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This is Episode 4, Movements. It shouldn't be, but the truth can be a tricky thing. It's said that if you repeat something enough times, it eventually becomes the truth, regardless of whether it's actually true. In Bruce's case, there's one statement I've seen repeated more times than any other. His friends said he was looking at investment properties.
Bruce was looking at business property. I heard he was shot while scoping out a piece of investment property. They said he was killed and robbed while trying to find investment property. The problem is, I've yet to find the source of that information. I can't find anyone who's publicly confirmed Bruce was in New Orleans East on an expedition to look at a piece of investment property.
Of the more than 30 people I've spoken with on and off record in this case, not one of them has said they had a conversation with Bruce in which he told them he was going to look at real estate in that part of the city on April 24th. Him scoping out a piece of investment property is just something that's been said over and over that I think in everyone's mind it's become true. But for the last few years, it's puzzled Chris and Kaitlyn.
Why did he go down there? Who told him to go down there? It didn't just come to him in a dream that he needs to go look at this place. Going down to New Orleans East to look at a property, it's not like the same as going to the CBD in New Orleans or downtown New Orleans or anything like that or in Old Metairie or wherever it is over there. It's not the same. You tell somebody, "Hey, I'm going to look in this area because it's not the best area."
Don't get me wrong, Bruce could have been interested in investment opportunities. He was into that thing at the time. For example, records with the Louisiana Secretary of State's office show that he was a member or registered agent of at least nine LLCs in Louisiana, all of which were tied to investments or real estate development in or around St. Tammany Parish or other parts of Louisiana, not New Orleans East though.
At the time of his death, some of these LLCs were long dissolved, but about a half dozen were still operating. He was also an officer for a small corporation in Mississippi that was a joint venture between him and his boss, Jared Rickey. The majority of Bruce's business associates were old colleagues or his high school friends, but a number of projects solely involved Jared.
According to Bruce's ex-wife, Mary Ann, and his widow, Ann, the reason Bruce came on board with so many LLCs over the years was because he was known for being a numbers guy.
Because he was in the business world, he was in the world of finance, a lot of people that he was in business with or associated with, he would take in as his friends. And it wasn't always necessarily a true friendship. It was built on this business situation. He was more making sure that the deal worked, the numbers worked, not scoping the deal.
Bruce was heralded as being a brilliant statistician and knew the ins and outs of the finance industry. He would often meet with partners or potential investors, but rarely did he go out searching for properties on his own. If he did, it was at the behest or directive of someone else.
The day before his murder, April 23rd, Bruce had a meeting with a man named Carol John Smith in Lafayette, Louisiana. The meeting was to go over business both men had in that part of the state. According to emails Chris exchanged with Carol after the murder, Carol said Bruce never mentioned he had any plans of wanting to check out real estate on his own the following day.
I did talk with Carol Smith, and he did say that my dad didn't mention anything about going to New Orleans East, nothing about going and looking at another apartment complex. I've emailed and left messages for Carol a few times because I thought it would be helpful to interview him, but he's never replied.
I did get in touch with Jack Branch, though, one of Bruce's close friends from a Bible study. And he spoke with Bruce on the phone at 9:32 a.m. on April 24th, a half hour before the murder, which would have been while Bruce was driving to New Orleans East. At no point in their conversation did Bruce mention where he was going or why. It wasn't like he avoided the subject, it's just that the men discussed other things.
So he and I spoke probably about 10 minutes, five or 10 minutes as we always did, checking in, how's life, how's marriage, this, that, and the other, holding one another accountable. And he just was his normal self. He had a friend of his that was terminally ill. And he said, we need to go see this guy in the hospital to talk about our faith and make sure he's in a place where he knows where he's going. Maybe an hour, hour and a half later, my wife at the time called me and said, I
Oh my God, you're not going to believe it, but Bruce has been killed. Jack also works in real estate development and business and said it would have been out of character for Bruce to be scouting out an apartment complex or any property in New Orleans East.
Bruce's kids agree that the whole trip to New Orleans East was out of character for their dad.
An apartment complex would be something that he would need the financials of a business partner to go in and do. Some people could say, oh, maybe he just was going rogue away from his business partner or something. But like our dad didn't have the financials to buy an apartment complex. That was not something he would typically do. Whereas his business partner owns plenty of apartment complexes.
It's true. Louisiana Secretary of State records show that Jared Rickey is the registered agent of at least 27 businesses in Louisiana and an officer of 11 others. Most of his entities are LLCs or corporations that deal with finances, construction, real estate, and utilities. A handful of them are apartment buildings and condos.
I asked Anne, Bruce's wife, if Bruce ever mentioned that he and Jared were going to buy something in New Orleans East together. But she said no. In fact, Bruce was kind of doing the opposite and not pursuing long-term investment property projects. 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.
But here's where things get really wild. I did a deep dive into the real estate records for Papania Drive, in particular the parcel history for the Mark 7 Apartments and the vacant charter bus building slash empty lot across the street. And there was nothing indicating either of those properties were for sale in April 2012. When Bruce was killed, the apartments were owned by an LLC aptly named Mark 7 Apartments LLC.
The registered agent was Suzette Toledano of Toledano Properties in New Orleans. Now, two days after Bruce's murder, which was April 26th, 2012, Suzette filed paperwork with the Louisiana Secretary of State's office requesting the state remove her as the registered agent. She wanted her elderly mother, Jacqueline, to be the only name on the paperwork for the LLC.
The state granted her request, and Jacqueline, despite now being deceased, is still the registered agent. I wanted to know why Suzette made this change, two days after a brutal murder on her property. So I called her. Hi, this is Delia Diembergen. I was reaching out for Suzette. I called this morning, but she wasn't in yet. I didn't know if she was in yet. Okay.
Uh-huh. Hello? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry.
And, okay, so you work for a podcast company, is that what you said? Yeah, like I don't work for like a local news station or a newspaper or anything like that. In looking at some of the LLC filings and like the ownership on record, it came back to Suzette Toledano and then Toledano Properties. And so I was just trying to get some information.
about, I guess, just the ownership of those apartments. I just, again, from some of the filings, it's hard to kind of tell whether it's just a property owned by the entity or what. So it was just a little hard to navigate. Okay. And what's the name of the podcast company? Yeah, it's Audiochuck, A-U-D-I-O-C-H-U-C-K. All right. Hold on a second.
Hello? Yes, hi. Hey, this is still Christina. I'm sorry. Oh, you're fine. I did just go interrupt and find out she said that the entity owned the property. Yeah, so that's what I'm seeing. And what I wanted to know was if it ever went up for sale or was for sale in April of 2012. And so it doesn't look like any sort of sale occurred in that time, but I would only be able to know based on the person's...
person who was in control of you see what I mean like I can see who owned it but I don't know if it ever went up on the market or if it was ever like you want to know if it was up in the up on the market in April of 2012 I think the only person that could tell me that would be Suzette because she is on the LLC filing for the entity that owned it so if that makes sense okay all right well let me take your phone number because I really don't know
"No matter how many times I called, Suzette never came on the line to speak with me. Her poor secretary was always the go-between, which only makes me have more questions for Suzette, one of which has to do with her last name." You see, the day after Bruce's murder, newspapers flocked to Covington to interview people who knew him. One person who provided a lot of quotes was a guy named Ryker Toledano. If you read early news stories about the murder, you'll see his name a lot.
Reichert was a friend of Bruce's and is now a St. Tammany Parish council member. He ran in the same circle with Bruce, Jared Rickey, and other prominent men living on the North Shore. Reichert confirmed all of this to me in a phone call we had a few months ago, which he declined to have recorded.
"When I asked him if he was related to Suzette, he told me she was his cousin. But then when I revealed to him why I was asking about her, he then stated he wasn't sure if she was his cousin and said he probably wouldn't even recognize her on the street."
So, needless to say, Reichert and Suzette are very touchy. If Suzette's oddly timed LLC filing was just a coincidence that overlapped with Bruce's murder, and she doesn't want to be bothered, then so be it. I kind of wish she'd just tell me that though. As far as why Reichert confirmed being related to her and then suddenly decided he wasn't, beats me.
All I know is it feels off. The Mark 7 apartments changed hands in 2014 and are now owned by another company. The parcel across the street didn't go up for sale until 2017. To this day, no other apartment complexes have come into that area. And to me, all of this proves one thing. The information Bruce received about there being available real estate on Papanya Drive was not true. ♪
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The morning Bruce was killed, Ann never got the chance to learn what her husband's plans were for that day. Their paths diverged earlier than usual. Usually he'd go to the, he'd wait till I get my son back from school. I'd drop him off and then we'd have our last cup of coffee. Then he'd head to the office around eight. That particular morning, he left before I got back.
The last thing Bruce told her was that he had lunch plans to meet with Jared Rickey and a man named Craig Babylon in downtown New Orleans. He didn't mention going to check out an investment property alone. Who led him to that apartment complex? We have no clue.
Bruce, Jared, and Craig were all part owners of a business called New Orleans Watch Company, and the men met frequently for meetings either in Covington or New Orleans. After the murder, Ann turned to Jared for answers. I questioned Jared right away, like, what was he doing there? Why was he there? Why weren't you with him? Because y'all had meetings after.
