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One of the biggest mysteries in Hollywood history is who murdered William Desmond Taylor. Lieutenant Tom Ziegler was told this was a “natural death” but when he arrived at the house on South Alvarado Street, he noticed Taylor had a bullet wound in his back. A traveling minister named Reverend George Kelly arrived in Villisca for the first time on the morning of June 10th to attend the Sunday school directed by Sarah Moore. He then left Villisca at 5 am the next morning on the train heading westbound out of the town. The blade of the weapon struck Josiah, while the blunt end crushed the rest of the victims. This distinction possibly indicates that Josiah had been the killer’s real target.
Visit the Villisca Ax Murder House
In his teenage years, Kelly had struggled with severe mental illness and also had a history of sexual deviance. Regularly visiting churches throughout Iowa and neighboring states, Kelly had developed a reputation as something of an eccentric. They searched Villisca and the surrounding areas and interviewed some townsfolk. But the killer had at least a three-hour headstart on them, and police believed that he would have already fled the town.
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The Time a Ghost Hunter Stabbed Himself at My Axe Murder Museum - VICE
The Time a Ghost Hunter Stabbed Himself at My Axe Murder Museum.
Posted: Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The Moore family was well-liked throughout Villisca and gained a reputation for being generous and kind. They were a church-going family who maintained strong contacts and good relationships with many in the community. However, Josiah had a number of enemies in both his personal and professional life. He was a successful businessman in Villisca, excelling at everything he lent his hand to. After he amassed reasonable wealth during his thirties, he later went on to marry and have four children with his wife, Sarah.
Whispers from the Shadows: Exploring the Villisca Axe Murder House
The Villisca house is now an attraction, a spectacle for the morbidly curious tourists. Slightly touched up to maintain its stability, it now exists as a museum. Its interior still boasts the same furniture and beds in which the Moore family and Stillinger girls were cruelly slain. While the Villisca perpetrator had draped cloth over the mirrors and reflective door panels, the murderer in the Illinois case used sheets to conceal the windows so no one could see in. It later came to light that Mansfield had been in Illinois around the time of the Villisca killings.
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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. The second suspect seemed far more likely and even confessed to the murders – though he later recanted claiming police brutality. There was also a rumor that Joe was having an affair with Jones’ daughter-in-law, though the reports were unfounded. The townspeople insist, however, that the Moores and the Joneses harbored a deep hatred for each other, though no one admits it was bad enough to spark murder. A few suspects were named over time though none of them panned out. The first was Frank Jones, a local businessman who had been in competition with Joe Moore.
Mapped: 26 of LA’s most notorious murders
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. A team of ghost hunters at the Villisca Ax Murder house using cameras to monitor each room. Over the past 90 years, the property had numerous owners up until 1994, when Rick and Vicki Sprague bought the property. However, after only a few months, the Sprague family sold the property to Darwin and Martha Linn.
George Reeves
On June 20, 1947, LA mob king Bugsy Siegel was sprayed with bullets as he sat reading at the home of his mistress, Virginia Hill. Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. Can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5ft 2" or at home reading true crime magazines. Founder of Crime Viral community since 2015.
On June 16, 1959, TV Superman George Reeves was killed in his house by a single gunshot. Gangster Mickey Cohen's former bodyguard was stabbed to death on April 4, 1958, by his girlfriend Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane. Stompanato was abusive and Crane said she was acting in defense of her mother.
The Toolbox Killers, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, raped and killed five teenage girls in 1979, and tortured them using tools like ice picks and pliers. Norris pleaded guilty and testified against Bittaker, who was convicted. Within the next few years, LAPD was grappling with more high-profile serial killer cases into the 1980s.
A brutal, unsolved murder case from last century still attracts morbid visitors to the crime scene that is now unabashedly named the Villisca Axe Murder House. One person tried in vain to open the doors and windows of the home before calling the town marshal, who broke down the door when he arrived. The slain family members were found in different bedrooms throughout the house. No one else has ever been tried for the murders, and the crime remains one of the most horrific, unsolved mass murders in American history.
The night of the murder, Mary invited two of her friends, Lena Stillinger (12) and Ina Stillinger (8) to the home for a sleepover. "Everybody loved them," said Johnny Houser, a tour guide at the Villisca Ax Murder House. "Think of that family from your small hometown that everyone loves, everyone respects, nobody has a problem with." Paranormal and other phenomenon are most often experienced in the dark hours, and many say that the whistle of a 2 a.m.
Kelly had arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning of the murders and attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls before departing early Monday. He returned two weeks later, and, posing as a detective, joined a tour of the murder house with a group of investigators. Sometime after midnight, the killer or killers picked up Joe’s axe from the back yard, entered the house, and bludgeoned to death all eight of its occupants.
YouTuber Bailey Sarian featured the murders on an episode of her weekly series, Murder, Mystery & Makeup. The murders were described in Episode 271 (October 17, 2021) on the podcast Morbid. The murders were described live in Episode 168 of the podcast My Favorite Murder, by Karen Kilgariff. The murders were also described in Episode 16 of the podcast Lore, by Aaron Mahnke.
He found a dead body in every bed, along with a blood-covered axe still lying in the room where the Stillinger girls lay dead. The entire Moore family and their two friends were brutally slain. According to reporting from the Tribune, the victims were killed with an ax the killer, or killers, found in the family's backyard, while they slept sometime around or after midnight.
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