The bloodhounds of the law were on his trail. They knew nothing of the score of murders now charged against him, but he had made a blunder and vengeance long deferred was on his track. He had robbed a Philadelphia insurance company of $10,000. the company did not believe that Pitezel, his accomplice, was dead.
One stormy night in November last, a stranger climbed the frozen hills near the village of Tilton, and hastened the door of a cottage. The night was dark and cold, and the stranger given shelter. It was Mudgett. Within the cottage at which he called were the wife of his youth and the child he had never seen, since grown to be a stout lad.
His wife who had become divorced, but who had not remarried, was overwhelmed by the surprise, it is said, and became hysterical with joy.
He said he must hasten to the village of Gilmanton to see his parents. He left that night, and the next he was heard of he was in Boston. He was fleeing from arrest, and was searching for a hiding place when he visited the home of his deserted wife and son. He was subsequently traced to Boston, where the detectives finally closed upon him and brought him to Philadelphia during the investigation of the Pitezel insurance conspiracy.
Even the insurance people do not believe he killed anyone.
The Chicago Daily News of July 20, 1895, prints the following bona fide story:
Holmes said:
“I am as innocent as the new-born babe of the charge of murdering the Pitezel children. I don’t believe they were ever murdered, and if they were I am not guilty. Why, the last time I saw the boy Howard Pitezel was in Indianapolis. Miss Williams was then in Detroit, and we had arranged that she should take Howard East. So one afternoon I sent the boy to her in Detroit, intending to follow soon afterward. Before I reached Detroit, however, Minnie Williams had taken Howard East and stopped in Buffalo. I then came East with the two girls and finally wound up in Toronto.
We had been there a short time when my wife arrived. She knew nothing of the existence of the Pitezel children. Mrs. Pitezel and the baby came to Toronto shortly after. Neither Mrs. Pitezel, my wife, Alice, nor Nellie Pitezel knew of each other’s presence in that city. I had good reasons, for not letting Mrs. Pitezel know of the proximity of her children, for she was then in very delicate health. We first thought of sending Mrs. Pitezel along with Minnie Williams and the three children to England, but her delicate health precluded that idea.
The man Hatch was in Toronto at the time. Finally it was decided to send Alice and Nellie Pitezel on to Niagara Falls, where Minnie was in readiness for their departure, and I had quite a hard time keeping the children’s presence hidden from Mrs. Pitezel.
I succeeded, however, and escorted them to the railway station, where Hatch had gone by prearranged plans. The four of us got on the train and I rode probably a few Miles out of the city with the children.
When I was about to get off the train Hatch suggested that he accompany the girls a few stations further, so that there would not be any mistake about their tickets.
Nellie and Alice were traveling on half fares and I wanted to be sure they got along on one whole ticket which the conductor had not taken when I left the train. So he went with the children and he can tell where they are to be found if any body can.
I came back to Toronto about 4 o’clock, in the afternoon and four hours later Mrs. Pitezel and the two children had boarded a train for Burlington, as it was thought better she should rest in some quite, healthy place.
Before leaving Toronto for Burlington with my wife the next morning I met Hatch. He seemed all right but there were no questions asked about the children, as I wanted the matter kept from my wife. He stayed there after us. When we arrived at Ogdensburg on our way to Burlington Mrs. Pitezel was there.
After sending my wife to a hotel I went to see Mrs. Pitezel. Hatch never lived in a hotel for private reasons. All our trunks were taken to this house and kept there until we left for Burlington.
One afternoon I took Mrs. Pitezel to the Hatch household and showed her the trunks, one of which needed mending. She saw the bed, the chair and the little stove and can tell about it to this day.
We stayed in Ogdensburg for over a week and then went to Burlington. Hatch went to Montreal to attend some business. I may say here that Hatch and myself were engaged in buying furs and other goods, and smuggling them across the border. That’s why the trunks were sent to the vacant house in Ogdensburg.
When we were about two weeks in Burlington, or three weeks after the two Pitezel girls had left Toronto, I went to the telegraph office to wire Hatch in Montreal to go to Niagara Falls and see the Pitezel Children and Miss Williams off to Europe.
