Celisia Stanton (0:00)

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But in the meantime, I want to make sure we stay connected during our break. You can follow the showrucrimepod on Instagram x Blue sky really all the places to catch behind the scenes moments and updates on our return date. But the most surefire way to make sure you don't miss anything is to hit subscribe on your podcast app and to sign up for our newsletter@truercrime.substack.com and if you've been wanting more of my takes beyond true crime, my personal newsletter, Sincerely Celicia@sincerelycelecia.substack.com drops every Friday and it's seriously the highlight of my week to write. It's where I share all my unfiltered thoughts on politics, culture and life. Plus all the books that have been keeping me up at night, recipes I'm obsessed with, products I can't stop recommending, and playlists that have been getting me through the week. It's basically like getting a text from that friend who always knows exactly what you should read, watch or try next. I'd love to have you join me there. This community honestly means everything to me. And while we still have our season finale coming up next week and some more fun things to come, I wanted to make sure you knew all the ways we can stay connected between seasons. But for now, let's get into today's episode. Please be aware that today's episode contains brief mentions of sexual assault and physical violence. Please take care while listening. Every few months for the last four and a half years, someone driving the Back roads here in Jefferson Davis Parish has come across a body. This was the opening line of a New York Times article published on January 1, 2010. And just like it hooked me and maybe you, it also caught the attention of New Orleans private investigator and author Ethan Brown. So Ethan kept reading. And as the Times piece unfolded, he learned about an alarming pattern snaking its way through a small Southern community. A series of young women's bodies had been popping up on the sides of roads in the canals and crawfish ponds of the Louisiana bayou for five years. The women, authorities felt, were murder victims. But due to decomposition, the Times said their specific causes of death were muddy. Though as Ethan would later learn, at least two of the victims were stabbed to death, and asphyxia was strongly suspected in the remaining cases. Something about this story stuck with Ethan, and intrigued, he set off to Jennings, Louisiana, in 2011. He told Rolling Stone that at the time, there was no carefully laid plan, no angle he was chasing after. But curious about what he could uncover, he started talking to folks about the murders, chatting with residents and victims, friends and family members. And then one evening around sunset, he interviewed a man named David Bowlegs. Deshotl for David Bowlegs was a recent nickname, one he'd been given after he suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. Bowlegs had dated a few of the murdered women. The two men talked, and the evening ended uneventfully. But the next morning, when Ethan woke up, Bowlegs was dead. Shot and killed in his own home. Ethan headed directly to the crime scene. But if the news of Boleg's murder had caught him off guard, the crime scene shocked him. No police tape, no secured perimeter, no instead, rampant disorder. Folks were even walking in and out of Boleg's house, and some were even taking items with them, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Ethan spoke with a few cops at the scene. Later, in an interview with Rolling Stone, he shared what they told him. Welcome to Jennings. We're sure you've never seen anything like this in your life. It didn't take him long to realize that for everyone else, this was just another day in Jennings, Louisiana. Suddenly, Ethan was sold. He knew he had to dig deeper, because this town, it had a story to tell. And he had a feeling that looking into the cases of these eight murdered women, that would be the key. So over the next several years, he did just that. Combing through court records, reviewing hundreds of pages of witness interviews and case files, and interviewing just about anyone he could get to talk fast. Forward to a decade later. And much like Ethan, in 2010, I found myself scrolling, reading a story I'd soon have trouble getting out of my head. But this article wasn't from the Times. It was published on Medium in 2014. It was Ethan's. And in the piece, he revealed the secrets he uncovered during his time in the Louisiana bayou. As I read, my mind swirled with questions. What happened to these eight women? What was really going on in Jennings? And what lessons can a small county in rural Louisiana teach the rest of us? Today, we'll be exploring these exact questions, because this is the story of The Jeff Davis 8. I'm Celisia Stanton, and you're listening to truer crime. Between 2005 and 2009, eight young women were murdered. Their families left without answers. But to truly understand that story, you have to understand the landscape on which it unfolded. A place called Jefferson Davis Parish. Not parish as in church community, but parish as in county. That's the term used by the state of Louisiana. But parishes and counties, they're functionally the same thing. Located in southwestern Louisiana, the parish gets its namesake from Jefferson Davis himself, the first and only president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It's a rural community made up of five towns with Highway I10 running smack in its center. The eight women whose bodies were found in the parish came to be known as the Jeff Davis 8. But most were discovered in and around the parish seat, a town called Jennings. Jennings, whose population hovers around 10,000, is racially