Had Holmes’s plot against the remaining Pitezels been successful, Lane would have found nothing at 26 Winooski Avenue but smoldering debris. But Carrie’s suspicions had been aroused by the fluid-filled jar hidden away in her basement, and—instead of transferring it up to the attic, as Holmes had instructed—she had carefully brought it out back and buried it in the yard.
Accompanied by Lane, Carrie and the children traveled to Boston, where they were met at the depot by another of Holmes’s ostensible accomplices—in reality, Inspector Whitman of the Boston police. The two men loaded Carrie and her children into a cab for the trip to police headquarters. When the truth of her situation finally became apparent, she swooned from the shock. She revived a few moments later, only to break into such hysterical sobbing that she seemed on the verge of a nervous collapse. Arrest and imprisonment—and their attendant disgrace—were the fulfillment of her most dreaded fears. At the time, she could not imagine that even worse nightmares awaited.
Carrie’s first confession, given on Monday, November 19, contained a number of fabrications. Her interrogators suspected as much. But they understood that her lying was the product of her panic and fear—not (as in Holmes’s case) a function of inveterate dishonesty.
Asked about her participation in the insurance fraud, Carrie steadfastly denied any foreknowledge of the scheme. As far as she knew, her husband had gone off to Philadelphia to conduct some legitimate business under the name Perry. When she read that Perry’s corpse had been discovered at 1316 Callowhill Street, she had naturally assumed that Benny was really dead.
“Before the time that you got this news from the press,” asked Hanscom, “had you known anything about this scheme?”
“No, they did not tell me anything about it.”
“Nothing had been said to you about it?”
“No.”
“Never had been talked over with you?”
“No.”
“Had you no intimation, not the slightest sign that it had been talked over?”
Carrie was emphatic. “I had no knowledge of what was to be done.”
The news of Benny’s death had been a devastating blow to Carrie. She was still prostrate with grief when Holmes—or Howard, as he was calling himself at the time—showed up in St. Louis a week later with an amazing announcement.
“What did he say to you?” asked Hanscom.
“Why, I told him that I saw something in the paper in regard to my husband, and I wanted to know if it was my husband and if it was true, and he said, ‘You need not worry about it.’”
“Did he ease your mind regarding the death of your husband before he went away, telling you that your husband was not dead?”
“Yes.”
Carrie, however, remained completely in the dark about the insurance scheme. It was not until later, when Holmes brought her to the office of Lawyer Howe to collect the payment on her husband’s life insurance policy, that Carrie first became suspicious. Even then, however, she was only obeying Holmes’s instructions and—as she believed—the wishes of her husband. At no point was she herself an active conspirator in the plot.
If Carrie’s desperate denials rang false to Hanscom and his colleagues, her dismay and bewilderment over her husband’s present whereabouts were unmistakably real. Even her harshest inquisitors—those least disposed to excuse her evident lies—were moved to pity by the cruel manipulations to which Holmes had subjected her.
“He has kept you moving, hasn’t he?” Hanscom asked in the soft, sympathetic tone of an understanding friend.
Blinking to keep back the tears, Carrie lowered her head and nodded. “Yes,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I wish to ask you one question direct,” Hanscom went on. “Do you believe now that your husband is alive?”
Carrie glanced up at him quickly. “Well, there must be something in it,” she said in a tone more expressive of hope than conviction. An instant later, her shoulders sagged. “I am sure I could not swear to it, for I don’t know for a fact that he is alive. All I know is what you have been telling me and what he has been telling me, and that is all I know.”
“But he has kept you moving from point to point,” Hanscom said again. “I would like to have you tell it in your own way.”
Carrie exhaled a tremulous sigh. “Well, I have been moving from one point to another. I have been just heartbroken, that is all there is about it.”
“Yes, I know,” Hanscom commiserated. “We are sorry for you.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Can you tell me the points in the order of them, how you have been moving about since you left home?”
Carrie squeezed her eyes tight, as though trying to retrace the tortuous route in her mind. “I went from my parents, from there to Chicago, from Chicago to Detroit, and from there to Toronto, from there to Ogdensburg, from there to Burlington.”
“Have you had confidence in Howard all the way through, that he would finally take you to your husband?”
“I thought so.”
“Has your confidence ever been shaken?”
Carrie’s voice became as fragile as a frightened child’s. “Well, sometimes, I thought maybe he was fooling me or something.”
Her greatest concern at the moment was the current location of her three children. Came explained that she had not set eyes on Alice since September, when the girl had gone off to Philadelphia in the company of Lawyer Howe.
“Who is he?” Hanscom interrupted.
“He is the lawyer, the attorney.”
Hanscom shot a look at Cornish, who flipped open a notepad and scribbled down the name.
“A St. Louis man?” asked Hanscom.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know where his office is in St. Louis?”
“Well, it is in the Commercial Building.”
Hanscom glanced at Cornish to make sure that he had copied the information, then returned to the subject of Carrie’s missing children. “Into whose custody did you place the other two?”
“He took the other two. That is, Holmes took them from St. Louis to where Alice was.”
“What was his reason for taking them? What reason did he give?”
“He said he would take them there and I could go home and make my parents a visit, and not be bothered with them, because my parents were getting along in years, and he would take the children, and then I could go over there when I got through visiting.”
“He was going to take them to meet Alice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that they would all be stopping with some widow lady?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give her name?”
“No, sir, I told you he did not.”
Hanscom pursed his lips in frustration. “Has he ever told you since then that they were with the father?” he continued after a moment.
“No, sir, he told me he took them to Toronto, that is all I know about it.”
“You understood from him that they are there?”
Carrie nodded. “At Toronto.”
“With friends of his, or whom do you believe them to be with? Your husband?”
“No. He said he would give them to some friends there. I don’t know whether he has.”
Hanscom stared at Carrie. Her answers seemed so evasive that he felt sure she must be withholding information. It was inconceivable to him that a mother would send three of her children off with anyone—let alone a person like Holmes—without knowing such elementary facts as where they were going, how long they would be staying, and who would be taking care of them.
“We believe this man to be a very bad man,” Hanscom said grimly after a moment, “and we want to get at the truth.”
“Well, that is as far as I know,” Carrie cried out. “I can’t tell you any more because I don’t know!”
“You did not understand then that these children were going to join their father?”
“No, sir,” Carrie replied miserably.
<
br /> “There is a boy and two girls?”
“Whoever told you that?” Carrie asked, her lower lip trembling.
“We have been talking with him,” Hanscom said softly. “We are not doing anything to undertake to make you feel bad. We are trying to get at the matter and sift it. He has kept you moving about the country from point to point, and you look as though you have been through a good deal. We want to get all the light we can. We don’t believe this man very much. That is why we are asking you these questions.”
Suddenly Carrie’s right hand shot out and clutched at Hanscom’s sleeve. “Do you know where the children are?” she asked desperately.
Hanscom shook his head sadly. “No. That is one of the things we want to find out. We want to find them as much for your sake as for any other reason in the world. In fact, we may say that all these questions that are being asked now regarding these children are in your behalf.”
But Carrie was no longer paying attention. Bowing her head, she gazed blankly at the floor and said, in a hollow, hopeless voice, “I thought maybe I would see the children here.”
The interview ended soon afterward. Carrie was informed that she was being held on a charge of conspiracy after the fact. Terrified and friendless, she begged that her children be permitted to remain with her overnight. Since the police had made no provisions for Dessie and the infant, they agreed.
When Carrie got to her feet, she found that she could barely stand, let alone walk. Hanscom beckoned to one of his subordinates.
Then—supported by a burly policeman and accompanied by her teenage daughter and infant son—the stricken woman was led off to the Tombs.
33
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
—Mark Twain, “A Mysterious Visit”
Though it would be months before the world discovered the true extent of Holmes’s depravity, his arrest was already regarded as a triumph of the law. In the days immediately following his capture, the press lavished praise on all the parties involved, from the insurance company investigators to the Boston police to what The Philadelphia Inquirer described as “the octopus-like system of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”
Other parties, meanwhile, were eager to share in the credit. Among those busily patting themselves on the back was the president of Fidelity Mutual, L. G. Fouse, who lost no time in revising his role in the drama from rather bumbling bit player to star. Interviewed by reporters on November 18, Fouse declared that—far from having been hoodwinked by Holmes—he had “scented something wrong from the start” and had been “determined to throw every legitimate obstacle in the way of the settlement of the policy.”
According to Fouse’s revisionist version, he had seen through Holmes’s imposture immediately. It was Jeptha Howe who had beguiled him by playing on Fouse’s inordinately good nature. “If there was anybody in the world calculated to throw a man off his guard, it was Howe,” Fouse proclaimed. “He was an innocent, boyish-looking fellow, with a frank, honest face. When I began to question him, he appealed to my soft side. He told me I was a man of experience in these things, and he was only a novice at the bar, and he begged me not to hinder him in his efforts to win success.”
Even so, Fouse, with his keen nose for deception, had ordered his men to investigate Howe and Holmes, and “before long my suspicions were confirmed.” From that point on, it was only a matter of time before the conspirators were brought to justice, thanks largely to the efforts of President L. G. Fouse.
In point of fact, Howe was still at large at the time of Fouse’s interview. But on Monday morning, November 19, a contingent of law officers—acting on an urgent dispatch from Philadelphia police superintendent Linden—showed up at Howe’s office in the Commercial Building and arrested him on a charge of conspiracy. Hauled down to headquarters, Howe was interrogated by St. Louis police chief Harrigan and William E. Gary for several hours before being released on a $3,000 bond.
Outside the building, Howe was accosted by several reporters, who pressed for a statement. “I will say the same to you that I have said to Mr. Gary and the chief,” Howe declared. “I do not, in the first place, believe a fraud has been committed. I believe the body identified by Pitezel’s fifteen-year-old daughter was that of her father. The marks of identification were perfect. As to how Pitezel met his death, I cannot say. But as I said to Mr. Gary, if a fraud has been committed, I am as anxious to have it investigated as anyone and will do all in my power to bring the guilty to punishment. I took the case in good faith and acted as any attorney would have done. Mr. Gary asked me if I would be willing to return to the company my fee if this were proved a fraud. I told him I would be not only willing but would not under any circumstances keep any part of it.”
Outraged at the injustice of the accusations and the injury to his name, Howe intended to leave at once for Philadelphia to prove his innocence and redeem his reputation.
Howe’s righteous indignation, not to mention his credibility, was somewhat undercut by Chief Harrigan, who—shortly after the young attorney’s release—publicly disclosed the content of Marion Hedgepeth’s letter, which had cracked the case open in the first place. Harrigan also revealed that, according to the bandit, Howe had attempted “to smuggle him keys and to aid him on various occasions to escape”—a charge confirmed by jail guard J. C. Armstrong, who, in a sworn statement to the St. Louis authorities, declared “that he was approached by Jeptha D. Howe for the purpose of getting his assistance in Hedgepeth’s escape.”
That same afternoon, the grand jury convened in Philadelphia to hear the testimony of President Fouse and Coroner Ashbridge. At two P.M., after concluding its deliberations, the jury issued true bills of indictment against Herman Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes, Mrs. Carrie Pitezel, and Jeptha D. Howe, charging them with “conspiracy to cheat and defraud” the Fidelity Mutual Life Association Company of $10,000.
Significantly, one name was missing from the indictment—Benjamin F. Pitezel. The omission reflected the widespread belief that—in spite of Holmes’s insistence that his partner was still alive—Pitezel had, in fact, been murdered.
From the moment the story broke, Pitezel’s fate was a matter of heated debate among the authorities and intense fascination in the press—a dark, spellbinding mystery that baffled the law and kept newsreaders guessing. PITEZEL MYSTERY STILL UNSOLVED, proclaimed The Philadelphia Inquirer. DID HOLMES KILL PITEZEL? asked The New York Times. POLICE PUZZLED OVER THE PITEZEL INSURANCE SWINDLE, trumpeted The Chicago Tribune. Papers throughout the country played up the melodrama for all it was worth, treating the Holmes-Pitezel case less as an unfolding news story than a serialized suspense novel, with each day’s installment dished up on page one.
At first, the consensus among insiders was that the double-crossing Holmes had slain his unsuspecting partner. L. G. Fouse, for example, insisted that the Callowhill remains were unquestionably those of Pitezel.
According to the theory Fouse advanced to reporters, “it was the original intention of Holmes to bring Pitezel to this city [Philadelphia] and have him rent the rooms at number 1316 Callowhill Street. He was to assume the name of B. F. Perry. Then Holmes, being a chemist, was to disfigure Pitezel’s cheek so that it would have the appearance of being burned, give him a drug to make him unconscious, and lay him on the floor. A broken pipe and other articles that would give indications of an explosion were placed about the room. Then the physician was to be called in. The doctor would, of course, think the man the victim of an accident. After the doctor had taken his departure, Pitezel was to be revived, washed up, and smuggled out.
“But I think that the latter part of the plot was never carried out,” Fouse continued, “and that instead of sharing in the spoils, Pitezel was murdered. I have every reason to think that the body interred in potter’s field is really that of B. F. Pitezel.” Holmes’s eager confession to fraud, Fouse concluded, was simply a ploy to “ward off the still greater charge o
f murder.”
Coroner Ashbridge likewise scoffed at Holmes’s contention that the corpse had been procured from a New York City physician and smuggled to Philadelphia in a trunk. According to Holmes’s confession, he had forced the cadaver into the trunk by bending it at the waist. “But a body once bent does not become rigid again,” Ashbridge pointed out—and the corpse found at the Callowhill address “was stretched flat upon the floor and perfectly rigid.” Moreover, “if the body had been in the trunk, it would have shown marks of where it had been doubled up. But no such marks were found upon the body.”
There was also the matter of the dried blood staining the floor near the corpse. As Ashbridge asserted, “blood could not have been extracted from the vein of a corpse such as Holmes described except with a force pump.” Finally, the coroner explained, “had the cadaver been obtained from a doctor in New York, it would have been preserved in alcohol. The body found in the Callowhill Street house was not preserved in this way.”
The inescapable conclusion was that someone had been killed on Callowhill Street, and the likeliest candidate was Pitezel, though whether his death was deliberate or not, Ashbridge was unable to say. It was conceivable, the coroner opined, that Pitezel had died from an accidental overdose of chloroform, administered “so that his cheek might painlessly be marked with burns which could be shown to a physician.” On the other hand, it was equally plausible that, after knocking Pitezel out with the anesthetic, Holmes had made sure that his accomplice would never waken again, thus obviating the need to split the insurance money two ways.
There was, of course, a third possibility, too, initially advanced by the Boston police—that the dead man was not Pitezel at all but rather another person entirely, who had been lured to the Callowhill Street house under some pretext and there done away with by the two conspirators. Pitezel, as one officer revealed to reporters, “was a drinking man, and it would have been an easy matter for him to secure a victim from some of his barroom acquaintances.”
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