What do you get if you combine Satan, Satan Jr, Satana, and Victoria Wingate? Yes…a Diabolical Nuclear Family! And one so quaint? The interesting thing as far as the comic is concerned is that it was a highly dysfunctional family. Now there's a surprise! Satan was banished to Hell…where else would he want to be anyway? Perhaps…Massachusetts, which is where the Diabolical Chip Off the Old Block was born. Poor Victoria…she had been…fooled. When she found out who her Diabolical Significant Other really was, she went insane.

So Mrs. Satan, before losing her mind, was the quintessential American housewife. A Diabolical June Cleaver! And, which is perhaps most surprising, Satan Jr…named Daimon Hellstrom (clever!) was raised in a Jesuit orphanage. He then became the opponent of what his father stood for all along. A rebellious son indeed. Oh my! Do I see a Reality TV show in the making, although we might want to vary the basic story line…

Satan Jr: “Mom! Can I go out and play with Pazuzu?”
Victoria: “No, it’s getting late. His mother will worry if he doesn’t go home.”
Satan Jr: “But Mom! I wanted to wreak havoc on the universe!”
Victoria: "I thought you wanted to be the Good Spawn of Hell.”
Satan Jr: “I guess so. What’s for dinner?”
Victoria: “Deviled ham and deviled eggs. They’re your father’s favorite.”
Satan Jr: “What’s for dessert?”

 Stop! I thought I decided to give up my short career as a comedienne after being booed off stage. That’s true. But I’ll bet you think you know what Housewife Victoria will say is for dessert. Maybe.

Satan Jr: “What’s for dessert?”
Victoria: “Fallen Angel food cake.”

So there! Not Devil's Food cake. Comics being comics, there are various story-lines that jumble up historical names with comic-bookish nonsense. Satan is also associated with Marduk Kurios. Marduk was the name of the principal deity of the Babylonian royal family during the time of the Neo-Babylonian empire. The word Kurios is simply Greek for “Lord.” A connection was also drawn with Lucifer. And we all know that most Christian believe that Lucifer and Satan are one and the same. I must strongly disagree, and I have some good evidence to offer as proof. Lucifer appears in only one Old Testament context…Isaiah 14. The title “The Satan” appears nowhere in this material. And unlike The Satan, who didn’t have a name until Satan became his name, which allowed early Christians to separate him from the function he had in Job and Zechariah, thereby allowing them to create a Great Cosmic Dualism…where the forces of good are led by God, and the forces of evil are led by Satan...and, it would seem, the war between the two keeps on going…and going…and going, Lucifer has no supernatural function. The Book of Revelation, which actually features the Dragon as God’s protagonist, states that the Dragon would be cast into some other-worldly jail for 1,000 years. Makes sense within the story. But then, after the Dragon served his sentence, God paroles him. He is then free to resume his war against God. One is tempted to ask…why not sentence the guy to life imprisonment? Why let him out? Odd.

Actually, Lucifer’s name is Helal ben-Shahar, which means..Shining One, Son of the Dawn. So now we do have a name! The prophecy is directed against the King of Babylon, and while it does tell a short story about Shining One, the main emphasis is not on Son of the Dawn himself…he is simply a parallel used to show what will happen to the king of Babylon. The main sin of Helal is that he attempted to make himself God:

 How you are fallen from heaven, O Halel ben-Shahar!

For you said in your heart, ‘I will climb into heaven, and I will set my throne above God’s stars.’

‘I will be like God!’

God would have none of that:

You shall be brought down into the Lowest of Places.

 And the word that I translated "Lowest of Places" for the sake of simplicity, actually denotes the place where the dead go...a similar idea to the Greek Hades. Now Luke 10:18 quotes Jesus as saying- “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Jesus makes this declaration after, having sent 70 men to go and preach the gospel, they return and tell him that they are able to control demons when they use his name.

