February 25, 2023 • 46 mins
In a small town in Iowa in 1912 eight people were murdered in the grisliest of ways while they slept. Local reputations were ruined when accusations flew, but could a drifting serial killer working across the Midwest have been behind it? Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen a really unsettling episode on the Valisca Axe Murders,
one of the most unsettling murders in the history of
American true crime. It's from twenty seventeen and it's a
good one. But fair warning, hopefully you have a strong
(00:20):
constitution because a lot of the stuff we talk about
is not nice anyway. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:43):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry.
Put the three of us together at a little mystery,
a lot of mayhem, you got stuff you should and
one axe? Yeah? How many is this? Three? We got
Lizzie Borden yet effect yep, and then this one. I
(01:05):
couldn't think of anymore. Well, I looked. It's funny because
I looked, I was like, I wonder if we could
do a spinoff show just on X murders. Um and
Wikipedia had thirty listed. I'm surprised that's it. There's like
ten mentioned in this this article alone. M Well, we'll
see why there are so many X murders. This this um,
(01:26):
this whole researching the Vliska X murder kind of solved
a question I've had that I didn't realize I knew
had how to pronounce Vliska. We just settled that by
calling the Vliska town Hall. I know, that was a
pretty great moment. Right before we recorded, I was like,
are you sure there's a Valissa? Josh called the town
(01:46):
hall and lied. Well, it was kind of a bet.
That's just settled. Yeah, we just never put money on it.
So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
Veliska town Hall, Um, first of all, thank you. You
got a call today, so congratulations. And second of all,
(02:06):
you just spoke to an internet celebrity. I don't know, man,
I think Valisca is on the map and it is
one hundred percent because of this this murder. Well, if
you just type in Valisca, almost all you see is
stuff about the sax murder. Well, yeah, the site Valiska,
Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated to this axe murder.
(02:29):
It's a it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, no, it's
just it doesn't mention it at all. But all the
copy is just in the outline of the shape of
an axe. They just talk about like their boys club
and stuff, that they're doing their Fourth of July braide,
but it's in the shape of an ax. Yeah. The
population and elevation is in a drop of blood coming
(02:49):
off of the axe. Yeah, it's this population, not as
much as it was on June ninth. That's morbid. Nineteen twelve.
Did you did you hear about this before? Well, I
think or hinterc effect. We had some emails from probably
local Iowans, Iowans Iowans Iowanian Nights saying, hey, you guys
(03:12):
should if you're into the not into X murders, but
get a load of it. If you're into reporting on
grizzly crimes, you should check out the one we had
in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they were right, man, This is
so before we get into it, I think it goes
without saying listeners that this is a very horrific grizzly
crime that we're going to talk about in some detail. Right,
(03:34):
listen at your own discretion. X murder is in the title, everybody. Yeah,
I just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
and a lot of people don't know about it. Man.
Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming. Okay,
all right, where was where was this from? By the way, Well,
(03:57):
one of the articles we researched was from Mike dash
the Smithsonian magazine. They do great work, great work. There's
another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we have
to give a shout out to, who has like a
whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder
guys researched to for like fifty five years or something
(04:19):
like that. Did he write one of the two books? Probably? Sure. Yeah.
He's widely known as the expert on the veliska acts murder.
He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it. Yeah.
One thing I realized in researching this was it was
way easier to get away with murder, yeah than nineteen twelve. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:45):
there's a lot of agreement that had this been done today,
they would have caught the guy very quickly. But yeah,
nineteen twelve. It was like, oh, you wear gloves and
you just confounded their only means of detection basically from
an eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, so we keep saying nineteen
twelve specifically, like you said, June ninth, nineteen twelve in
(05:08):
the little town t Well, it was one of those
things where it crossed over into midnight. So June ninth,
tenth depends on if you're still partying. Potato Potato Liska, Melissa, Right, Yeah,
but at five away East second Street in Valiska, Iowa,
which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
(05:29):
of the state. I believe not as far from here
as I thought. No. I just looked on a map
and I was like, wait, I was there, I thought,
I always like basically in Canada. No, huh, where is
it more right in the middle of the country. I
did not realize that, Like, it doesn't look further west
than like Dallas. I can believe that. But it was
(05:51):
the north that gets you, the northern, the northernward direction,
that's what gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenth,
nineteen twelve, and this little house there were eight people sleeping.
There were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
and then there four kids what were their names, Charles
(06:17):
I believe Herman, Katherine Boyd and Paul right, And then
downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in the house,
little Lena and Aina Stillinger, and they were just having
a sleepover, right, Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the
oldest daughter or the only daughter I guess, of the Moors,
and the whole group had been at church. They were
(06:40):
Presbyterians and they had been at church that day. It
was Sunday for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus
Moore had helped put on and the kids had all
participated him. And at that mass, Katherine had asked her
two friends, Lena and Iena the sisters, to spend the night.
And so they came back home with the Moors from
(07:03):
the Children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or
ten thirty, they were all at home in bed and
the lights were out and the house was settled and dark. Yeah, man,
the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all very sad,
But anytime I hear of a fateful turn, like oh yeah,
we just spent the night there that night and things
go bad. It always I don't know bothers me more. Yeah,
(07:25):
for sure, Twists of fate are terrible, especially when they
result in terrible deaths. So very late at night, like
you said, after midnight, someone crept in to the back
of the house, which was not locked. That's so up
for debate. Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked. They
(07:46):
got in without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house,
and this is a small town, this is there were
I don't even think two thousand people living there then,
and I think even less now than there were back then. Yeah,
of those places. So this person, and I think by
all accounts we can safely say it was a man
(08:07):
creeps in this house with an axe from the property. Yeah,
it was Joe Moore's own ax. Yeah. And as we
will see, apparently they called these weapons of convenience because
back in the day, every single house in the US
had an ax, like in the front or backyard. That
(08:27):
just explained it. That was the question I didn't realize
i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers at
a certain period of time in American history? Was because
everybody had an ax? Yeah, and you would leave it
just you know, yeah, like chopped into the stump that
you use as the chopping block or whatever. It'd be
like a weapon of convenience. Yeah, these days you would
(08:48):
have to kill people with like a mailbox, right, just
some something that everyone has, so like a silicone spatula
or a high speed internet cable here you yeah, chokes
somebody with that. Yeah, Okay, all joking aside. So this
dude creeps in there. He's got this axe. He gets
and this is very key here. He gets the lamp,
(09:09):
an oil lamp from the dresser inside the house. He
takes off the chimney the glass you know, covering, and
takes it off, bends the wick and half so the
flame is smaller, lights the lamp, and then turns it
down really low, and then commences creeping. Yeah, with an
axe in hand, and this low light oil lamp in
(09:32):
the other chimney less lamp, which we'll see is a
big clue. Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently,
so he passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up
the stairs. He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite
I believe the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe
and Sarah's room, or is Joe and Sarah's room, and
(09:55):
they're sleeping, and he sets the oil lamp down I believe,
at the foot of the bed, and he raises the
axe over his head and using the flat the flat
end flat side of the axe, not the sharp blade side,
but the other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head.
(10:17):
Joe I believe, was lying on his back, even though
Smithsonian article says something different. Yeah, raise it so high.
He even gouged the ceiling correct. Yeah, brought it down
hard on Joe's head. Probably killed him instantly from that
one blow. Yeah. Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at
all because he did the same thing to her. And
both of them were found in a position that they
(10:39):
would have been sleeping. And there wasn't like the bed
clothes weren't ruffled. There wasn't their arm wasn't enough to
defend themselves. They died in their sleep, it appeared, right. Yes,
So he kills the parents either immediately or they die
probably pretty quickly, right leaves the room and goes next door.
And this is really just almost awful to talk about.
(11:01):
But he kills all the children in their sleep. One
by one, but again without waking any of them. Yeah,
by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
have awakened. Finally, one of them, the older one Len
and I believe is the older one, and then he
(11:23):
dispatches with both of them in the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful,
awful murder. So that's bad enough, right, This guy just
went around and murdered eight people, six of them children
under the age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under
with the blunt end of an axe. That's bad enough.
But then it just gets a million times worse. And
(11:44):
this is probably why this axe murder is just part
of American history, whether we like it or not. So
what the guy does next is, well, he took the
axe and he flips it over, and he takes the
sharp side, and he goes around and he starts bashing
everybody's head in one by one. Apparently, Joe was later
(12:10):
found to have been struck as many as thirty times
in the head with the axe. Yeah, just one by one.
He went around and completely caved in the head and
face of all of his victims, methodically throughout the house
after they were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing
to do. Yeah, So then it gets a little bit strange.
(12:33):
He goes around to the rooms and all over the
house really and does different things in each one. He
covers windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors. Yeah,
all the mirrors in the house were covered. He covered
the faces of I believe all the victims, right, Yeah,
one way or another. I believe all of their faces
(12:55):
were covered with either sheets or pillowcases, or I think
in the case of the girls, he pulled their dress
up over their faces. Yeah. We'll talk about that in
a second. Uh. Yeah, it's very um, I think in
the serial killer or psychopath mode though I've heard of
stuff like that before though, right, like, Um, you get
(13:16):
the idea that they don't the murderer doesn't want the
victim looking at him, Yeah, which may also explain why
he bashed their faces in who knows. Um. So the
guy apparently hangs out for a little while. Um. He
does other weird things though. The bacon he grabbed a
two pound slab of bacon, and I saw elsewhere that
(13:38):
there was another slab of bacon found in the house,
but there was at least one two pound slab of
bacon that he wrapped in a dish towel and then
left on the floor of one of the bedrooms. There
was a bowl of bloody water that was later found
he washed himself off. He washed off the axe, although
he left it behind um and he apparently hung out
(14:01):
for a little while in the house before leaving sometime
before five am. So the murders took place around midnight. Yeah,
and then come five am the house is dark still.
It's five am, so that's not the weirdest thing, although
we're talking about Iowa. So plenty of people were up
(14:21):
at five, including the neighbor, a woman named Mary Peckham,
and she noticed that there wasn't anybody up at the house,
which was a little odd. It was a Monday morning now,
and by seven she thought it was just downright eerie
that there was no sign of life at the house.
She went over and let the Moore's chickens out so
(14:42):
that they could peck around and feed. She called Joe
Moore's store and said, hey, has Joe showed up and
found from the employee that he hadn't. And finally one
of those two gets in touch with a guy named
Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother, and Ross comes over and
unlocks the door. The front door is locked, and he
(15:05):
goes inside and he comes almost immediately rushing back out
calling for the local marshal to be called. Yeah, basically,
he gets Hank Horton as the marshall's name, He gets
him on the scene, and this is where things just
kind of go berserk. It's it's such a small town,
such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
(15:30):
and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
much a small town like this knows about preserving a
crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
all accounts, there were a hundred or more people that
went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
(15:53):
to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
in there and check things out. Yeah, So the first
group comes with the the the marshal, Hank Horton, right,
was to two doctors and a minister, Jay Clark Cooper, right,
great doctor name Jay Clark Cooper and Edgar Huff and
(16:15):
Wesley Ewing, who was the minister of the church. They
were the first contingent to make it into the house
after Rossmore came running out. Yeah. So they go in
and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
Another guy gets brought in, um La Linquist. He's the coroner. Yep.
He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
(16:37):
But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
His name was Williams. Yeah. FS Williams was the one
who examined the body and at a later inquest, um
he had the most details to offer about the bodies,
of positions, all that stuff. So when those guys walked in,
they were at least well versed enough to know not
(16:59):
disturb things as much as possible, or at least more
than the townspeople knew. Yeah, and FS Williams allegedly came
out of the house pretty shaken and said, don't go
in there, boys, or you'll regretted to your last day. Yeah,
And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're going inside.
We want to see some dead bodies. And they all
regretted it probably till their last day. Yeah, Because they
(17:22):
not only messed with the crime scene, they poked around.
There was supposedly the town drunk took fragments of Joe
Moore's skull as mementos. Like the crime scene was toast,
Like you said, if it could have ever been preserved,
it was toast. And even the local druggist showed up
with his camera to help preserve the crime scene because
he heard that the townspeople were tramping all over it,
(17:45):
and Ross Moore, not understanding what he was doing through
the guy out, thought he was just being a ghoul
trying to get pictures. So the crime scene is utterly
and completely lost. Yeah, and one of the things about Valesca,
almost said Vassela, is that it was a train town.
There were about thirty trains every day that went through there,
(18:07):
and so by this time, unless this person was local
and maybe hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murderer
had probably hopped a train was out of there right
that time, but they didn't gone. They didn't realize this
until they had already released some bloodhounds. They searched the countryside.
There was like a pretty pretty big search to find
(18:28):
whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody. So the
town was just terrified. Town of two thousand people, eight
including six children, had just been murdered with an axe
in your town. And now the sun's starting to go
down and nobody's been caught, all right, So let's take
a break and we'll come back and talk about suspect
number one right after this. Okay, So suspect number one
(19:15):
might be a little surprising when you first hear that
he was a state senator, very um well, well well
respected by some as a local businessman and a very
prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply divided between
Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and that stuff
(19:39):
mattered to those people. And his name was Frank Jones,
and Methodist immediately said, no, he's he's got to be innocent.
This is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians
are like, no, it's got to be him. And at
first I was like, well, why would it be the
state senator? None of this makes sense. There were a
(20:00):
couple of big things that made people believe that he
could be the guy. Yeah. Joe Moore worked for him
for seven years and was one of his best salesmen
on his farm equipment team. And apparently he left in
nineteen oh seven, and was not too happy with the
work hours, which were sixteen hour days, six days a week.
(20:24):
Who would be it's like us, And then set up
a rival business and even took one of the clients,
the John Deer company. Yeah, that was a big one.
I'm sure, so big that when Sarah Peckham called Joe
Moore's employee to tell him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's
employee called the John Deer people in Omaha to let
(20:45):
them know. Oh sure, they were like the third people
called after the bodies were discovered. So he takes John
Deer with him. So this set up an obvious rivalry
and worse than that apparently, and I don't know if
this is super were confirmed, but at least the rumor
was that Joe Moore had slept with Jones's daughter in law.
(21:07):
From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that's been that's understood, is true. That's true. So sleuch
with his daughter in law, who apparently kind of had
several affairs in town and was not very discreet. Yeah, apparently,
according to Mike Dash at Smithsonian, she used to set
up her um her meet and greets over the phone.
(21:29):
It's called a liaison. Oh that's right, um, over the phone.
And this was at a time when there was a
switchboard operator running the phones in the town. Yeah, they
could set there and listen. Yeah, and this lady obviously
didn't care. So um. Apparently it was pretty well known
that that Joe Moore had had an affair with F.
Jones's daughter in law. Yes, huge, you put those two
(21:51):
things together, and friends, the fact that apparently they used
to cross to the other side of the street to
keep from from from encountering one another, that's that's a
big deal in that town. You're a small town, right,
So Yeah, suspicion fell on to f apparently, from what
I understand, within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered. Yeah,
(22:12):
and suspicion not that he may have done it, that
Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because he
was fifty seven years old and probably had some pretty
good money clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy. He was
building a bank, overseeing his new bank being built when
he got the news of the bodies. When you're building
the bank, you're you're rolling in it. Yeah, So everyone
thought that he probably hired somebody out to kill him
(22:35):
and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency. There
was a detective named James Wilkerson who said, you know what,
I think you're right. I think he hired someone, and
I think that man's name was William Mansfield, William Blackie Mansfield.
It was already, Um no, he wasn't already. He would
later be, I believe, convicted of an axe murder himself. Yeah,
(22:57):
which is probably one of the chief reasons he was suspect. Well, no,
that that came a couple of years after. I believe
that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered his wife,
her parents, and their child, their child, his chocket with
an axe. Right. Yeah, See, I was a bad dude.
