Villisca (Book)

Signed copy of book "Villisca" by author, Roy Marshall

Published March 2003 

In 1912, what is still arguably one of the most violent crimes in U.S. history took place in the rural Iowa town of Villisca. Law enforcement officers encountered a scene of unimagined violence: eight victims, six of them children, bludgeoned to death with an ax while they slept. Everywhere there were clues. But inexperienced investigators failed, and private detectives took over.

When Detective James Newton Wilkerson charged that a respected state senator had been motivated to the unthinkable by the promiscuity of his daughter-in-law, the community was drawn into a bitter and accelerating struggle between powerful men. And then a deranged and perverted minister confessed.