Buried Bones - a historical true crime podcast with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes · Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Axed PT 2

·51 min·3 clips

Reverend Lynn is accused of soliciting nude poses from girls as young as 13 and showing pornography.

1. Buried Bones centers on the 1912 Villisca, Iowa axe murders and the Moore family farmhouse in a town of about 2,500 people. 2. Kate Winkler Dawson is a journalist who has spent 25 years writing about true crime, and Paul Holes is a retired cold case investigator with experience on complicated cases. 3. The episode asks whether the Villisca killings were one crime or part of a larger Midwestern series. 4. The Moore family included Sarah and Josiah Moore and four children 11 and under, and two girls sleeping in a guest room were also killed. 5. Kate and Paul note strange details in the house, including a slab of bacon, raw bacon on the kitchen floor, and Josiah’s missing ax. 6. The first suspect discussed is Reverend Lynn George Jacqueline Kelly, a 5-foot-2 traveling preacher from England. 7. Lynn said he saw a man’s shadow near the Moore house, heard thuds of an axe, and noticed a suspicious stranger on a 5:19 AM train. 8. Paul questions whether those observations reflect proximity to the church or knowledge of the crime. 9. Kate says investigators later let Lynn walk through the house and he claimed to find a glass vial in the room where Lena and Ina slept. 10. Lynn also started presenting himself as a minister and a Scotland Yard trained detective while blaming relative suspects. 11. The hosts then turn to Frank Fernando Jones, a merchant, banker, Methodist, and Iowa state senator in Villisca. 12. Jones and Josiah Moore had a business conflict after Josiah left Jones’s store to sell John Deere equipment on his own. 13. Kate adds a rumor that Josiah was calling Jones’s daughter-in-law Donna through the Mutual Telephone Company, at least a dozen times. 14. The episode also mentions Donna’s calls to Dr. Lomas, speculation about a pregnancy, and an affair involving Albert Davey. 15. Phone operators reportedly heard a fight, a gunshot, and Albert losing part of his thumb after being caught in bed with Donna. 16. A third suspect, Henry Lee Moore, is raised and then ruled out because he was in Columbia, Missouri during the murders. 17. Years later, Lynn was known in South Dakota as a crank who ranted about Villisca and made multiple confessions. 18. Testimony in 1917 described obscene letters, suicide attempts, jail outbursts, and a sanity hearing before his transfer to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. 19. The episode’s tone is methodical and forensic, with Kate pressing the case history and Paul testing each suspect against crime-scene details. 20. Listeners interested in historical true crime, suspect analysis, and early forensic reasoning will likely stay engaged, while listeners wanting a quick solved-case ending may skip it.

As heard by us

The Moore homicide stays unsettled as train timing, alibis, and physical clues keep rival suspects in view.

The episode treats the Moore homicide as a case pulled between rival explanations rather than a puzzle with one clean fit. Reverend Lynn's train timing gets careful pressure, while Albert's reported movements with W.B.

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Why you'd press play

You get a 1912 homicide where early-morning movements, weak alibis, and a stolen skull fragment keep the suspect list uneasy.

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