The Murder of Ernest Luttrell

Keithville is a suburb located southwest of Shreveport. Though it has existed for many years, it has done so without politics. It has no mayor or governing body. Fire protection and ambulance service are provided by Fire Districts which began with volunteers, and police services are provided by the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office. The main attraction of living in Keithville is to live in close proximity to city conveniences without having to pay outrageous city taxes.

On July 25, 2010, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office received a phone call from a woman in Keithville. It was 70 year old Loretta Luttrell. Loretta, known as Bobbie to family and friends, lived on State Highway 169 with her husband, Ernest. They had a small farm and lived in an attractive log cabin with a horseshoe driveway.

When Loretta Luttrell got home from Sunday School that morning, she thought her car was acting strange. She pulled up to the mobile home behind her house where Ernest’s farm hand Craig (not his real name) and his girlfriend Tina. Tina also worked for the Luttrells, cleaning house and driving Loretta to Shreveport to run errands. Loretta knocked on the trailer door and told Craig she thought her tires were low. He followed her to the shop and checked the tires. Each one had only 17 pounds of pressure in it. Most of the time only one tire is low or sometimes two on the same side, but it was strange for all four tires to have half the air they needed. Craig shook his head but didn’t question her. He cranked up the compressor and aired Miss Bobbie’s tires up to the correct pressure. It was 11 am.

As was her habit, Loretta left early that Sunday morning and drove six miles to Grawood Baptist Church. Her husband Ernest was not a church going man, so she made the drive alone. She was usually late for church, but she arrived an hour early that Sunday and sat conspicuously in the middle of the auditorium while the musicians practiced for big church. It was the only time the music leader ever saw her in the auditorium before church. At 9:30, she went to Sunday School, but by the time it was over she was tired and hungry. She skipped preaching and went home.

When Craig finished with her tires, Bobbie pulled into the garage,

eager to get inside. Her mind was preoccupied with food and a nap, so she was shocked to find her husband Ernest lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood with a gunshot wound to the head.

She hurried outside and called 911. The Sheriff’s Office dispatched the call as a man “unconscious and not breathing”. Since the Fire Station was only half a mile away, the firemen were the first to arrive. They stepped inside, took one look at Ernest, and stepped back out.

Sometimes old men get depressed because of they’re old and in pain, and sometimes depression leads to despair, and despair to suicide. That’s what happened to another Ernest, Ernest Hemmingway. Maybe Ernest Luttrell did the same thing, but fire fighters didn’t think so because Ernest’s body was riddled with bullets, and his hands were tied together. They knew he couldn’t have killed himself, and they knew he was not alive. They also knew the killer could still be inside the house, so they waited outside.

Deputy Robert Chapman was the first cop to arrive. He was a member of the Sheriff’s SWAT team. The firemen told Chapman Mr. Luttrell was lying just inside the south door of the cabin.

Moments later, Deputy Mike King arrived. King was a giant man who played professional football before becoming a deputy. Chapman and King followed their training and systematically searched every room, corner, and closet in the house. Chapman wrote in his report, “While clearing the residence I did see a w/m laying [sic] on his back in what appeared to be a pool of blood. He appeared to have a gunshot wound to his left eye and possibly his stomach and hip. He appeared to be deceased.”

Chapman noticed there was no forced entry into the house. The deputies set up crime scene tape and started a log, recording the names of everyone who entered the scene. Loretta Luttrell sat in an ambulance in front of her house, overwhelmed by the murder of her husband. She was elderly and frail. Rob Chapman spoke to her while she was in the ambulance and took his time. He knew she needed medical attention, but he also knew she could have critical information about the murder of her husband. The firemen would have to wait.

According to Miss Loretta, she left for church that morning at 8:30 am and nothing seemed unusual. She came home ready for dinner, but her tires were low, so she had Craig air the them up in the shop. When he finished, she walked into her house and saw Ernest on the floor and knew he was dead the moment she saw him. She told Chapman it was a robbery. In his report he wrote, “Bobbie (Loretta) seemed very calm and recalled the incident clearly.”

Craig the farmhand told the deputies Ernest’s dual-wheel pickup truck was missing. They called headquarters to get the registration for the truck, and they put it in the national computer (NCIC). If any law enforcement officer came across the truck, they would find out it was stolen in a robbery that left a man dead.

        The Sunday morning tragedy got the attention of the Sheriff’s Office leadership. Chief Deputy D. E. Stevens and Detective Captain Bobby Abraham beat lead detective Andy Scoggins to the scene. Detective Keith Fox and Lieutenant Bill Rehak arrived later.

Captain Abraham sent Keith Fox to a car parked in the gravel driveway south of the house where two men were standing, and two women were sitting inside in the air conditioning. The men were Ernest’s farm hand Craig and his son Dave (not his real name). The women were Bobbie Luttrell and her maid Tina, Craig’s girlfriend.

Craig could drive heavy equipment, weld metal, or pull weeds. He had known Ernest for a dozen years and lived on his property for six of those years. Ernest was good to him, and he paid him back with hard work and loyalty. Craig gave Fox a photograph of Ernest’s truck. Fox asked him directly who killed Ernest. Craig said he had no idea, but despite his sincerity, he remained a person of interest.

Fox interviewed Bobbie Luttrell, but the interview was brief. According to his report, “Mrs. Luttrell was eager to leave the scene and get out of the heat...” Her cooperation was paramount for the investigation, but he couldn’t force it. Fox was surprised that she was so easily distracted from the murder of her husband.

The housekeeper Tina was even less concerned. Fox asked to speak to her, but she was tied up on her cellphone, so he talked to her son, Dave. Dave told him he did not know anything about what happened to Ernest, but he wanted Fox to know he walked up to the Luttrell’s house a few days earlier and sat down on a bench on the back porch. He quietly contemplated the mysteries of life for awhile, then he got up and went back home. He lifted his foot and showed Fox the bottom of his shoes and told him his footprints might be found near the house. His eagerness to clear himself from suspicion did the opposite.

Detectives spent the rest of the day searching the murder scene. They found several guns missing from Ernest’s gun cabinet. Ernest may have been killed with his own gun, and whoever killed him, left the scene in his white pickup truck. Either the killer lived close by or someone brought him to the scene.

Detectives and deputies went door to door asking neighbors if they saw anything. They didn’t, so they stopped cars driving past the house hoping someone might have noticed something earlier that morning. One of the cars was driven by Lieutenant Gayle McFarland of the Shreveport Police Department who lived a few miles down the road. Gayle told the detectives he drove past the Luttrell’s at 9 am and noticed Ernest’s two Kubota tractors in their usual spots, but Ernest’s one-ton, pick-up truck wasn’t there. That meant the truck was gone shortly after Loretta left for church.

The next day, Detectives Andy Scoggins and Keith Fox did interviews at the detective’s office. They spoke with Ernest’s sister Mildred Jackson first. Mildred was close to her brother and broken hearted by his murder. She knew Bobbie wasn’t capable of shooting Ernest, but they had been at odds for years. She believed Bobbie was taking advantage of her brother. The detectives were surprised to find out that Bobbie and Ernest were not married. Bobbie was actually Loretta “Bobbie” Moore and had been living with Ernest for almost fifty years. Both of them had a child from previous relationships, but they did not have children together.

Mildred said Bobbie despised Ernest and wanted him gone so she could get everything he owned, and he owned a lot. Earlier that year, Bobbie had Ernest picked up on an emergency commitment order, also known as an Order of Protective Custody, after Ernest had a dispute with a neighbor about a property line. The neighbor accused Ernest of threatening to kill him, and Bobbie took the opportunity to get him out of the picture by having him committed, but it didn’t work because the hospital only held him for one day.

An Order of Protective Custody in Caddo Parish is issued through the Coroner’s Office. If a person is a danger to himself or others due to mental illness or addiction, anyone can go to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office and fill out a Request for an Order of Protective Custody. If the person fits the criteria, they are picked up by law enforcement and taken to the state hospital for evaluation. Most of the time the system works well, but Mildred claimed Bobbie had Ernest committed to get him out of the picture. She told Fox, “…there was no doubt in her mind Mrs. Luttrell had some involvement with Ernest’s death.”

It was a bold assertion since Bobbie was in the early stages of dementia, and most people believed she didn’t have the wherewithal to find her way home on a dark night. She was 70 years old but seemed older. She could have knitted a scarf or afghan, but she couldn’t fire a .44 caliber revolver or drive Ernest’s farm truck. If she had anything to do with it, she was not alone. The detectives had to figure out if Mildred was being forthright or merely vengeful.

Scoggins and Fox didn’t consider Bobbie a suspect, but something happened when they interviewed her the second time that concerned them. Immediately after the murder, they considered her lack of emotion a result of shock but nothing changed the second day. Her cold demeanor and story were still the same, and it seemed rehearsed. It is normal to recall additional details of traumatic events the next day, but her story did not deviate from her original statement. Detective Terry Richardson watched the interview on the monitor from another room and thought she looked emotionally detached.

After her interview, another family member pulled Fox aside. He told him he was concerned about Tina VanMoerkerque, the Luttrell’s cook/maid. Right after the murder, she told him Ernest’s guns were stolen from the house, and he wondered how she could know since no one had been inside the house since the murder occurred. He also thought Bobbie  was acting  strange. She always called him on Sunday afternoons, but that Sunday, she called him before 8 am and had little to say.

Those who knew and loved Ernest Luttrell were on edge. Little things that seemed trivial the day before suddenly seemed important. Those things might be a piece of the puzzle or just distractions, but it was too early to tell. Ernest’s family was scared and rightfully so. They couldn’t afford to overlook anything regardless of how outlandish it sounded. The detectives were concerned that the person who killed Ernest was still a danger to the people of Caddo Parish. Fingers pointed at Ernest’s widow, his farm hand, his maid, and the maid’s peculiar son, all of whom seemed to be unlikely suspects. The suspect list needed to be based on something more than suspicion, innuendo, and family prejudice. The case must be based on something solid, and it finally happened later that night, but in a way no one anticipated.

Thirty six hours after Ernest was found, the local news broadcasted a story on the murder. They showed a photo of Ernest while interviewing his neighbor who told the reporter what a great guy he was. The reporter also interviewed Bobbie’s pastor who said his congregation was in shock over the tragedy. At the end of the story they showed a picture of Ernest’s pickup truck and asked anyone who saw it to call the hotline.

Before the news ended, Andy Scoggins got a phone call. A woman in Shreveport told him she saw Ernest’s truck in her friend’s driveway earlier that day. She gave Scoggins his name and address. Andy and Fox arrived minutes later, but the truck was gone. They knocked on the door and took the man the caller described in for questioning. They showed him a picture of the truck, and he told them it was at his house that afternoon. His friend Erick Crain came to his house in the truck, but Crain left shortly after dark. 

Crain lived in a fifth wheel travel trailer in a trailer park behind Shreveport Regional Airport. He was 26 years old, had no ambition, and was unable to keep a job. As Monday became Tuesday morning, Andy located Crain’s travel trailer, but he was disappointed when Ernest’s truck wasn’t there. He knocked on the trailer door, and Erick stuck his head out, saw the detective’s badge, and slammed the door. Andy continued knocking and calling him to come out, but he would not, so Andy called the SWAT team.

They watched the house all night long, and as the sun came up, the SWAT team fired a canister of tear gas in the trailer. A desperate Erick Crain burst out the door gasping for air and demanding to know what was going on. He refused to follow simple directions from men dressed in black with big guns, so they put him down, and tied him up like a pretzel. When the effects of the gas subsided, Andy took him to the office and put him in the interview room.

        Crain made sweeping denials and contradicted established facts. He thought irresponsibility made him immune from accountability.

A detective’s goal in an interview is to get an alibi, and Andy didn’t waste anytime asking Erick where he was Sunday morning. Erick told him he was working at a body shop in Stonewall, Louisiana, just south of Shreveport. Andy continued to push and found out Erick had a friend in Keithville named Dave who lived behind Ernest Luttrell’s house with his mother. On the day of the murder, Dave was the one who told Keith Fox he left his foot prints at the crime scene. Erick and Dave’s friendship was suspicious.

Scoggins left the interview room and called the owner of the body shop in Stonewall. The owner said his shop was closed on Sundays, and besides that, he fired Erick a week earlier.

In less than five minutes, Crain’s alibi disappeared. When the detectives broke the bad news to him, he came up with a new story. He said he was at a friend’s house in Shreveport when the murder took place. Andy immediately called his friend to check the alibi. The friend said Erick came by his house on Sunday alright, but it wasn’t until noon, and…he was driving Ernest’s truck.  

Erick started his day with tear gas and things were getting worse, but he denied killing or even knowing Ernest Luttrell. His denial didn’t hold any weight because he was seen driving Ernest’s truck, and his best friend was Dave.

        Frustrated with having his alibis pulled out from under him, Erick stopped talking, but before Andy left him alone in the interview room, he took a good look at the peculiar young man. Erick was wearing boots with a distinct tread design that looked strangely similar to the boot prints left in blood on the Luttrell’s floor Sunday morning. 

After Erick was taken into custody, Patrol went to work searching for Ernest’s truck. At 9:45 am, Sergeant Greg Ardoin found it parked at an oil well site within walking distance of Erick’s travel trailer.

Scoggins arrested Crain for first degree murder. The charge made him eligible for the death penalty. At booking, Andy seized Erick’s boots for evidence. Later, forensic investigators confirmed they were the boots which left the bloody footprints at the Luttrell home on July 25.

That afternoon, a reporter from KSLA Channel 12 went to the body shop in Stonewall to interview Erick’s old boss. During the interview, the boss received a collect phone call from Caddo Correction Center. It was Erick. The boss accepted the charges for the call and turned on the speaker phone as Erick told him he was in jail for murder. His old boss asked him if he did it. Erick replied, “Yeah, I killed him.” He said he broke into the Luttrell’s house, and Ernest surprised him, so he had to kill him. Crain’s confession was the top story on the evening news.

The next person Erick called from the jail was Bobbie Luttrell’s maid, Tina VanMoerkerque. She was his friend Dave’s mother, and it seemed odd that he would call her. Months earlier, Tina was investigated for stealing and using the Luttrell’s credit cards. She had access to their bank accounts, vehicles, guns, and even their wills, and she took advantage of her position by stealing from them. She made $2000 worth of charges on their credit cards before the Luttrells knew what happened. The case was investigated by Bobby Herring of the Sheriff’s Financial Crime Task Force. Bobby investigated the case and had everything he needed to arrest her for felony theft, except one thing. When it came down to having her arrested, Ernest couldn’t do it. Instead, he set up a payment plan and let Tina continue to work for them.

Erick Crain robbed and murdered Ernest Luttrell, and Tina VanMoerkerque stole money from him, so why did he call her from a recorded telephone at Caddo Correction Center? It was a mystery for detectives to explore another day. They were exhausted after their all night apprehension of Crain, and five o’clock was a welcome sight. What they needed most was a good night sleep, but Lieutenant Bill Rehak had other plans. At 7 pm, he sent the detectives out to look for Dave, Tina, and Craig.

Some people thought Craig was the missing link. He was close to Ernest, lived on the property, and his girlfriend was close to Bobbie and had access to her finances. Others felt Tina’s son Dave was the connection. He acted strange when the detectives spoke to him on Sunday. And then there was Tina. Erick called her as soon as he was in jail. The detectives needed to talk to all three of them and since they lived in the same place, Scoggins and the detectives went to Craig’s trailer behind the Luttrell’s house. No one was home, so they checked area motels looking for them. They stopped at a motel in Shreveport, and the clerk told them they weren’t registered, but he told them he remembered seeing Tina there on Saturday night. It seemed too good to be true, but detectives checked the surveillance system and saw Tina going in a room with Erick Crain. Tina instantly became a prime suspect.

The detectives left Shreveport and drove to Greenwood where they found Tina’s car in a parking lot at a motel next to a truck stop. They checked with the front desk and found out Tina was renting a room. Lieutenant Rehak left Sergeant James Lewis and Detective Jay Morgan to watch the car while he, Scoggins, and Fox went to the jail to execute the DNA warrant on Crain. After Scoggins got his sample, they went back to the motel and knocked on Tina’s door. Inside were Craig, Dave, and Tina, They took them to the detective’s office. It was 4 am on Wednesday morning.

Craig the farm hand had some questionable friends and a drug habit, but it appeared he was oblivious to what happened to Ernest. Dave also appeared to be uninvolved, but Tina’s interview was not so convincing. She talked in circles and denied being with Erick Crain on Saturday night, that is until the detectives confronted her with the motel surveillance. After that, she admitted to having an affair with Erick Crain who was once her daughter’s boyfriend. Tina said the whole thing was a coincidence. On Saturday afternoon, she had to leave home because Craig beat her up, and she ran into Erick at McDonald’s in Shreveport. She spent the night with him, but left the motel early Sunday morning alone. After talking to detectives for three hours, Tina was entrenched in denial. The detectives left her alone in the interview room, and Scoggins got on the phone with the on-call Assistant District Attorney, looking for a way to charge Tina.

At 7:30 am, an ambulance pulled in to the detective’s office. Bubba Lewis was standing outside the building beside Craig, and they were were standing over a man on the ground. It was Craig’s son Dave. Bill Rehak and Keith Fox were nearby.

Sergeant Mickey McDaniel of Youth Services pulled in the parking lot early that morning. He knew nothing of the case, but Youth Services which consisted of school resource officers, DARE officers, and three sex crimes detectives was housed in the same building as the criminal detectives. As he walked past the man on the ground he asked James Lewis what was going on. Lewis told him Dave’s mother Tina was in the office being interviewed, and while Dave was waiting for her, he had a seizure. 

        Believing the EMTs were on top of things, McDaniel went inside, but once there, he looked through the window and saw Dave jump up and hit Craig in the face. It was the first time he ever saw a seizure victim do something like that. He ran to the front door and found Dave reeling backwards with his arms flailing while Lewis held him by the collar of his t-shirt. Lewis told him repeatedly, “Get on the ground!”

  Dave aggressively pulled away from Lewis and didn’t realize there was an oak tree behind him. He ran into the tree head first and dropped to the ground with a thud. Before he could get up, McDaniel and Lewis were on top of him.

       The two men were just shy of 50 years old having been born the same month and year. They cut their teeth in law enforcement twenty years earlier in the Sheriff’s jail where fights and attacks were a daily occurrence, and they had not forgotten how to control disruptive people. Violence was nothing new to them.

  Keith Fox joined them to immobilize Dave. Lewis had Dave’s legs pinned to the ground. McDaniel had his right arm and shoulder pinned, and Fox had Dave’s left arm behind his back, but despite being subdued, Dave fought back wildly. The blow to his head from the tree, and the fall to the pavement did not affect him. He squirmed, twisted, and tried to bite McDaniel. The detectives were surprised to hear him speaking in an unknown tongue.

They handcuffed Dave, and though he could not get away, he squirmed and began to slide down the dirt slope leading to a drainage ditch. Like a fish out of water, he was determined to reach the water in the ditch. On cue, the detectives lifted him and lay him on the sidewalk where Lewis put his legs in a figure four leg lock while the others pinned his shoulders to the ground.

McDaniel tried to talk to Dave, but he babbled unintelligibly except for an occasional curse word. Dave turned his head to spit on him, but the sergeant dropped his hand across his face and covered his mouth. The slap angered Dave, so he tried to slide his hands out of the cuffs which were not double-locked. He was dangerously close to freeing himself when McDaniel squeezed the single strand tight. Dave tried to twist the handcuff chain around the sergeant’s fingers, but he pulled his hand away and put Dave in a rear wrist lock.

        Dave fought violently but was under control, and now it was just a matter of loading him up and sending him to LSU Medical Center for evaluation, but one of the firemen approached the detectives, “Sorry guys...under the circumstances we won’t be able to transport.”

McDaniel, unable to hide his agitation, told him to leave. Fox called dispatch and asked for a patrol car. While they waited, Dave fought, cursed, and babbled. After ten minutes, a patrol car with lights and siren pulled in. It was John Baccarie. He ran to the detectives and helped them load Dave in the back of his patrol car.

Baccarie pulled out his pad and started writing down information. After five minutes, McDaniel remembered Dave handcuffed behind his back and lying on his stomach in the back of the patrol car. He went to the car and opened the driver’s door to find Dave sitting up and in his right mind. Surprised at the transformation, he asked him a question.

“Hey...who killed the man that lived in front of you?”

“My Mom.”

He knew Eric Crain was in jail for the murder because he saw it on TV the night before. It didn’t make sense to the sergeant that a woman was involved. He asked the question again. 

“Listen...who killed the man who lived in the house in front of you?”

The answer was the same, “My Mom.”

Maybe Dave was still out of his mind, so he tried it again. He didn’t say Ernest Luttrell’s name because he didn’t know it.

“Dave...I want to be sure you understand what I’m asking you. There was a man who lived in front of you that was murdered last Sunday. Do you know who did it?”

Dave, frustrated at being asked the same question repeatedly said, “My Mother.” 

McDaniel was convinced he was telling the truth.

While Dave was keeping the detectives busy in the parking lot, his mother, Tina VanMoerkerque, was inside the building in an interview room. Andy Scoggins, Keith Fox, and Jay Morgan were in the sergeant’s office watching her on the monitor. They had been talking to her for hours, but she did not admit anything. Andy knew she was involved and thought she might cooperate if they could charge her with something. He was on the phone with an Assistant District Attorney when McDaniel walked in. McDaniel told Fox and Morgan what Dave told him in the back of the car moments earlier. Morgan pointed at Tina on the monitor, “That’s her, You ought to talk to her.”

