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THE SERVANT GIRL ANNIHILATOR
by Clayton Stapleton
Updated
07/11/05 13:15 GMT
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Victim |
Date |
| Mollie Smith |
Dec. 30 1884 |
| Eliza Shelley |
May 6, 1885 |
| Irene Cross |
May 23, 1885 |
| Mary Ramey |
Aug. 29, 1885 |
| Gracie Vance |
Sept. 27, 1885 |
| Orange Washington |
Sept. 27, 1885 |
| Susan Hancock |
Dec. 24 1885 |
| Eula Phillips |
Dec. 24 1885 |
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AUSTIN, TEXAS - As I walked down the
incandescently radiated streets of downtown Austin near the Texas State Capitol building in 1985, little did I know
that only one hundred years earlier, the city hadn't been as calm and
peaceful as it was on that winter morning. The year
of bloodlust that began at the end of 1884 and ran through Christmas
Eve 1885 has become merely a footnote to Austin's history. Seven women and one man were brutally murdered, the women
dragged outside and sexually assaulted in the moonlight. The
identity of their assailant has remained an unsolved mystery in the
Austin Police Department homicide files to this day. Could this be
the work of America's first serial killer? Some say it was the early
work of the Whitechapel murderer in London, England, known as "Jack
the Ripper."
In order to understand the Austin of
1884-1885, we need to rediscover what was happening on the streets
of the city sometimes called "The Athens of the West." Still
recovering from years of
reconstruction after the
Civil War, Austin was emerging as a more modern metropolitan
community. The city started attracting people looking for work.
William Sydney Porter (O.
Henry) arrived in Austin in 1884 looking for employment.
According to records, Austin's population had grown to 23,000 people
at that time.
Mayor John Robertson proclaimed, "No city in the state has a promise
of a more healthful prosperity."
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The Capitol Under Construction - Dec. 19th,
1886 ©2004
Murray Montgomery - All Rights
Reserved |
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CONVICTS IN THE CITY
John
"Ox Cart John" Ireland was the governor of Texas in 1884 and was
tasked to rebuild the State Capitol after the old limestone capitol
was destroyed by fire during a rainstorm on November 9, 1881.
The original plans called for construction with Texas limestone, but
following lying of the cornerstone on March 2, 1885, doubt arose
concerning the quality of the limestone from a quarry in south Austin;
it discolored easily. So, the owners of
Granite Mountain at Marble Falls in Burnet County offered
building stone to the state free of charge. To save money, convicts were
employed to quarry the granite and build
the needed rail line from Burnet to Austin. Was one of the convicts
the killer?
A KILLER AMONG US
The city had become a place of
prosperity, and crime was unheard of besides the usual fights at the
brothels in "Guy
Town." People felt safe walking the dark streets of Austin
without fear of robbery or murder; they left doors and windows open and unlocked throughout the city to allow the night air to
cool their homes. However, the last day of December 1884 brought an end to
peaceful nights for the citizens of Austin.
"BLOODY WORK!" was the headline in the Austin Daily Statesman
newspaper when the body of Victim No. 1, maid Mollie Smith, was
discovered in the snow next to the outhouse behind 901 W. Pecan St.
(now Sixth Street). She had a large gaping hole in her head.
"ANOTHER SERVANT GIRL FOUND SLAIN" was the headline for Eliza
Shelley's murder on May 6. Eliza was the cook for Dr. L. B. Johnson.
According to the Statesman report, she was found with "her night
dress displaced in such a manner as to suggest she may have been
outraged (sexually assaulted) after death." Her body was found at the
corner of San Jacinto and Cypress Streets. |
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Only three weeks later, Irene Cross was brutally murdered with a
knife. An eyewitness who spoke to her before she died stated that she
looked as if she had been scalped.
That August, a servant named Rebecca Ramey was knocked unconscious
while she slept in her bed. Her eleven-year-old daughter, Mary, was
dragged to a backyard washhouse, stabbed through the ear with an
iron rod, and raped. Mary's death sent shock waves throughout the
city. Demands grew stronger for the police department to capture the
killer.
Still more death came to those who slept in their homes. In the
early morning hours of September 27th, Mr. W. B. Dunham heard a
noise coming from the servants' cabin in the back of his residence
on Guadalupe Street, as if someone had jumped through a window,
followed by a woman screaming. Dunham grabbed his gun and swung open
the door to see a woman fighting with a man at his gate. He leveled
his gun at them and yelled at them to stop making all that noise.
The woman ran to him, saying that everyone in the cabin had been
murdered and the man she was fighting was the killer. The man, seeing
the woman run to Mr. Dunham, fled into a big
thicket a few blocks behind the houses. Mr. Dunham called
his neighbors to assist him in catching the murderer, but the man had
gotten away. The woman was Lucinda Boddy, and she occupied the cabin
with a man named Orange Washington, his wife Gracie Vance, and
another woman named Patsie Gibson. Three days later, an article in the
Austin Daily Statesman described the crime:
from the testimony and surrounding circumstances, it appeared that the
killer had entered the room through a window, and before any of the sleeping occupants
awoke,
struck each of them
on the head with an axe. Seizing Gracie Vance, he dragged her
through a window, threw her over a fence, and then pulled her
through weeds across a vacant lot to a rear stable. At this point it
appears that Gracie recovered consciousness, as evidence of a death
struggle was abundant. She was, however, overpowered, and her head
battered with a brick that was found nearby, smeared with her blood.
While she struggled between life and death, her murderer brutally
raped her. A watch was found on her person with the chain tied
around her arm; a horse was also found saddled and tied to a tree
near the scene of the tragedy.
While the assassin was killing Gracie, Lucinda Boddy had regained sufficient
strength to get up and light a lamp in the cabin. Seeing the light
in the cabin, the assailant
returned; he stuck his head in the
window, cursed her, and ordered her to
put out the light. Seeing him, she screamed and ran from the
building. He leaped through the window, put the light out, and followed
the fleeing woman. This was the commotion that awakened Mr. Dunham.
Gracie Vance was dead
when they found her. Orange Washington died at an early hour the
following Monday morning. Lucinda was taken to the hospital. All the
victims suffered horrifying gashes to the head and face.
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Map of Austin, TX
1885-1886
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These murders created
"intense excitement among both whites and
blacks at the repeated occurrences of this nature in the capital
city," read the article in the Austin Daily Statesman dated
September 30th. Yet the greatest horror was still to come.
The killer seemed interested only in black women;.
all the previous
victims had been black. But on Christmas Eve, that would change. Sue
Hancock, a white woman described by one reporter as "one of the most
refined ladies in Austin," was discovered by her husband lying in
their backyard; her head had been split open by an ax, and a sharp,
thin object in her brain, inserted through her ear as had been done
to Mary
Ramey. Today, the location is near 98 San Jacinto Boulevard along
Town Lake. The Four Seasons Hotel occupies the property.
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About an hour later, Eula Phillips was found dead in the wealthiest
neighborhood in the city, near where the Austin Public Library
stands today. Lying in an unlit alley behind her father-in-law's
home where she lived with her husband and son, her bare body was
discovered with the skull bashed in by an ax and heavy pieces of
timber placed across her arms, as if to keep her pinned
down during the attack. She had also been raped. Jimmy, her husband,
was found lying in their bed in his father's home, nearly
unconscious, a severe gash in the back of his head. Their son was next to him, unharmed, holding an apple. Eula's
body was discovered when they followed the trail of blood from the bedroom to the alley. A writer
for the Fort Worth Gazette, one of many Texas journalists who
rushed to the scene, reported that Eula was on her back, her face
"turned upward in the dim moonlight with an expression of agony that
death itself had not erased from her features."
Governor Ireland posted a reward of three hundred dollars for the
capture of the killer or killers. Citizens questioned the
authorities and wanted to know why the Austin Police Department only
had four officers on duty at one time. Others blamed the City Council
for not hiring more men as sworn-in
emergency police officers to patrol the streets at night. Anger raged as men stayed home at night
in fear of losing their wives to the killer. People started locking
their doors and windows and refusing to leave their homes after sundown.
A FEAR THAT DOESN'T DIE
To this day, the murders have remained unsolved,
and their impact
forever changed Austin. The city erected the now-famous "Moonlight
Towers" in 1895 in order to light up the neighborhoods so people
would feel safe walking around after sundown. The victims rest in some
measure of peace in Oakwood Cemetery, but their killer has never
been brought to justice!
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