The Unsolved Murders of the Evangelista Family

0:03 Fire Eyes Media. Today, I'm taking you back to July nineteen twenty nine, to a house on Saint Aubin's Street and to a mystery that's haunted generations. The Evangelista's family murders remains unsolved nearly a century later. What motive could lie behind such brutality? Was it something a cult, something personal, or something more ordinary twisted into horror? Hello, and welcome to another episode of Truly Twisted. As always, I'm your host, Alicia Watson, and every Thursday, I will be bringing you a story that is always victim focused and fact based.

0:59 One thing that you all listening might not know about me is that I love fall, Halloween, and pretty much anything spooky. If you've come from Twisted and Uncorked, that's not new news. But to anyone else, I just wanted to announce that I'm doing something a little bit different for the remainder of season one. I am bringing you stories that have a spooky twist in some way, but it'll always remain about the victims here. I just wanted to be able to combine it with a season that I love, and you may also be wondering, why not just do the Five Thursdays in October. Well that's because in my house, spooky season starts September first, So this is a little happy medium. If you have any story suggestions that you think would be perfect for this, please send them to me at Alicia at fireeyesmedia dot com and friendly reminder that if you're enjoying the show, to please leave me five stars wherever you get your podcasts.

1:58 It really is the best way to spread word and help me grow the show. It also makes me super happy to know that people enjoy what I put out there. Now on to the story today, I am telling you about what is known as the Detroit Occult murders. On July third, nineteen twenty nine, a summer day in Detroit, Michigan that should have held warmth would soon be a day of unspeakable tragedy. The house stood at three, five eight seven Saint Aubin's Street, an address now long gone from maps, but forever etched into the city's darker history. The Evangelista family lived there, Benny Evangelista, his wife Santina, and their four children, Angelina seven, Margaret five, and gn four.

2:50 Mario was just eighteen months old, Benjamino Benji evangelista immigrated from Naples, Italy in nineteen oh four, and eventually made his way to Detroit. For many immigrants, moving to the United States was not the dream that they envisioned. Instead, they were met by terrible working conditions, a great deal of racism, poverty, and in some cases, even death. But Benny managed to beat all these odds. But he also wasn't your average immigrant laborer. He was a mystic, a healer, a spiritualist. Some people believed that he could communicate with divine forces, offer cures, blessings, and even curses. Others dismissed him as a complete fraud. But still Benny managed to make a living offering spiritual services from the front room of his home. Clients came by appointment. Some left feeling very hopeful, while others left kind of angry. He was also working on a manuscript, a sprawling egocentric religious texts that he he claimed had been dictated to him by an other worldly force. He called it the Divine Evangelist Revelation.

4:09 Benny wasn't just a mystic. He saw himself as a prophet, but not everyone respected him for it. Around nine am on the morning of July third, nineteen twenty nine, real estate agent Charles Wolfe, I also saw on a few of my sources that his name was Vincent Elias arrived at the Evangelista home to finalize some paperwork on a property that Benny was going to be purchasing. Benny had invested in different properties and either sold them or rented them to different tenants. We all need a side hustle, right, But when the agent knocked, there was no answer. The house was far too quiet for a family of five, let alone with three young kids living there, and something was definitely wrong. The agent forced his way into the home, but nothing could prepare him for what he would discover.

5:04 What he discovered was beyond all expectations. Inside Benny's study, Benny himself was seated behind his desk, his hands folded in his lap, almost in a prayer like position, and his head was laying at his feet, having been cleanly cut from his body and posed in a virtualistic and grotesque manner. There was no blood on the walls or the floor, which indicated to police that he had been posed there purposely. What the agent would discover upstairs was somehow much worse. Santina was found in her bed holding little Mario. She too had been decapitated, and her infant child, lying in her arms, had had his skull crushed by what was likely the blunt end of an axe. Across the hall, the other children, Angelina, Margaret and Jeanne, were found laying in their beds. They had died in the same way, seemingly as they slept. The scene was unthinkable.

6:11 The Detroit Police noted that there was no signs of forced entry, no obvious external break in points. Doors seemed to be locked and undisturbed. Neighbors reported seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the massacre and hearing nothing strange the night of it. There were no strange visitors, no loud arguments, and a murder weapon was never found. There was also no fingerprints to go off of, except for one bloody fingerprint on the front door handle. Benji Evangelista's work and the occult definitely added a new layer and an extremely wide suspect pull to go through. The brutality of these murders seemed to be carried out in a rage. It had to be personal who would do this to anybody, let alone four young children. Forensics in nineteen twenty nine was still in its infancy, and despite their best efforts, police hit a standstill before the trail went cold altogether. Over the decades, several theories had been floated, some more plausible than others, some more sensational. Benny's line of work definitely added a new layer and became the likely only motive for the murders in Philadelphia. Before moving to Detroit, Benny had claimed to have received a divine vision that changed his life.

7:38 He became consumed by mysticism and began developing his own cosmology, his own spiritual system. By the time he had arrived in Detroit, he had widely been known as a divine healer, and people frequently paid him for protection, charms, love spells, dream interpretations, and even curses for their enemies. Some say he had a following, others believed that he was as feared as much as he was revered. His Divine Book, the manuscript found at the crime scene, read more like a prophecy than a scripture. It was full of biblical sounding passages, cosmic war, and visions of divine justice. The book portrayed Benny as a kind of chosen messenger, so it was a little grandiose, to say the least. In a deeply Catholic and superstitious community, such boldness might have been seen as blasphemous or even dangerous, so that became the motive for the murders. The funerals for the family members took place on July sixth, nineteen twenty nine, and over three thousand people attended. Some were clients of Benny's, others believed he was a fraud, but overall everyone was shocked and horrified by the end that came to him, his wife, and their four children. Police were on site for the funerals all day to ensure that the scenes

9:10 stayed peaceful, but also to see if anyone suspicious showed up. No one in attendance caught their attention, and the funeral went on uninterrupted. A thousand dollars reward was collected for any information that may lead to the identity of a person responsible, but no new leads were ever generated, and this would be about sixteen thousand dollars today. As time went on, the home sat empty, left to decay before eventually being torn down altogether. When you search that address as of twenty twenty three, the lot is still fenced in and completely empty. So what do we think happened here?

