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By Ashley Cusick, Alex Horton, Tim Elfrink | Washington Post
OPELOUSAS, La. — Authorities in southern Louisiana said Thursday that the suspect in a spate of black church fires is the son of a parish sheriff’s deputy.
Holden Matthews, 21, was arrested Wednesday and charged with three arson counts in three church burnings in St. Landry Parish across 10 days that have frightened black communities, prompting worry that they were racially motivated crimes.
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“It has been especially painful because it reminds us of a very dark past of intimidation and fear,” Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said at a news conference.
Matthews is the son of St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Roy Matthews, who was “shocked and hurt” at the news of the arrest, St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz said. Guidroz rebuffed earlier reports that Matthews was taken into custody by his own father.
That is false, he said from the podium.
“This case was solved with boots on the ground and butts in the air,” Guidroz said, though he added Roy Matthews helped direct his son away from his home to make the arrest.
State Fire Marshal H. “Butch” Browning said physical and “technological” evidence, including video surveillance, led investigators to believe Matthews intentionally burned the churches — “an attack on the house of God,” Browning said.
Authorities said Matthews was interested in “black metal” music, which has been linked to notorious church fires in Norway.
Federal authorities are investigating whether the fires constitute a hate crime, an FBI official said at the news conference. “We need to go where the evidence takes us,” the official said.
The three arson charges each carry a maximum sentence of 15 years, Browning said.
Harry Richard’s church burned on April 2. On Thursday, he embraced Opelousas Police Chief Martin McClendon in a warm hug after the conference.
“I felt relieved knowing that our congregation didn’t have to worry anymore,” said Richard, a pastor at Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas. “They are my main concern. I was reassured that law enforcement is on our side.”
Authorities said they were confident Matthews was the suspect and that his arrest brings to a close a row of church burnings that sent waves of panic across southern Louisiana.
Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas burned April 4, consuming the church’s interior. It was the third predominantly black church to burn down in St. Landry Parish in the 10-day span.
On March 26, flames reduced St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre to just a few walls and piles of rubble. And on April 2, a blaze struck Greater Union Baptist Church.
A fourth fire March 31 was reported more than 200 miles away at the predominantly white Vivian United Pentecostal Church in Caddo Parish, La., but authorities have not publicly linked that fire to Matthews.
For some, the recent fires recall a dark history of attacks and threats against black churches in the South. During Reconstruction and the civil rights movement, black churches were targeted with fires, bombings and threats.
In 2015, a white supremacist gunman opened fire on a prayer group at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine black people. Nearly 200 years before, Emanuel AME’s predecessor had been burned down in 1822 by Charleston’s white leaders, who feared an insurrection by the city’s enslaved residents.
A man in Mississippi pleaded guilty to arson last month for setting fire to a black church in 2016. He had attempted to disguise the arson as a hate crime.
As authorities investigated the St. Landry fires, church leaders were resilient, though baffled by the attacks.
“My church has a lot of history,” the Rev. Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church told the Daily Advertiser, noting that it was more than 140 years old. “I don’t understand it. What could make a person do that to a church?”
Greater Union had served worshipers for more than 100 years, according to Richard, whose grandfather helped found the church. He plans to rebuild.
“I believe that God is on our side,” he said. “He’s my security. He is all of our security.”
Washington Post reporters Kayla Epstein and Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report.
