Clementine Barnabet

Barnabet is believed to have been born in 1894, by her own account in or around St. Martinville, Louisiana. Her parents were Dina Porter and Raymond Barnabet, and "Ferran", though "Ferran" appears to be a corruption or nickname of Zepherin. with contemporary coverage reporting her as a "half-breed", "half-blood", "mulatto", and, inaccurately and apparently by her own account, "only one-eighth negro". The Barnabets moved to Lafayette in 1909. Barnabet was 18 years old during her first trial in November 1911 and 19 years old at the time of her second confession in April 1912. == Murders ==

Andrus family murder On February 24, 1911, the Andrus family was murdered in their home in Lafayette. The Barnabet family were neighbors to the Andruses and on February 26, Raymond Barnabet was arrested by Lafayette Parish Sheriff Louis Lacoste on suspicion of murder, after a "mistress" implicated him in the crime, but Raymond was released for insufficient evidence within the week. She was arrested the same day, after blood was found on a back entry gate of the Guidry residence and further came under suspicion due to a search of Barnabet's bedroom finding more blood on an apron, dress, and some underwear. Barnabet initially denied involvement, admitting to the murders following a "third-degree" examination in New Orleans. First trial and confession During her trial for both the Andrus and Randall murders, Barnabet acted erratically by rocking back and forth in her chair while laughing. She admitted to her role in both cases and testified that she acted under the orders of the Church of Sacrifice, an alleged offshoot of a Christ's Sanctified Holy Church congregation in Lake Charles, Louisiana, stating that she had committed the ten murders because the families had "refused to obey message from God" and that she was acting alongside an unspecified number of accomplices. She also claimed to have murdered a woman and her children in Rayne while visiting her sister Pauline. By the end of January 1912, the murders of 26 black Louisiana residents were attributed to the Church of Sacrifices as ritualistic human sacrifices without evidence. While Clementine and Zepherin were both held in custody, the ax murders of families continued. Second confession On April 2, Barnabet confessed to involvement in 35 murders, claiming to have committed seventeen of them "with her own hands", later revising the number to twenty. She also claimed to have "caressed" the bodies of the victims by cradling their heads to her chest, but then picked out families with infants, even though none of the later targeted victims had newborns. The interrogations were led by Acadia Parish Sheriff Louis Fontenot, Chief Detective Peck, and Deputy Saul Broussard. On April 4, she repeated her confession to the press, after smoking cigars provided by journalists and singing Christian hymns such as "Nearer My God to Thee" and "Lead Kindly Light". Barnabet was reportedly excited about having her photo appear in the newspaper. On April 6, Barnabet claimed that her accomplice were targeting three families "near Lafayette", totalling 13 people, for "sacrifice". Her father Raymond, who had been rearrested due to his daughter's confession, again pleaded his innocence and supported the theory that Barnabet killed the Andrus family, claiming he she went out the night of the murders and that he found bloodied clothes in her room. Barnabet further claimed that she acquired "conjure bags" (a good luck charm found in Hoodoo), described as "two crossed needles, bound in thread and wrapped in red flannel and a few old rags", This spurred Barnabet into committing her first murder in Rayne, Louisiana in 1910 to test whether or not the claim of magical protection was true. or to have bought them from a "hoodoo doctor" in New Iberia, and that she got them alongside four friends, her alleged future accomplices, who then drew lots to decide who would test the effectiveness of the charms. The Times-Democrat stated that other voodoo practitioners identified the "conjure bags" as a charm meant to heal back pain from rheumatism. but still talked about having killed with others. as well as two murders in Crowley and Rayne, It was also reported that Barnabet had been the one to distribute the "conjure bags" to her accomplices rather than received the charms alongside them. infamous at the time for the 1907 killing of a white police officer. Newspapers invented descriptions of mysticism surrounding the number 5, falsely claiming that families of five were being targeted, buckets of blood were collected and that specific "rituals" were performed with the dead bodies, with details changing from account to account. Barnabet's given motive also fluctuated, initially presented as eliminating disobedient members of her church, a claims she did not repeat in her second confession. Instead, reasoning was fabricated by newspapers at the time, falsely attributing statements to Barnabet, including that the murders were for worship purposes Media continued to connect ax murders of African-American families to the "Church of Sacrifice" in the months following Barnabet's arrest. One of the last such reports was on November 23, 1912, when William Esley, his wife and their four-year-old son were found murdered in their home in Philadelphia, Mississippi. ==Sentencing and disappearance==

