Louisiana Voice

Looking for a break from the daily distractions of political strife? Need relief from the non-stop stress of worrying about wars, inflation, education, poverty, housing? Weary of trying to cope in a dysfunctional society?

Then take a drive out to Life Tabernacle Church in Central.

Stick around long enough and you’re almost certain to witness another entertaining episode of As Tony Spell Turns, the live soap opera at 9323 Hooper Road.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving, a saga that has taken on a life of its own and which now refuses to be ignored. Include it in the Nielson Ratings, and you’ve got a hit on your hands.

Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have used that word “hit,” which somehow is becoming synonymous with ground zero of the church.

The drama is such that it has citizens spellbound with anticipation for what’s next.

Shoot. Shouldn’t use “Spellbound” either; it kinda sounds like a certain preacher’s name.

I guess that’s Lif….Dang!

Well, here’s the thing:

Turns out that episode in which Rev. Spell attacked and beat up a 20-year-old neighbor wasn’t the first physical encounter between the victim, Toby Sherwin, and someone from Life Tabernacle, according to The Baton Rouge Advocate (normally, we would provide a link, but The Advocate has a pay wall, so you wouldn’t be able to open it anyway).

The accoster in the earlier case, Vance Gossett, appears to be on loan to Life Tabernacle from his previous residence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola—which in turn raises the question if his alleged assault on Sherwin might have been some kind of parole violation.

And it also reveals that the good reverend is fully skilled of administering his own brand of intimidation and name-calling—and may even be capable of allowing others to do some of the heavy lifting on his behalf.

Spell was arrested on June 23 for SECOND DEGREE BATTERY after he charged across the road from his church and peppered Sherwin with about three dozen blows to the head and body following an exchange of words (just who called whom what is still a matter of conjecture, depending upon which of the two participants is doing the talking).

But wait. It turns out that wasn’t the first time Toby Sherwin was attacked by someone from the church. He told authorities that nearly a year ago, on July 20, 2025, to be precise, he passed the church and saw a dark truck in the church parking lot. The truck pulled out and drove alongside him, he said, until he stopped in front of his home.

He said it was his practice to stop his vehicle to wait for other cars to pass so he could back into his driveway. One this day, according to sheriff’s deputies who viewed surveillance footage from Sherwin’s home, Vance Gossett, 38, exited the passenger side of the truck and approached Sherwin’s vehicle and punched him several times through the open window before re-entering his truck and leaving the scene. Gossett was later booked with simple battery and his case is pending.

Gossett spent about a decade in Angola and by his own admission, was slated for another extended visit but he credits a pretrial diversion program for allowing him to avoid that fate. “It (the program) saved my life,” he told a BATON ROUGE TV STATION.

But conviction of a battery charge could conceivably jeopardize his freedom.

Sherwin’s encounter with Gossett aside, two days following Spell’s burst of energy expended upon Sherwin, he was out mowing grass at 4:00 a.m. That’s four in the morning. Who cuts grass at 4:00 a.m.?

Only someone desiring to further antagonize a neighbor, according to Toby Sherwin’s father, Scott Sherwin, who called out East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s deputies to complain.

The elder Sherwin had succeeded in obtaining a protective order that Spell should have remained a reasonable distance from the Sherwin residence. “He’s doing this to intimidate my son,” Sherwin told deputies.

When deputies responded to Sherwin’s call, they approached Spell and asked him to identify himself—a routine procedure. But Spell didn’t see it as routine and in typical celebrity fashion, responded with an “Everybody in the world knows my name” variation of Do you know who I am? (Actually, preacher, “everybody in the world” knowing your name seems a bit of s stretch to me. You’re a preacher and should know, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe “everybody in the world” knows who Jesus was. Are you saying you’re better-known than Christ?)

But then, Spell showed the truly nasty side of his character. Most of us know the Bible instructs us to “Love thy neighbor.” But Spell’s hurling a homophobic slur (twice, at that) in reference to Toby Sherwin and saying, “He needs to get back to sleep with his boyfriend” really doesn’t convey the message of love and tolerance contained in Mark 25:40 (“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”)

Spell, for his part, claims that Toby Sherwin had threatened Snell’s family which he said provoked him to “protect his sheep.”

The dispute between Spell and the Sherwins goes all the way back to 2020 when Spell sued Scott Sherwin over Sherwin’s installation of surveillance cameras at his home (on his own property), claiming the cameras were installed so the Sherwins could keep tabs on the pastor.

Seriously? Does Spell actually believe he’s of that level of importance to anyone?

By the way, Rev., you been in a bank lately? They got cameras, lots of cameras.

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The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.

