I am fascinated by all sorts of serial killers (natch!), but modern serial killers really interest me because…you’d think it would get harder and harder to be a serial killer in the modern age, what with greater surveillance, better forensic science, and — maybe most crucially — enhanced cooperation/coordination between law enforcement bodies.
Still, Ronald Joseph Dominique — the Bayou Strangler — managed to kill twenty-three people between 1997 and 2006.
Unlike a typical serial killer, Dominique often preyed outside of his race — many of his victims were Black. He would roll up on potential victims in his pickup, offer them money or booze or drugs or sex with his (non-existent) girlfriend. Then, he would take them to his trailer, overpower them, tie them up, and rape them.
After this, he’d usually strangle them, then dump their bodies in the wilds of Louisiana.
This gambit worked close to two dozen times before Dominque tried it out on Ricky Wallace. He told Wallace that his (again, purely imaginary) girlfriend liked bondage and wanted Wallace bound for their romp. Wallace’s spider-sense must have tingled because he noped out of Dominque’s trailer and reported the whole thing to the police…who found him in a homeless shelter. In a weird spasm of congeniality, Dominique — who had been living with his sister at the time — had moved into the shelter because he had a feeling the jig was up…and didn’t want to inconvenience his sister by being arrested in her house.
You rarely witness such politesse in serial killers.
After his arrest, Dominique cooperated with investigators and helped them close a ton of cases, but never admitted to guilt — he claimed everything he did to his victims was consensual and that he only killed in the end in order to get rid of witnesses. The math, as they say, isn’t mathing, but that was his story and he stuck to it. Even all the way through the trial, where he eventually pled guilty to avoid the death penalty.
He was sentenced to 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole in 2008 and is still working on the first of them to this day.
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