In 1891 I associated myself in business with a young Englishman, whose name I am more than willing to publish to the world, but I am advised it could not be published on my unsupported statement, who by his own admission, had been guilty of all other forms of wrongdoing, save murder, and presumably of that as well. To manipulate certain real estate securities we held so as to have them secure us a good commercial rating was an easy matter for him and he was equally able to interest certain English capitalists in patents so that for a time it seemed that in the near future our greatest concern would be how to dispose of the money that seemed about to be showered upon us. By an unforeseen occurrence our rating was destroyed and it became necessary to at once raise a large sum and this was done by my partner enticing to Chicago a wealthy banker named Rodgers from a North Wisconsin town in such a manner that he could have left no intelligence with whom his business was to be. To cause him to go to the Castle and within the secret room under the pretense that our patents were there was easily brought about, more so than to force him to sign checks and drafts for seventy thousand dollars, which we had prepared. At first he refused to do so, stating that his liberty that we offered him in exchange would be useless to him without his money, that he was too old to again hope to make another fortune; finally by alternately starving him and nauseating him with the gas he was made to sign the securities, all of which were converted into money and by my partner’s skill as a forger in such a manner as to leave no trace of their having passed through our hands. I waited with much curiosity to see what propositions my partner would advance for the disposal of our prisoner, as I well knew he, no more than I, contemplated giving his liberty. My partner evidently waited with equal expectancy for me to suggest what should be done, and I finally made preparation to allow him to leave the building, thus forcing him to suggest that he be killed. I would only consent to this upon the condition that he should administer the chloroform, and leave me to dispose or the body as my part or the work. In this way I was enabled to keep him in ignorance of my dealings with the medical college agent. That evening this large sum of money was equally divided between us, and my partner went to the Palmer House, where he was well known, and passed the night at cards with three other men, and at 10 o'clock the next morning came to the office to borrow $100 with which to redeem· his overcoat, watch and rings that he had.
So much has already been written of my own extravagancies and wrong methods of living that. I can add little to what the detectives have already pointed out, save to say that during these years, reckoning only the amount or money which they have discovered that I defrauded others of, and as it is known to them that when I was arrested I had very little money, it is known to them that my disbursements were over ten thousand dollars per month.
The nineteenth case is that of a woman, whose name has passed from my memory, who came to the Castle restaurant to board. A tenant of mine at the time immediately became very much infatuated with the woman, who he learned was a widow and wealthy. This tenant was married, and his wife occasionally came to the restaurant when this boarder was there, which did not tend to decrease a family with disruption. Finally he came to me for advice, and I was very willing to have him in my power in order that I could later use him in my work if need be. I suggested that he live with the woman in the Castle for a time, and later, if his life became unpleasant to him, we would kill her and divide her wealth. Soon, he suggested it was time to take his companion’s life. This was done by my administering chloroform while he controlled her violent struggles. It was the body of this woman within the long coffin-shaped box that was taken from the Castle late in 1893, of which the police were notified.
The Williams sisters come next. In order that these deaths may be more fully understood it is necessary for me to state that what has been said by Miss Minnie R. Williams’ Southern relatives regarding her pure and Christian life should be believed; also, that prior to her meeting me in 1893 she was a virtuous woman, thus rendering truthful the statements of Mr. Charles Goldthwaite, of Boston, that he had never known her other than as an intimate friend or his wife, and that in June, 1893, he did not wire her a considerable sum of money to Chicago in response to a demand for some from her; that she was not temporarily insane at a hotel opposite the Pullman Building, Chicago, May 20-23, 1893; was not a little later secluded within the Baptist Hospital at Chicago under the name of Mrs. Williams, and still later at a retreat in Milwaukee; and that she did not kill her sister and threaten to kill a nurse having her in charge at 1220 Wrightwood avenue, Chicago. All these statements it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction to retract, thereby undoing so far as I can these additional wrongs I have heaped upon her name.
I first met Miss Minnie R. Williams in New York in 1888, where she knew me as Edward Hatch and later under the same name in Denver as has been testified by certain young women who recognized my photograph. Early in 1893 I was again introduced to her as H. H. Holmes in the office of Campbell & Dowd. of Chicago, to whom she had applied for them to secure her a position as a stenographer. Soon after entering my employ I induced her to give me $2500 in money and to transfer to me by deed $50,000 worth of Southern real estate and a little later to live with me as my wife, all this being easily accomplished owing to her innocent and child-like nature, she hardly knowing right from wrong in such matters. Thereafter I succeeded in securing two checks from her for $2500 and $1000 each, and I also learned that she had as sister Nannie in Texas who was an heir to some property and induced Miss Minnie Williams to have her come to Chicago upon a visit. Upon her arrival I met her at the depot and took her to the Castle, telling her Miss Minnie Williams was there. It was an easy matter to force her to assign to me all she possessed. After that she was immediately killed in order that no one in or about the Castle should know of her having been there save the man who burned her clothing. It was the foot-print of Nannie Williams, as later demonstrated by that most astute lawyer and detective, Mr. Copps, of Fort Worth, that was found upon the painted surface of the vault door made during her violent struggles before her death.
Figure 5: Nannie Williams
It was also easy to give to Miss Minnie Williams a delayed letter, stating that her sister’s proposed visit had been given up and also by intercepting later letters and substituting others to keep her from learning that the sister had left the South. Having secured all the money and property Miss Williams had it was time that she was killed. Owing to a fire that had occurred in the Castle I was unable to resort to the usual methods in taking her life, and, after some delay, took her to Momence, Ill., about November 15, 1893, registering at a hotel near the post-office under an assumed name, but as man and wife. My intention was to quietly kill her in some sure manner, but a freight wreck that occurred upon the outskirts of the town the day following my arrival there. Which, out of curiosity, I visited, brought me in contact with a passenger conductor named Peck, who knew me, and I therefore abandoned it, but later returned and took her eight miles east of Momence upon a freight line that is little used, and ended her life with poison and buried her body in the basement of the house spoken of at about the time of the Irvington discovery in 1893. It was a great wonder that the body was not found at that time if the detectives in reality went to that location. Nothing would at the present time give me so much satisfaction as to know that her body had been properly buried, and I would be willing to give up the few remaining days I have to live if by so doing this could be accomplished, for, because of her spotless life before she knew me, because of the large amount of money I defrauded her of, because I killed her sister and brother, because not being satisfied with all this, I endeavored after my arrest to blacken her good name by charging her with the death of her sister, and later with the instigation of the murder of the three Pitezel children, endeavoring to have it believed that her motive for so doing was to afford an avenue of escape for herself if ever apprehended for her sister’s death, by pointing to her as a wholesale murderess, and, therefore, p
resumably guilty of the sister’s death as well; for all these reasons this is without exception the saddest and most heinous of any of my crimes.
Figure 6: Minnie Williams
A man who came to Chicago to attend the Chicago Exposition, but whose name I cannot recall, was my next victim. The Chicago authorities can, it they choose, learn the name by inquiries made of the Hartford, Insurance Company, a Mr. Lasher, of the Stock Exchange Building, all of Chicago; a sash and door manufacturing company opposite the Deering, Illinois, Station or F. L. Jones, a notary public at Indianapolis, at some one of which places I hope either his name or handwriting may have been preserved, thus affording a clue for identification by his friends. I determined to use this man in my various business dealings, and did so for a time, until I found he had not the ability I had at first thought he possessed, and I therefore decided to kill him. This was done, but as I had not had any dealings with the "stiff" dealer for some time previous to this murder, I decided to bury the body in the basement of the house that I formerly owned near the corner of Seventy-fourth and Honore streets, in Chicago, where, by digging deeply in the sandy soil, the body will be found. After Miss Williams' death I found among her papers an insurance policy made in her favor by her brother, Baldwin Williams, of Leadville, Col. I therefore went to that city early In 1894, and, having found him; took his life by shooting him, it being believed I had done so in self-defense. A little later, when the assignment of the policy to which I had forged Miss Williams' name was presented to John M. Maxwell, of Leadville, the administrator of the Williams estate, it was honored and the money paid. Both in this instance and that of a $1000 check given by Dr. Tolman and checks aggregating $2500 by L. R. Hitt & Co., both of Chicago, inasmuch as the endorsements are forgeries, the Williams heirs can now recover these amounts, although it will be an undeserved hardship upon those who have once advanced the money upon them.
Benjamin F. Pitezel comes next. So much has already been printed (even in South Africa, where the case was recently given considerable prominence in a local issue there) regarding this case that there will be little for me to tell. Save the actual manner in which his death was brought about. It will be understood that from the first hour of our acquaintance, even before I knew he had a family who would later afford me additional victims for the gratification of my blood-thirstiness, I intended to kill him, and all my subsequent care of him and his, all well as my apparent trust in him by placing in his name large amounts of property, were steps taken to gain his confidence and that of his family so when the time was ripe they would the more readily fall into my hands. It seems almost incredible now as I look back that I could have expected to have experienced sufficient satisfaction in witnessing their deaths to repay me for even the physical exertion that I had put forth in their behalf during those seven long years, to say nothing of the amount of money I had expended tor their welfare over and above what I could have expected to receive from his comparatively small life insurance. Yet, so it is, and of the vagaries in which the human mind will, under certain circumstances, indulge; in comparison with which the seeking of buried treasure at the rainbow’s end, the delusions of the exponents of perpetual motion or the dreams or the hashish fiend are sanity itself. Pitezel left his home for the last time late in July, 1894, a happy light-hearted man to whom trouble or discouragements of any kind were almost unknown. We then journeyed together to New York and later to Philadelphia, where the fatal house upon Callowhill street in which he met his death September 2, 1894, was hired. Then came my writing to him the discouraging letters, purporting to be from his wife, causing him to again resort to drink. Then the waiting from day to day until I should be sure of finding him in a drunken stupor at midday. This was an easy matter, as I was acquainted with his habits and so sure was I of finding him thus incapacitated that when the day came upon which it was convenient for me to kill him, even before I went to his house I packed my trunk and made other arrangements to leave Philadelphia in a hurried flight immediately after his death. After thus preparing I went to the house, quietly unlocked the door and stole noiselessly within and to the second story room, where I found him insensibly drunk, as I had expected. But even in this condition the question may be asked had I no fear that he might be only naturally asleep or partially insensible and therefore liable to at any moment come to his senses and defend himself? I answer no, and that even had he done so my great strength would have enabled me to have still overpowered him.
Only one difficulty presented itself. It was necessary, for me to kill him in such a manner that no struggle or movement of his body should occur, otherwise his clothing being in any way displaced it would have been impossible to again put them in a normal condition. I overcame this difficulty by first binding him hand and foot and having done – I proceeded to burn him alive by saturating his clothing and his face with benzene and igniting it with a match. So horrible was this torture that in writing of it I have been tempted to attribute his death to some inhumane means—not with a wish to spare myself, but because I fear that it will not be believed that one could be so heartless and depraved, but such a course would be useless, for by exclusion, the authorities have determined for me that his death could only have occurred in this manner, no blows or bruises upon his body and no drug administered, save chloroform, which was not placed in his stomach until at least 30 minutes after his death, and to now make a misstatement of the facts would only serve to draw out additional criticism from them. The least I can do is to spare my reader a recital of the victim’s cries for mercy, his prayers and finally, his plea for a more speedy termination of his sufferings, all of which upon me had no effect. Finally, when he was dead I removed the straps and ropes that had bound him and extinguished the flames and a little later poured into his stomach one and one half ounces of chloroform. It has been asked why I did this after I knew that he was dead, what possible use it could have served? My answer to this is that I placed it there so that at the time of the post mortem examination, which I knew would be held, the Coroner’s physician would be warranted in reporting that the death was accidental, and due to an explosion of a cleaning fluid, composed of benzene and chloroform, and that the chloroform had at the time of the explosion separated from the benzene and passed into his stomach, and upon receipt of such intelligence I believed the insurance company would at once pay the full amount of the claim. The chloroform did worse than this, however, and developed a condition of this body that in my limited medical experience I have never seen of read of, and I mention it here as a fact of scientific interest, that I believe is not generally known. It drove from his entire body tissue, brains and viscera, all evidence of recent intoxication to such an extent that the physicians who examined the body after death were warranted in stating under oath that there was no evidence of, and they did not believe the man was drunk at the time of his death, or within twelve hours thereof. That they were wrong in making such deductions is proven by the well-known fact that all other testimony and circumstances at my trial tended to show that he must have been insensible from liquor, and that only in this condition could I have killed him; a fact so strongly brought out that the learned trial judge in his arguments commented upon it at some length. After his death I gathered together various assignments of patents and deeds to property he had held for me that I had been careful to have him sign some days before, so I should not suffer pecuniary loss. I also wrote the cipher message found by the insurance company among my papers after my arrest; imitating his handwriting, and after placing the body in such a position that by a cunning arrangement of a window shutter upon the south side of the building the sun would be reflected upon his face the entire day, I left the house without the slightest feeling of remorse for my terrible acts.
Figure 7: Benjamin F. Pitezel
For one month and six days thereafter I took no human life, although about three weeks after Pitezel’s death I was afforded an opportunity to gratify my feverish lust for blood by going to the graveyard w
here he had been buried and under pretense of securing certain portions of his body for microscopical examination removed the same with a knife, and the heartless manner in which I did this and the evident gratification it afforded me has been most forcibly told by Mr. Smith upon the witness stand. As an instance of the infallibility of justice, as a triumph of right over wrong, and of the general safety of condemnation to death upon circumstantial evidence alone this case is destined to long remain prominent as a warning to those viciously inclined that their only safe course is to avoid even the appearance of evil.
Two questions that have been often asked I would answer—why did I make no defense at my trial when by so doing I could lose nothing, and possibly could have gained? I answer that after Detective Geyer’s Western investigation, which we could not at that time in any way refute, and in the face of Dr. Leffmann’s learned statements to the effect that no one could or had ever been known to lose consciousness by chloroform self-administered, provided they had not first confined their movements. It would have been but a waste of my counsel’s energies, and of my own, to have tried to convince the most impartial juries that it was a case of suicide and not a murder. Is it to be wondered at that I hesitated before placing the defense of suicide before a jury composed of men who had, with three exceptions, stated under oath, before being passed upon by the court as competent, that they had already formed opinions prejudiced to my interests? The second question is, did Pitezel during his eight years’ acquaintance and almost constant association with me, know that I was a multi-murderer, and if he did know was he a party to such crime? I answer that he neither knew of nor was a party to the taking of any human life, and I earnestly beg that this statement may be believed, both in justice to his memory and on account of the surviving members of his family. The worst acts he ever participated in were dishonesties regarding properties and unlawful acts of trade, in which he aided me freely. In support of my statement that he was not cognizant of any of the graver crimes which I have so freely confessed herein I will mention one of many instances already known to the authorities, via that for six months previous to his death he had planned openly with his wife that their daughter Alice should spend a year at a school he believed Miss Williams intended to open near Boston, and these plans were of such a nature that Mrs. Pitezel knows he was not deceiving her. He would not have made these arrangements, and there would have been no occasion for him to have deceived his own family, if he believed Miss Williams was not alive.
Confessions of the Serial Killer H.H. Holmes (Illustrated) Page 16