I had written the message and was about to hand it to the operator when Hatch walked into the office. It was a surprise to see him there when I was under the impression that he was buying stuff in Montreal. Where he had been since I left Ogdensburg up to that time I don’t know. I wish I did, and don’t think Moyamensing prison would be my home to-day if I knew that. Shortly after that I was arrested.
Now the district attorney, Superintendent Linden and all these insurance people will tell you that Hatch is a myth. The insurance officers and agents know better. Why, I had scarcely thought of the occurrence in the telegraph office in Burlington, when one day last December Peary, the insurance agent, asked me who that man was whom I had met in the telegraph office I answered that the man was Hatch.
The company’s detectives tracked me all through the country, although I tried my best to avoid them. They know very well who Hatch is and they know he was in Burlington. I am almost positive that they know much more about the movements of Hatch than I do.
Going back to Toronto again and the finding of the two bodies in the cellar of the St. Vincent house, I can say with all confidence that I can prove an alibi to any charge that may be brought against me there. I can get at least six of the best-known business men to swear that I could not have rented the house where the bodies were found at the time stated by all those witnesses.
Hatch may have treated the children all right but where did they set to if not to London with Minnie Williams? Hatch was in Toronto the day I left there with my wife for Ogdensburg on my way to Burlington. I am eager to go to Toronto and stand my trial for the murder of Nellie and Alice Pitezel.”
Holmes has told the police that when he and Minnie Williams were living together at No 703 Sixty-third Street, Englewood, her sister Annie Williams came from the South to pay Minnie a visit. He said after the younger girl had been here a week the other became jealous of her and a furious quarrel broke out. Then, he says, Minnie Williams snatched up a small wooden stool, struck Annie upon the head with it and killed her. Then, Holmes said, in order to hide the crime committed by the girl he placed the corpse in a trunk, weighted it, and that night dumped it in the lake three miles from shore.
Opposing the story that Emiline Cigrande had been last seen Dec, 7, 1892, is one told by a Mrs. Stanwood of Chicago, from which it appears that Miss Cigrande was alive as late as April, 1893. Mrs. Stanwood keeps a boarding house on Yale Avenue between 63d and 64th streets.
She is accredited with the statement that as late as April, 1893, Miss Cigrande boarded at her house and while there became sick under peculiar circumstances, in which Holmes was to his discredit involved.
DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS.
Joseph Downey, Commissioner.
Chicago, July 23d, 1895
Special report on H.H. Holmes’ Building, S.W. Corner of 63 and Wallace streets:
Size of building, 50x125 feet, three story and basement; stores and flats, five stores, two facing 63rd Street, and three on Wallace Street.
The structural parts of inside are all weak and dangerous. Built of the poorest and cheapest kind of material. A combination bay window and winding staircase on Wallace Street side, starting at second story joist and projected three feet from building line, is breaking away from the building and is dangerous.
All dividing partitions between flats are combustible. Bu
ilding was built in sections, and several parts weakened by fire, and not properly repaired. There is an uneven settlement of foundations, in some places as much as four inches in a span of 20 feet. The temporary roof put up after fire in the building is not properly constructed. The secret stairway and trap door leading from the bath room and also underground gas tank does not interfere with the construction of the building. The stores are the only habitable parts of the building. The rest of the building should be condemned. The sanitary condition of the building is horrible.
Respectfully submitted,
E.F. LAUGHLIN,
Inspector.
JEWELER DAVIS
Mr. C.E. Davis, the present owner of the jewelry store formerly owned by H. H. Holmes, is a young man of pleasing manner and fine appearance. There is, perhaps, no better posted man in regard to Holmes mysterious work than he. He tells stories about the strange actions of the great swindler that are very interesting.
In regard to an article which appeared in the Times-Herald of Chicago in which it quotes him as saying he gave Holmes a $25.00 check for goods purchased by him from Holmes and that the check later turned up showing it had been certified, and afterward cashed at Fort Worth, Tex.; he says it is not true, but that the facts are that Holmes came in one evening after the disappearance of the Williams sisters and asked for some money which he had left with Mr. Davis for safekeeping sometime before.
Mr. Davis having immediate use for what currency he had in the drawer, made Holmes a check, which was afterward returned to him as a receipt from the bank with an endorsement signed by Mrs. B. F. Pitezel. Mr. Davis says he thinks now after learning so much about Holmes, that Holmes used to place money with him so that creditors could not find any and attach to it. At the time of Holmes making deposits with him he never gave it a thought. He says he believes Holmes is guilty of the murders charged against him, and knew Holmes to be very able in the manipulation of the surgical knife. He thinks Holmes killed Mrs. Conners, her little daughter Pearl, and the Williams sisters in the castle; that he cut them up into small pieces, and then, by the aid of resin burned the particles in the large stove in his office. He thinks that the bones discovered in the lime to be the remains of Mrs. Conner and little Pearl. His story as to how Holmes came in his store one evening about the time of the disappearance of Minnie Williams, and paced to and fro in an agitated and much worried manner is very dramatic. He thought at the time, perhaps some creditor was hounding Holmes; he now accounts for it as the result of the murder of one of the Williams girls preying on Holmes’ mind. Mr. Davis is the man who identified the necklace found in the stove by the detectives as the one worn by Minnie Williams. He is positive it is the one, as he had repaired it for her at one time.
According to Jeweler Davis, Holmes understood poisons and their use. The use of corrosive chemicals was a favorite theme of conversation with him. Disintegration of the tissues of a human being through chemical action was another of his favorite topics.
He understood the physical weaknesses of women as a physician does. He was known to change medicines which his wife, who had been a drug clerk, compounded, without her knowledge, so that the opposite effect to what she desired would be produced. He boasted of having done this.
Mr. Davis has greatly enhanced the appearance of the store since Holmes left, and he has purchased an elegant show case made with glass from the floor to the top of it for the jewelry department. All of his stock and fixtures were ruined by fire on the morning of August 19, 1895.
ARTICLES ABOUT H.H. HOLMES AS PRINTED IN SOME OF THE CHICAGO DAILIES.
The scene of H.H. Holmes’ murderous career changed from Toronto to Chicago when the charred remains of three of his victims, Annie Williams, Minnie Williams and Howard Pitezel, were discovered in the house which was built by the arch-criminal now under sentence for a trivial crime in Philadelphia jail.
For several days agents of the insurance company with special detectives have been tracing Holmes’ movements during the time he was exploiting his schemes in Chicago with a view of finding a trace of the missing Williams girls whom he robbed of $40,000 worth of property in Fort Worth, Texas. According to his own confession Minnie Williams, one of his alleged wives, murdered her sister Annie in Chicago, and Holmes put her body in a trunk and sunk it in the lake. The detectives never believed this story, and since the disappearance of Minnie Williams they have gone on the supposition that Holmes murdered both girls and disposed of their bodies in some secret place devised by the cold-blooded executioner.
The most likely of all places was his castle. This contained a number of secret apartments walled up for the purpose of concealing property which Holmes desired to conceal from creditors. The detectives found a room that had not been used since Holmes ceased to reside there. In it was an old, unused stove that still bore traces of fire, and in the ashes the detectives raked out charred bones that are supposed to be portions of the bodies of both the Williams girls as well as little Howard Pitezel, whose body was brought here from Indianapolis in a trunk. Among the ashes also were buttons from a woman’s dress.
The most convincing find was a portion of a lady’s watch chain with the links partly melted. This chain was shown to Jeweler C. E. Davis, who still occupied the drug store in the block, and he positively identified it as a chain worn by Minnie Williams.
There were garter buckles and a number of buttons of different descriptions which plainly point to the fact that Holmes used the big stove as a crematory for his different victims in Chicago.
