Waiting for the Axeman- The Axeman Panic of 1912 in Texas

"Waiting for the Axman"-

The Axeman Panic of 1912 in Texas

By Charles Swenson

(Photo courtesy of Fayette Public Library and Archives)

     On a bright spring day in April of 1912, a local delivery man named Ed Deere came into the newspaper offices of the Bryan Daily Eagle and Pilot to talk about the latest news that had been rattling black communities throughout Texas and Louisiana. Just fifty miles away in Hempstead, Ike Burney and his daughter Alice had been brutally axed to death. The murderer had been frightened off by another daughter who had rolled under her bed after she was assaulted, escaping the slaughter when her screams frightened off the killer. They were the last victims of the Axman, one of the names given to arguably the most prolific serial killings in American history, involving at least forty five men, women and children in twelve families in Louisiana and Texas. These horrendous crimes remain not only unsolved but virtually unknown over a century later.

     The Axman murders created a tremendous wave of panic among black communities in Texas and Louisiana between 1911 and 1912, a widespread fear that one's entire family might be wiped out in a horrendously brutal fashion while one slept at night. This terror was well justified and a very real existential threat to blacks in Louisiana and Texas in the spring of 1912. The ensuing panic was surprisingly well documented by the press at the time due to the sensational nature of the murders and lurid tales of voodoo swirling around them. Another name given these killings hints at why these murders seems to have been largely forgotten – the Mulatto Ax Murders.

     One of the connecting threads in these murders, beyond the use of an ax, was the fact that they always involved blacks, the only exception being the white wife of a black man in San Antonio, which did not keep her from being murdered along with her husband and three children. At least one member of the family was also a mulatto, one of the reasons Ed Deere was so distressed when he came to visit the newsroom. He said that

“...his wife was a 'high yellow”...like himself, and he felt that he was doomed to a certainty...he remarked that he had always boasted of his color to his white friends, declaring he was “no nigger,” but was now sorry he was not as black as tar.”¹

     The relationship of the white press to these murders provides an often disturbing insight into the distance the white community felt toward black communities during these early days of Jim Crow, with the use of the murders to terrorize black individuals and communities with letters threatening attacks by the Axman. But what becomes clear from those press accounts is that there was a sense of near panic in those black communities in Texas that lasted long after the murders subsided.



     The murders began in Louisiana in February of 1910, with the murder of a mother and her daughter in Lake Charles. In September a family of three was killed in Rayne, followed in January of 1911 by a family of three. The next month, a family of four was murdered in Lafayette, and then the slaughter expanded into Texas when family of five was murdered in San Antonio, Texas. The following day a family of four was murdered in Lafayette, Louisiana.²

     One of the earliest of the ax murders, and the first in Texas, took place on March 22, 1911. It happened in San Antonio, Texas, well before it was clear that it was but one of a series of ongoing murders, but in retrospect it clearly bore many of the hallmarks that came to characterize the murders that became much more well known a year later.

     Alfred Louis Casaway was born in Louisiana and had come to San Antonio as a teenager. After forty years of living there he had become a well known and much respected member of his mixed black and white community just east of the railroad tracks and train station. He developed an interest in local politics, finding a job as a janitor at City Hall and even serving as a bailiff for the grand jury at one time. For the previous six years he served as the janitor at the Grant colored school, arriving early every morning to open the school. He had “an excellent reputation for honesty and industry” and “did not have an enemy. His domestic affairs...ran smoothly, he and his family living happily together.”³

     Elizabeth Castelow Casaway, or Lizzie, as she was known to friends and family, had lived in San Antonio for a few years before she met her husband. As a younger woman, she had moved to San Marcos with her widowed father, but she moved out from their home when he remarried to live with a neighbor. While living there she met a young cowboy named Sam Lane, marrying him shortly afterward in February of 1885. Eight months later he asked her to fix her some “grub,” saying he was going “down country' to find some cattle. He never returned. There were some reports that although she had a fair complexion and was generally considered to have been white, “she contained a trace of negro blood, on and that account was divorced.”⁴

     She eventually moved to San Antonio, where she met Alfred. Their relationship bloomed, and in 1891 he introduced her to a local attorney of his to help her obtain a divorce so they could get married. The lawyer filed for the divorce, which was granted in 1891, but he warned against getting married because of a very serious problem they would encounter. He was black, and she was white, and their marriage would violate the laws in effect against miscegenation.⁵

     Since a marriage in San Antonio was not possible, shortly afterward the couple took a train to C.P. Diaz (now Piedra Negras), the nearest town in Mexico, and obtained a marriage license and were married there. But on their return to San Antonio, charges of miscegenation were filed against them, and Lizzie was summoned before the grand jury. However, no charges were ever filed against them after she gave her testimony, and they continued to live together as man and wife. They eventually had three children together, Josie, Louise (also listed as Ruby B. in the 1910 census) and Alfred Carlisle. They lived in a three room house at 517 North Olive Street, and by all accounts, they were a happy family and got along well with their neighbors.

     On Tuesday morning, March 21, 1911, Alfred Casaway did not show up to work. Since he had the keys to open the school and the students couldn't get in, Principal Tarver of the Grant school called the Campbell household to see why he hadn't showed up. Richard Campbell was a local attorney whose wife was a sister-in-law of the Casaways, who lived around the corner from them. Bessie Drakes lived with the Campbells, and knew the Casaway family as well. Her child had been playing with their children just the night before, and she had spent a few minutes visiting with the family on their front porch when she went to pick her up around 8 o'clock.

     Campbell's wife, Delia, sent Bessie over to see why her brother-in-law hadn't showed up for work that morning, but couldn't get any response. Delia then went over to the house, but when she had no better luck, she went around to a window to look through the curtains. She was horrified to see Alfred laying dead in his bed and ran home to telephone the sheriff, as well as the constable and police departments.

     As soon as news of the murder began to spread throughout the neighborhood, the house on Olive Street became a place of fascination. A photographer from a local paper arrived early and captured an image of the house. By the time law officers arrived the streets were blocked by a crowd of 500 black and white spectators, which quickly grew to nearly a thousand.

(San Antonio Express, March 24, 1911, p9)

     Bexar County Sheriff John Wallace Tobin was one of the first on the scene, and from the outset he had a personal interest in the murders. He not only knew Alfred Casaway from his work as a grand jury bailiff but Lizzie as well, who had previously worked at his home as a seamstress. He immediately offered a $250 reward for any clue leading to the apprehension of the murderer. In the months to come he would hunt down many leads and at times think he had come to solve the murder, but it would come back again to haunt him the following year.

     By all accounts, this was the most horrible and brutal murder that had taken place in San Antonio at the time. All five members of the household had had their skulls crushed in with the blunt end of a pole ax, probably taken from the woodshed at the rear of the house and found at the foot of a bed. Alfred, was found dead in the bed where his sister-in-law had first seen him, together with his 3 year old daughter Louise. In a bed in another room were the bodies of Lizzie, along with 6 year old Josie and the 5 month old Alfred. Blood splattered the walls, floor and even a child's doll on the floor, but other than that the house was neat and clean.

     The house had not been ransacked, the windows were all closed and locked, and the rear door was unlocked, with no sign of having been forced. The rear door was secured only by a thumb latch, and it was speculated that the family had neglected to lock it before going to sleep. Almost at once robbery was ruled out as a motive. In Alfred's trousers, found at the foot of his bed, was a gold watch, a case with an image of St. Joseph and a purse with some coins in it. It also held the set of thirteen keys that had not opened the school that morning, leading to classes being dismissed for the day.⁶ None of the neighbors had heard anything during the night, and the only possible clue as to the killer were some footprints on the rear porch which only led a few feet from the house before being washed away by the previous night's rain.
The lack of good clues did not stop the Sheriff's department from making arrests. That night a black suspect was arrested, largely because he was supposed to have made a threat against Casaway at some point in the past and his shoe sized matched that of the prints found on the back porch, but he was released the following day. The police and sheriff's department returned to the scene of the crime, meticulously examining every article and item of furniture, as well as the walls and the floors in search of more clues. Again, a large crowd of hundreds of onlookers of all races, gathered, and boxes and benches were placed under the windows, allowing the more sanguinely inclined to look in at the bloody furniture that remained in the house. The bloody mattresses, sheets and clothing were placed in the front yard “preparatory to being burned, although several negroes protested they should be buried, because they were covered with human blood.”⁷

(San Antonio Express, March 23, 1911, p 14)

     Arrangements for the burial of the Casaways were handled by Williamson and St. Clair. Ironically, “St. Clair” was actually Perry Sinclair, an undertaker who was also the son-in-law of Richard Campbell, the attorney who was first called by Principal Carver and whose wife first discovered their bodies.⁸ The funeral ceremonies were held at St. Paul's Methodist Church, and their bodies were interred at City Cemetery No. 3. The burials were in three caskets, with Alfred Casaway buried in one, his wife and their 5 month old son in another, and the girls, Josie and Louise in a third. The ceremonies were “attended by nearly all the negroes living near where the Casaways had lived. The murders and the funeral were the sole topics of conversation, almost, yesterday along North Olive Street between East Commerce and Nolan Streets and many of the negroes were wrought up to a high pitch.”⁹

     But once the bodies had been laid in their graves and night began to fall over the neighborhood, the crowds of curious onlookers which had swarmed around the Casaway house began to fade away.

The house looked lonesome, the doors closed and windows drawn; everything took on a gloomy aspect and the shadows about the place assumed curious shapes as distant lights threw occasional glimmers over all. A dog, the sole surviving member of the family, sat on the back steps and howled dismally. Few person passed by, for those who could preferred to go a roundabout way rather than go by the house in the dark. Those who lived near appeared to rest badly and frequently faces would be seen at the windows gazing toward the untenanted home...About 11 o'clock...close to the hour at which the murders are believed to have been committed, a little party of negroes was seated in a house near by. The dog, which had been quiet for some time, suddenly began howling again, attracting attention to it. As the persons in the group looked that way a blue light appeared suddenly to leap from the windows of the house. It vanished, but a moment later again shone forth. Looking closer, it appeared to the frightened watchers that a light shone dimly in the house. One of the party was sure heard a sound like a blow, followed by a sharp cry. The report spread quickly, and soon many eyes were focused on the house. For thirty minutes the blue light appeared to shine and then went out altogether. What cause it, whether a reflection from a distant electric light or what, is not known. No investigation was made. No one cared to approach the house. No watch dog was needed to guard it. ¹⁰

     As no new strong clues as to the identity of the murderer of the Casaways or their motives came to light, speculation began to grow. The dog that continued to wait in vain for its owners on the back porch was the source of one idea that was to grow over the coming year about how such a murder could come about. The dog who did not bark led some police to believe

“...(t)hat had anyone gone to their house with the intention to commit murder prepearations would have been made, instead of depending upon finding an ax. One theory the detectives have had is that the murderer was acquainted with the family to such an extent that the dog permitted him to pass, for the animal, if aroused, did not bark, at least not so as to noticed by any of the neighbors. Persons believe that a dog always knows when a death occurs in a house and announces the fact by howling unceasingly, cannot understand how it is that the animal made no outcry whatever during the night. It has been thought that the dog may have been doped, too, with something which was used to put the members into a deep sleep, for it is evident that the murderer went about his work deliberately, lighted a lamp after fastening cloths across the windows.”¹¹

     The suggestion that the Casaways had been drugged had already been made, but the detectives had decided not to have the contents of their stomachs examined, feeling that other clues could lead to the arrest of the murderer. ¹² Another area of speculation involved the mixed race issue, with Sheriff Tobin “inclined to the belief that the deed was the act of some fanatic on the problem of miscegenation.”¹³ This was also reported as “a commonly accepted theory here that the killing was done by some one who, believing Mrs. Cassaway woman and being insanely opposed to any mixture of the whites and blacks, conceived the notion of wiping out the entire family.”¹⁴ This issue also played a role in the murders over the following year, where the victims were predominantly mulattoes.

     After more than a week with no solution in sight, the murders had caught the attention of Texas newspapers in Houston, Alpine, Bastrop, Abilene, Bryan, Temple,Coleman, Brownwood and Galveston, as well as being reported in national papers in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, California and Illinois. Confronted with increasing national pressure on a killing being portrayed as “the most remarkable in the criminal annals of Texas, the murderer leaving absolutely no clue to his or her identity,”¹⁵, the sitting Goverrnor of Texas, Oscar Branch Colquitt, offered a $250 reward for the apprehension of the murderer of the Casaways. Two days later a mass meeting of the concerned black community was held in San Antonio as well, with hopes of raising additional funds for the reward.¹⁶

     When Judge Edward Dwyer of the Thirty-Seventh District court called together the grand jury a week after the murders, the importance of solving the crime was made imminently clear in his charge to the jurors.

Since your organization, I am sorry to say, a most diabolical crime has been committed in our midst. The midnight assassin has been at work and exterminated in one night a whole family – not even sparing innocent and helpless children. It is a crime that cries to heaven for vengeance and one that has shocked our fair city and made its citizenship bow their heads with grief and horror and shame. The officers of the law have been working day and night to find a clue to this horrible killing, but so far, I regret to say, have been unable to run down the criminals, and the outrageous murder is still shrouded in mystery. I charge you to leave nothing undone toward unraveling, if possible, this horrible crime, so as to bring the guilty ones to justice. I also now call upon all good citizens to aid us in every way possible in ferreting out who has committed this wholesale assassination in our midst by giving you or the officers any information they may have, circumstantial or otherwise, that might give a clue toward detecting the offenders. We all owe it to God, to our State, to society, to our fair city and ourselves to do all in our power to bring such miscreants and enemies of mankind to justice and must unite out energies in that direction...¹⁷

      Immediately after the murders, Sheriff Tobin initiated a search for Lizzie's family members. Two brothers was located, one in Llano, and another in Austin. Both were questioned by a deputy sheriff¹⁸ and a city detective, but neither was able to provide information pertinent to the investigation.¹⁹ Several of Lizzie's relatives, including her brother John, her well to do cattleman brother from Llano, were eventually called before the grand jury investigating the murders, only to find that a number thought she had been dead long before the murders.²⁰ But it was a more distant family member who had not been interviewed that was eventually arrested for the murders over four months later after he had been tricked into showing up at the Sheriff's office.

     William McWilliams was a 68 year old white man who had been raised as a foster child by a relative of Elizabeth Casaway, a Mrs. Hamilton from Perry Hill, Texas, and was also known as Mack Hamilton. The Hamilton were a tumultuous family, many of whom who died violent deaths, and McWilliams eventually lost track track of them after he moved to the East End of San Antonio. In the spring of 1911 he received a letter and then a visit from a family member, a Miss Ballard. It was during that visit that McWilliams learned that Elizabeth had married a black man and was living less than a quarter of a mile away from him.

     McWilliams didn't believe this at first, and went to go visit Elizabeth for himself. When he got there he stood outside the gate talking to her, while watching her children playing in a room of the house. According to the testimony he gave to law officers, he initially didn't believe that Elizabeth had married a black man until he heard her tell him the story of her abuse and abandonment in her first marriage. He said that Casaway had been kind to her, and that after they returned from their marriage in Mexico she and Louis were living a happy life together.

     The Sheriff's office had previously been told of his visit with Elizabeth the day before her murder. She had recounted to another woman that “she had been urged to leave her husband and children and refused to do so.”²¹ This unnamed woman had called in this information anonymously, and “refused to give her name, not even, she said, for twice the amount of the ($250) reward offered.”²² They had also received information from a black man named James Nelson that McWilliams “talked about having put five negroes out of the way, that three of them were buried in the same hole. Nelson further testified that McWilliams had said that Sheriff Tobin was looking for Mack Hamilton for having done the killing, and wanted Nelson to understand that he was not Mack Hamilton.”²³

     After he had been arrested, McWilliams' home was searched and a letter was found whose handwriting and paper matched those of an anonymous letter which had been received by the Sheriff's department. That anonymous letter, received on May 26, had been addressed to Sheriff Tobin and Richard Campbell, Louis Casaway's brother-in-law, and although at the time the Sheriff would make a full investigation of it, he also felt it might well be the work of “some crank.” It intimated not only a responsibility for the murders as well as animosity toward Sheriff Tobin, and was clearly the work of a disturbed mind. The full text of the letter was printed in full in the newspaper two days later.

San Antonio, Tex., May, 1911. - To Sheriff of Bexar County, and also to R.A. Campbell, lawyer – I understand that you all are in search for the man that killed the Louis Casaway family. Well, I am the man, and I am going to give you trouble in catching me, and whenever you run across me there will be trouble on your hands.

I am no negro. I am a full-blood white man, and again, I never wrote this. I had it done by a man that is today about three hundred miles from here, and I am in the city of San Antonio now. So catch me if you can and there will be trouble on your hands, because I am in a dangerous place and I mean to kill the first one that tackles me about the matter, so you can all pop your whip and get busy. I am ready to die at any time, so look out.

I had a right to kill that family, and if you ever catch me I will explain it to you.²⁴

     On the basis of this information, McWilliams was arrested and held in the county jail. When he appeared at a habeas corpus hearing the following week, most of the crowd in the courtroom were neighbors of the Casaways. McWilliams was noted to laugh several times during witness testimony, and his “aged wife, sitting at his side, also seemed to find considerable merriment in the proceedings.”²⁵ The hearing was not completed that day, and when it continued the following morning it once again had a large crowd of spectators attracted by the most spectacular murder in the city's history. McWilliams' demeanor was noted to be considerably more sober, punctuated not by laughter but by a severe coughing spell when the still bloody ax used in the Casaway murder was brought into the courtroom as evidence.²⁶ A federal marshal testified that McWilliams, whom he considered a nuisance who frequently visited the Marshal's office, had bragged to him that he knew who had murdered the Casaways, but when he reminded McWilliams he could receive a $500 reward for that information from the sheriff's office the reply was “I wouldn't tell Tobin anything. I have as much use for him as I do for a bedbug, and you know what to do to a bedbug – kill it.”²⁷

After two days of hearings, Judge Dwyer finally did grant McWilliams bail, set at $1000 per each charge of murder, but he was unable to make the bond of $5000 and returned to the county jail to until the grand jury was impaneled in October to stand trial. But for reasons that remain unclear, McWilliams never did stand trial for the murders.

     Shortly after the Casaway murders the authorities in Texas were contacted by Louis LaCoste, the Sheriff of Lafayette Parish in Louisiana. LaCoste had noted a similarity with a series of murders he had been investigating.²⁸ On November 11, 1909 Edna Opelousas, a black woman, and her three children between the ages of 4 and 9 had been murdered with an axe in Rayne, a town in Acadia Parish, adjacent to Lafayette Parish. On January 31, 1911, another Acadia Parish black family, Walter Byers, his wife and six year son were murdered with an ax in Crowley. On February 25, yet another black family, Alexandre Andrus, his wife Mimi, three year old son Joachim and 11 month old daughter Agnes also fell victim to an ax murderer in Lafayette. When Sheriff LaCoste heard about the strikingly similar murder of the Casaway family in San Antonio he suspected the same person may have been involved.

     A number of suspects in these Louisiana murders were arrested, but all were eventually released, save one. On October, 24, 1911 Raymond Barnabet was convicted of the Andrus murders in Lafayette, but the murders did not come to an end there. The following month, another brutal murder of a black family occurred in Lafayette. On the night of November 26-27, Norbert Randall, a 24 year old butler, his 23 year old wife Asima, 5 year old son Rene, 5 year old son Robert, year old daughter Agnes and an unnamed nephew were all killed by ax blows to the head. Their bodies were discovered discovered by the oldest Randall girl, 9 year old Devine, who had spent the night at her uncle's house.²⁹ The following day Clementine Barnabet was arrested for the murder of the Randall family, who she was living within a block of. Clementine was the 18 year old octaroon daughter who, along with her brother, had testified against her father during his trial the previous month.

     Clementine's appearance at a hearing on November 28 was described as one “that for years will be the subject for 'round-fire' tales by toothless grandmothers and will form the nucleus for legendary tales of horror for generations to come...With screams of hysterical laughter, the girl rocked back and forth in the witness chair, her great eyes rolling into the back of her head, barely any of the pupil showing.”³⁰ Whether prompted by mental instability, guilt or “a night in jail and a third degree”³¹ and a plan by the Lafayette Parish authorities “to be taken to New Orleans...to have her submit to an examination on the order of the 'third degree' by the New Orleans detective bureau,”³² she readily not only confessed to the Randall murders but to the murder of the Andrus family her father had been convicted of. Throughout her incarceration and eventual conviction of the murders, she also claimed be a part of a greater conspiracy, a member of the “Church of Sacrifice” under the protection of “condjahs”³³ provided by voodoo doctors to protect them while engaged in blood sacrifices.



     Although the confessed killer was in the Lafayette Parish jail awaiting trial, the ax murders continued. On January 19, 1912 another murder took place in “the coontown section of the city” of Crowley known as the “Promised Land,” a legally sanctioned red light district.³⁴ Marie Warner was a young mulatto woman who had been divorced from her husband for four years, but after he left for Beaumont she returned to their two room home to care for their three children, 9 year old Pearl, 7 year old Garey and five year old Harriet. When Marie's mother-in-law came to check on her and didn't get an answer at their front door, she asked a neighbor if she knew where she was. Finding the back door open and fearing the worst, they found a man willing to go in to check on them. Although there was no sign of a struggle, all four were found laying face down on their bed in the front, along with the bloody ax that had staved in their heads. Although there were footprints found in the back yard and bloodhounds were called in, no substantial clue was found leading to the murderer.³⁵

     Two days later, on January 21, another black family was murdered, this time in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Felix Broussard was known as “a hard working man” who had “an industrious family and bore a good family.”³⁶ He, his wife and their three children, aged 8, 6 and 3, were murdered with blows to the head from an ax, but this time there were two additional new twists to the murders. The first was a bucket found collecting the blood from the blood from the victims beside the bed. The second was found written on the front door of the family home, a line of Biblical text which read “When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble,” followed by the words “human five.”³⁷

     With the number of murders growing despite one confessed murderess being behind bars, the public was in an uproar. In Lake Charles Eliza Richards was arrested in connection with the murders despite her adamant claims of innocence. For her own protection she was brought back to Crowley, not only for “further investigation on the part of Sheriff Fontenot and his deputies” but for safekeeping, “as the wholesale murders around Crowley have aroused much excitement and resentment, and probably violence may have been attempted were any one held there in connection with the bloody crimes.”³⁸ In addition, King Harris and J.W. Wilkins were being held in the Lafayette Parish jail as preachers in the “Church of Sacrifice,” alleged by Clementine Barnadet to be the instigators of the murders as “a result of some fanatical belief or teaching.”³⁹

     But with the murders now numbering in the dozens, despite the arrest of one suspect who confessed to the murders and even more suspects being jailed, panic was beginning to spread through the black communities in southeastern Louisiana. It was reported that “(m)any of the Lake Charles negroes have remained awake since the night of the murder, while not a few have organized into bands to watch while the others sleep.”⁴⁰ To make matters worse, there were more attempts “to enter negro homes” and “(v)ery sensational tales are being circulated in regard to these attempts, which are greatly adding to the fright of the negroes.”⁴¹ A book agent asking a black woman in Lake Charles about her family size and their religion found her so nervous about the ax murders and suspicious over his line of questioning she became “began to shout hysterically and finally collapsed. The scared book agent fled to a negro cabin which was soon surrounded by a mob of more than a hundred angry negroes. He was rescued by the police.”⁴²

     In Lafayette there were a number of attempts to enter black homes at night, adding to the growing sense of fright among the black population. This led to a mass meeting of 150 black citizens at the Good Hope Baptist Church, who having “been recently visited by some unknown party, or parties who have committed the most horrible crimes in killing two colored families in a very mysterious manner,” adopted a number of resolutions “pledge(ing) ourselves to furnish the authorities and officers with any information we may have that would lead to the fereting out of these crimes and we further pledge ourselves to be used in any capacity by the authorities and officers of our city in helping them bring about the desired results in reference to the crimes committed in Lafayette, Rayne, Crowley and Lake Charles.”⁴³

     And the panic was soon to spread westward into Texas.


     On the night of February 18-19, 1912, the ax murderer crossed over from Sabine River from Louisiana into Beaumont, Texas. 39 year old Hattie Dove, a divorced black woman who worked as a domestic, was last seen at home that Sunday night with her three children, 18 year old Jessie Quirk (divorced), 16 year old Ethel and 14 year old Earnest, who worked as a laborer. Another extremely fortunate man who boarded with the Dove family worked nights, and was not home that evening when the now infamous “ax man” slipped into their house on the north end of town, wiping out yet another family. It was reported that

“Thousands upon thousands of negroes filed past the four dead negroes lying in the morgue...(a)nd sent fervent supplications to heaven to be spared a visitation of this awful vengeance upon themselves. Many of them moaned that the Lord had deserted them and some of them were heard to murmur that a curse had fallen upon the race.”⁴⁴  

      As usual, the police rounded up a number of suspects and detained them but eventually they were released. There was a mass meeting of concerned black citizens and they raised a reward of $500 for the arrest and conviction of the murderer. Tensions were running high and members of the black community were spending nights together, staying up in shifts to keep a watch out for any sign the ax murderer might decide to grant them a visit. Horace Alexander, a 21 year old married man was sharing these duties at the home of Adam Bobinaux on the south side of Beaumont on the evening following the Dove murders. Bobinaux was sitting up with the shotgun when he somehow mistook Alexander for the “ax man,” shooting him in the side and killing him instantly.45 In nearby Orange, there were “more revolvers purchased ...by negroes than was ever known before.”46

     Reports about the murders and Clementine Barnabet's sensational confessions were becoming more widespread in newspapers not only in Louisiana and now Texas, but throughout the country as well. The managing editor of the Utica Saturday Globe, A.M. Dickinson had traveled from New York to Louisiana and penned an extensive article on the Louisiana murders for the February 17, 1912 edition of his paper. It dealt with the murders in Crowley, Rayne, Lafayette and Lake Charles at length, and was complete with photographs of the houses where the murders took place, a “church of the 'Blood Atonement'” and members of the church being held in the Lafayette jail. It was captioned “Like the Jungles of America – Blood Sacrifices in the Louisiana Rice Belt.”47

     Another particularly lurid article on the murders appeared in the El Paso Herald, titled “Voodoo's Horrors Break Out Again.” The tone of the article is captured by it's subtitle, “How the Cruel and Gruesome Murders of Africa's Wicked Serpent Worship Have Ben Revived in Louisiana by a Fanatic 'Sect of Sacrifice.'” It was dominated by an illustration of a small black child wrapped in the coils of a massive snake, describing how “Here all the horrors of Voodooism are revived and little children go to their deaths a sacrifice to the serpent,” next to a photograph of “A Typical Group of Louisiana Rice Pickers from Whom the Victims of the “Sect of Sacrifice” are Taken” and above a picture of “How the Dead Fingers of the Baby Victims Are Spread Apart with Pieces of Wood After They Are Sacrificed!”48

(El Paso Herald, March 14, 1912, p13)

     The fear was spreading, and the mysterious murderer or murderers had a name - the Axman. On March 1, a story began circulating in Galveston that the Axman “had posted notices that his toll in Galveston would be 'twenty-three negroes,' and as a result the panic was wild. It was made necessary to call in an extra policeman from the reserve list...to stay at the station and answer telephone calls as well as assure frightened dusky callers that they would receive protection.”49 The press, feeling somewhat bemused and perhaps slightly insulated from a series of murders that only struck the black population, ran a skeptical article on the varieties of responses the black community of Chenevert in Houston was responding to this fear.

Darkies are Panicky.

Report That Mysterious Axeman Is in Houston Causes Those of Chenevert District Sleepless Nights.

Midnight oil, mysterious pans of cold water, uncanny exorcisms, knotted horse tails and too many other forms of incantations known to darky necromancy are playing part in a panicky epidemic through the Chevert neighborhood.

This sudden oscillatory, seismic disturbance in the peace of mind of the colored population of Chenevert street had its origins in a rumor, from some source that has not been run to its lair, that the author of the recent negro family massacres around Beaumont and Lake Charles had come to Houston and is now stalking the night in the Chenevert neighborhood.

In hope of keeping this mysterious and sinister being, man or devil, or whatever he or it is, away from their houses, the whole population is reported to have resorted to methods of the description alluded to above. Oil torches are left burning in their rooms all night, pans of water are placed on the floor and elsewhere about the room for the purpose of absorbing any portion of the evil influence that may happen to be hydrophobic, and other prestidigitations are performed carefully and thoroughly before retiring, in hope that those thus doing may be immune when the monster passes.

In order to supply the increased demand of oil growing out of the large consumption for this purpose, some of the Chenevert grocery and supply dealers on Chenevert street found it necessary yesterday to lay in extra quantities of kerosene, while the pan demand took on the proportions of a small flurry.

The Chenevert negroes have applied the name “Jack the Ripper” to the otherwise unidentified axman whose alleged presence in their midst is spreading terror. That some sinister joker is perpetrating one of the superstitious darkies of that side of town seems evident.⁵⁰

     But the next murder was to bypass Houston for a small town next to the railway tracks outside of Columbus, Texas by the name of Glidden. It was discovered by Parthenia Monroe, the 30 year old who lived with her grandmother when she came to check on her mother, 46 year old Ellen Monroe, a local washwoman and mother of 8 children.51 When Parthenia came by early on the morning of March 27 to check on her mother and younger siblings, she found they had been brutally murdered in their beds. In one room were 8 year old Alberta, 11 year old Jessie (also known as Octavia), 12 year old Dewey were in one bed and 16 year old Willie on a cot, their heads crushed with the blunt end of an ax. In the room across the hall, lying dead by the side of the bed, was Lyle Finucane a widowed 35 year old mulatto52 who worked as a porter in the rail yards and who roomed with the Monroes, his head also “crushed in and beaten away from the crown to the nose.”53 Ellen had apparently risen after being struck but only made it to the middle of the room before she died from her wounds. The ax, which had been taken from a woodpile out back, had been left in the house, and the murderer had stopped to wash his hands in pan of water before he left.

(The Glidden Murder House, from Around Columbus by Roger C. and Marilyn B. Wade; courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library)

     The following day five wagons carried the six coffins to be buried at Rocky Chapel, and nine blacks were held “under arrest, believed to have knowledge of the crime,” though the Justice of the Peace Gregory waited “until after the burial of the victims before taking further testimony.” Only one of these, Jim Fields, eventually went to trial for the murders, while most of the others were held as material witnesses, including his wife, Ida Fields. . Meanwhile, the Mayor, Sheriff, Chief of Police and City Detective of Beaumont came to Columbus to determine if “the perpetrator of the outrage has any connection with the crime of similar character lately committed in Beaumont” but were “of the opinion there is no connection between this crime and series east of here.”54

     But at least one unnamed attorney from Lake Charles felt that there was some sort of connection between these murders, and had mailed a letter to Constable J.M. Everett of Columbus “foretelling of the tragedy at Glidden and predicting that after it the perpetrators would proceed to San Antonio, where another family had been marked for slaughter.” 55 It was similar to an letter that had been received by the San Antonio City Marshal, dated April 2 and stating that “a crime identical with that of the Caraway(sic) atrocity would be committed in San Antonio on April 12.”56


     Early on the morning of April 12, 1912, Callie Burse, a young black maid, was sent over to the house of William Burton at 724 North Center Street in San Antonio just east of the railroad station. She a can of kerosene sent by a local preacher to repay a loan of the same by Burton, a 26 year old porter who worked at Sommer's Garden, a local saloon and bowling alley. No one answered at the front door when she knocked, so she went around to a side window. To her dismay, the curtains on the window were down and covered in blood. She “made no further investigation, but notified neighbors, who called county and city officials.”⁵⁷

     When the police forced their way into the house they came across the body of Burton's 20 year old wife, Carrie, face down on the floor next to the bed, her skull crushed in and a knife sticking out from her back. On the bed was Burton, his head also crushed in and a knife in his back as well. In an adjoining room the Burton's two children, 3 year old Naomi and 1 year old Edward, were found with their skulls crushed. Carrie's brother, Leon Evers, who had been staying with the Burtons, was dead on the bed next to the boy, skull fractured from an ax blow and a knife blade broken off in his back. A bucket of water was found in the room, where the killer had washed up after the murders.
The Burtons had lived a few blocks away from where the Casaways had been murdered less than a year earlier. As with the Casaways, aside from the slaughtered bodies of the victims, nothing was out of order, ruling out robbery, and all the doors and windows locked. Cassie Burton's mother, Betty Evers, had been by to visit the home around 8 the previous evening, and William Burton returned home from work around midnight. Neighbors said he had no enemies, but a next door neighbor said she had heard some odd noises at the Burton house around 2 in that morning when her dog began to respond to those noises, though she thought nothing of them at the time.

(Burton Home, San Antonio Express, April 13, 1912, p 14)

     It became clear that the dreaded killer known as the Axman had returned to San Antonio. The police and the Sheriff's department that “the crime was the result of religious fanaticism. This belief is based upon the similarity of the condition in which the bodies of the victims were left in this tragedy and other mysterious murders which have occurred in South Texas and Louisiana.”⁵⁸ Constable J.M.Everett came to San Antonio, along with the letters he had received, to see if he could further his investigation of the murders in Glidden. Three men were arrested in connection with the murders, including two “'voodoo' doctors” from Alabama, but both denied “any knowledge of the horrible butchery which has thrown seventeen separate and distinct kinds of scare into every negro in the city.”⁵⁹ Sheriff Tobin began to work under the assumption that “these murders are part of the religious propaganda of a secret sect” and that the fact that Cassie Burton, her brother and two children were mulattoes played a role in their murder.⁶⁰ He

...requested that all negroes who know anything of the practices of 'voodooism' confer with the peace officers. Their confidence will be respected and they will be afforded police protection...From one old negro yesterday he learned that the “human sacrifice” idea is taken from the Bible, St. Matthew, iv. 10, as follows:

'And now also the ax is laid unto the rot of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.'

Under a diseased condition of mind this is believed to have been warped into a literal command from the Most High to commit murder under certain conditions. Possibly the fact that the Burton woman was fair-skinned may have been the incentive in this instance. So far as known, however, she herself was not imbued with fanatical religious ideas, but lived a quiet and respectable life with her husband...⁶¹

     For the second time in less than a year, blacks in San Antonio began to fear that their family might become the next victims of a horrendous midnight slaughter, especially if there was any white blood in their background. One of the suspects, arrested after the murders with a large amount of skeleton keys, had been called upon to treat corns on a black woman's foot, and when another woman in the house, a mulatto, asked for him to treat her he “said he would not treat a woman of her color...for a million dollars...and that there would be an end to negroes of her hue.”⁶²

     In many houses one family member stood guard half the night, while another stood watch the other half of the night. Some nailed their windows shut, keeping the curtains up and the lights burning throughout the night so neighbors could help keep a lookout, and dogs were now allowed in the house to help raise an alarm over any intruders. “In some quarters there was an intensity of fear due to letters sent from Houston.” These were turned over to the police, unsigned chain letters which contained the prayer “We implore thee to bless all mankind and keep us from all evil and take us to dwell with thee,” and instructing the recipient to “copy it nine times and sen(d) it to nine friends with the promise that 'you will receive a great joy on the ninth day.' In conclusion, it says, 'Do not break this chain – sign no name, just date.'”⁶³

     A number of blacks in San Antonio “appealed to the Sheriff and police departments for permits to carry weapons, and others, without such permits, have resorted to the use of firearms when aroused by strange noises at the dead of night. Two such cases were considered in police court yesterday and it is reported that several similar arrests have occurred in which no arrests were made. “⁶⁴ The chief of police called upon “the city council to offer a $1000 reward for the capture of the fiends who slaughtered the Burtons, and Sheriff Tobin will make a like appeal to the governor.”⁶⁵

     William and Cassie Burton, as well as their two small children, were buried in City Cemetery #3, San Antonio's colored cemetery, the same as where the bodies of Louise Casaway, Lizzie Casaway and their three small children had been buried less than a year before. But before the funeral services for the Burtons could be held, the now infamous Axman was to claim his next victims.




     Isaac Burney had been born into slavery in Georgia in 1855, but had made his way to Texas by the age of 20, when he married Sylvia Johnson and had six children before she died some time before 1900. He was a preacher as well as a farm laborer, and in 1912 he was living a block east of the court house in Hempstead, together with his daughters, 20 year old Cassie and 30 year old Alice Marshall, along with Eva Jones and her two small boys.

     The night following the murder of the Burton family, As he slept he was battered into insensibility by blows from either a small ax or a hatchet, although he did not die immediately, lingering on for three days before succumbing to his wounds. The assailant then crept into an adjoining room, where his two daughters and Eva Jones slept. Alice was killed immediately, her head similarly crushed in. Cassie was also struck, but before any fatal injuries were sustained Eva awoke and managed to escape with only slight wounds to a hand before rolling under a bed and scaring off the murderer with her screams.⁶⁶ This not only saved her life but probably those of her two sons and Cassie as well.
This was the most atypical of the killings attributed to the murderer, primarily because the killing was interrupted before every in the house was killed, but also because none of those killed were mulattoes.⁶⁷ But it is also unique because the killer had become so well established in the public's consciousness by this time that on Alice Marshall's death certificate the cause of death is simply listed as “Killed by the Axeman,” although the signing physician was slightly more circumspect three days later when the cause for Ike Burney's death was given as “Struck on head by the Axman or some unknown party.”

Alice Marshall's Death Certificate's Cause of Death

     Sheriff Tobin, strongly suspecting links between the murders, sent off detailed copies of the Burton murders to law officers in Glidden, Hempstead, Beaumont and Lake Charles, with requests for information on the murders in those communities, noting similarities such as the presence of at least one mulatto and children in the cases. Reporters also noted that

Since the five bodies were found at the Burton home men in the Sheriff's department have been busy running down every available clue and the affair at Hempstead, seemingly similar to the one here, has redoubled their efforts. In an effort to determine whether all of these mysterious murders which have taken place at dead of night in various towns in South Texas and Louisiana are not directed by intelligence, Sheriff Tobin dictated to his stenographer yesterday a full and complete account of the one here. Copies of this were sent to Glidden, Hempstead, Beaumont and Lake Charles, La., with a request that the peace officers in those communities perform a like service for him. The information now at hand indicates that all of these crimes were similar, the distinguishing features being the families attacked contained at least one mulatto, that there were children in all cases, and in each instance some sharp instrument, such as a knife, was left sticking in the back of the victim.

It is the belief of those who have been working on the case here that the murders are due to the fanatical psuedo-religious teachings of a mysterious Church of the Sacrifice, whose ritual is reputed to be a queer jumble of voodooism and biblical quotations. This organization also has many of the characteristics of a secret society and, if reports which have filtered in to the police are true, those who are initiated into the mysteries guard them with zealous dread.

An old negro woman who conferred yesterday with Sheriff Tobin intimated that she knew something of the cult. She was wrinkled, decrepit and wore an old bandanna handkerchief about her head. Just who she was the sheriff declined to say, nor did he place much credence in her story. She explained that the words “blood of the lamb,” used figuratively by Christians, has a more literal meaning in voodooism, and gave this as a reason why children are killed.

The fact that the object of these murderous attacks are mulattoes is firmly established in the minds of the negroes and, while all members of that race here are more or less apprehensive, in those families where one or more is light-colored the fear is openly manifested. From midnight until dawn the mounted police are kept busy answering calls...⁶⁸

     By this time the Axman panic was firmly entrenched in the minds of blacks throughout Texas and becoming a common item in newspapers. In Austin, the older blacks recalled the unsolved “Servant Girl Murders” of 1884 and 1885, when five black women and one black man, as well as two white women were murdered and “voodoo doctors” were suspected of “waging a causeless war of extermination”. A black tramp who had recently arrived and was asking for food was feared to be an Axman. Similar suspicions about another stranger who had been hired to work on a black work gang led the crew to refuse to work until he was fired. When unsigned letters purporting to be from the Axmen were found in several East Austin front yards a delegation of black citizens met with the Sheriff and asked for extra patrols in their neighborhoods. The sheriff requested all copies of any letters, but the only one received was eventually “trailed to its source and found to be a joke. A group of black leaders presented a petition to the governor requesting that he authorize a reward for capture of the Axmen. ⁶⁹

     The colored population secured all the guns they could find. Much excitement prevailed all night and many windows and doors were nailed up.”⁷⁰ In Bryan, fear that the Axman was in the black section of town caused “a big excitement...(t)he whole population was soon up, with lights burning and preparations made for defense. A search of the neighborhood failed to reveal his presence and quiet was restored.” In Hearne the presence of a chalked letter “s” over the doors of homes in some areas, led many to fear the Axman was marking the homes of his next victims. This was coupled with an unexplained failure of electric lights in the town, but although law officers were on heightened alert, “(n)o clue has yet been found, nor have they found anyone who saw the houses being so marked.”⁷¹

     Similar “Black Hand” letters were received by some prominent black ciitizens in Georgetown, followed by warnings from someone presenting themselves as an Axman. “
Although Jim Fields was still being held for the murders in Glidden, with his wife offering to give testimony against him, on April 17 “...a mass meeting of white citizens was held at the courthouse to placate the negroes, to give them moral support and to offer any feasible protection that lies within their power against the axman...The object of the meeting was stated by the chairman to be sympathy and protection of the colored people against the axman.” The meeting, whose audience was about a third white and two thirds black, was addressed for almost two hours by many prominent white citizens, including the sheriff, county judge, justice of the peace and others, as well as S.H. Burford, a black physician. A pharmacist at the meeting, however, “warned the negroes of the sanitary effect of close crowding and sleeping with closed windows and doors.” The chairman of the meeting stated it's object was “sympathy and protection of the colored people against the axman,” and adopted a resolution “requesting the Governor to offer a suitable reward for the apprehensions, capture and conviction of the axman.” ⁷²

     The depth of the fears of the black populace and the horrendous character of the murders finally caught the attention of the governor of Texas, Oscar Branch Colquitt. But it was the growing number of letters supposedly from the Axman that brought him to act on this growing menace to citizen of his state. On the afternoon of April 19, he “issued a proclamation reciting that his attention had been called by numerous persons in various communities that negroes were receiving threatening letters in which the writers threatened assassination by the “Axeman.” He therefore offers a reward of $250 for the arrest and conviction of any such person found guilty of writing or sending such communications.”⁷³

     This did not stop such letters from preying on the fears of blacks for many months to come. In Victoria, “quite a number” of blacks were victimized by letters “typewritten on slips of bill heads,” supposedly signed 'The Axman' and 'The Hatchetman.' They were “thought to be no more than the work of some joker. One read: 'We warn you, you half white, and all your family to leave town in ten days.''⁷⁴ In the coastal town of Rockport the receipt of several “Voodoo letters” led the black community to form “an organization to protect themselves against expected visits of the 'axman,'” including a committee to “visit each incoming train to note the arrival of strange negroes” and one to “try to secure permissions from the police officials to carry weapons.”⁷⁵ In Luling slips of paper signed “Ax Man, Majority and Gamge, no. 25” were found under the doors of black residents warning them to “either vacate their buildings or leave the town permanently,” causing some to move out immediately. ⁷⁶ Letters from Houston were sent to four blacks in Columbus “with pictures of skull and crossbones, a head with an ax sticking in it and other devices with the words; 'June 19.'”⁷⁷

     A family in Houston received a particularly ornate and threatening letter. “The envelope had been edged in black, making it a good imitation of mourning stationery, and in the center was a black coffin. Stamped on each corner with a rubber letter printing outfit was the following inscription: “blood We Want and Blood We Must have.” The letter inside read “The axman is in town and he is not a negro. This is a warning for you. Blood, blood, blood.” This threw the entire neighborhood into a panic, and when the police arrived to investigate the letter they gave up on trying to “persuade the negroes to return to bed and the officers left them talking of the letter and hovering in groups supposed to meet any attack from the 'fiend.'” An investigation by detectives felt “that the letter is the work of some school children playing a joke at the expense of the superstitious negroes.”⁷⁸ Another family received a less ornate letter. “A large crossbones and skull were drawn crudely in the center and a large ax underneath. 'Look out, I am coming; you are next' were the words written on the paper, and it was signed 'Ax Man.' It is the opinion of the police the this letter is the prank of some friend taking advantage of the woman's fear of the 'fiend.'”⁷⁹

     The Houston Post reported a story of a cruel joke played with a potato. A porter on the return train from Beaumont went into the depot master's office to change from his uniform into his street clothes, but came running out so quickly he had to be stopped by several depot officials and a police officer. The cause of his fright was a potato on his suitcase carved to “resemble a message from the 'ax man.' It had a skull and cross-bones, the porter's initials and the sinister legend, 'You next' engraved thereon. It was signed 'the ax man,' too.” This apparently caused so much amusement that someone took the potato and changed the initials to those of a hack driver and dropped it in his carriage, who reportedly was so frightened he changed from working the day shift to the night to avoid the Axman's attentions.⁸⁰

     In Elgin, “(t)he axman fright had about subsided here when a negro man received a card reading thus: “Harry, you are next from Axman. Mean Axman.” The negroes are again in a perfect state of agony and despair.”⁸¹ The use of threatening letters was still being used in September as well, with one being turned over the Sheriff in San Marcos being clearly meant to terrorize blacks. It read

Sarah Adams, San Marcos: I want to warn you that San Marcos is our next place and we are after all these stray niggers like yourself. If you are there when we make our raid we are mighty likely to get you. These stray niggers running over the country are the ones we are after. It will only be a few days before we get there. You can take notice if you don't think we mean business. Wait and see. Your are not the only ones we are after in San Marcos. You had better lite out before we get there, which will only be a few days. We always send a letter ahead, in that way they don't believe it. AX COMMITTEE.”⁸²

     These attempts to frighten blacks were not limited to letters. The appearance of a “peculiar looking man” in Plano who “visited many places in the negro quarters of the town, trying gates and prying around” aroused “a panic among the local negroes, some of whom armed themselves and called on the officers for protection, which, of course, they were assured they should have.” The next day

“...about a dozen signs were found posted about the abodes of the colored population, and while they bore different wording, all were to the effect that the “ax-man” was coming, and the negroes had only 24 hours to make their get-a-way. This work is generally believed to have been done by boys who, knowing the superstitious nature of the negro, sought to frighten them. The better classes, who work and try to do right, have been assured that they shall not be hurt, and most of them went back to work Tuesday morning, although some of them were reluctant to do so. Of course the entire matter is regarded by the whites as a joke, and no trouble is anticipated by them.”⁸³

A letter to the Alto Herald also addressed the cruelty of these letters.

During the last twelve months a large number of negroes have been brutally murdered by some person or persons in Texas and Louisiana. In every instance, men, women and innocent little children have been brained as they asleep in their homes. The indications all point to the murderer being a negro, for an ax is the favorite weapon of the African. No matter whether he be black or white, I hope he will soon be apprehended, and will meet with the fate he so richly deserves. Following these brutal murders, many negroes are receiving anonymous threatening letters, evidently written by some hellish white man, which have caused much unnecessary uneasiness among the blacks. Such an act is the height of brutality, and the writers lay themselves liable to a sever punishment if detected. They ought to be hung. --- Harpoon⁸⁴

     Elijah Branch wrote in a letter to the Houston Post giving his views as a black man, suggesting that the post office should begin investigating these “blackmail letters” for possible clues to the Axman's identity.

All efforts should be made to run down the 'ax man' – the right one. It is possible in some cases for an ignorant negro to be caught, one who has not enough intelligence to exonerate himself, and yet he may be innocent of the crime.

It ought to be determined by the officers of the law, first, whether this killing is inspired by a well organized society whose sole purpose is to intimidate the negro race or whether each case is independent of the other. In many cases persons have received blackmail letters which should become the property of the postoffice inspector, so he could examine same and see where mailed and what connection they bear to one another, if any. This, in my judgment, would be the only starting point for the postoffice department.

I can only speak for my people. All of the law abiding negroes will unite with the peace officers in helping to run down these criminals, regardless as to who they are, and from the fact that they never have and never will be 'desirable citizens'...⁸⁵

     In Lafayette, Sheriff Lacoste even received an Axman letter in May. It's author, “evidently a negro,” claimed to be a member of “the '105,' who are banded together to kill negroes” and “that he is disgusted with the ax murders and willing confess his part in them...The letter makes the interesting statement that the victims of the axman are marked in advance by a man who goes into the towns and makes the necessary selections of victims, who are then dispatched by others. The writer deprecated the murders, but as his authority for them, cites the sixth and seventh book of Moses.” The sender of the letter also stated he was not afraid of being caught by law enforcement officials, but “is certain to have death meted out to him by his fellows.”⁸⁶



     Although some blacks were using unique techniques for protecting themselves, such as the man in Columbus who “has a system of fishing lines connected up to a cowbell that looks like a monster spider web,” most were taking to sleeping together, often at times with “as many as fifteen in a small house with windows and doors battened. Others divide watches and stand guard.”⁸⁷ Having death meted out by one's fellows was a definite hazard for during the Axman panic, as Adam Bobinaux had found out in Beaumont when he accidentally shot and killed his friend Horace Alexander. “All over Texas and Louisiana the colored people” were “...sleeping behind barred doors...with shot guns and pistols inready reach of the watcher, who is prepared to shoot on slight suspicion.”⁸⁸ In Houston it was “not regarded as safe for a negro to move about after dark among people of his own race, as many of them announce an intention to shoot first and ask pedestrians as to their mission afterward.”⁸⁹ Law enforcement officials in San Antonio were requested by several black citizens to be issued “permits to carry weapons, and others, without such permits, have resorted to the use of firearms when aroused by strange noises at the dead of night,”⁹⁰ with several arrests being made for related firearms offenses. It was reported that in Hallettsville the amount of ammunition being sold to blacks was greater than it had been in previous years.⁹¹ In Brenham, the firing of guns and pistols by blacks who had “been arming themselves for defense against the terrible butcher who slays people while they sleep” that the city marshal “determined to put a stop to the shooting and a number of arrests will probably be made as the result of the shooting and of the frequent stealing of cartridges from Brenham stores.”⁹² The constable in Gonzales arrested two blacks tenants for shooting at someone sneaking through some underbrush, fearing it was the Axman when it was just the landlady attempting to locate a turkey nest.⁹³

(Dave McKinney of La Grange. Photograph was taken by local whites mocking the Axman scare, and is courtesy of the Fayette Public Library and  Archives)

     Dan Green, of Yoakum was demonstrating to his wife how to use their shotgun “in case the axman made his appearance while he was absent” when it accidentally discharged both barrels and shot their daughter in her arms and thighs.⁹⁴ A unnamed white man was traced from a trail of blood after he attempted to break into the Elgin home of “a negress, Mary Colter” and found himself on the business end of a shotgun wielded by her teenage son, who feared he was the Axman.⁹⁵ Willie Harris woke from a dream of the Axman and ran out of his house in terror, crashing through a glass door and cutting his arms, legs and body. Other occupants of his rooming house awoke and followed him as he ran down the street, leaving “a trail of blood on the sidewalk as he ran and ...not overtaken until he fell exhausted nearly a mile from the house.” Doctors feared he might not recover from his wounds.⁹⁶

     A Houston Post reporter speaking to a local black man got details of a local “vigilance committee which was formed for the purpose of protecting the entire neighborhood.” The men on watch were required to make five rounds of his neighborhood during his nine hour watch, and was fined five dollars if he was found asleep while on duty. The interviewed man stated that while sitting on his porch on watch one night saw someone on walking around a house carrying what he was sure was an ax. He picked up his shotgun, went to the gate of the house and ordered the figure to stop, which it did. Despite his fright, the man on watch warily approached with his shotgun at the ready, only to find that what he had thought was an ax was a shovel being carried by the man who owned the house, who had been walking in his sleep.⁹⁷

     This fatal combination of fear and firearms lead to two deaths in Smithville on April 16. Ernest Smothers, unable to sleep, got up and was walking around in his room in a house where Wes Duval was on guard against the Axman. Duval, “nerves tautened by the long watches of a week...ran into the room, and without looking about him shot the supposed intruder, killing him instantly.” The sound of the shotgun raised an alarm in his neighbor, Max Warren, who grabbed his gun and ran over to render aid. But when he got there, he lost his nerve and headed back to his own house. Yet another neighbor, Morris Sellers, had also heard the gunshots and when he saw Warren running mistook him for a fleeing Axman and shot him. Both Duval and Sellers were held on homicide charges for a week before being released on $500 bail.⁹⁸

     Despite the deaths in Smithville, the Houston Post reported on “(t) first real ax man scare in which was blood was shed occurred yesterday morning” on the 19^th of April. The Brehnam Daily Banner, playing on the Houston report, went so far as to report that “(o)ne of the dreaded axemen has been caught at last, much to the gratification of many terrorized negroes who are in mortal fear of having their heads split open at night by the demon with an axe.” These stories were based on the arrest of Crawford Bray, a 42 year old junkyard worker who had been arrested the previous morning after he had terrorized a Houston neighborhood. After drinking way too much whiskey, Bray returned at three in the morning to the home of Prince Judge, with whom he'd had supper the previous evening. When Judge hesitated to let him in, Bray responded “I am the ax man; I want to get in the house, and if you don't open the door I will blow up the place with with dynamite.”

     Bray did indeed have an ax, which undoubtedly made Judge less inclined to let him in. Bray broke a window, crawled in through it and attacked Judge with the ax, slashing his arm. By this time the house was in a general uproar, with the women of the house screaming and the men rushing down to confront Bray, who began swinging his ax at them. By this time the entire neighborhood was awake and in an uproar over the possibility of the Axman being about, and an armed posse led by a local preacher, Rev. E.B. Evans, on the way. Bray attempted to escape by the back door but was captured before he could leave, and led by “a special committee of seven, five of whom had shotguns...appointed to conduct him to police headquarters.”

     Along the way, Bray began to sober up, and on arrival is reported to have told the Chief of Detectives “Boss, I sure is sorry about this thing, and I wouldn't have had it happen for $5000. I never is been in trouble and I never wants to be again.” He was held for assault to murder, although the charges were dropped 11 months later. Rev. Evans used the episode to relay to the police that there was talk in the black community of forming a “law and good order committee” offering a reward for anyone posing as an Axmen and “that the negroes were in great fear of the ax man and were honestly afraid and not putting on.” There were also reports that the neighborhood had received “several sheets of paper with skull and cross bones with an axe crudely drawn, containing the words, 'I am the axe-man – coming soon – you are next.'” The police, in turn, issued orders “to arrest suspicious characters, black and white and all persons who fail to give a good account of themselves.”⁹⁹



     Although the Axman was taking no white victims, his presence was nonetheless being noted in the white communities throughout Texas. A Temple newspaper article noted that the Axman scare had struck locally, and “...(i)f you haven't seen or heard of him, most assuredly you have no communication with the colored population. The axeman is the most dreaded boy that has come to disturb the peaceful dreams of Senegambia since the long ago days when the “Paterole” or the “Ku Klux” rode the lanes and by-ways.” Although the article, titled Axman'll Get You If You Don't Watch Out, was clearly made for white readers who might find the whole matter somewhat amusing, it did note that “it is to be considered that if a like epidemic of killing of families were to prevail with white folks as victims, there would be just as much fright as there is now, among the darkies.”¹⁰⁰

The Seagull Yearbook of Port Arthur High School, 1912, p73

     The all night vigils watching for the Axman were beginning to take a toll on whites dependent upon black workers as well. As far away as Louisiana it was being noted that the “axeman's crimes have negroes of south Texas in a state of terror at this time and in many instances they have stopped work, making the labor problem a serious one.”¹⁰¹ It was reported that around Columbus that “domestic services in the town and field work in the country is seriously interfered with. It is almost a daily occurrence for a cook or a yard man to report that they can not stay awake all night and work all day and that they will quit their positions to stay awake all night and sleep all day.”¹⁰² A local eatery in Bryan even attempted to capitalize on this with ads such as “When cookie is scared of the axeman and don't put in an appearance or wife feels indisposed, call on the Owl Dairy Lunch” and “Say, did you find an 's' on your door this morning? Well, don't be afraid of the axeman, for that is the first letter in 'stop at the Dairy Lunch.'”¹⁰³

     A fascination with the possibility of voodoo and it's racial undertones, compounded by the sensational confessions of Clementine Barnabet, fed much of the fascination that reporters were finding in the Axman story. An example of this can be found in this article, which mistakenly refers to Barnabet's last name as Crawford.

Despite the Crawford woman's denials the peace officers are convinced that she was but the instrument of a more powerful intelligence and her arrest has involved a “witch doctor,' who confesses to having provided her with certain “charms.” If the theory of the police here and elsewhere is correct these charms play an important part in the religious observances of the Church of the Sacrifice, and if the head of this sect can be located it is probable he will be subjected to surveillance, if not arrest.

These crimes have stirred up the negro population throughout the entire South, and it is not in San Antonio alone where members of this race are sitting up nights for fear of the mysterious “axman.” Among many of the more ignorant ones there is a superstitious dread which intensifies this fear and which in turn may, and probably has, sent hundreds of them to local “witch doctors” for charms to keep away the executioner.

For years it has been known that despite the enlightenment of the Twentieth Century, a species of voodooism has been kept alive in the “black belt” throughout the South. Few of the descendants of the slaves are more than four or five generations removed from barbarism and some even from cannibalism. Here and there an atavistic member of the race has handed down the weird practices of natives in Central Africa and in some instances improved on them. The result is that these “witch doctors” or “voodoos” as they are called, exercise a powerful influence over members of their race. They possess the “evil eye” and they “control the spirits” in such a way as to make them feared, and the average negro may laugh about it, but down in their hearts they can't shake off the dread with which they are possessed.

Moreover, these “witch doctors” do a thriving business, and if he truth be known, it isn't with members of their race alone. Many whites, just for fun, visit them, claiming, of course, that “it was just for the experience.” Fortunes are told or possibly a “love potion” is given; in some cases a charm is sold to ward off the “ha'nts.” Practically every child in the South who had a negro mammy has at some time or another been to “de doctor's” house to have mystic words spoke or his head rubbed by the queer old darkey.¹⁰⁴

     Another frequent source of news stories had to do with the growing use of a number of questionable preventive measures to ward off the attentions of the Axman. Many played on the theory that somehow the murdered families had been drugged to sleep before the killer slipped into the house, preventing them from rousing even as the were being killed.

The ways in which the precautions are taken are more amusing that effective. One favorite belief is that the Axeman in some way wafts chloroform into the sleeping room of his victims, thus enabling him to enter and kill all without arousing any. From somewhere, probably from a conjur doctor, it has been passed along that if water if placed in a vessel near the door some distance above the floor, the chloroform sill be taken up by the water instead of the fumes penetrating the room.¹⁰⁵

     A similar water method reported on in Houston suggested that it was a sleeping powder used by the Axman, with the inhabitants of the home which induced “a deep sleep from which they do not awaken before he has entered and brained them with an axe, his official weapon.” This particular remedy was being peddled by a “hoo-doo man” who would “divulge this information until he has been paid a certain amount” and moving on to the next potential customer “before his great and powerful knowledge has been broadcast in the neighborhood and he loses sales.” Another remedy was a green ointment sold by “another kind of 'hoo-doo man.'” It was rubbed on the head in large amounts, but lost it's power after nine hours and needed to be reapplied, leading one user to complain “that he could not sleep on account of a fear that he would oversleep himself and fall a victim to the 'axe man' after his liniment had lost its power.”¹⁰⁶

     Strangers began to be suspect in many communities, especially if they were thought to have any voodoo ties. O.L. Escrow, “a strange and peculiar negro,” was going house to house seeking a room to rent and writing down details on the location of these houses. “It was said that he kept it up almost all day and negroes fearing that the was the ax man sent for the police” who arrested him for vagrancy. After his arrest a”a peculiar hood and cape resembling a night rider's costume” was discovered in a nearby ditch, causing further alarm. Despite police offers of protection and reassurances “that the ax man is not in Houston...the general excitement and fear...has far from subsided.”¹⁰⁷

     A “negro fortune-teller” in Halletsville was “compelled to leave town” after she warned of a local Axman attack.¹⁰⁸ A woman who arrived in Lockhart “who from her dress and mysterious actions created the impression that she was in some manner connected with the much talked of axman.” She was arrested by the sheriff and given orders when released was given orders by the sheriff to leave on the next train.¹⁰⁹ In Belton a “'batty' colored woman” appeared in town “arrayed in a royal purpole skirt, was adorned with mammoth bows of red ribbon, wore a very large hat and black beil with white cloth tied over her mouth, and her clothing was bejeweled with brass dresser drawer handles,” causing “considerable excitement” when she announced she was “half crazy and half ax-man.”¹¹⁰

     When Mrs. H. Williams appeared in Bartlett, “wearing false hair made from white people's hair and wearing quite a number of skirts with large pockets in them, full of various trinkets...cheap jewelry, plate, knives and forks and other junk” she was arrested for vagrancy. She claimed her husband was a “faith healer and fortune teller,” and while many thought she was a “harmless crank” a number of local blacks became fearful that she might be “a Voo Doo priestess and that the trinkets and things found on her were to be used in the mystic ceremonies and rites of Voo Dooism.” Thinking she might be an Axwoman a crowd gathered around the jail where she was held and “told the officers that if they would give her to them they would kill her.”¹¹¹

     After being delayed by a local meningitis quarantine in Victoria, a blind woman with dark glasses and “pupils strangely deformed”, professing to be a “religious and educational lecturess” possessing “healing powers” arrived from Rosenberg. Her presence “created a general panic among the negroes of Victoria, who spoke of her as the axwoman. The more terror-stricken darkies threatened to kill her, and it took the combined efforts of the city marshal's and sheriff's departments to protect the woman.” She was eventually put up “at the home of a negro deputy sheriff, who was almost as much alarmed as any other negro over the presence of the woman, and before taking her into his house admonished her if she made any crooked move he would kill her.”¹¹²

     Around Lake Charles and Lafayette in Louisiana, Rev. J.S. Anderson was selling “'Paradise Pills,' for which he claimed the greatest of 'conjah' powers'” and “hoodoo bag.” It was apparently a lucrative business, since he later claimed he made more than $3000 from his sales. Unfortunately he also fell prey to suspicions “of being connected with the sect or society” that was thought to be associated with the Axman murders. Eventually, “for fear of his life” he went to the police and admitted to actually being A.N. Goodman, a preacher from San Antonio who had been convicted of embezzlement but had escaped prison in Texas several years previously. He “denied having anything to do with the murders and only confessed, so he said, that he might escape the vengeance of the colored people who suspicioned him.” On his return to Texas he “begged the officer not to take hi through Crowley on the trip west, as he would be lynched if seen by the people of that town (in whose vicinity some of the 'ax man's' wholesale murders were committed.)”¹¹³ Initially it was felt by law officers that he might be the Axman, and was even questioned by Sheriff Tobin and others about his whereabouts during his years on the run, but was eventually considered innocent of any murders and returned to Huntsville prison to serve out his term.¹¹⁴

     In early June, San Antonio's black community east of the railway station once again found itself immersed in a deep panic over what they felt was a thwarted Axman attack. James Dashiell was a 49 year old retired mailman who lived with Lula, his 35 year old wife, their three sons and daughter. They had lived near the Casaway family, but moved after they had been murdered. Their new residence was within a few blocks of where the Burton family had been murdered just six weeks earlier. Dashiell awoke to find a man about to enter into a side window with what appeared to be carrying “what resembled either an ax or heavy club.” After the intruder fled it was discovered he had cut the inner screen to the window and “red pepper was scattered about the window and in the yard...Negroes of the neighborhood say without reserve it was an occurrence sufficiently grave to again put them in fear of their lives.” They protested that they were not being allowed to adequately protect themselves, and also cited the lack of “street lights in the vicinity of the recent crimes, which makes it easy for a criminal to rob houses or go to greater extremes.” Noting that “their votes have been sought to help place in office some of the men who are not now considering their rights” they planned to meet with their state representative “and others in the hope of enlisting their efforts in getting the Governor to send rangers here to bring about at least a feeling of security.” ¹¹⁵

     Their protest of not being able to adequately protect themselves had already been an issue prior to the attempt on Dashiell's home. Because of previous appeals from the black community, Sheriff Tobin had been appointing “reputable negroes following the unrest created in the negro resident districts by the murder of two men, a woman and two children by the 'Axman.'” Four of these deputies, despite carrying authorization of their appointments had been arrested by city police officers for unlawfully carrying pistols. An unnamed official of the police department made a statement to the newspapers to justify these arrests that “nearly two hundred negroes of the city have been deputized by Sheriff Tobin and in the belief that such authority gives them the required legal permission are carrying on their persons arms of various sorts, the greatest number having revolvers. We do not propose to place the lives of the police officers of the city in jeopardy through this indiscriminate 'toting' of firearms, and instructions have been issued to the force to make every effort to round up all persons unlawfully carrying arms.”

     Responding to these arrests, Sheriff Tobin noted that no more than twelve deputies had been appointed and that “the police department should view the arming of these negroes with alarm is rather absurd to my mind. The appointments were made solely because of the unrest created in the negro resident districts following the murders committed by the 'axman.' In these districts the protection afforded by the city police is practically null.” He emphasized that each applicant had been thoroughly screened, and that he did “not believe the police officers need fear any danger from those holding my appointments.” In addition he asked for writs of habeas corpus to bring the contest the arrests of his deputies in county court.¹¹⁶

     One of the arrested deputies, M.B. Inman, filed suit against the city marshal and three officers for false imprisonment, asking for $20,000 in damages. His suit charged that “he was arrested without legal warrant, confined in a 'vermin-infested cellroom' and deprived of his liberty and denied bail, notwithstanding the offering of cash and realty securities in amounts ranging from $500 to more than $5,000.” After he filed his suit, he was released from jail on his own recognizance. In response the city marshal stated that “it would not surprise me if the other negro deputies took similar steps. The men were arrested because I believed their carrying of firearms a menace to the police and the public and the State has declared 'pistol toting' unlawful.”¹¹⁷

     At the end of June the Bexar County grand jury reported its actions regarding the appointment of deputies by Sheriff Tobin, finding that they had “been appointed in emergency and no record was kept of such deputation. We have been advised that all such deputations have been recalled” and that “hereafter no deputation of any kind shall be issued without the proper course being pursued.”¹¹⁸ While campaigning for his office again a month later, Tobin “defended himself in the matter of appointing negro deputies, explaining this action was taken after the appearance of the dreaded 'ax-man' and that the negroes of the community were panic stricken.” Speaking in front of the Alamo, he insisted “I have no apology to make for this. I appointed some ten or fifteen of the leading negroes to patrol the streets in which they live, and should the same conditions arise again I would reappoint them. If you don't think this was right, don't vote for me, but I think those negroes were entitled to protection, and if I'm in a position to do so I'll give it to them.”¹¹⁹ He was re-elected Sheriff not only in that election but until 1923, when he ran for mayor, winning that election and serving in that office until his death in 1927.

     On August 16, the Dashiell home was once again broken into again, with what the papers described as “what appears to be another visitation of the mysterious axman...Undoubtedly the wielder of the ax had planned to wipe out the entire family, but his misdirected blows at the head of the woman failed to silence the first victim and her screams roused the other members of the family.” according to her account, Lula Dashiell who was sleeping next to her daughter, awoke to to find a man swinging an ax at her. After a glancing blow which she hardly felt struck her shoulder she awoke, “immediately thought of the axman and quickly grabbed my child, all the while screaming as loudly as I could, when the ax struck me again on the ankle.” At this point her husband “fired several shots from a pistol at the would be assassin, but as far as known none of the shots sent true...the escape of the would be murderer … as mysterious as his entrance.”¹²⁰

     The following day law officers declared that they believed “the assault was not made by the axman. The officers were inclined to believe that the job was such a bunglesome one that the murderer who caused officers in this section to spend many sleepless nights would not be guilty of such an attempt.” They reported that “the weapon used was not an ax, but the wound in the woman's arm was caused by a shot fired from a small caliber pistol, while the bruise on the right ankle was a mere scratch, probably caused by a fall” and “that her screams awakened the neighborhood (and) in the excitement the theory that the axman had visited the house spread.” It was not clear from the news report if the pistol shot was one that had been fired by her husband at the fleeing intruder.

Although the original story of the Dashiell being another Axman attack was carried in many papers throughout the state, the San Antonio Express was the only paper that published this correction. 

     In retrospect, it seems that the Hempstead murders were most likely the last of the Axman murders targeting families. Other murders were being linked by the press to the Axman, such as murder on July 6, 1912 of a single black whose head was bashed in while sleeping in a stable office. While this hardly fit the modus operandi of the Axman it nonetheless provided the Houston Post an opportunity to run a lengthy article based almost solely on the previous Axman murders and giving a running total of the body count.¹²¹ Plugan Reed, a black woman in Sulfur Springs was found in June with her head crushed and an ax on the floor next to her dead body. Fear that this was the Axman at work again spread, but her two year old found playing in the same room, making this murder quite different from Axman murders in which children were slaughtered along with their parents.¹²²

Newspapers soon were speaking of the panic in the past tense. In Houston, Leon Narciss had been arrested on a charge of carrying a pistol, which he had “purchased” a pistol from a pawnbroker with a “99-year lease in which the negro agreed to pay a certain price for the weapon and 50 cents per day.” He was acquitted in September with “his defense being that during the 'axman' scare he was on his way home with a revolver when he was arrested.”¹²³ Effects of the Axman murders were even mentioned at the 1912 session of the Grand Lodge of the Colored Knights of Pythias in San Antonio. Among other services, the Knights of Pythias offered burials to members, and “grand medical examiner” Dr. T.E. Speed was reporting on the relevant death rates. “Last year, our death rate was a little over ten to the thousand. This year, with the axman and twelve murders, meningitis...the big explosion in San Antonio shops and an increase in our numerical strength, makes our death rate larger for the year just closed.”¹²⁴

     Clementine Barnabet did eventually go to trial and in late October was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Norbert Randall's wife, although she claimed responsibility for 19 of the murders in Louisiana.¹²⁵ After being incarcerated in Angola State Penitentiary, she attempted to escape the following year, but was caught within a day. Otherwise she incurred no infractions and due to a 1902 Louisiana law was eligible for reduction of her sentence and released in 1923.¹²⁶ But while she was the only person ever found guilty of an Axman murder, it is clear that those responsible for the majority of the Axman murders were never caught.

     There was a series of roughly contemporaneous unsolved ax murders of families throughout the American Midwest during the same time period, the most famous being in Villisca, Iowa in June of 1912. Some contemporary writers have tried to link one of the suspects, Henry Moore, to the Texas/Louisiana ax murders, but this seems unlikely at best. The eight Villisca victims, including six children, were white and affluent, as were the other murder victims, and the author of an extensively researched paper on the Midwest murders and their investigation by a Department of Justice Special Agent, M.W. McClaughry, clearly distinguishes between these murders and the Texas/Louisiana ax murders.¹²⁷ Unfortunately the Axman murders did not have a Special Agent assigned to the case.

The Texas/Louisiana murders have been mentioned in passing in several murder anthologies, such as Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters and The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large, and more extensively in Dark Bayou; Infamous Louisiana Homicides.¹²⁸ There has even been a book on the subject recently published by Todd C. Elliott with the unfortunate title of Axes of Evil: The True Story of the Ax-Man Murders.¹²⁹ These focus primarily on Clementine Barnabet and the Louisiana murders, and do bring to light the interesting proximity between railroads and the location of the murders, most of which took place quite close to the railroad stations, an important consideration.¹³⁰ A number of websites on the murders have also sprung up, ranging from the lurid to archives of related news stories, but these primarily deal with Clementine Barnabet and can be readily found with a browser search for her name. A literary connection is suggested by Janis Stout, who suggests that Katherine Ann Porter may have called upon her memories of the Axman murders while living in Houston during the worst of the Axman panic, and “considering how attuned she was to the newspaper as a social institution” utilized the imagery of an ax in her short story “Noon Wine.” ¹³¹ But aside from Bill Stein's well researched The Glidden Ax Murder¹³², the Texas murders have had little written on them.

     One academic paper on the subject by William Ivy Hair was published in 1972, incorporating information on several other overlooked black murders in the South during the same period as the Axman. He also offers interesting ideas on the prevalence of mulattoes among the victims.

In a society where blacks were liable to be mobbed for the slightest breach of racial etiquette, the centuries-old taboo against molesting whites was strong indeed. Even among violent blacks for whom the taboo posed no psychic obstacle, killing whites was, as a practical matter, a more perilous activity than killing Negroes. People of mixed ancestry, however, were classified by white society as being members of “the colored races.” In effect, any discernible amount of Negro blood made one a Negro. To most whites, the murder of a mulatto family might be a regrettable incident, but was no more reason for an extensive manhunt than the murder of a very black family.

It seems very reasonable to hypothesize that in the mind of a violence-prone black of the early twentieth century, the mulatto would make a convenient surrogate for the hated white man. A light- skinned Negro, or a family with such members, was the closest thing to a white person he could destroy with relative impunity.¹³³

     Hopefully this short essay on the Axman panic of 1912 in Texas will inspire others to look into these long overlooked murders, not just from a sense of morbid curiosity but from the broader perspective of looking into long overlooked portions of history and what this oversight has to say about how the past is remembered through often unrecognized racial filters. In the sense that the murders remain unsolved they remain a mystery to this day. But the greater mystery is why one of the largest killing sprees in American history, responsible for the death of close to fifty men women and children, has been so nearly lost to the collective consciousness of an American public so fascinated with murder.

_____________________________

1The Bryan Daily Eagle and Pilot, April 18, 1912, p2

2There are various estimates of the total number of murders and victims in the Axman murders, especially with regards to the earliest and most poorly documented murders. One of the best timelines of the murders can be found in Todd C. Elliott's Axes of Evil: The True Story of the Ax-Man Murders, Trine Day, 2015. Elliotts' research in turn draws from research done by Robert C. Benoit, a local historian and educator from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

3San Antonio Express, March 23, 1911, p1. Most of the details of the lives of the Casaway family, including this quote, come from a series of articles that ran in the San Antonio Express, beginning on March 23, 1911 over the following week and beyond.. This extensive coverage was at least in part due to the unprecedented nature of the murder, but speaks well of the reporting being done by Express reporters and the wider acceptance of racial differences in San Antonio due to a long history of coexistence dating back to its founding as a Spanish frontier mission.

4Santa Fe New Mexican, March 27, 1911, p6

5Although all newspaper accounts and the 1900 census state that Alfred was black, he was probably a very light colored mulatto. The 1900 census data is odd in that it also lists Lizzie as black, with unknown months of birth, the wrong birth state for Alfred and unknown occupations for both, with some data penciled in, possibly at a later date, suggesting that the information was obtained from neighbors rather than from the Casaways themselves. They are also the only whites listed as living in their neighborhood . On the other hand, the 1910 census lists them both, as well as their children, as white, but with the rest of the data more correct.

6When Principal Tarver picked the keys up, he “appeared to be superstitious of the number 13, and at first would not accept the keys. He took them, however, saying he would not like to use them again in opening the doors of his school.” (San Antonio Express, March 23, 1911, p14)

7San Antonio Express, March 25, 1911, p3

8This information comes from examining the same page of the 1910 Census on which the Casaways are also found. Sinclair's trade is given as “Merchant,” the nature of his industry as “Undertaker.”

