Hell and Gone Murder Line: KK's Corner Part 1

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fourteen year old Nicole Guidry, there with her. Nicole sometimes babysat for Stacy's twin daughters, who were twenty three months old at the time. She was keeping Stacy company until the store closed. Then the plan was for Nicole to ride home with Stacy and spend the night with Stacy's children. Nicole was about to turn fifteen and about to start the ninth grade. Marty hadn't actually been scheduled to work that night, but one of his co workers named Miles Addison,

had called in sick, so Marty stepped in. Marty's father, Ellis Lebuff, later told a local news station that the night seemed completely normal. He said that he had called Kk's that night before Marty got off work to tell Marty that he had left to plate to barbecue out for him at home. Closing time was midnight. That time came and went, and Marty, Stacy, and Nicole never made it home. Around five am on July sixth, one of Marty and Stacy's coworkers showed up to open the store.

She immediately noticed that something was very wrong. The cash register was open, money was missing from the drawer, the alarm was off, and Marty and Stacy were nowhere to be found. The employee picked up the phone behind the counter, the only phone that was on a different line and was still working.

shot multiple times, execution style. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families,

and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five, that six seven eight seven, four, four, six, one, four or five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod. This is Helen Gone murder line. A triple homicide in this sleepy little part of southwest

Louisiana immediately became a huge story. Everyone in town seemed to have a connection with this case, either their regulars in the store, or they knew one or more than one.

It totaled less than one hundred dollars, but someone had gone into the manager's office in the back of the store and taken a lot more money, cash checks and money orders worth over ten thousand dollars. Someone also knew how to cut the phone lines, and they knew how to get into the back of the store and get to the surveillance equipment. There was a camera, but the killer or killers took the tape from the VCR of

the surveillance footage. Detectives said they believed that Marty, Nicole, and Stacy had been led into the cooler one at a time and then shot at close range. Marty had been shot three times, Stacy and Nicole had each been shot twice. All of them had been shot in the head. Stacy apparently also had a bullet graze to the side of her head. This led detectives to speculate early on there may have been more than one killer. Because Marty

was a big guy. They believed that he would have fought back and that it would have been hard to subdue three people a gunpoint. Whoever it was, they left behind virtually no physical evidence. The detective put in charge of the investigation was Detective Donald Deluche, who went by Lucky. He told the investigation Discovery TV show the killer in question that police knew the murder weapon had been a nine millimeter handgun, but that detectives were not able to

get usable fingerprints. Detective Deluge was the director of Calcashu's Violent Crimes Task Force BCTF, which a later lawsuit described as an elite task force. It was made up of law enforcement officers from the Calcashue Sheriff's office, but also Louisiana State Police officers and some officers from other departments. That meant that Detective Deluche ran all of the high profile investigations in that parish. Police started interviewing people in

the area and tracking down leeds. They teamed up with crime stoppers to offer rewards. Kal Kashu Perrish's reward was one hundred thousand dollars. Crime Stoppers put in an additional ten thousand dollars. The FBI also got involved in the investigation. Meanwhile, rumors were flying all over town about people who could have been involved, and yet at the same time, no one seemed to have seen what happened. Police did talk to a couple of people who said they had come

to kk's corner earlier that night. They saw Stacy, Marty, and Nicole. They said that everything seemed normal. One hour after closing, at around one am, the store alarm went off. The alarm company called the store and no one answered, so the alarm company called the store's owner. The store's owner apparently said forgetting to set the alarm, would be a little bit unusual, so they suggested that the alarm company called nine to one one to get them to

dispatch a unit to the store, just in case. The alarm company did contact the dispatcher. The dispatcher said they would send a unit to Kk's Corners, but that never happened. Everyone wondered how could three murders happen right in the middle of a small town and no one seemed to

know anything or see anything. For a while, it seemed true that, as Sheriff Wayne Mcalvin said, there were no witnesses, but it turned out there was someone who knew something, a woman who stopped by at around eleven forty five pm to get some gas. They talked to this witness, Virginia Johnson, about a week after the murders. She said that she got to Kk's just as Stacey was closing the door, but Stacy led her into the store so she could get her gas. Virginia came in and paid

ten dollars for the gas. She told police that at that time she saw Marty, Stacy, and Nicole, and all of them were alive. Then she saw two men who drove up in a black car. She told police. While she was inside paying for the gas, the first man came inside the gas station and headed.

