Cancer kills in Jennings, Louisiana but so do the police and the drug dealers. When you start putting your own time-line together, it becomes shockingly obvious that all the players, slayers and victims form a spider’s web with each strand pointing back at another. It really isn’t difficult to understand who killed whom and why.
ETHAN BROWN gives no quarter, shows no favor, this is the most objective version of the Jefferson Davis Parish 8 that you can read. He has unravelled a mystery that somehow continues to elude the police. There is no defense for police corruption, for corruption it is and certainly not incompetence. Right there is the only reason this will never be solved, because the cops it seems are hoping cancer kills all the loose ends they didn’t take care of.
At the heart of the killings is a woman called Tracee Chaisson, the only reason Tracee is still alive is because she has recanted just about every statement she ever made. But Tracee knew all eight victims, she was an informant for everything with a badge and regularly got herself out of trouble by snitching. Added to that, she knows the biggest players in the Jennings drug world very well and is seen with them often.
Mike Dubois is the brother of one of the victims, Whitnei Dubois and strangely, the only person he isn’t pointing a finger at is a suspect in two murders, Frank Richard. Because Brown is objective and transparent, he puts Frankie at the scene of at least two murders. Richard was the local dope king in Jennings for two decades. Mike and Frankie were dealing dope at the same time, and as they say, there is no honor amongst thieves. So why isn’t he pointing all ten fingers at Frankie, who is suspected of killing Whitnei?
On the law enforcement side, supercop Terrie Guillory is everywhere he shouldn’t be and having sex left, right and centre when he is where he should be and that is the Jeff Davis jail. Yet Warden Guillory arrests people in the Boudreaux Inn, takes multiple statements from informants and is involved in a major shoot out, in the middle of the day, in another town! One can only ask how many roles as a law enforcement officer can one man fill?
When Guillory is at the jail, female inmates are raped by his guards and he himself gets sex from female inmates in turn for releasing them. Question to self: Is there a woman alive who has had sex with the now deceased Guillory? Yes there is, and they can now tell any version of the story they want. Polygraph Tracee? Polygraph Paula? Anybody?
In case the real FBI (not the ones from Louisiana) want to solve this case, talk to Kirk Menard and Brown. Between them they have most of the pieces of the puzzle linking the murders. I think the main problem prosecuting anyone is going to be the lack of physical evidence, again, we can thank the Sheriff’s Office for that. But a good DA does not need physical evidence to make up the corpus delecti. Not even in Louisiana.
Thoroughly researched and well presented, a gripping true crime story, I rate this book 4 stars. My thanks to Simon and Schuster for the copy.
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