The Axeman of New Orleans

by Miriam C. Davis

  Langridge and Fourcade both testified that on the night of March 8, they were chatting across from the dance hall when they’d seen Frank walk by sometime between 11:30 and midnight. That put Frank in the area later than the 10:30 or 11 PM that he’d testified he’d gone home. Langridge also stated that he’d seen Frank Jordano “walking fast” past the dance hall, not stopping to watch as he had claimed; they both testified that he’d said hello.

  Under cross-examination by Byrnes and Higgins, however, the two men didn’t recall much else about the night. Neither could name anyone else he’d spoken to in that neighborhood, nor name anyone else he’d seen in or around the dance hall that night. Officer Fourcade couldn’t say how big the crowd at the dance hall was, and he couldn’t recall whether it was a dark night or who his partner had been. His sighting of Frank Jordano seemed to be the only thing Fourcade remembered. Jim Coulton at the Times-Picayune thought that Byrnes did a pretty thorough job of tripping him up.

  Byrnes also elicited the information that Langridge was a deputy sheriff who’d received his commission from Sheriff Marrero. Langridge explained that he needed it for his work for the railroad and didn’t work for Marrero, although, he conceded, he had worked for the sheriff at one time.

  Next, the state brought out its own medical experts, beginning with Dr. R. M. Van Wart, a specialist in nervous and mental diseases. After getting the facts of the case from Dr. Unsworth and spending an hour with Rosie that morning, he pronounced her “sane and . . . perfectly responsible [with] . . . no evidence of any mental disorder.” He testified that he thought it possible for Rosie’s memory of the attack to appear suddenly in such crystal clear detail.

  The jurors found some of the doctor’s answers confusing, and at the end of his testimony one of them put a question to him. “Doctor, we bunch of boys understand some of it, but we don’t understand it all,” he said. “Do we understand that this woman now has her good sense and her reasoning power?”

  “She has, in my opinion,” answered Van Wart.

  That’s all the jury needed to hear.

  The dinner break had been taken during Van Wart’s testimony, and he stayed on the stand into the early afternoon. It was midafternoon by the time Dr. Unsworth was sworn in. He had interviewed Rosie several times in the last three weeks, and his professional opinion was that “she is now sane and responsible for her acts, and qualified to make a competent statement.”

  About 5 PM, the state rested its case, and the court broke for supper. The trial entered the final stretch when the court reconvened at 6 PM. The crowd of interested spectators had not diminished during the last week. It had, if anything, grown. Hundreds of people packed into the small courtroom, squeezing into every last inch of standing room and spilling out into the hallway where dozens—maybe even hundreds—tried to listen to the proceedings. Rosie, who had been banished to the witness room for much of the trial, now sat with Charlie at the front of the courtroom, behind the team of prosecutors, and right in front of the jury. Mrs. Jordano, Lena, and Josie sat anxiously behind the defense team.

  The time for summing up had come. Judge Fleury firmly admonished spectators against any disruption in the courtroom; anyone who interrupted the proceedings in any way would be in contempt of court. The prosecution would make its summation first, followed by the defense; the prosecution would then be allowed a rebuttal. For almost six hours, the attorneys summarized their case, marshalled their evidence, and employed rhetorical flourishes as they used both reason and emotion in an attempt to sway the twelve men who sat before them.

  No record of the summations in their entirety exists, but it’s not hard to guess what points each side emphasized. The state’s strongest evidence, both legally and emotionally, was the eyewitness Rivarde and Gaudet presented as the grieving mother who had watched helplessly as her only child was murdered and now waited for justice. Frank and Iorlando Jordano were the wicked business competitors driven to murder by jealousy. And Frank, the prosecution argued, had already proved himself to be “a perjurer! A self-confessed perjurer!”

  At one point, Clay Gaudet, swept up in his own eloquence, demanded, “Is there any doubt in your mind how Mary Cortimiglia met her death? There is no doubt where the responsibility lies for the murder of this child. The finger of justice”—and here he turned and pointed dramatically at Frank and Iorlando sitting only a few feet away—“by various witnesses and the mother of the child whom you have heard, points at the murderers who sit at the bar of justice.”

  Of course, Byrnes, Higgins, and Thalheim were simultaneously on their feet, objecting to the remarks as highly prejudicial. They leaped up again a little later when Gaudet, in another rhetorical flourish, asked, “Who killed Mary Cortimiglia?” then, again pointing to the defendants, answered his own question: “These are the villains!” Both times the defense asked for a mistrial, and both times the judge refused, only cautioning the jury to disregard the remarks.

  The defense, for its part, pointed out weaknesses in the state’s case. Rivarde had introduced Ed Hanson, who, he said, claimed that Iorlando had threatened to kill the Cortimiglias. Yet Rivarde had never backed up his claim by calling Hanson to testify.

  Likewise, the DA had argued that feed store owner Rube Mayronne heard Frank threaten the Cortimiglia family. And that a streetcar conductor named John Fandel had seen Frank in Algiers later on the morning of the murder with a scratch on his hand that Frank said he’d gotten in a fight. But the state produced neither as a witness.

  And Bob Langridge and John Fourcade—what did they prove? Both men said they had seen Frank on Saturday night at almost midnight, over an hour past the time he’d sworn he’d gone home. Neither, however, could tell the jury anything more about the evening—who else they saw, whether the moon was shining. Perhaps they did see Frank. Perhaps, though, they got the time wrong. Or maybe they had seen him some other Saturday night. Both officers had connections to the police, who were convinced that the Jordanos were guilty, so both had a possible motivation to misremember.

  What about the state’s medical witnesses? Neither had seen Rosie in Charity Hospital, and both had spent limited time examining her since her discharge. Wasn’t the testimony of her Charity physicians more persuasive?

  Most of all, they hammered on the unreliability of Rosie Cortimiglia as a witness. Her own attending physicians didn’t think she could be believed. While in the hospital she had maintained that she could remember nothing, and hadn’t even been told of her daughter’s death. Yet after only a few hours in the sheriff’s custody, she not only knew that Mary was dead, she finally recalled—in exact detail—how she had died. How had this happened? How had she even learned that Mary had died? How could she have known her baby was dead unless someone told her? Yet no one—certainly not Chief Leson or the deputy sheriffs—admitted telling her. What else were they not admitting?

  What about the inconsistencies in Rosie’s story of the attack? She said she had no time to scream, but Iorlando had time to leave the room and come back with an axe. Rosie also had time to talk to Frank. She said that the killer had hit the baby with the heavy axe that many members of the jury had handled. If husky Frank had hit little Mary three blows with such a weapon, he would have smashed her skull. But Dr. Fernandez, the coroner, testified that he found only two round wounds slightly larger than a half-dollar coin.

  Wasn’t it likelier that someone had fed Rosie the story of the assault? Someone who’d convinced her that the Jordanos must have done it? What if she had been told over and over that the Jordanos must have done it, and she, in her weakened state, had simply accepted their guilt? The Jordanos, after all, were the competition. They had thrown the Cortimiglias out of a successful business. If everyone else thought they did it, then they must be guilty, right? In her vulnerable state, if Rosie had been asked over and over again, “Did the Jordanos do it?” she could easily have become convinced that they did.

  And if Rosie’s testimony was disregarded, all the state ha
d was very thin circumstantial evidence, not enough to hang two good men.

  For Rosie, sitting behind the DA’s chair, listening to her mental state denigrated at such length proved too much. About halfway through the summations, as Andrew Thalheim pointed out inconsistencies in her account of the attack, she leapt from her chair, shook her fist at him, and shrieked, “You can say what you please but before God he did it!”

  The tense silence of the packed courtroom immediately dissolved into chaos, the audience buzzing with exclamations of surprise and sympathy for the mother of the murdered child and of outrage against the murderers. The bailiffs quickly reestablished order, and, angrily, Fleury ordered the deputy sheriffs to escort Rosie and Charlie from the courtroom.

  Once again, Byrnes and his team demanded a mistrial. Such an outburst on the part of the main prosecution witness was so prejudicial, they argued, that “the effect on the jury could not be remedied.” Once again, Judge Fleury denied their request but directed the jury to disregard the outburst.

  Bob Rivarde finished his summation for the state around midnight. By the time Judge Fleury delivered his charge to the jury, it was around 12:30 AM when the jury filed out to their deliberation room on the third floor. The courtroom settled in for what was expected to be a long night.

  But at 1:45 AM, the jury was back. Why so soon? Frank had reason for a surge of hope. Surely they couldn’t have convicted so quickly. A guilty verdict would have taken longer.

  Frank and Iorlando rose. The foreman handed the clerk of court the verdict: Frank Guagliardo, alias Frank Jordano—guilty as charged.

  Iorlando Guagliardo, alias Iorlando Jordano—guilty without capital punishment.

  By finding him guilty, the jurors had sentenced Frank to hang. Death was the automatic penalty for murder.

  Shocked, unbelieving, Frank swayed a little on his feet as the judge thanked and dismissed the jurors. Reporters surrounded the Jordanos, pounding them with questions. All Frank could say was, It wasn’t a fair trial. She lied. Miss Rosie lied. Bailiffs pushed the reporters out of the way, handcuffed the condemned men, and escorted them out of the courtroom.

  Months later, when the two prisoners again stood in front of Judge Fleury for formal sentencing, seventeen-year-old Frank spoke to the court with dignity and courage. Fighting back tears, he said, “It is true, judge, that I may hang, but I would rather go to the gallows than tell a lie in order to have an innocent man executed. If Mrs. Cortimiglia is possessed of her faculties, she knows that she is lying and I would not swap places with her today.”

  He then made mention of some of the inconsistences in her testimony and continued, “If you think, judge, that I should hang on testimony of that character, then I am ready to die, but there is no excuse for sentencing my old father, who is all crippled up with rheumatism and is almost blind. I pray to God that Mrs. Charles Cortimiglia will come forward and tell the truth before my father dies in prison.”

  Judge Fleury then did as he was required by the law and sentenced sixty-eight-year-old Iorlando Jordano to life in the state penitentiary and seventeen-year-old Frank Jordano to the gallows.

  ≡ 12 ≡

  False Lead

  AS THE AUTHORITIES IN Gretna convicted the wrong men for the killing of Mary Cortimiglia, so subsequent Axeman authorities have wrongly convicted Joseph Mumfre of being the Axeman. Or at least suggested that he’s the most plausible suspect for one or more of the murders. In Ready to Hang (1952), Robert Tallant planted the seeds of this legend by telling the story of Mumfre’s murder in Los Angeles by the widow of one of his alleged victims. And his version of events had its roots in sloppy newspaper reporting that probably grew out of the psychological need to provide a comforting solution to the Axeman crimes and resulted in conflating a Black Hand thug with a serial killer. But Mumfre’s story is in fact the story of blackmail and retribution.

  In 1909, Joseph “Doc” Mumfre began a twenty-year sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary for bombing an Italian grocery in a failed extortion plan. He was sent to Angola, one of the prison farms that made up the Louisiana penitentiary system, a place so brutal that prisoners had been known to deliberately cross the “deadline” to be shotgunned by a guard. Not Doc Mumfre. He survived to be paroled in June 1915—only to become a suspect in a murder investigation five months later.

  Vincent Moreci, a foreman for the United Fruit Company, was gunned down on November 19, 1915, as he walked home from work. Moreci had survived an attempt on his life five years before and then gotten off after being charged with the murder of one of the suspected gunmen, George Di Martini. Paul Di Christina, suspected along with Di Martini of attempting to kill Moreci, was shot by grocer Peter Pepitone, who was then convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary. The police saw it as a typical Italian vendetta.

  So when Moreci was killed in 1915, John Dantonio, the detective in charge of the investigation, saw it as a continuation of the vendetta. Dantonio had several suspects but not enough evidence to arrest them.

  So it was that Joseph Mumfre, well-known Black Hander on whom the police had been keeping an eye since his release from prison, was picked up, charged with being dangerous and suspicious, and grilled about the killing. Mumfre denied any involvement. And the witness who’d gotten a look at one of the shooters couldn’t identify him, giving Dantonio no choice but to let him go.

  Black Hander and alleged Axeman Joseph Mumfre.

  But Mumfre couldn’t stay out of trouble. In the January 1916 Democratic primary election (which in Democratic-controlled Louisiana was the only election that mattered), Sheriff Marrero was fighting off a challenge from Reform candidate Peter Leson. On the day of the election, January 25, one of Marrero’s deputies picked Mumfre up in the town of Kenner, across the river, not far from Lake Pontchartrain. Armed with marked ballots, he was canvassing—some said intimidating—the Italian population on behalf of the Reform candidates against the Regular, or Ring, Democrats in general, and against Sheriff Marrero in particular.

  As an example par excellence of a machine Democrat, Marrero wasn’t very happy about this. And, since Mumfre was also arrested for carrying a concealed revolver (a violation of the law) and was suspected of drinking in saloons (a violation of his parole), Sheriff Marrero jailed him and immediately notified the penitentiary’s Board of Control.

  The president of the penitentiary Board of Control instructed the sheriff to hold Mumfre until he could get orders from the governor to ship him back to prison. So Marrero did everything he could to make sure Mumfre didn’t get out of the parish prison.

  Two other men who’d been arrested with Mumfre—Angelo Albano and his cousin—posted bond and were released. Although Mumfre, too, posted bond, Sheriff Marrero refused to free him. The penitentiary’s Board of Control, he said, had instructed him to hold Joseph Mumfre, and hold him he would. So it was a considerable shock when Marrero received his next instructions from the Board of Control: he was to release Joseph Mumfre immediately. But the sheriff again refused. Mumfre had violated his parole, and as far as Marrero was concerned he was going to stay in jail until he went back to the penitentiary.

  In the meantime, Marrero’s son, District Attorney L. H. Marrero Jr., conveniently charged Mumfre with an additional offense—possessing obscene pictures. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a maneuver cooked up between Marrero Jr. and Sr. to make sure that Mumfre stayed where he was. The convict was ordered held on $500 bond, but, as the New Orleans States observed, “no bondsman [was] forthcoming.” Perhaps the sheriff had something to do with that.

  Joseph Mumfre came to trial in Gretna on February 16 on the charge of carrying a concealed weapon. His attorney, Louis Gosserand, was ill with the flu, so Mumfre, not unreasonably, asked for a continuance. DA Marrero refused. The trial went on as scheduled, without the defendant’s lawyer.

  With no attorney to advise him, Mumfre took the stand in his own defense. He admitted that he had been campaigning for
Chief Leson and other Reform Democrats with marked ballots at the behest of Gosserand, who had been defending him free of charge. Moreover, he took the courtroom by surprise by admitting that he’d received his parole with the assistance of George Wesley Smith, private secretary to Governor Luther Hall; Mumfre had paid Smith for his help. Apparently, Governor Hall had granted Mumfre parole because of paid intervention by his private secretary.

  All the pieces fell into place, and Mumfre’s connection with the Reform Democrats became clear. A member of a Reform administration had used his influence to get Mumfre paroled. At the next election, Mumfre solicited votes for the reformers, and when he was arrested, a Reform lawyer defended him. This also made sense of the apparent change of heart of the penitentiary Board of Control. The administration had obviously pressured the board not to send Mumfre back to prison. And this was the “Reform” party!

  Unsurprisingly, in a trial that lasted a day, Mumfre was convicted and served four months in the Jefferson parish prison for the unlawful possession of a weapon. After completing his sentence, he was shipped back to the penitentiary. But with the time off earned for good behavior, he was released again on April 21, 1918.

  And, less than a month later, he was under arrest again. Accused of trying to extort money from a woman, Mumfre served three months in jail—only to be arrested again in January 1919 when Detective Marullo picked him up as a “dangerous and suspicious” character suspected of sending Black Hand letters.

  So by the time Joseph Mumfre appeared before Judge J. J. Fogarty, the authorities of the city of New Orleans were heartily sick of him. He was an “undesirable” Italian, the kind associated with the vendetta and the Mafia. As the States reported: