Infamous America - NEW ORLEANS Ep. 5 | “The Axeman, Part 2”

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

After a merciful but brief hiatus, the Axeman returned to New Orleans. In a move that would be repeated by serial killers for years to come, he sent a letter to the newspaper that announced his presence. The murders began again, and no one knew when they would stop. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like The Explorers, History of the Great War, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legend will tell you that Tuesday evening, March 18th, 1919, was one of the loudest and rowdiest nights in a city that promised to be loud and rowdy every night. The stories say that every saloon from St. Claude to Gertown, from Bayou St. John to the quarter, and across the river to Algiers, was a drunken Bacchanal. Neighbors boasted of the wild parties they threw that night. Newspapers reported that you could hear the trumpets from the jazz clubs on Frenchman Street all the way to Gentilly. The tales will tell you that the parties all made sure to go past midnight, well past 1225 a.m. to be exact. Why? Because the Axeman demanded it. He had returned to the shadows of New Orleans and restarted the hysteria he began the previous summer. Mercifully, the Axeman had spared the city further corpses while it weathered a breakout of the influence. Luenza pandemic, celebrated the end of World War I, and lamented the dead. He let the people of

New Orleans cherish their revels during Mardi Gras season and eat their king cake, all without reports of overnight butchery. But then the letter came. It was postmarked from hell and mailed to the editor of the Times Picayune newspaper. He read, at 1225 o'clock, earthly time, on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. I'm going to make a little proposition. I'm very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils, every person shall be spared in whose house a jazz band is in full swing. One thing is certain, and that is,

some of those persons who do not jazz it on Tuesday night will get the axe. The Times Picayune ran the letter on the front page the day after it arrived. Maybe after the long absence of the Axeman, the letter alone wouldn't have stirred such fervor in the city. But eight days earlier, a husband and wife were attacked in their beds across the river in the Gretna neighborhood. Their two-year-old daughter had been in the bed as well, asleep between them. The couple was Sicilian, and they ran a grocery store. The husband and wife survived, but their daughter did not. She was killed instantly by a single blow to the back of the neck from a sharp weapon

wielded with tremendous force. The Axeman was back in the Crescent City, and on March 18th, 1919, people partied like their lives depended on it. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling four infamous stories from New Orleans over the next six episodes.

This is the second half of the tale of a killer who haunted the city in the first quarter of the 20th century. This is episode five, The Axeman of New Orleans. Part 2. When I Orlando Giordano and his family decided to lease the grocery store in the front of their modest home in Gretna to the Cortimiglia family, it made perfect sense. E. Orlando was in his late 60s, and a lifetime of hard work had taken its toll. Neither he nor his wife had the strength and stamina to work long days behind the counters

lifting, reaching, and scaling ladders. Their son, Frank, would have been a natural successor. He was physically impressive, standing over. six feet tall and weighing nearly 275 pounds. He was affable, fastidious, and a good salesman, but he was young and ambitious and had his sights set on other prospects. By the spring of 1919, he already had experience in both real estate and insurance. He also wanted a family of his own. He was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Josie, on March 19th, St. Joseph's Day. When Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia, the Jordano's next-door neighbors, showed an interest in taking over the store, Irrlando was thrilled.

The couple was sociable, well-respected in their community, and hardworking. I Orlando felt they would be outstanding tenants, ones he would be happy to help through the growing pains of running a new business. The arrangement worked well, and the two families became even closer. Frank, who looked forward to children of his own, doted on the Cortimiglia's young daughter, Mary. He spoiled her with gifts and was always ready to babysit if the Cortimiglias had a need. But in December of 1918, I Orlando Giordano abruptly ended his agreement with Charles and Rosie

and took back the grocery store. The Cortimiglias were livid. They felt I Orlando's move was bad business and they felt betrayed by their friends. And they didn't take the affront lying down. Charles built his own store nearby and it was immediately successful, much to the displeasure of the Giordano's. In the Gretna neighborhood, the tension between the two families was well known in the spring of 1919, and it would be in the front of people's minds when the horror took place on March 9th. Around 3 a.m. that morning, a man crept into the Cortimiglia's backyard.