she saw the two men in front of the beer cooler. Now, at this point something seemed to happen, something that spooked her, and it scared her enough to cause her to drive off without pumping the rest of her gas. After that, Virginia picked her boyfriend up from work, but later she drove by Kk's corner again. She said when she did, she saw the black car again and that the trunk was open this time, and she noticed there was a red pickup truck with a driver's side door open park

next to the black car. From the witness description of the man she bumped into, a police sketch artist created a composite drawing. She didn't really get a good look at the second man. The only thing she remembered when she first talked to police was that he had a Marlborough keychain hanging from a front pocket. On July sixteenth, the Task Force released the complete sketch. They said they were looking for the man in the drawing, who was seen in Kk's Corner with a second man at around

eleven to fifty pm on July fifth. At the time, police said the man they were looking for was around six feet tall and in his twenties or thirties. Detective Deluge said at a press conference police were investigating a possible drug connection and they simply said this man was wanted for questioning that he might have information. A lot of people started calling police and said they recognized the

man in the photo. They said that he was a dead ringer for twenty seven year old Richard mcalvin, the son of the Calcashu Parish Sheriff Wayne mccelvin. After the poset drawing was released, people in town were calling police and telling law enforcement that that drawing looked a lot like Richard mcalvin, the twenty seven year old son of the sheriff, Wayne mclvin. And this was not the first time that Richard Mcalvin's name had been mentioned by people

in town as potentially connected to a possible homicide. Richard Mcalvin has never been arrested or charged in connection with these murders. In fact, as we'll get into, according to local law enforcement, he has been cleared. I'm mentioning this because we're trying to understand the series of events that led to his name coming into the picture, and because many people, including members of Stacy Ruf's family, still believe Richard was somehow involved. We need to find out why.

Let's go back to nineteen ninety one. Back in nineteen ninety one, there was another infamous double homicide in the area, known locally as the Ellender murders. On Marty Grass February twelfth, nineteen ninety one, in soul For, Louisiana, also in Calcashue Parish, right down the road from kk's corner. The bodies of twenty seven year old Eric Ellender and his wife, twenty five year old Pam Ellender were found in their home. Pam was a stay at home mom. Eric was an

insurance adjuster. Eric worked at his father in law, Huey Littlden's business. The couple had been shot to death in their bed with a sowd off shotgun, one that police later said belonged to Eric. Their eighteen month old daughter was found in the home unharmed. Pam and Eric's Toyota four Runner had been stolen. Police found the stolen car the next day. Four young men, Chris Prudom, Robert Adkins, Philip Ladeux and Kurt Reese, had been seen in the

car riding around Baton Rouge. Chris Prudom later confessed that he had committed the murders alone. He was charged with the killings, but there was a strange series of events following this case. Seventeen days later, Chris took his own life by hanging himself in the shower stall of the Calcashue Parish Jay. Rumors spread that other people had been involved in the murders, though that was never proven. Pam's father, Huey Littlden, believed that Chris did not act alone. He

spent years with private investigators, conducting hundreds of interviews. Eventually he came to believe that Chris was a member of a group called Skater. Skat Er supposedly stood for Satan's kids, against the establishment. Huey Littelton also believed there had been a cover up. He believed that there was a party inside the house after the couple was murdered, and that Pam and Eric's dead bodies had been sexually molested. He believed there had been a videotape of the sexual assault

shown at that party. It's worth mentioning these murders happened right at the height of the Satanic Panic era.

Preschool trial in Los Angeles, California. Some of the stories that people told were pretty out there, but there were a lot of hard facts that Huey Littlden gathered that did seem to indicate that there was more than one person at least present on the day of these murders, and Huey Littleton got results.

charges were later dropped. One of the people who some people mentioned as being at the home was Richard Mcalvin, and Hughey Lyttleton believed that this lead wasn't pursued because Richard was the sh a son. This is something Sheriff Wayne Mcalvin always completely denied. In the end, Robert Adkins pled guilty to two counts of manslaughter.

again some people believed Richard was involved. Some of Stacy's family members believed that kk's Corner was not just a robbery gone wrong. They believed that Stacy was the original target. This was because of another mysterious death, one that happened just a few weeks before kk's Corner of Stacy's friend, Kevin Abel. Stacy and Kevin were friends. Her family says

they were dating at the time of his death. Now, officially, Kevin Abel's death was considered a suicide, but Stacy told people she thought that Kevin was murdered and that his murder was drug related. A few weeks before the kk's Corner murders, Kevin Abel was found in his home lying on the floor with a gunshot wounded the head. There was a suicide note found near his body, and there was a witness present, someone who apparently said they heard a gunshot and went into the room where Kevin had

been and found Kevin lying there. According to a police report, investigators stated Abel's hands tested positive for gunpowder residue, but some members of Stacy's family believed that the circumstances around the suicide were odd, including the fact that a TV was found on top of Kevin on his chest. Some of Stacy's family members said Stacy was scared in the weeks before the murder because she had been talking to police about drug dealing that was allegedly going on in

and around Kk's Corner. Her family also believes that some members of law enforcement may have been involved in some of that drug dealing, but the police report stated Kevin fell backward onto a TV stand That's how the TV

ended up on top of his chest. The task force, led by Detective Deluge, found that kevin Abel suicide was not connected in any way to the Kk's Corner murders, but Stacy's uncle, Robert T. Bob Rogers, said that Stacy had been talking to a deputy who was a friend of hers before the murders, talking about drug dealing that was allegedly going on in the store and about being afraid for her life. Robert wondered why that deputy did not come forward with that information immediately after the killings.

Detective Deluge told ID that he questioned that deputy friend of Stacy's, about why he hadn't come forward. He said the deputy told him there was nothing that he and Stacey had been discussing that he believed would have been relevant to the murders. The deputy also told Detective Deluge that he had no sexual involvement with Stacy and that Stacy did not work for him or for the Narcotic Division

as an informant. Detective deLuce said the deputy was polygraphed that he passed the law detector test, and because the deputy carried a nine millimeter handgun, the same caliber as the murder weapon, they did send the gun in for testing. They found that the shell casings did not match the shell casings at the scene at kk's corner. But Stacy's family members believed that Kevin was murdered and the police were somehow involved in the cover up, and that they

were also covering up something at Kk's corner. So I want to back up for a minute and say, for people looking at this from the outside, it may seem far fetched that someone could believe that anyone working in law enforcement could be intimately connected to crime or to drug activities, but there have been a lot of allegations over the years against law enforcement in this area and

criticisms of some of their practices. During the eighties and nineties, the police in Sulfur, right down the Itan Highway made headlines because they became the number one area in the United States for civil forfeitures. For anyone not familiar with civil forfeitures, what those laws allowed police to do was to confiscate and keep anything that was suspected of being

connected to a crime. They could keep cars or boats or cash they found during traffic stops, even if the people they stopped were not ultimately charged with some of those crimes. By the nineteen nineties, the New York Times reported that the police department down there had seized five

million dollars, mostly in cash, in these civil seizures. And in the book Murder in the Bayou, Ethan Brown talked about how in some areas of Louisiana, the confiscated property, including drugs, had a habit of sometimes disappearing from the evidence room. He said, quote local hustlers call this phenomenon dope on the table, dope on the streets, meaning drugs or sees form my tent proudly displayed for the press and then resold by the cops.

So in February of nineteen ninety eight, the Sheriff Wayne Mcalvin held a press conference, and during that press conference, he directly addressed people in the area who he believed were spreading rumors about his son, Richard.

press conference is weird. I get that the sheriff is concerned about his son, but he comes across as being much more concerned about finding people who were spreading rumors than he is about finding the actual killer. A few days later, an attorney named Hunter Lundy said the sheriff's statements were dangerous for free speech, that again the press conference had put the focus on Wayne mccealvin's son instead

of on the victims of the triple homicide. Cheryl Reeves, Stacy Reeves's mom, told the news station, quote Wayne mcalvin doesn't know pain and he will never know pain compared to this end quote.

and they were outraged by that. Detective Deluge said Richard voluntarily turned himself in, that he agreed to have blood taken, and he agreed to take a lie detector test, which he passed. Detectives also checked out Richard's alibi, Apparently he was camping out at Big Lake at a party and seen by several people, including his girlfriend, Amber Weatherford. Richard was cleared by police, but Stacy's family members continued to

believe the sheriff's department was covering something up. The district attorney, Rick Bryant, talked about the press conference. He said on the ID show, quote, if you want to believe that, you would have to believe that the entire sheriff's office is.

