Episode 115: Madame Delphine Lalaurie

The imposing gray three-story edifice known as the “haunted house” looms fortress-like on the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls streets in the French Quarter. Now a famous landmark, the home was once home to Madame Lalaurie who, in the early 1830s, starved and tortured her slaves and was hounded out of town by an angry mob when a fire revealed her misdeeds. Over time the story has been embellished with increasingly gruesome details, but archival research reveals that at least some of it is true.