Four Victims Identified in Louisiana Stabbing Spree as Suspect Is Detained
HOUMA, La. — Four people killed in a weekend stabbing spree in southern Louisiana have been identified by a relative and family advocate as a woman, her two adult children and her son’s girlfriend, while a 6-year-old boy remains critically wounded.
The victims were Verna Mae Verdin, her daughter Letha Verrett, her son Paul Verret, and his girlfriend Krissy Lynn Parfait, Brandon Thiel told WVUE and said in an online fundraiser for funeral expenses. The four were stabbed to death at their home in Houma, he said.
The wounded child was reportedly Verdin’s 6-year-old grandson, who was spending Saturday night with her. Thiel described him as an energetic, smiling child who is “the light of so many of the family’s world.” He said the boy was able to make it out and reach a neighbor who called for emergency help.
Authorities have not formally identified the victims. The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, which patrols Houma, said deputies responding to reports of a “series of stabbing incidents” initially found the wounded child and then discovered Verdin, her daughter and son, and Parfait dead nearby.
Deputies have detained 47-year-old Kaegan Jude Solet in connection with the case. Thiel told WVUE that Solet had fathered a child with one of the slain victims. Court records cited by the station show Solet had previously been tried and acquitted of attempted murder in a December 2019 stabbing of a woman inside a Houma hotel. He also had been booked in the January 2019 stabbing death of Scott Lovell, an unhoused man, according to HoumaToday.com. Lovell’s mother, Nancy Guidry, told WVUE that a grand jury later declined to indict Solet.
Verdin was two weeks away from retiring after a 20-year career at Walmart when she was killed, Thiel said. Letha Verrett was a mother of seven, including three minors. Paul Verret and Parfait lived together in a camper behind Letha and Verdin’s home, according to WVUE.
The bloodshed in Houma comes roughly two years after Louisiana’s Department of Health warned that intimate partner violence was a “significant public health concern in the state.” The state’s rate of women murdered by men has historically been far higher than the national average, according to the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Nationwide, more than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners, CDC crime data show. The case also adds to a grim tally: as of Monday, the Guardian had tracked at least 19 mass murders in the U.S. this year, including two in Louisiana. One was an April shooting in Shreveport in which eight children were killed in what police described as a “violent domestic incident.” A mass murder is defined as an incident in which four or more victims are killed; most such cases in the U.S. involve guns.
In Texas, authorities reported a separate mass murder Sunday near San Benito. Investigators there said they could not immediately release many details but confirmed that four related adults had been shot to death and one suspect was in custody, according to KVEO.
As word of the Houma killings spread, community members rallied around Verdin’s family. By Monday morning, the fundraiser Thiel organized to help cover funeral expenses and medical costs for the wounded boy had surpassed $46,500. Thiel said the family is grieving. “They are processing a lot right now. They are trying to process the loss of family members,” he told WVUE.