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2 Episodes
whollyprimebaboon
Between December 1884 and December 1885, eight people were murdered in Austin, Texas — most of them Black women who worked as cooks and domestic servants, killed at night inside the small detached quarters behind the houses they served. The developing state capital was a city of wooden homes and unpaved avenues barely reached by gaslight, and constables patrolled with hand lanterns while an unidentified man moved through the deep residential yards. The killer arrived empty-handed and used the households’ own tools — axes first, later a sharp steel spike — leaving them behind at the scenes. As the attacks moved from adult servants to an eleven-year-old girl, the victim profile the police relied on collapsed. Narrated from the documented record, the series follows the murders, the disputed dates, and the investigation that never produced a name.
2 Episodes
Between December 1884 and December 1885, eight people were murdered in Austin, Texas — most of them Black women who worked as cooks and domestic servants, killed at night inside the small detached quarters behind the houses they served. The developing state capital was a city of wooden homes and unpaved avenues barely reached by gaslight, and constables patrolled with hand lanterns while an unidentified man moved through the deep residential yards. The killer arrived empty-handed and used the households’ own tools — axes first, later a sharp steel spike — leaving them behind at the scenes. As the attacks moved from adult servants to an eleven-year-old girl, the victim profile the police relied on collapsed. Narrated from the documented record, the series follows the murders, the disputed dates, and the investigation that never produced a name.
2 Episodes
1 min. 2 sec.
Austin is a growing capital of wooden homes and dirt avenues where domestic workers like twenty-five-year-old cook Mollie Smith live in small quarters behind the houses they serve. A resident named William Sydney Porter, later known as O. Henry, will give the coming terror its name.
1 min. 1 sec.
On December 30, Mollie Smith is dragged from her cabin behind the Walter Hall residence on West Pecan Street and killed, with Walter Spencer left bleeding beside her. The axe left at the scene belongs to the household, and police treat the killing as a singular tragedy.