Axeman of New Orleans
- History Fix Podcast
- Oct 5
- 28 min read
Episode 133: How a Serial Killer Terrorizing New Orleans Acquired a Reputation as a Jazz Enthusiast
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The clock strikes midnight, March 19th, 1919 in New Orleans, Louisiana. One would expect, on this day and time, for most residents to be asleep in their beds, especially outside of the busier city thoroughfares, but that is not the case on this particular night. Instead, walking down a would be quiet street, you’d find lights on in each home and, what’s more, you’d notice the sounds of jazz music drifting out into the street, a discordant cacophony of noise issuing from each and every house. Others would leave their homes and cram into jazz clubs across the city. Few would sleep and, while some would try to make a fun evening out of it - the night we all stayed up and listened to jazz - most would be terrified. Because, while you might easily mistake such a night as a celebration of sorts, this one was far from it. This was a night of terror, a night New Orleans residents would do anything to avoid being the notorious axeman’s next victim. But who was the axeman and why jazz music? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. It’s Spooktober! Yay! Spooktober is my favorite time of year on History Fix because I have so many spooky stories I want to tell and I mostly try to save them for this month. So I’m super excited to finally get to some of these. Quick announcement before we get into the story today. Some of you may have already noticed if you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel or Patreon but I have completely lost my mind officially and started working on a kid version of the podcast I’m calling History Fix Kids. It is video only and, at the moment, it is only on YouTube and Patreon. I will probably add it to Spotify too at some point. It’s kind of experimental right now and I only have a few episodes out. But if you have kids or you are an educator, check it out. I think you’re really going to like it. That doesn’t change anything for regular History Fix listeners, this show will go on as usual. History Fix Kids is sort of its own separate but obviously related thing and I’m super excited about it. There were a few different encounters I’ve had with people, with History Fix listeners actually that prompted it. History Fix has a lot of young listeners and I love that, I love you guys. But I started to see a need for and a demand for, really, a version of the show geared specifically towards children. And it feels like coming home really because it blends the two halves of what I do - the podcast and education, creating educational resources - it blends them together in this really beautiful way. So anyway, I’m obviously very excited about it. History Fix Kids, just getting started, much more to come on that.
Speaking of kids though, this episode may not be the best one to listen to with your kids because it’s pretty violent and gruesome, but it makes for a great story to kick off Spooktober. So, let’s get into it. You may be familiar with the Axeman of New Orleans from season 3 of American Horror Story. That show is fantastic at absolutely shattering everyone’s understanding of history. So many misconceptions have come from that show. But, like, it’s not really their fault. It’s a fictional show. Don’t watch a fictional show and expect to learn historical facts. We’ve gotta be better about separating fact from fiction. So, please don’t believe anything that you saw in American Horror Story. It’s fiction. Now, there was an axeman of New Orleans serial killer and jazz music was involved, that night of jazz actually happened, but it’s not exactly what people think. We’ll clear that up a little later in the story.
Let’s go back to the very beginning first. At the time, it was believed that the Axeman’s first attack happened in 1917 but, historian Miriam Davis thinks that’s dead wrong. Davis wrote the book about the Axeman called “The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story,” so, if you want to know more after listening to this episode, definitely check that book out. It’s linked in the description. Davis thinks that the serial killer we call the Axeman actually started attacking people back in 1910 except that he went by a different name back then. The attacks that happened back in 1910 were attributed to a man they called the Cleaver. And then they stopped, for years, and started back up again in 1917, some even think 1918, as the axeman. But there are enough similarities between the Cleaver’s attacks in 1910 and the Axeman’s attacks in 1917/1918 that a lot of experts, like Davis, are convinced that they are the same guy, and I agree. For one, they all happened in New Orleans. Two, they were all perpetrated with a similar weapon, a meat cleaver or meat axe in the case of the cleaver, a hatchet or axe in the case of the axeman. For all the attacks, the weapon was found on the victim’s property or nearby. The killer didn’t bring it with him, he found it when he got there or on his way there. And, and this is the kicker, both the Cleaver and the Axeman attacked strictly Italian grocers. Yes, very specifically Italian people who owned or ran or were associated with grocery stores. We’ll talk more about that soon. The main reason the two weren’t connected was because there were 6 years of no attacks between the Cleaver and the Axeman. Some theorize that the Cleaver may have been in jail for some petty crime and unable to keep attacking but it led to this disconnect where two different serial killers emerged, the Cleaver and the Axeman who were most likely the same person.
