For the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office, the murders of Eric and Pam Ellender were an open and shut case. On the evening of February 11, 1991, the young couple were shot to death in their Sulphur, Louisiana, home. After a man who had stolen the couple’s vehicle confessed to their murders in a suicide note, investigators concluded the Ellenders were the victims of a random killing. Although awful, there was nothing unusual about their murders.

Thirty-three-years after the fact, the murders of Eric and Pam Ellender remain officially closed. Some, however, allege there is much more to the terrible tale–and what is alleged is also, if not even more, atrocious.

Eric And Pam Ellender

Twenty-seven-year-old Eric Ellender worked for Pam’s father, Huey Littleton, the owner of an insurance and private investigation company. Twenty-five-year-old Pam was a housewife.

Huey and his wife Joyce had a great relationship with Eric and considered him as their own son. They lived only a couple of miles from him and Pam in suburban Sulphur, part of metropolitan Lake Charles in the southwest part of Louisiana, approximately halfway between Baton Rouge and Houston, Texas.

Eric and Pam With Pam’s Parents, Huey And Joyce Littleton

While Eric was working during the day, Pam and their eighteen-month-old daughter Erica spent much of that time with her mother.

Beginning Their Family

At 8:45 p.m. on February 11, 1991, Eric phoned Pam at her parents’ residence to tell her he was home from work. Pam left with Erica half-an-hour later.

Mom And Baby Erica

The following afternoon, Pam’s grandmother, Nela Haywood, went to visit her. She let herself in after ringing the doorbell several times but receiving no answer. Her concern grew upon entering the home and hearing Erica crying in her crib.

In the bedroom, Nela encountered a horror: Eric and Pam lay lifeless on the bed in pools of blood. Each had been shot in their heads with one of Eric’s shotguns taken from a case in the home.

The Couple Are Shot To Death

Erica was distraught, but unharmed.

Baby Erica Is Spared

Eric’s car, a Toyota 4Runner, was not at the home and was reported stolen. The following day, it was seen by a policeman in Baton Rouge, one-hundred-thirty-five miles east of Sulphur. Four young men were inside the vehicle and all were arrested for auto theft.

One of the occupants was eighteen-year-old Chris Prudhomme, a Sulphur resident and high school dropout. Under questioning, he confessed to the murders of Eric and Pam Ellender, saying he acted alone.

Seventeen days later, Prudhomme was found hanging from a noose in the jail shower cell at the Calcasieu Correctional Center. He was rushed to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital but never regained consciousness. He died a week later after his parents signed the papers removing him from life support.

Chris Prudhomme

In a suicide note found in his cell, Prudhomme proudly boasted of killing Eric and Pam Ellender. He claimed to have acted alone and professed the innocence of his friends. The note concluded, “I enjoyed very much in the taking of those two individuals [sic] lives. I don’t need society.”

The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department closed the case. The killer of Eric and Pam Ellender had confessed his crime before killing himself.

Prudhomme’s Confession Letter

Huey Littleton, a well-known private investigator, believed there was more to the story of his daughter and son-in-law’s murders and began his own investigation. In the course of interviewing over one-hundred people, he learned that Prudhomme was a member of a satanic cult called the SKATERS, an acronym for “Satan’s Kids Against the Establishment.”

A girlfriend of a SKATER member told Huey that people other than Prudhomme were involved in the murders. She said that on the day after the killings, she heard a discussion among several SKATER members trying to concoct an alibi for those who had been with Prudhomme in Eric and Pam’s home.

From what the woman could ascertain, Prudhomme and at least one other SKATER member broke into the Ellenders’ home intending to burglarize it. High on LSD, they instead murdered them after finding and loading one of Eric’s shotguns.

Huey Is Not Convinced 

Nickie Alderson said that in the early morning hours of February 12, the SKATERS had hosted a party at the couples’ home. She claimed she stopped at the party after seeing a car she recognized parked at the home and saw at least a dozen people inside and outside the residence drinking and doing drugs.

Nickie said she recognized the house only when Eric and Pam’s murders were featured on the news the following evening. She is adamant that she did not know Eric and Pam, did not know they had been murdered, and did not know their lifeless bodies were in the house at the time of the alleged party.

Nickie Alderson

Chip Richard and his friend, Bobby Stoddard, not only confirmed Nickie’s account but added sickening details. They said they were not at the party at the Ellender house on the morning after their murders, but claimed they saw videotapes made at the party showing Eric and Pam being murdered and multiple people then molesting their lifeless bodies.

Richard and Stoddard said they saw Prudhomme give a sawed-off shotgun to another SKATER, Phillip Ledoux, who, Prudhomme said, was the one who actually shot Eric and Pam Ellender.  Prudhomme told them he agreed to take the fall for his fellow SKATER, because he believed it was the “noble” thing to do.

Chip Richard

Eighteen-year-old Bobby Adkins was one of the three other men arrested for auto theft in Baton Rouge after being found in the Ellenders’ car the day after the murders. He had previously served four-and-a-half years in prison for possession of another stolen vehicle. Adkins was also one of the person’s Prudhomme had mentioned in his suicide note.

Bobby Adkins

Adkins’ friend, Shawn Moody, said Adkins contradicted Chip Richard’s contention that Prudhomme did not commit the murders.

While Adkins was out on bail for the theft of the Ellenders’ car, Shawn, fourteen-years-old at the time of the murders, said Adkins told him he saw Prudhomme kill Eric and Pam. Adkins said they broke into the couple’s home to look for valuables. After finding and loading the shotgun, they entered the bedroom, awakening Eric and Pam. Adkins said a panicked Prudhomme then shot them to death.

Shawn Moody

Pearl Fruge said her cousin, Kim Manuel, had witnessed Eric and Pam Ellender’s murders. Huey Littleton said multiple people he interviewed also placed Manuel at the home during the alleged party.

With Kim’s permission, Fruge recorded a conversation in which Manuel described the murders in detail but stopped short of admitting to being present when they were committed.

Pearl Fruge

After hearing Fruge’s testimony and listening to the recorded conversation with her cousin, a grand jury issued an indictment of two counts of second degree murder against Kim Manuel. She claimed she and Fruge had rehearsed the recorded conversation and that she had told her what to say. Fruge denies her cousin’s claims.

The charges against Manuel were dropped after Fruge’s credibility was called into question and investigators contended she changed her story. Although the indictment was dismissed without prejudice, meaning Manuel could again be later charged, she never was.

Some believe the indictment was issued in the hopes of scaring Kim Manuel into identifying other suspects. If that was the objective, the ploy failed.

Kim Manuel

On February 9, 1995, nearly four years after the murders of Eric and Pam Ellender, Bobby Adkins was indicted, along with Philip LeDeoux and Kurt Reese. The latter two were the other men arrested for stealing the Ellenders’ car.

The charges against Reese and LeDeoux, both minors at the time of the murders, were later reduced. LeDeoux was convicted as an accessory after the fact and sentenced to four years in prison.  Reese received a two year sentence after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact. I could not find a picture of either man.

Adkins pled guilty to manslaughter and was given two twenty-one year concurrent prison sentences in addition to a five-year sentence for auto theft. He was given credit for time served on the latter conviction and his manslaughter sentence was later reduced to five-and-a-half years.

After being released from prison, Adkins was placed on five-years-probation. Newspaper articles state he had several subsequent instances of small probation violations and received “minor punishment” without elaborating.

Adkins Pleads Guilty To Manslaughter

Huey Littleton contended that upwards of fifty people told him that multiple “devil worshipers” were in his daughter and son-in-law’s home in the predawn hours of February 12, 1991, several hours after their murders. He took his findings to the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Department, which found no evidence that a party had been held in the house. Their findings were later confirmed by the state Attorney General’s office. The accounts of those who contend that a party was held at the home were dismissed as unreliable because many had criminal pasts and all at one point had been drug users.

The Ellenders’ home was somewhat isolated as they did not have any close neighbors. Investigators, however, believe that if a large party had been held at the home, the nearest neighbors would have heard the noise, but no one, including Huey and Joyce Littleton, had heard anything sounding like a party was being held there.

Furthermore, the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Department said the inside of the home appeared to have been staged to look like a robbery rather than being the scene of a party.

Crime Scene Photographs

Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Wayne McElveen led the investigation into the murders of Eric and Pam Ellender. His son Richard was involved in several crimes and was rumored to have been one of the people who attended the alleged party at the Ellender home following their murders. Huey Littleton contended the Sheriff did not thoroughly investigate the claims of the party to protect his son.

Sheriff McElveen was never charged with any wrongdoing or misleading an investigation and counters that Huey paid most of the people he interviewed for their testimony.

Wayne McElveen

Calcasieu Parish Sheriff

Huey said the only money he paid to those he interviewed was to cover their expenses and that those payments were coordinated with state prosecutors.

His disagreement with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department’s official ruling in the murders of his daughter and son-in-law propelled Huey to run against Wayne McElveen for   Calcasieu Parish Sheriff in 1995, but he was soundly defeated.

Huey Littleton died in 2019 at age eighty-three.

Huey Fights Till The End

Examinations by pathologists found no evidence that the bodies of Eric and Pam Ellender were sexually molested after their murders. The official ruling is that the Ellenders’ sole killer subsequently took his life after admitting his guilt and that all of the accessories have served their time. Nevertheless, many still believe multiple unindicted people had roles in their deaths.

The murders of Eric and Pam Ellender are closed, but many believe there is more to the story.

Is There More To The Story?

In addition to the Sheriff’s son, Huey Littleton said he was told that two Calcasieu Parish deputies and a game warden, Chad Manuel, no relation to Kim Manuel, were among the post-murder party attendees at the home of his daughter and son-in-law.

Manuel’s sister later married Steve Edwards, the son of infamous former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Both father and son were later indicted on extortion charges relating to the granting of casino licenses.

Huey’s Claims

 

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/28524266/eric-ross-ellender

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/28524349/pamela-maxine-ellender

 

SOURCES:

• The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Boston Globe
• KPLC NBC Affiliate Channel 7 Lake Charles, Louisiana
• FindLaw
• Shreveport Times
• New Orleans Times Picayune
• Unsolved Mysteries