The assailant had fled through the kitchen, and on his way out he’d managed to rifle a pair of his victim’s trousers before dropping it on the kitchen floor. Romano’s pocketbook—the early twentieth-century version of a wallet—was missing.
The grocery at the corner of Tonti and Gravier and the scene of Joseph Romano’s murder.
Though shaken, Pauline was able to provide a description of the attacker: tall and heavily built, in a dark suit and black hat. She thought he was white, although she couldn’t be positive. Even though he was a big man, when he fled, “He was awfully light on his feet,” she said, adding, “I think he had rubber soles.”
After an hour or so, word reached the family that Uncle Joe had died. At Charity Hospital, house surgeon Jerome Landry had immediately taken the badly injured man into the operating amphitheater, giving him just enough time to tell the doctor that he hadn’t seen his assailant. Dr. Landry later told the police that Romano had been hit with a very sharp weapon: “The skull was not shattered but cut clean to the brain.” Coroner O’Hara’s report noted that he’d died of one blow to the head that had left a three-and-a-half-inch fracture in his skull. Joseph Romano survived less than two hours after being attacked.
This had the hallmarks of an Axeman murder. The Bruno-Romano household were the poorest victims yet, with a tiny little store. But the murderer’s target remained the same. Romano was a barber, but he was the only male in a house with a grocery in the front room. Perhaps the Axeman had assumed that he ran the store. This attack differed from the Axeman’s most recent exploits only in that he’d ventured into a more heavily populated neighborhood and that he’d found an open window and not needed to cut out a door panel. Perhaps Mooney’s police patrols had driven him from his preferred hunting grounds into more dangerous territory.
Word of this most recent murder set off a full-scale panic among the population—and not only the Italians. Men who hadn’t already done so rushed to arm themselves. Some began sleeping by day, guarding their families at night. Others banded together and shared the night watches, taking turns sleeping and standing sentinel. Husbands and fathers clutched buckshot-loaded shotguns, or nervously gripped Colt revolvers, jumping at every sound. A few fingered their triggers hopefully, longing for the murderer to choose their door that night.
Cartoon in the Item depicting Orleanians too terrified to sleep.
In the meantime, Superintendent Mooney’s investigations brought to light recent incidents no one had bothered to report earlier. Two weeks previously, Joseph Le Boeuf, a grocer only a block away from the Bruno-Romano residence, had chased away an intruder who tried to break in through his back door in the middle of the night. When he bolted, the intruder dropped an axe. A few blocks farther away, on Cleveland Avenue, Arthur Recknagle reported that he, too, had driven off a prowler who’d left behind an axe.
The police also identified three attempts to break into homes in the Gravier and Tonti neighborhoods just before Joseph Romano’s murder that, in retrospect, they attributed to the Axeman. And Mooney’s investigators discovered that the night after Joseph Romano’s murder, a burglar had attempted to break into Al Durand’s saloon at the corner of South Salcedo and Canal, not far away. He was in the process of chiseling a panel off a side door when something or someone scared him; he dropped his tools and ran. Durand woke the next morning to find an axe, a screwdriver, and a .38 caliber cartridge outside his door. The realization of what may have passed him by so unnerved the saloonkeeper that he refused to report it for fear the shock of it would kill his ill mother. A friend ultimately informed the police of the incident.
Frank Mooney was incensed. How could his detectives track down the murderer without all possible public cooperation? How many other incidents did he not know about? He immediately issued a statement demanding that the public alert the police to any potential clue that might lead to the murderer: any attempted or suspected break-in, any suspicious person skulking about the street late at night, anything that struck them as unusual or irregular. Mooney didn’t temper his words: “I believe it is criminal for citizens to withhold such cases from the police,” he declared. “To withhold information means to assist the axe man in his murderous work.” The police needed the help of all New Orleans citizens, if they had any hope of catching “this blood-mad creature.”
But nerves were so on edge that some people didn’t need the chief’s encouragement. Some went Axeman hunting on their own. The very day after Romano’s murder, two overzealous public servants—a clerk in the criminal court and a deputy sheriff—crashed into the little shanty of Albert Alexander—a black man who, it was rumored, had been spotted chasing a young black girl with an axe. They dragged their quarry to the nearest police precinct station. Superintendent Mooney himself interviewed Alexander, concluded he was wholly innocent of Romano’s murder, and turned him loose.
This wasn’t the only “Axeman” spotting in the days immediately after Romano’s death. The evening after the barber’s murder, around midnight, a woman only four blocks from the Romano house spied a man meeting the description of the killer heading for her stable. Terrified, she raised the alarm, and within minutes armed, agitated neighbors poured out of their houses and commenced a manhunt. The posse gave chase, tracking the prowler over fences and through backyards before he melted into the warm August night air.
Other sightings followed. Early on August 16, six days after the Romano murder, three young men out on the town reported a man lurking near an Italian grocery. Before long, Chief of Detectives George Long had a dozen men on the scene searching the block, joined by armed residents of the neighborhood.
Other incidents followed, all carefully checked out by Mooney’s men, all coming to nothing. Some wilder stories would have been amusing if they hadn’t been fueled by desperate fear: the “Axeman” suspect reportedly disguised as a woman, only to turn out to be, in fact, a “badly frightened negro woman,” or the police squad that responded to a hysterical caller who claimed to have seen the Axeman only to find a drunk chopping up his neighbor’s porch steps for firewood.
A pattern targeting Italian shopkeepers did continue in the immediate aftermath of this latest killing, not a pattern of murder but of theft. Just over a week after Joseph Romano’s funeral three Italian grocers were robbed in rapid succession by methods that echoed those of the Axeman. In the early morning of August 19, an intruder used an ice hatchet and pick to break into the living quarters of grocer Toney Caronna and his family at the corner of South Claiborne and General Taylor Streets. (He’d first picked up the family axe but decided against it, perhaps because it was too heavy.) He was in the process of stealing cash and a revolver from the bedroom, when Mrs. Caronna woke, saw him, and screamed. He ran. On the very next night, a burglar chiseled a panel out of the door of Frank Guarisco’s grocery and saloon at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Calliope and cleaned out the register, all without waking the family. The next evening—the third in a row—someone broke into Paul Lobella’s drygoods store at the corner of Zimple and Cherokee using an iron bar, took eighty cents, and fled. The next morning an axe was discovered in the alley next to the house.
These break-ins were scattered all over the city, from Carrollton to downtown. Were any of these thieves the Axeman? Had he intended to attack the residents but was scared away in each instance? Or was murder for him just a sometime thing? Other criminals may have adopted the Axeman’s—rather successful—methods for their own use.
Times-Picayune map showing Axeman attacks and panel burglaries.
This was the beginning of a series of nighttime, Axeman-like burglaries that targeted Italians and non-Italians alike. For the next month at least, more than a dozen stores—not just saloons and groceries but furniture stores and stores that sold silverware, ladies’ clothes, cologne, and furs—were robbed using what became known as the “Axeman method”: the removal of a panel from a rear door. Frank Mooney, and probably much of the city, suspected that at least some of the
se incidents were Axeman jobs. They did nothing to calm the fears of the city.
Frank Mooney was getting desperate. He was facing, as the Item put it, “scathing criticism” from the public for his inability to catch the killer, and his “exhaustive investigation” of the Romano murder was getting exactly nowhere. He continued to reassure the public that it was only a matter of time until the Axeman was caught; he couldn’t very well admit that the murderer had the run of the city. But how was he going to stop him?
Mooney sent patrols out to cover the city as well as he could with his small police force, the downtown neighborhoods where anxiety had been so high lately, and especially the “thinly settled sections” the Axeman seemed to prefer. The killer had shifted from the edge of town to downtown, and Mooney had a hunch that all the heat might drive him elsewhere. How right he would turn out to be.
