'Jazz It Out — or Get the Axe': Inside the Story of a Serial Killer and a Chilling Ultimatum

The letter-writer called themselves a devil. The city called them the Axeman. And for one night in 1919, New Orleans danced not out of joy — but to stay alive.

That night, March 19, came after the Times-Picayune published a chilling letter allegedly from the Axeman. The writer promised to spare any home playing jazz at 12:15 a.m. “If everyone has a jazz band going,” the writer wrote, “so much the better… those who do not jazz it out… will get the axe.”

The city responded with music. Homes, bars, and dance halls pulsed with sound in a discordant, desperate attempt to stave off death.

Between 1918 and 1919, at least four people were killed — many of them Italian grocers — and up to 17 attacked. Victims were often bludgeoned in their sleep with their own axes. Entry was usually gained by removing a small door panel, suggesting a physically slight intruder. No clear motive emerged. No arrest stuck.

The attacks were brutal.

Joseph Maggio’s throat was slashed and skull fractured; his wife, Catherine, choked on her own blood. On March 9, 1919, a 2-year-old girl was killed and her parents were injured in another attack.

Some believe the Axeman’s letter was genuine. Others think it was a prank — or a publicity stunt. “It’s deliberately theatrical and fully aware of the city’s superstitions,” says local historian Bond Ruggles, who runs Hottest Hell Tours, a company that offers macabre walking tours of New Orleans’ haunted past.

Ruggles tells PEOPLE the letter, whether authentic or not, reflected deeper tensions — it came just after the city shut down Storyville, New Orleans’ red-light district and a hub for jazz, at a time when Black musicians were being criminalized for performing.

“If the letter wasn’t from the killer,” Ruggles says, “maybe it was a ploy to get the city to embrace jazz again — and by extension, the people who created it.”

The Axeman remains one of New Orleans’ most enduring legends, inspiring books, jazz ballads and even an appearance in American Horror Story, the FX series.

“For all the mythologizing, real people were attacked,” Ruggles says. “Real families were destroyed. And we still don’t know who did it.”

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She’s spent years studying the case — and now believes the Axeman may not have been a man at all. “I don’t know that I believe anymore there was an Axeman,” she says. “I think a woman outsmarted everyone.”

Her theory points to the survivors — many struck repeatedly but left alive. “If a man had done it, they’d be dead,” she says. She also cites the small entry points cut into doors: “That tells you something about size and strength.”

A 1921 article in the Los Angeles Times reported that Esther Albano — widow of Mike Pepitone, believed to be the Axeman’s final victim — shot a man named Joseph Manfre in California. She claimed he had confessed to her husband’s murder.

Manfre, also known by the names Mumfre or Monfre, had a criminal record and was once suspected in similar crimes. Some true crime authors believe he was the Axeman. But the evidence is speculative.

Ruggles proposes a twist: What if Esther and Manfre had been lovers? “She runs off with him, and then when it’s convenient, says, ‘It was him,’” Ruggles says. “And that’s the end of the story.”

In her view, Esther may have killed her husband and framed Manfre to avoid scandal — and inherit everything. “It was a smart move,” Ruggles says. “If you were a widow in Louisiana, you kept everything.”

Her theory is not widely accepted. But, she says, that’s part of the point.

“A woman like that — with motive and opportunity — would’ve been overlooked because of her gender,” she says. “We were all looking for a man.”