Forty years after Donnell Bluain broke into East Jefferson homes to rape and assault women, a Jefferson Parish jury deliberated about 45 minutes on Thursday (Sept. 3) in finding him guilty as charged of six counts of aggravated rape, rejecting his assertions that corrupt police in two states fabricated DNA and other evidence to frame him.
Bluain, 60, already was serving a life sentence for raping women in Georgia after he left Louisiana in the late 1980s, when his DNA, palm prints and his modus operandi connected him to rapes in Metairie and River Ridge between January and July of 1986.
Bluain now faces six mandatory life sentences in Louisiana, to be served without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence.
His conviction closes one of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office’s Cold Case Unit investigations. For almost four decades, until his genetic material confirmed he is East Jefferson’s serial rapist, Bluain was “a predator with no face, a rapist with no name,” Assistant District Attorney Lindsay Truhe told jurors in opening statements Tuesday.
“Donnell Bluain was a one-man nightmare, ripping fear in not just these women but throughout Jefferson Parish,” she told jurors Tuesday in urging them to find Bluain guilty. “Time may have delayed justice, but it will not prevent it. You will have the power to give these women justice. The time for accountability is now.”
Bluain lived in the 700 block of North Cumberland Street in Metairie in the 1980s, within two miles of his victims.
He broke into homes at night through side or rear windows while armed with screwdrivers or knives. He disguised himself by covering his head with his underwear or masks. He sometimes used socks as gloves. He walked through some of the homes nude from the waist down. He had a fixation on victims’ toes. He told some victims that he was raping them because “white men” raped women in his family.
“It was about power,” Assistant District Attorney Tommy Block told jurors Thursday in closing argument. “It was about control. He wanted control over these women. He chose the circumstances. He chose the time. He chose the victims. And they were the most vulnerable, in the safety of their homes. Many of them were asleep. And once he controlled them, he used them.”
Back then, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives knew they were pursuing a serial rapist, based on similarities the victims described.
His crimes caused widespread panic in East Jefferson neighborhoods, including Airline Park. The Sheriff’s Office participated in community meetings to inform the public about safety measures and formed a task force that included the FBI and local municipal police departments. Then-Sheriff Harry Lee turned to the news media in seeking the public’s help to identify the serial rapist.
‘A new set of eyes’
Bluain’s last known rape in Jefferson Parish occurred on July 30, 1986. The rapes remained unsolved until Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Curtis Matthews, chief of Special Investigations Bureau who formerly oversaw rape investigations, asked the Cold Case Unit to look at the old file in March 2021. The Cold Case Unit, which typically handles homicides, immediately reopened the rape investigation.
Cold Case Unit Capt. Denis Thornton and Detective Mary Adinolfi sought out decades-old evidence and reviewed the work of their predecessors in 1986. They sent the evidence they unearthed to the Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab for DNA testing, which did not exist four decades ago. Advances in science and investigative techniques were key to identifying Bluain as the rapist and bring him to trial, Assistant DA Block said.
“It also took the patience and determination of two highly skilled investigators with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Denis Thornton and Detective Mary Adinolfi, to go back and look into those dusty boxes and at these cold cases from 1986 with a new set of eyes and put the pieces of this puzzle together,” Assistant DA Block told jurors.
On March 23, 2023, DNA testing yielded a profile for a suspect. But they still had no name. The detectives uploaded the profile to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which is national database that law enforcement agencies use to compare DNA profiles to known suspects and crimes.
Less than a month later, on April 19, 2023, Capt. Thornton received a call from a police lieutenant in Lilburn, Ga., informing the Jefferson Parish captain they had a CODIS hit. For the first time, the Sheriff’s Office had a name associated with the 1986 rapes: Donnell Bluain, who was serving life in prison for his conviction for multiple rapes and other offenses in Georgia in 1998. The Cold Case Unit detectives learned that Bluain, who worked in construction, married a woman in late 1989 and moved to the Atlanta area shortly after.
Jefferson Parish detectives traveled to Georgia armed with a search warrant to obtain a DNA sample. Sheriff’s Office DNA analysts ran more tests at the Crime Lab in Harvey and further confirmed that Bluain was the serial rapist. In one of the crimes, Bluain left his palm prints on the edge of a bathtub, providing further evidence of his involvement in the crimes.
Charges filed
In July 2025, a Jefferson Parish grand jury indicted him with six counts of aggravated rape:
- Count 1: The Jan. 9, 1986, rape of a 26-year-old woman in her Maryland Street home in Metairie. Carrying a knife, he entered the home wearing a mask and no clothing below the waist.
- Count 2: The Feb. 6, 1986, rape of a 24-year-old woman in her Green Acres Road home in Metairie. He carried a screwdriver as a weapon, wearing only a mask.
- Count 3: The March 2, 1986, rape of a 29-year-old woman in her Peggy Street home in Metairie. He entered the home carrying a screwdriver as a weapon. His DNA was found on the victim’s nightgown. She has since died.
- Count 4: The July 15, 1986, rape of a 62-year-old woman in her David Drive home in Metairie. Again, he entered the home carrying a screwdriver and wearing a mask. His DNA was recovered from a window through which he entered the home and on the victim’s pajamas. The victim has since died. It was the blood recovered from the window that led to his initial link to these crimes.
- Count 5: The July 20, 1986, rape of a 32-year-old woman in her Florida Street home in River Ridge. As he did in previous rapes, he wore a mask and carried a screwdriver. His DNA was recovered from the victim’s clothing.
- Count 6: The July 30, 1986, rape of 26-year-old woman in her Stein Street home in River Ridge. Covering his face with a white cloth, he implied to the victim that he was armed with a gun before he raped her. The victim has since died.
“Make no mistake: These women were victims, traumatized, terrorized,” Assistant DA Truhe told jurors in closing argument Thursday. “All they wanted to do is not die.”
‘I almost got you this time’
About two hours before that last rape, Bluain attempted to rape a woman in her Little Farms Avenue home. He failed in that rape, but he left behind a screwdriver with a yellow handle, similar to what he used in previous crimes. The Sheriff’s Office believed the serial rapist struck again.
In response, now-retired Sheriff’s Office Maj. Vic Amstutz, who in 1986 was a sergeant in the patrol division, knew that during the previous incidents, the serial rapist generally headed to the south. So, Maj. Amstutz began patrolling to the south of Little Farms Avenue. He patrolled Stein Street several times. And on his final pass, he noticed a light on at a home with a for sale sign out front that was previously dark. Suspicious, he stopped his patrol car and walked up to the front door. It was about 2:45 a.m.
The door was slowly opening. He heard whimpering and rapid breathing and then saw a woman beginning to cross the threshold. “She was obviously in distress and was quivering, crying,” Maj. Amstutz told jurors Wednesday. Behind her in the darkness, he saw a person’s arm holding the door.
“As she stepped down, she saw me,” Maj. Amstutz testified. “And when she saw me, she just bolted, started running toward me. She grabbed me so tight I had a hard time getting my gun out of my holster. I asked her, “Have you been attacked?’ She said, “He’s still in the house.’”
He directed her toward his patrol car. Instead of running into the house, he ran toward the rear, found an open window and waited for the suspect “to come crawling out.” He then heard what he thought was someone driving away in his patrol car. He ran to the front and learned that it was the victim who had gotten into the car. He rushed back toward the rear window but believed that by then the suspect had escaped through neighboring yards.
“I screamed out at him, ‘I almost got you this time. Next time I will,’” Maj. Amstutz testified.
Bluain never struck again. “That was the end of his terror in Jefferson Parish, because he almost got caught,” Assistant DA Truhe told jurors in opening statements.
Jurors heard that Bluain committed numerous other residential burglaries and attempted rapes during this week’s trial. Among them was a Jan. 9, 1986 incident on Ackle Street in which a woman was dragged from her home to a shed-like structure. The woman escaped being raped because she forcefully grabbed his testicles, leading him to flee.
‘Unworthy of belief’
Because Bluain testified Wednesday, jurors also heard about his convictions in Georgia: Three counts of rape, two counts of aggravated sodomy, one count of kidnapping with bodily injury and two counts of burglary. When he was arrested in Georgia, police found he had pornographic literature that involved “toe sucking,” jurors learned this week.
From the witness stand, Bluain denied the charges and said that police in two states fabricated evidence to frame him. He turned to his victims in the courtroom. “I did not rape y’all. I feel y’all pain, but I’m not the person that rape y’all. I was a burglar. I liked to burglarize. I did not rape anybody.”
In closing argument, Assistant DA Block called Bluain’s assertions “ridiculous claims.”
“His testimony was an insult to each and every one of you, ladies and gentlemen,” he told jurors, calling Bluain’s testimony “nothing but lies and unworthy of belief.”
Jurors who were seated on Monday and heard two days of testimony returned with their verdicts at about 11 a.m., Thursday.
Judge Shayna Beevers Morvant of the 24th Judicial District Court is scheduled to sentence Bluain on Sept. 14 at 1 p.m.
Assistant District Attorneys Lindsay Truhe, Tommy Block and Sarah Helmstetter prosecuted the case.
