WEBVTT
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Hm, I walk street line, shackle change, Oh doesome gird
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it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's
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been a tentery juice as the huge stream game Rango three.
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I'm here be.
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By Meda dies.
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Inside these walls, inside the wild and when the girls as.
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I'm hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a
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podcast one hundred and forty two years in the making,
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the complete story of America's bloodiest prison. I'm Jim Chapman,
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and today I am going to bring you back to
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the late summer in early fall of twenty seventeen, three
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random shootings in the parish, along with one just across
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the line in a rural area of East batman Bridge Parish,
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seem to all be the work of one individual. The
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four shootings resulted in the death of three men and
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a fourth man miraculously survived. Now, the simularities in these
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shootings were striking, to say the least. All were white men,
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middle aged and up, and all were shot in front
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of their homes. Eventually, Ryan Sharp would be arrested claiming
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he was hunting people collecting hunting tags for the federal
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government in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the US Navy,
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the Louisiana State Police, and even the richest man in
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America which I looked it up and in twenty seventeen,
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that was Bill Gates. So the road to his conviction
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would prove dawny as a trial, a conviction, and a
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retrial would all have to be played out before these
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families would get justice. And it all began on July
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eighth of twenty seventeen when Tommy Bass, who was sixty
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two years old, was found dead of a shotgun blast
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in the driveway leading out from his carport of his home.
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This was in rural East Feliciana Parish. This type of killing,
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it just didn't happen in East Feliciana Parish. When you
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saw homicide as a detective, it was usually tied to
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a domestic dispute or a dispute in general, where you
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had a suspect right off the bat. In this situation,
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there were a lot of things going against the investigation.
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For example, Tommy did not have any known enemies, He
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was very well known in the community and very well light.
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There was just no cause for the murder that police
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could find. Also, the sheriff, Jeff Travis. He was newly elected.
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This was his very first homicide since taking office nine
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months prior. But fortunately Sheriff Trive had some pretty damn
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good experience in these type of cases as it related
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to one of his deputies. That was Chief Deputy Greg Ferries.
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Greg was the former chief of police for the neighboring
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capital city of Baton Ridge, and he was the very
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first person that Sheriff Jeff Travis called to that scene.
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But unfortunately, there was just not a lot to go
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on with this shooting. Police knew that Bass was shot
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with a shotgun at close range, it just seemed completely random.
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So more than a month would pass before yet another
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seemingly random shooting would occur in East Feliciana Parrish when
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forty seven year old Buck Hornsby was shot twice while
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exercising on his property. This was around seven point fifteen
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in the morning, and this was on September twelfth of
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twenty seventeen. Now, this particular shooting occurred just one and
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a half miles from the murder of Tommy Bass. And
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before I go into Buck Hornsby's situation for that day,
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let me tell you a little bit about Buck because
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I met him. He's a guy you can look at
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and immediately say, this guy was an athlete in his
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younger days. Heck of a high school football player, a
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big guy, but not lineman, big, muscular, big, like a
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running back. He was just a very strong country boy.
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And he was also and still is very strong in
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his faith. And these would both play a key role
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in what's about to happen. So Buck wakes up and
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as was typical for Buck, he was going to go
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on a jog around his property, which on this particular
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day when he woke up, his ankle was kind of
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bothering him, and that would typically occur when the weather
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would start to change. Maybe it was an overcast day
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or something. And as we all know, you get a
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little bit older and the bones start creaking a little
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bit when you wake up, and sometimes they ache. And incidentally,
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at this time, Buck is forty, I believe. But as
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I said, his ankle was bothering him, and he almost
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considered not doing his daily run at all. However, being
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a guy who doesn't like to get out of a habit,
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he just kind of said, heck with it. I'll walk
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a little bit and I'll jog a little bit and
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then walk a little bit when my ankle would start hurting.
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And that's what he did, so a little bit of
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a slower pace than what would be normal for Buck.
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It was that slower pace that would ultimately save his
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life here. So Buck takes off on his job and
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he rounds the corner of his property, which is situated
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right off the highway, and like most of us do,
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he had headphones on. He was just kind of zoning
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out on his jog slash walk right. The volume was
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just low enough, however, that he hears the sound of
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a vehicle seemingly pulling off the side of the highway.
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Buck turns to his right when he hears boom, shotgun blast,
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and Buck gets shot. He dives to his left and
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boom another shot, this one hits him in the back.
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And it's at this point that Buck kind of blacks
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out for thirty seconds to a minute, and he comes
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to realize a couple of things when he gets his
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bearings about him, and he immediately realizes that he's struggling
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to breathe, and his hearing was gone, and he noticed
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he was covered with blood. Now he was shot near
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a portable storage building that he had sitting near the
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edge of his property by the road, and it was
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fortunate that the building was even there. He was looking
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to sell the building, so he puts it up for
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sell by the highway so people would see it and
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if someone's interested, they know he's selling it. But he
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manages to roll underneath that storage building and it was
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sitting a little bit off the ground on wooden blocks
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or something. It was high enough sitting off the ground
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that he could kind of roll underneath it. And at
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that point he starts looking at although his sight was
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not great to say the least, one of the pellets
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had actually put his right eye out at this time.
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So obviously Buck is fueled by pure adrenaline and he
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goes into that survival mode and he makes his way
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to a nearby house, but no one was home, and
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somehow Buck manages to crawl nearly six hundred yards to
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reach his uncle Leon's home. So his uncle hears someone
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banging on the door and he goes to the door
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and he sees Buck, who's yelling, somebody shot me. Get
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me to the hospital, and that's exactly what they do.
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His uncle loads him up, they head to the hospital
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and when they get there. Buck gets taken back for
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X rays and it ain't good. He was riddled with
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shotgun pellets. Over fifty steel lodged after he had been
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hit with one hundred and forty pellets all over his body.
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To this very day, he still has some lodged in
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the pleurisy of his right lung, which means those pellets
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penetrated nearly four inches into his body. And an MRI
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at that point gets ordered, and that's due to the
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serious damage that was done to buck carteroid artery in
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his neck. And later on, Buck would recall that he
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requested the doctors not give him pain medication of any
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kind because he wanted to be able to tell his
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wife and kids that he loved them, and he wasn't
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sure he would be able to do that if they
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pumped him full of painkillers. The guy was a family
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man right now. After that MRI was completed, it was
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discovered that Buck came about a sixteenth of an inch
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from bleeding out on that property. That's how close those
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pellets came from penetrating that main artery. Now, being the
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son of a pastor and a godly man himself, Buck
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knew his survival was nothing thing short of a miracle
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and was God's grace. He was actually quoted as saying
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later on quote, sixty two feet that's how far the
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assailant was for me when he shot me. And had
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this person been just one sixteenth of an inch closer,
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I would not be here.
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I know.
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Had I been in a constant jog in my ankle
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was not hurting, I would have been only about twenty
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feet from the road, and I would not be here.
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God had his hand on me, and folks, I can't
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argue with that at all. It is a blessing and
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a miracle that he is still alive. So by this
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point you have one person killed and another nearly killed
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just a mile and a half away in that rural parish.
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They were both white men, both middle aged and older,
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and both incidents involved a shotgun that they were just
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far enough apart. As far as the time frame, which
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was a little over a month, that it was probably
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long enough that police were not sure yet if these
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were related incidents or not. Now, pretty much the same
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as the murder of Tommy Bass, no motive was present.
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Bug didn't have any enemies that he knew of, or
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that anybody else knew of For that matter, there were
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no witnesses to this other than Buck, just not a
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lot to go on. Time passes, but not a lot
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of time. Just a week later, on September nineteenth of
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twenty seventeen, Carol Breeden, who was sixty six and also
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the commissioner of Brack which is the Baton Ridge Recreation
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District in Baton Ridge, Louisiana, he was shot and killed
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outside of his home while spring we killer. So according
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to his family, the day started out as a normal
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day September nineteenth, twenty seventeen, but it would eventually become
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anything but normal. He and his wife had just returned
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from a cruise, and as is typically done when you
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return from a vacation, there's a lot of work to do, right,
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you got closed a wash, you've got unpacking to do,
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and of course when you go on a cruise for
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a week or two weeks or whatever it was, you've
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probably got a lot of yard work to catch up on.
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And that was the case with the breeding. Now, mister
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Carroll Breeden, he just finished cutting the grass and he
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was in the process of spring the ditch with that
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weed killer, and Miss Breeden, she was inside. She had
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their two year old granddaughter with her, and she hears
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two loud pops. Now, initially she thought the lawnmower had backfired.
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That was her first inclination. However, she quickly remembered, wait
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a minute, he was not on the lawnmower. He had
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already cut the grass. He was supposed to be springing
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that ditch in the front of the house with weedkiller. Now,
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at this time, her twenty five year old grandson was
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also at the house. So she goes and she tells
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him something's not right. Something happened that she heard two
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loud bangs, And they all go out of that house
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together and they see Carol Breeden lying on the ground
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in that yard. He had been shot in the back
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with a rifle. Now, the place where mister Breden's body
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laid and where that pumps prayer was that he was
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using to kill those weeds, they were about twenty yards apart,
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and that likely meant that mister Breeden actually saw the
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shooter and ran a pretty decent distance of way before
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he got shot. This was the third shooting in the area,
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and a couple things would create some difficulty for investigators
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at this point in the investigation first mister Breeden, even
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though he was really really close to the parish line
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of East Feliciana, his property was located in East Baton
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Ridge Parish. So different investigators, right, completely different team working
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on this. Sometimes that can create some slight issues, although
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in this case these folks did work together. The investigators
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from East Feliciana actually contacted the investigators from East batnerg
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Parish and said, hey, we've had some incidents, some shootings
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and some front yards over here, and we would like
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to get involved to make sure these aren't related. Now,
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the second thing that was strange about this situation was
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mister Breeden was shot with a rifle, not a shotgun,
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which was used in the first two incidents. And that
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is super rare in instances like this, where the same
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person would completely change a murder weapon. You just did
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not see that happen. Usually it's the same weapon every time.
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Not unheard of, but rare. So even though these incidents
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occurred really close together, and when I say these incidents,
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I'm referring to buck Hornsby shooting and the shooting involving
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mister Breeden, there were still questions as to whether they
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were related. Or what seemed more likely at this point,
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considering the murder weapon change, maybe a copycat was out
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there somewhere. Police at this point just were not sure.
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Hopefully you're keeping up. At this point, you have Tommy
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Bass shot with a shotgun, and the load used in
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that case was butck shot. Then you have Buck Hornsby,
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also shot with a shotgun, but the load used was
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not buckshot, it was a little lighter load. Then you
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have the killing of mister Breeden, who was shot with
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a rifle. Now what's most disturbing at this point is
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that all these men are very well respected, very good people.
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Everyone who knew these people just absolutely loved them. They
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were family men, they were fathers, they were husbands. It