Hey Weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.
this is morbid and we're in part three of hh home three's my lucky number so let's fucking get it brother well this is definitely going to be a four -parter so So this, this story is so like, I'm just getting right into like how crazy it is.
Cause I can't, can't stop.
Won't stop talking to the rhythm.
It's similar to Jack the Ripper, but not at all.
Yeah. You know what I mean?
Like it's similar. I know what you mean.
Similar in the sense that there is just so much and there's so many little things that you just need to, they need to double check because like so many different stories were were told and newspapers ran with certain things and like he told so many different stories and you know investigators were wrong on certain things so you have to like keep checking things to be like did that happen or did that happen or which one happened happened very confusing he has many many wives he has many many business scams he has many many states in which he does these things like a tlc show kind of he is just
so much so i figured i don't want to like just like crush all the information into as little episodes as possible I'd rather have more episodes being able to coherently discuss what's going on so that we can move on to the next one knowing where we are yeah so it gets it like a part four I think we're going to get into you know the business associate um his Benjamin I it's I've heard it two ways it's Pitezel Pitezel or Pitzel I like like Pite Cell and you've been saying that the whole time sounds right to me yeah um but he that his whole thing with his family that's what we're going to talk about in part
four when we get to that it's very confusing very intense so I just wanted to give that its own little thing okay and I think in part four we're also going to talk about because I was thinking about it more that the theories that he is Jack the Ripper I'm excited to talk about that because I know you you don't think so.
I don't think he was, but I think some of the theories are very compelling and I understand why it's still a theory.
I get it. Okay. I want to go a little further into those, which means I want to give a little more time to dive into some ship manifests and some other things to try to see, because he was in the UK at a time.
You love a ship manifest. I love a ship manifest. Where do you go to find them?
On Ancestry .com you can find them.
Ancestry's got a lot of cool shit.
like little like offshoot things that you can do yeah you can find marriage and death certificates you can find births yeah you know divorces in fact Ancestry has been and we're not like we're not sponsored by Ancestry this is literally just me being like it's a cool site yeah because I use it a lot I do too so Ancestry is good for this one I've been using it a lot because I've been like trying to find records of divorces and marriages just to like because one of the things with holmes is like he married people but he didn't always legally married people so he was married you don't know how many
he was married to legally and how many he wasn't it was wild but when we last left you we had talked about um emeline sagrand the secretary that he had hired on the one that benjamin his assistant there had found so remarkably beautiful and they told Holmes about.
Um, he had definitely murdered her.
Yeah. And we knew that because, you know, he claimed that she went and got married to a guy named Phelps.
Phelps was a known alias of Benjamin Peitzel.
Um, you know, she disappeared and the, uh, guy that he had hired before to articulate skeletons for him, he had come and picked up a trunk.
Yeah. You know, like not stuff at all.
Lots of other things, you know, the LaSalle Medical College of Chicago received a delivery of a nicely articulated skeleton right after this yeah not at all related yeah and they found that footprint a woman's footprint in that airtight vault that he had built in his castle and it was so it was made with so much force in the wall that they said they couldn't even wipe it off she was trying to get out of there that part just like stuck with me that's fucking terrifying yeah so that's where we had last left you and he's also still married to Clara and he is still married to Myrna.
Okay. So he still has Robert, his young son.
He still has Lucy, his young daughter, and he has murdered several people.
Fantastic. So yeah, so it's great.
Now, if you know the story of H .H.
Holmes, I think we mentioned this before, you definitely have heard of the World's Fair and that being inextricably linked together.
I was waiting for you to bring it up and I kept wanting to ask last episode and I was like, don't do it.
She'll get there. Well, that's the thing.
So the last episode I mentioned the World's Columbian Exposition.
That's the same as the World's Fair.
I'm going to call it the World's Fair from now on, but they are the same thing.
They're just called those things interchangeably.
But yeah, they are linked.
A lot of people think that he made this castle in response to the World's Fair coming because it was going to be such an easy thing.
He didn't make it in response to it.
He was planning to do it all along.
It just helped him out.
Yeah, but for him. There was something he did do in response to the World Fair coming to Chicago.
And after it had been announced, he decided to add a third floor to his murder castle.
Now, in the enthusiasm and excitement for the opening of the fair, a lot of businessmen around the area, they kind of like raced to make a ton of sales as possible.
Like this was their time.
They were going to go.
They didn't do a lot of credit checking.
They didn't do a lot of background checking.
They just wanted to make these sales.
skills Holmes was really able to use this to his advantage when he was making his castle because he got a ton of furniture a ton of fixtures and he could do it all without any intention of actually paying he just did it with credit and he did this using the name H .S.
Campbell by most accounts so by the time construction of the third floor was finished that was around the the end of 1892 early 1893 creditors were catching on and they started filing lawsuits against him basically for theft because he had stolen things and it got so bad that the sheriff and other creditors actually descended upon the castle demanding payment or they wanted all their items back but when they got there holmes was like i don't know what you're talking about come in i I don't have any of that stuff, you liars.
What? He had sold off all the furniture, or he hid them all in the secret chambers in the castle, basically being like, you can't prove anything.
Oh, shit. Like, literally just being like, those didn't even exist. What are you talking about, you liars?
And like, my name is not even H .S.
Campbell. Yeah, like, my name is not H .S.
Campbell. I am H .H.
Holmes. Like, you're looking for the wrong guy.
Yeah, like, how dare you?
Holy cannoli. So those secret chambers were more than just murder chambers.
They were also something where he could store his scams, essentially.
Scam chambers. Scam chambers.
Now, what he did was he essentially turned the second floor.
The third floor became more of the apartments.
And the second floor came more and more macabre and used as that really scary part of the castle.
The Chicago Tribune later, the way they described this, I was like, I have to bring this in.
I found it on newspaper .com, my favorite place.
They wrote, Oh, what a queer house it was.
In all America, there was none other like it.
Its chimney stuck out where chimneys should never stick out.
Its stairways ended nowhere in particular.
Winding passages brought the uninitiated with a frightful jerk back to where they had started from.
There were rooms that had no doors.
There were doors that had no rooms. A mysterious house it was indeed.
A crooked house. A reflex of the builder's own distorted mind.
blind in that house occurred dark and eerie deeds oh it sounds like the winchester mystery house thank you that's literally what he was doing he did the same kind of thing where you would open a door and it would just fall down to the basement right or you would there was um like i'm gonna bring up right now i took a screenshot of the floor plans of the house that they had laid out and especially the second floor and just some of the things that they had written in this newspaper paper article for what these things were.
Lots of things labeled secret rooms. Mysterious closed room was one of them.
Dummy elevator for lowering bodies.
Sealed room all bricked in.
Trap lead down to secret chamber.
The hanging secret chamber.
Was that like a hanging room or that's where he hanged people?
I have no idea. It's just labeled the hanging secret chamber.
No, thank you. One One is called the blind room.
One is called the dark room.
Asphyxiation chamber, no light with gas connectors.
Oh my God. So he had an actual room that was like the gas chamber.
There was one called the death shaft where he would throw people down alive.
Oh. There were things called the maze.
Room of the three corpses, one was called.
Okie dokie. The black closet.
Oh, I don't like that.
Yep. another secret chamber it's literally labeled another secret chamber uh one room is called another one another one is called the five door room it was a room with five doors no that's too many doors yeah and then in the in the front of it is just like waiting room reception room for me it's the black closet the black closet i think that's where i would hate the most well Well, I'd hate it all the most. This is one of the steel bound chamber.
No. And those are those airtight chambers that he would have, which on the outside, it looked like a regular door.
Sure. Like, and you would open the door and then there was a steel door there and he would open that door, shove you in, shut that steel door.
And then he would just shut the regular door and lock it.
And no one would hear you.
No, no one would think twice about it.
They'd walk past that door while you were slowly suffocating in there and they would never know it.
My God. No one would ever know.
You're sitting there looking at a fucking crazy footprint.
Like clearly knowing somebody tried to bust out of here and it didn't work.
Exactly. And you have to wonder, like, did he leave people in there?
I'm sure he did. And then put other people in there with them?
Probably. But a lot of the bones were found in the basement.
So I'm assuming he used those shafts to just usher them in.
Because a lot of the times he would bring them in there under the guise of like, check out this cool chamber.
Right. Like no one can hear you in here.
and then he'd be like boop and he'd just lock you in.
Oh my god. Was he a big guy?
He was not a big guy.
No. He was 5 '8". That's a couple That's like 2 inches taller than me.
So pretty normal. You know just like a normal sized guy.
Yeah. That's why he had to use a lot of mind games and a lot of scams. Right.
Because he couldn't overpower people per se.
Yeah he wasn't using a lot of force to do these things.
Especially with like other men.
Even with women he really wasn't.
Sometimes he was. But mostly he tried to incapacitate them first in some way.
But the floor Your plan just really shows you the thought process behind this house.
And the level of evil.
The level of evil is something we will never fully comprehend.
Insurmountable. Insurmountable evil.
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serve so unfortunately so the world fair is here we just had him he just murdered sagrand but he's gotten away with it and holmes's next victim minnie williams unfortunately came right to him oh no she was actually someone he'd met years earlier while he was on a brief trip to boston massachusetts no get out of here i know i was like bye i don't want you minnie williams was was actually born in mississippi but shortly after she was born both her parents were killed oh gosh she and her sister nanny and her brother were over were orphaned she's also referred to as netty nanny and netty netty is one
of my favorite names really i think netty is the cutest oh that's funny i love i like that name too it's cute uh and like sometimes you'll see her referred to as annie in like some newspapers i think they just remove the n yeah but nanny or netty basically i'm going going to call her nanny because that's what I saw mostly.
Sure. They were split up when the parents died and ended up being kind of shuttled around to a few guardians over the years.
But Minnie, they all ended up finding permanent places.
And Minnie found a permanent home and guardian with an uncle in Texas.
The uncle treated her very well, was like a very kind guardian, a very good guardian.
Ended up enrolling her in the Boston Academy of Elocution in 1886, which is a finishing school for high -class ladies.
Unfortunately, not very long after arriving in Boston, her uncle slash guardian passed away.
Oh God, she's been through it.
And in doing so, he left her an estate valued at $50 ,000 to $100 ,000, which was $1 .5 to $3 million now.
Well, shit. Yeah. So she inherited property as well, on top of that estate, she inherited a property in Fort Worth, Texas as well.
Shit. So she was like set up at this point.
she was and i found through ancestry .com that her uncle was reverend wc black of new orleans and he was the editor of the methodist christian advocate which is like a newspaper huh so there's just that fun uh because i want to know who he was yeah who is this man yeah but um but apparently he was like and apparently he was a great guardian so cool but it was at a party in boston while she was there in finishing school that was and it was was thrown by one of the city's big fancy leading families.
You know, I love that.
In the late 1880s that Holmes met Minnie Williams. No, thank you.
Because of course he was pretending to be very high class himself.
I just have to ask before you get too far into it.
I feel like, is this, is the AHS the one that the maid was based off of?
The one that the maid was based off of?
Yeah, the maid in the in hotel.
No. No? No. This all sounds so familiar to me.
Maybe I just heard it.
I mean, Miss Patrick March was based on H .H.
Holmes. That I knew, yeah.
But I don't think Minnie was – because she wasn't a maid.
Oh, okay. So she was like a high society maid.
Yeah, exactly. No, it sounds familiar, but maybe I've just heard her story.
I'm sure little bits and pieces of that definitely probably got sprinkled in there.
Yeah. But when she met H .H.
Holmes at this party for like fancy people in the late 1880s, he introduced himself as Harry Gordon.
That's not your name.
It's not. Now, Minnie herself was very charming.
She was essentially a socialite.
A search in newspapers back then in Boston shows that she was in attendance at a lot of big parties and events.
Hell yeah, girl. She was always listed among the guests.
Pinkies up, baby. There you go.
