Jeff Davis 8: The True Story Behind the Unsolved Murder That Allegedly Inspired True Detective, Season One
Jefferson Davis Parish has been described as quaint, and in many ways it certainly is. For anyone from a big city much of the area, especially out among the farms, is like a trip in a time machine. For a sleepy rural community, however, Jefferson Davis is a lot more violent than you’d expect, and these days cheap, potent rocks of cocaine are at the root of a lot of that violence.
Crack addicts are famously willing to do just about anything to subsidize their habit so street prostitution has become a real issue, mostly concentrated in the town’s poorer neighborhoods south of the railway track. Prostitution – especially on the street – is a dangerous business, so the sheriff’s office weren’t too surprised when the first one turned up dead. As the body count climbed people started to take notice, but despite all their efforts the killings continued until eight women were dead.
This book traces one of the most fascinating unsolved crimes in the history of Louisiana. In 2014, many believe it became one of the inspirations for the first season of HBO’s “True Detective.” But the crimes in this book are much more shocking than anything captured on TV.
Please note: This book is not published or endorsed by the creators or producers of “True Detective.”
Crack addicts are famously willing to do just about anything to subsidize their habit so street prostitution has become a real issue, mostly concentrated in the town’s poorer neighborhoods south of the railway track. Prostitution – especially on the street – is a dangerous business, so the sheriff’s office weren’t too surprised when the first one turned up dead. As the body count climbed people started to take notice, but despite all their efforts the killings continued until eight women were dead.
This book traces one of the most fascinating unsolved crimes in the history of Louisiana. In 2014, many believe it became one of the inspirations for the first season of HBO’s “True Detective.” But the crimes in this book are much more shocking than anything captured on TV.
Please note: This book is not published or endorsed by the creators or producers of “True Detective.”
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Excerpt
Introduction
If anyone is planning a book about rural Louisiana they should put a photo of Jefferson Davis Parish on the cover. Right on the edge of Cajun country, it’s a low-lying area with a lot of water around. The eastern border of the county is formed by the Mermentau River and its tributary, the Bayou Nezpique. To the south lies Lake Arthur. Most of the parish is less than fifty feet above sea level and many of the fields are heavily irrigated for rice. Others have been dug out for crawfish ponds. The parish is home to just over 30,000 people, who’re spread out over five incorporated towns - only one of which, parish seat Jennings, has more than 10,000 people – and scores of small settlements and farms. From Jennings it’s a three-hour drive to either New Orleans or Houston along Interstate 10. The sole airport is just outside Jennings and can’t handle anything much bigger than a Lear, and the only railway is the Union Pacific’s freight line that runs right through Jennings. Louisiana’s first oil well was drilled in the parish in 1901 but the basic economy has always been based on agriculture, and when oil production declined again the crops kept coming in. It’s not a rich place – a fifth of the population is below the poverty line – but the people get by. Ethnically the population is pretty mixed, with Acadian, German and African-American origins dominating. Cajun French is still widely spoken, more so in the smaller settlements.
Jefferson Davis Parish has been described as quaint, and in many ways it certainly is. For anyone from a big city much of the area, especially out among the farms, is like a trip in a time machine. As for the name itself it doesn’t date back to the Civil War; the place was named after the only president of the Confederate States of America in 1913, long after the fall of Richmond. That war passed out of living memory long ago and its legacy hasn’t caused real problems for the parish, unlike many other places in the old South. To most of the residents the name is just a fact of life, and there hasn’t been much pressure to change it. The quaintness shows in other ways; in the little white-painted wooden churches that form the center of most settlements, the elegant French colonial architecture that’s still so common and the traditional way of life in the farming communities.
- X -
The modern world hasn’t passed the parish by, of course, and sadly that applies to some of its nastier aspects too. Interstate 10 is a major route for drug dealers through the southern USA and Jennings has become one of their regular stops. That’s created a market for crack cocaine in the town and wherever crack goes it brings problems with it. The homicide rate in the parish is 7.78 per 100,000 people each year,[i] which is well above the US average of 4.8, and a lot of those deaths are clustered in and around Jennings. On paper Jeff Davis is a much safer place to live than the state average – Louisiana’s murder rate is 14.37 per 100,000 annually – but that’s distorted by New Orleans, which rivals Detroit as the murder capital of the USA. For a sleepy rural community Jefferson Davis is a lot more violent than you’d expect, and these days cheap, potent rocks of cocaine are at the root of a lot of that violence.
