[00:00:00] The city believed locks were enough, they were wrong. In New Orleans, homes were entered without force, doors left, sealed windows unbroken, and by morning people were dead in the beds where they slept. Police had no suspect, no pattern. They could agree on only a growing certainty, that whoever was doing this did not need permission to come inside.

[00:00:25] Then the killer wrote to the city, not a confession, a performance, and so an entire city made a decision no one should ever have to make. They turned on their lights, they lifted their instruments, they filled the streets with music, not for celebration, but for survival. Because something was listening and no one could be sure whether sound would be enough.

[00:00:52] Welcome to the House of Six. Tonight we present jazz jitters and jeers. This is the story about the axman of New Orleans.

[00:01:00] Jenn: Welcome to The House of Syx. I'm Jenn.

[00:01:05] Jared: I'm Jared.

[00:01:07] Jenn: And we are here to talk about some things, and that's why people do a podcast. 'cause the world's on fire. So we're podcasting.

[00:01:20] Jared: That's a deep sigh by myself.

[00:01:23] Jenn: Do you feel like you're alone in the world? Come talk to us. We're Jenn and Jared. We're gonna talk about your feeling.

[00:01:31] We're not here to talk about your feelings. Nope, Nope, because that's, that's too personal. I don't wanna get into that. I've got enough feelings on my own. Thanks,

[00:01:41] Jared: God. Oh, you're in rare form today.

[00:01:44] Jenn: I don't know what to say except, , we are just gonna hop right into it.

[00:01:49] Jared: Okay. Do I have 1918? Oh, okay. I was gonna ask if I had to hop.

[00:01:53] Yeah.

[00:01:54] Jenn: That's dumb.

[00:01:55] Jared: Yeah. Why? Keep going. Just got that. No, you know what,

[00:01:58] Jenn: between the two of us, we got enough foot problems, we can't hop anywhere.

[00:02:02] Jared: All right. Anyway, 1918.

[00:02:04] Jenn: It's 1918. We're in New Orleans. We got mystery. We got music. We got unaliving

[00:02:14] Jared: and piss in the streets.

[00:02:16] Jenn: And I think New Orleans has probably always had that.

[00:02:19] Jared: Yeah,

[00:02:20] Jenn: Yeah, it's, it's, an, uh, I, we have not been since. Yeah. I don't mean it rudely,

[00:02:24] Jared: it's just the way it, you know, had a friend of mine arrested in New Orleans because he was pissing on the street.

[00:02:30] Jenn: Are you serious?

[00:02:31] Jared: Yeah.

[00:02:33] Jenn: Why was he doing that?

[00:02:34] Jared: Ask Sh**n*n

[00:02:36] Jenn: You said names.

[00:02:39] Oh, it's out. Shannon got arrested or pissing in the streets.

[00:02:42] Jared: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:44] Jenn: Oh no. Yeah. Now that was a poor choice. How was it there?

[00:02:46] Jared: there?

[00:02:47] Jenn: That was a poor choice. Now, if you get caught urinating in the streets and there are children present, you can get, , indecent exposure and you would have to register as an offender.

[00:03:00] That'd be, but I mean, how many children are in the streets of New Orleans at the time that he was doing that? There shouldn't be. Hopefully not too many. Was this a New Year's Eve situation? I have no idea. Not not New Year's Eve. Wanna try to be, , fat, fat Tuesday? Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras. There you go. That is Fat Tuesday.

[00:03:12] Same thing. That's what it means.

[00:03:14] Jared: Uh, I don't remember. This was way, way, way, way, way, way, way back.

[00:03:18] Jenn: Wow. Way, way back. Yeah. Not just Way back. way back, right?

[00:03:20] Jared: Correct.

[00:03:22] Jenn: Right.

[00:03:23] Jared: It's a good story.

[00:03:24] Jenn: Cool. Yeah. Well, he survived that. He's doing pretty well for himself.

[00:03:28] Jared: I have no idea. I haven't seen him in forever.

[00:03:30] Jenn: Oh, dear. We're, we're, we're bringing, now we're talking a lot of, now we're talk personal baggage here.

[00:03:33] Now we're

[00:03:34] Jared: gonna talk about our feelings.

[00:03:36] Jenn: Do you feel abandoned by your friends?

[00:03:42] To understand why this case took hold the way that it did, did, we need to step back into New Orleans. We need to put ourself in the, in the, in the minds and the memories of these people.

[00:03:55] Okay? Okay. Okay.

[00:03:55] All righty. So let's go back. This was not a calm moment in the history of America. The first World War was ending, but the relief hadn't quite reached the people yet. Soldiers were returning home to cities already under strain. Jobs were uncertain. Prices were rising.

[00:04:17] Do you remember what pandemic hit in 1918? I

[00:04:20] Jared: should, but it's not coming to me. I should.

[00:04:23] Jenn: This Spanish flu?

[00:04:24] Jared: Nope. I shouldn't.

[00:04:25] Why?

[00:04:26] Jenn: Why?

[00:04:26] Jared: I, that's not what I was thinking.

[00:04:28] Jenn: This was the, the last major pandemic. Okay. That, that really hit, between late 1918 and early 19. 19, we're talking about six months here.

[00:04:38] Okay.

[00:04:38] An estimated 3,600 to 3,800 people in the city died from influenza. That's roughly 1% of the entire population lost in a matter of months. That's a lot of people. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Public gatherings were restricted.

[00:04:56] Death was not abstract. In this case, it was visible, constant, and expected. People were freaking out, man.

[00:05:03] Yeah.

[00:05:04] It was a scary time.

[00:05:05] Sure.

[00:05:06] So when fear arrived in another form, it did not enter into a stable city. These people were already exhausted from it, I can't imagine 1% of the population dying.

[00:05:21] Jared: Yeah. Be frightening.

[00:05:27] Jenn: You're, you're coming with the,

[00:05:28] Jared: the heat.

[00:05:29] Jenn: Yeah, exactly. Layered on top of that pandemic was something harder to quantify, but just as corrosive. The war had only just ended for years. Americans had lived with daily casualty count. Government propaganda and and constant expectation that catastrophe would arrive without warning.

[00:05:54] Even those who never left home , became absorbed with that stress. Violence had become distant, abstract and constant all at one time. It was just a really weird time. So by 1918, people were not just afraid. I think they were pretty much just worn down by the, the constantness of everything,

[00:06:14] new Orleans was not just any American city. It never has been. Louisiana itself is just a weird place. I gotta say, from an American culture perspective, it's absolutely amazing with the , Cajun and French influences, but it's a strange

[00:06:34] Jared: place. No, I agree that it is. It is very unique. That's the only way to put it.

[00:06:39] It is that I don't think about it often, but it absolutely is a very unique place, a unique state even.

[00:06:45] Jenn: I do enjoy whenever we watch documentaries or something that happens there, the dialect alone is fascinating.

[00:06:54] Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:54] I think it's really cool. Now, by 1918, new Orleans was shaped by layers of history that most US cities don't share.

[00:07:04] They had both French and Spanish Colonial rule. Deep Catholic roots in a largely Protestant nation, strong African Caribbean, and Haitian influence. This created a city that didn't operate on Simp.

[00:07:21] Simple bi, my God Bless America. I can't even FRICKing read.

[00:07:25] Short pause to get a drink because Jenn is on the struggle bus. It is 2:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon, and just Hollywood insight here. I write a script for each episode and I research and I practice, and I try to get it all out. And I try to be fluent and fluent and forward and footless and fancy free, but sometimes I just get really flustered.

[00:07:56] There was a lot of F-word

[00:07:57] Jared: today. The, the wheels aren't turning.

[00:08:00] Jenn: I think the wheels are about to fall off if I'm being perfectly.

[00:08:03] honest.

