Investigators charged Maurice Parms before finding Ja’Derrius Minnieweather, then spent weeks tracing the teenager’s suspected disposal route.
BATON ROUGE, La. — What began as a search for a missing 15-year-old became a first-degree murder investigation built around witness statements, surveillance footage and blood evidence before detectives ultimately traced Ja’Derrius Minnieweather’s remains to a parish landfill, where DNA testing confirmed his identity.
The sequence is central to the case against Maurice Parms, 51, because police arrested him June 20, weeks before Minnieweather’s remains were recovered. Investigators said they had accumulated enough evidence to conclude that the teenager had been killed and his body disposed of even though they could not yet produce the remains. Search crews later spent six weeks excavating landfill waste before finding suspected human remains Aug. 18. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office announced the next day that DNA comparison had positively identified them as Minnieweather.
The investigation began with a much different question: Where had Minnieweather gone? He was last seen around 2 a.m. June 5 and was reported missing the following day. Baton Rouge police issued public appeals, while his family stressed that the unexplained silence was out of character. Local reports described him as a student at Istrouma High School who had started a summer work program and stayed in regular contact with relatives. For days, investigators publicly treated the case as a missing-person search while gathering information about his final known movements.
Detectives learned that Minnieweather had gone to see a 16-year-old longtime friend shortly before he disappeared. According to the arrest warrant reported by WAFB, the girl had been out getting food with Parms before returning to the area. Police alleged that Minnieweather and Parms then had a tense disagreement over the way Parms was acting toward the girl. That allegation became a key part of the police theory, but investigators have not established it through a trial, and Parms has not been convicted of killing Minnieweather.
As detectives reconstructed the night, witness accounts supplied one part of the case. The warrant said witnesses described a tall man striking a smaller person repeatedly. Investigators believed the people they described were Parms and Minnieweather. One witness reported hearing a softer voice asking for the blows to stop and for the attacker to leave the person alone. Police then examined the area and reported finding large suspected bloodstains in the ground. Later testing confirmed the presence of blood, according to the warrant.
Video evidence added another layer. Detectives said surveillance recordings showed a person whose body type was consistent with Parms riding a child’s bicycle after the confrontation and discarding a mask, gloves and a shirt. The same person was allegedly recorded returning to retrieve those items. Investigators also said footage showed Parms wiping parts of his truck with a rag. When the vehicle was processed, police reported detecting blood in the area that had allegedly been wiped and elsewhere in the truck. The state would still have to establish the meaning and reliability of that evidence in court.
Police developed a theory that Minnieweather’s body was initially concealed and that evidence was discarded before being retrieved. Investigators later said the body was placed in a garbage container that was collected with ordinary trash. That detail offered detectives a route they could attempt to follow. Rather than continuing to search an unlimited number of possible outdoor locations, investigators examined where waste collected from the relevant area would have been taken. By late June, officials said they had strong evidence pointing to the East Baton Rouge Parish North Landfill.
That conclusion did not produce an immediate recovery. The landfill covers hundreds of acres, and authorities said they needed weeks to design a safe, evidence-preserving operation. The FBI joined Baton Rouge police, and officials planned the use of protective equipment, heavy machinery and procedures for examining excavated material. Search teams had to work around decomposing waste, glass, needles, fumes, heat and changing weather. When active digging began July 13, more than 70 police and FBI personnel were assigned to a search zone narrowed to less than an acre.
The challenge was not simply to move garbage quickly. Investigators needed to preserve anything that could have evidentiary value while limiting the risks to personnel. Crews worked in sections as equipment exposed layers of material associated with the suspected collection period. By August, the operation had consumed thousands of work hours and involved thousands of tons of waste. Authorities continued despite having no guarantee that remains would be recovered. The effort eventually produced the suspected human remains on Aug. 18, along with clothing police said corresponded to what Minnieweather had been wearing when he disappeared.
DNA testing then closed the identification question rapidly. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office said it worked with the LSU FACES Laboratory and Louisiana State Police Crime Lab to compare DNA and make a positive identification. That result converted what police initially described as strongly suspected remains into a confirmed recovery. The coroner’s announcement did not, however, resolve every forensic issue. At the time of the identification, the office said the cause of death was still pending, even though police had previously said their investigative evidence indicated Minnieweather had been beaten to death.
A second investigation involving Parms developed alongside the homicide case. Police said that while examining Minnieweather’s disappearance they discovered communications and other evidence involving the same 16-year-old girl. Parms was arrested June 10 on accusations of indecent behavior with a juvenile and computer-aided solicitation of a minor. Additional accusations were filed in August, including second-degree rape, trafficking of children for sexual purposes and indecent behavior with a juvenile. Those counts are separate criminal allegations that prosecutors would have to prove independently, and they should not be treated as proof of the murder accusation.
Before the landfill became the primary focus, searchers had covered large areas across and around Baton Rouge. Police, K-9 teams, volunteers and members of the United Cajun Navy checked wooded property, areas around bridges and other locations as tips came in. One phase covered close to 1,000 acres. Police also used imaging equipment while investigating a concrete structure near an area connected to the case but reported that Minnieweather was not found there. The progression shows how the investigation moved from broad field searches to a much more targeted recovery operation as new evidence was developed.
Minnieweather’s death continued to be felt beyond the criminal investigation after his remains were returned to his family. In September, a student organized a homecoming tribute for Minnieweather and fellow Istrouma student De’Vonte Coleman. Friends and relatives joined a section of the Sept. 26 parade honoring both teenagers. The public remembrance came after months in which Minnieweather’s photograph had first appeared on missing-person notices, then in police homicide announcements and finally in reports confirming that his remains had been recovered.
What prosecutors now have that they did not possess when Parms was arrested is the recovered body itself, along with any forensic evidence that examination of the remains may provide. The state still must prove its allegations in court, while the defense can challenge the witness accounts, surveillance evidence, blood evidence and conclusions investigators drew from them. Parms has not been convicted and is presumed innocent.
Author note: Last updated September 28, 2026.