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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. Authorities first became interested in Rev. Kelly a few weeks after the murders after being alerted by recipients of his rambling letters. The Children’s Day service was an end-of-the-year Sunday school program. Sarah Moore was a co-director and her children performed their little speeches and recitations along with the other Sunday school members. Jennifer Kirkland/FlickrIn recent years, the Villisca Axe Murders house has become a tourist attraction, with visitors even allowed to venture inside.
Villisca Ax Murder House – The Scene Of A Brutal Mass Murder In 1912
Two cigarette butts were discovered in the attic, suggesting that the perpetrator had waited there while everyone in the house went to sleep. He then made his way through the home using an oil lamp, first targeting Josiah and Sarah and then moving on to the children. 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. 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.
Strange Evidence
Moore was rumored to have had a sexual affair with Jones’ daughter-in-law, though no evidence supports this. Linn and Sampson say that Laursen has recovered from his injuries, but will not comment any further out of respect for the family. The town has drawn a lot of attention since the Laursen episode, however, and both Sampson and Linn, the caretaker, say they have been inundated with media inquiries, which they hope will end soon. In the 1990s, the home was painstakingly restored by historians Martha and Gavin Linn into a sort of living museum, recreating the home as it was on the night of the crime, right down to the lack of electricity and plumbing. If you want to visit the Villisca Ax Murder House, but simply can’t make it to Iowa, then there is one other option.
The True Story Behind the Hauntings at the Villisca Axe Murder House
One of the townspeople even took a fragment of Joe’s skull as a keepsake. Everyone in the house was dead, all eight of them bludgeoned beyond recognition. The next morning, the neighbors became suspicious, noticing that the usually rambunctious home was dead quiet. What he saw after letting himself in with his own key was enough to make him sick. The Travel Channel's television show Destination Fear filmed at the location for the eighth episode of their third season.
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Despite many investigations and suspects worth over a century, the murder at the Moore House may never be solved. In 1917, Kelly was arrested for murdering the Moore family and the Stillinger girls. Police obtained a confession to the crime from Kelly; however, Kelly retracted his statement hours later.
Tours
YouTuber Bailey Sarian featured the murders on an episode of her weekly series, Murder, Mystery & Makeup. The murders were described in Episode 271 (October 17, 2021) on the podcast Morbid. The murders were described live in Episode 168 of the podcast My Favorite Murder, by Karen Kilgariff. The murders were also described in Episode 16 of the podcast Lore, by Aaron Mahnke. The House and Murders were used as the setting and premise of the haunted house horror film The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016).
Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders of 1912
Officials cautioned the townspeople against going inside, but as soon as the premises was clear at least 100 townspeople gave in to their gross fascinations and traipsed through the blood-spattered home. 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 crept past the room with the children, and into Mr. and Mrs. Moore’s bedroom.
The other group left as the guide, a Villisca local, started to tell me the story of the murder and of how the house came to be a tourist’s destination. The house was slated to be torn down, but a local woman named Martha Linn decided that it was an important piece of town history that was worth saving. After she bought the house in 1994, she quickly realized that there was a ton of organic interest in opening it for tours and overnight ghost hunts. She did some work to take out the plumbing and restore the appearance of the house to look as it did back in 1912, and then added period-appropriate decor—and it’s been well worth the effort. The Villisca AXE Murders of June 1912 remain an enduring and unsettling enigma in American criminal history. In this quaint Iowa town on a pleasant summer’s night, eight unsuspecting victims, including Josiah Moore, his wife Sarah Moore and six children were bludgeoned to death as they slept following an evening church service.
Villisca murder museum sold to ghost US Ghost Adventures - The Daily Nonpareil
Villisca murder museum sold to ghost US Ghost Adventures.
Posted: Wed, 01 Nov 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The publicity comes naturally, mostly from true crime and ghost enthusiasts. A team of ghost hunters at the Villisca Ax Murder house using cameras to monitor each room. Over the past 90 years, the property had numerous owners up until 1994, when Rick and Vicki Sprague bought the property. However, after only a few months, the Sprague family sold the property to Darwin and Martha Linn. Local newspaper article from a few days after the murders took place.
However, the legacy of this town remains tainted mainly by the gruesome murders of the Moore family on June 9, 1912. Find information on tours, including overnight stays, at villiscaiowa.com. No one else has ever been tried for the murders, and the crime remains one of the most horrific, unsolved mass murders in American history. The ceiling in the parents’ bedroom and the children’s room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe. 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.
His wife, Sarah, when not looking after four children, was active in the local church. The entire Moore family and two friends who were staying at the house. Following the murder, many Villisca residents believed Iowa State Senator Frank F. Jones was the culprit. "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." There were many resemblances between his previous killings and the slain Moore family, causing him to be suspected of the Villisca Murder.
The Moore family was popular throughout the town and had made a name for themselves through their generosity and kindness. The townspeople knew them to be devout Christians who maintained good relationships with many in the community and beyond. However, Josiah had a few people who opposed his style of living, both personally and professionally. The Villisca house is now an attraction, a spectacle for the morbidly curious tourists.
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. The jury deadlocked 11 to one for acquittal, according to Iowa Cold Cases. Kelly signed a confession months later saying God had whispered to him to "suffer the children to come unto me." On June 10, 2012, a number of Iowa newspapers covered the 100-year anniversary of Iowa’s most highly profiled crime. KCRG-TV9’s piece featured an additional video with a tour inside the notorious home. The documentary, now available on DVD, features Dr. Edgar Epperly, the historian considered the foremost authority on the Villisca murders.
The crime scene was a macabre tableau of brutality, with shattered skulls, pools of blood and peculiar details. Despite a nationwide manhunt, multiple suspects and two trials, the murder remains unsolved. There was a group of three women in their 20s winding down their tour when I opened the door to the house, which appeared to give them and the tour guide, also a younger woman, a bit of a scare. Wilkerson convinced a grand jury to begin an investigation in 1916, and Mansfield was subsequently arrested and transferred to Montgomery County from Kansas City. However, Mansfield’s alibi put him in Illinois at the time of the Villisca murders. Eventually, he was released for lack of evidence, and he won a lawsuit against Wilkerson worth $2,225.
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