17 years after 27-year-old banker Paul Broussard was murdered in city’s Montrose area, only one of 10 defendants remains in prison

Paul Broussard (left); Jon Buice (right);

HOUSTON — Before there was Matthew Shepard or James Byrd Jr., there was Paul Broussard.

Broussard, a 27-year-old gay banker from Houston, was brutally beaten and stabbed to death by a gang of 10 youths in the city’s Montrose area on July 4, 1991.

Seven years prior to the legendary murders of Shepard and Byrd, Broussard’s case became one of the first anti-gay hate crimes in the nation to be covered by the mainstream media. The Broussard case also precipitated Texas’ first hate crimes law.

“I think if it hadn’t been for the Paul Broussard case, the Matthew Shepard case would not have developed as it did,” said Ray Hill, a longtime Houston gay-rights activist who helped bring Broussard’s killers to justice. “The Matthew Shepard case had the benefit of the field already being plowed. You just had to plant it.”

Andy Kahan, who heads Houston’s Crime Victims Assistance Office, began working on Broussard’s murder shortly after he was appointed to the position in 1992. Sixteen years later, Kahan still hasn’t been able to put down the case. Jon Buice, the only one of Broussard’s 10 killers who remains in prison for the crime, will again be up for parole in 2009.

“It was humungous down here,” Kahan said of the murder. “It echoed a firestorm for obvious reasons. You had 10 middle-class youth from a well-to-do suburb specifically targeting gay males. And this was not just an anomaly.

“They had come down several times previously as well ,” he continued. “You have a pack of wolves that went after three men who were just minding their own business leaving a club. It touched a nerve. Hate crimes wasn’t on anybody’s radar until Paul Broussard met his grisly death.”


‘Where’s Heaven?’
Broussard and his two friends, Cary Anderson and Richard Delaunay, were walking back to their car after a night out in the Montrose at about 2:30 a.m.

The 10 youths approached in two vehicles and asked for directions to Heaven, a gay bar.

After Broussard and his friends told them the route — an indication the three were gay — the youths jumped out and attacked them.

Anderson and Delaunay managed to escape after sustaining only minor injuries, but when Broussard turned down a dead-end street, he was cornered. The youths pummeled him with their fists, their steel-toed boots, a two-by-four studded with nails and at least one knife.

Broussard fought back but suffered a broken rib and crushed testicles, as well as stab wounds to the stomach and chest. He died about eight hours later at St. Joseph Hospital.

Hill, who then served as an unofficial liaison between Houston’s LGBT community and the police department, said he was summoned to the scene shortly after the attack.

Gay-bashings were relatively common in the Montrose at the time, Hill said, but law enforcement rarely took them seriously.

“By 1991, I was not willing to accept that,” Hill said. “I said this is not going to be another hate crime that is not going to get investigated.”

Hill helped raise reward money from Montrose-area businesses, and he organized a protest a week after the murder that drew 1,200 people, blocking traffic. The case was quickly elevated to the front page of the daily paper and to the top of TV newscasts.

“This was the first nationally publicized gay-bashing killing, and the whole purpose of that was to identify the culprits using the media as the vehicle,” Hill said.

And the strategy worked.

A few weeks after the attack, police got a tip from one of the suspect’s girlfriends that eventually led to all 10 youths.

Seven of the 10 were only 17, and the eldest was 22. They were all residents of the Woodlands, a suburb halfway between Houston and Huntsville, who’d attended the same high school. The suspects became known as the Woodlands 10.

According to news reports, the 10 boys had been drinking and partying for a few days before the attack when they decided to travel to the Montrose to engage in what had become a ritual — harassing and sometimes physically assaulting gays. They drove around asking for directions to Heaven, and when people indicated that they knew the location of the bar, the youths would throw “queer rocks” at them. Earlier the same evening, they’d hit a car windshield with one of the rocks and struck another man in the mouth.

Five of the 10 youths were sentenced to probation, which included boot camp and community service in the LGBT community. Two of those five violated their probation and were sent to prison.

Three of the remaining five youths were sentenced to 15 years in prison, one was sentenced to 20 years, and Buice — the knife-man who inflicted the fatal wounds — got the longest sentence, 45 years.


The saga continues
Back in Warner Robins, Ga., where Broussard grew up, his mother said she was getting ready for work when the phone rang about 6 a.m. on July 4. It was a man calling from the hospital to tell her what had happened and that her son wasn’t likely to survive.

“The phone call will stay in my mind for the rest of my life — it was an absolute nightmare,” said Broussard’s mother, Nancy Rodriguez. “I remember begging him, just do what you can. … They did everything they could for him. He never had a chance.”

Rodriguez said her son had been an Eagle Scout and an honor roll student who played in the high school band and sang in the church choir.

“He was a very good son, a loving son,” she said. “Everybody loved Paul. He had tons and tons of friends.”

Broussard moved from Georgia to College Station to attend Texas A&M University, and he worked two jobs to put himself through school, his mother said. After graduating, he moved to Houston.

Rodriguez said her son phoned home every week and was especially close to his younger brother and sister. In fact, at the time of his murder, he was saving money to bring his sister to Houston for a visit.

Broussard had come out to his family a few years earlier, while he was still in college, his mother said. The family was supportive, and while she feared things like HIV/AIDS, she never dreamed he’d fall victim to anti-gay violence.

“I never even knew about gay-bashing,” Rodriguez said. “I got quite an education after Paul was murdered.”

Since her son’s death, Rodriguez has been active in groups like PFLAG, Parents of Murdered Children and Compassionate Friends.

She’s also worked tirelessly to ensure that his killers serve as much of their sentences as possible. Even now, with all but Buice having been released, she must travel to Texas every two years to testify at a parole hearing. Rodriguez said preparing for the hearings can take up to six months.

The case has gotten renewed attention from the media in recent years due to a storyline about Hill, who’s become an advocate for Buice’s release.

Hill, an ex-con himself who hosts a radio show for prisoners and their families, said he no longer believes Broussard’s murder was motivated by anti-gay hate. Hill also said he believes Buice — a model prisoner who’s expressed remorse for the crime —is fully rehabilitated.

Hill’s stance has led to a bitter, emotional dispute with Rodriguez and Kahan. But all parties agree about one thing, which is that the legacy of the case hasn’t died.

“Certainly the life of Paul Broussard is not worth any of this, but out of that came a lot of public awareness,” Hill acknowledged. “Before Paul Broussard, people did not make apologies for their prejudices against gay people. I think it has resulted in some deep and pretty broad socio-cultural changes.”



This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 10, 2008.