Louisiana: Axe Murders, Outlaws & Legends (ft. National Park After Dark) | #465

[Music] I'm Sruti, I'm Hanna and we're at Handel. I'm Cassie, I'm Danielle and we're National Park after Dark. And this is the creepy transatlantic crossover that you have all been waiting for but you didn't want to admit it but it's too late now because it's happening. And this has been a long time in the works and we are very, very excited. To be doing this episode with you guys, thank you guys so much for joining us. This is of course as they just introduced themselves, listeners, National Park after Dark. And basically a combination of all of my favorite things because it's creepy disappearances, horrible murders, yes I know I'm gross, folklore and ruling survival stories. It's kind of like all of the various different things I would listen to in podcast, put into one, and then even better because obviously as the name suggests it's all of these things going down in National Parks, which is perfect because the more remote isolated and scary as you guys know for me, the better, it's just delicious. How did you guys come up with this idea other than it being perfect? Well thank you for quite the intro, we are flattered, I'm blushing a little bit. We started this, when did we start 2021? No, yeah, and we started the podcast because both of us were kind of our outdoor friends with each other and it morphed into this podcast because we would go out into the outdoors and we would always look up these stories to the places we were actually visiting before we got there and we found that it made our experience a lot different if we were heading up into these places. I can remember one time Danielle and I were heading into the mountains and I literally read her and affidavit of a true crime case the whole way to the drive which was about two hours so it was natural that it would become a podcast at some point. We do exactly the same thing. It doesn't help that we're massive cowards though because then I would tell you all these horrible things and then we stayed in Sikeshwarya which is where Dracula was born, Vlad the Impaler was born, Romania is beautiful, but I'm not going to lie, kind of creepy, lots of abandoned buildings, bit creepy and we stayed in this Airbnb, lots of dark wood, definitely not a fan of the overhead light there which I'm not usually, but there I would have appreciated it if I'm perfectly honest. It was fucking terrifying and then that I was just, I'm packing things and I was standing next to her. I was like, shall I make some tea? And then she was like, yeah, that would be great. And then I just carried on standing there and she looked at me and I was like, should we go down to to make tea together because I can't go down into the kitchen on my own. And that night I did turn up and her room and I was like, we need to share a bed because I can't sleep in that room on my own. So yes, that is the biggest thing holding me back from doing something even more scary with my life than a true crime podcast. I am definitely in the same boat as you. I have forced Danielle to sleep in the same room as me in creepy places. So we're on the same page with that, for sure. I'm a terrible sleep talker though and that doesn't really help. Oh no. Like that time we were in Cuba and you sat up and screamed, he's got a knife and I was like, oh my god, somebody helped me. We're getting well off tangent. Do you guys want to tell your listeners who we are? Of course, well, for anyone who is unfamiliar, which may be hard because you have the true crime genre on lockdown, you're kind of like crowned true crime princesses in the UK. You guys launched back in 2017. When National Park After Dark was not even a twinkle in R.I., you were already well on your way of creating one of the most successful true crime podcasts out there. You've expanded so far beyond the audio waves, you have been on international tours. You wrote a book. You've done some other standalone shows. You've kind of done it all and your episodes, I think I speak for both Cassie and I. When I say I think the historical mysteries are probably a favorite topic that you guys do, but serial killers, cults, you know, you kind of just do it all. Instead of a trail conversation, you guys had a drunk conversation at a party. Is that true? Absolutely. 100% true. And a lot of things had to go very specifically that day for us to ever have met. We never would have crossed paths otherwise. So it was a bit of a sliding doors situation. Thank you, firstly, for that very, very kind introduction. Is it, after 10 years, can we still call ourselves the princesses? I think we're more like the doyens or the grandmothers or the great grandmothers. Haggadold women, yeah, the witches of true crime, our Patreon show is called under the duvet because we literally used to record under duvets. So yes, we have escaped that. We're in studios now and our backs, especially as old ladies, are very grateful for it. It's very nice to be doing a collaboration with another set of female podcasters who started a long time ago. And I'm excited. I'm pumped for this. The theme that we have chosen for today's collaboration, can I say it's Louisiana, only one of us has actually been to Louisiana. And that is you, Cassie. Yes. Our expert, our Louisiana expert. I'm here with all of my expert knowledge of the one time I went to Louisiana in 2016. And you said you went mudding, which I've never ever heard of before. Yes. So I went mudding. I went with a friend and they have these big, I don't, they're these big mudding events where people come with side by sides, they have decked out, they're like, they spend a lot of money on these side by sides and four wheelers and dirt bikes. And I have a picture somewhere. I don't think I could ever find it now because it's so old. But I have a picture where we had been in these mud pits for so long on these dirt bikes and stuff that I am covered head to toe and mud. And the only thing you can see is my eyeballs, please dig out that photo. But I never actually went anywhere in public in Louisiana, but I was literally only in the woods. So that I feel like that's kind of the staple experience. I think so. What is a side by side? I don't know what that means. They're not cars. They're not cars. That's a car. For sure. Okay. They're on wheels though. They're kind of like an ATV only like enclosed and you sit side by side. They're like a four wheeler with a roof on it. Yeah. Oh, like the Pope Mobile. What? The Pope Mobile. A Pope Mobile? You know, the Pope has his little car with the like Malik brief glass. Oh, yes, I do actually. Yes. Okay. It's not really like that. Okay. Good. But I can see the resemblance. It's kind of like a badass. That's the notion of the Pope Mobile also kind of like a golf cart situation. Rucket. Rucket. Well, now that we have had an education in Louisiana from Cassie, we can get on with today's stories. So we knowing so much about Louisiana, we investigated the parks there and we have covered one National Park after dark episode in Louisiana. And we are venturing away from that because we wanted to do something a little bit different. And we don't know how familiar you both are with the National Park Service here in the United States and kind of how it's set up. But a lot of people think of National Park says there's the big 63. So there's like the Grand Canyon Yellowstone, you know, 70, these big iconic parks. But the National Park Service actually covers 433 different units. So it's not just these big iconic parks. There's also National Seashores or monuments or historical sites and things like that. So when people ask, are you ever going to run out of content? The answer is no. Because the Park Service manages a lot of different places. So today we each have a short story. We actually did not collab with each other. So all of our stories are a bit of a surprise. But we did both choose a location on something called the National Scenic Byway in Louisiana that is titled The Myths and Legends Byway. So this byway is actually one of 17 scenic byways in the state of Louisiana. But in our opinion, it is far and away the most interesting. This 181 mile route in Southwestern Louisiana originally settled by the Atacapa and Kusuta peoples was at one time a haven for land pirates and outlaws known as no man's land. This stretch of land was once a disputed boundary between France, New Spain, Mexico and the United States and experienced many years of lawlessness within the 19th century. Visitors can drive it or paddle much of it through the river systems that run alongside it. And it highlights 22 different locations and passes through different portions of National Forest, there's cemetery stops, wildlife management areas and more. And there are different stops that highlight different periods of time throughout history and different points of interest that have connections to ghosts, legends and dark history. So it is the perfect route for people who are history buffs, but also love outdoor adventure, which is kind of our whole thing. So we each picked a location, one of those 22 stops along this by way to highlight. And my location is called Wolf Rock Cave. And Wolf Rock Cave is located in Kessachi, National Forest, located in the central portion of the state. It is Louisiana's only National Forest, which I had no idea I've never been to Louisiana, but it just seems like for such a large state that I think you associate with a lot of forests and bayous, I thought maybe there would be more, but it is huge, it's over 600,000. and acres, it has Bayou's bought cypress and old growth forest pine spread across seven different parishes. Designated back in 1930, after years of campaigning work and spearheaded by Caroline Dorman, who actually became the first woman to be hired by the National Forest Service, she's kind of like the queen of that National Forest and she's really celebrated there, which I thought was really cool. That's super cool. The name Kisachi was derived from a group of indigenous peoples, the Kichai, who lived in what is now the National Forest for thousands of years, and tucked within this forest is Wolf Rock Cave, which is the Louisiana's only known cave, so the only known cave and the only National Forest in this state. The unique geologic formation, which is more of kind of like a large rocky overhang with some tunnel-like rooms rather than a deep, dark, cavernous cave that I think a lot of people envision, it has been drawing people to its depths for millennia. The cave itself dates back roughly 30 million years and evidence of early peoples, including items like arrowheads and fish hooks and various different stone tools have been found within and around it, but that isn't the only reason people venture to it today, because despite over 4500 years of human activity, nothing quite pikes the public's fascination quite like an outlaw. With any great legend, fact and fiction are bound to mix, and this is the case for this portion of the cave's history. Stories of it being used as a union army garrison during the Civil War and a hideout for people like Jesse James have all swirled about. Long with stories of one of the most infamous and deadly bandits of the 19th century, John Allen Merle. Born in Virginia in 1806, Merle was raised on a farm with seven siblings, all three of Merle's brothers were involved in criminal activities of one sort or another, including horse theft, inciting riots, grand larceny theft and counter-fitting, and one of his youngest brothers was running a brothel by the time he was 20 years old. As a teenager, Merle was charged with horse theft and was sentenced to a very fitting punishment for the time, which was 30 lashes, the pillory branding and one year in prison. Branding? Serious business, horse theft, wasn't it? They took it very seriously. I actually have a pillory in my hometown. At the site of the first meeting house, I drove by every day. See, I always think of pilloried as like, the pilloried is like to be shunned or whatever, like now, or to be attacked or like a Twitter pile on, but it's an actual now, like a thing. I was confused with, I always thought they were called what I was looking at growing up as a stockade, but their difference of the pillory is the one that you're standing and you put your head in your hands in between and it's like a punishment device. See, I thought it was like a doing word and now I'm learning it's a noun, so there you go. And I guess the difference with the stockade is you're just in a different position. I think it your feet and your ankles are also bound, but I'm no expert. So John became well known as a troublemaker and eventually became the head of a large gang of thieves and robbers known as the Mystic Clan, who operated primarily along the Natchez Trace and the Mississippi River. The Natchez Trace began as a trail used by indigenous people before became a major route for early American traders and travelers. Notoriously dangerous around that time, the path was rugged and known for outlaws and bandits who attacked travelers at roadside ends. Today, it is a 444 mile paved recreational route that winds through states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee and is managed by Cassie Say it with me. The National Park Service. There it is. Merle often used his knowledge of scripture and God to gain the trust of his victims, so his dad was a pastor. So he had a really thorough knowledge of scripture and he used that as kind of a ploy because he would pose as a preacher and held meetings of prayer and worship for locals while he was in different towns. And while he was doing that, his companions or the other members of his gang would go into their homes to rob them, steal all their things and their horses to his big ruse. He is also said to have posed as an abolitionist, giving false promises to groups of enslaved peoples that he would aid them in their journey to freedom only to portray them later. After gaining their trust, he would instruct them to steal their enslavers' horses and meet him in the woods. When they arrived, he would turn them back into their enslaver for reward money or end their lives and keep the horses. So very bad guy. He like a Wild West Jim Jones so far. The group exchanged signs and formulated secret handshakes to identify one another as well as planting particular species of trees and plants near different hideouts as inconspicuous signals to other group members while they were traveling or they used coated carvings that have been later found in caves, rock shelters and trees. In 1834, he was arrested, indicted and convicted on charges of stealing enslaved people and served a ten-year sentence of heart labor, a Tennessee state penitentiary in Nashville. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 38 in 1844, nine months after his release, because he got granted early release because he got sick. And on his deathbed, he denied committing any murders. However, he was reputed to have robbed and killed around 400 people. And that number is actually displayed on a bunch of different historical markers all throughout the south. He was interred in a church yard. However, souvenir hunters dug up his corpse and removed parts of his body, because very soon after he died, he became very notorious and people already knew who he was. So they dug him up, sold parts of his body, and historical sources suggest that his head was pickled in a jar and made the rounds at different county fairs throughout the south, and you could pay ten cents to go and see it. Ten cents a gander. And then one of his thumbs, or at least whatever is left of it, is at the Tennessee State Museum. Who's thumb is it? Is it a thumb or a toe or something? It's a toe. There's like out there and you can do shots of tequila. Oh, I've heard of that. We know someone who did that. Yeah, we do. Grim. I can't remember whose toe it is. It's a much more fun use of body parts, isn't it? I mean, it's a really fun party story if you have done that. Who needs a tequila worm when you can have a toe? I have got the worm before and I just I don't see the appeal. I really don't. Does it get you drunker? That was the lore. That if you got the tequila worm because it was soaked in the alcohol, you got so much drunker. I don't think I ate it. I think I pumped it off on someone, but it sort of looked like paper almost. Oh, okay. My drinking needs are over. So, so morals and nefarious deeds earned him the attention of the likes of Mark Twain and garnered him several different nicknames, including the Great Western land pirate, Reverend Devil, and Terror of the Natchez Trace. However, much of his story may not even be true. Much of his crimes and portions of his life have been exaggerated and sensationalized, tracing back to an author by the name of Augustus Walton, who published a pamphlet of Merle's life and crimes six months after his incarceration. And it is widely believed that they had some sort of beef in life. And when he published this paper, he totally exaggerated and embellished a bunch of different things, particularly about his crimes and things that he was involved with in order to boost sales of this particular pamphlet. And it just kind of took off from there and spun out like crazy. So, that's probably why later on on his deathbed, Merle was like, Hey, actually, I never did any of that. And it's because I was fighting with this guy, and he made up a bunch of lies about me. But who's to really say? That's a crazy pettiness. I know. Like, I'm going to create an entire story. You killed 400 people. It's like, what did I ever do to you? It contains stories of Merle organizing and inciting rebellions within enslaved communities, and fear about potential uprisings spread. As a result, enslaved people were actually tortured by their enslavers for information, quote, unquote, about any sort of uprisings that were brewing that they read about and kind of got really nervous about because of what was being said in these pamphlets. And it also resulted in the hanging of five different men who were alleged to be co-conspirators with Merle, even though there was no concrete evidence about it. And may have not even existed. Right. Correct. Fast forward about 80 years as more people settled the surrounding area in the 1950s and 60s and back to Wolf Rock Cave. This cave that once allegedly served as one of Merle's infamous hideouts began serving as an unofficial campsite for outdoor enthusiasts in a very, very popular spot for teenagers who were indulging in underage drinking and partying. By the 1970s, concerns about safety and preservation led the US Forest Service to clean up the cave. There was some of it that was unstable, so they detonated and sealed off the very back portion that had a couple of different chambers. So you're unable to go into the entirety of it anymore, but you can still visit it today. It still remains super popular. There's a trail that goes right out to it, and people enjoy it for all different types of reasons now, and they do still look for inscriptions or coded carvings from the Mystic clan and John Murl. - As you would, I want to go. - So that is the story of Wolf Rock Cave and John Murl's story that may or may not be true. - I don't care, I don't care, I believe it. (laughs) Well, I guess in just the vein of stories that may or may not be true. I have one, that is mostly true, but there's just a lot of legend around it. And I also decided to focus on an outlaw as well, a totally different outlaw, but also commemorated on the scenic byway. So the next stop that we're going to be going on on the Louisiana Myths and Legend byway is the Maryville Cemetery. And the cemetery might look pretty normal to anyone who's just visiting it until you realize who is buried there. So if you follow the outer fence line, you'll find a grave unlike any others. Separated completely from the rest of the headstones is a wooden marker with the name Charles Leather-Britches Smith, one of the most infamous outlaws in all of Louisiana's history. Leather-Britches was rumored to be a fugitive from East Texas on the run from murder charges who arrived in Maryville, Louisiana around 1910. Many believe Charles Smith was an alias, which I think is pretty. I mean, that's the most generic name I think you could think of. So they're like, that's not your name. But some people suspected that he was a Texas fugitive named Ben Mayet. He earned the nickname Leather-Britches because he always wore Buckskin trousers. I mean, was that unusual at the time? What was the fashion back then? 