Police report offers few leads in Becky Gary case

After an anonymous caller confessed to murdering Rebecca Pauline Gary at Governor Edwin Edwards’ request in 1988, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s detectives fruitlessly searched the city for a brown Ford LTD and the body allegedly in the trunk.

The caller supplied the victim’s full name and date of birth and gave directions to the Spanish Town road where he claimed to have left the body. Until then, police suspected “Becky” had disappeared of her own volition.

According to the sheriff’s office records released in 2021, deputies began looking for Becky on a Saturday, January 14, 1989, two weeks after her disappearance. The officer’s notes that day described Becky as a 32-year-old white female, five-foot-eleven, with brown hair and green eyes.

Investigating Officer Barry J. Parrish arrived just before five that evening at 8383 Airline Highway in Baton Rouge, responding to a missing persons call from Beverly D. Worthy, the manager of Oakland Apartments. Worthy told the officer that Rebecca Gary had sent her daughter to visit her grandmother in Shreveport two weeks before Christmas and that no one had seen Becky since that day.

Worthy said she entered the missing tenant’s apartment two weeks earlier when a friend of Becky’s came looking for her, concerned that no one had heard from her since Christmas. She found all lights and a coffee pot on, but no one in the apartment. Instead, she found framed photographs on the bed next to a half-packed suitcase.

Worthy called the sheriff’s office, she said, after returning to the apartment that Saturday afternoon to evict Becky for not paying her rent. Instead, she found the apartment in the same condition, except the power company had turned off the electricity. Finding Becky’s address book next to the bed, she phoned Becky’s brother, who told her the family had not heard from Becky since before Christmas.

Checking Becky’s apartment, Officer Parrish found no evidence of forced entry, and the apartment counter and table appeared coated in undisturbed dust.

Speaking to neighbors, he learned Becky frequented the Waffle House diner at 7664 Airline Highway. There, he interviewed Karen, a server, who said Becky and her daughter, Jamie, ate there daily until mid-December, but no one had seen them in at least a month.

Officer Parrish reviewed the case with Detective Dan Larkin, providing him with Becky’s address book and other personal papers, before filing his report with Sergeant Ike Stubbs. Becky’s other belongings remained untouched until Glen Gary arrived from Mississippi to collect them on January 19.

Becky’s brother supplied a list of the collected items to the police ten days later. The list included her clothing and suitcase, prescription bottles, Edward Edwards campaign posters and pins, several business cards, tax and insurance papers, a driver’s license, one pair of men’s underwear, size 34-36, some framed photographs, and a typewriter. Glen also provided police with Becky’s purse, which they logged into evidence. The pocketbook held no money, only documents.

Using Becky’s address book, Detective Larkin phoned Becky’s sister, Joyce, interviewing her at her place of employment on January 25. Joyce explained Becky had sent her daughter Jamie to visit them for the holidays. However, Jamie was still there.

On February 15, Detective Larkin phoned Jamie Gary, Becky’s daughter, at Joyce’s home in Shreveport. Jamie told him her mom had been dating a man she did not like for at least a year. She knew little about him, except that he knew Governor Edwin Edwards and had taken Becky to meet him in New Orleans.

According to Detective Larkin’s report, Jamie noticed her mother having “some sort of problem” in early December, acting nervous, even paranoid. She said, during this period, an unidentified man visited her mother. They sat in the living room of the apartment. From her room, Jamie overheard parts of the conversation. The man said someone would soon kill Edwin Edwards for not repaying money, a loan from someone important.

The February 15 report closed with a note summarizing Detective Larkin’s interview with Becky’s family members: “The victim is reportedly obsessed with and infatuated by the governor and keeps newspaper clippings and campaign memorabilia. She allegedly fantasized about him daily and would travel great distances and spare no expense to see him.”

On February 24, Tom Powers, a Child Protective Services employee, contacted investigators to report that Becky once allowed Jamie outside at night while the mother worked at a Nyland’s Café on Plank Road. A CPS worker, Jules Barnes, had investigated but could not substantiate the report.

Powers called, however, for a different reason. He said that Becky worked with a woman named Linda Carter and her boyfriend, Bill Weedling. When the café closed, she said, the couple moved to Weedling’s hometown in Indiana. He wondered if Becky had left with them.

Contacting police in Indiana, Sergeant Ike Stubbs confirmed this was not the case.

On April 12, Bob Williams, Becky’s employer at the time of her disappearance, told investigators Becky did not pick up her last paycheck. He said she seemed paranoid the month before she vanished and once came in with bruises on her face and arm. At the time, he said, Becky dated a truck driver named James Stewart, who lived in the same apartment complex. Investigators could not find Stewart.

Before Stewart, Williams said, Becky bragged about dating at least two married police officers.

On August 12, Detectives Dan Larkin and Ben Odom interviewed Charlotte Faye Williams, a server who once worked with Becky at Frank’s Restaurant, next door to Becky’s apartment. One year earlier, Becky and Faye had “entered into an altercation” that involved hair-pulling and both women losing their jobs at Frank’s Restaurant.

This report summarizes all the facts in the police files released last year. However, some pages are missing, or investigators never followed up on some of their leads.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office released these pages on Rebecca Pauline Gary in response to a Public Records Request from Investigator Kim Whisenant, information they did not have to disclose unless they considered the cold case closed. Perhaps they know something we do not, something still within the unreleased pages in her case file.

Kim delivered copies of the partially released files to Becky’s family on July 9, 2021, three days before Edwin Edwards died.