Ted Kergan's guest appearances

Ted Kergan

Discover Lafayette

Gary Wagner

Nathanael Johnson

Michael Russo

Tessa Brown

Mark Miller

Andrew Duhon

David Fisher

Michael Moore

Yvette Landry

Gary Wilkerson

Marquis de Lafayette

Stephen Barnes

Jonathan Perry

Mary Baker

Lauren Bercier

OwlTail

Ted Kergan, CEO of Kergan Brothers Sonic, along with the company’s President, Gary Wilkerson, joined Discover Lafayette to talk about the current difficulties the service industry is having in employing an adequate work staff as we emerge from the COVID shutdown in 2021. Business is up 50% for Kergan Bros. Sonic over last year’s numbers and meeting the workforce demand is their current #1 challenge. As Ted Kergan says, “It is a perfect storm. It’s hard to find people whose financial interests are best served by going to work. After the first of the year in most years, people get their income tax refunds so they have some free money. In this case, the government released stimulus checks which turned out to be $1,400.00 per person in each household…..one of our employees came in and said his family had $10,000 in the bank. Once people got that big amount of money, they didn’t want to go to work but they did want to go out and spend. It’s not just our business that has been impacted, it’s every single business.” Wilkerson further explained, “This started last year, with the stimulus checks. Over a year, you could stay home and make $40,000 not to work. It has snowballed at this point.” The industry’s supply chain has also been heavily impacted worldwide, compounding their ability to offer basic items people expect when food is ordered. Kergan explained, “As an example, we’ve had a heck of a problem finding straws. Specifically, our straws come from China and they’re in a container ship in Long Beach CA. We literally can not get our straws out of the container ship because, in Long Beach, every longshoreman went on vacation when they received their stimulus checks. Literally every one of them!!” With over 60 Sonic Locations across Central and South Louisiana, Kergan Bros. is one of Sonic’s most successful franchisees in the U. S and they focus on four main markets: Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Alexandria. With a workforce in place of about 2,000 people on any given day, Kergan Bros. Sonic actually has about 3,000 active employees, just as they have in past years, and offers a fun and quirky place to work where the employees are treated as family.  “We think our employees will never treat our customers better than we treat our employees. We look at our team members as our customers. Our challenge every day is to find a way to treat them with love, as we are all children of God and deserve to be treated that way. We treat each team member with love and respect. They mirror that with our customers out on the job.” The issue at hand is that as the stimulus dollars hit the market, people have more money in their pockets and they are running out to spend the money. There is a great pent-up demand. Everyone’s sales have gone through the roof. As Ted Kergan said, “We have the same number of employees we had last year. But business exploded so quickly in each segment that everyone needed more employees to handle the additional business.” This increased workforce need is the issue Kergan Bros. Sonic is struggling to meet. (As an aside, we spoke with Jimmy Guidry, owner of Hub City Diner in Lafayette, who shared that he is experiencing more business right now than he ever has….in the history of his restaurant.) When asked to give his thoughts on raising the minimum wage and its impact on the labor force, Kergan said, “Because of the tight labor market, the market is driving the minimum wage higher, faster than