# The Axeman of New Orleans was a single serial killer who terrorized the city in 1918 and 1919 and was never caught

**No verdict.** Between May 1918 and October 1919 a series of nighttime axe and hatchet attacks, several of them fatal, struck households in and around New Orleans, many of them Italian immigrant grocers. That much is documented in contemporary police records and newspapers. The claim we rate is narrower and larger: that the attacks were all the work of one person, dubbed the Axeman, whose identity was later established. On the evidence the case is unproven. No attacker was ever charged and convicted for the string of crimes, no single hand across all the incidents was ever proved, and the best-known named suspect rests on a story that later researchers could not verify. The crimes are real and remain officially unsolved; the popular narrative that ties them into one solved-but-hidden figure is not supported.

Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 1910s · First circulated: Contemporaneously, in New Orleans newspapers through 1918 and 1919, especially after a letter signed by the "Axeman" ran in mid-March 1919; the single-killer legend was fixed for later generations by Robert Tallant's 1946 book and by later true-crime writers · Believed by: A broad general audience of true-crime and local-history readers; New Orleans cultural memory treats the case as a defining local mystery, and the jazz-letter episode is widely retold
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/axeman-of-new-orleans

## Summary
For roughly eighteen months in 1918 and 1919, residents of New Orleans lived under the shadow of a series of nighttime attacks in which intruders broke into homes, frequently those of Italian immigrant grocers, and struck sleeping occupants with an axe or hatchet, often a tool already on the premises. Several people were killed and others gravely injured. The attacker or attackers were never caught. In mid-March 1919 a letter published in a local newspaper, signed by someone claiming to be the killer, announced that he would spare any home where a jazz band was playing on the night of March 19; the city responded with music, and no attack was reported that night. This case file keeps two things apart: a real, unsolved series of violent crimes; and the claim it rates, that all the incidents were one identifiable serial killer whose name is known. The crimes are historical fact. The tidy single-culprit story, and the named suspect attached to it, remain unproven.

## The claim
That the New Orleans attacks of 1918 and 1919 were the work of one serial killer, the Axeman, operating to a consistent method and motive; that this figure authored the famous jazz letter; and, in the most popular version, that his identity was eventually discovered even though he was never brought to trial.

## Origin and timeline
- 1918-05: On the night of May 22 to 23, 1918, Joseph Maggio, an Italian grocer, and his wife Catherine were attacked in their living quarters and did not survive. An axe and a razor found at the scene became the template newspapers would use to link later cases.
- 1918-06: On June 27, 1918, Louis Besumer, a grocer, and Harriet Lowe were attacked in rooms behind his store. Both were gravely hurt. Besumer was later arrested and charged over Lowe's death but was acquitted in 1919, an early sign of how uncertain the investigation was.
- 1918-08: Through the late summer of 1918 further nighttime attacks and prowler reports were recorded across the city and suburbs. Newspapers began treating the incidents as a single campaign and gave the unknown assailant the name that stuck: the Axeman.
- 1919-03-10: In Gretna, across the river, Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia and their infant daughter were attacked in their home. The parents survived; the child did not. Rosie later accused neighbors, who were convicted and then freed when she recanted, another line of inquiry that collapsed.
- 1919-03: In mid-March 1919 a New Orleans newspaper printed a letter signed as the Axeman, styling its author a spirit and demon, and promising to spare any household playing jazz at a set hour on the night of March 19. Its true authorship was never established.
- 1919-03-19: On the night named in the letter, dance halls filled and bands played across the city. No attack was reported that night. The episode fused the killings to jazz in popular memory and inspired a piece of sheet music published soon after.
- 1919-10: On the night of October 27, 1919, Mike Pepitone was attacked and killed at home, the last incident commonly attributed to the Axeman. No one was ever convicted for the series, and the attacks then stopped as abruptly as they had begun.
- 1921-12: In December 1921 a Los Angeles killing was later linked, in retellings, to a man named as an Axeman suspect. Decades on, researchers combing the records could not confirm the man, the shooting, or the connection, and the story is now widely regarded as legend.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: All the 1918 and 1919 attacks were committed by the same person, following one signature method.
  Evidence: The shared features are real but loose. Many attacks involved an axe or hatchet, often a tool found at the home, forced entry through a rear door or panel, and Italian grocer households. Those similarities drove the single-killer framing at the time. But axe attacks and burglaries of small grocers were not unique to one hand in that era, victim accounts and details varied, and some incidents folded into the legend may have been separate crimes or copycats. A common method across cases is suggestive; it is not proof of one attacker, and no forensic link across the series was ever established.
- Claim: The jazz letter proves a taunting, theatrical killer was behind the attacks.
  Evidence: The letter exists and was printed in a New Orleans paper in mid-March 1919, and the jazz-filled night that followed is well documented. What is not established is that the real attacker wrote it. Its authorship was never verified, and it has long been suspected of being a hoax or a newspaper-driven stunt, with a local musician among those floated as the writer. A dramatic letter making the rounds tells us the city was gripped by fear and by the press; it does not identify or even confirm a single perpetrator.
- Claim: The Italian-grocer pattern shows the crimes were an organized Mafia or Black Hand campaign.
  Evidence: Several victims were Italian immigrant grocers, and organized-crime extortion against that community existed in the period, so contemporaries and later writers reached for the Mafia. But the pattern also has a simpler read: grocers kept cash and lived behind or above their shops, making them targets for ordinary robbery, and the Italian-community focus may partly reflect which crimes the press chose to link. The Mafia framing is a plausible hypothesis that was never proved, not a demonstrated fact.
- Claim: The identity of the Axeman was eventually discovered, even though he was never tried.
  Evidence: This rests mainly on a single named suspect popularized by mid-century and later crime writers, tied to a supposed 1921 revenge killing in Los Angeles. When a true-crime researcher searched New Orleans and Los Angeles public, police, and court records and newspaper archives, he could not find evidence for the man, the Los Angeles shooting, or the widow said to have carried it out. The most-repeated solution therefore has no verified documentary basis and is now widely treated as an urban legend. The case remains officially unsolved.
- Claim: That the attacks stopped after October 1919 shows a single killer had been stopped.
  Evidence: The series does appear to end in late 1919, which the legend reads as a lone offender dying, moving, or being killed. But a cluster of crimes ending is consistent with many explanations: heightened policing and public vigilance, an arrest for an unrelated offense, a move, a death from any cause, or the simple fact that loosely linked separate crimes were never one campaign to begin with. An ending is not, by itself, an identification.

## Why people believe it
- The core facts are genuinely frightening and genuinely unsolved. Real people were attacked in their beds, several fatally, and no one was ever convicted, which leaves a vacuum that a clean single-villain story rushes to fill.
- The jazz letter is unforgettable. A killer who spares households playing music, and a whole city answering with bands in the streets, is a story so vivid it almost demands to be true, and it welds the crimes to the birthplace of jazz in a way people love to retell.
- The Italian-grocer pattern invites a tidy motive. Linking the victims by ethnicity and trade lets the mind supply a cause, Mafia vengeance or a bigoted campaign, that feels more satisfying than a scatter of unconnected crimes.
- Authoritative-sounding retellings hardened the legend. A 1946 book and later crime writers presented a named suspect and a neat ending as established fact, and those versions were copied for decades before researchers went back to the records.
- New Orleans embraces its dark folklore. Ghost tours, music, and local history keep the Axeman alive as a character, and cultural retelling smooths a messy, ambiguous record into a single memorable figure.

## Open questions
- How many of the 1918 and 1919 attacks were truly the work of one person, and how many were separate crimes or copycats swept into the same story by the press, is something the surviving records cannot settle.
- Who actually wrote the jazz letter, whether the real attacker, a hoaxer, or someone connected to a newspaper, was never established and probably cannot be now.
- Whether an organized-crime or anti-Italian motive drove any of the attacks, as opposed to ordinary robbery of cash-holding grocers, remains an open historical question rather than a proven one.

## Sources
- Axeman of New Orleans, Wikipedia (2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axeman_of_New_Orleans
- The Mysterious Axman's Jazz, The Historic New Orleans Collection (2019): https://hnoc.org/research-collections/collection-highlights/mysterious-axman
- The history of Axman, a New Orleans serial killer in 1918, NOLA.com / The Times-Picayune (2024): https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/new-orleans-jazz-loving-serial-killer-axman/article_e1f6fc84-4e75-11ef-ae9e-73c474a87280.html
- The Axeman of New Orleans, Country Roads Magazine (2019): https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/the-axeman-new-orleans/
- The Axe Murderer Who Loved Jazz, WBUR, Endless Thread (2018): https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/22/the-axeman-serial-killer-new-orleans
- The Axeman of New Orleans, Legends of America (2023): https://www.legendsofamerica.com/la-axeman/
- "The Axeman Cometh": New Orleans Residents Play Jazz All Night to Placate a Serial Killer, American Songwriter (2023): https://americansongwriter.com/the-axeman-cometh-this-month-in-1919-new-orleans-residents-play-jazz-all-night-to-placate-a-serial-killer/
- The Axman of New Orleans (text of the 1919 letter), The Louisiana Anthology (1919): https://louisiana-anthology.org/texts/axman/axman--letter.html

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/axeman-of-new-orleans