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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Alina.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
yeah it sounded like you were gonna say more you're like this is more bad no i was just saying it annoying no this is more bad you're never annoying never i had just quite the moment while we were getting set up here yeah ash was knocking shit over she was falling out of her seat mikey's computer started and it did the like and i thought he burped and i was like oh my god and then i was was like wait that's a computer that's a computer and then my fucking iced coffee went sailing across the galaxy and i'm just sitting over here in my seat with the microphone in my laptop and i'm like can we start
she's like i'm ready she's like this is why i don't do group projects people like you ash people like you i always was that bitch in a group project just like like it's just a wreck knocking shit over my iced coffee's falling it's fallen all right um so so we're in part four um yeah she is gonna make it five yeah i apologize i can't i just can't cram it all into this episode it would be too much too much for you to comprehend too much for me to comprehend really and it's definitely too much it's just i'm not gonna cram it into one episode So just to do that, it would be it would be not as good,
I think, in my opinion.
So I am going to make it five and I'm going to keep the Jack the Ripper stuff for part five because I I want to find a ship manifest that I've been seeing rumblings of.
But I can't seem to find the actual ship manifest, which seems to be a lot of the issue in the Jack the Ripper theories is a lot of people say stuff.
off but it's not no one's got any documentation to back it up so it's like oh yeah i think there was a homes ownership on the way to uk like during that whole thing and you're like whoa and then it's just like brian where's that it's like and it's also like homes was a very common name back exactly that's why he chose it so it's like i don't know about that imagine that but we'll get to it we're gonna get further into that next episode we will end at five don't worry i'm not gonna take this like the longest series we've ever had um we'll just tie it with jack we'll just tie it with jack it's it's
pretty much up there um but in this one we're going to talk about several murders that he committed uh pretty brutal ones they they're all pretty brutal but these ones involve children so yeah he's a real monster like a real monster well i mean he murdered his uh pregnant mistress so yeah he's fucking terrible that'll do it and the child in that situation yep uh poor pearl i know you know i've been i can't stop thinking about that name Yeah, it's such a cute name.
Yeah, and like those kind of names are coming back now.
Yeah, like old timey names.
Like cute old lady names.
Yeah, but you know what?
When we last left you guys, I'll give you a little recap because I know there's a lot to take in in this series.
So I think it's probably helpful to be like this is what happened in the last one.
I need the recap. Even if you don't, I need it.
Even if you don't. Holmes married again.
Yep. He's married again.
Remember, he is still married to Myrta, still married to Clara.
And now Georgiana. georgiana is now his new wife uh he fake married minnie who he killed and her sister yeah he real married georgiana though he real married georgiana in colorado yes look at me there you go so he has plotted so he married again he's plotted to take the inherited land from his new wife georgiana she stands to get some inherited land from her dead grandmother so he's plotting to take that He has sent Benjamin Peitzel to Fort Worth, Texas, to start getting the new Texas murder castle underway.
He's ready to start this whole process over with a whole other murder castle, which is the same way.
He's doing that on the land that he made Minnie Williams transfer into he and Benjamin's aliases names after he, and then he murdered her.
Now he's seeming to begin to turn on Benjamin a little bit after they both decided collectively to defraud an insurance company by faking benjamin's death and using another corpse to pretend it's his i feel like it's not gonna be fake yeah it's looking like benjamin's time as his lackey is coming to a tragic end yeah at this point i had a feeling this episode was going to be yeah height such trick yeah it's not it's not great for that entire family to be quite honest uh by the time holmes and georgiana arrived in fort worth to claim the land the land deeded to him by mini uh pitzel had already
been there for a few weeks he was there with his young son howard just getting things together so when he first got to texas pitzel had to receive the land deeded to his alias benton lyman and he had to transfer it back again to homes okay now initially i'll just give you a little rundown of how it initially happened so you remember mini was to transfer it into Holmes's alias, who she didn't know.
She thought this was another buyer.
Then that alias of Holmes was deeding it into Benjamin Peitzel's alias of Benton Lyman.
Yes. So now that Benton Lyman has it, he now has to deed it back into real Holmes's name.
It's funny. I wonder if any of, I don't know exactly how any of that works, but if somebody looking at that deed switching hands constantly like thought anything about that yeah i think honestly i think it's just the time period they were able to get away with this a lot easier nowadays obviously it would be like flagged you the first time it went into an alias i think people would be like wait a second what's going on there like it would at least be like looked at um this time instead of um like hh holmes they put it into harry holmes's name and this deed like this deed has been like boop boop boop
boop like Like you said, you would think somebody would maybe catch, but again, I think it's just the time period.
Even back then, though, I'm like, damn, you didn't think that was weird?
It's been like six times.
Yeah, because this deed has been around more times than a Broadway show.
Yeah, for real. Like, it truly has.
And from there, Pitezel selected a parcel of land on the corner of Second and Rusk Streets, and that's where they were going to put the murder castle.
The castle was going to be built under the watch of construction superintendent H .M.
Pratt. And guess who that was?
H .H. Holmes. Yep, that was another one of his aliases.
This is messy as fuck.
How did he get track of them all?
He has 40 plus aliases.
That's so crazy. And he basically started doing the same shit he did in Chicago with the construction of this one.
He wanted to build another murder castle so he had to be weird and sneaky about it so he would fire the workers every now and then to keep the plans from being fully realized.
He did, however, switch up his game a little and he started out actually paying people.
huh that's which is shocking for him weird but then he was right back on his bullshit and stopped he was like that sucks yeah he was like oh i don't like that i don't not like that and he had a million excuses for why he couldn't pay on time and he also went back to taking out loans and buying furniture and fixtures for the building on credit and then he would just not pay and then he would just hide the items from the creditors when they came to take them back this man gives me so So much anxiety running from these creditors.
Yeah. And he's doing the most because he's made places in this castle now where he's hiding all these furnishings.
Yeah, exactly. Now, unfortunately for him, Holmes was not going to stick around in Texas long enough to see this castle actually come to fruition.
What happened? In the spring of 1894, he and Peitzel began that scheme.
This is the beginning not of the insurance fraud scheme.
it's the beginning of the scheme that would kind of unravel everything for him the scheme before the scheme after that scheme and around the time of that other scheme this scheme was they would travel around the state buying horses and they would buy these horses with worthless promissory notes and deeds not cash so like bad checks essentially basically and then they would sell them for cash and move on before the seller figured out that they'd been scammed oh but But this plan fell apart when they were both arrested like idiots.
Oh, shit. Yeah, because it was a shitty plan to begin with.
Somebody was going to catch on. And once they were out on bond, investigators now were like, huh, we should begin looking into these guys a little bit more because Holmes, they were like, yeah, he has a few things on his records here.
So it was definitely going to bring more detectives on his tail.
And he doesn't want that.
