H. H. HOLMES HANGED

H. H. Holmes.

Cortland Evening Standard, Thursday, May 7, 1896.

HOLMES HANGED.

Greatest Criminal of the Age Put to Death.

EXECUTED THIS MORNING.

Close of a Life of Crime Unparalleled in Modern History.

Though Convicted or but One Murder He Is Known to Have Been the Author of Eight, While He Credited Himself With a Score of Others—His Entire Adult Life Made Up of a Series of Bigamous Marriages, Seductions, Swindles, Forgeries and Murder

—Amassed a Fortune Through His Nefarious

Schemes—Some or His Murders For Money, Others to Rid Himself of Dangerous Allies and Some For the Sheer Pleasure of Shedding Blood and Inflicting Pain—History of His Fiendish Murder of Four Members of the Pitezel Family—Others of His Murders Recalled—His Slaughter House in Chicago—A Fiend Incarnate, but Withal, an Artist in Crime.

   PHILADELPHIA, May 7.—H. H. Holmes, the arch-conspirator, swindler and murderer, and by his own confession the most remarkable criminal in modern history, today paid the penalty for at least one of his crimes—the murder of Benjamin F. Pitezel—on the gallows in Moyamensing prison.

   The execution occurred shortly after 10 o'clock. There were 60 persons present, including the 12 jurymen, 25 deputies and 22 newspaper men.

    Holmes met his doom as he has faced all his perils through life, with an unflinching eye and a steady nerve. He showed the marks of his long imprisonment and impending doom in the pallor and lines upon his countenance, but otherwise he looked much the same as during his trial. Holmes spent a restless night last night as he had for some time past. He had eaten little of late and evidently took his approaching death very seriously. He was attended by Father Dailey, pastor of the Church of the Annunciation, who recently made a convert of Holmes, confirmed and baptized him as a member of the Catholic church.

   The doomed man's cell was recently moved to the main corridor in which the gallows was set up, so that when the hour had arrived he had but a few yards to walk to the scaffold.

   Holmes was taken from his cell by Sheriff Clement and an assistant. He walked with a steady step to the gallows, followed closely by his spiritual advisor, who had been praying with the doomed man from an early hour.

   Sheriff Clement sprang the trap himself today, evidently fearing to trust any important portion of the execution to an assistant. Holmes' neck was broken, and death was practically instantaneous. No autopsy will be held on the body, as Holmes had forbidden it, and this is one of the prerogatives of a prisoner meeting capital punishment in this state.

   The particular crime for which Herman Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes, was executed, as stated above, was the murder of Benjamin F. Pitezel. The murder was committed on Sunday, Sept. 2, 1894, in a house on Callowhill street, this city. The crime was the outcome of a conspiracy between Holmes and the victim to defraud the Fidelity Mutual Life association, in which Pitezel was insured for $10,000 by representing Pitezel to have died and palming off a bogus body on the company.

   The fraud was accomplished, but by different means. Pitezel's was the body submitted and the money was paid. Why Holmes changed his plans and took the life of Pitezel will never be known, but it is thought that the difficulty of obtaining a body to substitute, was the principal reason and besides Pitezel was becoming dangerously familiar with Holmes' nefarious affairs.

   Pitezel was a marked man, having many personal peculiarities hard to duplicate. Therefore, Holmes decided to kill him. This he did with a subtle poison and then placed the body in a position near a window where the sun's rays beat upon it during the greater part of the day and quickly made the time of his death impossible to discover. The body was eventually discovered, was identified by Holmes, who took along one of the murdered man's children to aid him and the money was paid.

   This crime, only one among the score or more believed to have been committed by this man, led to his undoing. It set the insurance company's sleuths on his track and he was finally landed. His subsequent trial and conviction are of too recent date and too widely published and universally read to need rehearsing, Suffice it to say that from the day of his arrest his doom was certain. Witnesses flocked in from all points of the compass, evidence of his many crimes came thick and fast, and for months the newspapers teemed with the stories of his villainy.

   The authorities soon recognized that they had in Holmes a most remarkable criminal and a systematic search of his life was commenced. Detective Geyer of this city and a number of assistants were put on the case and the whole life of the man was gone over. As the scroll was unfolded, a career of crime unsurpassed in criminal history was laid bare and Holmes was proven to be the most extraordinary murderer of the age.

   With him murder was a passion, a pastime or a studied pursuit, as his needs or inclinations dictated. He killed for gain at every opportunity; at times he killed as a matter of policy, to protect himself, and he is said at other times to have killed and mutilated from the sheer desire to shed blood, inflict pain and glut his murderous appetite.

   Holmes was born of good parents at Gilmanton, N. H., in 1858, and was therefore 38 years of age when his lurid career ended in the noose. He was a bad boy. From a very tender ago he developed traits which branded him the black sheep of the family.

   His one good trait was that he was a faithful student. At 20 he married Miss

Clara A. Lovering, daughter of a well-to-do citizen of Loudon, N. H. Holmes had some means and decided to study medicine. He started at Burlington, Vt., but next year went to Ann Arbor, Mich. It was while studying here and his money running short, that he planned and consummated his first crime. It was an insurance swindle.

   A fellow student had his life insured for $12,500, they procured a body, the accomplice mysteriously disappeared and Holmes foisted upon the insurance company the bogus body. The insurance was paid. Holmes found himself prosperous, the money came easy and the pathway to an unparalleled career of crime was opened to him. From that time he made crime his lifelong pursuit. He deserted his wife, who had borne him one child, a boy.

   Holmes went to St. Paul, entered into business, gained the confidence of many people and one day departed with a large sum of ill-gotten money and left many creditors. He next married Miss Myrtle Z. Belknap of Willamette, a suburb of Chicago. He was not divorced from his first wife. He attempted to get her father's property by means of forged deeds, but failed. His wife left him, taking her girl baby with her.

   His third wife, Georgiana Yoke, he married in Denver under the name of Howard. Her home was in Franklin, Ind., and she was educated and refined. How many others he married, or pretended to marry, is not known, but during his subsequent career he had many mistresses, all of them good women, whom he led astray.

   The murder of the Pitezel children after he had killed the father will rank as

Holmes' most atrocious crime as well as the most cleverly executed.

   When Holmes was called from St. Louis to identify Pitezel's body in this city he prevailed upon Mrs. Pitezel to allow the child Alice to go with him. Upon their arrival the body was disinterred from the potter's field, and Holmes, in the presence of doctors and officials of the company, calmly cut certain marks from the corpse. The identification being complete, the money was paid, and, as Mrs. Pitezel swore at the trial, Holmes appropriated all but a few dollars, which he gave to her.

   After the departure of Holmes and Alice for Philadelphia, the next time Mrs. Pitezel saw him was Sept. 27. He said he had left Alice in Cincinnati in the care of his "cousin," Minnie Williams, but who was in reality his mistress and amanuensis.

   Then he induced her to let him take Nellie and Howard there, so that Alice should not be lonely. She never again saw her children alive. Some time afterward he took her to Detroit under the pretense that she was to meet her husband there. From that time to the day of his arrest he kept her moving from place to place throughout the country on some pretense or other. During these travels Holmes carried with him three separate detachments —Mrs. Pitezel, Miss Yoke and the children—all within four blocks of each other in all the different cities, almost traveling together, under Holmes' leading strings, and yet each detachment ignorant of the presence of the other two. Eventually he rid himself of the encumbrances by murdering the girls in Toronto and the boy in Indianapolis.

   It was during these travels that he received from the children pathetic little scrawls to their mother, whom they thought was in St. Louis. He was to mail them to her, but upon his arrest, long after, nearly every one of the childish letters was found on him, unmailed.

   At Toronto, Holmes, with the two girls, hired a house. The boy Howard had previously disappeared in Indianapolis, where his charred bones were afterwards found in a stove. The girls were induced to hide in a trunk. Then he shut down the lid, and filled the trunk with gas by means of a rubber tube inserted through a hole. Then he buried their bodies in the cellar.

   The scene of Holmes' other known murderous operations was the notorious "Castle," in Chicago, the building erected by him on the border of the World's Fair grounds. The place was fitted up with padded rooms, secret chambers, vaults and quicklime vats. Here, it is thought, sudden and violent deaths came to the Williams girls, Emily Cigrand, Mrs. Julia Conner and her 8-year-old daughter Pearl.

   Minnie Williams had inherited $40,000. She was engaged by Holmes as a stenographer. She became his mistress. Her sister, Nana, was invited to visit them. Both disappeared and Holmes obtained the $40,000.

   Emily Cigrande was a pretty 19-year-old girl, [and] was hired by Holmes as stenographer. At this time she became engaged to an old gentleman of wealth. One day she disappeared and nothing has been heard of her since. She knew too much of Holmes' affairs.

   Mrs. Julia Conners left her husband to become Holmes' mistress and brought her little girl with her. Both disappeared. Their bones are believed to be among those found in the Castle.

   Emily Van Tassell was a girl who worked for Holmes in the Castle business block. She also disappeared, leaving no trace to this day.

   It may be remarked that Holmes, to neglect no opportunity for gain, employed an articulator and had the bones of his victims mounted and sold the skeletons for cash.

   Probably the most remarkable feature in Holmes' systematic career of crime was the building of the Castle, a structure especially designed by himself to aid in his murders.

   The Castle is at 701 Sixty-third street, Chicago. Until the Chicago police began their investigation of the place, Holmes and Pat Quinlan, the janitor of the building, were the only men alive who knew anything to speak of about the interior of the place.

   The building is three stories high. In the main it was built with the idea of renting it out as flats, and for business purposes.

   The rooms used as offices by Holmes were in the front of the building. Both rooms were on the second floor, just in the rear of the offices. From Holmes' own bathroom there was a secret stairway leading to the street and also to the basement. The entrance to it was through a trapdoor in the floor of the bathroom. This door was concealed by a rug. There was a chute running from the roof to the cellar, with an entrance in the bathroom through the trapdoor, and there was a blind wall between the secret stairway and the chute.

   On the third floor of the building there were also trap doors. One led into a room which was used as the laboratory of the drug store, which was on the level with the street, and another led into the bathroom. On the first floor in Holmes' offices there were vaults capable of being made airtight, and built around so that no sound could be heard from them. Then there were rooms with no means of ventilation except the door. When that was closed no air could get in.

   It was in the cellar that the police made their greatest discoveries. Two sheet iron tanks entirely covered by the cellar floor were found, and in the bottom were some bones, which were believed to be those of human beings. In an ash pile near by were found pieces of linen blood stained.

   There was also a firebox or furnace in the basement. It was built into the wall. There was a grate covered with sheet iron seven-eighths of an inch thick. Underneath was another grate, intended to hold the fire. The top of the furnace was 2 ft. 6 in. above the top grate. There was an iron flue from the furnace which led to a tank. There was no other entrance to the tank. At the bottom of a vault was a white fluid, which gave forth an overpowering odor. In a hole in the middle of the cellar more bones were found.

   These are the histories in brief of Holmes' known crimes. How many others he committed can only be conjectured. To his recently published confession little credence is given, and in fact much of it has been proven untrue.

   Many imaginative theories have been advanced regarding this marvelous pervert, and whispers of "hypnotism" and "the evil eye" have been frequent. Without considering these, it is a strange fact that a sinister fate has befallen many of those connected with his case. William A. Shoemaker, one of his lawyers, attempted to foist upon the court a bogus affidavit and was subjected to disgrace, and finally disbarred for a period. Then Dr. William K. Mattern, the coroner's physician, who made an autopsy on Pitezel's body, suddenly dropped dead recently; and lastly, Linford T. Biles, who was foreman of the jury in the trial, was a few weeks ago shocked to death by a live wire.

   Altogether, it is safe to assume that a sigh of relief will go up from the whole country with the knowledge that Herman Mudgett, or Henry H. Holmes, man or monster, has been exterminated—much the same as a plague to humanity would be stamped out. But the true story of his strange career will probably never be known.