"They joined Miss Williams and Howard at Niagara Falls, from which point the) went to New York City. At the latter place Miss Williams dressed Nellie as a boy and took a steamer for Liverpool, whence they, went to London. If you search among the steamship offices in New York you must search for a woman and a girl and two boys and not a woman and two girls and a boy. This was all done to throw the detectives off the track who where after me for the insurance fraud. Miss Williams opened a massage establishment at 80 Veder or Vadar Street, London. I have no doubt the children are with her now and very likely at that place.
"I have an arrangement with Miss Williams by which we are to communicate with each other, using the personal column of the New York Herald and writing the communication in cipher."
Soon afterward the interview ended, the District Attorney instructing Holmes to prepare a cipher of the kind he described so that they could reach Miss Williams. Holmes was removed to his cell and a day or two after, forwarded the following communication to District Attorney Graham.
District Attorney Graham. Dear Sir. - The adv. should appear in the New York Sunday Herald and if some comment upon the case can also be put in body of paper stating absence of children and that adv. concerning appears in this paper, etc., it would be an advantage. Any word you may see fit to use in adv. will do and if a long one only one sentence need be in cipher as she will know by this that it must come from me as no one else, unless I told them, could have the same.
Perhaps the first sentence should be, Important to hear before 10th. Cable. Also write to Mr. Massie: Aplben Run-ub--CBRc--etc.
The New York Herald is-or was a year ago - to be found at only a few places regularly in London.
Very Respectfully,
H. H. Holmes.
REPUBLICAN republican.
ABCDEFGHIJ klmnopqrstuvwxyz.
Thus: CbepBc. (Holmes.)
On the Sunday following in June 1895, the following advertisement appeared in the New York Herald.
"Minnie Williams, Adele Covelle, Geraldine Wanda. - Aplben Run-ub--CBRc EBLbrB-ioth - PREeb ABmrcu-PCAcNcBu-RubuPB. Also write pk-PRaaAB -cbepBa. Address George S. Graham, City Hall, Philadelphia, Penn., U. S. A."
The message in ordinary language would have read.
"Important to hear before 10th. Cable. Return children at once. Also write Mr. Massie. Holmes."
Of course no reply was ever received. It was all a trick on the part of the wily criminal who was now fast in the net and struggling to be free.
This cipher message, occurring to him on the spur of the moment is a wonderful instance of the inventions, which he possessed, in an abnormal degree. But for the evil in his black soul and the cruelty in his false heart Holmes the murderer might have been one of the greatest and most honored men of his time.
Mrs. Pitezel Finds her Children
On July 15th, 1895, Detective Frank P. Geyer of the Philadelphia Police Bureau discovered the bodies of Nellie and Alice Pitezel in Toronto, Canada, where we have seen they were murdered by Holmes. It had been a long hunt for this excellent officer but success rewarded him at last. The corpses were terribly decomposed when dug from the cellar at the St. Vincent Street house. They were removed to the morgue as carefully as possible, but decomposition had gone so far as to occasion unavoidable damage to the bodies. The weight of Nellie's plaited hair, hanging down her back, had pulled the scalp from her head. At the morgue everything was done to make the bodies presentable that could be done.
The putrid flesh was taken from the skulls and the teeth had been cleaned so that they could be examined. A large piece of canvas covered the bodies and deftly cut paper concealed the unsightliest portion of the remains. The hair of the children had been nicely washed and. laid out upon the canvas.
For whom were these preparations made?
Alas, they were all that could be done to lighten the horrible ordeal that now confronted poor forlorn Mrs. Pitezel. It was necessary for the mother to view the bodies and identify them. She had been telegraphed to come to Toronto for the purpose.
On July I8th, 1895, she arrived in Toronto with Dessie and the baby. Detective Geyer met her at the Grand Trunk Depot.
Owing to the intense excitement in the city consequent upon the finding of the bodies a vast crowd hovered about the depot and when Mrs. Pitezel stepped from the train she saw a sight that she will remember to the day of her death so intent was everyone in that great throng to get a glimpse of the mother who had suffered more than any mother in the country.
She was placed in a carriage and taken to the Rossin House. So worn out by the weary strain of suffering that had oppressed her for so long, the poor woman broke down at the Rossin House and begged the officers to bring her children to her alive. When told as calmly as possible that the bodies of her children had been found in the cellar she merely repeated her appeal in the midst of her sobs and groans. Small wonder, indeed, that the forlorn, heartbroken creature should be confused and bewildered.
The next day her condition was more restored and it was agreed to take her to the morgue and have her view the bodies. But first it w as necessary to explain the condition they were in.
As gently as possible Detective Geyer made it clear to her that only the teeth and hair of Alice and the hair belonging to Nellie could be seen.
A sob went to her throat but the brave woman repressed it.
"Perhaps there is a mistake," she cried, hope again coming to her as it always did. "It is possible that the children are not mine."
"Let us go to the morgue and decide it," said the detective who was nearly choking with emotion.
She was taken to a carriage and driven to the morgue.