KENNETH COPELAND, who lives in a $7 million mansion and is worth something north of $760 million goes begging for love offerings so he can purchase a new private jet.

ORAL ROBERTS got quite a bit of publicity back in 1987 when he said the Lord was going to call him home (or was it call him at home?) if he didn’t raise $8 million for medical missions.

Joel Osteen is unquestionably one of the most prolific PROSPERIY PREACHERS, convincing followers to empty their wallets in exchange for the promise of future riches.

Robert Tilton was infamous for trashing prayer request letters—after he first removed the love offering checks. But he inadvertently became more famous for inspiring a montage of PARODY VIDEOS that bore testimony to his true talent.

So, with all those fundraising schemes floating around, perhaps Baton Rouge’s Tony Snell was facing something of a challenge to encourage the members of his Life Tabernacle Church to exhibit their faith by writing bigger checks.

What better way than to show his own pugilistic skills by ATTACKING A HECKLING NEIGHBOR (all captured on video, no less) in the defense of his flock? And truth be told, he did indeed put on quite an exhibition when he left knuckle bumps all over the head of a much younger man, showing that he is not only a man of the faith but a pretty good street brawler as well.

If it was a new wrinkle to generating revenue—and we’re certainly not suggesting it was—it would seem to be working.

Almost immediately, a Facebook post went up encouraging supporters of the battling bishop to chip in contributions to his defense fund.

It’s really questionable if such a fund will ultimately become necessary. After all, he claims a running feud with the neighbor who he says has been hurling insults and racial epithets to his church members for as long as six years. It’s actually quite likely that all charges will eventually be dismissed and the entire affair will fade quietly into the background.

But the money can be put to good use. There’re always missions, building funds, and the church could probably use another bus or two to add to its existing fleet of 50+ buses (more than some school systems) to transport the faithful.

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Just how bad is housing affordability in the U.S.?

So bad that Republicans and Democrats were actually able to come together long enough to send a rare bipartisan bill, the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act to Diaper Don to sign into law in the Oval Office.

But of course, the unpredictable, petulant Trump flip-flopped at the 11^th hour, saying he would not sign the bill until Congress passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship for all voters—despite the existence of federal laws that already say quite explicitly that non-citizens cannot vote and despite any actual evidence that any non-citizens have voted in any elections.

Trump has chosen to ignore the plight of Americans who are increasingly feeling the pinch of housing costs, what with his Iran war- and tariff-driven inflation has done to the cost of living. But never mind all that, he wants a voter-suppression bill passed to ensure the Republicans maintain control of Congress at all costs (no pun intended).

Besides the increased cost of building materials, why has the cost of housing escalated so much?

Because corporations and hedge funds are snapping up houses and charging exorbitant rents because…. they can. Meanwhile, the housing market tightens up for prospective homebuyers who are forced to turn to apartments with high rent and hundreds of dollars in hidden monthly fees that—again, the hedge fund and corporate owners—gouge apartment dwellers with because they can—and do

Only yesterday, The Guardian ran an in-depth story about how Greystar, the biggest owner and operator of apartments in U.S., with nearly 977,000 units nationwide, soaks its tenants with a plethora of fees that defy reason. The publication identified 125 DIFFERENT FEES in leases, court documents and rental listings for Greystar apartments.

They include such charges as “boiler management fees,” “variable refrigerant flow fees” (whatever in the world those are), “solar rebill” fees and even something called “lifestyle fees.” Together, they can add hundreds of dollars to already out-of-control base rental fees.

Greystar owns three large apartment complexes totaling several hundred units in Baton Rouge—Bend on Bluebonnet, Paramount at Cedar Lodge and Blu on the Boulevard. Base rent ranges from $1,346 to $4,233 per month.

In addition to the monthly base rent, there are the “required monthly fees: $80 per month fee for cable, $3 monthly for pest control services, $25 per month for trash services.

Then, there are the optional fees. If you have a pet, there is a $20 per month fee. You’ll pay $50 per month to park in the covered parking area or $100 per month to park in the garage and renters’ liability and content coverage will cost another $13 per month.

Of course, we couldn’t forget the required one-time fees which include $400 to $600 security deposit, a $50 fee just to apply for an apartment rental and an administrative fee of $150.

There are also other optional one-time fees. Those include a pet fee (over and above the monthly fee) of $300 to $500 and a security deposit which ranges from $1,346 to $4,233.

And there are the “additional fees.” If you should lose say, the remote for the TV, it’ll cost you to replace it. That fee is from $35 to $50, depending on which device needs replacing. An early lease termination will cost you anywhere from $2,692 to $8,466. There’s something called an “intra-community transfer fee ($300), a late fee ($134 to $423), legal/eviction fees which can vary, something called “payment services – alternative” ($18), “payment services – third party” (varies), pet management – third party ($30), a reletting fee that runs from $1,144 to $3,598, “renters liability only – non-compliance” ($8), a returned payment fee ($25), a utility- vacant cost recovery fee and a utility-vacant processing fee, both of which vary.

A quick tally reveals those add-ons could cost you between $4,400 and $7,340 over and above your monthly rental.

In San Diego, where Blackstone Properties owns about 6,000 units, multiply that by only a few of the add-on fees, and you have a pretty substantial side hustle of a couple hundred thousand dollars per month.

As another online news service, Popular Information, points out, one overriding factor in the high cost of apartment living is the concentration in ownership. Private equity firms presently own somewhere around 11,800 apartment complexes with nearly 3 million units (about 13 percent of all apartment units in the U.S.). It’s even higher in states like Georgia (almost one-third) and North Carolina (about 25 percent).

There’s another little trick these private equity firms employ to maximize their bottom line: the firms acquire buildings funded by low-income housing tax credits at a low cost while rent restrictions still apply. Then, once those restrictions expire, the rents are increased and they sell the properties for a large profit. With half-a-million units in the U.S. whose rent restrictions will be lifted by the end of the decade, there are big bucks to be made. Blackstone, for example, has focused on this tactic, spending over $5 billion on purchasing low-income housing in 2021 alone.

Meanwhile, tenants are being squeezed but investors are fat and happy.

There has been one HOUSING MARKET BUBBLE to burse in recent memory.

Could we be headed toward another one?

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It’s got to be the lingering effects of Agent Orange’s trailer park cage fight on the White House lawn. There can be no other logical explanation.

Whatever it is, a trio of men representing the institutions of law enforcement, the judiciary and most recently, spiritual inspiration have engaged in various forms of fisticuffs and mud ‘rasslin’, two of which appear to have been helped along with the aid of devil al-ke-hol.

And it’s cost one of those involved his career with the plea bargain of St. Tammany Parish SHERIFF RANDY SMITH who agreed to resign from office following an encounter May 29 in which he pounced on social media critic Bobby Couvillion in a Madisonville restaurant after running up a courage-boosting $346 bar tab.

Lost in all the hoopla over Smith’s confrontation with Couvillion was the simultaneous resignation of Smith’s Chief Deputy, Jeff Boehm, who stepped down Monday “in the best interest of the agency…”

That prompted the immediate question: Why is his resignation in the “best interest” of the sheriff’s office? All we could find online was a single sentence that said, “His departure comes amid significant internal turmoil within the office.”

Bret Ibert was promoted to Chief Deputy upon Boehm’s resignation and will now move up to interim sheriff until an election can be held for a permanent sheriff–permanent being a somewhat relevant term in St. Tammany Parish.

From over here in Livingston, two parishes removed, it would appear the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office is in dire need of a general housecleaning. The previous sheriff was defeated for reelection by Smith and his subsequent arrest in 2019 on state charges of rape, incest and indecent behavior with a juvenile.

But, hey, that’s ancient history when we have ongoing brawls to turn our attention to, right?

Like 23^rd JDC JUDGE STEVEN TRUEAU, who back on 2023 got involved in his own altercation that ended with his honor and two women sprawled amongst the garbage and mud behind a Gonzales restaurant. The story became current again when the Louisiana Judiciary Commission set a September hearing date to consider charges against the robed rogue.

AND NOW LAAAAY-DEEEES and GEN-TEEEL-MEN—the main event of the evening! In this corner, in dark blue pinstriped suit, red tie and holding a Bible, here to protect his sheep…..REV-REND TONNNNEEE SPELLLLLL!

And in the other corner, the emerging challenger, the 20-year-old mystery man.

Spell, pastor of Life Tabernacle Church, REFUSED TO TURN THE OTHER CHEEK and instead, charged his adversary following a not-so-Christian exchange during which Spell says the neighbor, in the bravado of pre-fight hype, threatened to rape and kill his family. A video of their neighborly encounter appears to show the younger man throwing the first punch but it was Spell who finished matters, pummeling his younger opponent convincingly enough get the good reverend arrested for second-degree battery.

“I’m a pastor who shepherds his flock,” he said. “It’s not the job of the sheep to attack the wolves; it’s the job of the shepherd to protect his sheep.”

Back at his Tuesday night services after bonding out of jail, Spell told his congregation that he fulfilled the scripture by laying hands on the sick. “I don’t know how much recovery they’re going to have, but I laid hands on them.”

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