At the back door, he carefully chiseled out the bottom wooden panel. of the door. He woke no one in the house as he slipped inside. He entered the kitchen, clutching the family's axe. He didn't touch anything in the house. He wasn't there to rob them. The man found Charles and Rosie in their bed asleep with their daughter Mary tucked between them. He viciously attacked them with the axe. A neighbor discovered the scene a few hours later, and her screams woke up the neighborhood. People ran toward the house. A few went inside and into the bedroom. One of them was Frank Giordano. Frank knelt by the bed next to Charles Cortimiglia. Charles was still breathing, but it was faint. He opened his eyes when Frank said his

name. Charles begged for help. As Frank rose, determined to go get a doctor and find the Cortimiglia's kin, he saw a little Mary, but he had to turn away quickly. He feared the little girl was already gone. Frank alerted a doctor. The man arrived a short time later and was able to stabilize Charles and Rosie so that they could be transported across the river to Charity Hospital. They both had fractured skulls and severe blood loss. Their conditions were critical, but they had a chance. Sadly, the doctor confirmed Frank's fears. They moved Mary's body off the bed and laid a clean white sheet over her. The police quickly found the murder weapon. It was crudely stashed under the back porch. The axe was covered in blood.

in hair. The mention of the axe and the brutal murder of a child rocked the normally quiet Gretna community. The news quickly reached the city of New Orleans and the desk of police superintendent Frank Mooney. He had been hounded by the press for not catching the presumed serial killer the previous year. It seemed like reporters were just starting to forget about the axeman, but the grim details of this new attack would surely remind them. And if they needed more encouragement, to sensationalize the Axeman, they were about to get it in a big way. What became known as the Axeman's letter was published by the Times-Picayune on March 16th, 1919. The letter was dated three days earlier. It was 478 words long, addressed to the editor

and signed The Axeman, and it was postmarked from Hell. The author claimed to be a demon, quote, the worst spirit that ever existed in either fact or the realm of fancy. He boasted that, at will, I could slay thousands of your best citizens. He mocked the audacity of the police to believe they could catch him, and he took pleasure in their failed efforts. When I see fit, he wrote, I shall come again and claim other victims. I shall leave no clue, except perhaps my bloody axe, besmeared with the blood and bloody brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company.

In the years to come, some scholars would question whether or not the person who penned the letter had anything to do with the Axeman attacks. But in 1919, there were many who took the letter seriously. Seriously enough, that when the letter claimed that the Axeman would spare the city bloodshed on March 18th if jazz music could be heard everywhere in New Orleans, the city responded. Jazz blew loudly in homes and saloons and music halls, and the Axeman kept his word. If the letter writer was indeed the Axeman, and if detectives working on the cases had tried to profile the killer, the letter was revealing. The writer was educated. His writing showed at least a high school graduates' level of proficiency.

He was worldly. He referenced Franz Joseph, who was the emperor of Austria until his death in 1916. and the postmark, from hell, was almost certainly a reference to Jack the Ripper. The most famous and infamous murderer in Britain's history sent a letter purporting to be from hell to the head of a community watch group during his killing spree 30 years earlier. The Ripper, however, included a grisly token with his missive, a kidney from one of his victims. The Axeman's letter stirred the hysteria back up, and at least one savvy business sought to capitalize on it. Joseph John DeVila was a musician who had a few songs that garnered national attention on the vaudeville circuit, including, Give Me Back My Husband, You've Had Him Too Long,

which was sung by the legendary Sophie Tucker. After reading the Axeman's letter in the newspaper, DeVila swiftly scored a jazz number entitled The Mysterious Axeman's Jazz, with a subtitle, Papa Don't Scare Me. As much as he tried, he was not able to get a music. He was not able to get a music. He was, it chic music printed by March 18th. But when he did, it sold fast. De Vila did so well with the song that some scholars have speculated that it was he who wrote the Axeman letter, and it had just been a ruse to promote his music. But if the Axeman was real and truly the author of the letter, he made good on his guarantee that he could not be caught. The police remained bewildered and without a suspect throughout the summer of 1919.

But luckily, there were no new attacks to investigate. Maybe high summer heat in New Orleans was too much, even for a self-proclaimed demon. Regardless, the Axeman went dormant long enough for the authorities to think that maybe they were done with them, but they weren't. Though in the meantime, they had a suspect for the recent attack on the Cortimiglias. The police in Gretna became convinced that the killer hadn't been the villainous Axeman at all. By the time the letter ran in the Times Picayune, Gretna detectives had already arrested their suspect, Frank Giordano, the son of the grocery

store owners. Although doctors at Charity Hospital privately believed the wounds to Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia would prove fatal, both survived the Axeman's attacks. Tragically, they awoke to news that probably made them wish they had not. Their daughter Mary was gone. The police questioned Charles several times, but the grieving father could only say that the attacker was big and that he was white. The fact that nothing was stolen made any investigator who didn't believe in the ax man presumed that the crime must have been personal, maybe revenge. If Gretna detectives canvassed the neighborhood, they would have discovered the bad blood that was thought to exist between the Cortomiglias and the Giordano's. Rosie Cortimiglia was also a grieving

parent, obviously, and she was recovering from massive head trauma a few days after the attack when investigators began to question her. At first, her memory was even more vague than her husbands. Doctors urged the police to tread lightly, and they implored them to understand how fragile the minds of the court amyglias were. But police questioning of Rosie quickly began to look more like an interrogation. By the end of the week after the attack, the police claimed that Rosie accused Frank Giordano and his father for the attack. Frank Jordano was immediately arrested. He would end up sitting in a prison cell for the feast of St. Joseph the day he was supposed to be married. And not long after, his father I Orlando joined him behind bars. They sat in prison

for more than a month before being charged. On May 5th, they were both indicted for murder. If found guilty, they would be sentenced to death. When the trial began, the district attorney's case against the Jordanos was based largely on Rosie's statement and portraying the Jordanos as jealous and vengeful. They had statements from several people who claimed that both Frank and I Orlando had threatened violence against the court amyglias. The statements were given to the jury, but none of the accusers were put on the witness stand. Rosie's testimony that it was Frank who wielded the axe was shredded by the defense on cross-examination.

She appeared confused and contradicted herself. The doctor who signed for her release from Charity Hospital testified that there was no way she was in any condition to be questioned by the police when she finally accused Frank and Orlando. An expert in head trauma testified that the injuries Rosie sustained could cause delusions, make her paranoid, and make her vulnerable to suggestion and coercion. The Giordano's attorney invoked the axeman to defend. his clients. He recounted the details of the Cortimiglia attack and how closely they resembled

those from the unsolved attacks and murders that were attributed, by the press at the very least, to the Axeman. The defense called New Orleans Police Superintendent Frank Mooney to testify. Even though drawing attention to the elusive Axeman looked bad for Mooney, he had to admit there were striking similarities between the cases. In his mind, the culprit in the Cortimigli attack was almost certainly the same person who was responsible for the attacks the previous year. And Mooney didn't believe that Frank Giordano or his elderly father were serial killers. But the judge in the case dismissed all testimony regarding the Axeman, and he cautioned the jury not to let the well-documented cases of the attacker influence their decision, even if the parallels

were undeniable. After several brutally hot summer days in the courthouse and after their spirited summations, both sides rested their cases. The jury deliberated for less than two hours. It appeared that the Gretna's citizens didn't believe the crime was the work of the Axeman. They somehow believed Rosie Cortimiglia's confused account of the night of the attack, and they believe that the likable Frank Giordano and his elderly father committed the attacks. I Orlando was found guilty, but was spared the death penalty because the axe had been in his son's hands. He received a life sentence. Frank was found guilty of capital murder. He was sentenced to hang at the Gretna Gallos.

The Giordano's attorneys quickly filed an appeal. Even with a high-profile case, a retrial might not happen for another two years. Some New Orleans might have felt some comfort in believing that the Cortomaglia attack was carried out by someone they knew rather than a phantom psychopath. A few might even have believed that Frank Giordano was the elusive axe man. But by the end of the summer, any sense of comfort and safety was gone. The axe man was back on the streets of New Orleans. On August 3, 1919, Sarah Laumann's parents heard their daughter scream from her room down the hall. When they barged in, they found the 19-year-old in bed with no clear physical signs of harm,

but very shaken emotionally. She told them she woke up to see a man looming over her. Thankfully, when she screamed, he ran out of the room. It was only after she calmed down that she noticed that her head was throbbing. Her mother pulled back her hair to see a rapidly swelling bruise behind her ear. There was only a little blood, and later doctors would tell them that the wound, and the bruise were minor, and there was no damage to the skull. When Sarah spoke to the police, she described a man who was roughly five feet eight inches tall

with a dark complexion. That was similar but not identical to the description of the attacker given by Pauline Bruno almost exactly one year earlier. Pauline's uncle Joe Romano had been murdered by a man with an axe, and she had run out of her bedroom and confronted the attacker in the hallway. The Romano murder was the last in the first wave of the attacks. At the Lauman home, a weapon could not be found right away, but the family's axe was missing. Later, it was discovered down the street. It was dull and there was no blood on it, but the police were safe to assume it was used to strike Sarah. Even with some of the differences in the attacks, the press was quick to declare the Lauman attack, the work of the Axeman.

The Times Picayune added Sarah Lauman's name to the list of crimes that it attributed to the mysterious killer. The list included Joe Romano, Joseph and Catherine Maggio, Louis Bessemer, and his mistress Harriet Lowe, and four people who were attacked in 1911. Harriet Lowe confessed on her deathbed that Lewis was her attacker. He was convicted of the murder, but he had recently won his appeal and his conviction was overturned. He left New Orleans permanently. The newspaper, which called the Giordano trial a sham, also listed the Cortimiglias as victims of the axman. Another alleged axman attack occurred just a week later when an Italian grocer named Steve Boka had his head slashed open by an intruder.

Boca survived but could remember nothing. The intruder had removed a door panel to gain entry and left behind a bloody axe on the kitchen floor. The Boka attack was added to the list. Although recent scholarly investigations have found no evidence that anyone named Steve Bocca was living in New Orleans at the time. One final and deadly attack was added to the legend of the Axeman just before Halloween. Italian grocer Michael Pepitone had his skull crushed by a metal pipe while he slept in his bed next to his wife Esther. She woke to his cries and saw two figures slip out of their bedroom. She and her daughter rushed for help, but there was nothing doctor.

could do. Mike Pepitone died later that night. Even though she claimed to have seen two men, Esther said she believed it was the work of the Axeman. Investigators and Superintendent Frank Mooney didn't see it that way. In the past, the Axeman usually attacked both the husband and the wife while they slept. That wasn't the case with the Pepitones. Also, there were multiple attackers this time, and they didn't use an axe. When it was discovered that the Pepitones were embroiled in a feud with another Italian family that stretched back a generation, the police believed the case was a personal vendetta, not the work of the mysterious killer. Predictably, the Times Picayune told a different story. It spent column inches highlighting the

similarities between the Pepitone murder and the Axeman's past attacks. The sensationalizing continued to promote the legend of the Axeman, and a newspaper's version of the Axeman's story would be retold and embellished by writers for decades to come. But the well was about to run dry for the Times Picayune. Yes, there was still the retrial of Frank and the Orlando Giordano for the Cortimiglia attack, and a murder in Los Angeles that the paper claimed was related to the Axeman. But the murder of Mike Pepitone was the last attack attributed to the Axeman of New Orleans, and all of the attacks remain unsolved to this day.

Police Superintendent Frank Mooney took the job of overseeing law and order in New Orleans just before the Axeman killings started in 1918. His short tenure as Chief Peacekeeper ended two years later, a little more than a year after the Axeman disappeared for good. It was a rough job, even without the chase for the ghost who became the city's most notorious killer. Crooked cops, a broken bureaucracy, and puppet politicians plagued his time in office. Mooney was a rule follower in a city made famous by its loose interpretation of the rules. He was relieved to hand over his badge, tip his hat, and return to the private sector.

The retrial of Frank and the Orlando Giordano kept the name of the axeman in the papers, but merely as an aside. The father and son remained in prison for the rest of 1919 and most of 1920. The Cortimiglias, damaged by their trauma and the loss of their daughter, didn't fare much better. Their grocery store began to struggle, and Charles and Rosie's marriage never recovered from their visit from the Axeman. Rosie resorted to prostitution to help keep the family afloat, and was arrested in the company of a retired police officer. She gave a fake name, but after the Giordano trial, she was far too recognizable. When Charles found out, he was, He swore he would leave her.

The couple made up, but Rosie's troubles weren't over. She had a change of heart, and she went to the newspapers. Rosie now claimed she saw two men on the night of her daughter's murder, but they weren't the Jordano's. During the extensive retrial, the judge again denied any talk of an axe-wielding killer as evidence, but it didn't matter. No matter how sure the prosecution was, Rosie's recanted accusation was enough. Frank and E. Orlando were acquitted and allowed to go free. When released, both men told the newspapers

they were happy the ordeal was over and they had no ill-will towards the grieving traumatized Rosie Cortimiglia. In Los Angeles, California, in late 1921, a woman named Esther Albano gunned down a man named Joseph Mumfrey who had blackmailed her family and killed her husband. Esther was extraordinarily unlucky. This was the second husband in two years who'd been murdered. Two years earlier, when she'd lived in the central city neighborhood of New Orleans, her husband Michael Pepitone had been killed. The man whom she'd shot, Joseph Mumfrey, had also lived in New Orleans.

He was running his blackmail schemes in the Crescent City before he moved to Los Angeles. It's not clear if Joseph and Esther knew each other in New Orleans, But some say Mumfrey was involved in the vendetta that killed Mike Pepitone. And the connection between Mumfrey and the people who were associated with the Axeman story led many to speculate that Joseph Mumfrey was the Axeman. For many, it would be a poetic end to the story. The wife of an alleged victim killed the killer. But Mumfrey was not the Axeman.

Mumfrey was in prison for many of the killings and reportedly had already left for Los Angeles before the attack on the Cortimiglias. So, more than 100 years later, there are still mysteries. The Axeman killed as many as seven people, but no one knows his identity or the true number of attacks. No one knows if he was specifically targeting Sicilian grocers or if that was just some sort of strange coincidence. And if he was targeting Sicilian grocers, why? Author Miriam Davis does a great job of trying to answer the questions and provide a profile of the killer in her book, The Axeman of New Orleans, the true story. Along with her book, The Killer has been the subject of other books and articles and songs, and he appeared in the television show American Horror Story.

Davis suggests that maybe someday new evidence will come to light that will reveal the identity of the Axeman, but don't hold your breath. The Axeman is more apt to stay a phantom in the tales of the macab, a New Orleans legend who still haunts the old neighborhoods. Take a ghost tour, and you will no doubt hear the story of the year that he terrorized the city. Pay attention at Mardi Gras, and you'll probably see someone dressed as the Axeman at a party or marching in a parade. He's the perfect specter for a city where there always seems to be something, whether it's fiendish or delightful, lurking in the shadows, just out of sight. Next time on Infamous America, we wrap up this series of infamous stories

about New Orleans with one last tale of intrigue and murder. The story of the trunk murders happens next week on the season finale here on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge

all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, Black Barrel News. Media.com. Memberships begin to just $5 per month. This episode was researched and written by Jamie Lyko, original music by Rob Valier. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels.

We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for infamous America podcast. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, History of the Great War, and many more. Thanks for listening.