diverse, but still deeply segregated, especially by class. This was something that Ethan, the investigator I mentioned earlier, noticed immediately. As he told Vice, the north side of Jennings is your average small town. There's a couple of car dealerships, a homey cafe, the courthouse, a library. But across the railroad tracks on the south side, that's another story. It's where you'll find most of the black folks and pretty much all of the poorer folks. Ethan would say that, at least when he was there. The south side was reminiscent of the iconic images captured in the days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Dilapidated homes peppering the roadways. This description caught me. I really wanted to see for myself. So I spent some time in Jennings on Google Maps, digitally exploring street by street. And, you know, things might not be exactly the same as they were in 2011. Most of the homes are still standing, but there is a recognizable difference between the two sides of town. The neatly manicured lawns and picket lined yards of the north side, a sharp contrast to the boarded windows and burnt out buildings I saw on the south side. According to the New York Times, Jennings is a community that struggles with issues of poverty and drug dependence. And it's seen a lot of young folks get swept up in crime and sex work in many ways. Before it closed, a place called the Bordeaux Inn represented the center of that struggle. Ethan wrote for Medium that the hotel, which looked more like a storage facility than an inn, was frequented by sex workers, and because of its proximity to i10, was a known hotspot for drug trafficking. But alongside its many struggles, Jennings is a community that mirrors so many other small towns. It's a place where people know each other, where you don't walk down the street without recognizing a family friend or cousin or neighbor. A place where folks lives are intimately interconnected. So perhaps it's not so strange that when Ethan began poking around, learning about these women who lived in Jennings before they lost their lives there, he quickly discovered that they were all connected in a web of relationships. Some were cousins. Some were former roommates. Some had been friends or at least friendly. According to the New York Times, they were racially mixed, both black and white. All were young. They ranged in age from 17 to 30. Time should have laid mostly ahead of them. And these women weren't just connected through their relationships. They also led similar lives. All were from the south side of Jennings. Most of them were involved in sex work and struggled with addiction and mental health problems. Many had been victims of violence and sexual assault. Sonia Benoit Beard, a family member of one of the victims, Whitney Dubois, told the Times that despite the struggles her cousin and the other victims faced, they'd always hoped everything would eventually work itself out. It's a school of hard knocks that they never got a chance to graduate from, she said. But there was another connection that bound the women, one that really stood out to me. Ethan wrote for Medium that all of the women were drug informants. According to the victim's relatives, their loved ones had shared information with the cops in return for protection and drugs. When Ethan discovered this, he confronted the sheriff with allegations. The sheriff hedged, saying, I wouldn't respond. If they were informants, I would still continue to protect their anonymity. I don't know if that's the truth. I won't comment on it. But if the allegations were true, it's deeply relevant, because informing, it's really dangerous work. According to the ACLU, a series of Supreme Court cases in the 60s gave the cops pretty much free reign to utilize informants when and how they pleased. It's all very unregulated and according to the New Yorker, in some cases, recruits are as young as 14 years old. They're often lured with the promise of reward. And while supplying drugs as victims, family members claimed in this case would not be above board, things like plea deals or drop charges can be common incentives. Given that reality, the lack of oversight allows for what can be a dangerously imbalanced power dynamic, especially in instances where an informant struggles with mental health or substance abuse issues that can be exploited, like in the case of the Jeff Davis 8. But the problems with all of this are deeper still. This setup. You give me info and I'll make it worth your while. It's the perfect condition to incentivize false accusations. The New Yorker wrote about one instance in 2000 where over 20 innocent black Texans faced cocaine charges after an informant lied in order to get out of his own legal mess. But how common is all that? I was surprised to learn just how widely used informants are, especially in drug cases where some researchers believe they're utilized like 80% of the time. And for informants themselves, there's a lot to be afraid of. Think about it. They're snitching, and police often have few if any measures in place to ensure their informant's protection. All this while informants are being asked to undertake potentially dangerous risks. As Ethan writes, a 2011 FBI report concluded, the agency gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times that year. And if you're an informant and something happens to you, well, you're on your own. Brian Salley of BBS Narcotics Enforcement Training and Consulting told the New Yorker. There's no such thing as training an informant. You direct them what to do, and if they follow those directions that will make it safer for them. There's always going to be a risk, but when things go bad, it's usually because they didn't do as they were told. They get themselves hurt, not the officers. The informants cause their own dilemma. Of course, all this had me wondering if the victims in this case were informants. Had that factored into what had happened to them? Were they targeted? Figuring all that out would be the job of law enforcement. And to their credit, early on, it seemed like there might be some traction on that front, because in December of 2008, with the number of victims steadily rising, officials pooled resources and launched a multi agency task force to investigate the murders. The FBI, the Louisiana State Police and nearby parishes all lent their support to the new team. But still the Jefferson Davis Sheriff's office, and the Jennings Police Department remained at its center. The group started by updating a reward for information, increasing it from a previous $35,000 to a whopping 85,000. They also announced their newest theory that the eight women had all been victims of a serial killer. It's a theory that's prevailed for years and one Ethan has challenged throughout his own reporting. According to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, serial killers are often strangers, with no visible relationship between the offender and the victim. But as Ethan notes, The Jeff Davis 8 had many common connections both to each other and to various members of their community. Throughout the years, investigators have considered different suspects for each of the eight women, but none of it seemed to point towards a single killer. And by 2009, four years after the first murder, many families expressed frustration that they were still without answers. How can there not be anything? The brother of Whitney Dubois asked in an interview with cnn. I want justice not just for my family, but for the families of all the girls. We live in fear that someone else is going to get killed. The mother of Kristen Lopez told the New York Times in 2010 that she starts every morning thinking about her daughter, wondering what happened. Through tears, she said, there's eight murders in Jeff Davis Parish and not one has been solved. Trust in the department was strained early on in the investigation. According to cnn, when Sheriff Ricky Edwards referred to the victims as living a high risk lifestyle, it struck a nerve for some of the families. It was a flippant comment that made it seem like the sheriff was blaming the women for what happened to them. The subtext stung. If their lifestyle was high risk, the consequences were their own making. And while Sheriff Edwards did try to accept the feedback, adjusting his language in the coming years, the fracture in trust wasn't easy to repair. And even without answers, the families of the victims still did what they could to build closure and healing on their own. According to cnn, the mother of Crystal Shay Zeno worked to bring the community together at a prayer vigil for victims and their families, passing out more than 1200 flyers ahead of the day. Whitney Dubois brother emphasized the need for community in his interview with cnn. We try to shoulder each other up, he said. It's not the time to be quiet. It's time to say enough is enough. And while the formation of the task force might have renewed hope for some, the police didn't exactly have the best track record. As WWWL reported in 2014, Jeff Davis Parrish had a total of 17 unsolved murders since 2005. Let's put that in perspective for a second. Nationally, police solve murders about 64% of the time. But in Jefferson Davis Parish, the clearance rate is less than 7%. But why? Why were so many cases still unsolved? It's a question with a lot of answers, many of which seem to play out in The Jeff Davis 8 cases. Take 30 year old Ernestine Daniels Patterson, whose body was found in a canal just south of Jennings In June of 2005, long before the serial killer theory was ever introduced. A daughter of two parents who loved her fiercely. Ernestine was the second of the eight victims. Eventually, after being identified, two men were charged with her murder. But according to Ethan, the alleged crime scene wasn't even tested for evidence until 15 months after Ernestine's death. By then, no blood could be detected at the scene, which meant that despite multiple witnesses connecting these men to the crime, officials had to drop the charges. There just wasn't a case to make. No evidence to point to. Not against the two men and not against anyone. Ernestine's mother, Evelyn Daniels, still sits with the pain of not knowing what happened to her daughter. I don't have no closure, no peace, she said in an interview for the Showtime documentary Murder in the Bayou. I can't rest at night. Whitney Dubois was the fourth woman found murdered in Jeff Davis Parish. In an interview for Fox News, her sister remembered her. She was fun loving. She was a firecracker. I found this photo of Whitney as a teenager. In it, she's sitting on the back of a pale blue pickup truck, her hair in two teased out pigtails. It's the kind of photo that captures the time period as much as the person. Late 90s fashion and aesthetics front and center. Her hair is bleached blonde at the top, dyed black near the ends. It made me think of my own teen years when my friends changed their hair as like an extension of who they wanted to be, who they were trying to become. As we slowly inched towards the promise of life after high school, Whitney was only 26 years old when her family learned she'd been found dead, her body abandoned at a rural crossroads. It was the day before Mother's Day 2007, and Whitney's daughter, Beyonce Jones, was just 4 years old. @ the end of that year, a local sergeant got word about two prisoners in the city jail. They wanted to come forward, claiming to have information about what had happened to Whitney and at least one of the other Jeff Davis eight victims. While these interview tapes have never been publicly released, Ethan did get a hold of them and he Listened to them in full. During the course of his reporting, the first inmate told a secondhand story. She claimed that Tracey Chaussau, a local sex worker, had said she'd been there on the night Whitney was killed, that she'd been hanging out with Frankie Richard and his niece, Hannah Connor. Now, Frankie was notorious in Jennings. According to the New York Times, he'd owned a strip club and faced previous charges for assault. He was a pimp who struggled with a slew of addictions throughout his life. And as Ethan would soon discover, seven of the eight women killed in Jeff Davis Parish were connected to Frankie in one way or another. As the jailhouse informant told it, Frankie was getting high with Tracy and Hannah. When he tried to make a move on Whitney, she rejected him and he got angry. Whitney fought back, but Frankie held her down and punched her. Then Hannah moved in, grabbing Whitney's head and drowning her. Now, it is fair to be skeptical of this telling. To our knowledge, it hasn't been corroborated beyond the jailhouse informants. But this wasn't the only story the prisoners were pushing. No, there was more. A second tale about another murder. Tracey Chasson had allegedly witnessed another murder at the hands of Frankie and his niece, Hannah. But this time, it was Hannah, the informants claimed, who confessed to them, Admitted she and Frankie had attacked and killed Kristen Lopez. Kristen, only 21 years old at the time of her death, had grown up in Jennings. She had an intellectual disability and found community playing sports at the Special Olympics. She was close to Frankie, even called him Uncle Frankie, and could often be found spending time at his house. And unlike the prisoner's other story, which is purely secondhand, this time, Tracy, the witness who'd allegedly been there herself, had told police the same story about Kristin's death. And she did all that before the jailhouse informants had spoken with the cops. In fact, after Tracy's confession, investigators had arrested Hannah and Frankie and charged them both with second degree murder. But eventually, Tracey changed her story, retracted her statement. The charges against Hannah and Frankie were dropped. But now these informants, they weren't just corroborating Tracy's original confession. They were adding new details, things they swore Hannah had told them. That Frankie had put Kristin's body in a barrel, that he loaded it into a truck to transport and then dispose of it. Every detail was horrifying. But it was at this point that the women dropped the biggest bombshell of the interview. That in an attempt to help Frankie cover up his crime, a sheriff's deputy named Warren Gary had purchased the truck and had it cleaned in order to conceal the evidence. I'm ready for my life to change. ABC Sundays. American Idol is all new. Give it your all. Good luck come out of the golden ticket. Let's hear it. This is a man's world. I've never seen anything like it. And a new chapter begins. You're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol News Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and Stream on Hulu. Two informants had accused the sheriff's office chief criminal investigator of destroying evidence of purchasing and cleaning a truck that had just been used to transport a body. It was a huge claim with severe implications, but it might have held water. Shockingly, according to public records reviewed by Ethan, Deputy Warren had bought a pickup truck from a friend of Frankie's the same month of Kristen's murder. And this friend of Frankie's, a woman named Connie Seiler, was one of the last known people to have seen Kristen alive. Even weirder, Deputy Warren sold the truck only a month after he purchased it for $15,500, nearly $7,000 more than he bought it for just 30 days prior. Profit like that on a car, especially a used car, is almost unheard of. According to the New York Times, a witness even claimed to have spotted Kristin in the same pickup truck just hours before she disappeared. But by that point, it was too late. The truck had already been cleaned and resold by Deputy Warren. To make matters worse, Connie, who'd sold the truck to Warren, was an inmate caught up in charges for writing bad checks. It was all majorly unethical. Warren, a chief detective at the sheriff's office, should never have bought anything from a current prisoner in the first place. He was eventually charged $10,000 for the ethical misstep. But when questioned, the former sheriff claimed the department had no idea the truck was potentially connected to a murder until way after it had already been sold. At a minimum, Deputy Warren Gary had been involved in an unethical financial transaction with an inmate. At worst, he took part in a scheme to dispose of critical evidence. And what did he get? A $10,000 fine and eventually a promotion to run the evidence room. And he wasn't the only cop with fingers pointed at him. According to wwl, the multi agency task force investigating the murders put out a report that included a multitude of witness stories alleging police misconduct and involvement in the killings. In his review of these records, Ethan noted that another sheriff's deputy, Danny Berry, was mentioned by at least three separate witnesses on the same day, one of whom claimed that Danny and his wife would drive around town, pick up girls and spike their drinks. Another described a windowless room in Danny's house where chains hung from the ceiling. Despite this, the task force never questioned Danny about the accusations. Whispers spread in the community about police corruption, how they might be the reason these women were