On September 23, 2019, the Louisiana Attorney General’s task force on Internet Crimes Against Children received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that a Louisiana resident was suspected of trafficking in child pornography.
The investigation of the tip led investigators to Livingston County Sheriff’s Detective Dennis Perkins. On October 22, 2019, Perkins, 44, was arrested at a fishing cabin in Toledo Bend, Louisiana. He admitted during a brief interview with officers that he had tossed his cell phone over the bridge as he walked up to where the officers were waiting.
Simultaneously, investigators executed a search warrant at his home in Dennis Springs, Louisiana. Electronic devices and computers were seized. The next day, Perkins’s 34-year-old wife, Cynthia, a junior high school teacher, was arrested. Both were charged with more than 60 counts of various sex offenses.
On December 17, 2019, a Livingston County grand jury indicted the couple on 150 counts of producing child pornography, rape, video voyeurism, and obscenity.
Among the evidence seized was a 17-minute video dated November 8, 2014, depicting Dennis Perkins and two women having sex. One woman, who was believed to be Perkins’s wife, Cynthia, had a sheet over her face and appeared to be unconscious while Perkins and another woman performed sex acts with her.
However, investigators determined that Perkins and Cynthia had not married until 2018. Further investigation of a Playboy bunny tattoo on the prone woman showed that she was R.S., Perkins’s wife at the time of the video. She had divorced Perkins in 2015. Dennis and Cynthia Perkins were married in Las Vegas in December 2018.
One of the folders from Perkins’s computer contained more than 100 files of different women. One of the files was labeled “Mel.” The investigators determined that the woman in that file, Melanie Curtin, then 32 years old, was the other woman in the video. When investigators interviewed R.S., she confirmed that Curtin was the woman in the video and asserted she had no memory of that video.
On February 1, 2020, Curtin was arrested and charged with aggravated rape and video voyeurism. During interviews with investigators, she said she had no memory of the video.
Prior to trial, her defense lawyers filed a motion to admit evidence that R.S. had engaged in sexual activities with Perkins in other instances in which her face was covered. The evidence consisted of photographs found on Perkins’s computer. The trial judge, Brian Abels, denied the motion.
Curtin went to trial in Livingston Parish 21st Judicial District in November 2021. After a jury was selected, but before opening statements, the defense made a motion to introduce evidence of an incident in which R.S. performed oral sex on Perkins with another woman in the room who was giving R.S. instructions on how to do it. The evidence was based on a statement from the other woman. Judge Abels denied the motion.
R.S. said she had been a workout friend of Curtin because their sons were in the same sports activities. She said that on a couple of occasions, Perkins suggested they have a threesome with Curtin, but she thought Perkins was joking.
She said she later learned that Curtin, who was going through a divorce, was having an affair with Perkins that began in 2013.
The prosecution presented evidence of text messages between R.S. and Curtin on the night of November 7, 2014, during which R.S. invited Curtin and her 8-year-old son to come over. The texts showed that Curtin and R.S. both had been drinking alcohol. The last text that night was at 11:08 p.m. from Curtin telling R.S. she was on her way over.
The next text exchanges began at 10:35 a.m. the following morning, November 14, 2014, with R.S. complaining of a massive hangover. Curtin replied, “You passed smooth out.”
Portions of the video were shown to the jury during R.S.’s testimony. Judge Abels ordered the courtroom cleared of all spectators when the video was played.
R.S. was distraught as she testified. She said that when investigators showed her the 17-minute video, she did not remember any of it occurring. “When I saw parts of that video, I just wanted to literally die,” she testified.
She said she did not consent to it and would never have consented to group sex. She said it was possible that Perkins had drugged her and Curtin, but insisted she had no memory of the video.
The defense contended that Curtin had no memory of that night and that evidence uncovered in the investigation of Perkins showed that he spiked drinks of women to engage in sex with them.
The prosecution was allowed, over defense objection, to introduce two videos of Curtin performing oral sex on Perkins in a dressing room and a photo of Curtin performing oral sex on an unidentified male.
Dr. Graham Spruiell, a forensic psychiatrist at Louisiana State University, testified for the defense about what he saw in the video. “I can’t say that she was under the influence of any particular drug with medical certainty,” he said. “But I can say that there is reason to believe that it is possible that she was intoxicated.”
Curtin’s defense attorney, John McLindon, asked, “And she could do what we saw in that video and have no recollection of it?”
“It is possible,” Spruiell replied.
In rebuttal, the prosecution summoned Dr. Patricia Williams, a toxicologist, who testified that after studying the video, she detected no sign of intoxication based on Curtin’s ability to change the focus of her vision from up close to farther away with no effort.
“[S]he worked at a very high level of cognition and motor function,” Williams said. “I saw nothing that interfered with that.”
On December 3, 2021, the jury convicted Curtin of aggravated rape and video voyeurism.
On February 18, 2022, Cynthia Perkins, who had lost her teaching job, pled guilty to one count of producing child pornography, second-degree rape, and mingling harmful substances for tainting cupcakes with Perkins’s semen and feeding them to school children. She was sentenced to 41 years in prison. Under the sentence, she was not eligible for parole until the last year of the sentence. She also agreed to testify against Perkins.
A defense motion for a new trial was denied, and on March 21, 2022, Judge Abels sentenced Curtin to life in prison without parole.
A month later, on April 21, 2022, the defense filed a new motion seeking a new trial. The motion said that on March 30, Jarrett Ambeau, a Baton Rouge attorney representing Dennis Perkins, said that a family member of Perkins had given him a box of materials that he had reviewed and discovered it contained documents relating to R.S.’s marriage to another man prior to marrying Perkins in 2011.
One of the documents was a sworn statement from R.S. stating that during that marriage she and her husband had, on two separate occasions, made videos of them having sex with another couple.
The motion noted that R.S., during Curtin’s trial, had been asked by the prosecution during her direct testimony:
“Is what Melanie did to you something you would ever have consented to under any circumstances?”
“No,” R.S. replied.
And then, during the redirect examination, the prosecutor said, “One last question, regarding Denny’s joke about having a threesome with Melanie, would you have ever agreed to something like that?”
“No,” R.S. said.
“Even if you thought he was serious?”
“No,” R.S. said.
The motion noted that during R.S.’s initial interview with investigators, she had been asked about having sex with multiple people. Asked if that was offensive, she said, “Yeah. And why would you be married if, um—I would not be okay with that. That isn’t anything I would want.”
Asked if she would ever “envision yourself consenting to something like that,” R.S. had replied, “No.”
The motion said the newly discovered evidence impeached R.S.’s credibility. Subsequently, the defense filed a supplemental motion noting that a photograph had been discovered documenting the incident in which the woman was giving instructions to R.S. on how to perform oral sex on Perkins.
The motion was denied.
The defense appealed.
On January 2, 2023, Dennis Perkins pled guilty to second-degree rape, sexual battery of a child under the age of 18, sexual battery of a child under the age of 13, video voyeurism, mingling of harmful substances, and production of child pornography. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole.
On October 5, 2023, the First Circuit Louisiana Court of Appeal vacated Curtin’s convictions and ordered a new trial.
The court ruled that the videos of Curtin performing oral sex on Perkins and the photograph of her performing oral sex on an unidentified man were unfairly prejudicial and did not establish Curtin’s motive or intent to rape R.S.
The appeals court also ruled that the defense should have been allowed to present evidence that R.S. and Perkins had engaged in other sex acts while R.S.’s face was covered, as it was in the 17-minute video with Curtin.
The court also held that Judge Abels erred when he declined to grant a new trial based on the affidavit from R.S. regarding threesomes in her prior marriage.
Curtin, represented by Baton Rouge assistant public defenders Jeanne Wheat and Elizabeth Warner, went to trial a second time in March 2026. They presented evidence regarding R.S.'s past sexual behavior when she was married to Perkins, including previous interactions where she was covered or masked and the “oral lesson” encounter with Perkins and another friend.
On March 17, 2026, the jury acquitted Curtin, and she was released.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 04-06-2026
