Dorothy Thompson murder case revisited in HBO docuseries

An HBO docuseries, ‘The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story’, has revisited the 1985 death of Dorothy Thompson, the 61-year-old proprietor of the Azalea Original Pet Cemetery in Toca, Louisiana. Thompson’s body was discovered in the Mississippi River nearly a month after she was reported missing, wrapped in chains; an autopsy identified asphyxiation as the cause of death.

Investigators previously focused on cemetery groundskeepers and Patricia Newman, Thompson’s friend and executor of her estate. Newman has dismissed suspicions, maintaining that her role was based on Thompson’s trust. The case remained unsolved for over 25 years until Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused significant damage to the cemetery land and destroyed many existing case files.

The series explores the long-standing mystery and the perceived haunting nature of the cemetery land, which had been in the Thompson family since Grace Thompson’s death in 1979.