00:00:03
[ominous music] NARRATOR: In October 2004,
the partially decomposed body of a 21-year-old
man was discovered
00:00:12
in a disused storage locker. Ronald Dominique
strangled Michael Barnett, and his body was
found several days
00:00:20
later, which
started to decompose within those mini storages. Dominique was the wolf
in sheep's clothing.
00:00:28
NARRATOR: The unassuming
Ronald Dominique, known as the Bayou
Strangler, raped and killed
00:00:33
men across South Louisiana. JIM BERNAZZANI: Once their
hands and feet were bound,
00:00:38
Ronald Dominique then
raped these individuals. And once he was done with
them, he'd kill them and then
00:00:45
remove the body
from his residence and throw them in the
sides of the road. BRYANNA FOX: Dominique would
often discard and leave
00:00:52
his victims on the sides
of highways or in a canal or in a ditch, like
somebody throwing
00:00:57
garbage out of a car window. GEOFFREY WANSELL: This
is one of the most relentless serial
killers in US history.
00:01:06
NARRATOR: For nine years,
Ronald Dominique was a ghost-- undetected, homicidal, and
one of the world's most
00:01:14
evil killers. [theme music] [dark music] In December of 2006,
42-year-old Ronald Dominique
00:01:43
was arrested in Houma,
Louisiana in connection with the murder of two men. He soon confessed to more
than 20 other killings.
00:02:07
He killed multiple men
across multiple parishes within the area. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There
was no national manhunt.
00:02:15
There was no headlines. He just was there, slipping
in and out of lives, taking them as he did so.
00:02:25
[soft ominous music] BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Ronald
Dominique appeared as a short, white male, a little
over set, walking with a cane,
00:02:32
perfectly harmless. And yet, he was an
extremely prolific murderer of young, healthy men.
00:02:42
People who do monstrous things
do not look like monsters. NARRATOR: Many of Ronald
Dominique's victims
00:02:51
were homeless with drug
dependency problems. These were the most
vulnerable people in society--
00:02:58
the absolute--
people that police were least willing
to investigate. It was just so much easier to
kill them and get away with it.
00:03:08
NARRATOR: Due to where some of
his victims' bodies were found, Dominique became known
as the Bayou Strangler.
00:03:15
He would claim the
lives of 23 men. At that time,
Ronald Dominique was the most prolific serial killer
that we knew of operating
00:03:25
in the United States. [dark music] NARRATOR: This
killer's story begins in the small Bayou community
of Thibodaux, Louisiana.
00:03:38
[dark bayou music] BRYANNA FOX: Ronald
Dominique was born in 1964, just
outside of Baton Rouge,
00:03:45
and he came from very
meager backgrounds. He was poor kid growing up,
and his family really clung
00:03:52
to the tight knit community. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He was
one of seven children, so his household would
have been very busy
00:03:59
and quite a demanding one. The area that Dominique grew
up in, Southern Louisiana,
00:04:05
is one that is
quite traditional, one where there are
very clear boundaries between masculine and feminine
and between men and women,
00:04:12
and as he was
growing up, he wasn't one of those alpha males. He had some quite
feminine tendencies.
00:04:20
JIM BERNAZZANI: He
was an outsider. He tried to fit in. He wasn't having any luck.
00:04:25
[soft music] BRYANNA FOX: He was
bullied, taunted by friends, and even put down by
his family members.
00:04:32
While growing up, he
was living by himself in a camper on the property
because the family essentially
00:04:38
said he was just too odd
and they knew that there was something amiss with him. NARRATOR: It would
gradually emerge
00:04:45
that one of the
reasons that he was uncomfortable with his
peers was that he was gay.
00:04:49
He was struggling
throughout adolescence and into his early 20s
with his sexuality.
00:04:54
I think he didn't
quite know what it was. [soft music] NARRATOR: Dominique
graduated high school
00:05:02
in 1983 at the age of 19. When he left home,
he moved frequently between trailer parks.
