The Nightmarish Reign of the Axeman in New Orleans

Between 1918 and 1919, an intruder who came at night through a chiseled-out door panel attacked a series of households in and around New Orleans, most of them families of Italian grocers, often with an axe from the victims’ own homes. The Historic New Orleans Collection puts the toll at at least six dead. Survivors described a heavyset dark man, or could remember nothing. In March 1919 a letter signed by “the Axeman” promised to spare any house where jazz was playing, and the city answered with a night of music. The killer was never identified. The only people convicted in connection with the attacks, a Gretna grocer and his son, were innocent and were freed.

Panels, Chisels and Axes

The pattern was recognizable early. James Karst of The Times-Picayune described it as a killer who “would use the cover of darkness to chisel out a panel in a door, then reach through the opening to unlock the door from the inside.” Robbery seemed not to be the motive. Historian Miriam C. Davis, writing in Smithsonian, said survivors’ accounts pointed to a white working-class man in his 30s when the attacks began, and that from the ease of his break-ins and his use of a railroad shoe pin, a common burglary tool, police concluded he was an experienced burglar. She also noted that some lethal attacks on non-Italians were attributed to him at the time and later proved not to be his.

Joseph and Catherine Maggio, May 1918

On May 23, 1918, the grocer Joseph Maggio and his wife Catherine were attacked as they slept in their apartment at Upperline and Magnolia streets. Davis wrote that Joseph’s skull was fractured with his own axe and his throat cut with a razor, and that Catherine’s throat was also cut and she asphyxiated on her own blood. According to the English Wikipedia summary of the case, Joseph died minutes after his brothers Jake and Andrew found him; a bloodstained razor later turned up on a neighbor’s lawn and was traced to Andrew’s barber shop; and Andrew, who lived next door, was held as a suspect and released. Money and valuables left in plain sight were not taken. A message written on the nearby pavement read, “Mrs. Maggio will sit up tonight just like Mrs. Toney,” which some took as a reference to Anthony and Joanna Schiambra, Italian grocers attacked in 1912.

Besumer and Lowe, June 1918

Before dawn on June 27, 1918, the grocer Louis Besumer and Harriet Lowe were attacked in rooms behind his store at Dorgenois and Laharpe streets. Besumer was struck above the right temple; Lowe was hacked over the left ear. A bakery wagon driver found them alive the next morning. The axe was Besumer’s own. Police arrested a former employee, Lewis Oubicon, and released him for lack of evidence. Lowe’s shifting statements made her a press sensation. In August 1918, dying after failed surgery, she named Besumer as her attacker. He was charged with murder, spent nine months in jail and was acquitted on May 1, 1919, after the jury deliberated for 10 minutes, according to the Wikipedia summary.

August 1918: Panic

On August 5, 1918, Anna Schneider, 28 and eight months pregnant, woke to find a figure over her bed and was beaten about the face. She survived and gave birth two days later. A man police described as an ex-convict was arrested and released.

At about 3 a.m. on August 10, 1918, Joseph Romano, a 31-year-old barber, was attacked in his home at Tonti and Gravier streets, Karst reported. The coroner listed the cause of death as “fracture of vault of skull.” The Wikipedia account says his nieces, Pauline and Mary Bruno, saw a dark-skinned, heavy-set man in a dark suit and slouch hat flee, and that police found a bloody axe in the yard and a chiseled-out panel on the back door. At the funeral, held in the house, a New Orleans Item reporter found that almost none of the neighbors had been sleeping at night. “Night has been turned into day for many Orleanians,” the Item wrote.

The next morning, Al Durand, a saloon keeper who lived alone at South Salcedo and Canal streets about 10 blocks away, found a greased hatchet, a screwdriver and a .38-caliber cartridge outside his door, and scratches on the door. Police Superintendent Frank Mooney said it was the Axeman. On August 16, The Times-Picayune reported that Mooney wanted to meet an anonymous man who had been mailing him advice about the case, who “appears to know more about crime and criminals” than the criminologists Mooney had consulted.

A week after the Durand scare, a resident near Rocheblave and Canal streets surprised an intruder in white linen trousers in his back yard and shouted “Axeman!” Forty officers responded. Karst wrote that they were outnumbered by perhaps 3,000 armed vigilantes, who searched the block for more than two hours. A woman screamed that he had crawled out from under the car in her yard. He was not found.

On September 13, 1918, Paul Durel Jr. found the panel removed from the door of his corner store at North Robertson and Marigny streets, and bare footprints on the fence. “It undoubtedly was the Axeman,” Mooney said. The intruder could not reach through: Durel had stacked cans of tomatoes against the door.

Mooney and Dantonio

Many in New Orleans assumed the attacks on Italian grocers came from a vendetta or Black Hand extortion. Davis traced the suspicion to the city’s history: the 1890 killing of Police Chief David Hennessy, blamed on Italians, and the mob that stormed the jail in 1891 and killed 11 of the accused. Detective John Dantonio, a nationally known expert on the “Mafia,” rejected the theory, saying a Black Hand attack would not have left survivors as the Axeman often did. He agreed with Mooney that the attacker was a “fiend,” “a Jekyll and Hyde personality, like Jack the Ripper,” who killed when “suddenly the impulse to kill comes upon him.” Mooney called him a “murderous degenerate … who gloats over blood.” Davis wrote that this was what we would now call a serial killer.

Gretna, March 1919

In March 1919 the attacker crossed the Mississippi to Gretna. Charlie Cortimiglia and his wife Rosie were badly injured and their two-year-old daughter was killed. Davis dates the attack to the night of March 9; the Wikipedia account gives March 10 and says the child, Mary, was killed in her mother’s arms. Mooney believed it was the same man. Gretna’s police chief, Peter Leson, and Sheriff Louis Marrero instead settled on the Cortimiglias’ neighbors and business rivals, Iorlando Jordano, 69, and his son Frank, 17 by Davis’s account and 18 by Wikipedia’s. The Jordanos had recently taken the Cortimiglias to court over a business dispute.

No evidence implicated them. Officials questioned the injured couple in Charity Hospital: “Who hit you?” “Was it the Jordanos? Frank did it, didn’t he?” Rosie’s doctor said she always answered that she did not know who attacked her. When she was well enough to leave, Marrero arrested her as a material witness and held her in the Gretna jail. She was released only after she signed an affidavit implicating the Jordanos. Charlie denied her account, according to the Wikipedia summary.

The trial lasted less than a week. Rosie’s identification, which her own physician thought unreliable, was the only evidence. Both men were convicted of murder. Iorlando was sentenced to life imprisonment; Frank was sentenced to hang. Nine months later Rosie walked into The Times-Picayune’s office and retracted. She said St. Joseph had come to her in a dream and told her to tell the truth. In a new affidavit she declared she had not seen her attackers and had been pressured into naming the Jordanos. Prosecutors at one point threatened her with perjury if she did not return to her first story. In December 1920, Iorlando and Frank Jordano walked free.

The Jazz Letter

On March 16, 1919, by the Historic New Orleans Collection’s account, The Times-Picayune published a letter to the editor from someone claiming to be the Axeman. The Wikipedia entry dates publication to March 13. “They have never caught me and they never will,” the writer said. “I am not a human being, but a spirit and a fell demon from the hottest hell.” He announced he would strike again at 12:15 a.m. on St. Joseph’s Day, but said he was fond of jazz and would spare anyone playing it or with a jazz band in full swing.

Jazz parties were organized at once. Cafés and bars were crowded that night. On Wednesday, March 19, The Times-Picayune ran a cartoon of the frantic effort to comply and an article about the after-midnight soirées. The Axeman did not strike. Joseph John Davilla, a local composer, wrote a piece “while he waited for the axman” and published it as “The Mysterious Axman’s Jazz (Don’t Scare Me Papa),” using the newspaper cartoon on the cover. The Historic New Orleans Collection holds a copy.

1919: The Last Attacks

According to the Wikipedia account, on August 10, 1919, the grocer Steve Boca woke to a figure over his bed and was struck on the head; he survived, and a chiseled panel was again found on the back door. On September 3, 1919, Sarah Laumann, 19, was found unconscious with a severe head wound in her apartment, and a bloody axe lay on the lawn. On October 27, 1919, Mike Pepitone was killed in his bedroom; his wife saw a large man with an axe flee. The Wikipedia account calls this the last of the alleged Axeman attacks. Davis dates the Pepitone killing to August 1919 and argues it belonged to a long-running vendetta, not to the Axeman.

Elsewhere in Louisiana

Davis wrote that the Axeman vanished from New Orleans after the Cortimiglia attack, but that police records and newspaper accounts show the same method elsewhere in Louisiana: the killing of 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. Each involved a night-time break-in at an Italian grocery and an attack on the family with their own axe. She also linked the series to a similar spate of attacks on Italian grocers in 1910 and 1911. The Wikipedia entry notes that press reports during the panic mentioned crimes as early as 1911, but that recent researchers have questioned them.

Suspects

No one was ever charged with the Axeman killings. The Historic New Orleans Collection notes that one suspect emerged: a man later shot dead in broad daylight in Los Angeles by the widow of his last New Orleans victim. The Wikipedia entry cites the researcher Richard Warner as naming Frank “Doc” Mumphrey (1875 to 1921), who used the alias Leon Joseph Monfre or Manfre, as the chief suspect. Neither identification has been proved.

Legal Status

The Axeman murders are unsolved. No one was convicted of them. Louis Besumer was charged with the attack on Harriet Lowe and acquitted on May 1, 1919. Iorlando and Frank Jordano were convicted of murder in Gretna in 1919, sentenced to life imprisonment and death respectively, and released in December 1920 after Rosie Cortimiglia retracted her identification.

Frequently Asked Questions

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