A crowd of curious people had gathered but they made way for the one whose life had been wrecked by her terrible troubles. While Geyer went to see that all was in shape in the dead room, Mrs. Pitezel was given a seat in the waiting room. When he returned and all was ready she was placed between two officers who could sustain her in event consciousness should suddenly leave her and thus protected she was led forward to the remains.
Before that gruesome canvas she stood without realizing at first what it meant. Then it gradually dawned upon her that here lay all that was left of the innocents that had been slaughtered by the monstrous being who was by this time charged with the murder of her husband.
Suddenly she recognized the teeth and hair of Alice and exclaimed in a horrified whisper.
"Alice - it is Alice." Next the long black plait that she had so often arranged for Nellie caught her eye.
The truth was pitiless. They were her children-Nellie and Alice.
One awful moment of silence passed in that scene and then a shriek of agony, that pierced into the very souls of the strong men gathered about, came from her lips and she sank helpless in a swoon.
She was hastily carried back to the carriage and taken to the hotel. One long fainting fit followed another. When revived from unconsciousness her voice would cry out like a wail from the lost. She begged for Alice and Nellie and Howard to come back to her - she prayed that they be restored. What horrible things this stricken mother must have suffered! To call aloud for her children as if they could hear, as if the sound of their mother's voice could bring them out of their bloody graves.
And still the wretch that had created this havoc remained unhung!
How seemingly slow sometimes are the processes of Justice!
Arrested and Tried
Fully a month elapsed before Detective Geyer located the body of Howard Pitezel in the house at Irvington, Indianapolis. The means by which this last discovery was brought about is, indeed, very curious.
The house where the murder had been committed was thoroughly searched but owing to the skill that Holmes had exercised in covering up the traces of the foul deed the detectives went away disappointed. While they were gone two little boys, Walter Jenny and Oscar Kettenbach went into the vacant house together. They had been very much interested in the work of the officers on the
premises and one of them suggested that they should play detectives. While engaged in exploring the recesses as they had seen the detectives do the boys came upon a chimney that began in the cellar and extended above the roof of the house. About three feet above the floor was a pipe hole into which young Jenny ran his arm. When he drew it out he had a handful of ashes and a piece of bone.
They ran from the house with the find and the detectives were soon on the premises again. By taking down the lower part of the chimney it was discovered to contain a large charred mass, which was cut open and found to be the stomach, liver and spleen of a child, baked hard. The pelvis and bony part of the body about the hips were also there. Some iron fastenings off of Howard's trunk, buttons, scarf-pin and other trinkets were also found.
Again Mrs. Pitezel was dragged to the scene of murder. More awful was this last ordeal for she clung to the hope that Howard had been placed in some institution as the fiend had represented.
With a stoicism born of long suffering she identified the various articles recovered as belonging to her slaughtered child.
Why dwell upon the matter longer? Can any more be said to make it clearer that this forlorn creature has suffered more than all of Holmes victims put together? How the heart of pity bleeds for her in the midst of all that misery.
On the 28th of October 1895, Holmes was brought to trial charged with the murder of B. F. Pitezel. He did his utmost to prove that Pitezel committed suicide but the evidence was too strong against him.
The speech of the Hon. Geo. S. Graham, the District Attorney left no loophole for the opposing counsel to thwart Justice. In the course of his remarks Mr. Graham said.
"He tells you that a body was substituted. Was there a body substituted? Don't you believe with me that that man (pointing to Pitezel's picture) was the man who was buried in Potter's Field? Don't you think with me that that man was the man whose body was found in that second story room? Lie No. 1! But he says B. F. Pitezel is down in South America and he has little Howard with him. Oh, gentleman, that is an awful, a frightful statement. What fearful twisting and destruction of the truth. Pitezel in South America! He had seen his body taken up out of the Potter's Field and made little Alice testify that it was the body of her father-down in South America! Gentlemen, think of it and then recall in that connection the broken hearted utterance of that poor woman, Mrs. Pitezel, as she was about to leave the stand, when she said, in answer to the question where did you see Howard last?
"I last saw little Howard's belongings in the coroner's office at Indianapolis." Little Howard in South America with his father! God help such a liar!"
Further Mr. Graham said.
"Then comes the story of Mrs. Pitezel. Gentlemen, you remember that story. I am not going to weary you by its repetition. In all the fifteen years of my service in this office, I do not remember a story that stirred my heart or moved my sensibilities like the broken sentences of that woman, when, with evident suffering in every line and mark upon her face in the supreme effort that she made to control herself, and to avoid breaking down, she told that pitiful, yet marvelous story, of how this man led her from place to place in the pursuit of her husband. I do not see for the life of me how he could sit there and look her in the face, conscious as he must be, of the awful wrong that he has perpetrated upon her - how he could sit there and look her in the face and listen to the harrowing tale of suffering and agony, without wincing, without changing a muscle - he is a man of steel; with a heart of stone and remains utterly unmoved.
"Gentlemen there was once during the course of this trial that tears seemed to come to his eyes and he appeared to be moved when Miss Yokes came upon the witness stand the first day. But it was a subject of such universal comment that you must have noticed it as well as I, and others, that when she was called to the witness stand the second day, no tears dimmed his eye. The question of his lawyers showed that the tears of the first day were summoned to influence her; to excite her pity for him so that in telling her story she might be induced to favor him. But on the second day, when his lawyer's shafts were dipped in malice, and question upon question was thrust at her regardless of how they placed her before the world or the community, he sat as stony, as immovable, as when Mrs. Pitezel told her awful story from the witness box.
"That was a strange story, gentlemen. If you and I had read it in fiction we would say perhaps that the novelist had overdrawn or overstretched the facts; that he had overdrawn the story and made it stronger than our imagination or fancy could tolerate."
"Now let us return to that story. After Alice was taken to Philadelphia to identify the father she was taken back to Indianapolis. He went to St. Louis and saw the mother and took from her the other two children. There are now three children started upon the journey in one group. In a few days he starts the mother upon her travels and with her are Dessie and the baby forming a second group. In a little while after that Miss Yokes proceeds with him. They are travelling in three detachments and utterly ignorant of the location and proximity of the other. Mrs. Pitezel does not know where the three children are located; Miss Yokes does not know that Mrs. Pitezel is travelling with Dessie and the baby and that the three children are also under his control. Another exhibition of the marvelous ingenuity, craft, cunning and power of this man.
Travelling in three separate detachments, and in the city of Detroit, stopping within a few blocks of each other. The hotels have been named at which they stopped-within a few blocks - the mother yearning to see her children and yet ignorant of their whereabouts, and kept from communicating with them; the children pleading to communicate with their mother, an yet kept from communication with her; within four blocks of each other, in the same city and kept apart. Poor Mrs. Pitezel! The will of the wisp, the hope of meeting Benny, held out to her day after day!
"Oh," said he "Benny will be in Detroit." She is at Galva, Illinois, with her parents. He tells her to come in the middle of the week but no, her eagerness to meet her husband prompts her to start early, and she starts for Detroit from her home on the 13th day of October. 'Where is Ben?' 'Well, we'll find Ben in Toronto!' They go to Toronto. You remember the days they spent there. 'Oh, he'll come over and see you when I get a house; he wanted to come and see you without the children being present. It'll never do to permit the children to know that he is living; he can't show himself in, the presence of the children! That is Holmes story.
"Gentlemen, right in that connection let me tell you something he said to Mr. Hanscom. In that statement to Mr. Hanscom he tells this remarkable story. Said he, 'Pitezel was in Detroit and of course I was keeping him out of sight of the children, but one day he got to drinking while in Detroit and before I knew it he walked right into the children, where the three children were and they all saw him, and they all knew him and he was there with the children and I permitted him then to take the children away with- him.' That is what he told Hanscom. Let us, see how that fits with what he told Mrs. Pitezel, 'Oh, says, he to Mrs. Pitezel, wait until I get a house, it will never do for you to have Mr. Pitezel come to see you and have your children see him.'
"Why he told Hanscom that he had called on those three children in that hotel in Detroit and that the children knew all about his being alive. 'Oh, wait until I get a house for you and with the children away, he can come into the house and see you, and the children will not know it.' A man has to be a good liar with a strong memory if he wants to make all the stories that he tells fit each other. His story told to Hanscom is vitally different from his story told to Mrs. Pitezel. Poor Mrs. Pitezel, however, was lured on and on and finally is taken to Prescott in Canada, thence to Ogdensburg, New York; thence to Burlington, Vermont; and at last to Boston to be arrested. He brings her to Boston to be arrested!
"What talent he displays. Here are the three detachments travelling separately, each kept in ignorance of the existence of the others, with this prisoner, the postmaster for Mrs. Pitezel and the children, with orders to collect her letters at every post off
ice upon their route; this postmaster for the three innocent little children who wanted to write letters to dear mamma-every letter intercepted, and those letters found in his tin box, identified in broken sentences by Mrs. Pitezel on the witness stand when she exclaimed in anguish: 'Oh, that's Alice's,' 'That's my Nellie's,' 'That was done by Alice,' 'That's my letter.' Was ever power more complete over a family than this man's power over these people?
"Every letter intercepted-no communication between them. Not one syllable from child to mother, not one syllable from mother to child. Did I speak wrongfully gentlemen, or was I cruel in making the statement when I said this man was a man of steel with a heart of stone?
"Any one that would take these children's letters addressed to their mother and hide and conceal them may justly be charged with being heartless and with being cruel beyond comparison. He is the jailor of the family. He suppresses and destroys their mail. No, he does not destroy it, for in almost every case of villainy and criminality, somehow or other whether it be Providential for the detection and punishment of the rascal or not, I cannot tell, but somehow the villain overreaches himself in his efforts at concealment, and here and there a telltale fact comes to light and points the unerring finger of accusation at him, saying, 'That's the guilty man.' Yes this is a marvelous story and the conclusion of it is not less marvelous than the rest.
"Mrs. Pitezel and Dessie have appeared before you. Mrs. Pitezel was asked, 'When did you see those children again?' and her heart-rending answer some of us must remember for many, many years to come; it was pitiful, it was infinitely sad coming from a heart broken with grief.
Confessions of the Serial Killer H.H. Holmes (Illustrated) Page 27
