One Eyed "Boo"

0:15 I walk the street line. Shackle change, ohsome gird, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and this being a tentery juice as the hill stream game Wrangle three, I'm here by me. Or die. Inside these walls, inside the wild.

0:56 And when the girls. Out. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast one d and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman, and today I'm going to cover the crime and conviction of resident of Death Row inside of Bloody Angola, and that is a man by the name of Gregory bou Brown.

1:56 And we're going to go back to the early evening of October fourth of nineteen ninety eight in the town of Clinton, Louisiana for this one and for those that may not be familiar, Clinton, Louisiana is a small community in South Louisiana, and although it's proximity to Baton Rouge, the capital city, is relatively close, it's a very rural area of the state. Its population is just a little over one thousand residents, and it is just what you would envision a quaint little town. Still to this day in twenty twenty five. Things like the story I'm about to tell you about, they just didn't happen in Clinton, especially back in the late nineties. So I'm gonna tell you about a guy by the name of Gregory Brown who went by the street name of Boo, and Boo not a nice guy. He was a guy who was very familiar with what you would call the street life.

3:05 And actually this guy only had one eye because a couple of years prior to this incident, in nineteen ninety six, he was involved in a gang related shootout where someone impure a Christmas story Ralphie style shot his eye out. So by this. Time in nineteen ninety eight, he was knee deep in a full fledged life of crime. So it was on October fourth of nineteen ninety eight the Boo, along with the guy by the name of Jonathan Booth, another guy by the name of Brian Risen, another guy by the name of Brian Williams, and a fifth guy by the name of Eldrick Thompson, they decide it would be just a great idea to travel from Baton Riage to Clinton to rob a drug dealer by the name of William Moore who went by the street name little Man. So they hop into a nineteen eighty four Gray Chevy van and off they go to head to Clinton, Louis Enna, the small town. At around five point fifteen pm, they arrive at a trailer home in Clinton, which they believed to be the home of William Littleman Moore. Jonathan Booth enters the residence. He's unarmed and he's encountered by a guy by the name of Davy Thompson, no relation to

4:35 Eldrick Thompson, who is one of the assailants in this story. So Davy Thompson confronts Jonathan Booth, and Davy Thompson was coincidentally a correctional officer and he asked Davy basically where is little Man, to which the response was he ain't here. Booth then exits the trailer, but he returns, and this time he is armed with a handgun and he attacks Thompson. They start fighting. There is a struggle for the gun and Thompson manages to disarm Booth. However, by this.

5:15 Time Boo Brown enters the trailer and he shoots Thompson in the thigh as he sees him get control of that gun. Now Boo also by accident, shoots Booth in the upper arm his own friend. And at this point both Boo Brown and Thompson they jump back in the van with the other three guys and they hal ass. They realize the heat is up. Now we're firing shots in a small town. In this trailer. Surely somebody's heard that we need to get the hell out of here, and that's just what they do. They get back in the van, they take off, screeching tires to get the heck out of Clinton, Louisiana, and they only get about three blocks before they get in a wreck.

6:04 And what caused this was they were in such a hurry. They were in a stop sign and they hit a white twed of camery and that Camery was driven by a sixty eight year old named Sarah Cheney. Now, due to this wreck, the van becomes inoperable and all five men they actually have to crawl out through the windows of that van to get out of the van. But once they get out, they start hearing sirens headed to the shooting scene. Because as they were making their escape, that correctional officer, he struggles across the street where his mother lived, stumbles into her house his brother sees him who happened to be at that house, and he tells his brother call police, I've been shot. So police were already on the way and they could hear those sirens in the background, and these guys, they're pretty sure that they're going to come across this wreck, and so they haul ass on foot and they run into some nearby woods that had a lot of coverage.

7:10 It was kind of some deep woods, if you will. And while police are at the scene for the initial shooting, local authorities get the call that the van that they were looking for that it had been involved at a wreck, and they knew these are the suspects in that shooting because that van was described as the getaway vehicle, and so they take off into those woods once they get to the scene in pursuit of these five guys, and in very short order they arrest Brian Risen, who was one of the five. He's caught actually at a car wash not too far away, and he's trying to solicit a ride to Baton Ridge from someone that was out there washing their car. That person knew something wasn't right called police and they end up catching him there. Now they continue to look for the other four guys. In about fifteen minutes after they arrest Brian Rising, something very horrific happens. So a guy by the name of Ike Roberts, he is in his shed and he's working on a gate for his horse stall, and his wife, Sharon, she was in the house at this point, thank god. When Boo Brown, Eldrich Thompson, and Brian Williams, three of the four that are still not arrested, they approach mister Roberts.

8:36 Boo was shirtless at this time. He was very sweaty, he was out of breath, and mister Roberts noticed this right away and knew this guy's been running from something. So Boo decides he's going to be the spokesman for all these guys, and he basically says, hey, man, we need a ride to Baton Rouge. And Roberts, who's a fifty five year old man, lived in Clinton his entire life. He knew everyone who lived in Clinton, small town. He went to school there, born and raised there, and he knew one thing for sure. He didn't know none of these cats and they were not from Clinton, Louisiana. So basically he says, no, I'm not giving you a ride anywhere.

9:19 And he was honest with him. He said, I don't know who you guys are, but you're coming over here out of bruth You came through the woods to my house. You're running from something, and I'm not going to help you get away from it. So they offer him money. First, they start out with four hundred dollars, then five hundred dollars. They go all the way up to twelve hundred dollars to bring them to Baton Rouge, and this guy still declines. Mister Roberts says, no, I don't want to do this. So they realize they're not getting a ride from him, and at this point they get pissed off and they grab some rope and they decide to tie him up. Now while attempting to do this, one of the men, Eldrick Thompson, he notices Roberts truck, which was in nineteen ninety gray Ford Diesel, and he asked mister Roberts where the keys were. Mister Roberts told the three men that the keys were inside the truck, which, y'all, this should tell you something about Clinton Louisiana in the late nineties. It was nothing to leave keys inside your vehicle. You just didn't have to worry about shit like this happening. You'd leave your doors unlocked, your windows up, whatever, You didn't have problems like this.

10:31 So these guys, they're from Baton Roudage, where you did not, even in the late nineties, leave your keys in your car, probably surprising them that they could just go to the truck and the keys were in it. But okay, at this point, one of the men, he goes, he jumps into the truck and he attempts to start that vehicle. However, due to these morons not knowing how to start a diesel, they couldn't even get the truck started. See, with a diesel, you have to turn the key slightly and wait a few seconds because you're heating up the glow plugs. Then you turned the key the rest of the way. But these folds didn't even know that, they had no idea how to do it. So they're trying to start this diesel like you'd start a regular gas truck and it won't turn over.

11:26 Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana. You know what, we should do a podcast. About it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts. Simply by searching crime wiar Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this past So Boo Brown he sees all this going down, and he fucking loses it.

12:11 He goes into a complete fit of rage. When that truck would not get started, he picks up a sixteen ounce claw hammer full one pounder, and with the help of both Thompson and Williams, he starts beating mister Roberts with that hammer. The three men then take a rope they tied around mister roberts neck, and Thompson and Williams hold mister Roberts down while Boo Brown starts slamming this hammer into mister Roberts. Now about midway through this assault, Thompson and Williams they release their hold on Roberts and they start making their way back to mister Roberts truck.

12:59 It's obvious that Boo Brown has us under control by himself. He's going to beat the shit out of this man with this hammer. So they make their way to that truck and this time they manage to get it started. Now at this point, they shout out at Boo to tell him, hey, man, come on, we got this thing started. Let's get the hell out of here before we kill this guy. But Boo he just ignores them, as if he doesn't even hear them. He's just in this whole nother world at this point, continuing to just slam this hammer into mister Roberts head, arms, shoulders, whatever. Over and over and over again.

13:41 So Thompson and Williams they wait a second and then they're basically like, screw this, we got to get out of here, and they leave in mister Roberts truck, leaving Boo who was still in the process of beating mister Roberts. So go ahead and share this with you before we move on in this story. Mister Roberts he lived throughout this ordeal, but barely. His injuries included a depressed skull fracture, a concussion, a broken left arm, a broken left hand, and the damage to his forearm which he was using to block all of these blows from that freaking claw hammer.

14:27 It was so severe that damage to his forearm that it required surgery in the insertion of a plate with seven screws in it to repair his forum. As a matter of fact, the attack was so severe that mister Robert's right ear was torn completely off with the claw end of that hammer. He spent the next three days in the hospital and now is permanently disabled. That's how bad they beat this guy. They were trying to kill him, attempted murder, so Boo Brown. He comes out of this rage for a second when he realizes these guys have started the truck. They backed it up, and they're taking off down the street, and he thinks, oh shit, my friends are leaving me. So he climbs off of mister Roberts and he takes off running down the street trying to catch his friends in that truck, and mister Roberts he somehow manages to get up. He runs into his house and he tells his wife to call nine to one one and as soon as he gets that out of his mouth, he collapses right there on the floor.

15:39 So police get this call and they respond to the Roberts residence and they put out a bulow a be on the lookout for mister Roberts truck, as well as the fact that the truck was being driven by at least two black males. So just twenty or some minutes later, a reserve deputy who was actually friends with mister Roberts and he knew the truck very well, he hears the bolo come out. He had a scanner on him and he goes looking. He was in the area and he comes up to a major highway it's known as Plank Road. It's about six miles away from Clinton, and as sheer luck would have it, he spots the truck. But one problem, he was in his personal vehicle. He didn't have his police CB on him, so he had no way to call this in and say, hey, I've got eyes on this truck. And this was nineteen ninety eight y'all. Cell phones were not prevalent.

