The New Orleans Murder Block

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Maid Discovers A Gruesome Scene

On the afternoon of Thursday, October 27, 1927, Nettie Compass entered the second-floor apartment at 715 Ursulines Street to do some cleaning.

In 1927 a large family lived in a 2nd-floor apartment at 715 Ursulines Avenue. Lonie, 28, and Theresa, 25 were sisters from New Iberia. Lonie had married Joseph Moity, 33 and Theresa had married his brother Henry, 29. They were both from New Iberia as well. They had moved to the French Quarter all together with 5 children, 2 from Lonie and Joseph’s marriage and 3 from Theresa and Henry.

Nettie came upon a gruesome scene upon entering the apartment. She saw blood right away and her screams attracted authorities. In one of the bedrooms they found a blood soaked mattress with severed fingers. There was a travel trunk on the floor and inside were the severed arms, legs, head, and torso of Theresa. In the back bedroom there was an identical scene, with the addition of a sugar cane knife sitting in the trunk.

New Orleans Parish Coroner, Dr. George Roeling determined that the killer had first bludgeoned the women with a lead billy club, before decapitating them with a machete and amputating their arms and legs. Authorities recovered a gold wedding band buried in a deep gash in Theresa’s back. Clothing that investigators believed had been tossed from the trunks to accommodate the women’s remains was strewn about the tenement alongside discarded human remains.

Police Suspect the Husbands

The victims were immediately identified as Theresa and Lonie. The first suspects were their husbands.  

Joseph Moity turned himself in to the authorities as soon as he heard about the discovery. He explained that he had come home a few weeks before to find his wife with another man in the apartment. She told her husband to leave so he had, taking the kids with him to his parents back in New Iberia (about 130 miles away). Joseph also told the police that he was sure that it was his brother Henry who committed the murders. But Henry was nowhere to be found.

Let’s talk about these marriages.

Lonie and Theresa were not shy about how disappointed they were in their marriages. Both Joseph and Henry were going from job to job and the family was scraping by financially. Both women had to sew and pick up other work to supplement their income. Neighbors reported bitter fights over money, constant accusations of infidelity, and wild drinking bouts in the household.

Lonie had even written a book. It was a cautionary tale warning women against marriage, making analogies to a prison or a life sentence.

Henry Is Found

Police were on the look for Henry and found that he had taken the children to a family member’s house and had gone to a boarding house. They believed he was planning a getaway on a ship. Superintendent Healy radioed the seven ships sailing out of New Orleans that day to be on the lookout. Healy’s dispatches to area law enforcement described Henry as having “dark bushy hair,” “very dark brown eyes,” and “tattoo mark on arm, flower with lady face, also nude woman.”

On Saturday, October 29—two days after the women’s bodies were discovered—crewmen of the freighter Gem reported Henry Moity to the Lafourche Parish Sheriff. Henry had begged his way onto the ship using a false name, but the crew recognized his tattoo from the newspaper stories about the crimes.

Henry’s Confession

Henry first tried to say that a red-headed Norwegian sailor had forced him to commit the crimes but he couldn’t get the story together and quickly confessed. He was enraged after hearing rumors that his wife was planning on running off with Joseph Caruso. He was their landlord and owner of a store on the first floor of the building. They had even been seen in town walking together and holding hands. Henry was already suspicious of Theresa’s infidelity, but her running away with someone pushed him too far.

He also blamed his sister-in-law for being a bad influence on his wife. After Joseph left the apartment both sisters brought men to the apartment when Henry was out. 

Henry also admitted to the murders being premeditated. The evening before Nettie said she saw Henry, Theresa, Lonie, and the children leave the apartment in good spirits. Nettie testified that she remembered Henry pulling her aside and whispering not to be scared if Nettie and her family heard the children crying in the early morning.

On the way home from their outing, a local busybody made a casual comment to Theresa, implying that there were rumors she was going to run off with Caruso that night. The women and children went to bed. Henry stayed up, stewing about his wife’s infidelity until his mind boiled over into rage. He went to Theresa’s bedroom and stabbed her. Next, he attacked his sister-in-law, who he blamed in part for his wife’s behavior. Then he cut up the bodies, stuffed them in the trunks, and left the house.

Henry is Sentenced to Life In Prison

In speaking with the police he also said “If I ever get my hands on that Joe Caruso, I’ll chop him up into little pieces, not big pieces like my wife, but little pieces,” he told police. “I’ll make him look like something that’s been run through a sausage mill. … Joe Caruso took my wife. She was beautiful. And I loved her.”

Henry was tried separately for each murder and found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison. Henry began his sentence at Louisiana State Penitentiary on July 6, 1928. He was a model prisoner and was given many privileges. By 1934 he was made a “trusty” which meant he was given additional responsibility and minimal supervision. 

Henry Escapes

In the summer of 1944, on a routine trip to the post office, Henry simply hired a taxi to take him to Hammond, Louisiana. From there he caught the Illinois Central Panama Limited en route to Chicago. The superintendent of the prison was not all concerned because he thought Henry would come back since there was a chance he was going to have his sentence reduced because he was drunk at the time of the incident. 

20 months later police stopped Henry for suspicious behavior. He was underweight and bedraggled and he quickly admitted who he was. Henry was sent back to Louisiana and despite his escape was released from prison 2 years later on March 26, 1948.

After getting out of prison, Henry moved to California in hopes of restarting his life. At a Los Angeles hotel in 1956, Henry shot his girlfriend Alberta Orange in the chest, puncturing her lung. He was sentenced to five years at Folsom Prison for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Henry died of a stroke in 1957 while serving his term at Folsom.

The Mad Butcher

In the mid 1800’s, Hans Mueller immigrated to the United States from Germany with his wife. 

A butcher by trade, Mueller established a sausage factory at 725 Ursaline Avenue. Ironically it is next door to the Moity apartment. The factory and store were on the first floor, with the living quarters on the second level.

The couple came with next to nothing and had created a successful business. According to some stories, Mueller hired a young woman, a much younger and very attractive woman, to assist his wife with the day-to-day duties of running the household. Eventually, Mueller began to have an affair with the woman which made his wife angry. When she threatened to fire the younger woman, Mueller murdered his wife to keep his mistress.

Other stories say that the hard work took a toll on his wife’s physical appearance and he no longer found her attractive. Since divorce was unheard of during this time, his only option of getting out of the marriage was to murder his wife.

One night as she was sweeping up the floors he came behind her and strangled her to death. Mueller used the tools that were available to him at the time….his sausage grinder. 

He dismembered his wife’s body and ground the remains up, making her into sausage and then selling that sausage to his customers. Neighbors were suspicious of the wife’s disappearance and even more disturbed by the behavior of Mueller, who was said to be wandering at night, wringing his hands and seeming to be hiding from some invisible being. Allegedly, a customer found a gold ring in the sausage and reported it to the police, who made a visit to Mueller’s sausage factory.

Resources

• Sausage Man/Hans Muller House – New Orleans, LA (Where’s the Beef?) 
• The Trunk Murders and ‘Sausage Ghost’ of 1920s New Orleans 
• JUSTICE STORY: ‘Handy man with a knife’ flies off the handle
• Amid Roaring Twenties New Orleans, a brutal French Quarter murder shocked the city

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