Louisiana’s Most Prolific Serial Killer | World's Most Evil Killers | Forensic Files

[ominous music] NARRATOR: In October 2004, the partially decomposed body of a 21-year-old man was discovered
in a disused storage locker. Ronald Dominique strangled Michael Barnett, and his body was found several days
later, which started to decompose within those mini storages. Dominique was the wolf in sheep's clothing.
NARRATOR: The unassuming Ronald Dominique, known as the Bayou Strangler, raped and killed
men across South Louisiana. JIM BERNAZZANI: Once their hands and feet were bound,
Ronald Dominique then raped these individuals. And once he was done with them, he'd kill them and then
remove the body from his residence and throw them in the sides of the road. BRYANNA FOX: Dominique would often discard and leave
his victims on the sides of highways or in a canal or in a ditch, like somebody throwing
garbage out of a car window. GEOFFREY WANSELL: This is one of the most relentless serial killers in US history.
NARRATOR: For nine years, Ronald Dominique was a ghost-- undetected, homicidal, and one of the world's most
evil killers. [theme music] [dark music] In December of 2006, 42-year-old Ronald Dominique
was arrested in Houma, Louisiana in connection with the murder of two men. He soon confessed to more than 20 other killings.
He killed multiple men across multiple parishes within the area. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There was no national manhunt.
There was no headlines. He just was there, slipping in and out of lives, taking them as he did so.
[soft ominous music] BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Ronald Dominique appeared as a short, white male, a little over set, walking with a cane,
perfectly harmless. And yet, he was an extremely prolific murderer of young, healthy men.
People who do monstrous things do not look like monsters. NARRATOR: Many of Ronald Dominique's victims
were homeless with drug dependency problems. These were the most vulnerable people in society--
the absolute-- people that police were least willing to investigate. It was just so much easier to kill them and get away with it.
NARRATOR: Due to where some of his victims' bodies were found, Dominique became known as the Bayou Strangler.
He would claim the lives of 23 men. At that time, Ronald Dominique was the most prolific serial killer that we knew of operating
in the United States. [dark music] NARRATOR: This killer's story begins in the small Bayou community of Thibodaux, Louisiana.
[dark bayou music] BRYANNA FOX: Ronald Dominique was born in 1964, just outside of Baton Rouge,
and he came from very meager backgrounds. He was poor kid growing up, and his family really clung
to the tight knit community. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He was one of seven children, so his household would have been very busy
and quite a demanding one. The area that Dominique grew up in, Southern Louisiana,
is one that is quite traditional, one where there are very clear boundaries between masculine and feminine and between men and women,
and as he was growing up, he wasn't one of those alpha males. He had some quite feminine tendencies.
JIM BERNAZZANI: He was an outsider. He tried to fit in. He wasn't having any luck.
[soft music] BRYANNA FOX: He was bullied, taunted by friends, and even put down by his family members.
While growing up, he was living by himself in a camper on the property because the family essentially
said he was just too odd and they knew that there was something amiss with him. NARRATOR: It would gradually emerge
that one of the reasons that he was uncomfortable with his peers was that he was gay.
He was struggling throughout adolescence and into his early 20s with his sexuality.
I think he didn't quite know what it was. [soft music] NARRATOR: Dominique graduated high school
in 1983 at the age of 19. When he left home, he moved frequently between trailer parks.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Dominique came to spend quite a lot of time in New Orleans because that was somewhere where he felt being gay
was more acceptable. He could be himself in that kind of environment. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It was quite a big contrast
between this neighbor in the trailer park and a boy who then turns up at the local gay bar.
And he used to dress up as his favorite character, or singer, Patty LaBelle. But even in the gay community, he didn't
seem to fit in all that well. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There was still a feeling of marginalization of people
not really wanting to include him, so wherever he turns, he seems to be rejected, and I think
that instills in him this underlying current of shame. [soft ominous music] But he never really got a proper job.
He did all sorts of menial things as a young man. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He was a pizza delivery driver.
He was a meter reader. And I think there's a sense in which there's a frustration in him that he's having to settle for these jobs
that are perhaps less than he feels that he's entitled to, but at the same time, these jobs ensure that he goes unnoticed.
They ensure that he remains in the background. [ominous music] NARRATOR: In 1985, at the age of 21,
Dominique was caught making a number of dirty phone calls to local residents. He was convicted of telephone harassment and fined $74.
He wants a connection with other people to some degree, but he wants that connection to make
him feel in control, to make other people essentially fear him. So this is how he's going about doing that-- he's making
a connection, but it's a connection that's based on a very negative foundation. But then in the 1990s, Dominique's crimes
take on an even more sinister edge to them. [ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: In August 1996,
Dominique was charged with attacking a young man. The young man escaped, but he insisted
that Dominique had actually been on the brink of killing him. He attempted to strangle him.
It's the first real sign of what was to come. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This isn't remote distant telephone
harassment. This is him luring somebody into his property and essentially assaulting them.
So here, we've got somebody who is escalating, who is getting more severe in terms of the kind of offenses
that they're committing. [dark soft music] NARRATOR: Dominique was in prison for two weeks
while awaiting trial. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He's held in jail, and he insists that he was brutally and persistently
raped by fellow prisoners. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When he tells it, it puts him in the role as the victim
to try and gain sympathy. It seemed to really impact him because he said, I never
want to go back to jail again. [ominous music] NARRATOR: When Dominique faced the charges at court,
his alleged victim didn't appear, so the case was dismissed. Dominique comes out of the other side of this, realizing--
said, I've gotten away with it. But also, it's given him a bit of a fright. He's not going to stop doing it, but he knows that he
can't leave any more witnesses. BRYANNA FOX: While most people who are in jail decide to stop all illegal behavior at that point,
well, Dominique actually escalated his behavior. [dark music] NARRATOR: On the 12th of July, 1997,
a 19-year-old man named David Mitchell had just attended a family gathering in New Orleans,
and then is believed to have hitched a ride to go home. But nearly 48 hours later, David's lifeless body
was found. The body was just dumped. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And dumping the body out
in the open, that's basically saying that you were worthless, you know, you have no value.
So this first murder is quite a significant one. [dark soft music] NARRATOR: David's body had been abandoned along a stretch
of highway in St. Charles Parish of Louisiana, six miles away from where he was last seen alive.
He'd been raped and drowned. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Dominique would have been able to watch the life drain out of his victim.
So this tells me that he's a killer who enjoys the process of murder as well as the outcome
of ending somebody's life. He felt a lot of anger and frustration inside, and so I'm sure the motivation was twofold--
to silence somebody who was able to witness and say what he had done, but also, he was acting out on his violent tendencies which
were developing after years, if not decades, of feeling repressed and ostracized
by his family and society. NARRATOR: Police found no meaningful evidence of the identity of the killer.
Ronald Dominique had escalated from would-be rapist to savage murderer, then escaped without a trace.
[ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: Barely six months later in December 1997, Dominique kills for the second time--
Gary Pierre, and he was 20. He was a high school student. NARRATOR: When his body was discovered
on the 14th of December 1997, there were signs that Gary Pierre had been sexually assaulted.
He was strangled to death. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Significantly, Pierre had been tied up.
For Dominique, it's about control as much as it is about the death. It's the ultimate God-like complex.
[dark music] ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He enjoys seeing people helpless and humiliated.
And this is something that goes back to his experiences of adolescence. He felt ashamed, he felt humiliated,
and he's repeating those feelings, but this time, he's the one carrying them out.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: In July the following summer, a third young man was found murdered in the same six mile
radius of St. Charles Parish. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's extraordinary that the bodies were found so close together
but no one adds 2 and 2 and gets 4. They're just separate bodies. But now you have three killings in the space of a year.
They're all strangled, but no DNA is found. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Dominique had managed to cover his tracks.