Barnabet's trial began on October 21, 1912. A team of court-hired physicians declared Barnabet sane, stating that she was "morally depraved, unusually ignorant and of a low grade of mentality, but not deficient in such a manner as to constitute her imbecile or idiot". Her attorney, John L. Kennedy, called his client's confessions unreliable and a result of her abusive childhood while also questioning the reliability of the forensic methods used to match the blood of the Andrus family to that found on Barnabet's clothes days later. On July 31, 1913, she escaped jail for a few hours, but was caught. During her imprisonment, Barnabet was noted as a model inmate and worked on the on-site sugarcane fields starting 1918. who had "studied medicine since his confinement and [became] a qualified physician and surgeon", James and James argue that, "if authorities had actually believed that she was behind these terrible murders, it is unlikely that she would have been released after a few years in jail. She was turned loose so soon because the authorities didn't believe her story, either." After Barnabet's release, no knowledge exists on her whereabouts. == Victims ==

Barnabet was accused of killing seven families, totalling 35 people. This includes a confessed five-person murder committed on December 19, 1911, in Rayne, Louisiana, where she claimed to have killed a woman and her four children, but no mention of such deaths exist in Acadia Parish death records or contemporary media. It was also otherwise claimed that the killings instead occurred on or after "New Year's of 1911", sources differently interpreting it as December 31, 1910/1911 or January 1, 1911/1912. • February 24, 1911, in Lafayette, Louisiana: Alexander Andrus (30) and Meme/Mimi Andrus (née Felix; 29), and their two children, Joachim (3), and Agnes (11 months); 4 killed • March 21, 1911, in San Antonio, Texas: Alfred Louis "A.L." Casaway (51) and Elizabeth Casaway (née Castelow; 37), and their three children, Louise (6), Josie (3), and Alfred Carlisle (5 months); 5 killed • November 27, 1911, in Lafayette, Louisiana: Norbert Randall and Azema/Asima Randall, their three children, Rene (6), Norbert Jr. (5), and Agnes Randall (2), and a nephew, Albert Scyth/Sise (8); 6 killed • January 19, 1912, in Crowley, Louisiana: Marie Warner (24) and her three children, Pearl (9), Garret (7), and Harriet (5); 4 killed • January 20, 1912, in Lake Charles, Louisiana; Felix Broussard (40), Mathilda Broussard (36), and their three children Margaret (8), Louis (6), and Alberta "Sisie" (3); 5 killed • February 18, 1912, in Beaumont, Texas: Harriet "Hattie" Dove (née Garrett; 39) and her three children, Jessie Quirk (18), Ernest (16), and Ethel (12) ; 4 killed At the site of the Broussard murders, a message had been left in pencil, reading "When he maketh the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble", an incorrect paraphrase of Psalms 9:12, as written in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as "Human Five", possibly as a signature. "Wexford" was most likely a corruption of "Warner" and thus the "Wexford family murders" are mentioned through reprint in other newspapers afterwards. • March 27, 1912, in Glidden, Texas: Ellen Monroe (46), four of her fourteen children, Willie (16), Dewey (12), Jessie (11) and Alberta (8), and lodger Lyle Finucane (37); 6 killed • April 12, 1912, in Hempstead, Texas: Alice Marshall and two of her children; 3 killed, 3 injured scream when the intruder hit her with an ax as she slept, injuring her arm and foot. Dashiell and three of his children were unharmed. == Other arrests ==

