Florida: Voodoo murderer gets no bond at hearing

Leonce Charles confessed to fatally stabbing his female companion to death and is now being held without bond in Orlando, Florida. The 48-year-old made an initial appearance before a Florida court on December 13. He is alleged to have killed Cecil Freus (46).  According to a sheriff’s report, it was the couple’s children who found their mother dead early on the morning of December 10 in central Florida, not far from the famed Disney World resort.

Charles reportedly confessed to fatally stabbing the mother of four, explaining to authorities that she had cast Voodoo spells upon him. Additionally, he told law enforcement that he blacked out during his fatal attack upon his domestic companion.  Charles claimed that he “'blacked out from anger," stabbing Freus to death with a knife he found on the floor of their shared bedroom. There had been a confrontation between the pair  about alleged infidelities, an arrest report said. He now stands charged with murder in the second degree.

The accused killed told detectives that companion  Freus was using Voodoo to control and sicken him. The pair had been in the room behind closed doors for hours in their bungalow on Windmill Drive in Pine Hills, near Orlando. It was their 18-year-old son who found his ravaged mother lying on her bed, dead of multiple stab wounds to her chest and legs. Two other children were at the home at the time.

The teenaged son, having received a telephone call from a concerned relative, went to check on his mother. When he found the bedroom door locked, he then broke through a bedroom window and crawled inside to find his dead mother. Panicking, he called for his siblings. There was no response from their dead mother.
Accused killer Charles fled the home at approximately 4:15 am. In his flight, he wrapped the knife he had used and threw it out of his car as he was driving to nearby Apopka. Investigators have since recovered the weapon. When asked, Charles could not recall just how many times he had stabbed his companion.

Voodoo, which is a Haitian religion in which devotees cast spells and conjure spirits, joins other esoteric faiths such as Santeria in Florida, having come to the peninsula with Caribbean immigrants. However, the Deep South also harbors a native version called Hoodoo, which also purports to allow devotees to control lovers and outcomes in life.