Murdered tow driver’s nemesis wore a badge

Throughout the five years preceding his murder, tow truck driver Charles Lee Reppond told anyone who would listen that the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office covered up the circumstances of his son’s death, and in 1988, he filed a 50,000-dollar lawsuit against a 20-year veteran of the department.

In 1984, south of The Willows near Hatchell Lane, a man walking his dog through the woods found the body of Charles Warren Reppond at three in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve. Investigators from the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office told reporters the 17-year-old died in a hunting accident 40 minutes before the dog-walker found the body.

The Baton Rouge Advocate reported:

“A Denham Springs youth accidentally killed himself while hunting, Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Deputies said this week. Charles W. Reppond, apparently hunting alone on an oil-well site near Hatchell Lane, deputies said, got the trigger of his 12-gauge shotgun caught in a barbed-wire fence. A blast from the shotgun hit him in the left [side of his] chest, deputies reported.”

The elder Charles Reppond scoffed at the sheriff’s office report, insisting his son never hunted alone and certainly had no plans to do so on New Year’s Eve.

On January 3, 1985, Chief Criminal Deputy Willie Graves told The Denham Springs News they still classified the teenager’s death as an accident. However, he said, they would continue investigating. He said a fence barb still hung in the trigger when deputies arrived, and they found one spent shell in the shotgun’s chamber. However, he admitted, they found the gun in the safety position. After sending the victim’s clothing and weapon to the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, he said, they could not fire the two other shells in the magazine with the safety engaged.

The lab also found that the buckshot struck the shirt in a pattern too broad for a close-range shot.

Until his death, Charles Lee Reppond held onto the clothing and report from the crime lab, insisting someone had covered up his son’s death. Reppond did not assume someone murdered his son. Instead, he theorized someone hunting with Charles Warren accidentally shot him and staged the scene to look as if he shot himself.

Charles Lee Reppond is best known as the tow truck driver who filed a 50,000 dollar lawsuit against the City of Denham Springs and one of his wrecker service competitors before someone murdered him in his truck. However, the year his son died, Charles Reppond operated two additional businesses. He escorted, towed, and set up mobile homes, and he ran a combination bargain barn/auction house in Port Vincent.

The year Charles Reppond began investigating his son’s death, his future adversary, Trading Post 24-Hour Wrecker Service owner Charles Roman “Sonny” Dugas, headed the auxiliary force for the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and ran for Chief of Police in his hometown of Walker.

According to the announcement, Dugas, 48 in 1984, owned the Trading Post Wrecker Service in Walker and served as a captain with the sheriff’s office. “A lifelong resident of Walker,” the news release read, “he married the former Betty Rae Milton, and the couple has nine children. Dugas, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lynn Dugas of Walker, is a member of Eden Baptist Church.”

According to the Denham Springs News, Dugas said his 15 years as a successful Walker business owner and 12 years with the sheriff’s office provided him with the leadership experience he needed to be the town’s police chief.

“I feel the citizens of Walker realize they desperately need a change in their police department,” Dugas told The News. “I feel my experience and knowledge will allow me to organize a more complete and efficient system of 24-hour police protection for the people of Walker.”

Sonny Dugas lost the race and died of a heart attack five years later amid his legal battles with Charles Reppond.

Reppond’s initial lawsuit suggested Dugas used his influence with the sheriff’s office and police in Walker and Denham Springs to gain an unfair advantage over his competition in the wrecker service and insisted that these municipalities create rotation lists dividing accident and junk vehicle calls between tow truck vendors.

Initially, two other competitors joined Reppond in his confrontations with the Walker and Denham Springs city councils, but both backed down when talk of litigation began. In an interview this week, an employee of one of those competitors explained why. “They weren’t afraid to go to court,” the employee told me. “They were afraid of getting killed. The owners got death threats, phone calls threatening their kids’ lives. I don’t know who the threats came from, but they got them. They even still got calls after someone killed that one driver.”

According to the employee, instituting the rotation lists did not solve the problem. “The sheriff’s office had rotation lists before all this,” he said, “But in the wrecker business, there are good cars and bad cars. Those that can be fixed easily will be claimed by the owner, and the tow service collects fees for the tow and storage of the vehicle. When vehicles are irreparably damaged, the owners abandon them, and the tow service makes nothing. Being friendly with law enforcement gets you the good cars and other companies get the bad ones.”

Sonny Dugas, 54, still fighting Charles Reppond’s 50,000-dollar lawsuit, died from complications of a heart attack on December 21, 1989. Eight days later, someone shot Charles Reppond and burned him alive inside his tow truck.

The family of Charles Reppond suspected friends of Sonny Dugas. However, I cannot help but wonder if Charles Reppond’s murder had nothing to do with Sonny Dugas or their high-profile case. Is it possible that Charles died after putting the last piece to the puzzle and confronting the person who accidentally shot his son and covered it up five years earlier?