In 1885, Austin was no longer the cowtown that it had been just 20 years previously. The city boomed with 23,000 residents and was emerging as a seat of education, with three colleges. Now-legendary poet O. Henry had even taken up residence in the city.
With the growth of any city comes an increase in crime, but no one can say for sure why suddenly, within 12 months' time, eight people were brutally and mysteriously murdered. Four black servants, one 11-year-old girl, a black man and two white women. An unknown murderer took their lives in the mid-1880s in Austin in the most brutal chain of killings that the newly established city had ever seen -- and more than 129 years later, the crimes remain unsolved.
It was December 1884. Two days before the new year, 25-year-old Mollie Smith worked in the kitchen of Walter K. Hall, an insurance salesman from Galveston, at his home at 901 West Pecan Street. Mollie had been working for the family for a little more than a month, and she was dating 30-year-old Walter Spencer, who lived with her in a small apartment in the back of the house.
In the dead of night, Spencer's screams shook the Hall family awake.
"Mr. Tom, for God's sake, do something to help me. Somebody has nearly killed me," Spencer told Hall's brother, Tom Chalmers, as he walked into his bedroom.
Chalmers leaped out of bed and saw that Spencer was bleeding profusely from several head wounds. He told him to go to the doctor to get his wounds dressed, after Spencer had told him that Mollie was "gone."
The next morning, Mollie was missing.
Around 9 a.m. on Dec. 30, the Halls' neighbor's servant found Mollie -- dead, lying in the Halls' backyard behind a small outhouse. She was nearly naked, with a gaping wound in the side of her head. She had been attacked in her bedroom, then dragged outside.
In her bedroom, police found broken glass, disarranged furniture, bloody finger marks and a blood-stained ax, presumably the murder weapon.
The tragedy stumped investigators. Previously, police placed blame for crimes of violence on people in the victims' vicinity: A jealous husband or former lover, someone who was looking for revenge. Spencer had no motive to kill Mollie. The two were on good terms, and they had been together for several months.
Soon, police arrested William Brooks on suspicion of murder. Brooks, who worked as a bartender in the Barrel House Saloon on East Pecan Street, was Mollie's former lover. The two briefly dated in Waco before moving to Austin, and police thought he was jealous of her relationship with Spencer. Brooks claimed he was at a ball at the time of the murder, and he was never prosecuted for the crime.
"They have got hold of the wrong man sure," Brooks said.
WATCH: The Servant Girl Annihilator
The attacks continued. Throughout the spring of 1885, police received countless reports of violent home invasions involving black servant girls and one German servant girl who was hit on the head with a stone when she refused to give money to the man who broke into her quarters. In March, two Swedish servants were attacked at the home of Col. J.H. Pope on Guadalupe Street and College Avenue. The girls claimed someone knocked on the door of their room, then fired a shot through the window, grazing one girl's neck and hitting the other girl in the shoulder.
Eliza Shelley worked as a cook for Dr. L.B. Johnson, who lived in a cottage on the corner of San Jacinto and Cypress streets. The 30-year-old Eliza and her three young children lived in a small cabin behind the house, separated by a fence and a gate.
Dr. Johnson had just returned home from the market on the morning of May 7, 1885, when he confronted his shaken wife.
"I believe Eliza has been murdered," Mrs. Johnson told her husband.
The woman said when she heard screams coming from Eliza's cabin that morning, she sent her young niece outside, who returned with grave results. Eliza was dead on the floor. She had a gaping wound over her right eye, a deep round hole stabbed just above her ear and another right between her eyes. Her pillows and sheets were covered in blood, and the room was in disarray. The murderer had dragged Eliza off the bed and wrapped her in her bedspread.
No weapon was found. The only clue police had was a barefoot track in the dirt, and the word of Eliza's dazed 8-year-old son. He didn't remember exactly what happened, and he couldn't remember what the attacker looked like, just that he wore a white rag over his face.
