Mind of a Serial Killer - SERIAL KILLER: H. H. Holmes Pt. 1

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

H.H. Holmes is one of America's most notorious serial killers. But before the murders, there were the scams. In this episode, Vanessa and Dr. Engels trace Holmes's dark path from a childhood fascination with death to medical school grave robbing, a mysterious building full of trapdoors, and a dangerous partnership with fellow conman Benjamin Pitezel. As the two hatch an elaborate life insurance fraud scheme, the line between crime and something far more sinister begins to blur. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. One of life's greatest challenges is finding someone you can trust, a true partner. You can put total faith in no matter what. For Benjamin Pytzel, that person was Dr. Henry H. Holmes. As a side note, many people have pronounced Benjamin's last name as either Pitezel or Pitezel, but for this episode, we'll keep it as Pitezel. After they met in 1889, their friendship was rocked. solid. Benjamin trusted Holmes in every aspect of his life, especially when it came to committing

crimes together. But as the saying goes, there's no honor among thieves. And Benjamin learned that lesson the hard way. Because H.H. Holmes was no run-of-the-mill criminal. He was a serial killer. And no one around him was safe. The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is serial killers and murderous minds, a crimehouse original. I'm Vanessa Richardson. And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Ingalls.

Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow serial killers and murderous minds. And subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. for ad-free early access to each two-part series. Before we get started, be advised that this episode contains descriptions of murder.

Please listen with care. Today we begin our deep dive into the dark and twisted tale of H.H. Holmes, one of the most notorious serial killers in history. Holmes was a doctor and insurance scammer who left behind a trail of violence everywhere he went. But it wasn't until his closest friend went missing that the mystery surrounding him started to unravel.

As Vanessa goes to the story, I'll be talking about things like how some violent offenders show an early fascination with death, the psychology behind criminal friendships, and why some offenders continuously rope others into their acts of wrongdoing. And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

For most of his life, wherever H.H. Holmes went, mystery followed. In fact, that wasn't even his real name. It was an alias. He was actually born Herman Mudgeett in 1861. Growing up on a farm in New Hampshire, Herman was a polite, smart kid. However, he was also a bit of a loner, and he got bullied a lot. His classmates even tried to scare him one day when he had a doctor's appointment. They told him about all kinds of horrifying things hiding behind the doctor's closed doors. Then they took things a step further.

According to Herman's autobiography, two older boys apparently forced him face to face with a human skeleton one day. They put his hands on his face trying to frighten him. It worked at first. But then something shifted for Herman. He became intrigued by the bones, not scared of them. When a child is repeatedly exposed to something frightening,

especially in a situation where they don't feel that they have control, the brain has to adapt. And one way it does that or it can do that is it changes the relationship to the fear. So instead of staying in a state of distress, the child can start to approach it with curiosity. And that can be protective because curiosity feels active rather than passive because that's what fear is. Fear is passive. That prolonged and repeated exposure can also reduce. reduce the intensity of the fear response. It becomes more familiar to them and in some cases even interesting. And when this happens during development, which is what occurs during childhood,

it can shape what captures someone's attention long term. And that can become part of how they engage with the world. So fear can evolve into fascination because the brain has found a way to make that fear feel manageable, even if the experiences themselves that brought them there were actually harmful to begin with. What are your thoughts on the fact that Herman's fixation had to do with the idea of death and dead bodies? On its own, if a child showed an interest in death or the human body, it's not inherently pathological. In most cases, it's curiosity, or it's because of exposure that brings that curiosity, or even that same shift that we just talked about, from fear to familiarity. What matters more is how that interest shows up over time and the context of that interest.

For some people, it stays within socially acceptable boundaries, like going into research, medicine, or just science in general. And for others, it may coexist with broader patterns like manipulation, lack of regard for others, or exploitation. But on its own, it doesn't explain future behavior, but alongside those broader patterns that are concerning, like I just mentioned, it can help us understand how they relate to things like control or the body itself or vulnerability. And with Holmes specifically, it's also important to remember that much of his early life is coming from his own accounts, his own autobiography, like you mentioned. Would you trust the account of a serial killer as 100% reliable? We know how much they like to construct and control

narrative. So any interpretation from that autobiography should be made with some degree of caution. If there was a moment that sent Herman down his eventual path, it might have been this one. From then on, he no longer feared death. He was fascinated by it. Over the next few years, Herman's preoccupation with death transformed into a desire to go to medical school. And after graduating high school at the age of 16, he found a way to turn that dream into a reality. In 1878, a year after he graduated, 17-year-old Herman married a young woman named Clara Lovering. Clara came from a privileged family, and she had the money to pay for Herman's tuition, which he used to enroll at the University of Vermont. But just because Herman had the means to go to

college didn't mean he fit in there. He was a little too interested in dissecting bodies, which caused others to keep their distance from him. After just one, One term, Herman left school and returned home. But the call of the medical field was too strong to stay away. One year later, in 1881, Herman gave it another go. This time, he went to the University of Michigan, where he studied under a professor named William Herdman. Hurdman was what they called a demonstrator of anatomy, which was the polite term for someone

who dissected human bodies for scientific research. Naturally, Herman was enthralled. Herman seemed to spend all of his time in his professor's office, helping him prepare and dissect bodies, and maybe even joining his mentor on night trips to the graveyard. During the late 19th century, medical schools often resorted to working under the table with Resurrectionists, aka grave robbers,

to get enough cadavers for teaching. It was morbid, but that's what Herman liked about it. and once he got used to grave robbing, he had an idea. He and a friend realized they could use dead bodies to defraud insurance companies. It would be simple. All they had to do was steal a body, create a fake identity for it, take out an insurance policy, stage an accidental death, and then collect their money.

However, Herman didn't actually go through with it. But even if it was just a daydream at this point, the idea had taken root in his mind. and he wouldn't be able to shake it off. There are a few layers of things happening here. And firstly, criminal behavior is being modeled by trusted professional and that's being normalized by peers. And then from that, he's seeing opportunity.

He had access to something most people don't and then he recognized its potential financial value. But it's how that access was framed that is most significant. In a medical setting, working with human work, remains is normalized within a specific context. And when something that would typically be off limits is introduced as acceptable, even if it's justified as legitimate for research, for teaching, for educational purposes, that can still shift how someone interprets boundaries. From there, it becomes less about whether something is allowed and more about how far that permission extends.

You see early signs of cognitive justification here. If something, someone can reframe something that's uncomfortable as something that's useful or something that's necessary, it becomes easier to act on. And the fact that that idea persisted in him beyond this matters. When someone revisits that same type of idea over time, it suggests that the underlying reasoning for that didn't resolve. He applied it more broadly. It stayed available for him. And he was considering it and waiting for the right conditions to apply it moving forward. Why do you think Herman went from being fascinated by bones and dead bodies to concocting this plan to make money off of stolen corpses?

That's a great question. I actually had the same thought as you were walking us through it, because it's not a direct progression. And there's no clear causation there. You don't, you know, going into this doesn't cause someone to try and make a plan out of creating financial gain from stolen corpses. What it may reflect, though, is a shift in how he's relating to what's in front of him. He had, again, access to human remains.

And instead of seeing that as strictly a clinical or educational purpose, he's recognizing it as a way to use it for personal gain. That kind of thinking suggests that he's got some kind of willingness to treat something that would typically be unethical or off limits as a resource to him. It's exploitative. And from there, it becomes easier to rationalize, especially when there is a clear financial incentive attached to it. And rather than a progression from him just being fascinated,

from him just wanting to learn into something darker than that, it becomes about opportunity and it becomes about a growing comfort with crossing boundaries or not even knowing what those boundaries are. Clearly, Herman wasn't interested in normalcy. He was looking for ways to get ahead, but he wasn't interested in doing it for the sake of his family. Herman's wife, Clara, had moved to Michigan with him, and by then they had a son named Robert.

But Herman was an abusive partner, and eventually she had enough. Right before Herman's graduation in 1884, Clara took Robert and fled back to her family in New Hampshire. While most people would have felt completely upended, Herman didn't seem to care at all. In fact, they would never actually get divorced. Herman just carried on with his life without Clara. He graduated from medical school as planned and officially became a doctor.

But after graduation, things started going south for Herman. Within a year or two, he'd made his way to Chicago, now going by the alias, Dr. Henry H. Holmes, which is how we'll refer to him for the rest of the series. It's not exactly clear why he changed his name, but it may have been a way to evade the law, because before Holmes came to Chicago, he spent a little bit of a little bit of his name. He spent a little time in New York and Philadelphia, and he got into hot water in both cities. In New York, people had noticed Holmes coming into town with a young boy who then disappeared. When Holmes was questioned about it, he said the boy went back home.

Nobody really seemed to question it, and there's some evidence to suggest that nothing bad actually happened. The young boy may have been Holmes' son, Robert. However, Holmes also faced a mountain of overdue bills and angry bills. debt collectors, so he skipped town. Then he ended up in Philadelphia, where it was rumored that he got a job as a drugstore clerk. There were whispers that a young boy came into the store and bought some medicine, and right after taking it, he died. Of course, Holmes denied having anything to do with it, but again, he immediately left town. What stands out here is that now there's a pattern where Holmes consistently leaves after there's some sort of pressure on him.

So on one level, this can reflect avoidance where he's removing himself from the pressure before consequences fully develop. But there's also a strategic component to this. Relocation allows someone to reset their environment because they're around new people. He gets a new identity and he has fewer ties to any prior problems or behaviors that got him there to begin with. And after a while, that can become a pattern where the identity becomes flexible. Instead of being anchored to a place or a role, it's something that can be adjusted, depending on what's most useful for him. I think it's really a behavioral strategy for Holmes. He's using movement to manage risk, to maintain control, and to create distance from any kind of accountability for his actions.

What might it suggest about someone who's constantly on the move, like, especially someone like Holmes, who's already broken from his family, he changed his name, and he has criminal ideation? This is where context really matters because the same behavior can mean very different things depending on the person and obviously depending on the situation. In many cases, frequent movement is linked to instability, things like untreated mental health concerns, substance use, financial strain, life changes, or limited support systems. Those factors can make it difficult for someone to remain in one place, even if they want to. And in a clinical setting, if I were assessing someone who had a pattern like this, those are the kinds of factors I would be exploring with them. But with Holmes, the pattern is different. His movements don't seem random or they're not really driven by immediate necessity in the same sense as, you know, most people. Instead, they tend to occur at points where circumstances are no longer beneficial for him.

They're also paired with other behaviors we've talked about, like deception and identity changes. And that allow him to reestablish himself quickly in a new environment where he engages in the same deceptive behavior again. So his pattern is intentional. It's opportunistic and it's selective. Whatever really happened in New York and Philadelphia, Holmes's next stop was Chicago in 1886. Shortly after getting there, he got another job at a drugstore owned by Dr. Elizabeth Holton. According to some sources, she and Holmes were more than employer and employer. They were lovers.

As the story goes, Elizabeth promised to give the store to Holmes in exchange for getting married. Holmes agreed, only for Elizabeth and her young daughter to mysteriously disappear soon after. As always, when the police asked Holmes about their disappearance, he said they just moved away, and they seemed to just take his word for it, or at least they didn't pursue him as a suspect. That may have been because Holmes hadn't done anything wrong, as other sources say Elizabeth legitimately sold the store to him. Either way, once Holmes took it over, he bought a plot of land across the street and started construction on a two-story building, which he had some strange plans for. Holmes added trap doors and shoots to the house,

along with stairways that went nowhere, doors that opened into walls and a giant furnace in the basement that was big enough to fit a person. People in town found it extremely odd, especially when they realized how Holmes treated the workers who were building the house. He was always complaining about shoddy workmanship and refused to pay for their services. He also constantly hired and fired new construction crews, which may have been how he crossed paths with one Benjamin Pitzel. When they realized they were kindred spirits, the two of them, them embarked on a crime spree that took them around the country and ended in death. In 1889, Dr. Henry H. Holmes had been living in Chicago for about three years. He owned a drugstore

and had started building a two-story house across the street, which is likely how he came across a 33-year-old carpenter named Benjamin Pitzel. The details of how exactly the two met are a little murky, but most likely Holmes hired Benjamin to work on his building in November of that year. And once they crossed paths, their lives would never be the same. At the time, Benjamin was fighting to make ends meet. He and his wife, Carrie, had five children. It seems like Benjamin had always struggled to get by in life because he had some sort of criminal past.

And while the details of that are unclear, it's a big reason why he and Holmes hit it off. Soon after they met, Benjamin, learned that Holmes had a pension for insurance fraud schemes. For someone like Benjamin, it must have felt like fate. With so many mouths to feed, he needed all the extra money he could scrounge up, and he didn't mind breaking the law to get it. He and Holmes were fast friends.

They even lived together for a little while. We don't know whether the two pulled off any fraudulent schemes together during that period, but about three years after they met, sometime in 1892 or 93, Benjamin landed in jail, on fraud charges. He'd used bad checks to steal expensive suits, and he did it multiple times before the authorities caught on. But he wasn't too worried about the charges. He had his friend, H.H. Holmes, looking out for him. And sure enough, after a few weeks, Holmes bailed him out. So it's not uncommon for individuals with criminal pasts to come together like this. There are a few

dynamics that explain why that is, and not all of them are psychological in the traditional sense. One of those dynamics is selection. People tend to gravitate toward others who operate with a similar tolerance for risk and have similar views about what's acceptable. That reduces friction. There's less need to explain or justify or even negotiate behavior among them. There's also a practical component. Individuals with criminal histories or criminal mentality, may have fewer conventional or pro-social opportunities, so relationships can form around access, shared knowledge, connections, or resources that are harder to obtain elsewhere. At the same time, there's mutual validation. They reinforce and justify one another's behavior. It's two people

enabling each other's otherwise antisocial tendencies when what they really need is accountability. And after a prolonged period of time, that dynamic can shift what feels normal. And what might have initially required some level of justification becomes more routine simply because it's consistently accepted within that relationship. And importantly, these relationships are often built around utility. Each person brings something of value, whether that's skills, access, or opportunity, which can make the connection feel efficient in reinforcing. But there could also be some negatives and downsides to relationships like this as well.

Maybe Holmes knew he would need a friend himself if he ever got into trouble, or at least someone who owed him a favor down the line. However, if he was brewing up any schemes with Benjamin, he put them on the back burner. Holmes wanted to focus all his attention on a major event taking over Chicago and the opportunities it might provide. In May of 1893, the World's Fair came to the windy city. The fair was a huge deal at the time. Companies from all over the world came to show off their industrial innovations. Around 27 million attendees flocked to its grounds over its six-month run, and Holmes was ready to profit from them. Before the fair officially opened, he quickly added a third floor to his house, which he'd used to rent out rooms to people attending the fair.

At least, that's what he told investors to get their money. In reality, it's not clear if Holmes ever intended to finish the construction project, but he built at least a few rooms and rented them out exclusively to young women. And pretty soon, many of them mysteriously disappeared without a trace. There was no proof Holmes had anything to do with their disappearances, which might have been because that summer, the third floor of his building caught on fire. If there had been any evidence of a potential crime, it was likely destroyed. Although he had taken out insurance policies on the building, to the tune of $60,000.

That's worth just over $2 million today. However, the insurance companies were immediately suspicious. They refused to pay out and instead started investigating homes for fraud and arson. Once homes caught wind of this, he left Chicago and headed south. And so did his good friend, Ben, Benjamin Pitzel, because the two of them had a plan to hit it rich in Texas. The whole thing was based on Holmes' prolific womanizing. Earlier in 1893, he'd hired a young woman named Minnie Williams as his personal secretary.

They were also likely having an affair. Technically, Holmes was still married to his first wife, Clara. And by that point, he'd also married his second wife, a woman named Murda Belknap. He was consistently unfaithful to murder. In fact, despite still being married to two different women, Holmes rented another apartment in Chicago with many, and they acted like husband and wife. Holmes is now showing a consistent pattern of deception, manipulation, and maintaining multiple identities. He also appears comfortable moving between relationships and situations in a way that serves his needs. That kind of pattern can suggest he used.

uses relationships for their function rather than any emotional value. He's considering what they provide, whether that's housing, financial support, access, or cover. His first wife was privileged, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was an intentional selection on his part. And this feels especially relevant given his pattern of leaving when circumstances become unfavorable. So relationships likely function as part of how he reestablishes himself when he's starting over. When someone is able to move between relationships while maintaining different identities or different narratives, it also indicates a high level of compartmentalization. Those same abilities can extend into other areas like fraud or exploitation. But generally speaking, these behaviors you're describing are very consistent with traits often discussed in relation to psychopathy.

Though, of course, you know, I've never evaluated him personally. Well, lying to others seemed to come naturally to Holmes. It's entirely possible that Minnie had no idea about his two wives, or maybe she did and she didn't care. Either way, Minnie seemed to be legitimately in love with him. His interest in her, however, seemed to be more focused on her property. And here's where the fraud scheme in Texas comes into play. Minnie had land in Fort Worth that Holmes had his eye on.

Eventually, he somehow ended up with the dead. deed to her property. Then Holmes transferred that deed to Benjamin. After that, Minnie's aunt got a letter from her and her sister saying that they were heading off to Europe for the summer with Holmes, who they referred to as Harry. Neither Minnie nor her sister were ever seen alive again after July 5, 1893. Once again, we're left to come to our own conclusions on their fate, but if we're reading between the lines, Holmes got the property he wanted, and then he had to get rid of anyone who might want it back. By the latter part of the year, Holmes and Benjamin were in Fort Worth. They immediately started construction on a new hotel, situated on the property they'd taken

from Minnie, and they used aliases to throw anyone off their scent. Benjamin went by Benton F. Lyman, and Holmes went by O.C. Pratt. But their business expedition didn't last long. As usual, the two were engaged in a healthy amount of fraud. They took out tens of thousands of dollars in mortgages and loans on the building, but then never paid up. And that wasn't all. They were also accused of stealing horses. Benjamin and Holmes bought them all over Texas, paid for them with worthless deeds and promissory notes, and then resold the horses for cash. In Texas, that kind of crime was tantamount to treason, so the two turned right back around and ran out of town before they found themselves on the wrong end of the gallows. So earlier we talked about how individuals with criminal pasts tend to gravitate toward one another and how that can become mutually reinforced.

And now we can see how that has happened. Their partnership has amplified, escalated, and been enabled by the both of them. They've been engaging in increasingly visible forms of fraud and then fleeing when the pressure builds and it's worked. And when a behavior consistently leads to a desired outcome, it becomes normalized, making future risk-taking easier. And like we talked about, that leads to escalation. This has now become their routine and it's built on mutual reinforcement. When people are willing to put in so much work to carry out crimes, what's stopping them from just putting in the same amount of to live an honest life instead? Is it just financial? And in the case of criminal friendships like this

one, could one person feel pressure or maybe be manipulated by the other? It's a great question. It's one I get asked so frequently, but it's usually not just about the money. And it's not really about a lack of effort either. People tend to stick with what they've learned works for them. So if someone has had repeated experiences where deception or crime leads to quicker or more reliable results, that can become their default, especially if they haven't had the same success or exposure with pro-social options. There's also a difference in timing. A lot of pro-social or lawful paths require patience and effort before you see results, whereas some offender behavior can lead to more immediate payoffs, even if the long-term risk is higher. And this is especially important for someone like Benjamin,

who has been struggling financially, has five children, has a criminal history, and has been having a really hard time making ends meet the pro-social way. That's very easy for him to get wrapped up in this kind of loop. Environment also plays a role. If someone is surrounded by people or situations where this kind of behavior is normalized, it can start to feel more familiar or even expected. And there can be real barriers like limited opportunities, lack of support, or their past consequences that make it harder to shift into a pro-social path, even if they wanted to. And as for their partnership or partnerships in general, there absolutely can be influenced. We talked about that.

That doesn't always look like direct pressure. Sometimes it's more subtle, like not wanting to go against the other person or feeling like this is just how things are done. And in some cases, there can absolutely be manipulation, especially if one person has more control or more experience or is more dominant. And in others, there is competition. They see the utility in the partnership that gets them there. And then once they get what they set out to get, that utility ends.

And so does the partnership. They don't want to share the grand prize, whatever that might be. It typically comes down to what's being reinforced, what's functional or useful, and what's worked for them or what feels possible for them based on their environmental history, personality traits, and all the other factors that I just listed. Well, Holmes and Benjamin seem to be on the same page. They regrouped in St. Louis, but they didn't have to go all the way back to the drawing board because for the better part of a year, Benjamin and Holmes had been quietly laying the groundwork for another scheme,

something bigger than all the others before. They were planning to fake Benjamin's death in order to collect $10,000 from a life insurance policy. Holmes had been paying the premiums on Benjamin's policy for the last year. All they had to do was decide the time was right, and they could spring into action. But when that time came, the situation quickly spiraled into something much more dark and twisted than Benjamin ever imagined. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time.

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to find her and she's still missing. I'm David Rigen and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 10, the Jacqueline Furland-Smith case. Available now on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. Sometime in late 1893 or early 1894, Benjamin Pytzel and H.H. Holmes were laying the groundwork for a massive insurance fraud scheme. But while they waited for the right time to strike, they had other simpler schemes they could run. For instance, Holmes had just purchased purchased a new drugstore in St. Louis, and he'd started to stock up on goods. Of course, he agreed to pay his suppliers later, but as always, that was an empty promise. Eventually,

that caught up with homes. Suppliers started getting suspicious, and soon the authorities came knocking. They arrested homes for fraud and selling the goods he hadn't paid for. However, he didn't stay in prison long. His lawyer arranged for a bail bondsman to put up the money. but he was there long enough to have a conversation that would come back to haunt him. Holmes shared a cell with the infamous Wild West outlaw Marion Hedgepeth, otherwise known as the handsome bandit or the debonair killer. Hedgepeth was in prison serving a 25-year sentence. Maybe in an attempt to impress the outlaw,

Holmes told Hedgepeth all about the life insurance scam he'd cooked up with his pal Benjamin. Then he asked Hedgepeth for his help. Holmes said he'd give him $500 if he could find him a trustworthy lawyer. Hedgepeth agreed and gave Holmes a name, Jepta Howe, who was the younger brother of one of his own attorneys. When Holmes got out of prison, he met with Howe, who was immediately on board with the life insurance scheme. He said he'd gladly help Holmes pull it off, for a fee, of course. At this point, I would characterize Holmes as an opportunist, given his pattern of behavior. He's involving someone else, and this looks less like a fixed master plan and more like a flexible system. He appears to have a general goal, but he adapts based on who is available and what resources he can access.

Bringing others in increases what he's capable of doing. It's practical in some sense, because different people provide different forms of access, whether that's knowledge, credibility or opportunity or in this case legal assistance. But again, it introduces risk. And he continues to do it anyway. That could be because so far it's worked for him. No one's turned him in and that that he's aware of anyway. But it's also likely his belief that he can truly manage that risk based on his prior successes and based on his overconfidence. He's not impulsive. He's just overconfident. Once all the pieces were in place and Holmes was out of prison, he told Benjamin it was time to put their plan into action.

They decided to run the scheme in Philadelphia. So Benjamin moved there and rented an office under the alias B.F. Perry. He pretended to be an inventor, which was an important part of the persona, because he and Holmes planned on staging and explosion. They'd make it look like an honest accident that happened while Benjamin was working. Afterward, homes would supply a cadaver, and they would disfigure the corpse enough so it was unrecognizable. Once the insurance claim would go through, they'd collect the payout, and no one would be any the wiser. Finally, the day came to carry out the plan. On September 4, 1894, a man named Eugene Smith stopped by Benjamin's office.

The door was unlocked, and when Smith wandered in, he felt like something was wrong. He called out, and nobody answered. So Smith ran to get the police. When the authorities arrived, a rancid smell hit their nostrils. They thought the inventor must have been experimenting with something god-awful, but then they saw the real cause. It was a body, burned, disfigured, and practically unrecognizable, just like Holmes and Benjamin had planned.

The investigator's first thought was that this was an accidental death from an explosion, again, just like the plan. Near the body, they found a pipe, several matches, and a broken bottle that contained a flammable fluid. It was all plausible. From there, the coroner's physician concluded the body had been dead for about three days before it was discovered. The man who discovered him, Eugene Smith, identified the body as the inventor, B.F. Perry. I think Holmes's earlier experiences are relevant here. We've talked extensively about how criminal mental mental mentalities can be.

be modeled, reinforced, or enabled. So we have to consider how his time earlier with his professor may have contributed to this. Because if you recall, it was his professor who normalized obtaining cadavers from grave robbers out of the graveyards and justified it in the name of research. That was modeled and reinforced within his environment from a trusted and esteemed adult. That doesn't mean it leads to something like this, but it may have influenced how he related to bodies or cadavers in this context. He's also thinking very sequentially here, which likely reflects learning from past behavior and refining his approach over time. This kind of plan requires anticipating how investigators, witnesses, medical professionals, and even insurance companies are going to interpret what they

see when they come across the scene. He's trying to make this look both. plausible and passable. There's also cognitive flexibility. He's combining aliases, a staged environment, a body, and supporting details around that to create a very coherent narrative that supports his goal. And importantly, this builds on patterns we've already seen and we've already talked about, which are deception, fraud, and using all the available resources that he has in very unconventional ways. So at this point in the story, there's no concrete evidence that Holmes has done anything like this before. So how do you think he taught himself to put together such a convincing scene? This was so well thought out. I mean, you're right. There's no concrete evidence, really, that he's done something like this exactly before.

But there are earlier patterns that give us some context. For example, what we just talked about with his professor in the graveyard. But also, while he was in Chicago, he modified his building, he rented rooms to women, some of whom were later reported missing, and then he later took out a very large insurance policy before that space caught fire, which raised suspicion, and it wasn't paid out because of that, because they had concerns about fraud and arson. Then he fled. We don't know what, if anything happened to those women, and we don't know the cause of that fire specifically. But those events do suggest a willing to this for him to engage in very similar schemes, potentially, using his environment strategically, and continuing even when things drew attention to him. So when you see something more complex later, like potentially staging a convincing scene, it's more likely than not coming out of nowhere. To me, it reflects a process of somebody who refined their methods. He's been trying things, adjusting, and getting better at anticipating how other people, like, investigators, witnesses, insurance companies are going to interpret what they see.

And that's really the key piece. He's not just acting, he's thinking about how his actions will be understood by other people. Do you think psychologically he enjoys tricking people as much as he enjoys the financial benefits of his crimes? It's hard to say definitively, but based on his pattern, I don't think it's just about financial gain. When you look at the level of planning involved and how much attention he's paying to how other people will interpret everything and how dedicated he is to making sure this works, I think the process and the execution itself is reinforcing to him. There can be a sense of mastery in being able to create a situation that others accept as real, especially when it requires anticipating their reactions and staying one step ahead of everyone else and not just like one group of people, but several. groups of professionals. That can build confidence. And in some cases, it becomes part of the reward. Financial gain is the main motivator, but there could also be value placed on ability to

carry something like this out successfully for somebody who has a lot of ego and a lot of confidence. Well, the incident seemed cut and dry. However, investigators soon discovered some inconsistencies. First, none of B.F. Perry's neighbors had heard any sort of explosion in the past few days, which didn't make sense because the authorities knew it had to have been a big one. Second, detectives found letters in the dead man's pockets that seemed to be from his wife. She was back in St. Louis and wrote about joining her husband in Philadelphia. But the weird thing was, all the bottom portions of the letters where the signatures would be were torn off, as if someone didn't want anyone to know the name of the person who had written them.

This meant they had no way of contacting the wife, and they had no other leads either. Ultimately, a coroner's jury ruled that B.F. Perry had died in an explosion. His body went unclaimed in the morgue for ten days, and then they buried him in a pauper's grave. Unless someone turned up looking for him, he would remain buried alone. But then the insurance company, Fidelity Mutual Life Association in Philadelphia, received a letter. It was from St. Louis, and it claimed that B.F. Perry was actually Benjamin Pitzel. And wouldn't you know it, he had a life insurance policy taken out with the company. In order to process the payout, the company needed to confirm the body's identification.

But instead of Benjamin's wife, Carrie, coming out to Philadelphia, H.H. Holmes and his lawyer, Jepta Howell, went instead. However, they did bring one of Benjamin's daughters, 14-year-old Alice Pitzel. Holmes told the insurance men that Benjamin had a few distinguishing marks. They included a mole on the back of the neck, a broken nose, peculiarly spaced teeth, and a twisted fingernail from being crushed by a child's rocking chair. They were very specific marks. If the body was, in fact, Benjamin, everyone should immediately be a able to tell, so the authorities agreed to exume the body. Holmes identified it as Benjamin, and Benjamin's daughter, Alice, agreed. After that, they moved the body to another cemetery,

and the insurance company paid out the $10,000 policy to Holmes, who was apparently acting on Carrie Pitzel's behalf. At the time, it all seemed above board. Carrie even supposedly wrote a letter to fidelity, praising them for paying the policy so promptly, Fidelity ended up using that letter for promotional purposes to advertise their services. But once everything was done and dusted, Holmes went to carry and told her the truth. Benjamin was actually alive. This was all part of the plan he and Benjamin had hatched. The body back in the Philadelphia office, he'd planted it and pretended it was Benjamin.

But really, they'd just managed to swindle the insurance company of $10,000. which today would be about $360,000. Holmes paid Carrie $500 of the $10,000 insurance payout. Then he told her that Benjamin was simply hiding out. They just had to go meet him. We talked earlier about Holmes bringing more people into his schemes. Let's talk about contacting Carrie. There are a couple ways to understand that decision,

and it may not be just one or the other, but on a practical level, contacting Carrie does serve a purpose. She's necessary because she's the legitimate claimant. Holmes doesn't get to claim that money. She does. She's also necessary to maintain the illusion, especially when it comes to avoiding suspicion. So bringing her into the situation even partially is intentional. She's central to it. He also paid her, which to Holmes, money is a powerful motivator. Because it motivates him, he likely expects it will motivate others similarly. There's also an element of control here.

He's the one calling her, not Benjamin. He's revealing all the information, and he's controlling how Carrie understands what happened and the consequences if she says anything. He's using Benjamin as leverage. He's essentially saying, here's your payout, but also if you say something, your husband goes to prison. He's putting her in a bind, but he's framing it as a win

because it's like saying, look, you got money out of this. No one was hurt in the end, and they won't be as long as you cooperate. That's a very, very coercive way of rationalizing this kind of harm. Holmes seemed to get ahead of any potential concerns on Carrie's part. She was more than happy to follow his lead. She wanted nothing more than to reunite with her husband. But Holmes was about to lead her on a wild goose chase.

And eventually, Carrie would start to wonder if Benjamin's business partner was keeping a deadly secret from her. Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time as we conclude our deep dive into H.H. H.H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. Cereal Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crimehouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on Instagram at Crimehouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your

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and is a Crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought. Brought to life by the serial killers and murderous minds team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Alyssa Fox, Sarah Batchelor, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.