Season 6 Episode 12: A Darkness on the Edge of Town (Pt.2 of 3)

Two and a half million people each doing the beach Body program that fits our own goals. Over eighty to choose from some that take just twenty minutes a day, nutrition plans that teach you how to eat healthy and still enjoy food. What we all have in common is we know it's not easy, so we help each other. It's as convenient as your TV or laptop, but you need to decide that you're worth it. That's why I'm inviting you to try our amazing Beachbody fitness and nutrition programs.

Let us help you succeed. Here's al Go to beachbody dot com to claim your free membership and start feeling great. The following episode contains deeply disturbing scenes of violence, murder, and sexual violence toward children. Parental discretion as advised. You're listening to Unexplained, Season six, episode twelve, A Darkness on

the Edge of Town, Part two. On Tuesday, June eleventh of nineteen twelve, the people of Vi Liska rose unsteadily into a new dawn, with any relief at having made it through the night quickly tempered by the renewed realization of the horrors from the day before. None perhaps felt them more strongly than Sarah and Joe Stillinger, parents to

young Aina and Lena. Sarah, who was heavily pregnant with the couple's tenth child at the time, was at home when she received word that some kind of catastrophic event had taken place at the Moor's house. After numerous failed attempts to call the family, she was eventually informed by the operator that there was no use trying to speak

to them because everyone in the house was dead. At first light on the Tuesday morning, City Marshaw Hank Houghton and Sheriff Owen Jackson reconvened at the house to carry out a second search with the bloodhounds, only to find a busy crowd of onlookers, from journalists to family and

everyone in between, already waiting for them outside. The crowd looked on with excited anticipation as the dogs appeared at the door, then once again headed west toward the West not Away River, following ascent picked up from inside a closet where a possible footprint of the killer was found. One familiar face among the onlookers hurrying to keep up with the dogs was local business owner and banker Frank Jones.

Years later, some would claim to have overheard him saying that the dogs were going in the wrong direction, as if he knew something of the killer's whereabouts. Once again, the dogs eventually lost interest after reaching the bushes by the river bank. For Sheriff Jackson, However, it was just about the only solid clue they had, believing that the dogs had simply lost the scent because the killer had waded into the water to get to the other side.

A one hundred volunteer search party was promptly gathered up to search the river banks, with one half cent to Clarinda, fifteen miles south and told to walk north, while the other was instructed to walk down from Veliska to meet them. Nothing useful was found. At some point on Tuesday afternoon, a man reeking of Booze, stumbled onto the porch of the Moor's home and introduced himself as m W. Mccloffrey, Special Agent in charge of the Department of Justice Bureau

of Criminal Identification at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Mcclofrey was an apparent expert in collecting finger prints and had volunteered its services to help in the case. After being sent home by the coroner, doctor Linquist to sober up, he returned later in the day to put his finely honed techniques to use. After three days scouring the property, however,

he failed to find a single usable print. Later, at the coroner's inquest, members of the community were invited to come forward with any information they might have regarding the sighting of any suspicious looking people near the moor house on the night of the murders, but no one had seen a thing, and so with little more to add

to the investigation. At the end of the second day, Sheriff Jackson, City Marshall Houghton, doctor Linquist, a newly appointed private detective Thomas O'Leary compared notes, there was little doubting the murder weapon, which turned out to be an old, blunt and rusted axe of Joe Moore's, taken from the wood shed outside the house. Other than that, however, nothing much seemed to make sense. Why, for example, had the killer taken pains to cover the window in the door

of the bedroom downstairs. The covering of the mirrors too, which extended to the mirrors in the upstairs bedrooms as well as the downstairs won was also baffling. Another strange feature was the discovery of a watch belonging to Joe that had likely been taken from Joe and Sarah's bedroom upstairs, but was left abandoned in the bedroom downstairs, And what to make of Lena's body found in its peculiar pose, not to mention the damp slab of bacon dropped nearby.

