Sometime during the evening of June 10, 1912 or early morning hours on June 11, 1912 in the city of Villisca in southwestern Iowa a family of six and two house guests were brutally murdered with an axe. Though there has been many suspects over the years, even a couple trials, this gruesome case remains unsolved. This is the true story of the horrific Villisca Axe Murders.
The members of the Moore family include parents Josiah (43) and Sarah (39), along with their four children Herman (11), Mary Katherine (10), Arthur (7), and Paul (5).
The other two guests were sisters Ina Mae (8) and Lena Gertrude Stillinger (12) who were invited by Mary Katherine Moore so spend the night at the Moore home.
On the evening of June 10, 1912, the Moore family along with the Stillinger sisters went to a church event which ended at 9:30 pm. Sarah Moore was co-director of this program called “The Children’s Day Service,” in which the Moore children performed in. Afterwards, everyone walked home, the journey being only three blocks long, and arrived between 9:45 and 10 pm. The family then enjoyed milk and cookies together before going to bed for the night.
Around 7 am the next morning, the Moore’s neighbor, Mary Peckham became worried when she noticed that the Moore’s had not been out to do their morning chores. She knocked on the front door and no one answered. She let the Moore’s chickens out then called Josiah Moore’s brother, Ross. When he arrived he also tried knocking on the door to no avail. While Mary waited on the front porch, Ross used his copy of the house key to go inside. In the guest bedroom he found the bodies of Ina and Lena Stillinger in the bed. Ross immediately told Peckham to call Hank Horton who was Villisca’s main peace officer.
When Horton entered the residence he made the horrible discovery that the whole Moore family had also been murdered. The weapon used to commit the act, an axe belonging to Josiah Moore, was found leaning against the wall in the guest bedroom near the bodies of the Stillinger sisters. Doctor. F.S. Williams, who was the first to examine the bodies and determine the time of deaths, told the crowd gathered outside of the house, “Don’t go in there, boys; you’ll regret it until the last day of your life.” Many ignored his warning and trampled through the house to satisfy their curiosity. They left fingerprints everywhere, contaminating the crime scene and it is reported that one person even took a piece of Josiah’s skull as a disturbing sort of keepsake.
Doctors came to the conclusion that the murders occurred between midnight and 5 am. Evidence in the form of two cigarette butts were found in the attic suggesting that the killer or killers had hid there until everyone in the house was fast asleep. The perpetrator used an oil lamp that he had taken off a dresser in the house, and keeping the flame low, made his way through the house. It is believed that the killer(s) started in the master bedroom of Josiah and Sarah. Josiah had been stuck at least 30 times with the blade of the axe, while everyone else was killed using the blunt end of the weapon. This makes it seem that he was the main target of the crime. The killer(s) then went to the children’s rooms and bludgeoned Herman, Katherine, Arthur, and Paul. A shoe that was filled with blood in the master bedroom had been later knocked over, indicating that the murderer went back to inflict more blows on the Moore parents before moving downstairs and killing Ina and Lena Stillinger.
Sadly, detectives believed that twelve-year-old Lena Stillinger had been awake when the attack happened. She had a defensive wound on her arm and was found laying crosswise on the bed. Her nightgown was pushed up to her waist and she was wearing no undergarments and police thought she may have been molested. After an examination by a doctor, it was determined that no sexual abuse had occurred.
The murder scene was bizarre. There was a four pound slab of bacon leaning against the wall next to the axe. The dressers in the house had been searched for clothing which was used to cover up mirrors in the house and the glass on the entry doors. These clothing items had also been used to cover the faces of the victims. In the kitchen, on the table was a plate of food that had been left uneaten, along with a bowl of bloody water that the killer may have washed his hands in. The ceiling was scraped in the master bedroom and children’s bedroom, from where the axe was swung high. The oil lamp was left on the floor at the top of the stairs and the killer took the house keys, locking the doors as he left.
The list of suspects was long and included Andrew Sawyer, Reverend George Kelly, Frank F. Jones, William Mansfield and Henry Lee Moore (no relation). We will now explore each of these suspects and others to determine why they may have had something to do with the murders.
Andrew Sawyer- Homeless transients and any strangers in town at the time were considered suspects by the community. One of those people was Andrew Sawyer. His name was mentioned more than a few times during court testimonies, though no solid evidence linked him to the crime. According to Thomas Dyer, who worked for Burlington Railroad, Sawyer came up to him at 6 am on the morning that the murders were discovered. Sawyer was clean-shaven and wearing a suit, but oddly his shoes were covered in mud and his trousers were wet almost up to his knees. He talked to Dyer about a job working for him and Dyer accepted because he was short on workers. Dyer testified that later that evening at a job site, Sawyer had bought a paper with a headline about the Moore residence murders and that he had went of by himself to read it. According to Dyer, Sawyer was very interested in the article. Sawyer also had other strange behaviors including sleeping in his clothes, not wanting to be left alone, sleeping with an axe by his bed, and he would ask about the Moore case frequently, wondering if the perpetrator had been caught.
Dyer also told the court of an instance when he was walking up to Sawyer from behind when Sawyer jumped up and threatened to cut his head off while swing his axe. Dyer’s son told another story that when they were driving through Villisca, Sawyer offered to show him how the murderer got away.
In spite of all this Sawyer had an alibi. He was locked up in the town of Osceola, Iowa for vagrancy on the night the murders took place. The sheriff in that town remembered sending Sawyer away on a train that night at 11 pm.
Using today’s Google maps, it takes between 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get from Osceola to Villisca by car depending on the route you take. Going by train may have been even faster. If Sawyer was put on a train at 11 pm the night of the murders that still gives him plenty of time to get to the Moore residence in the time frame of the murders. Quite a flimsy alibi.
Reverend George Kelly- George Kelly was a traveling minister who came to Visllisca on June 8, 1912 to teach at the Children’s Day services, which is the event the Moore’s went to on the night they were murdered. Kelly had a troubled past with history of mental illness as a teenager. He had also been accused of being peeping tom and asking young women and girls to pose nude for him. He left town by train early in the morning, hours before the murders were discovered, making him even more suspicious. He allegedly told fellow passengers on the train that there were eight dead souls back in Villisca, before the murders had even been discovered. He went on to confess to the murders in court but the jury didn’t believe his confession, possibly because of his history with mental illness. In the following years, Kelly was fascinated with the murder case and would send letters to police and family members of the victims to find out more about the investigation. In 1914, Kelly was arrested for sending obscene material, sexually harassing a woman who had applied to work for him. He once again came under suspicion for the Moore family murders. In 1917 he was arrested for the murders and once again confessed to the crime, but later recanted his confession. In his confession he said that he couldn’t sleep that night and went out for a walk. He saw light coming from the guest bedroom that the Stillinger girls were staying in and he observed them getting ready for bed. He then heard the voice of God whisper to him “suffer the children to come unto me.” He claimed to be in a trance-like state as he walked to the backyard and picked up Josiah Moore’s axe and entered the house through the kitchen door. After killing everyone in the house he hung around until daylight, then left out of the front door and proceeded to leave town. After hearing the evidence in court, the jury remained deadlocked, eleven to one for acquittal and the case ended up being dismissed. Later that year, a second trial was held which ended in an acquittal. Some townspeople believed he was being set up by Frank F. Jones, whom you will read about next.
Frank F. Jones– Frank Fernando Jones was a wealthy man with political power. He founded the Villisca National Bank and went on to become a state senator. Josiah Moore had once worked for Jones, but went on to open his own business. Moore took along with him a big business deal with John Deere Plow Company along with a lot of customers, making he and Jones bitter enemies. They would even cross the street to avoid walking by each other. It was also rumored that Moore may have been having an affair with Jones’ daughter-in-law. For these reasons, Jones had plenty of motive for murder. There was plenty of gossip going around about Jones, but the local paper, the Villisca Review advised people to not be spreading rumors about such a prominent citizen. Eventually a grand jury investigated him, but townspeople believe that he used his political influence to get out of it.
William Mansfield– Some believe that William Mansfield was a serial killer hired by Frank Jones to carry out the murders of the Moore family. Mansfield seemed a likely suspect because he was the sole suspect in the murdering of his wife, infant, and in-laws…with an axe. He is suspected in committing more murders in Kansas, Illinois and Colorado as well, all using an axe as his weapon of choice. In 1916, Mansfield was arrested for the murders, but was later released when payroll records showed that he was in Illinois at the time of the Villisca murders. A man by the name of Thorpe later said that he saw Mansfield boarding a train in Clarinda, Iowa, 20 minutes from Villisca. If Thorpe really did see Mansfield, and it was not a mistake in identity, this would contradict Mansfield’s alibi.
Henry Lee Moore– Several months after the Villisca murders, Henry Lee Moore, who was not related to the victims, murdered his mother and grandmother with an axe in order to get the deed to his family house. His crimes showed similarities with the Moore murders, but there was not enough evidence to show that he had anything to do with the Villisca murders.
Josiah’s brother-in-law, Sam Moyer was reported to have threatened to kill Josiah multiple times, but his alibi checked out for the night/morning of the murders.
Taking into account the age of this case, it seems unlikely that it will ever be solved.
The Moore’s home is still standing today and it reportedly haunted. It was renovated in the 1990’s to look similar to as it did in 1912 and is now open for tours or overnight stays.
Here is a fascinating video that I found on YouTube of a tour inside the Moore home as it looks today…
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There appears to be a mistake in the description of the rooms in the house on the video. The newspaper article denotes that the visiting Stillinger children were in an upstairs bedroom while the video shows that they were downstairs. It was common practice for the parents to sleep downstairs and children upstairs.
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