AMERICA’S FIRST SERIAL KILLER!

ONE MIDNIGHT IN TEXAS

THE TRUE STORY OF THE SERVANT GIRL ANNIHILATOR BY TROY TAYLOR (2024)

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Terror came to the Texas town of Austin on December 31, 1884. That night was the first attack by a killer that became known as the “Servant Girl Annihilator.” More would follow and the story of the killer became one of the great murder mysteries of the nineteenth century – most famously because he was the America’s first real serial killer. Never before had an American city been forced to confront a vicious monster who was, for some unknown reason, driven to murder women in a ritualistic fashion.

Over the next year, the killer eluded the police, who were helpless to stop him and unable to predict where he might strike next. Before it came to an end, at least a dozen men were arrested for the murders and three were placed on trial. They all claimed to be innocent – and undoubtedly were.

In this chilling book, author Troy Taylor presents a story of violence, madness, bloodshed, and terror, and the story of a town that was pushed to the brink by one man’s terrible crimes – a man who was able to elude capture and vanish into history. He was never punished and the murders he committed remain unsolved.

The name of the Servant Girl Annihilator has always been a mystery. Was the killer a crazed drifter? A local madman? An otherwise normal man with a compulsion to kill? A well-known figure who was quietly locked away when his secret was discovered? Or perhaps a killer that surfaced years later to murder again?

Explore the mystery and the many suspects with Troy Taylor with a book that will you locking all the doors and windows when you go to bed at night!

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK BY TROY TAYLOR

The killer that became known as both the “Servant Girl Annihilator” and the “Midnight Assassin” claimed his first victim in Austin, Texas, on December 31, 1884. It would not be his last. That murder began a year-long reign of terror by a vicious madman who roamed the city, striking by moonlight, using axes, knives, and even steel rods to rip women apart.

The story of the Austin murderer became one of the great American murder mysteries of the nineteenth century – perhaps made most famous because he was never caught.

He was also America’s first real serial killer.

There had been other multiple murderers that came before him – and perhaps claimed as many victims as he did – but he was truly the first that would fit the criteria established a little less than a century later about what makes a serial killer what they are.

For the first time on record, an American city was threatened by a monster who committed a series of murders for some unknown reason, pre-dating even the famous “Jack the Ripper” murders in London – murders that will become an important part of THIS story.

The Texas killer eluded the police, who were almost helpless to stop him. He taunted them for their failures, ensuring they couldn’t predict where he’d strike next.

Worried citizens came up with increasingly desperate plans to stop the murders, suggesting things like giving all the women of the city a guard dog or lighting the entire city with newly invented “arc lamps” so the killer would have no place to hide.

Private detectives descended on Austin, all hoping to find the killer and claim the sizable reward that was offered by the city’s businessmen and by the governor of Texas himself.

Even a group of “alienists” from New York – as experts in the study of mental illness were referred to in those days – gathered at the New York Academy of Medicine to discuss the killer’s methods, hoping they might somehow uncover his identity.

Before it all came to an end, at least a dozen men were arrested for the murders. There would be three different murder trials for three different suspects, all of whom claimed to be innocent – and undoubtedly were.

This is a story of violence, madness, bloodshed, and terror, and the story of a town that was pushed to the brink in response to one man’s terrible crimes.

And it’s also a story of the failure of a police force hampered by the inherent racism of the day. In fact, it was a year after the first attack when the murders finally stopped – only after the Austin killer slaughtered two white women. After that, the investigation finally began to be taken more seriously. For an entire year, the killer had targeted only African American women, so white families never imagined that the brutality would ever touch them.

Meanwhile, black families in Austin were living in fear, terrified that a mother, sister, female relative, or friend might be attacked and killed while they slept.

Ultimately, this is a story about America’s first serial killer and how he managed to elude capture and vanish into history. He was never punished, and the murders he committed remain unsolved.

The name of the Austin killer has always been a mystery. We don’t know who he was or why he went on that rampage in 1884 – 1885 that ended with so many dead.

Was the killer a crazed drifter who found the city to be a fertile hunting ground? Was he, as so many Austin locals believed, a deranged black man? Or was he well-known in society and lived an everyday life but occasionally felt the urge to murder women? And if so, was it true, as one rumor stated, that he was quietly captured and locked away to avoid public scandal for his well-connected family?

Or could the killer have been someone peripherally involved in the case, often present around the murder scenes but never seriously considered a suspect?

And could the killer have disappeared after the Austin murders only to resurface again later to carry out another series of murders and attacks?

As you’ll see, anything seems to be possible.

Before your purchase your copy, you’ll need to prepare yourself for another book in my ongoing series of titles about unsolved ax murders. This is my third and will undoubtedly not be my last, as my fascination with murders committed by what was a “weapon of convenience” in the nineteenth century seems to know no bounds.

This volume is a little different, however. This one isn’t about small towns in Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, and Texas that a mysterious stranger who traveled by train visited. It wasn’t the early twentieth century when police officers – even in small towns – were a little more knowledgeable about crime and had greater access to assistance from larger departments and cities.

This is about a police force that might have been as modern as just about any department in the United States at the time. But even so, when these murders occurred in 1884 and 1885, the authorities in Austin were unprepared for a killer like this. He came in the night, and he vanished without being seen. His victims were poor, mostly servant girls, so robbery was never the motive. He was committing murders just for the sake of killing.

Leave the lights on and the doors locked for this one.

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