Revenge is a primal imperative more potent than procreation or survival because there is nothing on earth more blind and explosive when that hammer drops. Society aka the justice system has tried mightily to rein in revenge crimes by discounting the motive and focusing solely on the letter of the law. Which lines up neatly with the resilient fantasy that our species has largely moved on from rewarding brutish, eon tested hunter-gatherer impulses. Until we jump on Instagram or God forbid the local nightly news and see felony road rage, spousal homicide and all stripes of heartache driven mayhem splayed across the screen. But compared to the premeditated settling of a life shattering grievance by a righteous grievee, the rest of our Pleistocene baggage pales in terms of mesmerizing poetry. But lets ditch the generalities and dissect a disco-era gem of an example.
It was March 1984 and I was a single Manhattanite when I saw a man shoot and kill the accused kidnapper and molester of his 11 year old son on live TV in the Baton Rouge airport. For reasons buried deep in my genetic fault lines, that footage has never quite faded from my frontal lobe. Probably because this protozoic YouTube clip exposed the prehistoric biped lurking under our skin and that critter’s undiluted capacity for aggrieved violence. The 39-year father was Leon Gary Plauche and the man he killed was Jeffrey Doucet, a 25-year old journeyman predator moonlighting as a karate instructor. The latter was suspected of repeatedly sexually assaulting the lad before kidnapping and transporting him to California. Having lived in Lake Charles for a few years, I was also struck by the deep-dish Cajun quality of both the hunter and the prey’s last names.
Doucet was captured in short order and the boy returned to his parents. Then the tragedy-porn addicted world sat back with popcorn on its lap to watch the deviant, squirm inducing coverage of the trial to come. Except Plauche was already planning a far more satisfying and time proven alternative to the dreary kabuki of oily attorneys. That script was bold and simple and outright innocent compared to the flimsy, contrived streaming standards of today. Plauche would follow the feverish local news updates for the exact time and day of Doucet’s extradition back to Louisiana. Then stroll around the Baton Rouge airport with a snub-nosed .38 stashed in his boot until he spotted the gate with the mob of lights, cameras and reporters. The rest would be instinct.
Sure enough, Plauche found the media mob and stood at a nearby bank of payphones pretending to be on a call as Doucet was escorted off the plane by deputies, hands cuffed in front of him. Then the accused molester strolled down the concourse with the insouciance of creature used to preying on the vulnerable in broad daylight and getting away with it. As if the accusations were nonsense that he and his unmet lawyers could deflect and twist until it morphed into modest prison time and counseling. But the man wearing a white baseball cap and sunglasses coming up on Doucet’s right had another solution in mind. A sensational form of pre-trial sentencing truly made for live TV.
When Doucet and his escorts drew even with Plauche, the dad turned quickly but smoothly, sidearm extended in a two handed grip and fired a single, point-blank round into Doucet’s noggin.
He toppled instantly. Plauche dropped the revolver and calmly raised his hands in surrender with a vacant and spent expression. Unless I missed it, he never looked down at his handiwork. After that, he was taken into custody by deputies shouting ‘Why?” And there it was. The dumbest question ever uttered in the whole wide world. Doucet fell into a coma and died the next day.
At Plauche’s trial, his lawyers argued that their client fell into a temporary psychotic state when informed about the sexual abuse of his son thereby demolishing any notion of right and wrong. This argument worked like a charm and Plauche pleaded no contest to manslaughter and got a suspended sentence. Ironically, that sentence included 300 hours of community service that the vast majority of Louisianans more than likely considered redundant. Then the names and images receded into America’s communal amnesia until the internet arrived, allowing us to endlessly savor the lurid mayhem of our past with no adverse effects other than anxiety and depression.
Cut to the present and Leon Gary Plauche has passed on after a largely tranquil run as a Deep South folk hero and I’m a father with grown beast of a son. I never met Plauche but I’ve never forgotten what he did and or lost interest in the mechanics of why because it spoke to my inborn appreciation for premeditated vengeance. It also strikes me that any solace Plauche might have unearthed by gunning down his boy’s alleged kidnapper and abuser must have come at a steep and eternal price. As in forever being that unstoppable, stone cold vision of retribution in the white cap and sunglasses at the Baton Rouge airport.
The fact that Doucet was publicly executed without his own trial dimmed the victory of heartbreak over process but not the truth of the matter. That being a jury of Plauche’s peers, standing in as the rest of us, seemed to fully understand the primordial reality that led to a collision between unbearable rage and twisted predilections. But that’s kinda gilding the pop-psych lily. In my opinion, there’s only one incorruptible nugget of a motive behind this 1980’s gem of a Cajun Noir Murder. That being Plauche was a deeply flawed father who knew exactly what he could live with and what he could not, making homicide a no brainer, zero downside option. And therein lies an acid test that is immune to modification. The physics of revenge are as unalterable as the tides and no amount of gussying up that human trait can stop the storm.
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