On March 12, 1981, at about 3 a.m., a 26-year-old white woman was walking along a road looking for help after a tire on her car blew out on the railroad tracks along Grand Caillou Road south of Houma, Louisiana, in Terrebonne Parish.
She said a Black man walked up to her and engaged her in conversation. She would later say he said his name was “Clyde.” She said he began making suggestive remarks, then threatened her, grabbed her by the neck, and dragged her from the road to the side of some buildings. He pulled her hair, punched her in the face, choked her, and bit her. He ordered her to take off her pants, stockings, and underwear, and then raped her. He repeatedly choked her and hit her head with a pipe.
After the rape, the attacker cleaned the victim's fingernails with grass. The victim, who was a nurse, ran away and was picked up by Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Deputy Harold Domangue, who saw her walking along the road. After taking the woman to the hospital, Domangue returned to the scene because about an hour earlier he had encountered 26-year-old Clyde Charles, a local commercial fisherman, hitchhiking along Grand Caillou Road.
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Lieutenant Ronald Bergeron responded to Deputy Domangue's request for assistance. He found a blue denim jacket and the victim's purse. Behind storage tanks where the rape occurred, Bergeron found a red baseball cap.
At about 4:05 a.m., Lieutenant Bergeron spotted Charles, a commercial fisherman who lived in the area, hitchhiking on Grand Caillou Road about one mile south of the location of the rape. Charles was advised of his Miranda rights and arrested. He was then taken to Terrebonne General Hospital where the victim identified him in a one-on-one show-up.
Charles was charged with aggravated rape.
Charles went to trial in Terrebonne Parish District Court in June 1982.
The victim testified that she left her parents' home between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. to watch the tugboats and think. On the way, a tire blew out on her car, leaving the car stranded on railroad tracks behind Grand Caillou Road. She said she abandoned her car and started walking toward Houma, hoping to find a telephone.
As she neared Gino's Restaurant after having walked for about 20 to 30 minutes, she noticed a man approaching. After exchanging greetings, the man reversed his direction and began walking beside the victim while engaging her in conversation. She said the man called himself “Clyde” during their conversation.
The victim said she told the man, whom she identified in court as Charles, about her car. She said she told him she was meeting friends at Gino's Restaurant because she did not want him to know that she was really alone. She said he began making suggestive remarks about her physical appearance and when she said she had a gun in her purse, he grabbed her by the neck and dragged her from the roadway.
The victim said she screamed and struggled, but the man punched her in the face dragged her behind some storage tanks where she was raped. She said she began walking toward the road and the attacker did not follow her.
Domangue testified that at 2:25 a.m., he had noticed Charles hitchhiking on Grand Caillou Road near Gino's Restaurant. Domangue said he got out of his car and ordered Charles to stay by the side of the road, as he was creating a traffic hazard. Domangue said that he spotted the victim’s car on the railroad tracks at 3:20 a.m. and continued on Grand Caillou Road where he found the victim.
Domangue obtained a description of the rapist's clothing by asking the victim to agree or disagree that her assailant was wearing certain items of clothing he described to her. Domangue said he already suspected Charles might be the rapist and included a description of Charles’s clothing in his questioning of the victim. He said the victim's responses indicated that her attacker was w earing a dark jogging suit with stripes.
Domangue testified that when he saw Charles before the attack, Charles was wearing a dark jogging jacket with white stripes, a red cap and blue jacket tied around his neck. The prosecution introduced the red baseball hat and jeans jacket that Bergeron found near scene of the rape, as well as a police statement that said Charles was wearing a blue jacket at the time of his arrest.
The prosecution also presented the rape kit. An analyst said that spermatozoa had been identified in the kit. A microscopic hair analyst testified that two Caucasian hairs on Charles's shirt were microscopically "similar," but not conclusively identical, to the victim’s head hair.
The defense argued that Domangue fed the description of Charles to the victim, resulting in his arrest and her identification.
On June 22, 1982, an all-white jury convicted Charles of aggravated rape. He was sentenced to life in prison at the Angola penitentiary.
Charles’s conviction was upheld by the First Circuit Louisiana Court of Appeals in June 1987..
Ultimately, Charles reached out to the Innocence Project for help. In 1999, Charles was granted post-conviction DNA testing of the biological evidence collected from the victim.
The testing was performed on one of two vaginal swabs. A large quantity of spermatozoa was recovered as well as a few epithelial cells. An analysis of the DNA profile from the spermatozoa of one slide was reviewed at the FBI Crime Laboratory. The FBI determined that a highly discriminating DNA profile had been obtained from the vaginal swab. This was confirmed by a report from Forensic Science Associates, a DNA testing laboratory in California.
Later, Charles submitted a blood reference for testing. The results excluded him as the source of spermatozoa from the rape kit.
Based on these findings, Charles’s conviction was vacated, the case was dismissed and Charles was released on December 17, 1999.
In April 2000, Charles's brother, Marlo Charles, was arrested and charged with the crime. He was convicted on March 1, 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
Charles later was awarded $480,000 in state compensation and settled a lawsuit for $200,000. On January 7, 2009, Charles passed away at his Louisiana home. He was 55 years old.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 10-09-2025
