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2 Charged with murder in 1986 Lafourche Parish Cold Case

Russell Lee and Judith “Judy” Weiser were charged with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. Their bail is set at $1.1 million each.

LAFOURCHE PARISH, La. — Lafourche Sheriff Craig Webre announced the arrests of two people in the 1986 murder of Paula Ann Boudreaux on Wednesday.

Russell Lee and Judith “Judy” Weiser were charged with Boudreaux's murder. LPSO detectives said Lee was taken into custody in Missouri on Tuesday and Weiser was taken into custody in Tennessee.

Both were charged with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. The sheriff's office said they will be booked into the Lafourche Parish Correctional Complex. 

Their bail is set at $1.1 million each.

She went missing from Golden Meadow in 1986 and the investigation got new life when WWL Louisiana profiled the case in February.

In January 2023, investigators got their biggest break in the case in more than three decades when the St Tammany Coroner and the Lafourche Parish Sheriff used DNA to confirm a woman’s body found by hunters three years after Paula disappeared was, in fact, Paula Boudreaux.

Last year in November, WWL Louisiana's Katie Moore reported that a witness told the sheriff’s investigators that they saw the man’s wife wielding a cane knife, a type of machete, on B&R Lane making veiled threats against Paula a few days before she went missing.

Investigators have also looked into another rumor about the case: whether someone went to the Golden Meadow Town Hall to the Police Department a few days after Paula disappeared to confess.

People long rumored that Boudreaux was killed with a cane knife, her body dumped near Slidell, but until now, sheriff's deputies had yet to make any arrests in the case.

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RELATED: Dissecting the mysterious death of Paula Boudreaux: Could the rumors be true?

RELATED: Cold Case: Young mother who vanished in 1986 linked to skeletal remains 33 years later

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