Gary Plauche‘s son Jody was abducted by his karate coach Jeff Doucet when he was only 11 years old. Doucet, like many child molesters, tested the limits with Jody and groomed him for abuse, according to ESPN. Doucet repeatedly molested the boy before eventually kidnapping him and taking him to Disneyland.
The abuse began when Jody was just 10. Doucet asked which of his young athletes wanted to learn to drive, and Jody’s hand shot up. Doucet then began to test Jody’s boundaries. Textbook pedophilia. The abuse escalated from there, with Doucet repeatedly molesting Jody before eventually kidnapping him and taking him to Disneyland.
Gary was heartbroken to learn what had happened to his son when he was returned to his parents. A rape kit proved Doucet sodomized Jody while he had him in Anaheim. Gary, unable to cope with the news, hatched a plan to seek revenge for his boy.
As Doucet was being extradited, he walked off a plane and into the Baton Rouge, Louisiana airport with a sheriff escort and news cameras rolling. Gary Plauche was waiting by a bank of payphones with a .38 snub-nosed revolver in his right boot. Gary was facing the wall, talking on the phone. “Here he comes,” Gary whispered to his best friend Jimmy. “You’re about to hear a shot.” The rolling news cameras captured the powerful scene that unfolded next.
Gary Plauche reached down for his gun, spun around, and fired a hollow-point bullet right into Jeff Doucet’s brain from just three feet away. He then lowered his gun and hung up the phone. “An unidentified man has shot Jeff Doucet in the airport,” the news anchor said as Gary’s wife June had turned on the news at the Plauche residence. Although June hadn’t known what her husband was up to that day, hearing those words, she had a good idea. Her knees buckled, and she fell backward onto the carpet.
In 24 hours, Doucet was dead, and Gary was in lockup — but he wouldn’t be there long. Luckily for Gary and perhaps surprising to the rest of us, a judge ruled that Gary was no threat to the community, and his sentence reflected that. Gary Plauche was freed from jail. He received seven years on a suspended sentence, five years probation, and 300 hours of community service.
Jody Plauche explained decades later that he didn’t want Doucet dead, he just wanted him to stop. He went on to be a four-sport letterman in high school and taught parents how to prevent pedophiles from molesting their kids through his work at a victims’ services center in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Gary Plauche was a loving father who was pushed to the edge after the unimaginable abuse his son had to endure. While he made a mistake in taking the law into his own hands, it’s hard not to sympathize with a father who wanted nothing more than to protect his child.
