Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “H.H. Holmes” Pt. 2: Herman Webster Mudgett

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Between 1891 and 1895, H.H. Holmes embarked on a vicious killing spree across the United States, terrorizing an entire nation in the process. No one knows exactly how many murders he committed. He confessed to twenty-seven, but only nine were confirmed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On September 1st, 1894, 33-year-old Dr. H. H. Holmes visited his longtime associate, Benjamin Pitesel at his Philadelphia apartment. Holmes suggested they have a drink together, and it didn't take long for 38-year-old Pytzel to get tipsy. Pitesle downed glass after glass at Holmes' encouragement. Once Pytzl was on the verge of passing out, Holmes seized his moment. Pitesl was completely helpless under his complete control. Holmes smiled as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid. Pizl tried to murmur something as Holmes soaked a rag in the liquid,

but Holmes paid him no mind. There was no more time for talk. As he pressed the rag to Pytzel's face, Holmes rehearsed his next moves in his mind. First, the quiet release. Holmes stood smirking over Pytzl's still corpse. It had been all too easy, just like the others. But there was still work to be done. If he was going to collect Pitesl's life insurance policy, it would all need to look like an accident. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is serial killers, a podcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're continuing our exploration into the twisted mind of Dr. H.H. Holmes, one of America's first serial killers. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.

Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open the app and type serial killers in the search bar. At PARCAST, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at PARCAST and Twitter at PARCAST network. And if you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help.

Last week, we discussed H.H. Holmes' childhood and his fondness for scamming the citizens of Chicago. We also delved into the murders of his first two victims, his mistress, Julia, and her six-year-old daughter, Pearl. This week, we'll follow his killing spree as it kicks into high gear, the construction of his notorious murder castle, and the cross-country pursuit, which finally led to his arrest. In May of 1892, 31-year-old Holmes breathed a little easier. No one suspected him of Julia and Pearl's disappearances. He felt free to indulge his greatest passion again, conning anyone gullible enough to take him at his word. Holmes planned to rip off a popular, supposed treatment for alcoholism, the gold cure. The injection was essentially a patent medicine made up of several ingredients,

one of which was a bromide derived from gold. It wasn't actually effective, but it was extremely popular. Holmes decided to create his own version of the cure, ingeniously substituting the gold solution for a silver one. He'd previously attempted to create a patent medicine without any luck. His many concoctions did nothing to combat illness, but a chronic disease like alcoholism made the perfect target for his pseudo-cure. By the time a patient realized the may be a patient realized the main.

medicine was ineffective, Holmes could be long gone with their money. Plus, the desperation of Holmes' targets made them especially vulnerable to being duped. Vanessa's going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. According to the book, Controversial Therapies for Developmental Disabilities, even otherwise intelligent people, people may be susceptible to obvious tricks under these conditions. The authors write, An important survival skill is to be aware of our limitations.

Much of the time, we do not utilize our full logical powers to guide our actions or judgments in the everyday world. A doctor himself, Holmes knew how easily people could be manipulated by his scientific credentials. He charged ahead with his new business, called the Silver Ash Institute. To support his new enterprise, he hired 24-year-old Emmeline Segrant as a typist. Holmes met Emmeline at an employment agency and was instantly smitten. She had previously worked at the Institute where the Gold Cure was administered and thus had ideal qualifications.

But more important to Holmes was Emmeline's beauty and charm, which he believed he could use to recruit and manipulate customers. He had brought on young women to help with the schemes before. treating them the way he treated everyone else as objects to manipulate and control. In Emmeline's case, he seemed particularly motivated to win her over and get her under his thumb. As soon as she began working for him, Holmes started flirting with her egregiously. He bought her gifts and took her to fancy dinners, despite the fact that he had a wife, Mirda, and a three-year-old daughter, Lucy, back at home.

His advances were so obvious that even Emmeline's landlady objected to their relationship. She noticed Emmeline coming in at odd hours, often accompanied by her boss, and told Emmeline it was unseemly for her to be seen out with a married man. In response, probably at home's instruction, Emeline found new lodgings. Thereafter, she never stayed in one boarding house for longer than a couple of weeks. According to one landlady, quote, Emeline told me that Mr. Holmes did not want her to board with any person longer than a week. All the special attention won Emmeline's affections, and he wasted no time in taking advantage of her in every way possible.

