination. And he's saying, give me the combination right now. So Leonz Millett gives him the wrong combination repeatedly. Repeatedly gives him the wrong one. Eventually, the safe is opened.

Eventually, I think he said, I'm going to cut your throat if this thing doesn't open on the next fucking time, you give me a number. And he probably gave him the right number at that point. It contained over $100,000 in cash. Dang. Jackpot for a burglar, obviously. Then the intruder stands up, once the safe is open, and shoots Leonson Millett in the face with a shotgun he found in the house.

What? With his own shotgun, in the face. In the face? Yes, in the face. What was that Colorado? Was that murder? In the face? Yeah.

That was Colorado, right? The woman killing her postal employee. ex-husband, that's right. Yeah. Okay. All the questions. In the face? So shot him in the face.

Then he goes to the other side of the house and shoots Joyce Millett as well. Uh-huh. So both these 66-year-old people. And then takes them... That's so cold. Takes the money and leaves. Uh-huh. Now, the problem for this killer is he fucked up.

He missed. Now, these two, no, they're both shot. One shot in the face and stabbed, the other one shot. But neither of them are dead. Right. Neither of them are dead. And they both, Leonce, despite a shotgun plass to the face and several stab wounds, he survives. Wow.

He got shot in the face with a shotgun from two feet away and survived. Oh, my. He probably looked like Daffy Duck after he gets shot. He has to, like, turn his beak around. Yeah, but still. That's got it. Oh, man. Holy shit.

Joyce also survives. She manages to drive to her son's house after. the attack or left. She shot in the face, too? Different parts of the body. She manages to bleeding, leaking blood, getting her car and drive to her nearby son's house where they call the ambulance

and both of them survive the attack. That's unbelievable. That is miraculously incredible. That's amazing. If you got stabbed a bunch, then shot in the face with a shotgun, you'd just be like, oh, I'm definitely dead now. This is happening.

Imagine, though, that it's not that bad where you know for sure that you can make it. You got to be like, you motherfucker. I got my face. I see so mad. Yeah. So this was in like an upscale residence just outside of Gonzalez, too. This is a very nice house.

Now, the thing that's wonderful for the police is they both survive the attack, which means they can what? Describe like a motherfucker. Absolutely. So they have a description. They give to law enforcement. The FBI is there trying to compile information. But they definitely don't know the guy. He's unknown to them.

Unknown to them. Wow. Supposedly here. They don't have a name. I mean, yeah. They say he's a white male in his 20s or 30s. They say he's about 5'7 with a medium build. So.

Incredible. There you go. But then they sat with a sketch artist as well. And they got a composite going and that gets sent out to the media. And more tips start coming in because now there's a sketch and a description and an MO. and do anybody have any extra money? And now there's a lot. Imagine you rob somebody of 100 grand.

You drive off and then you see your face on TV. That's, well, we'll talk about what happened when this guy saw his face on TV because it's... Imagine. He's got to be like... Your fucking throat would drop out of your asshole if that happened. I would go... Yeah, you just got to have the most heartburn. Oh, my God.

Every pizza you've ever eaten in your life would be backing up in your throat. Balls would suck up into your... You know what I mean? Immediately. Oh, God, that's so good. That looks just like me. Oh, man. So, tips come in.

One tip comes from a security guard at the square deal casino in Sorrento, Louisiana. The square deal? The square deal at a casino. Come on into the casino where you'll get a square deal? They do better than the rob you blind across the street, though. They do slightly better than that one. That one doesn't get as much business. as they'd like.

Come on down to Highway Robbery. Yeah, come on down, the Highway Robbery Casino. The fuck is this square. Go fuck yourself. Come on down to the gun in your ribs, handed over a casino, everybody. It's going to be great times. Come on down to, we'll call it even.

It's amazing. What is this bullshit square deal? How dare that? The most false advertising. We give you a square deal where everything is stacked against you and we're hoping to leave with the mortgage to your house. That's how we're doing.

That's a square deal. That's a square deal. You lose your money to us. You sign over your house to us. That's a square deal right there. Sounds square to me. You owe us a house. You give us a house.

We call it even. Everything's fine. Square deal. Will we take everything? Leave you homeless? That's a square deal. Square deal. By the way, we do eight decks in each fucking black

Jack table, too. So it's a square deal. Real square around here. Those slot machines set up to be the square slot machines you can imagine. They really pay off. All the thing, square is this motherfucking building, you thieving fucks.

That's awesome. So this is from a security guard there. Yeah. And he tells the investigators about a regular customer of his that he sees all the time. Now, he said before the murder started, this guy would come in and spend very little money. Yeah.

So he'd come in. He's a bummer. He comes in. He drops 20 bucks in a slot machine or whatever. And video poker is his jam, actually. And then he leaves. They said he dressed like shit. He drove a beat-up pickup truck.

Just some Hammondager coming in, you know, hoping to get an extra couple hundred bucks for the weekend out of 20 bucks. You never know. He said, though, after the guy, the murder started, he said the same guy was showing up, but all of a sudden he's looking sharp now. Oh, he's dressed is nice. He's got jewelry now, and now he's got a brand new motorcycle. He's riding a motorcycle to the casino. Brand new one, and he's spending a shitload of money on the slots on video poker. Wow.

Now he's got money to spend. He looks like night and day, like he won the lottery. So the truck the guard described was distinctive, the truck that he used to drive, a pickup with a homemade hoist on the back. Oh. He set up an engine hoist. Gross, yeah. Like a mechanic would have.

Like a shitty tow truck. To lift engines. Not a tow truck. It's specifically for engines. It's just an engine hoist? An engine hoist, yeah. Okay. That's what it's for.

Yeah, not to lift actual cars. So one of the detectives, because this all comes in in tips, and somebody said, oh, we got an interesting tip from a guy at a casino saying, you know, A, B, and C. Yeah. And this one detective said, hold on a second. Did you say a pickup truck with a homemade hoist in the back? Right. And he said, yeah.

I know that guy. I know that fucking truck. and I know that guy. I know exactly what we're talking about. No, it's extremely distinctive for the area. So he said, I know this exact guy. As a matter of fact, the guy I know who has that truck is a mechanic who used to work for a friend of mine. You may know him, Victor Rossi.

Because he's dead. Our first murder victim. Yeah. So they're like, he worked for that guy, the guy I know with the engine hoist. Uh-huh. So now we figure out, now he goes, I got to figure out who that guy. is and we figure it out. It's Daniel Joseph Blank.

DJ Blank. D.J. Blank. Goes by Danny. Old Danny Blank. Born June 28, 1962. He is from Paulina, Louisiana in the St. James Parish, right on the river. Sure. So grew up here his whole

life. His mom, I don't know her name, because she died about three years before all these murders started. But his dad's name is Hippolyte. Hi-P-O-L-L-L-I. I'm so bummed. I already named my son. Hypolyte. It's a great name.

Hypolyte. I don't know. I'd say like Hippolite, but that would be spelled completely different. There'd be no why. I don't get it. I know he has a sister named Sally Blank as well. So Hippolite Blank and Sally Blank and Danny Blank here. Now, Danny's parents worked at a sugar refinery, a sugar refinery. which is brutal, hot, shitty industrial work. Sugar cane refinery. They decide, since we both work at the sugar refinery, we should have eight kids. God dang.

Eight. So Danny has seven brothers and sisters, and they live in a small house and they're broke with 10 people living in it, which is... Oh, yeah. I mean, if you got no money, I mean, it's just me and you here, we could fuck. We could fuck and then keep fucking.

But once it starts getting too crowded to fuck, wouldn't you then? Slow down, probably. It's the only thing we're allowed to do. I'm doing it. You should take care of these goddamn kids is what you should be doing. Jesus. At age 12, Danny was riding a bike when he's struck by a car.

He gets hit by a car at 12. He's diagnosed with a mild brain dysfunction after that. Oh, boy. Got some issues. People who knew him said that after the accident, he became a completely different kid. Personality of life. Yeah, I've heard of that. Totally changed his personality.

More withdrawn, more introverted. They said before he'd been a normal kid, just regular normal kid. And after that, he got real quiet. And just they said it seemed like he was always inside of himself. Yeah. Yeah, trying to figure it out in there. It's a ghost house in there. And by the next year, when he's 13, in the eighth grade, he drops out of school.

Oh, he's done, huh? He got halfway through the eighth grade. He reads at about a third grade level. Yeah. And he's got an IQ of around 85. How old was he when he got hit? 12. And then the next year he dropped out.

Sixth grade. That's 13. That's 13. That's 13. That's 13th grade. So he's got an IQ of about 85, which doesn't make him like, you know, medically a problem or anything like that. That's in the low average range. That just means you're pretty dumb.

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So he's a dropout. In his teen years, he committed some arson. He burned down a building. But he was still a juvenile, so they let him go pretty much. That's just a kid trying to figure out why this sulfur when you strike it burns.

And what it smells like when it all burns. So he's adjudicated, a delinquent, and sent to reform school. Oh, no. Okay. Now, in reform school, he discovers he likes working on engines, though, which, is good for him. It gets him a vocation. The school had a mechanics program and he was quiet and withdrawn and turned out to be a really good mechanic, actually. Really? Really good mechanic. He takes right to it and pretty much just natural talent for it. By the time he got out, he knew that's what

he was wanting to do, was being mechanic, and he's good at it, and he worked steadily for years. Wow. Never at the same job for too long. Yeah. But always, if you're a decent mechanic and he's got your own tools, you can get a job anywhere. You can always get a job. Sure. It's like cutting hair. You can cut hair after you always get a job. Yeah.

Yeah. So he also has a, I guess you could say a girlfriend, but they've been together forever and they have two kids. So it's a lot. Now, Danny's going to have four kids total. Really? Two before this woman, then two with this woman. She is Cindy Bellard, B-E-L-L-A.

L-L-A-R-D. Yeah. And they live together in Louisiana, and they've been together a long time, and all four of the children live with them. Her kids and his kids all live with them. Now, what the hell has Danny been doing to make him need money so bad? Yeah. Gambling. And gambling and gambling and more...

He's an addict. Gambling. Oh, to the nth degree. He's a huge addict. Yeah. Louisiana opened up riverboat casinos and video poker. machines are everywhere. Yeah.

This is like Vegas now where you go to the, you know, the 7-Eleven and there's video poker there. It's at the fucking gate. Yeah. When you get off the plane, the first thing you see is a fucking machine. Go ahead. So this is a gas stations, bars, you know, obviously casinos. He went to many different casinos, the treasure chest, the boomtown, the square deal,

all of them. all the places that are named after things that are not happening here. The boom town. Boom town. For the casino. Yeah, you come in give us all your money. That's quite the boon for us. That would be boon town.

Yeah, it should be. Now, he'd go in with a little money. He'd blow it on the slots and ten minutes and go home. That's all. Problem is, though, he really escalates it. He really likes gambling. And by the mid-90s, he's out of his mind with this shit. Financial records would later show that between 1995 and 1997,

he had a reported income of $5,410 one year and $13,767 the next year. And then zero in 97. Okay. Now, they said that his very low legitimate earnings, 13,000767 and 96 and none in 97, make no sense because he gambled hundreds of thousands of dollars at local casinos. Uh-oh. Oh, yeah. He wagered during the same period where he made a grand total of less than $20,000, which is about $19,000 in change.

He bet over $269,000 across three different casinos. How? Think about that. Yeah. And cashed out $220,216. So his net loss was approximately $49,000. thousand dollars in three years, which is more money, that's almost, that's more than twice what he made during that period.

But it's still pretty impressive that that's all he lost. I suppose, but where, where do you get the money, though? That's the thing. Right. That's a question. How do you lose $49,000 when you make $18,000 in two years? That's crazy. Yeah.

So it's, I mean, hey, might be a decent gambler. That's sad that we're saying. To be a decent gambler is you didn't lose that much. You didn't lose all $2,69,000. That's true. You only lost $40,000,000. That's actually impressive. Because if I gambled $269,000, James, I will lose $369,000.

Well, he's not a card play. He does video poker and he does slots. So you could get lucky. So you win and lose. Yeah, you win and lose on those. Now, the treasure chest casino profiled him. They said, based on his. they profile anybody who spends a couple bucks there.

Based on his wagering patterns, they categorized him as a high roller. Oh, yeah. 19 grand in three years he made. A high roller with the spending habits of a corporate executive who earns over $200,000 a year. So they had him clocked as like a CFO of a company that comes in there and does shit. A big deal, this guy. That is amazing. Boy, did they swing and mess.

No, shit. He also has a nice. another expensive hobby, street rods. Oh, he loves a hot rod. He loves a hot rod. He's a mechanic. Of course, he loves a hot rod. We don't know what the hell he's got, but not sure about that.

I thought he would have to go over his fucking garage, James. No, the problem is that connects him because he had worked for the one guy, our curie, but also Joan Brock, the last murder he committed there before the two people got away. Yeah. Her husband Doug used to build custom street rods and they built them together. Daniel Blank. He and that guy. And Doug, or Doug, yeah, Blank and Joan Brock.

Sorry, Doug Brock and Daniel Blank. Yeah. So, Joan's husband Doug. Doug and Dan are building these. They're building those and they would attend street rod shows together with their cars. Apparently, between the street rods and the gambling, he just got out of control. He needed more money, obviously. So he started looking around to people that he knew, employers, neighbors, because it turns out that Barbara bourgeois or whatever lives like right behind him.

Also, Danny Blank lives in the same neighborhood. He is far too connected to all of these victims. That's what I mean. If you're going to do this, go to strangers' houses, but the problem is he doesn't know strangers have money. He knows who has money. He knows who has money. Yeah. And also who's older, also people who are older.

easier to knock over and take their money. So, yeah, maybe people would have nice houses and whatever. So his M.O. was consistent. He cased the house. Someone he already knew or knew of, knew about them. Someone with money or he thought who had money. And he could, someone he could basically reasonably access without drawing attention. Maybe he knew the neighborhood.

He had reasons to be there. Sure. Or it's just kind of the way the house is positioned. or it's a rural area where no one else is going to see. He'd cut the phone lines. Every single one of these has phone lines cut. Wow. Before he enters the house, he cuts the phone line.

No call at 911. He'd disable alarm wires too. He'd planned everything. He'd break in usually through a window. He'd remove a window pane a lot of the times. He'd find the safe. He'd find the cash and search. Basically, that's it.

And then he'd take the money and go to a fucking casino with it. That's unbelievable. It's insane, dude. I could see a drug habit, oh my. I guess I don't have the gambling bug. No, I'm terrified. For some people, gambling is the same as drugs or booze, and it has the same draw for them.

So I guess, you know, I just don't have that. So I don't know. To me, I go, I dropped $20 in a slot machine, and I go, that was fucking stupid, and then I leave. I sit there mouth the gape. I just saw a man win about $11 grand on roulette, slowly. He's like betting several bets at a time. It's just like, well, if you bet that on that and then you won this on this, you have, you have, you have, he had like fucking 11 bets out there.

He won two of them and he made more money on the two bets than what he had laid, so it didn't matter. But my brain can't calculate that. And he knows what the fuck he's laying it on. And then about 11 grant, he grabs his chips and hurriedly walks away. And I'm just shaking my head going, that wasn't even my money. and I can't fucking believe it. I had so much adrenaline watching him win. Well, that man has a disease is the thing.

He's a sick man. You watch that and went, wow, he's really got this down with science. Whereas most people do it for fun. Yeah. You know what I mean? That guy, that's what he does. 11 grand at a clip just, I was horrified. I couldn't believe he was doing it.

And like so methodically, like a fucking surgeon, just like knew where to put things. And then when he was done, he was done. When he figured this table's table's time. I don't know when you quit with roulette. I have, when you're out of money, or when you realize how stupid and random this game is and how you skill has zero to do with it. At least in blackjack, your skill has some level to do, something to do with it. A decision you make will affect the outcome.

Here, no matter where you put your chips, they spin the wheel and little ball falls where it does. There's nobody can control it. That's it. Yeah. So. But I know that on slots, you can go, well, this thing's not going to pay right now. it's doing some cycle thing that it's just not paying. So you get up and walk away.

But on roulette, there's no fucking cycle there. It's just fucking random every time. Completely the most crazy thing to put money into. It's so palsy. It's insane. I was so impressed. I get why there's hot chicks that hang around to blow these guys because I almost wanted to blow him. I was amazing, sir.

That's hilarious. That doesn't work with other diseases. No. It doesn't work with a her. in habit usually. No, that was impressive. People are like, wow, you really stuck a lot of junk in your arm. I'm really going to suck your dick now.

That's great. I was very impressed but also very scared. I just wanted to go home. Yeah, this is a different deal with people at Gamble. I can't understand it. I don't have it. I don't get it. So the investigators here, they're looking, they want to talk to Danny.

They really want to have a chit chat with him. They run a financial background check on him. It confirms everything. It confirmed that he made $0 in 1997. Yeah. They're like, okay, that's not good. How does he afford things? They went to his last known address in Sorrento, and he already moved.

He's gone. He's already gone. Now, his girlfriend's mother, Cindy's mother, answers the door, though. And says, Danny doesn't live here anymore, but I could try to get a message to him for you if you'd like. Yeah. And they said, yeah, sure, you know, let him know that we're looking for him, basically. talk. Investigators, here's my card. So within the hour, this investigators, she got it to him fast. Yeah, this investigator's phone rings. And it's a guy saying, I'm Daniel Blank. I heard you want to talk to me.

And they said, well, where are you? And he said, uh, on Alaska, Texas. Not even close. Yeah. They were like, okay. But why do you need to talk to me? And they said, well, we're investigating several homicides of elderly people, large amounts of money that have been stolen. and your name keeps coming up because of your spending habits at the casino. Keeps coming up. Absolutely. So he said, oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I totally get casino.

He goes, I'm a good gambler. That's why I go to the casino. I have receipts. I'll bring your receipts. I'll prove to you that all my gambling wins are legit. I might have started off with a little, but I turned it into a lot. Like fucking Jenny from the block. You know what I mean?

I can do it. So I got this. He said I left. I also have my casino winnings documentation. with my girlfriend's mother. I left that over there. So he said, tell you what, let's set up a meeting. I'll come back to Louisiana.

I'll go grab all my documentation. I'll come and I'll show you that all my shit is legit. And you can look at somebody else for this murder. Bring some quiz nos and we'll have a little time. Totally. They said, absolutely. They set up a date and he never shows up. Never shows up.

Never shows. It never comes back. Just stays in Texas. Yeah. I got busy. Yeah. So the task force, they're going to go to him. They had established a hotline.

And they said there's still the possibility that potential witnesses exist. And these witnesses, for whatever reason, may believe that their information is insignificant. This information may be extremely important to the investigation, to the investigators involved in the case. Now, by the time they get to Analaska, Texas, it's November 97. Wow. That has been months since the last murder. It took this long to be able to go there. Now, Danny built a whole new life over here.

He has a brand new trailer they're living in, brand new hot shit trailer. He bought for $22,000. A trailer like a, yeah, like a mobile home. Yeah, a house. For $22,000, cash he paid for it. Cash money. Cash money, $22,000. He bought, he even put in an above ground swimming pool for $4,000.

Boy, it's he living a white trash dream. I was just going to say, this guy's got a garage full of tools. a brand new trailer paid off and an above ground kicking. He is like in white trash hog heaven. This is amazing. My fridge is full of Natty Light. Wow. Yeah, he's got like a carport fridge full of Natty light.

He's like, all, every shelf. People come over to hang out, and he's like, I'll tell you what. He sits in his chair and he goes, I just couldn't think of anything that could improve my life right now. I just can't. I just can't think of one damn thing. I got a fucking fridge full of beer. I got a cabinet full of craft blue box.

Oh, I got the good stuff. He calls it blue box. I get the blue box. Get that great value junk no more. My elbow macaroni stays together when it boils. It don't break into pieces. It's good. He also bought a new dining room set, a new station wagon, a new motorcycle, a pickup truck, and a utility trailer.

He is... Does he also have tickets to the upcoming NASCAR race? Yeah, he's also got backstage passes to Toby Keith. He is ready to fucking go. He is ready to roll in 1997. He is doing everything that a lottery winner in a trailer park would do day one. Day fucking won. They didn't win the power ball.

They just split the regular with a few people. So, you know. Yeah, it's a scratch off. It's a scratcher, but it's a good scratcher. God, now. Truck, motorcycle. Pick up truck, station, wagon, motorcycle, above ground, utility trailer, new dining room set. That's right.

And a nice above ground, baby. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's solid oak right there. That's solid oak right there. He leased a garage space and opened Daniel's Automotive as well with this money. Can open a business. At least he's using it to like, you know. Maybe I could actually make money if I own my own shop rather than having to murder old people and take their money.

At least there's something there. What he's doing is living in his means, stuff that he can maintain in the event that the money runs out. And then he started a business, which it's smart. He's kind of stretching it the way a hillbilly would. Well, a hillbilly would piss it all away on beer and then not have any money left. He's turned into a businessman all of a sudden. So he takes over the business on August 8th and on September 3rd officially changes the name to Daniel's automotive. All right.

Okay. Now, while this is all going on in Texas, the FBI is working with not only the Louisiana police but also the Texas authorities to keep an eye on Danny while he's there. They have surveillance established on him. They watch him. They need a reason to officially engage him because they don't have any physical evidence and they don't have anything other than this connection. So they need a reason to talk to him. If they just go up to him and go, hey, we know you're whatever, he could just move again and change up and you'll never know anything. Well, the good news is it's Texas.

So you can harass him about goddamn anything. Yep. Well, they found it's true. Yeah. They found out that he does not have a valid driver's license. So they go, okay, that's a thing. But we can't pull him over for that because how do we know his license is valid if us are something first? So while they keep watching him, they find out that he.

He habitually runs a stop sign near his business. There's a specific stop sign. You know, it's a roll through. He doesn't stop there. There's nobody there, and he just goes through it. They go, every time he rolls through that stop sign, we're going to pull him over next time he rolls through that stop sign. He's not going to have a driver's license.

Yeah. We can take him into the station and see what happens. So they do. A Texas detective, Mike Nettles, sets up a traffic stop, hangs out near the stop sign, pulls him over. Where's your driver's license? I don't have one. Get in my car.

And he said, well, we got to take you. Danny said, is all this really necessary, you think? Uh-huh. You're arresting me all this. Just let me go. There's my, you know, where my shop is. You can, you know, what the fuck? We told you not to mess with Texas, and you messed with us.

You messed with Texas by rolling through a stop sign. You know, Texas, where you can have a fucking advanced military weaponry in your pickup truck, but don't you better make a complete stop at that stop sign, buddy. You're in trouble. Yeah. Wow. Wild place. So they book him into the county courthouse.

They take a full set of fingerprints and palm prints. And now they have them to compare to Louisiana. And they take him in. Here it comes. It's going to be fucking, you know, guillotine time, basically. Yeah. This is going to be the hammer dropping. They don't match.

Nothing matches shit. They don't match. Not a single print matches him from any of the fucking crime scenes they have. Oh, my God. Not one. Nothing. Not a partial, nothing. So they have nothing to hold him on.

Got to let him go. He paid a $50 fine and walked out. Uh-huh. That's that. They have nothing forensic. No prints, no physical evidence of any kind. They have nothing. They couldn't get a DNA sample from him because there's no reason to do that yet.

Because that sounds crazy. Yeah. All they had was a guy whose finances looked like something was going on and six dead people. And he happened to know or live near all of these six dead people. But a lot of people know or live near all of them. That's the big. Small town.

So they said the only way this is going to work is if we get a confession out of them. Or DNA or some shit like that. Something. So they end up, this is, DNA was hard at this point too. You needed like a whole head hair or blood or something like that. I don't think this is just a swab deal.

And you needed like a court order for this shit back then. So November 13th, 1997 at the Anilaska, Texas courthouse annex. The task force here, they arrived at Daniel's automotive with search warrants for his home and business. He was at the shop and readily agreed to accompany them to the courthouse for a conversation. He said, absolutely, no problem at all. He sat in the front seat of the police car and the drive over, not in handcuffs, not under arrest, nothing like that. They bring him into the room. He's given his Miranda rights.

And he said, I'll answer anything you ask. I mean, I ain't got nothing to hide. Quote, unquote. Well, perfect. That's what we're looking for. What follows is 12 hours of interrogation. 12 hours. I got nothing on right.

12 hours. Normally, nowadays, at about 7, they break it. And they go, it's going to get thrown out anything past that anyway. So fuck it. So, but this is 12 hours on camera the whole time. So none of this back room horse shit, they get them on camera. 12 hours, they give them four sodas, a water. bathroom breaks,

there's a no smoking sign. He immediately lights a cigarette. Ah, boy. Because he's a hillbell. They tell him to put it out. Eventually, apparently, he's allowed to smoke in the bathroom during breaks. Oh. They let him smoke in the, which is a smaller room, which makes no sense.

I don't understand. Hey, go in that smaller room. Maybe a fan. Plus, I guess it's better than smelling shit. Yeah. If I walk into, like, every airport bathroom, They should have one guy just assigned to stand there and smoke all day. Just that's your job.

Here's a pack of cigarettes. When you're done, clock out, we get a new guy in yours. Because I don't want to smell shit from every corner of the world. And that's what I'm smelling in this bathroom. Foods I don't want to know about. And I realize people have emergencies in there. Yeah, people have emergencies, people have allergies, people have health issues. It's fascinating to me how many people time.

travel of shit every day. I don't get it. As soon as they get off planes, those stalls are more full than the urinal. I know. It would have to be coming from my eyes before I would go into a fucking airport bathroom and shit. Absolutely coming. I mean, I would have to be, oh, God, it's literally, I got to catch it coming from

my ears. I have to shit now. I'm on the ground. I'm almost to where I need to be. I'll do it there. How long is your fucking flight that you didn't. day manager, you know what I mean? Manager day, so you're not shitting it like this.

I am not sure. So it's a very good question. So smoking in the bathroom. Now the detectives, this is Detective Heimel and Detective Tony. They take the first stretch here. This is background questions. Where are you from? What's your family like?

Work history? Bullshit. He said he grew up in Lutcher and was from Paulina, born there, grew up in Lutcher, dropped out in the eighth grade. He admitted he can bear it. read. He said he has a son and a daughter from his first marriage and he never sticks to a job for very long. They said, why do you have so many jobs? And he said, no particular reason. No particular reason. Just a, just a piss poor employee. That's all. I'm just bad at this.

Yeah. So they asked him all the questions. They're asking them questions they know the answer to to see if he lies essentially here. One of the things they ask him is about gambling. And he insists that He wins money every time. All of his winnings are legitimate, and that's where his money comes from. He starts to tell them how he got into video poker and how lucky he was at it. I'm just lucky. That's all, all the time. Wow.

He said, I was making $2,000 to $3,000 a week on video poker. How do you do that? Crazy because he made $18,000 in three years for his job. He said, I once won $5,000. in one night. And he said, the trailer I bought, I bought it in Sorrento with video poker money. And the one detective says, do you think we traveled this distance to speak to you about casino winnings?

Yeah. Do you think legitimately, that's why we're here? Like, you think that, like, we think you're running a casino scam? Yeah. You think we want to talk about casinos? So he says, well, basically, you wanted to know where I got all my money from, you know, and that's why I gave him the papers, talking about. the documenting the money at the casino.

So the detective says, we went, we both of us took a number of notes and we've been speaking to you for about an hour and a half now. And Danny says, um-huh, not uh-huh, um-huh, which is a weird one, um-huh. They said every single question that we asked you, we knew the answer to, and we do that for one reason to see if you're going to lie to us. He says, right? That's Danny, right? They said there, there's a few points that you did and there's a few things that you did.

And we're not going to ask you a question that we don't know the answer to. So you lied to us right now and we know it. Just want you to know that. Yeah, he said, yeah. And they said, we've been doing this for too long and we're too good at what we do, which is a lie. I love when the cops try that approach. There's several approaches.

There's the look. We have all the evidence. Just give it up. There's the, you don't know how good we all. are at this. Let me explain to you how, you know, I can take a fucking hair and connect it to whatever. And then there's the, you know, then there's the, hey, you know, you just need to be a good person and come queen. What would your grandma think of that? The first 48 thing of what would your grandma think about you not only killing someone, but then lying to a police officer about

it? And they start crying. So there's a few different approaches. You don't know how good I am is a fucking really aggressive approach. Yeah. So because they think he's a moron and they can just kind of roll him like that. So he says, right. And they said, and we're not going to come down here half stepping. And I'm not going to travel five hours to come speak with you without having all my ducks in a row. So he likes his, he likes his, you know, idioms.

So maybe. And Danny says, right. And they say, okay, you have absolutely no idea why we're here to speak to you. Is that what you're telling us right now? Yeah. And he said, well, you want to know where I got my money from. Dude, why is he so hung on the money? He thinks that's the only thing that's going to catch him?

That's what he wants it to be about. Yeah, yeah. Because that's not murder. So you're trying to hear all that other crime. Oh, yeah, I was terrible. Let's keep talking about gambling. So they said, have you ever been questioned or spoken to by any other sheriff's office in the past for any other crimes that have taken place? and he said, I was called in on that deal about Rossi.

He was questioned about Victor Rossi, as were any of his former employees, but he was cleared. So they said the Rossi homicide, and he said, yeah. So then Detective Heimel says, we've been speaking to you for about an hour and a half now, and we know the answer. We're just seeing if you're going to lie to us. Like, why are you doing this? three hours in, there's nothing, no progress here. He's just a lot of riot and I'm just, I can talk about the money. So then finally they go, listen, will you take a polygraph?

Yeah. What do you say? He said, yeah, to everything. What do you take a polygraph? They have an FBI agent in here, Agent David Sparks. He's been trained at Quantico, and he's waiting in the next room for you. So they said, what do you think? And he said, now, if I refuse.

the polygraph, then what happens? We flew a guy in. Yeah. So they said, Daniel, if you refuse it, then we got some serious talk and we need to do, okay? Yeah. And they said, we'll sit down and talk to you some more, meaning that's what'll happen. You're going to be never getting out of this room. And they said, then the other cop said, I'm no, I'm not going to bullshit you.

We all big boys in this room, okay? but I think you should save that decision until he, meaning the polygraph examiner, gets here and he can explain the test to you and its procedures. He says, I'll take the test. Fine. Okay. They go over the questions three times before they administer it to them. So they tell them what is going to be asked. That way you're not going to be surprised.

It's an open book test. It's an open book test. You know what's coming. So I could hook you up to a polygraph and I could bring up something. in a question that you didn't want to bring up that had nothing to do with the other thing and your heart rate would spike. So they said the test

focused specifically focused on the murder of Joan Brock, the last actual murder. He fails the polygraph. Three fucking times he takes it. Once, twice, all the words. Yeah.

Failed it. Failed every single question other than what's your name and your address, essentially. Yeah. Now, the polygraph's not admissible in court. No. But they still sit there and confront him with the results. They go in the next room and they go, you failed every goddamn question.

Worst you could do. Just terrible. And they're not bullshit, because a lot of times they'll do that too. Yeah, yeah. Now you lied. And I didn't. Yeah, they haven't hooked up to a copy machine. Lie.

Yeah, this is way different. So they then tell him, look, the investigation's pointing at you. The evidence is overwhelming at you. It's not good for court for us, but... Yeah. Then he says, listen, if you just confess, your family's still going to love you. You know, he said your kids deserve to hear the truth from you. Yeah.

The detective says something occurred in your life, 16, 18 months ago. Something made you snap all the way to hear. I don't think it was drugs. I think it was something... You said, I have to take care of my family. I have to take care of my family. You decided that you would take the easy way out. You didn't plan on hurting anybody, did you?

So they gave him that out too. This was, you never wanted to hurt anybody. We get that. That's another thing that they do is to minimize the crime. So it sounds like less than being a serial killer and they admit to it. And then that's that. So he maintains his innocence. He denies everything.

And he just kept saying, I'm just real tired now. Just getting real tired. As anybody would after hours of interrogation. Yeah. He said at one point, quote, want to charge me for this? Because I don't know what. Look, I'm tired. I've been up since 1.30 something in the morning.

Y'all drag me down here. Y'all been at it. I don't even know what time it is. Okay. That's what he said. So this one cop sparks, he finishes, that's the FBI guy. No confession. Wow.

They say, we're going to take one more shot at this. They send in Detective Todd Heimel. They go in and he takes the complete. opposite approach. He takes the first 48, the one in like Memphis that the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, the, uh, the black lady detective always takes with the kids when she goes in there and tells them, you live with your grandmama, right? And she'll be like, how disappointed would your grandmama be that you're lying to me right now? You're lying to a police officer in addition to being a murder and blah, blah, blah, and then they start going on. I love my grandmama and then they start confessing.

Yeah. They go in and he's real calm, this heimel. He doesn't threaten, doesn't protect, doesn't talk about evidence, doesn't do anything of that shit. Now, Danny's mom had died in 1994. Three years before the start, I remember we talked about that. Danny was close to her, really close to her, and the death was hard on him, and people who knew him said that he never really recovered from his mother dying. Uh-oh. So, for 20 minutes, Heimel sat with Blank and talked about his mother.

That's all he would talk about your mom. And not like your mom. Like I'm not like I banged her last night either Like yeah you might want to pick up my Not a bunch of your mama jokes Yeah I left something on your mom's floor last night If you want to grab that for me

Not of that shit So he just real calm He tells Danny that his mother loved him And that she'd want him And do the right thing She raised him Did your mother raise you right What's he gonna say no?

Yeah Says of course She can't be her fault Yeah They said she raised you to take responsibility Didn't she? Yeah of course And also

Well your mom was watching right now. You know that, right? You know your mom's up in heaven watching you right now, talking to me right now. Lie to me. Yep. He said, quote, she made you take responsibility for your actions. She instilled that in you. And then Danny started to cry. He starts cry. The tears start coming. Water works. He drops his head down and goes completely quiet. Just sobbing. They give him a second to sob and then when the time is right this detective said, did you mean to kill Mrs. Brock?

Danny still cry and says, no. That's it. That's a confession right there. Oh, boy. And that's it. And then after that, he just lets it all out. He just said it all? He says it all. He's done.

Detailed confessions. Not just, yeah, I did it. Yeah. Minute by minute by minute where he put things that he stole from the house, what he stole from the house. Certain things that you, this is a lot. Most of this stuff has not been, you know, out to the public. Yeah. This is stuff only the killer knows.

Only the person in the house. He draws maps. Oh. To items that he put. He draws diagrams of houses of where the victims were, where he was, where items are. He notes the, the location of safes and bedroom closets. Well, this is his roulette board. I think that he's putting it up.

That guy remembers that. You remember your business. You know what I mean? For sure, yeah. It's impressive, too. They just got him to crack using one person that, I mean, the lady's not even here. Nope, that's it. It just got him on his mother's sheet.

They knew that was an emotional fucking nerve to press and they pressed it. And that's like last, that's last ditch effort is your mama would want you to tell the truth. After that, they'd have to let him go. They have nothing. Right. It's the last swing. That's it. said, fuck you and fuck my mama, that would have been the end of the fucking interview,

literally. So it's wild. Now, he notes the location of safes and bedroom closets, how much money was in them. The fact that the attic ladder in the Philippe house folded down into the hallway, one of those. He knew that. He knew that. He knew the contents of victims' purses, things that he left behind, things that he took. These specific things he, the trophy he used,

he knew what the trophy was for. He knew what kind of trophy it was. He's like, it's third place in the bridge tournament. Like, he fucking knew, which is crazy. So he knows everything. This is all shit that only the killer would know. His narrative is consistent throughout. He didn't intend to kill anybody.

He broke into rob places. He tried to do it in the middle of the night while they were sleeping, things like that. They woke up. They attacked him and all he ever did was defend himself. With a shotgun to the face. It's almost like they didn't want, you know, some stranger in their home robbing them. It's real weird.

They attacked him and, you know, he was like, well, I had to defend myself. It's almost like the business owner that just fired this man didn't want his fired employees stealing from him. Strange. Isn't that weird? In his house? He won't even pay him for work he does. Never mind for nothing. Right. Given my shit. October, he goes back. through all the murders. October 27th, 1996 is that he had recently worked for Victor Rossi.

That's all it was at the repair shop in Prairieville. The guy had recently hired Daniel Blank, so he still worked there. Yeah. And he said that Rossi failed to pay him for some fuel injection equipment and failed to pay him for work that he had performed. Wow. So he decided to go over and exact it for himself.

And, you know, the guy woke up. and there was a big fight, and that's what happened. He said, I went to his... Just some fuel injectors. He said, I went to his house. He was asleep on his couch. He said, I found a baseball bat and beat him to death with it. He said, I got about $900, $800,900, and I went to the casino.

He said he woke Rossi up with the bat and attacked him, but Rossi got the bat away from him and hit him back. And then he got it away from Rossi, and then he hit him until he was dead, basically. Yeah. Well, there's got to be an element of self-defense. That's totally. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, he was just asleep on his couch and I was over him with a baseball bat. Right. He freaked out about it.

Like, calm down, bro. So now the problem is the murder weapon, this baseball bat with Prince and DNA, the Prince don't match him. Uh-huh. And neither does the DNA. Yeah, what the fuck is that? Neither thing matches him. Oh, by the way, Sam's fingernails? Yeah.

That doesn't match him either. It's an unknown male DNA, not Danny Blank. How did he not leave anything there? How did someone else leave something there? Never mind, him not leaving. If it was just there's nothing, there's other fingerprints and other DNA there. Yeah. Which is fucking crazy.

Then they talk about there's a gap in the murders from November 96 through March 97. And he confirmed that he was spending money that he had stolen out the casinos at that point. So he didn't need money. He said he was working as a mechanic, living with his girlfriend, Cynthia and Sorrento, helping to support his kids and her two kids. Well, actually, there are two kids and the two kids they have together. They're all his, yeah. Yeah. So he said five months he was losing at slots.

He was spending money he didn't have and he was, you know, debts piling up. So then March night. A streak. Yeah. Not a bad streak. March 19, 97 is the Barbara bourgeois or bougies or whatever her name is bourgeois. Barbara, 58 years old in Paulina, Louisiana. recently widowed special education teacher,

the teacher's assistant of the year and all that. Jesus Christ, one of those, the ball of death, essentially. It's that scene. Yeah. So this was the vacuum cleaner covered in blood and the knife that they immediately saw. They said there was no sign of robbery, extreme violence. So that's why they thought that the robber took off because of the confrontation.

He said he broke in through a window, disabled the telephone wires, and ransacked the house. He said he was going to collect shit and leave when Barbara woke up. When he woke up, she confronted him, so he grabbed her vacuum cleaner and attacked her with it. The first thing he could grab. First thing. He didn't even punch her first. He grabbed a vacuum cleaner. By the way, he's like 5 to 120 pounds.

He's little. He's little enough to fit through that fucking. event. What? Five two. Five two, they're saying. Very small. So he beat her horribly. Massive blunt force trauma to the head, fractured nasal bones, fractured sternum, large hematomas, internal hemorrhaging. Then he got a knife from her kitchen and stabbed her also. Brutal. She lived about a quarter mile behind his house. Right there. Yeah. April 10th, 1997, Gonzales, Louisiana, Lillian That's the first one we talked about. That's when Dr. Doyle came over because she didn't show up to pick up her sister to go on a religious retreat.

This murder, Blank said that he cut the phone lines, peeled a window open carefully so he didn't make noise, got inside and started searching. Now, he found the attic. There was a vent on the roof, and he removed it and lowered himself in. That's how he ended up getting in eventually. Sure. He couldn't, the window thing wasn't working too well. So he made his way through the attic, came down through a folding ladder into the hallway, then went looking for a safe.

Now, there was a safe in the bedroom closet. He opened it. He got into the purse. He was searching through the drawers, but then Lillian came out of the bathroom. Turns out she wasn't asleep. She was in the fucking bathroom. She was found at the foot of her bed, covered in blood with a broken trophy near her head in a bloody butcher's knife next to the bed.

He only fled with $120. cashed, remember in the envelope here. Now, the thing is, they said that a person would have a hard time fitting through the roof, but not if they're 5'2 and 120 pounds. Right. So here is the confession description of this crime. He said, quote, then I went back in and turned the light back on and started looking some more.

And I didn't find anything, so I gave up on it. And when I come out, I had turned the light off. And when I come out, that's when I saw something swinging at me. And they said, you saw something swinging at you. And he said, well, I saw a shadow of something. The light was off. The only light on was, I think, the bathroom light. And when I saw something coming at me with the shadow of the bathroom light,

and I just put my arm up, then I grabbed it and I pushed her. And they said, when you say you saw this something swinging at you, it was a person. Yeah, yeah. He said, yeah, it was the woman swinging something at me. I don't know if it was a lamb. I didn't see it. I just grabbed it. And it could have been a lamp.

It could have been a trophy. It felt more like a trophy. I don't know. It could have been like one of those little skinny lamps. I don't know. And well, then that's when I pushed her. I pushed her and then she comes at me with, I don't know if it was a knife or one of those letter openers or something.

I don't remember what it was. I didn't see it. She was super armed. Yeah, she's grabbing whatever the fuck's around. Armed at the teeth with lamps and letter openers. I mean, if she's got a desk there where she opens her mail, there's going to let her open her right there. So this is a wild story, though, to justify killing an old lady.

Yeah, you could have just knocked her, pushed her down and ran away. Ran away. That's it. Or just don't do this. Or just stay out of people's fucking houses. They said she had it in her hand, and he said, yeah, that's when I hit her with the thing I had in my hand. Then I grabbed it and I cut her with the knife. Yeah.

He said, I don't remember where I cut her or. how I did it. It just happened. It just happened so fast. I just, I just freaked out and then I left after that. And they said, all right. So you're saying while you was in the closet, you heard some noise and you turned the light out in the closet. And he said, right. And they said, then you waited a little and then you turned the light back on. And he said, no, I turned the light off when I heard a noise. Then I kind of opened the closet door and peeked out. I didn't see anything or didn't hear anything. Then I waited a couple seconds. Then I closed the door back and turned the light back on. And when I was ready to get out after I looked around and they had all kinds of stuff in there, I kind of emptied out the

drawers and stuff like that and didn't find nothing. I just decided to leave. So you say, this was a bust. And he was just going to leave. So they said, okay. And he said, and then when I come out, that's when I turned the light off and opened the door and come out. And that's when something, And that's when she was standing there and she had something in her hand and swung it at me. And they said, and you took it away from her. And he said, I put, you know, my hand up like that. And it hit me on the arm. And then I grabbed it and pushed her on her back onto the bed.

Then she grabbed something off the table or something, coffee table. And it could have been a knife or could have been one of them letter openers. I don't remember. They said, okay. So when she went to grab this, you had this trophy. and he said she come up and they said or lamp in your hand and he said yeah she come up and all I seen was like a shadow because I wasn't I I there wasn't no light when she was the light was there wasn't no light where she was the light was where I was shining from the bathroom and the

bathroom door wasn't open all the way it was kind of cracked and uh well then she come back at me with the knife and I tried to grab it but I couldn't see her. I couldn't see her arm to grab it and I just kind of ducked to the side and I hit her with the thing I had in my hand. They said, what part of the body did you hit her with? Did you hit her? And he said, I think I hit her in the head. I ain't sure. That's what he was aiming for. That's what he was trying to hit her at. Yeah, that's the thing. They said, okay. And he said, I think that's where I hit her. And they said, and what did she do? and he said after that I pushed her and I grabbed her hand with the knife and you know I cut her I don't know where but uh and they said was she standing up when you cut her or and he said no she was laying on the I think she had when I pushed her she was laying across the bed or at the edge of the bed and after I after I did that then I left they said but you hit her with the knife too then And he said, yeah.

And they said, okay, then you left. And he said, I, I grabbed her arm or hand or something and went back with it. And then I took the knife and I ain't positive, but I think I hit her twice with it. I ain't sure. I don't remember. It happened so fast. I was just scared and I just took out and left. Incredible recollection of that part versus knowing where every fucking.

thing is and he can only give small time. He doesn't want to tell him. He knows what he did. He's trying to make it sound as self-defense as possible, but on the fly. So how do you make a 71-year-old woman in her own home? Yeah. How do you make it seem like you're self-defending against that? You know what I'm saying? Bludgeon or crazy and slitter throat to near decapitation.

That's insanity. So, yeah, they said, so you took out and left or you took her out? And he said, no, I took off. I got out of there. Yeah. So that's the point where the whole task force is formed. And they noticed that the killer, when they were looking for him, they noticed he was organized and how he broke in, the tools, the wire cutting, the careful window work. But disorganized once he was inside.

He had no weapon to speak of. There's no, like, normal point of attack. There's nothing that he just gets in there and whatever happens, happens. It seems like to gamble. Yeah. Yeah, it's a gamble. Yeah. That's his big,

he pulls the slop machine. He pulls the arm and he's like, give me those cherries. He's like, oh, shit, too old people. Right. He can plan everything that happens on the outside. He doesn't know what's going to happen on the inside because he's never been in there or he's unaware of things that are there. So he's like, well, yeah.

But you think you'd take a weapon if you're going into the unknown. Yeah, like a lot of an organized killer might go in there. No people are sleeping. Find them sleeping. Kill them while they're sleeping and then take care of shit. That would be an organized. person that knew what they were doing. This guy gets in there and he's like, well, I mean, if they come at me, I'll come at them. But otherwise, I'm just going to steal some shit and leave.

It's real weird. Yeah, double down. Yeah. Splitting aces. And they said he didn't bring weapons. He panicked when confronted. This combination suggested someone familiar with the area, someone local, someone who could blend in, someone who might have the unexplained, you know, resources after that and all that kind of shit. Then they go on to May 9, 97 in Laplace. This is Sam and Luella Acuri. Right. That is the young, the deputy son comes over and, you know, does all this shit and finds him there, finds his parents dead. And he said he spent the night in the garage waiting.

He got there in the middle of the night. He waited. He'd removed a window pane to get in. And he waited in the garage. They picked up their newspaper. He heard him making the morning coffee. And then he went in and, you know, beat the place up. And it killed these two people.

And they also said, you know, you left $112,000 in the encyclopedias in that house, right? Which must have just burned his ass. You should have wanted to know who the 13th president was, you idiot. You fucking dummy. You had no interest in anything encyclopedic. So that was the one where they find the DNA under the fingernails that doesn't belong to Danny. Okay. Next is Joan and Doug there.

Joan. Doug was out. Brock. He said that he had a grievance against her husband. That's why he did this. He's pissed at Doug. That's exactly it. He said she let him in to the house because they knew each other.

So she let him inside. And then in the backyard is when everything went down. They said that Daniel had, Danny had worked for Doug. They'd worked together on the streetrod cars, custom built vintage vehicles. Danny had spent a ton of time at their home and New Joan very well. right he described his resentment of dug he said he took advantage of me by not assisting me in building some street rods and he said he also he'd put work in and didn't he didn't feel like he got what he was owed for yeah well compensated to what i felt i deserved so this is what happened here um this is following the polygraph and all of this uh this is about joan brock they said uh something occurred and you decided you wanted more in your life um you thought you could take the easy way, and you thought you could get some money from somebody. And he said, no, no, Danny Blank said.

And they said, and something happened. And he said, uh-uh. And they said, and when you went in there to Joan Brock's residence, when you were in there, and they said, oh, don't shake your head. I love this. When you went in there, oh, don't shake your head. I don't know. I know, you know, don't deny it.

Okay. That's what he said. I, you know, don't deny it, okay? That's the exact words. The investigation, this investigation's been coming down for six months, son, okay? Now he's son. This didn't happen yesterday. We didn't just come out here in the middle of nowhere, okay?

We know what's going on. We're trying to figure out, what we're trying to figure out is the why, because why this occurred, okay? And he said, I don't know, Danny. And they said, I want you to tell me, Daniel, don't just sit there and shake your head. Yeah. Said, now, come on, let's be honest with each other, okay? Let's be honest with each other. It's time to have a meeting of the minds, okay?

I'll tell you about the time my sister jerked me off when I was 12, if you tell me about the thing that happened to you. Meeting of the minds. The meeting of the minds. He said, it's time for you to sit down and accept what you've done and accept what you've done and let it go, okay? And this is before he admitted to everything. He said, how can I accept something I ain't done?

Okay. And they said, yeah, yeah, but you have. You have done it. That's the thing. They said, yes, you did, okay? And I, I, when you say you can't accept something you haven't done, that's good, okay? Because that means in reality, you know, I can't accept. I didn't do it because I didn't do it, okay?

That's what you're trying to tell me, all right? In your own, in your own streetwise way, what you're trying to tell me, all right? Something happened. Something occurred in your life. And he said, you didn't plan on hurting nobody. You just decided to take the easy way out. They keep going back to that. You got some regret. It's all right. Yep.

So, yeah, he said that, and Joan was nearly decapitated. She was stabbed so many times in the neck. And her car was later found in the Holiday Inn parking lot as well with the safe gone and all that kind of shit. Then they go to July 7, 1997, 2 a.m. Leonce and Joyce Millett, the two toughest senior citizens who've ever existed. That side of the misset for sure. God damn. Yeah, they lived in a nice house in Gonzalez.

Yeah. And he said, Danny said he thought they'd have a lot of money around because they had, quote, a big old fancy house. That's unbelievable. When I see a big fancy house, they go, there ain't shit in there. No. There's a bunch of people with credit and assets. Yeah.

They don't have cash in there. There's a bunch of people with some paperwork about where their money. he is. Exactly. So he said 2 a.m. he went in, cut the phone lines, found the sling blade in the garage, and waited. When they were awake, that's when it happened. He said they kept giving them the wrong combination. You know, he did what he did. He found, the safe had $100,000 in cash. He took the cash. He shot both of them. He thought they were dead. Yeah. The problem was he went home. And like you said earlier, he saw on the news that both victims survived. Imagine the

the discomfort. Yeah. Oh, yes. And he immediately packed up, told Cindy we're moving to Texas through the kids in the car and we're fucking gone. He was going like two days out of there.

Soon as that happened, he goes, they're going to be able to describe me. I got to go. That's real easy. That's when the sketch came and all that kind of shit and that's when the tip came from the security guard. also Fred Babin of the Ascension

Ascension Sheriff's Office said after getting a detailed map from Danny Blank he recovered the safe that had been thrown into a bayou along airline highway about a mile outside of Sorrenta. How the fuck else would you know where a safe was in a bayou and draw a map to it? Like that's crazy. There's also other objects here.

Several of the officers of this parish's sheriff's office also said that they recovered items at Danny's trailer in Sorrento, including jewelry boxes and a watch that were all identified from the Brockhouse. So he has things that he took from there as well. So quickly, just a timeline to go over because that's a lot to do. October 27, 96, that is Victor Rossi, beaten a death of the baseball bat. He ate, $8 to $900 is stolen. March 18th, 97 is Barbara Bourgeois, 58, beaten with a vacuum cleaner and stabbed. Robbery not completed. No money gets taken.

April 9th and 10th, 97, that's Lillian Felipe, assaulted and stabbed in Gonzalez for $120. May 9, 97, Sam Arcuri and Luella Arcuri, found by their son, the sheriff's deputy. They had $112,000 hidden encyclopedias. No DNA. The DNA doesn't match Danny. May 14th, 97, Joan Brock is murdered in her backyard, nearly decapitated, had her car stolen, safe taken, all that kind of thing. Then July 7, 1997, is the Millets and Gonzalez, and they survived. Now, this is the fucking hilarious thing here.

Okay. They have him. Now that they have him, and they arrest him, obviously, and the news goes out, now you have people talking about him in the press, which is hilarious. Police say that Daniel told them that he was the serial killer that did all this shit. But folks, this is from a newspaper article, quote, folks in the Piney Woods town of Analaska, Texas say blank told him or told them that he'd moved there last summer to get his wife and their kids away from the crime. There's all these murders going on where I'm from. That's what he said. Holy shit. There is a serial killer on the loose.

We had to get the fuck out of there. I mean, it's dangerous. It's like they got a stupid Ted Bundy rolling around them parts. He said, the neighbor said he was concerned with crime where he had lived. He said that, he said he was from Louisiana. You hear about all the violence in New Orleans. He wanted to get away, get his children away to a nice safe place to grow up and go to school. Wow.

So just, if you're in prison, it's a nice safe place. Barbara's daughter on the night of the arrest received a phone call, and the detective told her that we arrested somebody for your mother's murder. And in quite a bit of time it passed, so she was happy. She said, quote, it was like, oh, my God, okay, they got him. You know my mom's going to get justice. We came out of that, we came out of that courthouse with them. Every news media affiliate from Dallas to Lufkin to Fort Worth,

that's all of them, was on the steps of the courthouse. I'm glad they got the person who did it. meaning when they arraigned him. And then she said, my mother had this smile that could just light up a room. Everybody says I look just like her and I take that as a huge compliment.

The police did what they had to do and they were very determined. From the bottom of my heart, I think, but it'll still never be enough. Doug Brock, the one who was very disappointed, his wife, didn't get to cook him dinner in her new kitchen.

He said, I'm... She can get to use the new Viking range. Yeah, God damn it. He said, I'm real happy, but it doesn't change much in my life. There's still nobody making dinner in that new kitchen. I'll tell you what. I'm still hungry.

I'm still hungry. Still waiting for Thanksgiving. Got my bib ball, my turkey on it, and ain't even nothing's coming out. I don't even know how to turn this Viking rain. No, I don't know nothing about the kitchen. This poor guy, he's fucking, his wife died and making fun of him. But still, it's just funny. He said it definitely tears your life completely.

apart. They say time wounds are heals all wounds, but time cannot heal this. No. Then they talk to his garage landlord, the one who he's renting his Danny's automotive in Texas from. Don Evans, who owns a car repair shop, he said that Blank wanted to buy his repair shop for $65,000 cash. He had $65 grand cash sitting there. Cash money. That's what he said. He said, it felt, I felt something funny when he said he wouldn't have Any problem coming up with 65,000 cold, hard cash. Wow. He said their kids said their dad made a lot of money from video poker.

He was an excellent mechanic, though, an excellent transmission man. He upgraded this place, fixed the roof and some other things. He's real happy with the improvements to the building. He said, well, man, thank God. He said, that's good because he made improvements to this poor man's building. But he also said, quote, but I'm worried that it's depreciated, being leased by a serial killer and all. He said, I hope, you know, the roof, the fixed roof and the serial killer are offset each other and we'll get offsetting penalties first down. You know what I'm saying?

Let's just call it what it is. Hope I make a profit still. Yeah, there was a serial killer lived here, but it's got a new AC unit and insulation tip talk. I mean, we'll call it what he rented it for. So the police released the shop back to him. He changed the locks and called all the blanks as customers to have them come get their vehicles that were sat in the yard. in various stages of repair and disrepair. So, yeah, good with transmissions, though,

which is fucking hilarious. St. James Parish Sheriff Willie Martin said investigators are still probing Blanks' background, but there's little they know that would be consistent with the brutal crimes. They said, quote, this guy said he was a handy guy with his hands. He was a handy guy with his hands.

What else would he be handy with? What the fuck are you talking about? The steel, if you know what I mean. I mean, a handy guy with his hands. See, he's a transmission guy, but the catch is he has to do it all with his feet. All with his feet. He's a handy guy with his toes around them transmissions.

Andy guy with his hands. He said transmissions were his specialty. Uh-huh. The authorities say that, you know, it's all just saying it's just pathetic. He said, I know he frequented casinos. I don't know if he favored any particular one, but he frequented casinos. That's all. The arrest made one guy here, Jerry Tucker, a retired Continental Airlines pilot and one of Blanks's auto repair customers.

He rushed to the bank to cancel a $223 check that he wrote him. I'm not paying him. Shit. That's hilarious. He said Blank called him when he also said he wondered about a recent encounter because Blank had called him Wednesday to ask him to dinner. And this man said he agreed to meet Blank and the woman he called his wife, Cindy, but declined their offer to pick him up. And he said, how often does your mechanic ask you to dinner? Yeah.

He was going to find out if you've got money and come rob you. He said, they knew where I lived. His wife had taken me home once when my car was at the shop. They knew I was retired and was living in an exclusive community and that my wife had passed. No one would have missed me for weeks. It's eerie. They seem like such nice people. He was going to get it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was probably running out of money. He bought all that shit. He's probably running out of cash. That's crazy. They say they're trying to get a hold of Cindy, but they're having unsuccessful efforts here. Next door neighbors, Penny and Mike Darling told the newspaper that the blanks never tried to make friends or invite the darling's children to play with their children or go in their brand new above ground pool. Look at these highfalutin cock suckers.

around and they're above ground like they're too good for the rest of the world. Not even inviting us over to have a course light in it. Oh, man. Darling said, I tried to make friends with him, but he was real rude. After a while, I figured they only wanted to be friends with elderly people. Those are the only people they were real nice to. Oh, my God. They were just, everybody was a future bank.

That's it. Just setting them up. Yeah. Setting them up, yep. Wow. He thought he was never going to get caught for this. I mean, if it weren't for his stupidity of talking, then he may have never. They didn't have any evidence.

They had no evidence. I mean, he would have had to keep clean forever because they would have watched him until the end of time. But they had no evidence. That's unbelievable. That's it. Now, the police make an announcement back in Louisiana, quote, we have solid cases and the reign of fear in the river parishes is now over. Everybody back to one.

