Stuff You Should Know
SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders?
26 Sep 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: What happened during the Villisca axe murders in 1912?
Well, one of the articles we researched was from Mike Dash of the Smithsonian Magazine. They do great work. Great work. There's another guy named Ed Epperly who we have to give a shout out to who has like a whole site called Ask Ed that's dedicated to this murder. Guys researched it for like 55 years or something like that. Did he write one of the two books probably? Sure. Yeah.
He's widely known as the expert on the Villisca axe murder. He knows everything there is to know. And he's got a really fascinating, so if you're even remotely into true crime and this thing floats your boat, go check out Ed's site and you will just spend days poring over it. Yeah. One thing I realized in researching this was it was way easier to get away with murder. Yeah. In 1912. Yeah. Um,
Yeah, there's a lot of agreement that had this been done today, they would have caught the guy very quickly. Sure. But, yeah, 1912, it was like you wear gloves and you just confounded their only means of detection, basically, aside from an eyewitness. Pretty much. Yeah. So we keep saying 1912, specifically, like you said, June 9th, 1912. Wow. In the little town. June 10th.
Well, it was one of those things where it crossed over into midnight. Right. So June 9th, 10th. Depends on if you're still at partying. Potato, potato, Villisca, Villissa, right? Yeah. But at 508 East 2nd Street in Villisca, Iowa, which is in the county of Montgomery, in the southeast of the state, I believe. Not as far from here as I thought. No?
I just looked on a map and I was like, wait, Iowa's there? I thought Iowa was like basically in Canada. No.
Huh.
Where is it? It's right in the middle of the country. I did not realize that. Like it doesn't look further west than like Dallas. I can believe that, but it was the north that gets you, the northernward direction. That's what gets you? Sure. So on this night, June 9th, 10th, 1912, in this little house, there were eight people sleeping. There were a mom and a dad, Joe and Sarah Moore.
And then their four kids, what were their names, Charles? Charles. I believe Herman, Catherine, Boyd, and Paul. Right. And then downstairs, there were two additional people sleeping in the house, little Lena and Ina Stillinger. And they were just having a sleepover, right? Yeah, they were friends of Catherine, the oldest daughter, or the only daughter, I guess, of the Moores.
And the whole group had been at church. They were Presbyterians. And they had been at church that day, it was Sunday, for a special Children's Day Mass that Mrs. Moore had helped put on and the kids had all participated in. And at that Mass, Catherine had asked her two friends, Lena and Ina, the sisters, to spend the night. And so they came back home with the Moors from the Children's Day Mass.
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Chapter 3: Who were the victims of the Villisca axe murders?
Lynn George Jacqueline Kelly, the man with four names. He went by George Kelly, though. He was an Englishman, which was probably a little weird at the time. Sure. To be living there. No one had ever seen an Englishman in Iowa. Maybe. uh, he was a preacher though.
And it says, uh, in this Smithsonian article, a known sexual deviant, um, he definitely had some mental health problems, but, um, there are some things in his case where it sort of were suspicious and others that made him not a great suspect. Uh, one of which he was a little guy, he was five to 119 pounds. So maybe not the best, um, suspect for Swinging an axe like that? Yeah. Yeah.
Although, you know, he could have been strong as an ox. You never know. Sure. Thumbs those little guys, you know. Yeah, but they're usually good with, like, jujitsu sleeper holds rather than axe swinging, you know? They just scramble up on top of you before you know it. Their legs are around your neck and you're losing consciousness. Yeah, their thumbs are in your eyeballs. Right.
That kind of thing. Right. Yeah, so fair enough. But he was left-handed and the coroner Lindquist did say that, you know, from their analysis, as rudimentary as that might be in 1912, that could probably at least determine that it was a left-handed assailant. From the blood spatter, I believe. Yeah. On the walls. So good for them for being that advanced.
So there were some other things that implicated George Kelly. One, he was in Villisca. He was a traveling preacher. He and his wife toured around. And they were in Villisca the day of the murder. They were actually at the children's service that the Moores and the Stillinger girls were at. Again, this guy was a sex maniac is what he was known as. Yeah, I kind of wonder about that.
Does that mean he liked to have sex? I guess there were, he placed an ad, and this is in the 1910s, he placed an ad in the Omaha World Herald looking for a stenographer who would be willing to pose as a model and
And when one woman named Jessamine Hodgson replied to his ad, he sent her a letter, and apparently it was quite lewd, so much so that the court that heard the case against him said that it was so obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy as to be offensive to this honorable court and improper to be spread upon the record thereof. I really want to know what was in that letter.
Well, one of the things was that the lady would be required to type in the nude. Yeah. This is the 1910s. No, that's what I'm saying. I wonder how it would be judged by today's standard. Oh. Although, I mean, by today's standard, if you sent a potential job candidate a letter that said, I'm going to require you to be typing in the nude, you would get in some trouble for that. Sure.
I just don't know that you would say it was obscene, lewd, and lascivious. No, I'm with you. They'd say that's kink. But I think the, okay, George Kelly was a kinky traveling preacher who had his wife in tow. And he was in Villisca at the time of the murders. And he left that next morning on a train. Right.
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