Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast I'll Fry and I'm Won. Today we are going to resume our talk about X Murderer, Yes, part two of our American horror story Kevin inspired episode. Yeah. I'm actually pretty glad that something else came up, because a suit like the soon as Kevin premiered, people were tweeting at us and writing on our Facebook and stuff saying can you please, please please do something about the history of the show, And we were like, well, past hosts have already covered the history that is Marie Laveau. Yeah, like, they're already episodes about that in archive, and so I was sort of like, well, if they have something else we haven't talked about before, then sure. Well. And I remember during the second season of the show, I got really excited when I found out they were gonna use some historical happenings to inspire things, but they kind of abandoned them or they changed them so much that it really wasn't worth making the connection. Yeah. Well, in the second season of it was also so much more scattered and all of the different elements of things that we're sort of disparate weird things happening at the time. This one is much more focused on New Orleans and horror. Uh. So, in case you missed our intro in the last episode when they introduced the act Man of New Orleans, and we have when we're recording this, he has only appeared in one episode. We'll see what happens and how completely out of whack it gets in terms of history. I mean, we're already out of whack in terms of history with him. Uh. But the way they introduced that character is very rooted in reality and in an event that actually happened in New Orleans in the early nineteen hundred's, So we are picking up kind of in the middle of his crimes free uh on March tenth of nineteen nineteen, which is yet another incident of an attack. So because there had been this pause in attacks, the last one that we talked about was towards the inh of nineteen eighteen. Now we were getting into the early part of nineteen nineteen. UM the nation had kind of turned its eyes instead to the end of the fighting of World War One, although the war didn't formally end until later in the year. So the next axe attack took the city a little bit by surprise. This incident actually took place in Gretna, Louisiana, which is across the Mississippi River from uptown New Orleans. And at that point it was kind of an immigrant suburb of New Orleans. Yeah, and Gretna is still there, but it's changed significantly obviously. Um. And so on March tenth of nineteen nineteen, UH Orlando Jordano. Just in case anyone's curious, it is not Orlando. There is an eye. At the beginning, UH heard screams from his neighbor's house and he went to render aid, and that is how he discovered the next uh ax man's victims. And these were grocer Charles Courtemiglia and his wife and daughter. This is when I started to go, God, what are you? What are you have against grocers? We'll talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it's really at this point though, I think we're on grocer number three, right, Ah, that sounds correct. Um that I kind of go, okay, this is a weird grocery store pattern. So when Orlando arrived, Charles was unconscious and Rosie was cradling their two year old daughter, who had been killed by a blow to the back of the head. Rosie said the family had all been asleep in the same bed when the killer attacked them, and the attacker had once again entered through a chiseled away door panel, had not taken him in anything of value, and had left a bloody axe behind. So while young Mary had died at the scene, her parents were both alive, although they both had serious skulf fractures, and they were admitted to the hospital. When Rosie had recovered, she clearly named her attacker as her neighbor, Orlando Jordano. Both Orlando and his son Frank, who were business rivals of the Cortemiglia's, were arrested. Whether or not Charles corroborated her story is actually a matter of some debate. Uh. Some accounts say that he challenged her version of the story, and others say that he actually accused the son, Frank Jordano. Uh. There's also a pretty significant discrepancy as to what exactly happened to Charles after all of these accusations took place. In some versions of the story, he divorced Rosie after the trial, and in others, he died of his wounds and didn't live to trial time. And some of the tellings of this story just seemed to abandon Charles because it becomes much more about Rosie and her version of the story. And while I found the death record for their daughter Mary in Louisiana's online government database of death, I did not find Charles's, so I couldn't confirm or negate any of those different timeline accounts of his death. I love that you were crawling through the death database to try to pin that down. It's a sobering thing to crawl through. Just to look at that many death records is uh not the most uplifting way to spend your day, but it is super fascinating. Yeah. So, even though Orlando was an older man, he was sixty nine years old, he was apparently unlikely to have been strong enough to pull off these murders. Um and Frank was much too big to fit through the opening that the killer had made in the door. That Jordanos were found guilty based on Rosa's testimony, the older received life in prison and the Sun got a death sentence. Eventually, However, sometime down the road, uh like a year later, Rosie actually confessed that she had falsely accused the Giordano's Uh, and thankfully before the death sentence had been carried out, so they were released UH and all counts against them eradicated for the record. Three days after this attack, on March fourteenth, nineteen, the editor of the New Orleans Times picking received a letter which has become the most famous piece of the axe Man puzzle, and also will be familiar to people who watch American horror story. They printed this letter in its entirety, and here it is UH. This letter is dated Hell March nineteen nineteen, so the day before the editor received it, and it says 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 demon from the hottest Hell. I am what you are, Lenians and your foolish police call the axe in. When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody acts, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company. If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense that the way they have conducted their investigation in the past, in fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse me but his satanic majesty Francis Joseph, etcetera. 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 axe man. 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 are Lenians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am. But I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wish, 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 with the Angel of Death. Now to be exact, at twelve fifteen earthly time on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans in my infinite mercy. I am 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 have just 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 your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night, if there be any, will get an ax well. As I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leisure earthly home. I will cease my discourse, hoping that thou wilt publish this, 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 fancy. Signed the x Man. That is quite a note to dash off, it is. And if you imagine that there was lots of jazz playing in New or New Orleans after this, that would be right. By all accounts, there was basically jazz everywhere, and lo and behold, there were no murders, although There's always been some debate about whether the letter was truly from the X men or just a prank. Uh. Yeah, And I have to wonder if you know, Tracy as a site director not quite the same thing as lead editor on a newspaper. If you got like a bizarre warning like that that was like published this and warned everyone, I don't even know how I would feel. I would call the police, well, of course, and freak out a little bit. And I would probably have shaky hands handling the whole thing. I would freak out and call the police with my handshaking. Uh. And While the next several months passed without incident, uh, and some began to believe that the axe man had somehow been appeased or moved on. Unfortunately, the late summer saw a return of the familiar brutality. But we're going to pause for a moment before we get into those attacks and talk about our sponsor. Okay, So now back to uh, the more serious subjects of AX murders murdering grocers. Another Italian grocer as the next victim. On August ten, Steve Boca was attacked while he slept, and the assailant escaped into the night, and Boca made a full recovery, but he couldn't recall any details of the attack. Once again, there was a panel chiseled from the door, and the chisel was found next to the door, and the axe was left in the kitchen and nothing was stolen. The next incident happened a little less than a month later, a few weeks later, on September three. Uh and Sarah Lawman was a nineteen year old woman who was living alone in New Orleans, and so she was attacked on September three. Because the city had been kind of in the throes of this horrible series of attacks, some nay bors went to check on her because they knew she was a young woman alone, and that's when they discovered her unconscious on her bed, with several head wounds and teeth missing from a blow to the face. Like Steve Boca, she recovered, but she didn't have any memory of the assault. A bloody axe was found either outside the window or in the front lawn, depending on the source of the account. However, in the departure from most of the previous incidents attributed to the axe Man, Uh there was not a chiseled door panel. It's believed that the assailant in this instance had come in through a window. And she also wasn't a grocer, was she no? And not a man? No, So again we wonder it does call into question whether these should really all be grouped under the same killer or not, or the same attacker or not. Right next came in October of nineteen nine, and this was the last known assault committed by the axeman, or at least attributed in to him. On the night of October twenty, even after hearing noises in her husband's room, Uh, the wife of Mike Peppertoni hurried in to find a fleeing assailant and her husband's inert body one of their six children. Some of the police who found an ax outside the back door and a panel chiseled away from the door. And Mrs Peppatoni had actually claimed that there were two large men in the house. So a little bit different, uh than any other accounts that we had had heard up to that point. Yeah, there's also some suspicion in the accounts of this because Mrs Peppertoni seemed very calm as she talked to the police about her husband's murder. Uh. Yeah, she didn't seem particularly distraught. There is one version of the story that suggests that when the police got there, she basically was like, well, he was killed by the axe Man and just very matter of fact about it, so which calls, you know, into question other suspicious things. Uh. And While that was the last of the murderers that are attributed to the Axe Man, there are still plenty of questions about the whole series of incidents. Yeah. One of the big questions is whether some previous murders were also the work of the axe Man. From January of nineteen eleven to April of nineteen twelve, there was another large series of ax murders that claimed the lives of forty nine victims in Louisiana and Texas, and in these cases, entire families were savagely killed in their beds. Uh. In one instance in early nineteen twelve, where a family of five had been slain, a note had been left behind with the words, when he maketh the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble human five. Sort of a weird bizarre note. Uh. And justice with the New Orleans killings, nothing was taken in any of these crime scenes. There was also another series of murders in nineteen eleven that similarly targeted Italian grocers. There were three of the incidents and all of them were unsolved. The idea that only Italian businessmen were being targeted caused some citizens to speculate that there was a mafia tie into the nineteen eleven killings. So the speculation was that these victims had not made good on the protection arrangements that they had with organized crime. But according to a detective working on the Axe Man crimes, UH, the mafia wouldn't really target women, but the Axe Man clearly did that. Yeah, and children too. Um So there there many people who really like the uh the mafia tie into this story and think that that's really the key to who the X Man was. But there's that whole women and children thing that's problematic, so some discount based exclusively on that. So UH tying into the mafia hit man idea is another story that um some dismisses an urban legend and in this tale, a man named Joseph Mumphrey was shot and killed in December of Los Angeles, US and the killer was Mike Peppertoni's widow, and this tale appears to have first surfaced in Robert Talent's book Murder in New Orleans, and others who were researching these stories jumped on this idea, and at some point it was pointed out that Mumfrey was actually imprisoned during the gap between nineteen eleven and nineteen eighteen, which suggests that his incarceration and freedom fit the timeline pretty well. It doesn't match up perfectly, uh, and Mumfrey had also been theorized as a mafia hit man. However, if you look at the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers in the early two thousand's, a researcher named William Kingman was doing some digging and he actually got a notification from the California State Registrar that there had been no record of a Joseph Mumphrey dying in the state during this time, so that sort of detracts it, and he, the author of the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, makes the argument that this whole thing had been a fabrication, although I will say, having crawled through Louisiana records, not all of these people that are in the center pretty much accounted for. In the newspaper show up in those death records either, so I don't know. We know that at this point in time, things like that would fall through the cracks, not everything was noted perfectly. So in the last century there have been numerous theories put forth about the Axe Man's identity, but there's never been conclusive evidence for any of them. So this legend really lives on because of the inconsistencies in some of the attacks. It could easily be that there were multiple assailants involved, either working together or sort of mistakenly grouped under the same header of the Axe Man. There's also the prospect that some of these killers, as we said earlier, we're just copycats. But because there was some mediocre handling of evidence early on in these cases, uh that you know, presumably in the first instance with the Maggios, and in even in the second one, I don't know that the police were thinking serial killer. Uh. Fingerprinting had been available during this time, but they didn't really use it, so conclusive forensic evidence has really been lost to time at this point. Which is also this pesky issue of pretty small openings in the doors that the axe Man seemed to pass through, Like if you imagine a door that has panels that you could knock out with the chisel. It's not a very big hole. No. Um. This has led some people to say that he was really a demon or other supernatural entity, including him or whoever wrote the letter to the paper and American Horris Story Eric Norris story. Um, Yeah, that's an interesting thing. I only found one instance where they mentioned specifically that they had to have gone through the door panel and it was not a case of them popping that open and then reaching up to unlock the door, because all the doors were found still locked. But I only found that mentioned in one place, so I don't know how accurate that was. So here we go, we reach up and unlock it, and then we reach up and kind I mean that was my thinking. That's not conclusive one way or the other either. Uh. So it's interesting because while the X Man is not a huge story, I think in American serial killer mythology, it has come up a lot in various um media. American Horror Story maybe the most recent fiction to use it for inspiration, but is definitely not the first. Yeah. And in cartoonist and illustrator Rick Geary published a horror comic about the X Man as part of the Treasury of twentieth century Murder, and brief mention of him is also made in Chuck Pollini's book Haunted, which is a great read. I'm a huge fan of his uh and it's shown up in many other places as well. There have been bands that have been named albums after it and songs based on it. There was actually a song written in in a jazz song inspired by the events. Yeah, I've read, you know a lot about serial killers when I first discovered the Internet and discovered that there were websites that had basically everything about every serial killer. Ever, we're spending a lot of time reading these serial killer stories, and I had not ever heard of this particular one until American Horror Story. Yeah. I had heard of it, uh, primarily because of the Chuck Politic book, And I was like, wait, what is that? And I happened to do a quick search and discovered that it was a real thing. Yeah. As soon as I tell you, hey, people are asking us can we talk about this? You were like, is that a real thing? Yes? Real things? Uh. So there's shockingly real thing and bizarre and unfortunately it is, even though it is not so far back it's less than a hundred years ago. There's still so much story and lore that's grown around it that there are often, as we talked about in the Babush Lady, like eyewitness accounts even aren't even aren't al as accurate. So even at the time when people that were near the scene, we're saying things, fear was sort of you know, making their stories embellish in certain ways, and we can't count on the act received any of it. Yeah. Well, and when you think about, like with today's forensic methods, it's still I mean, it's not a rare occurrence for somebody to be exonerated through DNA evidence. I it's amazing to me that anyone was ever identified and and correctly imprisoned before all of those forensic methods really existed and like evidence handling procedures and that kind of thing. Yeah, and you know that was fingerprints were available, but they were not where they're at now. I think they were first used. I'm I'm completely doing this off the top of my head. I think the first case they were conclusively used in within nineteen eleven, so we pretty knew at this point. Yeah, within within a decade of when they were being used for actual investigation in court cases and evidence, so you can understand why they would not have necessarily fingerprinted the scene. So that is the scoop on the x Man of New Orleans. And already I can tell you that American horror story has diverged because in their version, uh, you know, I'm not going to spoiler it in case anybody's waiting to vertically view the whole thing, but it diverges pretty significantly well. And the letter is included in him passing through New Orleans on that night wanting lots of jazz, and then it gets very different. Okay, well, and then that when we started getting the AxMan requests, I think that it's like, so I haven't watched last night episode yet, but apparently there's some kind of ax Man. So there you go. And now we will go on too. Listener mail. So I have two bits. One is an actual email, one is just a very funny message we've got on Facebook. The first one is from Allison and she says, hello, Hollee and Tricy, Greetings from Juneo, Alaska. I just finished listening to your podcast about and probably effective Holocaust rescuers, and I was pleasantly surprised when you mentioned miss Irene good up Dike, as I feel she has often overlooked. Miss Opticke came to my high school in southern California to talk about her experiences during the war. While Miss Opticke did mention being captured by Russian soldiers, she mainly focused on her experience at the club and the villa, including becoming Major Rudemer's mistress. When a student asked why she became his mistress, I recalled that Miss Optike responded that she had more than her life to protect. There were many lives at stake, and although her talk lasted only one hour, it made quite an impression on me. Her talk was part of what inspired me to join the U. S. Coast Guard and to get my master's in public health, which I am now completing in order to assist those in me. I've attached a copy of the brochure that was handed out by Miss optics those who attended the talk at my high school, since I thought it might interest to you, and it did. It's very cool and it's neat to have. We always learned people right in where they have a direct connection to a piece of history. That we've talked about, and I know that she did do a lot of lectures and outreached, so love it. Our second note comes from our listener Russ and he wrote to us on Facebook and he says, Hi, ladies, I love the podcast to keep things informative yet light and fun. But the Babushka Lady podcast give me some concern and suspicions. Okay, when I read that, I got a little scared. But I was like, Oh, this is gonna be somebody that really studies the assassinations and they're gonna yell at me for some reason. Well, and I think you and I both when we get an email or Facebook message or whatever that starts. I really love the podcast, but there's a bracing for impact that happened. But Rust goes on to say, probably mentioned a couple of times that she is quote not in the CIA, which is exactly what she would say if she were in the CIA. This may need to be looked at by the people. That's definitely don't want you to know. Thanks Ray show. That makes my horrible commute much more tolerable and even educational. I don't know Ben sits near me. He hasn't raised any red flags. You all are on the same row and frequently late into the evening and chattering with each other, two of you on that row, and then no one and then me. Yeah, so he would know if I were suspicious. I think I'm too loud and goofy to be, but or that could be the perfect cover. So if you would like to write to us with your suspicious that we are spies or connections to history, you should do that. Uh. You can email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with us on Facebook at facebook dot com slash history class stuff, or on Twitter at misston history and at mist in history dot tumbler dot com on Tumblr, and you can visit us on Pinterest, where we are pinning many many things, both related to our podcast directly and not. I often been a lot of historical garments. Yeah, I think you and I both follow a lot of historical clothing boards. Sometimes what's there is really lovely. You know it's dangerous though, because then I want to make copies or things inspired by all with them, and I already have a list eight emails. When I want to watch you do that, I guess, Okay, you come over and hang out because I don't want to Kitty's climbing all over you. Um So, if you want to learn a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our website and type in the word serial killer, which I mentioned in the last episode. But this time I'm going to mention a different article. It's not really an article, it's a quiz. It's the Ultimate serial Killers Quit, which could be a fun diversion. And you can learn about serial killers and a great deal more at our website, which is helped up work dot com for lare on this and thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff you Missed in History Classes brought to you by Linda dot com. You can learn it at Linda dot com, an online learning company with more than seventy seven thousand video tutorials that teach software, creative and business skills. Membership starts at twenty five a month and provides unlimited seven access to top quality video courses taught by expert instructors with real world experience. Listeners of Stuff you Missed in History Class can trial Inda dot com free for seven days by visiting Linda dot com. Slash history stuff,

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast I'll Fry and I'm Won. Today we are going to resume our talk about X Murderer, Yes, part two of our American horror story Kevin inspired episode. Yeah. I'm actually pretty glad that something else came up, because a suit like the soon as Kevin premiered, people were tweeting at us and writing on our Facebook and stuff saying can you please, please please do something about the history of the show, And we were like, well, past hosts have already covered the history that is Marie Laveau. Yeah, like, they're already episodes about that in archive, and so I was sort of like, well, if they have something else we haven't talked about before, then sure. Well. And I remember during the second season of the show, I got really excited when I found out they were gonna use some historical happenings to inspire things, but they kind of abandoned them or they changed them so much that it really wasn't worth making the connection. Yeah. Well, in the second season of it was also so much more scattered and all of the different elements of things that we're sort of disparate weird things happening at the time. This one is much more focused on New Orleans and horror. Uh. So, in case you missed our intro in the last episode when they introduced the act Man of New Orleans, and we have when we're recording this, he has only appeared in one episode. We'll see what happens and how completely out of whack it gets in terms of history. I mean, we're already out of whack in terms of history with him. Uh. But the way they introduced that character is very rooted in reality and in an event that actually happened in New Orleans in the early nineteen hundred's, So we are picking up kind of in the middle of his crimes free uh on March tenth of nineteen nineteen, which is yet another incident of an attack. So because there had been this pause in attacks, the last one that we talked about was towards the inh of nineteen eighteen. Now we were getting into the early part of nineteen nineteen. UM the nation had kind of turned its eyes instead to the end of the fighting of World War One, although the war didn't formally end until later in the year. So the next axe attack took the city a little bit by surprise. This incident actually took place in Gretna, Louisiana, which is across the Mississippi River from uptown New Orleans. And at that point it was kind of an immigrant suburb of New Orleans. Yeah, and Gretna is still there, but it's changed significantly obviously. Um. And so on March tenth of nineteen nineteen, UH Orlando Jordano. Just in case anyone's curious, it is not Orlando. There is an eye. At the beginning, UH heard screams from his neighbor's house and he went to render aid, and that is how he discovered the next uh ax man's victims. And these were grocer Charles Courtemiglia and his wife and daughter. This is when I started to go, God, what are you? What are you have against grocers? We'll talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it's really at this point though, I think we're on grocer number three, right, Ah, that sounds correct. Um that I kind of go, okay, this is a weird grocery store pattern. So when Orlando arrived, Charles was unconscious and Rosie was cradling their two year old daughter, who had been killed by a blow to the back of the head. Rosie said the family had all been asleep in the same bed when the killer attacked them, and the attacker had once again entered through a chiseled away door panel, had not taken him in anything of value, and had left a bloody axe behind. So while young Mary had died at the scene, her parents were both alive, although they both had serious skulf fractures, and they were admitted to the hospital. When Rosie had recovered, she clearly named her attacker as her neighbor, Orlando Jordano. Both Orlando and his son Frank, who were business rivals of the Cortemiglia's, were arrested. Whether or not Charles corroborated her story is actually a matter of some debate. Uh. Some accounts say that he challenged her version of the story, and others say that he actually accused the son, Frank Jordano. Uh. There's also a pretty significant discrepancy as to what exactly happened to Charles after all of these accusations took place. In some versions of the story, he divorced Rosie after the trial, and in others, he died of his wounds and didn't live to trial time. And some of the tellings of this story just seemed to abandon Charles because it becomes much more about Rosie and her version of the story. And while I found the death record for their daughter Mary in Louisiana's online government database of death, I did not find Charles's, so I couldn't confirm or negate any of those different timeline accounts of his death. I love that you were crawling through the death database to try to pin that down. It's a sobering thing to crawl through. Just to look at that many death records is uh not the most uplifting way to spend your day, but it is super fascinating. Yeah. So, even though Orlando was an older man, he was sixty nine years old, he was apparently unlikely to have been strong enough to pull off these murders. Um and Frank was much too big to fit through the opening that the killer had made in the door. That Jordanos were found guilty based on Rosa's testimony, the older received life in prison and the Sun got a death sentence. Eventually, However, sometime down the road, uh like a year later, Rosie actually confessed that she had falsely accused the Giordano's Uh, and thankfully before the death sentence had been carried out, so they were released UH and all counts against them eradicated for the record. Three days after this attack, on March fourteenth, nineteen, the editor of the New Orleans Times picking received a letter which has become the most famous piece of the axe Man puzzle, and also will be familiar to people who watch American horror story. They printed this letter in its entirety, and here it is UH. This letter is dated Hell March nineteen nineteen, so the day before the editor received it, and it says 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 demon from the hottest Hell. I am what you are, Lenians and your foolish police call the axe in. When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody acts, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company. If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense that the way they have conducted their investigation in the past, in fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse me but his satanic majesty Francis Joseph, etcetera. 