By Chris Bartholomew
He attended Thibodaux High School where he was in the glee club and sang in the chorus. Classmates say he was ridiculed about being homosexual during his teen years, but at the time he never admitted he was gay.
As he got older he seemed to live in two worlds. There was the Dominique who was helpful to his neighbors in the small trailer parks where he lived. Then there was the Dominique who cross-dressed and did bad impersonations of Patti LaBelle at the local gay club. Neither world embraced him and among the gay community, many remember him as someone who was not particularly well liked.
Through most of his adulthood, Dominique struggled financially and would end up living with his mother or other relatives. He was suffering from declining health, having been hospitalized for a severe heart condition and forced to use a cane to walk.
Outwardly, there was a side to Dominique who enjoyed helping people. He joined the Lions Club just months before his arrest, and spent Sunday afternoons calling out Bingo numbers to senior citizens. The membership director said he was well liked by everyone he had met through the Lions Club. Maybe Dominique had finally found a place he felt accepted.
A poor, short, heavy-set no one, who lived with his sister before moving into a homeless shelter, he went willingly on December 1, 2006, leaning heavily on a cane, when officers came to get him.
Two days before being arrested at a homeless shelter run by police, he moved out of his sister's house because they suspected that they were being watched, and they were: according to police he was under 24-hour surveillance.
Even with a meek persona and a heart condition, he bound and strangled or smothered 23 men and teenage boys in southern Louisiana in what the FBI considered its most urgent serial-killing case. FBI profilers thought this was the most significant current serial-killer case in the country in terms of the number of victims and the time span of the killings, from 1997 to 2005. His reason for killing? He did not want to return to jail after raping the men.
Once investigators began interrogating him, Dominique eagerly claimed credit for 23 killings. He was booked and charged with raping and murdering nine of them in Terrebonne Parish.
All the victims were homeless males, ranging from 16 to 46, all were strangled or asphyxiated and all the bodies were bound. Their bodies were dumped in remote spots in seven parishes.
The break in the case came when an ex-con told his parole agent about getting away from a man who wanted to tie him up for sex.
Dominique apparently was able to charm his victims into accompanying him. He'd meet them on the street, walking or riding their bikes, and just start talking to them. He'd offer them a ride or talk them into sex and they'd go with him. He lured his victims with the promise of sex in exchange for money, or by showing them a picture of an attractive woman, supposedly his wife, and saying he wanted them to have sex with her.
Dominique then led the men to his home, asked to tie them up, then raped and eventually murdered the men to avoid arrest. In his statement to the police, Dominique said the men who refused to be tied up would leave his home unharmed. Such was the case with the man who reported the incident to the task force, a tip that eventually led to Dominique's arrest.
Dominique voluntarily gave investigators a DNA sample, which connected him to two Jefferson Parish murders.
The 23 victims were mostly homeless men, young, dark-skinned, who were asphyxiated elsewhere and dumped. All of the men were missing their shoes. Most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles of drug use and prostitution. Their bodies were found in remote locations such as sugar cane fields and ditches. The fact that many of the 23 victims were homeless men who participated in drug and prostitution activities also helped investigators link the cases together and had eventually allowed them to more clearly see Dominique's modus operandi.
Dominique was charged at least seven times and jailed twice over the years, mostly for minor offenses such as traffic violations, simple battery and disturbing the peace by offensive language.
February 10, 2002. Arrested in Terrebonne Parish after he allegedly slapped a woman during a Mardi Gras parade. According to the reports, Dominique accused a woman of hitting a baby stroller in a parking lot. The woman apologized, but Dominique continued to verbally assault her and then slapped her across the face. He was arrested but entered a parish offender's program instead of standing trial. Reports show he met all his conditions in the program in October 2002.
May 19, 2000. He received a summons to appear in court on disturbing the peace charges. Since it was a misdemeanor, he was able to plead guilty and pay a fine to avoid appearing in court.
August 25, 1996. Dominique was arrested on forcible rape charges and booked on a $100,000 bond. According to neighbors, a partially dressed young man jumped from the window of Dominique's home in Thibodaux, with an electrical cord hanging from his arm, screaming that he had tried to kill him. When the case was brought to court, the victim could not be found to testify. In November 1996, the judge continued the case indefinitely.
May 15, 1994. Arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated and speeding.
June 12, 1985. Arrested and charged with telephone harassment. He pleaded guilty, paid a $74 fine and court costs.
One man in the shelter Dominique had been staying in said that had he not been arrested, he could have been there for 20 years and no one would have paid any attention to him. But then, that's how serial killers are, they seem to blend in wherever they happen to be at the time. Everyone seems to have considered him harmless.
After investigators began focusing on Dominique as their suspect in the gay killings, they learned that he was unemployed, unmarried, and sometimes lived in a homeless shelter. On other occasions he lived in trailer parks.
Police believe that 19-year-old David Levron Mitchell was among the first, if not the first, of Dominique's victims. Mitchell's body was found in 1997, near the community of Hahnville. Several months later the body of Gary Pierre, 20, was discovered in St. Charles Parish, and in July 1998 the body of Larry Ranson, 38, was also found in St. Charles Parish. Over the following nine years, the bodies of many additional victims ranging in age from 19 to 40 were found dumped in remote areas including the aforementioned sugarcane fields as well as in bayous and drainage ditches. Other victims included Oliver Lebanks, 27, Manuel Reed, 19, and Christopher Sutterfield, 27. Lebanks' body was found on October 5, 1998, in Metairie; Reed's body was found inside a garbage container on May 30, 1999, in Kenner; and Sutterfield's body was found on October 15, 2006, in the vicinity of a boat launch near White Castle. Then police began seeing similarities in many of the murders, including the dumping locations, causes of death, and the fact that many of the men were barefoot when found.
One case the police are looking into is this one. Rector of St. John's Church, Thibodaux, and Vicar of Christ Church, Napoleonville, Fr. Horgan was found dead by the church's business manager in the parish hall on August 13, 1992. Thibodaux police reported the priest's wallet and car keys had been taken, and his car was later found abandoned a half mile from the church. Dominique worked in a flower shop next door.
On September 23, 2008, after being brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair, Dominique sat with his head down and turned away from the relatives as some of them testified about the effect the slayings had on their families. He answered "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to the judge's questions and refused to make a statement.
Ronald Dominique was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences in prison. He was convicted of the rape and murder of eight men in ten years. By pleading guilty, Dominique saved himself but has to spend the rest of his life in prison. The families of Dominique's alleged victims were consulted and all agreed that they did not want Dominique to be executed if convicted: opposition to the death penalty generally, and also a need for closure, were among the reasons.
This man charged with nine murders and suspected in many more was listed among potential members of a state grand jury. The Terrebonne Parish Clerk of Court confirmed that serial killer Ronald Dominique's name was on a computer-generated list. Computers don't know who's a serial killer, apparently.