At the inquest into the death of the Pitezel children which was held in Toronto, July, 1895. Mrs. Pitezel, though weak and agitated, ventured to go to the morgue where the bodies of her girls were lying and satisfied herself in their identity. She recognized them by the hair, the teeth, an abscess on the breast of one of them, and other signs which would be ample evidence to a mother. The authorities had taken care that there was no publicity given to the inquest proceedings, and only few except those officially connected were present. Willis MacDonald, the boy who found a snake belonging to the children in the St. Vincent Street house last Christmas, was the first witness. The MacDonald family had been living in the house for a month at the time, and the toy is of some importance as it is also identified by Mrs. Pitezel as having been owned by one of her girls.
Mrs. Pitezel was then placed on the stand and gave her evidence in a voice hardly audible. She called herself the wife of Benjamin Pitezel, formerly of Philadelphia, thereby showing she abandoned any hope of her husband being alive. She met Holmes first in 1893 at Chicago in a restaurant at sixty-fifth and Wallace streets. He was known then as Mr. Holmes, but he went by the name of Howard in St. Louis. She saw him in St. Louis about June or July, 1894. it was in September, Mrs. Pitezel said, she was in Toronto when news of her husband’s death came. Holmes brought it to her. She cried and Holmes said she made as much fuss about it as if it were really true. He advised her
to place the matter in the hands of Jeptha D. Howe, a lawyer, to see about the insurance. The managers of the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company at Philadelphia, wired her to come on and identify the body. She was too sick to go. Lawyer Howe and Holmes went instead and took little Alice, her daughter, with them.
At this point Coroner Johnson handed Mrs. Pitezel a picture of the children, which she identified with tears streaming down her face. Continuing, she said the body of her husband was identified by Alice and the money paid to Howe, who retained $2,500 as his fee, and handed her the rest. Holmes brought Alice back, and advised witness to visit her parents at Galva, Ill., and offered to take Howard and Nellie and put them at school in Indianapolis.
Witness went to Galva, Oct. 26. The two girls, Nellie and Alice, and the boy Howard went to Indianapolis Sept. 18. Sept. 28 she followed them with Dessie, aged 16, and the baby, 11 months old. They stopped at Geisey’s Hotel. They remained until Oct. 18, then they left for Toronto, arriving the evening of the 18th. She then detailed their movements in the cit
y. Oct. 25 they took the 8:30 p.m. train to Prescott, and there crossed to Ogdensburg, N.Y. While in Toronto she saw Holmes nearly every day. Holmes was always promising that at each new place she should see her husband. She saw nothing of her children after they went away as she supposed to Indianapolis, but received letters from them asking to be allowed to come home. Holmes finally told her he was going to rent a house in Toronto and that her husband was coming up here from Montreal. Subsequently he told her he had taken the house, but there were two men watching them, and she would not be able to see her husband without going to Ogdensburg. They staid at Ogdensburg from Oct. 25 until Nov. 1, when Holmes advised her going to Burlington, Vt., as Ogdensburg was too small a place. There she
was to see her husband. They took a furnished house in Burlington at No. 126 Winooska Street, and a few days later he told her again her husband was in Toronto and was coming right along. While they were at Burlington Holmes suggested he should take Dessie to Indianapolis and bring back Alice and she agrees. Nov. 18 she left Burlington and went to Boston, where Holmes was then under arrest.
Coroner Johnson then read depositions submitted by Detective Geyer at a previous session of the inquest. Mrs. Pitezel said the circumstances detailed were correct so far as she knew. Witness said she had come to Toronto at the request of Geyer to identify the children, and had visited the morgue during the afternoon to do so, and she had identified both of them. Mrs. Pitezel was then removed, half fainting, from the box.
Dr. John Caven next gave evidence as to the post mortem. This was of a purely negative character. No marks of any violence were found on the body nor anything suggesting the means of death. Marks spoken of by Mrs. Pitezel were not visible because of the disappearance of the soft tissues. This concluded the evidence tonight, Dr. Johnson remarking that little evidence as to the identification remained to be made. Just as the inquest concluded Mrs. Pitezel, who was in the matron’s room adjoining the court-room, burst into violent hysterics and the doctors present went to her assistance. The police matron spent the night with her, as her condition was very critical. The inquest was adjourned until the following Wednesday.
Confessions of the Serial Killer H.H. Holmes (Illustrated) Page 31
