Original Air Date: 2/5/19
For decades, the 1912 Villisca, Iowa axe slaughter of the Moore family has been one of the greatest unsolved family massacres in American history. Many believe that it was a local townsperson, but others believe it was the work of a transient serial killer.
From the late 1890s until possibly as late as the 1920s, Paul Mueller, a German sailor, rode the American rails, murdering entire families with the blunt edge of an axe, according to my guest, Rachel McCarthy James. She, along with her co-author and father, baseball historian and statistician Bill James, make a convincing case in their book, The Man From the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery, that they have discovered the slayer of potentially a hundred or more people across the United States, Canada, and even Germany.
More information about the book can be found here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-from-the-Train/Bill-James/9781476796260
