Barbara Bourgeois, 58, was found dead in her Paulina, Louisiana, home after neighbors noticed she had not picked up her morning newspaper or left for work on March 18, 1997. Deputies responding to the welfare check discovered signs of a struggle and determined she had been killed.

Investigators later linked Bourgeois’s killing to a series of River Parishes attacks carried out by Daniel Joseph Blank, a 35-year-old mechanic who lived nearby. Blank was arrested in Onalaska, Texas, on November 14, 1997, and confessed on videotape. In that confession he described breaking in through a back window, overpowering Bourgeois after she swung a vacuum cleaner, taking a knife she had used in self-defense, and stabbing her to death. Those details matched the crime scene.

Blank’s trial for Bourgeois’s murder began in February 2001; after the confession tape was played and a recess, he changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life in prison for this killing. His girlfriend at the time, Cynthia Bellard, was arrested and later had charges dropped in exchange for her testimony about the killings.

Did anyone in Paulina at the time recall seeing unusual activity near Bourgeois’s home in March 1997?