Feb 25, 2025 · 34 min · 22 segments
In February of 1982, Roxanne Sharp's body was found near the Covington Fairgrounds in Louisiana's St Tammany Parish. The crime was never solved. This podcast is an attempt to bring attention back…
[tense music] So on Friday, February 12th, 1982, the Dixie Trail Ride rolled into Covington and set up at the Covington Fairgrounds, and the Dixie Trail Ride was a group of, of people that made an annual five-day journey from Covington to Baton Rouge each year by horse pack or, uh, covered wagons.
And so about 2:30 that day, they set up in about ...
Man, they had like 125 horseback riders and 30 wagons that took part in the annual parade through downtown Covington.
It was a big deal back then.
And there had been some rain in the area.
The overnight temperatures dipped below freezing for the previous two nights.
So after the parade was over and they all returned back to the fairgrounds, a couple of the riders wandered into a patch of nearby woods, uh, between Collins Boulevard and the fairgrounds to collect some firewood for the night.
And as they went into the woods, what they stumbled across was the deceased body of a young girl who had been murdered, uh, and who the police later identified as Roxanne Sharp.
She was nude, uh, except for just a jacket that was thrown over her torso.
And, you know, I can't imagine what was going through those, those people's minds as they stumbled across her.
So the Covington Police Department was called, and the two first responding officers actually located the rest of her clothing scattered through the woods and really looks like as she's being drug into the woods, her clothes are just being stripped off of her, uh, up to the place where, where she was found and, you know, determined that she was brutally raped and murdered.
She was a tough old girl.
You didn't just walk up to her and, and stuff.
She ...
You wasn't gonna just slap her or nothing like that.
You ...
She'll slap you back.
But, uh, she just a nice girl.
Actually, the Ozone taught me how to be a, a police officer.
The ...
That was a ...
It was a little gang out there, and it was criminals, young criminals that grew up to be older criminals, and they never, they never changed their way of life.
Whether, whether it was burglaries or dealing drugs or murder, it doesn't matter.
They were there.
That, that was their way of life.
[tense music] So on Friday, February 12th, 1982, the Dixie Trail Ride rolled into Covington and set up at the Covington Fairgrounds, and the Dixie Trail Ride was a group of, of people that made an annual five-day journey from Covington to Baton Rouge each year by horse pack or, uh, covered wagons.
And so about 2:30 that day, they set up in about ...
Man, they had like 125 horseback riders and 30 wagons that took part in the annual parade through downtown Covington.
It was a big deal back then.
And there had been some rain in the area.
The overnight temperatures dipped below freezing for the previous two nights.
So after the parade was over and they all returned back to the fairgrounds, a couple of the riders wandered into a patch of nearby woods, uh, between Collins Boulevard and the fairgrounds to collect some firewood for the night.
And as they went into the woods, what they stumbled across was the deceased body of a young girl who had been murdered, uh, and who the police later identified as Roxanne Sharp.
She was nude, uh, except for just a jacket that was thrown over her torso.
And, you know, I can't imagine what was going through those, those people's minds as they stumbled across her.
So the Covington Police Department was called, and the two first responding officers actually located the rest of her clothing scattered through the woods and really looks like as she's being drug into the woods, her clothes are just being stripped off of her, uh, up to the place where, where she was found and, you know, determined that she was brutally raped and murdered.
She was a tough old girl.
You didn't just walk up to her and, and stuff.
She ...
You wasn't gonna just slap her or nothing like that.
You ...
She'll slap you back.
But, uh, she just a nice girl.
Actually, the Ozone taught me how to be a, a police officer.
The ...
That was a ...
It was a little gang out there, and it was criminals, young criminals that grew up to be older criminals, and they never, they never changed their way of life.
Whether, whether it was burglaries or dealing drugs or murder, it doesn't matter.
They were there.
That, that was their way of life.
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