“The Voodoo Priestess, The Man From The Train, and More Ax Murders From The 1800s” #WeirdDarkness
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This holiday season, UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 are proud to support the Wash for Kids Children's National Radiothon. Your donations help make a difference for local kids in need, providing life-saving care and hope. Together, we can give the gift of health this holiday season. UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 wish you and your family a joyful, safe, and happy holiday season. Happy holidays from our families to yours, and thank you for supporting Children's National Hospital.

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Unhinged fury and axe murder go together like greasy, grimy gopher guts and mutilated monkey meat.

The threat of being on the wrong end of an axe has seeped into the very floorboards of our language. Getting the axe comes to mind. Axes make for great verbal imagery because of their very nature: a powerful, imprecise tool whose efficacy relies heavily on the strength and determination of the person wielding the handle. Put it in the hands of an adrenaline-fueled maniac, and you've got a terrifying weapon for murderous mayhem.

So this episode of Weird Darkness goes out to those nutjobs who saw a tool used to split logs and thought, "Why not skulls, too?" I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness,

Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained, coming up in this episode

In late 1911 and early 1912, a series of axe murders took place in Louisiana and Texas. Gruesome as they were, they began to horrify the public even more when they were eventually attached to a teenaged voodoo priestess. Despite the numerous murders attributed to the voodoo priestess, a pair of authors say that there was somebody in the area at the time even more dangerous, known by many as just "The Man from the Train."

Plus, we'll look at a few more gruesome axe murders around the same time in other areas. There were a lot of axe murders in the late 1800s.

If you're new here, welcome to the show! While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media – plus you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now – bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness!

Before becoming the malignant religion known as voodoo, Vodun or Vodun was the name for the ancestral customs and beliefs of West Africa. Most closely associated with the Fon people of modern Benin, Vodun, with its talk about spiritual possession and examples of ecstatic worship, appeared to be nothing less than devil worship to the first Europeans who encountered it.

Even though Francophone and Lucifone Vodun, as practiced in places like Haiti, Louisiana, and Brazil, contains many Roman Catholic elements and professes a veneration of Jesus and Mother Mary, voodoo is still a byword for "diabolism." Between 1911 and 1912, voodoo was cited as the root cause for a string of terrible axe murders in Louisiana and Texas,

The unusual killer, a supposed voodoo priestess named Clementine Barnabette, ultimately managed to escape into the bayou before meeting the hangman's noose. But before escaping from reality into legend, Barnabette hinted at something as frightening as it was fantastic. Was there a murderous voodoo cult at work? West of Lafayette, Louisiana, is the city of Crowley,

There, on February 11, 1911, homicide investigators found the dead bodies of Walter J. Byers, his wife and their young son. Judging from the evidence at the crime scene, the unknown assailant had entered the Byers' home from the rear window of a nearby house. That other house was located in the "colored" quarter of the city. This meant one thing to the investigators: the killer was black.

Bloodletting wasn't unusual in Crowley, especially in the colored side of town. However, this crime was different. The sleeping Byers family had been brained with an axe. Besides being unimaginably cruel, the killer also appeared to be brazen. He or she hadn't bothered to hide the murder weapon as the blood-spattered axe was found dripping gore on the floor inside of the Byers family home.

Less than two weeks later, on the morning of February 24, 1911, Nina Martin's usual morning routine was interrupted. At approximately 7 a.m., Nina and her Lafayette, Louisiana home became adjacent to a crime scene when her son, Lazemi Felix, burst into the kitchen and said that Nina's sister and brother-in-law had been murdered.

Nina rushed over to her sister's home and found an abattoir. Alexandra Andrus and his wife Mimi, along with their son Joachim and daughter Agnes, were found murdered. Just like in the Byers case, the murder weapon was an axe, and it was found at the foot of the family's bed. Four days later, the Lafayette Advertiser ran a short article quoting Deputy Coroner Clark, who asserted that the deceased had been "brained with an axe"

The article included other shocking facts, some of which were surely provided by Sheriff Luis Lacosta. Namely, the newspaper noted that the Andres family had been killed while they slept, probably sometime after midnight. Alexandra and Mimi had been moved after death, with the killer putting them in a kneeling position beside the bed. Alexandra and Mimi appeared to be praying.

Sheriff LaCosta and his men suspected that the murderer of the Andres family was also the killer of the Byers family. Better yet, Sheriff LaCosta named their primary suspect, a recently escaped lunatic named Garcon Godfrey.

The next killing occurred outside of Louisiana. On March 22, 1911, Louis Cassoway, his wife, and their three children suffered the same awful fate as the Andress and Byers families. They too were mercilessly bludgeoned to death with an axe. As similar as the murder of the Cassoway family seemed to the previous crimes, there were some major differences that caught investigators by surprise.

First of all, the Cassoway family lived in San Antonio, Texas. Several sources say Beaumont, Texas. Second, while all of the previous victims have been black, one of the victims in this case, Mrs. Cassoway, was white. This fact initially convinced detectives that a hatred of mixed-race couples was at the root of this awful crime. After the murder of the Cassoways, Sheriff LaCosta had a new suspect in the form of Raymond Barnabette,

Barnabet was a petty criminal and sharecropper who lived in Lafayette. Raymond had a long rap sheet and was known to have a violent temper. The case against Raymond broke wide open when his mistress approached police and told them that Raymond had confessed to committing the murders during one of their frequent quarrels. In the autumn of 1911, Raymond Barnabet stood trial in Louisiana for the murders of three whole families.

Zephyrin and Clementine Barnabette, Raymond's own children, testified against their father. While on the witness stand, Clementine Barnabette told a graphic story about how her father came home one night covered in blood. Zephyrin seconded this story, and he went one step further by claiming that Raymond had announced one night that he had killed the whole damn Andrus family.

Then, as now, it was highly unusual for children to testify against their parents. However, Clementine and Zephyrin justified their actions by claiming that they were terrified of their father. It was better for everyone if Raymond Barnabet, a lifelong criminal, was behind bars. In October 1911, a Louisiana jury convicted Raymond Barnabet of murder.

This conviction would not last to the end of October, but Raymond would remain confined until November 1911. He was let go because another murder proved his innocence. On October 27, 1911, Raymond Barnabette was granted a new trial. The reason for this decision was threefold.

Raymond had been drunk throughout the earlier trial, thus calling his testimony into question. The jury had failed to follow the judge's instructions during deliberation, and the prosecution had never bothered to offer a motive for the murders. While Raymond languished in the Lafayette Parish Jail, police in Lafayette stumbled upon a new crime scene.

On November 27, 1911, the bodies of Norbert Randall, his wife Azima, and their four children were found murdered inside of their cabin located on Lafayette Street. Like the others, eight-year-old Albert Seiss, six-year-old René Randall, five-year-old Norbert Jr., and two-year-old Agnes had been beaten to death with the blunt side of an axe. Norbert had been shot in the head before he too was brained with an axe.

As per usual, the murder weapon was found at the crime scene, although police discovered that this axe had been partially washed. The horrific slaying of the Randall family sent the citizens of Lafayette into a panic. Rumors circulated that the Randall children had been mutilated by their killer. Because of this, well over 150 people met at the Good Hope Baptist Church in Lafayette. The meeting reminded citizens to sleep with weapons nearby.

It also demanded action from the police. Namely, the good, God-fearing people of Lafayette thought the police should look at other members of the Barnabas family. When police returned to the Barnabas family home in search of new evidence, they found several sets of bloody clothes belonging to 17-year-old Clementine. The specific objects of horror included a suit of women's clothing covered in blood and brain matter,

Blood was also found on the door leading to Clementine's room. Although few believed then that a 17-year-old woman could carry out such gruesome crimes, Clementine was arrested and sent to the same Lafayette Parish Jail as Raymond Barnabette. While both Raymond and Clementine Barnabette languished in jail, a killer used a blood-hungry axe to snuff out another family.

In January 1912, the Browzard family of Lake Charles, Louisiana - Father Felix, his wife and their three children - were ambushed by a mad killer. This crime scene was the most shocking of all. It not only suggested that Louisiana was the home of a crazed serial murderer, but also a serial murderer who appeared to know a thing or two about the occult.

The murdered Browser children had had their blood drained into buckets left at the side of their beds. A message written in blood was left on one of the home's walls. It read, "When he maketh the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble."

For decades, this inscription has been cited as coming from Psalm 9:12 of the King James Bible. But the King James Bible actually reads, "When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them; he forgetteth not the cry of the humble." The biblical quotation left behind at the Browser crime scene was actually taken from the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which had originally misquoted the verse.

Other facts of the browsered crime scene were soon sensationalized by the regional media. The El Paso Herald of El Paso, Texas called the murders a sacrifice and noted that the youngest victims had been found with their fingers splayed and secured with pieces of paper and pins. The words "Human 5" were found scribbled at the crime scene as well. The newspaper wasted little time in blaming voodoo worshippers for the murders.

Despite being behind bars at the time of the Browzard family murders, Clementine Barnabette confessed to having a hand in the killings. Clementine, whose demeanor and behavior was deemed odd by investigators and newspapermen alike, also claimed that she was responsible for more murders than the public knew about. Clementine ultimately confessed to her involvement in the murder of some 35 people between 1911 and 1912.

17 of these victims were reportedly murdered by Clementine herself. After her confession, Clementine was examined by several doctors, most of whom deduced that she was perfectly sane. Due to the severity of her crimes, Clementine was sent to the infamous Angola State Penitentiary near the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rouge. On July 31, 1913, Clementine tried to escape from prison, but was captured by officers on the same day.

For whatever reason, this escape attempt was forgotten, and in 1918, Clementine was given the job of cane cutter. This meant that Clementine was allowed to work outside with minimal observation. Five years later, on Saturday, August 28, 1923, Clementine Barnabet was allowed to leave Angola due to years of good behavior. The story of Clementine Barnabet remained a mystery until 1985,

According to one internet user named Voodoo Gal, she visited her 103-year-old great-grandmother in 1985. During that visit, the pair were joined by another woman who told them all a story about a forgotten string of voodoo murders. That same year, after the mysterious storyteller died, Voodoo Gal and other attendees at the funeral noticed that a youthful picture of the woman matched newspaper photographs of serial killer Clementine Barnabette.

As part of her confession, Clementine Barnabette claimed that she belonged to a secret cult known as the Church of Sacrifice. This cult and its secretive Human Five gang were supposedly part of the Christ Sanctified Holy Church, an evangelical church headed by a man named King Harrison.

The church could be found all along the Southern Pacific Railroad, and according to Clementine's confession, Harrison encouraged his congregation to use lethal discipline against any wayward members. Clementine said that the Randalls were an example of such backsliding. On top of all this, Clementine also told Louisiana authorities that she was a voodoo sorceress who enjoyed supernatural protection from punishment.

Sheriff LaCosta and others investigated Clementine's claims, but came up empty in almost every instance. District Attorney Howard E. Bruner, who categorized Clementine as a "moral pervert" because she admitted to caressing some of the corpses after killing them, believed that most of the murders Clementine admitted to were copycat crimes.

Several years later, in 1942, when the Federal Writers Project wrote down the history of Clementine's trial, they noted that confusion was the one constant in the case. In fact, given that newspapers had already suggested that a voodoo cult was behind the murders, Clementine could have been influenced by such coverage and "cooked up" the Church of Sacrifice as part of her confession.

Tragically, after Clementine's story circulated around the Southeast, many white citizens began to suspect that their black neighbors belonged to the murderous Sacrifice Church. This belief led to a handful of violent encounters and false arrests.

In their 2017 book, "The Man from the Train," writers Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James made the case that a slimy German immigrant named Paul Mueller is in fact the deadliest serial killer in American history. After murdering the Newton family of Westbrook, Massachusetts in 1897, Bill and Rachel James believe that Mueller began traveling the railroads in America and Canada, murdering entire families along the way.

His death toll was somewhere around 90. Mueller's crimes almost always saw him break into homes after midnight and murder all of the occupants with the blunt side of an axe. Mueller also had a habit of leaving his murder weapons at the crime scenes.

Although Bill and Rachel James accept that Clementine Barnabette confessed to committing multiple murders, they are convinced that most, if not all, of the crimes associated with Clementine Barnabette were actually carried out by Mueller, also known as the Man from the Train. When Weird Darkness returns, the story of the Man from the Train...

Hey Weirdos, our next Weirdo Watch Party is this coming Saturday and this one is extra special as it's our Christmas Watch Party and yours truly plays a part in it. Our hostess, Mistress Malicious and her team at Mistress Peace Theatre have recreated and re-edited the film for all of the funny stuff you'd expect from them and they replaced all the narration throughout with my own narration, even keeping a few of the ad libs I tossed in.

It's Santa Claus from 1959, sometimes known as Santa Claus vs. the Devil. It tells the story of the Devil showing up at Christmas time, determined to ruin it all — and ruin some children in the process. But Santa refuses to let Christmas be tainted and even teams up with Merlin the Magician to help defeat the Devil so Christmas can be saved.

Santa Claus, or Santa Claus vs. the Devil, hosted by Mistress Peace Theatre! It's this Saturday night, 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central, 8pm Mountain, 7pm Pacific, on the Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch – just tune in at showtime and watch the movie with me and other Weirdo family members, and often the horror hosts join in the page's chat box with us too!

Mistress Malicious brings us Santa Claus or Santa Claus vs. the Devil this Saturday night for our next weirdo watch party. I ho-ho-ho-hope to see you there! Get the details on the watch party page at WeirdDarkness.com.

This holiday season, UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 are proud to support the Wash for Kids Children's National Radiothon. Your donations help make a difference for local kids in need, providing life-saving care and hope. Together, we can give the gift of health this holiday season. UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 wish you and your family a joyful, safe, and happy holiday season. Happy holidays from our families to yours, and thank you for supporting Children's National Hospital.

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How can you quantify or qualify serial killers? They are all horrible. They are all awful. They are all worthy of scorn. However, some are upheld as worse than others. Ted Bundy, the charismatic and handsome necrophile, is the archetype of the charming sociopath who managed to convince family and friends that he was completely normal.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who may have killed as many as 650 people, is the quintessential noble killer – a pampered slaughterer of the early modern period who was only caught because she killed a fellow aristocrat. Oddly enough, the man possibly responsible for killing over 100 individuals is almost totally unknown.

This killer, who struck again and again and again in the United States and Canada between 1897 and 1912 is known simply as "The Man from the Train." First outed by writers Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James in their book "The Man from the Train," the blood trail of this serial killer is astounding. That blood trail will be dissected here.

On the afternoon of June 6, 1912, the bodies of Roland D. Hudson and his wife Anna were found by neighbors at around 4 p.m. Both had been murdered with an axe. As reported by the Miami Republican of Miami County, Kansas, the Hudson's heads were all but obliterated by several blows delivered from the blunt side of an axe,

Two years earlier, on December 10, 1910, another Kansas couple, the Bernhardt family, were also murdered with an ex. Again, the killer in this instance used the blunt side. In the Hudson case, local rumors speculated that the murders were the result of Anna's infidelity. Added to these cruel jabs was the rumor of "The Pig-Faced Man," an unknown boarder at a local rooming house who supposedly asked far too many questions about the murders.

Bill and Rachel James believe that the man from the train committed the murders. These crimes bore all the trademarks of the elusive killer. Namely, the man from the train attacked families during the early morning hours using an axe taken from the family's house, killed with the blunt side of the tool, and always picked victims who lived close to the railroad tracks. One of the key points of the book, The Man from the Train, is the theory that the serial killer worked as a lumberjack.

As a result, the murderer frequently took seasonal logging jobs. That's why axe murders occurred in the lumbering communities of Oregon, Washington, Texas, Maine, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. In 1906, the man from the train struck in Alabama. Sometime during the night, between February 7 and February 8, 1906, the entire Crispus family was murdered inside their home.

In total, three people were killed, including 61-year-old Confederate Army veteran Jeremy Christmas. According to the James authors, the Cottonwood murders, of which not too much is known, are connected with other aspects of the larger pattern of the man from the train's crimes. Notably, the mysterious serial killer liked to kill close to or on state lines. The state lines of Florida, Alabama and Florida, Georgia were some of his favorite hunting grounds.

Similarly, the crime in Cottonwood is important because it conformed to the man-from-the-trains modus operandi of attacking homes located near the first train stop past the state line. Trenton Corners, New Jersey no longer exists. However, in 1900, Trenton Corners was a small town in central New Jersey that was half white and half black.

On November 17, 1900, an awful discovery was made. The entire Van Loo family had been murdered by someone wielding the blunt side of an axe. The Van Loo house was just five kilometers or three miles from Trenton Junction, the nearest train stop. For the Mercer County authorities in 1900, the Van Loo murders were an open-and-shut case. Local ruffian Bob Henson was quickly arrested and charged with the crime.

Henson, who had prior convictions for larceny and assault, reportedly had a fight with the Van Loo family on November 6 after he brought them a stolen chicken. On December 27, 1901, Henson was executed by the state of New Jersey after just a five-day trial. Unfortunately, this was not the last time that someone else was killed for the crimes committed by the man from the train. The case of the Lyerly family of North Carolina is best known for a subsequent crime.

the August 7, 1906 lynching of three black men named Neese Gillespie, John Gillespie, and Jack Dillingham. All three were hanged by a Rowan County lynch mob for the murders of the White-Lyerly family. Amazingly, the mob originally rounded up eight suspects in the case but let five go after subjecting them to an impromptu trial. According to the James authors, these men were innocent.

Like other victims, the Lyreleys lived in a small town near a railroad stop. They were killed in their sleep by a man using the blunt side of an axe that he had found at the residence. This axe was then washed clean and left at the scene, both of which were common tactics of the man from the train. Other indications that this was a man-from-the-train crime was the fact that the killer set the house on fire following the murders and left money in plain sight.

Regarding the latter point, author Bill James thinks that the man from the train actually left his own money at the crime scenes. On September 21, 1909, six members of the Meadows family were murdered and their house was set on fire. This crime occurred in the bucolic environment of Buchanan County, Virginia. Most specifically, the Meadows family lived in the minuscule village of Hurley.

The body of the patriarch, George Meadows, was found dead outside the burned home. His body had been struck by two bullets, and he had been severely mutilated. Inside the cabin was Meadows' mother-in-law, Betty Justs, who was also found dead. George's wife, Lydia, had been hacked into several bloody pieces, while their three children were also found badly mutilated. At the time, the biggest employer in Hurley was the Ritter Lumber Milk,

This means that the area was swarming with lumberjacks, all of whom were experts with an axe. Despite this, Virginia authorities focused on a suspect named Howard Little, a mountain of a man who had a local reputation as a philanderer. At the time of the murders, Little was already married with four children. The word, though, was that Little planned to leave his wife for a married woman named Mary Stacy.

Little's bad reputation, plus the fact that he'd already been convicted of murder in Kentucky, made him an easy target. Little's fate was all but sealed when Mary Stacey told police that he had given her $20 some time after the murders. Given that the police thought the butchery at the Meadows homestead was done for robbery, they arrested and convicted Little.

On December 8, 1904, the small town of Trenton, South Carolina woke up to the horrific news that the local Hughes family had been murdered by an axeman. The Decatur Daily Review of Decatur, Illinois reported that the entire Hughes family died in their sleep. The crime was discovered by the Hughes' neighbors, who on December 8 found the family's home ablaze,

After the fire calmed down, searchers found the body of 42-year-old Benjamin Hughes, 42-year-old Eva Hughes, Benjamin's wife, 19-year-old Emma, and 14-year-old Hattie. All had died in their sleep, with their heads crushed completely by the blunt side of an axe. More disturbing still was the evidence recovered at the scene that the murderer had molested Hattie's corpse after the crime. This was another of the man from the train's calling cards,

His twisted desire for prepubescent girls frequently saw him assault corpses post-mortem. Arguably the worst crime committed by the man from the train occurred in the small hamlet of Milton, Florida in 1906.

On May 26, 1906, The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, South Carolina reported that all nine members of the Ackerman family were murdered with an axe. The victims included the father, Reverend Ackerman, his wife, and seven children, who were all butchered in their secluded home. If this crime was committed by the man from the train, then it was the deadliest attack of his entire killing spree.

According to author Bill James, the evisceration of the Ackerman family occurred just two months before the murder of the Lyerly family in North Carolina. James believes that the man from the train murdered the Lyerlys after catching a northbound train from Barber Junction, a train stop in the Florida Panhandle near Milton. Although nine people were killed in total, not too much is known about the murder of the Ackerman family.

One of the more shocking assertions is the idea that the infamous American killer may have somehow moved to Germany and carried out that country's most infamous axe-burder in 1922. On March 31, 1922, six members of the Gruber family were killed at their Bavarian farm by some unknown intruder.

The horrific crime was not discovered until April 4, when neighbors finally decided to check in on the family after they had not been seen in the area for several days. Inside the Gruber's barn, the investigation party, which was led by a man named Lorenz Schlittenbauer, later a prime suspect in the case, found the bodies of the Gruber family amid some hay. Dead alongside the Grubers was their maid, Maria Baumgartner, who had been killed on her first day as the family's maid.

While the James authors are not 100% convinced that the man from the train carried out these murders, they do believe he should be taken seriously as a suspect. After all, the Grubers had been murdered with an axe – in this case, a pickaxe. All had been beaten with the blunt side of the axe, and several of the bodies had been covered after death. This had occurred at other man-from-the-train crime scenes.

