Ep. 25 - Ursulines Avenue's Murder Block

New Orleans, Louisiana is well known for its legends and its ghosts. Like every other large city, it has played host to some heinous crimes and the 700 block of Ursulines Avenue seems to be a murder block. Is there something evil here? A legend grew up around a sensational crime that took place here in 1927 starring a spectre nicknamed "The Sausage Ghost." Seventy-five years later, another very similar and grotesque crime occurred just a couple doors down the block.

We first ran across this tale in the book "The Haunted South" by Alan Brown. The husband is named Hans Mueller and he is married to a woman named Teresa. They live on Ursulines Avenue and he works as a butcher. His shop is popular and he is an attractive man that draws women to him. He conducts many affairs on the side. One of these affairs is with a young girl named Ilse who comes to work at the butcher shop. Hans pays her a lot of attention and Teresa is not happy. At least, that is one version. Another version claims that Teresa is the one with loose morals, running about New Orleans, bedding strange men. Whichever story is true, they both end with Teresa murdered by Hans, either by strangling, an axe to the head or shot to death. The story continues with him eyeballing the shop's sausage grinder and disposing of Teresa's body. When customers and neighbors start asking where Teresa is, the authorities take notice and haul Hans in for questioning. He claims to be innocent, but eventually the authorities find him in a desperate state at his shop, huddled in the corner and claiming that Teresa was haunting him. He raves about how she had been climbing out of the sausage vat, covered in blood and walking towards him with outstretched hands. It was happening night after night. He confesses to the murder. He is sent to an asylum and eventually commits suicide, ending the haunting. This is the lore.

About a block down from the Lalaurie Mansion is the 700 block of Ursulines Avenue. Here are several row houses that butt up against one another. They are all similar in style with second floor balconies, single window dormer on top and very long windows on the first floor. The one at 715 Ursulines Avenue isn't very distinctive. The wrought iron balcony doesn't have the intricate scrolling that is characteristic of New Orleans. A real crime took place at 715 Ursulines Avenue on October 27, 1927. It is far more gruesome than the lore and possibly that is why the story turned into some kind of legend, because the truth was too much for the people of 1920s New Orleans.

Hans Mueller was actually Henry Moity, an Arcadian who was married to a woman named Theresa. They lived on the second level of 715 Ursuline Street and shared the cramped space with not only their children, but with Henry's brother Joseph and his wife Leonide or Lonie. A real estate business owned by Joseph Caruso was on the street level of the building. The brothers were shiftless, working odd jobs that didn't bring in much money. Their wives had to make up the difference with sewing and they were not happy about that on top of having to care for the children. Lonie eventually separated from Joseph. He left and she continued to live with Henry and Theresa. Henry didn't like her influence on his wife and it would seem that some of that influence led the ladies into making money in a more lucrative way.

The Moitys had a housekeeper named Nettie Compass. She arrived at the apartment to clean on the morning of October 27, 1927 and found a horrific scene. There was blood everywhere and she ran out calling for help. Nearby were two insurance men and they called for a reporter to join them. Apparently, calling the police or the coroner was not a priority. The reporter was George William Healy who would later become the longtime editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and he wrote of the crime scene in his 1976 memoir, "We found red stains on the floor and saw a large trunk in a bedroom, partially open. When I pulled up the trunk lid, a woman’s body, arms, and legs severed from the torso, was exposed." A female reporter friend named Gwen joined Healy at the scene and he wrote of that, "She charged into the apartment and sighted several objects on a bed. 'Look,' said Gwen, holding up these objects. 'Lady fingers.' Four fingers had been cut from a woman’s hand … After placing the fingers back on the bed, Gwen moved to a second bedroom, found a second trunk, and opened it. It contained a second woman’s body." On top of that body, was the cane knife. The fingers ended up belonging to Theresa. Her wedding ring was found pressed into her back and a gold bracelet still hung from the wrist of one of her severed arms.

Henry was nowhere to be seen and based on the manner of butchery, the police considered him a person of interest since he had worked as a butcher. He was formally charged with the murders on the evening of October 28th and the manhunt got underway. Police thought that he had committed suicide when they could not find him at first. Radio dispatches were sent out to the steamships to be on the lookout for a fugitive stowaway that was "tattooed and singularly hairy." He was eventually pulled from Bayou Lafourche. Henry initially blamed a sailor who he claimed was named Erickson or Aronson for the murders. He said that he had met the sailor and confided to the stranger that he was having martial problems. When the sailor heard that Henry's wife and sister-in-law were prostituting themselves he said, "I know what I'd do if I had two women like that. I'd bump them off." Henry asked the sailor how he would do it and told the man he didn't have the nerve or heart to do such a thing. The sailor then said that he would do it, if Henry would get a meat cleaver. He told Henry they would pack the women up and cart them off in a taxi and dump them in the river. Henry bought a sugar cane knife and then the sailor hid under the bed the night of the murders. After Henry's wife was asleep, the sailor cut off her head and then did the same to Lonie. He then dismembered the bodies and the men packed them into the two trunks.

Henry eventually confessed to the crime and admitted that he had done it because he was jealous and that his wife and sister-in-law had been packing the trunks so that they could leave. He claimed that Theresa had been carrying on an affair with Joseph Caruso who worked below their apartment. The couple had flirted openly, passed notes to each other and taken trips on streetcars together. The last straw was when Theresa waved a ten dollar bill in front of Henry and said that she could make more in an hour than he could make in a week. He claimed to be drunk at the time and had planned to kill himself and the children rather than his wife, but he thought that would give her the freedom she craved so he butchered her instead. He killed Theresa first and then Lonie and then cut up there bodies and packed the parts into the two trunks. He was convicted in March of 1928. He escaped from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1944, but was recaptured. He died in 1957 of a stroke at California's Folsom Prison.

The narrative of the crime became lost as though New Orleans wanted to forget it completely. Perhaps this is why the Sausage Ghost legend started. And while the story of a female ghost crawling out of a sausage grinder does not match the real events of this true crime, this street clearly has a reputation. That was added to again in more recent times. Our ghost lore takes place at 725 Ursulines Avenue, the trunk murders took place at 715 Ursulines Avenue and in 2002, 735 Ursulines Avenue added itself to the list of weird things going on at this murder block. 

Dana Pastori was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1966. Her friends called her Polly. She married a man in Santa Barbara, California and they had two daughters. The couple divorced and there was a bitter custody dispute that lead Pastori to abduct her daughters on Chrsitmas in 1995. When she was caught, she explained to social workers that her former husband's new wife was abusing the girls. The accusation was proven false and Polly became estranged from her daughters. By the late 1990s, Polly had moved to New Orleans and begun a relationship with a man named John Henry Morgan. 

Polly worked at the Quartermaster Deli on Bourbon Street and Morgan delivered groceries to the eatery. The relationship was tumultuous and the couple broke up often with Polly finally telling a co-worker that she was going to leave New Orleans in 2002. She then disappeared. It wouldn't be until 2005 that her mummified and dismembered body was discovered in a cheap particle-board trunk in a closet at 939 Elysian Fields Avenue. But that wasn't where she died.

Remnants of the murder were found at Morgan's former home at 735 Ursulines Avenue. Morgan had apparently strangled Polly and then dismembered her at the knees and abdomen in 2002. He stuffed her into the trunk and then hauled it from apartment to apartment as he moved until Hurricane Katrina hit and he left New Orleans. His landlord Maria Barranco had smelled a strong odor coming from the trunk and Morgan blamed it on a dead rat. When he got his FEMA check after the hurricane, Morgan split town. Some other people were going to move into the house on Elysian Fields and they found the trunk still there and broke it open, finding the remains of Polly. Morgan was arrested in North Carolina in 2008 and charged with second-degree murder. He was convicted and he displayed a wide grin as he was sentenced to life in prison.

What are the chances that similar crimes would take place just a few houses apart? Dismemberment is unusual with murder. Stuffing the body in a trunk is even more unique. In both of these crimes, those two attributes happened. Could this have been some kind of murderous spirit still hanging around after decades, inspiring Morgan to commit a similar crime with a similar motive? We don't believ in coincidences so it wouldn't be hard to believe that something paranormal happened here. There clearly is some kind of evil hanging around. Living on the 700 block of Ursulines Street may not be a good idea.

Nathan Chapman is co-owner of the property at 715 Ursulines Avenue and he claims the home isn't haunted, although it is a nightly stop for ghost tours. The Creole cottage at 735 Ursulines Avenue doesn't have any hauntings connected to it either. At least nothing being spoken about in public.  People do claim to feel a strange and ominous energy on the block. With the amount of spirits haunting the French Quarter, it really could be spirits from elsewhere and for other reasons. Are they attracted to the energy created here from death? Could the victims be haunting the block? That is for you to decide!