LAPLACE — After almost 20 years without utilizing capital punishment, five death row inmates convicted of murdering children are slated for execution, according to a recent announcement by U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

Among them is Alfred Bourgeois, originally from LaPlace, who was found guilty of the murder of his 2-year-old daughter in Corpus Christi, Texas, on June 27, 2002.

His execution is scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020.

According to investigators, Bourgeois told officials the toddler had fallen five feet out of his truck and onto the pavement at the Naval Air Station.

The child lived with her mother in Livingston, Texas. Bourgeois, who was living in LaPlace at the time, learned he was the biological father of the child in April 2002.

After being ordered to pay child support, Bourgeois requested visitation and was granted a seven-week visitation, described as a “hellish existence and horrific cruelty” by witnesses, including his wife and then 9-year-old stepdaughter during the 2004 trial.

A jury returned a guilty verdict in 90 minutes at the conclusion of the 12-day trial.

At the time of the trial, L’OBSERVATEUR reported Bourgeois’ wife, Robin Bourgeois, testified she feared her husband and had obtained restraining orders against him in the past.

She told the jury Bourgeois had ordered her and her young daughter to tell authorities the 2-year-old had fallen out of the truck.

Pronounced dead on June 28, 2002, the child, though brain dead, was on life support until her mother could arrive.

Bourgeois, a truck driver by trade, was arrested on June 28, 2002, after medical personal at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi determined that the story given by Bourgeois and his family had given a falsified account.

An 11-hour autopsy determined that, in addition to the severe head trauma which caused the child’s death, the child’s body had more than 300 marks of injury marks including whip marks, healed scars and nonspecific and patterned contusions, abrasions or excoriations, healing ulcerations, lacerations, and two bite marks on her body.

The FBI investigated the case with assistance from the Naval Air Station Security Police and the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, as the incident took place on federal property.

Assistant United States Attorneys Patti Hubert Booth, Elsa Salinas-Patterson and Tony R. Roberts took the case to court.

According to Barr, “On March 16, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois guilty of multiple offenses, including murder, and he was sentenced to death.”