September 26, 2025 • 46 mins
In a small town in Iowa in 1912 eight people were murdered in the grisliest of ways while they slept. Local reputations were ruined when accusations flew, but could a drifting serial killer working across the Midwest have been behind it?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Moving on with our next episode in the playlist, This
one's on a horrific and truly saddening multiple acts murder
in Iowa in nineteen twelve. To some, it looks like
a random act of violence committed by someone who is
a stranger to the victims, but some odd clues also
point to it as the work of possibly someone who
knew all of the people who died, which included children.
(00:23):
This one is harrowing, interesting, and bizarre.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry put The three of
us together, had a little mystery, a lot of mayhem.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
You got stuff you should know and one axe?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah acts, how many is this? Three?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
We got Lizzy Borden yep, effect yep, and then this one.
I couldn't think of anymore.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Well, I looked It's funny because I looked at I
was like, I wonder if we could do a spin
off show just on X murderers. And Wikipedia had thirty listed.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I'm surprised that if there's like ten mentioned in this
this article alone, Well we'll see why there are so
many X murders. This, this, this whole researching the Veliska
ax murder kind of solved a question I've had that
I didn't realize I knew had.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
How to pronounce Boliska.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We just settled that by calling the Velliska town Hall.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
I know, that was a pretty great moment. Right before
we recorded, I was like, are you sure there's a Mellissa?
Josh called the town hall and lied.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, it was kind of a bet that she settled. Yeah, said,
we just never put money on it.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
Veliska town Hall, all, thank you. You got a call today,
so congratulations. And second of all, you just spoke to
an internet celebrity.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I don't know, man, I think Velliska is on the
map and it is one hundred percent because of this
this murder.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Well, if you just type in Veliska, almost all you
see is stuff about the axe murder.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, yeah, the site Veliska, Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
To this axe murder.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's a it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, no, it's just it doesn't mention it at all.
But all the copy is just in the outline of
the shape of an axe. They just talk about like
their boys club and stuff that they're doing. They're fourth
of July praid, but it's in the shape of an ax.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah. The population and elevation is in a drop of
blood coming off of the axe.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah, it's as population, not as much as it was
on June ninth.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
That's morbid.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Did you did you hear about this before?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Well, I think after a hint your chaifect, we had
some emails from probably local iowaans iowaans iowans Iowania Knights saying, hey,
you guys should if you're into the not into.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
X murders, but get a load of this.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
If you're into reporting on grizzly crimes, you should check
out the one we had in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they
were right, man. This is so before we get into it,
I think it goes without saying listeners that this is
a very horrific grizzly crime that we're going to talk
about in some detail. Right, listen at your own discretion.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
X murder is in the title, everybody.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
and a lot of people don't know about it.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Okay, all right, where was where was this from?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
By the way, Well, one of the articles we researched
was from Mike Dash of the Smithsonian magazine.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
They do great work, great work.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
There's another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we
have to give a shout out to, who has like
a whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder.
Guys researched it for like fifty five years or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Did he write one of the two books?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Probably? Sure.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He's widely known as the expert on the veliska axmurt
He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
One thing I realized in researching this is it was
way easier to get away with murder. Yeah in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of agreement that had this
been done today, Yeah, they would have caught the guy
very quickly. Sure, But yeah, nineteen twelve, it was like, oh,
you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means
of detection basically and eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, So we
keep saying nineteen twelve specifically, Like you said, June ninth,
(05:06):
nineteen twelve, wo in the little town tenth, Well, it
was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right,
So June ninth, tenth.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Depends on if you're still a partying.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Potato Potato Belliska, Melissa.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, but at five oh way East second Street in Velliska, Iowa,
which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
of the state, I believe not.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
As far from here as I thought.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
No.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
I just looked on a map and I was like, wait,
I was there.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I thought I away was like basically in Canada. No, huh,
where is it this more right in the middle of
the country. I did not realize that.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Like, it doesn't look further west than like Dallas.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I can believe that. But it was the north that
gets you, the northern, the norther ward direction, that's what
gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenthnineteen twelve,
in this little house there were eight people sleeping. There
were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
(06:11):
and then there four kids what were their names, Charles.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I believe Hermann, Katherine Boyd and Paul Right.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
And then downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in
the house, little Lena and Aina Stillinger.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
And they were just having a sleepover.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter or
the only daughter I guess, of the Moors, and the
whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians, and
they had been at church that day. It was Sunday
for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus Moore had
helped put on and the kids had all participated in.
(06:52):
And at that mass, Catherine had asked her two friends,
Lena and Aina, the sisters, to spend the night. And
so they came back home with the Moors from the
children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or ten thirty,
they were all at home in bed and the lights
were out and the house was settled in dark.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah, man, the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all
very sad, but anytime I hear of a fateful turn,
like oh, yeah, we just spent the night there that night, right,
and things go bad. It always I don't know, bothers
me more.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, for sure, twists of fate are terrible, especially when
they result in terrible deaths.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
So very late at night, like you said, after midnight,
someone crept in to the back of the house which
was not locked.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's up for debate.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked? That got in
without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house and this
is a small town, is there were I don't even
think two thousand people living there then, and I think
even less now than there were back then. Yeah, one
of those places. So this person, and I think by
(08:03):
all accounts we can safely say it was a man
creeps in this house with an axe from the property.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, it was Joe Moore's own axe.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
And as we will see, apparently they call these weapons
of convenience because back in the day, every single house
in the US had an axe, like in the front
or backyard.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That just explained it. That was the question I didn't
realize i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers
at a certain period of time in American history was
because everybody had an.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Axe, Yeah, and you would leave it just you know, yeah,
like chopped into the stump that you use as the
chopping block or whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It'd be like a weapon of convenience.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Yeah, these days you would have to kill people with
like a mailbox, right, just some something that everyone has, like.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
A silicone' spatula.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Or a high speed internet cable. There chokes somebody with that. Yeah, Okay,
all joking aside. So this dude creeps in there. He's
got this axe. He gets and this is very key here.
He gets the lamp, an oil lamp from the dresser
inside the house. He takes off the chimney the glass
you know, covering, and takes it off, bends the wick
(09:19):
in half so the flame is smaller, lights the lamp,
and then turns it down really low, and then commences creeping.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, with an axe in hand in this low light
oil lamp in the.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Other chimneyless lamp, which we'll see is a big clue.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently, so he
passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up the stairs.
He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite I believe
the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe and Sarah's room,
or is Joe and Sarah's room, and they're sleeping, and
(09:57):
he sets the oil lamp down believe at the foot
of the bed, and he raises the axe over his
head and using the flat the flat end, flat side
of the axe, not the sharp blade side, but the
other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head. Joe,
(10:17):
I believe was lying on his back, even though Smithsonian
article says something different.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Yeah, raise it so high, he even gouged the ceiling correct.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, brought it down hard on Joe's head, probably killed
him instantly from that one blow.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at all because he
did the same thing to her. And both of them
were found in a position that they would have been sleeping.
And there wasn't like the bed clothes weren't ruffled, There
wasn't their arm wasn't enough to defend themselves. Right, they
died in their sleep, it appeared right.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yes, So he kills the parents either immediately or they
die probably pretty quickly, leaves the room and goes next door.
And this is really just almost too awful. To talk about.
But he kills all the children in their sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
One by one, but again without waking any of them.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Yeah, by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
have awakened.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Finally one of them, the older one Leen, and I
believe is the older.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
One, and then he dispatches with both of them in
the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful murder.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So that's bad enough, right, This guy just went around
and murdered eight people, six of them children under the
age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under with the
blunted of an axe. That's bad enough. But then it
just gets a million times worse. And this is probably
why this axe murder is just part of American history,
(11:50):
whether we like it or not. So what the guy
does next is, well, he took the axe and he
flips it over, and he takes the sharp side, and
he goes around and he starts bashing everybody's head in
one by one. Apparently, Joe was later found to have
(12:11):
been struck as many as thirty times in the head
with the acts. Yeah, just one by one he went
around and completely caved in the head and face of
all of his victims methodically throughout the house after they
were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing to do.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah. So then it gets a little bit strange. He
goes around to the rooms and all over the house
really and does different things in each one. He covers
windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, all the mirrors in the house were covered.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
He covered the faces of I believe all the victims, right.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, one way or another. I believe all of their
faces were covered.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
With either sheets or pillowcases. Or I think in the
case of the girls, he pulled their dresses up over
their faces.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Uh. Yeah, it's very I think in the serial killer
or psychopath mode. Though I've heard of stuff like that
before though.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Right, Like, you get the idea that they don't the
murderer doesn't want the victim looking at him, Yeah, which
may also explain why he bashed their faces in you know.
So the guy apparently hangs out for a little while.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
He does other weird things though.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
With the bacon, he grabbed a two pound slab of bacon,
and I saw elsewhere that there was another slab of
bacon found in the house, but there was at least
one two pound slab of bacon that he wrapped in
a dish towel and then left on the floor of
one of the bedrooms, so weird. There was a bowl
of bloody water that was later found he washed himself off.
He washed off the axe, although he left it behind,
(13:59):
and he apparently hung out for a little while in
the house before leaving sometime before five am. So the
murders took place around midnight and then come five am,
the house is dark still it's five am, so that's
not the weirdest thing, although we're talking about Iowa, so
(14:20):
plenty of people were up at five, including the neighbor,
a woman named Mary Peckham, and she noticed that there
wasn't anybody up at the house, which was a little odd.
It was a Monday morning now, and by seven she
thought it was just downright eerie that there was no
sign of life at the house. She went over and
let the Moor's chickens out so that they could peck
(14:42):
around and feed. She called Joe Moore's store and said, hey,
has Joe showed up and found from the employee that
he hadn't and finally one of those two gets in
touch with a guy named Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
and Ross comes over over and unlocks the door. The
front door is locked, and he goes inside and he
(15:06):
comes almost immediately rushing back out calling for the local
marshal to be called.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, basically he gets Hank Horton is the marshall's name,
He gets him on the scene, and this is where
things just kind of go berserk. It's such a small town,
such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
(15:32):
much a small town like this knows about preserving a
crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
all accounts, there were one hundred or more people that
went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
(15:52):
to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
in there and check things out.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah. So the first group that come with the marshall,
Hank Horton, right, was two doctors and a minister.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
J Clark Cooper, right, great doctor name J Clark Cooper
and Edgar Huff and Wesley Ewing, who was the minister
of the church.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
They were the first contingent to make it into the
house after Ross Moore came running out. So they go
in and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
Another guy gets brought in, La Linquist. He's the coroner.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
His name was F. S.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Williams.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah. F. S.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Williams was the one who examined the body and at
a later inquest he had the most details to offer
about the bodies and positions all that stuff. So when
those guys walked in, they were at least well versed
enough to know not disturbed things as much as possible,
or at least more than the townspeople knew.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
And F. S.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Williams allegedly came out of the house pretty shaken and said,
don't go in there, boys, you'll regret it to your
last day. And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're
going inside. We want to see some dead bodies.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
And they all regretted it probably till their last day.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, Because they not only messed with the crime scene.
They poked around there was supposedly the town drunk took
fragments of Joe Moore's skull as mementos. Like. The crime
scene was toast, Like you said, if it could have
ever been preserved, it was toast. And even the local
druggist showed up with his camera to help preserve the
crime scene because he heard that the townspeople were tramping
(17:43):
all over it and Ross Moore, not understanding what he
was doing, throw the guy out, thought he was just
being a ghoul trying to get pictures. So the crime
scene is utterly and completely lost.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, and one of the things about Blesca, said Vassela,
is that it was a train town. There were about
thirty trains every day that went through there, and so
by this time, unless this person was local and maybe
hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murder had probably
(18:15):
hopped the train and was out of there at that time.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But they didn't gone.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
They didn't realize this until they had already released some bloodhounds.
They searched the countryside. There was like a pretty big
search to find whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody.
So the town was just terrified town. Of two thousand people,
eight including six children, had just been murdered with an
axe in your town. And now the sun's starting to
(18:40):
go down, and nobody's been caught, all.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Right, So let's take a break and we'll come back
and talk about suspect number one right after this. Okay,
(19:13):
So suspect number one might be a little surprising when
you first hear that. He was a state senator, very
well well respected by some as a local businessman and
a very prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply
divided between Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and
(19:38):
that stuff mattered to those people. And his name was
Frank Jones.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Methodists immediately said, no, he's got to be innocent. This
is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians are like, no,
it's got to be him. And at first I was like, well,
why would it be the state senator? None of this
makes sense. There were a couple of big things that
made people believe that he could be the guy. Yeah.
(20:06):
Joe Moore worked for him for seven years and was
one of his best salesman on his farm equipment team.
And apparently he left in nineteen oh seven, and was
not too happy with the work hours, which were sixteen
hour days, six days a week.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Who would be it's like us.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And then set up a rival business and even took
one of the clients, the John Deere company.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, that was a big one, I'm sure, so big
that when Sarah Peckham called Joe Moore's employee to tell
him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's employee called the John
Deere people in Omaha to let them know.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Oh sure, they.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Were like the third people called after the bodies were discovered.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
So he takes John Deere with him. So this set
up an obvious rivalry and worse than that apparently. And
I don't know if this is super confirmed, but at
least the rumor was that Joe Moore had slept with
Jones's daughter in law.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that's that's understood.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Is true?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
That's true? So such with his daughter in law, who
apparently kind of had several affairs in town and was
not very discreet.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, apparently, according to Mike Dashitt Smithsonian, she used to
set up her her meet and greets over the phone.
Oh that's right, over the phone. And this was at
a time when there was a switchboard operator running the
phones in the town. Ye sat there and listen. Yeah,
and this lady obviously didn't care. So apparently it was
(21:44):
pretty well known that that Joe Moore had had an
affair with F. F. Jones's daughter in law, which is huge.
She put those two things together. Friends, the fact that
apparently they used to cross to the other side of
the street to keep from from from encountering one another. Yeah,
that's a big deal in that town. In a small town, right,
(22:05):
So yeah, suspicion fell onto Ff apparently from what I understand,
within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, and suspicion not that he may have done it,
that Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because
he was fifty seven years old and probably had some
pretty good money.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
He was building a bank, overseeing his new bank being
built when he got the news of the bodies.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
When you're building the bank, you're rolling in it. Yeah,
So everyone thought that he probably hired somebody out to
kill him, and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency,
there was a detective named James Wilkerson, who said, you
know what, I think you're right. I think he hired someone.
I think that man's name was William Mansfield.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
William Blackie Mansfield. It was already, No, he wasn't already.
He would later be, I believe, convicted of an axe
murder himself.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, which is probably one of the chief reasons he
was suspect.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Well, no, that came a couple of years after. I
believe that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered
his wife, her parents, and their their child, his cholcold
with an axe.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Right. Yeah, the guy was a bad dude.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
Mansfield had an air tight alibi. He was in Illinois,
hundreds of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only
did the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll record
showed very clearly that he had not been in Veliska
(23:35):
that day and couldn't have done it.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Yeah, so he was exonerated. But a lot of townspeople
still thought that that. You know how it was back
then and still is today to a certain.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Degree, sure, especially in a small town.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Yeah, people were convinced that he was the guy, and
a lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
you said, a lot of people thought that Jones Ffjes
apparently went by ff did have something to do with it.
The still injured girl's father and Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
both thought F. F. Jones was behind this, and and
(24:13):
Wilkinson made it like his personal mission to take Jones
down and apparently ruined his political career cost him reelection
to the state Senate.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
I would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
But maybe, but I think like there's something between townspeople
suspecting you and a detective like bringing evidence against you
and getting a grand jury to indict you.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It was like the good old days when you could
be suspected of an ex murder and still win a
Senate seat.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Right exactly the U. But Jones he didn't win re
election and uh yeah, apparently their dying day, some people
assumed that it was him behind it.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Another candidate candidate suspect, sure, candidate, it's not the right word.
Lynn George, Jacqueline Kelly, the man with four names.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
He went by George Kelly though.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird
at the time. Sure be living there.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Maybe he was a preacher though, and it says in
this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant. He definitely had
some mental health problems. But there are some things in
his case where it sort of were suspicious, and others
that made him not a great suspect, one of which
he was a little guy. He was five to one,
(25:38):
one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe not the best suspect.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
For swinging an axe like that.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, although you know he could have been strong
as an ox. You never know. Sure, those little guys,
you know, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holes rather
than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up on
before you know what. Their legs are around your neck
and you're losing content.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Yea, their thumbs are in your eyeballs, right, that kind
of thing, right, Yeah, so fair enough. But he was
left handed, and the corner Linquist did say that, you know,
from their analysis, as rudimentary as that might be. In
nineteen twelve that could probably at least determine that it
was a left handed assailant.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
From the blood spatter. I believe, yeah, on the walls.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It's good.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Good for them for being that advance.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
So there were some other things that that implicated George Kelly. One,
he was in Velliska. He was a traveling preacher. He
and his wife toured around and they were in Valliska.
Then the day of the murder, they were actually at
the children's service.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah, that the that.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
The Moors and the Stillingery girls were at. Again, this
guy was a sex maniac, is what he was known as.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I kind of wonder about that, and I mean
he liked to have sex.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I guess there were He placed an ad and this
is in the nineteen tens. He placed add in the
Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
willing to pose as a model. And when one, one
woman named Jessamine Hodgson, replied to his ad, he sent
(27:15):
her a letter. And apparently he's quite lude, so much
so that the court that heard the case against him
said that it was so obscene, leude, lascivious, and filthy
as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper
to be spread upon the record thereof.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
I really want to know what was in that left.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well, one of the things was that the lady would
be required to type in the nude. Yeah, this is
the nineteen ten.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
No, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would
be judged by today's standard.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Oh, although I mean by today's standard. If you sent
a potential job candidate a letter that said, oh, yeah,
going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
you would get in some trouble for that.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Sure. I just I don't know that you would say
it was obscene Luden lasibe.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
No, I'm with you.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
They'd say that's kink.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
But I think the okay. George Kelly was a kinky
traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and he
was in Viliska at the time.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Of the murders, and he left that next morning on
a train.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Right. But there was supposedly a witness that said that
he had a very incriminating statement when he got off
of that train that very morning.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders. But he had left
town before they found out about the murders. But then
later on those people recanted those statements.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Correct, right, So when when Frank Jones FF Jones had
a grand jury brought to hear evidence against him, he
was exonerated. Same thing. Not with George Kelly. Actually, I
should say he was actually the only person to ever
go to trial for these murders, and he was tried twice.
(28:58):
The first time the jury found eleven to one in
his favor. The second jury acquitted him entirely. The evidence
against him was just too flimsy, and it probably wasn't him.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Yeah, I mean the idea was they were like, he
was at that church service, he's a pervert. He saw
these kids in the service, he went back and peeked
into their house and camped out in their barn. And
the evidence there was there were some hay bales in
the barn that had depressions as if someone had been
laying on them, and if you'd laid down in one
(29:32):
of them, there was a peep hole right there in
the barn where you could see the house. This is
all pretty flimsy.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
There was also, though, I think one of the reasons
why the case was brought against him. He was specifically
tried for the murder of Lena Stillingure. And that's noteworthy
because although they don't say in the official court record
directly that she may have been sexually assaulted her, that
some sort of sex crime had been committed against her.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Supposedly she had been found with her night clothes hiked
up over her waist, like above her waist, her undergarments
had been taken off in stuffed under the bed, and
then her her legs had been arranged so that her
genitalia was prominent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
That was done after she had been murdered. And I
think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
sex maniac for that to be possible.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, oh, I forgot about this fact though. He actually
returned a week later and posed as a Scotland yard
detective so he could get a tour of the house.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
That is so George Kelly.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Well, it's definitely one of those things that makes you go,
wait a minute, return to the scene of the crime.
You lied to get in there and look at the house. Right,
But apparently everyone wanted to go look at the house.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, so it's and plus what's posing? You know, we've
seen so many like cartoony movies that like somebody gets
like the deer stalker hat and a pipe and says
they're from Scotland. Yard. Posing could be like somebody saying like, oh,
you must be from Scotland yards. Am I grunting in
the affirmative?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I guess that technically constitutes posing in the real world.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
I apparently signed a confession.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Oh yeah, that was a big one too.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Yeah, but I mean the confession literally said I killed
the children upstairs first and the children downstairs last. I
knew God wanted me to do it this way. Slay
utterly came to mind, and I picked up the acts,
went into the house and killed them. But you know
he took it back later He's like, yeah, all that
very specific stuff I said about killing this family, I
(31:42):
didn't really do it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So he was exonerated. So so far, the little town
of Veliska has looked around and said, we couldn't find
any tramps. So who's the person that hated Joe Moore
th most F. F. Jones, Well it wasn't him. Who's
the weirdest pervert we can find.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Who is in of the time, that Englishman George Kelly.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
It wasn't him, So they didn't know. A lot of
people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
And we still don't know what happened. But with the
hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
the work of dedicated historians like Ed Epperley, we have
something of a clearer picture emerging. And that picture seems
(32:26):
to be centering on the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
We'll talk about that theory more right after this. All right,
(32:56):
so we've ruled out these local your suspects local ish
I guess in Kelly's case, And now the modern take
on this is that this was a serial killer because
in nineteen eleven, in nineteen twelve, there were a lot
(33:16):
of axe murders in the Midwest, at least ten, everywhere
from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas. And many of them
had similar traits.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, like, some very startlingly similar traits, right.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
But not all of them. And some of them are
like and we'll go through these, but some are like, well,
in five of them, these same things happen and two
of them these same things happen, So it makes me
wonder if it wasn't if they're kind of grouping too
many of these together.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
This does Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five,
including Valliska.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
I thought three was at five.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Five, So there's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There
was one that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly
kicked the whole thing off, yeah, followed by Mammoth and
Illinois I forgot the s is silent, right, yeah, and
then Ellsworth, Kansas. Then there was one in Paola, Kansas,
(34:23):
and then the last one in Valliska. And those five
crimes have some similarities that make them really really suspicious.
That the idea of just like five different people or
even a couple of different people separately committing these crimes,
and as Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the
(34:44):
idea that these were local vendettas or you know, that
that people were.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Like something, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
That's not what these these crimes reflect at all. They
reflect the work of a like just a straight up
nut job psychopath who are few and far between. So
the fact that these things occurred between October of nineteen
eleven and June of nineteen twelve suggests strongly that there
(35:14):
was one person doing them.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Yeah. Well, there was the final one in Columbia, Missouri
in December nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is
that a man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore
in Columbia, Missouri, who was his mother? Ye, Mary Wilson,
So is that the guy? No, it would be weird
(35:40):
to commit a series of murders and then finish up
with your own family, right, Usually it's the other way around.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, right, So, like, if you're going to go off
on a killing spree, usually start you practice on your
family first. Yeah, you get a feel for it, right.
This guy, Henry Lee Moore, aside from having three three names,
is not a good suspect for the serial killer, right.
He apparently wanted the deeds to his family house. And
(36:08):
like you said, it's very rare for a serial killer
to go back.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
The deal with the three names. They don't all have
three names.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
No, I know, but so many of them do.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Well, No, the news reports it that way to distinguish them.
For every other Henry more in the world. So like
everyone's always like serial killers have three names. No, they're
just reported that way.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
That's awesome. Yeah, I love him when things are just explained. Yeah,
I wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I think you're right.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
So if anyone ever writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant,
we're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I would kill you,
thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Hey, you want to.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Shake on it? Jerry witnessed.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a
red herring. Like a lot of people say, well, he
was the one. He was a serial killer behind it,
because the the serial murder started right after he got
out of prison in Kansas, Yes, and then they ended
right after he got caught in Columbia, Missouri with his family.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Yeah, I mean kind of makes sense, it does.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
But that's where the whole thing really begins an end.
So a lot of people say, well, it wasn't Henry
ly more so, it wasn't a serial killing.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Well plus sorry, but his his killing his own family
was about obtaining the deeds to his family house.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Oh so that was greed motivated, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
this guy was just a jerk. So since Henry Lee
Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once somebody
then finds out that it wasn't Henry ly Moore, they
stopped thinking it was a serial murderer. Rightly says not
so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because Henry Lee Moore's
(38:01):
out of the equation doesn't mean there's not a serial
killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the similarities between these
five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
light low.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Axes were used in four of the five, but he
says that's just probably a matter of convenience. A pipe
I think was used in the Mammoth, Illinois case, which
is again an implement of convenience too. Right, Sure, don't
have an axe, handy, go for a lead pipe.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Right, Yeah, he probably didn't bring that with you.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Right, there were tell them about the tell them about
the mirrors, Chuck.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Well, I mean at several of these places the mirrors
were covered up. I mean that's a big one. Yeah,
mirrors and windows. And in one of the places, the
telephone was covered. And the thought there is is that,
like you said earlier, like they don't want the victims
to be watching them even after death, or to be
seen in the mirrors and windows being covered. But the phone,
(39:11):
apparently it was one of those old box phones on
the wall that you crank, and it has the two
it sort of looks like a face right when you
look at it. It has like looks like two eyes
and a nose. And so the thought was that that
even looks like a face to the dranged serial killer.
So they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing
(39:31):
else makes much sense. You know, you're not going to
in nineteen twelve, you're not getting phone calls after midnight.
You probably probably don't get more than a couple of
phone calls a week in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Twelve, right, most people have phones.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Yeah, And throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
No, there was another female victim, a young female victim
in Mammoth who was found basically the same way that
Lena's still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown
up over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there
(40:10):
was a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valliska where
and one other town too where the killer went on
to try to kill again.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Yeah, this was the most interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Either successfully did kill again. There was one where he
went to an adjacent house whose backyard connected the first
murder house and then went in and killed another family
right afterwards.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
That was Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And then in Valliska, the telephone operator who was like
sleeping in the telephone switchboard.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Headquarters because no calls were coming through.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
She reported the door knob being tried about two hours
after the more house members were murdered.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Yeah, like herd footsteps come up to the door, try
to open it, and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah,
that's a little shaky. But the last one was the
one that kind of sent the chill up my spine.
It was the one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola,
I bet you there are people there laughing because it's
probably pronounced Paula or something probably, but who knows p
(41:13):
a a. Kansas, there was a second family, Missus Longmire,
the Longmere family. They were awaken she and her daughter
at about midnight to the sound of broken glass, went
downstairs and saw a dude in their dining room who
had just broken oil lamp chimney and then got the
(41:33):
heck out of there through a window. They actually saw
a guy.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
they woke up and saw the man who was about
to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe,
and this probably leaving our house.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
And these were all trained towns, so they were all
linked by train depots. So by all accounts, there was
a train going serial killer, uh for a couple of
years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people hopping trains. Never
ever caught in that nuts.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It is nuts, and that the Veliska axe murders were
probably one of his crazy but we'll never know, no.
You know, when you say stuff like that, or when
you see stuff like that in print too, like we'll
never know who it was, it makes you wonder, like
what kind of technology are we going to have in
the future, like will we never know or are we
(42:29):
going to come up with something one day where we're like,
oh it was this guy. Yeah, like now we know,
you know who who knows the future knows? That's who knows.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
We should do one on Ed Geen. Okay, that's like
kind of one of the big big ones we haven't covered.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Okay, I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I
don't want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
true crime.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
we used to do multiple kind of creepy uppisodes.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think we did last time too was October.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yea, all right, we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial
killer type thing.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Okay, yeah we did hinter Kfech I think was that
last look? I think so?
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Ye Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Uh. If you want to know more about the Veliska
X murders, well again strongly recommend you go look up
ed Epperley. You can read the Smithsonian article The X
Murder Who Got Away, which is great. Uh. And there
were plenty of other articles that we relied on that
we love.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Thank you for those.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
In the meantime, you can also hang out with us
on how stuff works dot com and our famous search bar. Instance.
I said search bar got it in there. It's un
for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Hey, guys love the show, and now I have even
more reason to promote your podcast to everyone I know.
I work in a small family business with my cousin.
In this previous January, started experiencing severe gastro intestinal issues.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Oh I love this email.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yeah remember this one. It was like from yesterday.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the root.
Tested for Crone's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus
on anything, no energy, took a ton of time away
from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the
help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic
(44:21):
deteriorating quality of life. You see where this is going people,
I think listeners might know. And he was Southern one
day last month he was Southern. Actually, he came in
after a doctor's appointment, said he developed an iron deficient
anemia to add to his list of issues. At first,
it sounded disconnected until and I kid you, this is
(44:43):
an all caps I kid you not Josh and Chuck.
I was listening to your Hookworm episode that day, man,
when he got to the part about the aggressive iron
deficient anemia, I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm
infection symptoms, brought it to my cousin and he had
every last symptom his doctor prescribed to medication and he
(45:05):
is currently being de wormed. From the first day he
started his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both
mood and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could
have slipped by a half dozen GPS and specialists, But
I truly can't thank you both enough for your podcast
and his wide range of topics. That is, James and
sat Pete Florida.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
That is so awesome, man, dude, haad hookworm. Can you
believe it? Then? And thank you James, and.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Good luck to you cousin.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Way to go for being so smart to connect the
dots too.
Speaker 4 (45:34):
I think your cousin owes you a pizza or a beer.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Or whatever you may be both.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, trip to Chuck e cheese drunk if you want
to get in touch of this and tell us an
amazing story like James did. You can tweet to us
I'm at Joshum Clark and SYSK Podcast, Chuck's at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know on Facebook, and
you can send us all an email, including Jerry at
(46:00):
Stuff Podcast at how stuffworks dot com, and as always,
join us at home on the web Stuffishould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
Moving on with our next episode in the playlist, This
one's on a horrific and truly saddening multiple acts murder
in Iowa in nineteen twelve. To some, it looks like
a random act of violence committed by someone who is
a stranger to the victims, but some odd clues also
point to it as the work of possibly someone who
knew all of the people who died, which included children.
(00:23):
This one is harrowing, interesting, and bizarre.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry put The three of
us together, had a little mystery, a lot of mayhem.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
You got stuff you should know and one axe?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah acts, how many is this? Three?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
We got Lizzy Borden yep, effect yep, and then this one.
I couldn't think of anymore.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Well, I looked It's funny because I looked at I
was like, I wonder if we could do a spin
off show just on X murderers. And Wikipedia had thirty listed.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I'm surprised that if there's like ten mentioned in this
this article alone, Well we'll see why there are so
many X murders. This, this, this whole researching the Veliska
ax murder kind of solved a question I've had that
I didn't realize I knew had.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
How to pronounce Boliska.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
We just settled that by calling the Velliska town Hall.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
I know, that was a pretty great moment. Right before
we recorded, I was like, are you sure there's a Mellissa?
Josh called the town hall and lied.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, it was kind of a bet that she settled. Yeah, said,
we just never put money on it.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
Veliska town Hall, all, thank you. You got a call today,
so congratulations. And second of all, you just spoke to
an internet celebrity.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I don't know, man, I think Velliska is on the
map and it is one hundred percent because of this
this murder.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Well, if you just type in Veliska, almost all you
see is stuff about the axe murder.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, yeah, the site Veliska, Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
To this axe murder.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's a it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, no, it's just it doesn't mention it at all.
But all the copy is just in the outline of
the shape of an axe. They just talk about like
their boys club and stuff that they're doing. They're fourth
of July praid, but it's in the shape of an ax.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah. The population and elevation is in a drop of
blood coming off of the axe.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah, it's as population, not as much as it was
on June ninth.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
That's morbid.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Did you did you hear about this before?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Well, I think after a hint your chaifect, we had
some emails from probably local iowaans iowaans iowans Iowania Knights saying, hey,
you guys should if you're into the not into.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
X murders, but get a load of this.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
If you're into reporting on grizzly crimes, you should check
out the one we had in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they
were right, man. This is so before we get into it,
I think it goes without saying listeners that this is
a very horrific grizzly crime that we're going to talk
about in some detail. Right, listen at your own discretion.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
X murder is in the title, everybody.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
and a lot of people don't know about it.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Okay, all right, where was where was this from?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
By the way, Well, one of the articles we researched
was from Mike Dash of the Smithsonian magazine.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
They do great work, great work.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
There's another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we
have to give a shout out to, who has like
a whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder.
Guys researched it for like fifty five years or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Did he write one of the two books?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Probably? Sure.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He's widely known as the expert on the veliska axmurt
He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
One thing I realized in researching this is it was
way easier to get away with murder. Yeah in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of agreement that had this
been done today, Yeah, they would have caught the guy
very quickly. Sure, But yeah, nineteen twelve, it was like, oh,
you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means
of detection basically and eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, So we
keep saying nineteen twelve specifically, Like you said, June ninth,
(05:06):
nineteen twelve, wo in the little town tenth, Well, it
was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right,
So June ninth, tenth.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Depends on if you're still a partying.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Potato Potato Belliska, Melissa.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, but at five oh way East second Street in Velliska, Iowa,
which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
of the state, I believe not.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
As far from here as I thought.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
No.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
I just looked on a map and I was like, wait,
I was there.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I thought I away was like basically in Canada. No, huh,
where is it this more right in the middle of
the country. I did not realize that.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Like, it doesn't look further west than like Dallas.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I can believe that. But it was the north that
gets you, the northern, the norther ward direction, that's what
gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenthnineteen twelve,
in this little house there were eight people sleeping. There
were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
(06:11):
and then there four kids what were their names, Charles.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I believe Hermann, Katherine Boyd and Paul Right.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
And then downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in
the house, little Lena and Aina Stillinger.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
And they were just having a sleepover.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter or
the only daughter I guess, of the Moors, and the
whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians, and
they had been at church that day. It was Sunday
for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus Moore had
helped put on and the kids had all participated in.
(06:52):
And at that mass, Catherine had asked her two friends,
Lena and Aina, the sisters, to spend the night. And
so they came back home with the Moors from the
children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or ten thirty,
they were all at home in bed and the lights
were out and the house was settled in dark.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah, man, the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all
very sad, but anytime I hear of a fateful turn,
like oh, yeah, we just spent the night there that night, right,
and things go bad. It always I don't know, bothers
me more.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, for sure, twists of fate are terrible, especially when
they result in terrible deaths.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
So very late at night, like you said, after midnight,
someone crept in to the back of the house which
was not locked.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's up for debate.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked? That got in
without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house and this
is a small town, is there were I don't even
think two thousand people living there then, and I think
even less now than there were back then. Yeah, one
of those places. So this person, and I think by
(08:03):
all accounts we can safely say it was a man
creeps in this house with an axe from the property.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, it was Joe Moore's own axe.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
And as we will see, apparently they call these weapons
of convenience because back in the day, every single house
in the US had an axe, like in the front
or backyard.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
That just explained it. That was the question I didn't
realize i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers
at a certain period of time in American history was
because everybody had an.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Axe, Yeah, and you would leave it just you know, yeah,
like chopped into the stump that you use as the
chopping block or whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It'd be like a weapon of convenience.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Yeah, these days you would have to kill people with
like a mailbox, right, just some something that everyone has, like.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
A silicone' spatula.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Or a high speed internet cable. There chokes somebody with that. Yeah, Okay,
all joking aside. So this dude creeps in there. He's
got this axe. He gets and this is very key here.
He gets the lamp, an oil lamp from the dresser
inside the house. He takes off the chimney the glass
you know, covering, and takes it off, bends the wick
(09:19):
in half so the flame is smaller, lights the lamp,
and then turns it down really low, and then commences creeping.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, with an axe in hand in this low light
oil lamp in the.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Other chimneyless lamp, which we'll see is a big clue.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently, so he
passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up the stairs.
He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite I believe
the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe and Sarah's room,
or is Joe and Sarah's room, and they're sleeping, and
(09:57):
he sets the oil lamp down believe at the foot
of the bed, and he raises the axe over his
head and using the flat the flat end, flat side
of the axe, not the sharp blade side, but the
other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head. Joe,
(10:17):
I believe was lying on his back, even though Smithsonian
article says something different.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Yeah, raise it so high, he even gouged the ceiling correct.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, brought it down hard on Joe's head, probably killed
him instantly from that one blow.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at all because he
did the same thing to her. And both of them
were found in a position that they would have been sleeping.
And there wasn't like the bed clothes weren't ruffled, There
wasn't their arm wasn't enough to defend themselves. Right, they
died in their sleep, it appeared right.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yes, So he kills the parents either immediately or they
die probably pretty quickly, leaves the room and goes next door.
And this is really just almost too awful. To talk about.
But he kills all the children in their sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
One by one, but again without waking any of them.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Yeah, by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
have awakened.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Finally one of them, the older one Leen, and I
believe is the older.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
One, and then he dispatches with both of them in
the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful murder.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
So that's bad enough, right, This guy just went around
and murdered eight people, six of them children under the
age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under with the
blunted of an axe. That's bad enough. But then it
just gets a million times worse. And this is probably
why this axe murder is just part of American history,
(11:50):
whether we like it or not. So what the guy
does next is, well, he took the axe and he
flips it over, and he takes the sharp side, and
he goes around and he starts bashing everybody's head in
one by one. Apparently, Joe was later found to have
(12:11):
been struck as many as thirty times in the head
with the acts. Yeah, just one by one he went
around and completely caved in the head and face of
all of his victims methodically throughout the house after they
were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing to do.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah. So then it gets a little bit strange. He
goes around to the rooms and all over the house
really and does different things in each one. He covers
windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, all the mirrors in the house were covered.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
He covered the faces of I believe all the victims, right.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, one way or another. I believe all of their
faces were covered.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
With either sheets or pillowcases. Or I think in the
case of the girls, he pulled their dresses up over
their faces.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Uh. Yeah, it's very I think in the serial killer
or psychopath mode. Though I've heard of stuff like that
before though.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Right, Like, you get the idea that they don't the
murderer doesn't want the victim looking at him, Yeah, which
may also explain why he bashed their faces in you know.
So the guy apparently hangs out for a little while.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
He does other weird things though.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
With the bacon, he grabbed a two pound slab of bacon,
and I saw elsewhere that there was another slab of
bacon found in the house, but there was at least
one two pound slab of bacon that he wrapped in
a dish towel and then left on the floor of
one of the bedrooms, so weird. There was a bowl
of bloody water that was later found he washed himself off.
He washed off the axe, although he left it behind,
(13:59):
and he apparently hung out for a little while in
the house before leaving sometime before five am. So the
murders took place around midnight and then come five am,
the house is dark still it's five am, so that's
not the weirdest thing, although we're talking about Iowa, so
(14:20):
plenty of people were up at five, including the neighbor,
a woman named Mary Peckham, and she noticed that there
wasn't anybody up at the house, which was a little odd.
It was a Monday morning now, and by seven she
thought it was just downright eerie that there was no
sign of life at the house. She went over and
let the Moor's chickens out so that they could peck
(14:42):
around and feed. She called Joe Moore's store and said, hey,
has Joe showed up and found from the employee that
he hadn't and finally one of those two gets in
touch with a guy named Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
and Ross comes over over and unlocks the door. The
front door is locked, and he goes inside and he
(15:06):
comes almost immediately rushing back out calling for the local
marshal to be called.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, basically he gets Hank Horton is the marshall's name,
He gets him on the scene, and this is where
things just kind of go berserk. It's such a small town,
such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
(15:32):
much a small town like this knows about preserving a
crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
all accounts, there were one hundred or more people that
went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
(15:52):
to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
in there and check things out.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah. So the first group that come with the marshall,
Hank Horton, right, was two doctors and a minister.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
J Clark Cooper, right, great doctor name J Clark Cooper
and Edgar Huff and Wesley Ewing, who was the minister
of the church.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
They were the first contingent to make it into the
house after Ross Moore came running out. So they go
in and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
Another guy gets brought in, La Linquist. He's the coroner.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
His name was F. S.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Williams.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah. F. S.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Williams was the one who examined the body and at
a later inquest he had the most details to offer
about the bodies and positions all that stuff. So when
those guys walked in, they were at least well versed
enough to know not disturbed things as much as possible,
or at least more than the townspeople knew.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
And F. S.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Williams allegedly came out of the house pretty shaken and said,
don't go in there, boys, you'll regret it to your
last day. And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're
going inside. We want to see some dead bodies.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
And they all regretted it probably till their last day.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, Because they not only messed with the crime scene.
They poked around there was supposedly the town drunk took
fragments of Joe Moore's skull as mementos. Like. The crime
scene was toast, Like you said, if it could have
ever been preserved, it was toast. And even the local
druggist showed up with his camera to help preserve the
crime scene because he heard that the townspeople were tramping
(17:43):
all over it and Ross Moore, not understanding what he
was doing, throw the guy out, thought he was just
being a ghoul trying to get pictures. So the crime
scene is utterly and completely lost.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Yeah, and one of the things about Blesca, said Vassela,
is that it was a train town. There were about
thirty trains every day that went through there, and so
by this time, unless this person was local and maybe
hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murder had probably
(18:15):
hopped the train and was out of there at that time.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But they didn't gone.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
They didn't realize this until they had already released some bloodhounds.
They searched the countryside. There was like a pretty big
search to find whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody.
So the town was just terrified town. Of two thousand people,
eight including six children, had just been murdered with an
axe in your town. And now the sun's starting to
(18:40):
go down, and nobody's been caught, all.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Right, So let's take a break and we'll come back
and talk about suspect number one right after this. Okay,
(19:13):
So suspect number one might be a little surprising when
you first hear that. He was a state senator, very
well well respected by some as a local businessman and
a very prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply
divided between Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and
(19:38):
that stuff mattered to those people. And his name was
Frank Jones.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Methodists immediately said, no, he's got to be innocent. This
is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians are like, no,
it's got to be him. And at first I was like, well,
why would it be the state senator? None of this
makes sense. There were a couple of big things that
made people believe that he could be the guy. Yeah.
(20:06):
Joe Moore worked for him for seven years and was
one of his best salesman on his farm equipment team.
And apparently he left in nineteen oh seven, and was
not too happy with the work hours, which were sixteen
hour days, six days a week.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Who would be it's like us.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And then set up a rival business and even took
one of the clients, the John Deere company.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, that was a big one, I'm sure, so big
that when Sarah Peckham called Joe Moore's employee to tell
him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's employee called the John
Deere people in Omaha to let them know.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Oh sure, they.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Were like the third people called after the bodies were discovered.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
So he takes John Deere with him. So this set
up an obvious rivalry and worse than that apparently. And
I don't know if this is super confirmed, but at
least the rumor was that Joe Moore had slept with
Jones's daughter in law.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that's that's understood.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Is true?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
That's true? So such with his daughter in law, who
apparently kind of had several affairs in town and was
not very discreet.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, apparently, according to Mike Dashitt Smithsonian, she used to
set up her her meet and greets over the phone.
Oh that's right, over the phone. And this was at
a time when there was a switchboard operator running the
phones in the town. Ye sat there and listen. Yeah,
and this lady obviously didn't care. So apparently it was
(21:44):
pretty well known that that Joe Moore had had an
affair with F. F. Jones's daughter in law, which is huge.
She put those two things together. Friends, the fact that
apparently they used to cross to the other side of
the street to keep from from from encountering one another. Yeah,
that's a big deal in that town. In a small town, right,
(22:05):
So yeah, suspicion fell onto Ff apparently from what I understand,
within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, and suspicion not that he may have done it,
that Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because
he was fifty seven years old and probably had some
pretty good money.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
He was building a bank, overseeing his new bank being
built when he got the news of the bodies.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
When you're building the bank, you're rolling in it. Yeah,
So everyone thought that he probably hired somebody out to
kill him, and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency,
there was a detective named James Wilkerson, who said, you
know what, I think you're right. I think he hired someone.
I think that man's name was William Mansfield.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
William Blackie Mansfield. It was already, No, he wasn't already.
He would later be, I believe, convicted of an axe
murder himself.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, which is probably one of the chief reasons he
was suspect.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Well, no, that came a couple of years after. I
believe that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered
his wife, her parents, and their their child, his cholcold
with an axe.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Right. Yeah, the guy was a bad dude.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
Mansfield had an air tight alibi. He was in Illinois,
hundreds of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only
did the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll record
showed very clearly that he had not been in Veliska
(23:35):
that day and couldn't have done it.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Yeah, so he was exonerated. But a lot of townspeople
still thought that that. You know how it was back
then and still is today to a certain.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Degree, sure, especially in a small town.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Yeah, people were convinced that he was the guy, and
a lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
you said, a lot of people thought that Jones Ffjes
apparently went by ff did have something to do with it.
The still injured girl's father and Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
both thought F. F. Jones was behind this, and and
(24:13):
Wilkinson made it like his personal mission to take Jones
down and apparently ruined his political career cost him reelection
to the state Senate.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
I would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
But maybe, but I think like there's something between townspeople
suspecting you and a detective like bringing evidence against you
and getting a grand jury to indict you.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
It was like the good old days when you could
be suspected of an ex murder and still win a
Senate seat.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Right exactly the U. But Jones he didn't win re
election and uh yeah, apparently their dying day, some people
assumed that it was him behind it.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Another candidate candidate suspect, sure, candidate, it's not the right word.
Lynn George, Jacqueline Kelly, the man with four names.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
He went by George Kelly though.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird
at the time. Sure be living there.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Maybe he was a preacher though, and it says in
this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant. He definitely had
some mental health problems. But there are some things in
his case where it sort of were suspicious, and others
that made him not a great suspect, one of which
he was a little guy. He was five to one,
(25:38):
one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe not the best suspect.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
For swinging an axe like that.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, although you know he could have been strong
as an ox. You never know. Sure, those little guys,
you know, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holes rather
than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up on
before you know what. Their legs are around your neck
and you're losing content.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Yea, their thumbs are in your eyeballs, right, that kind
of thing, right, Yeah, so fair enough. But he was
left handed, and the corner Linquist did say that, you know,
from their analysis, as rudimentary as that might be. In
nineteen twelve that could probably at least determine that it
was a left handed assailant.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
From the blood spatter. I believe, yeah, on the walls.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
It's good.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Good for them for being that advance.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
So there were some other things that that implicated George Kelly. One,
he was in Velliska. He was a traveling preacher. He
and his wife toured around and they were in Valliska.
Then the day of the murder, they were actually at
the children's service.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah, that the that.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
The Moors and the Stillingery girls were at. Again, this
guy was a sex maniac, is what he was known as.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I kind of wonder about that, and I mean
he liked to have sex.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
I guess there were He placed an ad and this
is in the nineteen tens. He placed add in the
Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
willing to pose as a model. And when one, one
woman named Jessamine Hodgson, replied to his ad, he sent
(27:15):
her a letter. And apparently he's quite lude, so much
so that the court that heard the case against him
said that it was so obscene, leude, lascivious, and filthy
as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper
to be spread upon the record thereof.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
I really want to know what was in that left.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well, one of the things was that the lady would
be required to type in the nude. Yeah, this is
the nineteen ten.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
No, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would
be judged by today's standard.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Oh, although I mean by today's standard. If you sent
a potential job candidate a letter that said, oh, yeah,
going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
you would get in some trouble for that.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Sure. I just I don't know that you would say
it was obscene Luden lasibe.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
No, I'm with you.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
They'd say that's kink.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
But I think the okay. George Kelly was a kinky
traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and he
was in Viliska at the time.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Of the murders, and he left that next morning on
a train.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Right. But there was supposedly a witness that said that
he had a very incriminating statement when he got off
of that train that very morning.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders. But he had left
town before they found out about the murders. But then
later on those people recanted those statements.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Correct, right, So when when Frank Jones FF Jones had
a grand jury brought to hear evidence against him, he
was exonerated. Same thing. Not with George Kelly. Actually, I
should say he was actually the only person to ever
go to trial for these murders, and he was tried twice.
(28:58):
The first time the jury found eleven to one in
his favor. The second jury acquitted him entirely. The evidence
against him was just too flimsy, and it probably wasn't him.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Yeah, I mean the idea was they were like, he
was at that church service, he's a pervert. He saw
these kids in the service, he went back and peeked
into their house and camped out in their barn. And
the evidence there was there were some hay bales in
the barn that had depressions as if someone had been
laying on them, and if you'd laid down in one
(29:32):
of them, there was a peep hole right there in
the barn where you could see the house. This is
all pretty flimsy.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
There was also, though, I think one of the reasons
why the case was brought against him. He was specifically
tried for the murder of Lena Stillingure. And that's noteworthy
because although they don't say in the official court record
directly that she may have been sexually assaulted her, that
some sort of sex crime had been committed against her.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Supposedly she had been found with her night clothes hiked
up over her waist, like above her waist, her undergarments
had been taken off in stuffed under the bed, and
then her her legs had been arranged so that her
genitalia was prominent.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
That was done after she had been murdered. And I
think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
sex maniac for that to be possible.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, oh, I forgot about this fact though. He actually
returned a week later and posed as a Scotland yard
detective so he could get a tour of the house.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
That is so George Kelly.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Well, it's definitely one of those things that makes you go,
wait a minute, return to the scene of the crime.
You lied to get in there and look at the house. Right,
But apparently everyone wanted to go look at the house.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, so it's and plus what's posing? You know, we've
seen so many like cartoony movies that like somebody gets
like the deer stalker hat and a pipe and says
they're from Scotland. Yard. Posing could be like somebody saying like, oh,
you must be from Scotland yards. Am I grunting in
the affirmative?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I guess that technically constitutes posing in the real world.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
I apparently signed a confession.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Oh yeah, that was a big one too.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Yeah, but I mean the confession literally said I killed
the children upstairs first and the children downstairs last. I
knew God wanted me to do it this way. Slay
utterly came to mind, and I picked up the acts,
went into the house and killed them. But you know
he took it back later He's like, yeah, all that
very specific stuff I said about killing this family, I
(31:42):
didn't really do it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So he was exonerated. So so far, the little town
of Veliska has looked around and said, we couldn't find
any tramps. So who's the person that hated Joe Moore
th most F. F. Jones, Well it wasn't him. Who's
the weirdest pervert we can find.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Who is in of the time, that Englishman George Kelly.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
It wasn't him, So they didn't know. A lot of
people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
And we still don't know what happened. But with the
hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
the work of dedicated historians like Ed Epperley, we have
something of a clearer picture emerging. And that picture seems
(32:26):
to be centering on the serial killer.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
We'll talk about that theory more right after this. All right,
(32:56):
so we've ruled out these local your suspects local ish
I guess in Kelly's case, And now the modern take
on this is that this was a serial killer because
in nineteen eleven, in nineteen twelve, there were a lot
(33:16):
of axe murders in the Midwest, at least ten, everywhere
from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas. And many of them
had similar traits.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, like, some very startlingly similar traits, right.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
But not all of them. And some of them are
like and we'll go through these, but some are like, well,
in five of them, these same things happen and two
of them these same things happen, So it makes me
wonder if it wasn't if they're kind of grouping too
many of these together.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
This does Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five,
including Valliska.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
I thought three was at five.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Five, So there's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There
was one that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly
kicked the whole thing off, yeah, followed by Mammoth and
Illinois I forgot the s is silent, right, yeah, and
then Ellsworth, Kansas. Then there was one in Paola, Kansas,
(34:23):
and then the last one in Valliska. And those five
crimes have some similarities that make them really really suspicious.
That the idea of just like five different people or
even a couple of different people separately committing these crimes,
and as Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the
(34:44):
idea that these were local vendettas or you know, that
that people were.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Like something, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
That's not what these these crimes reflect at all. They
reflect the work of a like just a straight up
nut job psychopath who are few and far between. So
the fact that these things occurred between October of nineteen
eleven and June of nineteen twelve suggests strongly that there
(35:14):
was one person doing them.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Yeah. Well, there was the final one in Columbia, Missouri
in December nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is
that a man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore
in Columbia, Missouri, who was his mother? Ye, Mary Wilson,
So is that the guy? No, it would be weird
(35:40):
to commit a series of murders and then finish up
with your own family, right, Usually it's the other way around.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, right, So, like, if you're going to go off
on a killing spree, usually start you practice on your
family first. Yeah, you get a feel for it, right.
This guy, Henry Lee Moore, aside from having three three names,
is not a good suspect for the serial killer, right.
He apparently wanted the deeds to his family house. And
(36:08):
like you said, it's very rare for a serial killer
to go back.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
The deal with the three names. They don't all have
three names.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
No, I know, but so many of them do.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Well, No, the news reports it that way to distinguish them.
For every other Henry more in the world. So like
everyone's always like serial killers have three names. No, they're
just reported that way.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
That's awesome. Yeah, I love him when things are just explained. Yeah,
I wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I think you're right.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
So if anyone ever writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant,
we're in trouble.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I would kill you,
thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Hey, you want to.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Shake on it? Jerry witnessed.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a
red herring. Like a lot of people say, well, he
was the one. He was a serial killer behind it,
because the the serial murder started right after he got
out of prison in Kansas, Yes, and then they ended
right after he got caught in Columbia, Missouri with his family.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Yeah, I mean kind of makes sense, it does.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
But that's where the whole thing really begins an end.
So a lot of people say, well, it wasn't Henry
ly more so, it wasn't a serial killing.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Well plus sorry, but his his killing his own family
was about obtaining the deeds to his family house.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Oh so that was greed motivated, right, Okay.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
this guy was just a jerk. So since Henry Lee
Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once somebody
then finds out that it wasn't Henry ly Moore, they
stopped thinking it was a serial murderer. Rightly says not
so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because Henry Lee Moore's
(38:01):
out of the equation doesn't mean there's not a serial
killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the similarities between these
five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
light low.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Axes were used in four of the five, but he
says that's just probably a matter of convenience. A pipe
I think was used in the Mammoth, Illinois case, which
is again an implement of convenience too. Right, Sure, don't
have an axe, handy, go for a lead pipe.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Right, Yeah, he probably didn't bring that with you.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Right, there were tell them about the tell them about
the mirrors, Chuck.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Well, I mean at several of these places the mirrors
were covered up. I mean that's a big one. Yeah,
mirrors and windows. And in one of the places, the
telephone was covered. And the thought there is is that,
like you said earlier, like they don't want the victims
to be watching them even after death, or to be
seen in the mirrors and windows being covered. But the phone,
(39:11):
apparently it was one of those old box phones on
the wall that you crank, and it has the two
it sort of looks like a face right when you
look at it. It has like looks like two eyes
and a nose. And so the thought was that that
even looks like a face to the dranged serial killer.
So they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing
(39:31):
else makes much sense. You know, you're not going to
in nineteen twelve, you're not getting phone calls after midnight.
You probably probably don't get more than a couple of
phone calls a week in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Twelve, right, most people have phones.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Yeah, And throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
No, there was another female victim, a young female victim
in Mammoth who was found basically the same way that
Lena's still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown
up over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there
(40:10):
was a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valliska where
and one other town too where the killer went on
to try to kill again.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Yeah, this was the most interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Either successfully did kill again. There was one where he
went to an adjacent house whose backyard connected the first
murder house and then went in and killed another family
right afterwards.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
That was Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And then in Valliska, the telephone operator who was like
sleeping in the telephone switchboard.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Headquarters because no calls were coming through.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
She reported the door knob being tried about two hours
after the more house members were murdered.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Yeah, like herd footsteps come up to the door, try
to open it, and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah,
that's a little shaky. But the last one was the
one that kind of sent the chill up my spine.
It was the one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola,
I bet you there are people there laughing because it's
probably pronounced Paula or something probably, but who knows p
(41:13):
a a. Kansas, there was a second family, Missus Longmire,
the Longmere family. They were awaken she and her daughter
at about midnight to the sound of broken glass, went
downstairs and saw a dude in their dining room who
had just broken oil lamp chimney and then got the
(41:33):
heck out of there through a window. They actually saw
a guy.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
they woke up and saw the man who was about
to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe,
and this probably leaving our house.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
And these were all trained towns, so they were all
linked by train depots. So by all accounts, there was
a train going serial killer, uh for a couple of
years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people hopping trains. Never
ever caught in that nuts.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It is nuts, and that the Veliska axe murders were
probably one of his crazy but we'll never know, no.
You know, when you say stuff like that, or when
you see stuff like that in print too, like we'll
never know who it was, it makes you wonder, like
what kind of technology are we going to have in
the future, like will we never know or are we
(42:29):
going to come up with something one day where we're like,
oh it was this guy. Yeah, like now we know,
you know who who knows the future knows? That's who knows.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
We should do one on Ed Geen. Okay, that's like
kind of one of the big big ones we haven't covered.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Okay, I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I
don't want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
true crime.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
we used to do multiple kind of creepy uppisodes.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think we did last time too was October.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yea, all right, we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial
killer type thing.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Okay, yeah we did hinter Kfech I think was that
last look? I think so?
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Ye Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Uh. If you want to know more about the Veliska
X murders, well again strongly recommend you go look up
ed Epperley. You can read the Smithsonian article The X
Murder Who Got Away, which is great. Uh. And there
were plenty of other articles that we relied on that
we love.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Thank you for those.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
In the meantime, you can also hang out with us
on how stuff works dot com and our famous search bar. Instance.
I said search bar got it in there. It's un
for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Hey, guys love the show, and now I have even
more reason to promote your podcast to everyone I know.
I work in a small family business with my cousin.
In this previous January, started experiencing severe gastro intestinal issues.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Oh I love this email.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yeah remember this one. It was like from yesterday.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the root.
Tested for Crone's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus
on anything, no energy, took a ton of time away
from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the
help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic
(44:21):
deteriorating quality of life. You see where this is going people,
I think listeners might know. And he was Southern one
day last month he was Southern. Actually, he came in
after a doctor's appointment, said he developed an iron deficient
anemia to add to his list of issues. At first,
it sounded disconnected until and I kid you, this is
(44:43):
an all caps I kid you not Josh and Chuck.
I was listening to your Hookworm episode that day, man,
when he got to the part about the aggressive iron
deficient anemia, I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm
infection symptoms, brought it to my cousin and he had
every last symptom his doctor prescribed to medication and he
(45:05):
is currently being de wormed. From the first day he
started his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both
mood and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could
have slipped by a half dozen GPS and specialists, But
I truly can't thank you both enough for your podcast
and his wide range of topics. That is, James and
sat Pete Florida.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
That is so awesome, man, dude, haad hookworm. Can you
believe it? Then? And thank you James, and.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
Good luck to you cousin.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Way to go for being so smart to connect the
dots too.
Speaker 4 (45:34):
I think your cousin owes you a pizza or a beer.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Or whatever you may be both.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, trip to Chuck e cheese drunk if you want
to get in touch of this and tell us an
amazing story like James did. You can tweet to us
I'm at Joshum Clark and SYSK Podcast, Chuck's at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know on Facebook, and
you can send us all an email, including Jerry at
(46:00):
Stuff Podcast at how stuffworks dot com, and as always,
join us at home on the web Stuffishould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
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