# 4 Dark True Crime Mysteries

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 9 Oct 2025, 35 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO2212125258.mp3

Join me as we go down 4 true crime mysteries, and what you learn will shock you. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 lazy chill zone, lazy chill true crime, asmr true crime, true crime for sleep, true crime, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, missing persons, murder investigations, serial killers, criminal profiling, forensic evidence, DNA breakthroughs, crime documentaries, historical crimes, criminal psychology, court trials, wrongful convictions, criminal justice system, police investigations, crime scene analysis, infamous criminals, mysterious disappearances, solved cold cases, forensic science, true crime podcast, shocking murders, unexplained deaths, notorious cases, crime history, criminal conspiracies, real crime stories, dark history, homicide cases, unsolved murders, criminal investigations, crime suspects, forensic breakthroughs, chilling true crime, mysterious deaths, high profile cases, true crime analysis, strange disappearances, criminal justice

## Transcript

[0:00] On a crisp November evening in 2002, St.
[0:03] John's University in Collegeville, MN buzzed with the
[0:07] usual weekend energy. Joshua Guimond, a 20 year old
[0:11] political science major with aspirations of law school and
[0:15] public office, joined friends for a poker game at a student
[0:18] residence. Joshua had been valedictorian
[0:22] and class president at his high school and Co captain the
[0:25] university's mock trial team. He was considered reliable and
[0:29] rarely missed obligations. At about 11:45 PM, he left the
[0:34] party to use the bathroom and then, for reasons which are
[0:38] unclear, started toward his dorm.
[0:41] It was a 3 minute walk that crossed a footbridge near Stumpf
[0:44] Lake. Witnesses later recalled seeing
[0:47] him on that bridge after midnight.
[0:49] Yet he never arrived home, and he was never seen again.
[0:56] When Joshua failed to return to the card game, his friends just
[0:59] assumed he went home. But when he missed mock trial
[1:02] practice the next day, they realized something was wrong.
[1:06] His car, wallet and glasses remained in his dorm room, and
[1:10] repeated calls went unanswered. Campus security in the Stearns
[1:15] County Sheriff's Office launched a search.
[1:18] Bloodhounds tracked his scent to the edge of Stumpf Lake,
[1:22] prompting fears that he had fallen into the water on his way
[1:25] back. Divers, boats and sonar
[1:28] equipment scoured the lake while volunteers combed nearby woods,
[1:33] but days of searching yielded nothing.
[1:36] National Guard members joined the effort, and his father
[1:39] watched anxiously from the shoreline.
[1:42] The water theory dominated early thinking on this case.
[1:46] The campus sits among several lakes, and two other college men
[1:49] in the same region vanished within days of Joshua, and both
[1:53] were later found in local bodies of water.
[1:57] For months, authorities returned to the lake, but no evidence
[1:59] surfaced. Attention turned to Joshua's
[2:04] computer, and it became clear that several days after he
[2:08] vanished, someone entered his dorm and ran a cleaning program
[2:12] on his dorm device. Unfortunately, this would lead
[2:15] to years of setbacks and this data wouldn't be recovered for
[2:19] nearly half a decade. When investigators eventually
[2:23] recovered data, they discovered he had created multiple profiles
[2:27] on Yahoo personals. Some accounts portrayed him as a
[2:30] woman and were used to chat with men, often in an explicit
[2:35] manner. This suggested to investigators
[2:38] he might have been exploring his identity and could have arranged
[2:41] A clandestine meeting. Detectives theorized that he may
[2:45] have left the party to meet someone and, either willingly or
[2:49] under duress, entered a vehicle at the bridge.
[2:53] Notably, while it was determined that cleaning software was used
[2:56] on his computer after his disappearance, it wasn't clear
[3:00] who used it. For reasons which are unclear to
[3:03] me, the initial investigators hadn't sealed his room or taken
[3:07] his computer into storage when he disappeared.
