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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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