Jazzin It Out With the Axeman of New Orleans

The Axeman of New Orleans was a nearly forgotten serial murderer who assaulted twelve victims in the late 1910s. What has kept him from fading into complete obscurity is his letter to the local newspaper in which he claimed to be a demon from Hell that loved jazz music.

Jazzin’ It Out With the Axeman of New Orleans

By Kevin Jennings

I played several musical instruments from childhood through my first couple years at college. Among them was the tenor sax, which I played in my high school’s jazz band. We were really good, and I actually got to have a lot of really incredible experiences because of it. The music we played was always a lot of fun, but there was something I learned from my years of performing jazz: normal people don’t like jazz.

Seriously, do you know anybody that likes jazz that isn’t also a musician? When I was in school everyone’s parents would come to our competitions to support us, but I doubt any of them actually enjoyed jazz either. It’s not like we’d hop in the car and throw on a John Coltrane cassette tape for the drive home from a competition. That was the time to listen to real music: heavy metal guitar solos inspired by the likes of Vivaldi and Beethoven.

You can “Take the A Train” all you like, but me and Ozzy are going off the rails on a “Crazy Train”.

Jazz also teaches people some pretty questionable lessons. The first rule of jazz improv is that there’s no such thing as a wrong note; if you play what would normally be considered a wrong note, just keep playing it over and over again until it somehow becomes right. That is a terrible lesson to teach a person. That’d be like somebody being publicly scolded for the length of the intros to their scripts and deciding to lean into longer and longer intros instead of addressing the issue.

But times were undoubtedly different a hundred years ago. Jazz was a brand new style of music, originating in New Orleans. The new musical craze had many fans, and among them was a literal demon from the very depths of Hell. Or just a murderous psychopath. But it was definitely one of those two.

Separating Fact from Fiction

Though the story has become more popular in recent times thanks to the rise in true crime content, the Axeman of New Orleans was a pretty obscure story for a long time. There were newspaper articles at the time, but once the initial panic died down the story largely disappeared, even though the murders were never solved. The first book to feature the story of the Axeman wouldn’t be written until almost 30 years later, so in that way he was a lot like Jesus.

The problem with interest in the case subsiding almost as quickly as the panic set in is that it’s hard to separate the facts about the case from the fiction. Even the first book that contained the story was a collection of folk tales set in Louisiana, and folk tales aren’t notorious for their factual accuracy. Even the newspapers at the time weren’t great at reporting facts, and there was a lot of speculation and fantasy.

According to contemporary news reports, the Axeman could have claimed anywhere from 12 victims in New Orleans to over 100 victims across multiple states and countries. More recent research into the crimes has identified it as likely being the work of at least two different American serial killers, and some entirely unrelated crimes in Germany. A few years before the subject of today’s episode, there were a number of murders that have since been named the Mulatto Axe Murders of Texas and Louisiana, though at the height of the Axeman panic newspapers were willing to group them all together as being linked to a single killer.

We’re going to focus just on the 12 victims in New Orleans and immediate surrounding areas that were attacked in 1918 and 1919. It’s possible that the Axeman claimed more victims, but these are the only ones we can say for certain were tied to the same killer.

The Axeman Cometh

Italian grocer Joseph Maggio and his wife Catherine were sleeping in their bed on the night of May 23, 1918. A man hopped the fence into their backyard, grabbing the family axe as he made his way to the door. It was common at the time for nearly every family to have an axe, and most were either kept in plain sight around the house or in the backyard for easy access.

As the man approached the backdoor, he pulled out a screwdriver and began prying a panel off the door so that he could gain access to the house. Despite already wielding an axe, he saw a straight razor on a table and decided that it would probably be more effective as a weapon, at least to start. An axe is a pretty terrible weapon at extreme close range against someone who is fighting back, so the smaller blade would allow him to make quick work of the couple. He entered the room where Joseph and Catherine were sleeping, and got to work.

Joseph’s throat was likely slit first to incapacitate him, although the cut would not be immediately fatal. The Axeman then grabbed Catherine and cut her throat from ear to ear, cutting so deeply that he nearly severed her head completely. Catherine quickly choked to death on her own blood, hopefully before what happened next. I guess. It’s kinda hard to tell what the worse way to die in this situation is.

The Axeman raised the Maggios’ axe above his head and brought it down violently on the couple’s skulls. Peculiarly, it was the blunt end of the axe that they were struck with rather than the blade. It’s speculated that this was done to conceal their true manner of death, and in fact that the only reason an axe was used at all was to disguise how they really died. It’s also possible that the Axeman, knowing he had two targets to strike, didn’t want to swing the blade end down and have it get lodged in one of their skulls, forcing him to struggle to retrieve it.

After the attack, the Axeman removed his bloody clothes and left them in the apartment so he could make a clean getaway without drawing attention to himself. Shockingly, the attack didn’t kill Joseph. Instead, he lay in bed helplessly for the next two hours until the sound of his groaning got the attention of his brothers, Andrew and Jake, who lived in the adjoining apartment.

The brothers called the police, but Joseph passed away minutes after they found him. To be fair, it was 1918 so it’s highly unlikely doctors could have saved his life even if he had been found earlier, but they at least could have pumped him full of cocaine or morphine to lessen the pain.

