Madame Lalaurie and Her Haunted Mansion

we're out seen here in New Orleans at the LA Laurie manche it's right behind me here it's on the corner of Orleans and governor Nichols streets this is where our story takes place today New Orleans has a lot of history and not all of it is good more positive or something that people want to remember and a little ory story Madame LaLaurie story is one of those I'm gonna tell you about it hello everybody and happy Halloween this is so exciting today is the first video of the first-ever Harleen and if you're new to this channel and you don't know what Halloween is Halloween is videos in the month of October throughout the entire month of October that have a spooky sort of vibe or twist to them but obviously if you know me and you know my channel I'm a big history buff so the facts and the evidence and what really happened is going to be what's most important in the end I am so excited to launch Halloween and to share the next month with you guys and I have a lot of amazing exciting videos planned so if you're interested in being here to share that with us go ahead and click the subscribe button and hit the bell notification button so you can be notified with every Halloween video posts and I should be posting at least three times a week in the month of October before we get started on today's video I want to talk about our sponsor and today is a sponsor's annalisa jewelry and I always get questions in my comment section about what jewelry I'm wearing typically my necklaces but it's usually Ana Luisa jewelry I love their pieces they're simple yet they stand out they're great for everyday wear yeah they look different than what I see everybody else wearing I'm wearing an Ana Luisa necklace today and I told everybody a month or two ago that Green was gonna be my color for fall and when I saw this necklace I knew I had to have it it's just so pretty and so delicate but the green on the stone is gorgeous and it's going to complement so well all of my fall sweaters and 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holidays are coming up I know it seems like a long time way but we're in October okay we got November and then boom December Christmas shopping season easier so if you want to get a jump on holiday shopping if you're just looking for a really nice piece of Julie for your own collection to treat yourself because I understand that go ahead and check out the link in the description box and use the code sleuthin e10 at checkout for 10% off of your purchase sleuth aniyah's s EU th a and ie and then the number 10 okay let's jump in I'm really excited about this case today we have the case of Madame Delphine LaLaurie and her haunted mansion now as most of you know if you've been following me for a while I was in New Orleans in June this past June for crime common obviously while I was there I had to go around the city and figure things out and look into all the crazy mysteries than New Orleans holds because it is an amazing city probably one of my top three favorite cities in the whole world and of course the LA Laurie mentioned was at the top of my list because number one big history buff and number two big American Horror Story fans so if any of you watch American Horror Story you would have seen Madame Delphine LaLaurie featured in one of the seasons but the story of Madame la Lori and her Haunted Mansion like many things throughout the years has taken on different characteristics many of the graphic stories that you hear about her and what happened and what went on in her house those have a route in truth but of course over the years as time went on authors and writers have taken creative license to make the story more embellished and to bring it more shock value when in fact the original story and what actually happened it doesn't need any added shock value it's pretty shocking all on its own so I searched for a really good book that was based on fact and reality and historical research and believe it or not that was incredibly difficult to find because most of the books written on Madame LaLaurie are very dramatized and you have a hard time understanding what's the truth and what is just an author taking creative license for shock value so the book that I ended up picking up and it is the best book I can recommend if you're interested in on learning more about this case it's called Madame LaLaurie mistress of the haunted house by Carolyn Morel long so it's a pretty thick book and a lot of the books you'll see on Delphine LaLaurie are thin you know a couple of chapters because they didn't actually do the research but this author did a ton of research like going through archives of death records birth curds marriage records very intense research so this is probably the only book that I can recommend on this topic and it is what I used for my research as well as some internet resources and you'll hear a lot of myths about Madame LaLaurie you'll hear that her parents were murdered in a slave rebellion and that's why she went on to be so horrible and violent to her own slaves you'll hear that her mother was a cruel woman who was so horrible to her slaves that she was killed by her own slaves one night returning to her plantation house and these things we know are not true because we have records of when her parents were born and when they died and why they died I think what it is is it's the author's effort to try and understand why a woman who came from a good family and came from good breeding and had money would be so cruel to other human beings or would do something so terrible to her slaves which she considered her property it's an effort to figure out the why and I can understand that and I'm sure many of you can understand that because that's often why we're interested in true crime and cases like this we want to know the motive we want to understand why somebody would do what they went on to do and of course you know what I'm gonna say to understand what happened at the end you have to go back to the beginning and just as a heads up there's a lot of French names and pronunciations in this in this story that I'm about to tell you and although my father's first language is French and a lot of my aunts and uncles went on to teach their own children French my father he never really spoke French at home I think he wanted us to become Americanized so whereas a lot of my cousin's have the really helpful skill of being bilingual I just speak English but I have heard French spoken around me obviously my family speaks it at holidays and things so I've tried to pick up on the pronunciations but I'm pretty bad at it so don't make fun of me and feel free to correct me in the comments you know nicely that way I can know for for future times if I ever have to say those things again Madame LaLaurie was born Marie Delphine McCarty her family originated from Ireland and she was a member of the large wealthy and socially powerful McCarty clan this clan was made up of military officers planters merchants and in this family both female and male members owned and managed extensive real estate in many slaves legend says the family patriarch McCarty mechag fled to France to escape political and religious tyranny imposed by the English monarchs in Ireland it is believed he settled in the French province of longa Duke where he entered military service of the French King his descendant Barthelemy Daniel Dal finds grandfather immigrated to Louisiana in the colonies infancy the family name was gala sized 2d McCarty and by the 19th century it was simply McCarty in the beginning New Orleans was La Nouvelle or Liam a French settlement established by a pair of Canadian explorer brothers to be the capital of the Louisiana County when bartholomae Daniel arrived there as an officer of the French Navy the city was a handful of wooden shacks surrounded by a swamp the population at that time was about 4,800 with 3,000 659 of these being enslaved Africans Barthelemy Daniel and his wife had 11 children one of which was Delphine's father Louie in 1769 when Louisiana went from being under French control to being under Spanish control a lot of its residents pushed back against this but not the McCarthys and as a result their wealth their power and their influence only grew under the new regime barthélémy who is dolphins grandfather he built a large plantation on the river but when he died suddenly in February of 1781 his estate had to be divided equally among his surviving children Louie bartholomae was also a military man and he married a rich widow named Marie Janine LaRue bleh the couple had two children a son also named Louie and a daughter named Marie Delphine born on march 19th 1787 now Marie had brought into the marriage with Louie along with a ton of money an indigo plantation on the Mississippi River and from there the two went on to build their empire in and around New Orleans just as Delphine and her husband later would be known to throw lavish parties her parents were exactly the same especially in the summer a second cousin of dolphins described the parties as a monumental events where everyone conducted themselves in a decidedly under chorus manner but everyone in the upper echelons of society was also in constant fear of slave uprisings Delphine's uncle by marriage was murdered by slaves on his own plantation in 1771 before she was born and when she was four in 1791 there was a large slave revolt going on in the French colony of Sante Dominique which lasted for 13 years so she would have grown up hearing about it while the adults discussed the news amongst themselves what was referred to as a slave revolt was really the slaves and the free mulatos of the area fighting to abolish slavery the French Republic had outlawed slavery in 1794 but good old napoleon bonaparte was trying to get it reinstated and he sent a barrage of troops to santa dominique to put down the rebellion also in 1791 when the rebellion in santa Dominique was gaining traction an uprising had been attempted at Point Kupe which was only a hundred and fifty miles up the river from New Orleans these same slaves that tried to rise up and take control of their own lives in 1791 were empowered and emboldened by what was happening in Santa Dominique because it was actually going pretty well for them over there so they tried again four years later and this was discovered before it was even allowed to happen and put down but the constant threat of slaves turning on their white owners was always clear and present and it brought a great deal of anxiety to the landowners of New Orleans during the French rule of the Louisiana colony there had been a code put into place called the code noir it was originally passed by king louis xiv in 1685 and it stated essentially among other things that jewish people could not reside in french colonies all slaves must be baptized in the Roman Catholic religion if a free man fathered a child with a slave woman and he was unmarried he was expected to marry the woman thus freeing her and her offspring from slavery but if he was married he would be fined and with the slaves master and if the man in question was the slaves master and married he would still be fined but the slave and any resulting children of the Union would be removed from his ownership but not freed it also dictated that slaves were not allowed to carry weapons except with their masters permission the master would be expected to feed and clothe their slaves properly even if they were elderly or sick and if a master ever falsely accused the slave who was then put to death he would be fined one of the last points of the code noir I want to talk about is one that stated masters who killed their slaves could be punished could be not would but could which is pretty broad and open for interpretation however under Spanish rules enslaved peoples had more autonomy than before which isn't saying much considering they pretty much had none they were now allowed to make their own money by hiring themselves out or selling things that they made families who were all enslaved could not be separated and sold off to different owners section 33 stated if any slave lawfully employed shall be belated by any person without cause or lawful authority the person so offending shall pay for every such offence a fine of $10 and if the slave is beaten shall be mutilated or rendered incapable of working the offender shall pay the master $2 a day besides the fine and if the slave be rendered unable to work the offender shall pay the master the appraised value of the slave or be forever maintained at the expense of the offending party if the offender is unable to pay the said fine then he shall be imprisoned for not less than one year so it doesn't really tell people that you can't beat your slaves you can't abuse your slaves it tells them if you do beat them and abuse them you'll have to pay a fine maybe and if you beat and abuse them to such a point that they end up dying you'll have to pay more fines and if you can't pay that fine you you may have to go to jail or prison for no less than one year for murdering somebody and this is hard stuff to talk about guys this is a part of our history that's embarrassing and horrific and a lot of people don't want to think about it however it happened so many people were treated not as human beings but as property and this code new are may have sent a message to people such as the McCarthys that if you want to go ahead and abuse your slaves and beat them and starve them and treat them horribly you can just throw money at the problem and make it go away Louisiana also faced a shortage of marriage able women in its early days something will go more in-depth into during our casket girls video because of this it was not uncommon to see relationships and even marriages between white men and enslaved women of color according to the author of the book Madame LaLaurie mistress of the haunted house a search of the archival records will show numerous persons of mixed race who were concubines and natural children of the McCarthys Delphine's uncle Eugene Theodore D McCarty her husband Jean Baptists bartholomae and her own father all openly had relationships with one or more free women of color according to many writers who have looked into the history and background of the infamous woman Delphine's anger and embarrassment at the situation of her family members her male family members having relationships with slaves or free women of color and as a result having children from these unions this may have been motivation for her future torture of her own slaves especially because it was common practice for these men to recognize the children that came from these unions by claiming paternity and putting them in their wills in 1807 Delphine's father had a relationship with a free quadroon named a Sophie Sante a quadroon is simply a person who is one-quarter black by descent obviously this is a 19th century term it's not used today but given that we are talking about 1807 and not about 2019 I'm using that term in a historically proper way to be able to describe to you exactly what I'm talking about I'm not trying to be offensive in any way it seems these days that I'm afraid to speak or say anything that might be in a history book because today it's not acceptable but in general I don't think quadroon is considered to be offensive or in offensive term I think it just obviously went out as we became more elevated and intelligent as human beings and a society in 1815 selfie gave birth to a daughter she named Delphine McCarty and the godparents were written on the baptismal record as being the legitimate children of Louis senior Louis jr. and dalfen McCarty it's speculated that's Sophie giving her daughter Delphine's name basically her full name right because it's Delphine McCarty using her father's own last name and having her and her brother act as godparents to this child it may have been a huge slap in the face to somebody like Delphine McCarty we don't know for sure how she felt about it we don't know if she was for it or against it but considering her future behavior the way she would treat people of color in a later date we can only assume she wasn't a huge fan of the idea Delphine's first marriage happened when she was only 14 to a 35 year old widower named Ramon Lopez and you'll OD la candelaria if that isn't the most fancy name I have ever heard I don't know what is he was an officer of the Spanish crown a very important person who functioned as second-in-command to the governor and the representative of the royal treasury the couple would go on to have only one child together five years later right before he died under suspicious circumstances and like much of the information that surrounds Madame LaLaurie this reason for his death has been dramatized and embellished the story goes that ramon had fallen into disfavor with the spanish government and he was going to be punished so Delphine she sailed to Spain to speak directly to the Queen when the Queen saw Delphine walking in the Royal Gardens her long black hair unbound and hanging around her shoulders her lovely eyes raised to supplication the Queen stopped at the sight of her so young and so beautiful and stated your petition whatever it is is granted but before Delphine was able to rejoin her husband he died in Havana now the real story goes like this Ramon he arrived in New Orleans in late 1799 after a very long and harrowing ship voyage where his wife and many other people died according to sources Ramones wife Borgia had been very loved by him and he referred to her as my soul when he got to New Orleans as a high-ranking government official he was wined and dined by many families who were high up and influential in society including the McCarthys it isn't known whether he initiated the relationship with a 14 year old girl or if it was orchestrated by her family in order to arrange a good marriage but it is rumored that as soon as their relationship turned sexual he was compelled to marry her as soon as possible otherwise scandal would surely follow once again this is a part of our history that we should be embarrassed about in this time girls over the age of 12 were considered to be of perfect marital age but according to Spanish law Ramone would have been required to seek royal permission before he married a local girl this was an attempt to keep the Spanish authorities who were in the American colonies from colluding too much with the locals and getting too close and forgetting what they were there for in the first place it appears he did request permission from the crown on April 25th but when he didn't get a response quick enough he ended up marrying Delphine anyways he felt that there was no reason why permission wouldn't be granted to him Mae was probably just running late or delayed by weather I mean these days any messages that came from different countries had to literally sail on this long voyage across the sea before reaching its destination so he was like they're gonna say yes why wouldn't they and he ended up marrying Delphine On June 11th at the McCarty plantation there is also some evidence that at this time there were some issues between Delphine's mother and father that they were arguing and there was a rift there and they were considering getting a divorce and the family in general as a whole thought that this new marriage between Ramon and Delphine would somehow heal that rift although I'm not sure how they expected that to happen and there's really no record about how Ramon or Delphine felt about each other whether they loved each other whether they were attracted to each other if they had a good marriage how they conducted their marital business but we do know is that after seven months of being married to her On January 7th of 1801 a message from Spain date arrived in fact he was not given permission to marry her and in fact they'd found out that he'd gone ahead and married her already so he was asked to return to Spain and basically answer for himself he left New Orleans and he sailed to Havana Cuba and been to a Barcelona Spain with his new wife by his side this was in the spring of 1802 and the voyage across the ocean would take nearly five months by late October once back in Spain Ramon was writing to the Spanish Secretary of State basically saying okay what's next what happens now what happened next was basically Ramona was exiled he was sent to San the Sebastian which is by the French border and he was given a desk job as punishment one can speculate that Ramon was probably not happy about his fall from grace and may have blamed his new wife for his current job circumstances he wrote to the Secretary of State again in June of 1803 asking him to use your powerful influence so that His Majesty will concede to my request and get me out of this shameful and threatening State it's highly unlikely the Delfy never paid a visit to the queen of Spain and even more unlikely that the Queen was so overtaken by her youth and beauty that she offered to give her whatever she wanted without even knowing what it was that she wanted by 1804 Ramon was pardoned yay and he was heading back to New Orleans but the ship that he was riding on it ran into a sandbar and it capsized by Havana Cuba and he ended up dying and we don't know whether it was from him drowning or even a possible heart attack but either way Delphine requested that his body be preserved in salt so that it could be given a proper burial he died in January and not long after Delphine who was waiting for him in Havana gave birth to their daughter a little girl named Marie who would never meet her father after the burial of Ramon and the baptism of Marie Delphine sailed back to New Orleans where it is believed that she and her daughter lived with her parents on their plantation while she'd been gone Louisiana had changed hands again and was now a colony of the United States of America her second marriage not long after the death of her first husband was on March 19th 1807 to a man named jean-paul Blanc she was 20 and he was 43 and a widower jean-paul was a man of many talents and trades merchant lawyer banker state legislator political intriguer slave trader and friend of pirates he was a French man who had settled in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase when he married Delphine he acquired a considerable dowry $33,000 which would equate to basically six hundred and thirteen thousand dollars in today's money most of that money had come from Delphine's and mother's estate which have been divided between her two children when she died five weeks before the wedding of what seemed to be natural causes and like I said you'll often hear this myth that Delphine's parents were killed by slaves but they weren't because we have the records that showed not only did they not die on the same day or at the same time but that they both died of natural causes you'll also hear stories that Delphine was a black widow essentially and she married all these men and then probably had a hand in their deaths but there doesn't seem to be any truth to that either it's all fabrication that has added to the layers and layers and layers of mystique around this woman now Delphine and Jean Paul they were rich I mean really rich they inherited money from her mother they inherited her mother's Indigo plantation on the Mississippi River fifty-two slaves livestock and farming equipment that went along with the Indigo plantation but her father as a wedding present also gave the couple another plantation in a house full of furnishings as well as 26 more slaves and a lot on Chartres Street the question I have would be who needs two plantations one plantation seems excessive enough but who needs to like her father said I know you got this huge Indigo plantation from your mother blah I didn't know what else to get you and you guys didn't register anywhere so here's another plantation altogether Delphine and her husband were worth about two million dollars in today's money which may not seem like a lot of money compared to the Kardashians but for a girl who was 20 years old and newly married was more than most people in that area had and they didn't even inhabit either of these plantations full-time jean-paul and Delphine lived in a townhouse on Royal Street near the corner of Conti it's located in what is today known as the French Quarter and Jean Paul purchased this townhouse because it was close to the bank of Louisiana where he worked the couple had four children together three daughters and one son between the years of 1809 and 1815 which now made Delphine a mother of five it seemed like Jean Paul Blanc was an incredibly intelligent and calculating man with his fingers in a lot of different pies it also appeared that the United States government viewed him as a threat especially as he rose in the ranks of New Orleans power and politics in 1810 the territorial governor William Eclair Boerner wrote to Thomas Jefferson who is president of the United States at the time about Blanc saying he was a merchant in high credit about three years prior he had married a very beautiful Creole lady possessing a large estate and connected with one of the most numerous and respectable families in the county of Orleans Blanc is a man of genius and education and possesses considerable influence in the city he is a member of the City Council a director of the Louisiana bank and has been for the last three years a member of the House of Representatives for the territory he also wrote the Blanc was much disliked by many of the Native Americans residing in and around New Orleans his attachments were wholly foreign and he was considered to be a dangerous man so basically he was a dirty politician which seems like a redundant thing to say since most politicians I believe are dirty but he didn't have any interest in helping the American government or reinforcing their claim to Louisiana his interests were specifically self-motivated he was out for himself and he was smart enough to go about doing this without raising too much suspicion or allowing his opponents to gain or keep any evidence against him to prove what he was doing although the McCarty family weren't American supporters either they were still in support of Spain if Jean Paul had any loyalties at all they lay with his home country of France so it is probable to believe that Delphine may have always felt politically at least torn between her husband's beliefs and her husband's interests and those of her family it's also easy to speculate that his calculating and intelligent ways of doing things and getting away with them may have rubbed off on her eight years after their marriage in 1815 Jean Paul Blanca died at the age of 50 leaving 28-year old - Delphine a widow again for the second time but this time she had five children to care for her oldest daughter from her first marriage was just 11 years old and her youngest child her only son was just six months old and it seemed at the time of his death her husband had been so far into death that she had to appear in court to renounce the community of property between her estate and her late husband's estate this was allowed in Louisiana at this time most likely to protect a widow and her children from having to face poverty based on what her husband did most likely unknowing to her while they were married and he was alive women at this time wouldn't typically have been privy to financial decisions or investment ideas so most likely whatever Jean Blanca did in order to get himself so far deep into debt he hadn't shacked with Delphine beforehand at least that was what the court was assuming we can't really blame her for all this stuff that's happening or that did happen after his death if she didn't know it was happening and she didn't have any control over it we can't expect to hold her responsible for his deaths which is actually a pretty decent thing to do it turned out he was in debt to the tune of 2.5 million dollars and Delphine was responsible for having to essentially sell off his stuff in order to try and pay it back from his estate because she still was responsible for doing that and that included the townhouse on Royal Street because he had purchased it and it was in his name and that's where she'd been living in order to keep their country home yes they are they also had a country home in order to keep that she had to buy it once it went to auction between the time of her second husband's death and her remarriage to her third husband later eight of Delphine's slaves would perish four of these deaths took place in the summer and for in the winter most of the slaves who died were women of childbearing age or children the records appear to give the dates of their death but not the reason for their deaths it is speculated that the time of year might have had something to do with it especially those in the summer summers in New Orleans are sweltering and at this time there was an overabundance of disease and a minimal amount of Hygiene large numbers of people packed into small spaces insects that inhabited the swamps surrounding the city and sailors and steamboat workers coming in and out of the city from all over the world spreading sickness like wildfire now of course once again I I would like to reiterate these eight slaves who died were mostly women of childbearing age and children and although we know when they died and we can speculate that it might have been due to disease and some of them might have been due to disease we don't really know what happened dolphin's father died in 1824 which in truth saved her from financial ruin she and her brother Louie divided their father's estate equally which put her back in the black even before she married her third husband Leonard Louie Nicholas Lou Laurie was born in France near Bordeaux to a middle-class family at the age of 21 he studied medicine at the Sorbonne and by age 22 he was studying at the University of Toulouse in October of 1824 he sailed off to Louisiana to seek out his fortune on the ship's passenger list he gave his occupation as a doctor even though at that time he was not actually a doctor in March of 1825 Louis wrote to one of the local papers in New Orleans to request that they announce a new physician had just arrived in town and he had some special techniques to remove humps from backs he was referring to those individuals who suffer from the condition called kyphosis who in those times were called hunchbacks or humpbacks it's believed that Delphine McCarty and Louie Louie Laurie met when she brought one of her own children to see him and be treated by him Delphine would have been 38 at this time but she was still considered to be a great beauty and a hugely influential member of society and Louie appeared to have rent his family back in France talking to them and telling them about this powerful older woman who seemed to have taken an interest in him and was helping him in his new hometown his father wrote to him in October of 1825 asking about a box of linens that he'd sent to Delphine as a thank-you for helping his son out while he was in New Orleans he told Louie that if she was impressed with quality and she liked them that he would send more stating there is nothing I wouldn't do my dear friend for the people who would show an interest in you so it would appear that Louie's father didn't know that Louie and Delphine were romantically involved he probably considered to be some sort of mentorship or just an older nice woman helping Louie out a young young kid in a new city he probably didn't know that Louie and this older woman who was a widow two times over and had five children already were actually seriously considering being together but they were and once again I am not sure whether Louie actually was attracted to Delphine and fell in love with her and wanted to be her husband or if he was attracted to her wealth and her power and her status because his brother Lawrence who was also a doctor wrote to him he wrote to him in 1826 on Christmas Eve saying that the medical profession could be a path to fortune through which he could ally himself with a powerful and rich family and make a marriage that would shelter him from the uncertainties of fate in Lorenz letters to Louie he also talks about the great rewards and how important it could be to Louie's career if he is able to straighten the back of Delphine's daughter that this would basically make his name and in extend his reputation far and wide so I think there's a hint here that Louie most likely what he saw in Delphine was money and power and influence and something that would have protect him from the uncertainties of fate but it seemed at this point Louie was pulling away from his own family as he got closer to his future wife who would become pregnant with his child by late 1826 in January Louie's father wrote from France about the unexpect death of Louie's mother on Christmas Day and three months later in March he wrote again saying you cannot ignore the immensity of the loss we have experienced this letter will serve to remind you of the one who gave you life who believed so much in you and for whom I will cry until the day I go to join her the same stone will cover both your mother and father and if you ever see your country again visit the gravesite and let a tear fall upon it man I thought this kind of guilt was reserved for Italian mothers only but it seems like the French were pretty proficient at it as well so basically Louie wasn't really writing home that often he wasn't letting his family know what was going on when his mother died he didn't go back to France for her funeral or to console his father and his father really was not happy about that and wanted him to feel badly about it on August 13th 1827 Delphine and Louie welcomed their son into the world his name was Jean Louie Leonard Liu Laurie and he was a child that was born out of wedlock elfine and Louie would not negotiate their marriage contract until five months after his birth at the time of their marriage Delphine would have been worth about 1.5 million dollars in today's money so not as much as she was worth in the past but still worth quite a bit how did you ended up saying let's get married we're not sure whether it was because they they were intimate and she got pregnant so they kind of had to get married or if he was using her for her money and her prestige if she was lonely and just needed help raising her kids we don't know it was stated in the marriage contract that their son would have the same rights as a child born with in a marriage and during the marriage ceremony to follow the couple made it clear that they wanted him baptized having a child baptized at five months old in these times it was pretty much unheard of parents were never sure how long their children were going to survive like I said medicine wasn't as advanced as it is say there's a lot of diseases and so they would usually get the baby baptized like as soon as it was born it's believed that he was baptized the so late in order to hide the fact that he was born out of wedlock because anybody could look at the baptismal record and see that he'd been baptized you know five months before their marriage records showed that they were married it was definitely an odd pairing she'd been a widow for about ten years she was you know coming close to 40 years old he was 25 he'd been described as meek and mousy Delphine's oldest daughter was already married and had two children of her own and she was actually only two years younger than her new stepfather and as common as it was in that time and place for older men to marry younger women as we can see Delphine was considerably younger than her first two husbands it was pretty much a scandal when an older woman would marry a younger man I mean he was 25 and she was a grandmother they lived together at the McCarty plantation with her children from her past marriage and the new baby according to gossip in the town at that time the newlyweds had a rough start to their marriage a lot of fighting a lot of bickering a lot of on-and-off he would you know move out and then come back nobody really thought that it was going to last in 1831 Delphine built the house that today is known as the haunted well Laurie mentioned originally when it was built that year it stood at only two stories now the building is three stories with a flat roof but when Madame LaLaurie lived there it had a hipped roof with dormers there was an enclosed courtyard behind the residence where the slaves of the household would go and do their daily chores there was also a multi-storey a service wing that extended from the back of the house that would have contained the kitchen and the slave quarters the large town house was filled with lavish furniture and expensive pieces of art the couple were known for throwing a huge parties and it was pretty clear to everyone that their lifestyle their luxurious lifestyle came from Delphine's money since Louis hadn't successfully set himself up as a doctor yet his practice was pretty much not bringing in any money to the outside observer Delphine and Louie made it seem as if they had a happy marriage they talked with other people at their parties they were together they laughed they held each other but they did not have a happy marriage on November 16th 1832 Delphine filed for a petition saying that her husband had treated her in such an unbearable way that she could not be around him she wanted a separation from him a physical separation she said that he had made a living together unbearable and impossible she cited a specific date of October 26th where Louie had in the presence of many others beat and wounded her very badly but as the gossip said they would often fight and separate and then reunite sometimes Louie would be staying there at the house with her and the kids and sometimes he found other accommodations and perhaps an abusive marriage where she was on the receiving end of the abuse through Delphine into a vicious cycle where she would go on to abuse others and for a woman who had grown up in a culture where slaves were considered property and not human she had an entire house full of punching bags that couldn't fight back an American military officer named Amos Stoddard who was stationed in Louisiana around this time wrote that white Creole women had manners which were much more polished than those of the men they have but one fault they are habitually cool to their slaves there's a myth that's been fed on and purported in the many years since the brutal practice of slavery ended that white women wives of slave owners were kind and gentle to the slaves that they viewed themselves almost as aligned with them because they were both in positions where they had to obey they would often share secret alliances with them because of their shared a sense of feeling less than in society and although I am sure that there were many good women in the times of slavery who were not cruel to their slaves there were so many more who were in the book out of the house of bondage written by Fotolia glimpse in 2008 the author shows that white women beat harassed maimed tortured and killed enslaved peoples with as much brutality as white men Stephanie E Jones Rogers builds on the book further in her book they were her property white women as slave owners in the American South not only did women actively participate the buying selling and trading of human beings but they were often in charge of the physical punishment they reveled in this power and ownership and a time when women had power over very little they knew they had power over their slaves these Southern Belles so kind and hospitable and with good manners could turn into the most vicious kind of monster when it came to their human property Dal fiends own cousin Celeste D McCarty had whipped a female slave so badly she died and treated another female slave with so much cruelty that she died a short time after as well her deeds were brought in front of a court of law but was swept under the rug in respect for her husband who was the president of the bank of Louisiana it's not known whether Delphine was abusive to her slaves for her entire life she did free some of them in 1828 she freed her children's nurse Helene Helene had been with the McCarty family since the time of Delphine's own mother and in 1832 both Delphine and Louis freed their shoemaker after years of loyal service as an example to the other slaves that good behavior can bring rewards what we do know is she was never accused of mistreatment until after her marriage to Louis milori in 1828 it was reported that after being accused of mistreating her slaves the authorities entered her house and found them all bloody being given only the basic necessities needed to live but they were in very bad condition she was not charged with anything after a jury concluded there was no proof and no witnesses had come forward claiming to have seen her beat her slaves with her own hands it was said that she would loan out her slaves who would work for a wage but then she would demand that they returned home in the evening and bring their wages home to her if they did not make enough or they came home too late she confined them to a cellar and put them in Chains only visiting to practice her cruelty on them in 1832 she was indicted again for her barbarous treatment of her slaves but the charge went away after she threw enough money at it one of her own relatives was disgusted enough by her behavior that they were compelled to speak to the authorities about her but in a court of law she put her hand on the Bible and raised her other hand and swore that she didn't do anything like that she was completely civil and kind to her slaves and they believed her because she's a woman and she's giving her word why not however one of the main and most famous account of Delphine's brutality towards her slaves was the story of a young slave girl who was called lia if you watched American Horror Story the season called coven Madame Lauri was prominently featured on the season and you will see the story reenacted it is told that Lia was brushing Delphine's long hair when she accidentally pulled it and her mistress flew into a rage chasing her to an outside balcony where the girl fell to her death as is often the case with rumors this one was allegedly started by English author Harriet Martineau who visited New Orleans after Delphine had already fled she began questioning people in the area about what had happened at that house the one which now lay in ruin and she wrote in her memoir that it had been long observed that Madame LaLaurie slaves looked singularly Haggard and wretched and Delphine would often beat her two oldest daughters if they tried to provide food to these slaves she also wrote that a woman who lived in a house next door had heard a piercing shriek from the LaLaurie home and that she watched as a young slave girl of about 8 was pursued by Delphine whip in hand the two ran from story to story until they both appeared at the top of the house according to this eyewitness she was covering her eyes as the little girl fell but she heard her body hit the courtyard later the body was buried in a shallow grave in the courtyard by lamplight and under the cover of darkness it's likely that this story is not true because as much as Delphine was known to mistreat her slaves there were many people during her time in New Orleans who wrote about her mistreatment of slaves and this story itself was never mentioned by any of them it's just one of those things that made the Delphine LaLaurie story more scandalous and more violent more interesting for the big screen but like I said if we're being honest with ourselves the story doesn't need the embellishments she was horrible and cruel to her slaves and the whole business of owning slaves was horrible and cruel in itself so we really don't need the extra added its dramatic and terrible enough as it is but that's what happens with these things and we as a society and a population of people that enjoy true crime and horror and mystery we eat that stuff up because it does bring that exciting element into a story but this is a story of a real woman and this is a story of real people who were mistreated by this woman and as much as I enjoy like the next person a fun story when I'm watching American Horror Story I want to come here and tell you guys what the truth was what can be proven and what can't what is true and what can be proven with records is that while in Delphine's home 20 of her slaves died mostly women and children again whether this was because of mistreatment or natural causes or a combination we don't know but that number is very high the famous fire happened on the morning of Thursday April 10th 1834 using a newspaper articles from this time author Carolyn Morel long had put together the events of that day the fire started in the kitchen located in the attached multi-story service wing which was typical of houses in New Orleans at this time the slaves quarters were located above the courrier reported that it was known to some of the neighbors that the upper part of this building was used as a prison and that it was occupied by several unfortunate slaves kept in Chains a crowd began to gather outside as the flames hungrily spread through the house some helpful bystanders began helping the lalaurie's get their valuables out of the house others mentioned to a local judge who lived across the street from the l'amore mansion that they were concerned about the slaves who were rumored to be held right above where the fire had started the judge politely asked Delphine and Louie to move their slaves to a safe place to which Louis reportedly told him to mind his own business the fire was gaining momentum so the judge gave orders to have the doors broken down against the wishes of the homeowners the courier reported that the people who entered were greeted with a very gruesome sight the slaves who emerged from the smokey interior were covered in scars and weighed down with chains one of them was a woman who looked be in her mid-60s the New Orleans be reported that after this the rescuers found seven more slaves who were horribly mutilated they had been suspended by their necks with their limbs stretched and torn from one extremity to the other the paper went on to say that they had been confined for several months like this allegedly they had been given enough sustenance to just keep them alive and extend their torture the older woman admitted that a was she who had started the fire in hopes of ending their suffering the papers wrote that the condition of one of these slaves was so horrible that he could scarcely be looked upon he had a large hole in his head he was covered in scars from head to toe and filled with worms the painful circumstances of these victims was so atrocious that it seemed beyond human belief the injured slaves were transferred to the local jail for their own protection and while they were there many people came by to basically gawk at them and see for their own eyes what they had heard all of the papers reported on the fire and what had been found inside the house and they called for the immediate arrest of madame and Louie Lou Laurie on April 12th the New Orleans be published a statement that had been made by the judge who was there that day the one who had ordered to have the doors broken down and they said considering the source this statement is incredibly reliable but Delphine and Louie were not arrested because they were no place to be found on the day of the fire the entire family had a flat in New Orleans which angered the people of the town so much they took out their frustration on dalla Laurie mansion they descended on the house the next evening and began to tear it apart here's what the Louisiana courier wrote about this event in one short hour every article of furniture was thrown into the street and smashed into a thousand pieces the very panels and floor were doomed to destruction indeed nothing that they could lay hands on escaped the fury of the people it was cut and smashed until the interior of the building was stripped of its elegant contents and completely laid waste the valuable furniture jewelry and plate which had been removed at the time of the fire were returned to the house in the course of the afternoon and became prey to popular vengeance the mob continued their operations on the roof and the walls of the building until a late hour this morning the house is a complete wreck by the time the sheriff and his officers had put a stop to it which I expected was probably a little while you know letting them kind of get it out of their systems the house was completely destroyed there was nothing left of it only the walls remained which were covered in graffiti denouncing the lalaurie's okay so on Monday April 14th the Louisiana advertiser reported that one of the men who had been saved from the burning house had died they also reported that when the yard of the Laurie mentioned had been dug up several slaves were found to have been buried there the next day a retraction was printed in the New Orleans Bee which basically said none of the slaves that had been rescued had died and then nobody's were found in the yard which of these reports should we believe the advertisers or the bees there are reports that's the editor of the beep was not on good terms with the editor of the advertiser of course they were probably competing papers and the editor of The Bee would never miss an opportunity to contradict something that the advertiser printed the New Orleans bee was also a little bit more of a well-respected paper where the advertiser it was kind of like an early version of a tabloid but in the end despite that story in the advertiser saying that bodies had been found buried in the yard there is no other source stating that it took only a few weeks for the story to spread through the American colonies and into the rest of the nation and it was also when it started reaching the rest of America that the story began taking on the color and the embellishment that it later held this is when the story came out that the woman who had started the fire had been chained to the stove or the oven for several months and she'd essentially started the fire in an effort to you know and her life rather than stay chained up to the stove that way there was another story of a little boy who claimed he had been held captive by a Madame LaLaurie for five months and had been given only a handful of food each day but once again these stories cannot be traced back to sources where they were printed or court documents that they were described in this is all sort of the telephone game it continues on and on and every person it gets to add something else to it so we can't prove that these specific things happened but how did Delphine and her family escape the wrath of the angry mob who has showed up at her house to tear them all limb from limb only to find them gone and have to take their outrage out on the house instead well according to author Harriet Martineau as the streets outside of the mansion started to fill up with angry citizens the lalaurie's coachman informed Delphine and it was getting pretty bad out there and it was probably time to take off he suggested she should go on her normal Drive that she always went on every day after lunch but just never come back she got into her carriage like she did every other day and her completes nonchalance and casual behavior kind of stunned the the people who were there to kill her so much that they watched her get into the carriage and drive away as soon as the door did shut and the carriage started driving away they immediately realized what was happening and they converged on the carriage trying to capsize it the coachman deterred them from getting too close by using his whip and he made the horses run as fast they could and drove away escaping just in time he drove her to the docks of the river where a schooner was waiting for her when the carriage returned containing just the coachman and no Madame LaLaurie the crowds were pissed and they overturned the carriage and as story and legend goes they they killed the coachman and they killed the horse which why do you have to kill the horse that always makes me upset in movies or you know TV shows when I see war times and people are shooting at each other and then the horses have to die what if the horses do they didn't want this allegedly after boarding the schooners Delphine ended up across the river in the town of Mandeville and the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain there she and her family spent several weeks with Delphine's niece and her husband Jan elder we know she was there because on April 21st she signed power of attorney of her estate over to her eldest daughter's husband his name was seed for style Louis signed power-of-attorney of his estate over to the husband of another daughter his name was Augustus delicious these two men were authorized to manage all their affairs and business transactions in the state of Louisiana they could write checks and withdraw money from their accounts they could open in respond to letters addressed villa lorries sell real estate or slaves pay their taxes and collect money owed to them reportedly Delphine had made no arrangements to free any of the slaves she owned not even the coachman who saved her life if he had survived the townspeople attack on the carriage there are many theories about what happened to the lalaurie's after this some say she never left the state some say she did leave but then returned many years later and went under the name of widow Blanc living on Bayou Road near her two daughters others say she and Louis escaped to France where his family was from others claims she went to New York City where she was eventually recognized and was forced to retreat to someplace in Europe and from what I can tell given all the different evidence that is laid out in front of us it almost seems like a little bit of each of these stories is true now there was a poet his name was William Cullen Bryant and he claimed that he left New York City on a ship called the Poland this was on June 24th the 1834 and the ship was headed to Normandy in France he claims he was very seasick during this journey but one of the passengers did catch his eye a very pretty older woman who called herself Madam la Lorri Bryant claimed that he was familiar with the story of the woman who had mistreated her slaves and escaped the wrath of her town but he said surely this Madame LaLaurie couldn't be the same Madame LaLaurie she was very nice she was sweet she seemed like a normal lady but then he was like it must be the same a Tamil lorry because when she was talking to him she told him that she traveled from Louisiana to New York and was now returning with her husband lui to his native land of France according to him the other women on the boat basically treated her as an outcast and froze her out and she was often found in tears once they arrived in France on July 14th Louis Delphina sought refuge at his family home where his father still lived even here in this small French village called Villeneuve a the story had arrived already people knew what had happened with the lalaurie's in New Orleans and it doesn't appear as if Louie's father greeted his daughter-in-law with open arms still in November of 1834 Louis and his remaining siblings met at the notary's office to settle the estate of his late mother as well as his brother Laurent who had left France a really long time ago and hadn't been heard from so Laurent was basically declared dead and Louie inherited his small house the interior of this house had basically already been vultured and stripped down by the rest of Louie's family who had gone in and taken out all his personal possessions and the couple moved into this this very modest and very empty house and within no time Delphine LaLaurie who instead of feeling grateful that she escaped the hands of an angry mob who were coming to make her pay for the way she treated her slaves she felt annoyed by her current living situation and her fall from grace when her daughter and son-in-law visited her son-in-law wrote to his father my poor mother-in-law is disgusted with France owing to the falsehoods and slander that followed them the poor thing was confined to Lauren's unfurnished house by that riffraff lalaurie's family and without a bed to lie on she tells me of her sorrows and can't stop herself from breaking down into tears and each time her husband is Morgan fruit than ever apparently Jean fruit is a term in in French that is considered to mean useless and unreliable and in those days it held a much worse meaning the papers in New Orleans four years after would report that Delphine and Louie had escaped and were living a life of luxury they had a big house in Paris where she continued to throw her large and lavish parties but I mean how could any of that be true when she was living a horrible and miserable life in this small French town with a useless husband like Louie well in fact Louie and Delphine would leave his hometown in France I'm sure she was nagging at him every day this is below my station I don't deserve this there's a big world out there why are we subjecting ourselves to this horrible way of living oh and by october of 1935 they were in paris at the end of october Delphine wrote a letter to her 12 year old granddaughter back in Louisiana this was the daughter of her first child she apologized for not writing beforehand she was overwhelmed by her sorrows of being separated from her family so she was unable to get her thoughts in order and fix her attention for long enough to write she didn't waste an opportunity to tell her granddaughter that the little girl's parents had also not ran to her that they'd been neglecting her in this letter she also stated that her youngest son had been in classes for about a week and doctor lalaurie's sent along his greetings and an embrace so Delphine and Louie and their little son Jean Louie they were living happily in Paris it seems like they were fine and in 1836 her daughter's Pauline and Laura Blanc they actually moved to Paris to be with their mother and stepfather and in July of that year her other daughter Janine and her husband visited the lalaurie's in Paris as well they did some sightseeing and Jeannine wrote her father-in-law I am so happy to be near mama you know with what tenderness I love her she was and is always so good to me since I've been here she has foreseen all that would trouble me and doesn't even want me to be busy with my children they have two nursery maids Delphine's a son Pauline had been attending a Yale University he dropped out of Yale and he joined his family in Paris in 1838 according to letters written by him to his brother-in-law who was back in New Orleans he was pretty much living the trust-fund baby life in Paris he said I get up so late that sometimes at 3 p.m. I'm still in my dressing gown smoking or chatting with mama and Pauline after a couple years of doing this together in Paris lui apparently seems to have gotten tired of Delphine her neediness her complaining her constant victim routine and he basically left her and and her kids and his son and he moved to Cuba since leaving France it appeared that his own Emily had lost faith in Lois and when his father died in 1842 he wasn't even mentioned in the will we know that Louie ended up in Cuba because he wrote from Havana requesting that his son-in-law send him some personal things from New Orleans a few medical books that had once belonged to his father his diplomas and to Masonic aprons he died in 1863 and he's buried in the espada Cemetery in Havana but we really don't know what kind of life he lived after he left Delphine in his own words two letters that he sent to his family he was a very sad individual in 1840 Delphine once again found herself in dire financial straits when her son-in-law who was managing her money failed to send her any of her money it appeared that Auguste had been basically taking her money as well as the money of her brother Louie who had left his finances in the hands of a gust before he went travelling and he was taken their money and using it for himself and even though Delphine had no income to speak of she refused to tone down her spending the first-class life was all she'd ever known and most likely all she felt she deserved she managed to maintain this facade for a while by borrowing heavily from banks until they figured out what she was doing so she began sending a panicked letters to New Orleans and her son-in-law asking where her money was no money arrived and at this point Paul in who I guess took on the role of man of the house when Louie left he was 27 at this point