page_title: H. H. Holmes
section_title: Capture and arrest
hierarchical_section_title: H. H. Holmes / Capture and arrest
caption_attribution_description: English: Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia PA. The execution of H. H. Holmes, scene while he was making his final address. Sketched in the Prison by Newmar, Times artist. From Holmes' Own Story (1895) by Mudgett, Herman W. https://archive.org/details/HolmesOwnStory1895
context_page_description: Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes, was an American serial killer. While he confessed to 27 murders, only nine could be plausibly confirmed and several of the people he claimed to have murdered were still alive at the time of his confession. Many victims were killed in a mixed-use building which he owned, located about 3 miles west of the 1893 World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, supposedly called the World's Fair Hotel, though evidence suggests the hotel portion was never truly open for business.
  Besides being a serial killer, Holmes was also a con artist and a bigamist, the subject of more than 50 lawsuits in Chicago alone. Holmes was executed on May 7, 1896, nine days before his 35th birthday, for the murder of his friend and accomplice Benjamin Pitezel. During his trial for the murder of Pitezel, Holmes confessed to many other killings.
context_section_description: With insurance companies pressing to prosecute Holmes for arson, Holmes left Chicago in July 1894. He reappeared in Fort Worth, where he had inherited property from the Williams sisters, located at the intersection of modern-day Commerce Street and 2nd Street. There, he sought to construct another "castle" along the lines of his Chicago operation, once again swindling a number of suppliers.
  In July 1894, Holmes was arrested and briefly incarcerated for the first time, on the charge of selling mortgaged goods in St. Louis, Missouri. He was promptly bailed out, but while in jail he struck up a conversation with a convicted outlaw named Marion Hedgepeth, who was serving a 25-year sentence. Holmes had concocted a plan to swindle an insurance company out of $10,000 (equivalent to $296,000 in 2019) by taking out a policy on himself and then faking his death.
  Holmes promised Hedgepeth a $500 commission in exchange for the name of a lawyer who could be trusted. Holmes was directed to a young St. Louis attorney named Jeptha Howe. Howe was in practice with his older brother, Alphonso Howe, who had no involvement with Holmes or Pitezel or their fraudulent activities. Jeptha Howe, however, found Holmes' scheme brilliant. Nevertheless, Holmes' plan to fake his own death failed when the insurance company became suspicious and refused to pay. Holmes did not press the claim; instead, he concocted a similar plan with Pitezel.
  Pitezel agreed to fake his own death so that his wife could collect on a $10,000 life insurance policy, which she was to split with Holmes and Jeptha Howe. The scheme, which was to take place in Philadelphia, called for Pitezel to set himself up as an inventor under the name B.F. Perry, and then be killed and disfigured in a lab explosion. Holmes was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel. Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel by knocking him unconscious with chloroform and setting his body on fire with the use of benzene. In his confession, Holmes implied Pitezel was still alive after he used the chloroform on him, prior to being set on fire. However, forensic evidence presented at Holmes' later trial showed chloroform had been administered after Pitezel's death (a fact which the insurance company was unaware of), presumably to fake suicide to exonerate Holmes should he be charged with murder.
  Holmes collected the insurance payout on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. Holmes then went on to manipulate Pitezel's unsuspecting wife into allowing three of her five children (Alice, Nellie and Howard) to be in his custody. The eldest daughter and the baby remained with Mrs. Pitezel. Holmes and the three Pitezel children traveled throughout the northern United States and into Canada. Simultaneously, he escorted Mrs. Pitezel along a parallel route, all the while using various aliases and lying to Mrs. Pitezel concerning her husband's death (claiming Pitezel was hiding in London), as well as lying to her about the true whereabouts of her three missing children. In Detroit, just prior to entering Canada, they were only separated by a few blocks.
  In an even more audacious move, Holmes was staying at another location with his wife, who was unaware of the whole affair. Holmes would later confess to murdering Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hose through the hole, attaching the other end to a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house at 16 St. Vincent Street in Toronto. This home and address no longer exist, St. Vincent Street having long since been realigned into a part of Bay Street.
  Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia police detective assigned to investigate Holmes and find the three missing children, found the decomposed bodies of the two Pitezel girls in the cellar of the Toronto home. Detective Geyer wrote, "The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became, and when we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of
caption: Execution of H. H. Holmes (Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia, 1896)
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