A Tale of Two Phone Calls

Good morning. Oh, man, I'm good.

I'm good to Sun's finally shining.

“All right, so we're going to talk a little bit about this thing.”

Sure. Twenty-26 is well underway, a new year, new resolutions, new opportunities. Twenty-25 was a wild ride around here. This time last year, we were reeling from that terror attack down in New Orleans. The Super Bowl was coming to town.

My Maori girl came rolling through in the middle of all of that. And besides my daily responsibilities for our media company, I was busy doing something new. Something I felt needed to be done. And something that consumed every moment of my free time for the next several months.

I was busy producing this podcast, crafting a story about a 16 year old girl who had not been able to celebrate a new year for 40 plus years now. I was busy trying to answer one question. Who killed Roxanne? My name is Charles Doudie.

I work with North Shore Media Group and we're producing this podcast with Louisiana State Police. About the Unsolved 1982 rape and murder of Roxanne Sharp.

If this is your first episode to hear, then back up and go to the beginning.

Because none of this will make much sense. The phone call you just heard at the very start of this episode. That was between me and State Police investigator Stephen Montgomery. Since episode six, I've been poking him occasionally about doing another interview. And updating me and you on what had happened since the last episode.

And I was surprised when he finally said yes. I mean, we've been in a bit of a self-imposed shutdown since episode six. But obviously, he felt like he finally had something he wanted to share. We'll actually hear from him from two phone calls. One from a bit ago and one that I just had.

But first things first. Let me set the stage for a moment. Like I said to Stephen, it's been a mess since you heard for me. Any individuals mentioned in this podcast are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. This case remains an active, ongoing investigation.

And all discussions are based on publicly available information, investigative updates, and legal proceedings where applicable. The goal is to seek justice, provide awareness, and encourage the public to come forward with any relevant information. This podcast does not make any allegations of guilt against the individuals discussed,

and is intended for informational purposes only. When I spoke with state police investigator, Stephen Montgomery, we talked about what he had wanted to accomplish through this podcast. Quite simply, Stephen Montgomery told me that he wanted Roxanne's story to hold. He needed people to hear it.

“I just feel like Roxanne's life is more than a dash between two numbers on a headstone.”

And, you know, she was rough around the edges, but she was 16. She was a product of her culture and, you know, of people around her. And, you know, if the saying is true that it takes a village to raise a child, then the village failed her. And, you know, that's troubling to me.

But what I want to accomplish is not only telling her story, but I just want people to come forward, didn't know what happened. And, you know, get out of the mindset that I don't want to be involved, or I'm afraid that something's going to happen to me. It's time to come forward.

That's what I want to accomplish. With that in mind, we worked together to produce season one of who killed Roxanne. Our goal was to breathe life into a long, forgotten murder.

“Or, at least, that's what we thought it was.”

We were wrong.

From the first episode, call started coming in from people who knew Roxanne's sharp.

People who went to school with her, people who knew her family, and people who had heard her story growing up. And, as each episode dropped, more and more people came forward. What started as a trickle of phone calls has turned into a pretty good stream of information. And I can't think those people enough for coming forward.

I've got phone calls from people out from out of state.

You said, "Hey, I live there during this time."

“And this is what I remember, this is where I lived.”

And most of these people don't have knowledge about what happened to Roxanne. And I didn't expect that. But what they do have is the knowledge of coming to the 1982. You know, Collins Boulevard hasn't moved. The Fairgrounds hasn't moved.

It's changed a little, the topography. The ozone hasn't changed. But tell me where Jim's chicken tailing was. Nick's game room. The Choctaw Maltstein.

All those businesses have long since been gone. But when you're recreating someone's steps in the days prior to their murder,

“it's details like that that become crucial.”

And the only place you're going to get him is from the people that live there and know it. As the weeks passed, I became more and more confident. We were no longer just telling Roxanne's story. We were on the hunt for her killers. And you, the public, were along for the ride.

And I don't know much more about the current investigation than what I've already told you in this podcast. I am not a state police investigator. I don't pack a gun to work. I'm not privy to the details. We all want to know.

I've stated this before. I am a conduit between the public and state police trying to bring back to life a crime that was committed a long time ago. And I knew when we told this story that it was going to be different from what people are used to hearing. In that, her story is still being written. And yes, we're not giving out all the information that we have.

We're collecting information and we're asking the public to come forward with what you know. We, you know, we've had somebody give us billboard space. We've had, you know, people consult with us on a whole variety of things. And that partnership is what is going to write the next chapter. As we traveled through Roxanne's story, the burning question toward the end was,

where do we go from here? Is what we have enough. We had tons of downloads, plenty of people were listening. We were generating the interest in the case we had sunk. Heck, we had people as far away as all Australia listening into the podcast.

But the most important question for me was, had the right people come forward.

That's a really good question and a fair one. But I don't think it's one that I can answer. Just because I don't know who else is out there that has information and they just haven't come forward or they won't come forward. You know, I know way more about this case than I knew five months ago, five weeks ago, even five days ago. You know, my goal is to go to work every day and answer more of the unanswered questions.

And, you know, ultimately, I will present this to the district attorney's office. No fluff, no hype, just the facts of this investigation. And they'll review it and, you know, based on what they say, hey, will either move to the next phase of this process or we'll go back to work. But I'll tell you what we won't do. We won't stop. Did you catch that? Ultimately, I will present this to the DA's office.

No investigator is taking a 40 plus year cold case to a DA to consider unless there is something there. So he's not going to tell me what is there. But he is saying something is there.

“I asked him, what was the one thing you haven't been able to answer that you can tell us about now?”

There's something that nags at me about the person, the lighter. And I don't know what it is, but I know that people are creatures of habit.

And my mom was a smoker. She never left home without her cigarettes and her lighter.

And, you know, you can equate that to today with people in their cell phones. How far do you get away from your cell phone in a day? Not far. So, you know, the question that it opens is, did the person who killed her take it as a trophy from the crime scene?

Throughout this process, there were many times where I felt like he was holding me and as a result, the listener at bay. I've been learning this case as fast as I could for a year now. He's been living with it for a lot longer than that. And his objective is not just who done it. He wants to build a successful case. He doesn't just want to name Roxanne's killers. He wants to convict them in a court of law. That means we are coming at this from slightly different directions and I have worked hard to respect that.

Throughout this, I've tried to clearly point out when I was speculating. And this is one of those times. He has not said much about that purse or the lighter since we did the episode that featured them. But now as I listen to that clip, I'm guessing that they're part of this story. The purse and the lighter may not be finished. But I could be wrong.

A long time ago, for a variety of reasons we will not get into in this podcast, I dropped out of law school in the first semester.

But if this story goes forward, and if I'm going to continue to tell it, then we are all going to need some basic law schooling. I asked a friend of mine who is a successful attorney if he would help me out. We had a good conversation about Roxanne's case and what might happen legally. So here's some quick law schooling as it applies to Roxanne. Hopefully you won't drop out too. Pete Berkhalter, I am a local lawyer.

There's a general practice here in Covington. I went to Loyal Law School graduate there in 1995, so I've been practicing just a little more than 30 years now Charles. I have done a lot of different types of cases and law. I'm practicing different areas of the law, including some criminal work.

“Are you consider yourself plugged in on what's happening in St. Tamony politically, as far as the happenings around the courthouse?”

I know there's some gossip. Yeah, to a certain degree, I try to, my own business as much as I can. Sometimes that's easier said than done especially in what is still a very small, closely knit group of people. The courthouse crowd and lawyers in general like to talk and they like to talk about things that are above whether it's political moves, who's running for judge or cases in particular, things that are kind of on their mind at that time.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid those conversations simply because you're stuck in court and you're waiting for the judge or you're waiting on your pre-trial to happen. And so you get stuck in those conversations, but I try to stay a breast of what is going on, especially in an area where I practice. At the beginning of this podcast of which you told me you've listened to. Yeah, it's been great so far. I talk about how Roxanne's case was a forgotten case and I've had to correct myself because a lot of people have proven me wrong.

But I don't think it was a case that was on top that was top of mind for someone that wouldn't directly impacted by the case.

“And so were you familiar with the case and have you heard anything about it since?”

Oh, you know, I'd never heard of the case before in '82 when she died. I was living, I was 13 years old, first of all.

And I was living in opposite places where I grew up. My mom's whole family is from this area. And I'm really surprised that aunts, uncles, cousins would not have that this wouldn't have been a topic of conversation at a gathering of the family. And so I'm a little surprised that I'd never heard of it. But something that happened, you heck, when I was 13 years old, I probably would not have maintained that memory at that point anyway.

I'd never heard anything about it until I listened to the podcast and actually have listened to the podcast as I drive across the bridge to my office and have done so for each episode. And just got stuck with it once I listened to the first one. Good, that's what I was supposed to do.

Yeah, let's get into this for a second. I want you to remember, or I don't even know if you know this. I am a first semester law school dropout.

Oh my gosh, I didn't know that.

“Yes, so you are speaking, I need you to talk in that language, right?”

I couldn't do it, but sure you could. I did not want, there you go. But I did want to try to make sure we do this in a way that makes it make sense for everybody, whether they are law or not. And so what I know right now is I know there is some kind of case out there.

You know, they're going to be, I know there are hurdles that they have to cross based on the length of the case.

It's been 40 plus years.

“So, so what does that look like as we talk about a grand jury?”

Because I know if anything is going to move forward, it's going to go through there in some capacity. So what does a grand jury do? Right, so grand jury is generally convened by the charging authority. And in this particular instance, it would be the district attorney for St. Timony Parish, which is Colin Sims.

I know that his office has a good group of prosecutors.

He's obviously a very mindful person. He's been a prosecutor for a long, long time. He is obligated by state law to charge capital offenses, crimes for which you can be tried and sentenced to death and/or sentenced to life in prison.

“You're obligated to present those cases to the grand jury.”

And most people when they think about, you know, when they hear a jury, they think about a pettit jury, which is what most people will be getting. Notice is for, and they have to appear, and if they're chosen, they'll actually hear a single case. That's completely different than the grand jury process.

Grand jury process is private.

The grand jury process is, as I said, it's a single entity being the district attorney's office presenting evidence to a group of people who have been convened to hear cases for which a bill of information cannot be filed to charge that individual. And then the grand jury will determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to return a true bill, which is asking that are actually charging the individual and in guiding that individual for a particular crime. So they have an option, it's either a true bill or a no true bill. If it's a no true bill, they've determined that there isn't enough evidence to charge that particular individual or individuals with a particular crime for which they're being charged or sought to be charged at that time.

“And the threshold is different in terms of what you're trying to achieve, right?”

Right, and so it's remember it's one sided. It's the district attorney's office who gets the obligate or gets the opportunity to present the evidence one sided. There's not, you know, cross examination. There's not back and forth. There aren't motion. There is a motion practice. There isn't limitations on the evidence that you can present. They get the basically the sole bite at the apple. And if an indictment is handed down, then that individual defendant criminal defendant is then arranged. And then the process follows a kind of a normal track.

Except if it's a capital case, and then it's far more involved because of the nature and the consequences of that particular charge. We agree that the DA and his office has brought an appropriate case and they're ready to move forward. What happens after that? So if they return a true bill, then the person has been indicted. It'll be found with the clerk's office. There'll be a warrant issued for that person's arrest unless they're already in custody, which also happens in Louisiana. For a felony offense, the district attorney has a certain number of days to charge that individual or the individual can be released.

