Free The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases by John Marlowe Page A

of Joseph and Catherine Maggio were front-page news. Public interest was further aroused when it was learned that the razor used in the crime belonged to Andrew Maggio.
    He claimed he had taken it home from his barber shop on the very evening of the murders in order to repair a small nick in the blade. He was arrested, but released for lack of evidence. The axe, it was determined, had belonged to the murdered couple.
    It was during Andrew’s brief time in custody that the case took the first of what would be a number of peculiar turns. Two detectives came across a message scrawled in chalk on the pavement less than a block from where the couple had been murdered. It read: ‘Mrs Maggio will sit up tonight just like Mrs Toney.’
    Rumours began to circulate that the Maggio murder had been committed by the same hand that had killed a number of New Orleans grocers six years earlier. Some said it was the work of the Mafia and that ‘Mrs Toney’ was a reference to the wife of Tony Schiambra. In 1911, both he and his wife had been killed by a murderer who had used an axe.
    Two weeks after the Maggio murders, baker John Zanca stumbled over a scene not at all dissimilar to that discovered by the bereaved brothers. Early on the morning of 6 June, Zanca arrived with his regular delivery of fresh bread at Louis Besumer’s grocery store and was surprised to find the storefront dark. Looking through the window, he saw no sign of life, and so walked around the building and knocked on the side door. It was opened almost immediately by Besumer. His face was covered in blood. Besumer’s mistress, Anna Lowe, was lying in their bed, unable to move. They had both been attacked with an axe. Despite primitive medical treatment, the grocer managed to survive. His mistress was not so lucky. After clinging to life for a further two months, she died on 5 August, but not before claiming that it was Besumer who had attacked her. The grocer was arrested and, after a brief trial, found not guilty.
    That very same day, shortly after midnight, the next attack occurred. The victim was a Mrs Edward Schneider, who awoke to find a dark figure standing over her bed. The intruder attacked her with an axe, hitting her several times in the face. Discovered by her husband, Mrs Schneider not only survived, but three weeks later gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
    A pattern, it seemed, had been established. A killer, wielding an axe, was attacking people as they slept. He usually gained access to his victims by chiselling out door panels.
    On 10 August, an elderly man by the name of Joseph Romano was killed. His niece, Pauline Bruno, reported seeing a dark figure in the house. He turned and fled her room after she had let out a scream.
    For a time, it almost seemed as if Pauline Bruno’s scream had scared off the killer completely. Then, seven months later, in the early hours of 10 March 1919, the Axeman of New Orleans struck again. As in the past, the victims, grocers Charles and Rosie Cortimiglia, and their 2-year-old daughter Mary, were attacked as they slept. Mary, asleep in her mother’s arms, died instantly from a single blow to the back of the head. Charles struggled with the attacker, but was felled by several blows to the torso. Rosie, too, received wounds, primarily to the head.
    Three days later, the editor of the Times-Picayune received a letter from someone who signed himself ‘The Axeman’. Describing himself as ‘a spirit and a fell demon from the hottest hell’, the correspondent announced that he would strike again ‘at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night’, before offering a magnanimous gesture:
    ‘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 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 those people who do