9San Antonio Express, March 25, 1911, p3

10San Antonio Express, March 25, 1911, p3

11San Antonio Express, March 31, 1911, p3

12San Antonio Express, March 25, 1911 p3

13San Antonio Express, March 31, 1911, p3

14Bismark Daily Tribune, March 29, 1911, p8.. This is one of the articles which speculated that Lizzie Casaway, although generally considered white, had “a trace of negro blood.”

15The Daily Ardmoreite (Ardmore, Oklahoma), April 3, 1911 p7

16San Antonio Express, March 31, 1911, p3

17San Antonio Express, March 28, 1911, p20

18The deputy sheriff at the arrest was Will G. Tobin, Sheriff Tobin's brother. The sheriff himself was on a three week vacation on the Gulf Coast with his family.

19San Antonio Express, March 31, 1911, p3

20San Antonio Express, April 8, 1911, p8; San Antonio Express, April 12, 1911, p32

21San Antonio Express, March 25, 1911, p3

22Ibid.

23San Antonio Express, August 15, 1911 , p16

24San Antonio Express, May 28, 1911, p45

25Ibid.

26San Antonio Express, August 16, 1911 p7

27Ibid.

28Lafayette Advertiser, March 28, 1911, p2

29Lafayette Advertiser, November 28, 1911; the father's occupation, as well as family names and ages are from the 1910 Federal Census data, and are not mentioned in the newspaper article.

30The Mahoning Dispatch (Canfield, Ohio), December 1, 1911, p2

31The Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa), November 28, 1911, p1

32New Iberia Enterprise and Independent Observer, December 2, 1911, p1; the date on the story is November 28

33This refers to a phonetic interpretation of a “conjure,” a ritual object used as a voodoo charm.

34Corrales, Barbara Smith, Prurience, Prostitution and Progressive Improvments; The Crowley Connection, 1909 -1918, Louisiana History; The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Winter , 2004), pp. 37-70

35Lafayette Advertiser, January 23, 1912, p1; information from the 1910 Federal Census indicates her husband was living in the house in 1910 and that Marie did not live there, as well as indicating the woman initially checking on the Warner's, Harriet Crane, was the husband's mother rather than Marie's, as reported in the Lafayette Advertiser

36The Pensacola Journal (Pensacola, Florida), January 23, 1912, p1

37The Manning Times (Manning, South Carolina), February 7, 1912, p1

38Lafayette Advertiser, January 30, 1912, p1

39Lafayette Advertiser, January 23, 1912, p1

40Le Meschacebe, (Lucy, Louisiana), February 10, 1912, p7

41Lafayette Advertiser, February 13, 1912, p1

42The Pensacola Journal, February 25, 1921, p1

43The Lafayette Advertiser, February 13, 1912, p1 and p4

44Lafayette Advertiser, February 23, 1912, p1

45The Houston Post, February 22, 1912, p12

46The Houston Post, February 22, 1912, p8

47New Iberia Enterprise and Independent Observer, February 24, 1912, p2

48El Paso Herald, March 14, 1912, p13

49The Houston Post, March 3, 1912, p6

50The Houston Post, March 7, 1912, p1

51This, as well as other details , come from an article by Bill Stein entitled The Glidden Ax Murder, in the Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Vol. 1, No. 10, September 1991. p307-312.

52Per the 1910 census, he is listed as a mulatto and his father born in Germany although the Houston Post article refers to him as “an octaroon of considerable intelligence”; some accounts say he was separated from his wife rather than widowed.

53The Houston Post, March 28, 1912, p3

54The Houston Post, March 29, 1912 p4

55San Antonio Express, April 14, 1912, p20

56The Houston Post, April 13, 1912, p3. The accounts of this letter vary between Post and Express reports. The Post report states that the letter was not dated but mailed from within the city; while the Express gives the April 2 date and says it was “said to have contained a description of a negro whose presence in various towns is coincident with these gruesome affairs.”

57San Antonio Express, April 13, 1912 p16

58San Antonio Express, April 14, 1912, p20

59The Houston Post, April 14, 1912, p6

60According to the 1910 Census, although William Burton is listed as black, his wife and two children are listed as mulattoes. Although Leon Evers is not listed, his mother and two siblings (three, including Cassie) were listed as mulattoes.

61San Antonio Express, April 14, 1912 p20

62San Antonio Express, April 15, 1912 p12

63San Antonio Express, April 14, 1912 p20

64San Antonio Express, April 18, 1912, p7

65The Houston Post, April 14, 1912, p6

66San Antonio Express, April 15, 1912, p12

67At least according to the 1900 and 1910 Federal Census data for Burney and his family, as well as the 1900 data for Eva Jones.

68San Antonio Express, April 17, 1912, p7

69San Antonio Express, April 17, 1912, p4. The use of the plural throughout this article makes it clear that more than one murderer were feared to be involved in these killings. The best non-fiction book on the Servant Girl Murders is Skip Hollandsworth's The Midnight Assassin, (2015, Henry Holt), while Steven Saylor's A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry & the Texas Servant Girl Murders of 1885 is an excellent fictional depiction of the murders as well.

70San Antonio Express, April 19, 1912, p11

71San Antonio Express, April 17, 1912, p12 and p12. Astute readers of footnotes will recognize that there are four separate articles in this single issue of the paper devoted to the Axman. The chalked letter “s” is also interesting, in that it is similar in shape to the number “5;” a 5 (or Human Five) was found chalked on the door of the Broussard family after they were killed.

72San Antonio Express, April 18, 1912, p24

73Amarillo Daily News, April 20, 1912, p1

74San Antonio Express, April 23, 1912, p2

75San Antonio Express, April 28, 1912, p12

76San Antonio Express, June 30, 1912, p3

77The Houston Post, April 19, 1912, p7. This page is incorrectly numbered as 1 on the Portal to Texas History site.

78The Houston Post, April 24, 1912, p16

79The Houston Post, April 18, 1912, p18

80The Houston Post, March 31, 1912, p32

81San Antonio Express, May 1, 1912, p7

82 San Antonio Express, September 26, 1912, p11

83The Plano Star-Courier, May 2, 1912 p8

84The Alto Herald, May 9, 1912, p 6

85The Houston Post, April 19, 1912, p 7. (The Portal to Texas History site incorrectly gives the page number as 1.)

86New Iberia Enterprise and Independent Observer, May 18, 1912, p1

87The Houston Post, April 19, 1912, p7. (Incorrectly labeled as 1 at the Portal to Texas History site.)

88The Temple Daily Telegram, April 19, 1912, p8

89The Caucasian, (Shreveport, Louisiana), April 23, 1912, p2

90San Antonio Express, April 18, 1912, p7

91San Antonio Express, April 22, 1912, p3

92Brenham Daily Banner, April 17, 1912, p1

93San Antonio Express, April 26, 1912, p4

94San Antonio Express, April 21, 1912, p44

95San Antonio Express, April 16, 1912, p11

96The Houston Post, April 25, 1912, p2

97The Houston Post, April 21, 1912, p16

98The Houston Post, April 17, 1912, p5; San Antonio Express, April 26, 1912, p4

99The Houston Post, April 19, 1912, p9; Brenham Daily Banner, April 19, 1912, p1; The Houston Post, May 7, 1913, p18

100 The Temple Daily Telegram, April 19, 1912 p8

101 The Caucasian (Shreveport, Louisiana), April 23, 1912, p2

102 San Patricio County News, April 25, 1912, p2

103 The Bryan Daily Eagle and Pilot, April 22, 1912, p5; The Bryan Daily Eagle and Pilot, April 22, 1912, p5

104 San Antonio Express, April 21, 1912, p41

105 The Temple Daily Telegram, April 19, 1912, p8

106 The Houston Post, April 21, 1912, p16. The water preventative was widespread wide throughout the state, a version of it being used Ed Deere, with whom this article began.

107 The Houston Post, April 18, 1912, p18

108 San Antonio Express, April 22, 1912, p3

109 San Antonio Express, May 14, 1912, p13

110 The Temple Daily Telegram, May 29, 1912 , p3

111 The Temple Daily Telegram, April 23, 1912, p8

112 San Antonio Express, April 23, 1912, p2

113 The Houston Post, June 12, 1912, p11

114 San Antonio Express, June 11, 1912, p3; The Temple Daily Telegram, June 12, 1912, p8. Additional information comes from Convict and Conduct Registers from the Texas State Archives.. Goodman was acquitted by Governor Colquitt in January of 1914.

115 San Antonio Express, June 2, 1912, p2

116 San Antonio Express, May 20, 1912, p6

117 San Antonio Express, June 9, 1912, p9

118 San Antonio Express, June 30, 1912, p10

119 San Antonio Express, July 26, 1912, p5

120 San Antonio Express, August 17, 1912, p3

121 42 by their count, including the questionable Port Arthur murder occasioning the article. The Houston Post, July 8, 1912, p2

122 The Caucasian (Shreveport, Louisiana), June 11, 1912, p2

123 The Houston Post, September 5, 1912, p 8

124 San Antonio Express, June 14, 1912, p3

125 The Houston Post, October 26, 1912, p4. Clementine Barnabet was eventually released.

126 Alan G. Gauthreaux, D.G. Hippensteel, Dark Bayou: Infamous Louisiana Homicides, McFarland, 2015, p63

127 Beth H. Klingensmith, The 1910's Ax Murders: An overview of the crimes and the McClaughry theory, found at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bkling/hi815%20moore%20history%20paper.pdf. The Villasca murders are covered, with additional references in The Ax Murderer Who Got Away by Mike Dash in the June 8, 2012 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. The “Villisca Ax Murder House” is now not only open to tours, but the more adventurous “ghost hunter” can book an overnight stay for $428 (prices as of March, 2017).

128 Peter Vronsky, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Penguin, 2004, p31; Nigel Cawthorne, The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large, Little, Brown Book Group, 2011, with a two page entry on The Southern Pacific Railroad Axeman; Alan G. Gauthreaux, D.G. Hippensteel, Dark Bayou: Infamous Louisiana Homicides, McFarland, 2015, with a chapter entitled The Case of the Human Five, p52-64.

129 Todd C. Elliott, Axes of Evil: The True Story of the Ax-Man Murders, Trine Day, 2015

130 In the case of the San Antonio murders, the Casaways and the Burtons lived within a few blocks of the railway station. After the Burton murders a train would have been the only way to travel in time to Hempstead for the murder of the Burneys in Hempstead, another murder taking place within blocks of the railway station.

131 Janis P. Stout, South By Southwest: Katherine Anne Porter and the Burden of Texas History, University of Alabama Press, 2013, p121

132 Bill Stein, The Glidden Ax Murder, Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal: A Journal of Colorado County History, Vol. 1, No. 10, p307-312

133 William Ivy Hair, “Inquisition for Blood”: An Outbreak of Ritual Murder in Lousiana, Georgia, and Texas, 1911-1912,” Louisiana Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, Vol. XI, No. 4, Winter 1972