GREAT EXPECTATIONS - Chapter One

I want to share with you a story of the way in which privilege and wealth are subject to the cruel whims of fate, and a Cinderella adventure of royalty in disguise . Our story begins in 1742 when 32 year old Don Miguel Nemecio Silva de Peralta de la Corboda set foot in the city of Guadalajara, New Spain. He was on a secret mission, and carried papers identifying him as the “vistador del rey”, a visitor from the King, marking him as a wealthy and accomplished man, with powerful friends. He wore the gold collar of a Knight of the Golden Fleece, a title which placed him above the law, as he could only be arrested on a warrant signed by six other Knights, and there were only fifty of those in all of Spain. He was also a member of the order of Montesa, warrior Knights who served under Cistercian beneficence. Eventually he would become the “Baron of the Dry Area”, in Spanish the “arida zona,” but that would carry only those privileges he could make of them.

Two years later, pleased with Don Miguel's performance of his mission, Philip V of Spain promoted him and gave him an enormous grant of about 1,328,000 acres of land, leaving it up to Augustin de Ahumada, the Viceroy of New Spain, to pick the exact spot. It took Don Miguel ten years of searching for the best location. Finally on January 3, 1758, the Viceroy designated the grant as lying north of the Mission of San Xavier del Bac, on the Santa Cruz River, eastward from the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers. In May of that year Don Miguel, accompanied by a priest and two military officers traveled to the desert site and consecrated the grant on a barren hill he named the “Inicial”, or first, monument. Here Miguel scratched his mark upon a large rock, and laid claim to his new world empire.

Don Miguel Peralta immediately took physical possession of his land, establishing a base camp around the Pueblo ruins of Casa Grande. But the local Apache Indians did not recognize the claims of a far off Spanish monarch,  and their constant raiding forced Don Miguel to return south of the Gila River, to the Mexican state of Sonora. Here he bought land and settled here. And his retreat was not without its benefits. In 1770 he married the lovely Sofia Ave Maria Sanchez Bonilla de Amaya y Garcia de Orosco. He settled his new bride in Guadalajara. In 1776 Charles III reaffirmed Don Miguel's grant to the north, even though the vassal still dare not take physical possession of the land. And in 1781 Don Miguel and Sofia had a son, Jesus Miguel Silva de Peralta.

Jesus Peralta showed little interest in his arid inheritance, and built his life in and around Guadalajara, accustomed to wealth and privilege.  He did not settle down until he he was forty, marrying a local girl, Dona Juana Laura Ibarra, in 1822. In February of 1824 his father, Don Miguel Peralta, died at the fantastic age of 114 years, and Jesus Miguel inherited the family estates in and around Guadalajara, as well as a ranch in Sonora. There was also the still unoccupied desert grant to the north, but Don Jesus Miguel made no effort to claim that land or even show an interest in it. And after mortgaging and then losing his Guadalajara properties,  Jesus took Dona and retreated to the ranch in Sonora. There they  produced their only child, a girl named Sophia.

Sophia Peralta grew to be a pretty girl, but the eligible bachelors were few and far between. And the bride's family was by now, not considered the best, even in the limited social world of the empty desert lands south of the Gila River. Dona Sophia Peralta did not find a husband until she was 28. And only after the vows were exchanged in 1860 did it became apparent the union had been a gamble for both sides of the aisle. Don Jesus Peralta had thought he had matched his daughter to a wealthy man. But Sophia's new husband, Jose Ramon Carmen Maso, was in reality a professional gambler, and periodically down on his luck. And only after the wedding did Jose Maso discover his new wife's family estate was heavily mortgaged. This was why, in 1862, Jose Ramon was plan a trip to Spain,  in hopes of collecting some old gambling debts. He took with him his entire family, and his in-laws. Dona Sophia was forced to travel with him, even though she was pregnant.

Their timing was very bad .The Great Flood of 1862 (which began in December of  1861) was devastating the western coast of North America from Oregon to Mexico. Directly in the family's path,  the mountain road into San Diego was washed away in dozens of places, and the little town of Aqua Mansa, at the headwaters of the San Gabriel River, was destroyed. Only the alarm raised by the bell at the Mission of San Salvador de Jurupa prevented the loss of life there. And it was at the Mission, in February, that the flooding forced the party to pause,  and where Dona Sophia went into premature labor and gave birth to twins, a boy and girl. The newborns were weak, as was Dona Sophia, so while the women stayed on, Jose Ramon and Don Miguel Peralta continued over the mountains to San Diego, where they caught ship, first for San Francisco, and then for Spain.

The newborn boy soon died, followed by his mother Sophia. And the infant girl was not expected to live. And as there was little food in the region, both grandmothers then abandoned the sickly child and returned to Sonora. But the child did not die. She lived, cared for by a wet nurse hired by Mr. John A. Treadway, who was a friend of the gambler Jose Ramon. But Treadway died shortly thereafter on a business trip, and both Jose Ramon and Don Miguel died while in Spain. And the grandmothers also passed away on  their way back to Sonora. The abandoned child was raised by locals out of their loyalty to the departed Mr. Treadway.  But everything about her family was forgotten, except her first name. Sophia was raised by local; villagers until she was eight, when she was entrusted to a local businessman, John Snowball, who employed her first as servant and then as a cook in his roadhouse along the route between San Diego and Arizona.

Then, in 1877 a chance encounter on a train changed the orphan's girl's hard life. A well dressed gentleman with large whiskered sideburns approached the 17 year old and inquired about her background. The girl nervously admitted she was an orphan, and did not know her family name or history. The stranger suggested she might be the missing daughter of a wealthy family. She had never before heard the name he suggested: Peralta. The girl was uncertain whether to believe his story or not, but she wanted to believe it was possible.

But it was not. The entire story I have just shared with you, save for the storm of 1862, from the streets of Guadalajara, to the battered remains of a mission in the California desert, every word and document supporting it was based upon was the invention of the fevered imagination of one of the most determined and resourceful con men in American history. His name was James Addison Reavis (above). And at one time he came very close to owning most of the state of Arizona.  And what follows is the tale of how he did that, and how it all fell apart. 

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Eight

The first angry crack of muskets were fired by green Yankees – with barely a month of training, and largely armed with shoddily made weapons. But these 285 men, the 8^th Louisiana Infantry of African Descent, had literal “skin in the game”.   And in broad daylight of Saturday, 6 June, 1863, they had surprised the rebel pickets around the Tallulah depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad. The Confederates did as the Yankees had done a week earlier at the Perkin's plantation. They retreated and reported.

However, the commander of the black Yankees, Swiss emigrant and lawyer Colonel Hermann Lieb (above) , had already achieved what he wanted. He had found the rebels and his men had drawn first blood. Now he quickly marched his under strength regiment back to the relative safety of Milliken's Bend, and set them and their companion regiments to work, building defensive positions along two levees. Lieb also called for assistance. His boss at Young's Point, Brigadier General Elias Smith Dennis, could provide only part of the remains of the battered and bloodied 23^rd Iowa Volunteers.

Three weeks earlier, in a single 3 minute charge at the Big Black River Bridge, these 200 buckeyes had l1 enlisted men and 2 officers – including their Colonel, William Kinsman - killed outright, and 3 officers and 85 enlisted men wounded - half of all Federal casualties in that battle. The shattered unit was sent to safe camps across the river to recover. The 130 survivors were now tapped to send 100 men to support the black recruits at Milliken's Bend.   Admiral Porter also promised the 1,000 pound rifle, three 9 inch smooth bore cannons and two 30 pound rifles carried by the stern wheel ironclad ram, the USS Choctaw. But the ram would not arrived until mid- morning. Colonel Lieb woke his men at 3:00 Sunday morning, and put them at the ready.

It was now obvious to the ranking rebel commander at Richmond, Louisiana, Major General Richard Scott Taylor, that the only Yankees remaining on the western shore were some “...convalescents and some negro troops.” But even if he captured Milliken's Bend and Young's Point and the entire De Soto Peninsula, he still would not be able to directly aid Vicksburg. Lieutenant General Pemberton would not withdraw from that city. Taylor had no provisions with which to resupply the beleaguered garrison. And crossing Taylor's 4,500 men over to join Pemberton's 20,000, would merely advance the day the Vicksburg's defenders ran out of food. But Taylor had his orders, and he authorized General Walker to proceed with the assault.

Setting off at 6:00 p.m. on 6 June, Major General John George Walker pushed his division forward, re-capturing Tallulah after dark. A participant remembered the dramatic night time approach. “ In breathless silence...through dark and deep defiles marched the dense array of men, moving steadily forward; not a whisper was heard — no sound of clanking saber, or rattle of canteen and cup." 

By 2:00 a.m, on Wednesday, 7 June, the 1,000 plus man brigade of 39 year old Brigadier General James Morrison Hawes was approaching the Martin Van Buren hospital at Young's point, and General Henry McCulloch's 1,000 man brigade was within 2 miles of Milliken's Bend. Walker held Colonel Horace Randal's brigade in reserve at the Oak Grove Plantation.

The Yankee pickets, crouched behind a series of hedges, were methodically pushed back by the 19^th Texas infantry on the right, the 17^th regiment in the center, the 16^th cavalry dismounted on the left, The 16^th Texas infantry regiment followed in reserve.  Explained a Texan, "It was impossible for our troops to keep in line of battle, owing to the many hedges we had to encounter, which it was impossible to pass, except through a few gaps that had been used as gates or passageways."

Once through the last line of hedges, the rebels were facing the first cotton bale barricade. Behind it was the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiments (African Descent), 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), and the 23d Iowa Infantry, totaling 1,061 men. McCulloch drew his men into a line of battle just under a hundred yards from the Yankee line. As they did the Yankees unleashed a volley.  Ignoring the blast, McCulloch took the time to order his men, “No quarter for the officers! Kill the damned abolitionists!" With fixed bayonets, the Texans then charged.

The veterans of the 23^rd Iowa might have had time for a second volley, but that broken regiment had no more to give,. They scattered and ran for the last barricade on the final levee. The black soldiers could only muster a few scattered shots, either because they lacked the training with their weapons or the weapons failed.  General Lorenzo Thomas noted, "Both sides freely used the bayonet - a rare occurrence in warfare...two men lay side by side, each having the other's bayonet in his body. . . .A teenage cook, who had begged for a gun when the enemy was seen approaching, was badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. In one Negro company there were six broken bayonets." It would be the longest bayonet charge of the war.  Afterwards,  General McCulloch reported that of the wounds received by his men, 'more are severe and fewer slight than I have ever witnessed among the same number in my former military experience....This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy...” Some might have chosen another word, such as desperation, or even courage.

As the Confederates came over that barricade with bayonets and swinging their muskets as clubs, Yankee Lieutenant David Cornwell saw one of the Union soldiers, a “very large and strong-willed” Sergeant named “Big” Jack Jackson, charge forward “...like a rocket. With the fury of a tiger he sprang into that gang and crushed everything before him. There was nothing left of Jack's gun except the barrel and he was smashing everything he could reach. On the other side of the levee, they were yelling 'Shoot that big nigger!' Cornwell saw the Jack Jackson, “..daring the whole gang to come up and fight him. Then a bullet reached his head and he fell full on the levee.”

For over an hour the untrained Yankees struggled with the rebels, black and white skinned southerners murdering each other with abandon. Then the Yankees fell back through their own camp and toward the second levee and the second barricade. The Confederates followed , as Joseph Blessington of the 16^th Texas remembered, “bayoneting them by hundreds.”   As the Confederates gathered to storm the second barricade, the USS Choctaw steamed into view, big guns blazing.

General McCulloch ordered his men under cover behind the first levee. They looted the Yankee camp, searching for equipment and food they could not find in their own army, and they began killing any wounded black Yankees they found. It was alleged they also killed 2 white Yankee officers.  The murdering continued until McCulloch saw a second Yankee gun boat sailing up the river toward their position. Realizing he lacked the strength to crush these black men in blue uniforms, he ordered his entire brigade to pull back to the Oak Grove Plantation.

The rebel's limped back. Out of the  1,000 men present the Confederates had suffered 44 killed and 131 wounded and 10 missing. For the three under strength black Yankee regiments, it was a bloody disaster - 100 killed outright, 285 wounded, and 266 captured and murdered or returned to slavery.  Except those numbers deserve a closer look. Black Yankees, with barely a month of training and substandard equipment,  had not run. They had not melted away. They had stood and fought. They had inflicted almost 200 casualties on their foe, 20% of the attackers.  Given the worse of everything, they had fought back.

At Young's Point, the rebel's of Hawes' brigade drove in the Yankee pickets, but then finding themselves facing well armed and organized convalescing patients behind barricades, and three Federal gunboats providing covering fire, the Confederates withdrew without even launching an attack. For all the effort and sacrifice of men and material by Walker's "Greyhounds", General Taylor would later note “As foreseen, our movement resulted, and could result, in nothing.”

But there was a result, and even a victory.  In December of 1863, United States Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, (above) an early advocate of black soldiers, wrote a letter to Lincoln concerning the debate over their fighting ability. "Many persons believed, or pretended to believe..., that freed slaves would not make good soldiers,” he told his President. These faint hearts were worried the ex-slaves “...would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend (7 June, 1863), at the assault upon Port Hudson (27 May, 1863), and the storming of Fort Wagner (South Carolina, 18 July, 1863)."

The ground the Confederacy had once stood upon had shifted. And although the lies and obfuscation used  to defend the myths about antebellum southern culture, would delay the triumph of the truth for almost another century, the fuse was at least lit.  It was already past due time for that to happen. 

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WHAT'S EATING YOU?

I wonder if Superman ever has a creepy crawly moment, just before he steps into the shower maybe, when out of the corner of his X-Ray Super vision he notices a bunch of little buggies crawling over his skin. Of course his skin is "super" and never wears out, meaning he does not support a menagerie of livestock, grazing on his desiccated flesh, like we do. And I've got to say, that makes Superman a little less Super. to me.  Because compared to your personal zoo of Dematophagoisdes pternyssinus, AKA the Mighty Dusts Mite (actually some 15 species) grazing on your body at this very moment like vast microscopic herds of minuscule buffalo, Super Villains are a minor annoyance.

Feel the sudden urge to scratch? Don’t bother; scratching just creates tiny Alps of dead skin for these buggies to feast upon. The truth is we don’t merely live on this planet; this planet also lives on us. Louis Pasture had it right; even fleas have fleas. And so do we, and so do our fleas and so do the fleas starving on the desert that must be the empty plains of Superman's flesh.

Despite their small size (three of them could fit in the period at the end of a sentence and about 42,000 of them live in every once of dust) these driven little arthropods have a massive impact, because the Dust Mite does not eat dust – ah, would that dusting had such a dedicated helpmate. Rather they feast on the 50 million flakes (about 1 ½ grams) of skin which we shed each and every day.  About 80 % of the “dust” you can see floating in a beam of sunlight is your own dead skin, and fodder for these microscopic herbivores. These are the bugs that give spiders the heeby-jeebies!

Our mighty mite companions also enjoy munching on hair, pollen grains, fungal spores and bacteria, as well as cigarette ash and tobacco, clothing fibers, fingernail clippings and filings, food crumbs, glue, insect parts, paint chips, salt and sugar crystals and even graphite; in short everything and anything we are, use or touch, they eat and regurgitate and re-eat and re-regurgitate, etc., etc. (Dust mites, you see, are so small they  have no digestive tracts).

When you sleep (we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed) your body and bedding is transformed into an Acaroliocal Park (acarology being the study of dust mites) which makes Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Park" look like it had been stepped on by an Apatasaurous.  As much as half the weight in your ten year old mattress could be the 10 million mites who live there and depend on you for their dinner each time you lay you down and go to sleep. Mites don’t like sunlight and they love high humidity, meaning when you climb into bed tonight they will be there to welcome you, waiting for you to exhale and pull the covers up.

They also love rugs and carpets, dusty bookshelves and dusty books and nooks and crannies on fabric covered furniture. And they are completely harmless – except that their poop and their desiccated corpses are a source of human allergies and likely one of the primary a causes of asthma. During a female mite’s lifetime of 3 to 4 weeks she can produce 200 times her own weight in mighty pop and leave 300 cream colored mighty mite eggs, all capable of taking your breath away. A dehumidifier helps with the allergies (dust mite populations drop at anything below 50% humidity) and regular vacuuming can help keep their populations under control. But there are studies showing that carpet or mattress shampooing or even using a Hepafilter on your vacuum cleaner merely increases the resident population because it moistens it and scatters it. 

These tiny bugs have evolved so closely with us that there are no conditions or chemicals that will kill them without doing the same thing to us. So basically, the best we can hope for in our war with dust mites is a draw, because the world of the dust mite is a familiar yet strange place where air behaves more like water and a each human hair supports an isolated ethos.

And as every Ying has its Yang, and every Superman has his Bizzaro Superman, the herbivore dust mite has engendered the family Cheyletidae, the micro-predatory dust mite, which can be 6 – 8% of the total mighty mite population. These minuscule lions and tigers and bears stalk their prey every night, even migrating with them onto and off your body, unseen and largely un-felt, pouncing with vicious crushing microscopic jaws. They are no less heartless for their lack of a heart. Some digest their food inside its own shell (something to think about the next time you eat crab) by injecting masticating juices, and some of these tiny predators even consume the shell, reducing their meals to a tiny pile of mush before consuming it.

It even seems that our current  mighty mites are the survivors of a once more varied population of “guest workers”, as was attested to by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, just before vespers on 29 December, 1170. Once you get over the the whole subject of the power of the Church versus the power of the State, the story of Becket's death becomes much smaller and larger - at the same time.  Because something amazing happened to the Archbishop’s fresh corpse, as described in Hans Zinsser’s 1935 epic book, “Rats, Lice and History”, beginning with Zinsser’s description of the dead Archbishop’s robes of office. 

When he was murdered Becket was wearing, “…a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, …robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen.”  These were all natural fibers, you see.

As Becket’s corpse grew cold the successive layers of robes also cooled, and all the little creatures that had been living within the folds and pleats started looking for a new home. Wave after wave of various fleas, ticks, spiders, pincher bugs, and other creatures flowed out from the corpse, “…like water in a simmering cauldron” producing in the hushed mourners gathered in the dim cathedral, “…alternate weeping and laughter…’”. Those Saxons; they sure knew humor when they saw it, skittering across the blood stained marble floor. And the unseen mites must have been far more numerous and just as desperate to find their meal ticket suddenly giving then the cold shoulder.

 Not only did the dead Becket popularize the hair shirt, but his corpse offered an abject lesson in the realty of life before the invention of the water heater. Without easy access to warm water people tended not to bathe. And that made them much more intimate with their pests and parasites than we of the hygienic era. But despite our best efforts we still live with the mighty Dust Mite. In fact, if you listen very carefully, you can probably hear them marching across your flesh right now, and everything you touch during an average day, looking for a snack.

Sleep tight, and just let the dust mites bite. And bon appetit for you both.

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THE ODD LITTLE PREACHER

I do not believe the Reverend Kelly. But I am not sure if I don’t believe him when he said he did not murder those eight people, or when he said he did.  What I do know is that five years later, passengers on board the westbound number 5 train,  which had pulled out of the little station at Villisca, Iowa (above)  at 5:19 A.M. that Monday morning, remembered the twitchy, diminutive preacher telling his fellow bleary eyed travelers that he had left eight butchered bodies back in Villisca. The bodies would not be discovered until almost eight that morning. So if the sleepy witnesses correctly remembered the words spoken to them five years earlier by a strange little preacher they had never seen before, then he was guilty of an unspeakable horror. If they were wrong, he was innocent. Of course, either way, he was crazy as a loon. And don't get me started on why none of the travelers told anybody at the time, about the odd little preacher and his little tale of horror.

Villisca is a self proclaimed “community of pride where the rivers divide”,  the rivers being the West and Middle branches of the Nordaway River. It lies  80 miles southwest of Council Bluffs, Iowa, in   Montgomery County. The region 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. 

Almost all of them  arrived on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad, called by its  customers just “The Q”.   At the time no community in Iowa was more than a few miles from an active passenger rail line. Most of the residents of Villisca either sold services or equipment to the local farmers or worked for the railroad. And in 1912 the little town contained about 2,000 souls.

On the morning of 10 June, 1912,   inside a  sad looking two story house (now at 323 East 4th.Street) were found the bodies of Mr. Josiah Moore, his wife Sara, their daughter Katherine and their sons Herman, Boyd and Paul (below) , 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 ax, 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 ax blade

Downstairs little Lena Stillinger’s nightgown was pushed up, leaving her genitalia exposed. But the doctors said there was no evidence of molestation. There was an odd 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, the morning of 10 June, 1912.

On 11 June, 1912,  Mr. Sam Moyer was arrested for the murders.  He was released on the 15 June, because of lack of evidence.  On 20 June, 1912  a Mr. John Bohland was arrested for the murders. He was released a few days later, also because of lack of evidence.  

On 5 July, 1912, Mr. Frank Roberts (“a negro”) was arrested for the murders. He was released a few days after that. Also for lack of evidence. On 28 December, farmer and the ex-brother-in-law to victim Sara Moore,  Mr. Lew Van Alstine,   was arrested for the murders. He was released a few weeks later. For lack of evidence. On 15 July, 1916,  Mr. William Mansfield was arrested for the murders. On 21 July,  he was released. Ditto.

On 19 March, 1917, five years after the murders, 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 having committed the murders.  Lack of evidence prevented any further action being taken, And finally, on 30 April, 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 Number 5 train.

The authorities first became interested in the Reverend (above, on the right) a few weeks after the murders, alerted by local recipients of his rambling letters. He had arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning before the murders, and had attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls. He had left Villisca the following day, the Monday morning of the murders, on that Number 5 train..

Two weeks later he had returned posing as a detective, and had even joined a tour of the murder house with a group of real investigators (above).  There was virtually no control of the crime scene. The only thing stopping police from arresting George Kelly immediately was that it was abundantly clear the Reverend was absolutely crazy.

Lyn George Jacklin Kelly (above left, again with his wife) was the son and the 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 (above) . 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 at any moment 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 30 August,  a marathon session that lasted all night (above) .  At 7AM on the morning of the 31 August,  Kelly signed a confession to the murder, saying God had whispered to him to “suffer the children to come unto me.”

At trial the Reverend Kelly recanted his confession, and on Wednesday, 26 September 1917 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 by all 12 jurors.  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.Did he do it?  I don't know. The passengers on the number 5 train that Monday morning of 1912 were pretty sure he had confessed to them, three hours before the bodies were discovered. But did they really remember the confession, five years later? And why had they not reported the confession at the time? Was it really the morning of of the murders? Or had it happened two weeks after the murders, when Reverend Kelly had impersonated a detective? It is enough to shake your faith in any certainty in this world. ( http://www.villiscaiowa.com/)

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