Hammond dentist tarred and feathered
Before I started this column, when someone said “Bayou Justice,” I usually thought of this story. My great-grandfather, W. O. “Paw Bill” Courtney, retold it routinely when I was a kid. My grandmother, “Maw Telliua,” insisted he had embellished some of it. I never cared. I loved the story regardless.
Poultry pioneer’s suicide revisited
According to a March 22, 1953, multi-page feature in the Advocate newspaper, poultry breeders from across the state flocked to hear lectures from Luke Lea, hoping to take home the secrets of his success. The Associated Press picked up the feature and distributed Lea’s story nationwide. Two months later, the State Times celebrated news of Luke and Beatrice Lea’s newborn son. No one imagined that eight months later, Luke Lea would be dead.
‘Dead’ man returns to Louisiana alive
Sam Jones, 38, told New Orleans States reporter George Jackson he didn’t know until the fall of 1951 that he had been “murdered” in 1949. The lanky six-footer spoke with Jackson that year inside the Denver police station, where police arrested him in the climax of a grotesque case. Back home in Louisiana, Donald Easterwood, a World War II veteran, had confessed to killing Sam Jones and stood trial for his murder.
What happened to Congressman Boggs?
The disappearance of Congressman Hale Boggs remains, to this day, an unresolved chapter in American history, a story without an ending.