[3:11] I have to assume this was just due to pure ignorance of
[3:14] technology on the part of investigators who may have not
[3:17] fully understood the investigative power of data on a
[3:21] personal computer. A number of theories have been
[3:26] considered in this case, and many still think Joshua might
[3:30] have fallen into water. Bloodhounds LED searchers to the
[3:33] lake's edge, and the campus landscape of ponds and wetlands
[3:38] supports the idea of a misstep on a dark path.
[3:42] But repeated dives and sonar sweeps found no remains, and
[3:46] investigators themselves eventually found that this was
[3:49] unlikely, given no evidence was ever found.
[3:55] Notably, Joshua's case is one that's generally brought up in
[3:58] discussions of the :) predator hypothesis.
[4:02] However, no hard evidence has ever been established to
[4:05] indicate that he was the victim of a serial perpetrator, and the
[4:09] entire :) theory remains unproven.
[4:12] Regardless, it's been more than 20 years after Joshua Guayman
[4:18] vanished, and his case appears to remain no closer to being
[4:22] resolved today than it was when he went missing.
[4:26] Personally, I think the investigators just completely
[4:29] botched this one when they failed to secure the dorm room
[4:32] and get that computer into an evidence locker as soon as he
[4:35] was reported missing. While some data was recovered, I
[4:40] have to question what wasn't recovered in that process and
[4:44] what evidence potentially fell by the wayside over time.
[4:48] For instance, he was supposedly talking to all these men under
[4:51] this female assumed identity, but because the authorities
[4:55] didn't secure the evidence fast enough, this created a major
[4:58] issue. If they had Joshua's username in
[5:01] 2003, they could have gotten the records from Yahoo and figured
[5:06] out all the people he communicated with and
[5:08] interviewed them. This ability appears to have
[5:11] been lost due to this massive investigative misstep.
[5:19] A young man vanishes into thin air, his last known location
[5:23] being a storage unit in Lethbridge, AB in Canada.
[5:27] Days later, his truck is found torched more than 700 miles away
[5:31] near a remote hiking trail in the mountains of British
[5:33] Columbia. No footprints in the snow, no
[5:37] body, no reliable sightings. Just a burned out vehicle filled
[5:41] with items that shouldn't be there.
[5:43] This is the haunting story of Marshall Iwasa, a 26 year old
[5:48] whose unexplained disappearance in late 2019 has left
[5:51] investigators and his family searching for answers.
[5:57] After years of hard physical work in construction and
[6:00] landscaping, Marshall enrolled at the Southern Alberta
[6:03] Institute of Technology in Calgary to study computer
[6:07] programming. He had hoped to build a career
[6:09] that would allow him to earn more money than he was making.
[6:13] However, unknown to his family, he struggled academically, was
[6:18] placed on academic probation and eventually withdrew from the
[6:21] program, a fact which he appears to have struggled with.
[6:28] On the evening of November 17th, 2019, Marshall drove to
[6:32] Lethbridge to visit his mother. She asked him to help with a
[6:35] computer problem and invited him to stay the night, according to
[6:39] later reports, there was nothing unusual about his behavior and
[6:43] he appeared to be his usual self.
[6:46] He declined the offer to stay because he wanted to pick up
[6:49] belongings from a storage unit he shared with his sister before
[6:52] returning to Calgary. He left his mom's house around
[6:55] 11 and headed toward the storage facility.
[6:59] Security logs and surveillance footage show that Marshall
[7:02] attempted to access the storage locker multiple times overnight.
[7:06] He eventually gained entry shortly after six on the 18th of
[7:09] November and spent more than two hours inside.
[7:13] At around 8:30, he left the facility and this is the last
[7:17] confirmed sighting of him. Investigators later determined
[7:21] that no other individuals access the unit at the same time, and
[7:25] what he did inside the locker remains unknown.
[7:30] Six days later, hikers exploring an isolated logging road near
[7:34] Pemberton, BC, spotted a burned out truck on an unplowed trail.
[7:39] The area is extremely remote, requiring A4 wheel drive vehicle
[7:43] and knowledge of Backcountry conditions.
[7:46] It's not on any main route and can't readily be found on any
[7:49] apps or maps. The hikers were unable to call
[7:52] authorities until they reached cell service the following day.
[7:56] On November 25th, the authorities arrived at the scene
[7:59] and confirmed that the vehicle belonged to Marshall.
[8:03] His vehicle was approximately 14 hours from home and no one was
[8:07] sure how it got there. Around the truck were numerous
[8:12] personal items, clothing, a backpack, a destroyed laptop and
[8:17] three smashed cell phones. Curiously, there were gaming
[8:21] consoles and an expired passport that didn't belong to Marshall.
[8:25] More perplexing, key components such as the steering column and
[8:29] battery were missing. The fire originated inside the
[8:33] passenger cabin of the vehicle, according to the arson
[8:36] investigator hired by the family, leading to suspicions
[8:40] that it had been set deliberately.
[8:43] Investigators themselves haven't publicly released their own
[8:46] arson report, but they have not disputed the conclusion, at
[8:50] least not openly. From the beginning, the
[8:55] Lethbridge Police Service deemed the disappearance suspicious,
[8:59] but maintained that there was no credible or corroborating
[9:02] evidence to suggest foul play. Because the case remained a
[9:06] missing person investigation rather than a criminal
[9:09] investigation, authorities didn't immediately collect
[9:13] potential evidence such as DNA or fingerprints.
[9:17] They also didn't gather surveillance footage from gas
[9:19] stations along the 700 mile route Marshall would have taken
[9:23] or issue a nationwide alert. This cautious approach
[9:27] frustrated the family, who argued that the burned truck,
[9:31] missing parts and presence of unusual items should have
[9:35] triggered a criminal investigation.
[9:38] For their part, the authorities seem to have suspected that he
[9:41] did it himself, hence why they didn't seem to conduct a
[9:45] thorough investigation. They weren't clear as to whether
[9:50] they believed he had ended himself or if he had voluntarily
[9:53] started a new life, but it was clear they preferred one of
[9:57] these scenarios. And I swear, Canadian cops may
[10:02] give Japanese cops a run for their money when it comes to
[10:05] incompetence. And unlike Japanese cops,
[10:09] Canadian cops have a lot more crime to deal with, so I have no
[10:13] idea what their excuse is. Another theory suggests Marshall
[10:19] may have gotten lost and succumbed to the elements after
[10:22] his truck became stuck. The Pemberton Backcountry is
[10:26] unforgiving, with steep slopes, dense brush, and rapidly
[10:30] changing weather. An accident such as falling into
[10:33] a ravine or stream could conceal a body for years.
[10:38] However, several factors weaken this theory.
[10:40] In my view. 1 investigator determined the truck fire was
[10:44] deliberate, making it unlikely Marshall accidentally set his
[10:48] vehicle ablaze before wandering off.
[10:51] After all, he was deep in the woods and this would have
[10:54] essentially been the equivalent of burning your ships when you
[10:57] arrive on a new continent, which just sounds implausible.
[11:01] Personally, while I think it's impossible to completely dismiss
[11:05] this theory, I just don't understand why he would have
[11:08] burnt his truck. Many, including his family,
[11:14] believe the evidence points towards foul play.
[11:17] This theory suggests that Marshall was lured by someone
[11:20] after leaving the storage unit, driven to British Columbia by
[11:23] one or more individuals, and ultimately slain.
[11:28] Those who support this theory claim that several details
[11:31] support this view. For instance, the 14 hour
[11:35] journey from Lethbridge to Pemberton would have required at
[11:38] least 2 gas station stops, yet no activity appeared on
[11:42] Marshall's bank account. That said, he may have paid in
[11:46] cash, though his family said this wouldn't have been like
[11:49] him. Also, of course, if he had
[11:52] actually planned this all out, he may have taken a long gas
[11:55] canisters with him. These canisters may have
[11:58] eventually been used to light his truck on fire as well,
[12:02] though that's just complete speculation on my part and no
[12:05] canisters were even recovered. Personally, I think the truck
[12:11] being set on fire is the strongest indication that there
[12:14] may have been foul play at work here.
[12:17] That said, this would have required a tandem driver, since
[12:22] otherwise the perpetrators would have had no meaningful way to
[12:25] escape the deep backwoods area where the truck was found.
[12:30] Despite the suspicious circumstances, no motive or
[12:33] suspects have been identified. There's no evidence linking
[12:37] Marshall to any criminal elements or anyone who might
[12:40] have wanted to harm him. Unfortunately, the disappearance
[12:46] of Marshall Iwasa may never be solved, largely because
[12:50] investigators were slow to consider foul play.
[12:54] Early efforts focused on the possibility of an accident or
[12:57] voluntary disappearance, which delayed crucial forensic work
[13:01] and allowed potential evidence to be lost or contaminated.
[13:06] The burned truck should have triggered an immediate criminal
[13:09] investigation, yet the scene was just treated as puzzling rather
[13:13] than suspicious. By the time authorities
[13:16] acknowledged foul play as plausible, too much time had
[13:19] passed. Personally, I think that if the
[13:23] authorities had gathered surveillance footage from the
[13:25] gas stations along the route in a timely manner, this wouldn't
[13:29] be an unsolved mystery. There's just too much evidence
[13:33] that points to the potential involvement of other parties,
[13:37] and that footage would have potentially cleared up whether
[13:40] he was alone or not while on the road.
[13:46] Hey everyone, Jimmy, reminding you to like and subscribe and to
[13:50] tap the notification bell and click the share button and send
[13:52] it around to your friends and family.
[13:55] Also, just an extra emphasis on clicking the notification bell
[13:59] because clicking this is the only way you're assured to see
[14:02] my new videos drop. I've had so many complaints
[14:05] lately from subscribers who say they aren't getting my new
[14:08] videos anymore, and clicking that bell is the only workaround
[14:12] as far as I know. On a mild afternoon in May 2003,
[14:20] families in the town of Cumatori in southern Osaka Prefecture
[14:24] were settling into their routines.
[14:27] The local elementary school had sent its fourth graders on a
[14:30] social studies field trip to the nearby Sewage Science Museum. 9
[14:35] year old Yuri Yoshikawa was on her way home.
[14:38] She was dressed in her white short sleeved school shirt, a
[14:41] dark skirt, bright pink socks patterned with stars, and
[14:45] carrying a Sanrio backpack. She had left the sewage museum
[14:49] with three friends around 2:40 PM.
[14:52] The girls walked together until they reached a traffic light on
[14:55] Nana Yama St., about one mile from Yuri's house, where they
[14:59] waved goodbye. A boy pedaling past on his
[15:03] bicycle saw Yuri alone a few minutes later on a quiet
[15:06] hillside Rd. He was sure it was Yuri because
[15:10] he lived in the same neighborhood, and while he
[15:12] wasn't one of her friends, he knew her fairly well.
[15:17] He exchanged a casual greeting and rode off.
[15:20] And with that, no one has seen Yuri since.
[15:25] When Yuri hadn't returned by 5:00 PM, her older brother
[15:28] alerted their parents. The family canvassed the
[15:31] neighborhood, but by 7:30, they had to call police.
[15:35] Investigators initially treated the case as a kidnapping for
[15:39] profit and waited with the family for a ransom demand that
[15:42] never came. After the first crucial hours
[15:46] passed with no word, the Osaka Prefectural Police mobilized
[15:50] hundreds of officers and volunteers.
[15:53] Notably, this initial wait period has been highly
[15:55] controversial. According to the cops, they were
[15:59] worried that visible police activity could endanger Yuri if
[16:03] the kidnapper was holding her for ransom.
[16:06] Under this theory, Yuri may have been eliminated if the kidnapper
[16:10] thought the heat on him was getting too intense.
[16:13] That said, it's unclear why they believe this theory at all, and
[16:18] the only thing to support it is perhaps the fact that her father
[16:22] was a wealthy businessman. Witnesses reported hearing no
[16:27] screams or signs of a struggle, fuelling speculation that Yuri
[16:32] may have been lured rather than snatched by force.
