Emma Jean Raine (formerly Emma Evans and Emma Smith) has been married four times. In 2013 she was  convicted of the 2006 murder of husband number 2, Ernest Smith, and is suspected of murdering numbers 1 and 3. She was sentenced to life in prison on October 21, 2016.

She was once a tax preparer and has been prosecuted for insurance fraud and Federal tax fraud.

***

Emma Jeane Raine, born 1964?

1994 – Leroy Evans, husband #1; paralyzed after a car accident and died from “choking” after his feeding tube was “mysteriously removed.”

Nov. 2005 – apparently with Ernests’ knowledge Emma had increased his life insurance from $100,000 to $800,000 including a $10,000 benefit to his daughter.

Apr. 15, 2006 – Ernest Smith, 38, husband #2, dies; New Orleans, shot to death; Alfred “Terry” Everette, trigger-man. Fee: $10,000 (from $800,000 in insurance money).

2009 – Emma was given half of the now $834,988.74 from the life insurance.

Oct. 2011 – James Raine, 37, husband #3, dies; Poplarville, Pearl River County, Mississippi.

2013? – Marries John W. Golston (husband #4), Grain Valley, Mo.

June 21, 2013 – arrest warrant issued for both Emma Raine and Alfred Everette.

Jul. 25, 2013 – Alfred T. Everette arrested.

2013 – Emma Raine arrested in Missouri on fraud charges. Extradited to Louisiana.

Aug. 1, 2013 – Emma Raine, 49, was booked in New Orleans on Aug. 1 on charges of first-degree murder of husband #2 (in 2006) and criminal conspiracy after being extradited from Jackson County earlier in the week.

Nov. 23, 2015 – Emma Jean Raine, 51, has pleaded not guilty to a 35-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Gulfport.

Aug. 12, 2016 – Emma Raine, 52, was convicted in August of second-degree murder in the killing of her second husband, 38-year-old Ernest Smith.

Oct. 21, 2016 – Emma sentenced to life in prison.

Feb. 11, 2017 – ordered to make restitution of $94,107.01 on a guilty plea involving false tax returns she prepared for clients in Gulfport and Poplarville.

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It took more than seven years after Ernest Smith was gunned down outside his New Orleans home in the spring of 2006 until his widow was arrested and charged in his death, but she had been on police radar early on.

“Please be advised that the beneficiary, Emma Smith, wife of the deceased, cannot be ruled out as a suspect in the death of Ernest Smith,” a New Orleans detective wrote to an insurance investigation company in a July 12, 2006, letter.

By the time Emma Smith was arrested in that case in 2013, she had a new name, Emma Raine, and was, again, a widow. Her third husband, James Raine, 37, was shot to death at the couple’s Pearl River County, Mississippi, home in 2011. Authorities had their suspicions in that case too, even though Emma Raine was out of town at the time.

“She is a suspect in that James Raine case,” Pearl River County Sheriff David Allison said in a 2015 interview.

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“And through investigating that case we were able to get some information that New Orleans needed and passed it on to them,” Allison added.

James Raine’s death remains unsolved but Emma Raine is now on trial on a second-degree murder charge in 38-year-old Ernest Smith’s death.

On Wednesday, the opening day of testimony, prosecutors told jurors they will prove that Emma and James Raine arranged Ernest Smith’s murder at the hands of James’s adoptive brother, Alfred “Terry” Everette.

Everette was convicted of second-degree murder in the case in December 2014.

There was a tense moment when the convicted trigger-man entered the courtroom in shackles but refused to go near the witness stand. Everette is appealing his conviction in Smith’s death and refused to testify despite a court order that he appear and despite a grant of immunity that would prevent his testimony from being used against him in his appeal.

State Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier didn’t order that he be forcibly placed on the stand. She did allow prosecutors to question him in front of the jury as he sat in the courtroom several yards from the stand after refusing to be sworn in. He sat silently and did not respond to questions.

Then Enoch Raine, the brother of James Raine and Everette took the stand. He said that after Raine’s murder in October 2011, Everette tearfully confessed that he had killed Smith years earlier, at the behest of James and Emma.

Enoch said he and his uncle insisted that Everette turn himself in. He never did. Enoch said he eventually called a “cold case” detective in New Orleans in 2012, leading to Emma’s eventual arrest.

The case involves complicated insurance matters and complex relationships within the Raine family.

“In this particular case we are going to need diagrams,” Rodrigue said in an opening statement.

No eyewitness testimony or physical evidence links Emma Raine to the killing, Rodrigue said. But she said witnesses would testify that Everette admitted killing Smith at the urging of Emma and James Raine for a share of life insurance money. She added that documents will show that Emma bumped up the value of policies on Smith over the years before his death and that, to overcome an unexpected legal glitch, she arranged for her daughter to forge the name of Smith’s daughter on insurance documents.

Defense attorney Martin Regan’s view of the case: James Raine and Terry Everette plotted Ernest Smith’s death without involving Emma. He cast the late James Raine as an opportunist who seduced Emma as she suffered through an unhappy marriage to Smith and plotted Smith’s death to get her money.

“This case is about greed and money, infidelity and a guy named James,” Regan said.

He stressed that Emma Raine has never been arrested in James Raine’s death.

“Who kills James Raine? Was it another jealous husband?” Regan asked.

Attorneys have said the trial could last until Monday.

It was unclear whether jurors will hear testimony about the death of Emma Raine’s first husband, Leroy Evans, who died while hospitalized in 1994 after he was hit by a car. No arrests were ever reported in that case but, during Everette’s trial, prosecutors called his death suspicious.Hit man convicted of killing first of three men who died linked to same woman

A Mississippi hit man was convicted Thursday of gunning down a clergyman at his eastern New Orleans home in exchange for $100,000 from the pastor’s wife. It is one of three successive deaths of men who were close to the same woman, Emma Raine, 50, who has been called a black widow but has not been convicted of any killings.

A jury in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court jury deliberated less than an hour before voting unanimously to convict the hit man, Alfred “Terry” Everette, of second-degree murder. The charge carries a mandatory life sentence.

Prosecutors said Everette, 30, was promised $100,000 to kill Ernest Smith, who was shot dead outside his home on April 15, 2006. Police said the commission came from Raine and her boyfriend at the time, James Raine, who was Everette’s foster brother, in exchange for a chunk of an expected $800,000 life insurance payout. Everette’s “very close” relationship with his foster brother, combined with the promise of a monetary payout, helped sway him to carry out the hit, prosecutors said.

Emma Raine is also facing charges in Smith’s murder. But she is to be tried separately next year.

She also is suspected in the deaths of James Raine, who she eventually married but who was found fatally shot in 2011 inside the home they shared, and of her first husband, who was hit by a car, became a paraplegic and deprived of his feeding tube. She has not been charged those deaths.

Throughout Everette’s three-day trial, in Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier courtroom, prosecutors painted a portrait of a woman who had made a living out of killing her men, and of a greedy contract killer who agreed to off an innocent clergyman in exchange for a cash reward.

“Her main source of income was killing husbands,” said Assistant District Attorney Laura Rodrigue, who prosecuted the case with her father, District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro. “She wanted him dead more than anybody else, even if she didn’t have it in her to walk up to this man and pull the trigger.

“But guess what? He’s worse. He’s worse than Emma,” Rodrigue said during her closing arguments, pointing at Everette. The defendant did not take the witness stand during the trial. Wearing a dark suit and necktie, he sat quietly beside his attorneys.

On the night of Smith’s murder, Everette sat outside the pastor’s home in the 10700 block of Roger Drive and waited for him to return from an outing with friends. When Smith arrived at about 11:30 p.m., Everette got out of a car, drew a gun and shot Smith twice in the chest.

Smith, 38, was able to make it into his house but collapsed and died shortly afterwards. Everette drove back to Mississippi, tossing the gun out of the car’s window while crossing the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.

Emma Raine, who was inside the house at the time of murder, called a close friend of her husband’s before calling the police. She locked herself in a truck, refusing to speak with anyone, while detectives cased the area.

“If you’re shot and you’re stumbling into your house and blood is pouring out of your body, the first person that your wife is going to call is the person you were just with?” Cannizzaro asked the jurors during his closing arguments. “What about 911? What about 911?”

“She was also assisting this defendant,” Cannizzaro said, pointing to Everette.

“Someone you love has been shot and … not a drop of blood on her. Because she left him there to die. Because he was shot like an animal, he was shot like some dog, that’s what (Everette) did to him,” the DA said.

There were no witnesses to Smith’s killing, in a desolate block less than a year after Hurricane Katrina, Some neighbors reported hearing the gunfire, but the case quickly grew cold.

. . . . . . .

Emma Raine and James Raine eventually married and relocated to Mississippi, cashing in on Smith’s life insurance policy. After the couple used the money to build an expensive house, Rodrigue said, Everette never received the $100,000 he had been promised. Still, he was “treated like a king” in the Raine’s new house for carrying out the hit.

As the years passed, James and Emma Raine began having problems, Rodrigue said. In October 2011, James Raine was found shot to death in their house. Shortly after his death, the house burned down, and Raine collected on the property insurance.

It wasn’t until James Raine’s death that his relatives grew suspicious about Emma Raine. They had long suspected her involvement in Smith’s death, and now they began to think she might have killed Raine, also for life insurance. They said they confronted Everette, and that he confessed to them that he had carried out the hit.

Eventually, the family contacted DeCynda Barnes, a New Orleans police detective who specializes in cold cases.

Everette was arrested in Galveston County, Texas, in July 2013, extradited to New Orleans and charged with killing Smith. Emma Raine was arrested in August 2013 in Jackson County, Miss., returned to New Orleans and charged with second-degree murder and criminal conspiracy.

At trial, there were no eyewitnesses and no ballistic or DNA evidence linking Everette to the crime. The jurors ultimately relied on testimony from James Raine’s relatives, who were also called foster, or adopted, relatives of Everette’s.

One by one, James Raine’s brothers and an uncle took the stand and told jurors how, after taking Everette aside one evening, he confessed to them that he had killed Smith. They all testified that Everette’s motive was money, even though the amount of money differed.

Attorneys Michael Kennedy and Tanzanika Ruffin represented Everette. They portrayed James Raine’s relatives as a group hungry for money from his life insurance policy, which they were unable to access while Emma Raine’s case lingered in the judicial system.

“If James’ policy isn’t paid to Emma, who gets the money? Ruffin asked the jurors. “The family does, don’t they? Of course they do. Someone has to go down for this murder,” she said.

Everette’s attorneys also tried picking apart the testimony of an inmate who was housed with their client at the Orleans Parish jail, Donald Glover, 41, who testified that Everette confessed to him. The defense attorneys said Glover might have been promised a sweeter deal by prosecutors on a pending charge he was facing in exchange for his testimony.

Glover said he not been promised anything in exchange for his testimony, but that as a quadruple offender he was facing 20 years to life on his pending charges. Last month, prosecutors offered Glover an 8-year prison sentence as a double offender, on charges of vehicular burglary, felony bond jumping and possession of a stolen car.

After the verdict was read, one of Everette’s sisters began sobbing and collapsed to the floor. Everette stood stone-faced, his hands clinched by his sides. He spoke little to his attorneys and kissed his wife as he was shackled and led out of the courtroom.

“I think he was kind of numb to it at this point,” said Kennedy, his attorney. “There was a complete absence of phyicial evidence, no eyewitnesses. … Obviously we’re disappointed.”

Kennedy said Emma Raine’s presence in the narrative of his client’s case was a hard one to overcome. “The trial was more about her than about anything else,” he said.

James Raine’s brother, William Fowler, said he and other relatives think they saved Everette’s life. “We love Terry, we really do. But he was next in Emma’s path,” Fowler said. “We’re sure of that.”

“It’s been a long road. We built it, but it still hurts. It has messed with our famliy. And Emma and Terry need to see justice for this.”

Cannizzaro wouldn’t say much about the trial, as Emma Raine’s case remains open. But he said he considered Thursday’s verdict “certainly a very good start.”