The Jazz-Loving Serial Killer Nobody Ever Caught
Between May 1918 and October 1919, someone terrorized New Orleans with an axe. The killer — who was never identified, never caught, and never definitively linked to all the attacks attributed to him — broke into homes in the middle of the night, chiseled out a panel of the back door, and attacked the sleeping residents with their own axe. The victims were overwhelmingly Italian-American grocers and their families. The attacks left at least six people dead and many more wounded, and the city gripped by a fear unlike anything it had experienced before.
The Axeman of New Orleans remains one of the great unsolved mysteries in American criminal history.
The Letter
On March 13, 1919, the Times-Picayune published a letter purportedly from the Axeman himself. It is one of the most extraordinary documents in the history of American crime. The writer claimed to be a demon from "the hottest hell" and announced that he would strike again on the following Tuesday night — March 19, St. Joseph's Night — but would spare any home where a jazz band was playing.
"I am very fond of jazz music," the letter read, "and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned."
The response was pure New Orleans. Instead of cowering in fear, the city threw a party. On the night of March 19, 1919, every dance hall, nightclub, and parlor in New Orleans was packed. Families who didn't own phonographs hired musicians. People who had never listened to jazz in their lives hosted jazz bands in their living rooms. The composer Joseph John Davilla wrote a song called "The Mysterious Axman's Jazz (Don't Scare Me Papa)" that became an instant hit. The city called the killer's bluff with music.
No one was attacked that night.
The Attacks
The pattern was chilling in its consistency. The Axeman would approach a home — usually a residence above or behind an Italian grocery — remove a panel from the back door, enter silently, and attack the occupants with an axe or a straight razor. Joseph and Catherine Maggio were the first confirmed victims, attacked on May 23, 1918. Joseph died; Catherine survived. Louis Besumer and his companion Harriet Lowe were attacked on June 27. The attacks continued through the summer and fall, each one following the same eerie methodology.
The police were baffled. They arrested suspects — mostly Italian immigrants with convenient grudges — but none of the arrests stuck. The attacks stopped, then resumed, then stopped again. The last confirmed Axeman attack was on October 27, 1919, when Mike Pepitone was killed in his bed while his wife slept in the next room.
Theories
A century later, the identity of the Axeman remains unknown. Theories abound. Some historians believe the attacks were connected to Mafia vendettas within the Italian community. Others think a single deranged individual was responsible. Some have proposed that there were multiple attackers, or that some of the later attacks were copycat crimes inspired by the media frenzy. The letter itself might have been a hoax — possibly written by a journalist or a prankster rather than the actual killer.
What is certain is that the Axeman became a permanent part of New Orleans mythology — a bogeyman for a city that collects dark stories the way other cities collect monuments. The fact that the killer demanded jazz as his tribute, and that the city responded by playing jazz louder than ever, is the most New Orleans ending any horror story has ever had. The monster asked for music. The city gave it to him. And the music won.
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