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| The Joseph Moore family were butchered in their sleep in Villisca, Iowa in 1912 (The Daybook. June 14, 1912) |
June
10, 1912. The Moore family—Josiah, his wife Sarah, and their four children,
Herman, Katherine, Boyd, and Paul—settled down for what they thought would be
an ordinary night. What they didn’t know was they were about to make history,
albeit in the most tragic way.
The
family had just returned from watching a special Children’s Day program at
Villisca’s First Presbyterian Church. Two of Katherine’s friends, Lena and Ina
Stillinger, were staying over for the night. After a fun-filled day, everyone
went to bed, completely unaware it would be their last night alive.
The crime scene was a bloodbath. The ax man moved from room to room, starting with Josiah and Sarah, leaving a trail of blood and gore in his wake. The crazy thing is, the killer took his sweet time—covering the mirrors and windows, throwing a cloth over Josiah’s head, like it would hide the brutal-truth of what he’d done. The ax left in the guest room where the Stillinger girls were murdered seemed to say, “I did this and I’m leaving the evidence. Catch me if you can.”
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| Marshal Hank Horton was the first law enforcement office to enter the Moore home. He quickly sought help from neighboring law enforcement agencies. |
Mary Peckham, the Moore’s neighbor, started
her day at five o’clock, the same as she had for the last ten years. She was
out in the yard before breakfast, letting the chickens out, making sure they
had food.
Something was different this morning, but Mary
couldn’t put her finger on it. She came out an hour later and noted an “odd
stillness” about the Moore house. All the windows were dark, and the curtains
were drawn. The children still hadn’t come out to do their chores.
Mary walked over to the house. She tried to
open the door but couldn’t. It was locked. That was unusual. No one in Villisca
locked their doors. There was no need.
Mary pounded on the door but got no answer.
She walked out to the barn, let the chickens out, and fed them. That quieted
the squawking birds.
She walked back home and called Ross Moore,
Joe’s brother, to see if he knew what was going on. Ross was as in the dark as
Mary. He left work and walked over to Joe’s place.
Mary met him on the porch and waited in the
doorway while Ross checked things out. He didn’t get far before he noticed
something was terribly wrong. When he peeked in the downstairs bedroom, he saw
blood everywhere.
Ross walked outside and sat on the steps while Mary ran home to call City Marshal Hank Horton.
Hank walked through the dark house, striking a match in each room to light his way. He quickly determined he wasn’t up to the challenge and called Montgomery County Sheriff Oren Jackson and Thomas O’Leary from the Kirk Detective Agency.
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| Rev. Lyn George Jacklyn Kelly was often described as a queer, strange little man. Just days before the murders, he had been observered peering into windows in Villisca. An article in Smithsonian Magazine said he was awell-known sexual pervert. |
Later that day, bloodhounds were brought in
from Beatrice, Nebraska. Elmer Noffsinger dragged his dogs into the house. He
let them sniff the ax handle to get the scent, then turned them loose. The dogs
raced down First Avenue to the John Green farm, stopped for a moment, and then
hurried to the Neilsson Farm. They followed a trail through the timberlands at
the forks of the West and Middle Nodaway River. Three miles southwest of town,
they discovered some footprints, then the trail went dead.
It was as if the killer had disappeared into
thin air.
The coroner’s inquest, held
later that day, shed little new light on the gruesome murders.
The bodies were still warm
when Doctors J. Clark Cooper and F. S. Williams arrived. That narrowed down the
time of death to between two and three o’clock on Monday morning, possibly even
a bit earlier.
They determined the killer
used both the sharp edge of the ax and the blunt end. The victim’s heads were
smashed as well as chopped. The doctors thought he killed his victims
first—using the sharp edge, then turned it around and took out his
aggression—bashing their heads in.
Published reports at the
time didn’t mention the girls had been sexually molested. However, in The
Man From the Train, Bill James argued the killer got his jollies posing the
prepubescent girls in provocative ways. He suggested a slab of bacon served as
a favorite masturbatory aid. So maybe there was something more disturbing at
work.
Villisca had no shortage of suspects. Unfortunately, every lead turned out to be a dead end, and each suspect had a rock-solid alibi.
Out-of-towners were
targeted in the early days of the investigation. Joe Ricks was in town for the
day when he drew suspicion for asking a local girl for directions.
Several days later, 16-year-old
Fay Van Gilder and her mother boarded a train to Monmouth, Illinois, to see if
the girl could identify him. She couldn’t, but it didn’t matter. Authorities were grasping at straws. All
they had on Ricks was that maybe he was in Villisca on the day of the
murders and asked the Gilder girl how
to get to the courthouse.
Pretty-thin, right?
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| Ina Stillinger, 8 (left) and her sister Lena, 12 (right), shose the wrong night to stay with the Moore family. |
And the papers did their
part to play up his guilt. A reporter with the Evening Times-Republican said
Soward was
“of medium height, strongly built, [had] a bad, shifty eye, [was] slightly
bald, and has a nervous, crazy way of talking.” The reporter didn’t doubt that Soward was crazy. Neither did most of his
readers.
People in Clarinda, Iowa, got all worked up because Soward talked incessantly
about the ax murders and how easy it would have been to commit them. “All one
would need to do,” he said, “was carefully lay one’s plans, go to the house and
crack the victims over the head, go to the river and wash your hands and then
calmly go about one’s business.”
He made it sound so easy.
But it was only talk.
Charles Soward was obsessed with murder, but he didn’t kill anyone, other than
maybe talking them to death.
The detectives finally gave
up on him.
The first actual suspect was Frank F. Jones, a local
businessman and state senator. Josiah Moore worked at Jones’ farm equipment
store but left to start a John Deere dealership across the street, taking some
of Jones’ best customers with him. As if that wasn’t enough drama, there were
rumors about Josiah hooking up with Jones’ daughter-in-law, Donna. Not
that it was a big thing because the word on the street was, she slept around. A
lot.
Did
people blame Jones solely because he was rich and powerful, or was it a case of
business rivalry gone wrong? Opinion on that is divided. Some people believed
Jones had the motive and means necessary to carry out the murders, while others
were convinced he was unfairly targeted. Or maybe it was a bit of both.
Whatever, there was no evidence to charge him.
In mid-June 1916, Villisca
was buzzing with anticipation as newspaper headlines screamed, “Great crime at
Villisca now solved.” The supposed perpetrator was William Mansfield, an ex-convict and dope fiend
better known in his circle as “Insane Blackie.”
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| William "Insane Blacke" Mansfield is still the most likely suspect. He had a violent histor, and was suspected of other ax murders. |
Unfortunately, the case fell
apart after Mrs. Elmo Thompkins, who claimed to have overheard three men
plotting the Villisca murders, failed to identify Mansfield in court.
The prosecution dismissed the
case against Mansfield on July 21, 1916.
Another unlikely suspect was
the Reverend Lyn George Jacklin Kelly, often described as a queer, strange,
little man—he stood only five foot two and weighed 120 pounds. An article in Smithsonian
Magazine said Kelly was well known as a sexual pervert. Just days before
the murders, he was observed peeping into windows in Villisca.
Detectives arrested Kelly in
1917 and charged him with the killings, and for a while, it seemed they had the
case wrapped up.
Kelly made a written
confession. He said he saw a shadow by the Moore house while he was out
walking. “Something prompted him to follow it. He saw an ax. He picked it up.
Then came a voice saying: ‘Go in. Slay utterly.’”
He crept up the stairs and
into the children’s bedroom. The voice came back. “Slay utterly. Suffer little
children to come unto me.” He replied, “Yes, Lord, they’re coming quick.”
Chop—went the ax.
From there, he went into
Josiah and Sarah’s room. “More work yet. There must be sacrifices of blood.”
Again, the ax did its work.
Downstairs, he discovered the
Stillinger girls. “More work still.” The ax resumed its work.
Eight people were dead. The
voice was satisfied.
The next day, Kelly repudiated
the confession, saying he did not remember making it.
The court acquitted Kelly on
November 26, 1917.
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| Senator Frank Jones was the first actual suspect. Years before, Joe Moore had worked at his farm implement store, but had left to start a John Deere dealership across the street. And, there were rumors about Joe hooking up with Jones' daughter-in-law, Dona. |
Secret Service agents in Denver, Colorado, suspected a secret sect that believed in “blood atonement.” The group’s members sought blessings by engaging in “slaying and human sacrifice.”
The detectives pointed to a
half dozen similar murders around the country in Colorado Springs, Ellsworth,
Kansas, Monmouth, Illinois, and Rainer, Oregon as proof.
We could dismiss the idea
offhand, but it was reprinted in hundreds of newspapers around the country. Even
though detectives didn’t know the organization’s name or where it was based,
they worked up a description of its leader—saying he was below medium
height, with long black hair, black eyes, and a well-groomed beard and
mustache. The description was pretty detailed for never setting eyes on their
suspect. The detectives even suggested all the male members of the cult
followed their leader’s example in how they wore their
beards and mustaches.” That narrowed the list of suspects down some—to men with
well-groomed, full beards.
Detectives in Denver called
the cult human “death messengers,” and said they had “wiped out whole families in
a night without apparent provocation, merely to satisfy their lust for insane
blood sacrifice.”
While Villisca authorities
fretted over their next move, the Colorado Springs police force found itself in
a pickle. Many aspects of the Burnham-Wayne murders paralleled the Villisca
murders.
The Villisca murderer hung
skirts and aprons over the windows to keep passersby from catching him in the
act. At the Wayne-Burnham house, the killer stretched bedspreads across the
windows. The killer covered the victim’s heads with bed clothing at both homes,
then wiped the ax and his hands clean.
The other similarity was the
means of entrance. The doors were locked at both houses, but the killer made
his way in through an unfastened window.
The other similarity was the
means of entrance. The doors were locked at both houses, but the killer made
his way in through an unfastened window.
Detectives in other cities
found themselves facing the same quandary. A series of strange ax
murderers plagued the country, particularly in the Midwest.
Was there a connection? Could
the same man have committed these crimes?
Several years ago, Bill James
wrote a fascinating book called The Man from the Train. It suggested
technological advancements, such as the railroads, enabled the Villisca ax
murderer.
The theory wasn’t new. The day
after the news of the Villisca ax murders broke, police departments across the
country thought the same thing. By the time of the Villisca murders, the ax man
had been riding the rails for nearly a half-dozen years—visiting death on
small-town Americans.
James named his killer “the
man from the train.” In his book, Murdered in Their Beds, Troy Taylor
called his killer “Billy the Ax Man, “a term some contemporary
newspapers used. Take your choice or join me in calling the killer—the “Sunday Night
Murderer”—the name coined by the Chicago Tribune.
The
murders left a lasting scar on the town that has never truly healed. The Moore
house became a haunted relic, spawning tales of ghostly apparitions and
unexplained occurrences. Over the years, the house has attracted countless
ghost hunters and paranormal researchers hoping to communicate with the spirits
said to linger there.
But
it’s not just the house that’s haunted—the entire town of Villisca is forever
connected to the murders. Locals have had to come to terms with the fact that
one of the worst crime sprees in American history happened there. Books,
documentaries, and movies have been created to capture the horror and mystery
of that fateful night—ensuring it will never be forgotten.
Now,
let’s take a step back and examine the killings from a broader perspective.
There were many brutal killings making the headlines, not just the Villisca Ax
Murders. A series of eerily similar ax murders occurred across the Midwest,
leaving a trail of blood and mystery in their wake.
The
year before, the Burnham and Wayne families in Colorado Springs were found
murdered in their homes, again with an ax. Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck
the Dawson family as they were ruthlessly slaughtered in their Monmouth,
Illinois, home. A mere fourteen days later, the Showman family met their end,
courtesy of the ax man in Ellsworth, Kansas. And then, the week before the
Villisca murders, Rollin and Anna Hudson were murdered in their sleep in Paola,
Kansas. The final ax murders of 1912 occurred in Columbia, Missouri, in
December.
The Villisca Axe Murder house as it looked in 1912. (Topeka State
Journal. June 12, 1912)
The
killings remain unsolved, and the mystery surrounding them has only deepened
with time. Countless theories have been put forward, each more chilling than
the last. Were they crimes of passion? A random act of violence? Or the work of
a mad serial killer?
Whatever
else can be said, the Villisca Ax Murders remain one of America’s most chilling
unsolved mysteries.
As
time goes on, the chances of solving the case grow slimmer, but the fascination
with it only deepens. In a world where we seek understanding, the unexplained
killings serve as a haunting reminder that some questions will forever remain
unanswered.
The
murders have experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, thanks to
the growing true crime phenomenon and our collective fascination with the
macabre. Podcasts, documentaries, and books explore the case, each offering new
theories and insights.
The
Moore house, oddly enough, has attracted the attention of true crime buffs and
paranormal investigators, making it a must-visit destination.
Josiah Moore
(Topeka State Journal. June 12, 1912)
For
some, it’s about connecting with the past and trying to piece together what
happened that night in 1912. Others seek the adrenaline rush of stepping into a
location where unspeakable horrors unfolded, eagerly expecting a supernatural
encounter. And let’s be honest—there’s a certain allure to visiting a haunted
house, especially one with a story as dark as Villisca’s.
The
murders have also made their mark on pop culture. The case has inspired many TV
shows, from ghost-hunting reality series to dramatized crime specials. The
house has been showcased on popular TV shows like Ghost Adventures and
Scariest Places on Earth.
Investigators
have reported encountering a range of eerie phenomena, from disembodied voices
to bone-chilling unexplained cold spots. Several visitors claimed the evil
spirit locked in the house followed them home, and wreaked havoc on their
lives. There’s no denying the house has a way of sending shivers down your
spine.
Hollywood
isn’t immune to the case’s dark allure, either. It has inspired many horror
films, especially those that revolve around home invasions and hidden
small-town secrets. The concept of something so terrifying happening in the
safety of a family home has been a favorite theme of horror directors for
decades.
Crime
aficionados still debate the suspects, eagerly dissecting each clue and alibi.
Frank Jones, William “Blackie” Mansfield, and Reverend George Kelly remain at
the center of their conversations, as respective supporters and critics
passionately discuss their actions and beliefs.
Frank
Jones seeking revenge for Josiah Moore’s business betrayal—strikes a chord with
those who believe the murders were personal. Some modern theorists think Jones
hired Mansfield as a hitman, weaving the two theories together into a
convoluted narrative. The idea of a powerful man using his influence to commit
murder is captivating, especially in an era where true crime stories often
center on corruption and conspiracy.
Sarah Moore
(Topeka State Journal. June 12, 1912)
Despite
having an ironclad alibi, William Mansfield is still the most likely suspect.
He had a violent history, and his suspected involvement in other ax murders
suggests the Villisca murders were not an isolated event, but one piece of a
larger puzzle. The idea of a traveling serial killer, moving from town to town,
leaving a trail of bloodshed, fits neatly into our current understanding of
such criminals. Although Mansfield was never convicted, the striking
similarities between the Villisca murders and the other cases he was linked to
cannot be overlooked.
And
then there’s Reverend George Kelly, the oddball preacher and pervert. Investigators
and armchair detectives are still perplexed by his confession. Was he a lunatic
seeking attention, or did his confession hold a grain of truth? Or could it be
he watched the killer at work? Troy Taylor suggested Kelly might have witnessed
the murders or their aftermath while on one of his midnight excursions. It
would explain how he knew so many intimate details about the crime. Some
researchers dismiss Kelly as a serious suspect because he recanted his
confession so quickly, while others say his erratic behavior suggests
underlying guilt.
And
don’t forget the town. The ax murders are a source of morbid curiosity and a
burden to Villisca residents. The town has finally come to grips with its dark
history. The Moore house, now a tourist attraction, hosts events like the
annual Villisca Ax Murder House Festival. Visitors can explore the house,
attend lectures, and even take part in ghost hunts.
The
murders have shaped the town’s identity in captivating yet profoundly
disturbing ways. The murders have brought Villisca a level of fame (or infamy)
that few small towns have ever achieved, but it serves as a constant reminder
of the darkness that once invaded their peaceful lives.
So,
what is it about the Villisca Ax Murders that continues to captivate us over
100 years later? No doubt, the sheer brutality of the crimes is a major part of
our fascination with them. That someone could slaughter an entire family in the
dead of night is the stuff of nightmares. But it’s also the mystery, the
questions that remain unanswered, and the possibility the truth is still out
there, waiting to be uncovered, that keeps the murders at the top of people’s
minds.
The
Villisca Ax Murders embody our enduring fascination with true crime. They
provide a chilling peek into the dark corners of human nature, exposing our
ability to commit unspeakable acts. They encourage us to play detective, sift
through the evidence, and develop our own theories of what happened, and to
try, in our own way, to solve the mystery.
Who
knows? Maybe one day, the mystery will be solved. A new piece of evidence might
come to light, or a long-lost confession will be discovered, putting an end to
the speculation. Until then, the Villisca Ax Murders remain one of America’s
most enduring mysteries. They remind us that even in the most ordinary of
places, darkness lurks in the shadows.
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