Hey weirdos, it's Ash.
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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid.
it is the conclusion to H .H.
Holmes goodness that wasn't as epic as I thought it would sound I thought you sounded epic.
That's why I said oh my goodness.
Yeah, we're finally at the conclusion here.
It's a doozy. But don't worry, because in the end, this man gets what's coming to him.
Hell fucking yeah, he does.
Gets what's coming to him.
So when we, we're going to get right into it because this is a long one.
And I'm ready to go fucking off about Jack the Ripper and the Dear Boss letter again, so let's go.
go let's let's go down that path all over again go right down that path again so i'm just gonna catch you up really quick so this man has now killed benjamin peitzel and his kids not all of him right yeah at least three of his kids he's definitely gonna kill the ladies he has sent their mother slash wife around the nation and canada on a wild goose chase thinking her husband is alive all the while detective gary from the insurance company he defrauded with the murder or of his supposed friend and business partner has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to help track him.
They are hot on his tail now and he has left Canada and come back to the States.
They're going in. Where they are looking for him.
I'm not sure why he made that move, but like glad he did.
Yeah, that was stupid.
I'm really excited for the Pinkerton of it all.
I also really like saying Pinkerton.
Pinkerton. Yeah. Yeah, I know.
But before we get into this whole thing we are going to quickly touch upon why people think he's jack the ripper oh my goodness we're gonna get that right out of the way right up front so we can dive back into the story and finish it off with his execution because that's proper of course you know that's the way we do it it's the proper this is how we do it so let's talk about the theories about him being jack the ripper let us they mostly so he has um an ancestor named jeff mudgett remember his name is herman webster mudgett how could i forget uh jeff is like his great great great great grandson you
know like one of those i'm not exactly removed or something yeah and he firmly believes that hh holmes is jack h what you are you're all over me right now i'm sorry i love you he firmly believes that h .h.
holmes is jack the ripper they are the same person he the grandson yeah the great great great great grandson um he i mean he he's a former attorney like he's a credible human like so far i have not seen him i have not seen anything about him doing like anything you know nefarious bad or nefarious where you'd be like why are we believing this man um but you know i don't know if i agree i'm not here to say for sure because i don't know you don't know we don't know he doesn't know and i and i commend him for nobody knows there you go she literally put up a finger to make me stop talking to say that i
want you all to know that she said wait i didn't want the moment to pass sometimes i i don't put up a finger to stop you and the moment yeah yeah you know i get it yeah now he presented a ton of evidence uh he did a ted talk in vancouver i think it was shit he presented a bunch of exhibits a lot of them are pretty interesting um that's as far as i think they are as interesting one of the things he presented was a letter confirmed to be written by h .h holmes to his lawyer and it was near year of 19 or 1888 and he was talking about how much he wanted to go to london okay so he expressed interest
in going to london i too have done the same yeah there is that now there's also the fact that scotland yard believed according to witness reports that jack the ripper was about five seven you know somewhere in his late 20s early mid 30s they believed he was a doctor you know a very average build homes was exactly 5 '7 he was technically a doctor I feel though you know yeah I feel like 5 '7 is also like kind of on the shorter side yeah I think it's just like it's all pretty like you know average like nothing stands out to me it's like oh that's him also I know that like eyewitness accounts are you
know a thing they're tough and I know that's really all we have to go on in the Jack the Ripper case for these kind of things for what he looks like no surveillance unfortunately needs to remember and I hammered this idea and when we did the Jack the Ripper case there was no lights when I say there was no lights in Whitechapel I mean there was no lights I mean go outside stand in the middle of the forest that's probably kind of as dark as it was it was probably darker so like I don't know if we can really look at like like oh that man was five foot seven like I don't know well that's also just
so that's such a specific measurement very specific if you could say like oh he was like I'm five six so he was between my height and like five nine I'd say yeah like you know and even that I'm like five nine I don't know what someone who's five nine looks like no but you know what some well um no never mind I'm dumb like John is like six three six four I only compare things in in heights of John like I literally will look at somebody I'll be like well they're almost close to John's height so they're probably around like that's the only way I can distinguish I do that exact same thing in my own
home yeah I was measuring an area to put like a raised bed did you and in my head I said that's probably two jobs I do the same that's amazing and for height I'm always like that's about one and a half johns i do that all the time whenever people in the in the six feet apart times one john apart one john apart that's it that's literally i feel like could john lay between me and that person i'm good if they can't i better move back it reminds me of in uh gilmore girls when uh i can bring it back there all the time always uh either that or sabrina when logan is talking about like measuring distance
through crow pogs because that's like a Yale thing it's like this many crow pogs to this thing I'm like this many johns shut up Logan so yeah you know there's that so like sure again presented in a way where it says you know you put them all together and what do you got you put them all together and they all say five seven they say about this age they say about this height range this weight range like whatever he was a doctor her and then you say hey H .H.
Holmes happens to be five foot seven and of that average weight and all that must be him you know what I'll give it to you it's there that that is true so I will absolutely say that you can't really sure I mean a lot of other people are too but like sure H .H.
Holmes is uh Scott Linyard also put together and he really laid his hat on this one and a lot of people really lay their hats on this one um Scott Linyard put together a composite of all 13 credible and corroborated eyewitness accounts of jack the ripper and what he looked like but again no lights and again no lights uh they put it into one photo they composited it into one human that photo first of all when i look at it i'm like i don't know about that i don't know about that when you showed it to me i wasn't there i'm not there but i i too don't know about you you said in one of these that like
people have 1800s faces like old timey faces that man that was not an old that man is from 2013 at the earliest it just did not speak to me but besides that because obviously you would look at that and say well who gives a shit what you think this is reality right so that photo when compared to hh homes's photo people think it's a great comparison okay Okay.
And to which I say, nah, what?
Because I don't think it's a good comparison at all, in my opinion.
The lip bothers me a lot.
He has a very full bottom lip.
H .H. Holmes' bottom lip was notably fuller.
In fact, it was something people talked about with him.
It was a distinguishing characteristic to him that his bottom lip was a full bottom lip.
Filler Queen. Filler Queen H .H.
Holmes. But Jack the Ripper, that composite photo of what he's supposed to look like, he has no lips.
And he certainly doesn't have a full bottom lip.
And I'm telling you, if we are if we are close enough and we are able to describe enough to say he is five foot seven, he is of this age, he's of this weight, he has a mustache, he has high cheekbones.
They would have seen that full lip.
That would have been one of the things you would would have heard in many of the descriptions was he had a full lip and also wouldn't you think didn't he have like a special thing with his eyes aj chum he had strabidmus but that wouldn't i don't think that would have really been relevant especially in the darkness back then because all strabidmus is you can't uh really focus on someone oh okay okay it's like um it's really just a focusing thing gotcha gotcha like one eye might drift a little bit okay um so i don't know if anybody would have been close enough to him to see that beside until they
and they would have have been dead yeah that makes sense but again and the other thing is that homes had a very weak ass jawline yeah it sucked like no jawline to be found at least in the photos that i've seen yeah shave that beard and you're done for shave that and it's no good but the composite has a pretty strong jawline and it's like that seems to be a and he has very high cheekbones i guess you could say homes does too but like again they're not very i don't really i wouldn't i I wouldn't sit there and be like, wow, look at those cheekbones.
I think he kind of looks a little bit like a basset hound.
He does a little bit.
A little droopy. And then there's the medical knowledge thing.
We all know that medical knowledge is a hot debate when it comes to Jack the Ripper.
Some people believe wholeheartedly he had to have been a doctor or at least in the medical field.
Other people believe by no means is that even something we should be looking at.
And then there are other people who sit in the middle and they say, I don't know, it could be that.
Or he could have been a butcher at the time because they had similar knowledge.
That's you. That is me.
I'm on the side, like I said, like I sit in that middle area, but I would lean more towards he had at least some medical knowledge.
But theories surrounding Holmes being one in the same with Jack say that maybe Jack's crimes were actually the beginning of Holmes' murderous career.
And he evolved into the Holmes that we know now.
I don't understand this on any level.
and I've read a lot of these theories about this particular, like, issue here that, like, he must have started as Jack the Ripper and then evolved into Holmes.
I don't get that. Like, Jack was very methodical from the jump.
Was he reckless sometimes?
Yeah. Absolutely. But he always seemed to have a plan.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
Even in his recklessness, it was still slightly organized.
Yeah, like, it was reckless the way he went about it, but there was a plan in place.
And it's like he had he like escalated as he went.
So to think this would have been Holmes's beginnings make absolutely no sense to me.
It makes sense to go the other way around.
Right. Because Jack's murders were fucking horrific.
Like you don't start there and then end on poisoning people with gas.
No, you would think that you would work your way up to.
Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me.
And then people talk about the traveling.
Like it was pretty, you know, people could travel by boat pretty easily back then if you had the money to do it.
You find the ship manifest?
I cannot find the ship manifest. Maybe it doesn't exist. There are ship manifests, allegedly, they are cited a lot, but I can't find them, that say a man named Holmes traveled from the U .S. to London during the time period that Jack was active.
this was also during the time period in 1988 early 1989 where you can't find evidence of homes in chicago or in the united states so that is an interesting thing little hairy is weird that you can't find a lot of evidence or a lot of stuff going on about him during that time in the united states i will give that credence but at the same time he was always running around everywhere so he could have even been in canada that's the thing then he could have been using one of his like like his 40 aliases, you know what I mean?
That they just actually didn't pick up on.
Holmes was also a very common name at the time.
That's probably why Holmes chose it.
I think it still is.
So he could blend in with others, be confused with others, and that would allow him to get by with all his schemes.
But the fact that there was a Holmes on a ship to London, while very compelling when you put it next to other things, or if you want, you know, you're looking for confirmation bias and you you want to confirm your theory i understand that's compelling i'm not throwing it away by any means but i just don't think it proves anything really yeah i think it proves that there was a homes on that ship but there was a lot of homes could be any homes again the time period intriguing very intriguing the fact that we can't find a lot about homes during that this small period of time intriguing but whatever
and now we're going to get to the thing that pisses me off the most. One of the things that a lot of people use and Jeff Mudgett uses, and again, I'm not like, Jeff Mudgett might be 100 % right.
I'm not saying he's wrong.
I'm just saying I don't personally agree with this, especially this one piece of the puzzle.
People like to look at the Dear Boss letter, the Jack the Ripper Dear Boss letter.
And handwriting analysis said that this letter was likely written by an American because boss was not a um heavily used term slang term in England at the time it was used but it was used more in America I was gonna say maybe they just went abroad and thought they were fancy when they got back to London they were like boss and they think it was written by the same person who wrote things that belong to Holmes they compared some of the handwriting analysis again I saw the comparisons I'm not wowed by the the comparisons no and you showed them to me I wasn't either but they claim that the handwriting
analysis said that it was like a 97 match or something wild if it is that's fascinating but I'm my eyes don't work right it's also cursive and a lot of people at that time period learned how to write cursive in a very similar manner yeah that's the thing now I'm gonna read you because we because you I think we need to take a little trip back to the dear boss letter for a a second because i have a lot of reasons why this doesn't make sense that it was hhoms okay so the dear boss letter was this i'll read it to you dear boss i keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won't fix me just
yet i have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track that joke about leather apron gives me real fits i'm down on whores and can't quit ripping them till i do get buckled grand work the last job was i gave the lady no No time to squeal.
How can they catch me now?
I love my work and want to start again.
You will soon hear of me with my funny little games.
I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can't use it.
Red ink is fit enough, I hope.
Ha ha. The next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police officers.
Just for jolly, wouldn't you?
Keep this letter till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight.
My knife is nice and sharp.
i want to get to work right away if i get a chance good luck yours truly jack the ripper don't mind me giving the trade name wasn't good enough to post this before i got all the red ink off my hands curse it no luck yet they say i'm a doctor now haha so many things uh so many things yeah i went over in the jack the ripper episodes about how this is not jack the ripper when you were saying it i was like wait a second because i thought that we had determined it was not yeah Yeah, it's not.
This is not Jack the Ripper.
This is the like, you know, going from like my last job, my funny little games, the tones don't match. And then the whole blood thing.
The whole blood thing.
I'm going to get to that.
Don't worry. But that's it's and him giving himself the nickname.
It's just like, no, no, no, no. So the Dear Boss letter, when you first hear it, it could feel real on first glance.
And I get that. I thought it was real on first glance, especially because of the ear thing the ear thing it was so this letter was turned into police on september 29th which was hours before the double event and the murder of katherine eddowes who had their ear clipped off but the central news agency claims they received the letter on september 27th and waited until the day of the murders to turn it into police so there's conflicting ideas about when this letter actually came in if it came in on the day that it happened or days before, the dates are a little muddy there and I don't think we can trust
them. And another thing, George Sims was a journalist who wrote a weekly column and was heavily into the investigation of the Whitechapel murders and he said, the Dear Boss letter and postcard were sent to a news agency and not a paper, like not a newspaper, and not the cops.
drops a news agency sells stories to papers and news outlets it's a hub like that's where you spread the story or the news to other sources wouldn't someone just send the letter directly to the paper or the actual investigators why would they choose a news agency who would know to even do that i can tell you who someone who journal is news agencies and he wrote george sims wrote the fact that the self -postcard proclaimed assassin sent this imitation blood besmeared communication to the central news, opens up a wide field for theory.
How many among you, my dear readers, would have hit upon the idea of the central news as a receptacle for your confidence?
You might have sent your joke to the Telegraph, the Times, any morning or any evening paper, but I will lay long odds that it would never have occurred to communicate with a press agency.
Curious, is it not that this maniac makes his communication to an agency which serves the entire press.
It is an idea which might occur to a press man, perhaps, and even then it would probably only occur to someone connected with the editorial department of a newspaper, someone who knew what the central news was and the place it filled in its business of news supply.
This proceeding on Jack's part betrays an inner knowledge of the newspaper world, which is certainly surprising.
Everything, therefore, points to the fact that the jokist is professionally connected with the press and if he is telling the truth and not fooling us then we brought are brought face to face with the fact that the white chapel murders have been committed by a practical journalist perhaps even a real live editor which is absurd and at that i think i will leave it so he's like nah it's it's a very very valid point that is this 100 betrayed somebody with an inner idea of how the press and news work and honestly in white chapel especially at the time the lay person did not know that that was not something
that people were just going to know on the streets that postcard was also talking like it was sent before the double event like i said but it was actually postmarked over 24 hours after it was done yeah so the ear thing it was postmarked after that and they could have already known so it seems like whoever sent it tried to make it look like it was before but that postmark betrays it and again the dates are all confusing using so that postmark is the only real thing you can go off of and if you look at it it's after the double event fake news now also the coagulated blood in the ginger bottle that's
the whole thing this goes up my butt this is a medically minded person hh holmes is a medically minded person the real killer would not be shocked that blood coagulated in a ginger bottle and it would obviously that would be coagulated by the time you sat down to write that stupid fucking letter if you were keeping it from there.
It would be jelly in minutes and the real killer would know that and Holmes would also know that.
Regardless of his knowledge of medicine, he did graduate from medical school.
He's done a shit ton of stuff.
He knows what blood does.
He's seen it. It's stupid.
So this letter – In conclusion, it's stupid.
I just broke for a second.
You sure did. in in conclusion we just had to slap her real quick and she was like okay i'm back morbid is sponsored by squarespace squarespace is the all -in -one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online who doesn't want to stand out and succeed get you a girl who can can do both.
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gonna know what blood does he's seen blood coagulate in front of him probably so it's really not shocking and then if you're claiming this guy is hh holmes who even wrote this letter that doesn't make sense and then if you're saying that hh holmes is jack the ripper and that this letter is real i'm sorry i cannot not get behind that it's a it's a girl by moment it's a girl by moment for me and then the last thing that makes me crazy is if h .h holmes was in fact the committer of the white chapel murders he was jack the motherfucking ripper when that guy got x when he was he had an execution date
he knew knew he was gone i am i am headed off i'm shuffling off this mortal coil i know this he started being wild like that man started telling tall tales and started being like i have killed 4 000 people like he was just that's crazy all he wanted was to see in the papers what a fucking fiend he was and how he was a monster and he'll go down in history and bop bop bop he fucking loved it because he knew he was gonna die anyway so he wanted his legacy to be that he was was a fucking fiend and then he would lie about it and pull it back if he was jack the ripper you think he would have just neglected
to put that in there probably like you think he would have just like like come on i don't see it like he would have omitted the fucking white chapel murders out of his legacy me thinks not i don't think so i think he would have been like guys you think this was wild you should extradite me over to london because i did some shit there I think he would just be like, let's go.
And he would have been able to live longer.
Yeah, and he would have been able to talk about it more.
He would have fucking loved to talk about it.
You think he would have done all that and then not talked about it?
No. No. No. It's just not realistic.
Girl, bye. It's just not realistic.
I don't see it. So.
I wish you had a gavel.
If you believe. Do we have something that can.
Sounds like a gavel, right?
Did that hurt though?
