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It didn’t help that he wrote lengthy letters to investigators and posed as an investigator for Scotland yard to get inside the house shortly after the murders. He also sent a bloody shirt to a drugstore for cleaning the following week. Wilkerson concluded – as many investigators since – that those murders were part of a string likely done by the hands of the same person due to striking similarities. In each, the murders were hacked to death with the blunt end of an ax, the mirrors and bodies were covered with cloth. The crime scene was a macabre tableau of brutality, with shattered skulls, pools of blood and peculiar details.
One of America’s Most Haunted Houses
He has learned the habits and personalities of dozens who lived in 1912, their relationships with each other and injustices, and the story of a town torn apart. 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. Josiah was a prominent businessman and well-known church worker in town, according to reporting from the former Des Moines Tribune. 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.
Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?
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. Despite the commonalities, however, no actual connections could be made. No sale was ever attempted, and no changes were made to the original layout. Now, the house has become a tourist attraction and sits at the end of the quiet street as it always has, while life goes on around it, undeterred by the horrors that were once committed within. The second suspect seemed far more likely and even confessed to the murders – though he later recanted claiming police brutality.
Villisca ax murder house: Photos from the scene of Iowa's biggest mass killing - Des Moines Register
Villisca ax murder house: Photos from the scene of Iowa's biggest mass killing.
Posted: Fri, 06 Dec 2013 08:00:00 GMT [source]
What to know on the anniversary of the 1912 Villisca ax murders
But when he is gently pulled from the details of this small Iowa town and its infamous crime, marked this weekend by a 100th anniversary commemoration, and toward his own motivations, what unfolds is not an obsession. 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 community has a proud military history, beginning with the construction in 1912 of Iowa’s only publicly funded and longest operating Armory on the north side of the town square. 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.
I love both a good unsolved crime and a bone-chilling ghost story, so on a recent road trip through Iowa, I decided to make a stop at the house for a bit of investigating of my own. The town of Villisca is small, but it’s a welcome oasis of civilization in an unending ocean of farmland. The Villisca Ax Murder House is right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and its quaint and cozy exterior is a stark contrast to the legend that surrounds it. The house itself is kept in pristine condition, so the sales booth, gift shop, and bathroom are in the old barn on the other side of the tiny but tidy backyard. The killer only used the blade of the weapon on Josiah, who received the most brutal beating; the rest of the victims were murdered with the blunt side of the ax, which had belonged to Josiah.
Other than the regular, daylight hour tours, you can also book an overnight stay in the house. Those will set you back just over $400, and have proved very popular with ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts. The guide said that, as a local, she knew that most people in town didn’t buy into the ghost stories, and that kids like to tap on the windows when overnights are going on. 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.
Welcome To The Historic Villisca Axe Murder house
The eight caskets were kept at the local firehouse during the victims’ June 12 funeral in the Villisca town square. After the Linns opened the house to the public, visitors reported all manner of unexplainable phenomena, from feelings of dread, to sounds such as footprints and children’s laughter. Some have recorded engagement with spirits and two-way communication.
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Villisca Axe Murder House at Center of New Netflix Movie.
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When eight innocent people lost their lives in a single night, the usually-quiet, uneventful town of Villisca, Iowa, changed forever in June 1912. The perpetrator viciously murdered the Moore family and their two house guests with an axe. Suspects and confessions have come forward, and even trials were held, but, ultimately, the person responsible for the barbaric crimes remains unknown. Now more than a hundred years later, the Villisca axe murders remain one of the most mysterious cases in history. Two years after the Villisca killings, police turned their attention to an Illinois resident and serial killer.
Villisca Axe Murders Aftermath
Also, to be true to the home as it stood that night in June 1912, there’s no running water, indoor plumbing or electrical outlets. As a convenience for guests, a modern bathroom is provided in the restored barn next to the house where you’ll also find multiple plug-ins and a mini fridge as well. The Moore-Stillinger funeral services were held in Villisca’s town square on June 12, 1912, with thousands in attendance. National Guardsmen blocked the street as a hearse moved toward the firehouse, where the eight victims lay. Their caskets, not on display during the funeral, were later carried on several wagons to the Villisca Cemetery for burial.
But, no discussion of unsolved Iowa murders is complete without at least some mention of the mass tragedy and its innocent victims. The blacksmith George Bloodgood, for example, told of peering out his shop the day of the murder and seeing Jones storm past, red-faced and head lowered. Many citizens came forward, hoodwinked by Wilkerson, to testify to murky details of Jones and others in town conspiring to hire a man to do the deed.
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. 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 one hand, the stranger held the lamp, lighting the way through the house. The Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa is the kind of attraction that speaks for itself. It doesn’t need added kitsch or loads of billboards to bring in visitors. The name of the place says it all, and the gruesome legends surrounding the house are the only advertisements needed.
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. Around the time Henry became a suspect, other similar axe murders were popping up around the country. An officer assigned to the Villisca case became convinced that Henry Moore was responsible for the Villisca killings and a string of similar attacks in Colorado, Kansas, and Illinois.
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