Thomas Cisco — who was sentenced to 90 years in prison for the July 6, 1997, KK’s Corner triple homicide — has been granted parole after serving 24 years.

Cisco pleaded guilty to three manslaughter counts in 2010 — after being convicted and sentenced to death in a previous ruling that was later overturned — as part of a plea deal worked out between then-Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell and defense attorney Michelle Fournet of Baton Rouge.

Cisco’s initial murder trial ended Nov. 7, 2000, with three guilty verdicts. Jurors unanimously recommended a death sentence, but in December 2003 the state Supreme Court threw out the convictions, saying Cisco’s court-appointed attorney for the trial, Evelyn Oubre, shouldn’t have represented him because of a conflict of interest.

At the time Oubre was representing Cisco, she was also representing former Deputy Donald “Lucky” DeLouche in domestic court matters. DeLouche was the state’s leading witness and the former director of the now-defunct Violent Crimes Task Force.

On Feb. 12, 2004, then-Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant formally transferred the Cisco case to the Attorney General’s Office, citing a similar possible conflict of interest with his office. At that time, then-Assistant District Attorney Ric Oustalet was representing DeLouche in domestic court matters. Bryant said he didn’t want another conflict to arise in the Cisco case. The case was then assigned to Caldwell, whose father, Buddy Caldwell, was attorney general.

The Cisco case and other capital murder trials languished in the courts for the next several years over the question of how court-appointed defense attorneys would be paid for the representation of their indigent clients. In 2008, Cisco’s charges were amended to second-degree murder, which meant Cisco couldn’t face the possibility of another death sentence.

Caldwell amended the second-degree murder counts to manslaughter for the 2010 plea agreement and recommended the maximum sentence of 40 years on each count. Two terms and 10 years for the third were to run back to back for a total of 90 years. By amending the charge, the Attorney General’s Office paved the way for quicker prosecution of the case, he said.

Caldwell told the American Press in 2010 that Cisco would be older than 100 before he would be eligible for parole, and because he pleaded guilty he would have no grounds for appeal. He said the plea agreement was made after consultation with the victims’ families.

Cisco’s victims were store employees Mark Patrick “Marty” LeBouef, 21, and Staci Lynn Reeves, 24, and 14-year-old Nicole Guidry, who had been dropped off to go home with Reeves to babysit for her twin daughters.

“At about 1 a.m. the security company called the store to see why the burglar alarm hadn’t been activated, but received no answer,” Caldwell said in a 2010 synopsis of the robbery and homicide that were presented to the court as part of the plea deal agreement. “When morning employees arrived at the store four hours later, they found Marty’s and Staci’s vehicles still in the parking lot. Upon entering the store, they found checks strewn on the floor, an open safe, cut telephone lines and the store in general disarray. Deputies arrived and discovered the bodies of the three victims in the cooler in the back of the store.”

Caldwell said a witness who had stopped to buy gas at the store that night was able to identify Cisco as one of two people she had seen entering the store around closing time.

When Cisco was interviewed, he admitted his involvement, Caldwell said, and gave details of the crime such as the location of the bodies and descriptions of the wounds — all of it information that only the perpetrators could have known.

In accepting the plea agreement, Judge Robert Wyatt told Cisco, “You have ruined so many lives, the least of which is yours, and changed the course of Calcasieu Parish.”

Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Stephen Dwight told the American Press on Wednesday that when he learned of Wednesday’s hearing, he immediately reached out to the Attorney General’s Office to confirm their attendance to oppose the parole release. He said he was shocked to learn the attorney general’s office did not attend the parole hearing.

“The District Attorney’s Office vehemently disagrees with this ruling and are disappointed that the parole board is allowing this violent criminal back into our society,” Dwight said. “I am extremely disappointed that this killer, who committed such heinous crimes and was sentenced to 90 years, is being released on parole after serving only 24 years of his sentence.”