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NEW ORLEANS -- The long-awaited rape trial of Gerard Ladmirault got under way Tuesday, 27 years to the day after prosecutors say the New Orleans auto mechanic, then 28, forced a 14-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him at knifepoint.
That girl, LaToya Gaines, is now 41. She claims Ladmirault, now 55, was friends with a woman she and her family were staying with in New Orleans East. She said Ladmirault agreed to pick her up and bring her to get some school clothes. Gaines said Ladmirault took her instead to his house in the 7th Ward and approached her when she was in the bathroom.
“Just after I finished washing my hands, I looked up to find the door open with him standing in the door,” Gaines said in an interview with WWL-TV. “He pushed me back onto the toilet, shoved me down on my knees and he had a knife, a pocket knife, and suggested I either do what he asked, or I would die.”
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Gaines, reported the incident to police immediately. She was the second teenager to accuse Ladmirault of sexual assault in a span of 60 days in 1991. Ladmirault had already been charged with raping 19-year-old Ta-Tanisha Smith on Aug. 16, 1991, but was acquitted at a 1992 trial after claiming he and Smith had consensual sex.
Prosecutors brought Smith to New Orleans from her home in Atlanta on Tuesday to testify against Ladmirault in the Gaines case. She said she came back to tell the graphic details of her alleged rape at Ladmirault's auto body shop to "support LaToya." Smith has done so twice before, in 2015 and 2016, but both of those trials ended in mistrials after juries were unable to return a unanimous verdict.
A new six-member jury of five women and one man was selected Tuesday from a 34-person jury pool. They heard opening statements from prosecutor Michelle Jones, who called Ladmirault a "true predator," and from Ladmirault's defense attorney, David Belfield, who called Gaines' allegations a "bunch of lies."
Smith testified first, claiming that Ladmirault "kidnapped" her in Kenner and took her at gunpoint to an auto body shop in New Orleans, then forced her to have oral, anal and vaginal sex with him. Retired NOPD Detective Jean Beckemeyer testified next about investigating Smith's claims in August 1991 and finding items just as Smith had described them when he executed a search warrant at Ladmirault's shop.
Both Smith and Beckemeyer said they were shocked when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty in that first case. The former police officer testified he'd investigated more than 100 rapes and remains "positively" convinced that Ladmirault raped Smith.
The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office indicated it plans to call additional witnesses that weren't called in previous trials. Most notably, Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson gave prosecutors approval Tuesday morning to present testimony from an expert witness about a towel police found at Ladmirault’s house after Gaines reported the sexual battery.
In an interview with police within hours of the alleged attack, Gaines said Ladmirault ejaculated on her face and chest and used a towel to wipe the semen off her. During pre-trial arguments, prosecutor Jason Napoli said the towel tested positive for semen when it was collected as evidence by police. Jones later told jurors they would hear testimony about lab results showing the towel had semen on it.
Belfield said the tests didn't confirm it was Ladmirault’s semen and moved to have all references to semen excluded. Landrum-Johnson said she would allow the testimony about the semen on the towel, and after it was mentioned to the jury in Jones' opening statement, Belfield said he would show the evidence was contaminated by police "putting evidence in the same bag."
Landrum-Johnson did not preside over the two mistrials. Judge Laurie White did.
Belfield asked Landrum-Johnson to let him present testimony about Gaines’ sexual history, particularly the fact that she was already pregnant when the attack allegedly occurred. But state and federal rape shield laws prohibit a victim’s sexual history from being introduced, except in rare circumstances, and Landrum-Johnson said that threshold has not been met in this case.
Court records show that when Gaines was 14, her mother had her drop the charges against Ladmirault. Gaines told WWL-TV that her mother, now deceased, was a drug addict and left her on her own to live in a homeless shelter shortly after the incident.
She said she ran into Ladmirault several times at casinos over the years and thought she had moved on. But she rushed to the DA’s office to revive the charges in 2014 when she said she saw Ladmirault dropping off a teenage girl at her son’s high school, Warren Easton. Ladmirault testified on the witness stand that he never drove a girl to Warren Easton.
Ladmirault has also testified in the past he was never alone with Gaines at his house.
Gaines is expected to take the stand Wednesday morning.
David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@wwltv.com.