The Whole Haunted World #6
Does the Villisca Ax Murder House Stand Alone?
TRIGGER WARNING: This piece contains descriptions of violence against both humans and dogs
If you’re a fan of the paranormal, then chances are that you know about the Villisca Ax Murder House.
Located in the Iowa heartland just over an hour’s drive southeast of Omaha, this town of 1,132 (according to the 2020 census) is notable for one thing: a terrible crime in 1912 that led to a notorious haunting. On the evening of June 9, 1912, six members of the Moore family and two children staying with them were brutally murdered, a slaying that went unsolved. The house, which still stands, is now reputed to be one of the most haunted in America, with – as would be expected – most believing that the spirit(s) residing there is(are) particularly active.
Writers/researchers have been writing about the Villisca murders for years. The most exhaustive examination must surely be the 2017 book The Man from the Train, by sports writer Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James. At this point, nearly everyone agrees that the slayings in Villisca were the act of a serial killer; although there were suspects galore at the time (pretty much anyone who’d ever had a cross word with the Moores), nothing ever came of looking at locals. So, if this was the act of a random killer, they must have struck again, right?
Oh yes. For The Man from the Train, the authors broke down the peculiar, distinctive circumstances of the Villisca murders and searched thousands of old newspapers for similar accounts.
They found them. In fact, they found a lot, ranging across the United States (and possibly into Europe). They believe the murder spree began in 1898 with a Massachusetts family, the Newtons, who were employing a handyman named Paul Mueller. After the Newtons were found slain, Mueller vanished…and two years later, the bloody chain picked up in New Jersey, eventually finding its way to Villisca twelve years later. During that time, they theorize that Mueller murdered well over a hundred people.
Here are the unusual parts of the Villisca killings that they found happening over and over: they looked first for murders of entire families (or at least entire households). The house where the murders occurred must have close proximity to train tracks, since the killer likely rode the trains to escape (bonus points if the scene of the crime was near an intersection of two or more tracks, since that would’ve provided even more opportunity for passing trains to hop). The killings always involved an axe, suggesting the perpetrator was skilled at working with wood, so they gave special emphasis to crimes that occurred near logging communities. And the homes needed a barn or outbuilding where the killer could hide, watching and waiting until the family was tucked into their beds at which point he entered the house through a window.
Now here’s where it gets weird:
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