All language subtitles for Murder.360.S01E10.The.Bayou.Strangler.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-FLUX

I can't explain to you
why a person

would do something like this.

Some glitch, some wire

that didn't hook up
to the right spot.

It seemed like every time
we turned around,

there was another body.

So in a 12 square mile,
you had nine victims.

The person was trying
to rub our face into it,

knowing that he's
gonna get away with it.

We were looking into one
of the most prolific

serial killers
in Louisiana history.

This is a serial killer
you've never heard of.

And she kept repeating,
he's going to kill me.

And he shoots my daughter.

That's about
the only time in my career

that I just wanted
to shoot him.

You can run.

You can't hide.

The thing about Louisiana
is that when you travel

from parish to parish
and town to town,

you get different culture.

And that is what's
so great about the state.

Kenner is its own
little tiny metropolis

on the outskirts
of New Orleans.

Kenner has its own
culture as well.

And I think that's fed by a
lot of the different

immigrants that
call Kenner home.

It's the area that's right
before you hit what's called

the Bonne Carre Spillway,
which is

this long stretch of roadway
that heads toward

Baton Rouge and areas west.

Crime in Kenner has
actually been down

since the early and mid-'90s.

You know, we average maybe four
a--four a year of homicides.

My participation
in these investigations

stemmed from three homicides
we had here

in the city of Kenner.

Back in the late '90s,
young males were

dumped in various parts of the
city of Kenner on the roadside.

A man named Manuel Reed
was found strangled.

He was thrown in a business
trash bin in Kenner,

but he had been strangled
and raped.

These three were unique
because the bodies

were disposed of
where they were gonna

be found the next morning.

So they were
positioned to be found.

It wasn't like somebody was
trying to hide these bodies.

You know, we had no idea that
we were dealing with,

you know, some--
something larger.

We worked it as trying
to find--identify the victim.

Where did he come from?

You know, what--
try to find out

how the perpetrator got here
in the city of Kenner

to discard a body.

The victims were
similar in age.

And then we started
asking around.

So with the local
parish sheriff's office,

had something similar
in St. Charles Parish.

So we started to
compare notes and talk.

By this time, I think
it was our three,

and the sheriff's office
had an additional three

all within, you know,
with a two-year frame

where bodies
were just discarded,

where someone would find them,

either near a dumpster
or near a roadway.

So that's kind of when we
started thinking that

it may be the same person.

We were trying to see
if it was a,

like a certain type
of individual that was preying

on these--these people.

The Christmas
decorations are up

in this
St. Charles Parish home,

but all over the living room
are pictures

of 19-year-old David Mitchell,
who was murdered.

It's been hell
every single day.

Every night, I can't sleep.

I toss and turn because
I can't--you know,

I don't have any closure.

I don't know what happened,

how it happened,
why it happened or anything.

It's been--it's been
living hell.

David was
a happy-go-lucky person.

He was always jolly.

He could never hurt
a flea or anything.

He had to be center stage,
you know?

He had to be the clown
and his dancing.

And he always made people
laugh and everything, you know?

Everything I did,
you know, I did for him.

I took him everywhere I went.

I bought him clothes.

I just did everything
I could because I--

Like, that was a part of me.

Some of these cases started
as missing person cases.

So Oliver LeBanks
was 27 years old.

He was doing the job
that a lot of people

do in New Orleans,
which is work

in the hospitality industry.

He worked at
a French Quarter restaurant.

He was a dishwasher there.

He was a family guy.

He had five daughters.

His body was found in Metairie,
and he had been strangled.

What is similar
about all these crimes?

Early on, we were able
to determine that some of them

were coming out of the city
of New Orleans,

last seen in the city, mostly
African Americans, you know,

really come from poor areas
of the city.

Some of the ones
here in Kenner,

they were just last seen in,
you know, neighboring parishes,

walking the streets
with no detail of, you know,

the exact time,
the exact, you know, date

that someone was last seen.

The characteristics
of every victim

were they would
walk the streets.

I mean, they were young,
same physical build,

no gunshot wounds.

They were all, you know,
strangled, some form.

A lot of them didn't have
broken bones or bruising

that you would see whenever
there's a struggle,

which was interesting
for investigators.

A lot of them didn't
have a lot of money.

Many of them were vulnerable.

They were all men.

And I think that was
one of the tells

that made them say,
hey, wait a second.

We need to connect
these cases.

We need to get a task force
together and figure out

what happened to these men.

The three victims that are
found in the city of Kenner,

the three victims found
in St. Charles Parish,

and three victims in Jefferson
Parish were relatively close.

So within a 12 square mile,
you had nine victims,

two of them being dumped within
several feet of each other,

months apart.

Serial killers are rare.

Well, I thought they were rare
until this period of time,

where apparently
there were enough

going around South Louisiana
to make everyone take note.

We really didn't
get a good grasp

on the kind of person
that was--that was doing this.

But the geographical
layout was,

it was someone that was gonna
be from within this area.

Was it someone that was
comfortable in his environment

that, you know,
didn't care to be caught?

Or was he just good enough
to get away with it?

All of a sudden,
Metro New Orleans

doesn't get any more
of these dumped bodies of--

of the same,
you know, type victim.

They all started coming down
several miles

in lower Louisiana in and
around the city of Houma.

Terrebonne Parish is one
of the most beautiful parts

of Southeast Louisiana,
small highways that are

lined by sugarcane fields.

It's just calming when
you're driving down there.

It's peaceful.

It's quiet.

I grew up in Houma, and it's
a very close-knit community.

The people there
have very big hearts.

But at the time, it seemed like
every time we turned around,

there was another body.

Some of these guys
had decomposed

to the point they couldn't have
these open casket funerals.

They really never got to
say goodbye to these people

in a proper way.

The rapes themselves,
that horrified the families,

it really just
tore them to their core.

Some of them didn't have
extensive families

to sound the alarm
about the cases and anything

falling through the cracks.

My impression was,
there were a lot

of crickets in the community.

People just didn't seem to
make much of an impact at all.

I mean, I'm still shocked, and
I'm still surprised by that.

So, you know, it was really
kind of an eye-opener for me.

And the fact that,
you know, a lot of people

weren't jumping on TV talking
about how horrified they were

that this had happened,
I think that was

shocking to me as well,

just because of the nature
of the crimes.

The victims were not all
but mostly homosexual.

It didn't have the grip
that killing

young, beautiful women does.

There were two
other serial killers

loose in South Louisiana...

Who are getting most
of the publicity.

They were Derrick Todd Lee
and Sean Gillis.

Both of them were attacking,
kidnapping, raping, and killing

young, attractive women.

I remember Datrell Woods
just because I was there.

I remember he was young.

The killer dumped him with his
bicycle in a sugarcane field

out behind a church.

And it was summer,
and it was hot.

And he'd been there.

And it wasn't
a pleasant scene.

So I remember going to the--

to his house and talking to his
parents after he was found.

And his--there were a lot of--

there was a lot of family
there and a lot of heartache.

It was very sparse,
and it was very spread out

over so many parishes.

It wasn't until the end there
that it seemed to escalate

and the bodies seemed
to start piling up.

Some were found with--
missing a shoe.

Some had no shoes.

And they were trying to say
that that was the trophy

that this killer was--
was keeping, was a shoe.

So we were working every
angle, trying to find out

if, in fact, you know,
we can prove that that was,

like, a trophy item
the person's taking.

The task force
was put together

when they realized that
we have these dead people

that all have
a common denominator in that

they have been tied up.

So from 1998 to 2005,
we had the nine here

in Metro New Orleans
and then the ones coming up

in the Lafourche
and Terrebonne.

So we probably had
somewhere around 19.

And it was full, you know,
8 1/2x11 printouts

of a mug shot
of a person's head.

And every time we would--
would find one,

another victim would go on.

That was the frustrating part
that was kind of early on.

Just the number of victims
is the hardest thing.

One of his dumping sites
in Lafourche Parish

was on the bank
of a drainage ditch

right next to the Lafourche
Parish Sheriff's Office.

