New hearings loom, victim’s family remembers

Her favorite color was green; she had an emerald green car and they laid her to rest in an emerald-green dress she had recently purchased but never got the chance to wear.

They visit her grave nearly every Sunday, and keep her memory alive within her adult daughter and the grandchild she never got to meet.

So goes the existence of those who loved Pamela Ann Duplantis, the woman who was shot to death inside the former ArgentBank on Grand Caillou Road 17 years ago this past week, as they try to shed pain that never quite leaves, while still celebrating that life that was snuffed out by a deranged former cop named Chad Roy Louviere.

“We think of her all the time, and it is still so hard,” said the victim’s mother, Phyllis Duplantis, after returning home from Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church Sunday morning. “I had not been to church for a very long time and I just started going back. I used to go all the time before this happened. But I would just cry all the time so I stopped going. My family was pretty much begging me to go back, though, so I did.”

The details of Pam Duplantis’ death are forever to be found in the lawbooks of Louisiana; a state Supreme Court decision involving Louviere’s case gives a gripping account of what happened in the bank, including what happened to Pam Duplantis.

After driving to the ArgentBank, Louviere walked in carrying a duffel bag full of weapons, in his uniform.

The weapons included an AR-15 rifle.

After ordering the manager to eject two male customers and lock the entrance, leaving only six female employees inside – including his then-wife – Louviere ordered the women to leave their work stations and assemble in the tile-floored lobby.

After shooting a surveillance tape with the AR-15, Louviere spoke with his estranged wife and shouldered his rifle.

“Pamela Duplantis was seated in the lobby,” court papers state. “Standing some ten feet away, the defendant aimed at Pamela Duplantis and fired, striking her near the center of her forehead. She died instantly.”

A depraved standoff then commenced, lasting a full day, until Louviere was taken into custody.

But it is Pamela’s life that the family now cares to remember, rather than be reminded of the circumstances of her death.

She was the middle child and only daughter of Phyllis and Glynn Duplantis, a Grand Caillou Bayou couple who once enjoyed trawling shrimp and visiting their camp with children in tow. Pamela, the family said, grew into a fine and sweet woman who loved life and made friends easily.

“She always had a smile and she smelled so good all the time,” her mother said. “She loved to clean herself, to wash, to wear perfume and a little bit of makeup.”

A perfume called “Beautiful” was her favorite fragrance.

“Yes, Beautiful,” Phyllis said. “Just like she was.”

She had worked at Walmart and also at the local offtrack betting parlor, and was thrilled upon being hired by Argent because the job was close to home.

“She loved to eat,” her tearful mother said. “She would go to the restaurant, LaCasa, and she also liked boiled seafood and fish.”

More than anything, Phyllis said, Pamela loved her daughter, Brailand Olivia, who was only 9-years-old when her mother was slain, but has vivid and wonderful memories of her.

Now Brailand is a mom, and her little girl, Cammi Lucas, is a year old, already walking and trying to talk, and Phyllis knows Pam has her eye and a heavenly hand on the baby.

Glynn Duplantis says little about it all, but Phyllis daily sees the pain in his eyes that has never left.

“He has worked so hard all his life, as a shipyard welder, and he is retired now. We have been through a lot,” she said, which is one reason why she and her family see death for Chad Louviere – now 14 years on death row but seeking a new penalty heating – as the only acceptable option.

“I don’t want to see a chance that anyone else would have to go through what we went through from him,” Phyllis said. “It has to be so that he don’t get out and hurt anyone else.”

If she could talk to Louviere, Phyllis said – something she has no desire to do – there is one question she would ask.

“I would ask why did you choose my daughter,” she said. “He was going after his wife. Why did he choose my daughter?”

The laughter and life Phyllis is gifted with from her Pam’s daughter and the granddaughter she never knew in life are a salve, she said. Now, as Louviere’s attorneys and local prosecutors ready for a new round of legal wrangling, the pain of the past becomes sharp once again.

“I just want this to be all over with,” she said.

Pamela Ann Duplantis