Bayou Justice columnist bids farewell
As we ring the New Year in 2025, I began my tenth year writing the Bayou Justice column. Looking back at the decade of work, I have revisited over six hundred crimes, most murders hopelessly unsolved.
If you saw my national television debut as a crime reporter on A&E’s Cold Case Crimes, the episode “The Devil in Hammond,” you know I am most proud of helping put Selonia Reed’s murderer behind bars after thirty years. What you may not realize, however, is that the year the monster brutally murdered his wife, 1987, marked my tenth year as a newspaper reporter.
Since launching ...
DNA identifies ‘Lady in the Lake’ after 38 years
Nearly four decades after her murder, authorities in St. Tammany Parish say advanced DNA testing has identified the “Lady in the Lake” as Pamela Lee Hupp, a.k.a. Deborah Gail Justice, born in April 1958. According to the sheriff’s office, Hupp was in her early twenties at the time of her murder.
On June 19, 1986, an outdoorsman fly-fishing snagged the woman’s nude body just east of the Interstate 10 twin spans, about fifty yards from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. An autopsy revealed the woman, who had a plastic bag duct-taped over her head and a 22-pound weight tied to ...
I told you so
In July of last year, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard told reporters on a national television network that his office had new information on the 2008 disappearance of Barbara Blount.
“Right now, we have gotten some information that I feel is going to be very good information. Of course, we have to work through it to make sure it’s credible and what we need. But I have a really good feeling that this is going to put another piece in the puzzle and help us find Barbara Blount and [find out] what actually happened to her,” the sheriff said. “I’m really proud about this, but I ...
Ponchatoula officer’s death reignites vaccine fears
Within days of researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launching a new investigation into possible links between heart inflammation and the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, a healthy 44-year-old Ponchatoula Police Officer has died from heart complications.