10 Violent and Terrifying Unsolved Crimes From New Orleans

Everyone knows that New Orleans can be a mysterious and sometimes dangerous city. While The Big Easy is known for Mardi Gras, jazz, and letting the good times roll, many inexplicable and violent stories shroud the history of the Crescent City.

Strange happenings in The French Quarter in the middle of the night have led to murder and mayhem for years. New Orleans is home to some of the most violent and bizarre mysteries of the past three centuries, from serial killers to vampire wannabes and everything in between. Join us as we count down the ten most bizarre and terrifying mysteries to come out of New Orleans.

Related: 10 Lesser Known Murder Mysteries That Remain Unsolved

10 The Husbands of Minnie Wallace

At the age of sixteen, Minnie Wallace of New Orleans left home to marry 49-year-old James Walkup, mayor of Emporia, Kansas. They spent a blissful month as husband and wife. Then Walkup was found dead of arsenic poisoning. Minnie was tried for murder in a highly publicized trial, but was acquitted. Five years later, in 1897, she married again. This time to Toledo millionaire John B Ketcham. Soon after, Ketchem died. Again Minnie was under investigation for murder; this time she wasn’t even charged.

Then, in the nineteenth century, she had an ongoing affair with De Lancey Louderback, a railroad magnate. After a few years, Minne left him, moved to London and married someone else. A month later, just after writing her into his will, Louderback died from drinking cyanide. Suffice to say, Wallace left a trail of bodies in her wake. While this mystery seems easily solved, she was never convicted of any wrongdoing, leaving the murders of her husbands officially unsolved.^[1]

9 The Sultan of LePrete Mansion

In 1836, a Greek Revival style mansion was built at 716 Dauphine St. in the French Quarter. The owner, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, sold the building just three years later. Jean Baptiste LePrete bought the house for $20,050 in 1839. However, the Civil War disrupted LePrete’s cash flow, forcing him to rent the property. The tenant was said to be a Turkish sultan and the brother of a man of Middle Eastern descent who approached LePrete and signed the lease.

Over the next few days, an entire entourage of women, servants, advisers, furniture and art was paraded into the house. And then all the locks were changed. They partied every night at the Sultan’s House until one morning a neighbor saw blood dripping from the house and seeping down the stairs to the sidewalk. When the police arrived, they found everyone inside had died; one person was buried alive with a hand sticking out of their fresh and shallow grave. It was the sultan.

The man was not actually the Sultan, but the Sultan’s brother who escaped to New Orleans after stealing the real Sultan’s wives and property. The real sultan hired assassins to kill his brother and everyone in the house. The killer(s) were never found and the building is still believed to be the haunt of that night’s victims.^[2]

8 The toddler Ramona Brown

Three-year-old Ramona Brown was last seen in a house fire in Algiers, New Orleans, in 1984. It was Mardi Gras Day when the fire broke out. Six-year-old Simona Brown called the police and reported that two family members had already died in the fire. As a fire raged at the Brown family home, a couple pulled up in an unknown car. They asked the children if they needed help, and little Ramona got into the vehicle and was never seen again.

Simona said she told her mother about the alleged abduction, but Simona was only six at the time and her mother had a nervous breakdown trying to process the horror of it all. Now, nearly 40 years later, Simona is working with investigators from NOPD and WWL-TV to find out what happened to her sister all those years ago.^[3]

7 Eddie Wells

Seventeen-year-old Edward “Eddie” Wells was found dead and floating in the Mississippi River in 1982. At the time, the case was handled by Stanley Burkhardt, the NOPD’s child abuse investigator. Burkhardt quickly closed the case. He publicly theorized that Wells was killed while selling sex to a man, although there was no supporting evidence.

More than thirty years later, Burkhardt was exposed as a pedophile, and the NOPD is now closely investigating all of Burkhardt’s cases. While strong allegations have been made against Burkhardt in this case, no evidence has come to light. To this day, no one knows what happened to Eddie Wells, except that he was fished out of the river one day, and no one knows how he got there.^[4]

6 Storyville killer

The Storyville Slayer is the name given to the unidentified killer or killers who committed a series of murders in the New Orleans area between 1991 and 1996. Several vital signs connected these murders. The targets were mainly women of African descent between the ages of 17 and 42. Most of them were strangled, although some drowned. The victims were dumped in remote swamps and canals. Their bodies were left in the water for several weeks to several years, resulting in extreme decomposition and destruction of incriminating evidence.

Not surprisingly, some of the victims have never been identified. Two men, Victor Grant and Rusell Ellwood, were scrutinized and Ellwood had a high-profile trial, but was acquitted. As of November 2021, all but Cheryl Lewis’ murders remain unsolved. Ellwood remains a suspect in several murders, but no charges have been brought against him.^[5]

5 Margaret Koon

In 1987, Margaret Coon, a wealthy lawyer from Mandeville, was stabbed in the back and left for dead. She was jogging with her dog in a gated subdivision, considered one of the safest neighborhoods in the area. Local authorities have been dumbfounded for decades. In 2021, New Orleans reporter Jed Lipinski took a closer look at the case.

Coon left her home sometime after 8:30 p.m. Her body was found the next day; the faithful dog guarded her body. There were no signs of struggle or assault. She wore about $100,000 worth of jewelry on her corpse. The community gate security officer reported that no non-residents had entered the Beau Chene community that night.

Coon prosecuted sex offenders and child molesters, and speculation points to revenge killing. Her father, Webster Coon, spent $200,000 on private investigations to find out who killed his daughter and why; he died in 2005. With Lipinski’s help, this unsolved case remains relevant in New Orleans today.^[6]

4 Jacques Saint-Germaine

Jacques Saint Germaine arrived in New Orleans from France in 1902. He claimed to be a descendant of the Count Saint Germain. He was rich and prosperous; he spoke a dozen languages ​​and played as many musical instruments. He was known for throwing extravagant parties and entertaining New Orleans’ most influential citizens. Despite serving lavish culinary delights in his mansion in the French Quarter, he was never seen eating a single bite.

Screams were heard from St. Germain’s house one night after he brought home a woman from the bar. The woman jumped from the second floor of his home and told bystanders she had been attacked by her host, who grabbed her and bit her neck. When police searched St. Germain’s home, they found bloodstains and wine bottles filled with blood. St Germain was never seen again in New Orleans.^[7]

3 Ursuline Convent Murders 1978

The Ursulines Convent in New Orleans’ French Quarter has a long history of bizarre and terrifying happenings. The famous legend of “The Casket Girls” started the supernatural ball rolling in the early 18th century. The monastery has been attracting visitors for centuries who investigate where rumors of vampires come from and enthrall the whole town.

In 1978, a group of Boston College students came to see for themselves. They placed a video camera across the street. They planned to film from dusk to dawn for a week to see if there were any vampires or other paranormal activity in the old monastery.

The group consisted of two girls and three boys. On the third night, the three boys left the girls alone while they went for a drink. The boys found the girls’ bodies just before dawn in front of the adjacent chapel. They had lost 80% of their blood and had strange bite marks on their necks. The killer has never been found and the locals believe it to be haunted. The chapel has not held a Sunday Mass since the murders.^[8]

2 UpStairs Lounge Arson

Perhaps the most deadly attack on the LGBTQ community in history occurred on June 24, 1973, when what was then known as the UpStairs Lounge caught fire. 141 Chartres Street, now known as the Jiminai, was once a popular gay bar in the French Quarter. “An unknown assailant started a fire using lighter fluid. About 30 people escaped, but another 30 were trapped on the second floor. The windows were covered with bars and the fire raged for sixteen minutes before help could arrive. Twenty-eight people died in the fire; four more victims died en route or in hospital.”

At the time, UpStairs was one of the few safe places for New Orleans’ gay and lesbian population. Often referred to as the ‘forgotten tragedy’, the perpetrator or culprits of this deadly blaze were never found or brought to justice.^[9]

9 The ax man

While his reign of terror lasted only a year, New Orleans’ infamous Ax Man left a lasting mark on the city. He chiseled off the bottom panel of civilians’ back doors in the middle of the night, crept into their bedrooms while they slept, and attacked them with an axe. He focused on couples and Italians in particular; it is believed that he had ties to the Mafia. His first bout occurred in May 1918, averaging one episode per month.

The Ax Man sent a letter to the local newspaper on March 13, 1919. In the letter, he portrays himself as a demon who can turn into smoke and kill at will, disregarding the police. He held the city hostage and demanded that everyone listen to jazz the following Tuesday night or else blood would flow.

While there are many theories about the Ax Man, including that he was killed by a victim’s widow in California, official records indicate that he was never caught. The Ax Man has been depicted in the popular TV series American horror storyand his story remains one of the most heinous crimes committed in New Orleans.^[10]