The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery

In early 20th-century America, an unknown man traversed the country, mainly the South and Midwest, riding the rails. He would hop off the train, usually near a small town, locate a secluded house near the tracks, and brutally murder the occupants with the blunt side of an axe. Before any alarms could be raised, he would disappear onto another train to strike elsewhere. Popular sportswriter Bill James (Popular Crime) and his daughter, writer Rachel McCarthy James, painstakingly scoured thousands of newspapers and records to piece together the bloody trail of the titular Man from the Train. Using the infamous 1912 murder of the Moore family in Villisca, IA, as a starting point, the authors worked backward locating one, then another, crime that seemed to fit together. Eventually, they settled upon a suspect. Although the circumstantial evidence for their suspect is less than desirable, they may have indeed solved this century-old case.