Home of the Villisca Ax Murders

Table Of Content

• Villisca Axe Murder House
• Crime Stoppers
• The True Story Behind the Hauntings at the Villisca Axe Murder House
• A number of gruesome unsolved murders have turned this simple home into a morbid tourist trap.
• Overnight Stays
• Discovery of the crime
• What to know on the anniversary of the 1912 Villisca ax murders

The Jameses identify common features to these crimes, many of which are also found at the Villisca scene. Find information on tours, including overnight stays, at villiscaiowa.com. One person tried in vain to open the doors and windows of the home before calling the town marshal, who broke down the door when he arrived. The slain family members were found in different bedrooms throughout the house.

Villisca Axe Murder House photo is seriously creepy - Des Moines Register

Villisca Axe Murder House photo is seriously creepy.

Posted: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Villisca Axe Murder House

Despite its ominous air, the little white house was once filled with life, life that was harshly stamped out one warm summer’s night in 1912, when a mysterious stranger broke in, and viciously bludgeoned its eight sleeping inhabitants to death. The event would come to be known as the Villisca Axe Murders and it would baffle law enforcement for over a century. YouTubers Sam and Colby published a paranormal investigation video of the murders. Investigators continued to receive confessions in the years after the killings, including one from a prisoner in 1931 Detroit, who claimed that an unknown businessman had offered to pay him $5,000 to kill the Moore family.

Crime Stoppers

There was also a rumor that Joe was having an affair with Jones’ daughter-in-law, though the reports were unfounded. The townspeople insist, however, that the Moores and the Joneses harbored a deep hatred for each other, though no one admits it was bad enough to spark murder. The first was Frank Jones, a local businessman who had been in competition with Joe Moore. Moore had worked for Jones for seven years in the farm equipment sales business before leaving and starting his own rival business.

The True Story Behind the Hauntings at the Villisca Axe Murder House

Brave souls can tour the Villisca Ax Murder House and even stay overnight, if they dare. Other suspects, such as William Mansfield and Henry Moore, were also considered. However, due to the lack of evidence, most of what historians know today is based on legend.

In each case, the murderer avoided leaving fingerprints by wearing gloves, which Wilkerson believed was strong evidence that the man was Mansfield, who knew his fingerprints were on file at the federal military prison at Leavenworth. On November 7, a visitor to the world-renowned Villisca Axe Murder House in Villisca, Iowa, was rushed to a nearby hospital after being found with a self-inflicted stab wound to his chest. The house is a familiar site to paranormal investigators, who have proclaimed it to be one of the most haunted places in America following the 1912 murders of six children and two adults whose skulls were crushed while they slept in their beds. The crime was never solved, and visitors to the house regularly report emotional, physical, and supernatural disturbances during their overnight visits.

Ten years in the making, the documentary explores the possibility that the Villisca crime and similar murders in Monmouth, Illinois, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Ellsworth, Kansas, may have been the work of one of America’s first serial killers. Kelly — the son and grandson of English ministers — had suffered a mental breakdown as an adolescent. Since immigrating to America with his wife in 1904, Kelly had preached at Methodist churches across North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa. He’d been assigned as a visiting minister to several small communities north of Villisca, where he developed a reputation for odd behavior. He’d also been convicted of sending obscene material through the mail and had spent time in a mental hospital. The ceiling in the parents’ bedroom and the children’s room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe.

Discovery of the crime

Following the murder, many Villisca residents believed Iowa State Senator Frank F. Jones was the culprit. "Everybody loved them. And all of a sudden they wake up, and everyone's dead in bed." The night of the murder, Mary invited two of her friends, Lena Stillinger (12) and Ina Stillinger (8) to the home for a sleepover. "Everybody loved them," said Johnny Houser, a tour guide at the Villisca Ax Murder House. "Think of that family from your small hometown that everyone loves, everyone respects, nobody has a problem with." On June 10, 2012, a number of Iowa newspapers covered the 100-year anniversary of Iowa’s most highly profiled crime.

Over a century later, the case is still cold —and the spirits still linger. The 1912 Iowa Touring Atlas proclaimed it as “one of the finest towns in the state.” The brochure described it as a perfectly picturesque small town, populated with lovely Victorian homes on its tree-lined streets. Even though the Civil War slowed the construction of the railroads, having been awarded coveted a spot on the CB&Q line ensured, the town flourished as a retail and agricultural trade hub.

