Astonishing Legends

The Ax Murder House in Villisca Part 1

10.21.2019 - By Astonishing Legends ProductionsPlay

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Where's the one place in the world you'd like to feel the safest? Your bed, right? And in a secure home that surrounds that bed. We also become nostalgic for what we think was a simpler and more wholesome time. The atrocities we've become accustomed to hearing about on our current nightly news, we imagine inconceivable in bygone eras. But the truth is, we've always been vulnerable to the brutality of the waking world, no matter the times or the place. The darkest evil can come to find us wherever we lay our heads. One average family in America's Heartland at the turn of the century would experience this as their peaceful dreams turned into a nightmare. On the evening of June 9, or early morning hours of June 10, 1912, a depraved murderer had entered the home of the Moore family in Villisca, Iowa.  He savagely crushed the skulls of Josiah Moore, his wife Sarah, and their four children with an ax as they slept.  Also killed in the same fashion were Lena and Ina Stillinger, young sisters who just happened to be spending the night. The memories of this gruesome crime and the spirits who endured it would remain with the house.  This horrific act of violence would leave its mark on the town and the Moore home, forever branding it the "Villisca Ax Murder House."

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