Table Of Content
- Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?
- The Moore Family
- The Case Goes Cold And The Villisca Axe Murders House Becomes A Tourist Attraction
- Villisca axe murders
- A number of gruesome unsolved murders have turned this simple home into a morbid tourist trap.
- The Gruesome Story Of The Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders
The mansion reportedly had several secret panels, a secret corridor behind a bookcase, and hidden trapdoors. Also at the 1.84-acre property, there was a 60-foot swimming pool and a championship tennis court. 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. Kelly made a confession which was later withdrawn before his trial. Following the murder, many Villisca residents believed Iowa State Senator Frank F. Jones was the culprit.
Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?
Horton's search of the house revealed that the entire Moore family and the two Stillinger girls had been bludgeoned to death. The murder weapon, an axe belonging to Josiah, was found in the guest room where the Stillinger sisters were found. 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. Two years after the Villisca killings, police turned their attention to an Illinois resident and serial killer. William Mansfield murdered his wife, daughter, and parents-in-law in a way that was eerily similar to the Moore family murders. Later, investigators linked him to other axe murders that happened in Kansas and Colorado, and he was even a suspect in the notorious Axeman of New Orleans case.
The Moore Family
While many have tried to solve the case, the Villisca murders remains a mystery and most likely will forever. Moore and Jones despised each other, according to Villisca residents. However, it was considered a stretch that Jones could progress to murdering his business rival. There were also rumors around Villisca that Moore had engaged in extramarital activities with Jones’s daughter-in-law.
Villisca Axe Murder House in Iowa to be bought by US Ghost Adventures - Des Moines Register
Villisca Axe Murder House in Iowa to be bought by US Ghost Adventures.
Posted: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 12:06:14 GMT [source]
The Case Goes Cold And The Villisca Axe Murders House Becomes A Tourist Attraction
His motive, he said, was to obtain the deed to their Missouri family home. Police officers and a local doctor scrutinized the crime scene and examined the bodies. Doctor F.S. Williams, the first medical officer on the scene, determined that the attacks took place sometime between midnight and 5 am.
The Hillside Strangler Murders
The Travel Channel's television show Destination Fear filmed at the location for the eighth episode of their third season. Frank Fernando Jones was a Villisca resident and an Iowa State Senator. Josiah Moore had worked for Frank Jones at his implement store for many years before leaving to open his own store. Moore reportedly took business away from Jones, including a very successful John Deere dealership.
On one hand, the stranger held the lamp, lighting the way through the house. Curious to learn all the details of the Villisca Axe Murder House and why it's one of the most haunted places in the world? Listen to this week's episode of our haunted house podcast series, Dark House, for exclusive ghost stories and insights into the notorious home's haunted reputation. The full story of the Villisca Axe Murder House is featured in episode 2 of House Beautiful’s new haunted house podcast, Dark House. On February 3, 2003, legendary music producer Phil Spector shot actress Lana Clarkson to death in his house in Alhambra.
She wouldn’t take any money for it, so Brown gave her a box of chocolate-covered cherries for the ax. That’s how Epperly’s interest was revived — and how he later came to have the ax for 20 years before donating it to the state historical society. Epperly begins his own story in 1955 when he and two college buddies, all social studies majors, piled into a car they owned together and headed toward Villisca to write a paper for class on the murders.
Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders of 1912
Would you stay overnight at the Villisca Axe Murder House? - Little Village - Little Village Magazine
Would you stay overnight at the Villisca Axe Murder House? - Little Village.
Posted: Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Investigators discovered blood on a white Ford Bronco at his home address. They also discovered a women’s shelter had received a panic call from Brown four days prior to her murder. Brown said she was afraid of what Simpson might do to her as she refused to reconcile their marriage.
Those fascinated with the case regularly flock to see the house in person. Others simply want to see the crime scene of one of America’s most brutal unsolved murders. The Villisca ax murders — one of the most heinous crimes in the state's history — took place overnight on June 9, 1912.
The jury deadlocked 11 to one for acquittal, according to Iowa Cold Cases. The family was discovered in the morning after Josiah Moore didn't answer a call from his clerk. Neighbors became concerned that the Moores were not up doing their typical morning routines, prompting neighbors to call some of their relatives. This month marks 110 years since a family of six and their two visitors were bludgeoned to death in their sleep at a home in the small southwest Iowa town of Villisca.
Despite the same surname, he was no relation to the murdered Moore family. Moore and Peckham contacted Hank Horton, Viscillia’s primary peace officer who arrived shortly after. The officer’s search of the house would reveal all six members of the Moore family, and the two Stillinger girls had been murdered.
One man even experienced an inexplicable self-inflicted knife wound. Like the murders themselves, the riddle of the house and why these things occur will likely never be solved. On Sunday evening, June 9, 1912, Josiah (Joe) Moore and his wife Sarah took their four children, Herman, 11, Katherine, 10, Boyd, 7, and 5-year-old Paul to the Children’s Day service at the Presbyterian Church. Accompanying them were Lena (12) and Ina Stillinger (8), neighbors who had asked their parents’ permission to stay overnight with the Moore children. The house, redubbed the Villisca Ax Murder House, now is open for tours and overnight visits. The bodies of Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children and two visiting girls were found in the Moore home in Villisca, a Montgomery County town located about 100 miles southwest of Des Moines.
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. Iskenderian, who was suffering from cancer, then turned his gun on himself. Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their wealthy parents with shotguns on August 20, 1989 at their mansion in Beverly Hills (the motive was allegedly money).
On the kitchen table was a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water. Sometime after midnight, the killer or killers picked up Joe’s axe from the back yard, entered the house, and bludgeoned to death all eight of its occupants. According to reporting from the Tribune, the victims were killed with an ax the killer, or killers, found in the family's backyard, while they slept sometime around or after midnight. The family had spent the evening at a program at the local Presbyterian Church and returned home around 10 p.m. Ignoring the sleeping girls downstairs, the stranger made his way up the stairs, guided by the lamp, and a seemingly unerring knowledge of the home’s layout.
He found a dead body in every bed, along with a blood-covered axe still lying in the room where the Stillinger girls lay dead. The entire Moore family and their two friends were brutally slain. Kelly had arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning of the murders and attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls before departing early Monday. He returned two weeks later, and, posing as a detective, joined a tour of the murder house with a group of investigators. Nine months before the murders at Villisca, a similar case of axe murder occurred in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Two axe murder cases followed in Ellsworth, Kansas, and Paola, Kansas.
Nobody could understand why such a talented doctor, who adored his wife and children, would wake in the middle of the night and bludgeon them in their sleep. "He sent a bloody shirt to a laundry the week after the murder. It's a viable possibility that he was the killer. It can't be proven today, at least to my satisfaction." VILLISCA, Iowa — It's been 111 years since the tragic murders of eight people at a home in Villisca. Along came another suspect, an oddball itinerant preacher with sexual problems and mental illness who happened to spend that fateful night in Villisca.
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