ready to branch out and try more unconventional methods. They hired a hypnotist, someone you had a national reputation, and, according to court documents, costs between one thy and twelve hundred dollars to hypnotize Virginia Johnson, the witness who had been at kk's Corner at eleven forty five, the one who contributed to the composite sketch. Under hypnosis, Virginia was apparently able to remember new details.

my opinion, there are immediately problems with this hypnotist. I get that the detectives were willing to try and do anything to get more details, but honestly, a defense attorney could have had a field day with this. We already know that witness IDs can be problematic. Now you have few details coming out months later under hypnosis. And again we don't know what happened between the original time the

witness talked with the detectives and later. We don't know if she talked to police or anyone else about their theories of the case, or if police talked to her about potential suspects. After the show aired, Laine Lebuff, Marty Labuff's brother, spoke out. He questioned why did it take so long to get that composite photo made public. The FBI agent Don Dixon said detectives had waited so that the TV show America's Most Wanted would have the maximum impact,

and it seemed to. After the America's Most Wanted episode aired, a woman named Lonnie Kemp, whose daughter was friends with Stacy, contacted the task Force. She said she knew about someone who was friends with Stacy, a white man who she thought lived in New Orleans, but who had been in the Lake Charles area about two weeks before the murders, and she believed that this man carried a white rabbit's

foot keychain. The man's name was Thomas Cisco. Thomas lived in Metarie in the New Orleans metropolitan area, about a three hour drive from Lake Charles. Thomas did have a criminal record, but for non violent offenses like drug charges and shoplifting, and Thomas Cisco did tell detectives that yes, he carried a wallet chain with a white rabbit's foot

on it. Almost a year after the murders, on May twelfth, nineteen ninety eight, the FBI interviewed Thomas Cisco for the first time, and he told a lot of different stories during those interviews, according to court documents.

were at Thomas's apartment complex. One woman said the last time she had seen Thomas was after a barbecue on Friday night, that they hadn't seen him again until Monday or Tuesday, so Thomas's alibi was starting to fall apart. The FBI interviewed Thomas Cisco again three months later, according to court documents, this time over the course of five and a half hours, he told four different stories. In one version, he went there with a guy he knew

named Robert Thigpen. Thomas said Robert was the shooter. He agreed to go back to Lake Charles to be interviewed by Deputy Lucky Deluge, who he knew personally. Deputy Deluche interviewed Thomas Cisco on August twenty sixth, nineteen ninety eight. Now Thomas and Lucky knew each other from before, and you can hear them talking about what they'd been doing in their lives, making small talk. Parts of this interview can be found on YouTube.

add up. The bus station that he said he and Robert were at together, for example, was not even open live nineteen ninety seven, according to court documents, and Thomas could not pick out Robert Thigpen's house even when detectives took him to the street where the house was located. Meanwhile, police figured out Robert Thigpenn did have a connection to one of the victims, but it wasn't Stacy, who a lot of people in town believe may have been the target.

rape that he had not committed. Quote, because he wanted that shit to be over end quote what is it on? On?

was none other than Richard mcgalvin. Thomas said that Richard was allegedly involved in drug related activities going on in the area around kk's corner. He said Richard had hired him to kill Stacy and that Marty and Nicole had basically been collateral damage. Thomas said that Richard, who he called that little sorry rascal, promised to pay him twenty thousand dollars to kill because she knew too much, meaning that she had information about Kevin Abel's death, which he

said was murder, not suicide. Thomas told detectives that Richard had been involved in that alleged murder as well, but Thomas said he only got ten thousand dollars from the alleged tit and never collected the other ten. Thomas said the Sheriff's department had covered up the killings, but by this time Thomas was totally unreliable because he was admittedly a liar, who had given thirty five different statements, all of which contradicted each other. Next week, we're going to

take a more detailed look at Thomas's confessions. We're also going to talk to Stacy Reeves's uncle and Marty's brother, Lane Leabuffe, who has been trying to get answers for almost twenty five years. We're also going to take another look at the civil lawsuits to see if we can find any answers there. We're also going to try to figure out what's the real story with Thomas Cisco. Are any of these confessions believable? Was he just a distant friend of Stacy's from high school, or, as he later

told pol, her best friend. How did he know details about the crime scene, about the phone lines being cut, in the back office being broken into? Was it just because he'd been in the store and watched America's Most Wanted or did he have more details than only the killer would have known? And if Thomas didn't act alone, as the district attorney and police believe, then who was that second man? Could the killer still be out there walking around and has he killed again?

and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonpod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.