Two half-brothers, in prison for killing a priest, tell a story of abuse in New Orleans
Father Patrick McCarthy was brutally murdered in 1988. The two half-brothers in prison for the killing say he sexually abused them for years
M
Two of these men had a different path to prison.
Bernard Joseph, 57, and Marcus Hamilton, 65, half-brothers, are serving life terms in Angola, the Louisiana state penitentiary, for murdering a priest.
Their stories, revealed here in full for the first time, cite their lawsuits against the New Orleans archdiocese, voluminous documents in a death penalty appeal, and the National Catholic Reporter’s Zoom interviews with each man at an office with attorney Schubert present. Prison officials refused permission for in-person interviews.
This story also involves two Josephite priests. One was murdered. The other has testified that he was trying to help the brothers, who say both religious men abused them sexually.
The St Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart’s website describes it as a male religious order “serving the African American community through the proclamation of the Gospel and our personal witness”. Josephites have a long history in New Orleans, notably at St Augustine, a distinguished boys’ high school whose alumni include music superstar Jon Batiste and former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, along with major athletes and politicians.
Josephite priest Patrick McCarthy, head of the religion department, was also pastor at Blessed Sacrament Catholic church in a working-class neighborhood. McCarthy had a 1976 degree in psychiatric social work from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a 1982 master’s from the Washington Theological Union.
The rectory was decorated for Christmas on 18 December 1988, when the church caretaker found McCarthy’s naked body in an upstairs bedroom on a blood-soaked floor, hands and feet tied, stabbed in the neck, strangled by a cord. Police began a manhunt for Hamilton. Police reports said McCarthy “befriended” Hamilton, “allowing him to stay at the rectory as a cook while he looked for work”.
“A foolish act of horrible violence,” said Philip Hannan, who had retired as archbishop of New Orleans earlier that December. “Father McCarthy is now in the presence of the Lord that he served so well.”
Hannan told United Press International the slaying stemmed from “an act of charity”.
On New Year’s Eve, the FBI arrested Hamilton in Baytown, Texas, “without incident”.
“I never denied killing the homosexual priest from day one when FBI arrested me. I told the FBI exactly what took place,” Hamilton told the National Catholic Reporter via Zoom. The words poured out in a river from the man with a graying beard, glasses and paralytic left arm close by his chest.
“He kept after me and I was aggravated and this man lying buck naked on his belly like he was a real woman and I picked up a Black & Decker hammer. Some people doing renovation of the rectory left tools … and I killed him, but it wasn’t armed robbery! The homicide detectives found over 20,000 cash. Now if I was a robber, wouldn’t I have taken it?”
Hamilton, who in fact drove off in McCarthy’s car with a TV and other items, was telegraphing a larger point about the wellsprings of his rage.
Joseph said his brother was hallucinating at the time.
Hamilton spent 30 years on death row with a long legal challenge by Nick Trenticosta, former director of the Death Penalty Resource Center at Loyola University New Orleans.
Trenticosta had a joint 1977 bachelor’s in sociology from the University of New Orleans and in social work from Southern University at New Orleans, which is a historically Black school. As a community organizer, he had seen the representation at trial of Black men in a state with one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, and he went to Louisiana State University Law School, he told the National Catholic Reporter, “for the express purpose of representing people on death row”.
In 1998, Trenticosta took Hamilton’s post-conviction case, challenging then district attorney Harry Connick’s office over evidence not admitted at trial. Trenticosta secured affidavits with family members for one purpose: to spare his client death by lethal injection.
Family dynamics
Hamilton and his half-sibling were among the youngest of Genevieve Hamilton Joseph’s 12 children. She came from a plantation village in St Bernard parish (what counties are called in New Orleans) south of town.
Hamilton’s maternal grandmother, Ethel Woods Augustine, spoke of her daughter’s mental health issues in one of the affidavits taken by Trenticosta.
“Genevieve was not right from birth,” said Augustine, who noted she herself had been hospitalized “a few times” for mental health problems. “The doctors told me that what was wrong with [Genevieve] could not be cured. She would not talk to other children or play with anyone … She wouldn’t play with store-bought toys. She had figures made from moss and sticks and she talked to them. They all had names.”
Augustine said Genevieve was 13 when she was “taken advantage of sexually because she was not able to protect herself”.
Genevieve married Godchaux Joseph. They were not together long. Genevieve Hamilton Joseph had a succession of breakdowns and hospitalizations as she gave birth to one child after another, a dozen in all, by several men she never married. The children were in and out of relatives’ homes or foster care.
Please continue reading on The Guardian at:
Savior or predator?
==================================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment