A young mother vanishes and her body is found in an abandoned barn On the Fourth of July in 2016, 20-year-old Erica Hunt, a Black female from Opelousas, Louisiana, vanished. She had a young daughter, who was only two years old at the time of her disappearance. Erica was last seen at the residence she shared with her sister and brother-in-law, Jordan Barnes. After she went missing, her family reported her disappearance to the Opelousas Police Department, sparking a years-long investigation into her whereabouts.
For more than two years, there were no
answers. Then, in December 2018, human remains were discovered in a field in the nearby town of Ville Platte, Louisiana, approximately 18 miles from Opelousas. It would take another two years of forensic analysis by the LSU FACES Laboratory and the DNA Doe Project to make a positive identification. In February 2021, the remains were confirmed to be those of Erica Hunt. With this discovery, her case officially transitioned from a missing person investigation to a homicide case.
The investigation into Erica's murder continued for several more years. A significant breakthrough finally came on November 21, 2024, when detectives with the Louisiana State Police interviewed 33-year-old Jordan Jamal Barnes, Erica's brother-in-law. During this interview, Barnes confessed to killing Erica Hunt. He was subsequently arrested and booked into the St. Landry Parish Jail on the charge of second-degree murder, bringing a long-awaited answer to a case that had haunted the community for over eight years.
