She led cult in string of slays, then vanished
Raymond Barnabet was known to be a bad guy, a violent man who seemed capable of the ax murders of young children. When police in Lafayette, La., arrested him, they were confident they had the man responsible for a series of gruesome killings that terrorized the region in 1911 and 1912.
At his trial, Barnabet’s own daughter, Clementine, 17, testified against him. Her recollections — and apparent fear of her dad — played a big role in his conviction.
But, it wasn’t until Barnabet was locked up that police would learn the startling truth.
“The ‘Axe Man’ is a Woman,” screamed the headline of the “Alexandria Daily Town Talk” on April 2, 1912.
Not just any woman, but seemingly sweet Clementine. She fancied herself a high priestess in a violent voodoo cult and believed that bloodshed was her ticket to eternal life.
Investigations into the crimes started with a triple murder in Crowley, La., in February 1911. Someone crept through a window at night and attacked Walter Byers, his wife, and child with an ax.
Two weeks later, a killer attacked Alexander and Meme Andrus and their two children, leaving a bloody ax at the scene. In late March, death came in the night to Louis Cassaway, his wife, and three children, in Beaumont, Texas.
Police gathered enough evidence to charge Barnabet for the Byers and Andrus murders. His daughter, the prosecution’s star witness, said that her father went out around 7 the night the Andrus family was slaughtered. When he returned at dawn the next day, his clothes were drenched in blood and covered with bits of brains, wrote
Alan Gauthreaux and D. G. Hippensteel in their book, “Dark Bayou: Infamous Louisiana Homicides.”
Clementine’s brother, Zepherin, who also remembered blood and brains all over his father’s clothes, hands, and face, told the court his father boasted that he “killed the whole Andrus family.”
A jury quickly found Barnabet guilty, and his attorneys immediately appealed. He deserved a new trial, they said, partly because he was too drunk through the proceedings to know what was going on. The motion was granted.
Although the main suspect was behind bars, the bloodbath continued. In November, Norbert Randall, his wife, and their four children, ages 2 through 8, were found dead in their beds. All were mutilated with an ax.
After the Randall murders, police took a closer look at the other members of the Barnabet family. While searching Clementine’s room, they discovered a dress “saturated with blood and covered with human brains.”
Clementine laughed through questioning and insisted she had no idea how those clothes got into her room.
Now two suspects were in jail, but the body count continued to rise. There were more attacks in mid-January — Marie Warner and her three children, aged 2 to 9, in Crowley, La., and Felix Broussard, his wife, and three young children, from Lake Charles. Four more died in Beaumont, Texas, a month later.
All the victims were mutilated. “Heads and limbs would be separated from the torso and strewn all over the house,” reported the International News Service.
Police discovered a common thread among some of the victims. They belonged to a religious group called the “Church of Sacrifice” and Clementine was its leader.
Just before April Fools Day 1912, Clementine started to talk. She told detectives about her downward spiral into a life of “degradation” and her introduction to voodoo. Then she described the slayings. Disguised as a man, she hopped a train and committed her first ax murders in 1909 in the town of Rayne, La., about 15 miles from Lafayette.
Clementine took credit for 20 killings. But added she didn’t act alone, that she had followers — including her father and brother — who would continue exterminating families in poor African American neighborhoods.
As for a motive, Clementine believed human sacrifice was the path to immortality. Victims were chosen at random, and children were snuffed out for their own good. “We thought it was better to kill them than to leave orphans, as they would suffer,” she said.
After psychiatric exams determined she was depraved but sane, Clementine’s trial started in October 1912. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
A few more murders were committed by the end of year and then they stopped.
Police predicted that there would be arrests of at least 50 of her followers, but they only pulled in a handful. There are no records of what happened to her father, brother, and other alleged accomplices — including a voodoo “doctor” who sold protective charms and potions.
“We weren’t afraid of being arrested,” Clementine told police, “because I carried a voodoo, which protected us from punishment.”
At least for Clementine, there may have been some truth to this notion. In 1923, the “Ax Woman” was set free and vanished. For 80 years, no one heard any more about her.
Around 2002, a story popped up on the web that hinted about her life after prison, wrote Gauthreaux and Hippensteel. An online presence called “voodoogal11” wrote that in the 1980s she discovered her great-grandmother knew a lot about the murder rampage and that pictures of her as a young woman bore a striking resemblance to newspaper photos of Clementine.
If it’s true, it means the woman who cut so many lives short had the gift of exceptional longevity. She died at age 104.