3 Slayings, Gang Could Be Related FBI Hints Drug Deals Tied to Victim
Author(s): BRETT BARROUQUERE Date: December 1, 2001
Section: News
The FBI has linked a slain Gonzales woman with alleged drug activities by her husband and a loose-knit group known as the “Hillside Gs.”
Shanira “Lynn” Bringier, 27, who was killed along with two children in May 2000, helped her husband make a series of large cash deposits that federal investigators believe were drug profits, according to an arrest warrant. The warrant, and an accompanying affidavit for the slain woman’s husband, Lawrence “Bread” Bringier, details $54,375 in bank deposits between August and November 1999.
Lawrence Bringier of Gonzalez and four other alleged members of the “Hillside Gs” were indicted in October by a federal grand jury, charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and money laundering.
The documents also detail the slayings of Shanira Bringier and two children, who were found shot to death in a car May 17, 2000, in Port Allen.
No FBI agent has said definitively that the alleged activities of the “Hillside Gs” and Bringier’s death are related.
But the killings and Shanira Bringier’s alleged role in the drug ring have been repeatedly cited in arrest warrants and in pre-trial hearings for alleged members of the group.
FBI agent Jeff Methvin testified during a bond hearing Thursday that a known associate of the “Hillside Gs” was killed last year. “I have my beliefs, but I can’t state for certain they’re related,” Methvin said during the bond hearing.
Methvin wouldn’t name Shanira Bringier but said the person was well known to people associated with the “Hillside Gs.” Shanira Bringier along her daughter, Dominique Brown, 4; and family friend, Christopher Haney, 7, were found with gunshots to the head in a car
parked on a frontage road near Interstate 10 in Port Allen on May 17,2000.
Along with Lawrence Bringier and the four other men, 16 people were indicted in the summer of 2000 in a related investigation, charged with possession or distribution of cocaine in a sweep in the Valley Park section of Baton Rouge.
During the hearing Thursday, Methvin said the investigation into the alleged drug ring is continuing.
Ascension Parish Sheriff Jeff Wiley has said the killings are related to Lawrence Bringier’s alleged drug activity.
Bringier, James Eugene Warner III of Baton Rouge, former Baton Rouge funeral home owner Robert Gus “Bobby” Desselle and two others are charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and money laundering. Walsh, Desselle’s attorney, Mike Small, and Warner’s attorney, Thomas D’Amico, each have said their clients are not guilty and had no role in
Shanira Bringier’s death.
Two men in Gonzales face state murder charges related to Bringier’s death. While no federal agent will make a definitive link between the “Hillside Gs” alleged activities and Shanira Bringier’s death, FBI agents and prosecutors are using the slaying in pre-trial hearings to keep defendants in jail.
Methvin testified Thursday at Warner’s bond hearing about the slaying in an effort to keep Warner in custody pending trial.
Along with Warner’s hearing, prosecutors injected the killing into Lawrence Bringier’s bond hearing last month. U.S. Magistrate Judge Docia Dalby cited the slaying as one of the reasons she denied Bringier bail. FBI agent Roger White also used Shanira Bringier’s killing in the
arrest warrant for Lawrence Bringier.
In the affidavit, White does not say the drug activities and slaying are related but laid out the details of Shanira Bringier’s kidnapping and killing in asking a judge to issue the arrest warrant and seize Bringier’s assets.
White, in the affidavit, said Lawrence Bringier claimed to have worked several jobs during 1999, none of which could be verified. Because the jobs appear to be fake, Bringier had no known legal source of income during that time, White wrote.
White also said Bringier received two phone calls from his wife on May 17, 2000 – both times with a ransom demand. Copyright 2001 Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La.