legislation is. So in states like AZ and CA, where they’ve enacted the minimum wage, that’s a stairstep procedure over several years. The reality is, because of the tight labor market, we have always gone into a market and looked at our competitors’ wages and paid more. We’re not interested in the minimum or the average employee, we’re interested in the best people. Years ago, a banker in Ville Platte said to me, ‘The people you pay a lot of money to, they don’t cause you problems. It’s the lower-paid people that will cause you problems. You’ll spend 80% of your time on 20% of your business and that’s where your problems are.’ Once we adopted that philosophy, we just wanted good people and we didn’t care what we had to pay them, so a lot of our problems went away. Our people have drive and they hustle.” Sonic is very entrepreneurial and its managers are equity partners. The franchise finances equity partnerships and gives the managers a great deal of autonomy to run their restaurant according to the needs of the local business climate. 78% of Sonic’s managing partners started out as hourly employees. When Sonic hires, they look at how to move each employee forward in their career path. Managers can earn well into the six-figure range of yearly income.  As Ted said, “When we bring someone in, we want to train them to be winners and we want them to make more money. It’s worked for over 42 years for us. We’re going to stick with this!” Gary Wilkerson has worked with Ted Kergan and Kergan Brothers Sonic for twenty years. His background is in television, radio, and another fast-food chain. “Every morning Ted and I meet. I call it the ‘morning news.’ Ted comes in and we recap the news. We are always on the same sheet of music as to what we need to focus on.” Photo by Brad Bowie of The Advocate.The fast food industry’s COVID challenges have struck in ways many of us may not realize and they have evolved as time has gone by. As an example, early on in the shutdown in 2020, Sonic and other vendors couldn’t get hamburger meat. While Wendy’s said they just couldn’t get access to meat, Kergan Bros. Sonic went directly to Louisiana farmers and started buying cows, “meat on the hoof,” as they said, and they paid to process the meat. The individual franchisees got involved and 350,000 hamburger patties were purchased. Kergan Bros. Sonic figured out logistical issues and distributed the hamburgers while also helping local farmers. Globally, prices in the supply chain have skyrocketed, from the processing plants because they don’t have the help they need, to the issues caused by stimulus monies. Kergan shared that prices have gone up but will probably not come back down as people can now pay these prices. At Kergan Bros. Sonic, the menu is redone twice a year, and while prices are looked at, they are typically lower-priced than their competitors and they have taken efforts to remain affordable to their customers. Their godsend is that they do business in high quantities, and as people realized that they could “quarantine in their car,” they came out and remained loyal to Sonic.  As people wanted to emerge from their seclusion last year, a trip to Sonic provided a welcome break from being stuck at home. In closing, it is comforting to hear Gary Wilkerson affirm that “Good days are ahead. We’re going to be fine. I’m very excited about what the future holds.” Which, we must say, we are also glad to hear! And which Ted Kergan affirmed. For more information on Kergan Bros. Sonic, please visit http://sonic-blast.com. We thank Ted Kergan and Gary Wilkerson for their support of Discover Lafayette. For those of you would like more information on Ted Kergan’s story and his entrepreneurial success, please hear our first interview with him here. 

