Speaker 1: In the span of five years, Emma Rain lost two
Speaker 1: husbands to murder.
Speaker 2: Nothing was adding up. There wasn't a motive that was
Speaker 2: clear other than the fact that we knew this woman's
Speaker 2: last two husbands were also found dead in sort of
Speaker 2: mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 1: And then finally the police closed in on the killer,
Speaker 1: but then he disappeared.
Speaker 2: We had somebody killing husbands to make a living, and
Speaker 2: that's scary.
Speaker 1: Today we're in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the conclusion of
Speaker 1: bodies on the Bayou. I'm Sloan Glass and this is
Speaker 1: American homicide. And just a warning that this episode contains
Speaker 1: some graphic content. Please take care while listening. With winds
Speaker 1: of over one hundred and fifty five miles per hour,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: The Category five storm brought massive flooding and devastation that
Speaker 1: forced tens of thousands of New Orleans residence to evacuate.
Speaker 3: Not everybody came back, but crime was one of the
Speaker 3: first things to come back to the city.
Speaker 1: Journalist John Simmerman writes for The Advocate newspaper the.
Speaker 3: Police department in New Orleans was in chaos. During that time,
Speaker 3: it was pretty lawless around here after Katrina.
Speaker 1: Katrina forced hundreds of people who worked as police officers
Speaker 1: to evacuate, and the flooding kept many from returning. The
Speaker 1: police can't protect the city from a hurricane, only from
Speaker 1: what comes later. The question is after Katrina, can New
Speaker 1: Orleans police come back as quickly as crime An understaffed
Speaker 1: and overwhelmed New Orleans PD had to patrol a city
Speaker 1: that historically has had a high murder rate.
Speaker 3: There was a run there where it was the per
Speaker 3: capital leader in homicides in America. It's you know, first, second, third, fourth.
Speaker 3: Every year it's up there. We have a murder problem
Speaker 3: in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: The crime rate in New Orleans usually runs about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty percent higher than the national average. That's remarkable.
Speaker 1: So with more crime and fewer cops, many of the
Speaker 1: post Katrina murders went unsolved.
Speaker 2: That was tough.
Speaker 3: That was tough. I don't think their success rate in
Speaker 3: closing murder cases very high back then.
Speaker 1: The case of Ernest Smith was one of those unsolved
Speaker 1: cold cases. As we shared in the previous episode, Ernest
Speaker 1: was murdered in front of his New Orleans home. In
Speaker 1: April two thousand and.
Speaker 3: Six, somebody came up on him and shot him in
Speaker 3: the doorway there. Apparently he'd fallen into the house the
Speaker 3: bottom of a stairwell inside there, which had sort of
Speaker 3: created a bloody seen.
Speaker 1: The police investigated, but there were no arrests.
Speaker 3: It was still barren around there. There weren't a lot
Speaker 3: of people living out there. I mean, if you were
Speaker 3: going to kill somebody, that wouldn't be a bad place
Speaker 3: to do it.
Speaker 1: After the case went cold, his widow, Emma, moved to Mississippi.
Speaker 1: A year later. She married Ernest's military buddy James Rain.
Speaker 3: After his killing, it was long before she had moved
Speaker 3: back there, ed and settled into a house that was
Speaker 3: bankrolled in part by the insurance money from Ernest Smith.
Speaker 1: By twenty eleven, tragedy struck Emma yet again.
Speaker 3: James Rain was killed. He was shot up badly at
Speaker 3: the house he shared with Emma Rain. It looked to
Speaker 3: be very deliberate.
Speaker 1: That's when James's step brother, Alfred Everett, started acting strangely.
Speaker 1: His relatives noticed he appeared nervous and uncomfortable and wondered
Speaker 1: if maybe he knew something about James's murder. The family
Speaker 1: questioned him, but Alfred said he had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. But after a lot of back and forth,
Speaker 1: he shocked them all when he admitted to a different murder.
Speaker 3: Alfred Everett had told them that he had shot Ernest
Speaker 3: Smith and said he threw the gun and like Pontchatrain
Speaker 3: on his way back to Mississippi.
Speaker 1: After the shooting, Alfred said he killed Ernest for a
Speaker 1: few thousand dollars, but he never got paid.
Speaker 3: You didn't get that he got two clunker cars, said
Speaker 3: from James Rain.
