kneeling beside her husband Charles, who lay on the floor with a gaping hole in his torso. She was cradling a dead child.
Again, the attacker had broken in by chiselling a panel out of the kitchen door. It also appeared that the attacker had piled timbers by the fence ready to make his escape. Mrs Cortimiglia had been asleep with her two- year-old daughter Mary in her arms when she was attacked. Her husband had grappled with the attacker but had been injured himself. The neighbours said they had heard nothing. A bloodstained axe was found under the step to the kitchen. This time the police looked for fingerprints, but found none. As usual there were no clues, or anything that might help identify or locate the killer. But one thing stood out. Money that had been left out in the open was not taken, so the motive was not robbery. It was the act of a maniac, the coroner said.
Rosie Cortimiglia sustained five wounds to the head, but survived the attack, physically at least. When she recovered, she accused Iorlando Jordano and his son Frank of the attack. They were business rivals who operated from the premises next door. They were arrested. Unfortunately, Iorlando had told the coroner’s court a few days earlier that he had had a premonition that something bad was about to happen to the Cortimiglias.
The water now becomes murky. Newspapers at the time said that Charles had said that he had been attacked by a white man named Frank Jordano. Other accounts say that he disputed his wife’s accusation and even left her over it. Still others say that he died of his wounds in hospital. According to one witness, after the attack, Rosie had stated directly that her own husband had done it—though it is unlikely that he inflicted such grievous wounds on himself. Nevertheless, Frank and Iorlando Jordano were convicted—even though Frank’s 24-stone frame could hardly have squeezed through the hole in the kitchen door. Frank Jordano was given the death sentence and his father got life imprisonment.
Not everyone was convinced. Three days after the Cortimiglia attack, the editor of the
The letter to the
Esteemed Mortal:
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 fell demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.
When I see fit, I shall come again and claim other victims. I alone know who they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with the blood and brains of him whom I have sent below to keep me company.
If you wish you may tell the police not to rile me. Of course I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigation in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to amuse not only me but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don’t think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.
Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens, for I am in close relationship to the Angel of Death.
Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to visit New Orleans again. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a 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 have mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of those people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.
Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time that I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, and that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fantasy.
It was signed: “The Axeman.”
No one knew whether this was really from the Axeman or was a hoax. Nor is it plain whether people took it seriously or simply made it an excuse for a party. But the following Tuesday, although it was in the middle of Lent, New Orleans staged what seems to have been one of the biggest parties in its history. One party-giver issued the Axeman a macabre invitation, promising him “four scalps”. However, the Axeman was to come in through the bathroom window, which would be open. He was not to go tampering with the kitchen door. Even so, the Axeman did not fulfil his promise. No one was murdered that night—though perhaps everyone was out listening to jazz.
In April, Louis Besumer went on trial for the murder of Anna Lowe, but the war had ended five months before and the spy scare was over. The coroner testified that it would take a man much fitter and more powerful than Besumer to inflict the wounds on himself Besumer had sustained. After ten minutes deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
Although the Axeman had not attacked again in March, as the letter had said, he was still at large. On 10 August Italian grocer Steve Boca was at home asleep in bed when he was hit with an axe. He survived the attack and manage to stumble to a friend’s house to get help. He recovered but had no memory of the attack. Again, nothing had been taken, the Axeman had gained entrance by chiselling through the back door and he had left the bloodied axe in the kitchen.
On 3 September, 19-year-old Sarah Laumann was found unconscious in her bed with multiple head wounds. She died later in hospital. No door panel was tampered with to gain entrance, but a bloody axe was left outside an open window. She had been alone in the house and there were no witnesses. The attacker was as elusive as ever.
On 27 October, Mrs Pepitone heard the noise of a scuffle in the bedroom of her husband Mike, which was next door to her own. When she went to find out what the trouble was, she bumped into a man who was making his escape. In his room, Mike Pepitone’s head was split open and he lay in a pool of his own blood.
The Pepitones’ daughter ran to get the police. First on the scene was Deputy Ben Corcoran. He found Mrs Pepitone standing over her injured husband.
“It looks like the Axeman was here and murdered Mike,” she said.
Mike Pepitone was rushed to Charity Hospital, where he died soon after.
Once again, a panel had been cut from the back door and the axe was left on the back porch. However, Mrs Pepitone claimed she had seen two men in her home. They had fled, taking nothing. Strangely, Mrs Pepitone had not screamed when she had happened upon the scene. There were eight people in the house at the time and her screams would have alerted them. Plainly the attacker, or attackers, was not afraid of being caught. The police also noted that Mrs Pepitone showed no sign of grief when she was questioned.
Since the letter from “Hell”, there had been three more attacks and the police were no closer to identifying the killer. All the newspapers could offer was frenzied speculation. They picked up on the idea that the door panels removed at the crime scenes were too small for a grown man to get through. Nor could the Axeman have reached in to unlock the doors. Besides the doors were always found locked. Consequently, he cannot have been human.
Such ideas are not uncommon in Louisiana, which is a place full of superstition. In the late 19th century, a voodoo scare swept New Orleans and people began killing others who they thought had put a spell on them. There was a widespread belief in “Black Bottle Men” who killed hospital patients to sell the cadaver to anatomy students. Then there were “Needle Men,” who stabbed women and carried them off unconscious. The “Gown Man” rode around in a black car, wearing a long black gown, searching for girls on their own, who some thought was a malevolent ghost. In the suburb of Gentilly, his cousin, the “Domino Man”, wore a white robe with a hood, who sprang in the middle of a group of girls and sent them fleeing. Taking their cue from Pauline Bruno, other purported eyewitnesses said that the Axeman had wings—plainly he was a vampire. More prosaically he might have been a sinister development of “Jack the Clipper” who went about cutting off locks of schoolgirls’ hair in 1914. Or that Mike Pepitone was the son of Pietro Pepitone who had killed “Black Hand” extortionist Paulo Marchese some years before, raising again the spectre of the Axeman murders being Mafia slayings.
But perhaps the Axeman was identified and killed. On 2 December 1920, Mrs Pepitone, dressed in her
