The Axeman of New Orleans

The case

On the night of March 18, 1919, New Orleans played jazz in self-defense. A letter printed in the city's papers that week, headed "Hell" and signed "The Axeman," promised that at a quarter past midnight on Tuesday its author would pass over the city and spare every household where a jazz band was playing. Dance halls filled, parties ran late, and a local composer quickly published a song called "The Mysterious Axman's Jazz (Don't Scare Me Papa)." Nobody was attacked that night. Whether the letter came from the killer at all has never been settled.

The attacks that gave the letter its power had begun ten months earlier. In the early hours of May 23, 1918, an intruder entered the rooms behind the Maggio family's grocery at Upperline and Magnolia Streets, attacked Joseph and Catherine Maggio in their bed with a razor and an axe, and left. Catherine died at the scene and Joseph shortly afterward. A panel had been chiseled out of the back door, the method that would become the Axeman's signature, and money in plain sight was left untouched.

Over the next eighteen months the pattern recurred across the city. Louis Besumer, a grocer, and Harriet Lowe were attacked in June 1918; Lowe later died after surgery. Anna Schneider, eight months pregnant, was struck in her bed in August and survived. Days later Joseph Romano, an elderly man living with his nieces, was killed. Many of the victims were Italian immigrants who kept small groceries, which led newspapers to talk of the Black Hand and the Mafia, though no evidence of organized crime ever emerged. Often the weapon was an axe from the victims' own house, left behind.

The worst attack came on March 10, 1919, across the river in Gretna. Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia were badly injured, and their infant daughter Mary was killed. Rosie, still recovering, accused their neighbors Iorlando Jordano and his son Frank. Despite Charles's denials, the Jordanos were convicted of murder; the father was sentenced to life imprisonment and the son to death. The Axeman letter appeared in the newspapers within days of the Gretna attack.

Attacks continued later that year. Steve Boca, a grocer, survived a blow to the head in August 1919; Sarah Laumann, 19, was injured in her bed in September; and on October 27, 1919, Mike Pepitone was killed in his bedroom while his wife watched a large man flee. After that the attacks stopped as abruptly as they had begun.

The investigation suffered from the methods of its day. Police arrested the obvious suspects in each case, including Joseph Maggio's brother Andrew, a Black employee of Besumer's, Besumer himself and the Jordanos, and released or eventually cleared nearly all of them. Besumer was charged with Harriet Lowe's murder on her deathbed accusation and acquitted in May 1919 after a jury deliberated for minutes. In December 1920 Rosie Cortimiglia admitted that she had falsely accused the Jordanos, and both men were freed. The killer was never identified.