The Detroit Ax Murder

1/3/2025

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Near the corner of St. Aubin Street and Mack in Detroit is a tract of land where a house once stood. In 1929, a horrific murder was committed under its roof, where a family including four children were killed. Not surprisingly there have been reports of a headless man seen wandering where this abode once stood. Could it be the fact that this murder was never solved that causes a tortured soul to be bound to the place it experienced its last horrific moments as a human being?

Benjamino "Benny" Evangelista was murdered in his home in 1929

In 1902, fifteen-year-old Benjamino Evangelista was only one of a million of Italian immigrants who came to America seeking a better life.

He anglicized his name to Benny Evangelist, moved to Philadelphia and set about making a life for himself with his older brother Antonio who had immigrated from Naples with him. The brothers prospered but during this time Benny developed an interest in the occult, and claimed to be receiving visions from God, many which were quite dark and not Catholic at all. He also started his cult, which was probably the sale of love potions and hexes to those who were lovelorn or wanted vengeance. Whether his brother Antonio already had seen this side of his brother is unknown, but it was enough to sever the relationship and Antonio disowned him (at least temporarily), and Benny went off to York, Pennsylvania to work on the railroad there.

Police removing the bodies of the Evangelista family. The murder became known as the St. Aubin Street Massacre

Like magnet to steel Benny developed a friendship with another Neapolitan named Aurelius "Leon" Angelino. Perhaps he was seeking a mentor or a father figure, since Angelino was twenty years his senior, and before long they both continued studying occult philosophies such as Theosophy among others.

Benny continued with the development of his cult and its philosophies, but a horrific event occurred which derailed the fruition of his plans. Whether they fed each other's insanity, or there was a triggering event which sent Angelino over the edge in May 1919, he was jailed and transferred to the county asylum. His wife made efforts and secured his release, not realizing what a horrendous mistake this would turn out to be.

The following day while his wife prepared dinner in their Lancaster home he took up a club and tried to kill her. She ran into the yard with two of their four children, however he took the opportunity to lock himself in the room where his 4-year-old twin sons were sleeping, and he crushed their skulls with the club. He then stripped nude, took their bodies to the yard, chopped up one and stuffed the body parts in a can, and he was stopped by police before he could dismember the second. He ended up in the hospital for the criminally insane.

The Evangelist family was massacred in their home & the crime remains unsolved until this day

Benny Evangelista whether truly disturbed by what his friend had done, or because he thought it was expedient to sever all ties between himself and this ghastly crime relocated to Detroit, Michigan. He moved in with his brother "Tony" who lived in an Italian neighborhood at 642 Wilkins Street with his wife and four children. Benny worked as a carpenter.

Sometime after 1920, Benny married Santina Zanopia, had his own children and expanded his interests into real estate. Despite making quite a bit of money with his real estate interests, there is no denying that he was enthralled with the occult. He named the cult The Union Federation of America, and authored his own bible for it titled The Oldest History of the World Discovered by Occult Science.

He was a self-described prophet, mystic and healer and used religion, black magic and herbal medicine to cure those with mental or physical ailments. He would charge sometimes as much as $10, which was the equivalent of two days pay for most of the people that lived in his neighborhood.

Things went so well for Benny that he moved his family to a house at 3587 St. Aubin Street in Detroit. It was spacious, painted green and had a wide porch. In the basement he had constructed a dingy shrine that consisted of paper-mache dolls. There were figures hanging by a wire in the ceiling, which he claimed depicted "celestial planets", and his bible was the "sun". He also had an altar where he concocted his potions and hexes, including the sacrifice of animals. He held sermons there as well as readings, but not all those that came to him for cures or love potions were pleased with the results. There were those who thought Benny Evangelista had duped them, and taken their money.

It was believed Evangelista's cult was one of witchcraft and evil woven about the ancient symbols of black magic. Ironically he raised his children as Roman Catholics, leading the police to conclude he was a charlatan who concocted his shrine in order make money.

Thousands showed up on the streets of Detroit for the funeral of the Evangelist Family c.1929

On July 3, 1929 a real estate agent named Vincent Elias came to the Evangelista home, He was there to wrap up a deal with Benny for the purchase of a farm near Marine City, Michigan. He thought it was very strange that the household appeared to be so quiet. The front door was unlocked and he thought that Benny was downstairs in his basement, and he let himself in. He found Benny there alright with his arms across his chest, sitting in a chair behind his desk, minus his head which had been placed next to his feet.

He bolted from the house and summoned neighbors and the police. When they entered they found a house of horror. Benny it appeared had been the first victim, and bloody footprints were tracked upstairs where the bodies of Santina and her four children were found in their bedclothes. The coroner estimated the crime was committed around midnight. Santina's head had been almost severed, and her 18-month-old son Mario lay in her arms with his head crushed in. Angeline 7, Margaret 5, Jean 3 had their heads crushed in as well, but one of them had a partially amputated arm at the shoulder.

Insofar as is known, nothing of any value, such as money, jewelry or papers, was disturbed, although Evangelist had the reputation of being a considerably well to do real estate operator among the Italian colony on the east side.

-Detroit Free Press, July 4, 1929

Strange figures at the altar where Benny Evangelista was found murdered

Amongst the weird idols that Evangelist had on the altar, he had well-known Catholic icons including a cross. He also a had false beard and wig, which the police believed he used when giving his readings. There were also three pictures of a child laying in a coffin, which later on the police found out to be of Benny's son Malio who died in 1924. There was no explanation as to what message the photographs were intended to convey.

The police interviewed his physician which lived also on St. Aubin Street. He told them that Benny was insane and a religious fanatic. He would demonstrate outside his home on the street, waving his arms around and shouting incantations while he stared heavenward. The doctor said that the older children, were Mrs. Evangelist's by a former marriage as they had not been married that long (it's unknown if these were other children that did not live with them since they had married in 1921 when she was 29 years old).

Next the police interviewed his attorney who told them that he had been involved in several lawsuits on behalf of Benny Evangelista about real estate transactions, but none that would have caused such a level of enmity to cause the massacre of an entire family.

Several pieces of women's undergarments, each tagged with the name of its owner, police point out, reveal that the so-called mystic indulged in practices of "voodoosim," or devil worship. Such garments, "voodooism" has it, can lead to the finding of a missing person, when they are properly handled by one versed in the mystic arts of that belief.

The Evangelist Murder house was destroyed in the 1940s. Present-day most of the original neighborhood from the 1920s has also been demolished. c.2013

The police had their hands full, as not only neighbors but other gawkers came to see the house where the crime took place, contaminating the grounds and destroying any clues. They were lucky to recover a bloody fingerprint from the front door knob.

When the detectives started to canvass the neighborhood for more information they ran into another problem, which was that most of the families living there were recent Sicilian and Italian immigrants, who did not want to talk about what they knew, if anything at all. Despite the proof found at the Evangelist home that Benny had received hundreds of people for a reading, not even a handful admitted to even knowing him.

One of the leads the police found were several notes Benny had kept, in which he was being threatened by the "Black Hand", the last one only being written six months before. They had a reputation of preying on wealthy Italian immigrants, but that theory led nowhere. By 1929, the Black Hand had evolved into organized crime, and were not extorting local businessmen, a practice that was common before the time of Prohibition. Benny would probably not have taken the threat seriously, correctly assuming it was an amateur trying to scare him.

Benny Evangelist with a boy (possibly his stepson)

The following day police arrested Umberto Tecchio and Angelo Depoli. Tecchio had visited the Evangelist home the day before the murder to make the final payment on a house he had bought from Benny. Depoli had accompanied him to the house.

When the police visited the boarding house where they lived, they found a "keen-edged" banana knife and work boots that had just been washed. Both men denied any involvement with the murder, and claimed they had gone off to drink after visiting the house. The police were slow to accept their words as truth, since Tecchio had escaped prosecution after knifing his brother-in-law Bart Maffro in April. He claimed that it was self-defense, and since Maffro had later died at the hospital, there was no one to contradict his version of the story. But with no further proof to tie them to the murder they were both freed.

Altar figures found at the crime scene

Tecchio was rearrested for the murder in March of 1932, based on new evidence and then freed when they verified that his fingerprint did not match the one found at the murder scene. The police ultimately pinned the murder posthumously on him in August of 1935; Tecchio had died November 1934, from a hemorrhage. His wife who had divorced him after he had killed her brother, told police that Benny Evangelist had two machetes hanging over his altar, one which was not found and believed to be the murder weapon.

A newspaper boy said that he had seen Tecchio at 5 AM on the doorsteps of the Evangelist home when he was delivering papers, and others who lived in the same boarding home as him were not sure if he had left later that night. None of these witnesses had dared to come forward while he was alive. However the resolution to the case was short lived when in August 1935, the fingerprint taken at the scene was sent to another police department who confirmed that it did not belong to Tecchio.

After the murder, police received an anonymous phone call detailing Evangelist's past, and that he was alleged to have practiced hexing while living in York, Pennsylvania, which led to a murder near York (it's unknown if this alluded to the Angelino murders). His relatives refused to discuss his cult, and none of his customers admitted to trying his magic.

The murder threw the city and especially the Italian community into a panic. Evangelist's relatives and neighbors fled the city. Police went to Pittsburgh looking for Benny's cousin, Louis Evangelist with his father-in-law Angelo Papraro who fled from Detroit 3 years before. This was a few days after Papraro shot and killed Felice Argento, a reputed black hand extortionist when Argento came to collect $5,000 by threats. Police sought them out believing they had information about the cult leader's life that might help them, including the suspicion the crime might have ties to a vendetta.

Florence Morris came to the police station on July 6, to request protection for her children from some imaginary danger she felt might befall them. Eventually they called her husband to take her home. Three hours later she went downtown and jumped to her death from the 23rd story of the Barium Towers. She was 36 years old and the mother of five children. Her husband described where she had read every story written about the Evangelista murder, and somehow thought the same could befall her own family. No connection was found between her and the Evangelistas.

Scene outside the Evangelista murder house c.1929

The last suspect Aurelius "Leon" Angelino, in hindsight was probably the most accurate based on the nature of the crime. About a year after the murder a comparison was made between the fingerprint at the Evangelist crime scene, and those taken from the Angelino household when his sons were killed, and they appeared to match.

In 1923, Angelino had escaped from the Pennsylvania Asylum for the criminally insane and was never found again. He had escaped twice before and had been recovered. Had he made his way to Detroit ready to reestablish their business relationship, only to be rebuffed by Evangelist who had no interest in sharing the spotlight or the money he was making? Did he make his way into the home when he knew the residents of the working class neighborhood would be asleep in their homes, and slip out to leave the city quickly, knowing there would be many that would be suspected?

After his escape in 1923, nothing was ever known of the whereabout of Angelino. In the 1940s, the Evangelista home was demolished and now most of the neighborhood built in the 1920s has been leveled as well. Only a grassy field remains on the site of this horrific murder, which is said to be haunted by the figure of a headless man. Perhaps this was the bargain he made with the dark forces that he worshipped in his basement shrine.

The one eyewitness to the bloody crime disappeared for nine months. In March, 1930, the Evangelista's dog described as a shaggy brown mongrel which belonged to the children disappeared the day of the murder. Police made a record of the dog's license number, and a woman reported that a dog with the 1929 license number had come to her home. When she learned who had owned the animal she decided not to adopt it.

Rodriguez & Pena both convicted of killing a young girl almost 61 days to the date of the Evangelista murders c.1990

Almost 61 years to the day of the Evangelista massacre another crime with ritualistic overtones occurred. It all started when a skinned human head was found in a freezer inside a plastic bag. It belonged to Stephanie Dubay, age 15, who had run away from home after her mother refused to let her get a rose tattoo.

The rest of her was found in five trash bags; four were buried in the yard, and one was found in the garage of a brick house on Jean Street in Warren, Michigan. The house was already under police surveillance for drug activity.

Stephanie's killers turned out to be Jaime Rodriguez Jr. 22, and his cousin Agustin Pena, 16. Rodriguez was no stranger to breaking the law. He had served time for trying to set fire to an inhabited house, and he kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from Saginaw.

Pena carried a knife, marijuana and The Complete Book of Witchcraft.

Both of them killed Dubay together. They stabbed her 10 times and her right index finger was cut off so it could be worn on a necklace as part of a religious observance on August 1, Lammas Day, which also happened to be Rodriguez's 22nd birthday.

Rodriguez had a tattoo inscribed with 666, and his victim would also end up tattooing herself with the same numbers on her chest.

The crime was discovered when Rodriguez called girl to come over. He opened the freezer door and showed her Stephanie's head, which she recognized from the blue eyes. He offered to give her the eyes. She ran out the door. She returned with a friend, and they took the head to the police station.