Speaker 1: Alfred said Emma and James were having an affair at
Speaker 1: the time, and the two wanted Ernest dead so they
Speaker 1: could collect his life insurance, a policy, by the way,
Speaker 1: that Emma had just increased.
Speaker 3: In the months before Ernest Smith's killing. She had not
Speaker 3: only ratcheted up her insurance policy but also added James
Speaker 3: Rain as a fifty to fifty beneficiary.
Speaker 1: After this confession, Alfred promised his relatives that he'd go
Speaker 1: to the police and tell them everything, but instead he disappeared.
Speaker 3: Eventually, they called police themselves and turn him in.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, they phoned Detective Descenda Barnes of the
Speaker 1: New Orleans PD.
Speaker 3: Descenda Barnes was a cold case detective, and family members
Speaker 3: of James Rain called her wanting to relay information that
Speaker 3: Alfred Evert had shot Ernest Smith.
Speaker 1: Detective Barnes real opened preacher Ernest Smith's cold case started
Speaker 1: digging into the strange dynamic between Emma, her second husband James,
Speaker 1: and his stepbrother Alfred. Prosecutor Laura Roderick also worked the case.
Speaker 2: I remember saying to her what is going on here
Speaker 2: and her kind of breaking it down for me and
Speaker 2: explaining to me what was her take on things.
Speaker 1: The first thing they looked at was the police report
Speaker 1: from the night Ernest Smith was murdered.
Speaker 2: He is shot two times and killed. He is clearly
Speaker 2: shot outside, first stumbles his way inside and collapses on
Speaker 2: the steps where he will subsequently die. There was blood
Speaker 2: spatter by his feet which would go almost to the
Speaker 2: floor at the bottom of the steps and toward the
Speaker 2: front door where he had come in and collapsed on
Speaker 2: the steps.
Speaker 1: Emma told detectives she was upstairs in bed when she
Speaker 1: awoke to the sound of Ernest calling out for help
Speaker 1: in the doorway of their town home.
Speaker 2: Emma Rane tells the detective that she had been upstairs
Speaker 2: sleeping in her bed the whole night because she had
Speaker 2: a terrible toothache and she had taken some over the
Speaker 2: counterpane medication. While in the crime scene photos, the bed
Speaker 2: was perfectly made, so it didn't seem to make any
Speaker 2: sense that she had been in her bed all day.
Speaker 2: We certainly wouldn't have expected her to hurry up and
Speaker 2: quickly make her bed before the police arrived as her
Speaker 2: husband was dead on the steps.
Speaker 1: The report also noted that Emma looked pristine.
Speaker 2: She didn't have a drop of blood on her, no
Speaker 2: indication she had hugged him, touched him, nothing as he
Speaker 2: died on the stairs.
Speaker 1: It turns out that none of what Emma told detectives
Speaker 1: on the night of Ernest Smith's murder fit with the
Speaker 1: physical evidence.
Speaker 2: The blood was completely perfect, there were no footprints, nothing
Speaker 2: was smeared, which indicated that she could not have been
Speaker 2: in her bed upstairs sleeping, because she would have had
Speaker 2: to go around him and step into the blood in
Speaker 2: order to go outside call the police anything of that nature.
Speaker 2: There was just simply no indication that she had been upstairs,
Speaker 2: so that did not add up, and there was more
Speaker 2: Emma rain sat in the police unit for a while
Speaker 2: as they were sort of navigating through the scene, and
Speaker 2: it was during that time that it was learned via
Speaker 2: the phone records that either a phone call or a
Speaker 2: text message of some communication had gone to James Rain
Speaker 2: from the crime scene that night.
Speaker 1: As bad as things look for Emma, it was Alfred Everett,
Speaker 1: the step brother of her second husband, who pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: After coming clean to some of his relatives, Alfred disappeared.
Speaker 1: By the summer of twenty thirteen, the police located him
Speaker 1: in Texas.
Speaker 2: Alfred Everett was charged with murder. He was the gunman
Speaker 2: who killed Ernest Smith.
Speaker 1: They arrested Alfred, but he wasn't talking, so detectives then
Speaker 1: turned their attention to Emma, who was looking less like
Speaker 1: a grieving widow and more like a conniving killer.
Speaker 2: So we believed that Emma Rain had orchestrated the plan.
Speaker 2: She had through probably James Rain acquired the assistance of
Speaker 2: Alfred Everett. I guess James, who knew him better than anybody,
Speaker 2: knew he would be somebody willing to do this.
Speaker 1: When detectives did a deep dive into her past, they
Speaker 1: learned Emma had another husband before Ernest.
Speaker 2: Emma's first husband, we learned, was a man named Leroy Evans.
Speaker 1: And guess what. Back in nineteen ninety three, something terrible
Speaker 1: happened to Leroy.
Speaker 2: He was tragically hit by a vehicle. We weren't able
Speaker 2: to determine if there was any foul play in the
Speaker 2: actual traffic accident, but he did become a paraplegic.
Speaker 1: After the incident, Leroy was paralyzed from the neck down,
Speaker 1: leaving him bedridden.
Speaker 2: Rather than Emma take care of him, Leroy went to
Speaker 2: stay with his mother so she would care for him
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. He had a room where he
Speaker 2: would lay in bed for most of the day. He
Speaker 2: had a feeding tube that was necessary for him to survive.
Speaker 1: And then one day, LeRoy's feeding tube was mysteriously removed.
Speaker 2: So the mother of mister Evans told our investigator that
Speaker 2: Emma Rain was the last person in his room before
Speaker 2: his feeding tube had been removed, and he died of
Speaker 2: what the corner determined was asphyxiation. Mister Evans's mother certainly
Speaker 2: suspected fell play of Emma Rain and that she had
Speaker 2: caused his death. That's how she felt, so that was
Speaker 2: very alarming to us.
Speaker 1: But no charges were ever filed. And the strange thing
Speaker 1: is no relatives of Ernest Smith or James Rain knew
Speaker 1: Emma had been married to Lee roy Evans. Lee roy
Speaker 1: Evans died in nineteen ninety four, and according to Ernest's obituary,
Speaker 1: it said Emma married Ernest in nineteen ninety Let me
Speaker 1: read you one sentence from his obituary. He was united
Speaker 1: in holy matrimony to Emma Judge on November seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety Who is the love of his life, his soulmate,
Speaker 1: his bay, as he often calls her.
Speaker 2: That's where you sort of have to say, all right,
Speaker 2: what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Finally, investigators saw this string of dead husbands with hefty
Speaker 1: insurance policies and labeled Emma the black widow.
Speaker 2: The money was the most important, and she wanted that
Speaker 2: money more than anything.
Speaker 1: Detectives didn't think Emma could be any more cold blooded
Speaker 1: than that, but what they learn next proved them all wrong.
Speaker 1: Over nearly two decades, Emma Rain lost three husbands and
Speaker 1: the evidence against her was piling up.
Speaker 2: If she was willing to kill her own husband in
Speaker 2: exchange for a check, she was willing to do anything
Speaker 2: and that's scary.
Speaker 1: Prosecutor Laura Rodrick learned that in the months before her husband,
Speaker 1: Ernest Smith died, Emma made her boyfriend and eventual husband,
Speaker 1: James Rain, a beneficiary for half of Ernest's eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars life insurance policy.
Speaker 2: What Emma Rain did not realize was Louisiana law would
Speaker 2: prohibit James Rain from coming in to collect his four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand because Ernest Smith had a biological daughter.
Speaker 1: But Ernest's daughter never received that insurance money.
Speaker 2: Emma Raine's biological daughter goes into an office and forges
Speaker 2: the name of Ernest Smith's biological daughter. So essentially all
Speaker 2: of the eight hundred thousand dollars is awarded to Emma
Speaker 2: Rain through fraudulent activity.
Speaker 1: So not only did Emma have Ernest Smith killed, but
Speaker 1: she also cheated his daughter, his only child, out of
Speaker 1: money from his life insurance policy.
Speaker 2: It was alarming to us to see the lack of
Speaker 2: concern that Emma had for her daughter, that she would
Speaker 2: put her daughter in that position, that she had no
Speaker 2: problem with her daughter getting a felony conviction for doing that.
Speaker 1: There's so many terrible things Emma was accused of doing,
Speaker 1: but maybe one of the most galling happened on the
Speaker 1: day of James Rayne's murder.
Speaker 2: James Rain is in his home at the time that
Speaker 2: he's murdered. Emma Rain tells the police that she's on
Speaker 2: a business trip trying to make a deal work, and
Speaker 2: she's not at home. It was actually not much business
Speaker 2: going on at all. She was involved in a physical
Speaker 2: relationship with the man she was with in Arkansas at
Speaker 2: the time James is killed. In fact, the authorities get
Speaker 2: a statement from him where he says she gets the
Speaker 2: phone call, she learns that James is dead. We popped
Speaker 2: some champagne and had sex to celebrate. She calls it
Speaker 2: completing a business deal. The man she was with advises
Speaker 2: as they actually were drinking and having sex to celebrate
Speaker 2: the death of James Rain.
Speaker 1: Okay, now that is so beyond cold blooded, and there's
Speaker 1: actually more to the story, if you remember, Emma later
Speaker 1: called James's mother and had her check on James, even
Speaker 1: though Emma knew James was dead. Imagine knowing you were
Speaker 1: setting up a mother to see that.
Speaker 2: In other words, it seems as if she was intentionally
Speaker 2: louring James's mother over to find him dead. In the home.
Speaker 2: You know, she had no sympathy. She just was really cold.
Speaker 2: Cold to allow his mother to find him in that way,
Speaker 2: it would be something they felt was sort of the
Speaker 2: final twisting of the knife. It was intentionally cruel and
Speaker 2: it just showed her character.
Speaker 1: Late in the summer of twenty thirteen, detectives charged Emma
Speaker 1: with the death of her second husband, Ernest Smith. And
Speaker 1: guess what. At the time of her arrest, she was
Speaker 1: no longer Emma Rain. She had already moved on to
Speaker 1: husband number four.
Speaker 2: Emma and her fourth husband were living in Kansas City,
Speaker 2: Missouri at the time that she was arrested for the murders.
Speaker 1: And when detectives told Emma she was being charged with
Speaker 1: the murder of her husband, Emma asked which husband. As
Speaker 1: Emma waited her trial, her hired gun Alfred Everett, was
Speaker 1: tried in twenty fourteen. He was charged with killing Emma's
Speaker 1: second husband, Ernest Smith.
Speaker 2: Alfred Everett was charged with murder and he was convicted
Speaker 2: of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.
Speaker 1: The jury needed less than an hour to convict him,
Speaker 1: and with that, prosecutors turn their attention to Emma Rain's
Speaker 1: upcoming trial.
Speaker 2: As a prosecutor, we don't have the opportunity to speak
Speaker 2: one on one with the defendants who are charged with crimes.
Speaker 2: Rarely do we ever get to actually speak to them
Speaker 2: or ask them any questions or anything of that nature.
Speaker 2: The most that we can do to glimpse sort of
Speaker 2: their personality or what's going on is to listen to
Speaker 2: recorded phone calls during their incarceration.
Speaker 1: So what kind of things did the prosecutor learn about
Speaker 1: Emma from listening to her phone calls from jail.
Speaker 2: She would make demands of the jail. She wanted low
Speaker 2: fat chocolate chip cookies, certain things that you know, she
Speaker 2: just felt like she was entitled to, and she encouraged
Speaker 2: the young female inmates to sort of take on those
Speaker 2: causes with her.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors may have heard Emma demanding lofact cookies, but there
Speaker 1: was one thing they wanted to hear but did not.
Speaker 2: She never gave me the impression of any remorse at
Speaker 2: all for any of the family members who were going
Speaker 2: through this. She never so much has even cared to
Speaker 2: see the pain that the families were going through in
Speaker 2: dealing with the process of their loved ones being murdered
Speaker 2: and trying to get to the bottom of the crimes
Speaker 2: and trying to piece these puzzles together. It just did
Speaker 2: not matter at all.
Speaker 1: And this is an odd thing. As her trial day
Speaker 1: got closer, prosecutors were having a hard time getting anyone
Speaker 1: to testify against her. I think that people were nervous
Speaker 1: to come forward in the case against Emma because they
Speaker 1: they were worried about what more she could accomplish if
Speaker 1: she wanted to. Then, in more bad news, a ruling
Speaker 1: came from the judge that prohibited prosecutors from calling Emma
Speaker 1: Rain a suspect in the death of her husband number one,
Speaker 1: Leeroy Evans. They were also limited in what they could
Speaker 1: say about the death of husband three, James Rain.
Speaker 2: It got extremely complicated. So this was a different case
Speaker 2: in terms of how we had to present it.
Speaker 1: So prosecutors offered Emma a deal. If she pled guilty
Speaker 1: to manslaughter, she'd get thirty five years, but Emma turned
Speaker 1: down the deal.
Speaker 2: She was constantly kind of wheeling and dealing.
Speaker 1: When the trial began, Emma Rain was fifty two years
Speaker 1: old and face life in prison for the second degree
Speaker 1: murder of Ernest Smith. Her defense lawyer blamed Emma's third husband,
Speaker 1: James Rain, who was dead and obviously couldn't defend himself.
Speaker 1: Emma's lawyer referred to James Rain as James the Snake
Speaker 1: and claimed it was James who manipulated Emma into upping
Speaker 1: Ernest Rain's insurance policy. Most importantly, the lawyer argued that
Speaker 1: James alone got Alfred Everett to kill Ernest Smith.
Speaker 2: Alfred Everett he was sort of the last man standing
Speaker 2: who could testify against her.
Speaker 1: Alfred had already been convicted and sentenced to life, but
Speaker 1: he could set the record straight. Alfred was called as
Speaker 1: a witness, but he refused to take the witness stand
Speaker 1: or answer any questions from prosecutors. Instead, he defiantly sat
Speaker 1: in the courtroom while the puzzled jurors looked on.
Speaker 2: You could kind of get a read on some of
Speaker 2: their faces, like not knowing what to make of it.
Speaker 1: So prosecutors went to Plan B and called three of
Speaker 1: James's relatives to testify.
Speaker 2: Those were the three people who had sort of broken
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 1: Each one of those relatives described Alfred's confession.
Speaker 2: That James Rain and Emma Rain were in on it,
Speaker 2: that there was a life insurance policy and that's why
Speaker 2: he shot Ernest Smith. He describes having shot him twice,
Speaker 2: evidence that is consistent with the crime scene.
Speaker 1: But as she sat through the damning testimony from the
Speaker 1: prosecution side, Emma was quiet, just jotting down notes on
Speaker 1: a notepad, just.
Speaker 2: Zero emotion through the trial, no sign that any of
Speaker 2: this had affected her in any way.
Speaker 1: Emma Rain did not take the stand in her own defense.
Speaker 1: In fact, the defense did not call a single witness.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day. We did not believe
Speaker 2: that she had genuine love for any of these men.
Speaker 2: It was a business deal in her mind, but she
Speaker 2: was very good at disguising that this was somebody killing
Speaker 2: husbands to make a living.
Speaker 1: It was up to the eight women and four men
Speaker 1: of the jury to decide if Emma Rain was indeed
Speaker 1: a black widow. Emma Rain was a suspect in the
Speaker 1: death of her first and third husbands, but she was
Speaker 1: only charged with murdering her second husband, preacher Ernest Smith.
Speaker 3: The prosecution was telling about this woman who seemed to
Speaker 3: either be bad luck or worse for the men she married.
Speaker 1: Journalist John Simmerman covered the trial, where prosecutors labeled the
Speaker 1: three time widower and Moraine a black widow.
Speaker 3: Well, that was a term that the prosecution used, black widow,
Speaker 3: which is a term for a woman who marries somebody
Speaker 3: and kills them and maybe does it repeatedly, So she
Speaker 3: kind of fit that definition.
Speaker 1: At the time of Emma Raine's trial, she was married
Speaker 1: a fourth time, but husband number four did not attend
Speaker 1: Emma's trial. He told reporters the New Orleans judicial system
Speaker 1: was corrupt and said he had paid for her legal
Speaker 1: bills from back home and Missouri, and those bills, he said,
Speaker 1: had nearly bankrupt him. In the courtroom, Emma's lawyer blamed
Speaker 1: husband number three, James Rain, for the murder for higher
Speaker 1: pot of husband number two, Ernest Smith.
Speaker 3: He basically said that Emma Rain didn't know about this.
Speaker 3: This was all James's plan.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, James Rain was also murdered and he
Speaker 1: obviously could not defend himself.
Speaker 3: What Emma Raine's attorney tried to do was say, look,
Speaker 3: there's no physical evidence. There were no text messages and
Speaker 3: emails back and forth with James Rain on any murder plot.
Speaker 1: But prosecutor Laura Rodrig hoped jurors could connect.
Speaker 2: All the dots. This is a case that did not
Speaker 2: have a lot of direct evidence. There were no eyewitnesses.
Speaker 2: We were using what we call circumstantial evidence. We knew
Speaker 2: that this jury was going to be shot once they
Speaker 2: realized the intricacies of this case, and we could see
Speaker 2: that in their faces as the facts started to unfold.
Speaker 1: So she resorted to using charts and graphs to show
Speaker 1: the relationship between all the major players in the case.
Speaker 2: One of the things we had to show the jury
Speaker 2: was sort of a simplified family tree. We had to
Speaker 2: put that up on a large board in front of them,
Speaker 2: where we had diagrammed Alfred Everett, James Rain, how they
Speaker 2: all fit in as a family, and where Ernest Smith
Speaker 2: and Emmeraine came into that family tree. And we similarly
Speaker 2: had to do sort of a flow chart for the
Speaker 2: insurance policies, showing them the increase in the amount of
Speaker 2: the policy over the years leading up to Ernest's death,
Speaker 2: the forging of the signatures to get the policy all
Speaker 2: released to Ammeraine, and several sort of steps in laying
Speaker 2: out that story for the jury.
Speaker 1: Liberated for three and a half hours before returning to
Speaker 1: the courtroom with a verdict.
Speaker 2: I remember Emma her typical self in terms of being
Speaker 2: very calm, you know, she didn't seem rattled, she didn't
Speaker 2: seem worried about what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Emma stared straight ahead when the verdict echoed through the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Guilty Emma Rain, who was convicted of murder. The penalty
Speaker 2: will be life in prison.
Speaker 1: And coincidentally, Emma Rain's sentencing for the murder of preacher
Speaker 1: Ernest Smith happened on the five year anniversary of husband
Speaker 1: James Rain's death.
Speaker 2: This was somebody who had no regard for human life
Speaker 2: at all and would intentionally lure them in solely to
Speaker 2: use them as sort of a lottery ticket, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was an automatic win. We don't see somebody
Speaker 2: who is that sort of cold to the core very often.
Speaker 2: If using the widow card, essentially it was going to
Speaker 2: help her get what she wanted. She had no problem
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 1: Emma's fourth husband disagreed. He was livid and told the
Speaker 1: Associated Press, I think the whole thing was fabricated. It
Speaker 1: was a setup and it wasn't right. She didn't have
Speaker 1: anyone killed, and she didn't kill anyone. And even after
Speaker 1: being convicted of murder, Emma's legal problems were far from over.
Speaker 1: Emma didn't just cheat on her husband's she also cheated
Speaker 1: on her taxes. The government charged her with federal bankruptcy
Speaker 1: and tax fraud. She pled guilty to one of those
Speaker 1: counts and received a two year sentence that ran concurrently
Speaker 1: with her life sentence. She also had to pay restitution
Speaker 1: of over ninety four thousand dollars. Want to guess how
Speaker 1: she paid that? Tab Journalist John Simmerman reported on the story.
Speaker 3: One of the interesting things about this case is because
Speaker 3: she ended up getting the insurance money in James Raine's killing.
Speaker 1: So Emma used the payout of life insurance from husband
Speaker 1: number three, James Rain, to pay back the IRS.
Speaker 3: The judge saw no reason not to give it to
Speaker 3: her because no evidence was presented to suggest that Emma
Speaker 3: Rain was involved in James rain Is killing.
Speaker 1: In his ruling, the judge wrote that it would be
Speaker 1: nothing more than speculation that Emma killed James Rain and
Speaker 1: awarded her just over two hundred and forty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Ninety thousand of it I believe went from that settlement
Speaker 3: to pay her past tax debs.
Speaker 1: It's another example of the unexplainable hold Emma seemed to
Speaker 1: have over men. Lost in this story of three dead
Speaker 1: husbands is that the twenty eleven murder of Emma's third husband,
Speaker 1: James Rain, remains unsolved, although it sits outside her jurisdic,
Speaker 1: New Orleans Prosecutor Laura Rodrig continues to watch it from
Speaker 1: a distance.
Speaker 2: So that investigation essentially is still ongoing.
Speaker 1: Emma has an alibi, and the police don't believe she
Speaker 1: directly was the killer.
Speaker 2: She was out of the state. There's a witness who
Speaker 2: indicates she was with him, so we don't believe she
Speaker 2: pulled the trigger. So that means there's somebody out there
Speaker 2: who knows what happened.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how em n James Rain's house had
Speaker 1: a big, fancy security system and how it wasn't working
Speaker 1: on the night that James was murdered.
