Bonnie Sue Henderson Pannier was found dead in the woods behind Hammond High School around 3 p.m. on a Monday in January 1989, shot four times after being struck in the back of the head. She was 30 years old. Thirty-seven years later, no one has ever been arrested, and the case remains open.
The circumstances of her death were documented in detail by the Hammond Star's Bayou Justice column, a weekly true-crime feature examining notable South Louisiana cases, many of them unsolved. Her body was discovered in Bankston Cemetery in the woods behind Hammond High School.
An autopsy counted five wounds in total — two from behind and three from the front — consistent with a heavy blow to the back of her head followed by a shot to the base of her neck, two chest shots and one abdominal shot, per the Hammond Star's reporting. Coroner Vincent Cefalu determined her time of death as Sunday afternoon, Jan. 22, 1989.
A Life That Began In Joyce, Louisiana
Bonnie Rena Bradshaw was born in December 1958 and adopted by Bill and Irene Henderson of Joyce six days before her first birthday, per the idocpub account. She sang in churches starting at age 5 and later majored in piano at Northwestern. She married a man from Jonesboro and had two children, whom she eventually left with a family in Lake Charles before leaving town with carnival worker Ricky Pannier in 1984, according to the Hammond Star.
The couple lived under a bridge near Interstate 55 and U.S. 190 in Tangipahoa Parish in 1985, the paper reported. Bonnie later worked fast food jobs around Ponchatoula and then at Brenda A's Donuts. She filed for separation from Ricky Pannier on Oct. 17, 1988.
A Planned Wedding And Conflicting Accounts Of Her Final Hours
Irene Henderson told the paper that Bonnie had said she divorced Ricky Pannier and planned to marry Richard McCarter on Jan. 25 — just days after her death. Irene also said Bonnie and McCarter had driven to Joyce two weeks earlier, and that Bonnie had given her a pair of earrings for her birthday on Jan. 24.
Ricky Pannier, for his part, told investigators he and Bonnie had reconciled at a concert at First Assembly of God Church in Ponchatoula on Jan. 22. The church, however, said the concert actually took place two days earlier, on Friday, Jan. 20, and a church employee confirmed Bonnie was in the audience that night. Ricky also said Bonnie came to his door at 3:30 a.m. that Monday, upset about nightmares, and stayed until he left for work at 4:30 a.m., adding that she was supposed to get a ride at 10 a.m. to collect her belongings. Her purse, containing some change and her driver's license, was later found at his home. Law enforcement has never named Ricky Pannier a suspect, and no one has been arrested in the case, per the Hammond Star's reporting.
Evidence Sent To The Crime Lab, Then Silence
Detectives sent evidence to the state police crime lab in Baton Rouge in January 1989, but the Daily Star reported that no results had come back after a week.
By October 1989, investigator Mike Sticker told the Advocate he had good suspects and believed Bonnie was killed in anger on the spur of the moment. He said the case remained open as of January 1991. Ricky Pannier later signed a memorial notice for Bonnie in the Daily Star classifieds in January 1999, a decade after her death. A recording of Bonnie singing gospel played at her funeral, and Ricky told the paper the recording broke him down.
No Statute Of Limitations, And A Reporter Who Keeps Digging
Louisiana law places no statute of limitations on murder prosecutions, meaning charges can be pursued decades later if new evidence or a forensic match emerges, according to the Louisiana State Legislature. That leaves the door open in Bonnie's case even without an arrest or named suspect nearly four decades on.
H.L. Arledge, who wrote the Bayou Justice column examining the case, has covered roughly 600 unsolved or historical South Louisiana criminal cases since launching the column in 2016, according to Arledge's Muck Rack profile. Arledge has previously reported on a 30-year-old Tangipahoa Parish cold case that eventually resulted in a murder conviction, underscoring that old cases in the parish can still break open.
Anyone with information on Bonnie Pannier's murder can contact Crime Stoppers of Tangipahoa.