Clementine's father Raymond, as well as her siblings Zepherin and Pauline, were held on suspicion of participating in the murders, but all were released due to lack of evidence. Through Zepherin's confession, three people were arrested as alleged members of the Church of Sacrifice, a man named Ute Thomas of Port Barre in Eunice, and a man named Mac Thomas along with a woman named "Duce", both of Lafayette, in New Iberia. Police arrested another Christ's Sanctified Holy Church preacher named Thompson, and accused of having "converted many negroes to the 'sacrifice sect'". Three days after the Opelousas murders, police arrested the Washington family, consisting of husband and wife George and America, and their adult daughter Estelle, as they were the owners of the axe used in the killings. Estelle Washington and Opelousas had been "rival[s] for the affections" of a local man and were recently in court after Washington was accused of assaulting Opelousas. George Washington provided an alibi. On November 25, 1909, Houston Goodwill was arrested by police as the perpetrator of the Opelousas murders. In February, 1911, the Jackson brothers were separately arrested for the murder of the Byers family. Directly after the Andrus family murders, 27-year-old Gaston Godfrey, an African-American inmate at Pineville Asylum who had escaped a day earlier, was initially arrested, but later released. Another suspect, also black, could not be located. Relation to the Guidry family whom Clementine Barnabet lived with is unknown, though unlikely, as "Guidry" is an extremely common surname in Louisiana. Eliza Richards was arrested on January 27, 1912, on suspicion of having knowledge of the perpetrators behind the Broussard family murders. On January 28, 1912, during the statewide crackdown on those associated with the Church of Sacrifice, two men, identified only as Snyder and "Snap", were arrested in Glenmora. Both were reportedly members of the Church of Sacrifice. In early 1912, Jim Fields was arrested on suspicion of committing some of the ax murders attributed to Barnabet in Texas. The murders continued during his time in jail. Fields was indicted on May 17, with his trial lasting between May 20 and May 27. It was noted that Fields received a poor court-appointed defense, Gus Miller and Chris Grobe, as this was only Miller's second case and Grobe was excused for being "deathly ill". Charles K. Quin became Grobe's last second replacement and is credited with getting Fields found not guilty by emphasising that all evidence against his client was circumstantial. On June 10, 1912, a man was arrested for selling tablets he dubbed "Paradise Pills" in Lafayette and held on suspicions that he knew of the ax murders. The suspect gave his as J.S. Anderson, but was identified as S.W. Goodman, a Baptist minister who escaped custody in the Huntsville Unit in San Antonio, Texas. On November 6, 1912, Zepherin Barnabet was again arrested and charged with "lying in wait and stabbing with intent to murder" for injuring Walter Caffery on November 2, 1912. Two others, Zepherin's brother Noah Barnabet and Severin Giroaurd, were also wanted for the attempted murder. Related deaths Due to increased fears about the supposed "Ax-Man" in Texas, there was heightened vigilance among both state authorities and black citizens, the latter seeing a sharp increase gun ownership, as a precaution against home invasions. As a result, there were deaths and attempted lynchings related to suspected "Ax-Man" activity across the state between 1911 and 1912. In Smithville, teenage boy Max Warren, who had a history of sleepwalking, was shot by his neighbor West Duval, who had been standing guard outside the house that night. In Gonzales, a woman was forced out of town due to rumors of a "strange Negro woman missionary" claimed to be affiliated with the Church of Sacrifice. In Acadian regions of Louisiana, there was an increased demand for protective "charms" and amid a high of self-proclaimed "hoodoo doctors", Lake Charles Police Department mounted officer Ira E. Barker shot and killed A.E. Johnson, a "lightning-rod salesman" from Opelousas, after the intoxicated Johnson became belligerent during questioning. == Modern assessment ==

Modern analysts have tended to doubt Barnabet's involvement in the murders. In their 2017 book The Man from the Train, authors Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James argue that some, but not all, of the murders were part of a larger series of killings perpetrated by an itinerant worker named Paul Mueller, with others committed by copycats. Other than the fact that she had purchased conjure bags from a specific person, they write, "nothing that Clementine said about the murders (a) can be confirmed by any other party, or (b) has the ring of truth about it. A great deal of what she said is demonstrably false." == See also ==