Speaker 1: Hey, Happy Saturday listeners. We have gotten a number of
Speaker 1: emails and tweets over the last couple of months asking
Speaker 1: if we have seen an article about the Vliska As
Speaker 1: murders as being solved. So first, yes, we have seen
Speaker 1: the article. Uh. And seconds UH. This book, which is
Speaker 1: called The Man from the Train Presents was really a hypothesis,
Speaker 1: not like an ironclad solution. Uh. It's authors scoured old
Speaker 1: records for similar crimes, and based on that research, they
Speaker 1: concluded that the Veliska murders were the work of a
Speaker 1: serial killer who traveled by train and struck families who
Speaker 1: lived near the tracks. We talk about a number of
Speaker 1: other times that people had thought they'd cracked this case
Speaker 1: in our episode on the murders, including some leads that
Speaker 1: were also connected to serial killers. So we thought, in
Speaker 1: light of the recent book and questions, that it would
Speaker 1: be a good time to reshare it. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class from dot com. Hello the
Speaker 1: podcast and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Uh. And today's subject
Speaker 1: has been requested by multiple listeners, especially when we first
Speaker 1: came on the podcast. We came on just after Kind
Speaker 1: of the hundred, the anniversary of the event we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, and so it had been covered by a
Speaker 1: number of papers and had kind of been in people's
Speaker 1: minds a little bit more. It's actually been on my
Speaker 1: list for almost since the beginning, and we haven't had
Speaker 1: an X Murderer episode in a little while, so we're
Speaker 1: do I suppose, as do as one can be for
Speaker 1: such things. Uh. This one has some haunting mythology around it.
Speaker 1: It remains an unsolved case, so it's good for the
Speaker 1: Halloween season, and it's probably no surprise based on the
Speaker 1: fact that I've already said this is an X Murderer episode.
Speaker 1: But just to be safe, here's the warning. This is
Speaker 1: some graphic talk of some pretty brutal murders and particularly
Speaker 1: the deaths of children, which I know can be really
Speaker 1: difficult for some people to hear. So if you are
Speaker 1: sensitive to violent subjects of this nature, or if you
Speaker 1: listen with younger history buffs, this is maybe one to
Speaker 1: proceed with caution or to pre screen. For example, I
Speaker 1: can already tell you my best friend is not going
Speaker 1: to partake of this one. She and I were talking
Speaker 1: about it while I was researching, uh, and as a
Speaker 1: parent for her, it's just too rough to listen to
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, and the story is incredibly tragic,
Speaker 1: and even I mean, I'm I'm often quite open that
Speaker 1: I'm not really a kid's person. Um. It took me
Speaker 1: a long time to research because I would find that
Speaker 1: I just had to get up and walk away for
Speaker 1: a while, because it's just it's brutal and it's hard
Speaker 1: to think about somebody doing the things that this person
Speaker 1: or persons did. So we are talking about the Valiska
Speaker 1: as murders, and before we get into the details of
Speaker 1: the actual event, I will let Tracy set the scene
Speaker 1: a little bit about the town of Vliska, Iowa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Fliska, Iowa. This took place in nineteen twelve. Pliska
Speaker 1: is in Montgomery County and it's only about four square
Speaker 1: kilometers in size, so not not really big. Omaha, Nebraska
Speaker 1: and des Moines, Iowa are the nearest large metro areas
Speaker 1: and Vliska is roughly in between them and a little
Speaker 1: bit south. Yeah, it's a little closer to one side
Speaker 1: than the other. But for the purposes of this in
Speaker 1: between and in the early nineteen hundreds, this was a
Speaker 1: town that was on a growth trajectory. It was kind
Speaker 1: of rural, but there was a budding business community. The
Speaker 1: train depot was very busy. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: trains coming and going and visitors and business people, and
Speaker 1: it was a close knit community. Josiah B. Moore, who
Speaker 1: was the father of the family at the center of
Speaker 1: this whole unsettling crime, was forty three and nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: He's sometimes referred to as j. B. And he had
Speaker 1: lived in Valiska for thirteen years when he died, and
Speaker 1: was a respected businessman. He had married Sarah Montgomery on
Speaker 1: December six, and Sarah had been born in Illinois in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three and she moved to Iowa in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four when the rest of her family moved there.
Speaker 1: She was thirty nine at the time of the murders.
Speaker 1: The Morris had four children. Herman was eleven and was
Speaker 1: also really close to his father. Catherine was their second
Speaker 1: child and she was aged ten at the time of
Speaker 1: the attack. There were also two younger brothers, Boyd who
Speaker 1: was seven and Paul, who was five, and there are
Speaker 1: two other children that were victims in this case. So
Speaker 1: on the morning of June nine of nineteen twelve, sisters Lena,
Speaker 1: who was twelve, and Ainah, who was eight. Stillinger Uh
Speaker 1: They were the daughters of Joseph and Sarah Stillinger attended
Speaker 1: Sunday services at the Presbyterian Church, and the girls were
Speaker 1: intending to visit with their grandmother for the day after
Speaker 1: church had concluded and then. The plan for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day was that the girls would then go
Speaker 1: back to church to attend special Children's Day activities in
Speaker 1: the evening before returning to their grandmother's house to spend
Speaker 1: the night. But the evening's plans changed when Katherine Moore
Speaker 1: invited her two friends to spend the night at the
Speaker 1: Moor House after the Children's Day activities. Dabie Moore called
Speaker 1: still at the Stillinger home. On the phone, he left
Speaker 1: a message with Lena and I'na's older sister Blanche to
Speaker 1: pass along to their parents that they would be spending
Speaker 1: the evening with them. So, you know, one of those
Speaker 1: parenting heads up calls, your kids are gonna stay over here.