"A man came in the room and asked me where my mother kept her money," he said. "I told him I didn't know. He told me to cover up my head. If I didn't, he would kill me."
Later that day, police arrested 19-year-old Andrew Williams simply because he was barefoot nearby. Within a week, police arrested another man: 30-year-old Ike Plummer. Plummer's neighbor told police he had seen the man and Eliza arguing about six weeks before the murder, when they were living on Red River Street before she went to work for Dr. Johnson.
The neighbor told police he had heard Plummer ask Eliza for money the day before the murder, and the woman told him all the money she had was for her children. "I'll see you again, if I live..." Plummer told her. The neighbor said he saw either a hammer or a hatchet in Plummer's pocket. The night of the murder, Plummer's neighbor said the man awoke him around 1 a.m. when he was coming home.
Williams and Plummer were never prosecuted for the murder.
On May 23, just three weeks after Eliza's death, screams again echoed throughout Austin. Irene Cross, the 23-year-old servant of Sophia Witman, had been attacked.
A six-inch gash gaped across her right arm, leaving the limb nearly sliced in half. A slash across her head began just above her right eye, as if to scalp her. She was standing outside of Witman's house, screaming for help.
Before she died from her injuries, Irene's son told police that the intruder was a "big, chunky negro man, barefooted and with his pants rolled up," wearing a brown hat and a ragged coat and carrying a pocketknife.
The break-ins continued throughout the summer. Unknown assailants fired shots at servant girls and broke into their quarters. Would-be attackers threw large rocks into their windows. A thief stole jewelry from a servant's home in the middle of the night.
City Marshal Grooms Lee said police and the city were doing everything they could.
"I try to do the best I can with the few men under control," Lee said. "The trouble is, the force is too small."
Rebecca Ramey and her 11-year-old daughter Mary slept soundly on a peaceful Sunday morning, until out of nowhere, Rebecca was hit with a sandbag. Her skull was fractured, and she had a wound on the left side of her head from a sharp object. Her daughter was dragged into a nearby wash house and raped. Her attacker drove an iron pin into both ears, penetrating her brain. She lived for a short time after police arrived, bleeding to death in Weed's backyard.
The Rameys lived in the kitchen of Valentine O. Weed on East Cedar Street.
Weed told police he awoke around 5 a.m. to an "unnatural sound" similar to a dog howling. He said when he pushed the kitchen door open, he ran into Rebecca, who told him she was sick.
Police dogs followed the scent to a nearby stable, where Tom Allen was arrested. However, a doctor later discredited Allen's involvement in the crime. Alex Mack was also rumored to be a suspect, but police did not arrest him for the crime.
In September, the Austin Daily Statesman called out Austin's police force for its shortcomings. The paper accused the city marshal of being corrupt and incapable of running the police force.
The Statesman claimed the murders were "cunningly planned, carefully directed and intelligently consummated," and the reporter thought that the men who had been arrested for the crimes didn't seem to fit the profile.
The newspaper also pointed at the city government for its inefficiency "while unbridled ruffians spread terror," saying that Austin's crime rate was "second to no place in the civilized world."
Until the end of September, it seemed that women were the primary targets of the unknown killer. However, on Sept. 28, another girl and her boyfriend were both slaughtered in the middle of the night, and two of their friends were attacked.
Gracie Vance and Orange Washington lived together in a cabin on the property of William B. Dunham at 2408 San Marcos Street, and their friends Lucinda Boddy and Patsy Gibson were visiting them and spending the night.
Dunham said a noise awakened him in the middle of the night, sounding like Orange was whipping Gracie, which, he said, unfortunately happened often. He said the noises sounded like someone was being slapped across the face. He woke up to check on the couple, but could not hear any other noises, so he returned to sleep.
Then around 1 a.m. he heard a noise that startled him awake again. It sounded like someone had jumped through the window of his servant's cabin, followed by a woman's scream. Dunham grabbed his gun and ran to the door, where he saw Lucinda fighting with a man outside the front gate. The man hit her, and Lucinda ran to Dunham and grabbed him, disabling him from shooting at the attacker.
"My God, Mr. Dunham, we are all dead!" Lucinda exclaimed.
Dunham's neighbor called the police, and some neighbors attempted to shoot at the attacker as he ran away. The attacker left a horse, saddled and bridled, hitched to a tree near Dunham's house.
Gracie, 20, was found about 75 yards away from the cabin. The attacker had hit her, dragged her out the cabin window and over a fence and raped her before beating her to death with a rock. She had various gashes across her face and head.
Orange, 25, was found dead on the floor of the cabin, between the bed and the open window, his head nearly sliced in two. The gash on his head had cut all the way down to the skull. He was still breathing when they found him, but did not survive long.
Dunham said he found an ax under the blankets in the bedroom, near where he found Patsy sitting, injured. Dunham said the ax was not his, that no one on his property owned an ax, and it was smeared with blood.
Lucinda and Patsy had also been hit in the head. The girls had been sleeping on the cabin floor when they were attacked. The attacker sandbagged Lucinda and jumped through the window, causing the sound which had awakened Dunham. She told police she recognized the man as Doc Woods, a friend of Gracie's and possibly a friend of Orange's. Dunham later testified that he had seen Woods at the cabin before.
She said after he hit her, she jumped up and lit a lamp, yelling "Oh, Doc, don't do it!" She said she looked around and saw the blood and repeated her plea. According to Lucinda, Doc told her, "Don't look at me. Blow out that light."
Police arrested a man named Oliver Townsend along with Woods, who was wearing a bloody shirt at the time of his arrest (investigators later determined the blood was unrelated to the crime). Police also arrested Netherly Overton, the rightful owner of the horse found at the scene of the murder. Overton claimed that his stepson had taken the horse and hitched it to a rack while he went to the store, but it was stolen.
A witness, Johnson Trigg, testified that he heard Townsend and Woods planning Gracie's murder the night of the crime.
"We had better not go in tonight," Woods reportedly said.
"No. I am going to kill Gracie tonight," Townsend said, according to Trigg.
Trigg also said he heard Townsend talk about killing Rebecca Ramey before her daughter, Mary, was murdered. Trigg's testimony was later discredited, and he was later sentenced to five years in jail for perjury.
Woods claimed he was visiting a man named Mr. Baird on Sunday and didn't leave until 10 p.m. He said he went home and slept until he had to get up and pick cotton at 4 a.m. the next day. Townsend said he left church Sunday night around 9 p.m., but that he had no witnesses to prove where he was except his mother.
Patsy testified that a few nights before the murder, Woods visited the cabin while she was there alone with Gracie. He came to the window and asked to come in, but was refused admittance. Gracie told Patsy to get a gun and go see who was at the window, and Woods said, "It is Doc Woods, and I want to come in and stay all night." After Gracie again refused, Woods left. Lucinda said Woods also came to the window the night of the murder.
Again, neither Woods, Townsend or Overton were ever prosecuted for the crime.
In an Oct. 7 speech, City Marshal Grooms Lee said the murders were still "shrouded in mystery" and proposed an increase to the police force, which previously consisted of a marshal, a sergeant and 12 policeman. The city council passed an ordinance to allow the city to offer an award for the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the murders. It also authorized the mayor to hire detectives to help get to the bottom of the crime.
Later in October, Lee and other investigators arrested a man named Alex Mack after a struggled at the Black Elephant Saloon. Mack accused Lee and the officers of using excessive force, saying the men "swung him up as if to hang him." Lee denied Mack's claims.
"For a long time past I have had sufficient grounds for believing that Alex Mack was connected with the murder of [Mary] Ramey," Lee said.
Mack was in jail for nine days, but was later released. Throughout November, more names emerged in connection with the Ramey murder -- James Thompson, Cullen Crocket, Richard Bacon -- but none panned out. In November, Walter Spencer was arrested for the murder of Mollie Smith, but he was quickly acquitted less than a month later.
The Statesman wrote, "The crimes still remain a mystery, and their guilty authors retain the secret...This seems to be a year unprecedented in the character of crimes."
Until Christmas Eve 1885, the white inhabitants of Austin seemed safe from the crimes that had terrorized the city over the course of the year. However, on Dec. 24, two white women were brutally raped and murdered within an hour of each other.
Susan Hancock lived with her husband, Moses, a mechanic, at 203 East Water Street. Susan was "a beautiful woman," born and educated in the eastern states. Their daughters had gone out to a Christmas party, and since they were expected home late, the doors of the house had been left unlocked, and not a creature was stirring.
Hancock awoke in the middle of the night, flustered, with the sinking feeling that someone had robbed his house. He felt around for his clothes and noticed that his pants were gone. Out of concern, he walked to his wife's room on the other side of the house. The room was nearly completely lit by moonlight, and Hancock said he was paralyzed at the moment he noticed it: Clots of blood on the bed, and his wife nowhere to be seen. A robbery, he thought, but later police found an ax at the scene.
He ran out the back door and discovered his wife, moaning in pain, lying in the backyard in a pool of blood. She had been dragged nearly 100 feet from her room. He picked her up, panicking, running back to the house and calling out to his neighbor for help. His neighbor helped him carry Susan into the parlor, where doctors soon arrived to dress her wounds. Her skull was fractured in two places, and blood was oozing from her ears.
Hancock told police he had seen two men jump the fence to his property, and officers released bloodhounds to begin the search. However, they did not find any evidence.
While a Statesman reporter was gathering information at the Hancock house, a shriek rang out -- another murder had occurred, this time at the home of architect James Phillips Sr., 302 West Hickory Street.
Phillips the elder lived there with his son, James Phillips Jr., and his wife, Eula. Those living in the house were startled awake just after midnight when the younger Phillips began calling out for help.
The door of the bedroom was open, the sheets and pillows saturated with blood. The younger Phillips lay on the bed with a deep wound on the right side of his head, presumably caused by the ax which lay beside the bed. Eula was nowhere to be found, but their child was still in the bed, unharmed but smeared with his parents' blood. A trail of blood led police out to the yard, where Eula was found dead by the fence.
She was entirely naked, and a piece of wood was laid across her chest and arms. Her hands were outstretched and her blood had pooled around her. She had been attacked, dragged into the yard, raped and murdered.
In the days that followed, nearly a dozen black men were arrested for the Christmas Eve murders. City Marshal James Lucy told the police force that after a certain hour at night, every police officer should question any man they met, and if he couldn't "give a good account of himself," to give him 24 hours to get out of the city. The council decided that all saloons and liquor stores should close at midnight from that day forward. Thirty extra policeman were appointed to the force, and the council suggested that an officer be put on every street corner.
Many theories emerged, including one suggesting that the murders had been created by someone who routinely escaped from the insane asylum, committed the murders, then sneaked back into the asylum undetected.
Police seemingly arrested anyone with bloody clothes or possessions, and a man from San Antonio was arrested after bragging that he and Doc Woods had attacked people in Austin. The newspapers even began to mention the phases of the moon when the murders had occurred, as if there was some sort of pattern.
On New Year's Eve, Gov. John Ireland offered a reward of $300 for an arrest and conviction of those involved in the Hancock and Phillips murders. Later, rewards of $1,000 each for arrests in the Phillips and Hancock murders, and $1,000 for any of the other murders were offered.
On Jan. 2, James Phillips Jr., still in critical condition, was arrested for his wife's murder. Hancock was also arrested, but the case was dismissed.
Phillips had a preliminary hearing in February, and about 60 people testified with what they saw at the Phillips house and what they knew about the couple. Phillips himself took the stand, "feeble and tottering in his walk." He still had not fully recovered from his wounds.
