Louisiana DA withheld evidence in mysterious death case — and now a judge is investigating

GRETNA, La. — A Jefferson Parish judge said she intends to review records from the district attorney’s office that were withheld from a Missouri man who alleges authorities bungled the investigation into his son’s 2017 death. The judge’s action signals that details of the probe, kept secret for years, could be brought to light.

The records Bob Arthur has been provided show a pattern of police ineptitude, he said, bringing him no closer to finding justice or closure. He has also been intent on correcting what he says is a false narrative investigators fashioned and from which they have refused to divert.

“Immediately they said Shawn was having a drug and alcohol party with multiple people present” the night he died, Bob Arthur said in a 2020 interview with WDSU-TV. “And of course, we indicated to them this was not Shawn.”

Arthur, a retired insurance investigator who lives in Missouri, has pressed the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney Paul Connick for answers since they refused to charge and prosecute the couple who conspired to slip drugs into his 40-year-old son’s drink at his Metairie apartment. Coroner Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich initially ruled Shawn Arthur’s death accidental, the result of drinking too much, before later switching it to “undetermined.”

Federal prosecutors convicted Randy Schenck for human trafficking and identity theft in 2019 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His accomplice, Dominique Berry, claimed she was a trafficking victim and testified against Schenck. She was sentenced to 45 months.

The core of the federal case against the two came from a fact-finding mission Bob Arthur personally spearheaded with help from investigative journalist David Lohr and two private detectives. Through police records and interviews, they pieced together a cross-country string of incidents where Berry arranged to meet men online for a date — similar to how she met Shawn Arthur — drug them at Schenck’s direction and then rob the unconscious victim.

Berry admitted in a recorded jailhouse interview in Georgia with Lohr and a private eye that she had drugged Shawn Arthur so that she and Schenck and other accomplices could rob him.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against Schenck and Berry, a Jefferson sheriff’s investigator refused to treat Shawn Arthur’s death as a homicide.

And despite several pleas from Bob Arthur, Connick declined to bring the case before a grand jury to let its members decide if he should bring state charges against the suspects.

Attorneys with the Tulane First Amendment Clinic filed a lawsuit on Bob Arthur’s behalf against Connick in January after the DA’s office sent him a bill for more than $18,000 for copies of the investigative records he had requested. The cost was $5,560 if he wanted digital copies of more than 37,000 pages the district attorney produced. The cost was eventually waived after the Tulane Clinic filed its lawsuit.

In addition to seeking public records the DA’s office has yet to provide to Arthur, the suit also challenges the initial fees. The attorneys argue they are exorbitant and could deter the public from asking the district attorney for records they’re entitled to receive.

“These are public documents that are created with our taxpayer dollars. They should be provided for actual cost. (The district attorney) shouldn’t be getting an income from public records requesters,” Tulane First Amendment Clinic attorney Melia Cerrato said Thursday after a hearing in the case.

Family knows more records exist

Among the records the lawsuit seeks are documents that would detail deliberations within Connick’s office when prosecutors decided whether or not to bring Shawn Arthur’s case before a grand jury. Bob Arthur also wants the privilege log, which lists documents the DA’s office has refused to provide, with explanations of why they should be exempted from Louisiana’s public records law.

Judge June Berry Darensburg granted a request from Arthur’s lawyers to review those records and keep them under seal, meaning they will not become part of the public case documents.

Richard Stanley, the district attorney’s lawyer in the case, told the judge those records would be provided within five days. The judge said she intends to review them within 15 days.

As for other records Arthur wants produced, Stanley said in court they do not exist.

When asked after the hearing about other records he believes are being withheld, Arthur said they should include email correspondence between the DA and coroner’s office during the investigation into his son’s death. Lohr, the investigative journalist, and WDSU-TV reviewed copies of those emails the coroner’s office provided in response to a public records request.

Arthur insists the coroner and sheriff did nothing to avoid what he considers a conflict of interest between the agencies that rendered them unable to conduct a fair investigation into his son’s death. Dr. Marianna Eserman, the forensic pathologist who performed the original autopsy on Shawn Arthur, was married at the time to an investigator on the case, Sgt. Travis Eserman with the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office maintains Sgt. Eserman’s involvement in the case was minor. Police reports show that Travis Eserman interviewed Shawn Arthur’s former fiance, and Bob Arthur said the detective also took part in two interviews with his family at the sheriff’s office.

Shawn Arthur, photographed in New Orleans. (Courtesy Arthur family)

Sgt. Esserman also met Bob Arthur at his hotel to collect four empty capsules the family found at the apartment. After Shawn’s body was removed, investigators allowed Bob Arthur and his youngest son, Travis, inside. Among their findings were four more open drug capsules under a newspaper.

“How did they miss the drugs that were laying on the floor when we lifted up the paper? There’s capsules right there on the floor,” Travis Arthur told WDSU-TV.

One of the emails from the coroner’s office stated there was a conflict of interest policy that did not allow Marianna Esserman to perform an autopsy on a case in which her husband was part of the investigation team. The coroner’s office was not notified that Shawn Arthur’s case was a possible homicide, the email said.

Among the records the DA has provided to Bob Arthur is a 52-page supplemental investigative report from the sheriff’s office by Detective Kurt Zeagler, who led the investigation into Shawn’s death. Throughout the report, Zeagler paints the Arthurs as uncooperative and attempts to poke holes in the family’s investigation that became the basis of federal indictments and felony convictions.

“It’s obvious he has egg on his face” for a mishandled investigation, Bob Arthur said about Zeagler’s viewpoint in the report.

In Zeagler’s words, Bob Arthur used “a contentious tone” in multiple emails in three days after Shawn’s death as well as during in-person meetings in the days that followed. Questions for the Arthurs about Shawn’s alcohol and drug use “fell upon deaf ears,” the detective wrote.

To support their narrative of Shawn Arthur being a frequent drinker, detectives tracked Shawn’s debit card use prior to his death to show a pattern of purchases at bars, convenience stores and other places that sold alcohol. Bob Arthur said he and his sons told detectives Shawn was not a heavy drinker and never used illegal drugs.

Zeagler’s report also mentions Shawn’s use of a dating app and chat discussions with women about his sexual preferences, neither of which Bob Arthur said have anything to do with the cause of his son’s death.

Detective sows doubt in jailhouse interview

The detective also characterized the private detective’s jailhouse interviews with Berry as “disconcerting” and that her answers were based on “generalizations.” The Arthurs provided journalists with audio copies of the interviews, in which Berry admitted she had been arrested in California for drugging and robbing a man she met online. Zeagler’s report confirms this admission.

Zeagler also wrote that Berry wasn’t aware she was being recorded during three days of interviews. Like Louisiana, Georgia law allows recording in secret as long as one party to the conversation consents. Courts have ruled that the interviewer can be that one person, plus Lohr clearly identified himself as a journalist to Berry.

Lohr was the first to report on Berry and Schenck’s multi-state series of crimes, with 11 victims in seven states, in a HuffPost article. The Jefferson coroner’s reclassification of Shawn Arthur’s death from accidental to underdetermined came two weeks after Lohr’s report was published.

Detectives were able to identify Berry early in their investigation based on a fingerprint left on a liquor bottle in Shawn Arthur’s apartment but were not able to locate her.

“It should be noted that Berry is a documented prostitute that operated under numerous identities and traveled extensively, which hampered the investigator’s ability to locate and interview Berry relative to this investigation,” Zeagler wrote.

After learning through Arthur’s investigation where Berry was being held, Zeagler went to Georgia to conduct his own interview with her in April 2018. Berry told Zeagler she did not remember being with Shawn Arthur the night he died, according to his investigative report. She did acknowledge in detail the steps she and Schenck used to drug and rob victims she met online. They included the specific drugs placed in capsules that were slipped in their drinks.

Similar capsules with traces of the same drugs were found in Arthur’s apartment, police tests discovered. An amended autopsy report confirmed the presence of those drugs in Shawn’s system and said they were a “contributory” cause of his death. Pathologist Marianna Eserman explained that, in this instance, “contributory meant the drugs had between .001% and 99% to do with the death of Shawn Arthur,” Zeagler’s report said.

Bob Arthur has said the coroner’s amended report leaves enough wiggle room for the sheriff’s office to stick by its story that Shawn’s drinking led to his death.

Trial could explore records search process

In Thursday’s court hearing, which Bob Arthur traveled from Missouri to attend, Judge Darensburg implied the District Attorney Connick’s waiver of public records fees might settle the matter of the charges being excessive.

Cerrato told the judge if it’s determined that the district attorney’s office withheld records from Arthur, knowingly or accidentally, she could potentially put employees on the witness stand in a trial. Darensburg suggested a deposition of those employees could produce the answers Cerrato wants, expressing reluctance over the cost to the public for a full trial.

Any costs for the trial would fall solely on the district attorney’s side because the Tulane First Amendment Clinic is not charging Bob Arthur for its services. In response to questions from the Illuminator, Connick’s office said via email that Stanley, a New Orleans-based attorney, is paid $350 an hour to handle various matters for the district attorney.

Cerrato said it’s not certain how many records the DA might be holding back, making it all the more important to know who conducted the searches within the office and how.

“That’s a question we don’t really know because every single time we file a petition, then they dump a bunch of records,” Cerrato said. “So it’s like, is their search good? Obviously not, because this has happened twice now. It’s taken over a year and a half.”

Editor’s note: The Tulane First Amendment Clinic has provided legal representation and guidance to the Louisiana Illuminator.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.