He continued to hide in plain sight and frequent gay bars in New Orleans. On the 4th of October 1998, he met 27-year-old Oliver LeBanks
at a bar in the French Quarter. Years later, he would detail the encounter in a police interview.
MAR PAULSON: Oliver was a good friend. He was delightful, and never a problem, never an angry word.
Very, just jovial, smiling, sweet, kind. I saw him walk away down the alleyway from the restaurant,
and he turned the corner and that was the last time I saw him. NARRATOR: After chatting in the bar,
Oliver and Dominique left together. GEOFFREY WANSELL: According to Dominique, the two men had agreed to have sex in the back of his car.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: Oliver LeBanks had become the fourth man to lose his life at Dominique's hands.
He just didn't deserve to die like that. People were talking about him as being transient and drug
addict, and, you know, Oliver was a wonderful human being with a family. He was as much a part of that French Quarter community
as I was or anybody else was. He begins to cry at several points during these interviews,
and this is just an act. So what this does is it distracts our attention away from the fact that he's the aggressor,
he's the one who enacted this violence. [dark music] NARRATOR: The following day in the Jefferson Parish
of Louisiana, a passerby discovered Oliver's body under a freeway ramp. MAR PAULSON: Detectives came in and sat down,
and they showed me a picture of Ollie and told me that he had been found dead and they wanted me to tell them something about him.
They really just didn't want to hear anything that was, um, good. I think that they were expecting me
to say he was all kinds of problems, and he was on drugs, and the only thing that I could tell them was that he was a good, young man.
So they wrapped it up and left, and I didn't hear from them after that. NARRATOR: Investigators had, however,
found a Caucasian hair and semen on Oliver's body and recovered mitochondrial DNA.
Dominique had made a mistake. Mitochondrial DNA, it's very different to what we refer to as autosomal DNA.
It's maternally inherited, so it would have been shared with brothers and sisters and so forth because they were all
inherited from the same mom. So it's not the type of DNA that we have on the database.
NARRATOR: Investigators now had a partial DNA profile of Oliver LeBanks' killer but no means to match it to anyone.
[ominous music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: In the weeks following, other victims begin to turn up.
JIM BERNAZZANI: There were some that were killed in rather close proximity and close in time,
that he used to go for months without killing anybody. Then he did go back to having a spree of three or four deaths.
So this is part of the challenge at that time-- some were written off as deaths by accidents,
others were murdered, but to string them all together into one guy was a little bit far reaching.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There wasn't very much in the way of forensic evidence. This suggests that Dominique may have used condoms
when assaulting his victims. So this does tell us that there might be a degree of forensic awareness here.
There is a sense in which he wants to limit the amount of evidence that he leaves on their bodies.
He's quite an intelligent serial killer. BRYANNA FOX: Dominique would pick victims
and leave their bodies at multiple different parishes across Louisiana. [dark music]
We assume that police departments share information and have access to each other's case files and databases--
that it certainly wasn't that way in the 1990s. They would have to literally share information by calling
each other to discuss. And therefore, linking these crimes, pooling the evidence,
and trying to actually put together a case against a serial killer versus individual murders
was just not on the police radar. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There were not banner headlines saying a serial killer is loose in the Bayou.
There were no headlines at all. If they warranted a small mention, it was quite rare.
And we can't be sure, but it's significant, I think, that at this point, all his victims had been Black.
[soft music] To this day, when I talk to people and I talk about having someone that worked with me killed
by a serial killer, they're like, why didn't we hear about this? What happened? I think that in essence, the biggest problem was that you
were dealing with young Black men and it just got completely passed over. BRYANNA FOX: Victims that are white, female,
young, in college, they get the vast majority of the media attention. Victims that are male, older in age, minorities,
and especially if they were gay or had any type of other stigmatizing features, especially in the 1990s and even early 2000s,
they just did not generate a lot of public attention, sympathy, and were not deemed as media worthy.
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Most of the victims lived on the street and was homeless, you were subject to anyone
that passes by or anyone that's offering you something. Sometimes what some individuals believe is an act of kindness
is really something for them to take advantage of an individual person and then take them somewhere.
That's the reason why they, hate to say, could end up in human trafficking or even death.
NARRATOR: In January of 2000, more than two and a half years since he'd killed for the first time,
police were no closer to identifying 35-year-old Ronald Dominique. BRYANNA FOX: He thought that he could engage
in this type of pattern of systematic serial killing and sexual assaults and yet never get caught.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: In this period between the summer of 1997 and 2000, Dominique had killed 10 young men
with no trace or suggestion that a serial killer could be at work. And now something even more extraordinary
happens in the story of Ronald Dominique-- he stops killing. [dark music] NARRATOR: By January 2000, 35-year-old Ronald Dominique
had seemingly ended his murderous spree. The previous year, he'd moved home from New Orleans
to the nearby town of Houma. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Almost more of a nice, quiet, little town.
We're probably about maybe about 45 minutes to 60 minutes southeast of New Orleans.
As a small community, you pretty much know everybody. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Now, I don't think
the move in itself accounts for why he stopped killing. I think it's, in a sense, coincidence.
Something convinced him to stop killing. Had he been frightened that people would think there
was a serial killer in action? There's no evidence that he wasn't going to escalate further.
But for some reason, he doesn't kill again for almost three years. NARRATOR: On the 6th of October 2002,
the body of 20-year-old Kenneth Randolph was found dumped in an isolated area of Lafourche Parish,
18 miles outside of Houma. Kenneth had been raped and strangled. His body was completely naked, except for a pair
of white socks, with his limbs sprawled out. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Dominique is continuing that theme of shame.
He wants his victims to appear in these quite shameful positions. This is how he wants them to be remembered.
BRYANNA FOX: To somewhat blaming the victims for his own urges, whether it was the sexual attraction he had to them
or the fact that he killed them-- either way, he put it on the victims and didn't take
any responsibility himself. [dark music] NARRATOR: 38-year-old Dominique had now left victims' bodies
in four different parishes of South Louisiana with minimal evidence at any of the scenes.
Police were still struggling to put together a coherent investigation. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Many of Dominique's victims
were people who led quite transient lifestyles, quite high risk lifestyles-- people who live off the radar of society, people
who are essentially forgotten. [soft music] NARRATOR: Lieutenant Bobbie O'Bryan with the Houma Police
Department co-founded an initiative to help vulnerable local men called The Bunkhouse.
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: We opened up The Bunkhouse in 1998 as a shelter for homeless individuals
within our community. NARRATOR: One of the residents was Michael Barnett. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Michael Barnett was on the streets
as a homeless teenager. He stayed with us probably about two years in the early 2000s.
Through our process of our program, Michael Barnett was able to work himself to become self-sufficient and then
eventually move on to his own little place and stuff like that. NARRATOR: In October of 2004, 21-year-old Michael would
encounter Ronald Dominique. It was October 2004 that Michael Barnett was found deceased in the east side of Houma.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: For the first time in this long litany of killing, he kills a white victim.
Nobody had come looking for him. He was simply more fodder for Ronald Dominique.
NARRATOR: Michael Barnett's body was found on the 24th of October 2004, three weeks after he was last seen alive.
Ronald Dominique wasn't an obvious threat to his victims. He was overweight, often walked with a cane,
and appeared unassuming. But he had now killed 15 men. [ominous music] BRYANNA FOX: In 2005, after almost a decade of murders,
there was information being shared across jurisdictions. And at that point, they started noticing similarities
and patterns in the cases, and they were able to communicate and share the information that made them think
this is a serial killer, not just a number of unexplained deaths. NARRATOR: That number was still climbing.
By spring, Dominique had taken 18 lives. JIM BERNAZZANI: April in 2005, I was assigned to head up the FBI
field office in New Orleans, Louisiana, which covers the whole state of Louisiana.
