THE BAYOU STRANGLER-Fred Rosen

in the cane fields of New Orleans suburbs. The victims, many of them trans and street hustlers, had been brutally raped and strangled, leaving Louisiana's gay community rattled. When no leads were found and the murders continued, detectives Denis Thornton and Don Bergeron came together as a task force partners and were in indefigatable in their decade long effort to

track down the killer. In two thousand and six, DNA evidence finally linked the murderers to a suspect, the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years working as a pizza delivery man and a meter reader. But who was he and what had led him to

commit such heinous crimes. With direct access to the investigation, Dominique's confession and all the sights where bodies were dumped, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of the murderer, providing horrifying and fascinating account of his troubled, disturbing, broke in life and his brutal crimes. The book we're featuring the season is The Bayou Strangler, Louisiana's Most Gruesome serial Killer,

with my special guest, journalist and author Fred Rosen. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much again for joining us on True Murder. Welcome Fred Rosen, Dan, it.

hear about it tonight. What brought you to this story, Fred, before we get started.

a gay bar called the Rawhide. You take us right away to this incredible incident and interaction and these people colliding. So tell us a little bit about how you open up and start this incredible story in Orleans Parish, October third, nineteen ninety eight.

violent with these individuals. And the the mo o that he uses, which is to say to a guy in a bar and you know, and in this case it's a gay bar, he'd say to the guy, well, you know, I'm interested in, you know, doing this sexual act or that sexual act, and then they would agree on a price. And then what happens is he the he and and and his victim left the bar and they start walking

through the through the French Quarter. Do they walk right by Jean Lafitte's black blacksmith shop Lafitte, of course, with the pirate atriot who helped defend America from the British during the War of eighteen twelve in eighteen fourteen, and he takes him to his car and they start doing

you know, sexual stuff. And then the next thing you know, Dominique gets really angry because the guy is trying to do anal sex with him, and for various reasons, he doesn't want this, and that's the point, at least that's what he will subsequently tell please that he just loses it. But the fact is he went, well, they're doing this in the car. Dominique has like a jack candle under the seat, so he's already ready to do something, and

that's exactly what he does. He takes the jackcandle, he hits the guy in the head, and he kills him. But the interesting part about this individual is that rather than dump the body someplace where people won't find it, which is what most murderers I think would do, he

decides he's going to do it in public. And he's got all kinds of reasons for doing this, and so he rides around the airport with this body in the back seat and what I did, Dan was I drove exactly the same route so I could describe it in a book for the reader. So you know, I want you know, you got to see this stuff, you know what I mean? And you know you got to breed

when you're writing. You know this, when you're writing true crime, you got to breathe the same air as the bad guy because then you get it, you get the feeling for it. And just doing that really gave me an appreciation for how this guy was able to do what he did for so many years.

it and there'd be no evidence, not dominate. He wanted the body to be found because of his inferiority complex, and he wanted the body to be found, and so he would search out a place where he could dump the body without anybody seeing him. But it was still in public, next to a throughway or a freeway or road, whatever it might be. And that's what he does. And in this particular case and in all the other cases of the other twenty two men that he kills, you.

in criminal master's degree in criminal justice. So you've got a guy who's got street smarts, academic smarts, and most importantly he has he's blind to what the the profession is of the victim. A victim is a victim. He doesn't care whether the victim is a male prostitute, a female prostitute, or any you know, or anything of that nature. And he doesn't care if the victim is gay or straight.

Oly knows is it's a victim. And quite frankly, that's pretty unique in my experience with the police departments that I've worked with, because in most cases when prostitutes are killed, the police departments don't knock themselves out because these aren't

tax paying citizens. Dan, you know what. But when you once in a while you get a cop like this one and he doesn't care, you know, only knows is that one of the ten commandments has been violated and he's going to go after the guy as long as it takes.

But the uniqueness of this story is that the first on the case is nothing like this. And that's what got me. In contrast to the fact that our media wouldn't cover it.

He's last seen on July thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven in another parish, Saint Charles Parish, and Dominique say is living nearby in boot Or, but I'm not sure the pronunciation. So tell us tell us how this is found. And we didn't mention exactly what police in the condition of the body. And again this is something that we'll talk

of mo and signature. What do they find in terms of David Mitchell and what did they find before that with Lee Banks in terms of what police find at the scene, Well, what.

also be bludgeoning. But the it is a very consistent m O. Now, the difficulty is what profilers whole linkage? How do you link Okay, how do you link a a murder in one parish? And of course this is in Louisiana has a unique system. It's a county. Parish is a county, So how do you link it from over here to over there? This is this is not an easy thing to do. And today we we have more sophisticated methods uh of geographic profile. But they didn't

employ that year. All they knew was the body is dumb, the dude is suffocated, and blah blah blah, and we'll see what we can find out. That's pretty much it. You know, it doesn't get any you know, it doesn't. Again, it's a question of making that linkage, and that's going to take quite some time.

bad guy. You gotta you know guy, you know, and you know, there's a few TV series that get it right that when you're going to do something of that nature, you've got to get a if you get the guy in custody, you've got to get yourself a search warrant. In the United States to do that sort of thing, it's not an easy thing to get, you know, And so the police have constitutional restrictions essentially until they can show that there's a reason to get the DNA from

whoever the bad guy might be. But again we go back to the same thing. It doesn't do any good to you know, you can get the DNA off the body, but if you have nothing to compare it to, what good does it do. You've got to have yourself a you know, you've got to have yourself a suspect, and that is not happening. There is no suspect. And Dominique is a really smart guy, very feral, as many serial killers or as you know and the listeners know. And he moves from living in the New Orleans area back

to go back home to home of Louisiana, which is South. Well, that complicates the matter because now he's going through another half a dozen powershes how he you know, how are you going to link something like that? Again, the only way you could link it would be you'd really have to have a geographic profiler in the case. And that is a that is a that is a very um uh oh courant a method of profiling. You know, people have got to forget what they see on a TV

show like Criminal Minds. That's a bunch of crap. You know what I mean, Dan, It's it's all crap. I mean the FBI's Behavioral Science uh division serial killers, So unlike the these dudes, Uh they they advise police officers by and large, and a lot of the time they're wrong. So essentially, when you're trying to track down a serial killer, as in this case, it's a it's it's the old fashioned method of shoe leather and and and investigation. It's that's the way it is.

they end up being cookie cutter. What does Dennis Thornton, this really really dedicated cop, what does he come up with in this early assessment of the ligatures on the wrists.

into an interrogation room. And the literature marks are are of course extremely important, and they they also determine that again, the the you know when you when you strangle somebody, it's pretty interesting. What happens is blood vessel, blood vessels burst in the eye. Got to say that slowly, it almost rhymes. And you might also have uh in this situation, the hyoid bone in the throat might be broken. So

Dennis is really paying attention to this stuff. I mean, he's really he's really I mentioned in the book, I said, he's really being my I mentioned my Croff Holmes, who is Sherlock Holmes's older brother. And he's really being a true detective. And I also want to just point out that this is not usual. We'd like to believe that every police, every detective, is capable of this. Uh. Huh,

that's not the case. If that was the case, we're not having this conversation because he would dominic would have been caught a lot earlier on some of the other parachutes. But it's because of Thornton's observations of the signature behavior, of the ligature marks of the way the individuals are murdered that he begins to understand not only you know, what the mo is of this guy and how he

does it. And I think, and I'll just tell you that one of the things that I had a learning curve on Dan on this one was, you know, these guys that Dominie picked on, many of them were in very good shape. I mean, these were, you know, strong individuals, but he was able to use He actually was a lot stronger physically than he looked. So once he got the guy under him, he could use his weight to keep the guy there, tie him up to whatever he

wanted to do with the guys. I mean, thank god, he didn't torture or anything like that, you know what I mean. I mean, that wasn't his thing. That wasn't his thing. He had some.

