 On Monday, we spoke about one of the most popular unsolved mysteries from New Orleans. That of course is the unsolved mystery of the Axeman. The Axeman started in 1918, and of course, as we spoke about on Monday, he targeted Italian families. However, there was another case in 1911 that many people suspect was the real start of the Axeman. And if this is true, if their suspicions are correct, then that means the motivations of the Axeman were way more sinister than previously thought. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons here on Esoteric Atlanta. We are truly a grassroots channel. We do the best we can with what we have to bring you guys the truth of our world and situations at play. Your support goes to helping us purchase materials, research materials, equipment, and everything else needed to put together the stories as we put them together. So from the bottom of my heart, I truly, truly, truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce. And today, we are going to be talking about Clementine Barnabette. Before we get into Clementine's story, I have a question that I want to ask the community. I have been overwhelmed with emails coming in and I feel terrible that I'm not able to respond right away. As most of you know, I spend most of the day researching and because I'm researching, I'm not always on my email to, first of all, receive emails. And then when filming comes along and editing comes along and going on to other people's channel comes along, sometimes I can't even respond. And I want to be able to respond. I want to be able to communicate with all of you. But because there's only so much time in a day, sometimes that it gets a little complicated. And so I've been looking into this service that other YouTubers use. Now the YouTubers who use this service so far that I've seen are not in our community. They're more like drama channels and other types of channels, but it seems like a pretty good idea. It seems that they have a texting service that you will have a number on this channel where you can actually text me and we can kind of all group chat together. And therefore it would be easier to reach me if you have something you want to show me or show us as an esoteric Atlanta group. And of course would be easier for me to reach back out to you. Now the number that comes with the texting service is not my personal phone number. It's one that I will receive with the service. Again, I'm still just at the moment looking into it. I'm not sure if it's something that I totally trust yet, but I'm still trying to figure it all out. But I thought that would be a way easier way to keep communication open between all of us. So let me know your thoughts down about that down in the comment section below. If you've seen these services, I know there might be some weirdness with other countries too. I've got to check with that. If it actually goes outside the United States or not. Again, I'm still researching that. But let me know what you guys think. If that would be something that you would be interested in. Again, it would be like a group format. So it would be like personal, like personal one-on-one texting. It would be a big group that would be involved in this chat. So just let me know your thoughts down below because I'm trying to figure out a way to really reach out to each and every person in a very fair and timely manner. At this moment, email is just overwhelming. So I haven't been able to respond to a lot of people that I truly do want to respond to. At the time of Clementine's arrest, she was 17 years old. Yes, that number isn't lost on me. When the crime spree started, the first crime spree that started with an ax, the year was 1911. And this was not in the city of New Orleans. Instead, this was to the west of New Orleans, around the Lafayette area and some of the towns surrounding Lafayette. Now yesterday, we released a bonus episode about the Cajun and Creole people. The Lafayette area is typically the Cajun area of New Orleans. Yes, Lafayette New Orleans are relatively close together. They all are in the same state. But nonetheless, these crimes committed with an ax started outside of New Orleans. So if you remember from Monday, one of the biggest suspects to the ax man of New Orleans was the mafia because Italians were the people getting whacked. However, in this case, in 1911, just a few years prior, in the Lafayette and surrounding areas, it was the black community that was being attacked. All in the same manner as the ax man of New Orleans. Now again, as I said on Monday, back in the day, back when this was happening, many of the people in that area whom this was happening to believed that these two cases were connected. Now, even though Clementine's story is different than that of the ax man's story, and in fact, by the time the ax man was doing his thing in New Orleans, Clementine herself was in jail. So couldn't have done this. Many people still believe there was a connection and maybe Clementine herself was nothing but a scapegoat for the true villain in this story. And if there is another villain in the story, then that means that villain is neither a mafioso man nor Clementine herself. But again, might be something more sinister. Crawley, Louisiana is southwest of the city of Lafayette. And on February 11th of 1911, Walter Byers, his wife and their young child, were found in their house. The three had lost their lives to an ax. Now the Byers lived in one of the poorest communities in Crawley. In fact, they lived in what we could call a shack. Being