Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

James

Andrew Maggio, a barber in the city of New Orleans, had just received his draft notice. It was May 22, 1918 and World War I was on everyone's mind. Andrew wasn't keen to go to war, so he went out drinking that night. When he returned just before two o'clock in the morning to the place he shared with his brother Jake, he noticed nothing unusual. But then, he wasn't in much of a condition to notice anything at all, and that would soon come back to haunt him. Compared to what he was about to experience, a draft notice would seem like a mosquito's bite to shark attack.

Jake and Andrew's rooms adjoined the home of their married bother, Joseph Maggio, and his wife Catherine. As Robert Tallant, a novelist and acknowledged authority on the Axeman indicates, on the morning of May 23, Jake woke up around four o'clock a.m. He realized he'd been startled awake by noises that sounded like groaning that were coming through the wall from the room where Joseph and his wife slept. Jake got up and knocked on the wall to get their attention, but failed to get a response, so he knocked louder. Again, nothing.

Now worried, Jake tried to arouse Andrew, but had difficulty, since Andrew was inebriated. Finally Jake got him up. Together they ventured into Joseph's home, and to their alarm, they found evidence of a break-in. A wooden panel had been chiseled out and removed from the kitchen door. It lay on the ground, the discarded chisel on top of it.

They got into the house via the kitchen, skirted around the bathroom, and entered Joseph's room. He was on the bed, his legs draped over the side, and Catherine lay partially over him. When Joseph saw his brothers, he tried to rise, but fell over, half out of bed. They ran to check him and found that he was barely alive, with deep bloody gashes on his head. Catherine was already dead, lying in a pool of blood. They called the police immediately.

Corporal Arthur Hatener arrived first, just ahead of the ambulance, but it was too late. Joseph had expired. As Hatener waited for backup, he questioned the Maggio brothers and then looked around for clues.

The Times-Picayune newspaper ran the story on its front page that morning, including a photograph of the death chamber'”the bedroom in the home where the Maggios had lived behind their store. Married 15 years, they were grocers, operating a small store and barroom on the corner of Upperline and Magnolia streets. An investigation of the crime allowed the police to deduce that the brutal double homicide must have happened just before dawn.

Looking around the bloody scene, Officer Hatener discovered a pile of men's clothing in the middle of the bathroom floor. Inside the cast-iron bathtub, he spotted an axe leaning against one side. From all appearances, it had been hastily washed clean of blood, although some still clung to the blade and the tub. (In Gumbo Ya Ya, according to the piece on the Axeman penned by the same author, the axe was discovered under the house, while in Human Monsters Everitt says it was on the rear doorstep.)

Back in the bedroom, Hatener made another discovery: a straight razor, such as a barber might use, lying in blood on the bed. Reconstructing the crime, he believed that the killer had entered the home by chiseling out a panel in the rear door. The murderer then went directly into the bedroom. With an axe, he struck Mrs. Maggio in the head and then used a razor to slice through her throat, nearly severing her head. He also hit Joseph Maggio with the same axe. Since Joseph was sprawled half out of bed, it seemed that the killer might have struck him last, but given Catherine's position on top of him, it could have been the other way around. The events weren't clear. However, it was obvious that the killer also had used the razor on Joseph before discarding it.

The coroner arrived and gave a quick estimate of time of death being a few hours before, between two and three in the morning. The victims were removed as a crowd gathered outside to watch. A woman who lived nearby stepped forward to tell investigators that she had seen Andrew outside during the early morning hours. Jake and Andrew were taken into custody for questioning. They swore they were innocent, but were locked up anyway. Jake was released the following day, but Andrew remained in prison.

Then the police learned that the razor used to cut open the throats of Joseph and Catherine Maggio belonged to Andrew. One of his employees had seen him remove it that same day from his barbershop at 123 South Rampart Street (newspapers said Camp Street). Visibly nervous, he admitted that he'd brought it home to repair a nick in it. Things looked bad for him, with two witnesses and a significant piece of physical evidence implicating him.

On May 26, two days after his arrest, he gave an interview to the Times-Picayune newspaper to the effect that he'd suffered so much from his arrest.

"It's a terrible thing to be charged with the murder of your own brother when your heart is already broken by his death. When I'm about to go to war, too. I had been drinking heavily. I was too drunk even to have heard any noise next door."

Although he had not mentioned it before, he did say that he'd noticed a man going into his brother's house around 1:30 a.m., when he'd come home. The police did not believe him.

They had found the door to the safe in Joseph's house open and the safe empty, which indicated a robbery, but money under Joseph's pillow and found in drawers was left behind, along with Catherine's jewelry, wrapped and placed beneath the safe. A black tin box, empty, was found in one corner. The brothers said that Joseph always kept the safe locked, but there was no sign that the door had been forced open. Investigators determined that the axe had belonged to the victims and they believed the killer was familiar with the layout of the house.

The coroner carefully examined the wounds to the decedents. In Joseph's case, the axe had been the primary weapon involved in his death, breaking through his skull, while Catherine's throat had been slit open from ear to ear with the razor.

A few days after the bodies were found, Andrew was released from prison. Despite the witnesses, there was insufficient evidence against him, and soon another discovery would point to a different suspect'”one who had eluded police before.

James

About a block away from the small grocery store where the Maggios were murdered, two detectives came across a strange message, written on the sidewalk in chalk: "Mrs. Maggio will sit up tonight just like Mrs. Toney." They carefully copied it (although different sources report the wording differently. One says, "Just write Mrs. Toney," but the newspapers report it as the former statement.) The writing resembled that of a schoolboy and it seemed an important clue, but at that moment, no one was sure what to make of it. Some said that it had been written by an accomplice to warn the killers that Mrs. Maggio was on guard. After some digging, they eventually spotted a possible connection to earlier crimes in the area.

In 1911, seven years earlier, there had been either two or three incidents of horrendous axe murders (depending on whose account one reads. One crime writer, Michael Newton, claims that there is no record of any of these deaths. However, it was printed in the newspaper in 1918, described by the retired detective who had been involved in the investigations.) The supposed targets were Italian grocers. Since all of the couples had been grocers, Italian, asleep in bed, and killed with an axe after a break-in through a panel in the back door, it seemed that there must be a link, although all three incidents went unsolved. According to reports, which could be nothing more than folklore, detectives puzzled over the names from the scribbled message to try to discern a connection.

According to Tallant, the first victim's name was Cruti (no wife), the second Rosetti (killed with his wife), and the third Schiambra (also killed with his wife). This latter man's first name was Tony, so Tallant says the police wondered if it had some connection with the "Mrs. Toney" of the enigmatic chalk message. Perhaps it was the women, rather than the men, who were targeted.

It wasn't long before people in the Italian community began to talk about a possible connection with the Mafia. These people had been Italian, and perhaps they had not paid their "dues." Perhaps they'd borrowed money and then failed to meet their obligations. The Mafia was known to teach people lessons for such perceived effrontery. A few Italian citizens of New Orleans requested police protection. Some whispered about an organization called "The Black Hand," a Mafia splinter group believed in 1911 to have been responsible for that spate of killings.

There was a time in New Orleans when organized crime was a dominant force, to the point where much blood had been shed. In 1890, a group of Mafia assassins were believed to have gunned down Police Chief David Hennessy, as described in Gumbo Ya Ya, just steps from his home. Supposedly he'd arrested a Mafia leader and had threatened to expose the criminal records of others at an approaching trial. They could not allow him to testify. Suspects were arrested, but at their trials jury members were threatened and bribed, so one by one each of the men got off. The citizens of New Orleans were incensed at the outcome. They formed a mob, marched on the prison to find those who were left inside, and lynched 11 men that they believed were responsible for the crime. This was done to make a statement to organized crime rather than to exact justice against specific men. The citizens were tired of being pushed around and having their elected officials endangered or corrupted.

However, organized crime remained, and the Black Hand was still a secretive force in 1911. The society was so named because those who did not comply with its demands received notes imprinted with a black hand to warn them of terrible reprisals. Many Italians were expected to give up portions of their wages to this criminal group, and if they didn't, they were repeatedly harassed and even killed. It was believed that the Black Hand offered an assassination school for those who swore loyalty to the society, and there they learned how to intimidate people. While many said that the Black Hand had been squashed with a series of trials in the Midwest in 1907, the Italian community feared that members were still at large. Since the murder of the Maggios was so similar to the 1911 series, there was talk of the resurgence of organized crime, and those rumors would grow and get worse as more events occurred.

It had been two weeks since the Maggios were killed and the city was settling down again. Then on June 6 (Newton says June 28), John Zanca took a delivery of bread to one of his customers, a grocery store owner named Louis Besumer (or Besemer), when he found the store on Dorgenois and La Harpe streets locked up tight. That was unusual. Mr. Besumer, 59 and a native of Poland, was always up early, waiting for his bread.

Zanca went around to the side door to knock. He heard movement inside, which relieved him. But then Besumer opened the door, and Zanca was shocked to see that his face was covered in blood. Besumer said that someone had attacked him, and he pointed with a shaking hand toward the bedroom. Zanca went to look and found Besumer's wife on the bed (whom, it turned out, was actually his mistress), covered with a blood-soaked sheet. She had a terrible head wound and bloody barefoot prints led away from the bed to a swatch of false hair.

Zanca wanted to call the police, but Besumer tried to stop him, wishing instead to call his private physician. However, Zanca contacted the police and asked for an ambulance for both victims.

Once again, investigators found that the entry was made by prying out a panel of the back door with a wood chisel, and once again, a rusty hatchet was the murder weapon. It belonged to Besumer and was found in the bathroom. However, Besumer was not Italian and had lived in the city only three months. Despite the fact that he was conscious and alive, he was unable to give a description of either the attack or the attacker. The victim, Anna Harriett Lowe, 28, was taken to the hospital.

Suspicion fell on a black man who had been in Besumer's employ for the past week. He was arrested, and although he told conflicting stories, he was released.

Then Anna, before she succumbed to her wounds and died, gave several stories. First she said she'd been attacked by a "mulatto." Then she changed her story and accused Besumer of hitting her with an axe and of being part of a German conspiracy'”that he was, in fact, a spy. During this time of apprehension about the war, it was a believable premise. The newspapers printed a tale that trunks filled with secret papers were found in Besumer's home, that his grocery store might be a front to cover his affairs, and that he had letters written in German, Russian, and Yiddish. He also had opiates, and a neighbor said that he and his wife were drug addicts. Federal authorities came in to investigate, but the local police wondered if the estranged couple wasn't just saying things to hurt each other.

When Besumer got out of the hospital, he admitted that Anna was not his wife, though he was living with her. He then asked to be assigned to investigate his own case. That made the police suspicious, since Besumer was a grocer, not a police officer. Obvious to them was the fact that he wanted to keep something quiet. They began to think that the attack was the result of a private, if bloody, domestic quarrel, and Besumer had simply concocted the tale of an attack. Although fingerprinting was used in criminal investigations at the time, no one dusted for prints in the Besumer or Maggio homes. There is no mention of what they did with the bloody footprints, although at one point, both Lowe and Besumer said that they had walked across the floor after being attacked.

They arrested Besumer for murder. Yet he was clearly not the New Orleans Axeman.

James

Two months after the Besumer incident, on August 5 (the same day that Anna Lowe died), a businessman named Edward Schneider had worked after hours at his office. He returned home that evening, expecting his pregnant wife to meet him at the door. They were expecting a baby shortly and he wanted to be there to support her. However, when he opened the door, the place was quiet. Too quiet. He called for his wife but received no response.

Looking around with growing apprehension, he came into the bedroom. There on the bed lay his wife. Covered in blood, she had a gaping head wound and some of her teeth were knocked out. Edward ran to her and discovered that she was still alive, so he summoned the police and an ambulance.

Mrs. Schneider lay in the hospital for a few days in critical condition, but eventually returned to consciousness. When pressed, however, she could not recall many details of the attack. She had been taking a nap, she explained, and had awoken to see a dark figure looming over her. Then the axe came down and that was all she remembered.

Fortunately, the attack did not affect her pregnancy. She remained in the hospital, and a week later gave birth to a healthy daughter.

When the newspapers ran the story, they spread fear in the populace by asking in bold headlines, IS AN AXEMAN AT LARGE IN NEW ORLEANS? Axes and chisels were found outside several people's homes, and a few claimed they had frightened a potential intruder away.

Five days after the Schneider attack, on August 10, another woman was confronted by a dark figure in her home. Pauline and Mary Bruno were awakened early that morning by the sound of loud thumps that seemed to be coming from their Uncle Joseph's room. Pauline sat up and saw the tall, dark figure right there in her room, standing over her bed (or went out into the hall and saw him there), so she screamed. Whoever the tall man was, he turned and ran from the house. The girl later said that it seemed as if he had wings. "He was awfully light on his feet," she told a reporter.

In response to her scream, Joseph Romano came to her room (or she went to his), but he was in no condition to offer assistance. His nightshirt was covered in blood from gashes to his face. "I don't know who did it," he told Pauline. Instructing her to call Charity Hospital with his last breath, he collapsed to the floor, dying two days later (or half an hour).

Upon investigation, says Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg, the door panel had been chiseled out and an axe was left in the yard. Yet Romano, while Italian, was not a grocer but a barber, and his room appeared to have been ransacked.

Now the people of New Orleans were terrified. Clearly a killer was at large who managed to break into people's homes while they were sleeping. The citizens were on the lookout for mysterious figures, and reports flooded the offices of the police. There were supposed sightings all over the city. One man, a grocer, found a wood chisel on the ground outside his door. Another told of a panel gouged out of his door and an axe lying in the yard. Another, upon hearing sounds, shot through the door, and when police came, they found signs of someone chipping at the back door.

However, given the penchant among New Orleanians for story telling, it was difficult for investigators to determine who was telling the truth and who was just looking for attention. They even heard about "the Axeman," as he was now commonly called, wandering around dressed as a woman.

From what they could determine, this intruder left no fingerprints (it's not clear from accounts whether they actually used a forensic method or looked for prints with the naked eye), and there was no clear pattern among the victims. They seemed to have been picked at random. Most, but not all, were grocers. Police wondered if this was all the work of a single "degenerate" or several different people. One policeman had a theory.

In 1886, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson had published the tale of an upstanding citizen who takes a secret elixir that changes him into a rampaging madman. Inspired by a dream, the tale follows the monster's attacks. No one suspects Dr. Jekyll, who is in fact guilty, since by all appearances he's a normal professional man. The short book created an international sensation, and over a century later it is still referenced when investigators want to describe someone who appears to function with two opposing personalities'”one good and the other evil. They had heard about it in New Orleans.

Detective Joseph Dantonio, who had investigated the axe murders in 1911 and then subsequently retired, made reference to this type of person when interviewed by the local papers.

"Students of crime," he said, "have established that a criminal of the dual personality type may be a respectable, law-abiding citizen Then suddenly the impulse to kill comes upon him and he must obey it." To Dantonio's mind, the recent spate of attacks was linked to those that he had investigated. He believed the man could have lived respectably for a decade and then suddenly had the impulse again. What that meant to people who followed this line of thought was that the killer was more or less invisible, living and working right alongside his potential victims, and no one would be the wiser. In fact, there seemed to be something almost supernatural about his ability to get in and out of places, and even to be seen without a single victim recalling any clear details. It wasn't possible to go arrest a "dark, looming figure."

Yet he did not show himself for the rest of the year. New Orleans eventually settled into its normal routines. Months went by without a report of the Axeman. People wondered if he might have left the area, or if his murderous agenda had been fulfilled. World War I ended and their thoughts turned to other concerns. They were soon to find out that their assumptions about their local killer were wrong.

James

It started again on Monday, March 10, 1919, but this time it was across the river in Gretna, an immigrant suburb. According to Tallant, from the house on the corner of Jefferson and Second streets, screams emerged. A neighbor, Iorlando Jordano (or Jourdano), ran to help and found a terrible scene. (Newspapers reported that it was customers of the grocery store'”a couple of kids--who found the victims and that there had been no screams.)

Mrs. Rosie Cortimiglia, badly wounded, was holding a dead two-year-old child, her daughter Mary. Her husband Charles, a grocer, lay in the pool of blood on the floor. Rosie said they had been attacked while they slept. Her dead baby had been sleeping in her arms and was killed by a single blow to the back of the head. Although Charles had grappled with the attacker, neighbors said they had heard nothing.

The police combed the house and immediate area, but once again found no evidence. As usual, a panel had been chiseled out of the kitchen door, and it appeared that the attacker had piled timbers by the fence to effect his escape. Later, police looked for fingerprints and found none, but they did locate a bloodstained axe beneath a kitchen doorstep. Money that was right there in the bedroom was not taken, so robbery did not appear to be the motive. The coroner said that the deed was the act of a maniac.

When Rosie Cortimiglia recovered from her numerous wounds, which included five cuts to the head, she was ready with an accusation. Frank and Iorlando Jordano, a father and son who were next-door business rivals of Charles, were arrested. Iorlando was the person who had come to help (says Tallant), and now he was one of the accused. Unfortunately, he'd told the coroner's jury a few days earlier that he'd had a premonition that something bad was about to befall his neighbor. Charles had said that a white man had attacked him and did name Frank Jordano, according to newspaper accounts at the time, although several writers insist that he disputed his wife's accusation and even left her over it. Other accounts say that he died in the hospital.

At any rate, Rosie's testimony against the two men at their trial was so persuasive that they were both convicted'”despite the fact that Frank's 330-pound frame could never have fit through the hole in the kitchen door, and that Charles (if he was in fact still alive) could not identify him in court as the perpetrator. One witness even said that Rosie had stated directly after the attack that her own husband had done it (but it was clear that he could not have inflicted the wounds found on his own head). In the end, Frank received the death sentence and his father got life in prison.

Even while the investigation was still in its early stages, another incident occurred that may or may not be linked to the series of attacks. Three days after Cortimiglia attack, the editor of the Times-Picayune received a letter that would link the Axeman in some people's minds to an equally notorious set of unsolved slayings.

In London in 1888, over a period of 10 weeks, a man brutally murdered five prostitutes, often cutting pieces out of them and taking them with him. He was never identified or caught, but several letters came to the police during the course of the killings, one of which was signed, Jack the Ripper. Another, which appeared to contain a piece of a kidney said to be from one of the victims, was unsigned. It simply said, "From Hell" and promised more violence.

Now, it seemed, the Axeman had written a similar missive. The letter is reprinted in total in Tallant's book, in Gumbo Ya Y} and in Julie Simon's novel The Axeman's Jazz (named after a whimsical song composed at the time).

Dated, "Hell, March 13, 1919," it said:

Esteemed Mortal:

They have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me, for I am invisible, even as the ether that surrounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a fell demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.

When I see fit, I shall come again and claim other victims. I alone know who they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with the blood and brains of him whom I have sent below to keep me company.

If you wish you may tell the police not to rile me. Of course I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigation in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to amuse not only me but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don't think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.

Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens, for I am in close relationship to the Angel of Death.

Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to visit New Orleans again. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a proposition to you people. Here it is:

I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of those people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time that I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, and that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fantasy.

The Axeman

Whether a prank or the real thing, people took the letter seriously. It's been said that, while the residents of the "Big Easy" will use any excuse for a party, there has never been a louder, more raucous evening than that St. Joseph's Night on March 19. One host issued the Axeman an invitation, promising him "four scalps," but insisting he abide by protocol. He could come through an open bathroom window, so would he please leave the door alone?

And no one was murdered that night.

Around this time, in April, Louis Besumer went on trial, but now the war was over and no one cared if he was a spy. The coroner testified that only a man much stronger than Besumer could have inflicted on himself the wounds that Besumer had, so the jury took 10 minutes to acquit him of the murder of his common law wife.

Then on August 10, another Italian grocer suffered an ordeal. While he slept, Steve Boca was hit with an axe. He stumbled from his home to get help from a friend. Although Boca recovered, he had no memory of the details of the attack. A panel had been chiseled from his door and the axe left in his kitchen. Nothing had been taken.

Then three weeks later on September 3, the Axeman (or someone) gained entry to the home of Sarah Laumann, but not through a door panel. The 19-year-old girl was found unconscious in her bed, with multiple wounds to her head. A bloody axe was left outside an open window.

The next victim was Mike Pepitone on October 27. During the early morning hours, his wife heard a struggle in her husband's room, which was adjacent to hers. She rushed in, nearly colliding with a man fleeing the scene. Mike lay in his own blood, and the weapon of attack clearly had been an axe. It was left behind on the back porch. Once again, a panel had been cut from the door.

Their daughter ran for the police, summoning Deputy Ben Corcoran, who found Mrs. Pepitone standing over her husband. "It looks like the Axeman was here and murdered Mike," she commented. They transported him to Charity Hospital, where he died.

Mrs. Pepitone claimed that she had seen two men in her home, not just one, and both had been large. After attacking her husband, both had fled, taking nothing with them. Oddly, there were eight people in the house at the time, yet the attackers had not been intimidated by the possibility of being identified. Another odd thing was that Mrs. Pepitone had never screamed and as she answered questions posed by the police, she did not appear to be distraught.

A newspaper, the States, offered a speculation about the killer, wondering whether he was a fiend, a madman, a robber, a sadist or some supernatural entity. It was a question that others were asking as well. People had noticed that the door panels removed from each crime scene were too small for a grown man to get through. Nor could he have reached in to unlock the doors, and anyway, the doors were always found locked. How did he get in and outunless he was other than human?

Superstitions around New Orleans were not uncommon, as depicted in the folklore accounts in Gumbo Ya Ya. People spoke of "Needle Men," who stabbed women into unconsciousness and carried them off. Then there were the "Black Bottle Men," who killed patients at the hospital and then gave the body over to medical students. More mysterious was the "Gown Man," who wore a long black gown and rode in a black car, looking for girls out alone. Some who feared him believed he was a malicious type of ghost. He was just as likely to jump out of a tree as pull up in his car, similar to the "Domino Man" in Gentilly, a New Orleans suburb. Wearing a white hooded robe, he'd leap in the midst of groups of girls and send them running.

Then in 1914, as reported in Gumbo Ya Ya, someone dubbed "Jack the Clipper" managed to cut off the locks of three school girls. More cases were reported and girls began to protect themselves. "Jack" vanished as quickly as he had come.

It was no surprise, then, when many New Orleans residents began to speak of the Axeman as a spirit, a devil in their midst, especially when one witness said they had seen him dressed in black, wearing a black slouch hat. He was tall and thin, like most good phantoms.

It is partly for these reasons that Kalila Smith, New Orleans historian and author of Journey into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans, collects tales about the Axeman. "I was interested because I wrote about vampire stories that had been documented in town," she explains, "and I was intrigued with statements from an eyewitness that the Axeman had disappeared as if he had wings. Then there was that letter about him being a spirit. They never found a murderer, and in some instances there was no sign of break-in. It was a mysterious rash of murders in the city, and I went with the idea, what if he wasn't actually human?

"New Orleans has a history of people going crazy. In the late 1800s, there was a voodoo craze, where people killed each other because they thought someone had put a spell on them. We've had periods like that. It's possible that these attacks could have been by someone who believed he was superhuman. Homicidally deranged people can have such delusions of grandeur. Yet he did make a dare that they wouldn't catch him, and they didn't. The murders were never solved. During the 1980s, when New Orleans was considered the murder capital of the country, I had hoped to write about these unsolved murders. But I think the story has gotten distorted by fiction writers and some of the facts are embellished. It's hard to know what really happened."

Yet there are some who say the Axeman was identified and killed.

James

On December 7, 1920, Mrs. Cortimiglia, who had contracted smallpox, apparently had an attack of conscience. She retracted her accusation against the Jordanos, admitting quite dramatically in the newspaper offices that she had lied. A saint had visited her, she claimed, who had instructed her to "redeem" herself. She begged their forgiveness.

Both men were released.

Then the police received a report about an incident in Los Angeles, California, that had occurred on December 2. Apparently. Mrs. Mike Pepitone, dressed in black, had accosted a New Orleans resident named Joseph Mumfre, stepping out from a shadowed doorway to shoot him. He dropped dead on the sidewalk and she waited for the police to come and arrest him. She insisted that she had seen him running from her husband's room the day he was killed.

Mumfre did have a criminal record and during the hiatus between 1911 and 1918, and from the last murder in 1918 until the first murder in 1919, he had been in prison. During the time of each of the murders, he had been free. He had left New Orleans right after Pepitone was killed. Yet aside from Mrs. Pepitone's testimony, there was no evidence that directly linked Mumfre to any of the crimes. Newton points out that author Jay Robert Nash, in Bloodletters and Badmen, fingered Mumfre as a Mafia hitman, but then identifies the flaws in his theory. Despite the number of Italian grocers whom the Axeman victimized, not all of his victims were grocers and not all Italian. Tallant also points out that the Mafia did not murder women.

Mrs. Pepitone served three years of a ten-year sentence in Los Angeles, and then disappeared.

There were no more axe murders in New Orleans.

No one knows for sure who the Axeman was.

Source: Crime Library

Re: Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

Re: Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

Re: Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

Re: Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

Re: Serial Killer of the Week: The Axeman of New Orleans

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