I had long been told by everyone from sex workers to law enforcement that the Boudreaux Inn, the very hub of the Jeff Davis 8 milieu, was operated by politically powerful men. But there was no indication—in my witness interviews, Taskforce documents, police reports, or anywhere else—just who those men were.
Then, on September 2, 2014, I got a huge break: I received a tip that a southwest Louisiana political heavyweight known as “Big G” ran the Boudreaux Inn. The tipster didn’t know Big G’s real name, and I feared that such a generic nickname could be used by dozens or even hundreds of people in Louisiana.
But I quickly found a southwest Louisiana–based Big G in an unlikely place: on April 26, 2013, he’d been honored by Rayne country radio station Bayou 106.7 as the “Bayou Buddy of the Day.” An entry on the station’s Facebook page that day read: “Our Bayou Buddy of the day is Martin Guillory ‘Big G’ of Branch.” Branch is about thirty miles from Jennings, but this Big G’s last name—Guillory—is obviously very common in southwest Louisiana.
Because Big G was a businessman, it made sense to start by searching Louisiana LLC registrations via the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website. There, I found a Martin P. Guillory of Church Point, Louisiana, a town about five miles from Branch. This Martin Guillory was a partner in an LLC called Tri-Tech LLC. After I conducted further business searches, I discovered that Guillory also maintained a company called Big G’s Kans, out of Rayne. It was clear then that Martin P. Guillory was Big G, perhaps the Big G of the Boudreaux Inn. But who was Martin P. Guillory?
Martin P. Guillory is a field representative for Louisiana congressman Charles Boustany. I flashed back to a phone call, years earlier, from Frankie Richard. “Charles Boustany,” Frankie Richard told me on June 25, 2012, “you need to investigate him.”1 Back then, I only knew Boustany was a representative for Louisiana’s Seventh Congressional District. I had no idea what to make of the tip. I also had little reason to trust Frankie, who is especially fond of espousing case theories that somehow always exclude himself. But Frankie’s call that day stayed with me because he had asked me, for the very first time, if I was recording our conversation (I was not). And I had to wonder, given Boustany’s deep familial roots in both local and national politics (his father was the coroner of Lafayette Parish, he’s related to former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, and to Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late senator Edward Kennedy) and his prominence on Capitol Hill (he is the chair of the Tax Policy Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee in the House), just what Frankie’s tip was all about.2 Frankie himself was of little help. On that day in June, just as soon as he’d asked me if I was taping our telephone conversation, he hung up on me.
Because I lacked any specific information about Boustany’s involvement with the Jeff Davis 8, I shelved any search into his possible connections with the slain women. But then, more than two years later, right around the time that I received the tip about Big G and the Boudreaux Inn, I interviewed a former Jennings sex worker and discovered what Boustany’s connection to the Jeff Davis 8 may have been. The sex worker, who had been interrogated by the Taskforce, told me that Boustany was a well-regarded client of at least three of the Jeff Davis 8 victims as well as Tracee Chaisson. “Tracee, Loretta, Kristen, Muggy, all said that he [Boustany] was a good trick,” she told me. “He was at the Boudreaux Inn. He had money and he had the dope.”
Then in the spring of 2015, a Jennings woman with close ties to some of the victims contacted me to share memories of her deceased friends. She recounted the numerous conversations she had had with Kristen about her clientele, whom she described as “lawyers, judges, and cops.” The Jennings woman—whose identity I’m concealing out of concern for her safety—said that both Kristen and Loretta admitted that Boustany was a client. Kristen, she told me, specifically characterized Boustany as an important client whom she frequently rendezvoused with at the Boudreaux Inn. Kristen described Boustany to her friend as a man who “works in government, in high places,” and that she was concerned about her relationship with him because if he had any problems, “all he gotta do is say one thing to one person and it’ll be taken care of.”
I later learned that in the fall of 2012, a witness contacted the Taskforce to pass along information that Boustany engaged in sexual activity with at least one of the Jeff Davis 8 victims. I will call this witness Boustany Witness A. Taskforce investigators took Boustany Witness A seriously enough to interview her over several days in October of 2012. Boustany Witness A kept meticulous logs of her visits with the Taskforce, and according to these logs, she was interrogated by the upper echelon of the Taskforce, including Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office commander Christopher Ivey, and Edward W. Reed, a senior resident agent at the FBI’s Lake Charles office. In an August 2015 meeting at the FBI’s Lake Charles office, I asked Agent Reed about his meeting with Boustany Witness A, and he refused to confirm or deny that such a meeting occurred. Agent Reed also refused to confirm or deny that the feds have received information that Boustany patronized any of the Jeff Davis 8.
On May 9, 2016, I asked Boustany if he was aware of Martin Guillory’s role at the Boudreaux Inn and/or criminal activity occurring there, if he had ever visited the Boudreaux Inn in any capacity, or if he’d engaged in sexual relationships—or relationships of any nature—with any of the women of the Jeff Davis 8. On May 16, 2016, I received the following reply from Boustany’s Communications Director, Jack Pandol, via e-mail: “Dr. Boustany had no knowledge of Martin Guillory’s prior involvement at the establishment you mentioned. After double checking our office’s records, Dr. Boustany has never had any contact with any of the eight victims you mentioned. Obviously this case is a tragedy and Dr. Boustany is saddened something like this could happen in southwest Louisiana.” When I told Pandol that I believed there was one question unanswered—has Congressman Boustany ever visited the Boudreaux Inn in any capacity, and if so, when?—he replied “To my knowledge the congressman hasn’t ever visited that establishment [the Boudreaux Inn].”3
Before taking these allegations to Boustany, I obtained documentary evidence that could place him in the Jeff Davis 8 milieu. On a gray day in March of 2015, I made the three-hour drive from New Orleans to Jennings to research the property records of the Boudreaux Inn, the motel where the Taskforce witness told me that Boustany patronized Tracee Chaisson, Kristen, Muggy, and Loretta. Property records from the Assessor’s Office are housed in a sprawling space on the first floor of the parish courthouse at 300 North State Street. Because I’m accustomed to searching property records by name, I was surprised to find that one could not do the same in Jefferson Davis Parish. Instead, I had to search by address on a computer terminal, which then directed me to a conveyance book. According to the conveyance records, the Boudreaux Inn was owned by Justin Boudreaux, who died in 2006 at the age of seventy-seven. Boudreaux leased the space from November of 1999 to November of 2004 to a trio of business partners working under an LLC named Tri-Tech.4 The lease terms set the monthly rent at $4,000. According to Tri-Tech’s business filing with the Louisiana Secretary of State, Tri-Tech LLC’s principals included Martin P. Guillory—Big G—and Toby Leger.5
Guillory and Leger leased the Boudreaux Inn at the height of its role in the Jennings sex-and-drug trade—1999 to 2004—according to their lease terms but actually several years beyond that because, according to a lawsuit filed by the Administratrix of the Boudreaux estate after Tri-Tech’s lease expired in 2004, they “continued to occupy the premises on a month-to-month basis.”6
Big G has a phone number in Boustany’s office on Capitol Hill and makes public appearances on behalf of Boustany.7 In October 2013, Big G attended a groundbreaking ceremony for an oil-field manufacturing facility in Boustany’s stead.8 Big G is currently working for Boustany on his run for the United States Senate, according to Schedule B—“Itemized Disbursements”—forms that Boustany filed with the Federal Election Commission.9 Boustany is now running for a Senate seat vacated by David Vitter, who in 2007 admitted to involvement with a Washington, DC, escort service. Vitter’s run for Louisiana governor in 2015—he was beaten by a largely unknown Democrat from a rural part of the state named John Bel Edwards—failed in large part because of the specter of his involvement with sex workers, even though he was never charged with a crime. Boustany representative Big G is also connected to former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. In 2008, Jindal appointed him to the Louisiana’s State Parks and Recreation Commission.10
Big G’s partner at the Boudreaux Inn, Toby Leger, is a similarly notable public figure in southwest Louisiana. In 2006, he ran for alderman of Ward 5 in Church Point, a tiny town of approximately 4,036, miles northeast of Jennings, which is also where Tri-Tech is registered with the Louisiana Secretary of State. He’s served as a member of the Jeff Davis Business Alliance and the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury.11 A position on a governing body such as a police jury carries with it both enormous prestige and significant power.