This killing spree began in 1997, so that's eight years right there, and Ronald Dominique was not pinpointed as a suspect.
We had put together a task force made up of Sheriff's officers, Louisiana State Police, the Attorney
General's Office, and the FBI, and we worked this case together. BRYANNA FOX: The task force showed law enforcement was
finally all coming together to form a more cohesive collaborative team and put that evidence
towards finding one offender, rather than working separately with only tidbits of the case.
NARRATOR: On the 16th of August 2005, the task force had another victim on their hands.
The body of a Black teenager named Wayne Smith was found in a small bayou south of Houma.
The elusive killer had now taken 20 lives and discarded the bodies like trash. NARRATOR: When it was found, Wayne's body
was so badly decomposed that his ethnicity wasn't initially identifiable and his cause of death could not be determined.
BRYANNA FOX: And in this case, it was a 17-year-old boy who had a girlfriend, who had a very
supportive and loving family. And at this point, it seemed that this MO of killing men
that were on the fringes of society now all of a sudden had changed, and the attention that maybe had not
been paid to this case seemed to be changing and going in the opposite direction, with the task
force forming and the nature of the victim that was now killed. But all of this got derailed in early September of 2005.
[soft music] NARRATOR: Category five Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana with devastating effect.
Wide scale flooding ravaged the city of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes,
and over 1 million residents were evacuated. There were more than 1,800 fatalities.
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: The police force was very stretched out thin during that time, and really, you
couldn't focus on, say, big investigations only because you're dealing with the devastation
for which we have in the area. You will be on the curb. That shut down the case for about six months
because all of us were in our own particular environments trying to bring structure back to the city--
and actually, to the entire state. NARRATOR: Hurricane Katrina may have stalled the investigation
but did little to hinder the advance of 41-year-old Dominique, who'd now killed 20.
[ominous music] BRYANNA FOX: Dominique had gotten away with murder for almost a decade at this point,
killing almost two dozen men and never getting caught, arrested, questioned, or seemingly
even on police radar. So by this time, he's thinking he can do anything and get away with it.
NARRATOR: But Dominique's luck was about to change. [dark music] GEOFFREY WANSELL: In November 2005,
a young man called Ricky Wallace tells his parole officer about being tied up by a man
who is intent on killing him. BRYANNA FOX: Ricky Wallace said that he was approached
by a white man who showed him a photo of a woman and said that he would pay him to sleep with her,
and he took him into his van. And at the point that he was trying to get-- tied him up,
he refused. And at that point, Wallace said, please take me back home. I don't want to do this.
And incredibly, the man actually agreed and took him back home, and that's the only reason why he survived.
NARRATOR: Ricky Wallace would later reveal that he personally knew one of the previous victims
of the Bayou Strangler and was convinced that he'd encountered the same man. That man was, of course, Ronald Dominique.
[ominous music] And the parole officer told the task force what happened. JIM BERNAZZANI: Ricky Wallace brought the Sheriff's deputies
to Ronald Dominique's trailer. When they got there, they questioned him, they searched the camper, but they did not find any evidence
that linked him to the crimes. At this point, they asked him for a DNA sample, and even though he denied any involvement,
he was willing to give police a saliva sample. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There isn't very much resistance to this
at all because he knows that by refusing a sample, that's going to look even more suspicious.
And there's also an arrogance to him as well. So on many of his victims, there was no DNA evidence
found whatsoever, so I think he believed that he'd been so careful that they just
wouldn't be able to link him. BRYANNA FOX: At this time, there were actually multiple serial killers operating in Louisiana.
And on top of the deaths from Hurricane Katrina, forensic labs were actually so backlogged
that there were delays in forensic evidence testing. But because the microscope is being focused more and more
on Ronald Dominique, the police launch a surveillance operation. While we were putting together the case,
plainclothes Sheriff's deputies assumed positions to watch Dominique. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When the police were surveilling him,
Dominique appeared to stop his killing behavior. NARRATOR: Eventually, as the backlog at the forensic lab
eased, Dominique's saliva sample was processed. In November 2006, a mitochondrial DNA match
was made with evidence found on Oliver LeBanks in 1998, and another victim of the Bayou Strangler.
