This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

We begin with an unsolved murder mystery.

Actually a series of unsolved murders.

Perhaps the work of the United States first serial killer.

Before Jack the Ripper terrorized London,

before H.H. Holmes stocked the Chicago World's Fair,

Austin, Texas, was haunted by the servant girl, a narrator.

Producer Avery Truffman would like to reiterate that these murders are unsolved.

So it's possible that these were individual murders rather than the work of one man.

The hard-fast fact is this.

In 1885, eight women, mostly black servants, were brutally murdered in the dark of night.

And the night was very dark in Austin in 1885.

There was essentially no street lighting.

The darkness of just life after sundown in the 19th century is something that modern people are just completely unfamiliar with.

This is Bruce Hunt. He's an associate professor of the history of physics and technology at the University of Texas Austin.

Basically there was no outdoor lighting. There was moonlight.

When the moon was out, that was about it.

And in 1894, the city of Austin decided to buy more moonlight in the form of towers.

They're called moonlight towers because they were supposed to approximate a full moon.

Austin adopted moonlight towers, which really worked towers.

There were 15 stories high, very industrial looking, made of metal scaffolding, and each was crowned with a circle of six lights,

soaring way, way high above the city.

...