Acadiana man charged with hiring killers to silence victim had history of abusive crimes

Feb. 4—Beaux Cormier had been in and out of jail for sexual and violent crimes long before two women were shot to death in what investigators say was Cormier's quest to prevent a rape victim from testifying against him.

Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Tim Soignet announced in a Monday press conference the details of a murder-for-hire scheme that claimed the lives of Brittany Cormier, 34, and Hope Nettleton, 37, last month.

Beaux Cormier, a 35-year-old convicted sex offender from Kaplan, was at the center of it all.

He paid two men to kill his niece, who he is accused of raping, in order to prevent her from testifying in court, Soignet said. Instead, the sheriff said, the two hired men shot and killed the victim's mother and a neighbor who tried to intervene during the Jan. 13 incident at a Montegut home in Terrebonne Parish.

Cormier had traveled with Andrew Eskine, 25, of Carencro, and Dalvin Wilson, 22, of Rayne, to do surveillance on the home prior to the shooting, the sheriff said. The men also attempted to murder the rape victim on another occasion prior to Jan. 13, Soignet said.

Cormier, Eskine and Wilson were arrested Jan. 29 on two counts each of first-degree murder. Their bonds were initially set at $2 million.

Additional charges were added Tuesday for the three Acadiana men, who are now being held in a Terrebonne Parish jail without bond.

The additional charges, which include conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for each man, are tied to the communication, planning and traveling that happened prior to the Jan. 13 murders. Cormier was also charged with solicitation for murder.

Although he is now jailed without the ability to post bail, Vermilion Parish court records show that Cormier has a history of abusive and violent crimes prior to January.

Cormier faced little to no jail time for some of the criminal charges, which include forcible rape, third-degree rape, intimidating a witness, cyberstalking, armed robbery and animal cruelty.

"Statistics show that the severity of a crime when it's a sex crime continues to go up," said Stacie Rumenap, who leads the nonprofit Stop Child Predators. "And that's what it looks like happened in this case. It starts off with a bunch of smaller things and goes to rape and now murder. From a psychological standpoint, at what point will this guy stop? And why are we, as a society, giving him a third and fourth chance?"

Cormier's publicly available criminal records date back to a July 2002 forcible rape of a 12-year-old family member. He was 17 at the time.

Cormier initially pleaded not guilty to the charge but later entered into a plea agreement to a lesser charge of felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile.

In November 2004, Cormier was sentenced to 7 1/2 years at hard labor, which was suspended instead for five years of supervised probation. Cormier was ordered to pay the victim's father $820 and have no contact with the victim during his five-year probation.

Cormier was also ordered to comply with sex offender registration and notification.

Under the lesser charge, Louisiana law required Cormier to register as a sex offender for 15 years. The forcible rape charge would have required Cormier to register as a sex offender for life.

Cormier also faced two counts of cyberstalking for "threatening, terrifying and/or harassing" a man in July and September 2002.

In 2003, Cormier agreed to plead no contest to one of the charges after the state dropped the other. He was sentenced to 60 days in the Vermilion Parish jail, but that, too, was suspended for one year of unsupervised probation.

Cormier would be arrested for smaller infractions — from speeding to stealing to cruelty to animals — in the years that followed.

In 2007, Cormier's probation was revoked for failing to attend a hearing and comply with the sex offender registration requirements.

Cormier was ordered at that time to serve his original 7 1/2 years at hard labor, with credit for time served.

In the years that followed, Cormier would agree to more plea bargains that allowed him to serve time in prison concurrently for burglary and armed robbery charges.

Cormier's more recent charges are pending in the district court.

The first is for failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements from October 2018 through January 2019. The second is for the rape and intimidation charges the Terrebonne sheriff said resulted in the murder-for-hire scheme last month.

Cormier was arrested on March 6, 2020, for the September 2019 third-degree rape of his then 16-year-old niece and intimidation of the victim's mother. His bond was set at $50,000 for the first charge and $5,000 for the second.

Cormier bailed out of jail the same day.

"All we do is make the arrest," said Capt. Drew David, spokesperson for the Vermilion Parish Sheriff's Office. "Ultimately, that falls on the prosecutors — how he is convicted and what his bond amount is."

It's a complicated process — both setting bond and determining a sentence — that's made more difficult by the overwhelming number of cases processed by district courts.

Plea bargains are often attractive to both prosecutors and defendants. Prosecutors can skip the lengthier and riskier trial process, and defendants get reduced or dismissed charges and more lenient sentencing. Victims sometimes favor the pre-trial intervention to avoid reliving previous trauma during trial.

Don Landry, who recently took office as district attorney of Louisiana's15th Judicial District that includes Vermilion Parish, could not speak on Cormier's criminal prosecution and sentencing that happened during prior administrations.

"Every case is different," Landry said. "You have to do it on a case by case basis. Look at rap sheets. Listen to law enforcement. Certainly listen to victims and victims' families. All of that comes into play. It just does."

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