AXE MURDERERS
AXE MURDERERS Though the figure of the axe-wielding maniac is a staple of horror movies and campfire tales, he is largely a figment of the popular imagination. In reality, serial killers rarely rely on axes. The most famous axe in American criminal history , of course, was the one that belonged to Miss Lizzie Borden, who, according to folklore, used it to give her sleeping stepmother “forty whacks” in the face (and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one). Lizzie, however, was no serial killer but a chubby, thirty-two-year-old spinster with long-simmering resentments who apparently went berserk one sweltering day in August 1892. In short, her crimes (assuming she committed them, which seems fairly certain, in spite of her acquittal) were a one-shot deal—a lifetime’s worth of stifled emotions exploding in a single savage deed. Another fatal female who was handy with an axe was the notorious Belle Gunness, who murdered at least fourteen of her husbands and