The detectives had been at it since Sunday at noon and were exhausted. McDaniel had a reputation for talking to suspects, but he was in Youth Services not the Criminal Detectives Division. He didn’t work for Lt. Rehak, and he understood the chain of command, but the detectives told him they needed a break. They knew Tina was involved, but the evidence against her was underwhelming. She was still talking when they left the interview room, but so far, she only admitted to what they already knew. Andy planned to write a warrant on her for conspiracy to rob and murder Ernest, so until he finished the warrant, there was time.

Warrants are a great tool, but sometimes they can alert a defense attorney to weaknesses in a case. When the police have a suspect in custody for a serious crime and they have evidence against him, they arrest him on probable cause without a warrant. That was what happened the day before when Erick Crane was picked up. After interviewing him, they arrested him for murder. They didn’t get an arrest warrant; they simply booked him in jail and turned in an affidavit of probable cause. On the other hand, if probable cause is limited and the detective decides to get a warrant instead of making a probable cause arrest, the defense attorney might pick up on it. Later, charges could be thrown out or reduced.

In her interview, Tina said she stayed in a motel the night before Ernest’s murder because Craig was drinking, using drugs, and mistreating her. They knew she was lying. Craig’s bad habits never bothered her before, but she needed an excuse for spending the night with a murderer. She denied taking Erick to the Luttrell’s house, but she admitted to leaving the motel with him on Sunday morning and dropping him off down the road before she got home.

Her alibi may have been believable if she had told it three days earlier when it mattered, and Erick could have been arrested on Sunday, but there was a reason she didn’t tell it. Spending time with a killer did not make her one, but there was more to the story.

Scoggins told McDaniel about the case while they watched Tina on the monitor. She was short, heavy, and didn’t have her teeth in. A month earlier she turned 44, but she looked older. When Andy and Fox left the interview room, she was still talking, and she would continue to talk to anyone who would listen.

McDaniel walked into the interview room just after 8 am to find Tina VanMoerkerque standing up and pacing. He told her about Dave going to the hospital. She said he had ADHD as a child, but she never knew him to have seizures. He was recently released from the mental ward at LSU Medical Center for depression. If she was concerned about him, she didn’t show it. Her mind was on other matters. She was tired. The murder had everyone on edge, and now she was being accused as a conspirator in Ernest’s death. 

        If she had nothing to do with it, she too was a victim. Ernest gave her a job, a home, and forgiveness for stealing from him. Without him, she would have been homeless and hungry. Now her future was in jeopardy.

One of McDaniel’s weaknesses was impulsiveness, but he was patient that day. He took his time and developed rapport with the maid. Genuine suspects don’t care much about truth or justice; they only care about things that affect them directly. He looked in her eyes and asked her if she was alright. She wasn’t but wouldn’t say why. She told him she was a Christian and like her employer, a Baptist. People who try to hide things will say anything, and religious talk is often their first defense. It entered his mind to confront her about the hypocrisy, but it wasn’t time yet. He believed his role in the interview room was to be nonjudgmental and show genuine concern. If he could do that, she might eventually respect him, and if she respected him, it would be harder for her to lie to him. 

Innocent until proven guilty was the detective’s creed, but there was a problem. After four hours in custody, Tina Marie only admitted to what they already knew. Unless there was additional information, the case against her was weak. Proving her guilty would be impossible without something more. She had a facade of cooperation, but she was entrenched, and she felt safe in her foxhole where only a direct hit could harm her, so the detective crawled in her foxhole, felt her pain, listened to her, and immersed himself in her world. In the process he imagined she was the woman she portrayed herself to be, and he wanted her to be that woman. When he asked what was going on in her life, she replied, “Oh, Lord, here we go again. Can we step outside and let me smoke a cigarette, and I’ll tell you all you want.”

He held her off because he needed her alibi first. He had her re-tell the story of seeing Erick Crain at McDonald’s on Saturday. Erick was her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, and they used to live in the same mobile home park. They got caught up on old times and before leaving, they exchanged phone numbers. When she got home, she got in an argument with Craig about his drug use. The argument upset her so badly, she left home and called Erick. She picked him up and took him to a motel for beer, pizza, and sex. The next morning, Sunday, she went home. It was 11 am, or 10 am, or maybe 9 am... she wasn’t sure. On the way, she called Craig, and he threatened her. She was afraid of her boyfriend, so Erick agreed to go home with her, but before they arrived, she dropped him off at the road in front of the Luttrell’s house so she could check to see if Craig was behaving. She promised to give Erick a signal from the trailer if there was a problem. 

When she went inside, Craig was asleep, but before she could signal Erick, Bobbie Luttrell called and said her tires were low. She woke Craig and told him to go out to the shop and help Loretta. While Craig was outside, Tina realized she needed cigarettes, so she woke Dave and told him to go to the store with her. She told the detective, “I did hear one gunshot go off before I left.”

At the end of her sentence, the door opened. It was Bill Rehak. He was not happy about McDaniel interviewing his suspect. Without any introduction, he asked, “Are you ready?”

Tina was confused. “What am I supposed to be ready for?”

He offered to let her go outside and smoke a cigarette. It was an offer she could not pass up. They left McDaniel alone in the interview room. He sat there alone for a few minutes, mad at himself for letting the others talk him into interviewing Tina. When he left the interview room, he went in his office and shut the door.

Before she walked out, Tina told the detective she had heard a gunshot Sunday morning. It was new information and a subtle admission she knew something was going on Sunday morning, but the opportunity to explore the news was gone, traded for a cigarette.

Lieutenant Sam Hall, McDaniel’s supervisor, came in his office and sat quietly with him. He shook his head, recognizing an opportunity had been lost.

An hour later, the detective was walking down the hall when Rehak stopped him. He was expecting to be dressed down, but the lieutenant’s demeanor had changed.

“Sorry about that. I needed to get something out of her car.”

“No problem. I know it’s not my case.”

“We’ve already talked to her for hours, but you can go back in there if you want to.”

        The detective decided years earlier he would never pass up an opportunity to talk to a suspect. An hour earlier, this suspect’s son told him she was a killer.

        “Well, if you don’t care, I’m going back in. I doubt if she will tell me anything, but if she does, it will take awhile.”

McDaniel didn’t know it, but his lieutenant, Sam Hall, spoke to Captain Abraham about the abrupt interruption in the interview room earlier that morning. Captain Abraham 

made sure McDaniel could finish his interview with the maid.

It was 9:49 am. Tina had been sitting all alone for an hour and a half. The detective needed to make up for lost time, so he picked up where they left off. He asked her about the gunshot Tina heard Sunday morning. The question caught her off guard, and she seemed frustrated for telling him only minutes earlier that she heard a gunshot the same morning a man was shot to death.

  She said she didn’t associate the gunshot with Erick or Ernest. Instead, she thought it came from the shooting range down the road where gunfire was a regular occurrence. When she and Dave left for the store, she noticed Ernest’s truck was gone, but that was nothing unusual. She didn’t see Erick anywhere, so she assumed he found a ride home.

He asked her if she knew Erick was going to kill Ernest. She replied, “No sir, I did not. No sir, no clue. I had no idea. I would, you know, never even took {sic} him out there...” In thirteen words she denied knowing Erick was going to kill Mr. Luttrell five times. Like Ernest’s murder, her denial was overkill.

Tina said Ernest let her and Craig live in his mobile home on his property because they worked for him. It was the best deal an ambition-less person could possibly have, but she down played his generosity. Instead, she felt she gave up her freedom to take care of Loretta. She hinted she deserved far more; however, when the detective asked why she wouldn’t kill Ernest, she said, “Because I love the Lutrells. They give us a place to stay for free. I worked for them; I made good money, and I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to them ‘cause we might have to leave, you know, now.”

There are two types of criminal intent: specific and general. For a murder conviction in Louisiana, at least one of the two types of intent is necessary. For specific intent, Tina had to have an active desire to kill him, but all it took for general intent was for her actions to result in his murder. McDaniel didn’t think she had specific intent to kill Ernest, but he knew for a fact she was a thief. Perhaps her greed was a contributing factor to the murder. Maybe she ran her mouth to Erick about Ernest’s assets, and he called her bluff. Maybe she dropped him off near the log cabin so he could steal from Ernest, and things got out of hand.

Tina was still talking, but her answers were guarded. She was scared. The detective left her alone while he prepared for an interrogation. All told, his interview with her lasted 35 minutes, the average time for an interview.

He went to his office, shut the door, got on his knees, and said a prayer. Tina was comfortable in her foxhole, and it would take divine intervention to get her out. If she really was a passive participant in murder, she needed to tell the truth about it before it was too late.

When he went back in the interview room, he told Tina it was clear she was involved in the murder. She was quick to reply, “I ain’t no murderer. I had no part of it. Now, I’m telling you that’s the gospel truth, man.” 

Her religious talk returned with her denial, and it made the detective more confident than ever.

“Here’s the deal Tina. I’m gonna be upfront with you. It’s clear you were involved. Now, what I want to do is see if we can get to the bottom of it because I personally don’t think you are a murderer.”

And he didn’t. He thought Tina set up a burglary, and Erick did something stupid. It was a logical theory.

Tina was quiet at first, but then said, “I’m being honest; I’m not.”

She meant to say, “I’m being honest, I’m not a murder,” but the way she said it, it sounded like she admitted to being a liar, as if she were saying, “I’m being honest, but not really.”

He had her attention, and continued to reason with her. She replied, “No, I’m not involved in no murder.” Tina told the truth subliminally by using a double negative in her denial. In grammar and mathematics, a double negative cancels out two negatives and makes them positive. The proper interpretation of her attempt at denial was, “No, I’m involved in murder.”

Seconds later, the DVD of the interview was full after recording for hours and stopped recording. It took several minutes to put a new disc in the machine. The detective did not know about the recorder stopped, and during the break in recording, something significant happened. The conversation went like this:

“Tina, you must have known Erick Crain a little better than you made out since you spent the night with him.”

“No, not really, it was just a one night stand.”

“Oh really? Tina...how many one night stands have you had?”

The maid was offended. She turned red, and her mouth, void of teeth, turned down into a deep frown. For a second, she couldn’t catch her breath. Finally, she inhaled deeply, like a vacuum cleaner, and tears came to her eyes.

       “Are you calling me a whore?”

Though the fact was already established, it was a shocking revelation to her. He never called her a whore, those were her words, but she blamed him for it and refused to listen to reason. She growled and lashed out, and in a matter of seconds, she went from reasonable to hateful. The detective thought her tantrum was contrived. It was an attempt to relieve her stress by finding a reason to despise him.

By the time the recording picked back up, Tina was in tears and cussing him. When he didn’t give her the response she expected, she calmed down and admitted he did not call her a whore. He told her, “No, I asked you a question, but there’s something there that bothers you for you to respond like that. And what I’m hoping is, is that all this is coming down to this moment and you’re recognizing just how serious this is.”

“What are you talking about now? How serious what is?”

        Her lack of understanding was disingenuous. She had been talking to detectives for hours about Ernest’s murder, but the only tragedy in her mind was what might happen to her. She could focus on nothing but herself. The detective accused her of being involved in the murder hoping she would confess to the lesser offense of taking Erick to the Luttrell’s so he could steal from them. 

        “You were involved.”

“I was not, man.” It was all she could muster. She was wearing down.

“Listen, don’t be mad at me because I’m being truthful, okay.”

“How can you figure I was at fault...I wasn’t. Tell me.”

She wanted to find out what he knew, but all he knew was what he heard that morning. She claimed she didn’t know what Erick was going to do when she dropped him off Sunday morning. It left a piece of the puzzle hidden inside a woman who had been gambling her entire life on how to get ahead. He had to make her believe the gig was up, and the truth was the only way she could survive. He called her bluff, hoping she would cut her losses.

He left the murder alone and concentrated on his burglary theory. He drew her out of the foxhole by asking closed ended questions, and he was dangerously frank, “Tina, you are the connection between the robbery, the theft of the truck, and the murder. You are the common denominator. You know that. You brought him to the scene. The knowledge he had of the Luttrells and everything else…it’s because of you.”

She retreated to the only place she knew which was being a victim. She accused the detective of being rude and mean. He knew she was exaggerating things as a means of self protection. If she could find a reason to hate him, she had an emotional excuse to lie.

Instead of fighting back and giving her reasons to hate him, he listened to her and showed concern. When she paused from accusing him of harassment, he asked, “Can you honestly say I’ve harassed you, really? Can you honestly say that, Tina?”

Her face was red from tears. Her bottom lip poked out like a pouting child. She answered, “Worser than any drill sergeant.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a mocking, self-serving laugh; just a genuine response to an exaggerated accusation. Perhaps she was trying to make him angry, but it didn’t work. He looked her in the eye, shook his head, and smiled, and that was when something unexpected happened.

Instead of continuing the charade, a smile broke through her tears and she laughed, making her belly shake. The two of them laughed together, and in that moment, Tina VanMoerkerque and her interrogator became friends.

Things were different after that. For the next twenty minutes, he told stories about the past and related them to her situation. She nodded and smiled and ended his sentences. They looked like two friends reminiscing on old times, and when the time was right, he leaned forward and said, “You’re leaving some things out. You need to fill in some blanks. You know what I’m talking about, Tina?”

She knew.

“Can me and you grab a pop and go out here and smoke a cigarette?” 

He normally wouldn’t let a suspect leave in the middle of an interview unless it was an emergency, but Tina had been there for hours.

Years earlier, the detective got a confession on a double homicide after giving the suspect a cigarette, so he took the gamble. He grabbed a bottle of water and took her outside. It was after 11, and she had a three pack a day habit.

When they walked outside he realized he made a mistake. Her boyfriend Craig was standing at the front door. McDaniel stepped between them to distract her. She didn’t seem to notice him, and he didn’t speak. He took her to the north side of the building in the shade where they were alone.

It would reach 100 degrees before the day was over, but the morning was partly cloudy with a breeze. Tina reached in a leather case and found a king size cigarette. She lit it and took a deep draw. The detective thought she was playing him, but he wouldn’t give up until it was over. She smoked, and he talked. She responded with an occasional shake of the head to let her new friend know she was listening. After five minutes, she exhaled a cloud of smoke and interrupted him, “I’ll tell you everything if you promise not to take me to jail!”

He spent the last two hours with her, chasing false leads and mending hurt feelings, and the whole time she denied being involved. Before walking outside she told him, “As God is my witness, I did not ‘cause that was a good man!” But now she admitted for the first time she knew what really happened to Ernest.

It was the nicotine that changed her mind, but he had an obstacle to overcome: she did not want to go to jail. The only way that could happen was if she was a witness, but she wasn’t. That possibility went away when she took Crain to the scene before the murder. She was involved, but he didn’t know how deep. If he told her she wasn’t going to jail, it would be a lie.

“Tina, you could have asked any detective in this office to make that promise, and they would have, but I won’t because I am not gonna lie to you.”

She told him her story was important, but he didn’t budge. She lit a second cigarette from the first. Most suspects who promise to have important information rarely deliver. She fidgeted with her cigarette and paced back and forth in a small circle. She lit her third cigarette from the second and inhaled.

“Promise not to take me to jail, and I’ll tell you the truth...because, because someone else was involved.”

Tina slipped again. She knew about the murder all along, and someone else was involved. He knew she was involved, or she would have told her story to Keith Fox the day the murder occurred, and now he suspected the information she was holding back would put her in jail for a long time.

He asked her questions, but she would not answer. If they walked back inside with nothing more, it was all over, but words are not the only way to communicate. He drew her into a game she could not resist. 

One by one, he gave her names of all the people she told him about earlier, and he asked if they were involved. After each name, she shook her head no. When he exhausted his list, he asked, “Did we talk about the person earlier?”

She nodded.

Having gone through every man he could remember, he asked her if the person involved was a woman. She nodded yes.

“Tina...you didn’t mention any women to me.”

She nodded her head and closed her eyes, frustrated that he was overlooking the obvious. He held up his hands and shrugged. She broke her silence with one word.

“Loretta.”

“Loretta? Who is Loretta?”

“His wife.”

He remembered the little old lady who was in the office on Monday. He knew her as Bobbie Moore. To the detective, accusing a woman who looked like his grandmother was like desecrating a grave or cutting down a fruit tree. It didn’t seem possible, and Tina read his mind. When he looked at her she bobbed her head up and down to confirm what she said.

There was no deal in place, no promises made, and no guarantees of leniency. Armed with Tina’s new information, the detectives could track down the rest, but McDaniel was not content. He wanted everything.

“Tina, you know what this means?”

She sat on the steps in front of the back door and nodded.

“This means you have a lot of explaining to do. This doesn’t make sense.”

She pulled on her cigarette until it burned down to the filter. She flicked it onto the sidewalk. “I know...I know.”

She had been holding it in all week, and now it flowed unencumbered. She thought her forthrightness would clear her name, but instead, it sealed her fate. She downplayed her role, but ultimately admitted to being the common denominator in the plot to kill Ernest Luttrell.

Tina did Loretta’s cooking and cleaning and drove her wherever she wanted to go. She knew the Luttrell’s habits and secrets. She knew Loretta and Ernest were not married. She knew Ernest had a son with his first wife that died a few years back, and Loretta had a daughter from a previous marriage and a granddaughter.

Ernest retired from Foremost Dairy a decade earlier. After retirement, he built a log cabin in the country on a small farm. He cut hay and did a little farm work. When natural gas was discovered in north Louisiana, many landowners in the area, like Ernest, leased their property to gas companies such as Petrohawk or Chesapeake. Ernest leased his property and put the money in the bank.

According to Tina, the thing that kicked everything off occurred in May when Loretta’s granddaughter graduated from college. Ernest and Loretta went to Texas for her graduation. When Ernest congratulated her, she thanked him and asked if he was still going to pay for her graduate school. She told him it would cost $50,000. If he ever promised to pay her graduate school, he did not remember it. He ignored her demand. When they got back home, Loretta asked him when he was going to send her the money. He ignored her, but she didn’t stop. He told her to send her a check for $1000.

Loretta was not happy. She accused him of reneging on his promise. She was so angry, she told Tina she hated him. Tina tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen. She told her maid, “The only way out is to have him killed. Do you know anyone who would kill him for $1000?”

One thousand dollars was the amount of Ernest’s gift to her granddaughter, and it became the price of Ernest’s life, but she forgot the old saying: you get what you pay for.

        With feigned bewilderment, Tina asked the detective, “Can you believe she did that?” Despite her indignation, she put a plan in motion to have her boss executed. She never mentioned what she expected to get from orchestrating Ernest’s murder, but when he was gone, she had an inroad to the log cabin, access to Loretta’s bank accounts, and leverage on her for the rest of her life. When she saw her old friend Erick Crain at McDonald’s on Saturday, she offered him $1000 to murder Ernest. He told her, “I’ll do it. I need the money.”

Loretta moved money to different savings accounts to hide it from Ernest. She changed his will to ensure her daughter and granddaughter got his assets when he died. Everything was in place to intervene in the natural course of events; after all, he would die soon anyway. Might as well speed up the process.

Loretta called Tina at 8:30 Sunday morning, the Lord’s Day. She told her to make the murder look like a robbery. She said Erick could have Ernest’s guns and his truck when he finished his dirty work. Loretta left her boyfriend of 50 years asleep in bed, turned the house alarm off, left the doors unlocked, and drove to church to worship God.

Tina dropped the killer off in front of the cabin, and he went to work. When he got inside the Luttrell house, he found Ernest awake. He shot him six times with his own .44 pistol. When the deed was done, he loaded up Ernest’s guns in Ernest’s truck and drove away. In a matter of minutes, Erick Crane made one thousand dollars, or at least he thought he did. Before it was over, he got far more: free room and board for life.

Later, the detectives found the pistol Erick used to kill Ernest buried in his friend’s backyard. Tina gave him the pistol and the truck keys before he went inside the house, yet Tina did not feel responsible for the murder. She blamed everything on Loretta and Erick.

When she finished her confession, they went back inside. McDaniel left her alone in the interview room while he told the detectives what happened. The confession changed the atmosphere in the office. Even those who had no part in the investigation knew something special happened. There was no longer a need to get a warrant for Tina because she provided all the probable cause necessary for her own arrest. She talked herself into a first degree murder charge.

McDaniel re-interviewed Tina to get her confession recorded. He was wrong about his theory that Tina was only involved in a plot to rob her employer, but his approach to get to the truth was right. Confessions don’t come easy, and few people realize they come at a price. The price is the process of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, gaining their emotional trust, and drawing out their deepest secrets. The result is a relationship which cannot be maintained because the accused must go to jail…in this case for life. It is a heavy burden, and for that reason, few detectives do what it takes to get a confession. It’s quicker and less painful to get the suspect’s denial and call him a liar.

Tina could have reminded Loretta that murder is wrong and would ruin her life. She could have saved everyone a lot of pain by being the voice of reason. Instead, she thought it was a good idea to orchestrate a plan to satisfy Loretta’s desire for revenge. Her confidence in an old woman who probably had early stages of dementia was naive, and her choice of a hit man was foolish. Now that it was all over, her cooperation broke the case wide open, and her confession filled the gaps, but it did not reduce the tragedy.

