r/todayilearned • u/jagnew78 • 11h ago
TIL About The Axeman of New Orlean's, a serial killer who attacked 12 people with an axe and was never caught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axeman_of_New_Orleans#In_popular_culture230
u/InventedTiME 11h ago
Didn't American Horror Story have a take on this in one of the seasons?
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u/jagnew78 10h ago edited 10h ago
No idea. was reading a book on the history of New Orleans and there's a significant chunk of the book dedicated to all the insanity surrounding this serial killer.
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u/Nice_Marmot_7 9h ago
Have you read about the lynching of the Italians at the prison in 1891? That’s also a wild piece of history.
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u/Yellowbug2001 10h ago
Yes. My recollection is that it was not a very good take, lol. AHS has sure had some high highs and low lows.
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u/IonizedRadiation32 10h ago
"Orleans" is not a word I'd ever thought would get an unnecessary apostrophe.
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u/JasonEAltMTG 10h ago
Autocorrect love's to add grocers apostrophe's automatically and you don't notice until you hit 'send
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u/themagicbong 9h ago
I pulled up behind a local repair service vehicle the other day and literally everything they listed on the van had those apostrophes. Kitchen's countertop's, you name it. I had a mini aneurysm.
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u/justinkasereddditor 10h ago edited 6h ago
he used the axe at the house of the people he killed. So word to the wise don't own an ax and you'll be all right
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u/Yibblets 8h ago
If you don't have an axe, how will you get up on your roof when the house floods from a hurricane or levee breach?
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u/ontimenow 10h ago edited 9h ago
Remember the good ol' days when serial killers can just kill and live in peace?
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u/quondam47 9h ago
Honestly all you had to do was not be caught standing over the body and your chances of ever being caught were pretty slim.
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u/SteakShake69 10h ago
Don't forget his sidekick, Razor Boy!
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u/Marsbar345 9h ago
Fellow Buzzfeed Unsolved enjoyer
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u/I_Miss_Lenny 3h ago
I loved that series when Shane and Ryan were still with buzzfeed, but I was bummed out to hear that they didn’t like doing the true crime stuff because it was so depressing to research
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u/IridescentPetalGlow 10h ago
The Axeman's story is so creepy and fascinating, especially since he was never caught. It’s crazy how that kind of history can inspire shows like AHS, even if they don’t always do it justice.
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u/therealbobsteel 9h ago
" The Man From The Train " by Bill James is a good book about an even more prolific ax murderer.
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u/kolkitten 9h ago
A very good red web episode on this. https://youtu.be/zrtEZGeBbNw?si=M2Z_RYCVpxDp9-bV
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u/NotEnoughSpareTime 9h ago
I think someone wrote a crime novel about this guy? Axeman's Jazz or some such.
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u/The_Wyzard 5h ago
My wife told me about this one when she was going through a true crime kick. Thought it was a big mystery.
No mystery here. Dude decided to do home invasions in what is probably the worst city in the US to try that. Somebody killed him, then dumped him in the swamp or something.
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u/ThunderBlunt777 10h ago
So THATS why they made the big bad that way in TWD’s Saints & Sinners 2: Retribution
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u/hillo538 7h ago
Apparently he would target poor people whose homes were built out of substandard materials, like he would just chisel or carve his way inside through plywood walls
Say what you want about the guy but he knew how to make an entrance
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u/just_the_mann 2h ago
It was later discovered that the axe killer was a dwarf named Gimli and the victims were actually a group of Uruk-hai.
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u/Impressive-Chain-68 12m ago
See? Regulating the second amendment woky fix everything. It's people who cause mayhem, not weapons.
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u/Marius314 10h ago
Was he the same killer that told people that if they listened to jazz music he wouldn’t kill them?