Witnesses said Phillips and Eula didn't get along and accused her of being unfaithful. They testified that Eula was afraid of her husband when he was drinking, and they still fought when he was sober.
Phillips was sent to jail and his trial date set for May, but he was later released until his trial because being incarcerated endangered his already weak health.
Before the trial, rumors flew. People said they had seen Eula with another man the night of her death, and some even said that man was William Swain, then-state comptroller and gubernatorial candidate, though this was likely a rumor started by his political adversaries.
The trial began in May as scheduled. The prosecution attempted to portray Eula as an unfaithful wife who had affairs with several other men, and Phillips was a typical jealous husband. Eula's sister, Della Campbell, suggested that George McCutcheon, a friend of her father's, had purchased a drug for Eula to induce abortion, that he'd threatened to kill her and her sister if they told on them.
At the height of the trial, Phillips, still in weak health, found himself standing barefoot and ink-stained in the middle of a courtroom, carrying in his arms a 170-pound man. The defense was attempting to compare his footprint to the bloody footprint found on the floor of the Phillips house. The conclusion? No match -- Phillips' feet were too large.
However, Annie Dyer testified she had previously heard him threaten to kill her. A police sergeant said his dog failed to find a trail, but jumped onto Phillips' bed. A doctor testified that Phillips' injury could have been self-inflicted if "maddened by some desperate circumstances."
A jury found Phillips guilty of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to seven years in state jail.
More than six months later, a court of appeals reversed the decision. It wrote
"First, the court erred in permitting the state to prove the unchastity of the defendant's wife as a motive for the killing, without having show that this unchastity was brought to defendant's knowledge. Second, that the court erred in permitting the state to prove conditional and insignificant threats made by the defendant, which under the circumstances when they were made, showed no intention of the defendant's carrying them out."
After the success of the Phillips trial but before the decision had been repealed, Hancock was arrested again on suspicion of murdering his wife.
Hancock had moved in with his brother-in-law, W.T. Scaggs, after his wife died and his daughters left. He spent most of his days drinking and talking, annoying his in-laws. Mrs. Scaggs described him as "a perfect disgrace when he was drinking."
Joe Gassaway, another boarder at the Scaggs residence, had been recruited by police to keep watch on Hancock's every move to gather information about the murder. Before Hancock was re-arrested, Scaggs suggested the men take a trip out west. On the trip, Hancock was mostly drunk and said the night of the murder, he saw two men with his wife. One of the men was carrying her off, he said. When he caught him by the arm, he dropped her to the ground, and another man pointed a pistol at him and said if he didn't let go, he would shoot.
When the preliminary hearing began in June 1886, Susan's sisters testified about Hancock's drunkenness and abusive behavior toward his wife. Their daughter, Lena, said her mother wrote about leaving her father, saying she was afraid of being murdered.
Hancock was indicted for the murder.
The trial began on May 30, 1887. Testimony came from neighbors, Gassaway, the police and Hancock's in-laws. Prosecutors attempted to prove that Hancock was the only person at the scene, and therefore the only one who could have committed the murders.
The Hancocks' neighbor, Tom Glass, testified that Susan had asked him to take her husband to town because she was afraid to stay with him since he had threatened to kill her. He said he'd try, but Hancock refused.
The defense attempted to prove that other people were at the house, and that Hancock was sober, but the man who had taken the Hancock daughters to the Christmas party said he had smelled alcohol on Hancock's breath earlier that evening.
Three jurors voted for murder, eight for acquittal and one was doubtful. The case was dismissed.
No one was imprisoned for any of the eight murders, but this has not stopped the theories from flying for more than 100 years.
Nathan Elgin, a black man that attacked a woman and dragged her away, presumably to rape her, was shot and killed by a policeman on the night of Feb. 8, 1886. As it turns out, Elgin had a pinky toe missing from one of his feet, which matched up with the barefoot print found at the Ramey house the night Mary Ramey was killed and her mother was attacked.
There was no mention of Elgin's potential connection to the murders until June 1887 during the Hancock trial, when the sheriff suggested that no more murders had happened since Elgin died and Oliver Townsend was put in jail. Elgin, younger than 20 years old when the murders happened, did not seem at first glance to fit the M.O. for the crimes -- until discovering that in 1881, he was mentioned in the Statesman for fighting with another man near the governor's mansion and again in 1882, when he wrote a note to Deputy Sheriff John Rainey and threatened to "whip, destroy and kill the said officer on sight."
The murders stopped after Elgin's death. All was quiet.
So who did it? Even 129 years later, new theories are still emerging.
The most logical theory, some argue, is that Nathan Elgin was the murderer. The last murder happened a little more than a month before Elgin died, and he was missing a pinky toe, which matched the footprint left in the dirt at the Ramey house.
"Elgin seemed to be the simplest solution," said J.R. Galloway, an employee of the University of Texas Libraries who put together a book called "The Servant Girl Murders," a collection of more than 100 newspaper articles from the 1880s that document the murders. "He fit the profile and was the missing piece that seemed to fit the easiest."
A slightly more far-fetched theory, but maybe a more exciting one, is the connection between the Servant Girl Annihilator (so nicknamed by the poet O. Henry, who lived in Austin at the time) and Jack the Ripper, who terrorized London in 1888.
In London, Jack the Ripper's murders were slightly more gruesome than the Austin murders. His victims usually had their throats cut, their organs removed and body parts strewn about.
Crime lore has it that a Malay cook named Maurice, who had a history of working on cargo ships, had been employed at the Pearl House in Austin in 1885 and mysteriously disappeared from the premises in 1886. Most of the Austin annihilator's victims lived not far from the Pearl House, which was located at the corner of Congress Avenue and Cypress Street (now Third Street). Ripperologists claim that after the Austin and London murders, similar murders were documented in Nicaragua, Tunis and Jamaica -- all places that cargo ships would routinely visit.
Why do we care, nearly 130 years later?
First of all, it's a creepy story. It's hard to imagine that crimes this graphic and brutal could happen in Austin, let alone in Austin in the 1880s, when the city had just formed.
"This case was unusual," Galloway said. "There were violent crimes and murders, but the police force was generally effective. Crimes of violence weren't mysteries. The perpetrators were well-known. Often they started off as escalated fights, long-term feuds or alcohol-escalated arguments, or they happened in public. There was no real date."
These cases were different, Galloway said, mainly because they happened in the middle of the night by so-called "assassins" preying on vulnerable victims. Police were looking for an easy motive, so they tended to blame the people immediately close to the victims, as investigators had a hard time imagining that anyone else could have committed the crimes. That's why the police initially pointed at the women's husbands, or current or past lovers.
Galloway said that the high-profile nature of ax murderer killings has helped this story live for more than a century, since it was one of the first reported cases.
"Crimes like this are far enough in the past that it's outside of recent memory and gives people a lot of opportunity to speculate," Galloway said.
According to Dale Flatt, a retired firefighter who now volunteers with Save Austin Cemeteries, the story is an important part of Austin's history. Most of the victims are buried at Oakwood Cemetery in East Austin, though all are in unmarked graves. The black victims are buried in the "colored" section of the old cemetery, and Susan Hancock is buried in the southeast portion. She used to have a headstone, Flatt said, but it was stolen.
"It's history," Flatt said. "It's how the public gets reengaged. [Oakwood] is one of the only spots that hasn't changed since the 1800s."
Flatt said that's why it's so important that the public stays informed about this and other parts of Austin history. To help preserve this history, Save Austin Cemeteries hosts events like Murder, Mayhem and Misadventure, walking tours through Oakwood Cemetery every year near Halloween. This year's event takes place on Saturday, Oct. 25. Tours run every 20 minutes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
As far as Flatt's theory on who did it?
"Maybe when I cross over to the other side, I'll find out," he laughed.
Until then, we're left to speculate.