Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / Servant Girl Annihilator

Transcript

Servant Girl Annihilator · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:08
  Dispression. More than seven decades before the term serial killer was first used by
• 0:43
  investigators, the people of Austin, Texas were terrorized by a string of murders.
• 0:49
  It was the mid eighteen eighties when the first victim was found. She
• 0:53
  was twenty five year old Molly Smith, who worked as a cook, and
• 0:57
  she was murdered on the thirtieth of December eighth, teen eighty four. Her
• 1:00
  body was discovered lying in the snow next to an outhouse. The murder weapon
• 1:07
  was an axe, which had been used to inflict deep wounds to Molly's entire
• 1:11
  body, leaving her in a pool of blood. The wounds to her abdomen
• 1:15
  and torso would have caused her death quickly. It was clear that her killer
• 1:19
  had been determined to end her life. Five months later, the body of
• 1:25
  a second woman was found with very similar injuries. Eliza Shelley's axe wounds were
• 1:30
  so severe that her skull had been almost split in two. Both Mollie and
• 1:36
  Eliza had been attacked while sleeping in bed and then overpowered dragged outside where their
• 1:42
  bodies were left. When it became clear that the killings were likely connected with
• 1:48
  the same murder weapon used, the locals initially began to refer to the crimes
• 1:52
  as the Austin axe murders. Then a letter from a well known writer was
• 1:57
  published where the killer was nicknamed the Servant Girl Annihilator, and from that moment
• 2:02
  on that nickname stuck. Only days after Eliza Shelley's murder, another servant girl
• 2:10
  was killed. Irene Cross was also attacked with an axe, and one reporter
• 2:15
  who saw her body remarked that the axe wounds to her head gave the appearance
• 2:20
  that she had been scalped. Throughout June and July, there were no further
• 2:24
  attacks, but the residents of Austin remained paranoid that a brutal killer was out
• 2:30
  on the prow. Then in August there were three victims in quick succession,
• 2:36
  two servants, Clara Dick and Rebecca Raymie, as well as Rebecca's young daughter,
• 2:42
  eleven year old Mary. While Mary died from her wounds, both Clara
• 2:46
  and Rebecca managed to survive the attack. After the August killing spree, the
• 2:52
  paranoia in Austin grew. Neighborhood patrols were increased, and the locals began staying
• 2:59
  inside after dark, closing their businesses early, and increasing the protection around their
• 3:04
  houses, but these precautions didn't stop the Servant Girl Annihilator from striking again.
• 3:10
  A young couple, Gracie Vance and Orange Washington, were attacked with an axe
• 3:15
  while they were sleeping, and both victims died from their injuries. The newspaper
• 3:21
  reported that Gracie's head had been almost beaten into a jelly. The issue of
• 3:25
  the New York Times reported that the crimes had been carried out by some cunning
• 3:30
  madman who was insane on the subject of killing women. Despite the killer now
• 3:36
  being exclusively referred to as the Servant Girl Annihilator, not all the victims had
• 3:42
  been servants, but they did all have one thing in common. Up until
• 3:46
  this point, all of the victims had been African American, but in December
• 3:52
  eighteen eighty five, with the Annihilator's final two murders, that pattern changed.
• 3:58
  On Christmas Eve, two white women were killed in quick succession, Sue Hancock
• 4:03
  and then seventeen year old Eula Phillips. Yula's husband, Jimmy Phillips, was
• 4:09
  also attacked, but he survived his injuries. Initially, Sue and ULA's murders
• 4:15
  weren't believed to be connected. To the other crimes, and both women's husbands
• 4:18
  were initially suspected of killing them. The investigation into Jimmy Phillips even resulted in
• 4:25
  a conviction, but the guilty verdict was later overturned when neither of the husbands
• 4:30
  were ultimately found guilty. The murderers were then believed to be the work of
• 4:34
  the Servant Girl Annihilator. The news that the killer appeared to be targeting a
• 4:40
  wider range of victims caused a widespread panic, and citizens of Austin braced themselves
• 4:46
  for the next attack, but it never came. After killing Sue and Ula,
• 4:51
  the Servant Girl Annihilator never struck again. During the investigation into the murders,
• 4:59
  more than four hundred different suspects were questioned by investigators, but after all
• 5:04
  their interviews, all of them were eventually released. Although there were reports of
• 5:10
  at least one eyewitness who claimed to have seen the annihilator, the witness's description
• 5:15
  of the killer seemed to change every time they spoke to the police. The
• 5:18
  eyewitness described the killers being both dark skinned and light skinned, then claimed that
• 5:25
  he had worn a black pigment on his face to hide his real skin color.
• 5:29
  On one occasion, the killer was described as wearing a rag to hide
• 5:32
  the lower half of his face, with a hat shielding his eyes, and
• 5:36
  on another occasion, the eyewitness insisted that the annihilator had been wearing a dress.
• 5:43
  To this day, nobody has been identified as the Servant Girl Annihilator,
• 5:46
  but several of the suspects are still considered more likely to have been the culprit
• 5:51
  than the others. One of these suspects was a nineteen year old African American
• 5:57
  cook named Nathan Elgin, who had been apprehended drunkenly attempting to kidnap a girl
• 6:01
  from a saloon in the area. It was early eighteen eighty six, shortly
• 6:06
  after the Annihilator's final murders. Nathan had dragged the female victim out of the
• 6:12
  saloon and towards a house nearby, but her screams alerted concerned onlookers, including
• 6:17
  the saloon's owner, Dick Rogers, and a police officer, John Bracken.
• 6:23
  Officer Bracken followed Nathan into the house and separated him from the girl, but
• 6:27
  Nathan refused to go quietly. When he threatened the men with a knife,
• 6:30
  Officer Bracken shot him in self defense. The bullet lodged into Nathan's spine,
• 6:38
  causing paralysis of his legs. He initially survived the wound, but passed away
• 6:42
  the following day. During his autopsy, doctors noticed a strange detail about the
• 6:47
  man. He had a missing toe on his right foot, giving him a
• 6:51
  unique four toed footprint. The Servant Girl annihilator was believed to have taken off
• 6:58
  his shoes to get in and out of the houses without being caught, leaving
• 7:01
  behind several bare toed footprints in the soil. Because he carried his victims from
• 7:06
  their beds, the additional weight had deepened these footprints, allowing them to be
• 7:12
  clearly seen by investigators. At one of the crime scenes, a footprint was
• 7:16
  found that seemed to match Nathan's right foot, that right foot only having four
• 7:23
  toes. Nathan also had a history of violently threatening others, including sending a
• 7:29
  letter to the sheriff which was later described as reckless and bloodthirsty. He was
• 7:33
  familiar with the area and the local servant community, giving him the knowledge he
• 7:39
  needed to break into sleeping quarters of his victims, but apart from circumstantial evidence,
• 7:44
  there was nothing to prove that Nathan was the annihilator. However, not
• 7:49
  everybody believed that all the murders could have been committed by the same man.
• 7:55
  An article in the Texas Monthly reported that several officials denied that the same purpose
• 8:00
  trader could have carried out all eight murders. Meanwhile, many of the African
• 8:03
  Americans living in the area firmly believed that a white man in possession of other
• 8:09
  worldly powers was responsible for the crimes. They believed that the killer may be
• 8:15
  able to use magic to hide in plain sight, allowing him to enter an
• 8:18
  exit homes without being seen or heard. This theory was partially based on the
• 8:24
  fact that there had been pet dogs in many of the yards where the murders
• 8:28
  had occurred, and none of them were heard barking at the time the annihilator
• 8:33
  broke in. Whoever the servant girl annihilator was, he may have felt forced
• 8:37
  to move to a different area or stop killing altogether to avoid detection. Monetary
• 8:43
  rewards were being offered for any information leading to the discovery of the killer's identity.
• 8:50
  Community groups were organizing patrols throughout the nearby streets at night, and the
• 8:54
  local police force had even hired a group of new officers to investigate the crimes.
• 9:00
  Their prominent suspect was a Malaysian cook named Maurice, who worked in the
• 9:03
  same area. His workplace, the Pearl House, was connected to several of
• 9:09
  the Annihilator's victims. At around the same time that the killing stopped, Maurice
• 9:13
  moved away from Austin, spending some time in New Orleans before settling in London,
• 9:20
  and whether it's a coincidence or not, another serial killer appeared in London
• 9:24
  around that same time, Jack the Ripper, one of the most famous serial
• 9:28
  murderers in history. Although Maurice may not have been either killer, the theory
• 9:33
  that the Servant Girl Annihilator went on to become Jack the Ripper is a pretty
• 9:37
  popular one, and even during the eighteen hundreds, several people made the connection
• 9:43
  between the crimes. The surviving victims of the Servant Girl Annihilator never received any
• 9:48
  closure and lived the rest of their lives knowing that the man who had tried
• 9:52
  to kill them had gotten away and could still be out there.