The 1912 Villisca Axe Murders Blog: Three Slain in Bed by Fiend in Monmouth

On October 2, 1911 the headlines in the Lincoln Evening News in Lincoln, Nebraska read "Three Slain in Bed by Fiend". The sensational story grabbed the attention of readers all over the country.

"MONMOUTH, ILL, Oct. 2 - Accepting revenge as the motive, the police and Warren county officers today sought an unknown enemy of William E. Dawson, fifty-five years old, who with his wife and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Georgia, were slain in their beds with an axe. Bloodhounds from Decatur, Ill., arrived today and took up at the house a trail which they followed to the county fair grounds, but there became confused.

The coroner is investigating the report that an ex-convict, who went to the Illinois penitentiary with Dawson more than twenty years ago, had threatened Dawson. Dawson since his release had been a law abiding citizen and had reared a family of six daughters. Discovery of the crime was made known when Dawson failed to appear at the Christian church, where he was janitor. Members went to his house to get a key. Lying in one bed was Dawson and his wife and in an adjoining room Georgia was found slain. Each had been struck a single blow. The motive could not have been robbery since Dawson was a poor man and $40 was left untouched in his clothing.

The authorities today are working on a new theory. It is that a farm hand, formerly employed near here, is the murderer. Two years ago the man was sent to Joliet for larceny on the testimony given by the murdered daughter, Georgia. It is thought he may have committed the crime.

Authorities throughout the state were notified by the local chief of police today to hold and question all suspicious characters. It is believed the murderer has gone either towards Peoria or Rock Island.

The inquest will be held this afternoon."

Villisca City Square, 1910.

The murder was never solved. Eight months later Josiah and Sara Moore, their four young children, and two young friends, Lena and Ina Stillinger, would be murdered in their beds in Villisca, Iowa.