No amount of training could have protected disgraced karate instructor Jeff Doucet from the surprise attack that awaited him when he arrived at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport on March 16, 1984.
Doucet was escorted through the terminal in handcuffs in front of a procession of TV news cameras.
Lurking by a bank of telephones with his back to the commotion, a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, and a receiver pressed to his ear, was an incensed Gary Plauché. He had a score to settle.
A succession of camera flashes erupted as Doucet was forcefully led past the press, with reporters scrambling to line up the perfect shot.
Also readying to hone his aim was Plauché.
‘Here he comes,’ Plauché whispered down the line to his friend as Doucet passed behind. ‘You’re about to hear a shot.’
With that, Plauché turned on his heels, lined Doucet up in the sights of his .38 snub-nosed revolver and pulled the trigger at point-blank.
A thunderous crack sounded, and Doucet slumped to the ground in a bloodied heap.
Jeff Doucet arrived back in Louisiana in March 1984 unaware of the grisly fate that awaited him
Waiting to greet him with a single-bullet salute was Gary Plauché, a father of three
Two police officers raced to subdue and disarm Plauché.
‘Why, Gary?! Why’d you do it?’ pleaded one of the cops, who recognized Plauché instantly.
‘If it were your child, you would’ve done the same thing, too,’ he sobbed in response.
Within 24 hours, Doucet was dead.
Plauché, a salesman and former news cameraman, was later celebrated nationwide as a vigilante hero.
But watching at home in horror was his 11-year-old son, Jody Plauché, who was angry at his father for resorting to such violence.
‘I didn’t want Jeff dead,’ Jody, now 52, told the Daily Mail. ‘I just wanted him to stop.’
A fateful meeting
Jody crossed paths with Doucet by chance in 1983, when he was just a fifth-grader. He lived with his family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
A good athlete, Jody was already enrolled in numerous sports teams, but agreed to accompany his younger brother to karate lessons.
Watching on in horror was Gary’s 11-year-old son, Jody, who was a student of Doucet’s
When their original instructor didn’t turn up one day, the Plauché brothers were referred to Doucet’s class at a better-equipped dojo across town.
Jody remembers feeling impressed by the young and charismatic Doucet, an ex-Marine he soon came to view as his best friend.
In fact, the whole Plauché family was eventually taken with him.
Jody’s parents viewed Doucet as a blessing, crediting him with getting their sons into shape. They regularly invited him over for family game nights and dinners.
But during class, Doucet was beginning to show Jody an inordinate amount of attention.
Before long, Doucet began to see how far he could go.
‘He would test boundaries with all the kids, and then pick out the ones he thought would be best and the most compliant,’ said Jody.
‘How it worked with me is, he’d help me stretch, and then he’d start touching my inner thighs… that was his way of normalizing the inappropriate touch that was coming.’
For Jody, that horrifying moment came one day when Doucet asked the then 10-year-old if he’d like to learn to drive a car.
Jody enrolled in Doucet’s karate class in 1983 when he was just 10 years old
Gary always told his children if anyone ever harmed them, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them
Doucet drove a Datsun 280ZX, and young Jody leapt at the chance to get behind the wheel.
Once he was perched on Doucet’s knees, he felt his teacher’s hands land on his lap.
‘I remember thinking, “Whoa, what’s going on here?”’ recounted Jody.
‘Then I started rationalizing it, thinking maybe it was an accident. But he knew what he was doing. He was seeing what he could get away with. And that’s textbook pedophilia.’
Soon, Doucet’s inappropriate behavior gave way to outright sexual abuse.
Jody hauntingly recalled how, one night during a team retreat, Doucet had taken seven members of the dojo away and booked them all into one twin-bed motel room.
Four children were in one bed, and Jody and two other students were with Doucet in the other.
In the night, Jody woke up to Doucet groping his crotch.
Paralyzed in fear, he laid there pretending to be asleep.
The next morning, the two of them were driving to the store together when Doucet asked him if he could not tell anyone about what happened the night before.
‘I was playing dumb, asking him, “What do you mean? What did you do last night?”
‘And I think that’s the moment he knew, “Okay, I have him. He’s not going to say anything.”
‘That’s when the abuse stepped up… he abused me almost every day until he kidnapped me on Feb. 19, 1984.’
Scared into silence
Jody was aware that what Doucet was doing to him was wrong, but he was too afraid to speak up.
A few years earlier, his parents had made him and his older brother watch a TV special movie, chronicling how a young girl was lured into abuse by her pedophile softball coach.
His mother told him that there are some adults out there who try to take advantage of children, and it’s important to report any inappropriate behavior right away.
His father promised him that if anyone ever laid a finger on him, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.
Jody knew his father wasn’t joking. Telling on Doucet would almost certainly sign his death warrant, so he decided to stay quiet.
‘Maybe if I’d told them right at the start, then maybe Daddy wouldn’t have killed Jeff,’ Jody said.
‘But I didn’t want to upset my parents, so that’s why I kept my mouth shut, and that’s why most kids keep their mouths shut.
‘Once my dad found out all the things he’d done to me and made me do to him, that was the line that drove my dad over the edge, I think – it was those details.’
At this time, the Plauchés didn’t have any reason to suspect anything inappropriate about Doucet.
Under his tutelage, Jody won a trophy at the Fort Worth Pro-Am, and the team began competing in regional competitions.
Jody was aware that what Doucet was doing to him was wrong but he was too afraid to speak up
He trained with Doucet almost every day. Doucet abused him virtually ever time he was in his care
Jody trained with Doucet virtually every day, and after each practice, the other boys would be sent off to get snacks while Doucet abused Jody in a backroom.
Even when Jody came up with all kinds of excuses why he didn’t want to go to karate practice, Doucet would show up at his house to drag him away.
Believing his coach knew best, Jody’s parents didn’t stop him.
‘He didn’t just groom me, he groomed my whole family,’ said Jody. ‘He gained my trust as well as their trust and had us all fooled.’
‘I’m taking you away’
In early 1984, Doucet made a confession to Jody: He’d run into some financial trouble writing bad checks, and he owed a lot of money to the wrong people.
If he couldn’t come up with $15,000 soon, he’d have to leave the state.
‘If I don’t get the money, I’m going to California and taking you with me,’ Doucet, then 25, told him.
By February, a warrant was out for his arrest for fraud.
When he showed up on the Plauchés’ doorstep on February 19, his secret and twisted plan had already been set into motion.
Doucet told Jody’s mom he needed to borrow her car to drive to a nearby home where he was awaiting a carpet delivery, and asked if Jody could ride along to help him.
‘We’ll be back in 15 minutes,’ he assured her.
Jody was called outside and got into the car with Doucet.
‘Where are we going?’ Jody asked him.
‘We’re going,’ replied Doucet. ‘We’re going to California.’
Doucet wanted to skip town after writing bad checks and building considerable debt. He abducted Jody and went to California
Doucet took him to a motel room and dyed Jody’s blonde hair black to disguise him
The room where Doucet and Jody were found is shown above
Doucet then drove to his mother’s house in Portland, Texas.
He told his mom he was planning on taking Jody to New York and he needed his brother’s birth certificate so he could get a fake ID.
Jody’s mom called Doucet’s mother and asked if she’d seen her son.
‘Oh yeah,’ Doucet’s mom told her. ‘He’s got Jody and he told me they’d be back in the morning.’
The next morning, Doucet and Jody boarded a bus in Orange, Texas, bound for Los Angeles.
Jody told the Daily Mail that he wasn’t frightened at any point along the way.
He said he was enthralled at the prospect of seeing the Hollywood Sign and going to Disneyland.
And because the bus journey took more than two days, Jody said the trip gave him a 48-hour respite from Doucet’s sexual abuse.
‘He couldn’t abuse me on the bus, and he was so preoccupied with where we were going next and the fact he’d abducted a kid, that he hardly touched me at all,’ Jody said.
When they arrived in California, Doucet shaved his beard and dyed Jody’s blond hair black.
Then, he checked them both into a motel, where he proceeded to molest and rape Jody.
Eventually, Doucet made contact with Jody’s mom. In an attempt to throw investigators off their scent, he told her they were in New York.
‘If you don’t come and meet us in New York, you’ll never see your son again,’ he told her.
Jody’s parents frantically searched for their son for an agonizing 10 days.
A call home from Jody provided the break they needed, as police were able to trace their location.
‘I could hear the relief in her voice,’ Jody said, recounting that call. ‘I told her that I was fine and no harm had been done to me.
‘Then, not long after, I was sitting on the bed close to the door and Jeff was on the phone, and I want to say 12 police officers came bursting in and scared the s**t out of me.’
Even when Jody came up with all kinds of excuses why he didn’t want to go to karate practice, Doucet would show up at his house and drag him away
Jody said Doucet ‘groomed’ his whole family, duping them into gaining unfettered access to him
Vigilante justice
Jody was taken into the care of police, but continued to deny Doucet had abused him.
The horrifying truth was revealed when he was taken to a hospital and administered a rape kit.
Jody said he knew then he didn’t have to lie anymore.
‘I was going to continue to lie until that hospital report came back,’ said Jody.
‘And then once it came back, I wouldn’t be able to deny it, but I could also tell Jeff that it wasn’t me who told.
‘So many people think I lied to protect Jeff, but I was lying to protect me… I fully expected Jeff would get out of prison after a few years, because I didn’t understand how everything worked at that age.
‘It turns out Jeff would’ve likely gone to prison for the rest of his life, but Daddy gave him the easy way out.’
During an emotional reunion with his son at the airport, Plauché told reporters he felt helpless during his son’s kidnapping.
But in the days that followed, and as details of the sickening abuse Doucet subjected his son to came to light, Plauché enacted a plan to get revenge.
On March 16, 1984, he was drinking at a local bar with friends, one of whom worked at a local news station, who told him Doucet was due to be extradited back to Baton Rouge that night, landing precisely at 9:08 p.m.
Plauché headed straight to the airport, with a pistol tucked into his boot.
The rest was captured live on the news.
Within seconds of this image being captured, Doucet sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head
Two cops moved to restrain Plauché while Doucet bled out on the floor
Doucet was pronounced dead within 24 hours
Finding forgiveness
Plauché was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He spent two days in jail before being released on bond.
Disgust remained rife for the recently departed Doucet while Plauché was showered in praise.
‘I’d [have] shot him, too, if he done what they say he done to my boys,’ Linda Boyd, a 25-year-old mom of two who was working in the airport at the time, told the Washington Post in 1984.
‘Only I’d [have] gut-shot him three or four times and he’d [have] suffered before he died… Plauché shouldn’t do any time.’
‘Damn right,’ echoed Murray Curry, 47. ‘He got justice. [He] Saved the taxpayers money by blowing Doucet away. Some jury would have turned him loose.’
A Gary Plauché Defense Fund was set up by admiring members of the public, and Jody recalls his father being overcome with ‘fan mail’ bearing messages of support and thanks for vanquishing Doucet.
‘The support was overwhelming, and my mother and father made sure to respond to every single letter they received,’ said Jody.
‘And I just knew that my dad was gonna get off, that he wasn’t going to jail.’
Gary was lauded a hero nationwide for executing Doucet
Jody does not condone his father’s actions but said he understood why he did what he did
Jody wrote a book about his life story, titled Why Gary Why?, which released in 2019
Plauché died in 2014 after years of poor health. He is still lauded as a hero by many each time the video of his shooting Doucet re-emerges on social media
The judicial courts sided with the court of public opinion.
Plauché got seven years on a suspended sentence, five years probation and 300 hours of community service.
Despite all the public praise, Jody said he initially found it difficult to forgive him for killing Doucet.
While he doesn’t see his father as a hero for his vigilantism, he does understand why he did it.
‘I think for a lot of people who have not been satisfied by the American justice system, my dad stands as a symbol of justice,’ Jody explained.
‘I understand why he did it, absolutely. And I know my dad, and when he said he would kill anyone who touched me, I knew he’d kill him.
‘But I cannot and will not condone his behavior.
‘To this day, Jeff going to jail for the rest of his life is still my preferred sentencing for him.’
A survivor’s story
It wasn’t too long before Jody forgave his father – their life soon returned to normal and the pair rarely spoke of Doucet again.
Plauché died in 2014.
Still, four decades later, the video of him gunning down Doucet emerges on social media from time to time – viewers are largely celebrating his actions.
For Jody, the road to overcoming his trauma was long and at times unpredictable.
He went on to attend Louisiana State University, earning a degree in general studies with minors in philosophy, speech communication and psychology, which led to a job as a sexual assault counselor.
Today, he sits on the board of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault and travels the country holding seminars warning parents about signs of abuse.
In 2019, he wrote a book, Why Gary Why?: The Jody Plauché Story, about the abuse he suffered and his dad’s infamous shooting of Doucet, which he’s currently shopping around for a limited series or movie adaptation.
‘I wanted to give victims hope,’ he said of writing the book. ‘I wanted to give parents knowledge, and I wanted outsiders to get a general understanding about sexual violence and sexual abuse.’
‘Someone who read the book accused me of bragging,’ he said. ‘Hell yeah, I’m bragging.
‘But I’m also trying to let other people know that they can get to where I’m at now, where you can feel like you’re not a victim or defined by what happened to you.
‘I don’t look at myself as a victim. I’m a survivor, and I wanted to take what happened to me and turn it into a positive.
‘I think I’m doing a pretty good job of that.’