And she was an actress and very interested in the theater.
she was a very interesting person but she wasn't his type physically she was not his type she wasn't according to newspaper reports she wasn't the classic beauty of the time which is generally what Holmes went for okay he was very shallow uh he would usually go for like only pretty ladies classically pretty ladies you know what I mean she was described which I think is mean because there's photos of her and I think she is very pretty I'm gonna look her up she was described as plain that's fucked and they literally immediately know when they literally wrote that she had full cheeks and i was like
i'm sorry what should your cheeks be i was gonna say you mean like how people shove fillers into their cheeks to look like i'm like also like what should cheeks be like i feel like that like should they be sunken in i don't i wonder if back then did they possibly because that's the thing we're talking about like a standard of beauty that is definitely different than what we are doing today a hundred percent and that's what talking about though when they were mentioning that she was not a classic beauty she was apparently not fitting into the beauty standards of that time i think she was really
pretty right she was so cute yeah and she looks sassy she does look sassy and she has great hair she does now despite the fact that she wasn't exactly his type homes gave minnie a lot of attention she got money exactly he took a very perceived liking to her and showed her his interest anytime he came back into boston for quote -unquote business he lavished lavished her with attention he would take her to dinners he would take her to the theater he would extend his stays longer just to spend more time with her he acted like he was in love with her um it seemed like he was straight up courting her
yeah and she was thrilled of course she very much loved him unfortunately knowing she wasn't his normal type and knowing how hard he went at her it's very likely he was was drawn to her massive inheritance yeah remember he's a monster he has no feelings so he definitely didn't love her he courted her for some time but after a while he just became bored and he started making the visits less and less and then he just ghosted her completely and stopped visiting at all or communicating to her i wish that was the end of it like i hate the heartbreak for her but then you're better off you're better
off exactly and she was devastated she had really fallen for him she felt like he was the one who got away like ghosted her yeah totally ghosted her that's fucked wow even fuck boys in the 1800s ladies truly ladies and gents exactly my goodness now follow when she graduated from the boston academy of elocution imagine minnie moved from boston to denver colorado and there she tried to use some of her inheritance to start up her own theater company oh cool yeah she was like she was like fuck that i'm gonna i love the theater i'm gonna gonna start my own doing the damn thing unfortunately it didn't
really work out she ended up losing like a lot of money in the process she gave it a shot though yeah you know you you gotta shoot your shot you miss 100 of the shots you don't take there you go michael scott michael scott through all of that though she could not stop thinking about harry gordon you you can never get your mind off the last man's that ghosted you no and he had love bombed her he had showered her with attention with affection with gifts with dates with everything he had acted like he was courting her to lead up to a proposal that's what he had and in that time period that's you
court to lead up to a proposal there is not like this it's not like now where you're like i don't know maybe we'll go on a third date we're talking yeah like we're talking we're seeing each other whatever the fuck that is it's like back then you're courting and there's an expected end to this and the end to this is we're getting married.
Dude, they should go back to that.
Just like, I'm not going to court you unless we're getting married.
Honestly, like girls, gays, theys, let's start that.
Yeah, don't waste your time.
Like, yes, it's endgame.
Are you planning to get married someday?
No, next. Next, yeah.
Like, if that's what you're looking for.
Exactly. So as far as Minnie knew at this point, Harry was living in Chicago.
Chicago was obviously getting a lot of news around and newspapers and everything because of the World's Fair being hosted there.
TM. So to To Minnie, she was like, you know what?
Chicago does sound pretty exciting and the World's Fair would be like a lot of opportunities for me.
Like, you know, there's a lot of things there.
There's a lot of people.
There's connections.
Right. You know, she's like also Harry is there.
The love of my life.
She knows he's there.
She knows he's there.
So she's like, I don't know.
It kind of feels like the universe is calling me there.
So in February of 1893, she decided she was packing up and moving to Chicago.
She said, let's go.
And on her way there, she was just determined.
She was like, I'm going to reconnect with Harry.
Oh, baby. Now, Minnie settled on Chicago's north side when she arrived, and she took a job immediately as a stenographer for a local law firm.
But almost immediately, she did get in contact with H .H.
Holmes. Of course, Holmes was like, oh, my God, I'm so glad you're here.
Thank you so much for following me here.
That's great. I don't have to do any work.
oh no so after all he loved when he could get a woman to come to him he didn't want to have to do all the work if he didn't have to do the work he was like this is great so although she was already gainfully employed with a law firm he was like you have to come work for me you have to be my personal secretary here's a retroactive warning to everybody if hh homes ever asked you to be his personal secretary run the other way run for the hill anytime he asked someone to be his his personal secretary they were gone oh no um and he also put a little bit of sugar on top of this and he said be my personal
secretary i'll pay you a lot more and then he was like we can also spend a lot more time together which was he knew was the way to get minnie like oh my god yeah he knew what was up so minnie is so happy she has the dream has been realized she has moved to chicago to reconnect with the love of her life which she thought got away and she was meant to to be with him she contacted him and he was thrilled to hear from her and he's saying come spend more time with that is the saddest thing to me is that like she's like fuck like yes this is working out imagine how she felt like the excitement like
especially like when you've like lost contact with somebody you thought was really cool and then you regain it and you're like in her head she's probably like this was meant to be of course she was it was not because she was probably thinking there was probably thoughts in her head okay i'm gonna move to chicago i'm I'm going to contact him.
This could go one of two ways.
He's going to be psyched and my whole life is going to lead up to this moment.
It's going to be great.
And we're going to get married.
Or he's going to say, sorry, I'm not interested.
And I'm going to say, cool.
I gave it a shot. I did what I did.
Right. And I'm going to move on.
Right. So for him to do this is like confirming to her this was the right decision.
Me packing up my whole life and living here for him.
It was the right decision.
And it makes me so angry.
agree he not only loved to like fuck with people and like murder them but this motherfucker loved a mind game oh he loved a mind and i hate that yeah psychologically he loved to fuck with people and so he was like yes absolutely come come work with me we're gonna spend all this time together he did have a couple of stipulations though some little things uh one of the most important ones that was he said um i'm gonna insist that you never refer to me as mr gordon because uh that's not my name only refer to me as uh homes just call me that and and don't don't ask me why just just do that okay and she
was like smitten so she's just like okie doke okay and she just all right sure why not so just a few weeks after moving to chicago she left the boarding house she was living in and moved into the apartment in the castle or nor she was just so happy it's moving in the direction she wants it to move this is the hardest part of telling these cases is i just want to go back in time and just run to that fucking thing and grab her and take her out to a drink and be like girly i'm from the future this is going to be real fucked up but this is what was about to happen to you and it's like you are worth
more than this you are so much better than that mustachioed fake fuck he takes off that hat he's nothing honey nothing baby his hair is shit you under that you are all that and a bag of motherfucking and chips.
Yeah, I want to be like, girl, Minnie, you packed your shit up and moved to Chicago.
That's a strong, independent woman right there.
So continue on. You can get the fuck away from him.
Keep on keeping on.
Yeah, you don't need him.
Let's be friends. I'll come back and visit you.
TikTok sound that's like, he's just a guy.
Hit him with your car.
Oh my god, I've never heard that, but I need to.
It's like, he's not the love of your life.
He's just a guy. Hit him with your car.
That's what I would say about H .H.
Holmes. We don't condone violence.
Except for H .H. Holmes.
Hit him with your car.
Get rid of him. Hit him with like several of your vehicles.
With your horse and buggy.
Hit him with that. Hit him with all of your personal belongings.
But that's like it just makes me so mad for Minnie.
I know. I want to save her.
So she moved in with him.
And unfortunately, it started right away that she would catch him in a lot of compromising positions with customers or other random women.
She's like, hey, why are you like stealing from people?
Yeah. Yeah. And also he would just be like, like sexually, like, you know, assaulting or carrying on with women all over the place in that, in that castle.
Oh, and then like his wife down the street.
Yeah. His wife down the street and the other one across the country.
Yeah. Yeah. So he was just constantly like she would walk in and find, because at this point he's moved her into the apartment.
They are together Yeah Courting has begun again The promise of marriage has begun again And she's walking in Finding him like On top of another woman all the time Oh my god The fucking felonies I would commit Oh yeah So he decided Not to not do that Instead He had a buzzer installed In his That So that it ran from the second floor To the third floor And that way Whenever someone traveled From the third floor To the second floor where he would carry on his shenanigans.
Mainly Minnie. When she traveled down there, he would know.
A buzzer would sound and he could stop his shenanigans.
It's like the alarm that you have for...
Literally, it's like a motion detector.
And so he had that installed specifically so he could carry on affairs without being caught.
So he's like in the middle of like doing the damn thing with somebody else and that girl's like, Oh, Minnie's coming, let go off.
You piece of shit. Truly a piece of shit.
in 1893 he did propose to minnie you fake as fuck bitch and they began wedding planning remember the fact he's married the fact that he was gonna just like let her plan a whole ass wedding he is playing a long game here oh so many knows the end goal and i'm so angry right now he plays so many long cons and he does with so many people for so long that he is on another level level when it comes to like his stuff is gruesome in a different way because we don't have all the details of the things he did to people like we can surmise what he has done and we can see his plans for people and we can see
the bones that are left there and we can see all that evidence but what was really fucked up about him is the way he laid out long cons and had like 18 going at at once yeah and had no remorse about it didn't care how long it reached i hate a con man yeah fucking it like it's it it's so rattles my bones so so he's having her plan a wedding starting to plan a wedding remember his wife is living in wilmot yeah just next time over with his daughter right just fine and then his other wife is across the country with his other child oh yeah and at at the same time mini had begun reconnecting with her
sister nanny yeah oh i love that who at the time was working as a school teacher in texas and in her letters to her sister in late spring 1893 mini was just gushing about chicago and how happy she was and she said that she expected to marry a man named henry gordon or harry gordon either one who had plenty of money and mini wanted her sister to come see the world's fair and she wanted her to come for the wedding so nanny williams waited until the school year was done and then she headed out to chicago on a train now holmes married minnie but it was not recorded of course it was not legal but he
did put her through a wedding ceremony to her she was they were married yeah uh again not recorded i searched fucking high and low in the illinois cook registry there is nothing in there that says that they were married but people were at it they did have a ceremony well and it made sense that he wouldn't have been able to get married again because he married to murta he has two other marriages and he married murta in illinois exactly so he wasn't going to be able to do that exactly but he certainly went through the motions definitely made her believe that they were married and again Again, still
married to Clara and Myrta.
Nevertheless, falling in with Minnie so quickly, so fast, so closely, that gave him access to Minnie's inheritance right away.
Yep. Made her a very, very valuable tool in all of his scams as well.
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So in 1893, he convinced her to put the deed to the Wilmot house in her name.
Oh my God. So Murda and Lucy are living there.
It is now in Minnie's name.
What? Yep. and a little bit after that he had minnie write to the man in charge of her estate the one she inherited and request three thousand dollars be sent to her which was obtained by selling off a portion of the land left to her by her uncle oh no and he also convinced minnie to sign over the deed to the entire property oh i knew that was coming to a man named alexander bond who's that Which she did in about April 1893.
And a few weeks later, Bond signed the deed over to another man named Benton Lyman.
What she didn't know was that Alexander Bond was H .H.
Holmes. Yeah, I had a feeling that was an alias.
And Benton Lyman? Another.
That was an alias of Benjamin Pitzel.
Ah, fucking A. I knew that estate was going.
You're saying these other things first and I'm like, I know the estate is next.
I know what's next.
and he convinced her to do it like rapid sign over this deed put this in your name like that's he was able to do this shit so easily well and the thing that sucks like back then like i'm sure some people in their head are like oh my god why would you ever do that yeah but women weren't educated about deeds and trusts and estates they weren't allowed to be exactly exactly and it's one of those things where men were in charge of these kind of things so you just went along with it and also on the other side of this it's a simple thing where she was madly in love with him and trusted him and he made
her trust him and he made her feel like this is forever and made her feel like she made this right decision by changing and uprooting her life to come here and that the universe had put them together he had made her really feel like this is somebody who i can trust it's like trusting your own husband of course the way it is and why wouldn't and like you yeah if If John asked you to sign something, you wouldn't question to a big degree.
I would never question it because I would assume he's telling me the truth.
But now I'm like, what the fuck?
What is that? Where's the fine print, motherfucker?
But yeah, so that all happened, which you know is leading up to nothing good.
Because when he's signing over deeds and he's taking over things, you know this is leading up to taking care of business in his eyes.
But then Nanny Williams, her sister, arrived in Chicago.
This was in June after the school year had ended.
And a few weeks later, their Aunt Lucy, the two girls' Aunt Lucy, received a letter from Nanny saying, I have taken in the fair to my heart's content and have enjoyed it so much. And she said that she was going to be going on some trips with Minnie and H .H.
Holmes, and they were going to go to Milwaukee and New York and all these other places.
And she said, then we sail for Germany by way of London and Paris.
I can hardly realize that I'm going to have this great adventure for which I have wished to for so long.
Brother Harry, Harry Gordon, says you need never trouble anymore about me financially or otherwise.
So she wrote to her aunt saying, like, don't ever worry about me financially or otherwise, because Harry's going to take care of us.
And also we're going to Germany.
Yeah. Don't look for us.
Don't look for us. Because we'll be in Germany.
Precisely. We're going to be traveling everywhere.
That's why you won't be able to get in touch with us ever again.
Yep. Now, on the evening of August 13, 1893, a fire broke out in the Holmes Castle.
A real one? Yeah, an actual one.
And many of the residents there immediately said that they believed that Holmes set the fire himself to cash in on the insurance policies and possibly to get rid of a lot of incriminating evidence that was on that second floor.
Imagine that. They actually, so one of the residents said all day preceding the fire, Holmes was at work on the third floor of the building moving things out.
and that afternoon at five o 'clock he took the train to willmott soon after he left there was noticeable there was noticeable in the flats on the third floor a strong odor of burning tar and soon tar began to run down the walls in the closet below and in fact he had removed all of the things on the third floor he had literally taken all his clothing personal papers the the furniture, the fixers, he had removed door handles, anything that was worth anything he had taken out the day before the fire.
And in the months after the fire, they had hired a handyman named Joe Owens and he told the fire inspector that the fire had definitely been set for insurance money.
Of course it had. And he said, quote, some things that were in that building, Holmes never wanted known.
That's what he told the fire inspector.
That's an eerie fucking quote.
and apparently the thing that kills me is owens joe owns the handyman who said that yeah was never followed up on later but they never asked him any more about that i'm like what the fuck doesn't that make so much sense it does and it infuriates me because i'm like guys he obviously felt comfortable saying shit in front of this guy yeah but a few days after the fire a crew came in to help clean up the aftermath of the fire and this is just interesting and kind of shows that H .H.
Holmes was definitely together and very uh like controlled in the beginning with his schemes and with everything that was going on but as he started getting more and more intense with it and adding more and more layers onto his chaos yeah he was losing it a little bit like he was starting to get chaotic he was starting to get aggressive he was starting to be reckless a little bit this fire is a perfect example of that right he was caught very quickly right um but this one shows so a crew came a few days later to clean up the aftermath of a fire and they were throwing debris into uh off the roof and into
a tenement home next door that's kind yeah like they weren't using like a chute to like put it into a dumpster or something right and it was into the home of john s nickels who lived there with his family nickels was pissed because now there's like soot and shit all over his home so he asked for the janitor of the castle to the castle to complain about it and when holmes found out about this he told someone he was gonna fix that man oh so apparently he waited for days pacing the alleyway between his home and the castle waiting for nichols to come out the fuck and when he did he lost his shit on him
complained he was like i can't believe you complained about this you forced our workers to have to build an expensive shoot to dispose of the debris you cost me money the correct way to dispose of that.
And he pulled a gun on him.
And so a passing patrolman and a police officer was walking by and saw this whole thing and like tackled H .H.
Holmes to the ground.
Hey, put your gun away, asshole.
Luckily for Holmes, the whole thing wasn't pursued much further by Nichols because he was like, I don't even want to deal with this guy anymore.
He's crazy. But he was very aggressive and reckless.
And that shows right there that he was losing it.
He's breaking. And in his confession, Holmes claimed that the letter that was sent to Aunt Lucy from Minnie that was supposed to be from Nanny, he claimed that that was forged by Minnie.
Okay. What he does is he tries to blame Minnie for everything.
Even like the fire and stuff?
He blames like, not the fire, but he blames Minnie for everything that happens after this.
Oh, okay. Nice. In the case of Nanny, the letter, like you said, establishes why people wouldn't hear from her for a while, why they shouldn't be concerned about her, why nobody should ask where she is.
Uh -huh. So on the day that the letter was written, Minnie, in reality, took a day trip to Milwaukee, and Nanny had went with Holmes to the World's Fair.
They had just taken in the fair together while Minnie was away for the day.
Uh -huh. She was going to be away for the night, I believe.
Okay. Okay. They were seen several times during the day by several witnesses together.
It was the last time that Nanny was seen alive.
Oh, no. She was forced into one of his sealed bank vault type rooms and was left to suffocate to death.
Jesus fucking Christ. When Minnie returned from her trip the following day, Holmes sent a letter to the landlords of the apartment that he'd set up for himself, like the landlord of the upstairs apartment.
Okay. OK. He had actually sent because he had set up another apartment outside of the castle where they were going to be moving from the castle to this apartment together.
Him and Minnie. Yeah.
Him, Minnie and Nanny.
Yeah. He was going to have Nanny in there, too.
He sent a landlord to that apartment.
Excuse me. A letter to the landlord of that apartment.
Sorry. Saying that they would no longer need that apartment.
The landlord was like, that's weird because like they're living in there now.
like i don't understand like where are they yeah what's going on but he's like so the landlord was a little suspicious so he went into the apartment to check on him and he found it was abandoned completely oh so sorry so him and mini had already started living there and then he sent the letter and was like no we don't need to live yeah he had set up a whole apartment because they were living in the castle yep but then he had set up a second apartment outside of the castle which he often did with people where he would have like so they wouldn't hear everything basically so he had set them up in there
and they had only been living in there for a little while but they had lived but they had lived in there for at least like a week or something like that and there was things but it was completely abandoned and he said and the landlord said it looked like somebody had left very quickly also like do you have a lease yeah probably not um but a few days later nanny's trunk of all her belongings arrived at the chicago wells fargo office addressed miss nanny williams c -o -h gordon oh no no one ever came to claim that trunk no now later like i said he was going to blame minnie for a lot of things he was going
to later blame minnie for the murder of her own sister yeah i had a feeling that was coming he said she was insanely jealous of nanny and worried that homes was going to cheat on her with nanny well and it's like the night she was gone in milwaukee he claimed she came home the next day and found that only one bed had been slept in and assumed that they had slept together so he claims he came home and found that mini had murdered her sister in a blind jealous rage oh fuck you he claimed she had beat her to death with a stool so he said he helped her throw nanny's body into lake michigan and then
he claimed of course that after that he told manny like you need to leave he just banished her oh okay and he said you need to get treatment for your mental health yeah i'll help you dispose of the body but then like i'll fuck you over yeah because that'll turn out well for me no this was all bullshit and when holmes did another confession later he admitted that it was all bullshit yeah he killed them both he admitted that he was the one who killed nanny and after having her sign some documents needed to get the insurance payment uh pay out from her brother baldwin's death who he is also like
people are suspicious that he might have killed baldwin as well oh my god so he may have killed all three of these an entire family he killed minnie too the way he killed nanny he locked her in an airtight room to suffocate a slow and agonizing death jesus fucking christ both women had insurance policies taken out on them by none other than homes himself as the beneficiary yep i don't even like he he's evil in so many different ways he really is and what's crazy is later what you'll see is he takes another wife after this by the way um and we'll get into that i know crazy he's he's not the marrying
type but here he is but he takes another other wife and people see him with this wife later and sometimes he will refer to her as minnie and some people confuse her as minnie so people think that minnie is alive longer than she was and then there was this um article i found in like a super old um um a super old edition of the ann arbor argus newspaper it's from 1895 and it just says minnie williams is alive she's not And it says Holmes received a telegram from her yesterday.
I bet he did. And it says it was on August 22nd, 1895.
And it says he received a telegram yesterday purporting to come from Minnie R.
Williams, one of Holmes's alleged victims. It reads Providence, Rhode Island, August 19th, 1895.
The report that I was murdered is absurd. I am alive and well.
Yeah. And it says Minnie R.
Williams. And strangely, it was written in Holmes's writing.
And it says, when the message was shown to Holmes, he said excitedly, I knew my story that I did not kill the girl would be confirmed.
He brushed tears from his eyes and continued, I'm sorry, however, that she has made herself so public by telegraphing.
She might as well have written.
And then it says Providence, Rhode Island, August 21st. The night operator remembers the message, but could not state the time at which it was filed, nor could he state whether it was filed by a man or a woman.
Because he was paid off.
An inspection of the directory here fails to disclose any name that can be taken for that of a person indicated by the signature of the message.
So Minnie R. Williams was not alive at that point.
And she did not sign for that telegraph.
And it was definitely done by somebody helping Holmes.
Very interesting, though, that, like, even an article was written about it.
Yeah, that is wild.
now by this point he was hoping to he or excuse me he was hopping to and from various apartments under various names outside of the murder castle to try to stay one step ahead of all the insurance companies that were coming after him that's the thing that i don't understand like con artists like this like aren't you just living in fear at all times for him i feel like he was in an era where it worked to his benefit yeah because like they can only contact you in so many ways they They can only find you so many ways.
So it's, like. True.
Hopping around is really your best bet.
And it's, like, I don't think he ever thought he was gonna get caught.
I think he thinks he was one step ahead.
Like, remember when you were, like, young and, like, couldn't pay your bills and you missed one and then they just called you and called you and called you and the stress of, like, that feeling?
I can't imagine, like, bringing that upon myself, like, intentionally.
And having, like, murdered people names, like, attached to it?
Yeah, that's a whole other fucking.
That's a whole other thing.
but he was essentially running from them but they were always on his tail right and at the same time an insurance investigator named fg cowey uh he tracked homes to a small hotel on lake avenue and he went to go question him about that fire and the only person he found in the hotel was a woman who introduced herself as mrs holmes now it was he was determined to nail homes through like through all of this and this continues later but he couldn't really get very far with mrs homes yeah what we'll find out is that this was his next wife who he was saying was mrs homes but they thought this was minnie
okay now the insurance investigator from before was still convinced homes had intentionally set that fire and wanted homes prosecuted for arson so he looked into the various insurance claims that this man had taken out and received a shit ton of money from and in In January in 1894, he set a trap.
He told Holmes the company was going to pay out the insurance claim.
And he was like, just come to the office in downtown Chicago, pick up the check.
It's going to be it's fine.
We're going to punk you, bitch. So Cowie confronted him when he came to pick up the check.
And he was like, you are an arsonist. You burnt down that.
But we know this. And he managed to get Holmes to confess that he set the fire intentionally.
Wow. But I guess he did that because he knew that in order to be prosecuted for arson, Cowie was going to have to file the complaint within one year of the fire.
So all that Holmes had to do was basically dodge and try to duck and dodge investigators for six or seven more months, and then he'd be in the clear.
Because if they couldn't get him after a year, he was out.
So he just admitted to it being like, they're not going to catch me.
Right. And now they're at least like, I can get out of here.
So unfortunately for him, though, a lot of his other creditors were now aware of all his misdeeds.
Thanks to the attempt at arsoning himself into a payday.
Yeah. That really put a spotlight on him.
That'll do it. So they contacted, they all got together and they contacted Lafayette Mercantile Agency, which was a collection agency.
Uh -huh. The manager, George Chamberlain, organized more than 20 of his creditors to confront Holmes in a meeting.
Imagine how fucking excited they were.
They were probably psyched.
After a lot of back and forth, he agreed to give them over some real estate as collateral against his debts, and he offered up property that was deeded under the names Kate Durkee and Minnie Williams. Oh my goodness.
He made an intentional clerical error on these forms on the deed transfer because then it bought him more time because they had to set up another meeting to fix the clerical error.
Oh, OK. So when they set up, they were trying to set up the third meeting.
He just skipped town altogether.
Fuck. I hate that he was one step ahead of them.
He was. It's so sad that he was one step ahead of them.
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Terms restrictions apply visit earnin .com for full details download earnin now and take control of your pay but after leaving chicago because he was getting out of chicago now holmes went to denver and he went to denver to claim the insurance payout for bald baldwin williams's death who is minnie and danny's nanny's brother which tells you everything you need to know yep he had forms that were quote -unquote signed by Nanny and Minnie giving up claims to their brother's estate and saying that they were going away together for a long time and that H .H.
Holmes could take all the stuff on the estate wow and there's all this stuff about like whether he killed him it's not known it's hard to find anything on Baldwin Williams or what happened to him okay but it's very sus it seems he did take the insurance payout on him so yeah weird and And while he was in Denver, he met back up with a woman that he had been speaking to and corresponding with for over a year while married to Clara Murda and pretending to be married to Minnie.
Her name was Georgiana Yoke.
Oh, that's a pretty name.
And he had been, again, talking to her for at least a year before leaving Chicago.
He courted her very quickly and on January 17th, he married her.
Oh, no. As Henry M.
Howard of Fort Worth, Texas.
And did he actually marry her?
He married her. Okay.
Georgiana Yolk was born October 17th, 1869.
A lot more is known about her than most of the other victims. I don't know why she was concentrated on more.
She had almost white blonde hair.
She had super blue eyes that were huge, apparently.
Apparently, they were so big that people thought something was wrong with her.
They called it a defect.
And I was like, I love big eyes.
I don't understand that.
Back then, I guess it's not part of being a classic beauty.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It truly is. but when she knew homes she was in her early 20s she had been working as a school teacher in indiana until early 1893 she actually just like really abruptly left her teaching position and moved to chicago to live with an uncle chicago chicago exactly before leaving that teaching position i found this very interesting she had heroically saved children she was teaching from from a burning school building.
Holy shit. Had run back in and saved them.
Was H .H. Holmes the one that lit it on fire?
Right, you would think.
Wow, that's incredible.
So she's just like a hero.
Poor enough for Georgiana.
Right, I'm saying. Georgiana, right?
Georgiana. It was while she was in Chicago with her uncle that she met H .H.
Holmes. Womp womp. They met apparently while she was working at the cloak department at the fairgrounds.
Bitch, get you a cloak.
She had also worked at a department store before that in the area, but apparently Minnie was someone who came there a lot.
Like Georgiana and Minnie definitely met.
Ooh, that's weird. Yeah, I don't like that.
Yeah, no, that's too close to home.
And like nearly all of the women that H .H.
Holmes ever came in contact with or anything else in his life for that matter, his interest in Georgiana, I mean, she was beautiful.
Yeah. But it definitely had a lot to do with money.
In 1893, the year that they met, Georgiana's grandmother had passed away.
Oh my God, wait, wait, wait.
Did she get an inheritance?
She sure did. Crazy.
She got a 160 -acre farm in Indiana.
Well, bitch. So, coincidence?
I think not. No. So, of course, when he left Chicago on the run from all the insurance claims and debtors, he went to Denver and he knew exactly what he needed to do.
He needed to find that girl he was stringing along and marry her to get her money.
he even told her mother that the mini property was in fort worth texas yeah was left to him by his uncle false yeah false but strangely he said there was one condition of this in inherited land and it was that holmes had to take on his late uncle's name henry mansfield howard at some point was somebody just like you're a fucking liar that's what i'm like no one was like who would ever make you take on their name she's like i don't want my name to die so like you have to take my exact name the whole thing apparently georgiana was fine with that like the strange name changing okay she knew him as
hh homes she also knew a few of his other aliases she just kind of accepted that which is interesting um shows how charming he could be when he wanted to be that's the thing because to us we're like who the fuck would believe that but But, like, I would believe that if somebody charmed the pants off of me.
He's charming these ladies.
Now, later in court, she actually, Georgiana took the stand later in court.
Spoiler alert, she lives.
Oh. Oh. Yeah. So, later in court, she said that she believed that she knew about the Wilmette woman.
Okay. Talking about Myrta, his other wife.
So, she was like, I thought I knew her.
I believe I might have known about her, but she didn't remember if he had said they were married or not.
and i was like georgiana that's crazy georgiana i mean minor detail wow i was like come on and at one point she was like yeah i mean like i he might have said that there was a marriage ceremony but i just don't remember and it's like girl that's you know what i'm here to say it that's not a girl's girl that's not a girl's girl not but newspapers at the time um did never like she was i think she got kind of railroaded in the newspapers so she maybe she was just being like like fuck all y 'all uh but newspapers at the time referred to her as an adventurous spirit which in those times uh those times
meant a woman of loose morals yeah that's what that meant like i consider myself like a free spirit but not a woman of but back then it would be a woman of loose morals so i think she was getting like shitted on in the press so she probably was like fuck everybody that's what it sounds like now someone who knew georgiana and fort worth a man on my own he said something about her that i was like wow all right i was like if anybody ever said that about me i'd be like wow that is i'm gonna like chisel that on something oh maybe i'll say he called her a remarkably beautiful woman and he said it was one
of those winning attractive faces that you cannot get away from any more than you can believe the possessor capable of evil it was a it was a fresh and beautiful face with the fine hopes and aspirations of youth in it and one that once seen remained an indelible memory.
She wound her way unconsciously into the heart of everyone who met her.
She had that way about her which takes hold of the roots of things in an instant.
She was as gentle and refined in manner and personal conduct as it was possible to be.
Maybe it's Maybelline.
I was like, damn. Is this just like an acquaintance that said that about you?
Like, holy shit. Sounds to me like an obsession.
I was like, that guy liked you, liked you.
that guy has pictures of you hung up all around his home and maybe it's not a good thing he had a crush on you or maybe more and the homes is landlord at one point called her the most beautiful woman he had ever met damn so i was like georgiana i mean i feel like a georgiana just has to be pretty yeah and i mean the way they described her giant blue eyes and white blonde hair yeah like fuck like okay all right elsa like get out of my fucking face and he also He also said she appeared to idolize her husband and that he was also very enamored with her.
And he said that they were a very affectionate couple.
I bet. So that's interesting.
Now, after leaving Denver, Holmes and Georgiana, his new wife, began making their way to Texas where he intended to claim that land that many had transferred into his name.
Or as far as Georgiana knew, that the uncle had left him.
Yeah, the uncle whose name he now used.
But before he did this, they made a brief stop back in Chicago, which I was like, reckless.
Once he was there, he got a new life insurance policy.
On Georgiana. From the Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia, and he took it out to insure Benjamin Peitzel's life for $10 ,000.
Oh, shit. It's getting not good up in here.
It's getting not good.
It's getting heat. heat now he had he was very strategic about this time in his life all the moves he made seemed chaotic but they all made sense he was definitely moving from one state to another just to avoid prosecution for the arson and creditors but the trip to denver was to claim the insurance payout for the policy on baldwin williams's life he was able to claim that money uh the trip to chicago was done to tie up some loose ends take out the policy on pite cell's life and then leave the city forever and Holmes's next move to Fort Worth was to claim that land that Minnie Williams his uncle
had left and that she had transferred into Holmes and Pite's L's names unknowingly yeah but when's he gonna find the time to kill Pite's L because I know that's what's happening here well what he was thinking was he was gonna sell some of the land in order to get a lot of cash really quick and then on the rest of the land he was going to build a new three -story building building a new castle.
The Fort Worth murder castle.
Does that happen? That's what he was planning to do.
Okay. That's where he was going to be, where he planned that Pite Cell was going to join and they were all going to be part of this whole scheme together.
Yeah, right. Now, it's during this time in Holmes's life that Benjamin Pite Cell really came back into the fold in a wild way, obviously.
Before he had gotten to Texas with Georgiana, he sent Pite pitzel there first with his own son pitzel's son howard who was 10 years old at the time oh no to start the whole inheritance thing because remember pitzel can do that because the deed was transferred into his name yeah so he sends him get that started okay so we can have it going when i get there you little fucking henchman now pitzel's life was definitely a lot of poor decisions one after the other i feel like sounds like it he was a heavy drinker from an early age like we said in part two i believe he had a long history of like petty
crimes um the one that he actually like the one that we mentioned in part two he actually had to flee with his wife and four children to chicago in 1888 ding ding ding that's where he met holmes and the connection between holmes and peitzel doesn't really show up on paper until 1893 but that's when he became one of the bidders on Holmes' ABC copier company when it went to auction, auction when he didn't pay any of the creditors.
Okay. But in reality, we know from part two that Paitzel was part of Holmes' life much earlier than that during the construction of the initial castle.
Exactly. So they were really playing a long game here and making sure that no one knew that connection early on.
Buckers. And there's a lot of speculation as to who did what, who knew what when it came to what holmes was doing but pitzel was definitely fully aware of all the schemes and he was involved in a lot of them so we talked about in part two that um at one point during the time when he was in holmes's employ that pitzel had actually gotten arrested in indiana for passing bad checks i remember that and holmes had bailed him out using bad checks yeah but he had bailed him out And we know that Holmes doesn't do anything out of the goodness of his heart.
Never does that. No, he needed Peitzel.
Yeah, he didn't do that.
Just a few weeks after bailing him out of jail, Holmes sent a letter to Peitzel's lawyer asking him to send Peitzel a letter threatening him that he was going to be brought back into custody in Indiana.
He said, quote, he is not doing what he ought to in regard to transferring his house and lot.
and it seems that Holmes had been helping to support Peitzel and his wife and children while he was in jail and in exchange they had made some sort of agreement that he was going to sign over the deed to Peitzel's house and land oh shit so this was a whole arrangement he had he was only going to do this to get this and Peitel wasn't moving fast enough for him to get the shit done and he was starting to question is he really going to do this so he was like I gotta play that card I'm gonna have his lawyer threaten him and say that he's gonna be arrested again it's also like did you not see this coming
dude like you're a con man he's a con man one of you is gonna con the other because that by this point Peitzel had been involved in so many of Holmes's schemes like very involved he has a lot on you deeds in his name things being transferred around he's bringing him victims I was just gonna say exactly he's doing all this stuff he knew how this plays out out for people in the end very rarely do people survive to the end of these schemes with hh holmes it's always him standing alone at the end yeah with all the money all the deeds all the shit everything and all the credit so i don't know how he
didn't realize but he i who knows if he realized that he would ever be a target but at this point he was going to become a target it sounds like he was not just going to be involved he was going to be the actual they were going to be saying hey we We need to have a dead body and take it out and get a false insurance claim.
Well, they weren't going to get a fake dead body this time.
Ready? Ready? And I'll say it for you.
And that's where we're going to wrap for part three.
We're going to talk about that next week.
We're going to talk about that in part four because when it comes to Benjamin Peitzel and his family and what happens next, it's just a lot.
Oh, shit. And it's a lot to take in.
It's a lot to comb through.
And I really want to give it its own space.
I'm starting to wonder if this bitch is going to be five parts.
I think it's going to be four.
You think four? I think four.
I'm going to make it four.
But part four, I think, is going to be a doozy, a long one.
We love. So everybody buckle in, because we're going to talk about Jack the Ripper.
We're going to talk about all that shit.
We're going to talk about Patzell.
We're going to talk about Patzell.
We're going to talk about a lot.
It's going to be a lot.
We're going to see what happens to Georgiana.
I was just going to say, yeah, we're going to find out how she gets away, because I'm happy that she does.
Yep, she sure does.
And her big blue eyes.
nice her and her giant blue eyes that they literally referred to as a defect and i was like girl what that's like have you um have you ever met christina ricci that's an asset like i'm obsessed with christina like her big eyes i'm like oh gorge love them absolutely gorge sarah highland come on you know your eyes like are the only part of you that are like as big like when you're born they stay the same size thank you yeah correct well anyways thanks guys guys for listening we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but it's weird that you call somebody's eyes a defect because that's
really rude and disgusting bye it's very rude especially if they're gorge and everybody's gorge you're all gorge little babies she's elsa and i love you bye If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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Hey, weirdos. You know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
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Well, get ready for a love story that's going to blow your minds because this one is happening right now.
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Meet Travis. He falls head over heels for Lily Rose.
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And she's literally perfect.
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