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SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Moving on with our next episode in the playlist, This
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: one's on a horrific and truly saddening multiple acts murder
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in Iowa in nineteen twelve. To some, it looks like
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a random act of violence committed by someone who is
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a stranger to the victims, but some odd clues also
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: point to it as the work of possibly someone who
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: knew all of the people who died, which included children.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: This one is harrowing, interesting, and bizarre.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry put The three of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: us together, had a little mystery, a lot of mayhem.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: You got stuff you should know and one axe?
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah acts, how many is this? Three?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We got Lizzy Borden yep, effect yep, and then this one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anymore.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: Well, I looked It's funny because I looked at I
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: was like, I wonder if we could do a spin
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: off show just on X murderers. And Wikipedia had thirty listed.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised that if there's like ten mentioned in this
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: this article alone, Well we'll see why there are so
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: many X murders. This, this, this whole researching the Veliska
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: ax murder kind of solved a question I've had that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize I knew had.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: How to pronounce Boliska.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We just settled that by calling the Velliska town Hall.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: I know, that was a pretty great moment. Right before
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: we recorded, I was like, are you sure there's a Mellissa?
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: Josh called the town hall and lied.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it was kind of a bet that she settled. Yeah, said,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: we just never put money on it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: So if you are whoever answers the phone at the
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: Veliska town Hall, all, thank you. You got a call today,
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: so congratulations. And second of all, you just spoke to
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: an internet celebrity.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I think Velliska is on the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: map and it is one hundred percent because of this
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: this murder.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: Well, if you just type in Veliska, almost all you
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: see is stuff about the axe murder.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the site Veliska, Iowa dot com is entirely dedicated.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: To this axe murder.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty big deal.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's just it doesn't mention it at all.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: But all the copy is just in the outline of
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: the shape of an axe. They just talk about like
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: their boys club and stuff that they're doing. They're fourth
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: of July praid, but it's in the shape of an ax.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The population and elevation is in a drop of
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: blood coming off of the axe.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's as population, not as much as it was
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: on June ninth.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: That's morbid.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: Nineteen twelve.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Did you did you hear about this before?
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: Well, I think after a hint your chaifect, we had
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: some emails from probably local iowaans iowaans iowans Iowania Knights saying, hey,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: you guys should if you're into the not into.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: X murders, but get a load of this.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: If you're into reporting on grizzly crimes, you should check
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: out the one we had in nineteen twelve. Yeah, they
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: were right, man. This is so before we get into it,
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: I think it goes without saying listeners that this is
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: a very horrific grizzly crime that we're going to talk
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: about in some detail. Right, listen at your own discretion.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: X murder is in the title, everybody.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, just want to make sure we cover ourselves there.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: This is one of the most brutal crimes in American history. Yeah,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people don't know about it.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Well let's let's let's stop jabbering and get this criming.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Okay, all right, where was where was this from?
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: By the way, Well, one of the articles we researched
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: was from Mike Dash of the Smithsonian magazine.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: They do great work, great work.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: There's another guy named and named Ed Epperley who we
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: have to give a shout out to, who has like
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: a whole site called ask ed that's dedicated to this murder.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Guys researched it for like fifty five years or something
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Did he write one of the two books?
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Probably? Sure.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: He's widely known as the expert on the veliska axmurt
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: He knows everything there is to know, and he's got
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a really fascinating So if you're even remotely into true
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Ed's site and you will just spend days pouring over it.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: One thing I realized in researching this is it was
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: way easier to get away with murder. Yeah in nineteen twelve.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of agreement that had this
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: been done today, Yeah, they would have caught the guy
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: very quickly. Sure, But yeah, nineteen twelve, it was like, oh,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of detection basically and eyewitness pretty much. Yeah, So we
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: keep saying nineteen twelve specifically, Like you said, June ninth,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, wo in the little town tenth, Well, it
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So June ninth, tenth.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: Depends on if you're still a partying.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Potato Potato Belliska, Melissa.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but at five oh way East second Street in Velliska, Iowa,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: which is in the County of Montgomery in the southeast
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of the state, I believe not.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: As far from here as I thought.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: No.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: I just looked on a map and I was like, wait,
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: I was there.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I thought I away was like basically in Canada. No, huh,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: where is it this more right in the middle of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the country. I did not realize that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Like, it doesn't look further west than like Dallas.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I can believe that. But it was the north that
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: gets you, the northern, the norther ward direction, that's what
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: gets your share. So on this night June ninth, tenthnineteen twelve,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: in this little house there were eight people sleeping. There
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and then there four kids what were their names, Charles.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: I believe Hermann, Katherine Boyd and Paul Right.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And then downstairs there were two additional people sleeping in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the house, little Lena and Aina Stillinger.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: And they were just having a sleepover.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter or
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the only daughter I guess, of the Moors, and the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians, and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: they had been at church that day. It was Sunday
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: for a special Children's Day Mass that Missus Moore had
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: helped put on and the kids had all participated in.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And at that mass, Catherine had asked her two friends,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Lena and Aina, the sisters, to spend the night. And
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: so they came back home with the Moors from the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: children's Day Mass, and by I think ten or ten thirty,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: they were all at home in bed and the lights
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: were out and the house was settled in dark.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, man, the Stillinger girls. I mean, this is all
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: very sad, but anytime I hear of a fateful turn,
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: like oh, yeah, we just spent the night there that night, right,
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: and things go bad. It always I don't know, bothers
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: me more.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, twists of fate are terrible, especially when
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: they result in terrible deaths.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: So very late at night, like you said, after midnight,
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: someone crept in to the back of the house which
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: was not locked.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: That's up for debate.
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, all right, locked or unlocked? That got in
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: without raising suspicion, right, Yeah, two story house and this
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: is a small town, is there were I don't even
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: think two thousand people living there then, and I think
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: even less now than there were back then. Yeah, one
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: of those places. So this person, and I think by
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: all accounts we can safely say it was a man
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: creeps in this house with an axe from the property.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Joe Moore's own axe.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: And as we will see, apparently they call these weapons
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: of convenience because back in the day, every single house
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: in the US had an axe, like in the front
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: or backyard.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: That just explained it. That was the question I didn't
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: realize i'd had. Why were there so many axe murderers
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: at a certain period of time in American history was
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: because everybody had an.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Axe, Yeah, and you would leave it just you know, yeah,
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: like chopped into the stump that you use as the
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: chopping block or whatever.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It'd be like a weapon of convenience.
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, these days you would have to kill people with
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: like a mailbox, right, just some something that everyone has, like.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: A silicone' spatula.
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: Or a high speed internet cable. There chokes somebody with that. Yeah, Okay,
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: all joking aside. So this dude creeps in there. He's
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: got this axe. He gets and this is very key here.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: He gets the lamp, an oil lamp from the dresser
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: inside the house. He takes off the chimney the glass
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: you know, covering, and takes it off, bends the wick
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: in half so the flame is smaller, lights the lamp,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: and then turns it down really low, and then commences creeping.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, with an axe in hand in this low light
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: oil lamp in the.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: Other chimneyless lamp, which we'll see is a big clue.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he goes up the stairs, apparently, so he
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: passes the Stillinger girls first, yep, goes up the stairs.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: He passes the children's bedroom and then opposite I believe
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the landing from the children's bedroom are Joe and Sarah's room,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: or is Joe and Sarah's room, and they're sleeping, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: he sets the oil lamp down believe at the foot
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of the bed, and he raises the axe over his
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: head and using the flat the flat end, flat side
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: of the axe, not the sharp blade side, but the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: other side, he delivers a blow to Joe's head. Joe,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I believe was lying on his back, even though Smithsonian
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: article says something different.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, raise it so high, he even gouged the ceiling correct.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, brought it down hard on Joe's head, probably killed
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: him instantly from that one blow.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Then apparently he didn't disturb Sarah at all because he
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: did the same thing to her. And both of them
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: were found in a position that they would have been sleeping.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And there wasn't like the bed clothes weren't ruffled, There
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't their arm wasn't enough to defend themselves. Right, they
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: died in their sleep, it appeared right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: Yes, So he kills the parents either immediately or they
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: die probably pretty quickly, leaves the room and goes next door.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: And this is really just almost too awful. To talk about.
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: But he kills all the children in their sleep.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: One by one, but again without waking any of them.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, by the time he got to the Stillinger girls downstairs,
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: it seemed evidence points to the fact that they may
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: have awakened.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Finally one of them, the older one Leen, and I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: believe is the older.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: One, and then he dispatches with both of them in
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: the same manner. Yeah, grizzly, awful murder.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: So that's bad enough, right, This guy just went around
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and murdered eight people, six of them children under the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: age of twelve. Yeah, or twelve are under with the
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: blunted of an axe. That's bad enough. But then it
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: just gets a million times worse. And this is probably
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: why this axe murder is just part of American history,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: whether we like it or not. So what the guy
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: does next is, well, he took the axe and he
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: flips it over, and he takes the sharp side, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: he goes around and he starts bashing everybody's head in
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: one by one. Apparently, Joe was later found to have
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: been struck as many as thirty times in the head
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: with the acts. Yeah, just one by one he went
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: around and completely caved in the head and face of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: all of his victims methodically throughout the house after they
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: were dead, which is a bizarre, horrible thing to do.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So then it gets a little bit strange. He
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: goes around to the rooms and all over the house
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: really and does different things in each one. He covers
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: windows with sheets and things. He covers mirrors.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all the mirrors in the house were covered.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: He covered the faces of I believe all the victims, right.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one way or another. I believe all of their
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: faces were covered.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: With either sheets or pillowcases. Or I think in the
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: case of the girls, he pulled their dresses up over
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: their faces.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a second.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: Uh. Yeah, it's very I think in the serial killer
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: or psychopath mode. Though I've heard of stuff like that
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: before though.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Right, Like, you get the idea that they don't the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: murderer doesn't want the victim looking at him, Yeah, which
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: may also explain why he bashed their faces in you know.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So the guy apparently hangs out for a little while.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: He does other weird things though.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: With the bacon, he grabbed a two pound slab of bacon,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and I saw elsewhere that there was another slab of
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: bacon found in the house, but there was at least
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: one two pound slab of bacon that he wrapped in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a dish towel and then left on the floor of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: one of the bedrooms, so weird. There was a bowl
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of bloody water that was later found he washed himself off.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: He washed off the axe, although he left it behind,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and he apparently hung out for a little while in
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the house before leaving sometime before five am. So the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: murders took place around midnight and then come five am,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the house is dark still it's five am, so that's
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: not the weirdest thing, although we're talking about Iowa, so
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: plenty of people were up at five, including the neighbor,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a woman named Mary Peckham, and she noticed that there
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: wasn't anybody up at the house, which was a little odd.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: It was a Monday morning now, and by seven she
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: thought it was just downright eerie that there was no
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sign of life at the house. She went over and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: let the Moor's chickens out so that they could peck
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: around and feed. She called Joe Moore's store and said, hey,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: has Joe showed up and found from the employee that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: he hadn't and finally one of those two gets in
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: touch with a guy named Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: and Ross comes over over and unlocks the door. The
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: front door is locked, and he goes inside and he
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: comes almost immediately rushing back out calling for the local
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: marshal to be called.
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, basically he gets Hank Horton is the marshall's name,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: He gets him on the scene, and this is where
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: things just kind of go berserk. It's such a small town,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: such a grizzly crime. Any chances of preserving a crime scene,
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: and this is nineteen twelve. I don't even know how
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: much a small town like this knows about preserving a
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: crime scene at the time, but any hopes were lost
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: within those first few hours after the discovery, because by
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: all accounts, there were one hundred or more people that
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: went through that house, from doctors to coroners, to investigators
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: to just townspeople, right, that were allowed to just go
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: in there and check things out.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first group that come with the marshall,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Hank Horton, right, was two doctors and a minister.
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: J Clark Cooper, right, great doctor name J Clark Cooper
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: and Edgar Huff and Wesley Ewing, who was the minister
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: of the church.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: They were the first contingent to make it into the
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: house after Ross Moore came running out. So they go
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: in and they know enough to not disturb things too much.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Another guy gets brought in, La Linquist. He's the coroner.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: He tries to take some notes about the crime scene.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But the person who got the most information was another doctor.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: His name was F. S.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Williams.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. F. S.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Williams was the one who examined the body and at
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a later inquest he had the most details to offer
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: about the bodies and positions all that stuff. So when
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: those guys walked in, they were at least well versed
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: enough to know not disturbed things as much as possible,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: or at least more than the townspeople knew.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: And F. S.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Williams allegedly came out of the house pretty shaken and said,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: don't go in there, boys, you'll regret it to your
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: last day. And the townspeople said, nuts to you. We're
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: going inside. We want to see some dead bodies.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: And they all regretted it probably till their last day.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Because they not only messed with the crime scene.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: They poked around there was supposedly the town drunk took
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: fragments of Joe Moore's skull as mementos. Like. The crime
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: scene was toast, Like you said, if it could have
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: ever been preserved, it was toast. And even the local
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: druggist showed up with his camera to help preserve the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: crime scene because he heard that the townspeople were tramping
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: all over it and Ross Moore, not understanding what he
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: was doing, throw the guy out, thought he was just
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: being a ghoul trying to get pictures. So the crime
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: scene is utterly and completely lost.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and one of the things about Blesca, said Vassela,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: is that it was a train town. There were about
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: thirty trains every day that went through there, and so
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: by this time, unless this person was local and maybe
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: hiding out locally, by all accounts, the murder had probably
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: hopped the train and was out of there at that time.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: But they didn't gone.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: They didn't realize this until they had already released some bloodhounds.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: They searched the countryside. There was like a pretty big
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: search to find whoever did this, and they didn't find anybody.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So the town was just terrified town. Of two thousand people,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: eight including six children, had just been murdered with an
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: axe in your town. And now the sun's starting to
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: go down, and nobody's been caught, all.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Right, So let's take a break and we'll come back
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: and talk about suspect number one right after this. Okay,
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: So suspect number one might be a little surprising when
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: you first hear that. He was a state senator, very
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: well well respected by some as a local businessman and
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: a very prominent Methodist. Seems the town was pretty sharply
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: divided between Methodists and Presbyterian you know those days, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: that stuff mattered to those people. And his name was
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: Frank Jones.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: And.
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: Methodists immediately said, no, he's got to be innocent. This
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: is a fine upstanding member of our church. Presbyterians are like, no,
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: it's got to be him. And at first I was like, well,
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: why would it be the state senator? None of this
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: makes sense. There were a couple of big things that
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: made people believe that he could be the guy. Yeah.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Joe Moore worked for him for seven years and was
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: one of his best salesman on his farm equipment team.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: And apparently he left in nineteen oh seven, and was
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: not too happy with the work hours, which were sixteen
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: hour days, six days a week.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Who would be it's like us.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: And then set up a rival business and even took
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: one of the clients, the John Deere company.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big one, I'm sure, so big
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that when Sarah Peckham called Joe Moore's employee to tell
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: him the news. Yeah, Joe Moore's employee called the John
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Deere people in Omaha to let them know.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: Oh sure, they.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Were like the third people called after the bodies were discovered.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: So he takes John Deere with him. So this set
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: up an obvious rivalry and worse than that apparently. And
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: I don't know if this is super confirmed, but at
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: least the rumor was that Joe Moore had slept with
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: Jones's daughter in law.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: From what I understand, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that's that's understood.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Is true?
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: That's true? So such with his daughter in law, who
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: apparently kind of had several affairs in town and was
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: not very discreet.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently, according to Mike Dashitt Smithsonian, she used to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: set up her her meet and greets over the phone.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Oh that's right, over the phone. And this was at
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a time when there was a switchboard operator running the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: phones in the town. Ye sat there and listen. Yeah,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and this lady obviously didn't care. So apparently it was
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: pretty well known that that Joe Moore had had an
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: affair with F. F. Jones's daughter in law, which is huge.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: She put those two things together. Friends, the fact that
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: apparently they used to cross to the other side of
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the street to keep from from from encountering one another. Yeah,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that's a big deal in that town. In a small town, right,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, suspicion fell onto Ff apparently from what I understand,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: within a couple hours of the bodies being discovered.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and suspicion not that he may have done it,
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: that Jones was actually the killer, but maybe Jones because
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: he was fifty seven years old and probably had some
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: pretty good money.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Clearly, Oh yeah, he was wealthy.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: He was building a bank, overseeing his new bank being
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: built when he got the news of the bodies.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: When you're building the bank, you're rolling in it. Yeah,
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: So everyone thought that he probably hired somebody out to
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: kill him, and there was a very the Burns Detective Agency,
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: there was a detective named James Wilkerson, who said, you
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: know what, I think you're right. I think he hired someone.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: I think that man's name was William Mansfield.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: William Blackie Mansfield. It was already, No, he wasn't already.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: He would later be, I believe, convicted of an axe
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: murder himself.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, which is probably one of the chief reasons he
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: was suspect.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Well, no, that came a couple of years after. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: believe that was nineteen fourteen or fifteen, that he murdered
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: his wife, her parents, and their their child, his cholcold
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: with an axe.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, the guy was a bad dude.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: But there was one problem with James Wilkerson's theory. Blackie
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Mansfield had an air tight alibi. He was in Illinois,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away when the crimes occurred. Not only
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: did the foreman vouch for him, but the payroll record
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: showed very clearly that he had not been in Veliska
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: that day and couldn't have done it.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so he was exonerated. But a lot of townspeople
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: still thought that that. You know how it was back
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: then and still is today to a certain.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Degree, sure, especially in a small town.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, people were convinced that he was the guy, and
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: a lot of people probably went to their graves thinking that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So even though Chuck that Mansfield was exonerated, and like
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: you said, a lot of people thought that Jones Ffjes
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: apparently went by ff did have something to do with it.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: The still injured girl's father and Ross Moore, Joe Moore's brother,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: both thought F. F. Jones was behind this, and and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Wilkinson made it like his personal mission to take Jones
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: down and apparently ruined his political career cost him reelection
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to the state Senate.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: I would think that probably happened anyway, just from suspicion.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: But maybe, but I think like there's something between townspeople
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: suspecting you and a detective like bringing evidence against you
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and getting a grand jury to indict you.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: It was like the good old days when you could
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: be suspected of an ex murder and still win a
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: Senate seat.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Right exactly the U. But Jones he didn't win re
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: election and uh yeah, apparently their dying day, some people
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: assumed that it was him behind it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: Another candidate candidate suspect, sure, candidate, it's not the right word.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: Lynn George, Jacqueline Kelly, the man with four names.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: He went by George Kelly though.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: at the time. Sure be living there.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: Maybe he was a preacher though, and it says in
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: this Smithsonian article a known sexual deviant. He definitely had
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: some mental health problems. But there are some things in
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: his case where it sort of were suspicious, and others
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: that made him not a great suspect, one of which
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: he was a little guy. He was five to one,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: one hundred and nineteen pounds, so maybe not the best suspect.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: For swinging an axe like that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, although you know he could have been strong
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: as an ox. You never know. Sure, those little guys,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, but.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: They're usually good with like jiu jitsu sleeper holes rather
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: than axe swinging. You know, they just scramble up on
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: before you know what. Their legs are around your neck
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and you're losing content.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: Yea, their thumbs are in your eyeballs, right, that kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: of thing, right, Yeah, so fair enough. But he was
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: left handed, and the corner Linquist did say that, you know,
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: from their analysis, as rudimentary as that might be. In
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: nineteen twelve that could probably at least determine that it
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: was a left handed assailant.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: From the blood spatter. I believe, yeah, on the walls.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: It's good.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: Good for them for being that advance.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: So there were some other things that that implicated George Kelly. One,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: he was in Velliska. He was a traveling preacher. He
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and his wife toured around and they were in Valliska.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Then the day of the murder, they were actually at
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the children's service.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that the that.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: The Moors and the Stillingery girls were at. Again, this
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: guy was a sex maniac, is what he was known as.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of wonder about that, and I mean
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: he liked to have sex.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I guess there were He placed an ad and this
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: is in the nineteen tens. He placed add in the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: willing to pose as a model. And when one, one
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: woman named Jessamine Hodgson, replied to his ad, he sent
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: her a letter. And apparently he's quite lude, so much
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: so that the court that heard the case against him
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: said that it was so obscene, leude, lascivious, and filthy
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: to be spread upon the record thereof.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: I really want to know what was in that left.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the things was that the lady would
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: be required to type in the nude. Yeah, this is
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the nineteen ten.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: No, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: be judged by today's standard.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, although I mean by today's standard. If you sent
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a potential job candidate a letter that said, oh, yeah,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: going to require you to be typing in the nude, Yeah,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you would get in some trouble for that.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Sure. I just I don't know that you would say
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: it was obscene Luden lasibe.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: No, I'm with you.
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: They'd say that's kink.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: But I think the okay. George Kelly was a kinky
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: traveling preacher who had his wife in tow and he
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: was in Viliska at the time.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Of the murders, and he left that next morning on
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: a train.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Right. But there was supposedly a witness that said that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: he had a very incriminating statement when he got off
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of that train that very morning.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he apparently referenced the murders. But he had left
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: town before they found out about the murders. But then
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: later on those people recanted those statements.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Correct, right, So when when Frank Jones FF Jones had
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: a grand jury brought to hear evidence against him, he
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: was exonerated. Same thing. Not with George Kelly. Actually, I
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: should say he was actually the only person to ever
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: go to trial for these murders, and he was tried twice.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: The first time the jury found eleven to one in
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: his favor. The second jury acquitted him entirely. The evidence
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: against him was just too flimsy, and it probably wasn't him.
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the idea was they were like, he
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: was at that church service, he's a pervert. He saw
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: these kids in the service, he went back and peeked
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: into their house and camped out in their barn. And
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: the evidence there was there were some hay bales in
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: the barn that had depressions as if someone had been
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: laying on them, and if you'd laid down in one
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: of them, there was a peep hole right there in
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: the barn where you could see the house. This is
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: all pretty flimsy.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: There was also, though, I think one of the reasons
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: why the case was brought against him. He was specifically
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: tried for the murder of Lena Stillingure. And that's noteworthy
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: because although they don't say in the official court record
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: directly that she may have been sexually assaulted her, that
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: some sort of sex crime had been committed against her.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Supposedly she had been found with her night clothes hiked
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: up over her waist, like above her waist, her undergarments
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: had been taken off in stuffed under the bed, and
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: then her her legs had been arranged so that her
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: genitalia was prominent.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: That was done after she had been murdered. And I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons why they suspected George Kelly,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: because to add a sexual dimension to this brutal murder,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: they said, well, this guy's just just enough of a
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: sex maniac for that to be possible.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, I forgot about this fact though. He actually
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: returned a week later and posed as a Scotland yard
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: detective so he could get a tour of the house.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: That is so George Kelly.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Well, it's definitely one of those things that makes you go,
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, return to the scene of the crime.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: You lied to get in there and look at the house. Right,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: But apparently everyone wanted to go look at the house.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's and plus what's posing? You know, we've
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: seen so many like cartoony movies that like somebody gets
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: like the deer stalker hat and a pipe and says
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they're from Scotland. Yard. Posing could be like somebody saying like, oh,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: you must be from Scotland yards. Am I grunting in
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the affirmative?
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I guess that technically constitutes posing in the real world.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: I apparently signed a confession.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a big one too.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean the confession literally said I killed
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: the children upstairs first and the children downstairs last. I
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: knew God wanted me to do it this way. Slay
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: utterly came to mind, and I picked up the acts,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: went into the house and killed them. But you know
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: he took it back later He's like, yeah, all that
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: very specific stuff I said about killing this family, I
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: didn't really do it.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: So he was exonerated. So so far, the little town
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: of Veliska has looked around and said, we couldn't find
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: any tramps. So who's the person that hated Joe Moore
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: th most F. F. Jones, Well it wasn't him. Who's
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: the weirdest pervert we can find.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: Who is in of the time, that Englishman George Kelly.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It wasn't him, So they didn't know. A lot of
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: people went to their graves dying, not knowing what happened.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: And we still don't know what happened. But with the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: hindsight of I guess, modern forensic techniques, modern profiling, and
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the work of dedicated historians like Ed Epperley, we have
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: something of a clearer picture emerging. And that picture seems
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: to be centering on the serial killer.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: We'll talk about that theory more right after this. All right,
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: so we've ruled out these local your suspects local ish
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: I guess in Kelly's case, And now the modern take
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: on this is that this was a serial killer because
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: in nineteen eleven, in nineteen twelve, there were a lot
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: of axe murders in the Midwest, at least ten, everywhere
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: from Colorado Springs to Ellsworth, Kansas. And many of them
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: had similar traits.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, some very startlingly similar traits, right.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: But not all of them. And some of them are
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: like and we'll go through these, but some are like, well,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: in five of them, these same things happen and two
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: of them these same things happen, So it makes me
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: wonder if it wasn't if they're kind of grouping too
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: many of these together.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: This does Ed Epperley actually whittles it down to five,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: including Valliska.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: I thought three was at five.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Five, So there's three that happened in nineteen eleven. There
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: was one that happened in Colorado Springs, Colorado that supposedly
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: kicked the whole thing off, yeah, followed by Mammoth and
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Illinois I forgot the s is silent, right, yeah, and
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: then Ellsworth, Kansas. Then there was one in Paola, Kansas,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and then the last one in Valliska. And those five
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: crimes have some similarities that make them really really suspicious.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: That the idea of just like five different people or
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: even a couple of different people separately committing these crimes,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and as Ed Eppersley puts it, kind of dismissively the
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: idea that these were local vendettas or you know, that
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: that people were.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: Like something, right, Yeah.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: That's not what these these crimes reflect at all. They
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: reflect the work of a like just a straight up
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: nut job psychopath who are few and far between. So
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the fact that these things occurred between October of nineteen
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: eleven and June of nineteen twelve suggests strongly that there
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: was one person doing them.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, there was the final one in Columbia, Missouri
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: in December nineteen twelve, and one of the theories is
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: that a man named Henry Lee Moore killed Georgia Moore
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: in Columbia, Missouri, who was his mother? Ye, Mary Wilson,
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: So is that the guy? No, it would be weird
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: to commit a series of murders and then finish up
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: with your own family, right, Usually it's the other way around.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So, like, if you're going to go off
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: on a killing spree, usually start you practice on your
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: family first. Yeah, you get a feel for it, right.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: This guy, Henry Lee Moore, aside from having three three names,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: is not a good suspect for the serial killer, right.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: He apparently wanted the deeds to his family house. And
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's very rare for a serial killer
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to go back.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: The deal with the three names. They don't all have
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: three names.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: No, I know, but so many of them do.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: Well, No, the news reports it that way to distinguish them.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: For every other Henry more in the world. So like
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: everyone's always like serial killers have three names. No, they're
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: just reported that way.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, I love him when things are just explained. Yeah,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I wrapped up in a nice little bow. Thanks for that.
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: Like Lee Harvey Oswald, he I think went by Lee Oswald.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I think you're right.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: So if anyone ever writes a story about Charles Wayne Bryant,
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: we're in trouble.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. No, I would kill you,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: thanks man, I wouldn't kill you either.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Hey, you want to.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: Shake on it? Jerry witnessed.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: So the Henry Lee Moore thing, he's almost like a
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: red herring. Like a lot of people say, well, he
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: was the one. He was a serial killer behind it,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: because the the serial murder started right after he got
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: out of prison in Kansas, Yes, and then they ended
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: right after he got caught in Columbia, Missouri with his family.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean kind of makes sense, it does.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: But that's where the whole thing really begins an end.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: So a lot of people say, well, it wasn't Henry
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: ly more so, it wasn't a serial killing.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: Well plus sorry, but his his killing his own family
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: was about obtaining the deeds to his family house.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was saying.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: Oh so that was greed motivated, right, Okay.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Not a serial psychopathic, sex based serial killing spree. Right,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: this guy was just a jerk. So since Henry Lee
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Moore is associated with the serial murder theory, once somebody
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: then finds out that it wasn't Henry ly Moore, they
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: stopped thinking it was a serial murderer. Rightly says not
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: so fast. Wait, wait, wait, just because Henry Lee Moore's
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: out of the equation doesn't mean there's not a serial
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: killer involved. Yeah, He's like, consider the similarities between these
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: five cases, and they're they're they're pretty thick.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: In a couple of the cases, there were oil lamps
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: found where chimney. The chimneys were removed and set aside,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and the wicks were bent in half to keep the
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: light low.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big one.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Axes were used in four of the five, but he
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: says that's just probably a matter of convenience. A pipe
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I think was used in the Mammoth, Illinois case, which
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: is again an implement of convenience too. Right, Sure, don't
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: have an axe, handy, go for a lead pipe.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, he probably didn't bring that with you.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Right, there were tell them about the tell them about
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the mirrors, Chuck.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean at several of these places the mirrors
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: were covered up. I mean that's a big one. Yeah,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: mirrors and windows. And in one of the places, the
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: telephone was covered. And the thought there is is that,
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: like you said earlier, like they don't want the victims
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: to be watching them even after death, or to be
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: seen in the mirrors and windows being covered. But the phone,
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: apparently it was one of those old box phones on
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: the wall that you crank, and it has the two
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: it sort of looks like a face right when you
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: look at it. It has like looks like two eyes
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: and a nose. And so the thought was that that
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: even looks like a face to the dranged serial killer.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: So they'll cover that up as well, right, because nothing
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: else makes much sense. You know, you're not going to
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: in nineteen twelve, you're not getting phone calls after midnight.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: You probably probably don't get more than a couple of
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: phone calls a week in nineteen.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Twelve, right, most people have phones.
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And throwing a sheet over it wouldn't like disable
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: it anyway.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: No, there was another female victim, a young female victim
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: in Mammoth who was found basically the same way that
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Lena's still injury was found. Yeah, with her nightgown thrown
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: up over waist and her undergarments removed. And apparently there
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: was a similarity in I believe Mammoth in Valliska where
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: and one other town too where the killer went on
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: to try to kill again.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this was the most interesting to me.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Either successfully did kill again. There was one where he
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: went to an adjacent house whose backyard connected the first
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: murder house and then went in and killed another family
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: right afterwards.
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: That was Colorado Springs.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And then in Valliska, the telephone operator who was like
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: sleeping in the telephone switchboard.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Headquarters because no calls were coming through.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: She reported the door knob being tried about two hours
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: after the more house members were murdered.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like herd footsteps come up to the door, try
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: to open it, and then heard the footsteps leave. Yeah,
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: that's a little shaky. But the last one was the
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: one that kind of sent the chill up my spine.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: It was the one in Kansas specifically, you said, Paola,
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: I bet you there are people there laughing because it's
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: probably pronounced Paula or something probably, but who knows p
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: a a. Kansas, there was a second family, Missus Longmire,
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: the Longmere family. They were awaken she and her daughter
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: at about midnight to the sound of broken glass, went
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: downstairs and saw a dude in their dining room who
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: had just broken oil lamp chimney and then got the
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: heck out of there through a window. They actually saw
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: a guy.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So think about that, Chuck, Think about that they saw
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: they woke up and saw the man who was about
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to probably bludgeon them all to death with an axe,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and this probably leaving our house.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: And these were all trained towns, so they were all
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: linked by train depots. So by all accounts, there was
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: a train going serial killer, uh for a couple of
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: years in the Midwest. Yeah, killing people hopping trains. Never
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: ever caught in that nuts.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: It is nuts, and that the Veliska axe murders were
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: probably one of his crazy but we'll never know, no.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: You know, when you say stuff like that, or when
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: you see stuff like that in print too, like we'll
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: never know who it was, it makes you wonder, like
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: what kind of technology are we going to have in
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: the future, like will we never know or are we
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: going to come up with something one day where we're like,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: oh it was this guy. Yeah, like now we know,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: you know who who knows the future knows? That's who knows.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: We should do one on Ed Geen. Okay, that's like
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: kind of one of the big big ones we haven't covered.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, I got a couple more too. Oh yeah, I
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to even tease him yet. Okay, okay,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: true crime.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: Maybe we'll do one and uh like this October. Okay,
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: we used to do multiple kind of creepy uppisodes.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I think we did last time too was October.
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: Yea, all right, we'll look forward to another ghoulish serial
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: killer type thing.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah we did hinter Kfech I think was that
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: last look? I think so?
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Ye Okay.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Uh. If you want to know more about the Veliska
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: X murders, well again strongly recommend you go look up
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: ed Epperley. You can read the Smithsonian article The X
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Murder Who Got Away, which is great. Uh. And there
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: were plenty of other articles that we relied on that
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: we love.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Thank you for those.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can also hang out with us
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot com and our famous search bar. Instance.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I said search bar got it in there. It's un
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: for listener mail.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: Hey, guys love the show, and now I have even
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: more reason to promote your podcast to everyone I know.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: I work in a small family business with my cousin.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: In this previous January, started experiencing severe gastro intestinal issues.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Oh I love this email.
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah remember this one. It was like from yesterday.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: I won't go into detail, but for months afterward, he
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: saw specialists after specialists hoping to find out the root.
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: Tested for Crone's ulcers, ibs, everything under the sun, none
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: of which had a positive result or diagnosis. Couldn't focus
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: on anything, no energy, took a ton of time away
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: from work. He felt totally lost and even sought the
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: help of a psychologist because of his diminished work ethic
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: deteriorating quality of life. You see where this is going people,
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: I think listeners might know. And he was Southern one
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: day last month he was Southern. Actually, he came in
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: after a doctor's appointment, said he developed an iron deficient
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: anemia to add to his list of issues. At first,
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: it sounded disconnected until and I kid you, this is
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: an all caps I kid you not Josh and Chuck.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: I was listening to your Hookworm episode that day, man,
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: when he got to the part about the aggressive iron
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: deficient anemia, I lost my mind. I looked up hookworm
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: infection symptoms, brought it to my cousin and he had
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: every last symptom his doctor prescribed to medication and he
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: is currently being de wormed. From the first day he
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: started his treatment, he had a noticeable increase in both
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: mood and energy. I don't know how these symptoms could
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: have slipped by a half dozen GPS and specialists, But
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: I truly can't thank you both enough for your podcast
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: and his wide range of topics. That is, James and
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: sat Pete Florida.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: That is so awesome, man, dude, haad hookworm. Can you
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: believe it? Then? And thank you James, and.
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: Good luck to you cousin.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Way to go for being so smart to connect the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: dots too.
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: I think your cousin owes you a pizza or a beer.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Or whatever you may be both.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, trip to Chuck e cheese drunk if you want
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: to get in touch of this and tell us an
• 45:46
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• 45:49
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• 45:57
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• 46:00
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• 46:03
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• 46:11
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• 46:13
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