Man Accused Of Shooting Son’s Abductor Gave Friend Live
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) _ A man charged with murdering his son’s accused kidnapper as police were escorting the suspect through an airport described the shooting to a friend by telephone as the slaying took place, according to court documents.
″I’m pulling the gun out of my boot,″ Leon Gary Plauche told the listener, the document said. ″You’re going to hear the shot.″
Also, one of the deputies guarding Jeffrey Paul Doucet knew weeks before the March 16 shooting that Plauche wanted to kill the man, the document said.
″I’ll kill that S.O.B.,″ Plauche told East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Maj. Mike Barnett, the court document said.
The documents were filed in response to a defense request for self- incriminat ing statements in the second-degree murder case against Plauche.
The FBI arrested Doucet in California after authorities here charged him with kidnapping Plauche’s 12-year-old son. The FBI said agents located Doucet, 25, and the boy in a California motel.
Plauche, 39, pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity. He is scheduled to stand trial March 19. If convicted as charged, he faces life imprisonment with no probation, parole or suspension of sentence.
His defense hinges in part on his allegation that Doucet abused Plauche’s son sexually. The youth was a student at a martial arts school Doucet ran.
District Judge Frank Saia was expected to rule Friday on a prosecution motion to seal pretrial pleadings to prevent their disclosure from prejudicing the case.
Plauche told Barnett that he would kill Doucet, making the statement ″at unknown times and locations between Feb. 19 and March 16, 1984,″ Assistant District Attorney Prem Burns wrote in his response to the defense request for information.
Barnett, who has known Plauche since childhood, and Sheriff’s Lt. Bud Connor were returning Doucet to Louisiana from California when the shooting took place.
They walked Doucet in handcuffs through the Baton Rouge airport, where Plauche stood in a corridor, waiting. A news crew from WBRZ-TV videotaped the entire shooting.
The tape shows Plauche standing at a row of pay telephones as Doucet was walked by. One of Plauche’s hands held the telephone receiver. His other hand held a hand gun.
The prosecution’s court document said Plauche at the time was engaged in phone conversation with a man identified as Jim Adams.
It disclosed that Plauche told Adams: ″I see them coming. Oh 3/8 They took him a different way out. No, they’re coming and going to walk right past me.″
Plauche told Adams he had his back to the news crew. When ″the camera crew light came on, he would know Doucet was close to him,″ Burns wrote.
The prosecutor wrote that Plauche told Adams: ″When I see the light come on the camera, I’m going to shoot him.
″I’m pulling the gun out of my boot. You’re going to hear the shot.″
The news crew’s film showed Plauche turn from the telephone booth and shoot point-blank into Doucet’s head.
The court document also said that after the shooting Connor and Barnett heard Plauche say: ″I had to do it. I had to do it. You know what he did to my son.″