She had some savings from her work at the Institute, which Holmes promptly borrowed. He promised to compensate her with some real estate, but naturally only gave her forged documents and worthless shares in his phony companies. Whenever someone like the landlady commented that their relationship was improper, Holmes constructed more and more complex lies to avoid suspicion. He told some people Emmeline was his cousin. To others he gave the fake name Mr. Belknap, the maiden name of his wife, Myrta. Meanwhile, he covered his tracks at home by moving his family outside of town, sending Myrta and Lucy to a modest house in the suburbs. But while they lived there full time, Holmes only came around once or twice a week. It's unknown how he explained the situation to his wife, but she may have preferred his absence to his lies by that point.

Emmeline, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind the lies at all. She knowingly told several people Holmes' fake name and gave phony excuses to nosy landlady's for why she'd stayed out all night. She also knew Holmes was married, but apparently believed. he planned to divorce Mirida for her. In the late summer of 1892, a few months after she began working for Holmes, Emmeline told several friends she was getting married. Notably, she didn't tell anyone who'd actually met Holmes about the engagement. Instead, limiting her announcement to old friends who didn't know him. For Emmeline, the relationship was true love. For Holmes, it was just another scam. He liked to have Emmeline under his thumb,

helping him with his silver scheme and generally being at his beck and call. But he had plenty of other irons in the fire. By late 1892, he'd started planning for his most ambitious plan yet, setting up a hotel in preparation for the 1893 World's Fair. The World's Fair, set to begin in May of 1893, promised to be big business. Industry around Chicago scrambled to take advantage. of the expected boom in tourism. Holmes wasn't one to let a chance like that pass by.

He knew he could make money not only by catering to fairgoers, but also by defrauding the multitude of investors, clamoring to take advantage of the business opportunity. They were only too eager to get rich without doing their due diligence. Holmes borrowed as much money as possible under the guise of adding a third floor to his 63rd Street building. He told people he was opening the floor as a hotel. In truth, he planned to bleed his investors dry and never pay them back.

Once Holmes got the building materials and initial capital, he hired laborers to construct the third floor hotel. But after a week, he suddenly fired them all without pay, claiming he needed to make cutbacks. A few weeks later, he hired different laborers, again letting them go after a week with no pay. As the jeweler in Holmes drugstore later said, nearly every particle of his building and its fixtures was got on credit,

and very little of it was ever paid for. It always seemed to me it was the courteous, audacious rascality of the fellow that pushed him through. Holmes didn't play by any rules. His scams were transparent, and yet they continued, largely unabated. Using forged letters of credit, he collected as much building material as possible, sometimes selling off the excess to make a quick profit. With his plans secure for the moment, Holmes turned his attention back to Emmeline. Their affair continued until the end of 1892,

during which time she was still telling friends that she was engaged. Despite her insistence that her fiancé wasn't named Holmes, no one she knew had ever met any other lover. Then, soon after December 6th, Emeline disappeared from Chicago. The last known person to see her was her close friend Mrs. Lawrence, who spent some time out with her on the sixth. When Mrs. Lawrence didn't hear from Emmeline for the next couple of days, she reached out to Holmes, asking if he knew where she'd gone. She suspected Emmeline and Holmes had a relationship, but both had denied it to her in the past.

According to Mrs. Lawrence, when she asked him about Emmeline, Holmes became flustered. He claimed that Emmeline had gone away to get married and abruptly ended the conversation. Mrs. Lawrence was confused. She couldn't believe Emmeline didn't tell her about the marriage. Holmes had no further explanation for her and stayed with his wife the next couple of days. When he saw Mrs. Lawrence after that, he gave her a stack of marriage announcement cards as proof. Around the same time, Emmeline's parents received the same cards in the mail. The announcement stated that Emmeline had married a wrong.

