Ep 3 of 14: Encounters
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We believe that there's people who can give us good information on how to bring that case to a closure. We're trying desperately to get that information. We also want to rule out whether or not a robbery was involved. When former New Orleans Police Chief Renal Serpas gave that statement to the press on April 25, 2012, his department was 24 hours into its investigation. NOPD wasn't getting much cooperation from residents living in the neighborhoods next to the Mark 7 apartments.

So, to help drum up leads, Crime Stoppers, Inc. of Greater New Orleans and NOPD held a joint press conference. They invited Bruce's widow, Ann, and his 90-year-old mother, Vivian, who everyone refers to as Bebe. They wanted the women to sit in front of news cameras and plead with the public for information. In the room with them were dozens of extended family members, like Jack Ware. Vivian made a statement. That's what she did. She made a statement that was televised on TV, and we were all

standing behind her. Bebe put on a brave face for the cameras, but behind the scenes, she wasn't hopeful. I play it on her mind all the time. You know, she kept telling me, she says, I know they're never going to catch that guy.

For the family, the presser was a blur. But a Fox 8 news story from that day quoted Beebe saying, quote, I'm 90 years old and I never thought Bruce would pass away before me. I want to live long enough to see my son's killer brought to justice. I hope to look him in the eyes and say, why did you do this? End quote.

Unfortunately, Bebe never got the chance to live out those words. She died in November of 2014, two years after the murder of her only son. The biggest update that came out of the press conference was an announcement about reward money. Between donations from Bruce's family and Crimestoppers, $27,500 was offered to anyone who could provide credible information that led to an arrest.

But that cash sat untouched for a long time, until it eventually expired in 2015. Since then, Bruce's kids Chris and Kaitlyn have put up $40,000 of their own money, and in 2020 increased that amount to $100,000. They advertised the reward on a website called justiceforbruce.com. Kaitlyn launched the site a few years ago, but even with so much money up for grabs, the siblings aren't sure it's having the desired effect.

If it was a random thing, somebody told somebody, and there's a $100,000 reward out there, somebody would have turned that person. But I'm not surprised that the $100,000 didn't do anything because the $40,000 didn't do anything, and $40,000 is a lot of money. The $100,000 is just a bigger number, but nothing's happening because the people behind this, like $100,000 is not a lot to them. If it wasn't clear by now, Chris and Caitlin do not think their dad's murder was random. They think he was set up.

A theory that you'll learn in this episode is possible, and even in law enforcement's mind, probable. Two people from the scene of the crime who interviewed with police and actually had an encounter with Bruce at the apartment complex or heard the murder happen were Lucille Wilson and Darrell Merrick. According to NOPD's report, Lucille was the leasing office manager for Mark 7, and Darrell was the on-site maintenance man.

Lucille told the first responding officer that Bruce came into the office around 10 o'clock in the morning, asking if she could help him find the address 4515 Papania Drive. She told him the address numerics for the Mark 7 apartment buildings were 4508, 4510, and 4512, all even numbers. Which is correct, by the way. I checked.

The only thing that comes up when you GPS what Bruce was asking about, 4515 Papana Drive, an odd number, is an abandoned charter bus building across the street from the Mark 7 apartments. And that's just where Google Maps tries to pinpoint that address. Technically, 4515 Papana Drive doesn't exist. It's the front corner of some grass on the same parcel as the old vacant charter bus building.

I've made some street view and aerial diagrams of what I'm talking about, so definitely take a look at the blog post for this episode, because I think it'll make visualizing what I'm referencing much easier. Lucille told investigators that after she told Bruce the information about the address not existing, he looked really puzzled and said he was going to go back out to his truck to check his facts. A few seconds later, she heard a loud pop and ran outside and saw him lying in the parking lot.

Now, that's what's in the official police report regarding Lucille's statements. It's like four sentences. But you guys know me. There's always more than just what's in an official report. I asked cold case detective Ryan Oakwin to share more with me about what specifically Lucille said, but he didn't want to be too specific about her interview transcripts.

What have you learned from reading or rereading any interviews with her? Nothing other than that it kind of leads toward the fact that maybe he was given directions to go to this apartment complex for whatever reason, and he just wasn't sure that he had the right spot. So my next stop was talking with Chris and Caitlin. They recall being told by the former lead detective that Lucille mentioned in her interview that she got a bad feeling when she saw Bruce walk into the office that day.

She didn't explain where this bad feeling came from, just that it was so strong she decided not to walk out to the parking lot with him after initially agreeing to. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that feels like a pretty ominous thing to say. I needed to talk to Lucille to get to the bottom of all of this, so I tracked her down. Turns out, she left her job at the apartment complex within a week or so of the murder.

She's also since changed her last name. It's no longer Wilson, and she no longer lives in New Orleans East. Hello? Hello? Hi, is this Lucille?

I like to call him. Yes. Hi, my name is Delia D'Ambra. I'm a journalist from outside of New Orleans, Louisiana area, but I've been trying to get in touch with Lucille Wilson is the last name that I have. I was looking. I'm not interested. I got your message, ma'am, but I'm not interested. You can't talk to me about your conversation with Bruce Kachera on...

I was looking for the former property manager of the Mark 7 Apartments who spoke with Bruce Kuchera the morning of his murder in New Orleans East. Is this the right Lucille? But not even for his family? I mean, I'm just trying to get some information about some...

I don't know. And you can talk to, get the report from the police, but I'm not interested in giving any kind of interview. And please don't call me anymore. Okay, I appreciate your time. Let me know if you change your mind. Thank you. Bye-bye. Based on that phone conversation, I got the distinct feeling Lucille is afraid to talk. Not just to me, but to anyone. You know who isn't afraid, though? Daryl Merrick.

Daryl didn't have a clear view of the parking lot during the shooting. He only heard the gunshot. Like Chris and Caitlin, he's never believed Bruce was robbed randomly at gunpoint. He was dead before he got there. He just didn't know it yet.

And why? Because that area was not, it was little boys. They don't carry guns. They were still the kind of little boys where if they got into it with you, they got to go home and get a gun and they're not going to shoot it. It wasn't them kind of little boys around there. I know all them little boys who was around there. They're not them kind of little boys. Back then, no, they didn't carry guns. So that's why I say there's no way possible that somebody from around there could have done that to him.

Daryl is the only person from New Orleans East who knows the area inside and out who agreed to speak with me for a recorded interview. He's convinced the reason Bruce's murder has gone unsolved for over a decade is because law enforcement is looking in the wrong place. They still keep looking in that neighborhood. You're not going to find your killer in that neighborhood.

That's not where your killer is from. It wasn't nobody around there. If there was somebody around there, they already, they would have been caught him by now because they would have gave himself away. Apparently he was somebody of interest. If you still calling around trying to find out what happened to him, and he's somebody with some kind of money behind him, find out who benefited from his death, then you'll find your murderer, or at least the one that set it up anyway.

So yeah, Daryl is convinced it was a setup. Like, without a doubt convinced. And honestly, I can see the reason why. Like I mentioned in the last episode, it doesn't make sense that the contents of Bruce's wallet were never used, or at least attempted to be used.

Combine that with the fact that Bruce came into the leasing office confused about where he was, asking about an address that didn't exist, and you begin to get the sense that it's at least possible he was set up. The big question, though, is where did the information Bruce have, the 4515 Papanha Drive address, come from?

The piece of paper that was written, that was on his armrest, which had directions to the apartment complex. And then there was a time, which was right around the time that he was going to be there along with a name.

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A few days after the murder, Chris and Caitlin learned that NOPD evidence texts had collected a piece of paper from their dad's truck when it was processed at the crime scene. The paper had step-by-step directions written down on it. I believe that the directions only started, like, once you kind of got off the twin spans. What Chris is referring to is the twin span bridge that makes up Interstate 10.

On his way down from Covington, Bruce would have been traveling south on that bridge along the east side of Lake Pontchartrain. Once you get off into that, then now you're in New Orleans East, and that's when the direction started. So it looked like, from what the investigator said, he was kind of hurriedly riding them. Roughly 20 minutes before he was killed, Bruce got off the bridge and still had 12 miles left to drive before arriving at the Mark 7 Apartments.

It's a fairly straight drive from the Twinspan Bridge to Papenya Drive, but there are a couple of turns you need to make to end up in the 4500 block. Caitlin saw a copy of the note in person a few years ago and says it was in her dad's handwriting. It had very detailed specs about an apartment building and a point of contact.

Like a listing of like 10 one bedrooms, you know, 15 two bedrooms, like that sort of thing was like the, I guess, layout of the apartment complex was listed. And then there was a time, which was right around the time that he was going to be there along with a name, a first name of, I guess, I assume who he was meeting. The name on the note was Trey or possibly Terrence. No last name.

The information written down roughly matched up with the building specs of the Mark 7 apartments. Like Caitlin said, it described some kind of multi-unit buildings, which is exactly what Mark 7 is. At the time, Bruce wasn't playing the role of a real estate agent or scout for his employer, so it's odd to everyone who knew him that he would have had this kind of information on a note inside of his car. NOPD has remained extremely tight-lipped about this piece of evidence.

Was there any indication on anything that was on his person that he had directions? Like, is there anything, any papers, any? Yeah, there was. And I don't want to get too much into that because, I mean, it is evidence in the investigation. But there was some indication that he had some directions on where to go. Something I found odd after interviewing Anne is that she claims she's never even seen the piece of paper.

Regardless, though, of whether Bruce wrote the information down while driving or jotted it down before he left Covington, the information was intended for him to follow. It was provided by someone.

Figuring out who that person is, is extremely important in my opinion. But because I can't see the note for myself, that's a lead I have to let go for now. All this information about where Bruce went and why made me eager to get a sense of New Orleans East for myself. In April 2022, one week before the 10th anniversary of their dad's murder, I visited the Mark 7 Apartments with Chris and Caitlin. It was their second time ever coming to the crime scene.

Overall, the area looks the same as it did back in 2012. Except there's now a new wrought iron gate with a motorized arm and keypad, which is supposed to prevent non-residents from entering the parking lot off Papanya Drive, but the gate was wide open when we got there, and people were coming and going like it didn't even exist. The community dumpster was still in the same place, two parking spots in on the left-hand side. In total, there are approximately 60 parking spots in the lot.

As we stood on the concrete slab where Bruce was gunned down, I noticed several round security cameras gleaming from the sides of the main building. They looked new. There were also cameras attached to the outside of the leasing office and in the exposed stairwells that connected the first and second stories. Cars coming and going from the discount convenience store directly behind the wooden fence from where we were played loud music, and dozens of people were just hanging out.

I've been in sketchier places, but I'd be lying if I said I felt completely safe. Less than five minutes after we got out of our cars, a guy renting an apartment approached us. I moved here in 19, about 19. He asked why we were there, so we told him. So people still talk about that here? Yeah. What do they say? A white guy got killed by the dumps. I heard that a couple times. Yeah.

He then trailed off on a tangent about a violent dispute he had with his neighbor. And then he left us alone.

But just the fact that he was out and about with so many other people in the middle of the day, just like when Bruce was killed, got our attention for one very important reason.

The amount of people. Like, you can just see there's a lot of people hanging out at the gas station just over on the other side of this fence. We just had a young man walk up to us and ask us a question. The same thing happened the last time we were here. Someone walked up and was like, what are y'all doing? What's going on? And people sitting across the street. So to me, middle of the day or morning when this happened, there was definitely more than one witness. Like, it was seen. People saw what happened probably. It's just whether or not they're coming forward or...

if they've come forward and, you know, nothing's really happening with it or they weren't being asked the right questions. It's difficult for Chris and Caitlin to go to the scene of their dad's murder and not run through endless scenarios and ask questions.

He was holding it head first here. I mean, it could have been somebody like coming off the street. It could have been somebody hiding behind any other car that was here. It could have been hiding behind a tree or the fence. When he went and talked to the manager and the manager was like, I had a bad feeling and I didn't walk out with him. I was going to walk out with him, but then I had a bad feeling and I didn't. It's like, what gave you a bad feeling about him?

He definitely would have had to talk to his superiors about, you know, his bosses and people that have the money. Is this something that we want in our portfolio? It's just out of the ordinary. This is why it raises the questions and why there's questions. This is why not a single person in 10 years has said, hey, we were the ones that told him about this opportunity. We're the ones that told him to come down here. And so who told him? I mean, that's all that points to something nefarious happening. I wanted to get to the bottom of those questions, too. So I went digging.

There was nothing that would indicate that he was looking to buy the property. Why would you be investing in any real estate there? It's not a desirable real estate investment location. Until I hit public records pay dirt. That's coming up in the next episode of CounterClock. Episode four, movements. Listen right now.

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