Audrey Moate turned thirty-one-years-old on November 24, 1956. Her birthday fell on a Saturday and she celebrated in the same manner as she had nearly every other Saturday for the past two years: clandestinely.

The divorced Audrey had been having an affair with the married Thomas Hotard, who was fifteen years her senior. No one close to either adulterer had any inkling of their romantic involvement. Someone, however, apparently had knowledge and sought to put a violent end to the affair.

That morning, Thomas Hotard was found shot to death in his car along Lake Pontchartrain, approximately thirty miles north of New Orleans. Audrey Moate is believed to also have been murdered, but her body has not been found.

The secretive lovers kept their affair hidden from their respective inner circles. The waters of Lake Pontchartrain may keep Audrey Moate’s remains hidden as well.

                           Thomas Hotard                     Audrey Moate

Thomas Hotard lived in Gretna, part of metropolitan New Orleans. He and Beulah, his wife of twenty-nine years, had two children, nineteen-year-old Thomas Jr., and thirteen-year-old Susan.

Audrey Moate also had two children, nine-year-old daughter Dekki, and a seven-year-old son, George Jr. After several separations and attempts at reconciliation, she and her former husband, George, divorced in 1954.

Thomas and Audrey met through their employment with Celotex Chemical Company. When the company went on strike in 1952, Audrey, lacking a paycheck and separated from George, moved in with Thomas and Beulah. Minnie Smith, Audrey’s mother, said her daughter soon decided she wanted to be a safety engineer like Thomas and that he was helping her with her correspondence course and additional studies.

The Celotex strike ended six months later, but Audrey decided to leave the company. She and her children then moved to live with her mother in Baton Rouge. Audrey took a clerical position with the Kaiser Construction Company in Gramercy, forty miles southeast of Baton Rouge, and fifty miles west of New Orleans.

Coworkers

Even after Audrey left Celotex and moved out of the Hotard home, she and Thomas were frequently seen together organizing local Boy and Girl Scout activities, a mutual interest of both.

No one suspected they were partaking in their own form of extra-curricular activity.

Audrey Performing a First Aid Demonstration

 

On Saturday, November 24, 1956, local hunter Henry Monaret and his teenage son David were walking along Lake Pontchartrain’s Frenier Beach. At 9:00 a.m., they observed a blue four-door 1953 Nash sedan parked near the water. A man and a woman were having sex in the back seat of the car.

Around noon, another hunter saw a man in the car’s back seat in what he described as a “strange position,” but he did not investigate.

At 10:30 the following morning, Henry and David again passed by the locale and again saw the vehicle parked with the front passenger side door open. They had been startled at what they had seen the day before, but they were spooked by what they saw this time: The man lay dead in the car’s back seat.

Henry Monaret

A shotgun blast fired through the car’s back passenger window struck the man in the head, killing him. He lay on a sleeping bag and pillow spread across a makeshift bed, formed from folding down the front passenger seat to where it was level with the rear seat.

Along with several discarded food packages, multiple male and female clothing items were strewn throughout the car’s floorboard.

Crime Scene Photograph

A wallet in a pair of men’s pants contained a small amount of money, as well as a driver’s license and credit card bearing the name of Thomas Hotard. The car was registered to him, and he was identified as the murdered man.

Thomas’ keys were in the ignition. Scattered on the ground outside the car were another set of car keys along with a woman’s comb and other contents often carried in purses. These findings, along with Thomas’ wearing only a t-shirt and underwear and many women’s clothing items scattered across his car, led authorities to initially believe he had been killed in a lover’s quarrel.

Subsequent findings, however, suggested otherwise.

Shot To Death

Tracks of small bare feet were found beginning approximately fifty feet from the vehicle. They were spaced far apart, indicating someone, likely a woman, had been running. Behind each set of the footprints was a set of a man’s boot tracks. The footprints ceased near a road leading to the main highway.

A scuffle appeared to have commenced roughly five feet from where the car was parked. It appeared a woman, scantily clad, attempted to flee in desperation and in the process spilled the contents of her handbag.

The only tire track found in the area other than those from Thomas Hotard’s Nash could not be matched to any police had on file. It is believed to have been from a motorcycle, but no one who lived near or who had hunted in the vicinity had heard or seen such a vehicle in the area for months.

Investigators at the Crime Scene

After Removing the Car

After learning of Thomas Hotard’s murder and seeing a picture of him in the newspaper, a waitress at the Cafe Du Monde in LaPlace, between Gretna and Gramercy, called the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office. She believed she had seen the murdered man in the cafe that morning with a young woman.

When the waitress was shown a picture of Beulah Hotard, she was certain that she was not the woman with him.

The Café Du Monde

Upon arrival at the cafe that evening, St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff Percy Hebert found a 1949 Oldsmobile which had been parked at the cafe since morning. It was registered to Audrey Moate, and it was her keys which had been found on the ground next to Thomas Hotard’s car.

After learning Audrey had neither worked that day nor returned home, Sheriff Hebert searched her car.

Audrey’s Automobile

In a box on the back seat, Sheriff Hebert found several love letters penned by Audrey and addressed to Thomas. One letter contained a verse from the popular musical and recently released film The King and I, reading “We kiss in the shadows, we hide in the moon. Our meetings are few, and over too soon. We speak and whisper, afraid to be heard. When people are near, we speak not a word.”

Subsequent letters found indicated the couple began their fling in 1954, the same year Audrey and George had divorced.

When police spoke to Beulah, she told them Thomas claimed he had to work on Saturdays. Audrey had told her children and mother the same story. Instead, the two lovers met for their tryst virtually every week, including on the morning of November 24, 1956.

Their Affair Is Learned

The waitress was positive that Audrey Moate was the woman the she had seen at the Café Du Monde with Thomas Hotard on the morning of November 24. They had met at the restaurant at 7:30 a.m. After a quick breakfast and coffee, it was apparently time for dessert, as the lovers headed to their usual locale, Lake Pontchartrain’s Frenier Beach, a secluded area often called a “lover’s lane.”

Investigators concluded the woman’s footprints found at Frenier Beach earlier that day were almost certainly Audrey’s.

Frenier Beach

Lake Pontchartrain

Because Audrey had not recently made any large withdrawls from her savings account nor cashed her last paycheck, authorities concluded she was not involved in her lover’s homicide and had likely met a similar fate.

Two weeks later, on December 5, however, after seeing Audrey’s picture in newspapers, two waitresses at a French Market coffee shop near the French Quarter reported seeing a woman resembling her. They recalled that the raggedly dressed and disheveled woman ordered donuts and coffee. She took only one sip of the coffee before hastily paying and leaving the restaurant after realizing the waitresses were eyeing her.

This was the last reported sighting of Audrey Moate, but it could not be confirmed to be her.

Was It Audrey at the Coffee Shop?

The following day, Leah Moate, Audrey’s former mother-in-law, received a phone call from a woman identifying herself as Audrey. In a distressed tone, the woman said, “I’m in trouble. I need help” before the line went dead.

Leah lived in New Orleans and the call was traced to a pay phone near the French Quarter. She was certain the voice was Audrey’s and theorized her former daughter-in-law called her because she did not have the money to make a collect call to her own mother in Baton Rouge.

Was It Audrey On the Phone?

Later that day, New Orleans housewife Marie McKay believes Audrey came to her home asking to use her phone and inquiring about renting a room. She stayed for dinner with Marie and her husband, Walter, before departing.

The young woman introduced herself as either “Mrs. Moate” or “Mrs. Moore” and said her mother lived in Baton Rouge. Although she had used the phone, no calls were made to anyone Audrey knew and no further calls were received from anyone purporting to be her.

The woman in the McKay home also cannot be confirmed as Audrey Moate.

Was It Audrey In The Home?

Authorities questioned all the known area hunters, fishermen, trappers, and moss pickers as well as all of the people who lived near or frequented Frenier Beach but found nothing linking any of them to the murder of Thomas Hotard and the disappearance of Audrey Moate.

The first potential solid lead came when Jackson Lejeune, a local produce dealer, claimed an acquaintance who Audrey had dated and dumped had killed her and Thomas Hotard. The sixty-two-year-old Lejeune told police that Sampson Gallata buried Audrey in the woods and that he threatened to kill him if he said anything. Gallata was a known troublemaker who had a violent temper. Investigators, however, found too many discrepancies in Lejeune’s contentions and dismissed them as having no credibility. He had a history of psychological problems including having attempted suicide by slashing his wrist and being recently released from the Southeast Louisiana Psychiatric Hospital, prematurely according to one doctor.

On March 14, 1959, another crime similar to the murder of Thomas Hotard two-and-a-half years earlier occurred along Frenier Beach. As Frank Martinez was fishing along the lake, another man at the beach fired a shot through Frank’s’ car window, striking his wife Leonie. The assailant then attempted to get into the car, but the door was locked.

As Frank came rushing to his wife’s aid, the gunman fled in his car. Frank screamed out the vehicle’s license plate number and his wounded wife wrote it down. The vehicle was registered to forty-year-old Edmond Duhe. He was arrested within the hour at his swamp cabin near Reserve, less than five miles away. Leonie Martinez survived and Duhe confessed to shooting her. He led police to the spot where he had dumped the gun used, a .38 caliber revolver.

In searching Duhe’s home, police found a large amount of pornographic photos, over a dozen sexually-themed magazines, fifty lipstick applicators, and five women’s purses. Additional purses were found in the trunk of Duhe’s car.

Duhe had been one of the people who had volunteered to search for Audrey Moate following her disappearance. One of the purses found in his car matched the description of her missing purse, but it also was similar to that of many other women and could not be proven to be Audrey’s.

Although he admitted to having owing a sixteen-gauge shotgun, the same type of weapon used to kill Thomas Hotard in 1956, Duhe denied any involvement, saying he had lost the weapon in 1958. Duhe, however, failed two polygraph tests and, after later being administered truth serum, confessed to killing the couple and to burying Audrey in a local dump.  Searches, however, failed to find her body or any indication she had been there.

Edmond Duhe served seven years at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola for the attempted murder of Leonie Martinez. He died in 2003 without being charged in connection with the murder of Thomas Hotard and the disappearance of Audrey Moate.

I could not find pictures of Jackson Lejeune, Edmond Duhe, Sampson Gallata, or of Frank and Leonie Martinez.

Suspects Emerge But Are Not Charged

After Edmond Duhe was suspected but not charged, the Hotard-Moate case went cold for twenty-two years before it was thrust back to front-page news.

Several months before he died in December 1981, eighty-two-year-old Ernest Acosta told his children that his common law wife, Caroline Schlesser, had murdered the couple and that he had helped her dispose of Audrey’s body. Schlesser had died in February 1979.

In 1956, Acosta and Schlesser lived at the edge of the swamp, less than a mile from the Frenier Beach murder site. Both were rude and surly and were described by many as white trash.

Acosta’s daughter, Marville Coronna, knows of at least two occasions when Thomas Hotard and Audrey Moate came to her father and Schlesser’s home. She says each time the two couples became involved in heated arguments. Acosta told his daughter only that Thomas knew something about Schlesser that she apparently wanted kept secret. Acosta also claimed that Audrey was related to Schlesser, but no relationship has been established.

The night before Thomas Hotard’s body was found, Marville says her father told her he was out of town but was summoned home after Schlesser phoned him, saying she had shot Thomas and Audrey to death. Acosta claimed the murders occurred in their home, not in Thomas Hotard’s car, and that he and a neighbor carried Thomas’s body back to Frenier

Beach and put it in the car. He said they returned to the house and tied Audrey’s body to a Civil War cannon and dumped it into Lake Pontchartrain.

Marville passed a polygraph test and police believe her claims regarding what her father told her; they suspect, however, he morphed the truth about what actually occurred.

Marville Caronna

Ernest Acosta’s Daughter

Many investigators believe Ernest Acosta had seen Thomas Hotard and Audrey Moate in the Lovers Lane area of Frenier Beach several times and had become annoyed with them. On the morning of November 24, 1956, they believe Acosta sneaked up on them as they were having relations and shot Thomas to death. After he did so, Audrey fled, probably wearing no more than her slip and her bra. Acosta chased after and caught her. Investigators believe he then took her to his home where he may have raped her before killing her and disposing of her body in some way. The theory is based largely on his living only a mile from where the shooting occurred and would explain why no tire marks other than those from Thomas’ car were found at the scene.

Ernest Acosta refused to tell police what he had told his children.

A November 29, 1959, article from The Birmingham News, says police questioned a man who lived near the shooting scene. The man was not named, but his stated age of fifty-eight at the time matches that of Acosta.

I could not find pictures of Ernest Acosta or Caroline Schlesser.

St. John the Baptist Deputy Wayne Norwood Searching the Waters for Clues

Photo from New Orleans-Times Picayune

Acosta told his daughter that he and Schlesser tied Audrey’s body to a nine-foot Civil War cannon and dumped it in Lake Pontchartrain.

During the war, both Union and Confederate troops positioned cannons to protect railroads including the one which ran alongside Acosta’s home. In 1977, one such Confederate cannon had been discovered in Ruddock, only twelve miles from Frenier Beach.

The Ruddock Cannon

As Acosta is believed to have warped the truth about his role in the disappearance of Audrey Moate, his Civil War cannon claim also seems unlikely. Lake Pontchartrain is shallow and authorities say a cannon that size should be detected easily.

The St. John the Baptist Sheriff’s Office searched the lake in 1959 and believed if Acsota had managed to sink the cannon, their electromagnets would have discovered it. Additional searches with more advanced technologies conducted in Lake Pontchartrain have also shown no signs of a Civil War cannon.

In addition, a cannon of that size would have been too heavy to move without large machinery, which would have been obviously noticeable.

1959 Search of Lake Pontchartrain

Thomas Hotard’s wife Beulah died in 1986. Although a 1957 article from The Odessa American quotes her as saying, “I hated her!” in referencing Audrey, nothing was found suggesting she was responsible for her disappearance. I could not find a picture of Beulah Hotard.

Audrey’s former husband, George Moate, remarried in 1956, several months before his former wife disappeared. He had a solid alibi at the time of her disappearance and was cleared as a suspect. He died in 2004 at age seventy-seven.

George Moate

Audrey’s daughter Dekki was nine-years-old when her mom disappeared. She submitted DNA samples in the hopes that it will one day lead to the location of her mom’s remains.

Dekki died of liver cancer on January 21, 2019, at age seventy-one.

Dekki Moate

The area of Frenier Beach where Thomas Hotard was found shot to death and where Audrey Moate likely also met her grizzly end was long ago taken over by the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

Searches Continue

In addition to her affair with a married man, Audrey Moate had also kept another large secret from her friends and family. Gasoline credit cards found in Thomas’ car at the crime scene and bills found in the glove compartment of Audrey’s car at the Café Du Monde were both in the name of “Audrey M. Hotard”. Additional bills were found in Audrey’s car for a maternity ward and doctor that had delivered a child named “Jacqueline Hotard” the previous year.

 

Audrey had suffered a nervous breakdown in July 1955, a little over a year before her disappearance. Her family believed she had spent five months at a mental health facility in St. Louis. While receiving treatment, Audrey told family members that she had adopted a four-day old baby girl who had been abandoned by her parents; she named her Jacqueline. She brought the child home with her when she was supposedly released from the hospital.

 

After Audrey’s disappearance the following year, investigators determined that she had received no such treatment. She had instead been living in a rented apartment in Baton Rouge, only one mile from her mother’s home, during the time she claimed she was in Missouri.

Audrey’s Other Secret

Seven years after her disappearance and with Audrey declared legally dead, authorities were able to open her bank safety deposit box. The only item it contained was Jacqueline’s birth certificate. She had been born in New Orleans, not in St. Louis.

The birth certificate listed Jacqueline’s mother as “Audrey A. Hotard” and her father as Thomas Hotard. Audrey was determined to have checked herself in under the name Audrey A. Hotard.

Following her daughter’s disappearance, Minnie Smith moved to Oregon to live with her sister. Jacqueline was adopted by relatives Jack and Joyce Gustafson of Ojai, California.

Minnie Smith died in 1986 at age ninety-six.

Minnie Smith, Audrey’s Mother, and Jacqueline, Audrey’s (Biological) Daughter

Even after the passage of sixty-seven years, authorities are still welcoming possible clues, no matter how obscure or unlikely they may seem, regarding the murder of Thomas Hotard and the disappearance of Audrey Moate.

A 2011 article on Unsolved Wiki says remains found in February 2011 were suspected to be Audrey’s, but I have not been able to find anything more about the finding or subsequent tests.

If you believe if have information relating to the murder of Thomas Hotard or to the disappearance of Audrey Moate, please contact the St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Office at 985-652-9513.

Not Forgotten

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/112081515/thomas-adolph-hotard

SOURCES:

• The Advocate (Baton Rouge)
• Bayou Justice
• Biloxi Daily Herald
• The Birmingham News
• Charley Project
• Doe Network
• Monroe (Louisiana News Star
• New Orleans Times-Picayune
• The Times (Shreveport, Louisiana)
• Unsolved Mysteries