Help me solve my father’s murder

Every time I hear the word, something happens inside of me.

Sometimes, it’s frustration. Sometimes, it’s self-pity. Sometimes, it’s bitterness and anger.

Sometimes, it’s just a humbling reminder of how little control we actually have over our lives and futures.

The word is "circumstantial."

On the morning of May 17, 1974, my father — former Lafayette Red Cross director Russell James Foote — was murdered on his way to work.

It happened in broad daylight on the side of the road on what is now Congress Street. The engine in his white station wagon was still running and the window was partially rolled down. Two bullets were in his head.

Left behind to wonder why and how was his wife of nine years — Jackie — and three young sons — me at 7, Marcus at 3 and Jason two weeks before his second birthday.

To this day, no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime.

The reason given then, and still believed as the truth today, is the evidence pointing toward the prime suspect was just too “circumstantial” to convince a jury.

It’s a 44-year-old tale of justice long overdue. It was a case so forgotten that it even escaped the Sheriff Department’s stack of unsolved cold case murders files for decades … until now.

It’s a story whose chapters include embezzlement, lost files, suspicious fires and a crime that just seemed too daring to get away with for four decades.

A story that may finally have a chance for a fitting conclusion.

Grief is conclusive

Legally, it was a matter of the evidence back then being conclusive or not.

At 7 years old, I certainly didn’t have a crystal-clear understanding of the word or all of its all implications and perceptions.

I just knew how much heartache it brought my mother.

Her grief was conclusive.

According to the lead detective at the time, so was her immediate certainty in identifying the top suspect.

Dad was buried the day after his death.

The unspeakable emotional agony Mom endured that day as she hugged my father’s coffin yelling for him to not leave her was absolutely conclusive.

It’s etched in my memory.

Her anguish lasted a lifetime. Until the day she died of leukemia on Aug. 26, 2015 – two days before what would have been her 50th wedding anniversary – the questions never stopped haunting her.

Why did it happen? Why didn’t anyone ever have to pay for committing the crime?

Dramatic trial scenes

Perhaps because my father was murdered, I’ve always been fascinated by crime, forensic and detective TV shows.

So I hear the word all the time as other cases play out on the screen.

I love when the victim’s family in the show gets the guilty verdict in the dramatic trial scene at the end. It brings a tear to my eye almost every time.

I hate when the guilty party gets off on a technicality because of a crafty attorney. I especially hate when the guilty party goes free because the evidence was “circumstantial.”

An indictment...then nothing

More than four decades ago, there was an embezzlement trial and a grand jury proceeding, but never an arrest or a trial for my father’s murder.

“I believe we have enough to get an indictment on embezzlement and possibly murder as well,” Lafayette sheriff Carlo Listi said in the Oct. 16, 1974, edition of The Daily Advertiser.

The suspect he was referring to — a former Red Cross employee — was not named in the article. And the sheriff was wrong about the murder charge — the grand jury heard the evidence police had and declined to indict the employee.

The primary witness in the embezzlement trial was a former Guaranty Bank employee who vividly remembers the case and has wondered at times over the years why no murder prosecution was ever achieved.

But after testifying in the grand jury hearing, the case just seemed to drift into obscurity.

“After that, I never heard another thing,” Bonnie Hebert said in March. “It was like it was a dead issue. Every once in a while we’d kind of talk about it, but I went on to work and never heard another thing.

“They never called me back and never asked me for anything else after that.”

Time to tell the story

That began to change one Friday evening in late January 2017.

I was about to write a sports story when Daily Advertiser news director Kristin Askelson approached my desk with an ominous question.

“Don’t you think that 2017 is the year that we tell the story of your father’s murder?” she inquired, somehow with a calm demeanor.

After a weekend spent debating the pros and cons of embarking on such a journey, I gave her my conclusive response on Monday — let’s go for it.

Within days, I was interviewing people who worked with my father that I had either never met or hadn’t talked to since I was a kid.

It didn’t take very long to learn much more about my father’s murder case than I had ever known.

After each incredible interview, I had an overwhelming urge to call Mom and fill her in.

But that just wasn’t possible.

Maybe someone will remember

Nor has it been possible for me to escape, or shake, the constant reminders.

My brothers Marcus and Jason both left Lafayette to pursue careers as attorneys.

I never left.

Practically every day of my life I drive by the spot where my father was killed.

My thoughts are much more detailed and focused than they’ve ever been.

Unfortunately, the guilt I regularly feel for not actively reviving Dad’s murder investigation while Mom was still living isn’t circumstantial either. It’s as conclusive as any aspect of this case.

But it wasn’t just Mom living with the bitterness of Dad’s unresolved murder decade after decade.

Dad was the baby of the family by 13 years. He was only 28 years old when he died. Uncles Harold, Herbert and Franklin are all still living, and so are many cousins, nieces, nephews, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, friends and former associates.

Now, at long last, Dad’s story will be told. Maybe someone will remember something. Maybe there is hope for answers after all these years.

Maybe, just maybe, Mom’s long wait is over.

Full story: The unsolved murder of Lafayette’s Red Cross director

Kevin Foote is the sports engagement editor at The Daily Advertiser. He can be reached at 337-446-8522 or kfoote@theadvertiser.com.