Anatomy of a heist

Donovon McMullen Jr. came to Baton Rouge right after Katrina to help get medical supplies and emergency personnel to stranded New Orleans residents. The Caddo Parish District 3 Fire Chief worked out of a government staging area set up at the Jimmy Swaggart complex on Bluebonnet Boulevard.

Michael Proveaux of Pineville was a supervisor for one of the ambulance companies working from the same staging area. Another man working there was ambulance driver Rudy Adams of Beaumont, Texas.

On January 13, 2006, McMullen and Proveaux were whooping it up at a local strip club when they came up with the bright idea to steal a truckload of heart defibrillators. There were a ton of them at the staging area, each worth nearly $29,000. Both men knew that Adams, who had already quit the relief effort, had snagged one on his way home and sold it in Texas. Adams could hook them up with a buyer.

Later that night, the two men sneaked back into the staging area and loaded at least 18 defibrillators, perhaps as many as 30, onto a truck. The defibrillators belonged to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and had been paid for by FEMA.

McMullen and Proveaux drove the truck to West Louisiana, almost to the Texas border, where they met up with Adams. The ambulance driver paid McMullen $500 and gave Proveaux a bag of cocaine.

Back at the staging area, a state supervisor reported that the defibrillators had been stolen, and because the federal government had paid for them, the FBI launched an investigation.

Two months later, in March 2006, McMullen left the Katrina relief effort and went back to Shreveport. Although he was aware the FBI was investigating the theft, McMullen knew they didn’t have anything on him, Proveaux or Adams.

But that was about to change.

The first lead came from a small fire department in upstate New York. The department bought a used defibrillator on eBay and contacted the manufacturer to have it refurbished. The company checked the serial number and found out the machine had been stolen in Baton Rouge.

Next, a medical supply company in Texas discovered that a defibrillator they had recently purchased had also been stolen in Baton Rouge. The company told the FBI they had bought the stolen defibrillator from Rudy Adams.

In September 2006, FBI agents tracked Adams down in Beaumont and questioned him about the theft. He folded like a three-eight in a game of Texas hold ’em and gave up the whole conspiracy, including the names of Proveaux and McMullen. And he agreed to cooperate with the FBI.

With Adams in their pocket, the feds decided to put the screws to Proveaux, who was back in Pineville. They sent him a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in Baton Rouge. While Proveaux was at the federal courthouse on Florida Street, the FBI arranged for him to bump into Adams, who was also there under subpoena. Not long after their “chance” encounter, Proveaux flipped and agreed to cooperate.

Using a recorded telephone line, Proveaux called McMullen and told him he had seen Adams at the federal building, and he was sure that Adams had turned on them. In subsequent conversations, McMullen brought up an idea he had suggested earlier to Proveaux: Kill Adams.

With the FBI’s blessing, Proveaux played along.

In February 2007, McMullen, suspicious that the FBI was bugging his telephone, bought a pair of disposable cell phones for him and Proveaux. During a recorded conversation, McMullen asked if Proveaux knew anyone who would kill Adams for them. Proveaux told him about a guy in New Orleans.

A couple of weeks dragged by and McMullen started getting antsy. What was taking so long? Why wasn’t Adams dead? McMullen told Proveaux that if his New Orleans contact couldn’t get the job done, he knew some Mexicans who could. That kind of talk made the FBI agents a little nervous. They had to control the situation. If McMullen lost faith in Proveaux’s ability to arrange the hit, he might contract the job out himself.

Proveaux said he knew a crazy guy just out of prison who would do it. McMullen agreed to give the ex-con the murder weapon, a pistol he had scratched the serial number off of, and $2,500 once Adams was dead.

On March 16, 2007, Proveaux followed McMullen into the woods outside Natchitoches to discuss the final preparations for killing Rudy Adams. McMullen handed Proveaux the box containing the Star pistol and a magazine full of Hydroshock bullets, which he mistakenly believed exploded on impact. In reality the bullets were just modified hollow-points. He also gave Proveaux another disposable cell phone. The two men discussed whether they wanted the hitman to take pictures of Adams after he was dead, but McMullen decided against it.

A few days after their meeting in the woods, McMullen and Proveaux talked on their cell phones again. The hitman had found Adams leaving work but couldn’t get to him, Proveaux said. There had been a lot of people around, and the hitman was afraid the police would kill him if he opened fire in a crowded parking lot.

McMullen suggested the hitman follow Adams as he left work and kill him on his way home. “Just drive up beside him and pop, pop,” McMullen said, “another drug deal gone bad.”

Two days later, Proveaux called McMullen and reported that Adams was dead.

“Great,” McMullen said. “My problems are solved. I’m going have a cold beer.”

Later that same day, a federal grand jury in Baton Rouge returned a sealed indictment charging McMullen with theft from a health care benefit program and the attempted murder of a federal witness. The Caddo Parish fire chief didn’t know it yet, but he was facing 50 years in prison.

The next day, FBI agents made their move.

“It was a full assault on the fire station,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Corey Amundson, who prosecuted the case.

While meeting with Proveaux in the woods outside Natchitoches, McMullen had been armed with a shotgun and had specifically threatened to kill any FBI agents who came after him. The agents assigned to arrest him weren’t taking any chances. Wearing full tactical gear and carrying assault weapons, FBI agents and Caddo Parish sheriff’s deputies stormed the third district fire station and took McMullen into custody.