Joseph Brown was 16 when he disappeared from Kenner, Louisiana, during an October night in the late 1990s and was later found dead in Kenner in October 1998. The autopsy and investigators’ findings described blunt-force trauma to the head and death by suffocation; cocaine was detected in his system and evidence suggested a plastic bag had been used. Brown’s killing emerged amid a pattern: other young men in Kenner and neighboring parishes were turning up dead under similar circumstances, prompting investigators to consider a serial offender.

In December 2006 law enforcement arrested Ronald Joseph Dominique, and authorities said DNA and investigative work across multiple jurisdictions linked him to a series of killings that included Brown. Dominique later confessed to numerous murders and in September 2008 pleaded guilty to multiple first-degree murders, receiving eight consecutive life terms without parole as part of a deal that removed the death penalty from consideration.