 In a previous episode, we spoke about the prosperity of New Orleans in the early 20th century. Because of New Orleans' economic boom, this is where it got the nickname, The Big Easy. This, of course, was because jobs were easy to come by. And for a lot of people struggling in their home countries, New Orleans seemed like the ideal city to start over. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons. Without you guys, we could not do what we do. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the Axe Man of New Orleans. Now, this was by far one of the most heavily requested stories to cover. And to be honest with you, I was a little hesitant about covering this story because it has been told so many times. However, while I was doing research, I found an angle to the story that's not really spoken about. This is an angle that many, many years ago was considered to be a possibility. But because of its paranormal implications, people today typically don't speak of it. That angle of the Axe Man will be covered on Friday in our part two. Before today, let's just give the back story of what happened in New Orleans in the early 20th century. Between 1884 and 1924, about 300,000 Italians from the island of Sicily immigrated to New Orleans. The island of Sicily, off the coast of the Italian continent, had become overrun with dirty politicians and organized crime families. Now, we have spoken about the island of Sicily before in another video. That video I will place again down in the description box below. But for most Sicilians, they just wanted to live a good life. They did not want to be governed by people who were corrupt. I think in 2021, most of us can empathize with the Sicilians, the majority of Sicilians, who decided to immigrate to New Orleans. Now, any time in the history of this American continent that a group, a large group of people coming from a certain country infiltrates into American society, a lot of the Americans already living in the area get very nervous. For example, we saw this with the Irish. When the Irish, after the potato famine, happened, started moving to the New York area at one point, the New York ports told them that they weren't allowed to take in any more Irish. We covered bits of that about a year ago, and I will again place that video down in the description box below. So as the Italians started to make their way into New Orleans, the citizens of New Orleans were also very hesitant with this new group of people. In fact, there were so many Irish coming into New Orleans that the French quarter became known as Little Palermo. Now, even though most of the immigrants from Italy into New Orleans were again decent people just looking for a fair shot at life, of course, within this 300,000 people came some corrupt people. And pretty soon, the Mafias that had run Sicily were starting to establish control in New Orleans as well, especially around the docks. David Hennessey was a local New Orleans man. His parents were Irish and had moved to New Orleans during the potato famine. Now, again, since the Irish had already set their sights on the New World, when the Italians started coming over, there was not only tension with the Americans, but also tension between the Italian and Irish communities. Well, David Hennessey was a young man who got himself involved with the police force of New Orleans. And in 1881, David Hennessey made a huge arrest. He arrested a man named Giuseppe Esposito. Now, the arrest of Giuseppe Esposito made national news. He was known to be a very, very powerful man in the Sicilian mafia, a very powerful man who had been arrested previously in Sicily for the story goes that other members of the mafia helped Esposito escape to the New World. He came first to New York, making his way down eventually to New Orleans. Now, he had changed his name in order to hide his identity, but I'm going to continue to call him by his birth name, which again is Esposito. Once Esposito got to New Orleans, he quickly took a wife and worked his way up to become a crime boss in New Orleans. And as a crime boss, he started to control the docks and the markets. Now, again, a lot of the Italian immigrants worked in the grocery industry. They worked on the docks and they sold in the markets. And as with most organized crime, different factions started to press up against each other, leaving the innocent people just trying to make a decent living to be the victims of their dirty politics. Well, pretty soon a tip was set into the police force of New Orleans that Esposito was living in their district. And it was David Hennessey and his partner that eventually apprehended Esposito. What David Hennessey and his partner did not know was that their boss was also involved in the Italian mafia of New Orleans. And once Esposito was arrested by David Hennessey, his boss charged him with not being in his proper post at the time of the arrest. Esposito was deported back to Sicily for the Italian government to do what they needed to do with him. Meanwhile, David Hennessey was let off by someone even higher than his boss once he was released from the battle and sued on the streets of New Orleans. It seems that David's boss was really upset that Esposito had been sent back to Sicily and he was going to take care of Hennessey one way or another. Well, Hennessey ended up surviving, but obviously was scarred from his experience with the New Orleans police. After this fiasco happened, Hennessey decided to work in private security. While working in private security, Hennessey himself struck up a relationship with another Italian family. This was the Provenzano family and they too had some ties, allegedly, to organized crime. In fact, this family was the family that controlled the fruit market in New Orleans. So here's David Hennessey, a man who had made national news coverage for apprehended a wanted felon, now actually working private security for yet another family involved in organized crime. But I do understand this was the late 1800s and Hennessey needed a job and so sometimes you do what you got to do. Well, in the mid 1880s, another family named the Matraganas pushed their way into the docks, into the fruit market. Now the Matraganas did have ties to Esposito, the man again that Hennessey had apprehended. So once again, Hennessey was helping run security for an Italian crime family who was being pressured by another Italian crime family who had connections to a crime boss that the private security man Hennessey had apprehended when he worked at the police force. But everything changed in 1889 when new city leadership was elected. At this point, the new city leadership of New Orleans appointed Hennessey brought him back into the police force and made him the superintendent of all of the police. He was now the chief of police and this new mayor wanted to crack down on organized crime. I guess he knew that Hennessey had started to do that earlier on in his career. So I think he felt that if he brought him back on the police force, he would be able to help him clean up the streets of New Orleans. You see, many of the illegal businesses in New Orleans were paying off the police force. It wasn't just the crime families that had connections to the police force to keep themselves safe, but it was also houses of ill reputes, if you know what I mean, and other such businesses that were paying each month to keep the police off their backs so they could continue to run their illegal establishments. So the new mayor wanted inventory from all the businesses involved in this bribery, basically, that was happening with the city officials of New Orleans. So Hennessey wasted no time to start researching the crime family connected to Esposito that had been pressuring him as a security guard. He started his investigation with one of the wealthiest Italian business owners in New Orleans. This was a man by the name of Joseph P. Machica. Now Machica, on the outside, appeared to be a man that had a very successful shipping business in the docks. But according to Hennessey, he suspected that he again was one of the head ringleaders for this organized crime group that had made its way from Sicily into New Orleans. On October 15, 1890, David Hennessey while walking down the street, he wouldn't succumb to his injuries until the very next day, but it sent a clear message to the police department. The Italian mafia was here to stay. The police department retaliated by arresting about a hundred people associated with this particular crime family, although most of them would go on to be released due to lack of evidence. But nonetheless, tension grew between the Italians and the Americans, between the police force and the crime families. Tension that seemed to culminate in 1918 with the emergence of the Axe Man. Now the Axe Man had technically 12 victims. Six passed away and six ended up surviving. And like most, we saw a mass amount of confusion and finger pointing before the city of New Orleans figured out that they were dealing with the same person in every case. Now because the victims of the Axe Man were all Italian families, there was speculation in the beginning that these were hits families were putting on each other. And that still seems to be one of the biggest and well accepted explanations of what happened with the Axe Man. Because you see the identity of the Axe Man is still unknown to this day. On May 23, 1918, Joseph and Catherine Maggio were sleeping in their apartment behind their grocery store. A lot of the grocery stores at this point in New Orleans were run by Italian families. And from what I know today, you still can find some really nice Italian food in the French Quarter of New Orleans from the descendants of these Italians that immigrated over to America during this time. Now, Joseph's brother Andrew also lived in the apartment with his brother and his wife. Andrew was the one that discovered the bodies the next day. Their throats, the razor that was used on their throats was found in the neighbor's yard. And the interesting thing about this razor is it resembled a razor that Andrew, Joseph's brother, who found the bodies used at his barbershop. Andrew quickly became the prime suspect in his brother and his sister in law's death. But according to Andrew, he only discovered the body super early in the morning because he had been out drinking with his friends the night before and came home rather drunk. It seems that Andrew was about to join the Navy, and this was a bit of a hurrah celebration before he set off into his new life serving the United States. And then a little bit over a month later, on June 27 of 1918, Louis Beesumer and his mistress Harriet Lowe were also attacked. Once again, they were staying in Louis's apartment behind his Italian grocery store. Now, things got really interesting with this case because Harriet, the female, attacked again was Louis's mistress and not his wife. It seems his wife was up in Cincinnati during this time. And they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and Harriet, who had survived the attack for a little while, would point her finger at Louis. Louis would also go on to survive. Their bodies were discovered around 7am by a bakery driver, a driver dropping off goods to the grocery store. When the police investigated the apartment, they found a bunch of letters that Louis had written in other languages, and they concocted this idea that Louis was a German spy. Well, Harriet, who was still in the hospital trying to recover from her wounds, confirmed that Louis was a German spy and therefore was responsible for the attacks that she received and he received as well. Harriet ended up losing her life on August 5th of 1918. Louis was apprehended for both the charge of being a spy and also the attack of his mistress, although he would be acquitted on May 1 of 1919. On August 5th, the same day that Harriet Lowe lost her life, there was another attack from the Axeman. This was an attack on a woman named Anna Schneider. She was 28 years old and she was 8 months pregnant. She was discovered by her husband a little bit after midnight as he had just gotten off a late shift at work. After she was rushed to the hospital, she ended up giving birth to their daughter two days later. On August 10th of 1919, an elderly man named Joseph Romano was attacked. He lived with his two nieces. The nieces eventually found their uncle and called for backup. People in New Orleans realized that they had a serious issue on their hand and started to panic. People claimed that they were finding axes all over the neighborhood. Axes in their backyard, they felt like someone had tampered with their own personal axe, which is how the Axeman did it. He would always use an axe that belonged to the person that he was attacking. But you can't really blame people for this mass hysteria. After all, all the suspects that the police had interviewed or detained at this point all turned out to be innocent. It was becoming clearer that there was a maniac on the loose, an maniac who was targeting a specific group of people, the Italian immigrants. But all would be silent for about seven months. The Axeman wouldn't strike again until March 10th of 1919 and this was by far one of the most gruesome attacks. This took place in the neighborhood of Gretna, which is kind of like its own little incorporated town. It's right across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. So even though in some research you might think it's a totally different town, it's literally right there in the vicinity of where the Axeman had been working. This time the Axeman attacked a whole family, a father, a mother, and their small, small daughter. Charles, Cortamiglia, his wife, Rosie. And again, their very small daughter, Mary. Charles and Rosie would go on to survive the attacks. Unfortunately, their baby girl lost her life. And it wasn't long until Rosie started pointing the finger at their neighbors, the Giordano's. The father and the son of the Giordano's are the ones who had actually discovered the bodies and notified the police. Rosie believed that the Giordano's had put a hit on her and her husband because they were competing grocers in the area. Even though they were competitive in their marketing and business, Charles quickly said no, that this family was not responsible for the attacks. Nonetheless, the father and the son were arrested. The father was told that he would serve a life sentence, and the son was told that he would receive a corporal punishment. Eventually Rosie withdrew her statement saying that no, it wasn't them, and she was just delusional. And so the father and the son were released. And even though they had been arrested, it really didn't look like it was likely for them to be the culprits, giving that the father was extremely old and feeble. And the son was a really, really big man who would have had a hard time getting into the house on his own. A few days later, the police department in New Orleans received an anonymous letter claiming to be from the Axe Man. This letter was written on March 13, 1919, and it goes as follows, esteemed mortals of New Orleans. They have never caught me, and they never will. They have never seen me, for I'm 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 or Linneans and your foolish police call the Axe Man. 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 axe, the spirit, blood, and brains of he who 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 at the way they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only assume me, but his satanic majesty, Francis Joseph, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am. For if it were better that they were never be 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 hot. Undoubtedly, you norlyans think of me as the most horrible 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 and at the worst, for I am in a close relationship with the angel of death. Now to be exact, at 12.15 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 and the nether regions that every person shall be spared and whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has jazz band going on, well then so much better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on the specific Tuesday night, if there be any, will get the axe. Well as I am cold and cream the worth of my native Tartarus and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with thee. I have been and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or the realm of fantasy. So needless to say, on that Tuesday night, jazz music filled the streets of New Orleans. For those who were lucky enough to own a radio, they could play it from the radio. Others had to hire bands to come and specifically play jazz so that the axmen would avoid their house. According to my research, most families that are from New Orleans and have ancestors that experienced this tell wild stories of the night of the jazz music. And of course that night no human life was lost. The axmen would not strike again until August 10th of 1919. This of course was the one year anniversary of the slaying of Joseph Romero. Only this time it was a man named Steve Boca who once again was an Italian grocer. Steve Boca would survive the attack. The axman would attack again on September 3rd of 1990. This time a 19 year old girl who lived alone named Sarah Lowman. And then on October 27th of 1919 the axman would claim his last victim. This was a man named Mike Pepitone. Now after again Mike Pepitone, the axman never struck anyone in New Orleans. Pretty soon there was an urban legend circling around that the suspect, the main guy, was a guy named Joseph Monfrey. And this legend existed that he was taken out in Los Angeles by the widow of Mike Pepitone. However this name doesn't exist on any rosters and many people today don't think that this story any type of factual basis to it. Perhaps it was just a story created by the police department to calm the citizens of New Orleans down. To reassure them that this horrific time in New Orleans history was over. Many people today believe that the story of the axman has a very logical explanation. Many people believe that because of all the tension between the crime families in Italy that these people who were taken out were literal mafia hits. And once all the hits were complete the person that was hired to make these hits just returned back to Sicily. However at the time many New Orleans believed that there was something more sinister at play. Something paranormal, something demonic. Even the letter sent to the police department emphasized that the person doing these horrific crimes was not a person at all but a demon. Perhaps a summoned demon. Now many people might scoff at that and think that's just the logic of an older generation. But they had a reason to believe this. And that reason goes all the way back to 1911 with a case that many people believed at the time was actually connected to this case. Again since then people say no they're not connected at all but I'm not so sure myself. We know now that the spirit world is almost if not more real than our own world and even though the spirit world is powerful sometimes human beings are more powerful. Sometimes human beings can summon these dark entities to do their bidding. And many people believe that is what happened from 1918 to 1919 in New Orleans, Louisiana. That story is coming up on Friday. All right thank you so much for sitting through another story. Please leave me your thoughts and your opinions down in the comment section below. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the opening song again there is a link for that down in the description box below. And as always thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all today. Hold the line, hang tight, we're almost there and the best is yet to come. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.