Was Richard McElveen Involved in the KK’s Corner Murders?

Richard McElveen, the son of former Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Wayne McElveen, was investigated in connection with the 1997 KK’s Corner murders and formally cleared. He gave blood and hair samples, passed a polygraph, had an alibi confirmed by multiple witnesses, and was excluded by the only eyewitness when she viewed a photo lineup that included him. No charge was ever brought against him. His name nevertheless remained tied to the case because the convicted killer, Thomas Frank Cisco, later named him in one of a long series of shifting and uncorroborated statements.

Why His Name Came Up

Around midnight on July 5, 1997, three people were shot inside the cooler of KK’s Corner, a convenience store at Tom Hebert Road and Highway 14 in Calcasieu Parish: store employees Marty LeBouef, 21, and Stacie Reeves, 26, and 14-year-old Nicole Guidry, who had come to babysit Reeves’ twin daughters. The killers cut the phone lines, took the surveillance tape, and left with more than $10,000.¹

The only person to see anyone go in was Virginia Johnson, who had stopped for gas and watched two men walk inside from a black two-door Chevrolet. She later described them to a hypnotist, and a second composite sketch was released in late 1997.² Word moved through the community that the drawing resembled Richard McElveen, and the sheriff’s son was pulled into the investigation on the strength of that rumor.

How Investigators Cleared Him

In early 1998 the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office Violent Crimes Task Force brought Richard McElveen in for questioning. He provided blood and hair samples, took a polygraph examination, and passed it. He told investigators he had been at a camp in Big Lake on the night of the killings, and multiple witnesses confirmed he was there.²

Virginia Johnson, the only eyewitness, was shown a six-person photo lineup that included McElveen. She said none of the men in the lineup looked like the person she had seen inside the store.² There was a straightforward physical mismatch as well. Under hypnosis, Johnson had described the second man as about 6’2″ to 6’3″ tall. Former District Attorney Rick Bryant later noted that Richard McElveen stood about 5’8″.³

Deputy Donald “Lucky” DeLouche, who directed the task force, told the public there was “no evidence that this man is guilty of anything.” Bryant said that if McElveen had lacked an alibi and the witness had identified him, “he would have been prosecuted. I would have prosecuted him.” Neither condition was met.³

Cisco’s Later Accusation

Thomas Cisco was identified as a suspect after a January 1998 broadcast of America’s Most Wanted, when a local woman recognized a rabbit’s foot keychain Johnson had described as one Cisco carried. Johnson later picked Cisco out of a physical lineup.⁴²

In custody, Cisco gave repeated and contradictory statements. He sometimes said he acted alone and sometimes named accomplices, including people identified as Robert Thigpen, “Malcolm,” “Bobby,” and Chris Cabral. DeLouche testified that none of those leads produced corroborating evidence, and no one besides Cisco was ever arrested.¹

On March 18, 1999, more than a year after McElveen had been cleared, Cisco told Deputy Corey Manuel a new version of events. He claimed Richard McElveen had hired him to kill Stacie Reeves for $20,000, with $10,000 paid up front, because Reeves “knew too much” about the drug-related death of her friend Kevin Abel. In May 1999 he repeated a version of the claim to Deputy Tina Lyons: “He offered me $20,000 dollars and I was into drugs big time and he knew it… He knew I was on crack and he knew I was on coke.”¹²

Investigators treated the statement the same way they had treated Cisco’s earlier accusations. DeLouche testified that he would not “feel comfortable arresting anybody without some corroborating evidence other than his own word.” The defense characterized the McElveen allegation as “another example of the defendant’s many false confessions” and pointed to “wild rumors circulating through the jail and the local community about Richard McElveen” that preceded Cisco’s statement.¹ No charge followed.

The Kevin Abel Backdrop

Cisco’s story leaned on a death the community had been talking about for months. Kevin Abel, a friend and reported boyfriend of Stacie Reeves, died of a gunshot wound to the head in May 1997, weeks before the KK’s Corner killings. The Calcasieu Parish coroner ruled it a suicide, citing a suicide note, gunshot residue on his hands, and the position of his body.²

Reeves did not accept that finding. Her uncle, Robert “Bob” Rogers, said she had been speaking to a deputy about alleged drug dealing at or near the store and had told family she feared for her safety.⁵ Attorney Hunter Lundy, who represented the victims’ families, said: “Certain people didn’t like her reporting others to be involved in drug trafficking because I think she was giving names to law enforcement as to who she suspected to be involved in the death of Kevin Abel. And it got her killed.”²

The task force reached a different conclusion. It found the Abel case not connected to the KK’s Corner murders. The deputy Reeves had confided in passed a polygraph, and ballistics testing of his service weapon cleared him.⁵ The Abel theory never produced evidence tying Richard McElveen to either death.

The Sheriff’s Press Conference

On February 19, 1998, Sheriff Wayne McElveen held a press conference in front of about 100 people to deny the rumors about his son. “If I have to, in the name of my son, I’ll work with him and we will file suits if this does not stop,” he said, warning that lawsuits would follow continued accusations.²

The victims’ families, who were not permitted to attend, pushed back. Bobby Reeves, Stacie’s father, called the event “mudslinging” and said the focus should remain on solving the murders. Lundy called it “a frightening thing” for a person in law enforcement to threaten using his office to investigate rumors. Columnist Jim Beam wrote that the sheriff had “stirred the rumor pot again” rather than quieting it. No defamation suit by the McElveen family appears to have been filed.²

The Second Killer Question

Authorities have long maintained that Cisco did not act alone. Johnson saw two men go in. Former DA Bryant argued that one person could not have controlled three victims, shot them systematically, cut the phone lines, and taken the surveillance tape. But identifying the second man has proved essentially impossible.⁶

The person Bryant himself has publicly described as a “perfect match” to the composite is not Richard McElveen. It is one of Cisco’s friends from New Orleans, who gave an alibi saying he was with his girlfriend and had never been in Lake Charles. With no DNA, no fingerprints, no surveillance tape, and a convicted killer whose word investigators considered worthless after years of false leads, Bryant acknowledged that prosecuting any second suspect was effectively off the table.⁶ The Sheriff’s Office still classifies the case as open and active.³

That open question is why Richard McElveen’s name still turns up in connection with the case nearly three decades on. The record on him, though, is the record investigators compiled in 1998: an alibi that held, physical samples taken, a polygraph passed, and an eyewitness who looked at his face in a lineup and said he wasn’t there.

1
FindLaw. State v. Cisco
2
KPLC. KPLC Revisits KK’s Corner Murders
3
KPLC. 26th Anniversary: KK’s Corner Murders
4
KPLC. KK’s Corner Murders
5
Omny.fm. Hell and Gone: Murder Line – KK’s Corner Part 1
6
KPLC. Murders at KK Corner to Be Featured on ID Channel