16:45 At this time. So he follows the vehicle and the vehicle eventually comes to a stop in a residential neighborhood and the guys are just sitting there in the vehicle, and he sees a resident outside of a home and he tells that resident, hey call police. As soon as he says that. Long story short, Williams and Thompson were arrested without incident by this reserve officer. So let's get back to Boo Brown who was stranded after his friends left him and he was left running down the road. And this guy was totally unfamiliar with the town of Clinton. He had no idea where he was at. So where does he end up? Well, these small country towns, in many cases, family all live on the same road a lot of times the road itself is named after the family Clinton, no different than any town in small town America. And so he runs to the first house that he sees, which was eighty five year old widow Myrteral Roberts, who also happened to be mister Robert's mother. Now, the first thing that Boo Brown does is he goes up to her vehicle and he pulls on the door handle, attempting to steal her vehicle.

18:10 It was a nineteen ninety one to four pickup, but he was unable to do so because the truck's doors were locked. However, he did leave a nice bloody fingerprint on that door handle that would service evidence in his trial later. So at this point, he continues to Miss Roberts's back door, and I don't know if he peeked in and saw her that she was in the house, or if he just figured she was in the house, but he kicks the door in, and he leaves a nice muddy shoe print on that door, which would be also used in the trial later. Now, once inside of the home, he comes face to face with the eighty five year old Miss Myrtle Roberts, and he throws her to the ground, just grabs her with such force as a matter of fact, that she breaks her wrist as she hits the ground. Eighty five year old woman, simply disgusting.

19:06 He then demands the keys to her car, which this poor lady, she's in total shock. You've got this guy in your house. You have no idea who he is. He throws you to the ground. You think he's trying to kill you, and he probably is. And he's asking you where your keys are, and she can't even articulate it to him. At this point, her whole mind is in panic. She has no idea where her keys are in her mind, so Boo he realizes this lady can't even articulate where the keys are, and he starts freaking out at this point, and he's just ransacking this eighty five year old woman's home looking for those keys, and missus Roberts. She lays motionless on that floor. She's afraid to move and understandably so, and Boo knows that his time is numbered here. He doesn't have a whole lot of minutes to sit in this house because he's pretty sure that the guy he just beat the shit out of with the claw hammer is calling the cops or the guy's wife has walked out there and seen him dead.

20:13 He had no idea, but he didn't want to hang out long, so he realizes he's not going to be able to find these keys, and he's freaked out because he doesn't want this eighty five year old woman to call police. So he tears the phone from the living room wall. And this is back in the days when you still had a house phone and it was usually hooked up to a wall, especially if you were older, and he removes it from that home, actually takes it outside and he hides it and then he leaves. Now Miss Roberts, she also lives throughout this ordeal, thank god, but she's injured and a neighbor actually finds her on the floor just minutes after the attack, and that neighbor ends up police and Miss Roberts actually ends up at the same hospital as her son. Now at this point, the frustration is at an all time high for bou Brown.

21:14 His third robbery attempt in the same day and all three attempts failed, So this jackass. He moves on to the next house that he comes across, which was the home of sixty two year old William Gay and his sixty year old wife of forty five years and and William he had retired from Georgia Pacific, Ann was a registered nurse. Together, they had raised three children. They had only lived in that home for a year when Boo came across them. But these were really good people, just sad what happened to them that I'm about to tell you about, because they were really good people. So we're gonna fast forward a few hours to tell you what we know of what happened. Police in East Baton Ridge Parish, they get a call of a car on fire in East Baton Ridge Parish, a red nineteen ninety three Ford Escort, and they put out the fire and after they put out the fire, they see there's a plate on the back of that car. They run the plate and it comes out that that vehicle belonged to William Gay. They have an address there when they run the plate, and they reach out to police in Clinton and they tell them, Hey, we just find a car in Baton Rouge with two bodies in it that were pretty sure are the bodies

22:45 of the people that this car belongs to. You may want to go do a welfare check on them now. The bodies sadly were identified of that of William and and Gay. In the meantime, police and. They go to the home of the Gays and they. Discover the garage door open. They find an unopened can of beer as well as a spilled wineglass on the patio, and in interviews with neighbors, that was the last time they were seen alive. They were out on the patio, you know, just chilling, and they were actually cooking a roast and they were waiting on that roast to finish cooking.

23:25 And the way that we know that is that that roast was still in the oven, the oven was still on, and that roast was burnt to a crust. Now, an autopsy would reveal that both William and his wife Anne were shot execution style at close range, with mister Gay being shot three times, once in the chest and two times in the abdomen, and Miss Gay had been shot two times, once in the neck and once in the abdomen. So police at this point they they head to the hospital and they have pictures of Boo to show mister Roberts. They knew that Boo was responsible for a lot of this, but they needed that positive identification, right.

24:11 Mister Roberts, more. Than happy to do this, says, yeah, that's the guy that attacked me. Now, at this time in the process, Boo was the only one left of the five individuals yet to be apprehended. So he may say, well, how did Jonathan Booth get caught, because he was the one that was shot in the initial aspect of this story, if you'll remember at that first robbery attempt, and I haven't told you anything about him, Well, he split off from everybody else in this story in the beginning after that wreck when they all had to climb out the windows, he split off. He went a whole different direction because Booth knew somebody that lived in Clinton, an acquaintance, and that acquaintance only lived about a mile from where that wreck occurred. So he headed there and he hid in that acquaintance closet. That acquaintance didn't know that. That acquaintance comes home, opens a closet door and there's Booth in there with a gunshot in his shoulder area, arm area, and that person called police and he got arrested. So at this point, everybody's in jail except for Boo. So a warrant gets issued for Boo's arrest, and they go to Boo's apartment that he shared with his wife and child.

25:37 Yeah you heard me right, This student was married and had a kid. But of course Boo, he wasn't going home. He knew better than that. He knew police knew where he lived, so he's hiding out. He ain't going there now. Two days later, after some really good police work and detective work, police discover that Boo had an alternate residence in Baton Rouge that was kind of secret. So they go there and they find Boo Brown's father in a pop a lock employee attempting to gain access to a Chevrolet Camaro that was parked behind the house. So they go inside the house and the officers find the residence is completely empty, virtually empty of any of its contents.

26:27 There's a broom and a mop in the living room area, and they could tell that the house had been recently cleaned and sanitized. A neighbor informed the investigators that Brown's father had already made two trips to the house and removed items from the inside of the house. During their search, officials also discovered a trash can sitting on the front porch, and inside that trash can they discovered two pieces of duct tape, a telephone with a smear of blood on the handset and later that was determined to match Brown's DNA, And they also found a piece of gray telephone cord that had been cut, and that telephone cord was similar in color and consistency to the cord that was found binding the hands of Anne Gay in the backseat of the vehicle that was found burned. So they got a ton of evidence out of here, but it looked like Bu Brown was getting the hell out of town and his dad knew something about it.

27:35 That's what it looked like. So on December twenty third of nineteen ninety eight, a confidential informant contacts the US Marshall Service and they informed the Marshall Service that Brown was in the Baton Ridge area to visit his wife and child. And this informant states that Brown was hiding inside a single family, single story pink house in back and urge shouldn't be too hard to find a pink house. A search warrant gets issued for later that day and Boo Brown thankfully was arrested inside of that home. He had been a fugitive at this point, surprisingly for eighty two days, so he got away for quite a while. So on July twenty second of nineteen ninety nine, a grand jury indicts Gregory Brown Boo for the October fourth, nineteen ninety eight first three murders of William and Anne Gay, and.

28:39 They're going to seek the death penalty. Legendary prosecutor Prim Burns comes out and says, we're going for the death penalty in this case. Trial commences. Of course, it took a while, but on May sixth, the jury returns two verdicts of guilty as charge in the first degree murders of and and William Gay against Bou Brown. Now, both of those verdicts and death penalty sentences were on the same day, so we know how it works with death penalty cases. Right.

29:20 The appeals are. Insane with these types of cases. And look, it's a death penalty case. I get it. You don't want to put anybody to death that is innocent. And you know, since DNA has come around, there have been a few people that were let off. So I get the appeals. You want to make sure you got the right guy. I don't get the years and years and years and years that it takes, but I understand that you want to make sure you got the right guy in jail. I get that, or you know, in death row. In this case, appeals finally get exhausted. But as I told you last week with the Corporal Betty Smother's murder, the defense they always go to this mentally not capable of getting the death penalty stuff, and they went that way with Boo Brown.

30:18 They were turned down. This thing goes all the way to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says bullshit. He's completely mentally capable of this, and they uphold those death penalty verdicts and said the one eyed multiple murderer still today sits on death row twenty plus years after his conviction. Inside of Bloody Angola. There you have it. Thank you so much for listening. Check out the Patreon commercial, free early releases, and more patreon dot com slash Bloody and Gola podcast.

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31:55 A Wall Street Line, Shackle Change, Oh Goosome gird, It's calling by name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Rangol the three I'm in be. By me to die inside these walls, inside the wild, And when the girls.

32:39 I know, it's so. Bloody. Angle, obody, Angle A