On February 19, 1912, a Mulatto woman and her three children were axed in their sleep at Beaumont, Texas. Try as they might, police could find no evidence against their several suspects, and all were soon released. King Harris, leader of the sect, had addressed a meeting in Lafayette on the night of the Randall massacre, and informants reported links between the "Sacrifice Church" and certain voodoo cults in New Orleans.
It read: "When He maketh the Inquisition for Blood, He forgetteth not the cry of the humble - human five." Stirred by the quasi-Biblical implications, police made several arrests, including two members of the miniscule "Sacrifice Church." Rev. This time, the killer left a note behind. Two days later, at Lake Charles, Felix Broussard, his wife and three children were killed in their beds, each with a single blow near the right ear. On January 19, 1912, a woman and her three children were hacked to death as they slept in Crowley, Louisiana. She would be held in custody through spring of 1912, but her incarceration would not halt the carnage. This time, police arrested a black woman, Clementine Bernabet, on suspicion of involvement in the crime. Six members of the Norbert Randall family were butchered in their beds, each killed with a single blow behind the right ear. On the last Sunday of November 1911, the action shifted back to Lafayette, Louisiana. As in preceding cases, the victims died in their sleep, with no evidence of robbery or any other "rational" motive. Texas endured the killer's first visit in April 1911, when five members of the Cassaway family were axed to death at their home in San Antonio. Two weeks later, the scene shifted to Lafayette, where a family of four was massacred in the small hours of the morning. The following month, at Crowley, Louisiana-ten miles from Rayne -three members of the Byers family were dispatched in identical fashion.
The first attack took place in early January 1911, at Rayne, Louisiana, when a mother and her three children were hacked to death in their beds. The killers were supposed, by blacks and law enforcement officers alike, to be dark-skinned Negroes, selecting victims on the basis of their mixed-or "tainted"-blood. In each case, the dead were mulattoes or black members of families with mulatto children. Between January 1911 and April 1912, an unidentified killer (or killers) slaughtered 49 victims in the states of Louisiana and Texas, leaving police baffled.
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