Learning from loss

There are many children who grow up not knowing a parent because of divorce, parent died when the child was young or the parent just put the child up for adoption. Dodie Touchet grew up not knowing her mother, Anita Overstreet Touchet, because her mother was murdered in 1979 and the crime has yet to be solved.
Touchet’s body was found in a sugar cane field south of Erath. She had gone missing and the Sheriff’s Office was searching for her. A farmer found her purse scattered in a field. A helicopter, owned by the State Police, searched cane fields after the purse was found and eventually located Anita, who was 22 years old.
She was found naked, gagged and stabbed several times. No one has ever been arrested for the murder 35 years later.
Dodie was around a year old at the time. Today, she is all grown up and living north of Erath and working in New Iberia. Over the years she has found out bits and pieces of how her mother died. She has talked to detectives who worked the case years 10 years ago.
“I am always wondering and being somewhat upset about not knowing who did it and being mad,” said Dodie. “It has felt like it is unfinished business.”
Last week Dodie found herself talking about the death of her mother and comparing it to a new HBO weekly crime-drama called “True Detective.”
The show aired last Sunday and will air again tonight. For eight weeks, detectives are working to solve a murder case that occurred in a sugarcane field near Erath in Vermilion Parish. The show mentions Erath and a dead female was found nude near an oak tree.
The death on the HBO show happened in 1995 and not 1979. The only other similarity was both girls were found nude.
“I did not watch the show, so I do not know if it was based on my mother’s death. I do find it ironic they picked Erath of all the places they could pick,” Dodie said.
Despite it being 35 years ago, the Overstreet family has not had closure with the death of Anita.
Anita’s father, Henry Overstreet is 85 years old. He lives with Dodie. Despite his age, he remembers the day they found his daughter. He was living in Texas at the time and divorced from his wife, Juanita. Juanita and her two daughters moved to Abbeville 18 years earlier. Overstreet was told the news by a neighbor.
What has always puzzled him was where she was found - in a cane field - and why she was murdered.
“There is still no closure for me because I do not know who did this. She was stabbed 67 times,” said Overstreet.
The case has been reopened a couple of times over the years. The Sheriff’’s Department did not want to release any more details of the murder because it is still an open investigation.
Overstreet and his granddaughter have pictures of Anita in a photo album. One of the pictures is one of Anita holding Dodie on one knee. She has talked to relatives to find out information on what kind of person Anita was on the inside. Dodie learned both had a lot in common.
Dodie moved on with her life and she does not dwell on the past, especially the murder. After high school, she enlisted in the U.S. Army for four years and said that was one of the best decisions she ever made.
She has taken her mother’s death and turned it into a positive. When Dodie has to make a decision in life, she weighs both choices and thinks about the outcome. She has not always thought out her decisions and she saw herself making bad decisions.
Today, Dodie has gotten her life in order. She is engaged to be married.
“I never knew my mother, and from what I heard, she made some bad decisions in her life. I want to take how she lived her life and make my life better because of it. So, yeah, I guess she has had an impact on my life.”