Axes of Evil: The True Story of the Ax-Man Murders

by Todd C. Elliott, Peter Levenda (Foreword by)

Overview

The ax-man murders of 1912 in Louisiana and Texas leave a bloody trail of evidence that points to the largest, unsolved serial killing in history of the United States. It's a tale of ritual murder, voodoo mayhem, and wholesale killings that leads the reader on a shocking train ride across two states and into the chapters of a real American horror story. The fiendish slayings of 10 sleeping families nestled in their beds is only the beginning of the terrifying account of a true crime that remains unsolved. Axes of Evil sheds light on an unwritten part of American history and uncovers the American "Jack the Ripper."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937584733
Publisher:	Trine Day
Publication date:	02/13/2015
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	157
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Todd C. Elliott is a columnist for www.lakecharles.com, a reporter for the Eunice News, and the author of A Rose by Many Other Names. He is a former AM talk radio host and a freelance writer and journalist whose work has been featured in the Abbeville Meridional, American Press, the Crowley Post-Signal, the Daily Advertiser, the Jambalaya News, Lagniappe Magazine, and the Public News. He lives in Eunice, Louisiana. Peter Levenda is the author of Sinister Forces and Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult. He has appeared in numerous documentaries for the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, as well as in TNT's documentary The Faces of Evil. He has also appeared on Coast-to-Coast with George Noory and Ian Punnett. He lives in Miami.

Read an Excerpt

Axes of Evil

The True Story of the Ax-Man Murders

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By Todd C. Elliott

Trine Day LLC

Copyright © 2015 Todd C. Elliott
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-937584-73-3

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CHAPTER 1

Lake Charles

January 22, 1912

I hear the train a-coming, it's rolling round the bend ...

–Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues

To believe in the "good old days" is to believe in fairy tales. Perhaps even those good old days in 1912 were just a dream to Felix Broussard, his wife and three kids, who had just moved to Lake Charles in mid-November of 1911. Some accounts indicated that Felix had been in Lake Charles for a couple of years before his family arrived. Could it be possible that Felix would travel to Lake Charles from an outlying parish to find work at home in Calcasieu Parish? What Felix would ultimately find would be a gruesome fate for him and his family ... sealed by the hand of a blood-thirsty fiend.

Lake Charles should have seen it coming. The town, especially the black community and law enforcement, was already buzzing with macabre tales of the Ax-Man. The fiendish ax-wielding maniac was rumored to disappear within the folds of the night, a seeming shadow within the shadows. The Ax-Man and the murders left behind were the talk of the town.

The footprints of the Ax-Man are still visible today in Lake Charles, and all the other towns visited by the Ax-Man, in the form of the steel rails of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Felix Broussard and his family lived at 331 Rock Street in north Lake Charles. However, in the 1950s, the street name changed to North Bank Street.

It should be noted that the author believes he has found the Felix Broussard cabin, which could have held the address 331 in 1912 as he found it in 2011. Eerily enough, within the confines of the property lot, a curving railroad track winds, snake-like, through the backyard and close to the house as it would have on January 21, 1912.

As described by Lake Charles historian and researcher Robert C. Benoit, the Broussard house was within several hundred yards of the Lake Charles Rice Mill and within fifty feet of the Kansas City Southern Railroad switch line leading to the mill section of Goosport, in north Lake Charles.

The cabin in which the Broussard family lived consisted of three rooms: a southwest room, a northwest room and a kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Broussard, Felix and Matilda, slept in the southwest room. The Broussard children, all three of them, slept in one bed in the northwest room. It is believed that the killer, or killers, entered through the kitchen back door after trying to climb in through the window.

With their three children, the Broussards also had two grown, adult daughters who no longer lived at home. It was just the five of them in a three-room cabin in north Lake Charles.

The Daily Signal, of Crowley, would report later that Felix was a "hard working man" who had lived in Lake Charles and worked as a foreman at several of the saw mills in town. It appears that Felix Broussard had more than one job; one newspaper reported that he had worked at The Majestic Hotel. The hotel had been built in 1910 on the corner of Pujo Street and Bilbo Street in downtown Lake Charles. Mr. Broussard owned several pieces of furniture in his small home, and there were indications that he was a responsible man and a good father who was concerned about the future well-being of his family. The newspaper reported that he held life insurance policies, worth $20 a piece, on each of his three children.

The saw-mills back in 1911 were certainly abuzz with construction in Lake Charles. They were a huge area draw for workers, who labored to help rebuild and repair the city of Lake Charles, which had recently suffered the great city fire of 1910.

According to the March 14, 1912 edition of the El Paso Herald, Felix Broussard was a "good type of Negro" and further described him as "industrious and intelligent and lived happily with his wife and three children." The paper also mentioned a remark that Felix had recently made to neighbors and friends on the day before the tragedy. Although no member of his family had taken ill, Felix had remarked to a friend about his family and how: "they were all going home to glory, and going mighty soon." This alleged remark led some in Lake Charles to believe that Felix had been aware of his fate and the impending slaughter of his family. The paper also said that Felix, "either acquiesced in it or was too terror-stricken to avert it."

Sometime shortly before midnight on Saturday night, the temperature in Lake Charles dipped down to below freezing temperatures. The Rice Belt Journal of January 26, 1912 reported that the cold weather had reached a low of 19 degrees. Colder still must have been the bone-chilling stories of the Ax-Man rampage as the Broussard children snuggled into their one bed for the last time as their father tended the wood-burning stove. If the Ax-Man were a deathly angel, then surely his pitch-black wings were fanning the cold, night-time air and making the frigidness colder.

As the near tropical climate of Southwest Louisiana resisted the frigid temperatures and while the climes clashed along the banks of Lake Charles, a fog might have descended upon Lake Charles on that night. This foggy veil would not shield the superstitious from the believe that, on this night, surely, the "Devil was in the house."

After midnight, the only light in the tiny cabin of Felix Broussard may have been the dim, warm glow of coals as the Ax-Man crept in out of the cold, possibly warming his hands before the murder.

The Monday morning paper headline read: "ENTIRE FAMILY OF FIVE NEGROES MURDERED HERE SUNDAY MORING (sic)." So read the front page of the Lake Charles Daily American-Press, January 22, 1912.

At 10 o'clock Sunday morning, the Lake Charles police, acting on a tip from neighbors, found the Broussard family with their heads crushed amid body parts strewn among blood-soaked sheets and corn husk mattresses. Neighbors and authorities had found the family's back door wide open, leaving the cold, dead remains of the Broussard family exposed to the winter morning air.

Newspaper readers soon learned that this latest crime in Lake Charles was very similar to the recent Thursday night slaughter of a family of four in Crowley. This butchery was reiterated in the first few paragraphs of the news story.

For the first time, Lake Charles readers may also have been shocked to learn that the Thursday ax murder had been the second one to occur in Crowley. Two families had been murdered in Lafayette last year, and before the Lafayette murders, another one had happened in Rayne, just to the east of Crowley. A shocking tale emerged.

Crime scenes in the respective cities were too similar to be a random series of killings. Law enforcement knew that something bigger, something of pure evil, might be at play.

At nearly every Ax-Man crime, an ax was left behind. At the Broussard murder scene, the ax was found under the bed of Felix and his wife Matilda.

Newspapers reported that families began sleeping with their family ax under their beds at night as the Ax-Man was not carrying his weapon while riding on trains, but rather using the family's own ax against the oblivious, sleeping folks.

Axes in 1912 could be found near the woodpile behind any family home. Every family that wanted to stay warm during the winter months had to have an ax. That simple tool now haunted families. The very sight of their ax began to send shivers of fear throughout the black communities of Southwest Louisiana.

It should be noted that the head of the Broussard family ax was clean, save for the blunt end. The ax had been used, not for cutting or gouging, but rather smashing and crushing the heads of the victims.

The Broussards were found where they had been sleeping ... still in their beds. They had been attacked so viciously that the remains were barely recognizable to neighbors brought in to identify the bodies.

On the west side of the house, police determined that the killer, or killers, tried to enter through the kitchen window as they had noticed a partially-broken pane of glass, and a fastening stick to prevent opening was found outside on the ground.

Detectives determined that the killer, or killers, had entered through the kitchen door and exited the same way, but not before leaving a message to announce that these crimes were something uglier than murder for profit. Burglary had almost always been ruled out, as the victims were poor families with nothing to rob except their lives.

The newspaper described it: "Gaping wounds in the heads and blood streaming over the bed clothing and floor beneath told the story." However, this story was more than mere carnage alone. There was something more sinister at play.

Under the bed of the Broussard children, whose skulls had been bludgeoned by the blunt end of an ax, a bucket was found. The bucket had caught the dripping blood of the dead children, foreshadowing a certain foulness, even the possible ceremonial collection of blood for ritual use. This would lead Sheriff David John "Kinney" Reid, a five-time elected sheriff of the parish, to conclude that the work was done by a "religious fanatic." Reid had noted many signs of a religious maniac at work.

The scripture quote that was pencil-written on the family's back door, in Reid's published opinion in the Daily Signal, was not written on the night of the gory murder of the Broussard family. Reid said that because the handwriting appeared to have been too legible and was underscored led him to believe someone had returned that morning and made the inscription.

It was the inscription on the door that further baffled police and haunted the author of this work for years. Perhaps it was because the newspaper's account first implied that the Ax-Man was not just one murderer, rather "murderers." The mind automatically recoils in horror trying to fathom images of a cult members, men and women hacking into brains of children as another of the cult holds a candle or a lantern, who is then later tasked with writing in pencil a biblical inscription on the back door of a family as they were being murdered.

The Lake Charles Daily American-Press reported:

An inscription upon the door, thought to have been written there by the murderers, is significant of something sinister and fanatic in the mind of one who took the lives of the five innocent colored people: "When He maketh the inquisition for blood, He forgetteth not the cry of the humble."

Again, it was from the Holy Bible, book of Psalm 9:12, re-interpreted in pencil and each word underscored on the back door of the Broussard home.

Curiously, the words "Pearl Art" appeared to be written in another's handwriting under the inscription. The author thought for years that "Pearl Art" (or "Pearl Ort" in some accounts) was written by one of the Broussard daughters. Perhaps, even one of their school friends was named "Pearl Ortego," which is a name not uncommon in the region even to this day. It is possible that Felix had even scolded one of his children for writing on the door of their home.

Two days before the Broussard murders, the name of a young girl would resurface from the Crowley Ax-Man murders to the east of Lake Charles. The name of the young girl and victim was Pearl.

What is strange is that in the murders at Crowley, where the Ax-Man had just recently struck on Thursday, January 18, 1912, the oldest daughter in the Warner family extermination was a nine-year old named Pearl Warner. Then, within hours a similar horrific scene would occur in Lake Charles, a major city 40 miles to the west of Crowley, and the name "Pearl" is identified at a crime scene. However, this is likely to simply be a strange footnote in the Ax-Man lore.

The Lake Charles newspaper said that "over to the side of the inscription" were written the words "Human" and the written number "5." So, at the crime scene were the words "Human 5" as if the vile acts committed were now claimed by five individuals.

I imagined a cult of five, mysterious figures cloaked in ceremonial robes acting out some ritual murder simultaneously. Perhaps each victim had a hooded or veiled figure in black looming over their bed ready to deliver their death at the stroke of midnight.

The Lake Charles murder site also revealed a new detail in the gore previously seen in the blood splatter and brain tissue scattered during the previous murders in Rayne, Lafayette and Crowley. The hands of the Broussard family had been forcibly outstretched in postmortem to form an open hand, possibly signaling "The Human 5."

I had been familiar with this crime scene detail, which, to the best of my knowledge, has only ever been found on the Internet. However, I had always heard that it was pieces of wood shanks or kindling hammered into the webbing of the hand, in between the fingers of the victims.

In the El Paso Herald, this morbid item was covered for Texas readers in the newspaper's March 14, 1912 edition on page 13.

Perhaps the strangest feature of this tragedy was the fact that the fingers of each hand of the victims were stretched apart by the murderers, those of the children being wedged open with paper and fastened with pins!

The Ax-Man story was a horrific, true-crime story that "went viral," in the parlance of the new millennium, and spread like wildfire among papers across the United States in 1912. It should be noted that none of these details appear in the records of any of the Louisiana papers. It is possible that the newspaper editors, who were covering and running the story from a distance, might have embellished some of the details. However, it is possible that the gory details about the hands were not released to the public to prevent more of an outbreak of paranoia and fear.

The local Lake Charles newspaper contributed a theory that the murderer, or murderers, had been inside the Broussard family home before, stating that the house had been selected or previously picked out by someone who had a knowledge of the conditions in and about the Broussard home. The Lake Charles paper deduced that the killer had to be a white man, which is an interesting theory that will resurface later.

The next-door neighbor, Victoria Northern, was perhaps the last to see any indication that the Broussards next door to her were still alive. Northern said that she was up late cooking when she took notice of the house next door.

"I live in Lake Charles, 329 Rock Street, next door south of the deceased family," said Northern to the Lake Charles Daily American-Press of Monday, January 22, 1912. "I was up cooking until 1:30 o'clock last night. I saw the deceased family light a lamp about dark. Did not see them anymore.

"When I got up this morning, I noticed the back door open and did not see anyone moving around in the house. I thought that a little strange and asked my husband to go over and knock on their door and call them.

"He did, but no one answered," said Northern. "He said he would go in the house. I told him, 'No'; to get an officer."

Northern said that a neighbor, a man by the name of J.C. Thibodeaux then came over to the house. Thibodeaux is credited as the man who first discovered the bodies of the Broussard family. His wife happened to visit Mrs. Northern to borrow some milk. As she took note of the open door, Mrs. Northern told Mrs. Thibodeaux of her "uneasiness for the Broussard family."

The newspaper reported that when Thibodeaux showed up at the Broussard home he peered through the open back door and saw "the leg of a child protruding" from under some bed clothing in one of the bedrooms. Then, he called to an unidentified young boy and man walking down the railroad track. These three would enter the Broussard house of slaughter. As the three crossed the floor of the kitchen, they found their way to the small room in the house, the children's room. The three Broussard children were found gruesomely murdered in their sleep with the bed covers still on them. A similiar blood-soaked scene revealed itself when they found Mr. and Mrs. Felix Broussard. The blood soaked sheets of the parents did not appear to absorb all of the blood-spill. The crimson gore of Mr. and Mrs. Broussard pooled and ran from underneath their bedroom door and into the kitchen area of the house. Gaping wounds in their crushed skulls caused a saturation of the bed covering. The bloody ax was found under their bed.

The Daily Signal reported on the crime scene: "the old couple (Felix and Matilda) looked as though they never struggled." The bucket found in Felix and Matilda's room was "half filled with blood that had run from the man." The news story also mentioned how it appeared that Matilda's arm was extended, or thrown upward, as if she may have been trying to physically protect herself from a blow. In regards to the children, the paper claimed that it looked as though the children "had struggled and had been thrown on the bed." The paper also noted that the three children had also been "piled up" in the bed.

The ax was nearly always left behind. After all, the ax belonged to the family and the Ax-Man was no thief. To take the ax would have meant that the ax was stolen property giving the Ax-Man a motive for robbery. This was never the case. Did the fiend have the conscience and morals not to steal, but was powerless to resist murder?

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Axes of Evil by Todd C. Elliott. Copyright © 2015 Todd C. Elliott. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

cover,
Title page,
Copyright page,
Epigraph,
Dedication,
Foreword,
Introduction,
Chapter One – Lake Charles: January 22, 1912,
Chapter Two – Crowley: January 26, 1911 - January 19, 1912,
Chapter Three – Lafayette: February 24, 1911 - November 27, 1911,
Chapter Four – The Strange Case of Marie Santo,
Chapter Five – Texas: 1911-1912,
Chapter Six – A Villian of Villisca Iowa: June 10, 1912,
Chapter Seven – Before and After the Murders: Theories, Clue & Legacy,
The Ax-Man: Time Line Of A Killer,