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jazz it (if there be any) Johanna were murdered at home in May 1912, both will get the axe!” On the appointed night, already shot at close range and thus divorced entirely from the known for raucous celebration, New Orleans was even Ax Man crimes. Ironically, there were other unsolved noisier than usual. The din included numerous perfor-ax murders in Louisiana during 1911, claiming a total mances of “The Axman’s Jazz,” a song composed for of 16 lives, but the victims were all black and none were the occasion, and the evening passed without a new killed in New Orleans.
    attack.
    On June 28, 1918, a baker delivering bread to the The Jordano trial opened in Gretna on May 21,
    grocery of Louis Besumer found a panel cut from the 1919. Charles Cortimiglia did his best for the defense, back door. He knocked, and Besumer emerged, blood but jurors believed his wife and convicted both defen-streaming from a head wound. Inside the apartment, dants of murder on May 26. Frank Jordano was sen-Besumer’s “wife”—Anna Lowe, a divorcée—lay criti-tenced to hang, while his elderly father received a term cally wounded. She lingered on for seven weeks, deliri-of life imprisonment. (Charles Cortimiglia divorced his ous, once calling Besumer a German spy and later wife after the trial, and Rose was arrested for prostitu-recanting. On August 5 she died, after naming Besumer tion in November 1919. She recanted her testimony on as her attacker, prompting his arrest on murder charges.
    December 7, 1920, explaining to police that spite and (Nine months later, on May 1, 1919, a jury deliberated jealousy prompted her accusations. The Jordanos were all of 10 minutes before finding him innocent.) pardoned and released from custody.)
    Returning late from work that same evening—
    And still the raids continued. Grocer Steve Boca was August 5—Ed Schneider found his pregnant wife
    wounded at home on August 27, 1919, his door chis-unconscious in their bed, her scalp laid open. She sureled through, the bloody ax discarded in his kitchen.
    10
    “AX Man of New Orleans”
    On September 3 the Ax Man or an imitator entered as a suspect from the 1912 Sciambra attack). Author Sarah Laumann’s bedroom through an open window, Jay Robert Nash “solved” the case in his book Blood-wounding her in bed and dropping his weapon on the letters and Badmen (1973), calling Mumfre a Mafia hit lawn outside. Eight weeks later, on October 27, grocer man who was allegedly pursuing a long vendetta Mike Pepitone was murdered at home; his wife
    against “members of the Pepitone family.” The expla-glimpsed the killer but offered detectives no helpful nation fails when one recalls that only one of the Ax description. There the crime spree ended as it had Man’s 11 victims—and the last, at that—was a Pepi-begun, in mystery.
    tone. Likewise, speculation on a Mafia extortion plot Author Robert Tallant proposed a solution to the Ax against Italian grocers ignores the fact that four victims Man riddle in 1953, in his book Murder in New were not Italian, and several were completely uncon-Orleans. According to Tallant, a man named Joseph nected to the grocery business.
    Mumfre was shot and killed in Los Angeles on Decem-Still, there is a more deadly flaw in the Tallant-Nash ber 2, 1920, while walking on a public street. Mumfre’s solution to the Ax Man mystery: the Joseph Mumfre assailant, a veiled woman dressed in black, was identi-murder in Los Angeles never happened!
    fied as the widow of Mike Pepitone. At her murder trial, Ax Man researcher William Kingman has pursued
    which resulted in a 10-year prison sentence, she named the Mumfre tale and received formal notice from Cali-Mumfre as her husband’s killer—and, by implication, as fornia’s State Registrar of Vital Statistics on September the Ax Man of New Orleans. Tallant reports that New 10, 2001, that no person named Joseph Mumfre died Orleans detectives checked Mumfre’s record and found anywhere in the