Guess the psychology of it is,

the person was either trying
to rub our face into it

where he can actually kill
someone, discard them in a--

a place to be found,
knowing that

he's gonna get away with it.

Or was the person
comfortable enough

that he might be a law
enforcement officer,

that that would cause
no red flags,

him being in and around
some kind of police complex?

You know, we working,
you know, day and night

trying to develop a suspect,
only, you know,

to wake up the next morning to,
we have another victim.

It might be
a sugarcane field.

It might be under an overpass.

It might be in a ditch.

No defensive wounds or no--
no evidence of a big struggle.

Because some
of these people were

decent sized, you know, men.

Even though they were--
they were young at age,

they were, you know, pretty
much tall and big in stature,

some of them.

They weren't always
found right away because it

was really remote places.

In South Louisiana
in the summertime,

in the heat
and the daily rains,

it would degrade a body.

It would degrade
a dump site pretty quickly.

So there wasn't
always DNA to find.

We had the attorney
general's office,

the Louisiana State Police
Crime Lab,

probation and parole
working it.

You know, it was overwhelming
at the time.

You know, we would
get working, you know, leads

and people call in,
giving us some kind of tip.

Somebody gave a tip of,
you know, white guys,

you know, Black guys
of different ages.

Investigators were
making some progress

in trying to figure out what
happened to these people.

But at that point,
Hurricane Katrina hit.

And everything just
kind of went crazy.

With Katrina's worst on its
way, the last wave of people

fled New Orleans overnight,
thousands of them

looking for any place safe.

There was still a lot of
chaos, I guess, going around.

A lot of those people from
New Orleans evacuated to Houma.

We had, in just a few days,
what officials compared

to ten years' worth of growth
in Houma.

Our infrastructure
wasn't up to it.

We just had this inundation of
people coming from all over.

They're hoping, of course,
not to watch their homes

or their neighborhoods
blow away.

We are on the outer edge
of this storm,

and you can see what
we're dealing with here.

We kind of had to
slow down a little bit

because duties, you know,
was spread all over the place

at that time.

We weren't really impacted

in the way of storms
by Katrina.

But just a few weeks later,
Rita come through.

And it did--it did have
a lot of damage locally.

And so the communities were
trying to recover from that.

How many bodies went
unreported, went undiscovered?

How many more are
buried somewhere,

discarded, perhaps, in a more
organized way in the bayou?

We know that Katrina
was so destructive

that there were bodies
lying around the bayou.

It wouldn't have been uncommon
to come across a body

that was exposed
to the elements.

In the task force meetings,

we knew the perp
wasn't 100% successful

in one contact, one kill.

Whoever's doing this
is not 100% successful.

Every contact with a person
is gonna end up with a victim.

That's where the probation
and parole aspect came in.

So we had the probation
and parole agents,

when they met with people
they were supervising,

they would ask, is anything
out of the ordinary happening

in and around this area?

I think one of
the turning points

was when one of the victims
got away.

Ricky Wallace was
one of those victims.

He told a story
about a white guy

in a pickup truck that
approached him

while he was walking
down the street.

Said he had a family member
that was a victim of abuse.

Showed a picture of, you know,
some--we later learned that

it was a family member
of the perpetrator

he was using and lured him in
where she'll pay you for sex.

She's a domestic
violence victim.

She's afraid of men.

Actually got into the pickup
truck with the perpetrator,

actually let him bring him
to a trailer.

And once he got
into the trailer,

he said, well,
before the girl comes in,

being that she's afraid of men,
I have to tie you up.

And he said, there's
no way I'm gonna do that.

At that point,
Ricky was like,

I'm out of here, no, and ran.

And he got away.

Well, he was on parole.

So the next time he saw
his parole officer, he says,

look, the weirdest thing
just happened to me.

So we drove by, got a bunch
of license plate numbers

and ran some records,
everything from that address,

and came up with all
the residents there.

That led police eventually
to Ronald Dominique.

Ronald Dominique lived
on his sister's property

in a trailer in the front yard.

