A haunting mystery

Real talk: some places just have bad vibes, and the Azalea Original Pet Cemetery in Toca, Louisiana, is officially the main character of a nightmare. HBO’s new docuseries The Pet Cemetery Murders is currently taking us down a rabbit hole into the life and death of Dorothy Thompson, the 61-year-old who ran the cemetery before her grizzly end in 1985.

The plot thickens

Dorothy’s life was honestly wild before she even disappeared. In 1970, she shot and killed her first husband, Logan Banks, claiming self-defense. Her second husband, Donald Robinson, was also fatally shot on the property in 1978, though no charges were ever filed. After her mother, Grace Thompson, passed away in 1979, Dorothy was left running the 14-acre site alone.

On April 13, 1985, Dorothy vanished. St. Bernard Parish Detective Brian Vallelungo noted that there were zero signs of a struggle in her home—just a wine glass and the TV left on. Nearly a month later, her body was found in the Mississippi River, wrapped in chains with a plastic bag over her head. The vibes were undeniably off.

The fallout

Police initially looked into groundskeepers, including Elkin Childress and Brandon Nodier. Dorothy had actually been in a legal battle with Nodier over the cemetery property, and a hearing was scheduled for just 10 days after she went missing. It wasn't until 2009—decades after Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the original evidence—that witnesses finally came forward, some even claiming they saw Dorothy’s ghost.

An anonymous witness eventually testified that they saw Nodier kill her. He was charged with second-degree murder but took a plea deal for manslaughter in 2014, getting a 10-year prison sentence. St. Bernard Chief of Detectives Col. John Doran stated, "The motive was his strong desire to possess Dorothy Thompson's land."

Why it matters

This case proves that some secrets eventually crawl their way back to the surface, even when the evidence is literally washed away. You can catch the next episode of the docuseries investigating these haunting events on HBO Max this Sunday.