Ted Kergan, CEO of Kergan Brothers Sonic, along with the company’s President, Gary Wilkerson, joined Discover Lafayette to talk about the current difficulties the service industry is having in employing an adequate work staff as we emerge from the COVID shutdown in 2021. Business is up 50% for Kergan Bros. Sonic over last year’s numbers and meeting the workforce demand is their current #1 challenge. As Ted Kergan says, “It is a perfect storm. It’s hard to find people whose financial interests are best served by going to work. After the first of the year in most years, people get their income tax refunds so they have some free money. In this case, the government released stimulus checks which turned out to be $1,400.00 per person in each household…..one of our employees came in and said his family had $10,000 in the bank. Once people got that big amount of money, they didn’t want to go to work but they did want to go out and spend. It’s not just our business that has been impacted, it’s every single business.” Wilkerson further explained, “This started last year, with the stimulus checks. Over a year, you could stay home and make $40,000 not to work. It has snowballed at this point.” The industry’s supply chain has also been heavily impacted worldwide, compounding their ability to offer basic items people expect when food is ordered. Kergan explained, “As an example, we’ve had a heck of a problem finding straws. Specifically, our straws come from China and they’re in a container ship in Long Beach CA. We literally can not get our straws out of the container ship because, in Long Beach, every longshoreman went on vacation when they received their stimulus checks. Literally every one of them!!” With over 60 Sonic Locations across Central and South Louisiana, Kergan Bros. is one of Sonic’s most successful franchisees in the U. S and they focus on four main markets: Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Alexandria. With a workforce in place of about 2,000 people on any given day, Kergan Bros. Sonic actually has about 3,000 active employees, just as they have in past years, and offers a fun and quirky place to work where the employees are treated as family. “We think our employees will never treat our customers better than we treat our employees. We look at our team members as our customers. Our challenge every day is to find a way to treat them with love, as we are all children of God and deserve to be treated that way. We treat each team member with love and respect. They mirror that with our customers out on the job.” The issue at hand is that as the stimulus dollars hit the market, people have more money in their pockets and they are running out to spend the money. There is a great pent-up demand. Everyone’s sales have gone through the roof. As Ted Kergan said, “We have the same number of employees we had last year. But business exploded so quickly in each segment that everyone needed more employees to handle the additional business.” This increased workforce need is the issue Kergan Bros. Sonic is struggling to meet. (As an aside, we spoke with Jimmy Guidry, owner of Hub City Diner in Lafayette, who shared that he is experiencing more business right now than he ever has….in the history of his restaurant.) When asked to give his thoughts on raising the minimum wage and its impact on the labor force, Kergan said, “Because of the tight labor market, the market is driving the minimum wage higher, faster than legislation is. So in states like AZ and CA, where they’ve enacted the minimum wage, that’s a stairstep procedure over several years. The reality is, because of the tight labor market, we have always gone into a market and looked at our competitors’ wages and paid more. We’re not interested in the minimum or the average employee, we’re interested in the best people. Years ago, a banker in Ville Platte said to me, ‘The people you pay a lot of money to, they don’t cause you problems. It’s the lower-paid people that will cause you problems. You’ll spend 80% of your time on 20% of your business and that’s where your problems are.’ Once we adopted that philosophy, we just wanted good people and we didn’t care what we had to pay them, so a lot of our problems went away. Our people have drive and they hustle.” Sonic is very entrepreneurial and its managers are equity partners. The franchise finances equity partnerships and gives the managers a great deal of autonomy to run their restaurant according to the needs of the local business climate. 78% of Sonic’s managing partners started out as hourly employees. When Sonic hires, they look at how to move each employee forward in their career path. Managers can earn well into the six-figure range of yearly income. As Ted said, “When we bring someone in, we want to train them to be winners and we want them to make more money. It’s worked for over 42 years for us. We’re going to stick with this!” Gary Wilkerson has worked with Ted Kergan and Kergan Brothers Sonic for twenty years. His background is in television, radio, and another fast-food chain. “Every morning Ted and I meet. I call it the ‘morning news.’ Ted comes in and we recap the news. We are always on the same sheet of music as to what we need to focus on.” Photo by Brad Bowie of The Advocate. The fast food industry’s COVID challenges have struck in ways many of us may not realize and they have evolved as time has gone by. As an example, early on in the shutdown in 2020, Sonic and other vendors couldn’t get hamburger meat. While Wendy’s said they just couldn’t get access to meat, Kergan Bros. Sonic went directly to Louisiana farmers and started buying cows, “meat on the hoof,” as they said, and they paid to process the meat. The individual franchisees got involved and 350,000 hamburger patties were purchased. Kergan Bros. Sonic figured out logistical issues and distributed the hamburgers while also helping local farmers. Globally, prices in the supply chain have skyrocketed, from the processing plants because they don’t have the help they need, to the issues caused by stimulus monies. Kergan shared that prices have gone up but will probably not come back down as people can now pay these prices. At Kergan Bros. Sonic, the menu is redone twice a year, and while prices are looked at, they are typically lower-priced than their competitors and they have taken efforts to remain affordable to their customers. Their godsend is that they do business in high quantities, and as people realized that they could “quarantine in their car,” they came out and remained loyal to Sonic. As people wanted to emerge from their seclusion last year, a trip to Sonic provided a welcome break from being stuck at home. In closing, it is comforting to hear Gary Wilkerson affirm that “Good days are ahead. We’re going to be fine. I’m very excited about what the future holds.” Which, we must say, we are also glad to hear! And which Ted Kergan affirmed. For more information on Kergan Bros. Sonic, please visit <a href="http://sonic-blast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://sonic-blast.com</a>. We thank Ted Kergan and Gary Wilkerson for their support of Discover Lafayette. For those of you would like more information on Ted Kergan’s story and his entrepreneurial success, please hear our first interview with him<a href="https://discoverlafayette.net/podcast/ted-kergan-kergan-brothers-sonic-ceo-talks-life-business-and-spending-decades-finding-his-brothers-killers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> here.</a>

Kergan Bros. Sonic’s Ted Kergan and Gary Wilkerson Discuss Effect of COVID on Service Industry

Ted Kergan, one of Sonic’s most successful franchisees in the U. S., began his career with SONIC in 1977 as general manager of an Alexandria, LA location. Today, Ted is CEO of Kergan Bros. Sonic, which owns 60 Sonic locations across Central and South Louisiana, and employs more than 4,000 people each year.  In 2015, Ted was bestowed the Troy Smith Hall of Fame Award given to a franchisee who has worked with Sonic for a noteworthy duration and has made a significant contribution in terms of leadership, growth, positive influence, and brand image. Ted’s love for Sonic is palpable, and he attributes his success in the company to his dedicated and longtime employees who make it happen. Between his managers and assistant managers, the employees collectively bring over 1000 years of experience to the job.  In 2015, Ted was bestowed the Troy Smith Hall of Fame Award given to a franchisee who has worked with Sonic for a noteworthy duration and has made a significant contribution in terms of leadership, growth, positive influence, and brand image. Pictured from left: Sonic CEO Cliff Hudson, Ann Kergan, Ted Kergan. Sonic is a fun company and offers a solid business plan. Troy Smith founded Sonic in 1953 and always gave his managers the opportunity to be equity partners. Ted Kergan has followed Smith’s example and this generosity has led to lasting employee loyalty. There are 3600 Sonic locations in the U. S. and successful managers can make around $150,000 per year; the most successful manager in the U. S. is reported to make $250,000 per year. Ted recommends that anyone looking to purchase a franchise opportunity should take a close look at the business plan and select a company that has a name recognition so that people will flock to the door the day it opens for business. Many good concepts are unknown to the general public and it can be risky investing in an unknown name that will not generate adequate traffic.  Sonic was purchased by Inspire Brand in 2018 for $2.3 Billion; Inspire also owns Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Jimmy John’s Restaurants. Economies of scale are recognized in food purchases, attorney costs, etc. by franchisees associated with Sonic and Inspire, and Ted finds the costs associated with franchise royalties are greatly outweighed by savings the franchisees enjoy. Kergan Bros. Sonics has sponsored the annual Sonic Christmas Parade in Lafayette since 2003. An annual and beloved affair with over 70 participants, the parade was originally started by the Abdalla family in 1962.  Santa waving to the crowd in the Sonic Christmas Parade The Sonic Christmas Parade is an annual event held free for the community.  Ted also has a deeply moving and personal story to share, about his brother, Gary, who originally got Ted to move to Louisiana to join the Sonic team. Gary’s life came to an untimely and mysterious end on November 28, 1984. Ted’s journey to find out what happened to his brother is recounted in the compelling book, “My Brother’s Keeper, A Thirty-Year Quest to Bring Two Killers To Justice,” written by Chris Russo Blackwood.  Ted Kergan was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised with his older brother and sister by his mother. Ted’s father died the day after he was born and his mother worked hard as a seamstress to make ends meet. The children were close, especially Gary and Ted, who had their own special language where they would communicate using only the first letter of words. Gary meant the world to Ted and was always there for him to guide and protect him. When Ted was fifteen, his mother couldn’t sew any more due to arthritis, and she sold their family home so that she could raise funds to purchase a franchise business. Ted accompanied her and the opportunity to learn about business ignited a fire in him. He recounted that he attended college for one day and then dropped out to work, because of necessity and also because he was more interested in making money. “I was so broke that I couldn’t pay attention,” Ted jokingly said. Ted Kergan attended college for one day and then dropped out to go to work for two reasons: he had to work to make ends meet and he was more interested in making money. “I was so broke that I couldn’t pay attention,” Ted Kergan jokingly recounts. Today Kergan is CEO of Kergan Bros. Sonics which owns 60 restaurants. Gary and Ted worked in multi-level marketing and did well. When a friend of Gary’s invited him down to Louisiana to check out the Sonic franchise opportunities, Gary agreed and Ted soon followed. After one and one-half years, Gary and Ted bought the Sonic franchise from the guy they worked for and their business took off, growing to 14 stores rather quickly. Ted was about 28 years at the time. As the brother’s business grew, Gary kept a business apartment in Baton Rouge. On the night of November 28, 1984, the day before his son Wade’s 10th birthday, Ted spoke with Gary for the last time when Gary phoned him late to tell him he was heading back to Crowley where they both lived. Gary never made it home and by the next morning, the family knew something was wrong as this was totally out of character for Gary.  