Louisiana Voice

Several years back, Fayette Tomkins, a co-worker from my days at the Baton Rouge State-Times newspaper, called me and asked if I’d like to meet him for lunch at the Florida Boulevard Piccadilly.

Sure, I said, and the two of us met that day and renewed a friendship that had lapsed after I left the paper in 1976 to become managing editor of the Daily Leader in my hometown of Ruston.

Thomas Wolfe, it turns out, was right. You can’t go home again. After living in Baton Rouge and working for The State-Times, I was bitten. I missed Baton Rouge, so I moved back to nearby Denham Springs.

That lunch with Fayette proved to be an indication of something more–a semi-regular event. The late Bill Bankston was the first to join us, making it a trio of State-Times alumni and the lunches quickly morphed into a monthly event, though Bankston, unfortunately, passed away soon after.

When I drove Fayette to the hospital for surgery, I was just helping a friend with no expectations of reciprocity. But days after he was back home, I received an Amazon package. I knew I had not ordered anything from Amazon but in that package was a Kindle reader he’d ordered as a gift for me. That was just Fayette being Fayette—generous to the core.

And those lunches soon became a new tradition of former employees of both The State-Times and The Morning Advocate. As more members joined the group, we continued congregating monthly for lunch. Only the location changed. We moved to the Piccadilly on Sherwood Boulevard and word spread as we invited any and every former employee of the two publications.

Now a full-blown tradition, we began calling ourselves (only half-jokingly) The Dinosaurs. Most of us, after all, are either approaching or already past 80 years of age. Our numbers ebb and flow from one month to another but the number consistently hovers around 12 to 15 attendees. Mostly, we just laugh as we reminisce about some of our adventures at the paper—like the one reporter who, fed up with the sticking keys on his typewriter, dumped it into a trash can, poured lighter fluid on it and set it afire. Or about the meeting of an area city council when the mayor, responding to criticism of some official action from a member of the audience, said, “Well, sir, that’s your derogatory.” Or any of a dozen other episodes that made work at the paper enjoyable and memorable, like when Edwin Edwards took a pair of scissors and lopped off about half of Mayor Woody Dumas’s tie. Of course, politics and LSU and Southern University football are also hot topics at the table.

For the most part, the food is just an afterthought; it’s the camaraderie between people who genuinely care for each other, enjoy working together and sincerely enjoy the fellowship that make the gatherings a monthly highlight.

There are no officers in The Dinosaur Club. We’re all equal, no one more equal than anyone else but there was never any question that it was Fayette who came up with the idea of a monthly get-together and he scheduled each month’s meeting faithfully—until he couldn’t.

You see, Fayette was deaf in one ear from birth, which made conversations with him difficult at times. But then his hearing got progressively worse, his eyesight began to fail him and he eventually labored to even walk. Then one of the cruelest maladies of them all—dementia—began to take a toll and though Linda Lightfoot would pick him up and drive him to the lunches, he eventually quit coming altogether. He couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, he explained, and he felt left out of the conversations. It had to be a lonely feeling.

But his condition kept deteriorating and it was discovered he had a brain tumor that was adversely affecting his eyesight and causing severe headaches. It proved to be benign, but that didn’t lessen the pain or the frustration.

Last week, he underwent brain surgery to remove the tumor. They got about 90 percent of it. But then, he suffered a stroke that further sapped his energy and the decision was made to move him to hospice. Last Friday, at approximately 7:40 a.m., Fayette, a native of Homer in Claiborne Parish, passed away. He was 79.

The tradition of The Dinosaur Club lives on and today (Monday, May 11, 2026), Advocate retiree Katheryn Flournoy proposed a toast and 15 Dinosaurs quietly raised a glass in honor of Fayette. It was a fitting tribute and a fitting place and time to give it.

When last we visited 32^nd JDC Judge Randall Bethancourt, he’d just been:

• Accused, along with Terrebonne Parish President Gordon Dove, of paying voters up to $150 to vote for Bethancourt in his reelection bid;
• Presided over a bitter four-year dispute between grandparents and son over the grandparents’ visitation rights to their grandson in which legal fees reportedly bankrupted the child’s parents;
• Accused of falsifying court records in a separate case to show that a defendant was brought before a magistrate after his arrest—when, in fact, he was not.

His Honor Judge Randall Leon Bethancourt

All this occurred after an embarrassing LEGAL FAUX PAS by Bethancourt a decade ago when he signed a search warrant based on a 1968 law that was declared unconstitutional in 1981—a search warrant that ended up costing the parish about $250,000 in a settlement of the victim’s lawsuit—and that doesn’t include legal fees.