One other oddity was that all the doors, with the exception of the front door, were bolt locked from the inside. It may well have been that the killer entered through one of the bolt locked doors that had been left open and simply locked it behind them before locking the

front door on their way out. However, it offered up the tantalizing possibility that the killer already had a key for the property, and added to it all was the sinister implication that someone had been spying on the family from the hayloft for some time before deciding to carry

out the attack. On Wednesday, June twelfth, the funeral of Sarah and Joe Moore and their children, herman Mary, Arthur and Paul, along with Lena and Ainah Stillinger, was held at Veliska City Hall, with each of the eight closed caskets arranged in a semicircle at the back in front of a makeshift pulpit. Reverend William Ewing led the service as women and men wept openly and loudly at the

senseless waste of human life. Seated at the front were Joe and Sarah Moore's parents and siblings, alongside the heavily pregnant Sarah Stillinger and her husband Joe, as well as their seven remaining children, all of whom sat in a

shocked days. Perhaps Reverend Ewing's words brought comfort and the conviction that, if nothing else, the victims, both young and old, were at the very least now in heaven, basking in the warm embrace of God's love, but in reality there was likely no amount of faith or anything Ewing could do or say that could possibly plug the chasm of grief that had been ripped open inside the More and

would remain there until their own dying days. At the end of the service, the caskets were carried out by poor bearers in front of a crowd of roughly seven thousand people, almost half of them journalists who'd gathered to pay their respects, and then one by one, the coffins were transported north to Veliska Cemetery and committed to the earth.

Back at the More property, a cleaning team stripped the bloodstained bedding and mattresses from the beds, much of it still dotted with pieces of skin, brain, and fragments of bone, then carted it off to the local dump and burned it all. A few days later, roughly fifty miles away in Council Bluffs, a bag was left at a laundrette with no name or identifying marks, with an instruction to simply clean the contents and have it all placed in a basket of laundry that was due to be sent

to a drug store in Macedonia. When the worker on duty emptied the bag. They were surprised to find a wet, starched white shirt inside that was completely covered in a pale, dark red stain which looked to her professional eye like blood that had been soaked in water. Thinking little of it at the time, she duly cleaned the shirt and sent it back as requested, to the drug store in Macedonia,

where it was later collected. After hearing about the killings in Veliska, she then reported the incident to local authorities, who managed to track down the man who picked it up. His name was Reverend George Kelly, the same reverend who'd been in Veliska on the night of the murders and who talked about nothing else since his return to Macedonia where he lived. Back in Valiska, as the initial shock of the event began to wear off, people turned once

again to speculating about the identity of the killer. One early name in the frame was Sam Moyer, Joe Moore's feckless brother in law by marriage to a younger sister. Moya offered little by way of stability or financial support, and frequently came to blows with Joe about it. Another early candidate was Roy van Gilder, an ex brother in law of Sarah Moore. Like Moya, van Gilder was considered to be a man of poor moral qualities who was

also prone to violence. A handful of itinerant workers and traveling salesmen were also considered suspects, including one laceller who was known to have visited the Moor house the day before the killings. For Detective O'Leary, However, given the barbarity of the crime, none of these possibilities seemed plausible, and soon another theory began to emerge. As shocking as the Viliska murders were, they were only one of a string of violent murders involving the use of an axe that

took place in the Midwest around the same time. Back in September nineteen eleven, six hundred miles west of Viliska in Colorado Springs, a couple and their daughter were murdered, along with their neighbor and her two sons. Each of them had been smashed in the head with an axe. Two weeks later, this time in Monmouth, Illinois, two hundred miles east of Veliska, another couple and their daughter were

killed in a similar fashion. Found close to the scene was a flashlight bearing the inscription Colorado Springs September fourth. The following month, another couple and their three children were also brutally murdered by acts in Ellsworth, Kansas, three hundred miles away. Then on the fifth of June in nineteen twelve, only five days before the Veliska killings, a husband and wife were murdered in their sleep in Paola, Kansas. The pickaxe used to kill them was left behind on their

neighbors front porch. In some cases, windows were once again covered haphazardly with clothing, while all victims were dispatched in much the same way, with no wounds occurring below the neck. In at least two of the attacks, oil lamps were found with their globes removed, just as they were in Veliska, all of which led detective O'Leary to speculate that the

crimes were all committed by the same person. It was roughly a week after the Vliska murders the Sheriff Jackson was contacted by a man named Tom Dyer, a foreman who was overseeing the building of a railroad bridge in

Creston who had a troubling story to tell. Back. Early in the morning of Monday the tenth, the day the more and stillinger bodies were found, Dia was approached by an unshaven, disheveled looking man who was also soaking wet from the knees down, as if he'd been wading through water. The man, who introduced himself as Andy Sawyer, was looking for work and claimed to have experience operating steam engines.

Though a little put off by his appearance, Dia was in need of men and agreed to give him a go. Later that afternoon, DIA's crew arrived in Greenfield, fifty miles northeast of Vliska, to begin work constructing a bridge, where it quickly became clear that Sawyer had never operated to the steam engine in his life. Keen to keep him on regardless, Da assigned him the job of chopping wood and sharpening the large wooden stakes that were driven into

the ground to form the foundation of the bridge. Sawyer took to the work with gusto, wielding his axe with a speed and skill that DA had never seen before, and he was barely seen without it. Either he was using it to chop wood or he was busy sharpening it some even later said he took it to bed with him at night. But there was something else about

him too. He muttered constantly to himself under his breath and seemed not to want to engage with anyone else, taking his breaks alone away from the rest of the crew. There was no other way to put it, said Da. He just seemed kind of mad, And when the team read about the killings of Veliska in that Monday's afternoon paper, it seemed to trigger something Sawyer. He couldn't stop talking about it, how he himself had been in Vliska that night but had left to avoid suspicion, even though the

crime had yet to be uncovered. When he apparently did so the next day when the crew passed through Veliska, Sawyer seemed to take delight in pointing out exactly where the crime took place, and even speculated on the route the killer had taken when he fled the scene. And so on Tuesday, June eighteenth, Sheriff Jackson headed down to the Red Oak rail yard, where Dyer and his crew were then stationed, to pay Sawyer a visit. It isn't known exactly what was said between the two men, only

that afterwards Sawyer seemed deeply rattled. The next day, he quit his job and asked for his pay to be forwarded to an address in North Dakota, and then promptly disappeared. A week later, on Monday, June twenty fourth, Reverend George Kelly arrived back in Vliska for the first time since

the morning of the murders. In a letter written the week before to Reverend Ewing, Kelly claimed to have experience in the art of criminology, having apparently studied it for a number of years in England before he decided to join the church. Ewing had been kind enough to arrange it for Kelly to take a look inside the moor House to see if he might be able to lend

a hand in cracking the case. That afternoon, Ewing escorted Kelly to the property, where he proceeded to examine the various rooms, often stopping still for prolonged periods of time, claiming to be experiencing strange sensations as if a higher

power were trying to communicate with him. After taking down a number of notes, he then returned to Macedonia in July with Detective O'Leary making little progress, the state stepped into help, with State Governor Beryl Carroll announcing a five hundred dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the culprit, while also granting permission to the Iowa Attorney General, George Cosson to hire another detective. C. W. Toby was promptly assigned from the Kansas office of the

William Burns Detective Agency. The agency was established in nineteen o nine by William J. Burns, who'd achieved notoriety for his work investigating the Los Angeles Times bombing of nineteen ten, one of the largest domestic terror campaigns in American history, and was considered one of the very best the country had to offer. A few weeks later, detective Toby, along with Detective O'Leary and a number of other law enforcement officials,

received letters from Reverend Kelly. In them, Kelly, now referring to himself as a detective, having by then digested his findings from the crime scene, shared his belief that a member of the Moore family was most likely responsible for the murders. He also claimed to have found an empty vial in one of the bedrooms, which he believed was evidence that the family had been drugged before they were murdered.

Perhaps more revealingly, however, Kelly also claimed to have possibly seen the killer at the train station shortly before he boarded the fifteen nineteen train back to Macedonia on the

morning of the attacks. Kelly had apparently spoken to the suspicious looking man, who he said may also have boarded the same train as Kelly went on to explain, being a light sleeper, he'd found himself going out for walks at night during his stay in Veliska and had apparently seen this same man aimlessly walking the streets in the

early hours of Fay and Saturday morning. After speaking to some acquaintances back in Vliska, Kelly had apparently also ascertained that this mystery man had been asking around about the Presbyterian church where the Moors and Stillinger girls attended the children's exercises the night before they died. Kelly also claimed that he might have even seen the man at that

very service. The man, he concluded, had also been staying by the river and was seen running toward it sometime around one and two am on Sunday morning, a little after the time that the Moors and Stillinger Girls were thought to have been killed. This podcast is sponsored by better Help. Is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals? Better help will assess your needs and match you with your own license to

professional therapist. It's not a crisis line or self help. Its professional therapy on securely online with a broad range of expertise that may not be locally available in many areas. You can log into your account anytime and send a message to your therapist. You'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting

room as with traditional therapy. Better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy and free to change therapists if need it. It's more affordable than traditional online therapy, and financial aid is also available. Better help once you to start living a happier life today, and they have a special offer for unexplained listeners. Get

ten percent off your first month. Visit betterhelp dot com forward slash Unexplained one zero that's better help Help and join the over two million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. That's better help. Dot Com forward slash unexplained one zero. Though Detective O'Leary was keen to hear more from Kelly, Detective Toby, who by then considered the missing Andy Sawyer as the prime suspect, was adamant he was not to

be engaged in any professional capacity whatsoever. On July eleventh, Toby filed his first report for the Attorney General, explaining what he believed had taken place, basing his interpretation on a coroner, doctor Linquist's disturbing analysis of the crime scene. The killer, he said, had not acted out of spite,

but out of an excessive sexual impulse. After killing Lina, they'd removed her underwear and kept it tied around their neck as they continued killing, and when they'd finished, had stayed behind to revel in their crime, arranging Lina's body, which had likely been molested to specifically in order to pleasure themselves. Though it wasn't mentioned in Toby's report, there as the implication that the raw slab of bacon had

been used for this purpose. In early September, another family this time, in Quincy, Illinois, were found brutally murdered, their heads chopped and crushed with an axe. The prime suspect this time was the sun Ray Van Schmidt. Spotting obvious similarities with the Veliska case, O'Leary and Toby traveled to Quincy to investigate, with O'Leary concluding that fan Schmidt was indeed the culprit, while Toby stuck to his conviction that

an as yet unknown roving murderer was to blame. In the end, the evidence was overwhelming and fan Schmidt was convicted of the crimes either way. With roughly thirty people having now been killed in a similar manner throughout the Midwest in just over a year, there was good reason to suspect that at least some were connected. One morning in late summer nineteen twelve, a letter sent to Marshall Houghton from a Chicago police detective suggested Glasko Nchev as

a possible suspect. In January nineteen ten, a woman was found decapitated in the street in Chicago, and Enchev, originally from Bulgaria, had confessed to the crime. Enchev was arrested, but then promptly committed to a psychiatric facility, from which he then escaped. When it was speculated that the mirrors in the moor house had been covered up due to an Eastern European superstition, the Bulgarian Nchev suddenly appeared to fit the profile. The man, however, was never found and

before long was forgotten about completely. One night in July, Vliska night watchman Might Keirns was called to a disturbance taking place at the Vliska Hotel. A man had begun vividly and enthusiastically regaling guests with his interpretation of how the murders must have occurred, garishly re enacting the axe swings and cries of the victims with the perverse relish.

As the horrified guests watched on, with some brought to tears by the strange man's unpalatable display, Cairns was forced to step in to calm things down, surprised to find that the man was none other than Presbyterian minister George Kelly. Some months later in the autumn, Kelly and his wife moved to the city of Carroll in Iowa, where he continued to talk openly about his fascination with the veliska case.

