DNA identifies victim in Slidell cold case

This week, several readers contacted me asking if authorities had identified Slidell’s Lady in the Lake. Unfortunately, the answer is no. However, a similar cold case is now one step closer to being resolved due to DNA.

After she attended the blessing of the fleet celebration on August 2, 1986, a relative drove Paula Ann Boudreaux, a petite 22-year-old brunette, to her parent’s home near Golden Meadow in Lafourche Parish. However, her family says she never arrived inside the house, and her young son waiting inside never saw his mother again.

Paula Boudreaux had brown hair and eyes and a burn scar on the backside of her right arm. She stood 5-foot-1 and weighed 130 pounds. Friends said Paula wore a white tank top, blue jeans, and dark brown shoes on the day of her disappearance.

She also wore a silver graduation ring, a turquoise ring with a butterfly, a silver ring with the word “Love” engraved, and a pair of gold-colored stud earrings.

At a news conference on Wednesday, St. Tammany and Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s office officials and the St. Tammany Parish coroner reported identifying the remains of a body found in 1989 as Paula Boudreaux.

On March 13, 1989, hunters found human remains in a marshy wooded area off Bayou Paquet Road near Slidell. Although pieces of the victim’s body were scattered, likely due to animals, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office recovered a human skull.

Investigators from the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office told reporters how they linked Boudreaux’s disappearance to her remains in St. Tammany Parish. Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre and St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Detective Winston Harbin flanked the corner’s office investigators.

St. Tammany Parish Coroner Charles Preston said his office could not determine Paula Boudreaux’s cause of death.

The coroner lauded the persistence of Knoblauch and others on his staff, highlighting the importance of the agency’s in-house DNA lab, which enabled investigators to solve the case. DNA was a tool in its infancy when Boudreaux disappeared, he said.

Craig Webre said Paula Boudreaux’s family agonized for decades, “hoping against hope” she was still alive. But, with her death confirmed, he said there is some measure of closure now, and they’ll be able to give her a proper burial.

“But this is only the first piece of the puzzle,” he said. “Now, our investigators will work with St. Tammany Parish investigators and other jurisdictions as we attempt to determine what happened to Mrs. Boudreaux.”

St. Tammany Cold Case Detective Chris Knoblauch began researching the case of the unidentified body in 2020, working with NAMUS, the National Missing, and Unidentified Person System.

In October 2022, investigators at the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) contacted St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith. Following up on an email tip, the investigators reported the remains could belong to Paula Ann Boudreaux. The call prompted Smith and Knoblauch to contact Lafourche Sheriff Craig Webre for assistance.

An earlier facial reconstruction by the LSU FACES Laboratory in Baton Rouge confirmed similar physical characteristics. This confirmation and the timeline prompted Knoblauch to contact the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office requesting a DNA sample from a Boudreaux family member.

The swabs obtained matched the remains found in Slidell.

Paula Boudreaux’s son, who was almost 5 when she went missing, doesn’t remember much, Webre said. But her family’s reaction to now knowing the truth has brought a sigh of relief, Webre said.

A decade-old missing person’s case is now an active criminal investigation. Authorities are considering it a possible homicide. They made the DNA match in January, sources said. However, the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office wanted to wait to go public until after it ramped up for the criminal investigation.

Webre said there are persons of interest in the case, but they have identified no suspects.

“It’s a complicated case, as all cold cases are. Because witnesses have been deceased, much of physical evidence that might have existed no longer exists,” he said. “But we’ll take this case wherever it leads us.”

Webre said he hoped that news of the identification would generate some additional leads. Social media, he said, is a proven tool for collecting tips and other information, and he hopes the public will help solve this case.