elisheba-1

When this film ran on the Iowa Public TV Network recently, I was excited to see it since I have been interested in the crime for a long time and knew that a film was being made about it. My expectations about quality and amount of information in the film were not too high, however. Boy was I wrong! It is a two-hour film and is excellent in every respect (except for naming President William Howard Taft incorrectly as "Howard Taft", minor detail). Lots of information given, many photographs and interviews with local people and a very credible suggestion at the end as to who the real killer actually was with believable evidence presented. Only a couple of elderly people who were alive and living in Villisca at the time of the murders were able to be located and interviewed, however. Everybody else is apparently either deceased or unable or opposed to talking with the filmmakers. That is the only small disappointment in the film, and not one the filmmakers could control for. It's just too bad that nobody sought to interview people who were alive at the time of the murders while more were still living. All in all, great documentary for true crime buffs, well worth seeing!