[00:08:03] Jared: They're wobbly. They're

[00:08:04] Jenn: a little wobbly. So yeah, most of you won't. Ever get to see any of that. 'cause it cut out all the flubs and the flops because it's FRICKery. So I was trying to think of how many F words I could get out in a one minute time period.

[00:08:18] I think that was like 12.

[00:08:19] Okay.

[00:08:21] You're welcome. Anyways, back to the story at hand here. This created a city that did not operate on simple binaries. Neighborhoods mattered. Community networks mattered and rumor traveled faster than official information ever could. On top of which music was not just entertainment here, it was communication, it was presence.

[00:08:51] It was a way that communities asserted life in the face of loss. And you'll hear that in a lot of the jazz music that even gets played today.

[00:09:02] Jared: Yeah, I like jazz.

[00:09:03] Jenn: You do like jazz, I'm okay with it. Yeah. I don't, I'm not offended by jazz, but I'm also not,

[00:09:09] Jared: I mean, I don't ride in a car and listen to jazz. Jazz is the perfect thing to just have playing in the background while you're cleaning the house or, or doing something.

[00:09:21] Jenn: I don't wanna listen to jazz when I'm cleaning the house. I want a little indie pop to pop up, put a little pep in my step, you know?

[00:09:29] Jared: Sure. That too. too.

[00:09:31] Jenn: I don't really, jazz is fine. It

[00:09:33] Jared: is,

[00:09:33] Jenn: it's fine. I will say though, that while I was unemployed, I was trying to convince Jared that I didn't need to go back to work.

[00:09:41] So I would have dinner made and the house was sparkling, the dog was walked and he'd get home and I'd have smooth jazz playing in the background.

[00:09:51] Jared: And then I said, who the FRICK is this?

[00:09:53] Jenn: And then he said, get back to work. It's not what you said, but you gotta pay bills. So I went back to work. Now we're paying bills

[00:10:07] Ugh, back to New Orleans. Then we have the city's immigrant populations. Now, as we know, the United States is a country built on immigrants, and by the early 20th century, new Orleans had the largest Italian community in the American South. That's interesting. Many were Sicilian immigrants who had arrived with Little and worked their way into small business ownership, especially grocery stores and produce markets.

[00:10:40] Economically, they were very visible socially, not very accepted. Italians in New Orleans occupied an unstable position in the racial. Hierarchy of the time. This is important. At the time, Italians were often not considered white. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:01] Neither

[00:11:02] were the Irish or the Greeks. This is, this is strange to me.

[00:11:09] , They were stereotyped as criminal, violent, or inherently suspect.

[00:11:15] Jared: Okay.

[00:11:15] Jenn: I don't know why newspapers regularly use ethnic slurs when referring to Italian communities language that reflected how normalized that prejudice. Was, I'm not gonna use racial slurs because I think any racial slur is bad and it makes me super uncomfortable.

[00:11:35] Yep. Yep.

[00:11:35] All right. So this was not abstract bias. The newspapers, new Orleans had already seen anti Italian mob violence decades earlier. Now this is crowd mobs not organized. Crime mobs we're not quite there yet, , and we're in the wrong part of the country for that. These were fueled by suspicion, resentment and , political convenience.

[00:12:00] So by 1918, Italian families lived with a clear understanding they were necessary to the city's economy, but expendable in its social imagination, if you will. So there's visible, successful, but resented for it. Okay? Okay? Like that's not a great position to be in historically. We don't like that. Alright. It's also important to understand how little faith many people had in official protection at the time. This was an era when institutions routinely failed the public. The government had promised stability and they got war.

[00:12:41] Public health systems had promised control and delivered mass death in the form of the flu. Policing, especially in cities like New Orleans, was inconsistent, under-resourced and deeply shaped by bias and corruption. People did not assume help would arrive in time. They assumed survival was personal or communal or just freaking luck.

[00:13:05] This is not, yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody's sitting around going, I think the system has us covered. It's gonna be fine. Okay. And then there was the press. How do I feel about the press around this point in time? What do we call it? What do we call it? We call it yellow journalism because it's all about the sensationalism.

[00:13:30] They were not just reporting events, they were the primary way people understood reality beyond their own little circle. Competition was fierce. Accuracy was like, uh, you know, fluid sensation sold papers. Stories traveled fast. They went unchecked, uncorrected, and fear didn't just spread. It was amplified, shaped and repeated until it was pretty much inescapable.

[00:13:59] So when something frightening begins to stir in the city's consciousness, it did not encounter skepticism. encountered readiness. You have a population already shaped by death, a culture accustomed to storytelling and symbolism and immigrant community already viewed through suspicion and institutions that didn't have confidence.

[00:14:23] This is, this is a, a messy soup of scary. I didn't write that down in the script. I can tell you that. Okay, so let's talk about what happens. Okay? We're in the timeline now. Incident number one. It is May 23rd, 1918, and we have Joseph and Catherine Maggio. They're Italian. Remember, some of these names are deeply Italian.

[00:14:52] Let's begin. In the early hours, Joseph and Catherine were Italian immigrants who ran a small grocery in New Orleans. They lived behind their store, as , many shopkeepers did. At the time. Home and livelihood were not separate things, so if violence entered one, it, it entered both. Joseph was in his early forties.

[00:15:13] Catherine's exact age, we're not sure. It is told inconsistently, so I'm not even gonna guess. Let's say around the same age, sometime after midnight while the Gios were asleep, someone entered the residence quietly. There is no sign of a loud struggle. No reports of neighbors hearing screams.

[00:15:32] What was discovered later was devastating. Joseph Maggio was found alive, but gravely injured. I hate this part, but I have to tell it. His throat had been cut with a straight razor. He also showed head trauma consistent with being struck by a heavy object. Catherine was found behind him with similar injuries.

[00:15:57] I don't wanna repeat that. Both were taken for medical care. Joseph died shortly after Karen, excuse me. Catherine survived briefly, but then died two days later.

[00:16:09] later.

[00:16:09] Jared: Okay, Okay,

[00:16:10] Jenn: this is bad news. Bears Police searching the scene reported finding a straight razor and signs of blunt trauma consistent with an ax or a hatchet.

[00:16:21] We've told Axe stories before. It's not pretty. This combination of tools would later stand out, but at the time it just caused a whole lot of confusion 'cause people were just like, what The crap happened here? Nothing of value appeared to be stolen. One detail reported by the police at the time was the presence of bloody clothing at the scene.

[00:16:44] Officers inferred that the attacker may have changed clothes before leaving, which gives an air of premeditation or at least understanding of what they can't just walk around with.

[00:16:55] Yeah.

[00:16:56] Bloody clothes. This is not in London in 1888. You're not jacked a ripper or the leather apron. You remember that story?

[00:17:06] You had to go back and look at

[00:17:06] Jared: it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:07] Jenn: Yep.

[00:17:08] Jared: And you don't, you know, they don't have, they needed a Dexter suit.

[00:17:11] Jenn: Oh

[00:17:12] Jared: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:13] Jenn: Just cover the whole room in plastic,

[00:17:15] Jared: cover himself in plastic.

[00:17:16] Jenn: He did. Yeah, he did. As a smart guy, Dexter, you should not even if you're doing it for good, you should not kill.

[00:17:24] Jared: Yeah, thanks.

[00:17:26] Jenn: Everybody knows that. that. Yeah. I'm just, I'm just reinforcing. Anyways, initially, this case was treated as an isolated domestic or neighborhood crime police question, individuals close to the family.

[00:17:38] There was no immediate suggestion that this was the start of something bigger. So this is just horrific, not serial.

[00:17:48] Jared: Right, Right,

[00:17:49] Jenn: right. That is going to change because on June 27th, 1918. Louie Bessemer and Harriet Low, another grocery linked residence was attacked. Louie ran a grocery and behind the store there were living quarters. That's where the attack happened at night. Harriet Lowe lived with him in the residential space behind his shop. Contemporary sources frequently describe her as his mistress. This detailed mattered in 1918. This was, this would've been frowned upon.

[00:18:26] It shaped how newspapers framed the attack. It shaped how police spoke about the case and how sympathy was distributed to these two people. They were found alive, but severely injured. Both had suffered head wounds. Lowe was struck near the ear and left with permanent facial paralysis. Obviously survived.

[00:18:50] Bessemer's injuries were also severe though. He too also survived, so that's good. They were discovered in the morning by a bakery delivery driver. Someone just following a routine route who found the scene by chance police found a hatchet belonging to Bessemer at the property. In some accounts, it was located in the bathroom, which indicates cleanup probably, yeah.

[00:19:16] If it was in the bathroom,

[00:19:17] Jared: I don't know. I always have a hatchet in the bathroom.

[00:19:19] Jenn: That is where we keep our hatchet. Right?

[00:19:20] That's

[00:19:20] Jared: Right.

[00:19:20] Jenn: Do we have a hatchet?

[00:19:23] Jared: I don't think so.

[00:19:24] Jenn: Don't I? Do not advise. I don't think we need one that's just, that's just asking for trouble. If you ask me, that's fine. We don't need one.

[00:19:35] Nothing of value appeared to have been stolen. This was the first time police clearly documented a pattern that would later feel important. The attacker did not bring a weapon. He used one found at the scene.

[00:19:50] This feels intentional.

[00:19:52] Jared: Yeah.

[00:19:54] Jenn: If you're sneaking into somebody's house, you're, you're not doing good. So let's be clear on that. But like also, you know, you're going there to do some bad news bears things and you don't take anything with you.

[00:20:04] You're like, oh, I'll probably find something.

[00:20:07] Jared: Oh look, there's a hatchet next to the toilet.

[00:20:11] Jenn: I mean it, I don't know what to say.

[00:20:16] Jared: It doesn't have to be next to toilet, but he found a hatchet, you know, it worked out for him. Didn't work out for them, though.

[00:20:22] Jenn: It did not. And the last house, I assume that a straight razor's pretty common.

[00:20:26] Yeah. In any man's household. Yep. Yep. So you just go in and you're like,

[00:20:30] Jared: just, maybe that was part of the game,

[00:20:33] Jenn: finding the, what

[00:20:34] Jared: can I can I kill them with today?

[00:20:37] Jenn: I don't like that. Now we come to one of the most debated incidents. We don't know if this is absolutely the same dude here, and I'm assuming it's a dude because unless you're Lizzie Borden, you don't just go around swinging axes.

[00:20:56] Okay? I had, I don't think I've even picked up an ax. Not one time. I'm not saying ladies can't pick up axes 'cause I've seen those lumber drills and they are clearly bad asses and good for them. Ladies, you throw those ass axes, asses, and your ass

[00:21:12] both.

[00:21:12] You can throw all you want. Anything that you want, it's fine.

[00:21:17] I just, personally, I'm not gonna touch it. I wouldn't know what to do with an ax if I fricking had it in my hand,

[00:21:23] Jared: I think you'd know what to do with it.

[00:21:25] Jenn: It would be very poorly. It would scare the shit

[00:21:27] Jared: outta me. But have you

[00:21:27] Jenn: seen me at top balls? It would. It

[00:21:29] Jared: would scare me.

[00:21:29] Jenn: I can't swing for shit. I'm gonna tell you that right now.

[00:21:33] Don't give Jenn an ax. I don't know what I was talking about, but all this is to say that early on the morning of August 5th, 1918, Anna Schneider. Now I want you to note the last name here, because this is not an Italian woman. In fact, her the last, it was not said what her ethnicity was, but that name Schneider, that's a German surgeon.

[00:21:58] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:59] She is 28 years old and eight months pregnant. I'm really sorry to tell this story. She was attacked in her apartment. She later told police she woke to find a man standing over her bed. She was struck repeatedly in the face and head and left bleeding heavily.

[00:22:18] Her husband returning home from work later that night discovered her injured. Oh, that's rough. Yeah, she survived and later gave birth to a healthy

[00:22:30] Jared: baby. Okay. That's better news than expert.

[00:22:32] Jenn: That is pretty good news all around. I'm sure she was still injured. That's terrible. Yeah. There was no sign of forced entry.

[00:22:39] Police concluded that the weapon was likely a nearby object rather than an ax. Wouldn't they have found the nearby object? I guess you could have taken it with them maybe, but

[00:22:51] yeah.

[00:22:52] , A small amount of money was reported missing. But also if it was like $2, I don't, I probably have $2 in my wallet right now.

[00:23:00] If it went missing, I wouldn't know it.

[00:23:02] Jared: Yeah, you wouldn't,

[00:23:03] Jenn: don't steal my $2. I actually have $4 because I have two $2 bills.

[00:23:08] Jared: Oh, that's right. Yeah.

[00:23:09] Jenn: That my son gave me. Yep. That he used to pay me for something else.

[00:23:12] Jared: Yep. Yep.

[00:23:13] Jenn: For something. I, I don't know where he is getting $2 bills. But anyways, so why does this case appear in these timelines at all?

[00:23:23] At the time, police publicly suggested it, quote unquote, might be related to the earlier grocery attacks that suggestion entered the record early and stuck even though the mechanics differ it's included because it shaped how the series was, was understood in real time.

[00:23:41] Her case though, complicates the idea of a single victim profile, ethnically, socially, mechanically. Some historians emphasize how women sleeping alone were viewed as inherently suspect or unprotected in 1918. Policing culture. Okay. Almost like, well, if you're at home sleeping by yourself, what were you doing?

[00:24:01] doing? Like, that's your fault, lady. Hm. It's not like she was walking the streets.

[00:24:06] Jared: That's interesting.

[00:24:07] Jenn: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:08] Yeah. Why would you suspect that? Because a woman is at home alone sleeping. Her husband's at work. You gotta make a living man that she's suspect that's,

[00:24:26] Jared: I think you'd be more suspect if you had another man in your bin,

[00:24:29] Jenn: which she did not.

[00:24:30] Jared: Right.

[00:24:30] Jenn: To be clear,

[00:24:32] Jared: I didn't wanna be home alone. You were at work.

[00:24:34] So I've gotta fill in,

[00:24:37] Jenn: is that what I'm supposed to do when you go on vacation? Nope. You're not vacation work trips?

[00:24:41] Jared: Nope. I prefer you not to do what you need to do, but I mean, I'd really prefer you not to.

[00:24:48] Jenn: That's a strong statement. You do what you need to, but I prefer you didn't. Okay. Anyways.

[00:24:55] Now we need to pause and talk about a case that appears in many timelines for this story, but is not without controversy. On the night of August 10th, 1918, Joseph Joe Romano, an elderly man, often described as a former grocer, was attacked in his New Orleans home. .

[00:25:19] Romano lived with his two nieces that night. While they slept, someone entered the house quietly. They were awakened by the sound of of movement and found their uncle. Badly injured Romano suffered severe head wounds consistent with blunt force trauma and acts belonging to the household was found nearby.

[00:25:41] Bloody. There were no signs of force entry and no meaningful theft reported. Romano was transported for medical care but died several days later from his injury. This case is often included because of the nighttime entry. Household acts used as a weapon victim asleep in his home. No clear robbery motive.

[00:26:03] These similarities led police and later writers to fold Romano's death into the growing axman narrative.

[00:26:11] However this case is debated because details in the record are sparse. Some reports lack the mechanical specific scene in earlier attacks, such as the door panel removal, which is how this perpetrator got into different homes and the victim profile because he was an elderly man.