Authorities believed that they finally had the killer. Dominique was staying with his sister in her trailer.
JIM BERNAZZANI: He moved out and she left the area, and he went to The Bunkhouse.
NARRATOR: On the 29th of November 2006, Ronald Dominique, still under surveillance,
checked into The Bunkhouse homeless shelter run by Bobbie O'Bryan. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Originally, I did not
know Ronald Dominique was a suspect in reference to any of these potential murders, and we
took him in just like any other homeless male person. He was very soft spoken, almost to a point
to where I had to lean in to him a little bit to listen to what he was saying. We actually put him in what's called a bunkroom, which
is a room with several beds in it, which other male subjects would be in that room.
NARRATOR: The following morning, the Sheriff's Department contacted Bobbie and informed him of the growing
case against Dominique. BOBBIE O'BRYAN: The process of our program that we have over here is that the next morning
from the emergency bed, you have to leave at 8:00. Well, the chief acts to see if there was a way possible that I
could put Ronald Dominique back into The Bunkhouse, that way they would have a location that they know
that he would be at without having to go find him each and every day. Originally, I told the chief no because why would I put him
inside a closed facility building where he has access to other individuals that fit the profile of male subjects
that he actually would attack and kill? The chief convinced me after a few minutes.
Then I went back and I spoke to Dominique. He was sitting right on the fire escape stairs
and told him that somebody wants to sponsor him in reference to getting into a private room, which
was room six. It was not known to me at that particular time that Ronald Dominique actually stayed in the same exact room
that Michael Barnett lived here during the time that he stayed with us for more than two years.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: Two days later on the 1st of December 2006, investigators moved in.
I actually walked the two detectives into The Bunkhouse towards his room, and I knocked on room six.
Ronald Dominique opened up the door, and then all he did was put his head down, looking at the ground, like he knew--
or like he was waiting for something. [dark music] NARRATOR: Ronald Dominique was arrested and charged
in connection with two of the murders, including the killing of Oliver LeBanks. Police were interrogating him for his involvement in all
of the other crimes, and he almost instantaneously confesses but turns it around and starts
making excuses, and in some ways, blaming the victims for his behavior. [soft music]
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Dominique confesses to 23 killings. One policeman commented, he seemed to like killing.
There can be no doubt of that. Dominique was obsessed with killing. Obsessed with power and control.
He was just 42 years old at the time. NARRATOR: As police confirm the identities of the 23 victims
in Dominique's confession, they realized that his final victim was killed just weeks before his arrest.
BRYANNA FOX: It took 10 months for the DNA testing from Dominique to actually be linked to a victim.
The 10 month delay allowed him an enormous amount of time to go on and commit more offenses,
and that's exactly what he did. GEOFFREY WANSELL: While he's under the police surveillance operation, they
cannot make it absolutely 24/7. In October 2006, Ronald Dominique picks up a man called Christopher Satterfield,
who's 27 years old. NARRATOR: Dominique took Christopher to a storage facility off Highway 69 in Iberville
Parish of South Louisiana. It was the same location where he'd previously left the body of Michael Barnett.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Dominique hits him on the head. Strangles him. He was his 23rd and last victim.
[soft music] ELIZABETH YARDLEY: It really does tell you about the arrogance. There may have been a sense in which he thought,
it's only really a matter of time before I get apprehended-- that he wants to kill,
and nothing, not even a police investigation, gets in the way of that. NARRATOR: The arrogant killer attempted
to hide behind emotion as he confessed to police. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He's trying to make
people feel sorry for him. So he's basically saying, these guys had robbed me. They'd attacked me first.
I was simply defending myself. To think that each one of these men have been killed essentially in self defense,
it's absolute lunacy. NARRATOR: On the 23rd of September 2008, Ronald Dominique appeared in court, charged with the murders
in Terrebonne Parish. BRYANNA FOX: The public had the first images of what Dominique looked like.
The fact that he was labeled the Bayou Strangler and seemingly so evil and heinous,
and yet looked like this very trustworthy man that could potentially live next door, I think threw a lot of people
off and really showed them that a serial killer can look like anything, there's not one profile,
and evil can come in any different form. NARRATOR: Dominique had seemingly overpowered
and killed many young men. The question was, how? MAR PAULSON: Oliver was not a small person.
He carried himself very well, he was tall, and it just didn't make any sense to me
how he could be so easily taken down by someone like the person that murdered him.
BOBBIE O'BRYAN: Because of the way his demeanor, the way he acted, the way he spoke, walking with a cane,
he could barely move-- and to say to wrestle with someone, that would have probably been the last thought if you would have saw him
just walking down the streets. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Dominique had revealed the final piece of the puzzle--
investigators now knew how this seemingly weakened unassuming man had overpowered so many.
Under Louisiana State law, the Bayou Strangler could face a death sentence for his vicious crimes
if found guilty. BRYANNA FOX: Many families of the victims joined together and cohesively stated
they did not want the death penalty applied in this case against Dominique. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He's made a deal
with the district attorney. If he pleads guilty, he's going to avoid the death penalty,
and he's going to accept eight life sentences without parole-- an extraordinary deal you might think for a man who insisted he
never wanted to go back to jail. NARRATOR: In accepting the deal, Dominique pled guilty to eight charges of murder
and received eight consecutive life sentences in Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
To date, he has not been tried for his crimes in three other parishes where victims were found.
I think Ronald Dominique should have gotten the death penalty. He killed 23 people.
He is just a complete sick monster crying that he was a victim. He doesn't need to walk on the planet.
[soft music] These victims were not seemingly taken seriously for such a long period of time, and he killed them
and made it seem like they deserved what they had happened to them. I get upset when these young men are portrayed as the dregs
of society and the transients, the drug addicts, the sex workers. They were just people.
They went to work, they did the best that they could, and just did not deserve to die at the hands of this, just,
gross human being. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He demonstrates a level of callousness and disregard for human life
without expressing a word of remorse, without considering any of his victims or their families.
The sheer number of deaths, and the fact that Dominique went unidentified for so long,
is genuinely terrifying. [dark music] NARRATOR: For nearly a decade, the Bayou Strangler deceived,
bound, assaulted, and murdered men as he drifted across South Louisiana. He chose victims on the fringes of society, earned their trust,
then savagely snatched their lives away, confirming Ronald Dominique as one of the world's
most evil killers. [dark music] [audio logo]

Season 7, Episode 20

For nearly a decade, the Bayou Strangler deceived, bound, assaulted and murdered men, as he drifted across South Louisiana. He chose victims on the fringes of society, earned their trust, then savagely snatched their lives away. His name – is Ronald Dominique.

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Brief Summary

Ronald Dominique, the Bayou Strangler, murdered 23 men in Louisiana, exploiting societal neglect of marginalized victims before his arrest in 2006.

Key points

The Bayou Strangler's Reign of Terror. Ronald Dominique, known as the Bayou Strangler, raped and killed men across South Louisiana for nearly a decade.
A Killer's Confession. In December 2006, Dominique was arrested and confessed to over 20 murders, shocking the community.
The Vulnerable Victims. Many of Dominique's victims were homeless or struggling with addiction, making them easy targets.
Escalation of Violence. Dominique's crimes escalated from harassment to murder, marking a chilling transformation.
The First Murder. David Mitchell, a 19-year-old, was the first confirmed victim of Dominique's killing spree.
The Bayou Strangler's Arrest. Ronald Dominique was arrested after a long investigation, linked to multiple murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

People who do monstrous things do not look like monsters.

Describing Ronald Dominique's unassuming appearance.

2:42WatchJan 30, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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