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The Advocate
April 29, 2015
One by one, the last three men convicted in the home invasion triple homicide committed over a safe of valuable coins stood before state Judge Alvin Turner Jr. more than three years after the fact Wednesday evening.
One by one, each received sentences from Turner, of the 23rd Judicial District, bringing an end to a long, painful judicial process for the families damaged in that February 2012 night. Robert Irwin Marchand; his wife, Shirley Marchand; and her son, Douglas Dooley, were beaten and had their throats slashed in the couple’s home in a quiet corner of Ascension just north of Gonzales.
“The family can finally have some closure,” Charlotte Guedry, spokeswoman for District Attorney Ricky Babin, said after the sentences.
“You know, they’re on the way to that now.”
Robert Marchand, 74, and Dooley, 50, of Cross Plains, Tennessee, were found dead at the scene on Feb. 18, 2012. Shirley Marchand, 72, died on March 2, 2012.
The defendants, who had faced three counts of first-degree murder, reached plea bargains with prosecutors after the two central figures in the Feb. 17 slayings, Michael Aikens and Bernard James, had previously been convicted on three murder counts and sentenced to life in prison.
Rolando Durrell Stewart, 25, 15379 Roy Rogers Road, Prairieville, who also had been convicted on unrelated charges, including an attempted second-degree murder count, received the longest sentence Wednesday, 63 years at hard labor.
Travis “Buddah” Moore, 22, 4950 Wilot St., Baton Rouge, who had agreed along with co-defendant Devon James, to testify for prosecutors, received 26 years in prison.
James, 27, 40140 S. Autumnwood, Prairieville, who received 15 years, did not participate in the robbery and murders. But he lent Bernard James, his cousin, his Suburban for the robbery, helped open the safe later, clean it of fingerprints with bleach and dispose of it in Livingston Parish, according to the plea read in court Wednesday.
Turner gave his reasons for each man’s sentence, spelled out the prison time and then handed over each man to the state Department of Corrections.
Each time, emotional family and friends of the defendant walked out of the rear of the courtroom as sheriff’s deputies quietly led the defendant in the opposite direction.
At one point, the moans of sorrow from a woman could be heard after she left a courtroom.
The sadness was no less intense minutes earlier when the daughter of Robert Marchand and the widow of Dooley told the three defendants sitting together with their attorneys how the murders had cut short the lives of people they loved.
“These past three years have been the most difficult times in all of my life,” said Laureida “Lolo” Dooley, widow of Douglas Dooley.
