Recently I got hold of a copy of issue No. 114 of the Old Natchitoches Parish Magazine published at Marthaville, Louisiana by Kim Isbell. Old Natchitoches Parish is printed at Baton Rouge Press, where we also print The Piney Woods Journal. I picked up a copy in Baton Rouge, looking at samples for ideas for a tenth anniversary edition of The Piney Woods Journal next year. When I settled down to look at the sample publications, the cover story on Old Natchitoches Parish, titled "The Campti Horror," leaped out at me with more than usual interest.

It was about the double murder-suicide and subsequent discovery on October 18, 1951 in Natchitoches Parish of the bodies of a Winn Parish man and woman, Werner B. Kraft and Mrs. Lucy Lovell Neal, and the year-long search for Mrs. Neal's five-year-old son, Joseph Douglas Neal. It was a notorious case in North Louisiana during 1951. It finally ended in late 1952 with discovery of the remains of what proved to be the young boy in woods on the Winn-Grant line off Highway 167 south of Winnfield.

In October, 1951, I was a 20-year-old reporter at the Winn Parish Enterprise in Winnfield. The "Campti Horror" was a local story that I was involved with for some time both before and after the discovery of the bodies of Werner Kraft and Lucy Neal. The couple were the subject of worried conversation in Winnfield, where friends and family had reported them missing for several days.

When word came that their bodies had been found shot to death in a car on an old logging road in woods near Campti in Natchitoches Parish, I phoned the Natchitoches Sheriff's Department for details. When the officer gave the names, I asked, concerning Kraft whom I did not know, "Can you spell that?" "W-e-r-n-e-r B. K-r-a-f-t." Since the story broke early in the week, and the Enterprise did not publish until Thursday, the Shreveport Times ran with it before we were out, as "Warner" Kraft. As a young reporter, I mistrusted my own story, thinking that the metropolitan Times must have got it it right. Without doing a follow-up check, I changed my spelling of the name to "Warner" to track the Times in our first story. Then, later, I double-checked with the Natchitoches Sheriff's Office, and Whoops! I had it right the first time; the Times was wrong. I learned a career lesson from that: just because they're big don't make 'em right!

During the months following, a national search for five-year-old Joseph Douglas resulted in a continuous flood of "information" flowing into the Winn Parish Sheriff's Office. Sightings here, rumors there. One woman from somewhere out west, as I recall, hand-wrote voluminous letters, which I was able to check regularly, about Douglas' whereabouts, his condition, etc. She was obviously totally daft, but persistent. These and many other "tips" caused the Department to run down fruitless leads endlessly. I have wondered whether those files of correspondence remain in some dusty corner of the Winn Sheriff's Office. Probably not, since the original court house was replaced with a new, more modern facility 20 or so years later, and no one who was involved in the case is likely still around, or even alive. (The Sheriff involved in the case, C.M. Robinson, died of what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound not too many months after he lost a bid for reelection. Ironically, a nephew of his, Terry Reeves, served as District Attorney for Winn Parish in recent times, and a little over a year ago also died of what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot.)

Slightly over one year after discovery of the bodies of Mr. Kraft and Mrs. Neal, I was seated at my desk on a slow Friday morning in November 1952, "coasting" after the usual deadline pressure of the prior day's publication. Looking around, I noticed a car parked in the street in front of the Enterprise office, which was directly across Court street from the south side of the Winn Parish Court House. Chief Deputy Troy Kyson popped in the door, and said to me, tight-lipped, "Get your camera." I grabbed the big old Speed Graphic 4x5, which had four of five sheets of film remaining from a 12-shot pack, and got in the car with him. He grimly drove away, obviously in a hurry. I finally asked, "What's going on?" "The kid," was all he said, heading south on Highway 167 in the direction of Alexandria. I don't recall him speaking on the ride of 15 or 20 minutes. Deputy Kyson turned in at the dirt road at the Winn-Grant parish line, heading into woods on the west side.

We arrived at a site in the woods a short distance down the logging road, where deputies had begun to mark the various artifacts which had been found earlier in the day by two hunters. I began making pictures - including one of the skull of what was obviously a young child. In the top of the skull was a small perfectly round hole later determined to be consistent with a .22 caliber bullet.

I quickly ran out of film, and having no way to travel, I got on the two-way radio in Deputy Kyson's car (there were no cell phones then), and asked the operator back at the Winn Court House to contact Chester Derr at the Enterprise office and have him bring me a fresh supply of film. Fairly soon, Chester showed up with film, and waited while I finished shooting. He took the exposed film and beat it to an Alexandria photo shop, had the film developed, made prints, then went to an Alexandria engraving shop (no optical scanners and digitized computer images, either in those days), had a set of zinc engravings made, and rushed back to Winnfield. Meanwhile, I had finished my reporting, and caught a ride back to Winnfield. I wrote the story, and participated in producing the only "Extra!" edition in my newspaper career, and as far as I know, in the history of the Winn Parish Enterprise. We were on the street with the story and photos by mid-afternoon. I don't know if that edition made it into the archives of the Enterprise or not, but Chester and I and George Larson, the Enterprise Editor who remains alive at age 90-plus in an Alexandria assisted-living home, do remember it anyway.

n At that time, there was a second weekly paper in Winnfield, The Winnfield News-American (later sold to The Enterprise). Competition between the two was fierce, personal, and often bizarre. As I was nearly finished with my work at the discovery site, I noted the arrival of Miss Estelle Tannehill, editor of the competitive News-American, who it turned out was mad as hell for not getting an even break on the story from the Sheriff's Department. (We didn't do "press conferences" for squads of media; you either got the story, or you didn't.)

"The Campti Horror" is thoroughly researched, containing all the names and details as I recall them from the period. The Old Natchitoches Parish Magazine can be reached online at oldparishmag@eznetla.net , by phone at 318-472-8820, or at P.O. Box 111, Marthaville LA 71450.

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