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