 “And he said to them: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Look! I give you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”

It’s an odd passage. Step on snakes and scorpions…and suffer no ill effects? Perhaps he doesn’t mean snakes and scorpions literally:

 “Paul gathered a pile of wood and, as he put the wood on the fire, a poisonous snake suddenly jumped out and bit him on the hand. When the people living on the island saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, ‘This man must be a murderer! He escaped the sea..but not Goddess Justice! He will die!’ But Paul shook the snake off into the fire, and he was just fine.”

That is from the Book of Acts, which is associated with Luke, and so the words that Luke put in Jesus’ mouth are meant literally. And how strange it is that here in the good ole' US of A we actually have small Christians sects who practice snake-handling…

Sorry...wrong picture. Here it is:

Hey Mom! Did you know that Aunt Mabel is part of a Christian Snake-Handling sect? Of course I do! But don't worry...if you carry around venomous snakes in the name of Jesus...not Alice Cooper and certainly not Satan or Lucifer...you won't get hurt. That's a relief! What if she steps on a scorpion? Too bad! She should've been wearing shoes.

Another comment I could make would be that Luke, of all three synoptic gospels, is by far and away the closest to being, essentially, an apocryphal work. If Matthew was an expanded version of Mark, perhaps Luke was an expanded version of Matthew...that took the ball and ran with it!  It certainly shares one thing with Matthew…the sudden need for more stories about Jesus’ past. But then this spills over to include John the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth. Then we are on our way to a growing emphasis on Mary, which is clear from the “Song of Mary” included at the beginning.

But it would seem that the writer of Luke, when he put the strange words into Jesus’ mouth, has the Helal story in mind. The problem is that according to Isaiah:

 “Those who will see you will gaze at you! They will say, ‘Isn’t this the man who made the earth tremble? Didn’t he shake all the kingdoms? Didn’t he devastate the entire world?’ All the the other kings, all of them, live in glory…live in their palaces; but you will be cast into the Lowest of Places....the Realm of the Dead.”

Isaiah makes it clear that Helal ben-Shahar was a man…a king…one king among many kings in the ancient world. He was feared, and dedicated to destruction. He came to see himself as a rival to God. He attempted to climb into heaven so as to take up his position as the Great Divine One. The story implies that Helal didn't quite make it to the heights of heaven before he was stopped and thrown into the Lowest of Places…meaning…he died. No such events are associated with The Satan in the Old Testament. And it is clear that The Satan is not a human being…he is some kind of divine being along the lines of the sons of the gods. Helal is not a divine being. He was a powerful king who let things go to his head. He came to believe his own nonsense. My, that sounds familiar. But so too does Helal…the one who never became King of Heaven. Genesis speaks of a powerful, and very human, king named Nimrod. He is associated with Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh…all located in the land of Shinar. And yes…Babel is the name for Babylon in the Old Testament. Shinar is Mesopotamia in general. And! We then learn of an attempt to build a large tower that would reach into heaven. But that didn’t go so well. God soon arrives and puts a stop to this; so the Tower of Babylon, the very heart of Nimrod’s kingdom, failed to accomplish what Nimrod intended. And nothing is heard again about the king who was once so mighty. So the story of Helal sounds almost exactly the same as the story of Nimrod. And! Isaiah directs his version of the Nimrod story against…the king of Babylon! So the writer of the material in Luke, if he envisions Helal as an equivalent to The Satan, is simply wrong. But it is a cool image. And here is another indication that Lucifer and The Satan were not viewed as being the same guy among some early Christians.

This guy is Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari, around the year 300 A.D. Oh, and there was also Bishop Lucifer of Siena. Now it should be noted that the ancient Greek translation rendered the name Helal as Phosphorus, who is associated with the Morning Star…being the planet Venus visible in the morning. He is the son of Eos, goddess of the Dawn. In the same way, the Latin word “Lucifer” has the meaning “Shining One.” So I’ll bet that these two early Christian bishops would strenuously deny that Lucifer was Satan. In fact, the word Lucifer was applied to John the Baptist, and even to Jesus in early Christian hymns: “Tu verus mundi lucifer.” “You are the world’s true Shining One.” How about this as a hymn:

"Let this flame be found yet alight by the Morning Star! The Morning Star who never sets...Christ your son..."

