The Axeman's Jazz (City Blues Quartet)

Product Information

Each of the three detectives ends up pinpointing a different person as the one responsible for the killings. Who do you think came closest to the truth? Is the Axe-Man Type of Jekyl-Hyde Concept?". Times-Picayune. August 13, 1918 . Retrieved May 2, 2012. LastWeekTonight (June 2, 2019), Medical Devices: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), archived from the original on December 12, 2021 , retrieved June 12, 2019 Gibson, Cameron (2006). Serial Murder and Media Circuses. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 0275990648. Wild speculation ensued with everyone from demons in hell to the Italian mafia being suspected of the crimes. But the likeliest suspect was a known anti-Italian racist with a pre-existing criminal record. The Italian Mafia Did It

Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, 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 the worst), for I am in close relationship with the Angel of Death. Okay, enough credit. Serial killers have a penchant for delusions of grandeur and the Axeman was no different.

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 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 out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe. 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 amuse me, but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. 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 Axeman. 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.

She thinks a man named John Joseph Dávila wrote the letter. He was a musician and jazz composer, and right after the letter was published, he came out with a composition called "The Mysterious Axeman's Jazz (Don't Scare Me Papa)." Or, maybe the Axeman was defending jazz's honor? In the summer of 1918, the Times-Picayune ran an editorial trashing jazz, saying it was not even music, just noise. Countless people faced questioning, and even some of the victims themselves were suspected of being the Axeman of New Orleans, as was the case with one man named Louis Besumer (who was separately suspected of being a German spy). Last Podcast on the Left covered the Axeman as part of their first episode on unsolved serial murders, titled "Unsolved Serial Murders Part 1: The Phantom, the Axe, and the Torso". [28] She woke up on the evening of August 5, 1918, to see a dark figure looming over her bed before bashing her face in with an axe. Anna managed to fight off the Axeman and was later found by her husband who immediately took her to the hospital.

Katz, Hélèna (2010). Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in America. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313376924. The Axeman killings are also referred to in the short story "Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz" by Poppy Z. Brite, published in 1997.