New Orleans Axeman Victims

Case background and investigation

Between May 1918 and October 1919, a series of night-time attacks on sleeping residents of New Orleans and neighboring Gretna, Louisiana, was attributed to an unknown assailant whom the press called the Axeman. In most of the incidents, accounts say, the intruder entered by chiseling out a panel of a back door and used an axe or hatchet that often belonged to the household. Valuables were generally left untouched. Many of the victims were Italian immigrant grocers or their relatives.

The first attack in the series came on May 23, 1918, when grocer Joseph Maggio and his wife Catherine were killed in their home. On June 27, 1918, grocer Louis Besumer and Harriet Lowe were attacked; Lowe died that August after surgery. Before her death she accused Besumer, who was charged with murder and acquitted by a jury on May 1, 1919. Anna Schneider, who was pregnant, survived an attack on August 5, 1918, and Joseph Romano died of head injuries after an attack on August 10, 1918.

In March 1919, Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia were badly injured and their two-year-old daughter Mary was killed in Gretna. Rosie Cortimiglia accused two neighbors, Iorlando Jordano and his teenage son Frank. Both were convicted; Frank was sentenced to hang and his father to life imprisonment. Rosie Cortimiglia later withdrew her accusation, and according to Smithsonian Magazine the two men were released in December 1920.

Days after the Gretna attack, on March 13, 1919, a letter signed as coming from the Axeman appeared in the press. It said the writer would pass over New Orleans on the night of March 19 and would spare any place where a jazz band was playing. Accounts describe dance halls filling and bands playing in homes across the city that night; no attack was reported. The authorship of the letter has never been established.

Three further attacks followed in 1919. Steve Boca survived an attack on August 10, and 19-year-old Sarah Laumann survived one on September 3. On October 27, 1919, grocer Mike Pepitone was fatally attacked in his bedroom; his wife reported seeing a large man fleeing. That was the last attack attributed to the Axeman.

No one was ever identified as the attacker. Smithsonian Magazine notes that a similar run of attacks on Italian grocers took place in 1910 and 1911, and that comparable attacks occurred elsewhere in Louisiana in 1920 and 1921; whether one person was responsible for all of them is a matter of historical debate. The case remains unsolved.