Ranking up there with London's Jack the Ripper is Austin's own Servant Girl Annihilator. For two years, a maddened axman roamed the darkened streets of the Violet Crown City searching for the victims of his trade — domestics, working girls — who were invariably hacked to death while sleeping. Altogether, 13 Austin girls fell prey to this, the unkindest cut of all, the last on Christmas Day 1885. And like Jack the Ripper, the Annihilator's identity has never been unmasked.
It was just the start of another hotter-than-hell Del Valle August day in 1925, until the visitors stepped across the threshold of Charles Engler's spacious home. Then they found the bullet-riddled bodies of the prosperous farmer, wife Augusta, and pretty 25-year-old foster daughter Emma. There was no apparent motive.
The sheriff's department "went fishing" with a couple of suspects but didn't catch a thing. So desperate were the whitehats for a nibble that they resorted to the use of a then-new and controversial drug--scopolamine--for the first time in Travis County. Most of us know scopolamine as truth serum.
A related story has one of the suspect's wives cornering him while "under the influence." "What I want to know," she demands of him, "is — have you always been true to me?" His answer is not known. The case was still alive 13 years later when True Detective Mysteries magazine retold the grisly story and offered a thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. The reward was eventually withdrawn, and no perpetrator or motive has ever surfaced.
"The first and only Giraffe to be ever exhibited in Texas," trumpeted circus advertisements during the early fall of 1880. The Greatest Show on Earth stretched its neck all the way out in promoting its newest mysterious strange attraction, fresh from the depths of darkest Africa. A full complement of rubberneckers and starry-eyed children were waiting for the great Barnum & Bailey gypsy train as it chugged in from Houston (Just as it does each summer now, 120 years later). This greeting committee didn't exactly get what they came for; Giraffe was a lifeless (and smelly) as a land-locked mackerel, and had been since Brenham.
The roustabouts were looking forward to a big giraffe barbecue until a public-spirited citizen decided that the children of Austin would not walk away from the circus disappointed. He engrossed the carcass and engaged the services of Mr. Lesterget, Austin's most popular butcher. Lesterget promptly and scientifically skinned the hide and in turn presented it to the local tanner, who performed his peculiar ablutions, and bequeathed the hide to the local taxidermist, who restufied it to original specs.
Suitably remodeled, Giraffa camelopardalis was now ready for the carnival midway where it could be viewed by the general public for the modest sum of l5 cents. (So much for public spirit.) Folks paid the price, gazed upon its remnant beatification, and left, muttering that they had seen it all now ...
Being as this particular mother lode played out rather quickly, the giraffe's proprietors/agents offered it up for sale or trade for city property. It sure beats the hell out of a wooden Indian, they suggested to prospective clients.
We don't even know whether they ever managed to palm their four-legged skyscraper off on some cubic rube, much less what ultimately happened to the long-necked pawn in this story. But we can be sure of one thing: an 18-foot mercerized giraffe doesn't just gambol off into the sunset one evening, never to be seen again.
Louis Francke had a powerful thirst, and he was determined to do something about it. A day's labor in the vineyards of the public weal often does that to a man. But at that particular hour of the aftemoon, he and his pocketbook weren't on speaking terms. No problem; Fayette County's representative to the Texas Legislature just quick-stepped down the statehouse hall to the sergeant-at-arm's office, where he pocketed his per diem and travel pittances.
Thus armed, he maneuvered down Capitol Hill, down Congress Avenue, hellbent on fulfillment, past the Blue Ruin, past the Last Chance, finally turning into an anonymous little watering hole just the wrong side of the End of the World, where the beer was cold and the talk cheap. He drank his fill, and as there was no lobbyist present to pick up the tab, Francke whipped out a fiver and shoved all but a nickel back in his pocket.
Then he steered back up Congress to Capitol Hill. The black hills to the west were clutching at their violet crowns. Climbing the dark statehouse steps, Francke was ambushed by a pair of deadly swift shadows, who stove in his skull with a large rock. They lightened his pockets and tossed the corpse down the steps before disappearing forever into the night. Quite a few people had noticed two strange men lounging on the Capitol steps late that afternoon, February 19, 1873, and a grocer recollected selling them some beers, but neither they, nor anyone one else, were ever apprehended.
There was no law to speak of, save what the citizens could muster up. Robert E. Lee had surrendered two months ago, Governor Pendleton Murrah had faded into Mexico, Yankee General Gordon Granger's triumphant entry into Galveston on Juneteenth was still a week away. There was no moon, either. All in all, a perfect time to strike, that particular Sunday night, June 11, 1865.
The 40-odd brigands, turncoats, bushwhackers, and other assorted scalawags stole into town at a fashionably late hour and up darkened Congress Avenue to Capitol Hill, to the old Treasury building, which stood to the right of the old corncrib-cum-pumpkin Capitol building. Some stayed outside as lookouts, while the rest battered down the doors and proceeded to smash open the safe.
The drummer of the local militia company discovered the break-in and started to beat a call to arms on his drum. Within minutes, 15 armed men were marching on the Treasury. Gunfire erupted as the minutemen encountered the bandits' lookouts; the militia stood their ground, the outlaws ran. The good guys entered the building with gum blazing, not that it did much harm; only one robber bit the dust. The others escaped into the inky night, some toward Mt. Bonnell, others to the south. No one knew exactly how much they got away with — best estimate was about twenty grand — but much of what they left with was dropped along the roadside as they scurried for cover. The militiamen found the treasury-room floor knee-deep in silver and gold coins, but neither they, nor anyone else, ever found any of the midnight raiders.
The pestilence brought on by the lure of buried treasure seems to be a universal affliction, and Austin has certainly been no exception to the rule. We have long been possessed of all the right ingredients: skulking Indians, vulnerable Spanish gold trains, skulking bushwhackers, a vulnerable state treasury, skulking robbers, vulnerable bank vaults — you get the picture — multiplied by a multitude of limestone cubbyholes in which to stash the swag.
A buried-treasure map once fell into Will Porter's hands. According to the map, the hoard seemed to rest somewhere in Pease Park. Porter and company hoisted shovels and lanterns one night soon thereafter, and set about retrieving it. These two-legged moles resolved that they would either have the treasure or be standing in the streets of Shanghai by dawn.
Would have, but for the inhuman shriek and accompanying scream that frightened them off. A few hours later, early risers found a state hospital inmate sitting on the edge of the hole with a spade in his hands. They all wondered how he could have dug such a deep hole in so short a time.
Every bit as infectious as the buried-treasure bug is Diamond Fever. Diamond Fever was wreaking havoc around here by 1869, sending countless citizens out into hills in search of bits of crystalline allotrope of carbon.
The Gazette observed: "Everybody in Austin will soon have his pocket full of rocks. The search for diamonds is unabated. During the rain, we saw individuals hunting with umbrellas over their heads. We are fearful that digging will commence soon, and that our beautiful city will be undermined."
Another account read: "For some time past, people of all sorts — officers, clerks, white boys and black ones — have been seen roving over our gravelly hills, with their eyes intently fixed upon the ground as if in search of something lost. They are looking for Austin diamonds, not yet found, but they may be — who knows? What they do find are small pieces of crystalized quartz, very hard, hard enough to cut common glass."