She felt it was odd that Jared and Bruce had not carpooled like they usually did when they had meetings together in New Orleans. She didn't understand why Jared had not been with Bruce checking on this so-called investment property. They'd ride together. They would eat together. It was their time to be together. Jared told me he had a meeting in Covington that he had to attend.
The morning meeting and an appointment to pick up a new car in New Orleans is what Anne says Jared told her had kept him from connecting with Bruce that morning. She said he told her he didn't know why Bruce went to New Orleans East. He expressed the same thing to Chris and Caitlin when they'd questioned him. I've reached out multiple times to Jared and Craig Babylon. Neither man agreed to speak with me.
But it wasn't just Anne and Bruce's kids who questioned the existence of an investment property in New Orleans East. NOPD investigators in 2012 also didn't fully believe that notion. Detectives thought that maybe the real estate opportunity was just Bruce's way of hiding a secret, something he didn't want anyone else to know about.
They didn't tell me anything that they thought. They just asked me a lot of questions. Do you think your husband was there for drugs or prostitution or anything like that? And I was like, that, you know, I was taken aback by that because, wow, that would have been everything he was against.
I've found no evidence that Bruce went to Papanya Drive seeking drugs or sex workers. And when you think about it, none of the evidence points to that. His general confusion about where he was and the note in his truck with directions written on it don't align with that theory. I would think that if the apartments were a place Bruce went to regularly for some kind of affair or drugs, he wouldn't have needed directions to get there or been lost when he arrived.
To me, his confusion indicates this was his first and only time in that area. Somebody's got to help, you know, put that puzzle piece together for me. So, okay, we know that the place wasn't for sale at the time, but then our dad somehow went down there under the assumption that that place was for sale. But then if you look at the police report, he had an incorrect address. Cold case detective Ryan Oakwin has struggled to understand the puzzling aspects of Bruce's movements, too.
He doesn't understand why Bruce went all the way around Lake Pontchartrain to look at a property that wasn't for sale and tell no one about it. We don't know why exactly he chose that apartment complex. If he was meeting somebody, we know that he was on his way to the South Shore to meet with somebody. But that wouldn't have been a way, that wouldn't have been the most practical way for him to get to the area where he was going to meet the individual he was going to meet. What is your genuine, honest opinion
of a directive for Bruce Kutcher to have been sent to New Orleans East that day, and he wasn't there to look at the apartment, and someone was setting him up. I think there's a good possibility that that happened. Why he would have went to that location on his own free will, I don't know. I know nobody else was with him in the vehicle. Based on what we have, we know that nobody else was in the vehicle with him, so I don't know why if Kutcher
I don't think he was forced there. I think he went there on his own free will, whether or not it was a ruse to get him there to have this happen, or it just so happened that he landed there and somebody walked up to him and tried to rob him, or somebody walked up to him and just shot him. You know, I think it's a 50-50 shot on each one. I mean, it's, you know, it could be either way. And not having anything to prove otherwise is really frustrating.
Chris and Caitlin told me that all of the detectives who have handled their dad's case prior to Ryan agreed at some point that a setup was possible, even likely. It got to a point where NOPD was really telling us, look, this is 100%. They were like, this is 100% not a random thing. He was set up. I remember when we did meet with Matthews,
I mean, that whole conversation really was that it was not a robbery. That it was, they were definitely leaning towards very much so the setup aspect of it, which was shocking to me. Because I remember being like, no, there's no way. There was a paper, he was supposed to meet somebody, that person's never come forward. Now you're starting to think, well, why hasn't that person come forward? I mean, if you were in good faith, an actor in good faith,
And you're like, hey, you come forward and talk to the police. Hey, I was supposed to meet this guy and he got killed, you know? Or what would be the motivation of a person to not come forward? I mean, if the person didn't exist, if you're trying to set somebody up for something like this, sending them to New Orleans East is the perfect place to send them. You can't do this in Mandeville or Covington. You can't have somebody executed in Mandeville or Covington. That doesn't happen here. My sister and I are not just...
conspiracy theorists and all this other stuff. I mean, we were being told about the people with more evidence than we have, with more talking to different people than we have, with hours of conversations with other people when they went to interview people at my dad's office. They are saying, this is not a random thing. This was, he was set up. So we go from that and we say, okay, he was set up. Who benefited from that? I was convinced it was not random.
I just felt like he knew too much. Something happened to him. They took him out. But who is they? $100 million question. And did they ever communicate with Bruce before he died? We have people in this community walking around that are potential suspects, and we just act like it never happened. The answer might be somewhere deep in his cell phone data. I think those are some interesting phone calls he brought up.
That's on episode five of CounterClock, phone calls, which starts right now.
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