She told McDaniel she and Loretta had recently spoke on the cell phone trying to make arrangements to get Erick his money, so he could bond out of jail. They didn’t realize one thousand dollars wouldn’t come close to paying his bond. Talking to Tina, keeping secrets, and getting money to keep Erick and Tina quiet was getting harder and harder for Loretta. People were starting to notice her need for privacy, and they were getting suspicious.

McDaniel asked Tina if she was willing to make a recorded call to Loretta and arrange to pick up Erick’s $1000 murder money. He wanted something solid on Loretta. A recorded call just might do it. Tina was eager to make the call. She told the detective, “...she was gonna pass money from my hands is how I’m in trouble. I was gonna deliver the money, kind of a middle person, you see?” She asked the detective if he could believe how evil Loretta was.

After Erick murdered Ernest, he went to Walmart. It was 9 am. Tina met him there. He told her what happened. An old man suffering from Alzheimer’s was not a threat to a man in his twenties with a big gun, but Erick had a job to do. It was a gruesome, cowardly act, but he told Tina, “I never shot anybody in my life, but it felt good.”

McDaniel led Tina to her car in the parking lot. She got an envelope containing Ernest’s last will and testament and her cell phone. He checked the Caller ID on the phone and saw where she missed a call from Bobbie five minutes earlier. He brought Tina back to the interview room where Bill Rehak took the phone, wrote her a script, and had her call Bobbie in Texarkana. The call was recorded.

Bobbie: Hello.

Tina Marie: Loretta?

Bobbie: Uh, uh.

Tina Marie: This is me.

Bobbie: Yeah.

Tina Marie: I’m okay but the police down here have been talking to me. And I’m not sure if they’re gonna put me in jail. 

Bobbie: Yeah.

Tina Marie: The man, you know, that shot Ernest for you, he managed to get out on...

        Bobbie: Yeah.

Tina Marie:-- bond about an hour ago. And he called me and {sic} looking for a thousand dollars so he can get out of town. When do you think... 

        Bobbie: I don’t...

Tina Marie: -- I can get some money?

Bobbie: --if I could get it to you. I don’t have no way of getting it to you because everybody’s done told me that that – they was arresting you for it. And you know, I don’t know

how to get it to you. I don’t even have it now ‘cause it could have got just, you know –wasn’t used to this {sic}.”

All Bobbie wanted was for Ernest to give her all his money and go away, but she trusted  a woman who could not keep her mouth shut. She offered Tina her credit card number to pay Erick. Tina asked, “I feel sad about Ernest. How do you feel?”

Bobbie replied, “Oh, I wish we’d never – I wish it’d never been done. Don’t you?”

        In mid-sentence, she changed her pronouns from ‘we’ to ‘it’ like Pilate washing his hands after condemning Jesus. Justice was hot on Bobbie Moore’s trail, but some people said she could not have done it because of her mental condition. The phone call was the proof the detectives needed to make a case against her. McDaniel wanted to get her to the office that day to be interviewed and arrested, but his role in the case was over. Rehab told his detectives to wait until the next day, after Ernest’s funeral to bring Loretta in.

Keith Fox asked McDaniel if he wanted to arrest Tina and handcuff her, but he turned him down. He asked Fox to do it. Fox went in the interview room and told the maid to stand up. “You are under arrest for first degree murder.” Tina stared blankly and repeated the charge, “First degree murder?” He cuffed her and took her to Caddo Correction Center.

Ernest Luttrell’s funeral was the next day. That morning, Andy Scoggins got Bobbie’s warrant signed by a judge. The detectives arrested her after the funeral as her granddaughter drove out of Forest Park West at 2:30 pm. They arrived at the office just before a throng of TV reporters. Bobbie’s daughter, Katey Passaniti, came to the office and demanded to see her. Katey was from Austin, Texas. When they wouldn’t tell her where Bobbie was, she yelled and made threats. Her husband tried to calm her, but it didn’t work, so McDaniel made them leave. A reporter interviewed Katey in the parking lot in front of the building. She told him, "My mother couldn't have done it. Her mind is gone. I want you to know the shape that my mother was in. There's no way. Tina manipulated her. She had been stealing money from her.”

She didn’t tell the reporter that Bobbie had a driver’s license and drove a car, or that she had a cell phone and used it every day. She didn’t tell him about Bobbie’s conversation with Tina the day before.

Since Bobbie was unsteady on her feet, Fox escorted her outside to a patrol car like a groom escorts his mother down the aisle at a wedding. Patrolman Ricky York helped her in the car and took her to Caddo Correction Center. In booking, she stuck out her tongue when the took her picture, and they had to take it again. When she woke up in the jail the next morning,  she told the deputy she wanted her coffee and donuts served to her in bed.

On Friday, June 3, 2011, Erick Crain pled guilty to first degree murder. It was less than a year since he murdered Ernest. Things moved fast because he pled to avoid the death penalty. What Erick didn’t know was that the death penalty in Louisiana is almost totally ineffective. Death row inmates spend years waiting for punishment that never occurs. Endless appeals have tied up executions for decades. Shreveport serial killer Nathaniel Code has been on death row since 1990 for murders he committed in 1985. According to a report by Alison Bath from the Shreveport Times, “...prosecutors are seeking death sentences less frequently. Faced with higher costs, the need for a unanimous jury verdict and a lengthy, expensive appeals process, they instead are opting for life sentences with no parole.”

On Thursday morning, January 12, 2012, Tina Marie VanMoerkerque pled guilty to second degree murder. She received a life sentence without benefit of parole. In an article entitled, “Woman pleads guilty to murder-for-hire,” the Shreveport Times reported, “Investigators later determined that Erick Crain killed him for money. Crain, Moerkerque’s boyfriend, received a portion of the money but was arrested before the debt was paid in full. Moerkerque has agreed to testify in the trial of Loretta Luttrell.” Rather than gamble her life in a trial with the death penalty at stake, Tina cut her losses, but she didn’t go quietly.

Shortly after Loretta Luttrell was booked for murder, she fell down at the jail and broke her hip. In the 18 months she spent at Caddo Correction Center, her health and physical appearance deteriorated. Gone were shopping trips with Tina and visits to the beauty shop. Instead, she was confined to a medical ward and reduced to eating sandwiches. Most of the time she was manually fed by corrections personnel. The few recollections she had from 2010 dwindled away. A year and a half after the murder, she was found incompetent to stand trial and was moved from Caddo Correction Center to a state mental health facility.

By February of 2012, the murder case of Ernest Luttrell appeared to be wrapped up. Two people were in jail for life and a third was confined to a mental hospital, but a month later, Bobbie Luttrell’s daughter was arrested by the San Antonio Police Department. According to the Shreveport Times, “...a Caddo Parish Grand Jury returned a secret indictment against Linda Kate Passaniti for second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second degree-murder, and three counts of forgery. The indictment stems from a continuing investigation by the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office and the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office into the contract killing of Ernest Luttrell on July 25, 2010.”

The wills Tina VanMoerkerque turned over to Lieutenant Rehak on the day of her confession were forged by Katey. KSLA Channel 12 reported, “...documents recovered in the initial investigation led investigators to evaluate Passaniti’s participation and involvement in the manipulation of Ernest Luttrell's finances prior to and after his death.” Investigators from the DAs office also found probable cause to arrest her for second degree murder. On the day Bobbie was arrested, she blamed Tina for manipulating her mother, but now it seemed Katey was the manipulator. Before Tina was sentenced, she told the DAs Office Passaniti was involved in the plot to murder Ernest Luttrell.

Don Ashley was an investigator for the Caddo DAs Office and a retired Shreveport Police detective. Don reviewed the case and interviewed Tina. It didn’t take him long to find out  Katey forged Ernest Luttrell’s will twice before his death, and a third time after he was murdered. The money trail led straight to Katey. Though Tina was the common denominator between Loretta and Erick Crain, Katey was the master mind of the entire plot.

An important factor in most every crime is intent. The state had the burden to prove that Katey had specific intent to kill Ernest Luttrell. Specific Intent means, “...that state of mind which exists when the circumstances indicate that the offender actively desired the prescribed criminal consequences to follow his act or failure to act.”

In the conspiracy to kill Ernest Luttrell, Katey’s motive was greed, and she was the only co-defendant of four that had the brains to put the plan in motion, but her intent alone was not enough. In order to be guilty of a crime, she had to combine her intent with criminal conduct, which means, “An act or failure to act that produces criminal consequences...”

Most people thought Katey was close to her mother, but Don Ashley found otherwise. Bobbie was only 15 years old when Katey was born, and she was raised by Bobbie’s mother. Katey called her grandmother Mom, and she called Bobbie by her name. Katey’s husband said Bobbie never accepted the fact that Katey was her daughter. It was easier for her to think of her as her sister, but Bobbie had a second chance at motherhood when Katey turned 15 and came to live with her and Ernest; however, the reunion was not a happy one. Katey rebelled and eventually ran away for awhile. 

      The mother/daughter bond never happened. By the time she turned 18, Katy left for college. She was a brilliant student and thrived in the academic world. She got her doctorate degree and became a college professor. After she married and had a daughter, Katey determined to forgive her mother and build the relationship they never had. Bobbie embraced the opportunity and played catch up as best she could. Within a few years, Katey got the idea that an early inheritance would just about even things up.

Around age 70, Ernest was diagnosed with dementia, and it affected his memory and disposition. He was easily angered and got into a dispute with a neighbor about his property line. Katey took the opportunity to use her influence to have him committed. She showed up from Texas with paperwork saying she had power of attorney over Ernest. Her plan was to put him in a home, but Ernest had other ideas. He told officials he did not sign any paperwork, and Katey was not his power of attorney. Detectives found out later her power of attorney was forged. Since Ernest would not go down quietly, Katey stepped up her game.

Ernest’s estate was estimated at over a million dollars, and Katey could not ignore that kind of money. She refused to wait for the inevitable; instead, she would do away with her father in law like an old, crippled dog. Her first plan was to have him put away after his commitment. When that didn’t work, plan number two was to get rid of him by cutting the brake lines on his truck, but that plan also failed. Her third plan called for finding an idiot to kill him for $1000, and it worked…but there were consequences.

Katey’s trial began on April 22, 2013. The case was tried by long time Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorneys Laura Fulco and Dale Cox. Dale was the First Assistant DA and Laura was Section Chief. They laid out the case on day one. The Shreveport Times reported, “When Ernest Luttrell sold the mineral rights to his south Caddo property in 2008, his stepdaughter allegedly was outraged that he didn’t consult her prior to finalizing the papers. That started the wheels to spinning as to how Linda Kate Passaniti could get her hands on Luttrell’s $400,000, according to Caddo Assistant District Attorney Dale Cox. After a forged power of attorney for his healthcare and a failed attempt to get the 73-year-old committed to a nursing home, he was killed.”

The rest of the trial included testimony from Katey’s daughter, a handwriting expert, local notaries who participated in Katey’s forgeries, and convicted killers Erick Crain and Tina VanMoerkerque. Perhaps the most convincing testimony for the state was from Katey’s former cellmate at Caddo Correction Center, Lawanda Daughtry.

Shortly after noon on Saturday, May 4, 2013, the state presented its closing rebuttal. First Assistant Dale Cox addressed the jury comprised of six men and six women: five black and seven white. Dale Cox promised to dispel every suspicion of doubt that the defense presented. He described Tina VanMoerkerque as a “wretched soul,” Erick Crain as, “...the lowest vermin on earth,” and Bobbie Luttrell as an old woman whose mind had wasted away from the effects of dementia. He told the jury Katey was self-serving and greedy, and of the four co-defendants, she alone had the greatest motive.

While she was in jail, Katey told her cellmate, Lawanda Daughtry, about the plot to have Ernest murdered. Daughtry testified, “She wanted them to shoot him at least twice in the head to make sure he was dead."

When the state rested, the defense told the jury that the case against Katey was merely an obsession of District Attorney’s Investigator, Don Ashley. Dale Cox addressed the allegation by saying that the people of Caddo Parish owed Don a debt of gratitude. Dale told them Don was in charge of reviewing the case, and he found out Katey put a plan in motion to have Ernest Luttrell killed. Without her, there would not have been a murder.

During the rebuttal, Katey took careful notes on a yellow pad as if she was taking names while the teacher was out of the classroom. After Dale Cox’s rebuttal, the jury retired for deliberation. Mildred Jackson, Ernest Luttrell’s sister, attended the entire two week trial. McDaniel and Fox sat on the back row. Katey was in the courtroom all alone: neither her husband nor daughter were there. When McDaniel got up to leave, six foot eight inch tall Don Ashley met him in the aisle and hugged him.

In just an hour and a half, the jury returned with a verdict. They found Katey guilty of all charges. She did not shed a tear or show remorse.

On a stormy day in mid May, District Judge John Mosely handed down her sentence. It was a mere formality since second degree murder in Louisiana has only one sentence. Judge Mosely sentenced Linda Kate Passaniti, “...to life in prison at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation or suspension, plus 60 years.”

A man and three women were arrested for murder and put in jail at public expense. In the twenty-first century, hard labor is neither hard nor laborious, but it is expensive. It costs the state about $40 a day to house inmates. That adds up to $14,600 a year per person or $58,400 for all involved; however, Loretta’s expenses were higher than average due to the medical attention she required.

A year after Katey’s trial, on July 31, 2014, Bobbie died in confinement in a state mental health facility. It had been four years since Ernest’s murder. She was never prosecuted for her part in his murder.

  Ernest Luttrell was a paratrooper and veteran of the Korean War. Like many men who live long, he was set in his ways, but he was kind and generous to many. His kindness included his housekeeper, Tina VanMoerkerque, whom he did not fire or evict after she ran up an unauthorized tab on his credit card, and Bobbie Luttrell who said Ernest never raised a hand to her or treated her violently during their 50 year relationship.

In the end, the case was built on the cooperation of people: some good, some bad, and the Sheriff’s Office and 

DA’s Office ability to secure that cooperation. The case was unusual because three of the offenders were women, and at least two of them were professing Christians. The case was tragic because Katey Passaniti’s inheritance was sure, she just refused to wait for it, electing instead to succumb to envy and kill a man whose days were already numbered. In return, she lost everything…