Elmo Patrick Sonnier

Sister Helen Prejean was asked to write to death row inmates as part of her Order's community outreach program and wrote to Sonnier.

She became his spiritual adviser and eventually wrote Dead Man Walking (1993) about her experience and her belief that the death penalty was morally wrong.

On November 4, 1977, 17-year-old David LeBlanc and his 18-year-old girlfriend Loretta Ann Bourque attended the Homecoming football game at Catholic High School in Iberia Parish, Louisiana.

The Sonniers identified themselves as police officers and presented a badge that one of the brothers had acquired while working as a security guard.

The brothers took LeBlanc's and Bourque's driver's licenses, handcuffed the couple, and moved them to the back seat.

Elmo Sonnier decided against releasing them, as he feared the couple would report the incident and he would be reincarcerated at Angola.

The following day, the brothers disposed of LeBlanc's and Bourque's driver's licenses and buried the weapons they used in the killings.

[1] The prosecution attacked the younger brother's credibility, establishing Elmo Sonnier's lead in the crimes and responsibility for the murders.

Eddie Sonnier was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole because he was a minor at the time of the crime.

[2] Sister Helen Prejean later said that the younger brother, Eddie Sonnier, was guilty of killing LeBlanc and Bourque.

She claimed that Elmo was innocent but he felt guilt over his criminal past and for participating in the rape of not only Bourque, but other teenage girls at "lover's lane" who had come with their boyfriends.

[4] Eddie James Sonnier died in December 2013 at the age of 57, after a short illness, at Louisiana State Penitentiary.

[9] Jim Butler of Eunice Today stated that Eddie Sonnier was in "Obscurity", that is without attention from the public and press, when he died.

[10] Sister Helen Prejean published a book, Dead Man Walking (1993), about her relationship with Elmo Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie, another inmate on death row whom she counseled.

The book was adapted as a 1995 film of the same name directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Prejean and Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet, an amalgam of Sonnier and Willie.