January 3, 2024 • 22 mins
In the small railroad town of Villisca, Iowa, there is a quaint B&B at 508 East Second street you can still stay in for $150 a night, if you don’t mind sleeping in a home where eight people were murdered with an ax. The killer washed the blood off his fingers in a bowl filled with water then vanished, and a town turned against itself, every friendly face suddenly suspicious.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
One. So I was back in the bedroom where the
little Stillinger girls were murdered, and I was talking to them.
I just was conversing, telling them that I was who
I was, And all of a sudden, I got this
really cool feeling on my arm. And at the time
that I was back there, there was a team there
with a night vision camera. It looked like an ORB
(00:34):
had come and lit on my arm, and I feel
like that was just a communication between them and me.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The towns that dot southwestern Iowa are not a whole
lot different now than they were one hundred years ago.
If you're driving down Highway seventy one with a window
down on an early summer afternoon, the town of Alliska
will only take you a few minutes to drive through
a Dollar General, a splicih and Splash car wash, and
a farm equipment store, passing a blur, and then you're
(01:03):
in the middle of nowhere again, speeding through rolling hills
and tall grass prairie. This is the story of the
most famous murder home in Iowa and a murderer who
departed forever on a morning train, taking one last look
at a town he changed forever, closing his eyes as
the plains became a blur of green. What does a
(01:24):
man dream of when he walks out of a real nightmare?
A scene is so gruesome that a neighbor will come
running out of five o eight East Second Street shouting
to the crowd who had gathered outside, and yell, don't
go inside if you don't want to remember something that
will stay with you for the rest of your days.
This is Murder Holmes. I'm matt Rinovitch. Mary Peckham was
(02:04):
an early riser and a good neighbor. At seven am
on the morning of June tenth, nineteen twelve, she noticed
that the three bedroom farmhouse with a white clapboard was
unusually still unusual because the family that lived there, the Moors,
had a large family, four children, and the night before,
after a children's service at the Presbyterian Church, they'd agreed
(02:24):
to let two other children sleep over, Aina and Lena Stillinger.
Mary thought the least she could do was let the
Moor's chickens out of their coup, but she kept one
eye on the home, noting that the shades had been
pulled down tight in every window in the barn. She
found it peculiar that the livestock were still tied up,
(02:46):
so she found an employee of the Moors who had
a key, and he opened the door to five away
East Second Street. What the employee discovered inside would send
him screaming for help. Soon coroner, a doctor, and the
town's peace officer were inspecting the three bedrooms. In the
downstairs bedroom, the Stiltinger children had been murdered with an axe. Upstairs,
(03:09):
the four more children were also found dead, killed in
the same manner, and in the bedroom at the foot
of the stairs, Josiah Moore and his wife Sarah had
also been slain with the same axe, but the killer
had visited the father and mother a second time, carefully
lighting the gory scene with a kerosene lamp at the
foot of the bed, and then he had swung the
axe again, slicing Sarah's face into one inch strips and
(03:33):
pulverizing Josiah's head so viciously that the back of the
axe made a dent in the ceiling above, leaving plaster
dust on the bed. The coroner would say that Josiah's
head had been beaten into perfect jelly, blood soaked Josiah's pillow,
then saturated the bed sheets before dripping into his shoe
his wife had left under the bed until it was full.
(03:54):
The killer had tipped the shoe over, seemingly out of
the most evil curiosity, watching the blood spill out, Then
he carefully set it under the bed again to catch
more of Josie's blood. The windows had been locked, blinds
pulled down, sheets covered the glass doors inside the home,
and very strangely, a dark skirt had been thrown over
(04:16):
the mirror in the downstairs bedroom where the Stillinger girls
were found. Was the killer spooked by his own reflection
as he went about his work, perversely honoring the dead
he had butchered beyond recognition. After killing them a final touch,
he laid jackets, sheets clothes over each victim's head. Then
he filled a basin with water and washed the blood
(04:37):
off his fingers, wiped down the axe before resting it
against the wall, together with a five pound slab of
bacon he had removed from the ice box. He locked
the door on his way out, most likely as the
sun was just beginning to rise, blending in with other
Monday morning travelers. As he waited at the train station
five and weight East Second Street, and the vibrant family
(05:00):
lived there sat in a mortifying, buzzing silence, the rooms
curtained and dark. Eventually, if you listen closely, you could
hear a phone ringing in the home. Ayah and Lena
Stillinger's father was calling repeatedly, growing increasingly concerned that he
hadn't heard from Josiah. One hundred years later, on the
(05:20):
anniversary of the crime, the same acts would be displayed
by the Veliska Historical Society. It was found leaning on
the wall of the Stillinger girl's bedroom at what is
now known as the Veliska Axe Murder Home. Over a
century later, his identity remains a mystery. We'll be back
after a short break, We're back with murder Homes. The
(05:57):
Veliska Axe Murder Home is now owned by Martha Lynn,
who bought it with her late husband in nineteen ninety four.
You heard her voice at the beginning of the episode,
telling the story of her experience in the bedroom where
the Stillinger girls were murdered. From the beginning, Martha and
her husband wanted to bring the home back to its
original condition, tearing down the covered porches, getting rid of
(06:18):
the plumbing and electricity, a kind of reverse makeover, so
that by the time it was finished, the home on
East Second Street looked almost exactly like it did on
the day of the murders.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Structurally it looked very much like the nineteen twelve house.
Is it mostly original still or over time has there
been a lot of renovations.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, when we purchased it, it was a mess. It
was a royal mess. I wish you had a photograph
of that, because it had ugly green siding on it.
They had taken the kitchen area and taken the front
porch off and made that kitchen bigger, and of course
they put electricity in it, in the bathroom in it.
And so when we got the house, you make it
(07:00):
more authentic, we had to take all those things out.
We had to take the bathroom out, had to take
the electricity out, had to reconstruct some walls and windows,
and so it was about a two year project before
Darwin got it back to what it looked like in
nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Today, if you're brave enough, you can stay there with
some friends for four hundred and twenty eight dollars a night.
There's a sign out front that says Veliska Axe Murder House,
June nineteen twelve. Just in case anyone's forgotten what sets
this quaint farm home apart from all the others on
the block. Tours are a relative bargain at ten dollars.
(07:38):
Overnight guests don't always make it through the evening spook
by what they swear is paranormal activity. A few get
quite unhinged. One guest stabbed himself in the chest in
the middle of the night and had to be taken
to the hospital. But the concrete details of Veliska are
haunting enough. I asked Martha Lynne about the covered mirror
in the Stillinger girls bedroom. That's the one that sticks
(08:01):
with me the most.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Mark Why, in your opinion what the mirror is covered?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, I just think there's some old, old fashioned notions
about looking in the mirror and seeing your eyes and
seeing the crime through your eyes through a mirror or
something like that. But here's one thing, and it makes
you wonder if the Little Minister had something to do
with covering those because people's funerals used to be in
the homes, and so when visitors or guests would come
(08:30):
to see the body or to visit the family. The
family covered the mirror so people wouldn't be standing around
primping in front of them, combing their hair, fixing their
clothes or that. And so the show respect for the victims,
they would cover the mirrors, so people didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That's interesting when you mentioned the minister, you're referring to
George Kelly.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Reverend Kelly, yes, uh huh, because I hope he actually
entered the house. He was a known peeping tom and
he knew where the Moors lived because they had been
to the Sunday school program that night and he had
been there. And so because of his desire to go
peep in windows and keep on little girls and things
(09:12):
like that, he might have got there after the crime
happened and then went in the house, that's my theory.
And when he was in there, he might have taken
things and covered the mirrors because of him being a preacher,
and that might have been one reason why the mirrors recovered.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Reverend Lynn Kelly was a five foot two, red haired,
blue eyed creep by all accounts, born in England, he
had tried to find his footing in various Methodist churches
across the Midwest. Rootless, he traveled the sparse countryside, practicing
sermons that no one really wanted to hear. In his
spare time, he was also a sexual predator, firebug, and
(09:51):
peeping tom. On the night of the murderers, Kelly was
not only in Velliska, he was also sitting a few
feet away from Josiah Moore and his family had gathered
at the Presbyterian church there for a Sunday children's service.
