Blank was born in 1962 and lived in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, working as a machinist. He had a serious gambling habit and debts at the riverboat casinos.
Between 1996 and 1997 he broke into houses in the parish, chose older people living alone, and beat and stabbed them to death, taking cash, jewellery and cheques. Six people died. He was arrested on November 14, 1997 and gave a lengthy statement.
The six who died were Victor Rossi, forty-one; Barbara Bourgeois, fifty-eight; Lillian Philippe, seventy-one; Sam Arcuri, seventy-six, and his wife Louella, sixty-nine; and Joan Brock, fifty-five.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999. The sentence was overturned on appeal, and in 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
The motive is unusually plain and unusually small: he needed money to gamble, and he took it from people who could not stop him. There is no other pattern in the case.
The Louisiana Supreme Court opinion is the fullest accessible account of it, and the accessible press reporting is thin by comparison.