So let’s go back to the 1910 attacks by the Cleaver who is very likely actually just the Axeman. And another thing that sort of convinces me of that is that we see an escalation. If you know anything about serial killers you know their crimes tend to escalate. The first time they attack it’s a lot more tame and as they go it becomes more and more violent and extreme. So the very first attack by the Cleaver in 1910 is the most tame. He’s just testing the waters. His first victims were an Italian couple who owned a grocery store named Harriet and August Crutti. On August 13, 1910, Harriet awoke in the middle of the night to a man standing over her bed holding a meat cleaver which is like a butcher knife, it has the big rectangular blade for chopping through bones and whatnot. This man is hovering over her holding a meat cleaver and he tells her to give him all the money they have or he will chop her as he had chopped her husband. She gives him $8 which I guess is all they had. I mean that’s a lot more considerable of an amount back then. $8 in 1910 was worth $34 today BUT that had way more purchasing power. $34 AKA $8 would buy you a lot back then. So it isn’t pennies but it isn’t like a fortune either. Anyway, the guy gets away with the $8 and he also steals the couple’s pet mockingbird for whatever reason. He had removed a pane of glass from the kitchen door, apparently trying to unlock the dead bolt but, when he was unable to reach the lock that way, he pried the door open with a railroad pin. You will be glad to know though that, despite sustaining injuries from the meat cleaver, August Crutti made a full recovery not long after. So, we see some rookie moves here. He clearly isn’t confident about how to get in the door. The removing the pane of glass plan fails and he has to come up with a second last minute idea with the railroad pin. Also, August Crutti recovered pretty quickly so he’s clearly at least a little hesitant with his weapon. This isn’t a particularly brutal attack. And he takes money and a bird. So he’s like a little bit confused about what his motives are right now. Is he a burglar or a murderer? Bird kidnapper? What exactly is he doing here? He hasn’t really fleshed that out yet.
But we see some escalation with the next attack, not much. A little over a month later on September 20, 1910, Conchetta and Joseph Rissetto are attacked in their bed by a man wielding a stolen meat ax. The man had climbed in through an unlocked kitchen window and he didn’t steal anything this time. He actually left $23 in the grocery store cash register, cause these were like, these were grocery stores where the people also lived. They had living quarters in like the back part of the grocery store or whatever. So it’s their house but it’s also their store. He climbs in the window, doesn’t touch the cash register, goes straight to the bedroom and attacks the Risettos, then leaves. So the motive is developing. He’s decided he’s a murderer, not a burglar. He’s here for blood not money, this time anyway. Both Conchetta and Joseph Rissetto survived the attack although Conchetta was left permanently disfigured and Joseph was blinded in one eye.
