Carroll P. Matherne
November 25, 2008
RoseMary Smith Giron
November 28, 2008
Only months after receiving eight consecutive life sentences for killings in Terrebonne Parish, serial killer Ronald Dominique will return to a Tri-parish courtroom to face yet another trial.
Dominique, 44, is suspected of raping and then murdering as many as 23 men in south Louisiana over a decade. He is being jailed at the Lafourche Parish Jail awaiting trial for the first-degree murder of 27-year-old Christopher Charles Sutterfield.
According to authorities, Sutterfield was killed Lafourche Parish on Oct. 15, 2006. His body was found near the Tippy Canal Boat Landing on Louisiana Highway 69 in Iberville Parish.
District Attorney Cam Morvant II has not said if his office intends to seek the death penalty for the murder.
Dominique pleaded guilty to murdering eight Terrebonne Parish men – Michael Barnett, Kurt Cunningham, Chris Deville, Alonzo Hogan, Leon Lirette, Nicholas Pellegrin, Wayne Smith and August Watkins. He had been jailed at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
Victims’ families in Terrebonne Parish decided to allow Dominique to plead guilty to avoid the lengthy death-penalty process, Assistant District Attorney Mark Rhodes said at the conclusion of Dominique’s Terrebonne sentencing. The plea agreement spared the former Bayou Blue resident from facing execution, Rhodes said.
Dominique is scheduled to appear Tuesday before a magistrate in Lafourche Parish.
According to authorities, Dominique propositioned his victims for sex or lured them with the promise of drugs or sex with a fictitious woman.
He tied the men up and raped them before strangling or suffocating them, police reported. The bodies were found in cane fields and near remote bayous across south Louisiana.
