Politicians held hostage in Hammond restaurant

On a Saturday night, June 5, 1982. I sat at a corner table in Lil’ Johnny’s Seafood restaurant on U.S. Highway 51 South, laughing with radio legend Terrell “Foots” McCrory and the diner’s owner, Johnny Demarco. Behind Foots, a beer-drinker at the next table flipped open his wallet and said, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

Foots choked on his beverage, and I said to Johnny, “Mr. Demarco, I guess you get all kinds in here?”

Now, let me back up and explain how I remember the date.

Working for what was then Louisiana’s oldest weekly publication, The Hammond Vindicator, I’d spent that afternoon at the opening of “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.” George Sullivan routinely gave me Saturday passes to review movies in his theaters, and that same night, I dined free at Lil’ Johnny’s, reviewing his restaurant for the newspaper.

If you’ve ever been a starving journalist – or a Ramen noodle-eating student at Southeastern Louisiana University – you know why such a day can never be forgotten.

Before Johnny could answer my question, a grown man in a 60’s style Kirk-shirt stood up from another table and zapped his toy phaser at the guy with the wallet communicator, just as the waitress delivered my seafood platter.

“Toy guns are welcome anytime,” Johnny said. “It’s the real ones I don’t want to see in here again.”

“Again?” I asked.

“Wait,” Foots said. “I’m ordering another round before he tells this one.”

And that’s the night I learned of the 1975 Hammond Hostage Crisis and just how colorful local politicians and contractors can be.

Shortly after 7 o’clock on the evening of November 4, 1975, three men stopped at Lil’ Johnny’s to pick up an order of oysters for a party at Attorney Hobart Pardue’s home in Springfield. Frank McCarroll of Springfield and Bobby Moore of Pumpkin Center entered the restaurant, while Earl McCarroll of Holden waited in the truck.

Near the front entrance, laughing, and drinking, Moore and McCarroll spoke to several Tangipahoa Parish political candidates entering the building. The arriving former and would-be police jurors had been defeated three days earlier. They were attending a meeting in the restaurant’s banquet room to consider who they might endorse in the final round. Moore and McCarroll had worked as contractors in and for the parish and knew all of the meeting attendees.

Oysters in tow, the two men stepped into the parking lot, just as another defeated candidate approached the building. “Say,” Bobby Moore asked the man, “why did you invite that bastard to your meeting?” He pointed to a truck passing 10 feet in front of the group with rival contractor Milton Blount’s name painted on the side. The politician insisted that his group had not invited Blount and joked Blount must be craving Johnny’s famous catfish.

Inside, the politician told Johnny Demarco that the men walked away, talking about “getting help and coming back for Blount.” When Milton Blount entered the restaurant, Johnny asked him to leave and avoid trouble.

Two hours later, Bobby Moore and Frank McCarroll returned. The “help” they brought back consisted of Earl, a pistol, and three loaded shotguns.

The details that follow came from eyewitness testimony recorded in the court transcripts of the three trials that followed.

According to former Police Juror Joe Joe Darouse, Frank McCarroll kicked open the banquet room door, pointed his automatic shotgun, and said, “This is no holdup, but if anybody moves, we’ll kill you.” And then he asked the room why they invited Milton Blount to their meeting.

“I don’t remember threatening to kill anybody,” Frank later told the court. “I just wanted to take Blount in a fist-fight.”

Earl McCarroll added, “We didn’t go in there with any intention of terrorizing people.” When asked why his group wanted to fight Blount, he said Blount had ambushed Frank and shot at him several times. “We informed the Livingston Parish’s Sheriff’s Office, but they wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Phillip Robillard told the court that he realized something was wrong that night when someone jabbed a gun barrel in his back.

Joe Joe Darouse said he spent that night at Seventh Ward General Hospital after being hit hard enough to lose his glasses. Also hospitalized, Aswell Robertson told the court that he had “a weak spell with his heart” when one of the men slapped his face. “Anytime they spoke to one of us, they put a gun in our face. I’ll soon be 65,” he said, “And I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

“They had a gun stuck in my nose the whole time,” Speck Calmes testified, “What was I supposed to do?”

Calmes later told J. P. Duncan of The Daily Star, “It was a lie. They didn’t want nothing of Milton Blount. That was an excuse. If they’d wanted Milton, they could have gotten him.” Calmes said that he and others at the meeting believed the purpose of the attack was only to disrupt the meeting. When asked who might want the meeting disrupted, he said, “I have no idea, but there’s no truth to the story that we were meeting there against the sheriff.”

Another witness described for The Daily Star’s Mark Mathes, the three gunmen telling their hostages, “We’re here to break up these little political cliques, and don’t bother calling the law. They know we’re here.”

When the assault victims reported the incident to U.S. Attorney Gerald Gallinghouse in New Orleans, they accused Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Frank M. Edwards of refusing to investigate the matter. After arresting the accused terrorists, Sheriff Edwards told The Daily Star, “Everyone in law enforcement knew about the bad blood between Blount and Moore.” And added that the “other rumors” related to the case were part of a “smear campaign” against him.

Testifying in the federal grand jury investigation that followed, the sheriff told the court that he initially had trouble getting the investigation organized, because some of the victims refused to discuss the assault.

The others held at gunpoint that night included: Johnny Demarco, Lee Bankston, Jimmy Haltom, Wilkie Brumfield, Richard Stilley, Mark Edwards, Bill Wheat, and Bruce Kinchen.

Phillip Robillard said the gunmen held them almost 45 minutes, with the first two leaving at 9:45. Frank and Bobby, he told the court, left first to get the truck. He said Frank told Earl, “Stand at the back door. If anybody moves, blow their G-D heads off.”

Just before 10, Earl backed out the door, his shotgun still leveled at the hungry politicians.

On December 19, 1975, following a six-hour trial, a jury found Frank and Earl McCarroll guilty on eight counts of aggravated assault, and Bobby Moore pleaded guilty to ten counts of the same.

Frank and Earl later appealed and won after proving no one in the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office read them their rights.

Earl McCarroll stood trial again on November 17, 1976.

In his closing arguments to the jury, Assistant District Attorney Billy Quinn asked, “Does a good man have the right to commit aggravated assault and get away with it? If someone is mad at someone, does that give him the right to terrorize others?”

He said, “Ours is not a society of the fittest. We have laws to prevent people from stomping around restaurants with automatic shotguns.”

After only 15 minutes of deliberation, a seven-person jury found Earl McCarroll not guilty, saying his automatic shotgun had never been loaded, and he never hit anyone with it that night.

“I am not surprised. I’m shocked,” Quinn told reporters, “All but three witnesses recognized him. The man admitted to being there, and he admitted to aiming a loaded shotgun at people.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement in four states searched for fugitive Frank McCarroll. According to the FBI, McCarroll obtained driver’s licenses in Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri before Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies found him in January of 1978, hiding out in Holden, camping on the Tickfaw River.

Quinn told The Advocate, “Honestly, I think Frank wanted to be picked up. He just got tired of running.”

Frank Brent McCarroll pleaded guilty one month later and served less than one year in the St. Helena Parish Jail.