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 axe man. 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 are Lenians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am. But I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wish, 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 with the Angel of Death. Now to be exact, at twelve fifteen earthly time on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans in my infinite mercy. I am 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 have just 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 your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night, if there be any, will get an ax well. As I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leisure earthly home. I will cease my discourse, hoping that thou wilt publish this, 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 fancy. Signed the x Man. That is quite a note to dash off, it is. And if you imagine that there was lots of jazz playing in New or New Orleans after this, that would be right. By all accounts, there was basically jazz everywhere, and lo and behold, there were no murders, although There's always been some debate about whether the letter was truly from the X men or just a prank. Uh. Yeah, And I have to wonder if you know, Tracy as a site director not quite the same thing as lead editor on a newspaper. If you got like a bizarre warning like that that was like published this and warned everyone, I don't even know how I would feel. I would call the police, well, of course, and freak out a little bit. And I would probably have shaky hands handling the whole thing. I would freak out and call the police with my handshaking. Uh. And While the next several months passed without incident, uh, and some began to believe that the axe man had somehow been appeased or moved on. Unfortunately, the late summer saw a return of the familiar brutality. But we're going to pause for a moment before we get into those attacks and talk about our sponsor. Okay, So now back to uh, the more serious subjects of AX murders murdering grocers. Another Italian grocer as the next victim. On August ten, Steve Boca was attacked while he slept, and the assailant escaped into the night, and Boca made a full recovery, but he couldn't recall any details of the attack. Once again, there was a panel chiseled from the door, and the chisel was found next to the door, and the axe was left in the kitchen and nothing was stolen. The next incident happened a little less than a month later, a few weeks later, on September three. Uh and Sarah Lawman was a nineteen year old woman who was living alone in New Orleans, and so she was attacked on September three. Because the city had been kind of in the throes of this horrible series of attacks, some nay bors went to check on her because they knew she was a young woman alone, and that's when they discovered her unconscious on her bed, with several head wounds and teeth missing from a blow to the face. Like Steve Boca, she recovered, but she didn't have any memory of the assault. A bloody axe was found either outside the window or in the front lawn, depending on the source of the account. However, in the departure from most of the previous incidents attributed to the axe Man, Uh there was not a chiseled door panel. It's believed that the assailant in this instance had come in through a window. And she also wasn't a grocer, was she no? And not a man? No, So again we wonder it does call into question whether these should really all be grouped under the same killer or not, or the same attacker or not. Right next came in October of nineteen nine, and this was the last known assault committed by the axeman, or at least attributed in to him. On the night of October twenty, even after hearing noises in her husband's room, Uh, the wife of Mike Peppertoni hurried in to find a fleeing assailant and her husband's inert body one of their six children. Some of the police who found an ax outside the back door and a panel chiseled away from the door. And Mrs Peppatoni had actually claimed that there were two large men in the house. So a little bit different, uh than any other accounts that we had had heard up to that point. Yeah, there's also some suspicion in the accounts of this because Mrs Peppertoni seemed very calm as she talked to the police about her husband's murder. Uh. Yeah, she didn't seem particularly distraught. There is one version of the story that suggests that when the police got there, she basically was like, well, he was killed by the axe Man and just very matter of fact about it, so which calls, you know, into question other suspicious things. Uh. And While that was the last of the murderers that are attributed to the Axe Man, there are still plenty of questions about the whole series of incidents. Yeah. One of the big questions is whether some previous murders were also the work of the axe Man. From January of nineteen eleven to April of nineteen twelve, there was another large series of ax murders that claimed the lives of forty nine victims in Louisiana and Texas, and in these cases, entire families were savagely killed in their beds. Uh. In one instance in early nineteen twelve, where a family of five had been slain, a note had been left behind with the words, when he maketh the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble human five. Sort of a weird bizarre note. Uh. And justice with the New Orleans killings, nothing was taken in any of these crime scenes. There was also another series of murders in nineteen eleven that similarly targeted Italian grocers. There were three of the incidents and all of them were unsolved. The idea that only Italian businessmen were being targeted caused some citizens to speculate that there was a mafia tie into the nineteen eleven killings. So the speculation was that these victims had not made good on the protection arrangements that they had with organized crime. But according to a detective working on the Axe Man crimes, UH, the mafia wouldn't really target women, but the Axe Man clearly did that. Yeah, and children too. Um So there there many people who really like the uh the mafia tie into this story and think that that's really the key to who the X Man was. But there's that whole women and children thing that's problematic, so some discount based exclusively on that. So UH tying into the mafia hit man idea is another story that um some dismisses an urban legend and in this tale, a man named Joseph Mumphrey was shot and killed in December of Los Angeles, US and the killer was Mike Peppertoni's widow, and this tale appears to have first surfaced in Robert Talent's book Murder in New Orleans, and others who were researching these stories jumped on this idea, and at some point it was pointed out that Mumfrey was actually imprisoned during the gap between nineteen eleven and nineteen eighteen, which suggests that his incarceration and freedom fit the timeline pretty well. It doesn't match up perfectly, uh, and Mumfrey had also been theorized as a mafia hit man. However, if you look at the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers in the early two thousand's, a researcher named William Kingman was doing some digging and he actually got a notification from the California State Registrar that there had been no record of a Joseph Mumphrey dying in the state during this time, so that sort of detracts it, and he, the author of the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, makes the argument that this whole thing had been a fabrication, although I will say, having crawled through Louisiana records, not all of these people that are in the center pretty much accounted for. In the newspaper show up in those death records either, so I don't know. We know that at this point in time, things like that would fall through the cracks, not everything was noted perfectly. So in the last century there have been numerous theories put forth about the Axe Man's identity, but there's never been conclusive evidence for any of them. So this legend really lives on because of the inconsistencies in some of the attacks. It could easily be that there were multiple assailants involved, either working together or sort of mistakenly grouped under the same header of the Axe Man. There's also the prospect that some of these killers, as we said earlier, we're just copycats. But because there was some mediocre handling of evidence early on in these cases, uh that you know, presumably in the first instance with the Maggios, and in even in the second one, I don't know that the police were thinking serial killer. Uh. Fingerprinting had been available during this time, but they didn't really use it, so conclusive forensic evidence has really been lost to time at this point. Which is also this pesky issue of pretty small openings in the doors that the axe Man seemed to pass through, Like if you imagine a door that has panels that you could knock out with the chisel. It's not a very big hole. No. Um. This has led some people to say that he was really a demon or other supernatural entity, including him or whoever wrote the letter to the paper and American Horris Story Eric Norris story. Um, Yeah, that's an interesting thing. I only found one instance where they mentioned specifically that they had to have gone through the door panel and it was not a case of them popping that open and then reaching up to unlock the door, because all the doors were found still locked. But I only found that mentioned in one place, so I don't know how accurate that was. So here we go, we reach up and unlock it, and then we reach up and kind I mean that was my thinking. That's not conclusive one way or the other either. Uh. So it's interesting because while the X Man is not a huge story, I think in American serial killer mythology, it has come up a lot in various um media. American Horror Story maybe the most recent fiction to use it for inspiration, but is definitely not the first. Yeah. And in cartoonist and illustrator Rick Geary published a horror comic about the X Man as part of the Treasury of twentieth century Murder, and brief mention of him is also made in Chuck Pollini's book Haunted, which is a great read. I'm a huge fan of his uh and it's shown up in many other places as well. There have been bands that have been named albums after it and songs based on it. There was actually a song written in in a jazz song inspired by the events. Yeah, I've read, you know a lot about serial killers when I first discovered the Internet and discovered that there were websites that had basically everything about every serial killer. Ever, we're spending a lot of time reading these serial killer stories, and I had not ever heard of this particular one until American Horror Story. Yeah. I had heard of it, uh, primarily because of the Chuck Politic book, And I was like, wait, what is that? And I happened to do a quick search and discovered that it was a real thing. Yeah. As soon as I tell you, hey, people are asking us can we talk about this? You were like, is that a real thing? Yes? Real things? Uh. So there's shockingly real thing and bizarre and unfortunately it is, even though it is not so far back it's less than a hundred years ago. There's still so much story and lore that's grown around it that there are often, as we talked about in the Babush Lady, like eyewitness accounts even aren't even aren't al as accurate. So even at the time when people that were near the scene, we're saying things, fear was sort of you know, making their stories embellish in certain ways, and we can't count on the act received any of it. Yeah. Well, and when you think about, like with today's forensic methods, it's