[16:36] In 2003, the area had few security cameras, and cars with
[16:41] dashboard cameras were extremely rare, so investigators had to
[16:45] rely on human memory. The investigation quickly went
[16:49] cold and fully stalled out until a decade later in 2013, a woman
[16:57] came forward with a startling memory.
[17:00] On the day Yuri disappeared. She had been driving near the
[17:03] Hillside Rd. when she noticed a white car parked awkwardly at
[17:07] the roadside. As she slowed to pass, she
[17:10] glanced into the vehicle and saw a middle-aged man at the wheel
[17:14] and a young girl in the passenger seat wearing a white
[17:16] shirt. Over the years, two more people
[17:19] reported seeing a similar car that afternoon.
[17:23] Police eventually announced that the vehicle was likely a Toyota
[17:26] Crown from the late 1980s and that they had quietly been
[17:30] investigating this model for years.
[17:33] The cops had known about this vehicle the entire time and
[17:36] hadn't released this information to the public.
[17:39] Investigators traced about 900 such cars registered in southern
[17:44] Osaka and interviewed almost all them.
[17:47] Yet none of the inquiries led to a breakthrough.
[17:51] The delay in releasing this clue provoked a ton of criticism
[17:55] because the police kept the sighting secret for 10 years.
[17:59] Even today, the police have not released the composite sketch
[18:02] drawn from witness descriptions, fearing that an inaccurate image
[18:06] could misdirect the public again drawing criticism.
[18:12] Yuri's parents, Nagaki and Haruko Yoshikawa, have fought
[18:16] for their daughter's return in a way that attracted the wrong
[18:20] sort of attention from scammers. Nagaki Yoshikawa was an
[18:25] extremely successful businessman, and this fact
[18:28] didn't go unnoticed. The family's ordeal deepened in
[18:32] 2004 when a man and woman approached Nagaki, claiming to
[18:36] be psychics who knew Yuri's whereabouts.
[18:40] They not only claimed that they had seen visions of her, but
[18:44] that she was alive and could rescue her.
[18:48] And to do this, they claimed, they needed big, heaping piles
[18:51] of cash to fuel all their needs while they focused on their
[18:54] quote UN quote psychic work. Over the next four years, they
[18:59] convinced the parents to transfer a total of roughly ¥70
[19:03] million in exchange for vague updates about their daughter.
[19:08] To put this in context, adjusted for inflation, this is over $1
[19:13] million. The psychics told the parents
[19:19] that the police didn't approve of their methods, and if they
[19:22] told them about it, they couldn't help them anymore.
[19:25] Believing they could be jeopardizing Yuri's safety, they
[19:28] didn't inform police of the psychic involvement.
[19:32] Eventually, the pair's demands drain the family's savings, and
[19:36] when they couldn't pay up anymore, the psychic said they
[19:39] had to stop working with the family.
[19:42] Only then did the parents confide in investigators what
[19:45] had happened, and they arrested the con artists in 2008 on fraud
[19:50] charges. There are a number of theories
[19:54] about what may have happened to Yuri, and the most
[19:57] straightforward 1 is that Yuri was abducted by a stranger.
[20:01] Early on, investigators considered that someone might
[20:04] have targeted the family for ransom, likely due to the wealth
[20:07] of the family. However, no ransom demand
[20:11] arrived and the subsequent appearance of a suspicious white
[20:15] car with a middle-aged male driver suggests an opportunistic
[20:20] abduction. Another hypothesis is that Yuri
[20:24] was accidentally struck by a vehicle on the narrow hillside
[20:28] Rd. In this scenario, a driver
[20:31] panicked and hid her body rather than reporting the collision.
[20:34] Supporters of this idea point to the steep, winding roads around
[20:38] Nana Yama and the absence of screams or evidence of a
[20:42] struggle. A rapid collision could have
[20:45] knocked Yuri unconscious, and she could have later perished.
[20:49] Investigators did consider a hit and run, though they were unable
[20:53] to find any evidence that it actually occurred.
[20:58] Perhaps the most bizarre possibility of all is that North
[21:01] Korean agents were involved in her abduction and that she
[21:05] perhaps may still be alive. In the late 1970s and early
[21:09] 1980s, North Korea abducted several Japanese citizens.
[21:15] Some of those who were kidnapped were children, and they were
[21:18] brought to North Korea to train North Korean infiltrators to
[21:22] speak Japanese at a native level.
[21:25] These infiltrators were raised entirely in a Japanese cultural
[21:28] context so that when they were eventually deployed to Japan,
[21:33] they would completely blend in. Under this theory, it's been
[21:37] speculated that Yuri was taken to be a friend for a North
[21:40] Korean child raised for this future role.
[21:43] However, it's been noted that by 2003, the program of abducting
[21:49] Japanese citizens had officially wrapped up.
[21:52] But of course, with North Korea, who really knows?
[21:59] The disappearance of Yuri Yoshikawa remains 1 of Japan's
[22:02] most haunting mysteries. More than 20 years on, the case
[22:06] is still open, and the Yoshikawa family continues to wait, hoping
[22:11] against all reason that their daughter may one day return to
[22:14] them. On the night of March 19th,
[22:19] 1919, the city of New Orleans was alive with the sounds of
[22:23] music. It was Saint Joseph's Day, a
[22:26] holiday of deep significance to the city's large Italian
[22:29] population. But the music that filled the
[22:32] humid air wasn't one of quiet reverence.
[22:35] From the grandest dance halls to the most humble houses, the raw,
[22:40] improvisational energy of jazz spilled out into the streets to
[22:44] ward off what they believed to be an otherworldly threat.
[22:49] Professional bands played to packed rooms while families with
[22:53] amateur musicians gathered in their parlors, their instruments
[22:57] a shield against the darkness. This citywide concert was an act
[23:01] of collective exorcism. Just days earlier, the Times
[23:05] Picayune newspaper had published a letter from a man who claimed
[23:09] to be the serial predator stalking their neighborhoods.
[23:14] He called himself the Axe Man and let the readers know that he
[23:18] was a demon from the hottest pits of hell.
[23:21] This man, in the guise of a demonic entity, issued a bizarre
[23:26] ultimatum. At 15 minutes past midnight, he
[23:30] would once again pass through the city, but he would spare all
[23:34] those inside any home where a jazz band was in full swing.
[23:38] This surreal night, where a city's greatest cultural export
[23:43] became a Talisman against its deepest fear, is the perfect
[23:47] entry point into the story of the Axman of New Orleans.
[23:53] New Orleans of 1918 was a city on the edge, filled with various
[23:58] tensions. It was a major port, still
[24:01] buzzing from its role in the global conflict that had
[24:04] engulfed the world, but also a place worn down by economic
[24:08] uncertainty and a far more prolific threat.
[24:13] Long before the 1st Axman attack, a deadlier, invisible
[24:17] enemy had already laid siege to the city.
[24:21] The Spanish Flu arrived in the fall of 1918, brought in on the
[24:25] very ships that were the city's lifeblood.
[24:28] The public health response was slow and ultimately ineffective,
[24:32] striking down the young and healthy with terrifying speed.
[24:36] This event created the ideal psychological conditions for a
[24:40] new kind of terror to take hold. The city was already traumatized
[24:44] by this virus that entered homes unannounced, leaving devastation
[24:48] in its wake. Further public trust and
[24:52] authority had been eroded by what many saw as the failure of
[24:55] officials to contain this unseen entity.
[24:59] When the Axe Man began his attacks, it felt like a second
[25:03] wave of a familiar nightmare. He too was an invisible threat
[25:09] who violated the sanctity of the home, and his own letter to the
[25:13] press even claimed he was an invisible stalker who struck in
[25:17] the night. Yet amidst this atmosphere of
[25:20] extreme anxiety, New Orleans was also giving birth to something
[25:24] vibrant and new. In the late 19th century, a new
[25:29] kind of music was forming, and it was the perfect fusion of the
[25:33] African, European and Caribbean traditions that permeated the
[25:37] city. This music, which we would come
[25:40] to know as jazz, would be the only thing that could soothe the
[25:43] soul of this beastly predator. And it's very important to keep
[25:47] this connection to jazz in mind, because the most compelling
[25:51] theory of who this unseen predator was turns pretty
[25:55] heavily on this form of music. The Axe Man's story is
[26:02] inextricably linked to the story of Sicilian immigrants in New
[26:05] Orleans. Beginning in the late 19th
[26:08] century, a massive wave of Sicilians arrived in the city,
[26:13] fleeing poverty in their homeland for the promise of work
[26:16] on Louisiana's sugar and cotton plantations.
[26:19] New Orleans became a primary port of entry, and by the time
[26:23] of the Axe Man attacks, it's Italian American population was
[26:28] second only to New York City. These immigrants established a
[26:32] vibrant community in the lower French Quarter, an area that
[26:36] soon became known as Little Palermo.
[26:39] Crucially, many did not remain laborers for long.
[26:45] Through incredible hardship and thrift, they followed a common
[26:48] trajectory from the plantation fields to entrepreneurship.
[26:53] They opened small businesses, most notably corner grocery
[26:56] stores. By 1920, Italian owned
[27:00] businesses accounted for half of all grocery stores in the city,
[27:04] and they were a visible and vital part of every
[27:07] neighborhood. This rapid economic success,
[27:10] however, came at a price, and some theorize that individuals
[27:15] like the Axman would target this group for attacks Due to this
[27:19] success. The Axman's spree began on May
[27:24] 23rd, 1918 and immediately established A chillingly
[27:29] consistent pattern. The perp would gain entry to his
[27:33] victims homes, which were often connected to their grocery
[27:36] stores, by chiseling out a panel on a back door.
[27:41] He would then select a weapon from the premises, usually an
[27:45] axe, and attack his victims as they slept.
[27:49] Robbery was never the motive and money and valuables were
[27:52] consistently left untouched. The first victims were Joseph
[27:58] and Catherine Maggio, who were found brutally eliminated in
[28:02] their apartment. Joseph's throat had been cut
[28:05] with a straight razor before both he and his wife were
[28:08] bludgeoned with an axe. Over the next year and a half,
[28:12] the attacks continued, each one adding to the city's growing
[28:16] panic. The terror reached a new peak in
[28:21] March 1919 when the perpetrator crossed the Mississippi River to
[28:26] the suburb of Gretna and attacked the Cortemiglia family.
[28:31] Charles and Rosie Cordemiglia were gravely injured and their
[28:35] two year old daughter Mary was slain.
[28:38] The final string of attacks occurred between August and
[28:41] October 1919, ending with the brutal and fatal attack on a
[28:46] grocer named Mike Pepitoni. And keep this victim in mind,
[28:51] because he's going to come up again shortly.
[28:54] And then, as mysteriously as it began, the Reign of Terror
[28:59] stopped, the Axe Man having claimed as many as 17 victims in
[29:04] just under two years. The police investigation was,
[29:10] from the beginning, a catalog of failures that reflected the
[29:14] city's deepest social fractures. The New Orleans Police
[29:17] Department of the era was notoriously corrupt and lacked
[29:21] any modern investigative techniques whatsoever.
[29:24] Forensic science was in its infancy, and crime scenes were
[29:28] often poorly managed. In the Maggio case, for
[29:32] instance, the weapon was found on a neighbor's lawn only after
[29:36] an incomplete initial search of the home.
[29:40] The concept of a serial predator was also largely foreign to the
[29:44] police of New Orleans. Most investigators simply
[29:47] couldn't accept that one man could be behind these attacks,
[29:51] potentially with no motivation beyond the thrill of taking
[29:54] another life. However, interestingly, 1
[29:59] investigator did go on the record saying that he believed
[30:02] that the Axe Man was one single figure with a Jekyll and Hyde
[30:06] personality. Other potential motivations,
[30:10] such as prejudice towards the city's Italian community, were
[30:14] also ignored. The cops primarily focused on
[30:19] the potential that the attacks were a vendetta within the
[30:22] Italian community. Italians coming to America and
[30:26] bringing along vendettas from the old country was a popular
[30:29] narrative in the media at the time, and the investigators
[30:33] bought into it fully. Ultimately, against this
[30:37] backdrop, it's perhaps completely unsurprising that the
[30:41] phantom attacker was never caught.
[30:46] Over the centuries since the attacks, three main theories
[30:50] about the Axman's identity have persisted.
[30:53] The most popular theory at the time was that the attacks were
[30:56] Mafia related, either vendettas or Black Hand extortion attempts
[31:01] gone wrong. And just by way of background,
[31:04] the Black Hand were extortion groups from Italy who targeted
[31:08] Italian and Italian American communities.
[31:11] However, unlike the Mafia, they were only very loosely organized
[31:15] in any meaningful sense. However, experts then and now
[31:20] have largely discounted this. The Mafia used guns, not axes,
[31:26] and they didn't leave survivors as the axe man frequently did.
[31:31] That said, these Black Hand groups are potentially a more
[31:35] likely culprit, since unlike the mob, anyone could claim to be
[31:40] part of the Black Hand. It was simply a label some
[31:43] criminals used to make themselves much more
[31:45] intimidating to their potential victims of extortion.
[31:51] The second theory is that the axman was a lone,
[31:54] psychologically disturbed individual.
[31:57] He may have been motivated by his extreme Italophobia, or he
[32:01] may have seen them as a marginalized community that
[32:04] could be more easily targeted. Another variant of this theory
[32:08] draws on the evidence of the letter and suggests that the
[32:11] Axman may have been conducting sacrifices or occult rituals.
[32:17] However, the records from the crime scenes don't appear to
[32:20] show any direct evidence of a cult involvement.
[32:24] Further yet, it's not even clear that the letter itself was sent
[32:27] by the Axe Man himself. The third theory centers on a
[32:32] single compelling suspect, Joseph Mumphrey.
[32:37] Mumphrey was a known criminal who ran a blackmailing gang that
[32:41] targeted Italian business owners.
[32:44] The most damning evidence against him emerged years after
[32:47] the attacks had stopped. In 1921, the widow of the
[32:51] Axman's final victim, Mike Pepitoni, was living in Los
[32:56] Angeles. Mumphrey tracked her down and
[32:59] allegedly threatened to, quote, do what he did to her husband if
[33:04] she didn't pay him. She didn't feel like paying up
[33:10] and happened to be armed at the time, so she started blasting.
[33:14] She later told police that she recognized Mumphrey as a man she
[33:18] had seen lurking near her home on the night of her husband's
[33:22] slaying. Notably, Mumphrey was also
[33:27] something of an entrepreneur and happened to be the quote, UN
[33:30] quote manager of a number of local jazz bands.
[33:34] The letter to the newspaper forced households and
[33:37] establishments to book jazz bands, and sales of jazz sheet
[33:41] music went through the roof. Mumphrey, in essence, may have
[33:44] turned the art form of jazz itself into a disturbing element
[33:48] of a protection racket. While the evidence is entirely
[33:53] circumstantial and his guilt is still debated, the case for
[33:56] Joseph Mumphrey as the axman is ultimately quite strong.
[34:03] There are, of course, others who have speculated that there never
[34:06] really was a New Orleans Axman and that the entity itself was a
[34:10] creation of the media. However, what historians have
[34:14] agreed is most likely is that the media attempted to tie in
[34:18] additional victims of crime to sell more papers.
[34:22] After all, reporting on an Axman attack was more likely to move a
[34:26] paper than a regular run-of-the-mill attack, so the
[34:29] financial incentive and motivation was there.
[34:34] Whatever the case, the Axman was never caught and his identity
[34:38] was never confirmed, leaving behind yet another occult scar
[34:42] on the disturbing and dark history of New Orleans.
[34:46] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here thanking you for listening.
[34:48] And remember if you want the full experience you can check
[34:51] out my YouTube channels Lazy Chill Zone and Lazy Chill True
[34:55] Crime. Also don't forget to take a
[34:58] moment to rate my podcast and also click that follow button so
[35:02] you get notifications when I drop new content.

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