But finally, in December 1920, Iorlando and Frank walked free. At one point, Rosie was threatened with perjury charges if she didn’t stick to her original story. Rosie signed another affidavit, this time declaring that she hadn’t seen her attackers and had been pressured into identifying the Jordanos.ĭespite Rosie’s retraction, the prosecution didn’t immediately give up. Joseph had come to her in a dream, and told her she had to tell the truth. Nine months later, Rosie walked into the newspaper office of the Times-Picayune and retracted her testimony. Sixty-nine-year-old Iorlando was sentenced to life imprisonment Frank was to hang.
Palermo sicily black axe trial#
Yet, after a trial of less than a week, they were both convicted of murder. When Iorlando and Frank went on trial for their lives, the only evidence against them was Rosie’s identification, an identification that even her own physician thought unreliable.
She was released only after she signed an affidavit implicating her neighbors. When she was well enough to be released, Marrero immediately arrested Rosie as a material witness and incarcerated her in the Gretna jail. The officials handled this inconvenience by haranguing the injured Cortimiglias as they lay in Charity Hospital, asking repeatedly, “Who hit you?” “Was it the Jordanos? Frank did it, didn’t he?” According to the doctor who treated her, Rosie always said that she didn’t know who had attacked her. The trouble was that no evidence implicated the Jordanos. Only thirty years after Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel, the Axeman of New Orleans held an American city hostage. The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story As grocers, they were business competitors of the Cortimiglias and had recently taken them to court over a business dispute. Mooney believed this was the work of their “degenerate.” The Gretna authorities – Police Chief Peter Leson and Sheriff Louis Marrero – however, settled on the Cortimiglia’s next door neighbors, elderly Iorlando Jordano and his 17-year-old son Frank, as the culprits. On the night of March 9, he assaulted Charlie Cortimiglia in the familiar fashion, badly injuring Charlie and his wife, Rosie, and killing their two-year-old daughter. Then the killer crossed the crossed the Mississippi River to the neighboring town of Gretna. The Axeman struck households in New Orleans from 1917 to March 1919.
New Orleans Superintendent of Police Frank Mooney suspected that the murderer was a “murderous degenerate … who gloats over blood.” The press noted that the Italian immigrant community was especially fearful, with panic-stricken men staying up all night to guard their families. Nevertheless, New Orleanians were terrified. Several lethal attacks that didn’t target Italians were also thought to be the work of the Axeman although this would later prove not to be the case. His wife, Catherine, also had her throat cut she asphyxiated on her own blood as she bled out. Joseph Maggio, for example, had his skull fractured with his own axe and his throat cut with a razor. Some he left wounded four people he left dead.
Palermo sicily black axe series#
In the dead of the night, the Axeman of New Orleans (as he came to be known) broke into a series of Italian groceries, attacking the grocers and their families. The Axeman preyed on Italian-American families such as these who ran grocery stores in the New Orleans region.īy August of 1918, the city of New Orleans was paralyzed by fear.
0 kommentar(er)