We started
some surveillance on him,

and it didn't amount to--
to anything.

He worked at a oilfield
supply company

doing some kind of
just manual labor,

and other than that,
didn't really have a life.

He didn't leave the house,
didn't go to no bars,

didn't frequent anywhere.

He would just sit at home.

So we still didn't
have anything

to tie him in to these bodies.

Found out basically
that he was a loner.

And going back, we found out
that, you know, in high school,

didn't really
have any friends.

He had a couple of jobs.

One was as a meter reader.

What did he do positive
in the community?

Well, he called bingo,
might have

helped some neighbors with
groceries and mow their lawn.

We knew he was
arrested previously,

accused of raping a male.

So he was high on our radar
with just that

but didn't have anything
to connect him,

you know, with the crimes
in itself.

And then we realized that
the sister previously

lived right here
in St. Charles Parish,

within a few hundred feet

of the St. Charles Parish
homicides.

You know, the three bodies,
you know,

where they were dumped
in St. Charles Parish.

So all the homicides
moved at the same time

this family moved,
and Dominique followed them

to live on his
sister's property

outside of the city of Houma.

When he realized that
the police were following him

and that his arrest
was probably imminent,

he left his sister's property,

and he moved
into the Bunkhouse,

which is a homeless shelter
there in downtown Houma.

We had the FBI there.

Their surveillance team
actually

was--was assigned to it.

So 24 hours a day,
we had someone,

you know, watching him
in his residence.

And it is--
yes, it's binoculars.

It's--you know, it may
be cars on the ground,

people walking, even aircraft
in the air if he was mobile.

At that point, when we
identified the killer,

there was not gonna be
any other victims.

So we just sent two people
to--to make contact with him.

You know,
one female investigator

from Lafourche Parish
and one from--

a male from Jefferson Parish.

And they interviewed him.

It was very civil.

It was almost like
he expected it

and he was waiting for them.

And he answered questions.

Wouldn't admit to anything

but did consent
to a buccal swab,

which is a swab of his saliva.

They took
that DNA sample from him

and found that it matched DNA
that was found

on Oliver LeBanks
and Manuel Reed.

That's when they had enough

to charge him
with those two murders.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Katie Moore, and welcome to
the WWL Louisiana news at 5:00.

It was a Friday,
and I remember

going into the newsroom
and them saying,

okay, this arrest
has been made.

So we went down to
the homeless shelter

to try and talk to people,

and they said that
they were stunned

because he was very quiet,
very nice.

They said, you know, he could
have lived there for 20 years

and nobody would have thought
he did anything wrong.

He was that unassuming.

At the Bunkhouse in Houma,
a handful of homeless men

spent three days with
42-year-old Ronald Dominique.

Until Wednesday, Dominique
lived in these trailers

that crime scene investigators

combed through
looking for evidence.

They were parked
behind his sister's

house on Bayou Blue Road.

Law enforcement agencies,

including the
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff,

aren't releasing
many details about the case,

but we do expect
to learn more next week,

including how they linked
Dominique to the murders.

Everyone kind of knows
everybody down there.

And so I think when
this case popped up,

everyone was shocked because
a lot of people knew him

and a lot of people
knew his family.

And I don't think
anyone ever would have expected

that he could be responsible
for something so heinous.

A multi-agency task force
announced the arrest

of 42-year-old
Ronald Dominique last night

in connection with two murders
in the late '90s in Kenner.

Investigators also believe he is the suspect

in almost 20 other murders
over the past 11 years.

Two of the victims lived
in Jefferson Parish.

Two more are from
Lafourche Parish.

Four resided
in St. Charles Parish.

And 11 of the victims
lived in Terrebonne Parish.

The law enforcement
task force

would only say that
forensic evidence

links Dominique
to the two murders

that he's currently
charged with.

Both of the Kenner victims

and about half of the others
were found strangled,

partially dressed,
and missing shoes.

The local people down
in Terrebonne Parish

put out a word
to the public defender board

that they needed
a lawyer to come down

and represent him
because he was

charged with a capital case.

