On August 25, 2015, Lake Arthur police detective Raymond Mott, who had only been on the force for a few months but had made more arrests than any other officer in the twelve-man department, was called into a surprise meeting with Police Chief Ray Marcantel, newly hired Assistant Chief Terrie Guillory, and Chris Myers, an investigator for the Jefferson Davis Parish DA. The lawmen confronted Mott about a photograph taken of him at an August 2014 anti-immigration rally held by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. In the photograph, Mott, a balding man with a thick build and an engaging, dimpled smile, is dressed in all-black KKK garb, his arm extended in a Nazi-style salute; a burning cross is in the background, and he is flanked by an unidentified man in an all-white robe with a pointed hat. “They brought up the Klan rally picture,” Mott told me. “And they said that I was going to be fired.”1
Indeed, just days later, after the photo of Mott at the KKK rally went viral on social media—a tweet about Mott from activist Shaun King was retweeted nearly four thousand times, inspiring coverage ranging from the Huffington Post to the New York Daily News—a motion to terminate Mott’s employment passed unanimously.2 On the surface, it appeared that a devilishly bad cop had met an appropriate fate. But like every story about Jefferson Davis law enforcement, the truth is more complicated.
Mott told me that in the weeks before the meeting with Chief Marcantel, he was called out to the home of Crystal Benoit Zeno’s former neighbor, who was having a monetary dispute with Crystal’s sister. “Me and Chief Marcantel went out on the call,” Mott remembers, “and when we arrived, Crystal’s sister was screaming and panicking at the sight of us. She was irate and screaming and crying. She said, ‘Terrie Guillory killed my sister.’ ”
Mott says he wrote up an incident report regarding the call—a minor dispute between the neighbor and Benoit’s sister, whom the neighbor said owed her $5. Then Mott viewed a cell phone video, taken by one of Crystal’s family members, in which a witness claimed that “seven [of the Jeff Davis 8] were selling narcotics for Terrie Guillory.” Beyond this, Mott has no understanding of why Crystal’s sister blamed Terrie for her death.
A short while later, Mott was called into a meeting, this time with Terrie and Marcantel. There Guillory told him, “Stop doing drug busts. People are tired of reading about you and your drug busts in your newspaper.”
Mott couldn’t believe what Terrie was saying to him: “This was a direct order to stop making drug busts.”3 Mott told me that he refused Terrie’s order, and worse, in the days after the meeting, he saw Terrie embracing a big-time meth dealer and murder suspect, Vaughn Robinson. In May of 2015, Robinson had been arrested and charged with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder and accessory after the fact to armed robbery.4 In August, Robinson bonded out, but quickly caught new drug charges thanks to an arrest by Mott. Those charges were mysteriously dropped after cops at the Lake Arthur Police Department failed to write up an incident report regarding Robinson’s arrest. After the drug case against Robinson fell apart, Mott says he saw Terrie embracing Robinson.
Having refused Terrie’s order, Mott was hauled into another meeting with the town’s top cop. Here he was presented with the KKK photo, though Mott believes the department had been in possession of it much sooner, waiting to use it as leverage. “This photo has been in the hands of my supervisor for nearly six months, yet no one is willing to step up and tell the truth about that,” Mott told a reporter from Vice in September of 2015.5 Mott, then, insists that he was disciplined and fired not for his involvement with the Klan, but for challenging the police power structure, which he says protects drug dealers, not the public. “When Terrie told me that people were tired of reading about my drug busts, I told him I don’t care who it pisses off,” Mott told me. “This is the job I’m supposed to do.” Mott’s account is confirmed by an associate, Trey Gordon, who insists that Guillory told Mott, “I’m onto you—and then the next day the Klan photo was released to the Jennings Daily News.”6
But Mott is not, in fact, a white supremacist. He is an FBI informant, working to take down the KKK. After the August 2014 KKK rally he gave the FBI “everything I knew about the Klan—names, codes, everything. I basically ended the KKK in Louisiana.” It’s a bold claim, but it’s backed by Gordon, who says, “If it had not been for Ray, there would be a very active Klan in Louisiana.” The Klan itself (sources in the Loyal White Knights) confirmed to Vice that Mott’s informing led to the withering away of the Louisiana branch of the organization and a halt to its recruitment efforts there. More important, the FBI confirmed Mott’s account to Vice.
Both Mott and Gordon also told me that they fed information about the corrupt practices of Jefferson Davis Parish lawmen such as Terrie Guillory to the FBI. “I immediately contacted the agent with whom I was working on the KKK stuff about Terrie Guillory,” Mott told me. A law enforcement source confirms that the FBI, from its Lafayette office, has opened wide-ranging investigations into Jefferson Davis Parish’s law enforcement.
Mott’s claims about Terrie—specifically the allegation of his chumminess with a murder suspect—strongly echo allegations about him in the Jeff Davis 8 case. At the peak of the murders in 2009, Terrie and his ex-wife, Paula, were observed at Frankie Richard’s house. And the firing of whistle-blower Mott has much in common with the fall of detective Jesse Ewing and nurse Nina Ravey, who also crossed Terrie. “Do not trust them,” Gordon remembers warning Mott of Jefferson Davis Parish law enforcement. “They destroyed a man named Jesse Ewing.”
Gordon maintains that he and his family had their own history with Terrie Guillory. Gordon told me that a family member used to ferry drugs into Jefferson Davis Parish with Guillory serving as an escort; that a friend was booked into the jail when Terrie was warden and was sodomized with a flashlight by one of its guards; and that Terrie was a “frequent visitor” to the Boudreaux Inn and “would go in and offer free rides in exchange for sex.”
A woman who carried on a long-term relationship with Terrie told me that he is extremely close with both Frankie Richard and Tracee Chaisson. That a high-ranking member of law enforcement such as Terrie would have a relationship with Tracee is telling because she, like Frankie, has a history of beating significant charges (recall that in 2007 charges were dropped against her in the murder of Kristen). Tracee is also, notably, one of the sole surviving sex workers from the 2005–9 era. I reached out to her on multiple occasions during the writing of this book, but she refused to comment.
Terrie’s partner told me that she overheard multiple late-night personal conversations between Terrie, Frankie, and Tracee, including one where Frankie threatened to kill a relative. During the call, Terrie advised Frankie to harm—and not kill—the family member so “he [Terrie] could take care of it legally.” The partner says she was fearful of Terrie because he strangled her during sex (the suspected cause of death in many of the Jeff Davis 8 cases is asphyxia).
Terrie is a perennial power player in Jefferson Davis Parish, a status that appears to be confirmed by a bizarre August 31, 2015, suspension letter to Mott that is ostensibly from Chief Marcantel—it bears his name and signature—but is written in the third person.7 “The initial letter provided to you by Chief of Police Ray Marcantel on August 28, 2015,” it reads, “is supplemented by this letter.” Mott says that the third-person style of the letter is no accident and that it was actually authored by Terrie Guillory, who, Mott says, while officially second-in-command, is actually the de facto police chief of Lake Arthur, Louisiana. That a lawman who has connections to unsolved murders in a parish serves as police chief in that very parish is a bone-chilling reality in an area already haunted by decades of police corruption.