As the killer's epithet implies, the victims were attacked with an axe, which often belonged to the victims themselves. The common thread connecting each proposed axeman murder, is the manner by which the crimes were committed. In most cases, the back door of a home was smashed, followed by an attack on one or more of the residents with either an axe or straight razor. The crimes were evidently not conducted as robberies, as the criminal never removed items from his victims' homes.
The axe-man targeted a variety of victims, the majority of whom were Italian-American, leading many to believe that the crimes were racially motivated. Many media outlets sensationalized the quantity of Italian-American victims, going so far as to suspect Mafia involvement, despite the lack of evidence. Some crime analysts have suggested that the killings were related to sex, and that the murderer was perhaps a sadist seeking female victims. Criminologists Collin and Damon Wilson hypothesize that the axeman killed male victims only when they obstructed his attempts to murder women, as in a few cases in which the woman of the household was murdered and not the man. A less probable theory is that the killer committed the murders in an attempt to promote jazz music, as in his famous letter he stated that he would spare the lives of those who played jazz in their homes.
"The Axeman" was not caught or identified at the time, and his crime spree stopped as mysteriously as it had started. The murderer's identity remains unknown to this day, although various possible identifications of varying plausibility have been proposed. Most notoriously, on March 13, 1919, a letter purporting to be from the Axeman was published in the newspapers saying that he would kill again at 15 minutes past midnight on the night of March 19, but would spare the occupants of any place where a jazz band was playing. That night all of New Orleans's dance halls were filled to capacity, and professional and amateur bands played jazz at parties at hundreds of houses around town. There were no murders that night.
Not everyone was intimidated by the Axeman. Some well armed citizens sent the newspaper invitations for the Axeman to visit their houses that night and see who was killed first. One invitation promised to leave a window open for the Axeman, politely asking that he not damage the front door.
Crime writer Colin Wilson speculates the Axeman could have been Joseph Momfre, a man shot to death in Los Angeles in December, 1920 by the widow of Mike Pepitone, the Axeman's last known victim. Wilson's theory has been widely repeated in other true crime books and web sites. However, true crime writer Michael Newton searched New Orleans and Los Angeles public, police and court records as well as newspaper archives, and failed to find any evidence of a man with the name "Joseph Momfre" (or any reasonable facsimile) having been assaulted or killed in Los Angeles.
Newton also was not able to find any information that Mrs Pepitone (identified in some sources as Esther Albano, and in others simply as a "woman who claimed to be Pepitone's widow") was arrested, tried or convicted for such a crime, or indeed had been in California. Newton notes that "Momfre" and variants was not an unusual surname in New Orleans at the time of the crimes. It appears that there actually may have been an individual named Joseph Momfre or Mumfre in New Orleans who had a criminal history, and who may have been connected with organized crime; however, local records for the period are not extensive enough to allow confirmation of this, or to positively identify the individual. Wilson's explanation is an urban legend, and there is no more evidence now on the identity of the killer than there was at the time of the crimes.
Two of the alleged "early" victims of the Axeman, an Italian couple named Schiambra, were shot by an intruder in their Lower Ninth Ward home in the early morning hours of May 16, 1912. The male Schiambra survived while his wife died. In newspaper accounts, the prime suspect is referred to by the name of "Momfre" more than once. While radically different than the Axeman's usual modus operandi, if Joseph Momfre was indeed the Axeman, the Schiambras may well have been early victims of the future serial killer.
According to recent research the suspect "Joseph Momfre" was actually Frank "Doc" Mumphrey aka Leon Joseph Monfre/Manfre.
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