[00:26:32] However, it's hard to say it's a toss up, it sounds like. I mean, I don't know. I feel like most crimes maybe happen at night. Is that facts

[00:26:45] Jared: statistically? I I don't. I mean

[00:26:49] Jenn: like robberies and not robberies. Like burglaries? Yeah. Or home invasions. Wouldn't that normally happen at night?

[00:26:55] Jared: I would think, but also maybe not, because when people go to work, the house is empty.

[00:27:02] Jenn: I should never try to be a criminal. I don't think I'd be very good at crime.

[00:27:06] Jared: Hmm. I mean, I'm, I guess that's good.

[00:27:10] Jenn: Yeah. I am a, I'm a rule follower.

[00:27:12] Jared: Yeah, you are.

[00:27:14] Jenn: I am very much a rule follower. I don't like breaking the rules. I don't wanna break the law. I, I do speed. But that's it. I feel like as far as laws go, that's, that's a pretty everybody speeds except your son.

[00:27:28] Jared: Yeah, he, well, you ni hit the nail on head. I was going to say, there's only one bigger rule follower than yourself. And that would be my oldest son.

[00:27:37] Jenn: So yeah, that kid, when we were moving him from one college to another, and we packed up all of our cars and we were driving, Jared headed off first and I was right behind him.

[00:27:49] And then your son was. Following me. And one point Jared called me and he was, it was, this is like 30 minutes or an hour into the drive, and he, and he was like, is he still behind you? And I was like, dude, I blew his doors off hour an hour ago. That kid's 30 minutes behind me. Are you kidding me? Yeah.

[00:28:08] Like, he's good. He is the slowest driver on the, he's a good guy.

[00:28:10] Jared: He's very safe. He's a good guy.

[00:28:12] Jenn: I would lose my mind in the car with him. I'd be like, we're never getting out of the neighborhood. Anyway, on the night of March 10th, 1919 in Gretna, which is just across the Mississippi from New Orleans, Charles and Rosie Corlia and their infant daughter Mary, were attacked in their home. A neighbor heard screams and rushed over. Charles and Rosie were found alive, but were badly injured. Both suffering from head wounds consistent with ax blows.

[00:28:47] Unfortunately, their daughter Mary, did not survive. Hmm. This was an infant. Hmm. This is very hard to talk about. There is no way to get around it. , The Corlia case marks a clear escalation in harm and fear, and it's one of the reason that this story lodged itself so deeply in public memory. And Axe was found on the property, reportedly on the back.

[00:29:12] Porch police noted a critical detail. A panel had been chiseled out of the back door, suggesting deliberate, quiet entry, and this matched other entries into the previous homes. This removal of the door panel would later be cited as one of the strongest operational consistencies across the attributed cases.

[00:29:37] This attack reignited fear across the city, especially because it involved a child and it occurred after a long pause. Within days, the public atmosphere shifted dramatically. This is where the city snaps, I assume. Hmm. This is, I mean, a baby is

[00:29:56] right.

[00:29:57] Harmed,

[00:29:58] right?

[00:29:58] I think anybody can agree that's worst case scenario.

[00:30:03] Jared: Yeah. That would change your uh, attitude on a few things.

[00:30:07] Jenn: I don't like this one. On October 27th, 1919, this is a couple months later. This is the most disputed incident. We don't know if it fits, but we gotta talk about it. Mike Pepitone, an Italian immigrant and a grocer. Was killed in his home. Pepitone was asleep when this occurred.

[00:30:31] He suffered head wounds consistent with an ax. His wife was injured, but she survived. The ax was found at the property. There was no indication of major robbery. It occurred at night in a private residence while the victims slept mechanically. This echoes earlier cases, but this occurred months after a letter that is received, and we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[00:30:58] And the citywide panic that followed it. So at this point, the, the axman had already become a legend, but it's so far after the other incidents, and I just don't know why. I don't know why they don't attribute it, because they talk about how, I don't know, I'm confused about this.

[00:31:23] Jared: I'm confused that your confusion.

[00:31:27] Of course. I still haven't gotten over the name Pepitone. Gosh, what a great Italian name. Pepitone. That's it. That's a great Italian name.

[00:31:33] Jenn: Corlia. Pepitone. Yeah. Romano. Maggio. Exactly. Mao, like, we're just, these are just classic Italian names Here. Pepitone is, that's pretty. Yep.

[00:31:44] So let's talk about how policing worked in this time period. I like to always kind of dig into this a little bit because I think it's important to try to figure out why crimes were not solved or were solved with the information that they had available to them. At the time, at the start of the 20th century, American policing was still primarily about maintaining public order.

[00:32:06] It was not solving complex crimes after they occurred, they just, first of all, they weren't equipped to do that. Detective divisions did exist, but they were small, and also there were no centralized records, obviously no standard way to leak link crimes across districts. Each attack was handled individually as its own event.

[00:32:29] There was no concept of a serial offender in the modern sense. What we see now as a pattern had to be noticed manually where people. We're comparing notes across cases that were often separated by weeks, neighborhoods, profiles, jurisdictions like this was all done extremely manually and by detectives that were not educated in,

[00:32:56] right, right.

[00:32:57] The field of forensics, profiling, all of those things, crime scene preservation as we understand it today, did not exist. Homes were entered by neighbors, family members, doctors, priests, police often in rapid succession, and evidence was simply disturbed in by the act of rendering aid. I mean, even today, when people are attended to by medical emergency professionals, that just will destroy a crime scene.

[00:33:30] Obviously, you have to do that first because you have to render aid first, but it will destroy crime scene right as they just stomping all over it. Okay. Axes or hatchets found at the scene were frequently household tools, which made tracing ownership pointless. Everybody had an ax in New Orleans at this point in time.

[00:33:49] Fingerprinting technically existed. When did we learn about fingerprinting? Oh gosh. When did it come into being? It came into being in 1901.

[00:33:57] Oh.

[00:33:57] So by the time this case hit, it had been around for 17 years, but it was inconsistently applied and rarely useful on wooden handles or bloody surfaces.

[00:34:07] Hmm.

[00:34:08] This would've smeared fingerprints all over the place.

[00:34:10] Okay. Okay. I, it wood is hard to get fingerprints on. Not like our wood, that's all polished and shiny. This would be porous wood that wouldn't necessarily hold a fingerprint very well. Okay. Just saying, , blood analysis could not distinguish individuals. All that they could have told you at the time was if the blood was human or not, they would not have been able to tell it's

[00:34:35] Jared: red.

[00:34:36] Jenn: Yeah. It's liquid. Yeah.

[00:34:37] Jared: Yeah.

[00:34:38] Jenn: Sometimes there was no way to determine time of death at this time with much precision. In other words, when even when police wanted answers, the tools available to them to get them just were not, it just wasn't that simple. It just, they just weren't there.

[00:34:56] Yep.

[00:34:58] And I have to say as well, that again, they were peacekeeping officers for the most part.

[00:35:03] They were trying to keep order in the street. It wasn't so much about solving crime.

[00:35:07] Yep.

[00:35:08] So regardless of what they did or didn't do, they were not equipped to handle this situation.

[00:35:13] Jared: You know, I have pictures just in my head, like trying to get these fingerprints and again, these guys have not been trained in this besides maybe a five second class and you're, you, you, you'd be clueless and you'd probably look like a fool.

[00:35:28] Jenn: I the feeling reading through all of the information of this case, they didn't even try.

[00:35:32] Jared: Right.

[00:35:33] Jenn: There was no effort whatsoever to collect. And I even

[00:35:35] Jared: wonder what the technique was. Honestly. I actually did. I mean, were they, you know, you hear the term lifting fingerprints. Did they lift them then or did they look at the fingerprints?

