Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: And I'm Tracy D. Wilson. And today's topic, Uh comes
Speaker 1: directly from the fact that the subject of it showed
Speaker 1: up on American Horror Story covin recently, and almost immediately
Speaker 1: after they introduced this genuine historical figure as a character
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks back, we immediately got requests to
Speaker 1: cover it. Yeah. I basically got to work and people
Speaker 1: were already asking about it, and I hadn't even seen
Speaker 1: the episode, and I was like, Oh, I guess there's
Speaker 1: an ax Man, Uh spoiler. That's what the episodes about today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ax Man of New Orleans. And while it made
Speaker 1: for great TV, perhaps the most shocking part is actually
Speaker 1: how few liberties the show creators had to take with
Speaker 1: this story. Often, when you see a historical figure incorporated
Speaker 1: into modern entertainment, it gets really you know, altered and
Speaker 1: fluffed up. And but they're some pretty literal one to
Speaker 1: one translation on this one, which is really sort of
Speaker 1: shocking in and of itself. Well, and just in case
Speaker 1: the show completely diverges from reality, uh, we are recording
Speaker 1: this basically after the X Man's first appearance, right, and
Speaker 1: there's UH at the end we can talk about what
Speaker 1: obviously is not accurate in that because it does take
Speaker 1: a turn that we would UH not be able to
Speaker 1: have in actual UH history. But most of the plot
Speaker 1: was written for those show creators nearly a hundred years
Speaker 1: ago in terms of what they covered on the program,
Speaker 1: and the X Man story actually has a few different
Speaker 1: potential starting points. Although we're going to start at the
Speaker 1: cases that are generally considered like the official X Man
Speaker 1: timeline of events, UH, there are some that happened prior
Speaker 1: to that that get linked up, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: those at the end. And because the case was never solved,
Speaker 1: there is uncertainty about some similar crimes that may or
Speaker 1: not have been related and may or may not have
Speaker 1: been the work of the X Man. And also, just
Speaker 1: as a side note going into this UM, if you
Speaker 1: are following up on this and looking anything up online,
Speaker 1: you will see it spelled two ways, a x e
Speaker 1: MN and a x M a n UH. The X
Speaker 1: Man himself, if his one writing where he self references
Speaker 1: is in fact by him and not by an impostor
Speaker 1: or a hoaxter. They used the one without the E,
Speaker 1: but you'll see it written both ways in perfectly valid
Speaker 1: historical accounts. So we're going to start off with where
Speaker 1: the murders that are generally considered part of quote the
Speaker 1: x Man Murders began, and that is May twenty two.
Speaker 1: So Andrew Maggio had gotten a draft notice, and so
Speaker 1: he went out and drank a lot. He came home
Speaker 1: and passed out in the rooms that he shared with
Speaker 1: his brother Jake. There are accounts that suggest that the
Speaker 1: two of them had actually been out king together. At
Speaker 1: four a m. On the morning of the twenty three
Speaker 1: Jake was awakened by groaning noises coming from the other
Speaker 1: side of the wall, which was the home inhabited by
Speaker 1: another brother, Joseph and his wife Katherine. Joseph and Catherine
Speaker 1: ran a grocery in bar room that was connected to
Speaker 1: their living quarters, and that was a pretty common layout
Speaker 1: at this time. Yeah. One of the items will point
Speaker 1: to in the show notes has a picture from the
Speaker 1: the New Orleans Times Pickie unit the time, and they
Speaker 1: actually have a it's a very simple box layout of
Speaker 1: how most of these stores were set up, where the
Speaker 1: store was in the front and one to three rooms
Speaker 1: were separated in the back half of the building and
Speaker 1: those were like the living area, so Uh Jake roused
Speaker 1: the drunken Andrew with some difficulty after he was unable
Speaker 1: to get a response from his brother or sister in
Speaker 1: law when he knocked on the wall that joined their
Speaker 1: two rooms or that connected their two rooms to check
Speaker 1: on them, that he couldn't get them to answer. What
Speaker 1: the brothers found was evidence of a break in. A
Speaker 1: wooden panel had been chiseled out of the kitchen door
Speaker 1: and left on the ground outside with the chisel lying
Speaker 1: on top of it. And when Jake and Andrew reached
Speaker 1: the couple's bedroom, Catherine was already dead. She was sprawled
Speaker 1: partially across her husband, and Joseph was alive but had
Speaker 1: multiple very bad head wounds. Joseph died before police could arrive.
Speaker 1: Police found a pile of men's wear in the bathroom
Speaker 1: along with an axe. The location of this axe has
Speaker 1: been recorded really inconsistently in different sources. That's been cited
Speaker 1: as being in the bathtub, near the rear doorstep, and
Speaker 1: in the crawl space under the house uh and all
Speaker 1: of these have been named as the place where the
Speaker 1: axe was found. UH and just to address the men's
Speaker 1: were in the bathroom, you will read about that being
Speaker 1: very different things. Uh. Some accounts say it was actually
Speaker 1: like Joseph's close are close belonging to the couple. Some
Speaker 1: hint that they think the ax man actually changed completely
Speaker 1: out of the clothes he was wearing during the murder
Speaker 1: to another set of clothes to leave without blood on him. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's to my mind a little bit hazy still,
Speaker 1: because accounts do very quite a bit. And also found
Speaker 1: on the bed was a straight razor, and the coroner's
Speaker 1: report indicated that the axe had been the primary cause
Speaker 1: of death for Joseph, but that the killer had likely
Speaker 1: hit Catherine on the head with the ax and then
Speaker 1: used the razor to nearly decapitate her. Uh And her
Speaker 1: estimated time of death was between two and three am.
Speaker 1: Just a block away, the message Mrs Moggio will set
Speaker 1: up tonight just like Mrs Tony was found written on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk with chalk in a sort of childish handwriting. Initially,
Speaker 1: this particular clue was really baffling to investigators because the
Speaker 1: neighbor had actually witnessed Andrew outside that night when he
Speaker 1: was still inebriated. He and Jake were both taken in
Speaker 1: for questioning, and Jake was released after a day, but
Speaker 1: Andrew remained in custody, and unfortunately, several things started to
Speaker 1: make Andrew look extremely suspicious to the police. The first
Speaker 1: is that it was his razor blade. He was a barber,
Speaker 1: and he claimed he had brought it home from maintenance. Uh.
Speaker 1: Another thing is that the safe in Joseph and Catherine's
Speaker 1: house was open, but it didn't show a sign of
Speaker 1: forced entry or robbery. Money and valuables that were nearby
Speaker 1: were left completely untouched. And this, combined with the discovery
Speaker 1: that the ax had actually belonged to the victims, lad
Speaker 1: investigators to believe that the killer knew the layout of
Speaker 1: the house and possibly knew the family, so the idea
Speaker 1: that it was a family member kind of uh did
Speaker 1: not help Andrew's case, and that it was a murdering
Speaker 1: not a robbery. Andrew's story was also kind of changing. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: He didn't initially mention it, but he later said he
Speaker 1: had seen a man going into his brother's house at
Speaker 1: about one thirty in the morning. This contradicted his answers
Speaker 1: to the police questioning, and an interview that he gave
Speaker 1: a newspaper saying he'd been too drunk to even hear
Speaker 1: any of the noise coming from his brother's home. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he went from saying he was way too and
Speaker 1: he breeded to notice anything, to going, oh yeah, but
Speaker 1: I did see that one guy. Uh. But eventually that
Speaker 1: was kind of it. They didn't really come up with
Speaker 1: any additional evidence. And Andrew was released. So that is
Speaker 1: the first murder, and it really kind of gets the
Speaker 1: most detail in a lot of accounts, I think, because
Speaker 1: it was the earliest one. Even so, and we're at
Speaker 1: a time when there were newspapers and records. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: find as we go on that the records get fuzzy.
Speaker 1: There wasn't always great accounting. But we're gonna pause before
Speaker 1: we get to the second incident and talk about our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to ax murdyrs. Oh, yes, always fun.
