The bodies would not be discovered until almost three hours later. So if the sleepy witnesses remembered the unspeakable horror described by a strange little preacher they had never seen before, or since, then he was guilty of 8 grisly murders. But, no passengers at the time repeated such a tale. And why would they keep it a secrete if they heard it? But either way, the Reverend George Kelly was crazy as a loon.
Villisca Iowa is a self proclaimed “community of pride where the rivers divide”, the rivers being the West and Middle branches of the Nordaway.
Villsaca lies 80 miles southwest of Council Bluffs. Montgomery County was settled in the mid 19th century, mostly by people from 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 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 in 1912 the little town contained about 2,000 souls.
On the morning of Monday, 10 June, 1912, inside a sad looking two story house (now at 323 East 4th.Street) were found the bodies of Mr. Josiah B. Moore, his wife Sara, their daughter Katherine and their 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 12.
All of the Moore family (above) were found in their beds, with their heads covered by bedclothes. All of their skulls had been 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 (above) and the children's room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the ax blade
Downstairs Lena Stillinger’s (above, left) 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 downstairs bedroom floor.
On the kitchen table (above, right) 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 Monday morning of 10 June, 1912.
On Tuesday, 11 June, 1912, Mr. Sam Moyer was arrested for the murders. He was released on Saturday, 15 June. On Thursday, 20 June, 1912 Mr. John Bohland was arrested for the murders. He was released a few days later.
On 5 July, 1912, Mr. Frank Roberts (“a negro”) was arrested for the murders. He was released a few days after that. 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. On 15 July, 1916, Mr. William Mansfield was arrested for the murders. On 21 July, he was released. And for the next five years that was where the investigation ended.
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. 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, Monday morning on that Number 5 train..
Lyn George Jacklin Kelly (above left, again with his wife) was the son and the grandson of English ministers, It was known that, 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 “...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 (above) 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 more 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.
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, It was known that, 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 “...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 (above) 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 more 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, 1917, 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 empaneled, 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 in 1912, were pretty certain in 1917 that the Reverend Kelly had confessed to them, three hours before the bodies were discovered. But did they really remember the confession, five years later? Was it really the morning of the murders? Or had it happened two weeks later, when Reverend Kelly had impersonated a detective, and returned to the scene of the crime, and then boarded the same Number 5 train ? It is enough to shake your faith in any certainty in this world. ( http://www.villiscaiowa.com/). 
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