Homicide investigator Rod Demery goes on the record about his success, television fame and the tough road getting there.“I didn’t choose murder. Murder chose me.”

– Rod Demery

Rod Demery didn’t think much of it when his doctor’s office called. The 51-year-old recently had a six-month check-up, so surely this was a routine call to say his lab results were good.

Instead, Demery heard what he didn’t want to hear. His doctor wanted to see him. Soon.

“When the doctor calls and wants to talk to you, something’s not routine,” Demery said.

Demery soon found himself face-toface with his physician. Indeed, there was nothing routine about this visit.

She got straight to the point. She was serious. She was direct.

“I’ve got a People magazine. Can you sign it?”

Such is the life of Demery, a retired Shreveport Police Department homicide detective and now the star of “Murder Chose Me,” a television show airing on the Investigation Discovery channel. After years of toiling in the often-horrific world of murder, Demery is enjoying the perks of notoriety, such as being profiled in People. However, Demery isn’t exactly comfortable in his newfound spotlight.

“I’m still a policeman,” Demery said. “I think like a policeman, so when someone recognizes me, they’re looking at me and I’m looking like are they going to attack me or are they going to rob this store? Then someone says, “Hey, I saw your show!” In “Murder Chose Me,” Demery takes the viewer’s hand and leads them through some of the hundreds of cases he has solved. The program’s title is not by accident.

“When we talked about it initially before the show started, I said, ‘God charts out your path.’ Somebody asked me why I decided to work homicide. I said I didn’t choose murder. Murder chose me.”

Indeed. Demery certainly never asked for the pain murder inflicted upon him.

For starters, Demery’s mother was shot and killed when he was three years old. That led to being raised by his grandparents and to more questions than answers.

“There were so many holes,” Demery said.

“The biggest problems most people have in life are identity questions. Mystery. Fear. You quickly realize when your grandparents are raising you that your mother is a huge part of your identity. There was a huge part of my identity missing. The nurturing. The love. What am I like? People telling me over and over you have your mother’s smile. It was really difficult to go on through life with that piece missing.”

So Demery began filling those holes. He read the police report. He asked questions. He met his mother’s killer, who served just five months in jail.

“I didn’t have any contempt for him,” Demery said. “I wasn’t angry. I actually felt pity for him.”

Demery’s search for the truth answered his questions, but the end result was about much more.

“I was trying to find out who I was. All of the things I didn’t know about myself, I uncovered them. My capacity for forgiveness was something I never knew I had. It cleared up a lot of things. I was able to forgive people for other things and encourage other people to forgive. It was kind an amazing awakening.”

His mother’s killer would not be the only person Demery would be challenged to forgive. He and his older brother, Patrick, were close – bonding through Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, swimming lessons and GI Joe action figures.

But when Patrick was accused of murder, Rod looked past family memories. Blood was not thicker than the law.

Rod turned his brother in to the police. “I was able to separate the crime from the criminal,” Demery said. “I realize that with most people that commit crimes, you can hate what they did, but it’s really not who they are, it’s what they did. There was a level of understanding and balance that was divine.

Still, that didn’t change the fact Demery was now without his mother and brother. Plus, Demery’s grandparents – the only “parents” he knew – were aging.

“I think the difficult part was realizing that it was just me. It’s a frightening point when you have to face the world – and survive.”

Demery “survived” through years in the military (United States Navy) before pursuing a career in law enforcement. After working in Beaver Falls, Pa., Demery moved back “home” to Shreveport. He began patrolling Cedar Grove for the Shreveport Police Department, but it wasn’t long before he became a homicide detective.

It also wasn’t long before Demery knew he was where God wanted him be – doing what God wanted him to do.

“I felt very comfortable, very natural there – in the interrogation room and the crime scene,” Demery said. “It’s odd to say you are comfortable with murder, but the reality is there is an intimate relationship I’ve had with it my entire life.”

A man of faith, Demery strongly believes God puts people where God wants them to be – and for a reason.

“It’s based on scripture, actually. God speaks into the womb of your great, great, great, great grandmother and marks you and tells you what you’re going to do. The trick is finding out what that is. When I went to my first homicide scene, there was no question in my mind that was where I was supposed to be.”

Some 17 years later, Demery still remembers that first case. Not so much for the facts, but for confirming his belief that this is what he was supposed to do.

The woman Demery arrested for committing murder went to prison.

“I was able to stand on my own two feet.

I had a training officer, and I totally rejected everything he said. His credibility went in the toilet when he actually believed it was a suicide (instead of murder). I think that was something that gave me confidence. To have the experts and the judicial system OK it or agree with it or concur with it, it gives you that boost of confidence. That’s why that case stands out, because there you are, a rookie detective, and you got it right.”

Demery has seen “every possible way for someone to be murdered,” from mangled bodies to slit throats. Yet, he has been able to keep his emotions from entering the crime scene.

“Being overwhelmed, saying, ‘This is horrible,’ I just don’t have that type mechanism. That’s probably why I’m in homicide. If I go to a crime scene and see an infant that’s been halfway decapitated, I don’t go, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible.’ I don’t have that.”

“To me it was always just a piece of evidence. If I saw some brain matter, I’m wondering, ‘How fast the bullet was traveling?’ The velocity. Was it a highpowered rifle? That part of your mind takes over.”

Demery feels certain his ability to focus on evidence and facts was born out of his mother’s death.

“I remember my grandfather saying to me, ‘Boy, your mother is dead. She’s been dead since you were a baby, but you’ve still got to eat.’ For an 11-year-old kid, it was kind of like, ‘Wow.’ But it made so much sense to me. I can miss my mother. I can grieve my mother. But I can’t allow that to destroy me as well.”

Demery is now a homicide investigator for the Caddo Parish District Attorney. While Demery appreciates his current TV fame, he is determined to remain who he always has been.

“The reality is that if I wasn’t on Investigation Discovery, none of those people would pay any attention to me, so I don’t give it that much credence to be honest with you.”

Except when his doctor calls, wanting her copy of People magazine autographed.

– Tony Taglavore