H. H. Holmes

If you are ever in Philadelphia, perhaps you could attempt to find 1316 Callowhill St., this use to be the address of a patent office, owned by H.H. Holmes and his partner Ben Pitezel, the elusive address is now a parking lot which stretches the length of an entire city block.  Just across the road stands the North American Building, but there use to be a station servicing the Philadelphia and Reading Railroads.

Just down the road is the building which holds The Philadelphia Inquirer, the very paper which covered all of the salacious news stories during the time of H.H. Holmes.

This is an odd piece of a neighborhood now, filled mostly with abandoned buildings, an area tucked between Chinatown and the poverty-stricken portion of North Philadelphia. But when H.H. Holmes wandered these streets, the city was very different.

I’m John Dodson, welcome to The Secret Sits

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Transcript

If you are ever in Philadelphia, perhaps you could attempt to find 1316 Callowhill St., this use to be the address of a patent office, owned by H.H. Holmes and his partner Ben Pitezel, the elusive address is now a parking lot which stretches the length of an entire city block.  Just across the road stands the North American Building, but there use to be a station servicing the Philadelphia and Reading Railroads.

Just down the road is the building which holds The Philadelphia Inquirer, the very paper which covered all of the salacious news stories during the time of H.H. Holmes.

This is an odd piece of a neighborhood now, filled mostly with abandoned buildings, an area tucked between Chinatown and the poverty-stricken portion of North Philadelphia. But when H.H. Holmes wandered these streets, the city was very different.

I’m John Dodson, welcome to The Secret Sits

Philadelphia during the early 19th century, was the largest and wealthiest city in the United States.  The glamorous city was built with white marble clad buildings and cobblestone streets teaming with traffic.  It was the Paris of the Americas, and it quickly became the political center of the nation.  And like its sister city it was also quickly becoming the center of fashion and high society.

By the later half of the 19th century Philadelphia had grown to the highest population of African-Americans of any northern city.  The City Hall building was erected as an opulent example of Second Empire French architecture, which was all the rage at the time.  It used elements of many different historical styles and also made innovative use of modern materials, such as iron frameworks and glass skylights.  The building was crowned with a statue of William Penn in 1894.  Around this time a New York based cheese company also lent the popular city’s name to its number one brand new product, it’s cream cheese.

But suddenly the city lost its vigor and all of the nation’s political power moved to Washington D.C. and all of the arts, fashion and culture moved into New York.  Philadelphia turned to industry to maintain the city, but with industrial plants comes dirt and grime and the working class, which also brough crime.  It was at this time, when the city was lost in chaos, that H.H. Holmes moved in.

It can be almost comical how much we romanticize criminals who have long been lost to time, we make movies about the love affair of Bonny and Clyde and people can name four famous serial killers before they could tell you the Vice President 10 years ago.  And H.H. Holmes is no different.  His crimes seem so long ago, they are just a plot for a new horror movie, or the subject of the next True Crime documentary.  But I want you to remember, that most serial killers are psychopaths.  And many of these killers share very important characteristics.  They are master manipulators, and they have a sever lack of a moral compass.  They use their manipulative behavior to cover their tracks and evade capture.

And this is how H.H. Holmes was, he was almost the supreme serial killer.  It is believed that Holmes murdered a minimum of 100 human beings, in his house of horrors, before being caught.  But how did this Murder Castle come to exist and what made H.H. Holmes into the monster he turned out to be?

Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in the small village of Gilmanton, N.H., on May 16th 1861.  His father was Levi Horton Mudgett and his mother was Theodate Page Price, both of whom had descended from the first English immigrants in this area of the country.  Herman had an older sister named Ellen and an older brother called Arthur.  He also had younger siblings, Henry and Mary. If Herman or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating. Herman's father was especially abusive after he'd been drinking--which was all of the time.

Herman was never a child, like other children, he enjoyed being on his own.  He would causally attack small animals out in the woods and then attempt to dissect them while they were still alive, you know casual kid stuff.  Herman had no friends, well that is not quite right, he did have one friend, who mysteriously died one day while the two boys were out playing together.  But as Herman grew, he became a distinguished looking gentleman, he was bright and some found him handsome, but Herman’s one special talent was that he could make people feel special.  At the age of 16, Herman graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and took teaching jobs in Gilmanton and later in nearby Alton. On July 4, 1878, he married Clara Lovering in Alton; their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, was born on February 3, 1880, in Loudon, New Hampshire. Robert would go on to became a certified public accountant and served as city manager of Orlando, Florida.  

Herman enrolled in the University of Vermont in Burlington at age 18 but was dissatisfied with the school and left after one year. In 1882, he entered the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery and graduated in June 1884 after passing his exams. While enrolled, he worked in the anatomy lab under Professor Herdman, then the chief anatomy instructor. Holmes had apprenticed in New Hampshire under Dr. Wight, a noted advocate of human dissection. 

Housemates described Herman as treating Clara violently, and in 1884, before his graduation, she moved back to New Hampshire and later wrote that she knew little of Herman afterwards.  After he moved to Mooers Forks, New York, a rumor spread that Holmes had been seen with a little boy who later disappeared. Holmes claimed the boy went back to his home in Massachusetts. No investigation took place and Holmes quickly left town.  Right before moving to Chicago, he changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes to avoid the possibility of being exposed by victims of his previous scams.

He obtained a job as a keeper at the Norristown Asylum, which is now the Norristown State Hospital, but he could not handle the terrifying things he saw on this job, so he left and took a position at a local drug store instead.  After hearing that a customer he had prepared a prescription for had died, Herman decided to leave town.

In late 1886, while still legally married to Clara, Holmes married Myrta Belknap in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He filed for divorce from Clara a few weeks after marrying Myrta, alleging infidelity on her part. The claims could not be proven and the suit went nowhere. Surviving paperwork indicated she probably was never even informed of the suit. In any case, the divorce was never finalized; and it was dismissed June 4, 1891, on the grounds of "want of prosecution." 

Holmes had a daughter with Myrta, named Lucy Theodate Holmes, who was born on July 4, 1889, in Englewood, Chicago, Illinois. Lucy would go on to became a public schoolteacher. Holmes lived with Myrta and Lucy in Wilmette, Illinois, and spent most of his time in Chicago tending to business. Holmes married Georgiana Yoke on January 17, 1894, in Denver, Colorado, while still married to both Clara and Myrta.

Holmes moved to Englewood, Illinois which is just outside of Chicago and took work as a pharmacist at Elizabeth S. Holton's drugstore at the northwest corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street in Englewood. He quickly proved his worth and the people of the town were impressed with his medical knowledge and also his prowess around the ladies.  Soon the pharmacy would be filled with women, who had no need of the pharmacy, they simply wanted to be in Holmes company.  The woman who owned the drug store, sold it to Holmes after her husband passed away, under mysterious circumstances, and she never received any payment from the Holmes.  She filed a lawsuit against him for the money, but soon after that she suddenly disappeared and was never heard from again. Holmes informed everyone that she had gone to visit family in California.

In the fall of 1888 Holmes purchased an empty lot across from his drug store, at 63rd and Wallace, and he began construction on a two-story mixed-use building with apartments on the top floor and retail space on the ground floor.  At this same time, across the Atlantic Ocean, in London, Jack the Ripper began murdering women and terrorizing the city.  Holmes served as his own architect, it took two years to construct the building to his specifications and when it was finished Holmes marketed it as a boarding house for young single women.  But some who came to stay in this house, would never get the chance to leave.

A creditor of H.H. Holmes named John DeBrueil died of a stroke on April 17, 1891, in the drugstore; it is unknown if Holmes was involved with his demise. When Holmes declined to pay the architects or the steel company, Aetna Iron and Steel, they sued in 1888.  Holmes’ building was the talk of the town, it was so large and opulent looking, that everyone started referring to it as, The Castle.

In 1892, he added a third floor, telling investors and suppliers he intended to use it as a hotel during the upcoming World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, though the hotel portion was never completed. In 1892, the hotel was somewhat completed, with three stories and a basement. The first floor was the storefront area holding a; pharmacy, blacksmith shop, jewelry store, barbershop and restaurant. The second story consisted of his elaborate torture rooms, which contained chutes that led to the basement. There were soundproofed rooms and mazes of hallways, some of which seemed to go nowhere. Many of the rooms were outfitted with chutes that would drop straight down to the basement where Holmes had acid vats, quicklime and a crematorium to dispose of his victims' bodies.   The third floor held more apartment rooms including Holmes’ own bedroom. Ultimately, only Holmes knew the entire layout of the building and it was purposely built to be utterly confusing to guests, with hallways that went nowhere, doors that opened to brick walls and confusing staircases that made no sense. 

In 1894, some police officers inspected the hotel while Holmes was out. During the inspection, they found rooms with hinged walls and false partitions, rooms linked with secret passageways, and even airtight rooms that were connected to pipelines filled with gas, which Holmes used as gas chambers. Holmes would use chutes to deliver the bodies to the basement, and once there, he made use of surgical tables and an array of medical tools to dissect them before selling their organs and bones on the black market and to medical institutions. The prophet from selling these bodies made Holmes tons of money.  The hotel was gutted by a fire started by an unknown arsonist shortly after Holmes was arrested but was largely rebuilt and used as a post office until 1938. Besides his infamous "Murder Castle" Holmes also had a one-story factory which he claimed was to be used for glass bending. It is unknown if the factory furnace was ever actually used for glass bending-or to cremate incriminating evidence of Holmes crimes.

One of Holmes’ earliest confirmed murder victims was his own mistress, Julia Smythe.  She was married to Ned Conner, who lived in Holmes’ building after getting a job working at the jewelry counter in the pharmacy.  After Conner found out that his wife was having an affair with his boss, he quit his job and moved away, leaving his wife and young daughter behind.  Smythe gained custody of her daughter and remained living in Holmes’ building and continued on with their relationship.

Both Julia and her daughter Pearl disappeared on Christmas Eve of 1891.  Holmes would later claim that the woman had died during an abortion. Another likely mistress of Holmes was, Emeline Cigrande, she began working in the building in May 1892, and disappeared that December. Another woman who vanished, Edna Van Tassel, is also believed to have been among Holmes' victims. Holmes usual method of murder was by suffocation in various forms including: an overdose of chloroform; overexposure to lighting gas fumes; or being trapped in an airless vault, just to give a few examples. 

While working in the Chemical Bank building on Dearborn Street, Holmes met and became close friends with Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter with a criminal past who was exhibiting, in the same building, a coal bin he had invented. Holmes used Pitezel as his right-hand man for several criminal schemes; a district attorney later described Pitezel as "Holmes' tool ... his creature".  Benjamin Pitezel had a wife name Carrie and he also had 5 children; Dessie the oldest at 17, Alice, Nellie, Howard and their new infant son Wharton.

On May 1st 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago.  This was a gigantic, monumental fair spanning over 600 acers.  Over 20 million people from around the world would attend this World’s Fair.  The Fair would be held from May 1st until October 30th.  Holmes spends the time to update his rooms on the third floor of his building to attract Fair goers, he rents rooms in his Castle to tourist passing through town for the Fair, some who would not be easily missed.  But as per usual with Holmes, he never ends up paying for the furnishings at the Castle.  After not being paid, furniture suppliers found Holmes was hiding their materials, for which he had never paid, in hidden rooms and passages throughout the building. Their search made the news, and investors for the planned hotel pulled out of the deal when a jeweler in the building showed them the articles.

In early 1893, a one-time actress named Minnie Williams moved to Chicago. Holmes claimed to have met her in an employment office, though there were rumors he had met her in Boston years earlier. He offered her a job at the hotel as his personal stenographer and she accepted. Holmes persuaded Williams to transfer the deed to her property in Fort Worth, Texas, valued at approximately $40,000, to a man named Alexander Bond (an alias of Holmes). 

In April 1893, Williams transferred the deed, with Holmes serving as the notary (Holmes later signed the deed over to Pitezel, giving him the alias "Benton T. Lyman"). The next month, Holmes and Williams, presenting themselves as husband and wife, rented an apartment in Chicago's Lincoln Park. Minnie's sister, Annie, came to visit, and in July, she wrote to her aunt that she planned to accompany "Brother Harry" to Europe. Neither Minnie nor Annie was seen alive after July 5, 1893. 

Holmes had an entrepreneurial spirit. Based on his former medical education and his connections, he was able to sell skeletons to medical labs and schools. "He, and sometimes a hired assistant, were accused of stripping the flesh off the bodies, dissecting them, and preparing the viable skeletons. The rest of the remains would be tossed in pits of lime or acid, effectively breaking down the remaining evidence."

With insurance companies pressing to prosecute him for arson, Holmes left Chicago in July 1894. He reappeared in Fort Worth, where he had inherited property from the Williams sisters, at the intersection of modern-day Commerce Street and 2nd Street. Here, he once again attempted to build an incomplete structure without paying his suppliers and contractors. This building, unlike the former of his properties, was not a site of any additional killings. 

In July 1894, Holmes was arrested and briefly jailed for the first time, on the charge of selling mortgaged goods in St. Louis, Missouri. He was promptly bailed out, but while in jail he struck up a conversation with a convicted outlaw named Marion Hedgepeth, who was serving a 25-year sentence. Holmes had concocted a plan to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 by taking out a policy on himself and then faking his death. 

Holmes promised Hedgepeth a $500 commission in exchange for the name of a lawyer who could be trusted. Holmes was directed to a young St. Louis attorney named Jeptha Howe. Howe was in practice with his older brother, Alphonso Howe, who had no involvement with Holmes or Pitezel or their fraudulent activities. Jeptha Howe, however, found Holmes' scheme brilliant. Nevertheless, Holmes' plan to fake his own death failed when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. Holmes did not press the claim; instead, he concocted a similar plan with Pitezel. 

Pitezel agreed to fake his own death so that his wife could collect on a $10,000 life insurance policy, which she was to split with Holmes and Jeptha Howe. The scheme, which was to take place in Philadelphia, called for Pitezel to set himself up as an inventor under the name B. F. Perry, and then be killed and disfigured in a lab explosion. Holmes was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel. Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel by knocking him unconscious with chloroform and setting his body on fire with the use of benzene. In his confession, Holmes implied Pitezel was still alive after he used the chloroform on him, before he set him on fire. However, forensic evidence presented at Holmes' later trial showed chloroform had been administered after Pitezel's death (a fact of which the insurance company was unaware), presumably to fake suicide to exonerate Holmes should he be charged with murder. 

Holmes collected the insurance payout on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. Holmes then went on to manipulate Pitezel's unsuspecting wife into allowing three of her five children (Alice, Nellie and Howard) to be placed in his custody. The eldest daughter and the baby remained with Mrs. Pitezel. Holmes and the three Pitezel children traveled throughout the northern United States and into Canada. Simultaneously, he escorted Mrs. Pitezel along a parallel route, all the while using various aliases and lying to Mrs. Pitezel concerning her husband's death (claiming Pitezel was hiding in London), as well as lying to her about the true whereabouts of her three missing children. In Detroit, just before entering Canada, they were only separated by a few blocks. 

In an even more audacious move, Holmes was staying at another location with his wife, who was unaware of the whole affair. Holmes would later confess to murdering Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hose through the hole, attaching the other end to a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house at 16 St. Vincent Street in Toronto. This home and address no longer exist, St. Vincent Street having long since been realigned into a part of Bay Street.

Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia police detective assigned to investigate Holmes and find the three missing children, found the decomposed bodies of the two Pitezel girls in the cellar of the Toronto home. Detective Geyer wrote, "The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became, and when we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the forearm of a human being." Geyer then went to Indianapolis, where Holmes had rented a cottage. Holmes was reported to have visited a local pharmacy to purchase the drugs which he used to kill young Howard Pitezel, and a repair shop to sharpen the knives he used to chop up the body before he burned it. The boy's teeth and bits of bone were discovered in the home's chimney. 

Holmes' murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons Detective Agency. He was held on an outstanding warrant for horse theft in Texas because the authorities had become more suspicious at this point and Holmes appeared poised to flee the country in the company of his unsuspecting third wife. 

In July 1895, following the discovery of Alice and Nellie's bodies, Chicago police and reporters began investigating Holmes' building in Englewood, now locally referred to as The Castle. Though many sensational claims were made, no evidence was found which could have convicted Holmes in Chicago. According to Selzer, stories of torture equipment found in the building are 20th-century fiction. I would love to hear if you believe that the Murder Castle was real, or fiction, let me know through our social media. 

Holmes is transferred to Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia and tried for conspiracy to cheat and defraud the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. Holmes pleads guilty, but maintains that Pitezel committed suicide. In October 1895, Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, and was found guilty and sentenced to death. By then, it was evident Holmes had also murdered the three missing Pitezel children. Following his conviction, Holmes confessed to 27 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Toronto (though some people he "confessed" to murdering were still alive), and six attempted murders. Holmes was paid $7,500 by William Randolph Hearst, grandfather of Patty Hearst, who we covered just a few weeks ago, in exchange for his confessions, which were quickly found to be mostly nonsense. 

Holmes gave various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence and later that he was possessed by Satan. His propensity for lying has made it difficult for researchers to ascertain the truth on the basis of his statements. While writing his confessions in prison, Holmes mentioned how drastically his facial appearance had changed since his imprisonment. He described his new, grim appearance as "gruesome and taking a Satanical Cast", and wrote he was now convinced that after everything that he had done, he was beginning to resemble the Devil. 

On May 7, 1896, 10 days before his 35th birthday, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison, for the murder of Pitezel. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety, or depression. Despite this, he asked for his coffin to be contained in cement and buried 10 feet deep, because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection. Holmes' neck did not break; he instead strangled to death slowly, twitching for over 15 minutes before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung. 

Upon his execution, Holmes’s body was interred in an unmarked grave at Holy Cross Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery in the Philadelphia Western suburb of Yeadon, Pennsylvania.

On New Year's Eve 1909, Hedgepeth, who had been pardoned for informing on Holmes, was shot and killed by police officer Edward Jaburek during a holdup at a Chicago saloon. 

On March 7, 1914, the Chicago Tribune reported that, with the death of Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the castle, "the mysteries of Holmes' castle" would remain unexplained. Quinlan had committed suicide by taking strychnine. His body was found in his bedroom with a note that read, "I couldn't sleep." Quinlan's surviving relatives claimed he had been "haunted" for several months and was suffering from hallucinations. 

The castle itself was mysteriously gutted by fire in August 1895. According to a newspaper clipping from The New York Times, two men were seen entering the back of the building between 8 and 9 p.m. About half an hour later, they were seen exiting the building and rapidly running away. Following several explosions, the castle went up in flames. Afterwards, investigators found a half-empty gas can underneath the back steps of the building. The building survived the fire and remained in use until it was torn down in 1938. The site is occupied by the Englewood branch of the United States Postal Service. 

In 2017, amid allegations Holmes had in fact escaped execution, Holmes' body was exhumed for testing led by Janet Monge of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Due to his coffin being contained in cement, his body was found not to have decomposed normally. His clothes were almost perfectly preserved and his mustache was found to be intact. The body was positively identified by his teeth as being that of Holmes. Holmes was then reburied.

As of 2019, an adaptation of The Devil in the White City with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio attached as executive producers is in development with Paramount TV and Hulu. Though it was initially reported in 2015 to be a feature film starring DiCaprio, once Hulu agreed to a partnership with Paramount, the project was announced as a series with no confirmation of whether Scorsese and DiCaprio would actually direct and star in it, respectively. As of 2021, production has yet to commence.

So, this was the story of H.H. Holmes, coined as possibly the first serial killer in the United States of America. But just like with so many cases, the details are obscured by history and today, we are not sure if we know the whole truth.  Please send us your case suggestions through our social media or on our email at TheSecretSitsPodcast@gmail.com.  I’m John Dodson, this has been, The Secret Sits.  Audio Eng. by Gabriel Dodson.  Org. artwork, provided by Tony Ley.