Almost a year goes by before his next attack in the summer of 1911 and this would be his first actual murder that we know of. So far everyone has survived the attacks. Not this one. Clear escalation here. The victims were newlyweds Joseph Davi and his 16 year old very pregnant wife Mary. Like the others, Joseph and Mary Davi were Italian and ran a grocery store where they also lived. Mary is awakened in the night by a man standing over her, sounds familiar. She tries to wake up her husband who is laying next to her but doesn’t realize that he’s already been attacked. He was attacked in his sleep, didn’t even have a chance to react. He had a loaded revolver ready beside the bed that was untouched. But, so Mary tries to wake him up, he’s not waking up. The man tells Mary to hand over all their money but she doesn’t respond. She's just in shock, she can’t even speak, she’s like frozen, so he hits her in the head with a mug, knocking her unconscious. What’s interesting though is, he asked her for money and he seems to have rifled through their things but he doesn’t actually take anything. He leaves jewelry and cash behind. Mary survived but Joseph succumbed to his injuries and died at the hospital about a day after the attack. It was determined that the Cleaver, as he starts to be called, had once again come in through the window and he had also avoided a sort of makeshift security alarm that Joseph had set up. So this is important I think. Joseph Davi had set up this makeshift security alarm by hanging seltzer cans in their bedroom doorway. He had hoped that these would make enough noise to wake him up if there was an intruder. And then he had that loaded gun by his bed. He was obviously preparing for some kind of intruder. Now, this wasn’t during a string of attacks like what would come later where everyone is worried about this guy. It was only the third attack and it had been almost a year since the last one. So what was Joseph Davi so worried about?
This led to a theory that emerged that the Cleaver was part of an Italian mafia group known as the Black Hand Society. Except, that the Black Hand Society wasn’t an actual mafia group, it was more of an extortion tactic, like a common scam that was being used at the time within the Italian community. So it’s all different people, it's not like an organized group. And this, you have to understand this is a very Italian thing, this organized crime, mafia, specifically Sicilian. According to Davis, 80% of the Italian immigrants living in New Orleans were from Sicily. And the mafia was definitely a Sicilian thing. They just handled things differently there, culturally. They didn’t go to the police. They handled things the old fashioned way by carrying out vendettas. If someone wrongs you, you don’t take him to court, you go personally take him out. But the mafia isn’t really what people think. Historian Robert M. Lombardo says in a Smithsonian Magazine article written by Miriam Davis quote “the Mafia was not a secret criminal organization but a form of social organization that developed in Sicily and the south of Italy under very specific circumstances. [it was] a form of behavior and a kind of power, not a formal organization.” This Black Hand Society was a type of Italian mafia activity going on in New Orleans at the time. They would send a letter to whoever they were trying to extort demanding money and they would threaten them if they didn’t give them the money. Joseph Davi had actually received no less than three Black Hand letters demanding $200 from him that he had ignored which explains the seltzer can security system and the revolver by the bed. Someone had been threatening him for money. But, this was an Italian thing: the Black Hand Society and Mary Davi, Joseph’s pregnant wife who survived, swore that the Cleaver, the murderer, was a white man who spoke unaccented English, he wasn’t Italian. Also, he didn’t take any money. He left cash behind and the whole point of the Black Hand scheme was to get money, it was an extortion plot. Also, the fact that Mary Davi’s life was spared does not fit with the MO of the Black Hand Society. They didn’t tend to leave any survivors. They questioned a farmer named Sam Pitzo who had been seen arguing with Joseph Davi in his store right before the murder and who had threatened to kill his neighbor who was also an Italian grocer but Pitzo was very Italian with a mustache and Mary maintained that the murderer had been a clean shaven white man. So they let Pitzo go.
After Joseph Davi’s death, this third attack by the Cleaver, there are no more attacks until December of 1917 and when they start back up, the Cleaver becomes the Axeman. There’s this disconnect because so much time has passed but most people who know anything about this case believe that they are the same person. So, December of 1917, Italian grocers Epifanio and Anna Andollina are asleep in their bed. One again, Anna is awakened to a shadowy figure standing over her husband holding a hatchet. So the meat cleaver has turned into a hatchet or an axe. It’s an escalation and it’s also part of what transforms the Cleaver into the Axeman. Alexandra Kennon Shahin writes in an article for Country Roads Magazine which I have heavily sourced for this episode, linked into the description, quote “After telling the woman to shut up and pointing a revolver at her, the man proceeded to bring the hatchet down on Epifanio in several strong blows. On his way out, as Anna screamed, the intruder passed through the room of the couple’s two young sons, where he hit one in the head with the hatchet and knocked the other in the arm with the butt of his gun. This time, the assailant had carved a panel out of the back wooden door to enter, and he stole nothing. The family had never received threatening messages from the Black Hand, despite the police’s inquiries. Epifanio died ten months later in the Spanish influenza epidemic, his health no doubt weakened from the attack, his assailant still at large,” end quote. So he doesn’t actually kill anyone in this attack. He injures Epifanio but he obviously recovers enough to survive for 10 more months and then die of the Spanish flu. He hits the boys on his way out but clearly not intending to kill them. And he doesn’t take anything. So it’s like escalation but also de-escalation happening here. Which makes sense considering he’s been out of the game for 6 years.