Another fact that possibly links these murders to the man from the train is that Bavarian investigators found cash scattered all over the Gruber household. However, there is evidence that the man from the train did not kill the Grubers. First of all, the previous maid employed by the Grubers felt that the house was haunted. This may indicate that someone was researching the Grubers prior to the murders. The man from the train was known to do this during his early crimes, but stopped doing it after 1908.

The man from the train also preferred using logging axes, not pickaxes, which are most commonly used by miners. Finally, the killer of the Gruber family stayed at their farm for several days after the crime. There's no evidence that the man from the train ever did this. While Bill and Rachel James are not certain about the Hinterkaifeck crimes, they are convinced that the man from the train carried out the infamous Villisca axe murders in Villisca, Iowa.

Between Sunday, June 9, and Monday, June 10, 1912, the man from the train may have entered the Villisca home of the Moore family. While the family slept, the murderer used the family's axe to bludgeon them all to death. The death included 43-year-old Josiah B. "Joe" Moore, 39-year-old Sarah Moore, 11-year-old Herman Moore,

10-year-old Katherine Moore, 7-year-old Boyd Moore, 5-year-old Paul Moore, 12-year-old Lena Stillinger, and 8-year-old Ina Stillinger. The crime shocked the small community of Villisca, and today the Moore home stands as a ghoulish attraction for thousands of visitors every year.

What is known for certain is that Joe Moore was struck several times in the head with the blunt side of an axe, while his wife Sarah was struck only once with the sharp end of the axe. As for the children, only one, Lena Stillinger, showed signs that she was not killed while she slept. Indeed, the prepubescent Stillinger was likely intimately assaulted after death.

According to the James authors, the killer's sexual attraction to the young girls drove him to murder, and it likely drove him to kill the entire Moore family. According to the James authors, the first crime of the man from the train may have occurred in the year 1897,

In January of that year, the Newton family of Westbrook, Massachusetts, were murdered with an axe. The Worcester authorities named the man suspected of murdering the Newtons and furthermore reported that he was last seen fleeing the crime scene toward a nearby train station. The name of this suspect is Paul Mueller. In 1897, Mueller worked as a farmhand for the Newton family.

Mueller was a short, powerful man with a high level of intelligence. He was also a physically repulsive man. He was known as a shabby dresser and reportedly had few social skills. Like the later man from the train murders, Mueller left the Newton family home by crawling out of a window. Paul Mueller made his living with his hands. He may have worked as a logger between 1897 and 1920,

If so, then he would have likely lived in logging towns like Milton, Florida or Hurley, Virginia. Mueller was also ethnically German and most likely could speak German. Maybe this ability to speak German allowed him to blend in with the Bavarian neighbors of the Grubers. We may never know the answer, but it could very well be that Paul Mueller is the deadliest serial killer in North American history.

The man from the train, whomever that may be, got his start at murdering in the 1800s. But he wasn't the only one. It appears the fashionable choice for a murder weapon in the 1800s was the axe. We'll look at a few of those crimes when Weird Darkness returns.

We all dream, but for some people, what should be a time for their bodies and minds to rest turns into a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Our next Weird Darkness live stream is Saturday night, December 28th on the Weird Darkness YouTube channel, and during the live broadcast I'll share some of these chilling nighttime stories.

Tales of shadow people, sleep paralysis, and demons who stalk their victims in that place between dreams and reality. I'll share true tales of prophetic dreams, some joyful, some not. Sleepwalking incidents that are both amusing and disturbing. I'll also share real stories of night terrors so horrifying that sleep

became something to fear and dread for those victimized by the night. ***You might not want to sleep after joining our next live-screen. It's Saturday, December 28th at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. On the lighter side, I'll also be responding to comments and questions live on the air and doing a giveaway of some Weird Darkness merch.

Prepare yourself for our next live-screen for chilling tales of what some people must endure in an attempt to get some sleep. Find the details on the live-screen page at WeirdDarkness.com.

This holiday season, UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 are proud to support the Wash for Kids Children's National Radiothon. Your donations help make a difference for local kids in need, providing life-saving care and hope. Together, we can give the gift of health this holiday season. UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 wish you and your family a joyful, safe, and happy holiday season. Happy holidays from our families to yours, and thank you for supporting Children's National Hospital.

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Hey Weirdos! Our next Weirdo Watch Party is this coming Saturday, and this one is extra special as it's our Christmas Watch Party, and yours truly plays a part in it! Our hostess, Mistress Malicious and her team at Mistress Peace Theatre have recreated and re-edited the film for all of the funny stuff you'd expect from them.

and they replaced all the narration throughout with my own narration, even keeping a few of the ad-libs I tossed in. It's Santa Claus from 1959, sometimes known as Santa Claus vs. the Devil. It tells the story of the devil showing up at Christmas time, determined to ruin it all, and ruin some children in the process.

But Santa refuses to let Christmas be tainted and even teams up with Merlin the magician to help defeat the devil so Christmas can be saved.

Santa Claus, or Santa Claus vs. the Devil, hosted by Mistress Peace Theater. It's this Saturday night, 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Mountain, 7 p.m. Pacific, on the Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch. Just tune in at showtime and watch the movie with me and other Weirdo family members, and often the horror hosts join in the page's chat box with us too.

"Mistress Malicious" brings us "Santa Claus" or "Santa Claus vs. the Devil" this Saturday night for our next Weirdo Watch Party. I ho-ho-ho-hope to see you there! Get the details on the Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Ex-murders were fairly common in the 19th century. A murderer could easily enter a home and chop the inhabitants to bits without disturbing or waking the neighbors.

The axe was a silent and deadly instrument of death, and sadly enough, many axe murders were never solved. Unlike murder by gun, an axe murder was generally gruesome. Chunks of flesh and brain would scatter the floor. The victim often did not die right away and was sometimes hacked multiple times before death overcame them.

The subject also sold newspapers, and that's probably why so many axe murders were reported in the worldwide press at that time. Prostitution has always been a dangerous line of work, but 19th century New York at least provided the relative security of classy brothels. That did not help 23-year-old Helen Jouet, though – a young, successful, and sophisticated prostitute whose room one night was discovered full of smoke.

When the madam of the brothel entered the room, Helen's body was found with three hatchet gashes dug into her face. Her bed was smoldering. The madam then shouted, "Fire!" in a crowded brothel, and pandemonium ensued. When the chaos you'd expect from roomfuls of professional fornication being disrupted by cries of "Fire!" subsided, Helen's nightclothes were discovered to be reduced to ash. One side of her body was charred, and her pillow was soaked through with blood.

A young clerk named Richard P. Robinson, one of Helen's regular customers with whom she regularly exchanged fluid love letters, was quickly fingered by the testimony of Helen's fellow ladies of the night. He was arrested after he didn't flinch when taken to view her still warm corpse. The evidence against Robinson was strong, including a discarded hatchet and cloak that didn't require Sherlockian deduction to trace to him. Somehow, the brutal slaying captured the nation's imagination.

The story ran in newspapers throughout the country, something not all that common for 1836. In the end, Robinson was acquitted despite the considerable evidence against him, because the judge instructed the jury to disregard testimonies from many of Helen's fellow prostitutes, because they were polluted. No one could believe it. Why would a retired police constable living in mudgy New South Wales murder his wife and infant child?

At first, when the news broke out, some newspapers were inclined to believe there was a mistake. It had to be a lie. But it wasn't. In September 1898, John McCoy snapped, grabbed an axe, and battered the brains out of his wife and child. Neighbors knew the marriage was tense and that McCoy was often very cruel to his wife. Mrs. McCoy had often hinted that she was afraid John would one day murder her.

But no one stepped in to help because they did not believe McCoy would go so far. On the morning of the murder, screams were heard coming from their home. A young man ran over and witnessed McCoy strike his wife with an axe. The man took off and ran to the police station. The police arrived to a grisly scene. There were pools of blood, clots of brains, and murdered bodies of the woman and child. The infant had her head chopped open from the back.

The wife had been hacked with the axe multiple times. The back of her head was split open and her brains were on the floor. McCoy was caught trying to clean himself off with a bucket of water, and his three sons were safely nearby. At the inquest, McCoy claimed that his late wife was the abuser. Despite witnesses claiming that he was the aggressor in the relationship, he refused to pay for the internment of his wife and infant daughter. At trial, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged.

The sea can do some strange things to men. In 1828, trading ship Mary Russell returned to port in Ireland with seven of its crew members brutally murdered. The ship's paranoid captain was to blame. William Stewart, for reasons known only to his own psychotic brain, falsely believed his crew was about to mutiny. So he took the completely reasonable next step of binding the seven men in his crew from hand to foot and splitting their skulls.

To pull this off, Captain Stewart coerced three adolescents to help him. Stewart started his rampage by clocking his chief mate with a harpoon and ordering the other crewmen to tie him up. The chief mate was then thrown into solitary confinement for two days. Stewart lured the rest of the adult crew one by one to be bound. The brainwashed children stood guard. From there, Captain Stewart killed seven of his crew, first using a crowbar and then moving on to an axe.

During the attacks, he screamed, "The curse of God is upon you all!" Because of course he did. With most of his crew dead, he could finally kick back and relax for the first time in ages, smoking and drinking happily amid the mangled corpses. Two of the crew members managed to survive, and when one escaped his confinement, his reappearance frightened the captain. Naturally, Stuart then threw himself overboard on three separate occasions before the ship reached shore.

After being brought to trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Grand Rapids City, Wisconsin. It got quite a shock in the spring of 1858 when the body of a butchered woman was found inside a shanty. The scene was gruesome, and the shanty was covered in the woman's blood. According to one report, the woman's head was literally chopped to pieces. The murderer gloated over his victim and mangled the lifeless corpse after he had murdered her.

The blood-coated axe was found near the body. As is often the case, the woman's husband was immediately suspected and taken into custody after being discovered near the shanty. Patrick Bennett admitted to butchering his wife. He had a previous criminal record for robbery, and he was known to be a drunk. What happened to Patrick Bennett after his arrest is not known. Samuel H. Morris had managed to make a bit of extra money working in New Zealand, and with that money, he and his wife moved to Blackdown, New South Wales.

They bought a small homestead and eventually hired a worker, King Leung. Everything went as it should, until one day in 1888, Leung received two visitors. Morris didn't like the appearance of the visitors and ordered them off of his property. Instead of complying with the owner's wishes, Leung ignored Morris and had the visitors return to the hut where he lived.

Some time later, Lung received a mysterious letter. After reading it, Lung appeared to be upset, but nothing more was said of the matter. The wife then sent her husband to fetch some water, and while he was stooping down, Lung struck Morris over the head with a piece of wood. A struggle ensued, and Lung grabbed an axe. Morris grabbed a garden hoe. Lung gave Morris two hard blows to the head with the axe, and Morris returned a blow to Lung's head.

Morris, amazingly still alive, ran toward the house calling for his wife. She stepped out and was attacked by Loon, who broke three of her ribs with the axe. She escaped and ran to the neighbor's house over 0.8 kilometers or half a mile away. By the time the neighbors got to the homestead, Morris was dead from an axe wound that cut through his head. Loon was caught crawling back to his hut. At his inquest, Loon claimed that the fight was over wages that Morris owed him.

The wife, however, stated that there were no wages due and that she believed they were attacked for other reasons. Loon was found guilty of willful murder but died from his wounds before he could go to trial for sentencing. There's nothing worse than paying for your own death. Such a crime rocked an Indiana town in 1878 when four family members were discovered hacked beyond recognition by a hired hand.

Patriarch John Desir Veselet received nine axe gashes to the dome. His wife was so brutalized by the madman's axe that she was virtually decapitated. Their two sons died side by side in bed, with brain matter protruding from their broken skulls. The murders were so elaborate that both axes and knives were used.

Suspicion soon fell upon French immigrant Pierre Provost. He reported the attack to neighbors when he appeared at their doorstep before sunrise, barefoot and wearing nothing but his underwear. Eventually, he even expressed amusement about the whole ordeal. Not being the greatest judges of character, the Vassalettes had set up Provost on a trundle bed in their teenage son's bedroom,

He claimed to have narrowly escaped out of a window while a savage attack was taking place by a large group of men. The problem with his story was that the window remained fastened shut, and the presence of cobwebs proved it had not been opened in ages. A bloody barefoot print next to the vassalate parents' corpses did Pierre no favors either. In the wake of the murders, there was a threat of a lynch mob, but Pierre saved the townsfolk the hassle and hanged himself in his jail cell.

Leroy Rogers had been an old bachelor living on a small farm in Michigan when his body was found in 1894. It was a horrible scene. Leroy's skull had been crushed in above one of his eyes with the flat end of an axe, and the blade of the axe was still embedded in the man's neck. The body was still warm when it was discovered by a neighbor, so the murder was fresh, but there was no solid clue as to who could have done it.

All that was known was that there had been a tall man spotted near the house sometime before the murder was committed. The only motive the police could come up with was robbery. Leroy's gun and watch were missing. He was not known to have had much else in the way of money. From 1845, we have an odd story of an old man and a young girl, probably 14 or 15 years old, who rented a house in Parramatta, New South Wales.

The neighbors were naturally suspicious about the circumstances concerning the young girl whom the old man passed off as his daughter. They believed that they were a couple and that the young girl had somehow been seduced by the man. However they came into each other's lives, though, is not the story. It was how the couple ended that filled the newspapers of the day. A few days had passed, and the neighbors saw no movement coming from the rented house. Out of curiosity, some of them went inside.

They found nothing on the first floor, so they went upstairs. There, in the corner of a room, they found a bunch of old clothes on the floor and a blanket being used as a makeshift bed. On top of this, they found the mutilated body of the young girl, but no blood. The blood and gore was found in another rented home in Sydney. In that place, there were pools of blood on the floor, and the walls were covered in red. In an apparent axe mark in the wall, there were traces of the girl's hair,

It was obvious that the old man had murdered the girl in one place and carried her to the other. According to a doctor who examined the body of the young girl, she had multiple head wounds, and her forehead and cheeks were covered with bruises. She had bite marks on her chin, her ears were injured, and one of her fingers was cut off. Bruises on her torso revealed that she may have been brutally kicked multiple times. The old man was identified as possibly being named Halloran or O'Hallan.

He disappeared after the murder, and no report was found about his capture. Clay Young met Bush and Coey at a wagon yard in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1899. They told him that they were on their way to Arkansas, and Clay asked if he could join them on their trip. The men were fine with having another traveler join them, and they left, crossed the Arkansas River, and traveled by wagon for several more miles before stopping for the night. As the three men bedded down in the wagon, Clay began to think over his situation.

He realized it'd be easy for him to kill the other two men and take everything they had, including the horses and wagon. Clay decided that murder would be an excellent plan, and while the other two men slept, he grabbed a gun and an axe. He whacked Coey on the head with the axe. As Bush woke up, Clay gave him a blow to the head. To finish off the job, Clay put the gun to Bush's neck and pulled the trigger.

At this point, Coey began to regain consciousness. Clay raised the axe again, and this time he crushed the man's skull as if it were an eggshell. Bush, who had already endured a blow to the head and a gunshot wound through the neck, was still alive, so Clay finished him off with the axe. Unfortunately for Clay, the men had very little money on them. Clay was quickly captured after the bodies were found, and he confessed, without remorse, to what had happened that night. He was given a life sentence.

Andrew Manning lived in a factory village in Connecticut with his wife and adult children in 1879. He was a brute toward his wife and would often beat her. Their children grew tired of seeing Andrew hit their mother, so he gave them money to leave the house for good. Andrew accepted the deal and left, but after spending all the money on rum, he showed up back at the house. His wife came to the door and he asked if he could simply spend the night and rest. She allowed him inside the home.

Two of their daughters were concerned and feared that he would hit their mother, but the night went by uneventful. In the morning, Andrew gave his wife a warm kiss on the cheek, saying "goodbye, goodbye" and went out the door. Everyone assumed it would be the last time they would see him, but they were wrong.

He went next door and borrowed an axe from the neighbor. Then, as quick as lightning, Andrew bolted back into the house and buried the axe in his wife's head. She collapsed, dead. Andrew ran off to the mill pond, stuffed his pockets full of stones, and jumped in. Town authorities retrieved his body and buried it without ceremony. The wife received a full funeral.

