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

not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.’
    That Tuesday the bars and restaurants of New Orleans were filled with patrons seeking safety from the self-described ‘fell demon’. Even venues not at all known for playing jazz hired musicians for the night. There were no victims that evening.
    After her recovery, Rosie Cortimiglia accused father and son Frank and Iolando Jordano, business rivals of her husband, of her daughter’s murder. Some newspaper accounts record that Charles disputed his wife’s accusation; others state that he died of his injuries. Whatever the case, he did not join his wife in testifying at the subsequent trial of the Jordanos. Frank was sentenced to death, while Iolando received a life sentence.
    And yet the incarceration of the Jordanos, like those of Andrew Maggio and Louis Besumer, did nothing to stop the attacks. The Axeman’s next victim was another grocer, Steve Boca, who was attacked as he slept on 10 August 1919. Boca survived his wounds. Once again, the assailant used a chisel to gain access to his lodgings.
    He struck again three weeks later, on 3 September, using his axe on a sleeping 19-year-old woman named Sarah Laumann. She later died in the hospital.
    Miss Laumann had been alone when attacked, but eight people were home when the next victim, Mike Pepitone, was attacked. One of the eight, Mrs Pepitone, reported seeing two intruders in her house. Her husband could provide no statement. He died shortly after arriving at Charity Hospital.
    And it was here that the attacks ended.
    The mystery of the Axeman of New Orleans may never be truly solved, but there were further events that may provide some indication of the truth. The first took place on 2 December 1919 when Mike Pepitone’s widow stepped out of a darkened doorway and shot a man named Joseph Mumfre. She then waited next to his dead body. When the authorities arrived, Mrs Pepitone claimed that Mumfre was one of the two men she had seen fleeing her bedroom on the night of her husband’s murder.
    Five days later, on 7 December, Rosie Cortimiglia retracted her accusation against Frank and Iolando Jordano. They were summarily released from prison.
    Whether Joseph Mumfre was the Axeman of New Orleans is a matter of considerable debate. A man with an unenviable criminal record, he had been in prison during the period between the last axe murder of 1911 and the first of 1918, and again between the murder of Joseph Romano on 10 August 1918 and that of Mary Cortimiglia seven months later.
    Mrs Pepitone herself served three years for Mumfre’s murder. She was never able to identify the second man she claimed to have seen on the evening of her husband’s murder. It may well be that ‘The Axeman’ was right when he wrote in that infamous letter to the Times-Picayune: ‘ They have never caught me and they never will.’
    HENRI LANDRU
    Henri Landru was short and bald, with an unkempt beard and bushy eyebrows. Yet approximately 300 women in First World War France saw him as a desirable partner and an object of romance.
    A Parisian from birth, Henri Désiré Landru entered the world on 12 April 1869. His mother took care of the home, while his father worked keeping the blast furnaces alive at the Forges de Vulcain, an ironworks located within the city. An intelligent if unexceptional boy, Landru attended Catholic school and, in later years, studied engineering. At the age of 18, he was drafted into the military. Here, too, he did well. By the time he was discharged four years later, he had achieved the rank of sergeant.
    To all appearances, Landru had grown into a respectable, dependable young man, who attracted little attention. What little profile he had came from his service as a deacon in his church. He was also a member of the choir. It therefore seemed uncharacteristic when, in 1891, he seduced one of his cousins, Marie-Catherine Remi, impregnating her. Later that same year, she gave birth to a daughter. Two