Remembering Our Dead

Delores Mack

Delores was found dead in a canal along Louisiana 3160. The location is 782 feet north of where Cheryl Lewis' body was found the previous day.

More than two years after saying a string of bodies found scattered in desolate, swampy areas from Algiers to Gramercy was the work of a serial killer, authorities Tuesday arrested longtime suspect Russell Ellwood in two of the murders.

And investigators said Ellwood, a former taxi driver, remains a key suspect in the deaths of at least nine more of the 26 victims found since 1991, most of them African-American, female and prostitutes. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said Tuesday as many as four other suspects are being investigated.

In formally charging Ellwood, 47, with the murders of Cheryl Lewis and Delores Mack, authorities painted the accused as a deviant who liked to inject his victims with a lethal mixture of drugs and have sex with their near-lifeless bodies before dumping them.

In several interviews with The Times-Picayune, Ellwood has insisted he never killed anyone. And Tuesday evening his attorney said the case against his client is flimsy.

But during the news conference at the St. Charles Parish Courthouse, St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said authorities had ample evidence to charge Ellwood with two counts of second-degree murder in the February 1993 deaths of Lewis, 30, of Bridge City, and Mack, 39, of Metairie. Their bodies were found a day apart in a canal off Louisiana 3160 in Hahnville. Traces of drugs were found in both of their bodies. Mack, a transsexual, was strangled; Lewis was asphyxiated, authorities said.

https://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/1998/03/cabbie_is_charged_in_killings.html

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/New_Orleans_Serial_Killer

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0

Report added: 17 Feb 2019. Last updated: 13 Jan 2021

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