BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Playing cards in special new decks being
sold to Louisiana prison inmates bear the faces of homicide victims
and missing persons in cases that have been unsolved from one to 30
years.
About 10,000 Louisiana Cold Case decks - complete decks of 52
playing cards with two jokers - went on sale in canteens in the
state's prisons beginning in mid-March, said James LeBlanc, the
secretary of the state's Department of Public Safety and
Corrections.
They are the only deck of cards that will be sold in the prisons
- for $1.30 to $1.50 per pack and free to indigent inmates,
corrections officials said.
Officials said Monday that the program targets the state's
prison population because inmates are the most likely group to know
about unsolved crimes.
Some cards in the deck provide information on remains that have
been found but not yet identified, including the nine of spades,
which has no picture but says the victim is an unidentified newborn
found March 26, 1999, in Caddo Parish.
The seven of hearts displays the face of Kassie Lynn Federer, of
Baton Rouge. She was shot to death Sept. 13, 1999, in her
apartment.
Federer's mother and father, Debby Durapau and Warren Federer,
who were at a news conference in Baton Rouge, said they just want
closure.
"Was it a case of mistaken identity?" Durapau asked. "We just
want to know what happened to our daughter."
The oldest case in the deck is on the jack of clubs. Eleanor
Parker, of Baton Rouge, was 18 years old when she was reported
missing Nov. 10, 1981.
She was last seen in her 1975 Ford Maverick, according to the
card.


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