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Janice Trahan

Janice Trahan was born on September 6, 1962. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Janice Trahan.

Janice Trahan

Janice Marie Trahan Allen, Janice Roberts

September 6, 1962

Alive

Female

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Janice Trahan Janice Trahan (born 1962)

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Janice Trahan's History: 1962

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Introduction

Note: While there are reports of Janice Trahan's death, all evidence point to her being alive and well as of April, 2023. The other "Janice Trahan"s are too old or live elsewhere. Janice Trahan was born to Mr. and Mrs. Oran Trahan. Janice married Charles Roberts, and later filed a restraining order against him on behalf of herself and her lover, Richard J. Schmidt. Janice's and Richard's love affair allegedly began in 1984. She divorced Roberts soon after she filed the restraining order. She subsequently married Jerry Strother Allen on March 2, 1996. She was escorted down the aisle by her son, Justin Wade Roberts. Her ring bearer was Jeffrey Trahan, who is also her son. In July of 1994, Janice had called her married (then lover) Richard Schmidt and found him at his wife's home. She was upset and told him that she was ending their affair. It was two weeks later that he allegedly gave her an injection tainted with AIDS and hepatitis. In January of 1995, she learned that she was HIV positive. In 1998, Richard Schmidt, M.D., with whom Janice had an on and off affair for ten years, went on trial for the attempted murder of Janice Trahan Allen. During the trial, Janice testified that she became pregnant by Schmidt at least four times and had at least three abortions. She said that she had Schmidt's child in 1991, although he hasn't acknowledged paternity. Schmidt was convicted of attempted second degree murder for injecting her with a lethal cocktail. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. After 17 years, he was unanimously denied parole by the State Board. Janice is a registered nurse and Richard Schmidt is a medical doctor. They met at work and began their long-term affair, spanning ten years and at least one of Janice's marriages as well as Richard's marriage. The affair was full of twists, turns, and threats. For the full story, see a 2019 article about them at When being the "Side Chick" for 10 years . . .. Both survive as of 2023, Richard in prison and Janice managing her health and doing some nursing work, while although mostly retired due to her ongoing health issues. An HLN television show called "Forensic Files" also profiled the crime on one of its shows. See a synopsis at Forensic Files, Janice Trahan.. There are many articles about the crime, including another one written in 2021: See Her Doctor's Revenge - Janice Trahan Allen.
09/6

1962

Birthday

September 6, 1962

Birthdate

Unknown

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Janice is Caucasian.
Nationality & Locations

Janice lived in Lafayette and Duson, Louisiana.
Early Life & Education

Janice graduated from nursing school. She is a graduate of Arcadiana High School (Scott, Louisiana) and USL College of Nursing (which later changed its name to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), graduating in 1990.
Professional Career

Janice is a registered nurse (RN), she graduated from nursing school in Lafayette Louisiana circa 1994.
Personal Life & Family

Janice was married twice and has two sons and grandchildren.
Alive

Living status

Alive

Living status
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Memories

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5 Memories, Stories & Photos about Janice

Kathy Pinna

32.5k+ favorites

04/04/2023

Her Doctor's Revenge - Janice Trahan Allen

This is another take on the story of Janice Trahan, posted on June 13, 2021 by cheri19994861 on "Guy Breau's SPACE:

Note: Janice's death is constantly reported but the rumors are false. As of 2023, Janice is still alive:

1994 in Lafayette, Louisiana
Janice Trahan Allen had been a young married mother when she graduated nursing school and gained employment at a local hospital. While there, she met a handsome doctor, Richard J. Schmidt, who was also married with children. Nevertheless, an affair began; things grew serious, and the pair ultimately decided to leave their spouses and begin a new life together. Janice left the father of her son, and she waited for the doctor to do the same; he never fulfilled his end of the bargain.

Janice did not intend to remain a mistress, and she had attempted to end the affair. But every time she’d try and break it off, the doctor would become angry and vow to ruin her life. Richard had sworn that he’d get even, he’d post naughty photos of Janice on the bulletin board at work, he’d ruin her life, he would make sure no man would ever want her again, or even kill her. Janice knew Richard was serious, and the doctor blackmailed her for ten years before Janice finally found the nerve to cut Richard off for good.For the past several years Janice had suffered from lethargy, and the doctor had been injecting her with vitamin B shots. Richard had always been her doctor, so this part of the relationship continued.
One day Janice realized she didn’t feel good. Her lymph nodes were swollen, she had pain in her eyes, and she felt ill. She went to multiple doctors, nobody could figure out what was going on with her. Finally, she went to see Dr. Richard. He ordered blood work, and the results were shocking. Janice not only suddenly had hepatitis C, but she had somehow contracted HIV. The doctor began gossiping about his patient, telling everyone that nurse Janice had a habit of frequenting sleazy bars and bringing strange men home. Absolutely none of this had been true.

Janice thought long and hard about it, and she decided that she knew where she had picked up the diseases. She went to the police, and finally the district attorney; Janice told them about a late night call from the doctor, telling Janice he was coming over right now to give her a B vitamin shot. Richard had arrived at her house within minutes, injected her, then practically ran out the door. All of this had been so out of the ordinary, and the shot itself was unusually painful; she’d never had an injection hurt like that in her entire life! Looking back on it, Janice believed that the doctor had shot her up with hepatitis C and HIV that night.

Janice thought long and hard about it, and she decided that she knew where she had picked up the diseases. She went to the police, and finally the district attorney; Janice told them about a late night call from the doctor, telling Janice he was coming over right now to give her a B vitamin shot. Richard had arrived at her house within minutes, injected her, then practically ran out the door. All of this had been so out of the ordinary, and the shot itself was unusually painful; she’d never had an injection hurt like that in her entire life! Looking back on it, Janice believed that the doctor had shot her up with hepatitis C and HIV that night.

On the night in question, Dr. Schmidt made sure he had an alibi: the only time he was ever out of his wife’s sight was when she took a 20 minute bath. That’s when he rushed to Janice’s house and gave her that injection- a lethal concoction of HIV and Hep C. The AIDS virus doesn’t live long outside of the body, which is why he was so anxious to shoot her up right then and there. The doctor’s wife had no idea that Richard had ever left the house that evening. In 1998 Dr Richard Schmidt was tried for attempted murder and sentenced to 50 years; in 2015 he was denied parole. Despite all the evidence against him, the doctor maintains his innocence.

Janice, now remarried, is still hanging in there. There is a rumor that Janice passed away, but that appears to be just a rumor. She is on Facebook, and appears to be doing as well as possible. Here is her statement about the ordeal: “I deal daily with the harsh side effects of the medications and take one day at a time coping with my illnesses. I am disabled and unable to work. I have been blessed in many ways and Jerry and I just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. My husband, children & grandchildren give me many reasons to live.”.

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Kathy Pinna

32.5k+ favorites

04/04/2023

Forensic Files, Janice Trahan.

"Forensic Files", which is a television show on HLN, featured the story of this sensational crime involving Janice Trahan and her longtime lover on November 28, 2015.

A synopsis: "On this episode of Forensic Files, Janice Trahan suddenly started feeling uncomfortable and sick. After several doctor visits she learned that she was both pregnant and HIV positive. Having never been with an HIV positive partner before, how she acquired this disease is a mystery, or is it? Perhaps the answer is as obvious as a shot in the arm? "

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Kathy Pinna

32.5k+ favorites

01/10/2023

Janice Trahan and husband Jerry Allen

March 1996 photo of Janice Trahan at her wedding to Jerry Strother Allen.

Date & Place: March 1996

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Kathy Pinna

32.5k+ favorites

07/22/2022

When being the "Side Chick" for 10 years . . .

. . . gets you 4 abortions, Hepatitis, and HIV.

January 3 2019

Act of Revenge
Janice Trahan felt she was finally making a fresh start. After a turbulent 10-year affair marked by four abortions and numerous threats and hollow promises from her married lover, the Lafayette, La., mother of two seemed at last to have made the break. Sure, she had been feeling a bit sick lately; that dull pain behind the eyes had brought her to her doctor for tests, whose results she would be getting this morning in January 1995. But Trahan had a new boyfriend, Jerry Allen, and was looking forward to their future together. It was then that Dr. Wayne Daigle walked in and gently began delivering the news there is no good way to break: Trahan, a registered nurse, had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

But worse was yet to come. When Trahan, then 32, tried to imagine how she might have contracted the disease, she could find only one explanation. She told Capt. Jim Craft of the Lafayette police that she believed she had been inoculated with HIV by Dr. Richard Schmidt—her decade-long paramour, her sometime physician and the father of their young son Jeffery. “He made a lot of promises he didn’t keep,” Trahan would subsequently testify during Dr. Schmidt’s trial for attempted second-degree murder. “But he kept one—that he would kill me.”

If the attraction between Schmidt and Trahan ultimately turned deadly, it started more simply, in 1984, with an affair between coworkers at Lafayette General Hospital. Schmidt, a married gastroenterologist with a thriving practice and three children, was popular with his patients, though nurses sometimes made fun of his comb-over hairstyle. Yet the 36-year-old Metairie, La., native and former Marine apparently looked just fine to Trahan, 21, a married nurse with an infant son. “At first, everyone thought he was a good guy,” recalls Elus Brasseaux, husband of Trahan’s older sister Becky. “He was the perfect gentleman.”

In time, Trahan, the youngest of four children of a local bricklayer and a homemaker, divorced her husband and moved out of their mobile home into an apartment with little Justin. Schmidt continued to live with wife Barbara and their kids but was very much a part of Trahan’s family—even joining them regularly for Sunday dinner. “He told us many times that he wanted a family with her, that he was definitely leaving his wife,” says Becky Brasseaux. “But there was always an excuse.”

Months turned into years. By 1989, Trahan told police, she had become pregnant three times. Each time, she said, Schmidt—who has declined to speak with PEOPLE—persuaded her to have an abortion. (She later had a fourth abortion.) Whenever she brought up the subject of seeing other people, she says in court papers, Schmidt reacted with anger and threats. “He was very intimidating,” Trahan testified at a 1996 hearing. “He was obsessed, jealous, controlling, volatile.” The relationship, Schmidt’s attorney Michael Fawer conceded in court, was one “in which each party wreaked emotional havoc on the other.”

At one point, according to Trahan, Schmidt vowed that “he would make sure that no man would ever want me.” Says her sister Becky: “I remember how terrified she was. She said many times, ‘He’s going to end up killing me and possibly himself.’ ” When, in 1988, Trahan finally began seeing other men, Schmidt tried to intimidate them as well. According to Gene Guidry, a salesman who dated Trahan in 1990, Schmidt called him and “in a threatening tone made the suggestion that I not see Janice anymore. It was like he was telling me she was his possession.”

And in effect, Trahan was. With his promises—and threats—he kept persuading her to take him back. Even the humiliation of the doctor’s refusal to let her put his name on their son Jeffery’s birth certificate in March 1991 didn’t do the trick. “I was weak,” Trahan would tell the court. “I loved him. I wanted us to be a family.” By the summer of 1994, Trahan finally realized that was never going to happen. Upset when she began seeing suitor Barry Bleichner, Schmidt took an apartment—but by July was back with his family.

Though the lovers broke up that month for the last time, Schmidt continued to stop by Trahan’s home twice weekly to administer shots of vitamin B-12. According to Trahan, she was in bed on the muggy night of Aug. 4, son Jeffery beside her, when Schmidt arrived. In the faint light from the bathroom, she could see him standing over her with a syringe and telling her it was time for another B-12 shot. Despite her sleepy protests, Trahan said, she felt a needle p**** in her left arm.

That shot would be Trahan’s death sentence, contended Assistant District Attorney Keith Stutes at Schmidt’s trial. According to the prosecution, the “diabolical” injection contained blood tainted by both HIV and the virus causing hepatitis C—which Dr. Schmidt had drawn that week from two different patients.

In support of his case, Stutes introduced a notebook logging all blood samples taken by Schmidt’s staff. The only two that did not have stickers showing they had been sent to labs were drawn on Aug. 2 from Leslie Louviere, a hepatitis C patient, and on Aug. 4 from AIDS patient Donald McClelland. Then Stutes presented a pair of medical experts who testified to the similarities between genetic material from Trahan’s HIV and McClelland’s.

Despite the defense’s attempts to challenge these conclusions with its own experts, and Barbara Schmidt’s testimony that her husband had been at home on the evening of Aug. 4—she couldn’t account for 20 minutes during her bath—the jury took only four hours before returning with a guilty verdict. “I believe he’s a very disturbed individual,” juror Roy Ellis said to Baton Rouge’s The Advocate of Schmidt, who did not take the stand. “He destroyed many lives, including his own.”

Since February, when he received the maximum sentence of 50 years at hard labor, Schmidt has been confined to the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center. Schmidt, who surrendered his medical license in March, “doesn’t say much,” reports Lafayette Police Capt. Guy Hawkins. “He reads all the time.” Like his fellow prisoners, he is allowed only 50 minutes with visitors each week. Every Tuesday night, either his wife or one of his three children shows up. Schmidt, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, has filed an appeal. But his next day in court is more likely to involve one of the three civil suits filed against him—by former patients McClelland and Louviere and by his ex-lover.

Still trying to recover from the stress of the trial, Janice—married since March 1996 to Jerry Allen, a manager of oil-field-related projects—”takes it one day at a time,” says her sister Becky. She continues to work, when her health permits, as a manager at Lafayette General, and tries to help her two sons with their homework and to attend her 16-year-old’s baseball games. “Often I told her when she was trying to break up with Richard, ‘There’s a special person out there for you, Janice, just be patient and look for him,’ ” says Brasseaux. “And for her that special person is Jerry. She’s very blessed to have him.”

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