On a cold morning in March 1874, Benjamin Schneider walked toward the Stelzriede family farm near the small Illinois settlement of Saxtown.
What he found inside would become one of the region’s oldest unsolved murder mysteries.
Five members of the Stelzriede family had been brutally killed.
More than 150 years later, no one knows who did it.
Murder at the Stelzriede Farm
Carl Stelzriede lived on the farm with his wife, Anna, and their children near what is now Millstadt, Illinois.
When Schneider entered the home, he discovered a horrifying scene. Carl and his son Frederich—known as Fritz—were dead. So were Anna and two of the couple’s younger children, Karl and infant Anna.
The family had been attacked with an axe.
One member of the household, however, was still alive.
The dog.
His name was Monk.
And his survival would become one of the strangest clues in the case.
The Dog That Knew Strangers
Monk was reportedly known to be vicious toward strangers.
Yet someone had apparently been able to approach the Stelzriede home, enter the property and murder five members of the family without the dog preventing the attack.
That raised an unsettling possibility:
Did Monk know the killer?
Investigators began considering whether the murderer—or murderers—might have been familiar to the family.
And in a small community, that cast suspicion in a lot of directions.
A Town Under Suspicion
The investigation that followed swept up numerous suspects.
Two men were eventually charged and brought to trial, but both were acquitted. At least eight others were reportedly arrested during the investigation and later released.
No one was ever convicted.
The murders became part of the history of Saxtown, a community already fading from the map. Over the decades, theories multiplied while evidence disappeared and memories gave way to legend.
The crime remained unsolved.
The Barn Still Stands
More than a century later, part of the Stelzriede property remains.
The barn associated with the farm still stands, and its history has attracted attention from people interested not only in the murders but in the paranormal stories that have grown around them.
Randy Eckert, who owns the property, has described unusual experiences there, including strange occurrences he says seem especially noticeable around the anniversary of the murders.
Whether those experiences are paranormal, coincidence, or simply the weight that history can give a place is impossible to say.
But the story of Saxtown has never completely gone away.
Five members of one family were killed. Numerous people fell under suspicion. Trials came and went.
And the one witness who might have known whether the killer was a stranger couldn't tell anyone what he knew.
His name was Monk.
He was the dog who survived.
More Forgotten Cases from the Midwest
The Saxtown murders are among the historic crimes explored by journalist Bob Cyphers in 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest.
An Edward R. Murrow and Emmy Award–winning journalist, Cyphers spent his career reporting for newspapers, radio and television stations across America. In 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed, he revisits murders, disappearances and mysteries whose unanswered questions have survived long after the original headlines disappeared.
Explore 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed from Genius Books.