Every major city has it's share of secret places that you'd never find on a tourist
map because of the violent events that occurred there.
Sometimes the places themselves are even torn down in an attempt to erase them from history.
This is what occurred to the house at 3587 Saint Aubin Street in Detroit, Michigan, where
in 1929 a cult leader named Benny Evangelist and his family were butchered by an ax murderer.
A look back at the history of the torn down house reveals not only murder, but also the
story of a man obsessed with bizarre beliefs who lived in a city plagued by dangerous superstition.
It's 1904, and 19 year old Bennadetto Evangelista has just arrived in Philadelphia to stay with
his older brother Antonio.
He's one of the millions of Italian immigrants who have made the journey to America to escape
the grinding poverty of their home towns.
While most of the immigrants are farmers looking for work, Evangelista is a trained carpenter,
who upon arriving changes his name to Benny Evangelist and begins working in the real
estate business.
But only two years after arriving in the States, his life takes a very different turn.
He claims to begin receiving daily visions from God and is quickly disowned and sent
away by his brother to work on a railroad construction crew in York, Pennsylvania.
There he meets a man named Aurelius Angelino and together they begin to become involved
in the occult.
They believe that they are capable of casting spells and working magic and Evangelist begins
chronicling his visions and beliefs in a book called The Oldest History of The World Discovered
by Occult Science.
The book is poorly written, but in it Evangelist proclaims himself a prophet.
In 1919, Aurelius Angelino takes an axe and murders two of his own children.
He is sent to an asylum for the criminally insane.
In 1923, he escapes and is never heard from again.
Shortly after Angelino's crime, Evangelist moves his family to Detroit and they move
into a home on St. Aubin Street.
Here, in the basement, Evangelist uses his carpentry skills to construct a large shrine
out of chicken wire and wood.
He fills the basement with bizarre paper mache deities, 10 of them in total.
9 of them represent the planets and in the middle of them is a giant glowing eye that
represents the sun.
He places a hand painted sign outside of his home that reads “GREAT CELESTIAL PLANET
EXHIBITION” and also advertises his potions and psychic readings.
He charges $10 for a reading, which today would equal around $120.
Surprisingly, his psychic healing business takes off and it isn't long before he's amassed
a good number of followers.
He brings his clients down to the basement and encourages them to interact with the paper
mache deities and performs magic rituals.
He refuses to help anyone who doesn't pay, claiming that the spells only work when money
is exchanged.
On July 4th, 1929, a business associate of Evangelist arrives at the home at 10:30 AM
to discuss a real estate deal.
When no one answers the door, he steps inside and finds Evangelist sitting behind his desk
in his office with his arm crossed and his head missing.
He's been decapitated by an axe and the head is lying on the floor near his feet.
He's surrounded by copies of his book, which he had finished only 3 years earlier.
Near the head, there are also large framed death portraits of Evangelist's son who had
died years before.
Elias runs out of the house and contacts police.
When the authorities arrive, they discover the extent of the bloodbath.
Evangelist's kids are found butchered and bludgeoned to death in their bed clothes.
His wife Santina and their 18 month old baby were also found in their bed, clinging to
each other even after being hacked, with Santina's head only barely hanging on to her body.
A large number of police, newspaper reporters and gawkers stormed the house, contaminating
the evidence and the crime scene.
The only reliable clue that was found was a bloody fingerprint on a doorknob.
The murders were said to have occurred between midnight and 3 AM.
Interestingly, this is also the time period in which Evangelist said he would receive
his psychic visions.
The crime caused a sensation in Detroit.
At the time, it was the worst mass murder in the city's history.
Yet, none of Evangelist's clients would come forward when asked by police.
It's as if they had all been sworn into secrecy or were perhaps afraid of speaking openly
about their beliefs.
The family's funeral was a big public affair.
Police roamed the crowds in the hopes that the killer would be there but found nothing.
The first real suspect that emerged was a man named Umberto Tecchio, who had visited
Evangelist the night before the murder with a friend named Angelo Depoli.
Tecchio was there to make the final payment to a house that Evangelist had sold to him.
The two men were brought into questioning after the police discovered a stained banana
knife, an axe and a pair of boots that were still wet from a recent washing in their home.
Also, three months prior to the massacre, Tecchio had killed his brother-in-law with a knife
but was never incarcerated for the crime.
The men claimed to have had no involvement in the killing of the family and were let
go because of lack of evidence.
Years after Tecchio's death in 1934, a paperboy came forward claiming to have seen Tecchio
outside of Evangelist's home in the early morning after the murders but by that time
too much time had passed to gather any more evidence.
Oddly, I was never able to find any information on whether Tecchio's fingerprints were compared
to those found at the crime scene.
After the murders, a former member of Evangelist's cult came forward and confessed to killing
him.
The man claimed that he had been scammed by Evangelist.
He was very sick and consulted the psychic for a cure, eventually spending his entire
life savings on psychic treatments that didn't work.
Bank records seemed to confirm his story, but police still had a hard time believing
him responsible, since he recanted his confessions several times and also claimed to not have
had anything to do with the deaths of the wife and kids.
It's likely he was just a very sick and deranged man who hated Evangelist for scamming him
but had nothing to do with the murder.
Another suspect was Benny Evangelist's old friend Arelius Angeleno, who had killed his
own family with an axe and escaped the mental asylum years before but there's no evidence
linking him to the crime.
3 years after the massacre, on November 20, 1932, police found the body of a man named
James Smith tied to an alter with a knife through his heart.
The murderer was a cult leader named Robert Harris.
He claimed that Smith had offered himself as a sacrifice and was a willing participant
in his own murder but the autopsy revealed that Smith had in fact been knocked out with
a wagon axle before being killed, casting doubt on Harris' claim.
He was imprisoned for the murder and would later confess to have had plans to kill several
more people.
He also claimed to have been responsible for the murder of Benny Evangelist and his family.
The claim was investigated, but police found no evidence supporting it.
The fingerprints didn't match and it's believed that Harris wasn't even in Detroit when the
massacre occurred.
Benny Evangelist's house was torn down and today it remains an empty lot.
Some of the residents in the nearby area believe it to be haunted by a headless ghost.
It seems like some of the superstition that was so prevalent in early 20th century still
remains.
But if the St. Aubin Massacre has taught us anything, you have to be careful what you
believe in.
If you liked this video, please subscribe to Crypticc for more