Just days after Joseph Romano’s murder, newspaperman Jim Coulton sought out former detective John Dantonio to ask his opinion on the recent attacks. He’d no doubt heard that Dantonio, the expert in Italian crime, had been involved with the Cleaver attacks years before. For his part, retired for over a year and now in poor health, Dantonio was probably delighted that his advice was sought.
Fifty years before the term profiler came into use, Dantonio provided a remarkably perceptive analysis of the killer. “This is very probably the man we tried to get ten years ago,” he told the young reporter. “The murderer is likely a Jekyll and Hyde personality, like Jack the Ripper. A criminal of the dual personality type may be a respectable, law abiding citizen when his normal self. Then suddenly the impulse to kill comes upon him and he must obey it.” Perhaps, the detective speculated, the Axeman had been dormant for several years but now his dark side had reasserted itself.
No longer a public servant, Dantonio didn’t feel an obligation to reassure the city. He warned that the police were unlikely to bring the murderer to justice, admitting that these killers, who planned their attacks very carefully, were hard to catch.
For Dantonio, the key to all the attacks was the victims’ residences: “The homes of all the victims look alike. The Axeman apparently picks them out because of the resemblance which impresses him.” Although Dantonio realized that most of those targeted were Italians, he doesn’t appear to have considered this key to selecting the victims; he believed that the Axeman had attacked Mary Schneider, although he offered no opinion on the Besumer case.
Superintendent Mooney couldn’t have been pleased by Dantonio’s admission that the killer would be all but impossible to catch. In his efforts to catch the murderer, Mooney had immersed himself in the science of “fiends.” He’d read up on current criminology and talked to local experts, hoping to find some nugget that would lead him to the killer. His own views came to mirror Dantonio’s so closely that it’s difficult not to believe that he also consulted the retired detective. Gradually the superintendent’s views took shape: Robbery wasn’t the Axeman’s motive; he opportunistically grabbed small amounts of cash to throw off investigators. The crimes were the work of a madman, an insane killer in the grip of a depraved lust for blood, one who could nevertheless look and act normally until his obsession overcame him. He was a sadist, and likely a narcotics addict. Mooney sent two detectives to Joe Romano’s wake in the event that the killer showed up to savor his kill.
But Mooney doesn’t seem to have been persuaded by all of Dantonio’s theory. The retired detective surmised—probably correctly—that the Cleaver of 1910–1911 was also the Axeman. Witnesses from that series of attacks—Harriet Crutti and Mary Davi—described the Cleaver as white. But for reasons unclear, a black man had become Mooney’s favorite suspect: Charles Anderson, who’d served two prison terms for robbery. If Mooney was looking for a black man for the crimes of 1917–1918, he wasn’t convinced his killer was the killer of earlier years.
The superintendent’s efforts didn’t end with consulting criminologists. Mooney also conferred with police in other cities and turned to private security agencies. Rumor said that he had even involved the famous Pinkerton detective agency. He wanted the public to be confident that the police were doing all they could to catch the killer, assuring the newspapermen in a steely tone: “Take this for the gospel: We’re going to get him yet! I’m doing everything in human power to run down this murderous maniac. . . . We’re going to get him.”
Not everyone was terrified of the Axeman. Those who didn’t feel threatened by the killer could treat him as a joke. On August 23, a large ad appeared on page 5 of the Times-Picayune. “Attention Mr. Mooney and All Citizens of New Orleans,” it read. “The Axeman Will Appear in This City on Saturday, August 24th. . . . He will ruthlessly use the ‘Piggly Wiggly’ axe in cutting off the heads of all High Priced Groceries. His weapon is wonderful and his system Unique. Don’t miss seeing him.”
The Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain had introduced self-service in 1916. No need for a nice Mr. Jordano to wait on customers. A housewife could now help herself to a can of tomato sauce or a jar of olive oil. The popularity of self-service grocery stores would eventually mean the growth of the supermarket and the end of the corner groceries. This would take some time, but for now Piggly Wiggly made a tasteless joke at the expense of the neighborhood grocers it would replace.
Superintendent Mooney’s patience was rewarded. A month after she’d left the hospital, looking over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t seen, Mrs. Lowe stepped out of the store onto Laharpe Street and flagged down a passing policeman. She told him that she needed to see Superintendent Mooney at once. But Mr. Besumer must not know, she insisted.
This was what Mooney had been waiting for. Anxious not to spook his witness, he arranged for the grocer to be lured away for a couple of hours. Mooney, Assistant DA Ben Daly, two representatives of the Department of Justice, and a handful of policemen drove out to the grocery. The cloud has lifted from my mind, she told them when they arrived. I now know that it was Besumer who attacked me.
And she had something to show them. Mrs. Lowe led them to a trunk she said belonged to Besumer. Opening it, she showed them a cleverly concealed secret compartment in which, she claimed, he kept mysterious blueprints. Whatever documents the grocer had stashed there would later prove not to be incriminating, but a search of his clothes revealed a honeycomb of secret pouches.
Later that day, over the whir of an electric fan, Mrs. Lowe told her story to Mooney and the assembled throng of officials and newspapermen that crowded into his office. Shifting nervously in her chair like someone on the verge of a panic attack, her black hair plastered to her face with sweat, and glancing fearfully at the doorway from time to time, she said that she finally remembered what had happened that night.
“I met Mr. Besumer in Jacksonville, Florida,” she began, with the inflection of the second-generation Irish, “through a newspaper advertisement. I had advertised for a position as housekeeper.” She knew that Besumer was Jewish, but other than that, Mrs. Lowe didn’t know much about him. He made frequent trips on mysterious business that he refused to discuss. She knew that he used a number of aliases and wasn’t even sure “Besumer” was his real name. She had told them earlier that he didn’t like to be questioned and he had such a nasty temper that she’d learned not to ask about his business. Mrs. Lowe wasn’t really the curious type anyway. She had a roof over her head and food to eat, so even if Besumer was bad-tempered and peculiar, she didn’t worry too much about it.
Then, three months before the attack, Besumer shaved off his beard and moved to New Orleans, taking Mrs. Lowe with him and telling her she’d now be going by the name “Besumer.”
Around 7:30 PM, on the night of the assault, Besumer had just closed the store and was going over some blueprints when Mrs. Lowe entered the grocery and asked for money he owed her. She hadn’t been paid for months. But he shot her such a nasty look that she, knowing his temper, backed away and turned to leave. She heard him say, “You’ll get your money and more too” and then felt what she d
escribed as “a thousand bricks . . . hit[ting] her on the head.” She passed out and when she came to, heard him say something strange: “Annie, you are going to make a fire in the ocean for me.” She remembered being dragged through the house and undressed on the bed but then blacked out again until she woke up covered in blood.
When she got out of the hospital, Mrs. Lowe said, Besumer offered to marry her, at the same time that he warned her against talking to Superintendent Mooney. She remained in a fog, confused and unsure about the events that had put her in the hospital, but four nights ago the cloud lifted and it all suddenly began to come back to her: “As I lay in bed,” she said, “the street light shown through my door and Mr. Besumer appeared in the doorway. Then my memory started to return by degrees. I felt the horror again and became frightened.”
How did Besumer get hurt? Mooney wanted to know. She said she didn’t know. Perhaps he hit himself, one of the other policemen suggested, in order to make his story more believable. Another suggested that Mrs. Lowe’s wages had nothing to do with the attack; perhaps he’d tried to kill her because she’d caught him with the mysterious blueprints. Dr. Metz, the city chemist, had identified bloodstains on the hidden compartment in Besumer’s trunk. Maybe she’d seen something he didn’t want her to see.
Whatever the reason for the assault, Mrs. Lowe was visibly frightened of Louis Besumer. Although she was moved into a house where she’d be safe, her nerves became so frayed that she neared a breakdown. Two days later, she returned to Charity Hospital.
The Axeman of New Orleans Page 14