but you know still sleeping until 3:00 p.m. he decided to give it a shot and see if he could get his mother's money back for her I have to think it was also kind of selfishly fueled because he didn't have a job none of them really had a job none of them worked he dropped out of college so they basically depended on her and her money to live so Pauline wrote to his uncle saying that his mother was sick and in bed and she was unable to write so Pauline was going to be handling the financial matters from now on he claimed that Delphine was fully planning on returning to New Orleans to figure out what the heck was going on with her money the gist I get from this letter is that and thought it was a bad idea for his mother to return to New Orleans considering the circumstances she's left under he knew it would be a bad idea didn't his uncle agree with him so let's just avoid all this this nonsense and this nastiness and just sent us the money just send us the money please send us the money the next of Delphine's children to write 2 agust was pauline who claimed she was trying she was really trying hard to rein in her spending but some things they needed or necessities and I guess it was unthinkable for either of these two grown children to get jobs most of the letters exchanged during this time were concerning money and it's unknown if letters exist of Delphine ever talking about the incident that had caused her to leave New Orleans it doesn't look as if she ever wrote to her children or grandchildren taking ownership for it saying she felt badly or anything like that but it does seem as if she expressed to those around her that the whole story was nonsense slander and completely made-up now her brother Louie bartholomae he was also an interesting character and he had a story to tell he was described as being very handsome really nicely caught features that suggested to his is well-bred lineage he was eternally a bachelor never to marry and after living as a socialite in the New Orleans scene for a while he retreated and he basically became like an introvert and didn't leave his house all of his outside business was taken care of by an agent who acted on his behalf when he was in his 50s he got involved in a relationship with an eighteen-year-old girl named Eugene Adelaide Gorman Eugene went by the name a pan scene even though it seemed as if there was nothing as stopping a Louis McCarty from marrying this girl he never did instead she became a capped woman he gave her some property he gave her some slaves and in 1839 they had a child together a little girl named Marie Janine lui philomene McCarty so many names so many names anyways Louis still did not marry pan scene to you know make her illegitimate wife instead he gave her all the furniture silver and valuables in his house as an object of affection I guess and he also gave her and their child $21,000 in cash in 1840 when Louis left New Orleans to travel Europe and he left his finances and his business and everything in the hands of a gust who ended up not really handling it very well his first stop was Paris to visit his sister and he had his his girlfriend his mistress and their daughter with him an account from Delphine's son Pauline states that Louis was having a ball in Paris he enjoyed going to the theater and the Opera and he insisted that his nephew accompany him at all times which Pollan seemed to be a little annoyed by and there is no mention of pan scene at this time lui pan scene and their daughter who they called louisa for short because yes four names is way too many names to remember for a little girl they left paris to go to italy in march of 1841 before they did louie gifted his baby daughter a 2-story building in New Orleans on royal streets and six months later pantsing gave birth to another child a son that she named Louis bartholomae Pollan it appears that Louis did not give to this boy a house or silverware from his own home or you know even give him his last name so it shows that Louis McCarty probably doubted that this new child was his five years later at the age of 62 Louis McCarty died on his plantation and he left a quarter of his estate to his daughter Louisa he left the rest of his estate to his sister and wrote that he hoped that his sister and her heirs would respect his wishes and free his slaves now mr. McCarty had a sizable estate about seven million dollars in today's money and little Louisa would receive two million of that but of course even though she was desperate for money five million dollars was not enough for Delphine she contested the will and said that this little girl Louisa had already gotten a quarter of her brother's estate in the money and gifts that he'd given her when he was alive she did not win battle and had to satisfy herself with a five million dollars that she got poor delphine by 1847 the lalaurie's were in good shape again financially they occupied a large home in a fashionable area of Paris and coincidentally her cousin Celeste who was also known for being horrible and mistreating and killing her slaves she lived right around the corner New Orleans and all those wretched townspeople who felt sorry for slaves that that got mistreated they were just too provincial for the mccarty girls but what happened to the infamous Matt and Laurie how did she meet her end was she killed by a wild boar on a hunting expedition in the Pyrenees Mountains as one writer suggested or did she die in Paris her body being returned to New Orleans and buried in st. Louis cemetery number one where a mysterious and aging grave marker was found bearing the words Madame LaLaurie me Marie Delphine McCarthy died in Paris on December 7th 1842 well the wild boar story unfortunately is incorrect wouldn't that have been justice the second story holds a bit of truth Delphine actually died at her home in Paris in 18-49 at the age of 64 she had been sick for years and although there's no cause of death in the French records it's assumed that she died from natural causes she had some health problems on December 9th 18-49 she was given a third-class burial and interred in the tomb of the Notah and Noel families at the Mont Marte Cemetery in Paris this cemetery is one of the four cemeteries still in existence today that was open in the 19th century and it houses many artists of that time including Alexandre Dumas it's described now as secluded and idyllic and currently is occupied by a large group of cats it is said that no one knows where they came from but dozens of cats can be seen on any given day sunning themselves on the tombstones just a little fun fact On January 7th is rumoured that her body was exhumed and brought to New Orleans to be reburied now a lot of people think that Madame LaLaurie is buried in Saint Louis cemetery number one and nor and there's that that gravestone that says her name the burial books for the cemetery ended in 1841 and they don't resume again until 1857 but there's no record of this burial however the records do show that the tomb which is supposedly thought to be hers today was owned by the family of Paulin Blanc her son it's a very large sick shelf family tomb but as far as we know if we only have the records that existed go on neither a Madame LaLaurie nor any of her children including Paulin or laid to rest there the first person that is shown to have been interred there was one of Delphine's great granddaughters who died in 1884 but it does seem suspicious why would pollen have this huge tomb built with all these spaces and not have himself buried there or anybody else for almost 30 years after it was put there it's a little it's a little suspicious after the advertisers questionable report on April 14th the papers no longer reported on the rescue slaves their conditions or their fates they most likely would have been taken to Charity Hospital an establishment that often provided services to the indigent but when the hospital records for the time research there is no record of slaves being treated there after the fire there's also no funeral records for any of the lalaurie's slaves in the spring of 1834 the slaves that were not removed from the house were sold off by de lassus and forestall their her son in laws on the day of the fire Delphine owned 30 slaves with records of eleven being sold that leaves 19 of these people unaccounted for according to the author of Madame LaLaurie mistress of the haunted house they could have died from illnesses been given to family or friends or just run away during the confusion of the fire but because of the very strict record-keeping in New Orleans at this time the disappearance of 19 slaves without record of where they went or what happened to them is quite unusual and may imply something sinister so after this the house is pretty much you know sold off to person after person and they keep trying to to make things happen in this house like open businesses and things like that the first time it was sold was in March 24th 1837 for $14,000 to a man named Pierre Edouard trustor and he he sold it only three months later for the same amount to a Charles Caffyn it was during this renovation and transformation that the house became what you see today if you're strolling through the Garden District in New Orleans a third story was added with a flat-topped roof an observatory and in fact after the mob was finished with the original structure there was very little of it left to build upon but the stories of the house being haunted didn't just start within you know today's day and age or the past 10 or 20 years stories of the house being haunted started shortly after the fire people would walk by and report hearing tortured screaming coming from the abandoned shell of the building and it did seem that anyone who tried to live there or run a business out of there encountered extremely bad luck after Charles Katherine fixed it up he rented it out to a boys school but that boy school shut down after a couple of years and the house at empty for many years until Katherine was able to sell it it was sold to a music teacher but within five years she was trying to unload it as well she sold it to a tobacco merchant who wanted to use it for his business but he ended up renting it out to another school but when this tobacco merchant owned it he used the building as collateral three separate times to take out three separate loans and when he couldn't pay back those loans the house was seized and one of the people that this tobacco merchant owed money to he snapped it up in auction for six thousand dollars it acted as a public school for a little bit but in 1878 it was vacant again then the New Orleans Conservatory of Music moved in and this seemed to be going well until the director of the conservatory was planning a concert with all of these people who were supposed to come perform and then somebody started a vicious rumor about the director and then all the people who were supposed to come and play their instruments that they backed out the concert ended up being a huge bust and once again the building was vacant the New Orleans Times reported that the house had become inhabited with spooks and was a white elephant for its owner and in fact it was making the owner of this building very little money and he was basically renting out space in the building to whoever would you know come in and pay for it so it was filled with merchants and fruit vendors and vegetable vendors and just oddball renters here and there until finally in 1893 he was able to sell it to an Italian immigrant named Fortunato Grieco Grieco had noticed that people hung around this house they were kind of like entranced by its mystery and the possibility that was haunted so he decided he would capitalize on this he posted a sign stating that there was no ghosts in this haunted house and he charged people to come in and see for themselves and so basically he started the illustrious history that this house now has when you go to New Orleans as being a place that you really have to see it drew in large crowds and it actually made Fortunato a fortune Fortunato of fortune between 1895 and 1905 Greco operated a bar or saloon in the building that he called the haunted exchange so he was actually doing really well basically just capitalizing on people's fears and thoughts that this place was haunted but in the late 1800s the area had been basically inundated with immigrants who were very poor and the building turned into a multi-unit apartment building the Italian families who lived there paint at the front door red they painted the marble floors red they painted the mahogany staircase RAD the crystal chandeliers were shattered the fireplaces were smashed and the courtyard end up being filled with a bunch of garbage us Italians we can be a rowdy bunch but when these people are living here they do begin to tell the landlord that they're being tormented by spirits even the bartender who ran the haunted exchange bar on the ground-floor claimed that he had seen ghosts Greco sold the house to a realtor company and I believe the 1920s okay in 1916 it passed through several owners an article in 1920 says that every space was rented out by tenants basically people were crammed in there on top of each other it was filthy and a room on the ground floor inside the house was being used as stables for horses but even these occupants claimed that the place was haunted and they were being plagued by spirits in fact the children of one Italian family who lived there would put sheets over their heads and then stand in the window so it looked as if there was a ghost in the window and then one of their siblings would stand at the ground floor and grab tourists as they passed and say like oh you know give me five sensor or a nickel or whatever and I'll show you a ghost and then they'd bring them into the courtyard and show their sibling up and in the windows dressed as a ghost so it goes through the hands of many people and all of these people they don't want to keep this place for too long it just seems to bring really bad circumstances to everybody who lives there and in 1969 it was sold to a radiologist and this radiologist was named dr. harry russell albright he paid two hundred and thirty thousand dollars for it and he wanted to kind of give it life again and start refinishing it and bringing it back to its former glory in 1988 after making it gorgeous and new again he tried to sell the house for 1.9 million dollars and the newspapers went crazy talking about this guy trying to sell his haunted house that we all know is haunted for almost two million dollars who is he and and this obviously put a kink in his plans because nobody wants to spend that much money especially on a house that is rumored to be haunted it wasn't until the year 2000 that he was able to sell the house he sold it for 1.7 million dollars to an investor from Colorado named James Monroe and this guy pretty much used the Laurie mansion as like his sometimes house like Hina's family would go there and stay but they didn't spend all year there dr. Albright claims that while he lived there he didn't experience any paranormal or unusual events although he could just be saying that because he really wanted to sell the house however years later after he did sell the house he ran into a very tragic in crazy situation it was January of 2005 and he was having dinner in the French Quarter the whole town was full of tourists and rowdy people because of the sugar-bowl and as he was leaving the restaurant he tossed a mint onto the table of some Dallas natives and these men seemed to to think that was an insult of some kind one of these men whose name was Anthony creme followed the doctor outside and began to attack him and dr. Albright who wasn't a young man anymore he couldn't fight back and he fell down and he hit his head really hard on the sidewalk he was in a coma for three weeks and he suffered permanent brain damage from that so a very unlucky and just out of the ordinary kind of event to happen in 2006 the house changed hands again Nicolas Cage bought it you know Nicolas Cage gone in 60 seconds Nicolas Cage one of the worst Hector's ever Nicolas Cage Nicolas Cage was known to buy properties all over the world when he had money and then he didn't have money anymore and it turned out that he wasn't always paying his taxes so he lost most of these properties and the low glory mentioned was one of the properties that he lost when I went to New Orleans obviously I visited the Lu Laura mentioned I wanted to take a look at it just get a feel for it but you cannot go inside the house at this point it's privately owned currently it is owned by someone and they are working on renovating it but I mean it's a gorgeous it's a gorgeous house I wanted to go there and I think many people want to go there just to see if you know you get that feeling that something spooky is going on there and you do but I think it has a lot to do with you expecting two or even a little part of you wanting to feel that spooky vibe when you're there it's just to me a part of history it's a very old house it's had a crazy story to it even if you take away madam Liew Laurie and her family living there just all the stuff that it's been through and all the people that have lived there how its kind of survived to become what it's become against all odds do I think it's haunted it possibly could be I don't think anything is impossible and you know we know that she was terrible to her slaves we know that she abused them and tortured them and did terrible things to them so yeah there could be a lot of anguish there and we also know there was a good amount of slaves that she owned that have been on accounted for we don't know what happened to them so there could be a lot that happened there that we don't know about and there could be a lot of anger and anguish and sadness that builds up and when you have that much negative energy in one place it can sometimes you know give you that spooky feeling as if something otherworldly is going on but if you do end up going to New Orleans at some point I highly suggest it as a stop during your visit the Garden District in general it's a beautiful area New Orleans in general is the best city it's so much fun there's so many different things to see st. Louis cemetery number one you can head over there where her grave allegedly is there's so much to see there with so much history connected to it and and that's what makes it a really amazing city because you kind of get that spooky vibe like you're walking over somebody's grave the entire time you're in the city but it's exciting and fun and you feel like you're a part of something so that's gonna be it for today's video we kind of came to the conclusion that although the story is horrific and there there's so much to it that makes it horrific and is the reason why it still talked about today certain parts of the story as far as we know have been exaggerated for you know dramatic effect but still a really awful story thank you guys so much for being here if you haven't gotten your Halloween merch yet check out the sleuthin eShop I'm wearing my murdery vibe shirt today we have a ton of stuff in store for you there's gonna be another two videos this week I will be in Los Angeles when this goes up because I will be there from the 1st to the 4th but I'll still be posting videos and in the comment section talking to you guys it just might take me a while cuz I'll probably be on a plane when this post once again if you're interested in what we're doing for Halloween if you want to be a part of it if you want to see the videos there are some really great ones I hand-picked them all specifically for you guys based on your requests and what you like and what I like go ahead and subscribe push that like button leave a comment telling me what you thought and how excited you are for the rest of Halloween because I am super excited thank you guys so much stay kind and stay beautiful and stay spooky bye and that's the end you

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 597,085

Keywords: madame lalaurie, delphine lalaurie, the lalaurie mansion, haunted houses, harloween, stephanie harlowe, true crime, mystery

Id: D1szWYn91UM

Length: 84min 51sec (5091 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019