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The Los Angeles City Historical Society has created a new website that offers selected historical photographs from the Los Angeles City Archives. Viewers can search by community name, such as Chinatown, Venice, Westwood, or Downtown Los Angeles. One can also search by subject, such as bridges, streets, dates, and/or other specific topics.
Richard and Dion Neutra VDL House, Los Angeles
The murders began a chain of events that split the small town and forever changed the lives of its residents. The paranormal reality television series Scariest Places on Earth covered the story of the Villisca axe murders and hosted a paranormal investigation on the property. Three very similar crimes occurred in the Midwest – in Colorado Springs, Monmouth, Ill. and Ellsworth, Kan. – in the fall of 1911 before the Villisca ax murders. And another happened in Paola, Kan. just a few days before the Villisca killings. In the late 1980s, the town had a “history and mystery days” festival that Epperly viewed as cathartic. Controversy arose again in the 1990s when the Moore house became a tourist attraction and drew interest from so-called paranormal investigators.
Minden in state of emergency, half of town destroyed by Friday's tornado
They believed Jones had tried to pack the jury with his money and influence. Villisca City Marshall Hank Horton arrived quickly, soon followed by other officers. In the meantime, the gruesome news spread like wildfire, and within no time, neighbors and curious onlookers converged on the house. Law enforcement quickly lost control of the crime scene, and it is said that as many as a hundred gawkers strolled through the house before the Villisca National Guard arrived around noon and cordoned off the home. The murders were described in the episode Who Committed the 1912 Villisca Ax Murders? On the August 3, 2017 episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast.
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Originally designed for open-air gatherings and musical performances, the Sowden House is a distinctive showplace that evokes a sense of mystery and exoticism. Every ten feet along the bar were emergency flashing lights on poles. These were the “fight lights” that a bartender could turn on to let the bouncer know the exact location of an altercation or problem patron. Besides the phonetically inviting name, the place itself looked like a TGI Fridays that had exploded, and all the chairs and antiques had stuck to the walls and ceiling. One day I wanted to find out if a friend was at our favorite watering hole, the Oar House bar down by the beach on funky Main St.
Welcome to a Find a Grave Memorial Page

Every detail in the house from the peg wood paneling to the stained glass windows was designed by the brothers, with Charles being responsible for more of the interior details. The unprepossessing brown brick exterior of the Bradbury Building (304 Broadway at West 3rd Street) in Downtown LA, doesn't hint at its spectacular interior. Unlike the buildings on the previous pages, this is not one that you can appreciate on a drive by. You have to take the time to park and go inside, where intricately carved wood and wrought iron filigree are lit from above by a domed atrium.
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Some have reported feeling an evil presence in the attic, where it is thought the murderer hid while waiting for the family to fall asleep. One story alleges that an unknown force prevented her as one individual tried to enter the attic. By then, the house had deteriorated badly and was nearly condemned.
My heart breaks for the victims of this horrific attack more than a century ago. Cemeteries found in will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Use the links under See more… to quickly search for other people with the same last name in the same cemetery, city, county, etc.
Grier Musser Museum
After advertising in The World-Herald for a stenographer, he was convicted of using the mail to try to hire her to work in the nude. Although similarities had been noted between the Villisca murders and a string of other killings in the Midwest, the investigation never went far down the path of pursuing a drifting serial killer. Wilkerson arrested Mansfield and tried to extract a confession by having men hang him by his feet from a bridge. A grand jury in July 1916 considered the case against Mansfield, and refused to file charges. The biggest reason was that Mansfield was working in Illinois when the murders occurred – and had the pay records to prove it, Epperly said. The next morning, next door neighbor Mary Peckham became alarmed by “a terrible stillness around the Moore home,” as the local newspaper, The Villisca Review, reported at the time.
The murders were described live in Episode 168 of the podcast My Favorite Murder, by Karen Kilgariff. The murders were also described in Episode 16 of the podcast Lore, by Aaron Mahnke. Police obtained a confession from him; however, it followed many hours of interrogation and Kelly later recanted. In 1914, two years after the murders, Kelly was arrested for sending obscene material through the mail (he was sexually harassing a woman who applied for a job as his secretary). He was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the national mental hospital in Washington, D.C. Investigators speculated again that Kelly could be the murderer of the Moore family. Sent every Tuesday and containing a selection of the most important news highlights.
His known mental illness made authorities question whether he knew the details because of having committed the murders or was imagining his account. Every transient and otherwise unaccounted-for stranger was a suspect in the murders, Andrew Sawyer was one of those people. He also was obsessed with the murders and slept fully clothed as if he was ready to make a clean getaway and he also slept with an axe by his bed.
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The house is located in Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood. The Gamble House is now a museum that can be visited on scheduled tours. Select architecture students from USC get to live in the house as part of an architect in residence program. Early investigators noted similarities to the Villisca murders. Whole families were bludgeoned with a weapon of opportunity, usually an ax. In some, a chimney-less lamp was found at the foot of women’s or girl’s beds.