As Todd Nesom winds down his career as district attorney in Allen Parish, there is one case that sticks in his mind.
A young woman who was nine months pregnant took a ride back with another woman back into Allen Parish after seeing her obstetrician in Alexandria. The series of events that followed is something that could come out of a Hollywood movie.
“She gave the little girl a ride back home,” said Nesom. “She brought her in her house and murdered her to try to harvest the baby. She had three kids in the house, and one of her daughters heard screams and saw her mother go through the house with a weapon.”
Nesom continued, “Then, she ultimately ended up burning the body in front of her kids. She couldn’t completely burn the body the first time. She loaded it up, moved it to a different location, put the little girl’s body in a ditch, and burned it for about a week with leaves and sticks until she completely burned the body.”
The case went cold for several years until the woman’s teenage daughter confided to a wildlife agent about what she had seen her mother do.
“We knew the girl was missing,” said Nesom, but we had no leads to anything. At that point in time, we got a forensic specialist to come start digging and locate the remains. Everything was so burned up that we had to do a mitochondrial DNA test. It came back, and it was the little girl.”
The suspect pled guilty two years ago to murder and is serving a life sentence. Since then, she has moved several times to withdraw her plea.
“The case goes on,” Nesom expressed.
Nesom said this incident is one of the most unusual to happen in Allen Parish since he has been district attorney and shared the details while reclining at his desk on a recent lazy Friday morning in his last days in office.
The profession of law was not what Nesom initially had in mind as he received his undergraduate degree in farm and ranch management. “I wanted to do that for a living because my dad had a farm,” he said.
Nesom, however, realized he could not make a living by being a farmer and decided to attend law school. He graduated from Loyola in 1991 and, as he said, “hung out my shingle on my own and started practicing law.”
Starting out as lawyer was tough for Nesom. “They take you to law school and teach you the law, but they don’t teach you how to practice law,” he said.
The young lawyer had to depend on tight knit legal community of Allen Parish in order to learn the ropes. He quickly got on his feet, and an opportunity presented itself about a year later when Doug Hebert, who was district attorney at the time, offered Nesom a position as assistant district attorney.
At the time when he first became an assistant district attorney, Nesom had a satellite office in his Oakdale law office to serve the residents of the northern part of the parish. The actual district attorney’s office was in Kinder in Hebert’s office. The biggest change to the district attorney’s office, during Nesom’s time as assistant district attorney, was the construction of a courthouse annex in Oberlin to house the district attorney’s office.
After Hebert decided to retire from district attorney, Nesom decided to run for the position. “When he announced he was going to retire,” Nesom said, “everybody in the office knew I was going to run. So, I ran and got elected in October 2008.”
Twelve years later, Nesom decided to hang up his scales of justice and retire. “I don’t believe in being a career politician,” he expressed. “I think change is good.”
With retirement in view, Nesom plans to do some traveling with his family and help his sons get their businesses in shape after they graduated college. Both of his sons are commercial pilots. The oldest moved back to Oakdale with his wife, and the youngest son is a crop duster pilot.
Nesom, who was born in Oakdale and raised on his parents’ farm, also looks to get back to his roots of being a farmer once he is retired from law. “I live on a farm in Elizabeth,” he said. “I mainly just have hay. I have a few horses and not many cows. Right now, I’m fixing to buy some.”
The soon to be cattle farmer looked back on his two terms in office and said, “It’s been a good 12 years.”
Nesom went on to look forward to the future with Joe Green as his replacement. He concluded, “I have a lot of confidence in my replacement. I think Joe is going to be a good district attorney and will serve the parish well.”
