User:Rodney "Rod" Demery

{{About| Rodney (Rod) Demery is a Keynote Speaker, Amazon Best Selling author and a former “Undisputed” member of the Violent Crimes Unit of the Shreveport Police Department. With over 31 years in law enforcement Demery has worked on more than 250 homicide cases. He has an impressive 100% confession and solve rate as a lead investigator. His perpetual success and leadership increased his credibility as an expert in violent crime and homicide cases.

Rod was born in Shreveport, LA but he moved to Alamogordo, NM to live with his grandparents as a toddler. Tragically, Rod experienced his first encounter with murder at the age of 3 when it claimed his mother, Barbara Demery. It was explained to him that she was killed in a robbery gone wrong, but not much more than that was said. As a naturally inquisitive child, Rod could never accept the vague explanation of his mother’s death.  He grew up with the burning desire to find his purpose, a purpose that would later lead him to uncover the truth about his mother’s death.

 “As I grew up I realized all the things that happened with my mother, that being a detective is what I was supposed to do, it was my calling in life.” “I think all those influences kind of made my decisions.” -Rod Demery

After a brief stint at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, Demery joined the U.S. Navy where he served in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield. Post military, he served the public as an officer of the peace for 25 years. He proceeded to earn a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Louisiana State University-Shreveport and went on to work for 14 years a homicide detective with the Shreveport Police Department. He compiled a very impressive record prior to retiring in 2016.

Early in his career, Rod Demery’s presumptuous nature lead him to investigating his own mother’s murder case. It was not long before he was face to face with her killer- Her husband, Jerry Armstead.  At the time, Armstead was charged with “murder without malice”–manslaughter in today’s terms–and his relationship with the chief of police in small-town Sweeny, TX helped him avoid a proper investigation.” Nevertheless, Demery recorded Armstead’s disconnected confession of how he murdered his mother.

When Demery was in his 20s, his brother was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. Demery vowed “that no family would be denied justice the way his was. He developed a holistic approach to each case and he helped families find closure, the kind that he sought. “His career with the Shreveport PD resulted in, perhaps, the most impressive success rate in the entire country, but the pace Rod maintained often left others feeling intimidated.” 

Unbothered, Rod was further described by literary critics as a "Persuasive polemic".  He is the author of 2011 Amazon Kindle Best Seller, "Things My Daughters Need to Know: A Cop and Father's View of Sex, Relationships and Happiness." Here he shares both his professional and personal life experiences as an investigator and a dater as a way of helping women see their lives and loves in a different way so they can learn to read their own dating situations better and hopefully change the outcome.

Rodney released a second book, "No Place For Race: Why We Need to Address Economic and Social Factors That Are Crushing Us Every Day".  "No Place For Race" was reviewed in several publications across the United States and abroad. He leads a speaking series on Race Relations which addresses the economic and social factors that are crushing us every day. Demery is committed to educating and empowering the community to rise above crime and the underlying socio-economic antecedents. 

His leadership and high achievements caught the attention of TV producers. The conversation ultimately resulted in the production of the Television series: Murder Chose Me on Investigation Discovery. Demery says that the show is called ’Murder Chose Me’ because it had a lot to do with God’s plan for him. “I think all those experiences made me a better homicide investigator.”

This series contains two elements familiar to devotees of Investigation Discovery’s programming: first-person narration and fictionalized dramatization. These elements mix to give as accurate a presentation of past events as possible. “Intimate first-person storytelling.

 “The show is basically all the murder cases I worked on in my career but the difference is it’s very intimate. It tells all sides of the story of the victim,” Demery said. “The goal is to try and bring everything back together to have people relate to one another. We’re all working towards the same goal, finding the killer.” -Rod Demery 

Demery was acknowledged by the city of Shreveport for the great representation and visibility Murder Chose Me has brought the city.  Season 2 of Murder Chose Me will premiere in Jan of 2018 on Investigation Discovery.