I do not believe the Reverend Kelly. But I am not sure if I don’t believe him when he said he didn’t do it or when he said he did. What I do know is that on board the westbound number 5 train, which pulled out of Villisca, Iowa at 5:19 A.M. that Monday morning, the twitchy diminutive preacher supposedly told his fellow bleary eyed travelers that there were eight dead souls back in Villisca, Iowa, butchered in their beds while they slept. But the bodies would not be discovered until almost eight. So if the sleepy witnesses correctly remembered the words spoken to them five years earlier by a strange little preacher, then he was guilty of an unspeakable horror. If they were wrong, he was innocent.
Villisca is a self proclaimed “community of pride where the rivers divide” (being the West and Middle branches of the Nordaway River), 80 miles southwest of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Montgomery County was settled in the mid 19th century mostly by people from the old Midwest, upstate New York and Pennsylvania, people with names like Bates and Bowman, Kennedy and Hoover, Powers and Preston and Wymore. They arrived on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad, called by her customers just “The Q”. At the time our story takes place no community in Iowa was more than a few miles from an active rail line. Most of the residents of Villisca either sold services or equipment to the local farmers or worked for the railroad. And it is not likely that in 1912 the little town was much smaller that it is today, when the population is just about 1,000 souls.
On the morning of June 10th, 1912, inside the sad looking two story house (now at 323 East 4th.Street) were found the bodies of Mr. Josiah Moore, his wife Sara, daughter Katherine and sons Herman, Boyd and Paul, as well as the bodies of their overnight child guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger. The children were aged 5 through age 12. All the victims were found in their beds, with their heads covered with bedclothes. All had their skulls battered 20 to 30 times with the blunt end of an axe, which was found wiped clean in the downstairs sewing room/bedroom along with the bodies of the Stillinger girls. The ceilings in the parent's bedroom and the children's room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe.
Downstairs little Lena Stillinger’s nightgown was pushed up, leaving her exposed. But doctors said there was no evidence of abuse. There was a bloodstain on her knee and an alleged defensive wound on her arm. A two pound slab of bacon was found, wrapped in a dishtowel, on the bedroom floor. On the kitchen table was a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water. The medical estimate was that all of the murders had occurred shortly after midnight.
In June 11th Mr. Sam Moyer was arrested for the murders. He was released on the 15th. On June 20th Mr. John Bohland was arrested. On July 5th, Mr. Frank Roberts (“a negro”) was arrested for the murders. On December 28th farmer and victim Sara Moore’s ex-brother-in-law, Mr. Lew Van Alstine, was arrested for the murders. On July 15th, 1916 Mr. William Mansfield was arrested for the murders. On July 21st he was released. On March 19, 1917, the Reverend J.J. Burris told a Grand Jury sitting in the county seat of Red Oak, that a mystery man had confessed on his death bed to the murders. And then, on April 30th, 1917 a warrant for the arrest of the Reverend George Kelly was issued. He arrived to surrender himself two weeks later, oddly enough on the No. 5 train.
Villisca is a self proclaimed “community of pride where the rivers divide” (being the West and Middle branches of the Nordaway River), 80 miles southwest of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Montgomery County was settled in the mid 19th century mostly by people from the old Midwest, upstate New York and Pennsylvania, people with names like Bates and Bowman, Kennedy and Hoover, Powers and Preston and Wymore. They arrived on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad, called by her customers just “The Q”. At the time our story takes place no community in Iowa was more than a few miles from an active rail line. Most of the residents of Villisca either sold services or equipment to the local farmers or worked for the railroad. And it is not likely that in 1912 the little town was much smaller that it is today, when the population is just about 1,000 souls.On the morning of June 10th, 1912, inside the sad looking two story house (now at 323 East 4th.Street) were found the bodies of Mr. Josiah Moore, his wife Sara, daughter Katherine and sons Herman, Boyd and Paul, as well as the bodies of their overnight child guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger. The children were aged 5 through age 12. All the victims were found in their beds, with their heads covered with bedclothes. All had their skulls battered 20 to 30 times with the blunt end of an axe, which was found wiped clean in the downstairs sewing room/bedroom along with the bodies of the Stillinger girls. The ceilings in the parent's bedroom and the children's room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe.Downstairs little Lena Stillinger’s nightgown was pushed up, leaving her exposed. But doctors said there was no evidence of abuse. There was a bloodstain on her knee and an alleged defensive wound on her arm. A two pound slab of bacon was found, wrapped in a dishtowel, on the bedroom floor. On the kitchen table was a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water. The medical estimate was that all of the murders had occurred shortly after midnight.In June 11th Mr. Sam Moyer was arrested for the murders. He was released on the 15th. On June 20th Mr. John Bohland was arrested. On July 5th, Mr. Frank Roberts (“a negro”) was arrested for the murders. On December 28th farmer and victim Sara Moore’s ex-brother-in-law, Mr. Lew Van Alstine, was arrested for the murders. On July 15th, 1916 Mr. William Mansfield was arrested for the murders. On July 21st he was released. On March 19, 1917, the Reverend J.J. Burris told a Grand Jury sitting in the county seat of Red Oak, that a mystery man had confessed on his death bed to the murders. And then, on April 30th, 1917 a warrant for the arrest of the Reverend George Kelly was issued. He arrived to surrender himself two weeks later, oddly enough on the No. 5 train.The authorities first became interested in the Reverend a few weeks after the murders, alerted by recipients of his rambling letters. He had arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning of the murders, and had attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls. He had had left Villisca the following day, Monday morning. Two weeks later he had returned and had even joined a tour of the murder house with a group of investigators, posing as a detective. (There was virtually no control of the crime scene.) The only thing stopping police from arresting him immediately was that it was abundantly clear the Reverend was crazy.
Lyn George Jacklin Kelly (above, again with his wife) was the son and grandson of English ministers, who, as an adolescent, had suffered a “mental breakdown”. He had immigrated to America with his wife in 1904 and preached at a dozen Methodist churches across North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa. Preaching from the pulpit he was “...a confident, well-versed, and articulate speaker”. But in personal interactions the 5 foot, 119 pound minister displayed “...a nervous demeanor, shifty eyes, and often spoke so quickly that saliva would dribble down his chin”. 
He had been assigned as a visiting minister to several small communities north of Villisca, where he developed a reputation for odd behavior; late night walks, rumors that he was a peeping tom and unconfirmed stories that he had tried to convince young girls to undress for him. In 1914, while preaching in South Dakota he had advertised for a private secretary. One young woman who responded was informed by return post that Kelly wanted her to type in the nude. He was convicted of sending obscene material through the mail, and spent time in a mental hospital. While there he wrote to the Montgomery County D.A. that he expected to be arrested for the Villisca murders.
Finally, after investigating just about every other possibility, the Grand Jury indicted Kelly for the murder of Lena Stillinger. All through the summer of 1917, while in jail awaiting trial, Kelly was interrogated. The last interview was on August 30th , a marathon session that lasted all night. At 7AM on the morning of the 31st Kelly signed a confession to the murder, saying God had whispered to him to “suffer the children to come unto me.”
At trial he recanted and on Wednesday, September 26 the case went to the jury, which deadlocked eleven to one for acquittal. A second jury was immediately empanelled, and in November the Reverend Kelly was acquitted. No one else was ever tried for the murders. And the crime remains one of the most horrific, unsolved mass murders in American history, known simply as the Villisca Axe Murders.
( http://www.villiscaiowa.com/)
Lyn George Jacklin Kelly (above, again with his wife) was the son and grandson of English ministers, who, as an adolescent, had suffered a “mental breakdown”. He had immigrated to America with his wife in 1904 and preached at a dozen Methodist churches across North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa. Preaching from the pulpit he was “...a confident, well-versed, and articulate speaker”. But in personal interactions the 5 foot, 119 pound minister displayed “...a nervous demeanor, shifty eyes, and often spoke so quickly that saliva would dribble down his chin”. He had been assigned as a visiting minister to several small communities north of Villisca, where he developed a reputation for odd behavior; late night walks, rumors that he was a peeping tom and unconfirmed stories that he had tried to convince young girls to undress for him. In 1914, while preaching in South Dakota he had advertised for a private secretary. One young woman who responded was informed by return post that Kelly wanted her to type in the nude. He was convicted of sending obscene material through the mail, and spent time in a mental hospital. While there he wrote to the Montgomery County D.A. that he expected to be arrested for the Villisca murders.Finally, after investigating just about every other possibility, the Grand Jury indicted Kelly for the murder of Lena Stillinger. All through the summer of 1917, while in jail awaiting trial, Kelly was interrogated. The last interview was on August 30th , a marathon session that lasted all night. At 7AM on the morning of the 31st Kelly signed a confession to the murder, saying God had whispered to him to “suffer the children to come unto me.”At trial he recanted and on Wednesday, September 26 the case went to the jury, which deadlocked eleven to one for acquittal. A second jury was immediately empanelled, and in November the Reverend Kelly was acquitted. No one else was ever tried for the murders. And the crime remains one of the most horrific, unsolved mass murders in American history, known simply as the Villisca Axe Murders. ( http://www.villiscaiowa.com/) - 30 -
Dick Galatas ran gambling in Hot Springs, and he took the arrest of an underworld tourist in his territory, personally. The local cops, paid more by Galatas than by the taxpayers, threw up roadblocks on the highway back to Little Rock calling Frank a kidnap victim. So the FBI took their prisoner the other way, on the long drive west and then north to Fort Smith. There they intended to catch the 8:30 P.M. overnight train to Kansas City. They wired ahead to Special Agent in Charge of the F.B.I..’s KC office, R.E. Vetterli, to meet them at Union Station in the morning. But that train was late in arriving at Fort Smith, and a stringer for the Associated Press spotted the three men and their shackled prisoner in the waiting room. Shortly there after the story broke on the wires: “Frank Nash…was recaptured today at Hot Springs, by three Department of Justice agents…They revealed the identity of the prisoner for the first time here...” 
Galatas had already asked for help from Johnny Lazia (coatless), who ran the gambling and vice for the Pendegrast machine, which controlled Missouri politics and Kansas City. As a newspaper editor at the time described the level of mob activity, “If you want to see some sin, forget about Paris. Go to Kansas City.”
When J. Edgar Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 he commanded just 400 agents. He spent the next forty years battling small “r” republicans, who were suspicious of a big federal police agency. Hoover eventually overcame their resistance, sheepherding the growth of the F.B.I in both numbers and budgets. And yet, until 1963, Hoover denied the existence of a centralized crime organization in America, commonly called the mafia, even after the Appalachian Conference of November of 1957, where more than 60 criminal bosses from the U.S., Canada and Italy were detained by local cops in upstate New York. Hoover said, “The F.B.I has much more important functions to accomplish than arresting gamblers all over the country.” Hoover said, “Obviously we have neither the manpower nor the time to waste on such speculative measures.” Author Jeffreys-Jones has compared Hoover’s denial to Holocaust-denial. But whatever his reasoning, there is no justification for the law abiding men and women who paid with their lives for his denial. 
That July morning the three agents, Frank Smith, Joe Lackey and Oklahoma Chief Otto Reid, left the train heavily armed. According to research done by Pulitzer winner Bob Unger – “The Union Station Massacre: The Original Sin of the FBI” - agent Lackey inadvertently grabbed a pump action Winchester Model 1897 shot gun, which belonged to Chief Reid, who grabbed Lackey’s twelve gauge, also by mistake.
...and two K.C. detectives, Bill Grooms and Frank Hermanson (below). As the seven men moved through station, the third largest in the country, they formed a V, with prisoner Frank Nash sheltered in the center.
