THE AXEMAN OF NEW ORLEANS

since today's video is going to be another serial killer true crime unsolved video this time I haven't got an unsolved case in so long but if you follow me on Twitter you will have seen a couple of days ago that I just found out that this case is real you're all gonna think I'm so stupid I thought that this case was a myth I thought that this was just a story and then the Axman of New Orleans never existed I thought it was just a thing on American Horror Story I'm stupid I know but but I found out it was real and I was like okay so I've got to do that now like and yeah today's video is on the axeman of New Orleans he has never been identified this was over a century ago now by the way thank you so much for 600 care I literally just hit like 10 minutes ago so thank you so much that's insane I know I still owe you the 500k of special that's just because my life has been so hectic this summer like I haven't even had chance to keep up with my normal schedule never mind five extra videos so I'm gonna make that six should I just make it a week I'm just gonna make it week seven straight videos sometime soon I'm not gonna give you a date because my life is still pretty hectic until the end of August so I don't know when I can give you that but there's gonna be a week straight of videos sometimes by the way they st. Joe is gonna be quite long because I've got a few things to say this chair has suddenly got really squeaky this is the chair that I reviews for the past like over a year it's suddenly really squeaky so I'm sorry if you can hear that but yeah one last thing before we get into this video I just want to thank our sponsor June's journey for sponsoring this video Jim's journey is a thrilling murder mystery mobile gamer where you play as June and you try and solve the murder of your own sister the game is set in the 1920s so the aesthetics are really really cute and you basically take part in a bunch of hidden object scenes to help further you in the search for your sister's killer it's such a relaxed game to play and by that I mean it's like just the right amount of challenging where it's getting your brain going but it's not stressful and right now on the app they are running a competition named Joon's journey talents where you basically send in a short video of you showcasing your hidden talent there'll be five winners of this contest and each person will win a week-long luxury holiday in Berlin and as part of that trip you get to go to the June's journey headquarters in Berlin and like meet the team the competition will be running until August 9th all the details are pinned at the top of the June's journey Facebook page if you need reminding of anything and of course I'll leave the link down in the description to go and download June's journey it's available on iPhone and on Android so what are you waiting for go into that competition when you trip to Berlin yeah back to me and a green top let's get into the video yeah like I said in the beginning of this video the Axman of New Orleans was never identified so everything you're about to hear in this video oh I haven't done my usual disclaimer I'm all over the place I'm just too excited about hitting 600 care I'd just like to give my usual disclaimer that I made absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm about to say is just information that I have found on the internet and I'm compiling it into one video but yeah a lot of the information that you're about to hear in this case is from survivors of the axe man and he had quite a lot of survivors he actually killed as many people as he attacked that survived so he had six kills six survivors but that's kind of disputed wait until you get into it some of them might not be his kills he might have even more than that who knows so this case takes place in New Orleans in Louisiana in 1918 and 1990 and the first murder accredited to the Axman of New Orleans was on May 23rd 1918 the first victims of the Axman were a married Italian couple named Joseph and Katherine Maggio the couple actually owned like a grocery shop and they lived in the apartment above that and in the middle of the night while they were asleep the killer snuck in they broke in through that back door or whatever they must have chiseled off the bottom panel of the and snuck in and slipped birth of their throats while they were asleep Katherine's was actually slit so deeply that her head was almost completely severed but the Axman wasn't even done there he then went and found an axe the couple's own axe that they kept in their house and he took it back to the bedroom and hacked them both multiple times some people believe that he did this like he went back and got another weapon and came back because he kind of wanted to mess up his victims a little bit more like he didn't want their cause of death to be really easily identifiable so if they had multiple injuries it'll take police a bit longer but other people believe that this man was obviously just a seeker and he wasn't done having fun yet he wanted to do more to these victims before he left the couple were found around 4:30 a.m. that night two hours after they were actually attacked and it was Joseph's brothers Jake and Andrew that found them birth these brothers Jake and Andrew actually happened to live next door to the Maggio's but somehow they didn't hear any of this attack take place they just heard groaning two hours later when the Maggio's were dying anyway the brothers heard these noises went to their brother's house where they walked in they found Catherine already dead like I said her injuries were horrendous and Joseph was led on the bed beside her clinging to life he was almost dead as well the brothers called the police they called an ambulance and everything however it was too late and Joseph died literally within minutes of his brother's arriving that's kind of one little nice thing that you can take from this he survived for two hours alone in that room but then his brothers came and he was able to die with them which is still really sad but it's kind of you know so police arrived at the scene they did their first initial look around everything and immediately they found a pile of blood-soaked clothes that the killer hadn't even tried to hide at all so it seems as though the killer had killed this couple and then just take it all these clothes off put some new ones on clean ones and just left and left such huge evidence in the apartment outside the Maggio's home they also found the axe that still had blood on it and then a few houses down they also found the razor that was used to slash their throats that also still had their blood on it so it was like the Axman tried to kind of hide there but not hide them he wanted them to be found and the axe that was used on the Maggio's I can't remember if I said this earlier but it was their own axe and this is a running theme with the axe map which i think is one of the most like distinctive and sadistic things about this case is that the axe man would break into their houses and use their own weapons to kill them so anyway a police continued to look around this house and they found where the axe man had broken in like I said he chiseled away at the bottom panel in the door and he must have kind of like snuck in through that I don't know how big these panels were in the door but later on in this case it's implied that they weren't that big so it was very clearly a break-in it's not like the axe man had been left in or anything like that like he'd broken his own way in however nothing was stolen nothing was ransacked in the apartment it seemed as though this person had broken in with the intention of killing the couple so please really struggled to find a motive for this murder obviously it wasn't a robbery gone wrong the couple posed no threat to their killer at all they were obviously asleep they were in bed when they were attacked obviously whoever did this just wanted to kill them they broke in that will kill them so police began looking at Joseph and Catherine's lives like their personal lives people in their lives to see if they had any disagreements any enemies anyone that might benefit from them being gone and the first place they decided to look where the first two people on the scene after this attack took place Joseph's brothers Jake and Andrew but specifically one of the brothers Andrew Maggio actually owned a barber shop a couple of streets away from where they left meaning he had access to a lot of different razors cuz obviously big trim men's beards and things like that but one of Andrews employees remembers Andrew taking on this one specific razor a couple of days before the murders apparently Andrew wanted to sharpen this specific razor and so he took it home and then coincidentally it was used in a murder and another suspicious thing about this whole murder and how they were found and everything is that these two brothers lived next door to the murder scene where someone will have been hacking at these two people there will have been screams there will have been a lot of banging a lot of noise however it didn't work either of them even though they were just in the next apartment but the thing that did wick the brothers was groaning noises two hours later and those groaning noises will have just been coming from Joseph Maggio because his wife was already dead so how were the groaning noises louder than the actual attack so obviously police brought this up with andrew maggio they were saying look this is really suspicious can you explain why you didn't wake up at the attack and he said it was because he'd actually been out drinking that night because he'd just been accepted into the Navy he went out celebrating got really really drunk came home and just pretty much like passed out in bed and then that must have been when the attack was going on so obviously all these loud noises wouldn't wake up someone so intoxicated however at 4:30 a.m. he woke up for a drink and that was when he heard the noises and to be fair it does make sense so obviously police have no real evidence to say that Andrew did this it was all just kind of suspicions around him and so they couldn't really arrest him and some of the things could kind of be argued so yes he did on that specific razor that was used to attack his brother and his brother's wife but he also owned a lot of the razors in the town if that makes sense so like yes he owned that specific razor but if someone was to come into his shop and steal that razor with the intention of killing Joseph Maggio and romaji ah then it still Andrews razor but someone else used it you know I mean and yes his employee saw him taking home that specific razor but how can he be sure it was that specific razor because like pretty much all razors look the same I don't know about this one in particular but like a racism razor or maybe this was Joseph's Maggio's own razor think about it if you wanted to raise her at home to be able to trim your own and be it where are you gonna get that razor from obviously your brother that owns a barber shop and has a bunch of razors it's not like it was Andrews personal possession it was just a razor that Andrew had bought it's not like it had Andrews bloody initials engraved in it awesome then it was just a razor that he earned I don't know if that's making much sense but it's up to you whether you consider that evidence or not so another piece of evidence that I just want to talk about quickly before I move on I just wanna warn ya I don't know how accurate this is at all I saw it in some sources but a couple of blocks away from where this murder took place there was a note left on a wall written in blood and it supposedly said mrs. márcia will sit up late tonight just like mrs. Turner now I don't know who mrs. Tony is a lot of the sources that I found didn't know who mrs. Tony is it seemed as though if this was a real piece of evidence it didn't make much sense at the time or now that know isn't really talked about much at all through the rest of the case so I don't know if it was ever connected to anything if it was even real who knows because this is such a famous case it's got a lot of like Chinese whispers things added into it you know what I mean but say this was true how could this not have been written blocks away from the house in blood it's quite a long note and like forgive me for how graphic this is but he would have literally had to like bottle some blood from the crime scene and take it blocks away like how has he got that much blood on his clothes that he can write and know on a wall that long like fair enough if it was just one word like you can maybe like use some of the blood that's on your t-shirt or something from the attack I don't know I just I don't think I leave that piece of evidence it's up to you if you believe it and just the fact that it's not spoken about in every single source also makes me doubt it so yeah with lack of evidence to be able to convict or even charge andrew maggio with the murder of his own brother they had to let him go and they carried on looking for leads and looking for different suspects but it wasn't long before they had another case on their hands to worry about just over a month after the first killings on June 27th 1918 the axe man claimed a further two victims this time it was a man named Louie Bessemer and his mistress Harriet Lou and it was actually Harriet and Lusa you might know her as an if you've looked into this case Louis owned a bakery and he and his mistress Harriet were asleep in bed in his apartment above this bakery very similar to the first one the following morning a delivery man came to drop off some ingredients at this bakery and he knocked on the door but no one answered and this was very unusual this was a day when the bakery was supposed to be open Louie Bessemer always opened the door to him and so he decided to go around the back of the bakery to see if he could drop them off and that was when he saw a panel of the door had been chiseled out so this still agreement pushed open the door and walked to the living quarters where Louie and Harriet were asleep and as soon as he opened the door that was just blood everywhere all over the walls all over the floor even on the ceiling and he made his way to the bedroom where he walked in and found Louie Bessemer and Harriet leur layin on the bed in pools of their own blood and they were both still alive but only just they needed help immediately otherwise they weren't going to survive they'd both been struck in the head just once each with an axe of course police and an ambulance were called Louie and Harriet were taken to hospital and as police began to look around the apartment they found Louie bessemer's on ax covered in blood in the bathroom again the axe man had used the victims own weapon on them meanwhile in hospital both Louie and Harriet would be entreated Louie's injuries were a lot less severe than Harriet's Harriet was in of consciousness she needed a lot of treatment a lot of surgeries and so it was going to take a while for her to be able to give her story to police however they were able to talk to Louie pretty much immediately but unfortunately libby wasn't going to be much help to the investigation because he said that they were just both asleep when they were attacked so he woke up as he was being attacked but just to see the figure running away he couldn't get a good look at his face or anything like that literally Oh Louie bessemer said was that it was a dark looming figure so police didn't really have much to go on like I said Louie bessemer was able to fully recover from his injuries and he became the first ever survivor of the Axman however his mistress Harriet law wasn't so lucky and she actually passed away after seven weeks of treatment now I didn't mention this earlier but Wow Louie and Harriet were being treated for their injuries in hospital police actually went ahead and arrested a suspect this suspect was a 41 year old black man that worked at Louis bessemer's bakery and I think it's very important to note his race here because the only reason the police arrested this man are the only reason that they could really give was that he worked at Louie's bessemer's bakery so it was close to him knew where he was gonna be at all times knew that he could attack him in the middle of the night but they didn't arrest any of Louie's other workers the other white workers or the other Italian workers just the one black man that worked there it was a very racist time this was a racist thing to do they had no evidence against this man they arrested him because he was an easy target they kept him for a while with absolutely no evidence they were probably trying to find evidence against him they probably just wanted someone to lock up and they just thought that they would blame this innocent black man however they couldn't find any evidence obviously because this man was innocent and so they had to let him go this part is getting a little bit confusing I understand that but Harriet Lou before she passed away she passed away after seven weeks of treatment and during that seven weeks she was like in and out of consciousness in and out of surgery and while she was a WIC police would go in and question her and her series of events was very confusing at first she claimed that the attacker was a mixed-race man she used a racist term for that so we can assume that she meant it in a racist way but then she changed her mind she decided that the attacker was actually Lily Bessemer himself she told police that Lily Bessemer was a German spy and he'd never told you this before but somehow she got wind of it she realized that he was a German spy and so she confronted him about it and that is when he attempt her with the axe and then attacked himself with the axe to cover it up so police decided to look into this theory and they found some evidence just a couple of letters in his house written in different European languages Louise Bessemer was arrested but he was released very quickly after and the police that arrested him for being a German spy were actually demoted because they did a bad job because he wasn't a German spy and that's a really serious accusation to make against someone after speaking with Harriet low again police were trying to get a little bit more evidence on Louise besserman they just wanted someone to lock up for this because they wanted to be seen to be doing their job and after Harriet law passed away police decided to arrest Louise Bessemer for murder because now Harriet was dead before it would have been attempted murder but as soon as she passed away and that is when they arrested him he actually spent nine months in jail before he was finally acquitted he was found not guilty of murder after originally being found guilty of it but yeah after that no one else was arrested know where the leads were found no other suspects were found and so now police just had to double attacks on the hands with no one to blame for them just over a month after that the third Axman attack took place on August 5th 1918 this time on a pregnant woman and she was alone now the ones before this had been in couples she was alone 28 year old Anna Schnieder was eight months pregnant and her husband at came home from work one day and found her lid on their bed covered in blood literally she was so covered in blood that her husband didn't even know what was wrong he didn't even know where to start looking at her injuries he just called her an ambulance and they went straight to the hospital her face was just so brutally beaten there were so many wounds on her face she was missing so many of her teeth her scalp was cut up and Anna was treated for these injuries and by some kind of miracle after two days she gave birth to her little baby girl and the baby was completely healthy Anna also ended up surviving the attack and went on to tell police that she didn't really see her attacker again she was attacked while she was asleep and then when she woke up she just saw a dark looming figure leaving her room now even though the Axman of New Orleans his Emma seems to be using the victims own axe on them that doesn't seem to be how Anna was attacked it actually seems more likely in this case that she was attacked using her bedside lamp so she was just continually beaten with it it seemed as though this person just kind of went into the house and found whatever they could they seemed to prefer axes but if they were to find a razor they would use a razor if they couldn't find an axe they would use a bedside lamp you know so after the attack on Anna police were kind of split depending on what they thought about these attacks some of them were connecting all three attacks saying this is the same person that's done all three of these they were all very very similar whereas other officers were kind of still trying to explain where the different crimes to different people so a lot of officers still believe that the first one was done by andrew maggio and that this one because the mo was different like the weapon used was different they believed it was a different attacker around this point in the case a man named James Gleason was arrested however he was let go literally just after a couple of days of his arrest I believe the reason that James Gleason was arrested was because he saw police out and about in town or whatever and just ran and obviously that's very suspicious you don't just see police out and run unless you're guilty of something and you don't want police to see ya so he was taken to the police station he was arrested he was questioned obviously they didn't really find much evidence for him to be the Axman of New Orleans Gleeson said in his questioning that the reason he ran from police that day was because he'd been in and out of jail all his life and he just learned to be scared of police like it was kind of second nature to him to run away because he felt like he was gonna get arrested and taken to jail again but I mean to me that's still a sign of a guilty person anyway they couldn't find any evidence for him being the Axman and so he was just let free to do whatever else he was doing whatever that was but the next Axman attack came very quickly after the last one just five days later on August 10th 1918 in the early hours of the morning Pauline and Mary Brunner were awoken to noises coming from their uncle's room they walked in to find that uncle Joseph Ramana slumped on the floor in a pool of his own blood after he'd been attacked in the head with an axe some sources even said that the girls witnessed their uncle's attacker fleeing the scene now I don't know how true this is but I do have a court I do exactly I don't know where this Court is from that's why I'm so cool but the girl supposedly described this attacker fleeing the scene as a dark-skinned heavyset man who wore a dark suit and a slouched hat so this person if we're going by their account this person was going around murdering people in a suit again an axe was found in the back garden of the property and a panel had been chiseled out of the door so that someone could gain access eight-year-old Joseph Ramana did fight his injuries for two days however he eventually passed away in hospital at this point police couldn't deny that these attacks were probably connected because they were just far too many similarities the panel being chiseled out the door the axe being found on the lawn it was all just too similar for it to not be the same person so they decided to make it very vocal that they were looking for the person that was doing this it was all over newspapers and everything like that the police was stepping up their security they had people going out and patrolling at nights and days like people were on different Road corners and things everyone knew that the police were doing quite a lot to find this person and it was going to be kind of hard for the Axman to attack again and because of the kind of hysteria around this case a lot of members of the public were fawning in false stories false sightings of the Axman a lot of people said they would see different men with axes lurking around in the neighborhoods and so they would call the police police would turn up no one would be there realistically at this point I think the ax man realized how tight the police would be in and how unlikely he was to get away with a crime at this time and so he just stepped back and he waited until police gave up the ax man actually waited a full nine months and obviously by then there was less security around like obviously there hadn't been a random murder in nine months so police were beginning to think that they'd cracked this and that the axe man had given up or something but no he struck again on March 10th 1919 a neighbor of the Carter Miglia family heard screams coming from their house and so this neighbor ran across the street to check this never entered the home to find Rose Carter me cleared the mother of the family stumbling into the hall where blood all over her head and she was clutching her deceased infant child the child's name was Mary she was 2 years old and she was killed in her mother's arms so Roz and Mary were birth lid on the bed they were asleep and this attacker had come in and struck this child just once on the neck and killed her instantly I assume Rose was attacked around the same time she was struck just once in the head with an axe and roses husband Charles was collapsed on the floor in a pool of his own blood with similar head injuries to that of his wife Rose the couple were rushed to hospital and their wounds were treated and clavier survived however of course their two-year-old daughter Mary didn't and a lot of people believe that that drug rose cotton Miglia to insanity once she was all like physically healed she began having her police questioned ins and everything where they asked like if she saw her attacker and things like that and that was when Rose told them that it was actually the neighbor that attacked her that neighbor that came in and found them bleeding it was him but this neighbor was a 69 year old man and he was very ill very frail he could not have even lifted an axe never mind committed such an attack and when police told Rose that when they were like we really don't think it was him she said well not it was his son as well then she began accusing his son Frank who was I think he was 18 years old he was six-foot and 200 pounds she was quite a big guy and police again didn't believe her the reason I tell you about his size is because again the killer had gotten in through a panel in the dark a very tiny little panel that the chiseled out the door this big 6-foot 200-pound guy could not fit through that gap in the door and the other guy was too old and too frail to be able to do that so police at this point just didn't really believe Rose and her story like I said Charles Carter Miglia survived as well and he was being questioned as well and the whole time he was completely denying Rose's version of events he was saying I don't know what she's talking about that didn't happen it wasn't him wasn't either of them but police arrested the two neighbors nonetheless and they were both found guilty of attempted murder the older of the two neighbors were sentenced to life in prison and the younger of the two neighbors the one that they believed actually probably hit them with the axe and everything he was sentenced to death he was to be hanged from roses accusations so the men went to trial obviously it was gonna be a really long trial this was before they were sentenced everything and about a year into this trial charles casa milia divorced his wife rose because after this whole thing she just wasn't the same she was insane as he said as he put it he just couldn't believe that she was saying these things about the neighbors because he was there he saw the attackers obviously you didn't see their face but he knew it wasn't his neighbors and I think it must have been like the divorce to kind of snap Rose back to reality because she went to the police and admitted that there were all false accusations and that neither of the neighbors were there that night luckily the younger of the two neighbors hadn't been sentenced to death yet and the other one was only gonna serve life in prison anywhere and so they were both let free but anyway we've skipped forward quite a lot there we'll just get forward a full year so let's go right back to that attack the last attack of the kata Miglia is just three days after that a newspaper received the infamous letter from the axe man himself and you know at the top of the page where the sender will put like a return address like Barrow an address so that if the letter gets lost it can go back to them well the axe man just simply wrote how so I'm just gonna read you a few of the like main bits from this letter because the axe men like to rumble quite a lot and a lot of it doesn't really make much sense to me anywhere cuz I've got like three brain cells it started with esteemed mortal of New Orleans the axe man 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'm not a human being but a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell I am what you are lenient and your foolish police call the axe man when I see fit I shall come and claim other victims I alone know whom there shall be I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe they smeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company he then basically went on to said that the police is stupid and they're never gonna catch him and they're following all the wrong leads and everything but he said it in a lot of words just summarizing he goes on to say that he could kill every single night if he wanted to but he was just kind of being nice and now I'm going back to coordinate he says now to be exact at 12:15 earthly time 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'm 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 have just mentioned if everyone has a jazz band going well then so much 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 will get the ax and then he signed it off with the ax man now of course obviously can't be proven that this letter was actually from the ax man a lot of people believe that this letter is a hook after all the ax man was a famous and feared serial killer at this point everyone in New Orleans knew who he was they were terrified that he was coming for them next and it's not unusual to see people bright hooks letters just to get a rise out of the public in cases like this I mean it doesn't really happen as much these days but like in the Jack the Ripper case a lot of people believe a lot of those letters were hoaxes but just the concept of the threat in the letter just makes it seem like a joke like pledge of music and I want killya like that that seems like a joke especially about specific phrase people who do not jazz it out will get the ax it's just like hard to take it seriously don't you think so yes it could be a hooks but at the same time think about it this way okay so a person that can commit such murders like killing literally an infant with an axe they must be like mentally ill in some capacity and to a mentally ill person this letter might not sound like a joke like this might sound really threatening to someone that's not all there you know what I mean so you maybe is hooks but also this could be his version of like a really scary letter and he could think that he's really scaring everyone in New Orleans and to be fair he did and they all followed his instructions the next Tuesday came around and pretty much every single home that owned a record player was playing jazz music obviously even if he thought it was a hoax you wouldn't take that risk there were some houses that did take the risk and to be fair I think it was more like let's try and catch the Axman kind of thing like if they're not playing jazz music someone might come and break in the house and then they'll be able to catch this person that's been attacking people but yeah people that didn't have record players were going to like different jazz clubs and like community centers like every single jazz band in New Orleans was booked for that night and on that night March 19th of 1919 there was no ax man attack in fact there was no further attacks for months everyone thought that the ax man had given up again but of course he hadn't and five months later on August 10th of 1919 a man named Steve Barker a walk in his bed - a dark figure looming over him with an axe literally as soon as Steve's eyes opened he was struck by this axe so he didn't really get to see anything and then he was knocked unconscious for a couple of hours when he finally came round he realized that he was in a lot of pain and so he managed to stagger out of his house into a neighbor's house across the street and once he got there he just collapsed he must have used the rest of his energy this neighbor found Steve outside managed to call an ambulance and get him to the hospital but when police came to question him Steve didn't remember anything obviously the blows to the head must have just completely knocked him out and made him not remember a single thing he didn't even remember being attacked he didn't know he'd been attacked by an axe police I believe just kind of theorized that he had because it fit the other attacks but Steve actually sustained some of the worst injuries in this whole case his skull was completely cracked open apparently you could see his brain of course I don't know how accurate all of this is but this is what I found online as with the other acts mutt attacks Steve's house had been carefully broken into the bottom panel had been chiseled away from the door there was nothing stolen in his house they seemed like a signature Axman attack and the next attack took place again very quickly after this one just three weeks later in early September nineteen year-old Sarah lawmen was attacked in her sleep after the ax man had climbed into her house through an open window and this attack left Sarah unconscious for quite a few hours until neighbors finally came in and found her when she was almost dead it seemed as though she'd been bludgeoned really quite badly she was missing a lot of her teeth and her head was just covered in blood Sarah did survive her injuries however she couldn't really tell police much because she was asleep when the attack started and unconscious when it ended so she didn't see anything as with the other Axman attacks and ax was bound on Sarah's front lawn however there is some doubt surrounding this particular attack because the killer didn't break in through the door he let himself in through open window I mean maybe he did just see a big gaping open window and thought well it's easier to just let myself in through there rather than sit and try and chisel away the back panel on a door maybe he did just let himself in through there and give up his normal and uh oh maybe this was a copycat killing and we're gonna talk about that a little bit more later but the final Axman attack happened two months after this one on October 27th of 1919 Esther Pepitone a walk in the middle of the night hearing noises coming from her bedroom I believe she'd fallen asleep on the couch or something like that so she ran to the bedroom where her husband was asleep and she stood in the doorway and witnessed two men fleeing the scene now some sources say she saw two men some saucer says she saw just the one man but most of them said two men so I'm gonna take that one as what she said her husband had been attacked these two men his name was Mike Pepitone and he'd been struck in the head with an axe 18 times and there was just blood everywhere all over this room when police arrived at the scene Mike was already dead obviously he had 18 blows to the head with an axe he wasn't gonna survive that however police noted that his wife Esther seemed very calm she wasn't hysterical she wasn't scared she wasn't too upset to say her husband had just been killed in front of her and this particular attack just seems a little bit off to me I mean seeing two people fleeing the scene when there's never been two people before in these attacks it seems to line up quite well with a copycat killing because as well none of the other victims had quite so many ax wounds all the others were just struck like once or twice maybe three times but never 18 times sir if the last two killings both seemed a little bit off then the likelihood is that maybe the axe man stopped before the last two and these last two that we accredit to the axe man and actually the axe man maybe they're just copycat killings some sources said that another weapon was used that night apparently something used to put up circus tents with and there was a circus in town at the time of this murder so a lot of people believe that it was someone other than the axe man that did this some people have pointed out that Esther Pepitone seems a little bit suspicious and you're gonna see a little bit more later on that she seems more suspicious did that make sense absolutely not Esther seems quite suspicious her demeanor when her husband died and police got there was a little bit off and then something you're gonna find out later adds to that suspicions other people believe that this murder the last one specifically of Mike Pepitone was actually a mafia killing Mike pepper John's father had killed a man in the past I don't know much about that at all however it is believed that the mafia then wanted revenge on the family and so they went and attacked him and that would explain why there were two men this time because I mean I've never been attacked by the Mafia before don't plan on it please don't come after me but with them being such like a tight group it wouldn't surprise me that they would go in twos to attack someone because that would mean that they would definitely overpower them definitely kill them and maybe if it was a mafia killing maybe they