Then, alone in the house with his own madness and eight dead, brutalized bodies, the killer apparently went to every window, drawing curtains, and spreading aprons. He also covered a mirror inside the home. He may have stayed in the Moore home for hours after the massacre.
Villisca: Living with a Mystery does an excellent job of detailing the events spiralling out from that horrific night. The Rundles trace how later suspicions and accusations derailed the political career of one man and drove another man, already troubled, even further into madness. And they finally make a compelling case for the Moores having been victims of a particularly terrifying and mobile serial killer.
For there were at least 20 other murders that happened in the midwest in the same time period that had strikingly similar elements. All of these murders have been tentatively attributed to a man named Henry Lee Moore. From the Stevens Point Gazette (WI), an issue published May 14, 1913:
Henry Lee Moore went to the penitentiary at Jefferson City after being found guilty of the murder of his mother and grandmother, Mrs. Mary Wilson and Mrs. George Moore, at Columbia Mo., in December, 1912. Moore made many damaging admissions and contradictory statements.
He said he had made a study of famous murders, including the Dr. Crippen case in England. The ax murders ascribed to Moore [...] are:
H. C. Wayne, wife and child; Mrs. A.J. Burnham and two children; Colorado Springs, Colo., September, 1911. William B. Dawson. wife and daughter, Monmouth, III. October, 1911.
William Showman, wife and three children, Ellsworth. Kan.. October, 1911.
Rollin Hudson and wife, Paolo, Kan., June, 1911.
J. B. Moore, four children and two girl guests. Villisca, Ia. June, 1912.
Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Moore at Columbia...
The murders were linked by similarities, sometimes striking, found at each scene, as well as Henry Lee Moore's mobility at the time. Henry Lee Moore was a railroad worker. He was able to travel widely in a way not always available to other residents of the midwest in 1911 and 1912.
This documentary premiered in 2004, and it has been receiving steady notice and positive reviews ever since. And no wonder, as for the true crime afficionado as well as anyone with an interest in that particular period of American history, Villisca: Living with a Mystery is a dark treat. Not only does it portray an unsolved crime worthy of modern slasher films in a respectful and dignified way, it also explores the ripples such events can send through the lives not just of those left behind but the collective life of a community. Villisca today is simply not the same town. There was, as the movie makes clear, the Villisca before the axe murders, and the Villisca afterwards. Villisca eventually embraced the legacy left by the Moore murders, but even now, it isn't a comfortable embrace.
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