My Hometown Had a Religious Murder Cult

Trigger warning: This article mentions infanticide.

I moved to Attleboro, Massachusetts in the fall of 1989 — my freshman year of high school. My Mom and I left Virginia to move to the Boston commuter town where my grandparents had retired.

We moved in with my grandmother for a few months while we got settled, and stayed in town as that was where I was enrolled in high school.

New England: Quaint Charm?

Attleboro was at that point a pretty typical suburban Massachusetts town, with tree-lined streets, two high schools (one a private Catholic school, I went to the public school), a modest downtown with a few shops and restaurants, a beautiful old library, and several parks including a small zoo with a polar bear that as a child I thought was magical (adult me not so much).

The biggest local employers were a jewelry company (it was once home to several and known as the jewelry capital of the U.S. apparently!) and a (simpler times) technology/parts company that specialized in CALCULATORS. It’s like an entire lifetime ago, isn’t it?

There was also a religious shrine site towards the edge of town, Our Lady of La Salette (known to locals as “LAAH SAHLAHTTE”), where even non-religious types flocked from near and far at Christmas for the impressive light display.

As teenagers, we would trudge around the snowy winter wonderland trying to look goth or whatever we 90s “alternative” weirdos did, but really I felt like a little kid, cowed by the splendor of the acres of Christmas lights.

We’d get hot chocolate or cider to ward off the icy cold, in what felt to me like a wholesome setting of old-time nostalgia. In retrospect, I think I had cultivated a romantic ideal of New England as a southern transplant.

I am setting the scene here because, as someone new to the area, I felt like I had moved to a picturesque, movie-setting version of small-town life with few rough edges.

When Religious Zealotry Turns Evil

The events that led to the arrest of members of the Robidoux and extended group family religious cult, also known as “The Body”, in Attleboro in 2000, are some of the most disturbing I have heard of. Possibly because it all happened around twenty years ago, I think it became a blip on the radar of infamous cult atrocities.

What started out as a bible study group that splintered away from a fundamentalist Christian church evolved into a commune lifestyle.

The group rejected modern medicine, all forms of modern culture, homeschooled the kids, inflicted beatings as punishment on small children, and over time had a growing reliance on perceived “prophecies”. First-hand testimony of a former member described the group:

It was in the decades following, Weeks said, that the Robidouxes joined with a few other families and cut themselves off from society, living frugally off money earned through masonry work, carpentry and a chimney sweep business.

The church cut themselves off entirely from outside society, he said. Some sect members intermarried, including Jacques, who wed Karen, the daughter of another group member.*

This all escalated and tragically resulted in the death of an 11-month-old baby boy of starvation. Apparently, a “prophecy” had been communicated to the sister of Jacques Robidoux and this convinced him and his wife, Karen to starve their child, baby Samuel, of solid food for 51 days.

This shockingly happened with the outside knowledge of other group members, including the cult’s main leader, the father of Jacques, Roland Robidoux.

The cult secretly buried the baby, named Samuel, in a park in Maine, along with another baby who the family claimed was miscarried, but there was no medical confirmation of the cause of death.

Fourteen other children were taken into state custody at the time of the arrests for fear their lives were also in danger. A pregnant mother was incarcerated for the protection of her unborn child as she refused medical treatment.

The details of this case are some of the most upsetting I have ever read. There is an index of stories collated by the Cult Education Institute I will link to below for anyone interested. It is especially disturbing to me how callous this group was as this helpless child starved to death before their eyes.

Shockingly, only one person in a large group of church/cult members went to jail: Jacques Robidoux. The father of the deceased 11-month-old boy was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The child’s mother got off on a domestic battery defense and time served despite being charged with second-degree murder. The district attorney at the time said:

The verdict angered Walsh, whose office had successfully prosecuted Robidoux’s husband, Jacques, for first-degree murder in the starvation death of their son, Samuel, who died three days short of his first birthday in April 1999 after being denied solid food for 51 days.

In a strongly worded statement, Walsh said the verdict was contradictory, in that it found Robidoux guilty of assault and battery, but not of the death that resulted from her actions.

“This much is certain: Samuel was systematically starved to death before his first birthday by his father and his mother,” the statement said. “There is a time to temper justice with mercy. In my view, this wasn’t one of them. Individuals are responsible not only to God. Parents have legal responsibilities; feeding your kids is one of them. People have to stop making excuses. Never before in 14 years as district attorney have I been this disturbed by a verdict.”**

The grandfather Roland Robidoux was by most accounts the true pater familias/cult leader. He remained unrepentant and also escaped prison, dying at home in 2006.

What reminded me of these events recently was the show Midnight Mass on Netflix. It gave an eerie gaze to how warped influences and religious zealotry can brainwash people to do terrible things they would have thought were unthinkable only a short time previously.

People who think of themselves as good and righteous and protected by God no matter what they do can seemingly become monstrous in the blink of an eye under the wrong influence (which has been exhibited many times in recent years by religious extremist terrorists).

Local Perspective

I moved away from Massachusetts a couple of years before this all happened, but I still remember how shocking and unreal it seemed at the time that this could happen in the place I had called home.

I also became aware that I had gone to high school with a member of the family (it turns out as I was reading more about these events it was actually two people). Both dropped out early, to do with the family homeschooling the kids.

They were reportedly one of several group members who initially refused to cooperate with the police and let them know where the dead children were buried. While I didn’t know this person well, it was unsettling as my limited experience with them was that of a friendly, popular kid. Eventually, several arrested group members were given an immunity deal for cooperating.

The Aftermath

The mother of the deceased child, Karen Robidoux, gave an interview a few years after her release where she said she feared many of the family members were still practicing this “religion” unphased by these events.

She renounced it by this time and told her side of the story, which included being forced to drop out of school and have two children before the age of 15. While she was obviously culpable in the death of her child, it is clear that women especially had a deeply oppressed life in this cult.

Reading the court excerpts on this blog***, it sounds like the prosecution was overwhelmed with how to proceed with punishing all of these clearly disturbed/brainwashed people.

I wonder if it happened in more recent times if a more aggressive approach to de-programming them might have yielded more cooperation/answers.

Many of the cult’s children were taken away from their families twenty years ago, but some were placed with non-cult family members so it’s hard not to wonder what became of them/how this has affected them growing up.

Jacques Robidoux, still in prison, has finally, only as of November 2021, come out to tell a story of repentance. He now says

“I essentially became a compartmentalized sociopath,” Jacques Robidoux told CBS Boston. “Once the realization came that ‘Holy God, I killed my own son. How did this even happen?’ So then everything begins to start. Everything begins to unravel.”****

He is apparently working to help other former cult members in prison now.

To me, there is still an element of mystery here, but maybe that is just the overactive imagination of someone who has watched too many crime documentaries.

It is hard not to suspect that, while fractured, many members of the cult managed to escape punishment or outside scrutiny once the case was closed and could in theory still be active.

In looking into it further it seemed odd to me how unexplored the case has been in the years since by mainstream media.

Maybe it’s just too dark, revisiting it I admit I wasn’t completely aware of how horrific this case was. It doesn’t feel like justice was served (not that it ever could be).

My connection with the town lessened in time, as most of my friends and family have moved, so I haven’t been back in over a decade. But some part of me will always feel connected to it.

If it happened in a quiet town in New England it could happen anywhere. Much like the Branch Davidians at WACO, there are always innocent victims in these stories. I don’t think they should be forgotten.

Sources cited:

*The Robidoux Family Cult: A Deadly WCG Splinter Group

**https://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/02/04/jury_acquits_robidoux_of_murdering_baby/

***https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/us/state-seeks-child-parents-don-t-acknowledge.html

****https://boston.cbslocal.com/2021/11/04/jacques-robidoux-prison-interview-the-body-former-cult-leader-mind-control-attleboro-wbz-tv/

A thorough list of many related articles:

https://www.culteducation.com/component/itpgooglesearch/search.html?gsquery=attleboro

A further deep dive here: https://www.apologeticsindex.org/a97.html

This article was originally published by the author on Medium