Sadie Roberts-Joseph

Roberts-Joseph was born in 1944 and grew up in Woodville, Mississippi. She was the fifth in a family of twelve children, and her parents were sharecroppers.^[5] The family later moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She attended Baton Rouge Vocational-Technical School and Southern University, studying education and speech pathology. She was an active volunteer in the local black community, and worked for many years as a certified respiratory therapy technician.^[4]

Her brother serves as pastor of the New St. Luke Baptist church in Baton Rouge. She had two children, a son, Jason Roberts, now curator of the Baton Rouge African American museum, and a daughter: Angela Roberts Machen, a commissioner on the Greater Baton Rouge Port Commission.^[4][6]

On Friday, July 12, 2019, the body of Roberts-Joseph was discovered in the trunk of her own car about three miles from her home in Baton Rouge.^[7][8] On Monday 15 July, police stated that the cause of death was "traumatic asphyxiation" by suffocation and ruled it a homicide.^[9][10]

The next day they arrested a tenant of hers who owed $1,200 in rent.^[11]