Villisca: Living with a Mystery

Lovers of true-crime tales should be drawn to Kelly and Tammy Rundle's Villisca, an exhaustive documentary that explores a multiple murder in which an entire family named Moore were killed with an ax (along with two little girls who were overnight guests) in the titular Iowa town in 1912. Accusations were soon leveled against a prominent local politician who had business differences with Moore, as well as the man's son, whose wife Moore might have been romancing, but when both were exonerated in court, suspicions shifted to a mentally unbalanced minister who happened to be visiting town the night of the crime. While the thorough (indeed, repetitive) coverage of the facts is intriguing, the film is even more interesting for its investigation of the incident's social ramifications touching on the religious and economic divisions in the town, yellow journalism that drove the case, and lingering local dispute over whether the memory of the killings should be suppressed or exploited for commercial reasons. Technically, the two-hour picture is fairly rudimentary, employing still photographs, newspaper accounts, and interviews—with local residents and researchers—but easily holds the viewer's interest without becoming either sensationalistic or condescending (and it ends with a plausible theory about who actually murdered the Moores). DVD extras include audio commentaries, deleted scenes, a “making-of” featurette, and an archival radio broadcast about the crime. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)