Damon Thibodeaux

The Crime

On July 19, 1996, at around 5:15 p.m., 14-year old Crystal Champagne left her home in Marrero, Louisiana, to walk to a nearby supermarket. When she didn’t return home, several of her family members — including her 21-year-old step-cousin, Damon Thibodeaux — as well as concerned neighbors began looking for her. The search continued until the following afternoon, when a few family friends heard that a girl who looked like Crystal had been seen walking on a levee the previous evening. Not long after, her body was found near the levee. She had been strangled.

The Investigation

Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department investigators interviewed people who had been with Crystal before she disappeared. This included Mr. Thibodeaux, who had been at the Champagne family home when Crystal left for the store.

Mr. Thibodeaux denied any knowledge about the murder, but the police took him down to the station anyway. There, he was subjected to a nine-hour interrogation without food or breaks. He maintained his innocence during a polygraph examination, but police said his results indicated deception. Under police threats, he then gave another statement sharing a dream he had had about someone being raped on the levee. Eventually, in an effort to end the interrogation, Mr. Thibodeaux stated that he had raped and murdered Crystal. He was subsequently arrested and charged with both crimes. After he was finally allowed to eat and rest, Mr. Thibodeaux recanted his confession, but this was ignored.

A week after the crime, detectives questioned two women they found walking on the levee near the area Crystal’s body had been found. Both said they saw a man pacing and acting nervously on the evening of the murder. When presented a photographic lineup of possible suspects, both women selected the photo of Mr. Thibodeaux.

The Trial

Mr. Thibodeaux went to trial in Jefferson Parish District Court in 1997. The prosecution’s case was centered on the forced confession. 

Dr. Fraser MacKenzie, the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy, testified that the girl had been strangled to death. She had injuries to her right eye and forehead consistent with getting hit by a bat or a rock, as well as bruises on her buttocks indicating a struggle had occurred. He estimated that Crystal had died about 24 hours before she was found. 

Separately, Dr. Lamar Lee, a professor of entomology at Louisiana State University, testified about the insect egg samples found on the victim’s body. He explained that flies will lay eggs on a body within a couple of hours after death, but will not lay eggs after dark. Based on his calculations, he estimated that the eggs were laid before nightfall on July 19, 1996, meaning that the girl had died while the search had been ongoing. 

No physical evidence linked Mr. Thibodeaux to the crime, and though the victim was found partially undressed, there was no semen recovered from her body nor other physical evidence that she had been raped. A police officer testified that the semen could have been eaten by fly larvae.

The two women who had identified Mr. Thibodeaux as the man they had seen on the levee both testified and identified him again.

Mr. Thibodeaux’s attorney argued that detectives had coerced the confession and fed him details of the crime during their interrogation. 

On Oct. 3, 1997, a jury convicted Mr. Thibodeaux of first-degree murder and rape. He was sentenced to death. 

Mr. Thibodeaux’s attorneys filed motions for a new trial and for a post-verdict judgment of acquittal, which the trial court denied. His lawyers then appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, alleging numerous errors at trial. Most significantly, they argued that Mr. Thibodeaux’s confession was false and unreliable, and should not have been admitted. Mr. Thibodeaux, they claimed, had been fed details of the crime while psychologically fragile and highly suggestible. However, the Court upheld his conviction on Sept. 8, 1999.

The Exoneration

In 2007, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office agreed to reinvestigate the case alongside the Innocence Project and other lawyers who volunteered to work on the case. Investigators re-interviewed numerous witnesses and ordered DNA and other forensic testing to be performed on the evidence.

The reinvestigation revealed that the women who identified Mr. Thibodeaux as the man they had seen pacing near the crime scene had seen his photograph in the news media before police showed them the photographic lineup. Moreover, they claimed to have seen him pacing the day after the victim’s body was found, not before, when Mr. Thibodeaux was already in custody.

Extensive DNA testing on crime scene evidence failed to detect any trace of biological material connecting Mr. Thibodeaux to the murder. Testing on the cord used to strangle her identified a male DNA profile that did not belong to Mr. Thibodeaux.

Additionally, the reinvestigation established that Mr. Thibodeaux’s confession was thoroughly false. Despite Mr. Thibodeaux’s rape confession, DNA tests revealed that Crystal had not, in fact, been sexually assaulted. He claimed to have strangled her with a gray speaker wire from his car, when in fact she had been strangled with a red cord that had been tied to a tree near the crime scene. Furthermore, an expert in false confessions, who had been contacted by the prosecution to review the case, concluded that Mr. Thibodeaux’s confession was the result of police pressure, exhaustion, psychological vulnerability, and fear of the death penalty. 

On Sept. 29, 2012, Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, Jr., joined the Innocence Project, the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, and the law firm of Fredrikson & Byron in a motion to vacate Mr. Thibodeaux’s conviction and death sentence and dismiss the charges against him. He was released directly from death row that afternoon. 

In 2013, Mr. Thibodeaux filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that was unsuccessful. He died on Aug. 31, 2021.