The Man from the Train

by Bill James

  Far from it. The prosecution of Reverend Kelly was a wide-open door for Wilkerson, and he rushed through it. In a political campaign, in a debate, in a trial, the worst thing you can do is to hand the truth to your opponent. It is vastly easier to defend a true proposition than it is to defend a lie. The prosecution of Reverend Kelly, which bordered on being silly, allowed Wilkerson to say things that were true. He would describe Kelly as a “poor nut,” which was true, and would say that Havner was trying to railroad him, which was essentially true.

  Now living full-time in the Villisca area, Wilkerson set up the Reverend Kelly Defense Fund, and raised money on behalf of Kelly’s defense. As long as Kelly was in legal jeopardy, Wilkerson was paid by the defense fund. When Kelly was acquitted that pipeline dried up. Wilkerson looked for some way to sustain his campaign. He decided to run for office. He was going to be the new county attorney.

  Actually that understates it; not only was Wilkerson running for county attorney, but one of his chief supporters was running for Sheriff, and another for county supervisor. They all ran as Republicans. Wilkerson by now was the most famous man in the county. He had conducted dozens and dozens of high-profile public meetings. His picture had been on the front page of the newspapers countless times. He had fantastic name recognition, and while it was true that many people hated him, at least as many and probably more regarded him as a hero. He wanted to be the county attorney, a modest goal for such a man. If he could attain the office, Wilkerson could finally prosecute Frank Jones for arranging the murders of the Moore family, but first he had to get licensed to practice law in Iowa. That’s when the part about being mortal enemies with the Iowa attorney general raised its head.

  In April 1918, J. N. Wilkerson petitioned for a license to practice law in Iowa. Horace Havner acted immediately to deny the petition. That battle was still being fought out when the Republican primary came around in June. Wilkerson was originally listed on the ballot, despite not being legally eligible to take the office he sought, but then was taken off the ballot after it was decided that this was a problem. No problem; Wilkerson was a fantastic campaigner. He started a write-in campaign, and won the primary easily, while one of his supporters won the election to be the Republican candidate for sheriff, another, the candidate for county supervisor.

  Frank Jones was now fighting for his life. If J. N. Wilkerson was elected the county attorney, Jones was in serious, serious trouble. There was, however, another step in the process; there was a county nominating convention, which had the authority to resolve disputes. This was a dispute: Was Wilkerson eligible to appear on the ballot, or wasn’t he? This dispute would be resolved by the Montgomery County Republican Party, and if there was one place left where Frank Jones still had friends, it was the Montgomery County Republican Party.

  * * *

  This finally came to an end in late June 1918.

  There were crime scene photos taken of the Villisca murders, although only one photo is known to survive. Warren Noel was the owner of the crime scene photos, having purchased them with a photography business. J. N. Wilkerson, learning of the photos, visited Noel, who became one of Wilkerson’s most active supporters. He was an excitable young man with an attractive young wife.

  In late summer of 1917, Warren Noel purchased a flashy automobile that he fairly obviously could not afford. In September 1917, Noel was being investigated by the county sheriff on charges of writing bad checks. In the course of that investigation, investigators learned that Noel was also suspected, by the other officers in Wilkerson’s operation, of not turning over to the group all of the funds that he had collected. He was stealing the money before Wilkerson could steal it.

  In October 1917, Noel staged an incident in which he claimed to have discovered a plot to derail a train and thus murder Wilkerson, who would be on the train. He thought there should be a reward, from the railroad, for his having prevented the train derailment. Officials from the railroad didn’t even consider paying the reward, but didn’t have enough information to prosecute. About the same time, officials from Wilkerson’s band confronted Noel about holding back money. Unable to come up with the money, Noel sold his flashy car, reported it stolen, and filed a false insurance claim. The insurance company, like the railroad, didn’t give a thought to paying the claim but didn’t have enough information to prosecute.

  On October 31, 1917, Noel took a train east from Villisca, getting off the train several times for various reasons. He mailed a letter back to his wife, claiming that he had been seized and was being held hostage by a mysterious group of ruffians. The next morning Noel was found on the platform of the freight depot in Albia, Iowa, 120 miles east of Villisca, with a bullet in his head. His revolver was on the ground beside him.

  Noel was well insured, overinsured, and his suicide left his young widow a wealthy woman. In late June 1918, as the battle raged over whether Wilkerson would be allowed to practice law, thus allowed to become the county attorney, Mae Noel and J. N. Wilkerson traveled together (with her baby) to Ottumwa, Iowa, southeast of Des Moines. Arriving about eleven o’clock at night, they walked to a hotel, where they registered under assumed names in two adjoining rooms.

  If it now occurs to you Warren Noel may actually have been murdered, welcome to the club; this has occurred to others as well. The coroner ruled it a suicide. But entirely by chance, Wilkerson and Mae Noel were spotted on the street by state agents. The state agents were low-level police officers, generally assigned to bust up poker games, hassle bootleggers and prostitutes, and enforce other laws of a type that, in the modern world, we would classify as “why don’t you people mind your own business?” One of those laws prohibited adultery. Wilkerson was a married man. In 1918 it was a violation of the law, in Iowa and probably every other state in the nation, for him to get too friendly with a woman not his wife.

  The agents who spotted Wilkerson knew immediately who he was, and the state agents worked indirectly for Horace Havner; that is, they worked for somebody who worked for somebody who worked for Horace Havner. When they spotted Wilkerson with a woman not his wife, they got interested fast, and in a few minutes there were three state agents hiding in the next room, ears pressed to the door, and standing on furniture so that they could watch the hallway from behind the transom of a darkened room.

  Wilkerson and Mae Noel were found to be sharing a hotel room and arrested on a charge of adultery. The next morning that charge was dropped, but they were rearrested on a charge of conspiracy to commit adultery; apparently the agents, in their eagerness, had jumped the gun and arrested the couple before they had actually got around to adulterizing each other. It was a violation of the manual; the agents were supposed to wait until they heard the bedsprings creaking—again, I am not making up these details—but they got anxious and moved in too early.

  Wilkerson’s arrest made headlines across Iowa. Perhaps it was not a serious law and not a serious violation, but to do this with the widow of a man who had been completely devoted to you and who had recently killed himself was seriously unseemly.

  At long last, Wilkerson’s support melted quickly away. The Montgomery County Republican Convention decided that Wilkerson would not be their candidate. Wilkerson dropped his petition for a license to practice law in Iowa and filed instead for a license to practice law in Nebraska. Nebraska turned him down.

  In late 1918 there was one more trial, Wilkerson’s trial for conspiracy to commit adultery. Horace Havner personally prosecuted the case; Wilkerson, as always, was active and aggressive in his own defense. The trial was nasty but brief and ended in a hung jury identical to Reverend Kelly’s, eleven to one for acquittal. Havner could have retried the case but chose not to, and the case against Mae Noel was never brought to trial.

  The great J. N. Wilkerson left Villisca in disgrace. He came back at least one more time, about Christmas 1918. He ran into Frank Jones on the street; they were both headed to the same bakery. They snarled at one another, spat insults, and made motions a
s if they were ready to fight. Frank Jones pulled back his foot and kicked Wilkerson, so they said, like you would kick a dog, and then they were pulled apart.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Villisca 5

  In this era, private detectives were the nation’s premier investigators. The private eyes were better funded than the police networks, better organized, more experienced, better paid, and more flexible. Between 1930 and 1950, the private eyes were pushed out of this business by the development of state investigative agencies.

  There were four large national detective agencies in that era—the Pinkerton Agency, which was the largest, the Thiel Agency, the Kirk Agency, and the Burns Agency, which was the second-largest. It may seem surprising that the Burns Agency would work with a man like Wilkerson, but actually it isn’t. Nineteenth-century detectives were essentially spies. The term detective entered the English language in the middle of the nineteenth century and was in common usage after 1860, but early detectives basically infiltrated criminal communities, befriended criminals, and ratted them out. Of course, police occasionally do that now, but in the nineteenth century that was a detective’s job description. James McParland of Pinkerton’s, the most celebrated detective of the nineteenth century—still alive and still active in 1912, and peripherally involved in this case—infiltrated criminal conspiracies as a young man and ran spy networks as an older man. This is not to deny him credit for what he was; he was also clever, well-organized, and an outstanding interrogator. He would get everybody’s story on record, and then he would systematically check out the details of each narrative, just as a modern police investigation would.

  By 1912 the detective business was becoming more sophisticated; it was no longer merely spying on criminals and betraying them, although that remained an important part of the trade. When Wilkerson was on assignment for the Burns Agency he drew a salary, drew a per diem allowance, and (of course) had all of his expenses paid. But otherwise, when he was not on assignment, the usual arrangement was that the detective had to drum up his own business; otherwise he didn’t get paid. The Burns Agency and the other agencies ran ads in local newspapers, and their employees trolled for high-dollar thefts and other serious crimes, as well as, of course, taking walk-in business: missing relatives, people who absconded without paying debts, and cheating husbands.

  For a detective to make money by investigating a tragedy was normal—as it is for any detective, or for a prosecutor—and Wilkerson probably rationalized it as such. This is what I have to do to fund this investigation, I have to hold these meetings. It’s normal for a detective. He probably did not see how corrupt he had become because, of course, he did not want to.

  It would be nice to report that J. N. Wilkerson was punished for his actions and died under a bridge, but he wasn’t and he didn’t. He landed on his feet; he would spend much of the rest of his life traveling around the Midwest, lecturing about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He developed complex and convoluted conspiracy theories about the assassination, and his theories survive to this day. An old man who died in 1903, in his last years, claimed to be the “real” John Wilkes Booth. After he died his body was mummified and exhibited at carnivals and in sideshows as the body of John Wilkes Booth. Wilkerson purchased the mummy sometime in the 1930s and toured the Midwest with it, giving lectures about the assassination and supposed cover-up. A long and entertaining history of J. N. Wilkerson and his mummy “John” was published in the Saturday Evening Post on February 10, 1938.

  Years later, the county attorney who assisted Havner in the prosecution of Reverend Kelly was walking down a street in Kansas City, when he heard someone call his name. He turned around; it was Wilkerson. Wilkerson said his apartment was just across the street, and he invited the attorney up for a drink. “You’ve got yourself a real nice place here,” said the attorney.

  Wilkerson smiled broadly and said, “Well, you can thank the citizens of Montgomery County for that. They paid for about sixty thousand dollars of it.” Wilkerson died in Oklahoma either in 1937 or in 1944; we are unsure which is accurate.

  Wilkerson’s stepson married Blanche Stillinger, the older sister of the Stillinger girls, who gave permission for them to stay overnight with the Moore family. They had a long and happy marriage, and raised a family.

  Frank Jones lived another twenty-five years, into his mid-eighties; he died in 1941, in Villisca.

  Horace Havner served as attorney general of Iowa from 1917 to 1921, being reelected in the midst of his war with Wilkerson. Havner in 1917 was traveling around the state, speaking everywhere, trying to lay a foundation for a run for the governor’s office in 1918. Suffering setbacks associated with this case, he skipped the run in 1918, ran for governor in 1920, and lost in the primary. Havner slipped into obscurity after leaving the attorney general’s office, and we have been unable to locate the time and place of his death.

  The much maligned (and unfairly maligned) Hank Horton died in Villisca in 1923, aged sixty-two.

  William Mansfield became a labor organizer. Later in life he would claim that he was targeted for prosecution in this case because of his labor union activities, although actually he didn’t become active in his union until years after his involvement in this case. He died in Milwaukee in the 1950s.

  Reverend Kelly talked constantly, during his trials, about writing a book, explaining his view of the case, but of course he never did. He was in and out of Montgomery County for a couple of years, trying to borrow money to file a lawsuit against the county, but that never happened, either. Eventually he went back to England, where he disappeared. He may or may not have returned to the United States. It’s rumored that he died in a mental hospital on Long Island in the 1950s.

  The axe with which the murders were committed was taken on the night of the murders to the home of Montgomery County Sheriff Oren Jackson. It was kept at the Montgomery County Courthouse, and was introduced into evidence in the Kelly trials in 1917. Sometime between 1923 and 1930 the axe was given by the then-sheriff Arthur Baker to James Risden, who was an investigator for Horace Havner in 1917, one of the crew that bullied Kelly into confessing, and who later became head of the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation. A 1945 article in the Des Moines Register mentioned the axe being in the possession of Mr. Risden. Two young men interested in the murders in 1961, Edgar Epperly and Donald Brown, located the axe in the possession of Mr. Risden’s widow, and she expressed a willingness to give it away. Donald Brown gave her a box of chocolate-covered cherries, not exactly in exchange for the axe, but as a gift in recognition of a gift. Later, Mr. Brown gave the axe to Dr. Epperly, again in exchange for a box of chocolate-covered cherries. Epperly loaned the axe to a Villisca city official, and it was displayed in the Villisca city hall from 1987 to 2004, at which time Dr. Epperly reclaimed the axe and placed it in a secure location. Plans are for the axe to be donated to the Villisca Historical Society.

  If you want to know more about Villisca there is a documentary movie, Villisca: Living with a Mystery, which I am tempted to say is of the highest possible quality. Of course, nothing is of the highest possible quality, but certainly this is far above the normal standards of crime documentary. Living with a Mystery includes interviews filmed over a good many years by Kelly and Tammy Rundle, edited and released in 2004. The Rundles talked to everybody they could find who was extremely interested in the case, talked to old people (in the 1980s and 1990s) who were in Villisca at the time of the murders, assembled all of the facts of the case, and boiled it down into an immensely interesting 116 minutes. The Rundles worked with Dr. Edgar V. Epperly, a retired educator who has been interested in Villisca, and working to understand what happened, since the 1950s; Dr. Epperly is in a sense the author of the documentary. Much of the documentary is oral history, and oral history involves inevitable distortions, so some things that are said in the movie are not exactly right. But if you’re not really, really interested in the Villisca murders now, you will be by the time you finish watching.r />
  Roy Marshall was the state fire marshal of Iowa from 1989 to 2000; that’s right, Marshal Marshall. He had a fifty-year career investigating fires in Iowa. As a result, when he turned his attention to writing a book about Villisca (Villisca: The True Account of the Unsolved Mass Murder That Stunned the Nation) he had both investigative skills and relevant connections. Marshall is quite intelligent, very professional, and entirely serious in his approach. The book was published by Aventine Press, a vanity publisher, in 2003; Marshall knows more about the murders in Villisca than I am ever going to know, and I have great respect for his work.

  A couple of quibbles. While Marshall recognizes and clearly states that there is good evidence connecting the Villisca crimes to others in the series, he devotes almost all of his book to the “follow on” stories about Villisca, the prosecutions of innocent men in Villisca. This seems to me a curious choice. He pays little attention to the question of who might actually have committed the murders, instead writing for hundreds of pages about the prosecutions of two innocent men, and the horrible battles created within Villisca by these corrupt prosecutions.

  Second quibble, which is related to the first. While Marshall is extremely well informed about Villisca, and I take his book about Villisca to be a credible and authoritative source, when he touches on murders in other towns he often doesn’t know what he is talking about, and much of what he says is just completely wrong. It is more than that; he seems curiously ill informed on those topics. His account of the Pfanschmidt murders (chapter XVIII) is irretrievably garbled, and he doesn’t seem to have ever heard of Clementine Barnabet (chapter XXXVIII), although her story was well known at the time and shaped the thinking of many others about the murders. Marshall almost ridicules the Montgomery County sheriff, Oren Jackson, because Jackson kept coming back to the belief that a religious cult was behind the murders: