Abbeville woman deals with her two sons being murdered and another son in jail for a different murder

Mary Lou Diggs believes in God. It’s the Lord who keeps her going each day. She needs all the help she can get to survive each day because over the last 17 years, two of her sons were murdered and another son is spending the rest of his life in prison for murder.
In 1997, her son Jeremy Perry and another person were found murdered in a truck parked at A. A. Comeaux Park in Abbeville.
“I remember I was in Houston for a funeral when I got the phone call that my son was killed in the park,” Diggs said. “I had to come home to another funeral - my son’s.”
Someone was eventually arrested for the murders but a jury found the person not guilty of both murders. The killer of the two men still remains free on the streets.
Ten years later, another son, Jalen Diggs was living in Houston, and he was also found murdered in a parked vehicle in Houston. No one has ever been arrested for that murder either.
A couple of years later, in 2009, her younger son, Jamal Diggs, was found guilty of first degree murder in Abbeville.
Three sons, two murdered and one in jail for murder.
“They were good kids,” Diggs said. “They came from a two-parent home. Both parents worked. Our kids just went astray.”
Diggs said there is not a day that goes by that her and her husband do not have a conversation about one of their three sons.
Because her son’s murder is still unsolved 18 years later, Diggs attended a town hall meeting in the Abbeville library on Wednesday. The topic was unsolved murders in Vermilion Parish. Parents and family members of murdered victims attended the library searching for answers from the Abbeville Police Department and Sheriff’s Office.
Diggs was vocal throughout the meeting and asked questions about her son’s case. She got a few answers. But while the killer or killers of her sons continue to walk the streets of Houston and Abbeville, the Diggs family will live in pain.
“I hope they can solve it because we need closure,” Diggs said. “Right now there is no closure. I see a person and I asked, ‘Could that person be involved?”