one of the poorest areas in this community, police just assumed that this was typical that you would find in a poor area of any community. It just so happened that this community was predominantly black. However, on February 24th, 13 days later, the Andres family of Lafayette, a family of four, were also found by an ax. On March 22nd of 1911 in Beaumont, Texas, very close to this area, the Casaway family was yet again also discovered to be by an ax. However, at first the police did not put the three cases together because the Casaway family had something a little different about them. You see, the wife, the matriarch of the Casaway family, was white. So therefore, the police in Texas figured that there had to do with racial issues instead of connecting the dots that there was something more. I guess if we're looking at these three cases with modern eyes, if we were the police back in that day, we would say that the Casaway case was more of a ha... Whereas the other two cases, the buyers and the Andres family, did not appear to be because all of the people involved were racially the same. Louis Lacoste was the sheriff of the area of Louisiana where these had taken place. He was sheriff of this area from 1904 to 1914. He immediately suspected Raymond Barnabette to be the culprit in these cases. It appears that Raymond Barnabette already had a bit of a reputation, even though the Casaway case in Texas was not assumed to be a part of this case. Sheriff Lacoste was the first person to acknowledge there was a similarity between the three different cases. And again, he had his eyes set on Raymond. Raymond was immediately arrested as a suspect in these crimes, but then later on was released with lack of evidence. Although a few days later, he would go on to be re-arrested and in October of 1911, a grand jury indicted him on these charges. Raymond Barnabette's trial started on the 19th of October. During his trial, his common law wife, a woman named Nina Porter, and their two teenage children, Clementine and Zephyl and Barnabette, gave testimony against their own father. They claimed that their father was... And they also all three gave testimony that he was not at home during the crimes that he was indicted on in this trial. However, all three of them gave very, very different testimonies. This case became very sensational back in the day, and the media started this smear campaign on the Barnabette family. The media was also the first to leak to the people that the children, especially Clementine, probably knew more than they were letting on about what happened. The media began to spin this story that the children themselves were guilty of these crimes. Nonetheless, on October 28th, Raymond himself was convicted of these crimes. Raymond's lawyer immediately went to file an appeal. Of course, that's what any good defense attorney would do. He claimed that his client, Raymond Barnabette, had been drunk during the trial and therefore was not of sound mind and was entitled therefore for a new trial. He also claimed that the prosecution lacked a motive. Why would Raymond Barnabette go on such a... There was no logical explanation for everything he had done, so therefore he deserved a new trial so the prosecution could prove why he would do such a thing. And it's interesting, the one time that I served jury duty, I remember the judge saying this as well, that realistically, as it should be in a trial, that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. And the defendant has to be proven guilty by the prosecutor. It's not the defense attorney that has to prove his client innocent, but the prosecution, the DA. And part of proving someone guilty of a crime is giving the jurors a motive. Why would this person do the things that they did? Well, Raymond Barnabette's appeal was accepted. He was able to have a new trial. However, during this time, Raymond Barnabette himself was not released from the jail. And while he was being held in custody in the jail, more ensued. His new trial started on November 2nd of 1911. It does seem that the court systems worked a little bit faster during this time than they happen to do nowadays. And hopefully in the future we'll get back to speedier trials, but nonetheless it is what it is. And again, while Raymond was sitting in custody during his next trial on November 27th of 1911, the Randall family of six was with an ax. Now you can look into court records to hear the details about these. However, I'm not going to describe them here on this channel, A, because of censorship, and B, because most of these killings involved small innocent children. By the time the Randall family lost their lives, the police started to recognize a pattern. They found that, again, everybody lost their lives to an ax, and the ax was always left in the room, propped up against the wall. Very much like the ax man would do years later in New Orleans. They also suspected that the manner in which these people lost their lives was more ritualistic. Like these were sacrifices. That these killings were beginning to look more religious than anything. Sheriff LaCosta was very suspicious of Clementine. And one day he followed Clementine. In fact, he followed her into a friend's house where he immediately came in, knocked on the door, and asked to go to the bathroom. While in the bathroom, he noticed that there was a dress, a dress that had belonged to Clementine that was covered with blood and brain matter. Clementine was immediately arrested, along with her brother and two other men believed to