When Donna Arceneaux’s naked body was found in a small Louisiana town in 2017, the local sheriff’s office soon told the public it was a suicide despite a coroner’s report that ruled it a homicide.
Now more than eight years since the 40-year-old mother of three was shot to death, the new sheriff in town is crediting a podcast by one of Arceneaux’s family members for uncovering the truth about the cold case and helping secure an arrest.
“Freeze Frame,” an eight-episode podcast released in 2024, looks in-depth at Arceneaux’s life, the possible suspects in her murder and why the case went cold. It’s just the latest example of how regular people like internet sleuths, a college criminology class and a former reality TV producer-turned-podcaster can crack dormant cases wide open.
“I would not even know about this case if it weren’t for the podcast,” Washington Parish Sheriff Jason Smith told USA TODAY. “The podcast sparked an interest and when I started looking at it, I thought, ‘We can solve this. This is doable.’”
Last month, just over a year after the last episode of the podcast aired, the sheriff’s office arrested Arceneaux’s former boyfriend, Scott Jordan. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of second-degree murder on Jan. 14.
He has pleaded not guilty and is staunchly maintaining his innocence.
As both Jordan and Arceneaux’s family await his trial, USA TODAY is looking at what happened to Arceneaux, why the case was apparently mishandled, and how the “Freeze Frame” podcast changed everything.
What happened to Donna Arceneaux?
On Oct. 24, 2017, Scott Jordan and a spiritual adviser of Arceneaux’s reported to police that they found Donna Arceneaux dead in her home in Franklinton, a town of fewer than 4,000 people about 70 miles north of New Orleans.
Police responded to find Arceneaux nude on the floor next to her bed, with a gunshot wound to the chest and a gun sitting on top of the opposite side of the bed, retired sheriff’s investigator Demmie Rice said on the “Freeze Frame” podcast. Evidence indicated that someone had cleaned up blood in the bathroom and that there was a “minimal” amount of blood in the bed area, Rice said.
“There’s no way she could have got off the bed, went in the bathroom, bled out, and then cleaned up the mess with a bullet going through the heart,” Rice said on the podcast.
Sheriff Smith told USA TODAY that any reasonable investigator would reach the same conclusion: “It was clearly a homicide.”
Yet back on Feb. 7, 2018 − five years before Smith was elected − the sheriff’s office told the public otherwise. “The most recent autopsy results show it to be a suicide, and it has been officially ruled as such,” reported the Era-Leader in Franklinton, citing the sheriff’s office.
A coroner’s ruling of “homicide” indicates that someone’s death was caused by another person. It does not necessarily mean murder but it does rule out the possibility of suicide.
Smith said: “It was never anything other than a homicide.”
Podcaster uncovers autopsy report, pressures investigators
Among the biggest revelations on the “Freeze Frame” podcast was a preliminary coroner’s report that found Arceneaux’s death to be homicide. The report was dated three months before the sheriff’s office told the public it was suicide.
It’s exactly the kind of breakthrough that 33-year-old Tucker Simmons hoped for when he began working on the podcast about his Aunt Donna’s death.
“I just called the coroner’s office up and said, ‘Hey, I’m just confirming this is real and it was never ruled a suicide,’” Simmons told USA TODAY this week. “He said, ‘Yeah, it pissed me off when it was reported as a suicide because it’s never been ruled that.’ And because of politics and a small town, it kind of just went away.”
Simmons began working on the podcast after he says he got burned out developing and producing reality TV shows in Los Angeles. When he moved to Nashville and started on “Freeze Frame” in 2020, Simmons said he knew he had to hold officials’ feet to the fire and renew attention to the case.
So across the street from the sheriff’s office, Simmons spent about $1,000 to put up a provocative billboard: “THERE’S A MURDERER AMONG US,” it read, along with the coroner’s finding: “Official ruling: Homicide.”
Simmons spent several years interviewing dozens of people and says he spent six figures of his own savings producing the podcast, which included interviews with investigators, the former sheriff who was in charge at the time, and Arceneaux’s family.
The podcast paints Jordan as an increasingly controlling and abusive on-and-off-again boyfriend of Arceneaux’s who at one point gave her three pages of rules to follow, like sharing social media passwords and her location.
Simmons said the podcast culminating in Jordan’s arrest was “shockingly emotional.”
“It’s been a five-year process,” Simmons said. “It’s weird to say I’m excited, because Donna is still gone, but this was the whole plan: get law enforcement to take some action.”
Who is Scott Jordan?
Scott Jordan is a 59-year-old radiology tech who was born and raised in the Franklinton area and has worked at the same local hospital for 35 years, his attorney, Roy Burns, told USA TODAY this week.
The podcast describes how he and Arceneaux became romantically involved after he moved next to her home and how he later bought her house when she experienced financial trouble. Their relationship deteriorated after that, and Arceneaux told others that she was planning to get away from Jordan and had “dirt” on him, the podcast says.
Jordan’s attorney, Roy Burns, told USA TODAY that his client adamantly denies any involvement in Arceneaux’s death and plans to vigorously fight the charges.
“This case is a very, very defendable case,” Burns said. “This is nothing but a circumstantial case.”
Sheriff Smith acknowledged that “there wasn’t any new evidence” that led to Jordan’s arrest. He said his investigators built their case in part by eliminating all other possible theories and suspects, and re-examining Scott’s previous interviews with the sheriff’s office, citing inconsistencies in his statements.
He declined to discuss a motive or share all the evidence he has but said that investigators were in close touch with prosecutors about what needed to be proved to build a strong case.
Burns successfully argued at a hearing this week for Jordan’s bond to be reduced from $2 million to $500,000. Jordan was able to post bond and was released after spending weeks in jail, on the condition that he wear an ankle monitor and stay at home unless he’s going to work, his lawyer’s office or church, Burns said.
He said there’s an easy explanation for accusations that Jordan had become controlling of Arceneaux, citing her history of being unfaithful to partners − a history the podcast fully explores and acknowledges.
“He’s not happy about his arrest and having to hire an attorney and defend his case,” Burns said. “But he’s going to see it through to the end … He did not do it.”
Donna Arceneaux’s sister on case going cold: ‘I started to lose hope’
Now more than eight years after her sister’s death, Sherry Pigott told USA TODAY that she’s relieved that the case is being handled by investigators committed to solving the crime.
Back when it first happened, she said her grief and pain were compounded when the sheriff’s office told the public that Arceneaux’s death was a suicide.
“It was very hurtful,” she said. “We just didn’t understand. I was just like, ‘What is going on? Why is it being shoved under the rug like this? I did start to lose hope.”
The sheriff in charge at the time, Randy Seal, did not respond to a message from USA TODAY. He told Simmons in the podcast that some of his investigators thought it was a homicide and some thought it was a suicide, and that his way of managing people is to “let the people that know what they’re doing do their job and get out of the way.”
Seal told Simmons that he doesn’t know why the public record was never corrected to reflect that Arceneaux’s death was ruled a homicide but that his office worked hard on the “puzzling case.”
“I hadn’t stayed in office for 30 years to have a dark heart,” Seal said. “There might have been some poor police work, there may have been some mistake, I don’t know. But I don’t think it was done on purpose.”
For Pigott, she said she regained hope that her sister’s killing would be solved when Simmons began working on the podcast and when Sheriff Smith called her to tell her that his investigators were reexamining the case.
“That’s all we ever wanted from the beginning − someone to look at the case seriously and treat Donna like she was a person.”
Original source: us