Lucifer? I’ll let modern Pseudo-Christianity grapple with that one. So the writer of the passage in Luke, if he was thinking of Lucifer, was wrong. Hey!

Is this guy really the same as Satan…an alteration of a being who bore the title The Satan? Do you fear the fat little kid with his watering can? Or the churchmen? Or Jesus himself? My isn’t little Lucifer cute! Of course, the story of attempting to reach heaven is a common, etiological tale:

This guy, well one of them, looks like he’s in a bit of trouble. He is the Greek figure known as Icarus, who made the mistake of making wax wings for himself, and then attempting to fly up to heaven. His wings melted, and he was thrown from heaven like lightning. Metaphorically speaking. I think that the real Helal ben-Shahar was the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza…built not as a temple or a tomb, but as a:

That’s right! The Great Pyramid was a Stairway to Heaven! Not one that lead to a Sad Little Tool Shed! One that was intended, like the incomplete Tower of Babylon in Genesis, to allow Helal to climb into heaven and take his place as God. It obviously didn’t work. In the song, it is an unknown lady who “buys” a Stairway to Heaven. The Bible offers a parallel to Nimrod’s attempt to build a Tower into Heaven:

The guy sleeping on the ground is the biblical patriarch Jacob. And in his dream, he saw angels climbing up into heaven, and climbing back down, via a ladder. So I am now writing a new single called Ladder to Heaven. Ok, it’s not such a good name, but Stairway to Heaven was already taken. But as we all know, Lucifer is depicted as having wings:

He looks depressed.

So his plot really did fail! What passage describes The Satan has having wings? None. And is Isaiah’s Lucifer described as having wings? Yes…wait…no! But how else can you ascend into heaven? We know the answer…a Stairway to Heaven…a Tower to Heaven…a Cosmic Ladder; and perhaps, though I’m sure I’m wrong, a Great Pyramid. So why wings? Could it be that the imagery is drawing from the Greek story of Icarus, who definitely used wings when trying to fly up to heaven?

So what does this have to do with Ed Landers? Nothing…other than the fact that his family became a very strange one that found itself in the middle of a Strange Canonical Story…one that many might think had something Demonic about it. And what may be even more strange was that they were able to escape this story altogether. Almost. I think their role in the Story is one of the most fascinating parts of it. Before there was the Sylvia Likens Murder Saga there was the Villisca Axe-Murder Saga.

508 E. 2nd Street, Villisca, IA 50864. Today, it looks quite different…

…driven, no doubt, by the fact that it is now a tourist trap. And that’s a funny thing. The house that Gertrude Baniszewski lived, and where Sylvia Likens died, did not become a tourist trap…it was eventually demolished. Similarly…

…the home of the List family, where John List decided to kill his wife, children, and mother…claiming to have so to save their souls and ensure they go to heaven. Apparently, John List had no worries about going to heaven, or he would have done the only decent he had left to do…commit suicide. John began living a new life under a new identity, but was eventually caught and convicted. It wasn’t long after that the house…

…burned down. The picture on the right shows the vacant plot where Gertrude Baniszewski rented 3850 East New York, Indianapolis. But, as I said, 508 E. 2nd Street managed to survive, and then get a new lease on life when it became a tourist trap.

On the evening of June 9, 1912, in the small Iowa town of Villisca, a family of six returned home from a church event. But they didn’t return alone. They had with them two other girls, Ina (8) and Lena (12). They were the daughters of Joseph T Stillinger, and they attended the church event with Josiah and Sarah Moore and their children Herman (11); Mary Katherine (10); Arthur Boyd (7) and Paul Vernon(5).

Earlier in the day, it was decided that the…

…Stillinger girls would spend the night with the Moore family. That was either the heights of bad luck, or, as I believe, one of the reasons for the murders. They left church around 9:30 pm, were home around 9:40, and then subsequently murdered; all of their heads had been bashed in with an axe. The event quickly morphed into the Greatest Show on Earth, and a whole host of suspects were paraded around as if they were clowns jumping out of the little car at the circus. How’d they all fit in there? In the end, no one was convicted…no one went to jail, and the Villisca Murders are one of the most famous cold cases in American history. I will have much more to say about this case, and perhaps there is no other that has such fascinating details and clues as this one. But I limit my focus at this point to only a couple of details.

The murders were discovered at about 7 am by the family’s neighbor…

…Mary Peckham. When she didn’t see any Moores that morning, she went over and knocked on the door. So yes! Villisca had a Nosy Neighbor too! All the doors were locked, so she summoned Josiah’s brother Ross, who had a spare key. He entered the house and came upon a horrific scene, to say the least. One of the elements that made the case so interesting from the get-go was the fact that the victims had slept in three different bedrooms, two upstairs, and one behind the parlor downstairs. And none of the victims had gotten out of bed. Only one victim showed a trace of a possible defensive wound. And she was murdered LAST! So in effect, the killer went from bedroom to bedroom, walking up the stairs and then back down, bludgeoning 8 people to death with no one…not one person…having got up to fight, or run, or…

Yes. No one heard anything. Mrs. Peckham made the definitive statement during the initial inquest. She stated that she went to bed at 8:00 pm, and never heard a peep from her neighbors. Although Nosy Neighbor may have been a sound sleeper. However, Mrs. Landers, who lived across the street from the Moores reported hearing "queer sounds" coming from the Moore house. Yet! No one else who lived around the Moores heard anything. And perhaps, the victims didn’t…although I would question that. But it doesn’t seem as though there is any reason to doubt that the neighbors didn’t hear anything coming from the Moore house. But what of Mrs. Landers? I think that there is ultimately a reason for the claim that she heard "queer sounds."

But that changed. When? After the case was reopened in 1916 and a grand jury became involved. Details changed dramatically, and the question of the lack of noise from the house did too. The old lady across the street, Mrs. Margaret A Landers, described what the "queer sounds" actually were, they were shouts: “Oh dear! Oh dear! Don’t, don’t, don’t!” She believed that the person who was doing the shouting was Mrs. Moore. The voice was that of a woman...so who else could it have been, given the Canonical Story. Amazing. Just how loud would Mrs. Moore have to be screaming to be heard by the old lady across the street? So loud that Mrs. Peckham, and others, couldn’t hear, but Mrs. Landers could? And it would seem that if Mrs. Moore actually shouted what Margaret said she shouted, it’s a bit anti-climactic. It almost reminds one of the Likens Trial testimony when, making up fictional stories for the court, witnesses have Sylvia, while being abused and tortured, saying…ouch. Oh dear? Please. And how impossible this is anyway. It is a fact that Mr. and Mrs. Moore were killed first. To carry out murders such as this, the killer has to take out those most capable of physical resistance; i.e. the adult male and then any adult females. He would kill the man first. So if Mrs. Moore was killed next, and she was shouting so loud that Old Lady with the Best Hearing in the World could hear it, I would think that the four children sleeping in the room directly across from that of the parents would hear it too. And even the Stillinger girls on the first floor. So, yes; you would have 6 children awake, out of bed, running around, and screaming. And not “Oh dear!” But it is clear that the four Moore children and the one Stillinger girl were killed while laying in bed…asleep.

So why make such an obviously false claim so many years later? Actually, she made another claim. She stated that she saw two strange men walk over to the Moore house during the daytime. They went around back, and found Mr. Moore’s ax leaning up against a chopping block. One of them picked it up, gazed at it, and laid it back down. They then walked away. Wow! It is implied that these two guys were the killers. Mrs. Landers actually described someone as holding the murder weapon in his hand! Of course, they did this stupid..boy-aren’t-we-dummies-for-doing-this-in-broad-daylight-so-that-everyone-can-see-us…even Mrs. Landers...thing like a couple of idiots. They then, that night, made it back to the house without being seen, entered the house without being seen, were suddenly smart enough to kill 8 victims in three rooms without anyone getting out of bed and none of the neighbors, ones that weren’t suddenly lying years later, hearing a single thing. They then got out of the house unseen, and left town unseen. Please. What Mrs. Landers appears to be doing is two things. First, by describing two morons who handled the murder weapon, she is filling the bucket full of muddy suspects with yet more suspects. And the noise? If she was up and able to hear shouts from the house across the street at the time at which the murders were taking place, then she was up…and could, if necessary, provide alibis for other people.

As it turned out, Mrs. Landers' son’s family was visiting with her at the time of the murders. Her son was…

…Ed Landers, whose wife was Mary Landers. And they got caught telling lies that, with a little investigation, could never hold up…and they knew it. The first interesting thing that came up during the testimony was that years ago when he testified before the Coroner’s Jury, Ed stated that he ate dinner at his mother’s house. He then went out onto the porch after dinner, and saw nothing unusual across the street. Thus he establishes where he was and when (dinner time), and is also a witness to nothing odd happening at the Moore house. It is, of course, far too early to have noticed anything odd. That puts him in the clear. The only problem with his statement is that…it was a lie. Ed then found himself denying having said any number of things to any number of people. He originally told Alvin McCoy that he saw no one around the Moore house that night. Now in 1916, he denied saying that. He made the same statement to the City Marshall, Hank Horton…he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Now he denied saying that. What about the whole I-Ate-Dinner-at-Mom’s-House statement? You guessed it…he denied saying that. In fact his denials about the different things he told others, which essentially came down to the claim that he saw no one near the Moore house, took on a ridiculous form:

“I didn’t put it in those words. I said…Well, I didn’t think I did. I didn’t say…I did not see anybody.”

It’s too bad we can’t push Ed Landers into the Tardis and take him back to Indianapolis in 1965. He’d feel at home testifying at the Sylvia Likens trial. Yes! What I said was that I didn’t think I didn’t see anyone. And that’s very different than actually seeing someone. So if I did see someone, which I am claiming I did, I didn’t ‘think’ I did…I really did! This is perhaps one of the most stupid statements I think I’ve ever read, and shows just what an impossible situation Ed Landers was creating for himself. It turns out that after the murders, Ed, by trade a real estate salesman, morphed into a detective, who went about investigating the murders and looking for clues. It emerged that he had earlier claimed that he saw Fen Moore enter the house on the day of the murders. Fen Moore was one of Josiah’s brothers. Of course, he’s family, and so there’s nothing too strange about Josiah’s brother being at the house on a Sunday. Was Ed implicating Fen Moore? I say…yes he was. When Ed was asked about having said that to another witness, he denied it. If all he did was point out that a Moore brother had been visiting the house on Sunday, and did not intend to cast suspicion on him…why deny having said it? Why add this denial to a bunch of other denials that are clearly false?

Perhaps Ed Landers had a good reason for this denial…he now accused Albert Jones of going into the Moore house…sometime between 8:00 and 8:30. Oh…pm. Albert Jones? Yes, he was the son of Frank Jones, who ran a farm equipment business in town. Josiah Moore had previously worked for Frank, but then left to set up a rival business selling John Deere equipment. As the Canonical Story goes, this upset the Jones family. Then a rumor went around that Josiah had had an affair with Dona Jones, Albert’s wife. The Jones family were also implicated in the murders by a nutty private detective named Wilkerson, who claimed that the Jones’ had hired a nutty killer named Blackie Mansfield to kill the Moores. Blackie? Now that’s a great name for a fiend! And it sure seems familiar to me:

That is Badlands Blackie! He and his evil gang “dry-gulched” Nell’s pappy, and he threatened to kill Nell's father if she didn’t marry him. And that’s not nice. But Blackie met his just fate at the hands of the town’s new sheriff and deputies:

Don’t worry about Badlands Blackie with Coney Island Curly around, the new sheriff assured her. And thus did Larry, Curly, and Moe put an end to the evil doings of Blackie. Not that I would make fun of things, mind you. But the Blackie that so obsessed Wilkerson had nothing to do with the murders. But! Investigators had a picture of Blackie Mansfield. And after testifying about the two idiots who cased the Moore house in the middle of the day, and even handled the murder weapon, Old Lady Landers was shown a picture of

Wait…no…that’s not the right picture. How’d that get in there? That is, of course, according to some lady who sent a letter to an Indianapolis newspaper at the time of the Sylvia Likens Case, the One who is Destroying All That is Good. Don't worry about The Satan, or Helal ben-Shohar, Satan Jr, or Lucifer...or even Pazuzu, Victoria Wingate, or Aunt Mabel and Her Diabolical Snake Show...not with Gidget loose in the universe!

I’m sure the killer looked like…wait…that’s the wrong Blackie. And no, that’s not Badlands Blackie; that’s Blackie Lawless, singer of the 80’s heavy metal band WASP. Let me look again, I’m sure it’s..somewhere..here it is!

Now we’re talking! He looks the part! He was in jail accused of killing his family. He was later that year cleared of being involved in the Villisca murders when the grand jury refused to indict him. For a good reason…he had nothing to do with the murders. In fact, he later sued Wilkerson for slander and won! I will discuss the disreputable Mr. Wilkerson and point out that he had close connections to other characters in this Most Interesting of Cases, in a later segment.

And the rumors about an affair? They were rumors. What about the Stillingers? Frank and Albert were responsible for these murders…revenge of course, but they also butchered the Stillinger girls? They would have had nothing to do with such an affair. And they were still asleep after six people upstairs were killed with axe…maybe just let them sleep and just sneak out of the house. Still, I think that revenge for marital infidelity may indeed be at the center of the case. But the Stillinger girls would, for that to be true, also have to be at the center of the case. In other words, the killer intended on murdering the Moores, but also intended on murdering the two Stillinger girls. That leads to a very different understanding of the events than the Canonical Story would have us believe.

There was a serious flaw associated with Ed Landers’ latest false claim…he linked it to a particular time. That time enabled him to see Albert Jones fictionally enter the Moore’s home, be there before the Moore’s arrived, thereby enabling him to be in the house waiting to kill the Moores when they returned home, and allowing Ed to be back at his mother’s house before anything horrible had happened. He said that he and his wife had been at the restaurant of J.L Posten that evening, and left shortly after 8:00 pm. Then he made a mistake that is seen so often with witnesses in the Likens Case…they begin talking...then embellishing, and then telling a story that none except Canonikers can believe. He said that as he and his wife were walking back to the house of the Old-Lady-with-Bionic-Hearing, they were actually walking behind Albert…

I sure have gotten my pictures all mixed up. That is Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and grandson of Queen Victoria. He lived at the time of the Whitechapel murders. And you guessed it! The world is full of people who say that Albert was Jack the Ripper! That Albert was innocent, and so too Albert Jones. But! As the Landers walked along, they actually ended up 8-10 feet behind the Duke of Clarence…sorry…behind Albert Jones. And what a tension building component to the story that is! To be so close to the murderer! Landers said at first that he thought the man was Ross Moore. Wow! Landers can’t seem to stop implicating Josiah’s brothers! But apparently in the mind of Ed Landers, Albert Jones was pretty stupid. Ed describes Albert suddenly walking up to the Moore house, and finally opening the door and walking in, not even bothering to knock. My, what poor manners! Oh…the Moore’s were known to keep their house locked…at night…and especially when they weren’t home. And despite being only 8 little feet ahead of the Landers, the time being about 8:15, Albert didn’t notice the two people behind him who, had he not turned and walked into the Moore house, would have tripped over him. What do Ed Landers and Mother Landers have in common? They both see people doing things too stupid for the killer to have done.

Mary Landers, Ed’s Better Half, confirmed the story about being at the restaurant. She had no choice…the J.L. Posten who owned the restaurant was the husband of Mary C Posten, whose maiden-name was Mary C Landers, Ed Landers’ older sister. Ed had been working the cash register Sunday night at Villisca’s finest eatery. And the Postens were adamant about Ed and Mary being at the restaurant, which the latter now had no choice to but to admit. So much for Ed Landers being at home at dinner time on the day of the murders. That was a lie. Of course, Ed’s wife wasn’t going to let her mother-in-law fill the bucket with more muddy, though unnamed, culprits without her input! She said that she saw a suspicious man eating at the restaurant on Saturday. Suspicious? He’s just having dinner. How was he suspicious? Well, that’s obvious…he had a scar on his throat under his chin. Wow! A man who had recovered from getting his throat cut must be a bad guy! And in a strange twist on Mother Landers’ story about the two suspicious men, Mary said that she saw two strange men stop at her mother-in-law’s house! Why? They were wall-washers, and wanted to know if the Old Lady Who Could Hear a Pin Drop in Whitechapel had dirty walls that needed washing.

But now I reach the most important element in the story of the Strange Case of Ed Landers. He lied. Wait…that’s not strange…he lies as often as the Great American Circus Clown President! Perhaps, for Ed Landers, he just keeps on tossing out Fake Claims until he finds Fake People with enough Real Stupidity to believe them. He said that he and his wife left the restaurant at 8:00 pm. Ah! Ed’s sister and brother-in-law adamantly insisted that they left at…10:30 pm. That’s right…10:30 pm. And the Postens weren’t the only people who saw this. A.W. McCoy and Gus Reynolds said it was 10:30 pm. So Ed and his wife walked past the Moore home at about 10:45 pm…which is clearly the time that the horrible murders were taking place. And so the lies are rolled back until they hit an obstacle…the truth. Since the morning after the killings, Ed Landers has been implicating person after person...claiming to be at home, then changing around the times…anything to keep from describing himself standing in front of the Moore residence while the murders were taking place. And Mother Landers chimed in…if she was up to hear the screaming…she could say that her son and daughter-in-law were in her house at the time of the killings. She offered us two suspicious figures, one even handling the murder weapon…so the killer couldn’t be her son. One of the men was even…the Dreaded Blackie; well, in some manifestation.

Why? Why not just have been honest from the beginning? The fact that no one heard anything had been established years ago. So you walk past the home…there are no lights on…you hear nothing. This makes you, in fact, another witness whose testimony would simply agree with that of everyone else. The only difference was standing outside at the time. And let’s not forget…you’ve been lying, and from the start. When you lie about your alibi…falsely try to implicate others…change places and times…everyone thinks you’re covering for yourself. Because you’re the killer. However! I do not believe that the Landers had anything to do with the murder of the Moore family and the Stillinger girls. They have no motive…no reason…and there is nothing to suggest that they killed anyone, or were involved in any way. But I can think of another reason for such continual lies. I can think of a good reason why Mother Landers would make her contributions. Suppose you left the Postens’ restaurant at 10:30 pm. You walked part of the way back to your mother’s house…the one across the street from the Moores. You chatted with your sister and brother-in-law. Several locals saw this. Then the Postens turned off and went home. It’s now 10:45 pm, and then something really strange happens. It will change your life forever. As you are walking past the Moore house, you freeze. The door just opened, and someone stepped out. Or a window opened, and someone climbed out. And that person froze. So you find yourself staring at a man…a man you know…who is staring back at you. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time. But so is he. Of course, it’s very strange. But it’s not until the next day that you learn about the horrible murders that took place around the time you saw the man leave the house. And now you know…who did it. Not why, but who. And you know he knows you know. It’s a fictional scene to be sure…and one that would be great in a movie! A double feature! The Strange Case of Ed Landers and The True Story of the Diabolical Mrs. Wright. Both Rated R, of course. Ah yes. But if I were making the movie, I would add yet one more sinister element. I would have my Horrible Murderer, the one seen by the hapless star who was almost as unlucky as the Stillinger girls as far as being at the Moore house at 10:45 pm, let my star know just what would happen if suspicion fell on him as a result of anything the Leading Man might say. And one thing is for sure…we know he’ll do it.