New Orleans Unsolved

The past always catches up. This episode breaks down how information has looped back around, connecting pieces of a puzzle that's been building for over six years.

This is a brief update on what I’ve learned since the release of Episode 41 regarding the bodies I observed at St. Roch Cemetery in New Orleans. Since the episode aired, I’ve made efforts to get clarification and understand what I was seeing. This update reflects where things stand based on the information I was able to obtain after the episode was released. I will also be posting the video I recorded the day I visited the cemetery so listeners can see exactly what I saw.

Every detail has its day.

A small discovery opens a much bigger path. Anna traces it, step by step, into places that have been overlooked for decades.

As Stanley Burkhardt’s bid for bail is denied, years of chasing scattered leads finally pay off. Long-missing details come to light, revealing more about Burkhardt himself and the path he’s taken to escape accountability — until now. If you’d like to support this ongoing investigation, visit NewOrleansUnsolved.com for donation links and ways to help.

With the help of new information that has surfaced, I’m able to fit together pieces of the puzzle that had long remained disconnected. This episode traces the impact of that development—and the new clarity it brings to the investigation.

Time takes everything but the truth.

Just a little update.

In this episode, Anna follows a trail of overlooked details—newspaper clippings, archived files, and a name buried in an old contact list—that led us to a hidden connection between two key figures. What began as a quiet hunch became a pivotal piece of the larger puzzle. You’ll hear how Anna's research unfolded in real time, and how every small clue helped bring a buried link to light. To donate, please visit the link below: https://ko-fi.com/neworleansunsolved

Anna receives some long awaited documents, uncovering a lead she never expected. A conversation she thought impossible finally happens, revealing critical new information. But just as the pieces start falling into place, a new discovery shifts the investigation.

No one's the villain in their own story.

In this episode Anna gives updates from leads she has been tracking down. Anna also has a meeting that doesn't get the results she was hoping for. However, a new lead that brings new information comes to light. You know what they say, when one door closes, another door opens.

I know I've been quiet. Here's an update before the next episode.

A small detail revealed in a recent interview connects back to information from season one, bridging the gap between two criminals. The Eddie Wells case continues to be the nexus in every leg of the investigation.

In this episode Anna focuses on two of the men convicted in Troop 137. More information comes to the surface that leads to implications of a cover-up , conspiracy or blackmail on a much larger scale. You'll also hear from an individual that witnessed the theft of an important recurring item.

This is the second half of episode 29. After you listen I think you'll understand why I had to break this up into two parts. Out of all the information I've received during this six year investigation, this is the most shocking so far. Every time I think it can't get worse, it does.

This is a two part episode. The second part will come out tomorrow night at midnight. "A secret is a kind of promise ... It can also be a prison." –Jennifer Lee Carrell

In this bonus investigation episode, "This is just way way too much, I mean its unfolding, from what you are telling me its unfolding."

New Orleans Unsolved began as a deep dive into one mysterious death. But in the six years Anna dedicated to investigate the cases that eventually became the basis for both seasons of the podcast, she discovered that rarely were the details isolated. They were part of a web consisting of cops, corruption and cruelty. In the season finale of The Rope Murders, Anna's investigation comes full circle.

The path of Anna's investigation takes her back to Pass Christian, Mississippi for a second look at the location where Mark Richardson's body was discovered. We also hear about a more sinister undercurrent of what ties these cases together and the shocking news that brings us to the present day.

The Rope Murders took place at a time which preceded what we've all come to know as forensic science. The murders of Dennis Turcotte, Mark Richardson and Daniel Dewey were also comitted before the internet age . Anna's investigation of the murders has never revolved around web-sleuthing. Much of it has revolved around making contact and connections. It has led her on a path to retrace the trail of a suspected serial killer. In this episode, Anna explains why taking the long way home revealed more than she expected.

Dead end roads don't always lead to dead ends, sometimes they lead to answers. Anna takes a trip to meet a listener that helps connect the dots to a location she has been searching for for years.

From digging into old records and newspaper archives to tracing faded genealogy lines, Anna has used different investigative techniques and tools. But the one tool that perhaps produced the most revelatory information has been a map that became available through a cab company. In this episode, Anna details what she placed on this map, and in turn, what she learned from it. She also makes a shocking discovery when she examines a document related to one of the Rope Murders.

Over the course of six years and two seasons of the podcast, Anna has been trying to decipher the identities of the murdered teenage boys who ended up in the photos that were eventually shown to other children. The individual who showed them those photos was a child predator. Anna's investigation has steadily cleared a path through a forest of questions. In this episode, she explains why what was in the background of those photos is perhaps as important as what was front and center in them. Her latest interview also brings us back to a place central to Season 1 of New Orleans Unsolved...the Ninth Ward.

Anna unexpectedly connects with a woman who had information that sent her reeling. The years Anna has spent investigating the Rope Murders have been filled with attempts to connect deaths, details and decades. It’s been a constant pursuit of this theory that the murders of Dennis Turcotte, Mark Richardson and Daniel Dewey were part of a wider web spun by predators masking as trustworthy people. In this episode, the interview Anna wasn’t quite prepared for reveals the story of a missing boy who, until now, only existed in the memory of a 10-year-old boy.

During Anna’s investigation of the Rope Murders, she found correlations to the mysterious case of Eddie Wells, the pedophile operation ran by Boy Scout Troop 137, and one person who seemed to have tentacles touching all those elements. But it took Anna years to find those connections. In the initial stages of her investigation, she had a working theory about the Rope Murders. That theory was tested when she was called to a meeting of law enforcement officers. Also tested was her trust in the people who attended that meeting. .

Anna’s investigative focus stays on the Orange Grove Plantation as she sits down with a woman who, as a young girl, lived near the plantation in Plaquemines Parish and visited its grounds. Through Anna’s yearslong investigation of the Rope Murders, she’s come to believe the Orange Grove Plantation was a significant site. It was also a place a survivor from season 1 of New Orleans Unsolved was taken as a child. In this episode, he recalls the murky circumstances surrounding the times he ended up at the plantation, and why the man who took him there always kept the contents of a particular footlocker a secret.

Fragmented memories, fading landmarks and decades old newspaper articles have been among the puzzle pieces Anna has had to work with as her investigation of the Rope Murders took her deeper into Plaquemines Parish…and some of its troubled history. One place, located off what was described as the shell road, stood for more than a century. But for one person, it represents a dark point in his past. In this episode, Anna explores its possible connection to the Rope Murders.

The bodies of Dennis Turcotte, Mark Richardson and Daniel Dewey may have been found north of New Orleans, but as Anna as got deeper into her investigation of their murders and the crimes of Boy Scout Troop 137, her findings kept taking her south…to Plaquemines Parish. She discovered connections to some of its history of hate. At a remote site off the parish’s coast, there was physical evidence of that hate. In this episode, Anna explains the mystery around that site and how it fits into her investigation.

So far, Anna’s investigation of the Rope Murders has uncovered links to the pedophile cell that was Boy Scout Troop 137. While that troop may have been based in New Orleans East, Anna found that its tentacles reached outside of the city. In this episode, Anna’s investigation shifts to a place that was once dominated and defined by a segregationist who some called King of the Bayou.

The Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” predates the founding of the organization in 1910, but preparedness became a cornerstone of Scouting for the century that followed. In the case of Boy Scout Troop 137 in New Orleans, the crooked leaders of that troop were unprepared for the investigations and arrests that stemmed from the abuse inflicted on the children of that troop in the 1970’s. In this episode, Anna continues to connect the dots between victims of the Rope Murders, Troop 137 and the focus of our first season.

Over the two seasons of the podcast, Anna’s investigations have involved the mysterious deaths of teenage boys and the abuse of young children. As she continued her work on the Rope Murders, she kept finding a connection to an organization that was historically known to be a place for boys and young children.

Anna begins to lay out her four-year investigation of the Rope Murders. It includes a familiar person from season one who said he was shown photographs of dead boys tied up and left in rural settings. Anna analyzes the locations where the victims of the Rope Murders were left. What did they have in common? And to gain a better understanding of how something or someone can be hogtied, we turn to a man named Trapper John.

It took almost 30 years for investigators to identify Daniel Dewey’s body. For almost as long, a narrative kept repeating in newspapers and online articles that Dewey and the two other victims of the rope murders may have been male prostitutes or well-known street kids in the city of New Orleans. But was that really the case? We pose that question to Dennis Stewart and relatives of two of the victims.

In the summer of 2000, the remains of John Doe were exhumed from his grave at Pine Hill Cemetery in St. Helena Parish. He had been buried for more than 20 years. Back in 1979, his body had been tied up and left at a local garbage dump in the parish. There were hopes that technology and forensic science could finally reveal the boy’s identity. Those hopes quickly faded until the discovery of an encounter in Texas.

For roughly 20 years, John Doe’s body had been buried at Pine Hill Cemetery in St. Helena Parish. At the time of his burial and in the two decades that followed, there wasn't much progress in finding a suspect in his murder. The victim’s true identity also remained elusive. In the summer of 2000, officials and investigators physically dug up the past. They exhumed John Doe’s remains. In an attempt to finally put a name to the boy who had been ritualistically tied up and left in rural Louisiana, his remains would be sent to a place called The FACES Lab. Read More

In 1997, after almost 20 years of cold case status, the murders of Dennis Turcotte, Mark Richardson and John Doe would get renewed interest. Dennis Stewart was a relatively new detective with Louisiana State Police, but his knowledge of one of the Rope Murders went back to 1979. Stewart grew up in Greensburg, Louisiana, not far from where John Doe’s body was discovered. He remembered hearing about the boy being tied up and left at the garbage dump in St. Helena Parish. Detective Stewart was determined to find the boy’s identity. To do that, John Doe’s body would have to be exhumed.

When each victim of the rope murders was found, investigators didn’t make any public mention of a serial pattern or perpetrator. But, within a month after the discovery of John Doe’s body in St. Helena Parish, at least one newspaper ran a story about the boys being “male hustlers” who may have been stalked by a “sex killer”. The hustling scene in the French Quarter of New Orleans has been a real thing for decades. Whether these victims were part of that scene is far less certain, but the stigma it placed on the cases was hard to deny. What was it like in the Quarter when the murders took place? We take a journey back to a time full of nostalgia, but also violence.

In 1979, Jack Foster was assigned the case of a teenaged boy who had been ritualistically tied up, murdered and left at a local garbage site in St. Helena Parish. Foster was a self-taught detective working part time with the sheriff’s office. He was described as determined and thorough. But, those qualities wouldn’t be enough to find out the boy's true identity, let alone the person responsible for killing him. The case was a local mystery. When Foster fell into a bizarre coma during the investigation, it only added to that mystery.

On November 12, 1979, the tiny sheriff’s department in St. Helena Parish was just beginning its investigation of a body that had been ritualistically tied-up and left at a garbage dumpsite. The body was decomposing. Identifying the victim was difficult. What authorities could say definitively was that it appeared to be the body of a teenage boy. In an attempt to identify that boy, the sheriff’s grandson says he was taken to the scene. What he and the deputies saw that day would stick with them for decades to come.

Following a coroner’s inquest jury in Harrison County, it was determined that Mark Richardson’s death was the result of a homicide. The coroner presumed Richardson died from a possible overdose of injected drugs, but the actual cause of death was undetermined. No explanation or theory was offered about the fact that Richardson was found with his hands and feet tied behind him. How was Richardson killed? What did the ropes have to do with his death? More than a year later, similar questions would be asked when the body of another victim was found tied up and left in Greensburg, La.

Two days after a tied-up body was found in a wooded area near coastal Mississippi, a family from Biloxi believed it was that of their teenage son. Only weeks separated the discoveries of his body and Dennis Turcotte’s. The fact that both victims had been ritualistically bound would seem to show a strong connection between the cases, but early in the Mississippi investigation, authorities were grappling with a basic but crucial question: who is the victim?

Soon after Dennis Turcotte’s body was discovered, the working theories about his death and disappearance revolved around New Orleans’ French Quarter. A New Orleans bellhop was said to be the last person who saw Turcotte alive. In this episode, Turcotte’s brother details what Dennis was doing before he went missing. In neighboring Mississippi, a second investigation begins after the body of another teenager is found.

After Dennis Turcotte’s body was discovered bound and dumped in 1978, New Orleans Police Detective Frank Weicks traveled out of his jurisdiction to the rural area of Talisheek to assist in the case. The working theory was Turcotte had spent time in New Orleans French Quarter and was possibly kidnapped from there. But once at the crime scene, Weicks found some pressing and practical problems. In this episode, Weicks explains his concerns about the integrity of the investigation. And a suspect emerges. Who is he? How did he know Dennis Turcotte?

The creators of New Orleans Unsolved are finally back with their second season. This time, they’re investigating a set of truly mysterious murders. In 1978, hunters found the body of a teenager in a rural area of Louisiana. His hands and feet were ritualistically tied, the rope was connected to his neck. Some described the way the victim was bound as “hogtied”. A veteran New Orleans Police detective was quickly called in to assist in the investigation. When he arrived at the location, he couldn’t believe how the crime scene was handled. Little did he know, there would be more scenes like it, and more victims. In the Rope Murders, Anna and Thanh follow the trail of a suspected serial killer.

Investigative producer Anna Christie and veteran journalist Thanh Truong are back with the second season of their independent true crime podcast. Season 2 of New Orleans Unsolved, The Rope Murders, begins October 11th, 2023.

A man who says he was one of Eddie Wells’ best friends cautiously shares what he knows of a fateful day in 1982. He claims he was with Eddie the day he disappeared. To get his story, we go inside a parish jail.

In the season finale, Stanley Burkhardt gets arrested again, but will he stay in prison? His testimony in a court hearing weighs heavily in that decision. The testimony includes details in Eddie Wells’ case.