Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - In 1997, KK’s Corner was often the last stopping point for outdoorsmen heading south from Lake Charles to hunt or fish.

The convenience store, which sits a few miles below Lake Charles at the corner of La. 14 and Tom Hebert Road, was your regular country store - a place you could buy shotgun shells but also get a snack, food, or drinks.

The store stayed busy as folks who lived in the immediate area also made it a regular stop on their way to and from Lake Charles.

On Sunday, July 6, 1997, the store became the center of talk around Southwest Louisiana.

Around midnight on Saturday, July 5, 1997, 21-year-old Marty LeBouef was closing the store with 26-year-old Stacie Reeves. Reeves also had a visitor with her — 14-year-old Nicole Guidry, who babysat Stacie’s daughters, Traci Lane and Tiffani Lynn.

Working at KK’s Corner was not uncommon for the LeBouef family. In July 1997, two of the five LeBouef children were employed at KK’s Corner, although Marty’s sister, Tanya, was out on maternity leave.

Marty’s father, Ellis LeBeouf, called the store that night to tell him he had left a plate of barbecue out for him at the house.

But when a worker arrived the next morning to open the store, she found it amiss. She called the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Office, and when deputies arrived, they found Marty, Stacie, and Nicole’s bodies in the cooler.

The peace of the entire parish was shaken.

In the 25-plus years since the killings, the store’s name has changed at least twice, and several other stores have popped up in the area to meet the growing population.

But all these years later, the aftermath of the KK’s Corner killings remains.

When the lone person convicted in the murders - Thomas Frank Cisco - was nearly released on parole earlier this year, the case came charging back into the forefront of the minds of Southwest Louisiana residents. The unsettled emotions of an unsolved case, the old rumors, the everlasting heartbreak of the victims’ families - in a single afternoon, it seemed, they all returned.

And once again, the murders were the talk of Southwest Louisiana.

THE KILLINGS

Several people were in the area of KK’s Corner on the night of July 5 and the morning of July 6, but none saw anything unusual outside the store. Calcasieu deputies did a visual check around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, a deputy responding to a nearby call did another visual check around 1:17 a.m. on Sunday, July 6, and two deputies returning from another nearby call did another around 1:50 a.m.

Around 1:30 a.m., a person stopped outside the store to deliver copies of the Sunday edition of the Lake Charles American Press but saw nothing suspicious.

One request for a check, though, went unanswered. When the alarm system was not set, the store’s security service called the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Office after 1 a.m. on Sunday to ask if someone could be sent to check out the store, but no deputy was dispatched. The dispatcher was later suspended, then ultimately fired on July 16.

A clerk arrived just before 5 a.m. to open the store, but finding the inside in disarray, she called the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office at 4:53 a.m.

Deputies arrived and found the three bodies in the cooler.

Stacie Reeves was buried the following Tuesday; Marty and Nicole were buried a day later.

“I can’t imagine someone looking at my daughter and killing her, I just can’t,” Nicole’s dad Harold Guidry said in the immediate aftermath of the killings.

At that point in the year, 12 people had died by homicide in Calcasieu in 1997 - the KK’s Corner triple killing made seven in a one-month timespan.

More than $10,000 in cash, checks, and money orders was taken from the store. Detectives said they believed the motive was a robbery.

By July 8, more than 100 people had contacted the Violent Crimes Task Force, and around 60 people had been interviewed.

By July 9, a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading up to the arrests.

The Violent Crimes Task Force, which had been set up in 1994, worked around the clock to solve the murders. The eight-member task force — four from the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Office, two from the Lake Charles Police Department, one from the Sulphur Police Department, and one from the Westlake Police Department — were going on little sleep as they attempted to crack the case, Director Lucky DeLouche said at the time.

But no quick arrests followed.

Ten days after the crime, on July 16, the first significant bit of information was released by authorities. The Task Force released a composite sketch of a man who was seen in the store with another man around 11:50 p.m. on July 5. Police described the man as being 6-foot tall and in his 20s and 30s. They believed him to be local.

But he was not described as a suspect. Lucky DeLouche said he was only wanted for questioning.

It was at that same news conference, DeLouche announced a possible drug connection was being investigated.

Three weeks after the homicide, on Monday, July 28, 1997, KK’s Corner reopened - but under a new owner. Chuck Kleckley, who would go on to be Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, bought the store from his brother-in-law, Kenny Klein. Kleckley changed the name of the store to Four Corners.

That same day, FBI Special Agent Don Dixon announced his office was joining the investigation, and authorities first mentioned the rumors beginning to spread about the case.

“There are a lot of rumors going around the community concerning the manner of death — like mutilation — etc., etc.,” Calcasieu District Attorney Rick Bryant said. “All of those are untrue in some way or another.”

In November of 1997, Task Force Director Lucky DeLouche announced a hypnotist had been brought to interview witness - at a price of between $1,000 and $1,200.

At the time, DeLouche said the hypnotist had produced “limited information.”

But the information the hypnotist was able to unearth would ultimately prove crucial.

By the time 1998 rolled around, there were few leads and still no arrests.

Needing a change of fortune, detectives turned to a national TV show for help.

The case aired on America’s Most Wanted on Jan. 25, 1998, a Saturday night.

Not even two minutes after the segment aired, detectives began receiving phone calls. Fifty-two calls came in the night of the show and around 30 to 40 over the next two weeks.

One of those calls eventually led to an arrest, but it was also the TV show that set the stage for a torrent of rumors.

Several new details were included during the showing of the case, including an updated sketch drawn from information gleaned from putting the witness under hypnosis. Then FBI agent Don Dixon said the sketch was completed about a month before the show aired.

The woman stayed out of sight to protect herself - her name wasn’t known to the public until the trial.

She arrived at KK’s Corner around midnight on July 5, 1997, to get gas. As she walked to the store to pay for the gas, a black car - a two-door Chevrolet - pulled into the parking lot and parked by the gas station’s side entrance.

The witness said the door was already locked as Marty and Stacie were preparing to close. But Stacie let her in to pay her $10 for gas.

As she paid for her gas, one of the men in the black car walked into the store and headed straight for the beer cooler.

As she walked out of the store, a second man from the car walked in, bumping her.

“He didn’t even say excuse me and that’s when I just got a bad feeling.”

As the woman stood at her car pumping gas, she saw the two men arguing in front of the beer cooler. Although she wasn’t done pumping gas, she was so shaken she drove off.

After picking her boyfriend up from work, she drove by the store again a short time later. This time, she saw a red pickup truck with its driver’s side door open parked next to the black car, which now had its trunk open. No one was around the vehicles.

The next morning, just before 5 a.m., the store clerk, Deborah Tubbs, arrived at KK’s to start her shift and open the store.

“I noticed that the alarm system wasn’t on, that’s when I noticed things wasn’t right,” Tubbs said. “The cash drawers was open, the safe was open.”

Rather than walking around the counter, she reached across it and called 911.

She did not realize what she had just walked into.

It wasn’t until Calcasieu Parish deputies arrived that the bodies of Marty, Stacie, and Nicole were discovered.

Detectives said the suspects had cut the lines to the office phone and the outside pay phones.

Lucky DeLouche said detectives believed one of the men took Marty and Nicole into the cooler and shot them multiple times, while the other man forced Stacie to open the safe for him before she, too, was shot.

Because Marty’s body was the furthest back in the cooler, it was believed he was shot first.

While the witness did not get a good look at the second man, she noticed something that would be the turning point in the case.

Hanging from a right pants pocket was a keychain with a rabbit’s foot and a key tag in the shape of a cigarette, emblazoned with the word “Marlboro.”

While the show presented the public with the most information yet, some family members wondered why it wasn’t released until seven months after the crime.

“I was just overwhelmed with information,” said Lane LeBoeuf, the brother of Marty LeBouef, who was hearing for the first time about the witness and the red truck. “Anyone who might have been passing in the area, if they would have known this information, they might have … ‘Well, yeah, I seen that,’ or ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ Holding it back to protect the case I can see the grounds on that, but I can’t understand, the amount of information we received on the show, I can’t understand how that wasn’t made public.”

Investigators say they withheld some of the details to preserve the integrity of the case and waited to release the information on America’s Most Wanted for greater impact.

“We wanted to release this thing nationally, in addition to locally at the same time,” Dixon said. “A lot of the local calls we got were kind of repeats we got initially when the case broke. Some of our national leads are new-type leads that we’re going to pursue.”

But in addition to new leads, the case sparked rumors, the most prevalent that Sheriff Wayne McElveen’s son Richard looked like the man in the new sketch.

Rick Bryant, Calcasieu Parish’s District Attorney in 1998, said the callers didn’t say Richard McElveen was involved in the murders - just that he looked like the sketch. Despite there being “no substantive evidence at all” that Richard was involved, he was brought in and interviewed. He gave blood, hair samples and took a lie detector test.

The lone witness was shown Richard McElveen in a photo lineup of six people, but she said none of the men looked like the man whom she saw in the store on the night of the murders.

“No evidence, no evidence that this man is guilty of anything,” DeLouche said at a news conference days later.

Richard McElveen also had an alibi. On the night of the murders, he had been at a camp where he was seen by several other people, officials said.

Then 27 years old, he was ruled out as a suspect and witness.

Family members of the victims began to ask for an outside investigation.

LeBouef family attorney Perry Sanders stressed he believed Richard was innocent but felt because of the rumors, an agency from outside the area should be brought in.

On Feb. 19, 1998, Sheriff Wayne McElveen called a news conference to dispel those rumors.

But it didn’t appear to help. Some believed it only inflamed them.

“While making a good case for his son, McElveen stirred the rumor pot again,” American Press columnist Jim Beam wrote shortly after the news conference.

“If these people will knowingly say that a person is a murderer when they know it is false, I’m telling you, you are sick people,” the sheriff said during the news conference. “I’m asking now, if any law-abiding citizen hears these people making false accusations and rumors, please call the sheriff’s department and give us names, dates, and places.”

“If I have to, in the name of my son, I’ll work with him and we will file suits if this does not stop,” Sheriff McElveen said. “If these rumors, if people still believe them, let them say them. They’ll say them to you and if they do, I’m sure lawsuits will follow.”

Richard said he did not know the victims, nor why he was the target in the rumors.

“To whoever started these rumors, these rumors, they’re not going to make me or my family just fold and go away,” Richard said. “We’re not going to do that, y’all underestimated the strength of the McElveen family and friends.”

Around 100 people attended the 32-minute news conference at Calcasieu Correctional Center - Task Force members, sheriff’s deputies, members of the McElveen family, and other supporters of the sheriff.

But family members of the victims were not allowed in.

They quickly voiced their concerns that the focus was being put on the rumors rather than solving the case.

“As far as the stuff yesterday (at the news conference), the little mudslinging, that’s not important,” Stacie Reeves’ father, Bobby, said. “What’s important now is solving our case and finding out who killed our children.”

“She’s left me her two beautiful little angels to take care of for her,” Sheryl Reeves, Stacie’s mother, said. “That’s what pain is, Wayne McElveen doesn’t know pain and never will compared to this.”

Attorneys for the families also voiced their concerns.

“Anytime a person of power, particularly a person in law enforcement, decrees that he will use his office to investigate rumors is a frightening thing,” Hunter Lundy said.

But the speculation that Richard McElveen was involved in the crime wasn’t the only rumor.

Investigators claimed they believe the motive behind the killings was a robbery - as they continue to do - but some of Reeves’ family and associates thought she may have been targeted.

A friend of Reeves, Kevin Abel, had died in May of 1997. While the coroner ruled the death a suicide, Stacie wondered whether he had been murdered.

Investigation Discovery looked further into Abel’s death for a special on the KK’s Corner murders. They obtained a copy of the coroner’s report, which stated Abel left a suicide note and had gun residue on his hands. The police report said Abel fell backward into a TV stand, causing the TV to fall onto his chest.

Whether Stacie’s intuition was right or wrong, it did not change the fact she was relaying her concerns to a deputy about people she believed were connected to the drug trade, and, in her mind, Abel’s death.

“Certain people didn’t like her reporting others to be involved in drug trafficking because I think she was giving names to law enforcement as to who she suspected to be involved in the death of Kevin Abel,” said attorney Hunter Lundy, who, along with attorney Clayton Davis, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the families of Stacie Reeves and Nicole Guidry. “And it got her killed.”

The suit Lundy and Davis filed also listed a co-worker at the store, claiming he was dealing drugs out of KK’s Corner and had quit in the days before the three were shot dead, telling friends “it was not a matter of luck” he was not working that night.

With the rumors continuing to persist, there were no breaks in the case as the one-year anniversary of the crime neared.

On June 26, 1998, about a week before the one-year anniversary of the case, Sheriff McElveen put up a $100,000 reward, paid for out of asset forfeitures from alleged drug dealers, to find the killers.

Finally. On Aug. 28, 1998 - 418 days after the murders - an arrest was made.

Thomas Frank Cisco, a 29-year-old former Lake Charles resident who had moved to New Orleans two years prior, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Stacie Reeves, Marty LeBouef, and Nicole Guidry. Cisco and Stacie Reeves were friends from high school; he had even spent time at her house, her mother Sheryl Reeves said.

It was a lead generated by “America’s Most Wanted” that led to Cisco’s arrest, DeLouche said.

But there wasn’t much else DeLouche or any other investigator was saying about his arrest.

DeLouche announced the arrest in a short news conference but answered few questions.

One of the first things reported about Cisco was that he had once claimed he had been into devil worship.

Court records pulled by the American Press showed Cisco was arrested in 1988 for stealing a grave marker. During a plea agreement hearing, he told Judge Greg Lyons he stole the grave marker because he was “into something I wish I hadn’t gotten into - devil worship.”

Cisco also had been a witness to a shooting death eight years earlier. Cisco was in a trailer when 20-year-old James McNease shot 15-year-old Barry Spears in Westlake on Dec. 27, 1985. It was Cisco who told the police what happened in the case. McNease pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and indecent behavior with a juvenile.

And, on Oct. 8, 1998, Cisco was formally indicted on three counts of first-degree murder.

THE CONFESSIONS

When Thomas Frank Cisco was arrested, it was not an issue to get him to talk.

But figuring out what was true and what wasn’t was a different story.

Cisco gave numerous statements to police - at least 35 - but many of those contradicted each other.

Aug. 27, 1998, jailhouse interview

“I know who did it, cause I was there,” Cisco told the investigator.

Cisco said he had returned to Lake Charles from New Orleans by bus for a “fresh start.”

Cisco claimed he robbed KK’s Corner with a man named Robert Thigpen - and that it was also Thigpen who first suggested they rob the corner store. But when investigators looked into the claim, they found Thigpen had a solid alibi and was not involved in the crime.

“He just popped up, like, out of the blue, man and said, ‘Let’s go. Let’s go rob KK’s Corner,’ Cisco claimed. “I thought it was a joke, actually, I really, truly thought it was a joke at first.

“And, like a dummy, I went with him.”

Cisco said they laid out a plan to rob KK’s Corner around midnight, cutting the wires to the phones and alarm system.

“He said he would kill everybody there if he had to,” Cisco said. “Everybody who was in the store.”

Cisco alleged Thigpen had a 38 and a 9 mm on his person, handing Cisco the 38 when he walked in.

“(Stacie) said ‘Tom, what are you doing here,’ " he said.

Cisco claimed it was Thigpen who did all the dirty work, killing all three despite their tears.

He said he tried to stop Thigpen, but Thigpen would not back down.

Thigpen got $800 and Cisco got $400, he claimed.

Detectives, though, believed there were several inconsistencies in that statement alone: KK’s Corner did not have a back door, but a side and front door; the woman who was bumped into was black, not white as Cisco claimed; and the woman claimed it was the man with the rabbit’s foot who had bumped into her.

But Thigpen did not match the description, had a solid alibi, and was cleared quickly.

When confronted with those facts, Cisco exonerated Thigpen, laughing and saying he had named Thigpen because he didn’t like him.

Two significant things came out of that interview, though; Cisco admitted he always carried a rabbit’s foot keychain in his back pocket, with the rabbit’s foot hanging out, and he read aloud a letter he wrote to Stacie.

“Stacie,

I want you to know that I’m really sorry for what happened. If I knew you were going to be there that night I would have never let it happen, I really wouldn’t.

Please, if you’re up there listening, please understand that if I could have, if I could take your place and the other’s place, I would in a New York minute. If it was up to me that night, I would have done it totally different.

“I would have just took all the money and took my chances of getting caught. I know that you could never forgive me, but I’m really sorry from the bottom of my heart.

No matter what happened, I still love you, Sis.

If you can find it in your heart, please forgive me. If you can. I’m paying for what I did and he will pay for what he did because I’m going to do everything in my power to see that he is caught, I promise.

I cry a lot since you’re gone. Believe me, I do. Again, I’m really sorry about everything.

Bye, sis, I love you very much.”

Aug. 31, 1998, jailhouse interview

Four days later, Cisco recanted everything, saying he wasn’t even at KK’s that night.

“I was talking to my ex on the phone and she asked, why you confessed to something you didn’t do,” Cisco said.

Cisco said he did so because he felt as though he was being harassed by the FBI, causing him to lose his job and his place to stay in New Orleans.

“I’m just telling you, Lucky. I swear on it, if you give me a stack of Bibles swearing that, I swear on my kid’s life and I don’t never swear on my kid’s life or anything,” Cisco insisted. “I did not commit these murders, I did not commit these murders and I don’t know who did commit these murders.”

Cisco also said he previously admitted to a rape he didn’t commit.

“And that, that’s the main reason why I did this, man, because I want this to be over with,” Cisco told DeLouche. “I’m tired of people looking at me.”

“Let me tell you something, ok,” DeLouche replied. “Tommy, If you want people to quit looking at you, confessing to it makes them look at you worse.”

“I understand that now,” Cisco agreed. “It makes me look like a criminal.”

DeLouche laid out that investigators believed there were elements Cisco had confessed which only the killer would know.

But Cisco was insistent he wasn’t there, responding that some of that was because he had been in KK’s Corner before and some of it was him guessing correctly what happened the night of the murder.

“What me and you need to do is go to Las Vegas, because if you got that kind of guessing…” DeLouche told Cisco.

“I wish I could make some money off of guessing, bruh, I really, truly do,” Cisco quickly responded. “I ain’t gonna lie to you.”

“It seems everything you guess at, you guess right, like the phone lines being cut,” DeLouche said.

Dec. 1, 1998, call to KPLC

Still denying any involvement, Cisco took his case to KPLC, calling the news station in late 1998 and claiming to be the “fall guy.”

“I think they’re gonna pin me for it because they have not convicted anyone in a year and a half on this case.”

Cisco then claimed investigators were using his friendship with Stacie to tie him to the crime.

“The main reason me and Stacie hung around together was I could keep her out of trouble, keep her from getting hurt,” Cisco told KPLC. “I had no reason to do any of that.”

Cisco said he was under the influence when he told Lucky DeLouche he was involved in the crime.

“During this investigation, when I was being questioned, I was on drugs when I was being questioned, that’s why I confessed,” Cisco said. “I was under a lot of pressure, I was tired of the FBI harassing me.”

Jan. 20, 1999, jailhouse interview

More than a month-and-a-half after calling KPLC and proclaiming his innocence, Cisco had another story - this time putting himself at the center of the crime.

Now, Cisco claimed he traveled to Lake Charles from New Orleans - with a man named Bobby and another man he continuously identified only as a “black male.”

While Bobby stayed outside, he and the “black male” entered the store, Cisco armed with a 9 mm and the other man armed with a .38 caliber. It was Bobby who cut the phone line, he said.

He again claimed he was on drugs at the time and said he and the other man passed by a white female customer as they entered.

When Cisco told Marty, Stacie, and Nicole to come out from behind the counter, the other man held them at gunpoint in an aisle until Cisco called them back to the cooler.

“I called them each, one by one, from where they were standing,” Cisco said. “I motioned them back to the cooler, one by one. As they came back there, I sat them down executional style and shot them.”

He claimed he shot Marty first, then went back and got 14-year-old Nicole, who was sobbing.

He then called Stacie back, he said.

“That’s the one I really hate the most, because I loved Stacie,” he said. “I would have gave anything in the world, but right at the time, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to get caught.”

He said he shot each of them multiple times.

A crying Stacie asked him why he was doing it.

“I told her, to be honest with you, I don’t want to be caught,” Cisco said. “I don’t want to take no chances of getting caught.”

Cisco said they stole money out of the cash registers but did not get into the safe. The amount he got was “close to about $100.”

He returned to New Orleans and sold his gun in the Ninth Ward for drugs.

“This is the true story,” he told Lucky.

“I did it, there’s no questions about it, I’m pleading guilty right here on this tape.”

March 3, 1999, Cisco names McElveen

Six months after his arrest and a year and two months after the case aired on America’s Most Wanted, Cisco brought Richard McElveen into the picture.

In his latest iteration of events, Cisco told Deputy Corey Manuel that McElveen was to pay him $20,000 to kill Stacie Reeves - with $10,000 upfront.

“That little sorry rascal hired me to kill this girl,” Cisco told Manuel.

“I admit I wasn’t in my right mind to take a $20,000 hit,” Cisco said. “But I was desperate for money ‘cause I had to have my drugs.”

Cisco reiterated that information to another deputy, Tina Lyons, in May of that year.

“He offered me $20,000 dollars and I was into drugs big time and he knew it,” Cisco told Lyons. “He knew I was on crack and he knew I was on coke. He offered me twenty grand to do it because Stacie knew too much.”

But authorities have repeatedly throughout the years said there is nothing to tie Richard McElveen to the crime. The sheriff’s son had a solid alibi for the night of July 6, 1997, and passed a lie detector test. And Virginia Johnson, the last person to walk out of KK’s Corner that night, failed to pick him out of a lineup - unlike Cisco, whom she did recognize from a lineup.

Jan. 27, 1999 interview in LaPlace

Looking into a previous claim Cisco made that he took the store’s surveillance tape, investigators traveled with him to LaPlace, where he said he had burned it.

While there, standing outside with Lucky and another investigator, Cisco identified another man as an accomplice.

The other investigator showed him both composites, first asking him whether the composite was Malcolm or Bobby.

Cisco said the first composite sketch looked like Bobby, and said the composite sketch shown on America’s Most Wanted looked like himself.

But, then, an investigator pressed him.

“Tommy, you know who the picture is,” the investigator said. “Big eyes, wide nose, Let me tell you, I’ve met just about everyone that you know, who knows you. I’ve talked to all of them. And when I met someone that I know was an associate of yours…

“Who am I talking about?”

“Chris,” Cisco replied, shaking his head.

“Chris was there?”

Cisco shook his head yes, then said Chris never entered the store.

“Was there four of you then?” DeLouche asked.

Cisco again shook his head yes and said, “There was four of us.”

Jan. 29, 1999, jailhouse interview

Two days later, back in the jail, Cisco reiterated his role as the shooter and said he and the others were high on LSD, marijuana, Vicodin, and Soma.

Cisco freely named several people in his 35-plus ever-changing and inconsistent statements, but he was the only one ever charged in the crime.

THE TRIAL

When Marty, Stacie, and Nicole, were found shot to death in July 1997, it marked the first triple killing in Calcasieu Parish since March 20, 1993.

By the time the trial rolled around three years later, there were few, if any, in Calcasieu, who had not heard about the brutal killings, and the rumors and gossip surrounding them.

Because of the publicity the case had received, the jury was picked out of Baton Rouge.

Attorneys began selecting the jury on Oct. 1, 2001, and on Oct. 10, testimony began.

Cisco, wearing a bullet-proof vest, was quickly whisked into the courtroom.

In his opening statement, Rick Bryant told jurors the rabbit-foot keychain discussed on “America’s Most Wanted” was what led authorities to Cisco.

More than $10,000 was missing from the store and three of the four phone lines into the store had been cut. The only phone line that remained functional was the phone on the store’s counter.

The lone witness - Virginia Johnson - stopped to purchase $10 worth of gas shortly before midnight but left without fully fueling up because the men made her nervous.

She picked up her boyfriend from Copeland’s restaurant - a few miles north of KK’s - then drove back by about 30 minutes later.

When she returned, the black car was still at the store - although it had been moved and a red truck now sat next to it.

Although a composite sketch was initially drawn from her memories of that night, a second one was drawn - the one shown on America’s Most Wanted - after she was hypnotized in October 1997.

Johnson also told detectives one of the men had a keychain hanging out of his pocket with a rabbit’s foot and a Marlboro cigarette key tag.

Johnson would pick Cisco out of a lineup.

She underwent grueling cross-examination by defense attorney Evelyn Oubre, who said there were various inconsistencies in the details of what she told investigators in numerous interviews. Becoming upset on the stand, she started crying and accused Oubre of trying to confuse her.

“I’m not trying to get this man in trouble,” Johnson blurted out. “I’m only saying who I saw and it was him. I know it was him.”

Another woman to testify, Lonnie Kemp, said the rabbit’s foot keychain caught her attention as she watched America’s Most Wanted.

Kemp knew both Stacie Reeves and Thomas Cisco - Stacie and her daughter were friends.

Cisco was the only person she ever knew to carry a rabbit’s foot keychain, thus, she called the tipline, she said.

Two weeks before she was killed, Stacie told her Cisco was coming to town, Kemp reported to investigators.

That put the focus on Cisco, leading to his arrest.

While Cisco attempted to pin the shootings on Robert Thigpen, Thigpen was playing bingo with his family that night.

Despite that false statement, D.A. Rick Bryant said, Cisco gave details of the crime and described shooting each victim.

Bryant said Cisco’s numerous statements contained both truth and lies.

“It’s going to be difficult for the jury to look at all those statements and determine what the truth is,” Bryant said. “But we feel very strongly that a lot of the information in the statements only the killer would know.”

The prosecution and the defense both brought out inconsistencies in Cisco’s statements, including whether the three were tied up, and where on his body Marty was shot.

The state introduced 128 pieces of evidence and put 40 witnesses on the stand.

As the state begin to wrap up its case, it called ex-girlfriends of Cisco, one of whom testified Cisco asked her to provide an alibi for the night of the crime. Another said Cisco sent her a letter in which he admitted his guilt.

The last of the witnesses was Coroner Terry Welke.

All three victims were shot multiple times, Welke said. Marty and Nicole were kneeling down, “execution-style,” when they were killed.

Two psychologists testified for the defense that Cisco was the product of a terrible childhood - beaten by his father and the son of a prostitute, he first drank at age 6 and first got drunk at 10. By 15 years old, he had graduated to drugs.

Cisco eventually became an extreme, chronic substance abuse user, who suffered from brain damage as a result, the psychologists testified.

It took the jury only two hours to find Cisco guilty as charged on all three counts of first-degree murder.

One day later, the jury sentenced Cisco to death.

THE AFTERMATH

While another killer remained at large, Cisco’s conviction and sentencing, it seemed, brought some sense of closure to the case.

Cisco was facing an eventual death by lethal injection, but less than two years later, he was granted a reprieve.

Cisco’s post-conviction attorneys brought up on appeal that his court-appointed attorney, Evelyn Oubre, had also represented Lucky DeLouche and his wife in family matters.

That wasn’t new news.

It had been discussed early in the case, and Cisco even signed a waiver allowing her to continue as his lawyer. But the state Supreme Court decided Cisco didn’t have the mental wherewithal to have signed the waiver, and reversed his sentence and conviction, sending the case back to Calcasieu for a new trial.

But District Attorney Rick Bryant became concerned about another conflict of interest - this one that Assistant District Attorney Ric Oustalet was now representing DeLouche in domestic matters. So, on Feb. 12, 2004, Bryant sent the case over to the state Attorney General’s Office.

But the case sat in limbo for years.

In 2008, the charges were amended from first-degree to second-degree murder, removing the possibility of the death penalty.

Then, on March 26, 2010, more than 13 years after the murders, Cisco pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison.

Prosecutors promised he would never be released.

“I think that everyone needs to understand, as a result of the plea today, that Thomas Cisco will die in Angola,” Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell said.

But then came another 13-year jump.

Despite the promises made by the Attorney General’s Office more than a decade before that Cisco’s final fate would be in state prison, he found himself before an agreeable parole board on Feb. 8, 2023.

Cisco told the three-member panel that it wasn’t he who pulled the trigger - but that he stood by and watched as another man killed Stacie Reeves, Marty LeBouef, and Nicole Guidry.

The parole board did not ask who the shooter was.

Cisco told the board of a tough childhood involving early drug abuse and claimed to be a reformed man.

The board granted him clemency and a plan was set for Cisco to be released and move to Tennessee.

The outcry was swift.

Word quickly reached Lake Charles and the office of Calcasieu District Attorney Stephen Dwight, which quickly reached out to the office of Attorney General Jeff Landry to see whether the state office had attended the hearing. Attorney General’s Office representatives said they opposed Cisco’s release but did not attend the parole hearing.

Dwight called it a “miscarriage of justice” and asked that the case be returned to Calcasieu since the conflict that first landed the case with the AG’s Office no longer existed.

His office requested to review all disciplinary records for Cisco and learned he had been found with pills the night before he was granted parole - 17 pills reportedly were an anti-psychotic drug, three were Benadryl, and two were over-the-counter medications for stomach issues.

The next day, Thomas faced a disciplinary hearing, during which he pleaded guilty to the contraband infraction.

His parole was rescinded.

To be fair, not everyone believed Cisco should remain in jail. Marty’s brother, Lane LeBouef, was one of those, stating he believed Cisco when he said he wasn’t the shooter and that Cisco had done his time.

But for those who believe he is the shooter or at least intricately involved in the murders, there’s still a chance he could walk free.

Cisco, now 54, is up for parole again in two years.

And despite years of investigation, and certainty among investigators that at least one other person was involved, only Cisco has ever been charged in the killings.

The search continues for the other killer.

Twenty-six years later, the case still isn’t closed.