A silently seething father waited patiently at the Baton Rouge Metropolitan airport. He idled in a baseball cap and sunglasses at a bank of payphones to remain inconspicuous. A man named Jeffrey Doucet was being led by police down the hall and would directly walk by the waiting father, who suddenly pulled a pistol out of his boot. He then leveled the gun to his shoulder.
What happened was one of the most shocking things ever captured live on TV. This is the story of a father who loved his son so much he would kill for him. This is the story of Gary Plauché.
Leon Gary Plauché led your everyday average American life. He was born in Baton Rouge in Nov. of 1945, graduated from high school, and went into the U.S. Air Force. He completed basic training and firearms training and reached the rank of Staff Sergeant. After leaving the service, he took on different jobs. He worked as a salesman and also as a cameraman for the local news.
He met a woman named June and they had four kids. All in all, Plauché seemed to be destined to live an ordinary life, if not a satisfying one. His son Jody was 11 when he started taking karate lessons from a man named Jeff Doucet. Jody took lessons with two of his siblings and no one had any reason to think anything was awry; Doucet was a trusted member of the local community and he was good with kids. They loved him.
Jody even told his school newspaper that Doucet was everyone’s “best friend,” so much so that Jody had quit playing both football and basketball to focus on Doucet and spend every moment possible at the karate dojo. On February 19, 1984, Doucet, 25, picked up Jody to go for a drive. We’ll be back in 15 minutes, he told June. What June didn’t know was that Doucet had been abusing and raping the boy for two years already.
They weren’t going around the neighborhood at all, as June quickly realized when the boy didn’t return for hours. The two were actually on a bus heading toward California. Doucet, who was known for his large beard, shaved it off and dyed Jody’s hair black to pass him off as his son. He knew law enforcement would quickly be on his tail.
The man and the boy checked into a dingy motel near Disneyland. Once he had him alone, for 11 harrowing days, Doucet sexually assaulted the boy. For some unknown reason, Doucet eventually let Jody call his mother collect. Police traced the call and the jig was up. Jody was quickly put on a plane back to Louisiana, where his parents met him, a moment that was captured on TV as well.
At first, Jody didn’t admit that he was molested, too ashamed to admit the truth. “They were trying to get me to break, and I wouldn’t,” Jody said in a 2024 interview. “The cops told my parents, ‘This boy is either so brainwashed he’ll never admit it, or that man didn’t touch him and [we] were wrong’.”
It wasn’t until the results of a forensic test came back positive for sperm in the boy’s rectum that Jody admitted the abuse happened. This meant that police now had enough evidence to extradite Doucet and bring him home. Gary Plauché, however, didn’t think the police were going to do what needed to be done.
Plauché was eating at a restaurant and ran into a WBRZ news reporter, who asked him if he knew when Doucet was going to be extradited. Plauché said no and the reporter did some research. Doucet would be flying in at 9 P.M. on March 16, 1984. It was a month since the abduction and two weeks since his rescue, and Plauché hatched a plan.
While he waited at that bank of payphones, Plauché called his best friend and told him he was going to kill the man that raped his son. Plauché saw the cameras. He saw the lights. He saw Doucet walking toward him.
“He could see them out of the corner of his glasses,” Jody said. “When that light from the camera came parallel or even with my father, he knew to turn and shoot – that’s why his timing was so perfect.”
The timing was impeccable and Doucet went down like a sack of bricks off a ten-story building. As he lay writhing on the floor leaking fluids, a police officer accosted Plauché and yelled the famous words “Why?! Why Gary? Why’d you do it?” Plauché answered: “If somebody did it to your kid, you’d do it, too!” as tears leaked from his eyes.
Remarkably, Plauché only spent three days in jail, and only because he was arrested on Friday and couldn’t get bailed out until Monday. He pleaded no contest to manslaughter and got a seven-year sentence, suspended. He was ordered to do 300 hours of community service and serve five years of probation. He died in 2014 after a second stroke. Jody said he hopes his story will inspire others that they can bounce back from tragedy.
“I hope to let victims know that if you’ve been through something like that, with the proper support, you can be OK,” Jody said. “You can turn your life around. You’re not scarred for life. You’re not damaged goods. Your innocence – that may have been taken, but for the most part, you’re going to be OK.”