Servant Girl Annihilator
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The Servant Girl Annihilator or Austin Axe Murderer is the given name of a notorious serial killer or killers who terrorized Austin, Texas, USA between 1884 & 1885.
It is thought that at least seven women, mostly servant girls, died at the hands of the killer, who typically dragged his victims from their beds and raped them before slashing or axing them to death. Several victims were stabbed by some sort of spike in the ears or the face, leading to suspicions that they had been lobotomized to quiet their struggle. His first victim was Mollie Smith who was killed on New Year's Eve, 1884.
Though many people were arrested (often without sufficient cause) for the crimes, none were ever convicted, and the killings stopped mysteriously almost exactly one year after they started, with the murder of two wealthy white women, Eula Phillips and Sue Hancock, in downtown Austin on December 24, 1885.
The crimes represented the first recorded serial killer in the US, occurring approximately three years before Jack the Ripper wreaked a far better-known series of crimes on London. Some have even attempted to prove that the Annihilator and Jack the Ripper were one and the same person.
The crime spree was depicted in fictionalized form in the Stephen Saylor book A Twist at the End. William Sydney Porter, better known as the short story writer O. Henry, was living in Austin at the time and is presented as the protagonist. Though the murders themselves are depicted accurately, there is no evidence that Porter was actually involved in the mystery or knew the victims. He did however make one important contribution to the story: he coined the term "Servant Girl Annihilator" for his friends working at the Austin Daily Statesman (now the Austin American-Statesman).
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