It has never been proven who the murderer was, waiting with an ax in the closet under the stairs in a house in Villisca in June 1912, waiting for the eight occupants to go to sleep before killing everyone inside sometime after midnight.

But 55 intrepid Mahaska County Reads, 2008, participants were ready to make the two-and-one-half hour bus ride from Oskaloosa to Villisca to visit the scene where some have said the most gruesome mass murder in United States history occurred in 1912. The death toll that fateful Monday, June 12, morning totaled eight — Josiah B. Moore, 43, his wife, Sarah Moore, 40, their children, Herman, 11, Katherine, 9, Boyd, 7, and Paul, 5, and the Stillinger sisters, Lena, 11, and Ina, 9.

Tuesday’s day-long trip was part two of the Oskaloosa Public Library’s four-part extravaganza delving into the Villisca ax murders. Part three is 1 p.m. Saturday at the library, where Roy Marshall’s book, “Villisca: The true account of the unsolved 1912 mass murder that stunned the nation,” will be discussed. Part four will be 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, with a screening of the documentary, “Villisca: Living with a Mystery,” directed and written by Kelly and Tammy Rundle, of Moline, Ill. The Rundles, as well as Dr. Edgar Epperly, will attend the screening.

If critics say the trip was one of morbid curiosity, then they have not been to Villisca lately. One resident in this tiny southwest Iowa community with less than 1,400 people located in Montgomery County has turned the house into a shrine of sorts, offering guided tours of not only the house but also the cemetery and other significant buildings in town.

So under a cloudy sky, an Arrow motor coach bus pulled out of the Oskaloosa Public Library parking lot a little after 9 a.m. Shortly after noon, the same bus pulled into Villisca.

The first stop was the bank Frank Fernando Jones built in 1901 for a catered lunch. Jones was an influential member of the community, a wealthy banker, businessman, politician and church leader and someone many suspected of the murders.

After lunch, author Roy Marshall spoke to the entire group. He said he was prepared to discuss the book but not the chapter that was left out where he reveals who he believes is the killer.

“In all, eight people were killed here, who did it?” Marshall said. “It’s not that simple. It really isn’t.”

Marshall said he started his research while in his mid-20s. He conducted his first interviews in Villisca in 1969, and in early 2003, his book was published.

Marshall said he was surprised there was not a book on Villisca other than the fictional “Morning Ran Red.”

“And to me the real story here is what actually happened,” Marshall said. “Far more compelling than what anyone can make up.”

The chapter both he and his publisher decided to leave out contains Marshall’s conclusions on who committed the crime and what he lays out as proof for that conclusion. In “The Killer Is,” Marshall writes there are four possibilities: the state’s case against an ordained minister named George Lyn Jacklin Kelly, a private detective’s case against Jones; it was the work of a serial killer and none of the above.

Marshall listed what he believes is compelling evidence against Kelly. He had the opportunity. He was in Villisca on June 12, 1912. He was a known pervert, a window-peeper. He had talked about the murders before the bodies were discovered. He confessed on several occasions. He took a bloody shirt to a dry cleaner in Council Bluffs for cleaning.

In the end, the evidence against the Rev. Kelly was too compelling for Marshall to not consider him the killer. And evidently, the evidence was compelling to the state of Iowa, as Kelly was tried for the murders in 1917 but acquitted by a jury.

From there, the entire group went to The Jones Store on the square, where Jones ran his farm implement business, and where Josiah Moore worked for nearly 10 years, which is now the Olson-Linn Villisca Museum, owned by Darwin Linn, who also owns the house where the murders took place.