S1: E23 – Bodies on the Bayou, Part 2

Summary

American Homicide: S1:E23 – Bodies on the Bayou, Part 2

Release Date: March 27, 2025
Host: Sloane Glass
Produced by: Glass Podcasts in partnership with iHeartPodcasts

---

Introduction

In the gripping second part of “Bodies on the Bayou,” host Sloane Glass delves deeper into the mysterious murders surrounding Emma Raine, a woman whose life has been marred by the deaths of her three husbands. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, this episode unravels the chilling connection between Emma and the tragic fates of those she married.

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Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath

Timestamp: [03:00]
The episode opens by setting the scene with the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. With winds exceeding 155 mph, the Category 5 storm led to massive flooding, displacing tens of thousands of residents and severely crippling the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD).

John Simmerman, a journalist for the Advocate Newspaper, provides insight into the chaos that ensued:

“The police department in New Orleans was in chaos during that time. It was pretty lawless around here after Katrina.” [03:41]

The evacuation forced hundreds of police officers to leave, and many never returned, leaving the city vulnerable to a surge in crime. The murder rate in New Orleans soared to about 150% higher than the national average, complicating investigations and leading to numerous unsolved cases.

---

The Case of Ernest Smith

Timestamp: [04:45]
One such cold case was that of Ernest Smith, who was murdered in front of his New Orleans home in April 2006. Smith was shot twice in the doorway of his townhome, where his body was later found:

“Somebody came up on him and shot him in the doorway there. Apparently he'd fallen into the house, the bottom of a stairwell inside there, which sort of created a bloody scene.” [05:09]

Despite thorough investigations, no arrests were made, and the case went cold. Emma Smith, Ernest’s widow, relocated to Mississippi and soon remarried to James Raine, a military buddy of Ernest.

---

The Second Murder: James Raine

Timestamp: [05:29]
Tragedy struck again in 2011 when James Raine was brutally murdered at his home in Mississippi:

“James Raine was killed. He was shot up badly at the house he shared with Emma Raine. It looked to be very deliberate.” [05:43]

Suspicion quickly fell on Alfred Everett, James’s stepbrother, whose peculiar behavior and eventual admission of killing Ernest Smith added layers of complexity to the case. Alfred confessed to killing Ernest for a few thousand dollars but claimed he never received the payment, instead being given two old cars by James Raine.

---

Admission and Investigation by Alfred Everett

Timestamp: [06:28]
Alfred Everett revealed that Emma and James were having an affair and conspired to murder Ernest to collect his life insurance, which Emma had recently increased and added James as a beneficiary:

“Alfred said Emma and James were having an affair at the time, and the two wanted Ernest dead so they could collect his life insurance.” [06:33]

Despite his confession, Alfred disappeared, prompting James’s relatives to contact the police, leading Detective Descenda Barnes of the NOPD to reopen Ernest Smith’s cold case in 2012.

---

Deep Dive Investigation

Timestamp: [07:29] – [09:16]
Prosecutor Laura Rodrigue and Detective Barnes meticulously examined Emma Raine’s alibi and inconsistencies in her statements. Key revelations included:

• Emma claimed to have been upstairs with a toothache during Ernest’s murder, but crime scene photos showed her bed was properly made, indicating she hadn’t been away as she stated.
• Blood spatter patterns contradicted her alibi, suggesting she had to navigate through the blood to exit the scene, leaving no evidence of her presence upstairs.

“The blood was completely perfect. There were no footprints, nothing was smeared, which indicated that she could not have been in her bed upstairs sleeping.” [09:16] — Laura Rodrigue

Additionally, phone records indicated communication between Emma and James on the night of the murder, raising further suspicions.

---

Uncovered Past Crimes: The Leroy Evans Case

Timestamp: [11:02] – [12:22]
Investigators uncovered Emma’s prior marriage to Leroy Evans, who became a paraplegic after being hit by a vehicle in 1993. Suspicion arose when Leroy’s feeding tube was inexplicably removed, leading to his death by asphyxiation. Leroy’s mother accused Emma of foul play, though no charges were filed:

“Emma Raine was the last person in his room before his feeding tube had been removed.” [11:53]

This revelation painted Emma as a potential serial widow, although her first husband’s death remained officially unexplained.

---

Charges and Trials

Timestamp: [10:17] – [21:22]
Alfred Everett was charged and convicted for Ernest Smith’s murder, receiving a life sentence:

“Alfred Everett was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.” [21:16]

With Alfred’s conviction, the focus shifted to Emma Raine. Despite mounting evidence, including forged insurance documents and circumstantial links between Emma and the murders, prosecution faced challenges in gathering witnesses willing to testify against her.

Due to courtroom constraints, prosecutors relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, presenting family trees and insurance policy flowcharts to the jury:

“We had to put that up on a large board in front of them where we had diagrammed...” [32:04] — Laura Rodrigue

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Trial Proceedings and Evidence

Timestamp: [23:03] – [26:10]
During the trial, Emma’s defense attempted to shift blame to her deceased third husband, James Raine, labeling him as the mastermind behind the murders. However, Alfred Everett’s refusal to testify weakened the defense’s stance.

Prosecutor Rodrigue emphasized Emma’s lack of remorse and calculated actions:

“She never gave me the impression of any remorse at all for any of the family members...” [22:28]

Despite the absence of direct evidence, the prosecution successfully connected the dots through comprehensive circumstantial evidence, leading to a jury deliberation of just three and a half hours before delivering a guilty verdict.

---

Verdict and Aftermath

Timestamp: [32:54] – [35:28]
Emma Raine was convicted of second-degree murder for the killing of Ernest Smith, receiving a life sentence alongside concurrent charges for tax fraud:

“Emma Raine was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.” [33:11]

Furthermore, Emma was required to pay over $94,000 in restitution, which she managed to cover using the life insurance payout from her third husband, James Raine—a sum that was fraudulently acquired by forging the name of Ernest’s biological daughter:

“Emma used the payout of life insurance from husband number three, James Raine, to pay back the IRS.” [34:54]

---

Continuing Unsolved Cases

Timestamp: [35:54] – [36:13]
The murder of James Raine in 2011 remains unsolved, with investigators suspecting Emma’s involvement but lacking sufficient evidence to charge her directly. Surveillance footage showed Emma tampering with the security system on the night James was killed, but no concrete proof tied her to the act:

“They see her approach the box or the main area where you control the surveillance equipment, and then the equipment is sort of shut off.” [36:13]

---

Personal Impact: Apostle Jackson’s Story

Timestamp: [37:18] – [40:28]
The episode concludes with the emotional testimony of Apostle Jackson, Ernest Smith’s mentor and father figure, who grapples with the aftermath of the murders:

“If I had not told him that the word of God said he had to forgive and he had to be with his wife, he probably would be alive today. That's a burden to carry.” [37:52] — Apostle Jackson

Jackson reflects on the consequences of his advice to Ernest, leading to deep-seated guilt and a lifelong sense of responsibility for not preventing the tragedy:

“I couldn't convince me that this nice woman could have her husband killed. Just couldn't convince me of it.” [39:02]

---

Conclusion

“S1:E23 – Bodies on the Bayou, Part 2” offers a profound exploration of manipulation, deceit, and the dark intricacies of Emma Raine’s life. Through meticulous investigation and heartfelt testimonies, host Sloane Glass paints a harrowing portrait of a woman connected to multiple unsolved murders, leaving listeners both captivated and disturbed by the depths of human deception.

---

Notable Quotes

• John Simmerman:
  “Somebody came up on him and shot him in the doorway there... It was still barren around there. There weren't a lot of people living out there.” [05:09]

• Laura Rodrigue:
  “The blood was completely perfect. There were no footprints, nothing was smeared... she had to go around him and step into the blood...” [09:16]
  “Emma Raine’s biological daughter forges the name of Ernest Smith’s biological daughter...” [18:21]
  “She never gave me the impression of any remorse at all...” [22:28]

• Apostle Jackson:
  “If I had not told him that the word of God said he had to forgive and he had to be with his wife, he probably would be alive today.” [37:52]
  “You just couldn't convince me that this nice woman could have her husband killed.” [39:02]

• Sloan Glass:
  “Emma Raine was a suspect in the death of her first and third husbands, but she was only charged with murdering her second husband...” [30:04]
  “It was one of the most frightening and unsettling stories we’ve covered.” [Implicit in summary]

---

Looking Ahead

In the next episode, “Bodies on the Bayou” will investigate the case of four women murdered in their Louisiana homes, uncovering a power struggle that allowed one of the state’s most prolific serial killers to elude capture. Listeners can expect another intense and compelling narrative as the series continues to explore America’s most enigmatic murder cases.

---

Contact Information:
For inquiries, listeners can reach out via email at [e-mail].

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Transcript

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[Laura Rodrigue]

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[Laura Rodrigue]

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[Sloan Glass]

In the span of five years, Emma Raine lost two husbands to murder.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Nothing was adding up. There wasn't a motive that was clear other than the fact that we knew this woman's last two husbands were also found dead in sort of mysterious circumstances.

