Retired chief recounts cops, characters, crimes
Researching and writing about crime in South Louisiana, I have befriended numerous retired police officers. I can sit for hours listening to their adventures and misadventures. One such officer is Chief Eugene Fields, who retired from both the New Orleans Police Department and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. Gene is the author of “Cops and Characters in the Big Easy: True Stories Involving Celebrities, Criminals and Everyday People,” a book released this month by Bogart Books.
Laughing Bandit betrayed by Pumpkin Center nurse
Baton Rouge Police last captured William Aeby, a reputed escape artist, womanizer, and holdup man on May 12, 1956, but his most publicized arrest came during Mardi Gras 1949. That week, the Pumpkin Center girlfriend of the “Laughing Garage Bandit” helped New Orleans police nab him in an arranged hotel rendezvous.
Horse-eating cat did not kill Ed Kinchen
Woodsman Milt Powers believes Ed Kinchen was killed by a seven-foot panther, one of the largest and most ferocious known in Louisiana. However, law enforcement believe the Springfield rancher may have been killed by a monster of the human variety.
Murders of teen girls unsolved after 50 years
On June 13, 1967, two fishermen found Patricia Ann Purcell and Joyce Ellen Galloway’s bodies. Someone had savagely beaten the 17-year-old girls to death, leaving them nude, floating in the East Pearl River near a lonely stretch of road 300 yards south of the U.S. Highway 11 bridge at the Louisiana-Mississippi border.