Crack addicts are famously willing to do just about anything to subsidize their habit so street prostitution has become a real issue, mostly concentrated in the town’s poorer neighborhoods south of the railway track. Prostitution – especially on the street – is a dangerous business, so the sheriff’s office weren’t too surprised when the first one turned up dead. As the body count climbed people started to take notice, but despite all their efforts the killings continued until eight women were dead.
With so many bodies and no solid evidence there was predictable anger in the community and not all of it was directed at the mysterious killer. It’s common in high profile unsolved homicides for law enforcement to face criticism as the investigation drags on, but in the area around Jennings the public’s feelings ran a lot deeper than that. They weren’t just annoyed that the police couldn’t stop the killings. They were worried that they might be committing them.
Chapter 1: The First Year One of the things Louisiana is justly famous for is its Cajun cuisine, which is now popular pretty much everywhere in the western world, but the roots of that cuisine lie in the state’s widespread and long-standing poverty. For many early Louisianans being able to cook up something edible from whatever you could hunt or catch wasn’t a virtue – it was a necessity. A lot of people keep the tradition going, whether to stretch their income or because it’s just the way they’ve always done things. Retiree Jerry Jackson had enough time on his hands to spend some of it fishing and if he could bring in something decent for the pan that was always a nice bonus. The muddy waters of the Grand Marais canal, just over three miles southwest of Jennings, could usually be relied on to give up a couple of catfish, and the concrete bridge on Highway 1126 made a perfect place to cast from. Silt had built up around the bridge supports, splitting the canal into two narrow channels, and mats of floating vegetation and debris tend to collect upstream of it; it’s an ideal spot to find a scavenging catfish.
On May 20, 2005 Jerry was down at the bridge sorting out his line when he spotted a pale outline in the water. At first he thought it was a prank – some mannequins had been stolen from a local store a few days ago, and he guessed this was one of them caught among the rank grass. Then he caught a shimmer in the air above the shape and took a closer look. It was a swarm of flies, and mannequins don’t draw flies.
Alarmed, Jerry called 911. First deputies from the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office arrived, then detectives from the Criminal Investigations Division. Carefully the detectives climbed down the bank, verifying what Jerry had thought – this was no plastic dummy, but the body of a petite woman with short, light brown hair. They took dozens of photographs then, when they were sure they’d recorded the location exactly, they set about getting the corpse out of the water. That wasn’t a pleasant task. Water does nasty things to corpses, and in May the temperature in the parish climbs into at least the mid-80s most days. The body was decaying and unrecognizable, and there was nothing distinctive about the clothes – blue jeans, blue panties and a white blouse.
[i] LouisianaLifeExpectancy, Louisiana Homicide
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/louisiana-homicide
If anyone is planning a book about rural Louisiana they should put a photo of Jefferson Davis Parish on the cover. Right on the edge of Cajun country, it’s a low-lying area with a lot of water around. The eastern border of the county is formed by the Mermentau River and its tributary, the Bayou Nezpique. To the south lies Lake Arthur. Most of the parish is less than fifty feet above sea level and many of the fields are heavily irrigated for rice. Others have been dug out for crawfish ponds. The parish is home to just over 30,000 people, who’re spread out over five incorporated towns - only one of which, parish seat Jennings, has more than 10,000 people – and scores of small settlements and farms. From Jennings it’s a three-hour drive to either New Orleans or Houston along Interstate 10. The sole airport is just outside Jennings and can’t handle anything much bigger than a Lear, and the only railway is the Union Pacific’s freight line that runs right through Jennings. Louisiana’s first oil well was drilled in the parish in 1901 but the basic economy has always been based on agriculture, and when oil production declined again the crops kept coming in. It’s not a rich place – a fifth of the population is below the poverty line – but the people get by. Ethnically the population is pretty mixed, with Acadian, German and African-American origins dominating. Cajun French is still widely spoken, more so in the smaller settlements.
