The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth

Author:Skip Hollandsworth [Hollandsworth, Skip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780805097689
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2016-04-05T07:00:00+00:00

The Travis County Courthouse, also known as “the Castle,” where all the murder trials were held

But the city’s leaders were not backing down. Citizen’s Committee of Safety chairman Wooldridge announced that the committee would be raising funds to hire Taylor Moore, a well-regarded Austin lawyer and former district attorney himself, to “assist” District Attorney Robertson as a “special prosecutor” at Jimmy’s trial.

Interestingly, a few days after the Christmas Eve attacks, Moore had given an interview with the St. Louis Republican suggesting that he, too, suspected that the murders of Austin’s women were probably the work of “a maniac who at regular intervals feels an uncontrollable desire to outrage and murder women.” But after accepting the Citizen’s Committee’s fee, he obviously changed his mind. He now told reporters that he and young District Attorney Robertson were already “up to their armpits” preparing their case against Jimmy. He noted that at least a couple of people who had known Jimmy and Eula were planning to testify that Jimmy had made specific threats to kill Eula if he ever found out she was cheating on him. One man reportedly would be testifying that a drunken Jimmy had come to his home one afternoon in November 1885, holding a small pocket knife, angrily asking if he knew Eula’s whereabouts.

Still, for many of Austin’s citizens, there was one question to be answered—and it was maybe the biggest question of all. If Jimmy really did murder Eula, then who murdered Susan Hancock?

It didn’t take long for them to get their answer. A couple of weeks after Jimmy’s arrest, Justice of the Peace Von Rosenberg held another closed-door hearing in his courtroom. When it was concluded, he walked outside and announced that Thomas Bailes of the Capital Detective Association—yes, the very same Thomas Bailes who had come up with the “evidence” to arrest Jimmy—had presented “new evidence” regarding the Hancock case, which had led Von Rosenberg to issue an arrest warrant charging another Austin man with murder.

Everyone leaned forward, eager to hear the man’s name. According to the evidence that had just been presented in his courtroom, Von Rosenberg said, Mrs. Hancock’s killer was none other than her own husband, Moses.

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