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    Gruesome Iowa: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State: Gruesome, #1
    Gruesome Iowa: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State: Gruesome, #1
    Gruesome Iowa: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State: Gruesome, #1
    Ebook160 pages2 hours

    Gruesome Iowa: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State: Gruesome, #1

    By Nick Vulich

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    About this ebook

    Murder, madness, and the macabre in Iowa? You've got to be kidding!

    When most people think about Iowa, their minds conjure up pigs, cornfields, and crotchety old farmers. But ax murders, mass killings, and ghostly sightings. Those atrocities are reserved for big cities like Chicago or LA, not a little burg like Villisca, Iowa - population 2,000.

    People refuse to believe that a hundred years ago, every eye in the nation turned to Villisca, Iowa where eight people were butchered in their sleep by a madman using only an ax. Attention quickly turned to the Reverend Lyn Kelley, "a queer, strange, little preacher man," often accused of window peeping.

    The police forced a confession from him.

    Kelley said he was walking by the Moore house when a voice commanded him to, "Go in. Slay utterly." What could he do? He climbed the stairs and slaughtered the children. "Slay utterly. Suffer the little children."

    Back downstairs, he went into the parent's bedroom. "More work yet. There must be sacrifices of blood." Again, the ax did its work.

    In another downstairs bedroom, he discovered the Stillinger girls, asleep in their beds. "More work still." The ax resumed its work.

    Eight people were dead. The ax was satisfied.

    When Kelley recanted his confession, investigators turned their attention to Senator Frank Jones. Old-timers hinted there had been bad blood between Jones and Joe Moore (the deceased) ever since Moore left his position at Jones' farm implement store and opened the local John Deere dealership.

    Another rumor had it; Joe Moore was sleeping with Albert Jones' wife. But that theory didn't hold water, either. Reports linked Dona Jones to half the men in Villisca.

    Detectives developed dozens of others suspects over the years, but none of them panned out. The Villisca Ax Murders remain Iowa's most famous cold-case file.

    Or, if you prefer outdoor adventures, consider the story of Andrew Thompson, "a big, fat, red-faced" farmer who built his mistress a cottage at the edge of his farm and flaunted their relationship in front of his wife and children. Later, when Mrs. Thompson laid down the law, Andrew moved his mistress and her three children to McGregor, Iowa. Then, the next day, he had second thoughts.

    Thompson took the Haggerty's on a sleigh ride through Iowa and Wisconsin. A week later, he returned home alone. No one was the wiser, until the spring thaw.

    It was almost the perfect crime until the bodies began to wash up on shore around Jaco Island, Wisconsin.

    Then, Andrew Thompson had some explaining to do.

    Gruesome Iowa is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book - such as the Villisca Ax Murders have ever made it into print. Except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.

    Read them now, if you dare!
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Vulich
    Release dateDec 15, 2020
    ISBN9781393666790
    Gruesome Iowa: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Hawkeye State: Gruesome, #1

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      Book preview

      Gruesome Iowa - Nick Vulich

      Gruesome Iowa

      Murder, Madness, and the Macabre

      in the Hawkeye State

      Copyright 2019 / 2023 © Nick Vulich

      A person with a beard Description automatically generated with medium confidence

      Table of Contents

      ––––––––

      Villisca Ax Murders

      Twenty-five Cents and You’re Dead

      The Tale of the Wife-Murder

      When Devils Come Among Us, We Must Send Them to Hell

      The McGregor Murders

      She Got Away with Murder

      A Case of Insanity

      Murder on the Midnight Run

      A Devil in Human Form

      Triple Murder in Rural Iowa

      He killed them Because He Loved Them

      Murdered on Her Honeymoon

      The Smoky Row Murder

      Mass Hysteria in Van Meter

      Fish Stories, The Keokuk Sea Monster

      Haunted Houses Are Everywhere

      A Marvelous Hoax

      Bonus Chapter—Vigilantes Iowa Style

      About the Author

      Footnotes

      Villisca Ax Murders

      ––––––––

      S

      ometimes bad things happen to good people. The same goes for cities.

      In 1912 Villisca, Iowa, was a booming farm community with over 2,000 people—4,000 if you counted the surrounding farms.

      The town had several farm implement dealers. However, the local John Deere dealership owned by Josiah Moore (most often called Joe or Joseph) was the most successful.

      Joe initially worked in Frank Jones’ implement store. He kept books, moved into sales, and eventually managed the store.

      When John Deere was looking for a local dealer in Villisca seven years later, Joe jumped on the opportunity. He opened his new implement store across the street from Jones’ business.

      Frank Jones hadn’t done too badly for himself, either. He purchased an interest in the local bank and soon became the wealthiest man in town. Several years later, Jones ran for political office and became a state senator. From all accounts, he had patched up any hard feelings with Joe many years before.

      Sunday, June 9, 1912, was much like any other day in Villisca. The Moore’s finished their chores early that morning and went to church. They spent the rest of the day relaxing and visiting with friends.

      At 7:30, the family visited Villisca’s First Presbyterian Church for a special Children’s Day presentation. When it ended at 9:30, they walked home accompanied by two of Katharine Moore’s friends—Lena and Ina Stillinger. The girls had gotten permission to spend the night with the Moores. Typically, they would have walked the short distance to their grandmother’s house and spent the night there before returning to their parent’s farm.

      This night was different.

      The city streets had gone dark that night. Villisca had electric streetlights, but a dispute with the power company over the cost of electricity wound up shutting them off earlier that day.

      The family arrived home at ten o’clock. Most likely, the children visited for a while, but not too long. Chores started early on the Moore farm. Usually, they were up before five o’clock. The children fed the chickens and made sure the cows and horses had feed before school.

      Their neighbor, Mary Peckham, started her day at five o’clock, the same as she had for the last ten years. Before making breakfast, she was out in the yard letting the chickens out and ensuring they had food.

      Today, something was different, but Mary couldn’t put her finger on it. 

      She came out an hour later and noted an odd stillness about the Moore house. All the windows were dark, and the curtains were drawn. The children still hadn’t come out to do their chores.

      Mary walked over to the house. She tried to open the door but couldn’t. It was locked. That was unusual. No one in Villisca locked their doors. There was no need.

      Mary pounded on the door but got no answer. So, she walked to the barn, let the chickens out, and fed them. That quieted the squawking birds.

      Mary walked back home and called Ross Moore, Joe’s brother, to see if he knew what was happening. Ross was as in the dark as Mary. He left his workplace at the drug store and walked over to Joe’s place.

      Mary met him on the porch, and they entered the house. Mary waited in the doorway while Ross checked things out. He didn’t get far before he noticed something terribly wrong.

      When he peeked into the downstairs bedroom, Ross felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. I am afraid there is something wrong here, said Ross. there is blood everywhere.

      He walked outside and sat on the steps. Mary ran back to her house and called City Marshal Hank Horton.

      Hank Horton walked through the dark house alone, striking a match in each room to light his way. He quickly determined that he was not up to the challenge. Hank returned to his office and called Oren Jackson, the Montgomery County Sheriff. It was a sixteen-mile drive from his house, but Jackson said he would be right over. In the meantime, he suggested Hank call Thomas O’Leary from the Kirk Detective Agency to conduct the investigation.

      When Doctors J. Clark Cooper and F. S. Williams arrived, Marshal Horton took them through the house to investigate further.

      They discovered eight dead bodies. Each of the victim’s heads was beaten to a bloody pulp. The murder weapon—a bloody ax was found leaning against a wall in the downstairs bedroom where the two Stillinger girls were discovered. 

      What caught everyone’s attention was how dark the house was. All the curtains were closed. Two lamps were lit, with the wicks turned down, so they emitted just a faint glow, and the chimneys had been removed from both. The chimney from the lamp in Joe and Sarah’s room was concealed under their bed.

      All the mirrors were covered as if the killer feared seeing his bloody reflection. In the kitchen, investigators found a bucket of bloody water—supposedly used by the murderer to clean himself up and a plate of food—uneaten next to it. Perhaps, butchering eight people puts a damper on your appetite?

      Detectives found bloody fingerprints on several doorknobs and a chimney lamp. 

      As news of the murders got out, crowds gathered around the Moore house. At noon there were so many people Hank called Company B of the state militia for help keeping people away from the murder scene. Anyone who tried to cross the line was to be denied entrance. It was a good thought, but fifty or one hundred sightseers somehow found their way into the house.

      Later in the day, bloodhounds were brought in from Beatrice, Nebraska. Elmer Noffsinger dragged his dogs into the house. He let them sniff the ax handle, then turned them loose. The dogs traveled south, down First Avenue to the John Green farm, stopped for a moment, and then hurried to the Neilsson Farm. They followed a trail through the timberlands at the forks of the west and middle Nodaway Rivers. They discovered some footprints three miles southwest of town, then the trail went dead.

      The bodies remained in the house all day on Sunday and most of the day on Monday. Finally, at midnight on Monday, Coroner Linquist gave the okay to move the corpses to a temporary morgue inside the fire station. 

      On the nights after the murders, people didn’t take any chances. In most houses, three or four families huddled together for safety. Even the bark of a dog could mean a sleepless night. Hardware stores quickly sold out of locks and bolts. Guns sold as fast as dealers put them on the shelves. 

      Coroner’s Inquest

      The coroner’s inquest conducted by A. L. Linquist threw little new light on the murders. 

      Mary Peckham, the Moore’s neighbor, noticed all the shades still down when she went outside to begin her morning chores. By five or six o'clock in the morning, she would typically see a scurry of activity in the yard, with kids running about doing their chores and playing and screaming.

      This morning she noted an odd stillness.

      Mary telephoned Ross Moore, John’s brother, at the drug store where he clerked.

      When he got there, they went inside and looked around. Ross walked into the downstairs bedroom, then ran back out. I am afraid there is something awful, he said, covering his eyes, there is blood in the beds.

      They went outside and called City Marshal Hank Horton.

      Ed Seeley’s first call that morning came from Mary Peckham. She said something seemed odd at the Moore house. No one had taken care of the morning chores. Ed went to the house and fed the livestock. 

      No sooner had he returned to the implement store than Ross Moore called to say something was wrong. When Seeley returned to the Moore house, he entered the house along with Ross Moore, Elmer Peckham, and Marshal Horton. 

      Seeley didn’t go very far into the house before seeing the blood on the white sheets and pillows. When they saw that, everybody came out. Marshal Horton locked the doors and called Sheriff Orten Jackson and Coroner A. L. Linquist.

      Doctors J. Clark Cooper and F. S. Williams examined the bodies immediately after their discovery. The killer had covered the face of each victim with the bed clothing. They didn’t smell chloroform, so they determined the murderer did not use an anesthetic to knock the victims out before performing his gruesome work.

      The bodies were still warm when the doctors arrived. So, that helped fix the time of the murders at 2 or 3 a.m. on Monday morning, maybe a little earlier.

      The killer used both the sharp edge of the ax and the blunt end. The heads were smashed as well as chopped. The doctors thought he killed his victims first—using the sharp edge, then turned it around and took out his aggression—bashing their heads in.

      One thing they found strange was the killer had closed all the doors in the house and locked the entrance doors. 

      The reports I read didn’t mention that any of the girls were sexually molested, but in The Man From the Train, Bill James makes a case that the killer got his jollies posing the prepubescent girls in provocative ways. For example, a slab of bacon served as a favorite masturbatory aid at several murder scenes.

      J. Clark Cooper was reading the newspaper when Hank Horton told him to come with me. Horton looked frightened. He whispered, Joe Moore and all his family were murdered in bed.

      Doctor Hough walked over and joined them when they got to the Moore house. In the parlor bedroom downstairs, they saw an arm of someone sticking from under the edge of the cover with blood on the pillows. 

      Cooper had grown used to seeing blood and gore as a doctor, but what he saw in the Moore home made him queasy. 

      Cooper said he was dazed and merely did what he had to do.

      They counted eight bodies all together—two they didn’t recognize (Lena and Ina Stillinger). The blood and brains on the pillows had contracted, as it does when killed, will dry, so that it was perfect jelly at that time, and blood clots were dry. 

      Doctor F. S. Williams said Joe Moore’s face was all beaten in, as was his wife’s. 

      When asked if he didn’t know

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