Madame LaLaurie holds a special place in the mythology of the South, and New Orleans in particular. If there ever was a house that was haunted, it would be her mansion, a collection of rooms used for torturing and murdering slaves in the most violent ways possible. Born Marie Delphine Macarty, Madame LaLaurie, wealthy socialite and slave owner, may have been one of America’s first serial killers, with a body count that was rumored to be somewhere near 100.
Many people believe that it was after she married her third husband that LaLaurie's violent instincts kicked in. Whatever the reason, she was known to openly flog her slaves for even the most trivial of perceived slights. Even given the abhorrent standards of behavior towards slaves in her time and place, this was considered extreme, and her behavior got her investigated for cruelty to slaves in 1828, 1829, and 1832.
With this collection of gruesome facts, you’ll come to meet one of the most disturbing people who ever walked the face of the earth, and one who never faced any recrimination for the brutal torture that she doled out to her slaves. Actress Kathy Bates depicted a fictionalized version of LaLaurie in the third season of American Horror Story.
There was never any reason for Madame LaLaurie’s gruesome and twisted murder spree, it’s as if one day she decided that she was going to start systematically murdering and dehumanizing her slaves in elaborate ways that would make the creators of The Human Centipede blush. LaLaurie’s behavior was something that made normal slave owners seem cordial in comparison.
Madame LaLaurie has become a part of New Orleans legend, and her house, as it stands now, is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the slaves who met their demise at her hands. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, you have to admit that if any building is haunted it has to be the mansion where one woman tortured her slaves to death before letting them burn alive in an attic.
14 Facts About Madame LaLaurie, Socialite, Slave Torturer, & Serial Killer,
She Allowed Her Slaves to Burn to Death
In 1834, when the LaLaurie mansion was set on fire by one of her slaves, LaLaurie skeedaddled out of New Orleans without even so much as unlocking the attic where there were still living slaves. Rather than face recrimination of being a human nightmare, she was simply A-OK with letting her slaves burn.
She Chained Her Personal Chef to the Stove
Nothing dehumanizes a person quite like chaining them to the physical representation of their station in life, and that's exactly what LaLaurie did to the 70-year-old woman who cooked all of her meals. Either because she couldn't trust the woman to not escape (and who could blame her for wanting to run?), or because she was a cruel piece of garbage that found sick pleasure in imprisoning people, LaLaurie literally chained this woman to her work station. Ironically, this would be LaLaurie's undoing. Rather than live out the rest of her life chained to an oven, the emaciated cook set fire to LaLaurie's mansion, calling attention to the Madame's brutal treatment of her slaves before the entire city of New Orleans.
Her Slaves Were Sent to an Attic Torture Chamber and Never Seen Again
If her beatings, whippings, and general nastiness weren't enough to keep her slaves in line, Madame LaLaurie would send her slaves to the attic, a place that was more torture chamber than storage space. Rather than have the attic be a place where slaves were sent for punishment before returning to their work, it was a final resting place for many of the slaves who were sent there. What's worse is that LaLaurie never removed the bodies of the dead slaves from the attic, so by the end of her tenure in New Orleans, people were being locked up next to rotting corpses.
She Stuffed Animal Waste Into One Woman's Mouth, Then Sewed It Shut
One of the most brutal forms of torment that LaLaurie exacted on her slaves was not only disgusting, but it proves that she likely didn't act alone. After breaking into the Madame's attic to save slaves during the fire that ended her reign as the torture queen of New Orleans, people found one woman who had had her mouth stuffed with animal excrement and her lips sewn shut.
Aside from being one of the most gruesome torments that we can imagine, it's also something that would be hard to do on your own. In order to do this, presumably someone has to hold the person down, and you need at least one more person to handle the animal feces, and maybe a third to sew. LaLaurie gets the credit for being the boogeywoman of New Orleans, but she probably wasn't alone.
She Left Her Victims Hanging for Months
Some of the slaves that did survive their horrific encounter in the attic only did so because they were thrown upstairs a few months before the fire and hadn't died yet. Upon breaking into the torture chamber, the people of New Orleans discovered some slaves who had been locked in shackles and left to hang until they died. Even though those slaves discovered during the LaLaurie fire were saved, it's doubtful that many people survived their treatment in the attic.
She Wrapped Her Slaves' Intestines Around Their Bodies Like Belts
Because there's no direct timeline of LaLaurie's torture, it's hard to know when she decided to get creative with her punishments. Did she ramp up to turning a woman into a human caterpillar? Or was that something she started out with before her bloodlust waned to simple whippings and beatings? One of the sick forms of torture that LaLaurie committed was chaining women up, disemboweling them, then wrapping their intestines around their waists and letting their bodies hang and rot.
She Drove a Young Girl to Leap Off the Roof to Escape Her Torture
LaLaurie was so frightening that many of her slaves chose to commit suicide rather than deal with her punishments directly. One story tells of a 12-year-old slave girl, Lia, who accidentally tugged at a snag while brushing the Mistress's hair. LaLaurie chased the young girl around with a whip, and Lia chose to jump off the roof rather than face whatever vile torment was waiting for her. LaLaurie had the girl's body buried in a well, and the discovery of her remains is what began the downfall of LaLaurie's life in New Orleans.
She Collected Horrific Torture Devices
In the 19th century it was probably much easier to get your hands on torture implements without ending up on a list, and LaLaurie certainly made use of her ability to hand-pick shackles of all shapes and sizes. She locked some of her slaves up in iron collars that had inward-facing spikes. The way these collars work is that when you take a breath, you are actively killing yourself, so you can either hold your breath until you die, or let the collar do its job.
She Beat Her Daughters When They Tried to Feed Her Slaves
You know who wasn't a cool mom? Madame LaLaurie. She was such a human nightmare that she even beat her daughters when they attempted to give the emaciated slaves any form of sustenance. LaLaurie had to know that there was no good way for her story to end, right? As a person who owned people and beat up her own children, she must have understood that at some point the hammer was going to drop and everything was going to come back on her. Or maybe she was just a crazy person who had no concept of right or wrong.
She Attempted to Turn a Woman Into a Human Caterpillar
After Madame LaLaurie's mansion caught fire and the people of New Orleans rushed to save the slaves who were trapped inside, they found some truly disturbing human "experiments" locked in the attic of the house. “[A] victim [of the 1834 fire who] obviously had her arms amputated and her skin peeled off in a circular pattern, making her look like a human caterpillar,” and another who had had her limbs broken and reset “at odd angles so she resembled a human crab.”