Now, to me it’s pretty obvious that this is just the Cleaver again and I’d probably be looking at records of who in the area went to jail back in 1911 and just got out. But something happens that totally derails the investigation and prevents this connection from being made. The main investigator of the Cleaver cases, Superintendent Reynolds of the New Orleans Police Department was murdered in 1917. The police department has to get a new superintendent, they are sort of starting from scratch, no one sees the full picture like Reynolds had, and so they just don’t make the connection.
On May 23, 1918, this guy really ramps it up. This is the first in the string of attacks most often attributed to the Axeman. On this night Joseph and Catherine Maggio were attacked and killed while they slept in their bedroom behind their grocery store. The killer had used a chisel to remove a panel from the wooden door and had taken an axe from the couple’s backyard. At first I was like, how is this guy managing to find axes at all of these houses just like laying around. I don’t even own an axe. But you have to remember, this is 1918. They likely don’t have heat in their houses. They probably have fireplaces which means they have to chop wood which means they have axes laying around near woodpiles and whatnot. So axes were probably a lot more available back them. So he took the axe from their backyard, killed them with it, and then left it in their bathtub covered in blood. A bloody straight razor was also found on the neighbor’s lawn which was believed to have been used in the murders as well and then ditched afterwards. I don’t know if he found this in the bathroom when he was putting the axe in the bathtub and then like went back with it to make sure they were dead. I don’t know. This guy has failed to kill a lot of people in the past so maybe he used the razor to make sure he finished the job this time. Because he slit their throats with it. He ransacked the house and appears to have taken $50 but left other cash and valuables behind. And so this is the first time where no survivors were left behind. He tended to leave the wives alone for the most part, but not this time. Catherine Maggio gets the axe too, literally.
Then we have a few red herrings. We have some attacks that seemed like the axeman that actually weren’t the axeman which, of course, derailed the investigations even further. About a month after the Maggio’s were killed, a Polish grocery store owner, not Italian, Polish, named Louis Besumer and his common law wife or mistress or housekeeper or something, this lady he was shacking up with, Harriet Lowe, were both attacked with a short handled axe. But the attacks on Harriet were much much worse than what Louis sustained. It later came out, once Harriot regained her senses somewhat about 5 weeks later, that it was Louis who had attacked her. The head wound she sustained failed to heal and she eventually died from this attack, like weeks and weeks later after and just after naming Louis as the attacker. So, initially thought to be the axeman attacking both of them, later came out that it was actually just Louis Besumer probably trying to get away with killing Harriet for whatever reason by looking like the axeman.
On August 4, 1918 a young mother of three named Mary Schneider who was currently expecting her fourth child was hit while she slept but not with an axe, with the lamp from her bedside table. The house was ransacked and hundreds of dollars and a bunch of stuff, including an axe, had been stolen. People were quick to assume this was the axeman mostly because an axe had been stolen but Mary Schneider was hit with a lamp not the axe. That’s enough of a deviation from the axeman’s MO to convince most that this was not the axeman, just some burglar who broke into Mary Schneider’s house. You’ll be happy to know she survived the attack and successfully delivered her baby girl, whom she named Clara.
But, less than a week after this red herring attack on Mary Schneider, the actual axeman seems to have struck again. An Italian barber this time, named Joe Romano, was beaten to death with an axe while he slept which was found bloodied beside the bed. And you may be thinking, barber? I thought the axeman only attacked grocers. Well, turns out, Joe Romano’s niece operated a small grocery store at the front of the house where he lived. So he himself was not a grocer but he did live in a building that also housed an Italian grocery store. Close enough.
Kennon Shahin writes quote “Two neighbors later told police that in the weeks prior, attempted intruders had been chased away from their homes in the night—both times dropping an axe as they ran. Several other sightings of men attempting to break in near previous Axeman crime scenes came forward. In the weeks after Romano’s death, three other Italians—all grocers—were robbed, though not attacked, in a manner in-line with the Axeman’s methods,” end quote. How many Italian grocers were there in New Orleans in 1918 good lord? Actually, according to Miriam Davis, by 1920, Italian immigrants ran around half of the grocery stores in New Orleans. Also, by 1900 New Orleans had the largest Italian immigrant population in the south at around 20,000. And this is probably a good time to pause and fill you in on that context a little more, Italian immigrants in New Orleans. According to Davis, these Italian immigrants made their way to New Orleans at a welcome time. This was right after the end of slavery, late 1800s and plantation owners were looking for cheap labor. Turns out, Italian immigrants made great cheap laborers. They worked hard and they didn’t mind minimal pay. One planter called them quote ““a hard-working, money-saving race, and content with … few of the comforts of life.” But, the problem with Italian immigrants as plantation workers was that they didn’t stay there long. They saved all of the money they made and they used it to climb the ladder out of that life very quickly. Davis says in a Smithsonian Magazine article quote “As far as the planters were concerned, this was the one problem with Italian workers. Planters grumbled that they couldn’t keep Italians in the field because in a couple of years they would have [quote within a quote] “laid by a little money and are ready to start a fruit shop or grocery store at some cross-roads town.” By 1900, small Italian-owned businesses had sprung up all over Louisiana,” end quote. So the formula was, immigrate to Louisiana, work on a plantation saving all the measly earnings you made, invest that money into a fruit cart, save that money, invest that money in a corner grocery store. So many of them were doing this and that’s why there were so many Italian grocers.
After the attack on Joe Romano, an Italian detective named Dantonia comes forward with the theory that the Axeman is really just the Cleaver but he took a 6 year break. He said quote “I am convinced the man is of a dual personality … and it is very probable he is the man we tried so hard to get ten years ago, when a series of ax and butcher-knife murders was committed within a few months … My opinion is based on experience and a study of criminology …” So he thinks this guy is living sort of a double life. Like he may just be a normal guy by day, Axeman by night. He compares him to Jack the Ripper who operated in London only around 30 years before the Axeman. Jack the Ripper was fresh and still unsolved. So the Axeman is sort of a New Orleans version of Jack the Ripper. Dantonia throws this theory out but everyone is like “nah, you’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mmkay. Part of this hesitancy to believe they were the same guy was because witnesses had claimed the Cleaver was a white man, remember, a clean shaven white man. But, the detective working the case at the New Orleans Police Department was convinced that the Axeman was a Black man. I don’t know why. I can’t find any witness accounts or anything saying that he was Black. I have to assume, you know this is 1918, I have to assume there is some racial bias here but I really don’t know why Detective Mooney was so sure the guy was Black. I can only speculate. On August 16 the Times Picayune newspaper published a joke making fun of the floundering investigation writing quote “If this axeman proves to be a negro, I guess the head writers will call it an ebony Mafia,” end quote. As if to say, how did we go from Italian mafia to white guy to… Black guy? That’s literally out of nowhere. And it’s yet another thing that keeps them from connecting the Cleaver attacks to the Axeman attacks.
