11/05/2026
A pair of gruesome murders in the French Quarter, remembered as the “New Orleans Trunk Murders,” was one of the most violent crimes in 1920s New Orleans…
On the afternoon of Thursday, October 27, 1927, Nettie Compass entered the second-floor apartment at 715 Ursulines Street to do some cleaning. She had barely set foot inside before encountering traces of blood. Her calls for help attracted the attention of two men nearby, who called the police.
Responding officers uncovered the full horror of the murder scene: two small traveling trunks packed with the expertly butchered co**ses of two young women. Blood-soaked mattresses where the victims had lain. Severed fingers on the floor. A bathroom covered in blood.
Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. George Roeling determined that the killer had first bludgeoned the women with a lead billy club, before decapitating them with a machete and amputating their arms and legs.
Authorities recovered a gold wedding band buried in a deep gash in one of the victims’ backs. Clothing that investigators believed had been tossed from the trunks to accommodate the women’s remains was strewn about the tenement alongside discarded human remains.
The victims, both in their mid-20s and both originally from New Iberia, were Theresa and Leonide Moity and were married to the brothers Henry and Joseph Moity.
Upon the gruesome discovery of the two murdered women, New Orleans Superintendent of Police Thomas Healey set about locating the husbands. Leonide’s husband, Joseph, turned himself in that evening. Henry, however, was nowhere to be found.
Both couples and their young children lived in the small apartment. Joseph told police he had recently moved in with his sister after catching Leonide with another man. Neighbors reported bitter fights over money, constant accusations of infidelity, and wild drinking bouts in the household.
After determining that Henry had headed to a Camp Street boarding house, where he planned a getaway by ship, Superintendent Healy radioed the seven ships sailing out of New Orleans that day to be on the lookout. Healy’s dispatches to area law enforcement described Henry as having “dark bushy hair,” “very dark brown eyes,” and “tattoo mark on arm, flower with lady face, also n**e woman.”
On Saturday, October 29—two days after the women’s bodies were discovered—crewmen of the freighter Gem reported Henry Moity to the Lafourche Parish Sheriff. Henry had begged his way onto the ship using a false name, but the crew recognized his tattoo from the newspaper stories about the crimes.
In his confession Henry detailed his motives for the killings, while also insisting that his mind had been warped by alcohol. He was enraged over an affair he believed his wife was having with the couple’s landlord, Joseph Caruso.
In Henry’s version of events, he was provoked to vengeance by Theresa’s imminent plans to leave him, in addition to her infidelities and neglect of the children. He also resented his sister-in-law, Leonide, for having what he perceived was a negative influence on his wife.
In a Times-Picayune article, parish coroner Dr. George Roeling noted the killer’s skill with a knife at trial, saying, “The killer who decapitated Mrs. Henry Moity . . . knew enough not to try to cut through the bone, but to cut through the joint.
The appearance of the head of the wife of the defendant . . . indicated that it had been skillfully removed…” Before coming to New Orleans, Henry had worked as a butcher’s assistant in New Iberia.
Henry began his sentence at Louisiana State Penitentiary on July 6, 1928. He appears to have enjoyed remarkable leeway for a man convicted of two brutal murders. In 1934 Henry was made a “trustee” of the prison, meaning he was given responsibility for special assignments and was less heavily guarded than other prisoners.
In the summer of 1944, on a routine trip to the post office, Henry simply hired a taxi to take him to Hammond, Louisiana. From there he caught the Illinois Central Panama Limited en route to Chicago. George Provosty, then superintendent of prison camps in Louisiana, seemed unconcerned.
He predicted Henry would soon return of his own accord, since he had served 16 years of his sentence and had a chance of being pardoned due to temporary insanity (due to his consumption of alcohol) at the time of the killings.
Two years later in 1946, Henry was stopped for suspicious behavior by police in St. Louis, Missouri. When he admitted his identity, he was returned to prison in Louisiana. Despite his two-year sojourn, the Louisiana Pardon Board recommended his release in 1947. On March 26, 1948, Governor Jimmie Davis signed the pardon.
Twenty-one years after killing his wife and sister-in-law, Henry Moity was free.
His early release turned out to be a terrible mistake that nearly cost another young woman her life. After getting out of prison, Henry moved to California in hopes of restarting. At a Los Angeles hotel in 1956, Henry shot his girlfriend Alberta Orange in the chest, puncturing her lung.
He was sentenced to five years at Folsom Prison for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
Henry died of a stroke in 1957 while serving his term at Folsom.
