The son said about his father, “He used to tell people, ‘If anybody ever touches my kid, I’ll kill him.’ I knew he wasn’t kidding.”
Trigger warning: This story contains graphic video content and details of sexual abuse and murder, which some may find distressing.
In 1984, a father named Gary Plauché had been waiting at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport in Louisiana because he knew that in a few moments, the man who raped his son would walk out the doors. When the rapist, Jeff Doucet, was being escorted by a police officer, Gary pulled his gun out and shot the man to the ground, right in front of news cameras that recorded the entire incident.
Gary was the father to Jody Plauché, who was kidnapped and sexually taken advantage of by his karate coach, whom Gary knew well. Jody was only 11 years old when he was kidnapped by Jeff more than three and a half decades ago in February, 1984, according to The Advocate.
Before Jeff took Jody away from his family, he started molesting him as a child when he joined karate classes at the age of 10. Jody considered his coach as his best friend back then but his innocent mind was being exploited by a pedophile.
“It was over several months before he ever started to do anything, and he had already been testing the boundaries,” Jody recalled later as an adult. “He had begun the grooming process, not just on me but my family. Pedophiles are very good at what they do. One of the things they’ll do with the grooming is test the child’s boundaries.”
Jody went on to say, “Jeff would go, ‘We need to stretch,’ so he’d be touching around my legs. That way, if he grabbed my private area, he could say, ‘It was an accident; we were just trying to stretch.’ Or, if we were driving a car, he’d put his hand in my lap and might go, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize my hands were there.’ That’s that slow, gradual seduction.”
After a while, Jeff started molesting Jody. On February 19, 1984, when Jody was 11 years old, Jeff kidnapped him and drove to Port Arthur, Texas to a relative’s house. Then, he took the child to Los Angeles by bus and the police were able to track them only after a week of Jody being held by Jeff.
When Jody was brought back home, his parents, Gary and June were glad to finally see their boy, and the video below shows what Gary said at the time.
As investigations were carried out, a rape kit proved that Jeff had raped Jody while he was with him. When Gary found out that officers were bringing his son’s 25-year-old rapist back, the father dressed himself up in a baseball cap and sunglasses, and waited at the airport near the phones. He actually was having a phone conversation with someone while waiting. And on the other side of the line was his best friend Jimmy, according to ESPN.
As the officers brought Jeff out, Gary whispered on the phone, “Here he comes. You’re about to hear a shot.”
Within moments, Gary fired his gun and shot Jeff in his right ear. Succumbing to the gunshot injury, Jeff eventually passed away.This video shows the incident of Gary firing a shot at Jeff. The content could be distressing, so viewer discretion is recommended.
Jody later said, “After the shooting happened, I was very upset with what my father did. I did not want Jeff killed. I felt like he was going to go to jail, and that was enough for me,” as quoted by The Advocate.
But Jody knew how protective his father was and said, according to ESPN, “My dad was absolutely too extreme. He used to tell people, ‘If anybody ever touches my kid, I’ll kill him.’ I knew he wasn’t kidding. That’s why I couldn’t tell anybody. And that’s exactly what he ended up doing.”
Following the incident, Gary pleaded no contest to a manslaughter charge and was sentenced to five years of probation. A suspended seven-year sentence was given to Gary along with a large number of hours of community service. However, apart from the time he spent in jail before the trial, Gary didn’t spend a day in prison for gunning down his son’s rapist, according to The Advocate.
In a YouTube video, a portion of the interview Gary later gave showed him being asked if he had any regrets. And the father said “no regrets.”
Now in his late 40s, Jody wrote a book titled Why Gary Why? and where he mentions some of the incidents that happened to him and how parents can protect their children from such things happening to them.
Jody said, “…I was able to work through it and eventually accept my dad back in my life, and we kind of went back to normal,” according to The Advocate. After getting a general studies degree with minors in philosophy, speech communication, and psychology, Jody went on to work as a sexual assault counselor and hopes that his book will give people the help they need.
“It is what it is,” said Jody. “I’ve embraced who I am and what I’ve gone through. That’s why I wrote the book. Again, it’s not about me or what Daddy did. It’s about educating and helping other people.” In 2014, Gary passed away.
