Jury: Odomes guilty of killing Thibodaux priest

The Rev. Hunter Horgan III was found facedown in a pool of blood on Aug. 13, 1992, in the St. John’s Episcopal Church rectory. His wallet was missing, his left pant pocket was pulled inside out and his 1990 Toyota Camry was gone.

A trail of blood led investigators from the business office, where Horgan’s bludgeoned and stabbed body was discovered, down a hallway, through a meeting room and into the kitchen. In the kitchen sink and on the counter, police found diluted blood.

Horgan’s autopsy revealed several blunt-force wounds to the top of his head, defensive wounds to his forearms and hands, and a sharp-force wound that punctured his neck and severed his carotid artery.

The mortal wound could have been one of the blows to the head, which caused a depression of the skull, or the stab wound to the neck, Dr. Susan Garcia, who conducted the autopsy, testified.

Two fingerprints from the scene matched those of Derrick Odomes, investigators learned 15 years after Horgan was killed.

Four years after Odomes was charged with killing Horgan, a 12-person jury convicted last week the 33-year-old man with an extensive criminal history.

The jury heard about 10 hours of testimony, evidence and lawyers’ comments. Twelve witnesses took the stand and 23 pieces of evidence were submitted.

The verdict was rendered within 90 minutes.

‘An absolutely super guy’

John Bourgeois ventured in and out of the courtroom last week. He had a vested interest in the result, as he sought some form of closure after his friend was murdered 19 years ago.

The retired chief of public defenders and a 50-year parishioner of St. John’s Episcopal said Horgan became a “good friend” once he arrived as the church’s minister in 1988.

“I was his attorney, and he was my priest,” Bourgeois reflected while the jury deliberated. “He married my second wife and me.”

Bourgeois relayed an anecdote from the marriage ceremony that he said demonstrated Horgan’s charisma.

During the ceremony, Horgan removed a garment draped over his shoulder, a stole, and was set to tie it around the hands of the bride and groom, to unite the pair with a symbolic knot.

Because it was Bourgeois’ second marriage, Horgan decided to take an extra measure.

“He looked at me with a little boyish grin, like he was going to do something mischievous,” Bourgeois said. “He tied the stole around our wrists very tightly, looked at me and said, ‘John, I’m going to make this work.’

“He was just an absolutely super guy with great charisma.”

Horgan was a 44-year-old father of two when he was murdered.

John Perry, Horgan’s first cousin and the family’s media spokesman, was one of 10 relatives to sit through the two-day trial.

“Hunter was a fantastic person,” Perry said. “It has been 19 years. He didn’t get to see his son graduate college, become a man, become a father, and the same thing with his daughter. It was a senseless murder.”

The family members, now scattered throughout the country, reunited with every motion hearing during the four years leading up to last week’s result.

They spilled out into downtown Thibodaux and retired to the district attorney’s office, while Perry stood on the courthouse steps and heaped praise on the lead prosecutor, Cam Morvant II.

“We have tremendous admiration and respect for the DA and his staff,” Perry said of the man who made a promise fours year ago he would seek closure for the family.

“He is a man of his word. We are so grateful for that.”

After the 19-year journey for justice culminated with a guilty verdict, Horgan’s relatives were moved to tears and hugged one another in the courthouse lobby.

“The church can heal and the family can heal,” Bourgeois said. “It has been a long road.”

Preliminary findings

Michael Martin was a sergeant with the Thibodaux Police Department in 1992 and was the lead investigator in the Horgan homicide.

The Camry was found the night of the crime “a little over a mile from the church,” parked on St. Charles Street, Martin said.

When investigators located the car, it was parked backwards, an apparent attempt to hide the license place. Through interviews with neighboring residents, police learned the Camry was first parked facing the front, and someone had returned to the scene to back it in.

The driver’s seat was positioned as far forward as possible and the radio was tuned to FM 93.3, a station that played mostly rap music at that time, the officer testified. Odomes was 5 feet, 1 inch tall when he was 14 years old, Martin said, pointing out that Odomes would need to bring the seat forward if he drove the vehicle.

At the rectory, the blood spatter on the east and north walls of the business office pointed to “medium velocity” strikes, Martin testified.

Patrick Lane, a crime scene investigator with the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, collected evidence from the scene.

On a folding table “a few feet away” from Horgan’s body, Lane discovered a small bloody fingerprint, about the size of a “dime,” he testified. The bloody print was “not suitable for identification at that point,” Lane said.

The blood on the table was isolated. It takes about 15 minutes for blood to dry, and it must have been wet for a person to transfer it from his or her finger to the table, he said.

It’s “not impossible,” but it would have taken “an unlikely combination of events,” for the blood to have been on the table before Horgan was assaulted, Lane testified.