Harriet Williams, a woman in her 50s, was known to be hardworking. She was respected in her North Carolina neighborhood and knew how to save a penny. She worked six days a week in the city and returned to her cabin on Saturday nights to enjoy her Sunday off in quiet. On a spring morning in 1890, a neighbor was walking past her cabin looking for his horse when he heard groans coming from inside. He opened the door and saw Harriet on the floor covered in blood with two axes by her side.

The neighbor ran off in a fright and fetched others to return to the scene. They lifted poor Harriet onto a bed, and she passed away shortly thereafter. The coroner examined her body and found that she had three bloody and deep gashes made in the head, a gash at the shoulder that cut to the bone, and one on either arm.

It was also learned that Harriet had kept one of the axes at the head of her bed and the second against a wall. When her attacker entered her room, she grabbed the axe by her bed. The intruder grabbed the other one. A struggle ensued, and Harriet was the weaker in battle. A search of her cabin showed that some of the money she had hidden in her home had been taken, but much was left behind. The murderer was not known, and no suspicious people had been seen in the area.

Benjamin Ellison lived with Elizabeth Rouse Samen in a little college in Penzance, England. In 1846, one night, Benjamin showed up at a nearby hotel and asked if he could spend the night there. When asked why he would not go home, he stated that it was simply too late to do so. He then called a friend to visit him, and when the friend asked if Elizabeth was well, Benjamin stated that she was, in fact, quite unwell.

The next morning, Benjamin left the hotel and went to a neighbor near the cottage. He told the woman that someone had broken into his home and that Elizabeth had been murdered. The police came and found Elizabeth's butchered body inside the home. An axe lay on the floor, and there were pools of blood. Elizabeth's head was almost completely severed, and the back of her skull was beaten in. Her body bore numerous cuts, showing that there was a struggle with the murderer.

In her hand was a tuft of hair that, by appearances, seemed to match Benjamin's hair. When Benjamin was examined, his hands showed bruising, and one of his fingers had bite marks. He was taken into custody, and a jury gave him a verdict of willful murder. James P. Davis of Maine had spent some time in the state insane asylum for being of unsound mind, but he was discharged as "cured" and returned home to his parents.

On a spring morning in 1874, his mother went out into the yard and saw her son standing over the body of his father, holding a bloody axe in his hands. The top of the father's head had been chopped entirely off. The mother spoke to her son and convinced him to put away the axe. She then led him into the house and told him to wait there while she got the neighbors. The neighbors came and took the troubled young man into custody.

When questioned about why he killed his father, Davis said, "Washington ordered me to do it." If you're going to be the first woman executed by the state of North Carolina, you might as well get your money's worth. Frances Stewart Silver hacked apart and scattered her husband so thoroughly that he wasn't found all at once. His remains were eventually buried in three separate graves. In addition to an axe murderer, Frankie was something of a twisted fire starter as well.

She became the prime suspect in her husband's disappearance when a snooping neighbor poked around the couple's fireplace and found ashes oozing with fleshy oils. It didn't help that a pool of blood as big as a hog liver was discovered under the floorboards of their home. The eventual discovery of what remained of Charles' head and torso sealed the deal. The motive is unclear, with theories ranging from jealousy to self-defense of herself and their infant daughter.

Either way, 1830s society didn't take kindly to wives dismembering their husbands. Controversy swirled around the trial, and Frankie was nearly acquitted. Despite public support shifting toward pardoning her, Frankie needed a jailbreak by her father as a last gasp at dodging the hangman's noose. It was not to be. Following her recapture, the petite Frankie was hung from the neck until dead.

Thanks for listening! If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com – Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N.

WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on WeirdDarkness.com, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on "Tell Your Story." You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Voodoo Murders of Clementine Barnaby and The Man from the Train were both written by Benjamin Welton for Listverse. Axe-Burders of the 1800s is by Elizabeth Yetter and Josh Gotter, also from Listverse. Again, you can find links to all of these stories in the show notes. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light…

Romans 12:9-10: "Love must be sincere, hate what is evil, cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, honor one another above yourselves." And a final thought from Joseph Campbell: "We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." I'm Darren Marlar, thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

This holiday season, UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 are proud to support the Wash for Kids Children's National Radiothon. Your donations help make a difference for local kids in need, providing life-saving care and hope. Together, we can give the gift of health this holiday season. UA Local 5 Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 602 wish you and your family a joyful, safe, and happy holiday season. Happy holidays from our families to yours, and thank you for supporting Children's National Hospital.

We all dream, but for some people, what should be a time for their bodies and minds to rest turns into a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Our next Weird Darkness live stream is Saturday night, December 28th on the Weird Darkness YouTube channel. And during the live broadcast, I'll share some of these chilling nighttime stories. T

Tales of shadow people, sleep paralysis, and demons who stalk their victims in that place between dreams and reality. I'll share true tales of prophetic dreams, some joyful, some not. Sleepwalking incidents that are both amusing and disturbing. I'll also share real stories of night terrors so horrifying that sleep

became something to fear and dread for those victimized by the night. You might not want to sleep after joining our next live-screen. It's Saturday, December 28th at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. On the lighter side, I'll also be responding to comments and questions live on the air and doing a giveaway of some Weird Darkness merch.

Prepare yourself for our next live scream for chilling tales of what some people must endure in an attempt to get some sleep. Find the details on the live screen page at weirddarkness.com.