He even once told a man that he had been accused of committing the crime himself, because it was found that he hadn't used his bed the night had occurred, and had arrived at the station the next morning a full hour before his train was due to leave, a fact that was later verified by witnesses. Kelly had also become suspicious of anyone he didn't recognize, questioning them to see if they were detectives looking for him, and even once asked a physician what a rational man would have

to do in order to appear insane. When he was eventually contacted and questioned about the apparent bloodstains found on his shirt, he said first that it was from a hair tonic of his, then later that it was simply catch up. Meanwhile, a third detective named W. S. Gordon was assigned to the case by the Burns Agency. He too quickly pinpointed Andy Sawyer as a leading suspect, only to find, much to his frustration, that nobody seemed to

know where he was. Making it his mission to find him. Gordon, along with Montgomery County Attorney William Ratcliffe, eventually tracked the man down to North Dakota, where he lived on a homestead with his wife and children. Sawyer denied flat out that he'd committed the crime, claiming that he'd boarded a train at ten twenty two pm that night from Osceola and arrived in the city of Creston sometime between three to four am the next morning, a period of time

that would span the entirety of the crime. His alibi checked out, Andy Sawyer was not their man. At the end of nineteen twelve, Attorney General Cosson assigned Assistant General Attorney Henry Sampson to take over the investigation from the state perspective. Soon after, he received a letter from a private detective unrelated to the case, who had some interesting things to say about Reverend George Kelly. The man, it was claimed, was a window peeker who harbored unusual sexual proclivities.

He was slippery too, often borrowing money but neglecting to pay it back, and continued to talk often about the Veliska killings. Deciding Kelly should be questioned at once, Sampson sent the Assistant State Fire Marshal Ja Tracy to speak with him in Omaha, Nebraska, where he was then living. There Kelly repeated his story about the strange man he apparently saw at the train depot. Only by now this

mysterious figure had become a dark complexioned man. Tracy was convinced that Kelly was hiding something and suggested to Sampson that they keep an eye on him back in Veliska. However, Sheriff Jackson was of the opinion that the then thirty five year old Kelly was little more than a harmless eccentric with no history of causing harm to anyone. With Andy Sawyer now out of the picture, however, they were

struggling to identify any other likely culprits. Things only got worse when Detective O'Leary, having come round to the mass murderer theory, began looking closer into the other recent acts murders that had occurred in the region. Though all were superficially similar to the Viliska killings, it soon became clear that most were not connected in any way at all, and as time went on, the town's fear and fascination with the case morphed inevitably to anger at the authority's

inability to catch the killer. The town, and most of all, the stillinger and more families were restless for answers, and as one possible suspect after another was scratched off the list, it was only natural that the local community would be drawn to the names that were left. In April nineteen thirteen, at all broad shouldered Texan arrived in Veliska, claiming that he was there on behalf of some investors who were

looking to purchase farmland in the county. In truth, forty eight year old James Newton Wilkerson was another private investigator from the William Burns Agency who liked to covertly bed himself in with the locals to get a sense of what the person on the street had to say about it all, and one name in particular seemed to crop up more than any other local businessman, and as of October nineteen twelve, recently elected Iowa State Senator Frank Jones.

The then fifty seven year old Frank Fernando Jones was originally from Steuben County in New York, but moved to Veliska in eighteen seventy five along with his parents and brother when they purchased a small plo to farmland just outside the town. Jones began his working life as a farmer and teacher, before eventually becoming a full time bookkeeper for the Baines and Waterman Farming implement store in Veliska.

After working his way up in eighteen ninety two, Jones then bought his own store, quickly establishing himself as one of the leading implement sellers in the county, before entering the banking trade two years later as a partner in the Citizens Bank of Vliska. In nineteen oh one, with Jones having sold his implement store, Joe Moore was installed as its new manager. When Jones then brought the store

back soon after, he decided to keep Joe on. A few years later, however, Joe left the store to open up his own right across the street from Frank's, in direct competition with him. This, some believed was one reason to suspect that Jones had it in him. Another more scourless rumor, however, was that Joe was having an affair with Frank's daughter in law, Donna Jones, who was married to his son Albert, who also happened to be the

