71. The Axeman of New Orleans

In this week's episode, we butcher (pun intended) the story of the Axeman of New Orleans — a guy who somehow managed to terrify an entire city with an axe, a badly written letter, and a weird obsession with jazz. Between 1918 and 1919, the Axeman went on a spree of breaking into people's homes, murdering innocent grocers, and confusing the hell out of law enforcement. We’ll dig into the crimes, the absolute circus that was the investigation, and how New Orleans basically threw a citywide jazz party to try not to die.

If you somehow survived this dumpster fire of an episode, please rate, review, and share the show. Five stars or we’ll start writing threatening jazz letters to your hometown newspaper. You’ve been warned.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, I'm Tersa and I'm Sarah. Welcome to the Shit
Show a half. That's True crime podcast. Welcome back, Hello,
how do you do? So? We are pre recording this
to go out whenever this goes out, because Sarah's leaving me. Yes,
I'm going to be all alone for a week. So
if for some miracle reason the video works out on this,

(00:27):
we're not scrubs for two weeks in a row, wearing
the same outfits, have other clothes. We're just recording two
episodes in one day. Well, I mean it's gonna it's
kind of like one episode. We're just breaking it in half. Yeah. Also,
we realized in the middle of last the last episode,
that we were wearing pretty much the same outfit because
I said, I almost wore a tap top just like that.

(00:47):
I don't really get. I mean, we're wearing the same
tight like ribbed, high up king tops, just different colors.
And I almost wore my sweater that looks exactly like
the one TSA's time. We used to like, well, when
we our lives weren't chaos and we could actually go
to the gym, we would have to text each other
to not like I'm like I would say, I'm wearing

(01:09):
blue today because we if we didn't, we would without fail,
we would always match. And I'm going to go ahead
just say I think everybody just wants to match me
because anytime Kent and I get dressed, literally always fucking match.
Well like several times not in the room together, we
still somehow always fucking match, like without fail. So it's
it's me, It's me, It's Sarah. Anyway, that was a

(01:30):
riveting way to open our show. Do we how do
we want to ask for reviews from the beginning, because
it's fucking weird. We did want to like kind of
switch up how we like gave some of our information
and stuff. We're gonna go ahead and yeah, we're gonna
kind of switch it up and put some of our
information more at the top of the episode versus at

(01:51):
the end because because I don't think everyone's listening. Everyone anyone,
I don't think anyone's listening all the way to the end,
and I am feeling whiny. Yeah, so we're gonna change
that for winey please thank you. So. You can find
us on Facebook at The Shit Show, a True Crime Podcast,
and you can find us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and
YouTube at the Shit Show TCP. And the reason I

(02:14):
want to move this to the front was to beg
you to please go leave us a nice review on
Apple Podcasts when we stopped recording for so long. I'm
not really sure why happened, but we lost all of
our reviews. And not only does that just make Sarah's day,
every time you leave a nice review, it kind of
like changes that I don't want to say algorithm of,

(02:35):
but like push pushes us out more to more people.
So please just do that. And if you don't want
to leave a nice review, but you still want to
make Sarah's day, you can email us about literally anything
at Shit SHOWTCP at gmail dot com. Also, like liking
and commenting on Spotify would be cool, Just be like, hey,
I liked this. Yeah, Sarah, fucking up names is so funny.

(02:55):
All right. Anyway, we are, like I said, recording this
from the way past, and you're listening from the way future.
I guess I'll just jump into my case because it's
my turn. Sarah did hers last? Yes? All right, so
I am going to be telling you about the ax
Man of New Orleans. Okay, do you know anything about that.
I'm going to need more information. Okay. So I picked

(03:17):
this case because last time we recorded, I let all
fifteen of you know that I am getting divorced, and
Sarah and I have talked about what we're doing. I'm
I'm going to make a trip to New Orleans after
I get divorced, because that's some place I've always wanted
to go and it has not happened. So I was like, oh,
I'll look up places from there or whatever, or places
from their stories or whatever. And the x men Ullians

(03:38):
is something that I've known about, but I've never like
really dove deep into. Yeah whatever. I think it's more
of a well known case, not whatever, but obviously not
if you don't know. I again, need more information. There's
a lot going on up here, is there? I mean?
Yes and no? Sorry that was mean. Okay, and pre warning.
I wrote this and then restructured it and then have

(04:00):
looked at a sense. So worst part of editing this
is going to be the pauses, where I'm reworking with
a new one will help take the pauses out more easily, maybe, Okay.
So the Italian community called New Orleans home for many years,
further growing as Sicilian immigrants came to Louisiana to satisfy
a post Civil war demand for labor in the sugar

(04:20):
cane fields. Through really being frugal people and hard work,
a lot of Italian immigrants could amass enough capital to
start their own businesses. And many of them, for whatever reason,
were through grocery stores. So you would have and now
two senses in I'm already going off from what I
wrote down. So you'd have the owner of like the

(04:42):
little grocery store, and they would usually have living quarters,
either like in the back or on maybe a second story. Yeah,
and that was super common. In eighteen eighty, people of
Italian descent owned around seven percent of New Orleans grocery stores.
By nineteen twenty, about half of those were Italian owned.
Despite the success, unpleasant stereotypes clung onto Italian immigrants. It

(05:06):
was mostly just things like their distrust distrust of authorities.
So this group of people was really distrustful of authorities,
and it would lead them to settle their disputes quote
unquote the old fashioned way. Okay, okay, so like that's
really just how they would settle disputes anyway. In Italy.
They would just hash out themselves. They didn't trust authorities,

(05:28):
They weren't whatever, so they brought that over to America.
There were many shootings and knife fights, specifically on Decatur Street,
and it was that area was nicknamed Vendetta Alley. Like okay.
The fear of immigrant crime culminated in eighteen ninety and
into eighteen ninety one with the murder of the New
Orleans Chief of Police, David Hennessy. He was a very

(05:52):
popular official, and he was met with gunfire as he
arrived home on the night of October fifteenth, eighteen ninety
He was fatal wounded, and he insisted that it was
a group of Italians that attacked him. Okay. He'd previously
been involved in a violent dispute between two Italian factions.
And I wrote the last names here, but I am

(06:14):
the most white, the Provenzanos and them. It makes me
so happy that you also are struggling with and the
mac rangis sure, we'll go with that sounds good to me, right,
New Orleanians, New Orleanians on paper, it looks right. The
people of New Orleans found it very easy to believe
that Hennessy's murder was connected with the feud, and that

(06:34):
organized Italian criminal gangs in the press were often obviously
we know this now, but then it was like a
new thing coming over from Italy, the mafia. So it
was very he got killed and everybody was like, oh, yeah,
it was the mafia. The police arrested a number of
Sicilians who were to be tried in two groups. After
an initial set of acquittals, a mob stormed the jail,

(06:57):
murdering eleven of the accused. They lynched some who had
been acquitted as well as well as some who had
not yet been tried, so that I think could be
its own story, Like this was like restructuring and rereading stuff.
I was like, well, maybe I should look that up
a little bit more of it. I was like, I
don't know, this is already long enough. So at this time,
like I know, we think of like the Italian mob

(07:19):
as like organized crime, right right, but like at this
time it was not really like a secret criminal organization,
but more of a form of social organization that had
been developed in Sicily. Yea, like this is how we
as a people handle thing handle things. This one historian
I have a quote here form or it was more
of a form of behavior and a kind of power,

(07:39):
not a formal organization. Yeah, okay. On the other hand,
there was a type of extortion and a group of
people known as the Black Hand, which were a group
of Italian immigrants but not not like I really struggled
with this because like, when I think of the mafia,

(08:00):
I think of organized crime, right, and this is not that.
But they were like one of these I connected, like
the families were kind of grounding that type of thing.
I'm talking a lot with my hands right now, Italian
Black Hand. So this was what they would do is
they would basically find a victim, threaten the victim with
violence if money the money demanded wasn't paid. And this

(08:22):
was going on in Italian communities all over the United States.
Lots of extortion, lots of extortion, and I guess this
kind of disappeared as descendants of immigrants became more like
quote unquote Americanized and were able to like or we're
willing to report this to police. Yeah okay, So citizens
of New Orleans really kind of put the vendetta, the mafia,

(08:46):
and the Black Hand kind of all together, interchanged the
mafia the black man, and really they would refer to
like any criminal organization as that. So given the history,
it wasn't entirely surprised when the people of New Orleans
suspected that the attacks on Italian grochures might be connected
to a vendetta or black man blackmail attempts. But with

(09:09):
kind of the history of the culture of the area
out of the way, we can talk more about the
quote unquote AxMan of New Orleans. So this was a
serial killer that was active during well, I mean, was
it said to be active during nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen.
Press reports during the height of the panic mentioned similar
crimes as early as nineteen eleven, But it's kind of

(09:35):
in a question whether or not they were all connected.
But either way, don't worry. I'm starting with those ones
because I think they might be connected. And it actually
goes back to nineteen ten. So on August thirteenth, nineteen ten,
Harriet Crudy was awake at three am for what reason,

(09:55):
we don't know, just sometimes you can't sleep. Why was
it always old timing cases they people were just randomly
awakened three clock. I think people are ran on that.
Four people are randomly awake now though, right, like, I
don't know what, Yeah, Savannah says, to shit, at like
three o'clock in the morning. When I wake up the
next morn, I'm like, bitch, go to bed. Took at
one sentence, so sorry. So at three I think she

(10:17):
was just like laying in bed, not sleeping right, because like,
what else are you going to do in nineteen ten?
I mean there's no phone to scroll on, you know
what I mean, So like maybe half asleep, half whatever.
All of a sudden, she realized a stranger was standing
over her, and the stranger was waving a bloody meat
cleaver while demanding money. Waking up and coming to her senses,

(10:38):
she saw her husband lying in a pool of blood.
So she gave the shadowy figure all of the money
in a box under her pillow, pillow or bed. I'm
not really sure, hope, because that's so uncomfortable for your pillow.
Satisfied by this, the man walked out of the room.
He took the crudies caged mockingbird, and then made his
way outside. That's fucked. He dropped the meat cleaver in

(11:01):
the yard, jumped the fence, and then walked another block
until he came to another stoop, and then he freed
the bird. I'm torn on it. It's fucked anymore or not.
You're setting up bird free, Yes, but if that bird
was brend captain captivity, do they know how to live
outside of that? Yes, I'm more worried about the bird
than the I was gonna sag. I get it. We

(11:23):
clearly know this, srikas about animals a lot. Yeah. Is
there more about the husband? Because I am very confused, like,
why not just ask the husband for the money. Why
did we have to bludgeon him first? I think I
thought you're pretty common for homebreakings or whatever that you
want to like subdue the husband first, the bigger threat. Okay,
I would not have like tied him up. Would that
have been as quick as okay with meat cleavering? A

(11:46):
sleeping man in his sleep? A sleeping man in his sleep?
How many times can I say sleeping? We just want
to make it clear that he was asleep, he was
not awake, Okay, so when police arrived on the scene,
they could reconstruct kind of what happened. The intruder had
used a railroad shoe pin to force the kitchen door open,
after which he made his way through the various rooms
until he came to their bedroom where he struck August

(12:08):
John Crudy once in the head and the chest. Well,
the time out, I have more questions. I'm so sorry
she was awake because she couldn't sleep, Okay. Also, I
want to point I also want to point out because
part of this I just skipped over because it sounded
weird in that sentence, but they had like a mosquito
netting around their bed because it's it's Louisiana. Yeah, right,
So I'm wondering if she was awake because she had
fucking bugs swarming swarming. Yeah. But also, but then, if

(12:30):
you're awake, how did you not hear your husband being bludgeoned?
Maybe you're like half awake, half asleep, you know. I
don't know. I can't. I'm not I'm not a good
judge of that because I am literally the lightest I
was gonna say. We've talked about you being a super
late sleeper. I don't know. I've drifted in and out
of sleep, like and then I wake up and I
say I didn't sleep all night, But I know I did, yeah,
but it felt like I didn't because I was like
in a yeah, okay, you're out awake or whatever, and

(12:51):
if it's just like two quick blows, it's not like
the husband can really hit him in the head, right, Okay,
and then maybe that's what startled her. I'm just trying
to understand. So August was sent to Charity Hospital. His
injuries were actually found to be non life threatening, which
I'm like, sir, you have a hard head. We did
not die. He didn't die, Okay, never mind, Okay, Sorry,

(13:12):
this whole time, I'm assuming that he just well because
when you took a meat cleaver to the head, I mean,
that's honestly very shocking. He did not to come to that,
especially in that time. Yeah, he must have had a
hard fucking head. Oh God, damn it. Maybe between Okay,
I don't feel so bad now that I was worried
about the bird. Okay. The profile of the attacker composed

(13:36):
from descriptions from Missus Crudy and a witness who was
looking through a window, which I think that might be
how they know the bird was okay, or they maybe
they found the bird cage, I'm not really sure. Profiled
him as a man, maybe in his mid thirties, about
five foot six, rod shoulders, clean shaven with dark hair,
wearing a working man's shirt, dark trousers and a Derby hat.
What is a Derby hat? What's a working man shirt?

(13:58):
I just picture like a button of yeah that you
don't yeah. I fear that if I googled Derby hat,
it's going to be the Kentucky Derby Google. Well, what
year the time? Nineteen o nine, nineteen ten, old timey Derby.
Oh like a bowler hat? Oh, okay, that's a choice.
That is a you can get one for eight dollars now, okay.

(14:23):
On September twentieth, nineteen ten, around one forty five in
the morning, conchetta, conchetta? Is that? Do you think that's
how I say that to you? And cetca c h
e t ta oh. Chetta risetto awoke when a meek
leaver struck her in the face, breaking her cheekbone. A
second strike went across her neck, and the attacker moved
to her sleeping husband, Joseph, striking him twice in the face.

(14:45):
The assailant dropped his weapon and then, taking nothing from
the building, he left, hopped over a fence in the
front yard and vanished. Okay, so now we're assaulting both
and taking nothing and hitting the woman first, Yeah, which
is which maybe he thought it was. Maybe maybe that
is the case that he thought he was on the

(15:05):
husband's side of the bed, struck realized not him, quick
go to the other side of the bed. Right Despite
being wounded, Joseph fired his revolver in the air, drawing
the attention of people nearby. Neighbors would take the neighbors
would take the couple to Charity Hospital, into their surprise,
and many of the medical staff treating them. Both would survive.
Holy McLarney, these people are lucky as fuck. Was this

(15:30):
like the dullest fucking butcher knife post? Everybody in New
Orleans at this time slept the helmet on with the
full face bounce right once it was daylight, the police
could make out some prints of bare feet in the yard.
So both of these houses were grocery store owners, so
this kind of gave them clues as to how this
person was sneaking up on sleeping couples with no shoes on.

(15:52):
They were like a little sneaky, nothing squeaking like. They
identified the weapon as an item stolen from a butcher's
stall several weeks before the attack. Another of these stolen
butcher knives would also appear on the scene of a
grocery store burglary two miles from the risetto's, although like
no one was hurt during that, okay, but like, why
are we just leaving our butcher knives out? For real?

(16:14):
Everybody hide all of the knives. In the early morning
hours of June twenty seventh, nineteen eleven, Mary Davy was
awoken by some movement in her bedroom. A strange man
was ransacking the nearby wardrobe, and she asked her husband
Joe what he was doing in their room. Joe, is
that you? Why are you in my wardrobe? Are you
putting on my dress? What are you doing? She only

(16:34):
got a groan in response next to her, not from
across the room. Across the room, the intruder, hearing her speak,
spun around to face her and demanded to know where
the money was. Mary frozen fear, which infuriated the man
in her room, and he hit her with a porcelain mug. Rude, Well,
he had already used all of his stolen meat cleavers,

(16:55):
but was it a pretty mug? Oh? Everyone should know
that Sarah collects mugs. Oh might have a slight obsession
with coffee. Mugs. The Davy grocery store in residence was
a small place on the outskirts. I'm breaking down. I
wish I went first now on the outskirts of New Orleans,
about a mile from the risetto store. The attacker had

(17:17):
gained access to the building through a window pride open
with a railroad shoe pen and then he moved on
like into the bedroom. That night before he had gone
to sleep, Joseph, the husband, had propped water bottles on
top of the door as a makeshift intruder alarm because
of the other attacks that had happened. But the burglar, burglar,
Oh my god, the burglar. But the assailant had quietly

(17:42):
disarmed the system, giving him access to the bedroom. So
like he was, he was on it, he was, and
this is how he had surprised Joseph's sleeping before he
could shoot into the air. Despite demands for money, the
attacker hadn't stolen anything, just broken coffee mug. Well, there's
no it didn't say it. Bro Mary Davy would recover

(18:02):
and give detectives a description of her attacker, a white
man who spoke with no accent, like spoke English with
no accent, was clean shaven, just under six feet tall
for a working man's shirt with black pants. That's a
better description of what they've gotten so far. I think
it's like about the same. Okay, Well, I didn't know,
like the clean shaven and the height, and I think

(18:22):
I remembered, Yeah, they did that in the last one.
She was adamant that his movements were silent, and she
had suggested that he might have been barefoot at the
time of the attack. These first three attacks had a
clear pattern of escalation. John Crudi's injuries were relatively light
and his wife was unharmed. The Rosetto suffered severe injuries
through both, although both survived during the Davy attack. I

(18:45):
think that guy died, Okay, Okay, this just in t
Lisa sucks at doing stuff. Joseph Davey was attacked and
that's why he was just groaning next to her, and
that makes sense, makes sense. Yeah, and he died from
his attack. Okay. So we have the crudies pretty light
injuries to the husband, wife not harmed. The Rosetto's suffered

(19:06):
severe injuries, but both survived the Davy attack. The husband
was hit with such brutality that it caved a fifteen
degree angle into the mattress Jesus. So that's the e Scalatian.
It's said that this suggests that that X men spree
might have started just as burglaries, but then he really
sought and craved physical confrontation. Yeah, if he was responsible

(19:30):
for all of them, because those are that set of three.
It's debated on whether or not. But really, okay, so
I'm not sure if you're remembered when I covered Jack
the Ripper, but in that case, we had a list
of canonical victims who are all victims that are likely
to be linked. Okay, so that one I think had
five checked their bread five canonical victims, but there were

