Due to a planned power outage, our services will be reduced today (June 15) starting at 8:30am PDT until the work is complete. We apologize for the inconvenience. However, the murders that occurred on Saxtown Road forever shattered that illusion. When a local German family was brutally slaughtered in 1874, it created a dark, unsolved mystery – and a haunting that continues today. Ax Murders Of Saxtown Author: Nicholas J. Pistor ISBN: 171 Genre: True Crime File Size: 33. 76 MB Format: PDF, ePub, Mobi Download: 343 Read: 1103 Get This Book. Henri van Breda was 20 years old when he killed his family. Henri Van Breda, who murdered his father, mother and brother with an axe in South Africa in 2015, has been sentenced to life in prison.

Details
December 1885 newspaper headline relating to the Servant Girl Annihilator
Other names	The Austin Axe Murderer
Victims	8 known victims
December 30, 1884–December 24, 1885
Country	United States
State(s)	Texas

The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Austin Axe Murderer, was an unidentified Americanserial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, between 1884 and 1885.^[1]^[2]^[3] The sobriquet originated with the writer O. Henry.^[4]

The series of eight axe murders were referred to by contemporary sources as the Servant Girl Murders.^[5]

The December 26, 1885 issue of The New York Times reported that the 'murders were committed by some cunning madman, who is insane on the subject of killing women'.^[6]

The murders represent an early example of a serial killer operating in the United States, three years before the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel.^[1]

According to author Philip Sugden in The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, the conjecture that the Texas killer and Jack the Ripper were one and the same man originated in October 1888, when an editor with the Atlanta Constitution proposed this conjecture, following the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes by Jack the Ripper.^[7]

Murders[edit]

According to Texas Monthly, the killer murdered seven women (five black, two white) and one black man. Additionally, the killer seriously injured six women and two men.^[8]

All the victims were attacked indoors while asleep in their beds. Five of the women were dragged, unconscious but still alive, and killed outdoors. Three of the women were severely mutilated while outdoors.

All the victims were posed in a similar manner. Six of the murdered women had a 'sharp object' inserted into their ears.^[9]

The series of murders ended with the killing of two white women, Eula Phillips, age 17, and Susan Hancock, who was attacked while sleeping in the bed of her 16-year-old daughter on the night of 24 December 1885.^[1]

Only one of those arrested, James Phillips, was convicted. He was found guilty of murdering his wife but the conviction was later overturned.^[1]

London authorities questioned several American cowboys, one of whom (according to the authors of Jack the Ripper, A to Z) was possibly Buck Taylor, a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.^[10] Taylor was born in Fredericksburg, Texas,^[11] about 70 miles west of Austin.

According to a front-page article in The New York Times of December 26, 1885, 400 men were arrested during the course of the year.^[6] According to the Texas Monthly, powerful elected officials refused to believe that one man, or one group of men, was responsible for all the murders.

The African-American community and some practitioners of voodoo believed the killer was a white man who had magic powers that enabled him to become invisible, as no dogs outside or in fenced-yards adjacent to locations where murders occurred were heard to bark or raise any alarm.^[1]

The series of murders stopped when additional police officers were hired, rewards were offered and citizens formed a vigilance committee to patrol the streets at night.^[12] Contemporary newspapers reported that the murderer(s) had apparently fled the area, as no more murders were officially attributed to the killer by the authorities.^[1]

Victims[edit]

Mollie Smith, 25, was murdered the night of 30 December 1884. Walter Spencer was seriously wounded.^[1]
Clara Strand and Christine Martenson, two Swedish servant girls, were seriously wounded the night of 19 March 1885.^[1]
Eliza Shelly was murdered the night of 6 May 1885.^[1]
Irene Cross murdered by a man with a knife on the night of 22 May 1885.^[1]
Clara Dick was seriously wounded in August 1885.^[1]^[13]
Mary Ramey, 11, was murdered the night of 30 August 1885. Her mother, Rebecca Ramey was seriously wounded.^[1]
Gracie Vance and her boyfriend, Orange Washington, were murdered on the night of 28 September 1885.^[14]^[1]
Susan Hancock was murdered the night of 24 December 1885.^[1]
Eula Phillips was murdered the night of 24 December 1885.

Eyewitness accounts[edit]

According to a July 2000 article in the Texas Monthly, there was an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the murderer, but reported contradictory information to the police.

Cannot download spotify on mac. The killer was variously reported to have been white or dark-complexioned; or a 'yellow man' wearing lampblack to conceal his skin color; or a man wearing a Mother Hubbard style dress; or a man wearing a slouch hat; or a man wearing a hat and a white rag that covered the lower part of his face.

There were also reports that the killer worked with an accomplice, or belonged to a gang of murderers.

The Malay cook suspect[edit]

According to the Atchison Daily Globe of November 19, 1888, the Austin American-Statesman reported that a Malay cook 'running on ocean vessels' was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. The newspaper reported that 'a Malay cook had been employed at a small hotel in Austin in 1885.' Furthermore, the newspaper reported that the Austin reporter:

..investigated the matter, calling on Mrs. Schmidt, who kept the Pearl House, near the foot of Congress Avenue opposite the Union depot, 3 years ago. It was ascertained that a Malay cook calling himself Maurice had been employed at the house in 1885 and that he left some time in January 1886. It will be remembered that the last of the series of Austin women murders was the killing of Mrs. Hancock and Mrs. Eula Phillips, the former occurring on Christmas eve 1885, just before the Malay departed, and that the series then ended. A strong presumption that the Malay was the murderer of the Austin women was created by the fact that all of them except two or three resided in the immediate neighborhood of the Pearl House.^[15]

In London on the 13th of August 1888, a sailor named George M. Dodge was interviewed by Scotland Yard. Dodge claimed to have met a Malay cook named 'Alaska' (possibly 'Laskar', an old Malay word for 'sailor') at the Queen's Musical Hall at Poplar, London. He claimed that Alaska was about 35 years old, 5 feet 7 inches, weighed 10-11 stone (around 63-69 kg), and sometimes carried a double-edged knife, which he showed George. The following is what George claimed Alaska told him 'he had been robbed by a woman of bad character, and that unless he found the woman and recovered his money he

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