Speaker 1: If this was in part because the girls seemed a
Speaker 1: kind of afraid to walk back to their grandmother's house
Speaker 1: alone in the dark. Yeah. The Children's Day program, led
Speaker 1: by Sarah Moore began at eight pm, so this was
Speaker 1: an evening thing. It would have been quite dark when
Speaker 1: they concluded at nine pm, and once the festivities were
Speaker 1: all wrapped up, the entire More family and the two
Speaker 1: young Stillinger sisters walked back to the More home and
Speaker 1: arrived there is estimated somewhere between and ten pm. On
Speaker 1: the morning of June tenth, the More's next door neighbor,
Speaker 1: Mary Peckham, noticed that the house was unusually quiet. She
Speaker 1: hadn't seen any of the family come outside or start
Speaker 1: their normal morning chores. So sometimes shortly after seven am,
Speaker 1: Mrs Peckham walked over to the Moor house and knocked
Speaker 1: on the door. She got no response, and so she
Speaker 1: tried the door and found it locked. And this is
Speaker 1: one of those areas that there is some conflicting information
Speaker 1: in various records, so many will say this was actually
Speaker 1: pretty unusual for the door to have been locked. Uh.
Speaker 1: The habitual locking of doors at night was not really
Speaker 1: particularly common practice at this time in Valisca or in
Speaker 1: fact many other places you know, in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't that sort of level of uh lockdown
Speaker 1: at the end of the night. Mrs Peckham, who was
Speaker 1: troubled and also wanted to help let the Moore's chickens out,
Speaker 1: as the family would normally have done themselves in the morning.
Speaker 1: And then she also telephoned Ross Moore, who was Josiah's brother,
Speaker 1: and Rossmore arrived at the home of his brother's family.
Speaker 1: He shouted and he knocked. He attempted to peer into
Speaker 1: the house through the windows, but they were covered and
Speaker 1: he got neither reaction nor information, like he couldn't there
Speaker 1: was nothing. So eventually he went through his keys until
Speaker 1: he found the one that unlocked the door. Like he
Speaker 1: had a copy of their key, but it took him
Speaker 1: a little while to sort out which one it was.
Speaker 1: Mary Peckham was there with Rossmore, but she didn't venture
Speaker 1: past the porch and into the house. The surviving Moore
Speaker 1: brother didn't go past the second room of the house.
Speaker 1: He opened the door to the bedroom off the parlor,
Speaker 1: and he immediately saw the bodies of two children on
Speaker 1: the bed, as well as an enormous amount of blood.
Speaker 1: He went back to the porch and told Mary Peckham
Speaker 1: to call the police. Yeah, and this is a very small,
Speaker 1: i mean by today's standards home. So the bottom floor
Speaker 1: was only three rooms. It was like the parlor or
Speaker 1: the front room, this small bedroom and a kitchen. So
Speaker 1: after they raised an alert, City Marshall Hank Horton responded.
Speaker 1: He quickly arrived on the scene and his investigation of
Speaker 1: the house revealed the in addition to the two bodies
Speaker 1: Rossmore had seen the young Stillinger sisters, there were six
Speaker 1: more bodies upstairs. The entire More family and their guests
Speaker 1: had been killed in their beds. It was about nine
Speaker 1: in the morning when the county coroner finally got there
Speaker 1: and took a look at the situation. He later reviewed
Speaker 1: his findings with the sheriff and the marshal, and then
Speaker 1: he called a coroner's jury to the home. So once
Speaker 1: words spread of what it happened, uh in a small community,
Speaker 1: and these things do spread rather quickly, many townspeople made
Speaker 1: their way to the scene, and this ended up being
Speaker 1: a real problem. We've talked about similar things happening before
Speaker 1: with crime scenes. So these people were all there, they
Speaker 1: were very interested, and so keeping the crime scene intact
Speaker 1: became something of an impossibility. There were accounts of dozens
Speaker 1: of people at a time walking through the house kind
Speaker 1: of with the you know, morbid curiosity trying to catch
Speaker 1: a glimpse of the bodies or see what had happened.
Speaker 1: Some reports even put it at close to a hundred
Speaker 1: people at one point that we're all in the house,
Speaker 1: which again was not that large structure, so you can imagine,
Speaker 1: like keeping evidence intact was completely out the window at
Speaker 1: that point. Irritated by these looky loose yes, Eventually the
Speaker 1: Valiska National Guard had to come and clear the area
Speaker 1: and keep onlookers out of the house. By that time,
Speaker 1: several hours had passed and a lot of the evidence
Speaker 1: was damaged or compromised, which just infuriates me. I want
Speaker 1: to take all the lucky lose first. Stern a stern
Speaker 1: lecture about how not to be terrible. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean I have read some uh there was I forget
Speaker 1: which account it was that I was reading where they
Speaker 1: were kind of pointing out like, yes, this was terrible.
Speaker 1: But even so, there's maybe wouldn't have been that much
Speaker 1: more evident that was really garnered in the investigation. Um,
Speaker 1: but we don't know. So the corner's jury did not
Speaker 1: finish their investigation of the home until after ten pm,
Speaker 1: and it was at that point that the undertaker was
Speaker 1: given clearance to remove the bodies. Uh. Those were taken
Speaker 1: to a local fire station which was being used as
Speaker 1: kind of a makeshift morgue because it was so many
Speaker 1: people at once uh and the undertakers did not finish
Speaker 1: moving the victims until roughly two am. Despite the herd
Speaker 1: of looks who had passed through the crime scene, there
Speaker 1: were some solid facts that they were able to glean
Speaker 1: about these murders. Yes, so the doors to the house,
Speaker 1: all of the doors were locked, and as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: many people believed that this was not a normal state
Speaker 1: of affairs. The curtains in every room of the house
Speaker 1: had been closed, and in the case of two windows
Speaker 1: that had no curtains, Mrs Moore's clothing had been used
Speaker 1: to cover them. Uh and I left it out of
Speaker 1: these notes, but her clothing had also been used to
Speaker 1: cover all of the mirrors in the house. Well that
Speaker 1: now I'm scared. Don't be scared. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to laugh at his tragic and creepy but I
Speaker 1: don't want Tracy to be scared. No, genuinely, And you
Speaker 1: said that I had a shutter. Sorry, So to get
Speaker 1: more serious, all eight of these victims have been bludgeoned,
Speaker 1: apparently in their sleep with an ax, and each victim's
Speaker 1: head had been covered with bed linens or articles of
Speaker 1: clothing after their skulls had been crushed. Based on the
Speaker 1: medical examination of the bodies, it's believed that the murders
Speaker 1: took place shortly somewhere between shortly after midnight and three am,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a three hour window. In the
Speaker 1: two rooms where Josiah and Sarah Moore and Lena and
Speaker 1: Ailis Aina Stillinger had been killed, kerosene lamps were found
Speaker 1: at the ends of the beds, with their chimneys removed
Speaker 1: and their wis turned back, as though the killer had
Speaker 1: wanted to dim the ights. The murder weapon had been
Speaker 1: Josiah Moore's. It was found in the room with Lena
Speaker 1: and Aina, and the ceilings in several of the rooms
Speaker 1: had been hit during the killer's upswing as he raised
Speaker 1: the axe. On the kitchen table, there was a plate
Speaker 1: of food and a pan of water, and the water
Speaker 1: had blood in it. The downstairs bedroom where the still
Speaker 1: injured girls were slain, contained a number of clues and
Speaker 1: sort of odd aspects. Uh Aina was sleeping on the
Speaker 1: portion of the bed closest to the wall when she
Speaker 1: was killed, and a coat had been used to cover
Speaker 1: her face. Afterwards, h Lena was situated part way down
Speaker 1: the bed. This led to some speculation that she may
Speaker 1: have been struck and then shifted or wiggled down the
Speaker 1: bed a little bit initially before she died. She was
Speaker 1: wearing no undergarments and her nightgown had been shifted upward.
Speaker 1: There was blood on the inside of one of her
Speaker 1: knees and injuries to one arm, which appeared to be defensive,
Speaker 1: as though she had tried to protect herself against the attacker.
Speaker 1: She's the only one that exhibited any sort of defensive injury.
Speaker 1: There was a two pounds slab of bacon on the floor,
Speaker 1: wrapped in what was either a rag or a dish towel,
Speaker 1: and there was a nearly identical slab of bacon in
Speaker 1: the kitchen ice box. And additionally, there was part of
Speaker 1: a key chain on the floor. And I know what
Speaker 1: some of you people are probably thinking based on a
Speaker 1: couple of these details, and I promise you we are
Speaker 1: coming back to them now. We will get to sort
Speaker 1: of the coroner's inquest. The day after the Grizzly discovery.
Speaker 1: So on June eleventh, the coroner's jury began their official
Speaker 1: inquest into the murders and they eventually called fourteen witnesses
Speaker 1: for testimony. So their first witness was Mary Peckham, who
Speaker 1: you know was the first woman, the neighbor that discovered
Speaker 1: that there was something not quite right, and she stated
Speaker 1: that the last time she saw the family was when
Speaker 1: they were leaving for the children's day activities at the
Speaker 1: church on the evening of the ninth. She was already
Speaker 1: in d when the family returned home, and she said
Speaker 1: that she didn't hear any noises during the night. She
Speaker 1: related how she came to be curious about the family's
Speaker 1: whereabouts in the morning because of the unusual stillness of
Speaker 1: the house uh and that she had seen Mr Moore's
Speaker 1: employee Ed Selly arrive and head to the barn to
Speaker 1: tend the horses not long after she contacted Ross Moore.
Speaker 1: The second witness was Ed Selly, and as we just said,
Speaker 1: he was an employee at J. By Moore's store, and
Speaker 1: his testimony indicated that he had opened the store as
Speaker 1: normal the morning of the discovery before being contacted by
Speaker 1: Ross Moore. About the suspicious situation. After speaking with the
Speaker 1: victim's sister in law, Jesse Moore, Selly contacted the Moore's
Speaker 1: parents and Sarah's parents to see if the family had
Speaker 1: gone to visit any of them. So at that point
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out where they were, not
Speaker 1: realizing they were in the house. He was then contacted
Speaker 1: by Mrs Peckham about the Moore's livestock, so he left
Speaker 1: the store to tend to the horses and then went
Speaker 1: back to work. Not long after, Mrs Peckham called again,
Speaker 1: this time to tell him to get the Marshal and
Speaker 1: come back to the house. And Selly's testimony, Uh, contradicts
Speaker 1: Mary Peckham's just a little bit, and it's not really
Speaker 1: anything terribly important. I just wanted to point it out.
Speaker 1: He indicated that he had joined Mrs Peckham and Ross
Speaker 1: Moore in entering the house, whereas Mrs Peckham indicated that
Speaker 1: she had never gone past the porch. After the Marshal
Speaker 1: had a preliminary look at the scene, Selly indicated that
Speaker 1: the house was blocked and that he went to the
Speaker 1: store to contact business associates about the situation. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wanted to let the people that they had business dealings
Speaker 1: with know that uh, Mr Moore had been killed and
Speaker 1: that they were gonna have to make some arrangements. Sally
Speaker 1: was asked if J. B. Moore had any enemies he
Speaker 1: knew of, and he indicated that JB had told him
Speaker 1: that his brother in law, Sam Moyer had it in
Speaker 1: for him. The third witness was Dr. J. Clark Cooper.
Speaker 1: Cooper was the first physician on the scene after the
Speaker 1: bodies were discovered. Cooper described his first access to the bodies,
Speaker 1: first encountering the Stillinger girls who he didn't recognize. He
Speaker 1: also mentioned the lamps without their chimneys. Cooper indicated that
Speaker 1: he didn't touch the bodies on site. He sort of
Speaker 1: performed just a visual assessment at that point. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: didn't do uh any real hands on examination. His statement
Speaker 1: also included that estimated time of death that we talked about,
Speaker 1: and that was based on his observation of the blood
Speaker 1: and brain matter on the scene and the level of
Speaker 1: dryness and congealment it had achieved. Uh. He was also
Speaker 1: the one that introduced the detail that the faces he
Speaker 1: believed had been covered after the bludgeoning, and this was
Speaker 1: based on the fact that none of the covering fabrics
Speaker 1: were stuck to the wounds, They just kind of been
Speaker 1: draped over afterwards. And none of those fabrics or articles
Speaker 1: of clothing had any holes or damage of any kind
Speaker 1: other than normal wear and tear. Witness for was Jesse Moore,
Speaker 1: who was Rossmore's wife. Jesse spoke with Mrs Peckham when
Speaker 1: she first called for Ross and her statement echoed ed
Speaker 1: Sally's regarding what their conversations were like. She also mentioned
Speaker 1: that she later entered Josiah's and Sarah's home to retrieve
Speaker 1: photographs of the family for the local paper, and she
Speaker 1: didn't know of any possible enemies that the family might
Speaker 1: have had. Yeah, there are some accounts that suggests that
Speaker 1: she had gone in and kind of like posed for pictures,
Speaker 1: but those seem like embellishments. She did go in, but
Speaker 1: she was trying to get pictures from the household for
Speaker 1: the press um so that they could be used in
Speaker 1: news stories. Witness number five was Dr F. S. Williams,
Speaker 1: and whereas Dr Cooper that we mentioned just a few
Speaker 1: moments ago had only done a visual inspection on the
Speaker 1: bodies at the crime scene, Dr Williams was the one
Speaker 1: that actually examined the bodies. Um. His testimony described the
Speaker 1: crushed heads of each vic them and their positions in
Speaker 1: their beds. Uh. And he was the one to introduced
Speaker 1: the idea that Lena Stillinger had squirmed on the bed
Speaker 1: after having been struck. Some people have theorized over the
Speaker 1: years that Lena had been sexually assaulted, but Dr Williams
Speaker 1: testimony runs really counter to that. He indicated that he
Speaker 1: had investigated the possibility of a rape, but he didn't
Speaker 1: find any evidence of that kind of violation. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was the one we mentioned she didn't have any undergarments
Speaker 1: on and that her night dress had been shifted up.
Speaker 1: She may have been the object of some um you know,
Speaker 1: visual stimulation for the killer, but her body was not
Speaker 1: in any way um molested to the best of this
Speaker 1: doctor's knowledge. UH. Witness number six was Edward Landers, and
Speaker 1: Landers was a neighbor. He was actually the son of
Speaker 1: a neighbor. He was staying a few houses down from
Speaker 1: the moors at his mother's house for the summer, and
Speaker 1: he stated that he had gone to bed shortly after
Speaker 1: nine pm on the night of the murders, but he
Speaker 1: had heard a noise during the night that to him
Speaker 1: at the time sounded like people hooting to one another outdoors,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of pressed by the examiners over
Speaker 1: what time this might have been, and he guessed it
Speaker 1: was probably around eleven PM, but he wasn't certain uh,
Speaker 1: And after the news of the murders broke the next morning,
Speaker 1: he began to wonder if the noise that he had
Speaker 1: heard had not been people hooting but in fact a
Speaker 1: woman moaning. The seventh witness was rossmore so besides brother,
Speaker 1: and he relayed the events of the morning of the
Speaker 1: tenth and how he had come to discover the bodies
Speaker 1: of the two style inser girls before exiting the home.
Speaker 1: He mentioned that before opened opening the bedroom door and
Speaker 1: making the discovery, nothing in the home seemed like it
Speaker 1: was out of place, and he also couldn't offer any
Speaker 1: information about possible enemies that the family may have had.
Speaker 1: Witness number eight was Fenwick More and this was another
Speaker 1: More brother. There were several brothers in the mix here.
Speaker 1: His testimony was not particularly illuminating. He aicated that he
Speaker 1: really didn't know anything about his brother's business or if
Speaker 1: he had any enemies, and he was dismissed from the
Speaker 1: stand pretty quickly. The ninth witness was Marshall Hank Horton,
Speaker 1: and the Marshall's testimony was really brief. He basically said
Speaker 1: he had been contacted by Seally to go into the
Speaker 1: More home. He corroborated entering the house with Sally and
Speaker 1: then again with the doctors. Witness number ten was Levin
Speaker 1: Gilder and this was Josiah's nephew, but he also did
Speaker 1: not have a whole lot of information to impart. He
Speaker 1: had briefly been considered a suspect because he had some
Speaker 1: kind of shady uh happenings in his background. His record
Speaker 1: was not entirely clean, but he was cleared pretty early on.
Speaker 1: Witness eleven was another More brother, Harry More, and he
Speaker 1: also had really nothing new to add in the proceedings.
Speaker 1: Like Finnwick, his other brother, he had neither knowledge of
Speaker 1: Jabe's business nor of any possible ill intentions against him.
Speaker 1: Witness twelve was Blanched Stillinger and remember this was Lena
Speaker 1: and his older sister. She was the one that had
Speaker 1: spoken with Jsiah over the phone about the girls sleeping
Speaker 1: over at the Moorhouse, and she was the one that
Speaker 1: kind of said, yeah, I think that will be fine.
Speaker 1: I will tell my parents. And the thirteenth witness was
Speaker 1: Joseph Stillingser so Lena and i Aina's father. He also
Speaker 1: didn't know of anyone who might commit such a crime,
Speaker 1: and he indicated that his wife had phoned the Moors
Speaker 1: several times in the morning, uh, the morning that the
Speaker 1: bodies were found, because she had expected the girls to
Speaker 1: be back before school time. Yeah, this had happened on
Speaker 1: a Sunday night into the Monday morning hours, and so
Speaker 1: she thought the kids were going to come home and
Speaker 1: get ready for school, but they didn't, so they were
Speaker 1: trying to contact them and getting no answer. The lapst
Speaker 1: witness was Charles Moore. This is yet another more brother.
Speaker 1: Charles testified to the coroner's jury that he knew Josiah
Speaker 1: kept an AX, but when he was questioned, he couldn't
Speaker 1: say with certainty that the murder weapon was the one
Speaker 1: that Josiah owned. He just wasn't sure. Uh. He also
Speaker 1: indicated that it was in fact his brother's habit to
Speaker 1: lock the house from the inside at night. Um. One
Speaker 1: thing that always kind of rings odd to me and
Speaker 1: is not really discussed all that much in a lot
Speaker 1: of these is that the whole house was locked, but
Speaker 1: somehow the killer or killers got out. So that's always
Speaker 1: stayed a little bit of a mystery. Whether they had
Speaker 1: a key or not is unclear. Yeah. Well, and then
Speaker 1: that gets into me super wondering what lock technology was
Speaker 1: like at the time, Like now we have door kodd
Speaker 1: locks that you just plupt the thing and then you
Speaker 1: go out. Well, and there was also you know, uh,
Speaker 1: skeleton keys that could open multiple doors were a little
Speaker 1: more common still than uh, you know, it just wasn't
Speaker 1: quite the same as what we're dealing with today. So
Speaker 1: and that may be one of the reasons that it's
Speaker 1: not really talked about that much. It's not that insane
Speaker 1: a thing. It's not like, uh, even in some of
Speaker 1: the and I'll talk about them briefly at the end,
Speaker 1: but even in like some of the sort of supernatural
Speaker 1: investigations of it, it doesn't really seem to come up
Speaker 1: as like a weird thing, like an entity locked all
Speaker 1: the doors. Uh, doors were just locked. They don't really,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get embellished a whole lot. But before we
Speaker 1: start talking about suspects and what may have driven someone
Speaker 1: to do this, let's have another quick word from a
Speaker 1: sponsor will take a break from all of this sort
Speaker 1: of dark material for just a moment, so to return
Speaker 1: to this horrifying subject. There were many early leads in
Speaker 1: this case and really no shortage of suspects, but nothing
Speaker 1: ever panned out, and this horrific crime is still unsolved.
Speaker 1: It's not possible in the scope of a podcast episode
Speaker 1: to cover every single suspect, but we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the more high profile ones. Yeah, this really sort
Speaker 1: of turned this town on its head, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people characterize it as basically making a place where
Speaker 1: people would invite a stranger into their home for a
Speaker 1: meal and you know, be very open and very friendly,
Speaker 1: into a place where suddenly everyone was suspicious of everyone
Speaker 1: else and you know, sort of fear driven suspicion kind
Speaker 1: of led their behavior beyond that And as a consequence,
Speaker 1: a lot of different people were accused of participating in
Speaker 1: this crime. But one of the primary suspects that comes
Speaker 1: up in almost any discussion of this case is Frank F. Jones,
Speaker 1: and he was an Iowa state senator. He had been
Speaker 1: Josiah Moore's boss for many years, but in nineteen eight
Speaker 1: more had struck out on his own opening a farming
Speaker 1: implement company, and he took several of their lucrative business
Speaker 1: partners with him, including the John Deer Company, so Jones
Speaker 1: was a little i rate with him from that point on.
Speaker 1: There were also rumors that Josiah had had an affair
Speaker 1: with jones daughter in law, so Frank Jones and his son,
Speaker 1: so the husband of this daughter in law. We're even
Speaker 1: accused quite publicly by a detective agency of having hired
Speaker 1: a killer named William Mansfield to take out the More family.
Speaker 1: And William Mansfield was arrested for the murders in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: four years after they had taken place. According to Detective
Speaker 1: James Newton Wilkerson, who had been the one that had
Speaker 1: leveled those accusations against the Joneses, uh, he asserted that
Speaker 1: Mansfield was in fact a serial killer and that he
Speaker 1: also had a cocaine habit. Mansfield was also linked via
Speaker 1: Wilkerson's research, to other brutal murders, including those of his
Speaker 1: own wife, child, and his wife's family in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: so that would have been a couple years after Bliska,
Speaker 1: as well as murders in Kansas and Colorado and in
Speaker 1: all of these cases, the victims were bludgeoned with an
Speaker 1: axe in homes where the windows and mirrors were all covered,
Speaker 1: similar to the morselings. Detective Wilkerson was so convinced that
Speaker 1: Mansfield had been hired by Jones that he posted flyers
Speaker 1: all over town with Mansfield's face on them that read,
Speaker 1: this is the axe murderer he murdered the more family
Speaker 1: at Bliska. The hypocrite whose dirty money paid for the
Speaker 1: hellish job wants your support for the state Senate. Will
Speaker 1: he get it? So? I'm sure delighted Jones. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I have to say, I think if you have just
Speaker 1: accused a man of hiring someone to kill a man
Speaker 1: who has made you angry, making him angry and this
Speaker 1: way seems like a really bold and foolish move. Um.
Speaker 1: But while Mansfield does seem like an obvious solution to
Speaker 1: who killed the Moors, and while Detective Wokerson really seemed
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life that he was certain
Speaker 1: that what that Mansfield was the killer Uh. Mansfield had
Speaker 1: an art alibi for the time of the Veliska murders
Speaker 1: that placed him in Illinois. There was some payroll happenings
Speaker 1: that indicated that he had had been working there at
Speaker 1: the time. There were some eyewitnesses that placed Mansfield in
Speaker 1: Veliska and not Illinois, but none of those uh eyewitness
Speaker 1: accounts were ever substantiated, and Mansfield was eventually set free.
Speaker 1: After his release, Mansfield sued Wilkerson for slander, and he
Speaker 1: was awarded more than two thousand dollars. Wilkerson alleged that
Speaker 1: Jones had in fact managed to use his position of
Speaker 1: power to secure Mansfield's release. Yeah, he also kind of
Speaker 1: blamed Jones for orchestrating the decision in Mansfield's favor during
Speaker 1: the slander case, and he suggested that Frank Jones set
Speaker 1: up the next suspect to kind of take the fall,
Speaker 1: and that next suspect was Reverend George Kelly, who was
Speaker 1: a preacher who had moved to Macedonia, Iowa in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: So after the trail went cold with Mansfield, Kelly was
Speaker 1: arrested and charged with the more murders in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: and he was in Baliska for the Children's Day activities
Speaker 1: and he left town the next morning. He was even
Speaker 1: alleged at one point to have spoken of the murders
Speaker 1: on the train out of town, which is early in
Speaker 1: the morning, before the bodies had even been discovered. He
Speaker 1: also returned to Veliska a week after the murders and
Speaker 1: he pretended to be a detective from Scotland Yard to
Speaker 1: gain entry into the More home. He actually had some
Speaker 1: mental problems that were on record, and Kelly was considered
Speaker 1: to be a sexual deviant, obsessed with sex and known
Speaker 1: to have been a peeping tom. There have been some
Speaker 1: theories about the rolled up bacon slab that was found
Speaker 1: downstairs in the bedroom had been used as a sexual
Speaker 1: aid by the killer, and that made people really willing
Speaker 1: to connect the dots to to Kelly, who had this reputation.
Speaker 1: Unlike Mansfield, Kelly actually did confess to the murders, and
Speaker 1: in his confession he wrote, I killed the children upstairs
Speaker 1: first and the children downstairs last. I knew God wanted
Speaker 1: me to do it this way. Slay utterly came to
Speaker 1: my mind, and I picked up the axe, went into
Speaker 1: the house and killed them. So that makes it seem
Speaker 1: like an open and shut ace. But it all fell apart.
Speaker 1: He wound up recanting his confession, and the witnesses that
Speaker 1: initially claimed he talked to them on the train about
Speaker 1: the murders before it was public knowledge. I'll change their story.
Speaker 1: He was also a really small man, at five ft
Speaker 1: two inches tall, and he weighed less than a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty pounds, So the idea of him being able
Speaker 1: to deliver the crushing blows that killed the family was
Speaker 1: a little difficult to support. I imagine at that height
Speaker 1: it might have been also difficult for the upswings of
Speaker 1: the axe to hit the ceiling. Yes, I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 1: I thought about that as well, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything substantial. I'm sure we could do it if with
Speaker 1: a little bit more time to find out what the
Speaker 1: height of the ceilings were in the length of the axe.
Speaker 1: But I did not have time to work out the
Speaker 1: math on that. And while somebody that size could probably
Speaker 1: easily until children, Mr Moore was like six ft tall
Speaker 1: and weighed about two hundred pounds, you know, he was
Speaker 1: a full grown man, So it it seemed like that
Speaker 1: would have been a little bit more of a stretch
Speaker 1: for Kelly to be able to manage. Kelly was actually
Speaker 1: tried twice for this crime. The first trial resulted in
Speaker 1: a hung jury, and in the second trial, the jury
Speaker 1: freed him because there was really no evidence other than
Speaker 1: sort of the suspicion that he was weird and deviant
Speaker 1: and might be the kind of person to do these things.
Speaker 1: The third suspect was Henry Lee Moore, and in May
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirteen, almost a year after the murders, a
Speaker 1: federal investigator on the case named m W. Mccloudy, announced
Speaker 1: that he had solved it, as well as twenty two
Speaker 1: other similar cases. Mcclardy believed all of the slings to
Speaker 1: be the work of serial killer Henry Lee Moore, who
Speaker 1: was not actually relation to the More family. It was
Speaker 1: not yet another More brother. Yeah, it was just coincidental
Speaker 1: that they had the last name. Uh. A few months
Speaker 1: after the Valiska incident, Henry More was convicted of murdering
Speaker 1: his mother and grandmother in Missouri. The brutality of the
Speaker 1: victims was quite similar. They were legend with an AX
Speaker 1: and UH. It should be pointed out that one of
Speaker 1: the things that differs is that he was allegedly motivated
Speaker 1: by money. In this he was hoping to gain their
Speaker 1: assets after they died. As the Valiska investigation had gone on,
Speaker 1: multiple similar acts murders were uncovered in Colorado, Illinois, and Kansas,
Speaker 1: and some of these were crimes Mansfield had also been
Speaker 1: linked to by other investigators, but McClary thought they were
Speaker 1: all Henry Morris doing more actually served thirty six years
Speaker 1: of his life sentence for the deaths of his mother
Speaker 1: and grandmother. UH and then he was paroled in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. UH. He ended up having his sentence commuted
Speaker 1: some years later when he was in his eighties. UM.
Speaker 1: He kind of falls off the public record after that.
Speaker 1: No one really knows like or he went or how
Speaker 1: he died. But he was never formally charged for the
Speaker 1: murders in Valiska, despite mccloudy's insistence that he was clearly
Speaker 1: the one who had done it. In addition to these
Speaker 1: three high profile suspects, there were so so many others,
Speaker 1: And initially it was because of the shocking nature of
Speaker 1: the hot side. Citizens of Aliska suspected anyone who wasn't
Speaker 1: from around there. Some of them were legitimately suspect, although
Speaker 1: not not ever actually linked to the murders, and some
Speaker 1: of them were simply guilty of being strangers. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to make a note about the similarities among the
Speaker 1: murders UH that were discovered in other states and other areas,
Speaker 1: and the use of an AX as the murder weapon.
Speaker 1: It's worth considering just food for thought that this was
Speaker 1: a time when almost every home would have an X,
Speaker 1: often readily accessible UH. Mike dash who was a writer
Speaker 1: that wrote an article for the Smithsonian in twelve about
Speaker 1: the Valiska killings, makes the point that this sort of
Speaker 1: could be considered a weapon of convenience for the times,
Speaker 1: Like in the Midwest, if you just wanted to go
Speaker 1: on a killing spree, an access pretty easy to get
Speaker 1: ahold of. Additionally, as is the case often with high
Speaker 1: profile crimes, confessors came out of the woodwork for decades.
Speaker 1: People were confessing to the crime well into the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: although many of these confessions got details wildly wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that that happens with any big UH murder case.
Speaker 1: Or there are people that confess that could not have
Speaker 1: done it for whatever reasons, but those, of course, we're
Speaker 1: pretty easily dismissed in most cases. Um So, jumping to
Speaker 1: sort of the modern day UH in the house where J. B.
Speaker 1: More and his family were killed was purchased by Darwin
Speaker 1: and Martha Lynn and the Lins restored the house to
Speaker 1: its nineteen twelve condition, and the residents was placed on
Speaker 1: the National Historic Places Registry in nineteen. Prior to the
Speaker 1: Lens purchase, the house had passed through many hands of
Speaker 1: ownership and it had been repeatedly renovated, so it was
Speaker 1: really quite a significant restoration effort. Today you can tour
Speaker 1: the home. It's actually a museum, and for a little
Speaker 1: less than five hundred dollars a night, you can book
Speaker 1: sleepovers in the murder House. It's actually one of the
Speaker 1: main draws of Valisco, which is a pretty rural town.
Speaker 1: If you want to book on the anniversary of the murders, though,
Speaker 1: there's a lottery. And there have been many discussions and
Speaker 1: debates through the years about whether it's right for a
Speaker 1: business to grow out of such a tragedy and so
Speaker 1: much brutality. These debates probably go on for as long
Speaker 1: as the museum is open. Yeah, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of articles if you search for this that talk about
Speaker 1: it kind of from the modern standpoint. They really do
Speaker 1: discuss kind of that this is a problem and something
Speaker 1: that continues to be debated, and and they kind of
Speaker 1: look at like the Valisca murder houses. This odd money
Speaker 1: making machines of but you know that's something that you
Speaker 1: can draw your own conclusions and have your own opinions of. UM.
Speaker 1: Paranormal investigators and ghost hunters have of course kind of
Speaker 1: flocked to this house hoping to get some activity that
Speaker 1: they can record or discuss. It's been featured on a
Speaker 1: lot of numerous television reality and making the air quotes shows, uh,
Speaker 1: and there have been several documentaries made about the murders
Speaker 1: that are less about sensationalizing it and making a haunted
Speaker 1: house ghost story, but really just trying to break down
Speaker 1: the actual crime. UM. I kind of feel like a
Speaker 1: broken record when I do this wrap up, because we
Speaker 1: do it for almost any of the cases where they're
Speaker 1: go unsolved. But odds are that this one is not
Speaker 1: ever going to be solved. And the further away we
Speaker 1: get from the date of when it actually happened, the
Speaker 1: less and less evidence there will be to go on.
Speaker 1: So it will remain a draw for crime history buffs
Speaker 1: and visitors to the Valiska Murder House. Uh, probably for
Speaker 1: quite some time. But that is the Valiska Murders, which,
Speaker 1: as I said, we're requested by a large number of people.
Speaker 1: Very unsettling and disturbing to think about. Uh, but you know,
Speaker 1: good Halloween fodder. And again it is a huge tragedy.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, I'm not a kids person,
Speaker 1: but reading these testimonies about what happened to these children
Speaker 1: was so rough for me. Yeah, I kept I kept
Speaker 1: going like, let's go hug a kitty. I'm having to
Speaker 1: go out to cartoon for fifteen minutes, just anything to
Speaker 1: kind of break the intensity of that. Well, and in
Speaker 1: addition to how I got genuinely creeped out sitting here
Speaker 1: when you said all the mirrors were covered up with
Speaker 1: their clothing, Um, the part about their you know that
Speaker 1: the parents of the children who were visiting the home
Speaker 1: calling over there because they were expecting them to be
Speaker 1: home for school, that really got to me. It's it's
Speaker 1: very upsetting to think about. I mean, these were, you know,
Speaker 1: kids that were part of someone's lives, and it was
Speaker 1: just it could be it's one of those this could
Speaker 1: happen to anyone kinds of things. UM. And I think
Speaker 1: especially when these kinds of crimes happen in rural communities
Speaker 1: that were very you know, friendly and and pretty free
Speaker 1: of this kind of thing. It's really shocking. It kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of when I first read in Cold
Speaker 1: Blood Patry as a kid, because it's kind of a
Speaker 1: similar there's some parallels there. Um, it's hard to think
Speaker 1: about what a mental shift that has to be for
Speaker 1: the entire community to be Like, one day life is
Speaker 1: one way and the next day you see it all
Speaker 1: completely differently. Thank you so much for joining us for
Speaker 1: this Saturday Classic. Since this is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
Speaker 1: r L or something similar during the course of the show,
Speaker 1: that may be obsolete. Now, so here's our current contact information.
Speaker 1: We are at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: and then we're at Missed in the History. All over
Speaker 1: social media, that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Thanks again for listening for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. House of stot comm