Warning: The following contains graphic descriptions of murder, extreme violence, and descriptions of human remains. Reader discretion is advised.
The Axeman of New Orleans: a serial killer who still remains unidentified today. His spree ran from May 1918 to October 1919, and left six injured and six dead. He attacked his victims with an axe (as his name implies), and on occasion, a straight razor. He would remove a panel from his target’s home’s back door with a chisel, then leave the panel and chisel at the scene.
But what was his motive? It wasn’t robbery, because the Axeman never took anything from the houses. It may have been ethnically motivated, as most—but not all—of his victims were Italian-Americans or Italian immigrants. Media sensationalism took hold of the captivating story and suggested that the crimes were tied to the Mafia, even though there was no evidence to suggest that. A very common theory is that his motive was a hatred towards women, as the majority of his victims were female, with male victims only being attacked if they were “obstructing his attempts to murder women.”
But the generally accepted motive for the murder spree is, out of all things, that the Axeman killed his victims to promote jazz music. A famed letter attributed to the Axeman (see photo) was mailed in to a local newspaper, threatening the city of New Orleans. It stated that the Axeman would strike again at fifteen minutes past midnight, but would spare the lives of the occupants in any place where a live jazz band was playing. That night was met with every single one of New Orleans’ dance halls being completely filled to capacity, as well as hundreds of houses around town throwing parties with professional and amateur jazz bands alike. Sure enough, there were no murders that night. The letter itself is perhaps the best indicator of the Axeman’s mental state, or his propensity for inflicting terror. The letter only gets progressively weirder the further it goes on, starting with being it being dated and addressed from Hell.
The first victims of the Axeman were a married couple, Joseph and Catherine Maggio. They were attacked in their apartment on May 23, 1918, where the killer forcibly entered and slit the couples’ throats with a straight razor. The killer then bashed their heads with an axe; perhaps to cover the true cause of death, perhaps to keep the axe method of murder as his calling card. Joseph survived the attack, only to pass minutes after his brothers discovery of the couples bodies. Catherine, however, did not survive. Further driving the killer’s theoretical motive of a hatred against women, her throat was so badly slashed that her head was nearly completely severed from her shoulders and collarbone. She passed before her brothers-in-law discovered the couple. Written on the pavement just outside of the couple’s apartment was the phrase, “Mrs. Maggio will sit up tonight just like Mrs. Toney [sic]”. It’s theorized that this is a reference to the 1911 axe attack against Italian-American grocers Anthony and Joanna Sciambra, which resulted in the death of Mrs. Sciambra—who was reportedly known by customers as ‘Mrs. Toney’.
Louis Besumer and his mistress Harriet Lowe were attacked on the morning of June 27, 1918 in Besumer’s apartment, which was attached to his grocery store. Besumer, who had been sleeping at the time of the attack, was struck in the right temple with a hatchet, while Lowe was hacked over the left ear. The axe, which was owned by Besumer himself, was found discarded in the bathroom of the apartment. Media attention soon turned to Besumer himself when a series of letters written in German, Russian, and Yiddish were discovered inside his apartment. Police began to suspect that Besumer was a German spy, and soon, government officials began a full investigation of possible espionage. Harriet Lowe, while in the hospital and only semi-conscious, told police that she believed Besumer was a German spy, leading to his immediate arrest. He was released two days later, but arrested again in August 1918 after Harriet Lowe stated, while on her deathbed in the hospital following a failed surgery, that he had been the one to attack her. He was charged with murder, and served nine months in prison before being acquitted in May of 1919, after a mere ten minutes of jury deliberation.
Anna Schneider survived an attack in her bedroom the evening of August 5, 1918. Her husband, home late from work, found her with her scalp sliced open. Miraculously, she was fine, and gave birth to a healthy baby two days later, although she remembered nothing of the attack. Nothing was stolen, and police found no signs of forced entry. They determined that she had likely been attacked with the lamp on her bedside table.
The Cortimiglia family, consisting of Charles, Rosie, and two-year Mary, were attacked on March 10, 1919. Both Charles and Rosie survived with severe skull fractures, but Mary was killed with a single blow to the back of the neck while asleep in her mother’s arms.
Many other victims survived their attacks, including Steve Boca, Sarah Laumann, and the wife and six children of deceased Mike Pepitone. The most commonly believed suspect of the Axeman’s crimes is Frank “Doc” Mumphrey (1875–1921), the owner of a jazz club in the Garden District of New Orleans. His club was noted by many in his community as seeming to do “unusually good” business once the city of New Orleans began to hire jazz bands and purchase jazz records in the masses, compelled by the ever-looming threat of violence. Mumphrey was also known to have used the alias Leon Joseph Monfre (occasionally ‘Manfre’) in some of his business deals. Coincidently (or not), a man named Joseph Monfre was shot to death in Los Angeles in the December of 1920 by the widowed wife of Mike Pepitone, the last known victim of the Axeman of New Orleans.