And that's what we did.

Of course, one of
the first things we did

was go and talk to Dominique.

At that time,
I had handled dozens

and dozens of capital cases
but never a serial killer.

I went in there to see him,
and out of all my clients,

he was probably
the least intrusive.

I mean, he was--he was
short and fat or obese.

He was quiet.

He walked with a limp and
with cane and really reserved.

His demeanor was rather
a passive demeanor.

You know, there wasn't

anything threatening
about him.

If you look at a lot
of serial killers

through the years,
they don't stand out.

They fit in well.

This guy fit in well
at what he did.

I mean, he didn't do anything.

He didn't do anything
to call attention to himself.

He never got
in many arguments,

you know, with the sister,

with anybody else
in the community.

He kind of just stayed alone.

Let's put it this way,
he wasn't scary,

wouldn't scare anyone,
and kind of taken aback

by how someone that
looked like he did

would be capable of committing
all these offenses

that he was accused of.

He had a bad heart,
fat and flabby.

There was nothing
physically about him

that would make you think
that this person was

capable of killing anyone
at all, with his hands.

He looked like just some
little guy that really

had nothing going for him.

And then as we started
to hear more and more details

out of that
serial killer task force,

we started to realize
that this was

much bigger than just two men.

When they had Ronald
Dominique in interrogation,

then it was like
the floodgates opened.

He told police that
he had killed Oliver LeBanks.

They went
to a remote area, had sex,

but the victim was apparently
pretty rough on Ronald,

and Ronald struck him
in the head with a tire iron.

Once he knocked him out,

realized that he doesn't have
to deal with this pressure

or problem anymore.

And then he strangled him.

And then we learned that
apparently, Ronald Dominique

had confessed when
he went in to police

and just frankly told them

that, you know, he had killed

up to 23 people.

And I just--my mind was blown.

Most people who had come in
contact with Ronald Dominique

were shocked to find out
that he was accused

of killing more than 20 people.

I mean, they were stunned.

This man that people
now were hearing

may have been one
of Louisiana's

most prolific serial killers.

So police say that Ronald
Dominique gave them details

about how he committed them.

And what Dominique told police
was that he went out

late at night,
prowling in search of men

who appeared to be
in need of money.

He would pick people up
on Bourbon Street

near the gay bar.

He would see them riding
their bicycle down the road.

He seemed to like Black men,
slight Black men--

not big, brawny guys,
but lean, thin.

Of his 23 victims,
18 of them were Black.

He would cruise, go to areas
where street people,

hustlers would frequent,
stop, talk to them,

make a determination.

If they said yes,
he'd say, come on, get in.

He would drive them
to his trailer,

and he would say, well, look,
I don't want you to hurt me.

So in order to not be hurt,
I want to tie you up

before we have sex.

If he thought they were gay,

he would proposition them
for sex with himself.

If he thought they
were heterosexual,

he had a picture
of an attractive woman,

who he'd say was
his girlfriend or his wife,

and he'd offered them money
to come back

and have sex with this woman.

And he would use
his niece's picture

because she was
an attractive young lady

to entice men to come
to his place.

That was the photograph
he used to say, look, my wife

wants to have sex with you.

Here's what she looks like.

If they agreed
to be tied up,

he'd rape them
and strangle them.

You have to have
a certain personality

to be able to strike up
a conversation with someone,

make them feel
comfortable enough to where

they're willing to go
to another location with you

and spend time with you.

And in this case,
a lot of times

he was convincing them to go
to an offsite location for sex.

The early victims, he would
meet in an automobile.

The crime was committed
in an automobile.

He would strangle him
with the seat belt.

In Southern Louisiana,
a shocking confession

from an alleged serial killer.

Ronald Dominique was charged
with 11 counts of murder.

Police say
he admitted to killing

23 men over eight years.

The victims, which ranged
in age from 16 to 46,

had all been strangled
or suffocated.

When we go investigate people,
we do.

We go back and try to find out
people that knew him

when he was growing up,
teachers, people he worked for,

whoever he may have
come in contact with.

He grew up
in Lafourche Parish.

He went
to Thibodaux High School.

He was not a popular guy.

My understanding
is that he didn't--

he didn't come to terms
with his homosexuality

until late in his teens.

I'm told that he was bullied.

So high school
was rough for him.

And we found with Dominique,
really didn't have

any long-lasting friends,

teachers that really
took to him.

Lower income, lived in
a trailer in Bayou Blue.

Just regular,
everyday, working folk.

I don't think Ronald
Dominique is a high IQ person.

I really don't.

I think he's a simple person
that had a simple plan.

How he came up with
the actual killing of someone,

I don't think it was
the killing was the motive.

I think it was a sex act
that was his motive.

He always lived with either
his mom or his older sister.

Just didn't fit
my preconceived idea

of what a serial killer
would be like.

I mean, he was the most
unthreatening individual,

like, I could think of.

There's two forms of pleasure

involved in these homicides,

perverse pleasures.

One is, of course,
the sexual part.

The other part was the--
the homicide part.

He felt the only way
he could become intimate

with someone else
was by tying them up

and then forcing himself
on them, right?

Again, power. Again, control.

But such low self-esteem

to think that the only way
he could be close to someone

was through this mechanism.

He just kept talking
and talking and talking.

And he admitted,
and he provided

details of all these murders.

I thought it was
really weird, though,

because our reporters
had put together

from different sources,
and they had gotten,

like, a list of men that
had gone missing

and then turned up dead,
and we'd put together,

before he was arrested,
the list of possible

serial killer victims.

And we didn't have
all 23, of course,

because we didn't take
into account the ones,

like, in the Kenner area.

We were more looking
at our jurisdiction.

And he admitted
to every one on our list,

but he didn't admit to any
that weren't on our list.

And I just find it
highly suspect

that we got them all right.

I always wondered if
maybe there were more

or if he just decided
to confess to everything.

I don't know.

I've always wondered
if there were others.

One of the things
that surprised me was the fact

that he was able to not only
strangle these people,

with the strength that took,
but also to pick up

the bodies,
put them in his vehicle,

and then take them someplace
and dispose of them.

I was trying to figure out
how he could do that because

he didn't strike me as being
that strong of an individual,

even though the victims
weren't that big,

they probably weighed 145
pounds, somewhere around there.

He didn't look like someone
that you would consider

a serial killer or someone
capable of killing

23, you know, grown men.

In everyday life,
Ronald Dominique was powerless.

But when he was hunting and
killing, he was very powerful.

It dawned upon me
that he probably had

a big adrenaline rush
when he was doing this.

And that may have had
some play in why he did it

and why he was able to--
to move bodies around

and that sort of thing.

Six weeks before
he was arrested,

he killed Sutterfield,
according to the police.

He was able to subdue, tie up,
and rape a full-grown man,

and then drag his body
to where he dumped it.

Then when he was arrested,

he has a cane
and he can't even walk upright.

He's having to be helped
into the car by two officers.

I just always felt
like that was a show.

I just couldn't see
how physically,

how he could have declined
so much.

They said he had
a heart attack,

but I still felt like
a lot of that was for show.

He didn't amount to
much of anything other than

he worked in, you know,
some kind of labor intensive,

menial job
working in a supply business.

He felt that he was inferior.

Couldn't get a girlfriend
or boyfriend.

He was kind of, you know,
little overweight.

Just really aimless life,
no friends, no one

to be in love with
or to love him.

Even when he came out
of the closet

and was part of the gay scene,

he really wasn't accepted
there, either.

Favorite thing was being
a female impersonator.

He liked to dress up like
Patti LaBelle and imitate her,

but he wasn't very good at it.

This female impersonation,
this act,

where he was inviting
others to laugh at him,

he's in control of that.

Now, whether this predated
his--his sensibilities

when later on went on
to kill, we don't know,

but this is a marker.

Control is a marker.

And we know that
with the serial rapes,

rape has nothing to do
with love or affection

or intimacy or sex.

It's a control issue.

And yeah, the trappings of it
were there in the act.

So in the early to mid-'90s,
Ronald Dominique had actually

been arrested for rapes.

The story goes that
it was at his sister's house

and that the victim
jumped out the window

and ran away yelling but that
they never followed through

with the case
because they could

never locate the victim again.

So nothing ever came of that.

The second time he was
arrested for a rape,

which was in 1996,
he was convicted

and ended up serving time
in prison.

And while he was in jail,
he was brutalized.

Police believe that that may
have been Ronald Dominique's

trigger, that once he had
to do the time in jail,

he decided he wasn't gonna
spend time in jail anymore.

So he would kill his victims
so that they couldn't

tell police what he had done.

Something happened
to him that,

whether or not
it was a sexual fantasy

or it was something else
that got him to come up

with this plan and scheme
that if he wanted to have sex

with a male, I guess
he was intimidated

and couldn't do it on his own.

He had to kill him first.

It escalated
to where he really enjoyed

the entire process,
from the rape to the murder.

It just got to where the
interval in between murders

became smaller and smaller,
like he needed it more often.

I don't think that we knew
until the following week

that the number of victims
would climb that high.

You know, when we went
to the news conference

that was law enforcement
agencies

talking about how deep and
wide their investigation went,

I think all of us
were stunned.

And then to hear that
law enforcement

hadn't even connected
all 23 of those killings.

Ronald Dominique did.

When you hear that
it's over 20 people

that this man is accused of
killing over that many years,

it's stunning that
they weren't able

to catch up with him sooner,

especially given
the similarities in the cases.

But nobody knows
about Ronald Dominique

because he killed people
who were marginalized.

He killed people who lived
a high-risk lifestyle

and didn't necessarily
garner a lot of sympathy

from people outside
their family.

Each of them had
a family that loved them

and cared about them.

These were people
that were hurting.

I mean, their loved ones,
in spite of the fact

that their loved ones
might have been

homeless and street hustlers
or whatever,

they still loved them.

And they were angry
at what happened.

They had
22 unsolved murders.

You know, I mean,
I don't know how--

how the guy did that for
so long to get away with that.

I would want him dead.

I would want him dead.

I mean, serving time
in penitentiary, that--

that don't help.

I mean, he took a--
he took my child's life.

We discussed the ins
and outs of the case

and came to the realization

that trying
eight capital cases

in that parish alone
would be burdensome,

not only on
the parish's finances,

but also on the families
of the victims.

It would be decades
before this would be over.

The families would have
to go through the trial

over and over.

They would have to hear
all these horrendous details

of what happened
to their loved ones.

And they were not about
hearing those gory details.

In the end,
Ronald Dominique was

offered a plea deal
by prosecutors,

and he ended up taking it.

He pleaded guilty
to avoid the death penalty.

The prosecutor said
at the time that he felt like,

and some of the families felt
like, that it would be more

of a punishment
for Dominique to be jailed

for the rest of his life than
it would be for him

to get the death penalty
because he hated jail so much

that they saw this as
a bigger punishment for him

than taking his life.

I mean, eight consecutive
life sentences, that's--

yeah, that's one
after the other.

That's what you give a cat.

There's no need
to waste the resources,

you know, to prosecute him
anywhere else.

You know, we just have
open warrants for him

if he ever does,
you know, try to get out.

Each one of these victims
had a life to live.

And that got cut short
because of Ronald Dominique.

They had the unlucky fortune
or misfortune of, you know,

coming into his crosshairs.

I think the most
important thing that needs

to come out of it is,
how did this person

fall through the cracks?

What did we miss
in order to stop this person

from taking so many lives?

In this case,
it's just horribly sad.

I mean, he was
preying on people

that were some of our society's
most vulnerable.

Even though Ronald Dominique
is one of the most prolific

serial killers
in Louisiana history,

many people have never
even heard of him.

This is the serial killer
you've never heard of.

He was prolific.

He got away with it
for ten years.

Nobody knows who he is.

These were
somebody's children.

And they were raped
and dumped in mini storages

and sugarcane fields
and under overpasses.

They deserved better.