'Cause I like he changed his name to a really generic name, but then wore trousers that made everybody take notice of him that they gave him a whole nickname about it. I feel like it wasn't the fact that his trousers were so out of the ordinary. I think it's like, he never wore anything else. I see. I see. The capsule wardrobe is like, I've got a solid look. I'm going to start calling myself Hannah Yoga Pants-Maguaya. (laughing) That's always ever. Well, he arrived in Maryville, just as Southwestern Louisiana was being transformed by the booming lumber industry. So basically the railroad came through and once the railroad was built, the lumber industry in this particular area in Louisiana just took off and all of these towns came in. A lot of people came in looking for money, but with it also came a lot of gambling, a lot of outlaws were drawn to the area and it was kind of a lawless place that people like. Leather-Britches were really attracted to, especially while on the run from the police. And part of the fun of Leather-Britches' story is trying to separate the truth from his folklore. Because according to local legend, he was one of the deadliest marksmen anyone had ever seen. With a pair of cult revolvers, strap to his hips, people claimed he could shoot birds out of the sky in mid-flight or hit a fox squirrel at a full sprint through trees. Whether any of that is true is impossible to know, but what is well-documented is the fear that he inspired in the townspeople there. Everyone there was afraid of him. His reputation only grew with stories that if deputies ever got too close, he would escape into the woods and never be found. He was known to know all the trails, all the creeks, all the hidden hideouts. One of the most infamous tales says that Leather-Britches approached a family's home around dinner time, drew one of his cult revolvers and shot the head off a chicken wandering through the yard. He tossed the bird towards the woman who was standing on the porch and said, "I'll be back for dinner." (laughs) Okay, that's kind of-- I don't want any ketone animal cruelty, but that I would listen. Well, according to the local legend, he showed up later and dinner was on the table. That bet. Leather-Britches arrival also coincided with one of the most volatile periods in Louisiana's history, because as the timber industry boomed, there was tension between lumber mill owners and their workers, and at one point, it just got really volatile. Basically, what was happening here is that the companies controlled nearly every aspect of their lives. They owned the grocery stores. They had the banks, they had everything, and they were paying the lumber workers minimum wage. So they formed a protest on July 7th, 1912, when the workers went to a demonstration in the Galway Mill in Grebo, but it turned into a deadly fight. In just 10 minutes, at least four people were killed, and 40 others were wounded, making it one of the bloodiest labor conflicts in Southern history. And this actually is another marker on the scenic byway where you can go to where this shootout happened. It's in DeRitter, Louisiana. There's a marker there that says shootout at Grebo, and you can go to the location where this all went down. Leather-Britches, of course, the marksman he was, was heavily involved in the shootout, and when the shooting was over, authorities began arresting several of the members, and they arrested everyone who was allegedly involved, except for Leather-Britches. For weeks, he managed to stay one step ahead of every posse that was sent after him. Some believed that sympathetic union members had hit him, others thought local families secretly brought him food and warned him whenever deputies were nearby, and many believed that he was just out in the woods because he knew them so well, and no one could ever find him. However, eventually his luck ran out. In September 1912, a posse led by deputy sheriff, Del Charlene, tracked Leather-Britches to the pump house branch, a secluded wooded area just outside of Maryville, where he was rumored to have been hiding. Exactly what happened next depends on who's telling the story. The official account claimed deputies ordered him to surrender before he reached for his rifle, forcing them to open fire. But local legend tells a different story. They say that they found him asleep and riddled him with bullets before he ever had a chance to defend himself. Others believe someone may have betrayed his hiding place in that lead to finding him. But whatever happened, Leather-Britches by the end of the day was dead, but his story did not end there. The posse that found him loaded his body into a wooden coffin and sent it back by train to Maryville, where it was packed with ice to preserve his body before it was propped against the wall outside of a Maryville jail. There he was put on public display so everyone could see the man that had spent years evading capture and could allegedly never be caught. Residents lined up outside the jail to look into the coffin while deputies traveled from Texas hoping to identify the body as the fugitive named Ben Mayet that I mentioned at the beginning. But they got there and they said that his characteristics didn't line up, this wasn't the same guy. So instead, they couldn't decide who this person Charlie Smith, they were never able to actually identify who he was. No family ever came forward to claim his body, so the people of Maryville found themselves divided over what should happen next to him. Some believed that he deserved a proper burial in the town cemetery, but others insisted that a man with this reputation and had been wanted for murder and was this very scary outlawed gunman should not be in the same cemetery with all of their local family and people. So they came to a compromise and they decided to bury him on the very, very edge of the cemetery boundary outside. They're like, you can't be with our families, but you can be in the cemetery line. And there are some versions of his legend that claim that he was buried face down. And I don't know why they would want to do that. I think it's like a last, like a shameful, yeah. The original grave was reportedly marked with a cedar board placed by local residents, but over the decades that marker deteriorated and its exact location was forgotten. Years later, towns people erected a stone monument and what they believed was the correct location to ensure the story of leather bridges wasn't lost. However, then another local resident who said that he had learned the exact location of his burial from his uncle who knew leather bridges in life said that it was actually in another location and not where the stone marker was. And then his stone marker disappeared. What? So after that, they erected a wooden marker that is the one that is visible today. However, the location of it may or may not be the location of his actual grave site and the name of leather bridges to this day has never been verified. So we don't know if he's buried there or who he is. International man of mystery. He's a regular old and timey James Bond, doesn't he? Shooting the heads off chickens to do some of the ladies where I want to say sugar bridges. The bridge. Also known as sugar bridges. I love it. Seen setting Louisiana, old and timey, you guys took us and it's what you picture when you think of Louisiana, right? Though I did, I would have thought there would have been more caves and more national parks, but definitely enough lampirots. There's a lot of outlaws doing a lot of things that we're not really sure if or when they happened, but they sure make for a good story. And I'm so glad you guys said that you like when we do historical cases as well, because we don't do them often. But we have got a historical case today. And it is, of course, in Louisiana. Yay, amazing. Felix and Matilda Brussard lived on Rock Street in Lake Charles, Louisiana. They had a modest little home, a few feet away from the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railway Line. And usually this house would have been an absolute hive of activity with their three children, Margaret 8, Louis 6 and Alberta, who the family called Sissy, who was just three years old. but on the 22nd of January. In January 1912, the house sat completely silent, because inside the couple and all three children lay dead. Their skulls had been smashed in with the dull side of a pole axe, and on the door, someone had hand written a Bible passage. It was Psalm 9, and it read, "When he make it in position for blood, he forgeteth not the cry of the humble." And underneath it were the words "human", "five". Naturally, it shook the local community to its core. Then again, it was starting to feel sickeningly familiar, because this nightmare was far from isolated. It was just one link in a devastating chain. In fact, just three days earlier, another whole family had been brutally murdered with an axe, about 50 miles to the west. And in total, between 1910 and 1912, 11 entire families, 45 people were slain in the area, in an almost identical way. The police were convinced that it was the work of one killer. But their lead suspect was not a vengeful axe man, settling scores across the state. It was a 15-year-old girl. According to the police, courts and contemporary records, she was a terrifying, bloodthirsty cult leader, the high priestess of a dark voodoo church obsessed with human sacrifice. I really don't believe it. She didn't do it. She's innocent. I don't know if you saw my eyebrow creeping up like, hmm, a 15-year-old girl. Hey man, this is what the police thought. This is what they thought. This 15-year-old girl had murdered 11 families in two years. But, you know, she's not a regular 15-year-old girl. She is the high priestess of a voodoo church, so we have to factor that in to our calculations on her guilt. And if this girl had been responsible, she would easily rank among the worst serial killers in US history. But, as you ladies are already suspecting if you scratch, even just the surface of this story, almost everything about what we've been told starts to fall apart. This, as we've titled it, is red-handed after dark, the voodoo edition. I love that. So, we are in the 1910s in Louisiana. And we did a shorthand on Louisiana folklore quite recently, so you can go and listen to that if you want to know even more. But, the short version is, "Casian and Creole People" are the descendants of French Catholics. If you take them and you mix it with Haitian voodoo and African folk beliefs, that creates. Probably, the United States' most unique culture. The only thing I can ever think of when anyone mentions Louisiana is that it's where Gypsy Rose Blanchard is from. And she's from a really small town, and I cannot remember the name of her, but it's something like, like, give up and die Louisiana. It's like something like that. It's just, like, middle of nowhere. Rotten Bend, Louisiana. You've got no hope, Louisiana. It's somewhere like that, but I cannot remember what the actual word is. And that's the only thing that sort of pops into my head. But if I had to ask you guys, what is the first thing that sort of crops up in your brain when you think about Louisiana? True blood. Oh, fair, yeah. Oh, yes. I love that show. That was so good. Yeah. And I've been reliving it shout out to our friends, Ash and Alena, over at Morbid. They do another podcast, the re-watcher, and they're re-watching and going over all of true blood. So I have literally been in the true blood thick of things again, very recently. And it definitely give that's all I can think of when I think of Louisiana is probably because I haven't been there and I have to create my own memories, but I'll live I could easily through vampires and things. I think Anna Pakwin was all very first like proper celebrity listener. Yeah, I remember. I think a by use, I think a alligator's and by use and really in Jean Lafitte in the thick of yes, Jean Lafitte. I don't know what that is. He was a actual part of sea pirate. And we did an episode on him. There's the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park there. And that's the episode we covered and allegedly he had some of his treasures in the by use of Louisiana. And it's kind of like a people are always on the hunt for finding his last cash. Oh, I see. I think the thing that has like done Louisiana dirty as far as my opinion is concerned is I just watched the most recent season of outlast on Netflix. And if anyone has watched that, you know exactly what I'm talking about because the horrible little gremlin man on their Joseph Marbra is Louisiana accent talking nonstop about the fucking by use acting like a total piece of shit all the way through that season. I just wanted to punch him in the face so hard. So I'm sorry. I hated him so much. Giving Louisiana. Anyway, in 1910, which is where our story is Louisiana wasn't a place where people with different beliefs just sort of coexisted people were perfectly happy borrowing from all of these different types of places. For him here, a voodoo talisman there. None of it was mutually exclusive. Everyone can sort of have a go. So the year before the Lake Charles murders, a family was killed in Lafayette Louisiana on the 24th of February 1911 30 year old Alexander Andres and his wife Mimi and their two children were all also brutalized with an axe. And two days later police arrested 30 year old Raymond Barnabet. Barnabet was an Afro Creole farm worker. And he was arrested on the strength of three testimonies by his own family members, his common law wife Deena said that he left the house at around 7pm on the night in question and returned at 2am demanding dinner. And then on top of that their daughter 16 year old Clementine had a different version. Clementine said that Raymond had actually returned just after daybreak and she said he was smoking a pipe and he was covered in blood and brains. Oh and brains. That's quite the description. On the 19th of October 1911 Raymond was tried for the murders found guilty in sentence to death by hanging. But his lawyers argued for a new trial which he was granted. Why? Well mostly because he'd been so blind drunk during his first trial that he could barely speak and we all need a second go you know. And if it hadn't been for that wine soaked delay, he may well have been hanged. But as it was Raymond was saved because yet another black family had been savagely murdered just down the road in Lafayette. They were the Randalls, a family of six. Norbert Randall had been shot, but Esmer Randall and her four children were all killed with the family's acts. Just like all of the other victims that had preceded them, the police were now forced to think again about Raymond Barnabep. Since he'd been in jail, he couldn't have killed the Randall family. Five families were now dead. That was almost 40 people. All of them were black and all of them had been killed with the blunt side of the family's own poll acts which was left at the scene of every crime. And the back doors of each house were also always left open and nothing was ever stolen. The police were convinced that the spate of family killings were connected and I think yeah definitely I would agree with that. And now, since it couldn't really be Raymond, they started looking elsewhere. Admittedly though, they didn't look that far elsewhere. After the Randalls had been discovered, a crowd gathered outside and in that crowd was Raymond's daughter, 16-year-old Clementine. She worked as a housekeeper for a nearby family and that apparently was enough of a connection for the police to search Clementine's room. Inside, according to a local newspaper, they found a dress, an apron and underwear that were and this is a quote saturated with blood and covered with human brains. The clothes were examined by a doctor Metz who said that they were a match but I don't really know what a match means in 1912. He's so ahead of his time, but kind of DNA testing that they have in 1910. And when the police arrested Clementine, she was reported to have a sphinx-like attitude, showing no remorse and laughing as she was taken away and presumably asking riddles of people. She was probably laughing because it was so ridiculous. She was probably like, "I'm 16, what's wrong with you guys?" Yeah, it's just classic, classic 15-year-old mean girl behavior and they're just like, "Get her." Yeah, I would have been arrested for sure at 16. It would have been like she did it. Yes. So at the time of her arrest, Clementine said that she was innocent, but then she was subject to what the New Orleans Police Department called a third-degree examination. And this has been written about and studied a lot since all this went down. And basically a third-degree examination is essentially just torturing the suspect until they tell you what you want to hear. They get the confession that they want, but like, okay. So I guess people who may be questioned the confession, you still have to answer, "Well, what about Clementine's bloody clothes?" Remember, it was a match after all. Well, lots of reports from the time exposed some extremely sloppy handling of said evidence. To the point that Clementine's clothes could well have been just carried in a pile with those from the actual Randall family's blood-soaked clothes, so like, they literally could have just picked all those clothes up together and been like, "Oh look, it's a match! All of the Randall family's blood is all over her clothes as well." And it also could just as easily have also been menstrual blood that they found on her underwear. Yeah. It's 1912 and she was 16. That was my first thought when you first said it until the apron was covered. I was like, "Okay. That's a lot." That was my first thought until you said brains, yeah. And from her examination onwards, Clementine changed her tune. She said that she was ordered by her church, the Church of Sacrifice, to carry out the killings and that her victims had been killed for disobedience. As she made this confession, she laughed as she spoke and swayed in her chair. But no record of a Church of Sacrifice has ever been found. Most people now think that this was actually a mishearing of sanctified church, which is a pretty common name for a Pentecostal church at the time. But once the name was out there, the train had well and truly left the station. When it came to black criminals, the press in the Jim Croweer itself had one hell of a sick imagination. And a lot of this focused on exoticizing and demonizing black religions, so very soon the killings just became known as the voodoo murders. One paper imaginatively described a fetish religion defined by sexual orgasm, the snake god blood wild dances white rum and the heads of slaughtered children. Clementine became the high priestess of a fanatical occult sect, who believed that human sacrifice would grant them immortality. As she told a jury, "I am the woman of the sacrifice sect. I killed them all, men, women, and babies, and I hugged the dead bodies to my heart." Clementine claimed that when she was about 14, she and some friends were out on the town in New Iberia, and to spice up the evening, they decided to buy some conjures from a doctor of voodoo, a kind of spiritual folk magic, which like sure, we've all dabbled in the dark arts when we were teenagers, so not massively surprising there. And Clementine said that her group believed that the conjure would protect them from any responsibility, so to test it out, they killed a family and reign, and when they got away with it, they decided to carry on. On the stand, Clementine even named this voodoo doctor, who was actually found and questioned, and it turns out that he did actually practice voodoo, but he said he'd never met Clementine Barnabet. Clementine named a string of other accomplices, but these names were never consistent. And when questioned, they all had solid alibis. Clementine Barnabet took back her confessions immediately after the trial, but it was too late. The police had their perpetrator. Even when two more families were killed in the same way on consecutive nights in January 1912, while Clementine was in jail, their conclusion didn't budge. One of these murdered families was the Brusard family, and theirs is the story we started with, with the Bible Psalm written on the wall, followed by the words 'human five'. And supposed sacrifice cult now started to be referred to in the press as 'the human five'. The El Paso Herald wrote that the cult held the belief in the mysticism of the figure five, which has always been held by primitive people. Her attorney said that her confessions were unreliable and inconsistent, but perhaps knowing that this wouldn't be enough, he sought a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Three doctors evaluated her and wrote, 'We have found the subject to be morally depraved, unusually ignorant and possessing a low-grade morality, but not deficient in such a manner as to constitute her imbecile or idiotic. We found in this case no sign of an inquired insanity.' And so Clementine was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. On the 4th of April 1912, she made her one and only statement directly to the media. She sang Christian hymns like 'near on my god to thee' and was even handed cigars by journalist, which she smoked. Apart from one very brief escape attempt, Clementine was a model prisoner in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. In 1923, when she was 28 years old, the prison doctor, a man named Dr. Sterling, announced that Clementine had been cured. He'd employed a prisoner called Wyatt H. Ingram as his assistant, who'd studied medicine on the outside. Now, what exactly they did to Clementine, we really don't know. But their report is not promising, as said the following. The woman's desire to slay came from a perversion of her sexual instinct and operation, to cut out bloodlust from her body was performed by the facisions. They said afterwards, she had 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. Which like, what are they curing her off if they said that there was no insanity? I guess they're curing her of a bloodlust. That's it. They're like, she's not insane. She's just very lusty for blood. And we've cured her off. It sounds like they did a little bit on me, aren't they? Yeah. That's what I. It feels weird and I don't know why, but the fact that they're saying the woman's desire to slay came from a perversion of her sexual instinct