Fortune in voodoo gold still missing 136 years later
This column is part one of another chapter from the history of Bloody Tangipahoa. Circumstances revealed in this two-part report suggest members of a Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s posse succumbed to a curse after relieving a voodoo doctor of a fortune in gold.
Bloody Tangipahoa shootout assessed in court
Before his death on October 9, 1899, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Avery R. Draughon told fellow deputies that Gage and Alonzo Gill accosted him at the train station in Tangipahoa, shooting him three times. Aleck and Jim Gill promised Deputy Sheriff W. J. Mullins their brothers would surrender by week’s end, but that never happened.
Stories conflict in Bloody Tangipahoa shooting
Sunday, October 8, 1899, the evening edition of the New Orleans Daily Picayune stacked multiple headlines per story, shouting “Tangipahoa wars start again,” followed by “Deputy Sheriff Draughon seriously wounded by 2 Gill boys,” “Shooting at victim’s home,” “Deputy boarding train for Kentwood when Gill pounced on him,” and “Three shots! Victim pulled gun as they searched him.”