by Dr. Ed Epperly

Professor of Education

Luther College - Decorah, Iowa

Sometime during the night of Sunday, June 9, 1912, a person or persons unknown entered a modest house in Villisca, Iowa and bludgeoned to death the eight people sleeping there. These killings, known thereafter as the "Villisca Axe Murder," is easily the most notorious murder in Iowa history.

The Villisca Axe Murder is the only Iowa crime that has potential historical and literary "legs." In this sense, it is like the two great murder epics, Jack the Ripper and the Lizzie Bordon case. Jack the Ripper, well into his second century continues to provoke controversy while novels, plays, motion pictures, and even musicals based on his crimes spew out into the popular literature market. Historical studies of this serial killer ranging from serious to fancifu1 also seem to spring up like mushrooms as the years go by.

America's equivalent of England's "Saucy Jack" is Lizzie Bordon. There is a veritable cottage industry producing books and television documentaries speculating about Lizzie's guilt or innocence. There is even a quarterly journal devoted entirely to the Bordon murders, and the city of Fall River, Massachusetts debates converting the murder house into a bed and breakfast mystery hotel.

Villisca's murder is only eighty years old and while it has yet to provoke national interest, there are signs that it will remain a viable topic into the 21st century. There is now a novel and a play based on the event and two scholars from Kansas City have a historical study of the murder nearing completion. Fourth Wall Productions, a Hollywood-based documentary film company, is producing a feature length film based on the murder with an anticipated release during 2001. Villisca is cautiously experimenting with using the murder as a means of attracting tourists, and the murder house is now a private museum semi-restored to its 1912 condition.

It seems obvious that murders like Villisca and Lizzie Bordon hold great fascination for large segments of the general population. The question becomes, is this just pushpin or are there things to be learned from such events? Study of the Villisca murder reveals how a community reacted to an extreme moral crisis. With no time to prepare and no precedents to consult, Villisca and its rural environ were confronted with a Lord Jim decision. How do individuals and communities respond to such pressure? How are questions of justice and retribution solved when agencies of police and courts are unable to apprehend a killer?

In response to such questions, Villisca developed a full-blown conspiracy theory of history to explain their failure to achieve justice. Like most conspiracy theories, Villisca' s plot seems tortured to outsiders, but it was real to the majority of citizens and therefore determined their beliefs and actions. In this sense, this small event, a horrible murder in a rural village, says something to a nation beset by shadowy conspiracies that are invoked to explain every fallen leader and justify such horrendous events as the Oklahoma City bombing.