The Servant Girl Annihilator on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Eliza Shelly was murdered on this day (May 6) in 1885 by the Servant Girl Annihilator. 

The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Austin Axe Murderer and the Midnight Assassin, was an unidentified American serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, between 1884 and 1885. The sobriquet originated with the writer O. Henry. The series of eight axe murders were referred to by contemporary sources as the Servant Girl Murders.

The December 26, 1885, issue of The New York Times reported that the "murders were committed by some cunning madman, who is insane on the subject of killing women." The murders represent an early example of a serial killer operating in the United States, three years before the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel.

According to author Philip Sugden in The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, the conjecture that the Texas killer and Jack the Ripper were one and the same man originated in October 1888, when an editor with the Atlanta Constitution proposed this conjecture, following the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes by Jack the Ripper.

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The 1978 Indiana Burger Chef Murders on This Day in History

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Today in History: The Burger Chef murders happened on this day at a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana in 1978. Four young employees went missing in what was initially thought to be a petty theft of cash from the restaurant safe. By Saturday morning it became a clear case of robbery-kidnapping, and by Sunday, when their bodies were discovered in the woods 20 miles away, it became a a case of murder. Despite thousands of hours of police investigation, as well as Burger Chef offering a reward of $25,000 to anyone who could capture the murderers or provide information about their whereabouts, the attackers were never prosecuted, and the case remains officially unsolved.

1978 was also the year we had the Blackfriars Massacre where an unsolved Irish Mob and/or Italian-American Mafia massacre occurred in the Blackfriars Pub in Downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Four criminals were killed, allegedly over the sale of cocaine. 

1978 was also the year that the Clinton Avenue Five went missing. The Clinton Avenue Five are five young men who disappeared in Newark, New Jersey. The name is derived from the street where they were last seen. The case eventually went cold. 

1978 was also the year of the deliberately set Holiday Inn fire. The 1978 Holiday Inn Fire broke out at the Holiday Inn-Northwest which was located at 1525 West Ridge Road in the Town of Greece, near Rochester, New York, and killed ten people. Seven of the fatalities were Canadian. The case remains unsolved as well.

1978 was also the year of the Marseille bar massacre, which refers to the mass murder of ten people in the Bar du Téléphone in Marseille, France, on 3 October 1978. Three armed gunmen entered the bar and shot everyone present in the head, with the sole survivor being the owner's wife Nicole Léoni, who was in another room. This was believed to be part of a gang war, and it remains unsolved to this day.

1978 was also the year of the Sirloin Stockade murders. Armed with a handgun, Roger Dale Stafford and his wife and brother went to rob the restaurant and ended up killing six employees execution style. Roger Dale Stafford was suspected of 34 murders and was executed on Death Row in 1995.

1978 was also the year of the Jonestown mass suicide.

See also: The Untold Truth of the Burger Chef Murders

Going Postal on This Day in History

 

Former U.S. postal worker Joseph Harris shot two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey on this day in 1991. The night before, Harris had killed his former supervisor, Carol Ott, with a samurai sword, and shot her fiance. Harris was initially armed with an Uzi, grenades, and "samurai sword" and garbed in a ninja outfit and gas mask. After a four-hour standoff with police at the post office, Harris was eventually arrested. His violent outburst was one of many such attacks by postal workers that resulted in the addition of the phrase “going postal” to the American lexicon.

"On November 14th of that same year, after being fired, Thomas Mcilvane killed 4 people and then himself at a Royal Oak, Michigan post office. In a terrible coincidence, on May 6th 1993, two separate shootings took place.  The first one was at a post office in Dearborn, Michigan, where Lawrence Jasion killed one person and wounded three before killing himself. Within a few hours of that, in Dana Point, California, Mark Richard Hilbun killed his mother, and then shot two postal workers." Source

Between the years of 1983 to 1993, there were 11 murderous rampages in U.S. post offices. The worst of these took place on August 20, 1986, in Edmond, Oklahoma. Pat Sherrill, who was about to be fired, killed 14 mail workers, wounded another five, and then turned the gun on himself. I've noticed that some who have gone postal are former military. 

The first case of Post Office violence that I could find was in Australia in 1926 where fired postal worker James Hannivan shot and wounded two employees at Adelaide General Post Office, before committing suicide by shooting himself in the head.

The most recent case of this type of violence happened at a Fedex facility in Indianapolis on April 15 2021 where a gunman killed nine of his former coworkers.

2,000,000 US workers per year report workplace violence.

Most cases of workplace violence are non-fatal. From 1993 to 1999, an average of about 1.7 million people reported occupational violence. About 75% of these cases are considered simple assault, while 19% of cases are considered aggravated assault.

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