Bayou Justice draws media attention
I established this column nearly a decade ago to draw attention to Louisiana’s growing number of unsolved crimes. I have published updated collections of these reports in three books with the same goal.
This week, I’m proud to report the strategy has worked.
In two weeks, the A&E news program, Cold Case Files, arrives in Hammond to film a documentary on the Selonia Reed murder case, a homicide this column caused authorities to reopen and solve three years ago.
For the documentary series, A&E plans to interview me, along with members of Selonia’s family, police and prosecutors, and several Tangipahoa Parish residents who testified at Reginald Reed’s murder trial. Today, Selonia’s ex-husband serves life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Furthering the goal of getting the word out, Sunday night, August 6, the Bayou Justice podcast, launched three years ago but interrupted by the Covid pandemic, returns to social media, streaming live video for the first time.
In this broadcast, I will briefly discuss the Selonia Reed case but focus more on five other local homicides still unsolved today.
I intend to air more the following week, another list of unsolved crimes. Such a weekly broadcast could potentially continue for years since Louisiana has no shortage of unsolved murders. As with this column, the goal is to increase awareness and encourage witnesses to step forward. For every unsolved crime, there is someone out there who knows something, and there is a grieving family member who deserves answers.
According to Louisiana State University’s Repository for Unidentified and Missing People, Louisiana investigators hold the bodies of 128 presumed murder victims, unclaimed and unidentified. The repository also tracks 500 people currently missing in our state.
In 2023, the New Orleans Police Department reported 137 homicides and 223 non-fatal shootings. The city held the highest murder rate for any American city 14 times since 1993, with 424 murders in 1994 at the height of the city’s bloodletting. The city’s murder rate that year stood at 86 murders per 100,000 residents, the single worst recovered by any municipality in United States history.
Removing New Orleans from the total does little to improve Louisiana’s crime statistics improve. Our state still would have recorded the nation’s highest or second-highest murder rate in 14 of the last 17 years.
Sunday, August 6 broadcast, we will recap several atrocities first reported previously in this column, including:
Jerry Monus – Tuesday, January 8, 1991, the Associated Press reported, “St. Tammany Parish deputies have located the body of a convenience store clerk believed to have been kidnapped during a robbery.” Jerry C. Monus, 56, had been working the overnight shift at a Jr. Food Mart in St. Tammany Parish. Deputies found her bullet-riddled remains in Washington Parish.
Millard and Loraine Anthony – Four Millard Anthony Jr., 35, and his wife Loraine, 32, died of carbon monoxide poisoning, according to Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Frank M. Edwards Jr. Early Sunday morning, May 11, 1969, according to TPSO, two hunters noticed taillights near the Tangipahoa River before discovering the bodies of a Greensburg couple, the parents of seven children, deceased in their car. Foul play is suspected, but the case remains unsolved.
Butch Vallecillo – Two nights before Christmas 1984, late-night diners heard a shot and saw a yellow Chevrolet pickup truck speed from a parking lot, leaving 40-year-old Raul David “Butch” Vallecillo, a former detective with the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office, lying dead in the gravel with a 25-caliber slug in his skull, two inches behind his right temple.
Janessa Hartley – Four years ago, one day before her 57th birthday, a masked man shot and killed Janessa Hartley as she dropped a friend two blocks from her home at a Brookshire Avenue residence in their Sherwood Forest neighborhood. The Baton Rouge Police Department is still looking for her killer today.
David Bell – Just after nine in the evening, December 17, 2001, David Wayne Bell, a 35-year-old construction contractor, entered his home office at 16595 Abbott Lane, yards from his home in Walker. As he entered, someone shot him in the head.
Watch the broadcast live Sunday, August 6 at 7:PM on the YouTube Bayou Justice channel.