The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story (2026) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode Three
[tense music playing]
[police siren wailing]
[John Doran]
It was March 15th.
I know that's
the Ides of March.
That day, we were involved
in a hostage situation
and a shootout.
[indistinct police
radio chatter]
No one got injured or killed,
thank God.
[steam whistling]
I get home, and I get a call
late that night
from one of my
night shift detectives
that somebody was calling in
with information on a murder.
Some kind of
pet cemetery case
or something
y'all are working on.
I said,
"You gotta be kidding."
[police siren wailing]
[indistinct
police radio chatter]
We make a trip on out
to the St. Tammany lockup.
And that's when we meet
James Tregler.
I had no idea who this guy was.
I had never seen him before.
I had never heard his name.
This was a guy
that was a total sleeper.
You know,
when I first saw him,
he didn't look like a menace
or anything to anybody.
He looked like
an English professor.
He had little
wire-framed glasses.
I'm kind of thinking to myself,
"Is he actually the murderer?"
[discordant music playing]
[James Tregler]
I'd gotten involved with some
different crimes,
unfortunately.
[fire whooshing]
Auto theft, robberies,
doing all kind of dirty deeds
like that.
I tried to burn my truck,
for insurance.
[fire crackling]
I should have blown my head off
because I blew the truck
in half
and, uh, got arrested for that.
[door slams]
[lock tumbles]
[buzzer droning]
One day I'm sitting
in the cell by myself
[dour music playing]
And it just got
so freezing cold.
And it was cold like I've
never been so cold in my life.
There was definitely
a presence there.
[static crackling]
It was the avenging angel.
It was Dorothy.
[water bubbling]
I knew either
I tell what happened
or I'm going to hell.
[keys rattling]
And that's when
I got on the phone.
"Call up St. Bernard
right now, now!
Call 'em up,
tell him to come talk to me."
I wanted this sin off my soul.
[John] As he's talking,
he's kind of going
into that same spiel
that Jose Cruz gave us.
[Jose Cruz] He did tell me
he killed her.
-Who are we talking about?
-Brandon.
[John] You know his last name?
Nodier. Nodier.
Alright, is this who
we're talking about?
[Jose] Yes, sir.
[John] He was telling us
that Brandon killed Dorothy
and all that sort of stuff.
So finally I cut him off
and I says,
"How do you know all of this?"
And he just comes
out and says,
"'Cause I was there.
I saw him do it."
[eerie music playing]
[grass rustling]
[creature howling]
[bird cawing]
[chimes tinging]
[suspenseful music playing]
[James] Back then,
I had no direction in my life,
no morals, no anything.
You know, I just drifted
whichever way
the circumstances took me.
[vocalist humming]
Let's see, I met Brandon
it have been in the early '80s.
We met through our circle
of people doing construction
and stuff like that.
He knew I did electric work,
so I would help him out
with different things.
I'd gotten involved
with some crimes with him,
unfortunately, you know?
Stolen merchandise
and things like that, so
He was intelligent and violent.
And he had
a reputation for that.
If he was in public
and anybody offended him,
you know, he would
[laughs]
He would threaten them.
At the time,
I looked up to him.
Nobody messed with him,
you know, that kind of thing.
[pensive music playing]
[birds chirping]
I believe the first time
I went to the pet cemetery,
I went to look
at the electric for Brandon.
You'd come up the driveway
in beautiful oak trees
and manicured lawn
with the pet graves
in the front.
The house wasn't falling down,
but it, you know,
could use a paint job.
You know, and I met Dorothy.
"Hi, how are you doing?"
You know,
and she introduced herself.
And I think they were
doing a monkey burial
when I was there, as I recall.
Kind of like the old movie, uh,
Sunset Boulevard.
So, yeah.
Miss Dorothy was like,
you know,
a kindly grandma to me.
She had a bunch of old,
antique 1920s, '30s magazines.
I asked her about 'em,
and she said,
"Well, of course, take 'em all.
"You know, those were
my mother's,
and I'm glad somebody
wants them."
That kind of thing, so
He was very lucid,
he was very direct,
and he basically goes into,
you know,
this long, detailed story
about the night of the murder.
He remembered it
in great detail.
[somber music playing]
[James] Brandon had asked me
to come take a ride with him.
So we drove
in his pickup truck.
It was after dark,
and it was a
You know, a quiet night.
So, it's pitch-black out there.
So we rode down
to Dorothy's house.
-[vehicle approaching]
-[wind chimes tinging]
And we pulled up
to the house, it was dark,
and we're standing outside.
And I looked at the house,
I was like,
"Man, you got termites
under here."
And I knocked on the--
on the thing.
I said,
"Man, you gotta fix this."
And Dorothy is like,
"Who's there?" or something.
You know, was startled.
And Brandon went inside
and, uh, choked her
till she passed out.
Their blood, blue and red,
makes things so clear!
[James] And I came in.
She's on the floor,
and Brandon's getting up
from choking her.
[chatter on TV continues]
And she woke up.
You know,
and I screamed at Brandon,
"She's still alive!
She's still alive!"
And he's like,
"Go outside, go outside.
Meet-- Go sit in the truck."
[wind chimes jingling]
And Brandon immediately
grabbed her again by the throat
and was choking her.
And he choked her to death.
Brandon came out with
the body wrapped in a sheet,
and he had an electric cord
around her neck.
And he wrapped her in chains
that he had
in the back of the truck.
I just sat there, just frozen,
staring straight ahead,
you know, just freaking out.
[ominous music playing]
[John] From the start,
he makes it clear
that he had nothing to do
with her murder.
He had no inkling that Brandon
was going to kill Dorothy.
[ominous music continues]
He went down there
under the guise
of helping Brandon
move some of his belongings
that were down at the property.
[James] We drove
to the old ferry landing,
and he dumped the body there.
Brandon was very strong,
so he just picked her up
like she was a, you know,
bag of potato chips.
And then, you know,
took her out of the truck
and threw her in the water.
[water splashing]
I heard the body splash.
[foreboding music playing]
[Patricia Newman]
Isn't that horrible?
To think that somebody
would do something like that
to an older person.
Or to do that at all.
That your mind
would be that messed up
that you would do that.
[James] I should have
stopped it, you know?
I should have stopped
Brandon when Dorothy
took that big, deep breath.
You know, but I was just
overcome with fear.
I'd have been dead too,
you know?
Let's be honest here.
Brandon wouldn't have
hesitated.
You know,
Brandon's a scary man.
But I didn't realize
he was evil like that.
[bird cawing]
[John] You know,
I'm always skeptical.
I don't know this guy.
Is he telling us the truth?
Is he not?
So let's check out some of
the facts he's saying, right?
This is the spot right here
where she was dumped
into the Mississippi River,
and it's consistent with where
the body turns up downriver.
The condition that the body
was in and how she was killed
and the fact that she was
wrapped in chains
with a bag on her head
is just how he described
everything to us.
[tense music playing]
Everything that Tregler said
matched up
with what we-- we had
already known
or what we thought we knew
and what the evidence showed us.
Whether or not his involvement
was more than that,
you know, we'll never know.
[insects chirring]
Ms. Thompson weighed
probably 150,
155 when she was killed.
200 pounds of chains
is giving you 350 pounds.
So, uh, we was debating on if
one person could do this or not.
[James] After the murder,
I just disassociated
what happened in my mind
and buried it
and just continued on
with life as normal.
Like nothing ever happened.
I just went back to my life of,
you know,
trying to function
and not doing a very good job
at it, so, yeah.
But over the years,
Dorothy's ghost
just kept pulling on me,
pulling on me to do something.
And, uh, finally I couldn't
live with it anymore
and, you know, contacted
the, uh, St. Bernard Sheriffs
and told them what I knew.
[water lapping]
[John] You know, now here
you have two people
that are being tormented
by Dorothy's ghost.
That door that I had locked
just swung wide open.
[John] Tregler is talking
the same thing
that Jose Cruz talked about,
about seeing her ghost
and being hounded
by this woman's ghost.
Dorothy's roaming the earth,
seeking justice,
and she's coming to him
as a portal, I guess,
to get to us.
[eerie music playing]
[water lapping]
[James] There is such a thing
as ghosts, you know?
[water gurgling]
I quickly denied it, but I had
a feeling that's what it was.
We have immortal souls.
Now, are they trapped here
or do I know
all the workings of it?
No. Uh-uh. No.
But they're real,
I can guarantee you.
Things can be cursed.
[John] Now we got to keep
Tregler on the hook.
He's got to testify.
Got to convince
the district attorney
that he's telling us the truth.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Greg Noto]
I can go back 51 years
when I joined
the police department.
I have seen a lot of things.
First-degree murder,
second-degree murder,
sex crimes, aggravated rape,
crimes like that.
-Send her both and see
-Yeah.
-which one that they like.
-Okay.
[Greg]
And nothing surprises me.
It's human nature.
I don't want to say
I'm immune to it,
but I just roll
with the punches.
Tregler wanted
to have immunity,
which means
he would testify for me
and I would not prosecute him
for admitting that he was
involved in this 25 years ago.
I went to great lengths
to get immunity for the guy
because I thought
his testimony was vital.
[pensive music playing]
[Jack Stephens]
And that was when
the ball really started
rolling.
Once the DA decided that he was
gonna be involved in this
and he was gonna actively
pursue the case
and he was gonna grant immunity,
Nodier had a problem.
[metal detector beeps]
[John]
So the district attorney chose
to take it
through a grand jury.
A grand jury, it's 12 people
selected from their community.
There's no judge.
And it helps
the district attorney
to establish whether there's
enough evidence to go to trial.
Get all of the facts out there,
get Tregler on record
because, I mean,
anything can happen to him.
You know, if Nodier gets wind
that he's cooperating,
I mean, who knows, you know?
Can he reach out to him
and get him in that jail?
Tregler was worried about that,
and I don't blame him
because Nodier
was a tough fella.
[suspenseful music playing]
[James] At the time,
I was in the depths
of the jail
in St. Tammany Parish.
And Brandon visited me
over there.
Now, did he visit me
to make sure
I wasn't going to testify
against him, you know?
I don't know.
He seemed nervous.
He seemed very nervous.
[Mark Jackson] Tregler said,
"Brandon came and visited me
"a few days ago at the jail,
"and he just reminded me of
what I witnessed back in 1985,
"and he said that he knows
where my wife lives,
"he knows where
my kids go to school,
and I need to be quiet."
I wasn't worried about Brandon,
you know?
I was like,
"No, this has gotta be
This has gotta be dealt with
now or never."
I didn't care
if I lived or died.
[footsteps]
[Greg]
Doran was my first witness
who set the stage
with the grand jury.
[John] District attorney
tells the jurors, you know,
what we're here for
and what the case is about.
And then opens it up to me,
and I basically
just start to tell the story.
They wanted to know
about crime scene photos
and DNA,
and all these sort of things.
And I had to go over
the whole thing about Katrina,
and took a lot of the files
and the pictures
and the photos.
So, having been the only one
involved in the case
at that time
that had actually seen
the crime scene photos
and the gruesome nature
in which she was murdered
and the condition of the body.
I had to replay that over
and over and over in my mind
because I'm the only one
that could describe it
to this grand jury.
I didn't want to get off
into the weeds about ghosts.
You know, we just stayed
with the facts.
It was not
a cut-and-dry case,
and Tregler was gonna
be in handcuffs
and leg chains in a jail suit.
And my concern at that time
was the grand jury
was not going to like him,
and they weren't
going to believe him.
And I'm having
to walk out there like
Like the Hunchback
of Notre Dame in chains
and testify
to the grand jury, so
[Greg] They brought him over
from jail.
I met him somewhere
in the courthouse.
I sat and talked with him
a little bit,
and then I brought him in
to the grand jury.
[James] The grand jury's there.
And I looked everybody
straight in the face
and told them the story.
I witnessed the murder.
I saw it.
I saw him choke her to death.
I looked at the grand jury.
The sadness in their eyes,
you know?
[clock ticking]
[John] There's a time
that they deliberated,
and it was--
seemed like forever.
To my surprise,
the grand jury loved this guy.
They believed
everything he said
and he came across
as an honest,
sincere man who was trying
to exorcise demons
and do the right thing.
[James] Immediate relief.
That's how I felt.
Just getting it off my chest,
you know?
Like akin to a dead man's
confession.
This shadow
over my life was gone.
And it was 12-0
that they indicted Nodier
for a second-degree murder
of Dorothy Thompson.
[John] You know,
I couldn't believe it.
I said, you know,
after all this time
and all these things we did,
this is it.
We got him.
Right then and there
we have him.
And then we secured
an arrest warrant,
and we went looking for him.
[foreboding music playing]
[insects chirping]
[Mark] We immediately
went to Brandon's house.
Pickup truck wasn't there
at that time.
I told Doran that he's probably
going to run.
[crickets chirping]
[John] We were a little bit
disappointed
because we wanted to get him
right there, surprising him,
you know, and said,
"Hey, guess what?
Remember the pet cemetery?"
[police siren wailing]
He's nowhere to be found.
Nobody knows where he is.
And, yeah, he's in the wind.
[Mark] We didn't sleep
that night, really.
We were out all night
just looking at locations
and seeing if we could find
where he may have went.
[foreboding music continues]
And then we got
a call the next day
from his attorney,
wanting to turn him in.
We met him at the jail,
and Brandon turned himself in.
[reporter] Today, 58-year-old
Brandon Nodier from Arabi
surrendered to detectives.
A grand jury charged him
with the murder
of Dorothy Thompson.
[John] When we saw him,
he was played out.
He was described
as a fearsome-type character
back in his younger days,
but he wasn't much
of a threat at that point.
You could see in his eyes
when he looked at us,
he knew what he had done.
He knew we had him right.
He knew that the jig was up.
Toca neighbors say
an arrest in the Thompson murder
after 27 years does give them
a bit of closure to a crime
that sent shock waves
through this small community.
In the years since the murder,
some locals have reported
seeing Thompson's ghost
walking through
the old pet cemetery.
We do a search warrant
on Brandon Nodier's house
after he's arrested.
[eerie music playing]
We go to the house,
Brandon Nodier's wife
Bonnie's there.
She didn't really give us
much trouble.
She actually
talked about a ghost.
She unsolicited says,
"Look, I don't know anything
about the murder,
"but I can tell you
that Dorothy's ghost
pushed Brandon
off of a roof one time."
-[birds cawing]
-[wings fluttering]
He conveyed to her
that Dorothy's ghost
pushed him off the roof,
and he fell down
and broke his arm.
Me and Doran, we just looked
at each other and said,
"Wow, this is another one.
I mean, this is crazy."
[pensive music playing]
[car whooshing]
[John] You know,
there's a number of people
that all claim to have seen
Dorothy's ghost in this case.
Whether that's their mind
playing tricks on 'em,
could be their conscience,
their guilty conscience.
Who knows? I mean,
if there's something
beyond this world that,
you know,
some people are tuned into
and other people are not,
some level of consciousness
or intuition
that draws people
to these type of things.
And I think as a homicide
or a death investigator,
you have to have
that sixth sense.
You have to have some type
of gut feeling about things.
So, you know, maybe
So maybe we need to keep
an open mind on this.
[car horn blaring]
[low-key music playing]
[Mark] They set a trial date
for Nodier.
As the trial got closer,
we knew that Tregler
was our only shot
at getting a conviction,
so we really needed
Tregler on board.
[John] Giving testimony
to the grand jury
is a very different thing
than a trial in court.
Because when
you gotta sit there and face
an evil son of a bitch
like Nodier, you know,
giving you the evil eye
the whole time,
it's a much different thing.
And all of a sudden,
Nodier shows up
with Pat Fanning,
best defense attorney probably
in the state at the time.
And I thought, you know,
"We might be fucked here, man."
[Jack] At his peak,
I would categorize him
as one of the best criminal
defense lawyers in the area.
How Nodier winds up
with Pat, I don't know,
but I know Pat
doesn't work for nothing.
At the time,
you know, I'm thinking,
where-- where did he get
this money from?
Is it the money that
was at the pet cemetery
that he may have found?
[paper rustling]
[Pat Fanning] The first time
I met my client,
Brandon Nodier,
was in St. Bernard
Parish Prison.
And instead of being through
a Plexiglas on phones,
they put us in the chapel,
which was a little
strange, a little odd place
to be meeting
with a guy accused of murder,
and there'd be a big crucifix
and holy pictures all around.
And we'd be sitting there
cursing up a storm,
talking about whether or not
he killed this lady.
-[water babbling]
-[birds chirping]
Of course, he told me
he did not do it.
But he had some real bad luck
because not many
people go fishing
in the Mississippi River.
I mean, it's full of chemical
pollutants and mud and stuff.
But people go out there
and fish catfish,
trying to catch
what we call river cats,
and somebody hooked
a body on the bottom.
So, that's just bad luck.
