Gary S. Kergan, a 34-year-old Baton Rouge businessman and co-owner of a Sonic drive-in chain, vanished after leaving the Night Spot Lounge on Plank Road on the evening of November 28, 1984. He was last seen with a teenage exotic dancer, Leila Erika Mulla, and was reported to be carrying about $2,000 in cash and wearing jewelry valued at $8,000.

A late-model pink Cadillac belonging to Kergan was found abandoned in Metairie with puddles of blood in the trunk. Investigators searched an apartment on Byron Street connected to Mulla and her boyfriend, Ronald Delton Dunnagan, and found bloodstains and signs of a violent struggle; entries in Mulla’s diary were reported to suggest a plan to kill Kergan. Mulla and Dunnagan were arrested and charged, but the case initially did not result in a conviction and the charges were dropped after roughly three months because the body was never located.

Kergan was declared legally dead in 1986, but his remains have not been recovered.