Transcript of Chasing The Devil - Franklin, Louisiana

Yay!

Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigalo, and I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Whitman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us this week on another absolutely wild, crazy edition of "Small Town Murder."

So check that out. Patreon.com/crimeinsports. And in addition to all that, you also get everything we put out all ad-free with your Patreon as well. I mean, that's everything too. "Crime in Sports," your stupid opinion, "Small Town Murder," and you get a shout-out at the end of the show.

You bet.

So it's all there. That said, disclaimer time, everybody.

Here we go.

This is a comedy show. We're comedians. We're going to make jokes, and horrible murder is going to occur because that's the show.

Oh, sure.

So you go, well, how does that happen? Why do you do that? How does that mix? Very easily, actually. There's a real easy way to do that because there's plenty to make fun of. You can make fun of a small town because we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun. Who doesn't have a sense of humor about yourself? Lighten up.

Right.

You know what I mean? Or let's say some police force screws up and lets a murderer go free to murder more people. I think we can mock them a little bit. That's pretty bad stuff. And we also make fun of murderers.

Why not?

Because we're comedians. What else can we do? We can't do anything to them other than make fun of them. And I feel like while you're sitting in a jail cell, to have two guys like us mocking you can't help your psyche at all. So that's something.

Probably hurts a little.

But what we don't do, what we never do, is we never make fun of the victims.

No.

Or the victims' families.

Why?

Because we're assholes.

But.

But we're not scumbags. See, that's how it works. It's real simple. It's a real easy way to do that. And if you think that sounds good to you, man, are you in for a wild ride today on a crazy show. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together.

Wow.

I don't know what to tell you. Maybe we're not for you, but I'd give it a shot just in case. It may not be exactly what you think it is. So that said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back.

Oh, boy.

What do you say here? Clear the lungs, as I've been doing for two weeks since I've been sick. Clear the lungs here. What do you say? Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody. What do you say?

Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

Where are we going?

Louisiana, everybody.

Yeah.

We are going down to Franklin, Louisiana. That's Franklin with an I, not an Y.

Is it near Baton Rouge?

It's southern Louisiana. We'll get to where it is here, but it's the actual little tiny nook of a place kind of inside Franklin that this takes place is Verdunville, but it doesn't have its own stats or anything because it's kind of the addresses are all technically Franklin. So we just leave it as Franklin. This is in southern Louisiana. It's about an hour 45 to New Orleans. So then if you go kind of up, it's about two hours to Baton Rouge, something like that. About four hours to Houston in the other direction.

Holy.

Yeah. And an hour 45 to, what was it, La Place? Is that how you said it? Or La Place?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. La Place.

Whatever it was. Episode 691, a big ball of death. So that's our last Louisiana one. This is in St. Mary Parish. Remember, there's parishes, not counties down there. Area code 337. And a little bit of history. Franklin was named.

Are wards different from parishes?

No idea. Yeah. Parishes are counties. Wards are sections of cities, I believe.

Okay.

If I'm not.

Sections of the county?

Sections of something, yeah. But the parish is the county, and then the wards are within that. Because New Orleans has a bunch of different wards. So I think that's sections of a city.

Right.

I would think. I'm not positive that. Just.

I just listen to a lot of Master P.

Yeah.

It's all they screamed about. It's the ninth ward.

It was wards, yeah.

Yeah.

History here. Franklin was named for what, Jimmy?

Oil.

Benjamin Franklin. Franklin? That's right. Founded in 1808 as Carlin's Settlement.

Oh.

A French-born pioneer named Joseph Carlin and his family were here. And it became the parish seat. It was incorporated in 1820. Basically, this was sugarcane plantations down here. So they still have plantation houses, which is creepy. I mean, pretty, but also like, ugh.

They are really beautiful.

They're nice, but I mean, not, I don't know, just creeps me out.

Historically, they're gross.

Creeps me out a bit.

Kind of stained, yeah.

Yeah. I guess steam boating became a thing. So this became an interior sugar port. And these were some of the wealthiest agriculture people in the south here from sugar, by the way.

Wow.

I mean, it was huge. They had grand, big mansions they built in Franklin. It's wild here.

Is it on the coast? Is that what this is?

It goes inland, the way the water goes there. There's no real hard coast. It's all kind of pieces, so.

It's all swampy, murky.

It's an interior port, they call it. So it's not on the whatever, but you can get to the ocean from there. During the Civil War, the Battle of Irish Bend, which is also known as Nursen's Woods, was fought near Franklin in 1863.

Sick.

Later, the railroad came in, and it became a sawmill town.

Oh.

Turns out sugar's not as profitable when you have to pay people to pick it or cut it.

Are there a lot of.

It's weird.

Are there a lot of trees down here?

I don't know. There's trees somewhere, and they're going to fucking saw them up over here either way. I mean, there's a lot of trees in Mississippian shit too, I assume. Northern Louisiana is probably the same.

There are woods.

Probably plenty of wood. I mean, not right by the coast, but.

Right. That's what I mean.

Yeah. You can trunk them in a little bit probably. Reviews of this town has 3.1 stars on Niche, by the way. That's.

That's not positive.

That is not a good, that's Chinese food you'd avoid.

Right.

Here's five stars. Franklin is a very smell family. Smell family.

Smell family.

Not small family. Smell family. It's a very smell family-oriented town, everybody. Everyone really knows everyone in this town so much that if visitors come over here, we know who they are. That's disturbing. Yeah. I don't like that.

Because you can't smell them.

You can't smell them. He don't smell like a local. I can promise you, if you don't know them, then my mom and uncle or cousin knows the individual. So if you don't know them, someone in your family does, basically.

Oh, okay.

Not the visitors, someone else. One of the main drawbacks of living in this town is there's not a lot of things for children to do. Every single one of these towns says that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Stop. That's why they run away screaming as soon as they can leave. So put some shit in for kids.

It's not fun for the youth.

No. Three stars. Franklin is a place that is very homey. It's a city where everyone knows everyone. Franklin isn't the best place for a young teen like myself. So we got a teen here. I am young and full of adventure. I love that line. I am young and full of adventure, but Franklin only offers grocery stores and fast food places.

Sorry, Huck Finn.

Sorry, yeah. Get your fucking whitewash out for that fence and go help fucking, go help your boy there.

Okay.

We don't even have places for little kids to enjoy. I would put some enjoyment in Franklin because it is dry. Dry. No fun to be had. Three stars, finally. There is little opportunity here. There are a few stores. If you do not know someone in the system in Franklin, chances are you will not be able to find a gainful job. Many people leave here to branch out for a better life.

In the system.

In the system. Yeah. Basically, we get a lot of this with these small towns too. It's like, well, if you're not cousins with the sheriff, you don't get no job and this and that. But all these little towns, they're all little boss-hog thieftoms, all these weird towns.

The waterworks or the fucking sewer or.

Yeah. Everybody knows everybody. Now, people in this town, 6,811. So not very many. That's.

Small.

The whole area there. Way more women than men. 52.4% women, which is odd for a town with over 1,000 people.

Anything, yeah.

Yeah. 38 is the median age, which is the same in the rest of the country. The marriage rate is super low here. Usually, it's 50-50. Here, it's 34%. Single with children, 35%, which is normally about 10%. Race in this town, 35.4% white, 56.8% black, 0.7% Asian, and 5.1% Hispanic. Religion is thriving here. 55.2% of the people here are religious.

Oh, yeah.

Southern Louisiana, it's Catholic is actually the highest.

Wow.

Yeah. 33% of the people here are Catholic. Whereas if you go outside of southern Louisiana, it immediately drops to 0.3% everywhere down there. So it's interesting.

Everything else is voodoo.

Yeah. Everything else is, yeah. And here there is, or Baptist, which, same thing, whatever. Same shit.

Or Baptist.

I mean, what's the difference?

Spiders and snakes. Same shit.

It's all the same shit. Exactly. What's the difference? 0.0% Jewish here. 0.0%, a lot of things. Median household income here, $33,390 a year.

Oh, boy.

Household.

Whole thing.

That's something. That is, wow. That's disturbing almost. How the fuck do you even, how do you do that?

I guess that's a lot of debt.

I don't know. Debt, that's just you're not making any money. I don't think there's any money to be made.

That's what I mean. You got to be.

You got to be in debt to live.

Yeah.

Well, the cost of living, actually, not that bad here. Cost of living, 100 is regular average. Here, it's 78, which you go still.

It's got to be fucking 45.

The median home cost is what makes this possible. Median home cost here is like from the '70s. This is the early '80s. $90,100 is the median home cost. So if you're making more than a third of your home cost, most people don't make more than a third of their home cost. So that's actually not bad in that way.

What does that entail?

But I don't know how you eat.

90 grand.

You know what I mean? I don't know how you eat. I don't know how you pay for insurance in a hurricane area. I don't know how you do all that kind of thing. Well, I've looked here, and I found so many houses under $100,000, it's not even funny. They're not great places. Don't get me wrong. I mean, tons of them.

It's not 100.

Well, I'll tell you what. If you are interested in this and you want to move to Franklin, we have for you the Franklin, Louisiana Real Estate Report, everybody. All right. Your first house here, actually, average two-bedroom rentals, $890 a month, which seems excessively high when you can get houses for cheap like that.

For 90 grand, yeah.

Yeah. Here is a three-bedroom, two-bath. This is not a trailer. It's an actual house. 2,022 square foot house. It's a little fucked up on the inside. I'm not going to lie.

Sure.

I mean, on the outside, it looks like a house. It doesn't look like it's going to fall over.

It's great.

All the kitchen tiles are all broken up and smashed and.

So it's half-started.

It has real old metal cabinets. You'd need to do a lot in there, but.

Metal.

Metal, but it's on a half-acre lot. $44,700 for that, though.

That's crazy.

You can't get a mid-range used pickup truck for $47,000 or $44,000.

It sounds like, I mean, you could put 40 grand in that house and make it.

Livable, yeah.

Incredible.

So it just had a price cut of $4,300 too, so.

They're dropping it.

There's that.

10% off.

Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,798 square foot, move-in ready, really nice wood floors.

Really done.

Wood floors are really pretty, actually. It's a nice little house, 17, not even little, 1,800 square feet, but it looks like a box, and I guess it goes back further.

Yeah.

Not bad at all. $90,000.

Wow.

And it just had a $7,000 reduction as well.

Yeah.

And then finally, you're living it up.

Here we go.

You have planted all the sugar that you can have here. Four-bedroom, three-bath, 4,240 square foot house.

Wow.

It's on 2.8 acres or 2.06 acres. It's got a big yard, and it's backed up to water. I don't know what the hell this water is, but it's an extraordinary custom-built waterfront home. Exceptional craftsmanship, premium materials, and modern amenities. And it is $999,000.

No.

Nope. I don't think so.

To get malaria.

Yeah. That's what it looks like. You can just see things breeding in that water. All sorts of shit. Chiggers and.

Yeah. They would have a.

Mosquitoes and.

An off-mister that you walk through.

Constantly.

If you go outside.

Things to do here. The Bayou Tesh Black Bear Festival.

Okay.

I was like, all right. I didn't know there was black bears.

What's the Tesh about? Not John, right?

No, T-E-S-C-H-E-E. Or C-H-E. T-E-C-H-E. Tesh. I looked up how to pronounce that because I didn't know.

All right.

Apparently, the mission of the bear festival is to educate the citizens of St. Mary Parish and the surrounding area about the Louisiana black bear, a species listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened under the guidelines of the Endangered Species Act. So the Louisiana black bear is threatened. Up here, there's tons of black bears. New York, tons of them. Yeah. People.

Arizona, you got black bears or brown bears? They're black bears.

I think they're brown over there. There might be black bears. I'm not sure. Here, they're very common to pop up in people's yards. There's tons of videos of like, "Hey, there's a bear in my yard." When we first moved in, our neighbors thought our dog was a black bear. Benny, the big Connie Corso. They got scared.

Lucky it didn't get shot, huh?

They looked out and were like, "Oh, shit." And they were going to tell us about it. Then they saw it coming in and us petting it. They were like, "Okay, that's a dog." It's not a black bear.

Some leash on it.

Thought it was like a small black bear. The festival features all of the activities associated with a typical Louisiana festival. That scares me.

Oil.

Music, food, and good company. Good company. I've never heard that advertised in a fucking festival before. But also includes field trips, educational exhibits, and children's activities relating to bears and the many other natural resources found in southern Louisiana. Name the number one best new event in 2006.

Oh.

20 years ago.

For 20 years, this has been the best new thing.

By the Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals, which had no idea there was a governing body there. None.

Well, Louisiana's got one.

So they are extremely excited, it says here. It says, "We are so excited to officially announce the live music lineup for this year's festival." Then it says, "Headliner alert." Is it ludicrous?

Oh, alert.

Is it ludicrous? I don't know. A local favorite is back in all caps. And getting the band back together just for you, all caps. Rick Buga, B-U-G-G-A, Buga. Wayne, Dacia, and Brian. Brian's even going to be back? Well, now.

Brian's going to show.

Jamie, we're going to fly it out there for this one because I think this is very important that Brian's there. Are reuniting for a special performance and helping them out on stage will be Chase Landry. Okay. If you remember, when they used to play together, you already know this is going to be one you don't want to miss. And if you've never seen them, who the fuck are they? What's the band name? They haven't mentioned that at all. I know Brian's going to be there.

You'll see. I can't believe you don't remember.

You'll love the music leading up to the headliner. All local favorites. All.

Oh, fuck.

Shit bands that are local. Bring the best or bringing the best family tunes all morning, and in between sets is DJ Shannon Bork. Okay.

Bork.

Next up, Chase Landry and Brittany Poole is a duet. Is always a crowd favorite. Back again and bringing a great music set, as they always do, is Scott Burdett and Brad Clements.

Oh my.

Have you heard any of these people?

No.

Okay. I was just checking because you never know.

These are just southern Louisiana people.

And I guess the big headliner, we can finally find out only by looking at the schedule to see who the fuck those were because they didn't tell us. From 5:00 to 7:00 PM, Don't Ask will be playing. I guess that's.

Don't you dare.

Don't Ask. That's where you get Rick and Buga and Wayne and Brian and the rest of the crew together.

We are. Don't Ask.

Don't Ask who we are. So yeah, that's what's going on in this town here. Downtown Franklin on Tesh Drive. Live music all day. By the way, the live music starts at 9:00 AM. Jesus Christ. That's the coveted spot.

Right near somebody's house.

That's the coveted spot right there. All the bands. They really want to be out in the sun at 9:00 AM to play music.

The spot that wakes up the neighbors.

Oh, that's fucked up. I think everyone's up down there probably.

The late sleepers. There's somebody that sleeps till 10:00.

Oh, God. Those poor bastards. Well, crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime almost double the national average. So that's not good. That seems like a lot. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about one-third high. It's a little bit high. Not double, but it's getting there. Not wonderful.

