# 21: The Axeman of New Orleans

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 27 Jun 2023, 48 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880352/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851629-44100-2-44ab126ee7910405.mp3

Today's episode is on the unsolved mystery of serial killer: the axeman of New Orleans. Trigger Warning: racially motivated murders (not proven) Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Today's video is on the Axe Man of New Orleans.
[0:41] He has never been identified. This was over a century ago now.
[0:46] I'd just like to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[0:48] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[0:51] video. This video is for educational
[0:53] purposes, and everything that I'm about to say is just
[0:55] information that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling
[0:58] into one video. But yeah, a lot of the
[1:00] information that you're about to hear in this case is from
[1:03] survivors of the Axe Man. And he had quite a lot of
[1:06] survivors. He actually killed as many
[1:08] people he attacked that survived.
[1:11] So he had 6 kills, 6 survivors. But that's kind of disputed.
[1:16] Wait until we get into it. Some of them might not be his
[1:18] kills, he might have even more than that, who knows.
[1:21] So this case takes place in New Orleans in Louisiana in 1918 and
[1:26] 1919. And the first murder accredited
[1:29] to the Axe Man of New Orleans was on May 23rd, 1918.
[1:33] The first victims of the Ax Man were a married Italian couple
[1:37] named Joseph and Catherine Margie.
[1:39] The couple actually owned like a grocery shop and they lived in
[1:43] the apartment above that. And in the middle of the night,
[1:46] while they were asleep, the killer snuck in.
[1:49] They broke in through their back door or whatever.
[1:51] They must have chiseled off the bottom panel of the door and
[1:54] snuck in and slipped both of their throats while they were
[1:58] asleep. Catherine's was actually slipped
[2:00] so deeply that her head was almost completely severed, but
[2:05] the axe man wasn't even done there.
[2:06] He then went and found an axe, the couples own axe that they
[2:10] kept in their house and he took it back to the bedroom and
[2:15] hacked them both multiple times. Some people believe that he did
[2:18] this, like he went back and got another weapon and came back
[2:22] because he kind of wanted to mess up his victims a little bit
[2:25] more. Like he didn't want their cause
[2:27] of death to be really easily identifiable, so if they had
[2:30] multiple injuries, it'll take police a bit longer.
[2:33] But other people believe that this man was obviously just a
[2:35] sicker and he wasn't done having fun yet.
[2:39] He wanted to do more to these victims before he left.
[2:41] The couple were found around 4:30 AM that night, two hours
[2:45] after they were actually attacked, and it was Joseph's
[2:48] brothers Jake and Andrew that found them.
[2:50] Both these brothers, Jake and Andrew, actually happened to
[2:54] live next door to the Maggios, but somehow they didn't hear any
[2:59] of this attack take place, they just heard groaning 2 hours
[3:03] later when the Maggios were dying.
[3:06] Anyway, the brothers heard these noises, went to their brother's
[3:09] house where they walked in. They found Catherine already
[3:12] dead. Like I said, her injuries were
[3:14] her horrendous and Joseph was laid on the bed beside her
[3:18] clinging to life. He was almost dead as well.
[3:21] The brothers called the police, they called an ambulance and
[3:23] everything. However, it was too late and
[3:26] Joseph died literally within minutes of his brothers
[3:29] arriving. That's kind of 1 little nice
[3:32] thing that you can take from this.
[3:33] He survived for two hours alone in that room, but then his
[3:37] brothers came and he was able to die with them.
[3:41] So police arrived at the scene. They did their first initial
[3:44] look round at everything and immediately they found a pile of
[3:48] blood soaked clothes that the killer hadn't even tried to hide
[3:53] at all. So it seemed as though the
[3:54] killer had killed this couple and then just taken all his
[3:58] clothes off, put some new ones on, clean ones, and just left
[4:01] and left such huge evidence In the apartment outside the
[4:07] Maggios home, they also found the axe that still had blood on
[4:11] it. And then a few houses down, they
[4:13] also found the razor that was used to slash their throats that
[4:17] also still had their blood on it.
[4:18] So it was like the axe man tried to kind of hide them, but not
[4:23] hide them. He wanted them to be found.
[4:25] And the axe that was used on the Maggios, I can't remember if I
[4:28] said this earlier, but it was their own axe.
[4:31] And this is a running theme with the axe man, which I think is
[4:35] one of the most like distinctive and sadistic things about this
[4:39] case, is that the axe man would break into their houses and use
[4:42] their own weapons to kill them. So anyway, police continued to
[4:46] look around this house and they found where the axe man had
[4:49] broken in. Like I said, he chiseled away at
[4:51] the bottom panel in the door and he must have kind of like stuck
[4:55] in through that. I don't know how big these
[4:57] panels were in the door, but later on in this case, it's
[5:01] implied that they weren't that big S it was very clearly a
[5:04] break in. It's not like the axe man had
[5:06] been let in or anything like that, like he'd broken his own
[5:09] way in. However, nothing was stolen,
[5:12] nothing was ransacked in the apartment.
[5:14] It seemed as though this person had broken in with the intention
[5:18] of killing the couple. So police really struggled to
[5:21] find kind of motive for this murder.
[5:23] Obviously it wasn't a robbery gone wrong.
[5:25] The couple posed no threat to their killer at all.
[5:29] They were in bed when they were attacked.
[5:31] Obviously whoever did this just wanted to kill them.
[5:34] They broke in there or killed them.
[5:35] So police began looking at Joseph and Catherine's lives,
[5:38] like their personal lives, people in their lives, to see if
[5:41] they had any disagreements, any enemies, anyone that might
[5:45] benefit from them being gone. And the 1st place they decided
[5:48] to look where the first two people on the scene after this
[5:51] attack took place, Joseph's brothers Jake and Andrew, but
[5:55] specifically one of the brothers, Andrew Maggio,
[5:58] actually owned a Barber shop a couple of streets away from
[6:02] where they lived, meaning he had access to a lot of different
[6:06] razors because obviously they trim men's beards and things
[6:09] like that. But one of Andrew's employees
[6:11] remembers Andrew taking home this one specific razor a couple
[6:15] of days before the murders. Apparently Andrew wanted to
[6:18] sharpen this specific razor and so he he took it home.
[6:22] And then coincidentally, it was used in a murder.
[6:25] And another suspicious thing about this whole murder and how
[6:30] they were found and everything is that these two brothers lived
[6:33] next door to the murder scene where someone will have been
[6:37] hacking at these two people. There will have been screams.
[6:40] There will have been a lot of banging, a lot of noise.
[6:43] However, it didn't wake either of them, even though they were
[6:46] just in the next apartment. But the thing that did wake the
[6:49] brothers was groaning noises two hours later.
[6:53] And those groaning noises will have just been coming from
[6:56] Joseph Maggio because his wife was already dead.
[6:59] So how were the groaning noises louder than the actual attack?
[7:04] So obviously, police brought this up with Andrew Maggio.
[7:06] They were saying, look, this is really suspicious.
[7:08] Can you explain why you didn't wake up at the attack?
[7:12] And he said it was was because he'd actually been out drinking
[7:15] that night because he'd just been accepted into the Navy.
[7:18] He went out celebrating, got really, really drunk, came home
[7:21] and just pretty much like passed out in bed.
[7:24] And then that must have been when the attack was going on.
[7:26] So obviously, all these loud noises wouldn't wake up someone
[7:30] so intoxicated. However, at 4:30 AM, he woke up
[7:34] for a drink and that was when he heard the noises.
[7:37] And to be fair, it does make sense.
[7:39] So obviously, police had no real evidence to say that Andrew did
[7:43] this. It was all just kind of
[7:45] suspicion around him. And so they couldn't really
[7:47] arrest him. And some of the things could
[7:50] kind of be argued. So yes, he did own that specific
[7:54] razor that was used to attack his brother and his brother's
[7:58] wife. But if someone was to come into
[8:00] his shop and steal that razor with the intention of killing
[8:04] Joseph Maggio and Catherine Maggio, then it's still Andrew's
[8:08] razor. But someone else used it, you
[8:11] know what I mean? And yes, his employee saw him
[8:13] taking home that specific razor, but how can he be sure it was
[8:16] that specific razor? Because like, pretty much all
[8:19] razors look the same. I don't know about this one in
[8:21] particular, but like, a razor's a razor.
[8:24] Or maybe this was Joseph Maggio's own razor.
[8:27] Think about it, if you wanted a razor at home to be able to trim
[8:30] your own beard, where are you going to get that razor from?
[8:33] Obviously your brother that owns a Barber shop and has a bunch of
[8:36] razors. It's not like it was Andrews
[8:38] personal possession, it was just a razor that Andrew had bought.
[8:41] It's not like it had Andrews bloody initials engraved in it
[8:44] or something. It was just a razor that he
[8:47] owned. I don't know if that's making
[8:49] much sense, but it's up to you whether you consider that
[8:51] evidence or not. So another piece of evidence
[8:54] that I just want to talk about quickly before I move on.
[8:56] I just want to warn you, I don't know how accurate this is at
[8:59] all. I saw it in some sources, but a
[9:01] couple of blocks away from where this murder took place, there
[9:04] was a note left on a wall written in blood, and it
[9:08] supposedly said Mrs. Maggio will sit up late tonight, just like
[9:12] Mrs. Tony. Now, I don't know who Mrs. Tony
[9:16] is. A lot of the sources that I
[9:18] found didn't know who Mrs. Tony is.
[9:20] It seemed as though if this was a real piece of evidence.
[9:24] It didn't make much sense at the time or now that no, isn't
[9:28] really talked about much at all through the rest of the case.
[9:30] So I don't know if it was ever connected to anything, if it was
[9:33] even real, who knows? Because this is such a famous
[9:36] case, it's got a lot of like, Chinese whispers things added
[9:41] into it, you know what I mean? But say this was true.
[9:44] How could this note have been written blocks away from the
[9:48] house in blood? It's quite a long note.
[9:52] And like, forgive me for how graphic this is, but he would
[9:55] have literally had to, like, bottle some blood from the crime
[9:59] scene and take it blocks away. Like, how has he got that much
[10:03] blood on his clothes that he can write a note on a wall that
[10:06] long? Like, fair enough.
[10:07] If it was just one word, Like, you can maybe like, use some of
[10:09] the blood that's on your T-shirt or something from the attack.
[10:12] I don't know. I just, I don't think I believe
[10:15] that piece of evidence. It's up to you if you believe
[10:16] it. And just the fact that it's not
[10:18] spoken about in every single source also makes me doubt it.
[10:21] So yeah, with lack of evidence to be able to convict or even
[10:25] charge Andrew Maggio with the murder of his own brother, they
[10:28] had to let him go. And they carried on looking for
[10:31] leads and looking for different suspects.
[10:32] But it wasn't long before they had another case on their hands
[10:36] to worry about. Just over a month after the
[10:38] first killings, on June 27th, 1918, the Axe man claimed a
[10:43] further 2 victims. This time it was a man named
[10:46] Louie Bessemer and his mistress, Harriet Low.
[10:49] Her name's actually Harriet Anne Low, so you might know her as
[10:53] Anne if you've looked into this case.
[10:55] Louie owned a bakery and he and his mistress Harriet were asleep
[11:00] in bed in his apartment above this bakery, very similar to the
[11:04] first one. The following morning, a
[11:05] delivery man came to drop off some ingredients at this bakery
[11:09] and he knocked on the door, but no one answered.
[11:12] And this was very unusual. This was a day when the bakery
[11:15] was supposed to be open. Louis Bessemer always opened the
[11:18] door to him. And so he decided to go around
[11:20] the back of the bakery to see if he could drop them off.
[11:23] And and that was when he saw a panel of the door had been
[11:26] chiseled out. So this delivery man pushed open
[11:29] the door and walked to the living quarters where Louis and
[11:33] Harriet were asleep. And as soon as he opened the
[11:36] door, there was just blood everywhere.
[11:38] All over the walls, all over the floor, even on the ceiling.
[11:41] And he made his way to the bedroom, where he walked in and
[11:45] found Louis Bessemer and Harriet Lowe laying on the bed in pools
[11:50] of their own blood. And they were both still alive,
[11:53] but only just. They needed help immediately,
[11:55] otherwise they weren't going to survive.
[11:57] They'd both been struck in the head just once, each with an
[12:00] axe. Of course.
[12:01] Police and an ambulance were called.
[12:03] Louie and Harriet were taking into hospital, and as police
[12:07] began to look around the apartment, they found Louis
[12:10] Bessemer's own axe covered in blood in the bathroom.
[12:14] Again, the axe man had used the victim's own weapon on them.
[12:18] Meanwhile, in hospital, both Louie and Harriet were being
[12:21] treated. Louie's injuries were a lot less
[12:24] severe than Harriet's. Harriet was in and out of
[12:26] consciousness. She needed a lot of treatment, a
[12:29] lot of surgeries, and so it was going to take a while for her to
[12:32] be able to give her story to police.
[12:34] However, they were able to talk to Louie pretty much
[12:37] immediately. But unfortunately, Louie wasn't
[12:39] going to be much help to the investigation because he said
[12:42] that they were just both asleep when they were attacked.
[12:45] So he woke up as he was being attacked, but just to see the
[12:49] figure running away, he couldn't get a good look at his face or
[12:52] anything like that. Literally all Louie Bessemer
[12:54] said was that it was a dark, looming figure, so police didn't
[12:58] really have much to go on. Like I said, Louie Bessemer was
[13:01] able to fully recover from his injuries and he became the first
[13:04] ever survivor of the Axe man. However, his mistress Harriet
[13:08] Lowe wasn't so lucky and she actually passed away after seven
[13:12] weeks of treatment. Now I didn't mention this
[13:14] earlier, but while Louis and Harriet were being treated for
[13:18] their injuries in hospital, police actually went ahead and
[13:21] arrested a suspect. This suspect was a 41 year old
[13:25] black man that worked at Louis Bessemer's bakery.
[13:29] And I think it's very important to note his race here because
[13:32] the only reason that police arrested this man or the only
[13:35] reason that they could really give was that he worked at Louie
[13:38] Bessemer's bakery. And so he was close to him, knew
[13:41] where he was going to be at all times, knew that he could attack
[13:44] him in the middle of the night. But they didn't arrest any of
[13:47] Louie's other workers, the other white workers or the other
[13:51] Italian workers, just the one black man that worked there.
[13:55] It was a very racist time. This was a racist thing to do.
[13:59] They had no evidence against this man.
[14:00] They arrested him because he was an easy target.
[14:03] They kept him for a while with absolutely no evidence.
[14:06] They were probably trying to find evidence against him.
[14:08] They probably just wanted someone to lock up and they just
[14:11] thought that they would blame this innocent black man.
[14:14] However, they couldn't find any evidence, obviously, because
[14:17] this man was innocent, and so they had to let him go.
[14:20] This part's getting a little bit confusing.
[14:22] I understand that. But Harriet Lowe, before she
[14:25] passed away, she passed away after seven weeks of treatment.
[14:28] And during that seven weeks, she was like in and out of
[14:30] consciousness, in and out of surgery.
[14:32] And while she was awake, police would go in and question her.
[14:37] And her series of events was very confusing.
[14:41] At first, she claimed that the attacker was a mixed race man.
[14:45] She used a racist term for that, so we can assume that she meant
[14:49] it in a racist way. But then she changed her mind.
[14:52] She decided that the attacker was actually Louis Bessemer
[14:55] himself. She told police that Louis
[14:58] Bessemer was a German spy, and he'd never told her this before.
[15:02] But somehow she got wind of it. She really realized that he was
[15:05] a German spy and so she confronted him about it and that
[15:09] is when he attacked her with the axe and then attacked himself
[15:13] with the axe to cover it up. So police decided to look into
[15:15] this theory and they found some evidence, just a couple of
[15:20] letters in his house written in different European languages.
[15:23] Louis Bessemer was arrested, but he was released very quickly
[15:26] after. And the police that arrested him
[15:29] for being a German spy were actually demolited because they
[15:33] did a bad job because he wasn't a German spy.
[15:36] And that's a really serious accusation to make against
[15:38] someone. After speaking with Harriet Lowe
[15:47] again, police were trying to get a little bit more evidence on
[15:50] Louis Bessemer. They just wanted someone to lock
[15:52] up for this because they wanted to be seen to be doing their
[15:55] job. And after Harriet Lowe passed
[15:57] away, police decided to arrest Louis Bessemer for murder
[16:00] because now Harriet was dead. Before, it would have been
[16:03] attempted murder, but as soon as she passed away, that is when
[16:06] they arrested him. He actually spent nine months in
[16:09] jail before he was finally acquitted.
[16:11] He was found not guilty of murder after originally being
[16:15] found guilty of it. But yeah, after that, no one
[16:17] else was arrested. No other leads were found, no
[16:20] other suspects were found. And so now police just had two
[16:25] double attacks on their hands with no one to blame for them.
[16:29] Just over a month after that, the third Axe Man attack took
[16:34] place on August 5th, 1918, this time on a pregnant woman and she
[16:39] was alone. Now the ones before this had
[16:42] been in couples. She was alone. 28 year old Anna
[16:45] Schneider was eight months pregnant when her husband Ed
[16:49] came home from work one day and found her laid on her bed
[16:53] covered in blood. Literally.
[16:54] She was so covered in blood that her husband didn't even know
[16:57] what was wrong. He didn't even know where to
[17:00] start looking at her injuries. He just called her an ambulance
[17:03] and they went straight to the hospital.
[17:04] Her face was just so brutally beaten.
[17:07] There were so many wounds on her face.
[17:10] She was missing so many of her teeth.
[17:12] Her scalp was cut open. Anna was treated for these
[17:16] injuries and by some kind of miracle after two days she gave
[17:20] birth to her little baby girl and the baby was completely
[17:24] healthy. Anna also ended up surviving the
[17:27] attack and went on to tell police that she didn't really
[17:31] see her attacker again. She was attacked while she was
[17:34] asleep and then when she woke up she just saw a dark looming
[17:38] figure leaving her room. Now even though the Axe man of
[17:41] New Orleans, his MO seems to be using the victims own axe on
[17:47] them, that doesn't seem to be how Anna was attacked.
[17:50] It actually seems more likely in this case that she was attacked
[17:54] using her bedside lamp. So she was just continually
[17:57] beaten with her. It seemed as though this person
[17:59] just kind of went into the house and found whatever they could.
[18:02] They seemed to prefer axes, but if they were to find a razor,
[18:05] they would use a razor. If they couldn't find an axe,
[18:07] they would use a bedside lamp. So after the attack on Anna,
[18:11] police were kind of split depending on what they thought
[18:16] about these attacks. Some of them were connecting all
[18:18] three attacks saying this is the same person that's done all
[18:21] three of these, They were all very, very similar.
[18:23] Whereas other officers were kind of still trying to explain away
[18:27] the different crimes to different people.
[18:29] So a lot of officers still believed that the first one was
[18:32] done by Andrew Maggio and that this one, because the MO was
[18:37] different, like the weapon used was different, they believed it
[18:40] was a different attacker around this point in the case, and man
[18:43] named James Gleason was arrested.
[18:46] However, he was let go literally just after a couple of days of
[18:49] his arrest. I believe the reason that James
[18:52] Gleason was arrested was because he saw police out and about in
[18:56] town or whatever and just ran. And obviously that's very
[18:59] suspicious. You don't just see police out
[19:01] and run unless you're guilty of something and you don't want
[19:04] police to see you. So he was taken to the police
[19:06] station. He was arrested, he was
[19:08] questioned. They didn't really find much
[19:11] evidence for him to be the Axe man of New Orleans.
[19:14] Gleason said in his questioning that the reason he ran from
[19:18] police that day was because he'd been in and out of jail all his
[19:21] life and he just learned to be scared of police.
[19:25] Like, it was kind of second nature to him to run away
[19:28] because he felt like he was going to get arrested and taken
[19:31] to jail again. But I mean, to me, that's still
[19:35] a sign of a guilty person. Anyway.
[19:37] They couldn't find any evidence for him being the Axe Man.
[19:40] And so he was just let free to do whatever else he was doing,
[19:44] whatever that was. But the next Axe man attack came
[19:46] very quickly after the last one. Just five days later, on August
[19:50] 10th, 1918, in the early hours of the morning, Pauline and Mary
[19:54] Bruno were awoken to noises coming from their uncle's room.
[19:59] They walked in to find their uncle, Joseph Romano, slumped.
[20:03] On the floor in a pool of his own blood after he'd been
[20:06] attacked in the head with an axe.
[20:08] Some sources even say that the girls witnessed their uncle's
[20:12] attacker fleeing the scene. Now, I don't know how true this
[20:15] is, but I do have a quote. I don't exactly.
[20:19] I don't know where this quote is from, that's why I'm saying
[20:21] quote. But the girls supposedly
[20:22] described this attacker fleeing the scene as a dark skinned,
[20:26] heavyset man who wore a dark suit and a slouched hat.
[20:30] So this person, if we're going by their account, this person
[20:34] was going around murdering people in a suit.
[20:36] Again, an axe was found in the back garden of the property and
[20:40] a panel had been chiseled out of the door so that someone could
[20:44] gain access. 80 year old Joseph Romano did fight his injuries
[20:48] for two days, however, he eventually passed away in
[20:51] hospital. At this point, police couldn't
[20:54] deny that these attacks were probably connected because there
[20:58] were just far too many similarities.
[21:00] The panel being chiseled out of the door, the axe being found on
[21:03] the lawn, it was all just too similar for it to not be the
[21:07] same person. And so they decided to make it
[21:09] very vocal. But they were looking for the
[21:12] person that was doing this. It was all over newspapers and
[21:15] everything like that, that police was stepping up their
[21:18] security. They had people going out and
[21:20] patrolling at nights and days, like people were on different
[21:24] Rd. corners and things. Everyone knew that the police
[21:27] were doing quite a lot to find this person and it was going to
[21:30] be kind of hard for the axe man to attack again.
[21:33] And because of the kind of hysteria around this case, a lot
[21:36] of members of the public were phoning in false stories, false
[21:41] sightings of the axe man. A lot of people said they would
[21:44] see different men with axes lurking around in the
[21:48] neighborhoods and so they would call the police.
[21:50] Police would turn up, no one would be there.
[21:52] Realistically, at this point, I think the Axe Man realized how
[21:56] tight the police would be in and how unlikely he was to get away
[22:00] with a crime at this time. And so he just stepped back and
[22:03] he waited until police gave up. The Axe man actually waited a
[22:07] full nine months, and obviously by then there was less security
[22:11] around. Like obviously there hadn't been
[22:14] a random murder in nine months. So police were beginning to
[22:17] think that they'd cracked this and that the Axe man had given
[22:20] up or something, but no, he struck again.
[22:24] On March 10th, 1919, a neighbor of the Carter Miglia family
[22:28] heard screams coming from their house and so this neighbor ran
[22:32] across the street to check. This neighbor entered the home
[22:35] to find Rose Carter Miglia, the mother of the family, stumbling
[22:39] into the hallway, blood all over her head and she was clutching
[22:43] her deceased infant child. The child's name was Mary.
[22:47] She was two years old and she was killed in her mother's arms.
[22:52] So Rose and Mary were both laid on the bed, they were asleep and
[22:56] this attacker had come in and struck this child just once on
[23:01] the neck and killed her instantly.
[23:03] I assume Rose was attacked around the same time.
[23:06] She was struck just once in the head with an axe and Rose's
[23:10] husband Charles was collapsed on the floor in a pool of his own
[23:13] blood with similar head injuries to that of his wife Rose.
[23:17] The couple were rushed to hospital and their wounds were
[23:20] treated and luckily they so survived.
[23:22] However, of course their two year old daughter Mary didn't
[23:26] and a lot of people believe that that drove Rosecarter Miglia to
[23:30] insanity. Once she was all like physically
[23:33] healed, she began having her police questionings and
[23:36] everything where they asked like if she saw her attacker and
[23:39] things like that. And that was when Rose told them
[23:42] that it was actually the neighbor that attacked her, that
[23:45] neighbor that came in and found them bleeding in.
[23:48] It was him. But this neighbor was a 69 year
[23:51] old man and he was very ill, very frail.
[23:56] He could not have even lifted an axe, never mind committed such
[24:01] an attack. And when police told Rose that
[24:03] when they were like, we really don't think it was him, she
[24:06] said, well, no, it was his son as well.
[24:08] Then she began accusing his son Frank, who was, I think he was
[24:12] 18 years old. He was 6 foot and 200 lbs.
[24:16] So he was quite a big guy and police again didn't believe her.
[24:20] The reason I tell you about his size is because again, the
[24:23] killer had gotten in through a panel in the door, a very tiny
[24:27] little panel that they chiseled out of the door.
[24:29] This big 6 foot, 200 LB guy could not fit through that gap
[24:34] in the door. And the other guy was too old
[24:37] and too frail to be able to do that.
[24:39] So police at this point just didn't really believe Rose and
[24:42] her story. Like I said, Charles Cortemiglia
[24:45] survived as well and he was being questioned as well as and
[24:49] the whole time he was completely denying Rosa's version of
[24:52] events. He was saying, I don't know what
[24:54] she's talking about. That didn't happen.
[24:56] It wasn't him, wasn't either of them, But police arrested the
[25:00] two neighbors nonetheless and they were both found guilty of
[25:04] attempted murder. The older of the two neighbors
[25:06] were sentenced to life in prison and the younger of the two
[25:10] neighbors, the one that they believed actually probably hit
[25:13] them with the axe and everything, he was sentenced to
[25:16] death. He was to be hanged for roses
[25:20] accusations. So the men went to trial.
[25:23] Obviously it was going to be a really long trial.
[25:24] This was before they were sentenced and everything.
[25:26] And about a year into this trial, Charles caught Amiglia,
[25:30] divorced his wife Rose, because after this whole thing, she just
[25:35] wasn't the same. She was insane, as he, as he put
[25:39] it. He just couldn't believe that
[25:40] she was saying these things about the neighbors because he
[25:43] was there. He saw the attackers.
[25:45] Obviously he didn't see their face, but he knew it wasn't his
[25:49] neighbors. And I think it must have been
[25:51] like the divorce to kind of snap Rose back to reality because she
[25:55] went to the police and admitted that they were all false
[25:57] accusations and that neither of the neighbors were there that
[26:00] night. Luckily, the younger of the two
[26:03] neighbors hadn't been sentenced to death yet, and the other one
[26:05] was only going to save life in prison anyway, and so they were
[26:08] both let free. But anyway, we've skipped
[26:10] forward quite a lot there. We've skipped forward a full
[26:13] year. So let's go right back to that
[26:15] attack, the last attack of the Quartomiglias.
[26:18] Just three days after that, a newspaper received the infamous
[26:23] letter from the axe man himself. And you know, at the top of the
[26:26] page where the sender will put like a return address, like
[26:29] their own address, so that if the letter gets lost, it can go
[26:32] back to them. Well, the Axe man just simply
[26:35] wrote hell. So I'm just going to read you a
[26:37] few of the like main bits from this letter because the Axe man
[26:41] liked to ramble quite a lot. And a lot of it doesn't really
[26:44] make much sense to me anyway because I've got like three
[26:47] brain cells. It started with esteemed mortal
[26:50] of New Orleans, the Axe man. They have never caught me and
[26:53] they never will. They have never seen me, for I
[26:56] am invisible even as the ether that surrounds your earth.
[26:59] I'm not a human being but a spirit and a demon.
[27:02] From the hottest tell I am what you are, lenient and your
[27:06] foolish police call the axe man. When I see fit, I shall come and
[27:10] claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be.
[27:14] I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe besmeared with blood
[27:18] and brains, of he whom I have sent below to keep me company.
[27:23] He then basically went on to say that the police are stupid and
[27:26] they're never going to catch him and they're following all the
[27:29] wrong leads and everything. But he said it in a lot of
[27:32] words, so I'm just summarizing. He goes on to say that he could
[27:35] kill every single night if he wanted to, but he was just kind
[27:39] of being nice. And now I'm going back to
[27:41] quoting it. He says now, to be exact, at
[27:44] 12:15 earthly time on next Tuesday night, I'm going to pass
[27:49] over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I'm going
[27:53] to make a little proposition to you people.
[27:55] Here it is. I'm very fond of jazz music and
[27:58] I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person
[28:02] shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at
[28:06] the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band
[28:09] going well, then so much better. For you people, one thing is
[28:13] certain, and that is that some of your people who do not jazz
[28:16] it out on that specific Tuesday night, if there be any, will get
[28:21] the axe. And then he signed it off with
[28:23] the axe man. Now, of course, it obviously
[28:26] can't be proven that this letter was actually from the Axe Man.
[28:30] A lot of people believe that this letter is a hoax.
[28:33] After all, the Axe Man was a famous and feared serial killer.
[28:37] At this point, everyone in New Orleans knew who he was.
[28:40] They were terrified that he was coming for them next.
[28:42] And it's not unusual to see people write hoax letters just
[28:46] to get a rise out of the public in cases like this.
[28:49] I mean, it doesn't really happen as much these days, but like in
[28:53] the Jack the Ripper case, a lot of people believe a lot of those
[28:56] letters were hoaxes. But just the concept of the
[28:59] threat in the letter just makes it seem like a joke.
[29:02] Like, play jazz music and I won't kill you like that.
[29:05] That seems like a joke, especially that specific phrase.
[29:09] People who do not jazz it out will get the axe.
[29:12] It's just, like, hard to take it seriously, don't you think?
[29:15] So yes, it could be a hoax, but at the same time, think about it
[29:20] this way. OK, so a person that can commit
[29:23] such murders, like killing literally an infant with an axe,
[29:28] they must be like mentally ill in some capacity.
[29:32] And to a mentally ill person, this letter might not sound like
[29:36] a joke. Like this might sound really
[29:38] threatening to someone that's not all there, you know what I
[29:41] mean? So who knows, maybe it is a
[29:43] hoax. But also, this could be his
[29:46] version of like a really scary letter, and he could think that
[29:50] he's really scaring everyone in New Orleans.
[29:53] And to be fair, he did, and they all followed his instructions.
[29:56] The next Tuesday came around and pretty much every single home
[30:00] that owned a record player was playing jazz music.
[30:03] Obviously, even if you thought it was a hoax, you wouldn't take
[30:06] that risk. There were some houses that did
[30:08] take the risk. And to be fair, I think it was
[30:11] more like, let's try and catch the axe man kind of thing.
[30:15] Like, if they're not playing jazz music, someone might come
[30:17] and break in the house and then they'll be able to catch this
[30:20] person that's been attacking people.
[30:21] But yeah, people that didn't have record players were going
[30:24] to like, different jazz clubs and like community centres.
[30:28] Like every single jazz band in New Orleans was booked for that
[30:32] night. And on that night, March 19th of
[30:35] 1919, there was no Axe Man attack.
[30:44] Five months later, on August 10th of 1919, a man named Steve
[30:49] Boker awoke in his bed to a dark figure looming over him with an
[30:54] axe. Literally as soon as Steve's
[30:57] eyes opened, he was struck by this axe.
[30:59] So he didn't really get to see anything, and then he was
[31:02] knocked unconscious for a couple of hours.
[31:05] When he finally came round, he realized that he was in a lot of
[31:08] pain, and so he managed to stagger out of his house and to
[31:12] a neighbor's house across the street, and once he got there,
[31:15] he just collapsed. He must have used the rest of
[31:18] his energy. This neighbor found Steve
[31:20] outside, managed to call an ambulance and get him to the
[31:23] hospital, but when police came to question him, Steve didn't
[31:27] remember anything. Obviously the blows to the head
[31:30] must have just completely knocked him out and made him not
[31:32] remember a single thing. He didn't even remember being
[31:35] attacked. He didn't know he'd been
[31:36] attacked by an axe. Police, I believe, just kind of
[31:40] theorized that he had because it fit the other attacks.
[31:43] But Steve actually sustained some of the worst injuries in
[31:46] this whole case. His skull was completely cracked
[31:49] open. Apparently you could see his
[31:51] brain. Of course, I don't know how
[31:53] accurate all of this is, but this is what I found online.
[31:56] As with the other Axe Man attacks, Steve's house had been
[31:59] carefully broken into. The bottom panel had been
[32:02] chiseled away from the door. There was nothing stolen in his
[32:05] house. This seemed like a signature Axe
[32:07] Man attack. And the next attack took place
[32:10] again very quickly after this one.
[32:12] Just three weeks later, in early September, 19 year old Sarah
[32:16] Larman was attacked in her sleep after the axe man had climbed
[32:20] into her house through an open window.
[32:24] And this attack left Sarah unconscious for quite a few
[32:27] hours until neighbors finally came in and found her when she
[32:31] was almost dead. It seemed as though she'd been
[32:33] bludgeoned really quite badly. She was missing a lot of her
[32:36] teeth and her head was just covered in blood.
[32:40] Sarah did survive her injuries, however she couldn't really tell
[32:44] police much because she was asleep when the attack started
[32:47] and unconscious when it ended, so she didn't see anything.
[32:51] As with the other axe man attacks, an axe was found on
[32:54] Sarah's front lawn. However, there is some doubt
[32:58] surrounding this particular attack because the killer didn't
[33:02] break in through the door, he let himself in through an open
[33:06] window. I mean, maybe he did just see a
[33:08] big gaping open window and thought, well, it's easier to
[33:12] just let myself in through there rather than sit and try and
[33:14] chisel away the back panel on a door.
[33:17] So maybe he did just let himself in through there and give up his
[33:20] normal MO. Or maybe this was a copycat
[33:24] killing and we're going to talk about that a little bit more
[33:26] later. But the final axe Man attack
[33:29] happened two months after this one.
[33:30] On October 27th of 1919, Esther Pepitone awoke in the middle of
[33:36] the night, hearing noises coming from her bedroom.
[33:38] I believe she'd fallen asleep on the couch or something like
[33:41] that. So she ran to the bedroom where
[33:43] her husband was asleep, and she stood in the doorway and
[33:46] witnessed 2 men fleeing the scene.
[33:48] Now, some sources say she saw two men.
[33:51] Some sources say she saw just the one man, but most of them
[33:55] say two men. So I'm going to take that one as
[33:58] what she said. Her husband had been attacked by
[34:01] these two men. His name was Mike Pepitone, and
[34:04] he'd been struck in the head with an axe 18 times and there
[34:09] was just blood everywhere, all over this room.
[34:13] When police arrived at the scene, Mike was already dead.
[34:16] Obviously, he had 18 blows to the head with an axe.
[34:20] He wasn't going to survive that. However, police noted that his
[34:23] wife Esther seemed very calm. She wasn't hysterical, she
[34:27] wasn't scared, she wasn't too upset to say her husband had
[34:32] just been killed in front of her.
[34:33] And this particular attack just seems a little bit off to me.
[34:37] I mean, seeing two people fleeing the scene when there's
[34:40] never been two people before in these attacks, it seems to line
[34:44] up quite well with a copycat killing because as well, none of
[34:48] the other victims had quite so many axe wounds.
[34:52] All the others were just struck like once or twice, maybe three
[34:55] times, but never 18 times. So if the last two killings both
[35:00] seem a little bit off, then the likelihood is that maybe the axe
[35:04] man stopped before the last two and these last two that we
[35:08] accredit to the axe man and actually the axe man and maybe
[35:11] they're just copycat killings. Some sources say that another
[35:15] weapon was used that night. Apparently something used to put
[35:19] up circus tents with, and there was a circus in town at the time
[35:23] of this murder. So a lot of people believe that
[35:26] it was someone other than the Axe man that did this.
[35:29] Some people have pointed out that Esther Pepitone seems a
[35:33] little bit suspicious. Her demeanor when her husband
[35:36] died and police got there was a little bit off and then
[35:40] something you're going to find out later adds to that
[35:42] suspicion. Other people believe that this
[35:44] murder, the last one specifically of Mike Pepitone,
[35:47] was actually a mafia killing. Mike Pepitone's father had
[35:51] killed a man in the past. I don't know much about that at
[35:55] all. However, it is believed that the
[35:57] mafia then wanted revenge on the Pepitone family and so they went
[36:01] and attacked him. And that would explain why there
[36:03] were two men this time. Because with them being such
[36:06] like a tight group, it wouldn't surprise me that would go in
[36:10] twos to attack someone because that would mean that they would
[36:13] definitely overpower them, definitely kill them.
[36:16] And maybe if it was a mafia killing, maybe they just took an
[36:19] axe and used an axe to try and cover it up to make it look like
[36:23] an axe man killing because they were going on at the time.
[36:25] So perfect time to kill someone and try and get away with it,
[36:29] isn't it really? And like I said before, he was
[36:32] struck 18 times, whereas all the other people were struck like
[36:35] twice. So they were definitely making
[36:38] sure that Mike Pepitone was dead this time, whereas the Axe Man
[36:41] never really did that. Actually, that's something that
[36:44] really confuses me about this case.
[36:46] I wonder if the Axe Man ever really cared about killing
[36:50] people. Maybe he just wanted to attack
[36:52] and scare, and maybe he wanted to keep survivors so that they
[36:56] could tell the story and keep his name in the news.
[36:59] I don't know. That's just something strange
[37:01] about the Axe Man. He never really made sure that
[37:04] they were dead and I he probably would if he wanted to, but that
[37:08] didn't happen with Mike Pepper turn.
[37:09] So again, that makes me think that it wasn't an axe man
[37:12] killing. And just like that the axe man
[37:14] stopped killing. Or maybe he stopped killing
[37:16] before that and they were just coffee cats.
[37:18] Who knows. Maybe the axe man carried on
[37:21] elsewhere, or maybe he changed his MO and carried on killing
[37:24] but no one knew it was the axe man.
[37:26] Whatever the reason for the end of the axe man killings, police
[37:30] never found out who he was. They had literally no leads.
[37:34] Obviously DNA evidence wasn't a they had nothing.
[37:38] And so because they had no like leads or anything, they decided
[37:41] to try and think of a motive because then that might lead to
[37:45] a suspect. It didn't seem as though the axe
[37:47] man ever really had a motive. There weren't robberies gone
[37:50] wrong. It seemed as though he was
[37:52] literally just breaking in these places to attack because he
[37:56] wanted to. Like, for what reason?
[37:58] So police looked at the victims of the axe man and they all
[38:03] seemed to fit a particular pattern.
[38:05] They all seemed to be a Italian immigrants or Italian Americans
[38:09] and a lot of them had businesses like they were quite successful
[38:13] people. So maybe the axe man did have a
[38:16] motive after all. Maybe maybe he was racist.
[38:19] Maybe they were racially motivated.
[38:21] So of course we have a lot of theories in this case, copycat
[38:24] killings, mafia killings, racially motivated killings.
[38:28] But now we're going to talk about 1 suspect in particular, a
[38:32] man named Joseph Mumfrey. Now this whole situation from
[38:36] now on is a little bit confusing, so stick with me as
[38:38] well as you can. So the last believed killing of
[38:41] the axe man was Mike Pepatone. His wife, Esther Pepatone found
[38:46] him dead, saw two men fleeing the scene.
[38:49] Well, about a year later, Esther Pepatone moved to LA and
[38:52] remarried a man named Angela. And two years after her first
[38:58] husband's death, literally on the anniversary, two year
[39:02] anniversary of his death, her second husband goes missing.
[39:06] And not long after her second husband goes missing, a man
[39:09] turns up on her doorstep, a man that had done business with her
[39:13] second husband multiple times, a man named Joseph Mumfrey.
[39:18] However, he wasn't coming to just check on Esther.
[39:21] It wasn't like a nice little visit.
[39:23] It was actually quite hostile. He opened the door and demanded
[39:26] that Esther give him $500 and all of her jewelry.
[39:30] Now, Esther was very smart in this situation.
[39:34] She didn't panic. She said, OK, let me go get my
[39:36] jewelry. She goes to get her jewelry and
[39:39] comes back with a revolver and shoots Joseph Mumfrey to death.
[39:44] So of course, Esther Pepitone is arrested for this murder.
[39:48] She's taken to the police station.
[39:50] She's going to be in prison for a long, long time.
[39:52] And they questioned her and they said, well, why did you do it?
[39:54] Like, why did you kill him? And she said, because that is
[39:57] the man that killed my husband. So all the way back when Esther
[40:01] claimed to have seen those two men that night.
[40:04] One of them was Joseph Mumfrey, but she'd never told the police
[40:07] that before. But they decided to look into
[40:10] Joseph Mumfrey a little bit more and they found that he had a
[40:13] lengthy criminal record. He was part of a gang, a
[40:16] blackmailing gang, I believe. I don't, I don't really know
[40:19] what that is. Sounds like a gang, but like not
[40:21] that much crime. And this gang that he was a part
[40:24] of specifically targeted Italians, which lined up with
[40:29] the Axe Man so well because a lot of people in New Orleans at
[40:33] this time, a lot of white people were very racist towards
[40:36] Italians and of course black people.
[40:38] It was like some horrible hierarchy of different
[40:42] nationalities and races and just so many different layers of
[40:46] people that thought they were better than other people because
[40:49] of certain features or certain things about them.
[40:52] It was horrible. But like I said, he had a very
[40:55] lengthy criminal record. He was in this gang.
[40:57] He was in and out of prison all his adult life and the times
[41:01] when he was out of prison seemed to perfectly line up with the
[41:06] Axe Man killings. Although that is kind of the
[41:08] only evidence that anyone ever has against Joseph Mumfrey and
[41:12] it's very circumstantial. I think it's quite interesting
[41:16] how well it lines up. 1 interesting thing to note about
[41:19] this case is that the Axe Man could have so many more victims
[41:23] than we've even talked about right now.
[41:25] So the ones that we've talked about South Far in this video
[41:28] have all been official cases that are official attributed to
[41:32] the Axe Man. These are the ones that I'm
[41:34] about to talk about are not official, which is why I've left
[41:37] it until the end. Although a lot of people believe
[41:39] that the Axe Man did commit these ones as well.
[41:42] And they could be another link to Joseph Mumfrey.
[41:45] Because these ones that I'm about to talk about happened in
[41:47] 1910 and 1911, some of them in the beginning of 1912 as well, I
[41:52] believe. And then in 1912, Mumfrey went
[41:56] to prison for seven years until 1918, and then he got out.
[42:00] And coincidentally, that is the same time that the Axman murders
[42:04] began. So these murders are literally
[42:06] the most confusing thing I've ever read in my entire life.
[42:09] It took me hours to get my head around this, and I still don't
[42:14] have my head around it. So I've simplified them as much
[42:17] as I possibly can. I try not to drop details in my
[42:20] true crime videos, but literally, if I can't understand
[42:23] it, how am I supposed to tell it?
[42:24] You know what I mean? So this is very simplified.
[42:27] Between 1910 and 1912, 5 or 6 different Italian business
[42:33] owners were killed in different circumstances.
[42:37] So some of them were beaten, some of them were shot, some of
[42:40] them were killed in unknown circumstances.
[42:42] And that is a very specific group of people, Italian
[42:45] business owners. And I mean, there weren't too
[42:48] many Italian business owners at this time in New Orleans.
[42:51] Like I said, because of the hierarchy and stuff, all the
[42:54] white people were on the top. All the white people were the
[42:57] rich ones. Well, not all the white people
[42:59] would get onto that in a minute, but Italian people were just
[43:02] kind of coming up at this time. They were just building empires
[43:06] for themselves. This was when they were really
[43:08] starting to like find their feet in New Orleans.
[43:10] And like I said, at this time in New Orleans, the white people
[43:13] were very racist to literally everyone that wasn't a white
[43:17] person. Just different people, just
[43:19] people that weren't from New Orleans, they didn't like them.
[43:22] Anyone that came in that was not there already, they didn't like
[43:26] them. And so these Italian immigrants
[43:28] were coming in and they were outdoing the white people
[43:31] completely. They were becoming more
[43:33] successful, they were more hard working.
[43:35] They were starting their own businesses, building their own
[43:37] empires. They were becoming really
[43:39] successful citizens. The white people didn't like
[43:42] that because they were doing better than them, and the white
[43:45] people always thought that they were the best.
[43:46] And so the theory is that the Axe man was a jealous white man
[43:51] and he was racist, and he didn't like that these Italian
[43:56] immigrants were being really successful in his city, and so
[44:00] he went about killing them. But at the same time, some of
[44:03] these killings between 1910 and 1912 can have other
[44:06] explanations. Some of them are believed to
[44:09] have been mafia killings, some of them I believe to have been
[44:12] like personal disputes, like genuinely explained by a fight
[44:16] with a friend or something and they killed each other.
[44:18] I mean it's up to you what you believe.
[44:21] It's a very specific, like, you know, demographic of people to
[44:25] all have been killed in such a short space of time.
[44:29] And that's something about all the confirmed Axe Man victims as
[44:32] well. They were pretty much all
[44:34] Italian immigrants. So now we're going to talk about
[44:36] our last suspect in this case. He is an unofficial suspect.
[44:40] So he's not talked about quite as much as Joseph Mumfrey is or,
[44:44] you know, like any other suspect or theory.
[44:48] But this is really interesting to me.
[44:50] I personally don't believe it. It's really interesting.
[44:53] His name was Jake Bird, and he was arrested in 1947, so a long,
[44:58] long time after the axe Man murders because he was believed
[45:01] to have been responsible for a double murder and the weapon of
[45:05] choice was an axe. So Jake was in his 50s when he
[45:09] was accused of committing this double murder in the 1940s.
[45:12] And this was 20 years after the Axe Man killings.
[45:15] So police took Jake to the station.
[45:17] They were questioning him about this double murder in the 40s
[45:21] and and then Jake tells police that he is responsible for 44
[45:26] different murders in his lifetime all across America.
[45:29] And although he didn't confirm or deny that he was the Axe man
[45:33] of New Orleans, he was a teenager living in New Orleans
[45:38] at the time of those murders. So he was in the area and
[45:41] something that I thought throughout this case, right?
[45:44] Remember when we were talking about the doors with the
[45:47] chiseled out panels and that 18 year old 6 foot guy couldn't fit
[45:51] through this little panel? Well ever since then I have been
[45:53] thinking well how small are these panels?
[45:55] Obviously I don't know how small the panels were, but if a guy,
[45:59] like if a man can't fit through one of them, how small was the
[46:03] axe man? Potentially teenager sized.
[46:07] That's not an official size, but you know what I mean.
[46:10] Jake Bird was a teenager at the time, meaning he was smaller
[46:13] than a man, so could have potentially fit through a little
[46:16] door panel every time. And that's all there really is
[46:19] to connect Jake Bird to the Axe Man killings.
[46:22] Just that he's confessed to more murders and he was small.
[46:26] I do have one little piece of information about Jake Bird that
[46:29] I think you might find interesting.
[46:31] It's completely irrelevant to this case.
[46:33] At his murder trial for that double murder that he was
[46:37] accused of, he was actually found guilty and sentenced to
[46:40] death. And when he was given that
[46:42] ruling, he stood up in court and announced that everyone in that
[46:46] room would die before he would. So obviously he was given a set
[46:51] date that he was going to be killed on, and he stood up and
[46:54] said everyone in this room is going to die before then.
[46:56] And six people out of about 10 or 12 in that room did die
[47:02] before he did of different like natural causes, diseases,
[47:06] illnesses. It was very, very weird.
[47:09] I don't know, like it's just kind of interesting in it
[47:13] whether you believe in that kind of thing.
[47:15] But yeah, that's pretty much everything on the Axe Man of New
[47:17] Orleans. I hope you enjoyed this video.
[47:20] I really enjoyed researching this one.
[47:25] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[47:28] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[47:30] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[47:33] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[47:37] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[47:48] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[47:51] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[47:54] See you next time.

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