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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.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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