Lake Providence Police Chief Rudy Threats walks past the burned home of James Kelly and his son, James “Bubba” Kelly, who were found slain on the Mississippi River Levee in Lake Providence last month. Former America’s Most Wanted fugitive Jesse James Caston is a suspect in the case. (The Vicksburg Post/PAT SHANNAHAN)

[01/08/01] LAKE PROVIDENCE Taking refuge from a bone-chilling Louisiana Delta rain, David Barber sat in his kitchen and tried to explain his hometown’s problems.

The pastor settled on a metaphor taken straight from the stack of Bibles that rested on his nearby desk. Lake Providence, he said, is spending time on a cross, suspended atop a Golgotha forged from charred buildings, embarrassing trials and the bodies of young men killed in places like Play Girls Lounge. And Barber, who serves Northside Church of Christ, doesn’t think resurrection is coming anytime soon.

“It’s going to have to get worse before it gets better,” he said. “Enough bad things are going to have to happen so that everybody in town will realize we’re all in this together and turn it around.”

This month has brought a lot of bad things to Lake Providence, a town of almost 9,800 about an hour northwest of Vicksburg on Louisiana 65.

A school board member faces removal for a sex offense involving a teen-ager. A fire ripped another hole in the city’s already-bleak downtown area. And three murders were recorded in December, sandwiched around the capture of resident Jesse James Caston, a fugitive featured on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list who is the prime suspect in two of the slayings. The killings brought East Carroll parish’s 2000 homicide total to nine, a staggering figure for a population of just more than 10,000.

“We’ve been busy all year,” said Lake Providence Police Chief Rudy Threats. “Really, 2000 came in with a bang and went out with a bang. The killings were too much.”

One of the murder victims, Eddie Green, 22, was killed at the Play Girls Lounge around 1 a.m. on Christmas Eve, the day he was to be married. In the other slaying, James Kelly and his son, James “Bubba” Kelly, were found shot to death on Lake Providence’s Mississippi River levee. Authorities suspect Caston in that case.

“It’s been a rough year, and we’ve never seen a month quite like December,” said Brandon Wiltcher, a spokesman for the East Carroll Parish Sheriff’s Department. “We really are having a hard time figuring this year out, with all the killings.”

While the number of killings stands out, the fires that plagued Lake Providence in 2000 are more familiar. Arson hit the town repeatedly in the 1990s, most notably in a 1993 fire set by teen-agers that gutted Lake Providence High School.

Still, the town was greatly affected by a Dec. 15 blaze that destroyed Fred’s Discount Store on Hood Street. A Family Dollar Store is now the sole retail shopping outlet in Lake Providence. Otherwise, residents must go to Tallulah or Vicksburg, drives that take 30 minutes to an hour.

Lake Providence also saw two house fires on Christmas Day. Wiltcher said investigators have yet to determine whether any of the blazes were set.

For Lake Providence’s downtown area, though, cause isn’t as important as effect in the blazes, especially the Fred’s fire. The blow to the district’s commercial life adds to a years-long exodus of businesses, some arson victims that chose not to return.

“It’s funny how I never realized those things until somebody from the outside pointed them out to me,” East Carroll police juror Darrin Dixon said. “One time I was showing a reporter from Time magazine around here. He pointed them out to me. That’s when I first noticed how bad it looks.”

The Time article, a 1994 piece that declared Lake Providence “the poorest place in America,” was the first in a series of national media reports on the town.

Other than relating East Carroll Parish’s poverty, which 1990 census figures placed at 55 percent, more than 40 points above the national average, the articles focus on corruption in Lake Providence. In 1998, George, a national political magazine, included Lake Providence in its report on “The Top Ten Most Corrupt Towns in the United States.” The article retold the fall of Sheriff Dale Renicker, who was accused of profiting illegally from a private prison company.

Lake Providence also faced renewed trouble in the political arena last month, as school board member Michael Owens came under fire after being convicted in Arkansas for a sex offense with a minor. A judge is set to rule within days on whether Owens can keep his seat.

To exacerbate the political situation, many disagreements on issues still break down along lines of race, keeping alive tensions that have existed since the late 1960s.

Barber said the social forces unleashed since 1970 by integration are at the root of many problems that Lake Providence and East Carroll Parish face.

“Of course, it goes beyond being a simple matter of the black and white races,” Barber said. “But forced integration widened the chasm between the races. It also revolutionized the social and business life of Lake Providence. It changed housing patterns, it changed where businesses were located, it changed just about everything.”

Many whites who lived downtown before integration moved to the north of the oxbow lake that gives the town its name.

Dixon, the police juror, said this housing pattern sets up an unfortunate social arrangement.

“It’s very easy here in Lake Providence for white people not to rub shoulders with black people,” he said. “Vice versa, it’s very easy for black people here to not rub shoulders with white people. That’s bad, because understanding comes from getting to know one another.”