On the morning of June 10, 1912, the Moore family of Villisca, Iowa, was found dead in their home. To this day, their murder remains unsolved. Their house, aptly named the Villisca Murder House, is haunted.
Prominent in the town of Villisca, the Moore family consisted of Josiah (43), his wife Sarah (39), their four children, Herman Montgomery (11), Mary Katherine (10), Arthur Boyd (7), and Paul Vernon (5). Josiah was a wealthy businessman, and Sarah was an active member of the Presbyterian Church. The family was well known, and very well liked in their community.
On June 9, 1912, the Presbyterian Church was holding a Children’s Day Program that Sarah had coordinated. The program started at 8pm and Josiah and Sarah took their four children. The program ended at 9:30pm, and Mary Katherine invited her friends Ina Mae (8), and Lena Gertrude Stillinger (12) to spend the night at her home. Together the eight of them walked back to the Moore residence, arriving sometime between 9:45 and 10pm.
To their neighbors, the evening appeared uneventful, and it wasn’t until 7am the next morning that Mary Peckham, a neighbor, became concerned. The Moore family was always up and about by this time, working on their morning chores.
Mrs. Peckham knocked on their door, but no one answered. She tried the knob, but the door was locked. She decided to help out by letting out the Moore’s chickens, then called Josiah’s brother, Ross.
Ross arrived at the house, and he too, tried knocking and calling out to his brother. He tried to peer through the windows, but all the shades had been drawn. Still getting no response, he pulled out a copy of the house key he had, and used it to unlock the front door. He left Mrs. Peckham on the porch while he went into the parlor, and then opened the guest bedroom door. There, he found the bloodied bodies of Ina and Lena Stillinger, on the bed. They had been covered with a sheet, and the headboard and walls were covered in blood spatter.
Ross immediately returned to Mrs. Peckham and instructed her to call Hank Horton, Villisca’s primary peace officer, who arrived at the Moore residence shortly after. Horton proceeded to search the entire house, where he discovered that the entire Moore family as well as the two Stillinger girls, had been bludgeoned to death. The murder weapon? An axe, belonging to Josiah, was found in the guest bedroom where the Stillinger sisters had been found. It’s blade had been partially wiped clean. Strangely though, he found a four pound slab of bacon, wrapped in cloth, just beside it.
Horton proceeded to inspect the rest of the home. He found a plate of uneaten food, next to a pot of bloody water on the kitchen table. All the mirrors in the home, as well as the glass in the entry doors, were covered with articles of clothing that had been found when the killer or killers rifled through the family’s things.
The two bedrooms which the Moore family had occupied had axe marks on the ceiling, apparently made by the upswing of an axe. Josiah had received the worst of the beatings, having received more blows from the axe than any other victim. The blade of the axe had been used on him, and his face had been cut so badly, that both of his eyes were missing.
The children were killed next, attacking each while in their beds and beating them with the blunt end of the axe. Then the killer returned to the parent’s bedroom where they attacked again, even knocking over a shoe that had filled with blood.
The Stillinger girls were the last to be killed. Ina was first, waking her sister Lena. It is believed that of all eight victims, only Lena was awake when she was murdered. She fought back, but it wasn’t enough. Her body was found lying crosswise on the bed, bearing her defensive wound on her arm.
Lena’s nightgown was pushed up to her waist, and her undergarments had been thrown underneath the bed, leading investigators to speculate that she may have been sexually molested. Fortunately, after examination, doctors were able to conclude that she had not been sexually abused, and was likely left on display for the killer’s viewing pleasure.
Each victim took approximately 20 to 30 blows to their heads with the axe. Josiah had been crushed from his upper jaw and up with blood, brain tissue, and skull fragments sprayed across the headboard. The killer covered all of their heads with bedclothes. Doctors were able to determine that the murders took place sometime between midnight and 5am.
While looking for more clues, investigators found themselves in the house’s attic. There they discovered two spent cigarettes, indicating that the killer, or killers, had lay in wait for the family and their guests to fall asleep.
When Horton returned to town to get the doctors, he accidentally let it slip that there had been a murder at the Moore home. Word spread like wildfire; townspeople told friends, family, stores closed up shop for the day, and it wasn’t long before hundreds of people were at the Moore residence, gawking at the bodies like it was some sideshow attraction. They ran yelling and screaming from room to room, disrupting evidence. As Horton got one crowd of people out, another pushed in.
The Moore-Stillinger funeral services were held in Villisca’s town square on June 12, 1912. Thousands were in attendance, and the National Guard had to be utilized to block the street as a hearse moved toward the firehouse, where the eight victims lay. Their caskets were later carried on several wagons to the Villisca Cemetery for burial.
There were initially several suspects, including the Reverend George Kelly. Reverend Kelly had only arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning of the murders. He attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls, and left town at 5:19am Monday morning, the day after the murders. He boarded the westbound number 5 train, and it was reported that he told a few travelers that there were eight dead souls back in Villisca, Iowa, “butchered in their beds while they slept,” he said, even though their bodies had yet to be discovered.
Two weeks later, Reverend Kelly returned to Villisca, Iowa, posing as a detective. He joined a tour of the murder house with a group of investigators. It was discovered that he had had a reputation for odd behavior, and had also been convicted of sending obscene material through the mail. The Reverend had even spent time in a mental hospital.
Reverend Kelly was indicted for Lena Stillinger’s murder, and was interrogated throughout the summer of 1917 while he sat in jail, waiting for his trial. Then on August 31, at 7am, he signed a confession for the murder, saying that God had whispered to him to “suffer the children to come unto me.”
At his trial, he recanted his confession, and the jury deadlocked eleven to one for acquittal. A second jury ultimately acquitted him in November 1917.
Another suspect was Andrew Sawyer, a transient who arrived in Creston at 6am on the morning the murders were discovered. He was clean shaven and wore a brown suit. His shoes were covered in mud and his pants were wet almost all the way to the knees. When he approached Thomas Dyer, a bridge foreman, and asked for a job, he was hired on the spot.
Later that evening when the crew reached Fontanelle, Iowa, Mr. Sawyer purchased a newspaper and went off on his own to read it. On the front page was the account of the Villisca murders. Mr. Sawyer was very interested in it, and had confessed to Mr. Dyer that he had been in Villisca that Sunday evening, and had heard of the murders. Afraid of being considered a suspect, he fled town. That on top of the fact that Mr. Sawyer behaved anxiously when alone, always slept with his clothes on and an axe next to him, gave Mr. Dyer enough reason to turn him over to the sheriff on June 18, 1912.
Mr. Dyer later testified that before the sheriff arrived, he walked up behind Mr. Sawyer who was rubbing his head with both hands. Suddenly, he jumped up and said to himself, “I will cut your god damn heads off,’ while making striking motions with his axe, hitting the piles in front of him.
Mr. Dyer’s son testified that one day when the crew drove through Villisca, Mr. Sawyer told him he would show him where the man who killed the Moore family got out of town. He said that the man that did the job jumped over a manure box which he pointed out about 1½ blocks away, and then showed where he crossed the railroad track. The boy said there were footprints in the soggy ground north of the embankment and Mr. Sawyer told him to look on the other side of the car and said he would show him an old tree where the murderer stepped into the creek. According to the boy,, he looked over and saw such a tree south of the track about four blocks away.
Officials dismissed Mr. Sawyer as a suspect when they learned that he could prove he had been in Osceola, Iowa on the night of the murders. Fortunately for him, he had been arrested for vagrancy there, and the Osceola sheriff recalled putting him on a train (to send him away) at approximately 11pm that evening.
Investigators briefly considered Frank F. Jones, a Villisca resident and Iowa State Senator. Josiah had worked for him at his implement store for many years prior to leaving and opening his own store. Mr. Jones was reportedly angry with Josiah for taking business away from him, including a very successful John Deere dealership. It didn’t help that Josiah had also been rumored to have had a sexual affair with Mr. Jones’ daughter in law. With no other evidence, he didn’t remain a suspect for long.
Some believed that William Mansfield killed the Moore family. It was rumored that Senator Jones, rather than taking care of Josiah himself, hired William “Blackie” Mansfield to murder the family. Some believed Mr. Mansfield was a serial killer, as two years after to the Villisca murders, he had murdered his wife, infant child, and in-laws with an axe. There had been axe murders in Paola, Kansas four days before the Villisca murders, and Mr. Mansfield was a suspect there as well as in the double homicide of Jennie Peterson and Jennie Miller in Illinois. Each crime was carried out almost exactly the same manner, and each location was accessible by train.
Other nearly identical murders include an axe murder in Colorado Springs, Colorado and two axe murder cases in Ellsworth kansas. Similar cases, yet not identical were those committed along the southern Pacific Railroad from 1911 to 1912 and the Axeman of New Orleans killings.
He was arrested and brought to Montgomery County from Kansas City. However, Mr. Mansfield had an alibi. Payroll records showed that he had been in Illinois at the time of the Villisca murders. He was released for lack of evidence, but that didn’t convince everyone. Mr. R.H. Thorpe, a restaurant owner from Shenandoah, Iowa identified Mr. Mansfield as the man he had seen boarding a train at Clarinda the morning after the Villisca murders. That man had said he had walked from Villisca.
Additionally, Mrs. Vina Tompkins, of Marshalltown, reported that she heard three men in the woods plotting the murder of the Moore family a short time before the killings.
There were more suspects, and even some confessions, but all had been proven false, or thrown out due to lack of evidence. To this day, the identity of who killed Josiah Moore, Sarah Moore, Herman Montgomery Moore, Mary Katherine Moore, Arthur Boyd Moore, Paul Vernon Poore, Ina Mae Stillinger, and Lena Gertrude Stillinger remains a mystery.
Today though, over 100 years later, people are still intrigued by this case. Perhaps because it’s unsolved, or could it be that the Villisca house is haunted?
Numerous paranormal teams have investigated here, and other paranormal investigation shows have filmed there, including the famous Ghost Adventures crew. It has been reported that there is a feeling of heaviness from the main stairwell of the house up to the rooms upstairs.
When the train passes through the town of Villisca at 2am, it is believed that it’s whistle triggers the residual events of the murder. A light fog fills up the bedroom, then moves from one room to another until it finally dissipates. Then you can hear the sound of dripping blood.
From the pictures, video, and audio, one can find orbs, EVP, and other electronic audio phenomena. If you want to see it for yourself, pay the home a visit. It has been made into a museum, and is open for both Daylight Tours as well as Overnight Tours. Check it out at http://www.villiscaiowa.com
If you thought this unsolved mystery was interesting, we encourage you to read about the Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders.
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