More's neighbors. This affair was further complicated by the fact that Frank was rumored to also be in love with Donna. The rumors were given some credibility when it emerged that Joe Moore was seen having what some said was an intense conversation with Frank's son Albert the night before his entire family were butchered. There was no way of knowing for sure what was and wasn't true, but one thing was for certain. Texan detective James Wilkinson was very keen

to find out. In the autumn of nineteen thirteen, having been forced to drop out of the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary due to his debts, Reverend George Kelly and his wife Laura moved to Winner in South Dakota, where he took up a job as a Methodist preacher. Instead, he also worked a second job as a typist for hire. In December nineteen thirteen, he placed an advert in the Omaha World Herald newspaper appealing for a stenographic typist to help

him with a novel he was apparently writing. The applicant would have to be female, interested in literature and the fine arts, and would also have to be comfortable posing as a model for all the pictures he planned to put in the book. A short time later, he received a reply from one Jessamine Hodgson Kelly, referring to himself by his first name. Lynn then wrote back to Hodgson, thanking her for the response, but wanted to know a

few more things before they went any further. That she was single and free to go wherever she pleased without people inquiring of her, while also stressing that with regards to the posing, she would have to be willing to pose exactly as he wished. He finished by asking her what she thought of the naked human form and whether she objected to studies of nudes, saying that she shouldn't

because art is beautiful and God made us. So. Disturbed by his response, Hodgson passed the letters on to her pastor, who in turn forwarded them on to authorities in Council Bluffs. The authorities duly wrote back to Kelly, pretending to be Jessamine Hodgson, and were deeply alarmed at what he replied, with one letter reading, I am a favorite with everyone, especially with the girls. They like me, they trust me,

and I have never wronged one yet. Please jessimin, I faithfully promise you I shall never utter a word about your correspondence or your relations with me. Our relations together of work and pleasure shall be kept a secret with me forever. I want you to be faithful to me. Jessamine, never breathe one word of what we do together alone another read now, I am only human. I must not boast. Sometime I may do wrong. I may yield to temptation sometime. Who can ever tell? None of us know what we

will do. I will be as good to you as I can. But we may fall in love with one another if we work long enough. I am sure you will keep whatever is done between us always a strict secret. I will affectionately lynn. On the thirtieth of January nineteen fourteen, a man and walked into Reverend Kelly's office in winter

and introduced himself as a Deputy United States Marshal. Kelly slouched at his desk, telling the man he knew they were coming for him about the Veliska murders, but the deputy looked confused he was in fact there because of the letters. As it transpired, Kelly had successfully convinced a number of young women to unwittingly pose nude for him.

After being arrested, he was found guilty of perpetrating immoral acts, with the judge describing some of what he'd written in his letters to obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy to be spread upon the record. At his indictment, Kelly was sentenced to a year in jail and placed in prison in Sue Falls, where he frequently acted out violently toward guards and was accused of trying to engage other prisoners in sexual acts. A few months into his incarceration, gan telling

officers that he'd committed the murders in Viliska. After being judged potentially insane, he was taken to a psychiatric facility in Washington, d C. For a number of months, where he was said to be a highly troublesome patient, again frequently flying into violent fits, and who was often observed concealing portions of meat then dropping them in random places

without any apparent interest in eating them. After a few months in DC, he was returned to Sioux Fall's prison, but was never sentenced for his original guilty plea, and was released a few months after that before eventually moving once more to Sutton, Nebraska. It was sometime later in May nineteen fourteen that a woman walked into the Attorney General's office in Des Moines, Iowa's capital, asking to speak to Assistant Attorney Harry Sampson, who she'd heard was now

spearheading the Viliska case. The woman had come on behalf of some one called Veena Tompkins, who'd come to her and her husband begging for shelter from a group of violent criminals, which included her husband and brother among them. Tompkins, who had two sons and was keen to escape her treacherous life, claimed to be in possession of a big secret, the true identity of the More family and the Stillinger

Girl's murderer. For Texan Detective James Wilkinson, it was a story as long as it was convincing, and all of it led inexorably back to Iowan's Senator Frank Jones. You've been listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twelve, A Darkness on the Edge of Town. Part two. The third and final part, will be released next Friday, April fifteenth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us,

you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add free episodes, just go to patron dot com Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music,

are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast