Ankle bracelet helps turn missing person case into a murder mystery
After following a trail of electronic clues, police are now looking for a suspect.
Eddie Rodrigue was a small-time marijuana dealer. His street hustle landed him in jail several times.
Despite his lifestyle, Rodrigue was close to his tight-knit family, including his childhood sweetheart who, at the time of his death at age 28, had become his fiancée.
“You wake up every day and you're looking for that person and thinking he's going to walk through the door. But you know he's not coming back,” his fiancée said. “I know he wanted better out of life. He really did.”
Rodrigue goes missing
Rodrigue went missing on Dec. 14. The first sign of trouble came in the form of electronic dots on a computer screen at Assured Supervision Accountability Program – ASAP – a company that uses electronic monitoring to track criminal defendants free on bail. Rodrigue was awaiting trial on a charge of distribution of marijuana.
“We received at 9:27 in the morning an alert for a tamper of the ankle monitor,” said Matt Dennis, co-owner of ASAP.
That alert set off a chain of events that quickly led to valuable clues for police, and dismay for Rodrigue's family. They spoke to WWL Louisiana with their identities hidden out of fear.
While ASAP agents were checking on Rodrigue’s tamper alert, his fiancée was fighting off panic when he didn’t respond to her texts or phone calls.
“No answer. No answer. I texted him. No answer,’ she said “I called him over 200 times and it was going straight to voicemail.”
Ankle bracelet found
Matt Dennis, along with his wife and ASAP co-owner Jill Dennis, were already collecting pieces of the puzzle, using the electronic trail that started at a house on Salem Drive in New Orleans East with the tamper alert. The next ping was from a dumpster a few blocks away.
The dumpster is where they found the electronic bracelet that had been cut off of Rodrigue’s ankle.
“We brought it to our office to begin the next phase, which is pressing charges for escape,” Matt Dennis said.
The bracelet was inside Rodrigue's backpack along with court papers, a shoe, and – smeared with a trace of blood – his cell phone.
Hours later, when Rodrigue didn't arrive to pick up his fiancée from her job where he had dropped her off that morning, she called ASAP.
Matt Dennis answered.
“I hit her straight up. I said, ‘So you mean to tell me you didn't help him escape today?’ And when I said those words to her, she screamed and said, ‘Oh my God, my baby's dead.’ ”
“I knew something happened to him,” his fiancée said. “There's no way he cut his ankle monitor off himself.”
Matt Dennis came to the same conclusion when he analyzed how the bracelet was cut off.
“Those marks made it clear it was done from behind and underneath him,” Dennis said. “So he was lying down and somebody was doing it. Not him.”
The rest of the tragic picture came together quickly over the next 48 hours.
Finding Rodrigue's body
First, police found the fiancée’s car with blood in the driver's seat. Then, using the GPS trail to track Rodrigue's final hours, police located a security camera that captured a gunshot at the exact time and location where the bracelet had been cut off.
“We can tell you the only place it makes logical sense for this to have occurred,” Matt Dennis said. “And it's all based on dots. Those dots tell the story.”
Jill Dennis broke down the timeline: “A little after 9, the gunshot, 9:20, the cutting of the ankle monitor, 9:50, leaving that address on Salem to dump the device.”
“There's no doubt that we knew this man was dead. And all that we had left was to find his body,” Matt Dennis said.
Despite all the evidence pointing to a fatal shooting, without the body, New Orleans Police could only issue a missing person bulletin.
In the bulletin, the department asked for help locating a person of interest – Joseph McKinnis – a friend and frequent companion.
Rodrigue's family turned their attention to finding their missing loved one.
“We weren’t eating. We were up day and night looking for him. Everywhere,” his fiancée recalled.
Finally, their fears were confirmed.
Behind an empty apartment building the decomposed body of Eddie Rodrigue was found on New Year's morning, 17 days after he was reported missing.
Police were alerted to the spot after a stolen car was wrecked there. A few feet from the car, buried under a discarded mattress, was Rodrigue's body.
“It just hurts. You know, it hurts,” said Rodrigue’s sister, wiping away tears. “People loved Eddie, you know. It's just hard.”
The family wanted an open casket funeral, but Rodrigue's body was too badly deteriorated.
“I know he didn't expect that person to do that to him,” his sister said.
As for Joseph McKinnis, the earlier person of interest, he’s now gone missing. His disappearance coincides with Rodrigue’s case turning into a homicide investigation.
Court records show that McKinnis was a no-show for a Feb. 21 court date in a pending burglary case against him, prompting the judge to issue a warrant for his arrest. And now, multiple sources say there is an additional warrant for McKinnis, this one in connection to the killing of Eddie Rodrigue.
Electronic monitoring was able to quickly turn a missing person case into a homicide investigation, but the technology could only go so far.
“We want him to get justice. We can't get him back, but the least we can get is closure and justice.
Crimestoppers, 822-1111, is offering a reward of up to $5,000 reward for tips leading to an arrest of the suspect. Callers can remain anonymous.
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