Episode 578: Clementine Barnabet & The Church of the Sacrifice & The Louisiana Axe Murders
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New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. My name's Ash. Whoa. This is morbid, I think. I just felt crazy. I want to just shake it up a little bit. I just felt crazy. I just felt cuckoo now.

Oh, man. We're excited. We're going to go to a rage room. Yeah. It's for my birthday celebration. Yeah. Going to rage, motherfucker. So much rage inside of me. So much rage inside of me. Can we ask them to play Get Out of Your Mind? That would be such a good song to rage to, to be honest.

I'll put my hair in a ponytail. We'll switch back and forth on the playlist there. Yeah, we usually have to at most events. Yeah, pretty much. I'll put my hair in a ponytail and do the helicopter. Yeah, do the ash get out of your mind. That's the get out of your mind dance. It's a ponytail helicopter. I tried to teach your youngest how to do it and it wasn't that easy.

Wasn't bad for her first attempt. I mean, she's pretty great. She's pretty out of her mind. She's like, I stay out of my mind, TT. She's like, you know what? I feel this on a spiritual level. Yeah. Yeah. So we have an old timey case today, but fear not people who don't like old timey cases. It's axe murders.

So it's going to be gnarly. And this one... It's also an Alina case. It's very interesting, too. Oh. It's interesting how it all pans out. Yeah. It's interesting that there's still a lot of questions in this case. Huh. And...

I still don't know what to think of it. Really? Yeah, it's very, very interesting. It's a stumper. Yeah, I hadn't heard about this. So I don't even know what to call this episode. We will know what to call it by the time this is released. You'll know what we're calling it. I'm going to start it by saying it's the Louisiana Axe Murders, Clementine Barnabas, and the Church of the Sacrifice.

There's so many themes. I think Mikey said that this is a highly requested one. Yeah, Mikey did say this is a highly requested one, which is...

Shocking to me just because I had never heard of it, which I feel remiss that I had never heard of this. Clementine Barnabas sounds familiar to me. The name sounded familiar to me, but when I read it, I was like, oh, I had no idea what this was. Oh, I'm interested to see if I know anything. So it's going to be gnarly in here, just so you know. It's Axe Martyrs after all. It's also just always fucking gnarly in here. It absolutely is. So let's begin, shall we? We shall. Between 1909 and 1912, a series of truly brutal,

brutal and gruesome and horrific family axe murders. Oh, God. Or axe murders of entire families. Yeah. Children, everybody. Oh. Occurred along the Southern Pacific Railroad line between, running between southwestern Louisiana and Texas. I mean, it's impossible at this point to know how many of these murders were connected, but

There were definitely similarities in a lot of them. I mean, the fact that it was full families that were being axe murdered was one thing. So most notably, the timing and the victims were the things that really connected these things. And they have, there's many that speculate that this is one singular killer or one singular group of killers. Okay. Because there's too many similarities. It just doesn't feel like this many would have happened in this span of time and that they'd be so similar.

With a body count of more than 50 people across 12 families, all the victims were black.

Oh. That's another similarity. And they lived near the train line. And all were killed at night. And all had been killed with their skulls fractured with an axe. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's really horrific. That's intense. Now, because no serious suspect has really ever been identified in this case. Like, we're going to get into that. Don't worry. There is...

suspects, but like we can't really pinpoint a suspect in this case. No one's been caught in this case. Really? It's really difficult to say when the murders even began, to be honest. Some identify the first murder as that of Edna Opelousas and her three children who were aged four to nine years old. Oh my God, little babies. It was in Rain, Louisiana on November 13th, 1909. Details on the case are not like

but neighbors heard screams coming from their home around 1 a.m. and rushed to the scene. And that's where they found Edna, quote, and this is from the Crowley Daily Signal in 1909, quote, lying on the floor with her head split open by a blow with an ax. The children had been attacked in a similar way, and they were actually still alive when the neighbors came. But all three died not long after. Oh, God.

Other than the bloody axe that was left at the scene. That's the other thing. The bloody axe gets left at a lot of these scenes. But we're in the early 1900s here. It's not like we can just be like, boop, boop, who's this? Yeah, no, of course. There was very little evidence to be collected at the scene besides that. And a few days later, police arrested Houston Goodwill, who was Edna's brother-in-law. He had apparently recently made threats against the family after having a fight with his wife.

But the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial and they really couldn't pin anything on him. So nothing came of his arrest. Then on January 24th, 1911, a little over a year after the initial murders, someone broke into the West Crowley home of Walter Byers in the middle of the night. And they murdered Walter Byers, his wife Sylvina, and their six-year-old son while they all slept. Wow.

When officers came to the home, they discovered the entire family, and this is also from the Crowley Daily Signal, lying in one bed with their skulls split, the bed covered with blood and bloody footprints on the floor. Like, horrific. That's so chilling. And just as in the Opelousas murder, the doors were all locked from the inside. And the killer had actually come in the home through the window. Oh, I hate that. In both scenarios. Yeah.

So also like the initial murders, the bloody axe again was left at the scene. This seems too coincidental.

This time, though, the police discovered a wash basin filled halfway with bloody water, which made them think that the killer had at least tried to clean themselves up before leaving the scene. But unfortunately, there was very little additional evidence once again. And a week later, police arrested Walter Jackson, who was a local barber, and his brother for the murder of the Byers family. But it's unclear what led to them being the two men that were caught as suspects.

there's really nothing to indicate that either was prosecuted for the murders, and so the deaths remain unsolved. Almost exactly one month after the Byers murders, the scene just repeated itself, when on February 25th, 1911, somebody broke into the home of 35-year-old Alexander Andrus and murdered Alexander, his wife, Memme, and their two children with an axe. The murders appeared to have occurred at the same point in the night,

that the other two had. Okay. And the bodies were discovered by Memme's father, Lazim Felix. Oh, his whole family. And they were discovered the following morning. This got very strange, though, because the skulls of all four of the victims had been crushed with an axe, but this time, whoever killed them had arranged the scene.

What? According to the press, after they were killed, and this is a quote by the Lafayette advertiser, the man and woman were taken up by the murderer and placed on their knees beside the bed. The woman's arm over the man's shoulder as if in the attitude of prayer. So they put the two parents into a praying position after they killed them. That's so fucking creepy. The killer then placed the baby on the bed beside Mamet.

Yeah. Oh, I don't like this at all. It's rough. What? That's just bizarre. Very bizarre. And initially, investigators thought it might be this escaped patient from Pineville Sanitarium named Garkon Godfrey. Sorry.

But when they finally arrested him a few days later, several people attested to the fact that he had been in Maurice, which was about 20 miles away when the murders were committed. So no way. Although they couldn't identify a motive for the murder, Chief Detective Peck, quote, believed that the murders of the Andrews family were caused by either jealousy or revenge and that a number of people were involved.

Okay. And everybody's like, why though? Yeah. The press, on the other hand, started speculating that the family had been killed by the same individual or people who'd killed the Opelousas and Byers families. I mean, I can see why they would think that. One reporter wrote, the crimes are so alike that they may be the work of the same monster. Yeah. And honestly, I don't see why not thinking that.

And sorry, was this family killed with an axe that was left at the scene too? Or was it left at the scene? I couldn't find in any reports whether it was left at the scene, but they were killed by an axe. Yeah. Two days after the murders, police arrested a man named Raymond Barnabat.

who Clementine Barnabas, you'll find out. Raymond Barnabas was a man who lived nearby and was known by police to have a criminal past. Raymond claimed that on the night of the murders, he had been about 30 miles away in Broussard. And without evidence to the contrary, investigators really had no choice but to let him go.

Almost exactly one month later, a family in San Antonio, Texas, living near the Southern Pacific Railroad line, were again murdered in the middle of the night. Their skulls were caved in with an axe that the killer left behind.

Now, it feels like that third one, it was probably left behind, but I don't want to say it was because I couldn't find it. Yeah, you don't know for a fact. Despite having no evidence to hold him, police remained convinced that Raymond Barnabas was at least partially responsible for the murder of the Andrus family. And in July 1911, Raymond was re-arrested and held in the local jail until his trial in October.

Now, throughout the trial, Raymond said nothing and just sat at the defense table, occasionally muttering to himself goodbye and mo foutu. I'm really bad at French. I apologize. But it means I am gone. And he would say it loud enough so that the jury could hear. After months of months of investigation, local authorities really didn't come up with any new evidence that implicated him.

But what they did have were his children, one of whom would become crucial to the prosecution in Cusin's case. Oh, shit. I thought you were going to say Clementine was his wife. No. So according to Barnabas' daughter, Clementine, on the night of the murders, Raymond came home, her father came home, between 2 and 4 a.m. And I quote, with his blue shirt covered in blood and brains.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Testifying for the defense, Barnabas' live-in girlfriend, Dina Porter, denied ever seeing any blood or brain matter on Raymond's clothing that night or any other time and refuted the claim that he had bragged about killing the Andrus family, though she was forced to admit that Raymond had threatened to kill her just one month earlier.

So maybe that would be why she wasn't so, like, jumping at the chance to talk about him. Probably. Or testify against him. Now, a fourth witness was a neighbor who apparently lived in the other half of the Barnabas house. Okay. They also denied seeing any blood or brain matter on Raymond's clothing and directly contradicted everything Clementine and Zephyrin had said on the witness stand. Okay. So a lot of different stories floating around here. Interesting. Despite the total lack of actual evidence and the conflicting testimony, which...

There's not a lot to go on there because, like, there's many different stories being told. It's just a bunch of he said, she said. Raymond Barnabas was found guilty and sentenced to death. After the verdict was handed down, the press noted that the verdict was won, quote, mainly through the testimony of Clementine and Zephyrin Barnabas, whose testimony made men shudder.

Okay. Now, both claim that upon arriving home in a rage, quote unquote, Raymond dragged them out of bed in the middle of the night and forced them to help him hide evidence. Though what that evidence was besides that shirt and where they hid it was never answered and never seemed to come up during trial.

Why wouldn't that come up during trial? I'm not real sure. Would that not be your follow-up question? Welcome to the 1911 of it all. For real. Raymond's lawyers immediately appealed the verdict on a number of grounds, including their belief that their client had actually been very drunk during the entire trial.

Okay. And thus was not able to adequately assist in his defense. Yeah, no, I would say not. Probably not. According to the defense, quote, Raymond had drained a smuggled bottle of wine in his cell before he was taken into the courtroom. Fuck. To their surprise, the judge actually granted Raymond a new trial. But because he was destitute and couldn't afford bail, he remained in custody. Okay. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Now, one month after the verdict against Raymond Barnabas was handed down, on the morning of November 27th, 1911, remember he was held in jail. Yes. The bodies of Norbert Randall, his wife Azima, their three children, ages three to seven...

and their two-year-old niece were discovered in their home in Lafayette, all with, and this is from the Crowley Daily Signal, who was very graphic with their descriptions, all with, quote, their brains knocked out with an axe. The discovery was made by Randall's nine-year-old daughter, who had just come back from sleeping over someone else's house that night and came to find her entire family dead.

At nine years old. Walked into that scene of everyone killed with an axe. The layers and layers of trauma that probably followed that girl throughout her life. Can't even imagine. And to think, I would have been asleep in this house if I didn't have these plans. If I wasn't sleeping somewhere else. What the fuck? When officers arrived at the Randall house, they found Norbert, his wife, and their niece, Agnes, dead in their bed, with the bodies of the three children lying dead in another bed.

A child's bloody footprint was found next to one of the beds, which led investigators to speculate that one of the children had woken up during the attack and that the victim was thrown back on the bed before being killed. Oh. Unlike the Andrus murders in which all had been killed with the bladed end of the axe. Yeah. The Randalls appeared to have been bludgeoned with the blunt end of the axe. Weird. Yeah.

And that's such a sudden switch up. Yeah. Interestingly, Norbert Randall had also been shot in the head and the bullet entered his forehead. This would be the only victim in the Louisiana axe murders to be killed by a weapon other than an axe. Huh. Now police immediately fanned out all across the neighborhood looking for anything, any evidence of the killer or killers and soon found blood.

Bitch, what? This just switched up so fast. Yiff.

Also arrested were Clementine's brother Zephron and Edwin Charles and Gregory Porter, which were two other young men who were living in the house at the time. Okay. So when they testified, they weren't really like children children. They were like...

They were like teenagers. Okay. Now, Clementine denied having anything to do with the murders, but given that her father had been implicated in the previous murders and was locked up at the time, the authorities told the press they, quote, believe she is implicated in this horrible crime and also in the murder of the Andrus family last February.

Despite her insistence that she was innocent, Sheriff Louis Lacoste was convinced that she was the killer and that the bloody apron discovered among her things was evidence enough of her guilt.

The evidence was immediately taken to the New Orleans state chemist to be examined. And the chemist, Dr. Metz, went on to confirm that the blood and biological material on the apron was human. Okay. And not just blood, also biological material. Also, Dr. Metz compared the blood on the apron to the blood on one of the pillowcases taken from the Randall house. It was a match.

Really? This was one of the Randall family's blood on her apron. And forensics was advanced enough at that time to have a match for blood types? Yeah. Damn, I didn't realize that. It happened in 1901. Oh, wow. It was the beginning of blood typing and this was 1911 or 1912. So cool, yeah. So they at least had blood typing happening.

And either way, it's like, there's this human brain matter on her apron. Yeah. Like, how did that get there? How? Now, while the sheriff waited for the results of the lab tests from the chemist, Clementine and the others sat in jail. But the murders didn't stop.

In early January, all six members of the Wexford family, including a baby supposedly born just a day earlier, were murdered in their home. And that was in Crowley. With their prime axe murder suspects already in jail, the sheriff's office needed to find a new suspect now for their Wexford murders, and they found one.

They found King Harris, who was a preacher at Sacrifice Sect Church, which was a fringe religious sect with churches in Crowley, Lafayette, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. Okay. All towns along the Southern Pacific Railroad line. Uh-huh.

Despite the name and the church's occasional non-Western practices, Harris denied the church preached, quote, anything that would incite criminal acts and assured the sheriff that neither he nor anyone from the church had anything to do with these murders. Also, Harris insisted his only contact with Clementine Barnabas was when, on the night of the Randall murders, he had been walking down the street and encountered Clementine, who told him, quote, to leave the area because a street corner fight had taken place and the police were on the way.

Regardless of all the denials, King Harris was arrested on January 20th, 1912 and held on suspicion of involvement in the axe murders. Okay. It seemed that even the arrest of the Barnabas and Harris weren't enough to stop it, though.

On January 21st, just one day after Harris' arrest, Felix Broussard, his wife Matilda, and their three children were all murdered by what the press described as a midnight assassin. And to have that happen one day later, it's almost like whoever is doing this is taunting them. As in the other cases, all five members of the Broussard family had been bludgeoned to death with an axe, which had been left behind at the scene and was discovered underneath one of the beds.

The scene really didn't have any clues, any evidence. But the walls, this is what's interesting. The walls had been smeared with blood. And on one of the walls, the killer had written in pencil, when he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. Is that biblical? It's a verbatim quote from the book of Psalms. Okay. Okay.

And on the inside of the front door, they had written human five. What? Like this five members of the family. What? Yeah.

Isn't that like chilling? Yeah. I'm just like, this is the one of the weirdest fucking cases you've ever presented. That's what I'm saying. That's why I was like, I don't know what to think of this. Because I really don't. Like I've heard of Clementine's name before, definitely, but I've never heard any details of this case. So I did, I look this up. The when he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. Okay. Okay.

And when I looked it up, it seems that the idea of this is kind of conveying the idea that God, when he doles out justice, remembers the cries of the humble and will actually save them. Yeah. And I think like put justice towards those who shed innocent blood. Wait, say that last part again? So it's basically like he's seeking justice. It's basically like God...

Trying to dole out justice upon those who shed innocent blood. Okay. That's what it is interpreted as.

So the innocent blood would be the people who were murdered and that's justice for them or that's justice for the person that murders them? That's what doesn't make sense. It's interpreted as God will dole out justice to those who shed innocent blood. And the people who – the innocents will be remembered. Yes. You know what I mean? And it will like – you're going to have to deal with the wrath of God if you shed innocent blood kind of thing. Okay. Yeah.

But then it's like the killer wrote, when he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. So it's almost like he's, because the idea of that quote, I think it comes from like revenge and justice and like avenging people. That's what it sounds like, yeah. And so then when he writes human five, I wonder if this feels very, I mean, this particular one, whether it's meant to sound this way or not,

Obviously, it's very religious. Yeah, clearly. Some religious. I'm not saying this is any religion that we can even identify. But it seems like they're trying to make it religious, this person that did this. And it almost feels like they're tallying, like human five. And it's like they're tallying what they're going to have to answer for.