dying in the first place. In a move to reestablish trust with the community, officers were asked to submit DNA samples, according to CBS News, all investigators would be tested against evidence in the case. The sheriff at the time said of the test, it's easy to point the finger at law enforcement. In every serial type case and every type of prolonged investigation, those rumors come up. So it puts the burden on law enforcement to show that it's not. As Ethan reported, the results of these tests were never released. And while I can't claim to know which of these allegations are accurate and which are just rumor, it's fair to say that corruption in Louisiana's public office goes way back. According to local news outlet WAFB9, a University of Illinois study examining the years between 1976 and 2010 ranked Louisiana as the 10th most corrupt state in the country based on a whopping 906 federal public corruption convictions in that time frame. And when those statistics were measured per capita, the state moved up the ranks to second place. But Jefferson Davis Parish in particular, had a long rap sheet. Ethan writes about many of these instances for medium like the time in 1990 when a couple of men stole 300 pounds of marijuana from the sheriff department's evidence room and then, when caught, named Chief Deputy Sheriff Ted Gary as one of their co conspirators. He was never charged. Or the time in 1993 when, when another sheriff pled guilty to obstruction of justice after committing several crimes, not the least of which included using public money to buy personal cars and guns. Then in 2000, a former Jennings police officer shot and killed another officer, his wife, and a responding officer for unknown reasons. And of course, we can't forget about the time DATELINE ran a television expose after an investigation uncovered a long history of Jeff Davis Parish deputies making illegal traffic stops. But there was one incident I read about that had a particularly horrifying set of details. In 2003, a group of female cops filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Jennings for sexual violence and harassment they experienced while working at the police department. According to the Marshall Project, one of the women shared that Police Chief Donald Deluge had forced her to record herself getting her nipples pierced and then Took the video and began parading it around to show others. There were allegations of vulgar and explicit sexual talk from superiors, and an instance where a police captain drove a female officer to a secluded area and threatened to rape her. But there's more. More misconduct. In 2013, a former police chief was charged with stealing money and drugs from the department's evidence room. He eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Ethan later told vice that his investigation uncovered layer after layer of corruption, from, quote, a big drug dealer in town claiming his supplier was an officer who worked in narcotics to a sheriff's office deputy who was literally robbing people off I10 to female inmates, alleging that they'd have sex with various prison officials in order to be released from jail. And that last accusation, I found it particularly alarming. So I dug a little deeper, and I uncovered an article from the AP discussing the arrest of two deputies for their role in arranging sex between inmate in exchange for bribe money. The article goes on to say that a group of female prisoners accused police of masterminding a sex trafficking ring where women prisoners were forced to have sex with male inmates. One woman even alleged that she was forced to have sex with a deputy, but that jail staff ignored her complaints Here. It's worth noting that at least one of the witnesses in the case against the bribed deputies was a Jeff Davis eight victims. But potential links between police corruption and The Jeff Davis 8 don't end there. According to the Marshall Project, an examination of task force witness interviews revealed claims that sex workers made deals with local law enforcement, trading sex for jail release. And multiple witnesses also claimed that they knew officers who paid to have sex with several of the murdered women. And while I can't say definitively whether police were involved in the murders of the Jeff Davis 8, a woman named Nicole Guillory was convinced they were. Nicole, who was born and raised in Louisiana, was a music and nature lover with four kids. She frequented South Jennings and had known most of the victims through her own involvement in sex work. She might have been easy to underestimate with her long brown hair, doe eyes, and sweet smile. But Nicole was sharp. She held her own. Ethan reported that at 24, she protected herself from a john by attacking him with the handle of a sledgehammer. And while she herself had collected quite the list of charges over the years, many of them had been dropped. Perhaps because she'd been an informant. Maybe that's what led her to mistrust the cops. She repeatedly told her family she believed it was the police killing These women and Nicole's suspicions seemed to extend to her own life. She felt strongly that she would be killed next, even telling her mom, Barbara Guillory, that she didn't expect to be around for her next birthday. Barbara told Ethan it got to the point where she didn't want to go anywhere by herself. I think she could feel that they were closing in on her. She was always paranoid. Nicole even made arrangements to have a few relatives care for her children. Nicole Guillory's body, which was found on August 19, 2009, would be the last of the Jeff Davis 8. Barbara told Ethan that she suspects her daughter was killed because she knew about some kind of corruption in the department. She knew, she knew, she knew, Barbara