Lashann Matthews

Lashann Matthews, 20, a Black woman from Hammond, Louisiana, died on May 18, 1998, in a place that should have felt safest: the mobile home where she lived with her husband, Eric Dawon Matthews. When relatives arrived to check on her, they discovered a scene that looked staged for cruelty—her hands and feet bound, a sock forced into her mouth, and marks consistent with choking at her neck, with early reports describing death by asphyxiation. The house was unnaturally quiet, but what felt loude ...