The Ax Murders of Saxtown ― The Unsolved Crime That Terrorized a Town and Shocked the Nation

An entire household massacred. A family feud. A sheriff found dead. Neighbor turned against neighbor. Reports of ghosts, bounty hunters, deathbed confessions, and legacy fortunes.

In 1874, the Saxtown massacre rocked a nation reeling from economic depression and shattered a small German immigrant farming community in Illinois. The murder of the Stelzriede family led investigators through forests and farmland, chasing footprints, bloody tobacco leaves, and the marks of an ax dragged away from the scene.

Nicholas J. C. Pistor’s The Ax Murders of Saxtown is a gripping tale of suspense and suspicion that exposes brand new information about the century-old crime and showcases the flaws of the nineteenth-century justice system.

A reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nicholas J.C. Pistor has broken stories on some of the biggest crimes in the Midwest, and has been a paid consultant for CBS News’s "48 Hours Mystery." He has appeared on NBC’s "Today Show," CBS’s "Early Show," Fox’s "Studio B with Shepard Smith," and CNN’s "Nancy Grace." St. Louis Magazine named him the city’s "best Twitterer." He grew up a few miles from the Saxtown murder scene, where talk of the one-hundred-year-old crime kept him awake as a boy.