urged. And that's why they killed her. Ethan had spent years in and around Jennings, writing his way through the tangled web of the town. Sick of waiting, he took matters into his own hands and published his findings on Medium. Who killed The Jeff Davis 8? It had all the makings of a viral true crime tale. Police corruption, unfolding mysteries, the moody backdrop of a seemingly dangerous small town with proven public interest in the case. Ethan was offered a book deal, but this didn't sit well in Jennings. Sheriff Ivy woods published a response on the department's website. In it, he referred to Ethan as an author of fiction stories and reiterated his commitment to restoring professionalism and regaining trust amongst the community. In closing, he wrote, we are doing everything possible to solve these cases. It is unfortunate out of town journalists are here taking information and twisting it to support a fictional conspiracy theory to gain followers and sell a story. But he wasn't the only one in Jennings pushing against Ethan's work. According to the Rolling Stone, Ethan felt his relationship with the local Jennings newspaper strain. Despite initially supporting his investigation, the paper stopped replying to his messages and published critiques of his work in town. One of Ethan's contacts told him of thinly veiled threats bouncing around folks who'd said the book wouldn't have the chance to make it to print. In a sea of hostility, he kept his distance, held the remaining interviews outside the bounds of the parish. His book, Murder in the Bayou, was released in 2016, just as promised. Still, here we are, 15 years after the last body was found. Still no closer to accountability for the victims and their families. Not for Loretta Chassal Lewis. Not for Ernestine Daniels Patterson. Not for Kristen Gary Lopez. Not for Whitney Dubois. Not for Lacania Brown. Not for Crystal Shay Benoisino. Not for Brittany Gary. Not for and not for Nicole Guillory. And as I researched and wrote this story, I just kept wondering, what exactly is it we expect to be done? This is a case riddled with potential corruption and mishandling from the start. Are we just supposed to think that magically one day these same flawed entities are going to provide some semblance of justice? It's a question Ethan tackled head on, telling Vice that even though a majority of court cases in Jennings are drug related, no drug treatment services even exist there. It's one example of a deeper problem that he summed up well in a quote to Rolling Stone. Obviously these women were murder victims, but they were also dying under the weight of having no resources for their health problems, no resources for their mental health problems, no resources for substance abuse. To me, it's the exact thing I'm always questioning about true crime. What does it mean to be truly victim centered? Is justice only retribution? What would it look like to live in a community where being victim centered meant being proactive rather than just reactive? A society whose first question is always what must change to keep more people safe? A world with fewer victims, not just more punishment? For me, listening to true crime must come alongside a real commitment to making the world a safer, more just place. This is why action items are so important to me. These stories shouldn't just be entertainment, they should be wake up calls, fuel to take action to support victims and their families. So today, because a number of the Jeff Davis Eight were believed to have been sex workers, I want to highlight the Sex Workers Project which provides client centered legal and social services to individuals who engage in sex work regardless of whether they do so by choice, circumstance or coercion. Their work includes legal education, workshops for sex workers, media advocacy, and sex worker led organizing and policy change. You can check out all their amazing resources and donate to support their work atsex workers project.org I also encourage you to check out the New Yorker article the Throwaways by Sarah Stillman, which is linked on our show notes page. This 2012 piece is an amazingly thorough investigation into the hidden world of police informants in the dangers it poses to those that are actually doing that work. This was a key source in today's episode and I promise you it's well worth your time to read it in full. Finally, a special thank you to Ethan Brown for his incredible reporting on the Jeff Davis Eight, without whom this episode was just not going to be possible. Please make sure to check out his Medium article who killed a Jeff Davis 8? And of course his book Murder in the Bayou. As always, you can keep up with True Crime on Instagram and xrewercrimepod, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok, Alicia Stanton and through my weekly newsletter, SincerelyCelecia SincerelyCelecia.substack.com for a full source list and links to all today's action items, make sure to visit our website@Trueorkindpodcast.com Truer Crime is created, hosted and written by me, Celisia Stanton and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Additional writing and research by Olivia Heusingfeld. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Additional production by Olivia Hussingfeld and Jamie Albright. Editing by Liam Luxon with additional editing support by Sydney Evans and Jaja Muhammad. Our supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station 16 Original music by Jay Ragsdale Mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at uta, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like Truer Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening. Foreign thanks for listening to this Season two episode of True 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.