Satanic Craigslist Serial Killers
Are there Satanic Killers amongst us? Or is this the story of a young woman looking for something more impressive-sounding than the garden variety John Killer she was?
“Looks can be deceiving,” this is how Miranda Barbour answered the question of how people were supposed to believe that the petite young woman could be capable of multiple murders.
The Friends You Don’t Want
Elytte Barbour had graduated high school in 2010 and enrolled in college. People who knew him at this time described him as a quiet young man who had a religious background.
Then in March of 2013, Elytte tried ecstasy and ended up overdosing. After recovering from the OD, friends said Elytte changed. His personality was completely different than before the OD. He quickly became the guy who never did drugs, from trying them once and ODing, to taking drugs every day after that.
The new Elytte 22 and his then-girlfriend found out they were expecting a child. Around this time, another expectant mother came into their orbit, Miranda Dean. The three soon were close friends. Miranda taught them how to practice Satanism.
Miranda Dean, 19, had moved to Coats, North Carolina, to live with her mother after leaving her childhood home in North Pole, Alaska. When she showed up in North Carolina, she was six months pregnant, and the father of her baby was dead.
***An investigation has been launched to try and determine if Miranda had anything to do with the death of her child’s father.
At some point, a fracture happened in the trio, and Elytte left his pregnant girlfriend for Miranda, who was carrying another man’s child. Miranda and Elytte decided to leave North Carolina and head to a friend’s house in Pennsylvania.
When Elytte told his workmates, he was quitting. They asked what was going on. Elytte would only say, “you’ll see,” like he had big plans that were going to shock everyone.
On the way to Pennsylvania, the couple got married in Lillington, North Carolina, on October 22, 2013.
The Killer Honeymoon
The couple arrived at their friend’s house in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, with a bed, chair, and lockbox, saying they would only be staying a few weeks.
They were still living with their friends when Elytte’s birthday came around on November 11, 2013. Miranda and Elytte had decided on a special celebration. Not only were they still on their honeymoon, but with Elytte’s birthday, they wanted to do something together that would take their relationship, Satanic Practice, and lives to another level. They had decided they were going to kill together.
They searched Craigslist looking for a victim.
The site that is known for selling everything from auto parts to kittens also has a dark side. People routinely use the site to sell sex.
Troy Laferrara, 42, was a married man from Port Trevorton, Pennsylvania. Troy had placed an ad on Craigslist looking for a female escort. He said he was willing to pay $100 for sex.
Elytte and Miranda replied to his ad, and Miranda then started texting with Troy about the two of them meeting up for sex. After being caught, Elytte said that “[Miranda] misleadingly sold him sex through texts, but that was never the intention. The whole intention was to kill him.”
On Monday night, November 11, Elytte’s birthday, Miranda planned her date with Troy. They had agreed to meet at the Susquehanna Valley Mall parking lot in Hummels Wharf, Pennsylvania.
Troy arrived in his Chevy S-10 pickup truck, and Miranda told him to get into her Honda CRV. They settled up with the payment, and then Miranda drove Troy about six miles away to the small town of Sunbury. Sunbury is about 100 miles North West of Philadelphia. What Troy didn’t know was that Elytte was hiding under a blanket in the back seat.
As she’s driving, Miranda told Troy that she had just turned 16 in an effort to gauge whether he was a good or bad man. Troy said to her that it was alright. He didn’t care. His response let Miranda know that he was an evil man willing to take advantage of a young girl. So she felt justified in doing what she and her new husband had been planing.
She parked the car, and at once, Troy was on Miranda. That’s when she gave the cue to Elytte, “Did you see the stars tonight?”
Elytte sprung up from under the blanket and wrapped a cable cord around Troy’s neck in an attempt to choke him. Unfortunately, Elytte’s strength was no match for the 6"-2, 278 pounds Troy.
Miranda grabbed her knife and began stabbing Troy while Elyette had him pulled back against the seat. In all, Miranda would inflict over 20 stab wounds. While Troy was bleeding to death, gasping for air, Miranda started to drive again. Now she was looking for a place to dump the body. She wound through town all the while Troy was half propped up in the passenger seat bleeding.
Eventually, she ended up on the 200 block of Catawissa Avenue in Sunbury. She put the car in park in the alleyway and then went around to the passenger door and opened it. Troy had been leaning against the door and now toppled out. Miranda closed the door and got back in the driver’s side, and drove away.
They needed to use the GPS to find their way to a department store to purchase cleaning supplies before heading back to their friend’s house. There Miranda dropped off Elyette, and she drove to a remote spot to clean the car. She had purchased bleach wipes, towels, and spray cleaner. Miranda used these to wipe down and soak up the blood in the car. She then disposed of all of the bloody supplies before picking up Elytte to celebrate his birthday.
After killing a man, they wanted the birthday celebration to continue. Elyette had just turned 22 and had committed his first kill. To celebrate it all, Elytte and Miranda got dinner at a strip club.
Later in police custody, Elytte would remember that night, “I ate a burger, and it was fantastic.”
After the strip club, the couple drove back past Troy’s body. It was still lying there undisturbed in someone’s backyard.
Troy Laferrara’s body would be discovered the next morning. Miranda and Troy were there, watching the police searching the scene for clues and removing the body.
After reliving their crime again watching the scene, the couple drove back to their friend’s house and told them all about what they had seen.
Their friends would later tell police that Miranda and Elytte said they had happened upon a crime scene in Sunbury. The couple said they sat in their car and watched what was happening but never mentioned anything about being involved.
After the night of the murder, their friends said there wasn’t a change in the couple. They never suspected anything had happened. At Thanksgiving, Miranda Skyped with her mother to get recipes. She then cooked a full Thanksgiving dinner for the group.
Miranda was on social media, “Happy Holidays to me,” she wrote with a picture of her new wedding ring.
The Investigation
Soon after finding Troy’s body, the police started looking into women he might have been with that night. Troy had been known to spend time with various local strippers, so the detectives began there.
When the police searched Troy’s cell phone, they hit payday. They found the last calls made were to Miranda Barbours, and even more telling were the text messages shared between the two phones.
Alright, I’m pretty close to the mall . . .
Good . . .
I’m dropping my daughter off right now. Then I’ll be at the mall in 15 . . .
I’m here . . . I don’t see you . . .
I am so sketched out right now . . . I will wait 10 more minutes . . .
Miranda was brought in for questioning on December 3, 2013. At first, she denied knowing Troy or having ever talked to him. But the police had enough evidence to arrest her, and they did. While she was being held, they continued looking for more evidence. They traced the purchase that Miranda had made that night at the department store. Security cameras showed her buying cleaning supplies and that she wasn’t alone. Three days later, the police arrested Elytte.
The First Set of Confessions
When the couple was first interrogated, they told two different stories, but both said the murder was committed in self-defense.
Elytte was the first to open up and talk with the authorities. ***What follows is his first account of everything leading up to and after the murder of Troy Laferrara.
On the night of November 11, 2013, Elyette said that Miranda had picked him up late that night to go to a strip club for his birthday.
“She must have done a good job of cleaning the car because I didn’t notice anything. I didn’t know any of this was going on until Monday [when first questioned about the case] when I walked out of work and police asked me to go to the station with them. I thought it had to do with my roommate being in trouble for something.”
When the investigators asked him about Miranda meeting men, Elytte said he was fully aware of what his wife did to earn money. But, he wanted to make certain things clear.
“She is not a prostitute.”
“What she does is meet men who have broken marriages or have no one in their lives, and she meets with them and has delightful conversation. She has done this 30 to 35 times in the last year or so when we were living in North Carolina.”
“But, I can tell you there was never any sex involved.”
“She only met with two or three people since we have been here [Pennsylvania], and this is the first time something ever went wrong.”
“After I learned of what she did, she explained that he [Troy LaFerrara] was trying to hurt her, and she blacked out and stabbed him in protection of herself.”
Further, Elytte said that it was his knife in the Honda. He told the cops that he always kept a three-inch pocket knife in the car. He said Miranda knew about it and must have grabbed it to protect herself. When asked about where it was now, Elytte said he hadn’t seen it since November 11 but added that he hadn’t looked for it either. It wasn’t something he had needed since then.
***In her interview with the police, Miranda said that she had thrown the knife from the car into the river five days before the interview. She also admitted that she had used that knife from the vehicle to stab Troy.
Elytte told the cops that Miranda usually made $50–850 dollars from meeting men for coffee, dinner, or to walk around the mall and chat. He said that all of the dates were set up initially through Craigslist. He said he was alright with his wife meeting these men because “Miranda was a great listener.”
“You got to understand that walking around with a beautiful woman next to you gives you a lift.”
“All she did was show companionship, and she let it be known up from that she was not selling any sort of sex.”
“These were rich men and people who couldn’t spend all the money they had. They wanted a pretend girlfriend. One guy took her to dinner, and they stayed for three hours talking. Some would buy her gifts. These were like dates.”
The police wanted to know if Miranda had any proof that Troy had attacked her, forcing her to defend herself. “No. I love her, and she has always told me the truth.”
Elytte told the police that he had no idea Miranda was meeting Troy that night.
He said, “I followed it every day,” when asked if he knew about the case. But he claimed he had no idea his wife had any involvement. “She never said a word to me about anything, and even when police came to my house and searched through our things, I thought it was because of my roommate, who was in trouble for something else.”
Elytte said again that the first he knew anything about him or Miranda being connected to Troy’s death was when he came out of work and cops were waiting for him. They took him to the police station. “When we got there, Miranda was there. I asked her what was going on.” His wife didn’t say anything.
When police showed him a picture of Troy LaFerrara, he said he had never met the guy. Later, both he and Miranda were let go. “When we got home, it was about 2 am and she said I have to tell you something.”
“She told me she met with Troy and that he tried to grope her and grab at her, and Miranda defended herself, and she blacked out and stabbed him. I told her she needed to go and tell the police, so I drove her there around 4:30 am. A few minutes later, she called me and told me that she wasn’t under arrested and she couldn’t have an attorney and that she was free to leave, but I explained she better stay and tell them everything because they would only be back again. To pick her up.”
“That’s the last time I heard from her until she called me from Northumberland County Prison.”
“All she said was, ‘I’m in jail,’ and then I heard what sounded like a deep voice, and the phone disconnected.” Elytte added, “That’s the last thing I heard.”
He told the officers that Miranda had a rough childhood. “With my wife’s history, I believe she defended herself and eventually killed this man, and that’s not against the law to defend yourself.”
“What she did was keep it from police, and that was wrong. I believe she blacked out.”
Elytte said after Miranda was arrested, the Snyder County Children and Youth Service took their baby. “I lost my wife, my stepchild, and my life all at once.” He said, “I can’t sleep at night. I’m alone in a room with an empty crib and lonely bed.”
“This story can go a different way, and I know that.” Still sticking to his story. “I am not naive to that, but I believe my wife, and I trust in her and what she said.”
When Miranda finally spoke with the police, she too gave a similar account of what happened.
The Second Set of Confessions
After spending some time in jail, Miranda and Elytte changed their stories. Now they admitted to killing Troy LaFerrara for the thrill of it on their three-week wedding anniversary. ***What follows is as close to the truth as anyone is going to get from these killers.
Elytte spoke about their trill kill. “We just decided that we were going to kill somebody.” He told the police, “We had no reason other than that.”
Miranda now agreed with her husband, “I tried it a few times, but it never worked out.” Referencing her and Elytte attempting to find a victim before. “I knew we were going to do this since the day we met, and we tried, but the others just didn’t show up.”
Miranda said that while she was driving, she tested Troy and intended to let him go if he did the right thing. But she says, “He said the wrong things.”
“I lied to him and told him I just turned 16.” At the time of the murder, Miranda was 18 but easily could have passed for a 16-year-old girl. “He told me that it was ok. If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go.”