The night of March 10, 1919 marks the most horrific of all the attacks, the one that really scares the life out of people. Italian grocery store owners Charlie and Rosie Cortimiglia and their two year old daughter Mary were found bludgeoned with an axe in their bed. The house was ransacked but nothing was taken. Two axes were found on the property and one of them was covered in blood and hair. Rosie, the mother, was the only survivor. At first when questioned, Rosie denied having seen the attacker at all. But, police were pretty desperate at this point and so they resorted to some pretty desperate measures. When Rosie got out of the hospital, having lost her husband and child and having been brutally attacked herself, the police threw her in jail. Yeah. They made her spend the night in jail until she confessed who attacked her. So, less than 24 hours after she said that she didn’t see the attacker, she signed a document saying that it was her neighbors Iorlando and Frank Jordano. The Jordanos were arrested and kept in jail for an entire year before Rosie, wracked with guilt, confessed to the Times-Picayune newspaper that she had wrongfully accused them. The paper wrote quote “A little more than a week ago Mrs. Cortimiglia came to the offices of The Times-Picayune and in the presence of several members of the staff voluntarily confessed that she had falsely identified the convicted men at the trial. She declared that she was mentally unbalanced at the time of the trial and wished to withdraw her testimony against the Jordanos,” end quote. Ya think?
Soon after the attacks on the Cortimiglia family a mysterious letter appears in that newspaper, the Times-Picayune, that is apparently from the Axeman himself. March 16, 1919, the paper published this letter it had been sent. It reads, and I’m going to read you the whole thing because I think it’s important. It reads quote “Hell, March 13, 1919 Editor of The Times-Picayune, New Orleans: 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 fell demon from hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the axman. When I see fit, I shall come again and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody ax, besmeared with the blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company. If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way in which they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid so as to amuse not only me, but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, 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 axman. I don’t think there is any need of such a 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. 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 to 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 o’clock (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 the 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 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 those persons who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the ax. Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time 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. —The Axman” end quote.
Okay so my initial reaction is that this is a joke. This demon from hell is fond of jazz? He says “Person’s who do not jazz it on Tuesday night?” Jazz it? And then he’s like, okay welp I’m cold and I wanna go home so byeeee. It’s borderline comical. But this was taken very seriously at the time. People were scared. A two year old girl had been bludgeoned to death and so they took this letter seriously. Kennon Shahin writes quote “Late into the night of March 18, 1919 and early the morning after, jazz floated into the damp, dark air from homes and bars across New Orleans and its suburbs. Normally such an outpouring of music is, and was, a product of celebration—but on this particular spring night, the sound signaled something much more sinister. New Orleanians were playing jazz music out of fear for their very lives,” end quote. But most experts, including Miriam Davis, do not believe the letter was written by the Axeman at all. They think the whole thing was a hoax. Davis says quote “When you read the letter, this is a person who’s an educated person—he has a classical allusion to Tartarus [a place of torment in Greek mythology]. It reads like it was written by a fraternity or something. And the person who is the Axeman, from the description we’ve got of him, he’s a working man, he’s working class. And I just don’t think a working class person at that time would have been educated enough to write that letter,” end quote. It’s like the Shakespeare conundrum all over again. In her book Davis details speaking with both a modern homicide detective and a Georgia Bureau of Investigations criminal profiler and both agree that the letter was not written by the actual Axeman.
So who wrote it and why? A lot of people think the letter was written by a New Orleans jazz musician named Joseph John Davilla. You see, Davilla wrote a jazz song that night, the night of March 19th, called “The Axeman’s Jazz (Don’t Scare Me Papa)” that he claimed he finished around 2 am once he was sure that the Axeman wasn’t coming to get him. He’s playing jazz music because the letter said to play jazz music so you won’t get killed right? But, then he sort of uses that, this story behind his new song, to get publicity. So there are some who think it was actually Davilla who sent the letter to the newspaper pretending to be the Axeman as a way of getting attention to his jazz music, like it was a publicity stunt. On March 19th, the Times-Picayune published a cartoon of sorts, think political cartoon, showing a family playing jazz music in this sort of frantic frenzy while staring out the door, terrified, looking for the Axeman. Davilla would later use this same cartoon as the cover of the sheet music for his new song which you are seeing right now if you’re watching this episode on YouTube or Patreon. So, it’s fishy.
