MURDER, VANITY, AND TEARS

Keota Road Trip Part III (Finale)

Dec 22, 2025

Some things persist because we know no better and hang on. It *seems* coherent, though. - JHF

MAP APPS NEVER MENTION THINGS LIKE THIS or how to get there on the back roads. My 2022 Rand McNally Road Atlas, however, clearly shows the Villisca Axe Murder House1 in the tiniest of fine print next to the town on page 38. I first noticed the reference on another trip I took in 2023. After turning off the main highway to Villisca that September, I followed the arrow on a shiny white sign all the way to the other end of town and never spotted the place. Frustrated, I decided to circumnavigate Villisca (population 1,099) to intuit its location from the evil vibes, but all I found was the “Bitchin’ Rusty Hole Auto Restoration Garage,” remarkable in itself. The image below is from the house across the street. That has to be the proprietor’s mailbox. I like the yard and know what warm humid breezes would feel like sitting underneath the trees.

HOT ROD MAILBOX, 09/13/2023 - Villisca, Iowa

This year I was in a better mood and clever, but after a surreal late breakfast stop and nap in the parking lot of a necrophilic McDonald’s on the way out of Creston, Iowa, I almost wavered. The manager was three feet wide and wouldn’t give me an Egg McMuffin because it was 10:35 a.m. and they switched menus at 10:30. The walls were bare and cold like in a mausoleum. There were about a dozen people in the place drinking coffee at two sexually segregated tables. Everyone was old and huge and wore plaid flannel shirts and blue denim jackets—once in a while someone would say something loud and all the rest would chuckle. The parking lot was full of shiny 4-door pickup trucks you couldn’t haul a plywood panel in. I took my milk and quarter-pounder back to my truck, doom-scrolled while I ate, and slept for 20 minutes before moving on.

Glad to be alive and hip, I did my usual thing and navigated back roads to Villisca where I pulled the same damn stunt and followed the big white sign to nowhere. This was getting old. On the way back through the town square I thought I’d simply ask someone this time but it was noon and sunny and the sidewalks were deserted. Then I spied a local bank, the kind of place where the tellers know everyone who comes in and press a buzzer to the sheriff if they don’t.2 I put on my best relaxed out-of-towner drawl and said something like, “Hi! I don’t need anything, but I’d like to ask a question and I bet you hear it all the time: just where is the famous Murder House?”

The auburn-haired lady had been around. She rolled her eyes and said, “Oh yes we do, several times a week,” and pointed out the window at the street I’d just come up to tell me where to turn. I thanked her, drove back down the hill, and found it. Not the kind of place you might expect an axe-wielding maniac to bludgeon eight people to death and come back later to chop off all their faces3 late one night in 1912, but this is Iowa so everything is nice now. I wonder if whoever did it used that chair to rock away their troubles as the sun came up or walked back home to wash his axe and feed the chickens.

It really is a pretty little town. Note that I was there on Halloween.

The house is on the National Register of Historic Places, restored to the way it was on the night of the crime, and you can even stay there. The whole house is available for overnight visits or you can book an individual room.4 I walked through twice and shook my head at how cramped and ordinary everything was, so old, small-town American like the homes of long-dead relatives I used to poke through when I was a boy. I still have artifacts I “stole”5 from ancient attics, closets, and forgotten rooms that smelled exactly like the murder house—just dust, old quilts, and talcum powder people must have sprinkled in the drawers. Later I learned that right after the bodies were discovered, the authorities left the gory mess in place and allowed long lines of townspeople to walk through and take souvenirs… Bloody clothing, chunks of skulls, so help me.

Now you can buy earrings with little axe-heads on them in the gift shop. T-shirts and candy, too. I’m not sure how I feel about all this, but it ain’t good, and I don’t need to revisit Villisca, no sir, no way, never. Maybe not even drive to Iowa again, just take a plane to Des Moines and rent a car to visit the gravesite in Keota. Be like paradise by comparison. Sun’s goin’ down, we gotta feel okay.

Everybody dance!

I don’t know what’s in the little bottles and didn’t ask.

On the second day of my trip out I made a point to go through Shenandoah, Iowa because I’d read that the Everly Brothers grew up there. This surprised me because I thought they came from Knoxville, Tennessee.6 Don was actually born in Brownie, Kentucky on February 1, 1937 and Phil in Chicago on January 19, 1939. I was a huge Everly Brothers fan and “Wake Up Little Susie” became a big hit around the first time I ever kissed a girl. I had a vague notion of the trouble mentioned in the song and didn’t know what the fuss was all about, but I’d just been to a seventh grade sock hop at Rhein-Main Air Force Base at Frankfurt, Germany and danced all night with Rae Ann Hollingsworth, more than once to “Wake Up, Little Susie.” I walked her home afterwards, kissed her in the moonlight, and never saw her again.7 Fast forward 68 years and I was following another sign, this one for the “Everly Brothers Childhood Family Home” in downtown Shenandoah, somehow got lost, and the same thing happened.

Just where was the goddamn place?

On the way back though, I got lucky, except that it was utterly unremarkable and closed.

Maybe I’m done with Iowa for now. It’s been a long ride over the last 45 years. I like the idea of flying to Des Moines (except for the claustrophobic disease-ridden flammable flying sardine can) and renting a car for the two-hour run to the cemetery in Keota. Short and sweet, you know? As old as I am now, I’d rather save long road trips for places I’ve never been. The past is only an idea that makes me sad.

You should have seen me at the storage units yesterday, or maybe not. I got past the usual shock but came home with a box of my great-grandfather Hamilton Young’s personal effects to “sort through” and now I’m not so sure. There’s even a fucking gold-plated metal toothpick, ugh. I already have his goddamn hatchet and straight razors. Why??? My niece in Phoenix wants to see the old family photo albums I discovered, but I’m the only one who knows who those people even were—neither my sister nor my brother do. Why do I have to be the frigging archivist? I don’t, of course. I even found my mother’s ashes in a cardboard box. (It happens.) In theory I’m supposed to take them back to Maryland to bury, but she died in Tucson 13 years ago and all her relatives in Maryland are gone or dead. No one would visit the grave! I could just as well scatter them from a mountain. It all goes back into the soup and no one cares. What the ever-loving hell. Do other 80-year-olds feel this way?

Look at what I saw on the last day of my trip about 70 miles from Taos: