Trigger Warning: Death
Villisca is a city in Iowa, and in the early 1900s the town only held around 2,500 people. The town thrived pretty well and in 1912, it opened the first publicly funded armory in the state of Iowa which was used for storing ammunition, related parts, and held trainings. The people housed here participated in World War I, II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. A lot of these accomplishments were overshadowed by the deaths that occurred on June 10, 1912.
Josiah Moore was one of the town’s most prominent businessman and he had 4 kids with his wife, Sarah; ages ranged from 5-11. The moved to Villisca in 1903 and it was a simple home they moved into. The stairs in the home would lead one to Mr. and Mrs. Moore’s room, a door on the first floor would lead you to one bed room, and across from the parents’ room was where the kids slept. On June 9, 1912, the Moore family planned to attend children’s day service. The neighbor’s daughters asked their parents if they could go with the Moore’s for the service and stay the night at their house after. The parents agreed and the sisters went with the Moore family. When the service ended, people who attended talked up until about 9:30pm and the Moore’s took the kids (including the neighbor’s kids) home and they went to bed.
On June 10th at 7:30am, another close neighbor of the Moore’s became concerned about the Moore house because typically it would be more commotion going on around that time, it was just typical of the family. This neighbor knocks on the door and she gets no answer, so she goes around the back and sees that the farm animals haven’t been tended to yet. She then calls Josiah’s brother, Ross to ask about the family’s whereabouts. Ross comes to the house around 8:00am and finds a spare key to get into the home, he goes into the bedroom on the first floor and finds two figures covered with a sheet and blood on the bed frame. Ross later discovers through a man named Ed (he worked for the Moore family) that someone was killed in every bedroom. Ed also said he believes he found the murder weapon, which was a partially clean axe leaned against the wall of the downstairs bedroom.
The attacks were so bad that the physician who first arrived on scene could not identify one body (their heads were beaten in 20-30 times with the blunt end of the axe). The murderer left a four pound piece of slab bacon next to the axe, he/she searched through the drawers for clothing to cover all forms of glass in the house, an unfinished plate of food, and a bowl of bloody water. The strangest thing was that all of the doors were locked when you can only lock the doors from the inside. There were no broken windows or signs of forced entry.
There were several different suspects for several different reasons, but this murder still goes unsolved. If you want to learn more about the potential suspects in this case, a link is attached below that has information on why these people were looked at.
https://www.villiscaiowa.com/the-suspects.php