The Bayou Strangler ─ Louisiana's Most Gruesome Serial Killer

The terrifying true story of Louisiana serial killer Ronald Dominique’s ten-year killing spree that left more than twenty men dead, and the two dedicated detectives who hunted him down. 

In 1997, the bodies of young African American men began turning up in the cane fields of the quiet suburbs of New Orleans. The victims—many of them transient street hustlers—had been brutally raped and strangled, but police had no leads on the killer’s identity. The murders continued, leaving southeast Louisiana’s gay community rattled and the police desperate for a break in the case. Detectives Dennis Thornton and Dawn Bergeron came together as task force partners, and they were indefatigable in their decade-long effort to track down the killer.

In 2006, DNA evidence finally linked the murders to a suspect: the unassuming Ronald Joseph Dominique, who had lived under the radar for years, working as a pizza deliveryman and meter reader. But who was Ronald Dominique and what led him to commit such heinous crimes? With direct access to the investigation, Dominique’s confession, and all of the killer’s body dump sites in Houma, author Fred Rosen enters the warped mind of a murderer and captures a troubled, disturbing, and broken life. As with the many other serial killers he has covered, including Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee Cannibal) and Dennis Rader (the BTK killer), Rosen provides a horrifying and fascinating account of the lengths to which a bloodthirsty monster will go to lure and brutalize his victims.

A former columnist for the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times, Fred Rosen is an award-winning author of true crime and history books, including Gold!, Did They Really Do It?, and Lobster Boy. He can frequently be seen on the Investigation Discovery network’s Evil Kin and Evil Twins TV series, where he is a regular on-air commentator.