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By the fall of 2012, Jared had received Bruce's $5 million payout from New York Life. But 2012 is not when Bruce's kids saw any of the money. That took a while. And when I say it took a while to sort out Bruce's estate, I mean it took a while. Almost two years.
And it wasn't as simple as divvying up the money. First, it had to be determined what state Bruce's business holdings were in, i.e., which of Bruce's assets were in the red and which ones were in the black, who he might owe money to and who owed money to him. To do this, the services of Covington attorney Julian Rodrigue Jr. were enlisted. I'll be referring to him from here on out as Rod.
Rod and Bruce knew one another. In fact, Rod had notarized the prenuptial agreement Bruce and Anne signed before they'd gotten married. Rod was also friends with Jared Rickey, Bruce's boss. And Covington is pretty small. Rod and his late father's law firm, Rodrigue and Rodrigue, is still a known entity around town. As Bruce's kids and Jared got further along in the estate succession, a few promissory notes popped up that had to be addressed.
According to documents from the estate filing that Caitlin provided me, Bruce signed a promissory note to Jared on April 4th, 2012, worth just over $666,000. The date he signed it was 20 days before his murder. Two other promissory notes also surfaced. Both were executed in 2010. One was signed by Bruce and bound him to owing Jared's company $225,000.
And the other had Jared's signature on it and stated he owed Bruce $200,000. For those of you who don't know what a promissory note is, it's a signed document that contains a written promise to pay a sum of money to a specific person or entity on a certain date.
Think of it as a fancy IOU. The two smaller promissory notes from 2010 were Bruce and Jared swapping ownership stake in some LLCs they were a part of. The $666,000 note was for the same kind of thing, but Chris and Caitlin were suspicious of the timing their dad had signed it.
20 days before he's killed this large promissory note gets like signed by my dad. I was like, well, I've always thought what was going through his mind whenever Jared came to him and said, hey, I need you to sign this promissory note, like execute this, putting you on the hook for 600 and something thousand dollars.
Chris and Caitlin told me that Jared told them the note was for a handshake deal he and Bruce had made sometime in the mid-2000s, but they'd never put terms in writing. However, when the note came up later in another estate meeting, the kids said Jared then told them it was for Bruce's ownership interest in a specific shopping plaza.
The different stories confused them, but they had no proof that anything inappropriate was going on. And honestly, that was the least of their worries because the final tally of Bruce's debts only exacerbated things.
According to a detailed descriptive list of Bruce's property that was created after his death, his cumulative debts were determined to exceed the value of his assets. His estate was valued at $2.2 million, but he was said to be in debt $4 million, leaving a negative balance of roughly $1.8 million.
These numbers weren't concrete, though. They were best estimates based on figures their attorney, Rod, had worked to collect from people like Jared, Ann, Dan Burris, and anyone who'd been close with Bruce. At the time, we didn't really, like, think about all this. We just were kind of trusting what they were saying. But today, Chris and Caitlin say they don't believe the deaths were as much as the detailed list said they were.
My personal opinion is Jared had inflated a lot of these numbers, a lot of the debts. That way he could be like, "See, your dad owed me this money, so that's why the $5 million is going to pay your dad's debts." Now, this is kind of an accusatory statement towards Jared, so I want to address it. Because so much time has passed and as a journalist, I'm not able to access every bit of financial information in Bruce's life, I can't authenticate everything in the detailed list of his property.
But I have been able to study his bank statements from the last year of his life. And there was one line item on the estate debt document that overlapped with his checkbook. It's a listed debt of $27,526, which represented Bruce's membership stake in an entity called New Orleans Watch Company LLC. Bruce was part owner of that business with Jared and a man named Craig Babylon.
While examining Bruce's checkbook, I found a check he wrote to New Orleans Watch Company for $20,000, and it was dated March 29, 2012, a month before his murder. And in the memo line, it says, purchase 26% of company. That check cleared his commercial account the same day it was written, which means whoever received it got that money right away.
So, to me, the check would indicate Bruce at least made a substantial partial payment to his membership interest in that company. My question is, why then was the $27,526 still listed in his estate as a debt to New Orleans Watch Company? If there's some material proof, he paid a portion of that debt a month before he died. I can't answer that question. No one I've talked to can't.
But Chris and Caitlin didn't have hard proof of any inflation, so there was nothing they could do when Rod told them they'd be getting nothing. Not only would they be getting nothing, Jared could threaten to come after them for their father's debts. But then a solution popped up. Through their lawyer Rod, a settlement was brokered in 2014.
After everything was said and done, a little over $300,000 of the $5 million life insurance money went to pay off Bruce's mortgage, which meant his kids could keep his house. But that was it. The end. Everything else, according to Rod and Jared, would be used to pay the debts of Bruce's LLCs. So, after the mortgage was paid, Jared walked away with the life insurance proceeds and no legal instructions on how to spend the money.
Chris and Caitlin didn't want things to end that way, but at the time, they felt they had to settle. I mean, at the end of the day, I know people can say, well, why did you agree to this? But we didn't have anything to stand on. If that doesn't make you feel uneasy, this next part will. Shortly after Bruce's estate was settled, a concerning fact about attorney Rod Rodriguez was brought to Chris and Caitlin's attention.
While Rod was helping them settle the succession with Jared, he was also an active business associate and board member for SELA, one of Jared's companies and one of the listed beneficiaries of the life insurance. Anybody that has listened to this, it's like, wait, hold on, what does that mean? That means that one of the beneficiaries of part of the $5 million was a company that the estate attorney was on the board of directors for, and we have that in the deposition.
It's true. Transcripts from court documents for unrelated litigation confirm Julian Rodrigue Jr., a.k.a. Rod, was a longtime CELA board member as well as a designated trustee of at least one of the Rickey family trusts.
you can see where the conflict of interest is, right? If Rod was closely associated with the entities and people benefiting from the $5 million in life insurance, then he shouldn't have also been the person guiding Bruce's kids on how to settle the succession with those same entities.
When Chris had this realization, it hit him hard. It's just really hard when you're in your 20s and you're dealing with something like this and obviously never been through this, but then the people that you're supposed to rely on are kind of taking advantage of you. You can't rely on your estate attorney because the estate attorney was on the board of one of the board of directors of one of the beneficiaries of life insurance policy. But we didn't know that at the time. That's the thing.
It's like we didn't know that until later on. How are we supposed to be able to do anything the right way or get the best situation for us when all the people that we're putting trust into have their own interests or conflicting interests, should not be handling the estate? I consulted with a Covington attorney named Scott Brownell about the Rod Rodriguez situation. Scott is a corporate advice and commercial litigation lawyer who's been practicing in Louisiana for 23 years.
Scott didn't know Bruce or his family while Bruce was alive, and he's never officially handled anything related to his succession. But a few years after the estate settled, Caitlin asked him to review the succession file and give her his honest opinion about two things. One, were Bruce's debts tallied correctly? And two, should Rod Rodriguez have disclosed to Bruce's family before representing them that he might have a conflict of interest?
The first thing Scott noticed when he got into the paperwork was that there was a severe lack of documentation when it came to Bruce's business ventures with associates like Jared. The paperwork related to these business dealings lacked the precision you would hope to see. They lacked the detail you would hope to see. There were a lot of ambiguities in how the LLCs were documented, structured, and how they interacted with each other and with each project.
It was a bit of a Gordian knot trying to untangle which of his LLCs were involved in which projects. Scott's big takeaway about the debts associated with Bruce's estate was that the debts related to his LLCs should not have been in his personal succession in the first place. The only debts that should have been placed into Bruce's succession should have been his personal debts, not his LLC debts.
If the LLC is the debtor, then the succession is not the debtor. A lot of the debts that were filed or lodged against Bruce's estate were or appeared to be debts of Bruce's LLCs. From a legal standpoint, a creditor has a claim against the debtor and the debtor is the LLC. The creditor does not necessarily have a claim against the individual.
And here's where Rod Rodriguez's performance as an attorney stood out to Scott. What I did not see that I expected to see was paperwork showing the lawyer for the estate challenging the debts that were being lodged against the estate. It was never properly vetted, and it certainly was never challenged. The documents that I was provided do not indicate that that occurred at all.
You don't just decline to do something without explaining it, because in the absence of these documents, the first thing someone would think is, why were these debts not challenged? Which is one of the very first thoughts that I had. In essence, Scott thought it was odd that Rod had not fought harder to challenge some of the claims and assertions of debt that Jared made against Bruce's estate.
But once Scott learned about Rod's history working with and for the Rickey family, his performance as the estate attorney made more sense. The issue of transparency is quite important in what we do. And if I were an heir, I would like to know if my lawyer...
had had any level of business dealings or interactions with the person or the person's companies lodging debts against the estate. If in fact the lawyer that represented Bruce's estate had represented any of the Rickey entities in the past, that would have needed to be disclosed to the executor or executrix of Bruce's estate. The heirs advised me that the lawyer had served on a board of one of the Rickey companies.
That's also something that I would have disclosed. It's my appreciation that that did not happen. As far as whether or not there was a conflict in this case, I don't have enough information about the lawyer's involvement with the Rickey Companies to definitively opine on that. If what the heirs have told me is accurate, that he had business dealings, then I'm of the opinion that you disclose that.
Louisiana rules of professional conduct are what would govern this scenario. They require an attorney to disclose any conflicts of interest. That is an affirmative requirement. But the Louisiana rules of professional conduct are loose. Essentially, lawyers police themselves on whether they think they have a conflict of interest.
Whether or not there's a conflict of interest, the lawyer is the gatekeeper and determines whether or not to disclose that. The attorney that's bound to disclose those conflicts of interest is also the person that is evaluating whether or not a conflict exists. It is self-serving, but that is how it is written and how it is done. The only time a third party, like a court, can evaluate if a lawyer has a conflict of interest in a case is if a client files a legal malpractice suit.
Chris and Caitlin never did that because by the time they realized how close Rod was with the Rickey businesses, the allotted period of time for them to file a legal malpractice suit against Rod had expired. Scott wrapped up his review of Bruce's succession with one resounding question for Rod about his connection to the Rickey family. Why would you not disclose it? That's the type of issue that I think most lawyers would disclose.
And the reason I say that is not because they're pure of heart. It's because if you in fact have a conflict like that and you get, and there's ultimately an action filed against you, you don't have much of a defense. So the reason that most would disclose, again, is not because they're pure of heart, but it's out of self-preservation. Meaning if I get caught and called on it, then I will be in a bad way. As a matter of due diligence, I called Rod's office in Covington.
Okay, so is that an official no comment from him? I just wanted to be clear. One moment.
Rod's disinterest was frustrating, but ultimately, I couldn't force him to explain himself. I had to move on and follow a lead I could vet further. A lead that has to do with a possible connection between Jared and Glenn Angus.
To remind you, Glenn Angus is the Mississippi businessman who was the last person Bruce spoke with before the murder. He was the guy Bruce called twice, once while on the way to the Mark 7 apartments and once when he was in the parking lot. That's when we realized now they're connected.
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Not long after Caitlin asked Scott Brownell to review Bruce's succession, she and Chris hired a private investigator. This PI never returned my emails or phone calls, so I can't verify with him what all he did. But Chris and Caitlin told me during the time he was on the job, he made a few phone calls to poke around.
The PI contacted Glen. Glen then proceeded to contact Jared to tell Jared that there was a PI working the case. Jared then calls Chris and goes, "Hey, did y'all hire a PI? My buddy Glen contacted me and told me a PI reached out to him about your dad's case." And that's when we put it together, like, okay, the last person to talk to dad who won't talk to us
has then warned Jared that there was a PI working. Now, it could be a warning. It could have been just like, hey, I'm just letting you know a PI is working case. Is there any update? I don't know. I don't know either. And I couldn't just take Caitlin and Chris's word for it that Jared and Glenn had communicated. So I did what I do best and dug deep into the labyrinth of businesses, court filings, and public information available on both Glenn and Jared. If there was any kind of formal connection, it should be there.
I first looked at Glenn's LLC in Louisiana, an entity called Covington Multifamily LLC. According to the Secretary of State's website, its listed address is Fitzgerald Road in Covington.
But when I contacted the owner of the property, she was surprised to hear from me. She was an older woman who said she'd lived in her house for several decades and didn't know anyone named Glenn Angus. She also had no idea why someone would list her address on an LLC.
I went out on a limb and found a Fitzgerald Church Road in Covington that I thought might have just been typed wrong on the LLC filing. But there was no numeric on that road that even came close to the one Glenn listed for his LLC. So I'm confident the address on Glenn's LLC is bogus. Something else I found while analyzing Glenn and Jared's businesses was that both men often used the word Wellington in their entity names.
For example, in 2003, Bruce, Jared, and Jared's stepfather became listed members of a Louisiana LLC called Wellington Ridge. Glenn is tied to four LLCs in Mississippi that have the word Wellington in the name.
Wellington Properties III, formed in 1999, Wellington Investments Incorporated, formed in 2001, Wellington Asset Management, formed in 2004, and Wellington Front Beach LLC, formed in 2005. None of Glenn's entities have Jared listed as a manager or member, and the same goes for Jared's businesses. But I couldn't help but notice the repeated name, Wellington.
How much of a connection there is between Jared and Glenn, if any exists at all, is unclear. I spent hours poring through Jared's phone records, which were also in the same Verizon statements I got Bruce's call history from. And I didn't find an instance where Jared called or received a call from Glenn Angus. I also haven't been able to find a paper trail formally connecting the men in any way.
The only solid link I can prove exists is Bruce. And he's dead. Because I haven't said it yet, and it feels like now is the appropriate time to make it absolutely clear, NOPD has never publicly named Jared a suspect in Bruce's case.
Detective Ryan Oquin told me that early on, Jared was communicating with homicide detectives. But in the 11 years since, he's declined to explain some of his actions or come into NOPD headquarters to undergo a formal police interview.
As far as the associates, those all have to be all individuals that we want to re-interview again. His business partners, I know there's one in particular that, foolishly on our part, we're assuming that he won't give another interview. So we kind of, as a strategy, holding off on that until we can get more information. Eventually everybody will be re-interviewed. It's just one of those things that take time.
Jared not volunteering to talk with Ryan one-on-one doesn't mean he's guilty of anything. It means he's decided to stay silent for reasons known only to him. If by now anyone in Covington has suspected him of doing anything nefarious, it doesn't seem like it's affected his life in St. Tammany Parish. His public image is pretty strong. In fact, every time someone has publicly questioned his character, he's made sure to aggressively defend himself.
Jared is still a well-known business figure and investor in St. Tammany. He has a fairly large political profile as well. He sits on the board of the Louisiana State Police Commission, which is an oversight authority for the state police. For a few years, he rubbed elbows on that panel with W. Lloyd Grafton, a voice you heard in episode two, lamenting about Louisiana's reputation of corruption.
Grafton told me that his time on the State Police Commission reinforced one conviction he's always felt sure about. The entity has a lot of drama and problems. Once they created the State Police Commission, it was just a very short time until the colonel for the State Police...
became all powerful. The State Police Commission does not have investigators of their own, so the only material you review is material submitted to you by management of the State Police. I found that it was just loaded, the seven members on that house, at least four of them, just enjoyed hobnobbing with the State Police and they had credentials showing they were on the State Police Commission.
And a couple of them were just wealthy guys. One was a contractor and one was in the liquor business. They were there as people who were important and got to hot knob with the upper crust of the state police. I mean, it was sort of baffling, but at the same time, I saw it for what it was.
Jared and Grafton often got into it at board meetings because neither one had a lot of respect for the other. Here's a heated exchange between the two of them from 2017 that was recorded by Robert Burns, a YouTuber who attends the public meetings and then publishes the footage for public view on his page, Sound Off Louisiana. The first voice you'll hear is Jared's. The second is Lloyd's.
Am I hiding from the truth or is somebody else? I've tried to keep some integrity in this commission and there is none. Oh, well. There is none. Yeah, nobody has character on this commission but you, sir. Ever since you came on this board and you came on it with an agenda. For you to sit up here and act like you're holier than thou, the only one with any integrity and character is insulting to everyone else sitting here.
These kinds of loud arguments are commonplace at commission meetings. Board members and citizens often get into yelling matches with one another. Is there anyone on this commission that is presently being investigated? I mean, you have a job to do, but it seems as though to me you're either in the loop or out of the loop. What is going on? Is it really necessary for this commission to exist?
Because apparently, you're not serving a purpose. At the heart of a lot of the drama is the board's history of corruption and scandal. I did a deep dive into this entity and found several articles from Louisiana publications reporting about board resignations, conflicts of interest, abuses of power, and members making unethical political campaign contributions.
Back in 2019, a man used his allotted time during public comment to accuse Jared specifically of participating in inappropriate political activity. Members of the State Police Commission are expressly prohibited from participating in political activity. These members should resign their positions immediately. Mr. Chairman, I will happily, happily respond in writing to this commission in writing this false allegation against me.
I found what you coming up here and calling for my immediate resignation without even the opportunity to defend myself. I found that very well. I think there's a better way to handle things. It's still America. We're still innocent until proven guilty. And I certainly had the right to defend myself before you come up here and make the accusations against me.
that you did without even giving me the opportunity to defend myself. You knew it was going to be in the press, and I'm fine with that. We're all grown-ups up here. We know what we signed on for. But I also have a child that reads the paper and Googles. I don't have a problem defending myself about anything I did prior to or while I'm sitting up here. What I have a problem with is when somebody makes an accusation against me
grandstanding that I should resign without even the opportunity to defend myself. I don't have a problem that you're up here every month. I don't have a problem with you bringing things to our attention. You do it for your own reasons and I respect that. But we give you courtesy, we give you politeness, and we treat you with manners. And I'm going to ask from this point forward, you do the same with us. It was a cut and paste error that a state representative made. I didn't do anything.
I won't even do anything with politics. I won't show up at a meeting. I won't discuss it. And I certainly did not write a check or sponsor anything since the day I took the oath to come up here two and a half years ago. So to have been accused of that and then had it splashed all over the press and blogs, I found it an attack on my character. Do a little bit more homework next time before you stand up here and attack my character. Period.
Jared wasn't guilty of what the guy accused him of, by the way. But I played this clip to let you hear for yourself how Jared is his own fiercest defender, to even a whiff of someone questioning his character. Which is why I figured my multiple attempts to speak with him about Bruce would be welcomed. But I was wrong. Hello? Hi, I was looking for Mr. Jared Caruso-Rickey.
This is he. Hi, Jared. My name is Delia D'Ambra. I am a journalist that has been working on a story about the 10-year anniversary of Bruce Kachira's murder. And I wanted to try and get a hold of you and see if you had some time to speak with me about his case. No comment. Okay. Is there an attorney I can speak with?
"I can't change the fact that Bruce worked for Jared or that they were said to be good friends. If I'm going to investigate Bruce's life, I can't just ignore his connection and association with Jared. I can't ignore the life insurance, the succession, the lawsuits, any of it. I have to follow every lead no matter where it takes me."
And the next avenue of investigation I came across took me back to Jared and Bruce and the Rickey family businesses. But this time, a lot more than $5 million was involved.
It was $60 million or $70 million. He thought that this, the water company sale, that was his, like, ticket. They had all kinds of issues with the company and Jared, with the DEQ. There were multiple contracts in play, which anytime there's multiples or amendments, things get messy. That's in the next episode of CounterClock, Episode 9, The Sale. Listen right now.
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