9:52 What are our theories? Dary one a jealous client or former follower, someone close, perhaps a client who felt cheated, or a follower who believed that Benny had misled them or worse, betrayed their faith. In such a mindset, rage could become lethal. And if someone believed that their spiritual or economic well being depended on Benny, then anger, humiliation, or betrayal could provoke unthinkable violence, as we see in this case Theory two personal or family conflict. It's possible that this was not about the occult at all, but something personal, either a love affair, a betrayal, some sort of personal debt. Some sources mentioned that Benny was selling love charms or love potions, and this was a transaction of cost, expectation, and sometimes deception. Could somebody have believed that they were simply swindled. Could there have been a secret scandal involving this family. Way one really knows for sure.

11:02 Another possibility is that it was simply somebody that was unwell and in the wrong place at the wrong time and took opportunity to cause harm on this family. But the acts are so brutal and so intimate that they to me suggest something more than robbery or just a happened opportunity. The next theory could be a tenant or a real estate customer. The night before the murders, a man named Umberto Tequino visited the Evangelista home to make a final payment on the house that Bennie had sold him. He, along with a friend named Angelo d'poli, had a couple of drinks with Benny before leaving the home. They remain adamant that they knew nothing about the murders. However, when police visited his home for questioning, they found an axe, a banana knife, and a pair of suspiciously cleaned work boots in the barn. Accounts mentioned that just three months prior to the massacre, Umberto had knifed his brother in law to death during an argument, and how he escaped any prosecution for that is unclear, but it certainly gave investigators a reason to make him a prime suspect. However, there was no physical evidence and no confession, so Umberto was eventually let go, and he died a few years

12:33 later in nineteen thirty four. Other reports indicate that Benny was suspecting a lumber shipment to be coming. In strangely enough, though, the delivery man never arrived and there was no cash ever found in the home for Benny to have made said purchase. Was the person involved and did they know that there was going to be no need to make this delivery because the family was brutally murdered? Who knows. I also saw in some sources that Umberto and this lumber delivery person were possibly the same person. So again, do with these theories what you will. It is the nineteen twenties of it all, and unfortunately some records do get lost. Or theory six. An old friend, Benny's old friend, Aurelius Angelino, murdered two of his children in nineteen twenty three, and prior to the murders of the Evangelista family, he had been housed in a Pennsylvania prison for the criminally insane, but somehow he managed to escape and he was never seen again or apprehended by police. Had Angelino somehow made his way to Detroit, But then again, what's the motive here?

13:53 What did Benny do to this man that would have provoked such violence, even if that violence was just within him. How would he get from Pennsylvania to Detroit and commit these crimes with no one knowing anything. I will also say that I couldn't find any historical evidence of this said friend or the murders that he allegedly committed, So do with that theory what you will. But again, like I said, some records can get lost. If you have any tips or old family stories, archives, newspaper clippings, if you lived in Detroit or your family talked about the Saint Aubun's Street massacre, I would encourage that you reach out.

14:38 You may have the peace that's needed to solve this horrific murder. Nearly a century later. And at the end of the day, no matter what Benny did for a living, his family deserved to sleep safely in their home. They didn't deserve to be murdered in such a horrific way. And in the cases of these children taken way too soon, it's heartbreaking to picture these kids sleeping in their beds and having been found that way. Of Santina holding her baby infant in her arms, it makes you wonder what the feelings and thoughts were of this family in their last moments. And I do wonder who did this personally, My theory is that, yes, it could be somebody involved in Benny's side hustle, so to speak, where maybe it was a property deal gone wrong, or maybe somebody wanted to take advantage of him and you know, purchase this property without actually having to give him the money, and by taking out his entire family, they could take the money back and still have the property document signed over to them. Or maybe it was somebody on his main hustle where they did feel wronged or cheated, or like the work that Benny was doing was somehow evil or wrong, or maybe he had made them believe that something was gonna work and it didn't and they did feel cheated.

16:07 I can't ever imagine feeling so angry towards one person that I would take it out on four others on top of it, or five others on top of it. But that's just me. We're the people telling the stories, thankfully, and I do hope that you enjoyed this occulty spooky kind of twist in an old timey murder, But at the end of the day, people still lost their lives, and that's important to highlight. If you look at the oldnewspapers dot com articles for these murders. It's interesting to see the language that's chosen in headlines and how distasteful they can be at times. I have a few of them linked in my show notes below if you choose to look at it. But for example, divine prophet wife, four children hacked to death. That's really really disturbing language.

17:06 So I hope that I told the story well and tastefully. And again, if you like the show, please leave me five stars wherever you are listening now. I will see you next week for another episode with a spooky twist. And in the meantime, remember you are wanted, you are loved, and you deserve to be here, and I will see you next week. Truly Twisted is a proud production of Fireeyes Media, a woman owned and operated network. This show is hosted, researched, and edited by me Alicia Watson, and I would love if you would email me any case, suggestions or comments you may have at Alicia Atfireeyesmedia dot com.

17:58 Fireeyes Media