Speaker 1: So the second incident happened just a few weeks after
Speaker 1: the Maggio slings. Uh. And a delivery man in this
Speaker 1: instance discovered this event while he was trying to drop
Speaker 1: off bread at grocer Louis Bessemer's store in the seventh Ward. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is another one of those cases that I
Speaker 1: just mentioned where the details are not always consistent. Bessemer
Speaker 1: gets spelled several different ways. Sometimes it's spelled b E
Speaker 1: s E m e R, sometimes b O s s
Speaker 1: U m e R. Sometimes b O s U m
Speaker 1: b R. There are is a lot of variation. So
Speaker 1: when Bessemer did not meet the delivery man, John Zenka
Speaker 1: at the store's door and the way he normally did,
Speaker 1: Zenka went around to the side door. Bessemer opened the
Speaker 1: door and he was covered in blood and said that
Speaker 1: he had been attacked, and he directed Zenka into the bedroom.
Speaker 1: Uh they're a woman who was presumed to be Bessemmer's
Speaker 1: wife was sprawled on the bed with a really deep
Speaker 1: head wound, although she was still alive at that point.
Speaker 1: Against Bessemer's wishes, Zenka called the police. Bessemer has had
Speaker 1: wanted to call his doctor instead. Just kind of odd.
Speaker 1: I think they should call both. Yes, make both the calls.
Speaker 1: Just as in the Maggio murders, a door panel had
Speaker 1: been removed with a chisel and then placed on the
Speaker 1: ground with the chisel on top of it. Bessemer's own
Speaker 1: acts had been used to commit this assault. And it
Speaker 1: was found in the bathroom, and again no valuables had
Speaker 1: been taken. So while both of the victims were connected
Speaker 1: to a grocery, their ethnicity was different um the Maggio's
Speaker 1: where Italian and Bessemer was Polish. Uh. Initially a new
Speaker 1: employee of Bessemer's store was detained, but he was soon released,
Speaker 1: similar to the Andrew Maggio situation, though he had told
Speaker 1: some conflicting stories to police. And this kind of leads
Speaker 1: me to go out on a limb. I guess that
Speaker 1: fear was the significant motivator in some of these wishy
Speaker 1: washy stories of the suspects. That they were probably just
Speaker 1: terrified and didn't they wanted to say something that would
Speaker 1: clear their name, even if it wasn't accurate. Uh. But
Speaker 1: they did really stepman because he didn't there wasn't enough evidence.
Speaker 1: So the victim, the female victim, was Anna Harriet Low.
Speaker 1: She turned out to be either Bessemer's mistress or his
Speaker 1: common law wife, depending on who is talking, and she
Speaker 1: told different stories to the investigators before she died of
Speaker 1: her wounds. Her first account said that she had been
Speaker 1: attacked by a man of mixed race, but she did
Speaker 1: not stick to that story. The second account was that
Speaker 1: it had actually been Bessemer and that he was a
Speaker 1: spy and part of a German conspiracy. This, combined with
Speaker 1: letters that were found in his home in a number
Speaker 1: of different languages, got federal investigators involved, and Bessemmer was
Speaker 1: arrested but was soon released. Yes, so remember this is
Speaker 1: during World War One, so that's why to say he
Speaker 1: was a German spy got a lot of hubbub happening
Speaker 1: very quickly. It's a big deal in a bizarre move.
Speaker 1: This particular incident has so many weird layers to it.
Speaker 1: Bessemer actually asked the police if he could investigate his
Speaker 1: own case regarding the attack, like if they would make
Speaker 1: him the detective on the case. Uh. And this, combined
Speaker 1: with Anna's strange story and Besmer's reluctance to call a
Speaker 1: police in the first place, eventually it led police to
Speaker 1: believe that there was actually a domestic dispute at the
Speaker 1: heart of this second incident. Uh and Bezmer ended up
Speaker 1: being arrested again and this time held on murder charges.
