Louisiana Voice

It’s finally here.

After years in the research and writing that saw thousands of pages of records rescued from a historic flood, my fifth book, Murder on the Teche: A True Story of Money and a Flawed Investigation is now available.

Dr. Robert Chastant, a highly successful and widely respected New Iberia orthodontist, was brutally murdered on Dec. 13, 2010 at his horse farm near his home. The killer, a Mexican illegal who worked for Chastant, was quickly apprehended and confessed to killing the doctor with a claw hammer. But, he told authorities, he was paid $1,000 by Chastant’s wife, Laurie, to kill her husband. Her possible motive? The difference between approximately $80,000 she would have received under a pre-nuptial agreement and more than $2 million in insurance and benefits.

Murder on the Teche contains the classic ingredients: money, a love triangle, murder and a bitter fight among Chastant’s third wife Laurie and his children. The inexperienced, bumbling investigators who overlooked or ignored obvious clues that may have revealed the involvement of a second person did little to alleviate tensions.

Laurie Chastant was never questioned as a suspect in the murder. Was it ineptness on the part of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office or did the fact that Laurie’s father was – and is – a sheriff’s deputy in a nearby parish who had worked with Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal when both were Louisiana State Troopers influence authorities to consider Viera the lone killer?

I undertook this book after being contacted by Dr. Chastant’s brother, Paul Chastant, an architect living in Texas. He directed me to Lafayette attorney James Daniels, who represented his brother’s estate in the myriad legal fights. Daniels graciously provided me with boxes of legal documents which were sitting on the floor of my den when 33 inches of river water invaded my home in the flood of 2016. As I dejectedly stared at the soaked documents, my heroic wife Betty said, “Well, let’s get busy drying them out.” We then laid every single page on 8X4 plywood sheets in the hot August sun. The result was we saved every single page. While not in the best of shape, they were usable.

The result was this book, which you can order from me for $20 (the $17.95 price, plus shipping) by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post to pay by credit card or you can mail a check to Tom Aswell, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727. (This is not a donation to the LouisianaVoice fundraiser: I promised no more of that until September. This is separate and apart from the LouisianaVoice non-profit.)

You may also order by clicking on the CAVALIER HOUSE ad on this page. That will take you to the web page of Cavalier House Book Sellers in Denham Springs.

Finally, you may order direct from DVille Press, my publisher, by clicking on www.dvillepress.com

Whichever method you choose, I sincerely hope you enjoy the book.