And once the indictment is handed down, then the normal process of criminal cases working their way through the system begins. It's a lot to a particular division of the court. As long as that judge to whom it's a lot, it doesn't have any personal contact or anything that would prevent them from hearing the case, then they will have the case through verdict. And obviously the case could be tried to the judge if that was the defendant's election, but most of the time they're tried to jury's. The jury's obviously are made up of citizens of St. Timony Parish because it happened here in Covington.

And then the case would work its way through, as I said, and I've made mention of it a few times. You have motion practice. You have discovery. That's the defendant's opportunity to secure the information that the district attorney has in their possession that they may utilize at a trial to convict that person. They have all of the testing we've mentioned and you had an episode on DNA. If there's DNA that is utilized or the results are going to be utilized, obviously the defendant not only gets to look at the results, but also gets to potentially get the samples.

And have independent testing if they believe that the DNA results were incorrect or improper. What about not asked that I should have asked you? You've asked me pretty damn good question. Oh, so there were a couple other things people before I let you go that I wanted to ask you about. And I really want to hear your thoughts on you heard about the crime scenes. You know as much as I know about what happened to her.

Right. So based on what you have heard and what we have learned through this podcast, can you imagine or think about or discuss what possibly could be the charges going forward?

You've got a sexual assault occurred, which will give you the basis of an aggravated rape. I believe that there was some information regarding the use of force and having an weapon from prior podcast. Obviously that is the weapon that gives you the elements of the aggravated rape and then of course with the homicide.

You can charge second-degree murder in this particular case. Those are both very serious charges.

I want to talk a little bit about where we are today versus 1982, in terms of technology, in terms of how crimes are prosecuted now versus how they were prosecuted then. And this appears that it will be a crime where, you know, no cell phone data. Nobody's run around with a video. Right. You know, our tags are being read on 190. None of that. Right. This is going to really rely. I think a good bit on witnesses.

“Are we still doing that? Is that something that can happen? Yeah. I think that you have to think about, as you said, you can't go out through a red light without, you know, a camera going off or a picture being taken of your car or”

drive down the interstate and there's a tag reader there. Obviously in 1982, having lived during that time, I didn't, there were no cell phone cameras. There was no GPS location to prove where you were or where you weren't by way of your cell phone. I doubt there's here. So there were any cameras pinpointed on this location or surveillance cameras in that area. If you're going to rely heavily upon the physical evidence that's been obtained, the depiction of the scene from the prior podcast, where they actually described and was able to pinpoint where the location was.

I think is going to be very, very important for the jury. Remember, we're in a very conservative jurisdiction, you know, that people come here to raise their children because it's a very safe place.

I would say that the majority of people in this jurisdiction are pro prosecution and this is a crime that is going to shock their conscience. And I think that the DA's office will utilize the information that's available to them and that's going to be some degree of physical evidence, but then a lot of it is going to be circumstantial and a lot of it's going to be driven by witness testimony. And that's where the witnesses are so important and their involvement in the case is so important. All right, so some slight changes in the law and you were trying to explain that to me a moment ago, I'm going to let you turn you loose with it.

Yeah, so difference in terminology aggravated rate is no longer used in this particular instance. It would be a first degree rate.

“That change occurred in 2015, I believe, same elements. You have to have obviously a sexual assault and then you have different criteria could be someone who's under the age of 13,”

someone who's mentally or physically infermed or with their multiple offenders and then obviously the use of force intimidation and/or the use of a weapon. So as we discussed, you have those elements and you certainly have the information or at least based upon the podcast and what information has been derived in the case. You certainly have the facts necessary, I believe, to probably charge the individuals ultimately with with first degree rate. Thanks to local attorney Pete Burkhalter for walking me through what might be coming.

Now I want to talk about a man Pete spoke of in that interview, the local DA, Colin Sims. And before we speak about him, I want to speak about the DA who came before him. I had heard of Colin Sims long before I met him. His boss, the man who hired him to leave his federal prosecutors job and come to St. Timony, was a DA named Warren Montgomery. Montgomery was also a former federal prosecutor. Warren would come into my studio once a month to promote what his office was doing or pet calls as he had adopted or trials they had won.

I would see him regularly at social events. If I had to use a single word, I would say Warren was one of the most decent people I have ever known. No doubt there was fire under the surface, there had to be for him to do that kind of job. But outwardly, pretty much all you got from Warren was a kind word and a genuine laugh.

“He wasn't just shaking hands while looking for the next person to meet. He would remember details and ask you about your kids, your life.”

Warren talked about his own family often. He loved to talk about being with his family in Wyoming, where they often went to ski. But this is the type of chance I have, there's no known to for it. So, you know, it hits me, knocks me down, I get up, I hit it back. It hits me again, I get up and knock it back. And we've been going back and forth like this for really almost four and a half years.

And you just don't quit, you just don't quit, you keep going, you stay positive, and there's this new technology called quarantine therapy.

And I went into this trial and at MD Anderson over in Houston and believe it or not, the cancer was wiped out of my lungs within four weeks. Now, I still have cancer and all the parts of my body, and I'm still under going sincerity. But I mean, 90% of the people who get this cancer die within five years. And here I am, four and a half years into it. And we, when they have a cure. While Warren was serving as DA, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Warren Montgomery took over a beleaguered DA's office.

The same nominee has had its share of colorful corruption in public office. And the longtime DA before Montgomery received a federal prison sentence after he was filed guilty on a wide array of charges.

DA walked to read had been in office for decades.

Warren Montgomery was not the front runner when he threw his hat in the ring for the race to replace wall to read. But he won a little bit of a long shot victory. And a race where a scandal-weary public appeared to go with the straightest shooter they could find. That was Warren Montgomery.

“And Warren's chief prosecutor in assistant DA, who did Warren bring in to lead criminal prosecutions for his office?”

That was the current DA, Colin Sims. Warren Montgomery died November 10th, 2023.

Colin Sims was sworn in as DA on November 17th of that year.

[Music] St. Tammany is a wonderful place to live, but there are some funding issues with parish government when it comes to public safety. I think watching Colin Sims take on the parish's financial problem says a lot about who he is. He advocated for change once it became apparent something had to be done. He took a leadership role and attempting to bring about that change once he had everyone's attention.

And he wasn't afraid to take on the challenge of reworking the entire taxing structure for the good of everyone. Something no one else has tried to do. This is a guy that is not at all shy about fighting for what he believes. And that definitely extends to a crime victim like Roxanne. I know that because I've seen him tackle this funding issue as office is facing right now.

I know that from previous cases he is one over the course of his career. I know that from the progressive coalitions his office has joined around the area to combat trafficking or drugs or other issues. I'm not going to tell you the guy is perfect. None of us are, but he is a fighter. And for a case I mistakenly thought no one cared about.

It's starting to feel like Roxanne's story is not quite done yet. Oh yeah, and Walter Reed, the longtime DA who preceded Warren Montgomery. Well, he also had a role in Roxanne's case.

“Remember episodes two and three when I told you how Robert Willie and Henry Lee Lucas may have overshadowed and affected Roxanne's own murder case.”

In the Times Pickie-Un from Sunday, December 30, 1984, they listed the top story in St. Tammany for the year. In involved a secret trip from a jail in Texas as St. Tammany deputies snuck the killer. Henry Lee Lucas into the parish and drove him around while he pointed out different crime scenes. By the time he was done, Lucas had tried to confess to the killing of deputy Louis Wagner,

Kenneth Lee broils, Ruth Ann Manguno, and Roxanne Sharp. All unsolved, nor sure cases that had vexed local authorities. Now this article was written before Lucas's massive nationwide deception was uncovered. It was the top story because officials said they now believed they had enough evidence to close three of those four murders, including Roxanne's.

“And what else was on the same page of that newspaper on the very same day?”

Right beside the article about Lucas visiting St. Tammany in secret, there was a short story about the execution that previous Friday of Robert Willie, who at one time also confessed to being present when deputy Wagner was shot and killed. Now in hindsight, we know Lucas was smart enough to manufacture those confessions, and he had done it literally across the country.

So they didn't kill her, but it reinforces my point that these two murderers suck the air out of everything else, including searching for Roxanne's actual killers.

“You know who made the decision not to try Lucas for Roxanne's crime?”

The new DA, Walter Reed, at the very beginning of his long legal reign. In essence, smelling a rat with Lucas and throwing Roxanne's case back among the unsolved, where it remains to this day. So now, back to that recent call with investigator Montgomery. I've kept in touch with him over the last few months, and I can assure you he is working on Roxanne's case. I've called him at night, he's working on it, I've tried to reach out on the weekends, he's working on it.

What I've come to realize from this unique partnership with law enforcement is that the quieter he becomes, the closer we might be getting to something actually happening.

Now I know that might not be what you want to hear, it's driving me crazy too, but like I said earlier, we aren't just telling a tragic story. We are seeking justice for someone who's story does not have an ending yet. And I had my doubts about what I would get from him at this point, but Stefan agreed to talk on the record with me about where the case stands, right now.

“All right, so first things first, it's been a minute, so where would you say we stand with the case?”

Well, it's not lost on me that we're almost to the 44th year of Roxanne's death, but I can tell you that we're much further along than we were this time last year. And I think the value of doing this podcast is the new information that we have gained over the past year, and even the smallest of details have helped to either confirm or dispel things that were documented back in 1982. The one thing we do have, I will say, is we have the advantage of hindsight, we know stuff now that they didn't know back then, and we have the advancement of DNA technology and forensic.

Beyond that, I don't want to say a whole lot more about it. Well, you and I've talked numerous times, even during the taping of the podcast that you know, you'd met some new people, but introduced to some new voices. So I guess talk about just the witnesses in general, and how important you view them as to this case. Extremely important, the people who chose to step up with credible information about this case, they will be the success of this investigation. There are so many things from the original case file that I had kind of glossed over, maybe didn't make sense or seem important at the time, but they've become relevant because of, you know, just stories and associations and locations that have been provided by people who lived in Covington in 1982.

Aside from the people who came forward with specific information regarding rock, sand shark, and we're going to end our murder. I talked to a local attorney and we discussed the grand jury process. Is that the next logical step? I mean, what are your thoughts there? Oh, definitely.

The next step in the process is obviously to present our case to a grand jury.

“It's an important step, but you got to realize that that's just the beginning.”

I'm building a case with a trial in mind, which means that I'm striving to eliminate all reasonable doubt to the extent that that's possible. Because only thing more important to me than holding somebody accountable for this horrendous murder is to make sure that it's the right person or people. All right, and then I had one other question. It's about those people. We've talked about, you know.

It was the end of this most recent call was Stefan Montgomery that really caught my attention and only after the fact. It was almost a throwaway question. When you ask when you can't think of anything else, I don't know.

Maybe that first call kind of woke me up to this.

Maybe I'm reading way too much into it. Maybe not. See what you think. He's made a few references now about being close to the point of presenting his work to the DA. Obviously, you don't do that without concrete suspects.

You don't do that without a story that explains what happened to Roxanne that night.

I don't know if Stefan Montgomery did it on purpose or not.

But at the very end of the call, it felt like we went from hypothetical to something more absolute.

From unknown assailants who committed a horrible crime to something more personal.

“Do you think the people who are responsible for Roxanne's death have heard this podcast?”

I'm pretty positive there.

All right, if that's correct, then what do you say to them? See you soon.

“Who killed Roxanne is a North Shore media group production, original music by Crestley Kalora.”

Connect with the podcast online at WhoKilledRoxanne.com. If you have a tip or information for Louisiana State Police, call 985, 635, 3167, or email North [email protected]. [Music]