Robert E. Phelps on December 7th. She had occasionally mentioned the name Phelps to her friends, but as it turned out, no such person existed. It's likely Phelps served as a stand-in for Holmes himself, but exactly what became of Emmeline is unknown. In the months after her disappearance, rumors circulated that Holmes had gotten Emmeline pregnant and paid her off to leave town. Considering Holmes' aversion to paying anyone anything, it's more likely to her. that he killed Emmeline, just like he'd killed his previous mistress, Julia, after she'd gotten pregnant. And just like after Julia's disappearance, Holmes largely escaped suspicion after

Emmeline went missing. People knew he'd been having an affair with her, but didn't suspect him of being capable of violence. And no one knew of any reason Holmes would have to murder Emmeline. Unfortunately, as Holmes would later prove, he never really needed a real. reason to kill. He enjoyed making others suffer, and his bloodlust was only growing. Up next, H.H. Holmes completes construction on his murder castle and attempts some of the most daring and violent fraud of his career. Now back to the story. In 1892, 31-year-old H.H. Holmes claimed his third victim, 24-year-old Emmeline Cigren. And Emmeline, like one of his previous victims, Julia, had been Holmes' mistress.

She disappeared from Chicago in December of 1892. After his first two murders, Holmes had taken a brief respite from illegal activities, probably to avoid incriminating himself. But with the 1893 World's Fair only five months away, he had no such luxury. By that time, the cracks in his largest scam, the hotel, were starting to show. Homes had been adding a third floor onto a building he owned to serve as lodgings for fairgoers. All the while, he used the construction as an excuse to acquire goods on credit. He borrowed enormous amounts of hardware and construction materials, using the building itself

as collateral. But many lenders had caught on that Holmes wasn't planning to pay them what they were owed. Angry business owners swarmed the partially completed building on 63rd Street to repossess their property. Most were disappointed. Homes had already sold off many of the furnishings and hardware and hidden the rest. The items were so well concealed that it took weeks and multiple walkthroughs for creditors to find what they were looking for. Once again, Holmes outfoxed his victims through sheer absurdity. While the third floor was being constructed, he ordered countless secret doors and hidden compartments installed, which he used to keep things out of sight. Holmes dealt with the repossessions as he always did. He avoided direct confrontation and thwarted legal challenges

by forcing lawyers to sift through incomprehensible mounds of paperwork. At the end of a fruitless search, all the lawyers would find was that Holmes never put his name on anything. He didn't legally own the building or any of the numerous shell companies which had been granted the loans. Everyone knew he was a fraud, but legally they could do little about it. Meanwhile, he was courting yet another mistress, 28-year-old Minnie Williams. Minnie was a former actress who moved to Chicago in early 1893, determined to find steadier work outside of the theater. Holmes took her on as a typist, the same position held by Emmeline months before. As the weeks wore on, the similarities between Emmeline and Minnie only grew.

Minnie wrote letters to several friends, along with her sister, in which she claimed to be engaged or already married to a wealthy doctor. Just like Emmeline, Minnie gave some people a fake name when they asked about her fiancé. She worked with Holmes closely. enough that she had to know he commonly went by H.H. Yet even when clearly speaking about Holmes, she called him Harry Gordon. It seemed to some extent Holmes had a type, considering that he often scammed his victims before killing them. It's likely he thought of them more as marks than anything else. According to a paper published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender profiling, some serial killers use a framework when

selecting their victims that matches those of con men. As the paper reports, like the Confidence Man, a serial killer must give the impression to the intended victims, as well as others, that he or she is trustworthy and a friend. This is exactly how Holmes approached his relationship with Minnie at first. She lied to cover up his true identity because he knew exactly how to get her to trust him. By some accounts, Holmes lulled Minnie into a false sense of security by getting her involved in his criminal activities. He wanted her to think they were equal partners so that she wouldn't suspect it when he ran a scam on her. Apparently, it worked. In the late spring of 1893, Holmes had her send a hurried message to her financial advisor. She asked him to sell some

property she had inherited in Fort Worth, Texas, and send her the money. as soon as possible. Her advisor sold off a small section of the property and sent her nearly $3,000 from the transaction, worth nearly $85,000 today. It's not clear what exactly Minnie and Holmes did with the money. He might have just wanted to milk her for everything she had, or to test the limits of her cooperation. Whatever his motives, Holmes was intensely invested in Minnie Williams. Soon after, she and Holmes, began posing as husband and wife under the names Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. It's possible Holmes had held a phony ceremony and convinced Minnie they were actually married,

