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Dart Award Winner

The Days After

By Jason Brown, Arnessa Garrett, Claudia Laws, Brittain Quibodeaux Orgeron, and Marsha Sills

A series about the murder of eight women in Louisiana's Acadiana. Originally published in the Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, LA), on Aug. 7, 2005.

Eight women in Acadiana have been murdered since January 2004 in acts of domestic violence.

The faces you will see on these pages are the people who confront the effects of violence every day - in the courts, on the streets, in counseling sessions and at hospitals.

And these are the faces of a family who picked up the pieces when violence shattered a home.

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Jason Brown

  • Jason Brown, 28, began his career as an intern at The Daily Advertiser in 2004 and was promoted to a full-time night cops position shortly afterward.

    Since then, Brown has worked as a general assignment reporter focusing on public safety and environmental issues.

Arnessa Garrett

  • A professional journalist since 1990, Arnessa M. Garrett, 35, began her career as an intern at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. She attended Tulane University and was named a Truman Scholar in 1990. She spent her junior year of college at the Institut d’etudes politiques in Paris.

Claudia Laws

  • Claudia B. Laws joined the staff of The Daily Advertiser in 2004. A 2002 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Laws interned at The Bay City Times, The Cedar Rapids Gazette and The Montgomery Advertiser before finding a home with the Lafayette paper.

Brittain Quibodeaux Orgeron

  • Brittain Quibodeaux Orgeron, 25, graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2002, where she received a degree in mass communications.

    After working as a technical writer and consultant, she took a position at The Daily Advertiser as a part-time reporter, then moved to a full-time copy desk post in 2003, where she now designs and edits.

Marsha Sills

  • Marsha Sills is a staff reporter at The Daily Advertiser. Sills started her career at the newspaper in late 2001 as a night cops reporter and covered the unfolding investigation of the 2002 murder of a local woman whose death was linked to serial killer Derrick Todd Lee.

    For the past two years, Sills has covered higher education. Most recently, health-care issues have been added to her beat coverage. During Hurricane Rita, Sills reported from Lake Charles, La., which was hit hard by the storm.

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