A sense of dread hung over Austin, Texas, during the year of 1885. A brutal and unidentified serial killer, known by names like the "Servant Girl Annihilator" and "The Midnight Assassin," was terrorizing the city. For a year, this shadowy figure had been breaking into homes, attacking people as they slept with terrifying violence, often using an axe.
The city's population of around 15,000 was gripped by fear, but the horror would reach a crescendo on Christmas Eve, with the murder of a 17-year-old wife and mother named Eula Phillips.
Eula, a white female, belonged to two early Travis County families and had married James Phillips Jr. at the age of 14. By the time of her death, she was the mother of a young son named Thomas. The young family was living in a room at her in-laws' home near what is now West Eighth Street. In the late hours of December 24, 1885, just an hour after her mother-in-law had seen her laughing in bed with her husband and child, an intruder entered their room. The attack was swift and brutal, carried out with an axe.
The first sign of the tragedy came when Eula's mother-in-law was awakened by the cries of her grandson. Entering the room, she discovered a horrific scene. Her son, James, was unconscious in bed, bleeding heavily from at least two deep wounds to his head. The couple's young son was standing on the blood-soaked bed, unharmed but with his nightclothes stained crimson. Eula was gone, her pillow saturated with blood. A bloody trail led from the room, across a gallery, and into the back yard. There, near an alley, lay Eula's lifeless and nude body in a pool of blood. She had been struck in the forehead with an axe, breaking her skull, and a heavy rail was laid across her chest, pinning her arms.
The murder of Eula Phillips, along with that of another white woman, Susan Hancock, on the same night, marked a turning point in the killer's spree and intensified the city's panic. Until then, the victims had been predominantly Black servant girls. The shift in victimology confounded the police and the public. In the frantic investigation that followed, hundreds of people were arrested, but the police focused their suspicion on the husbands of the two latest victims.
Despite being severely injured in the attack himself, James Phillips was arrested and tried for his wife's murder in June 1886. Prosecutors pointed to alleged marital troubles and testimony that James had been prone to violent outbursts and had threatened to kill Eula if she were ever unfaithful. He was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. However, the conviction was later overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals, citing insufficient evidence, and James Phillips was ultimately freed. Moses Hancock, Susan Hancock's husband, was also charged but was acquitted.
The Christmas Eve murders were the last in the series attributed to the Servant Girl Annihilator. After the attacks on Eula Phillips and Susan Hancock, the killings abruptly stopped, leaving a terrified city and one of America's earliest and most haunting unsolved serial killer mysteries. No one was ever definitively identified or brought to justice for the eight murders that plagued Austin. The identity of the Midnight Assassin, the person who ended Eula Phillips' young life in such a brutal fashion, remains unknown to this day.
