Jazz It Out or Get the Axe

Have you ever been to New Orleans? No, I have not. Oh, you'd love it. It's so fun. I went on a graveyard tour. I saw Marie Lavoe's tomb and I saw Nicholas Cage's tomb. What he has a tomb there? That's he's alive. Don't worry, Nicholas Cage is alive. Oh. I was like, what, Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. I'm setting the tone. We're in New Orleans and it's the turn of the century, and I think, I don't know why I've been in such a true crimey mood lately. Maybe I just I don't know what's going on. I just need my historical true crime. So this is a historical true crime story. Cool, but it's Friday, March fourteenth, nineteen nineteen. I don't know when that is. I'm trying to literally try to imagine what people look like. No, I'm like, I know. I was like trying to. I was like, do I elaborate or wait, let them let the wheels turn, let them crank in there. So World War one is going on during this time. Let me just set some scenes. So it's like World War One. Yeah, world War One was from nineteen fourteen to I wrote it down nineteen four fourteen, nineteen fourteen to nineteen nineteen. Yeah, yeah, that's World War One. You're the history person. Yeah, well that's World War One, not World War Two. Okay, okay, to the world wars, remember, yeah, yeah, because I think I heard you say, like I thought automatically forties and I'm like, wait, we were just in nineteen twenty something, nineteen nineteen or nineteen whatever, end of the Gilded Age. It's New Orleans. It's swinging, you know, everybody's having a good time. Okay, Okay, I'll take your word for it. Yeah. So, on March fourteenth, nineteen nineteen, the editor of the New Orleans Times newspaper received a letter. And now I'm going to read that letter, and it will introduce what we're about to talk about. Hell March thirteenth, nineteen nineteen. 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 demon from the hottest hell. I am what you are, Lenians, and your foolish police call the axe man. When I see fat, I shall come and claim of the victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe be smeared with 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 they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse 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 they were never bomb than to incur the wrath of the axe Man. I don't think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel the 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 old Indians think of me as the most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to, If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night at will, I could slay thousands of your best citizens. For I am in a close relationship with the angel of Death now to be exact, at twelve fifteen earth a time. On next Tuesday night, I am gonna pass over New Orleans in my infinite mercy. I am gonna make a little proposition to you people here. It is I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in another regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going well, then so much the better for you people. One thing is certain, and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night, if there be any One thing is and that is that some of you and your people who do not jazz it out on a specific Tuesday night, if there be any we'll get the acts well. As I am cold and craving the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse, hoping that thou will publish this that it may go well with thee I have been and will be the worst spirit that has ever existed, either in fact or in the realm of fantasy. The Axe Man. Early I never read that letter fully and I was like, Oh, that's hilarious. She's gotta jazz it out, you guys, you gotta jazz it out, to jazz it out, but a psycho killer who loves jazz. One of the most mysterious and still unsolved frenzies to grip the city of New Orleans came in the early nineteen hundreds with the arrival of the Axe Man, who is a strange and terrifying creature I don't know, ghost, ghoul, something worse, someone who loves jazz. Many believed that he was not a man at all, but creature that could disappear and reappear at will. Was the letter written like handwritten, I don't know, typewriter. It might have been a typewriter at that time, I don't know, or like cool magazine clippings the whole thing. Imagine you have to use up like fifty magazines. Yeah, I mean that would have been so much money. Now we have to get in the time machine, of course, because we got to go investigate this. Let's go, We're going back in time. We're going back. Are you ready time machine slash washing machine duo. Yeah, but it's a combo, it's a com unit. Oh okay, we're here. May nineteen eighteen. That fog Horton Leghorn voice really wears out my vocal courts. Anyway, May nineteen eighteen. Here we are here, We are New Orleans, and the greatest boogeyman that New Orleans has ever known has just arrived in the city. Yeah, the Axe Man's here, and no one was safe, it seems. The Axe It's pretty legendary. But I mean, I have some theories at the end of this that I'm like, Eh, I don't know, we'll see. His official reign of terror started in nineteen eighteen with an Italian grocer their named Joseph Maggio and his wife were murdered while they were sleeping in their apartment above Maggio's grocery store. Why should do that? And now my accents are out of control. I don't know what's going on. Their throats had been cut with a razor and the wounds had been covered up with axe strikes, so that was a little unusual. Upon the investigation, the police discovered that the panel in the rear door had been chiseled out, providing a way for the killer to get in and out. The axe was found in their apartment, still coated with Maggio's blood. Nothing in the house had been stolen pulled. Several subjects were arrested in question, including a brother in law that was asleep next door to them and was a barber and who had been passed out drunk while they were murdered. And then he went and got all of his brothers before he checked on them to see that they were dead. Suspicious, I'm just saying. So he heard somebody, he knocked on the door, heard somebody groan. And this is after he woke up after being passed out. So he woke up, heard somebody groan, went and got his brothers all around town, came back, then opened the door, found them all cut up on their bed, and Joseph was actually still alive, so like he was alive during that whole time that what's his name went and got so it was just very it's very weird. And then Joseph died on his way to the hospital. It's just very suss. But they also found this other clue. I mean, the thing is, they thought it was going to be him, but they couldn't prove it, so they released him. And they also found this other clue that was pretty weird, and it was written in chalk near the victim's home, and it read miss Joseph Maggio will sit up tonight, just write missus Tony? What written in chalk somewhere outside their house. Just that's supposed to be like a cryptic code. Who's miss Tony? No one knows who's missus Tony? Like I don't know, it's just a Investigators began digging in old files looking for possible cases that matched the Maggio murders, and they actually discovered three murders that had taken place in nineteen eleven, murders that bore a striking resemblance to the Maggio crime, including an axe that had been used at each home that had been taken from the home, and then someone had used a chisel to get through a panel of the door of the rear door, so that was like a similarity as well. And so but the earlier crimes that they in nineteen eleven, they actually thought were mafia crimes. So the police and the Italian residents of the French Quarter braced themselves for the worst. So they just thought they were like mafia crimes, and so everybody was scared. Wow, but for no reason, people were just did they find anything about the victims being involved with something? Is it just weird racism where they just thought all Italians were in the mafia. That might also be it. I don't know, there's like lots of The overarching thing is that this guy does target Italian grocers for some reason. That was his over all arching victim type. Wow. Ye, it's very specific the type. It's a very specific type considering it's like and he did kill some random women, but like it was generally Italian grocer. So wow, it's pretty weird. Just charged too much. It's just like locks in and he's like, my spaghetti's too expensive, My spaghett he's too expensive. Almost exactly a month after the Maggio murder, a second crime Louis Bossmer, a grocer who lived behind his store with a common law wife named Annie Harriet, was discovered by neighbors one morning, lying in a pool of blood. He had been badly injured but wasn't dead. Beside him was Annie, also injured but amazingly not dead. Both of them had been hacked with an axe, which is so gruesome I can't even The weapon was also lying next to Bossomer, and it was also covered in blood. A panel of the kitchen door had been removed with a chisel lying on the back steps. Nothing had been stolen. As Annie regained consciousness at the hospital, she said her attacker had been young and very dark, but later she changed her story and stated that Bossimer had attacked her and the police were skeptical because like, how do you hit yourself in the head with an axe? Like you hit her like she was hitting the head with an axe, But then how do you fracture your own skull with an axe? What? Yeah, So it didn't make any sense. No one could. The police were like, this doesn't make any sense. They kept it well, to be fair, that's a head injury. I mean, like, that's massive head injury. When it was so, but it happens a few times, which is very strange. What about the other guy? Did he say anything? But did he die well, it said. After he recovered from injuries, he was released. Bossier couldn't remember his attack. Then later, a woman named should I love that? A woman named miss Edward Schneider? So, okay, whatever her fucking actual name is is lost the time or lost to me not googling hard enough. It's weird because like, is that her last her last name? No, right, like that's you know she's it's her husband's name. But they're just saying missus Edward Schneider. I still find that's so weird when they say, like, and now mister and missus and then they say the guy's name, right. I never understood that. I don't know. I'm just I don't get it either. It's a thing about property ownership, like women's named property. So yeah, it's legit that they haven't seen Barbie. Oh God. In August, a woman named miss Edward Schneider awakened in the middle of the night to a phantom form standing over her bed. She screamed just as the act sell. A few minutes later, her neighbors found her unconscious, with her head gashed and bloody and several of her teeth knocked out, but she was able to recover from her injuries, but she didn't really remember her attack. So this guy doesn't actually kill, like he just injures or does his axe just suck Like yeah, I don't know, it's the axe just dull. I don't know. He's just hitting people in the head with an axe, and somehow people are living and it's an axe, not like a little hatchet or like a little no you know. I thought about this because of the Velaska Murder House as well, like why are there so many axe murders right around this time? And I think it's because A the railroad came into popularity with travel, but b so like people could go from place to place easier. Oh no, no, no, no, go with me on this. And then everybody had an axe because of the way heating was so like he had to do a fire, so everyone had an axe. So like if you're going from town to town on a railroad and you want to kill somebody or attack somebody or rob somebody, and you wouldn't look suspicious walking around with an axe either, right, Like it's just like I'm just gonna get some wood. Yeah, everybody had one. So a few nights later, an Italian grocer named Joseph Romano, not related to Ray Romano, who was also attacked. This you're not even gonna respond to my joke about Ray Romano. Maybe I think my mind went to something else. I was gonna say, what if maybe they are related. That's where my mind was. I guess, I guess they couldn't be related. You're right, I'm as folk. You're right, You're totally right. We don't know. This could be Ray Romano's great great uncle, great great great uncle. I mean, I learned well back that what was it? Is it Hillary Clinton? That's kind of like it's nineteenth something related to Donald Trump or something like that. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, they're all related. They're always all related. Anyway. A few nights later, an Italian grocer named Joseph Romano was attacked. We don't know if he was related to Ray Romano. We've been over this several times already. We don't know what level it's gonna get cut out. Anyway, This attack was just like the others, though Romano did not survive. He died a few hours later and was never able to provide any clue of the identity of the axe man. By this time, hysteria was sweeping through the city. I bet just. I mean, like that's the serious thing. Like imagine from in my neighborhood. We were like with our neighbors, were like, whose dog is crapping on the yard in the front yards because you know, in that little section in front of the sidewalk that was causing a commotion, just because we're wondering, whose dog is it that you know, they're not cleaning up and why is he pooping so much? Yeah? Is your dog okay? Sir, sir, sir, your dog's not okay? So imagine the neighborhood people are just dying. They that's yeah, it's terrifying, especially all like I don't know, kind of in a short time. Yeah, yeah, who's a killer. Everybody's getting spooked. Family members were taking turn sleeping shifts to guard their family. Yeah, people were scared. There were a bunch of so called sightings attributed to local residents, but also the axe man left tangible evidence behind a few times as well. So on August eleventh, a man named al Durand discovered an axe and a chisel lying outside his rear door in the early morning hours. His back door had been damaged, but apparently proved too thick for the killer to cut through. Yeah. And then in late August this the rear door of Paul Labelle's grocery and residence was chiseled through. No one was home at the time, and the same day another grocer named Joseph lebuff Yeah not related to Shaya that we know of which it actually means the beef. Oh, I didn't know's that's cool the beef shy of the beef anyway, reported that an attempt had been made to chisel through his rear door at night. Awakened by the noise, he had frightened the intruder away, and an axe was discovered dropped on the steps. And then on September fifteenth, a grocer named Paul Durrell found that someone had also attempted to cut through his rear door, but a case of tomatoes that had been resting against the inside pan no Italian. So Italian that ca it's beautiful in a way that someone who's so anti Italian would be foiled in a way that's so Italian that like, I mean, it's really beautiful. In the early morning hours of March tenth, nineteen nineteen the axe man struck again, and perhaps this is his most terrible crime, because he attacked Miss Charles Cordamiglia, wife of the grocer her in Renton, which is just across the river from New Orleans. She awakened to find her husband struggling with a large man in dark clothing who was armed with an axe. As her husband fell in a bloody heap on the floor, Miss Cortemiglia held her two year old daughter in her arms and begged the attacker for mercy, at least for the child. But the axe came down anyway, killing the little girl and fracturing the skull of the lover. Yeah, it was all fun and tomatoes, adil. A child is murdered. The police were once again stumped, and the rumblings began to suggest the axe man wasn't really a man at all. Someone claimed it might be a woman or like a little person enabling them to slip through the small space cutting the door an yeah maybe, yeah, like something a keebler elve, But others maintained that he was a creature that was from the world beyond. Also, what was interesting about that story is that missus Cortamiglia actually accused the neighbors that came in and found them and like helped her and her husband survived, but she accused the neighbors that came in and found them because they had a rival grocery and so she blamed them, and so like another weird false thing happened. Oh no, yeah it was. It's pretty weird. And then when the husband finally got his memory back, he was like, no, it wasn't them, and so yeah, and then she admitted to lying about it, so everybody was stuck. Just every Yeah, you're putting like everyone against each other, like just paranoid. Yeah, it just just it's really weird. I don't know, there's like a lot of weird things like that in this where it's like hmm okay, all right, well moving on. That's weird. Yeah, And you know, one really weird thing is that the guy's leaving the axes, like, but they also don't have fingerprint technology at this time, so it's not like you can do anything. So it's like, if you grab an axe at someone's