just took an axe and used an axe to try and cover it up to make it look like an axe man killing because they were going on at the time so perfect time to kill someone and try and get away with it isn't it really and like I said before he was struck eighteen times whereas all the other people were struck like twice so they were definitely making sure that Mike Pepitone was dead this time whereas the axe man never really did that actually that's something that really confuses me about this case I wonder if the axe man ever really cared about killing people maybe he just wanted to attack and scare and maybe he wanted to keep survivors so that they could tell the story and keep his name in the news I don't know that's just something strange about the axe and he never really made sure that they were dead and I he probably would if he wanted to but that didn't happen with my pepper turn so again that makes me think that it wasn't an axe man killing and just like that the axe man stopped killing or maybe he stopped killing before that and there were just copycats who knows maybe the axe man carried on elsewhere or maybe he changed his MO and carried on killing but no one knew it was the axe man whatever the reason for the end of the axe man killings police never found out who he was they have literally no leads obviously DNA evidence wasn't a thing man they had nothing they never found him they never had any decent suspects I mean we're going to talk about a couple but it's like and so because they have no like leads or anything they decided to try and think of a motive because then that might lead to a suspect it didn't seem as though the axe man ever really had a motive they weren't robberies gone wrong it seemed as though he was literally just breaking in these places to attack because he wanted to like for what reason so police looked at the victims of the Axman and they all seem to fit a particular pattern they all seem to be Italian immigrants or Italian Americans and a lot of them had businesses like there were quite successful people so maybe the axeman did have a motive after all maybe maybe he was racist maybe they were racially motivated so of course we have a lot of theories in this case copycat killings mafia killings racially motivated killings but now we're going to talk about one suspect in particular a man named Joseph mumphrey now this whole situation from now on is a little bit confusing so stick with me as well as he can so the last believed killing of the axe man was Mike pepper turn his wife Esther pepper turn found him dead saw two men flee in the scene well about a year later Esther Pepitone moved to LA and remarried a man named Angela and two years after her first husband's death literally on the anniversary two year anniversary of his death her second husband goes missing and not long after her second husband goes missing a man turns up on her doorstep a man had done business with her second husband multiple times a man named Joseph mumphrey however he wasn't coming to just check on Esther it wasn't like a nice little visit it was actually quite hostile he opened the door and demanded that Esther give him five hundred dollars and all of her jewelry now Esther was very smart in this situation she didn't panic she said okay let me go get my jewelry she goes to get her jewelry and comes back with a revolver and shoots Joseph mumphrey to death sir of course Esther Pepitone is arrested for this murder she's taken to the police station she's going to be in prison for a long long time and they questioned her and they said well why did you do it like why did you kill him and she said because that is the man that killed my husband so all the way back when Esther claimed to have seen those two men that night one of them was Joseph mumphrey but she'd never told the police that before but they decided to came to Joseph mumphrey a little bit more and they found that he had a lengthy criminal record he was part of a gang a blackmailing gang I believe I don't know I don't really know what that is sounds like a gang but like not that much crime and this gang that he was a part of specifically targeted Italians which lines up with the Axman so well because a lot of people in New Orleans at this time a lot of white people were very racist towards Italians and of course black people it was like some horrible hierarchy of different nationalities and races and just so many different layers of people that thought they were better than other people because of certain features or certain things about them it was horrible but like I said he had a very lengthy criminal record he was in this gang he was in and out of prison all his adult life and the times when he was out of prison seemed to perfectly line up with the Axman killings although that is kind of the only evidence that anyone ever has against Joseph mumphrey and it's very circumstantial I think it's quite interesting how well it lines up one interesting thing to note about this case is that the Axman could have so many more victims than we've even talked about right now so the ones that we've talked about so far in this video have all been official cases that are officially attributed to the axe man these are the ones that I'm about to talk about and not official which is why I've left it until the end although a lot of people believe that the axe man did commit these ones as well and they could be another link to Joseph mumphrey because these ones that I'm about to talk about happened in 1910 and 1911 some of them in the beginning of 1912 as well I believe and then in 1912 mumphrey went to prison for seven years until 1918 and then he got out and coincidentally that is the same time that the axe my murders began so these murders are literally the most confusing thing I've ever read in my entire it took me hours to get my head around this and I still have my head around it so I've simplified them as much as I possibly can I try not to drop details in my true-crime videos but literally if I can't understand it how am I supposed to tell it you know I mean so this is very simplified so I'm sorry about that between 1910 and 1912 five or six different Italian business owners were killed in different circumstances so some of them were beets and some of them are shocked some of them were killed in unknown circumstances and that is a very specific group of people Italian business owners and I mean there weren't too many Italian business owners at this time in New Orleans like I said because of the hierarchy and stuff all the white people were on the top all the white people were the rich ones well not all the white people we'll get on to that in a minute but Italian people were just kind of coming up at this time they were just building empires for themselves this was when they were really starting to like find their feet in New Orleans and like I said at this time in New Orleans the white people were very racist literally everyone that wasn't a white person just different people just people that weren't from New Orleans they didn't like them anyone that came in that was not there already they didn't like them and so these Italian immigrants were coming in and they were out doing the white people completely they were becoming more successful they were more hard-working they were starting their own businesses building their own empires there were becoming really successful citizens and the white people didn't like that because they were doing better than them and the white people always thought that they were the best and so the theory is that the Axman was a jealous white man and he was racist and he didn't like that these Italian immigrants were being really successful in his city and so he went about killing them but at the same time some of these killings between 1910 and 1912 can have other explanations some of them are believed to have been mafia killings some of them are believed to have been like personal disputes like genuinely explained by a fight with a friend or something and they killed each other I mean it's to you what you believe it's a very specific like you know demographic of people to all have been killed in such a short space of time and that's something about all the confirmed x-men victims as well they were pretty much all Italian immigrants so now we're going to talk about our last suspect in this case he is an unofficial suspect so he's not talked about quite as much as Joseph's mom for years or you know like any other suspect or theory but this is really interesting to me I personally don't believe it but it's really interested his name was Jack Byrd and he was arrested in 1947 so a long long time after the Axman murders because he was believed to have been responsible for a double murder and the weapon of choice was an axe so Jake was in his 50s when he was accused of committing this double murder in the 1940s and this was 20 years after the axe man killings soplease took Jake to the station they were questioning him about this double murder in the 40s and then Jake tells police that he is responsible for 44 different murders in his lifetime all across America and although he didn't confirm or deny that he was the axe man of New Orleans he was a teenager living in New Orleans at the time of those murders so he was in the area and something that I've thought throughout this case right remember when we were talking about the doors with the chiseled out panels and that eighteen-year-old six-foot guy couldn't fit through this little panel well ever since then I've been thinking well how small are these panels obviously I don't know how small the panels were but if a guy like if a man can't fit through one of them how small was the Axman potentially teenager sized that's not an official size but you know what I mean Jake bed was a teenager at the time meaning he was smaller than a man so could have potentially fit through a little door panel every time and that's all there really is to connect Jake bird to the ax man killings that he's confessed to my murders and he was small but I do have one little piece of information about Jake bird that I think you might find interesting it's completely irrelevant to this case I'm gonna tell it anyway it's quite interesting at his murder trial for that double murder that he was accused of he was actually found guilty and sentenced to death and when he was given that ruling he stood up in court and announced that everyone in that room would die before he would so obviously he was given a set did that he was gonna be killed on and he stood up and said everyone in this room is gonna die before that and six people out of about 10 or 12 in that room did die before he did of different like natural causes diseases illnesses it was very very weird and a lot of people find that a little bit those books I don't know like it's just kind of interested in it whether you believe in that kind of thing but yeah that's pretty much everything on the axeman of new orleans I hope you enjoyed this video I really enjoyed research in this one because I thought it was you know not real the whole my whole bloody life but yeah I hope you enjoyed this video thank you so so much for watching let me know down in the comments who you think the ax man was do you think it was mumphrey do you think it was you know someone else thanks again to Jun's journey for sponsoring this video like I said the link will be down in the description quick good unload the app go enter the competition try and win that holidays to Berlin but yeah if you enjoyed this video make sure you leave a big thumbs up down below and subscribe if you want to see some more from me I almost forgot how to say that them a huge huge thank you to all of my channel members if you want to become a channel member and support me and the content and the videos that I make you can click the link in the description or you can click the join button under the video if you're on a desktop all channel members get access to a community tab where we can discuss curses you can 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,113,701

Keywords: makeup, tutorial, eleanor neale, review, beauty, 2019, vlog, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, axeman of new orleans, american horror story, buzzfeed unsolved, kendall rae, bbc, itv, crime watch daily, jack the ripper, mile higher, criminally listed, chills, serial killer documentary, documentary, podcast, true crime podcast, the hello kitty murder, dateline, app, june's journey, crime, killer, netflix, movie, creepypasta, ted bundy, john wayne gacy, axeman, coven, case

Id: 1W4YMApxQJw

Length: 51min 44sec (3104 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2019