be associated with the Barnabette crime family at this point. Now again, remember, their father Raymond was still being held in custody. When Clementine was first taken into custody and questioned again by the police after her arrest, Clementine proceeded to act unstable. Many people believe that she was trying to set up the defense, that she was not collectively, cognitively there. And her brother Zephren just kept claiming he had an alibi. Now at this time, obviously there was not a whole lot of forensics, of any forensics at all. But you see, there was something they could do in 1911. They could take the dress of Clementine's, send it to a chemist, so the chemist therefore could determine whether the blood on her dress was that of human or animal. If the blood and the brain matter were that of an animal, well, unfortunately, there was no crime there and she would have been released from jail. However, her dress did come back that it was human blood and human brain matter. Her brother Zephren and the two other men were eventually released, as again, they all had alibis. And now everybody's eyes were on Clementine. All of the victims of these heinous crimes all were members of one specific church. This was called the Church of Sacrifice and it was an offshoot from another church called Christ Sanctified Holy Church, a denomination that was an offshoot of the Methodist Church that had been started in 1892. They believed that every person needed not just the first acceptance of Jesus Christ, but a second blessing. Obviously, if all the victims of these crimes were members of the same church, there had to have been something to this. They immediately arrested the Reverend. This was a Reverend named King Harris. But after questioning King Harris, they believed that he had nothing to do with this. It seems the church was completely innocent and even though it was his members that were being offed by this lunatic, he wasn't the one influencing the activities. While both Clementine and her father Raymond sat in jail held in custody, more crimes ensued. On January 18th of 1912, a woman named Marie Warner and her three children were brutally attacked with an axe in Crawley, Louisiana. And then on January 21st of 1912, more people lost their lives. This was in Lake Charles, Louisiana where a family of five were attacked. At this crime scene, there was a note left. This note said, when he maketh the acquisitions for blood, he forgeteth not the cry of the humble, human five. And at this crime scene, the culprit had placed a bucket by the bed. This bucket was to collect the blood dripping off of one of the victims. On this time, more and more citizens of this area started to receive letters in the mail, letters that were reportedly written in blood and were basically like a warning shot. Like we're coming for you. By February 11th, 1912, 150 people of the community decided to volunteer and help the police force patrol the area. In fact, the one silver lining to this dark cloud was that both the white residents of the area and the black residents of the area came together. They stood in solitude against these heinous crimes that were being committed in their hometowns. But as the security was upped in Louisiana, Texas was still left vulnerable. And on February 20th, 1912, four more bodies were discovered to have been brutally attacked with an axe. Citizens were high now. People believed that Clementine, Barnabette, and her father Raymond were actually the leaders. The leaders of an offshoot of a CULT that came from the Church of Sacrifice. And even from their jail cells, they were able to direct their followers to continue these human sacrifices. And then Sheriff LaCosta received a letter. This was a letter claiming that Clementine and her father Raymond, as leaders of this sect, had a lieutenant. And this lieutenant was the person on the ground hunting people for their organization's doctrine. At this point, there was a list of 35 people who had lost their lives due to the rumored attack. At first, Clementine denied everything. She was hysterical, saying that she knew nothing. Then after the incident on February 20th, she turned around and made a full confession. And the story she told would add more fuel to the fire. She told the police forces that she had gotten involved in voodoo. Now I want to be very very clear about this because we are going to be doing a huge series on voodoo that I am working on right now. For a lot of people, this might be hard to hear. We have been indoctrinated by Hollywood, by the churches, by so many bad people to believe that certain faiths are wrong. Voodoo I have found in my research is not the sinister religion that they want us to believe it is. In fact, from what I have found, a lot of the people like Marie Laveau, these very famous voodoo priest and priestess were pretty much the scapegoats for what some of the people in the Catholic Church were actually doing. Because as we know today, it's the Catholic Church that claim to be Christian that are actually doing the work of Satan. Hence why Vatican means head of the serpent and hence why there's a Lucifer room underneath the Vatican. We also know that while under duress, many people make crazy confessions that are not true. I don't know if they were super aware of that in 1911, but over 100 years later in 2021, we are super aware of this. We know that people could confess to the craziest things, especially when they've been held for a long time and there's been psychological warfare played on them. So is this what