Resume normal living. We didn't catch shit. He told us. I mean, we got him in the room, but, you know. So December 97, the indictments begin. He's indicted for three counts of first-degree murder for Brock, Joan Brock, and the Akuri family there. Five counts total by mid-December. Six counts plus two attempted murders by January 98.

Right. They also arrest Cindy. She had to know something, right? Yeah, she was apparently taking him to where she was a drive. driver. Oh, she was part of the whole thing. Yeah, she was part of the whole thing. She saw him soaked in blood. She knew what he did. Oh, absolutely. She knew everything that was going on. She had, at this point when they arrest her, she had custody of all four kids, including his two from an earlier marriage. Imagine what a disaster that mother must be. If the not even wife of your, wow. Their relationship had been ongoing for several years, despite her marriage, because she's still married at this point.

But the only reason she's still married to the other guy and not to this guy, she hasn't been able to get a divorce because her husband, Brennan, is serving time in Huntsville, Alabama. She's got a type, and it's fucking scumbags. So she's never accused of committing any of the murders herself with her hands, but she was arrested days after blanks or blank and charged in connection. specific charges were she was indicted in at least one count of first-degree murder as a principal accomplice and in the Victor Rossi case also along with other related counts. They knew that she knew about Danny's crimes and drove him to or from some of the crime scenes. Like when he left that car at the Holiday Inn and took the safe, who do you think picked him up? Yeah, you've got to get picked up at some point.

That's it. they said the last charge related to the unreported or to the reported burglary of Wayne Melanson, residents in April 1997, not earlier known to be part of Blanks River Parish's crime series. At the scene, the pair reportedly made off with a safe and a weapon belonging to Melanson, passing the safe through a bedroom window. The residence was unoccupied at the time, a fact which they said probably saved this guy, Melanson's life. He had owned a restaurant in Ascension Parish at the time, and he was in his early 60s, which mean he probably had fucking cash in his safe fee on a restaurant. Nobody who owns a

restaurant back before credit cards where every swipe is claiming all of that cash. Nobody is. Never. They said that Bellard, Cindy, would bring blank to the crime scenes in Ascension Parish and assist in his escape. They said, we feel quite confident with the merits of probable cause for the arrest. She definitely knew what he was doing. So definitely accomplice, at least after the fact, something. So she makes a deal. They're going to drop all charges against her in exchange for her cooperation and testimony. She provided information that helped corroborate details of his gambling and his movements.

So she's not portrayed as the co-killer active in the violence, but after the fact knowledge and possible logistical assistance tied to the robberies. Wow. Okay. They also had, she knows everything about him, basically. Now, they have evidence issues is the problem. Right. A lot of them. A lot of them. They have a 12-hour videotaped confession, detailed, specific, full of facts that only he could know, that only the murderer. There's that, sure. But they have zero physical evidence, placing him at the scene of any crime. No fingerprints, no DNA, no weapon tied to him, no fibers, no hairs. Uyghats, nothing. Nothing. They have unidentified male DNA on a baseball bat used to kill Victor, not blank, which a defense would use as that would be everything. Putting somebody else's hands easily. None of his shit was on the bat, but other people's were, that's your murderer, not our guy.

That's as reasonable doubt as you get. Unidentified male DNA under Sam and Keri's fingerprints, not dany's. And unidentified male and female DNA. Oh. cigarette butts found at the millet crime scene. Is that right? Not Danny blank. Again.

Okay. So the case is built 100% on his confession. Without that, they have absolutely nothing. And the defense's strategy is they coerced the confession. So if you throw that out, now we're sitting here, why is he? With nothing. Yeah. You can pick a guy off the street and sit him there and he has as much to do with it as this guy.

So now they do, the defense argued, they did 12 hours of interrogation with no attorney present. Blank has mild brain damage from a childhood incident. He showed schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorder traits per psychological testing. And he was told that they had evidence that they didn't have. Right. Which is perfectly allowed. They're perfectly allowed to do that. They said he was pressured with a polygraph.

He was manipulated through grief about his dead mother. and the portion of the interrogation conducted by the FBI's agent Sparks, which showed the most, which showed the most aggressive questioning is edited out of the tape they're going to show to the jury. Okay.

Okay. Now, the DNA, they said not only was the state's forensic evidence inconclusive regarding his involvement in any of these fucking things, this is actually exculpatory evidence. Right. Under the fingernails, the baseball bat,

that's exculpatory. It's not mine. Yeah. No, that's shit that comes. up when someone's been in prison for 30 years and they let him out because of it. So there's all of that that they have. The DNA samples recovered from three separate crime scenes were analyzed as a part of the state's attempt to corroborate his confession, but they rule him out as a match. Now, his counsel obtained the results of the analysis but did not, however, obtain the underlying data or the unidentified DNA profiles generated from the DNA samples.

So they don't have that part. This additional information they're saying would have helped his lawyers to independently test whether the unidentified DNA profiles collected from the Rossi, Akuri, and Millett crime scenes matched each other indicating a common perpetrator. Or alternatively matched other known DNA profiles in FBI's CODIS database. Okay. Which they're saying, we would like to at least see if all three of those are the same killer's profile. Yeah. How about that? They said either way, a match would have undermined the confession because it would have contradicted his account.

So they don't give that over and it's not tested. Now, during a hearing, he tells the judge that he's been mistreated at the jail, saying his cell lights are left on and jailers are constantly banging on his cell. Yeah. Yeah. Because you killed six people. They're fucking with me. Yeah. And I killed a bunch of old people.

People tend to hate that. They hate when you kill kids and old people. and old people are like, come on. The fuck. What are you a pussy? Don't kill old people. His family thinks he is innocent as fuck. Really?

Oh, yeah. His sister Sally said her brother is, quote, too nice of a person, too kind-hearted. That doesn't matter. She said a lot of people don't believe it, not just us. Old Hypolyte here, dad, said, I still don't believe he'd done that. He is a good boy. He says he don't know what's going on. they don't tell him nothing.

He says he didn't do nothing and don't know nothing. I talked to him a few times on the telephone and he says he don't know what's going on. I can't believe it. There's no way he could have done this alone. The main thing is, who was with him? Cindy. There you go.

And he also said, we can't afford an attorney for him, you know, either. So he's given an attorney anyway. December 1998, he is in court for a hearing and he tries to escape. Uh-oh. He's a fucking moron. The hearing is whether the jury will be allowed to see, well, what parts of the videotape the jury will be allowed to see. Okay. While this is going on, Jesus Christ, this fucking moron, this guy goes sometime during this hearing.

He goes to the bathroom. They take him into the bathroom. Somehow he broke through a bathroom window and jumped out the bathroom window. He got out. He got out. but he hurt himself. He hurt his leg falling out of the window and was quickly captured while he laid there going,

ow, my leg! Shit! While he's handcuffed wearing orange. Yeah. Fucking dummy. So he's caught and now he's made to wear a bulletproof vest in court because they fear retaliation from the victim's families because they're a bunch of fucking guineas and rednecks down there.

That's who he's killed. Guinea's and rednecks. All vengeful people. So 1999 is the first thing. first trial. This is the trial for the Felipe woman here, Lillian, Felipe. This was moved to Terrebonne Parish due to pretrial publicity. The murders are all over this. I mean, this is all they're talking about for days. The prosecution enters their evidence, 12-hour videotape, polygraph portion edited out, of course, evidence of five other murders and the attempted

murder of the Millets as well, because he is claiming self-defense in this killing. Is that Right. That's wild. Testimony from investigators that his confession included details not of public knowledge and financial records showing that he ran $269,000 through casinos while making about $18,000 in salary. So the defense argued that the confession is coerced, held without a lawyer. There's insufficient evidence of a specific intent to kill. He didn't even bring a weapon with him. He didn't mean to kill. and the admission of five other murders was massively prejudicial.

Also, they say his schizophrenia and brain damage made him susceptible to a false confession. Okay, which is true. But he wouldn't have known the details that he knew. You could take me into a room right now and I could confess to ship, but if I don't know where the safe is in the bayou, you know I'm lying probably. If I can, if I draw a map to a safe thrown over a bridge, that's a problem. That's a problem. Yeah.

And otherwise, even if I want to confess for some reason, if I don't know the details, they're not going to believe me. If I guess that it's in by you, that's impressive. That's pretty good. But to draw a map to it, you're kind of fucked. That's fucked. So the deliberation took two and a half hours. Yeah. And he has found guilty of first-degree murder.

Because he knew too much. He knew too much. Now, during sentencing, death penalty on the table, by the way. Oh. Yeah. I believe the method of execution was just. being thrown in a pit with two alligators back then.

Is Harry Connick's dad there right now? That's bad. That's not his judge. But prosecutors urge the jury to sentence him to death, saying it's the only just punishment. Felipe's son, granddaughter, and brother all told jurors

that their lives have been filled with pain ever since she's been murdered. Once, this is her son, Tracy, said it's been a terrible loss. You can't. imagine something like this happening until it happens to you. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. They have a psychologist, two psychologists who evaluated Danny, said he's severely disturbed. Oh, no shit. Yeah. Is that right? Has difficulty understanding social detail and can get easily

confused in certain situations. See, I think that blow to the head fucked him up like that. Because they said he got all introverted and weird and couldn't get social shit anymore. Yeah, they say that about people that have had that. They're nuts after that. Sometimes it's like for the better, like Sam Kinnison, they say that. He got hit by a car when he was a kid and then he turned into a fucking preacher, comedian lunatic. Before that, he wasn't like that at all, they said.

So they also said Blank's family here, Danny's family takes the stand. And they said they come from a close family and he's never showed a violent side. his son Daniel Blank Jr., because of course he had to pass that on, said it upsets me because my father is a kind and gentle person. He really is. And a wonderful gambler. Absolutely.

So the aggravating factors found are engaged in the perpetration of an aggravated burglary and that the victim here was over 65 years old. Yeah. And they say, you, sir. Right. Yeah. They fuck off death penalty.

Is that right? Oh, yeah. You don't kill old people. They got them good. Now, the fucked up part is, you know, Cindy got up this big deal. Yeah. She's granted immunity in exchange for testimony. She never showed up to testify.

What? She just blew it off. Immunity if she just gets to go? This is why they don't do sentencing of these people till after or whatever it is, usually until after they testify. They shouldn't have given her shit. They should have said, you're charged until you testify. Then you can have immunity.

Where did she go? Don't know. She never showed up. Not at the guilt phase. Not for sentencing. She just didn't show up. Wow. Basically, the state gave her immunity for murder charges and got nothing out of it.

She played everybody. Played it perfectly. Played like a video poker machine on a run. April 2000 is the Joan Brock trial. And they said that the beginning of this, they couldn't select a jury. after two days they had selected zero jurors. They couldn't get one juror in two full days of jury selection. So they were like shit because they had this is after they had moved the trial.

Yeah. They said, Jesus, maybe this isn't far enough away, basically. Still struck them all. Yeah. So the openings in this case, they said that evidence will show, this is the prosecution, evidence will show that the killing was unnecessary and intentional. and that Danny Blank killed the mother of a new bride. I don't know what difference that makes.

Oh, well, if her daughter just got married, then yeah, this is serious. The mother of the bride. We thought that, you know, her daughter hadn't gotten married yet. We wouldn't let him go. But since she just got married, yeah. Put him to death. Everybody knows you never fuck with the mother of the bride. Everyone knows that.

That's just the worst thing you could do in our society. Now, Blank's attorney, Glenn Cortello, appealed to the, jury to not only consider the factual evidence, but look at other things. Look at bullshit, too, not just the facts. He said there will be factual evidence and circumstantial evidence and a lack of evidence. I ask you to consider the lack of evidence. He pointed to his unemotional and slightly built client and asked the jury, how could Danny blank lift a 260 pounds safe by himself?

And also said, great, great. fine, but then who else helped him? Because he did it. It's not that he shouldn't be sitting there. It's maybe who should be next to him at that table. But he should definitely be there too. For sure. They said there's no forensic DNA, no fingerprint evidence, nothing linking him to the crime.

He said, consider this even if there is other evidence. Consider the lack of evidence as hardcore. Big time. Okay. So there's also the safe, the process. the prosecution started its case by calling up several police officers, and one, the evidence custodian, testified that the safe taken from the Brock House could have easily been moved. You didn't need to pick it up. They said the safe was on wheels.

Oh. And demonstrated to the jury how easily the safe moved by rolling it a couple of feet across the courtroom. Like, look, watch. See? It's got its own personal dolly. This is so easy. On cross-examination, they said that they asked. if the man, the evidence guy here,

who weighs 175 pounds, could pick up the safe. He said, I probably could if I had to, which is a great response. That's something only a guy would say. I mean, I probably could if I had to, you know, I mean, but, you know, I don't want to right now, my back and everything. But, you know, if my kid's under and the song,

I'll lift it right off of there, no problem. That's a total guy thing. A woman would go, no, that's huge. You know what I mean? Like, if it fell on a child's legs, I'll get it off of it. Women know when something's too big for them to take in any aspect. Whereas guys are like, I could do that.

What am I a bitch? What am I, a little girl? Of course I can pick it up. He said, among other things. So they said, could you put it up on a desk? And he said, no, but I could put it on a lower platform. Depends on how high the desk is. Yep.

He said that the safe was too heavy to lift, but he had to drag it. out of the bayou with his truck. And he said, I couldn't lift it because it was full of water and stuck in the mud. Yeah, that's a problem. It was like crawfish living in it and shit. That's why. The medical examiner is called talking about the four major blows to the head, the sharp instrument blows to the neck and the knicking the vertebrae, just to talk about exactly how brutal it was. In the cross-examination, the defense tries to show that the victim was struck by a left-handed assailant and blank is right-handed.

Okay. Medical examiner said, could have been done with either hand. It all depends on the positioning of the body. Yeah, you can. Not a big score. So it goes to the jury and they find him guilty. Of first degree murder. Yeah, that's right.

And during sentencing, the judge tells him this is Judge J. Sterling Snouty. Snouty. Snouty. S-W-O-E-D-Y. Snouty. Yeah. Sterling Snouty. He said the death of Joan Brock

caused irreparable damage to the Brock family, the local community, and the state. You, sir. May fuck off. Death penalty again. He got two now.

This is going to be hard to overturn. He did it twice. Oh, yeah. February 2001, Barbara Bourgeois trial. He pleads innocent to this as well.

On day two of the trial, he says, fuck it. Change it to guilty. I'm done. Not doing this. Why not? Guilty.

Bro, it's two. It's over. That's it. What are we doing? Yep. And the judge says, You, sir, may fuck off again. Life without parole.

Okay. So we'll attack that on the two death penalties. Yeah. November 2001, Sam and Luella a curie trial. He pleads guilty right away. Pleads guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. Ooh. And Judge Snouty gives him again, you, sir, keep on fucking.

off two additional life terms without parole consecutive. So now he's got three consecutive life sentences without parole and two death penalties. He's in there for like 600 years, basically, they have this guy for. The Rossi trial, by the way, has never tried. The state decided not to pursue the fifth capital case. Yeah, give it a sec in case he tries to get out. Yeah, they were like, it's not going to work. He's got death sentences.

He's got, you know, all this type of shit. They said these cases are extremely expensive to try. Yeah, they are. You need all the experts. You have to pay for them and their experts. And they're really expensive. In Louisiana, not sure if everybody knows this or not, but is not a wealthy state. They're not doing well?

What they have down there. No, no, no, no. It's not good. The, yeah, gross national product out of Louisiana is not great. Surburbian Street is doing the heavy lifting of the financial bills around there. Yeah. I don't think it's going to cut it. The gross national product is like two strings of beads and a palm full of vomit.

That's the gross national product of Louisiana. And a titty glimpse. And a titty glimpse. Now, 2006, the Joan Brock conviction. Yeah. This was his second death penalty case. Is vacated due to a clerical error in trial procedure. Somebody made a literally just paperwork error.

and they have to vacate the conviction for that. Later on, he'll end up just getting life without parole for that. So he'll end up with one death and four life withouts consecutively. So that's a lot. 2007, he appeals to the Louisiana Supreme Court. And now the court agreed that it was an error to exclude the portion of the interrogation where the FBI agent went out in pretty hard. They said the error was harmless, though, because this interrogation wasn't particularly coerce him.

They said it wasn't like he put his fucking head in a car door or anything. He, you know, he didn't torture the guy. He was just asking him more pointed questions than the other guy. He didn't say we're going to go over there and fuck your mother if you don't tell us. None of that shit came out. Trying to put him in a pizza. Yeah, exactly. So he has other things that he's also appealing, though.

They said he alleges that the detectives, coerced him into confessing by the repeated mention of his deceased mother. That's enough. They explained to him that his deceased mother would want him to take responsibility and admit to the crimes. At that point, he broke down and started crying and admitted to everything. They said in this appeal, a confession is not rendered inadmissible because officers exhort or are a juror or an accused to tell the truth. it provided the exhortation is not accompanied by an inducement in the nature of a threat, which implies the promise of a reward or that.

So you can't threaten or promise rewards for anything. In this case, the repeated references to Blank's deceased mother and the exhortation to tell the truth and take responsibility for his actions did not make the confession inadmissible. The detectives did not threaten or promise blank anything in reference to his mother in obtaining the confession. They didn't say, we'll bring her back from the dead if you confess. Right. They said, basically, you can bring up somebody's dead mother as much as you want. Fuck off.

Now, he said, I didn't get any food. Oh? Throw all my convictions out because I got no food. He said he didn't get any food, but they say he also did not indicate that he was hungry. So, he's got to ask for food. But does he have a time that he eats, or is it just

whenever he hollers? He's got to ask for food, they're saying, I guess. In the transcript of the hearing on the motion to suppress before the 23rd Judicial District Court, the detective testified that during the November 13th interview, Blank did not ask for any food. And had he requested food, they would have given him food. I didn't know he had to request it in jail. He's not in jail. He's in an interrogation room. Oh, oh.

Oh, yeah. There. Yeah, you definitely got to. Yeah, so, I mean, they should probably say. I guess, but 12 hours? A lot of times they offer you something, but that's when they're trying to be nice to you and whatever. They'll offer you something. But, I mean, I guess he could have asked for food.

In 12 hours did they? They said, fuck yourself. That's what I'm saying. They must have went out and had a lunch out there, probably. He's got to eat. But I guess unless he asked for it, they also offered blank something to drink on several occasions. The detective testified he reviewed the tape several times and indicated that Danny was provided five drinks, four Cokes and one cup of water. The 12-and-a-half-hour video of the interview is the best evidence to determine whether the confession was induced from a lack of food.

Upon review of the tapes, there appears no indication that Blank's confession resulted from lack of food. It wasn't like holding his stomach going, all right, fine, man. Just put me in a cell so they'll feed me. Well, the thing about Coke is that it will suppress appetite, too, because your body's generally, you won't even know that you're not hungry. Yeah. There was no express statement or mention of food by either the. the detectives or blank. The detectives did not promise to give blank food if he confessed.

Further, the detectives did not eat in front of him. That would have been funny if they were just eating big sandwiches in front of him. And Detective Tony stated that neither he nor Detective Heimel ate anything during the timeframe of the interview either. Oh. In light of the fact that the detectives provided blanks with drinks, bathroom breaks, and adjusted the temperature in the interview room at his request, there's nothing in the record to suggest that Blank would have been denied food upon request.

I'm like they were treating him like shit. They didn't have him chained to the floor. Yeah. You know, with just his underwear on or anything. In light of the totality of the circumstances, there appears to be no coercion by the detectives to include a confession from lack of food. His next thing that he brings up is, they wouldn't let me smoke. Well, yeah.

He don't have a constitutional right to cigarettes is the problem there. It is a bummer sometimes. I get it. I mean, yeah. I get it, brother. But he said, Blank tried to smoke a cigarette in the interview room. However, Detective Heimel informed him that he could not smoke in the building. Detective Heimel testified that approximately at 3.45 p.m., which was two hours and 45 minutes into the interview,

Blank lit up a cigarette for 15 seconds while he was not in the room. When Detective Heimel returned to the interview room, he informed blank that he could not smoke in the building and directed him to put out the cigarette, explaining that there was a no-smoking sign posted on the door. Detective Heimel also stated that shortly thereafter, around 4.10 p.m., right before the polygraph test was to be administered, Blank had a 12-minute break where he went to the bathroom. The detective testified that blank smoked a cigarette while in the bathroom. Detective Heimel stated that after Blank smoked in the bathroom, the detectives continued to let him smoke. They were like, just fuck it.

The whole place stinks anyway now. He's not going to stop. He wins. Fuck it. The detective also states, so now soda and cigarettes, so he has meat food, he's fine. Yeah, there's appetite suppressant there. Detective Heimel also stated that Blank smoked a cigarette nine times on camera. and one time off camera in the bathroom.

So he smoked half a packle. He was in there. Yeah. In 12 hours, that's pretty good. That's a lot of cigarettes, yeah. Detective Mike Tony, the other officer present in the interview room, also testified that Blank smoked a cigarette prior to confessing. So it's not like if you tell us something, we'll let you have a cigarette.

It's none of that shit. A record of the interview or a review of the record indicates Blank did not or did smoke prior to admitting some involvement in the crimes. Both detectives Heimel and Tony, testes. testified that at first, Blank was not allowed to smoke because of the sign, but based on the record and their testimony, it appears that the initial denial of Blank's request to smoke was not because of police coercion, but because due to the no smoking regulation at the Texas courthouse. Like, they weren't doing it to fuck with them. They were doing it because there's no smoking allowed in the building. It's the policy.

That's it. If you see a lot of them, they usually take them out to, like, the vehicle area. They'll take them out to, like, the intake bay there and let them smoke out there, even when they're already in. cuffs and in prison, they let him do that. However, Detective Heimel stated that once blank smoked in the bathroom, they allowed him to smoke in the interview room. And not for nothing, but if you're going to get a

serial killer confession, we'll spray some shit in here later. You know what I mean? We'll open a window and spray the spray. It's fine. What are we talking about? It won't be smelly forever. It'll go away eventually. And it'll smell like any, it'll smell better than anything else in a jail, so

it's fine. And now sleep also. They said within the first three hours of the interview, Blank indicated he was sleepy when he said, sitting here ain't doing nothing, getting sleepy. And before the polygraph test was interviewed, he stated to the examiner that he went to bed the previous night

between 12 a.m. and 1.30 a.m. and woke up the next morning around 8.10. That sounds like a great night's sleep. I never get that much sleep. I would fucking kill to get that much sleep. It's almost eight hours, right? Oh, God, that sounds great. It's between seven and eight hours he got.

That's amazing. Blank also stated that he was up late working on a transmission. A review of the tapes also indicates that Blank put his head on the table when officers were out of the room. The issue is whether Blank was deprived of sleep, and if so, whether this amounted to police misconduct, which induced an involuntary confession. Based on the record, it appears that Blank did not request any sleep. He only said that he was tired from not doing anything and from working late on a transmission. The detectives did not promise him that he would be allowed to sleep if he confessed. So he's fine. And the Louisiana Supreme Court

affirms this conviction and his death sentence for the Felipe case. Yeah. So there is a dissenting view from a justice here who says it cannot be, it cannot be said beyond a reasonable doubt that the excluded evidence could not have affected the jury's verdict. And she said she would have granted a new trial. Really? Okay. So 2009 is when he pleaded. leads guilty to the Joan Brock murder and is resentenced to life without parole. He has a habeas hearing in 2015 where Lillian's brother, who's 82 years old, attends it. And he tells reporters he had a hard time understanding how a longstanding murder conviction can be undone years later. Right.

And he should read the law because there's a lot of that in there. January 20th, 2016. Here we go. He is a death warrant assigned for him. Execution day scheduled for March 14th, 2016. Okay. Problem is, state of Louisiana at that point does not have the drugs required to conduct the legal injection. Right.

So unless they're going to, you know, drag him behind a truck or something, they got some fucking problems. Blank's attorney, Gary Clements, of the Post Conviction or the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, said there are no drugs in Louisiana to execute anybody and Daniel Blank will not be executed in March of this year or conceivably in the foreseeable future. So what does that mean? They got away for drugs. They just hang on to him. Yeah. Yeah, like they did with everybody in this time. And the prosecutor said it's time for Daniel Blank to get justice like the jury said in night.

1999. February 17, 2016, Louisiana Supreme Court issues an official stay of execution because of the lack of drugs. October 5th, 2021. U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson orders multiple Louisiana law enforcement agencies to turn over evidence for independent DNA testing. Jackson notes in his ruling, DNA collected from the three crime scenes, a baseball bat, cigarette butts, and material from under Sam McHurie's fingernails, not match blank. He writes that the state's case relied almost exclusively on the videotaped confession. He said Blank's defense team was never given the underlying DNA data for independent review. The crime lab said they would only test the fingerprints if Blank waived his right to sue the state for civil damages in the event of an exoneration. Uh-oh.

They denied the judge's order. The judge called this, quote, incomprehensible and issued another. order. That's shocking. If you fucked up, you don't want any consequences for it? I don't think so. Fuck you. Not a chance I'm signing that. Yep. December 20203, he orders that the Louisiana state police crime lab to, quote, stop flouting his past orders and test the evidence. And they hand it over. They have to at that point. January 2024, the testing is completed. The results go under review. as of 2025, he remains on death row. The DNA review is ongoing.

We don't know yet. Louisiana resumed executions in March of 2025. Oh, they got the drugs. They got, well, they got different drugs that don't work as well, and they just say, fuck, it good enough, basically. They're going to get him. I think so, too. Well, there's evidence questions.

A federal court has now ordered testing of 29 unidentified fingerprints from the Felipe crime scene and other locations. I mean, the problem here is though he might have just not left behind DNA or fingerprints. And it might be someone else who is over at the house that was unrelated to the murders. Who the fuck knows who it is? Who knows? Yeah. And he may have worn gloves.

That's what I mean. He's a mechanic. I don't know how the hell an old man would get some other male's DNA under his fingernail. I don't know how that happens. I don't know. A rough handshake? Who scratches other men? I don't know.

You know what I mean? Like, a good handshake? I guess. What else would you do? That's what I mean. Who the fuck knows? But even then, a good handshake with who they just woke up. I assume he's washed.

It was overnight. Pull something out of your kid's mouth. You know, they're old people. They don't have any kids. Grandkids? I don't know, man. They were all night there by themselves and woke up that morning. They hadn't encountered anybody else.

Yeah. How do you get that? Could he have DNA from two days ago? Is he just dirty? I don't know what's going on. So we don't know. They said it's possible someone else was at the crime scenes for reasons unrelated to the murders. It's possible the DNA samples were contaminated.

It's possible blank worked with an accomplice. His girlfriend was initially charged, but then not at all. Where'd she go? But we never, I don't know if she was tested against this shit. And either way, it's unidentified male DNA. There was one female thing somewhere. That was cigarette butts, connect. to an unidentified female.

But they didn't match Daniel. Might have matched sure we don't know. It's also possible that a federal judge found a significant order enough, found significant enough to order testing that a man was convicted on a confession because here's the problem too. We know false confessions happen a lot. All the time. And when you start getting with the fucking,

when the IQ starts going under 100, the odds of a forced confession go up and up and up because the people doing it are smarter than the person sitting there. But the problem is that he knows so much. He knows so much. Drawing maps is not good. It's not good. He knew how he got into every house.

They didn't tell him. He knew that the window putty was cut. He knew about that the ladder folded down. He knew about everything. He knew murder weapons. That's too much. He knew it was in old ladies' purses. Yeah, that's too much.

It's too much. So we don't know, though. The district attorney said he's confident that Danny is guilty and doesn't expect DNA testing to change a fucking thing about that. So, holy shit. There you go, everybody. There is Laplace, Louisiana. Yeah.

And a whole fucked up-ass story. That's a crazy goddamn. It's a very bad guy if he... A terrible man. Confession is right. Holy shit. That is bad stuff. So let us know what you think.

He knew too much. He knew too much. I can't get past that. Yeah. That and DNA not matching him and fingerprints not matching him. Doesn't matter. direct they directly headbutt each other. But do they?

I mean, to me that says that guy didn't touch anything. That's just a gloved guy. But then why is there DNA under a guy's fingernails? And why is there other DNA and fingerprints on a bat that was used to beat the guy to death? I don't know. Who knows if that was put there then? During the beating. That's what I mean.

We don't know shit. It's crazy. If the fingerprints are in that man's blood, okay, fine. They're on the bat. They're the only fingerprints on the bat. Oh, that's good. And DNA, too. They're the only DNA on the bat.

Unknown DNA. It doesn't match any of his family. So bad. It's fucked up. I mean, it's so, this is a mind fuck. I mean, I think he did it because he knew everything about it. It just knows too much. Here's what I think.

If you want my opinion, I think he did it. He doesn't want to say exactly what happened because Cindy was way more involved than she'd then they let on. And he doesn't want his four fucking kids being homeless. Yeah. He wants her to take care of the kids. So he's just going to say, okay, whatever. And he was going to try to confess to it all on his own.

But I think that Cindy was involved. And I think possibly maybe somebody else involved in a couple of robberies. We don't know. But not sure. Either way, there it all is. If you like this story, if you're confused about it, if anything at all about this story, you feel compelled to talk about, definitely let us. know and hit us up on social media.

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The tiny, tiny sliver. Made a deal list for that. It doesn't exist anymore. No. So we don't know what, to do and we have to figure it out and vet other companies and this takes longer than a few weeks to do so hopefully we'll

have a Halloween virtual line. That's what we're working on. And maybe by then we'll find out if we have any money from that. Yeah, maybe we'll find out if we got anything from it. So either way, if we got like eight bucks from it. So there you go. It doesn't even make shows anymore. No. There's no money.

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with the names of the most wonderful people in the world whose DNA would certainly be at a murder scene if they did it they'd have the they'd have the damn niceness to do that hit me with them right now this was executive producer Liz Vasquez stephanie and emma visiting all the illinois parks they've got uh 35 to go they've done over a hundred of them I don't know how many parks Illinois got. Wow. Apparently a lot. Like municipal parks or like?

I thought you meant like amusement parks because we did that on Patreon. Or amusement parks. 135? I don't know. That's a lot. It seems like all of them I think of that one. Is that municipal parks? I think we're getting held up on details.

It probably don't matter that much at this point. Gary Howard's in Duncan, South Carolina. Did you know that? Good to see you, Gary. Laura Blakesley put down her pop. God damn it. I'm sorry. That's a heartbreaker.

Sorry, you know of that. Arthur Lane says Yahweh's a cunt. That's fun. We'll find out about that about the do Robert Rozier on Crime in Sports. Other producers this week, Peyton Meadows, Thomas Smith, happy birthday. Happy hours in Horn Lake, Mississippi.

Horn Lake, that's one of our towns, I believe. Janice Hill, Sharon Jones, Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 are celebrating Raptor 1's birthday, James. Well, congrats on. Happy birthday to the Raptor. I don't know why they've got to be so anonymous, It's that Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady? Is it after one and two?

I'm not sure. Not sure. Mikey G. Tyler Mack, Brad Kelly, Kiss fan, 44. Aiden Chan, Tallin, would know last name. Kelly would know last name. Beka Haas.

Live would no last name. H.K. Aden Becker. Tricia Monague. Shannon Johnson. Alex Nissen. Allison Bain. Danielle would no last name.

Amelia Ticatch. Adam, no, that's Matt. Adam, that's definitely Matt. Yeager, or Jaeger, Stafie Maeberry, Stacey Mayberry, Sam Van, Melissa Crane, Papa Willie. You know, like Pop, Willie? Wheely, but Papa. Willie. His name's Willie.

Crystal Regina Blair, McKenzie with no last name. Brian D. Jody St. Laurent, Lindsay Malcowitz. Andrea Braun, Thaum. No, it's Tom with an H. No last name, just Thumb. Riley Allen, Liz would no last name. Kristen Kava, Hugh Jassel, James.

It's definitely a real name. Mia Riverwind. Molly Vogeli, Marine Lawless, Fiona B, Jackie Hawk, Chelsea would know last name. Charles Spencer, Paul Helvey, Ashley would know the last name. Paul Estes, Kayla Dean, Jennifer Zonifer Brist, Pecakes, Pecacques,

uh, Donna Bela. Nikki Olson, Diane W., Courtney Frize, Jacob Osborne, Tanya Walker, Dan and Hannah Conway, William St. Jean, John, perhaps, Miranda Bailey. Don would know last name. JJ would no last name. Jesse Rodden. Kyle McDaniel. Paul George Aubrey would know last name.

Tree or Tris or Tris or Tris. with no last name. Kerry Issel, Issa Brand, he's brand. Penny Adams. Penny Adams, that's it. Hansel Cross. Ronnie would no last name.

Lollipop. Heather would know last name. Jackie Pick. Yanna Morgan. Yana perhaps. Jennifer Aiello, like Danny. Don Shaw. Gavin Yenney.

What happened to him? Is he dead? Danny Ayell? He's got to be dead. Maybe. I haven't heard of anything. Ian Crow. Yeah, last thing I've heard of him was

that Papa Don't Preach video, right? Is that the last thing he was in? He was on a bad TV show in the late 90s. I'm pretty sure. Ah, fuck. Ian Crow. Slatman would no last name. Days Gay. Barbara Thompson, Betty S. Mr. Moose. Andy would no last name. Rebecca H. Guy Pelland. J. Marie. Hallie. Hallie Moore Timmons. Kevin and Janice McComor.

Teresa Lang. no last name. Caitlin Haas, Manuel Garcia, Amy McCurnan, Nikki Sampson, Lando Ewaq, Arthur Cook, Mary Eberhardt, Dylan O'Connell, Mike and Rebecca Elton, Betsy Retaya, Gazda. I'd rather help a dog. Evette would know last name. Nope, that's Edvette S. Roxanne Lance, Brody would know the last name. Katie would know last name. Crystal Cardenas, Jamie, Jamie, Jaime, Keck, Dylan Gluckert, Jossi would know the last name. Nestor Navarro, Cecilia would know last name. Sheet metal workers, local 19, James.

Oh, shit. They're around. The locals, I fucking love a union. Lisa Dyer, Bender would know last name. Megan French, Linda Payne, Bridgett, Brandhorst, Aidan D, Renee Crawford, Kimberly Hensley, Lindsay Ginger, Ramundo, Ramundo Martinez, Mary Esther, Luce, Carissa, Carissa Cardiff, Timothy Cropa, Nekisha, Cretzer, Daniela Satori, Sartori, Tish D, Bradley Lathen, Chelsea Rangeloff, Alec, Alec, Krista Springer, Patrick Van Splean,

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