Alleged blackmail behind A&M professor's suicide

A Louisiana man is accused of using an underage female relative to lure a Texas A&M University professor into a sexually explicit online relationship that ended with blackmail demands and the professor leaping to his death from atop a campus parking garage.

The charges, filed in Houston, clear up some of the mystery surrounding why James Arnt Aune, 59, who chaired the school's department of communication, committed suicide on Jan. 8.

Daniel Timothy Duplaisir of Metairie, La., is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court Tuesday on a charge of using a phone and the Internet to extort money from Aune.

"Let me tell you (expletive) … you sick old (expletive) … I told you I was going to call the cops," Duplaisir told Aune in one of a series of text messages, according to the FBI.

Further sordid details at http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Online-sex-scam-led-to-Texas-A-M-instructor-s-4382918.php .

Related thread at http://www.democraticunderground.com/10785249 .