Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Ninety-six years ago today, another one...


Today marks ninety-six years since Mary Peckham decided to check things out at the all-too-quiet home of her neighbors, Joe and Sara Moore.  A quick Google of Villisca will tell you just 
about everything you ever wanted to know about the crime that split the little Iowa town.

It's the most well known and well documented of this series of crimes and probably the best example of how little investigators understood what was going on in these towns.  Anybody reading this blog probably knows about the crime so I won't get much into it here except to say this...All the victims of the Midwest Axeman deserve to be remembered so lets take a moment to think about the Moore family and their house guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Ninety-six years ago today...



It has been ninety-six years since three neighbors went into the front yard of Rollin and Anna Hudson's house to investigate the empty look of the place. For an accounting of this crime go to Miller's Paranormal Research. They have transcribed newspaper articles about the crime and included some photos taken from those papers. I'll say up front that I do not believe in psychics and mediums and their psychics make some connections between this crime and the Villisca crime that are, quite frankly, debunked. But in the interest of full disclosure I do believe in "ghosts" and I enjoy reading stories about hauntings and watching shows like "Ghost Hunters" so a website like Miller's Paranormal is a guilty little pleasure for me.  I'll be writing about this crime later, as new information comes up, but for now just take a moment to remember Rollin and Anna, who had their problems and faults, but were victims just the same.