Ep 10 of 14: The Fallout
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By mid-April of 2012, Bruce's deposition in Ken Dutrick's lawsuit against Jared Rickey was barreling toward him. Ann, Bruce's widow, says he started making bold statements about what he intended to do when it came time for him to testify. He said, "I won't rely for the Rickeys." What Bruce meant by that statement, if in fact he said it, remains a mystery.

Around that time, when it came to the topic of work, Anne remembers Bruce often repeating the same phrase to her.

To remind you, Ken Dutrick was one of Bruce's business associates who'd helped him bring St. Tammany Parish to the table as a buyer when Sela, Jared's company, sold its assets for $36 million in March of 2010.

After the sale, SELA changed its name to SECO, Southeastern Louisiana Water and Sewer Company. Almost immediately, Ken sued Jared for failing to pay him a finder's fee, which inherently required Bruce to testify about what he knew regarding the business agreement he, Jerry Gilbert, and Ken signed with Jared. The deposition also meant Bruce was going to be subject to heavy questioning about everything related to the water company sale.

Leading up to going under oath, Bruce's friends and family noticed he was showing signs of personal and professional fatigue. I just, I knew he had a lot on his mind. Ann says Bruce had picked up on subtle hints from his business associates that made him feel further from the inner circle he was once a key figure of. Them going around him in business deals, having closed door meetings where Bruce was normally involved but wasn't being involved.

So he expressed those concerns to me, but nothing in depth. Then there were days Bruce would come home early from work with grandiose ideas. He'd say, I want to die and go to heaven, or I want to sell everything and move to an island somewhere. Just to me, he just kind of wanted to escape from the situation that he was in. I didn't take it at the time.

as something that I really needed to be concerned about. It was later, after all of this occurred, that made me start thinking, why was he saying those things? - Those kinds of declarations were fleeting though, because the one thing Bruce always came back to was his desire to stay in Covington and hopefully be his own boss.

He talked about going back on his own in his business, what that would look like. He would does loans when there's a business looking for a loan. He was trying to kind of get out of most of the business deals that he was in because he was getting older and he didn't need a long payout. He wanted just the ones that were quick and easy payouts. Did he ever express being dissatisfied with his work at all?

for and with the Rickey family, and that it was just not something he wanted to be involved in anymore. He never said it in that, on those words, but it's kind of what I gathered just from the conversations that we had about the Rickeys and the things that were coming up for him with the, that had to testify.

According to everyone I've interviewed for this show who knew Bruce, they all say he reached a point in his life where he wanted to live on his own terms. He wanted flexibility because he was a grandfather approaching retirement age and really enjoyed Christian ministry, whether that was evangelizing to men in the finance world through his weekly Bible studies or taking trips overseas to be a missionary. He felt it was his passion.

duty to share that with them so they could see what he's seeing and learning and growing in his faith. He was very interested in doing missionary work. He had just gone to Romania a couple of years before that, and really he wanted to do that full time, but we needed to figure out financially how that would work. How would we manage that?

The man Bruce went to Romania with about a year before his murder was his close friend, Jack Branch. It was always stressed here. It was really a blessing for him to get away and go serve and love on people. And it was interesting because he was always a preparer and he had these notes when we were in this little town. And I said, "You can't have the notes, Bruce. Just go from the hip." He goes, "I don't feel good about that. I feel better being prepared." I said, "Just put the notes to the side."

And he goes, "I can't do that." I go, "Yeah, you can." And I was worried more for me, but I was encouraging him. And it was amazing watching him with people. He just, he loved them. I saw so much in him of how he had come so far as a man and a human being, just, you know, sharing his stories and his parts of his life that he wasn't so proud of. Yet, it was part of his story.

And he was telling them that there is a better way and sharing his faith with people. And it was just, it was amazing watching him. Whatever positive vibes Bruce came home with from that trip or spiritual highs he'd get from doing ministry work didn't change the fact that the person closest to him, Ann, felt there was something he wasn't telling her. Which brings me to the matter of a small but noteworthy piece of information about Bruce and a firearm. ♪

According to Anne, she says in the spring of 2012, Bruce had been storing two handguns for Jared for safekeeping. I can't verify this information firsthand with Jared because he didn't want to speak with me. So everything I'm about to explain is strictly from Anne. She says one of the guns stayed in her and Bruce's bedroom at their house in Covington, and the other stayed in the driver's side door compartment of Bruce's pickup truck.

Now I know what some of you are probably thinking. A handgun? In the pickup truck Bruce was killed next to? Is that the murder weapon?

But the answer is no, at least according to NOPD. Remember, the gun NOPD believes is the murder weapon is a revolver, likely .38 caliber class.

I don't have the official evidence list from Bruce's crime scene, so I don't know for sure what caliber the gun was that Bruce kept in the pickup truck, or if he even did. I also don't know if NOPD took it as evidence. But I tend to think they did, based on this response I got from Detective Ryan Oakwin. There was nothing that would lead us to believe that a gun was taken from him and then his own gun was used on him. No.

The other handgun Ann says Bruce was keeping for Jared, the one at the house, moved locations a few times, which made Ann concerned that her husband was living on edge.

She says when Bruce first brought it home, he put it in their bedside table. But after they both agreed that was too dangerous with her young son running around, they moved it to their closet shelf. But then, shortly before the murder, Ann found it back in the bedside table. I'd found it in his bedside table. So we moved it. I'd want to know if he knew, like if he was scared, because the gun was in the bedside table. We had...

I'd asked him to move it to the top of the closet, which I saw him do. So then between now and that day, it was back in the bedside table, which was odd. What's interesting to me is that during my interview with Mary Ann, Bruce's first wife, and the woman who knew him most of his adult life, she said that prior to 2008, she never knew Bruce to possess handguns or have anything to do with them.

You never knew him to own a firearm, personally, to carry a firearm? No. Mm-mm.

We can't get inside Bruce's mind, so I'm not going to speculate about the reasons why his preference to possess a gun might have changed over the years, or if the gun that Anne says he kept in the closet and moved to a bedside table indicates he was afraid of someone or something. But what does seem clear is that in the months and weeks before his murder, Bruce was making some changes to his end-of-life plans.

Before his mission trip to Romania with Jack Branch and after everything erupted with Ken Dutrick's lawsuit, Bruce discussed with several people that he wanted to take over his large life insurance policies and remove the Rickey companies as the beneficiaries. Here's Chris, Bruce's son.

At the end of 2012, he was going to pay off all the back premiums or something of the insurance policy. And he was going to change. It was going to be his policy. He was going to be able to have the beneficiaries for whoever he wanted. Ann remembers Bruce having a meeting with Jared about a month before the murder to go over all the details.

Bruce went to talk with him six weeks before that because he texted me to say he wasn't going to be home at 5. He was going to have a meeting with Jared. So he came home around 6, and we talked about what he and Jared had discussed. And a big question for him was health insurance and life insurance because those were paid by the company. I didn't know the amount of the insurance policies, but I knew he had life insurance through him because he...

was concerned about taking it with him if he left.

So I think that evening is when they discussed the deals that they still had out there, which ones Bruce wanted to be involved in, which ones he didn't. And he probably talked to him about the life insurance policy, how that was structured, as well as whatever else. Evidently, it was all smoothed over because he came home and said, I talked with Jared about everything. Everything's on the up and up. I trust Jared immensely. I know he'll do the right thing.

P.J. DeMary, the agent for New York Life, confirmed that Bruce did inquire several times about how to restructure his life insurance. We talked about whether he was going to take over some of that coverage, but he didn't want to pay the premiums.

so he never exercised that right. Jared said, "Whatever you want, you can have. You just have to pay the premiums." That option was given to him fully to take the whole thing, a part of it or none of it, or whatever he wanted, and he never took action on that. The specific timing of when Bruce was going to make changes and then ultimately decided not to is not something I can pinpoint to a specific day. But regardless, he was murdered, which ended things.

All of this information was helpful in my investigation because it provided me with context. Context about what kinds of conversations Bruce was having leading up to his murder, and more importantly, who he was having those conversations with. But I wanted to find out for myself if there was any hard evidence in Bruce's communications that showed he wanted to distance himself from his ongoing business relationships or was deeply concerned for his safety and future.

And it turns out, there might be. He must have, like, signed that and been like, what the hell is going on, going on, going on.

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The date April 4th, 2012 is important for a couple of reasons. One, it was 20 days before Bruce was brutally murdered. Two, it was about a month before he was scheduled to be deposed in a highly contentious lawsuit. Three, it's the day he signed a roughly $666,000 promissory note indebting him to Jared.

And four, he made a series of back-to-back phone calls to Jerry Gilbert, the chief figure entangled in Ken Dutrick's contentious lawsuit over Selah selling to St. Tammany Parish. Jerry also sat on Selah's board, the very entity Bruce was reportedly trying to cut ties with. The call records from Bruce's Verizon statement list the activity between Bruce and Jerry down to the minute.

On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012, at 10:45 a.m., Bruce called Jerry three separate times, all within the same minute. On the last call, Jerry picked up, and the exchange lasted for four minutes. Then, at 10:49 a.m., Bruce called Jerry again for one minute. Then, at 10:50 a.m., Jerry called Bruce back, and the call lasted one minute.

Now, these calls are just calls. I have no idea what the men talked about or why there was so much back and forth. But when I pointed them out to Chris and Caitlin, who'd never seen them before, they felt that that kind of call activity was abnormal for their dad. And they're convinced the timing is strange.

That's whenever Dad signed that promissory note. I wonder, he must have like signed that and been like, what the hell is going on? You can't tell me that that promissory note and then that happening on the same day is like just a coincidence. It looks like Dad is frantic. It looks like he's frantic about something. Could you imagine this? All right, so let's, what do we know about April 4th? We know that

My dad, at some point on that day, was given a $600,000 promissory note to execute by his boss because, hey, you owe me this money from something from three years ago. So that happened. And then we know that these phone calls happened with a guy that was in this Sela deal. That was one of the three people with Ken Dutron and dad, right? And that dad was about to go...

at some point get deposed on this and he was saying I'm not going to lie for them anymore I'm going to tell the truth and all this other stuff right so I mean we can sit there and like but just knowing those things if you put those together it's like

I mean, was something told to our dad? I think that something happened to trigger him to all of a sudden start doing, to start blowing his phone up like this. I mean, he's panicking. That's a panic. Something made him panic right there. I guarantee if you go look through his other phone calls, I mean, has he ever blown up one person that quickly? The answer is no, at least not that I could find in the Verizon bills I have access to, which go back to February 2012.

I didn't find another instance in those three months of records where Bruce fired off that many calls to the same person in such quick succession.

On April 4th specifically, Bruce didn't speak with Jared before or after calling Jerry. So Chris's suggestion that perhaps his dad's calls to Jerry are related to Bruce being frantic about the promissory note don't seem to be supported by any other exchanges from his call records. Maybe the back-to-back calls with Jerry are completely innocuous. Maybe they're not meaningful at all. But then again, maybe they are.

The only person who knows and can tell me is Jerry Gilbert. But Jerry didn't return my calls or emails over the past year. According to his LinkedIn page, he's still the owner of a financial management firm in Diamond Head, Mississippi. So here's me taking my shot. Jerry, if you're out there listening, email me at counterclock at audiochuck.com. I'd really like to ask you a few questions.

The only insight I have about where Jerry stood in all the drama surrounding the water company sale and the subsequent lawsuit is his deposition from July 2012, an interview that happened months after Bruce was already dead. Jerry's responses during hours of questioning from Ken Dutrick's lawyer were, meh, at best.

Jerry said when it came to selling Selah to St. Tammany Parish, he worked more in the background. It was Bruce who always had the face-to-face meetings with the parish. It was Bruce who took Selah's financial spreadsheets to the parish. And it was Bruce who always had the most interaction with the Rickey family.

So essentially, Jerry said all the things you'd expect him to say. And because Bruce was no longer around to weigh in, Jerry's testimony became the standard of truth. He also confidently testified that he did not think either he, Bruce, or Ken were owed finder's fees after the sale.

I also have Jared's two depositions from that lawsuit, which were lengthy and full of interesting tidbits. A note at the top of both transcripts indicated Jared's depositions were videotaped, and when I contacted the firm who was hired to film those tapes, they still had them in their archives. The only problem was, they wouldn't let me buy copies without permission from Ken Dutrick and his former attorney.

To my deepest disappointment, Ken declined my request. He didn't want to let the firm sell me copies and wrote me via email, quote, Delia, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and hopefully helping Bruce's children get justice in this case. However, I'm not interested in spending any more energy going over my old case with Ricky. Best of luck to you in your endeavors, end quote.

"I feel confident in the fact that something unusual was going on with Bruce in the weeks and days before his murder. Something that affected his mood, money plans, and mind." Perhaps his loyalties no longer lied where they used to. Maybe deep down he was hurt about not receiving a finder's fee. Maybe the tension and pressure around Ken's lawsuit made him realize nothing he'd been chasing after in business was worth it anymore.

Or maybe it was something else entirely weighing on his mind. In business, some things, you know, skyrocket and take off, and then some things are challenges. And maybe that something had to do with another ongoing legal battle with roots all the way in Texas. I had told him just to be careful with a couple of the people that were involved in that operation.

This Texas drama had a main character who would make bombshell claims about the identity of the people behind Bruce's murder. He's a very motivated person to help. He feels like he was wronged. Well, generally where there's smoke, there's fire. He knows enough stuff. He knows where some of the skeletons are buried. That's next time on CounterClock, episode 11, Recant. Listen right now.

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Toyota, let's go places.