After I returned home from my visit to the courthouse, I decided to review the hundreds of pages of records I’d received from Sheriff Edwards documenting the arrests of all of the women of the Jeff Davis 8. What I discovered stunned me, even after investigating the case for years. From the late 1990s to the end of 2004, the period when Big G’s Tri-Tech was leasing the motel, Frankie Richard and several of the slain workers were constantly involved in incidents resulting in police presence at the Boudreaux Inn. Incident reports I’ve obtained from the Sheriff’s Office read like a diary of the Jeff Davis 8. I’ve summarized key points below.
• On October 12, 1998, Loretta and a Jennings woman, Norma Dubroc, rented a room at the Boudreaux Inn. Loretta’s husband arrived and knocked on the motel room doors looking for her. When he found Loretta, he allegedly beat her and then fled the scene.12
• On December 22, 1999, a man complained to the Sheriff’s Office that he brought Loretta to the Boudreaux Inn for a threesome, but when he woke up the next morning, his money and wallet were missing.13
• On December 19, 2000, Boudreaux Inn management found Loretta in Room 206 despite her being previously told that she was no longer allowed on the property. Detective Terrie Guillory arrested Loretta, but because the jail was full, she was released.14
• On January 10, 2000, a fight broke out between Loretta and another woman at the Boudreaux Inn. After the women refused orders to stop fighting, the Sheriff’s Office was called. Loretta was told—again—not to return. Warden Guillory noted in his report that Loretta was “very intoxicated.”15
• On May 11, 2000, Toby Leger called the Sheriff’s Office after spotting Loretta getting into a truck that was parked by one of the rooms. “In speaking with Mr. Leger,” wrote a sheriff’s deputy, “I was informed that Mrs. Chaisson has caused trouble there in the past and was told by a Deputy not to return to the Boudreaux Inn and he wants charges pressed on her.”16
• On February 7, 2002, a fight broke out at the Boudreaux Inn between Frankie Richard and Andrew Newman, the father of Jeff Davis 8 victim Kristen Gary Lopez. Frankie allegedly put ex-wife Jill Richard in a headlock, and when Newman attempted to stop the assault, Frankie broke his nose. The incident report notes that the “Boudreaux Inn did not want to file report and allowed them [the Richards] to remain in the restaurant and stay in room 206.”17
• On March 11, 2002, Jill Richard reported that her former husband had threatened to burn down her house and “whoever was in it.” Jill said that Frankie had “come to the trailer park hunting for her and told her neighbors that he was going to kill her.” Jill confronted Frankie at the Boudreaux Inn, where he allegedly warned her that he was going to “burn her down in the trailer while she was sleeping.” After this incident, Jill obtained a restraining order.18
• On April 2, 2002, Jill called the Sheriff’s Office because Frankie allegedly violated the restraining order by pulling into the parking lot of the Boudreaux Inn while she was staying in a room there.19
• On August 15, 2004, Loretta called the Sheriff’s Office from the Boudreaux Inn. When a sheriff’s deputy arrived, he found her in the lobby. Loretta said that her husband, Murphy Lewis, “got mad at her and put her in a head lock beating her on top of the head.” The deputy on the scene noted bumps on her head and a cut lip. Murphy Lewis was later located in Jennings, where he allegedly admitted that he’d struck Loretta.20
• Just before midnight on December 31, 2004, Muggy Brown rented Room 105 at the Boudreaux Inn. Moments later, she pulled the fire alarm on the outside of the room and fled to her grandmother Bessie Brown’s home in South Jennings. According to a report written by Mike Janise—the same officer from the Sheriff’s Office who discovered Muggy’s body in 2008—she admitted that she pulled the alarm.21
• On April 8, 2006, detectives responded to a call from the Boudreaux Inn about a stabbing in Room 204. When they questioned the occupants of the room, Whitnei and Bootsy Lewis, Lewis said that he had gotten into a fight with a man and that another woman stabbed Whitnei in the head. Whitnei was transported by ambulance to the Jennings American Legion Hospital, where she was treated. Whitnei’s head wound was approximately two inches long and one-quarter of an inch deep. Investigators photographed the wound. It’s unclear if anyone was ever arrested or charged in the incident.22
These many incidents demonstrate that the Boudreaux Inn played a central role in the lives of the Jeff Davis 8. Furthermore, the persistent string of incidents involving the Jeff Davis 8 would have all but guaranteed that management was aware of their presence. Indeed, Tri-Tech’s Toby Leger chased Loretta off the Boudreaux Inn property on May 11, 2000, though she continued to patronize the business—and engage in sex work there—until just before she was murdered in 2005. “It was a whorehouse,” a former deputy with the Sheriff’s Office told me. “That’s exactly what it was.”
I contacted one of the Boudreaux Inn’s former managers, Suzette Bouley Istre of Jennings, to understand the day-to-day operations at the Boudreaux Inn better. Istre managed the Boudreaux Inn from 2000 until the motel closed in 2008. She told me that Kristen, Muggy, Loretta, and Frankie Richard were all frequent habitués of the business.23 “Loretta, she was a regular,” Istre told me. “She was thrown off the property for a couple of years. But she came back. She wasn’t allowed on the property [even] before I got there. I don’t remember Kristen in the rooms, but Kristen would come and eat. . . . Muggy gave me trouble a few times; she pulled a fire alarm and scared everybody in the middle of the night. People were running everywhere. Frankie would come to the bar and rent a room.” Istre insisted, however, that because she worked at the Boudreaux Inn mostly during the daytime hours, she “didn’t always see” what was occurring at the motel, especially at night between the likes of the Jeff Davis 8 and Frankie.
When I asked Istre whom she reported to at the Boudreaux Inn, she named Tri-Tech LLC’s Toby Leger and Martin Guillory as her bosses. “They were both in politics,” Istre said. “Toby had ran in Church Point, for mayor. Martin is a representative for Charles Boustany. . . . I met Boustany over there [at the Boudreaux Inn]. It was [with] other people working for him and they were campaigning. He came and met a lot of people; he talked and he answered a lot of their questions. He didn’t stay long because he was campaigning from town to town that day. I think it was just one time he was over there if I’m not mistaken. He didn’t stay very long, like I said. He came and then he had to go to another little town.”
Indeed, Boustany’s first campaign for Congress occurred in 2003–4 when Guillory was at the helm of the Boudreaux Inn. On December 4, 2004, Boustany was elected to represent Louisiana’s Seventh Congressional District after he defeated Democratic state senator Willie Mount in a much-contested runoff—an endorsement from Vice President Dick Cheney gave Boustany a late campaign boost.24 Boustany became the first Republican elected from southwest Louisiana since 1884, and in the fall of 2009, he delivered the Republican Party’s rebuttal to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on health care.25
Istre told me that both Leger and Boustany staffer Big G were at the Boudreaux Inn on a weekly basis. “Every week Toby would come,” Istre told me. “On Thursday, he’d come and do the payroll. There were poker machines in there, and when someone would win a certain amount of money, they [Leger and Big G] would have to come in. They was there pretty often.”26 The Boudreaux Inn era ended in 2008 after a lengthy legal battle between owner Justin Boudreaux’s heirs and Tri-Tech LLC. Boudreaux’s heir Jacqueline Granger served Big G and Leger with an eviction notice, but the pair claimed that they had exercised an option to extend the five-year term of the initial lease and that the extended term had not yet expired. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in Granger’s favor in April of 2008, and the Boudreaux Inn subsequently closed.
Istre was not the only person to encounter Boustany field representative Big G at the Boudreaux Inn. Kristen Gary Lopez’s father, Andrew Newman, told me that he saw Big G there constantly and even knew him by his nickname. Newman told me that Big G was at the Boudreaux Inn “on a weekly basis maybe two to three times a week, if not more,” and that Big G told him that he was particularly concerned about the slaying of the eighth victim, Necole Guillory, because her body had been dumped in Acadia Parish, where he is based.26 Frankie Richard, similarly, told me that he had had drinks with Big G at the Boudreaux Inn. “I talked to Big G at the bar,” Frankie told me. “He used to be over there all the time.”
Documentary evidence establishes that not only was Big G at the Boudreaux Inn but also, on at least one occasion, he was armed. In the summer of 2015, I received a long-awaited response to a request I’d made under Louisiana’s Public Records Act to the Sheriff’s Office for any and all incident reports related to the Boudreaux Inn from the late 1990s to 2010. Among the documents—they spanned eleven hundred pages—was a July 22, 2003, incident report of the Sheriff’s Office being called to the motel because “Martin Guillory pointing gun.”27 When detectives arrived on the scene, the complainant—whose name was redacted in the report—said that Big G “pulled a black pistal [sic] on him” during an argument. Big G’s handgun was taken and placed into evidence and he was issued a citation for aggravated assault (the disposition of the case is unclear from the Sheriff’s Office’s records). The Sheriff’s Office’s response to my public records request also documents multiple incidents involving drugs at the Boudreaux Inn when Big G and Leger helmed the business. In one incident report, dated December 27, 2001, a caller to the Sheriff’s Office complained of a “crack party going on at the Boudreaux Inn.”28
On May 10, 2016, I spoke with Big G about illegal activity at the Boudreaux Inn, his relationships with Frankie Richard and the Jeff Davis 8, and Boustany. In an earlier, introductory phone call, Big G had requested that I e-mail him with background information about me and my work. During that call, Big G confirmed that he is Martin Guillory, former proprietor of the Boudreaux Inn who currently serves as a field representative for Congressman Charles Boustany.
When I asked Big G if he was aware of criminal activity occurring at the Boudreaux Inn or if he was aware of any of the Jeff Davis 8 engaging in prostitution, he said, “No, sir”; he added, however, “I’ve met one or two [of the Jeff Davis 8]” though he could not recall which specific women he had met.29 “I didn’t know the rest of ’em,” he insisted. Guillory then said that he met Frankie Richard “on one occasion,” but “Frankie mostly stayed in Lafayette: he told me he had a business in Lafayette.”
I asked Big G if he could recall Congressman Boustany visiting the Boudreaux Inn in any capacity, and he said, “Not that I can remember,” but that he “may have.” Of the 2003 incident where he allegedly pointed a gun at someone while inside the Boudreaux Inn, Big G insisted, “I was never arrested,” and that he was simply “took in [to the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff’s Office] to write a statement.” Big G then downplayed his role at the Boudreaux Inn—“I half owned a business in the Jennings area”—but then admitted that he was on the premises “maybe once a week.” When I asked Big G if Congressman Boustany had engaged in relationships of any nature with the women of the Jeff Davis 8, he replied, “Well, of course not, that I know of. Why would that man deal with any of the women at the Boudreaux Inn?” Big G then angrily concluded the call, told me to never call him back, and warned, “I assure you when you come out with all of these allegations we’re gonna file suit against you.”
And while FBI agent Reed would not comment on his meeting with Boustany Witness A nor any Taskforce interviews regarding Boustany’s involvement with the Jeff Davis 8, he did, however, appear interested in the connections between Boustany and Big G, and Big G and the Boudreaux Inn. So, per his request, on August 3, 2015, I furnished Agent Reed a précis of Jeff Davis 8 arrests at the Boudreaux Inn; the Boudreaux Inn property records/its lease; Martin Guillory’s business registrations with the Louisiana Secretary of State as “Big G”; Big G’s staff listing with Charles Boustany on Capitol Hill; LLC documents filed with the LA Secretary of State for Tri-Tech LLC, leased by Big G and Toby Leger; and a copy of the July 22, 2003, incident report involving Big G at the Boudreaux Inn. Because the Jeff Davis 8 case is an open investigation, it’s unclear if the feds have acted upon any of the information provided by me, Boustany Witness A, or other Taskforce witnesses connecting Boustany to the Boudreaux Inn and the Jeff Davis 8.
To be clear, there is no evidence that either Congressman Boustany or Big G and his partners had any involvement with the murders of the Jeff Davis 8. And while a number of witnesses maintain that Boustany enjoyed the services of at least two of the victims, he has denied, through his office, any involvement, and no doubt, while I have found the reports credible, his accusers can be challenged. Nevertheless, the clear evidence of Big G’s involvement with the Boudreaux Inn and the allegations concerning Congressman Boustany do provide yet another indication of how intertwined the powerless Jeff Davis 8 victims were, or were believed to be, with those who hold power in Louisiana.