The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-11-21
HOLMES GRUESOME YARN.
FEELS HIS ADYESrURgs FRoM BOT.
 HOOD TO 4 DErECrfYE.


 ments to-day in the conspiracy and possible murder case whereby slo.ooo insurance was obtained from the Fidel- ity Mutual Life association were the ar- rival In Philadelphia of,Herman Mudg- ett, alias Harry H. Holmes, alias How ard, the arch-conspirator; Mrs. BenJa- min F. Pitzel, alias Cook, the wife or widow of the victim, with her sixteen ysar-old daughter Meda and one-year- old boy, and Holmes wife; and the re- ceipt of intelligence that Lawyer Howe of St. Louis, who was indicted as CO., conspirator. is on his way shither. The date when Holmes. Howe and Mrs. Pitzel will be arraigned on the indict- ments charging them with conspiracy to cheat and defraud has not been fixed, but Assistant District Attorney Kinsey, who with District Attorney Graham will conduct the prosecution, stated this afternoon that the triallwil be hurried. Holmes and Mrs. Pitzel
 
 Crawford and Supervisor of Claims Per ry of the Fidelity association. Mrs. Holmes is not under arrest, but accom- panied her husband, and the Pitzel children were in the company of their mother.
 Detective Crawford told the story of the trip from Boston. which was full of exciting incidents. The party left Boston at 7:30 o'clock last evening and on the train Holmes. handcuffed as he , was to the detective, went over his ad- ventures from boyhood.' When the train was passing Providence Holmes turned to his custodian and said:
 See here, Crawford, think my wife and Mrs. Pitzel can raise between them $500. I'm a hypnotizer. If you'll let me hypnotize you. 90 that we can es- cape, I'll give you the S500"
 "Hypnotism," returned the detective ''always spells my appetite. I'm afraid the $500 is no inducement when weigh ed against possible dyspepsia"
 Holmes then told the detective that he was raised in Burlington, Vt, and attended the schools there until he was fifteen years old. He taught school for time and afterwards went to a local college, working in summer to pay his fees Graduating in Burlington, he went to . Michigan college and there made the acQuaintanca. as . student, of the physician who, he alleges, agreed to supply the body used in this last fraud. The two young men worked during vacation, as Holmes had done in the east. About twelve years ago, one summer, they were short of funds and Holmes friend thought of an in- surance swindle, in which a bogus body was to be used. The friend, now a physician, had his life insured for s12,500; the body was procured in Chi cago; the Identification with the in- sured doctor was made and Holmes collected sthe money.
 The scheme was repeated several times. On one occasion Holmes in- sured his own life for $3O,O0O. Then he went to hotel in Rhode Island, wear ing beard. He got a body, took it two miles from the hotel, cut the head off and buried the rest. He shaved, went to the hotel, registered under a new name and asked for Holmes. They said he had gone out, but was staying at the hotel. The swindler took the head, charred 1t in the hotel furnace and tried to identify 1t as his own. This particular scheme fell through. The arch-conspirator then without giv- ing names, dwelt upon his dealings with Miss Williams, as narrated in a dispatch from Chicago. In Chicago, he said, where he was living with his second wife, he became intimate with young girl a typewriter. He fur nished apartments for her, where she was visited by an elder sister. The young girl, infatuated with Holmes, became jealous of her sister, and one day in his absence she brained her with q stool.
 When came back" Holmes re- lated, T found the dead body in the rooms. took the corpse, put it in a trunk and sunk 1t in the lake, This was year and half ago. The younger sister, in danger of arrest for murder, was anxious to escape. She owned some property at Fort Worth amounting to $40,000. Pitzel and I took this property off her hands and gave her money to fly the. country. We then bought horses, getting credit on the strength of the Fort Worth proper ty. But the deeds were not straight and we needed money to keep the thing going. So the two of us agreed to work the insurance scheme again and that's how this trouble began"
 Supervisor Perry, whofran Holmes to earth in Boston last Saturday. declared this morning that he believed the case to be one of murder; that Pitzel is in reality dead and has not disappeared, as Holmes alleges Mir. Perry said that Holmes has three wives, one in New Hampshire. who Is divorced and with whom Is thirteen-year-old child; anA other in IAinoiA who has a lchild of six years, and the third spouse, who ac-= companied him to Philadelphia and whom Perry believes to be innocent. When asked how Holmes accounted for the disappearance of three of Mrs. Pitz- ePs children, the supervisor said:
 "Ffe claims to have left one child at . hotel in Indianapolis while he went on to Detroit, where he delivered the others to their father.
 Regarding Mrs Pitzel's connection with the affair, Perry further said:
 T believe she may have been acces- sory after the fact. forced to sign pa- pers and consent to acts of others by