The Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” predates the founding of the organization in 1910, but preparedness became a cornerstone of Scouting for the century that followed. In the case of Boy Scout Troop 137 in New Orleans, the crooked leaders of that troop were unprepared for the investigations and arrests that stemmed from the abuse inflicted on the children of that troop in the 1970’s. In this episode, Anna continues to connect the dots between victims of the Rope Murders, Troop 137 and the focus of our first season.   

Over the two seasons of the podcast, Anna’s investigations have involved the mysterious deaths of teenage boys and the abuse of young children. As she continued her work on the Rope Murders, she kept finding a connection to an organization that was historically known to be a place for boys and young children.

Anna begins to lay out her four-year investigation of the Rope Murders. It includes a familiar person from season one who said he was shown photographs of dead boys tied up and left in rural settings. Anna analyzes the locations where the victims of the Rope Murders were left. What did they have in common? And to gain a better understanding of how something or someone can be hogtied, we turn to a man named Trapper John.   

It took almost 30 years for investigators to identify Daniel Dewey’s body. For almost as long, a narrative kept repeating in newspapers and online articles that Dewey and the two other victims of the rope murders may have been male prostitutes or well-known street kids in the city of New Orleans. But was that really the case? We pose that question to Dennis Stewart and relatives of two of the victims.

In the summer of 2000, the remains of John Doe were exhumed from his grave at Pine Hill Cemetery in St. Helena Parish. He had been buried for more than 20 years. Back in 1979, his body had been tied up and left at a local garbage dump in the parish. There were hopes that technology and forensic science could finally reveal the boy’s identity. Those hopes quickly faded until the discovery of an encounter in Texas. 

For roughly 20 years, John Doe’s body had been buried at Pine Hill Cemetery in St. Helena Parish. At the time of his burial and in the two decades that followed, there wasn't much progress in finding a suspect in his murder. The victim’s true identity also remained elusive. In the summer of 2000, officials and investigators physically dug up the past. They exhumed John Doe’s remains. In an attempt to finally put a name to the boy who had been ritualistically tied up and left in rural Louisiana, his remains would be sent to a place called The FACES Lab.

For roughly 20 years, John Doe’s body had been buried at Pine Hill Cemetery in St. Helena Parish. At the time of his burial and in the two decades that followed, there wasn't much progress in finding a suspect in his murder. The victim’s true identity also remained elusive. In the summer of 2000, officials and investigators physically dug up the past. They exhumed John Doe’s remains. In an attempt to finally put a name to the boy who had been ritualistically tied up and left in rural Louisiana, his remains would be sent to a place called The FACES Lab.

In 1997, after almost 20 years of cold case status, the murders of Dennis Turcotte, Mark Richardson and John Doe would get renewed interest. Dennis Stewart was a relatively new detective with Louisiana State Police, but his knowledge of one of the Rope Murders went back to 1979. Stewart grew up in Greensburg, Louisiana, not far from where John Doe’s body was discovered. He remembered hearing about the boy being tied up and left at the garbage dump in St. Helena Parish. Detective Stewart was determined to find the boy’s identity. To do that, John Doe’s body would have to be exhumed. 

When each victim of the rope murders was found, investigators didn’t make any public mention of a serial pattern or perpetrator. But, within a month after the discovery of John Doe’s body in St. Helena Parish, at least one newspaper ran a story about the boys being “male hustlers” who may have been stalked by a “sex killer”. The hustling scene in the French Quarter of New Orleans has been a real thing for decades. Whether these victims were part of that scene is far less certain, but the stigma it placed on the cases was hard to deny. What was it like in the Quarter when the murders took place? We take a journey back to a time full of nostalgia, but also violence.  

In 1979, Jack Foster was assigned the case of a teenaged boy who had been ritualistically tied up, murdered and left at a local garbage site in St. Helena Parish.  Foster was a self-taught detective working part time with the sheriff’s office. He was described as determined and thorough. But, those qualities wouldn’t be enough to find out the boy's true identity, let alone the person responsible for killing him. The case was a local mystery. When Foster fell into a bizarre coma during the investigation, it only added to that mystery.