Welcome to Stuffy Mist in History Class from HouseofWorks.com

Hello and welcome to the podcast I'm Molly Brown and I'm Tracy V Wilson

And today's subject has been requested by multiple listeners, especially when we first came on the podcast

We came on just after kind of the hundredth anniversary of the event we're talking about today and so it had been covered by a number of papers and had kind of been in people's minds a little bit more

It's actually been on my list for almost since the beginning and we haven't had an axe murderer episode in a little while so we're due, I suppose, as due as one can be for such things

This one has some haunting mythology around it, it remains an unsolved case so it's good for the Halloween season and it's probably no surprise based on the fact that I have already said this is an axe murderer episode

But just to be safe, here's the warning, this is some graphic talk of some pretty brutal murders and particularly the deaths of children which I know can be really difficult for some people to hear

So if you are sensitive to violent subjects of this nature or if you listen with younger history buffs, this is maybe one to proceed with caution or to pre-screen

For example, I can already tell you my best friend is not going to partake of this one, she and I were talking about it while I was researching

And as a parent for her, it's just too rough to listen to this kind of stuff and the story is incredibly tragic

I mean, I'm often quite open that I'm not really a kid's person, it took me a long time to research because I would find that I just had to get up and walk away for a while

Because it's just it's brutal and it's hard to think about somebody doing the things that this person or persons did

So we are talking about the Velisca axe murders and before we get into the details of the actual event, I will let Tracy set the scene a little bit about the town of Velisca, Iowa

So Velisca, Iowa, this took place in 1912, Velisca is in Montgomery County and it's only about four square kilometers in size, so not really big

Omaha, Nebraska and Des Moines, Iowa are the nearest large metro areas and Velisca is roughly in between them and a little bit south

Yeah, it's a little closer to one side than the other but for the purposes of this in between

And in the early 1900s, this was a town that was on a growth trajectory, it was kind of rural but there was a budding business community

The train depot was very busy, they had a lot of trains coming and going and visitors and business people

And it was a close knit community

Josiah B. Moore, who was the father of the family at the center of this whole unsettling crime, was 43 in 1912

He's sometimes referred to as JB and he had lived in Velisca for 13 years when he died and was a respected businessman

He had married Sarah Montgomery on December 6, 1899

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