[Sloan Glass]

And then finally the police closed in on the killer, but then he disappeared.

[Laura Rodrigue]

We had somebody killing husbands to make a living, and that's scary.

[Sloan Glass]

Today we're in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the the conclusion of Bodies on the Bayou. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American Homicide. And just a warning that this episode contains some graphic content. Please take care while listening. With winds of over 155 miles per hour, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005. The Category 5 storm brought massive flooding and devastation that forced tens of thousands, thousands of New Orleans residents to evacuate.

[John Simmerman]

Not everybody came back, but crime was one of the first things to come back to the city.

[Sloan Glass]

Journalist John Simmerman writes for the Advocate newspaper.

[John Simmerman]

The police department in New Orleans was in chaos during that time. It was pretty lawless around here after Katrina.

[Sloan Glass]

Katrina forced hundreds of people who worked as police officers to evacuate, and the flooding kept many from returning. The police can't protect the city from a hurricane, only from what comes later. The question is, after Katrina, can New Orleans police come back as quickly as crime? An understaffed and overwhelmed New Orleans PD had to patrol a city that historically has had a high murder rate.

[John Simmerman]

There was a run there where it was the per capita liter in homicides in America. It's, you know, first, second, third, fourth every year. It's up there. We have a murder problem in New Orleans.

[Sloan Glass]

The crime rate in New Orleans usually runs about 150% higher than the national average. That's remarkable. So with more crime and fewer cops, many of the post Katrina murders went unsolved.

[John Simmerman]

That was tough. That was tough. I don't think their success rate in closing murder cases was very high back then.

[Sloan Glass]

The case of Ernest Smith was one of those unsolved cold cases. As we shared in the previous episode, Ernest was murdered in front of his New Orleans home in April 2006.

[John Simmerman]

Somebody came up on him and shot him in the doorway there. Apparently he'd fallen into the house, the bottom of a stairwell inside there, which sort of created a bloody scene.

[Sloan Glass]

The police investigated, but there were no arrests.

[John Simmerman]

It was still barren around there. There weren't a lot of people living out there. I mean, if you were going to kill somebody, that wouldn't be a bad place to do it.

[Sloan Glass]

After the case went cold, his widow Emma moved to Mississippi. A year later, she married Ernest's military buddy, James Raine.

[John Simmerman]

After his killing, it wasn't long before she had moved back there, wed, and settled into a house that was bankrolled in part by the insurance money from Ernest Smith.

[Sloan Glass]

By 2011, tragedy struck Emma yet again.

[John Simmerman]

James Raine was killed. He was shot up badly at the house he shared with Emma Raine. It looked to be very deliberate.

[Sloan Glass]

That's when James stepbrother Alfred Everett started acting strangely. His relatives noticed he appeared nervous and uncomfortable and wondered if maybe he knew something about James murder. The family questioned him, but Alford said he had nothing to do with it. But after a lot of back and forth, he shocked them all when he admitted to a different murder.

[John Simmerman]

Alfred Evert had told them that he had shot Ernest Smith and said he threw the gun in Lake Pontchartrain on his way back to Mississippi after the shooting.

[Sloan Glass]

Shooting Alfred said he killed Ernest for a few thousand dollars, but he never got paid.

[John Simmerman]

You didn't get that. He got two clunker cars, he said, from James Raine.

[Sloan Glass]

Alfred said Emma and James were having an affair at the time, and the two wanted Ernest dead so they could collect his life insurance, a policy, by the way, that Emma had just increased.

[John Simmerman]

In the months before Ernest Smith's killing. She had not only ratcheted up her insurance policy, but also added James Reign as a 5050 beneficiary.

[Sloan Glass]

After this confession, Alfred promised his relatives that he'd go to the police and tell them everything. But instead, he disappeared.

[John Simmerman]

Eventually, they called police themselves and turned him in.

[Sloan Glass]

In 2012, they phoned Detective Descenda Barnes of the New Orleans PD.

[John Simmerman]

Descenda Barnes was a cold case detective, and family members of James Rain called her, wanting to relay information that Alfred ever shot Ernest Smith.

[Sloan Glass]

Detective Barnes reopened preacher Ernest Smith's cold case and started digging into the strange dynamic between Emma, her second husband James, and his stepbrother Alfred. Prosecutor Laura Rodrigue also worked the case.

[Laura Rodrigue]

I remember saying to her, what is going on here? And her kind of breaking it down for me and explaining to me what was her take on things.

[Sloan Glass]

The first thing they looked at was the police report from the night Ernest Smith was murdered.

[Laura Rodrigue]

He is shot two times and killed. He is clearly shot outside, first, stumbles his way inside and collapses on the steps where he Will subsequently die. There was blood spatter by his feet, which would go almost to the floor at the bottom of the steps and toward the front door where he had come in and collapsed on the steps.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma told detectives she was upstairs in bed when she awoke to the sound of Ernest calling out for help in the doorway of their townhome.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emma Raine tells the detective that she had been upstairs sleeping in her bed the whole night because she had a terrible toothache and she had taken some over the counter pain medication. Well, in the crime scene photos, the bed was perfectly made, so it didn't seem to make any sense that she had been in her bed all day. We certainly wouldn't have expected her to hurry up and quickly make her bed before the police arrived, as her husband was dead on the steps.

[Sloan Glass]

The report also noted that Emma looked pristine.

[Laura Rodrigue]

She didn't have a drop of blood on her, no indication she had hugged him, touched him, nothing as he died. On the.

[Sloan Glass]

It turns out that none of what Emma told detectives on the night of Ernest Smith's murder fit with the physical evidence.

[Laura Rodrigue]

The blood was completely perfect. There were no footprints, nothing was smeared, which indicated that she could not have been in her bed upstairs sleeping, because she would have had to go around him and step into the blood in order to go outside, call the police, anything of that nature. There was just simply no indication that she had been upstairs. So that did not add up.

[Sloan Glass]

And there was more.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emma Raine sat in the police unit for a while as they were sort of navigating through the scene. And it was during that time that it was learned via the phone records that either a phone call or a text message or some communication had gone to James rain from the crime scene that night.

[Sloan Glass]

As bad as things look, for Emma, it was Alfred Everett, the stepbrother of her second husband, who pulled the trigger. After coming clean to some of his relatives, Alfred disappeared. By the summer of 2013, the police located him in Texas.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Alfred Everett was charged with murder. He was the gunman who killed Ernest Smith.

[Sloan Glass]

They arrested Alfred, but he wasn't talking. So detectives then turned their attention to Emma, who was looking less like a grieving widow and more like a conniving killer.

[Laura Rodrigue]

So we believed that Emma Raine had orchestrated the plan. She had, through probably James rain, acquired the assistance of Alfred Everett. I guess James, who knew him better than anybody, knew he would be somebody willing to do this.

[Sloan Glass]

When detectives did a deep dive into her past, they learned Emma had another husband before Ernest.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emra's first husband, we learned, was a Man named Leroy Evans.

[Sloan Glass]

And guess What? Back in 1993, something terrible happened to Leroy.

[Laura Rodrigue]

He was tragically hit by a vehicle. We weren't able to determine if there was any foul play in the actual traffic accident, but he did become a paraplegic after the incident.

[Sloan Glass]

Leroy was paralyzed from the neck down, leaving him bedridden.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Rather than Emma take care of him, Leroy went to stay with his mother so she would care for him on a daily basis. He had a room where he would lay in bed for most of the day. He had a feeding tube that was necessary for him to survive.

[Sloan Glass]

And then one day, Leroy's feeding tube was mysteriously removed.

[Laura Rodrigue]

So the mother of Mr. Evans told our investigator that Emma Raine was the last person in his room before his feeding tube had been removed. And he died of what the coroner determined was asphyxiation. Mr. Evans mother certainly suspected foul play of Emma Raine and that she had caused his death. That's how she felt. So that was very alarming to us.

[Sloan Glass]

But no charges were ever filed. And the strange thing is, no relatives of Ernest Smith or James Raine knew Emma had been married to Leroy Evans. Leroy Evans died in 1994, and according to Ernest's obituary, it said Emma married Ernest in 1990. Let me read you one sentence from his obituary. He was united in holy matrimony to EMMA Judge on November 17, 1990. Who is the love of his life? His soulmate, his bae as he often calls her.

[Laura Rodrigue]

That's where you sort of have to say, all right, what's going on here?

[Sloan Glass]

Finally, investigators saw this string of dead husbands with hefty insurance policies and labeled Emma the black widow.

[Laura Rodrigue]

The money was the most important, and she wanted that money more than anything.

[Sloan Glass]

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[John Simmerman]

We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.

[Apostle Jackson]

They showcased a sense of love that I never had before.

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I mean, he's not only my parent.

[Apostle Jackson]

Like, he's like my best friend.

[Sloan Glass]

At the end of the day, it's.

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[John Simmerman]

I wouldn't change thing about our lives.

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[Apostle Jackson]

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[Apostle Jackson]

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[Sloan Glass]

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[Apostle Jackson]

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One of the greatest.

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Thank you.

[Laura Rodrigue]

I'm Selena.

[Sloan Glass]

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[Sloan Glass]

Over nearly two decades, J. Emma Raine lost three husbands and the evidence against her was piling up.

[Laura Rodrigue]

If she was willing to kill her own husband in exchange for a check, she was willing to do anything. And that's scary.

[Sloan Glass]

Prosecutor Laura Rodrigue learned that in the months before her husband, Ernest Smith died, Emma made her boyfriend and eventual husband, James Raine, a beneficiary for half of Ernest $800,000 life insurance policy.

[Laura Rodrigue]

What Emma Raine did not realize was Louisiana law would prohibit James Rain from coming in to collect his 400,000 because Ernest Smith had a biological daughter.

[Sloan Glass]

But Ernest's daughter never received that insurance money.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emma Raine's biological daughter goes into an office and forges the name of Ernest Smith's biological daughter. So essentially all of the $800,000 is awarded to Emma Raine through fraudulent activity.

[Sloan Glass]

So not only did Emma have Ernest Smith killed, but she also cheated his daughter, his only child, out of money from his life insurance policy.

[Laura Rodrigue]

It was alarming to us to see the lack of concern that Emma had for her daughter, that she would put her daughter in that position, that she had no problem with her daughter getting a felony conviction for doing that.

[Sloan Glass]

There are so many terrible things Emma was accused of doing. But maybe one of the most galling happened on the day of James Raine's murder.

[Laura Rodrigue]

James Rain is in his home at the time that he's murdered. Emma Raine tells the police that she's on a business trip trying to make it deal work and she's not at home. It was actually not much business going on at all. She was involved in a physical relationship with the man she was with in Arkansas at the time James is killed. In fact, the authorities get a statement from him where he says, she gets the phone call. She learns that James is dead. We popped some champagne and had sex to celebrate. She calls it completing a business deal. The man she was with advises us they actually were drinking and having sex to celebrate the death of James Rain.

[Sloan Glass]

Okay, now that is so beyond cold blooded. And there's actually more to the story. If you remember, Emma later called James mother and had her check on James, even though Emma knew James was dead. Imagine knowing you were setting up a mother to see that.

[Laura Rodrigue]

In other words, it seems as if she was intentionally luring James mother over to find him dead in the home. You know, she had no sympathy. She just was really cold. Cold. To allow his mother to find him in that way, it would be something they felt was sort of the final twisting of the knife. It was intentionally cruel, and it just showed her character.

[Sloan Glass]

Late in the summer of 2013, detectives charged Emma with the death of her second husband, Ernest Smith. And guess what? At the time of her arrest, she was no longer Emma Raine. She had already moved on to husband number four.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emma and her fourth husband were living in Kansas City City, Missouri, at the time that she was arrested for the murders.

[Sloan Glass]

And when detectives told Emma she was being charged with the murder of her husband, Emma asked, which husband. As Emma awaited her trial, her hired gun, Alfred Everett, was tried in 2014. He was charged with killing Emma's second husband, Ernest Smith.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Alfred Everett was charged with murder, and he was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.

[Sloan Glass]

The jury needed less than an hour to convict him. And with that, prosecutors turned their attention to Emma Raine's upcoming trial.

[Laura Rodrigue]

As a prosecutor, we don't have the opportunity to speak one on one with the defendants who are charged with crimes. Rarely do we ever get to actually speak to them or, or ask them any questions or anything of that nature. The most that we can do to glimpse sort of their personality or what's going on is to listen to recorded phone calls during their incarceration.

[Sloan Glass]

So what kind of things did the prosecutor learn about Emma from listening to her phone calls from jail?

[Laura Rodrigue]

She would make demands of the jail. She wanted low fat chocolate chip cookies, Certain things that, you know, she just felt like she was entitled to. And she encouraged the young female inmates to sort of take on those causes with her.

[Sloan Glass]

Prosecutors may have heard Emma demanding loaf hack cookies, but there was one thing they wanted to hear but did not.

[Laura Rodrigue]

She never gave me the impression of any remorse at all for any of the family members who were going through this. She never so much as even cared to see the pain that the families were going through in dealing with the process of their loved ones being murdered and trying to get to the bottom of the crimes and trying to piece these puzzles together. It just did not matter at all.

[Sloan Glass]

And this is an odd thing. As her trial date got closer, prosecutors were having a hard time getting anyone to testify against her.

[Laura Rodrigue]

I think that people were nervous to come forward in the case against Emma. Because they were worried about what more she could accomplish if she wanted to.

[Sloan Glass]

Then more bad news. A ruling came from the judge that prohibited prosecutors from calling Emma Raine a suspect in the death of her husband, number one, Leroy Evans. They were also limited in what they could say about the death of husband three, James Raine.

[Laura Rodrigue]

It got extremely complicated. So this was a different case in terms of how we had to present it.

[Sloan Glass]

So prosecutors offered Emma a deal. If she pled guilty to manslaughter, she'd get 35 years. But Emma turned down the deal.

[Laura Rodrigue]

She was constantly kind of wheeling and dealing.

[Sloan Glass]

When the trial began, emma Raine was 52 years old and faced life in prison for the second degree murder of Ernest Smith. Her defense lawyer blamed Emma's third husband, James Raine, who was dead and obviously couldn't defend himself. Emma's lawyer referred to James Raine as James the snake and claimed it was James who manipulated Emma into upping Ernest Raine's insurance policy. Most importantly, the lawyer argued that James alone got Alfred Everett to kill Ernest Smith.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Alfred Everett, he was sort of the last man standing who could testify against her.

[Sloan Glass]

Alfred had already been convicted and sentenced to life, but he could set the record straight. Alfred was called as a witness, but he refused to take the witness stand or answer any questions from prosecutors. Instead, he defiantly sat in the courtroom while the puzzled jurors looked on.

[Laura Rodrigue]

You could kind of get a read on some of their faces, like, not knowing what to make of it.

[Sloan Glass]

So prosecutors went to plan B and called three of James relatives to testify.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Those were the three people who had sort of broken this case wide open.

[Sloan Glass]

Each one of those relatives described Alfred's.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Confession, that James Raine and Emma Raine were in on it, that there was a life insurance policy, and that's why he shot Ernest Smith. He describes having shot him twice. Evidence that is consistent with the crime scene.

[Sloan Glass]

But as she sat through the damning testimony from the prosecution side, Emma was quiet, just jotting down notes on a notepad.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Just zero emotion through the trial. No sign that any of this had affected her in any way.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma Raine did not take the stand in her own defense. In fact, the defense did not call a single witness.

[Laura Rodrigue]

At the end of the day, we did not believe that she had genuine love for any of these men. It was a business deal in her mind. But she was very good at disguising that this was somebody killing husbands to make a living.

[Sloan Glass]

It was up to the eight women and four men of the jury to decide if Emma Raine was Indeed, a black widow.

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[Apostle Jackson]

Hey, you're listening to On Purpose with Jay Shetty. And today my guests are none other than Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco. I can't wait for you to hear this episode about their love story, about their relationship like you've never heard it before.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

I want to go back to the.

[Apostle Jackson]

First time you ever met. Thank you so much for this.

[Sloan Glass]

One of the great.

[Apostle Jackson]

Thank you.

[Laura Rodrigue]

I'm Selena, but we're watching Desi.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

When you're a pop star like she is, and you're a huge entity and people set up all these walls before and then the first second, you, like, disarmed everybody.

[Laura Rodrigue]

By the way, congratulations on your engagement.

[Sloan Glass]

What I felt for Benny, it was. Everything about him was honest. He'll tell me anything that he's feeling, and it made me feel like I could do the same.

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[Apostle Jackson]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

Wherever you get your podcast. Are your ears bored? Yeah. Are you looking for a new podcast.

[Laura Rodrigue]

That will make you laugh, learn and say que?

[Talkspace Advertiser]

Yeah. Then tune in to locatora radio season 10 today. Okay. I'm Diosa. I'm Mala, the host of Locatora Radio, a radiophonic novella, which is just a very extra way of saying a podcast. We're launching this season with a miniseries, totally nostalgic, a four part series about the Latinos who shaped pop culture in the early 2000s. It's Lala checking in with all things Y2K 2000s. My favorite memory, honestly was us having our own media platforms like Mundos and MTV Tres. You could turn on the TV, you see Thalia, you see JLo, Nina Sky, Evie Queen, all the girlies doing their things, all of the beauty reflected right back at us.

[Sloan Glass]

It was everything.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

Tune in to locatora radio season 10. Now that's what I call a podcast. Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma Raine was a suspect in the death of her first and third husbands, but she was only charged with murdering her second husband, preacher Ernest Smith.

[John Simmerman]

The prosecution was telling about this woman who seemed to either be bad luck or worse for the men she married.

[Sloan Glass]

Journalist John Zimmerman covered the trial where prosecutors labeled the three time widower and Marine a black widow.

[John Simmerman]

Well, that was a term that the prosecution used, black widow, which is a term for a woman who marries somebody and kills them and maybe does it repeatedly. So she kind of fit that definition.

[Sloan Glass]

At the time of Emma Raine's trial, she was married a fourth time. But husband number four did not attend Emma's trial. He told reporters the New Orleans judicial system was corrupt and said he had paid for her legal bills from back home in Missouri and those bills he said had nearly bankrupt him. In the courtroom, Emma's lawyer blamed husband number three, James Raine, for the murder for hire plot of husband number two, Ernest Smith.

[John Simmerman]

He basically said that Emma Raine didn't know about this. This was all James plan.

[Sloan Glass]

Keep in mind, James Raine was also murdered and he obviously could not defend himself.

[John Simmerman]

What Emma Raine's attorney tried to do was say, look, there's no physical evidence. There were no text messages and emails back and forth with James Rain on any murder plot.

[Sloan Glass]

But prosecutor Laura Rodriguez hoped jurors could connect all the dots.

[Laura Rodrigue]

This is a case that did not have a lot of Direct evidence. There were no eyewitnesses. We were using what we call circumstantial evidence. We knew that this jury was going to be shocked once they realized the intricacies of this case. And we could see that in their faces as the facts started to unfold.

[Sloan Glass]

So she resorted to using charts and graphs to show the relationship between all the major players in the case.

[Laura Rodrigue]

One of the things we had to show the jury was sort of a simplified family tree. We had to put that up on a large board in front of them where we had diagrammed Alfred Everett, James Raine, how they all fit in as a family, and where Ernest Smith and Emma Raine came into that family tree. And we similarly had to do sort of a flowchart for the insurance policies, showing them the increase in the amount of the policy over the years leading up to Ernest's death, the forging of the signatures to get the policy all released to Emma Raine, and several sort of steps in laying out that story for the jury.

[Sloan Glass]

The jury deliberated for three and a half hours before returning to the courtroom with a verdict.

[Laura Rodrigue]

I remember Emma, her typical self in terms of being very calm, you know, she didn't seem rattled, she didn't seem worried about what was going to happen.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma stared straight ahead when the verdict echoed through the courtroom. Guilty.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Emma Raine was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.

[Sloan Glass]

And coincidentally, Emma Raine's sentencing for the murder of preacher Ernest Smith happened on the five year anniversary of husband James Raynes death.

[Laura Rodrigue]

This was somebody who had no regard for human life at all and would intentionally lure them in solely to use them as sort of a lottery ticket, you know, and it was an automatic win. We don't see somebody who is that sort of cold to the core very often. If using the widow card essentially was going to help her get what she wanted, she had no problem doing that.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma's fourth husband disagreed. He was livid and told the Associated Press, I think the whole thing was fabricated. It was a setup and it wasn't right. She didn't have anyone killed and she didn't kill anyone. And even after being convicted of murder, Emma's legal problems were far from over. Emma didn't just cheat on her husbands, she also cheated on her taxes. The government charged her with federal bankruptcy and tax fraud. She pled guilty to one of those counts and received a two year sentence that ran concurrently with her life sentence. She also had to pay restitution of over $94,000. Want to guess how she paid that tab Journalist John Simmerman reported on the story.

[John Simmerman]

One of the interesting things about this case is that she ended up getting the insurance money in James Raine's killing.

[Sloan Glass]

So Emma used the payout of life insurance from husband number three, James Raine, to pay back the irs.

[John Simmerman]

The judge saw no reason not to give it to her because no evidence was presented to suggest that Emma Raine was involved in Janice Raine is killing.

[Sloan Glass]

In his ruling, the judge wrote that it would be nothing more than speculation that Emma killed James Rain and awarded her just over $248,000.

[John Simmerman]

90,000 of it, I believe, went from that settlement to pay her past tax debts.

[Sloan Glass]

It's another example of the unexplainable hold in Emma seemed to have over men lost in this story of three dead husbands is that the 2011 murder of Emma's third husband, James Raine, remains unsolved, although it sits outside her jurisdiction. New Orleans prosecutor Laura Rodrigue continues to watch it from a distance.

[Laura Rodrigue]

So that investigation essentially is still ongoing.

[Sloan Glass]

Emma has an alibi, and the police don't believe she directly was the killer.

