Billy the Axeman

Billy the Axeman (also referred to as the Ax-Man, the Midwest Axeman, and the Man from the Train) was the name of a suspected serial killer thought to be responsible for a series of family murders that occurred mainly in the U.S. Midwest between September 1911 and June 1912.

Attacks attributed to this killer are characterized by the slaying of a whole family in their beds by crushing their skulls with a blunt instrument, usually an axe. The families often lived in very close proximity to the rail road, which is assumed to be what the killer used for transportation. Possible signature characteristics include the destruction and covering of the victim's faces and the staging of one of the female victims in a manner that indicated lust murder.

The notion of such a killer was first introduced by the press in 1911, and over the past 100 years, many different theories have been advanced. Most theories focus on a series of crimes, which ranged from 1911 to 1912 and claimed between 24 and 30 victims depending on the crimes included. More recently the authors Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James published The Man from the Train, in which they argue for a much longer crime series spanning from 1898 to 1912. This revised theory attributes over 90 deaths to him, which would make him one of the most prolific serial killers in US history.