And gathering up just some of their belongings belongings and all the money that homes had managed to raise at this point for the castle homes and georgiana fled out of texas for saint louis with a brief stop in denver along the way okay so they're running all around and does she know she knows about the scheme obviously because now she's on the run with him we don't know what she knew okay it's one of those things where like i don't know yeah i don't know what she knew yeah that's fair maybe she didn't know real sure uh georgie didn't know she she knew something but i don't know what she knew
okay at this point holmes was on the run now for two crimes he was on the run still in from chicago for the arson of the original my god i literally forgot yes and now he's on the run for horse thievery horses and arson that i'm saying the 1800s of it all so you would think he would run as far away as possible from the two places he committed the two things he's on the run about one chicago and texas but no after he fled texas they went to st louis and st louis is four hours from chicago technically don't you think you just like go to europe and it's like that's the thing and it's 12 hours from texas
obviously these two things are on in like car you know which like at the time it's not really relevant but it's like they're not crazy far it's not like across the country you know what I mean so it's like that's weird that you didn't go further away I guess that's the thing like even try California yeah just some or even like Massachusetts like get out of there yeah he's already been there like go back but I mean don't I don't want you here but he probably didn't want to because he has a wife there that's true and his new wife might not like that his old wife is there there's a lot going on but he
had to have a reason and that for like going to St. Louis and that reason was that Georgiana was turning 25 in the fall and that was when she she was going to inherit the rest of the estate left to her by her grandmother in Indiana.
So he was obviously planning to take the entire inheritance for himself alone.
So he wanted to stay closer to Indiana to wait and then pounce on that when she turned 25.
And he was just going to like throw her down a chute.
He's so gross. He really is.
While in St. Louis, he called himself, is it St. Louis or St. Louis?
I say St. Louis. I say St. Louis.
I'm sure I will get yelled at for that, but like.
I don't know. I think it's probably interchangeable.
i'm asking mikey about it i think it's st louis because you know what i always think of meet me and st louis isn't that like a a musical or something um i don't know i feel like that's a musical i believe you you have more musical knowledge than i do um like am i thinking something different now i feel like i need to confirm this with myself i think of um fucking Jennifer Hudson that's what I think of Mimi and St. Louis hold on I'm going to just check this really briefly Judy Garland is in it I'm pretty sure you're asking the wrong girlie about a musical yeah it's a thing but now I'm like is it
called Mimi and St. Louis or Mimi and St. Louis throw on the pronounce names dot com for the people in the back pronounce names dot com Louis this is real time st louis right now i feel like this is gonna prove me wrong and it's gonna be upsetting st louis yeah fuck guys and i always believe that guy because he sounds like jock puppet i believe everything he says i believe that man all right so uh st louis okay so that french guy i believe and he said st louis i don't know it could be either one maybe if it's like if you're from there you say it maybe i don't know and i'm not from there so it's
not you know it's not my business but uh st louis i'll say now i've said it both ways now so i've covered all bases so here we are uh after arriving in settling in st louis in the saint place yeah um so while he's there he called himself hm howard are you sure it's not howard is it howard maybe howard as hm howard he bought a drug store again on the corner of 14th and north market streets streets because remember he's taken money that he raised for the murder castle he didn't do that he's run to st louis st louis and now he has bought another place a drugstore to run okay when he bought it yeah
quote unquote run into the ground uh when he bought it he told the seller that he just wanted something to quote unquote occupy his attention and that he really didn't care a lot about profits was because he was just he's he's well off he doesn't give a shit about about he's in it for the fun he's in it for the fun of a drug store the fun that a drug store can provide that's this is a great fucking time all right you can get anything you need there i'm saying that's what he's in for it and he used a little cash to buy it but then he bought the rest of it with ding ding ding useless promissory
notes and stock also like you have the money to spend and like plenty left over just do it the right way brother he's greedy as fuck him he is his scrooge mcduck literally he is swimming in a bunch of gold coins and he's not giving him up but he's not cute no he's not that's true uh but yeah he did the same old thing he bought furniture and fixings for this store on credit no intention of paying for it stupid stupid stupid soon after arriving and settling there benjamin peitzel joined them he had moved there with his wife and their five children oh yeah this was when holmes let benjamin's wife
carrie in on the plan that he and her husband were working on they needed her help with it their plan was to defraud the fidelity mutual insurance company by faking ben's death they needed her in on it because they needed to fake his death they needed her to help you're not gonna fool fidelity mutual though and And they did not.
I don't feel. But meanwhile, Holmes was also already on the path of selling the pharmacy and then running away from the massive debt that he had compiled with the pharmacy.
Everywhere. So he's just like, oops, that sucked, and now we're going to run away from that, and it's on to the next thing.
It's just amazing the anxiety -filled life he must have lived.
Like, it is constant.
That he created for himself.
And he just keeps inviting.
Yeah. But I don't think he, I think in the end it seems like he became anxious and he became paranoid.
And it started to, in the beginning, I think he was having a fucking blast with it.
Because I don't think anything was catching up to him in the beginning.
Well, and I think in the beginning there was less to keep track of.
And then it just kept piling on.
And now he's basically, like, negating states out of his available paths of escape.
He's snowballing. Like, it's getting, the mess is getting bigger and bigger as it rolls down the fucking hill.
He's blacklisting himself out of several states.
And it's like soon there's not going to be many left, my gosh.
And they're all like in the middle -ish.
Yeah, like the Midwest happening.
But Holmes and Bitesell found a buyer for the drugstore.
But in order to buy the store, the man had to take a loan from a supplier.
And when he did this, he had to promise that supplier that they would be his main supplier.
That was kind of part of the whole thing.
That makes sense. And that was in exchange for the money they were going to pay.
The problem, however, was that Holmes already had a mortgage on the store, which meant that any additional mortgage on the same property would have been illegal and invalid.
So when the new buyer became aware of the situation, he immediately alerted authorities.
And he was like, this guy is trying to fucking scam me.
And Holmes was arrested on fraud charges.
Oops. And this is in St. Louis, St. Louis.
St. Louis, St. Louis.
Louis, this is when he was—so he bought this drugstore, had no intention of running it properly, did all the same shit, bought it with worthless notes, bought the fixings for it with all bullshit credit that he wasn't paying.
And then he tries to sell it to somebody illegally, and he doesn't think that this person—he thought he was so much smarter than everybody around him.
It's pretty par for the course with serial killers.
I feel like they always think they're smarter than everybody, and no one's going to outsmart me.
And it's like, you're a fucking idiot.
it's narcissism you're not smart no you're cunning and there's a difference head but you are not smart right there's not you're an idiot and it's like and you're greedy you're gluttonous and it gets and it's gonna catch up to you it will always catch up and it does because this guy who was buying the pharmacy was like fuck you you're trying to swindle me you dick so he called the authorities and boom arrested authorities authorities hello this man's trying to scam me this man is trying to swindle me like sir this is st louis lewis why are you why you got an accent like are you all right but this is not great britain like
a fake like transatlantic accident that like doesn't exist he's like madonna yeah what's what's going on right now so is this like a bit so he's like no i'm really snl i'm really upset Morbid is sponsored by Squarespace.
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So he was in jail for two weeks and was finally bonded out by Georgiana.
Oh, man. That's why I say, I don't know what Georgiana knew.
She knew some things, though.
We say about Georgiana, hmm.
Hmm. hmm i say i'm just gonna scratch it a little bit about it i'm not gonna say she i don't know what she knew because i'm not in georgiana's head i'm gonna put my sunglasses on roll up my window and say i don't know her i don't know her so i don't know uh but the day she bonded him out they went to the train station and were intending to flee right back to chicago but you're wanted there too brother and what they were gonna do there was regroup kind of formulate the next part of a uh giant fucked up plan.
But their plan was not going to happen because before the train even left the fucking station, they were stopped by a police sergeant.
And the police sergeant said that he was afraid the proposed trip would have to be postponed.
And then he placed Holmes under arrest again.
After he literally just got out like that morning.
Literally like got out, walked to the train station and they were like, no. They're like, back to jail.
This is monopoly. According to news reports at the time, Georgiana, quote, protested in the most indignant manner and became almost hysterical and denounced the arrest as persecution georgie calm down so off he goes back to jail and they set bail at eight hundred dollars which at that point was fifty thousand dollars at present they were like you're fucked up and we're not letting you out of here uh no one had that cash at the time so georgiana went to indiana and retrieved the deed to some of the land she was going to be inheriting and that was going to be accepted as sufficient collateral federal.
It's old timey. They were going to hand over a deed to land.
Makes sense. He was released from custody the next day.
Damn. So he had only spent a couple of weeks in jail before that, but he made some networking moves once he was in there because we know Holmes always is closing.
He's working on a pyramid scheme, even in the walls of the prison.
He's an idiot, but he's a hardworking idiot.
Cunning. He connected with other inmates and he started They started getting them into future schemes with him, like promising them things that he couldn't deliver.
Of course. One of these convicts was a outlaw and bank robber named Marion Hedgepeth.
Holmes told him about his scheme to defraud the insurance company by faking Pite Sell's death, passing off another body as his.
And then he was like, we're going to flee the country after that.
Because I've kind of used up a lot of these states and I should probably get out.
Now, according to Hedgepeth, Holmes offered to bring him in on the scheme.
but he was like no i'm good like even he was like i think you're dumb like i don't think this is gonna work out for you there was something about homes that he was concerned about and like there was also like a pesky little detail that marion was serving a 25 -year sentence so like you don't really know how we're gonna cut you into this he wasn't gonna be scheming outside of those walls not for a while but he did direct homes to a very um morally gray oh lawyer oh a lawyer by the name of jepta howe uh this lawyer agreed to help holmes and pitzel pull off the insurance scheme once they arrived in philadelphia that'll
get you debarred uh he was morally gray maybe an understatement the morally corrupt uh very uh unscrupulous i would say oh i love that word yeah that's a good word unscrupulous uh but But Hedgepeth later told reporters, quote, I am now convinced that he would sooner or later have murdered me had I been able to accompany him on his intended trip abroad.
Which one said this?
Hedgepeth. Oh, a 25 -year sentence.
Yeah. I was like, I don't think you had to worry.
You weren't getting out of jail, my guy.
You're fine. So on July 29th, Benjamin Peitzel left St. Louis, St. Louis, and he told his wife, I'm just covering my bases.
Yeah, you know. He told his wife he was taking a brief trip to purchase some lumber in Chicago.
but he was actually headed to philadelphia where he was going to meet up with holmes now meanwhile as soon as holmes was bonded out of jail he and georgiana left st louis st louis and headed to philadelphia to meet with benjamin peitzel along the way they stopped in indiana to visit georgiana's mother where holmes told her they were going to be traveling to germany to look after his uncle's property woof so she she shouldn't be alarmed at all if she doesn't here from Georgiana for a while he was fully planning on murdering Georgiana and she was fully planning on spending the rest of her life with him
even like in his outlawish ways yeah now Georgiana did stay behind and fill in Indiana a little bit just for a little while just like visit with family while Holmes went straight to Philadelphia after this to start the whole scam So Benjamin Peitzel got to Philadelphia on August 17th, 1894.
Within a couple of days, he opened a business and it was a patent business under the name B .F.
Perry. Another earliest. Another one.
This is what Holmes had told him to do.
Once he'd established himself, the plan was that Howe, the unscrupulous, the morally gray lawyer, was going to help them get a fresh corpse that was similar looking to Benjamin.
Why does this lawyer have a corpse connect?
Not real sure. A lot of people had corpse connects back then.
Yeah, we don't love that.
The plan was to place this body, this lookalike corpse, in the patent laboratory in the building that he owned.
Then cause an explosion in the building, disfiguring the corpse so much that they could pass it off as Pite Cell's body without a lot of suspicion.
And then once they'd faked his death, Pite Cell was going to go into hiding and Holmes and Pite Cell's wife, Carrie, would split the $10 ,000 insurance payout.
yeah right baby homes has taken that full 10 sounds great but all you yeah on the morning of september 1st the doorbell rang at the apartment homes was sharing with georgiana and he went downstairs to open the door and it was the police he came back inside and he told georgiana that the man at the door was from the pennsylvania railroad company he said he had been working with them on a contract to sell copiers because remember remember he had a weird copier business at one point no i literally forgot that he like it was a fake copier business like abc copiers or something like that but he's like
oh yeah he's it's this guy he's like works for the railroad company just like you know we have a contract we're gonna sell copiers that's what he told georgiana that's why i say i don't know what georgiana knew she knew some things but he would lie to her about a lot of things totally because later holmes told investigators that this man was actually benjamin pitzel at the door and he had had come to tell Holmes that unfortunately his youngest child Wharton was sick and his wife had asked him to actually return to St. Louis St. Louis and help with the children yeah so he was like I can't do this scheme
with you I have to leave and take care of my kid this was really going to fuck up Holmes's plans and immediately he made the decision that Pitezel was not leaving Philly.
Oh, shit. So this man comes to Holmes and says, my youngest child is sick.
And this in Holmes is like, you're not leaving.
And I'm going to make sure.
Do you think that he was worried that Pitesel was starting to freak out and was going to like alert authorities?
He was probably worried of that.
And he was pissed. Yeah, he was pissed.
His plan was fucked up.
One thing about Holmes was like, don't double cross him.
Don't fuck with him.
Don't fuck with his schemes if you even show slight backing out or and even for valid reasons even if you're saying my kid is sick i gotta leave he's like betrayal like he immediately looks at that it's like you don't value our shit here as much as you should i know other people have to die now yeah that don't understand when your kid is sick yeah and then they're like betrayal like betrayal i'm gonna fuck you over now put that on a list somewhere exactly it's crazy so that's exactly what happened was he was like oh your kid is sick i'm gonna fuck your world up now and it's like oh okay he's just
trying to go home and be a dad but like okay but like fuck him right yeah fuck him so he was i think he was just really fucking mad that he fucked up his plan and he figured that actually killing benjamin would probably be easier than faking it at this point and since he was mad already he was like i want to kill him now so then you have to worry about his whole family which i i have a feeling he will yeah he's not too worried about his whole family um in his later confession holmes said that pite cell sent quote discouraging letters purporting to be from his wife that caused pite cell to begin drinking
heavily okay um then he claimed that on the second september or um yeah september 2nd he showed up at the bf perry laboratory and found pite cell in a drunken and stupor.
That's what he's claiming in his confession.
So the next day, he said he was upset about his wife and what was going on, and then we found him in a drunken stupor at the laboratory.
And he said, quote, This was an easy matter, as I was acquainted with his habits, and so sure was I of finding him thus incapacitated, that when the day came upon which it was convenient for me to kill him, even before I went to his house, I packed my trunk and made other arrangements to leave Philadelphia in a hurried flight immediately after his death.
Wow. So he's literally like, it was very convenient for me to kill him the next day because I knew he was so upset about his child that he was gonna be drunk at the laboratory.
And I was already on my way out.
And I was already ready to kill him, so I figured I'd just pack everything up and be ready to go.
You got a friend in him.
Like, holy shit. Jesus Christ. So according to the confession, Holmes said he entered the building, he went to the second floor, and that's where he found Pitezel passed out.
he said quote only one difficulty presented itself it was necessary for me to kill him in such a manner that no struggle or movement of his body should occur that's the only issue not that you're murdering your longtime not at all a friend and associate basically in father of five yeah seriously basically he had to kill him and make it look like an accident or suicide instead of murder and that was his concern so he tied his hands and feet and then he soaked his entire body in like in um i think it was bent what was a benzene it was like some chemical and then he just burned him alive yeah that'll
look like suicide burned him alive that's so horrific he burned this man alive like didn't light the building on fire just burned him alive first and then was gonna light the building on fire so didn't even bother to light the building on fire and leave he burned this man alive in front of him i feel like he had to have done something like so fucked up like that to somebody before like more obviously putting somebody in that enclosed room is fucked up but even like more than that because you don't just burn your fucking friend your associate and just be like moving on moving on well and in his confession he
said so horrible of this torture that in writing of it i have been tempted to attribute his death to some humane means not with us not with a wish to spare myself but because i fear that it will not be believed that one can be so heartless and depraved so do you think he really did do that then or do you think he's bluffing he definitely did that oh he definitely did it's like it's like proven yeah so once the body was sufficiently disfigured and basically burned beyond recognition holmes claimed that he removed the bindings from his wrists and ankles and then he said he quote poured into his stomach
one and one half ounces of chloroform so that at the time of the post -mortem examination, the coroner's physician would be warranted in reporting that the death was accidental.
What? So once he'd burned the body, Holmes threw things around and ransacked the room to make it look like an accidental explosion had caused damage to the remains.
Then he went further and he had, like, a detailed narrative to the scene, he broke the bottle of chloroform and benzene that he had used, then left an extinguished match near the spilled liquid.
So it made it look like Pitezel had attempted to light his pipe too close to the flammable liquids and caused an explosion.
That actually is, like, like, I would never think to do something like that.
And it kind of worked.
It makes sense. Like, it was a, this is what I mean, like, he's a fucking idiot, but he's.
But he's cunning. but unfortunately he's smart when it comes to fucking terrible shit street smarts yeah now with paitzel dead and murdered and the scene looking to be an accident he rushed back to the apartment and told georgiana that he closed the deal on the copiers and they would be leaving for indianapolis immediately so he'd already set that that whole thing up oh i closed that deal that i told you about yesterday and in his mind he's like yeah i closed the deal he also also Also told her that if anyone asked, she should tell them that they were bound for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Okay. And he explained this by saying that the St. Louis, St. Louis stuff wasn't fully settled.
And if too many people knew where they were, he could be arrested again.
Mm -hmm. So off the—and she was like, okay.
So off they went that evening, and they boarded the 1025 PM train to Indianapolis.
You have to imagine she probably was scared of him.
Oh, for sure. and that's probably why she didn't if she didn't question things she wasn't gonna ask she was just like you know what I don't want to be part of this let me keep my nose clean now two days later Peitzel's body was discovered by Eugene Smith who was um a local inventor in the area who'd been in to talk to and see BF Perry a week or so earlier now he had stopped in to speak with Perry a few few times since the man had opened the patent laboratory and he was really excited because they had kind of talked about him making money off of some of his inventions now they're going to patent
some of them so the morning of September 4th he tried to walk into the patent office to speak to him but the door was locked this was strange to him because it was during working hours so he called the police they sent officer George Lewis and he broke down the door he found found Benjamin Pitezell's rotting body on the second floor of the apartment.
And as far as anyone knew, B .F.
Perry was last seen alive on Saturday, September 1st. That's when the last people had seen him alive besides Holmes.
I think it was a delivery boy that had brought a message that day.
That was the last person who had seen him.
That message that was brought to him, it's like even worse because that was a telegram they believe from Carrie Pitezell informing them him of wharton's illness so they think no the last person to see him besides homes was that little message boy the telegram boy and that telegram was the real telegram saying that wharton was sick oh no it's just like really sad because he was trying to get home to that child um pite cell was discovered quote lying on his back on the floor with his right hand clasped over his heart and what appeared to be blood about his head um given the way that the scene look
to detectives it was pretty much assumed that he had been holding in his right hand a bottle of benzene and was in the act of lighting his pipe when a terrible explosion occurred knocking him to the floor the body was brought in for an autopsy and the coroner he was not so sure he could not identify the cause of death he was like i can't say for sure what this cause of death is i feel like it could be something else why why did he pour chloroform into his stomach i think it was like i don't know if it was because it meant like um it would look like he inhaled the chloroform when the when that happened
he did it too close to the liquids okay or maybe he was trying to make it look like a um suicide as well like maybe it would muddle the findings a little bit okay there was an inquest in the corner dr william scott testified quote i went to the house expecting to find a man burned to death or blown to death by an explosion Instead, we found the face discolored and distorted or full of pools.
The odor was terrible.
His tongue was swollen and stuck out of his mouth and red fluid issued from his mouth.
Any little pressure on the stomach or over the chest here would cause this fluid to flow more rapidly.
It just didn't make sense to him as it was being presented as an accident.
He said the state of the room didn't really jive with him either.
He thought it was very staged.
It didn't look like an explosion caused everything.
He said it looked like somebody had just thrown shit around.
Yeah. but it was the chloroform in the stomach that actually set off the most alarm bells.
I had a feeling because it's just random as fuck.
So, yeah. So as a coroner, he was aware that if Peitzel had ingested the chloroform before his death, the harsh chemical would have caused a lot of irritation to the stomach lining.
But when the stomach contents was observed, there was no irritation.
That's because it was put in his body after his death and it was clear.
Now, Scott couldn't be certain what specifically had caused the man's death because it was so badly disfigured.
But they were pretty sure it had happened suddenly and was not the result of an explosion.
Now, despite this testimony by this coroner, the jury delivered, quote, a verdict of death from inhalation of flames or from some poison, the character of which is unknown.
I can understand why the jury was confused because there's just so many elements to that to understand.
understand well and what's worse is his body was held at the morgue for a few days and then it was just buried in an unmarked popper potter's grave oh because nobody knew that he's not nobody knows he's pipe cell i am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.
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So at the time, it's kind of seeming like his plan is going to work here because he's going to be able to use this.
Right. You know, so while this was all happening and a jury is trying to determine whether this man they know as B .F.
Perry was murdered or killed by accident, incident holmes is on his way back from indianapolis to saint louis saint louis now where he's going to meet carrie pitzel because remember she was there she was trying to get pitzel back to saint louis saint louis and she knows about the plan now unfortunately for holmes word of pitzel's death had reached the family before he could get there to break the news and he found carrie pitzel inconsolable oh like inconsolable i can't imagine now holmes decided Because people knew that like he was using that alias so it was getting around to his family.
People back home. So Holmes decided to just lie to Carrie and insisted that her husband was actually alive and that he was in hiding until they were going to be able to get that $10 ,000.
So he was basically like, no, this is the scheme.
No, the plan is going to court.
Like don't worry that we want you to believe that it was him.
That's the whole plan.
But they said we need to get the $10 ,000 first. Once we get that from the insurance, then he'll come out of hiding.
And then he said, but in order to do that, someone has to go to Philadelphia and claim the body as Benjamin Petzel.
Okay. He's so fucking evil.
He is. Because he's giving her hope that she's going to find her husband again.
Yeah. Now, Carrie was concerned about traveling from St. Louis, St. Louis to Philadelphia because her child is sick.
And also, he didn't want her to go there because that could muddle some things.
So he was like, who can we get that can be a little bit down a level from Carrie.
A little more innocuous.
So Holm convinced her to send in Peitzel's teenage daughter, Alice, in her place.
I knew he was going to use a kid.
And he even claimed that the girl could stay with his cousin.
No. Minnie Williams. No, no, no, no, no. She's dead.
Yep. While she was in Philadelphia.
No. This way, he could still stay on track to get the money from insurance.
But in the meantime, Jephthah Howe, the gray.
Why are there so many characters?
The morally gray lawyer.
The morally corrupt Jor Haal.
He started drafting documents that would give him power of attorney over Carrie that would be necessary to claim the entire $10 ,000 for Holmes.
Not a POA. Nope. So six days after his death, Fidelity Mutual Insurance received a telegram reporting that the dead man from Philadelphia known as B .F.
Perry was probably Benjamin Peitzel.
This is so much. How did you even fucking research this?
Insane. And they said Benjamin Peitzel has actually a large insurance policy with your insurance company.
So the death was still looked at as suspicious.
So agents at Fidelity Mutual were like we would like a little more information before we pay out this policy.
Right. So they looked further and saw that the only other name listed on the policy was H .H.
Holmes. His actual name.
His actual name. So they went about finding Holmes and to do this they sent a letter to Myrta and Wilmot.
His wife. Myrta still alive.
Yeah, she's still alive, right?
Okay. I don't know what happened there, but after a little bit of a delay, Holmes did get in touch with Fidelia Michaud.
I don't know if Myrna just called him and was like, hey, I just got this letter.
Was he keeping in touch with her?
I think he was slightly.
So she was still under the guise that they were married?
Only a little bit. I think it was one of those things where it was like, she probably knew that he was gone.
Yeah. But like, it's weird. Okay.
My oh my. Yeah, exactly.
My oh my is correct.
correct now holmes replies to the fidelity insurance company and tells the agent that he'd only just learned that the body was in philadelphia so he said i'll go there immediately and we will identify this man and get back to you okay now again holmes wouldn't allow carrie to identify the body and carrie really didn't want to leave her kid anyway and she probably wouldn't have wanted to see that body yeah so he told the he told the insurance company that he she was too ill to come okay and you know he was gonna have to go but they were like no you You can't just go.
And that's when they were like, you need to bring a family member.
And he was like, I'll bring Alice.
Especially because he's the one listed.
So, of course, he's going to be like, yeah, that's him.
Yeah, that's totally fine.
On September 20th, Holmes met Alice Peitzel and Jepta Howe in Philadelphia.
And she wrote a letter to Carrie, her mother, later.
And she said of meeting Holmes, she referred to him as Mr. Howard. She said, quote, I don't like him to call me babe and child and deer and all such trash.
She's like, fuck this guy.
she thought he was a pig yeah like she knew right away she had his number yep a few days later alice and how the lawyer show up at the fidelity mutual office holmes joins them there and they all provided the agents with like some like um notable like things that would that would basically identify but yeah exactly i was trying to think of the word uh that would identify this as benjamin pints.
Things of this were like he had a mole on his back.
He had a scar on his leg.
He had a twisted fingernail that had occurred out of an accident.
Oh, that's interesting.
And he had very unusual dentition.
He had a lot of spaces in his teeth.
Oh, okay. So a lot of very particular things.
Is dentition just what your teeth look like?
Yeah. I've never heard that word. Really?
Yeah. It's a nice word. It feels like.
Dentition. Dentition.
You have nice dentition over there.
Anything that ends in shun, I always feel has a nice, like, the body had been exhumed now.
And when they got to the cemetery, it had been moved to a shed.
And it was being examined by Dr. Mattern.
Nice. In the shed. And that happened a lot.
That happened a lot in the Jack the Ripper case.
I know. I remember you just always being like, yeah, the body in the shed.
Yeah, and the coroner's just doing an autopsy in a shed.
Vibing in the shed.
um dr matern was the other coroner who was with dr scott that did the original autopsy by that time his remains were in an advanced state of decomposition one would think and they were given the description the unique marks on the body but matern insisted the state of the remains kind of made it impossible to positively identify the body at at once at one point the doctor couldn't find the big scar that they were talking about that was supposed to be on his leg leg holmes was present for this and he got frustrated and impatient and he grabbed the leg apparently rubbed the flesh so that the burned
layer of skin moved away and then revealed the scar he's a fucking monster and then was like do you see this is benjamin pitzel we told you like was was pissed and was like here it is i figured it out like oh my god who who like show us that show us how money hungry you are without doing among us does that not i not even the coroner was willing to do that he was like no i okay but at that point they were like all right and poor alice being there and having to see that that's her father yep and they were like okay cool that you think it's him alice what do you think you're the determining factor if you
say this is not your father it's not she must have been scared yeah so apparently again pitzel had that unique set of teeth yeah so a lot of spaces which were very easily identifiable and apparently dr materne was the only one who actually gave a shit about alice and they had to present this body to her and have her look at the teeth and they said before doing that he removed quote as well as he could everything that was repulsive from the mouth.
And then he asks Alice to look at the teeth and she said she looked into his mouth and she told the doctor that the teeth, quote, appeared to be like her papa's.
And then she left the shed immediately.
Now, the agents from Fidelity Mutual waited a full day and then they let Alice and Howe know that they found Alice's identification satisfactory.
So typically these kind of claims are very slow and methodical to be be processed but for good reason lawyer how there he appealed to the agents and he said the pipe cells are very poor they have a sick kid they could use the money as soon as possible can you can you expedite it yeah so after a little discussion they agreed to pay the claim immediately and they took out any of the costs that they had to use to identify the remains you know everyone in that fidelity office was like what the fuck is going on they were like some shit is going down The break room was popping off at lunch. It was.
The water cooler was bubbling.
The coffee was filled to the brim.
They were all like, something stinks here.
You want to go to the pub later to talk about this shit?
Yeah. Seriously. So right away, a check was written to Carrie Peitzel, but that check was given right to Holmes.
And the check was in the amount of $9 ,715 .85 because they took out the cost that they had to use to exhume and identify the body.
But back then, that must have been so much money.
A lot of money. So with that check, Holmes immediately boarded a train for St. Louis, St. Louis, and he was going to deliver that check to Carrie but have her immediately give the money back to him.
So he wrote a letter to the company also, by the way, and he wrote it as Carrie, thanking them for the prompt payment.
And they used that letter in promotional materials for a little while.
Oh, my God. Yikes. They used a fucking letter from H .H.
Holmes. They had no idea.
Ole, ole. now Holmes's plan had always been to claim the money from the insurance scam and then flee to Europe right and that's where he was you know none of the creditors nobody was going to be able to get him there so it's strange that during this return trip from Philadelphia he sent a letter to his brother in Gilmanton to let him know that he would be returning to Gilmanton in the coming days I don't even remember that he had a brother yeah Holmes told his brother he'd been on a trip trip to minneapolis in 1888 and when he was there a train crashed and for the six years that followed he'd been
suffering from amnesia incorrect and he said he'd regained his memory and he was planning to return home to just resume his life with clara and robbie what is this about what because he had like no he didn't have any plans to do no plans to do that bored on a tuesday Can I just be the dick?
Now, when Holmes arrived in St. Louis, St. Louis, with the money from the insurance payout, he gave $2 ,500 to Jepta Howe as payment.
I'm surprised he even did that.
And he only gave $500 to Carrie.
And he said that the remaining $6 ,700 for himself was because her husband had owed him money and had outstanding debts and he was going to take it.
What a piece of absolute dung.
Yeah. Cow dung. She just had to accept it.
Elephant dung. How about that?
Now, what's worse is Carrie's husband, Benjamin, now has to be in hiding and they have to go get him out of hiding.
But he's still in hiding right now.
And she's got five kids that she's trying to support that now she has like almost no income doing.
So she's panicking.
She's like, I can't do this.
Oh, my God. And Holmes is like, you know what?
It might be better if I took your 12 -year -old Nellie and your 8 -year -old Howard and they could come live with their sister Alice in Indiana for a little while.
And they can be looked after by my cousin, Minnie Williams. Who's dead.
Until Benjamin comes out of hiding and then you can all rejoin together.
So what you're telling me is he was like, I'm going to kill these kids.
Now, Carrie Paitzel agreed because she probably had no other choice at that point.
Yeah. And on September 27th, she transferred custody of Nellie and Howard to Holmes.
And he sent a telegram to Alice in Indianapolis telling her to be ready to leave the following day because they were going to go stay with Minnie Williams. Now, on September 28th, Alice met Holmes and her two younger siblings at the train station in Indianapolis and the four of them went to Cincinnati.
Okay. I know. Now we're in Ohio.
Once there, he registered at the Atlantic House under the name Alexander Cook.
cook and he got the kids settled and then he wired Georgiana and asked that she come to join them all so he explained that he had come into some money because remember Georgiana was staying with some family in Indiana so he explained that he had come into some money from someone purchasing the land in Fort Worth okay I know there's a lot that's what I mean when I say I'm not cramming everything into one episode because there's enough with just this no there is just enough places enough people he's traveling everywhere do you see my eyes every now and again just like adding it up in my head like
okay that's where we are and that's why i'm like it just needs to be consumed in in bits so that you can understand where he is at any given time no i'm happy about the way that you're doing it because i i would turn off at some point and just be like i don't know that's this one's different from jack the ripper obviously in a lot of ways but like in very lair jack the ripper was at least like white chapel yeah right we are in white chapel we're in fucking massachusetts then Then we're in New Hampshire.
Then we're in Ohio.
Then we're in Philadelphia.
Literally. Then we're in so many other places.
Colorado, Chicago, Texas, Indiana, Cincinnati, St. Louis.
See, what I knew of the H .H.
Holmes story was just the murder castle.
Just Chicago. Like that's all I knew.
Because he's known as like the Chicago serial killer.
But really he was the everywhere killer.
He was. Now it was at this time that Holmes was becoming really paranoid.
I can... as you can imagine a lot is being piled on now and i feel like he he let too many people in on this way too many people he's done it across way too many states yep he's caused way too many wires to cross he's been in jail a few times now yeah he's starting to crack a little bit and according to adam seltzer who we uh linked that source in the in the show notes holmes claimed that he received tips that detectives were on his tail right and it was starting to could get to him um i don't know how much he knew whether he was you know just operating purely out of paranoia or he was actually
like had the facts but he was being pursued by a lot of different agencies so and now the fidelity mutual insurance company was added to that list because now they were like something's awry here now what made them feel that way so i'll tell you so in early october the lead detective with the fidelity mutual insurance company w .e.
gary got a telegram not a telegram not a telegram this telegram was from lawrence harrigan who was the chief of the st louis st louis police uh this telegram from the chief of police was letting him know that a prisoner in st louis st louis had come forward with information that basically alluded to the the fact that the fidelity insurance company had recently been defrauded in a big way i knew that motherfucker was gonna come forward and try to get some shit off his 25 year sentence yeah right it was from marion headspace uh that's the thing why would you not why you trusted like if you're gonna tell
anybody tell somebody with like three years so they have something to look forward to but this guy's got nothing to lose he doesn't give a shit and everything to gain because he's giving information thinking like oh let me help you out and get a couple years off my sentence yep and In the letter, the telegram gave all the details of a scheme that Holmes had told him about, how they were going to fake Pite -Sell's death for money.
And at the time, he had offered Hedgepeth $500 for his part in it, which would be to recommend an attorney of ill repute.
Which he did. Which he did.
Hedgepeth claimed that he really didn't think Holmes would attempt it.
He thought he was just like, I'll talk.
Bluffing. But then a few weeks later, his lawyer, Howe, told him, quote, that he had never heard of a finer or smoother piece of work and that he was sure to work and it was sure to work and that howard hh holmes was one of the smoothest and slickest man that he had ever heard tell of so how was already singing his praises like weeks later so marion hedge path likely felt compelled to inform authorities of this just to get something out of it obviously he was also salty because he was never given his 500 and it seemed to him like every one of the schemers had just got what they needed from him
and then an abandoned ship right he's like i got snacks to buy on this commissary so he was out to fuck them over but detectives did believe him and the details he gave and the superiors at fidelity mutual they thought actually that hedge path may be lying um and a few days had passed before they finally were willing to believe this and that they were like you know what we're gonna give w .e gary the detective for fidelity insurance thank you they're gonna give him approval to To pursue Holmes.
But it took a few days for them to investigate it.
Because they had just paid this out.
They don't want to believe that they just got fucked over.
Yeah, that's a lot of money.
So they looked into it and they were like, I think this guy is telling the truth.
Yeah, what'd you say?
It was like $9 ,000, right?
Yeah, it was a lot of money.
It was almost $10 ,000.
It was actually almost $10 ,000.
It was $9 ,700, I think, somewhere in there.
Round up. But Holmes had been lucky that his previous issues with the law were under so many aliases.
and there had been so much time between them that they were kind of tough to connect the dots but this scheme was so fresh and so big that it was much easier to trace and he had left too many missing pieces so now detective gary is on holmes's tail and he is detective gary so funny detective gary's hilarious i think all i can think of is gary from below deck yeah i know any any like like mr gary like that's detective gary it just doesn't sound right but now holmes is having to shuttle the pitzel children all over cincinnati for the remainder of this time yeah um and then he ships them to indianapolis for the few
for a first few weeks of october and in india indianapolis homes in georgiana checked into some like very fancy like swanky hotel penthouse situation yeah And they had the Pitzel children at a hotel down the block.
And they registered them as the Canning children when they put them in the hotel.
A few days later, he moved them again, this time to the Circle House, which was another hotel in the city.
He's like shuttling them everywhere.
They must have been like, what the fuck is going on?
They were so, like, they were like, what the fuck is happening here?
Like, I just want to go home.
And Alice, I feel like, was onto him a little bit.
Oh, she was like, what the fuck is going on?
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Now, even though he was on the run from many law enforcement agencies, many.
A multitude. He made time during this whole thing.
to attempt another scam what while they were in indianapolis homes and georgiana began touring properties with a realtor this realtor thought that they were a couple who wanted to buy a house in the city yeah homes had told the realtor that his wife had inherited some property and they were planning to trade the title to that property for something in indianapolis that they he could then sell for cash okay this sounded insane to me when i read it but apparently the bank had had already approved this exchange like in reality weird the problem however was that the offer had an october 10th expiration date
okay and the property wouldn't have officially been accessible to georgiana until her 25th birthday which was not until october 17th oh shit so holmes abandoned the realtor and never went through with the plan but he was planning to try to get go through with this before it was going to be legal and after he was arrested the realtor who who scammed here told the press, quote, Holmes was a good -looking fellow but had a kind of uneasy look in his eyes.
So he tried to fuck over this other person while he's on the run like the heat is on.
The heat is like the heat is on.
It's more than on. Yeah, it's real on.
It's a fire. While he toured the city with Georgiana trying to set up some other schemes, the Peitzel children were just spending their time in a hotel room alone.
That's so sad. And during this time they were writing daily to their mom in St. Louis i said st louis and they were concerned because they never received anything back and on october 6th at one point alice wrote to her mother and said why don't you write to me i have not got a letter from you since i have been away and it will be three weeks day after tomorrow carrie peitzel had been writing to her children he had written back to every single letter holmes just kept them what he just kept them from the kids just to fuck with the kids why would you even do that because he's an actual monster evil
yeah so in October they're mourning the loss of their father being shuttled to all these new places and now they think their mom just abandoned them holy it's awful he is like truly torturing them and I I feel as though it's gonna escalate I just can't believe that's their last days yeah um Holmes went to a realty real why can I never say say realty realty realty realty realty why can i not say that word that tripped me up in the last one it did yeah right some people say realtor but it's just realtor realty realty that's what it is a realty office it's losing all meaning but it really is i don't
know sorry everybody i don't know why my like my brain knows it but my mouth won't say it's a real estate office a real estate office in irvington which is a suburb of indianapolis yeah and he started making arrangements to rent a house called the lancaster house it was a small cottage on union avenue i would not rent that house he got very hostile which was rare for him to do in public because remember he is mr cool calming losing it now at this point uh because he was demanding the keys be given to him now and he was like i'm in a big hurry i need them now i'm not going through any of the shit
i have to go through like lost his mind and the realtor there you go later said quote i remember I remember the man very well because I did not like his manner.
I felt that he should have had more respect for my gray hairs.
That's amazing. I love that.
They were like, respect your elders.
He was like, I'm old.
I don't know why he was mean.
But a few days later, Holmes had a large oak stove delivered to Lancaster House because he did rent it and also dropped off a case of surgical tools in town to be sharpened.
A large oak stove and sharpened surgical tools.
That sounds normal.
So everything's fine.
oh no um in the afternoon on an like in early october holmes brought howard piezel in his trunk of belongings howard is the um 10 year old son yeah uh belongings to the lancaster house and according to his confession later they arrived a little after 8 p .m and holmes called howard into the house and he told him that he had to go to bed at once and then he said he gave him the first the fatal dose of medicine and he said he he like poisoned him yeah essentially and he said as soon as he had ceased to breathe I cut his body into pieces that would pass through the door of the stove and by the combined
use of gas and corn cobs and proceeded to burn it with as little feeling as though it had been some inanimate object what that was his own confession that's a 10 year old I poisoned this 10 year old boy and I cut up his body and then put him in a stove and I felt such little feelings about it that he might have been well it's been an inanimate object oh my god yeah so it's most likely that he had poisoned his food to kill him that's what everybody thinks um or sweetie and when they searched the property after he was arrested they found a bottle of cyanide an amount of wolf's pain and there was also um
he had purchased a cocaine solution from a pharmacist a few days earlier uh once he had disposed of howard's body he went back at the train station by 9 p .m so that all happened within an hour according to him And he got his mail and he boarded a train for Chicago.
So the next day, and I don't know what he did there, but he returned to Indianapolis the next day.
And he got Georgiana and the other children and put them on separate trains, Georgiana on one, children on the other, bound for Detroit.
We're going to Michigan.
So when they were going to Michigan.
I'm like, why are we going another place?
When they arrived in Detroit, Holmes checked himself and Georgiana into the Hotel Normandy under the name G.
Howell and Wife. I love that back then you didn't need a name as a wife.
You were just wife.
And then went to like, we don't need your name.
And they went a few blocks away and checked Nellie and Alice into the New Western Hotel.
Then the next day they moved them to a boarding house run by a woman named May Ralston.
in. Holmes was definitely starting to fray at the seams. He was starting to come apart.
The children were starting to lose it, being alone all the time, not understanding where Howard is now, not understanding what's going on.
He's dragging them all over the place, leaving them all alone for days at a time.
Alice wrote letters to her grandparents, and October 14th she wrote, We have to stay in all the time.
Howard is not with us right now.
All that Nell and I can do is draw, and I get so tired sitting that I could get up and and fly almost i'm getting so homesick that i don't know what to do i wish they had just run away now a day after she sent that letter carrie and wharton pitzel wharton was the younger son that was sick they arrived in detroit and checked into a hotel just a few blocks away from the boarding house where they didn't know that alice and nelly were staying holy shit homes had written carrie telling her to come there where she could finally be reunited with benjamin and her children oh my god when they got there
is wrong with this guy's fucking awful when they got there he goes oh sorry can't reunite you yet because it's like too heavily populated here so you're gonna have to wait a little longer oh my god he is just fucked up a few days after coming to detroit he rented a small house on east forest avenue which he told the landlord was for his sister and her children okay which he was probably gonna pass georgiana and the kids off yeah Yep.
He then dug a four foot by three foot hole in the backyard. Okay.
Neighbors noticed. So this was clearly where he was intending to kill Alice and Nellie.
No one is sure why, but he decided not to murder the girls there at this time.
Instead, he told Carrie Pitzel that Benjamin was waiting for her now in Toronto, Canada, and she should travel there.
and he was going to and so he sent alice and nelly back to indianapolis where they were going to be waiting for them when she and benjamin returned from canada canada okay this is when carrie was like what the fuck is going on and she was concerned and this is when she was like where the fuck are my kids like where are they and he was like don't worry they're being cared for by a widow lady but he wouldn't give any more details yeah that sounds totally fine now as all of this is unraveling, and he's losing complete control of this situation, clearly.
I also just feel like he's going insane at this point.
Oh, he is. It seems like he's going mad.
Because he's just doing, like, none of this makes any sense.
It's chess moves that make no sense at all.
Right. He's just sending her up there.
He's sending, he doesn't know what he's He was just making a bunch of lateral moves.
Yeah, and he was definitely intending to kill Nellie and Alice in that house in Detroit, but then he didn't.
I don't know why. I wonder if one of the neighbors, like, came by or something.
I wonder if a neighbor saw saw him digging your right and was like hey what's that about and he was like oh nothing but detective gary had enlisted that's so funny and detective gary is like the real mvp here because he got the pinkerton detective agency on the case and they had made a lot of progress in finding homes they narrowed him down to the detroit area and this is why i believe maybe he left like me it could have been that he was planning to kill them or the police were coming but I think they came a little hotter sure I don't know how aware he became of that situation but the but thinking
now like the fact that he moved so quickly out of there I think he may have been tipped off somehow and that's probably why he abandoned the whole plan maybe he saw some kind of police presence he could have so they made it to Canada and as soon as they got there Holmes checked Carrie and Wharton into the union house under the name Mrs. Adams then he disappointed pointed them again and he said oh you just missed benjamin he said benjamin had received word of detectives looking for him in the city and he had actually fled to montreal now oh my god and homes then returned to the train station he
got alice and nelly at the train station and brought the girls to the house he'd rented on vincent street and he told the neighbors he had rented this one for his sister as well who was going to be coming from hamilton ontario and this is a different house Different house.
Yeah, that's true. The house had been rented on a six -month lease, and the neighbors later told investigators they thought it was real strange that the man had rented the entire house, yet he only had a bed frame, a trunk, and a mattress a dog wouldn't even sleep on.
What does that mean?
So Holmes then got Georgiana at the train station, and they went off to Niagara Falls, where they stayed one night in the Imperial Hotel, before they went back to Toronto and checked into the Palmer House Hotel as H.
Howell and wife. Oh, the Palmer house is super haunted.
There you go. Probably from him.
Probs. So on October 24th, Holmes went to the house on Vincent Street where he put Nellie and Alice.
He borrowed a shovel from a neighbor, telling him, I'm going to fix a place in the cellar to hold potatoes.
The fuck? And he went into the basement of the house and dug a fresh grave. No. After he did this, he went back to Carrie Pytzel and told her, oh, shit.
Howard's not there yet.
And he said, oh, you got to go to Ogdensburg, New York, because Benjamin had fled there now.
At this point, I'd be like, you're not sending me another fucking place.
Nope, but he put Carrie on the train.
But she also misses her husband, so she's in her children.
And she's just trying to get her family back together.
Puts Carrie on the train, and he went back to the Vincent Street house.
Holmes was, strangely, when he confessed to this, he was less sensational than he normally is.
Really? The story of Nellie and Alice's murders is less dramatic and he was less excited to tell this story, I feel.
In his confession, he said he had taken a large trunk to the house on Vincent Street.
He'd cut a small hole in the trunk large enough for a hose to fit.
Uh -huh. This is pretty awful.
It sounds like it will be.
He wouldn't explain how, but he got both girls in the trunk alive.
And he, quote, ended their lives by connecting the gas with the trunk.
So he gassed them in a trunk.
Holy fucking shit. Once they were killed, he opened the trunk and he found them, in his words, quote, their little blackened and distorted faces.
Oh my God. So he then took them out of the trunk.
He stripped them of their clothing, then buried their bodies in the grave in the basement in the Vincent house.
Oh my God. And he said, quote, without a particle of covering save the cold earth, which I heaped upon them with fiendish delight.
light that's the only time he got like he just gassed two children to death and two little girls buried them in fiendish delight i don't know how he dies but i hope they did something brutal to him well and what's worse is so you listen to that story and you're like that's fucking terrible yeah but adam seltzer he says there's a problem with that story and he said he did kill these little girls of course but that house on vincent street was not set up for gas and so he says the claim of poisoning them with gas was probably not true unless he did it somewhere else okay and then what's worse is that he
was like he probably poisoned their food like he did howard but then he just told this story that's even worse which is even worse and he's like i don't no matter what killed brutally killed two little girls and buried them in the basement right but the fact that he is making up like that's already terrible story from something that's even gross like still gross is like you just wanted to tell that story like what the fuck is wrong with you well i wonder if it's like almost he can't now that he's in prison and he knows he's got got he can't kill anybody anymore so now he's killing people differently
in his mind yeah like he's living that vicariously through his own fantasies exactly going with it exactly wow dude that is he what the fuck did he have yeah like seriously what was going on with him now the next day he returned the shovel to the neighbor and then he stuffed the girl's clothing and any belongings they had into the chimney and put a fire in the fireplace to try to burn them all so but unfortunately for him he'd packed the items too tightly into the chimney so large pieces of clothing were still in there even even after the fire went out.
Oh, damn, and he didn't realize it?
No. Also, the stupid idiot hadn't even been very thorough when he gathered up their belongings because he had ended up leaving several of Alice's belongings, including a bag, out in the apartment when he left. And you can't imagine she even had that many belongings at that point.
By the time the new tenants arrived a few days later, Oh, my God.
they found the random clothing scraps and remnants left behind.
But by this point, Holmes was back and he had already left Toronto and he wasn't coming back.
And is he sorry? Is he the landlord of that house or no?
He just rented? No, he just rented it just to do that.
Now, eventually, this man would tell so many stories about the missing children, it would be almost like it's like it's something out of fiction.
He would say Benjamin, Benjamin, the father was in South America.
He told Carrie the kids were in South America.
He told them now they were in Chicago, in Detroit.
They were in England.
They were anywhere else.
But reality, he was just driving her insane.
Yeah, he was trying to drive her insane.
sane and that is where we're going to leave part four you are you i did not see that coming because what because he should he should have stayed in canada and he didn't okay i'm happy to know that once he returns to the united states that's when shit is going to go down for him and i don't want to start the going down process i would like i would like episode five to just be all high -fiving and the fact that this motherfucker gets got oh i can't wait to hear how because i actually i don't have any idea yeah how he gets caught or what happens to him after he's caught so this is him he's leaving
toronto he's leaving canada he's coming back to the united states like a big fucking idiot yep he has killed kids in canada he's killed kids in the united states he has killed women in the united states he has now killed a man in the united states and he's coming back.
And the Pinkerton Detective Agency guys, they are on his fucking tail.
I'm so excited. They're right here.
He would have been much better off staying in Canada.
Thank goodness he didn't, though.
Thank goodness he's a fucking idiot.
I'm so glad he is. So we're going to talk about his arrest. We're going to talk about the trial.
We're going to talk about the wild confession.
And we're going to talk about the theories that he is Jack the Ripper, which I don't agree with.
But we'll talk about it.
But the theories, when you put them out there, you can understand why people are interested at least slightly compelling okay but very interesting we're going to talk about his execution ah it's all coming in part five it's all happening sheena shea the end the climax of this series is part five my goodness yeah all right well we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you go all around the world doing H .H.
Holmes type shit because like, don't.
Keep it so weird that you're Detective Gary.
Yeah, just be a detective.
Keep it that weird. In a world full of H .H.
Holmeses, be a Detective Gary.
And with that, we leave you.
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