He watched Josiah and Sarah as they proudly listened to
their youngest child, Paul, sing a hymn, finishing with an
off key but heartfelt lyric. Like any family. After a
(10:14):
satisfying night, they walked home slowly, the children running ahead
of them, Josi and Sarah holding hands. It was chilly
for an early summer night, and a light drizzle covered
the grass as they walked up the porch and entered
their home, the children laughing and pushing each other, Josiah
closing the door behind him. A guest of the Presbyterian
(10:35):
priest who lived close by, He soon found himself wandering
the streets, feeling sick to his stomach. He thought the
cold drizzle would help him clear his head, but the
voice only grew louder. At eleven PM, the Moors and
the Stillinger girls had gone to sleep, and Reverend Kelly
was standing in the shadows of their home. This is
(10:56):
what he said happened.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Next in the grip of something. I was in the
grip of something I did not understand. I did not
know where I was going, nor where I was. My
sun shadow on the side of the house, going from
the back to the front, and God told me to
(11:19):
follow that shadow. I went hunting the shadow to the
back of the house. I did not know who lived there,
but I kept on hearing that voice play utterly, and
I said, yes, Lord, I will.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Reverend Kelly found an axe leaning against the moor home,
which would not have been unusual in a farming community.
He picked it up and went where the shadow went.
The shadow led him to the front door, and a
voice told him to go in to do as he
was told to slay utterly. As soon as he entered
the home, he heard the voice whisper, I'm up higher,
(12:01):
and he climbed the steps as if you were sending
Jacob's ladder. He saw the children first, and the voice
told him he could not turn back, and an all
night interrogation that was only broken by crying fits. A
miserable Reverend Kelly, five years after the murderers, told detectives.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
This, the Bible says, so for little children to come
unto me, and I said, they are coming, Lord. Before
I knew what I was doing, I started sending those
children somewhere. I had to do, Scott told me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
After years of false leads, and after dozens of suspects
had been detained and released, Feliska prosecutors finally thought they
had their killer and an air tight case. After all,
they had a confession, and Reverend Kelly had been in
Veliska the night of the murders. He had also been
a tested for lewd behavior. A year after the murderers.
He had placed an ad in a newspaper searching for
(13:06):
a woman who would type in the nude. He was
even more excited when a woman replied and he began
an obscene correspondence, not realizing he was sharing his innermost
deranged fantasies with a vice squad detective. But the case
that seemed to be so airtight almost immediately began to
fall apart in court, it seemed it was common knowledge
(13:27):
that Reverend Kelly was a nutjob, a paranoid schizophrenic with
twisted delusions of grandeur who thought he'd get all the
attention he deserved by confessing to a crime he didn't commit.
He recanted his confession in court, saying it had been coerced.
He came across as fragile, dement it, almost vulnerable, and
his lawyers showered the jury with a long list of
(13:50):
his nervous breakdowns and mental hospital incarcerations. The first trial
ended in a hung jury. The second jury flat out
acquitted him, and Reverend Kelly Peeping tom sexual predator Firebug,
was free to go. He ended up, like many failed preachers,
both religious and otherwise, on the Bowery on the Lower
(14:10):
east Side of New York, where he managed to convince
another priest to put him up at his parish. If
you can imagine the demented reverend for a moment later
in his life, shiftlessly walking in the dirty sidewalks of
the Lower east Side, his shock of red hair turned gray,
his face always carefully shaven. Is the person mumbling to
himself one of the most brutal killers in American history.
(14:34):
In the space where fantasy meets reality, only Reverend Kelly
would have known. He's buried in an unmarked grave in
the Bronx. But when I pressed Martha about Reverend Kelly,
she says she isn't sure. Even the most diehard, veliscous
sluice constantly shuffle the deck and lay out a new
card when it comes to suspects, and you believe it's.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
You're not certain, but you think most likely it's Kelly.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh No, I don't. Reverend Kelly was a rather small man,
and the act is a long handled axe, and I
don't know how he could have. Anybody that would have
done what they did had to have a mental problem.
So I don't know who did it. I just simply
don't know who did it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Martha also believes that the killer was already in the home,
hiding in the attic when the moors and the still
and your children returned from church that evening.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Bryan never slept ring soundly when my children had overnight guests,
because they were guests in my house and I worried
about them. And I think Missus Moore probably was the
same way. She probably did not sleep soundly when there
were other people when they were guests in the house.
So somebody who had would come into the house and
climb those wooden steps, it would not be quiet, and
(15:54):
I think it would have awoken her or her husband,
or she would have wakened him up, and they might
have discovered the murder if he hadn't already been in
the house somewhere.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
There were other suspects, most notably the most powerful man
in Veliska, Frank Jones, who detested Josiah Moore. Moore had
worked for Jones and then quit, tired of six day
work weeks. There was another reason that Frank Jones and
Josiah Moore across the street in Veliska rather than meet
face to face. There was gossip that Moore had an
affair with Frank Jones' daughter in law, Donna Jones, a
(16:30):
raven haired beauty. She was a school teacher, but in
a small town, it soon became known that she was
conversing with two men. In those days, telephone operators worked
at switchboards. When Josiah placed a call to her, it
had to go through.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
One eight seven four nine eight eight four eight nine.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Eight seven four zero nine eight eight four eight nine.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Listen, operator, You're not going to be on the line.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
This is a very private call, no sir, I'm not
even to be on the line.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But when a telephone operator finished her shift, she knew
everything that was happening behind the scenes. In the small
town of Veliska, Frank Jones, the most upstanding of citizens
with an eye on high political office, would have been
tortured by the gossip. After the murderers, a private detective
was hired and managed to sully Jones' name completely. He
claimed he'd hired a hitman to kill Josiah Moore and
(17:26):
his family. Jones was never tried, but his reputation was ruined.
And then there's the serial killer angle. Feliska was on
a major railroad line, and so were the Midwestern towns
of Rainier and Mount Pleasant and eight other towns where
axe murderers also occurred in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve.
Four of those murderers featured killers who cover their victims' faces,
(17:49):
Three murderers had washed their hands at the scene, and
at least five of the killers had lingered in the
murder house. Perhaps most striking of all, two other homes
had been lit by land in which the chimney glass
had been laid aside and the wick bent down, just
as it had been at Veliska. In their twenty seventeen
book The Man from the Train, Bill and Rachel James
(18:12):
theorized that the murderer could have been a German military
veteran and immigrant, Paul Mueller. At the time of the
Veeliska murderers, Mueller is believed to have been working as
a lumberjack, and the James trace Mueller to a number
of similar axe murderers between nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve
that happened in Holmes, close to railroad stops. Mueller is
(18:33):
also the prime suspect in one of Germany's most notorious
unsolved murders, the axe murder of family of five, and
they're made on a Bavarian farm called Hintock Effect in
nineteen twenty two. The farm was also within walking distance
of a railroad stop. But when I asked Martha about
this theory, she said she doesn't believe Mueller did it.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I don't think so if he came to town on a train.
This house was three blocks north of the railroad tracks.
Between the railroad tracks and the Moor's house, there were
lots of other houses and I feel like this house
was somebody who knew who was living in the house,
and that was their destination. The man on the train,
(19:16):
he didn't know the people that he was murdering when
he got off the train, And why would he have
tried to get three blocks before he decided to find
a house that he could murder the people in.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
We'll be back after a short break. We're back with
murder homes. Just recently, four college students were murdered with
a k bar knife while they were sleeping in Moscow, Idaho,
by a suspect named Brian Kohlberger. In the last few weeks,
(19:51):
there's been a drive by the community there to demolish
the home. This happens with murder homes. Sometimes there is
no rhyme or reason why one home was down and
another left standing. In Valiska, where the murders were equally gruesome,
the house was never torn down. The opposite happened. It
was renovated by Martha Lynne and her late husband until
(20:12):
it looked just the same as it did that day.
The town of Veliska has embraced the home and its
history and the story behind it, adding it to its
Register of Historical places. Embrace is a controversial word when
it comes to a horrific crime, but the town isn't
ashamed of its history. It welcomes hundreds of visitors each
(20:32):
year who wander through the small farmhouse. They leave toys
for the children and debate the likeliest suspects. Martha Lynne
welcomes them all. I have a question, is it more
important to demolish than preserve, which, in the end better
serves the memory of the victims. It gets to the
heart of true crime, and while we're fascinated by it,
(20:55):
and demolishing does little to erase interest in cases that
haunt the public. In nineteen ninety four, one zero zero
five zero Cielo Drive was demolished, but murder tours still
cruised by the home where Sharon Tate was murdered. In
nineteen twenty three, the hinter k Effect farm in Germany,
the one with the strange link to Veliska, burned down,
(21:18):
but people fascinated still visit the memorial that stands in
its place. I would argue that a demolished murder home
makes it even more of a specter, because you can't
scrape a crime away. People will come and stare at
a patch of earth in Valliska. Over one hundred years
have passed. Visitors still wander the rooms, and you have
(21:38):
to wonder what the Moor family would make of it,
this museum of their life, all their love and affection,
reduced to a single night. A murder home is always
fixed in time and in Vliska, because the murderer was
never found. That point in time is agonizingly compressed, his
faint traces, his personality etched by the few things we
(21:58):
know he did. We keep coming back, unable to find
the face of a man who covered the mirror above
the dresser with a black skirt, even stealing his own reflection.
In the end, we replay his last moves forever, and
then replay them again. He is always leaving the home
as quietly as he came, locking the door and pocketing
(22:20):
the key. This is murder, Holmes Amat Murnovitch
Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
One. So I was back in the bedroom where the
little Stillinger girls were murdered, and I was talking to them.
I just was conversing, telling them that I was who
I was, And all of a sudden, I got this
really cool feeling on my arm. And at the time
that I was back there, there was a team there
with a night vision camera. It looked like an ORB
(00:34):
had come and lit on my arm, and I feel
like that was just a communication between them and me.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
The towns that dot southwestern Iowa are not a whole
lot different now than they were one hundred years ago.
If you're driving down Highway seventy one with a window
down on an early summer afternoon, the town of Alliska
will only take you a few minutes to drive through
a Dollar General, a splicih and Splash car wash, and
a farm equipment store, passing a blur, and then you're
(01:03):
in the middle of nowhere again, speeding through rolling hills
and tall grass prairie. This is the story of the
most famous murder home in Iowa and a murderer who
departed forever on a morning train, taking one last look
at a town he changed forever, closing his eyes as
the plains became a blur of green. What does a
(01:24):
man dream of when he walks out of a real nightmare?
A scene is so gruesome that a neighbor will come
running out of five o eight East Second Street shouting
to the crowd who had gathered outside, and yell, don't
go inside if you don't want to remember something that
will stay with you for the rest of your days.
This is Murder Holmes. I'm matt Rinovitch. Mary Peckham was
(02:04):
an early riser and a good neighbor. At seven am
on the morning of June tenth, nineteen twelve, she noticed
that the three bedroom farmhouse with a white clapboard was
unusually still unusual because the family that lived there, the Moors,
had a large family, four children, and the night before,
after a children's service at the Presbyterian Church, they'd agreed
(02:24):
to let two other children sleep over, Aina and Lena Stillinger.
Mary thought the least she could do was let the
Moor's chickens out of their coup, but she kept one
eye on the home, noting that the shades had been
pulled down tight in every window in the barn. She
found it peculiar that the livestock were still tied up,
(02:46):
so she found an employee of the Moors who had
a key, and he opened the door to five away
East Second Street. What the employee discovered inside would send
him screaming for help. Soon coroner, a doctor, and the
town's peace officer were inspecting the three bedrooms. In the
downstairs bedroom, the Stiltinger children had been murdered with an axe. Upstairs,
(03:09):
the four more children were also found dead, killed in
the same manner, and in the bedroom at the foot
of the stairs, Josiah Moore and his wife Sarah had
also been slain with the same axe, but the killer
had visited the father and mother a second time, carefully
lighting the gory scene with a kerosene lamp at the
foot of the bed, and then he had swung the
axe again, slicing Sarah's face into one inch strips and
(03:33):
pulverizing Josiah's head so viciously that the back of the
axe made a dent in the ceiling above, leaving plaster
dust on the bed. The coroner would say that Josiah's
head had been beaten into perfect jelly, blood soaked Josiah's pillow,
then saturated the bed sheets before dripping into his shoe
his wife had left under the bed until it was full.
(03:54):
The killer had tipped the shoe over, seemingly out of
the most evil curiosity, watching the blood spill out, Then
he carefully set it under the bed again to catch
more of Josie's blood. The windows had been locked, blinds
pulled down, sheets covered the glass doors inside the home,
and very strangely, a dark skirt had been thrown over
(04:16):
the mirror in the downstairs bedroom where the Stillinger girls
were found. Was the killer spooked by his own reflection
as he went about his work, perversely honoring the dead
he had butchered beyond recognition. After killing them a final touch,
he laid jackets, sheets clothes over each victim's head. Then
he filled a basin with water and washed the blood
(04:37):
off his fingers, wiped down the axe before resting it
against the wall, together with a five pound slab of
bacon he had removed from the ice box. He locked
the door on his way out, most likely as the
sun was just beginning to rise, blending in with other
Monday morning travelers. As he waited at the train station
five and weight East Second Street, and the vibrant family
(05:00):
lived there sat in a mortifying, buzzing silence, the rooms
curtained and dark. Eventually, if you listen closely, you could
hear a phone ringing in the home. Ayah and Lena
Stillinger's father was calling repeatedly, growing increasingly concerned that he
hadn't heard from Josiah. One hundred years later, on the
(05:20):
anniversary of the crime, the same acts would be displayed
by the Veliska Historical Society. It was found leaning on
the wall of the Stillinger girl's bedroom at what is
now known as the Veliska Axe Murder Home. Over a
century later, his identity remains a mystery. We'll be back
after a short break, We're back with murder Homes. The
(05:57):
Veliska Axe Murder Home is now owned by Martha Lynn,
who bought it with her late husband in nineteen ninety four.
You heard her voice at the beginning of the episode,
telling the story of her experience in the bedroom where
the Stillinger girls were murdered. From the beginning, Martha and
her husband wanted to bring the home back to its
original condition, tearing down the covered porches, getting rid of
(06:18):
the plumbing and electricity, a kind of reverse makeover, so
that by the time it was finished, the home on
East Second Street looked almost exactly like it did on
the day of the murders.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Structurally it looked very much like the nineteen twelve house.
Is it mostly original still or over time has there
been a lot of renovations.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, when we purchased it, it was a mess. It
was a royal mess. I wish you had a photograph
of that, because it had ugly green siding on it.
They had taken the kitchen area and taken the front
porch off and made that kitchen bigger, and of course
they put electricity in it, in the bathroom in it.
And so when we got the house, you make it
(07:00):
more authentic, we had to take all those things out.
We had to take the bathroom out, had to take
the electricity out, had to reconstruct some walls and windows,
and so it was about a two year project before
Darwin got it back to what it looked like in
nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Today, if you're brave enough, you can stay there with
some friends for four hundred and twenty eight dollars a night.
There's a sign out front that says Veliska Axe Murder House,
June nineteen twelve. Just in case anyone's forgotten what sets
this quaint farm home apart from all the others on
the block. Tours are a relative bargain at ten dollars.
(07:38):
Overnight guests don't always make it through the evening spook
by what they swear is paranormal activity. A few get
quite unhinged. One guest stabbed himself in the chest in
the middle of the night and had to be taken
to the hospital. But the concrete details of Veliska are
haunting enough. I asked Martha Lynne about the covered mirror
in the Stillinger girls bedroom. That's the one that sticks
(08:01):
with me the most.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Mark Why, in your opinion what the mirror is covered?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, I just think there's some old, old fashioned notions
about looking in the mirror and seeing your eyes and
seeing the crime through your eyes through a mirror or
something like that. But here's one thing, and it makes
you wonder if the Little Minister had something to do
with covering those because people's funerals used to be in
the homes, and so when visitors or guests would come
(08:30):
to see the body or to visit the family. The
family covered the mirror so people wouldn't be standing around
primping in front of them, combing their hair, fixing their
clothes or that. And so the show respect for the victims,
they would cover the mirrors, so people didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That's interesting when you mentioned the minister, you're referring to
George Kelly.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Reverend Kelly, yes, uh huh, because I hope he actually
entered the house. He was a known peeping tom and
he knew where the Moors lived because they had been
to the Sunday school program that night and he had
been there. And so because of his desire to go
peep in windows and keep on little girls and things
(09:12):
like that, he might have got there after the crime
happened and then went in the house, that's my theory.
And when he was in there, he might have taken
things and covered the mirrors because of him being a preacher,
and that might have been one reason why the mirrors recovered.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Reverend Lynn Kelly was a five foot two, red haired,
blue eyed creep by all accounts, born in England, he
had tried to find his footing in various Methodist churches
across the Midwest. Rootless, he traveled the sparse countryside, practicing
sermons that no one really wanted to hear. In his
spare time, he was also a sexual predator, firebug, and
(09:51):
peeping tom. On the night of the murderers, Kelly was
not only in Velliska, he was also sitting a few
feet away from Josiah Moore and his family had gathered
at the Presbyterian church there for a Sunday children's service.
He watched Josiah and Sarah as they proudly listened to
their youngest child, Paul, sing a hymn, finishing with an
off key but heartfelt lyric. Like any family. After a
(10:14):
satisfying night, they walked home slowly, the children running ahead
of them, Josi and Sarah holding hands. It was chilly
for an early summer night, and a light drizzle covered
the grass as they walked up the porch and entered
their home, the children laughing and pushing each other, Josiah
closing the door behind him. A guest of the Presbyterian
(10:35):
priest who lived close by, He soon found himself wandering
the streets, feeling sick to his stomach. He thought the
cold drizzle would help him clear his head, but the
voice only grew louder. At eleven PM, the Moors and
the Stillinger girls had gone to sleep, and Reverend Kelly
was standing in the shadows of their home. This is
(10:56):
what he said happened.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Next in the grip of something. I was in the
grip of something I did not understand. I did not
know where I was going, nor where I was. My
sun shadow on the side of the house, going from
the back to the front, and God told me to
(11:19):
follow that shadow. I went hunting the shadow to the
back of the house. I did not know who lived there,
but I kept on hearing that voice play utterly, and
I said, yes, Lord, I will.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Reverend Kelly found an axe leaning against the moor home,
which would not have been unusual in a farming community.
He picked it up and went where the shadow went.
The shadow led him to the front door, and a
voice told him to go in to do as he
was told to slay utterly. As soon as he entered
the home, he heard the voice whisper, I'm up higher,
(12:01):
and he climbed the steps as if you were sending
Jacob's ladder. He saw the children first, and the voice
told him he could not turn back, and an all
night interrogation that was only broken by crying fits. A
miserable Reverend Kelly, five years after the murderers, told detectives.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
This, the Bible says, so for little children to come
unto me, and I said, they are coming, Lord. Before
I knew what I was doing, I started sending those
children somewhere. I had to do, Scott told me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
After years of false leads, and after dozens of suspects
had been detained and released, Feliska prosecutors finally thought they
had their killer and an air tight case. After all,
they had a confession, and Reverend Kelly had been in
Veliska the night of the murders. He had also been
a tested for lewd behavior. A year after the murderers.
He had placed an ad in a newspaper searching for
(13:06):
a woman who would type in the nude. He was
even more excited when a woman replied and he began
an obscene correspondence, not realizing he was sharing his innermost
deranged fantasies with a vice squad detective. But the case
that seemed to be so airtight almost immediately began to
fall apart in court, it seemed it was common knowledge
(13:27):
that Reverend Kelly was a nutjob, a paranoid schizophrenic with
twisted delusions of grandeur who thought he'd get all the
attention he deserved by confessing to a crime he didn't commit.
He recanted his confession in court, saying it had been coerced.
He came across as fragile, dement it, almost vulnerable, and
his lawyers showered the jury with a long list of
(13:50):
his nervous breakdowns and mental hospital incarcerations. The first trial
ended in a hung jury. The second jury flat out
acquitted him, and Reverend Kelly Peeping tom sexual predator Firebug,
was free to go. He ended up, like many failed preachers,
both religious and otherwise, on the Bowery on the Lower
(14:10):
east Side of New York, where he managed to convince
another priest to put him up at his parish. If
you can imagine the demented reverend for a moment later
in his life, shiftlessly walking in the dirty sidewalks of
the Lower east Side, his shock of red hair turned gray,
his face always carefully shaven. Is the person mumbling to
himself one of the most brutal killers in American history.
(14:34):
In the space where fantasy meets reality, only Reverend Kelly
would have known. He's buried in an unmarked grave in
the Bronx. But when I pressed Martha about Reverend Kelly,
she says she isn't sure. Even the most diehard, veliscous
sluice constantly shuffle the deck and lay out a new
card when it comes to suspects, and you believe it's.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
You're not certain, but you think most likely it's Kelly.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh No, I don't. Reverend Kelly was a rather small man,
and the act is a long handled axe, and I
don't know how he could have. Anybody that would have
done what they did had to have a mental problem.
So I don't know who did it. I just simply
don't know who did it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Martha also believes that the killer was already in the home,
hiding in the attic when the moors and the still
and your children returned from church that evening.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Bryan never slept ring soundly when my children had overnight guests,
because they were guests in my house and I worried
about them. And I think Missus Moore probably was the
same way. She probably did not sleep soundly when there
were other people when they were guests in the house.
So somebody who had would come into the house and
climb those wooden steps, it would not be quiet, and
(15:54):
I think it would have awoken her or her husband,
or she would have wakened him up, and they might
have discovered the murder if he hadn't already been in
the house somewhere.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
There were other suspects, most notably the most powerful man
in Veliska, Frank Jones, who detested Josiah Moore. Moore had
worked for Jones and then quit, tired of six day
work weeks. There was another reason that Frank Jones and
Josiah Moore across the street in Veliska rather than meet
face to face. There was gossip that Moore had an
affair with Frank Jones' daughter in law, Donna Jones, a
(16:30):
raven haired beauty. She was a school teacher, but in
a small town, it soon became known that she was
conversing with two men. In those days, telephone operators worked
at switchboards. When Josiah placed a call to her, it
had to go through.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
One eight seven four nine eight eight four eight nine.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Eight seven four zero nine eight eight four eight nine.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Listen, operator, You're not going to be on the line.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
This is a very private call, no sir, I'm not
even to be on the line.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But when a telephone operator finished her shift, she knew
everything that was happening behind the scenes. In the small
town of Veliska, Frank Jones, the most upstanding of citizens
with an eye on high political office, would have been
tortured by the gossip. After the murderers, a private detective
was hired and managed to sully Jones' name completely. He
claimed he'd hired a hitman to kill Josiah Moore and
(17:26):
his family. Jones was never tried, but his reputation was ruined.
And then there's the serial killer angle. Feliska was on
a major railroad line, and so were the Midwestern towns
of Rainier and Mount Pleasant and eight other towns where
axe murderers also occurred in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve.
Four of those murderers featured killers who cover their victims' faces,
(17:49):
Three murderers had washed their hands at the scene, and
at least five of the killers had lingered in the
murder house. Perhaps most striking of all, two other homes
had been lit by land in which the chimney glass
had been laid aside and the wick bent down, just
as it had been at Veliska. In their twenty seventeen
book The Man from the Train, Bill and Rachel James
(18:12):
theorized that the murderer could have been a German military
veteran and immigrant, Paul Mueller. At the time of the
Veeliska murderers, Mueller is believed to have been working as
a lumberjack, and the James trace Mueller to a number
of similar axe murderers between nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve
that happened in Holmes, close to railroad stops. Mueller is
(18:33):
also the prime suspect in one of Germany's most notorious
unsolved murders, the axe murder of family of five, and
they're made on a Bavarian farm called Hintock Effect in
nineteen twenty two. The farm was also within walking distance
of a railroad stop. But when I asked Martha about
this theory, she said she doesn't believe Mueller did it.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I don't think so if he came to town on a train.
This house was three blocks north of the railroad tracks.
Between the railroad tracks and the Moor's house, there were
lots of other houses and I feel like this house
was somebody who knew who was living in the house,
and that was their destination. The man on the train,
(19:16):
he didn't know the people that he was murdering when
he got off the train, And why would he have
tried to get three blocks before he decided to find
a house that he could murder the people in.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
We'll be back after a short break. We're back with
murder homes. Just recently, four college students were murdered with
a k bar knife while they were sleeping in Moscow, Idaho,
by a suspect named Brian Kohlberger. In the last few weeks,
(19:51):
there's been a drive by the community there to demolish
the home. This happens with murder homes. Sometimes there is
no rhyme or reason why one home was down and
another left standing. In Valiska, where the murders were equally gruesome,
the house was never torn down. The opposite happened. It
was renovated by Martha Lynne and her late husband until
(20:12):
it looked just the same as it did that day.
The town of Veliska has embraced the home and its
history and the story behind it, adding it to its
Register of Historical places. Embrace is a controversial word when
it comes to a horrific crime, but the town isn't
ashamed of its history. It welcomes hundreds of visitors each
(20:32):
year who wander through the small farmhouse. They leave toys
for the children and debate the likeliest suspects. Martha Lynne
welcomes them all. I have a question, is it more
important to demolish than preserve, which, in the end better
serves the memory of the victims. It gets to the
heart of true crime, and while we're fascinated by it,
(20:55):
and demolishing does little to erase interest in cases that
haunt the public. In nineteen ninety four, one zero zero
five zero Cielo Drive was demolished, but murder tours still
cruised by the home where Sharon Tate was murdered. In
nineteen twenty three, the hinter k Effect farm in Germany,
the one with the strange link to Veliska, burned down,
(21:18):
but people fascinated still visit the memorial that stands in
its place. I would argue that a demolished murder home
makes it even more of a specter, because you can't
scrape a crime away. People will come and stare at
a patch of earth in Valliska. Over one hundred years
have passed. Visitors still wander the rooms, and you have
(21:38):
to wonder what the Moor family would make of it,
this museum of their life, all their love and affection,
reduced to a single night. A murder home is always
fixed in time and in Vliska, because the murderer was
never found. That point in time is agonizingly compressed, his
faint traces, his personality etched by the few things we
(21:58):
know he did. We keep coming back, unable to find
the face of a man who covered the mirror above
the dresser with a black skirt, even stealing his own reflection.
In the end, we replay his last moves forever, and
then replay them again. He is always leaving the home
as quietly as he came, locking the door and pocketing
(22:20):
the key. This is murder, Holmes Amat Murnovitch
Host
Matt Marinovich
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