A true-crime book argues the infamous 1912 ax murders in the southwest Iowa town of Villisca were committed by a previously overlooked serial killer, and its authors will give a lecture in Ames tonight. Rachel McCarthy James, who co-wrote the book with her father, Bill James, says they did extensive research into dozens of similar slayings, all around the turn of the last century.

In the Villisca murders, eight people were killed one night in a house, including six children. There was another incident in Iowa around that same time which wasn’t necessarily a “slam dunk” to be the same killer, she says. An elderly couple was murdered in a rural farmhouse in the Marshalltown area in 1910 that had many similarities to the Villisca case.

Their lecture is at 7 P-M this evening at Iowa State University’s Memorial Union Great Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public and will also be live-streamed.