[00:35:44] Like, kind of like on the surface and that's, you know,

[00:35:47] Jenn: I can answer this question for you. No. Oh,

[00:35:48] you.

[00:35:49] Jared: I love it. I love it.

[00:35:49] Jenn: Yeah. So they did use the fingerprint dust. I don't know if it was the same as it right as it is today, but they used the fingerprinting dust and then they would take photographs of it. That's what I figured.

[00:36:00] Oh, close photographs of it. That's what I figured. That's the best that they could do. Right? There was no lifting. That's

[00:36:04] Jared: what I figured.

[00:36:05] Jenn: They identified it. And even today have computers that can help. , Go through fingerprints, although they're still, it's, it's still a pretty manual process of matching fingerprints in the sense that they had to look at it and compare it and they would, they could use markers, but for the most part, they would just look at it and go, yep, that looks the same.

[00:36:28] Jared: Yeah, I'm sure there was no margin of error.

[00:36:31] Jenn: I would say that it was probably something like 70%. 70% of them were wrong. Yeah. So police did make arrests in this case. They questioned they detained acquaintances. In some cases they arrested suspects briefly and then released them when evidence failed to hold.

[00:36:55] This wasn't restraint. It was necessity without reliable proof cases depended heavily on witness statements, confessions, and circumstantial suspicion there, there was nothing. Nobody saw anything. They barely even heard anything. Yep. There were no witnesses. They got nothing.

[00:37:16] Jared: They got nothing.

[00:37:21] Jenn: It would also be dishonest to pretend that bias played no role in this situation. Many victims were Italian immigrants. A group that occupied an unstable position in the racial and social hierarchy at the time, they were not always seen as white, and they were often associated unfairly with criminal stereotypes.

[00:37:42] This affected how cases were framed, how aggressively they were pursued, and how quickly. Attention was paid to them. This does not mean that the police ignored the attacks. It does mean the victims did not benefit from the same assumptions of innocence, respectability, and urgency afforded to more powerful groups.

[00:38:03] The police didn't ignore it, but they were like, eh, all right. Yeah, we'll get to it. Right? I'm sure it's fine. They're just grocers, right? I use grocers instead of Italians. It felt less dirty.

[00:38:17] So the idea that these attacks might be connected emerged gradually, not from forensic breakthroughs, but just because it kept happening, right? Repetition, nighttime attacks, victims asleep, weapons found in the home and at the scene, little or no theft. Even then, police statements were cautious and sometimes contradictory.

[00:38:40] Some officials suggested a link, others dismissed it. This lack of consensus filtered directly into press coverage and public perception. So was this investigation bungled? We have to ask ourselves, not in the cartoonish sense, like you can't. You can, like Charlie Chaplin bumbling around on a on a set.

[00:39:03] There were missed opportunities. There were assumptions that narrowed the focus too quickly, the focus on the Italian population. There were moments where stronger coordination might have helped, but most of the issues here were structural police were trying to solve a modern problem with not modern tools.

[00:39:23] They just didn't have. So I don't think this was necessarily their fault. They could have been a little, paid a little bit more attention to it. But I think the gap between what people expected authorities to do and what they were actually capable of doing is where the problem lies.

[00:39:41] Sure.

[00:39:41] They just weren't capable.

[00:39:42] It's not that they dropped a ball, they just, they weren't playing the right game.

[00:39:48] Jared: I like that.

[00:39:49] Jenn: That was a good one. Well done. That was good. Yep. You are welcome. By early 1919, police had no suspect. They could hold no weapons. They could trace no confessions they could trust. What they did have was a city on edge, and who was there to fill the silence?

[00:40:08] Who do you think it was? The FRICKing newspapers. You better believe it. ,

[00:40:13] I don't like the press, like all these stories, the press just makes it worse. And look, I'm not, I don't even know any journalists. Do we know any journalists? I don't think I know any journalists. I

[00:40:23] Jared: don't think I do.

[00:40:24] Jenn: I think it's a, I think there are plenty of respectable,

[00:40:27] Jared: of course,

[00:40:27] Jenn: journalists out there.

[00:40:28] I'm not saying that the press is bad and we should get rid of the press. I'm just saying that you know, TMZ and Buzzfeed and National Choir, they're not helping things. Wouldn't you just present the facts now? I like a good sensational story. Okay. I like gossip. I do. I wanna listen to the gossip. I don't necessarily wanna be a part of the gossip.

[00:40:55] I don't wanna be the gossip.

[00:40:56] Jared: No, you don't ever wanna be the gossip. I don't

[00:40:58] Jenn: wanna be the gossip, but I suppose in that sense, I do contribute to the problem because I'm like, Ooh, you got some juicy gossip. I'm here to listen. Oh, I listen to like, it's interesting, but also knock it off. And I don't know what to do with that.

[00:41:14] Now, I will say this, one of the most powerful acts, the press performed in this case was naming. They called this attacker the ax

[00:41:25] Jared: Man.

[00:41:26] Jenn: Okay. Okay.

[00:41:27] Not very inventive. Nope. Nope. But the newspapers turned a series of disconnected assault into a single coherent figure, and they created a character. Once that name existed, every new incident, even loosely, similarly kind of involved, could be pulled into it.

[00:41:47] And this is how legends are formed.

[00:41:51] Jared: Could have come up with a better name, the grocer getter, you know, instead of the grocery getter, the um,

[00:41:57] Jenn: instead of the grocery getter. Yeah. Like that's a thing right now.

[00:42:01] Jared: Yeah. That's a car. You know, the grocery getter. I want you to cut this out, but, um, okay.

[00:42:05] Jenn: I think that's a good idea.

[00:42:06] Probably gonna leave it in just 'cause because that. Like what?

[00:42:12] Jared: I was trying to come up with some better names, but I fell, fell short.

[00:42:16] Jenn: Well, we'll We'll there. So

[00:42:20] we gotta talk about the letter because this is what really cemented this case into the psyche of New Orleans in March of 1919. The Times Pic Aun newspaper. I am sure that is a Native American name

[00:42:38] or, well,

[00:42:39] no, I guess that would be a French, like a Cajun name.

[00:42:42] , Probably,

[00:42:43] uh, the Times Picayune received a handwritten message from someone claiming to be the Axman and and the paper published it.

[00:42:54] Important clarification here. The existence of the letter is a historical fact. It was sent to the newspaper. There's no doubt about it, but the identity and truthfulness of the author are, are not. So by printing the letter, the newspaper unintentionally shifted the case. case. The ca The story was no longer about violence, it was about performance, and the attacker, real or imagined, we're not sure, was now speaking directly to the city.

[00:43:29] I am gonna read you this letter and I wanted to do it in a neutral voice that is unbiased and it's just reporting the facts. But I don't have that capability. I

[00:43:40] Jared: didn't think so.

[00:43:41] Jenn: So what you're about to hear, I have no control over. Alright. This is the Axman letter read is exactly as written. Hell March 13th, 1919, esteemed mortal of New Orleans.

[00:44:01] 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 Orleans and your foolish police call the the axman. man. When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims.

[00:44:26] I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue, except my bloody acts 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 beware me naturally. I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigations in the past.

[00:44:51] In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to amuse me. Ha. But tell me this, I shall not always be so easy to satisfy. I shall make my next move more terrible than ever. I shall leave a few more victims in my wake to prove that I can do. They think they have frightened me off. I laugh at them. Their threats in their silly attempts to trap me have been laughable.

[00:45:18] I fear no man and no law. I am infinitely superior to any mortal. On next Tuesday night, I'm going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I'm going to 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 the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I pass over.

[00:45:55] If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then so much the better for the people when thing is certain. And that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on that specific Tuesday night, if there be any will get the ax. Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native to Tar Tar Taurus. What the FRICK?

[00:46:21] And is about the time I leave your earthly home. I will cease my discourse hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with the I have been am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed, either in fact or realm or fancy the ax. Man,

[00:46:47] what the FRICK was that that I just read? And first of all, I don't know how I got through that whole thing without going, what the FRICK? Wait, I think I did at one point. But anyways, what do you think about that?

[00:47:02] Jared: Pretty, um, confident. And he likes jazz.

[00:47:05] jazz.

[00:47:06] Jenn: He likes to jazz it. Yeah. He actually said that some of your people who do not jazz it mm-hmm.

[00:47:17] On that specific Tuesday night. Yeah. Jazz it. Yeah.

[00:47:20] Jared: Yeah.

[00:47:22] Jenn: Is that like turning jazz into a verb?

[00:47:26] So, , the letter named a Night, Tuesday, March 19th, 1919, 12, 15:00 AM ,

[00:47:37] what I just, that letter.

[00:47:42] Jared: Well, what's it tell to you? What's this, what, what bothers you?

[00:47:47] Jenn: Very like, give me a fricking break. What, what is this? this? I have been am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed in fact or realm or fancy that it may go well with the like who talks like

[00:48:06] this? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:07] Just who?

[00:48:09] do Listen, if this motherfricker was alive in the year of 2025, this guy would be on some fancy fantasy Fanfic website acting like he was an elf of the realm or something. Yeah. Yeah. This guy would be so into Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons. It's not even funny. Like this guy's entire identity would be wrapped up in his Sims characters.

[00:48:48] Jared: Okay. I that's, like it.

[00:48:49] Jenn: This guy. I just, I don't even know what to say about this. This guy is a douche

[00:48:59] Jared: you also need to remember we're in 2026. Had to remind you too many times. We are

[00:49:04] Jenn: in 2026.

[00:49:05] Jared: Had to remind you too many times lately,

[00:49:07] Jenn: because we're only on

[00:49:08] Jared: day four.

[00:49:08] Jenn: We're on day four. It's gonna be 2025 in my head for at least another four weeks.

[00:49:14] Jared: Oh, okay. I just, we're gonna be

[00:49:15] Jenn: well into February when I'm gonna, alright, you're right. I just

[00:49:17] Jared: wanted some timetable. I got it.

[00:49:20] Jenn: Just jazz it. it. Oh, this guy. What a dirt. Like go FRICK yourself. I wish the newspaper had printed it at the end. They were like, Hey ax, man, go FRICK yourself. That's how we feel about you, buddy.

[00:49:40] You can just just get FRICKed.

[00:49:45] Jared: Really hit you.

[00:49:46] Jenn: Yeah. So this letter did not just threaten violence, it offered conditional safety. If there was jazz playing in your home when the ax man passed over the city, then you were spared. Yeah. So that night, that Tuesday night, new Orleans responded. Now, this is pretty interesting. Homes that had never hosted music before.

[00:50:10] Opened their doors, families borrowed instruments, neighbors pooled mu musicians. Jazz poured out of windows onto porches, into streets. Professional bands played late. Amateur players did their best. Phonographs ran nonstop. Some people gathered out of fear, others out of defiance. Some because it felt better to not be alone in this whole situation.

[00:50:35] And some crucially doing felt like they were doing something better than just sitting around and

[00:50:41] waiting. Sure.

[00:50:43] It's tempting. It, it is tempting to describe this as mass hysteria. I think this is more like collective problem solving in a s agreed situation that they had no control over.

[00:50:53] Agreed.

[00:50:54] And, , police, I mean, police could not promise protection.

[00:50:58] , So I don't think that they, these people were being naive by any stretch of the, of the. Imagination. They were just being human. And jazz is not incidental here. New Orleans was and is, its birthplace. Jazz lived in neighborhoods, not in concert halls. It was participatory, accessible, communal.

[00:51:22] This made it perfect. , They were saved by sound. They were saved by their love of music. No confirmed axman attack occurred on that night. That fact has been repeated so often, but it's important to be precise here because just because there wasn't an attack doesn't mean this. This doesn't mean Jack.

[00:51:46] No.

[00:51:46] In this whole thing, because there were not attacks on a lot of nights, just this. Okay. By mourning the music stopped. Something had shifted. Fear had been externalized. And that did not solve the case, but it did something else. It showed how quickly authority can transfer from institution to narratives when answers are nowhere to be found.

[00:52:13] So yeah, a lot of people like to say that after that night, the attacks stopped. Coincidence, I don't even know. But then we have, the pepitone attack happened after that, but that's why it's not considered Okay. A, an official link to this case because it happened after the letter, which seems like a really stupid way to decide.

[00:52:43] Sure.

[00:52:44] What cases are attributed. I just think, yeah.

[00:52:52] We, what we know and what we don't know. Okay. We know that between 1918 and 1919, victims were attacked while sleeping entry was quiet. Household tools, usually axes and hatchets were used. Robbery not consistent or even, I don't even know if it exists. Somebody noticed a little bit of money was like, that's just okay.

[00:53:14] Sure. You didn't leave your pocketbook somewhere. I don't even know. , And this happened mostly within working class homes. It is worth noting that many New Orleans working class homes of the period used thin wooden door panels designed for ventilation, not security, which made quiet entry possible without structural damage to the door.

[00:53:36] , Also there was an entire podcast dedicated to whether or not a man could. Slither his way through. Mm-hmm. A door panel. Mm-hmm. You think about modern door panels are pretty small, but these were somebody thin or, , I don't know. I think somebody could have gotten it. Agreed. No big deal. , What we don't know, we do not know who committed these attacks.

[00:54:00] We do not know whether every incident mentioned here is even connected to the others. We don't know who the author of the letter is, or if it was just hoax and we don't know why the attacks stop. , The historical record fractures in predictable places, names are misspelled, ages are missing. Timelines are wrong.

[00:54:25] Some victims are remembered vividly. Others barely align in the newspaper like this. This just all over the place and frankly, it wasn't reported on correctly half the time

[00:54:35] okay, so let's talk about actual suspects in theories. You ready for this? Sure. We're gonna decide who did it and then we can just talk about how each one breaks down. Frank Oxley is the most frequently named suspect in the contemporary reporting. Oxley was arrested on March of 1919, shortly after the Axman letter appeared in the newspapers.

[00:55:02] He is described as unstable. It's helpful, a former sailor, and crucially, he had allegedly threatened his wife with an axe once. Now I'm gonna tell you guys something. Jared has never threatened me with an ax. I, I, I, let me be more clear. Jared has never threatened me.

[00:55:24] Jared: Thank you. you. Let's, Let's, let's start, let's start there.

[00:55:26] Let's go. It's

[00:55:26] Jenn: not, also, not with an ax. Right? Right. But first he has never threatened me. So there's that to the police in 1919. This matters. They were not looking for behavior profiles. They were looking for someone dangerous and plausibly violent. And I'm sure they thought Sailor threatened his wife with an ax.

[00:55:46] He did it. Oxley did fit that shape, but that's where the case against him ends. That's all we have in evidence against him. There is no evidence placing him at any crime scene, no to the victim. Victims that we know of. No corroboration tying him to multiple attacks. He was questioned and then he was released.

[00:56:08] Oxley is remembered, not because the case against him was strong, because but everybody was like, yeah, it seems like the guy. guy. It's gotta be, it's gotta be him, right?

[00:56:17] Jared: Sure,

[00:56:18] Jenn: sure. Now we have a modern named suspect here, frank. Doc Mumey, also known as Leon Joseph Re, which those are two very different names. Yeah. I would like to point out, yeah. And yet those two names are associated with one man, Frank Leon, doc Joseph.