No, it didn't. so if you believe that they are one and the same i support your uh freedom of thought elena says you're wrong uh but you're wrong and i'm right that's the way it is just capricorn things so there's that i'm wrong you're right and that's it i don't think people are gonna think i'm such an asshole what's new i was gonna say breaking news elena's an asshole uh so let's get back to uh herman webster budget and get into it yeah so i just had to get through that we had to talk about it it was the elephant in the the room all that good stuff he's not jack the ripper so let's talk about him
as he is so this man has now again killed a bunch of people he's come back from canada we got the detectives on his trail and staying in canada definitely would have been a better idea um since neither the pinkerton agents or detective gary from fidelity mutual why will it never not be funny because every time i hear ronnie and ben go blah blah blah tell you about gary from below deck see and i just love detective gary from fidelity mutual it is the equivalent to jake from state farm it really is what are you wearing gary from fidelity mutual well the thing is the pinkerton in agents and detective
gary neither one of them had authority in canada so he he might not have even been extradited like i'm sure canada like we know canada and they would have been like girl we'll help you out yeah like canada's kind but like you don't know that would have been pretty fucking ballsy yeah but the agents did make their way up there because they knew canada was kind and that they could get them on their side they said i'm coming up but this time the uh the agents arrived in toronto and holmes and georgiana had already left and were on their way to meet carrie peitzel in ogdensburg new york where they
had told her for the hundredth time she would be meeting her husband benjamin and the and i'm what i'm assuming is the end of her life that's all she heard it's she was i the amount of times that she was shuffled somewhere and then told her husband moment be there and then they were like yeah just kidding kills me i know it's so sad but when homes and georgiana arrived in new york he immediately let carrie know uh -oh this is too small of a town for us to arrange a meeting and he said everyone is attending to everyone's business here so he said you can go to burlington vermont that's where he'll
be oh i fucking love burlington vermont yeah and he said he said there you can see ben it's a nice place it is but you're not not gonna see that he has shuffled her everywhere it's she's come from canada down to new york again and he's like oh vermont and that also shows like how in love with her husband she was that she was willing to go all these places yes because you would think at some point she'd be like what the fuck exactly the jig is up but the love for her husband clearly kept her going and she thinks that her kids might be with him too so she's just like all hope right now holmes at this point
had written a letter to his brother in new hampshire oh right saying that he had had amnesia for eight years the eight years since they had seen him i forgot about that like oops i just forgot everything and i would love to come back home and you know just see all the things that i haven't seen it's like the episode of full house where michelle falls off the horse yes that was a very intense episode true but somewhere between canada and where he ends up in boston later we'll see what he had heard yep he had heard that he was being tailed i just pulled on my ear uh to be like i had heard it felt
like softball i don't know why i did that but i was like he heard with his ears i was like is that where he does have like pretty gnarly ears but he heard with those big ears that he was being tailed for murder in chicago and people had figured shit out but he didn't know by who he didn't know the pinkertons were involved and he didn't know No, Detective Gary was involved and he didn't know when.
He just heard this rumor.
So in the week that followed, Holmes continued this whole bullshit.
He told Carrie, Benjamin's husband or wife, and Desi, their 16 -year -old daughter, because now there's Desi, the 16 -year -old daughter, and Wharton is like a baby.
Those are the only two left. The other three have been murdered by Holmes.
So he tells Carrie and Desi, their 16 -year -old daughter, that Benjamin was alive and well and is now oh no he's up in montreal again told them he's back in canada i don't even know what i would fucking do at that point yeah i think i would start exactly losing it and they said that he so he claimed that he went back up there because he didn't feel it was safe to be in the u .s he thought he was going to get caught so he was waiting to reunite with his family and then he told them you won't even know him he has a new set of teeth and is all fixed up nice so you won't know him at all he's very anxious
to see you he's such an evil fuck so fucked like no one really knows why he was continuing the scheme at this point because he was enjoying he'd already claimed the money for the insurance payout and he killed the three pite cell children so there was really no reason to continue this he could have just abandoned her and left like other than she she did know a lot that's true but he would have been like who's gonna believe you like what they've have already paid out the insurance thing.
Like it's, I truly believe he was just having a lot of fun emotionally torturing this family.
That's so fucked. I believe you.
Yeah. Now on November 5th, I believe you.
On November 5th, Holmes left Carrie Peitzel in Burlington and he took a thousand dollars from Georgiana, his wife, and he traveled to Gilman to New Hampshire where he was from, where Claire is, where his son Robert is.
Now remember that he had sent the letter to his his brother um and he said so when he did this he told georgiana that he needed the thousand dollars because he was traveling to kingston for a business meeting with an associate from chicago so he's just lying all over the place like a rug and he said it was going to be silly boring stuff you know it would be better if georgiana stayed behind yeah of course you should definitely stay behind just hang tight so off he goes and apparently everyone must have bought the amnesia story right like right off the bat according to the boston globe clara showered
her long lost husband in kisses thrilled to have discovered him to be alive oh my god now when i read that i said yeah huh like do we do we remember how she would walk around that place with black eyes like are we really that psyched to see this fucker right now according to adam seltzer those newspaper accounts were probably very embellished as fuck meaning clara and holmes had not seen each other and like forever and the last time they had seen each other he was violent and he was shitty and neglectful of their children child and her and then there was like some other communication where he
wrote to her and wanted full custody exactly they had treated her like shit so i doubt she was immediately just like oh my god yes yeah she's probably like fuck so it's much more likely that he gave them a very selective rundown of what he'd been doing in the years that he had been away he definitely explained the bigamy as amnesia related having you know i forgot that i was married oh my god so he told them he was married again yeah he was like oops i got married again twice they were like excuse me and according to holmes it was only in the last two or so months that something had happened to
cause his memory to come back so that's why he wanted to return to his life as herman webster mudgett totally now it's funny because he speaks about this time very very strangely for him when he wrote about it.
Okay. It's like emotion filled, strangely.
About his return to New Hampshire, he said, here are many changes that take place.
Even my initials that have been deeply cut into one of the large elm trees that grow so slowly had become obliterated.
This touched me deeply, seeming so much in keeping with what had been in reality, had what had in reality occurred to the name itself.
self so he's saying like my name had been obliterated in reality and it was obliterated on that tree and like that's a very like deep that is like this motherfucker is getting nostalgic yeah it's like an introspective way of speaking about it which is not very of him i would say or at least he usually does it falsely and that seemed a little more real like i've lost who i was and like i'm like but then you just continue to it's very weird no one gets to stop at that point i think yeah no one gets this though i don't get it he probably doesn't get it that much maybe i think there is like something
about going home you know like i think that made him introspective it must have and what's weird though too is no one knows why he really went back to new hampshire do you think he loved his parents i don't know or like it's not love but like whatever he i don't know i really don't know i couldn't put my finger on anything because nothing Nothing makes sense for him.
The only thing I can think of is that, like you were saying, he knows the detectives are hot on his trail for murder.
Maybe he did just want to go home and say, like, have a couple more memories with his parents and Clara.
See, that's - But it's fucking weird. Or, like, he knew they were on his tail.
And so he went back there and he was fully ready to become Herman Webster Mudgett again.
Right. And he was like, maybe if I leave Holmes behind, I leave all these other aliases.
is behind i leave howard behind all this i'm herman webster mudgett i am my birth name like you know maybe that maybe this will keep me safe like they won't be able to track me right if i convince everyone that i had amnesia that nothing's happened in the eight years and we just start anew right that maybe like i'll be able to avoid all this because maybe he was even planning on like the amnesia story selling it to himself yeah time truly you know yeah but then so we I said that, and we said that, and we're like, that makes a little sense.
We be say. But he didn't stay long.
He left after only two days.
Maybe you just couldn't take it.
On a train for Boston.
No, get out of here.
Exactly. But I'm like, what were you doing?
Like, what was the plan that initially, and you were like, this isn't going to work, maybe?
Maybe. Like, maybe you saw that fucking tree, and you were like, oh, shit.
Yeah, changed things.
Maybe he was very introspective in that moment and he's like, the name has been obliterated on the tree.
I can never come back to Herman Webster Mudgett, so I just need to go forth.
He's like, I really am gone.
I really am H .H. Holmes.
The only thing I could also think of, so another thing, is his child, his firstborn was a son and that was fucking huge back in the day.
Oh yeah, it was like air and all that.
So maybe he was like, I must see my son one more time.
Yeah, I don't know.
Because then, remember, he also wanted the custody, and we were like, why did he want custody of his son?
That doesn't make any sense.
It's very strange. I don't know.
It's very strange. Now, before leaving New Hampshire after those two days, Holmes sent a telegram to Georgiana in New York, you know, his wife.
Yeah. One of them. Telling her to meet him in Boston.
So before he even left, he was already like, I'm out of here.
They met at a train station on November 13th, and from there, they checked into the Adams house as Mr. and Mrs. H .M.
