27-year-old Pasquale Marchesi, a leader amongst the Italian immigrant community in Kenosha, Wisconsin, made a fateful decision in November 1911. He left his store and went home early and his wife Roxsaria was–to say the least–not expecting him. In fact, she had company.

“I had no suspicion of my wife’s unfaithfulness, but just for fun I peeked in at her bedroom window,” Marchasi told the police. “I was driven to senseless desperation by the sight that met my eyes.” The man with his wife was Pasquale’s own cousin.

“I became as one insane. I ran to a woodshed and seized a lumberman’s axe then I carefully raised the window and entered. My arm strengthened by the sight, I chopped off my cousin’s head at the first blow of the axe. He did not move but the sound of the blow aroused my wife.”

Roxsaria fought savagely for her life and managed to ward off her husband’s initial blows. Then she seized their 2-month-old child, holding it between them to protect herself. She threw herself on her knees, pleading with her husband for forgiveness.

“Her defense had prevented the fatal bow but her praying posture allowed the axe to swing freely. I was mad, but I had sense enough left to avoid striking the baby.” After killing his wife, Marchesi washed the blood off of the baby, who was unharmed, and took the infant and his 4-year-old daughter to his brother’s home. He told them his wife was ill.

Marchesi then went back home and concealed the axe before leaving again. There was no one to raise the alarm about the murder just yet and he wandered the streets aimlessly. Just before dawn, Pasquale, sick with grief and betrayal, made his way into the church basement and laid down on the floor.

In the darkness his wife’s screams rang in his ears and in his fevered brain, he saw headless figures rushing toward him from the dark shadows.  Soon afterwards, morning mass began and as the distorted music reached Marchesi, the music began to form the words Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.

The tortured man rose with a cry and ran upstairs, seizing a priest and confessing to the double murder.

I may have a follow up to this story at some point. It sounds like Marchesi pleaded Not Guilty by way of the Unwritten Law, which figured so heavily in the Kings of Louisiana case.