Morbid: Episode 460: H.H. Holmes Part 4

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Mike Williams set off on a hunting trip into the swamps of North Florida where it was thought

he met a gruesome fate in the jaws of hungry allogators, except that's not what happened

at all.

And after the uncovering of a secret love triangle, the truth would finally be revealed.

Binge all episodes of Over My Dead Body Gone Hunting right now, ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Alina.

I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid.

Yeah!

It sounded like you were going to say more.

You're like, this is Morbid.

No, I was just saying it annoying.

No.

This is Morbid.

I'm never annoying.

Never.

I had just quite the moment while we were getting set up here.

Yeah, Ash was knocking shit over.

She was falling out of her seat.

Mikey's computer started and it did the like, mumm.

And I thought he burped and I was like, oh my God.

And then I was like, wait, that's a computer.

That's a computer.

That's a computer.

And then my fucking iced coffee went sailing across the galaxy.

And I'm just sitting over here in my seat with the microphone in my laptop and I'm like,

she's like, I'm ready.

I'm ready.

She's like, this is why I don't do group projects.

People like you, Ash.

People like you.

I always was that bitch in a group project.

She's like, it's just a wreck knocking shit over.

Hold on.

My iced coffee's falling.

It's falling.

All right.

So we're in part four.

Yeah, she is going to make it five though.

Yeah.

I apologize.

I can't.

I'm going to cram it all into this episode.

It would be too much, too much free to comprehend, too much for me to comprehend really.

And it's definitely too much.

It's too much.

It's just, I'm not going to cram it into one episode just to do that.

It would be, it would be not as good, I think in my opinion.

So I am going to make it five and I'm going to keep the Jack the Ripper stuff for part

five because I, I want to find a ship manifest that I've been seeing rumblings of, but I can't

find the actual ship manifest, which seems to be a lot of the issue in the Jack the Ripper

theories is a lot of people say stuff, but no one's got any documentation to back it up.

So it's like, oh yeah, I think there was a homes on a ship on the way to UK, like during

that whole thing.

And you're like, whoa.

And then it's just like Brian.

Where's that?

And it's like, and it's also like homes was a very common name back then.

Exactly.

That's why he chose it.

So it's like, I don't know about that, but we'll get to it.

We're going to get further into that next episode.

We will end at five.

Don't worry.

I'm not going to take this like the longest series we've ever had.

We'll just tie it with Jack.

We'll just tie it with Jack.

It's pretty much up there.

But in this one, we're going to talk about several murders that he committed.

Pretty brutal ones.

They're all pretty brutal, but these ones involve children.

So yeah, he's a real monster, like a real monster.

Well, I mean, he murdered his pregnant mistress.

Yeah, he's fucking terrible.

That'll do it.

And the child in that situation.

Poor Pearl.

I know.

You know, I've been, I can't stop thinking about that name ever since we...

Yeah, it's such a cute name.

Yeah.

And like those kind of names are coming back now.

Yeah.

Like old timey names.

The cute old lady names.

Yeah.

But you know what?

When we last left you guys, I'll give you a little recap because I know there's a lot

to take in in this series.

So I think it's probably helpful to be like, this is what happened in the last one.

I need the recap.

Even if you don't.

I need it.

I need it.

Homes married again.

Yep.

He's married again.

Remember, he's still married to Myrta, still married to Clara.

And now Georgiana.

Georgiana is now his new wife.

He fake married Minnie, who he killed and her sister.

He real married Georgiana though, right?

He real married Georgiana.

In Colorado.

Yes.

Look at me.

There you go.

So he has plot, so he married again.

He's plotted to take the inherited land from his new wife, Georgiana.

She stands to get some inherited land from her dead grandmother.

So he's plotting to take that.

He has sent Benjamin Pytzel to Fort Worth, Texas to start getting the new Texas

murder castle underway.

Like he's ready to start this whole process over with a whole other murder castle.

Yeah.

Same way.

Yep.

He's doing that on the land that he made Minnie Williams transfer into he and

Benjamin's aliases names after he and then he murdered her.

Now he's seeming to begin to turn on Benjamin a little bit after they both decided

collectively to defraud an insurance company by faking Benjamin's death and using

another corpse to pretend it's his.

I feel like it's not going to be fake.

Yeah.

It's looking like Benjamin's time as his lackey is coming to a tragic end.

Yeah.

I had a point.

I had a feeling this episode was going to be.

Yeah.

Hycetric.

Yeah.

It's not great for that entire family, to be quite honest.

By the time Holmes and Georgiana arrived in Fort Worth to claim the land deeded to him

by Minnie, Pytzel had already been there for a few weeks.

He was there with his young son, Howard, just getting things together.

So when he first got to Texas, Pytzel had to receive the land deeded to his alias Benton

Lyman and he had to transfer it back again to Holmes.

Okay.

Now initially, I'll just give you a little rundown of how it initially happened.