Another nearby newspaper called the West Bank Herald criticized the Times-Picayune for publishing the obviously fake letter, writing on March 20th quote, “It is very evident that the man who wrote this letter is one with more than ordinary intelligence and it can readily be seen that it is written more as a joke than anything else. In fact, it looks to us that someone put one over on The Times-Picayune. Undoubtedly, the letter made good Sunday reading for those who like to read articles of a sensational character, but we must stop to think of the great amount of harm it has done to the ignorant classes who are superstitiously inclined and believed to a certain extent that this ax-man would visit certain families who did not have a jazz band … If the T.-P. would have devoted the same amount of space in an effort to capture the man who is causing these murders, it would have served the public to a much greater advantage than the publishing of this joke-letter, which caused a great deal of uneasiness and worry among the ignorant classes. So satisfied was the T.-P. with this ‘scoop’ that it gloated over it Wednesday morning by publishing a cartoon showing one of the many families in a state of fright, the mother piteously trying to sooth the children by playing jazz music in compliance with the order of the ‘Axman’. We fail to see the joke.” end quote. Same.
The Axeman did not actually attack anyone on the night of the jazz music. And, actually, there were no more attacks in New Orleans after the Cortimiglia family on March 10 1919. That was it. But these guys don’t just stop. If a serial killer stops killing it means something has happened. He’s either been jailed for something else, he’s been killed himself, or he’s moved out of the area. Miriam Davis thinks the latter is the case here, that the Axeman left New Orleans and continued killing. She writes quote “Evidence from police records and newspaper accounts, however, show that he struck elsewhere in Louisiana, killing Joseph Spero and his daughter in Alexandria in December 1920, Giovanni Orlando in DeRidder in January 1921, and Frank Scalisi in Lake Charles in April 1921. The killer’s modus operandus was the same: breaking into an Italian grocery in the middle of the night and attacking the grocer and his family with their own axe. The Axeman then disappeared from history.” end quote. So who was this guy? There are theories, none very good. There was that farmer, that Sam Pitzo guy who was threatening Italian grocers but he wasn’t white enough so they never really looked into him. There was a guy named Joseph Mumfre who had been arrested in 1907 for attempting to bomb an Italian grocery store. This would have been before all the attacks so I assume he was out by 1910 when the Cleaver first struck or we wouldn’t be suspecting him. This theory really gets some teeth when another Italian grocer named Mark Pepitone was beaten to death in his sleep with an iron bar in October of 1919 so that’s 7 months after the last official Axeman attack and it’s an iron bar, not an axe. So probably not the axeman. Davis thinks this was just an unrelated vendetta and he happened to be an Italian grocer. Anyway, Pepitone’s widow, a woman named Esther, gets remarried to a guy named Angelo who works with Joseph Mumfre. Esther and Angelo move to Los Angeles with Mumfre and then Angelo disappears mysteriously without a trace. Soon after that, according to Esther, Mumfre walked into her house and demanded that she give him $500 or he would quote “kill her like I did your husband.” I actually love the way this story ends. Esther goes back into the bedroom like she’s getting him the money but really she gets a revolver. She comes back out shooting. She ends up shooting Mumfre 11 times, killing him. But, to me, there’s very little connection to the Axeman here. Mumfre said he killed her husband but is he talking about Angelo or Pepitone? Probably Angelo, the one we know he actually knew and worked with. Some weird coincidences for sure though. Mumfre kills the husband of a woman who used to be married to an Italian grocer in New Orleans who was bludgeoned to death AND Mumfre once got arrested for trying to bomb an Italian grocery store. It’s weird but it’s not great proof that Mumfre was the Axeman. It’s more just proof that there were a lot of Italian grocers in New Orleans carrying out various vendettas against each other. Davis agrees saying quote “It was funny how that story got twisted in the retelling from the L.A. Police, to the New Orleans Police, to the New Orleans reporters, again, like a game of telephone… And it led to [Mumfre being assumed by many to be the Axeman]. And it’s easy to see how it happened,” end quote. Girl stealing my telephone analogy. I’ll allow it. It’s a good one.
