On the evening of June 9th, 1912, the Moore family returned home to Villisca, Iowa, after a church children’s programme. Two of their daughter’s friends — Lena and Ina Stillinger, aged 11 and 8 — came back for a sleepover. Eight people went to bed in that house. None of them woke up.
Sometime after midnight, someone picked up Josiah Moore’s own axe from the coal shed and went inside.
The Horror
He moved through every bedroom. Each victim’s face was covered after being attacked. The curtains were drawn. On windows without curtains, pieces of the family’s own clothing were draped. Every mirror in the house was covered — not with sheets, but with clothes pulled from the dressers. A four‑pound slab of bacon was left on the floor beside the axe. A bowl of bloody water sat on the kitchen table.
The kerosene lamps were found at the foot of the beds — wicks turned back, chimneys discarded underneath. The ceilings above the beds were gouged and bloodstained where the axe had struck on its backswing. Before leaving, the killer washed his hands, made himself a plate of food, ate, then locked the front door with the family’s own key. Based on witness testimony, he likely left around dawn.
No one was ever convicted. Multiple suspects emerged over the following decades — a travelling reverend tried twice and acquitted, a business rival, a suspected serial axe killer active across the Midwest. The case remains officially unsolved.
Before investigators could properly secure the scene, curious neighbours had already walked through every room, touching doors, handling objects, and tracking mud across the floors. The most important crime scene in Iowa history was destroyed by the town that couldn’t stay out of it.
The Modern Relic
The Moore house still stands in Villisca, Iowa — preserved as closely as possible to its 1912 appearance, with no modern wiring and no major renovation. You can stay overnight. The axe marks in the ceiling of the children’s bedroom are still there.
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