howeenterprise.com
Monday, October 16, 2017
Page #10
Texas History Minute a confusing and contradictory description. Wild rumors ran through the city streets about the identity of the possible killer or even suggested that a gang of men was responsible.
Dr. Ken Bridges Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com. Murder came to the darkened neighborhoods of the capital city on New Years Eve 1884. Mollie Smith, a young cook, was murdered with an axe, her body dragged outside and left in the yard. Her employer was also injured. This was the first of a series of eight deaths in Austin over the course of a year. In what became one of the earliest serial murder cases in the United States, the deaths left a bustling city used to political scandal and stories of death on the frontier gripped in terror.
The last two murders both occurred on Christmas Eve 1885. Two women were murdered by an axe in their homes while they slept. Susan Hancock was killed while sleeping alongside her teenaged daughter, and Eula Phillips, age 17, was murdered blocks away while her husband was seriously injured. Serial killers usually will stop killing either because they have moved away from the area, they are in jail or institutionalized from unrelated causes, or they die. In 1885, it was considerably easier for people to slip away and disappear from public view. Austin was known for a population that drifted in and out of the city. No similar murders were reported elsewhere in the United States in the years after the Austin murders stopped.
One suspect, Nathan Elgin, was named as a possible suspect by Travis County Sheriff Malcolm Hornsby. Elgin was 18 when the murders started. In February 1886, he was shot while assaulting a girl near a saloon and died shortly afterward. Though Elgin On March 19, 1885, two young was missing a toe and the murders servant girls were hit with an axe stopped after his death, no other while they slept. Though they physical evidence or witnesses at survived, they could not identify the time was able to conclusively their attacker. Another young connect him. He had no arrest woman, Eliza Shelley, a cook, was record, and though he does not fit killed by an axe two months later the typical profile of a serial killer, while she slept. This was followed this neither acquits nor convicts by another murder two weeks later him. and an 11-year-old girl in August. Police had no suspects. Modern Two trials were held in connection investigative techniques did not to the deaths. James Phillips was exist at the time. tried for his wife’s death the following May. The death of Eula Texas writer and Austin resident Phillips by the axe seemed too William Sydney Porter, also called similar. Though her husband was O. Henry, offhandedly called the also wounded, he was placed on murderer the “Servant Girl trial. It was clearly shown that his Annihilator” in a letter in 1885, and footprints did not match those in the name has since stuck with the other cases, but he was individuals studying the case. The nevertheless convicted of secondServant Girl Murders, as they were degree murder, a conviction later typically called at the time, sent the overturned. Moses Hancock was growing city into a panic. tried for his wife’s death in 1886. The case ended in a hung jury. The attacks were brazen, the acts of a madman filled with some The Jack the Ripper case shocked undefined and maniacal rage. Age, the world with the brutal slayings race, and social class made no of five women, with these murders difference. In each case, the acts taking place in London between were committed while the victims August and November 1888. Even slept and performed with either an at the time, some people axe or knife. Sometimes the axe speculated the two series of was left behind. In many cases, the murders were connected. murderer took his boots off and However, no evidence ever wandered into the houses barefoot. emerged to connect the two. Police noted a missing toe on one While the two cases have a foot. But police were understaffed passing similarity on the surface, with only 12 undertrained officers, more in-depth examination shows many of whom were known for that the targets and the styles of visiting local saloons while on the murders were completely duty. different. And what is truly more terrifying is that there was more Survivors were never able to than one person capable of such identify their assailant. One other barbarity an ocean apart. witnessed that talked to police gave
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Austin tripled the size of its police force in 1886, set strict curfews, and forced the all-night saloons to close at midnight. By 1895, Austin’s distinct Moonlight Towers were set in place across the city to improve lighting and nighttime safety. Even a decade after the deaths, the city was still unnerved by the Servant Girl Murders. Today, there is still some active discussion and interest in the Servant Girl Annihilator case. A number of books have been
written discussing the case. None of the houses where the murders took place still stand, all wiped away by time and progress. Though more than a century has passed; and all survivors, witnesses, and possible suspects are long since dead, the case still remains technically unsolved. The most terrifying things are not ghostly wisps or supernatural bumps in the night. True terror is the depths of evil that some people are willing to inflict on another. But even in a world of nightmares, the good is still strong enough to defeat the bad.
HPD arrests 21-year-old Melissa man for burglary and public intoxication On Thursday, October 5, 2017, to be intoxicated. Woodall was Howe Police Lieutenant Michael arrested and into the Grayson Hill and Officers Morris and Stone County Jail. arrested 21-year-old Melissa resident Bryce Woodall for Burglary of a habitation, Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, and Public Intoxication. Woodall broke into a home on Tutt Street at approximately 5:00 am Thursday morning. The homeowner heard the commotion and confronted Woodall. He assaulted the homeowner with a baseball bat, then ran from the scene. He was later located walking down State Hwy 5. Inside the backpack, he was carrying contained items taken from the home on Tutt Street. He was found
Bryce Woodall
