The Official Site of the Villisca Axe Murders

Suspected and Acquitted of the Villisca Axe Murders

Reverend Lyn George Jacklin Kelly was born in England in 1878 and came to the United States with his wife Laura in approximately 1904. He wanted desperately to become a preacher and quickly joined the Presbyterian Church.

According to Roy Marshall in his book, "Villisca", "Kelly was a spidery little man with protruding ears, a prominent nose, high forehead and a wide mouth with large lips that seemed to turn down at the corners even when he smiled. People remembered his dark, deep-set and chilling eyes, but it was his mannerisms even more than his looks that disconcerted them.

When excited, and he was easily excited, he ranted and spoke so fast he was often impossible to understand. He drooled excessively, and while in one of his frequent tirades was apt to spray spittle on those nearby."

One well known historian is adamant the Reverend Kelly was responsible for the Villisca Axe Murders. In an article that appeared in the Sept. 28th 1986 issue of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Ed Epperly, author of several articles on the Villisca Axe Murders is quoted as saying "Personally, I am convinced that Kelly was the killer. I think you can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt."

Present at the Children's Day Exercises at the Presbyterian Church, Kelly quickly became a suspect in the Villisca Axe Murders. Kelly had a somewhat checkered past and his departure from Villisca early on the morning of the murders was enough to arouse suspicion. Kelly arrived in Villisca on Saturday from his home in Macedonia, Iowa.

He was to attend the Children's Day Exercises and then stay overnight at the home of Reverend Ewing, pastor at the church, and his wife. When Reverend George Kelly arrived in Villisca, Seymour Enarson, the son of Henry and Jenny Enarson met him at the train depot. He was driven from the depot to the home of Louis Enarson (Seymour’s uncle) for supper. After supper at the home of Louis and Dora, Kelly was taken to the Henry Enarson home for the evening.

“At the family farm, where Rev. George Kelly stayed the night before the murders, there were my father, Henry; my mother, Jenny; my two brothers, Seymour and Wayne; and my four sisters, Grace, Garnet, LaVerne, myself, and Wilma.

After supper at Uncle Lou’s, Seymour brought Rev. Kelly out to the (Enarson) farm, which is located six miles north of Villisca. It was still light. When the little Minister got to the farmhouse, he was very nervous and began to walk the floor in the living room.

He told my mother to get those children out of the living room because they were too noisy and they bothered him. But there was no other place to play so the three younger children had to stay in the living room.

The two older daughters helped my mother in the kitchen. There was a bedroom off the living room, on the ground floor, where Rev. Kelly spent the night. The Rev. Kelly’s behavior so alarmed my mother that, after the family had gone upstairs to bed, she wrapped herself in a blanket and spent a sleepless night on the steps leading to the upstairs bedrooms.

The stairway had a door at the foot of the stairs leading from the living room, where she sat behind the door. The next morning, the day of the murders, my father and Seymour took the Minister to the Pilot Grove Church.

Seymour was the one who talked about what happened there. The women at the noon picnic made over the Minister and Seymour thought some of the women acted silly toward him. The morning sermon, Seymour thought was the strangest he had ever heard. He was only fourteen at the time and didn’t say exactly what the Minister had said.

After the picnic, my father drove the Minister back to the house for supper. Afterwards, Seymour drove Rev. Kelly back into town (Villisca) where he left him at Rev. Ewing’s home.

That was the last any of the family saw of him prior to the murders.” “We youngsters always heard the Minister confessed the crime on the train going to Macedonia. As we heard it, he had received a vision to follow the biblical injunction, “Slay and slay utterly.”

Whether that is in the Bible I have no idea, but we as youngsters always repeated it to each other. After he was acquitted in the two murder trials and left for England, Rev. Kelly wrote letters to both my father and Uncle Lou asking for money so he could return to the United States. They both refused him. Nonetheless, I have always heard he did somehow return.

I do remember my parents always believed Rev. Kelly committed the Villisca Ax Murders.”

“I remember the ax murder as tho it were yesterday. I still can see all the caskets in the park. I feel like I grew up with that. The Senator Jones was mistreated something terrible. Verna Means (our cousin who worked as Secretary to F.F. Jones) worked for him.

It was all handled the way a lot of gossip starts. I remember a lot about the preacher Kelly. He was crazy as a loon. The nite of the murder there was a children’s program at the Presbyterian Church. This preacher had been at our home. Dad had taken him up north some place to preach.

They came back, had supper & Mom told Dad to never bring that thing out there again. He wouldn’t have a thing to do with any of us kids and that bothered Mom. That night Dad sent Seymour into Villisca to take the preacher back and attend the Children’s exercises.

The preacher never attended the exercises and when he said before he left Villisca-he admitted he did it and said, ‘I slayed the children first because they have always been a detriment to me’ & when Mom read that she said ‘He did it’, and when he got on the train the next morn to leave Villisca he told the conductor, ‘there was an awful murder in Villisca last nite.’

All this was brought out at the trial in Red Oak. Dad & Uncle Lou each had letters from him written like a crazy man and Dad said they sat back in the (Court) room & were never called up & they were both there ready. But they wouldn’t let the preacher’s voice mean anything. They dismissed him as crazy and shipped him back to England.”

“It caused a break in the town, split the churches and really I don’t know why they would want to keep it hanging. There was a Detective too. I’m sure you would find his name in your papers. I have no papers, just what I have written you is just what I remember hanging around with dad and the men. I would like to forget it but I never will.”

In letters written to authorities after the murders, Kelly appeared obsessed with the murders in Villisca and supposedly wrote about things that only the murderer would have known. Witnesses said he spoke of the murders on the morning train to Macedonia before they had even been discovered and he also sent a bloody shirt to the laundry in Council Bluffs.

Kelly was arrested in 1914 in South Dakota for sending obscene materials through the mail and was sentenced to prison. He wound up instead in a mental hospital in Washington D.C.

In 1917 Kelly was arrested for the Villisca Axe Murders. His confession would become the most disputed part of his case. Kelly's first trial ended in a hung jury and in the second he was acquitted. To read regarding the Kelly trials, click here.

It is rumored Kelly returned to England after his release and died there.

 

"Boasted of Eight Murders"

(By United Press) Red Oak, Ia., Sept 17, 1917 -- The confession of Lyn George J. Kelly is alleged to have been made to the state agents, that he killed eight persons with an ax at Villisca in 1912, was not the first made by the itinerant unordained minister. This was brought out today when the Kelly trial was resumed here. W.C McQueen, former deputy at Sioux Falls, S.D., who arrested Kelly in 1914 on some trivial charge, testified that Kelly told him he committed the murders at Villisca. According to witnesses Kelly told other persons who came to the cell to see him that he killed the Moore family and the two Stillinger girls and asked them "how did the Iowans find out I killed them?"

A man who shared a cell with Kelly at the Sioux Falls prison testified in the same line. According to this prisoner, he said he killed the eight persons and added that none would suspect him because he was a minister.