Welcome to the WBZ book Club. This is Jordan Rich. Well before the term serial killer was even coined, over one hundred years ago, there was a series of murders in Austin, Texas that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper across the pond in England. The book is The Midnight Assassin Panic Scandal and the Hunt for America's First Serial
Killer by author Skip Hollinsworth. The city of Austin, Texas, in the late eighteen hundreds was terrorized by a vicious, diabolical killer dubbed the Midnight Assassin, who at first prayed mainly on poor black women in the community, ultimately brutally murdering members of the white elite community. Weapons used include axes, knives, and long steel rods. Eighteen eighty eight, investigators in London actually tried to connect the murders in Austin, Texas with
those of Jack the Ripper. Suspects were arrested, many of them poor black men, tinged by the racial prejudice of the time, But the author of this book, Skip Hollandsworth, offers his take with a lot of circumstantial evidence as to who could be responsible. The Midnight Assassin that's the book Club. WBZ, Boston's news radio