Miranda said that as Troy started to grope her, she said the phrase, “Did you see the stars tonight?” That was supposed to be Elytte’s cue to strangle Troy, but she told the officers that her husband didn’t do anything. So she repeated it, and still, Elytte didn’t move. “He still didn’t jump up, so I hit him in the leg, and then he popped out.”
“And then things got out of control. I can tell you he was not supposed to be stabbed. My husband was just supposed to strangle him.”
“[Elytte] messed it up.” She said that Troy had been able to break free from the cable cord and was trying to get out of the car. That’s when she grabbed the knife and started to stab him.
When asked if she felt remorse for what she had done, Miranda said no because she only killed “bad people.” She then told the police, “If I were to be released, I would do this again.”
After killing Troy and dumping his body, Miranda said they drove to Wal-Mart to get cleaning supplies. She said she wasn’t able to clean up all the blood. There was too much.
When she finished cleaning the best that she could, she picked up Elytte, and they drove to a strip club in Harrisburg to celebrate her husband’s birthday. “We were on this high, but the club was so bad. The girls were just dirty. It was a total buzzkill.”
They stopped by to look at the scene on their way home but had difficulty finding the alley. The next day they drove back by and spotted the police working the crime scene.
Elytte agreed with his wife’s version of events. Then he adds that she didn’t ditch the knife but that they kept it. He told the police where they stashed it, in the attic of their friend’s house.
Ultimately they killed Troy LaFerrara because they wanted to kill someone together.
More Confessions
While awaiting trial in December 2013, Miranda wrote to Journalist Francis Scarcella. She asked him to come and visit her in prison, that she had information she wanted to share.
Mirada | “I feel it is time to get all of this out. I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.”
“My entire life went upside down when I turned 12. I got into a gang based around Satanism.”
“I always felt there was something inside of me, and I knew it was bad, and one day it would be totally out of control. This is not the first time.”
Scarcella | “Are you saying that you’ve killed before?” Miranda told him yes. He asks, “How many times, Miranda? If you had to take a guess, what would you say?”
Miranda | “I guess . . . I know that when I hit 22, I stopped counting.”
Scarcella | After the interview, Scarcella spoke with BBC Three, “Immediately I’m thinking, ‘I could be sitting in front of the world’s worst serial killer of all time.”
Miranda | “I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them.”
“I would lure these people in,” Miranda spoke of how she found victims. “I studied them. I learned them and even became their friend. I did this to people who did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here anymore.”
When asked about her latest kill, Miranda said she wanted to hit a reset button. “I believe in reincarnation. I wanted a fresh start.”
Miranda talks about how she regrets the fact that she will never be able to hold her daughter or husband in her arms again. “I knew I would be put away, but I just didn’t think it would all happen so quickly.” She added, “I thought I would have more time to say goodbye.”
Talking about her murders, “People think I’m a monster, but I’ve done a lot of good.” Miranda says she believes the murders she committed saved hundreds of young girls from potential abuse over the years. “The justice system doesn’t work, so I did what I did.”
Miranda also sat down with Journalist Jill Burke. During that chat, Miranda said that she killed Troy LaFerrara because she knew that her daughter would be put up for adoption and have a better life than Miranda could give her. “I was a good mother, but I had two sides of me, at war with each other.”
“I felt if I did something to get myself out of the picture, everyone else would be so much better off in their lives.”
Her husband, Elytte Barbour, spoke about Miranda’s killer stories and personality. “I fully believe she killed these people. I always told everybody I thought Miranda was possessed. We called her Super Miranda.” Saying she took on another persona at times. “It’s a Demon. I believe she’s capable of anything.”
After the interview, Jill Burke made some observations. “It could be that ‘Super Miranda’ is an identity she formed to cope with the Uncle Rick years.” Burke got the chance to see Miranda up close during their interview. “‘Super Miranda’ is defiant, powerful, has control over men. She’s a killer. Maybe she’s an offshoot of the schizophrenia.”
The Couple that Killed Together were Charged Together
When Miranda was first charged, and the prosecutor sought the death penalty, she lashed out. Saying that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment,” and she shouldn’t be subjected to that.
The Barbour’s initially pled not guilty to first-degree murder in December 2013. But after being held for several months, they both changed their minds and pled guilty to second-degree murder.
Soon after that, Miranda started to confess to numerous other murders.
Elytte seemed to embrace the killer persona while awaiting his sentencing. He got a teardrop tattoo and told anyone who would listen about how he and his wife had killed together. “I still love her,” is how he responded when asked about Miranda.
When Miranda was asked about Elytte’s behavior in prison, “He is proud of what he did. I will always love him.” She still says she has no regrets about what she did.
“I know I will never see my husband again, and I have accepted that. I know I wanted to talk about all of this because I know I had a 20-year window where I would possibly get out of jail, and I don’t want that to happen. If I were to be released, I would do this again.”
“By no means is this a way to glorify it or get attention. I’m telling you because it is time for me to be honest, and I feel I need to be honest.”
During their sentencing on September 18, 2014, the judge said that the Barbour’s “permanent removal” from society is appropriate as he sentenced them to life without parole.
Miranda refused to speak, but Elytte read a statement. He said he couldn’t explain why he did what he called a “senseless crime.” He told the court that “it is not the person who I am” and “It’s not the person I want to be.”
Afterwards
Elytte attempts to withdraw his guilty plea. He claimed that his lawyer was ineffective, which caused him to admit to his part in the murder. He also contended that his lawyer should have advised him to use a mental health defense. In November 2015, he dropped his withdrawal attempt.
In June of 2016, Miranda filed for divorce, sighting an “irretrievably broken” marriage.
Miranda’s Life in Alaska
After she was arrested for murder, reporters sought out friends of hers to try and find out what kind of person Miranda was. When asked to describe her, a couple of things seemed to be brought up over and over. Almost everyone who talked about her mentioned she was obsessed with sex and hated fat people.
While in prison, Miranda agreed to several interviews with various news outlets. One particular interview with The Daily Item shed light on how such a young woman could become so detached and emotionless about taking the lives of others.
Court records back up Miranda’s account of child rape. When she was only three years old, her Uncle Richard ‘Rick’ Fernandez raped her. Miranda’s mother also confirmed this account, that her brother raped her toddler. Fernandez was charged with the sexual abuse of a minor and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. When the judge sentenced Fernandez, he said it was the most physically extreme case of abuse he had ever seen.
When investigators were searching Fernandez’s home and belongings, they came across something else sick and twisted. He had written a book entitled “Fun with My Sister’s Kids.” He wrote the book for Uncles, Fathers, and Grandfathers to get started with sexual acts against their Nieces, Daughters, or Granddaughters.
Fernandez served nine years before being released. He wasn’t free for long when he was charged with the possession of child porn. He is currently behind bars, with a future parole date on or before 2035.
***Child abuse in Alaska is over six times greater than the national average in America.
A diary Miranda kept later has an excerpt about what happened to her: “I felt dirty, violated, hurt, and ashamed. How could he think he had the right to hurt me and my sister the way he did? I wanted him to hurt worse than he hurt me.”
She told The Daily Item that she believed her Uncle created her darkness. “I think he created a monster inside of me. It’s always there.”
“It’s something I’ve struggled with all of my life. He will never change. None of them (pedophiles) ever do. The legal system is supposed to protect people from these people. It doesn’t. It didn’t protect me.”
***Is Miranda attempting to kill her Uncle when she stalks and attacks other men? Is this why she tells them she’s younger than she is? She wants to be sure they’re a pedophile, someone who needs to be stopped?
Satanic Cult
At the age of thirteen, Miranda says she joined a Satanic Cult in North Pole, Alaska, where she was living. The Cult is where she was first introduced to murder.
When asked how she got involved in Satanism, Miranda responded, “I kind of slid into it.” Then added, “But they weren’t just into Satan, they were into hating minorities too.” She told the reporter that Satanism had a positive influence on her life. It helped her to harness all the darkness inside of herself. “I worship a dark entity, but just because it is dark doesn’t mean that it is bad.”
Miranda says that someone owed the Cult money. The leader of their group, Forest, and a few others had cornered the man in an alleyway. Forest shot the victim, but he was still alive. The leader said she needed to prove herself and placed the gun in her hands. But she couldn’t pull the trigger. Forest moved behind her, wrapping his hands around hers and forced her to pull the trigger.
“He said to me that it was my turn to shoot him. I hate guns. I don’t use guns. I couldn’t do it, so he came behind me, and he took his hands and put them on top of mine, and we pulled the trigger. And from there, I just continued to kill.”
Miranda claims that most of her kills were made with her favorite knife. She would notch the hilt after each kill but stopped when she reached 22.
Forest wasn’t just the leader of their Cult but the father of Miranda’s unborn child when she left Alaska for North Carolina. No one has heard from or seen Forest in quite a few years. Some speculate that Miranda killed him before she fled Alaska. Miranda says she didn’t and has no idea where he is.
Some believe Miranda would have killed Forest because he ordered the Cult to perform a sacrifice with an “in-house abortion.”
Miranda said they tied her to a bed then force-fed her drugs. But when she went to the Dr’s to be checked afterwards, the baby was still alive, and she ended up carrying it to full term.
By the age of thirteen, Miranda had been diagnosed as being Schizophrenic and was taking medication. In her teens, she tried to kill herself several times.
It doesn’t appear that she had any sort of normal childhood. Records show she attended kindergarten and first grade, then just slipped through the cracks and didn’t enroll again until high school around the age of 14.
Miranda did happen to go to the same school as Willow Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin. It would be a fight with Willow Palin that would get Miranda suspended from school.
“Willow was standing at my locker,” Miranda starts to tell what led to the fight. “I always hated her. She wouldn’t move, so I punched her in the face and got suspended.”
Miranda says she briefly thought of killing Willow but then added, “it just didn’t seem like a good idea.” Because she only wanted to kill people who really deserved it, and she thought that Willow Palin “being stuck up” didn’t warrant a death sentence.
She claims she told Willow, “I was like, you have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of.”
Search For the 22
After Miranda made the statement that she had killed at least 22 people before moving to North Carolina, a nationwide search began. Local police in the cities she mentioned, along with the FBI, started task forces and investigations.
Miranda told detectives, “I wasn’t always there [mentally].” At that time, she said she had been using a lot of drugs. “I knew something was bad inside me, and the satanic beliefs brought it out. I embraced it.”
Northumberland County District Attorney gave an interview with The News Item after Miranda’s confessions. “We have been in contact with other law enforcement agencies where she has lived and haven’t received any information verifying what she said.”
Actual Information Miranda Gave Investigators
1 | Severed body parts were dumped in Big Lake, Alaska, outside Wasilla (not far from Anchorage).
2 | Male murdered on a pier in Mexico Beach, Florida. His body was then pushed into the ocean.
3 | While driving from Raleigh to Coats, North Carolina, severed body parts were thrown from a vehicle.
4 | Miranda spoke about over 30 encounters with specific men that investigators are trying to track down.
States She Murdered In | Alaska, Texas, North Carolina, California, Florida
Final Notes:
CNN reporter said on-air about Miranda, “I believe she did this before.”
The Church of Satan had their High Priest, Magus Peter H. Gilmore, release a damage control statement. “In this post 9/11 world, the idea that there could be a murderous cult out there . . . how’s that going to escape law enforcement?”
*** Lot’s of things escape law enforcement, including the more than 25 serial killers operating at any given time in the US by the FBI’s accounts.
About Me, Lisa Marie Fuqua: I’m a Crime and Corruption Writer for the Publication True Crime Addiction. I’m a Crohn’s Disease Ninja, a Sphynx Cat Rescue Mom, and reluctant desert dweller in Las Vegas. Also, I’m a proud Trophy Wife, it’s true I have a bowling trophy to prove it.
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