Town gossips, however, became aware that things weren’t quite as they appeared. Marie had begun having an affair with an artist. In 1912, Kiss announced that she had run off with her lover. Overnight, Kiss was transformed from jilted husband to the most desirable bachelor in town.
Kiss hired one Mrs Jakubec, a housekeeper, to care for his home while he focused on his trade. He also entered into correspondences with several young women. It was not long before a number of single, attractive women began visiting his Cinkota home. This steady parade prompted gossip of a different sort. As each woman passed through town on the way to the tinsmith’s home, there was speculation as to whether this might be the next Mrs Kiss. It seemed, however, that Kiss was having no luck in finding a suitable mate – most women were seen in his company only once. Mrs Jakubec would later say that she had never had the opportunity to know any of her employer’s visitors.
By the latter half of 1914, when Kiss left to serve in the First World War, no replacement for the unfaithful Marie had been found.
Mrs Jakubec was left alone in the house, and yet neither she nor the townsfolk heard anything from Kiss. As the war progressed, rumours began to circulate that the popular figure had been taken as a prisoner of war. There was some speculation that Kiss had been killed in some unnamed battle. By the end of the second year, the lease had lapsed on the house Kiss had begun renting some 16 years before.
It was at this point that a rather gruesome discovery was made – one that transformed Kiss from a thoroughly respected citizen of Cinkota into the town’s greatest monster. Although there are two very different accounts of the events leading up to Kiss’s unmasking, both involve six sealed metal drums that he had lined up outside his home. One story relies on the memory of something Kiss had supposedly told a town constable. When asked, in the early months of 1914, what the mysterious metal drums contained, the tinsmith revealed that he was hoarding petrol in the anticipation that war would soon be declared. In this version, the constable, thinking the fuel would be of use in the fighting, contacted the military, who, in turn, prised open the drums.
The other story has it that Kiss’s landlord came upon the drums while preparing to rent out the property. Curious as to their contents, he punctured one of the drums and was met with a nauseating smell. Kiss’s neighbour, a chemist, was convinced that the scent was that of rotting human flesh. According to this version, it was the authorities who, under Charles Nagy, the chief detective of the Budapest police, opened the drums.
Whatever the chain of events, both led to the same horrible discovery: each drum contained the corpse of a naked young woman. A search of the property Kiss had rented revealed a further 18 bodies, including that of the adulterous Marie Kiss. All 24 victims had been preserved in wood alcohol, which aided greatly in identification.
Nagy immediately informed the military, advising that Kiss be arrested. Mrs Jakubec, who had protested so strongly against the drums being opened, was detained. Suspicion of the housekeeper deepened when it was discovered that she was the main beneficiary in Kiss’s will. Proclaiming her innocence, Mrs Jakubec led police to a room her employer had forbidden her to enter. It was no chamber of horrors – no further bodies were found, as some had expected. Indeed, Kiss’s forbidden room, containing a few bookcases, a large desk and a chair, at first looked quite innocent. However, its sinister purpose was quickly revealed.
The bookcases were filled with volumes on the subjects of strangulation and poisons. The desk held correspondence with 74 women, including letters going back as far as 13 years. There were marriage proposals, love letters and photographs. Through notices he’d placed in the personal columns of various newspapers, Kiss had been swindling women who were seeking husbands.
The tinsmith had selected his victims with great care. Each victim met two criteria: an abundance of wealth and an absence of relatives. In other words, he desired moneyed women who would not be missed if they happened to disappear.
Among his victims was Katerine Varga, a very wealthy young widow who sold a thriving dressmaking business in order to be with her prospective husband in Cinkota.
The mother of another young woman, Margaret Toth, had given Kiss money after he had promised to marry her daughter. On a subsequent visit to Cinkota, the fiancé forced the young Miss Toth to write to her mother with the news that she was running off to the United States. Evidence indicates that Kiss then strangled the young woman and posted the letter.
Not all of Kiss’s victims had been killed. It seemed that the metal drums and burial on the Cinkota property represented a fate that befell only women who had become troublesome. Indeed, records indicated that two of Kiss’s victims, Julianne Paschek and Elizabeth Komeromi, had initiated separate court actions after he had taken their money under false pretences. The bodies of both complainants were found buried close to his home.
On 4 October 1916, as Nagy’s investigation was set to enter the third month, the detective received word from a Serbian hospital that in 1915 Kiss had succumbed to typhoid. Shortly after, a second message arrived from Serbia, stating that Kiss was alive, recuperating in the very same institution. Nagy travelled immediately to the hospital, arriving to find a corpse in Kiss’s bed – the body of a dead soldier who was quite obviously not the murderer. Nagy was certain that Kiss had somehow been tipped off and had hoped to throw off the police by placing a dead man in his bed.
While the tinsmith may not have been successful in fooling the chief detective of Budapest, his escape was effective. The trail was cold, and was warmed only occasionally by rumour and speculation. In 1919, he was supposedly spotted in Budapest. The following year, it was reported that he was serving under the alias ‘Hoffman’ in the French Foreign Legion.
One unconfirmed report was that he was in a Romanian prison, serving time on a charge of burglary; another had it that Kiss had died in Turkey of yellow fever.
The most intriguing of all these sightings occurred in 1932 when a New York Police Department homicide detective named Henry Oswald thought he saw Kiss exiting the Times Square subway station. Known as ‘Camera Eye’, owing to his flawless memory for faces, Oswald followed the man he thought was Kiss, but lost him in the crowd. He never saw the man again.
THE AXEMAN OF NEW ORLEANS
On the evening of 19 March 1919, residents of New Orleans sat in bars and restaurants, listening to live bands, confident that the music being played, jazz, was protecting them from violent murder. It was just one of many evenings made bizarre by the Axeman of New Orleans, a serial killer who, literally and figuratively, struck randomly in Louisiana’s largest city in the early part of the 20th century.
The mystery of the Axeman of New Orleans begins in two modest flats that once stood at the back of a grocery store at the corner of Upperline and Magnolia streets. In one flat lived Andrew Maggio, a barber, and his brother Jake. The other served as home to a third brother, Joseph, and Catherine, his wife. It was, in fact, Joseph and Catherine’s grocery store and bar that separated the flats from the street. In the early hours of 23 May 1918, Jake was awoken by a sound, a sort of groaning, coming from Joseph and Catherine’s apartment. At first, he tried to get the couple’s attention by knocking on the wall. There was no response. He woke Andrew and together the two brothers went over to the adjacent flat.
They immediately came upon the sign of a break-in: a wooden panel that had been chiselled out of the kitchen door. Entering the apartment by the same point as the intruder, the pair rushed to the bedroom. There, they came upon Catherine. Lying across the bed, her skull was caved in, and her throat was so deeply cut that she was very nearly decapitated. Beneath their sister-in-law, bathed in her blood, lay their brother Joseph. He, too, had been attacked. His head was cut open in several places, yet the grocer was still alive. When he saw his brothers, Joseph attempted to stand, but found he could not. He died before an ambulance could be summoned.
After the authorities arrived, a pile of men’s clothing was discovered on t
he bathroom floor. A bloody straight razor and an axe were also discovered. The coroner had no doubt that both had been used in killing the couple. The motive for the crime was less clear. Although the Maggios’ safe was found to be open and empty, money placed in other locations in the flat, including a sum discovered beneath Joseph’s pillow, was left behind.
The horrific scene ensured that the murders 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 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 years passed before Landru did the honourable thing and married the mother of his child.
Shortly after the marriage, Landru
entered the business world as a clerk. As his family began to expand, he was dealt a significant blow when his employer ran off to the United States, taking with him money Landru had provided as a bond. The swindle appears to have motivated Landru to act in kind.
He established a business dealing in used furniture and was soon preying on recently widowed women. Often Landru’s victims would enter his shop, hoping to sell furniture in order to supplement the modest pensions left them by their departed husbands. Landru would then encourage these women to invest these same pensions, stealing their money in the process. The cons went unnoticed for some time until, in 1900, he was arrested after having attempted to withdraw funds using a false identity. It was the first in a series of seven convictions.
Landru spent the first decade of the 20th century moving in and out of prison. The longest sentence received was for a scheme that began with a matrimonial advertisement he’d placed in a Lille newspaper. Portraying himself as a wealthy widower, he had persuaded one respondent, a 40-year-old widow named Jeanne Isoré, to exchange 15,000 francs for several counterfeit deeds. By the time the law caught up with Landru, the money was long gone – Mme Isoré was impoverished.
Landru’s lawlessness had also taken a toll on his family. His mother died while he was in prison. Landru’s father, ashamed of his son’s behaviour, committed suicide. Landru’s wife and four children were penniless.
By the beginning of 1914, he had become estranged from his wife, although no divorce was sought. During the tensions leading up to the First World War, Landru was released, yet again, from prison. After spending his initial months of freedom drifting around the French countryside, he somehow ended up in a rented villa on the outskirts of Paris. During one trip into the city he met a very attractive 39-year-old named Jeanne Cuchet. A widow, she was employed in a lingerie shop and had a 16-year-old son named André.
The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases Page 6