Too high.

Too high, let's just say. That said, let's talk about a fucking wild occurrence here that took place. Just some, wow, this is crazy. I was reading the court document for this, and I'm like, there's more? More crazy shit just kept happening. I'm like, oh my God, this is insane. So.

Keeps going.

Let's go back to 2001. Okay? Not too far among. I mean, a long time ago, 25 years ago, but not black-and-white times anyway. So let's talk about Kimberly Zimmerman. Now, Kimberly Zimmerman, she's about 30 years old here. She's married. She has three small kids at the time. And apparently, in the beginning of the summer, she's pregnant, by the way, during this in 2001 time. She's pregnant by her husband.

Oh, for sure.

And if you're a shit family and you have five kids, one of them will do good things, and the rest of the four will follow. Like the wild, wonderful whites. The one guy went to Minnesota. His kids had braces. He was breaking the cycle, but everybody else was a fucking mess.

Yeah. They had clothes that they bought. They had price tags on them.

Exactly. Yep. And in every rich, there's always a Nare Duell Kennedy kid in every one of their little families too, out of all their kids. There's always one that's a piece of shit, and it's a rapist or a moron or a fucking worse that we're finding out. So anyway, they had the abusive alcoholic father. He's kicked out, Donald is, at the age of 16, which is he had just completed the 10th grade, but then he drops out of school because he's not living at home anymore.

Yeah, because it's hard to get there.

Now, several years later, he'll get a GED, actually. And he'll end up somehow, as we find out what he's going to do for the next 10 years, somehow getting about two years of college in.

Oh.

In between a bunch of shit. Like community college or whatever, but college. He went to school. That's good. More than I did. So good for him. He had several different jobs, but never anything steady. Never could find anything and stick with it. He was a welder's helper, an electrician's helper. These jobs that if you stick with it.

Never see them through. Yeah.

You can apprentice and end up doing that. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah.

Especially.

You journeyman at that shit. You'll never be rich, but you'll never be hungry.

You'll always make a living. That's the problem with those jobs, though. You'll never be rich. You'll never be hungry, but you'll have to work till you're fucking 75 years old. You'll never stop working, which sucks.

You will be at work before the sun comes up, and you will be at work when the sun goes down.

And it's a physical job. We only know this because our families are comfortable with this type of shit.

That's what I did.

You walked around with a fucking wand. You didn't do shit. What are you talking about? You were at my house half the time you were getting paid. Stop acting like you did hard work. You did not.

I was.

You're the worst employee of all time.

I did the union work for hours and hours and hours on end. I did it.

Which was hanging out at my house. Sitting on the couch talking about comedy and writing jokes together. That's what we were doing while Jimmy was getting paid.

But I was wearing FR clothes when I did it.

You did show up in your work truck and park it. People must have thought our electricity was a disaster at my house. Why is the electric company always at these people's houses?

UPS is always over there.

Man, they must have problems in their wiring. What the fuck happened? That's funny. But no, I'm joking, obviously, breaking your balls. But it's that environment, though, of and that's different because the electric company, those people could eventually retire. A lot of these people have electricians retire eventually. They can usually make a good living if they do well.

You get a 401(k) and a pension. You do very well for a fixed income. There's not much that's better.

No, but you are.

In retirement.

It's still a job like most jobs where you're paid for your time. You're paid for your time. So any job where you're paid for your time, you're never going to get rich from that ever because the time is never going to be there. So that's hard. But at least you could make a goddamn living. But he chose not to.

He stops every time it starts to get good.

Well, welder's helper, electrician's helper, pipe fitter, and a plumber's helper. So he went to all the.

He tried everything.

Every trade he went to.

Wow.

Got in, and then it didn't work out for him because he's a fuck-up. That's why.

Yeah. That's what it sounds like.

So it's not like we just didn't find the thing he wanted. He tried everything, and none of it worked. And these are all very good jobs where he could have supported a family and made a good living for his whole life.

All of those things too, they're a skill, but it's not something that you're born with. It's not a talent. It's something you can learn. And if you stick with it, you can get really good at it.

Absolutely.

And if you get really good at it, you can make a damn good living.

You can do just fucking fine for yourself. So the problem is too, and so this might have been an issue with these employment opportunities, is he's getting arrested an awful lot too as a problem.

Oh.

That's an issue. Several different problems he had. Disturbing the peace by fighting, burglary, forgery, battery, theft of over $500, attempted burglary. A lot of things. Here's just a few of his highlights here. Basically, he has 11 arrests total up until 2001 here. On October 30th, 1986, he was arrested and convicted for burglary, which he received three years of supervised probation for because it was his first offense or his first major offense.

It's getting real serious now.

Yeah. 1991 in April, three years over more than three years from that date, luckily for him, he was arrested for disturbing the peace by fighting. Then on October 31st, 1991, so just a few months later, Halloween night, he's arrested for simple battery. November 14th, 1994, he's arrested for theft over $500, to which he was sentenced to six years in prison for that.

Holy shit.

Yeah. Now, that same day, he also was arrested for simple battery. So simple battery and the theft of over $500.

It also sounds like the court might be tired of his fucking shit.

How would you not be? You keep seeing this idiot here. Now, one of his arrests, and we're not sure which one, one of his arrests was for fighting his father.

Nice.

As an adult.

Nice.

Which is, nah. That's a touch of class right there. If you've ever fought your father past a certain really at all, you got to check yourself. There's some white trash flowing through your goddamn veins, and you need to figure that out.

Yeah. Every Thanksgiving, though, I do search out that video of the guy that flips the table with everything on it.

Absolutely. For real. But usually, you let your dad have a meltdown at that point. You don't fight the guy. So I don't know who was right or anything like that, but he fought his dad, and both of them were arrested. So that's pretty fun.

They both went.

They both got arrested for fighting.

They rarely hitch up too, right?

Especially if they're father and son. Wouldn't you be like, "Okay, morons. You fucking idiots."

There's usually a victim and then somebody that defended themselves. Did they both throw the first punch?

They must have just fucking socking back and forth like rock-em-sock-em robots, just beating each other's asses.

I'll bet it's a good story.

So this guy, as you might imagine, isn't the most stable guy to have a relationship with. He's a bit of a fucking mess. And he hasn't been out of prison for very long either in 2001. He was in prison, I think, till '99 or 2000. So he's in there. Now, this affair goes on between Donald and Kimberly. And if you have a separation from your wife, you sure hope she doesn't have an affair with this fucking guy, but this is what happened. This affair ends in late November 2001, mainly because Kimberly has her baby.

Yeah, the schedule is kind of tough.

They're a little tightly scheduled, and they're at a commission for, what, six weeks, do they tell you? Six to eight weeks, not to fuck with it. So it's really the affairs.

Maybe it's longer than that. Yeah.

It's a while. Yeah. Whatever the fucking case is. She's not in affair-to-have-in-times right now or even relationship-to-have-in-times. This is her fourth child too, and they're all pretty young. And this seems reasonable. She's like, "I'm going to get back together with my husband since I just spit my fourth small child out, and they're all his, and it just seems logical that we try to be a family here." Again, that seems normal. And also, if you were him, expected.

She is a mother and a wife, so.

She's not divorced.

The free sex train might depart.

The free sex with a seven-month pregnant woman train might depart also.

That's absurd.

That's so wild. And I'd say, if you're seven months pregnant, nobody should fuck you, but a stranger shouldn't want to fuck you. That's like a weird fetish at that point.

Right. Free sex with a seven-month pregnant woman whose baby is not yours.

Not yours.

That's fucking crazy.

You meet somebody, they're seven months pregnant, and you're like, "Yeah, get me some of that." Not in six months. Now.

Right. In the last seven months, she was in a very serious relationship.

The only guys I can think of that would do that, it's because that's a fetish for them. That's a weird fetish. You know what I mean? So you should have your head on a swivel if you're pregnant, much like Asian girls do about Asian chicks are very aware of you're not fetishized.

They're small fetish heat ones.

You're not real into this, are you? You're not super into Asian stuff, are you?

Or 28-year-olds that look 16. Keep your head on a swivel. That's weird.

That's weird too. So he, instead of being like, "Well, I had my fun. That ended. Now go find some other pregnant woman to hump on," he instead gets real jealous and possessive over her. How dare you?

What?

How dare you nurse your child in your living room while your other three kids run around?

With your husband.

With your husband. So he began threatening and harassing Kimberly. Two different times the police were called even. That's just how bad it is. He'll show up. He'll call constantly. He's off the deep end with this shit.

What does her husband do about this?

I don't know how not go kill him or go punch him in the fucking mouth or something, but this keeps going on and on and on. It's wild. Then that's like late November. So we're talking Thanksgiving-ish area around there, November 20-something. Then December 7th, 2001, Donald decides he's going to buy a gun because he hasn't been quite threatening enough, I don't think. That's the problem. He hasn't made his threats clear enough to her, I believe, is the issue.

Is he allowed to?

I don't know if any of those things were a felony. So not positive. He doesn't buy a gun at a store.

No, he's going to buy it from a guy.

He buys a gun from a guy he knows, a coworker of his, a guy named Ricky Adams.

He can do that a lot.

Yeah. He bought a gun from a guy named Ricky, a grown man that goes by Ricky, who's not Henderson. That's wrong. Something wrong there. You ever met a grown man named Ricky?

Yes.

Yeah. That's what I mean. You know who they are.

It's wild.

Well, what's he like?

He's dead.

There you go.

Exactly.

Bought it on a dirt bike when he was 32 because you can't live any longer and be named Ricky. It's just not possible.

Yeah.

There's no 80-year-old man named Ricky.

It's wild.

Anybody's grandfather named Ricky out there?

Yeah, nobody has a grandfather named Ricky.

No. You can't be Ricky. I'm telling you.

Even Ricky Henderson is dead, isn't he?

He's fucking dead. He aged out. He couldn't do it anymore.

I don't think he made it to 70.

No. I don't know anybody named Ricky that lives past a certain age.

My uncle literally went to a drag strip with us with his car, and it was one of those run what you brung. That's what they call it. You get to race whatever car you got. He had a '67 Dart that was a convertible, mind you. So if it rolls, you're in so much trouble. There's no roll bar in the car.

Parts flying around, metal trucks.

You're going to die. And they told him that he had to have a helmet if he wanted to race. And he looked at them baffled, and he was like, "Well, I didn't bring a helmet." And they're like, "Well, then you don't race." He had to literally go buy a helmet off a guy in the pits.

Oh, my God.

And he raced his fucking car. If he'd have rolled it, he's dead. He'd have been decapitated.

That's why Rickys don't live past a certain age.

Yeah. Ricky was willing to do 120 on a quarter mile. Helmetless.

That's Ricky behavior. That's the problem. We got Ricky behavior going on. You can't be Ricky and be that old.

Yeah. Meanwhile, the trunk is full of Coors lights.

Totally. Yeah. He's like, "Oh, shit. He hit my Coors light stash back there." So he buys a 9-millimeter Beretta from his work friend here. This is in the midst of harassing Kimberly and just being a general menace to society. Basically, this guy brought the gun to work on December 7th, gave it to Donald in exchange for $140 in cash and "$60 later."

We'll agree on 200. But it takes the gun.

Yeah. I'd like to try to harass a woman, but I can't afford it at the moment. Can you help me? Can you subsidize my harassment of a woman?

Can you carry me for 60?

Trying to terrorize somebody here, and it's really difficult with this measly bankroll that I got. Please help me. So that's how it goes. He's got a gun. December 10th, 2001. It's morning. Now, Ricky Adams talks to Donald, and he said Donald's in a great mood that day. Ricky's the guy who sold him the gun. He's in a great mood than in the days past because it's been kind of dark since he broke up with Kimberly here. And Donald was telling Ricky that he was "going to go get back together with his girlfriend today," and he felt good about that.

Today's the day.

He felt real, real good about it. Yeah. So now, by the way, the timing of the baby is I'm not sure about. This is the thing. I don't know if they broke up because she was having the baby or she had the baby before.

It wasn't time.

And they broke up because she was dealing with a newborn. I'm not sure. But either way, they've had sex since she's had the baby. That we know. Okay. We know that because this day this is, by the way, how he's going to get together with her. She's at the Walmart. All right?

Yeah. Picking some alike.

Kimberly's at the Walmart where she's shopping with her infant daughter. Donald approaches her in the Walmart because I feel like in this area, if you want to find somebody, start at the Walmart and go from there. They're probably there. Or if not.

If they're not home, check Walmart.

Check Walmart. There, Kimberly says to him that, "I think I might be pregnant with your child," which, I mean, a fifth fucking kid now.

I'm going to be pregnant again?

Again. Dude, reach up and tie your own tubes if you have to. This is crazy. You have four fucking kids. I guarantee you, just by the measure of this story, that no one here is wealthy enough to afford five kids or any of this shit. So anyway, she said, "I think I might be pregnant." So they made plans to meet back at Walmart later that evening to purchase a home pregnancy test together.

Why can't we get that now?

Why can't you just pick it up, go home, pee on it, and let me know what's going on? Why do we have to why does this have to be some weird group activity? Okay. So they left the store, apparently, and drove to a nearby Catholic church parking lot to talk. They talked for a little bit. Now, Donald was upset because he wanted this baby. He said, "Well, if you're pregnant, I want this baby." And she said, "I don't want a baby. I don't want to be pregnant again. I have four small kids, and I'm married. The last thing I need is a fifth kid from some outside source here."

It's certainly going to complicate and cause questions at my house.

It's going to be something. So they agreed to meet later that night at Donald's grandfather's house at 203 Neptune Street in Bayou Vista, where he was staying. They're going to meet there, then go to the old Walmart together. Or they're going to the other way around. So they end up meeting. They go get the pregnancy test, and then both of them come back to Bayou Vista here. They're waiting on the results of the pregnancy test, which, by the way, do not take that long. They really don't.

Pretty quick, usually.

Pretty quick. You don't have a big window of time. It's not like, "Well, what are we going to do while we wait?" It's like four minutes. You're fine.

It tells you how long to wait.

Sometimes it's 30 seconds.

It's always so much quicker.

Yeah. So while waiting on the results, he sees this as a perfect window to try to get back together with her and reconcile. He's like, "I got three minutes. I can close this deal." He tries to persuade Kimberly to reconcile with him and, "We'll raise this baby together," which her response is, "What about the other four babies I have? Who's raising them? What are we talking about here?" Because she's not a dummy like he is, this one. So anyway, Kimberly insisted, "No, I'm going back to my husband.

Wonderful.

Thank God. She's not pregnant.

Now we get to all walk away.

Okay. He is super upset about this. He thought he had really ensnared her and got his hooks into her. Yeah. He's like, "I bought a crib already, and I figured yellow because I don't want to do blue, pink. We don't know the sex yet, so I just did a neutral."

I did go ahead and did.

Pastales.

Diapers, preemie, through three teeth.

So, I mean, let's do it. No, the test indicates she's not pregnant. He says, "I hope you're happy now."

Okay.

She was ecstatic, as a matter of fact. Yes.

Real.

Fuck yeah.

Yeah.

Then Donald tries to persuade her to have sex with him. She's like, "No, I just dodged that bullet. I'm not going to get back in this fucking circle with you." He's like, "Well, I didn't get it last time. Let me get it this time." She said, "No, I'm planning on reconciling with my husband." This is when he kept okay, this is the weirdest part of this whole story for some reason. You got to remember the time it is. And if you're very young, we'll explain it to you in a moment of why this is significant and ridiculously fucking stupid and funny.

He registered?

He registered. Now, if you don't know why, if you're young or whatever, during this time, the biggest show on Earth was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And if you don't know what that is, it's a game show that was a trivia show. And Regis Philbin, for some reason, people were obsessed with Regis from '99 to 2002. So yeah, he would ask a question. There'd be four answers, and there was different things. You could take two of the answers away. That was one of the things. You could phone a friend.

Four choices every time.

Yeah. You could phone a friend. That was one of the options. You could only do that once. You could whatever.

50/50, and then you can poll the audience.

You can poll the audience. That was the other one. So basically, in the end, if you won, then you won a million dollars if you made it through the whole thing.

That's the idea.

Or you could get to a question you don't know and leave with whatever you've won so far. That was the hook here on it. Now, the big thing was they'd say, "I think it's C. I'm going to go with C." And Regis would go, "Is that your final answer?" And is that your final answer? That was it. At that point, you've taken your hand off the chess piece, and if you're wrong, you lose all your fucking money. That was the point. Is that your final answer?

Yeah. So much so that people would answer and say final answer, the very first answer.

Yep. Final answer.

So that he didn't have to go, "Is that your final answer?"

And in society, the phrase, "Is that your final answer?" was it was like the 2001 version of like, "Yeah, baby." Shagadelic, like fucking some sort of Austin Powers reference from years before that. It was huge.

Is that your final answer before or after you are the weakest link?

Before. Weakest link came out after that. That's what I mean. So I would love it if he then, instead of, "Is that your final answer?" over and over, if he went to other game shows. He's like, "Survey says?" And she's like, "No, still no." And then he calls her the weakest link and tells her goodbye, and then we just go from then on.

Yeah. I miss who wants to be I miss Regis. Regis really.

I don't miss Regis at all.

At the end of his life was the most successful. He must have given a shitload of money to somebody.

He did great from he was married for like 50 years to the same lady.

Yeah. Same woman?

Same woman, yeah, forever. But he was huge. And from the mid-'90s to 2005, you could not get rid of Russell and Regis.

Couldn't shake him.

And I wanted to shake him, and he couldn't shake him.

He had some Scottie Pippen defense. You couldn't shake him.

Oh, you could not shake him. Fucking on you, dude. Fucking on you. Like Randy Brown in fucking '95. Just all over your shit. So yeah, Kimberly said he kept saying he wanted to get back together, and she said, "I'm not having sex with you. I'm going back to my husband in Mississippi, not even in this state."

Oh, my God. She's so far away from home for this.

Like two and a half hours away, at the very least.

Wow.

Kimberly said, he kept saying, "Is that your final answer?" And then, "I didn't want it to have to come to this," he kept saying. And then saying, "Is that ."

What show is that?

"Is that your final answer? I didn't want it to have to come to this." Oh, we're very sorry. That's not the correct answer. So then, out of nowhere, apparently, he pulls out a 9-millimeter handgun - I bet a Beretta if I had to guess - from the top drawer of his dresser. It's the one he had bought from the coworker there. And he said, "I didn't want it to come to this," pointed it at Kimberly, and said, "I bet you'll make love to me now, won't you?"

Oh, my God.

"I bet I can rape you at gunpoint now, huh?" That's a crazy fucking statement. Okay. So shit is obviously getting very serious.

Oh, boy.

Okay? Basically, Donald tells her, "I know exactly where I'm going to take you." Don't like that. "I'm going to kill you," he tells her.

Oh, boy.

"I'm going to put you and your van in the water, and nobody's ever going to find you."

Oh, my God.

She has a baby blue van that she has. He then ties one of her hands with a tie wrap, they said. I don't know what that is exactly.

It's a tie, probably.

She started to struggle, so he threw her on the bed and put a knee in her back in order to bind her wrist together, which is brutal. Absolutely brutal. Then he I guess it was tie straps. I think they're tie-downs for a car is what he's using.

Really?

Like a pickup truck tie-downs or something. They keep calling them tie straps in the paper.

Yeah, that's a tie-down. That's not a zip tie.

Then he grabs - and this is a crazy thing also - "a crown royal bag full of bullets."

That's how he carries them.

That's where.

That's a chandelier.

That's where he keeps them. Some people like a Rambo thing across the chest. He says, "Crown royal bag. It's classier that way, that velvet sack."

Like a college kid with his weed.

Yeah, exactly. Thinking it's classy to keep it in there.

It's velvet.

It's so fucking funny. If you know ladies, if your man keeps anything in a crown royal bag, he's trash.

Anything.

Anything.

Get the fuck out of there.

Get the fuck out of there. I don't care what it is. Get out now. Spare chains.

In his safe is a golden pouch.

Nope.

A golden roped pouch. Get the fuck out.

We know that guy is why we're warning you. He is trash, and he'll pull a gun out and say, "I bet you'll have sex with me now." That's that guy.

His ammo in the crown royal bag.

Just a sack of it.

A sack full of ammo.

Full of bullets. Loose bullets. Why do you think the box was a bad idea? I'm going to carry it in this. The box is perfect for it. What are you doing?

Yeah. Inside the box, there's a plastic rack that they fit perfectly.

It's perfectly how they're supposed to be. This guy went, "No, I'll just dump them in a crown royal sack because I'm classy."

Oh, boy.

What an asshole. So then on the way they're in their kitchen, on the way out to the van, he then tapes her mouth closed, which terrifying again. Then he starts saying, "All I have to do is aim and shoot. I can't go back to prison."

Oh, my God.

"So I'm going to kill you. I'm going to put you in the water. No one's going to find you. I can't go back to prison. All I have to do is shoot you." You're terrified if you're this Kimberly at this point. Then he grabbed a pair of white cotton gloves with black dots on them, gardening gloves that your mom would wear. You know what I'm saying?

I was seeing four-fingered Mickey Mouse gloves.

No, no, no. These are literally gardening gloves from just the gardening section at Walmart that you get.

With the black dots on the palm to get grip.

That's what he grabs. That's his crime gloves.

Oh, boy.

Okay. Then he seat belts her into the van's front passenger seat, which I assume anybody driving would see a handcuffed woman with her mouth taped shut in the front seat of a van, and that's scary, right? So he wow. I don't even know what's going on here. Wow. I can't believe oh, by the way, he also before they got out there, he did cut the tape off. He grabbed a knife to cut a piece of duct tape.

Oh, boy.

How dare she be scared? He told her you're going to murder her in the woods after you rape her, probably. So with the knife and gun in his hand here, they're in the van. Here we go. It's a Ford minivan. They drive a.

AeroStar.

One of those. Yeah. Was that a Ford?

They're two. They had the Windstar and the AeroStar.

Was the AeroStar a Ford?

Yeah. The Astro was a Chevy.

The Astro van was a Chevy. Yeah. So they drive a short distance, and then he removes the duct tape. Okay. Takes the duct tape off and tells her, "You have 20 minutes to talk to me."

Oh.

He really is into game shows. And then he started a big clock in there, and it was ticking down. Really into game shows.

Yeah. Don't run the light.

Yeah. Don't do that. You don't want to do that. That's a comic line for you there. So he then tells her that he's going to kill her, or now there's an or, or maybe I'll just kill myself. I haven't decided. You got 20 minutes.

In the next 20 minutes.

You got 20 minutes to decide to talk me into killing myself rather than you, essentially. That's what he tells her. And again, he said, "Because I am not going back to prison. That ain't happening. Can't do it."

I'm already kidnapped.

So she's pleading for her life, obviously. She's telling him anything that he wants to hear. He's telling her, "I'll stay with you. Don't worry. Yeah, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. Yeah, no, me and you will be together. We'll have a family. We'll have a family. Yeah. I want to get pregnant. I can't wait. I'm not going to tell the police. Why would I tell the police about the man I love?" So she's telling him everything he wants to hear. He's not buying it, though.

Oh.

No. The first non-dumb thing he's done this whole fucking thing is not believe this.

You're going to turn me in.

So as Kimberly notices that they're approaching the water, she knows she's fucked now because he said, "I'm going to leave you in the water." Somehow, she manages to get her hands free. Apparently, he didn't tie them very well. He is a fuck-up in all of his jobs. So apparently, tying maybe that's why he got fired from one of his jobs. Bad tying.

Perhaps they're bungee cords?

Not sure exactly what it is, but basically, they're near a neighborhood where there's a handful of homes with lights on. She sees this as last fucking chance.

Chance to go. Yeah.

So she jumps out of the moving van. She pretends like her hands are still behind her back, and then just in one motion, opens the door, leaps out of the fucking van, tumbles.

Amazing.

The whole deal. Incredible, right? So he snatches at her as she's diving out of the van and grabs her sweater, pulling it off. So now she's just in a bra.

I didn't have that. Yeah.

Now she's in a bra, running around crazy in a neighborhood, screaming for help in her life, basically, at this point. So he slams on the brakes. Rather than get out of his side, he climbs over the seat and follows her out the passenger side, which seems like it would take longer. He's not very bright, this guy, until he realizes at that point the van is rolling forward.

Oh, he did not put it in park.

So he re-entered the van to stop it. She runs screaming, saying, "God, please, somebody help me. Somebody help me. Help. He's going to kill me," running around. Now, if you're looking for attention, having no shirt on is a great way to get it while screaming at the top of your lungs here. Not that you should do that to get attention, but that'll get people going. There's a shirtless woman screaming in the street.

God help me.

She gets to the home of a guy named Steven Andrade, which is about the third home down from where she jumped out of the van. So she screamed for two houses, went up to the door. He's chasing behind her. Apparently, he stopped the van and then didn't see where she went. The van was rolling. He got in, stopped. It gets out. Now she's already in somebody's house.

She's gone. Yeah.

He just assumes what trailer she's in because he just goes to the closest one, thinking she must have ran there. That is 896 Verdonville Road. Okay. This place. Just before midnight we are at now. Inside that trailer is a married couple and some kids too, or one kid. There's two kids that live there, but only one kid is home. First of all, there's Troy Salone, S-A-L-O-N-E.

They have something in common.

They have something in common. Absolutely. Now, just before midnight, Evelyn's about to fall asleep when she hears a woman screaming outside.

Uh-oh.

And trailers have very poor sound quality.

Oh, the insulation and noise reduction.

There is no insulation.

It's impossible.

And she hears, "Help. He's going to kill me," which seems like something you should look into. So she believed that Troy, her husband,'s already asleep, so she went to see what all the commotion was about. Troy went to bed about a half hour earlier. Zeb, who's 15 at the time Zeb LeBlanc is his name, by the way, which is a cool name.

First name?

His whole name is Zeb LeBlanc.

Wow.

A fucking cool name, right? Sounds like a rock star.

It's Zeb Judah. There's not much cooler than that.

Zeb LeBlanc. Sounds like a cool rock star.

Fuck yeah.

Anyway, Zeb was also asleep. The 7-year-old Mary was spending the night next door at Troy's mother's house, not the house Kimberly ran to. She's at the third house. That's the second house. Now, she said she woke up Troy to tell him she'd heard the scream. Then she went outside and saw a van with its passenger door open passing by slowly. Now, she saw him. Evelyn sees Donald and tells him, "Hey, your van's still rolling.

He didn't notice. A bystander told him, "Hey, dumb dumb."

"Hey, stupid. Your van's rolling." Because she didn't know what the hell was going on. She was just like, "Hey, your van's rolling, dude. You should probably grab that. It's midnight. You just get out of bed." So Donald is looking for Kimberly, sees Evelyn there at this address, and he thinks that Kimberly's inside.

Oh.

So he starts yelling at Evelyn, "Where is she? Where is she?" Now, Evelyn has no idea. She just heard a woman screaming and came outside. So she has no fucking clue where the hell he is.

You see your AeroStar? It's right there.

Yeah. Where is she? Oh, you must mean she must mean your van, I guess. Is there a ship's dock somewhere by the water? Do you have a ship somewhere? So she doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. So she said, "Who are you looking for? I don't know who you're talking about." And then he then pops up at the trailer door, and Troy comes to the trailer door and says, "What the hell's going on out here?" Because he hears all sorts of screaming.

Oh.

So Evelyn then wow. Evelyn said, "By the way, he could have been talking about a dog for all I knew." She didn't even know he was talking about a person. He said, "Where is she?" Could be anything. So then they said that he reached into the front of his waistband, pulled out the gun, and pointed it right at me. Evelyn then assures Troy and says, "He's not going to shoot. It'll be okay."

Oh, how does she know that?

At that point, he fires the gun at Evelyn at point-blank range.

Oh, my God.

Just very contrary, apparently. He's not going to shoot me. Sure I am. Pow. She falls to the ground, this poor woman. Yeah. And she said that, "I was surprised because I thought surely he was not going to shoot." And then the gun went off. The bullet went through her right forearm and into the right side of her abdomen and exited from her left hip. So it went all the way through her.

Oh, Jesus. It crossed her body.

All the way through her, which tore a lot of shit apart, as we'll talk about.

She's so lucky to be alive if she's alive.

Well, we'll talk about it. And she said, "I told Troy that I was hit and to go for help." So Troy turned in to go to the trailer to call for help.

Yeah. Here comes the ride.

Unfortunately, Donald follows Troy into the trailer.

Oh, shit.

As Troy reaches for the telephone, Donald shot him one time in the head, drops dead instantly, poor Troy.

Oh, no.

One shot in the head, dead on the floor. Now, during all this, the 15-year-old Zeb LeBlanc wakes up because he heard Troy screaming something about a gun. That's all he knew. So he hears a gunshot four or five seconds later. Now, by the way, when they went in the house, when Troy went into the house to get help, he fired a shot at Troy as he entered the house or entered the trailer. So he fired a shot, missed him, and then when he got close to him, that's when he shot him.

Shot him in the head.

Yeah. And Evelyn said, "I could see him going after Troy." And he said, "I could hear their feet running through the trailer, and then I heard the gun again." So you know what running in a trailer also sounds loud. So Zeb, in his bed, jumps out of bed. He's got a shotgun in his room. He gets up, and he can't load it because his hands are shaking because he woke up to gunplay, basically. So his hands are shaking. He can't load the gun.

Oh, God.

