Brenda Ann Constanza Collins
December 31, 2013
A timeline of events involving Ben Freeman
January 1, 2014
As shattered families bury the dead and comfort the wounded, few clear answers explaining a registered nurse’s fatal shooting spree last week have emerged.
That bad blood existed between the nurse, Ben Freeman, and his former father-in-law, Lafourche Councilman Phillip Gouaux, who remains in critical but stable condition, is indisputable. Court papers show accusations by and against one toward the other, relating to Freeman’s tempestuous marriage to Gouaux’s daughter.
More puzzling is Freeman’s fatal attack on Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital CEO Milton Bourgeois, who by some accounts appears to have stood by the troubled nurse, even when his personal problems erupted into bad behavior at the hospital itself.
Freeman’s current wife Denise Freeman was found strangled to death in the couple’s filled bathtub inside their Houma residence;
Phillip’s wife Susan “Pixie” Gouaux was shot multiple times in her abdomen, according to detectives, and also died; and Bourgeois was killed by a wound to the chest, fired at close range inside his Raceland home, according to officials at the Jefferson Parish Medical Examiner’s
office, where the autopsies were performed, and the Lafourche Parish Sheriff ’s Office.
Also injured were Phillip Gouaux, shot one time in the neck; Phillip Gouaux’s daughter Andrea, who suffered spinal damage from a gunshot wound; and Bourgeois’ wife Ann, who underwent surgery due to a gunshot wound to her leg, according to Lafourche Parish Sheriff ’s Office spokesman Brennan Matherne.
The Gouauxes were shot inside their Lockport home.
Denise, maiden name Perry, was laid to rest Monday in Mississippi, the Associated Press reported.
Visitation for Pixie Gouaux is scheduled from 5-9 p.m., Friday, Jan. 3, at Falgout Funeral Home in
Lockport. She will be laid to rest in private following a mass at 11 a.m. at Holy Savior Catholic Church.
Ben Freeman was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was inside an SUV parked alongside U.S. Highway 90, near Raceland pointed westbound.
Freeman’s weapon of choice was a Benelli 12-guage shotgun.
Detectives continue to investigate whether the gun was registered to Freeman and should have answers to ownership questions by the end of the week, Matherne said.
Detectives processed all three scenes Thursday night and did not uncover a suicide note or other indications as to what prompted the killings.
Also unknown was the mental stability of Ben Freeman, who pleaded for help following a tirade
at St. Anne’s nearly three years ago, according to witnesses. Hospital officials informed Lafourche deputies then that Freeman would be admitted for a psychiatric evaluation, though it is unclear if he was assessed, much less treated. And Freeman’s ex-wife Jeanne Gouaux, amid the contemptuous divorce proceedings that began in 2010 and were still unresolved at the time of the slayings, also made written statements questioning his mental health.
MARRIAGE GONE AWRY
Ben Freeman and Jeanne Gouaux were married on June 7, 1997. Four and a half years later their first child was born. They conceived three more children through mid-2009.
Freeman first petitioned the 17th Judicial District Court for a divorce, filing on Feb. 3, 2010, and the case was assigned to District Judge John LeBlanc, who placed the standard 365-day limit on the proceedings, meaning it could not be finalized until the parties had been separated for one year.
So when Freeman and Gouaux reconciled before LeBlanc on Dec. 3, 2010, the case was dismissed. But public records indicate their marital issues did not lie dormant.
A month and a half after the divorce proceedings were dismissed, Lafourche Parish deputies were dispatched to St. Anne General Hospital, where Freeman had apparently gone on a destructive bent following a telephone conversation with Jeanne.
Deputy Steven Pitts, penning an incident report under the header “Mentally Disturbed Subject,” said Freeman had knocked a porcelain sink off the wall in the employees’ restroom and “smashed” a window in the main doorway leading to the psychiatric ward’s control room. Freeman was sedated in an isolated room, Pitts said.
“Both ER staff (which was Freeman’s employ) and psychiatric ward employees said that at no time did Ben Freeman attempt or threaten to harm them in any was (sic),” Pitts wrote. “All subjects advised that Ben Freeman was requesting mental help before he does something.”
Pitts went on to contact one of the hospital’s administrators. The administrator, Pitts reported, opted against pressing charges and said Freeman would be admitted for a psychiatric evaluation.
In a teleconference with the media last week, Ochsner Health System Vice President Michael Hulefeld declined to comment on the incident, which surfaced Thursday night when Lafourche Sheriff Craig Webre mentioned it in connection with a statement saying Freeman was fired from St. Anne.
Actually, Hulefeld said, Freeman resigned his full-time position, giving an April 18, 2011 departure date.
Freeman remained in good standing to be rehired, the Ochsner vice president said.
Freeman would later work for Thibodaux Regional Medical Center and Terrebonne General Medical Center.
Jeanne Gouaux filed for divorce on May 3, 2011, and it was granted on May 27, 2012, though lingering issues, such as delinquent child support payments – which Freeman
had agreed to pay – were unresolved as of the moment Freeman allegedly began the spree.
In the time since Jeanne sued Freeman for divorce, she successful obtained two temporary restraining orders against him. She cited obscene verbal treatment and his obstructing of her closing doors – an attempt to end the communication – during custodial exchanges within the first order, filed July 2, 2012. In neither instance did she reference violent behavior toward herself.
“I just want the mental and verbal torment to stop,” she wrote in the second order, filed June 20, 2013, one month after Freeman was arrested for telephone harassment. “I am afraid of Ben because he has some mental health issues and I just want to protect myself and our
children.”
Responding to the second protection order, Judge Hugh Larose, who oversaw the divorce proceedings, granted an injunction against Freeman lasting through Nov. 30, 2013.
It stripped custody rights from the defendant and permitted contact with the Gouauxes only for information related to the children, with whom his contact was restricted to three phone calls a week.
CRIMINAL CHARGES LEVIED AGAINST FREEMAN
Over the course of the past eight months, Freeman had three criminal charges levied against him.
The first two were telephone harassment charges – one filed by Phillip Gouaux, the other by Jeanne – stemming from a stream of text messages Jeanne turned over to police on May 12.
“Embrace who u are,” reads one sent to Jeanne’s phone, “then stir up in your cauldron, a earth shaking shit storm to destroy the one true voice in your life, good luck.”
“U may think I’m wreck it Ralph, lol,” reads another. “I dont wreck my homes, i wrecked your lil hoar house.”
Freeman was arrested on May 20 and pleaded guilty to one of the two counts on Oct. 23. He was sentenced to one year of supervised probation, and the second charge was dropped, court records show.
On Nov. 27, the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff ’s Office issued Freeman a citation for simple battery domestic violence against Denise Freeman. A court date was scheduled for Jan. 16, 2014.
‘HE WAS A SOFT-SPOKEN KID’
The public accounts regarding Freeman’s alleged prior crimes and prior bad acts, which reside in the files of courts and law enforcement agencies, conflict with the recollections of family friends and neighbors who knew Freeman.
“He was a soft-spoken kid, who looked up to his younger brother. Something caused him to crack. He was a nurse. And when our daughter was a toddler we brought her to the ER and Ben was the nurse there. He was very compassionate,” said one Lafourche Parish resident, who is familiar with both the Gouaux and Freeman families.
They described him as a talented carpenter who worked closely in wood with an uncle. Occasionally he redid rooms in the homes of friends or neighbors. More than one of those said they had heard some time ago that Freeman fell and struck his head, and that the blow knocked him unconscious.
“Some people say he has never been the same since,” a former neighbor said.
FREEMAN’S NURSING LICENSE IN GOOD STANDING
Signs of more serious trouble on Freeman’s horizon escaped notice by the state agency that licenses nurses.
Karen Lyon, executive director of the Louisiana State Board of Nursing, said she had no record of complaints involving Freeman, whose nursing license was up for renewal this month.
Nursing licenses are annually renewed, Lyon said. Part of the process involves licensees self-reporting criminal charges or other issues that might place them afoul of the state’s standards for nurses. Mental illnesses are also reportable.
Anyone with knowledge of a problem nurse is also free to file an independent complaint, whether they are a hospital administrator or a patient.
“Mr. Freeman had an unencumbered license,” Lyon said. “As for any other allegations I cannot confirm or deny. He had not undergone in the past any allegations of violating the nurse practice act.”
Nurses are required to report misdemeanor as well as felony arrests.
“Obviously when we ask those questions we rely on the respondent to be honest,” Lyon said. “I will also say that there are things that come, reports would come to the board of nursing from law enforcement, should Mr. Freeman have had any run-ins with the law for which he was charged with a crime.”
Freeman’s last place of employment was Terrebonne General Medical Center. Director and CEO Phyllis Peoples said he worked in the emergency department.
“During his 8-month tenure he displayed compassion and received many compliments from the patients he cared for in the emergency room,” Peoples said, adding that Freeman was hired in May 2013 “following a background and reference check.”
“Freeman, along with all potential employees, go through an extensive screening process. No red flags were raised during Mr. Freeman’s screenings and he had no incidents or displayed concerns during his employment.”
INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
Although nobody stands to be prosecuted, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff ’s Office is continuing its investigation into the homicides, “specifically what led to the events,” Matherne said. The sheriff’s office understands the community wants answers to some of the lingering questions, he said.
Among the mysteries detectives still haven’t solved is where Freeman went following the shooting at the Bourgeois residence. He was considered at large for nearly four hours before he was found dead.
Detectives are also trying to make sense of Bourgeois’ slaying and what made Freeman connect the three as his victims. Matherne echoed Webre’s acknowledgement of the bitter divorce and custody proceedings as a possible motivator but pointed out that Freeman’s personal issues were believed to be unrelated to his previous employment under the longtime St. Anne CEO.
“The most important thing is to get some answers as to why,” Matherne said.
The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff ’s Office, on the other hand, has closed its case, according to Capt. Dawn Foret, assistant chief of detectives.
“He is the lead suspect (in Denise’s death), and we’re considering the case closed,” Foret said. “I think if anyone comes up with a motive, it would be complete speculation, because she can’t attest to anything and neither can he.”
