TriCity Stories: Blumenfelds return to work on documentary about notorious murder case

Melissa Hensley Blumenfeld heard the stories as she grew up in Morgan City. Maybe you did, too. These stories were about a sensational crime in the Jazz Age.
The rumors said a doctor, Thomas Dreher, was having an affair with Ada Leboeuf. She was the wife of Dreher’s best friend, James Leboeuf, the superintendent of Morgan City’s power plant.
Dreher and James Leboeuf were hunting buddies who were sometimes joined in the woods by Dreher’s handyman, James Beadle.
In 1926, Leboeuf asked Dreher to see his wife because she was having severe headaches. The doctor continued to see her for much of the next two years. The inevitable gossip eventually reached James Leboeuf, who confronted both his wife and Dreher about their alleged affair.
In 1927, as Lake Palourde receded with the end of the Great Flood, a couple of froggers found James Leboeuf’s body. He’d been shot twice with buckshot, and a feeble attempt had been made to weigh his body down with railroad angle irons.
Dreher and Ada Leboeuf were tried and convicted of conspiring to kill James Leboeuf and putting Beadle up to the actual shooting. All three had confessed. Most of the confessions were recanted one way or another but were nevertheless allowed into evidence at their trial.
Beadle was sentenced to life but released after more than a decade to live out his life in Berwick. On Feb. 1, 1929, Dreher and Ada Leboeuf were hanged.
Now Blumenfeld and her husband, David, are back in Morgan City to continue making their documentary. They’ll be here through Friday, filming interviews and other footage.
Their company makes films for nongovernmental agencies, charities mostly, often in Africa and India, as well as documentaries. The Blumenfelds, who live in Israel now, met after she went away to Nicholls State University to study marketing and was introduced to film while participating in a Department of Environmental Quality estuary program. They met in New Orleans when he made a visit from Canada to shoot photos in the Crescent City. They’ve been married 13 years.
The Blumenfelds would like to talk to anyone who might have something to add to their knowledge of the case. They can be reached at 985-297-3490 or melissa@blumenfeld.com.
“There are so many different layers to this case,” said Melissa Blumenfeld, 47. “It’s also personal to me because I grew up in the Dreher house.”
The layers start with the obvious: It’s a compelling crime story. Seen in a certain light, it’s also a story about mob justice.
“The entire trial was based on circumstantial evidence,” Blumenfeld said. “That’s what drives me crazy, and drives everyone else crazy. Today there’s no way that would happen. …
“I’ve heard comments from some of the jurors, that other people heard, that they were going to hang the doctor and the woman for what they did. But it was hearsay and nothing that you could bring in front of the judge.
“It was a media circus is what it was. People knew what they learned from the media. There were no cameras in the courtroom. … The media were sensationalized back then. I think pretty much the people tried them. The citizens tried them.”
An ambitious 28-year-old judge presided at the trial, Blumenfeld said, making up part of the political layer in this story. Gov. Huey Long and Lt. Gov. Paul N. Cyr split in part over the Leboeuf case. Cyr wanted Long to grant clemency. Long refused.
“Huey had his hand in quite a few different things, not just in the state but in Morgan City,” Leboeuf said.
“You have this case where nobody saw anything,” Blumenfeld said. “They didn’t have a shotgun. … There’s no way. Today these people would have walked, or at least gotten just a few years.”
But Thomas Dreher and Ada Leboeuf paid the ultimate penalty, peeling away yet another layer: a feminist one. Was Leboeuf killed for her role in a murder, or because she was accused of committing adultery? She was the first white woman ever executed in Louisiana.
Questions like that make the Blumenfelds’ task difficult in a small city where people still alive can remember the case.
“It’s very sensitive,” Melissa Blumenfeld said. “I really wanted to interview Libby Ledet, Ada’s youngest daughter, but I was told years ago that nobody talks to Libby about it. I respect that. It’s a small town, and I understand.”
Ada Liberty “Libby” Leboeuf Ledet died in 2013 in Houma. She was 95.
As sensitive as the case may remain, people are curious about it, too. St. Mary historian Pam Heffner led a local effort to get a 2000 book on the case, Charles Hargroder’s “Ada and the Doc: An Account of the Ada Leboeuf-Thomas Dreher Murder Case,” back into print. They succeeded last year.
The Baton Rouge Advocate reported that before the reprinting, copies of the book were fetching up to $600 on eBay. So people like their true crime stories.
Another case in point: the surprise popularity of the recent podcast “Serial,” which reconstructed nearly every detail of a controversial 1999 Baltimore murder case over the course of 12 weekly episodes. The case involved the murder of a promising student-athlete, allegedly at the hands of her ex-boyfriend.
The podcast was criticized for failing to determine whether the boy, who was convicted, was actually guilty. Blumenfeld said she may offer a conclusion in her 60-minute documentary.
“I’m trying to keep an open mind,” Blumenfeld said. “I’m trying to be objective. I don’t want my feelings to get in the way.”
If you know local person with a compelling story to tell, please let us know. Call or write Bill Decker at 985-384-8370 or bdecker@daily-review.com. His Twitter handle is @BillDeckerMC.

This column was written by Bill Decker of The Daily Review staff. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.