00:05:11
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Dominique came to spend quite a lot
of time in New Orleans because that was somewhere
where he felt being gay
00:05:17
was more acceptable. He could be himself in
that kind of environment. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It
was quite a big contrast
00:05:23
between this neighbor
in the trailer park and a boy who then turns
up at the local gay bar.
00:05:29
And he used to dress up
as his favorite character, or singer, Patty LaBelle. But even in the gay
community, he didn't
00:05:36
seem to fit in all that well. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
There was still a feeling of
marginalization of people
00:05:42
not really wanting to include
him, so wherever he turns, he seems to be
rejected, and I think
00:05:48
that instills in him this
underlying current of shame. [soft ominous music] But he never really
got a proper job.
00:05:59
He did all sorts of menial
things as a young man. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He was
a pizza delivery driver.
00:06:04
He was a meter reader. And I think there's a
sense in which there's a frustration in him that he's
having to settle for these jobs
00:06:12
that are perhaps less than he
feels that he's entitled to, but at the same time, these jobs
ensure that he goes unnoticed.
00:06:20
They ensure that he
remains in the background. [ominous music] NARRATOR: In 1985,
at the age of 21,
00:06:28
Dominique was caught making
a number of dirty phone calls to local residents. He was convicted of telephone
harassment and fined $74.
00:06:40
He wants a connection with
other people to some degree, but he wants that
connection to make
00:06:47
him feel in control, to make
other people essentially fear him. So this is how he's going
about doing that-- he's making
00:06:54
a connection, but it's a
connection that's based on a very negative foundation. But then in the 1990s,
Dominique's crimes
00:07:01
take on an even more
sinister edge to them. [ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL:
In August 1996,
00:07:09
Dominique was charged with
attacking a young man. The young man escaped,
but he insisted
00:07:18
that Dominique had actually been
on the brink of killing him. He attempted to strangle him.
00:07:23
It's the first real sign
of what was to come. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This isn't
remote distant telephone
00:07:29
harassment. This is him luring
somebody into his property and essentially assaulting them.
00:07:36
So here, we've got
somebody who is escalating, who is getting more severe in
terms of the kind of offenses
00:07:44
that they're committing. [dark soft music] NARRATOR: Dominique was
in prison for two weeks
00:07:51
while awaiting trial. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
He's held in jail, and he insists that he was
brutally and persistently
00:07:58
raped by fellow prisoners. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
When he tells it, it puts him in the
role as the victim
00:08:06
to try and gain sympathy. It seemed to really impact
him because he said, I never
00:08:13
want to go back to jail again. [ominous music] NARRATOR: When Dominique
faced the charges at court,
00:08:19
his alleged victim
didn't appear, so the case was dismissed. Dominique comes out of the
other side of this, realizing--
00:08:27
said, I've gotten away with it. But also, it's given
him a bit of a fright. He's not going to stop doing
it, but he knows that he
00:08:35
can't leave any more witnesses. BRYANNA FOX: While most
people who are in jail decide to stop all illegal
behavior at that point,
00:08:44
well, Dominique actually
escalated his behavior. [dark music] NARRATOR: On the
12th of July, 1997,
00:08:54
a 19-year-old man named David
Mitchell had just attended a family gathering
in New Orleans,
00:09:01
and then is believed to have
hitched a ride to go home. But nearly 48 hours later,
David's lifeless body
00:09:13
was found. The body was just dumped. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And
dumping the body out
00:09:18
in the open, that's basically
saying that you were worthless, you know, you have no value.
00:09:22
So this first murder is
quite a significant one. [dark soft music] NARRATOR: David's body had
been abandoned along a stretch
00:09:30
of highway in St. Charles Parish
of Louisiana, six miles away from where he was
last seen alive.
00:09:37
He'd been raped and drowned. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Dominique would have been able to watch the
life drain out of his victim.
00:09:45
So this tells me that
he's a killer who enjoys the process of murder
as well as the outcome
00:09:51
of ending somebody's life. He felt a lot of anger
and frustration inside, and so I'm sure the
motivation was twofold--
00:09:59
to silence somebody
who was able to witness and say what he
had done, but also, he was acting out on his
violent tendencies which
00:10:09
were developing
after years, if not decades, of feeling
repressed and ostracized
00:10:13
by his family and society. NARRATOR: Police found
no meaningful evidence of the identity of the killer.
