Grand jury finds no true bill in jockey murder case

A Jefferson Parish grand jury, looking into the slaying of a young jockey in 1974, concluded their investigation in 1982 without indicting the two men police charged with the slaying of 19-year-old James Sibille.

New Orleans Assistant District Attorney William Hall, who presented testimony about the case, said the grand jury hoped to continue the matter in two weeks, but no further prosecution took place, and in 2021, the case officially remains unsolved.

Hall attempted to find more witnesses and evidence for the grand jury to consider in the case but failed. Word on the street said Mafia Chieftain Carlos Marcello had ordered everyone in the city to keep their mouths shut. Speaking with reporters that week, ADA Hall declined to comment on any aspect of the testimony heard by the grand jury.

The state had sought first-degree murder indictments against Samuel Kleindorf, 51, of 6959 Bellaire Drive, New Orleans, and Glen Babin, 49, of Lafayette.

Kleindorf was arrested at his home in 1982 after a new witness came forward, but vanished before his court appearance. Afterward, the court set Kleindorf free on a $150,000 bond.

Police arrested Babin the same week at his girlfriend’s house in Slidell. During the grand jury investigation, he was held at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center under a $150,000 bond.

The 1982 hearing marked the second time a grand jury heard testimony on the killing of Sibille without returning indictments.

Under a change in procedure for violent crime cases made after 1974, the district attorney’s office today can take matters to the grand jury only after an arrest has been made. That was not the case in 1974. The first hearing took place within weeks of the murder and considered the same suspects.

Although their testimony remains sealed today, we know the names of those seen entering and leaving the grand jury room in 1982 included Stephanie Dowagiac, Connie Shipley, and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Detectives August Claverie and Marco Nuzzolillo.

In a preliminary hearing before Judge Floyd Newlin to determine whether there was probable cause to arrest Kleindorf. Nuzzolillo said Dowagiac and two other women told police that in 1974 they were suspicious when Kleindorf told them hours before Sibille was killed that the jockey was depressed and considering suicide.

Police have said they believe Babin ordered Kleindorf to murder Sibille because the jockey from Sunset, Louisiana did not throw a race at Jefferson Downs on April 14, 1974, but instead rode the thoroughbred, Joe Top, to victory.

Nuzzolillo said investigators believed Babin placed a $30,000 to $35,000 off-track bet on an unidentified horse and stood to reap about $140,000 in earnings if Sibille had pulled back on Joe Top as someone ordered him to do.

At that Tuesday morning hearing, Detective Claverie said a woman, identified by other sources as Shipley, told police that she accompanied Babin on a flight to Atlanta on April 14 and returned the same day. Sources say police now believe the crime was to have occurred that day and that the woman was to provide an alibi for Babin. But on April 14, a Sunday, Sibille rode at Evangeline Downs.

Kleindorf reported finding Sibille’s body inside the jockey’s 2632 Georgia Avenue apartment at 4 in the afternoon of April 16, 1974.

Dowagiac and Shipley lived in the same apartment building. Dowagiac, who once worked at Jefferson Downs, hoped to become Sibille’s understudy.

In 1974 statements, the women told police that Sibille and Kleindorf visited in their apartment until 2 the morning of the murder and that Dowagiac and Shipley visited with Sibille in his apartment another two hours after Kleindorf’s departure.

They said that while they were in their apartment, Kleindorf called each of them aside and told them Sibille was depressed and considering suicide. However, he did not seem that way to either of the women.

At the hearing, Nuzzolillo said that in an original statement in 1974, Kleindorf said he knew nothing about a pistol found in Sibille’s hands when he discovered the body. A few weeks later, Kleindorf changed that statement and told police that earlier on the evening of April 15 — before he and the jockey visited the two women — he found Sibille sitting on his bed pointing the gun at his head. Kleindorf, in his new statement, said he took the revolver from the jockey, emptied the bullets into his coat pocket, and hid the gun.

The coroner’s office ruled Sibille’s death a homicide after finding two bullets wounds in his head and two in the body.

At the hearing, Detective Claverie said a jockey, later identified by The Times-Picayune as Jimmy Young, told police he encountered an angry Babin in the lobby of a Kenner motel the night Sibille won his final race. The detective said the jockey told police “mobsters” later instructed him to throw a race of his own. Young said the hoods, accompanied by Babin, told him if he disobeyed, the same thing would happen to him that happened to Sibille.

That explains why James Sibille’s murder came up in Carlos Marcello’s 1975 racketeering trial. Next week, we conclude this series revisiting that trial and considering the disappearance of the prosecution’s key witness.