Maybe, yeah. I'm trying to figure out the logic behind this. I'm sorry, were there five members of this family? There were five members of this family. Okay. But it's the sixth family that we know of. That has been killed so far, okay. But it almost feels like they're tallying the people in the house, like the victims, like what they're going to have to answer for, like human five. Right, right.

You know? It's so weird to write human. Yeah, because I'm like, is there somewhere where animals were killed that you could find somewhere written like an animal? Yeah, this is strange. This is so strange. Keep going. So absent of any other clues or evidence besides that bizarre shit, investigators in Lake Charles told reporters, quote, circumstances point to the work of a fanatic or religious cranks as nothing shows revenge or robbery as the motive.

And they also speculated that despite them being nearly 75 miles apart, whoever killed the Broussard family was probably also responsible for the other murders in Crowley and Lafayette. Sounds like it. Which it definitely could be. There's a big difference. Yeah. So it could absolutely be like a copycat or someone using it to, you know, who knows if all of these are connected. Right. Interesting. But there's also like a train that runs along. Exactly. So you can get there. It's not like...

It's not like you're driving. There's a way to get to all these places. Yeah. But the mere suggestion that this rash of axe murders occurring along the Southern Pacific line was the result of religious fanaticism was enough to... Because remember, these are all black families. Yeah. Raymond Barnabas is black. His family is black. King Harris is black.

So we're seeing this, and now we're seeing this mention of religious fanaticism. That's enough to send white Southerners into a gosh darn panic at this point. Within one day of the Broussard murders, the press had put together the pieces of various stories, the Barnabas arrest, King Harris, and the sacrifice sect, and all those, into one very sensational story.

and highly questionable story that they just knew was going to sell papers. Goody. On the morning of January 23rd, 1912, the headlines on papers like the Monroe News Star said, Sacrifice Sect Slaughter 26. Basically implying that not only had they been all victims of the same killer, but also that the murders are now being directed by, quote, a preacher who teaches fanaticism. Meanwhile... So now we're just making shit up. He's in prison. Just making shit up. Right. Right.

Now, while the writing on the wall at the Broussard crime scene obviously was very unusual, remember, that was a 75-mile-away murder. That's a little bit of an outlier. Yeah. It's similar, obviously. Duh. A little bit of an outlier. Yeah. You know, there was the idea that there was the people that were placed into praying positions, so there's that as well. But nothing really about...

all of the murders, it wasn't like they were all ritualistic. You know what I mean? There were ritualistic elements for sure that you could see in a couple. But not all. They didn't look like they were human sacrifices for a religious sect. You know what I mean? Like, it seemed like it was a very aggressive...

frantic murder scene. You know what I mean? Like, especially with an axe. Like, an axe is a very chaotic way to kill people. It's not a ritualistic way to kill people. But, you know, they wanted to sell a lot of papers. So the press leaned hard into that sacrifice angle, claiming, among other things, that the Broussard family's killer had, quote, set a bucket below their heads in which to catch the dripping blood for use in rituals later. Which is not true at all.

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And he hasn't even had a trial yet. He's just been arrested. Yeah, he's just been arrested. So it's like, cool, guys. And it's important to note that the press and the authorities never directly accused Harris or the Barnabets of being responsible for the murders of the Broussard family. Yeah. Like, they're just implying that he's probably behind this. It's literally ridiculous. And in fact, while all the suspects are being held in jail, there were other murders happening.

So like... Every time. What's going on? A family of five in Reign were killed in December 1911, and a family of four were killed in Crowley just a few days before the Broussard family was killed. So clearly these murders could not have been committed by Clementine Barnabas or her brother and father.

But they and King Harris, who was still sitting in jail at certain moments, he wasn't even in the area at the time, they were all being accused of being behind all this. Every single one of these. Which you could also look at this and say, okay, maybe there's some big cult or organization type thing that is being led by someone that pieces of this cult are being put in jail, but there's other ones out here. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But the fervor, the problem here was the fervor over non-white and non-Christian religious practices that came out of this through communities across Louisiana into a panic with white residents demanding action and black residents fearing for their safety at this point. Because now they're pointing to like, oh, it must be voodoo. That's what it must be.

If it's not Christians, that's for sure. Never. And several white Southerners exploited the opportunity to exploit public fear for personal gain, sending extortion letters to black churches, like...

Going way, like leaning into this totally. Yeah, being completely fucking horrible. And there were other more serious consequences to this panic as well. In Lake Charles, a Hoodoo preacher was going door to door selling charms of protection and offering to wire homes to secure them from evil. And in March, that preacher was killed. Oh my God. Yeah.

So in March, many newspapers across the South ran a syndicated article that was titled Voodoos Horrors Breakout Again. And now in this, the unnamed author provided details of the brutal murders, emphasizing the more sensational and what they took as ritualistic aspects of all the crimes.

A particular interest was the supposed frequency in which the number five appeared in the cases, such as the message painted on the back of the, or written on the back of the Broussard's front door, the one that said human five. The article connected that aspect of the case with the fact that regardless of her claims of innocence, Clementine Barnabas had been arrested and had four other accomplices, and she was arrested with...

brain-mattered blood on her apron. Mm-hmm. So this is part of the article. It said, "...at Lafayette, it was five members of the Andrus family who were sacrificed. At the same place a few months later, five members of the Randall family had evidently been marked for slaughter, but a sixth appearing upon the scene unexpectedly met the fate of his kingsmen."

At Crowley, so they think that that family, the Randall family, there was five of them, but there was one extra. And they said that was just coincidental. At Crowley last June, four members of the Warner family had undoubtedly been doomed to perish, but one, a child, escaped and only four went to their death.

Two months ago, six members of the Wexford family perished at the hands of fanatics, but one was an infant that had been born a day before the tragedy, and in all probability had not been taken into consideration when the plans for the human sacrifice were consummated.

Now comes the Broussard family tragedy with the five victims, thus completing a series of sacrifices of five separate families, each evidently intended to involve five victims. It does sound that way. Interesting, but I feel like they're reaching. Yeah. With some of these. The fear-mongering and sensational journalism...

It had racist undertones to it. It implied black Americans were in large numbers embracing pre-Christian religious practices that were encouraging and promoting human sacrifice. Like, that was essentially what they were saying. Right. That that's what this must be. Like, that's fucked. Yeah.

And when they put it this way, of course it was going to make any reader reading these things seem not too shocked and didn't seem too far-fetched that the teenage Clementine and her accomplices might have been involved in a conspiracy and that they might have been involved in this whole thing.

Some kind of culty religious thing to commit ritualistic murder in the service of what they were saying was one or more either voodoo or what they got wrong, hoodoo gods, because they would conflate those two practices. They conflated them a lot.

This theory should have been undermined by the fact that the murders continued even as the five supposed members of the murderous cult sat in jail. Right. One month after the Broussard murders, three families were brutally murdered with an axe along the Southern Pacific line in Texas, all spaced roughly one month apart and all looking exactly like each other.

Same hallmarks of each case. Five family members? Three, yeah, like, same kind of situation. All had the same hallmarks, everything. Interesting that it seems to usually be five family members. Like, that's weird. Well, I should say, those last three, I'm not positive that all three of them were five. Oh, okay. But they were, they all looked exactly the same in the sense of, like, what was used, what was not.

That a family was killed in the middle of the night, left the same way. With an axe. The axe was found. Like, all the same kind of situation. And all along that railroad line. Right. Now, because there was so much sensationalism surrounding the case and a lot of fear-mongering happening, it's unlikely Clementine or any of the others were going to get a fair trial by an unbiased jury. Yeah, no. Yeah.

And who knows if that was the reason that a confession came or if a confession came from a genuine place. Who can be sure? But in April, Clementine Barnabas called the sheriff to her cell and confessed to murdering more than 20 people in the previous year. Okay. Out of nowhere. According to Clementine, she had accomplices who had continued to carry out the work of extermination all along the Southern Pacific Railroad while she was in jail. Okay. Okay.

And she said there are many families in the state that have been selected for killing and their doom was sealed.

Clementine went on to tell authorities that two years earlier, she and the other members of the group had traveled to New Iberia and obtained from a hoodoo doctor a conjure that would protect them from all harm and absolutely protect them from discovery in the commission of any crime or deed. Which didn't work, evidently. Which all of this seems to line up with what everybody is thinking is happening. She's basically just saying the same story. Like confirming it. Now, she said hoodoo.

But the media, like I said, was immediately conflating hoodoo and voodoo as the same thing. Right. Not bothering to find out that there's a difference or if there was a difference. So this made the whole voodoo ritualistic angle of the newspaper reporting a lot more prevalent. And in the end, it was wrong.

From what I could gather, there are many differences between hoodoo and voodoo. And the main one is probably the most distinctive difference is that voodoo is technically like an organized religion. It's practiced with rituals and there's a structure to the practice. There's leaders in the practice.

Voodoo, from what I could gather, is mostly an independent magic-leaning practice that individuals take part in. Okay. And I believe it has most of its roots in the U.S. while voodoo does not. Oh, okay. So there are differences. Yeah. At least look up the...

A little bit of the differences. But, and remember, we're in the early 1900s. We're in the South here. Racism is prevalent. It's just part of, it's here. It is even now. So to the white authorities and press, the confession of her, quote, most violent repulsive acts...

seemed to confirm what everyone had already suspected, even though many within law enforcement acknowledged that much of what she had told them wasn't true. It didn't line up. Huh. One article stated, while the officers know some of the confession is true, they discarded much of Clementine's story as mere fiction, as she has given any number of clues that have been run down and proved only will-o'-the-wisps. So just...

Okay. Now, Clementine's confession included a number of actually true statements about the murders, but the information could have been easily learned through newspaper articles or just town gossip. Everyone was talking about this. More often than not, her statements were like way over the top, outlandish, and she would contradict herself a lot. So she wasn't telling a clear, concise story of like, here's what happened, but...

it's exactly what you all think. Here you go. It was like, they made it sound like that. But when you really look at it, all of the shit was contradicting. And a lot of it, like I said, was things you could have seen in the paper. Okay.

I wonder what her motivation for confession would be. I believe she might have. I mean, here's the thing. No one knows whether she was part of this or not. Nobody can tell. Really? But it seems to me like she may have been mentally ill. She may have been suffering from some mental illness. So that might have had something to do with her confession. Or she had something to do with it. Yeah. I don't know. And I honestly can't put my finger on which one.

It is. Okay. Or if it's a mixture of two. Yeah. You know, like, it's very hard to figure out. But...

One of the things was she claimed, quote, she had assistance in the murders, but then she would often boast about having committed them herself, especially the Lafayette crimes. Like said, she did it alone. Despite the inaccuracies and inconsistencies, Sheriff Lacoste told reporters, quote, Clementine Barnabas is rational and I believe it is true, except as to details given with the purpose of confusing others as to her accomplices.

So now they're claiming that all the contradictions are just to confuse you about who was her accomplice. Which again, absolutely could be true. Yeah, you could see that. No idea though. In the days after her confession, Clementine's story also grew and grew and grew and became increasingly bizarre. The longer she went, the more murders she confessed to. It was kind of one of those things, which we have seen instances where that has happened with other people.

supposed murders or confessed murders where, you know, like Henry Lee Lucas. That's what I was just going to say. They admit to like a billion zillion murders and then they would pull it back and then they admit to more and then they pull it back. Some people do do that. Yeah. And it's like, even people who do murder people who are actual murderers. So who knows? But she eventually said that she killed 35 people herself. Okay. She claimed she and four others, two women and two men, were part of an axe gang.

And once they'd identified a family to be sacrificed, decided seemingly at random, they drew lots. And whoever drew the short straw did the killing. Okay. She said it was an easy matter. That's what she said of killing the Randall children. It was an easy matter. We thought it was better to kill them than to leave orphans as they would suffer. Okay.

As for why she had done it, Clementine told the sheriff that, quote, moral perversion was responsible for a passion to shed human blood and take human life that she could not control. Okay. So again, these statements are chilling. Yeah. And scary. The idea of an axe gang. Like, very scary. Absolutely. And could be true. And we don't know.

According to Clementine, when this impulse came upon her, she said she could not rest until she had killed an infant and pressed its form to her breast. What the fuck? And an infant was killed and babies were killed. Yeah, multiple.

Now, initially, Clementine had refused to identify her accomplices. Yeah. But by April 4th, and this is where it gets funky. Okay. This is where you're going to go, okay, maybe she is just lying. But by April 4th, she finally named Reverend Joseph Thibodeau as the aforementioned hoodoo doctor who had provided them with protection spells. Okay. Thibodeau was a black fortune teller living in New Iberia who also portrayed himself as a practitioner of herbal medicine.

He didn't traffic in charms, he said. He didn't deal with charms, as Clementine had indicated. But he was known to prescribe a remedy that included giving a patient a piece of paper with 25 letters in five lines. The paper was instructed, when they felt bad, to tear off one of the letters, roll it in a ball, and swallow it. Okay.

And it's likely just a coincidence, but the emphasis on fives in Thibodeau's remedies fit the ritualistic sacrifice narrative perfectly, and he was soon roped right into the crimes. Joseph Thibodeau was arrested a day or two later, but police had literally nothing on him except for Clementine's statement.

So following his arrest, the local press pointed out that while Thibodeau was a well-known figure in the city, no one knew him to associate with Clementine, much less willfully advising the woman or of knowing of her intention of starting her career of crime. Yeah.

A few days after her confession, six indictments were returned by the grand jury charging Clementine with the murders of the Randall family. Okay. A date was set for the arraignment soon after, but nobody, I don't, I couldn't figure out why. The arraignment was like continuously put off. Huh. Like continuously. And in the meantime, Clementine continued just naming co-conspirators. Okay.

Feeding the press for that insatiable hunger they had for more gruesome, awful details. Right. But each time investigators tracked down or arrested anyone named by Clementine, nearly every single one of them were able to account for their whereabouts on the nights of the murders or just had the alibis themselves. Like they were, they had alibis. Like everything checked. And people could account for them. Right. Right.

So she would name someone, they'd go to them and be like, no, they were states away. Like, or this person can account for where they were. Huh. So it's like they kept being like, no, that's not someone. And she'd be like, oh, this person. So after several delays, Clementine was finally arraigned on the murder charges and a trial was scheduled for late October. In the meantime, her defense attorneys found her to be very difficult and an uncooperative client. But eventually they convinced her to enter a plea of religious insanity.

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Now, at the same time, articles about Clementine's bizarre claims and behavior kept getting reported in the press. And honestly, it was getting, like, offensive at this point. Like, they were getting really nasty about it. One of them said that the woman is on the lowest scale of humanity and totally devoid of any sense of pity or ordinary conception of shame and disgrace, is conclusive and borne out by her whole life, which has been pitched on the lowest plane of morality.

Which, if she killed a bunch of people... Then, yeah. Absolutely. While the woman at times seems practically insane, she yet has a certain intelligence and cunning. Ever since her incarceration, she has successfully foiled the officers in their attempts to get at the true facts of the case. And when she deceives the officers by giving them some false clue, she smiles with devilish delight and chuckles over her victory. And again, if this is true, fucking terrifying. Yeah, very much so.

But, again, they haven't, like, charged her. They don't have any real evidence here. And I still go back to that apron, which I'm like, someone explain that away for me. Yeah. I don't know about that. That's the biggest thing for me. Unless she's hiding it for someone else.

But why would her apron be? That's the thing, it was hers. Yeah, I don't get it. Now, although initially a source of fear, now that she had been indicted and seemed bound for prison, the public developed feelings of disgust and moral outrage towards Clementine, which...

Who wouldn't at this point? If you think that she did all this, of course. But this also probably contributed to her very defiant attitude that she had. To make matters worse, by late October, Clementine had been evaluated by three psychiatrists and all of them found her sane. Really? And that cleared the way for a trial. Oh, gosh. I don't know about that. No? I don't know about that, but who knows? I mean, this was very early 1900s in the South and...

A lot's happening. Yeah. So I don't know if they cleared that way. What makes you think that she's suffering from a mental illness? The way she's speaking, the way she acted in court. Like, she's very, like, smiling about things. She seems like she's not in that religious mania thing. Yeah. Kind of seems to be a little bit fitting. But you'll also...

Later, you'll hear something that happens that you're like, what happened here? Okay. Like something's awry. Okay. You know? And just the way she talks about it, the way she's sitting there saying like, well, she just, she felt like she had to just kill an infant and hold it to her breast. Right.

I don't know about that. Like, I don't know. Who knows? That's the thing. She's young. She's like a teenager at this point. So it's just, I think it's almost too much for me to like believe that she's fully sane saying these things. Maybe it's just because it's so gruesome and awful. Could be. And the thought of her killing entire families. That's the other thing is like, you did this all yourself?

Because you're naming accomplices and they're getting cleared. So, like, who are your accomplices? Yeah. What about the other ones that were arrested? And that's the thing. Well, they all did it together. And maybe, but they kept getting... Families were getting killed after they were arrested. Yeah. So, who are the other people? Yeah.

And she can't point to... Well, maybe she doesn't want to point to anybody else. But she was. Well, that's actually responsible. Maybe she's just having them chase down leads of... Yeah, but it's like, why? You know what I mean? To fuck with them. People do that all the time. But it's like, you're going down. Yeah. But maybe she knew that. Like, you're really going to hold out? Maybe she's like, I'm going down. Maybe I might as well have fun on the way out. Maybe that was fun for her. Yeah, maybe if they really do... If she really does believe, and obviously...

This is theorizing because I don't know if she is... Could he be guilty or not? I really don't. But I'll go with the, like, if she is guilty, then this seems to be something that's like...

we wanted to, like, cleanse, you know, the moral perversion and all this shit, like, when she was talking about that. So it feels like this is, if she is guilty, and if there is a group of people doing this, like an offshoot of some kind of religious thing, then they seem to be doing it because they need to cleanse this horrible thing that's happening. So if she's caught, it makes sense that she would want it to continue. Right. Like you said, like, she's going to have them chased down

false leads because she wants the other real co-conspirators to be able to continue this grand plan that they have. Exactly. So there is a way of looking at it like that, that you go, okay, maybe. And then maybe she'll still go to, maybe in her mind, she still goes to wherever she wants to go once she gets taken down because she didn't fuck with the plan in any way. Because she didn't stop the plan and she kept it in motion. Exactly. So you're right. It could absolutely be that

kind of religious, you know, fanaticism that we can't understand. But then at the same time, she did say that they picked these families at random, so how do you know that they're morally perverse? And that's the thing. So it's like there was no real...

They said once they picked someone, that was it. Yeah. But... Maybe they just felt like it was some kind of divine intervention of... That's the thing. Maybe they just knew. Yeah, like it just came to them. Because she didn't like, you know... She didn't really spell out the process. Yeah, like she didn't kind of like indulge us in any more details about that, but it's...

Maybe it could be that they would feel it. Yeah. And that was the family that had to go. Because a lot of times that kind of shit is inexplicable anyways, even if you do get an explanation. Because the reality of that is just they want to kill people. But, yeah, that's the thing. This is a fascinating case. And it gets more fascinating somehow. Okay. Now, Clementine's trial began October 24th, 1912, and the prosecution was relying very heavily on her confession, obviously. Yeah.

She had formally confessed to 17 murders and implied having committed many more. But she was also being prosecuted for the murders of Azima Randall.

And throughout the trial, Clementine continued to exhibit very strange behavior and was frequently disruptive. Okay. At one point, she screamed from the stand, I am the axe woman of the sacrifice sect. I killed them all, men, women, and babies, and I hugged the dead babies to my breast, but I am not guilty of murder.

Okay, so I see why you think potentially mentally ill. You just don't know. And you don't know if it's an act. You don't know. Yeah. That would be so disturbing. It would be very disturbing. Despite their repeated attempts to control Clementine and discourage these outbursts, Clementine's defense attorneys were unable to dissuade her from demanding that her confession be entered into the trial record. So she didn't want it entered in.

Like that confession that she just screamed out in the middle of court. And they were trying to get it taken off the record. They were like, that's an outburst, blah, blah, blah. But they couldn't. But she wanted it entered into the record. Okay. Which...

It can point both ways. It can point to mental illness where she didn't do this, but she's just going along with it. It can point to mental illness where she did do this and she's not realizing what's happening here. Or it can point to she's part of this wild cult that, and she wants it on the record that she did this. Right. It can go any of those ways. And I can see it going any of those ways.

Which is so frustrating. You wish that more people, and I don't know if anybody else does, but you wish that more people offered anything up. Well, in this next bit, we'll make you go, huh. Because according to one source, she wanted it in the trial record because, quote, she felt if she was to be executed, an angel in a chariot of fire would save her life. So that's a lot. Yeah. And you could, again, look at that two ways.

So the prosecution rested their case after just one day, followed soon again by the defense, who...

Really didn't have any defense of their client. What the fuck do you do there? After a brief deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and Clementine was sentenced to life in Angola prison for the murder of Azima Randall. Now following her conviction, Clementine kind of just disappears from the record. Really? That's haunting as fuck. Just got convicted, went to prison, but then when she does pop up,

You're like, what? Tell me everything. Because she popped up again in the news nearly a year after this. Oh, okay. And according to the article, and after that she really disappears. It's like she really just pops in every once in a while. But according to the article, it says that the prisoner, meaning Clementine, underwent what is described as an operation of the most delicate sort. Oh, no. Performed by prison physician Dr. Sterling,

which left her, quote, one of the mildest prisoners in the penitentiary. Did she have a lobotomy? Lobotomies were not really over here at this time. Okay. Again, the article is not specific about what type of surgical procedure was performed, only saying that, quote, the woman's desire to slay came from a perversion of the sexual instinct and an operation to remedy this was performed by the physicians.

So they're saying, like, her sexual appetite is what made her want to kill. In a statement to the press following the operation, prison manager Colonel Harrison Parker said, We have had the woman under observation ever since. She has lost all traces of her old desire to kill and sings cheerfully as she works in the fields. The cure is as complete as it is wonderful.

What did they do? This was before lobotomies were really a thing. I think it was a forced hysterectomy. I was wondering if that's what it was. Just because of the way they speak about sexual desires and all that. But no matter what it was, holy shit. What the fuck? The cure is as complete as it is wonderful. That's chilling shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And then she's just singing. And then she's just in the fields. Yeah. Which, like... And there's also stories, like, I've seen, like, stories, you know, and they're, like, internet stories, so, like, you know, anybody can say any fucking thing they want on the internet. But they, like, that people have said, like, that, like, I've seen somebody claim that they, like...

met this old woman who like their grandmother knew in the area and that this woman like told her stories about like they never caught that, you know, the axe murder, you know, of New Orleans, not the other one that we talked about before. But it kind of like gave these stories that made it seem like, you know,

I don't know, like that just made it seem like they knew a little more. And this is like older woman. And I guess like at one point she said something like that she was, you know, like that she showed like a picture of her when she was younger. And when they saw it, it was the picture of Clementine Barnabas. But she was still in prison. But people think she was released from prison. What? Yeah.

And in fact, authorities were so confident in this surgical procedure that they had performed on Clementine. She was released from Angola April 23rd, 1923. So she didn't even do like 10 years. Wait, when was she convicted? I think that was only, she only did... She was convicted in like 1911, 1912? Yeah, probably like 1912, I would say. She was there from 1912, so...

What, 11 years? Yeah, what the fuck? I mean, it's a long time, but not in this context. If that's what she did. If that's what she did, yeah. And she just fades into society and off the record. Clementine Barnabas was the only person punished for the familial axe murders in Louisiana. So they just let everybody else that they were holding go? And Texas, I should say. She was the only one punished for them.

What? And these were the ones that occurred between 1909, 1910, and 1912. Yeah. But the consensus seems to be that if she was responsible for any, because nobody's sure if she was or not, that she couldn't have been responsible for all of them. Well, no, because she was in prison while some continued to happen. Yeah. Exactly. Many of the suspects, other suspects, were arrested and in jail with her, and they were still occurring. And when did they stop? Yeah.

That's the thing. It's hard to say when they stop, quote unquote. Okay. I think in 1912, it seems like they teetered out, at least from the record. But I don't know if that's just like, that fits the narrative of like, she's in jail now, so we won't connect these. Okay. You know what I mean?

But it seems like that's the thing. There's so many weird things here. That's interesting. That, like, I would be interested in, and I will do that. I'll go back and I'll report back on the next episode in the beginning. I'm going to go back in the record and see what other ones occurred. Yeah. And whether they were similar. Yeah. Because, again, if they continued, then you can say...

Well, she was saying she was part of the sect that was doing this and other people were around to do it. Yeah. But also you can be like, huh. You know what I mean? There's so many ways to look at it. Well, because you could also say like she got convicted. Maybe that scared the other whoever was involved. And once she got convicted, they were like, okay. They stopped and were like, shit. But then she got out. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm going to take a peek and see if there's more that fit the bill. This was a very spooky one. It's a spooky one. And again, you go back to why did she confess?

Right. And why did she confess to as many? Why did she insist it be put in the trial record? But when you think, why did she confess to as many? Like you said in the beginning, there was more even before that they just were like not as similar, which does lead you to wonder, like sometimes that happens in people's early days of killing. They change it up and they get...

better at it. I hate to say it like that. Yeah, for lack of a better term. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe. There's many ways to look at this and there's many ways to either say she is...

mentally ill and suffered. Yeah. And that this was just placed on her because they needed someone to pin it on. Or maybe she's mentally ill and she did it. And she did it. I lean a little more toward she had some kind of involvement in this. It feels like she did have some kind of involvement. I can't get past that apron. I can't get past that apron and I can't get past the fact that like she was so adamant that her father be put in prison. Mm-hmm.

And she hid these bloody clothes for him. Yep. It leads you to wonder, like, did she say, oh, I did it for my dad in case they found anything in her possession? Yeah. And then her dad's in jail and they do find something in her possession. It's like, okay, well, it's not your dad now. Yeah.

See? It's a very interesting case. Yeah. I'm glad people suggested it because it's fascinating. I can't get past the... Because it would be one thing if she had a bloody apron, like, you know, things happen, like, whatever. Yeah. But there was brain matter on the apron. And that they matched... It's human. And it matched one of the people at the scene. And that it matched the Randall family. I mean... Yeah. And it would be one thing if it was a apron or an apron. But it was her apron. It was hers. And it was found in her room. Hidden. Hidden. Mm-hmm.

That's bizarre. And then she confessed. Yeah. And then what fucking operation did they give her? I know. I feel like it has to be some kind of hysterectomy. It did sound that way. As soon as you started talking about like her sexual appetite and then it was suppressed. And if you look, there is no, they never released what it was. You can't find it anywhere. But a lot of people do feel like it was probably a hysterectomy. Oh.

And then, like, if she wanted to talk about it later, like... Yeah. And obviously that's, like, just people on the internet talking. Who knows? But you never know. It could just be to, like, add to the spooky vibes of it all. Of course. Wow. Weird fucking case, dude. Yeah. Very interested to hear... Very interesting one. ...next episode. Yeah, I'm going to take a peek because now I'm curious. Yeah. So I'll update you guys in the beginning of the next episode. Yeah. I...

very much enjoyed your coverage of that. Oh, thank you. That was a thinker. And thanks to Dave for the help because this was a very interesting one. Dave forever. Dave forever. Wow. Well, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don't keep thinking about this because I'm never going to stop probably. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

I think I'm ready. I'm ready. Sometimes I just miss singing. That was good. That was good.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...

I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

You know, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.