and an operation to cut out bloodlust from her body was performed. I'm like, lobotomy or was it something? Or like a hysterectomy or something? Sexually. Yeah. Either way, it sounds horrific. Whatever it was, it was considered so successful that she was released after just 10 years on the inside, despite being linked to more than 40 axmas. And after her release, she disappeared. Maybe she intentionally managed to reinvent herself and leave her name behind. Or maybe she became a recluse, so damaged by the ordeal that she couldn't face the outside world. Either way, Clementine Barnabet was never seen again. But that's not the end of the story, because it leaves an unimaginable spree of identical killings across Louisiana and East Texas over several years. And if you want to know more about that, we would recommend that you guys read the book, The Man From The Train by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James. They argue that the dots point towards a German immigrant called Paul Mühler. They linked him to more than 100 victims across the southern US and Germany. All of the victims were near train tracks, and the James's say he hopped trains to avoid detection. But then other people linked the axe murders to another serial killer, the axe man of New Orleans, who operated in the late 1910s. I was wondering when he was going to show up. Yeah. Had there are multiple options of who this person could be, but the axe murderer of New Orleans sounds like a pretty fitting person for these axe murders not that far from New Orleans. But more than a century later, we still don't know who wrote human five on the Brusard store or whether Clementine Barnabet had anything to do with it at all. There are some people who say that there was absolutely no serial killer in the first place. In 1910 to 1914, show a huge anomaly in death records with the numbers of axe murders spiking all over the country, and every house had an accident. And high profile, sensationalized crimes do tend to have their copycats. If you could also rely on it somehow being tied to a supposed voody serial killer or blood drinking high priestess laughing and swaying from the dock, then it's all the easier to get away with it. And as they say in the man from the train, the period from 1910 to 1912 was the era of the axe murderer. Murder leaves the idea of murder hanging in the air. And I suppose pretty quickly everyone had to go to war, so they forgot about it. Yeah. They got all their axe murdering fun in before, before they had to go over the top, yeah. Well, that's it, guys. That's the story of Clementine Barnabet alleged voodoo high priestess and convicted murderer of at least 45 people, but let her out after 10 years after they did God knows what, which will never know. I think it's probably not a 15 year old girl, even if she was, you know, a bit bored and dabbling about with a bit of voodoo or who do or whatever. It doesn't really strike me as that, but yeah, we'll never know. This is why the historical cases, they're fun, but can be ultimately kind of a bit unsatisfying because we don't have an answer, but maybe it's more fun because the answer can be whatever you want it to be. Yeah. I have a hard time believing that it was her because, especially because these are families, I just don't see a world where a 15 year old girl can overpower all these men and the families as well. That just seems so unrealistic to me. While speaking of you saying, you know, that you like doing the historical mystery cases, but they're kind of frustrating sometimes. Do you have a favorite genre, I mean, within the true crime umbrella that y'all cover? Is there either a particular case or type of story? Definitely. When we first started Red Handed all those years ago, we really used to do the cases that were done, adjudicated. We were doing a lot of the classic cases, but also more recently over the past like three or four years, we've really been doing the big cases that are like unfolding, the big live stories that are in the headlines and yeah, if you can even see as the trend has changed, I think years ago, people had a real obsession with serial killers and that's kind of tied away now. I think there's been a real shift towards like the more domestic, the more intimate killings and they're definitely the cases I enjoy the most to research and to write. So it's like the person who's never even got like a speeding ticket who then ends up just murdering their spouse and then coming on TV. and like crying in front of the news camera is pretending like they don't know what happened and they're part of the searches. Yeah, oh my god, I think it's just like the audacity of it and the fact that it feels so rooted in like the ordinary for all of us. Whereas the serial killer, it just feels so far from anybody's ability to even comprehend. Whereas this is just, yeah. And statistically you are most likely to be murdered by somebody you know. I agree. The serial killer is and it's not to say that it's been said and done because I think that they're so intriguing for various reasons that have definitely clearly captivated, you know, generations of people now. But yeah, there is something to be said about. They just feel like someone you would never run into. Even though they did, you know, they had bunnies and stranger beside me and all that. However, you know, there are so many people who commit murder that are like, oh my gosh, I was my neighbor or that's my cousin or whatever and I couldn't I can't even believe that happened. So yeah, I can understand that. Do you ever get like overwhelmed with I saw actually, and I think I saw like a teaser for this episode where you're like, I'm doing some research on something and it is stressing me out and you guys better enjoy this because it is deeply disturbing. Do you ever feel that because we very quickly pivoted from solely true crime for that reason where like this is just we're not built for this. Do you ever feel like that or if you do, what do you do to kind of alleviate the heaviness of your your full-time job? It does take quite a lot to get to me, but we're at the moment covering um, The Golden Stakeholder, um, Joseph, uh, Daniel, and because that is so sort of home invasion, and like the thing that really unsettles me the most about it is that he would be in the house for hours before he would do anything and just wait and just stand really still like in a cupboard. And I've quite recently like moved house multiple times, so I'm in like very unfamiliar settings. More often than I have ever been in my entire life and I just happen to be writing this one because he would go sometimes months before to like case the houses and then he would come back. The thing that he wanted to make the most clear to all of his victims is that he had been watching for some time. I think it's always a home invasion ones of the nearly 10 years we've been doing this. There's only a handful of cases that have ever like made me lose sleep. The most recent one that did it for me was that I know her student murders when I wrote that script. The fact that you you should feel the most safe in your home and especially with that one, the fact that every single person in that house was there were six people sleeping in that house. Again, you immediately feel safe. You're not on your own and every single person that was killed was in bed with another person. They weren't even on their own. It's like nothing could save you in that scenario. And there was a dog in the house. You know, what more do you need to feel safe? Absolutely terrifying. I literally couldn't sleep for like a week after I wrote that case. They can all creep up on you. You never know which one's going to get you. Do you want to give our listeners a little pitch for any upcoming episodes you guys have got or any road trips that they might have planned and which episodes you would recommend? Well, I guess the first thing that comes top of mind for us is that if you want to see us live, we're about to go on tour, which is very exciting. We're going to be on tour in October and November this year. And if you want to be scarred by some of our episodes, we have a few for you. We have almost 400 episodes now. We cover a wide variety of topics, but kind of going off of the things that are most personally disturbing. I think we both have different answers. But for me is the wildlife based ones just because we spend so much time outdoors and unfortunately for us, we have the same taste in landscapes and places to go as like top tier predators. So because of that, we spend a lot of time coexisting with them. And wildlife human interactions is my favorite thing in the world to talk about. I love wildlife more than anything. And the animal attack cases that we have covered and night of the Grizzlies was really one of our most impactful. Are you familiar with night of the Grizzlies? No. Elevator pitch. Cassie, take it away. It was your episode. I love that. Cassie, go. In the 1960s in Glacier National Park, there was one night that happened, I think it was August 12, 1967 actually, that it happened on a single night. There were two separate grizzly mollings on two separate sides of the park that resulted in two fatalities. And it all stemmed back to the practices that were happening inside the park because the park service had been actually baiting bears and they would put out trash pits and literally had bleachers for people to come and watch these bears fight over food together. They weren't taking bear safety very seriously. And one of the mollings happened very close to one of these bear baiting trash areas where a woman was camping with her friend. And she woke up in the middle of the night being dragged off by a grizzly bear. And the second one happened the same night very similar, but it was a bear that had been a problem bear that had been breaking into cabins and had been very aggressive towards picnickers and stuff. And there was a group of friends who were camping outside with their dog. And this bear was very emaciated. Teeth were not as sharp as they used to be and saw this girl in her sleeping bag and took her and her friends all heard her screaming as she was dragged away and couldn't do anything about it. And it changed, it changed the trajectory of how the National Park Service Manages bears and how they take it a lot more seriously. I won't go into all the details, but it is extremely gruesome and it's very scary and it will make you never leave your food out while you are in bear country ever again. That is for sure. And that's kind of like what we love to do is yes, these stories at face value are horrifying and deeply sad and we take them very seriously, but also we love that there's, you know, real life for us. These stories changed the way that the park service did things and by extension changed the way that we recreate outdoors because you can hear all of these safety tips when you're going somewhere to a National Park, like don't go near the edge, don't do this, don't do XYZ. And it can kind of feel like, murmur, murmur, like, droning on, you know, a teacher telling you what to do and what not to do. But when you hear the stories of why these rules are in place, it's so much more impactful and memorable and it makes you take things a little bit more seriously. But all of that to say, it doesn't deter us from being outdoors. If anything, it fuels our love for the outdoors and deepens our respect. And that's why we started the show is to spread that love and knowledge with everybody else. That's awesome, guys. Thanks very much for sharing that. I think one of the like best hinge prompts I've ever seen was like the question was what's your most controversial opinion? And this guy had written that grizzly man is a comedy. I'd be like, what do you know about Timothy Treadwell? Cannot remember a single other thing about him, but you know, very quick, I guess, pitch from us. We've done a lot of the big crimes like Jambunet Ramsey, the staircase, et cetera. And we also, as I said, have started doing more and more of these like big unfolding cases. We did the D4VD case about obviously that singer in the US whose Tesla was discovered with the body of a 14 year old girl decomposing in it. So yeah, horrible, horrible stuff. That trial is coming up and we are staying very much plugged in. A case that I'm currently writing at the moment, which people might be interested in a big, big case in the US right now, Lindsay Clancy, a young woman, similar age to us actually in her 30s, lived just outside of Boston and had three children, five, three, and eight months old, and was clearly suffering with very extreme postpartum psychosis undiagnosed, even though she had been to doctors again and again and again and begged for help. And she ended up killing all three of her children and trying to kill herself. And that episode will be coming out once the trial is done. And yeah, just how like it's not just Lindsay Clancy on trial, it's the provisions for mental health care and how she was so objectively failed by everybody and how it led to the deaths of three children and what should be the adequate reaction to that. But anyway, we've got a whole mix. Come check it out. That case is actually a bit close to, we grew up in New England and she's from the town my cousin grew up in and I spent a lot of time there. So it's another case that we, you know, just by, you know, location were also really heavily invested in. Yes, yeah. And then I guess the last last thing. So a lot of people discover us on road trips because you just type in your location of where you're going, but we have a really cool interactive map on our website where you can scroll the globe and you can look at where you're going and there's these little, you know, markers on there that will link to different episodes that are associated with different locations. So if you want to scroll our map, if you have a location you're going to on vacation, especially for UK based listeners if you're coming to the United States on vacation and you're interested in what unfolded in, I don't know, Louisiana. We also have some UK based stories too. Of course we do. Check it out, guys. And yeah. Check out their tour, check out the forecast. Thank you everybody. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you guys later. Bye. Bye. Goodbye.