So, to this day, we have no idea who the New Orleans Axeman serial killer was. No idea. And I think that’s kind of wild considering how many witnesses he failed to kill. There were a lot of survivors. Mary Davi said he was a clean shaven white man which means she saw his face, right, to know that he was clean shaven. I’m astounded that with so many eyewitnesses, they never managed to catch this guy. But I think a lot of mistakes and just mishaps led to this case being mishandled by the police. For one, the main detective handling the Cleaver cases from years earlier was murdered. Then the new detective was convinced the Axeman was, not only not the Cleaver, but also a Black man which I can find no witness testimony to support. I have all kinds of speculative theories on that that have to do with the letter published in the newspaper about the Axeman loving jazz and jazz being performed by mostly Black musicians at the time and jazz music carrying this weird evil connotation for conservative white folks in those days. But then modern experts and criminal profilers swear that that joke letter wasn’t even written by the Axeman and even the guy we think wrote it the Davilla guy, he wasn’t Black either. So I think that detective, Detective Mooney, just really went down the wrong rabbit hole, probably fueled by racial prejudice of the day.
And then it’s like, what in the heck with the Italian grocery stores? Why were they such a target? Was this like a fellow grocer just trying to take out all the other grocery stores in town so he would get all the business. I’d be taking a look at the other grocers for sure. Who else has that weird and specific of a motive? Just like, someone who hates Italian grocers? But then on the other hand, who would hate Italian grocers? Probably not other Italian grocers. Possibly someone upset about Italian immigrants climbing that ladder up from field hand to grocer. There was a lot of hateful racism towards Italian immigrants in those days. Despite hailing from Europe, they were not seen as white people. They were not on the same social level. According to Davis quote “But the commercial success of Sicilian immigrants couldn’t protect them from the racial prejudices of the American South. Italians never entirely replaced black labor in Louisiana but worked alongside African-Americans in the fields. While Italians, not understanding the racial hierarchies of the South, found nothing shameful about this, for native whites their willingness to do so made them no better than “Negroes,” Chinese, or other “non-white” groups. The swarthy Sicilians were often considered not white at all, nothing but “black dagoes.”” end quote. She also says quote “In 1929, a New Orleans judge expressed a common view of most Sicilians in New Orleans as “of a thoroughly undesirable character, being largely composed of the most vicious, ignorant, degraded and filthy paupers, with something more than an admixture of the criminal element.” end quote. So, if this guy was a clean shaven white man as Mary Davi had insisted, then it’s possible he was carrying out his own vendetta against Italian immigrants because of these racial prejudices at the time. And how can you be sure someone is an Italian immigrant and not a tan white guy or a light skinned Black guy? Welp, he owns an Italian grocery store. It’s a dead giveaway.
Davis thinks the story of the Axeman has been blown up to almost mythic proportions because of what she calls the “glamor” of associating a killer with jazz music. She says quote “I’m not sure what deeper truth a killer who likes jazz reflects … But you know, it’s just the kind of thing people remember,” end quote. If New Orleans is known for anything it’s jazz and murder, and maybe jambalaya, but jazz and murder combine together in this story in a way that sticks with you, all culminating with this frenzied, discordant night of music, so antithetical to murder and yet happening simultaneously. There’s something very alluring there. We are no closer to figuring out who the Axeman of New Orleans was now than we were then, but his story isn’t going anywhere. And in it, we see a little glimpse of how legends are made. Because the real Axeman was likely no more a jazz enthusiast than he was a demon from hell. But we like the idea of it. Something about it sticks with us and out of it comes, not the New Orleans Axeman cold case murder story, but the New Orleans Axeman the legend. It’s a fine line we walk with history.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from The Axeman of New Orleans the True Story by Miriam Davis, Smithsonian Magazine, The Historic New Orleans Collections, Country Roads Magazine, and Wikipedia. As always, linked in the show notes.
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