00:10:21
Ronald Dominique had
escalated from would-be rapist to savage murderer, then
escaped without a trace.
00:10:29
[ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: Barely six
months later in December 1997, Dominique kills for
the second time--
00:10:40
Gary Pierre, and he was 20. He was a high school student. NARRATOR: When his
body was discovered
00:10:46
on the 14th of
December 1997, there were signs that Gary Pierre
had been sexually assaulted.
00:10:54
He was strangled to death. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Significantly,
Pierre had been tied up.
00:11:00
For Dominique, it's
about control as much as it is about the death. It's the ultimate
God-like complex.
00:11:09
[dark music] ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
He enjoys seeing people helpless and humiliated.
00:11:15
And this is something that
goes back to his experiences of adolescence. He felt ashamed,
he felt humiliated,
00:11:22
and he's repeating
those feelings, but this time, he's the
one carrying them out.
00:11:28
[ominous music] NARRATOR: In July
the following summer, a third young man was found
murdered in the same six mile
00:11:35
radius of St. Charles Parish. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
It's extraordinary that the bodies were
found so close together
00:11:42
but no one adds 2
and 2 and gets 4. They're just separate bodies. But now you have three killings
in the space of a year.
00:11:50
They're all strangled,
but no DNA is found. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Dominique had
managed to cover his tracks.
00:11:58
He continued to hide in plain
sight and frequent gay bars in New Orleans. On the 4th of October 1998, he
met 27-year-old Oliver LeBanks
00:12:12
at a bar in the French Quarter. Years later, he would
detail the encounter in a police interview.
00:12:42
MAR PAULSON: Oliver
was a good friend. He was delightful, and never a
problem, never an angry word.
00:12:50
Very, just jovial,
smiling, sweet, kind. I saw him walk away down the
alleyway from the restaurant,
00:13:02
and he turned the
corner and that was the last time I saw him. NARRATOR: After
chatting in the bar,
00:13:11
Oliver and Dominique
left together. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
According to Dominique, the two men had agreed to have
sex in the back of his car.
00:13:19
[ominous music] NARRATOR: Oliver LeBanks had
become the fourth man to lose his life at Dominique's hands.
00:13:57
He just didn't deserve
to die like that. People were talking about him
as being transient and drug
00:14:05
addict, and, you know, Oliver
was a wonderful human being with a family. He was as much a part of
that French Quarter community
00:14:15
as I was or anybody else was. He begins to cry at several
points during these interviews,
00:14:37
and this is just an act. So what this does is it
distracts our attention away from the fact that
he's the aggressor,
00:14:44
he's the one who
enacted this violence. [dark music] NARRATOR: The following
day in the Jefferson Parish
00:14:52
of Louisiana, a passerby
discovered Oliver's body under a freeway ramp. MAR PAULSON: Detectives
came in and sat down,
00:15:01
and they showed me
a picture of Ollie and told me that he
had been found dead and they wanted me to tell
them something about him.
00:15:15
They really just
didn't want to hear anything that was, um, good. I think that they
were expecting me
00:15:23
to say he was all
kinds of problems, and he was on drugs,
and the only thing that I could tell them was
that he was a good, young man.
00:15:36
So they wrapped it up and left,
and I didn't hear from them after that. NARRATOR: Investigators
had, however,
00:15:46
found a Caucasian hair
and semen on Oliver's body and recovered mitochondrial DNA.
00:15:54
Dominique had made a mistake. Mitochondrial DNA, it's
very different to what we refer to as autosomal DNA.
00:16:03
It's maternally inherited,
so it would have been shared with brothers and sisters and
so forth because they were all
00:16:08
inherited from the same mom. So it's not the type of DNA
that we have on the database.
00:16:13
NARRATOR: Investigators
now had a partial DNA profile of Oliver
LeBanks' killer but no means to
match it to anyone.
00:16:24
[ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: In
the weeks following, other victims begin to turn up.
00:16:31
JIM BERNAZZANI: There were
some that were killed in rather close proximity
and close in time,
00:16:36
that he used to go for months
without killing anybody. Then he did go back to having a
spree of three or four deaths.
00:16:43
So this is part of the
challenge at that time-- some were written off
as deaths by accidents,
00:16:49
others were murdered,
but to string them all together into one guy
was a little bit far reaching.
00:16:56
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There
wasn't very much in the way of forensic evidence. This suggests that Dominique
may have used condoms
00:17:02
when assaulting his victims. So this does tell us that
there might be a degree of forensic awareness here.
00:17:09
There is a sense
in which he wants to limit the amount of evidence
that he leaves on their bodies.
00:17:15
He's quite an intelligent
serial killer. BRYANNA FOX: Dominique
would pick victims
00:17:21
and leave their bodies at
multiple different parishes across Louisiana. [dark music]
00:17:28
We assume that police
departments share information and have access to each other's
case files and databases--
00:17:34
that it certainly wasn't
that way in the 1990s. They would have to literally
share information by calling
00:17:40
each other to discuss. And therefore, linking these
crimes, pooling the evidence,
00:17:45
and trying to
actually put together a case against a serial killer
versus individual murders
00:17:51
was just not on
the police radar. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
There were not banner headlines saying a serial
killer is loose in the Bayou.
00:18:00
There were no headlines at all. If they warranted a small
mention, it was quite rare.
00:18:06
And we can't be sure, but
it's significant, I think, that at this point, all
his victims had been Black.
00:18:12
[soft music] To this day, when
I talk to people and I talk about having someone
that worked with me killed
00:18:20
by a serial killer,
they're like, why didn't we hear about this? What happened? I think that in essence, the
biggest problem was that you
00:18:29
were dealing with
young Black men and it just got
completely passed over. BRYANNA FOX: Victims
that are white, female,
00:18:42
young, in college, they
get the vast majority of the media attention. Victims that are male,
older in age, minorities,
00:18:52
and especially if
they were gay or had any type of other
stigmatizing features, especially in the 1990s
and even early 2000s,
00:19:03
they just did not generate a lot
of public attention, sympathy, and were not deemed
as media worthy.
00:19:11
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Most of the
victims lived on the street and was homeless, you
were subject to anyone
00:19:16
that passes by or anyone
that's offering you something. Sometimes what some individuals
believe is an act of kindness
00:19:23
is really something
for them to take advantage of an
individual person and then take them somewhere.
00:19:28
That's the reason why
they, hate to say, could end up in human
trafficking or even death.
00:19:36
NARRATOR: In January
of 2000, more than two and a half years since he'd
killed for the first time,
00:19:42
police were no
closer to identifying 35-year-old Ronald Dominique. BRYANNA FOX: He thought
that he could engage
00:19:49
in this type of pattern of
systematic serial killing and sexual assaults and
yet never get caught.
00:19:58
GEOFFREY WANSELL: In this period
between the summer of 1997 and 2000, Dominique
had killed 10 young men
00:20:07
with no trace or suggestion
that a serial killer could be at work. And now something even
more extraordinary
00:20:15
happens in the story
of Ronald Dominique-- he stops killing. [dark music] NARRATOR: By January 2000,
35-year-old Ronald Dominique
00:20:27
had seemingly ended
his murderous spree. The previous year, he'd
moved home from New Orleans
00:20:36
to the nearby town of Houma. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Almost more
of a nice, quiet, little town.
00:20:43
We're probably about maybe
about 45 minutes to 60 minutes southeast of New Orleans.
00:20:48
As a small community, you
pretty much know everybody. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
Now, I don't think
00:20:54
the move in itself accounts
for why he stopped killing. I think it's, in a
sense, coincidence.
00:20:59
Something convinced
him to stop killing. Had he been frightened that
people would think there
00:21:05
was a serial killer in action? There's no evidence
that he wasn't going to escalate further.
00:21:11
But for some reason,
he doesn't kill again for almost three years. NARRATOR: On the
6th of October 2002,
00:21:22
the body of 20-year-old
Kenneth Randolph was found dumped in an isolated
area of Lafourche Parish,
00:21:30
18 miles outside of Houma. Kenneth had been
raped and strangled. His body was completely
naked, except for a pair
00:21:39
of white socks, with
his limbs sprawled out. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Dominique is
continuing that theme of shame.
00:21:46
He wants his victims to
appear in these quite shameful positions. This is how he wants
them to be remembered.
00:21:56
BRYANNA FOX: To somewhat blaming
the victims for his own urges, whether it was the sexual
attraction he had to them
00:22:02
or the fact that he
killed them-- either way, he put it on the
victims and didn't take
00:22:06
any responsibility himself. [dark music] NARRATOR: 38-year-old Dominique
had now left victims' bodies
00:22:14
in four different
parishes of South Louisiana with minimal
evidence at any of the scenes.
00:22:22
Police were still
struggling to put together a coherent investigation. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Many
of Dominique's victims
00:22:28
were people who led quite
transient lifestyles, quite high risk lifestyles-- people who live off the
radar of society, people
00:22:39
who are essentially forgotten. [soft music] NARRATOR: Lieutenant Bobbie
O'Bryan with the Houma Police
00:22:47
Department co-founded
an initiative to help vulnerable local
men called The Bunkhouse.
00:22:54
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: We opened
up The Bunkhouse in 1998 as a shelter for
homeless individuals
00:23:00
within our community. NARRATOR: One of the
residents was Michael Barnett. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Michael
Barnett was on the streets
00:23:08
as a homeless teenager. He stayed with us probably about
two years in the early 2000s.
00:23:15
Through our process
of our program, Michael Barnett was
able to work himself to become
self-sufficient and then
00:23:20
eventually move on to his
own little place and stuff like that. NARRATOR: In October of 2004,
21-year-old Michael would
00:23:28
encounter Ronald Dominique. It was October
2004 that Michael Barnett was found deceased
in the east side of Houma.
00:24:19
GEOFFREY WANSELL:
For the first time in this long litany of killing,
he kills a white victim.
00:24:26
Nobody had come looking for him. He was simply more fodder
for Ronald Dominique.
00:24:36
NARRATOR: Michael
Barnett's body was found on the 24th
of October 2004, three weeks after he
was last seen alive.
00:24:47
Ronald Dominique wasn't an
obvious threat to his victims. He was overweight, often
walked with a cane,
00:24:54
and appeared unassuming. But he had now killed 15 men. [ominous music] BRYANNA FOX: In 2005, after
almost a decade of murders,
00:25:15
there was information being
shared across jurisdictions. And at that point, they
started noticing similarities
00:25:22
and patterns in the cases, and
they were able to communicate and share the information
that made them think
00:25:28
this is a serial
killer, not just a number of unexplained deaths. NARRATOR: That number
was still climbing.
00:25:36
By spring, Dominique
had taken 18 lives. JIM BERNAZZANI: April in 2005, I
was assigned to head up the FBI
00:25:45
field office in New Orleans,
Louisiana, which covers the whole state of Louisiana.
00:25:50
This killing spree
began in 1997, so that's eight
years right there, and Ronald Dominique was
not pinpointed as a suspect.
00:26:01
We had put together a task force
made up of Sheriff's officers, Louisiana State
Police, the Attorney
00:26:06
General's Office,
and the FBI, and we worked this case together. BRYANNA FOX: The task force
showed law enforcement was
00:26:14
finally all coming
together to form a more cohesive collaborative
team and put that evidence
00:26:19
towards finding one offender,
rather than working separately with only tidbits of the case.
00:26:26
NARRATOR: On the
16th of August 2005, the task force had another
victim on their hands.
00:26:33
The body of a Black
teenager named Wayne Smith was found in a
small bayou south of Houma.
00:26:40
The elusive killer
had now taken 20 lives and discarded the
bodies like trash. NARRATOR: When it was
found, Wayne's body
00:27:02
was so badly decomposed that
his ethnicity wasn't initially identifiable and his cause of
death could not be determined.
