SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders?
Stuff You Should Know
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 79.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
In a small town in Iowa in 1912 eight people were murdered in the grisliest of ways while they slept. Local reputations were ruined when accusations flew, but could a drifting serial killer working across the Midwest have been behind it?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:05.5 | Moving on with our next episode in the playlist, this one's on a horrific and truly |
| 0:10.5 | saddening multiple acts murder in Iowa in 1912. |
| 0:15.2 | To some, it looks like a random act of violence committed by someone who is a stranger to the |
| 0:19.5 | victims, but some odd clues also point to it as the work of by someone who is a stranger to the victims, but some odd clues also |
| 0:21.9 | point to it as the work of possibly someone who knew all of the people who died, which included |
| 0:27.3 | children. This one is harrowing, interesting, and bizarre. |
| 0:35.4 | Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from How StuffWorks.com. |
| 0:45.6 | Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. |
| 0:52.2 | Put the three of us together. Add a little mystery. A lot of mayhem. You got stuff you should know. And one axe. Yeah. Axe. How many is this three? We got Lizzie Borden. Yep. Hintechai effect. Yep. And then this one. I couldn't think of it anymore. Well, I looked, it's funny because I looked at, I was like, I wonder if we could do a spin-off show just on X-Murders. And Wikipedia had 30 listed. I'm surprised that it. There's like 10 mentioned in this article alone. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Well, we'll see why there are so many acts murders. |
| 1:29.0 | This whole researching the Velisca axe murder kind of solved a question I've had that I didn't realize I knew had. |
| 1:40.0 | How to pronounce Velisca? |
| 1:41.6 | We just settled that by calling the Velisca Town Hall. |
| 1:44.7 | I know. |
| 1:45.1 | That was a pretty great moment. |
| 1:46.1 | Right before we recorded, I was like, are you sure it isn't Valissa? |
| 1:49.6 | Josh called the town hall and lied. |
| 1:54.7 | Well, it was kind of a bet that she settled. |
| 1:57.5 | Yeah, you said to settle a bet. |
| 1:58.5 | We just never put money on it. |
| 1:59.5 | So if you are whoever |
| 2:00.8 | answers the phone at the Velisca town hall um first of all thank you I'm you got a |
... |
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