Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to bling a Chalk Reporting and I'm Fair Dowdy
Speaker 1: and we were continuing here with our look at H. H. Holmes,
Speaker 1: the man who is often referred to as America's first
Speaker 1: serial killer and one of our most requested topics now.
Speaker 1: Holmes became famous for the crimes he committed in Chicago
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteenth century, around the time
Speaker 1: of the Chicago World's Fair. But where we are in
Speaker 1: the story, we don't know him as a notorious serial
Speaker 1: killer yet. From what we learned in part one of
Speaker 1: this podcast, he's just a really shady guy, a con artist,
Speaker 1: a criminal for sure. We know he's committed insurance fraud
Speaker 1: with the help of stolen condavers, and he's been associated
Speaker 1: with at least one strange disappearance, that of Mrs Holton,
Speaker 1: the woman he bought his first Chicago drug store from.
Speaker 1: And we should also mention that he's also a deadbeat
Speaker 1: husband slash dad. He left his first wife and child
Speaker 1: and is basically estranged from his second wife, Murda and
Speaker 1: their daughter together. Where we left off, though he has, however,
Speaker 1: constructed this very unusual building with gas jets and trapdoors
Speaker 1: and hidden passageways, among other things, and he's done so
Speaker 1: in a secretive manner so that nobody knows the full
Speaker 1: extent of how creepy this building really is. On the surface,
Speaker 1: of course, it's just a structure to house his businesses,
Speaker 1: and it's a business itself as well. It's a hotel
Speaker 1: for the world's fair crowd. But the building's odd and
Speaker 1: rather creepy features in an understatement hint at an underlying
Speaker 1: purpose that's a lot more sinister. So when we left
Speaker 1: off with our story, a man named Jonathan Belknop was
Speaker 1: just getting a sense of that underlying creepiness of this
Speaker 1: hotel slash block of buildings. So Belknop was Holmes's second wife,
Speaker 1: Murda's uncle, and Holmes had recently taken a loan from
Speaker 1: him and then forged his signature on another note to
Speaker 1: get more money. Holmes then invited bell Knap to tour
Speaker 1: his new building, and against bell Knap's a better judgment,
Speaker 1: convinced him to stay the night after They're creepy feeling
Speaker 1: up on the roof. Yes, he tried to get Holmes
Speaker 1: had tried to get him to go on the roof,
Speaker 1: and he had a bad feeling about it and didn't
Speaker 1: do it. And he had a bad feeling about spending
Speaker 1: the night too, but he did it anyway. So this
Speaker 1: is where we're going to pick up with our story.
Speaker 1: So bell Knap carefully locked the door before we went
Speaker 1: to bed that night. He later recalled initially thinking that
Speaker 1: he and Holmes were the only two people in the
Speaker 1: building at that time. The block of buildings, which is
Speaker 1: already kind of a disturbing feeling, something like almost a
Speaker 1: hundred rooms. So just imagine that Bellknap goes to bed,
Speaker 1: but he can't sleep. He lies awake listening to the
Speaker 1: sounds outside, like the occasional horse going by trains, and
Speaker 1: then after a few hours he hears something more alarming.
Speaker 1: Someone is trying his door and they slip the key
Speaker 1: into the lock. So at that point Balknop called out
Speaker 1: and the sound stops. Then a couple of minutes later
Speaker 1: he heard someone walking down the hall, and this is
Speaker 1: the first time that makes him feel like there may
Speaker 1: have been two people at the door, not just Holmes
Speaker 1: in the building. So he said something again to that
Speaker 1: person who was maybe still there. This time, somebody answered him,
Speaker 1: and Belknap later said it was Patrick Quinlyn, Holmes is
Speaker 1: trusted caretaker who he mentioned in the first part of
Speaker 1: the podcast, and Quinlan said that he wanted to come
Speaker 1: into the room, but balk Knope wouldn't answer, the door,
Speaker 1: wouldn't let him in, and eventually Quinlan went away. But Belknap,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine it, still didn't get any sleep
Speaker 1: that night after this bizarre interlude. In the early hours
Speaker 1: of the morning, lay awake thinking about it. Right So,
Speaker 1: not long after this incident, belk Nap discovers that Holmes
Speaker 1: had forged his signature. Holmes apologized as profusely and somehow
Speaker 1: manages to talk Belknap down, so Belknap never press charges
Speaker 1: or reports the incident or anything that happened that night
Speaker 1: that he spent the night in the building. According to
Speaker 1: Eric Larson's book, though, which recounts these events in detail,
Speaker 1: Belknap later said that he realized why Holmes had wanted
Speaker 1: him to go on the roof of his building so
Speaker 1: badly that day. Belknap said, quote, if I had gone,
Speaker 1: the forgery probably wouldn't have been discovered because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been around to discover it, so his hesitation about
Speaker 1: going up there on the roof was justified, and it
Speaker 1: kind of makes you think that he should have resisted
Speaker 1: spending the night too, even though he ultimately got lucky
Speaker 1: he had locked his door. He was awake when he
Speaker 1: heard the key rattling around, And that's kind of why
Speaker 1: we wanted to bring up this incident in the first place.
Speaker 1: Even though it's not one of the most significant or
Speaker 1: grewesome of Holmes's story, it illustrates what happened to a
Speaker 1: lot of people who encountered Holmes, even though they weren't
Speaker 1: as lucky as Belknap. Several p well may have had
Speaker 1: a funny feeling about him, a funny feeling about homes
Speaker 1: or his strange, creepy building, but they sort of went
Speaker 1: along with whatever was going on because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be rude. And that was exactly what happened with Belknap.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to offend his niece or her husband
Speaker 1: and Sarah, you and I have talked about this a
Speaker 1: lot since we started researching this topic. I mean, thank
Speaker 1: you for instincts. Trust your instincts. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't we're so worried about being polite all
Speaker 1: the time that we ignore some of those creepy feelings
Speaker 1: that we have now and again occasionally turned out to
Speaker 1: be justified. Another thing, though, a lot of people who
Speaker 1: did experience something strange or had doubts about homes in
Speaker 1: his building didn't report their concerns to the authority. So
Speaker 1: maybe that's another lesson out of this. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: let somebody know if if there's a strange situation going on.
Speaker 1: He even at one point had a large rectangular kiln
Speaker 1: built in the basement. Nobody thought anything of reporting that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And when the person who had built the kiln for
Speaker 1: Holmes came by, he was just sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, this was a kiln and I can
Speaker 1: make it, yeah, but didn't realize until later what it
Speaker 1: would be used for opening up pottery studio or something.
Speaker 1: Homes exactly Well, I think it was because Holmes had
Speaker 1: supposedly opened a glass business because so much glass was
Speaker 1: needed at the time with all the construction going on
Speaker 1: for the World's Fair, and so he sort of indicated
Speaker 1: that he would need this kiln to create the glass
Speaker 1: that he was making. But it was entirely the wrong shape.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was this long rectangular kiln, more body
Speaker 1: five than glass, more suited to something else, to burning
Speaker 1: up something else rather than glass. But there's a that's
Speaker 1: a big part of why Holmes was able to do
Speaker 1: what he did for so long and not get caught.
Speaker 1: But we should address that question a little bit before
Speaker 1: we go further. I think, what exactly was he doing?
Speaker 1: We need to talk about how exactly he put the
Speaker 1: strange building and all these strange things inside of the
Speaker 1: kiln in the vaults out there already. So one of
Speaker 1: Holmes's primary agenda seemed to involve his employees. And as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, he had several businesses in the building, including
Speaker 1: a drug store and a barbershop and a restaurant, and
Speaker 1: of course all those businesses he needed help to keep
Speaker 1: them all running. Even early on, though people noticed that
Speaker 1: homes of employees didn't really stick around very long. He
Speaker 1: had a high turnover. And he also had this habit
Speaker 1: of hiring young attractive girls, often naive girls from small towns.
Speaker 1: He'd encourage them to bring all their money with them
Speaker 1: and rent accommodations conveniently in his building right where they're working.
Speaker 1: And he'd also have them take out life insurance policies
Speaker 1: naming him as the beneficiary. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: the strangest thing. That's not usually how employer employee relationships work.
Speaker 1: But these girls would work for Homes for a little while,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they would just disappear, vanish off the earth,
Speaker 1: often leaving their belongings in the rooms upstairs. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: individual stories of all of these employees aren't necessarily known.
Speaker 1: A lot of them really didn't know anybody when they
Speaker 1: came to Chicago. They were sort of anonymous, and then
Speaker 1: they were never found later. But there are a couple
Speaker 1: of stories that stand out from the rest that we
Speaker 1: want to go into. One involves a man named Ned Connor.
Speaker 1: Connor was a jeweler who moved to Chicago at the
Speaker 1: end of eighteen nine beginning of eighteen nine one somewhere
Speaker 1: in there, and he started managing the jewelry counter and
Speaker 1: Homes drug store. He his wife, Julia, and their eight
Speaker 1: year old daughter Pearl also rented an apartment above the store,
Speaker 1: and Julia also ended up getting a job as a
Speaker 1: clerk in the drug store. So at first Ned really
Speaker 1: admired his young, handsome, wealthy employer looked up to him,
Speaker 1: in fact, and a lot of people in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: did so. He wasn't alone in that respect, but soon
Speaker 1: he started to feel a little bit uncomfortable with how
Speaker 1: a ten of Holmes was towards his wife. Julia was
Speaker 1: very pretty and very tall. She was six ft tall
Speaker 1: in fact, and she liked this attention from Holmes. Soon
Speaker 1: Ned began to notice that customers kind of looked at
Speaker 1: him with pity, and some people his friends even told
Speaker 1: him that something was going on with Holmes and his wife.
Speaker 1: And then one day Holmes made him an offer. He
Speaker 1: offered to sell Ned at the pharmacy and set up
Speaker 1: a super easy payment plan for him, offered to handle
Speaker 1: all the legal stuff involved with transferring ownership, and Ned
Speaker 1: didn't think twice it seems about why Holmes would want
Speaker 1: to sell him the business, especially if he was potentially
Speaker 1: carrying on with his wife during this. He did, and
Speaker 1: the business was doing fine. I mean, he didn't have
Speaker 1: any suspicions there. He just thought that owning the business
Speaker 1: might help elevate him in his wife's eyes. But it
Speaker 1: didn't work at all, because meanwhile Holmes was also encouraging
Speaker 1: Ned to buy life insurance, telling him that once he
Speaker 1: and Julia were on good terms again, he'd want to
Speaker 1: protect his family. Ned refused that aspect of the deal.
Speaker 1: But not long after he took ownership of the pharmacy
Speaker 1: from homes creditors started showing up and apparently the previous
Speaker 1: owner H. H. Holmes, of course, had bought everything in
Speaker 1: the store, the furniture, even the stock, on credit and
Speaker 1: hadn't repaid a dime. So the new owner, Ned was
Speaker 1: stuck with all of this debt and the only thing
Speaker 1: he could do is commit to repaying them as soon
Speaker 1: as possible. So instead of a new drug store to
Speaker 1: impress Julia with, he has this dead weight around his ankle.
Speaker 1: So think about if this happened to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would imagine Ned to go up to Holmes to
Speaker 1: be really angry and get in a fight. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he approaches Holmes, but Holmes just acts really sympathetic and
Speaker 1: gives Ned some sort of you know, hey, all businesses
Speaker 1: have debts, and I'm sure you knew this when you
Speaker 1: went into business, that was was out of line with
Speaker 1: the deal. They right, thinking that saying trying to imply
Speaker 1: that nothing was unusual, But of course, he didn't offer
Speaker 1: to help him at all either, So things continue to
Speaker 1: get worse between Julia and Ned, and Ned started to
Speaker 1: kind of finally believe these rumors about Holmes and Julia.
Speaker 1: He ultimately left Julia and Pearl and abandoned his interest
Speaker 1: in the store, and Ned eventually divorced Julia, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't get custody of Pearl even though he wanted to.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go get her and and bring her
Speaker 1: to live with him. Of course, this left Holmes with
Speaker 1: Julia and Pearl, and Julia didn't seem quite as attractive
Speaker 1: to him anymore for some reason. And then, to make
Speaker 1: matters worse, in late eightee, Julia told Holmes that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant and so obviously she expected him to marry her. So,
Speaker 1: according to Larson's book, Holmes calmly agreed to marry her.
Speaker 1: Apparently he had been promising that for some time, but
Speaker 1: said that before he did that, she'd have to have
Speaker 1: an abortion, which he would handle sense. Of course, he
Speaker 1: was a doctor and everything he said he'd use chloroform
Speaker 1: she wouldn't feel anything. So Julia agreed she had no choice.
Speaker 1: She wanted to get married. She didn't want to be
Speaker 1: an unmarried, pregnant woman in the late eighteen hundreds, so
Speaker 1: a friend, another tenant in the building, last saw Julia
Speaker 1: that Christmas Eve and even made plans with her to
Speaker 1: see Julia and Pearl the next day, but neither of
Speaker 1: them were ever seen again after that. Holmes told people
Speaker 1: that they had gone to visit family in Iowa, and
Speaker 1: then just after Christmas, Holmes employed the services of a
Speaker 1: man named Charles M. Chapel, who had a very special
Speaker 1: skill and one that implicates Holmes quite a bit. In
Speaker 1: this case. Yes Homes paid Chapel thirty six dollars to
Speaker 1: strip the flesh from a dead woman's body and then
Speaker 1: reassemble the skeleton. Chapel recalled later that the face of
Speaker 1: the body was unidentifiable the face had been disfigured, but
Speaker 1: the body was unusually tall for a woman's, so that
Speaker 1: kind of suggests that it might have been Julia. Chapel,
Speaker 1: like Pizel and Quinlan, actually ended up becoming one of
Speaker 1: holmes trusted accomplices. Although it appears as if Chapel really
Speaker 1: didn't suspect murder, he may have not really known what
Speaker 1: was going on. After all. Holmes was a doctor and
Speaker 1: this could have just been the body of one of
Speaker 1: his patients who died. Of course, that sounds a little
Speaker 1: naive to most of us, but I guess there maybe
Speaker 1: was no way to prove that he knew for sure
Speaker 1: that it was murder. Holmes, of course, had called Chapel
Speaker 1: in in order to make some more money too. He
Speaker 1: ended up selling that skeleton to Hanuman Medical College in Chicago.
Speaker 1: And we've mentioned before how u s medical schools in
Speaker 1: the dred Will Actually we've talked about Burke and Hare too.
Speaker 1: Medical schools around the world were really desperate for bodies,
Speaker 1: even in skeleton form, to use an instruction, So some
Speaker 1: doctors and students were even robbing graves at this point
Speaker 1: to fulfill that need, satisfy that need, and Holmes knew
Speaker 1: this and obviously used it as an opportunity to make
Speaker 1: some good money off of off of these murders. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's not the only time that Holmes used the strategy.
Speaker 1: Another woman who ended up working for homes in Eine
Speaker 1: two was a beautiful, young blonde woman named Emmeline sigrand
Speaker 1: he sought her out to and offered her a job
Speaker 1: because he'd heard of her beauty from Pizel, who'd come
Speaker 1: across her while she was working at a facility where
Speaker 1: he was in rehab. Holmes offered em Line twice her
Speaker 1: previous salary to work for him, and she accepted. He
Speaker 1: started wooing her right away, using all of his usual
Speaker 1: charm that seemed to always work on the ladies. His
Speaker 1: attentiveness that touched that we mentioned that was so but
Speaker 1: at the same time comforting. So she fell in love
Speaker 1: with him, and they would ride bikes together all over
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. I think, if I remember from that book
Speaker 1: was a cool new pastime. It was. It was, and
Speaker 1: Holmes got really into buying bicycles, I guess. But eventually
Speaker 1: she took in a part met in his building too.
Speaker 1: She bought his whole facade. He even embellished his personal
Speaker 1: story and told her that he was the son of
Speaker 1: an English lord, but told her, you know, don't tell
Speaker 1: anyone this is secret. I don't want it to get
Speaker 1: out because I don't want anyone to know, Like he
Speaker 1: just didn't want to brag or something. So this just
Speaker 1: made him seem all the more romantic. She was head
Speaker 1: over heels for him, but when a couple of her
Speaker 1: cousins came to visit. They weren't so taken by the
Speaker 1: whole situation. They didn't actually meet Holmes, but they found
Speaker 1: his building to be really creepy and gloomy, much bell
Speaker 1: Knap did. They didn't share their feelings about it, though,
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to hurt em Line's feelings. So
Speaker 1: later that year, Emilne and Holmes became engaged, but by
Speaker 1: December eight she suddenly disappeared, much like Julia's situation. A
Speaker 1: friend in the building started asking homes about em Line,
Speaker 1: where is she? What happened to her? And he said
Speaker 1: that she left to go marry a man named Robert
Speaker 1: Eve Phelps. He even produced a typed up wedding announcement,
Speaker 1: typed up a very plain looking wedding announcement that apparently
Speaker 1: some members of her family received as well. He had
Speaker 1: several that she had supposedly dropped off for tenants in
Speaker 1: the building that he handed out, and then some of
Speaker 1: her family members got one in the mail well. And
Speaker 1: no surprise here, but Emilyne had never mentioned Phelps to
Speaker 1: her friends in the building or to her family, so
Speaker 1: people didn't quite buy this wedding announcement thing, they kept
Speaker 1: on inquiring about her. Her hometown newspaper found out about
Speaker 1: the wedding and printed that now very eerie founding announcement,
Speaker 1: which said that the bride quote after completing her education,
Speaker 1: went to Chicago where she met her fate. Not the
Speaker 1: most romantic founding announcement. No, and I mean by fate
Speaker 1: they were obviously referring to marriage in kind of an
Speaker 1: oblique way. But uh, now that we know that her
Speaker 1: fate was very different, darker than the darker So Emilyne's
Speaker 1: friend in the building recalled seeing a large trunk brought
Speaker 1: downstairs soon and after Emilyne disappeared. She later said that
Speaker 1: she felt like Holmes had killed Emilyne, but she never
Speaker 1: went to the police and remained living in the building.
Speaker 1: So again another case of that somebody has a suspicion,
Speaker 1: but they not only don't speak up about it, but
Speaker 1: they don't get out of there for themselves. I don't
Speaker 1: take actions to protect yourself. So Holmes also employed the
Speaker 1: services of Chapel again around that time and sold the
Speaker 1: skeleton to a Sala medical college. A few weeks later.
Speaker 1: After em Line, Holmes moved on to a woman named
Speaker 1: Minnie Williams, who he courted previously long distance while she
Speaker 1: was finishing school in Boston and he was in Chicago.
Speaker 1: She wasn't attractive like most of the girls that Holmes
Speaker 1: got involved with, but she did have other virtues. Specifically,
Speaker 1: she was an heiress to a Texas real estate fortune,
Speaker 1: so Many happened to move to Chicago in February of
Speaker 1: pretty much following Holmes. She hadn't heard from him in
Speaker 1: a while, but she was still really in love with him.
Speaker 1: She knew him by a different alias, though, Henry H. Gordon,
Speaker 1: and she called him Harry, so when Holmes found out
Speaker 1: that Many was in town, he immediately called on her
Speaker 1: and started things up again. He asked her to come
Speaker 1: work for him so they could see each other whenever
Speaker 1: they wanted, but he specifically asked that she called him
Speaker 1: Henry Howard Holmes when they were in public, because you know,
Speaker 1: he adopted that name for business purposes, and she didn't
Speaker 1: want her coming in and making anybody suspicious or wonder
Speaker 1: who he really was. So during their courtship, he also
Speaker 1: convinced her to sign over the deed to her Texas property,
Speaker 1: which was her vast heiress's inheritance to someone named Alexander Bond,
Speaker 1: who then in turn signed over the deed to a
Speaker 1: Bent and Tea, a lineman. Holmes convinced many that it
Speaker 1: was a smart business transaction. You know, she'd make more
Speaker 1: money off of it. He would take care of everything,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. And what many didn't know was that Bond,
Speaker 1: the original person she signed it over to, was another
Speaker 1: one of Holmes's aliases, and Lyman was an alias of
Speaker 1: that trusty assistant of Holmes then Pipes All. So essentially
Speaker 1: he had gotten her to give him her fortune, and
Speaker 1: he promised many a wedding, and they ended up having
Speaker 1: a small one, just the two of them and a preacher,
Speaker 1: and she thought it was all legal, but there's no
Speaker 1: record today of their marriage. Many had been writing throughout
Speaker 1: this entire affair, though, to her sister Anna, just talking
Speaker 1: about how happy she was, and how great Holmes was
Speaker 1: and now handsome, and what a great businessman. And when
Speaker 1: the World's Fair got underway, Holmes invited Anna to visit
Speaker 1: and to come see the fair with them. She came,
Speaker 1: though she had reservations at first, but when she got
Speaker 1: there she just got taken in by holmes charm like
Speaker 1: everyone else, and he promised to take both of the
Speaker 1: women to Europe, and Anna even sent for extra clothes
Speaker 1: and things from home in preparation for her long journey.
Speaker 1: So it seemed too people back home like she was
Speaker 1: really going to be taking the jule. But both Anna
Speaker 1: and Minnie disappeared around that time in the summer of
Speaker 1: eight Soon after that, Holmes hired a man named Stephus
Speaker 1: Humphrey to pick up a large trunk and a box
Speaker 1: from his building. The box was long and had dimensions
Speaker 1: somewhere to a coffin, and Holmes had that sent to
Speaker 1: the train station where he'd pre arranged to have it
Speaker 1: ship somewhere, and the trunk was sent to Chapel, Oh. So.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we mentioned, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: other people who were never seen again after staying in
Speaker 1: holmes Is building, and they weren't all his employees or
Speaker 1: all these would be fiances or wives. As planned, he
Speaker 1: had turned his building into a world's fara hotel. In
Speaker 1: still most of his guests were women. According to Larson's book,
Speaker 1: when men would come by to enquire about renting a room,
Speaker 1: the place would suddenly be mysteriously full. But when young
Speaker 1: women came by, there were always vacancies. But the strange
Speaker 1: thing about Holmes, and I think maybe we were discussing
Speaker 1: this earlier, it's something that disturbs us, particularly about homes.
Speaker 1: He didn't usually kill people face to face, but he
Speaker 1: liked to be nearby so that he could hear what
Speaker 1: was going on as he killed them. Right, if he
Speaker 1: locked them in his air tight vault, for instance, he
Speaker 1: could just barely hear the sounds. I mean, remember it
Speaker 1: was soundproof, but he could just barely hear someone crying
Speaker 1: or calling out for help. Often, though, he'd just turn
Speaker 1: on one of those gas valves and let someone die
Speaker 1: in their sleep in their room, or he'd sneak in
Speaker 1: and knock them out with chloroform. So, not surprisingly, his
Speaker 1: hotel often smelled of gas, or it smelled slightly medicinal.
Speaker 1: That would add to the overall creepy feeling people get
Speaker 1: when they visit this place. Yeah, especially if you're eating
Speaker 1: in the restaurant or something. But I guess maybe people
Speaker 1: chalked being a doctor, or they're being the drug store nearby.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, although most drug stores don't smell like
Speaker 1: gas or medicine. Of course, though with all of these
Speaker 1: people disappearing, at least some folks were coming and inquiring
Speaker 1: what happened to their kin folk. Most of them were
Speaker 1: family members, including Emily family, who thought that it was
Speaker 1: really strange she had never written them after her sudden
Speaker 1: marriage to this man they'd never heard of. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think she used to write them very frequently. She was
Speaker 1: a good daughter and very close to her and she
Speaker 1: just went off the map. So they were afraid that
Speaker 1: she had gone to Europe on a honeymoon after her
Speaker 1: wedding and had suddenly died there, and that maybe her
Speaker 1: husband didn't know how to get in touch with them.
Speaker 1: So still not suspecting, really felt play, just hoping that Holmes,
Speaker 1: is their last point of contact, would have some kind
Speaker 1: of information on their daughter. Yeah, although maybe they suspected
Speaker 1: more as time went by. The guardians of Minnie Williams
Speaker 1: were also suspicious, and they hired a lawyer to go
Speaker 1: look for her and protect her estate. So Holmes started
Speaker 1: to feel the pressure, started to feel the heat of
Speaker 1: all these inquiries and from creditors to it turned out
Speaker 1: that pretty much nothing he'd bought for that monstrous building
Speaker 1: was paid for. He had a way to weasel out
Speaker 1: of everything. I mean, just some examples. That airtight vault
Speaker 1: that he built. When the company that installed it came
Speaker 1: to collect, he told them, sure, you can have this back.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you say that you need
Speaker 1: it back if they can't pay for it, but you'll
Speaker 1: have to pay for the damages cause to the building
Speaker 1: when you remove it. And the companies that had sold
Speaker 1: him furniture would come to repossess their goods and he'd say, okay,
Speaker 1: go get it, and then they wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: find it in his labyrinth of creepy rooms. He'd have
Speaker 1: it hidden somewhere, and with all these secret staircases, good
Speaker 1: luck actually trying to find your stuff. Eventually, though, a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of the creditors at Holmes
Speaker 1: owed money to got together and they hired a lawyer.
Speaker 1: He realized at that point that his days in Chicago
Speaker 1: were numbered, so he set the top floor of his
Speaker 1: building on fire, hoping to collect the insurance money. But
Speaker 1: the policy was in the name of one of his
Speaker 1: aliases here him S Campbell, and so when he filed
Speaker 1: the claim, an investigator got suspicious and started looking into it.
Speaker 1: So Holmes never really got to claim that money because
Speaker 1: if he had gone to claim it, this guy who
Speaker 1: was suspicious of and probably would have busted him. So
Speaker 1: instead he fled to Fort Worth, tex after that to
Speaker 1: take advantage of Mini's land that he had had transferred
Speaker 1: to himself through that roundabout way. He took his new
Speaker 1: girlfriend with him, Georgiana Yoke, and he took his trustee
Speaker 1: assistant Pizel, too, but before leaving he ensured pipe of
Speaker 1: life for ten thousand dollars and maybe the assistant should
Speaker 1: start worrying he will become a victim. At this point,
Speaker 1: Holmes wasn't able to successfully get his hands on Mini's estate,
Speaker 1: so they ended up moving on to St. Louis, where
Speaker 1: Holmes took over another drug store, and of course he
Speaker 1: tried to pull one of his usual scams, stocking the
Speaker 1: store on credit and then trying to sell it and
Speaker 1: get the new owner to pay for the stock. But
Speaker 1: this time it didn't work. He was arrested for fraud
Speaker 1: and he went to jail for a short time. Before
Speaker 1: he left jail, though, he confided in another criminal there,
Speaker 1: a train robber named Marion Hedgepeth. Holmes asked Hedgepeth for
Speaker 1: the name of a good attorney one that so, in
Speaker 1: other words, a bad attorney, like someone he could trust
Speaker 1: with his shady dealings, and promised to pay hedge Pet
Speaker 1: five dollars for the information the referral fee on the exactly,
Speaker 1: and he told hedge Pet about his plans to fake
Speaker 1: his friend Pizel's death and collect the ten thousand in
Speaker 1: insurance money. So when Holmes got out, he and Piezel
Speaker 1: proceeded with their plan, and Piezel, under an alias, opened
Speaker 1: up his own business for buying and selling patents, and
Speaker 1: the two were planning on faking an accident and then
Speaker 1: using a disfigured cadaver to collect that life insurance money,
Speaker 1: kind of a throwback from his college days, pulling one
Speaker 1: of his old scams. So on September four, a customer
Speaker 1: came by Pizel's business and found the door locked, and
Speaker 1: when he came back with the police later, they broke
Speaker 1: in and found a body that seemed to have gotten
Speaker 1: caught in an explosion inside. They determined that the body
Speaker 1: was B. F. Perry, which was Piezel's alias, and that
Speaker 1: he had died of burns. So after the body went
Speaker 1: unclaimed for a little while and was bare aid, the
Speaker 1: Fidelity Mutual Life Association received a letter that said that
Speaker 1: Perry was actually Pizel, who had been insured by their company,
Speaker 1: and soon after the lawyer Homes had hired with hedge
Speaker 1: Peth's recommendation, visited Philadelphia to try to get the claim.
Speaker 1: So the company paid Holmes, who kept all the money
Speaker 1: and didn't give any to Pizel's widow or several children.
Speaker 1: And at first it seemed like he was going to
Speaker 1: get away with us, but he made a fatal mistake.
Speaker 1: He never did give hedge Peth that five dollars he
Speaker 1: promised him, So Hedgepeth got mad and ratted out Homes
Speaker 1: to the insurance company. And after looking into it and
Speaker 1: finding evidence about all of the shady dealings that had
Speaker 1: really happened with the alias and all of that, Fidelity
Speaker 1: called in the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which we have done
Speaker 1: a podcast on them before, and the detective agency tracked
Speaker 1: down Homes to Boston. He was arrested on November sev
Speaker 1: and confessed to one count of insurance for all he
Speaker 1: pled guilty to that in the summer of eight. There's
Speaker 1: another creepy catch with this story, though. The thing was
Speaker 1: he kept on changing his own story so much about
Speaker 1: all other aspects of that crime, including what really happened
Speaker 1: to Pizel, because you know, everybody was assuming that he
Speaker 1: had faked they had been in the togather and faked
Speaker 1: Pizel's death. Pizel wasn't anywhere to be found, though, and
Speaker 1: Holmes couldn't answer questions about that. So the authorities ended
Speaker 1: up exhuming the body they had buried as Pizel and
Speaker 1: performed an autopsy on it. They found that the body
Speaker 1: was not some kind of stand in dead body, it
Speaker 1: was Piezel himself, not a random cadaver, and that he
Speaker 1: had been killed not in an explosion but by chloroform.
Speaker 1: So now Holmes is facing a murder charge. And there
Speaker 1: was still a question of what happened to Pizel's children,
Speaker 1: who homes have been traveling with for a while after
Speaker 1: the fraud. I mean, this kind of complicates the story
Speaker 1: a little bit. But sometime in between when he had
Speaker 1: pulled off this fraud with Pizel, supposedly with Piezel, but
Speaker 1: now we know it was sort of on Pizel, he
Speaker 1: was traveling around with three of Pizel's children. So Holmes
Speaker 1: ha told the authorities that Minnie Williams had taken the
Speaker 1: children to London our Texas era, right, But a Philadelphia
Speaker 1: detective named Frank Geyer he didn't buy this. He lost
Speaker 1: his own wife and children not long before, and so
Speaker 1: he was really motivated to find these kids. He launched
Speaker 1: this drawn out investigation in which he traveled to all
Speaker 1: the cities that Holmes had been to recently, kind of
Speaker 1: tracked his male path, and it took a couple of months,
Speaker 1: but he finally found these kids. Unfortunately, they want alive though.
Speaker 1: He found the bodies of the two girls, Nellie and Alice,
Speaker 1: in Toronto, and he found the charred remains of Pizel's
Speaker 1: son Howard in a kitchen stove in Indianapolis. The search
Speaker 1: for the kids is actually really fascinating part of home story.
Speaker 1: I thought, I wish we could spend more time on
Speaker 1: it now in this story, but it's uh. Laursen goes
Speaker 1: into it a lot in the book, so if you
Speaker 1: pick that up, will get to learn for the murder
Speaker 1: Castle and that phase of his career. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: hunt for the children was an interesting kind of conclusion
Speaker 1: to it all. And is it just reveals more I
Speaker 1: guess about holmes character and how synistry was when he
Speaker 1: was doing these awful crimes, and the fact that his
Speaker 1: serial killer profile just would change so dramatically, going from
Speaker 1: luring people in and dispatching them in a very hands
Speaker 1: off kind of way to murdering these kids for no reason,
Speaker 1: no money. Very strange. With Holmes suspected of quite a
Speaker 1: few murders by now, though, the Chicago Police decided to
Speaker 1: search that abandoned castle in Inglewood, and what they found was,
Speaker 1: of course horrifying human remains and stoves and fireplaces and
Speaker 1: chimneys throughout the building, a lot of horrible stuff in
Speaker 1: the basement, yeah, bloody dissecting tables, surgical instruments, that kiln
Speaker 1: that we mentioned which still contained bone fragments. They also
Speaker 1: find found quick line pits beneath the floors, as well
Speaker 1: as a vat of corrosive acid and the bones of
Speaker 1: a small child which might have been Pearl Connor. And
Speaker 1: the vault somehow had an impression of a woman's footprint
Speaker 1: on the inside of the door, which authorities believed to
Speaker 1: belong to in the line. So it's clear now why
Speaker 1: this is known as the murder Castle. But they weren't able.
Speaker 1: The police weren't able to conduct a more thorough investigation
Speaker 1: because in August eighteen, a mysterious fire destroyed the castle
Speaker 1: and the rest of the evidence inside. And that's partly
Speaker 1: why will never know exactly how many people homes killed.
Speaker 1: Some estimates put the numbers low. Well it's still a lot,
Speaker 1: but at some put it at as high as two people.
Speaker 1: Holmes went on trial for Pitzel's murder in October. It
Speaker 1: was called one of the trials of the century, but
Speaker 1: it only lasted for about six days. The jury returned
Speaker 1: a verdict in a couple of hours, though according to
Speaker 1: Joneses History magazine article which you mentioned in the previous podcast,
Speaker 1: the jurors said it really only took them a minute
Speaker 1: to make their decision, but they just stayed out longer
Speaker 1: for appearance's stake. Holmes was hanged May seven, eight six,
Speaker 1: but not before he changed his story a number of times.
Speaker 1: I mean, he said that he didn't kill a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and then he said he killed people that
Speaker 1: they later went and found out we're still alive. And
Speaker 1: it was very confusing. He just kept changing what had happened,
Speaker 1: and he wrote his memoir while he was imprisoned to
Speaker 1: get sympathy, and he also sold the rights to his
Speaker 1: final confession to William Randolph Hurst for seven thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, And in that confession he said that he
Speaker 1: killed twenty seven people. Didn't you wonder who ended up
Speaker 1: with that money eventually too? I mean, he must have
Speaker 1: a math quite a fortune with his gams and his
Speaker 1: ability to never pay his tab anywhere. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of you guys could let us know if
Speaker 1: you have an answer to that. Towards the end, though
Speaker 1: Holmes wrote quote, I was born with the devil in me.
Speaker 1: I could not help the fact that I was a murderer,
Speaker 1: no more than the poet can help the inspiration to song,
Speaker 1: nor the ambition of an intellectual man to be great.
Speaker 1: Another kind of interesting point, he was so afraid of
Speaker 1: people taking his body after he died, Even he had
Speaker 1: done so much to other people's bodies, he was so
Speaker 1: afraid of his own being taken and having stuff done
Speaker 1: to it. He had concrete poured into his coffin and
Speaker 1: also over his coffin in his grave so that people
Speaker 1: couldn't steal his body. And then, of course with a
Speaker 1: story this chaotic. There's also a curse involved, a possible curse.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a curse since the Ice Man. Actually
Speaker 1: that's it's yeah, So lots of weird stuff happened to
Speaker 1: people involved with the case after holmes death. Guyer became ill,
Speaker 1: the jury foreman on his case was electrocuted, the priest
Speaker 1: who had given Holmes his last rites died suddenly, and
Speaker 1: an office of an insurance company that Homes had cheated
Speaker 1: caught on fire. So the Curse of H. H. Holmes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys decide what you think about that. It's certainly
Speaker 1: a scary story though. These ethereal killer tales always creep
Speaker 1: me out a lot. But I know, listeners do you
Speaker 1: like them? A lot? Listeners like them? It's to be
Speaker 1: kind of split. I mean, we sort of did a
Speaker 1: little informal poll around the office here at how stuff works,
Speaker 1: and you know, we found that some people are really
Speaker 1: into real killer stories and really like researching them. And
Speaker 1: I think Sarah and I both fall on the opposite camp,
Speaker 1: were not as much interested in serial killers. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's always fun to reach an interesting story. So it
Speaker 1: just makes me really in a fascinating story. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think that's probably a good time for us to transition
Speaker 1: away from serial killers and into listener mail. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to transition too far after all. Because our
Speaker 1: postcard that we're featuring today does still have a skeleton
Speaker 1: on it, although it's kind of in a can't be
Speaker 1: funny way. It's from Marie. She sent it as a
Speaker 1: holiday card. Um, and just to give you guys a description,
Speaker 1: it is a skeleton holding a crystal ball and it
Speaker 1: says Alexander Crystal Seer sees your life from the cradle
Speaker 1: to the grave. However, Marie has kindly painted over the
Speaker 1: grave scene in the in the crystal ball and put
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree with a shining rhyme stone on top,
Speaker 1: so um holiday cleaning things up a little bit. Thank you, Marie.
Speaker 1: And uh, if any of you guys want to send
Speaker 1: us an email, we have changed our address again. We're
Speaker 1: now at History Podcasts at Discovery dot com and that
Speaker 1: should make our mail delivery a little more reliable than
Speaker 1: it's been the past. It's been spot in the last
Speaker 1: month that we haven't replied to you. That's why. But
Speaker 1: also maybe don't pre send everything or we'll never be
Speaker 1: able to catch up. That's true too again, though, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter at Myston History are always great ways to
Speaker 1: reach us as well, and if you want to learn
Speaker 1: a little bit more about our somewhat scary topic today,
Speaker 1: we have an article called how serial Killers Work, and
Speaker 1: you can find that by visiting our homepage at www
Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future, Join
Speaker 1: House to Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The hou Stuff Works iPhone
Speaker 1: up has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.