Tommy Spell #95309: Submission to the Louisiana Pardon Board: G. Paul Marx - Trial Lawyer: Lafayette, LA 70598-2389

Tommy Spell #95309
Submission to the Louisiana Pardon Board
G. Paul Marx – Trial Lawyer
Lafayette, LA 70598-2389

Tommy Spell was a 22 year old painter in Crowley working in a family business at the time that Ricky Mire was found murdered in a rural Acadia Parish canal. Spell was among many subjects interviewed by State and local authorities in connection with the homicide. The victim’s homosexual orientation and his comments about young Crowley men led investigators to interview numerous subjects, including Tommy Spell and Anthony Broussard. Investigative polygraphs indicated Spell’s denials were truthful, according to State Police polygraphist. Other key suspects, one of whom eventually became the State’s key witness, failed each polygraph administered them. That was Anthony Broussard, whose girlfriend two years latter happened to be the woman Spell was married to and living with at the time of the murder. That tie would become a noose around Spell’s neck when Anthony Broussard was indicted for rape two years after the Mire murder. Anthony Broussard had committed the aggravated rape of a young untold male. Tommy Spell believed Broussard also molested Spell’s son.

For two years he [Anthony Broussard] had denied knowing anything. Then, within days after his indictment for Aggravated Rape, Anthony Broussard decided to solve the most sensational murder mystery in Acadia Parish history. Anthony Broussard declared that Tommy Spell had killed Ricky Mire, and that decision would pay off for Broussard because the State would dismiss his rape charge and take a plea to attempted molestation of a juvenile. Some two years after the dying youth was discovered, an Acadia Parish Grand Jury deliberated a full 12 minutes in returning an indictment of Tommy Spell for the murder of Ricky Mire.

Witnesses told Acadia Parish lawman that Anthony Broussard was a frequent associate of the dead youth, and may have been involved with him in parties and drugs. In fact, the investigation of Broussard’s rape charge two years later actually led to Tommy Spell’s wife. She was dating Anthony Broussard by then, and when questioned about Anthony Broussard being Mire’s murderer, claimed Spell was the killer. She said that only after being confronted by evidence that Anthony Broussard had been a close friend of Ricky Mire. Broussard and Spell were mortal enemies because of allegations that Broussard had molested Spell’s son. Broussard’s girlfriend Deborah Spell was Tommy’s estranged wife who had threatened to ruin him in a bitter divorce. There was no physical evidence connecting the victim or the homicide to Tommy Spell.

Spell’s first trial before District Judge Bradford Ware was interrupted when his former wife got cold feet about her story and used “husband / wife” privilege not to testify. The trial was actually recessed for the D.A. to take writs, which were denied, but after being threatened with prosecution as a principal to the murder, the wife took the stand and testified. Judge Ware granted a new trial in the wake of that indictment. The case was set for re-trial before Judge Sue Fontenot. During that trial, Counsel did not introduce nor advert to the following exculpatory evidence, which was eventually discovered since 1995, some of it being in the State’s file and other items learned through investigation:

• Eyewitness accounts consistent with two men holding someone down in the back seat of a GTO or Malibu, driving south in Crowley toward the location of the body on the day of the murder. A car and subjects not consistent with Spell or Broussard.

• Statements attributed to the victim and his family describing a stalker who had been bothering him for weeks before the homicide, describing a vehicle and people inconsistent with Tommy Spell’s vehicle and physical description.

• Information that a fingerprint had been found on a drink can near the victim, which was not the print of Tommy Spell and which in fact was related to another suspect.

• Information that the victim had told his family he planned to get into the car of a strange white male, unknown to him, but that the man had failed to show up. This happened only days before the homicide.

• Eyewitness reports that there were two men running away from the scene where the body was found, which was inconsistent with Anthony Broussard’s version of Tommy Spell having walked the victim from the car alone.

• Details on the arrest of a subject in another State, who was in possession of a bloody blunt instrument and a bloody jacket, shortly after the homicide and consistent with the weapon used in this homicide.

• Shirley Dugas reported that a group of boys accosted a youth in her neighborhood in a scene reminiscent of the later murder of Mire.


It was also not revealed to the second Trial Jury in Spell’s second trial that Anthony Broussard would be relieved of any potential liability for the Aggravated Rape charge immediately after his testimony, nor that Broussard was a suspect in the homicide. Broussard’s testimony was patently false.

The only other witness in this case was Ronald Jenkins, an inmate who claimed that Tommy Spell admitted killing Mire during a conference in the prison library. Jenkins was a career criminal, with literally scores of felony convictions. He recanted his testimony, but after he was charged with a felony offense in Acadia Parish, un-recanted, and testified for the state. He claimed to have been offered a bribe for recanting, but there was no evidence to corroborate that, and his pending charges were dismissed immediately after his testimony in Tommy Spell’s case.

Recent investigation has confirmed that Anthony Broussard’s father was a confidential informant for the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office, specifically for Detective Doris Thibodeaux, who was the one Anthony Broussard contacted immediately after his indictment for aggravated rape to tell his story about Spell. Years after the trial, witness Perry Kibodeaux came forward and offered testimony that Mire was killed by several youths who wanted to keep him from ratting them out to police, much the same as the statement Shirley Dugas, who could identify the participants.

Excerpt from submission to the Louisiana Pardon Board