Howell. so he's right back to his own bullshit the next day he checked them into a boarding house in boston because he was planning to stay longer now meanwhile unbeknownst to holmes detective gary in the pinkerton's followed him from new hampshire to boston once there they went straight to the boston pd and spoke to them about setting out to arrest holmes for the philadelphia insurance fraud unfortunately the boston police chief at the time felt that the warrant from philadelphia was not like super strong and he said i could probably get him but i'm not going to be able to hold him with this okay
so he was sticking ahead he was so gary was like i got you and he scrambled and got a second warrant from fort worth texas the one where holmes was wanted for being a horse thief and horse thievery is a big deal so this would strengthen the case to hold him in boston i guess they could have also tried to get a warrant from chicago for the arson too but they they didn't need to you would think that they would want to i know november 17th 1894 homes left the boarding house to go for a nice little morning walk how'd that turn out because he was so fucking egotistical that he assumed that there was no way
he was being tracked in boston with his big old mustache like everybody knows exactly who you are fucker what a doomist and also if you were on the run and you had committed all of those things don't you think the first fucking thing you do is shave your fucking stupid mustache you think that but he knew he knew under that there was nothing good i mean there usually isn't but while walking he was suddenly and very quickly surrounded by three inspectors from the boston police and one pinkerton agent freeze motherfucker and they told him he was coming down to speak to them at the station i love
it now at first homes was like oh what what are you talking about acting shocked and very confused i've had amnesia and he tried to talk his way out of it like he always does but he quickly gave in when they were like Like, we're not going away, fucker.
Now, remember, he had heard that he was being tailed and he had to be heard. He was being tailed for murder in Chicago.
So at some point he was like, I was figuring I was going to get caught at some point, but he assumed it was for murder.
And instead they're arresting him with a warrant for horse thievery.
So when he goes to the station, he's confronted by another agent from Fidelity Mutual named Forrest Perry.
See, that's better.
Forrest Perry from Fidelity Mutual.
Yeah, it makes sense.
He confronts him for faking the death of Benjamin Peitzel.
And he was like, oh, good.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I did that. I'm technically not up for murder.
Okay. So he just confessed.
He was like, okay. So he said, quote, went to Philadelphia with Peitzel, rented the house on Callow Hill Street and fitted it up with for both a bachelor's headquarters and a business office.
then stated that he went on to new york where he met an old medical friend of his through him he obtained a body which would answer in every description that of bf pitzel the preparation of the body by burning one side with benzene or other ignitable fluid followed and the old clay pipe was placed dangerously near it so as to suggest a terrific explosion so he admitted everything except for murdering benjamin pitzel he said oh no no we put a person there in his his place right but that person was already dead we're just we're just frauding insurance that's all like no murders here we just knew
of a dead body locally yeah and he also said he was part of a band of conspirators that included benjamin himself and carrie peitzel and which i mean he kind of was sort of yeah and in his first confession to deputy superintendent hanscom of the boston police and john cornish of the pinkerton detective agency he claimed that that Benjamin Peitzel was still very much alive.
He said, quote, Well, I last saw him in Detroit, in the neighborhood of three weeks ago.
And he said he accompanied the children for a short time and then was to hand them over to their father in Cincinnati.
That was the plan. But when they got there, he said Peitzel had started drinking heavily again and he just wasn't comfortable leaving the children with him.
Wow. This man. Wow.
This man. Who had gassed those children to death.
this man is claiming their father who he murdered was such an alcoholic that he didn't feel comfortable leaving those children with him and he gassed those girls in a trunk wow and poisoned that little boy he poisoned them so he said he had some discussions with Benjamin and then he said he and Benjamin quote compromised there so he took But I took one of them and I took the other two to Chicago because I had business there.
You can have one. I think you can handle one in your drunken stupor.
Just one, just the boy.
But I'll take the others.
And he said thinking that it would not call anyone's attention so quick if he traveled with the boy alone as if there were three.
What? That doesn't even make sense.
Thank you for saying the exact, like what?
Yeah, exactly. Holmes probably expected his confession would like pretty much answer all the lingering questions they had.
I mean, he he did the thing that really stupid murderers do where he prepares an answer for every single question that could come up.
But it's so hyper prepared and rehearsed that you're like, that's you can't possibly have all these answers.
Right. But he thought it was going to make up, you know, people are going to now understand his international and interstate travels like all that.
But I think he finally overestimated his abilities to fuck around and not find out.
because within a day of his confession they'd moved a fresh body in a trunk from new york to philadelphia and the coroner pointed out that the body in the apartment had been laid out flat which would have been which wouldn't have been possible if the man had been dead for some time so they did a little experiment yeah they said okay so you brought that body from here to here in a trunk you said that body that was supposed to be benjamin peitzel's like double okay how'd you lay lay it flat how'd you do that like that doesn't make any sense and that's just such a classic like well i thought i was smarter
and they also said they said first of all wouldn't have laid flat if it was in like any position and they said definitely not if it was in a trunk for a long period of time right and they said it would have shown marks of where it had been doubled up uh -huh so no such marks were on the body and holmes confession didn't hold up under any of this Of course, he couldn't explain any of this.
Of course not. Yeah.
So investigators immediately said that the body found was really that of Pitezel and not of someone else.
So the claim of such a, like this was truly a like gruesome insurance fraud scheme, even if you take away the murder.
Yeah. It's just gruesome.
No matter what. So headlines were going crazy.
And within days, it was blowing up all over the place.
After just two days of being arrested in Boston, Pinkerton agents arrested Carrie Pitzell in Burlington, Vermont.
She was probably like, what the fuck?
Yeah, and then she was just there waiting for Benjamin.
Of course. Yeah. She was brought to Boston and she was interrogated by Hanscom and Cornish, the Boston cop and the Pinkerton detective.
And she wasn't super forthcoming, unfortunately.
Well, she was probably scared.
She sure was. Because like you said, she was involved in a scheme.
And she was trying to protect her husband, who she still believed was alive.
So she lied and denied any knowledge of a fraud scheme, which only made her look more complicit than she complicit than she even was in reality.
Based on all this and Holmes's confession, detectives confirmed that they believed, quote, the missing man, Benjamin Pitzel, is dead and that he met his death at the hands of Holmes.
homes so although she may have had some knowledge of the scheme to defraud the insurance company detectives were pretty sure pretty quick that kerry pied cell didn't play a part in the actual crime okay they said she probably only knew of the swindle after her husband was supposed to be dead yeah and police were pretty confident that she definitely wasn't directly involved in it she hadn't had her hands in it but they said there is someone else who seems to have their hands in this Jep Da Howe, the lawyer.
Oh my God, I forgot about Jep Da.
That nefarious, unscrupulous lawyer.
Is it Jep Da Howe or Jep Da Howe?
No, it's Jep Da Howe.
Gotcha. He was arrested at his home in St. Louis, St. Louis on November 20th, and the warrant charged him with being a fugitive from justice.
Woof. He released a statement saying, I do not believe that a fraud has been committed.
I believe the body identified by Peitzel's 15 -year -old daughter was that of her father.
The marks of identification were perfect.
As to how Peitzel met his death, I cannot say, but if a fraud has been committed, I'm anxious to have it investigated.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
And his immediately arson was another charge because his pants lit right on fire.
Yep. Boom. On November 19th, a Philadelphia grand jury indicted Holmes and Howe for conspiracy to cheat and defraud the Fidelity Mutual Company.
You don't want to be doing that.
The indictment also added a third conspirator onto it, Charles A.
Peitzel. Who's that again?
Who that is, is no one.
Investigators made an oopsie.
Who that is, is no one.
And Charles A. Peitzel is just one of Benjamin's aliases.
So they didn't realize that yet.
And they literally indicted a dead man's alias for his own murder.
Wolf .com. I just love that is, is no one.
So there's that there's the, that of it all.
So there's that. I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner.
And my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.
It's mine, not yours.
Just kidding. You can have some too.
this is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough it's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli I'm obsessed it's pillowy it's satisfying I feel indulged I just love it so much I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now my mochi is only around 70 calories per piece which like hello that's amazing my mochi is gluten free and each Each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.
Do I eat two a night?
Yeah. Yeah, I do because they're that good.
And guess what? My mochi is the number one mochi ice cream in the US of A.
The strawberry flavor is bursting with fresh picked fruit flavor that tastes incredibly refreshing.
I love, love, love them after dinner.
This August, look for the purple box of my mochi ice cream at your local grocery store and feel joyfully chill with the coolest treat around my mochi.
In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men practically overnight.
He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi scheme.
Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award -winning comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco, this is Easy Money, the Charles Ponzi Story, an Apple Original Podcast The following day, they were extradited to Philadelphia to stand trial.
So Holmes killed Benjamin Pitzel.
Yes, correct. So that meant he couldn't have left the three missing children with their father.
No. So now the question became, where the kids at?
Where the fuck are Alice, Nellie, and Howard Pitzel?
Yeah. So the missing Pitezel children are definitely like top priority right now.
But now they're also looking into like the nationwide crime spree, like an international crime spree that was shocking them at this point.
In Chicago, a bunch of people came forward and identified Holmes as a man they'd once known by many other names before he had run out on them before paying for anything that he had put on credit.
it and in texas people suddenly suddenly started connecting their loved ones minnie and nanny williams with this man and were stressing the fuck out they they were like something terrible has happened here and in the time since she'd gone missing several private detectives were sent from texas to chicago in search of nanny williams because her trunk had sat unclaimed at the wells Fargo office for months and then was returned to her aunt so in Texas which shocked them all and none of them could get a hold of her the Chicago Tribune reported it is certain Annie Williams did come to Chicago but whether
she was murdered is a point that can only be cleared up when her sister Minnie is brought to light by the time Holmes reached Philadelphia on the 21st of November he started talking about Minnie too because they were bringing her up right according to the the philadelphia police detective thomas crawford one of the uh somebody who was transporting homes from boston to philadelphia talk he said he talked a lot i was just gonna say imagine being that guy god and you just have to hear him he's told the bizarre story about um nanny williams like how she had died he told like several different stories
about that and under hypnosis crawford this police detective relayed the story that he had heard from homes oh that's crazy yeah he said he went to chicago with his first wife and there fell in with a young typewriter named minnie williams for whom he secured furnished apartments the girl was often visited by her elder sister the younger however was jealous of homes and one day knocked her on the head and killed her when homes returned and found the dead body in the rooms he took it and put it in a trunk together with a lot of stones and sank it in the lake the younger sister having property in texas
he and pitzel took the property off her hands and furnished her with money to go to europe where she is now nope so again claiming that minnie was jealous of nanny and and homes killed nanny in a jealous rage by beating her over the head with a stool leaving her in the bed then helped homes put her in the trunk sink her to the bottom of the lake and then he she signed over the deed to the texas properties to homes in pitzel and then they gave her a little money and off she went to europe to live out the rest of her days that's what he's claiming the story spun about millie minnie killing her sister
at a jealous rage just like was not anything anybody was going to believe it wasn't hidden with anyone which is good because that's also so fucked up that he killed the both of them and was like the other one was just jealous of the older one so he she beat her with and this was also further cemented in by the hordes of people who after he was arrested wanted to tell reporters about their interactions with homes many of them had met homes and minnie williams in chicago but the problem was that they both they were known as different names and in some cases the women they thought was minnie williams
was actually georgiana yokes oh shit but he was like introducing her saying this is minnie and she was like yeah it's me yeah he also had another known associate named kate durkee who he didn't kill and he would it was also her sometimes that he would say was mini the fuck and these women were just like yep it's me that's the thing like what now eventually enough stories had come forward to allow investigators to conclude that mini was also missing and had in fact not been seen by anyone since she was last spotted with her sister in chicago in mid -december 1893 now in the year that followed after this,
Holmes' story about Minnie and Nanny Williams changed a billion times.
Never told the same story twice.
In some, they're both alive.
They're both dead. Minnie had gone into hiding after killing her sister.
But then sometimes he would say, I'd only told that story for fun because this Crawford guy was super gullible and I wanted to see if he'd believe it.
But regardless of what he would say, it was always that Minnie killed her sister, then fled to Chicago and he hadn't seen her since that was what he would like go back to always so stupid so holmes spent the winter of 1895 in jail and journalists were talking to anyone who had even come in slight contact with him and his travels meanwhile detective frank geyer from the philadelphia police had set out from philadelphia to track his movements before his arrest so that they could could figure out maybe where the missing pitel children were along his path by then investigators had learned a ton more
about homes and they learned that he had what like dozens and dozens of aliases at the time that he had moved from one hotel to the other to a boarding house to renting a house like they were learning all this shit as it's happening i'm just picturing them connecting the red lines and just having the wall become a red line yes literally and now Now, with all of this, they're trying to find these kids and it's becoming so complicated that it must've been so frustrating.
And just like, imagine how desperate they felt.
Yes, and Geyer began retracing Holmes' steps and he's checking in with every hotel along the way, every boarding house, every alias he's falling up on, just trying to find these kids.
Well, it's been exhausting.
Everyone. Now, Holmes was no help and his stories were becoming more and more inconsistent.
consistent. They were changing.
He would just lie. He would pull it back.
But then in his possession, they found a small tin and that small tin had a bunch of letters that the children had written their mother, Carrie Peitzel.
Oh, no. And she had written them too.
And he had never sent them and he had never given them her letters.
And using the dates and locations referenced in the letters, guyer was able to trace a pretty accurate route of homes his travels with the kids from indianapolis to canada holy shit so they use those letters from the kids um and in a town outside cincinnati they talked to a bunch of like shopkeepers and they showed them a photograph of the man identified as homes and they were like yep we know that guy and then they said he was traveling Traveling in the company of a young boy who was later identified as Howard Pitezel.
Got him. Well, and also a hotel clerk in Cincinnati identified Holmes as the man who checked in with two girls, but he didn't remember seeing a boy.
But remember, he killed Howard first. In each new location, Geyer would hear another story.
Holmes would arrive with children, rented a house or apartment for a really short period of time, and then he would leave and go to another one.
This story finally changed in July 1895 because Geyer traveled all the way up to Toronto following the trail.
Now, he've worked with the Toronto police force and they helped him trace Holmes's steps all along the city.
Along the way, he got more and more positive identifications from eyewitnesses.
People would see Holmes, Georgiana, and Nellie and Alice from hotel managers at the the Walker house where they said the girls were staying, the Palmer house where he stayed with Georgiana.
And through this investigation, he finally learned that Holmes had expressed interest in buying or renting a house in several of the locations he was in in Toronto.
So he went around to every real estate agent that he found in the area and like just asked if they recollected ever renting a house about that time to a a man who maybe only stayed there a few days and who represented that he wanted this house for his widowed sister because that's the story he was hearing but the fact that he would only need it for a few days would be so memorable exactly so after doing this only for a couple of days he finally found an agent who rented a house on the outskirts of toronto to a man who only stayed there for a little bit and matched the description so guyer and the toronto
detectives arrived at this house and now an older couple was living there with their adult son oh god so the detectives were like hey uh we have reason to believe that two young girls were murdered in this house and their bodies might be buried somewhere on the property can we like look do you mind if we look like god can you imagine getting that fucking knock on your door well apparently the owners weren't like crazy shocked they go that accounts for that pile of loose dirt under the main building You didn't want to call anybody?
They're like, what?
Jesus Christ. So the couple's older son helped them and they got under the house and began digging.
But the space was really small and it was really difficult to move around in.
So it was slow, this process.
And eventually they had to stop because investigators determined it was not a house rented by H .H.
Holmes. What? So there was just some random loose dirt in their house?
There was nothing in there?
Fuck you. now that was not cool fuck you now while gyer was retracing holmes's whoa whoa throwing your pussy across the room chica sliding across the desk you were playing like air hockey with it i went to go like move it because i thought it was falling off and i almost made it fall off so you launched it launched it into the sun now while gyer was retracing all the movements in canada homes was on trial in philadelphia for conspiring to defraud the fidelity mutual life association of ten thousand dollars by producing a dead body and representing it to be the corpse of benjamin f peitzel that that's
what he's on i'm gonna type all that uh homes pled guilty to the fraud charges but when asked he said he would refuse to say to the district attorney or philadelphia investigators where those children were he was not going to tell him of course so they took him to county prison Now, several days went by.
Geyer is still up in Canada talking to every real estate agent ever and finally comes across another one several days later.
And it was for a house on Vincent Street, rented by a name matching.
And you might remember that street.
I remember Vincent Street.
And the man who rented it matched Holmes's description.
So on the morning of July 15th, Geyer and his associates arrive at the house.
They speak to the next door neighbor and the next door neighbor says, yeah, I saw Holmes's picture in the papers and he was definitely the one who rented this house for his widowed sister.
Mm hmm. And the neighbor also said, yeah, I didn't get a good look at the girls, but he definitely had two girls with him.
I couldn't. And he said, I won't identify them as the two girls because I didn't get a good enough look.
But he said, oh, also, before he left town, like shortly before, he asked me to borrow a shovel.
Oh, I forgot about that.
Dyer was like, OK, cool.
and so he went to the owner of the house the one who rented it two homes and they positively identified homes as the man who'd rented it and they said by all means search that house yeah no problem here so guyer and the other detectives went into the basement and it didn't take long before they found a spot of ground in the southwest corner of the room that was definitely recently disturbed they began digging like pretty easily it was moving away and guyer said and after going down about one foot a horrible stench arose so they were convinced this is it so guyer began digging with his hands like
ripping out dirt and they were able to unearth a tomb they said the deeper we dug the more horrible the odor became and when we reached the depth of three feet we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the forearm of a human being thank god with the help of the undertaker the local undertaker bd humphrey bd humphrey the local undertaker he should be yeah absolutely no other career path I will not question that ever nope BD Humphrey for life ever um Geyer and the detectives were able to unearth the two bodies in the basement they were very decomposed and were actually a little bit injured from being
exhumed as well because it was not like a very together exhumation but I'm glad that they were able to be located so that they could actually be put to rest and they were able to be um put into two Two separate coffins.
Right. Which is good they weren't just dumped in one thing.
That's good. Yeah, it's really sad.
But with the so badly decomposed, that's going to be a problem.
But enough that they were able to put two and two together.
The children's remains were taken to the morgue for examination.
And Geyer sent a telegram to the district attorney, Graham, letting him know that he should definitely proceed with murder charges against H .H.
Holmes. Yikes. unfortunately the remains of howard paitzel the third child were never discovered oh and people believe that he was probably scattered or buried on the property where he was actually murdered oh that's terrible now after the bodies of alice and nelly were uncovered holmes's guilty plea in the fraud case became kind of a problem because the girls had been killed in canada so holmes would need to be extradited to toronto in order to stand trial for the murders and once he'd learned of the discovery holmes claimed he was traveling at the time that the girls were killed and he couldn't
have possibly done it which georgiana verified i don't really like her yeah i'm not a fan now instead holmes said the pitzel children were killed by a man named hatch is that your alter ego he described this man as a mythical sort of person and i'm like i'm sure he was mythical because he doesn't exist, and a very disreputable character.
Mr. Hatch was apparently a friend of Minnie Williams, according to him.
Isn't everybody? And he'd reluctantly given the girls to this man during a stop in Buffalo.
You wouldn't leave them with their father, but you gave them to a random man?
A disreputable, mythical man.
Named Hatch. Yeah. And he had instructed Hatch to take them with Minnie to Europe.
Everybody's just hanging out in Europe.
See, he is obsessed with Europe.
i will say that when superintendent of police lyndon heard this statement he replied that man holmes is the most infernal liar i have ever been brought in contact with his willingness to plead guilty to the charge of conspiracy led us to think that something must be back of the case so the discovery of the two bodies pretty much confirmed to all the news outlets and the public that h .h holmes was definitely a multiple murderer at the time it was not known as a serial killer.
Within days of that discovery newspapers went wild around the country.
And Chicago investigators and citizens started digging around the rubble of the castle because remember it had burned.
Not all the way down but part of it had.
But they were thinking they would find bones of victims and they were going to try to attack more on.
Chicago was looking for evidence of Minnie and Nanny's remains at the castle.
And on July 19th two detectives who were looking through the the ashes that were technically used to be the basement, they found an old stove.
When they looked in the firebox of the stove, they discovered a quantity of charred human remains and a watch chain formerly owned and worn by Mindy Williams. So he had burned their bodies in the stove.
That's terrible. At the time of the whole crime spree and the arrest and all that, newspapers, especially like the Metropolitan Papers, were not held to like very high standards yeah i could see that and there was a lot of competition among them they wanted to be the one with the most readers so this would definitely lead to some leaning towards like tabloid kind of reporting um and they were a little bit more willing to exaggerate and fabricate you know it's sad so many still around today do the same thing like how often do you find fake shit when you're researching and you're like why does no other
articles say that yeah it's like what now holmes knew this and he almost was kind of like eager to play along with it of course he would give outrageous statements contradictory statements like things that would like make him like the most bloodthirsty ruthless killer leaving bodies all across the country like that's another reason why i don't think he would have left out that he was jack the ripper i think this would have been the time he would have been like by the way you You know, those crazy murders in Whitechapel?
Yeah, seems like a big part to skip.
But a lot of papers did operate the way they should, on fact.
But they would definitely still kind of sensationalize the whole thing, because how can you not?
When Julia and Pearl Connor's disappearances were connected to Holmes, finally, in the summer of 1895, the Chicago Chronicle had this to say, Have two more victims of murder been added to the long list to Holmes's credit?
Mrs. L. L. Connor and her daughter are now supposed to have been killed by the swindler holmes is said to have coerced the woman to deceive her husband and to aid his general schemes of villainry mrs connor then lived with holmes but they quarreled frequently and she threatened to expose him she disappeared in the fall of 1893 with her daughter and friends believe that they have been removed by holmes where the woman could not possibly appear against him it's so factual but it's just the way they presented it's very sensational yeah because like we don't know why he did it like we don't know that she
threatened to expose him we We don't know any of that.
You just added that in as like drama.
And like how would you even prove that?
Why would you write that if you can't prove it?
Because it just sounds more like whoa.
But meanwhile, investigators in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Chicago and every other city that Holmes had been spending a ton of time in, they were connecting the dots between unsolved crimes in their cities and this guy.
Slowly unraveling this whole complex crime spree that he had been on for eight years at this point it's fucking wild soon there was a connection made between homes and emeline sagrand um and they were able to attribute her disappearance to him investigators and reporters had also been digging into homes his personal history and that's where they learned about his fascination with dissection and chemistry and obviously those personality personality traits added with the crimes it's a recipe for just a wild tale now holmes was indicted in early september 1895 for the murder of benjamin peitzel he
entered a plea of not guilty and when the judge asked how will you be tried holmes said by god and my country which meant he wanted a jury trial in the time between the indictment and the trial holmes took a lot of advantage of the public he manipulated the hell out of people i can see that in early october he published his own supposed autobiography entitled holmes's own story queue up ashley simpson exactly the book was an alleged chronological history of holmes's life all the way to incarceration it was just bizarre all the way through some of it's real for sure do you think he was just at the end
no i don't think he was losing it i think he was very much together i think he he was just a fucked up human being i think he was enjoying it this is all he wanted was to be something right now the trial began october 28th and from the start it was pretty clear that holmes's defense attorneys were uh out of their league in fact although they had previously agreed to the trial date set by the judge when the day came his counsel made quote one of the most desperate fights for postponement ever witnessed in a criminal trial holy shit we were like i really have plans that day i can't do i can't move
my meeting please screaming give me a check damn it and it got so outrageous i guess that the judge apparently threatened sanctions against the lawyers he said if they leave the court they will be punished as lawyers are punished for disobedience and cancel your fucking plans for doing a trial they weren't able to uh withdraw the case for that day but they didn't technically have to participate either and they didn't oh no they just sat quietly and let holmes basically act as his own defense attorney they literally sat in the room and were like i don't know what to say they were like we don't
really know how how to defend this man.
So, uh, if the real slim shady would please stand up.
You know what? That guy said sanctions.
That's the only reason I'm here.
So I'm just going to sit here now in his opening statement, district attorney, George Graham laid out his case and he told the jury, quote, he would prove that Holmes had killed each of the four Pite cells who were not alive to be called as witnesses and that he had tried to kill the rest of them too.
He presented a very strong wrong case.
He used a lot of witness testimony and anyone surviving in the family.
Those who had seen Holmes with Benjamin and the children before they all disappeared, they all came up to say something.
Holmes, on the other hand, just kind of like made outrageous claims about the prosecutor attempting to prevent him from seeing his quote unquote wife Georgiana.
Yeah. It was was all very preventative performative it was not helpful for him at all eugene smith the man who'd gone to the patent laboratory that day to speak about his inventions and ended up finding peitzel's body he was called to testify and on the stands on the stand homes grilled him about benjamin peitzel's drinking habits and other subjects that he couldn't know anything about like he he didn't know him he's like i just know i had a patent he was so he's sitting there grilling him being like well he was a drinker you know that and he's like i literally don't know that i don't know this man i
thought his last name was perry so like no i did not know this man i didn't actually even know his name and he's asking him all these details and he's like my guy i don't know this man all i know of him is the couple of conversations i have with him and he was not drunk so like i cannot confirm that got nothing for you and then holmes just demanded that all the witnesses be removed from the courtroom and the judge was like overruled like it was literally just like uh no nah church's smokehouse chicken is back and the block already knows what's up The signature Smokehouse Rub hits every piece of that juicy
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So on the third day, Holmes' second confession was read aloud for the jury, because remember, he has like 85.
And in this one, he claimed that the body was Benjamin Benjamin Peitzel, but Benjamin Peitzel had died as the result of suicide.
