This is a bizarre and very disturbing story from Louisiana. The KKK is apparently recruiting. But, one recent recruit didn't make it. She was murdered:
A Tulsa, Okla., woman who traveled to Louisiana to join the Ku Klux Klan was shot to death by the leader of the group's Bogalusa chapter Sunday after she tried to back out of initiation rites at a remote, sandbar camp in northeastern St. Tammany Parish, authorities said Tuesday.
An investigation Monday resulted in the arrests of eight members of the Klan branch, which had flown under the radar of officials in St. Tammany and Washington parishes, investigators said. The suspects, all from the Bogalusa area, include Raymond "Chuck" Foster, who has been booked with murder in the shooting of the unidentified woman.
"It's a situation that almost defies logic, " St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain said Tuesday. "When you think you've seen it all, something like this occurs."
The woman apparently learned about Foster's group, the Sons of Dixie, through the Internet and applied so she could recruit others in Oklahoma, Strain said. Investigators have recovered the woman's application to join the Klan and noted that she had requested that the organization waive its typical membership fee.
The woman came to Louisiana by bus on Friday to begin her initiation into the group, Strain said. After several rites, including a head-shaving, she was taken to a camp on a sandbar, accessible only by boat, in the Pearl River Canal near Sun.
The initiation continued at the campsite, with rituals that consisted mainly of lighting torches and "running around in the woods, " Strain said.
Sunday night, the woman decided she wanted to leave the camp, sparking an argument with Foster that soon turned violent, Strain said. Foster pushed the woman down and, as the argument continued, he shot her with a .40-caliber handgun, the sheriff said.
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