In this particular case, Bethancourt, whose campaign is basically propped up by contributions by attorneys who practice before him, awarded full custody of the child to the mother who had admitted on the witness stand that:

• She had made homicidal threats against her own mother;
• She was unable to distinguish reality from her delusions;
• She had made false accusations on court documents.

Moreover, she was arrested for domestic abuse when she assaulted the father and her daughter on the front lawn with at least four witnesses, including children who were present. But Bethancourt, in his judicial wisdom, refused to allow even the police report to be added into the record even though it would certainly seem relevant.

He then refused to allow the father’s witnesses to the incident to testify because the mother’s testimony lasted so long and Bethancourt indicated he was ready to “wrap things up.”

So, in effect, the father’s witnesses were cut by Bethancourt in the interest of saving the court time.

There’s more.

A court-appointed attorney, Heather McAlister, after two meetings with the child, in one of which the boy specifically requested that he be allowed more time with his father, she decided that the boy had Stockholm Syndrome (now referred to as Appeasement). She was so convinced after two brief interactions that she had her recommendation printed and ready in court before the father’s testimony.

As court-appointed attorney to represent the minor son, she had a duty to represent the child, yet she spent lunch chatting with the mother and her attorney. An observer noted that the trial proceeded “as though the mother had two attorneys of record.”

No misconduct was proved against the father. The boy’s teachers even testified that the father was the only involved parent.

Family courts throughout the state have been getting dragged across the coals—apparently with considerable justification. The common complaint is that one parent with financial resources can, with a crafty attorney doing the dirty work, easily wear the opposing parent down physically, emotionally and financially. It makes the promise of justice for all an empty joke.

The fact that family court proceedings are not open to the public and all records are sealed only exacerbates the problem. Nothing good ever occurs in secret.

If you read nothing else ever posted on this blog, I want you to read Robet Mann’s The party of “Shut up, boy” post of today.

Read it. Then go back and read it again. And again. Slowly. Digest it. Let his words sink in and maybe, just maybe you’ll feel a twinge of the shame and outrage that he has expressed so well.

Mann is at his articulate best with this column and it exposes this state and this legislature (one legislator in particular) for becoming—and remaining—the example of everything we should abhor in elected officials.

And let’s lay the blame where it belongs: The Repugnantcan Party.

Don’t believe me? Just listen to the nauseating TV ads of the Repugnantcan candidates from State Supreme Court to Congress and the Senate. They’re all doing their dead-level best to be a better Trump-whore than their opponents.

When, for example, have you heard a candidate for judge emphasize his or her ability to faithfully follow the rule of law? All I’m hearing is who is the most conservative, the most loyal Repugnantcan. That’s not how a candidate for judge should campaign. They’re supposed to be impartial, immune to party politics. But not, apparently, in Louisiana.

Here is a photo of the subject of Mann’s wrath and indignation:

This is what hatred looks like when you dress it up in a suit

Remember this face. It is the face of the typical Republican white supremacist, the champion of the white nationalist redneck, the kind of person who runs on the coattails of the Pedophile-in-Chief—and is proud to do so. Think about that for a moment. They have hitched their career to a convicted rapist and an accused child sex abuser. Can it possibly sink any lower than that?

This is State Sen. John C “Jay” Morris III (R-West Monroe).

And remember, it is not Bob Mann but Morris who has exposed himself to being a bigot, a racist, a man who would, in the year 2026, tell the Black executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party during a committee hearing on congressional redistricting to “Shut up, Boy.”

That is just about as Jim Crow as you can get. Nothing subtle about the good senator who authored the bill to strip an elected clerk of court in New Orleans of the office he’d just won. A detractor pointed out to LouisianaVoice recently that Calvin Duncan was a convicted felon who’d served hard time in Angola. True. But what that person who, like Morris, is obviously blinded by his own bigotry, failed to point out is that Duncan had been wrongly convicted by a corrupt prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence and that he had been 100 percent exonerated—after more than three decades behind bars, after which he pursued and obtained a law degree.

(Of course, the person who pointed that out is of a somewhat limited vocabulary. He repeatedly employs the term “libtard commie” in his diatribes even though he would be hard-pressed to accurately define a communist of communism—and he certainly cannot explain the difference between socialism and communism.)

But I digress. Bob Mann is dead right in his critique of Louisiana’s elected officials who are perfectly content with the state ranking at the bottom of every list of accomplishments so long as the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel and other special interest money keeps feeding their campaigns.

If Morris’s sorry rebuke does not enrage you, embarrass you, make you cringe, then by God, you’re just as much a part of the problem as Morris or any mouth-breathing KKK member.

As is the case with most scandals, big or small, details leak out slowly until a sharper image is formed of the entire sequence of events. The case of Nathan Jump, the former proncipal of Mt. Olive Christian School in Claiborne Parish, appears to be no different.

It now appears, according to at least one person, there were as many as 80 complaints lodged against him. It’s not known if all, most or even any are related to sexual misconduct–though his arrest in February and again last week were for just that.

LouisianaVoice has learned that Louisiana State Police initiated the investigation of Jump but the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, an arm of the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, soon stepped in and took over the case, a development described by a retired law enforcement officer as “a good move.”

The same retired officer said he was told Jump’s first arrest for sexual battery in February was not a political move to discredit his wife, Tammy Jump, who is running for district attorney of the 2^nd JDC, but was legitimate. “He also told me there would be more arrests and sure enough, they popped ol’ Nathan again,” the retired officer said, the latest last week for two counts of indecent behavior with juveniles and a single count of molestation of a juvenile.

Tammy Jump For several years has been an instructor in an annual law enforcement criminal law update class. This is a three- or four-hour class where officers around north Louisiana are made aware of the latest criminal law updates of the most recent legislative session. “I think she started doing that with retired (now deceased) Judge R. Harmon Drew from Minden,” he said. “After Judge Drew’s health declined, the class was taken over by presiding Judge Jeff Cox of the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. I don’t know if she and Judge Cox are still working together on this or not.”

Another person will knowledge of the situation said Nathan Jump wrote notes to some of the girls at Mt. Olive Christian School and would take some of the female students to lunch. She described him as ”creepy.” The person said when the first female victim contacted local authorities to report Jump, she was “blown off.”

“One complaint—possibly a vendetta, but 80 complaints? That is insane,” the individual said. “[There’s] no telling how many more there are that are ashamed or afraid to come forward.”

For previous stories LouisianaVoice has posted on the Jumps and their family ties to the defunct New Bethany Home for Girls where survivors continue to claim they were sexually, physically and mentally abused, see the links below:

Husband of DA candidate arrested on sex counts; she was prosecutor who punted on New Bethany sex abuse in 2015 | Louisiana Voice

Family of DA who failed to prosecute sex abuse claims now owns home once operated by accused preacher Mack Ford | Louisiana Voice

Former Mt. Olive Christian School student says accused principal had students he favored, wrote ‘love notes’ to | Louisiana Voice

Well, this just has to be filed under “What in the world was he thinking?”

Every time I write about the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Department, I find myself thinking they can’t possibly do something even more bizarre and each time, I’m wrong—because they do.

Before I go any further, someone in Jackson Parish seems to think I’m relying on a certain individual (apparently a candidate for sheriff) as my source of information. Such is not the case. I am receiving information from various sources, none of whom is the one the writer assumed it was.

When Deputy Brent Barnett became Interim Sheriff following the resignation of incumbent Andy Brown, we more or less figured the office would be straightened out but then Barnett commandeered the sheriff’s department PICKUP TRUCK, plastered it with his own campaign posters and drove the truck in the annual Christmas parade. State law prohibits the use of department vehicles for any thing other than official use and political campaigning is not considered an official use.

WELCOME TO JACKSON PARISH SHERIFF’S OFFICE

As a Sheriff’s Office, we value:

Integrity | Professionalism | Commitment | Honesty | Trust | Respect

Fair enough, Bad judgment on Barnett’s part.

And one would think he’d be a little more careful after we exposed Brown’s side hustle with his SIX POINTS business.

But it gets better. Or worse, depending upon your own ethos.

Barnett also has his outside business enterprise, Barnett Cattle and Land Development.

Registered Agent(s)

Officer(s)Additional Officers: No 

He is listed in Louisiana Secretary of State corporate records as the agent and only officer/manager of the company which apparently also markets Derksen portable buildings.

Business hours for Barnett Cattle and Land Development is listed as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. six days a week and get this, the web page lists Barnett’s sheriff office email address: bbarnett@jacksonparishsheriff.com

That’s pretty brazen even by Louisiana’s lax ethical standards.

Shoot, even Andy Brown wasn’t foolish enough to refer clients of Six Points to his office email address.

But I suppose when you’re pulling down $280,000 a year, including benefits, in your day job in a historically low-income parish, you tend to get a little blinded by the temptation of bending the rules to make a little more…