The Axeman of New Orleans

by Miriam C. Davis

  When the L.A. police questioned Mrs. Albano about the killing, they were intrigued to hear the story of her first husband’s death. Could the dead man have had something to do with that? Tipped off by an Italian informant to “Leone Manfre’s” real identity, investigators contacted the New Orleans Police Department asking about his criminal record. The informant also told them that Mumfre may well have killed Esther Albano’s first husband, Mike Pepitone. With an axe. Already, the story was being garbled.

  Because she’d shot Mumfre three times in the back, Esther’s lawyers weren’t able to get the charges dismissed as they’d hoped. Four months later, she stood trial for first-degree murder. Fortunately for her, she made a sympathetic defendant.

  The trial began in the Los Angeles Superior Court on April 7. The basic facts of the case weren’t in dispute, so it was a quick trial. The prosecutor took less than three hours to lay his case in front of the jury. His witnesses included Lena Manfre, who testified that the dead man was her father, the county surgeon who performed the autopsy, several police officers who attended the scene, and Rosa Albano Casimano, who had overheard the entire incident.

  When its turn came, the defense called A. R. Kallmeyer of the Los Angeles Police Department Investigation Bureau, who had received Joseph Mumfre’s criminal records from New Orleans and could testify to his long criminal history. A neighbor of the Albanos asserted that after Angelo Albano vanished, Mumfre told her, “Albano has a big house and plenty of money. He is being held for some of that money. His wife will be asked for it after things quiet down.”

  But the crucial witness for the defense was Esther Pepitone Albano herself. Her lawyer had her tell the whole story in her soft Italian accent, beginning with the killing of Paul Di Christina by Peter Pepitone and including the murder of Mike Pepitone. She testified that she didn’t know why Mike was killed or who the killer was, and she didn’t know whether Mumfre had been involved. She didn’t add that the New Orleans police suspected that she knew much more about Mike’s death than she was willing to admit.

  She detailed Angelo Albano’s business partnership with Joseph Mumfre and its dissolution, Albano’s disappearance, and her suspicion that Mumfre was involved. She recounted the day Mumfre turned up at her front door, demanding money and threatening to do to her what he’d done to her husband. She had assumed, she said, that he meant Albano, not Pepitone.

  After two days of testimony, the jury retired to consider their verdict. They were gone for forty minutes. They found Esther Albano not guilty. Clearly, members of the jury thought that Joseph Mumfre/Leone Manfre was a man who needed killing.

  Robert Tallant’s version of the Axeman story had its roots in the reporting of Mumfre’s death at the hands of Esther Albano by the New Orleans press. The New Orleans police learned of his death when Los Angeles authorities contacted them for information about Mumfre. And the city’s press immediately misreported the news.

  Although it was clear at the time of his death that Mike Pepitone’s death was no axe murder, that fact quickly faded from public memory. The Times-Picayune reported that “motive and probable solution of the killing of Mike Pepitone . . . one of the series of ax murders that stirred New Orleans two years ago, is seen by the police in the killing of Joseph Mumfre.” That the New Orleans police jumped to the conclusion that Mumfre killed Pepitone makes it likely they suspected him all along, even though Mumfre had been run out of town nine months before—and even though there is no evidence Esther Albano ever claimed that Mumfre was Pepitone’s killer.

  The assumption that Mike Pepitone was hacked to death with an axe fit together very nicely with the assumption that Mumfre murdered him, to “solve” the mystery of the Axeman. It was the New Orleans States, where Andy Ojeda was the crime reporter, that sketched out what would become Tallant’s Axeman tale. The story that appeared on December 15, 1921, was unambiguous: AX MURDERS SOLVED; MUMFRE IS KILLED. The article claimed that in 1919 and 1920, New Orleans was terrorized by a killer who especially targeted Italian grocers. The first axe murders—victims Crutti (misidentified as a butcher), Joseph Davi, and Tony Sciambra—took place before Mumfre was first sent to the penitentiary but stopped when Mumfre was in prison. He was paroled only for a short time in 1917 before being sent back to prison. Then Mumfre got out again in 1919. And the axe murders began again—Andollina, the Maggios, the Cortimiglia child, and Mike Pepitone. The killings stopped again, the article claimed, when Mumfre left for California. Now Mumfre was dead by the hand of Pepitone’s widow, whom police had always suspected of knowing more about her husband’s killer than she would admit. “Perhaps it was just a coincidence,” the States hedged. “Perhaps Mumfre knew nothing of these murders.” But the clear implication of the story was that the Axeman had killed Pepitone, and Mrs. Albano had known that Mumfre had killed her first husband and had exacted her revenge. And Mumfre was the Axeman.

  This version of the Axeman murders is wrong on many counts. The first axe attacks (neither of them fatal) began with the assaults on the Cruttis and Rissettos in the fall of 1910. Joseph Davi was the first actual murder, his skull smashed in June 1911. Mumfre couldn’t have assaulted any of these men because he was in Angola the entire time. The Axeman failed to strike from the time Mumfre was paroled in 1915 until he was returned to prison in 1916. Released again in April 1918—after the attack on the Andollinas—he was rearrested by May 18—before the killing of Joseph and Catherine Maggio on the morning of May 23—and served three months. He probably wasn’t yet out of jail when Joseph Romano was killed on August 11. And finally, Mumfre was arrested again in January 1919 and ordered out of town. If he had been in New Orleans or the surrounding areas when Mary Cortimiglia or Mike Pepitone was killed, he would have faced immediate rearrest. While it’s not physically impossible for Joseph Mumfre to have killed Mike Pepitone, it’s more likely that by this time he’d joined his daughter in California.

  The New Orleans Item jumped in to try to correct the record, pointing out that Joseph Mumfre had been in the penitentiary when the Andollinas were attacked and in the parish prison when the Maggios were slaughtered. But it wasn’t enough.

  Robert Tallant was a New Orleans native and lifelong resident who published novels and nonfiction in the 1940s and 1950s. In the later ’50s, he wrote for the New Orleans Item. He was ten years old at the height of the Axeman scare in 1919 and may well have remembered the city’s terror. He’d also no doubt heard the story told by newspapermen and policemen who’d been around thirty-five years before; Tallant thought he was the first to write it down. Almost certainly, he knew the reporters who’d most closely followed the Axeman’s career and who still lived in New Orleans. Andy Ojeda worked for the New Orleans States until he retired in 1949, and Jim Coulton became a lawyer and then a district attorney in the city. They died within fourteen months of each other in 1949–1950. Most likely, the scrambled version of the truth that Tallant heard from them and read in some old newspapers found its way into his Ready to Hang.

  Tallant undoubtedly relied on oral tradition for the end of his story, and he’d clearly heard it from someone who didn’t remember the story very well. In “The Axman Wore Wings,” Tallant writes that Mumfre was shot as he was walking down a busy street. No mention is made of Angelo Albano or any blackmail attempt. And, according to Tallant, Esther claimed that she had seen him when he murdered Mike Pepitone: “He was the Axeman. . . . He killed all those people.”

  In this way, the Black Hand blackmailer and bomber Joseph Mumfre was forever linked with the tale of the Axeman of New Orleans. Certainly Mumfre was deeply unsavory. After all, the jury that tried Esther Albano quickly decided that he’d had it coming. But if any part of the mystery has been solved, it is that Joseph Mumfre was certainly not the Axeman.

  ≡ 13 ≡

  Rosie and Saint Joseph

  Iorlando Jordano had taken the verdict better than his son. At sixty-eight, Iorlando was an old man who in his modest way had made a success of his life. But Frank’s
life was still ahead of him, or it had been. Now that life was taken away. By the mother of the toddler he adored. By a friendly neighbor lady who lied, swearing that he was a murderer, that she had seen him murder little Mary with her own eyes. Frank could scarcely believe it. Perhaps he had naively thought that since he was innocent he had nothing to fear. He’d remained optimistic throughout his trial, even to the point of what some called “nonchalance.” But now he faced a hangman’s rope. It wasn’t a fair trial, he told reporters who asked for a comment as he was handcuffed to be led back to the parish prison. We didn’t get “reasonable doubt.”

  How had Frank and Iorlando been convicted? The jurors were serious men, diligent about their task. They’d listened carefully to the evidence and paid close attention as the experts contradicted each other about Rosie’s reliability as a witness. The testimony of the physicians who treated her was consistent—Rosie wasn’t mentally competent because of her head injuries. But the jury had to weigh that against the doctors who had examined her recently, who pronounced her “sane and responsible.” The emotional testimony of the young mother weighed heavily on the twelve jurymen. In 1919, research had not yet raised doubts about the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Yes, elements of her story were unlikely and hard to believe, but there was no doubt that her daughter was dead and no doubt about her grief. Rosie might be a young and ignorant girl, but she was a mother who’d lost a daughter; what motive, the jurors might have reasonably wondered, did she have for lying?

  Many in Gretna thought the boy and old man were guilty, and public pressure on the jury shouldn’t be underestimated. A change of venue might well have dramatically lowered the Jordanos’ chances of conviction. But the case had been tried in Gretna and the jurors’ names printed in the newspaper. If they acquitted men widely believed guilty of hacking a toddler to death, all their neighbors would know it. Not that members of the jury consciously convicted men they believed innocent, but knowledge of the community’s verdict couldn’t help but have influenced them in reaching their own.

  Frank had one comfort. After the verdict was announced and the stunned Jordanos were led from the courtroom, Jim Coulton of the Times-Picayune followed them out and caught up to them. He put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and looking straight into his eyes told him, “I believe you, Frank, and I’m going to work to help you out.” Gratitude welled up in the boy. But what could the reporter do now?

  Coulton was outraged at the verdict. He had no doubt that all of the recent axe murders were the work of one crazed fiend. Couldn’t the jury see that the Cortimiglias had been the latest victims of the Axeman? But Judge Fleury hadn’t allowed jurors to hear evidence that the Cortimiglia attack resembled other Axeman crimes.

  Despite his generally good relationship with the New Orleans Police Department, Coulton knew that not all policemen—and by extension officers of the court—were completely trustworthy. He himself had recently been tossed into jail by corrupt police officers during his investigation of a shakedown scheme. And, as a crime reporter who’d often sat in court, surely he knew that witnesses could lie and juries could be wrong. He was convinced of it in this case and was determined to do something about it.

  Two days after the verdict, defense attorney William Byrnes announced he would file a motion for a new trial, swearing that he’d go all the way to the Supreme Court if he had to. By the time he filed his appeal, the judicial summer vacation was imminent and Judge Fleury refused to rule on the motion until the fall.

  Frank and Iorlando had to spend an oppressively humid Louisiana summer in the confines of the Jefferson parish prison waiting for the Twenty-Eighth District Court to come back into session. Since grounds for appealing the verdict were based mostly on mistakes the defense alleged that Fleury had made, it came as no surprise when, at the end of the summer, the judge denied the motion for a new trial.

  No doubt Byrnes expected that. He had prepared his appeal to the state supreme court, amassing over thirty bills of exception to Judge Fleury’s rulings. When he filed his appeal in mid-November (just before Frank’s eighteenth birthday on the twenty-third), the defense attorney was confident that he had grounds for the conviction to be overturned.

  The appeals process, even in a capital case, wouldn’t drag out for decades. The Jordanos’ case would be resolved within a year or two of the trial, two or three years even if there were grounds for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the convictions were upheld, Iorlando would be sent to the state penitentiary; Frank’s execution would be carried out promptly, in a matter of months at most.

  Everyone who read the newspapers would have been familiar with the mechanics of an execution. In 1910, all hangings had been moved to the state penitentiary in Baton Rouge, but eight years later, executions were shifted back to the parishes. Hanging a man locally made a better example of him, reasoned state legislators. At the same time, a ritual intended to give dignity and solemnity to the event was scrupulously observed. The night before, the condemned man was given his last meal. His jailers ordered it special from a restaurant, and he’d sit down to what would in other circumstances be a comforting meal of steak and potatoes and biscuits with butter, washed down with a bottle of wine or a pot of strong coffee.

  The prisoner spent his last night in his cell or sometimes, if he couldn’t sleep, outside in the corridor talking to the deputies on the deathwatch. In the morning, he took a cold bath in the prison bathroom, after which he dressed in a somber suit of clothes provided by the sheriff: black trousers, black coat, black tie, white vest, white shirt, turn-down collar, and soft black slippers.

  Once dressed, if the condemned man was a Catholic like Frank, he’d be taken to the chapel to celebrate mass and see his family one last time. After his family was escorted out of the prison, the prison matron brought him the breakfast he had ordered the night before, probably ham and eggs, biscuits, and coffee. If he decided at the last minute that he had a taste for something else, like fried or raw oysters, jail personnel scrambled to get it for him.

  The prisoner spent the remainder of the morning with his priest receiving spiritual solace. He was even given a bracer of whiskey if he needed it to keep up his courage. At noon, the sheriff came for him accompanied by the fifteen men sworn as official witnesses. The sheriff read the death warrant and asked the prisoner if he had anything to say. Then with the priest at his side, the prisoner began his last walk, the death march down from the condemned gallery, out into the prison yard and up the steps of the wooden-framed gallows to stand at the trapdoor. Quickly, the black-hooded hangman bound the prisoner’s hands and feet and whipped a black hood over his head. He positioned him just right over the trapdoor and adjusted the noose under his jaw. If the condemned man was lucky, he had an experienced executioner; one who knew what he was doing made the difference between a quick, painless death and an agonizingly slow one.

  When he had the prisoner properly positioned, the hangman called out: “Gentlemen of the Jury, I call upon you to witness that this execution is being conducted according to the high formalities of the law.” Then he threw the lever that sprung the trap, sending the prisoner plunging into eternity. When the rope jerked suddenly, the body convulsed for a few seconds, then went still, swaying gently at the end of the rope. Under the circumstances, the best possible scenario was that his neck would snap instantly and the spinal cord would be severed, making death more or less instantaneous. The hangman gauged the drop by the height and weight of the condemned; if he botched it, the prisoner could dangle at the end of the rope for more than fifteen minutes, slowly strangling. For this reason, the law required that the body hang for at least twenty minutes before being cut down.

  The priest pronounced the last rites, standing on a box to reach up and anoint the motionless body with holy oil. After an examination, the coroner pronounced death. The body was taken down and placed in a simple wooden casket that was loaded into a horse-drawn hearse. The gates of the prison swung open, and the horse plodded
forward to return the prisoner to his family.

  This is what Frank had to look forward to if his appeal failed, and it’s hard to imagine that the scenario did not run through his head as the long, muggy summer of 1919 turned into the mild Louisiana winter. But he could do nothing except comfort his father and pray for deliverance. Had Saint Joseph, protector of Sicilians, deserted him?

  As the months passed, Iorlando’s health deteriorated in the cold, damp jail cell. His rheumatism flared up, and he ached all the time; Frank’s hands were sore from rubbing liniment on his father’s back every night. Iorlando’s eyesight grew dimmer, and Frank noticed that he had to speak more loudly for his father to hear him.

  But they clung to their faith that their innocence would free them. Frank decorated his cell with pictures of the saints and the Virgin Mary and prayed every night for vindication.

  They started off the new year hopefully in January 1920, when their drab prison existence was brightened by a wedding.

  For two years Lena had been engaged to Anthony Spera, the twenty-two-year-old brother of Frank’s girlfriend Josie. Tony had joined the army when the United States entered the First World War, and he’d seen active service with the 151st Field Artillery. He’d returned home a war hero, expecting to marry his girl only to find that her father and brother were in the parish prison and might never return home.

  What should they do? Frank and Iorlando’s appeals could take several years. And what if the appeals failed? Did they want to risk Frank being hanged before he could see them as a married couple?