The Bayou Strangler

In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of New Orleans suburbs. The victims-many of them transient street hustlers-had been brutally raped and strangled, leaving Louisiana's gay community rattled. When no leads were found and the murders continued, detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task-force partners and were indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer. In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and a meter reader. But who was he, and what led him to commit such heinous crimes? With direct access to the investigation, Dominique's confession, and all the sites where bodies were dumped, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of the murderer, providing a horrifying and fascinating account of his troubled, disturbing, broken life and his brutal crimes.