On June 2, 1992, the body of 25-year-old George Williams, a Black man from New Orleans, was found floating in the LaBranche Wetlands in St. Charles Parish. An autopsy determined his death was not accidental; Williams had been asphyxiated, either by strangulation or smothering, and his death was classified as a homicide.

Williams worked as an exotic dancer in the French Quarter. Some reports described him as a transvestite, a detail noted in discussions about his vulnerability during a period when a series of murders attributed to a so-called Storyville Slayer was unfolding from 1991 to 1996. Most victims in that series were African-American women involved in sex work, though Williams’ gender made him an outlier and has prompted speculation that perpetrators may also have targeted men who presented as women.

Bodies dumped in isolated swamps, canals, or ditches—locations that accelerate decomposition and destroy evidence—complicated the investigation. A task force involving the New Orleans Police Department and the FBI was created in May 1995 and investigators considered at least two potential suspects in the wider series, but no definitive suspect has been charged in George Williams’ death and the case remains unsolved. Did anyone in the New Orleans area in 1992 know George Williams or see anything that could help explain what happened that summer?