Script

The town of Villisca, Iowa hasn’t changed much in the last century.  Most of the homes are still on large lots with tall, mature trees gracing each lot. 

So, as I walked from the center of town to a home at 508 East 2nd Street, it was somewhat easy for me to imagine what the home at this address might have been just over 110 years ago, on the evening of Sunday June 9, 1912.  A soft wind blew but otherwise, there was a peaceful silence that’s remarkable because of the absence of the noise typical of modern civilization.  The loudest sound was that of my shoes on the street.

I don’t know the exact path that the Moore family walked that evening around 9:30, but it certainly wasn’t a long walk as they made their way home from a children’s program at their nearby Presbyterian church just 3 blocks away. 

Reportedly, along the way, the family greeted neighbors and others.  There were eight in the group - Josiah and Sarah, their four children, Herman 11, Katherine 10, Boyd 7 and Paul 5.  Two neighbor girls, friends of Katherine, Lena and Ina Stillinger, were going to sleep over.  The program had started at 8pm that evening and had been planned and led by the Sarah Moore herself and all six of the children had participated and performed.   Sarah, no doubt, was like exhilarated that the well planned program had gone well and exhausted by the efforted required to make it happen.

Soon, the family entered their home.  After a snack of cookies and milk, the Moore & Stillinger children were put to bed.  Josiah and Sarah extinguished the gas lamps and darkness shrouded the two-story, wood frame home.

The darkness fully enveloped the eight lives who slept in this peaceful home, in this small, peaceful agricultural town.  And The eight would never wake up.

This is the story of the Villisca Axe Murders and this is the My Dark Path podcast.

In the early hours of Monday, June 10, 1912, an unknown intruder entered a two-story wooden house through the unlocked back door. The small Midwest settlement had a population of around 2,000, where everyone knew each other by sight, and the residents did not worry about crime.

The intruder quietly closed the door behind him and proceeded to take an oil lamp from a dresser. The town coroner later reconstructed the events, indicating that the stranger removed the lamp's chimney, or glass top, and placed it under a chair. Then, he bent the wick to reduce the flame's intensity, lit the lamp, and turned it down to a very dim glow, barely illuminating the sleeping household.

Carrying an axe he’d taken from the woodshed outside, the intruder passed a bedroom where the two Stillinger girls, aged 12 and 9, were sleeping, and ascended the narrow wooden stairs leading to two other bedrooms. He passed by an additional bedroom, where the four Moore children were sleeping, entering the room where 43-year-old Joe Moore was lying beside his wife, the 39 year old Sarah. Raising the ax high above his head, to the point where it hit the ceiling, the assailant struck Joe Moore on the back of his head with the flat of the blade, crushing his skull and probably killing him immediately. Without giving Sarah a chance to wake up or notice his presence, he struck her as well.

Leaving the dying couple, the intruder went to the next room, using the ax to kill the four Moore children as they slept.  All evidence points to the likelihood that Herman, Katherine, Boyd, and Paul, did not wake before they died.  Incredibly, these murderous acts did not create enough noise to wake Katherine’s two friends, Lena and Ina Stillinger, as they slept in the first bedroom downstairs.  In his last murderous act, the killer then returned downstairs and took his ax to the Stillinger girls.  The older of the two may have awakened an instant before she, too, was murdered.

Hi, I’m MF Thomas, and this is the My Dark Path podcast.  In every episode, we explore the fringes of history, science, and the paranormal.  So, if you geek out over these subjects, you're among friends here at My Dark Path.  See our videos on YouTube, visit mydarkpath.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok.  And if you like My Dark Path, please consider signing up for My Dark Path Plus on Patreon.  Subscribers get an exclusive episode every month and also get free swag like t-shirts, stickers, and books.  Find us there at patreon.com/mydarkpath.  And thanks to two new subscribers Erich & Eliza!  We’re grateful for your support!

But no matter how you choose to connect with me and My Dark Path, thank you so much for listening and choosing to walk the Dark Paths of the world with me.  Let's get started with Episode 50, The Villisca Axe Murders & the Unknown Train Killer.

Part 1

The town of Villisca, Iowa is a long way from the major cities of Iowa.  My trip required a very deliberate drive, a very deliberate effort to find the small, white two-story home where, in 1912, eight people were murdered in the middle of the night by an unknown man wielding an axe.  Without this reason to visit, it’s unlikely anyone would ever stumble across the home.  The town is located in Montgomery County, Iowa.  Even today, the rural county is lightly populated with only about 11,000 people.

Planning the trip, I’d researched and read a lot about the murder of the Moore family, the home and the equally torrid tale of the quest to find the murderer.  Even though I had no expectation of a paranormal dimension to the story, several sources and books suggested that element was a part of the story.  Of course, I can’t discount that the murder of 8 human beings couldn’t create an environment susceptible to paranormal visitations, but the story doesn’t need any additional embellishment to be both terrible and fascinating. 

My research revealed an even more astonishing insight - that this wasn’t just a single horrific event.  The Villisca case, to this day, remains unsolved yet these murders are one of at least a dozen other cases across the United States where entire families were murdered in their sleep under circumstances that are eerily similar.  Serial killers are not an artifact of the late 20th century.  But before I open that dimension to the story which will extend into a future episode, let’s start with Villisca.

The home at the center of this story looks much like it did 110 years ago.  At this time of year, there are few tourists seeking a tour and the home was locked in the afternoon when I arrived.  I walked up the back steps and peered through the windows of the back door into the kitchen.  The room has been carefully maintained to cultivate the appearance as it would have been on that evening of June 10, 1912.  Dark brown wood plank flooring was carefully swept and mopped.  A wood fired stove and oven sat against the left wall.  A table covered with a table cloth sat against the far wall and an icebox sat against the far right corner, just to the side of the open doorway leading to the living room.  I explored the home, the neighborhood and the streets to the center of town and the railroad as the shadows lengthened and the afternoon turned into dusk.

But on that June night in 1912, once the killer had completed these grisly acts, he then did several things that mystified investigators at the time and then for decades thereafter.  He covered the shattered heads of Joe and Sarah with bedclothes.  He also moved through the house and, placing clothing over the faces of the other victims. Then, he also went on to ritually hang cloth over every mirror and glass object in the house.

At some point, he even removed a portion of uncooked bacon from the icebox and left it wrapped it in a towel, on the floor of the downstairs bedroom near an unfamiliar keychain. There are hypotheses that the bacon was used as a sexual aid, but forensics being what they were in the 1910s, this simply remains a hypothesis.  The killer remained inside the house for a while, even filling a bowl with water and washing his bloody hands in it.  Just before 5 a.m., he left the lamp at the top of the stairs and departed as silently as he had arrived, locking the doors and taking the house keys with him. As the sun rose, the murderer vanished without a trace.

It was only several hours after daybreak that the gruesome murders of the Moores were discovered. A neighbor, Mary Peckham was out hanging laundry at 5am on the morning of the 10th.  By 7am, she realized she hadn’t seen any of the Moore’s outside, and there was a complete absence of the usual noise coming from the lively household.  By 8am, she had walked to the front door and knocked.  Without an answer, she tried opening the door but found it locked.  She quickly let out the Moore’s chickens before hurrying home to call Joe's brother, Ross, and requested that he investigate.

Ross Moore arrived soon after Mary’s call.  He knocked at the door and tried unsuccessfully to see the family through a window.  Finally, he produced the key his brother’s family had given him, unlocked the front door, went inside.  Mrs. Peckham stayed on the porch.  Opening the door to the downstairs bedroom, he saw the mangled bodies of the two Stillinger girls.  He immediately left the home and told Mrs. Peckham to call the night watchman, Hank Horton and the sheriff, Oren Jackson. 

While well intentioned, this initiated a series of events that ruined any chance of gathering valuable evidence from the crime scene.  Hank Horton immediately sought out several individuals, including Dr. J. Clark Cooper and Dr Edgar Hough, Wesley Ewing (the minister of the Presbyterian congregation), the county coroner L.A. Linquist, and Dr. F.S. Williams (who conducted the first examination of the bodies and provided an estimated time of death). When Dr. Williams emerged from the house shaken, he warned the growing crowd of onlookers: "Don't go in there, boys; you'll regret it until the last day of your life." Despite his advice, as many as 100 curious neighbors and townspeople freely roamed through the house, leaving fingerprints and even taking fragments of Joe Moore's skull as souvenirs.  Finally, the Villisca national guard got control of the crime scene by noon.

Despite the disastrous control of the crime scene, there are 12 facts about the crime scene which were recorded with high confidence. 

·      Eight people had been bludgeoned to death, using an axe that was left at the crime scene.

·      The doctors' estimation was that the time of death was shortly after midnight.

·       All the windows in the house, except two, were covered with curtains. The uncovered windows were concealed with the Moore family's clothing

·      . After being killed, all the victims' faces were covered with bedclothes

.

·      At the foot of Josiah and Sarah's bed, a kerosene lamp was discovered with the chimney off and the wick turned back. The chimney was found under the dresser.

·       Similarly, a lamp was found at the foot of the Stillinger girls' bed with its chimney off.

·       The axe, which belonged to Josiah Moore, was found in the Stillinger girls' room, and an attempt had been made to wipe off the bloodstains.

·      The ceilings in both the parent's and children's rooms bore gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe.

·      A portion of a keychain was discovered on the floor in the downstairs bedroom.

·       A pan of bloody water was found on the kitchen table alongside a plate of uneaten food.

·       All the doors in the house were locked.

·       

Regarding the bodies of Lena and Ina Stillinger that were found in the downstairs bedroom.  Lena, according to the inquest testimony of Dr. F.S. Williams, "lay as though she had kicked one foot out of her bed sideways, with one hand up under the pillow on her right side, half sideways, not clear over but just a little. Apparently she had been struck in the head and squirmed down in the bed, perhaps one-third of the way." Lena's nightgown was slid up and she was wearing no undergarments. There was a bloodstain on the inside of her right knee and what the doctors assumed was a defensive wound on her arm.

The county coroner Linquist also made note of one of Sarah's shoes which he found on Josiah's side of the bed. The shoe was found on it's side, however it had blood inside as well as under it. It was Linquist's assumption that the shoe had been upright when Josiah was first struck and that blood ran off the bed into the shoe. He believed the killer later returned to the bed to inflict additional blows and subsequently knocked the shoe over.

In 1912, forensics was in its infancy.  While a local pharmacist brought his camera to the scene, he was thrown out without being able to document the crime.  Fingerprinting was a new science.  Perhaps, had these axe murders occurred today, the crime might have been solved quickly.  But how many serial killers still roam free today, unaccountable for their crimes until they pass from this mortal realm?

Part 2

The killings shook Villisca to its core, and the failure to convict the murderer despite several attempts only added to the growing fear and unease in the community. The reality was that the killer had disappeared without a trace, leaving no clue as to their identity or whereabouts. It was possible that the killer had slipped back into their own home in the area, or even escaped on one of the 30 trains that passed through the town every day, with a head start of up to five hours. Despite attempts to use bloodhounds to track the killer, all efforts proved futile. As night fell, the townspeople were left with nothing but their own speculations and rumors, and many took to securing their homes with stronger locks. Such was the fear that, by nightfall, not a single dog could be found for sale in Villisca at any price.

The next day, Tuesday, June 11th, a coroner’s jury convened for the inquest.  Fourteen witnesses testified.

Mary Peckham, the Moore’s next door neighbor, was the first person to testify and we’ve already covered her experience.  The second person to testify was Ed Selley, one of Josiah’s employees. Ed had first learned that something was wrong with his employer when Ross, Josiah’s brother had called the store, looking for him.  Questioning of Ed did start to open up a list of people with a potential motive to kill the Moores, or at least Josiah.  Apparently, Josiah relayed the following “Joe says, I got a brother in law that don’t like me.  Said he would get even with me some time.”  Other witnesses appeared that morning, including the physicians who had responded to the crime scene as well as Josiah’s brother Ross and his wife Jesse.

While the inquest did little to establish new facts or identify potential suspects, several well-known men came under suspicion almost immediately.

The first was Frank Jones, a powerful local businessman and state senator and suspected of holding a grudge against Joe Moore for at least two reasons. First, Moore had been a star salesman for Jones's farm-equipment business for seven years, but had left in 1907, five years before the murders.  The reasons for Moore’s departure possibly include Jones's insistence on long working hours. Moore then became a direct competitor, taking the valuable John Deere account with him. Secondly, Moore was rumored to have had an affair with Jones's daughter-in-law, a local beauty with a reputation for indiscretion. Her affairs were well known as she would  arrange her liasons over the phone...perhaps not very smart an operator manually coordinated all phone calls.

By 1912, the relationship between Moore and Jones had become so strained that they would cross the street to avoid each other, a clear sign of animosity in such a small community. Despite never being formally charged with involvement in the murders, Jones was investigated by the grand jury and was subject to a long campaign to prove his guilt.leading to the destruction of his political career. Many in Villisca believed that he had used his considerable influence to avoid prosecution.

Few people in Villisca believed that Jones, because of his age and status, would have committed the murders himself.  However, it seemed reasonable that the Jones could have hired someone else to carry out the deed.   

This hypothesis was pursued relentlessly over the years after the murder by James Wilkerson, an agent of the prestigious Burns Detective Agency.  At this time in the United States, detective agencies had more resources and experience than virtually any of the city or state police departments throughout the United States.  Wilkerson became involved almost immediately after the news of the murders became public.  Wilkerson believed Jones had paid a man named William Mansfield to kill Joe Moore as an act of revenge. Wilkerson's persistent claims eventually derailed Jones's bid for re-election to the state senate and led to the convening of a grand jury to consider the evidence he had collected.

Over time, Wilkerson focused on considered William Mansfield, also known as George Worley and Jack Turnbaugh, as the primary suspect in the murder of Joe Moore and the other individuals in the Moore home.  According to Wilkerson's investigation, Mansfield was hired by Jones to commit the crime.  Wilkerson alleged that Mansfield was a cocaine addict and a serial killer.

In 1916, four years after the murders, Wilkerson persuaded a Grand Jury to commence an investigation, leading to Mansfield's arrest and transportation to Red Oak Iowa from Kansas City.  On Saturday, July 15, 1916, the Montgomery grand jury began examining the evidence against William Mansfield.  It was expected that the jury would be busy until Friday, when Mansfield would have his preliminary hearing and be defended by his attorney from Kansas City.

Interestingly, part of Wilkerson's case against Mansfield included the accusation that he was responsible for the axe murders of his own wife, baby, as well as his father and mother-in-law in Blue Island, Illinois on July 5, 1914,  two years after the Villisca murders.  He also accused Mansfield of commiting axe murders in Paola, Kansas, four days before the Villisca murders, as well as the murders of Jennie Peterson and Jennie Miller in Aurora, Colorado.

Mansfield’s guilt was obvious in the Villisca case, according to Wilkerson’s investigation, because all of the murders of his family as well as those in Kansas and Colorado were executed in the same manner, indicating that they were committed by the same person. Wilkerson claimed that he had evidence proving Mansfield's presence at each location on the night of the murders. The victims in every case were brutally hacked to death with an axe, and the mirrors were covered in the homes. The murderer left a burning lamp without a chimney at the foot of the bed and a basin used for cleaning in the kitchen. Additionally, the murderer wore gloves, thus avoiding leaving fingerprints. Wilkerson believed this absence of fingerprint evidence was compelling as Mansfield knew that his fingerprints were on file at the federal military prison at Leavenworth.

While these accusations would be used by Wilkerson, Mansfield was never charged in any of these murders.  Still, the case against Mansfield was backed up by several witnesses who appeared before the grand jury.

First, R.H. Thorpe, a restaurant owner from Shenandoah, identified Mansfield as the man he saw boarding a train at Clarinda the morning after the murders. Clarinda is an Iowa town directly south of Villisca.  At about 17 miles distant from the Moores’ home, it would have taken Mansfield about 6 hours to walk.  This would have been a strenuous walk, it would also have to have been done under the cover of night – at a time when street lamps were limited to town centers and oil lamps provided personal illumination.  If true, this claim by Thorpe would have contradicted Mansfield's alibi.  Mansfield claimed to have been in Illinois at the time of the murders.

A second witness by the name of Joe Nickell testified that he had seen Mansfield in Villisca on the day of the murders, and had seen him in possession of a bloody shirt.

A third witness called didn’t implicate Mansfield.  Mrs. Vina Thompkins from Marshalltown Iowa came to the hearings at Red Oak.  She testified that she had overheard three men in the woods plotting the murder of the Moore family shortly before the killings took place.  Interestingly, Marshalltown Iowa is about 170 miles from Villisca.

Despite these witnesses, Mansfield’s alibi was corroborated by payroll records, demonstrating that he had been in Illinois at the time of the Villisca murders. On July 21, 1916, Mansfield was released from custody on the order of District Judge Woodruff at 3pm in the afternoon after the grand jury refused to indict him for the Villisca axe murders from four years earlier.  A sheriff took Mansfield from the courthouse where he took a train back to Kansas City, Kansas.  Later, he filed a lawsuit against Wilkerson and was granted $2,225 in compensation, that’s about $50,000 in today’s dollars.

Despite the grand jury’s actions, many residents, such as Ross Moore, Josiah’s brother and Joe Stillinger, the father of the two Stillinger girls, continued to argue that Mansfield and Jones were guilty. The hostility caused by Wilkerson persisted in the community for years.

Wilkerson, for his part, believed that Jones applied sufficient political pressure such that the grand jury acquitted Mansfield and drove subsequent detention and trial of the next suspect, Reverend George Jacklin Kelly.

Part 3

The Reverend George Kelly had immigrated from England.  He worked as a preacher and was a known sexual deviant with documented mental issues. He had been present in Villisca on the night of the murders.  He acknowledged that he had left on a morning train just before the bodies were discovered. Although some aspects of Reverend Kelly made him seem an unlikely suspect, including his small stature of 5-foot-2 and weight of 119 pounds, other evidence suggested that he may have been the Villisca Axe Murderer.

First, Kelly was left-handed, and based on the pattern of blood spatters in the murder house, the coroner concluded that the killer likely swung the axe that way. Furthermore, Kelly had an unhealthy obsession with sex and had been caught peeping into windows in Villisca just two days prior to the murders.

After an investigation, it was uncovered that Lyn Kelly had ties to the Moore family, which some residents believed indicated his involvement in the murders. Kelly had attended the Children's Day service at the Villisca Presbyterian church on the night of the killings, which was organized by Sarah Moore, and where her children and the Stillinger sisters had participated in their best clothes. Many residents of Villisca speculated that Kelly had become obsessed with the family after seeing them at the church, and that he had spied on the Moore household as they went to bed. Some evidence supported the theory that the killer had waited for the Moores to fall asleep, such as the discovery of a depression in some hay bales in the family barn that could have been used as a lookout post. Although the fact that Lena Stillinger was found without underwear and her nightdress pulled up suggested a sexual motive, no evidence of such an assault was found by doctors

Kelly’s obsession with the case caused him to start writing long, rambling letters.  He wrote to private investigators, state and local investigators, as well as relatives of the victims.  Of course, the letters drew immediate attention to him even though he wouldn’t be brought before the grand jury for 5 years.

Within a month of the murders, officials investigating the crime began to quietly pay attention to the letters of Preacher Kelly. Tom O'Leary, representing the Hays Detective Agency, was particularly suspicious of him. O'Leary wrote a flattering letter to Kelly, asking for details about what had happened on the night of the murders. Kelly replied to O'Leary and several others, providing details that seemed either fanciful or incriminating. He claimed that he had been out walking and heard the thud of the axe, and that the killer had been disturbed by a couple walking by and had stepped out onto the porch until they had passed. He also said that Mrs. Moore had reared up in bed before the killer struck.

The Iowa state attorney general discretely investigated Kelly throughout the summer and fall of 1912.  While news of the investigation didn’t reach the press, he was seriously considered as a suspect during this time.  Still, his obvious mental illness and position as a minister seems to make the authorities uncertain about whether he could actually be the murderer.  Quietly, he faded from view.

But he reemerged in 1914 when he caught authorities attention in Winner South Dakota.  While living there, he placed an ad in the Omaha World-Herald for a "girl stenographer" to do "confidential work," but stipulated that the successful candidate "must be willing to pose as model." A young woman, Jessamine Hodgson, replied to the advertisement.  Then Kelly sent her a letter, an obscene one.  A judge later described the letter as "so obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper to be spread upon the record thereof." The letter included instructions for Hodgson to type in the nude.  She took his letter to her pastor who turned it over to the police.  The postal authorities, pretending to be Jassamine, started a correspondence with Kelly.  As expected, his letters became more and more salacious.  Finally, the police arrested him in 1914 for sending obscene material through the mail.  Kelly was convicted in May.  He was initially sentenced to Fort Leavenworth federal penetenatary but was transfer to St. Elizabeths, a mental health hospital in Washington DC.  After months of treatment, he wrote to the Iowa attorney general, George Cosson.  With his mental health more stable as a result of his treatment, he realized that his past claims of being involved in the murders put him at risk for prosecution.  Cosson replied back via mail that Kelly wasn’t a suspect and that he should instead focus on getting well.

But in 1916 when the Wilkerson case collapsed, a grand jury member, Scott Smith was reported as saying “we’ve got to look at that crazy preacher over in Nebraska.”

Within a year, the grand jury conducted an investigation and returned an indictment into Kelly’s possible guilt.  They issued a bench warrant for his arrest on April 30, 1917.  Kelly presented himself to the Montgomery County sheriff on May 14.

Reverend George Kelly's interrogation started in the afternoon and went on for several hours into the night, with multiple investigators questioning him. During the interrogation, Kelly was given occasional breaks and allowed to go back to his cell, which he shared with two undercover investigators posing as inmates. These undercover investigators spoke with Kelly during his breaks, falsely claiming that confessing to the crimes would result in better treatment. The investigators' aggressive interrogation techniques, along with the misleading advice from the undercover detectives, led Kelly to break down and confess the following morning.

While this was going on and Kelly waited for his hearings, there was a sense of unrest in Montgomery County and the surrounding area in Southwest Iowa throughout the summer of 1917.  Private Investigator Wilkerson created the Iowa Protective Association and raised funds for Kelly's defense while the while advocating for the arrest and trial of F.F. Jones.  The tension was so significant that the attorney general stationed a court reporter in the audience of these meetings to create verbatim transcripts.

Wilkerson held these meetings to reinforce his accusations against Jones, lay out his belief in a government plot to implicate Kelly, and gather donations for their cause. The funds collected were utilized to employ a legal team for Kelly and to finance new investigations into the possible involvement of F. F. Jones and William Mansfield. The defense team was led by Ed Mitchell from Council Bluffs, who was also Wilkerson's attorney in Mansfield’s defamation lawsuit.

Throughout the summer, while the torchlight meetings continued, the state was building a case against Kelly who hadn’t helped himself when he confessed to the murders.  He claimed that "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 my mind, and I picked up the axe, went into the house and killed them."

By September, when Kelley was brought to trial, the prosecution had four crucial elements to their murder case: (1) evidence of Kelly's disturbed mental state and sexual obsession; (2) a bloody shirt that Kelly had sent to be laundered a week after the murder; (3) Kelly's knowledge of and talk about the murder before it was discovered; and (4) his confession(s) and 5) his unhealthy obsession about the case, including the fact that he’d had returned to Villisca a week later and even pretended to be a Scotland Yard detective to tour the Moore house.

The charge against Kelly specifically related to the death of Lena Stillinger. She had been found with her undergarments removed and thrown under the bed, with her nightshirt pulled up to her hips. Her body had been pulled down into the bed with her hip slightly off the bed. The state contended that Kelly had posed her in this manner to satisfy a sexual desire.

The prosecution highlighted several instances that they argued demonstrated Kelly's sexual obsession and predatory behavior towards young women. They noted that just days before the murder, he had been caught peering into the bedroom of a Villisca woman and had been seen wandering the streets of several towns late at night. He had also made repeated requests for young women to pose nude for him. Additionally, less than a year after the murder, while preaching in Carroll, Iowa, he had reportedly pressured two thirteen-year-old girls to pose nude for him.

The state presented these actions as evidence that Kelly had entered the Moore house, killed the occupants.  Kelly, for his part, later retracted his confession, and several witnesses who had initially claimed to have spoken to him changed their story. As jurors learned of the coercion used to extract the confession, they didn't believe Kelly's statements, believing they came under duress.  The first grand jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision, with 11 of the 12 refusing to indict him.  A second panel held in November 1917 acquitted him completely due to a lack of conclusive evidence linking him to the murders.

Kelly, apparently, continued to live a transient life, preaching and doing odd jobs. In 1924, he was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, for the murder of a young boy. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He died in prison in 1951.

While case remained open, there was also no active investigation, leading to frustration across Iowa. The families and supporters of the victims were unable to find closure or justice, while many believed that Wilkerson's influence had swayed public opinion and allowed the true killer to escape punishment. With both sides feeling powerless and angry, the situation remained unresolved.

Still the possibility of Jones, Mansfield, and Kelly all being innocent started gaining some support, despite the efforts of Wilkerson.  But before we open this chapter in the story of the Villisca Axe Murders, let’s observe the final downfall of Wilkerson.

Part 4

Wilkerson, as I mentioned, was not a popular figure.  He’d stirred up too many emotions and left his supporters and detractors deflated.  During the interim period between Kelly’s two trials, John Warren Noel, a Villisca photographer and a strong supporter of Wilkerson, was discovered shot and dying on the railroad platform in Albia, Iowa. Wilkerson's supporters attempted to suggest that Noel was murdered to silence him, but an inquest conducted by an Albia coroner concluded that it was a suicide. Railroad detectives were pursuing Noel for allegedly attempting to extort money from the "C.B. & Q." by staging an accident.  While not directly implicating Wilkerson in the scheme, the suicide and the events surrounding it, cast a negative light on his patron.

Then, another part of Wilkerson’s life started to unravel.  As a part of his crusade to convict Jones and Mansfield, Wilkerson started a campaign in early 1918 to win the position of Montgomery County Attorney General.  He had been very clear that he was seeking this position so as to better pursue Jones and Mansfield.  But Wilkerson had many enemies who were seeking an opportunity to bring him down.

In June 1918, James Wilkerson and Mae Noel, the widow of John Noel, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit adultery at an Ottumwa, Iowa hotel. Six months later, their trial jury was unable to reach a verdict as to whether to convict Jim without Mae. The judge decided that he could not convict one without the other.

Still, Wilkerson persevered in his campaign, easily winning his party’s nomination.  He was a clear favorite to win the general election in November.  However, to meet the legal requirements for the position, he needed to be admitted to the Iowa state bar.  When he applied to the Iowa State Supreme Court, the state attorney general strongly opposed his application and developed a long dossier of findings against him.  Wilkerson, stymied, withdrew his application and ended his campaign, returning to live in Kansas City. 

With Wilkerson’s withdrawal from public life, the last character in the story exited the stage and the story seemed to go dormant.

But, as gruesome as the Villisca axe murder case may be…it’s just the tip of the iceberg.  As I mentioned in the opening, the murder of the Moore’s and the children’s friends, is not an isolated one.  As much as we think of serial killers being a modern phenomenon, it’s not.

There is real evidence that the slaughter of 14 families totaling 59 victims were committed by a single murderer across the country from the late in the first decade of the 1900s to 1912.  Additionally, there is reasonable evidence that another 25 family murders with another 94 victims can be connected to the same suspect. 

How could this be true?  But consider the time…. without forensics, databases and even easy communication across police jurisdictions, it’s easy to see that up to 3 dozen family murders would have gone unconnected.  The story that connects the Villisca case with these others is astonishing can could represent the second most profilic serial killer in the history of the United States, just behind Samuel Little with 60 confirmed victims.  There are astonishing similarities…use of a blunt edge of an axe, absence of robbery, the covering of victim’s faces…just to name a few.  They are murders that have been It’s a story that I’m now exploring…with the use of an AI tool I’ve developed to help identify patterns that may have gone unnoticed. The suspect may even have been responsible for the 1922 Hinterkaifect murders in Germany. 

As for this first episode about the Villisca Axe Murders, it’s now complete.  But as surely as the lights fade over this story, just as surely they will return to illuminate the story of the Man from the Train.

Thank you for listening to My Dark Path.  I'm MF Thomas, creator and host, and I produce the show with our creative director is Dom Purdie.  I researched and wrote this episode.

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