On the trail of America's first serial killer

When a series of gruesome murders struck Austin, Tex., in the late 1800s, the term "serial killer" didn't exist yet.

Texas's capitol city — and the country — had never encountered anything like it: Someone was killing black women, mutilating their bodies with an ax or an ice pick. Six victims were killed in less than a year, many of them dragged from their beds, their bodies left in the open.

The idea that a single person could be behind all the brutal mayhem was inconceivable. Law enforcement and the terrified public imagined roving gangs and impressionable copycats, acting out what they'd seen in the blood-soaked headlines.

"No one had seen this kind of killer in American life before," said Skip Hollandsworth, author of "The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer."

As the death toll climbed, reporters gave the murderer a string of ominous titles: The Servant Girl Annihilator, Texas's Jekyll, the Midnight Assassin.

Austin's law enforcement chased dead-end leads for months, interrogating boyfriends and ex-boyfriends and a well-known chicken thief. There was no forensic science to aid them: No blood splatter analysis, no matching fibers. Investigators didn't even have a way to take fingerprints — which were called "fingermarks" at the time.

"The only thing they had was bloodhounds — dogs that would pick up a scent and maybe trace it to the killer," said Hollandsworth told MPR News host Kerri Miller.

But in the case of the Austin murders, even Bob — Texas's most respected bloodhound, known for his "wicked but intelligent eye" — came up empty.

The failed investigations and the city's panic were inextricably tied up with race. The murdered women were black. The police assumed the murderer, or murderers, were too. That was until two white women were killed on Christmas Eve, 1885, barely an hour apart — struck down in their own backyards. That confounded the investigation further: Police accused the women's husbands of the crimes, saying they had been inspired by the earlier attacks.

This gruesome moment in Austin's history caught Hollandsworth's eye more than 15 years ago. He has reported on crime stores for Texas Monthly for years, but he'd never heard of the killings.

"Why did this story in Austin slip through the cracks of history and just disappear?" Hollandsworth asked.

It could have sunk even further into obscurity, if not for the case's strange tie to the most written-about serial killer in the Western world: Jack the Ripper.

"Three years after the murders stopped in Austin, the killings began in the Whitechapel district of East London," Hollandsworth said. As the mutilated bodies of women began to appear in London alleys, some theorized that the killer had come from Texas.

"Lots of people in England believed it, because they didn't want one of their own to be the killer. It made perfect sense to them that a coarse, uncouth frontier Texan was doing all the killings," Hollandsworth said. "Austin was wanting to believe it too, because they wanted the Midnight Assassin to be out of their lives entirely — they were thrilled at the idea he was over in England."

Though no firm evidence supports the transatlantic serial killer theory, Hollandsworth's book gives the Austin murders a fresh examination. Hollandsworth spent years digging through historical records and tracking down the descendants of investigators, and of the victims.

"I had this narcissistic idea," Hollandsworth said. "That 120 years later, I could do some research and uncover who the killer was."

For the full interview with Skip Hollandsworth on "The Midnight Assassin," use the audio player above.

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