Breakthrough in Barbara Blount case?

Last week, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard told reporters his office has new information on the 2008 disappearance of Barbara Blount.

“Right now, we have gotten some information that I feel is going to be very good information. Of course, we have to work through it to make sure it’s credible and what we need. But I have a really good feeling that this is going to put another piece in the puzzle and help us find Barbara Blount and [find out] what actually happened to her,” the sheriff said. “I’m really proud about this, but I don’t want to get too excited because, again, in these cases, you have to take your time, be patient, and make sure this information is credible,” he said.

Regular readers of Bayou Justice reading this today may feel I’ve reprinted an older column. However, Sheriff Ard made the above statement on May 2, 2023.

Preparing a run for re-election in 2018, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard called a press conference. With the family of Barbara Blount on stage next to him, he declared plans to solve the then 10-year missing person case.

But that never happened.

The following year, Louisiana State Police charged Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Perkins with 60 counts of production of pornography involving a juvenile under the age of 13, two counts of first-degree rape, three counts of possession of pornography involving a child under the age of 13, two counts of video voyeurism, and two counts of obscenity.

Sheriff Ard’s reputation tanked when journalists reported Perkins got his job with the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office in 2002 when Ard vouched for him after another law enforcement agency fired him.

Soon after, Sheriff Ard called another news conference. Former deputies Woody Overton and Jim Rathmann, he said, were given Barbara Blount’s case files. They would review collected data with fresh eyes and interview Blount family members on their web-based podcast.

Unfortunately, nothing came of it. When Dennis Perkins pleaded guilty, receiving a century-long prison sentence, the case faded from the headlines, as did Woody Overton’s attention to Barbara Blount.

However, in this new election year, Sheriff Jason Ard has again announced developments in the Barbara Blount case.

I’d love the statement to be accurate, but I’m having trouble trusting this sheriff when he claims to care about unsolved crimes.

The year he paraded Mrs. Barbara’s family on stage, I sent public records requests to every law enforcement agency in the 21st Judicial District, from the smallest to the largest, asking for a list of unsolved murders within their jurisdiction in the previous 20 years.

Every agency complied without charging so much as a copying fee—every agency except the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office.

When I asked the LPSO public information officer for an explanation, she told me Sheriff Ard would consider my request only if I first paid a 300 dollar research fee.

When I explained Louisiana law required them to comply with public records requests, she suggested I file a lawsuit, saying the sheriff initially wanted to charge me a thousand dollars before she explained to him that my work might help them close a case or two.

At the Barbara Blount press conference the year he denied my request, Sheriff Ard insisted the Blount disappearance was the only unsolved case on their books.

In 2021, I interviewed Wesley and Terrie Collins, the last people to admit to seeing Barbara Blount before she vanished in 2008. The couple saw her parked on a hunting camp road off Highway 1036 in Holden, less than a mile from her home, walking distance from where neighbors found her car abandoned hours later.

Barbara Blount smiled as the couple passed. They smiled back at Barbara, who stood near a pickup truck behind her car, talking to a younger man seated in the truck.

Wes Collins remembered. “It was a full-size truck, an F-100 or maybe a 150, but not a 4-wheel drive.”

Wesley Collins grew up in Louisiana, but in 2008, he and Terrie lived in Fort Payne, Alabama. The week Barbara Blount vanished, Wes, Terrie, and their three youngest children visited relatives in Holden. They believe they witnessed Barbara Blount’s abduction as they left the area and headed back to Alabama.

“We usually took 1036 to the Interstate highway in Amite and went north from there. However, a rainstorm cut our visit short that day,” Wes said. “We had an 8-to-10-hour drive ahead of us, 463 miles.”

On a Friday afternoon, May 2, 2008, Barbara Blount, a Sunday school teacher at Magnolia Baptist Church in Holden, left her country home, drove a quarter mile down the street, and disappeared.

Soon after, a passing teenager recognized her car in the woods by Road 7, a dirt road into a hunting camp, and phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. On the dirt road, the concerned teen also found a set of car keys several yards from the abandoned vehicle.

With a deputy en route to the possible traffic accident, Barbara Blount’s daughter and nephew phoned police and reported her missing.

“We saw her standing in the misting rain,” Terrie Collins remembered. “She had keys in her hand and something else. I really thought it was her glasses. I can’t be sure, but that made sense to me, taking your glasses off when the rain started.”

“We had just come around a curve,” Wes said, “and we were pulling our camper. We had to slow in that curve. That’s how we happened to see her as clearly as we did.”

Wes drew a map showing the position of the three vehicles as they rounded the curve. Barbara Blount’s 2006 Toyota Camry sat in the middle of Road 7, which joined Highway 1036, as if she had just pulled in to turn around. Barbara stood behind her car in front of a silver Ford parked facing her on the side of Highway 1036. She stood facing the truck’s driver’s side door, talking to the driver.

“It looked like she had just pulled over to talk to someone she knew,” Wes said. “I was driving, so I noticed more about the vehicles than the people talking. The truck was not new, but not old, maybe a 1998 model.”

“When we came around that curve,” Terrie said, “the lady turned to look at us and smiled as you do in rural areas, but something seemed off. I got this eerie feeling like something wasn’t right.”

“She may have been being lured away,” Wes said, “but for sure, no violence had started. The man was still sitting in the truck.”

“After she smiled, I looked at the guy,” Terrie said. “He wore mirrored sunglasses like state troopers wore back then, and he had light-colored hair, blonde or bleached with dark roots, almost in a bowl cut. His face was thin, kind of sunken in.”

“Sallow,” Wes added.

“The man kept a blank expression as we passed,” Terrie said, “but when I made eye contact, he slumped in the seat and pushed his head back towards the door panel like he didn’t want us to see his face.”

By week’s end, Wes and Terrie were back in Alabama when Terrie read of Barbara Blount’s disappearance on social media and phoned the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s office. Although Terrie did not know the victim, she described the lady perfectly, including the striped shorts and unmatched shirt Barbara wore that day.

Detective Chuck Watts instructed Terrie and Wes to report to the Norfolk Police Department to review mugshots. The couple selected Barbara Blount from a collection of photographs. However, none of the mugshots provided resembled the man in the silver Ford.

Later, Wes and Terrie returned to Louisiana and escorted Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputies to the scene where they saw the lady standing. Detectives confirmed the location was within yards of where they found Barbara Blount’s empty car.

To date, the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office has not located the suspect fitting the description of the man Wes and Terrie Collins saw. However, Barbara’s family insists she never stopped for anyone she did not know—and she had few neighbors in this rural section of the parish.