Who Killed Dorothy Thompson? Pet Cemetery Murders Unearths the Truth
The truth about what happened to Dorothy Thompson could've stayed buried forever.
Nearly a month after she was reported missing, the 61-year-old proprietor of Azalea Original Pet Cemetery in Toca, La., was pulled out of the Mississippi River on May 2, 1985.
Her body had been wrapped in chains and a subsequent autopsy determined her cause of death to be asphyxiation.
"Someone intended the body never to be found," St. Bernard Parish Detective Brian Vallelungo recalled in the Oct. 11 premiere of HBO's The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story, a three-part docuseries that digs into not only the search for Thompson's killer, but also the epic amount of tragedy that haunted her land in Toca long before her grisly death.
“People genuinely almost fall down a foxhole when they become involved with this bit of land,” series director Philip Cairney told Vanity Fair, “because it does seem to suck you in and not let you go.”
Thompson inherited the pet cemetery from her mother, Grace Thompson, and had lived alone in the rambling old house next to the graveyard since Grace's death in 1979. In addition to a final resting place for beloved pets, the local haunt become a magnet for vandals and kids hoping for a spooky close encounter.
But who wanted Thompson dead?
HBO
Detectives had their suspicions about a couple of the cemetery groundskeepers, and even looked into her friend Patricia Newman, the victim's power of attorney and executor of her estate.
"Oh, come on," Newman said in the HBO series, rolling her eyes at the thought of being a suspect. "Come on!"
Thompson put her in charge of her affairs, she explained, because "she trusted me."
Though, Newman quipped, "I told her I don't want to live at the cemetery, the spirits and I probably would have problems."
But when no leads panned out, the case turned cold.
And it stayed that way for more than 25 years until—after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 wiped out the cemetery land, the case file and most of the evidence—people started reporting sightings of Thompson's ghost.
Read on for the bizarre true story behind The Pet Cemetery Murders:
HBO
Did Dorothy Thompson Kill Her Husbands?
Dorothy Thompson shot and killed her husband Logan Banks in Toca, La. in 1970. As detailed in the HBO docuseries The Pet Cemetery Murders, she told police a drunken Banks had threatened her with a knife, and it was determined she acted in self-defense.
Dorothy's second husband, Donald Robinson, was fatally shot on the grounds in 1978. She said she found his body and no charges were ever filed in his death.
The following year, her mother Grace Thompson died of natural causes at the age of 88. Dorothy was left to run the Azalea Original Pet Cemetery on her 14-acre property, which Grace bought in the late 1940s when it was an abandoned antebellum sugar cane plantation.
HBO
What Happened to Dorothy Thompson?
Dorothy was last seen alive at a local bank on April 13, 1985.
St. Bernard's Parish Det. Brian Vallelungo said in the HBO series that there were no signs of a struggle inside the 61-year-old's home, recalling that the TV was on and there was a glass of wine on the table.
HBO
Among those questioned at the time was part-time groundskeeper Elkin Childress. He admitted to digging up some pet graves in search of $500,000 Dorothy was rumored to have buried in the cemetery, Vallelungo recalled, but he denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
HBO
On May 2, fishermen found Dorothy's body near Myrtle Grove, about seven miles away from Toca. There was a plastic bag tied around her head with wire and the body had been wrapped in heavy chains before being dumped in the Mississippi River.
"We wore ourselves out" working the case, Vallelungo said, but eventually they "couldn't figure out who else to interview" and there wasn't enough evidence to make an arrest.
HBO
Who Killed Dorothy Thompson?
In the early days of their investigation, groundskeeper Brandon Nodier, who built tombstones at the cemetery, denied being involved in Dorothy's death.
But it turned out they were embroiled in litigation, according to court records reviewed years later by the Times-Picayune, after Dorothy agreed to sell the cemetery to Nodier for $20,000.
HBO
Her friend Patricia Newman recalled in The Pet Cemetery Murders that Dorothy was "devastated" by her mother's death and suggested she wasn't in her right mind when Nodier came to work for her.
Dorothy sued Nodier in 1984, alleging he got her to sign papers under false pretenses. A pretrial conference was scheduled for 10 days after she went missing.
The case had been cold for 24 years when people started contacting authorities with information, more than one of them reporting that they'd seen Thompson's ghost, according to St. Bernard Chief of Detectives Col. John Doran. He told the Times-Picayune that some witnesses stay silent until "they start feeling their own mortality."
St. Bernard Sheriff's Office
What happened to Brandon Nodier?
This time an unidentified witness told authorities and then testified before a grand jury that he saw Nodier kill her.
Nodier was arrested in April 2012.
He was booked on a charge of second-degree murder but ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter in July 2014 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
"The motive was his strong desire to possess Dorothy Thompson's land," Det. Doran told reporters.
St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmann said at the time he "would have liked to see [Nodier] spend the rest of his life in prison." But, he added, "There's always a risk of going to trial with little evidence."
Doran noted, "Some form of justice has been served. Ten years is better than none."
The next episode of The Pet Cemetery Murders premieres Sunday, Oct. 18, at 9 p.m. on HBO Max
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