[00:56:45] Sure. Okay. Got you. He was associated with the jazz scene in New Orleans. Okay. Here's where the jazz comes in. Obviously he liked to jazz it. He was connected after the Axman letter, compelled the entire city to play jazz music that night. , Obviously this implication is obvious.

[00:57:06] If someone's to benefit from the panic financially or socially, then Mumey had the motive. Because he wanted to get hired to play in a jazz band on Tuesday night.

[00:57:18] Jared: This that valid. Okay, I'm with you now. I'm following.

[00:57:22] Jenn: This is a slippery slope here. How many ledgers is he gonna have to write to get Right?

[00:57:26] Business churning. That's literally the only reason why his name was brought up

[00:57:31] Jared: that. Yeah,

[00:57:32] Yeah.

[00:57:33] Jenn: he liked to jazz it.

[00:57:34] Jared: That was a lot of work to get a one night gig.

[00:57:37] Jenn: To get a gig for one night.

[00:57:38] Jared: Yeah.

[00:57:39] Jenn: Yeah. I mean in that letter, yeah.

[00:57:44] Okay. There bud. Another modern theory. , Separates the crimes from the letter entirely. It suggests that Joseph John Dilla, a jazz composer, may have written the Axman letter, not as the killer, but as a provocateur. Mm-hmm.

[00:58:03] Mm-hmm.

[00:58:04] The letter coincided neatly with a boom, an axman themed jazz music and sheet music sales.

[00:58:12] I can't make this up. There were actual jazz songs named after the Axman.

[00:58:20] Jared: That makes sense. Does it? It does, does,

[00:58:22] Jenn: it it

[00:58:24] Jared: does. Okay. Well,

[00:58:28] Jenn: under this theory, the letter was all theater. , It was a hoax that exploited, , an existing panic. And this does not explain the unalivings, but you know, now we're gonna go with broader theory models here and just kind of talk about it in the ether, because we are out of. of.

[00:58:47] People

[00:58:47] to talk about. Okay. Right, right. We

[00:58:48] don't, , newsflash, we don't know who did it.

[00:58:51] Got it.

[00:58:52] Okay. So the question is, was this a serial offender or a serial opportunity situation? Could one person have done all of these different attacks?

[00:59:07] Jared: Is that a question?

[00:59:09] Jenn: This is a question. Do you think it, like it could have been, I'm not gonna ask you what you think yet, but it could have been one person.

[00:59:14] Right. Versus these are just all separate attacks that just have No,

[00:59:18] Jared: so you may answer that now or wait, so that

[00:59:20] Jenn: one person, or this is multiple attackers committing similar crimes folded together by the press and fear and the axman letter and all of that shit.

[00:59:31] Jared: Yeah, it's one guy. guy.

[00:59:33] Jenn: You think It's one guy. It's one guy.

[00:59:34] Jared: It's one guy. For most part, it's not like three or four. It's one guy, maybe one copy, you know? But it's one guy. Yeah.

[00:59:41] Jenn: You think it's one guy? Yeah. Well, hold on. You're You're jumping ahead.

[00:59:45] Jared: Hey, hey, hey.

[00:59:46] Jenn: You're jumping ahead. The biggest question I would have is why did it stop?

[00:59:51] Sure.

[00:59:51] If it is one person, it stopped. Historically speaking, serial offenders stop when huge life changes happening. Like loss of a loved one, birth of a child marriage. Or they go to jail or they die.

[01:00:10] Yeah.

[01:00:11] That's why serial offenders stop.

[01:00:12] Okay.

[01:00:13] Okay. So we don't have any, I mean, new Orleans is a big place, so it's kind of hard to track all the people that died, went to prison or had life changes.

[01:00:23] That's too many. First of all, it was a man, I'm just gonna say that it has to be a man. It just does. No offense.

[01:00:32] Yeah.

[01:00:32] I don't think women go around again unless you're Lizzie Borden because we know she did it.

[01:00:38] Yeah,

[01:00:39] obviously. So, yeah. You think it is one dude? You think one dude. Yeah. Maybe of them is a copycat.

[01:00:49] Right? You think it's one guy?

[01:00:50] Jared: Yep.

[01:00:53] Jenn: So you know me. How did I decide who did this? Or if it was one person I had to do some research.

[01:01:02] Jared: Okay. That was an easy answer. I was looking for something deeper.

[01:01:04] Jenn: Nope, nope. I started doing research and looking things up. I think statistically speaking, statistics here.

[01:01:12] Yeah.

[01:01:13] Okay. I do not think there is a single axman in New Orleans. I think we're looking at a cluster of violent home invasion, A acts attacks. Committed by more than one person. Now here's the thing, as soon as the newspaper printed an ax attack, it's now become collective knowledge. The newspaper said that they used an ax from the house.

[01:01:38] So I feel like people were reading the news and they were like, huh, axes do make good weapons. They chop down trees just fine. I wonder what they would do to somebody's nogging?

[01:01:48] no. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:01:50] So like, they're like, well, yeah, that's a really good point. Axes do make good weapons. and. And I think statistically the victim profiles are inconsistent.

[01:02:03] There were some Italian grocers, but there were also nont Italians. There was also a pregnant woman alone. There was a family like this didn't go from, I don't know.

[01:02:16] Jared: I understand what you're saying.

[01:02:17] Jenn: The profiles of different, the mechanics are s

[01:02:21] just. just. The easiest way to break into somebody's home, into these houses was to remove these door panels.

[01:02:28] Right. It was just easy. It wasn't a commonality in that sense. It was just, that's the easiest way to get in the door.

[01:02:35] Yeah.

[01:02:35] Jared: Yeah.

[01:02:36] Jenn: Like breaking windows is loud, shimming in this panel out of the way. Like it just, it just makes sense. I also will say that like anybody that's going to get all bloodied up is gonna change their clothes or try to clean up before they go walk out on the street.

[01:02:54] That's not like a premeditation or like, I don't think that's a consistency. Consistency between one or the other case. Yeah. Agree. I just think that it just makes most sense. I clean up before you go out. No, I agree.

[01:03:04] Jared: I agree.

[01:03:04] I agree.

[01:03:05] Jenn: So I just, you know, axes were common. Every single house would've had one. , Nighttime home invasions are not rare.

[01:03:15] I think that's pretty normal. The only thing that I, the only thing that bugs me about the multiple perpetrators is that there wasn't any, doesn't seem like any sense to why they, why, why nothing was stolen.

[01:03:33] Jared: Correct.

[01:03:34] Jenn: In some cases, the people weren't even totally killed. I mean, I, I think, I think if they, if you hit somebody in in the head with that kind of an object, you would think that it would take 'em 'em out.

[01:03:48] Yeah. Gone. Mm-hmm. They'd

[01:03:49] be be

[01:03:50] done for you would think.

[01:03:52] Yeah.

[01:03:53] Oddly enough, that's actually not the case.

[01:04:00] Jared: Yeah. I was so, yeah. No, I was thinking, but yeah. What were you thinking? No, I, I, I, I, I'm going back to there's, you know, you're equally, there's still a pattern.

[01:04:14] Jenn: I think that there's a pattern, but I also think that because all of these cases were in the newspaper, right? I think that it, they were copying them. Yeah. I think that there were multiple offenders. This is the same environment. I think you have convergence because of economic stress, racial tension, weak policing. It's not like you have to worry about getting caught. These guys are just trying to,

[01:04:35] Jared: but they still didn't take anything.

[01:04:39] Jenn: I hear you. But I mean, you do have this racial tensions and I think you have to look at it from the sense of these gosh darn people in our city that are ruining it for the rest of them or whatever they thought, like, I don't think like that, but people look,

[01:04:57] Jared: they were taking it upon themselves. Each individual is to , handle a situation.

[01:05:04] Jenn: I think so, yeah. That would be where I'm going. I think that this is just. Somebody saw a newspaper story and it became a script, and the script got reused. No,

[01:05:15] Jared: that makes sense. It does. It's a possibility. Um,

[01:05:17] Jenn: modern, and this is, is something that I found interesting. Modern criminology shows that once a violent method is publicized, similar crimes spike briefly and then taper off.

[01:05:29] Especially when the method is simple and accessible. And at this point in time, this would've been simple and accessible. Right. Right. This is not speculation. This is observed behavior.

[01:05:39] Jared: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:40] Jenn: The letter is most certainly, in my opinion, not from whoever did any of these unalivings.

[01:05:47] This is probably a journalist because I think that they just wanted to sell sell papers.

[01:05:53] Jared: Yeah. And here's some jazz. A

[01:05:55] Jenn: journalist that loves some, yeah. Smooth jazz. Yeah.

[01:05:58] Jared: Yeah,

[01:05:59] Jenn: it did. It did appear during a lull in the case, and it just, it brought the attention all back. Minimal risk. I mean, yeah, who's gonna catch a letter writer in 1919?

[01:06:12] Like, they can't, they don't know the difference between different typewriters.

[01:06:16] Jared: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:17] Jenn: There's no handwriting analysis happening. I don't think so. I think an opportunity, just like a journalist wrote the letter, published it in their paper, and then, you know, just banked on all that fear and just to sell some papers and you know, I mean, jazz might have scared this demon away, but most likely I think that.

[01:06:44] Either this was multiple offenders and they got whoever they got, or just, you know, they died.

[01:06:50] Right.

[01:06:50] They went to jail for something else.

[01:06:52] Jared: Right.

[01:06:53] Jenn: They just, yeah.

[01:06:57] Jared: We'll never know.

[01:06:58] Jenn: We'll, this is an interesting one because there are so few suspects to even point at. Frank Oxley is the most commonly, commonly cited, but he most certainly, there's absolutely no

[01:07:14] proof.

[01:07:15] Right, right.

[01:07:16] And it's just, there's like a collective, eh, this is a weird one. There's, there's definitely, I can't wrap this one up for you in a bow.

[01:07:29] Jared: Okay. Okay. It's all right.

[01:07:32] Jenn: Nope. So the axman of New Orleans did not change the city because. He was caught. Definitely not. He changed it 'cause it's never explained like it.

[01:07:45] In absence of resolution, new Orleans was forced to confront something and had rarely faced in a concentrated way, violence without motive, pattern, without clarity and fear, without an identifiable enemy. Like you can't really pin this on anybody. Before these attacks, new Orleans was no stranger to danger.

[01:08:08] The city had been shaped by disease, poverty, corruption, racial tension, labor unrest, violence existed, but it was usually contextualized. You could make sense of it. And this just didn't make sense. , It disrupted all of that logic. These crimes offered no demands or warning. This case also marked a turning point in the relationship between crime and the media in the city.

[01:08:35] Newspapers did not simply report on the axman. They shaped him through repetition, selective framing, and sensational language. How I feel about that. A series of violent acts was transformed into a singular figure with a name and personality, eventually a voice. I just used it on this podcast to express that demon's, words, we're just gonna wrap that on that. I will say this though, I think that New Orleans absorbed the mystery the way it does absorbs so many things. And I think it all goes back to the music and the culture, the narrative, the endurance of New Orleans.

[01:09:12] It is just a really unique and interesting city and I think it, it's really cool to have that narrative in Amer the American culture.

[01:09:23] Jared: Sure. I Sure. I agree. It's, yeah, I've got nothing

[01:09:30] Jenn: I would like to go to New Orleans, and I would like to meet a voodoo priestess. I'd like to talk to somebody about voodoo, and I'm like, so really the voodoo doll, explain this to me also.

[01:09:42] Why do I have to dance backwards through a doorway? That's a thing. Okay. Okay. Look, I can't explain it to you, but, 'cause I don't understand,

[01:09:52] Jared: Right?

[01:09:52] Jenn: Right. You

[01:09:52] Jared: want to be, yeah. You want, you want somebody to explain it to you.

[01:09:55] Jenn: I want somebody to explain voodoo to me and does it really work? And please give me instructions.

[01:10:03] I have some ideas of people that I could use it on.

[01:10:06] Jared: Okay.

[01:10:08] Jenn: So it's not you. Thanks, by the way, you're safe.

[01:10:11] Jared: I was watching you to see how your eyes were, so Yeah.

[01:10:14] Jenn: What does that mean?

[01:10:15] Jared: I just was looking.

[01:10:16] Jenn: Yep. I, I would like to use some voodoo.

[01:10:19] Jared: Okay.

[01:10:19] Jenn: Mm-hmm. I'd also like to have a seance. Do you wanna have a seance in this house?

[01:10:23] I'm

[01:10:24] Jared: all right for now. now.

[01:10:25] Jenn: Oh, no. I think it would be really fun. We could find out for real, if this house is haunted,

[01:10:30] could we?

[01:10:30] Jared: we?

[01:10:31] Jenn: Yes.

[01:10:31] Okay.

[01:10:32] If we did a seance and something was like, it's, it's, it's, I'm not gonna say his name, but it's the man that owned the house. I dump love it and I did it just for you, Jenn.

[01:10:42] Jared: Okay.

[01:10:43] We'll think about it.

[01:10:45] Jenn: Well, we could film it. it. We could film a seance.

[01:10:49] Jared: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:49] Jenn: I need somebody to reach out to me and tell me how to do a seance and then maybe we could just do like a zoom call and we could like seance you in. Oh

[01:10:58] boy.

[01:10:59] I think that that would be seance you in. I would seance you in. I need somebody to tell me how to do a seance because I, you're

[01:11:06] Jared: good at research. research.

[01:11:07] I think you've got this.

[01:11:08] Jenn: No, but I need somebody, like, I need an adult in the room because like experiments with me. , This is how I view cooking. Okay. I am like, I'm like, eh, it's probably fine. Usually it's not. And also you should use less salt than you think you should, but I want to use more salt. So I, that went awry.

[01:11:32] But let me just say this. , If you enjoyed the show, make sure you're subscribed or following so you don't miss our future episodes. Bonus content if you want. patreon.com/houseofsyx. You can also find us on YouTube and TikTok @houseofsyx Clips. Extra content. It's sometimes funny. I went on a whole rant about birds last week.

[01:11:57] That was fun indeed.

[01:11:57] Jared: indeed.

[01:11:58] Jenn: Yep. Ratings and reviews help sharing's fun. Sharing is caring. Okay. I think that you should remember that when you listen to this, , podcast. But so yeah, we appreciate you no matter what. If you think you know what really happened in this case and I don't know how you did, but if you think you know who did it, you should let us know.

[01:12:17] Jared: Sure.

[01:12:18] Jenn: You should tell us.

[01:12:19] Jared: Be helpful.

[01:12:20] Jenn: You think that it was Bob, like that guy I knew he looked guilty as hell. And so, or if you have an interesting case you wanna hear, you could let us know. We like to hear your feedback. You can reach out to us on all the places I just mentioned. You can also email us at houseofsyx@gmail.com.

[01:12:42] Yeah. So that's it. That was fun. We'll be back soon. We're doing episodes every two weeks now. Dropping on Tuesdays. That's fun. Tuesdays are fun.

[01:12:54] Jared: Fun Tuesday, not just for Taco Tuesday now it's more than that now.

[01:12:58] Jenn: Yeah. Or jazzing it. Okay.

[01:13:00] Jared: Okay.

[01:13:00] Jenn: Yeah. Okay, so stay out of stay. Keep the jazz plane. Okay.

[01:13:09] Jared: Bye.

[01:13:10] Jenn: Um, bye.