The Axeman of New Orleans

By Peter Dove

New Orleans has always managed to create a mix of the mysterious and the macabre in our minds. As a city, it is different; its jazz, its location and openness to the elements, its cosmopolitan community. At the turn of the last century, the French influence was still strong. A quarter of the population spoke the Gallic language, and French newspapers were still popular. But these Northern Europeans were not the only significant immigrant group to reside there.
In 1915, Atlantic storms blew into the vulnerable city, and floods threatened lives and buildings. But still the city stood, tall and firm, against all that nature could throw against it. Yet if it could withstand the onslaught of the natural world, the same was not necessarily true of the human one.
Back in 1910, a particularly savage crime took place, a vicious, merciless assault with an axe There is something almost primordial about such an attack. On this occasion, the victim survived, and in a city where racial tensions were rife, where child labour still flourished, the confrontation went largely unnoticed by the wider community. Then, in the early summer of 1911, another incident took place and this time the assault proved fatal. Joe Davi was, in all probability, the first man to die at the hands of the Axeman of New Orleans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201643317

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE AXEMAN

RODNEY ALCALA

KILLER HANDYMAN

ROBERT HOWARD

A MONSTER IN THE CHURCH

RAY COPELAND

JUANA BARRAZA

PETER SUTCLIFFE

New Orleans has always managed to create a mix of the mysterious and the macabre in our minds.  As a city, it is different; its jazz, its location and openness to the elements, its cosmopolitan community.  At the turn of the last century, the French influence was still strong.  A quarter of the population spoke the Gallic language, and French newspapers were still popular.  But these Northern Europeans were not the only significant immigrant group to reside there.

In 1915, Atlantic storms blew into the vulnerable city, and floods threatened lives and buildings.  But still the city stood, tall and firm, against all that nature could throw against it.  Yet if it could withstand the onslaught of the natural world, the same was not necessarily true of the human one.

Back in 1910, a particularly  savage crime took place, a vicious, merciless assault with an axe  There is something almost primordial about such an attack.  On this occasion, the victim survived, and in a city where racial tensions were rife, where child labour still flourished, the confrontation went largely unnoticed by the wider community.  Then, in the early summer of 1911, another incident took place and this time the assault proved fatal.  Joe Davi was, in all probability, the first man to die at the hands of the Axeman of New Orleans.

Time has created something almost cartoon like about this killer.  The way that he carried out his crimes, that they took place in New Orleans, the Big Easy, the home of jazz.  That this music seemed to be a parallel phenomenon to the killings.  More, the letter he sent to a local paper makes the unknown villain seem like a character from Batman, or Spiderman.  Evil, but a caricature of that.  An exaggeration that offers fascination more than repulsion.  Even the name given to him – Axeman – adds to the myth.  He has featured in the popular show, American Horror Story, in a graphic novel by Rick Geary, called the Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans; he is a character around which fiction is created.

The image of the Axeman as a gothic cartoon figure is strengthened by the fact that he attacked at night, that his killings were carried out using any implement to hand, that crimes were especially bloody and macabre.  Time, too, adds to the mystique, as does the fact that the killer has neither been caught nor identified.  He is the Jack the Ripper of New Orleans, a character to make us shiver on dark nights, but in an excited way.  He is the subject of children’s ghost stories.

Except that the reality of this man is very different.

Whether that first victim, Joe Davi, was even attacked by the Axeman is open to question.  Mike Dash, writing for the Fortean Times, disputes the theory.  He says the idea was ‘effectively demolished’ when some detailed research was undertaken into the killer’s crimes.  These included Joe Davi, but seem to suggest that connections between his murder and ones that took place more than six years later are circumstantial at best.  Davi was, like the other victims, Italian.  And that was it.  In all probability he was not even killed with an axe. 

Murders of immigrants and their families were not exactly hot news in the early part of the twentieth century. The crime ridden streets of cities in the Deep South were used to such events.  Back then, few links were made between the main body of the Axeman’s victims and Davi; these have been a more modern development.

Miriam Davis, though, in ‘The Axeman of New Orleans; The True Story’ points out the limitations of police intelligence back in those days.  The concept of the serial killer is a relatively modern phenomenon and police back in the days prior to the First World War would not seek to necessarily make connections between crimes that occurred several years apart.

However, she points out that Davi was not the first victim in that particular spate of attacks.  In fact, there were at least three assaults on Italian immigrant families in a short period of time.

August John Crucci was the first of these.  He had a small store catering to the Sicilian tastes of the immigrant community.  His home was attached to the store.  Crucci was in bed with his wife when they were hit;  Crucci was injured while his wife was threatened.  Police were confused as to the motive of the crime.  It was clearly not sexually motivated, because the wife was not physically harmed.  Theft would seem logical, but only $8 was stolen from the store.

Then, a month later, Joseph and Conchetta Rissetto became the next victims.  The similarities between the crimes taking place seemed too great to ignore.  Both couples were Italian immigrants; both owned stores; both lived in accommodation attached to the stores; both were attacked in bed, and both with an axe.

But in the second incident, no money was taken.

Although several months passed before the attack on the Davi family, once more the similarities between the assaults seem too hard to place in the hands of coincidence.  The Davis too lived in a home attached to the store they operated. This time, though, the axeman struck with such force that Joe Davi was killed.  His wife, Mary, was hit with a porcelain mug and seriously injured.

The Italian community were struck with fear.  Three attacks in less than a year.  But that was that, until 1917.  Whether these crimes were linked in any way to what followed has to be a matter of conjecture.  To suggest that they are completely separate seems a leap too far, even if the culprit in the two sets of attacks turns out to be a different person. This is a theory to which we will return later.

It was just before Christmas in 1917 that fear once more hit the community.  December 22nd, and the store owned by Epifanio and Anna Andollina was coping with the festive rush.  Then, once more at night, their bedroom was invaded by an axe wielding criminal;  the axe was used against both Epifanio and one of his sons, but both survived.

Just six months passed before the community began to suspect that the Axeman, not yet named as such, had returned.  This time the victims were Joseph and Adelle Girard, grocery store owners.  They were hit in the head and face, sustaining serious wounds, but both survived.

Matters escalated on May 23rd 1918 when the Axeman claimed more deaths.  The victims were Joseph and Catherine Maggio; they too owned a grocery store.  The two were in bed when the killer struck.  He firstly slashed both the victims’ throats with a straight razor, before bludgeoning them with an axe.  More details of this crime exist than with former incidents.

Once more, robbery did not seem to be a motive.  Cash and valuables were left in clear sight, but they were untouched.  Joseph died almost certainly as a result of the slash to the throat, which was deep and deadly.  However, police did discover a clue to suggest that these were pre-meditated crimes, not just the random actions of a mad man.  In the Maggios’ apartment, they discovered the bloodied clothes of the killer.  He had clearly taken a spare set to change into before leaving the couple.

The pair were discovered by Maggio’s brothers, Jake and Andrew.  They found Catherine already dead, and Joseph passed within a couple of minutes of their arrival.  They had heard noises coming from their brother’s apartment, which was next door to their own.

Another clue would prove to be a possible forerunner to the kind of serial killer taunting of the authorities which is the mark of TV horror shows.  A couple of blocks from the Maggios’ home a notice had been chalked on a wall.  ‘Mrs Joseph Maggio will sit up tonight.  Just write Mrs Toney.’  Police assumed that the cryptic message was from the killer.

An early suspect was Andrew Maggio himself.  He had returned from a night of celebration – he was about to join the navy.  Police believed that he would have heard the forced entry into the victims’ apartment, which he denied. But Maggio stuck to his story, and the police knew that they needed to look elsewhere.

Just over a month later the Axeman struck again.  Another Italian grocer, Louis Besumer, lived at the back of his store. That night, June 27th 1918, he had company – his mistress, Harriet Lowe.

These two were discovered the following morning when the store failed to open.  A delivery man, John Zanca, found their bodies when he was trying to deliver a batch of bread.  Both were still alive, just.  But they were horribly disfigured.  Besumer had been hit above his right temple with an axe while his mistress had been chopped above her ear.

They were able to give some evidence, and a man was arrested.  But there was insufficient evidence to hold him, and he was released.  Given that in those days the validity of evidence was a moveable feast, it might be safe to say that either the police had no evidence, or the man had an indisputable alibi.  The third option is that the man had influential backing, an idea to which we will return later, although (as will be seen) such a prospect seems unlikely in this case.

In line with the morals of the day, especially when applied to immigrants, many in New Orleans were more outraged by the fact that Besumer was sleeping with his mistress than by the fact that the two had been assaulted.

But police were desperate to find a culprit, and soon settled on Lewis Oubicon, a 41-year-old African American who had been employed at the store.  The evidence against him was sketchy at best, but that was not something to deter the authorities in those days, especially if the suspect was black.  Lowe described her attacker as ‘possibly mulatto’ and Oubican was unable to offer a satisfactory account of his whereabouts on the night of the attack.

There was one final twist to this element of the Axeman’s reign of terror.  After the event, the mistress told police that it was Besumer who had attacked her.  He was charged and was imprisoned for nine months leading up to his trial. 

Meanwhile, the badly disfigured Lowe underwent plastic surgery.  Any kind of surgery in those days was extremely risky, especially a new field such as cosmetic work.  Two days after the operation was finished, Lowe died.  Besumer’s indictment was now for murder. Investigations revealed some letters stored in a trunk and for a while police believed that Besumer might be a German spy.  But this possibility was as weak as those that had passed before.  When it came to his trial, the jury were out for just ten minutes before acquitting the grocer.

The next attack in New Orleans followed a similar pattern to the former assaults, although this time it was a woman alone who fell victim.  She was Mrs Edward Schneider, and she was eight months pregnant at the time.  It seems likely that she was attacked with a lamp that decorated the room.

Her husband discovered her mutilated body when he returned from work, but fortunately both she and the baby survived.  Now police were beginning to speculate, publicly as well as in private, that the attacks may be linked.

More patterns were beginning to emerge as well.  Entry to the properties was gained by the panels of windows or doors being chiselled away.  The attacks took place using the victims’ own implements.  Homes were usually ransacked, but little or nothing was ever taken.  Victims often described their assailant as ‘dark’. 

The police continued their pot luck approach of arresting random people against whom evidence was usually non-existent, or so thin as to break under the least scrutiny.  This time, an ex-convict, James Gleason, was the police force’s quarry.  The evidence against him was that he ran away when police approached.  There was nothing else. He later explained that this was because he had so often been the victim of harassment.

When, on August 10th 1918, the next victim was struck, police were able to add another clue to their growing, but ineffective, catalogue.  A witness description.  The recipient of the attack was once more a grocer, Joseph Ramano, an elderly man who lived with his nieces.  They were awoken by the commotion taking place in their uncle’s room, and burst in just as the attacker was fleeing.  Although their uncle seemed to have survived the attack at first, even being able to walk to the ambulance taking him to the hospital, the head trauma he received ultimately proved to be fatal, and he died two days later.

However, the nieces had seen their uncle’s assailant, and told police that he