(19:51):
some that like might be related, might not be there,
debaited or whatever. So assuming this is all one perpetrator,
he took some time off and then struck again in
nineteen eighteen. Ok So, now we're going to start the
axe Men of New Orleans canonical it's like the ones
that they are linked together. Okay. So Andrew Maggio, a

(20:12):
barber in the city of New Orleans, had just received
his draft notice. It was May twenty second, nineteen eighteen,
and World War One was on everyone's minds. Andrew didn't
want to go to war, so he went out drinking
that night fell, which is like everyone has always done
the same things, We all have the same brain. Yeah.
When he returned just before two o'clock in the morning

(20:35):
to the place that he shared with his brother Jake,
he noticed nothing unusual, but like he was apparently very drunk,
so would he have noticed anything? Probably not. He's like,
is this the right house? Right? That's all I care about. So,
Jake and Andrew's rooms were like adjacent to the home
of their married brother, like attached, so this is another
grocery store with living quarters in it. Their rooms are

(20:56):
attached to it, but like kind of separate living quarters.
So attached to the home of their married brother, Joseph
Maggio and his wife Catherine. On the morning of May
twenty third, Jake woke up around four am. He realized
that he had been startled awake by some noises that
sounded like groaning, like you know, you wake up and
you're like, what the fuck was that noise? It could
have been a gunshot, It could have been thunder like,

(21:17):
could have been a ghost, could have been a ghost
which Sarah's house is haunted. We didn't talk about that.
We didn't, and I forget to tell you about the
other night. Wait into it at the end. Yeah, right,
ghosts down somewhere, So listen to the end if you
want to hear about Sarah's ghost. Yeah. So these noises
were coming through the wall from the room where Joseph
and his wife slapt. Jake got up and knocked on

(21:38):
the wall to get their attention, but didn't get a response,
so he knocked louder and again got nothing. He was
now kind of worried, so he woke up his brother Andrew,
but it was difficult because Andrew had just gotten home
just a couple of hours later earlier drunk. Finally, Jake
got him up and together they went into Joseph's living quarters.
To their alarm, they found evidence of a break in.

(21:58):
A wooden panel had been chiseled out of chiseled out
and removed from the kitchen door, so it was like
on the ground next to the door with the chisel
on top of it. They got into the house through
the kitchen around to the hallway and they entered Joseph's bedroom.
He was on the bed with his legs dripped over
the side, and Catherine, his wife, was partially laying on

(22:18):
top of him. When Joseph saw his brother, he tried
to his brothers. He tried to stand up but fell
over like half out of bed, so he's still alive.
They ran to check him and found that he was
barely alive with deep bloody gashes on his head. Catherine
was already dead, lying in a pool of blood. They
obviously called the police immediately. Yeah, the killer had cut

(22:39):
the couple's throats with a straight razor before bashing their
head into an ax. When law enforcement began to investigate,
they found the bloody clothes of the murderer, like he
had changed into a clean set of clothes before fleeing
the scene. Police ruled out robbery as motivation for the
attacks because nothing was missing, like there was money and
valuables left in plain sight. Near the couple's home. There

(23:00):
was a message written in chalk that read quote missus
Joseph Maggio will sit up tonight, just write missus tony quote,
which is just like I hate old Tamy. We're leaving
words out my brain cannot okay, So a drastic escalation.
If these are connected to the previous ones, right, but
remember there was like eight years. Yeah, could the killer

(23:23):
have gone somewhere else and escalated somewhere else and then
return or. Investigators immediately questioned several people, but all were
released for lack of evidence. They I mean, yeah, I
mean did the brother survive or did he die? The brother? Yeah,
you said the wife died her husband? Yes, sorry, they

(23:43):
both died, Okay, sorry I was the brother was drunk. No,
their other brothers Okay, yeah, I couldn't remember. Also, I
don't know if you remember in Jack the Ripper and
I didn't even think about this when I was hyping
this up, but there was like a weird message written
in chalk at one of those crime scenes too vaguely.
Do you remember what time in nineteen eighteen, eighteen eighty eight.

(24:06):
I'm gonna go on a lemon, say are these connected?
I don't think so. Yeah, there's no like, it's the chalk,
it's the it's just the chalk. Just because they had
chalk in New Orleans isn't mean it was Jack the Ripper.
The razor was found to belong to Joseph's brother Andrew,
who owned a barbershop in the area. His employee Esteban
Torres told police that Andrew had taken, like taken the

(24:26):
razor from the shop two days before, saying that he
wanted to have a nick honed from the blade. Okay,
so then police are looking at Andrew like, right, didn't
you didn't want to go after war? Did you murder
your brother and his wife? Andrew blamed his failure to
hear any noise related to the attack itself on his

(24:48):
intoxicated state. Yeah, like I got home and I passed out, right,
or what if it happened before? Well, no, because Joseph
was still alive, Yeah, barely. Police really seemed shocked that
he didn't hear anything during the attack. But like, have
police never been drunk? Maybe not that drunk, I don't know.
So Andrew was briefly the police chiefs prime suspect in

(25:12):
the crime, but he was released after investigators were unable
to break down his statement, like he's stuck to the
story that he had and all that. A little more
than a month later, another couple was attacked in the
early morning hours of June twenty. June twenty seventh, nineteen eighteen.
Blis Besseuomer, a grocer, and his mistress Harriet Lowe lived

(25:33):
in quarters in the back of the store. So John
Zanka took a delivery of bread to Lewis Bessemer when
he found the store was locked up tight, which was
super unusual, so mister Bessuomer was always up early in
waiting for this. It is worth noting that he was
a native of Poland, so he was not an Italian immigrant, okay,

(25:54):
just but was a grocer in the area. The delivery
guy what was his name, John, John, I put his
last name, and I hate when I do that. Went
around to the side door to knock and he heard
movement inside, which he was like, okay, like they're getting up,
They're getting up. They must slept in. I don't know
whatever shit happened, But when Louis opened the door, John

(26:16):
was shocked to see his face was covered in blood.
Louis Bestmer said that someone had attacked him and he
pointed with a shaking hand towards his bedroom. So John
went to look and found Harriet Lowe covered with a
blood soaked sheet. She had an awful, terrible head wound
and bloody barefoot bloody barefoot prints led away from the bed.

(26:38):
Louis had been struck with an axe above his right temple,
and Harriet was hacked over her left ear. Though badly injured,
both were still alive. Louis Bestmer stated to investigators that
he had been sleeping when he was attacked with a
hatchet or an axe. I feel like they're like interchangeable.
Like I feel like a small axe is the same
thing as a large hatchet. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

(27:00):
Almost immediately police arrested Louis Obcon, a forty one year
old black man who had been employed at the grocery
store for just a week before the attacks. No evidence
existed that could prove that Lewis now I have to
Lewis's Louis Obacon was guilty. Police arrested him, I think
probably because he was black. Because he was black, yeah,

(27:21):
stating that he had offered conflicting accounts of his whereabouts
on the morning of the attack. Louis Obacon was later
released as police were unable to gather any evidence to
hold him, okay, which is surprising for the time, honestly. Yeah.
Though the crime did make the newspapers, a bigger note
to some was the scandal of the mistress. I was
gonna Okay, I saw you perk up when I said mistress. Okay, well,

(27:44):
because my thought process was is she a mistress because
they're living together not married, or does he have a
wife that he's got checked up somewhere else? Okay. So
Harriet Lowe became the center of a media circus as
she continually made scandalous and often false statements relating to
both the attacks and the character of Louis Bestomer. After

(28:04):
Louis Bestmer fell under suspicion of espionage following the discovery
of foreign written letters in his possession, Harriet told police
that she thought that he was a German spy, resulting
in his immediate arrest. Okay, that that's a turn. He
was released two days later, though, Okay. So. After the attack,
one side of Harriet's face was partially paralyzed, and on

(28:26):
August fifth, she had a surgery performed in an effort
to correct that. Two days later, she died, but before
she passed, she told authorities that she suspected it was
Lewis Bestmer who had attacked her and himself with a
fucking hatchet axe whatever, Just like that's just as bad
as the one lady that they said committed suicide when

(28:48):
the stabs to the back of her fucking hut. Yeah,
dozens of stabs, right, and she supposedly given Okay, sorry,
that's a whole mother, That is a whole we someone
no doubt. Okay. So so Lewis Bestimer was then charged
with murder and served nine months in prison before being
acquitted on May first, nineteen nineteen, after a ten minute

(29:09):
jury deliberation. Yeah, because what the fuck do you think?
That's what the people of the jury said. Yeah. They
were sitting there during the trial and think of it,
and then they're like, can we heard this long? We
already know what our answer is going to be, right, Okay.
So I some articles cover this and they do like

(29:30):
the whole, big, long timeline. So you have the attack,
and then you have all these other attacks, and then
you have like his trial and his staff later donline,
I just put it together because like I, it's not him. Right.
So now going back to August fifth, nineteen eighteen, in
the early morning hours and a Schneider Oh wait, okay,
hold on, I forgot to put it in here. Louis

(29:51):
Beustimer his wife quote unquote, potentially remember I text you
and I was like, I've been searching and searching and
searching and searching for this man's wife's name and I
couldn't find it anywhere, as if she didn't exist. I
think that what you said about it was scandalous. And
she's in Harriet was a mistress because they were living
together or not married. Yeah, I couldn't find any evidence

(30:11):
that he had had a wife. Yeah, I'm I'm gonna
go with And I tried for hours. I remember you
saying that. I do remember that now. Yeah, I think
it's more along the lines of she was seen as
who were for living with the man, well not married. Yeah, okay,
So anyway, that was a tangent all on my own.
So August nineteen, eighteen, twenty eight year old Anna Schneider,

(30:32):
who was eight months pregnant, awoke to find a dark
figure standing over her and was bashed in the face repeatedly.
Her scalp was cut open and her face was covered
in blood. Anna was discovered after midnight by her husband
Ed as he returned home from work. Anna survived, but
claimed that she didn't remember anything from the attack and
actually gave birth to a healthy baby girl two days later.

(30:54):
She says the trauma from the taf Probably Center in
that labor Yeah, I would say. Ed told police that
nothing was stolen from the home besides six or seven
dollars that had been in his wallet that he had
left at the home that day. Okay, Now, I'm just like,
if we're acting people like we're going about everywhere like

(31:14):
we're sneaking and attacking people, clearly you have to realize that,
like you're not actually killing most of them, like you're
leaving a trail. But I guess like you're not actually,
But I'm surprised that as a murderer, like they haven't
learned learned from past mistakes because they're not. But they're
getting away with it. So it's yeah, but for how
long you know, like you're leaving, you bitch? If you're

(31:36):
telling making on space right now? God damn it, Lisa, Okay,
ruin the rest of my life, come on? Okay. When
the newspapers ran the story, they really spread fear to
the population with bold headlines like is an X man
at large in New Orleans? Yes? Yes, yeah, but I

(31:57):
think like just like the constantly reporting on it, right
with any with any crime or set of espree of crimes,
or anything. People become more vigilant and worried. Well, yeah,
the one guy tried to like set up a little
booby trapped, right, and it didn't work. That was in
the first set. So just axes and chisels were found
outside of several people's homes. A few claimed that they

(32:18):
had scared a potential intruder away and like police were
just like inundated with a billion tips. I saw this
guy jumping over this fence. I saw somebody with a
weird bowlers hat going, you know, like I saw somebody
with a mockingbird. You know, the mockingbird's gone. And that
was also from the first set. I know that would
be that the thing that ties them together. An ex
convict was arrested shortly after Anna's attack, but was later

(32:40):
released due to lack of evidence, because what evidence do
they have, Right, we're not fingerprinting, there's no DNA, just hazy.
He's using axes and shit that he steals from other
places and finds out like he's got his own specific
murder weapon. Right, everybody's got an ax in their backyard.
It's nineteen eighteen, and right on August tenth, nineteen eighteen,

(33:02):
Pauline and Mary Bruno awoke to the sound of commotion
in the adjoining room where their elderly uncle, Joseph Romano resided.
Upon entering the room, the sisters discovered Joseph had taken
a serious blow to the head, which resulted in two
open cuts. The assailant was fleeing the scene as they arrived,
but they were able to give a description of a

(33:23):
dark skinned, heavy set man who wore a dark suit
and a slouched hat. That's different than before. That is
different than before. Romano was able to walk to the
ambulance once it arrived, but he died two days later
due to the severe head trauma. Yeah. Other clues of
this crime were similar to previous ones, like the scene
was ransacked but nothing was stolen, the killer had used

(33:44):
the owner's hatchets if from the backyard, and panels of
the doors or windows were chiseled away to gain entry
into and the majority of the victims of Italian minus
Sun bestomer I pointed this way like that guy. John Dantonio,
a then retired Italian detective, made public statements where he
hypothesized that the man who had committed the crime, who

(34:06):
had committed the recent murders was the same man who
had killed the people from the nineteen ten to nineteen
eleven attacks. He described the so, I mean, I think
a lot of people had just kind of like forgotten.
It's been eight years, yeah or whatever. And he was like, no,
when I was an active detective, these were happening, and
this is very similar, so he said. He described the

(34:29):
potential killer as an individual of dual personalities who killed
without any real motive. This type of individual would likely
have been like a normal law abiding citizen who was
just overcome by an overwhelming, overwhelming desire to kill. He
later would go on to describe the killer as like
a Doctor Jekyll, mister Hyde. Yeah, type of situation. What

(34:51):
I was just gonna say, yeah, because normally during the day,
most people don't walk around asking people in the face,
because well at night most people don't get anybody either.
But I'm saying, if you're going to ask people, you're
not going to do it. When somebody's staring at you,
I can say who you are. It's true. On the
night of March tenth, nineteen nineteen, Italian immigrant Charles Cortimiglia

(35:14):
and his family, so his wife Rosie and infant daughter
Mary were attacked in their residence on the corner of
Jefferson Avenue and Second Street in Gretna, Louisiana, which is
a New Orleans suburb, so not so great in the city. Well,
maybe people are looking too closely to what's going on
in their neighborhoods and New Orleans. Upon hearing screams from
the residents, grocer Orlando Ordano rushed across the street to investigate.

(35:38):
He discovered that the court Miglia family had all been
attacked by the axe men. Charles and Rosie had suffered
skull fractures from blows caused by an axe which was
found on their back porch, and Mary was killed in
her mother's arms from a blow to the back of
the neck, which is really sad. So we're definitely escalating here.

(35:58):
We're like without no guard to anything at this point. Yes,
And I think it must show that this person's not
like staking out the families at all, right, because it
sounds like Mary was in bed with her parents, not
in like her own separate room or anything. Nothing was
stolen from the house, but a panel on the back
door had been chiseled away. Charles was released two days

(36:19):
after the attack, while his wife had to stay in
the hospital. Upon gaining full consciousness, Rosie claimed that the neighbor,
George Orlando, and his eighteen year old son, Frank, were
responsible for the attacks. Orlando was a sixty nine year
old man and was said to be in too poor
of health to have done this. Frank, eighteen year old son,

(36:41):
was six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds
and would have been too large to fit through the
panel in the back door. Okay, what or were we
not reaching through the panel to unlock the door? I
think in some of them like you couldn't. That is
again that goes to like how brain's work, and how
like to just like randomly your brain saying no, this

(37:02):
person did this to me. That's her recollection of night
or whatever. It could also be. She was attacked and
then the first faces that she saw think he's too
fat to fit through the panel on the back door.
Charles denied his wife's claims. He was like, Nope, that
absolutely was not not them. Police nonetheless arrested both men
and charged them with murder. The men would later be

(37:24):
found guilty. Frank was sentenced to hang, and his father
was sentenced to life in prison. Charles divorced his wife
after the trial, which like divorced in nineteen eighteen to
really show like no, what the fuck? Yeah yeah, because
she was like they adamant about it. Almost a year
later was he admitted that she had falsely accused the

(37:46):
Jordano's out of jealousy in spite, and this resulted in
their release. And then I wrote, I'm kind of surprised
they weren't just very quickly or frank at least, wasn't
just very quickly executed. Okay, yeah, but also you're jealous,
so you just ruined two people's life. I don't know
if they had like competing grocery stores or something, or
I don't know, or maybe she said that because again

(38:07):
she was attacked and there were the first faces that
she saw and then like didn't want to yeah say
just kidding, I was wrong, I don't know, yeah, Okay.
So then a new twist came upon the scene when
the Times pickiun newspaper received a taunting letter on March fourteenth,
nineteen nineteen that promised another attack. If you know anything
about this, it would be like this letter. You don't
know any of us. I haven't so far. I almost

(38:29):
didn't do this because I was like, eh, it's too no,
I don't not okay. So the letter was dated from
Hell March thirteenth, nineteen nineteen, to the editor of The Times,
pickyun in New Orleans in general, okay, steamed mortal. I
don't know if I can get through this with that laughing.
I don't look at me. I don't know. You just
sew me like fuck? Would I do it? I, esteemed mortal.

(38:50):
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 in a fell demon from
the hottest Hell. I am what you new Orlenians. I'm
what you Orlenians and your foolish police called the axe Man.
When I say fit, I shall come again and claim

(39:11):
other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I
shall leave no clue except my bloody axe be smeared
with the blood and brains of he whom I have
sent below to keep me company. If you wish, you
may tell police to be careful not to rile me.
Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no
offense in the way in which they have conducted their

(39:32):
investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so
utterly stupid so as to amuse not only me but
his Satanic Majesty Francis Joseph, etc. But tell them to beware,
Let them not try to discover what I am, for
it were better that they never were born than for
them to incur the wrath of the axe Man. I

(39:53):
don't think there is any need of such warning, for
I feel sure that your police will always dodge me,
as they have in the past. They are wise and
know how to keep away from all harm. Doubtedly you
Orleanians think of me as the most horrible murderer, which
I am. But I could be much worse if I
wanted to, if I wish, If I wished to, I

(40:13):
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 twelve fifteen o'clock earthly time on
next Tuesday night, I'm going to pass over New Orleans
in my infinite mercy. I am going to make a

(40:34):
little proposition to the people here. It is I am
very fond of jazz music. Shut the fuck up. Okay,
I'm sorry. I've been trying to so I'm like trying
not to look at you. But I also have our
video on the screen too, and I'm like, I need
to get through this. Okay. 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

(40:58):
those house a jazz band is in full swing at
the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a
jazz band going well well, then so much the better
for the people. One thing is certain, and that is
some of the people, some of the persons who do
not jazz it on Tuesday Night, if there be any,
will get the acts well. As I am cold and

(41:22):
crave the warmth of my natest Tartarus, and as it
is about time that I that I have left your
homely earth, 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 the realm of fancy.

(41:45):
And signed the ax Man so we're just like fucking
with people, like to see if we can get them
to play our favorite music at this point, because did
people do it? So? Per the Killer's statement that no
one listening to jazz music on March nineteenth would get
the AX, the music flowed from homes across much of
the city. Dance halls were filled to capacity, and professional
and amateur bands played jazz at parties at hundreds of

(42:07):
houses across town and no one was killed. Imagine this
guy is just in a jazz band and wants to
get picked up more so that so like this is
I think I have it injured. Like that's the theory somebody, Okay,
what if fucking like that was so hard for me
to read? I don't know how. Honestly, I don't know
how you made it through reading the entire thing, because
I would have not. There's just so much like, are
we Is this our our original satanic panic? Like we're

(42:32):
trying to cause I don't know, But again, I think
Jack Ripper wrote letters and stuff. He didn't call himself
like a spirit, I don't think, but he wrote tunting letters.
I think it's just some shipthead. I don't know. I know,
I also want to know, like, what were they tripping
on while they wrote this? I don't I don't even
know how else to address that. It's just I just
love the shut the fuck up. I couldn't hold it
in anymore. Okay, So that was March nineteenth. Okay, no one,

(42:58):
everybody is jazzing from the letter. On August tenth, nineteen nineteen,
grocer Steve Boco was attacked as he slept in his
bedroom by an axe wielding intruder. Boko awoke during the
night to find a dark figure looming over his bed.
When he regained so he got knocked out by the
vote of the head. When he woke up, he ran

(43:19):
into the street to investigate the intrusion, which I'm like, buddy,
how are we running right? That's where he found that
his head had been cracked open, so like he didn't
know really, he just woke up and was like, what
the fuck happened. He ran to the home of his neighbor,
Frank Ganuza, where he lost consciousness again and collapsed. Nothing
had been taken from his home, yet once again, a
panel on the back door of the home had been

(43:40):
chiseled away. He recovered from his injuries, but couldn't remember
any details of the attack. On September Tewod, a local
druggist named William Carson escaped the axe man when he
fired several shots at an intruder who had broken into
his home. The killer had left a broken door in
an axe behind, So apparently the spirit it is afraid

(44:01):
of guns. Yes. I was gonna say with the one
that you were talking about previous to this one that
I was surprised that more people aren't sleeping like with
a gun on their hand, or was sleeping with an
ass to be like ax frax, motherfucker. Here's like no,
I well, I don't know, like how if everyone had
guns and you know, everybody had an ax though. Yeah.

(44:24):
On the night of September third, nineteen nineteen, Sarah Lahman
was attacked in her apartment. Neighbors came to check on
her because she lived alone, and they actually broke into
her home when she didn't answer. They discovered the nineteen
year old laying unconscious on her bed, suffering from a
severe head injury and several missing teeth. The intruder had
entered the apartment through an open window and attacked her

(44:45):
with a blunt object. A bloody axe was discovered on
the front lawn of the building, So I think like
the back part of the axe. Yeah. Sarah Laman recovered
from her injuries but couldn't remember any details of the attack.
On the night of October twenty October twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen,

(45:05):
Mike Pepatone's wife. Do I not have her name in her?
Was I just over the wife's names by the time
I got to the probab place, or they may not
have included it. They may not have included it. Yeah,
she was woken up by a noise and went into
the bedroom. I don't know if she was sleeping on
the couch or whatever. They were not together in the
middle of the night. Oh okay, so got to the
bedroom just as a large axe wielding man was fleeing

(45:27):
the scene. Mike Pepatone had been struck in the head
and was covered in blood. Bloodspetter was all over the
majority of the room. So this woman who children is
just nameless. I guess was the mother of six children
and was unable That's a weird spot to put that
they had six kids. Okay. She was unable to describe
any characteristics of the killer. Besides he was large. Okay.

(45:48):
The Pepatone murder was the last of the alleged axe
man attacks. So the police received a report about an
incitant in Los Angeles, California, that occurred on December second. Apparently,
missus my Pepatone, dressed in black, had accosted a New
Orleans resident named Joseph Mumphrey stepping out of from a
shadowed doorway and shot him. He dropped out on the sidewalk,

(46:10):
and she waited for police to come and arrest him.
And she insisted that she had seen him running from
her husband's room the day he was killed, and tracked
him down to California and killed him. I'm not gonna
say good for her, but how did that happen? And
we don't know where her first name is? Okay, so
her husband's murdered, she says, I don't know, I didn't
see anything. Weeks, no months later, she finds supposedly finds

(46:32):
the dude kills him in California, Right, Okay, I feel
like she knew who it was. Yeah, absolutely, I mean
if she, yeah, did track them all the way down
to California, like right, yeah, And it's all word than
just I saw an old timey article Esther. Esther took
care of some business. Est said, fuck you, goodbye, fuck

(46:52):
you goodbye. So Joseph Mumphrey did have a criminal record,
and during the break between nineteen eleven and nineteen eighteen,
and from the last murder in nineteen eighteen until the
first murder of nineteen I remember there was like a
small breakah in there. He had been in prison both
of those times testing. So Esther was out here just
doing the lord's work. I thought the police was. And

(47:15):
he had left New Orleans rate after Mike Pepatone was killed. Okay,
so he knew, he knew he was seen that time.
I think so aside from Esther's testimony, there was no
evidence that directly linked him to any of these times.
But like there was nothing as linking anyone to anything.
Estra Pepatone Woops served three years of a ten year
sentence in Los Angeles and then disappeared. For her, I

(47:36):
do not condone murder good for her. Okay, there were
no more ex murders than New Orleans. I mean, there were,
like around that area a handful, But I think you
can't attribute every single X murder to this mystery being,
especially because, like you said, it is the most convenient
weapon of the time. Right. One theory suggests that the
attacks were racially motivated, given the New Orleans X man