00:27:13
BRYANNA FOX: And in this
case, it was a 17-year-old boy who had a girlfriend,
who had a very
00:27:20
supportive and loving family. And at this point, it seemed
that this MO of killing men
00:27:26
that were on the fringes of
society now all of a sudden had changed, and the
attention that maybe had not
00:27:33
been paid to this case seemed
to be changing and going in the opposite
direction, with the task
00:27:38
force forming and the nature of
the victim that was now killed. But all of this got derailed
in early September of 2005.
00:27:47
[soft music] NARRATOR: Category five
Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana with devastating effect.
00:27:56
Wide scale flooding
ravaged the city of New Orleans and its
surrounding parishes,
00:28:02
and over 1 million
residents were evacuated. There were more than
1,800 fatalities.
00:28:10
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: The police
force was very stretched out thin during that
time, and really, you
00:28:15
couldn't focus on, say,
big investigations only because you're dealing
with the devastation
00:28:21
for which we have in the area. You will be on the curb. That shut down the
case for about six months
00:28:26
because all of us were in our
own particular environments trying to bring structure
back to the city--
00:28:35
and actually, to
the entire state. NARRATOR: Hurricane Katrina may
have stalled the investigation
00:28:42
but did little to
hinder the advance of 41-year-old Dominique,
who'd now killed 20.
00:28:50
[ominous music] BRYANNA FOX: Dominique had
gotten away with murder for almost a decade
at this point,
00:28:56
killing almost two
dozen men and never getting caught, arrested,
questioned, or seemingly
00:29:02
even on police radar. So by this time, he's
thinking he can do anything and get away with it.
00:29:08
NARRATOR: But Dominique's
luck was about to change. [dark music] GEOFFREY WANSELL:
In November 2005,
00:29:16
a young man called
Ricky Wallace tells his parole officer about
being tied up by a man
00:29:24
who is intent on killing him. BRYANNA FOX: Ricky Wallace
said that he was approached
00:29:29
by a white man who showed
him a photo of a woman and said that he would
pay him to sleep with her,
00:29:35
and he took him into his van. And at the point that he was
trying to get-- tied him up,
00:29:41
he refused. And at that point, Wallace
said, please take me back home. I don't want to do this.
00:29:49
And incredibly, the man actually
agreed and took him back home, and that's the only
reason why he survived.
00:29:57
NARRATOR: Ricky
Wallace would later reveal that he personally knew
one of the previous victims
00:30:02
of the Bayou Strangler and
was convinced that he'd encountered the same man. That man was, of
course, Ronald Dominique.
00:30:12
[ominous music] And the parole officer told
the task force what happened. JIM BERNAZZANI: Ricky Wallace
brought the Sheriff's deputies
00:30:21
to Ronald Dominique's trailer. When they got there,
they questioned him, they searched the camper, but
they did not find any evidence
00:30:31
that linked him to the crimes. At this point, they asked
him for a DNA sample, and even though he
denied any involvement,
00:30:38
he was willing to give
police a saliva sample. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There isn't
very much resistance to this
00:30:44
at all because he knows
that by refusing a sample, that's going to look
even more suspicious.
00:30:50
And there's also an
arrogance to him as well. So on many of his victims,
there was no DNA evidence
00:30:56
found whatsoever, so
I think he believed that he'd been so
careful that they just
00:31:01
wouldn't be able to link him. BRYANNA FOX: At this
time, there were actually multiple serial
killers operating in Louisiana.
00:31:09
And on top of the deaths
from Hurricane Katrina, forensic labs were
actually so backlogged
00:31:16
that there were delays in
forensic evidence testing. But because the microscope
is being focused more and more
00:31:24
on Ronald Dominique,
the police launch a surveillance operation. While we were putting
together the case,
00:31:31
plainclothes Sheriff's
deputies assumed positions to watch Dominique. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When the
police were surveilling him,
00:31:39
Dominique appeared to
stop his killing behavior. NARRATOR: Eventually, as the
backlog at the forensic lab
00:31:47
eased, Dominique's saliva
sample was processed. In November 2006, a
mitochondrial DNA match
00:31:56
was made with evidence found
on Oliver LeBanks in 1998, and another victim of
the Bayou Strangler.
00:32:04
Authorities believed that
they finally had the killer. Dominique was staying with
his sister in her trailer.
00:32:14
JIM BERNAZZANI: He moved
out and she left the area, and he went to The Bunkhouse.
00:32:20
NARRATOR: On the 29th
of November 2006, Ronald Dominique, still
under surveillance,
00:32:26
checked into The
Bunkhouse homeless shelter run by Bobbie O'Bryan. BOBBIE O'BRYAN:
Originally, I did not
00:32:33
know Ronald Dominique was a
suspect in reference to any of these potential
murders, and we
00:32:37
took him in just like any
other homeless male person. He was very soft spoken,
almost to a point
00:32:44
to where I had to lean in to
him a little bit to listen to what he was saying. We actually put him in what's
called a bunkroom, which
00:32:52
is a room with several beds in
it, which other male subjects would be in that room.
00:32:58
NARRATOR: The following morning,
the Sheriff's Department contacted Bobbie and
informed him of the growing
00:33:04
case against Dominique. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: The
process of our program that we have over here
is that the next morning
00:33:10
from the emergency bed,
you have to leave at 8:00. Well, the chief acts to see if
there was a way possible that I
00:33:16
could put Ronald Dominique
back into The Bunkhouse, that way they would have
a location that they know
00:33:22
that he would be at without
having to go find him each and every day. Originally, I told the chief
no because why would I put him
00:33:30
inside a closed
facility building where he has access
to other individuals that fit the profile
of male subjects
00:33:38
that he actually
would attack and kill? The chief convinced me
after a few minutes.
00:33:43
Then I went back and
I spoke to Dominique. He was sitting right on
the fire escape stairs
00:33:49
and told him that somebody
wants to sponsor him in reference to getting
into a private room, which
00:33:55
was room six. It was not known to me
at that particular time that Ronald Dominique actually
stayed in the same exact room
00:34:03
that Michael Barnett
lived here during the time that he stayed with us
for more than two years.
00:34:08
[ominous music] NARRATOR: Two days later on
the 1st of December 2006, investigators moved in.
00:34:20
I actually walked the two
detectives into The Bunkhouse towards his room, and
I knocked on room six.
00:34:30
Ronald Dominique
opened up the door, and then all he did
was put his head down, looking at the
ground, like he knew--
00:34:37
or like he was
waiting for something. [dark music] NARRATOR: Ronald Dominique
was arrested and charged
00:34:44
in connection with
two of the murders, including the killing
of Oliver LeBanks. Police were interrogating
him for his involvement in all
00:34:55
of the other crimes, and
he almost instantaneously confesses but turns
it around and starts
00:35:02
making excuses,
and in some ways, blaming the victims
for his behavior. [soft music]
00:35:09
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Dominique
confesses to 23 killings. One policeman commented,
he seemed to like killing.
00:35:19
There can be no doubt of that. Dominique was
obsessed with killing. Obsessed with power and control.
00:35:26
He was just 42 years
old at the time. NARRATOR: As police confirm the
identities of the 23 victims
00:35:34
in Dominique's
confession, they realized that his final victim was killed
just weeks before his arrest.
00:35:43
BRYANNA FOX: It took 10
months for the DNA testing from Dominique to actually
be linked to a victim.
00:35:51
The 10 month delay allowed
him an enormous amount of time to go on and commit
more offenses,
00:35:58
and that's exactly what he did. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
While he's under the police surveillance
operation, they
00:36:04
cannot make it absolutely 24/7. In October 2006,
Ronald Dominique picks up a man called
Christopher Satterfield,
00:36:16
who's 27 years old. NARRATOR: Dominique took
Christopher to a storage facility off Highway
69 in Iberville
00:36:25
Parish of South Louisiana. It was the same location
where he'd previously left the body of Michael Barnett.
00:36:34
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Dominique
hits him on the head. Strangles him. He was his 23rd and last victim.
00:36:42
[soft music] ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
It really does tell you about the arrogance. There may have been a
sense in which he thought,
00:36:48
it's only really
a matter of time before I get apprehended--
that he wants to kill,
00:36:53
and nothing, not even
a police investigation, gets in the way of that. NARRATOR: The arrogant
killer attempted
00:37:01
to hide behind emotion as
he confessed to police. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
He's trying to make
00:37:46
people feel sorry for him. So he's basically saying,
these guys had robbed me. They'd attacked me first.
00:37:54
I was simply defending myself. To think that each
one of these men have been killed
essentially in self defense,
00:38:01
it's absolute lunacy. NARRATOR: On the 23rd
of September 2008, Ronald Dominique appeared in
court, charged with the murders
00:38:13
in Terrebonne Parish. BRYANNA FOX: The public
had the first images of what Dominique looked like.
00:38:24
The fact that he was
labeled the Bayou Strangler and seemingly so
evil and heinous,
00:38:30
and yet looked like this very
trustworthy man that could potentially live next door,
I think threw a lot of people
00:38:37
off and really showed them
that a serial killer can look like anything, there's
not one profile,
00:38:43
and evil can come in
any different form. NARRATOR: Dominique had
seemingly overpowered
00:38:49
and killed many young men. The question was, how? MAR PAULSON: Oliver
was not a small person.
00:38:59
He carried himself
very well, he was tall, and it just didn't
make any sense to me
00:39:05
how he could be so easily taken
down by someone like the person that murdered him.
00:39:14
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Because of
the way his demeanor, the way he acted, the way he
spoke, walking with a cane,
00:39:19
he could barely move-- and to say to wrestle with
someone, that would have probably been the last thought
if you would have saw him
00:39:27
just walking down the streets. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Dominique had revealed
the final piece of the puzzle--
00:39:58
investigators now knew how this
seemingly weakened unassuming man had overpowered so many.
00:40:06
Under Louisiana State
law, the Bayou Strangler could face a death sentence
for his vicious crimes
00:40:13
if found guilty. BRYANNA FOX: Many
families of the victims joined together and
cohesively stated
00:40:21
they did not want the
death penalty applied in this case against Dominique. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
He's made a deal
00:40:28
with the district attorney. If he pleads guilty, he's going
to avoid the death penalty,
00:40:33
and he's going to accept eight
life sentences without parole-- an extraordinary deal you might
think for a man who insisted he
00:40:42
never wanted to go back to jail. NARRATOR: In accepting
the deal, Dominique pled guilty to eight
charges of murder
00:40:49
and received eight
consecutive life sentences in Angola, the
Louisiana State Penitentiary.
00:40:56
To date, he has not been
tried for his crimes in three other parishes
where victims were found.
00:41:03
I think Ronald
Dominique should have gotten the death penalty. He killed 23 people.
00:41:13
He is just a
complete sick monster crying that he was a victim. He doesn't need to
walk on the planet.
00:41:27
[soft music] These victims were not
seemingly taken seriously for such a long period of
time, and he killed them
00:41:38
and made it seem
like they deserved what they had happened to them. I get upset when these young
men are portrayed as the dregs
00:41:51
of society and the
transients, the drug addicts, the sex workers. They were just people.
00:42:00
They went to work, they did the
best that they could, and just did not deserve to die at
the hands of this, just,
00:42:11
gross human being. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He
demonstrates a level of callousness and
disregard for human life
00:42:21
without expressing
a word of remorse, without considering any of
his victims or their families.
00:42:27
The sheer number of
deaths, and the fact that Dominique went
unidentified for so long,
00:42:32
is genuinely terrifying. [dark music] NARRATOR: For nearly a decade,
the Bayou Strangler deceived,
00:42:42
bound, assaulted, and
murdered men as he drifted across South Louisiana. He chose victims on the fringes
of society, earned their trust,
00:42:54
then savagely snatched
their lives away, confirming Ronald Dominique
as one of the world's
00:43:00
most evil killers. [dark music] [audio logo]