(1873) She Paid $500 a Night to Be His Slave- The Serial K!ller Who Owned a Judge’s Daughter | HO!!!!

The Midnight Visit

On October 13, 1873, just past midnight, the iron door of Louisiana State Penitentiary’s death row groaned open. The woman who stepped through wasn’t a victim or a lawyer. She was a judge’s daughter.

Her name was Evangeline Crawford, nineteen years old, beautiful, refined, and the pride of one of New Orleans’s most powerful families. What she carried with her that night wasn’t forgiveness—it was $500 in bribes.

Inside the dim cell waited Silas Blackwood, a six-foot-five mountain of muscle and rage, shackled to the wall. In two weeks, he was set to hang for the brutal rape and murder of the Louisiana governor’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Amelia Morrison—a crime so depraved that the courtroom spectators had vomited when the photographs were shown.

But when Evangeline saw those same images in court, she didn’t flinch.
She smiled.

That smile would set off one of the most shocking chains of events in American criminal history: a love affair between a condemned killer and a judge’s daughter that would end with 200 people dead, a state government paralyzed, and the creation of one of the 19th century’s most elusive female serial killers.

The Trial That Broke a City

In September 1873, New Orleans was sweltering under late-summer heat and public outrage. The trial of Silas Blackwood and his three codefendants—Marcus Green, Thomas Walsh, and Daniel Carter—had become front-page scandal across the South.

The evidence was overwhelming. Witnesses placed all four men at the scene; bloodstained clothing, fingerprints, and testimony painted a picture of unspeakable violence. When Judge Thaddeus Crawford, Evangeline’s father, read the death sentence aloud, the courtroom erupted in applause.

But as Silas Blackwood was led away in chains, his eyes met Evangeline’s in the gallery. For exactly three seconds, the world seemed to stop.

To everyone else, Silas was a monster.

To Evangeline, he was the first man who didn’t pretend to be good.

The First Night

Six nights later, she bribed a prison guard to open his cell.

Witnesses would later say she looked calm, almost reverent, as she entered. What happened inside that cell remains partly speculation, but the guard who found her at dawn described her lying on the floor, wrists marked by chains, neck bruised, eyes glazed—and smiling.

When he asked, “My God, what did he do to you?”

Evangeline answered, “He made me into the woman I wanted to be.”

By morning, she was already planning her return.

A Monster’s Mirror

Over the following week, Evangeline returned every night. The $500 she paid each time bought her not just access but transformation. Silas stripped away her upbringing—her etiquette, her religion, her civility—and replaced them with something raw, predatory, and unrepentant.

He told her about the lashings he endured as a slave, about the white men who’d beaten and humiliated him, about a system that called itself civilized while bathing in blood. “Your father owned men like me,” he whispered. “You just inherited his chains.”

For a girl raised to worship propriety, Silas’s rage was intoxicating. He was everything society told her not to be—uncontrolled, unapologetic, and real.

But behind his philosophical sermons was a plan. Every story, every confession, every touch was carefully designed to turn the judge’s daughter into his weapon.

The Corruption File

Within a week, Evangeline was stealing. She began smuggling files from her father’s study—trial documents, court ledgers, correspondence between judges and prosecutors. Silas convinced her that these papers contained proof of his innocence.

They did not.

What they did contain was information he could use: names, political ties, hidden scandals. With every page she delivered, she gave him leverage against Louisiana’s most powerful men.

By late October, Evangeline had compiled a full dossier—17 officials, including judges, prosecutors, and city councilmen—each guilty of bribery, fraud, or worse. She carried that dossier into the office of Louisiana’s attorney general and delivered an ultimatum:

“Use this to reopen Silas Blackwood’s case—or I destroy every career in this city.”

The Chaos That Followed

The next morning, newspapers screamed of massive judicial corruption. The attorney general called for investigations, and under pressure, Governor Morrison—whose daughter Silas had slaughtered—granted a stay of execution.

The public saw a crusading young woman exposing injustice.

Only Silas and Evangeline knew the truth: it was blackmail.

Within days, the state collapsed into chaos. Judges accused one another. Prosecutors fled. Prison security faltered.

And on November 14, 1873, Silas Blackwood and his three accomplices vanished from Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The Blood That Followed

Evangeline’s father, Judge Crawford, discovered her diary soon after. Its pages detailed everything—the bribes, the lies, the nights in Silas’s cell, and her complicity in the escape.

He burned the diary that night, resigned from the bench, and told his daughter to disappear. She did.

Three weeks later, she found Silas in Texas. He was living under a false name, plotting to cross into Mexico. For a brief moment, the two lovers reunited. But what Evangeline discovered in that dim boarding house would make Silas’s original crimes look almost merciful.

The four men had been killing for years. Amelia Morrison hadn’t been their first victim—only the most important one. They had murdered six other women before her.

And now, with Evangeline among them, the killings began again.

The Judge’s Daughter Turns Predator

In the ruins of her conscience, Evangeline found purpose.

While Silas killed from rage, she killed from curiosity. She designed the murders like equations—victim profiles, alibis, disposal methods. She planned everything with surgical precision.

Between 1873 and 1874, seventeen women disappeared along the Gulf route to Mexico. None were ever found.

But Silas’s dominance couldn’t last forever. On February 14, 1874, Evangeline poisoned her lover and his men with arsenic, set their boarding house ablaze, and watched as they burned alive.

Then she crossed the border alone.

The Monster Abroad

Under false names, Evangeline Crawford lived a dozen lives across three continents. In Mexico, she was a teacher. In Paris, an art patron. In London, a socialite widow.

Wherever she went, women vanished—servants, prostitutes, orphans. Always unnoticed. Always uninvestigated.

When she died in 1904 in Buenos Aires, the newspapers mourned her as “a refined philanthropist dedicated to the education of women.” Her fortune was donated to charity. Her legend was spotless.

Until 1947.

The Confession in the Wall

That year, demolition workers in Buenos Aires uncovered a sealed compartment behind a wall. Inside was a leather-bound journal written in English—the final confession of Evangeline Crawford.

Across 400 pages, she chronicled every murder, every manipulation, every pleasure and regret. Her last words were as cold as they were brilliant:

“Civilization is a costume. Monsters don’t always hide in the dark—they host the dinner party.”

Authorities suppressed the journal to avoid scandal. It remains locked in the Argentine National Archives under a 100-year restriction, not due for release until 2047.

Historians who’ve glimpsed excerpts estimate her confirmed victims at 43 women—and likely more.

The Real Corruption

The “Louisiana Corruption Crisis of 1873” is still remembered in legal history as a political scandal that toppled judges and exposed graft. But that was only the surface.

The real corruption began with a father’s silence, a daughter’s fascination, and a killer who understood one horrifying truth:

To destroy civilization, you don’t need an army.

You only need to teach one privileged woman to love the dark.

Epilogue: The Mask of Civilization

Evangeline Crawford was not seduced. She was revealed.

Silas Blackwood didn’t create her—he uncovered what was already there: a hunger for power that no amount of refinement could disguise.

She spent the rest of her life feeding it under the perfect mask of gentility.

The most terrifying thing about her story isn’t the bodies she left behind. It’s how easily society accepted her.

Because monsters, as Evangeline herself wrote, “rarely look like monsters.”

They smile, they donate, they charm— and then, when no one’s watching, they build their altar in the dark.