(48:00):
here to be targeting Italian grocers. But maybe he's just
telling grocers why they give you food. They didn't let
his jazz band play one tie. We gotta track that down.
Others suggest that it might be like that mafia. Yeah,
you know, like the mafia people were shaking down these
Italian grocers for protection money and a lot of them
were refusing. Yea, so they started directing all of their

(48:22):
quote unquote enforcers to do it. And then that's why,
like you might have descriptions of people who are slightly
different or very different. A skinny, white, clean shaven man
and a heavy set black man. Yeah, also, but would
a black man be And I was gonna no, maybe
he was a copycat. Maybe those girls thought they saw,
you know what I mean, like didn't. Actually, I mean,

(48:44):
you're as much as you think you're going to remember
every detail of a traumatic incident like that, you're not.
Contemporary researchers actually do lean towards Joseph Mumfrey being because
he was in prison during all of the birds that
planes that ate your gap, right, and that it just
stopped when he died. When the aster was like, no, fuck,

(49:06):
you killed my husband. Yeah, I want a picture of
Esther and I want to put it on a T shirt.
If you find that for the store that we used
to have, I'm gonna I'm gonna need you to go.
That's your job right now. Okay. So there was also
a and unclear to me if this Joseph Mumphrey that

(49:28):
Esther killed in this person. I think they're the same person,
but it was like very not super clear. His name
was Frank Doc Mumphrey, who would use an alias as
Leon Joseph Monfrey or Manfree owned Mumfrey's Garden District Jazz,
a business that was previously struggling, as noted by many
in the community. And maybe he was trying to get

(49:51):
more business into his jazz like that's where the tie
of the jazz is and or it's just some fuck
would being I was like, I wrote, are we really
killing all these people for your jazz business? No? No, no,
because again, like it was only mentioned like after a
billion people had been asked to the face it wasn't
like after the first one, Like, right, but if this

(50:13):
Monfrey guy that owns jazz business is the same one
that Esther killed, then like that would tie into the letter.
Even if he was just writing as a joke like
everyone plays jazz, then I won't kill anyone. Let me
watch the city bend to my will or whatever. Yeah,
which is probably just a gross person being yeah gross. Yeah.
So anyway, my sources were the Smithsonian Magazine, crimelibrary dot org, Britannica,

(50:38):
the lineup in Wikipedia, and that's the x man of
New Orleans. I'm going with this isn't unsolved. Esther solved it.
Please couldn't do it. Ester did it. It's officially unsolved. No,
I agree he did. Ester solve the case is, but
she fucking took care of the problem. I'm just like
she stayed quiet during the investigation. I was like, I

(50:58):
know where that motherfucker's going. Yeah, I think, which is
what I'm an off of. Most is like, I I
don't it's it was well she was Italian too, right,
well lands and leads into the hole. I take care
of it ourselves, right, I don't trust you're going to
get this job done. I'm doing this well, and look
at maybe there was something to that for that time

(51:19):
period in this area, like not trusting that the police
are going to do it because they would question people
and then be like we don't have enough evidence sorry,
or fucking put people who were clearly innocent in jail, right, Okay, anyway,
that's my case this week. Thanks, I hate it. I
guess the only thing I can say from that is
Esther's area, elogy, and she took care of business. She
sure did. Oh that was I hadn't heard that before.

(51:42):
I'm really surprised because you've done it's old timey. Yeah,
it's axe. I'm not saying I haven't come across the
axe murder or you know, like the title of that. Yeah,
but then I just that's as far as I ever went,
if anything, because I've come across lots of ax murders
that I haven't done. So you don't sound crazy at all. Okay,
how do we close this now that we've already Yeah?

(52:04):
Did we want to, like, in two seconds, tell them
about my ghost? Oh? I forgot the ghost? Yes? Do
you want to start with your editing last week? Okay,
so it's not just last week, it's happened a couple
of times. I remember, I've sent it to you. I'll
be editing, and then all of a sudden, it's just
like weird. Like one time it sounded like a voice.
Oh was a voice the one time. I can't remember
what it said, but it was just something like sudden
and like weird. And then I can't remember what it was.

(52:26):
Last time, just like a weird blip of it was
like a kind of like a weird like laugh, like
a man. So creepy, wasn't that one? Like, oh no,
that was definitely us, Like, no, it was clearly not us.
The other night, Friday night, when we should maybe also
say that you have believed there was a ghost here forever. Oh,
you have like video of ship flying off walls and stuff, shelves, shelves,

(52:50):
So yeah, there are our ghost. Because I like to
call him. I'd say you shm too, because when because
you have his voice. Just so for years of us
living here, like they would just randomly fall off shelves
in the garage. It like things that have been like
in place for years and then all of a sudden,
it just like boops off the shelf and nothing else
is moving and nobody's in there because we have a

(53:11):
camera in there. And then there have been many times
I've seen somebody go past my shower curtain, which I
think I've mentioned. I don't know if I've mentioned that
on here before. Oh, so that's definitely happened, to the
point where I like, I was yelling, thinking it was Kenton,
and then he never came in there. So I text him,
I'm like, did you just walk through the bathroom to
fuck with me? And he's like, I've been sitting on

(53:33):
the couch watching Tiptock this entire time, Like cool, thanks,
I hate it. So there's that. And then the other
night we were over in the bar, like just on
the other side of my basement playing darts, and like
we had stopped because we were talking something, and then
we heard something fall over on this side. So then
I just kept fucking with him and told him the

(53:54):
reason I was winning darts was because the ghost was
helping me. But yeah, so our house is for sure haunted.
They see it seems fine to me. It's fine, yeah,
just as so long as it doesn't he doesn't mess
with our audio. Maybe one of these times he's gonna
pop in and be like no, that guy really did
do say something like that. We can hear and I'll
put you on the show. We will share you. But yeah,
so my house is for sure haunted. I don't get

(54:17):
any bad vibes, so it's fine. Yeah whatever, Yeah I
don't really, We're not going to do the whole spiel
again because you did at the top. But I'll just
say O bously follow us everywhere in Surius with your friends. Yeah,
and that's all we have for this week. Thanks for listening.
Hey bye kay bye.