or it could be that this was just another part of a joint scheme Minnie willingly participated in. Either way, the couple moved into an apartment together in June of 1893. A few days later, they were joined by Minnie's older sister, Nanny. She came to Chicago from Texas to see the world. Fair and decided to stay with the couple in their new apartment. How Holmes explained all of this to Myrda is unclear. Likely, he continued his habit of staying with her and his daughter once or twice a week and spent the rest of the time with Minnie and Nanny.

But this meant Holmes was now essentially juggling two wives, two separate families, all while simultaneously dodging a bevy of creditors and lawsuits. The stress became too much. He decided to pull the ripcord on a couple of his commitments and made plans to rid himself of Minnie and Nanny. After July 5th, neither sister was ever seen alive again. Like the previous confirmed Holmes murders, it's not known exactly how he killed the women or where he hid their remains.

His story changed vastly in later years. He initially confessed to stuffing Nanny's body in a trunk and sinking it in Lake Michigan, but later retracted the story. On July 7th, debt collectors showed up to the apartment in search of many, only to find the place had been completely cleared out. All evidence of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, along with Nanny Wilson, had disappeared without a trace. But getting rid of his second family wasn't the only thing on Holmes' to-do list.

He still had to deal with. his World's Fair Hotel. Construction had finished on the third floor hotel by the time Minnie and Nanny disappeared, but none of the rooms were truly livable. Most weren't furnished. Some of the doors didn't close all the way, and nothing was clean. Holmes didn't advertise his lodgings, and there are no records of any guests. It was definitely not a busy hotel, but it is possible Holmes rented the place out under the table

to avoid attention. If he did, guests certainly would have been shocked to find trick walls with sliding panels and a bizarre floor plan that was difficult to navigate. Many of the closets also had two doors, which could have allowed a person to secretly enter someone's quarters from the adjoining room. Holmes used some of the hidden passageways to hide goods he bought on credit so they couldn't be repossessed, but it's not clear what the rest of them were for. The labyrinth design and secret passageways eventually sparked rumors that homes designed the hotel like this to spy on guests and easily abduct them.

One tale even suggested that the so-called murder castle had a body shoot that led to the furnace for easy disposal. But it's unlikely that any of that ever happened. While no one knows for certain what he did with the hotel during the fair, it was likely largely vacant. But if not for murder, what was it for? Such a confusing place, full of unnecessary dead ends and convoluted tricks, actually suited Holmes' personality perfectly. It showcased his desire to manipulate and control everything, right down to the places he inhabited.

Most of all, it served as a monument to all the confounding wastes of effort he devoted his energy to. Further heightening the mystery was the fact that the only person really was the only person regularly allowed up to the third floor was Holmes himself. He kept a Spartan office in one of the rooms there. Other than a small desk and chair, it featured only a stove and a large safe lined with asbestos. The laborer who worked on the safe, a man named Joe Owens, later said he had no idea why Holmes wanted it insulated in such a way. The only reasonable explanation seems to be that Holmes wanted it to be soundproof. The vault was around

eight feet tall and just wide enough for a person to walk into. As for the stove on the third floor, it was fairly large, but not enormous. Holmes later claimed he used it for experiments in bending glass, but that doesn't explain why some unidentified women's jewelry and buttons were found in the stove years later. Though it wasn't large enough to cremate an entire body, it could have been used to incinerate smaller pieces, or to get rid of other incriminating evidence.

Holmes certainly could have been killing people in the hotel. Hundreds of visitors to the world's fair disappeared or fell victim to violent crimes while in Chicago. Local police at the time were known to be corrupt and had a reputation for ignoring as many cases as they pursued. Regardless of what he was using the building for, by August of 1893, Holmes was eager to get rid of the whole. hotel, though the fair was scheduled to run until October. On August 13th, a couple of tenants

on the second floor saw him lugging things out of the building in heavy trunks. After Holmes finished, he left to spend the night with Myrta and Lucy. Within the hour after he left, the smell of burning tar permeated the building, and soon the castle was ablaze. The fire ended up destroying the roof and much of the interior of the third floor. but no one was injured. After almost a year spent constructing the hotel, Holmes deliberately burned it to the ground. He'd taken out multiple insurance policies on the building and seemed to look forward to the impending insurance payout.

But considering the complex layout and the extent to which Holmes went to keep his activities on the third floor secret, it's possible there was much more going on behind the scenes. Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure how, many victims Holmes might have claimed in his castle. If there was any hard evidence, it was destroyed in the fire. But the blaze didn't mark the end of Holmes' murder spree. He was just getting warmed up. Up next, H.H. Holmes embarks on a dizzying tour of the United States, killing freely as he went. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong.

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Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Now back to the story. On August 13, 1893, 32-year-old H.H. Holmes set fire to the third floor of a building, building he owned in Chicago. It had been touted as a hotel for tourists visiting the city for the World's Fair, but there's no record of anyone actually staying there. Judging by the suspicious

stories surrounding the building, as well as the hasty arson, it's possible Holmes used the blaze to get rid of some incriminating evidence left inside. But as an added bonus, he also intended to collect a sizable insurance payout after the fire. But soon, multiple insurance companies investigated his claims and figured out something was fishy. Holmes had purchased the policies under the alias H.S. Campbell. When no such person could come to give a personal statement to the insurance companies, the claims were all considered void. The companies didn't take kindly to the fraud,

and the case got Holmes in more hot water than he'd ever been in before. He jumped from hotel to hotel, desperately trying to. to stay ahead of investigators. But as usual, Holmes was working more than one angle. While fleeing the authorities, he was simultaneously pursuing a new mistress named Georgiana Yoke. 24-year-old Georgiana was a beautiful department store employee Holmes may have met at the World's Fair. Unsurprisingly, he began their relationship with a complex series of lies.

He initially told Georgiana his name was H.M. How? When she found out he commonly went by Holmes, he made up a spectacular excuse. He explained that he had changed his original name on the last wishes of his uncle, supposedly also named H.M. Howard. He told Georgiana that his uncle had recently passed away and left him some property in Texas that could only be collected if he changed his name to match his uncles. It was a complex but ingenious lie because the property homes referenced. actually did exist, it had belonged to his last mistress, Minnie Williams, now deceased.

Holmes was apparently convincing enough that Georgiana bought the bizarre story. Their relationship intensified as the drama around the 63rd Street fire grew. The payday Holmes had hoped for never came to pass, and the insurance companies pressed for him to be held accountable for the blaze. After some research, Holmes found he couldn't be arrested for arson unless the charges were filed within a year of the fire. He decided the best course of action would be to skip town until the heat died down. Thus, in late November of 1893, Holmes left Myrta and his four-year-old daughter behind, without an explanation. Then he and Georgiana hit the road to Texas. Of course, Georgiana was in the dark about the real reasons for their departure.

To get her out of town, Holmes told her he needed to go to Texas to claim the property his uncle had left him. Georgiana and Holmes were ultimately headed to Fort Worth, Texas. But along the way, they stopped in Denver, Colorado to hastily get married. On January 17, 1894, the two were wed in a small ceremony. This made Georgiana, at least the fourth woman to be. believe she was married to Holmes, though technically he never legally divorced his first wife. From Colorado, the newlyweds made their way to Fort Worth and met up with an associate of

homes from Chicago, Benjamin Pitesle. He was a seedy character who had collaborated with Holmes on a number of minor schemes over the years. Now he had come to Texas to further their partnership and lay the foundation for their latest scheme, inheriting Minnie Williams' property. Using forged documents and an alias, Pitzel managed to transfer the deed for the land from Minnie to Holmes. Then they began constructing a new building on the property. It's not clear what Holmes intended to do with the property once it was completed. He probably planned on making it a storage space and a home base for his various scams, just like he'd done in Chicago. But no matter what the plans were, they were once again foiled by Holmes' inability to stop his

constant scamming. In addition to buying materials for the building on credit, he started renting bicycles and then selling them off without returning them. As the heat on him increased, Holmes traveled around Texas with Georgiana and Pitesal, buying horses with phony collateral and then immediately reselling them. Local law enforcement finally caught onto his latest swindle and began looking into it. Eventually, they figured out that Minnie was missing. and that Holmes may have something to do with it. But by that time, Holmes was already gone. He knew he was being investigated

and hurriedly left Texas in May of 1894. This time, he was bound for St. Louis, Missouri. Holmes was now wanted for crimes in at least two states. He had outfoxed authorities in Illinois and Texas, but apparently, Missouri was a different story. After just a few weeks in St. Louis, he was arrested for the first time in his life. He'd taken out multiple mortgages and loans against the same property there

and was caught before he could leave town. It took homes a month to secure bail money, but he was finally released from jail on July 31st. He promptly skipped town and slipped into Philadelphia in early August. His stint in jail hadn't done much to temper his criminal ambitions. Once Pitesol joined him in Philadelphia, on August 17th, he and Holmes cooked up their most daring scam ever. They planned to fake Pitesel's death, pull a bait and switch with a medical cadaver,

and then collect on a life insurance policy. Outwardly, it was similar to a con Holmes had conceived of after graduating for medical school. This time, though, Holmes was determined to collect the insurance money, whether or not he could find a substitute body. body. On September 1st, 1894, Holmes went up to Pytzel's apartment. He likely found Pytzl already intoxicated, as he was known to be a heavy drinker. Holmes easily plied Pytzl with more drinks until he had almost passed out.

Once his friend was unable to fight back, Holmes killed Pytzl slowly using chloroform. With Pitesl dead on the floor, Holmes broke a bottle of a flammable chemical and set it next to his body, along with a match and a pipe. He then burned Pitesl's face and hair, trying to make it look like Pizel had died in an accidental explosion while lighting his pipe. Once the scene had been set, Holmes rushed back to his apartment to get Georgiana, and the two of them headed back to St. Louis. They had to fetch Pizel's family so they could identify his body for the insurance company.

Holmes arrived in St. Louis a few days later to find Mrs. Pitesel and her children distraught. They'd heard about her husband's death in the newspaper, and when Holmes arrived, claiming to have news about Benjamin, Mrs. Pytzell panicked all over again. It took some doing, but Holmes eventually managed to persuade her that Pizel was actually alive and well, just in hiding. He told Mrs. Pitzel they had worked together to fake his death and that she needed to come back to Philadelphia. to identify the phony corpse so they could all collect the insurance money. Because Mrs. Piedzel was sick at the time, she decided to send her 15-year-old daughter Alice to identify the body instead. A couple of weeks later, Alice met Holmes back in Philadelphia, and on September 22nd, the two of them went to the morgue.

She positively identified the body as that of her father, and Holmes collected the insurance money. Out of the $7,200 payout, he sent only $500 back to Mrs. Pitzel. But that wasn't the end of his involvement with the family. Mrs. Pitzel believed her husband would eventually come out of hiding and rejoin them. Holmes was only too happy to help and offered to handle the relocation arrangements for the entire family. He told them that Benjamin would meet them in Indianapolis to start their new life. It's clear Holmes planned on picking up. the Pitesles off one by one from the start. But it's unknown why he was so intent on killing

them. It's most likely he simply considered Mrs. Pytzel and her five children final loose threads. People who knew too much about him and his criminal schemes. When they reached Indianapolis on October 10th, Holmes took Howard Paisal to a house he'd rented in a suburb outside the city. There he'd set up a stove and cooked the boy his last meal and laced it with poison. It's not a surprise that Holmes poisoned many of his victims. As forensic psychologist Dr. Lori Johnston writes, convicted poisoners also tend to have a sense of inadequacy for which they compensate through a scorn for authority,

a strong need for control, wish-fulfillment fantasies, and a self-centered, exploitive interpersonal style. All of these could be used to describe Holmes, who loved to flout the rules and dominate everyone he came across. His actions prove him to be entirely self-centered, and his numerous cons show that he was only interested in other people as long as he could exploit them. Reports differ on whether Holmes poisoned Howard using cyanide, wolf spain, cocaine, or chloroform. Whatever he gave the boy, it must have worked quickly when he was dead. Holmes burned bits of his body in the stove and buried some in a nearby barn. Two days later, Holmes convinced the Pitesles to travel again.

Benjamin could no longer meet them in Indianapolis. Instead, they would meet him in Toronto. Holmes told the rest of the family that he'd left Howard in the care of his cousin, Minnie Williams, and that he would rejoin the family soon. Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, one insurance investigator, began having doubts about the story of Benjamin Pitesle's death. He successfully convinced the company president to hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to pursue Holmes and investigate the matter further.

Though Holmes wasn't aware he had Pinkertons on his trail, he did suspect that he was running out of time before his crimes were discovered. Spinning yet another yarn about how Benjamin Paisel was under too much heat from the authorities to meet the family in Toronto as planned, Holmes convinced Mrs. Pytzel to rush to New York, along with Baby Wharton. After she was gone, he set to work getting rid of the elder girls, 15-year-old Alice and 16-year-old Nellie. He took them both to a rented house on the night of October 25th and murdered them. Again, it's unclear how Holmes killed the girls, but he likely did it with points.

the same as Howard. He put the bodies in a shallow grave in the cellar and burn their clothing in the furnace. After killing Nellie and Alice, Holmes' next moves are somewhat of a mystery. He and Georgiana traveled around Canada and the northern United States for the next few weeks, always closely followed by detectives. On November 13th, he resurfaced in Boston and made plans to stay there for an extended period. Holmes had neglected to pay attention to the people pursuing him. With the help of the Pinkerton Agency, the Boston police arrested him on November 17th.

The initial charge was horse thievery, a holdover from his days in Texas, but Holmes knew that was just an excuse to get him into custody. Soon detectives delved deeper into Holmes' life, and he was asked to explain where Minnie and Nanny Williams had gone. Over the next few months, Holmes told a number of conflicting stories. He lied repeatedly about where the Williams sisters were, whether Benjamin Pitesle and his children were still alive,

and about his activities in Chicago. It was obvious Holmes wasn't being entirely truthful in his supposed confessions, but it was difficult to separate fact from fiction. Police still hadn't found any hard evidence which implicated Holmes in murder, though everyone suspected him of it. All that changed in July 1895. When Nellie and Alice Pitzel's bodies were found in the cellar of the home, Holmes rented in Toronto.

Homes could no longer claim the girls were secretly still alive, hiding out with their father. When he learned the bodies had been discovered, Holmes responded, Well, I guess they'll hang me for this. They did. In October, Holmes was put on trial for murdering Benjamin Pitesle and was sentenced to be hanged. After the sentence, police decided not to pursue charges for the deaths of Alice and Nellie.

But Holmes wasn't done enjoying his time in the spotlight. Now, with nothing to lose, he gave a new confession to a Hearst newspaper, this time claiming to have murdered 27 people during his life. Holmes said whatever he could to become infamous. The newspaper paid him $7,500 for the tell-all confession, but it was later found to be largely fabricated. In fact, some of the people Holmes claimed to have murdered in his confession were still living at the time.

Afterward, Holmes even claimed he was possessed by Satan. Sensational reports continued to circulate until there were rumors he'd killed hundreds of people in his so-called murder castle. All the lies and presbating may have cemented his legacy as one of history's most notorious villains, but it didn't help him escape justice. On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged in Philadelphia.

Since then, stories about Holmes have proliferated, often taking his false confessions at face value, and sensationalizing his crimes. In some ways, he's become the symbol of the American serial killer, a seemingly unstoppable, depraved monster. But while he was undoubtedly evil, beneath all the hype, H.H. Holmes was really just a two-bit fraud. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back Monday with a new episode.

For more information on H.H. Holmes, amongst the many sources we used, we found the book H.H. Holmes. The True History of the White City Devil by Adam Salzer, extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals for free on Spotify. Not only does Spotify already have all of your favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy

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We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and is a Parcast Studios original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Juan Borer. with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Freddie Beckley. This episode of serial killers was written by Terrell Wells, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon

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