Darryl Bleek Milton, a 25-year-old male, was shot and killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on April 1, 2010. The brazen nature of the crime sent ripples through the community, as another man, 37-year-old Charles 'Nokey' Matthews, was also found deceased at the scene. Both men had been shot while sitting in a car, the victims of a violent ambush that would later be untangled as part of a much larger and more sinister criminal enterprise.
The investigation into the double homicide soon
pointed to two primary suspects: Michael 'Marlo Mike' Louding, a teenage hitman, and Kendrick 'Ken' Johnson. The case against the duo was built amidst a backdrop of a string of unsolved murders that had plagued the Baton Rouge area. Louding, who was just a teenager at the time, eventually confessed to his involvement in a shocking number of these violent crimes, including the murders of Milton and Matthews. His confessions painted a grim picture of a murder-for-hire scheme that had taken numerous lives.
Kendrick Johnson, for his role in the slayings, ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. In a deal with prosecutors, he admitted to plotting the murders with Louding and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison. Louding, the central figure in this wave of violence, was implicated in multiple homicides and was eventually convicted for the murder of Terry Boyd, another crime in this bloody saga. For his part in the numerous killings, he received a life sentence in prison. The deaths of Darryl Bleek Milton and Charles Matthews served as a stark and tragic example of the brutal reality of organized crime and contract killings that haunted the streets of Baton Rouge.
