Jessel Ourso is thus far the youngest person elected sheriff in Louisiana.
17 Facts About Jessel Ourso
1.
2.
Jessel Ourso was a boxer at Plaquemine Senior High School, as were his friends and later political allies, state representative and then Lieutenant Governor Robert "Bobby" Freeman, school superintendent Sam Distefano, and District Attorney Sam Cashio.
3.
Jessel Ourso was sometimes called "The Black Stallion", the name of the family trucking company.
4.
Jessel Ourso worked for the Baton Rouge municipal police department and the Louisiana State Police before he was elected Iberville Parish sheriff at the age of thirty-one.
5.
Jessel Ourso unseated the 16-year incumbent, Charles A Griffon Jr.
6.
Jessel Ourso claimed that he had won the Democratic primary election held on December 7,1963, because he led by a plurality.
7.
Jessel Ourso organized a sheriff's flotilla to cover swamplands and waterways.
8.
Jessel Ourso introduced the psychological stress evaluator in the investigation of crimes.
9.
Jessel Ourso established the first ambulance service in Iberville Parish and was the first Iberville Parish sheriff to use a helicopter.
10.
Jessel Ourso built a firing range for deputies and opened it to the public.
11.
Jessel Ourso established sheriff's sub-stations with deputies on duty around the clock.
12.
Jessel Ourso constructed a new $2 million jail, completed in 1977, the year before his death.
13.
From 1968 to 1971, Jessel Ourso fought federal charges of extortion and thirty-three state criminal allegations brought forth by Attorney General Jack Gremillion, including bribery, theft, extortion, and malfeasance.
14.
Jessel Ourso was either acquitted or benefited from hung juries in all of these cases.
15.
On November 1,1975, at the age of forty-three, Jessel Ourso defeated five challengers to win his last abbreviated term as sheriff in the first-ever nonpartisan blanket primary held in Louisiana.
16.
Jessel Ourso died in Houston, Texas, at the age of forty-six.
17.
In 2009, Jessel Ourso was inducted posthumously into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.