The speck was confirmed to be blood through a coloration test before it was lifted for evidence, Lane said. That process, in addition to the time that has elapsed since the crime and the small quantity of blood available, made it impossible to pull a DNA sample from the blood, he said.

The state police crime lab did not conduct DNA tests in 1992. The source of the blood has never been scientifically determined.

Lane lifted a second, “non-bloody print” from the table, which was developed and forwarded for comparison.

Another print was lifted from the cold-water knob of the kitchen sink, Lane said. The crime scene investigator also noted specks of diluted blood in the sink and around the counter. “The implication is that someone washed their hands,” he testified.

“We had no physical evidence to tie anyone to the scene,” lead detective Martin said of the case going cold early in the investigation.

Six years after the murder, however, Odomes became a suspect. Acting on a lead, three detectives, Martin, Det. Sandra Davis with TPD and Det. Woody Harrelson with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, traveled to Swanson Correctional Center in Monroe and interviewed the then 20-year-old Odomes.

“The [Horgan] case was never closed,” Morvant said. “You don’t close homicide cases. You don’t close murder cases.”

‘He totally removed himself from the scene, altogether’

Before being questioned, Odomes waived his right to an attorney and submitted himself to interrogation.

Despite the proximity of his childhood home to the church, Odomes denied knowledge of Horgan’s murder and denied ever entering the church rectory, Martin testified.

One could stand on the porch outside of Odomes’ home at 806 Harrison St. and have an unimpeded view of what has since been renamed Horgan Hall.

“He totally removed himself from the scene, altogether,” testified Sandra Davis, one of the detectives who questioned Odomes.

Harrelson, the third detective who questioned Odomes in 1998, died in the line of duty while responding to a call in 2003.

Investigators took Odomes’ fingerprints and forwarded them to the state police crime lab, but fingerprint analysts were unable to match the prints with photographs of four prints from the scene Martin had sent to the lab.

Despite Odomes’ defensive responses to investigators, there was still a lack of physical evidence and the case went “stale” for a second time, Martin said.

LeBlanc ruled on Wednesday that Odomes’ statement to police was admissible.

The jury was sent out of the courtroom, and Odomes took the stand to tell LeBlanc he was not informed he was a suspect at the time, and he was taking anti-anxiety medication three times each day.

Martin and Davis testified that Odomes freely and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights and was coherent in answering detectives’ questions.

Two fingerprints, incarcerated witness implicate Odomes

Prosecutors linked Odomes to the church rectory with two matching fingerprints, the only forensic evidence the state submitted before the jury. The prints linked Odomes to the rectory, a contradiction of his denials.

The first print, matched to Odomes’ left thumb, was taken from the kitchen sink. Vicky Barbay, a fingerprint analyst with the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory, confirmed it to be Odomes’ print.

The print from the sink’s knob was compared to a fingerprint ink card that contained Odomes’ prints. After seeing the match, the crime lab asked detectives to acquire a “major case fingerprint roll” from Odomes.

This option offers a more detailed look at a subject’s fingerprints and includes a palm print and the sides of fingers, according to the analysts’ testimony.

The second matching print was the non-bloody mark Lane lifted from the table. It was compared to the major case roll and confirmed by Barbay to be a match of the second joint on Odomes’ left middle finger.

Another analyst with the state police crime lab, who also testified on Wednesday, affirmed Barbay’s work.

The state’s final witness, Derrick Reed, was called early Thursday morning. Morvant described Reed as Odomes’ “longtime friend.”

Odomes admitted to killing Horgan and threatened to murder Reed during an encounter some time between 1995 and 1997, Reed testified.

Odomes accused Reed’s cousin of “ratting” him out and threatened to kill both of them, Reed said.

Reed is currently serving a 10-year sentence with the state Department of Corrections for aggravated battery. He was arrested in 2007, the same year he relayed Odomes’ alleged confession to investigators.

The informant said he had lived by the “street rules” and getting arrested changed his life. “I’ve got to do the right thing and give (Horgan’s) family closure,” he said.

Reed appeared before the jury with his hands and feet shackled, wearing blue jeans and a faded-blue St. Gabriel prisoner’s shirt.

Reed also said he saw a pair of cream-colored pants with blood on the front of each leg when he was helping Odomes’ mother move belongings out of her shed shortly after Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall two weeks after Horgan’s death. Reed said Odomes threw the pants in the garbage.

Under cross-examination, Reed was pressed for the year in which Odomes told him of the murder. After first saying it was in the late 90s or early 2000s, he settled on a range between 1995 and 1997. “Everything I said this far is true, but I probably got the dates mixed up,” he said.

Odomes was incarcerated in Monroe from 1994-2000.

Odomes testifies

Odomes took the witness stand Thursday morning in an effort to refute the statement he made to detectives in 1998 that he had never been inside the rectory.

Following an FBI-conducted polygraph test administered in 2007, Odomes did admit to investigators that he had been in the rectory during a burglary, according to a letter from an FBI agent.

Defense attorney Lynden Burton presented the letter to LeBlanc while the jury was out of the courtroom to ask if it could be used as evidence. LeBlanc had previously ruled in the defense’s favor, declaring the polygraph test as inadmissible.

If Burton referenced the test, LeBlanc ruled, the prosecution would have free reign to discuss the test and its results.

The polygraph test indicated Odomes was being “deceptive” in his answers to inquiries about his involvement in Horgan’s death, Morvant said as he outlined the situation.

The defense chose not to discuss the polygraph test before the jury, and Odomes was left with little choice but to renege on his 1998 statement from the stand.

As a child, Odomes frequented the playground behind the church rectory many times. He entered the rectory to use the restroom and drink water, and he spoke to Horgan on more than one occasion, he testified.

Odomes said he was unsure of the last time he entered the rectory before the homicide, saying it could have been “days, months or weeks.”

He was “scared” to admit this to detectives during the 1998 interrogation, he said, because of the way he was approached, “as if they came to hurt me.”

During a tense exchange with Morvant during cross-examination, Odomes said the manner in which detectives approached him during the initial interview was, “just like the circus you’re putting on now.”

“It’s not a circus,” Morvant quickly responded. “This is a murder trial.”

“I was glad (Odomes testified),” Morvant said. “It’s a shame he never owned up to what he did. I think the jury saw through what he tried to do. He never had any intent to tell the truth.”

Morvant accused Odomes of killing Horgan and leaving the bloody print. “Your print, Mr. Odomes, is on the table in blood next to the body,” Morvant said.

“You’re assuming that,” Odomes responded.

Cross-examination of the defendant also gave Morvant the avenue he needed to present the jury with Odomes’ felonious history.

LeBlanc ruled Odomes’ criminal history off-limits before the trial, so his six felony convictions were not discussed before the jury until his cross-examination.

Odomes feigned forgetting the circumstances of his previous convictions, asking Morvant to provide the dates of the convictions before he admitted under oath to each one. The subtle strategy illustrated to the jury that his earliest conviction was in 1995, three years after Horgan was murdered.

From the witness stand, the alleged killer also contradicted everything Reed said, including the confession and the setting in which Reed claims he saw the bloodstained pants.

‘Listen to the evidence, or lack thereof’

Defense attorney Lynden Burton kept his opening statement on Wednesday brief. No more than two minutes long, Burton simply implored the jury to “listen to the evidence, or lack thereof.”

Burton, based out of New Iberia, maintained the theme the next afternoon when he delivered his closing argument, a spirited, in-depth probe of what the jury had, or hadn’t, seen during last day and a half.

Investigators matched two fingerprints left at the scene to Odomes, but Burton discussed the fingerprints that were lifted and didn’t have a match.

Fingerprints were crosschecked with suspects, an FBI database and elimination sets, which are provided by people who had previous access to a crime scene. Several sets of prints, the fingerprint analysts testified under cross-examination, did not match Odomes, the database or the elimination sets.

Included in the sets of prints that did not have a match, Burton emphasized, were two prints retrieved inside on the rectory’s front door, a print on the door facing the office, a print on the closet door in the rectory’s business office, and two prints lifted from the Camry.

“Somebody drove the car away,” Burton said. “Somebody left prints on that windshield.”

Burton pointed out that a hair lifted from underneath Horgan’s fingers was never tested for a DNA sample.

After the trial, Morvant said, “There was so much information given to us over the years, and some of it got lost. I don’t know if they still have (the hair).”

The state did not establish a point of entry, and it did not make mention of a murder weapon, Burton argued.

Odomes had been in the rectory before, Burton said, reinforcing the defendant’s testimony, and could have left a print on the table when speaking with Horgan and left the print on the sink while drinking water.

Burton argued that Odomes’ prints were not found on any point of entry or the car and mockingly said the state was making Odomes out to be a “14-year-old sophisticated criminal” who had the wherewithal to wipe his prints but still stole the vehicle, parked it, and then returned later to park it backwards.

“You’re not leaving common sense at the door,” Burton said. “You’re seeing the forensic evidence that we do have.”

Sentencing

Sentencing for the second-degree murder charge is scheduled for Sept. 23. District Judge John E. LeBlanc ruled in pre-trial proceedings that Odomes could not serve jail time if convicted because he was 14 at the time of the crime.

Lafourche District Attorney Cam Morvant II appealed the decision to the Louisiana First Circuit of Appeals, who responded that they could not render an opinion before a conviction.

Odomes was sentenced to life in prison as a habitual offender last week after the state proved in court that he had been convicted of six felony charges.