Courtesy of Dinosaur Rumblings Entertainment
Editor’s note: This film (not this article) requires a trigger warning: includes graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse.
When filmmaker Brett Roblez first met Terry King, he thought the man had to be a liar.
The sensational stories King told—of working with other citizens of St. Tammany Parish to bring down their parish coroner, who they suspected of criminal fraud—were so incredibly unbelievable. But, as a Google search quickly confirmed, every word was true. King and his wife Laura acted as whistleblowers in the case against Peter Galvan, joining up with the Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany (CCST) in an effort that resulted in Galvan’s 2013 conviction for conspiring to steal government funds.
Roblez, who grew up in St. Tammany Parish, couldn’t believe the remarkable story of blatant government corruption and citizen-led investigation hadn’t yet been told on a larger scale.
Roblez turned to his collaborators at Dinosaur Rumblings Entertainment, an award-winning film studio and production company based in Baton Rouge. Over the next year, he and his team conducted dozens of interviews with St. Tammany Parish residents, attorneys, journalists, and others involved in the case against Galvan—as well as other instances of corruption in St. Tammany.
“This is an everywhere problem. And what can we do about it? Terry got the community organized, and it’s completely turned St. Tammany around. When the community is involved in local politics, positive change can, and will, happen.” —Brett Roblez
The result is Dinosaur Rumblings’ first feature-length documentary, Dead People, Crazy People, Drugs and Politicians—named for King’s memoir on the Galvan case. The story begins in 2004 with Galvan’s successful passage of a parish-wide tax for the coroner’s office, promoted on a platform of crime-fighting amid anxieties following the conviction of infamous Louisiana serial killer Derrick Todd Lee. The tax more than tripled the agency’s budget and reportedly made him the highest paid government official in the United States after the President.
Laura, a Ph. D toxicologist, took a job in Galvan’s “Taj Mahal of DNA labs,” and immediately began observing a culture of excess and extravagance, usually paid for with taxpayer dollars; in a later lawsuit, she alleged sexual harassment and racism in hiring practices. Eventually, she lost her job after refusing to use grant funds allocated for lab equipment to purchase computers.
When she and King decided to file suit for wrongful termination, King’s meticulous audit of discovery documents revealed incriminating evidence of much deeper malfeasance. By partnering with the CCST, civil rights activists, and FBI investigators, King successfully championed the case—all the way to Galvan’s conviction.
The second half of Roblez’s film focuses on one of the almost thirty other corrupt public officials who King and the CCST have helped expose since the Galvan investigation. The case of the former St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain began with concerns about conditions at the local jail and suspicions that Strain was abusing the work-release program for financial gain. It turned out to be something much more harrowing. In 2021, in large part due to the work of community watchdogs like King and the CCST, Strain was convicted of four counts of aggravated rape, two of aggravated incest, one of molestation of a juvenile, and one of sexual battery.
Included in Roblez’s film is a victim’s account of the horrific sexual abuse that Strain engaged in while acting as St. Tammany Parish sheriff. It was a much-discussed decision to include such graphic descriptions in the film, but Roblez felt it was important. “People hear ‘sexual misconduct,’ and it can mean so many things,” he said. “I felt we would be doing the victims—the ones who wanted to talk to us—a disservice by sanitizing it. I want people to really grasp the things these people have used their power to get away with.”
[Read about other 2025 documentary films featured in our "Film & Literature" issue.]
Beyond holding corrupt public officials to account, Roblez hopes the film shows what an impact regular citizens can make when they get involved. “This isn’t just a St. Tammany problem,” he said. “This is an everywhere problem. And what can we do about it? Terry got the community organized, and it’s completely turned St. Tammany around. When the community is involved in local politics, positive change can, and will, happen.”
Learn more about Roblez and Dinosaur Rumblings Entertainment, and find out where to screen Dead People, Crazy People and Drugs and Politicians at dinosaurrumblingsentertainment.com or @dinosaur.rumblings.ent on Instagram.
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