Speaker 1: Moving on with our next episode in the playlist, This
Speaker 1: one's on a horrific and truly saddening multiple acts murder
Speaker 1: in Iowa in nineteen twelve. To some, it looks like
Speaker 1: a random act of violence committed by someone who is
Speaker 1: a stranger to the victims, but some odd clues also
Speaker 1: point to it as the work of possibly someone who
Speaker 1: knew all of the people who died, which included children.
Speaker 1: This one is harrowing, interesting, and bizarre.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry put The three of
Speaker 1: us together, had a little mystery, a lot of mayhem.
Speaker 3: You got stuff you should know and one axe?
Speaker 4: Yeah acts, how many is this? Three?
Speaker 1: We got Lizzy Borden yep, effect yep, and then this one.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, I looked It's funny because I looked at I
Speaker 4: was like, I wonder if we could do a spin
Speaker 4: off show just on X murderers. And Wikipedia had thirty listed.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that if there's like ten mentioned in this
Speaker 1: this article alone, Well we'll see why there are so
Speaker 1: many X murders. This, this, this whole researching the Veliska
Speaker 1: ax murder kind of solved a question I've had that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize I knew had.
Speaker 4: How to pronounce Boliska.
Speaker 1: We just settled that by calling the Velliska town Hall.
Speaker 4: I know, that was a pretty great moment. Right before
Speaker 4: we recorded, I was like, are you sure there's a Mellissa?
Speaker 4: Josh called the town hall and lied.
Speaker 1: Well, it was kind of a bet that she settled. Yeah, said,
Speaker 1: we just never put money on it.
Speaker 4: So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
Speaker 4: Veliska town Hall, all, thank you. You got a call today,
Speaker 4: so congratulations. And second of all, you just spoke to
Speaker 4: an internet celebrity.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I think Velliska is on the
Speaker 1: map and it is one hundred percent because of this
Speaker 1: this murder.
Speaker 4: Well, if you just type in Veliska, almost all you
Speaker 4: see is stuff about the axe murder.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the site Veliska, Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated.
Speaker 3: To this axe murder.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's just it doesn't mention it at all.
Speaker 4: But all the copy is just in the outline of
Speaker 4: the shape of an axe. They just talk about like
Speaker 4: their boys club and stuff that they're doing. They're fourth
Speaker 4: of July praid, but it's in the shape of an ax.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The population and elevation is in a drop of
Speaker 1: blood coming off of the axe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's as population, not as much as it was
Speaker 4: on June ninth.
Speaker 3: That's morbid.
Speaker 4: Nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Did you did you hear about this before?
Speaker 4: Well, I think after a hint your chaifect, we had
Speaker 4: some emails from probably local iowaans iowaans iowans Iowania Knights saying, hey,
Speaker 4: you guys should if you're into the not into.
Speaker 3: X murders, but get a load of this.
Speaker 4: If you're into reporting on grizzly crimes, you should check
Speaker 4: out the one we had in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they
Speaker 4: were right, man. This is so before we get into it,
Speaker 4: I think it goes without saying listeners that this is
Speaker 4: a very horrific grizzly crime that we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about in some detail. Right, listen at your own discretion.
Speaker 1: X murder is in the title, everybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people don't know about it.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, where was where was this from?
Speaker 1: By the way, Well, one of the articles we researched
Speaker 1: was from Mike Dash of the Smithsonian magazine.
Speaker 3: They do great work, great work.
Speaker 1: There's another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we
Speaker 1: have to give a shout out to, who has like
Speaker 1: a whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder.
Speaker 1: Guys researched it for like fifty five years or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: Did he write one of the two books?
Speaker 3: Probably? Sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's widely known as the expert on the veliska axmurt
Speaker 1: He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
Speaker 1: a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
Speaker 1: crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
Speaker 1: Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One thing I realized in researching this is it was
Speaker 4: way easier to get away with murder. Yeah in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of agreement that had this
Speaker 1: been done today, Yeah, they would have caught the guy
Speaker 1: very quickly. Sure, But yeah, nineteen twelve, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means
Speaker 1: of detection basically and eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: keep saying nineteen twelve specifically, Like you said, June ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, wo in the little town tenth, Well, it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right,
Speaker 1: So June ninth, tenth.
Speaker 4: Depends on if you're still a partying.
Speaker 1: Potato Potato Belliska, Melissa.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at five oh way East second Street in Velliska, Iowa,
Speaker 1: which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
Speaker 1: of the state, I believe not.
Speaker 4: As far from here as I thought.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: I just looked on a map and I was like, wait,
Speaker 4: I was there.
Speaker 1: I thought I away was like basically in Canada. No, huh,
Speaker 1: where is it this more right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the country. I did not realize that.
Speaker 4: Like, it doesn't look further west than like Dallas.
Speaker 1: I can believe that. But it was the north that
Speaker 1: gets you, the northern, the norther ward direction, that's what
Speaker 1: gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenthnineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: in this little house there were eight people sleeping. There
Speaker 1: were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
Speaker 1: and then there four kids what were their names, Charles.
Speaker 4: I believe Hermann, Katherine Boyd and Paul Right.
Speaker 1: And then downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in
Speaker 1: the house, little Lena and Aina Stillinger.
Speaker 4: And they were just having a sleepover.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter or
Speaker 1: the only daughter I guess, of the Moors, and the
Speaker 1: whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians, and
Speaker 1: they had been at church that day. It was Sunday
Speaker 1: for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus Moore had
Speaker 1: helped put on and the kids had all participated in.
Speaker 1: And at that mass, Catherine had asked her two friends,
Speaker 1: Lena and Aina, the sisters, to spend the night. And
Speaker 1: so they came back home with the Moors from the
Speaker 1: children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or ten thirty,
Speaker 1: they were all at home in bed and the lights
Speaker 1: were out and the house was settled in dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all
Speaker 4: very sad, but anytime I hear of a fateful turn,
Speaker 4: like oh, yeah, we just spent the night there that night, right,
Speaker 4: and things go bad. It always I don't know, bothers
Speaker 4: me more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, twists of fate are terrible, especially when
Speaker 1: they result in terrible deaths.
Speaker 4: So very late at night, like you said, after midnight,
Speaker 4: someone crept in to the back of the house which
Speaker 4: was not locked.
Speaker 1: That's up for debate.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked? That got in
Speaker 4: without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house and this
Speaker 4: is a small town, is there were I don't even
Speaker 4: think two thousand people living there then, and I think
Speaker 4: even less now than there were back then. Yeah, one
Speaker 4: of those places. So this person, and I think by
Speaker 4: all accounts we can safely say it was a man
Speaker 4: creeps in this house with an axe from the property.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Joe Moore's own axe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And as we will see, apparently they call these weapons
Speaker 4: of convenience because back in the day, every single house
Speaker 4: in the US had an axe, like in the front
Speaker 4: or backyard.
Speaker 1: That just explained it. That was the question I didn't
Speaker 1: realize i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers
Speaker 1: at a certain period of time in American history was
Speaker 1: because everybody had an.
Speaker 4: Axe, Yeah, and you would leave it just you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: like chopped into the stump that you use as the
Speaker 4: chopping block or whatever.
Speaker 1: It'd be like a weapon of convenience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these days you would have to kill people with
Speaker 4: like a mailbox, right, just some something that everyone has, like.
Speaker 1: A silicone' spatula.
Speaker 4: Or a high speed internet cable. There chokes somebody with that. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 4: all joking aside. So this dude creeps in there. He's
Speaker 4: got this axe. He gets and this is very key here.
Speaker 4: He gets the lamp, an oil lamp from the dresser
Speaker 4: inside the house. He takes off the chimney the glass
Speaker 4: you know, covering, and takes it off, bends the wick
Speaker 4: in half so the flame is smaller, lights the lamp,
Speaker 4: and then turns it down really low, and then commences creeping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with an axe in hand in this low light
Speaker 1: oil lamp in the.
Speaker 4: Other chimneyless lamp, which we'll see is a big clue.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently, so he
Speaker 1: passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up the stairs.
Speaker 1: He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite I believe
Speaker 1: the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe and Sarah's room,
Speaker 1: or is Joe and Sarah's room, and they're sleeping, and
Speaker 1: he sets the oil lamp down believe at the foot
Speaker 1: of the bed, and he raises the axe over his
Speaker 1: head and using the flat the flat end, flat side
Speaker 1: of the axe, not the sharp blade side, but the
Speaker 1: other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head. Joe,
Speaker 1: I believe was lying on his back, even though Smithsonian
Speaker 1: article says something different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, raise it so high, he even gouged the ceiling correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brought it down hard on Joe's head, probably killed
Speaker 1: him instantly from that one blow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at all because he
Speaker 1: did the same thing to her. And both of them
Speaker 1: were found in a position that they would have been sleeping.
Speaker 1: And there wasn't like the bed clothes weren't ruffled, There
Speaker 1: wasn't their arm wasn't enough to defend themselves. Right, they
Speaker 1: died in their sleep, it appeared right.
Speaker 4: Yes, So he kills the parents either immediately or they
Speaker 4: die probably pretty quickly, leaves the room and goes next door.
Speaker 4: And this is really just almost too awful. To talk about.
Speaker 4: But he kills all the children in their sleep.
Speaker 1: One by one, but again without waking any of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
Speaker 4: it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
Speaker 4: have awakened.
Speaker 1: Finally one of them, the older one Leen, and I
Speaker 1: believe is the older.
Speaker 4: One, and then he dispatches with both of them in
Speaker 4: the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful murder.
Speaker 1: So that's bad enough, right, This guy just went around
Speaker 1: and murdered eight people, six of them children under the
Speaker 1: age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under with the
Speaker 1: blunted of an axe. That's bad enough. But then it
Speaker 1: just gets a million times worse. And this is probably
Speaker 1: why this axe murder is just part of American history,
Speaker 1: whether we like it or not. So what the guy
Speaker 1: does next is, well, he took the axe and he
Speaker 1: flips it over, and he takes the sharp side, and
Speaker 1: he goes around and he starts bashing everybody's head in
Speaker 1: one by one. Apparently, Joe was later found to have
Speaker 1: been struck as many as thirty times in the head
Speaker 1: with the acts. Yeah, just one by one he went
Speaker 1: around and completely caved in the head and face of
Speaker 1: all of his victims methodically throughout the house after they
Speaker 1: were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So then it gets a little bit strange. He
Speaker 4: goes around to the rooms and all over the house
Speaker 4: really and does different things in each one. He covers
Speaker 4: windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the mirrors in the house were covered.
Speaker 4: He covered the faces of I believe all the victims, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one way or another. I believe all of their
Speaker 1: faces were covered.
Speaker 4: With either sheets or pillowcases. Or I think in the
Speaker 4: case of the girls, he pulled their dresses up over
Speaker 4: their faces.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 4: Uh. Yeah, it's very I think in the serial killer
Speaker 4: or psychopath mode. Though I've heard of stuff like that
Speaker 4: before though.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, you get the idea that they don't the
Speaker 1: murderer doesn't want the victim looking at him, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: may also explain why he bashed their faces in you know.
Speaker 1: So the guy apparently hangs out for a little while.
Speaker 4: He does other weird things though.
Speaker 1: With the bacon, he grabbed a two pound slab of bacon,
Speaker 1: and I saw elsewhere that there was another slab of
Speaker 1: bacon found in the house, but there was at least
Speaker 1: one two pound slab of bacon that he wrapped in
Speaker 1: a dish towel and then left on the floor of
Speaker 1: one of the bedrooms, so weird. There was a bowl
Speaker 1: of bloody water that was later found he washed himself off.
Speaker 1: He washed off the axe, although he left it behind,
Speaker 1: and he apparently hung out for a little while in
Speaker 1: the house before leaving sometime before five am. So the
Speaker 1: murders took place around midnight and then come five am,
Speaker 1: the house is dark still it's five am, so that's
Speaker 1: not the weirdest thing, although we're talking about Iowa, so
Speaker 1: plenty of people were up at five, including the neighbor,
Speaker 1: a woman named Mary Peckham, and she noticed that there
Speaker 1: wasn't anybody up at the house, which was a little odd.
Speaker 1: It was a Monday morning now, and by seven she
Speaker 1: thought it was just downright eerie that there was no
Speaker 1: sign of life at the house. She went over and
Speaker 1: let the Moor's chickens out so that they could peck
Speaker 1: around and feed. She called Joe Moore's store and said, hey,
Speaker 1: has Joe showed up and found from the employee that
Speaker 1: he hadn't and finally one of those two gets in
Speaker 1: touch with a guy named Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
Speaker 1: and Ross comes over over and unlocks the door. The
Speaker 1: front door is locked, and he goes inside and he
Speaker 1: comes almost immediately rushing back out calling for the local
Speaker 1: marshal to be called.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically he gets Hank Horton is the marshall's name,
Speaker 4: He gets him on the scene, and this is where
Speaker 4: things just kind of go berserk. It's such a small town,
Speaker 4: such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
Speaker 4: and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
Speaker 4: much a small town like this knows about preserving a
Speaker 4: crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
Speaker 4: within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
Speaker 4: all accounts, there were one hundred or more people that
Speaker 4: went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
Speaker 4: to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
Speaker 4: in there and check things out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first group that come with the marshall,
Speaker 1: Hank Horton, right, was two doctors and a minister.
Speaker 4: J Clark Cooper, right, great doctor name J Clark Cooper
Speaker 4: and Edgar Huff and Wesley Ewing, who was the minister
Speaker 4: of the church.
Speaker 1: They were the first contingent to make it into the
Speaker 1: house after Ross Moore came running out. So they go
Speaker 1: in and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
Speaker 1: Another guy gets brought in, La Linquist. He's the coroner.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
Speaker 1: But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
Speaker 1: His name was F. S.
Speaker 4: Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah. F. S.
Speaker 1: Williams was the one who examined the body and at
Speaker 1: a later inquest he had the most details to offer
Speaker 1: about the bodies and positions all that stuff. So when
Speaker 1: those guys walked in, they were at least well versed
Speaker 1: enough to know not disturbed things as much as possible,
Speaker 1: or at least more than the townspeople knew.
Speaker 3: And F. S.
Speaker 1: Williams allegedly came out of the house pretty shaken and said,
Speaker 1: don't go in there, boys, you'll regret it to your
Speaker 1: last day. And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're
Speaker 1: going inside. We want to see some dead bodies.
Speaker 4: And they all regretted it probably till their last day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because they not only messed with the crime scene.
Speaker 1: They poked around there was supposedly the town drunk took
Speaker 1: fragments of Joe Moore's skull as mementos. Like. The crime
Speaker 1: scene was toast, Like you said, if it could have
Speaker 1: ever been preserved, it was toast. And even the local
Speaker 1: druggist showed up with his camera to help preserve the
Speaker 1: crime scene because he heard that the townspeople were tramping
Speaker 1: all over it and Ross Moore, not understanding what he
Speaker 1: was doing, throw the guy out, thought he was just
Speaker 1: being a ghoul trying to get pictures. So the crime
Speaker 1: scene is utterly and completely lost.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and one of the things about Blesca, said Vassela,
Speaker 4: is that it was a train town. There were about
Speaker 4: thirty trains every day that went through there, and so
Speaker 4: by this time, unless this person was local and maybe
Speaker 4: hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murder had probably
Speaker 4: hopped the train and was out of there at that time.
Speaker 3: But they didn't gone.
Speaker 1: They didn't realize this until they had already released some bloodhounds.
Speaker 1: They searched the countryside. There was like a pretty big
Speaker 1: search to find whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody.
Speaker 1: So the town was just terrified town. Of two thousand people,
Speaker 1: eight including six children, had just been murdered with an
Speaker 1: axe in your town. And now the sun's starting to
Speaker 1: go down, and nobody's been caught, all.
Speaker 4: Right, So let's take a break and we'll come back
Speaker 4: and talk about suspect number one right after this. Okay,
Speaker 4: So suspect number one might be a little surprising when
Speaker 4: you first hear that. He was a state senator, very
Speaker 4: well well respected by some as a local businessman and
Speaker 4: a very prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply
Speaker 4: divided between Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and
Speaker 4: that stuff mattered to those people. And his name was
Speaker 4: Frank Jones.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: Methodists immediately said, no, he's got to be innocent. This
Speaker 4: is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians are like, no,
Speaker 4: it's got to be him. And at first I was like, well,
Speaker 4: why would it be the state senator? None of this
Speaker 4: makes sense. There were a couple of big things that
Speaker 4: made people believe that he could be the guy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Joe Moore worked for him for seven years and was
Speaker 4: one of his best salesman on his farm equipment team.
Speaker 4: And apparently he left in nineteen oh seven, and was
Speaker 4: not too happy with the work hours, which were sixteen
Speaker 4: hour days, six days a week.
Speaker 3: Who would be it's like us.
Speaker 4: And then set up a rival business and even took
Speaker 4: one of the clients, the John Deere company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big one, I'm sure, so big
Speaker 1: that when Sarah Peckham called Joe Moore's employee to tell
Speaker 1: him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's employee called the John
Speaker 1: Deere people in Omaha to let them know.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, they.
Speaker 1: Were like the third people called after the bodies were discovered.
Speaker 4: So he takes John Deere with him. So this set
Speaker 4: up an obvious rivalry and worse than that apparently. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is super confirmed, but at
Speaker 4: least the rumor was that Joe Moore had slept with
Speaker 4: Jones's daughter in law.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 1: that's that's understood.
Speaker 3: Is true?
Speaker 4: That's true? So such with his daughter in law, who
Speaker 4: apparently kind of had several affairs in town and was
Speaker 4: not very discreet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently, according to Mike Dashitt Smithsonian, she used to
Speaker 1: set up her her meet and greets over the phone.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, over the phone. And this was at
Speaker 1: a time when there was a switchboard operator running the
Speaker 1: phones in the town. Ye sat there and listen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this lady obviously didn't care. So apparently it was
Speaker 1: pretty well known that that Joe Moore had had an
Speaker 1: affair with F. F. Jones's daughter in law, which is huge.
Speaker 1: She put those two things together. Friends, the fact that
Speaker 1: apparently they used to cross to the other side of
Speaker 1: the street to keep from from from encountering one another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big deal in that town. In a small town, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, suspicion fell onto Ff apparently from what I understand,
Speaker 1: within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and suspicion not that he may have done it,
Speaker 4: that Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because
Speaker 4: he was fifty seven years old and probably had some
Speaker 4: pretty good money.
Speaker 3: Clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy.
Speaker 1: He was building a bank, overseeing his new bank being
Speaker 1: built when he got the news of the bodies.
Speaker 4: When you're building the bank, you're rolling in it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So everyone thought that he probably hired somebody out to
Speaker 4: kill him, and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency,
Speaker 4: there was a detective named James Wilkerson, who said, you
Speaker 4: know what, I think you're right. I think he hired someone.
Speaker 4: I think that man's name was William Mansfield.
Speaker 1: William Blackie Mansfield. It was already, No, he wasn't already.
Speaker 1: He would later be, I believe, convicted of an axe
Speaker 1: murder himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is probably one of the chief reasons he
Speaker 4: was suspect.
Speaker 1: Well, no, that came a couple of years after. I
Speaker 1: believe that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered
Speaker 1: his wife, her parents, and their their child, his cholcold
Speaker 1: with an axe.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, the guy was a bad dude.
Speaker 1: But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
Speaker 1: Mansfield had an air tight alibi. He was in Illinois,
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only
Speaker 1: did the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll record
Speaker 1: showed very clearly that he had not been in Veliska
Speaker 1: that day and couldn't have done it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he was exonerated. But a lot of townspeople
Speaker 4: still thought that that. You know how it was back
Speaker 4: then and still is today to a certain.
Speaker 1: Degree, sure, especially in a small town.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people were convinced that he was the guy, and
Speaker 4: a lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
Speaker 1: So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
Speaker 1: you said, a lot of people thought that Jones Ffjes
Speaker 1: apparently went by ff did have something to do with it.
Speaker 1: The still injured girl's father and Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
Speaker 1: both thought F. F. Jones was behind this, and and
Speaker 1: Wilkinson made it like his personal mission to take Jones
Speaker 1: down and apparently ruined his political career cost him reelection
Speaker 1: to the state Senate.
Speaker 4: I would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion.
Speaker 1: But maybe, but I think like there's something between townspeople
Speaker 1: suspecting you and a detective like bringing evidence against you
Speaker 1: and getting a grand jury to indict you.
Speaker 4: It was like the good old days when you could
Speaker 4: be suspected of an ex murder and still win a
Speaker 4: Senate seat.
Speaker 1: Right exactly the U. But Jones he didn't win re
Speaker 1: election and uh yeah, apparently their dying day, some people
Speaker 1: assumed that it was him behind it.
Speaker 4: Another candidate candidate suspect, sure, candidate, it's not the right word.
Speaker 4: Lynn George, Jacqueline Kelly, the man with four names.
Speaker 1: He went by George Kelly though.
Speaker 4: He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird
Speaker 4: at the time. Sure be living there.
Speaker 1: No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa.
Speaker 4: Maybe he was a preacher though, and it says in
Speaker 4: this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant. He definitely had
Speaker 4: some mental health problems. But there are some things in
Speaker 4: his case where it sort of were suspicious, and others
Speaker 4: that made him not a great suspect, one of which
Speaker 4: he was a little guy. He was five to one,
Speaker 4: one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe not the best suspect.
Speaker 1: For swinging an axe like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, although you know he could have been strong
Speaker 4: as an ox. You never know. Sure, those little guys,
Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: They're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holes rather
Speaker 1: than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up on
Speaker 1: before you know what. Their legs are around your neck
Speaker 1: and you're losing content.
Speaker 4: Yea, their thumbs are in your eyeballs, right, that kind
Speaker 4: of thing, right, Yeah, so fair enough. But he was
Speaker 4: left handed, and the corner Linquist did say that, you know,
Speaker 4: from their analysis, as rudimentary as that might be. In
Speaker 4: nineteen twelve that could probably at least determine that it
Speaker 4: was a left handed assailant.
Speaker 1: From the blood spatter. I believe, yeah, on the walls.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 4: Good for them for being that advance.
Speaker 1: So there were some other things that that implicated George Kelly. One,
Speaker 1: he was in Velliska. He was a traveling preacher. He
Speaker 1: and his wife toured around and they were in Valliska.
Speaker 1: Then the day of the murder, they were actually at
Speaker 1: the children's service.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the that.
Speaker 1: The Moors and the Stillingery girls were at. Again, this
Speaker 1: guy was a sex maniac, is what he was known as.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of wonder about that, and I mean
Speaker 4: he liked to have sex.
Speaker 1: I guess there were He placed an ad and this
Speaker 1: is in the nineteen tens. He placed add in the
Speaker 1: Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
Speaker 1: willing to pose as a model. And when one, one
Speaker 1: woman named Jessamine Hodgson, replied to his ad, he sent
Speaker 1: her a letter. And apparently he's quite lude, so much
Speaker 1: so that the court that heard the case against him
Speaker 1: said that it was so obscene, leude, lascivious, and filthy
Speaker 1: as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper
Speaker 1: to be spread upon the record thereof.
Speaker 4: I really want to know what was in that left.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things was that the lady would
Speaker 1: be required to type in the nude. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the nineteen ten.
Speaker 4: No, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would
Speaker 4: be judged by today's standard.
Speaker 1: Oh, although I mean by today's standard. If you sent
Speaker 1: a potential job candidate a letter that said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would get in some trouble for that.
Speaker 4: Sure. I just I don't know that you would say
Speaker 4: it was obscene Luden lasibe.
Speaker 1: No, I'm with you.
Speaker 4: They'd say that's kink.
Speaker 1: But I think the okay. George Kelly was a kinky
Speaker 1: traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and he
Speaker 1: was in Viliska at the time.
Speaker 4: Of the murders, and he left that next morning on
Speaker 4: a train.
Speaker 1: Right. But there was supposedly a witness that said that
Speaker 1: he had a very incriminating statement when he got off
Speaker 1: of that train that very morning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders. But he had left
Speaker 4: town before they found out about the murders. But then
Speaker 4: later on those people recanted those statements.
Speaker 1: Correct, right, So when when Frank Jones FF Jones had
Speaker 1: a grand jury brought to hear evidence against him, he
Speaker 1: was exonerated. Same thing. Not with George Kelly. Actually, I
Speaker 1: should say he was actually the only person to ever
Speaker 1: go to trial for these murders, and he was tried twice.
Speaker 1: The first time the jury found eleven to one in
Speaker 1: his favor. The second jury acquitted him entirely. The evidence
Speaker 1: against him was just too flimsy, and it probably wasn't him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the idea was they were like, he
Speaker 4: was at that church service, he's a pervert. He saw
Speaker 4: these kids in the service, he went back and peeked
Speaker 4: into their house and camped out in their barn. And
Speaker 4: the evidence there was there were some hay bales in
Speaker 4: the barn that had depressions as if someone had been
Speaker 4: laying on them, and if you'd laid down in one
Speaker 4: of them, there was a peep hole right there in
Speaker 4: the barn where you could see the house. This is
Speaker 4: all pretty flimsy.
Speaker 1: There was also, though, I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the case was brought against him. He was specifically
Speaker 1: tried for the murder of Lena Stillingure. And that's noteworthy
Speaker 1: because although they don't say in the official court record
Speaker 1: directly that she may have been sexually assaulted her, that
Speaker 1: some sort of sex crime had been committed against her.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Supposedly she had been found with her night clothes hiked
Speaker 1: up over her waist, like above her waist, her undergarments
Speaker 1: had been taken off in stuffed under the bed, and
Speaker 1: then her her legs had been arranged so that her
Speaker 1: genitalia was prominent.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: That was done after she had been murdered. And I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
Speaker 1: because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
Speaker 1: they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
Speaker 1: sex maniac for that to be possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, I forgot about this fact though. He actually
Speaker 4: returned a week later and posed as a Scotland yard
Speaker 4: detective so he could get a tour of the house.
Speaker 1: That is so George Kelly.
Speaker 4: Well, it's definitely one of those things that makes you go,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, return to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 4: You lied to get in there and look at the house. Right,
Speaker 4: But apparently everyone wanted to go look at the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's and plus what's posing? You know, we've
Speaker 1: seen so many like cartoony movies that like somebody gets
Speaker 1: like the deer stalker hat and a pipe and says
Speaker 1: they're from Scotland. Yard. Posing could be like somebody saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be from Scotland yards. Am I grunting in
Speaker 1: the affirmative?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I guess that technically constitutes posing in the real world.
Speaker 4: I apparently signed a confession.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a big one too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean the confession literally said I killed
Speaker 4: the children upstairs first and the children downstairs last. I
Speaker 4: knew God wanted me to do it this way. Slay
Speaker 4: utterly came to mind, and I picked up the acts,
Speaker 4: went into the house and killed them. But you know
Speaker 4: he took it back later He's like, yeah, all that
Speaker 4: very specific stuff I said about killing this family, I
Speaker 4: didn't really do it.
Speaker 1: So he was exonerated. So so far, the little town
Speaker 1: of Veliska has looked around and said, we couldn't find
Speaker 1: any tramps. So who's the person that hated Joe Moore
Speaker 1: th most F. F. Jones, Well it wasn't him. Who's
Speaker 1: the weirdest pervert we can find.
Speaker 4: Who is in of the time, that Englishman George Kelly.
Speaker 1: It wasn't him, So they didn't know. A lot of
Speaker 1: people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
Speaker 1: And we still don't know what happened. But with the
Speaker 1: hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
Speaker 1: the work of dedicated historians like Ed Epperley, we have
Speaker 1: something of a clearer picture emerging. And that picture seems
Speaker 1: to be centering on the serial killer.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about that theory more right after this. All right,
Speaker 4: so we've ruled out these local your suspects local ish
Speaker 4: I guess in Kelly's case, And now the modern take
Speaker 4: on this is that this was a serial killer because
Speaker 4: in nineteen eleven, in nineteen twelve, there were a lot
Speaker 4: of axe murders in the Midwest, at least ten, everywhere
Speaker 4: from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas. And many of them
Speaker 4: had similar traits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, some very startlingly similar traits, right.
Speaker 4: But not all of them. And some of them are
Speaker 4: like and we'll go through these, but some are like, well,
Speaker 4: in five of them, these same things happen and two
Speaker 4: of them these same things happen, So it makes me
Speaker 4: wonder if it wasn't if they're kind of grouping too
Speaker 4: many of these together.
Speaker 1: This does Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five,
Speaker 1: including Valliska.
Speaker 4: I thought three was at five.
Speaker 1: Five, So there's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There
Speaker 1: was one that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly
Speaker 1: kicked the whole thing off, yeah, followed by Mammoth and
Speaker 1: Illinois I forgot the s is silent, right, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then Ellsworth, Kansas. Then there was one in Paola, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and then the last one in Valliska. And those five
Speaker 1: crimes have some similarities that make them really really suspicious.
Speaker 1: That the idea of just like five different people or
Speaker 1: even a couple of different people separately committing these crimes,
Speaker 1: and as Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the
Speaker 1: idea that these were local vendettas or you know, that
Speaker 1: that people were.
Speaker 4: Like something, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's not what these these crimes reflect at all. They
Speaker 1: reflect the work of a like just a straight up
Speaker 1: nut job psychopath who are few and far between. So
Speaker 1: the fact that these things occurred between October of nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven and June of nineteen twelve suggests strongly that there
Speaker 1: was one person doing them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, there was the final one in Columbia, Missouri
Speaker 4: in December nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is
Speaker 4: that a man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore
Speaker 4: in Columbia, Missouri, who was his mother? Ye, Mary Wilson,
Speaker 4: So is that the guy? No, it would be weird
Speaker 4: to commit a series of murders and then finish up
Speaker 4: with your own family, right, Usually it's the other way around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So, like, if you're going to go off
Speaker 1: on a killing spree, usually start you practice on your
Speaker 1: family first. Yeah, you get a feel for it, right.
Speaker 1: This guy, Henry Lee Moore, aside from having three three names,
Speaker 1: is not a good suspect for the serial killer, right.
Speaker 1: He apparently wanted the deeds to his family house. And
Speaker 1: like you said, it's very rare for a serial killer
Speaker 1: to go back.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: The deal with the three names. They don't all have
Speaker 4: three names.
Speaker 1: No, I know, but so many of them do.
Speaker 4: Well, No, the news reports it that way to distinguish them.
Speaker 4: For every other Henry more in the world. So like
Speaker 4: everyone's always like serial killers have three names. No, they're
Speaker 4: just reported that way.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, I love him when things are just explained. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
Speaker 4: Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
Speaker 1: I think you're right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So if anyone ever writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant,
Speaker 4: we're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I would kill you,
Speaker 1: thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either.
Speaker 3: Hey, you want to.
Speaker 4: Shake on it? Jerry witnessed.
Speaker 1: So the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a
Speaker 1: red herring. Like a lot of people say, well, he
Speaker 1: was the one. He was a serial killer behind it,
Speaker 1: because the the serial murder started right after he got
Speaker 1: out of prison in Kansas, Yes, and then they ended
Speaker 1: right after he got caught in Columbia, Missouri with his family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean kind of makes sense, it does.
Speaker 1: But that's where the whole thing really begins an end.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people say, well, it wasn't Henry
Speaker 1: ly more so, it wasn't a serial killing.
Speaker 4: Well plus sorry, but his his killing his own family
Speaker 4: was about obtaining the deeds to his family house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Speaker 4: Oh so that was greed motivated, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
Speaker 1: this guy was just a jerk. So since Henry Lee
Speaker 1: Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once somebody
Speaker 1: then finds out that it wasn't Henry ly Moore, they
Speaker 1: stopped thinking it was a serial murderer. Rightly says not
Speaker 1: so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because Henry Lee Moore's
Speaker 1: out of the equation doesn't mean there's not a serial
Speaker 1: killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the similarities between these
Speaker 1: five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
Speaker 1: found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
Speaker 1: and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
Speaker 1: light low.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: Axes were used in four of the five, but he
Speaker 1: says that's just probably a matter of convenience. A pipe
Speaker 1: I think was used in the Mammoth, Illinois case, which
Speaker 1: is again an implement of convenience too. Right, Sure, don't
Speaker 1: have an axe, handy, go for a lead pipe.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, he probably didn't bring that with you.
Speaker 1: Right, there were tell them about the tell them about
Speaker 1: the mirrors, Chuck.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean at several of these places the mirrors
Speaker 4: were covered up. I mean that's a big one. Yeah,
Speaker 4: mirrors and windows. And in one of the places, the
Speaker 4: telephone was covered. And the thought there is is that,
Speaker 4: like you said earlier, like they don't want the victims
Speaker 4: to be watching them even after death, or to be
Speaker 4: seen in the mirrors and windows being covered. But the phone,
Speaker 4: apparently it was one of those old box phones on
Speaker 4: the wall that you crank, and it has the two
Speaker 4: it sort of looks like a face right when you
Speaker 4: look at it. It has like looks like two eyes
Speaker 4: and a nose. And so the thought was that that
Speaker 4: even looks like a face to the dranged serial killer.
Speaker 4: So they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing
Speaker 4: else makes much sense. You know, you're not going to
Speaker 4: in nineteen twelve, you're not getting phone calls after midnight.
Speaker 4: You probably probably don't get more than a couple of
Speaker 4: phone calls a week in nineteen.
Speaker 1: Twelve, right, most people have phones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable
Speaker 4: it anyway.
Speaker 1: No, there was another female victim, a young female victim
Speaker 1: in Mammoth who was found basically the same way that
Speaker 1: Lena's still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown
Speaker 1: up over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there
Speaker 1: was a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valliska where
Speaker 1: and one other town too where the killer went on
Speaker 1: to try to kill again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was the most interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Either successfully did kill again. There was one where he
Speaker 1: went to an adjacent house whose backyard connected the first
Speaker 1: murder house and then went in and killed another family
Speaker 1: right afterwards.
Speaker 4: That was Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1: And then in Valliska, the telephone operator who was like
Speaker 1: sleeping in the telephone switchboard.
Speaker 3: Headquarters because no calls were coming through.
Speaker 1: She reported the door knob being tried about two hours
Speaker 1: after the more house members were murdered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like herd footsteps come up to the door, try
Speaker 4: to open it, and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a little shaky. But the last one was the
Speaker 4: one that kind of sent the chill up my spine.
Speaker 4: It was the one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola,
Speaker 4: I bet you there are people there laughing because it's
Speaker 4: probably pronounced Paula or something probably, but who knows p
Speaker 4: a a. Kansas, there was a second family, Missus Longmire,
Speaker 4: the Longmere family. They were awaken she and her daughter
Speaker 4: at about midnight to the sound of broken glass, went
Speaker 4: downstairs and saw a dude in their dining room who
Speaker 4: had just broken oil lamp chimney and then got the
Speaker 4: heck out of there through a window. They actually saw
Speaker 4: a guy.
Speaker 1: So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
Speaker 1: they woke up and saw the man who was about
Speaker 1: to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe,
Speaker 1: and this probably leaving our house.
Speaker 4: And these were all trained towns, so they were all
Speaker 4: linked by train depots. So by all accounts, there was
Speaker 4: a train going serial killer, uh for a couple of
Speaker 4: years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people hopping trains. Never
Speaker 4: ever caught in that nuts.
Speaker 1: It is nuts, and that the Veliska axe murders were
Speaker 1: probably one of his crazy but we'll never know, no.
Speaker 1: You know, when you say stuff like that, or when
Speaker 1: you see stuff like that in print too, like we'll
Speaker 1: never know who it was, it makes you wonder, like
Speaker 1: what kind of technology are we going to have in
Speaker 1: the future, like will we never know or are we
Speaker 1: going to come up with something one day where we're like,
Speaker 1: oh it was this guy. Yeah, like now we know,
Speaker 1: you know who who knows the future knows? That's who knows.
Speaker 4: We should do one on Ed Geen. Okay, that's like
Speaker 4: kind of one of the big big ones we haven't covered.
Speaker 1: Okay, I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: true crime.
Speaker 4: Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
Speaker 4: we used to do multiple kind of creepy uppisodes.
Speaker 1: I think we did last time too was October.
Speaker 4: Yea, all right, we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial
Speaker 4: killer type thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah we did hinter Kfech I think was that
Speaker 1: last look? I think so?
Speaker 3: Ye Okay.
Speaker 1: Uh. If you want to know more about the Veliska
Speaker 1: X murders, well again strongly recommend you go look up
Speaker 1: ed Epperley. You can read the Smithsonian article The X
Speaker 1: Murder Who Got Away, which is great. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: were plenty of other articles that we relied on that
Speaker 1: we love.
Speaker 3: Thank you for those.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can also hang out with us
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Speaker 1: Oh I love this email.
Speaker 4: Yeah remember this one. It was like from yesterday.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
Speaker 4: saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the root.
Speaker 4: Tested for Crone's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
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Speaker 4: when he got to the part about the aggressive iron
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Speaker 1: That is so awesome, man, dude, haad hookworm. Can you
Speaker 1: believe it? Then? And thank you James, and.
Speaker 4: Good luck to you cousin.
Speaker 1: Way to go for being so smart to connect the
Speaker 1: dots too.
Speaker 4: I think your cousin owes you a pizza or a beer.
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