Villisca Axe Murders (Montgomery County, Iowa, 1912)

[Stacker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villisca_axe_murders

I was reading about this case earlier today.

It was suggested that there had to be more than 1 killer involved in the process of the mass murder. I agree with that conclusion, but I am unsure as to whom the guilty people were, as well as how many guilty people there were beyond that.

[Ginger]

Why would you think that it required more than one murderer?

I heartily recommend the Troy Taylor book "Murdered in Their Beds". It's an entertaining and readable popular history that deals with the Villisca murders in the context of a larger series of axe murders across the upper Midwest, from Colorado to Illinois. He goes into detail as well on the legal aftermath of the murders, accusations, trials, suits and countersuits, etc. He also posits an appalling, clever, entirely logical way for George Kelly to have known details of the murders before Ross Moore's discovery of the bodies, without Kelly having been involved in the murders.

The Villisca Axe Murders Blog (https://docublogger.typepad.com/villiscamystery/) is also a great resource, although rarely updated these days. Enough backposts here to keep one occupied for days, though.

[Stacker]

Why would you think that it required more than one murderer?

https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-grotesque-murder-cases-that-will-never-be-solved/

this explanation

[Stacker]

It definitely does appear that there were a lot of axe murders going on in the 1910s.

[Ginger]

There certainly were. Part of it, of course, was the sheer ubiquity of axes and hatchets - families that heated and cooked with wood owned an axe, and those that used coal owned a hatchet. It didn't matter how 'handy' one was, and indeed, there might not be another tool in the house, but that axe was essential.

Beyond that, though, there seemed to just be something in the zeitgeist that favoured serial axe murders. Besides the Midwest Axe Murders, there also occurred a series of oddly similar axe murders in Texas and Louisiana between January of 1911 and April of 1912, with all of the victims located along the Southern Pacific railroad line. In these murders too, the victims were killed in their beds, with the flat of the axe, apparently without waking anyone. The victims here were, without exception, mixed race families, with the parents being either black and white couples, or mulatto couples. This case turned very strange, with the investigation centering on a black church, said to be as much voodoo cult as anything, called 'The Sacrifice Church'. In the end, 49 people were killed, with the cases going unsolved.