Thursday, May 2, 2024

Villisca Axe Murder House, one of Iowa's most haunted locations

viscilla ax murder house

The bodies of Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children and two visiting girls were found in the Moore home in Villisca, a Montgomery County town located about 100 miles southwest of Des Moines. Josiah was a prominent businessman and well-known church worker in town, according to reporting from the former Des Moines Tribune. This month marks 110 years since a family of six and their two visitors were bludgeoned to death in their sleep at a home in the small southwest Iowa town of Villisca. Groups can book the house for $500 for up to five people, and $100 for each additional person.

June 11th, 1912

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'Ghost Hunter' stabs himself at 'Ax Murder House' during paranormal investigation.

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Moore had worked for Jones for seven years in the farm equipment sales business before leaving and starting his own rival business. The event would come to be known as the Villisca Axe Murders and it would baffle law enforcement for over a century. Using testimonies given during the coroner’s inquest, the Linn’s also placed furniture in the same places it occupied at the time of the murders. Restoring the property as close to its original state as possible.

Category:Murder in Los Angeles

She had also reported a missing set of house keys which were later found on Simpson when he was arrested. He arrived around 8 am and let himself in through the front door. He first inspected the downstairs bedroom, and to his horror, he found two bloodsoaked sheets covering two corpses.

William Mansfield

Authorities were eventually able to connect both Miller and Kastin's murders to the Hillside Stranglers. "There was a lot of communication going on between homicide detectives in L.A.," Grogan said. "We were starting to run into things that looked like a common denominator. ... But there wasn't anything substantial to say we got a serial murder going on." That November, the nude body of 21-year-old Lissa Kastin, who moved to L.A.

Paranormal investigators claim the house is incredibly active…..if you believe in that sort of stuff. The Villisca Ax Murder House has also been featured on popular ghost-hunting shows and podcasts. Ghost Adventures, Scariest Places on Earth, My Favourite Murder, and Lore all discuss the crime. Naturally, the Villisca Ax Murder House, with such a dark past, quickly attracts ghost hunters. There is not a ghostly phenomenon that hasn’t been reported there. The Villisca Ax Murder House today, restored to how the house looked in 1912.

The cause of death was brute force trauma to each of the victims’ skulls. In Josiah and Sarah’s bedroom, the ceiling showed gashes from the axe’s upswing. While Villisca still possesses the same small-town charm and appeal it did over a hundred years ago, its legacy is forever tainted by the events of June 1912. To this day, the Villisca Axe Murders continue to haunt the small town. Its effects are sewn into the fabric of its history and never seem to fade even with the passage of time. "He sent a bloody shirt to a laundry the week after the murder. It's a viable possibility that he was the killer. It can't be proven today, at least to my satisfaction."

viscilla ax murder house

According to the Villisca Ax Murder House's website, it is believed that an unknown person entered the Moore's home sometime after midnight on June 10 and murdered all eight occupants. VILLISCA, Iowa — It's been 111 years since the tragic murders of eight people at a home in Villisca. After the Linns opened the house to the public, visitors reported all manner of unexplainable phenomena, from feelings of dread, to sounds such as footprints and children’s laughter. Some have recorded engagement with spirits and two-way communication. One man even experienced an inexplicable self-inflicted knife wound.

Lyn George Jacklin Kelly

viscilla ax murder house

She died later the same year after a nervous breakdown, aggravated by the murders. That evening, nobody heard any kind of disturbance coming from the Moore house. However, the next morning, neighbor Mary Peckham noticed the family hadn’t come outside to do any of their usual chores. Mary knocked on the door of the house, but nobody answered and it was locked. After letting their chickens out, she rang Ross Moore, the brother of Josiah. Curious to learn all the details of the Villisca Axe Murder House and why it's one of the most haunted places in the world?

Paul Mueller

A jury found them both guilty and they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to witnesses, Diles entered the apartment at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon, approx. 3 am and beat to death Joy Miller, Billy DeVerell, and Barbara Richardson with a pipe as they slept on the couch.

Herman, Mary Katherine, Arthur, and Paul were next bludgeoned in the head in the same manner as their parents. Seemingly afterwards, a 4lb slab of bacon was taken out of the icebox and laid next to the axe. Investigators also found untouched food and bloody water during the search. After the search, people were let in to see if they could have committed the crime, completely contaminating the weapon. The Villisca ax murders — one of the most heinous crimes in the state's history — took place overnight on June 9, 1912. It remains unsolved despite years of investigations, multiple grand jury hearings, a slander lawsuit and a murder trial, according to the Iowa Cold Cases blog.

Bonnie Lee Bakley was shot to death outside of Vitello's restaurant on May 4, 2001. Her husband, actor Robert Blake, was acquitted on criminal charges but found civilly liable. He said he wasn't at the scene of the crime because he'd gone back to the restaurant to get a gun he'd left there.

Ben-Hur star Ramon Novarro was brutally murdered in his Laurel Canyon home on October 30, 1968. Two brothers, convinced that Novarro had a hidden stash of cash, tortured and beat him; the crime scene allegedly involved a silver lead dildo given to Novarro by Rudolph Valentino. Susan Berman was an author and daughter of Davie Berman – a mobster who took the place of Bugsy Siegel at Las Vegas’ Flamingo Hotel following his murder. Berman herself was only 12-years-old when her father died under mysterious circumstances during an operation and a year later, her mother committed suicide. Gradually, she received a total of $4.3 million from the Mafia due to her father’s business interests.

After two separate trials, he was acquitted, and the Viscilla Ax murders remained unsolved. Neighbor Mary Peckham was the first to notice something wrong at the Moore home. She was said to have acted like a grandmother figure to the Moore children.

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This included all six family members and two friends of one of the daughters. The house change hands a few times over the past 100 years, and the reported ghost encounters just keep accumulating. So while what happened there in 1912 makes it a terrifying place to be on its own, ghosts or no ghosts, it definitely continues to earn its title as one of America's most haunted houses. Serial killers Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, who were also cousins, had abducted and murdered 10 victims – all young women ranging in ages from 12 to 28 – between October 1977 to February 1978. The case became known in the media as “The Hillside Strangler” case because investigators initially believed there was just one killer committing these crimes. Police officers and a local doctor scrutinized the crime scene and examined the bodies.

The faces of both parents, as well as the children, had been reduced to nothing but a bloody pulp. Jo Naylor/FlickrThe Villisca Axe Murders house where an unknown attacker committed one of American history’s most disturbing unsolved murders of all time in 1912. James started his research in an attempt to solve the Villisca murders, and with his daughter found archival newspaper stories detailing dozens of families murdered under similar circumstances across the US.

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