still I mean, it's not a rare occurrence for somebody to be exonerated through DNA evidence. I it's amazing to me that anyone was ever identified and and correctly imprisoned before all of those forensic methods really existed and like evidence handling procedures and that kind of thing. Yeah, and you know that was fingerprints were available, but they were not where they're at now. I think they were first used. I'm I'm completely doing this off the top of my head. I think the first case they were conclusively used in within nineteen eleven, so we pretty knew at this point. Yeah, within within a decade of when they were being used for actual investigation in court cases and evidence, so you can understand why they would not have necessarily fingerprinted the scene. So that is the scoop on the x Man of New Orleans. And already I can tell you that American horror story has diverged because in their version, uh, you know, I'm not going to spoiler it in case anybody's waiting to vertically view the whole thing, but it diverges pretty significantly well. And the letter is included in him passing through New Orleans on that night wanting lots of jazz, and then it gets very different. Okay, well, and then that when we started getting the AxMan requests, I think that it's like, so I haven't watched last night episode yet, but apparently there's some kind of ax Man. So there you go. And now we will go on too. Listener mail. So I have two bits. One is an actual email, one is just a very funny message we've got on Facebook. The first one is from Allison and she says, hello, Hollee and Tricy, Greetings from Juneo, Alaska. I just finished listening to your podcast about and probably effective Holocaust rescuers, and I was pleasantly surprised when you mentioned miss Irene good up Dike, as I feel she has often overlooked. Miss Opticke came to my high school in southern California to talk about her experiences during the war. While Miss Opticke did mention being captured by Russian soldiers, she mainly focused on her experience at the club and the villa, including becoming Major Rudemer's mistress. When a student asked why she became his mistress, I recalled that Miss Optike responded that she had more than her life to protect. There were many lives at stake, and although her talk lasted only one hour, it made quite an impression on me. Her talk was part of what inspired me to join the U. S. Coast Guard and to get my master's in public health, which I am now completing in order to assist those in me. I've attached a copy of the brochure that was handed out by Miss optics those who attended the talk at my high school, since I thought it might interest to you, and it did. It's very cool and it's neat to have. We always learned people right in where they have a direct connection to a piece of history. That we've talked about, and I know that she did do a lot of lectures and outreached, so love it. Our second note comes from our listener Russ and he wrote to us on Facebook and he says, Hi, ladies, I love the podcast to keep things informative yet light and fun. But the Babushka Lady podcast give me some concern and suspicions. Okay, when I read that, I got a little scared. But I was like, Oh, this is gonna be somebody that really studies the assassinations and they're gonna yell at me for some reason. Well, and I think you and I both when we get an email or Facebook message or whatever that starts. I really love the podcast, but there's a bracing for impact that happened. But Rust goes on to say, probably mentioned a couple of times that she is quote not in the CIA, which is exactly what she would say if she were in the CIA. This may need to be looked at by the people. That's definitely don't want you to know. Thanks Ray show. That makes my horrible commute much more tolerable and even educational. I don't know Ben sits near me. He hasn't raised any red flags. You all are on the same row and frequently late into the evening and chattering with each other, two of you on that row, and then no one and then me. Yeah, so he would know if I were suspicious. I think I'm too loud and goofy to be, but or that could be the perfect cover. So if you would like to write to us with your suspicious that we are spies or connections to history, you should do that. Uh. You can email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with us on Facebook at facebook dot com slash history class stuff, or on Twitter at misston history and at mist in history dot tumbler dot com on Tumblr, and you can visit us on Pinterest, where we are pinning many many things, both related to our podcast directly and not. I often been a lot of historical garments. Yeah, I think you and I both follow a lot of historical clothing boards. Sometimes what's there is really lovely. You know it's dangerous though, because then I want to make copies or things inspired by all with them, and I already have a list eight emails. When I want to watch you do that, I guess, Okay, you come over and hang out because I don't want to Kitty's climbing all over you. Um So, if you want to learn a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our website and type in the word serial killer, which I mentioned in the last episode. But this time I'm going to mention a different article. It's not really an article, it's a quiz. It's the Ultimate serial Killers Quit, which could be a fun diversion. And you can learn about serial killers and a great deal more at our website, which is helped up work dot com for lare on this and thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff you Missed in History Classes brought to you by Linda dot com. You can learn it at Linda dot com, an online learning company with more than seventy seven thousand video tutorials that teach software, creative and business skills. Membership starts at twenty five a month and provides unlimited seven access to top quality video courses taught by expert instructors with real world experience. Listeners of Stuff you Missed in History Class can trial Inda dot com free for seven days by visiting Linda dot com. Slash history stuff,