Ted headed to Baton Rouge to look for Gary, checking his apartment, his usual haunts, and going through his Rolodex calling Gary’s associates. No one had seen Gary and he missed an important real estate closing a couple of days later. Ted’s personal detective work led to information that identified the last person Gary was seen with, Leila Mulla, leaving the Night Spot lounge in Baton Rouge.   An all-points bulletin was put out on Gary’s Cadillac, which turned up in Metairie with its trunk filled with blood, triggering an arrest warrant on Leila Mulla as a material witness in Gary’s murder. Mulla had already left the state with Ron Dunnagan, her boyfriend, and headed to Las Vegas to find work as a dancer; on December 7, 1984, when she filled out the paperwork to obtain a dancer’s license in Las Vegas, a routine background check of the national criminal database found a warrant for her arrest back in Baton Rouge. While she was detained, Dunnagan had remained in the car outside and he finally went in to see what was taking so long. The Las Vegas authorities agreed with the East Baton Rouge police to detain Dunnagan for twenty-four hours based upon a failure to appear warrant from City Court, to allow them to get to Vegas and take custody of the suspects.  With time being of the essence, the Baton Rouge police needed to get to Las Vegas to question both suspects quickly. Ted Kergan chartered a jet at his own expense to ensure that the police could do their job and detain the suspects, placing the charge on his American Express card. And just like that, the two killers were tracked down and taken into custody. Within fifteen days, both Mulla and Dunnagan were charged with the first-degree murder of Gary Kergan  In a strange twist of fate relating to the election of a new East Baton Rouge District Attorney, both killers would be released from custody by March 20, 1985. Ted would spend the next three decades trying to locate his brother’s body, as well as bringing both Leila Mulla and Ron Dunnagan to justice for the murder. The details of the case are fascinating and are laid out in My Brother’s Keeper: a Thirty-Year Quest to Bring Two Killer To Justice by Chris Russo Blackwood. But to really understand the passion of Ted Kergan and his unrelenting pursuit of his brother’s killers, you must listen to him in this episode of Discover Lafayette.  “One of my goals has always been to find my brother’s body and to bring him home. It’s like the story of Cain and Abel. Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers.”  After nearly thirty years of unrelenting roller coaster ups and downs, spending over $1 million of his own money spent to track the suspects and cover expenses of investigation, and a loving dedication to his brother’s legacy unmatched by anyone, Ted Kergan finally achieved what he set out to do: both Leila Mulla and Ron Dunnagan were brought to justice.  With a federal grant that had been awarded to the East Baton Rouge Police Department to pursue cold cases and the advent of DNA technology in the years since Gary Kergan’s murder, reliable evidence was obtained to prove that Gary Kergan’s body had indeed been in the trunk of his Cadillac thirty years prior.  In the presence of Ted Kergan and his family, Mulla pled guilty to manslaughter on May 15, 2014 and received a thirty-year sentence, and Ron Dunnagan was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment just over a year later. EBR Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore speaks in front of courthouse after Leila Mulla’s guilty plea to manslaughter in 2014 in the killing of Gary Kergan.  In 1984, Hillar Moore was a police investigator on the scene of Gary Kergan’s death and photographed the crime scene. Many other coincidences would play out over the thirty-year ordeal in bringing Gary Kergan’s killers to justice.While Gary Kergan’s body has never been found, Ted has not given up his hunt. Ted Kergan is truly his brother’s keeper.  In Memory of Gary Kergan…..

Ted Kergan, one of Sonic’s most successful franchisees in the U. S., began his career with SONIC in 1977 as general manager of an Alexandria, LA location. Today, Ted is CEO of Kergan Bros. Sonic, which owns 60 Sonic locations across Central and South Louisiana, and employs more than 4,000 people each year. In 2015, Ted was bestowed the Troy Smith Hall of Fame Award given to a franchisee who has worked with Sonic for a noteworthy duration and has made a significant contribution in terms of leadership, growth, positive influence, and brand image. Ted’s love for Sonic is palpable, and he attributes his success in the company to his dedicated and longtime employees who make it happen. Between his managers and assistant managers, the employees collectively bring over 1000 years of experience to the job. In 2015, Ted was bestowed the Troy Smith Hall of Fame Award given to a franchisee who has worked with Sonic for a noteworthy duration and has made a significant contribution in terms of leadership, growth, positive influence, and brand image. Pictured from left: Sonic CEO Cliff Hudson, Ann Kergan, Ted Kergan. Sonic is a fun company and offers a solid business plan. Troy Smith founded Sonic in 1953 and always gave his managers the opportunity to be equity partners. Ted Kergan has followed Smith’s example and this generosity has led to lasting employee loyalty. There are 3600 Sonic locations in the U. S. and successful managers can make around $150,000 per year; the most successful manager in the U. S. is reported to make $250,000 per year. Ted recommends that anyone looking to purchase a franchise opportunity should take a close look at the business plan and select a company that has a name recognition so that people will flock to the door the day it opens for business. Many good concepts are unknown to the general public and it can be risky investing in an unknown name that will not generate adequate traffic. Sonic was purchased by Inspire Brand in 2018 for $2.3 Billion; Inspire also owns Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Jimmy John’s Restaurants. Economies of scale are recognized in food purchases, attorney costs, etc. by franchisees associated with Sonic and Inspire, and Ted finds the costs associated with franchise royalties are greatly outweighed by savings the franchisees enjoy. Kergan Bros. Sonics has sponsored the annual Sonic Christmas Parade in Lafayette since 2003. An annual and beloved affair with over 70 participants, the parade was originally started by the Abdalla family in 1962. <ul> <li> Santa waving to the crowd in the Sonic Christmas Parade </li> <li> The Sonic Christmas Parade is an annual event held free for the community. </li> </ul> Ted also has a deeply moving and personal story to share, about his brother, Gary, who originally got Ted to move to Louisiana to join the Sonic team. Gary’s life came to an untimely and mysterious end on November 28, 1984. Ted’s journey to find out what happened to his brother is recounted in the compelling book, “My Brother’s Keeper, A Thirty-Year Quest to Bring Two Killers To Justice,” written by Chris Russo Blackwood. Ted Kergan was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised with his older brother and sister by his mother. Ted’s father died the day after he was born and his mother worked hard as a seamstress to make ends meet. The children were close, especially Gary and Ted, who had their own special language where they would communicate using only the first letter of words. Gary meant the world to Ted and was always there for him to guide and protect him. When Ted was fifteen, his mother couldn’t sew any more due to arthritis, and she sold their family home so that she could raise funds to purchase a franchise business. Ted accompanied her and the opportunity to learn about business ignited a fire in him. He recounted that he attended college for one day and then dropped out to work, because of necessity and also because he was more interested in making money. “I was so broke that I couldn’t pay attention,” Ted jokingly said. Ted Kergan attended college for one day and then dropped out to go to work for two reasons: he had to work to make ends meet and he was more interested in making money. “I was so broke that I couldn’t pay attention,” Ted Kergan jokingly recounts. Today Kergan is CEO of Kergan Bros. Sonics which owns 60 restaurants. Gary and Ted worked in multi-level marketing and did well. When a friend of Gary’s invited him down to Louisiana to check out the Sonic franchise opportunities, Gary agreed and Ted soon followed. After one and one-half years, Gary and Ted bought the Sonic franchise from the guy they worked for and their business took off, growing to 14 stores rather quickly. Ted was about 28 years at the time. As the brother’s business grew, Gary kept a business apartment in Baton Rouge. On the night of November 28, 1984, the day before his son Wade’s 10th birthday, Ted spoke with Gary for the last time when Gary phoned him late to tell him he was heading back to Crowley where they both lived. Gary never made it home and by the next morning, the family knew something was wrong as this was totally out of character for Gary. Ted headed to Baton Rouge to look for Gary, checking his apartment, his usual haunts, and going through his Rolodex calling Gary’s associates. No one had seen Gary and he missed an important real estate closing a couple of days later. Ted’s personal detective work led to information that identified the last person Gary was seen with, Leila Mulla, leaving the Night Spot lounge in Baton Rouge. An all-points bulletin was put out on Gary’s Cadillac, which turned up in Metairie with its trunk filled with blood, triggering an arrest warrant on Leila Mulla as a material witness in Gary’s murder. Mulla had already left the state with Ron Dunnagan, her boyfriend, and headed to Las Vegas to find work as a dancer; on December 7, 1984, when she filled out the paperwork to obtain a dancer’s license in Las Vegas, a routine background check of the national criminal database found a warrant for her arrest back in Baton Rouge. While she was detained, Dunnagan had remained in the car outside and he finally went in to see what was taking so long. The Las Vegas authorities agreed with the East Baton Rouge police to detain Dunnagan for twenty-four hours based upon a failure to appear warrant from City Court, to allow them to get to Vegas and take custody of the suspects. With time being of the essence, the Baton Rouge police needed to get to Las Vegas to question both suspects quickly. Ted Kergan chartered a jet at his own expense to ensure that the police could do their job and detain the suspects, placing the charge on his American Express card. And just like that, the two killers were tracked down and taken into custody. Within fifteen days, both Mulla and Dunnagan were charged with the first-degree murder of Gary Kergan In a strange twist of fate relating to the election of a new East Baton Rouge District Attorney, both killers would be released from custody by March 20, 1985. Ted would spend the next three decades trying to locate his brother’s body, as well as bringing both Leila Mulla and Ron Dunnagan to justice for the murder. The details of the case are fascinating and are laid out in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/MY-BROTHERS-KEEPER-Thirty-Year-Killers-ebook/dp/B0763FRWM8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">My Brother’s Keeper: a Thirty-Year Quest to Bring Two Killer To Justice </a>by Chris Russo Blackwood. But to really understand the passion of Ted Kergan and his unrelenting pursuit of his brother’s killers, you must listen to him in this episode of Discover Lafayette. “One of my goals has always been to find my brother’s body and to bring him home. It’s like the story of Cain and Abel. Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers.” After nearly thirty years of unrelenting roller coaster ups and downs, spending over $1 million of his own money spent to track the suspects and cover expenses of investigation, and a loving dedication to his brother’s legacy unmatched by anyone, Ted Kergan finally achieved what he set out to do: both Leila Mulla and Ron Dunnagan were brought to justice. With a federal grant that had been awarded to the East Baton Rouge Police Department to pursue cold cases and the advent of DNA technology in the years since Gary Kergan’s murder, reliable evidence was obtained to prove that Gary Kergan’s body had indeed been in the trunk of his Cadillac thirty years prior. In the presence of Ted Kergan and his family, Mulla pled guilty to manslaughter on May 15, 2014 and received a thirty-year sentence, and Ron Dunnagan was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment just over a year later. EBR Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore speaks in front of courthouse after Leila Mulla’s guilty plea to manslaughter in 2014 in the killing of Gary Kergan. In 1984, Hillar Moore was a police investigator on the scene of Gary Kergan’s death and photographed the crime scene. Many other coincidences would play out over the thirty-year ordeal in bringing Gary Kergan’s killers to justice. While Gary Kergan’s body has never been found, Ted has not given up his hunt. Ted Kergan is truly his brother’s keeper. In Memory of Gary Kergan…..

Ted Kergan: Kergan Brothers Sonic CEO Talks Life, Business, and Spending Decades Finding His Brother’s Killers