MIDNIGHT IN AUSTIN: A Chronicle of the Servant Girl Annihilator Between December 1884 and December 1885, seven people were brutally murdered in Austin, Texas—victims of an unidentified killer the press dubbed the "Servant Girl Annihilator." The murders terrorized the city for a year, drove hundreds of families to flee, and sparked a massive investigation that ultimately failed to identify or capture the perpetrator. This chronicle, compiled by journalist James Griswold over forty years, documents not only the crimes themselves but the systemic failures that prevented their resolution. The investigation was corrupted by racial prejudice—five of the seven victims were Black, and the dragnet arrests focused disproportionately on Black men while overlooking viable suspects. The Christmas Eve 1885 attacks, which killed three people simultaneously, represented either the work of multiple killers or an escalation that ended as mysteriously as it began. Griswold investigated a possible connection to Jack the Ripper, whose 1888 London murders bore striking similarities, but concluded they were likely different killers whose methods coincidentally aligned. His attempts to preserve the victims' memory met consistent resistance—his book manuscript was rejected by publishers who deemed Black victims insufficiently compelling for readers. Forty years later, the case remained officially unsolved, the victims largely forgotten except in Griswold's meticulously preserved archive. His chronicle stands as testimony to crimes society chose to erase and victims deemed unworthy of remembrance.