Between 1997 and 2006, an overweight pizza delivery man named Ronald Dominique strangled 23 men across rural Louisiana, and almost no one has ever heard his name.
A deep-dive article on all of the obscure legends featured in the first section of tonight's podcast: https://weirddarkness.com/obscure-legends/
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BayouStrangler
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3fyw74cj
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Spine-tingling ghost stories and eerie myths... come to life! Are any of them actually true? We’ll explore the more obscure side of folklore with ghosts and legends that don’t get the same amount of attention others do – but are certainly not to be ignored! (Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of) *** In the quiet town of Essex, Maryland, the disappearance of nine-year-old Alva Jean Parris shattered the peace of summer 1960. Walking just three blocks to her aunt's house, she vanished without a trace, only for her body to be found days later, hidden beneath a makeshift grave. Decades have passed, but the mystery of who took Alva Jean and why remains unsolved. (Who Killed Alva Jean?) *** He’s a little-known serial killer. Ronald J. Dominique, dubbed the Bayou Strangler, went on a decade-long murder spree in rural Louisiana, killing 23 men. (The Bayou Strangler)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:49.323 = Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of
00:33:02.110 = The Bayou Strangler ***
00:49:50.242 = Who Killed Alva Jean?
00:54:23.489 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of” sources: Cara Duke at ListVerse.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bddryv6h; Mysteries of Canada: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckwn5y5; Brendan-Noble.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8audhk; Factschology.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycxzdhwa,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/v7rdp57c, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdfcswwk; InuitMyths.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/puzuc272, TheIrishRoadTrip.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/vj824vwb; DallasTerrors.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8s8crn; NewEnglandHistoricalSociety.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/8r4zmkpt
“The Bayou Strangler” by Oliver Mason for The-Line-Up.com, used with permission: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mt8tnyh4 (BOOK: “The Bayou Strangler” by Fred Rosen: https://amzn.to/49RIiWj)
“Who Killed Alva Jean?” source: Robert A. Waters at KidnappingMurderAndMayhem.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8ab932
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Originally aired: April 23, 2024
This episode of Weird Darkness travels from obscure folklore across four continents to a little-known Louisiana serial killer and a Maryland child murder that has gone unsolved for more than sixty years.It opens with a tour through the ghosts and monsters that rarely make the usual lists: the Dungarvon Whooper, the murdered lumber-camp cook named Ryan whose whoops still echo along New Brunswick's Dungarvon River; the strzyga of Slavic myth, a two-hearted, twin-souled demon that takes the form of a barn owl before it feeds; Lady Koi Koi, the red-heeled teacher whose clicking footsteps haunt boarding schools across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa; the banshee of North Carolina's Tar River, tied to a flour miller named Dave Warner and the Revolutionary War redcoats who drowned him in 1781; the Headless Nun of Miramichi, the murdered Sister Marie who wanders French Fort Cove asking where her head has gone; the Kludde, a chain-rattling shapeshifting dog from Belgian and Dutch folklore; the Inupasugjuk, the rarely-seen giants of Inuit tradition; the Dearg Due of County Waterford, an abused Irish bride who rose from her grave near the Tree of Strongbow to drain the blood of her father and husband; the Goatman of Old Alton Bridge near Denton, Texas, an 1884 iron truss bridge also tied to the lynching of black goat farmer Oscar Washburn; and the Stratford Knockings of 1850, the poltergeist that draped Reverend Eliakim Phelps's Connecticut mansion in funeral crepe and centered on his eleven-year-old stepson Harry.From there the episode turns to Ronald Joseph Dominique, the Louisiana pizza delivery man dubbed the Bayou Strangler, who raped and strangled twenty-three men between 1997 and 2006 while evading police for nearly a decade. Drawing on Fred Rosen's book The Bayou Strangler, the segment follows the killing of Oliver LeBanks, beaten with a tire iron and dumped beneath a highway overpass near Metairie, and traces Dominique's earlier victims across St. Charles Parish, from nineteen-year-old David Mitchell in July 1997 to twenty-year-old Gary Pierre and thirty-eight-year-old Larry Ranson, most of them gay African American men lured with the promise of paid sex. It introduces Detective Lieutenant Dennis Thornton of the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office, who worked the LeBanks scene and set himself the task of linking the killings that DNA evidence would finally tie to Dominique.The episode closes with the June 10, 1960 disappearance of nine-year-old Alva Jean Parris, who vanished walking three blocks to her aunt's house from the Riverdale Apartments in Essex, Maryland. Five days later, searchers found her shoes in a marsh and her body in a shallow grave concealed with linoleum, sod, and twigs beside an abandoned farmhouse, her abdomen and pelvis coated in lye. Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. William Lovitt found decomposition too advanced to confirm a cause of death, though strangulation was suspected, and despite polygraph tests, a solid alibi clearing her mother Fredonia, and tips about a man seen in a sailor's hat, no suspect was ever charged in a case that remains open today.
