Deadly Small-Town Secrets: The Reporter Who Risked Everything for the Jeff Davis 8

Summary

Truer Crime: Deadly Small-Town Secrets — The Reporter Who Risked Everything for the Jeff Davis 8

Host: Celisia Stanton
Guest: Ethan Brown
Release Date: March 13, 2025

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Introduction

In the gripping Season 2 episode of Truer Crime, host Celisia Stanton delves deep into the harrowing case of the Jeff Davis 8, uncovering layers of corruption, human trafficking, and systemic failure in Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana. The episode features an in-depth conversation with Ethan Brown, the investigative reporter whose persistent efforts have shed light on this convoluted and tragic series of murders.

Ethan Brown’s Journey into the Jeff Davis 8 Case

Ethan Brown’s interest in the Jeff Davis 8 case ignited in 2009 while working as an investigator for a law office in New Orleans. His curiosity was piqued by the unsettling presence of billboards on Highway I-10, displaying the faces of all eight murdered women, combined with a compelling New York Times article by Campbell Robertson.

Ethan Brown [02:54]: “I started working for an investigator at a law office in New Orleans... I would pass images of the eight women every time I went out there.”

Brown recognized the disturbing frequency of the murders in such a small area, drawing parallels to the crack epidemics of the 1980s but localized in rural, white Louisiana. His background includes authoring four books on crime and criminal justice, contributing to major publications, and assisting attorneys in death penalty cases.

Investigating Local Corruption and Human Trafficking

Determined to unearth the truth, Brown visited Jeff Davis Parish in the summer of 2011, engaging with local families and uncovering alarming accounts of corruption within the sheriff's department. His investigations revealed a human trafficking ring operating out of the local jail, involving connections to high-profile individuals, including a former Louisiana congressman.

Celicia Stanton [05:16]: "Ethan actually wrote a book called Queens Reign Supreme about crack kingpins... these parallels... all stayed with him as he continued his investigative work."

Relationship with Frankie Richard

A pivotal figure in Brown’s investigation was Frankie Richard, a central suspect linked to several of the murders. Known for his violent reputation and connections to drug trafficking, Frankie maintained an enigmatic relationship with Brown, characterized by frequent phone calls and bizarre requests.

Ethan Brown [08:15]: “He sort of lumped in media people altogether... It was really bizarre.”

Celicia draws parallels between Frankie’s manipulative behavior and his ability to weave a network of loyal yet potentially dangerous contacts, highlighting the complexity of his character and the challenges he posed to the investigation.

Challenges and Hostility from Law Enforcement

As Brown's reporting gained traction, he faced escalating hostility from local law enforcement. After publishing his detailed Medium article in 2014, aimed to appear in GQ magazine, the sheriff's office and local media launched a smear campaign against him, questioning his credibility and intent.

Ethan Brown [15:25]: “The sheriff published a message about me on the actual sheriff's office website that was like really nuts.”

This backlash not only threatened Brown’s safety but also underscored the deep-seated corruption and resistance to accountability within the parish's power structures.

The Informant System and Its Dangers

A significant revelation in the episode is that all eight victims served as informants for local law enforcement. Brown explains the precarious nature of these relationships, especially in an environment rife with corruption and limited protections for informants.

Ethan Brown [23:18]: “Police departments and sheriff's offices have people who are informants but it's much more informal... They just sort of do their thing.”

Celicia emphasizes the heightened risks these women faced, caught in a system that exploited them for information while failing to ensure their safety or justice.

Failures of the Investigation and Task Force

Brown critiques the multi-agency task force initiated in 2008-2009 to solve the Jeff Davis 8 homicides, highlighting severe deficiencies in investigative practices, poor interview conduct, and blatant conflicts of interest.

Ethan Brown [29:45]: “The interviews are conducted very poorly... witnesses were telling them all these horrible things about the sheriff's office.”

The task force's collapse by 2012, due to inadequate efforts and internal conflicts, left the cases unresolved, perpetuating the cycle of injustice and impunity.

Hope for Resolution and Ongoing Efforts

Despite the decades-long impasse, Brown remains cautiously optimistic about achieving justice. He commends the new sheriff’s office for its commitment to solving select cases and challenging entrenched power dynamics.

Ethan Brown [33:20]: “I do think there's hope for the cases. I met the new sheriff last summer and I was really impressed by how smart they are.”

Brown also uncovers connections to influential figures, such as the prominent congressman involved with the Boudreaux Inn, suggesting that powerful interests may still be obstructing the quest for truth and accountability.

The Importance of Bearing Witness

Celicia reflects on the emotional toll the case has taken on the community and the critical role of investigators like Brown in keeping the memories of the victims alive. The act of bearing witness serves as a beacon of hope for the grieving families and a reminder of the systemic failures that need to be addressed.

Ethan Brown [36:54]: “Just knowing that people are interested in [the case]... it's very easy to despair and feel isolated... So, yeah, whatever people can do to say that they're out there and listening and interested is fantastic.”

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a powerful call to action, urging listeners to remember the victims and support ongoing efforts to unravel the deeply embedded corruption in Jefferson Davis Parish. Celicia Stanton recommends Ethan Brown’s book, Murder in the Bayou, and a five-part documentary series by Showtime for those seeking to further explore the intricate web of deceit and tragedy that defines the Jeff Davis 8 case.

Celicia Stanton [35:48]: “Do whatever you can do to make sure that this case isn't forgotten, that the women aren't forgotten, that people still care about it.”

Ethan Brown continues his vital work with the Garrison Project, aiming to expose and address mass incarceration and policing issues through meticulous investigative reporting.

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For more true crime stories and updates, follow Celisia Stanton on Instagram, TikTok (@helicastanton), or subscribe to her weekly newsletter at [e-mail].

Transcript

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[Celicia]

Hi friends, I'm so excited to share this new season two episode of True or Crime with you. If you want an ad free listening experience, subscribe to Tenderfoot [e-mail] or on Apple Podcasts. Hey friends, I am super excited to share something special with you today. A conversation with Ethan Brown, the investigative reporter whose work on the Jeff Davis 8 case really blew my mind and formed the backbone of our last episode. I still remember when I first came across Ethan's 2014 Medium article about the Jeff Davis 8. I was totally hooked. The way he dug into this case and challenged the whole lone serial killer story that everyone had been pushing. That really got me thinking. In our chat today, Ethan reveals some shocking details about local corruption in Jefferson Davis Parish, including a human trafficking ring operating out of the jail and connections to a Louisiana congressman that I never saw coming. Ethan's journey with this case is pretty fascinating. Back in 2009, he was working as an investigator for a law office in New Orleans, and during trips to a neighboring parish, he'd drive past these billboards on i10 with the faces of all eight women. Those haunting images, plus a compelling piece in the New York Times sparked his curiosity. What's fascinating, though, is how his relationship with Frankie we Schar, the man at the center of many of these murders, developed in such an unexpected way. Wait till you hear about their phone calls and Frankie's unusual requests. Before we jump into our chat, I should mention that Ethan's written four books on crime and criminal justice. He's contributed to places like Rolling Stone and the Guardian and spent about a decade working with attorneys who represented people facing the death penalty in the Deep South. His work really shines a light on people who often get overlooked by our justice system. We'll also get into the dangers these women faced as police informants, how evidence mysteriously disappeared, and whether Ethan thinks these cases will ever be solved. After all, this Time. So let's hear from Ethan himself about how he got pulled into the strange and disturbing case of the Jeff Davisy.

[Ethan Brown]

I became interested in this case around 2009.

I started working for an investigator at a law office in New Orleans.

And very soon afterward, I had a case in Calcasieu Parish, which is southwest Louisiana, and it's one parish west of Jeff Davis Parish. And because this was so soon after the last Jeff Davis 8 Homicide, there were billboards on I10, and I10 is the highway that goes through this area featuring images of all eight of the women. So I would pass images of the.

Eight women every time I went out there.

And I thought, wow, this is, like, really interesting. It's a lot of women, especially for a small area. It'd be a lot of women anywhere, but it's a very, very small area. And I thought, this is interesting. And then a reporter at the New York Times named Campbell Robertson wrote a piece about the Jeff Davis 8 and the Jeff Davis 8 investigation. And it was like a really well written piece, both from a reporting standpoint and from a writing standpoint, meaning that it was very beautifully written about how that area looks. And it also had some, like, really intriguing stuff about the investigation. So I thought, wow, I'm passing these billboards, right? I'm reading about this case in the New York Times, and I was like, oh, this is so interesting. And as I started getting deeper and deeper into that case, which had nothing to do with this Jeff Davis said case, by the way, but it was just geographically close. The Kalcatoo Parish case had culturally tons of overlap with Jeff Davis Parish, meaning that it involved the kind of weird.

Underworld of southwest Louisiana.

Poor white people, poor black people. A crack epidemic in a part of a country that people don't associate with crack epidemics. A very white part of the country, rural. And I thought, wow, this is so interesting. It's like 1980s crack epidemics, but, like, poured it over into 2010 white, rural Louisiana. This is, like, really bizarre and interesting.

[Celicia]

These connections made perfect sense to me. Ethan actually wrote a book called Queens Reign supreme about crack kingpins in southeast Queens, New York, back in 2005. So these parallels. He's noticing a crack epidemic in rural, white Louisiana that most people wouldn't associate with. That drug culture would absolutely catch his attention. All of it. The haunting billboard images of these eight women, the vivid descriptions of the bayou, the unexpected drug dynamics. It all stayed with him as he continued his investigative work in the neighboring parish. It's like the case was calling to him, begging him to dig deeper.

[Ethan Brown]

And so I said, you know, I'm going to just go out to Jeff Davis Parish and meet people. So I just go out there in the summer of 2011 and. And just start knocking on doors. Not like random people doors, but like families of the Jeff Davis saint. And consistently, everybody talked to me. And people in Louisiana are natural storytellers. They speak almost like literature coming out of their mouths, you know what I mean? So it was remarkable. And then some of the things that they were saying about the sheriff's department were terrifying. And it's just shocking stuff. And so honestly, that summer of meeting all of those people, I thought, it's a massive unsolved homicide case, right?

It's a massive police corruption case.

It has these incredible characters in it. And then it was also the summer that I met Frankie. Richard and Frankie, for reasons that I still really don't understand, really lied to me.

[Celicia]

You likely recognize Frankie's name from our main episode. He's the notorious Jennings figure who operated as a pimp and drug dealer with connections to the eight murdered women. As I mentioned before, Frankie was briefly charged in Kristen Lopez's murder before those charges were dropped. He was this larger than life character in the Jennings underworld, a strip club owner with a long history of addiction issues who often sat on his porch on McKinley street, almost taunting authorities with his presence. Despite being a central suspect in these.

[Ethan Brown]

Unsolved murders, his reputation in Jeff Davis Parish was as this incredibly violent man who also had a large group of.

Other men willing to do things for him.

And he cycled through the criminal justice system constantly and yet really never was convicted of anything. And he would sit on the front porch of his house on a street called McKinley street in Jennings, which is the parish seat of Jeff Davis Parish.

And he would sit out there in.

This way that was, like, very clearly.

Telegraphed a message, which.

Which was, I'm a suspect in a serial murder case. And look at me sitting here on a porch and you can't do anything to me. But when I met him in 2011, I can't really say why. Like, he really, really liked me personally. And we started this long relationship that was weird, I have to say. Like, he called me on my cell phone all the time, just like, can we talk? Just to talk. Not about the case at all, I think, because he sort of like lumped in media people altogether. At one point he was like, really into Sugar Ray Robinson, the boxer, and.

I think some other boxers.

And he was like, if I tell you, like, A photo of Sugar Ray.

Robinson or whatever that was in the New York Times.

Can you go to the New York Times, get the photo for me? Even though he knew that I lived here in New Orleans, there was some part of him that, like, thought that.

I lived in New York City, too.

It was really bizarre.

[Celicia]

I think there's something really interesting about Frankie's dynamic with Ethan. The way he describes Frankie calling him constantly asking for random favors and developing this, like, oddly personal connection. It kind of reminded me of exactly how Ethan just described Frankie's operation in Jennings. He had this network of people willing to do things for him, a web of connections he could activate whenever he wanted. I wonder if that's just how Frankie approached, you know, all of his relationships, creating these strange bonds of loyalty or obligation, pulling people into his orbit, making them feel special, while he's actually just expanding his network of useful contacts. Even with Ethan as a reporter, he seemed to be working that same angle, building a connection he might leverage later, or, at a minimum, keeping tabs on what Ethan knew. It's like watching his manipulation tactics in real time, even when he wasn't fully aware, anyone would recognize what he was doing.

[Ethan Brown]

Such a strange relationship.

Maybe the only way that I can.

Explain it is that, like, when I met him in 2011, I knocked on.

The door of his house on McKinley.

Street, and his mother answered the door, and she was like, oh, you know, Frankie's gone.

He's gone.

He's not coming back. And then she invited me in to have gumbo or something. And honestly, I was like, this is a major faux pas thing you don't do in Louisiana. I was like, passed on the gumbo and ended up spending a bunch of time with her. And she was like, let me get him on the phone. And she gets Frankie on the phone. And he had kind of escaped out of Jeff Davis Parish to this town called Bro Bridge in southwest Louisiana. And he was there because he had kind of exiled himself out of Jeff Davis. And so I think that he's not really talking to anybody at this time. He feels very alone. You know, he's not at home. And I think I was someone for him to talk to, you know? And he loved telling stories, and I was always interested in hearing his stories, even when they had nothing to do with anything. I just sit and listen to his stories. He also had a very, very dark sense of humor that I found very funny. But he was very sharp, and he was scary. He was extremely scary person. There's an irresistible aspect to it. Meaning, like, who can say that they.

Had a friendship with a serial killer?

It's just such a weird thing.

But that's what he wanted.

[Celicia]

You know, getting this inside perspective on Frankie really hit me hard. I had to ask Ethan the question that's probably on all of our minds. In our main episode, we talked about how law enforcement pushed the serial killer theory for the Jeff Davis eight murders. But Ethan's reporting suggested something a lot more complicated. I was curious. Given Frankie's connections to the eight women and those witness statements implicating him and his niece in a couple of the killings, what did Ethan actually believe happened? Was Frankie responsible for all these deaths? Was he a serial killer after all? Or was the truth messier with different people responsible for different murders, all tangled up in this web of corruption and crime that characterized Jennings? I wanted Ethan's perspective on who really killed these women.

[Ethan Brown]

I think it's a complicated web of things with suspects that are all intertwined.

You have suspects in Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno in 2008 who are not Frankie. You have suspects in Brittany Gary in 2008 who are not Frankie. Frankie is a very clear suspect in two of them, both in 2007. Whitney Dubois and Kristen Gary Lopez. And in fact, in Kristen Gary Lopez. You know, they make arrests of Frankie and his niece, right? And they start to draw up paperwork in the court system to charge them with murder, and then they drop it. So I don't think it's a serial killer. I do think that the suspects are from the same very small world in South Jennings. And I don't think Frankie did all of them.

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[Celicia]

I was curious about the nitty gritty of how Ethan had gathered so much detailed information in a place where secrets seemed so closely guarded. His Medium article that I referenced in the main episode uncovered so many connections and contradictions. I wanted to hear how he built that story and what happened when his findings finally went public.

[Ethan Brown]

Yeah, so reporting on this was actually surprisingly easy, particularly in the first stage of it, when I was working on it as a long form piece. It was initially supposed to run a GQ magazine, and GQ was willing to spend a lot of money to support the investigation. Louisiana has a state level FOIA law, sort of like the state version of foia, Freedom of Information Act. That's very good. It's unusually good. It's better than many states. And so I was just doing like FOIA requests for everything. And so particularly at the beginning, the.

Institutions that were being hit with these.

Public records requests loved them because they didn't know what I was doing really. And they'll charge you a dollar per page. So thanks to gq, I was able to write gigantic checks all the time. It was just rolling, you know, because people just love getting these checks, you know. And so that comes to a big halt in January of 2014, which is when the piece publishes. That turns what I'm doing from like, here's this person quietly doing public records requests. Who knows what he's doing. It turns it from that to like, oh, we hate you now. And I don't mean the people. By the way, the sheriff published a message about me on the actual sheriff's office website that was like really nuts. It was so dumb. It was like, don't listen to this crazy person from out of town and blah, blah, blah. I don't. It was so dumb. Like, how on earth is a law enforcement agency using their own official website to attack me? And it honestly scared me to death, especially given what I know about the sheriff's office. And then also kind of at the same time, the local paper, which is called the Jennings Daily News, ran like two weeks of front page stories about me. And they were just filled with lies that were scary. One of them had like the DA saying, this is a liar. He doesn't have any of the public records that he says he has.

Terrible in terms of damaging your reputation.

You know what I mean? Especially in a small town, like, structure out there was like, fuck this person, meaning me. So the two to three year period.

That I had where it was like.

Just doing interviews and doing these public records requests, and I'm getting really far with it, right? So that all ends in 2014. I had to take a break for a while because I wanted to let things cool out there before I started going back. And during that cool off period, I was like, you know, I'd like to do a book about this.

[Celicia]

I'm fascinated by what happened when Ethan published his article. It's like there was this sudden shift from cooperation to hostility, from cashing his checks for records to publicly attacking his credibility. That reaction from the sheriff's office and local paper speaks volumes. What I'm really curious about, though, is what kept him going through all this. Here he is investigating these extremely sensitive, potentially dangerous allegations in a small town where power and corruption seem deeply intertwined. He's facing public attacks from law enforcement, having his reputation smeared in the local paper, and yet he decides not just to continue, but to expand his investigation into a book. I wondered what was driving him. Was it purely the fascinating complexity of the case? Was it a sense of justice for these women? Was he hoping to trigger some kind of official response or reopening of the investigation? What outcome was he actually hoping for when he decided to pursue the story so thoroughly, despite the personal risks?

[Ethan Brown]

I think that the driving force was honestly how much I liked everybody there. And I don't mean, hey, let's go get a beer.

You're my friend.

I mean, just how much respect I had for everybody there. In my first visit out there in 2011, I knocked on the door of what I thought was Kristen Gary Lopez's mom's house, right? And then a very old woman answers the door.

It's clearly not her mom.

It's her grandma. And so her grandmother invites me in. We have a conversation. And then at the end of the conversation, Kristen's grandmother gets up and points to some magnets on the refrigerator. And the magnets on the refrigerator were holding up Kristen's obituary and an anniversary.

Piece of some kind.

Oh, can I show these to you? Yeah, absolutely. You can show them to me. So she pulls them down and starts talking about them and puts them into my hand and says, take them. And I was like, what? For a second, I thought, like, she was senile, you know? Like, this is a different time. It's not 80 years ago, but it might as well be, right? Like, people don't have photos on their phones, really? And, like, the grandmother's, like, trying to, like, force these things into my hand. She's like, I insist that you take them. And I said, absolutely not. I cannot take these items from you. And I left. And I thought, wow, like, this is so weird. Imagine being in a place where your granddaughter was murdered.

The murder's unsolved.

You don't really have anything left about your granddaughter.

And then this random person knocks on.

Your door, and you're trying to give them everything you have about your granddaughter. Like, I thought, how do you get to that place? And so, honestly, it was like, that kind of thing. And how Much. I liked everybody out there.

[Celicia]

Hearing this story made me wonder about all the victims families. I can only imagine how they must have felt, not only dealing with the unimaginable grief of losing their loved one, but than having these murders remain unsolved for so many years. With whispers of police involvement circulating through their community. When an outsider like Ethan comes in to investigate, I wondered if they were ever hostile or resistant to his work. After all, they'd been let down by authorities for years. Why trust yet another person promising to uncover the truth? I was curious how they responded to his investigation, especially as it started to gain attention.

[Ethan Brown]

I think that when you deal with people who have had family members murdered, right? When you deal with people who come from deeply oppressive communities, you're never going to expect them to be happy with.

You all the time.

And there are certainly times where people were like, fuck this person, you know? I don't think there was ever a time when anybody challenged what I was saying from a factual perspective, right? Like oh, you got this wrong or you did this wrong. It was more like the moods of people who are deeply traumatized and have.

To live in this place.

It's a very, very complicated place to live. Even just reporting there, it was very complicated. And honestly, I would actually get this like physical sickness every time I cross into the parish. It's very, very, very intense. So yeah, you can never expect that.

People in that environment are going to.

Be happy with you 100% of the time.

[Celicia]

All of this reminded me of another startling fact about this case that I can never seem to get out of my mind. All eight victims served as informants for local law enforcement. It's a detail that completely changes how we understand their murders. These women were pulled into a system that used them for information, but apparently couldn't protect them and in some ways may have even put them in danger. Hearing Ethan describe the emotional complexity of Jennings, how it physically affected him, just crossing into the parish and how traumatized the community was, makes me think about how dangerous it would have been to be an informant in this environment. I wanted to understand better how this informant system typically works, especially in smaller communities like Jefferson Davis Parish.

[Ethan Brown]

The best way to understand it is like in the federal criminal system, there's.

A pretty regimented system for informants.

Particularly like if you're indicted in a.

Criminal case in federal court and you.

Have co defendants, you're often given the opportunity to cooperate against them and in.

Return you get a sentencing reduction.

Like police departments and sheriff's offices have people who are informants but it's much more informal, right? Meaning that, like, if you get arrested for having a bag of weed or vials of crack, you can tell the arresting officer something about somebody else, right? And they just let you go. Or you could be somebody in the community who's selling drugs or even engaging in violence, who is feeding information to the sheriff's office or the police department.

Again, very informally, and they're just like.

Okay, you can sort of do your thing, like do your bad thing. And as long as you give us information, it's fine. People think about some registered confidential informant.

Right, with the FBI or whoever.

It's not like that. It's very, very informal.

And there are protections.

And really, even in the federal system, it's very discretionary as well, and there's not a lot of protections. And then the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which is the office that like, reviews everything, all the DOJ agencies like the FBI and the DEA do, they'll put out a report that'll be like, this is our examination of how the DEA adheres to informant regulations. And the conclusions sometimes would be like, oh, you know, 75% of the time they don't adhere to the regulations. Some crazy data. And so if these big federal agencies just cast these regulations aside, it's a million times worse for these local agencies that either have threadbare regulations or don't have any at all. You know what I mean?

[Celicia]

Ethan's explanation of how informant relationships work make it clear that even in the best circumstances, being an informant is incredibly risky. Federal agencies with actual guidelines still frequently ignore their own rules. And at the local level, there's often no protection at all. This got me thinking about Jefferson Davish Parish specifically. In our main episode, we touched on some of the corruption there, but I wondered if Ethan thought this was just typical small town problems or something more extreme. Louisiana already has a reputation for political corruption, but from what I'd researched about Jennings, the situation there seemed particularly disturbing, especially for vulnerable women caught up in a system where they had little power and even less protection.

[Ethan Brown]

Ricky Edwards, who was sheriff from the.

Early 90s to around 2012, but like.

