For 112 years, the brutal bludgeoning of eight people in a quaint Iowa town has stumped investigators
Des Moines Register-USA TODAY NETWORK
Villisca Ax Murder House in Villisca, Iowa
It’s been more than 112 years since a beloved family of six and a pair of siblings in their care were bludgeoned to death in their Iowa home. To this day, there are no firm answers as to who did it or why.
After a century unsolved, the Villisca axe murders have become the stuff of ghost tour fodder — the type of local legend in a small Midwestern community that gives children nightmares and inspires true crime sleuths to try to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.
But the facts remain: Eight people, including six children, were brutally murdered with an axe on the night of June 10, 1912 when a suspect – or suspects, according to some theories – walked into Josiah and Sarah Moore’s home sometime around midnight and attacked the victims in their sleep.
PEOPLE is looking back on the case, which has stumped prosecutors and ghost hunters alike for more than a century.
Des Moines Register-USA TODAY NETWORK
An upstairs attic crawl space in the Villisca Ax Murder House, on Oct. 26, 2011 in Villisca Iowa. There is speculation that the killer hid out in the crawl space before committing the murders in the home.
The Family
The Moore family was a well-respected family in the local Villisca community throughout the early 1900s, Johnny Houser, a tour guide at the Villisca Axe Murder House, told local ABC 5 last year. “Everybody loved them,” Houser said. “Think of that family from your small hometown that everyone loves, everyone respects, nobody has a problem with.”
Moore, 43, was a local hardware dealer who started his own business about five years beforehand and was well-known in the local church community, according to the Des Moines Register. He and his wife Sarah, 39, shared four children together: Herman, 11, Mary, 10, Arthur, 7, and Paul, 5.
The Murders
The members of the Moore family were asleep in their beds following a Monday night church service, along with Lena Stillinger, 12, and Ina Stillinger, 8, two children who were visiting the Moore children.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Josiah was killed first when his murderer — or murderers — walked in through the family’s unlocked front door, snuck past two bedrooms with the children sleeping in them, and crushed his skull with an axe. The killer or killers lifted the axe so high for the initial blow that a piece of the ceiling was impacted, according to the magazine.
The killer or killers then quickly smashed Sarah’s head before she had time to register what had happened to her husband. The killer or killers then moved on to kill the Moore’s four children, and then the Stillinger sisters.
The killer or killers then backtracked through the crime scene, bludgeoning his victims dozens of more times in the head. Josiah was struck about 30 times in the skull after he was already dead, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
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The murderer (or murderers) left a chaotic scene behind, according to the magazine, according to the Des Moines Register and ABC 5. The Moore family’s heads were covered in bed clothes, sheets covered mirrors around the home, food was left on the floor, and there was bowl of water that some reports say was used to wash the bloody hands of whoever committed the murders. Then, the killer or killers disappeared silently into the night.
The eight bodies were discovered the next morning when a neighbor, Mary Peckham, had noticed the Moore family was not outside doing their typical chores, according to Charlene Bielema, who visited the house in 2023 for the Shaw Local News Network.
Rodney White-USA TODAY NETWORK
Villisca, IA, USA; A downstairs bedroom that was occupied by Lena Stillinger, 12, and her sister Ina, 8, houseguests of the Moore children, at the time of the murder in the Villisca Axe Murder House, in Villisca, Iowa.
The Theories
No one has ever been convicted in the Moore family’s murder, nor the murder of the young Stillinger sisters, though there have been theories.
One leading theory is that Frank Jones, a rival hardware seller and state senator who used to be Josiah Moore’s boss before the Moore patriarch left Jones’ business in 1907 to begin his own local competitor, was the culprit, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Another theory that took a strong hold claimed that Rev. Lyn George Jacklin Kelly was the killer, the Des Moines Register reported. Rev. Kelly was a traveling preacher who was passing through Villisca at the time.
According to the newspaper, Kelly had left town the morning after the murders. Local ABC 5 reports that many have said Kelly later sent a bloody shirt to be laundered a week later.
The Register reports that Kelly was twice acquitted in court, despite having once confessed to the murders, telling prosecutors that God had told him to commit the crime.
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