An Austin Walking Tour Sheds Light on America’s First Serial Killer
October 16, 2020 | By Laurel Miller
Miles is a former high school history teacher and the owner of Walking Tours of Austin, which specializes in local history. Miles launched his Murder Walk in April 2019, using his considerable storytelling abilities to relay the gruesome story of America’s first serial killer. Known in the press as the “Midnight Assassin” or “Servant Girl Annihilator” (the latter a nickname coined by the author O. Henry, who lived in Austin at the time), the killer took the lives of four Black servant women, one of the servant’s daughters, a Black man, and two white socialites, using axes and knives to hack and stab his victims before lobotomizing most of them with a steel rod.
