BuzzFeed Unsolved, a YouTube series that delves into unsolved true crime cases and the supernatural, explored stories and theories regarding the Axeman in S2E1, "The Terrifying Axeman of New Orleans".

The inconsistencies around how many victims the Axeman of New Orleans actually killed are partly because some only count immediate deaths while others count additional deaths that resemble the Axeman’s M. Various people were suspected of being the Axeman of New Orleans, though witnesses could only describe the attacker as “dark-skinned,”“heavy set,” and wearing a “downturned” hat. In the virtual reality game The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners multiple references to the Axeman can be found. Media attention soon turned to Besumer himself, as a series of letters written in German, Russian, and Yiddish were discovered in a trunk at the man's home. Ida is a misfit partly because she is an African-American girl that is light-skinned enough to pass for white.Though every citizen of the ‘Big Easy’ thinks they know who could be behind the terrifying murders, Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot, heading up the official investigation, is struggling to find leads. Inspired by a true story, set against the heady backdrop of jazz-filled, mob-ruled New Orleans, The Axeman’s Jazz by Ray Celestin is an ambitious, gripping thriller from a major talent in historical crime fiction. A sentence from the Axeman's letter to The Times-Picayune is spoken at the beginning of Fila Brazillia's song "Tunstall and Californian Haddock. Countless people faced questioning, and even some of the victims themselves were suspected of being the Axeman of New Orleans, as was the case with one man named Louis Besumer (who was separately suspected of being a German spy). My Favorite Murder, a true crime podcast, covered the story of the Axeman on their 60th episode entitled "Jazz It".

The plot – a young man who fantasies about being a hijra and commits murder in drag, pursued by a jaded inspector whose discovery of corruption in influential families put the kibosh on his career – is standard fare. So despite his sloppy victim survival rate of 50%, you got to hand it to the Axeman of New Orleans — he had a fine taste in music. She woke up on the evening of August 5, 1918, to see a dark figure looming over her bed before bashing her face in with an axe. While there were a few people suspected of being the shadowy axe murderer, namely Andrew Maggio, the authorities were never able to get a conclusive or even remotely solid idea of who the Axeman of New Orleans was. Weeks later, after going in and out of consciousness, Harriet Lowe told police that she thought Besumer was in fact a German spy, which led to his immediate arrest.My suspicion is that there's some kind of racial or ethnic anxiety, that he perhaps has this resentment of these not-quite-white foreigners who are doing better than he thinks they ought to be doing," says Davis. Police received a slew of reports, in which citizens claimed to have seen an Axeman lurking in New Orleans neighborhoods. The retired detective cited similarities in the manner by which the two sets of homicides had been committed, as reason to assume that they had been conducted by the same individual. On August 10, 1918, Pauline and Mary awoke to the sound of a commotion in the adjoining room where their uncle resided. One theory holds that the attacks were racially motivated, given that most of the victims were Italian-American immigrants, who had been facing a general wave of bigotry in the U.

After this look at the Axeman of New Orleans, read up on five more terrifying serial killers you’ve never heard of before. The Axeman is one of three serial killers referenced by Jughead Jones in the opening narration of the fourth episode, Chapter Seventeen: The Town That Dreaded Sundown, of the second season of Riverdale. Lowe became the center of a media circus, as she continually made scandalous and often false statements relating to both the attacks and the character of Louis Besumer, some of which are described in the preceding description. While certainly obscure, the strange unsolved case of the Axeman of New Orleans is undoubtedly not forgotten. Almost a year later, Rosie announced that she had falsely accused the two out of jealousy and spite.Lowe died August 5, 1918, just two days after doctors performed surgery in an effort to repair her partially paralyzed face. The main theme of the book is truth and prejudice – how what we consider to be the truth may just be our own, personal interpretation of the world around us, and how that interpretation can be influenced by our prejudices. The Axeman killings are also referred to in the short story "Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz" by Poppy Z. The Axeman of New Orleans was an unidentified American serial killer active in New Orleans, Louisiana, and surrounding communities, including Gretna, from May 1918 to October 1919. I don't think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past.