Jefferson Davis Parish has been described as quaint, and in many ways it certainly is. For anyone from a big city much of the area, especially out among the farms, is like a trip in a time machine. As for the name itself it doesn’t date back to the Civil War; the place was named after the only president of the Confederate States of America in 1913, long after the fall of Richmond. That war passed out of living memory long ago and its legacy hasn’t caused real problems for the parish, unlike many other places in the old South. To most of the residents the name is just a fact of life, and there hasn’t been much pressure to change it. The quaintness shows in other ways; in the little white-painted wooden churches that form the center of most settlements, the elegant French colonial architecture that’s still so common and the traditional way of life in the farming communities.
- X -
The modern world hasn’t passed the parish by, of course, and sadly that applies to some of its nastier aspects too. Interstate 10 is a major route for drug dealers through the southern USA and Jennings has become one of their regular stops. That’s created a market for crack cocaine in the town and wherever crack goes it brings problems with it. The homicide rate in the parish is 7.78 per 100,000 people each year,[i] which is well above the US average of 4.8, and a lot of those deaths are clustered in and around Jennings. On paper Jeff Davis is a much safer place to live than the state average – Louisiana’s murder rate is 14.37 per 100,000 annually – but that’s distorted by New Orleans, which rivals Detroit as the murder capital of the USA. For a sleepy rural community Jefferson Davis is a lot more violent than you’d expect, and these days cheap, potent rocks of cocaine are at the root of a lot of that violence.
Crack addicts are famously willing to do just about anything to subsidize their habit so street prostitution has become a real issue, mostly concentrated in the town’s poorer neighborhoods south of the railway track. Prostitution – especially on the street – is a dangerous business, so the sheriff’s office weren’t too surprised when the first one turned up dead. As the body count climbed people started to take notice, but despite all their efforts the killings continued until eight women were dead.
With so many bodies and no solid evidence there was predictable anger in the community and not all of it was directed at the mysterious killer. It’s common in high profile unsolved homicides for law enforcement to face criticism as the investigation drags on, but in the area around Jennings the public’s feelings ran a lot deeper than that. They weren’t just annoyed that the police couldn’t stop the killings. They were worried that they might be committing them.
Chapter 1: The First Year One of the things Louisiana is justly famous for is its Cajun cuisine, which is now popular pretty much everywhere in the western world, but the roots of that cuisine lie in the state’s widespread and long-standing poverty. For many early Louisianans being able to cook up something edible from whatever you could hunt or catch wasn’t a virtue – it was a necessity. A lot of people keep the tradition going, whether to stretch their income or because it’s just the way they’ve always done things. Retiree Jerry Jackson had enough time on his hands to spend some of it fishing and if he could bring in something decent for the pan that was always a nice bonus. The muddy waters of the Grand Marais canal, just over three miles southwest of Jennings, could usually be relied on to give up a couple of catfish, and the concrete bridge on Highway 1126 made a perfect place to cast from. Silt had built up around the bridge supports, splitting the canal into two narrow channels, and mats of floating vegetation and debris tend to collect upstream of it; it’s an ideal spot to find a scavenging catfish.
On May 20, 2005 Jerry was down at the bridge sorting out his line when he spotted a pale outline in the water. At first he thought it was a prank – some mannequins had been stolen from a local store a few days ago, and he guessed this was one of them caught among the rank grass. Then he caught a shimmer in the air above the shape and took a closer look. It was a swarm of flies, and mannequins don’t draw flies.
Alarmed, Jerry called 911. First deputies from the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office arrived, then detectives from the Criminal Investigations Division. Carefully the detectives climbed down the bank, verifying what Jerry had thought – this was no plastic dummy, but the body of a petite woman with short, light brown hair. They took dozens of photographs then, when they were sure they’d recorded the location exactly, they set about getting the corpse out of the water. That wasn’t a pleasant task. Water does nasty things to corpses, and in May the temperature in the parish climbs into at least the mid-80s most days. The body was decaying and unrecognizable, and there was nothing distinctive about the clothes – blue jeans, blue panties and a white blouse.
[i] LouisianaLifeExpectancy, Louisiana Homicide
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/louisiana-homicide