The confession was followed by what was likely the most damning testimony of the trial.
It was given by Carrie and Desi Peitzel.
Oh, that must have been horrific.
She positively identified Holmes as the man who'd conspired with her husband and dragged her around the nation in search of her children.
And she spent hours on the stand and it was just like heartbreaking.
breaking she identified the unsent letters found as being from her kids the new york herald reported quote her appearance spoke of deep poverty it was as if all her emotions were dead she seemed incapable of suffering or feeling anymore when she looked at home she seemed not to even see him like she was just i mean she had been through it at that point and then to have all those fucking letters to read oh my god when she lost all of her children i can't even fathom and all All of the letters were just like, why aren't you writing to us?
Yeah. And she's like, they thought I wasn't writing to them.
Like, to know that they were in that kind of thing.
Like, you poisoned them against me at the end.
Right. They died thinking I wasn't—I didn't care about them.
That poor woman. I don't know how she went on after.
She was a very powerful witness for the prosecution.
And when they put her against Holmes, it definitely helped out as well.
After several days of testimony and tons of crazy media reports, courts the things that made Holmes such a successful criminal like such a successful killer and con man and frauder his ability to lie confidently have no remorse and just so unbelievable amounts of chaos everywhere he went they were kind of taking a toll on the jury like the jury was feeling it I could see that he had told so many versions of the same story and he He had made such a complicated and incoherent set of stories and lies that they were kind of just like, uh, at the end of it, like, they don't even know what to think.
It must have been so hard to follow.
Yeah. So in the end, they were much more inclined to believe the prosecution than they were to believe his bullshit.
They were like, I don't even know what to do with this.
A, like, clean case from beginning to end.
And they were like, you're just bizarre.
I know, like, but you've confused me.
And he probably seemed like a madman at that point.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And on the final day of the case, Graham presented his closing arguments and he just wrapped up the evidence and all the testimony.
And Holmes and his defense attorney or his whole team, they just had the same weak arguments.
You know, the mysterious strangers like Hatch taking the children to Europe and Benjamin Peitzel committing suicide.
All of this was supposed to put in reasonable doubt.
It wasn't necessarily painting Holmes as innocent.
It was really just putting reasonable doubt and it wasn't even good reasonable doubt.
they were just like i don't know i still think he's shitty so judges are supposed to remain pretty impartial but how'd that go but this judge pretty much let his opinion be known at the end i feel like they all kind of do at the end yeah and he sent the jury out saying this i will say that it is such a remarkable story that it proves the truth of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction for if the story which mrs peitzel told upon the stand be true and there seems to to be no reason to doubt it no novel that was ever written contains a story as thrilling as that which was told here upon the stand concerning
the manner in which this man lured her around the country in a deceptive and fruitless hunt after her dead husband which is like awful oh at the end he should have literally been like wait oh you should have dropped the gas now dismiss right Get out of here.
Go on. Go on. So the jury returned to the courtroom at 9 p .m. that evening.
I know I said p .m. that evening.
That's annoying. I wasn't even going to yell at 9 p .m. I was just like, end of statement.
They'd be working overtime.
This is what's funny.
So they returned a verdict.
Guilty. Yes. And it was later learned that they spent all night in that jury room, like the deliberation room.
They didn't come out until 9 p .m. but the jury actually had made their decision like right away they walked into that room they were like we're all thinking it and they were all like hell yeah and then they were like but you know what we just needed to like keep up appearances and we also wanted to eat dinner for nine hours so we sat in there and pretended it was this big long thing but they all knew damn they were just having a pizza party yeah they just had a pizza party uh after the trial a lot of them said when they were asked by reporters what convinced them of his guilt He said that he just seemed
to know too much about how to kill a man with chloroform.
That'll do it. And it's like, yeah.
Yeah. I would say so.
Now, when this was read out loud, Holmes was shocked.
Well, because he's a narcissist. He had spent his whole life conning, manipulating, lying, and getting away with it.
And now he's done. Done for.
On November 30th, he went back to the courtroom for the sentencing phase and his defense attorneys attempted to argue for a new trial date again.
Is that the only thing they argued for?
Yeah, they said that Holmes had to act as his own defense for much of the trial and he was largely unprepared.
And it's like, that's on you, my guy.
You also were largely unprepared.
And Judge Arnold overruled and he said, it is not within the power of persons accused to say when they will be willing to, when they will be willing to be tried or to defeat a trial by dilatory motions and practices such as were resorted to in this case.
So he's like, fuck off.
he's like i'm not giving you time to make a better case for yourself and so he said so he literally looked them went no and then he looked at homes and said you will be hanged by the neck until dead so uh homes's defense lawyers obviously went about the appeal process and they said they will go to the highest court if necessary and then they said this is literally my favorite thing they said i shall enter at once upon the preparation of papers for an appeal when i shall have them them ready it is impossible to tell but no time will be lost I love that like I will get those papers done to stop
you from being killed I will do it at some time but I cannot say when don't worry though I'm gonna do it at some point hang tight no pun intended I will get there I don't know when don't hold me to it like it's literally just like what that's like me returning a phone phone call you can't say like next week like just give something don't over commit they were literally like we are going to set about at once doing that but i don't know when i'll finish so i think they were air signs i think they were like oh we're yucky leave that door open i don't want a deadline no and they were like well your
client's gonna be hang though and they were like i hope we get there in time but no i will not commit to that i kind of love it like wow don't ever commit to anything so the appeal did go through it finally came on february 3rd um and george graham and holmes's defense team were in the supreme court of pennsylvania i'm surprised they were like yeah we'll entertain them they made it so holmes's defense argued that a lot of the testimony used to convict so holmes and this is quite a stretch i was like well you guys did do your homework they pull a muscle they said that it came from his wife georgiana yoke
yoke which would make it privileged testimony that shouldn't have been admissible in court but i bet they found a couple loopholes this was very overruled by judge arnold who said on the ground that a prior marriage nullified the union between holmes and yoke it wouldn't it does not privilege because they're not husband and wife i also love that he was like a prior union i'm like how about several prior unions just like oof yeah like you tried guess that bigamy came back to bite you my guy like that usually does and after hearing arguments on both sides the court sided with the prosecution and said
that georgiana quote did say that she had gone through a marriage ceremony with this man but she does not say that she is his wife she merely says that she was imposed upon you know what i think she was she was she remains to be imposed upon yeah girl so the supreme court decided to uphold the conviction of course and the death sentence and he had no other appeals and a date of may 7th in 1896 was set for his execution in the meantime homes was now going um away from the whole i didn't do it thing and he's now just enthusiastically embracing his villain role he's like you know what i've officially
entered my villain era he sure has and between his conviction and execution he confessed to a ton of crimes, including at least 100 more murders.
But not the Jack the Ripper ones.
He would scale it. Thank you.
That's the thing. You're welcome.
Throwing that shit up to like 200 and something, but he's not going to include the White Chapel?
Nah. No. It doesn't make sense.
He later would scale it back, but then he'd pump it up again, scale it back, so you don't know.
Just depending on the direction of the wind.
And I guess a confession was commissioned by the Hearst Corporation in april 1896 titled the most awful story of modern times told by the fiend in human shape i don't know if i would want to hear the most awful story told by the fiend who wrote it that's a really good way of describing an asshole though a fiend in human shape i do like that i like that um he gave detailed accounts in this confession of the murders of julia and pearl connor eminem sagrand minnie and nanny williams the whole pitzel family um and then he added 18 more murders onto that which everybody was like oh shit okay he really
did that but unfortunately those other 18 are questionable because uh at least two of the people he claimed to have murdered kate durkee and robert leacock they were still alive they were found to be alive stop it and fine so i knew it so this motherfucker he was saying the murdered people are still alive he was definitely going to claim the jack the ripper murders if it had ever been planted in his head hundo i tell you right now if somebody came to him during this shit and said hey did you hear about that jack the ripper murders what do you think about it nobody knows who did it he would have been
like that was me like he would have literally been like it me everybody he just didn't nobody planted that seed in his head yeah but holmes was apparently paid seven thousand five hundred dollars for that confession and what was he gonna do with the money he got sentenced to hang girl you literally just said my next sentence oh shit that was perfect no don't be sorry that was like right here like what like that's why i was like thank you you literally just said exactly what i was gonna do doing that i think that happened in one of the last episodes too or maybe the rewatcher that's been happening
a lot it has because literally my next thing was gonna be why he chose to do that i don't know he was scheduled to die in a month so i don't know what that money would have done for him but maybe it was kind of just like a fuck you like here's that's the thing you can't spend yeah like okay i guess i'll just take it but then did georgiana get it i don't think so because she's not his real wife damn yeah i hope um what's the first one clara clara i hope you got it and there's also myrta with lucy that's true they split it i hope like i hope it was like the end of the other woman and they all went
on vacation together yeah you know um so the other thing is holmes is like very over the top about his remorse in these confessions like he does show like very theatrical remorse which is how you know like laughable in a way so he might have been trying to salvage some kind of empathetic reaction you know what i mean like i don't know okay i don't think so though i think he just liked doing it yeah just like for the drama but on the morning of may 7th 1896 wait a second is that today oh my god is it is that today is today the seventh it's the eighth oh okay and weird and And weird and weird because I
have, my next case that I'm covering, May 7th, plays a date in my case.
And I was like, oh, weird. Like, I'm writing that a couple days before.
Oh, that's weird. And I literally wrote in my notes, like, weird, I'm writing this a couple days before.
And I was writing this end part yesterday.
On May 7th. And I didn't even realize it.
That's weird. That's really weird. That's so fucking weird. Oh, shit.
So it was like, however many years from yesterday.
Yeah, because I was writing my thing on May 6th.
6th and the the may 7th thing came up and i was like oh shit tomorrow wow that's weird tourist season is crazy i think it's tourist season anyway well on the morning of may 7th 1896 he was taken from his cell at the county prison and he was led to the gallows goodbye he denied denied denied now having killed benjamin peitzel and the children and he insisted he only ever killed two women lies and i love that he's just like guys i just killed a couple women let's calm down here let it go do we really think that this is necessary i just killed some women remove this tie for my neck it was just a couple
of bra just a couple of broads everybody like oh my god uh when asked if he had anything to say before he was going to hang what did this idiot say he said gentlemen of course i have very few words to say in fact i would make no statement at this time except that by not speaking i would appear to acquiesce in life in my execution i only want to say that the extent of my wrongdoings in taking human life consisted in the deaths of two women they having died at my hands as a result of criminal operations i wish to also state however so that there will be no misunderstanding hereafter i am not guilty of taking
the life of any of the pite cell family the three children or father benjamin f pite cell of whose death i am now convicted and for which i am today to be hanged that is all he ended that shit with that That is all.
I would have been like, that is all.
Nope. Wrong. That's all.
He Miranda Priestley'd it.
Yep. That's all. That's all.
And then the hood was placed over his head and the lever was pulled at 10, 12 a .m. The door opened.
He dropped five feet.
Oops. That was supposed to break his neck.
Did not do that. Ooh, karma's a bitch, huh?
Adam Seltzer writes, there were contortions for a minute.
The body spun. The legs swang as though he was trying to break the rope.
The fingers opened and closed.
Two spectators fainted.
After a few minutes, the body settled.
Ultimately, 15 minutes would pass before the physician felt comfortable declaring him dead.
Wowza. And then he wasn't cut down for another 15 minutes.
So he stayed in that niche for 30 minutes.
Yep. Pretty gross. And when he was removed from the gallows, they immediately put him into a coffin.
that coffin was placed in cement which then had more cement poured over on top of it and it was placed in a vault at holy cross cemetery just outside of philadelphia city limits why the fuck would they bury him in holy cross cemetery it was his request for the cement to be poured over his coffin as well because he was worried that it would be desecrated or things stolen after he was interred which i say oh the irony i think that's how you use that word because he was 100 constantly stealing from the dead and using dead bodies and desecrating graves and up like and he's like i don't want that like
he's literally like i know how this works i don't want to be an asshole and they had to do it i can't believe he was buried in a church cemetery yeah i'd be like he's the actual devil yeah before he was executed carrie pie cells lawyer thomas fahey i think it is um he thought that when he died that he would leave a portion of his assets to the pite cell family because he he was like i thought he was gonna leave benjamin's stuff to her it's betting on a lot well that's what i was like you think this man that killed several people including three of her children was like you know what maybe i should leave
well then i'm like thomas you ever play craps because i don't i don't know if you'd be great thomas i don't think play crap you shouldn't enter a casino thomas don't you a betting man you are not well i'm feeling lucky today yeah like so once his body was placed in the vault the report the uh lawyer found out and told the reporters i've been given to understand that holmes died in test state which means died without a will in place oh right although i did believe that he would leave a will devising the one -third interest in whatever estate he had to mrs peitzel i fear now that he He did not make
provision for the widow of the man he yesterday denied killing.
And unless he had given instructions to his attorney as to the matter of restitution, I will have to proceed upon different lines.
Which also just proves to you right there.
He's claiming he didn't kill Benjamin and that he never would have hurt those kids and that he loves the Pitell family.
Why didn't he leave the money to her?
Yeah, exactly. So he frauded her?
Right. That's like, come on.
Even in death? Yeah.
It's like, no, come on.
So a few years after his execution, Georgiana Yoke married a man by the name of Chapman.
and just kind of faded away.
I bet she did. Yeah, just whoop, bye.
You know what, though?
I was saying things like, oh, I don't know about her, but he was beating Clara.
I'm sure he was beating her as well, and I should have thought of that.
No, but I mean, it's all very convoluted, and you don't know what's going on here, but exactly.
There was probably a lot of factors involved in here, and that's why I say, you know what, Georgiana?
Bye. Go live the rest of the life.
See you never. Just bye.
Go exist. Right. uh Myrta Myrta Holmes oh god I would change my last name in the beginning she was kind of like just backing his claims of innocence because I'm sure she didn't want to believe it and again was probably scared of him and after he died she went back to teaching primary school in Minnesota she eventually became the principal of more than 33 unorganized schools which I'm not sure what that means Lucy the daughter followed in her mother's footsteps and then together later the The two of them became Red Cross supporters and volunteers during the First World War.
Hell yeah. So good for them.
That's awesome. After his arrest, Clara Mudgett.
I love it. We got like Clara Mudgett.
Myrta Holmes. We have Myrta Holmes.
And Georgiana Yolk.
Yeah, and then Georgiana didn't get it.
So Clara Mudgett actually was able to avoid actually speaking to the press or anything.
Good for her. And lived out the rest of her life in Tilton.
and their son robert left new hampshire and eventually became city manager of orlando florida until he died in 1956 wow yeah i was like not that long ago i know well i was but but like not in the grand scheme of things um and investigators and reporters have always tried to link him to more crimes like you know unsolved murders more frauds cases all that they haven't really been able to connect anything really like hard to him right i feel like we can though i feel like we can i feel like it's gonna come we're gonna hit more i feel like we don't know the extent of what he's done i could see that i
really feel that way i'm much more interested in the jack or the ripper case and finding that out but i think that this is also a very interesting one and i think if people really give it it's due diligence i think we could learn more probably um but um in august of 1896 way back then the murder castle mysteriously caught fire again and it burned to the ground interesting yep so it's gone and i think now there's like a post office on its uh where it was should be like a park there i think it's a post office so i think it's just like an innocuous post office sitting there the post office is the worst
it is so it kind of like you know the vibes are not great yeah so there's that i wonder if there's any reports of it being haunted at all that was actually the next thing i wanted to look into and i think i might look into it a little bit to just be like follow up yeah just be like a fun little like look back on it to see if anybody has any things about it um but that is the tale of hh homes herman webster mudget and now good job i'm going to sleep nighty night good night damn that was crazy shout out to you shout out to dave yeah that was a complex shout out to myrta and clara shout out to them
oofy shout out to them and poor minnie and nanny williams i know and all the poor all of them it's just really sad pearl yeah feel bad for carrie feel bad for everybody that fucker is gone now i know i wonder whatever happened to Carrie yeah I know couldn't find anything she probably just she was probably get me the hell out of here oh god but wow that was terrible in conclusion he is not Jack the Ripper that's wild um yeah so you guys have been wanting that one for uh five years I'd say and I've been waiting for the time I just knew it was gonna be a a real deep dive so I wanted to give it the time
it required yeah he was from new hampshire right yeah my um next case that is occurring is also in new hampshire that's weird weird and i didn't plan for that yeah that's really weird and it's also kind of fun that he was caught in boston because i was like bye bitch i don't love our city was like that's true that's true i just don't like that he had his feet on my ground but and it was also our city who was like that sounds great to arrest him i'm so i'm like fully down with that but you're gonna have to get me another warrant so i can keep that bucker so we can extradite his ass boston strong
baby just saying boston was like do your job okay bean town well as always folks we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you're like elena and you have to revisit the dear boss letter for another time and then you also have to cover this in five parts because wow she's so crazy guys i'm probably gonna revisit it again with some other case she says probably but she means definitely forever forever Jesse and the Rippers yeah whole circle bye 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 prime members can listen ad free on amazon music before you go tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com survey hey weirdos you know ash and i have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds, because this one is happening right now.
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