Woman slain at Klan rite

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL AND GREG GARLAND
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: Nov 12, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Eight people have been arrested in connection with the slaying Sunday of a Tulsa, Okla., woman who tried to back out of a weekend Ku Klux Klan initiation at a remote campsite in northeastern St. Tammany Parish, authorities said.

Raymond “Chuck” Foster, 44, of Bogalusa, who authorities said is a high-ranking Klan member, is accused of shooting the unidentified white woman with a .40-caliber handgun during an argument Sunday afternoon about her intention to leave the initiation, authorities said Tuesday.

Foster and the seven other white men and women implicated in the case tried to cover up the slaying, St. Tammany and Washington Parish sheriff’s deputies said.

Someone had removed the bullet from the woman’s body, investigators determined. The woman’s clothing, other personal effects and the campsite next to a sandbar in the Pearl River Navigation Canal were set afire, said Capt. George Bonnett, St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s spokesman.

The canal, a waterway which gives marine traffic access to the Pearl River and is next to the Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge, is a popular area for boating, fishing and camping, Washington Parish authorities said.

Foster, booked Monday with second-degree murder, was being held without bond at St. Tammany Parish Prison in Covington, deputies said.

Bonnett said the seven others, all of whom are from the Bogalusa area and are believed to be Klan members, were booked Monday and Tuesday with obstruction of justice and remained in St. Tammany Parish Prison on $500,000 bonds.

Deputies identified the seven as Shane Foster, 20; Frank Stafford, 21; Timothy Michael Watkins, 30; Alicia M. Watkins, 23; Andrew Yates, 20; Random Hines, 27; and Danielle Jones, 23.

The shooting victim, whose identity has not been confirmed, was recruited over the Internet and was supposed to return to Oklahoma after joining the KKK in Louisiana to start recruiting new members, St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s deputies said in a statement.

The woman arrived by bus last week in Slidell, met two people, and during the weekend was taken to the campsite, deputies said.

Washington Parish sheriff’s investigators became aware of her death early Monday morning after getting an anonymous tip about two men turning up at a Circle K convenience store near Bogalusa with bloodstains on their clothes, said Shannon Lyons, deputy chief of the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office Criminal Division.

Frank Stafford and Shane Foster, who is Chuck Foster’s son, went into the store north of the intersection of La. 16 and La. 21 and asked the store clerk how to get bloodstains out of their clothing, Bonnett said.

Once alerted, investigators found the woman’s body Monday a few miles south of the campsite under loose brush at the end of Lock No. 3 Road near the village of Sun, deputies said.