In the 90s, his office came under unbelievable fire in civil rights lawsuits about people being robbed by Sheriff's deputies on I10. And there was an instance where Frankie Richard was robbing the evidence room of marijuana with somebody from the sheriff's department. And then the sheriff's office was running a human trafficking ring out of its.

Own jail in the early 2000s.

I mean, it is shocking and some.

Of the victims of that human trafficking ring are the women who end up dead in the.

Jeff Davis say the sheriff's deputies in the jail were basically feeding male inmates.

Female inmates to rape.

And if the male inmates did something that the upper ranks of the jail.

Liked, your reward was you got to rape a female inmate.

So, you know, are there issues of.

Misconduct that are, like, commonplace elsewhere?

Absolutely. But is this unusual? I think it is. I don't think, you know, every sheriff's office has a human trafficking ring going out of its jail. I mean, it's unbelievable, and it's enraging as well, because the human trafficking ring.

Was going on in the early 2000s, right before these homicides started.

And it involved these women who were.

Killed, as I said.

And then it involved people in the.

Sheriff'S office who've been implicated in the homicides.

And, you know, you have to wonder if the investigation that happened into the.

Human trafficking ring really did what it was supposed to do, which is like.

Indict all these men for raping women.

And indict all these men on human trafficking charges, then maybe this whole thing that we're talking about here wouldn't have happened at all.

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[Celicia]

During my conversation with Ethan, I kept thinking about the Ernestine Daniels Patterson case. In our main episode, I described how two men were briefly charged with her murder. But despite multiple witnesses implicating them, the sheriff's office didn't test the alleged crime scene until 15 months after Daniel Patterson's murder. By then, any evidence was long gone. This kind of investigative failure seems to typify why justice has been so elusive for all eight women. I was curious what Ethan thought about the overall investigation. Was this just incompetence or something more troubling? And after all the roadblocks, all the corruption he documented, all the resistance from powerful people in Jennings, does he still believe these cases might someday be solved?

[Ethan Brown]

So why hasn't justice been served in these cases?

It's complicated. I think there's, like, a bunch of different answers. One is in 2008. 2009, this multi agency task force is initiated to solve the homicides, right? And it's the sheriff's office, the city police department, the Louisiana State Police, and.

Then some FBI involvement.

So it's a big task force with.

Many law enforcement agencies.

But then you look at the work product of what the task force was doing, and it's like really bad on.

A couple of important levels.

The first level is the very basic.

Investigative function of it is poor.

The interviews are conducted very poorly. The way that they were memorialized is very poor. And then, and this is where it gets scary. You have witness after witness naming specific people and law enforcement suspects. You have witness after witness naming specific people in law enforcement as patronizing sex workers in Jeff Davis Parish. Then you have this other problem which might even be even bigger, which is like, wait a second, the Jeff Davis.

Parish Sheriff's Office is on the task force, right?

And yet their witnesses are telling them all these horrible things about the sheriff's office. Not just horrible, but illegal, you know, things. Misconduct, murder. And so there's a huge conflict there, right? There's a major conflict of interest where you sort of just have to stop everything. And this should be turned over to the feds, you know, entirely. It should be turned over to the DOJ Civil Rights Department. You know, the DOJ Civil Rights investigates misconduct by police officers and sheriff's deputies. And so that didn't happen. They keep all of this material in their task force circle. And unsurprisingly, because of the poor quality.

Of the investigation and these huge conflicts.

Of interest, the task force just sort of goes dead. So it's like you have this task force doing bad work, doing conflicted work, and then it sort of loses energy, right, pretty fast. And then it basically is a corpse. From 2012 to 2024.

[Celicia]

After hearing about all the failures in this investigation, the conflicts of interest, the witness testimonies that went nowhere, the deliberately mishandled evidence, I have to wonder if there's any hope left. It's been 15 years since the last body was found, and still no justice for any of these eight women. In our main episode, I talked about how stories like these should be more than just entertainment. They should move us to action. These cases matter not just because they're fascinating mysteries, but because real women lost their lives, real families still grieve, and real systems failed them completely. I'm curious if Ethan still believes there's any chance for resolution or if powerful interests in Jefferson Davis Parrish have successfully buried the truth forever.

[Ethan Brown]

I do think there's hope for the cases. I met the new sheriff last summer and I was really impressed by how smart they are.

I was really impressed by how serious.

They are, how respectful they are of the families.

Now all of this sounds like sort.

Of ground floor stuff, but it's an.

Enormous change from the past.

You still have the resource sort of.

Problem, which is like a small sheriff's.

Office trying to figure this out. But I think they see the more.

Solvable ones of the eight as solvable.

And I think they have started there. They are also unafraid to upset people. I mean, like people in law enforcement who don't want these to be solved. You know, the women of the Jeff Davis state were pimped out and trafficked by Frankie Richard. Right? They were pimped out and trafficked at a very specific place, a motel called the Boudreaux Inn. And during my investigation, started to get interested in, like, who actually owns the place, who runs it. And I pulled some property records and other materials and found that a very prominent congressman in Louisiana, who's no longer a congressman, a high level staff member in his office, ran the Boudreaux Inn. He and a couple of partners had the lease for it and they were operating the premises during this period. And so it was pretty shocking. But there is a power structure there that doesn't like this case. Everything that's kind of floated around in the universe of it and that just, yeah, it doesn't go away. Louisiana is small and a lot of these institutions and people get kind of caught up with one another. What I hope that people take away from this is like a sense of the people, a sense of the place.

A sense of what happened to the.

Women, a sense of all of the people in power and sort of like.

What they did and didn't do in.

This case, whatever you could do to make sure that this doesn't go into the past tense, you know, whatever that.

May be, do it.

Do whatever you can do to make sure that this case isn't forgotten, that the women aren't forgotten, that people still care about it. That's the most important thing, I think, for people who are like, you know, what is this? I don't live here. It seems crazy. It's horrible. Do whatever you can do to make.

Sure it never goes away.

Particularly because there's such a need from people in power to make it disappear. You know, I think that's happened.

[Celicia]

As we came to the end of our conversation, I wanted to start to think about the real impact of cases like These we've talked about the investigative process, the corruption and all the roadblocks to justice. But there's something more fundamental at work here too. The simple act of bearing witness, of refusing to let these stories fade away. I wonder if that's part of what keeps Ethan engaged with this case after all these years, knowing that his work ensures these women aren't forgotten. For the family still living in Jennings, still waiting for answers, I imagine it matters deeply to know that people beyond their small town care about what happened to their loved ones.

[Ethan Brown]

Just knowing that people are interested in care just means a whole lot, you know, it really does. It's such a small place. Like the entire parish is 30,000 people. The town Jennings, where this took place is about 8,000 people. You know, there are 8,000 people in one part of a New York City block. You know, that's how small it is. So, yeah, it's very easy to despair and feel isolated and feel like nobody cares, you know. So, yeah, whatever people can do to.

Just say that they're out there and.

Listening and interested is fantastic.

[Celicia]

I want to thank Ethan Brown for sharing his insights and experiences investigating the Jeff Davis 8 case. His dedication to uncovering the truth and giving voice to these eight women is truly remarkable. For those of you who want to learn more, I highly recommend checking out Ethan's book Murder in the Bayou, which dives much deeper into the case than we could do in an episode or two. Showtime also released a five part documentary series based on his book that's worth watching, especially if you are interested in seeing more of the people and places that we talk about about today. Ethan continues his important work as Editor in Chief at the Garrison Project, an organization addressing the crisis of mass incarceration and policing through investigative reporting and analysis. Their work appears in publications like the New Republic, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, and many others. As always, you can keep up with true crime on Instagram and xruerchrimpod. And you can find me on Instagram and TikTok helicastanton or through my weekly newsletter sincerelycelecia@sincerelycelecia substack. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this season two episode of True or Crime. If you want an ad free version of this show and other great shows from Tenderfoot TV, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts.