On the afternoon of June 9, 1912, a group of travellers made their way through Villisca, Iowa, United States as was usual.
One of those was a seemingly unassuming middle-aged man with a beard who posed with two children.
The identity of the one on the left is no longer known with certainty, but the one on the right was ten-year-old Mary Katherine Moore, who lived with her parents and three siblings in a neaby house.
Later that night, she and her brothers went to a childrens’ daycare where her mother volunteered while the father attended church.
Eventually they chose to return to their residence, bringing Mary’s two friends, Lena and Ina Stillinger along with her.
According to later reports, Mary Peckham — an elderly neighbour who was regarded as a “second grandmother” to the Moore children — heard screaming coming from the Moore family home in the middle of the night but was too scared to get out of bed until sunrise at 7 AM.
She then noticed that none of the occupants had gotten out of bed to do their usual morning labour.
Even more puzzling was that the windows were covered in blinds.
Lastly, the door itself was locked!
Becoming ever more nervous, she found Ross Moore — the brother of Josiah Moore — and got him to unlock the door, only to realise that entry was still practically impossible, because somebody had wrapped the interior knob with cloths and tied the other end near the kitchen.
When Ross finally barged through he found the home eerily silent.
Soon thereafter, he entered the first floor bedroom, where he found the Stillinger girls deceased, with Lena’s body indicating that somebody had pulled down her underwear towards her knees, where a small clock was kept — presumably to keep track of time.
In the corner of the room was a bloody axe.
Going upstairs, he immediately came upon the bodies of his brother Josiah, and his wife Sarah, both of whom were covered in blood from the dozens of headwounds inflicted on them.
And a few feet to the left he ventured into the childrens’ room where he found the corpses of Herman, Arthur, Paul, and Katherine Moore.
The eight murdered individuals
Aside from this gory discovery, investigators soon noticed that slabs of bacon and other unconsumed beverages and foods had been taken out of the fridge and freezer, indicating that the killer may have hung around the home for at least several hours.
Mirrors were also covered — a custom among certain demographics whenever a mortal sin had been committed — and cigarettes were allegedly left in the attic — where the killer may have hidden for upwards of a day before carrying out the act.
Nobody ever found out who the perpetrator was.
A passerby by the name of Reverend George Kelly — a known peeping tom who allegedly told others on a train about the murders more than two hours before the gruesome discovery was discovered by other residents — was later tried, but acquitted.
There is a strong possibility that Kelly was innocent, and that he had likely been snooping about the neighbourhood when he inadvertently stumbled upon the crime in progress.
Being too shocked and horrified at what he witnessed, he then took the train out of town at approximately 5 AM — the time of day the killer is believed to have sneaked out of one of the home’s back windows.
Furthermore, canines sent to the house in the hours after the murder to scent the killer’s footsteps show him fleeing to a local nearby river.
What makes this case even more astounding is that it was almost certainly not a one-off killing spree perpetrated by the killer, but a long string of killings that may have gone back decades.
In nearby Paola, Kansas, investigators found that the features behind the Villisca axe murders — axe murder, dimly lit candles, covered mirrors and windows — were identical matches.
Shortly thereafter, these two crimes were linked to a series of other midwest murders committed in 1911, including one in Monmouth, Illinois, and a more noteworthy incident in Colorado Springs, where two family homes were butchered by an axe on the same night.
This would earn the faceless killer the macabre nickname: Billy the Axeman.
The crime shocked the community so badly that Mary Peckham — the neighbourly woman who is believed to have heard the commotion, but could not bear to get out alone in the dead of night — moved to Montana for health reasons, where she died six months later.
Meanwhile, the mother of the Stillinger girls ended up miscarrying, due to the stress related to the murders.
Newspaper from June 14, 1912
Author Bill James believed that this perpetrator was a man by the name of Paul Mueller, who committed his first known family killings in Massachusetts in January 1898 — more than fourteen years before the Villisca axe murders.
According to the police reports, Mueller’s physical description in 1898 was as follows:
Short and stocky
Muscular
Long hair
Dark hair
Long beard
Whiskers
Approximately thirty-five years of age
In the introductory photograph taken just hours before the Villisca murders, we see a shorty stocky man, who was muscular, had long hair, long beard, whiskers, and who looked approximately fifty years, and therefore around the age Mueller would have been in 1898.
The only main feature that was missing was that his hair was greying, though considering the time difference between the two killings, as well as the fact that Mueller’s professions included working in the lumber and mining sectors, we can assume that his hair would have grown lighter as he approached middle-age in 1912.
It should also be noted that some believe that the crimes committed by the axeman date even further back than 1898, with the killings of the elderly Defoore couple in Georgia in 1879 being the first documented slayings — or even 1874, with the murder of a German family in Millstadt, Illinois.
Regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of whether the killer was the man in the photograph, and whether or not he was indeed Paul Mueller, what we do know is that the girl on the right would not live for another day after the photograph was taken…
And the mysterious bearded man was never seen or heard of again!
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