Author: Skip Hollandsworth
Narrator: Clint Jordan
Some time around the turn of the century, I was an avid reader of Texas Monthly, a periodical covering a wide range of topics which I considered to have some of the finest writing one could come by in that era. And in one issue appeared the odd story of a serial killer, pre-dating Jack the Ripper, who had lurked in my own backyard - killing women and girls in Austin the mid-1880's, when Austin was the capital, but still just sprouting up as a municipality.
I was stunned.
Like a lot of young folks with too much time on their hands, I was aware of details around particularly famous serial killers, having read up on Jack the Ripper as far back as middle school. And I recall being aware of Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and a handful of other killers by the time I graduated high school, back when all of it was sort of an abstraction. So to find out that Austin had it's own Victorian-era killer, and that we had our famed Moontowers because of the killer? That was mind-boggling.
Since that article, the general knowledge that Austin had a 19th-century serial killer has become more pronounced. And, these days, if you want to go on one of those Ghost Tours of Austin, I believe there's some that cater to hitting up the spots where folks were killed.
But I'd never read Skip Hollandsworth's follow up to the article, his 2017 book The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for America's First Serial Killer. I'd planned to read it in October as my Hallow-read, but... I get excited and jump the gun sometimes. And here we are. And, yes, I took the book in as an audiobook read by Clint Jordan.
If you are unfamiliar with Austin's serial killer, "The Midnight Assassin" is the polite name. Prior to the publication of this book, I'd mostly heard of them referred to as "The Servant Girl Annihilator". I'll give you two guesses as to why that could be. But, yes, this individual - who was never caught, and there were no damning leads to point at anyone in particular, despite what History Detectives told me - killed multiple women, mostly servants of middle class families in what were the neighborhoods of Austin of the 1880's.
Hollandsworth's prose move along at a brisk, energetic clip. A journalist more than an historian - he knows to paint the characters in a light so they're memorable and highlights their import to the unfolding events. He knows what details to linger on, and which to move through swiftly - a challenge in a book that both requires the reader understand brutal, despicable crimes perpetrated on real people and also doesn't sensationalize despicable acts.
The book chronicles far more than the murders themselves, but looks at the context of 1880's Austin as a city on the rise, its eyes on the future and desire for growth as a city on the Western expansion of the US. It's the seat of Texas' government, so in play are politicians both local and state-wide, some with eyes on National prestige. Telephones exist, but folks ride horses.
What we think of as police procedure didn't yet exist in the 19th century, and absolutely not out in far-flung Texas. Psychology was in its infancy, and serial killers were an unknown concept.
And, oh, sweet mercy, the racism. Like, look, our modern world is far from perfect, but with no base to start with for understanding the horrors inflicted, it's wild to hear what the city thought was happening - pointing the finger at the Black population for... reasons we won't get into here. But it's not anything to make you feel great about our forefathers.
Skip Hollandsworth handles this in the way I think is most effective - rather than editorializing or commenting on it, he lets people speak for themselves, pulling from sources. And leaving the distinct impression that if folks didn't default to racism, maybe they could have sorted out *something*.
It's not a criticism to say that there's no satisfying conclusion here. It's kind of the point of the discussion around The Midnight Assassin. What happened in the aftermath is covered, how the events changed the town, and impacted lives. And theories are chased down in necessary detail.
Anyway - I don't think you need to be from Austin to find the book a good read. It's a snip of a place and time, and an extraordinary series of events that occur that shake a city. Just as the city would be shaken again and again. And as time marches on, those events are forgotten only to resurface as historical curiosity.
But as you think about picking up something a bit mysterious or spooky for the Halloween season - why not try some non-fiction?
The audiobook is interesting in that I think Clint Jordan mostly does a very good job, but once in a while you can hear how he pronounces a place or proper name, and that's not the preferred pronunciation locally. It would have served the director of the recording to get checks on proper place names and how we say them. Seguin is "suh-geen", it is not "sehg-win" (the most egregious example). But overall, a solid performance!
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