Jody Plauché’s parents enrolled him in karate classes when he was ten years old. Jody’s father, Gary Plauché, was strong friends with the coach, Jeff Doucet.
The parents thought Jody would pick up a valuable life skill, but they had no idea that the time he spent taking karate lessons would end up being the worst moment of his life and permanently alter the path his family would take.
After Jeff abused Jody, he abducted him and transported him to Port Arthur, Texas, and then to Los Angeles. A week later, authorities found him.
“It was over several months before he ever started to do anything, and he had already been testing the boundaries,” Jody recalled later as an adult. “He had begun the grooming process, not just on me but my family. Pedophiles are very good at what they do. One of the things they’ll do with the grooming is test the child’s boundaries.”
He then continued: “Jeff would go, ‘We need to stretch,’ so he’d be touching around my legs. That way, if he grabbed my private area, he could say, ‘It was an accident; we were just trying to stretch.’ Or, if we were driving a car, he’d put his hand in my lap and might go, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize my hands were there.’ That’s that slow, gradual seduction.”
Gary, Jody’s father, was among many who were unable to move past what had occurred to Jody. He chose to take matters into his own hands since he couldn’t fathom allowing Jeff to live after everything he had done to his son.
Gary believed his son’s rapist would leave the building at that moment, so he put on a baseball cap and sunglasses and made his way to the Baton Rouge Metro Airport in Louisiana on February 19, 1984. Gary murmured over the phone while he was talking to someone, most likely a friend of his named Jimmy: “Here he comes. You’re about to hear a shot.”
Gary pulled out his gun and immediately killed Jeff by shooting him in the ear. Reporters covering the news at the time captured the entire episode on camera.
After identifying Gary Plauché, Deputy Mike Barnett said “Why, Gary? Gary, why?” seconds after television cameras recorded the shooting.
“After the shooting happened, I was very upset with what my father did,” Jody recalled, speaking out about his father’s actions years after the murder. Jeff’s death was not what I wanted. “I thought he was going to jail, and that was enough for me,” The Advocate said.
“My dad was absolutely too extreme. He used to tell people, ‘If anybody ever touches my kid, I’ll kill him.’ I knew he wasn’t kidding. That’s why I couldn’t tell anybody. And that’s exactly what he ended up doing,” Jody told ESPN.
Gary was taken to court and given a five-year probationary period. Gary didn’t spend any time behind bars, with the exception of the period he was awaiting trial.
When asked if he regretted killing his son’s rapist in an interview with Yahoo, Gary responded as follows: “No regrets.”
In his book Why Gary Why?, Jody, who is currently in his 40s, discusses ways parents can safeguard their kids. He is a sexual assault counselor as well.
“It is what it is,” Jody said. “I’ve embraced who I am and what I’ve gone through. That’s why I wrote the book. Again, it’s not about me or what Daddy did. It’s about educating and helping other people.”