Speaker 1: Sometime down the road, he was, however, acquitted. The next
Speaker 1: attack was not at the home of a grocer but
Speaker 1: a businessman, and it also broke from the typical axeman
Speaker 1: scenario in a few other ways as well. When Edward
Speaker 1: Schneider got home from work on August eighteen, he found
Speaker 1: his pregnant wife on the bed with a serious head wound.
Speaker 1: She was unconscious, but she was still alive, and she
Speaker 1: was immediately rushed to the hospital. And while Mrs Schneider
Speaker 1: did recover and she did successfully deliver a daughter, she
Speaker 1: really couldn't help police investigators with many details of the attack.
Speaker 1: They had really been hoping that she would have a
Speaker 1: witness account, but she had been asleep when the intruder
Speaker 1: had entered the house, and she only recalled waking up
Speaker 1: to see him by the bed as the axe came
Speaker 1: swinging toward her. It's terrifying, yes, although some of the
Speaker 1: police investigators thought that she had actually been hit with
Speaker 1: I can't remember if it was a large, heavy jar
Speaker 1: or a lamp that was near the bed, So whether
Speaker 1: or not she was actually hit with an axe actually
Speaker 1: even came into question, as in the other attacks, nothing
Speaker 1: of value had been taken out of the house, but
Speaker 1: that and her account of an axe being involved are
Speaker 1: really the only connections with the other Maggio and Bessemer cases.
Speaker 1: Unlike in those crimes, there was no door panel that
Speaker 1: had been chiseled out of the door, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: male victim, and the target was completely removed from the
Speaker 1: grocery trade, which just caused some people to wonder if
Speaker 1: it really was the same perpetrator. Before we get to
Speaker 1: the next one, so many ex events. We're gonna pause
Speaker 1: one more time and take a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: If Tracy's game, let's do that, alrighty, yes? Uh So
Speaker 1: just five days after Mrs Schneider was attacked, this time
Speaker 1: a barber named Joseph Romano. So he was Italian, uh,
Speaker 1: similar to some of the others, but not a grocer,
Speaker 1: even though you will often see it said as he
Speaker 1: attacked Italian grocers. But there's a lot more variation than that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he was attacked in his home, but this time
Speaker 1: there were two witnesses, his nieces Pauline and Mary Bruno,
Speaker 1: who lived with him. They were awakened by loud thumping
Speaker 1: sounds from their uncle's room. According to some accounts, a
Speaker 1: man fled when Pauline saw him and screamed. Other versions
Speaker 1: of the story have the man already fleeing the house
Speaker 1: when the girls saw him. UH, and Joseph had suffered
Speaker 1: several blows to the head and he died from his wounds,
Speaker 1: although he did tell the girls before he died to
Speaker 1: call for help. So this murder was more similar to
Speaker 1: the previous attacks. There was the chiseled door panel with
Speaker 1: the chisel aft the entry UH. And by this time,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, New Orleans was in a panic. UH.
Speaker 1: There were constant calls to police precincts about suspicious figures
Speaker 1: and attempted intrusions. And some of these seem to be
Speaker 1: based in truth, but others really seemed to be the
Speaker 1: result of panic and fear leading to mistaken assessments of situations.
Speaker 1: Like they were constantly getting a call of there's a
Speaker 1: weird person in my yard. There's someone at my back door.
Speaker 1: That's reminds me of the eight million suspicious package us
Speaker 1: that the police departments were getting, like in the wake
Speaker 1: of the Boston marathon bombing. Yeah, everyone's extra cautious, so
Speaker 1: you're noting everything that stands out. It's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: that you're I think some people tend to assume that
Speaker 1: fear is causing people to make things up. And while
Speaker 1: that may have been the case in some of them,
Speaker 1: you're also just noticing things that you normally noticed because
Speaker 1: you are at a heightened sense of awareness hyper vigilances behind.
Speaker 1: So the mythology of the Axe Man started to morph
Speaker 1: as these stories were shared and spread. A mishmash of
Speaker 1: true and false details formed this patchwork that was kind
Speaker 1: of difficult to pick apart. Yeah, police were responding to calls,
Speaker 1: and some things would be in place that suggested the
Speaker 1: Axe Man, like some doors looked like they had been
Speaker 1: tampered with, but not always. Sometimes people couldn't tell if
Speaker 1: it maybe was just a prankster trying to scare people,
Speaker 1: or if it could actually be the Axeman copycat, yeah,
Speaker 1: or a copcat. But while the city was on edge,
Speaker 1: uh and in this state of hyper vigilance, the last
Speaker 1: several months of nine eighteen did not have any more
Speaker 1: recorded attacks of the Axe Man, although there were, as
Speaker 1: I said, a few instances of chisels and axes being
Speaker 1: found near people's back doors when police were called. So
Speaker 1: we're actually gonna this one into two episodes, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of killing to put in just one
Speaker 1: and then another person was murdered by an axe building
Speaker 1: mad Yeah. So we're gonna pause here and then our
Speaker 1: next episode will pick right back up, because then things
Speaker 1: really get interesting and really tie into the story that
Speaker 1: appeared on American Horror Story. Do you have listener mail
Speaker 1: before we go? I do. Uh. This one is from
Speaker 1: our listener Amy, and it is in reference to our
Speaker 1: episode on Rudolph the Second. She says, I've been an
Speaker 1: avid listener for some time now, especially since I have
Speaker 1: a boring job and need some levity. I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to write, but never had a good topic that seems
Speaker 1: like something I could write about. But I was very
Speaker 1: excited when you did the podcast on Rudolph the Second.
Speaker 1: I'm an American who lived in Prague, Czech Republic for
Speaker 1: twelve years from the first to the twelfth grade, and
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the Prague Castle was
Speaker 1: actually created by Rudolph. One of his many eccentric pursuits
Speaker 1: was acting alchemists to discover how to turn ordinary objects
Speaker 1: into gold. He collected them all on one street, which
Speaker 1: developed the nickname of Golden Lane. Because of the alchemists,
Speaker 1: all of the buildings are oddly short and skinny. It
Speaker 1: almost looks like a miniature lane rather than a normal street,
Speaker 1: and the buildings are also all bright colors, which was
Speaker 1: unusual for that time. As a kid, I always looked
Speaker 1: forward to walking down Golden Lane and looking at the
Speaker 1: cute houses. Unfortunately, you now have to pay to walk
Speaker 1: down it. At the end of the lane, there's actually
Speaker 1: a toy museum now that has a fascinating progression of
Speaker 1: what barbies have looked like through the ages. Okay, I
Speaker 1: would be all over that museum, across the attics of
Speaker 1: a few of the houses. They have also put in
Speaker 1: a crossbow range for tourists. My older brother enjoyed this
Speaker 1: a lot. I now wish I had done it as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: I just noticed that the coaster of that my hot
Speaker 1: chocolate is resting on is a picture of Golden Lane,
Speaker 1: a present from my mom. I'm glad my hometown received
Speaker 1: a bit of the spotlight. Keep up wonderful work. Uh
Speaker 1: so cool to hear about. I had never heard about
Speaker 1: the Golden Lane, even though I have friends that lived
Speaker 1: at Prague. I guess they were holding out on me.
Speaker 1: But thank you Amy for telling us that, because that's
Speaker 1: a really cool bit that I would not down I
Speaker 1: want to go to Froud quite badly. Uh, there're can
Speaker 1: I see pictures of it? I think it's super cool.
Speaker 1: So if you would like to share information with us,
Speaker 1: you can do so at our email address, which is
Speaker 1: History Podcast at Discovery dot com, or you can connect
Speaker 1: with us at Facebook dot com slash history class Stuff.
Speaker 1: You can connect with us on Twitter at mist in
Speaker 1: History and at misston History dot tumbler dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can visit us on contests where I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to figure out fun ways to include images to
Speaker 1: X men, but I'm gonna do it. You would like
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Speaker 1: can go to our website and do a search for
Speaker 1: the word serial killer and you will get how serial
Speaker 1: killers work. You would like to learn about that, or
Speaker 1: anything else your mind can conjure, you can do that
Speaker 1: at our website, which is how stuff Works dot com
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