UNSOLVED: Villisca Axe Murders Pt. 2

On the evening of June 9th, 1912, Josiah and Sarah Moore walked their four children home from a Children's Day program at the Presbyterian church in Villisca, Iowa. Two young sisters, Lena and Ina Stillinger, had been invited to stay the night. By the next morning all eight of them had been murdered with an axe in their beds while the small southwestern Iowa town slept, in what became known as the Villisca axe murders. Josiah ran the local farm implement dealership and Sarah had organized the church program that evening; the Moore children were 11, 10, 7 and 5. There was no forced entry, nothing of value taken, and no one who heard a sound. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy introduces the Moore family and the town where they were among the best known names, the night eight people were killed behind unlocked doors, and the crime scene that curious neighbors walked through for more than a day before the bodies were removed. Please note, this episode contains descriptions of extreme violence and may not be suitable for all audiences. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios

Beware...for Halloween, Carter Roy is haunting this feed with an episode of another show he hosts, The First 48.

For Staten Island kids in the 1970s and '80s, the boogeyman had a name: Cropsey, a madman said to live in the tunnels beneath Willowbrook State School and take any child who stayed out too late. Then children began disappearing for real: five-year-old Alice Pereira in 1972, seven-year-old Holly Ann Hughes in 1981, eleven-year-old Tiahease Jackson in 1983. On July 9, 1987, 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger, a girl with Down syndrome known to every neighbor on her block, went out for a walk and never came home. Thirty-five days later, a volunteer found her in a shallow grave near a Willowbrook campsite used by Andre Rand, a former custodian there. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy examines the legend that haunted a borough for two decades, the children who vanished without answers, and the grave behind Willowbrook that turned a bedtime story into a police investigation. Please note, this episode contains discussion of the abduction of children and may not be suitable for all audiences. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy follows the excavation of Dorothea Puente's garden and the murder trial that came out of it. Detectives recovered seven bodies from the yard on F Street. Puente walked away during the dig, took a bus to Los Angeles, and was arrested days later after a man she met in a bar recognized her from the news. Prosecutors charged her with nine murders and built the case almost entirely from circumstance: the sedatives in her victims' bodies, the prescriptions she explained away as sleep aids, and the checks that kept being cashed after her tenants stopped being seen. She insisted they had died of natural causes and that she had only kept collecting their money. The trial also exposed how a woman on parole for stealing from the elderly had been handed one vulnerable adult after another. No court ever reached a verdict on six of the nine deaths she was charged with, and the number of people who died in Dorothea Puente's care has never been settled. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios

Through the 1980s, a landlady named Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California. Her tenants were the people nobody else would take: the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the newly homeless. Social workers who visited described her as warm and unusually attentive, the rare operator who cooked real meals. Puente also collected their mail and cashed their Social Security checks, and she was on parole, under orders to stay away from elderly people and stop handling government money. In November 1988, a social worker reported a tenant missing: Alvaro Montoya, a gentle man with intellectual disabilities who everyone called Bert. Days later, detectives started digging in the garden. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy introduces Dorothea Puente and the record of fraud and violence behind her, the boarding house she ran on other people's benefit checks, and the missing tenant whose social worker refused to accept the story she was given. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios