Finally, asked Rotan, why—if Holmes had murdered Pitezel—did he return voluntarily to Philadelphia when he could have been taken to Texas to face the far less serious charge of horse theft? “Now the Commonwealth would have you believe they lynch men in Texas for stealing horses, and Holmes was afraid of that. But do they really lynch men, except by mobs, except when horse thieves are caught in the act? Would they lynch a man arrested three thousand miles away and brought back by due process of law, months later, long after the tempers involved had had full opportunity to cool down?
“No. Holmes returned to Philadelphia voluntarily to face whatever charges faced him in Philadelphia. And if he had killed Pitezel, surely he must have known he had done it. And he must have known, too, if he had done it, he would one day be found out. But he returned—fearlessly—and his fearlessness was the product of his innocence of murder.”
Bringing his argument to a close, Rotan demonstrated his agility by paying tribute to Graham’s superior eloquence while reminding the jurors that it was their solemn duty to base their decision on hard evidence, not high-flown oratory.
“This man,” he said, gesturing toward the prisoner’s dock where Holmes sat plucking nervously at his chin hairs, “has been assailed for a long time in this and other matters. He has been indicted here for murder, and the case is now going to you for your most earnest consideration. I shall expect that only in regard to the testimony given from the witness stand is this man to be judged, and I want you not to be influenced by the magnificent oration and the masterly way in which the Commonwealth, represented by our learned district attorney, has presented the facts in his speeches. He is handy and adept at that—he is a master hand. We, to an extent, are greatly inexperienced, never having had such opportunities for experience, and, I may say, probably never will attain the height which the district attorney has in conducting cases of this kind.
“I only ask that you will not prejudice this case on account of any speech made by him. You should not be influenced by that.”
Rotan spoke his final words with all the assurance he could muster. “I now let this case go to you with a great deal of confidence—so much confidence that we have not put in a defense. We feel that the Commonwealth has failed in removing that reasonable doubt to which the prisoner is entitled, and that we can safely rely upon this case going to you and your rendering a verdict of not guilty.”
Immediately following Rotan’s speech, Judge Arnold gave his charge to the jury. He began by reiterating a point Graham had made in his opening address—that, while the jurors had it in their power to find Holmes guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter, neither of those verdicts “would be in accord with the evidence. In my judgment, the case is one in which there should be a verdict either of murder in the first degree or a verdict of acquittal.”
Since the Commonwealth’s case had been built entirely on circumstantial evidence, Judge Arnold spent some time defining that concept: “The word circumstantial leads some persons to believe that the evidence is inconclusive and imperfect, but this is not so. The difference between circumstantial and direct evidence is that direct evidence is more immediate—the evidence of the eyesight, generally—and requires fewer witnesses than a chain of circumstances which leads to but one conclusion.”
To clarify the point, the judge provided a vivid example. “Suppose, while walking along the street, you hear something behind you that sounds like a pistol shot. You turn and find a man running past you, with others in pursuit. You join in the chase and see the man arrested. You walk back with him under arrest, and on the way back you find a pistol with a chamber discharged, and still warm and smoking. Further on, you come upon a man who has been killed by a pistol shot. What is the inference that you draw from those facts? And is not that inference irresistible? Yet, you did not see the pistol fired.
“Now in the case of killing by means of poison, experience shows that nearly all such cases are proved by circumstantial evidence only. Poisoning is generally a secret act, and unless the party using the poison has someone to assist him, who afterwards confesses and testifies, direct evidence cannot be obtained.
“In the present case, the defendant is accused of killing Benjamin F. Pitezel by means of poison. Three questions must be considered and determined and answered by you in order to reach a verdict of guilty of murder as charged in the indictment.
“The first question is: Is Benjamin F. Pitezel dead? The second is: Did he die a violent death? And the third is: If he died a violent death, did he commit suicide or did the defendant kill him?”
Judge Arnold then spent over an hour reviewing the “sum and substance” of the testimony in the case from his handwritten notes. Outside the courtroom windows, the somber daylight faded. The gray fall sky had darkened to black by the time he brought his remarks to a close.
“In all criminal cases, gentlemen, it is essential that the defendant shall be convicted by evidence which persuades the jury of the guilt of the prisoner beyond a reasonable doubt. If, after considering the testimony, you are unable to come to the conclusion that he is guilty—if there is a doubt about it and you hesitate, or if you are not fairly satisfied by the evidence of his guilt—he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt and should be acquitted.”
Removing his pince-nez reading glasses and laying down his sheaf of notes, the judge gazed gravely at the jurors. “Consider this defendant’s case calmly, considerately, patiently. I have no doubt that if you will do that, if you adhere to the evidence, you will have no trouble in reaching a righteous verdict.”
It was almost six P.M. when the jurors were escorted to the deliberation room by a contingent of court officers. As soon as they were under lock and key, Graham—following through on a promise he had made to the press corps a few days earlier—led the reporters into his office and allowed them to examine a cache of evidence that (as one of the newsmen wrote) “left no doubt that Holmes was a scoundrel unworthy of human form.”
These grisly items—barred from the trial by Judge Arnold’s ruling in regard to the Pitezel children—included Howard’s charred jawbone and several of his teeth, the stove in which the boy had been incinerated, and the spade Holmes had used to bury the bodies of Alice and Nellie.
Graham also displayed Benjamin Pitezel’s skull, which (along with the samples of clothing identified by Carrie) had been removed from the corpse during the recent exhumation. Graham had been ready to introduce the skull into evidence, but had refrained when the defense admitted that the dead man was Pitezel.
As the relics were being passed from hand to hand, Graham noticed an unfamiliar individual examining Pitezel’s skull with an intensity that surpassed even that of the journalists. Making his way through the crowd, Graham confronted this gentlemen, who turned out to be none other than C. A. Bradenburgh, proprietor of the “Holmes Museum” at Ninth and Arch streets. Bradenburgh—who had been raking in money during the past few months by displaying a substitute skull among his other replicas—made it clear to the district attorney that he was willing to offer a handsome sum for the original. Would the Commonwealth be interested in such a transaction?
“Indeed not!” cried the outraged attorney, snatching the skull out of the impresario’s hands and showing him unceremoniously to the door.
Holmes, meanwhile, had been led to the basement cell to await the verdict. Though he showed little appetite for the dinner he was offered, he seemed, on the whole, remarkably self-possessed for a man whose fate was hanging in the balance. He chatted with his jailers and passed some time idly flipping a coin—thumbing it into the air, catching it in his palm, and slapping it over onto the back of his opposite hand.
When one of his guards, Charles Wood, asked him what he was doing, Holmes replied that he was trying to predict the verdict. “Tails, convicted,” Holmes said with a wry smile. “Heads, acquitted.”
Altogether, Holmes flipped the coin ten times. It came up heads—“not guilty”—every time but one.
Interestingly, the consensus matched the prediction of Holmes’s tossed coin. The majority agreed that, for all Graham’s skill, the Commonwealth had failed to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
One old-timer, however—the ancient court clerk, William Henszey, who had been observing juries for more years than even he could remember—stuck to a different opinion. The twelve men who held Holmes’s life in their hands were going to send him to the gallows, Henszey declared.
He had seen it in their faces.
At precisely eight forty-five a bustle in the courtroom made it clear that the jury was about to return. Judge Arnold entered first, followed by Graham and his assistant, Thomas Barlow. Next came Rotan and Shoemaker, the latter bundled in an overcoat and shivering as though afflicted with an ague.
Finally, the prisoner was ushered in and led to the dock.
The silence in the packed courtroom was almost oppressive. Every eye was turned to Holmes, who stood erect in the dock, one hand encircling the opposite wrist behind his back. He displayed no obvious signs of agitation—though spectators sitting directly behind him could see, from the whiteness of his knuckles, just how tightly he was squeezing his wrist.
A moment later, the jury filed in. Not one of them looked in Holmes’s direction as they took their places in the box.
When Holmes saw the expression on their faces, his own face went white. He let out a few dry coughs, raising a trembling hand to his lips.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” Clerk Henszey intoned, “have you reached a verdict?”
When the foreman replied that they had, Henszey looked at the judge. “Your Honor, the jury has agreed.”
Judge Arnold nodded, and again Henszey turned to the jurors. “Gentlemen of the jury, in announcing your verdict, you will please rise and remain standing until the court hath recorded it.”
The jurymen arose in a body.
“Gentlemen of the jury, how say you?” asked the gravel-voiced clerk. “Do you find the prisoner at the bar, Herman W. Mudgett, guilty of the felony of murder, whereof he stands indicted, or not guilty.”
Without hesitation the foreman replied, “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Holmes drew his lips tight to steady their quivering. Then he sank into his seat while—at Rotan’s request—Clerk Henszey polled the jurors, who confirmed their condemning verdict one by one.
Afterward, one of the jurors told a reporter that he and his colleagues had arrived at their decision before the door of the deliberation room had closed behind them. But—believing it improper to send a man to the gallows without even the appearance of due consideration—they had decided to take their dinner and discuss the evidence before delivering their judgment.
As soon as the trial was formally adjourned, Holmes was led down to the basement holding room. A mob of newsmen quickly gathered outside the iron-barred door, pleading for a comment.
“I can’t say very much,” Holmes replied hoarsely. “I scarcely know what to add to what I have already said.”
Shortly afterward, he was escorted into a van and returned to Moyamensing. By the time he was back in his cell, he had found something he wanted to say. Seated at his small writing desk, he composed a formal statement, which ran the next morning in newspapers throughout the country:
It is not safe for a man in my position to criticize the verdict which has been rendered concerning me. Many able lawyers who have followed this trial have declared that the evidence is not sufficient to convict. I, who know my own innocence of the charge brought against me, know, of course, that no evidence could be brought. I know that I am innocent and, while lack of time and money to prepare my case have brought about this temporary defeat of justice, I know that I shall be acquitted and vindicated in the end.
I have been told and I have been warned that for me to tell the truth would be dangerous. A plain denial, I was told, would be more convincing than any explanation, however truthful. I believed, however, as I still believe, that an innocent man cannot be convicted under our laws and that he could certainly not be convicted for telling the truth.
I am aware that a higher tribunal must pass upon my sentence before it can be confirmed. I know that this higher tribunal must, in the face of my innocence, give me a new trial. At this new trial I shall have had time, at least, to prepare my defense and to refute the web of false contortions spun by the ambitious lawyers who have prosecuted and persecuted me.
I did not murder Pitezel. He committed suicide. I am innocent of the charge against me. I cannot possibly be condemned for a crime which I did not commit.
Early in my life I was thrown much into the company of an old man, upon whom I grew to look at almost as an oracle. Often he would say to me: “He that seeks sympathy receives ridicule.” Bearing this in mind, and in no sense wishing to appear before the public as a martyr, yet more for the sake of others than myself, I ask that for a time at least I be dealt with leniently, for in the name of Almighty God and in the names of those who are near and dear to me, I state that I have not taken a human life.
That was what Holmes had to say on the day his trial ended. But it was not his final word.
A few months later, he would issue another, very different statement. And its publication would send shock waves across America.
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I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing…. I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.
—From the confession of H. H. Holmes
On Friday morning, April 10, 1896, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER carried a half-page announcement for a sensational coming attraction, scheduled to appear in its Sunday edition:
HOLMES CONFESSES MANY MURDERS
The Most Fearful and Horrible Murderer Ever
Known in the Annals of Crime
FIRST AND ONLY COMPLETE CONFESSION
The Most Remarkable Story of Murder and
Inhuman Villainy Ever Made Public
CONVICTION LIES IN EVERY LINE
The only way to describe it is to say that it was written by Satan himself or one of his chosen
monsters
Printed in the center of the ad was a facsimile letter, penned in Holmes’s flowing hand: “The following statement was written by me in Philadelphia County Prison for the Philadelphia Inquirer as a true and accurate confession in all particulars. It is the only confession of my fearful crimes I have made or will make. I write it fully appreciating all the horror it contains & how it condemns me before the world.”
Having spent so much time protesting his innocence and proclaiming himself a scapegoat for a politically ambitious district attorney, Holmes seemed to have undergone an extraordinary change of heart. Presumably, he was eager to unburden himself before coming face-to-face with his Maker. But those with a firsthand knowledge of Holmes’s profoundly manipulative nature perceived other, less pious, motives behind this remarkable turnabout.
Holmes, to begin with, had nothing to lose. Three weeks after the jury brought in its verdict, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had turned down his appeal for a new trial. On November 30, he had been sentenced to hang. By the time The Philadelphia Inquirer trumpeted the news of the upcoming confession, Holmes’s execution had been set for Thursday, May 7.
On the other hand, Holmes had a great deal to gain by publicizing his atrocities. In mid-March, he had received a visit from representatives of newspaper czar William Randolph Hearst, who reportedly offered him $7, 500 for exclusive rights to his confession—a considerable sum in 1896 dollars. Even with the gallows looming, Holmes had an eye for the main chance. By all accounts, he had always be
en a good provider for his Wilmette wife, Myrta, and their little daughter, Lucy. Hearst’s money would make a substantial bequest—and Holmes, for his part, was prepared to give good value in return.
But money was only part of the story. Holmes had another, even more powerful inducement, more in keeping with his uniquely perverse aspirations. As early as October 30, a newspaper reporter, visiting the notorious criminal in his cell, had noted Holmes’s desperate “ambition to be great in some way—and his models of greatness, if one may judge from his talk, are old-time villains of high degree.”
And indeed, immediately after the end of Holmes’s trial, District Attorney Graham had prophesied to reporters “that Holmes will confess fully when he finds all hope of escape is gone. His pride in his criminal career is unbounded. In his most despondent moods, he would always cheer up when told by Mr. Barlow and myself that we considered him the most dangerous man in the world. It is our confident belief that, before he dies, he will make such confession as will give him the highest possible rank as a wholesale criminal.”
It was a remarkably astute prediction. For on Sunday, April 12, 1896, Holmes displayed himself before the world as the most monstrous criminal of his day, a psychopathic killer whose record of slaughter would remain unmatched until the latter half of our own century and the dawning of the era he foreshadowed—the Age of the Serial Killer.
During the police investigation of the Castle, when hysteria over the “archfiend” was at its height, newspapers had bandied about all sorts of figures. Estimates of his victims ranged from a half dozen to several hundred.
The final number he admitted to on Sunday, April 12, was a great deal smaller than the most frenzied guesses, though certainly enough to mark him as the most prolific murderer of his day.
Depraved Page 37