She said, "Within seconds, I heard Zeb call out, 'Oh, no, Troy.' And I heard the fear in his voice and called to him to come outside so he could help." So Troy gets outside or Zeb gets outside, sorry, and she's yelling, "Troy, Troy, call 911. He shot me." That's what she's yelling. Zeb attends to his mother, kneels down beside her, and asks her what's going on. It's at this point, Zeb stood up, and here comes Donald towards Zeb and asks Zeb, "Where is she?"

Final answer.

Is that your final fucking answer? Yeah. You are the weakest link. So Zeb tells him, "Just go away. Leave us alone." He's 15. He doesn't know what he's going to say to us.

He doesn't know.

"Some psycho just shot your dad and is holding the gun on you, and your mom's bleeding on the ground." He was still saying, "Where is she? Where is she?" over and over again. When the man saw Zeb, Evelyn said he motioned to him with the gun and told him to go back where you came from if you know what's good for you. So he said, "Go back inside. Leave your mother alone." That's when he said, "Why don't you just leave us alone? Leave us alone." Then he started walking away from the property to the van, and he shouts out to the whole neighborhood, "Kimberly, I'll be waiting for you at home.

I imagine.

There's screaming, gunplay, more screaming. There's plenty of 911 going. Gunshots going.

Ends of session with pauses between them.

Yeah. There's a 45-minute tape later with calls from her, calls from Zeb, calls from several other residents, all the 911 calls later on. Now, back to Evelyn.

The supercut is 45 minutes long?

45 minutes long of 911 calls from the neighborhood. That's something. So back to Evelyn, Troy, and Zeb. He called 911. Emergency medical personnel and police are dispatched to the area. This is when it gets real crazy, as if it hasn't been crazy enough already. Okay. The police are on the way. Now, they've been told there's wounded people, there's dead people, gunplay, all this shit. All we have is a description of a blue van.

I'm going to stay on this.

He turns around, starts chasing the van. He is joined by every other officer that has ever wanted to be in a car chase, basically. They're chasing a minivan, by the way. And the minivan is getting away.

They haul ass.

This chase lasts for 30 miles.

Wow.

That is so long for a chase.

That's far, yeah.

Through cane fields, back roads. I mean, he's not even sticking to roads, man. We're going on.

This is an hour-long chase then.

Oh, yeah. It's forever. He would also it's pitch black in the middle of nowhere. He would turn his lights off for a while periodically, hoping maybe that would get them to lose him, even though they have spotlights and helicopters and everything else. Several points in it, he's driving 100 miles an hour in a van for 30 miles. So this is a crazy fucking chase. The vehicle got on the US-90, and they put a spike strip down, and he avoided that.

Missed it.

Missed it. So this is crazy, okay?

He's winning.

He's winning. At one point, the cop says here this is one cop, Officer Bode Barrelu, with an A-U-X on the end of it there.

Oh, boy.

That is some Louisiana shit. He said that at one point in the Shadyside area, he was in the left lane closely behind the van, which was in the right lane, when he saw the driver's hand come out of the window and throw something out. Police searched the area most of the next day and didn't find a gun, but they did find a pair of polka-dot-like gloves. He threw his gardening gloves out. So we're talking St. Mary's Parish Sheriff's Department, the Franklin Police Department, the Morgan City Police Department.

Everybody. Hell yeah.

So eventually, he goes through all this, eluding all these people, going through fields, turning his lights off, all this shit. Then he passes, gets up to the Morgan City Police Department, where he pulls into the parking lot, gets out, and is arrested without incident. And I've seen people do this before. It makes no sense to me. You know that guy in upstate New York that did that? Remember that guy that I showed you the interrogation?

I think he ran out of gas.

I don't know. I don't know if he just got tired.

I think he was getting close. He was just like, "Fuck it. I'm going to go to the station."

I think he was just like, "Well, I'm not losing these guys. They're just on me. I'm in a minivan. I'm not getting away." And it was the exact type of thing, too, when this rampage seems like people get in this rampage mode, and then when they cool off, they're like, "Well, I guess I'll just pull into the police station."

I mean, that's where they're taking me.

Yeah. There's one in upstate New York where there's this interrogation. The guy's name is Cliff something. I can't fucking remember what his name is. He's a gigantic asshole. Just everything that's wrong with divorced men over 50, he's the guy. He's angry. He's pissed off. He hates everybody. He talks about he's a tree trimmer, which, again, thief in the fucking night, number one. But he talks about how, "Yeah, I see people. I got a nice car. I got all this. I'll fucking charge them double.

Oh, my God.

Shot a bunch of people, as many people as he can, then got in the car and led police on a huge chase where he eventually just pulled into the police department parking lot and gave up. So it's the exact same thing, pretty much. Exact same guy, exact same type of guy, mindset, everything.

He's looking for publicity, right? He wants people to see this shocking shit?

I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure. And then in the interrogation room, that guy's a fucking nut. He keeps threatening the cops. Say, "Yeah, you let me off of here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." It's like, "Okay, tough guy. Whatever."

Fight.

Yeah. Yeah. You're 55. This guy is a 30-year-old cop. He's going to kick the shit out of you in this fucking interrogation room.

Maybe. But if I win, do I get to go home?

Then I get to go home. Yeah. So he's just a real asshole. Then he's a fucking racist, too. He talks about all sorts. He's the exact.

But not Donald.

He's the exact asshole you'd want. Not this, but I mean, it's the same guy, basically. Angry because he got rejected, and he's going to go do all this shit. Now I'll show him. Well, who's in prison, stupid? So he's arrested there at 12:50 AM. Okay. He exits the blue van, hands in the air, placed under arrest, handcuffed, given his rights, yadda, yadda. So I guess two sergeants of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Office testified that he twice interrupted the sergeant's recitation of rights to inform the other sergeant that he both knew and understand his rights.

Tell him to stop reading those.

You can't just say, "I know my rights," in the middle of it. We still have.

I don't have the words.

Yeah. So he said he understood his rights, and then he didn't make any statements at that time. He did not speak at all as they transported him to the jail. Now, when the medical personnel arrived to Troy and Evelyn, Evelyn immediately gave them a description of Donald as the shooter.

And his name.

And she doesn't know his name. She just gave him his name.

Oh, right. Evelyn doesn't. Right, right, right.

Yeah. She just knows his description. So she's describing this. The doctor and an EMT said she would describe the gunman to anyone who would listen. This is the guy who did it. This is the guy who did it. He was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a light-colored baseball cap, and a bright yellow windbreaker. What is it with people committing crazy crimes where they want to keep low-key while wearing fucking hunter yellow? While wearing safety colors? What the fuck are you doing?

While wearing TJ Maxx Carl Canine colors.

What is happening? Yeah. Why are you doing that? So in the same description, that's the same description that a Robin Raphael said. That's a neighbor who said that the man pulled into her driveway at 902 Verdunville Road in a van just minutes after she heard the gunshots. She said she initially thought it was her brother shooting at coyotes.

Wow.

Which is just normal there.

Is that what they do?

I know they shoot at those nutria down there. That's a big deal.

I do hate a coyote, but that is just like the scummiest.

I'm not shooting a dog. Yeah. I'm not shooting a dog. I mean, happening. So down there, they shoot anything, I guess. Well, like I said, those nutria, they give money for those things. I don't know if they still do. But for years, they would give you like four bucks a head or something for those nutria things. So anyway, they said this person said his hand was shaking. He had a gun. He was looking for a girl, then drove away toward the Centerville Bridge. Now, Evelyn is going to survive her injuries.

Wow.

But the amount of surgeries and rehab and.

Oh, the quality of life is fucked.

Yeah. She basically damaged everything. Basically, Troy, he died immediately after the bullet entered his left cheek on his face and severed his spinal cord as it made its way out of the back of his neck. At least it was fast. That's terrible. Evelyn rushed to the hospital where an ambulance helicopter was waiting to transfer her elsewhere. She went to Franklin Foundation Hospital. She said, "But I stayed at Franklin Foundation because I was too unstable to leave.

Ah, Jesus.

And basically, they said, though, her doctors cannot ensure her that she will continue to have normal bowel function for the rest of her life.

What a terrible thing to say out loud.

Destroyed this woman's life. I mean, killed her husband, fucking made her physically.

Had seven surgeries about it.

This is fucking horrible. So anyway, immediately after his arrest, the police filled out an affidavit for a search warrant for his residence and his vehicle, as well as a separate affidavit for the clothing and property that he has, okay? Now, the affidavit supporting the warrant, seeking his clothes, described the requested clothing as a white T-shirt type shirt, white insulated shirt, and a yellow windbreaker, jeans, and boots. It was noted the yellow windbreaker, white T-shirt, white insulated shirt were taken at the time of his booking.

Which police?

Yeah. They gave him the they let him wear the windbreaker, and then they took it off him later because it was cold at the time. So in the thing or whatever. So he's saying, "Well, you said that it was in the locker, whereas it was actually on me, so that shouldn't count."

Oh, boy.

Yeah. It's crazy. The seizure of the jacket in the parish jail and the police's retrieval of that jacket without a warrant was valid, they said, though. So anyway, he makes several statements, and there's some other stuff here. Things that they seize from his residence and van include a used pregnancy test from his house.

Nice.

A glove seized from the rear of his truck, a black sweater from Kim, Kim's sweater, Kimberly's sweater, and a picture of Kimberly's children recovered from Troy and Evelyn's yard.

Oh.

I don't know where that came from.

Oh, that'd be there.

Now, no gun is ever recovered. They never get the fucking gun. And he had a few minutes between when he left the neighborhood and when the police encountered him to dump the gun. So they saw him throw something out the window. They said during the something else that they didn't find, they said, which caused sparks on the road. So that might have been the gun.

That's probably the gun.

So he's transported to the jail. He's placed in an interview room. Detective with the St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Office, accompanied by another detective, brings a copy of the rights form into the room. They sit down. They go over the form. With him, he says, "I got nothing to say." So the detective did not question him, and he immediately just left the room. Got nothing to say. Fine. Goodbye. The other detective, who was keeping an eye on Donald in the interview room, watched as Donald got out of his chair and started running.

Where to?

He's in an interrogation room.

Yeah.

That's the question.

There ain't a lot of room to run.

No, no, no. He starts running. The detective thought he was trying to escape. He was not trying to escape. He was starting at his chair and running as hard as he could into the wall with his head. That's what he did. This is his attempt to kill himself, is to run into a wall as hard as he can with his head. Which is a little weak as far as suicide attempts go. No?

I don't know if it's weak or not, but I do know that's never worked in the history of anything.

Yeah. It's not going to work. Yeah. Not at all. So according to the detective, the impact caused him to leave his feet and land on his stomach. He hit it so hard that his feet came out from under him, and he fell on his face. Which you just laugh and let him keep doing that, right? I mean, fuck this guy at this point.

At best, it's going to give him a concussion or knock him out.

Whatever.

Just let him keep going, right?

Just keep going.

It's never going to kill him.

No. He could do this all day. It's not going to kill him. So the detective goes in there and goes, "Oh, Jesus Christ," checks him for vital signs, and notes that he lost consciousness for a bit, as might happen.

Pass out.

Upon regaining consciousness, he looked at the detective and said, "She killed my baby." Which, no, she never had your baby, first of all, in her. The detective said, "Well, I'll stay with you till the ambulance arrives." They get the ambulance going. His vital signs are taken at 2:15 AM. They assess a slight redness to his forehead, but no swelling. What a fucking idiot. After being examined and offered treatment and transport, he adamantly refused to go to the hospital.

Didn't even break the drywall. Just swelled his didn't even swell his face. Just pinkened it.

I wonder if it was one of those block wall rooms, too. A lot of those interrogation rooms are block wall. Oh, that would hurt.

Little cinder block.

Oh, man. So Lieutenant Gillory of the Franklin Police Department, who oversees the jail, said that he was closely monitored on suicide watch due to his action of ramming his head into the wall. That'll happen.

That's amazing.

So subsequently, now that he's in jail, he's going to make five different statements.

Oh.

Okay. Over the next day and a half, by the way. All inculpatory statements. None of them are good for him. And one of the statements is a recorded telephone call, which counts as a statement. So first statement is 13 hours after his arrest. So we're talking about 2:00 in the afternoon the next day. He's interrogated by the Franklin Police Department. Lieutenant Gillory and Agent Rupert are the ones here. That is the defendant's parole officer.

Nice.

I don't know. I've never heard of a parole officer participating in a murder interrogation, but hey, what the hell?

Maybe he was there to discuss his well, it's his parole from before, obviously, right?

He's on parole. He just got out of prison a couple of years ago. Yeah. He's on parole.

So he's never violated him based on whatever information we get.

But homicide interrogation is a very specific skill. That's why they don't let the homicide guys do it. This they got women, whatever. But here, they have the lieutenant who runs the jail and his probation officer or parole officer in there. This lasted two hours, the whole questioning. The final 28 minutes from 12:45 to 1:13 PM were recorded on video.

Uh-oh.

I don't know why the whole thing wasn't recorded. That's stupid. But anyway, now, Agent Rupert said that he advised him of his constitutional rights in the presence of the lieutenant. The lieutenant said that Agent Rupert reminded him of his constitutional rights and that Donald acknowledged that he understood his rights.

I know my rights.

I know my rights. Now, the videotape shows Agent Rupert asking him whether he'd been advised of his rights. The video shows him nodding his head slightly and saying yes. Then Donald told the lieutenant and the agent that he and his girlfriend had purchased a pregnancy test based on her statement to him that she might be pregnant, that he did not know whether or not she was pregnant, and that she had just told him that she did not want the baby. So he said that he just lost it at that point.

Oh, okay.

Lost it.

Lost what? For what? Why?

His mind. I don't know. She's not pregnant?

Right.

Head explodes. It's not like he thinks she's lying to him. He had the pregnancy test in his goddamn hand. Is there fucking two lines or not, stupid? If there isn't, then she ain't pregnant. I don't know what you want from her.

It's more than that, though, right?

Yeah. It has to be. It has to be the whole, "I'm rejecting you completely and moving back to Mississippi with my husband." But I think he figures if he leans on the baby angle, maybe they'll understand it's not just him being a jealous guy. "She killed my baby." That's what he's telling them.

She killed it.

So he indicates to the officers that he didn't understand what happened or why he did what he did. I don't know what happened. So they press him for further details, and he says, "I don't want to talk about it." So they continue to question him, though. Because he didn't ask for a lawyer. He just said, "I don't want to talk about it," which is not, "I want a lawyer." So he subsequently stated that his life was over and that he, "Knew where he was going." At one point, he said, "I just want to die. Can somebody just kill me? Is that possible?"

I saw one recently where he said that. He's like, "Just shoot me. Just fucking shoot me." And they're like, "No, we need to talk about this." And he kept saying it over and over.

It's all, yeah.

"Just shoot me. I know where I'm going."

Yep. So the lieutenant and the agent sought details, and he reiterated several times he did not want to talk about it. Fair enough, right? I don't want to talk. So anyway, the videotape shows that throughout the interview, he gave unresponsive answers to questioning, placed his head down on the desk or in his hands, and cried intermittently.

Oh.

It's a bad showing for Donny Boy here.

Yeah. I do love a good cry fest during an interrogation. That's so fun.

I like that, too. I like that a lot, too. They just crumble.

Yeah. I just saw recently the beginning of the Sarah Boone one again.

Oh, God.

And the amount of times that she just imposes her own sentence upon herself.

Yeah, yeah.

It's so amazing.

Tell you what, I'm not going to be drinking anymore. That I'll tell you right now.

I'll never drink again.

She acts like she's a teenager who had a party and broke a vase. You know what I mean?

And threw up on the carpet.

Never drink again. I'll never have my friends over. I'm grounded for two weeks, at least.

Somebody put Ever Clear in the Kool-Aid, and now the new carpet stanked forever. And I am so sorry. I'll never do it again.

You murdered a dude. Yeah. Holy shit. So anyway, no waiver of rights form was generated during this interview. So they didn't have him sign anything, didn't have him do anything. They just came in and said, "You know your rights, right?" And he said, "Yeah." And they went, "Okay, good." And they kept talking. So after about 28 minutes, when he finally became totally unresponsive during this interview on video, they left and turned the interrogation over to Chief Maguire of the Franklin Police Department and Detective Sonier of the St.

Well, are there anybody from La Place available?

Yeah. Well, they act like that is not a specialty thing.

Yeah.

You're selling a product.

That's so annoying.

Yeah. You're selling a product nobody wants to buy, and that's life in prison at the very least. So you got to be real good at selling that fucking product.

Yeah.

Because yeah, it is not something they want, and you still have to get them to give it to you. That's a lot.

Yeah. That's worse than selling you guys, because this is literally nobody wants this.

Nobody wants this. Nobody wants life in prison. So new interrogators enter the room. He initially ignores them, too. He's like, "I'm not interested." So during the next portion of the videotaped interview, lasting from approximately 1:13 to 1:40 PM, no signed waiver of rights form was obtained again. Eventually, he answered the officer's questions regarding his relationship with Kimberly, the suspected pregnancy, and his bewilderment at why he did the things that he did.

He can't believe it.

He reiterated over and over his belief that his life is over, he kept saying.

Yeah, it's Donald. Yeah.

You got that right. So throughout this portion of the interview, he again stated multiple times that he, "Did not want to talk about it and did not want to talk anymore." Finally, he said, "I want to go back to my cell. I'm through answering questions. Can I leave?" At this point, the cops finally terminated the interview and said, "Well, he's not answering any more questions, so fuck it." Now, this interview lasted about two hours. Only 28 minutes was on videotape. And basically, they said he may the cops say they Mirandized him before they started the videotape going.

Yeah.

That's what happened. Yeah. So the lieutenant said the jail nurse attended to Donald, cleaning some cuts on his face and ear and giving him liquid Tylenol, which will do nothing, I'm sure, unless it's the good stuff.

A little acetaminophen.

Yeah. In addition, Donald's subsequent statements that he wanted to die and that his life was over caused the police to put him on monitored suicide watch, making his sleeping, eating, and drinking routines something they have to stare at, basically. Now, on the videotape of him being booked, the lieutenant's heard stating that he had not wanted to wake him up earlier. Apparently, he went in his cell and went to sleep. So the lieutenant was like, "Hey, didn't want to wake you up earlier to talk to you. It looked like you needed a little rest." During the booking procedure, the lieutenant presented him with a waiver form of rights and had him read it to himself.

Enjoy.

Yeah. Get the best one you can get. So then the lieutenant concluded the explanation by stating something similar to, "There's nobody that can say there's nobody that says you can't call a lawyer or something." So Donald did not continue the discussion regarding counsel, nor did he request counsel at that time. During the remainder of the booking procedure, there was no more questioning about the crime. Instead, regular booking proceedings, mugshot, fingerprints, all that shit. He was also offered a shower, shave, and food as well, cleanup.

Is there handling service here?

What the fuck? Yeah. There's no voicemail for you here. The lieutenant said, "What the fuck should I know if someone called for you? I don't know."

Can I check my voicemail?

Yeah. Then out of nowhere, there's a pause and some time, and Donald just asks, "Did anybody die?" And the lieutenant says, "Yeah." Okay. Lieutenant then told Donald that he would not speak to any of the defendant's family members who may have called until the defendant said that he could, basically. So he said, "Hey, listen. You tell me and I'll talk to them." So the videotape shows him, Donald musing that he would get life, maybe worse.

Yeah, great.

I'll make some statements on the record. So he contacted Chief Maguire, who accompanied Captain Broussard to the defendant's cell. The chief entered Donald's cell, brought him coffee, sat on the bed next to the defendant, and gets a statement. Neither officer recites Miranda warnings, nor was a waiver form signed at this time again. They figured that one must still hold from yesterday, basically.

Somebody else must have done it.

Unbelievable. So the audio recording of this interview is mostly inaudible. This fucking police department is a wreck.

And inaudible?

They don't even know how to tape something. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

God damn it.

They show the encounter with the defendant. They said that the interview concluded at about 9:19 AM. So over an hour. It's good long talk. The conversation with Broussard and the questioning by Chief Maguire lasted less than two hours. And basically, this is how the chief sums up the statement that they received from Donald. Like I said, this is on video, but inaudible. Okay. "He told me that he found out Kimberly was possibly pregnant and that he had left a note wanting to speak with her the day before the incident on the van at Walmart."

Pregnancy kit.

It comes with viral sperm.

A baster and yeah.

Some good sperm.

A frothing machine.

Oh, you got to have that. It's like you're making a cappuccino. You need something.

Whips it up and makes it much more body.

You can just use a cappuccino maker, though, for the same thing. Like where you steam the milk.

For steaming.

It's the same thing. It works. He said he didn't know what kind to pick up and actually picked up the wrong thing, so she had to pick it up.

What is it, Monostat or some shit?

He doesn't even know how to buy a fucking pregnancy test, this goddamn asshole. He brought tampons and was like, "Stick these in you. They'll tell you." They don't tell you what's in there. So he said this is, again, the cop. And I asked him how much it cost, and he said approximately $10. They retrieved the pregnancy test and went to his house. He said that after the pregnancy test was conducted, she didn't tell him or show him whether it was positive or negative. She wanted to leave. He got angry.

Oh, that's Kim's gun.

It's Kim's gun. I just took it from her. And that when he was putting her in the van, pushing her across to the passenger side, that she had a purse in between the two seats and that it was tied with a string and that it had fallen open and the gun had fallen on the floor. How lucky. How lucky.

She's got a loose purse pistol.

How lucky are you? You go to kidnap someone, you don't have any weapons, and a fucking gun falls out on the floor from the victim that you can use, that they didn't think to pull on you.

Turn the roll too fast and whoops a daisy if I'm not armed now.

Wow. Super weird. So he took the gun, he put it in his pants, drove to the Centerville area, which he was familiar with because he had been fishing in that area. So okay. When he drove to that area, he said that Kimberly didn't want to talk to him and that he kept wanting to and that he kept wanting to talk to her. It's clear she doesn't want to talk. He removes the tape from her mouth. He said he balled it up. He didn't remember if he had thrown it on the floor of the van or out the window.

I jumped out the same door she got out and the car kept rolling till it hit a mailbox. That wasn't before.

The mailbox. No. And it's funny because she says he pulled the gun out in the house and he's like, "I didn't get the gun till it fell out of her purse in the car."

In the center console.

You know how it is. He said he jumped in the van, stopped the van, and then started looking for her. He said there was all kinds of people and people were yelling and screaming, and then he thought he heard Kimberly. A lady was standing there and he was asking, "Where was Kim? Where was Kim?" And she wouldn't answer, and the gun went off.

That doesn't happen.

Goes off. He said he then saw a male subject come to the door of that house and he thought he heard something in the house that he thought was Kim, so that's why he went into the house. He said that the male subject reached over towards over a table, toward the sofa, and at that point, he fell on the sofa. He didn't say, "I shot the guy," and he died. He just said he fell on the sofa.

He reached towards the sofa, then fell on it.

A lot of times when I lay down on my sofa, it severs my spinal cord. So I totally get that. It's very normal.

If you're real tired, they do say, "Be gentle. Don't fall into the couch."

You'll absolutely sever your spinal cord. He said he thought the back door was he saw the back door was open and thought it was Kim, so he proceeded out the back looking for Kim. I asked him what he had done with the gun, and he told me that he threw it in the wooded area behind that home. Then he heard sirens, so he jumped into the back of the van, back into the van, and took off. And he had some work gloves on, some black dot work gloves, and he threw the black dot work gloves and the knife out somewhere near Calumet.

Who sold it?

They already talked to Ricky. Yeah, Ricky already came forward here. Ricky's like, "I'm Ricky. They'll blame me. I got to get out from under this."

I'm going to get out ahead of this and let y'all know I am a Ricky. That part is true. Also.

I am Ricky. Hear me roar. So after the conversation in the holding cell, the chief asked Donald if he would like to make a recorded statement, and he agreed. After taking a 40-minute break so that the interrogation room could be set up, I assume the camera and everything like that. So during which time that Donald was allowed to take a shower, spend some time outside, and then he gave a videotaped confession at 10:00 AM in the presence of the chief, the captain, and the lieutenant.

Isn't that called sleeping?

He needs to build up his thinking power, though. It's like, "I can't think right now. I'm going to need to think later. So I got to save up all my thinking for later."

I'm going to need to recharge the batteries to my noodle.

He's a little low here. So the chief stressed the need to get his statement on the record so that the police could check the information that he gave them. You want us to believe you? I need something to go on. Lieutenant reprimanded or reminded, I'm sorry, Donald about the rights that they had discussed the night before and specifically informed him of his right to remain silent. The captain put a cassette tape in the recorder, and Donald informed them that he did not feel comfortable.

In talking?

With the camera on, he's like, "Usually, they're my dicks out when the camera's up. If I take my dick out, would that make anyone else feel uncomfortable? Because I'd feel better if I could."

Have y'all got two ring lights? That's usually enough.

Is that?

I don't shoot with just the one.

I need a because otherwise, there's going to be shadows, really.

Yeah. I need this thing to look.

I don't want to look like a villain. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you could let me even and honestly, if I'm being realistic, put that bouncer on the bottom. Give me an uplight if I got one on top because I like them to meet in the middle and just make my face like a shining star diamond type of thing.

One angle of light casts a shadow on my thigh, and it looks small. I'm going to be honest. When you have two, though, it's like an X marks the spot.

It's like a celestial at that point. It's like a star.

Gives it a halo.

Gives it something here, like a planet.

It's the head reflection.

It's glowing, see? So anyway, he said that, "Obviously, you don't have to talk if you don't want to, but whatever." Now the cops tried to ascertain what aspect of the interview made him feel uncomfortable, specifically questioning his feelings about the audio tape. He responded that he just didn't know what to do. He said, "I just don't know what to do." What makes you uncomfortable? He goes, "I just don't know what I'm doing." So they reiterated they loved to get his statement on record and urged him to read over the rights form.

What the fuck are you doing?

He was, again, urged to read over his rights form so that they could search for the evidence that would support his story. At this point, the videotape reflects that he agreed to give a written consent to search so the officers could search his house. When asked specifically if he was refusing to sign the waiver of rights form, he said that he did not want to talk. They told him that in order to obtain written consent, he would have to, quote, "do his rights too." Do his rights. Then he appeared to want the officers to search his house to find the evidence that would corroborate the information he was telling them so that they could see he was telling the truth.

No.

He then went on to say that he just didn't know what was going to happen to his life. Well, I got a pretty good idea at this point what's going to happen.

I don't know how you don't know.

Yeah. You got a good idea here. So the captain tells him that the judge would appoint a lawyer for him. He doesn't raise the issue of counsel again, but answers the officer's questions, implicating himself in aggravated kidnapping and the shootings of Evelyn and Troy. When the officers conclude the interrogation, they again attempted to have him sign the waiver of rights form, and he told him that the rights on the form were the same ones that were read to him by the lieutenant. He said, "Okay," and then signed the waiver of rights, which usually comes before you make a statement, by the way.

Quick.

So yeah. And then he also made an unrecorded statement to Chief McGuire and Captain Broussard. In the interim, he was allowed to refresh himself, take a shower, and go outside again. He was reminded of the Miranda provisions, which had been thoroughly discussed, obviously. When he expressed yeah, it just keeps going on with this, "What do we do here?" So then he makes a fifth statement, sort of. Okay. This is a call with his brother, Mark.

Nice.

And basically, he talks to his brother Mark from jail and then is mad it's recorded. They're all recorded. That's it.

You're using their phone, man.

Yeah. The only person you can talk to without any sort of supervision is going to be a lawyer. That's it. Nobody else. Maybe a priest, but definitely a lawyer.

But if you're using somebody else's phone, assume that whatever you're saying is being heard by everybody on the planet.

Everybody completely. So apparently, the police said that he was invoking his right to counsel and that further questioning of the police was prohibited. That's when he said, "I don't want to talk to anyone anymore. I want to talk to a lawyer, and I want to go to bed or whatever." So then his brother Mark returned a phone call which the lieutenant had placed at the request of the defendant. Basically, he said, "Can you call my brother?" So they said, "We'll call your brother." They called his brother. They left a message, and then his brother called back.

We're going to be actively listening and recording.

And recording.

Certainly right here.

Yeah. Mark said that would be all right, and however he wanted to do it, that's fine. So I don't care. The lieutenant also said he informed Mark that the telephone conversation would be heard and recorded. They said, "Normally, under circumstances, we don't let anybody talk to inmates, but I figured that he, the defendant, needed to talk to a family member. So I went to my office, opened my office up, got him, brought him into my office, explained to his brother that it'd be on speakerphone, and it's all recorded." They let him talk to his brother, and the lieutenant said, "I stepped out of my office and left a crack in the door about like that, that far open, to let him talk to his brother."

Oh, boy.

He then gave Mark's phone number or he gave Mark Zimmerman's phone number and said, "Call her and ask her why " that's the husband of her. "Call her and ask her why she'd done this to me, why she pushed me to the edge like this. You call Kim up.

Call my—

Harass her more.

Call her old man and ask him why she'd done this to me.

To me. I couldn't get answers for questions at gunpoint, but you call her and see if she'll answer your questions.

Yeah. Call her old man, and that ought to do it.

So this is all this is not good, basically. He expressed sorrow and despair, and he instructed his brother to sell his truck and whatever other possessions he owned in order to provide him with any kind of money here.

Oh, so my truck or sell your truck?

So my truck.

Okay. All right.

So if you know where my truck is, sell it. The title's in here and blah, blah, blah. So Evelyn, recovering in the hospital, sums everything up. She says, "You could see in his eyes that there was evil present. That night was evil."

The whole night. Wow.

The whole night.

The witching hour.

It is the witching hour. It was midnight. 12 midnight, the witching hour.

That's a whole damn night. Yeah.

But Evelyn said she knew beforehand that she was going to live thanks to what she described as a spiritual experience she had while lying on the ground waiting for help to arrive. Also, you lose blood. You start to see things.

You get lightheaded.

Yeah. She said, "I prayed and said, 'God, please don't let me die.' I knew Troy was dead. When he was shot, I felt something move through me and lift me up. I said, 'God, please don't let my kids find me dead.' And then a voice told me that I wasn't going to die. It wasn't my time." So who knows? So whatever. She lived. Now, plea offers. They offer Donald plea deals.

Why?

Plea deals. Because it's just messy. The whole thing's messy and expensive in Louisiana. I don't know if you've seen the state of the economy down there.

Not a lot of infrastructure.

Not a lot of extra cash flying around Louisiana, let's just say. So if you can get somebody to just go to prison forever and shut the fuck up, I guess you do it.

I guess you've also got a lady who's got seven fucking surgeries she's got to deal with.

She's got that. Who knows? So he turns down two plea offers that would have given him life in prison.

Oh.

Okay. He wants to go to trial, damn it.

He really wants to.

I don't know what he's going to prove. If he's convicted of murder, the minimum is life in prison. So what did he think he's going to get? Less than that? I don't know what they're going to find him not guilty. I don't know what he's thinking here.

Yeah. And if he gets a dickhead judge that really wants to prove a point, he could give him life without and then consecutive whatever the fuck for attempted murder.

Who knows? Yeah. So June of 2003, while he's awaiting trial, he sends a letter to Kimberly from prison.

Oh, no.

This fucking lunatic. Okay. Wow. She receives a letter, and she is just horrified by it. I mean, traumatized. She said, "Dearest Kim," I'm sorry. He said, "Dearest Kim, hello, my love." Hello, my love? What the fuck are we talking about? He said, "Well, how are you?" "Well, I'm just fine. I'm fine. Just fine, except for this mess you caused."

So she's the problem.

"You caused this."

Yeah.

Yep. He said, quote, "Someone else shot those people while I was looking for you. Probably drugs had to do with it."

Oh, boy.

He's now telling her, "I didn't shoot those people. While I was looking for you, there was some other madman running around with a gun shooting people."

Probably on drugs.

Yeah. You know how it is around here. Lots of people on drugs.

Wow.

You ran me into a goddamn.

You did this to me.

Yeah.

To me.

In a trailer park, how am I supposed to know there's not some drug man out there just killing folks? And I got.

You know how people are.

I got sewn up on. I couldn't help it. So one month before trial trial's coming. It's one month away. He's decided he wants to represent himself.

Hell yeah.

Because from everything we've seen from him so far, he clearly has the intellect to defend himself in a death penalty case, for sure. So the self-representation was first raised by him on December 10th, 2003, less than a month before trial, after discussing his pro se, the motions he filled out, which duplicated defense motions already acted upon. He just copied the ones his lawyers did. Defense counsel indicated the defendant had more that he wanted to discuss at the hearing. His attorney said, "Your Honor, earlier this afternoon, Ms.

Yeah. It's either me or bad counsel.

Or bad lawyer.

Bad counsel or worst wait.

Not a lawyer or bad lawyer. Which one would you rather have?

Bad counsel or worst counsel? I'll say bad all day.

Maybe bad. He said, "Because Mr. Calwort," that's the lawyer's name, "has failed numerous times to file motions to protect my rights. This is the reason why I've had to file these motions on my own. And being a layman in court proceedings, a lack of knowledge of applying the proper court procedures and articles, and therefore, that's the reasons and causes why I have brought these motions to the court's attention." All of a sudden, he took non-dummy pills for five minutes. He sounds half intelligent.

I'm a layman.

He said, "And they were denied based upon the defendant didn't allow the counsel to file them, and that was one of my arguments in one of the motions I had. And Mr. Calwort has waited 15 days before trial to start preparing a defense, and I believe it's been prejudiced. It's been prejudiced. It's prejudiced me. The time has been two years tomorrow since this occurrence, and now he chooses to put forth an effort to defend me. At no time has he come and seen me since I've been housed at the Department of Corrections at Angola.

Oh, he's at Angola.

And maybe a half dozen times he visited me in New Iberia, but not very briefly."

They're putting him in the worst place.

Yeah. How do they call it New Iberia? What the fuck does that have to do with Portugal and Spain?

Is that what it is?

That's Iberia. Iberian Peninsula is Portugal and Spain. Couldn't think of anything less.

It might be an island area.

It's by water. I mean, I'll give it that, but.

It's swampy.

You are pushing it, people.

Look at this moisture.

There's a lot. There's bugs. I'll tell you that much. He said, "And then in the time we spoke on certain things, we have a total conflict of interest between me and Mr. Calwort. We're not on the same page." That's not a conflict of interest, by the way. That just means.

We're not on the same page? That conflicts with my interests.

Yeah. I don't like that. "In the little time I've talked with Ms. Broussard, I've only met her one time for 45 minutes, and it seems that we have a better communication between the both of us, and state law says the defense lawyers must work with the defendant and give notice."

State law.

State law. "And Mr. Calwort has failed to do that. I can't even make a collect phone call to his office because they won't accept it." Now, a lot of times, by the way, people don't realize is that these people from prison will try to call their lawyer collect like 10 times a day. They're like, "I don't need to talk to this guy 10 times a day. I need to talk to him when I need to talk to him, and I'll get with him. I don't need to get 10 different collect phone calls a day from this idiot."

I don't need to talk to him every time he thinks of something.

That's the thing.

"Wait. I think I've cracked the case. Stop calling me."

They act like that's the only case they're working on or the only thing going on. He said, "And Mr. Calwort " And Mr. Calwort has failed to do that. "I can't even make a collect phone call to his office because he won't accept it. I wrote letters. He hasn't replied back. I had done that with Mr. Gary LaGross too, and they failed to do that as well. So that's why I filed these motions, Your Honor, on two separate occasions asking for Mr. Craig to be dismissed and appoint another counsel." The judge says, "All right, but that doesn't speak to most of what you said.

I'm telling you, no. Let me handle it.

Let me talk to him and see what they say. Get Kim up on this. I'll talk to her. I'll get her to admit it's all her fault. That's what he's thinking in his head too. It's exactly what he's thinking.

Why does he think he's going to do a better job?

Because he's a fucking idiot. Dumb people don't realize how dumb they are. That's one of the I think the keys of being smart is knowing when you don't know something. And just going, "Well, I don't know how to do that. I should get someone." Whereas dumb people are like, "I could probably fix that myself." And then next thing you know, they're standing in knee-deep water.

Yeah. I don't think that he understands.

Bumps are his lawyer.

I think his lawyer's trying to tell him, "Look, the only way to do that is to be counsel, meaning you're not counsel. I am. I'll take care of that." And he's going, "Well, then I'll just do that."

In one breath, he's saying, "I want to represent myself." And then he's saying, "I don't want to represent myself. I just want a different lead counsel." And then he's saying, "But I want to question people." And they're going, "But you have to be the you have to represent yourself to do that." And he's like, "Well, I just want to question him without representing myself, though." He just wants to when he feels like it, he wants to be able to go up basically, he wants to yell at Kim in court and have it be allowed. That's what I think it is. He wants to confront Kim.

Absolutely.

And let her know what she's done wrong and how she caused all this shit, and it's all her fault. And I think he thinks, "If I can get her on the stand and tell her how she caused all this and how wrong she is, then the jury will understand it, and then I'll get to go home." And then maybe they'll put Kim in prison, which would be great for everybody, right? Excellent. I think that's what he's thinking.

It's the strategy that people go into couples counseling, not realizing that the counselor is not judge and jury of your fucking relationship. They're here to point out how you both can heal. That's it. And then one person is going to inevitably come in going, "See? Side with me." And they don't do that. And that's what he wants. He wants the judge to go, "Oh."

Well, he doesn't want he just wants to.

We've gotten it all wrong.

Yeah. This is the dream of every crazy person who's been dumped in a relationship is, "I'd like to get that person on the stand under oath so I could find out exactly what the fuck why they did what they did, blah, blah, blah." This is just a crazy, jealous, possessive person. It's like Ted Bundy wanted to question people. He wanted to control.

In this room.

Yeah. Yeah.

Put it everywhere.

I'll show the world what happened. That's right. So yeah, he goes on. "The motion to represent himself is denied. The motion to participate with counsel in the examination of witnesses or to present argument is also denied."

Denied. Yeah.

So he said.

He can't do that.

That's denied. He said, "If that was the request." So you can't represent yourself. And if you were asking for the thing I think you're asking for, you can't have that either.

Right.

No.

In case.

No ice cream and I believe yeah. No ice cream or candy either. I believe you asked for candy also. You can't have that either.

In case you were asking for sprinkles or butterfingers. No.

That happened. Plain cone is what you're getting. Cherry dip? I don't think so.

No, no, no, no, no.

Plain cone.

Get out.

Okay. So the trial comes up, and there's some pretrial shit here. He wants the identifications from lineups thrown out. He says, "They lined up a six-pack of pictures, as they do, but I had cuts on my face, so they knew that I had been through some shit where the other guys didn't. So they picked me out for cuts."

They're in a pants, and I've had a night.

It's been a long evening. So this is the IDs made by Evelyn and Zeb. He contends that he sustained the cuts to his face and his ear, and that would be shown. He says that out of the six-person lineup, he's the only one with facial injuries and argued that the photo array shown to the witnesses was unduly suggestive, tainting the identifications.

Oh, that's funny.

The defense counsel asked a detective as well as Evelyn Sloan and Zeb LeBlanc whether they noticed that the only person in the six-person photographic array who had cuts on his face was the defendant. None of the three witnesses indicated that they had noticed cuts on the face of the defendant in the pictures. Apparently, the distinction had minor, if any, impact on the eyewitnesses. So they said that looking at the photographic array, the cuts are indeed minor and not such as would be duly suggestive. He doesn't have a big bandage wrapped around his head or anything like that.

Under duress.

Which you have to say, "I want a lawyer and will not talk to you or else they will keep wearing you down." That's how it works. They said that they find nothing to suggest the duration of the various interviews police had with him were too long. The longest interview he had was two hours. That is nothing in an interrogation. It takes two hours to get rapport going sometimes.

The one that he blabbed everything was 45 minutes long.

That's what I mean. 35, I think, or something like that.

Right. Sub-45.

That's wild, man. It's less than a Law and Order episode.

Half a feature film. You don't even get to the part where it shows you why we watched this.

You're mid-second act. There's a big surprise still coming. You don't even know it's part of the plot yet. So the record supports the finding that all of the interrogation sessions were short of short duration, did not last the entirety of the day and a half as maintained by the counsel. All of the officers connected with the questioning of him affirm that he was never threatened, intimidated, made promises, or inducements in order to obtain a statement. The defendant's encounter with Sergeant Driscoll in the early morning hours of December 11th, when he was first arrested and read his rights, lasted mere minutes.

Wow.

So not much. Clearly, the length of time that he was questioned while in custody was not so coercive as to lead to involuntary statements or confessions. This is not Brendan Dassy sitting there for 15 hours going, "I get to watch WrestleMania if I get to go home." None of that.

This is six over a day and a half.

Yeah. Of a 32-year-old man who's been in the system before and knows how this shit works is the other thing. He's been in prison, for Christ's sake. He also complains that the police assaulted him upon his arrest, rendering his subsequent statements involuntary. They assaulted him.

Oh.

Okay. They said the record is unclear as to how the slight scratches on his face and ear occurred. So they don't know here. During a videotape statement taken on December 11th, Donald told Agent Rupert and Lieutenant Gillory that the police inflicted the scratches during the arrest procedure. But to the chief and Captain Broussard, there's an indication that he stated that during his unrecorded statement with them that he scratched that the defendant scratched his ear while running through the woods behind the Sloan trailer looking for Zimmerman and discarding the gun, which makes the most sense.

Real pushover. That's for sure.

Super easy. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in failing to find his statements involuntary. He also argues he was suffering from a head injury, was suicidal, and had been suffering from depression and sleep deprivation in the weeks preceding his arrest due to his breakup with Kim, which rendered his confessions involuntary. He points out to the record his custodial statements that claimed, "I just want to die. My life is over. I have nothing to live for. I just don't want to live no more."

Just shoot me now.

Yeah. And also, they rely on the fact that his self-inflicted head injury after the arrest caused this also.

Right. They tried to open his eggs?

Yeah. And finally, also, they said the defendant complained during some interviews his head hurt and that he was dizzy and that he wanted to lie down, and they let him. They also reflect that the police immediately sought medical attention for him after he rammed his head into the wall. They said, "It wasn't that big of a deal. He had slight redness. We even offered him to go to the hospital. He said he was fine."

And so they let a man with a head injury lay down.

They let him lay down for a while. Yeah. Just go lay down. Have a good I mean, what's the worst that could happen, honestly? Fuck this guy.

Save the world a bunch of money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we know what he did. Everybody knows what he did. There's no mystery here. So I mean, we're not going to kill him, but if he wants to fucking just go to sleep and not wake up, that's fine on our part. So he then argues the police manipulated his need for medical treatment to secure his statement, which is kind of a silly thing because the chief indicated that she would have told the district attorney's office about how he felt that he thought he needed some medication or to talk to a psychiatrist or something.

No.

The defense, this Broussard that he likes so much, touted the fact that the police never found the weapon.

No.

And that gunpowder residue tests on his hands and clothing were not conducted.

Oh, so we don't even know if he didn't have it.

Innocent.

Yeah.

Innocent.

Clearly. Yeah.

Clearly. If that worked, that Caleb Flynn would be going home right now because that don't work, my friend. There's plenty of other evidence here in deep shit. So the prosecution here, they respond that he had ample time and more than one body of water to get rid of the gun during his flight from police. He could have thrown it in any of these places. And reminded jurors that a cellmate of Ledler, Wesley Green, is going to testify that the gun was thrown in the water because Ledler told him that.

Is it Leger or Ledler?

Ledler.

Okay.

Oh, the newspaper misspelled it L-E-G-E-R here. It's Ledler.

Okay.

Okay. Man, they really fuck it all up. Why is that all fucked up? Because it's not on those.

Is it not Leger at the beginning? Did we say Leger?

I thought it was Ledler, I said, right?

No, I thought it was Leger.

Did I say Leger? Oh, maybe not. I just said Donald. Yeah. It was Donald and then Junior. Oh, shit. Maybe it is Leger, and I've been calling him Ledler. Isn't there a basketball player named Ledler? Is that their problem?

Yes. Sean?

Tim?

Tim. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I fucked up.

And he was single syllable.

We're going Donald here.

Donald. Yeah.

So Donald had more than ample time to get thrown in the water. And while admitting to the Franklin police chief that his guilt, he still tried to put himself in a good light, claiming that the gun he used that night was actually Kim's gun. So he didn't even bring it up. During the confession, they said that Donald told them that while in the Sloan front yard, quote, "The gun just went off," and that he went inside the trailer and the man had, quote, "Just fallen over."

Oh.

He said.

He wasn't shot.

No. The hole in his head is completely irrelevant to this situation. Don't know how that happened, but he just fell over.

Sometimes when your neck fractures, breaks, pops, shit just flies out of your neck.

You know how it goes. Pop, pop, pop. Your spinal cord goes.

It was not a bullet.

Hole in your cheek. They also said that not only that, he was on parole and early release from two prior felony convictions when he kidnapped his girlfriend at gunpoint and then raided the home of Evelyn and Troy. He said this was a home invasion that resulted in the slaughter of a husband and father, but for the grace of God, the slaughter of a wife and mother. So the state presents a shitload of evidence that he committed the murder, obviously, during the preparation of an aggravated kidnap or perpetration of the aggravated kidnapping and an aggravated burglary, and that he had specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person.

Sometimes you look at the chest instead of the face.

You never know. Yeah. Well, if you got a dick, you do sometimes. After the shooting, the defendant here led the police on a high-speed chase. Officers never lost sight of the blue van in which he attempted his getaway, even though he periodically shut off his headlights and drove through fields. They show the pregnancy test, the wraps, everything corroborating Tim's shit. They also talk about the gloves he threw out the window. And yeah, they said the prosecuting attorney, the defense is, "There's no evidence that linked those to him."

Wow.

Well, he threw them out the window, and we watched him do it, and then we went back and picked them up. I mean, how many times have you watching Cops or something or Live PD when somebody throws a goddamn drugs out the window, they go back and get it, and they don't go, "Well, you can't prove that's mine. It's 10 feet away from me." They go, "No, I saw you throw it out. That's yours, and you're under arrest." That's it.

The whole front of that car has cameras on it. I watched it happen.

Yeah. We watched it. Plus, there's a camera crew in my car. There's a guy with a boom mic, for Christ's sake. We all saw it.

It's nine guys that went back to get it.

So many. All his statements are played for the jury. Okay? And at trial, the lieutenant testifies that he told the brother Mark that the line was recorded and that it would be on speakerphone and that officers would be able to hear it.

Idiot.

On cross-examination, though, the lieutenant conceded he did not tell Donald the line was recorded. However, he stated the telephone itself is marked as a recorded line. So there's a sign there saying this is recorded.

It's above. It's not even on the phone. It's like you're looking at it while you talk.

Well, this is the office phone. This wasn't his prisoner phone. This was the lieutenant's office phone, but it's still recorded. I guess.

Yeah. Everything's.

Every phone in the station is recorded all the time. And it says it on every phone. So now Mark testified he heard a tone on the line that he assumed was the telephone being taken off the speakerphone, and the lieutenant disputed that fact, saying that the receiver of the phone was never picked up because it had to be on speaker. When asked whether he thought the defendant had an exception, an expectation of privacy in the conversation, the lieutenant questioned how the defendant could have thought he was having a private conversation with the conversation being on speakerphone in a lieutenant's office with me standing four feet away looking at him through the door and hearing the whole conversation.

Amazing.

There's no expectation of privacy there. You're not in your room at night with the door closed. This is crazy. Like in your home. Kimberly also said she gets up there and gives her harrowing tale, which is enough. Between her and Evelyn.

It's pretty amazing.

The jury's going to hate him. Hate him. And Zeb.

Are they going to put Zeb up there? Because Zeb's got the best story.

And Zeb gets up there and said, "I finally had a dad. Now I have no one to go to for advice. This poor woman's saying he was threatening to kill me and fucking tied my hands up. Evelyn, he shot this poor woman. She can't shit right for the rest of her fucking life. Her husband's dead. Her kids are fucking traumatized.

Seven surgeries, every organ affected. That's fucked up.

Unreal. Unreal. And she talks about how he said, "You've got 20 minutes to talk to me, and I'm going to put you in the water where no one will ever find you." Kim said, "I was begging him not to do it, and I knew I was going to jump out." She said, "By the time they crossed a bridge and she saw Bayou, she had her left hand free and managed to release the seat belt without him knowing." So she got the little pull-up on the seat belt. So it was loose. And that way, she could just boom, burst out in one shot.

She just let go of the seat belt. It slaps as she hits the door.

That's it.

Fascinating.

When they reached the Bayou-Tesh Bridge in Centerville, that's when Ledler told her, "We're almost there," which then she knew it was time to get the fuck out of there. There is a defense witness here. Okay. The state rests its case. The defense here, the lawyer Broussard, accuses Lieutenant Gillory of having intimidated Ledler into a confession.

Leger.

Leger. God damn it. They said, "Did you say to him, 'I killed a nom. I can kill again'?" And this Gillory denied that, as well as another accusation by Broussard that Donald was threatened with being shot in a staged escape attempt. "We'll pretend like you're escaping and shoot you."

Oh.

We didn't say that. So in closings, the prosecution here said, "If he couldn't have her, no one else would. He wanted sex, and she refused him." There you go. And also, the fact that she was going back to her husband, he couldn't take it anymore.

Right.

Kimberly had told the 911 operator she thought that the gunshots meant that Donald had killed himself, but that turned out not to be the case. Quote, "That's when the defendant raided a man's castle, shot him in his own house, and brought terror to an entire neighborhood. Troy was hit in the face and died instantly when his spinal cord was severed." And he says, "Why?" Because Donald was convinced that the Sloans were hiding Zimmerman and that he was going to find her evidence by his own words to his brother in a taped phone conversation after his arrest.

Is one of them the one that he has?

That would be the one he has, the old 9-millimeter Beretta. And the lawyer said, "And there's more. After his arrest, the defendant slowly and surely admits his guilt. But it's a classical criminal response to put the blame on someone else. He was recorded telling investigators that, 'I messed up. I lost it. My life is over. Something's wrong with me. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison or worse.'" He said his phone call at the department to his brother where he admits his guilt was not privileged, as they tried to claim. But even in that conversation, he slanted the truth to put himself in a better light.

Okay.

So then you discount them.

Just throw them out in your own mind. Yeah.

Then you only have the evidence of several eyewitnesses who watched him do that and were shot by him. So throw them out. I would say, if you're the prosecution, you can almost say, "Fine, throw them out."

Don't think about them.

I'll put Evelyn on the stand. That's all I really need.

Especially that little kid. Yeah.

You can have everybody, anything else you want. We will put Evelyn and Kimberly and Zeb on the stand, and that's our whole fucking case. And you can.

It's all we need.

You can cash it in. I'll be eating a hamburger while you're doing your thing. I won't even worry about what you're doing.

We're going to ask him questions. You cross him, by the way.

Oh, say whatever you want. Enjoy.

Just bring lots of extra barbecue because fries and barbecue is delicious.

Do cross on a woman who doesn't shit right and whose husband's dead and she's upset about it. Do cross on her.

While I eat America's favorite fries.

We'll do that. Yeah. While she changes her fucking bag out, I'll eat the fries. So the verdict comes in here. This, by the way, jury deliberates for an hour and a half.

Oh, that's fast.

That's real fast. He is found guilty of first-degree murder. Now, the same jury will be deciding whether it's death row or life sentence without parole.

Oh, boy.

So during sentencing, the prosecution presents the testimony of Evelyn, obviously, Zeb, also the stepson, another different stepson here, the victim's mother, Danette Boykin, Troy's sister-in-law, also Ricky Cook, who, by the way, is not a coworker. He's apparently his boss, Donald's boss.

His boss sold him a gun?

Sold him a gun.

Wow.

They got him. Oh, yes. And then there's also Troy's employer who testified to individual characteristics of Troy and the impact of his death on their lives and the lives of the family members. And finally, they put up Kim Zimmerman.

Oh, boy.

Who said that basically, she's been terrified. He got a letter. She got a letter, basically, that she felt was threatening, urging her not to testify against him and all that kind of shit. So yeah, the victim impact, they talk a lot about Troy's kids. All these kids are going to miss him. They said none were considered stepchildren by Troy. They were all his equally. They said, "It's going to be hardest on poor little seven-year-old Mary."

Great point.

Yeah. They said since the Boykins live in that's the in-laws she's staying with, live in Baldwin. Zeb and Mary stayed with other relatives in Centerville until school started. So she was separated from her children now, too. The sister said, "We took care of Evelyn for three months, treating her wounds, helping her through her anger and her anxiety." Okay. Then Zeb talked about Mary, too. Zeb said, "She's a little tomboy. I guess she was a son to him, too. She kissed the ground that he walked on, and he felt the same about her."

An employee of the jail?

Yeah. An employee of the jail testified that. Kenneth LeBlanc and Kenneth Baquet, B-A-Q-U-E, testified about a prison ministry group to which they belong and how they met Donald through that group during his previous incarcerations. By the way, talking about how great he was during his previous incarcerations is not a good argument because then he got out and murdered somebody.

Kept going. Yeah.

Kept going.

Did worse shit.

That shows he's fine in jail, but then when he gets out, he can't handle that. It's the worst. They testified to their knowledge of his strong faith and desire to have a wife and children. He said, "All he ever talked about is he wants to get married and have a family and have faith." He didn't do any of those things, but he really wanted to. He really wanted to have faith and go to church and get married.

He's fucking somebody else's wife and thinks he got her pregnant.

Wow. This LeBlanc also testified about the lack of parental support that he received. And finally, his brother, Mark, testified about the family life, the abusive alcoholic father, him being kicked out at 16. Now, Mark went on to be a sergeant in the US Army. He said that the four children that had the alcoholic father, who was also abusive to their mother, Mark is the only one who's done well for himself. He said, "Everybody else is a fucking mess." He said, "I had a high school coach that put me on the right track that resulted in me being the only kid to succeed out of our family."

Oh, Jesus.

Good. We need more of these genetics flooding the fucking space here.

In nine years, she had five kids, meaning every other year she's throwing out another kid.

Eight years. Yeah. That's crazy. 16 to 24. And 16, that's crazy right there.

That's rape. Well, in some states.

She might have been he was probably 16, too, or who knows. Down there, who knows. Their parents, who moved from Patterson to Hackberry almost 20 years ago, have never been there for any of us, he said. "They didn't even come to my wedding 14 years ago. And that's my whole life story and Donald's, too." He said, "But Donald never had the support I had." He said, "Donald looks at things differently than I do. He's always been held down and seen as an underachiever, a troublemaker. I'm the only one who saw his potential." He said he saw a dramatic change in Donald while he was in prison.

Ah, shit.

And considering the death penalty, he told the jury they had already cited three aggravating circumstances when they found him guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated burglary, and causing the risk of great bodily harm or death to more than one person. He said no remorse has been shown by the defendant. He's only been worried about himself. They also argued, the defense argued, that they had no way to know. The jury had no way to know that Donald was going to kill Zimmerman and that the death was not premeditated.

Middle of the road.

He said, "Did he have a right to do it? No. Does he deserve to be punished? Yes. But you should also look at his other character traits." Yeah. He said, "He's not the worst type of offender. If you give him the chance to go back to his faith, he can be redeemed."

He was going to go door to door to find her.

Killing people.

Until he gave up.

Or ran out of bullets. One of the things.

He just gave up after the first one.

Yeah. He had already killed a guy. I was like, "Shit, I better get out of here. Everyone's calling 911." The prosecution rebuttal said, "Did his Catholic faith affect his decisions when he tried to kill Zimmerman and shot the Sloans? Donald has earned a sentence of death," is what they said. So let's find out what the jury finds. Under two hours of deliberation, they find he was, one, engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of an aggravated kidnapping or second-degree kidnapping. These are the aggravators.

You will die about that in Louisiana.

He kind of earned that one, I got to say. He went about everything. I just mean, in court, he had to expect that's what he's going to get when he went about what he did the way he did it and the way he wouldn't admit to it and shows no remorse.

He's a dangerous, dangerous man. He shot a woman in the gut, probably expecting that she would die.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Close range. Pow, right here.

All the way through.

Same way Lee Harvey Oswald got shot. That's exactly the way she got shot. Jack Ruby came up and plugged her. That's what happened here.

God damn.

So Evelyn, right after this decision, she puts a thing in the papers, an editorial sends out to all the newspapers here, saying, "Thank you for each act of kindness and comfort." Saying thank you for each act of kindness and comfort just doesn't seem to be enough to express my feelings. I've found no word to truly express my gratitude to each of you. Life has moved on fairly steadily for many of you, but there are those of you who understand that each day will always be a challenge in many lives to put things together.

That would be fun.

Yeah. I felt compelled to tell you now this. Many months ago, I had the let go and let God. All that was supposed to happen with the outcome of the trial was out of my hands and given to God. I believe that you would be a voice of God's will, whatever the verdict and sentence would be, not mine or anyone else's. To ask what I wanted never was important. I have always felt there's a reason for all things and a time for it. I want to let each of you know that I'm sure it was hard for each of you, and no matter what the choice was, it was the one God wanted.

Nice.

A bed and breakfast that she owns.

Oh, Jesus, that's weird.

That's real weird. Yeah. The first time she saw Donald again was at his grand jury hearing where he was indicted. She said, "He would never face me, not even at trial. He didn't come from a very good family, but he wasn't stupid. None of what he did was a legal act of insanity."

He didn't even look at her.

She said she's conflicted at times about the death penalty, she said, but she's decided that it's to leave it in God's hands. She said, "I thought if God moves one juror to be against the death penalty, then it won't be. I believe in fate. You have to go through this. Staying involved in the legal aspect was important so I could be the voice of Troy, my children, and Troy's family." She said she said her children will always be credited with giving her the will to survive.

He didn't say, "I want a lawyer." He just said, "I don't want to talk anymore."

Yeah. But he never said, "I want a fucking citizenship."

If he said, "I want a lawyer."

Yeah. So the court says, "We agree with the state's concession. We find that the lieutenant and agent Rupert failed to honor his invocation of his right to remain silent and that his statements during the portion of the interview after he first invoked the right to remain silent should not have been admitted into evidence. We also find that continued interrogation by Chief McGuire and Detective Sonier did not scrupulously honor the defendant's invocation of his constitutional right to remain silent." The police practices on display here are specifically prescribed in Mosley, "Where the police failed to honor a decision of a person in custody to cut off questioning either by refusing to discontinue the interrogation upon making or upon request or persisting in repeated efforts to wear down his resistance and make him change his mind."

It is hilarious, but.

Yeah.

But.

We can't be doing this.

We can't be doing it. I mean, it's fun. Don't get me wrong.

It's very funny. They said that, "We hold the trial court abused its discretion in failing to suppress the portion of the first videotape statement after the point where he said that he want to cut off questioning." So one finding of error doesn't finish all this. So the court must determine whether the error was harmless, and that's what they're going to discuss. Also, about the second statement, they said they have to assess whether it was obtained in violation of his right to remain silent or whether the interrogation resulting in the first statement tainted the second one.

A goose stepping around his chair.

Yeah. He's just whistling fucking Dixie over here. I'm jerking off. So the Miranda warning were again discussed with the defendant who signed the waiver rights form. We also note that the lieutenant did not follow the defendant's lead and begin interrogating him. The lieutenant merely answered the questions asked independently by the defendant. They said, "Police are not obliged to ignore spontaneous and unsolicited statements by someone in custody as long as those statements do not result from police-initiated custodial interrogation or questioning reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response."

Yeah.

That can still be used.

That's usable. Yeah. They didn't interrogate that out of you. You volunteered that.

It's not everything after that.

Yeah. It doesn't just end the world when you do that.

You got to shut the fuck up at the same time.

Yeah. The third statement, unrecorded statement, they said they're talking about whether that one is a violation. And they said there was no evidence indicates he received a new set of Miranda warnings. However, the defendant, a veteran of the criminal justice system, had received a full set of warnings from the lieutenant at booking in the previous evening, and the advice was presumably fresh on his mind a few hours later when he agreed that he would talk to the captain.

He should know.

He said basically he should know that shit. The fourth statement, he offered to sign a consent to search his house because he appeared eager for the police to collect the evidence, which he said would free him. The police told him that a waiver of rights had to be done at the same time as his voluntary consent to search. He now complains that this trickery coerced him into making a recorded statement.

Trickery.

They said, "Ploys to mislead a suspect that do not rise to the level of compulsion or coercion to speak are not within Miranda concerns." You can trick people. That's allowed.

Right.

Perfectly allowed for the cops to lie to you, trick you, do all that shit. They can say anything.

They use all kinds of weird tactics.

All kinds of shit here. So they go really into detail about that whole thing. They said the videotape of the booking reveals that he immediately responded, "Yeah, I'm going to need a lawyer, though," and the lieutenant explaining the procedure about obtaining appointed counsel as opposed to hiring one. Was he subject to interrogation at the time of his booking? And they say that the lieutenant's words and actions at that time were not the functional equivalent of questioning, but rather words or actions, part of the normal police attendant thing that they do with arrest and custody.

Oh, he wrote, "Give them what they deserve."

Yeah. You also put something about they asked you a question about the defense attorney, what you think about the defense attorney, and you put, "Why do they need them? If arrested, he must be guilty."

What?

Never put that person on a jury.

Oh, this is the prosecution's rules over people like this.

What drink?

They don't want it to be fair. They want to win. That's what's crazy.

Wow.

The prosecution, they're not being paid to win. They're being paid for justice. So they should try to be 1,000% fair. I get then they can't run for office and say they have a 99% conviction rate, but.

That guy.

You got to stop with this shit.

That guy's a problem on a jury, though.

Fuck, yes. Then he said, "Okay, is that how you feel if they're arrested?" And this guy said, "Well, I feel if he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he's guilty."

Okay.

Okay.

He got through the facts to know that.

By the way, we both said, "Okay." The defense counsel said, "Okay." It's exactly what they said too. At this point, is life an option or the only? And this guy said, "Well, I mean, now that I understand the proceedings, I can keep an open mind." And they said, "Okay, you put down give them what they deserve. You favor the death penalty." And he said, "Give them life or death." Okay. So they go back and forth and they say, "So you did do that, but you're backing off of this a little now?" And he says, "Yes."

He was?

Absolutely. Another juror, Ginny Raymond, they said, "Do you think it's proper for them to push the death penalty?" She said, "Yes." "Do you have a problem with them seeking the death penalty?" "No." "Yada, yada, could you consider?" Then they said, "Ms. Raymond, I'll ask you the same question. If they prove beyond a reasonable doubt my client was guilty of first-degree murder and an aggravating circumstance exists, would you automatically vote for the death penalty?" And she said, "Yes, I would." Okay. Anthony Parker, one more.

Because you were given two options and you chose a third. You fucking moron.

You chose a third. It came to the fork in the road and went straight, my friend. That's not part of it. Fuck is wrong with you.

Idiot.

So they said, "On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the strongest, 1 being the weakest, what is your position in regards to the death penalty?" And he said, "10." Love it. Love it. Can't wait.

Yes.

I love my tax dollars being wasted.

That's my answer. Yes.

Yeah. You know how there's nothing for kids to do around here? Good, because all my money's going into this. And that's what I want. So fucking goddamn ignorance. So they said, "Anyway, the defense counsel posed only one question to Mr. Parker. Would you automatically vote for the death penalty?" And he's responded, "Yes." And they said.

Yes.

I have no other questions. And they went, "He's on the jury."

Affirmed.

Affirmed. Oh, my God.

Wow.

Then there's another one here, a lady who doesn't like the death penalty. She says it's fine and proper for the state to have a death penalty and to try to impose it, but she said that she said it's a hard decision to make, and I would rather not make it. I don't want any part of this. She said, "I would rather see the person go to life in prison than death." And she didn't say it for even mushy. She said, "I would rather them sit there and think about what they did rather than just be gone." And I thought, is that helping? And there's a lot of appeals and all that.

Wow.

So they got to get 12 people who love the death penalty. There are 10. All 12 of those people are whatever, just some of those people to say they don't want you to have the death penalty, which is why there's so many times that the death penalty gets called.

Get people that are saying life or death.

Yeah.

And I'd prefer the one that's cheaper, death. What? You idiot.

It's crazy. He also tries to argue an act of passion. This was an act of passion.

Oh.

So you bought a gun three days ago, taped her up, drove. That's a lot of passion. You're a very passionate man, sir.

I love all.

Your passion less hours. Quite a lot of passion you have there, sir.

Crime of passion. I hunted a woman down.

Wow.

And then didn't kill her.

No. After buying a gun partially on fucking.

Partially layaway to gun through a friend.

Yeah. Got that. This is crazy. Then there's the craziest one. He tries to bring up a racial issue.

Oh.

He's white. Troy and Evelyn are black.

Oh.

He's white. He ran into a black man's house and shot him. And they're like, "There's a racial." No, there's no racial issue here because also, that was never brought up in trial at all. That was never brought up. It didn't matter. It wasn't even a factor. They were just people in their trailer. It had nothing to do with.

But the victim and the perpetrator are opposite colors. Therefore, there's a race issue.

Yeah. And it's like, that's not the issue, though, here. You're not getting that. And most of the jurors are white, too. So you're not going to get extra stank from them over that. So anyway, this Louisiana Supreme Court found no reversible error. They did find a bunch of errors they made because they seem to kind of fly by the seat of their ass down there, even in 2001. No reversible error in the arguments and affirm both the conviction and the death sentence. Now, there is a really, really hefty dissent in this one from one of the I mean, it is long detailed, and they are like, "No, no, no, no, no.

It's absolutely.

Perfect. 2009, he sues because he claims he can't effectively practice Catholicism in prison.

Oh.

He's okay.

Oh, I need to do the Stations of the Cross, James.

I need to do stuff. Well, they said the prison officials unfairly limited Sunday television services on death row to Baptist or Pentecostal services.

Yeah, there's nothing in Latin. This is bullshit.

You can't do it. So he complained he was unable to participate in Catholic Mass because that's the only way they could do it from TV. So the ACLU and him come together to make an agreement. By the way, religious people hate the ACLU. They fight for religious rights more than anybody, which is hilarious. But all these, if you tell somebody in Louisiana, "What do you think of the ACLU?"

Yeah.

Sit back and get ready for your hair to blow back because they're going to tell you how much them liberal woke sons of bitches and this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's for anybody. So they fucking defend Nazis all the time. It doesn't matter. It's a free speech issue. So anyway, they filed a settlement securing the right of Donald to practice Catholic faith by participating in Catholic Mass and confession. So apparently, he sued them after being unable to do that. Now, he is able to do that.

They pop in from time to time.

I mean, when they're visiting clients, they're here, but.

Put the briefcase and shit.

They don't stay over is the thing. They will walk out there. The Catholic Church will have the same opportunity to hold Mass that other denominations enjoy on death row, and he will be allowed to fully private confessional visits with a priest.

Wow.

And also, the agreement also ensures, and this would be important for me, that prisoners on death row will not be compelled to listen to religious programs.

You don't have to.

I would be begging for the needle if you fucking put that on every week. Begging, please, God, fucking inject me. I swear to God. Put Windex in my fucking neck. I don't care.

The only.

I want out.

We get to watch.

They said the ACLU has long stood for the religious rights of everyone. Donald Leaguer simply wanted to practice his Catholic faith. Those on death row, like anyone else, should have the opportunity. July 2023, there are 56 requests for clemency from the Louisiana Pardon Board because Louisiana resumes executions, including Donald. And the governor wrote a letter to the Pardon Board asking for hearings to be set in the cases. And the Pardon Board began to comply, but opposition erupted from the district attorney.

Oh.

I'd charge him for making sure people's civil liberties are protected. What are you talking about? Love you, Evelyn, but that's a little much for me.

But James, it's already been set in stone, so we can't.

Set.

Can't walk over those stones.

No, they're set. As of now, he's still on death row. And the property that the murder trailer was on is valued at $84,000.

Wow.

On there. So there's something on it.

That's a pretty nice one.

I guess so. It has to be. I think there's a decent amount of land, too. I think there's a little bit there.

It's nicer than that first house.

I would hope so. Shit, the first house was unlivable. So there you go, everybody. There is Franklin, Louisiana. Hope you enjoyed that very quickly here. If you did, get on whatever app you're on and give us five stars. It helps so much. Double thumbs up on Netflix. That is also extremely helpful. Thank you for doing that. You can follow on social media at Small Town Murder on Instagram, Small Town Pod on Facebook. You can definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Get all of your everything, all your merchandise, all your tickets for live shows.

This is executive producer Gary Howard in Livingston, Texas.

Hey, hang in there.

Penny Boyce, Larry Butterfast wants you to know that Ty never goes to the runner.

Ty never goes to the no, that's just weird. It's to the.

He wants you to know he is very angry that that was possible innuendo on this.

That's playground rules is what that is.

Yeah.

Yes. I know that.

Happy hours in Splendora, Texas. So we have one in Livingston and one in Splendora, and I believe those are their homes. I don't want to give that too much.

Oh, boy.

I don't know what's what. But thank you both. You dirtbag truckers, you're the best.

Thank you. Thank you.

Cat Ayala is still around. Do you remember her?

Fuck yeah, I do. From Iceland or.

She's wonderful.

Is it Iceland? Northern Europe somewhere.

Yeah.

Finland, Iceland.

She's Nordic somehow.

Yeah. Cool, though. Thank you.

Her name is Cat, spelled with an R. You figure it out.

You look and you're like, "Cart? Nope. Okay."

Yeah. No, not even close.

She's a random woman.

Stephanie, thank you. Stephanie Hirsch got married for the fourth time, and she thinks.

My Christ.

That's going to be lucky. So good for Steph.

If not, you have no one to blame but yourself, sweetheart. That's how it works.

Yeah. Congratulations on getting half of three men's shit already.

But it's a freeing thing knowing that, okay, if this goes wrong, it's all my fault. I know not to blame anyone else. It's me.

Who gives a shit?

I love when it's me. At least then I know.

Yeah. At least getting the validation.

Yeah.

Julie Crook and Big Kahuna Curly, thank you all so much for what you're doing.

Thank you.

Other producers this week, Peyton Meadows, Dale Olson, Janice Hill, Leslie Jacobs, Heather Peltier. Chad H, Hannah Crosson, Seymour Butts. I'm sure that's a real person. Diesel247 is probably a real person.

Oh, he's there.

Terry Skirrow.

Give me a name.

Yeah. I mean.

Is that your Christian name, 247?

Yeah. 247 kids.

Whatever it is. Yeah. That's your first name, right? I don't know which one's your Christian name. Is that your first name or your last name?

I think it's just the whole name.

No idea. Keep going.

Governor is the whole name. I don't know. Heather Rowe, Tinker Bell, Terry Spiro, Caitlin Hildebrand, Basil Saar, Basil, Hazel, Dosius, Dojos, Dojois. Tiffany was the last name. Robert Garrett, Lauren Walker, WG Mike, Haley Anderson, Dana Davenport, Patricia McGuire, Elise with no last name. Colin Newman, Stacey Baker got two patrons. Thank you, Stacey. Unless you didn't mean to do that.

Well, then cancel one. Jesus.

Go check.

You don't want to take money you don't want to give us. Christ.

Delete one that you don't need to. Tamsi, Tamsi, 85. Mike Herve, Ashley with no last name. Tim Huxel, Huxel, Downtown Tony Brown, Jackie Mead, Jason Sawatizek, Jeane, Janae, Cinquegrana, Cinque, Cinquegrana, Timothy Dotridge, Marguerite Puenta, Mind Distortion, Rosie Seidel, Nancy Edwards, Emily Walker, Madison Grant, Penny Wilson, Danielle Carter, Mike B, Mayhem with no last name.

Bednarek?

Brian.

Chuck.

Blankenship. Was that Bednarek?

I said Bednarek, like Chuck, the gold football player.

Bednarek. That's probably it.

He went both ways.

Bednarek. PJ, no last name. Chuck Miller, Corey Schmitz, Paula Jo Jesser, Ruth Widyanto, Cassie B, Ryan Manfredi, Jerianne Brumley, Dean DePhillips, Stacey Mackie, Lauren with no last name, Laura with no last name, April Webb Jr. from Tampa, Sophia with no last name, Jen with no last name, Summer Pike Smith, Tom Carver, Steph Clemons, Jacob Westfall, Sandra Welch, AMS, Susie, Lindsay Moore, Colleen Bellows, Laura, Lovelady Cooper, Kay Marg, Belinda Poole Marin with no last name, Steve Dornaman, Cat with no last name, Janice with no last name, Matthew Archuleta, Wendy Visconti, Justin Tache, Taj, Tachi, Susan Junker, Tasha Phillips, Nicole Robinson, Shelby with no last name, Kristen Burrell, Bernie B, Cindy with no last name, Winchester Gurley, Tyler Fox, Faith Rather, Mario Castaneda, Megan Davis, Divest, Karen Thompson, Susan Pericchia, Dylan Curton, Alicia Lee, A.

Thank you, everybody, so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. God damn it, we appreciate all that you do for us all the time. Thank you for being there. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your money. Thanks for telling people everything. Keep coming back and seeing us week after week here. We will be here, and we're not going anywhere. You want to find us? Check out shutupandgivememurder.com. All the social media stuff is on there. You can find us. We're easy to track down. So keep doing that. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

Bye.