Eight Beds, One Axe: The Villisca Murders That Iowa Never Solved

2026-06-30 · Unexplained Deaths · 8 min read

Villisca, in the southwestern corner of Iowa, was a prosperous railroad town of about twenty five hundred people in the summer of 1912. On the evening of Sunday, June 9, the family of Josiah Moore spent the last hours of the day at the Presbyterian church, where Josiah had helped organize the Children's Day program and where his four children took part. Walking home with them were two guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger, sisters of twelve and eight, who had asked to stay the night rather than return to their own house. By about eleven o'clock the lamps in the white frame house on East Second Street had gone dark.

The next morning the house stayed shut. A neighbor, Mary Peckham, noticed that the Moores had not come out to do their chores, that the shades were down, the animals unfed, and that no one answered her knock. She telephoned Josiah's brother, Ross Moore, who came with his own key, stepped into the downstairs guest bedroom and walked straight back out, telling her only to call the sheriff.

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