But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
(23:18):
Mansfield had an airtight alibi. He was in Illinois, hundreds
of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only did
the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll records showed
very clearly that he had not been in Viliska that
day and couldn't have done it. Yeah, so he was exonerated,
(23:38):
but a lot of townspeople still thought that that you
know how it was back then and still is today
to a certain degree. Sure, especially in a small town. Yeah,
people were convinced that he was a guy, and a
lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
you said, a lot of people thought that Jones, F
(23:59):
Jones apparently went by f M did have something to
do with it. The still in your Girl's father and
Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother, both thought f Jones was
behind this, right and and Wilkinson made it like his
personal mission to take Jones down and apparently ruined his
political career, cost him reelection to the state Senate. I
(24:22):
would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion, but maybe,
but I think like there's something between townspeople suspecting you
and a detective like bringing evidence against you and getting
a grand jury to indict you. It was like the
good old days when you could be suspected of an
X murder and still win a Senate seat, right exactly.
(24:44):
But Jones he didn't win re election, and uh yeah,
apparently to their dying day, some people assumed that it
was him behind it. Another candidate, candidate suspect. Sure in candidates,
not the right word. Lynn George Jacqueline Kelly, a man
(25:07):
with four names. He went by George Kelly though. He
was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird at
the time, sure be living there. No one had ever
seen an Englishman in Iowa. Maybe he was a preacher though,
and it says in this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant.
He definitely had some mental health problems. But there are
(25:29):
some things in his case where it's sort of we're
suspicious in others that made him not a great suspect,
one of which he was a little guy. He was
five to one, one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe
not the best suspect for swinging an ax like that. Yeah, yeah,
although you know he could have been strong as an ox.
You never know. Sures, those little guys, you know, Yeah,
(25:53):
but they're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holds
rather than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up
on top of before you know what, their legs are
around your neck and you're losing concoct their thumbs are
in your eyeballs, right, that kind of thing, right, Uh, yeah,
so fair enough, But he was left handed, and the
coroner Linquist did say that you know, from their analysis,
(26:14):
as rudimentary as that might be in nineteen twelve, that
it could probably at least determine that it was a
left handed assailant from the blood spatter. I believe, Yeah,
on the walls. It's good. Good for them for being
that advanced. So there were some other things that Um
that implicated George Kelly. One, he was in Valiska. He
was a traveling preacher. He and his wife toured around
(26:35):
Um and they were in Valiska. Then the day of
the murder Um they were actually at the children's service. Yeah,
that the that the moors and the still injured girls
were at Um. Again, this guy was a sex maniac,
is what he was known ass Yeah, I kind of
wonder about that. And I man, he liked to have sex.
I guess there were He placed an ad and this
(26:57):
is in the nineteen tens. He placed an ad the
Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
willing to pose as a model. And when one woman
named Jessamine Hodgson replied to his ad, he sent her
a letter. And apparently he's quite lude so much so
(27:19):
that the court that heard the case against him said
that it was so obscene, lude lascivious, and filthy as
to be offensive to this honorable court, and improper to
be spread upon the record thereof. I really want to
know what was in that last Well. One of the
things was that the lady would be required to type
in the nude. Yeah, this is the nineteen ten. No,
(27:42):
that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would be
judged by today's standard. Oh, although I mean by today's standard.
If you sent a potential job candidate a letter that
said going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
you would get in some trouble for that. Sure, I
just don't know that you would say it was obscene
luden Lecity. No, I'm with you. They'd say that's kink.
(28:05):
But I think the so okay. George Kelly was a
kinky traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and
he was in Viliska at the time of the murders,
and he left that next morning on a train. Right.
But there was supposedly a witness that said that he
had a very incriminating statement when he got off of
that train that very morning. Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders,
(28:29):
but he had left town before they found out about
the murders. But then later on those people recanted those statements, correct, Right,
So when Frank Jones f F. Jones had a grand
jury brought to hear evidence against him, he was exonerated.
Same thing, not with George Kelly. Actually, I should say
(28:52):
he was actually the only person to ever go to
trial for these murders, and he was tried twice. The
first time the jury found a eleven to one in
his favor. Yeah, the second jury acquitted him entirely. The
evidence against him was just too flimsy and it probably
wasn't him. Yeah, I mean the idea was they were
(29:13):
like he was at that church service, he's a pervert.
He saw these kids in the service, he went back
and peeked into their house and camped out in their barn.
And the evidence there was there were some hay bales
in the barn that had depressions as if someone had
been laying on them, and if you'd laid down in
one of them. There was a peephole right there in
(29:33):
the barn where he could see the house. This is
all pretty flimsy. There was also, though, I think one
of the reasons why the case was brought against him.
He was specifically tried for the murder of Lena still Injured,
and that's that's noteworthy because although they don't say in
the official court record directly that she may have been
(29:55):
sexually assaulted her, that some sort of sex crime had
been committed against her. Yeah, Supposedly she had been found
with her nightclothes hiked up over her waist, like above
her waist. Yeah, her undergarments had been taken off and
stuffed under the bed. Yeah, and then her her legs
had been arranged so that her genitalia was prominent. Right.
(30:17):
That was done after she had been murdered. And I
think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
sex maniac for that to be possible. Yeah. Oh, I
forgot about this fact though. He actually returned a week
(30:38):
later and posed as a Scotland yard detective so he
could get a tour of the house. That is so
George Kelly, Well, it's definitely one of those things that
makes you go, wait a minute, returned to the scene
of the crime. You lied to get in there and
look at the house, right, but apparently everyone wanted to
go look at the house. Yeah, so it's and plus,
what's posing? You know, we've seen so many like cartoony
(31:01):
movies that like somebody gets like the deer stalker hat
and a pipe and says they're from Scotland Yard. Posing
could be like somebody saying like, oh, you must be
from Scotland Yard and like grunting in the affirmative. Yeah,
that's true. I guess that technically constitutes posing in the
real world. Apparently signed a confession. Oh yeah, that was
a big one too. Yeah, but I mean the confession
(31:23):
literally said I killed the children upstairs first and the
children downstairs last. I knew God wanted me to do
it this way. Slay utterly came to mind, and I
picked up the axe, went into the house and killed them.
But you know, he took it back later. It was like, yeah,
all that very specific stuff I said about killing this family,
it didn't really do it. So he was exonerated. So
(31:45):
so far, the little town of Veliska has looked around
and said we couldn't find any tramps. So who's the
person that hated Joe more the most f Jones? While
it wasn't him, who's the weirdest pervert we can find?
Who was in town of the Yeah, that englishman George Kelly.
It wasn't him. So they didn't know. A lot of
people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
(32:08):
And we still don't know what happened. But with the
hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
the work of dedicated historians like Ed Upperley, we have
something of a clear picture emerging. And that picture seems
to be centering on a serial killer. We'll talk about
(32:29):
that theory more right after this. All right, so we've
(32:55):
ruled out these locals local I guess in Kelly's case,
And now the modern take on this is that this
was a serial killer because in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve,
there were a lot of axe murders in the Midwest,
(33:18):
at least ten everywhere from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas.
And many of them had similar traits. Yeah, like some
very startlingly similar traits, right, but not all of them
(33:38):
and some of them are like, and we'll go through these,
but some were like, well, in five of them, these
same things happened, and two of them, these same things happen.
So it makes me wonder if it wasn't if they're
kind of grouping too many of these together. This does.
Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five, including Veliska.
Oh I thought it was three. Was at five? Five?
(34:00):
There's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There was one
that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly kicked the
whole thing off, followed by momouth in Illinois, I forgot
the s is silent, right, yeah, and then Ellsworth, Kansas.
Then there was one in Paola, Kansas, and then the
(34:22):
last one in Valiska. And those five crimes have some
similarities that make them really really suspicious. That the idea
of just like five different people or even a couple
of different people um separately committing these crimes, and as
Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the idea that
(34:43):
these were local vendettas or you know, um that that
people were like, yeah, that's not what these these crimes
reflect at all. They reflect the work of a like
just a straight up nut job psychopath, whom are few
and far between. So the fact that these things occurred
(35:06):
between October of nineteen eleven in June of nineteen twelve
suggests strongly that that there was one person doing them. Yeah. Well,
there was that final one in Columbia, Missouri in December
nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is that a
man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore in Columbia, Missouri,
(35:28):
who was his mother, Mary Wilson. So is that the guy. No,
it would be weird to commit a series of murders
and then finish up with your own family, right, Usually
it's the other way around. Yeah, right, So, like, if
you're going to go off on a killing spree, usually
(35:48):
start your practice on your family first. Yeah, you can
get a feel for it, right. This guy, Henry Lee Moore,
aside from having three names, is not a good respect
for the serial killer, right. Um, he apparently wanted the
deeds to his family house, and um, like you said that,
it's very rare for a serial killer to go back.
(36:09):
You know, they deal with the three names. They don't
all have three names. No, I know, but so many
of them do. It's well, no, the news reports it
that way to distinguish them. Every other Henry Moore in
the world, gotcha, So like everyone's always like serial killers
have three names. No, they're just reported that way. That's awesome. Yeah,
I love it when things are just explained. Yeah, I
(36:30):
wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. So if anyone ever
writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant, we're in trouble.
Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I wouldn't kill you,
(36:52):
thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either. Hey, you want
to shake on it? It's Jerry witnessed. Yeah. Um. So
the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a red herring.
Like a lot of people say, well, he was the one.
He was a serial killer behind it because the serial
murder started right after he got out of prison in Kansas, Yes,
(37:13):
and then they ended right after he got caught in Columbia,
Missouri with his family. Yeah. I mean kind of makes sense,
it does, But that's where the whole thing really begins.
An end. So a lot of people say, well, it
wasn't henrally more so, it wasn't a serial killing. Well
plus uh sorry, but his killing his own family was
about obtaining the deeds to his family house. Yeah that's
(37:34):
what I was saying. Oh so that was greed motivated right, Okay, yeah,
not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
this guy was just a jerk. Um. So, since Henry
Lee Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once
somebody then finds out that it wasn't Henry Ly Moore,
they stopped thinking it was a serial murderer, right at
(37:54):
Epperly says not so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because
Henry Lee Moore's out the equation, it doesn't mean there's
not a serial killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the
similarities between these five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick. Right.
In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
(38:15):
found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
light low. Yeah, that's a big one. Axes were used
in four of the five, But he says that's just
probably a matter of convenience. A pipe I think was
used in the Mamouth, Illinois case, which is again an
implement of convenience too. Right, sure, don't have an axe, handy,
(38:38):
go for a lead pipe, right, Yeah, he probably didn't
bring that with you, right there were Tell him about
the Tell him about the mirrors, Chuck, Well, I mean
at several of these places the mirrors were covered up.
I mean that's a big one. Yeah, mirrors and windows.
And in one of the places, the telephone was covered.
And the thought there is is that, like you said earlier,
(39:01):
like they don't want the victims to be watching them
even after death, or to be seen in the mirrors
and windows being covered. But the phone appearently it was
one of those old box phones on the wall that
you that you crank, and it has the two it
sort of looks like a face right when you look
at it. It has like looks like two eyes and
a nose. And so the thought was that that even
(39:23):
looks like a face to the Draine serial killer. So
they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing else
makes much sense. You know, you're not gonna in nineteen twelve,
You're not getting phone calls after midnight. You probably probably
don't get more than a couple of phone calls a
week in nineteen twelve, Right, most people I have phones? Yeah,
and throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable it anyway. No,
(39:46):
there was another female victim, a young female victim in
Monmouth who was found basically the same way that Lena's
still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown up
over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there was
(40:08):
a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valiska, where and
one other town too, where the killer was went on
to try to kill again. Yeah, this was the most
interesting to me. Either successfully did kill again. There was
one where he went to an adjacent house whose backyard
connected the first murder house and then went in and
killed another family right afterwards. That was Colorado Springs. And
(40:30):
then in Valiska, the telephone operator who was like sleeping
in the telephone switchboard headquarters because no calls were coming through.
She reported them the doorknob being tried about two hours
after the more house members were murdered. Yeah, like heard
footsteps come up to the door try to open it,
(40:51):
and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah, that's a little shaky.
But this, the last one was the one that kind
of sent the chill up my spine. It was the
one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola, I bet you
there are people they're laughing because it's probably pronounced Paula
or something, probably but who knows p a l A. Kansas.
(41:12):
There was a second family, Missus Longmire, the Longmire family.
They were awakened she and her daughter at about midnight
to the sound of broken glass, went downstairs and saw
a dude in their dining room who had just broken
oil lamp chimney and then got the heck out of
there through a window. So they actually saw a guy.
(41:35):
So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
they woke up and saw the man who was about
to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe.
This is probably yeah. And these were all trained towns,
so they were all linked by train depots. So by
all accounts, there was a train going serial killer for
(41:59):
a couple of years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people
hopping trains. Never ever caught in that nuts, It is nuts,
And that the Valiska Acts murders were probably one of
his crazy, but we'll never know. No, you know, when
you say stuff like that or when you see stuff
like that in print too, like we'll never know who
(42:19):
it was, it makes you wonder, like what kind of
technology are we going to have in the future, Like
will we never know or are we gonna come up
with something one day where we're like, oh, it was
this guy? Yeah, like now we know, you know, um
who who knows the future knows? That's who knows. We
should do one on ed Gean. Okay, that's like kind
(42:41):
of one of the big big ones we haven't covered. Okay,
I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I don't
want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
true crime. Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
we used to do multiple kind of creepy episodes. I
think we did last time too. That's October. You all right,
(43:02):
we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial killer type thing. Okay, yeah,
we did hinter Kfec I think think so. Yeah. Okay,
if you want to know more about the veliska Ax murders,
well again strongly recommend you go look up ed Epperley.
You can read the Smithsonian article um the ax Murder
(43:23):
Who Got Away, which was great, and there were plenty
of other articles that we relied on that we love.
Thank you for those. In the meantime, you can also
hang out with us on HowStuffWorks dot com and our
famous search bar and s it's us a search bar.
Got it in there. It's Sime for listener mail. Hey guys,
love the show, and now I have even more reason
(43:44):
to promote your podcast. Everyone. I know. I work in
a small family business with my cousin. In this previous
January start experiencing severe gastrointestinal issues. Oh I love this email.
Yeah remember this one? It was like from yesterday. Yeah.
I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the route
(44:04):
tested for Crohn's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus
on anything, no energy, took a ton of time away
from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the
help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic
deteriorating quality of life. Do you see where this is going? People?
I think listeners might know and he was southered. One
(44:28):
day last month, he was Southern. Actually, he came in
after a doctor's appointment and said he developed an iron
deficient anemia to add to his list of issues. At first,
it sounded disconnected until and I kid you, this isn't
all caps. I kid you not, Josh and Chuck. I
was listening to your Hookworm episode that day, man. When
(44:49):
he got to the part about the aggressive iron deficient anemia,
I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm infection symptoms,
immediately brought it to my cousin and he had every
last symptom. Is doctor prescribed a medication and he is
currently being de wormed. From the first day he started
his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both mood
and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could have
(45:11):
slipped by a half dozen gps and specialists, but I
truly can't thank you both enough of your podcast and
its wide range of topics. That is, James and Saint
Pete Florida. That is so awesome, man, dude head hookworm.
Can you believe it? In man? Thank you James, and
good luck to you cousin. Way to go for being
so smart to connect the dots too. I think your
(45:33):
cousin owes you a pizza or a beer or whatever
you may be both. Yeah, Yeah, trip to Chuck e
Cheese Drunk. If you want to get in touch with
us to tell us an amazing story like James did,
you can tweet to us sysk podcasts, and you can
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(45:53):
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Home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen a really unsettling episode on the Valisca Axe Murders,
one of the most unsettling murders in the history of
American true crime. It's from twenty seventeen and it's a
good one. But fair warning, hopefully you have a strong
(00:20):
constitution because a lot of the stuff we talk about
is not nice anyway. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:43):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry.
Put the three of us together at a little mystery,
a lot of mayhem, you got stuff you should and
one axe? Yeah? How many is this? Three? We got
Lizzie Borden yet effect yep, and then this one. I
(01:05):
couldn't think of anymore. Well, I looked. It's funny because
I looked, I was like, I wonder if we could
do a spinoff show just on X murders. Um and
Wikipedia had thirty listed. I'm surprised that's it. There's like
ten mentioned in this this article alone. M Well, we'll
see why there are so many X murders. This this um,
(01:26):
this whole researching the Vliska X murder kind of solved
a question I've had that I didn't realize I knew
had how to pronounce Vliska. We just settled that by
calling the Vliska town Hall. I know, that was a
pretty great moment. Right before we recorded, I was like,
are you sure there's a Valissa? Josh called the town
(01:46):
hall and lied. Well, it was kind of a bet.
That's just settled. Yeah, we just never put money on it.
So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
Veliska town Hall, Um, first of all, thank you. You
got a call today, so congratulations. And second of all,
(02:06):
you just spoke to an internet celebrity. I don't know, man,
I think Valisca is on the map and it is
one hundred percent because of this this murder. Well, if
you just type in Valisca, almost all you see is
stuff about the sax murder. Well, yeah, the site Valiska,
Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated to this axe murder.
(02:29):
It's a it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, no, it's
just it doesn't mention it at all. But all the
copy is just in the outline of the shape of
an axe. They just talk about like their boys club
and stuff, that they're doing their Fourth of July braide,
but it's in the shape of an ax. Yeah. The
population and elevation is in a drop of blood coming
(02:49):
off of the axe. Yeah, it's this population, not as
much as it was on June ninth. That's morbid. Nineteen twelve.
Did you did you hear about this before? Well, I
think or hinterc effect. We had some emails from probably
local Iowans, Iowans Iowans Iowanian Nights saying, hey, you guys
(03:12):
should if you're into the not into X murders, but
get a load of it. If you're into reporting on
grizzly crimes, you should check out the one we had
in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they were right, man, This is
so before we get into it, I think it goes
without saying listeners that this is a very horrific grizzly
crime that we're going to talk about in some detail. Right,
(03:34):
listen at your own discretion. X murder is in the title, everybody. Yeah,
I just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
and a lot of people don't know about it. Man.
Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming. Okay,
all right, where was where was this from? By the way, Well,
(03:57):
one of the articles we researched was from Mike dash
the Smithsonian magazine. They do great work, great work. There's
another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we have
to give a shout out to, who has like a
whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder
guys researched to for like fifty five years or something
(04:19):
like that. Did he write one of the two books? Probably? Sure. Yeah.
He's widely known as the expert on the veliska acts murder.
He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it. Yeah.
One thing I realized in researching this was it was
way easier to get away with murder, yeah than nineteen twelve. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:45):
there's a lot of agreement that had this been done today,
they would have caught the guy very quickly. But yeah,
nineteen twelve. It was like, oh, you wear gloves and
you just confounded their only means of detection basically from
an eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, so we keep saying nineteen
twelve specifically, like you said, June ninth, nineteen twelve in
(05:08):
the little town t Well, it was one of those
things where it crossed over into midnight. So June ninth,
tenth depends on if you're still partying. Potato Potato Liska, Melissa, Right, Yeah,
but at five away East second Street in Valiska, Iowa,
which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
(05:29):
of the state. I believe not as far from here
as I thought. No. I just looked on a map
and I was like, wait, I was there, I thought,
I always like basically in Canada. No, huh, where is
it more right in the middle of the country. I
did not realize that, Like, it doesn't look further west
than like Dallas. I can believe that. But it was
(05:51):
the north that gets you, the northern, the northernward direction,
that's what gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenth,
nineteen twelve, and this little house there were eight people sleeping.
There were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
and then there four kids what were their names, Charles
(06:17):
I believe Herman, Katherine Boyd and Paul right, And then
downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in the house,
little Lena and Aina Stillinger, and they were just having
a sleepover, right, Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the
oldest daughter or the only daughter I guess, of the Moors,
and the whole group had been at church. They were
(06:40):
Presbyterians and they had been at church that day. It
was Sunday for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus
Moore had helped put on and the kids had all
participated him. And at that mass, Katherine had asked her
two friends, Lena and Iena the sisters, to spend the night.
And so they came back home with the Moors from
(07:03):
the Children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or
ten thirty, they were all at home in bed and
the lights were out and the house was settled and dark. Yeah, man,
the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all very sad,
But anytime I hear of a fateful turn, like oh yeah,
we just spent the night there that night and things
go bad. It always I don't know bothers me more. Yeah,
(07:25):
for sure, Twists of fate are terrible, especially when they
result in terrible deaths. So very late at night, like
you said, after midnight, someone crept in to the back
of the house, which was not locked. That's so up
for debate. Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked. They
(07:46):
got in without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house,
and this is a small town, this is there were
I don't even think two thousand people living there then,
and I think even less now than there were back then. Yeah,
of those places. So this person, and I think by
all accounts we can safely say it was a man
(08:07):
creeps in this house with an axe from the property. Yeah,
it was Joe Moore's own ax. Yeah. And as we
will see, apparently they called these weapons of convenience because
back in the day, every single house in the US
had an ax, like in the front or backyard. That
(08:27):
just explained it. That was the question I didn't realize
i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers at
a certain period of time in American history? Was because
everybody had an ax? Yeah, and you would leave it
just you know, yeah, like chopped into the stump that
you use as the chopping block or whatever. It'd be
like a weapon of convenience. Yeah, these days you would
(08:48):
have to kill people with like a mailbox, right, just
some something that everyone has, so like a silicone spatula
or a high speed internet cable here you yeah, chokes
somebody with that. Yeah, Okay, all joking aside. So this
dude creeps in there. He's got this axe. He gets
and this is very key here. He gets the lamp,
(09:09):
an oil lamp from the dresser inside the house. He
takes off the chimney the glass you know, covering, and
takes it off, bends the wick and half so the
flame is smaller, lights the lamp, and then turns it
down really low, and then commences creeping. Yeah, with an
axe in hand, and this low light oil lamp in
(09:32):
the other chimney less lamp, which we'll see is a
big clue. Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently,
so he passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up
the stairs. He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite
I believe the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe
and Sarah's room, or is Joe and Sarah's room, and
(09:55):
they're sleeping, and he sets the oil lamp down I believe,
at the foot of the bed, and he raises the
axe over his head and using the flat the flat
end flat side of the axe, not the sharp blade side,
but the other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head.
(10:17):
Joe I believe, was lying on his back, even though
Smithsonian article says something different. Yeah, raise it so high.
He even gouged the ceiling correct. Yeah, brought it down
hard on Joe's head. Probably killed him instantly from that
one blow. Yeah. Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at
all because he did the same thing to her. And
both of them were found in a position that they
(10:39):
would have been sleeping. And there wasn't like the bed
clothes weren't ruffled. There wasn't their arm wasn't enough to
defend themselves. They died in their sleep, it appeared, right. Yes,
So he kills the parents either immediately or they die
probably pretty quickly, right leaves the room and goes next door.
And this is really just almost awful to talk about.
(11:01):
But he kills all the children in their sleep. One
by one, but again without waking any of them. Yeah,
by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
have awakened. Finally, one of them, the older one Len
and I believe is the older one, and then he
(11:23):
dispatches with both of them in the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful,
awful murder. So that's bad enough, right, This guy just
went around and murdered eight people, six of them children
under the age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under
with the blunt end of an axe. That's bad enough.
But then it just gets a million times worse. And
(11:44):
this is probably why this axe murder is just part
of American history, whether we like it or not. So
what the guy does next is, well, he took the
axe and he flips it over, and he takes the
sharp side, and he goes around and he starts bashing
everybody's head in one by one. Apparently, Joe was later
(12:10):
found to have been struck as many as thirty times
in the head with the axe. Yeah, just one by one.
He went around and completely caved in the head and
face of all of his victims, methodically throughout the house
after they were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing
to do. Yeah, So then it gets a little bit strange.
(12:33):
He goes around to the rooms and all over the
house really and does different things in each one. He
covers windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors. Yeah,
all the mirrors in the house were covered. He covered
the faces of I believe all the victims, right, Yeah,
one way or another. I believe all of their faces
(12:55):
were covered with either sheets or pillowcases, or I think
in the case of the girls, he pulled their dress
up over their faces. Yeah. We'll talk about that in
a second. Uh. Yeah, it's very um, I think in
the serial killer or psychopath mode though I've heard of
stuff like that before though, right, like, Um, you get
(13:16):
the idea that they don't the murderer doesn't want the
victim looking at him, Yeah, which may also explain why
he bashed their faces in who knows. Um. So the
guy apparently hangs out for a little while. Um. He
does other weird things though. The bacon he grabbed a
two pound slab of bacon, and I saw elsewhere that
(13:38):
there was another slab of bacon found in the house,
but there was at least one two pound slab of
bacon that he wrapped in a dish towel and then
left on the floor of one of the bedrooms. There
was a bowl of bloody water that was later found
he washed himself off. He washed off the axe, although
he left it behind um and he apparently hung out
(14:01):
for a little while in the house before leaving sometime
before five am. So the murders took place around midnight. Yeah,
and then come five am the house is dark still.
It's five am, so that's not the weirdest thing, although
we're talking about Iowa. So plenty of people were up
(14:21):
at five, including the neighbor, a woman named Mary Peckham,
and she noticed that there wasn't anybody up at the house,
which was a little odd. It was a Monday morning now,
and by seven she thought it was just downright eerie
that there was no sign of life at the house.
She went over and let the Moore's chickens out so
(14:42):
that they could peck around and feed. She called Joe
Moore's store and said, hey, has Joe showed up and
found from the employee that he hadn't. And finally one
of those two gets in touch with a guy named
Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother, and Ross comes over and
unlocks the door. The front door is locked, and he
(15:05):
goes inside and he comes almost immediately rushing back out
calling for the local marshal to be called. Yeah, basically,
he gets Hank Horton as the marshall's name, He gets
him on the scene, and this is where things just
kind of go berserk. It's it's such a small town,
such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
(15:30):
and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
much a small town like this knows about preserving a
crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
all accounts, there were a hundred or more people that
went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
(15:53):
to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
in there and check things out. Yeah, So the first
group comes with the the the marshal, Hank Horton, right,
was to two doctors and a minister, Jay Clark Cooper, right,
great doctor name Jay Clark Cooper and Edgar Huff and
(16:15):
Wesley Ewing, who was the minister of the church. They
were the first contingent to make it into the house
after Rossmore came running out. Yeah. So they go in
and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
Another guy gets brought in, um La Linquist. He's the coroner. Yep.
He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
(16:37):
But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
His name was Williams. Yeah. FS Williams was the one
who examined the body and at a later inquest, um
he had the most details to offer about the bodies,
of positions, all that stuff. So when those guys walked in,
they were at least well versed enough to know not
(16:59):
disturb things as much as possible, or at least more
than the townspeople knew. Yeah, and FS Williams allegedly came
out of the house pretty shaken and said, don't go
in there, boys, or you'll regretted to your last day. Yeah,
And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're going inside.
We want to see some dead bodies. And they all
regretted it probably till their last day. Yeah, Because they
(17:22):
not only messed with the crime scene, they poked around.
There was supposedly the town drunk took fragments of Joe
Moore's skull as mementos. Like the crime scene was toast,
Like you said, if it could have ever been preserved,
it was toast. And even the local druggist showed up
with his camera to help preserve the crime scene because
he heard that the townspeople were tramping all over it,
(17:45):
and Ross Moore, not understanding what he was doing through
the guy out, thought he was just being a ghoul
trying to get pictures. So the crime scene is utterly
and completely lost. Yeah, and one of the things about Valesca,
almost said Vassela, is that it was a train town.
There were about thirty trains every day that went through there,
(18:07):
and so by this time, unless this person was local
and maybe hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murderer
had probably hopped a train was out of there right
that time, but they didn't gone. They didn't realize this
until they had already released some bloodhounds. They searched the countryside.
There was like a pretty pretty big search to find
(18:28):
whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody. So the
town was just terrified. Town of two thousand people, eight
including six children, had just been murdered with an axe
in your town. And now the sun's starting to go
down and nobody's been caught, all right, So let's take
a break and we'll come back and talk about suspect
number one right after this. Okay, So suspect number one
(19:15):
might be a little surprising when you first hear that
he was a state senator, very um well, well well
respected by some as a local businessman and a very
prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply divided between
Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and that stuff
(19:39):
mattered to those people. And his name was Frank Jones,
and Methodist immediately said, no, he's he's got to be innocent.
This is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians
are like, no, it's got to be him. And at
first I was like, well, why would it be the
state senator? None of this makes sense. There were a
(20:00):
couple of big things that made people believe that he
could be the guy. Yeah. Joe Moore worked for him
for seven years and was one of his best salesmen
on his farm equipment team. And apparently he left in
nineteen oh seven, and was not too happy with the
work hours, which were sixteen hour days, six days a week.
(20:24):
Who would be it's like us, And then set up
a rival business and even took one of the clients,
the John Deer company. Yeah, that was a big one.
I'm sure, so big that when Sarah Peckham called Joe
Moore's employee to tell him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's
employee called the John Deer people in Omaha to let
(20:45):
them know. Oh sure, they were like the third people
called after the bodies were discovered. So he takes John
Deer with him. So this set up an obvious rivalry
and worse than that apparently, and I don't know if
this is super were confirmed, but at least the rumor
was that Joe Moore had slept with Jones's daughter in law.
(21:07):
From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that's been that's understood, is true. That's true. So sleuch
with his daughter in law, who apparently kind of had
several affairs in town and was not very discreet. Yeah, apparently,
according to Mike Dash at Smithsonian, she used to set
up her um her meet and greets over the phone.
(21:29):
It's called a liaison. Oh that's right, um, over the phone.
And this was at a time when there was a
switchboard operator running the phones in the town. Yeah, they
could set there and listen. Yeah, and this lady obviously
didn't care. So um. Apparently it was pretty well known
that that Joe Moore had had an affair with F.
Jones's daughter in law. Yes, huge, you put those two
(21:51):
things together, and friends, the fact that apparently they used
to cross to the other side of the street to
keep from from from encountering one another, that's that's a
big deal in that town. You're a small town, right,
So Yeah, suspicion fell on to f apparently, from what
I understand, within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered. Yeah,
(22:12):
and suspicion not that he may have done it, that
Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because he
was fifty seven years old and probably had some pretty
good money clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy. He was
building a bank, overseeing his new bank being built when
he got the news of the bodies. When you're building
the bank, you're you're rolling in it. Yeah, So everyone
thought that he probably hired somebody out to kill him
(22:35):
and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency. There
was a detective named James Wilkerson who said, you know what,
I think you're right. I think he hired someone, and
I think that man's name was William Mansfield, William Blackie Mansfield.
It was already, Um no, he wasn't already. He would
later be, I believe, convicted of an axe murder himself. Yeah,
(22:57):
which is probably one of the chief reasons he was suspect. Well, no,
that that came a couple of years after. I believe
that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered his wife,
her parents, and their child, their child, his chocket with
an axe. Right. Yeah, See, I was a bad dude.
But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
(23:18):
Mansfield had an airtight alibi. He was in Illinois, hundreds
of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only did
the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll records showed
very clearly that he had not been in Viliska that
day and couldn't have done it. Yeah, so he was exonerated,
(23:38):
but a lot of townspeople still thought that that you
know how it was back then and still is today
to a certain degree. Sure, especially in a small town. Yeah,
people were convinced that he was a guy, and a
lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
you said, a lot of people thought that Jones, F
(23:59):
Jones apparently went by f M did have something to
do with it. The still in your Girl's father and
Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother, both thought f Jones was
behind this, right and and Wilkinson made it like his
personal mission to take Jones down and apparently ruined his
political career, cost him reelection to the state Senate. I
(24:22):
would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion, but maybe,
but I think like there's something between townspeople suspecting you
and a detective like bringing evidence against you and getting
a grand jury to indict you. It was like the
good old days when you could be suspected of an
X murder and still win a Senate seat, right exactly.
(24:44):
But Jones he didn't win re election, and uh yeah,
apparently to their dying day, some people assumed that it
was him behind it. Another candidate, candidate suspect. Sure in candidates,
not the right word. Lynn George Jacqueline Kelly, a man
(25:07):
with four names. He went by George Kelly though. He
was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird at
the time, sure be living there. No one had ever
seen an Englishman in Iowa. Maybe he was a preacher though,
and it says in this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant.
He definitely had some mental health problems. But there are
(25:29):
some things in his case where it's sort of we're
suspicious in others that made him not a great suspect,
one of which he was a little guy. He was
five to one, one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe
not the best suspect for swinging an ax like that. Yeah, yeah,
although you know he could have been strong as an ox.
You never know. Sures, those little guys, you know, Yeah,
(25:53):
but they're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holds
rather than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up
on top of before you know what, their legs are
around your neck and you're losing concoct their thumbs are
in your eyeballs, right, that kind of thing, right, Uh, yeah,
so fair enough, But he was left handed, and the
coroner Linquist did say that you know, from their analysis,
(26:14):
as rudimentary as that might be in nineteen twelve, that
it could probably at least determine that it was a
left handed assailant from the blood spatter. I believe, Yeah,
on the walls. It's good. Good for them for being
that advanced. So there were some other things that Um
that implicated George Kelly. One, he was in Valiska. He
was a traveling preacher. He and his wife toured around
(26:35):
Um and they were in Valiska. Then the day of
the murder Um they were actually at the children's service. Yeah,
that the that the moors and the still injured girls
were at Um. Again, this guy was a sex maniac,
is what he was known ass Yeah, I kind of
wonder about that. And I man, he liked to have sex.
I guess there were He placed an ad and this
(26:57):
is in the nineteen tens. He placed an ad the
Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
willing to pose as a model. And when one woman
named Jessamine Hodgson replied to his ad, he sent her
a letter. And apparently he's quite lude so much so
(27:19):
that the court that heard the case against him said
that it was so obscene, lude lascivious, and filthy as
to be offensive to this honorable court, and improper to
be spread upon the record thereof. I really want to
know what was in that last Well. One of the
things was that the lady would be required to type
in the nude. Yeah, this is the nineteen ten. No,
(27:42):
that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would be
judged by today's standard. Oh, although I mean by today's standard.
If you sent a potential job candidate a letter that
said going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
you would get in some trouble for that. Sure, I
just don't know that you would say it was obscene
luden Lecity. No, I'm with you. They'd say that's kink.
(28:05):
But I think the so okay. George Kelly was a
kinky traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and
he was in Viliska at the time of the murders,
and he left that next morning on a train. Right.
But there was supposedly a witness that said that he
had a very incriminating statement when he got off of
that train that very morning. Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders,
(28:29):
but he had left town before they found out about
the murders. But then later on those people recanted those statements, correct, Right,
So when Frank Jones f F. Jones had a grand
jury brought to hear evidence against him, he was exonerated.
Same thing, not with George Kelly. Actually, I should say
(28:52):
he was actually the only person to ever go to
trial for these murders, and he was tried twice. The
first time the jury found a eleven to one in
his favor. Yeah, the second jury acquitted him entirely. The
evidence against him was just too flimsy and it probably
wasn't him. Yeah, I mean the idea was they were
(29:13):
like he was at that church service, he's a pervert.
He saw these kids in the service, he went back
and peeked into their house and camped out in their barn.
And the evidence there was there were some hay bales
in the barn that had depressions as if someone had
been laying on them, and if you'd laid down in
one of them. There was a peephole right there in
(29:33):
the barn where he could see the house. This is
all pretty flimsy. There was also, though, I think one
of the reasons why the case was brought against him.
He was specifically tried for the murder of Lena still Injured,
and that's that's noteworthy because although they don't say in
the official court record directly that she may have been
(29:55):
sexually assaulted her, that some sort of sex crime had
been committed against her. Yeah, Supposedly she had been found
with her nightclothes hiked up over her waist, like above
her waist. Yeah, her undergarments had been taken off and
stuffed under the bed. Yeah, and then her her legs
had been arranged so that her genitalia was prominent. Right.
(30:17):
That was done after she had been murdered. And I
think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
sex maniac for that to be possible. Yeah. Oh, I
forgot about this fact though. He actually returned a week
(30:38):
later and posed as a Scotland yard detective so he
could get a tour of the house. That is so
George Kelly, Well, it's definitely one of those things that
makes you go, wait a minute, returned to the scene
of the crime. You lied to get in there and
look at the house, right, but apparently everyone wanted to
go look at the house. Yeah, so it's and plus,
what's posing? You know, we've seen so many like cartoony
(31:01):
movies that like somebody gets like the deer stalker hat
and a pipe and says they're from Scotland Yard. Posing
could be like somebody saying like, oh, you must be
from Scotland Yard and like grunting in the affirmative. Yeah,
that's true. I guess that technically constitutes posing in the
real world. Apparently signed a confession. Oh yeah, that was
a big one too. Yeah, but I mean the confession
(31:23):
literally said I killed the children upstairs first and the
children downstairs last. I knew God wanted me to do
it this way. Slay utterly came to mind, and I
picked up the axe, went into the house and killed them.
But you know, he took it back later. It was like, yeah,
all that very specific stuff I said about killing this family,
it didn't really do it. So he was exonerated. So
(31:45):
so far, the little town of Veliska has looked around
and said we couldn't find any tramps. So who's the
person that hated Joe more the most f Jones? While
it wasn't him, who's the weirdest pervert we can find?
Who was in town of the Yeah, that englishman George Kelly.
It wasn't him. So they didn't know. A lot of
people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
(32:08):
And we still don't know what happened. But with the
hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
the work of dedicated historians like Ed Upperley, we have
something of a clear picture emerging. And that picture seems
to be centering on a serial killer. We'll talk about
(32:29):
that theory more right after this. All right, so we've
(32:55):
ruled out these locals local I guess in Kelly's case,
And now the modern take on this is that this
was a serial killer because in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve,
there were a lot of axe murders in the Midwest,
(33:18):
at least ten everywhere from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas.
And many of them had similar traits. Yeah, like some
very startlingly similar traits, right, but not all of them
(33:38):
and some of them are like, and we'll go through these,
but some were like, well, in five of them, these
same things happened, and two of them, these same things happen.
So it makes me wonder if it wasn't if they're
kind of grouping too many of these together. This does.
Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five, including Veliska.
Oh I thought it was three. Was at five? Five?
(34:00):
There's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There was one
that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly kicked the
whole thing off, followed by momouth in Illinois, I forgot
the s is silent, right, yeah, and then Ellsworth, Kansas.
Then there was one in Paola, Kansas, and then the
(34:22):
last one in Valiska. And those five crimes have some
similarities that make them really really suspicious. That the idea
of just like five different people or even a couple
of different people um separately committing these crimes, and as
Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the idea that
(34:43):
these were local vendettas or you know, um that that
people were like, yeah, that's not what these these crimes
reflect at all. They reflect the work of a like
just a straight up nut job psychopath, whom are few
and far between. So the fact that these things occurred
(35:06):
between October of nineteen eleven in June of nineteen twelve
suggests strongly that that there was one person doing them. Yeah. Well,
there was that final one in Columbia, Missouri in December
nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is that a
man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore in Columbia, Missouri,
(35:28):
who was his mother, Mary Wilson. So is that the guy. No,
it would be weird to commit a series of murders
and then finish up with your own family, right, Usually
it's the other way around. Yeah, right, So, like, if
you're going to go off on a killing spree, usually
(35:48):
start your practice on your family first. Yeah, you can
get a feel for it, right. This guy, Henry Lee Moore,
aside from having three names, is not a good respect
for the serial killer, right. Um, he apparently wanted the
deeds to his family house, and um, like you said that,
it's very rare for a serial killer to go back.
(36:09):
You know, they deal with the three names. They don't
all have three names. No, I know, but so many
of them do. It's well, no, the news reports it
that way to distinguish them. Every other Henry Moore in
the world, gotcha, So like everyone's always like serial killers
have three names. No, they're just reported that way. That's awesome. Yeah,
I love it when things are just explained. Yeah, I
(36:30):
wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. So if anyone ever
writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant, we're in trouble.
Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I wouldn't kill you,
(36:52):
thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either. Hey, you want
to shake on it? It's Jerry witnessed. Yeah. Um. So
the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a red herring.
Like a lot of people say, well, he was the one.
He was a serial killer behind it because the serial
murder started right after he got out of prison in Kansas, Yes,
(37:13):
and then they ended right after he got caught in Columbia,
Missouri with his family. Yeah. I mean kind of makes sense,
it does, But that's where the whole thing really begins.
An end. So a lot of people say, well, it
wasn't henrally more so, it wasn't a serial killing. Well
plus uh sorry, but his killing his own family was
about obtaining the deeds to his family house. Yeah that's
(37:34):
what I was saying. Oh so that was greed motivated right, Okay, yeah,
not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
this guy was just a jerk. Um. So, since Henry
Lee Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once
somebody then finds out that it wasn't Henry Ly Moore,
they stopped thinking it was a serial murderer, right at
(37:54):
Epperly says not so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because
Henry Lee Moore's out the equation, it doesn't mean there's
not a serial killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the
similarities between these five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick. Right.
In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
(38:15):
found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
light low. Yeah, that's a big one. Axes were used
in four of the five, But he says that's just
probably a matter of convenience. A pipe I think was
used in the Mamouth, Illinois case, which is again an
implement of convenience too. Right, sure, don't have an axe, handy,
(38:38):
go for a lead pipe, right, Yeah, he probably didn't
bring that with you, right there were Tell him about
the Tell him about the mirrors, Chuck, Well, I mean
at several of these places the mirrors were covered up.
I mean that's a big one. Yeah, mirrors and windows.
And in one of the places, the telephone was covered.
And the thought there is is that, like you said earlier,
(39:01):
like they don't want the victims to be watching them
even after death, or to be seen in the mirrors
and windows being covered. But the phone appearently it was
one of those old box phones on the wall that
you that you crank, and it has the two it
sort of looks like a face right when you look
at it. It has like looks like two eyes and
a nose. And so the thought was that that even
(39:23):
looks like a face to the Draine serial killer. So
they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing else
makes much sense. You know, you're not gonna in nineteen twelve,
You're not getting phone calls after midnight. You probably probably
don't get more than a couple of phone calls a
week in nineteen twelve, Right, most people I have phones? Yeah,
and throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable it anyway. No,
(39:46):
there was another female victim, a young female victim in
Monmouth who was found basically the same way that Lena's
still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown up
over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there was
(40:08):
a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valiska, where and
one other town too, where the killer was went on
to try to kill again. Yeah, this was the most
interesting to me. Either successfully did kill again. There was
one where he went to an adjacent house whose backyard
connected the first murder house and then went in and
killed another family right afterwards. That was Colorado Springs. And
(40:30):
then in Valiska, the telephone operator who was like sleeping
in the telephone switchboard headquarters because no calls were coming through.
She reported them the doorknob being tried about two hours
after the more house members were murdered. Yeah, like heard
footsteps come up to the door try to open it,
(40:51):
and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah, that's a little shaky.
But this, the last one was the one that kind
of sent the chill up my spine. It was the
one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola, I bet you
there are people they're laughing because it's probably pronounced Paula
or something, probably but who knows p a l A. Kansas.
(41:12):
There was a second family, Missus Longmire, the Longmire family.
They were awakened she and her daughter at about midnight
to the sound of broken glass, went downstairs and saw
a dude in their dining room who had just broken
oil lamp chimney and then got the heck out of
there through a window. So they actually saw a guy.
(41:35):
So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
they woke up and saw the man who was about
to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe.
This is probably yeah. And these were all trained towns,
so they were all linked by train depots. So by
all accounts, there was a train going serial killer for
(41:59):
a couple of years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people
hopping trains. Never ever caught in that nuts, It is nuts,
And that the Valiska Acts murders were probably one of
his crazy, but we'll never know. No, you know, when
you say stuff like that or when you see stuff
like that in print too, like we'll never know who
(42:19):
it was, it makes you wonder, like what kind of
technology are we going to have in the future, Like
will we never know or are we gonna come up
with something one day where we're like, oh, it was
this guy? Yeah, like now we know, you know, um
who who knows the future knows? That's who knows. We
should do one on ed Gean. Okay, that's like kind
(42:41):
of one of the big big ones we haven't covered. Okay,
I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I don't
want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
true crime. Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
we used to do multiple kind of creepy episodes. I
think we did last time too. That's October. You all right,
(43:02):
we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial killer type thing. Okay, yeah,
we did hinter Kfec I think think so. Yeah. Okay,
if you want to know more about the veliska Ax murders,
well again strongly recommend you go look up ed Epperley.
You can read the Smithsonian article um the ax Murder
(43:23):
Who Got Away, which was great, and there were plenty
of other articles that we relied on that we love.
Thank you for those. In the meantime, you can also
hang out with us on HowStuffWorks dot com and our
famous search bar and s it's us a search bar.
Got it in there. It's Sime for listener mail. Hey guys,
love the show, and now I have even more reason
(43:44):
to promote your podcast. Everyone. I know. I work in
a small family business with my cousin. In this previous
January start experiencing severe gastrointestinal issues. Oh I love this email.
Yeah remember this one? It was like from yesterday. Yeah.
I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the route
(44:04):
tested for Crohn's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus
on anything, no energy, took a ton of time away
from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the
help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic
deteriorating quality of life. Do you see where this is going? People?
I think listeners might know and he was southered. One
(44:28):
day last month, he was Southern. Actually, he came in
after a doctor's appointment and said he developed an iron
deficient anemia to add to his list of issues. At first,
it sounded disconnected until and I kid you, this isn't
all caps. I kid you not, Josh and Chuck. I
was listening to your Hookworm episode that day, man. When
(44:49):
he got to the part about the aggressive iron deficient anemia,
I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm infection symptoms,
immediately brought it to my cousin and he had every
last symptom. Is doctor prescribed a medication and he is
currently being de wormed. From the first day he started
his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both mood
and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could have
(45:11):
slipped by a half dozen gps and specialists, but I
truly can't thank you both enough of your podcast and
its wide range of topics. That is, James and Saint
Pete Florida. That is so awesome, man, dude head hookworm.
Can you believe it? In man? Thank you James, and
good luck to you cousin. Way to go for being
so smart to connect the dots too. I think your
(45:33):
cousin owes you a pizza or a beer or whatever
you may be both. Yeah, Yeah, trip to Chuck e
Cheese Drunk. If you want to get in touch with
us to tell us an amazing story like James did,
you can tweet to us sysk podcasts, and you can
send us all an email, including Jerry at stuff podcast
(45:53):
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