terms of age. And you also point out that these bodies are dumped close together, so Thornton really has his hands filled on trying to understand this mentality of this guy that seems to be taunting police, not only leaving the bodies to be discovered, but now going back to a familiar dumping site, and the FBI, like you say, comes in, but it's not really doing anything at that time. You talk about how though, after Lebanks that things accelerate

and he's not waiting as long. Fifteen days after Lebanks is Joseph Brown, who's sixteen years old, and one month later Williams, a young man named Williams. Now yes, at what point? And then you talk about Manuel Reid found twenty one years old, found May nineteen ninety nine. Then Angel Megia, June thirtieth, nineteen ninety nine. So what does Thornton think? How much are this? Is the state disturbed by this or are they What is the progress of

this investigation? Tell us a little bit about what the status is around this time with this many victims.

Most of these individuals are gay. And I might add I somebody pointed this out to me, a friend of mine, Jim Seely afterwards, that some of these individuals could also have been bisexual, you know, but the state is not. And and again I wouldn't be critical of the State of Louisiana on this one because they're not putting it together. If you have a you know, they're not putting it together. If you've got a body that's you know, dumped over here,

and then there's one over here. They don't, you know, it's not like it's not like, uh, you know, Morisco Pargeta is sitting there reading all of the uh, you know, all of the bulletins that are coming in from all over the place, you know what I mean. And and so Dennis is of course puzzled by this. And and we all know that serial killers have quote unquote cooling

off periods and where they don't do anything. In the Dominiqu's case, in some of those cooling off periods, he gets a little bit in trouble with the cops for some minor stuff, which again is fairly difficult for serial killers. But as far as the state putting it together, uh, the state is not at this point in time by the late nineties, they're not interested. They're really you know, they're not interested. Nobody's put it together yet.

but she was a serial killer. So anyway, he decides that he's going to take his uh. He's got himself a motor home, and he's got himself a uh he's got like a car that he uses to pick up the victims. And so what he does is he hitches he hitches one up to the other and goes south. And I believe that the reason he did that is because he was getting a little bit too hot for

him in New Orleans, no pun intended. And he goes back to Homer and he moves he well, he doesn't move in, but he's in the what he pulled the driveway or the back, you know, the driveway of his sister, who lives in a neighborhood called by you Blue, and individuals who live in the in these areas are known by that names. In other words, if you live in the by your Blue neighborhood, you're by your blue man.

If you live in a buy you blue you know red neighborhood, you're known as by you blue red, whatever it might be. So he moves, he moves in with the sister. And what's really interesting again about motivation, you know, which is what everybody wants to know about, is that he has faced Dominique has faced an incredible amount of discrimination.

I don't know if discrimination is the right word. Ridicule, ridicule for being dead and from his family, but he seems to have a pretty good relationship with a sister, and so that's why he goes there. But I think it's very the cultural differences are very important in this story because if this was a gay individual growing up in San Francisco, for example, or New York City, I don't think we'd have this conversation because the individual would

have been more accepted. But you're talking about a place where a lot of individuals are not many of them are not well educated. And Dan, if I may, I'd just like to tell you that what I did when I went to the town to start, you know, to Homa. Interrupt me at any point, because I just go on and on. But I went to Homa, Dan, And you know, I'm a huge fan of Westerns. So in Westerns, people will you know you wanted Marshall wants information, goes into

the saloon. So I went into a local bar Dan you know, And I asked, I asked around when I went there to investigate this case, and I went, everybody knows Bernald J. Dominic. No, they're no. I looked at him like they were crazy. How do you kill twenty three people, most of them in your parish. You never

heard of them? And of course only Fred Rosen. This was two thousand and nine when I was doing this, and Barack Obama had just been elected, and of course Louisiana was not a state that voted for the president. So of course after they these individuals said they'd never heard of him, and I knew they were lying. I said, gee, what do you think of Barack Obama? Gee? That was not the smartest thing to do. I was lucky I didn't get a fight.

