“Her motive. Did the jury buy it?”
“She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a state psychiatric hospital rather than to death row, so yes, I suppose it worked.”
Evangeline knew it happened, mothers killing their own children, but it was something she would never be able to fathom. She certainly couldn’t lay claim to any mother-of-the-year awards, but she’d sooner take her own life than harm J.D.
“Mary Alice’s husband was a man named Charles Lemay,” Lena continued. “When he was just five years old, his father, Earl, was convicted of raping and murdering three young women in East Texas and burying their bodies on the family farm. He was sent to the Walls Unity in Huntsville and was executed some years later. Charles’s mother moved the family to Texarkana where she remarried and her three children took their stepfather’s last name.”
“I don’t blame them,” Evangeline murmured.
“So far as I’ve been able to determine—and I’ve been researching this case for nearly a year now—the family lived a fairly normal and middle-class life until the older boy, Carl, was arrested for the murder of a female classmate when he was seventeen. Her body was found buried in a vacant lot adjacent to the family’s backyard. The girl had been raped and beaten to death, just like his father’s victims.”
“The evil gene,” Evangeline murmured.
“Carl Lemay was also sent to Huntsville. He remained incarcerated for more than forty years before he was finally paroled as an old man.”
Lena bent forward and picked up her cup. But the coffee had cooled by this time, and she set it back down with a grimace.
“After the mother and stepfather died, Charles and his sister, Leona, moved to Louisiana. They both settled in New Orleans, but some years later, Charles got a job as a sales rep with a chemical company in Houma. Around that same time, he started using the name Lemay again. And this is when he met Mary Alice.”
“Did she know about his past?”
“Probably not at that time. But I think she must have found out about it later. I’m certain that was a factor in what she did to her sons.”
“So she married this Charles Lemay.”
Lena nodded. “Yes, against her family’s wishes, apparently. He was older. Very handsome and charming and by all accounts, it was love at first sight for Mary Alice. But right from the start, there were disturbing signs. Charles Lemay was cunning and manipulative, and Mary Alice’s family and friends were put off by his controlling nature. But she ignored their warnings and married him anyway.”
“They almost always do,” Evangeline said.
“Yes, I’ve known women like that, too,” Lena said. “What’s that old saying? They can’t see the forest for the trees. Mary Alice couldn’t see past her husband’s charm and good looks. Not at first anyway. He bought a place on the bayou in Lafourche Parish, and he and Mary Alice settled in. The house was out in the country, miles from the nearest neighbors, and since Charles’s job required extensive travel, Mary Alice was alone much of the time.”
“He isolated her,” Evangeline said.
“Exactly. And then the babies started coming. Before she was thirty, Mary Alice had five young children for which she was almost solely responsible. When the two girls reached school age, she homeschooled them at Charles’s insistence. You see, he not only isolated his wife, he also isolated the children. The only time any of them were allowed to socialize was at worship services. They attended a nondenominational charismatic church, and if you’ve never attended one of these services, the intensity can be a shock to your senses. The power of those sermons and the concepts of prophetic manifestations and demon chasers must have had a compelling impact on Mary Alice. On her children, as well, I would imagine.”
“By charismatic, you’re talking about snake-handling churches, right?” Evangeline felt both dread and impatience for what she suspected lay ahead.
“There are only a handful of small congregations that observe this practice,” Lena said. “But, yes. The church where Mary Alice and her children worshipped believed in taking up serpents.”
“No, that’s fine. You’re bound to have questions. Believe me, I know how all this sounds. But as I said, context is everything.” She paused, as if trying to remember where she left off. “One day Charles left on a business trip and never returned. He just simply vanished. Everyone assumed he’d walked out on his family. But when the police arrested Mary Alice for the murder of her children, she also confessed to killing her husband. She claimed she’d discovered that he was abusing their young daughters. She also feared that he may have been responsible for the disappearances of at least two young women from towns that were along his sales route.”
“Were her claims substantiated?”
“The records involving the children are sealed,” Lena said. “So I can’t speak to that. As for the disappearances…no bodies were ever found. But I suspect Mary Alice was right. However, given what she did to her own children, you can understand why the authorities were skeptical. I doubt her claims were ever properly investigated. What I do know is that Charles’s behavior fit the pattern of his father and brother, and I think Mary Alice was aware of that. Which is why she had to kill her children in order to save their souls.”
“That’s a hard sale,” Evangeline said. “Because what you’re saying is that she killed her sons so they wouldn’t grow up to be like their father and grandfather. That’s a huge assumption to make, especially where your children’s lives are at stake.”
“For Mary Alice it wasn’t an assumption, though. It was a matter of faith. Even so, her dilemma must have been heart-wrenching. Think about it.” She leaned forward, forearms on her knees as her gaze burned into Evangeline’s. “How far would you go to protect your son? Would you willingly sacrifice your own soul in order to procure his eternal salvation?”
“Now you’re making an assumption,” Evangeline said. “You’re assuming she told the truth about her motivation.”
The blue eyes darkened. “What is truth? Your truth? My truth? Mary Alice’s truth?”
“I’m not much on moral relativism,” Evangeline said. “It’s hard for me to get past the fact that she murdered her children in cold blood. That’s the only truth that matters to me.”
“You’re not alone.” Lena sat back against the sofa. Some of her energy seemed to have drained away. “Most people thought Mary Alice should have gone to the electric chair. Instead, she’s spent the past thirty-some years in a mental hospital. I don’t know which would have been the kinder fate.”
“What happened to the little girls?”
“They were separated and put in foster care. The older girl, Ruth, was adopted by a family in Baton Rouge. Her name was changed, of course, and from what I’ve been able to learn, she grew up in a stable, loving environment. Rebecca wasn’t so lucky. She’s been under psychiatric care since she was a teenager. Three years ago, her doctor committed her to Pinehurst Manor, in East Faliciana Parish.”
“I know where Pinehurst Manor is,” Evangeline said.
“Then you probably also know that up until a few years ago, it was a low- to medium-security facility. When Katrina hit, some of the patients in maximum-security units were evacuated and sent to places like Pinehurst. Mary Alice was one of those patients.”
“You’re saying she and her daughter ended up in the same mental hospital?”
“For a short while, yes.”
“Did they come into contact with one another?”
“Almost certainly they did. And you can imagine the impact such a meeting would have had on someone as fragile as Rebecca Lemay. She’d had no contact with her mother or sister for years, and it’s my belief that seeing Mary Alice unleashed a flood of suppressed memories—her father’s abuse and her complicity in at least one of her brother’s deaths. Those memories would have devastated her. Perhaps the only way she could justify what she’d done was by convincing herself that she, too, had been carrying out God’s will. And if she’d been recruited as one of His soldiers, then her mission wasn’t yet over. It would be her spiritual duty to finish what her mother had started.”
“Meaning?”
“The only way to destroy the evil embedded in the Lemay family DNA would be to destroy all the male
