There is a lot of thinking that the Villisca, Iowa axe murder case was perhaps the first modern-style serial killer case, as there were families and people killed like that in other states like Colorado, a couple in Kansas, and I think one of the original main suspects killed his family just like that just near Chicago in 1917 I think it was. The cops said that the murder scene and apparent modus operandi strongly suggested a cocaine fiend was the murderer, but then again, at that time, the people who wanted to ban Bolivian Marching Powder also claimed that C-Jam made African American men impervious to .32 calibre bullets . . .
I don't know if they really believed it back then or were trying to flush out the murderer, but the stories about the murder in the Kansas City, Omaha and other newspapers claimed that the coroner had used the retina of one of the children to obtain a picture of the killer, as if the last thing a person sees before dying is imprinted on the retina like a photograph and somehow retrievable.
Whoa, I hadn't heard about the cases in Kansas, and Omaha, and what do you mean "used the retina of one of the children to obtain a picture of the killer"?
Could you send me some links about those murders?
I just ordered a book I found online last night called "The Man From the Train" which theorizes that the Hinterkaiffeck murders and another 9 axe murder-killings of families throughout the United States between 1898--1920-something (including the Axe Murders of New Orleans which was the other case I forgot about) were all killed by the same man named Paul Mueller. I am assuming the cases you are referring to are some of the ones this author also attributes to the killer.
His theory is that every house that the killer killed at was near a train station and that this guy was a transient riding the train around the U.S. killing people with an axe and that he was a German immigrant who returned to Hinterkaifeck to kill there.
Now...I don't know if you have read about the Hinterkaiffeck murders (if not you really should) but I've often thought there was much in common between that and the Villisca case, but honestly, I have to be very doubtful that the same person who committed the Villisca crime in Iowa was the same one who killed those people in Hinterkaifeck Germany 10 years later in 1922.
Of course it was still possible to take a plane back then to kill in another country, but I don't know, it's much easier for me to buy that someone killed multiple families in the U.S. than that that same person ALSO went to Germany to commit a crime, but not impossible. It kind of seems like something some true crime addict like me would WANT to believe out of it being an interesting idea rather than it likely being true. However, i think it is VERY likely that some of the other axe murders in the U.S. at the time were committed by the same person who did the Villisca killings, but whether or not they were this Paul Mueller guy I'm not sure of.
I read some excerpts, and there were so many similarities between these cases: entire families killed, usually with the BLUNT end of the axe, axe left at crime scene, likelihood of killer hiding out in the house, train stations near houses, mirrors covered up, bodies covered up, wick burned down on a lamp, etc....very interesting theory.
Still seems more likely to me that the one in Germany was someone else, but I don't know, it intrigues me that they could be the same person.
I look forward to reading it.