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126 Dead Family Walking Copyrighted Material

“The day of his funeral just blew my mind!” Godfrey remembers, “ It was on TV! Why did the Church have to put this on TV? They made me feel like I was the bad guy, not Elmo. I didn’t do anything. He was the murderer. I could not believe that Bishop Ott would do something like that! Where was Bishop Ott & Helen Prejean for Loretta’s funeral? Didn’t she need a bishop? Prejean & Ott were only thinking about Elmo the murderer, not at all about the Bourques. I guess they just didn’t care about us. That day really turned me off the Catholic Church. It made me question my faith — we felt betrayed.”

Saturday morning New Orleans Times Picayune headlines said it all: Executed Killer Blessed with Burial for the Elite. “In death, executed murderer Elmo Patrick Sonnier received what few Catholics ever achieve—a funeral mass conducted by a bishop and burial within the shadow of graves of other bishops.”

Sonnier had been buried in a special plot set aside for nuns. In 1922, the Order of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, from New Orleans, paid $690 to Roselawn Cemetery located at 4045 North Street in Baton Rouge for two plots, 104 and 107, near the center of this gated centuries-old cemetery. Each plot which had a capacity of twelve gravesites or twenty-four for both plots, was expected to fulfill their intentions at that time to have a final resting place for the Sisters of Saint Joseph who gave their lives to their Catholic vocations. Up until 1984, sixteen gravestones were laid side-by-side on this holiest part of the cemetery known especially to the caretakers—as sacred ground. Beneath the sixteen gravestones rested sixteen bodies, all Caucasian, all female, all nuns, including three Mother Superiors. For over sixty years the tradition of burying nuns, side by side, at this location had been upheld by those in charge of the Order until tradition came to a end because of the body in grave number seventeen.

James Munn, manager at Roselawn for fifteen years at that time, recalls the strange events that took place the day of Elmo Sonnier’s burial in grave number seventeen on April 6,1984. Surprised that a convicted murderer was going to be buried on sacred ground since it was his understanding that only nuns could be buried there, Munn reluctantly handled the arrangements under the watchful eye of Prejean. Even though Sister Prejean was told that the nun in charge of the cemetery plots had to sign for the interment, the events that took place there that day would not have happened as they did, and the embarrassment caused to the Sisters of the Order of Saint Joseph would not have occurred, if she had followed the rules. Cemetery regulations required a lot owner’s signature to open a grave for burial.

Munn would write twenty years later about the nun who took charge that day in Baton Rouge. “Sister Prejean spoke to about twenty family and friends at Sonnier’s burial about what a fine Christian he was and that while he was in prison he found God and that she knew that he was in heaven at the right hand of God. She praised him highly and told the family to be proud of him. She made us believe she was God’s gift to the world. I got so mad that I walked away as she was speaking out of earshot from her—because I wanted to tell her a few things—but being with the cemetery I had to let it lay. I later learned from two nuns,” wrote Mr. Munn, “that Prejean went behind Mother Superior’s back and talked the sister in charge of the gravesites to sign the authorization for burial without Mother’s Superior’s knowledge. I was told Mother Superior was very upset Prejean secretly authorized the burial. Some of the nuns were so upset about the sacred ground, which was blessed by the priests; they wanted to have him removed from the cemetery. I received a very strange phone call from them about thirty days after the burial asking for details about a disinterment for Sonnier, at which time I gave them the regulations for having to get signatures of the nearest next of kin, or a court order. We began discussing plans for the disinterment but they never called back. I assume that the reason he was not disinterred was due to the fact the next of kin refused to sign the authorization.” Munn goes on to say, “She tried to make him sound like he was so good. Every time her name is mentioned I go into orbit! I can’t stand her for what she said. I think she is a disgrace to the Order. I feel she just wants to make a name for herself and is using the church to do it!”