It started with a telephone call.

Honestly it started before that, but it was a telephone call in January 1911 that gave

the first indication to police that they were not dealing with a handful of random killings.

The first hint of what some called the Church of Sacrifice murders came to the attention

of the authorities when a police officer in West Crowley, Louisiana took an urgent call

from neighbors who feared that something terrible had happened at 605 Western Avenue.

When officer below arrived at the house, he found that the house three occupants, a man,

a woman and a young boy, have been murdered in their beds.

Their skulls had been split open.

The mattresses were soaked with blood and smeared footprints were on the floor.

The doors were all bolted from the inside, suggesting the killer had entered the house through

a window and killed everyone while they slept.

In the corner of one room was a basin filled with bloody water.

Proped against the foot of the bed was the murder weapon, a blood-stained axe.

A local newspaper called the crime the most brutal murder in the history of this section,

but it would turn out to be one of many axelings across Louisiana and Texas in the early 19 teens.

Over time, newspapers would reveal that the murders were connected to a deranged voodoo

cult called the Church of the Sacrifice, which claimed its victims were bloody rituals.

Well, some of them might have been, I guess, if you want to call it that, but we'll come back.

Because I should clarify, they might have been if the so-called voodoo cult had actually existed.

You see, nothing was what it seemed in Louisiana and Texas between 1909 and 1912.

There were the alleged cult murders and then there was something perhaps even more sinister,

...