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The Music of Murder: A True Crime Tale from Jazz Age New Orleans - The Axe Man Files
Paperback
Series: Shadows of the Past
Publisher: Thrive Collective
Published: Aug 12 2026
Pages: 156
Weight: 0.48
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Between May 1918 and October 1919, someone walked into New Orleans homes
through a chiseled-out back door, and left with an axe.
The victims were mostly Italian grocers and their families, attacked in
their beds in the dark. The city locked its doors and did not sleep. And
then, in March 1919, a letter arrived at the Times-Picayune, signed by
the killer, promising to spare any house where a jazz band was playing.
That night, New Orleans played.
The Music of Murder is the story of the Axeman, the city he terrorized,
and the century of folklore that grew over the facts. Historian Eliza
Hawthorne moves through the case night by night, from the first attack
on the Maggios' grocery to the final strikes and the silence that
followed, drawing on period newspapers, police records, court files, and
personal letters.
But this is not only a book about a killer. It is a book about who New
Orleans decided to protect and who it decided to forget. About the
Italian immigrant families whose grief was reported as spectacle. About
detectives working a case in a police department that could not be
trusted. About a press that fed the panic it claimed to be covering. And
about how a city under siege turned its own terror into music.
Inside:
The attacks, reconstructed chronologically from the surviving evidence
The Axeman's letter, and what really happened on the night of March 19
The suspects, the theories, and an honest accounting of which ones the
record supports
The victims, restored as people rather than headlines
The afterlife of the case, from 1919 newspaper hysteria to the legend as
it stands today
Where the record is thin, Hawthorne says so. Where the story has grown
past the facts, she separates them. The case is still unsolved, and this
book does not pretend otherwise.
Includes a full bibliography and a discussion guide for book clubs.
The Music of Murder is Book Five of the Shadows of the Past series, in
which Eliza Hawthorne investigates the historical crimes that refused to
stay buried.
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