property, it's better to just leave it, I think, than walk out with the bloody axe. Oh I see, okay, I thought he would take his own acts. Okay, it's not byoa. Yeah. No. Also, if you're killing someone with an axe, you're pretty covered with blood, so like he's still leaving like as a weirdo, covered in blood and nobody's seeing him. So that's also it's weirding people out too, Like it's just there's no Yeah, it'd be terrifying, bloody person walking around. Yeah, it's terrifying. So after those murders, New Orleans obviously gripped with terror again, and all the police began to believe all the crimes were committed by the same man, a bloodthirsty maniac filled with passion for human slaughter. And perhaps they were right. That was a quote for some reason, and perhaps they were read. So that's the atmosphere that that letter that I read at the beginning was sent in. So they got that letter telling them to all jazz it, jazz it up, jazz it up. And so the people of New Orleans did their best to follow what the ax Man's instructions were to the letter, so restaurants and clubs all over town were jam packed with revelers. Friends and neighbors gathered in their homes to jazz it up. So he made a party all this it was this way to invite people like, it was just like, hey, here's your invitation. Yeah. And and midnight found the city alive with activity. Banjo's guitars, mandolins shrummed all night, and even this composer named Joseph Davilla, a well known local composer, created a theme song for the night. He entitled the Mysterious Axe Man's Jazz, and in typical New Orleans fashion, it became a huge hits. I went and listened to it. It's very like ragtime sounding. It's like I like rag time, Yeah, ragtime. It's very that. So anyway, the sun rose the next morning and they learned that their had been a single attack that night. So this guy really did like jazz, and everyone was like, oh, creep, we're safe. Jazz saved the night. I don't think New Orleans ever needs an excuse to throw a party, but this was like a pretty good one. After that night, all was quiet for a time until August third, nineteen nineteen, and then, in the darkest hours of the night, a young girl named Sarah Larman was attacked with an axe while she slept in her locked and shuddered home. She received a brain concussion, but she recovered. Although the woman did not die, the attack pushed the hysteria and the city to New Heights. Miss Lawman was not the owner of a grocery store, she was not Italian, and her attacker had not entered through a door panel but a window, which you'd think would indicate that it's yeah, that it's someone else, But everybody says it's the Axe Man. But on August tenth, the man named Steve Boca stumbled from his home on Alesian Fields Avenue with an axe wound to the skull dripping blood. He managed to make it to a friend's home, but a half a block away. The friend treated his wounds as best he could and then called for help. The police, who searched Boca's house found the classic signs of the Axe Man, including the chisel door panel and the bloody axe laying on the floor. And then on September second, a local druggist named William Carson fired several shots at an intruder who had broken into his home. The intruder left a broken door and an axe behind, but managed to escape without injury. And then in October the Axe Man appeared for his final murder, a grocer named Mike Peptone was butchered in his bed at night, his wife and six children asleep in the next room. They were not touched. Sorry, I just realized seven people sleeping in one room and he's sleep behind in another. Yeah. The dad's like off in another room, is like, this is my room. You guys can't come in. I pay for this house. Yeah, you guys all sleep in this probably all sleeping on the floor. I imagine the wife and the kids all sleeping on the floor too. I imagine them like lined up in the bed like the mom, and in the next oldest, and then until the youngest all oh yeah, all in a bed though, like and they're all greatsh and when they do there the I don't know, the little socks roll in and out. Yeah, and that's what I imagine. But anyway, the dan had his own bedroom for some reason. We don't know why. But they were fine, and the clue was the usual clues left behind. But the authorities were no closer to learning the identity of the axe Man than they had been in the beginning. But that was it. That was the last murder attributed to the ax Man, and he was never heard from again in New Orleans, and no one would ever know the true identity of the Axe Man, or would they. I do have some speculations, Oh what are they? Well, well, I have some official speculations which I think have been debunked. But more than a year after the Axe Men's final appearance, a former New Orleans man named Joseph Mumphrey was shot to death in the Pacific, like in California, somewhere on the Pacific coast. They just came saying on the Pacific coast. But he was killed in California somewhere, and he had been killed by a woman named Esther Albano, who was later discovered to be the widow of the Axe Man's last victim, Mike Pepatone. So that's kind of a random coincidence that she shot this random guy. But it seems like, honestly, I looked it up because it's like the story is like the spin is that, Oh she figured out that this Joseph Mumphrey had been in New Orleans and that he was the killer. Yeah, like, I don't know. Hold on. The police began working and trying to untangle the mystery that linked Mumphrey's murder to the Axe Fan case. Some curious coincidences were revealed in the investigation. Mumphrey once had been the leader of a band of blackmailers and New Orleans who had preyed on Italians, which is very specific. Check. He had also been, for a separate matter, sent to prison just after the first axe murders in nineteen eleven, and in the summer of nineteen eighteen he was paroled, so questionable, and then at the same time the Axe Man reappeared. And then immediately after Peptone's murder, Mumfrey had left New Orleans for the coast, and strangely, the Axe Man had vanished as well at the same time. Is this debunked by the way, or is this like it's been debunked because in spite of all of this, there's actually no evidence linking to him in any way. Also, it turns out that Esther Albano was avenging her second husband who had just gone missing, so she shot Joseph Mumphrey in connection with this. Okay, they don't actually know if that was the Esther Pepatone, like if that was actually his wife at the time, you know, like the wife from the story. So it's unclear, it's uncle like all of that is a little like hazy. Well, I mean saying that he didn't do it because there's no evidence. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, there's not going to be any hard evidence of this anymore because I don't know he was Hell, what would be evidence? What would be evidence? Right there? I don't know. That's all. I mean. That's being a member of a band of blackmailers that prey on Italians. That's a pretty big indicator. I think, like that feels like, if not him, someone in that group, and the timeline matches Michelle, like the actual timeline. Oh, he left during this time, he was released during this time. Yeah, allegedly. I mean all that's like allegedly, but I guess like somebody was writing a book on this and did a bunch of research and there wasn't like any actual CONCREC felt like he was like checking newspapers and stuff, and there wasn't any actual concrete facts to the story. I mean, it's a good story. It was all a lie. Yeah, so was Joseph Mumfrey, the axe Man. Who knows maybe were there actually several killers working to terrorize the Italian community, which kind of feels like maybe that might have actually been at like a KKK type situation. Yeah, but I mean like that they all like agreed and to just hack at the victims and not actually kill. Yeah, that's interesting too. And then I also was like, sounds like a weak person saying, yeah, you're right, it does kind of sound like a weak person, speculate it was like a woman or a are you saying women are weak? No? God no, but like, but it had to have been a small person that could have fit through the child, the child of the axe child of New Orleans also terrorizing the Italian community, because I was like, oh, World War One was happening at this time, Like was there a lot of like anti Italian hate, like beyond just normal American hate. And it turns out the Italians in World War One were actually on the Ally side, so that wasn't even a thing. So it's just normal, just normal hating people that are different, I guess, just hating immigrants terrible. This is some theory that I came up with because I was like reading that letter, and that letter is so articulate, and it is coming from someone who's so educated. That is not a common criminal. This is not a time where everybody knew how to read and write. This is someone who's very educated wrote that letter, someone who maybe did a PR stunt for a song that they recently wrote, mister ax Man Ragtime song. I don't know. I just that's pure me. That's my pure speculation, is that the letters of pure hoax right just to just to promote your party, promote your mysterious axe Man jazz. Oh wow, I don't know. It just feels like a modern PR stunt, Like that's what it feels like. Somebody's like, you know, I don't know if someone would have been that devious at that time, but maybe. I mean, it just feels a little like who would have benefited more than someone who just wrote a song about these crimes. I wonder how he announced it in honor of the axe Man. I'm going to be releasing a right, I don't know the official anthem. That's just like ragtime music. I don't know. Part of me was like, yeah, that would you put a bunch of crimes together? That seemed like it was all one person? Because I don't know if I'm in the camp where I think it's all one person, and then you put the letter there and give it this really creepy mystique. I think it's risky, like for the same person to be doing the same thing when everybody's looking out for you, especially if like, but also no one would have been looking out for woman like, that's the thing too, No one would have been looking for that. Yeah, I guess no one would be looking out for a demon either though, Like that's true, that's true. Yeah, no one was actively looking for a demon at that time. They just yeah, snuck past everybody. And we'll never know who the axe man was. And that's kind of the magic. Another magical tale of New Orleans. I still want to go, like, oh, I think you'd love it up. Yeah, I gotta go jazz it up in New Orleans. I mean I'd go again in a heartbeat. Hyde your axis too, because yeah, please hide your axes. Lock your axes up, true, or maybe just sharpened in the morning and at night it's all worn out because you chopped so much. Wow, I don't know. I don't know how axes work. I don't do that. I just use electricity. We use a time machine washing machine combo, so we don't. We don't know how acts actually work. Anyway, be sure to rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please, yeah, and send us little messages on Spotify because we love to hear from you and the DM. I'm still on there, even though it looks like it's abandoned, it's still functional, so just stay tuned, stay tuned. It'll be back and going soon. But yeah, we love it anyway. What are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise. Ooh fun. Okay, all right, see you guys, See you guys. Bye,