Speaker 2: The detectives learned that the last person seen in the
Speaker 2: footage was Emma Raine until the footage all goes off,
Speaker 2: so they see her approach the box or the main
Speaker 2: area where you control the surveillance equipment, and then the
Speaker 2: equipment is sort of shut off. Essentially, it was turned off,
Speaker 2: they believe by Emma Rain.
Speaker 1: As of twenty twenty five, no one has been charged
Speaker 1: in the twenty eleven murder of James Rain.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to wonder why James thought he would be
Speaker 2: different from the rest, because it was very clear that
Speaker 2: Emma Rain was not capable of loving another human anymore,
Speaker 2: or even to the same extent that she loved herself.
Speaker 2: Most people who came across her were shocked to ultimately
Speaker 2: find out that this was happening. They were shocked to
Speaker 2: find out that this person they had trusted could have
Speaker 2: been capable of something like this.
Speaker 1: The person who seemed to be the most shocked and
Speaker 1: disturbed by Emma was Apostle Jackson, preacher Ernest Smith's mentor
Speaker 1: and father figure.
Speaker 4: How do you just take someone like how people just
Speaker 4: take some out of life. I'm telling you, supposed to
Speaker 4: love this man, He's supposed to be in your heart.
Speaker 2: How can you do that?
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and six, when Emma and Ernest's
Speaker 1: marriage was strained, Apostle gave Ernest marital advice that continues
Speaker 1: to haunt him today.
Speaker 4: I convinced him that he needed to give his marriage
Speaker 4: another chance and need to forget him forgive and I
Speaker 4: live on that every day. So I'm still walking in guilt.
Speaker 4: It's been since two thousand and six. I'm still walking
Speaker 4: in guilt. If I had not told him that the
Speaker 4: Word of God said that he had to forgive and
Speaker 4: he had to be with his wife, he probably would
Speaker 4: be alive today. That's a burden to carry, you know
Speaker 4: what you think about it.
Speaker 1: Of course, if Apostle had a do over, he would
Speaker 1: have told Ernest to leave Emma.
Speaker 4: She lost something that was awesome. She destroyed it. She
Speaker 4: could have had a great life. But look at her
Speaker 4: life now. She's in prison. She needs to stay there
Speaker 4: every day and not ever ever get out. But I do.
Speaker 1: Forgive Apostle forgave Emma. He was a preacher, That's just
Speaker 1: how he was. But Apostle might also want to consider
Speaker 1: apologizing to his wife, Carolyn. On that feedful night in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when Emma called Apostle to say
Speaker 1: that Ernest was dead, he hung up the phone and
Speaker 1: shared the news with Carolyn.
Speaker 4: Then my wife, He just said, just like this, she
Speaker 4: killed him.
Speaker 3: She killed him.
Speaker 5: Those are my words to my husband.
Speaker 1: That morning, Carolyn said she always had a bad feeling
Speaker 1: about Emma that she just couldn't shake.
Speaker 5: Those are not thoughts that you think about. Those are
Speaker 5: not things that you can even imagine within yourself. You
Speaker 5: don't even think like that. You know, then boom is
Speaker 5: in your face. This is only something you hear about
Speaker 5: on the TV show. You know, like, you never think
Speaker 5: this was something that would happen in real life, especially
Speaker 5: to someone that you know personally. So I don't know
Speaker 5: what Emma was thinking that day.
Speaker 1: Carolyn had her suspicions all along, but Apostle couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: Emma being a murderer.
Speaker 4: You just couldn't convince me that this nice woman could
Speaker 4: have a husband killed. Just couldn't convince me of it.
Speaker 4: I did not accept that. I did not want to
Speaker 4: believe that, and it took me a long time to
Speaker 4: believe that, even though she was my wife. It still
Speaker 4: took me a long time to even think that someone
Speaker 4: could take someone like It really made me be aware
Speaker 4: that peoples that you trust could actually be wicked, even
Speaker 4: when they don't look it.
Speaker 1: Next time on American Homicide, when four women are murdered
Speaker 1: and they're Louisiana homes, the investigation turns into a power
Speaker 1: struggle that allowed one of the state's most prolific serial
Speaker 1: killers to roam free. We'll head to Baton Rouge for
Speaker 1: the case of the serial killer of South Louisiana. That's
Speaker 1: next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American
Speaker 1: Homicide Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloan Glass
Speaker 1: and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Speaker 1: Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The
Speaker 1: series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with
Speaker 1: additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Kristin Melcurrie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry
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