Why Did a Ghost Hunter Stab Himself Inside a Famous Ax-Murder House? - VICE

Why Did a Ghost Hunter Stab Himself Inside a Famous Ax-Murder House?.

Posted: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?

Kelly recanted his confession at trial, and his case went to the jury on September 26. A second jury was immediately empanelled, but acquitted Rev. Kelly in November. Paranormal and other phenomenon are most often experienced in the dark hours, and many say that the whistle of a 2 a.m. Before booking, please be aware that an overnight stay is experiential in nature – it’s not meant as accommodation but to offer a one-of-a-kind chance to experience a place known to be haunted in the hours most likely to generate activity. The jury deadlocked 11 to one for acquittal, according to Iowa Cold Cases. The second suspect seemed far more likely and even confessed to the murders – though he later recanted claiming police brutality.

Seemingly afterwards, a 4lb slab of bacon was taken out of the icebox and laid next to the axe. Investigators also found untouched food and bloody water during the search. After the search, people were let in to see if they could have committed the crime, completely contaminating the weapon. The next day, June 10, Mary Peckham, the Moores' neighbor, became concerned after she noticed that the family had not come out to do their morning chores. When nobody answered, she tried to open the door and discovered that it was locked. Peckham let the Moores' chickens out and called Ross Moore, Josiah's brother.

After murdering the Moores, the killer had apparently set up some kind of ritual. He had covered the Moore parent’s heads with sheets, and the Moore children’s faces with clothing. He then went through each room in the house, covering all of the mirrors and windows with cloths and towels. At some point, he took a two-pound piece of uncooked bacon from the fridge and placed it in the living room, along with a keychain. In 1914, two years after the murders, Kelly was arrested for sending obscene material through the mail (he was sexually harassing a woman who applied for a job as his secretary). He was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the national mental hospital in Washington, D.C. Investigators speculated again that Kelly could be the murderer of the Moore family.

The faces of both parents, as well as the children, had been reduced to nothing but a bloody pulp. Jo Naylor/FlickrThe Villisca Axe Murders house where an unknown attacker committed one of American history’s most disturbing unsolved murders of all time in 1912. James started his research in an attempt to solve the Villisca murders, and with his daughter found archival newspaper stories detailing dozens of families murdered under similar circumstances across the US. The Jameses thus believe that Mueller was guilty of the Villisca murders as part of a killing spree that lasted over a decade, killing at least 59 people in 14 separate incidents, including the Colorado Springs and Paola crimes.

The murders were described in the episode Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders? The murders and purported paranormal activity was described in Episode 21 of the podcast And That's Why We Drink. The House and Murders were used as the setting and premise of the haunted house horror film The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016). Police obtained a confession from him; however, it followed many hours of interrogation and Kelly later recanted. Sheriff Sampson has been on the county police force since 1992, and sheriff for the last six years. He says that he's never been called out to the house for any emergencies in the past, and refers to Villisca as just "your basic, small-town, Iowa farming community."

"I have notebooks from just the last two years full of what overnight experiences people have had. Very few of them go away without experiencing something." All the victims were found in their beds, their heads covered with bedclothes, and all had their skulls battered 20 to 30 times with the blunt end of an axe. The murders spawned nearly ten years of investigations, repeated grand jury hearings, a spectacular slander suit and murder trial, and numerous minor litigations and trials. In the weeks that followed, he displayed a fascination with the case and wrote many letters to the police, investigators, and family of the deceased.

The killings became known as the “Villisca Axe Murders,” and are easily the most notorious murders in Iowa history. The Villisca ax murders — one of the most heinous crimes in the state's history — took place overnight on June 9, 1912. It remains unsolved despite years of investigations, multiple grand jury hearings, a slander lawsuit and a murder trial, according to the Iowa Cold Cases blog. In Mueller's suspected crimes there was often but not always a sexual motive directed towards a pubescent girl, as with Lena's being partly disrobed.

According to Wilkerson's investigation, all of the murders were committed in precisely the same manner, indicating that the same man probably committed them. Wilkerson stated that he could prove that Mansfield was present in each of the differing crime scenes on the night of the murders. In each murder, the victims were hacked to death with an axe and the mirrors in the homes were covered. A burning lamp with the chimney off was left at the foot of the bed and a basin in which the murderer washed was found in the kitchen.