The Donna Arceneaux homicide case is now in the hands of the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office. As reported earlier, Sheriff Jason Smith requested that the case be returned to the Sheriff’s Office, which is where it was originally after Ms Arceneaux was killed in October 2017.
A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office said this week that investigators have to “start at ground zero,” which requires organizing existing evidence and planning the steps of the cold case investigation.
The spokesman said, “We are still in the early stages of the investigation but we are committing resoures to the case and working with the DA, who has agreed to provide a special prosecutor moving forward.”
The case was originally worked by the Sheriff’s Office after Ms Arceneaux was found shot to death at her home just outside the Franklinton city limits on Highway 16 in October 2017.
But by 2019, with no arrests occurring, Ms Arceneaux’s family asked that the Louisiana State Police take over the case. The then sheriff, Randy Seal, agreed and a state police investigator was assigned to the case.
However, the State Police were unable to solve the homicide, and in early January of this year the case came back to the Sheriff’s Department at the request of Sheriff Smith.
The WPSO investigators who are handling what is acknowledged to be a tough case after seven years do not have a specific timetable or deadline. Instead, they are starting back at the beginning and planning a step-by-step indepth investigation, including a careful examination of any available evidence.
In an earlier statement regarding the case, Sheriff Smith said his department will “make a very strong efffort to achieve justice.”
