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| Mickey Shunick |
The office was successful in securing an aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder indictment against the 33-year-old sex offender in the case of missing UL Lafayette student Mickey Shunick, but ADA Keith Stutes and a team of law enforcement officials from multiple jurisdictions had another case to make, accusing Lavergne of the unsolved murder of Lafayette resident Lisa Pate.
Pate went missing in the summer of 1999, just two months after Lavergne crawled through the window of a home in Evangeline Parish and sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman.
The 35-year-old Lafayette woman’s remains were discovered in September 1999, four days after Lavergne married Lainey Vasseur of Opelousas, according to this timeline from KATC TV-3. Her body had been hidden underneath boards behind a house in the Church Point area.
About five months later, in February 2000, Lavergne pleaded guilty to oral sexual battery of the 18-year-old. He was released in 2008 after serving eight years for that crime.
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| The DA's office secured a surprise indictment against Brandon Scott Lavergne for the 1999 murder of Lisa Pate of Lafayette. |
In a story published today, The Advocate noted that in December 2002, Keith Latiolais of the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office said that investigators had a suspect in Pate’s death. The suspect was not identified, but Latiolais told the paper he was already in jail for an unrelated offense. Latiolais, now chief criminal deputy for Acadia Parish, has not returned repeated phone calls from The Independent over the past week.
Sources close to the Shunick investigation tell The Independent that among the evidence collected from Lavergne’s home in Swords were several women’s IDs and bloodied pictures of Lavergne showing the injuries he sustained May 19, the day Shunick disappeared. Lavergne told a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputy that he was attacked in his truck in the New Orleans area when he stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. He was unable to give the detective any information about where the supposed attack took place. The detective noted that Lavergne had multiple stab wounds on his chest, back, hand and neck.
Those sources would not say whether evidence collected from Lavergne’s home helped to build the cases against him in the Shunick and Pate murders. However, they did confirm that law enforcement officials outside of the 15th Judicial District, which covers Lafayette, Acadia and Vermilion parishes, are also looking at any possible connections between Lavergne and other crimes against women. Those investigations stretch into Texas as well.
Shortly after word of Lavergne’s indictment came down Wednesday afternoon, a local woman posted on her Facebook page that Lavergne had tried to get her to move in with him in this year. “He lied to me about his whole past and tried to get me to go on several dates,” she wrote. “Best thing I ever did was decided not to go. I’m sure that there are others.”
After Shunick went missing, Lavergne became engaged to an Acadia Parish woman (not the one who posted the aforementioned comment). The woman's identity is known, but The Independent and other local media have decided not to publish her name.
The DA’s office is seeking the death penalty.
JUNE 19 Former Saint Steve Gleason, who is paralyzed by ALS, released a statement Tuesday in response to the Atlanta radio station's skit making fun of him and the disease, this Picayune post reports. What did he say? He said he'd accepted the apology of the DJs who did it, notes that at least the incident has got people talking about ALS, and asks anyone who is burning to take action about it to do so -- by helping him fight ALS.
JUNE 19 Blogger Ian McGibboney takes a look at the Gleason incident in this post. He makes a good argument about the difference between having free speech and being free from consequences for your speech (which none of us is). He also admits that many of us got upset before we listened to the skit -- but lets us know that the reality is far worse than we can imagine. It was the incredibly bad judgment, even more than the actual speech, that probably got those DJs fired, he opines.
JUNE 19 Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake writes about Sen. Guillory's switch to the GOP in this post. He writes what most political watchers in Louisiana know: Guillory was a Republican before he decided to run for the senate seat in a mostly-D St. Landry district, and has switched back now that he plans to run for Lt. Gov. in a mostly-R state. But how come Blake missed Guillory's appearance on a TLC pageant show? Now that is a video we'd like to see. (Again).
JUNE 19 Here's another Washington Post blog post about a Louisiana politician, and it's just plain scathing. Ezra Klein says Jindal's Politico post was "insulting" to the intelligence of voters, and adds that Jindal is personifying the "stupid" he's railed against, by being an "elite" who convinces GOP activists of "things that aren't true." Me-ow.
JUNE 19 Here's Gov. Jindal's post in Politico, in which he asks the GOP to get over losing to Obama (again) and stop "the bedwetting." (Uh, what?) He gives his Republican buddies what is probably a nerd's idea of a coach's motivational talk, which starts with a list of accomplishments that they can't seem to exploit and ending with an absurd description of liberals that sounds like a character treatment for a Fox "News" movie scripted by Gordon Liddy. Sure, he's preaching to the choir, but even the choir's not this gullible.
JUNE 19 Lamar Parmentel read Gov. Jindal's post on Politico, but thinks it was so dumb it probably was published in the wrong paper. This post by Lamar on the Daily Kingfish opines that possibly Jindal's post was destined for the Onion -- because the governor couldn't possibly be serious here. If you listen closely, you can hear the staff of the Kingfish giggling.
JUNE 19 Blogger Robert Mann posts from Turkey, a country he has visited several times in the past few years. Mann gives an interesting overview of the current political and societal climate of the country, which -- if you're living under a rock and don't know -- is experiencing protests and turmoil these days. Mann promises to post as much as he can during his trip, which should be fascinating reading.
JUNE 19 Blogger CB Forgotston says the legislature is keeping the vicious cycle going with its funding of new buildings for the community college/technical college system. Universities across the state need maintenance and improvement on existing buildings, and the solution is to build new buildings at other schools? By the time the bonds are paid off, those buildings will be falling down, too, CB says.
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