A two door Model T Ford were parked in front of the station. Nash was placed in the front bench seat, while Lackey, Smith and Reed sat in the back. As Agent Caffey was about to enter in the driver’s side door, Joe Lackey noticed three men appear from behind a green Plymouth parked next to their Ford. At least two carried machine guns. And, according to Bob Unger, Lackey now found himself holding the wild card
The Winchester 1897 was a WWI army surplus shotgun and lacked a safety feature most modern shotguns have – a trigger disconnect. In the slam mode this “trench sweeper” would automatically fire if the trigger is compressed and the action is pumped, forcing a round into the chamber. Unfamiliar with this feature, without even waiting to get his weapon up, Lackey pumped a first round into the chamber; as he did so the weapon went off and blasted load of shot a foot away, into the back of Frank Nash’s head (below), and a stray pellet also went “…right into the side of the head of agent Caffrey”
Panicked at the unexpected explosion, Lackey pumped the action on the shotgun a second time, and again the weapon immediately discharged. In an interview Bill Unger described what happened next. “Hermanson is in a direct line between Lackey and the machine gun wielders. Joe Lackey gets off a second shot, which takes of the left side of Frank Hermansons’ head…. So here we are in the first two seconds of shooting, and already Frank Nash – the top of his head is gone and he is dead, and Ray Caffrey is dying of a fatal wound….And Hermanson is dead. So far no one has fired a shot except Joe Lackey…At this point everyone begins to shoot, and there’s massive firings by machine guns, and so forth, and by the time all of this is over, Bill Grooms, the other Kansas City policeman, is also dead. And Reed in back seat….when they finally get to him, he has a fatal wound…”
The entire shootout took less than 30 seconds. When one of the gunmen finally reached the target car he glanced inside and shouted, “They’re all dead. Let’s get out of here.”
They weren’t all dead. Agent Lackey was wounded three times and barely survived. Agent Smith, having ducked as the shooting started, was uninjured. And that quickly the Kansas City Massacre was over. 
Of the men who could be proven to have been responsible for the shootout, Vern Miller was found murdered and mutilated, outside of Detroit, Michigan 5 months and two weeks later. And one week short of the first anniversary of the massacre John Lazia was gunned down out side of his hotel. Ballistics tests run years later indicated the gun which fired the bullets which cut down Lazia, had also been used in the massacre. As he lay dying in a Kansas Hospital, John Lazia asked the doctor, “Doc, what I can't understand is why anybody would do this to me? Why to me, to Johnny Lazia, who has been the friend of everybody?”
It was a question that Frank "Jellybean" Nash would probably have asked, if he’d had the time. 
She tumbled helplessly down two stories, landing on the hotel veranda’s sunshade, breaking her leg. Fear drove her to crawl through an open second story window into an empty room. She pressed a towel into the bloody cavity in her head, and only then did she scream for help. Two men responded. By chance the first to arrive was the hotel’s manager, Mr. Wright. The second was her husband, the murderous Mr. Griffith. Christina screamed, “He shot me! He’s crazy!” Griffith calmly assured the manager that Christina had accidently shot herself. But the manager insisted upon calling the sheriff. And in a couple of hours the 100,000 residents of the young metropolis of Los Angeles were electrified to hear newsboys on every street corner shouting that one of the town's most prominent citizens, the man who in 1896 had donated 4,000 acres for a city park, a generous supporter of the temperance league and a well respected and well connected businessman, was so “crazy drunk” that he had tried to murder his wife in broad daylight.
And Griffith’s behavior since the shooting did little to quell the public’s outrage. Released on bail he repeated his allegation that Christina had shot herself, and then assured the public that his social position would protect him. When Christina, now called "the society wife who refused to die", filed for divorce the “Colonel” contested the custody of their son, which made Griffith appear not just crazy but cruel. His lawyers did their best to repair the damage, leaking to the Los Angele Examiner that “Mrs. Griffith…believed her husband was insane and she thought he should be locked up, but she was averse to a swearing of a felony complaint against him....” 
Christina did not take the hint. By this time her family, as wealthy and powerful as Griffith, had hired a team of lawyers, including Henry Gage, a former governor, and Isadore Dockweiler, a powerful trial lawyer. They immediately went on the offensive. The victim, now blind in one eye and forever disfigured, submitted to a deposition under oath, saying, “…. her husband was sober on the night of the shooting… (and) had not been drinking during the day…” In other words, they were not going to accept a diminished capacity defense.
Now beginning to panic, Griffith’s lawyers sought a change of venue. That was quickly denied. Just five days before the trial was scheduled to begin Griffith hired a young new lawyer named Earl Rogers (above). He immediately filed for a delay, and the prosecution prepared arguments to smack Rogers down. But on the first day of the trial, Monday, February 15th., 1904, Rogers caught the prosecutors off stride by withdrawing his motion. The trial games had begun. 
The L.A. Times described the jockeying in the court room amongst the mob of lawyers. “Rogers would ask a question; the District Attorney would object; retort to the D. A. would follow from (defense lawyer) Maj. Jones; slap back at Jones from Dockweiler; dig at Dockweiler from (defense lawyer) McKinley; swat at McKinley from Mr. Gage; crack at Gage from Luther Brown (yet another defense lawyer) .” On the witness stand there were battling psychiatrists and battling bartenders. Griffith’s doctors said he was insane and his bartenders swore that he drank two quarts of whiskey a day. 
Griffith, it seemed, was a man of many paranoia. A devout Methodist, Griffin had often lectured his club on the conspiracies of the Catholic Church. Combined with his ego, these beliefs convinced the “Colonel” that through his devoutly Catholic wife, the Pope was seeking to assassinate him. Restaurant waitresses testified of his habit of suddenly exchanging dinner plates with his wife. When asked, he explained "...you never knew when a meal might be poisoned". A local doctor testified that many years before Griffith had come to him with a bottle of wine and said he thought it was poisoned. Asked what he did with the wine the doctor blandly replied, “I drank it.”
There were so many lawyers in the courtroom that it was barely noticed when the defense called another as a witness. A member of the county Republican Committee, Oscar Lawler, described a lunch at which Griffith promised not to run for mayor, because, he said, no one else would stand a chance. Griffin even expected the Democrats to stand aside for him. Lawler thought Griffith was joking and suggested that Griffith should run for President. Griffith replied seriously, “I think so myself.” Lawler testified that from that moment on, he believed Griffith to be insane.
It turned out, so did the jury. After two days of deliberations, on March 3rd., 1904, they rejected the charge of attempted murder, and instead found Griffith guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor. The frustrated judge then sentenced Griffith to the maximum allowed, just two years in prison. The public was outraged all over again.
Earl Rogers became famous, and was the inspiration for Erle Stanley Gardner’s character, Perry Mason. Such talent in the courtroom did require some compromises. After hearing himself declared not guilty one client rushed to shake Roger’s hand, but the lawyer responded, “Get away from me, you slimy pimp. You know you’re guilty as hell!” And perhaps Rogers understood Griffith’s alcoholic paranoia so well because he himself was an alcoholic. Rogers died in 1922 “broke and alone in a Los Angeles boarding house" of liver failure at the age of 52. His daughter, famous L.A. newswoman in her own right, Adela Rogers St. John, wrote his biography, “Final Verdict”, which was published in 1962.
Griffith served his time in San Quentin State Prison. Once denied access to alcohol, the insanity evaporated. He turned down a job in the prison library, and instead made burlap sacks. Released in late 1906 he returned to Los Angles, living quietly. The only subject he lectured on now was prison reform. In 1912 he offered the city $100,000 to build an observatory, saying, “Ambition must have broad spaces and mighty distances.” A prominent citizen responded that, “This community is neither so poor nor so lost to a sense of public decency that it can afford to accept this money.” The next year Griffith sweetened the offer with $50,000 to build an outdoor Greek theatre. The city even protested his planning for the project. So Griffith put the bequest in his will.
The Assyrians first recorded a female deity associated with Aphrodite more than 4,000 years ago. The Phoenicians liked her so much they transported her to Greece via Cyprus and from there the Romans adopted her, although they changed her name to Venus. She was the goddess of love, both of the mind and of the body, but mostly of the body. During the festival of Aphrosdisia, when ritual prostitution was practiced, having sex with the high priestess of the temple was a sacred act; which must have made their church fundraisers a lot more popular than a Lutheran ice cream social. It may sound odd to modern ears, but parents in ancient Greece would have been proud to learn that their daughters had been accepted into the priesthood. At least the were learning a marketable trade.
At the other ancient extreme were the Vestal Virgins of Rome, charged with maintaining the ritual “fire of Vesta” which protected the city. But even they were only required to remain virgins for thirty years. In return they got the best seats at the coliseum and they were the only women in Rome who could own property and vote. On the down side, if convicted of a sexual indiscretion they would be thrown in a tomb with some water and pomegranates and left to starve to death in the dark.
In 394 A.D. the newly Christianized Emperor Theodosius I odered the Vestals out of their temple and put out their light. But that was not quite the end of them. At some point Theodosius’ niece, Serena, slipped into the deserted temple and stole a necklace from a statue of Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Reamus. Out of nowhere an old virgin appeared and, in a scene any graduate from a Catholic school can imagine, laid such a curse on Serena that she had nightmares for years. Worse, the curse seems to have taken. In 409 A.D. Serena was sacrificed in a desperate attempt to placate the angry Vesta. It did not work, and shortly thereafter the Goths burned Rome to the ground. It may be sacrilegious to point out, but Rome had never been so completely destroyed before the Christians came along.
And then came Victoria; the epitome of virginal motherhood, who gave birth to 9 children and outlived her husband by 40 years. In fact she was spoiled, stubborn and demanding and as governed by superstition as she was by religion. As Queen she fashioned herself after Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”, but I find her more like Lady Honoria from Dickens’ “Bleak House”, arrogant, conceited and obsessed with her own reputation. When Prince Albert died in 1861 Victoria’s widowhood established Victorian morality as the cultural norm; absolute and contradictory, just like its namesake. The only problem was most women are not widows.
But recent events seem to offer a hint that perhaps custom is shifting, and the mileposts of this shift may be the outcome of scandals involving two Miss USA winners, one in 2006 and the second in 2009.
Tara Connor won the Miss USA tiara on April 21, 2006. By December the grinding schedule of personal appearances and swimsuit wearing combined with Tara’s approaching 18th birthday, drove her to partieee.
Flash forward to 2009 when, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was asked on stage if same-sex marriage should be legalized. She still had to display no talent, and in fact showed no talent in answering this question. And that, some have alledged, is why she lost the competition. But I can not imagine such a question being asked of a Miss USA five years ago. I can not imagine such a question being asked of Yolande Bethbeze . I cannot imagine why anyone would want the answer to such a question from someone whose work clothes consist of a wearing a bikini and high heels. The response from Donald Trump would be just as valid. And I certainly don't consider him qualified to pass judgement on gay marraige, either.
In fact I was more interested in the Donald’s reaction as expressed on “The View”, where the tower himself said the controversy was actually a good thing for his tower; “No one is talking about the young woman who won. Nobody knows who she is.”
It seems to me that somewhere history has taken an unexpected turn, at least in America, and a turn which would have amused Aphrodite and maybe Queen Victoria, too. Somehow it seems that where we were talking about women, we are suddenly talking about gay men. And does that mean that talking about the sexual definition of straight men can be that far beyond? But that should not be a surprise. We have been talking about tramps and Queens, and we all fit into those categories, one way or another - often at the same time.
