In 1912, in Villisca City, Iowa, a couple, their 4 kids, and 2 other children had been murdered. Both of the parents’ had a blow to the head by an Axe and the childrens skulls have severe head injuries by an unknown perpetrator. The first trial ended in a hung jury, the second ended in an acquittal. Yet the crime remains unsolved. The Moore family consisted of parents, Josiah (age 43), Sarah (age 39), and their four children: Herman Montgomery (age 11), Mary Katherine (age 10), Arthur Boyd (age 7), and Paul Vernon (age 5). In the evening of June 9, 1912, Mary Katherine Moore invited Ina Mae (age 8) and Lena Gertrude Stillinger (age 12) to spend the night at the Moore residence. Later in the evening the girls went to Presbyterian church where the girls got to attend the Children’s Days Program. The Program had ended at 9:30 PM, the girls began to walk home and arrived around 9:45-10:00 PM. The next day, June 10, at 7 AM, Mary Peckham, the neighbor of the Moore residents, began to worry.
Mary Peckham hadn’t seen any of the family since she woke up, she walked over to the Moore residence house and knocked. There was no answer. She tried to open the door but it was locked. Peckham went around the back and let the Moores’ chickens out and called Ross Moore, Josiah’s brother, to come down to the Moore residence to check out what was going on. Later that day Ross had driven up to the house and grabbed a copy of the house key from under the mat, he then opened the door to find the house oddly quiet. He began to go upstairs to the guest room and found the Stilliingers bodies on the bed. He ran down the stairs and told Peckham to call Henry “Hank” Horton, who was Villisca’s primary peace officer. Horton arrived shortly after and began to search the house and revealed that the entire Moore family and the Stillinger girls have been Bludgeoned (beat ‘someone’ repeatedly with a bludgeon or other heavy object.) to death, He looked around the room and saw a bloodied axe that had belonged to Mr Moore in the Stillinger’s room.
Before the killer murdered the Stillinger girls they went down the stairs and took a 4lb of bacon out of the icebox and set it beside the bloodied axe.The investigators had found untouched food and bloodied water during the search. After the search the investigators had concluded that every other person was asleep except Lena Stillinger, They had thought that she was awake and tried to defend herself as she was found laying crossed on the bed with a defensive wound on her arm. Lena’s nightgown was pushed up to her waist and wasn’t wearing any undergarments, making law enforcements think the killer had molested her or tried to but was then later proven false. The killer is still on the run, with many axe murders in Ellsworth Kansas, and Paola Kansas, it raised suspicion and created many theories but was never actually true.
The doctors had concluded that the murders had to have taken place during midnight and 5-am. There were 2 cigarette butts in the attic, meaning that the killer or killers had patiently waited. Before the murders had occurred, there was an official tour of the house and there weren’t any cigarettes in the attic. The cigarettes were found later after the killing. The Killer first started with the master bedroom, where Josiah and Sarah slept. Herman, Mary Katherine, Arthur and Paul were then bludgeoned in the head in the same manner as their parents. After the Killer got done with the kids he went back into the master bedroom and inflicted more blows on the Moores’, In the process the Killer had managed to knock over a shoe that was filled with blood.
