Dr. Edgar Epperly is the foremost historical authority on the 1912 Villisca axe murder mystery. Think you can stump him? Submit your question today.
What tangible link between F. F. Jones and William Mansfield did Detective Wilkerson forge? -Bill, Northern Ireland
Edgar V. Epperly: The simple answer is none, but perhaps I should offer some evidence to support that assertion.
In the spring of 1914 James N. Wilkerson arrived in Villisca posing as a Texas land agent. Actually, he was an operative of the Burns Detective Agency investigating the axe murder incognito. His first reports to the Iowa Attorney General’s office were wildly speculative and revealed no coherent theory guiding his initial investigations. One of his more colorful speculations was that the killer had committed the murder in the nude which explained why no bloody clothes hampered his escape.
Wilkerson’s nosing into the case soon led him to the widespread local suspicion that prominant Villisca citizen and Iowa State Senator F. F. Jones (photo on left) was somehow behind the outrage. By the early summer of 1914, Detective Wilkerson had focused his interest on Jones and began to windrow the hundreds of rumors into a coherent, if improbable, case against Jones. All he lacked was a murderer.
In a rare stroke of luck, another major axe murder hit the public press during the summer of 1914. On July 5th Jacob Mislich, his wife Mary, daughter Martha, and her infant daughter Marie, were murdered in their beds in the south Chicago suburb of Blue Island. Initial speculation linked William (Bill) Mansfield, estranged husband of Martha to the murder. Police investigated Bill’s whereabouts at the time, but were satisfied with his alibi that he was working in a Milwaukee packing house when the killer struck.
Wilkerson was not so easily satisfied. He visited the scene and reported that the two cases were practically identical. From that point on Wilkerson insisted that Bill Mansfield was the perpetrator of both murders, and he began to refer to Mansfield as "Blackie." 
Working behind the scenes, Wilkerson (photo on left) developed an elaborate theory that pictured Mansfield as the primary murderer with two supporters added just in case Bill faltered. Harry Whipple, a part time coal miner and day laborer from the Carbon, IA, area, and his young brother-in-law John Oviett were the two helpers hired to stand behind Mansfield.
By 1916 when Wilkerson laid his case before the general public he had this trio of murderers meeting in Villisca on Saturday, June 8, to case the house. That inspection on Saturday morning was followed by a Saturday night meeting with F.F. Jones in the rye field behind Joe Moore’s house.
Unfortunately for Wilkerson, Bill Mansfield was able to prove, with both written records and sworn testimony, that he was working in Montgomery, IL, during both the week before and after the Villisca murder. It was also an embarrassment that the Blue Island murder had been solved in 1915 by a confession from Casimer Arezewski, an immigrant who had boarded with the Mislichs. Casimer confessed the crime and was identified as being seen in the area the day before the murder. On this evidence he was convicted and incarcerated in a Illinois mental hospital.
Contrary to Wilkerson’s accusations, Mansfield (photo on left) was never suspected of using drugs, could not be placed in Villisca at anytime and never laid eyes on F. F. Jones. Standing four square for the union movement, Mansfield spent his life as a labor organizer for the packing house workers union. He died in the 1950s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, honored by his union and unacquainted with Frank Fernando Jones.
Photo at top: Edgar Epperly at the "Double Talks" event in Ames, Iowa at the Des Moines Area Community College campus in January 2008. (Fourth Wall Films)
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