Two mothers fear missing sons murdered
Two mothers in South Louisiana contacted Bayou Justice last week with the same problem. Their adult sons are missing, and police suspect both are dead.
Tracy Brewer wrote me, distraught that her 31-year-old son, Christopher, had not returned to his home on Stateline Road in Kentwood since May 2020. The lead investigator originally assigned the case was Captain Blane Sanders of the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, but Tracy said he had been replaced and that investigators today suspect someone killed her son. However, she said, investigators have no leads in the case.
“The police presume him dead, but no arrests have been made, and they haven’t found a body,” Tracy told me via text messages. “But there are a lot of stories going around about what happened to him with details and the people involved.”
Police officers in four parishes know Christopher. Deputies in the Tangipahoa, Livingston, St. Helena, and Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Offices have booked him at various times on burglary charges.
In September 2018, serving time in the Tangipahoa Parish lockup in Amite accused of robbing the St. Dominic Catholic Church in Husser, Christopher challenged a jailer, Charles Grimes III of Ponchatoula, to a fistfight.
Grimes accepted, and Sheriff Daniel Edwards fired him.
Christopher told deputies later that Grimes was a “good dude” and that he felt bad that Grimes lost his job. Christopher also admitted to detectives, “I shouldn’t have provoked him.” He said both apologized to each other after the fight was over.
Last seen in the Wilmer area, Christopher went missing in May 2020. He is a Caucasian male with auburn hair and green eyes. He weighs between 140 and 165 pounds with tattoos on his neck, face, abdomen, chest, and arms. He has a spiderweb with the name “Jaelynn” inscribed on the back of his head and a tattoo on his chest that reads “Ride or Die for My Family.”
The same week Tracy Brewer wrote me, Tina LeClercq contacted me about her missing son. Near three in the morning, August 29, 2014, a 9-1-1 caller reported seeing a man sitting on a railing near a truck parked on the I-10 Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge. Minutes later, a second caller reported seeing the man jump from the bridge, 175 feet to the muddy water below.
The truck belonged to Tina’s 22-year-old son, Jake Latiolais of Brusly, who had dinner with his grandmother and brother less than 48 hours earlier and seemed to be in good spirits. Jake stands five-foot-ten, weighs 150 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes with a cross-shaped scar on his left wrist.
After police received the anonymous call about a person going over the railing, responding officers found Jake’s truck running and his cellphone on the pavement nearby.
“A dive team was called in, but no one was recovered,” Captain Don Coppola of the Baton Rouge Police Department told NBC Dateline. “So right now, it’s an open missing person’s case. Homicide did a preliminary investigation, but it is an active missing person’s case right now.”
“Here’s what the police aren’t telling anyone,” Jake’s mother said. “There was a boat in the back of his truck and an ice chest with fish. Someone tried to make it look as though he had gone fishing, but the trolling motor had no battery, and there were no fishing poles.”
She said, Jake broke his right foot two weeks earlier. He could not walk without crutches and an orthopedic boot. Neither of which were in the truck.
“If he had jumped off the bridge, his crutches would have been found. They would have been left nearby, in his truck, on the bridge, or floating in the water,” Tina said.
Tina found the boot inside Jake’s home, and the crutches turned up at a relative’s home two years later. Police found the truck’s gas tank full and four packs of cigarettes, bought at a Port Allen Walmart at two that morning, unopened on the truck seat.
“After I learned about those two 911 calls coming in,” Tina said, “I requested and got copies. Both calls came from the same number but two different voices. On the disc, there was also a recorded call from a state trooper named Marc Bourgeois. He said that he was going Eastbound when he saw Jake’s truck on the bridge, but he saw a gray car parked next to it.”
Tina also reported that Jake’s home had been broken into, robbed, and later burned. The day following Jake’s disappearance, she found indications of a struggle, including holes in the walls and a window punched out, and Jake’s television and guns were missing.
“I recently got a letter from the Social Security stimulus program showing someone received three stimulus checks in Jake’s name,” she said. “I’m not law enforcement. If I can find out this much, they can do better. They are not trying to solve this case.”
Jake Latiolais enjoyed fishing, working on cars and drawing. Local business and homeowners often hired him to create art on their walls. He also left behind a young daughter.
The disappearances of Jake Latiolais and Christopher Brewer remain open missing person cases, and the mothers of these two young men need help to find answers. Reading this, if you have information or know someone who does, please contact investigators.