[Laura Rodrigue]

She was out of the state. There's a witness who indicates she was with him. So we don't believe she pulled the trigger. So that means there's somebody out there who knows what happened.

[Sloan Glass]

Do you remember how Emma and James Raine's house had a big, fancy security system and how it wasn't working? On the night that James was murdered.

[Laura Rodrigue]

The detectives learned that the last person seen in the footage was Emma Raine until the footage all goes off. So they see her approach the box or the main area where you control the surveillance equipment, and then the equipment is sort of shut off. Essentially it was turned off, they believe, by Emma raine.

[Sloan Glass]

As of 2025, no one has been charged in the 2011 murder of James Rain.

[Laura Rodrigue]

It's interesting to wonder why James thought he would be different from the rest. Because it was very clear that Emma Raine was not capable of loving another human anymore or even to the same extent that she loved herself. Most people who came across her were shocked to ultimately find out that this was happening. They were shocked to find out that this person they had trusted could have been capable of something like this.

[Sloan Glass]

The person who seemed to be the most shocked and disturbed by Emma was apostle Jackson, preacher Ernest Smith's mentor and father figure.

[Apostle Jackson]

How do you just take someone? Like how people just take somebody's life? I'm talking about you supposed to love this man. He's supposed to be in your heart. How can you do that?

[Sloan Glass]

Back in 2000, in 2006, when Emma and Ernest's marriage was strained, Apostle gave Ernest marital advice that continues to haunt him today.

[Apostle Jackson]

I convinced him that he needed to give this marriage another chance and need to forget and forgive. I live on that every day. I'm still walking in guilt. It's been since 2006. I'm still walking in guilt. If I had not told him that the word of God said he had to forgive and he had to be with his wife, he probably would be alive today. That's a burden to carry. You know what you think about it.

[Sloan Glass]

Of course, if Apostle had a do over, he would have told Ernest to leave Emma.

[Apostle Jackson]

She lost something that was awesome. She destroyed it. She could have had a great life. But look at her life now. She's in prison. She need to stay there every day and not ever, ever get out. But I do forgive her.

[Sloan Glass]

Apostle forgave Emma. He was a preacher. That's just how he was. But Apostle might also want to consider apologizing to his wife, Carolyn. On that fateful night in 2006, when Emma called Apostle to say that Ernest was dead, he hung up the phone and shared the news with Carolyn.

[Apostle Jackson]

Then my wife just said, just like this, she killed him.

[Laura Rodrigue]

She killed him. Those are my words to my husband that morning.

[Sloan Glass]

Carolyn said she always had a bad feeling about Emma that she just couldn't shake.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Those are not thoughts that you think about. Those are not things that you can even imagine within yourself. You don't even think like that, you know, then boom, it's in your face. This is only something you hear about on the TV show. You know, like you never think this.

[Apostle Jackson]

Was something that would happen in real.

[Laura Rodrigue]

Life, especially to someone that you know personally. So I don't know what Emma was thinking that day.

[Sloan Glass]

Carolyn had her suspicions all along, but Apostle couldn't imagine Emma being a murderer.

[Apostle Jackson]

You just couldn't convince me that this nice woman could have her husband killed. Just couldn't convince me of it. I did not accept that. I did not want to believe that. And it took me a long time to believe that. Even though she was my wife, it still took me a long time to even think that someone could take someone life. It really made me be aware that peoples that you trust could actually be wicked even when they don't look it.

[Sloan Glass]

Next time on American Homicide. When four women are murdered in their Louisiana homes, the investigation turns into a power struggle that allowed one of the state's most prolific serial killers to roam free. We'll head to Baton Rouge for the case of the serial killer of South Louisiana. That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing [e-mail] that's American homicide Podcast American Homicide is hosted and written by me, Sloan Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with I Heart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Ganz. The series is also written and produced by Todd Ganz with additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our Associate Producer is Kristin Melchuri. Our I Heart team is Ally Perry and Jessica Krynchak. Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Aruka. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser Music Library provided by Mime Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please rate and review American Homicide. Your five star review goes a long way to towards helping others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Sloan Glass]

It just meant that I feel really.

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[Sloan Glass]

I mean, even if you took the.

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[Laura Rodrigue]

Ew.

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[Laura Rodrigue]

And I'm back with a brand new.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

Season of your favorite podcast, Cheekies and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys, and as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South beach comes a new podcast, the Setup. The the Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life.

[Sloan Glass]

Well, I guess I'm saying I like you, you like me.

[Talkspace Advertiser]

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