Article by Caroline Popovic: On the evening of 18 September 2017, just as Martinique was beginning to feel the effects of Hurricane Maria, Kerry Ferdinand killed his mistress Leila Laviolette (photo of deceased above) and her two children aged 6 and 4.

He stabbed them to death.

Ferdinand, a 33 year old, sometime disc-jockey is originally from St. Lucia and he is well-known in the St. Lucian community in Martinique.  He had been seeing Leila Laviolette, a school teacher living in Fort de France, for about a year even though he lived with someone else.

The night she and her children were brutally killed, Leila Laviolette had told Ferdinand that she was seeing someone else and that the relationship was over.

The 3 bodies were discovered by police after a tip off from a marabou, the equivalent of a chemboiseur or shaman.

After the murders, Ferdinand had thrown his blood-soaked clothes away and gone to see the marabou. He confessed to the killings and asked the occult specialist to cast a spell on him to protect him from the police.

The marabou went straight to the nearest police station.  The police officers who were first on the crime scene are said to be traumatised by the violence with which  Leila Laviolette and her two children had been murdered.

Ferdinand was arrested and subsequently confessed.

In 2010, Ferdinand was sentenced to two months in prison for violence. Today he faces life in prison for the murder of Leila Laviolette and her 2 small children.

On Saturday 23 September 2017, 500 people took to the streets in Fort de France, Martinique’s capital,  to protest against the level of violence against women. There were no men present.