Stanley Burkhardt invokes Fifth Amendment over 700 times in civil lawsuit
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · May 8
Stanley Burkhardt invokes Fifth Amendment over 700 times in civil lawsuit
2 articles · Updated · The Guardian · May 8
During a four-hour late-April deposition in New Orleans, the former NOPD officer refused to answer whether he killed four youths, including Eddie Wells.
The questioning came in Richard Windmann’s lawsuit against Burkhardt and the city; in civil court, jurors may draw adverse inferences from his silence, attorney Kristi Schubert said.
A retired officer testified Burkhardt had been viewed as a possible suspect in Wells’s 1982 death. Burkhardt, jailed since July 2025 on alleged parole violations, faces a tentative trial on 13 July.
After a cop pleaded the Fifth 700 times, will his silence finally solve decades-old murders?
With police warned about their own investigator for years, how deep does the institutional cover-up go?
Parole Breach to Murder Allegations: The Ongoing Legal and Investigative Crisis Surrounding Stanley Burkhardt
Overview
Stanley Burkhardt, a convicted sex offender and former police officer, was re-arrested in July 2025 for violating strict parole conditions by secretly using social media. His history of abuse, including sexually assaulting Richard Windmann from age 12, and the New Orleans Police Department's failure to act on abuse reports, led to a civil lawsuit against Burkhardt and the city. During the 2026 deposition, Burkhardt invoked his Fifth Amendment rights over 700 times, hindering the investigation into unsolved 1980s murders linked to him. Systemic failures in parole supervision and police oversight allowed Burkhardt to evade accountability, culminating in a trial scheduled for July 2026 that could result in a lengthy prison sentence and further legal consequences.