In the late hours of Sunday, November 26, 1911, a horrific act of violence brought-an end to the lives of Norbert Randall and most of his family in Lafayette, Louisiana. The male head of the household was a respected member of the community, living with his wife, Azema, and their children in a small, three-room house in a neighborhood known as Mills Addition.
Their lives were tragically cut short in a brutal attack that was part of a string of terrifying serial killings that haunted Louisiana and Texas between 1911 and 1912.
The next morning, the scene of the massacre was discovered by the Randalls' eldest daughter, a girl of about ten who had spent the night at an uncle's house. Returning home, she found the kitchen door open. Inside, she was met with an unimaginable sight: her parents, siblings, and a nephew, all dead in their beds. The local police described the house as a slaughterhouse. Most of the victims, including Azema and the children, had been bludgeoned to death with the blunt side of an axe, their skulls crushed. Norbert Randall, however, had also been shot in the head, a detail that set this crime apart from the others in the series. The victims included Norbert, Azema, their three children—Rene, 6, Norbert Jr., 5, and Agnes, 2—and a nephew, Albert, who was 8.
The Randall family murders were not an isolated incident but a chilling chapter in a spree of violence attributed to a killer, or killers, known as the "Mulatto Axe Murderer." This mysterious figure targeted African American and mixed-race families, slaughtering them in their sleep with an axe, often one belonging to the victims themselves. The wave of killings, which claimed as many as 49 lives, spread terror through communities along the Southern Pacific railroad line. Before the Randalls were killed, families in Rayne, Crowley, and Lafayette had already met the same fate.
The investigation into the Randall murders quickly focused on a 19-year-old Afro-Creole woman named Clementine Barnabet. She lived nearby, working as a housekeeper, and knew the Randall family; she and Azema were deaconesses in the same congregation. Suspicion fell on her after blood was found on a gate at her employer's residence and on her own clothing locked away in her room. Barnabet was arrested the morning the bodies were discovered.
During questioning, Clementine Barnabet confessed to killing the Randall family. Her confessions, however, were often contradictory and changed with each telling. She claimed to have shot Norbert Randall "somewhere in the breast or body" after "braining him," when in fact he had been shot in the forehead. She also confessed to other murders in the series, sometimes implicating her father, Raymond Barnabet, who was already in jail for the murder of another family, the Andruses.
Barnabet's motives were murky. At one point, she claimed the killings were ordered by a religious cult called the "Church of the Sacrifice," to which she and the Randalls allegedly belonged. She told authorities that Norbert Randall had refused to follow "church orders." This led to the arrest of a pastor known as King Harris, but he was later released. Despite the sensational claims of a "voodoo cult," the murders continued even while Clementine and her father were incarcerated, casting doubt on their sole responsibility.
In October 1912, Clementine Barnabet was tried and convicted for the murder of the Randall family. She was sentenced to life in prison at just 19 years old. Her father, Raymond, was also convicted in a separate trial for the Andrus family murders. The series of axe murders eventually stopped, but the identity of the killer or killers was never definitively proven, and the theory of a larger group being involved was never substantiated by police. The case of Norbert Randall and his family, like the others in the terrifying spree, officially remains unsolved, a haunting legacy of a time of great fear and violence.