happened with Clementine? I don't know. But Clementine again claimed that she had joined this voodoo religion. She had traveled down to New Iberia where she had decided to take the path of dark magic. Now this is true with voodoo as with most faiths. Most faiths have two dividing distinct lines. You either practice the faith in the light or you practice it in the dark. She took the dark path, allegedly according to her confession. She claimed that she had met this old voodoo priestess lady down in New Iberia, Louisiana. And this was the lady that mentored her and taught her how to walk the dark side. And to practice black magic, she gave her what's called a conga bag, which is a bag that held a bunch of trinkets that were supposed to keep her safe while she participated in black magic. She claimed that during the earlier crimes, she dressed as a man when she went to attack these families and basically used them again as a sacrifice. She claimed that she alone did these crimes and that the Texas crimes were nothing but copycats. However, Sheriff Lacosta did not believe that Clementine actually practiced voodoo. Throughout all of my research, he seemed to be a very level-headed man and this was a man that was from the area. People that are from these areas, I especially know from my roots in the low country of South Carolina, tend to have a deeper understanding of religions like voodoo. And he wasn't buying it. He did not believe that she had ever been involved in voodoo. So why would she then commit all these crimes? After all these statements were made, another crime was committed in San Antonio. There was something about the crimes in San Antonio on April 12 of 1912 that struck police officers at odd. You see within every crime, especially something as hideous as what was happening here, the police will keep some information about the crimes a secret. And even though Clementine and her father were sitting behind jail cells, this crime in San Antonio had a lot of the similar features as the ones done prior that Clementine herself had taken credit for. Again, an axe was used, but the culprit had done something to the children's hands. Things he had done to the children's hands in prior cases. He had taken pegs and placed them between each of the fingers of the child's hand. Again, this was something that had not been released to the media. This was something that only the police and the criminal would have known. And again, as I said, both Clementine and her father were still behind bars. Then a few months later, on August 20th, 1912, there was an attempted attack with an axe. And then on October 16th, 1912, Clementine's attorneys told the state that they believed she was insane. She was insane. She could not be tried. They wanted her to be examined by doctors. And so she would. However, the doctors found that she was in fact sane and could stand trial. Clementine would go on to be found guilty of these crimes. Now because of what she did, normally, corporal punishment is the punishment for such crime. However, because of her age, because she was only 17 years old, they decided instead to give her a life sentence. And even after all this commotion happened and she was away in prison, yet one more incident occurred. And this was on November 22nd of 1912. Three people lost their lives in the same manner after they had left church. The same church where all the other victims reportedly were members of. Now again, Clementine was already in prison, her father was still in custody. And so there was no way that they could have been responsible for these three other deaths. Clementine resided at Ankle Estate Penitentiary. She was given the job of cutting cane during the day while in prison. She did try to escape once what was brought back into custody. And then in 1923, after the Axeman situation in New Orleans, Clementine was released. She was granted clemency because after her one time where she tried to escape, she became a model prisoner. And so they had mercy on her and let her go. After that, Clementine Barnabette was never heard from again. Now it seems pretty unlikely that Clementine was the actual mastermind behind this killing spree in Louisiana. And I personally do believe that she admitted to the crimes under duress. This was over a hundred years ago. I imagine that the prison system and the jails where they were held in custody were not the greatest places to be held in the world. And I can imagine that being there probably drove her crazy. But her whole case opened up an angle, an angle that led to perhaps a paranormal, demonic entity hunting throughout the state of Louisiana in Texas. Was there a spirit who had been released, a spirit who would eventually find his feeding in New Orleans years later? Were all these done by somebody associated with Luciferianism? And I personally believe that there is more to this story. There is something way sinister. And people like Clementine Barnabette were nothing but a scapegoat. And in fact, possibly the whole religion of Ludo itself was nothing but a scapegoat. Alright guys, thank you so much for sitting through that today. Please leave me your comments down below in the comment section. I hope you're all having a wonderful, wonderful Friday. Hold the line. The best is yet to come. Thank you so much to Josh McKay for doing our music. And thank you so much to Todd Broderick for helping me get this story out to you guys today. If you would like to purchase the opening song, as always there is a link down below. I will talk to each of you soon. Bye.