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best sheets ever. When we last spoke, Fred, we talked about don Bergeron and you talked about her being a relative novice as a police officer, but someone wanted her. There was a task force formed with Dennis Thornton, and someone spoke very highly of Don Bergeron and saw something in there, and she was on the task force. Tell us about this task force that is formed, and tell us what happens in the career killing career of Ronald Dominique.

doesn't discriminate. She she understands people. In fact, one of the things that she told me was that she had she was on some some detail that dealt a lot with individuals who, according to Dawn, they were Occajuns, and that it was fairly common, according to Dawn, in the Cajun culture, where there was a certain amount of insects. So this is somebody who had experience with sexual crime. And you know what, if I was casting this, yeah,

she it beat Mariska Hargeta in a heartbeat. And so what happens is when they decided that you already have going. Dominique has laid off killings for a couple of years. The reason being he got in trouble. He insulted a woman in public, and he went after her and eventually he was tried and convicted and blah blah blah. Another the cops actually had the bad guy in custody, they

didn't know it well. Don Bergeron meanwhile, is paying attention to the bodies that are accumulating terror Bone Parish, which is where she is in Homer, And eventually the state police realize, uh, you know what, we got a lot of bodies here. So they formed a quote unquote Tanskport and the tankports includes detectives from the various parishes. The first person, of course they signed up or signed up

was it was Dennis Thornton. And when he meets Bergeron, there is a chemistry between them and they really complement each other quite well. And so at that point they get together. And and I should also mention that in the task Force there is a parole officer which becomes key to solving our case. And so and and and there's actually a parallel uh uh in this case to the Dahmer case that we'll talk about, and not involving

certainly not involving cannibalism, but something else. In any case, Bergeron and and Thornton become the two lead investigators on this thing.

Dominique again. What is the state of the bodies that's consistent with the other bodies, not that anybody's making a link between these are making all of the links with these people, all these victims. Tell us what those shared characteristics are? And when do they make this definitive link between all of these perishes that he has killed in.

Bergeron get together. They realize that all of these cases are tied together to buy the mo and they realized that the individual they're seeking is someplace within the Terrbone Parish. But the question becomes, Okay, how do we find this person? And I got to tell you something, it's so ironic. One of my best friends for forty years, and I had no idea he grew up in Homer, Louisiana and Terrbone Parish. It wasn't there any time. But you know when I spoke to him about it, his name is

Frank Amston. He's a film director. And that's why was so fascinating. Again that you know, this is, like I call it an out of the way place. And I also would add that this is about, oh maybe a year before the deep border horizon blows up. I'm going to go from Mexico with the big oil spill. Well that's literally right outside the door. So the detectives get together and now they start putting it, putting the pieces together and realize the individual that they're seeking is someplace

within her parish. Then the question becomes, how do we get to do.

they're on the scent, he goes the other way. And so they don't have the you know, it's it's not like they're going to stake it out, you know, and the guy's going to come and try to pick somebody up, and the cops are there and you know, and and and so forth, that doesn't happen. That's what they're hoping is going to happen. But that's not what happened. And

it's extremely frustrating to them. And the saying that came across to me was as Dawn explained, how they had to shadow the guy, they had to uh, you know, the stakouts and so forth. A lot of this is on their own time because for whatever reason, the state was not giving them the overtime, so they did it on their own time, which took away from the time they would spend with their families. And again, I think

that's that so indicative of their of their dedication. And again to to catching the killer without caring about the sexual aspect or the racial aspect didn't make any difference to these two jobs. They were. You know that this is a lone ranger in Tonto. Basically, you know, these these people don't care about race, they don't care about sex. All they care about is somebody is getting murdered and we're going to get him.

and he also is on the task force. So he's a probation officer of John Banning. So tell us a little bit about John Banning, what information they get from him, because he's important.

this dude back to his trailer. But once he gets back to the trailer and Dominique tries the whole deal with you know, he tries to get sexual with him, He tries to bind him, and so forth. That's what's interesting, which is the guy breaks out of the trailer and

he eventually tells his his parole officer about it. And so when Thornton and Bergeron ask the parole officer, hey, have any of your and and this guy was a you know, it was a pro league and he says, and so Thornton and Bergeron say to the parole officer, hey, any of your guys know anything about some weird guy? Blah blah blah. And the next thing you know, this paro league comes forward and tells the parole officer about Dominique.

And then and this part is actually at a movie, which is they they they he tells them where it is, and they go and they open up the mailbox and they say and they look at the mail and it says Ronald J. Dominique, but it being bought a boom, as Tony Soprano would say, They have their suspect. And then they conduct and then they run arent go ahead.

nuclear DNA. That's not enough. You also have to be able to get the guy some other forensic evidence and or having the individual in a room where you you know where where where you interrogate the individual. And so what they're what they're hoping to do is get some sort of match of nuclear DNA, but it really is not going to happen so easily.

a mitochondrial DNA match. So it's really a question of trying to set a trap for the guy, as they did with the Sugar Bowl motel, which didn't work, and he slips away from that, and they were really owed because while they're surveilling and he went out to kill somebody else. So now it's like, Okay, what do we do. We've got a minochondrial DNA match to one of the victims.

We don't have nuclear but do we let the guy keep doing what he's doing or do we take a shot interest And that that is the major decision that they have to make.

So it's a desperate scene that you described that these officers working for over eight years on this. Thornton over eight years on this and they know who it is and they know he has a record. He just hasn't been convicted. That people just didn't show up, so they know they have their guy. Oh yeah, tell us about you talk about another against verious film esque scene where Bergeron wants to make this arrest. She's been involved, she's in deep but she you talk about the sacrifice where

these people are working overtime on their own money. I mean, they're not being paid for overtime work, so they're volunteering that time. But she has promised to take her kid, her daughter to Walt Disney World, so she calls to see if it's okay, if she can go and fulfill the promise she made to her daughter. Like wow, So tell us what she does and how in the end, finally he is arrested.

to be made. Okay, he's already he's already killed two people, even though we had the drag man out, and so that's in addition to the other twenty one. Okay, what do we do? And they make a decision that they're going to arrest this guy and try to sweat him during the interrogation, and so she leaves Disney World early with her daughter. And again this points out the sacrifices

they're making in their personal life. And finally she comes back to Terreborne Parish and they find out that that Dominique has left his sisters and is living in some flop house someplace and for lack of a better term,

Downtown Hall. Mom and the cops are not the cops for the immediate have become aware that they're going after the Southern Louisiana serial killer, and they go to arrest them, and they arrest them and they take them downtown to be interrogated, and that is when they get they're able to get the evidence that they need in order to charge him successfully.

is to bit by bit make this case. So they do they'd single of two murders in particular, how do they approach this, as you write the masterful approach? What do they do to be able to gain the necessary information to at least say we've got two Well.

so fast because they want to get more information. Because despite the fact that they're going to put he talks about suicide and so forth, they're going to have a suicide watch in the individual. That's there's always a possibility the guy's going to do it. So the idea is essentially to act as therapists to lack of a better term, and allow him to tell them what his life is like, what his life is about. And as he does this,

he starts confessing to the first couple of murders. But because these are these police officers are really humanitarians, that's not enough. They're not interested in just solving so unquote or putting closure, that's the best word on a couple of murders. They want to put closure in all twenty three and so they'd have to come up with a way to do that, and as you point out, without

him lawyering up. And if anything, if there's any part of the story that's like a movie, this is the part because they're able to have a discussion with him that lasts really a couple of days in which he will wind up confessing to all twenty three murders. And then of course there needs to be a decision on the part of the prosecutor about what to prosecute and so forth and so on. But for them, and I will also say the prosecutor, the idea is to bring

closure to the families. And I just feel as wonderful is how they treated these family, these the families of the victims. Again, they didn't look at this in any sexual way, which is, you know, and considering the you know, the discussion we've had in this country regarding the rights of gays and transgender people and so forth. And this is in two thousand and six, so this is eleven years ago. These two police officers are way ahead of their time, as well as the prosecutor, so to him

extensively and really trying to be his best friend. They're able to draw him out.

take a break, Like you say, they can't continue. They're very very careful. They want to make sure this sticks. But the thing that they realize is that now is the time that they've gained his confidence and befriended him and listened to his stories, his excuses for why he is the way he is. And I'll let you tell our audience to some of the things he said about his background that apparently are the reason for his later behavior.

But they realize and then go into that room and say to him, listen, this really isn't about self defense, and they not so, not so or not, and not very much time they have him admitting what he was claiming about self defense as nonsense, don't they?

of the oil platforms and being well. He talks about that, and then he talks about at some point he's behind bars for something and for some minor crime and he gets raped and it screws up his anus, and so he is he's afraid of anybody having anal sex with him, an he any and he And what's wonderful is that these police officers do not show any surprise in, you know, in the details of this, because there's a lot of

details that make people very uncomfortable. Not these two cups. Now, uh, they're they're as sympathetic as as and and and I believe they were. They were really sympathetic. I don't think it was just a you know, an act. I think it's from these people are they're not sympathetic to the guy killing, but they're certainly sympathetic to an individual who claims he was in a rape. They're sympathetic to an individual who says he was denigrated growing up by everybody,

et cetera, et cetera. And so then the real question comes in, Okay, how do we clear old twenty three. And that's where it gets, you know, interesting, where they make a deal. They talk to the prosecutor. Now this is a state and where they execute people. There are thirty eight states in the United States where they still have the death penalty on books, and Louisiana is one of them, and they use it. But the cops, Dennis Don and the DA decide it's more important to bring

closure to these families. So they make a deal. If if Dominate takes them to all twenty three dump sites where the bodies were dumped, they will take the death penalty off the table and he'll just be sentenced just quote unquote to you know, a consecutive terms of life

in prison. And of course they confer with the families on this, and I think in the annals of American criminal justice, this might be one of the best deals any venue has ever made with a bad guy, let alone a serial killer, because they're able to clear all twenty three and bring closure to the families. And you know, there's also the possibility, as everybody knows, that an individual like this goes behind bars and then maybe at some point some guy wants to kill him or something like that,

you know what I mean. So in terms of quote unquote death, guess what to these people, that's not the most important thing or what. And again, what I love about this story is how the South always gets painted as a place where all they want to do is execute and the and the racist and so forth. This is this is about as far from that as you can get.

people that was supposed to be friends. I was accused by two people of breaking them and it wasn't true. So here's a guy who obviously has had a screwed up background, and these two cops are probably the only ones that ever showed him any sympathy or empathy in his life. And I believe that's the reason why he was willing to make the deal. But he did and give closure to those families.

Alonso Hogan, Chris Deville, Wayne Smith, and Nicholas Pelegrin. Like you say, thirty relatives of victims were in the courtroom, and it was so interesting. Of course, dramatic victim impact statements weren't there.

does break your heart. And I guess I guess as we're talking, then I you know, I would my question would my question would be why don't we have more? Uh, professionals in the in our criminal justice system that have the the kind of humanitarian instincts that these two detectives and the and the DA have, but particularly the detectives. You know, I always feel that it has more to do with how you raised And I didn't get into

it with Dennis and Gone. You know, I didn't. You know, I Gone told me you know some information about our background, But it's pretty obvious to me that they were raised the right way to look at people, at this people. Yet you have to say to yourself, my god, if there were more individuals like this in the system, it would be a lot easier to clear cases. Let alone when somebody, you know, somebody like a dominique is in custody earlier for something else which is not as serious,

maybe they would be more empathetic with him. We don't know if that could change what happened. We don't know, but we sure know that that in this case, were not for the fact that Dennis and Dawn were so open to talking with him and listening to him and feeling for him at the same time doing their job, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

or a prostitute, so you know. And the other thing is I think too that the courts had dealt with Dominique, and when a complaint in over a serious crime can't be found, sometimes a subpoena that person and force them to come to court, you know. So there was times when the court didn't assess this guy as dangerous whatsoever, even though it would seem in retrospect for some pretty

serious charges as well. We got to talk about maybe just police training is good, but it's just a matter of look at the budget that they couldn't get because they couldn't get national attention, because it's New Orleans, because again the victim, again, they couldn't get funding. Seemed to me incredibly that they couldn't get even with the incredible

events they had twenty four to seven surveillance. But like you point out, if it's if it's white victims or victims of a different occupation, you know, I think it's it's not just to be laid on a police force. I think because I think there's a lot of blame to go a law around basically with this, Even with this case with twenty three victims, it seems like everyone has an idea of the more innocent victim seems to be the better victim.

You know, they think that readers and listen are are going to discriminate in that respect, as if it makes any difference. And I've always felt that, I've always you know, that's not the case. In fact, I did the first book years ago on an African American serial killer. And you know so, I mean, I've been warned for years don't write about black bad guys, okay, And here's a situation where we've got a guy who's gay taking on gay individuals over the publisher that well, you know what,

and the media just went along with this. You know, there was a complicity. It's not a conspiracy. And I understand it, okay, I understand that. Look, when you start talking about a TV show, whatever TV show it might be, whether it's a it, whether it's you know, a magazine show or a you know, it's something, you know, a true crime reality show, you're selling. You know, you've got commercials you're selling, you know, breakfast, cereal, whatever. And people

don't want to hear these kinds of details. At least that's what the individuals can power think. I don't know. I don't know if that's the case or not. All I know is that's not the way I was raised, you know, And I felt that it was my responsibility to speak for the dead, and and it just is dawn and denist it. And you know, what happens in the future, Maybe things will change a little bit. Since you know, the social climate is certainly in a state of flux here. You know. I sometimes I feel like

the United States is way behind other places. However, that's that's the way it is. And I know I'm not supposed to get into politics.

a little bit more about her background. So tell us a little bit about this meeting, and just as you do in the book, tell us about this meeting between you and Don Bergeon.

I believe, on the books of all fifty states. But the thing is she she really said, fred I'll take I'll give you all the I'll give you all the paperwork. And then and then she takes me to the dumb sites. And then in between doing that, we stopped in at some focal place to have lunch, and we ran into about old It must have been about eight cops there from the parish. And we sit down, you know, and and uh and uh uh. They wanted to see what

my reaction was through a French pride alligator. Dan give me a break, you know, I mean, you know, so, you know, so they ordered it and I ate it, and of course I said, a taste like chicken. I probably should have said, being that I'm a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, I probably should have said, it's this kosher. But I didn't. And you know, she was just as friendly as could be. And that, by the way, that's the other thing, you know, I didn't hide what my

religion is. And you know, there's still a little thing called anti Semitism that exists in the United States, particularly in certain states and particularly among certain individuals. Nobody cared about that there. They didn't care about that. Nobody said anything to me. I never got any vibes. She didn't say anything to me. We just we just hit it off.

And I think it's because as we're talking, I think this case really really bothered her and it stayed with her and she wanted to get the truth out about what happened on how they brought this guy to ground. And so I feel like I was particularly lucky with my rapoor with her. And I'm not a judgmental person either, so you know, I think she probably picked up on that, and I think that as a result, we you know, we hit it off.

able to get a hold of you. I know you're very very active and out there, so tell us for people that've been living under a rock. How they might contact you, get a hold of you, find out about your work, tell us a little bit about that.

you know bookstores, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. I don't even know any other bookstores that are around beside Barnes and Nobles, and of course Amazon dot Com is available also in as as an e book, And all you gotta do is just you know, click on the you know the links, uh to order it and those you know of course they'll send it right to your house, hopefully with your sheets. But seriously, it's it's, it's it's. It's available in bookstores, and it's available at Amazon dot com.

It's available as an e book, and it's available as a hard copy. And one of the things I was particularly happy about, quite frankly, it was I felt it was reasonably priced I'm always big on that, Dan. I always work with the publisher when I have that opportunity to make sure it's reason to lead price because I know how hard our listeners work for their money all over the world, and I want to make sure that they get value for the dollar. That's very important to me.