Cajun Country Criming

If you can't beat your lifelong rival for parish Sheriff in a fair election, blow 'em up with a pipe bomb, right?

Politics is serious business in Cajun country, but Lafourche Parish Sheriff Duffy Breaux said he didn’t think it would get so serious that a onetime rival for office would try to kill him.

Social patterns are strongly influenced in this town 50 miles southwest of New Orleans by those who work in the dominant industries, oilfield roughnecks, commercial fishermen and farmers - quick to laugh and quick to anger.

They love good times, LSU football and politics.

U.S. Attorney John Volz says former sheriff Cyrus ″Bobby″ Tardo, 58, twice defeated for office by Breaux, hired a crew of former law officers and their associates to set a pipe bomb that almost blew Breaux’s foot off 10 days before Christmas.

Tardo also was charged last week with attempted first-degree murder in Lafourche Parish, where a bond of $2 million has been set for him.

Tardo and his three co-defendants have all professed their innocents, though they have not yet entered pleas.

Investigating authorities have declined to speculate on a motive, but Breaux said political revenge may have been involved.

″I can only see one thing - it’s a political thing,″ Breaux said. ″I always defeated him. Maybe he wanted me out of the way. I never thought a man would stoop that low.″

Tardo, a former state policeman, was elected sheriff in 1971. Breaux defeated him for the sheriff’s office in 1975, then won again when Tardo challenged him in 1979. Tardo then ran for parish president and won. He lost that post to Vernon Galliano in 1986. Parish is the Louisiana term for county.

Louis Breaux, a cousin of the sheriff and a second-term councilman, said he cannot believe the charges brought against Tardo.

″Talk to anyone in the parish. It’s hard to believe. He was pretty much of a loner, not much of a good mixer, not a hothead at all,″ he said Friday. ″People take their politics seriously in Lafourche Parish, but to try to kill a man? That’s going pretty far out.″

 

Something tells me Pardo and Breaux have hated each other for decades, and they finally made national news over that seething rivalry. Congrats, gents. It'll make a fascinating HBO comedy.