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Curious to learn all the details of the Villisca Axe Murder House and why it's one of the most haunted places in the world? Listen to this week's episode of our haunted house podcast series, Dark House, for exclusive ghost stories and insights into the notorious home's haunted reputation. The full story of the Villisca Axe Murder House is featured in episode 2 of House Beautiful’s new haunted house podcast, Dark House. 2nd Street was built in 1868 on lot 310 for local resident George Loomis.
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Jennifer Kirkland/FlickrOne of the children’s bedrooms inside the Villisca Axe Murders house. A bowl of water was found in the home, spirals of blood swirling through it. Police believed that the murderer had washed his hands in it before leaving. Then, as quickly and silently as he had arrived, the stranger left, taking keys from the home, and locking the door behind him. The Villisca Axe Murders may have been quick, but as the world was about to discover, they were unimaginably horrifying.
The Villisca Ax Murders: 111 years later
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But when Rundle began filming his documentary in the 1990s, there had been little talk of the house being haunted. He says that in his years of filming inside the house, he never experienced or saw anything out of the ordinary, nor did any of the previous occupants he spoke with who had lived in the house for years before it became a tourist attraction. Perhaps the most surprising name linked to the brutal Villisca murders was Frank F. Jones. Josiah Moore had worked for Jones for several years before leaving to start his own business selling farm implements. When he did so, he reportedly took a lucrative John Deere contract with him. While that might not have been motive enough for murder, rumors also persisted that Moore had been carrying on an affair with Jones’ daughter.
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The Case Goes Cold And The Villisca Axe Murders House Becomes A Tourist Attraction
Jennifer Kirkland/FlickrIn recent years, the Villisca Axe Murders house has become a tourist attraction, with visitors even allowed to venture inside. Everyone in the house was dead, all eight of them bludgeoned beyond recognition. The next morning, the neighbors became suspicious, noticing that the usually rambunctious home was dead quiet. What he saw after letting himself in with his own key was enough to make him sick.
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The cases were similar enough to raise the possibility of having been committed by the same person. Other murders reported as possibly being linked to these crimes include the numerous unsolved axe murders along the Southern Pacific Railroad from 1911–1912, the unsolved Axeman of New Orleans killings, as well as several other such murders during this time period. The chief Villisca suspect was a traveling minister named George Kelly, who was arrested in 1917 after years of sending inquiring letters about the murders to police and family members of the victims. Kelly had previously been arrested for sending obscene material through the mail, and had been held in a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. After his arrest, Kelly made a full confession to the Villisca slayings. However, the confession came after hours of interrogation, and he recanted almost immediately. His first trial ended in a hung jury, while the second resulted in an acquittal.
The home would have echoed most others in the area in size and features, at about 600 square feet, with two bedrooms, a parlor, a downstairs sewing room and a kitchen and an outhouse. The house, redubbed the Villisca Ax Murder House, now is open for tours and overnight visits. The bodies of Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children and two visiting girls were found in the Moore home in Villisca, a Montgomery County town located about 100 miles southwest of Des Moines. Josiah was a prominent businessman and well-known church worker in town, according to reporting from the former Des Moines Tribune. No sale was ever attempted, and no changes were made to the original layout.
Groups can book the house for $500 for up to five people, and $100 for each additional person. This month marks 110 years since a family of six and their two visitors were bludgeoned to death in their sleep at a home in the small southwest Iowa town of Villisca. After reading about the Villisca Axe Murders, read about another unsolved murder, the Hinterkaifeck murders. Then, check out the history of Lizzie Borden and her infamous string of murders. Soon, reports of similar enough crimes happening throughout the country began to pop up. Though the crimes were not quite as gruesome, there were two common threads – the use of an axe as the murder weapon, and the presence of an oil lamp, set to burn extremely low, at the scene.
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Now, the house has become a tourist attraction and sits at the end of the quiet street as it always has, while life goes on around it, undeterred by the horrors that were once committed within. Shortly after midnight, a stranger entered through the unlocked door (not an uncommon sight in what was considered a small, safe, friendly town), and plucked an oil lamp from a nearby table, rigging it to burn so low it supplied light for barely one person. On one hand, the stranger held the lamp, lighting the way through the house.
Who Committed The Villisca Axe Murders?
Kelly signed a confession months later saying God had whispered to him to "suffer the children to come unto me." Neighbors reported they did not hear any cries from the rooms of the sleeping family. One of the townspeople even took a fragment of Joe’s skull as a keepsake. The state of the bodies wasn’t the most concerning part, however, once the police had searched the home.
Every transient and otherwise unaccounted-for stranger was a suspect in the murders, Andrew Sawyer was one of those people. He also was obsessed with the murders and slept fully clothed as if he was ready to make a clean getaway and he also slept with an axe by his bed. The bodies of Lena and Ina Stillinger were discovered in the downstairs bedroom. At the base of 12-year-old Lena's bed, a kerosene lamp was found, possibly used to project light onto her body, which was lying in a sexual pose with her underwear missing, blood smeared across her legs, and defensive wounds across her arms. Investigators believe she was the victim of sexual abuse, and also the only member of the house who attempted to fight off her attacker. "They play with the children, they hear voices, they get pictures of anomalies," says Martha Linn, 77, who bought the house in 1994 and restored it to its 1912 condition, stripping the place of all electricity and plumbing and turning it into a tourist attraction.
Sometime after midnight on June 10th, 1912, six children and two adults were found bludgeoned to death by an axe that was left at the scene. Accusations regarding the culprit spread quickly throughout the small town of Villisca, Iowa, sparking suspicious glances among neighbors that would lead to friendships torn asunder. Unfortunately the crime-solving technology of 1912 was not sophisticated enough to identify the murderer, and the case has gone unsolved to this day. Amateur detectives ranging from historians to psychics have tried their hand at solving the case, but a verdict has never been reached.
The blows were delivered so forcefully that gouges were left in the ceiling. Some of the most unsettling details about the crime scene, aside from the sheer brutality and tragedy of it, include a hidden attic, a door locked from the inside, and linens covering every window and mirror in the house. Kelly was left-handed, which police determined from blood spatters that the killer must be.
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