True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Axe Murders and Mirrors

True Crime Tuesdays on Fearsome Fiction: Axe Murders and Mirrors

On the night of June 9th, 1912, eight people went to sleep in a small farmhouse in Villisca, Iowa. Six of them were children. By morning, all eight were dead — killed with an axe as they slept, in a crime so deliberate the killer stopped to cover every mirror in the house before he left. More than a century later, despite two trials, a confessed minister, a state senator with a grudge, and a theory that reaches all the way to a serial killer riding the rails, nobody has ever been convicted.

This week on True Crime Tuesdays, we walk through the Villisca ax murders — the victims, the suspects, and the eerie detail that still brings visitors to the restored murder house today, some of whom don’t make it until morning.