Food to Die For: Cornbread Inspired by the Villisca Axe Murders

Equal parts travelogue and cookbook, Amy Bruni’s Food to Die For: Recipes and Stories from America’s Most Legendary Haunted Places (Harper Celebrate) journeys to over 50 spooky locations throughout the country, recounting their grisly history and sharing a recipe that captures their eerie essence. In this excerpt, Bruni looks at one of the most brutal and infamous crimes in Iowa’s history: the bloody murder of eight people—most of them children—in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912. The Villisca Axe Murder House is currently open to the public for tours and overnight stays.

June 9, 1912, was an especially dark night in Villisca, Iowa. The Midwestern town was in a financial dispute with the power company, and the streetlights had been turned off, blanketing the homes of two thousand people in total darkness. No one could have known what was happening at 508 East Second Street. No one could have even imagined.

The Moore family had spent the day at a church event, returning home at about 9:30 p.m. Josiah and Sarah had four children: Herman (11), Mary Katherine (10), Arthur (7), and Paul (5). Mary Katherine had invited two friends—Lena (12) and Ina (8) Stillinger—to stay the night at the Moore house. Nothing appeared amiss outside the house until the next morning, when neighbor Mary Peckham noticed the family wasn’t out doing their usual morning chores. Her knock at the locked door elicited no response. Mary called Josiah’s brother, who unlocked the door to the house, only to find an unthinkable horror scene inside. Dr. J. Clark Cooper later testified as to what he saw when he arrived at the scene: “All we could see was a arm [sic] of someone sticking from under the edge of the cover with the blood on the pillows and I went over and lifted the covers and saw what I supposed was a body, some entire stranger and a mere child at the back of the bed. I did not recognize them at all.”

Every person in the home had been bludgeoned to death with the blunt end of an axe, struck so many times that their faces were mangled beyond the point of recognition. Each person had been killed through a bedsheet, presumably to minimize blood spatter, and evidence suggested that they were all still asleep when murdered.

Nothing seemed to be missing from the home, but drawers had been ransacked for cloth to cover every mirror and window inside. On the kitchen table sat a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water that the killer had presumably used to wash up with. The bloody axe was found in the room where the Stillinger sisters were killed.

To this day, no one knows who committed the heinous crimes. Reverend Lyn George Kelly, a traveling minister who had been at the event with the Moores that day, was the leading suspect.

He had a history of mental illness, sent bloody clothes to be laundered soon after the murders, and returned to the Moore home two weeks later, pretending to be an investigator. The following year he was kicked out of seminary for requesting a woman do her work for him in the nude. He was sent to jail and then to a mental hospital, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Five years after the murders, Kelly was put on trial for allegedly committing the crimes but was acquitted. Some theories link the Moores’ deaths to serial killers, but no definitive answers have ever surfaced.

Today the Villisca Axe Murder House is open for daytime tours and overnight bookings. Almost everyone who goes to the home looking for ghosts has been able to make contact with them. Investigators have captured EVPs of people they believe are family members, as well as capturing video of apparitions. One investigator, Robert Laursen Jr., went into the house in November 2014 and aggressively challenged any spirits there to come after him. The next thing he knew, he woke up in the hospital; he had stabbed himself in the chest with a hunting knife, with no recollection of what had happened that night.

 

Villisca Cornbread

In a state as famous for its corn as Iowa, is it any surprise that cornbread is a staple? This regional recipe is adapted from the cooking blog DeadgirlBaking, whose author developed this Villisca-inspired cornbread after visiting the axe murder house.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8-inch cast-iron skillet with butter.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and baking powder.

3. Stir in the liquids until just combined.

4. Pour the batter into the skillet. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden. Serve with butter and honey.

 

INGREDIENTS

Butter, for greasing

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup cornmeal

¼ cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup milk

1 (8-ounce) can creamed corn

¼ cup canola oil

1 egg

Butter, for serving Honey, for serving

Excerpted with permission from Food to Die For by Amy Bruni.  Copyright © 2024 Amy Bruni.  Used by permission of Harper Celebrate.