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

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Emma Raine’s husbands were mysteriously dying, leaving the family and law enforcement baffled. As investigators dig deeper, a chilling conspiracy and another victim surface.  Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us: [e-mail]. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for season four. Every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect podcast network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows. Come hungry for season four. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast,

The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find.

Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Setup. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life, well I guess I'm saying I like you.

You like me? He actually is too good to be true. This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilawba painting. We can do this together. Listen to The Set Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the span of five years, Emma Rain lost two husbands to murder. 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.

And then, finally, the police closed in on the killer. But then he disappeared. We had somebody killing husbands to make a living, and that's scary. Today we're in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the conclusion of Bodies on the Bayou. I'm Sloane 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 of New Orleans residents to evacuate. Not everybody came back, but crime was one of the first things to come back to the city. Journalist John Zimmerman writes for the Advocate newspaper. The police department in New Orleans was in chaos during that time. It was pretty lawless around here after Katrina.

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. There was a run there where it was the per capita leader

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. 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. That was tough.

That was tough. I don't think their success rate in closing murder cases was very high back then. 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. 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 had sort of created a bloody scene." The police investigated, but there were no arrests. "...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." After the case went cold, his widow Emma moved to Mississippi. A year later, she married Ernest's military buddy, James Rain. 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. By 2011, tragedy struck Emma yet again. James Rain was killed. He was shot up badly at the house he shared with Emma Rain. It looked to be very deliberate. 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. Alford Everett 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. Alfred said he killed Ernest for a few thousand dollars, but he never got paid. He didn't get that. He got two clunkered cars, he said, from James Rain. 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. In the months before Ernest Smith's killing, she had not only ratcheted up her insurance policy, but also added James Reign as a 50-50 beneficiary. After this confession, Alfred promised his relatives that he'd go to the police and tell them everything. But instead, he disappeared. Eventually, they called police themselves and turned him in.

In 2012, they phoned Detective Desinda Barnes of the New Orleans PD. Desinda Barnes was a cold case detective and family members of James Rain called her, wanting to relay information that Alfred Evert had shot Ernest Smith. Detective Barnes reopened Preacher Ernest Smith's cold case, started digging into the strange dynamic between Emma, her second husband James, and his stepbrother Alfred.

Prosecutor Laura Rodrique also worked the case. 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? The first thing they looked at was the police report

from the night Ernest Smith was murdered. 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. 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.

Emma Rain 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. The report also noted that Emma looked pristine. She didn't have a drop of blood on her. No indication she had hugged him, touched him, nothing, as he died on the stairs. It turns out that none of what Emma told detectives on the night of Ernest Smith's murder fit with the physical evidence.

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.

And there was more. Emma Rain 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. As bad as things looked 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. "'Alfred Everett was charged with murder. He was the gunman who killed Ernest Smith. 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. So we believed that Emma Rayne 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. When detectives did a deep dive into her past, they learned Emma had another husband before Ernest. Emma's first husband, we learned, was a man named Leroy Evans. And guess what? Back in 1993, something terrible happened to Leroy. 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. Leroy was paralyzed from the neck down, leaving him bedridden. 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. And then one day Leroy's

feeding tube was mysteriously removed. So the mother of Mr. Evans told our investigator that Emma Rain 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 Rain and that she had caused his death. That's how she felt. So that was very alarming to us. But no charges were ever filed. And the strange thing is, no relatives of Ernest Smith or James Reign 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? That's where you sort of have to say, all right, what's going on here? Finally, investigators saw this string of dead husbands

with hefty insurance policies and labeled Emma the Black Widow. The money was the most important and she wanted that money more than anything. Detectives didn't think Emma could be any more cold-blooded than that. But what they learned next proved them all wrong. That's the question being asked by Murder True Crime Stories, the Crime House original podcast powered by Pave Studios.

I'm Carter Roy. Join me every Tuesday as I tell the story of a famous solved or unsolved murder. Each episode dives into the darkest corners of true crime, unraveling chilling narratives, examining compelling clues, and most importantly, seeking the truth. What sets Murder True Crime stories apart is the focus on humanizing the victims, and the effect their deaths had on their families, friends, and community. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why their stories need to be heard.

New episodes release every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for Murder Colon True Crime Stories. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at ThisIsPretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Dr. Joy here. You may know me from Therapy for Black Girls, where we're celebrating 400 episodes of the podcast.

That's a whole lot of girl me too moments. For years, we've had deep, thoughtful, and inspiring conversations about black women's mental health. And now we're celebrating this milestone in a big way. In this special episode, Peloton yogi Chelsea Jackson Roberts shares how yoga has taught her to stay grounded and present while

balancing motherhood and self-care. I can't control my partner. I can't control my child. I can't control anyone outside the way that I govern myself in this world. And the celebration doesn't stop there. We'll continue this milestone with Dr. Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful, yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for black fans. Together, we explore how we navigate this transformative journey with strength and grace.

Black girlhood is giggling, it's sisterhood, but it is also, I think, focusing on learning how to cope with really difficult things that are happening. With insights like these, this 400th episode celebration is one for the books. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago Mafia for all these years. It doesn't make any sense.

He was a firefighter paramedic. How the hell can he be a hitman? I need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand.

I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Kirk County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts is available now. Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over nearly two decades, Emma Rain lost three husbands, and the evidence against her was piling up. If she was willing to kill her own husband in exchange for a check, she was willing to do anything.

And that's scary. Prosecutor Laura Roderig learned that in the months before her husband, Ernest Smith, died, Emma made her boyfriend and eventual husband, James Rain, a beneficiary for half of Ernest's $800,000 life insurance policy. What Emma Rain 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. But Ernest's daughter never received that insurance money. Emma Rain'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 Rain through fraudulent activity. 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. 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. There are so many terrible things Emma was accused of doing. But maybe one of the most galling happened on the day of James Rain's murder. James Rain is in his home at the time that he's murdered. Emma Rain tells the police that she's on a business trip trying to make a 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 was 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. 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. Okay, now that is so beyond cold-blooded. And there's actually more to the story. If

you will 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. In other words, it seems as if she was intentionally luring James's 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.

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 Rain. She had already moved on to husband number four. Emma and her fourth husband were living in Kansas City, Missouri, at the time that she was arrested for the murders.

And when detectives told Emma she was being charged with the murder of her husband, Emma asked, which husband? As Emma waited her trial, her hired gun, Alfred Everett, was tried in 2014. He was charged with killing Emma's second husband, Ernest Smith. Alfred Everett was charged with murder and he was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison. The jury needed less than an hour to convict him. And with that, prosecutors turned their attention to Emma Reign's upcoming trial. 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 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. So what kind of things did the prosecutor learn about Emma from listening to her phone calls from jail? She would make demands of the jail. She wanted low fat chocolate chip cookies, certain things that she just felt like she

was entitled to, and she encouraged the young female inmates to sort of take on those causes with her. Prosecutors may have heard Emma demanding low-fat cookies, but there was one thing they wanted to hear, but did not. 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 has 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.

And this is an odd thing. As her trial date got closer, prosecutors were having a hard time getting anyone to testify against her. 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." Then, more bad news. A ruling came from the judge that prohibited prosecutors from calling Emma Rayne 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 Rayne. death of husband 3, James Rain. It got extremely complicated, so this was a different case in terms of how we had to present it.

So prosecutors offered Emma a deal. If she pled guilty to manslaughter, she'd get 35 years. But Emma turned down the deal. She was constantly kind of wheeling and dealing. When the trial began, Emma Rain 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 Rain, who was dead and obviously couldn't defend himself. Emma's lawyer referred to James Rain as James the Snake and claimed it was James who manipulated

Emma into upping Ernest Reign's insurance policy. Most importantly, the lawyer argued that James alone got Alfred Everett to kill Ernest Smith. Alfred Everett, he was sort of the last man standing who could testify against her. 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. You could kind of get a read on some of their faces, like not knowing what to make of it. So prosecutors went to Plan B and called three of James' relatives to testify. Those were the three people who had sort of broken this case wide open. Each one of those relatives described Alfred's confession. That James Rain and Emma Rain 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.

But as she sat through the damning testimony from the prosecution side, Emma was quiet, just jotting down notes on a notepad. Just zero emotion through the trial, no sign that any of this had affected her in any way. Emma Rain did not take the stand in her own defense. In fact, the defense did not call a single witness. 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. It was up to the eight women and four men of the jury to decide if Emma Rain was indeed a black widow. There's a story behind every murder, but is there an ending? That's the question being asked by Murder True Crime Stories, the Crime House original podcast powered by Pave Studios. Stories, the Crime House original podcast powered by Pave Studios. I'm Carter Roy. Join me every Tuesday as I tell the story of a famous solved or unsolved murder. Each episode dives into the darkest corners of true crime, unraveling, chilling narratives, examining compelling clues, and most importantly,

seeking the truth. What sets Murder True Crime stories apart is the focus on humanizing the victims, and the effect their deaths had on their families, friends, and community. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why their stories need to be heard. New episodes release every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for Murder Colon True Crime Stories. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself

We also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap away, you gotta pray for yourself, as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov, brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

and Services and the Ad Council. I need answers, so I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand. I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Crook County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart podcasts is available now. Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts. Dr. Joy here. You may know me from Therapy for Black Girls, where we're celebrating 400 episodes of the podcast. That's a whole lot of girl me too moments. For years, we've had deep, thoughtful and inspiring conversations about black women's mental health. And now we're celebrating this milestone in a big way.

