More than 7 decades before the term “serial killer” was first used by investigators, the people of Austin, Texas were terrorized by a string of murders.
It was the mid-1880s when the first victim was found. She was 25-year-old Mollie Smith, who worked as a cook, and she was murdered on the 30th of December 1884 before her body was discovered lying in the snow next to an outhouse. The murder weapon was an axe, which had been used to inflict deep wounds to Mollie’s entire body, leaving her lying in a pool of blood. The wounds to her abdomen and torso would have caused death quickly - it was clear that her killer had been determined to end her life.
Five months later, the body of a second woman was found with similar injuries. Eliza Shelly’s axe wounds were so severe that her skull had been almost split in two. Both Mollie and Eliza had been attacked while sleeping in bed, and then overpowered and dragged outside, where their bodies were left.
When it became clear that the killings were likely connected, with the same murder weapon used, the locals initially began to refer to the crimes as “The Austin Axe Murders.” Then, a letter from a well-known local writer was published where the killer was nicknamed “the Servant Girl Annihilator”, and from that moment on, the nickname stuck.
Only days after Eliza Shelly’s murder, another servant was killed. Irene Cross was also attacked with an axe, and one reporter who saw her body remarked that the axe wounds to her head gave the appearance that she had been scalped. Throughout June and July, there were no further attacks - but the residents of Austin remained paranoid that a brutal killer was on the prowl. Then, in August, there were three victims in quick succession - two servants, Clara Dick and Rebecca Ramey, as well as Rebecca’s young daughter, 11-year-old Mary. While Mary died from her wounds, both Clara and Rebecca managed to survive the attack.
After the August killing spree, the paranoia in Austin grew. Neighborhood patrols were increased, and the locals began staying inside after dark, closing their businesses early and increasing the protection around their houses - but these precautions didn’t stop the Servant Girl Annihilator from striking again. A young couple, Gracie Vance and Orange Washington, were attacked with an axe while they were sleeping, and both victims died from their injuries. The newspaper reported that Gracie’s head had been “almost beaten into a jelly.”
An issue of the New York Times reported that the crimes had been carried out by “some cunning madman” who was “insane on the subject of killing women.”
Despite the killer now being exclusively referred to as the Servant Girl Annihilator, not all of the victims had been servants - but they did have one thing in common. Up until this point, all of the victims had been African-American - but in December 1885, with the Annihilator’s final two murders, that pattern changed. On Christmas Eve, two white women were killed in quick succession - Sue Hancock, and then 17-year-old Eula Phillips. Eula’s husband, Jimmy Phillips, was also attacked, but survived his injuries.
Initially, Sue and Eula’s murders weren’t believed to be connected to the other crimes, and both womens’ husbands were initially suspected of killing them. The investigation into Jimmy Phillips even resulted in a conviction, but the guilty verdict was later overturned. When neither of the husbands were ultimately found guilty, the murders were then believed to be the work of the Servant Girl Annihilator. The news that the killer appeared to be targeting a wider range of victims caused a widespread panic, and the citizens of Austin braced themselves for the next attack…but it never came. After killing Sue and Eula, the Servant Girl Annihilator never struck again.
During the investigation into the murders, more than 400 different suspects were questioned by investigators - but after their interviews, all of them were eventually released. Although there were reports of at least one eyewitness who claimed to have seen the Annihilator, the witness’ description of the killer seemed to change every time they spoke to the police. The eyewitness described the killer as being both dark-skinned and light-skinned, then claimed that he had worn black pigment on his face to hide his real skin color. On one occasion the killer was described as wearing a rag to hide the lower half of his face, with a hat shielding his eyes, and on another occasion the eyewitness insisted that the Annihilator had been wearing a dress.
To this day, nobody has been identified as the Servant Girl Annihilator, but several of the suspects are still considered more likely to have been the culprit than the others.
One of the suspects was a 19-year-old African-American cook named Nathan Elgin, who had been apprehended drunkenly attempting to kidnap a girl from a saloon in the area. It was early 1886, shortly after the Annihilator’s final murders. Nathan had dragged the female victim out of the saloon and towards a house nearby, but her screams alerted concerned onlookers, including the saloon’s owner, Dick Rogers, and a police officer, John Bracken. Officer Bracken followed Nathan into the house and separated him from the girl, but Nathan refused to go quietly. When he threatened the men with a knife, Officer Bracken shot him in self defense.
The bullet lodged in Nathan’s spine, causing paralysis of his legs. He initially survived the wound, but passed away the following day. During his autopsy, doctors noticed a strange detail about the man - he had a missing toe on his right foot, giving him a unique four-toed footprint. The Servant Girl Annihilator was believed to have taken off his shoes to get in and out of the houses without being caught, leaving behind several bare-toed footprints in the soil. Because he had carried his victims from their beds, the additional weight had deepened the footprints, allowing them to be clearly seen by investigators. At one of the crime scenes, a footprint was found that seemed to match Nathan’s - the right foot appeared to only have four toes.
Nathan also had a history of violently threatening others, including sending a letter to a Sheriff which was later described as “reckless and bloodthirsty.” He was familiar with the area and the local servant community, giving him the knowledge needed to break into the sleeping quarters of his victims. But, apart from circumstantial evidence, there was nothing to prove that he was the Annihilator.
However, not everybody believed that all of the murders had been committed by the same man. An article in the Texas Monthly reported that several officials denied that the same perpetrator could have carried out all eight murders. Meanwhile, many of the African-Americans living in the area firmly believed that a white man in possession of otherworldly powers was responsible for the crimes. They believed that the killer may have used magic to hide in plain sight, allowing him to enter and exit homes without being seen or heard. This theory was partially based on the fact that there had been pet dogs in many of the yards near where the murders had occurred, and none of them had been heard barking at the time when the annihilator had broken in.
Whoever the Servant Girl Annihilator was, he might have felt forced to move to a different area or stop killing altogether to avoid detection. Monetary rewards were being offered for any information leading to discovery of the killer’s identity, community groups were organizing patrols through the nearby streets at night, and the local police force had even hired a group of new officers to investigate the crimes.
Another prominent suspect was a Malaysian cook named Maurice, who worked in the area as a cook. His workplace, the Pearl House, was connected to several of the Annihilator’s victims. At around the same time that the killings stopped, Maurice moved away from Austin, spending some time in New Orleans before settling in London. And, whether this was a coincidence or not, another serial killer appeared in London at around the same time - Jack the Ripper, one of the most famous serial murderers in history. Although Maurice may not have been either killer, the theory that the Servant Girl Annihilator went on to become Jack the Ripper is a popular one, and even during the 1800s, several people made the connection between the crimes.
In total the Annihilator killed seven people, and injured another nine. His surviving victims never received any closure, and lived the rest of their lives knowing that the man who had tried to kill them had gotten away with his crimes.
