LAFAYETTE, La. — KATC is learning more about the man whose body was found in a burn pile in Lafayette Parish and the weeks leading up to his death.
Linda Plaunty-Dupre, his sister, remembers him as a kind man, with a troubled life.
“He wasn’t all good,” she said. “I’m not going to lie about that. We all know Wayne had his issues. He had drug addiction. He went back into using meth. We all knew it. He had asked us for a place to stay, we told him, ‘you get rehab and you can come stay here’.”
She says a car accident in his youth led him to a pain medication addiction.
“He’s not hurting anymore,” she said. “That's my peace. And I just pray for his soul. I just pray that God delivers him, takes him with mom and with my sister Macy.”
About a month ago, in a phone call with one of his sisters, Wayne told her that he didn’t want to get the family into problems he was involved in.
“He said, ‘my kids have gotten me into some mess that I cannot get out of,” she said. “We didn’t know what he was talking about.”
The family suspects a money or drug-related fight led to his death. A few days before deputies found human remains in a burn pile, she says Wayne reached out to his son.
“’Son, they have me. They've been beating me up, but I’m going to be okay. I’ll see you in a couple of days, tell my kids and tell my family that I love them,” recounts Plaunty-Dupre.
She says that’s the last they heard of him.
The cause of death has not been confirmed.
“We were praying that he died before they burned him,” she said.
LPSO says the case is still being investigated.
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