In this special episode, Peloton yogi Chelsea Jackson Roberts shares how yoga has taught her to stay grounded and present while balancing motherhood and self-care. I can't control my partner. I can't control my child. I can't control anyone outside the way that I govern myself in this world. And the celebration doesn't stop there. We'll continue this milestone with Dr. Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful

yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful, yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for Black fans. Together, we explore how we navigate this transformative journey with strength and grace. Black girlhood is giggling. It's sisterhood. But it is also, I think, focusing on learning how to cope with really difficult things that are happening.

With insights like these, this 400th episode celebration is one for the books. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Emma Rayne 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. The prosecution was telling about this woman who seemed to either be bad luck or worse for the men she married. Journalist John Zimmerman covered the trial, where prosecutors labeled the three-time widower Emma Rain a Black widow. Zimmerman covered the trial, where prosecutors labeled the three-time widower, Emorraine,

a black widow. 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. At the time of Emorraine'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 Rain, for the murder-for-hire plot of husband number two, Ernest Smith. He basically said that Emma Rain didn't know about this. This was all James' plan. Keep in mind, James Rain was also murdered, and he obviously could not defend himself. What Emma Rain'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. But prosecutor Laura Roderig hoped jurors could connect all the dots. 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. So she resorted to using charts and graphs to show the relationship

between all the major players in the case. 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 Rain, how they all fit in as a family and where Ernest Smith and Emma Rain came into that family tree.

And we similarly had to do sort of a flow chart 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 Rain, and several sort of steps in laying out that story for the jury. The jury deliberated for three and a half hours before returning to the courtroom with

a verdict. I remember Emma, her typical self in terms of being very calm. She didn't seem rattled. She didn't seem worried about what was going to happen. Emma stared straight ahead when the verdict echoed through the courtroom. Guilty. Emma Raine was convicted of murder. The penalty will be life in prison.

And coincidentally, Emma Raine's sentencing for the murder of preacher Ernest Smith happened on the five-year anniversary of husband James Rain's death. 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. 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 Zimmerman reported on the story. One of the interesting things about this case is that she ended up getting the insurance money and James Rain's killing. So, Emma used the payout of life insurance from husband number three James Rain to pay back the IRS.

The judge saw no reason not to give it to her because no evidence was presented to suggest that Emma evidence was presented to suggest that Emma Rain was involved in James Rain's killing. 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. 90,000 of it, I believe, went from that settlement to pay her past tax debts. It's another example of the unexplainable hold 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 Reign, remains unsolved. Although it sits outside her jurisdiction, New Orleans prosecutor Laura Rodrik continues to watch it from a distance. So that investigation essentially is still ongoing. Emma has an alibi, and the police don't believe she directly was the killer. She was out of the state. There's a witness who indicates she was with him. So we don't believe she pulled the killer. 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. Do you remember how Emma and James Rain's house had a big fancy security system and how it wasn't working on the night that James was murdered? The detectives learned that the last person seen in the footage was Emma Rain 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 Rain. As of 2025, no one has been charged in the 2011 murder of James Rain. It's interesting to wonder why James thought he would be different from the rest. Because it was very clear that Emma Rain 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. The person who seemed to be the most shocked and disturbed by Emma was Apostle Jackson, preacher Ernest Smith's mentor and father figure. How do you just take someone like, how people just take somebody's life? I'm talking about you're supposed to love this man. He's supposed to be in your heart.

How can you do that? Back in 2006, when Emma and Ernest's marriage was strained, Apostle gave Ernest marital advice that continues to haunt him today. I convinced him that he needed to get his marriage another chance, and need to forget and forgive. And 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 have told him that the word of God said that 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, when you think about it." Of course, if Apostle had a do-over, he would have told Ernest to leave Emma. "...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 needs to stay there every day. And I'd ever, ever get out. But I do forgive her. 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. "...then my wife just said, just like this, she killed him. She killed him. Those are my words to my husband that morning. Carolyn said she always had a bad feeling about Emma that she just couldn't shake. 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 was something that would happen in real life, especially to someone that you know personally. So I don't know what Emma was thinking that day." Carolyn had her suspicions all along, but Apostle couldn't imagine Emma being a murderer. 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 believe that even though she was my wife, it still took me a long time to even think that someone could take someone like it. It really made me be aware that people that you trust could actually be wicked, even when they don't look it. 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 Pod at gmail.com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail.com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me, Sloane 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 Gans. The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional writing by Ben Federman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is Kristen Malkuri. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kreincak.

Audio editing, mixing and mastering by Nico Oruka. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser Music Library provided by MyMusic. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please rate and review American Homicide. Your five-star review goes a long way towards helping others find this show. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for season four every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving

up both dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows.

Come hungry for season four. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims,

but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Setup. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life, Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? he actually is too good to be true. This is a con.

I'm conning you to get the Dilama painting. We can do this together. Listen to The Set Up on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.