The Vanishing Lady was a movie made in 1896. And yes, they made movies in 1896. But! It was a silent movie. But don’t worry, The Lady Vanishes was a movie made in 1938. Poor Miss Froy! She vanishes, and as the other characters search for her, another woman suddenly appears, dressed just like Miss Froy; Miss Froy the Vanishing Lady.
So movies provide points of parallelism; and for so many things. The more I thought about the claims made by Old Lady Landers, the more I began to think that it was impossible that no one in the Moore house woke up…that no one saw the murderer, or murderers...I find it impossible that no one made a sound. Well, Dr. F.S. Williams, who was sent to the house to examine the scene, stated that a wound on the arm of Lena Stillinger may have been a defensive wound, and, according to Williams, it appeared that she had moved around in the bed. So it might seem that Lena was killed last. It was in this bedroom that the bloody ax, the murder weapon, was found. And next to the ax was a…two pound slab of bacon. Bacon? Yes! Originally, it was part of a four pound slab of bacon. The murderer cut the slab into two, one having been left in the icebox, and the other was carried into the bedroom where the dead Stillingers were, and placed next to the murder weapon. A mystery within a mystery! Why would the killer cut a slab of bacon in half and then place one half next to the murder weapon? Some commentators have made suggestions for very this strange act. None are convincing. But I do believe that the bacon is important; that it was a clue left by the killer.
In the same way, Lena’s night-dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing undergarments. This is also extremely odd. The subject of molestation was brought up, but it was made clear that Lena had not been molested, and there were no signs of anything sexual. Given her age, determining that would not have been difficult. But this strange thing is important. If a stranger or strangers carried out these murders, then what was the idea? Serial killers, and it must be remembered that there had been a series of ax murders in the mid-west, and in some instances, whole families were murdered, targeted the Moore family, and then carrying out the murders, at least one of them happened to also be a pedophile? Or did a pedophile target Lena Stillinger, and being so desperate to reach his victim, he murdered 7 people? And then murdered Lena? I must say that I find both of these scenarios to be highly unlikely. Was the killer a pedophile who raised Lena’s night-dress and then, with nothing to stop him, did…nothing; well, nothing more than remove her undergarments? He murdered 8 people to get underwear? He could have avoided the 8 murders by simply stealing underwear from somebody’s clothes-line. Almost all of us dry clothes in a gas dryer. Not so in 1912. You hung your wet clothes on a clothes-line outside. So any weirdo with an underwear fetish could roam the area pulling knickers off people’s clothes-lines. If you get caught..so what? I’m sure the cops would give you a warning, but you wouldn’t go to prison, and you wouldn’t go to the gallows or the electric chair. Was it the case that the killer who murdered the girls sleeping in the parlor bedroom couldn’t “perform”? Then he decided to kill Lena?
These are the Moore children. Katherine was 10 years old in 1912. Lena Stillinger was 11 years old. So why not Katherine? Why didn’t the strange re-arrangement of apparel happen to the Moore girl? Was the killer making a point by focusing on Lena? I think that the removal of the undergarments had nothing to do with pedophilia, molestation, or a weird fetish. Like the bacon, I think that the killer was leaving a clue. And it is interesting that the killer left the ax behind. Why not take it with you and toss it into a local river? And this is an excellent question! Once the murders were discovered, bloodhounds were brought in. They picked up a scent that they were very keen on. That trail led to, and then went cold at, the Nodaway river. So the killers, and I now believe that there were two killers, and for other reasons than the two cigarette butts found in the attic, knew that bloodhounds would be used, and that they wouldn’t be able to follow a trail that led into a river. Of course, an axe is wieldy, and once you left, anyone up and about would certainly notice you walking down the street with an axe. Perhaps you could have brought a back-pack or duffel bag of some sort. Perhaps you could have washed it off and put it back where Mrs. Landers said she saw it when the Two Buffoons walked over to it and handled it. In broad daylight. While she watched. Two guys? Maybe all they wanted to do was wash Mrs. Landers' dirty walls.
There are two interesting things about the ax. The first…it is not certain that the ax found in the house was actually the ax that belonged to Josiah Moore. They sought to establish this during the inquest, and Josiah’s brother Charles was specifically asked to identify the ax as that owned by Josiah. He said that he couldn’t. Of course not. Axes all look pretty much alike, and unless Josiah carved his name into the handle, or had it etched into the blade, or tied pink ribbons around it…who knows if that’s Josiah’s ax? The second thing…the blade of the ax looked as though it had been wiped. And that is interesting, although it may ultimately mean nothing. But still! I understand wiping off the handle to remove fingerprints. But why the blade? He cleaned off the ax, returning it to it’s “pre-murder condition,” and then left it behind. It’s not as though the police would see an ax at the scene of 8 ax murders, and find an ax in the room containing two ax-murder victims, but conclude that since the ax was clean, it couldn’t possibly be the murder weapon. And! This is from the June 11, 1912 Webster City Freeman newspaper:
So! The killers knew to wipe off the ax, but left bloody fingerprints around the house? It has been suggested that the killers wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. That is certainly not what the Webster City Freeman thought.
But! If the ax left at the scene was not the murder weapon, but the killers wanted it to be identified as the murder weapon, then they would need to wipe off the blade because the police would determine the last thing that the ax had been used to chop was…lwood, a common victim of axes. Is it possible that the axe in the house was Josiah’s axe, but it wasn’t the murder weapon? How much more satisfying would it be for the killer to use his own axe!
On thing that I find interesting is the apparent confusion involving the two bodies found in the room with the ax and two pounds of bacon. One pound of bacon for each Stillinger girl? Or half a slab of bacon for a different victim? The generally agreed upon Canonical Story says that the two girls found in the back bedroom were Ina and Lena Stillinger. Pretty straight forward. But this appeared in the Bayard News (Bayard, Iowa) on June 13th:
Hold on…what? Who? Edith and Blanch Spillinger? Spillinger? I’ll assume a misprint. But! Ina and Lena? Who are Edith and Blanch?
Joseph T Stillinger (49)
Sara E Stillinger (43)
Edith M Stillinger (17)
Edward L Stillinger (15)
David L Stillinger (14)
Blanche M Stillinger (12)
Lena G Stillinger (9)
Ina M Stillinger (6)
Ada L Stillinger (2)
That is the Spillinger…oops! The Stillinger household in 1910. Edith was born February 29, 1893. Blanche was born February 20, 1898. So the ages given by the newspaper are demonstrably wrong. So how is it that 3 days after the murder the newspaper knew who Edith and Blanche were, but then gave patently false ages for them, and then stated in black-and-white to have been the victims found in the back bedroom?
Sorry for the creepy looking photo; well, it looks like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photo. It's important to be able to see the stature of the two girls. But this is a better shot of their faces:
Yes, these are the two Spillinger-Stillinger girls…Lena and Ida. Granted…the condition of the heads of all the victims did not allow a facial confirmation. But how do you confuse these girls with a 20 year-old woman and an 18 year-old woman? Even if you got the ages right, you might be able to confuse Blanche and Ida, but what about Lena? It gets better:
Stop! Who? Mrs. Van Gilder and her daughter? During the inquest, John Lee Van Gilder was briefly questioned. And although he admitted to having spoken to Josiah on Sunday afternoon, he knew nothing more than that. But who was he? Sarah Moore, Josiah’s wife, was born Sarah Montgomery on April 17, 1873. Her parents were John S and Mary Phebe J Montgomery. Sarah had an older sister named Mary Montgomery, born November 13, 1871. She was married to Roy Clayton Van Gilder, born in 1870, and died on May 26, 1914. John Lee was born January 28, 1893, and married Letha Marcella Findley on March 16, 1914. Fae Marie Van Guilder was born in 1896. So it would seem that the “Mrs. Van Gilder and her daughter” would be Mary (Moore) Van Gilder, who was 41 at the time of the murders, and Fae Marie Van Guilder, who was 16 years old at the time of the murder. So the news article is absolutely fascinating.
First identification of the bodies in the back bedroom:
Mary Van Guilder 41
Marie Van Guilder 16
Second identification of the bodies in the back bedroom:
Edith Stillinger 20
Blanche Stillinger 18
Third identification of the bodies in the back bedroom:
Lena Stillinger 12
Ida Stillinger 8
My! The deceased persons changed and changed! And my did the ages drop! It seems clear that something must have happened at the crime scene to produce this astonishing situation.
Yes! That sums it up well. But if we rule out a Kebelian Madman, we have revenge for a motive; and I think that that is indeed the case.
Maybe the Bayard News doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Fake News! Fake Press! Fake Story! Ah, yes…all you clowns…chant the silly things that your Circus Clown Messiah tells you to chant. Remember...Lock her Up! That's changed. How about...Lock him Up! Or, Lock them Up! Because that's what's going to happen.
What about the Davenport Weekly Democrat and Leader?
Too bad, Edith and Blanche…two sources say that you’re dead! Notice that the names of Edith and Blanch are listed, but the age given to Edith is about the correct age for Blanche, and the age given for Blanche is the age of Lena. And we have a Stillinger and a Spillinger. What? The Quad-City Times (June 11, 1912) lists the same information just provided. Perhaps the newspapers got everything wrong due to the articles being printed in the very wake of the murders. This was published in the Adams County Free Press on October 2, 1912.
The rest of the names of murdered people have nothing to do with the Moore Murders. But we're back to Edith and Blanche again.
Who is Mrs. Emma Van Gilder? I can’t find the middle name of Mary (Moore) Van Gilder, but in the 1900 census, her name is given as Mary A Van Gilder. So no Emma. No Emma among the Van Gilders. But! The full name of JT Stillinger’s wife was Sarah Emma Stillinger. So we find an Emma, but she has nothing to do with Fay Van Gilder
And on June 18, 1912, we return to something familiar, this time in the Twice-a-Week Plain Dealer:
More on the Van Gilders:
Ok..we know who Lee Van Guilder is. But who is John? John who was missing for thirteen years, and then suddenly showed up the day before the murders. Methinks we have an interesting suspect. But who is he? The article indicates that although John Van Gilder had been spotted in town “the son did not see him.” The son must be Lee Van Gilder, John Lee Van Gilder, actually. And his father was Roy Van Gilder, Roy Clayton Van Gilder, actually, was the son of John W Van Gilder. Roy married Mary Montgomery on December 17, 1981. Remember, Fae Marie Van Guilder was born in 1896. Roy Van Gilder died in 1914. But this what is the 1900 census looks like:
John S Montgomery (54)
Phoebe J Montgomery (51)
Mary A Van Gilder (28)
Lee Van Gilder (7)
Fae M Van Gilder (4)
So clearly Roy was gone by 1900. If we go by the information cited above (“missing for 13 years”), then Roy Van Gilder left his wife around 1899. So that information which appears to mix up John Lee Van Gilder and Roy Van Gilder is accurate. I have seen several sources that say that Lee Van Gilder was Josiah’s brother-in-law. But the information provided in this essay identifies him as Sarah Moore’s nephew, whereas Roy Van Gilder would be Sarah’s brother-in-law. So the confusion about who was in the back bedroom seems to apply to the Van Gilder family as well. I can’t see any possible motive for Lee Van Gilder to have murdered…either his mother or sister…who were very much alive, or the Moores, or the Stillinger girls. If, however, Roy Van Gilder suddenly appeared, and being the ex-husband, and possibly the current husband if no divorce was obtained before or after he left Montgomery county, he would be a prime suspect. But that’s only true of his wife, and possibly his daughter…but apparently not his son. So why kill the Moores? If he wanted to kill his family, excluding John Lee, he could have done it in the Van Gilder home. You want to kill your wife so you kill six other people too? If Roy Van Gilder had shown up after thirteen years, which is a confirmable number, he had nothing to do with the murders…and neither did Lee Van Gilder. But the confusion between Roy and Lee is well attested:
That is from the Topeka State Journal, June 12, 1912. And it is confusing. John Lee Van Gilder and Roy Van Gilder. Leroy Van Gilder?
Blanche Stillinger is interesting. I suspect that she got bullied into lying during the inquest. For followers of the Sylvia Likens Canonical Story, that comes as no surprise.
“The coroner then called Blanche Stillinger to the stand. Blanche was the eldest of the Stillinger children and sister to victims, Ina and Lena Stillinger.”
That quotes comes from (www.villiscaiowa.com). Blanche was the eldest? What about Edith...and Edward...and David? Oops. Another part of the quote:
“According to Blanche, Joe Moore had called the Stillinger home at 6:00 pm on Sunday night and asked to speak to her mother. When she told him that her mother was outside, he went on to tell her that the girls were going to church with his family and didn’t want to walk back to their grandmother’s in the dark. He then asked if she thought it would be okay if they stayed with the Moore’s overnight. Blanche testified that she told Mr. Moore that she thought it would be okay if they stayed. After a few other questions regarding her sister’s ages, Blanche was excused…”
This is strange. I’m not surprised about the questions related to her sisters’ ages…given the fact that the bodies were identified as various people, one of whom was 41 years old, and one of whom was the girl being questioned! Of course, for the two girls to spend the night at the Moore home, Mr. Moore did the fitting and proper thing…he called the Stillinger home to ask one of the parent’s permission. Suppose this happened yesterday. Your two daughters were going to spend the night with friends. The other parent seeks your permission. Then something strange happens. Your 14 year old daughter answers the phone. She tells the other parent that you are outside. When dinner time fast approaches, you suddenly wonder where your two youngest daughters are. You panic…they should be home. Then your 14 year old tells you that they are staying the night somewhere else, and that she gave the other parent permission. What do you parents think about that? What should Blanche have done? She could have gone outside to get her mother so that she could talk to Mr. Moore. Or, she could have told Mr. Moore that she would have her mother call him back. And how would you have felt about Mr. Moore? Was it appropriate to let the 14 year give Mr. Moore permission? He goes to the trouble to do the right thing, then suddenly does the wrong thing? Oh…it’s Sunday…why couldn’t Blanche have asked her father, Joseph Stillinger, to speak with Mr. Moore?
Why did the newspapers report the identity of the two bodies in the back bedroom as Edith and Blanche? Could it be possible that what the reporter was told was that the two bodies were the daughters of Joseph Stillinger. So why call them Edith and Blanche? I say this in a purely hypothetical way, not in any way representing this as verifiable fact, but if you knew that Ida and Lena weren’t actually Joseph Stillinger’s daughters, and you were told simply that Joseph’s daughters were found dead, and knew about Edith and Blanche, then you might identify the two girls as Edith and Blanche, since Ida and Lena weren’t his daughters. Hypothetically, that would mean that the Stillingers who were murdered were the Stillingers who weren’t Stillingers.
But the really interesting thing is this. The question of the identity of the bodies in the back bedroom unexpectedly surface again when H.M. Havner, the Attorney General, re-opened the case in 1917 and testimony began yet again. Notice this:
That ran in the July 17, 1918 Des Moines Register. And my how interesting is this? Havner blackened the name of one of the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Stillinger? How?
That ran in the Adams County Free Press on July 11, 1917. Of course he’s looking for a motive! And what a question! Why won’t Stillinger answer it? Just say no! And did the Attorney General not know the ages of Lena and Ida? Of course he did. But it seems to me as though Mr. Havner doesn’t accept the Canonical Story as far as who really was in the back bedroom at the time of the murders. The other article referred to only one of the girls. The only one old enough to have gentlemen callers in 1912 was Edith. The newspaper articles cited earlier identified one of the murder victims as Edith Stillinger.
A strange thing was reported on September 10, 1917 in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Detective Wilkerson, not of the police, but of the Burns Detective Agency, had taken a central role in the case, and he had been behind the attempts to connect Blackie Mansfield with Frank and Albert Jones, advocating that they had hired Blackie to kill the Moore family because Mr. Moore had had an affair with Albert’s wife, Dona. One of the witnesses described over hearing three men discuss plans to murder Josiah Moore. One of them was a criminal who was offered money to kill Mr. Moore. Ah, yes! Any what an interesting story she tells!
Hollywood here we come! A Fortune Teller! A cemetery! And even a boy with a thorn in his foot! Oh that he had a mouse to pull it out! Oh, I almost forgot, and a detective from the Burns Detective Agency. The Villisca murders are just like the Sylvia Likens case…the stories go on and on! You know what I heard? No, what? I heard that Pazuzu did it! He's always causing trouble. One lady who lived in Villisca pointed out that there weren't footprints at the end of the porch. For her, this indicated that the person jumped from the porch, and that the person was wearing moccasins, so an Indian did it!
The Jones element of the Canonical Story was one that Ed Landers would eventually join in on, stating that he saw Albert Jones enter the Moore home on the evening of the murders. But the only really serious suspect to emerge was George Kelly, an itinerant preacher, who confessed. He soon recanted, maintaining that he had been forced to confessing.
That is from the Adams County Free Press (September 5, 1917). George Kelly and his wife had moved to Macedonia, Iowa in 1912. He had been present for the church event on the day of the murders. He was then seen leaving Villisca early the next morning. The truth of the matter, as it soon emerged, is that he was crazy. In fact, the preacher had never been ordained by any Christian denominational authority. And he liked nude pictures. That explains the mass murder, and I’m sure he’s the only man who liked looking at nude pictures. But he was a very mentally unstable man, and the police have no business questioning such suspects until a mental health professional of whatever type has examined the suspect, and reaches a conclusion as to whether he should be questioned at all. Of course, Kelly claimed that when he killed the people sleeping in the Moore house, he
That is from the Adams County Free Press (September 5, 1917). Wait…you killed her first, or you think you killed her first? And no…Mr. Moore would have been killed first. Another little detail…we know that the killer used an ax, but he used the blade only on Mr. Moore; he used the blunt end on all the other victims. Why? Because the killer, the one who attacked Mr. Moore in his sleep, was enraged at Mr. Moore, and so he gave him the most violent of the attacks. You try to kill the wife first, and then you wake up the one person in the house who can put up an effective defense. George Kelly was wrong. And he saw nothing wrong with contradicting himself:
So…we meet the only adult in creation who finds children ‘bothersome.’ There is, of course, no way that the killer murdered four children in the room across the hall, and then went after the adults. And we also find out something very important…George Kelly was hearing voices. Not in the Moore home…he was obviously schizophrenic. His story becomes more ridiculous when he tells us about the Stillinger girls.
He’s about as good at making up stories as the witnesses in the Sylvia Likens case. So Kelly is a schizophrenic who hears voices. And despite being totally unfamiliar with the inside of the Moore home, he moves around without anyone hearing him…hearing him trip over things. He walks noisily up the stairs, in the dark with a small lamp, and then kills the four Moore children…the problem being that he was also killing Mrs. Moore at the same time, leaving Josiah Moore to jump out of bed and give the little-man Kelly one heck of a thumping. No! Josiah sleeps through the murder of five people, then gets it himself. Kelly is tired…that was hard work. So he goes downstairs looking for a bed to lie down on. Look! Two more bothersome children! Who knew they were here? And they are sleeping soundly through all of this…so I killed them too. “More work still”? Please. And the “slay utterly” bit of nonsense…that’s probably Ezekiel 9:6
“Slay utterly old and young, both girls, little children and women…”
He was brought to trial, and acquitted. I will discuss this further in a different post. But what is worth noting here is that Wilkerson was gunning for the Jones family, despite the fact that George Kelly had actually confessed. And especially if you were Mr. Stillinger, this might seem odd:
It seems very odd. It’s one thing to believe that George Kelly was innocent, but he did confess to butchering your daughter. Why have a picture taken with him? And why clasp his hand? And Sarah Moore’s father is in this picture as well? And let’s not forget nutty Wilkerson. So this picture featured a veritable Kum by Yah moment with:
1. Sarah Moore’s father
2. J. N. Wilkerson
3. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly
4. Joseph Stillinger
This is a strange alliance. Could it be that Joe Montgomery, Wilkerson, and Joseph Stillinger were out to get the Jones family? So much so that they celebrated the acquittal of George Kelly? Getting Kelly out of the way removed the only suspect to be tried, leaving the way open to go after someone else. So was there bad-blood between the Jones family and the Moore family? Or was it bad-blood between the Stillingers and the Jones family?
This picture is certainly not the only connection between Joe Stillinger and J. N. Wilkerson, not according to the Quad-City Times (September 5, 1917):
So! the Iowa Protective Association had been created by Wilkerson, who was also funding it. And the president of this association is none other than Joe Stillinger. Wilkerson had been ordered by the court to stop spreading his nonsense about the case here, there, and everywhere. His arrest was ordered, but then:
That was published in the July 8, 1917 Quad-City Times. Actually, it’s called Fleeing and Eluding. And actually, it’s a crime, maybe even a felony, depending on local statutes. And think of all the traffic violations he racked up along the way! And so we see the character of the nutty detective. And what an odd event. 1,200 citizens of Montgomery county were packed into the Boyd theater, while 36 relatives of the ax-murder victims were seated on stage:
The important thing to know about Frank Jones, is that he was more than just the owner of a farm supply business for whom Josiah Moore worked before opening his own business. He was also a state senator, and Wilkerson had made him the main target of the Iowa Protection Association. Wilkerson claimed that the Attorney General and others in the political establishment were trying to silence him in order to protect a local politician.
My how people flocked to the cause of George Kelly (Quad-City Times; September 9, 1917).
So not just Stillinger and John Montgomery. Josiah Moore’s mother got into the whole…that crazy George Kelly got in the way, and the only way to get him out of the way was to get him acquitted. Seeing how Kelly was innocent, that’s all well and good. But one wonders if there wasn’t another reason as well.
There are just a few more comments to make about Mr. Joseph Thomas Stillinger before concluding this long, rambling and surely, quite boring, essay. Note this:
The Quad-City (January 5, 1913). does seem to have a problem getting things right. It is clear from the context that John Stillinger is really Joe Stillinger, since the article refers directly to the two girls who were killed with the Moore family in 1912. But not only did Joe Stillinger's house burn down, his wife had died. It doesn't specifically say when she died, but it was clearly by January 5, 1913. And it is very strange, since Sarah Emma Stillinger is supposed to have died in 1945. Certainly she continues to appear in the census records, and her grave is easy to locate. So it really is phenomenal that she should have died in 1912 too! And so the confusion just keeps going...and going...and going. The issue of loss for the family of Joe Stillinger is an interesting one. He had another loss…Sarah Stillinger was pregnant at the time of the murders, and the baby was still-born. And so this is the list of losses suffered by Mr. Joe Stillinger:
1. Ina Stillinger- murdered in 1912
2. Lena Stillinger- murdered in 1912
3. Still-born son- died in 1912
4. Wife Sarah Emma Stillinger- died in 1912
5. House burned down- January 1913
Ralph Stillinger was born in 1906, and Ada Stillinger was born in 1908. So there would be no more children after 1912, and a new house in 1913. House fires do happen. But it sure leaves one with an uneasy feeling, and its very difficult to keep everyone straight without a scorecard, although I'm sure that if we had one, it would be confusing too.
I return now to the statement of Mrs. Landers. And I say again that it seems unlikely that none of the victims woke up. This is the house:
Obviously, that is a rather small house. Why was it that one of the victims, at the very beginning of the story was believed to be 41 year old Mary Van Gilder? We also suspected that a 20 year old and an 18 year old were dead in the house. This truly is a puzzle. And one of the doctors, F.S. Williams, who went to the house to examine the body tells us something absolutely amazing. He went into the downstairs back bedroom, and he saw two bodies:
“From their appearances, one was a big woman and a little girl, and that the girl out to the outside of the bed next to the east side…”
But he also said:
“I did not recognize either one of the little girls.”
So here we have it again…who was in the bed? Was it a “big woman”? or two little girls? Actually, the evidence clearly suggests that there was another adult woman in the house at the time of the murders…and it would appear that at least one of the Stillinger girls was sleeping in the bed with her. That’s right…two adult women; but were they both murdered? If that is the case, then what happened to the other body? There should have been two dead women in that house. It was suspected that the other murdered woman was Mary Van Gilder, although this was ruled out. So it was someone else. And at the time that Dr. Williams inspected the downstairs bedroom, the body of the full-grown woman was still in the bed. So what happened next? Could it be that an effort was made to conceal the identity of this woman? And so she became the Vanishing Lady? If not, then it seems as though someone must have hid the body. But where? Would none of the people outside see someone carry one of the bodies out of the house? And it seems as though it would have been impossible to hide the body in that small house, unless it was moved to the attic, and access to the attic was adamantly prevented, it was moved to a different room, and became someone else.
In closing, I would add a comment on the shouts that Mrs. Landers said she heard all the way across the street, the shouts no one else heard. She said they were:
“Oh, dear; Oh, dear; Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”
It seems that one is left with the conclusion that the existence of the other body, the full grown woman sleeping with one of her daughters…strange, but that is what the whole ‘Mrs. Van Gilder and her daughter’ story said it was. Could it be that one story was quickly used to hide the other? Of course, there appears to be no reason to doubt that Ina and Lena Stillinger were murdered in the house. What we’ve lost is the adult woman. That means that an adult woman with two Stillinger girls was murdered in the Moore house. I think that the shouts reported by Mrs. Landers may have been heard by her son, Ed Landers, who was standing in front of the Moore residence around 10:45 pm on the night of the murder. He would have been able to hear shouting coming from the house. Perhaps, when Mother Landers clarified the "queer sounds" she heard coming from the house, she mixed the words up. Maybe:
“Oh dear- don’t!” or “Don’t dear! Don't!”
This would suggest that one of the two adult women murdered in Josiah Moore’s house knew her attacker well enough to call him “dear.” And since, at least as far as the killer upstairs was concerned, Josiah Moore was killed first, the shouting voice couldn’t have been Mrs. Moore. The only one in the house she would have called “dear” would, presumably, be her husband Josiah Moore. But Josiah Moore didn’t kill anyone. That would suggest that it was the second woman, the Vanishing Lady, who knew her killer well enough to call him “dear.” It was the Vanishing Lady whose shouts Ed Landers heard. If there was a complete alteration of the scene, then a murder victim disappeared, and the authorities were involved in it, and one thinks of Wilkerson who continually asserted that there was a massive cover-up. He may be partially right, but not on the question of Frank Jones. But one of the victims simply disappeared. And why? Would it be impossible that the killer, one of two, actually returned to the house the next day and was able to remove the Vanishing Lady? Perhaps it would be more apt to say…moved the Vanishing Lady. And it would be crazy to think that he moved her body upstairs.
The bacon was a strange detail. So too the underwear. So too two other strange details. What are those? The first is the existence of a dinner plate on the table. The meal hadn’t been touched. If the Moore’s got home between 9:30 and 9:45 pm, did they all sit down to a meal? Or did they serve food at church? Why did no one eat any of the food on the plate? Someone showed a lot of interest in the bacon. The second detail was mentioned by one of the women who testified in 1917. She stated that there was an additional bed, by which we can understand a spare bed, that had been made up in the front room. She said two other things about this bed. First, it hadn’t been slept in. Second, the fact that it was made up did not indicate that another guest would be staying. I strongly disagree with this latter statement. I think it did. I think that was the person who told Mrs. Moore that he was hungry, so she made him a plate of food, and then she went to bed. But he didn’t eat it. He was supposed to sleep in the other bed that was made up. But he didn’t. He dallied until he knew that the those in the back bedroom were asleep. There was someone else upstairs. Both belonged there in the house that night. One killed the Moores upstairs, while the other killed the woman and the two Stillinger girls downstairs. And the woman awoke, recognized her attacker, and pleaded with him. She called him “dear.” Two people walking by the house outside heard it. They froze, and suddenly, two people emerged from the house…not just one person. And they all knew each other. Before leaving, the killer downstairs removed a 4 pound slab of bacon. Some commentators have made the preposterous suggestion that the killer intended to take the bacon with him, but, laying it next to the murder weapon in the back bedroom, he forgot it. Please! The bacon is a clue; a clue left by the killer. What a strange clue is a slab of bacon! Perhaps. But it should be remembered that it wasn’t just a slab of bacon…it was half of a slab of bacon. A four pound slab of bacon split in half. I think Matthew 19: 5-6 may be relevant:
“And so it is that a man leaves his family and marries his wife. And they become one. Since they are now as one, joined together by God, let no one separate them.”
Ah! Someone separated the 4 pound slab of bacon. In effect, he did exactly what the Lord said not to do…one became two. And! If the killer set one half in the bedroom next to the murder weapon, perhaps he intended the bacon to be understood as…the Other Half. Yes! The Other Half is in here. Well...was.