Once the body was removed, police didn’t actually conduct a full search of the house. It was a different time back then, and forensic investigation wasn’t really a thing yet. New Orleans hadn’t even fully implemented fingerprinting yet, so unless extremely obvious clues were left behind, they had to rely on good old fashioned police work. Which is to say following their gut and beating confessions out of people.

I’m not saying that’s what all police work was like in the 1910s, but New Orleans cops were notorious for their use of the third degree.

Luckily, there were some blatant clues left behind. There were the bloody clothes that the killer left behind. There was the axe, discarded in a neighbour’s yard. More importantly, there was the bloody razor, found in another neighbour’s yard. This was one of three key pieces of evidence that the police would use in identifying their key suspect.

The razor belonged to Andrew Maggio, who worked as a barber. An employee of Andrew’s recognized the razor and mentioned that Andrew had taken it home from work two days prior, claiming that he wanted to hone a nick out of the blade. The razor must have been dinged up pretty bad if he wasn’t able to fix it and bring it back to work the following day.

If you recall, and it wasn’t that long ago, Andrew was also one of the two that found Joseph’s body. He didn’t hear someone breaking into the house or brutally murdering his brother and his sister-in-law, but two hours later he heard the sound of groaning coming from the room? That’s mighty suspicious.

Finally, there’s the issue of motive. Andrew didn’t have a clear motive, but the murder scene didn’t present one either. Money and valuables were left out in plain sight, but nothing had been stolen except the murder weapons, which were then discarded. It’s not to say that Joseph couldn’t have had some enemies, but his brother somehow slept through the attack in which nothing was stolen and his razor was used as the murder weapon. The police were sure they had their man.

During his interrogation, Andrew had difficulty establishing an alibi or keeping his story entirely straight. The fact that he had trouble coming up with an alibi isn’t particularly surprising, to be honest. It was late at night when the murder took place, sometime around 1 am. For me, establishing an alibi at that time of night would be trivial because my circadian rhythm is fucked and my laptop and cellphone would make it clear where I was and what I was doing.

But for a person who sleeps at normal human hours, especially before all of our modern self-surveillance technology, how would a single man establish an alibi for 1 am? I’m sure every conversation on the topic went pretty much the same:

“Alright creep, where were you at 1 am last night?”

“It was 1 am. I was in bed sleeping.”

“Do you have anyone who can corroborate that story?”

“Don’t I wish.”

Or, if they felt like tempting fate, “Yeah, your mother.”

As for the inconsistencies with his story and how he was able to sleep through the noise, Andrew had a pretty good answer to that. He was about to go join the navy and potentially head off to fight in the First World War, so he had gotten completely shitfaced earlier in the night. Ultimately, police would release Andrew. Based on the evidence they did have and the fact that no other crimes were yet tied to this killer, it’s completely understandable that they’d really have wanted to nail Andrew for it.

But without harder evidence and with no way to actually disprove his story, their hands were tied. Fortunately for Andrew, it wouldn’t be long before he was no longer the chief suspect.

Sex, Lies, and German Spies

It was June 27, just over a month since the Axeman’s first murders. This time, his targets were Louis Besemer and Harriet Lowe. Like the first victim, Louis was another Italian grocer. Mamma mia! Louis had a small apartment in the back of the grocery store where he and Harriet were in bed.

Again the Axeman gained entry by chiseling a panel off of the door to get inside. He walked inside and retrieved Louis’s hatchet from the bathroom, the most logical of rooms to keep a hatchet in. It was just after 7 am when he went into the bedroom and swung the hatchet down, striking him above his right temple. This time, the Axeman was using the business end of the hatchet. He swung down at Harriet, hitting her just above her left ear and possibly lodging the hatchet in her skull briefly.

Had he orchestrated this attack a few minutes earlier, he may have had time to finish the job. Instead, he was interrupted. The driver of a bakery wagon had been waiting outside for Louis to come accept his delivery, and he decided to let himself in when Louis didn’t show. He came inside and found the couple laying in a pool of their own blood, the hatchet on the bedroom floor.

This is how the story is often reported, at least. The delivery driver never saw anyone else, so it’s possible that the Axeman had actually attacked them much earlier in the evening and just left them, assuming they would die from their wounds like the previous victims.

Once again, the Axeman had come into a home by removing a panel on the door. He had attacked a couple in bed with an axe, and left without stealing anything. The victims were Italian immigrants, and both men were grocers. The occupation may have been a coincidence, but it also may not have been.

However, police didn’t draw any connection between the two attacks, at least not publicly. It’s possible they were trying to play it close to the vest, but no records or evidence exist to suggest that they actually believed at this point that the crimes were related.

There’s some pretty strong evidence that they never considered the possibility, because what followed was a scandalous dumpster fire that captivated the citizens of New Orleans. When the delivery driver found the couple, Harriet was unconscious and Louis was dazed, but lucid. The two were taken to Charity Hospital to recover.

Almost immediately after the attack, police arrested a former employee of Louis’s, an African American man who had worked at the store until a couple weeks before the attack. I’m guessing he was a suspect because he was fired, but why he no longer worked there doesn’t seem to be clear. Either way, that’s the only reason he was arrested because there was absolutely zero evidence of his involvement.

They believed he had attacked the couple so that he could rob the store, despite the fact that nothing was taken. When Harriet woke up, she told police she remembered being attacked by a mulatto man, but the police called her delusional and refused to release their suspect based on the victim’s eyewitness testimony. Eventually, he was released due to the complete lack of evidence.

But while he was in custody was when things really got crazy. Harriet started to create a media frenzy almost from the start. She was extremely outspoken, and insisted on making scandalous and sometimes false comments to the media, especially with regards to Louis. The media ate this behaviour up, and the drama only intensified when, upon someone trying to find the room of “Mrs. Harriet Lowe”, they discovered that there was no such person in the hospital.

She was Harriet Lowe, but she wasn’t Mrs. There was a Mrs. Louis Besumer, but Harriet wasn’t her. A few days after the revelation that Harriet was his mistress, Louis’s real wife returned from her trip to Cincinnati.

It was a media sensation that could easily have inspired writers of America’s first soap operas in the 1930s. Things only escalated when a series of letters written in German, Russian, and Yiddish were found in a trunk in Louis’s home. Police believed he may have been a German spy, a sentiment that was inflamed by some of Harriet’s false statements.

It became such an outrageous media circus, it kind of feels like people genuinely forgot that there was a fucking axe murderer on the loose. Police began investigating Louis and his potential acts of espionage, which did not exist, but when Harriet made a statement that she believed he was a German spy Louis was immediately arrested. Two days after his arrest, Louis was let go on account of him obviously not being a spy, but the lead investigators were demoted for allowing him to go free.

On August 3, over a month after their attack, Harriet underwent surgery. Her face had been partially paralyzed from the attack, but the surgeons thought they could fix it. They were very wrong, and she would die as a result of the failed surgery two days later. As she lay in bed dying, Harriet accused Louis of being the one that attacked her.

It should be noted at this point that, prior to this surgery but after accusing Louis of being a spy, she had actually been released from the hospital at which point the couple went back to cohabitating in the back of his grocery store. The police didn’t feel that was an important piece of evidence, so as soon as she directly accused Louis of attacking her he was arrested and charged with her murder. He sat in prison for nine months awaiting trial, where he was finally acquitted after a ten minute jury deliberation, because of course he was.

Because this was all insane. It’s hard to imagine Simon hasn’t already said this yet, but just in case: police, what are you up to?

Connecting the Crimes

There’s a good chance that the Axeman was following the entire media shit show surrounding Louis and Harriet closely, basking in the chaos that he had created. But when Harriet passed away following her failed surgery and with Louis already in prison for murder, the show was over. Harriet died on August 5, news that undoubtedly made the evening paper. That night, the Axeman claimed his next victim.

This time, it was not a couple but rather a woman home alone that was attacked. It’s possible that the Axeman had come for both of them, but the husband was working late that evening. More specifically, her Italian husband was working late at his grocery store.

Anne Schneider, eight months pregnant, woke up as the shadowy figure standing over her began bashing her head in, but the details of this attack are less clear. This time, there were no signs of forced entry. Anne was hit in the face repeatedly and her scalp was cut open, but the weapon this time was almost certainly not an axe. Perhaps Anne and her husband didn’t own an axe, or perhaps the killer chose to show some level of mercy to the unborn child. Probably not the second option.

When her husband, Ed, returned home shortly after midnight, he found his wife in bed, her face covered in blood. But she was alive. Anne was taken to the hospital where she gave birth to a healthy baby two days later. She made a full recovery, but she could not remember anything about the attack or more specifically the attacker. It was dark and she was already being hit when she woke up, so it’s hardly surprising that she couldn’t remember anything identifying about the culprit.

Not long after Anne went to the hospital, a man named James Gleason was arrested for the attack. He was an ex-convict, and the 1918 version of Ronnie Dobbs, a deep cut that I’m guessing Simon isn’t familiar with. You see, James was arrested for running from the police. He explained that he had been arrested so many times that he just ran whenever he saw police, and the police chased him. He hadn’t actually done anything wrong (this time) and was let go due to a total lack of evidence.

However, with this third attack police finally connected all three cases. They did not explicitly state that they believed there was a single perpetrator behind all the attacks, but they did at least publicly entertain that it was a possibility. Even though the weapon was almost certainly not an axe in this instance, someone clearly had it out for the Italian grocers of New Orleans.

But with Anne recovering fully and her baby surviving, this was hardly the media sensation of the previous attack. There was no affair, no international espionage, just a beat up Italian woman. By and large, the people of New Orleans weren’t that concerned with the well being of a bunch of Italians. Most of the Italian immigrants to Louisiana were Sicilian, and the prevailing sentiment in the American South at the time was that those “swarthy dagoes” were no better than “negroes”.

If we suspect that the Axeman was following the news, this lack of coverage may be why the next attack happened so much faster than the previous two. Only five days later on August 10, Pauline and Mary Bruno woke up from the noise coming from the adjacent room. They entered and saw their elderly uncle, Joseph Romano, bleeding from his head.

The attacker was already escaping when the girls came in, but they identified him as a dark-skinned, heavy-set man wearing a dark suit and slouched hat. They called for an ambulance, and despite his injuries Joseph was able to walk to the ambulance on his own when it arrived. Like with the first two attacks, a door panel had been pried off to gain entry and a bloody axe was found in the backyard. This time the house appeared to be ransacked, but nothing was stolen.

Despite seeming to have been reasonably okay immediately following the attack, Joseph would die from head trauma in the hospital two days later.

With two attacks in less than a week, the public were whipped into a frenzy. People were terrified, and police received frequent reports of people finding axes in their yard or believing they saw the Axeman lurking around neighbourhoods. If the killer was looking for a big reaction, he had finally gotten it.

There was also no longer any doubt that these crimes were connected. They were far too similar. In addition to the general terror among the citizens, police became more vocal as well. Particularly, one retired detective, an Italian man named John Dantonio, made several public statements regarding the killer. However, because he was retired, he wasn’t actually working the case and was just taking the opportunity to publicly speculate on the crimes.

First, he suggested that the Axeman was the same person responsible for earlier murders, the ones now attributed to the Mulatto Axe Murderer who we mentioned earlier. His other speculation was more reasonable, although not terribly helpful to the average person. He made some comparisons between the Axeman and Jack the Ripper, but his more notable comparison was to that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

John believed that the killer essentially had a dual personality. He claimed the Axeman would seem like a normal, ordinary citizen, but that he would become overcome with a desire to kill. Much like how forensic evidence wasn’t really a thing yet, neither was forensic psychology. John was likely on to something, but it wasn’t well understood at the time.

He was essentially describing the Axeman as an organized killer, a murderous psychopath who still possessed social skills and probably even had a family of his own.

Unfortunately, when you tell a bunch of hysterically panicked civilians that the killer probably seems like any other normal person except when they’re killing, well that certainly isn’t going to make anybody feel more safe.

It’s hard to guess as to the exact reason, but the Axeman took a long break following this murder. It was likely a combination of having already gotten the reaction he wanted and needing to let the heat die down a bit. Eventually, both the increased police scrutiny and public fear would die down, and people began to let down their guard.

Seven months after the murder of Joseph Romano, the Axeman would strike again. It was now March, 1919, and this time he had chosen to leave the city of New Orleans and visit the suburb of Gretna on the other side of the Mississippi. Here, he would create his next media sensation.

On March 10, screams were heard coming from the residence of Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia. Their next door neighbour, 69 year old Iorlando Jordan rushed over to see what was happening. When he arrived, he saw that the family had been brutally attacked. Charles was laying on the blood-drenched floor, clinging to life. Rosie was in the doorway, blood pouring from her skull. In her arms was the deceased body of their two year old child, Mary.

Iorlando called the police, and the couple was rushed to Charity Hospital. Police found a bloody axe on the back porch and saw that a panel of the door had been chiseled off. The New Orleans police caught wind of the murder, and they immediately contacted authorities in Gretna, absolutely convinced it was the work of their Axeman. But Gretna’s chief of police had already decided to follow his gut, and his gut told him that this was the work of Iorlando and his 17 year old son Frank.

Charles and Rosie survived the attack, with Charles being released from the hospital two days later. Rosie was in worse shape, and stayed in the care of the doctors much longer. As she tried to recover both physically and emotionally from the loss of her daughter, police constantly harassed her, trying to interrogate her in her hospital bed.

The Cortimiglias and Jordans were both grocers, and as such would have been in direct competition with one another. The Gretna police were convinced that the murder and assaults were the result of a family vendetta, and they weren’t interested in taking no for an answer. The entire time that police hounded Rosie in her hospital bed, trying to get her to point blame at the Jordans, she insisted that she had no idea who attacked her.

Once Rosie had finally recovered to the point that the hospital was ready to release her, she was immediately arrested and placed in jail as a material witness. Police refused to release her from the jail until she signed a sworn affidavit stating that it was the Jordans that had attacked her family. They were then arrested and placed on trial for murder.

The only evidence against the accused was Rosie’s confession, a confession that her physician testified was unreliable. Iorlando was too old and in too poor of health to have perpetrated the attack, and at 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, Frank was far too large to have fit through the hole from the single missing panel in the door. But the police had their coerced confession, and they weren’t going to let a silly thing like facts get in the way of obtaining a conviction.

The Jordans were found guilty of Mary’s murder. Because of his advanced age and poor health, Iorlando was sentenced to life in prison. Frank was sentenced to hang. Following the conviction, Charles divorced Rosie. Nine months later, Rosie walked into the offices of the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune. She claimed that St. Joseph came to her in a dream, and she had to tell the truth and confess to her misdeed. After giving her story to the reporters, she signed a new affidavit retracting her testimony.

Not wanting to lose their conviction, the prosecutors threatened Rosie with perjury charges if she didn’t stick to the story she had previously testified to. She chose to stand her ground, and roughly a year after their conviction, the Jordans were released from jail.

The Devil’s Music

While all of this was going on in Gretna, something else was taking place in New Orleans. On March 13, three days after the attack on the Cortimiglia family, the Times-Picayune received a letter that claimed to be from the Axeman. To this day, it is unknown whether or not the letter was genuine. Based on how much attention the killer seemed to be paying to the news surrounding his crimes, combined with the refusal of the police to credit him with the recent attack, I personally am inclined to believe that it is.

The letter is absolutely insane, but it speaks for itself. The return address for the letter was “Hell”, and my abridged version read:

“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 demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.

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

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 with the Angel of Death.

Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little 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 just 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 your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, 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”

I’d love to talk about the differing degrees of accuracy in various translations of the Bible, or how many languages have words with different but similar meanings that can only be determined by an intimate understanding of the context. I’d love to, but we just don’t have the time. Instead, I’ll just say that Tartarus is the fiery pits in the depths of Hades from Greek mythology and is not part of Christian Hell to which the Axeman clearly refers in the full version of the letter; the word is no more appropriate in this context than claiming he was from Asphodel, Elysium, or Hogwarts. In short, I don’t think that the Axeman is actually an immortal demon like he claims.

Despite this, the letter does seem to display a level of education and intellect greater than what we may expect from the Axeman. I still think it’s more likely than not that the killer was the author of the letter, but there’s definitely room for doubt. Regardless, the message was clear: jazz it out, or get the axe.

Did people heed the warnings of this letter? Well, that’s pretty difficult to say. We know that dance halls were filled to capacity and that there were a lot of parties that night, particularly among the Italian community. As for your average resident? We really don’t know. The reporting at the time was sensationalized, and it had been playing into supernatural and occult angles even before this letter was published.

Even if newspapers weren’t trying to play up the murders to sell more copies, it’s not really an easy thing to get an accurate accounting of. There were over 300,000 people living in the city at the time, it’s not like investigative journalists could just walk past every house at 12:15 to see if they had a jazz album playing.

There were certainly more parties that night than there would otherwise have been, and the dance halls no doubt loved the extra business on a Tuesday night, but it is extremely unlikely that all the Italians, let alone the entire city, stayed up past midnight to obey the instructions put forth in that letter. Whether they did or not, there were no attacks that night which gave the papers license to report that the whole of New Orleans had caved to the Axeman’s demands. After all, jazz was known as the devil’s music, so what better way to say they warded off the attacks of a horrible demon than by sating his appetite with jazz?

It was this letter that would be the Axeman’s claim to fame, and the only reason that the story didn’t fade completely into obscurity. Later that year, local musician Joseph Davilla released a song called “The Mysterious Axman’s Jazz (Don’t Scare Me Papa)”. The album cover featured a terrified looking family playing music, and it was one of the first songs written about a serial killer.

The Final Attacks

For the next five months after the Axeman’s letter was published in the paper, there were no attacks. People slowly began to let their guards down again, thinking that the letter may have been the Axeman’s final act before disappearing into the shadows forever. Then, on the night of August 10, 1919, he emerged once more.

The attack was largely the same as previous incidents. The Axeman pried away a panel from the back door to make his way inside the home of Steve Boca, yet another Italian grocer. Steve was sleeping in bed, briefly waking up to see the shadowy figure standing over him before the blow to the head knocked him back unconscious.

Upon waking up again, Steve ran out into the street to try to find his assailant and figure out what was going on. It was during this investigation that he discovered his skull had been cracked open, so he ran to his neighbour’s house where he then immediately collapsed and fell unconscious again. He was taken to the hospital where he made a full recovery from his injuries, but he couldn’t remember any useful information about the attacker.

The next attack would occur less than a month later on September 3. This assault was slightly different than the others, though that may have just been a matter of convenience. Rather than forced entry, the Axeman was simply able to enter through an open window. The victim was Sarah Laumann, a 19 year old girl who lived alone.

Though this was his second attack on a woman who was home alone, the first woman was the wife of an Italian grocer who the murderer may have expected to be home as well. Despite lacking such obvious ties to his normal victims of choice, the Axeman bludgeoned Sarah, presumably using the blunt side of the axe again. She was left bleeding from a severe head injury and with several teeth knocked out.

It wasn’t until neighbours, concerned for the safety of a teenage girl living alone, came to check on Sarah that her body was discovered. She didn’t answer the door, so they broke in and found her in her bed. There aren’t detailed statements from the neighbours available, but the bloodied axe was found on Sarah’s front lawn rather than the back.

Most likely the neighbours saw the axe before breaking through the door, rather than simply overreacting to a neighbour not rushing to receive company. Sarah survived the attack as the previous victim had, but she also had no useful details that she could remember from the attack.

Almost two months later, on October 27, the Axeman would strike for the final time. Mike Pepitone was asleep in his bedroom when a noise woke his wife up. She was sleeping in a different room, but made it to the bedroom door just in time to see a large man with an axe escaping from the bedroom. She then saw her husband, his head split open and blood splattered across the entire room. His wounds were fatal, and once again the potential witness was unable to provide any means of identifying the Axeman.

In total, that is 12 victims that are ascribed to the Axeman of New Orleans. Six were injured, and six died. To this day, the true identity of the Axeman remains unknown. As we discussed, there were a number of suspects and several arrests made. Beyond the suspicion that fell on the first victim’s brother, there was little to no evidence pointing towards the suspects. The arrests they made ranged from the absurd to the downright illegal.

But there have been other suspects and theories put forth. The theories, even if they don’t point to a particular individual, give a lot of insight into what was happening with these crimes and what the motivation may have been. You’ve probably already picked up on this by now, but our killer seems to really have it out either for Italian immigrants or for fresh vegetables and baked goods.

Suspects and Theories

We’ll talk about the specifically named suspects first before talking about more general theories that don’t try to lay an accusation on a particular person. We’ve talked about a number of the suspects that the police had at the time, but there’s one suspect from back in the day that we haven’t talked about yet.

It’s not uncommon here on the Casual Criminalist, especially with more modern cases, for there to be a suspect with a name like “Unidentified Male”. This is generally what a suspect is called when they find DNA or fingerprints but have nobody to match the evidence to, though in the case of fingerprints they wouldn’t assume the sex of the person.

Investigators on the Axeman case had a similar such suspect, with a much more unusual name. I understand that the past was the worst, but I can’t possibly stress enough that I am not joking when I tell you that the actual police that were investigating these crimes added the name “Unidentified vampire” to the list of possible suspects. The arguments for why they believed this were stupid, and they did eventually abandon the idea. If they hadn’t stopped investigating the supernatural, maybe they would have actually caught the Axeman.

But not really.

A theory that was put forth by true crime writer Colin Wilson is that the killer was a man named Joseph Momfre, though there are four different spellings of the last name all of which were very common in 1910s New Orleans. The name comes up a lot as the most likely suspect, and there’s a pretty compelling story that goes along with the argument.

The widow of the last victim remarried, but her husband vanished without a trace. Joseph then approached her in December of 1920 and demanded $500 and all of her jewelry. She went to allegedly retrieve the items, but instead came back with two guns and shot Joseph 11 times. She was naturally arrested for the murder, but was acquitted on the grounds of self defense.

It’s nice to think that one of the victims could have gotten revenge on the Axeman, but there’s a few problems with this story. The first is that the killer never stole anything, so returning to try to extort money out of a previous victim doesn’t really line up with what we know about the Axeman. The other issue is that Joseph was in jail at the time of the murders.

Possibly. There are reports that he was in jail from 1911-1918, meaning he was behind bars for most of the attacks. There are other reports that he was only in jail during the seven month stretch between 1918 and 1919 when the Axeman was inactive. There are also no contemporary records showing that the incident between Mike Pepitone’s widow and Joseph Momfre ever actually happened.

It’s possible that a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that it was a common name, and records surrounding various different people are muddling the issue. While the story of the attempted robbery turned revenge killing sounds completely made up, there is another possible connection to the name Joseph Momfre.

I only talked about the 12 canonical victims of the Axeman. There are some who dispute that any of the attacks that occurred after the infamous letter are tied to the same killer, but these 12 are generally agreed upon to be the true victims of the Axeman. However, I also mentioned that originally there were other murders that were tied to this same individual. If we consider the possibility that some of those may have actually been victims of the same killer, then we find another link to Joseph.

In 1912, the Schiambras, another Italian couple, were shot and killed in their home. Other than being Italian, there doesn’t seem to be much else linking this to the Axeman’s crimes, but some people believe this was an early murder by the culprit before he had fully developed his MO.

No one was ever charged with those murders, but the main suspect was a man named Frank “Doc” Murphy who was also known to go by the alias Leon Joseph Monfre. I don’t really buy this, as it feels like an attempt to link an unrelated crime to the Axeman just to tie him to the name Joseph Monfre, a name that seems to have been put forth by one true crime writer and then thoroughly debunked by others. To me it feels too much like grasping at straws or trying to force evidence to fit a theory.

Onto the more general theories, police did suspect that these killings may have been Mafia related. There were three main types of Italian related violence at the time. One of them was the vendetta system, something that the Sicilians had brought with them to America. Sicilians didn’t trust their own justice system, and they didn’t trust the authorities in the United States either. Instead, they took it upon themselves to work out their own issues, with extreme severity.

This was why the Gretna police were so insistent that the attack on the Cortimiglias had to have been a vendetta by their neighbours. That insistence is also why you can’t really blame the Italians for not trusting the authorities.

In addition to vendettas, there was also the Black Hand. The Black Hand wasn’t actually an organization, it was just a specific type of petty extortion. The Mafia was known for Black Hand crime as well, as with their famous “protection” racket. You know, the whole, “It’s a real nice store you’ve got here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it. You should probably pay us so we’ll protect you from that happening.”

However, while the Mafia is famous for this behaviour, Black Hand crime was common in Italian communities and was rarely actually the result of organized crime. It is worth noting that the aforementioned Joseph Momfre, who may or may not have been in jail at the time of the murders, was known for this type of blackmail.

People generally grouped vendettas and Black Hand crime under the same blanket term of “Mafia”. This means that while there’s a good chance the police were on the right track in terms of motive, they were under the assumption it was an actual criminal organization behind the attacks rather than a single individual.

The idea that this was Black Hand crime makes a lot of sense. Italian grocers were among the most common targets of this extortion. While it’s very possible, there are two major points of contention that make this less likely.

The first comes from John Dantonio, the retired Italian detective we mentioned earlier who likened the killer to Jekyll and Hyde. He believed that it was unlikely that these were Black Hand attacks because half of the Axeman’s victims survived. In a real case of Black Hand crime, there would be no survivors.

The other issue that makes this a little less likely is that there were so many attacks by the same person. It’s important to be able to show the people you’re attempting to extort that you mean business so that they’ll actually pay up. But after the first couple was murdered in their home, people wouldn’t have continued to cavalierly disregard the extortion requests. And if that many people did take him seriously but were unable to pay, well then you’re charging too much.

The most likely scenario is that it was just a deranged serial killer who was racially motivated. I mentioned how Italians were looked down on in the American South, but it was actually more complicated than simply being disliked based on having darker skin.

Italians would come to the United States and take jobs on plantations, harvesting sugar cane and cotton alongside African Americans. They didn’t understand the racial hierarchy that existed, so they didn’t realize taking these jobs made them appear as “less than” in the eyes of others. If they chose to stay on the plantations it may have been fine, but it was worse because they didn’t understand their place.

Few Italians remained on a plantation more than a couple years, which was a major annoyance to the land owners, some of whom were old enough to remember when they were allowed to own these workers as property. They would complain that the Italian workers were only ever good for a couple years because they hoarded all the wages they earned until they had enough money and were ready to start a fruit shop or grocery store. The corner grocery store industry was entirely dominated by Italians, most of whom had originally worked on plantations beforehand.

The idea of the Axeman just being a racist serial killer is hardly farfetched, and it ties almost everything together without the use of demons or vampires. The only thing that it doesn’t explain is the letter. Surely if the killer was racially motivated then the letter would have just been some tirade about how much Italians suck and were ruining America, right?

All About That Jazz

What if the Axeman wasn’t just a fan of jazz; what if jazz was the motivation for the attacks themselves? There are a few theories that heavily incorporate jazz into the motivation for the attacks themselves.

One theory was that the Axeman was angry that the New Orleans red-light district had been shut down by the U.S. Navy. The red-light district was more than just brothels, it also included clubs, dance halls, and gambling dens, places where jazz music all thrived. It’s not the most outrageous motivation possible, but the targets all being Italian grocers doesn’t make a lot of sense in this scenario.

It was also proposed that the Axeman may have been defending jazz’s honour from the libelist hacks over at the Times-Picayune. In the summer of 1918, the newspaper published an editorial that shit all over jazz, saying that it wasn’t even music and was just noise. Not only does this theory fail to address why the victims were Italian grocers rather than newspaper writers or editors, the editorial wasn’t published until after the first murders had already taken place. I know these sound kind of silly so far, but there is one other theory involving jazz that is actually pretty plausible.

Jazz was invented in the African American communities in New Orleans. It was heavily influenced by blues and ragtime, but also has roots in African rhythmic rituals. If you were to ask the average person who invented jazz or where it happened, they’d probably guess it was African Americans living in the south, even if they couldn’t be more specific. But a funny thing happens if you go to Google and search for “who invented jazz”.

The very first thing you will see is the name Nick LaRocca, an Italian man from New Orleans.

The very first jazz album ever released was The Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917. It’s a controversial album both because the band was fronted by Sicilian immigrants, but because many people feel that the album isn’t actually jazz. A key component of jazz is improvisation, and the fact that everything on the album was written beforehand with no improv whatsoever was considered blasphemous. The album has been referred to as “jazz-like, but not jazz.”

A bastardized version of the beloved musical style of New Orleans being considered the first official jazz recording could already be enough to enrage fans of the genre. But Nick LaRocca took it further by repeatedly claiming that he personally invented jazz. That’s a bold claim to make, and one that he certainly had to have recognized was a lie.

Is that enough to drive a person to murder? I mean, someone tried to murder Ronald Reagan so he could get a date with Jodie Foster, so I can’t really put anything past a crazy person. It would make more sense that LaRocca would be the intended target, but he could have proven to be too high profile a target to successfully assassinate. In that case, the killer could have taken his aggression out on the Italian community as a whole for sullying the “good” name of jazz.

Wrap Up

Like most century old cold cases, there’s pretty much no way we’ll ever get a definitive answer as to the identity of the Axeman of New Orleans. It’s a pretty bad sign that of all the specifically named suspects, “Unidentified vampire” fails to be less plausible than the alternatives. It’s absolutely not plausible because vampires aren’t real, but it’s also not any of the other people that have been named either.

I’m also inclined to agree with the detective that didn’t believe it was likely to be a vendetta or Black Hand crime since half of the victims survived. The Axeman was rarely interrupted during the act, so if his goal was specifically to kill them then they’d all have died.

At the end of the day, these attacks were likely just the result of 1910s southern racism perpetrated by a run of the mill psychopath. The fact that the victims were attacked so brutally yet not always fatally points to the idea that the killer just had a lot of rage against the Italians in general. It’s hard to believe that the individual victims could have been specifically targeted and attacked so brutally without any particular care given to whether or not they actually died.

It seems instead that it was just a disgusting individual who took pleasure in what he was doing, reveling in the brutality of it all rather than focusing on any sort of efficacy beyond using the straight razor in the first attack. I left out a lot of the gorier details of the attacks, particularly with regards to shrapnel of brain and skull strewn about the rooms, but suffice to say that the Axeman definitely loved what he was doing.

But beyond most likely just being a racist psychopath, was the Axeman truly a lover of jazz, and did he really compose the letter that was sent to the newspapers? While I do think it’s more likely than not, I don’t think it’s a slam dunk; I’m definitely curious what Simon and you listening believe about the authenticity of the letter.

I mentioned that the first reference to the Axeman after 1919 was in a 1945 collection of Louisiana folk tales. From there, it was nearly another 40 years until an Australian rock band released an album called “The Axeman’s Jazz”, but things have picked up quite a bit. Interest in the admittedly bizarre case has increased, and references across pop culture have become increasingly common since the 2000s.

From the novel Haunted by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, to an episode of American Horror Story, to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, to The Walking Dead VR game, references to the Axeman are all around us now. And we can now add The Casual Criminalist to that list of high profile references.

Let’s just hope that the Axeman wasn’t really some sort of immortal demon. I can only imagine the carnage he would unleash if he returned to Earth only to discover that the majority of modern Americans would much rather take an axe to the skull than have to spend an entire night listening to jazz.

Key Takeaways

• The Axeman of New Orleans attacked twelve victims in 1918-1919, primarily Italian grocers, using axes and door-panel break-ins.
• A famous letter claimed the killer was a demon from Hell who loved jazz and would spare homes playing jazz on a specific night.
• Police made multiple wrongful arrests based on coerced confessions, racial bias, and absurd theories including an ‘unidentified vampire’ suspect.
• The case faded into obscurity until true crime content revived interest; the killer’s identity remains unknown despite various theories.
• The most plausible theory suggests a racially motivated serial killer targeting Italian immigrants, though jazz-related motives have also been proposed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the Axeman of New Orleans?

The Axeman of New Orleans was a serial murderer who assaulted twelve victims in the late 1910s. He gained notoriety from a letter he sent to a local newspaper in which he claimed to be a demon from Hell who loved jazz music.

How many victims did the Axeman attack, and how many died?

The Axeman attacked 12 victims in total. Six were injured, and six died.

What was the Axeman’s letter to the newspaper about?

In a letter dated March 13, 1919, the Axeman claimed to be a spirit and demon from Hell who was invisible and in a close relationship with the Angel of Death. He proclaimed his love for jazz music and threatened that anyone whose home did not have a jazz band playing at 12:15 AM on the following Tuesday night would ‘get the axe.’ The letter’s return address was listed as ‘Hell.‘

What was unusual about the first attack on Joseph and Catherine Maggio?

In the first attack, the Axeman used a straight razor to slit the victims’ throats before striking them with the blunt end of an axe rather than the blade. He also left his bloody clothes behind in the apartment and discarded the axe and razor in neighbors’ yards.

Why was Andrew Maggio initially suspected in the first murders?

Andrew Maggio was suspected because the bloody razor used in the attack belonged to him, he was one of the two brothers who found Joseph’s body (claiming he only heard groaning two hours after the attack), and he had difficulty establishing an alibi and keeping his story straight during interrogation. He was eventually released due to lack of harder evidence.

What happened with the Cortimiglia family attack and the Jordans?

After the attack on Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia that killed their two-year-old daughter Mary, Gretna police coerced Rosie into signing a sworn affidavit falsely accusing their neighbors, Iorlando and Frank Jordan. The Jordans were convicted based solely on this confession—despite Iorlando being too old and ill, and Frank being too large to fit through the door panel. Rosie later recanted her testimony, claiming St. Joseph came to her in a dream, and the Jordans were released after roughly a year in jail.

What are some theories about the Axeman’s motivation?

Several theories exist: (1) Mafia or Black Hand extortion crimes against Italian grocers; (2) racially motivated attacks against Italian immigrants, who were looked down upon in the American South; (3) anger over the New Orleans red-light district being shut down by the U.S. Navy, which harmed jazz venues; (4) retaliation against Italian Nick LaRocca for claiming to have invented jazz and releasing what some considered a bastardized version of the genre as the first jazz album.

What was the police’s most unusual named suspect?

The police actually added ‘Unidentified vampire’ to their list of possible suspects, though they eventually abandoned this idea.

How did the Axeman case become more well-known in recent times?

The Axeman’s letter to the newspaper was the primary reason the story didn’t fade into complete obscurity. Interest increased with the rise of true crime content, and the case has been referenced in pop culture including Chuck Palahniuk’s novel ‘Haunted,’ an episode of ‘American Horror Story,’ ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,’ and ‘The Walking Dead VR game.’ The first reference after 1919 was in a 1945 collection of Louisiana folk tales, and an Australian rock band released an album called ‘The Axeman’s Jazz’ in the 1980s.

What was significant about Joseph Davilla’s song ‘The Mysterious Axman’s Jazz’?

Released later in 1919, it was one of the first songs ever written about a serial killer. The album cover featured a terrified-looking family playing music.

Sources

• Original Casual Criminalist video: Jazzin It Out With the Axeman of New Orleans
• Hero image source by Adbh266 / openverse, by-sa.

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