Jolie Rouge

The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.) archived excerpts

March 11, 1987

Clues on missing, murdered women sought outside BR
Detectives hoping to find similar cases in other cities in South Louisiana


Frustrated by a lack of leads, Baton Rouge law enforcement officers are looking to other cities for new clues in the cases of at least seven women who either mysteriously vanished or were murdered in the past several years.

By sharing information with law agencies in other cities, detectives are hoping to find similarities or differences in their respective cases. Police want to know whether other South Louisiana cities have cases that are similar, according to Detective Ike Stubbs, in charge of missing persons for the city police detective office.

"What we need to do is get the various departments in the area together to discuss unsolved homicides, concentrating on females and also females who are missing," Stubbs said. "Over the past several years, there have been a number of unsolved homicides involving females, and this is an organized effort to focus on those homicides."

Some of those cases -- about 30 percent, Stubbs said -- are similar in that there are no suspects. "Many of those cases," he added, "have different suspects and are obviously not related."

Stubbs said even solved cases will be studied again in the hope that they could provide a lead in some of the unsolved cases.

Some of the Baton Rouge cases which will be re-examined include the disappearance of 18-year-old Eleanor Parker, who mysteriously vanished Nov. 10, 1981, after dropping by her parents' Southdowns home. Her car was found a week later parked not far from the downtown Maison Blanche/Goudchaux store, where she worked. Extensive searches for the young woman turned up nothing.

The body of 27-year-old LSU graduate student Melissa Montz was found in October 1985 near the LSU golf course two weeks after she was
reported missing after an early morning jog. She had been strangled. No suspects have been located in the case.

On Oct. 13, 1986, 24-year-old Laurie Samson was found strangled in her Tigerland apartment. Few clues have turned up and no suspects have been located, police said.

In an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's office case, the body of 25-year-old Teresa Moore was found July 5, 1985, after she was abducted from a Hooper Road convenience store. Her throat had been cut, and an autopsy revealed that she died from a loss of blood. The case has baffled detectives.

In the most recent case, the sheriff's office is actively investigating the disappearance of Mary Keller Thornton, a 38-year-old woman who has not been seen since a man stopped to help her at 2 a.m. Feb. 5 when her car ran out of gas on Jefferson Highway.

Authorities have released a drawing of the man, but no traces of the woman or the man who stopped to help her have been found. The woman told convenience store clerks that the man was acting strangely, but that she guessed it would be OK to ride with him back to her car with $2 worth of gas.

Thornton has not been located, and Litchfield said Tuesday that deputies don't know what happened to the woman.

Two other cases -- in which police found decomposed bodies of unidentified females -- also will be reviewed.

Sheriff Elmer Litchfield said his office will be glad to meet with city police and other agencies in the investigations into murdered and missing women. While the sheriff said he hasn't noticed similarities in the cases his detectives are investigating, the cases could be similar to cases being investigated by other agencies. "The more input you can have, especially from out of town, the better off you are," Litchfield said.

Stubbs said he hopes several law enforcement agencies will be able to
meet soon to compare notes. "The purpose of the meeting is to exchange information to draw any parallels or similarities in the cases and to share any leads that might separate the cases or bring them together," he said. "At this
point, no one case is being tied to any other case."

"Any homicide that's solved that could be a parallel to other homicides will be looked at," he said. "We may in fact be wasting our time," Stubbs said, but he added that detectives are trying to find "anything that would establish a
pattern."

Investigators will look at the method of the murder, a description of the victims, the time of day when the murder occurred and the location of the crime in relation to the victims' homes and workplaces, he said. "It's not going to be something that's done overnight or at one meeting," he said. "We're laying the groundwork."

Each city police detective with unsolved cases involving women will contribute information to the project, and Stubbs said he hopes other departments will do the same. "Several detectives in the office were discussing it and they feel there is a need to coordinate the efforts of each individual officer and each agency," he said. "We're trying to organize to develop new leads," he said. "We don't want to put them on the back burner and forget about them."
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Police have no reason to think there is a serial killer or any other sensational angle to the cases, but are simply trying to determine whether any of the disappearances or murders might be connected, the detective said. "At this point we don't know, but we can't rule anything out," Stubbs said.

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