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Speaker 1: The following episode contains deeply disturbing scenes of violence, murder,
Speaker 1: and sexual violence toward children. Parental discretion as advised. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained, Season six, episode twelve, A Darkness on
Speaker 1: the Edge of Town, Part two. On Tuesday, June eleventh
Speaker 1: of nineteen twelve, the people of Vi Liska rose unsteadily
Speaker 1: into a new dawn, with any relief at having made
Speaker 1: it through the night quickly tempered by the renewed realization
Speaker 1: of the horrors from the day before. None perhaps felt
Speaker 1: them more strongly than Sarah and Joe Stillinger, parents to
Speaker 1: young Aina and Lena. Sarah, who was heavily pregnant with
Speaker 1: the couple's tenth child at the time, was at home
Speaker 1: when she received word that some kind of catastrophic event
Speaker 1: had taken place at the Moor's house. After numerous failed
Speaker 1: attempts to call the family, she was eventually informed by
Speaker 1: the operator that there was no use trying to speak
Speaker 1: to them because everyone in the house was dead. At
Speaker 1: first light on the Tuesday morning, City Marshaw Hank Houghton
Speaker 1: and Sheriff Owen Jackson reconvened at the house to carry
Speaker 1: out a second search with the bloodhounds, only to find
Speaker 1: a busy crowd of onlookers, from journalists to family and
Speaker 1: everyone in between, already waiting for them outside. The crowd
Speaker 1: looked on with excited anticipation as the dogs appeared at
Speaker 1: the door, then once again headed west toward the West
Speaker 1: not Away River, following ascent picked up from inside a
Speaker 1: closet where a possible footprint of the killer was found.
Speaker 1: One familiar face among the onlookers hurrying to keep up
Speaker 1: with the dogs was local business owner and banker Frank Jones.
Speaker 1: Years later, some would claim to have overheard him saying
Speaker 1: that the dogs were going in the wrong direction, as
Speaker 1: if he knew something of the killer's whereabouts. Once again,
Speaker 1: the dogs eventually lost interest after reaching the bushes by
Speaker 1: the river bank. For Sheriff Jackson, However, it was just
Speaker 1: about the only solid clue they had, believing that the
Speaker 1: dogs had simply lost the scent because the killer had
Speaker 1: waded into the water to get to the other side.
Speaker 1: A one hundred volunteer search party was promptly gathered up
Speaker 1: to search the river banks, with one half cent to Clarinda,
Speaker 1: fifteen miles south and told to walk north, while the
Speaker 1: other was instructed to walk down from Veliska to meet them.
Speaker 1: Nothing useful was found. At some point on Tuesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: a man reeking of Booze, stumbled onto the porch of
Speaker 1: the Moor's home and introduced himself as m W. Mccloffrey,
Speaker 1: Special Agent in charge of the Department of Justice Bureau
Speaker 1: of Criminal Identification at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Mcclofrey was
Speaker 1: an apparent expert in collecting finger prints and had volunteered
Speaker 1: its services to help in the case. After being sent
Speaker 1: home by the coroner, doctor Linquist to sober up, he
Speaker 1: returned later in the day to put his finely honed
Speaker 1: techniques to use. After three days scouring the property, however,
Speaker 1: he failed to find a single usable print. Later, at
Speaker 1: the coroner's inquest, members of the community were invited to
Speaker 1: come forward with any information they might have regarding the
Speaker 1: sighting of any suspicious looking people near the moor house
Speaker 1: on the night of the murders, but no one had
Speaker 1: seen a thing, and so with little more to add
Speaker 1: to the investigation. At the end of the second day,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Jackson, City Marshall Houghton, doctor Linquist, a newly appointed
Speaker 1: private detective Thomas O'Leary compared notes, there was little doubting
Speaker 1: the murder weapon, which turned out to be an old,
Speaker 1: blunt and rusted axe of Joe Moore's, taken from the
Speaker 1: wood shed outside the house. Other than that, however, nothing
Speaker 1: much seemed to make sense. Why, for example, had the
Speaker 1: killer taken pains to cover the window in the door
Speaker 1: of the bedroom downstairs. The covering of the mirrors too,
Speaker 1: which extended to the mirrors in the upstairs bedrooms as
Speaker 1: well as the downstairs won was also baffling. Another strange
Speaker 1: feature was the discovery of a watch belonging to Joe
Speaker 1: that had likely been taken from Joe and Sarah's bedroom upstairs,
Speaker 1: but was left abandoned in the bedroom downstairs, And what
Speaker 1: to make of Lena's body found in its peculiar pose,
Speaker 1: not to mention the damp slab of bacon dropped nearby.
Speaker 1: One other oddity was that all the doors, with the
Speaker 1: exception of the front door, were bolt locked from the inside.
Speaker 1: It may well have been that the killer entered through
Speaker 1: one of the bolt locked doors that had been left
Speaker 1: open and simply locked it behind them before locking the
Speaker 1: front door on their way out. However, it offered up
Speaker 1: the tantalizing possibility that the killer already had a key
Speaker 1: for the property, and added to it all was the
Speaker 1: sinister implication that someone had been spying on the family
Speaker 1: from the hayloft for some time before deciding to carry
Speaker 1: out the attack. On Wednesday, June twelfth, the funeral of
Speaker 1: Sarah and Joe Moore and their children, herman Mary, Arthur
Speaker 1: and Paul, along with Lena and Ainah Stillinger, was held
Speaker 1: at Veliska City Hall, with each of the eight closed
Speaker 1: caskets arranged in a semicircle at the back in front
Speaker 1: of a makeshift pulpit. Reverend William Ewing led the service
Speaker 1: as women and men wept openly and loudly at the
Speaker 1: senseless waste of human life. Seated at the front were
Speaker 1: Joe and Sarah Moore's parents and siblings, alongside the heavily
Speaker 1: pregnant Sarah Stillinger and her husband Joe, as well as
Speaker 1: their seven remaining children, all of whom sat in a
Speaker 1: shocked days. Perhaps Reverend Ewing's words brought comfort and the
Speaker 1: conviction that, if nothing else, the victims, both young and old,
Speaker 1: were at the very least now in heaven, basking in
Speaker 1: the warm embrace of God's love, but in reality there
Speaker 1: was likely no amount of faith or anything Ewing could
Speaker 1: do or say that could possibly plug the chasm of
Speaker 1: grief that had been ripped open inside the More and
Speaker 1: would remain there until their own dying days. At the
Speaker 1: end of the service, the caskets were carried out by
Speaker 1: poor bearers in front of a crowd of roughly seven
Speaker 1: thousand people, almost half of them journalists who'd gathered to
Speaker 1: pay their respects, and then one by one, the coffins
Speaker 1: were transported north to Veliska Cemetery and committed to the earth.
Speaker 1: Back at the More property, a cleaning team stripped the
Speaker 1: bloodstained bedding and mattresses from the beds, much of it
Speaker 1: still dotted with pieces of skin, brain, and fragments of bone,
Speaker 1: then carted it off to the local dump and burned
Speaker 1: it all. A few days later, roughly fifty miles away
Speaker 1: in Council Bluffs, a bag was left at a laundrette
Speaker 1: with no name or identifying marks, with an instruction to
Speaker 1: simply clean the contents and have it all placed in
Speaker 1: a basket of laundry that was due to be sent
Speaker 1: to a drug store in Macedonia. When the worker on
Speaker 1: duty emptied the bag. They were surprised to find a wet,
Speaker 1: starched white shirt inside that was completely covered in a pale,
Speaker 1: dark red stain which looked to her professional eye like
Speaker 1: blood that had been soaked in water. Thinking little of
Speaker 1: it at the time, she duly cleaned the shirt and
Speaker 1: sent it back as requested, to the drug store in Macedonia,
Speaker 1: where it was later collected. After hearing about the killings
Speaker 1: in Veliska, she then reported the incident to local authorities,
Speaker 1: who managed to track down the man who picked it up.
Speaker 1: His name was Reverend George Kelly, the same reverend who'd
Speaker 1: been in Veliska on the night of the murders and
Speaker 1: who talked about nothing else since his return to Macedonia
Speaker 1: where he lived. Back in Valiska, as the initial shock
Speaker 1: of the event began to wear off, people turned once
Speaker 1: again to speculating about the identity of the killer. One
Speaker 1: early name in the frame was Sam Moyer, Joe Moore's
Speaker 1: feckless brother in law by marriage to a younger sister.
Speaker 1: Moya offered little by way of stability or financial support,
Speaker 1: and frequently came to blows with Joe about it. Another
Speaker 1: early candidate was Roy van Gilder, an ex brother in
Speaker 1: law of Sarah Moore. Like Moya, van Gilder was considered
Speaker 1: to be a man of poor moral qualities who was
Speaker 1: also prone to violence. A handful of itinerant workers and
Speaker 1: traveling salesmen were also considered suspects, including one laceller who
Speaker 1: was known to have visited the Moor house the day
Speaker 1: before the killings. For Detective O'Leary, However, given the barbarity
Speaker 1: of the crime, none of these possibilities seemed plausible, and
Speaker 1: soon another theory began to emerge. As shocking as the
Speaker 1: Viliska murders were, they were only one of a string
Speaker 1: of violent murders involving the use of an axe that
Speaker 1: took place in the Midwest around the same time. Back
Speaker 1: in September nineteen eleven, six hundred miles west of Viliska
Speaker 1: in Colorado Springs, a couple and their daughter were murdered,
Speaker 1: along with their neighbor and her two sons. Each of
Speaker 1: them had been smashed in the head with an axe.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, this time in Monmouth, Illinois, two hundred
Speaker 1: miles east of Veliska, another couple and their daughter were
Speaker 1: killed in a similar fashion. Found close to the scene
Speaker 1: was a flashlight bearing the inscription Colorado Springs September fourth.
Speaker 1: The following month, another couple and their three children were
Speaker 1: also brutally murdered by acts in Ellsworth, Kansas, three hundred
Speaker 1: miles away. Then on the fifth of June in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: only five days before the Veliska killings, a husband and
Speaker 1: wife were murdered in their sleep in Paola, Kansas. The
Speaker 1: pickaxe used to kill them was left behind on their
Speaker 1: neighbors front porch. In some cases, windows were once again
Speaker 1: covered haphazardly with clothing, while all victims were dispatched in
Speaker 1: much the same way, with no wounds occurring below the neck.
Speaker 1: In at least two of the attacks, oil lamps were
Speaker 1: found with their globes removed, just as they were in Veliska,
Speaker 1: all of which led detective O'Leary to speculate that the
Speaker 1: crimes were all committed by the same person. It was
Speaker 1: roughly a week after the Vliska murders the Sheriff Jackson
Speaker 1: was contacted by a man named Tom Dyer, a foreman
Speaker 1: who was overseeing the building of a railroad bridge in
Speaker 1: Creston who had a troubling story to tell. Back. Early
Speaker 1: in the morning of Monday the tenth, the day the
Speaker 1: more and stillinger bodies were found, Dia was approached by
Speaker 1: an unshaven, disheveled looking man who was also soaking wet
Speaker 1: from the knees down, as if he'd been wading through water.
Speaker 1: The man, who introduced himself as Andy Sawyer, was looking
Speaker 1: for work and claimed to have experience operating steam engines.
Speaker 1: Though a little put off by his appearance, Dia was
Speaker 1: in need of men and agreed to give him a go.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, DIA's crew arrived in Greenfield, fifty miles
Speaker 1: northeast of Vliska, to begin work constructing a bridge, where
Speaker 1: it quickly became clear that Sawyer had never operated to
Speaker 1: the steam engine in his life. Keen to keep him
Speaker 1: on regardless, Da assigned him the job of chopping wood
Speaker 1: and sharpening the large wooden stakes that were driven into
Speaker 1: the ground to form the foundation of the bridge. Sawyer
Speaker 1: took to the work with gusto, wielding his axe with
Speaker 1: a speed and skill that DA had never seen before,
Speaker 1: and he was barely seen without it. Either he was
Speaker 1: using it to chop wood or he was busy sharpening
Speaker 1: it some even later said he took it to bed
Speaker 1: with him at night. But there was something else about
Speaker 1: him too. He muttered constantly to himself under his breath
Speaker 1: and seemed not to want to engage with anyone else,
Speaker 1: taking his breaks alone away from the rest of the crew.
Speaker 1: There was no other way to put it, said Da.
Speaker 1: He just seemed kind of mad, And when the team
Speaker 1: read about the killings of Veliska in that Monday's afternoon paper,
Speaker 1: it seemed to trigger something Sawyer. He couldn't stop talking
Speaker 1: about it, how he himself had been in Vliska that
Speaker 1: night but had left to avoid suspicion, even though the
Speaker 1: crime had yet to be uncovered. When he apparently did
Speaker 1: so the next day when the crew passed through Veliska,
Speaker 1: Sawyer seemed to take delight in pointing out exactly where
Speaker 1: the crime took place, and even speculated on the route
Speaker 1: the killer had taken when he fled the scene. And
Speaker 1: so on Tuesday, June eighteenth, Sheriff Jackson headed down to
Speaker 1: the Red Oak rail yard, where Dyer and his crew
Speaker 1: were then stationed, to pay Sawyer a visit. It isn't
Speaker 1: known exactly what was said between the two men, only
Speaker 1: that afterwards Sawyer seemed deeply rattled. The next day, he
Speaker 1: quit his job and asked for his pay to be
Speaker 1: forwarded to an address in North Dakota, and then promptly disappeared.
Speaker 1: A week later, on Monday, June twenty fourth, Reverend George
Speaker 1: Kelly arrived back in Vliska for the first time since
Speaker 1: the morning of the murders. In a letter written the
Speaker 1: week before to Reverend Ewing, Kelly claimed to have experience
Speaker 1: in the art of criminology, having apparently studied it for
Speaker 1: a number of years in England before he decided to
Speaker 1: join the church. Ewing had been kind enough to arrange
Speaker 1: it for Kelly to take a look inside the moor
Speaker 1: House to see if he might be able to lend
Speaker 1: a hand in cracking the case. That afternoon, Ewing escorted
Speaker 1: Kelly to the property, where he proceeded to examine the
Speaker 1: various rooms, often stopping still for prolonged periods of time,
Speaker 1: claiming to be experiencing strange sensations as if a higher
Speaker 1: power were trying to communicate with him. After taking down
Speaker 1: a number of notes, he then returned to Macedonia in
Speaker 1: July with Detective O'Leary making little progress, the state stepped
Speaker 1: into help, with State Governor Beryl Carroll announcing a five
Speaker 1: hundred dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest
Speaker 1: of the culprit, while also granting permission to the Iowa
Speaker 1: Attorney General, George Cosson to hire another detective. C. W.
Speaker 1: Toby was promptly assigned from the Kansas office of the
Speaker 1: William Burns Detective Agency. The agency was established in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine by William J. Burns, who'd achieved notoriety for
Speaker 1: his work investigating the Los Angeles Times bombing of nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: one of the largest domestic terror campaigns in American history,
Speaker 1: and was considered one of the very best the country
Speaker 1: had to offer. A few weeks later, detective Toby, along
Speaker 1: with Detective O'Leary and a number of other law enforcement officials,
Speaker 1: received letters from Reverend Kelly. In them, Kelly, now referring
Speaker 1: to himself as a detective, having by then digested his
Speaker 1: findings from the crime scene, shared his belief that a
Speaker 1: member of the Moore family was most likely responsible for
Speaker 1: the murders. He also claimed to have found an empty
Speaker 1: vial in one of the bedrooms, which he believed was
Speaker 1: evidence that the family had been drugged before they were murdered.
Speaker 1: Perhaps more revealingly, however, Kelly also claimed to have possibly
Speaker 1: seen the killer at the train station shortly before he
Speaker 1: boarded the fifteen nineteen train back to Macedonia on the
Speaker 1: morning of the attacks. Kelly had apparently spoken to the
Speaker 1: suspicious looking man, who he said may also have boarded
Speaker 1: the same train as Kelly went on to explain, being
Speaker 1: a light sleeper, he'd found himself going out for walks
Speaker 1: at night during his stay in Veliska and had apparently
Speaker 1: seen this same man aimlessly walking the streets in the
Speaker 1: early hours of Fay and Saturday morning. After speaking to
Speaker 1: some acquaintances back in Vliska, Kelly had apparently also ascertained
Speaker 1: that this mystery man had been asking around about the
Speaker 1: Presbyterian church where the Moors and Stillinger girls attended the
Speaker 1: children's exercises the night before they died. Kelly also claimed
Speaker 1: that he might have even seen the man at that
Speaker 1: very service. The man, he concluded, had also been staying
Speaker 1: by the river and was seen running toward it sometime
Speaker 1: around one and two am on Sunday morning, a little
Speaker 1: after the time that the Moors and Stillinger Girls were
Speaker 1: thought to have been killed. This podcast is sponsored by
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Speaker 1: Though Detective O'Leary was keen to hear more from Kelly,
Speaker 1: Detective Toby, who by then considered the missing Andy Sawyer
Speaker 1: as the prime suspect, was adamant he was not to
Speaker 1: be engaged in any professional capacity whatsoever. On July eleventh,
Speaker 1: Toby filed his first report for the Attorney General, explaining
Speaker 1: what he believed had taken place, basing his interpretation on
Speaker 1: a coroner, doctor Linquist's disturbing analysis of the crime scene.
Speaker 1: The killer, he said, had not acted out of spite,
Speaker 1: but out of an excessive sexual impulse. After killing Lina,
Speaker 1: they'd removed her underwear and kept it tied around their
Speaker 1: neck as they continued killing, and when they'd finished, had
Speaker 1: stayed behind to revel in their crime, arranging Lina's body,
Speaker 1: which had likely been molested to specifically in order to
Speaker 1: pleasure themselves. Though it wasn't mentioned in Toby's report, there
Speaker 1: as the implication that the raw slab of bacon had
Speaker 1: been used for this purpose. In early September, another family
Speaker 1: this time, in Quincy, Illinois, were found brutally murdered, their
Speaker 1: heads chopped and crushed with an axe. The prime suspect
Speaker 1: this time was the sun Ray Van Schmidt. Spotting obvious
Speaker 1: similarities with the Veliska case, O'Leary and Toby traveled to
Speaker 1: Quincy to investigate, with O'Leary concluding that fan Schmidt was
Speaker 1: indeed the culprit, while Toby stuck to his conviction that
Speaker 1: an as yet unknown roving murderer was to blame. In
Speaker 1: the end, the evidence was overwhelming and fan Schmidt was
Speaker 1: convicted of the crimes either way. With roughly thirty people
Speaker 1: having now been killed in a similar manner throughout the
Speaker 1: Midwest in just over a year, there was good reason
Speaker 1: to suspect that at least some were connected. One morning
Speaker 1: in late summer nineteen twelve, a letter sent to Marshall
Speaker 1: Houghton from a Chicago police detective suggested Glasko Nchev as
Speaker 1: a possible suspect. In January nineteen ten, a woman was
Speaker 1: found decapitated in the street in Chicago, and Enchev, originally
Speaker 1: from Bulgaria, had confessed to the crime. Enchev was arrested,
Speaker 1: but then promptly committed to a psychiatric facility, from which
Speaker 1: he then escaped. When it was speculated that the mirrors
Speaker 1: in the moor house had been covered up due to
Speaker 1: an Eastern European superstition, the Bulgarian Nchev suddenly appeared to
Speaker 1: fit the profile. The man, however, was never found and
Speaker 1: before long was forgotten about completely. One night in July,
Speaker 1: Vliska night watchman Might Keirns was called to a disturbance
Speaker 1: taking place at the Vliska Hotel. A man had begun
Speaker 1: vividly and enthusiastically regaling guests with his interpretation of how
Speaker 1: the murders must have occurred, garishly re enacting the axe
Speaker 1: swings and cries of the victims with the perverse relish.
Speaker 1: As the horrified guests watched on, with some brought to
Speaker 1: tears by the strange man's unpalatable display, Cairns was forced
Speaker 1: to step in to calm things down, surprised to find
Speaker 1: that the man was none other than Presbyterian minister George Kelly.
Speaker 1: Some months later in the autumn, Kelly and his wife
Speaker 1: moved to the city of Carroll in Iowa, where he
Speaker 1: continued to talk openly about his fascination with the veliska case.
Speaker 1: He even once told a man that he had been
Speaker 1: accused of committing the crime himself, because it was found
Speaker 1: that he hadn't used his bed the night had occurred,
Speaker 1: and had arrived at the station the next morning a
Speaker 1: full hour before his train was due to leave, a
Speaker 1: fact that was later verified by witnesses. Kelly had also
Speaker 1: become suspicious of anyone he didn't recognize, questioning them to
Speaker 1: see if they were detectives looking for him, and even
Speaker 1: once asked a physician what a rational man would have
Speaker 1: to do in order to appear insane. When he was
Speaker 1: eventually contacted and questioned about the apparent bloodstains found on
Speaker 1: his shirt, he said first that it was from a
Speaker 1: hair tonic of his, then later that it was simply
Speaker 1: catch up. Meanwhile, a third detective named W. S. Gordon
Speaker 1: was assigned to the case by the Burns Agency. He
Speaker 1: too quickly pinpointed Andy Sawyer as a leading suspect, only
Speaker 1: to find, much to his frustration, that nobody seemed to
Speaker 1: know where he was. Making it his mission to find him. Gordon,
Speaker 1: along with Montgomery County Attorney William Ratcliffe, eventually tracked the
Speaker 1: man down to North Dakota, where he lived on a
Speaker 1: homestead with his wife and children. Sawyer denied flat out
Speaker 1: that he'd committed the crime, claiming that he'd boarded a
Speaker 1: train at ten twenty two pm that night from Osceola
Speaker 1: and arrived in the city of Creston sometime between three
Speaker 1: to four am the next morning, a period of time
Speaker 1: that would span the entirety of the crime. His alibi
Speaker 1: checked out, Andy Sawyer was not their man. At the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen twelve, Attorney General Cosson assigned Assistant General
Speaker 1: Attorney Henry Sampson to take over the investigation from the
Speaker 1: state perspective. Soon after, he received a letter from a
Speaker 1: private detective unrelated to the case, who had some interesting
Speaker 1: things to say about Reverend George Kelly. The man, it
Speaker 1: was claimed, was a window peeker who harbored unusual sexual proclivities.
Speaker 1: He was slippery too, often borrowing money but neglecting to
Speaker 1: pay it back, and continued to talk often about the
Speaker 1: Veliska killings. Deciding Kelly should be questioned at once, Sampson
Speaker 1: sent the Assistant State Fire Marshal Ja Tracy to speak
Speaker 1: with him in Omaha, Nebraska, where he was then living.
Speaker 1: There Kelly repeated his story about the strange man he
Speaker 1: apparently saw at the train depot. Only by now this
Speaker 1: mysterious figure had become a dark complexioned man. Tracy was
Speaker 1: convinced that Kelly was hiding something and suggested to Sampson
Speaker 1: that they keep an eye on him back in Veliska. However,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Jackson was of the opinion that the then thirty
Speaker 1: five year old Kelly was little more than a harmless
Speaker 1: eccentric with no history of causing harm to anyone. With
Speaker 1: Andy Sawyer now out of the picture, however, they were
Speaker 1: struggling to identify any other likely culprits. Things only got
Speaker 1: worse when Detective O'Leary, having come round to the mass
Speaker 1: murderer theory, began looking closer into the other recent acts
Speaker 1: murders that had occurred in the region. Though all were
Speaker 1: superficially similar to the Viliska killings, it soon became clear
Speaker 1: that most were not connected in any way at all,
Speaker 1: and as time went on, the town's fear and fascination
Speaker 1: with the case morphed inevitably to anger at the authority's
Speaker 1: inability to catch the killer. The town, and most of all,
Speaker 1: the stillinger and more families were restless for answers, and
Speaker 1: as one possible suspect after another was scratched off the list,
Speaker 1: it was only natural that the local community would be
Speaker 1: drawn to the names that were left. In April nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: at all broad shouldered Texan arrived in Veliska, claiming that
Speaker 1: he was there on behalf of some investors who were
Speaker 1: looking to purchase farmland in the county. In truth, forty
Speaker 1: eight year old James Newton Wilkerson was another private investigator
Speaker 1: from the William Burns Agency who liked to covertly bed
Speaker 1: himself in with the locals to get a sense of
Speaker 1: what the person on the street had to say about
Speaker 1: it all, and one name in particular seemed to crop
Speaker 1: up more than any other local businessman, and as of
Speaker 1: October nineteen twelve, recently elected Iowa State Senator Frank Jones.
Speaker 1: The then fifty seven year old Frank Fernando Jones was
Speaker 1: originally from Steuben County in New York, but moved to
Speaker 1: Veliska in eighteen seventy five along with his parents and
Speaker 1: brother when they purchased a small plo to farmland just
Speaker 1: outside the town. Jones began his working life as a
Speaker 1: farmer and teacher, before eventually becoming a full time bookkeeper
Speaker 1: for the Baines and Waterman Farming implement store in Veliska.
Speaker 1: After working his way up in eighteen ninety two, Jones
Speaker 1: then bought his own store, quickly establishing himself as one
Speaker 1: of the leading implement sellers in the county, before entering
Speaker 1: the banking trade two years later as a partner in
Speaker 1: the Citizens Bank of Vliska. In nineteen oh one, with
Speaker 1: Jones having sold his implement store, Joe Moore was installed
Speaker 1: as its new manager. When Jones then brought the store
Speaker 1: back soon after, he decided to keep Joe on. A
Speaker 1: few years later, however, Joe left the store to open
Speaker 1: up his own right across the street from Frank's, in
Speaker 1: direct competition with him. This, some believed was one reason
Speaker 1: to suspect that Jones had it in him. Another more
Speaker 1: scourless rumor, however, was that Joe was having an affair
Speaker 1: with Frank's daughter in law, Donna Jones, who was married
Speaker 1: to his son Albert, who also happened to be the
Speaker 1: More's neighbors. This affair was further complicated by the fact
Speaker 1: that Frank was rumored to also be in love with Donna.
Speaker 1: The rumors were given some credibility when it emerged that
Speaker 1: Joe Moore was seen having what some said was an
Speaker 1: intense conversation with Frank's son Albert the night before his
Speaker 1: entire family were butchered. There was no way of knowing
Speaker 1: for sure what was and wasn't true, but one thing
Speaker 1: was for certain. Texan detective James Wilkinson was very keen
Speaker 1: to find out. In the autumn of nineteen thirteen, having
Speaker 1: been forced to drop out of the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary
Speaker 1: due to his debts, Reverend George Kelly and his wife
Speaker 1: Laura moved to Winner in South Dakota, where he took
Speaker 1: up a job as a Methodist preacher. Instead, he also
Speaker 1: worked a second job as a typist for hire. In
Speaker 1: December nineteen thirteen, he placed an advert in the Omaha
Speaker 1: World Herald newspaper appealing for a stenographic typist to help
Speaker 1: him with a novel he was apparently writing. The applicant
Speaker 1: would have to be female, interested in literature and the
Speaker 1: fine arts, and would also have to be comfortable posing
Speaker 1: as a model for all the pictures he planned to
Speaker 1: put in the book. A short time later, he received
Speaker 1: a reply from one Jessamine Hodgson Kelly, referring to himself
Speaker 1: by his first name. Lynn then wrote back to Hodgson,
Speaker 1: thanking her for the response, but wanted to know a
Speaker 1: few more things before they went any further. That she
Speaker 1: was single and free to go wherever she pleased without
Speaker 1: people inquiring of her, while also stressing that with regards
Speaker 1: to the posing, she would have to be willing to
Speaker 1: pose exactly as he wished. He finished by asking her
Speaker 1: what she thought of the naked human form and whether
Speaker 1: she objected to studies of nudes, saying that she shouldn't
Speaker 1: because art is beautiful and God made us. So. Disturbed
Speaker 1: by his response, Hodgson passed the letters on to her pastor,
Speaker 1: who in turn forwarded them on to authorities in Council Bluffs.
Speaker 1: The authorities duly wrote back to Kelly, pretending to be
Speaker 1: Jessamine Hodgson, and were deeply alarmed at what he replied,
Speaker 1: with one letter reading, I am a favorite with everyone,
Speaker 1: especially with the girls. They like me, they trust me,
Speaker 1: and I have never wronged one yet. Please jessimin, I
Speaker 1: faithfully promise you I shall never utter a word about
Speaker 1: your correspondence or your relations with me. Our relations together
Speaker 1: of work and pleasure shall be kept a secret with
Speaker 1: me forever. I want you to be faithful to me. Jessamine,
Speaker 1: never breathe one word of what we do together alone
Speaker 1: another read now, I am only human. I must not boast.
Speaker 1: Sometime I may do wrong. I may yield to temptation sometime.
Speaker 1: Who can ever tell? None of us know what we
Speaker 1: will do. I will be as good to you as
Speaker 1: I can. But we may fall in love with one
Speaker 1: another if we work long enough. I am sure you
Speaker 1: will keep whatever is done between us always a strict secret.
Speaker 1: I will affectionately lynn. On the thirtieth of January nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: a man and walked into Reverend Kelly's office in winter
Speaker 1: and introduced himself as a Deputy United States Marshal. Kelly
Speaker 1: slouched at his desk, telling the man he knew they
Speaker 1: were coming for him about the Veliska murders, but the
Speaker 1: deputy looked confused he was in fact there because of
Speaker 1: the letters. As it transpired, Kelly had successfully convinced a
Speaker 1: number of young women to unwittingly pose nude for him.
Speaker 1: After being arrested, he was found guilty of perpetrating immoral acts,
Speaker 1: with the judge describing some of what he'd written in
Speaker 1: his letters to obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy to be
Speaker 1: spread upon the record. At his indictment, Kelly was sentenced
Speaker 1: to a year in jail and placed in prison in
Speaker 1: Sue Falls, where he frequently acted out violently toward guards
Speaker 1: and was accused of trying to engage other prisoners in
Speaker 1: sexual acts. A few months into his incarceration, gan telling
Speaker 1: officers that he'd committed the murders in Viliska. After being
Speaker 1: judged potentially insane, he was taken to a psychiatric facility
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. For a number of months, where
Speaker 1: he was said to be a highly troublesome patient, again
Speaker 1: frequently flying into violent fits, and who was often observed
Speaker 1: concealing portions of meat then dropping them in random places
Speaker 1: without any apparent interest in eating them. After a few
Speaker 1: months in DC, he was returned to Sioux Fall's prison,
Speaker 1: but was never sentenced for his original guilty plea, and
Speaker 1: was released a few months after that before eventually moving
Speaker 1: once more to Sutton, Nebraska. It was sometime later in
Speaker 1: May nineteen fourteen that a woman walked into the Attorney
Speaker 1: General's office in Des Moines, Iowa's capital, asking to speak
Speaker 1: to Assistant Attorney Harry Sampson, who she'd heard was now
Speaker 1: spearheading the Viliska case. The woman had come on behalf
Speaker 1: of some one called Veena Tompkins, who'd come to her
Speaker 1: and her husband begging for shelter from a group of
Speaker 1: violent criminals, which included her husband and brother among them. Tompkins,
Speaker 1: who had two sons and was keen to escape her
Speaker 1: treacherous life, claimed to be in possession of a big secret,
Speaker 1: the true identity of the More family and the Stillinger
Speaker 1: Girl's murderer. For Texan Detective James Wilkinson, it was a
Speaker 1: story as long as it was convincing, and all of
Speaker 1: it led inexorably back to Iowan's Senator Frank Jones. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twelve, A Darkness
Speaker 1: on the Edge of Town. Part two. The third and
Speaker 1: final part, will be released next Friday, April fifteenth. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us,
Speaker 1: you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access
Speaker 1: to add free episodes, just go to patron dot com
Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book
Speaker 1: and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been
Speaker 1: covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones,
Speaker 1: among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music,
Speaker 1: are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
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Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com
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