And how they got it up,
you know,
I've heard that it was
200 pounds of chain.
They must have thought
they had a hell of a catfish,
and here comes
Dorothy popping up.
[birds chirping]
Tregler says that Brandon
asked him to take a ride
with him at midnight
to the pet cemetery.
But he didn't know why
and he didn't even ask why.
Well, that's bullshit.
And then he says he was
a spectator to the whole thing.
So, let's see. [clears throat]
Brandon's going
to kill this lady.
Let me bring a witness
to watch.
How stupid is that?
[ominous music playing]
-[seagulls cawing]
-[water lapping]
Typically, you would have
a court date set,
and in advance
of the court date,
I'd call and say,
"Greg, why don't we sit down
"and start talking
about a plea bargain?
"Can we get rid of this thing
before we go to court?
What can we do?
You got a crappy case."
And then, of course,
we both puff our chests out,
and he would say, "I got two
eyewitnesses and a motive."
And I'd say, "Yeah, you got
two pieces of shit.
"You got a victim who put
the 'funk' in 'dysfunctional'
"when it comes to her family
and her history.
"She whacked
the last two husbands.
Nobody's gonna feel
sorry for her."
"So, you know, Greg,
"you don't have
the strongest case in the world,
so what are we gonna do?"
[Greg] That may have been
where I said, "Okay, look,
give us 15 years,"
and somehow
we arrived at 10 years.
[Pat] But the law at the time
of the offense
was that you had to do
50% of your sentence
for a violent crime.
So you're really going
to have to do five,
and he's got a year
and a half credit,
so he's gonna get out
in three and a half.
Now, you and I,
three and a half
would be a long time.
A guy like Brandon Nodier,
polite people would say
he could do that
standing on his head.
Guys like me would say,
"Brandon, you could do that
sitting on the shitter."
[reporter] A plea deal
was eventually reached
with Nodier's defense team,
the sentence being
10 years in prison
for a reduced
manslaughter charge.
[Pat] I told my client,
"You know, if you go to trial,
"there's a chance
you can win this case,
"but there's a chance
they win the case.
"And if they win,
you get life in Angola.
"If we do this deal,
you get 10 minus
your good time and things."
And so it was his decision
to take the safe route.
It's always better to get
numbers instead of letters.
Give me an L, give me an I,
give me an F, give me an E.
That's a long time.
[reporter]
Although justice prevailed,
the judge himself called
Nodier's sentence a bargain.
[train whistle blows]
[paper rustling]
[John] If you'd have told me
that the way we were going
to solve this case is by
witnesses coming forward
because they had seen
this murdered woman's ghost,
I'd have called you a liar.
That poor lady
is wandering the earth now.
I think she's crying out
for justice.
But-- But that's indeed
what happened.
[James] When that apparition
happened,
I knew who it was, you know?
I had no doubt
in my mind who it was.
I knew it was Dorothy's spirit.
Her soul couldn't rest
until justice was served.
Brandon was held
accountable for it,
and, you know,
from then on, I felt at peace.
I'm sure Dorothy's
at peace, also.
I truly believe Dorothy's soul
is at rest, finally.
[leaves rustling]
[bird cawing]
I don't quite believe in God,
but I do believe in ghosts,
and that's largely
through my experiences
at the pet cemetery.
[eerie music playing]
There is this ghostly
presence there.
[eerie music continues]
[bird cawing]
There's this sort of
omniscient eeriness.
Just that something is wrong.
And I've always felt that there,
even not-- Even knowing
all of the tragedies
that happened at the property.
A lot of the lore about the
pet cemetery surrounds ghosts.
It surrounds Dorothy herself
being murdered there.
It surrounds her husbands who
died in strange circumstances.
And surrounds
the story of the treasure,
the quote, unquote
"hidden fortune."
That seems to be
the part of the story
that's lived on
most, uh, infamously,
is that there's allegedly
hidden money back in there.
[lulling music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[John] The murder case itself,
in my mind, was resolved.
You know, we got justice
for Dorothy.
And I thought that would be
the last I heard of it.
Then a newspaper article
came out.
The headlines are
"Written in Blood,"
and it revealed
all these other things
about that pet cemetery.
And I knew right then
that this wasn't going
to end right there.
You know, I knew that this was
going to go on and on and on.
[rain pattering]
[thunder rumbling]
[Ben Alexander-Bloch]
I learned that Nodier
had been arrested
for Dorothy's murder.
It's quite unusual
as a journalist to discover,
you know, that somebody
who had died themselves
had potentially killed two other
people on a property, right?
[gunshot]
[gunshots]
So, I started looking into,
okay, what's driving her?
What's the motive here?
Why did she kill these men?
So, I start by looking
at Dorothy's mother, Grace.
[suspenseful music playing]
She's around at the time
of these deaths.
And also, she's the one
that started this pet cemetery,
which is kind of quirky enough.
Why would somebody
start a pet cemetery, right?
I saw that Grace,
she was tied to Kansas City.
And I began digging
and looking at archives
from Kansas City newspapers
and in some
of the police records.
But little did I know
that pulling on that string
would lead to, you know,
more murder,
bloodshed, killings.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter] Officer Wigan
on duty at the depot
at the time of the crime.
Redcap Solomon,
who narrowly escaped death.
Mrs. Lottie West
gives an eyewitness account
of the crime.
[Ben] It turned out that Grace
had fled this murder charge
after killing her ex-husband's
new wife, Mary.
[Michael Binder]
Grace's first husband
was called Jack Thompson,
and despite the fact
they had both divorced,
they continued an affair.
At that point, Jack was
very highly influential
in the Kansas City mob.
And put Grace and Dorothy up
at a very fancy hotel.
During the midst
of the Great Depression,
when people were starving,
he bought them a car
and lavished them with gifts.
Even though
he wasn't her father,
Dorothy refers to Jack
as "Daddy Jack,"
essentially as her father.
This was Grace.
I think this might have been
her mug shot.
Dorothy used to tell me stories
about her mother
and Daddy Jack,
who was Jack Thompson,
who was the attorney
for one of the first Mafia
in the United States,
in Kansas City.
He had a lot of connections.
He knew a lot of people.
[Ben] This was Prohibition era
when, you know,
the mob was going strong.
[reporter] Sergeant Phil Style
of the Kansas City Police
points to bullet holes
in the car
in which Special Agent Caffrey
was killed at the wheel.
[Ben] Grace is quite a figure,
and she kept her own
amongst these mobsters,
it seems, in Kansas City.
[gunshot]
[Michael]
Grace became very obsessed
with the idea
of remarrying Jack.
Jack, in the meantime, however,
had already remarried
a woman named Mary Kirschner
and just kind of kept
Grace on the side.
So, on the 13th of September,
1934,
Mary and Jack Thompson
were coming home from a dinner
in downtown Kansas City.
And as they were coming up
the porch steps,
Grace stepped out
from behind the shadows
with an automatic pistol
and opened fire.
[gunshots]
[gunshots continue]
Firing five times,
hitting Mary three times,
once in the breast,
once in the groin,
once in the abdomen.
Another bullet had ricocheted
off the porch column
into Grace's forehead.
And then she was arrested
later that night.
As she's being dragged off,
she said she was glad
she did what she did
and that no one
would ever touch her,
that she would be protected.
[Ben] Jack Thompson used
some of his influence
to get it so she doesn't
have to stand trial.
He gets it so she goes
to an asylum instead.
[dour music playing]
[Michael] And she's brought
to the State Hospital No. 2
at St. Joseph, Missouri,
and is there
for not quite a year.
One day, in 1935,
her elderly mother
and her then
13-year-old daughter, Dorothy,
drive up to the hospital,
pick Grace up
and just drive away.
[swinging upbeat
music playing]
And end up in New Orleans.
-Hold that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Where's that tiger? ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Turn that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Hold that tiger ♪
-Meow ♪
-Turn that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
Where's that tiger? ♪
[Ben] Grace purchased
a storefront on Freret Street
where she ran a very
successful flower shop.
And she also became
the organist
at Our Lady of Lourdes Church
a few blocks away.
She seems to like
attention of a certain sort.
-Meow! Meow! ♪
-Hold that tiger ♪
Meow! ♪
[haunting music playing]
[Ben] She goes on
to publish these books
on horticulture and music.
[Michael]
She writes about, you know,
how peaceful her garden is
and all of this.
I think that was really
sort of a blueprint
for the pet cemetery.
[sign buzzing]
[Ben] In 1935,
Jack Thompson
comes to visit Grace
in the Jung Hotel
in New Orleans.
[Michael] Jack Thompson
was a very big gambler.
That's how Grace alleges
he made his fortune.
[Ben] He had this
half-million dollars gambling
mob fortune with him,
supposedly,
down at the Jung Hotel
in New Orleans.
Jack flagged down a bellhop
after he started having
chest pains that evening.
That night,
he dies of a heart attack.
[Michael] He was 45 years old
at the time.
He wasn't very old.
[Ben] Suspicious circumstances
to say the least.
[disquieting music playing]
The rumor is it was actually
Grace who killed Jack Thompson,
and that she was the one
that walked away
with this half-million dollars
that's buried somewhere
in the pet cemetery.
And it's still there
to this day.
[Kristine Wood] Grace Thompson
was my grandmother.
When I heard that Jack Thompson
had had a heart attack,
I immediately
thought about Grace
and her extensive knowledge
about flowers and toxins.
And I think Grace poisoned him
with toxins from flowers.
That is something
she would understand, clearly.
[Ben] Grace is interviewed
at the time
by the New Orleans police.
And so she puts it
out there, Grace,
that he had
this half a million dollars,
and that this would
have been a motive
to kill him
and steal this money.
[Michael] At that moment,
that's when the police
in Kansas City start saying
that they should be
looking in New Orleans
for Grace Thompson.
[Ben] She's found by
a Kansas City policewoman.
She's extradited and she's
found guilty of murder.
Dorothy cries
as her mother's taken away.
But eventually,
the Missouri Supreme Court
finds, like, a mistrial,
and Grace manages
to escape again
to St. Bernard
with Dorothy in tow
and vanish into the bayou.
[insects chirring]
[vocalist humming]
There is a sense that it's
the end of the world, right?
This is where the U.S.
kind of feeds into the ocean.
And, you know, there aren't
people vacationing out here
like-- like other parts of--
You know, there aren't
beaches out here, right?
It's not, like, a popular
resort town, right?
This is, um, the marsh.
[eerie humming continues]
It is this otherworldly place.
[pensive music playing]
So, in 1946,
Grace starts the pet cemetery.
She buys this Edwardian manor
that had been built in 1909.
It almost seems like
more of a tropical paradise
with this macaw bird that's
perched on Grace's shoulder.
[squawking]
[Michael] It was very much
sort of cut off
from the rest of the world.
It was in Toca, Louisiana,
which at that time,
a lot of St. Bernard
didn't have electricity, even.
So it was very much isolated
from the rest of the world.
And she had hundreds
of trees and plants
and exotic flowers
that she planted there.
It was really meant
to be her own paradise.
[Ben] The odd thing is
that she's hiding,
but then she's doing
these very flamboyant things
that-- that draw attention--
like a pet cemetery.
[interviewer] Mrs. Thompson,
what kind of animals
do you have buried here?
We have, uh, a thousand dogs.
We have 350 cats.
We have, uh, two cheetahs.
We have a 20-foot,
uh, boa constrictor.
The snake was buried
with a real hearse,
three, uh, limousines,
and about 35 other people
out here.
The most famous of animals
to be buried there
was a snake named Serita
that had performed once
on The Johnny Carson Show.
It was owned
by an exotic dancer
who worked on Bourbon Street.
They, uh, sang, and they had
a preacher with them.
And, uh, they were all
very much in earnest, too.
There wasn't any laughing
or anything like that about it.
[Michael] It was placed
into a custom-built,
satin-lined coffin,
and when it was lowered
into the ground,
a choir sang
"Goodnight, Irene."
The mourners then went
to the Rodriguez store
up the road
and had pies and soft drinks.
[interviewer]
Did you ever get the feeling
that pets are better
than people sometimes?
Oh, yes. I think that
right now, yes, indeed.
To tell you the truth,
I don't like to be ugly,
but I don't like people much.
I-- I like the pets.
[Michael]
They were very much outsiders.
Children were told to stay away
from the pet cemetery.
People really didn't want
much to do with them.
Grace said when she first
opened the pet cemetery,
her neighbors
would bark like a dog
and meow like a cat
when they would see her.
So there was that
sort of hostility a little bit.
[train whistle blows]
[pensive music playing]
[train bells clanging]
[John]
Reading the Ben Bloch article,
that blew me away.
I had no idea about Grace
and her sordid past.
This woman is on the run,
has buried money.
I had no idea
about any of that stuff.
That changed my perspective
of Grace and Dorothy.
Dorothy apparently married
these bad men,
and she was in
abusive marriages,
and both of these guys
turned up dead.
But what we know about Grace
is that she was definitely
a cold-blooded killer.
She didn't take any shit.
I mean, you know,
if you crossed her,
you were dead.
She was very protective
of Dorothy, by all accounts.
So, if these men
were being abusive
or threatening her daughter,
I mean, your days
were numbered.
I do believe now that,
actually,
Grace is the one that killed
Dorothy's two husbands.
[wind chimes tinkling]
I don't think Dorothy
was capable of killing anybody
because I think
if that's the case,
Brandon would've been
gone a long time ago.
Do you think that Brandon
would've been living in there
acting like that
if Grace would've been living?
No.
I think the story goes,
Grace and Dorothy
living out there,
sometimes men
would stop by thinking,
"Well, we're gonna get
a girlfriend."
And Grace made it quite clear,
"Get off the property
while you can."
And some of 'em
didn't make it, you know?
[sinister music playing]
[Michael] Dorothy didn't have
an easy go of things.
She spent most of her life
in various addictions.
I think a pretty good
explanation for Dorothy
is that she was raised
by this woman.
That should, I think, garner
some-- some sympathy for her.
[water dripping]
I don't know why
Grace became so violent.
Whatever went wrong,
it was really wrong.
My mother made
terrible decisions.
Maybe she couldn't help it,
but as angry as I was,
things happen.
And it's not
to dismiss it at all,
but how long
do you want to be angry?
And if you don't forgive,
what are you doing to yourself?
[eerie music playing]
[birds chirping]
[Patricia] When Dorothy died,
the will stated
I own 51% of the cemetery,
which the three children
had the rest.
They said,
"No, we don't want it."
They wanted nothing
to do with it.
[crow cawing]
[Kristine] When my brother
and my sister and I
talked about
our mother's murder,
the first thought
we all shared was,
nothing there
was important anymore.
[insects chirping]
[Patricia] I'm gonna open it up
as a cemetery like before,
and that's gonna be
because of Dorothy and Grace.
It's gonna be
a working pet cemetery.
I had the priest
go out there three times
to do exorcisms on the property.
So the property is blessed.
It is not a bad property.
[insects chirping]
[creature barking]
[John]
Every time you turn around,
terrible things
continue to happen
involving this property.
So, in 2015,
Patricia Newman hires a Realtor
by the name of Barbara Lynchard
in an attempt
to sell the property
where the pet cemetery stood.
Five years goes by,
the property doesn't sell.
In 2020, Ms. Lynchard
is the victim
of a murder-suicide
with her husband and daughter
just north of here.
When you think
the story is over,
something else
always comes up.
[solemn music playing]
I'm not entirely sure
if I believe in curses,
but I think if they do exist,
that place
is a candidate for it.
With all of the bloodshed
that happened there
the density of it just grows.
It gets into this continued
conundrum of tragedy,
this-- this multiplying hell.
[Ben]
There's a lot of eerie things
that have happened on this land
that are hard to explain.
How do you tie them
all together?
Is it the fact that
they started a cemetery there
that then opened up
past trauma?
The more that you dug down
into the cemetery,
the more that you saw
buried deep.
Maybe there's
this treasure down there,
but there's definitely bodies.
[leaves crunching]
There's romantic entanglements
that lead to murder.
Bloodshed tied
to Native American
burial grounds.
Colonization and slavery.
[John] At first, I thought,
well, maybe this is just
a bunch of strange coincidences
that happened on this property.
That can explain
some of it away.
But it doesn't explain
these ghost sightings.
It doesn't explain what
occurred on this property
[gunshot]
going back to the 1800s.
Makes you question
is there some other force here?
I just hope
I'm on the good side of it,
that's all I'm telling you,
because anybody that winds up
on the bad side of any of this,
whatever force that is
down there,
winds up dead.
I wear my Saint Michael medal
every day.
It's been blessed
by the archbishop.
I never take it off, you know?
Whether it helps me or not,
I don't know.
It can't hurt, right?
In an abundance of caution,
as they say.
[leaves crunching underfoot]
This is going to be a place
that stays with me
probably till I die.
[eerie music playing]
[lulling music playing]
[police siren wailing]
[John Doran]
It was March 15th.
I know that's
the Ides of March.
That day, we were involved
in a hostage situation
and a shootout.
[indistinct police
radio chatter]
No one got injured or killed,
thank God.
[steam whistling]
I get home, and I get a call
late that night
from one of my
night shift detectives
that somebody was calling in
with information on a murder.
Some kind of
pet cemetery case
or something
y'all are working on.
I said,
"You gotta be kidding."
[police siren wailing]
[indistinct
police radio chatter]
We make a trip on out
to the St. Tammany lockup.
And that's when we meet
James Tregler.
I had no idea who this guy was.
I had never seen him before.
I had never heard his name.
This was a guy
that was a total sleeper.
You know,
when I first saw him,
he didn't look like a menace
or anything to anybody.
He looked like
an English professor.
He had little
wire-framed glasses.
I'm kind of thinking to myself,
"Is he actually the murderer?"
[discordant music playing]
[James Tregler]
I'd gotten involved with some
different crimes,
unfortunately.
[fire whooshing]
Auto theft, robberies,
doing all kind of dirty deeds
like that.
I tried to burn my truck,
for insurance.
[fire crackling]
I should have blown my head off
because I blew the truck
in half
and, uh, got arrested for that.
[door slams]
[lock tumbles]
[buzzer droning]
One day I'm sitting
in the cell by myself
[dour music playing]
And it just got
so freezing cold.
And it was cold like I've
never been so cold in my life.
There was definitely
a presence there.
[static crackling]
It was the avenging angel.
It was Dorothy.
[water bubbling]
I knew either
I tell what happened
or I'm going to hell.
[keys rattling]
And that's when
I got on the phone.
"Call up St. Bernard
right now, now!
Call 'em up,
tell him to come talk to me."
I wanted this sin off my soul.
[John] As he's talking,
he's kind of going
into that same spiel
that Jose Cruz gave us.
[Jose Cruz] He did tell me
he killed her.
-Who are we talking about?
-Brandon.
[John] You know his last name?
Nodier. Nodier.
Alright, is this who
we're talking about?
[Jose] Yes, sir.
[John] He was telling us
that Brandon killed Dorothy
and all that sort of stuff.
So finally I cut him off
and I says,
"How do you know all of this?"
And he just comes
out and says,
"'Cause I was there.
I saw him do it."
[eerie music playing]
[grass rustling]
[creature howling]
[bird cawing]
[chimes tinging]
[suspenseful music playing]
[James] Back then,
I had no direction in my life,
no morals, no anything.
You know, I just drifted
whichever way
the circumstances took me.
[vocalist humming]
Let's see, I met Brandon
it have been in the early '80s.
We met through our circle
of people doing construction
and stuff like that.
He knew I did electric work,
so I would help him out
with different things.
I'd gotten involved
with some crimes with him,
unfortunately, you know?
Stolen merchandise
and things like that, so
He was intelligent and violent.
And he had
a reputation for that.
If he was in public
and anybody offended him,
you know, he would
[laughs]
He would threaten them.
At the time,
I looked up to him.
Nobody messed with him,
you know, that kind of thing.
[pensive music playing]
[birds chirping]
I believe the first time
I went to the pet cemetery,
I went to look
at the electric for Brandon.
You'd come up the driveway
in beautiful oak trees
and manicured lawn
with the pet graves
in the front.
The house wasn't falling down,
but it, you know,
could use a paint job.
You know, and I met Dorothy.
"Hi, how are you doing?"
You know,
and she introduced herself.
And I think they were
doing a monkey burial
when I was there, as I recall.
Kind of like the old movie, uh,
Sunset Boulevard.
So, yeah.
Miss Dorothy was like,
you know,
a kindly grandma to me.
She had a bunch of old,
antique 1920s, '30s magazines.
I asked her about 'em,
and she said,
"Well, of course, take 'em all.
"You know, those were
my mother's,
and I'm glad somebody
wants them."
That kind of thing, so
He was very lucid,
he was very direct,
and he basically goes into,
you know,
this long, detailed story
about the night of the murder.
He remembered it
in great detail.
[somber music playing]
[James] Brandon had asked me
to come take a ride with him.
So we drove
in his pickup truck.
It was after dark,
and it was a
You know, a quiet night.
So, it's pitch-black out there.
So we rode down
to Dorothy's house.
-[vehicle approaching]
-[wind chimes tinging]
And we pulled up
to the house, it was dark,
and we're standing outside.
And I looked at the house,
I was like,
"Man, you got termites
under here."
And I knocked on the--
on the thing.
I said,
"Man, you gotta fix this."
And Dorothy is like,
"Who's there?" or something.
You know, was startled.
And Brandon went inside
and, uh, choked her
till she passed out.
Their blood, blue and red,
makes things so clear!
[James] And I came in.
She's on the floor,
and Brandon's getting up
from choking her.
[chatter on TV continues]
And she woke up.
You know,
and I screamed at Brandon,
"She's still alive!
She's still alive!"
And he's like,
"Go outside, go outside.
Meet-- Go sit in the truck."
[wind chimes jingling]
And Brandon immediately
grabbed her again by the throat
and was choking her.
And he choked her to death.
Brandon came out with
the body wrapped in a sheet,
and he had an electric cord
around her neck.
And he wrapped her in chains
that he had
in the back of the truck.
I just sat there, just frozen,
staring straight ahead,
you know, just freaking out.
[ominous music playing]
[John] From the start,
he makes it clear
that he had nothing to do
with her murder.
He had no inkling that Brandon
was going to kill Dorothy.
[ominous music continues]
He went down there
under the guise
of helping Brandon
move some of his belongings
that were down at the property.
[James] We drove
to the old ferry landing,
and he dumped the body there.
Brandon was very strong,
so he just picked her up
like she was a, you know,
bag of potato chips.
And then, you know,
took her out of the truck
and threw her in the water.
[water splashing]
I heard the body splash.
[foreboding music playing]
[Patricia Newman]
Isn't that horrible?
To think that somebody
would do something like that
to an older person.
Or to do that at all.
That your mind
would be that messed up
that you would do that.
[James] I should have
stopped it, you know?
I should have stopped
Brandon when Dorothy
took that big, deep breath.
You know, but I was just
overcome with fear.
I'd have been dead too,
you know?
Let's be honest here.
Brandon wouldn't have
hesitated.
You know,
Brandon's a scary man.
But I didn't realize
he was evil like that.
[bird cawing]
[John] You know,
I'm always skeptical.
I don't know this guy.
Is he telling us the truth?
Is he not?
So let's check out some of
the facts he's saying, right?
This is the spot right here
where she was dumped
into the Mississippi River,
and it's consistent with where
the body turns up downriver.
The condition that the body
was in and how she was killed
and the fact that she was
wrapped in chains
with a bag on her head
is just how he described
everything to us.
[tense music playing]
Everything that Tregler said
matched up
with what we-- we had
already known
or what we thought we knew
and what the evidence showed us.
Whether or not his involvement
was more than that,
you know, we'll never know.
[insects chirring]
Ms. Thompson weighed
probably 150,
155 when she was killed.
200 pounds of chains
is giving you 350 pounds.
So, uh, we was debating on if
one person could do this or not.
[James] After the murder,
I just disassociated
what happened in my mind
and buried it
and just continued on
with life as normal.
Like nothing ever happened.
I just went back to my life of,
you know,
trying to function
and not doing a very good job
at it, so, yeah.
But over the years,
Dorothy's ghost
just kept pulling on me,
pulling on me to do something.
And, uh, finally I couldn't
live with it anymore
and, you know, contacted
the, uh, St. Bernard Sheriffs
and told them what I knew.
[water lapping]
[John] You know, now here
you have two people
that are being tormented
by Dorothy's ghost.
That door that I had locked
just swung wide open.
[John] Tregler is talking
the same thing
that Jose Cruz talked about,
about seeing her ghost
and being hounded
by this woman's ghost.
Dorothy's roaming the earth,
seeking justice,
and she's coming to him
as a portal, I guess,
to get to us.
[eerie music playing]
[water lapping]
[James] There is such a thing
as ghosts, you know?
[water gurgling]
I quickly denied it, but I had
a feeling that's what it was.
We have immortal souls.
Now, are they trapped here
or do I know
all the workings of it?
No. Uh-uh. No.
But they're real,
I can guarantee you.
Things can be cursed.
[John] Now we got to keep
Tregler on the hook.
He's got to testify.
Got to convince
the district attorney
that he's telling us the truth.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Greg Noto]
I can go back 51 years
when I joined
the police department.
I have seen a lot of things.
First-degree murder,
second-degree murder,
sex crimes, aggravated rape,
crimes like that.
-Send her both and see
-Yeah.
-which one that they like.
-Okay.
[Greg]
And nothing surprises me.
It's human nature.
I don't want to say
I'm immune to it,
but I just roll
with the punches.
Tregler wanted
to have immunity,
which means
he would testify for me
and I would not prosecute him
for admitting that he was
involved in this 25 years ago.
I went to great lengths
to get immunity for the guy
because I thought
his testimony was vital.
[pensive music playing]
[Jack Stephens]
And that was when
the ball really started
rolling.
Once the DA decided that he was
gonna be involved in this
and he was gonna actively
pursue the case
and he was gonna grant immunity,
Nodier had a problem.
[metal detector beeps]
[John]
So the district attorney chose
to take it
through a grand jury.
A grand jury, it's 12 people
selected from their community.
There's no judge.
And it helps
the district attorney
to establish whether there's
enough evidence to go to trial.
Get all of the facts out there,
get Tregler on record
because, I mean,
anything can happen to him.
You know, if Nodier gets wind
that he's cooperating,
I mean, who knows, you know?
Can he reach out to him
and get him in that jail?
Tregler was worried about that,
and I don't blame him
because Nodier
was a tough fella.
[suspenseful music playing]
[James] At the time,
I was in the depths
of the jail
in St. Tammany Parish.
And Brandon visited me
over there.
Now, did he visit me
to make sure
I wasn't going to testify
against him, you know?
I don't know.
He seemed nervous.
He seemed very nervous.
[Mark Jackson] Tregler said,
"Brandon came and visited me
"a few days ago at the jail,
"and he just reminded me of
what I witnessed back in 1985,
"and he said that he knows
where my wife lives,
"he knows where
my kids go to school,
and I need to be quiet."
I wasn't worried about Brandon,
you know?
I was like,
"No, this has gotta be
This has gotta be dealt with
now or never."
I didn't care
if I lived or died.
[footsteps]
[Greg]
Doran was my first witness
who set the stage
with the grand jury.
[John] District attorney
tells the jurors, you know,
what we're here for
and what the case is about.
And then opens it up to me,
and I basically
just start to tell the story.
They wanted to know
about crime scene photos
and DNA,
and all these sort of things.
And I had to go over
the whole thing about Katrina,
and took a lot of the files
and the pictures
and the photos.
So, having been the only one
involved in the case
at that time
that had actually seen
the crime scene photos
and the gruesome nature
in which she was murdered
and the condition of the body.
I had to replay that over
and over and over in my mind
because I'm the only one
that could describe it
to this grand jury.
I didn't want to get off
into the weeds about ghosts.
You know, we just stayed
with the facts.
It was not
a cut-and-dry case,
and Tregler was gonna
be in handcuffs
and leg chains in a jail suit.
And my concern at that time
was the grand jury
was not going to like him,
and they weren't
going to believe him.
And I'm having
to walk out there like
Like the Hunchback
of Notre Dame in chains
and testify
to the grand jury, so
[Greg] They brought him over
from jail.
I met him somewhere
in the courthouse.
I sat and talked with him
a little bit,
and then I brought him in
to the grand jury.
[James] The grand jury's there.
And I looked everybody
straight in the face
and told them the story.
I witnessed the murder.
I saw it.
I saw him choke her to death.
I looked at the grand jury.
The sadness in their eyes,
you know?
[clock ticking]
[John] There's a time
that they deliberated,
and it was--
seemed like forever.
To my surprise,
the grand jury loved this guy.
They believed
everything he said
and he came across
as an honest,
sincere man who was trying
to exorcise demons
and do the right thing.
[James] Immediate relief.
That's how I felt.
Just getting it off my chest,
you know?
Like akin to a dead man's
confession.
This shadow
over my life was gone.
And it was 12-0
that they indicted Nodier
for a second-degree murder
of Dorothy Thompson.
[John] You know,
I couldn't believe it.
I said, you know,
after all this time
and all these things we did,
this is it.
We got him.
Right then and there
we have him.
And then we secured
an arrest warrant,
and we went looking for him.
[foreboding music playing]
[insects chirping]
[Mark] We immediately
went to Brandon's house.
Pickup truck wasn't there
at that time.
I told Doran that he's probably
going to run.
[crickets chirping]
[John] We were a little bit
disappointed
because we wanted to get him
right there, surprising him,
you know, and said,
"Hey, guess what?
Remember the pet cemetery?"
[police siren wailing]
He's nowhere to be found.
Nobody knows where he is.
And, yeah, he's in the wind.
[Mark] We didn't sleep
that night, really.
We were out all night
just looking at locations
and seeing if we could find
where he may have went.
[foreboding music continues]
And then we got
a call the next day
from his attorney,
wanting to turn him in.
We met him at the jail,
and Brandon turned himself in.
[reporter] Today, 58-year-old
Brandon Nodier from Arabi
surrendered to detectives.
A grand jury charged him
with the murder
of Dorothy Thompson.
[John] When we saw him,
he was played out.
He was described
as a fearsome-type character
back in his younger days,
but he wasn't much
of a threat at that point.
You could see in his eyes
when he looked at us,
he knew what he had done.
He knew we had him right.
He knew that the jig was up.
Toca neighbors say
an arrest in the Thompson murder
after 27 years does give them
a bit of closure to a crime
that sent shock waves
through this small community.
In the years since the murder,
some locals have reported
seeing Thompson's ghost
walking through
the old pet cemetery.
We do a search warrant
on Brandon Nodier's house
after he's arrested.
[eerie music playing]
We go to the house,
Brandon Nodier's wife
Bonnie's there.
She didn't really give us
much trouble.
She actually
talked about a ghost.
She unsolicited says,
"Look, I don't know anything
about the murder,
"but I can tell you
that Dorothy's ghost
pushed Brandon
off of a roof one time."
-[birds cawing]
-[wings fluttering]
He conveyed to her
that Dorothy's ghost
pushed him off the roof,
and he fell down
and broke his arm.
Me and Doran, we just looked
at each other and said,
"Wow, this is another one.
I mean, this is crazy."
[pensive music playing]
[car whooshing]
[John] You know,
there's a number of people
that all claim to have seen
Dorothy's ghost in this case.
Whether that's their mind
playing tricks on 'em,
could be their conscience,
their guilty conscience.
Who knows? I mean,
if there's something
beyond this world that,
you know,
some people are tuned into
and other people are not,
some level of consciousness
or intuition
that draws people
to these type of things.
And I think as a homicide
or a death investigator,
you have to have
that sixth sense.
You have to have some type
of gut feeling about things.
So, you know, maybe
So maybe we need to keep
an open mind on this.
[car horn blaring]
[low-key music playing]
[Mark] They set a trial date
for Nodier.
As the trial got closer,
we knew that Tregler
was our only shot
at getting a conviction,
so we really needed
Tregler on board.
[John] Giving testimony
to the grand jury
is a very different thing
than a trial in court.
Because when
you gotta sit there and face
an evil son of a bitch
like Nodier, you know,
giving you the evil eye
the whole time,
it's a much different thing.
And all of a sudden,
Nodier shows up
with Pat Fanning,
best defense attorney probably
in the state at the time.
And I thought, you know,
"We might be fucked here, man."
[Jack] At his peak,
I would categorize him
as one of the best criminal
defense lawyers in the area.
How Nodier winds up
with Pat, I don't know,
but I know Pat
doesn't work for nothing.
At the time,
you know, I'm thinking,
where-- where did he get
this money from?
Is it the money that
was at the pet cemetery
that he may have found?
[paper rustling]
[Pat Fanning] The first time
I met my client,
Brandon Nodier,
was in St. Bernard
Parish Prison.
And instead of being through
a Plexiglas on phones,
they put us in the chapel,
which was a little
strange, a little odd place
to be meeting
with a guy accused of murder,
and there'd be a big crucifix
and holy pictures all around.
And we'd be sitting there
cursing up a storm,
talking about whether or not
he killed this lady.
-[water babbling]
-[birds chirping]
Of course, he told me
he did not do it.
But he had some real bad luck
because not many
people go fishing
in the Mississippi River.
I mean, it's full of chemical
pollutants and mud and stuff.
But people go out there
and fish catfish,
trying to catch
what we call river cats,
and somebody hooked
a body on the bottom.
So, that's just bad luck.
And how they got it up,
you know,
I've heard that it was
200 pounds of chain.
They must have thought
they had a hell of a catfish,
and here comes
Dorothy popping up.
[birds chirping]
Tregler says that Brandon
asked him to take a ride
with him at midnight
to the pet cemetery.
But he didn't know why
and he didn't even ask why.
Well, that's bullshit.
And then he says he was
a spectator to the whole thing.
So, let's see. [clears throat]
Brandon's going
to kill this lady.
Let me bring a witness
to watch.
How stupid is that?
[ominous music playing]
-[seagulls cawing]
-[water lapping]
Typically, you would have
a court date set,
and in advance
of the court date,
I'd call and say,
"Greg, why don't we sit down
"and start talking
about a plea bargain?
"Can we get rid of this thing
before we go to court?
What can we do?
You got a crappy case."
And then, of course,
we both puff our chests out,
and he would say, "I got two
eyewitnesses and a motive."
And I'd say, "Yeah, you got
two pieces of shit.
"You got a victim who put
the 'funk' in 'dysfunctional'
"when it comes to her family
and her history.
"She whacked
the last two husbands.
Nobody's gonna feel
sorry for her."
"So, you know, Greg,
"you don't have
the strongest case in the world,
so what are we gonna do?"
[Greg] That may have been
where I said, "Okay, look,
give us 15 years,"
and somehow
we arrived at 10 years.
[Pat] But the law at the time
of the offense
was that you had to do
50% of your sentence
for a violent crime.
So you're really going
to have to do five,
and he's got a year
and a half credit,
so he's gonna get out
in three and a half.
Now, you and I,
three and a half
would be a long time.
A guy like Brandon Nodier,
polite people would say
he could do that
standing on his head.
Guys like me would say,
"Brandon, you could do that
sitting on the shitter."
[reporter] A plea deal
was eventually reached
with Nodier's defense team,
the sentence being
10 years in prison
for a reduced
manslaughter charge.
[Pat] I told my client,
"You know, if you go to trial,
"there's a chance
you can win this case,
"but there's a chance
they win the case.
"And if they win,
you get life in Angola.
"If we do this deal,
you get 10 minus
your good time and things."
And so it was his decision
to take the safe route.
It's always better to get
numbers instead of letters.
Give me an L, give me an I,
give me an F, give me an E.
That's a long time.
[reporter]
Although justice prevailed,
the judge himself called
Nodier's sentence a bargain.
[train whistle blows]
[paper rustling]
[John] If you'd have told me
that the way we were going
to solve this case is by
witnesses coming forward
because they had seen
this murdered woman's ghost,
I'd have called you a liar.
That poor lady
is wandering the earth now.
I think she's crying out
for justice.
But-- But that's indeed
what happened.
[James] When that apparition
happened,
I knew who it was, you know?
I had no doubt
in my mind who it was.
I knew it was Dorothy's spirit.
Her soul couldn't rest
until justice was served.
Brandon was held
accountable for it,
and, you know,
from then on, I felt at peace.
I'm sure Dorothy's
at peace, also.
I truly believe Dorothy's soul
is at rest, finally.
[leaves rustling]
[bird cawing]
I don't quite believe in God,
but I do believe in ghosts,
and that's largely
through my experiences
at the pet cemetery.
[eerie music playing]
There is this ghostly
presence there.
[eerie music continues]
[bird cawing]
There's this sort of
omniscient eeriness.
Just that something is wrong.
And I've always felt that there,
even not-- Even knowing
all of the tragedies
that happened at the property.
A lot of the lore about the
pet cemetery surrounds ghosts.
It surrounds Dorothy herself
being murdered there.
It surrounds her husbands who
died in strange circumstances.
And surrounds
the story of the treasure,
the quote, unquote
"hidden fortune."
That seems to be
the part of the story
that's lived on
most, uh, infamously,
is that there's allegedly
hidden money back in there.
[lulling music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[John] The murder case itself,
in my mind, was resolved.
You know, we got justice
for Dorothy.
And I thought that would be
the last I heard of it.
Then a newspaper article
came out.
The headlines are
"Written in Blood,"
and it revealed
all these other things
about that pet cemetery.
And I knew right then
that this wasn't going
to end right there.
You know, I knew that this was
going to go on and on and on.
[rain pattering]
[thunder rumbling]
[Ben Alexander-Bloch]
I learned that Nodier
had been arrested
for Dorothy's murder.
It's quite unusual
as a journalist to discover,
you know, that somebody
who had died themselves
had potentially killed two other
people on a property, right?
[gunshot]
[gunshots]
So, I started looking into,
okay, what's driving her?
What's the motive here?
Why did she kill these men?
So, I start by looking
at Dorothy's mother, Grace.
[suspenseful music playing]
She's around at the time
of these deaths.
And also, she's the one
that started this pet cemetery,
which is kind of quirky enough.
Why would somebody
start a pet cemetery, right?
I saw that Grace,
she was tied to Kansas City.
And I began digging
and looking at archives
from Kansas City newspapers
and in some
of the police records.
But little did I know
that pulling on that string
would lead to, you know,
more murder,
bloodshed, killings.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter] Officer Wigan
on duty at the depot
at the time of the crime.
Redcap Solomon,
who narrowly escaped death.
Mrs. Lottie West
gives an eyewitness account
of the crime.
[Ben] It turned out that Grace
had fled this murder charge
after killing her ex-husband's
new wife, Mary.
[Michael Binder]
Grace's first husband
was called Jack Thompson,
and despite the fact
they had both divorced,
they continued an affair.
At that point, Jack was
very highly influential
in the Kansas City mob.
And put Grace and Dorothy up
at a very fancy hotel.
During the midst
of the Great Depression,
when people were starving,
he bought them a car
and lavished them with gifts.
Even though
he wasn't her father,
Dorothy refers to Jack
as "Daddy Jack,"
essentially as her father.
This was Grace.
I think this might have been
her mug shot.
Dorothy used to tell me stories
about her mother
and Daddy Jack,
who was Jack Thompson,
who was the attorney
for one of the first Mafia
in the United States,
in Kansas City.
He had a lot of connections.
He knew a lot of people.
[Ben] This was Prohibition era
when, you know,
the mob was going strong.
[reporter] Sergeant Phil Style
of the Kansas City Police
points to bullet holes
in the car
in which Special Agent Caffrey
was killed at the wheel.
[Ben] Grace is quite a figure,
and she kept her own
amongst these mobsters,
it seems, in Kansas City.
[gunshot]
[Michael]
Grace became very obsessed
with the idea
of remarrying Jack.
Jack, in the meantime, however,
had already remarried
a woman named Mary Kirschner
and just kind of kept
Grace on the side.
So, on the 13th of September,
1934,
Mary and Jack Thompson
were coming home from a dinner
in downtown Kansas City.
And as they were coming up
the porch steps,
Grace stepped out
from behind the shadows
with an automatic pistol
and opened fire.
[gunshots]
[gunshots continue]
Firing five times,
hitting Mary three times,
once in the breast,
once in the groin,
once in the abdomen.
Another bullet had ricocheted
off the porch column
into Grace's forehead.
And then she was arrested
later that night.
As she's being dragged off,
she said she was glad
she did what she did
and that no one
would ever touch her,
that she would be protected.
[Ben] Jack Thompson used
some of his influence
to get it so she doesn't
have to stand trial.
He gets it so she goes
to an asylum instead.
[dour music playing]
[Michael] And she's brought
to the State Hospital No. 2
at St. Joseph, Missouri,
and is there
for not quite a year.
One day, in 1935,
her elderly mother
and her then
13-year-old daughter, Dorothy,
drive up to the hospital,
pick Grace up
and just drive away.
[swinging upbeat
music playing]
And end up in New Orleans.
-Hold that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Where's that tiger? ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Turn that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
-Hold that tiger ♪
-Meow ♪
-Turn that tiger ♪
-Meow! ♪
Where's that tiger? ♪
[Ben] Grace purchased
a storefront on Freret Street
where she ran a very
successful flower shop.
And she also became
the organist
at Our Lady of Lourdes Church
a few blocks away.
She seems to like
attention of a certain sort.
-Meow! Meow! ♪
-Hold that tiger ♪
Meow! ♪
[haunting music playing]
[Ben] She goes on
to publish these books
on horticulture and music.
[Michael]
She writes about, you know,
how peaceful her garden is
and all of this.
I think that was really
sort of a blueprint
for the pet cemetery.
[sign buzzing]
[Ben] In 1935,
Jack Thompson
comes to visit Grace
in the Jung Hotel
in New Orleans.
[Michael] Jack Thompson
was a very big gambler.
That's how Grace alleges
he made his fortune.
[Ben] He had this
half-million dollars gambling
mob fortune with him,
supposedly,
down at the Jung Hotel
in New Orleans.
Jack flagged down a bellhop
after he started having
chest pains that evening.
That night,
he dies of a heart attack.
[Michael] He was 45 years old
at the time.
He wasn't very old.
[Ben] Suspicious circumstances
to say the least.
[disquieting music playing]
The rumor is it was actually
Grace who killed Jack Thompson,
and that she was the one
that walked away
with this half-million dollars
that's buried somewhere
in the pet cemetery.
And it's still there
to this day.
[Kristine Wood] Grace Thompson
was my grandmother.
When I heard that Jack Thompson
had had a heart attack,
I immediately
thought about Grace
and her extensive knowledge
about flowers and toxins.
And I think Grace poisoned him
with toxins from flowers.
That is something
she would understand, clearly.
[Ben] Grace is interviewed
at the time
by the New Orleans police.
And so she puts it
out there, Grace,
that he had
this half a million dollars,
and that this would
have been a motive
to kill him
and steal this money.
[Michael] At that moment,
that's when the police
in Kansas City start saying
that they should be
looking in New Orleans
for Grace Thompson.
[Ben] She's found by
a Kansas City policewoman.
She's extradited and she's
found guilty of murder.
Dorothy cries
as her mother's taken away.
But eventually,
the Missouri Supreme Court
finds, like, a mistrial,
and Grace manages
to escape again
to St. Bernard
with Dorothy in tow
and vanish into the bayou.
[insects chirring]
[vocalist humming]
There is a sense that it's
the end of the world, right?
This is where the U.S.
kind of feeds into the ocean.
And, you know, there aren't
people vacationing out here
like-- like other parts of--
You know, there aren't
beaches out here, right?
It's not, like, a popular
resort town, right?
This is, um, the marsh.
[eerie humming continues]
It is this otherworldly place.
[pensive music playing]
So, in 1946,
Grace starts the pet cemetery.
She buys this Edwardian manor
that had been built in 1909.
It almost seems like
more of a tropical paradise
with this macaw bird that's
perched on Grace's shoulder.
[squawking]
[Michael] It was very much
sort of cut off
from the rest of the world.
It was in Toca, Louisiana,
which at that time,
a lot of St. Bernard
didn't have electricity, even.
So it was very much isolated
from the rest of the world.
And she had hundreds
of trees and plants
and exotic flowers
that she planted there.
It was really meant
to be her own paradise.
[Ben] The odd thing is
that she's hiding,
but then she's doing
these very flamboyant things
that-- that draw attention--
like a pet cemetery.
[interviewer] Mrs. Thompson,
what kind of animals
do you have buried here?
We have, uh, a thousand dogs.
We have 350 cats.
We have, uh, two cheetahs.
We have a 20-foot,
uh, boa constrictor.
The snake was buried
with a real hearse,
three, uh, limousines,
and about 35 other people
out here.
The most famous of animals
to be buried there
was a snake named Serita
that had performed once
on The Johnny Carson Show.
It was owned
by an exotic dancer
who worked on Bourbon Street.
They, uh, sang, and they had
a preacher with them.
And, uh, they were all
very much in earnest, too.
There wasn't any laughing
or anything like that about it.
[Michael] It was placed
into a custom-built,
satin-lined coffin,
and when it was lowered
into the ground,
a choir sang
"Goodnight, Irene."
The mourners then went
to the Rodriguez store
up the road
and had pies and soft drinks.
[interviewer]
Did you ever get the feeling
that pets are better
than people sometimes?
Oh, yes. I think that
right now, yes, indeed.
To tell you the truth,
I don't like to be ugly,
but I don't like people much.
I-- I like the pets.
[Michael]
They were very much outsiders.
Children were told to stay away
from the pet cemetery.
People really didn't want
much to do with them.
Grace said when she first
opened the pet cemetery,
her neighbors
would bark like a dog
and meow like a cat
when they would see her.
So there was that
sort of hostility a little bit.
[train whistle blows]
[pensive music playing]
[train bells clanging]
[John]
Reading the Ben Bloch article,
that blew me away.
I had no idea about Grace
and her sordid past.
This woman is on the run,
has buried money.
I had no idea
about any of that stuff.
That changed my perspective
of Grace and Dorothy.
Dorothy apparently married
these bad men,
and she was in
abusive marriages,
and both of these guys
turned up dead.
But what we know about Grace
is that she was definitely
a cold-blooded killer.
She didn't take any shit.
I mean, you know,
if you crossed her,
you were dead.
She was very protective
of Dorothy, by all accounts.
So, if these men
were being abusive
or threatening her daughter,
I mean, your days
were numbered.
I do believe now that,
actually,
Grace is the one that killed
Dorothy's two husbands.
[wind chimes tinkling]
I don't think Dorothy
was capable of killing anybody
because I think
if that's the case,
Brandon would've been
gone a long time ago.
Do you think that Brandon
would've been living in there
acting like that
if Grace would've been living?
No.
I think the story goes,
Grace and Dorothy
living out there,
sometimes men
would stop by thinking,
"Well, we're gonna get
a girlfriend."
And Grace made it quite clear,
"Get off the property
while you can."
And some of 'em
didn't make it, you know?
[sinister music playing]
[Michael] Dorothy didn't have
an easy go of things.
She spent most of her life
in various addictions.
I think a pretty good
explanation for Dorothy
is that she was raised
by this woman.
That should, I think, garner
some-- some sympathy for her.
[water dripping]
I don't know why
Grace became so violent.
Whatever went wrong,
it was really wrong.
My mother made
terrible decisions.
Maybe she couldn't help it,
but as angry as I was,
things happen.
And it's not
to dismiss it at all,
but how long
do you want to be angry?
And if you don't forgive,
what are you doing to yourself?
[eerie music playing]
[birds chirping]
[Patricia] When Dorothy died,
the will stated
I own 51% of the cemetery,
which the three children
had the rest.
They said,
"No, we don't want it."
They wanted nothing
to do with it.
[crow cawing]
[Kristine] When my brother
and my sister and I
talked about
our mother's murder,
the first thought
we all shared was,
nothing there
was important anymore.
[insects chirping]
[Patricia] I'm gonna open it up
as a cemetery like before,
and that's gonna be
because of Dorothy and Grace.
It's gonna be
a working pet cemetery.
I had the priest
go out there three times
to do exorcisms on the property.
So the property is blessed.
It is not a bad property.
[insects chirping]
[creature barking]
[John]
Every time you turn around,
terrible things
continue to happen
involving this property.
So, in 2015,
Patricia Newman hires a Realtor
by the name of Barbara Lynchard
in an attempt
to sell the property
where the pet cemetery stood.
Five years goes by,
the property doesn't sell.
In 2020, Ms. Lynchard
is the victim
of a murder-suicide
with her husband and daughter
just north of here.
When you think
the story is over,
something else
always comes up.
[solemn music playing]
I'm not entirely sure
if I believe in curses,
but I think if they do exist,
that place
is a candidate for it.
With all of the bloodshed
that happened there
the density of it just grows.
It gets into this continued
conundrum of tragedy,
this-- this multiplying hell.
[Ben]
There's a lot of eerie things
that have happened on this land
that are hard to explain.
How do you tie them
all together?
Is it the fact that
they started a cemetery there
that then opened up
past trauma?
The more that you dug down
into the cemetery,
the more that you saw
buried deep.
Maybe there's
this treasure down there,
but there's definitely bodies.
[leaves crunching]
There's romantic entanglements
that lead to murder.
Bloodshed tied
to Native American
burial grounds.
Colonization and slavery.
[John] At first, I thought,
well, maybe this is just
a bunch of strange coincidences
that happened on this property.
That can explain
some of it away.
But it doesn't explain
these ghost sightings.
It doesn't explain what
occurred on this property
[gunshot]
going back to the 1800s.
Makes you question
is there some other force here?
I just hope
I'm on the good side of it,
that's all I'm telling you,
because anybody that winds up
on the bad side of any of this,
whatever force that is
down there,
winds up dead.
I wear my Saint Michael medal
every day.
It's been blessed
by the archbishop.
I never take it off, you know?
Whether it helps me or not,
I don't know.
It can't hurt, right?
In an abundance of caution,
as they say.
[leaves crunching underfoot]
This is going to be a place
that stays with me
probably till I die.
[eerie music playing]
[lulling music playing]