Rodney Lamar Demery | |
---|---|
Born | Shreveport, Louisiana, United States |
Alma mater | Louisiana State University New Mexico State University Alamogordo |
Spouse | Conya Demery |
Police career | |
Department | Beaver Falls Police Department Shreveport Police Department Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office Grambling State University Police Department |
Service years | 1994-1999 1999-2016 2016-2018 2022-present |
Other work | TV host, narrator, writer |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Service/ | United States Navy |
Battles/wars | Gulf War |
Rodney Demery is an American author, TV host and former homicide detective, currently serving as the chief of the Grambling State University Police Department. [1] He is best known for his role as the TV host and narrator on the Murder Chose Me TV series which airs on Investigation Discovery since 2017. [2] [3]
Rodney Demery is a veteran of the United States Navy. He served in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield. [4] [5]
Upon leaving the Navy, he served as an officer with, and then the chief of, the Beaver Falls Police Department in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. [1] In 1999, he resigned from the Beaver Falls Police Department to join the Shreveport Police Department. [6] In 2001, he was assigned to the Department's violent crimes unit as a homicide detective. During his career with the Shreveport Police, he worked on over 250 homicide cases. [7] In a 2016 interview with KTBS 3, Demery said his achievement in solving homicide cases resulted from personal encounters with violent homicides, [8] referring to his mother's murder and his brother Patrick's conviction for homicide. [9] He understood both the bereaved families and the suspects. [10] [11]
Demery is S.W.A.T. certified and a hostage negotiator as well as having experience in undercover work. [12] As a homicide detective, Rodney Demery looked into his mother's homicide case. [13] He tracked down his stepfather and found him in bad health. [14] [15]
Demery worked as a homicide investigator for the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office until July 2018, [16] when he resigned to focus on television and film projects. [17] However, on May 27, 2022, Demery was hired by Grambling State University as its new chief of university police. [1]
In 2018, the Shreveport Times reported he considered running for Shreveport Mayor. [18] In July 2018, Demery denied interest in local politics. [19] He confirmed a desire to become the chief of Shreveport Police, [19] with multiple 2018 mayoral candidates approaching him for the position if elected. [20] In 2018, Rodney Demery endorsed Lee O. Savage for Mayor, [21] who lost the election to Adrian Perkins. [22]
Rodney is the narrator of Investigation Discovery's 2017 crime drama Murder Chose Me, [23] in which he narrates the show in the first person. [24]
The crime TV show is based on detective Demery's work at the Shreveport Police homicide unit. [25] It highlights the homicide cases he worked on during the 14 years he was active. [26] The show was renewed for a second season on May 19, 2017. [27] Murder Chose Me was renewed for the third season on November 8, 2018 [28] and is set to premiere in June 2019. [29]
Rodney Demery has written two books on Amazon Kindle. His 2011 title, Things My Daughters Need to Know: A Cop and Father's View of Sex, Relationships and Happiness was an Amazon Bestseller when it was released. [30] Demery released his second book, No Place for Race: Why We Need to Address Economic and Social Factors That Are Crushing Us Every Day, in October 2013. [31] The book appeared on the 10 Best Black Books of 2013 list published annually by literary critic Kam Williams. [32] It has also been featured and reviewed on multiple news outlets throughout the United States. [33]
Shreveport is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third-most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, of which it is the parish seat. It extends along the west bank of the Red River into neighboring Bossier Parish. The 2020 census tabulation for the city's population was 187,593, while the Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area had a population of 393,406.
Daniel "Danny" Harold Rolling, known as The Gainesville Ripper, was an American serial killer who murdered five college students in Gainesville, Florida over four days in August 1990.
A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or retained material evidence, or fresh activities of a suspect. New technological methods developed after the crime was committed can be used on the surviving evidence for analysis often with conclusive results.
KTBS-TV is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with ABC. The station is owned by the locally based KTBS, LLC, alongside Minden-licensed CW affiliate KPXJ. The two stations share studios on East Kings Highway on the eastern side of Shreveport; KTBS-TV's transmitter is located near St. Johns Baptist Church Road in rural northern Caddo Parish. Currently, KTBS-TV is one of a handful of American television stations to have locally based ownership.
KSLA is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate KTSH-CD. The two stations share studios on Fairfield Avenue and Dashiel Street in central Shreveport; KSLA's transmitter is located near St. Johns Baptist Church Road in rural northern Caddo Parish.
KPXJ is a television station licensed to Minden, Louisiana, United States, serving the Shreveport area as an affiliate of The CW. The station is owned by locally based KTBS, LLC, alongside ABC affiliate KTBS-TV. The two stations share studios on East Kings Highway on the eastern side of Shreveport; KPXJ's transmitter is located near St. Johns Baptist Church Road in rural northern Caddo Parish.
The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, officially designated Shreveport–Bossier City by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, or simply Greater Shreveport, is a metropolitan statistical area in northwestern Louisiana that covers three parishes: Caddo, Bossier, and DeSoto. At the 2020 United States census, the metropolitan region had a population of 393,406; its American Community Survey population was 397,590 per census estimates. With a 2010 census population of 439,000, it declined to become Louisiana's fourth largest metropolis at 394,706 residents at the 2019 census estimates.
Cedric Bradford Glover is a Democratic Party politician who is a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, representing District 4. He was earlier the two-term mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, the first African-American to hold that position.
Shreve Town was originally contained within the boundaries of a section of land sold to the company by the indigenous Caddo Indians in the year of 1835, during the period of Indian Removal. In 1838, Caddo Parish was created from the large Natchitoches Parish and Shreve Town was designated as the parish seat. Shreveport remains the parish seat of Caddo Parish today. On March 20, 1839, the town was incorporated as "Shreveport".
Joseph Patrick Kenda is a retired Colorado Springs Police Department detective lieutenant who was involved in 387 homicide cases over a 23-year career. He solved 356 cases, a closure rate of 92%. He was featured on the Investigation Discovery television show Homicide Hunter, on which series he recounted stories of cases that he had solved. Kenda hosts the Discovery+ show American Detective With Lt. Joe Kenda. His debut novel "All is not forgiven" was released in July 2023.
Bosch is an American police procedural television series produced by Amazon Studios and Fabrik Entertainment starring Titus Welliver as Los Angeles Police Department detective Harry Bosch. The show was developed for Amazon by Eric Overmyer, and the first season takes its inspiration from the Michael Connelly novels City of Bones (2002), Echo Park (2006), and The Concrete Blonde (1994). It was one of two drama pilots that Amazon streamed online in early 2014, and viewers offered their opinions on it before the studio decided whether to place a series order. The seventh and final season was released on June 25, 2021.
George Wendell D'Artois, Sr. was an American law enforcement officer and politician in Shreveport, Louisiana, who served as the city's Public Safety Commissioner from 1962 to 1976. D'Artois was investigated more than once for misuse of city funds, and was arrested for his alleged involvement in the 1976 shooting death of Jim Leslie, a Shreveport advertising executive who had managed D'Artois' 1974 re-election campaign. He was released for lack of evidence. A trial on charges of theft of city funds and intimidation of witnesses was postponed several times because of D'Artois's poor health. Arrested again in April 1977 for Leslie's murder, D'Artois died the following month during heart surgery and never went to trial. Histories published in the decades since D'Artois' death state that he was involved with organized crime and had contracted for the murders of both Leslie and Leslie's killer to prevent their testimony before a grand jury.
James S. Leslie, known as Jim Leslie, was a journalist for The Shreveport Times who became a public relations and advertising executive in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States. He is known for having been murdered in Baton Rouge on July 9, 1976, in a case described by the police as a "professional hit." George W. D'Artois, the Public Safety Commissioner in Shreveport, was twice arrested in the case; the first time he was released for lack of evidence. He was arrested again on charges of first-degree murder in April 1977, suspected of contracting for the murder of Leslie, but died in June of that year during heart surgery. No one was tried in the case.
Carol Ann Cole was a 17-year-old American homicide victim whose body was discovered in early 1981 in Bellevue, Bossier Parish, Louisiana. The victim remained unidentified until 2015, when DNA tests confirmed her identity. Cole, native to Kalamazoo, Michigan, had been missing from San Antonio, Texas since 1980. Cole's killing remains unsolved, although the investigation is continuing.
The prosecution of Rodricus Crawford in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in 2013, attracted national media attention. Crawford, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death that year for suffocating his one-year-old son. His death sentence was seen as part of a pattern in the parish, which has the highest rate of death penalty sentencing in the nation. The prosecutor in this case said this penalty was needed for society's revenge.
Adrian Perkins is an American politician and attorney who served as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana. Perkins is a graduate of both the United States Military Academy at West Point and Harvard Law School, and is an Army veteran. He ran for the United States Senate in 2020, losing to incumbent Republican Bill Cassidy.
The 2022 Shreveport mayoral election took place on November 8, 2022, with a runoff election on December 10 because no candidate obtained a majority of the vote in the first round. It selected the next mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana. Incumbent Democratic mayor Adrian Perkins sought re-election to a second term in office, but finished fourth in the general election. Former Shreveport City Councillor Tom Arceneaux, a Republican, and Louisiana state senator Gregory Tarver, a Democrat, advanced to the runoff election. Besides Perkins, other candidates eliminated in the general election include Caddo Parish Commission president Mario Chavez and city councillor LeVette Fuller.
A general election was held in the U.S. state of Louisiana on October 14, 2023, with second rounds held on November 18 where needed. Louisiana uses a two round system, where all candidates from all parties share the same ballot in the first round, and if no candidate wins an absolute majority, a runoff between the top two is held.
Caddo Parish held its regularly-scheduled election for sheriff in 2023 as part of the 2023 Louisiana elections. Incumbent Republican Steve Prator retired, leaving an open seat. In the first round, held on October 14, Republican John Nickelson and Democrat Henry L. Whitehorn, Sr. were the highest-placing candidates, advancing to a November 18 runoff. In the runoff, Whitehorn beat Nickelson by exactly one vote; however, Nickelson filed a lawsuit seeking a rerun of the election due to various alleged irregularities.