James Sylve

James Sylve, a 1-year-old Black boy from Kenner, Louisiana, vanished into the kind of silence that makes an entire community hold its breath. In mid-May 1998, he was in the care of his stepfather, Eric Dawon Matthews, after violence had already torn through the family’s life. Two days before James was found, his mother, Lashann Sylve Matthews, was discovered dead in the family’s trailer home in Hammond, Louisiana, bound and gagged, with indications she had been choked. When Matthews and the ...