So you remember, Minnie was to transfer it into Holmes's alias, who she didn't know.

She thought this was another buyer.

Then that alias of Holmes was deeding it into Benjamin Pytzel's alias of Benton Lyman.

Yes.

So now that Benton Lyman has it, he now has to deed it back into real Holmes's name.

It's funny.

I wonder if any of, I don't know exactly how any of that works, but if somebody looking

at that deed, switching hands constantly, like, thought anything about that.

Yeah.

I think honestly, I think it's just the time period.

They were able to get away with this a lot easier.

Nowadays, it would be like flagged.

The first time it went into an alias, I think people would be like, wait a second, what's

going on there?

Like it would at least be like looked at.

This time, instead of like HH Holmes, they put it into Harry Holmes's name.

And this deed, like, this deed has been like, boo, boo, boo, boo.

Like you said, like somebody, you would think somebody would maybe catch, but again, I think

it's just the time period.

Even back then though, I'm like, damn, you didn't think that was weird.

It's been like six times.

Yeah.

Cause like this deed has been around more times than a Broadway show.

For real.

Like it truly has.

And from there, Pytzel selected a parcel of land on the corner of Second and Rusk Streets,

and that's where they were going to put the murder castle.

The castle was going to be built under the watch of construction superintendent H M Pratt.

And guess who that was?

H H Holmes.

Yep.

That was another one of his aliases.

This is messy as fuck.

How did he track of them all?

He has so, he has 40 plus aliases.

That's so crazy.

Yeah.

And he basically started doing the same shit he did in Chicago with the construction of

this one.

He wanted to build another murder castle, so he had to be weird and sneaky about it.

So he would fire the workers every now and then to keep the plans from being fully realized.

He did, however, switch up his game a little and he started out actually paying people.

Huh.

That's, which is shocking for him.

That's weird.

But then he was right back on his bullshit and stopped.

He was like, that sucks.

Yeah.

He was like, Oh, I don't like that.

I don't not like that.

And he had a million excuses for why he couldn't pay on time.

And he also went back to taking out loans and buying furniture and fixtures for the building

on credit.

And then he would just not pay.

And then he would just hide the items from the creditors when they came to take them

back.

This man gives me so much anxiety running from these creditors.

Yeah.

And he's just, and he's doing the most cause he's made places in this castle now where

he's hiding all these furnishings.

Yeah, exactly.

Now, unfortunately for him, Holmes was not going to stick around in Texas long enough

to see this castle actually come to fruition.

What happened in the spring of 1894.

He and Pytzel began that scheme.

This is the beginning not of the insurance fraud scheme.

It's the beginning of the scheme that would kind of unravel everything for him.

The scheme before the scheme, after that scheme and around the time of that other scheme.

This scheme was they would travel around the state buying horses and they would buy these

horses with worthless promissory notes and deeds, not cash.

So like bad checks essentially.

Basically.

And then they would sell them for cash and move on before the seller figured out that

they'd been scammed.

Oh.

But this plan fell apart when they were both arrested like idiots.

Oh shit.

Yeah.

Once they were, cause it was a shitty plan to begin with, somebody was going to catch

on.

And once they were out on bond investigators, now we're like, huh, we should begin looking

into these guys a little bit more because Holmes, they were like, yeah, he has a few things

on his records here.

So it was definitely going to bring more detectives on his tail.

And he doesn't want that.

And gathering up just some of their belongings and all the money that Holmes had managed

to raise at this point for the castle.

Holmes and Georgiana fled out of Texas for St. Louis with a brief stop in Denver along

the way.

Okay.

So they're running all around.

And does she know, she knows about the scheme obviously cause now she's on the run with

him.

We don't know what she knew.

Okay.

It's one of those things where like, I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know what she knew.

I'm not sure.

Maybe she didn't know.

I'm not real sure.

Georgie didn't know.

She knew something, but I don't know what she knew.

Okay.

At this point, Holmes was on the run now for two crimes.

He was on the run still in from Chicago for the arson of the original.

Oh my God.

I literally forgot.

Yes.

And now he's on the run for horse thievery.

Horses in arson.

I'm saying horses in fire.

So you would think he would run as far away as possible from the two places he committed

the two things he's on the run about, Chicago and Texas.

But no, after he fled Texas, they went to St. Louis and St. Louis is four hours from

Chicago technically.

Well, don't you think you would just like go to Europe and it's like, that's the thing

and it's 12 hours from Texas.

Obviously these two things are on in like car, you know, which like at the time it's

not really relevant, but it's like, they're not crazy far.

It's not like across the country.

You know what I mean?

So it's like, that's weird that you didn't go further away.

I guess that's the thing.

Like even try California.

Yeah.

Just somewhere even like Massachusetts.

Like get out of there.

Yeah.

He's already been there.

Like go back.

But I mean, don't.

I don't want you here.

But he probably didn't want to because he has a wife there and his new wife might not

like that.

His old wife is there.

There's a lot going on.

But he had to have a reason and that for like going to St. Louis and that reason was

that Georgiana was turning 25 in the fall.

And that was when she was going to inherit the rest of the estate left to her by her

grandmother in Indiana.

So he was obviously planning to take the entire inheritance for himself alone.

So he wanted to stay closer to Indiana to wait and then pounce on that when she turned

25.

And he was just going to like throw her down a shoe.

He's so gross.

He really is.

Well in St. Louis, he called himself, is it St. Louis or St. Louis?

I say St. Louis.

I say St. Louis.

I'm sure I will get yelled at for that.

But like, I don't, I think it's probably interchangeable.

I'm asking Mikey about it.

I think it's St. Louis.

Because I don't, you know what I always think of me, me and St. Louis.

Isn't that like a musical or something?

Um, I don't know.

I feel like that's a musical.

I believe you.

You have more musical knowledge than I do.

Is that how I'm like, am I thinking something different now?

I feel like I need to confirm this with myself.

I think of, um, fucking Jennifer Hudson and.

That's what I think of.

Me, me and St. Louis.

Hold on.

I'm going to just check this really, really time.

Judy Garland is in it.

I'm pretty sure.

I, you're asking the wrong girlie about a musical.

Yeah.

It's a thing.

Okay.

But now I'm like, is it called me, me and St. Louis or me, me and St. Louis?

Throw on the pronouncenames.com for the people in the back, pronouncenames.com.

St. Louis.

This is real time.

Right now.

I feel like this is going to prove me wrong and it's going to be upsetting.

St. Louis.

Yes.

Fuck, guys.

And I always believe that guy because he sounds like Jack Puppet and I believe everything

he says.

I believe that man.

I do too.

So, uh, St. Louis.

So that French guy, I believe, and he said St. Louis, I don't know.

It could be either one.

Maybe if it's like, if you're from there, you say it, maybe, and I'm not from there.

So it's not, you know, it's not my business, but St. Louis, I'll say now, I've said it

both ways now.

So I've covered all bases.

So here we are.

Sure.

Arriving in settling in St. Louis.

In the St.

Place.

Yeah.

Um, so while he's there, he called himself HM Howard.

Are you sure it's not Howard?

Howard, baby.

Howard.

Howard.

As HM Howard, he bought a drug store again on the corner of 14th and North Market Streets.

Because remember, he's taken money that he raised for the murder castle.

He didn't do that.

He's run to St. Louis, St. Louis.

And now he has bought another place, a drug store to run.

Okay.

When he bought it, yeah, quote unquote, run into the ground.

When he bought it, he told the seller that he just wanted something to quote unquote,

occupy his attention and that he really didn't care a lot about profits because he was just,

he's well off.

He doesn't give a shit about that.

He's in it for the fun.

He's in it for the fun of a drug store.

The fun that a drug store can provide.

That's a great fucking time.

All right.

You can get anything you need there.

I'm saying that's what he's in for it.

And he used a little cash to buy it, but then he bought the rest of it with ding, ding,

ding, useless promissory notes and stock.

Also, like you have the money to spend and like plenty left over.

Just do it the right way, brother.

He's greedy as fuck.

Him.

He is Scrooge McDuck.

Literally.

He is swimming in a bunch of gold coins and he's not giving them up, but he's not cute.

Scrooge McDuck.

No, he's not.

That's true.

He did the same old thing.

He bought furniture and fixings for the store on credit.

No intention of paying for it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Soon after arriving and settling there, Benjamin Pytzel joined them.

He had moved there with his wife, Carrie, and their five children.

Uh-oh.

Yeah.

This was when Holmes let Benjamin's wife, Carrie, in on the plan that he and her husband

were working on.

They needed her help with it.

Their plan was to defraud the Fidelity Mutual Insurance Company by faking Ben's death.

They needed her in on it because they needed to fake his death and they needed her to help.

You're not going to fool Fidelity Mutual though.

And they did not.

I don't feel.

But meanwhile, Holmes was also already on the path of selling the pharmacy and then running

away from the massive debt that he had compiled with the pharmacy everywhere.

So he's just like, oops, that sucked.

And now we're going to run away from that and it's on to the next thing.

It's just amazing the anxiety-

Right.

Filled life he must have lived.

Like it created himself.

Like it created himself.

And he just keeps inviting.

Yeah.

But I don't think he, I think in the end it seems like he became anxious and he became

hot to it.

Paranoid and it started to, in the beginning I think he was having a fucking blast with

it because I don't think anything was catching up to him in the beginning.

Well, and I think in the beginning there was less to keep track of.

And then it just kept piling on.

And now he's basically like negating states out of his available paths of escape.

He's snowballing.

Like it's getting, the mess is getting bigger and bigger as it rolls down the fucking hill.

He's blacklisting himself out of several states and it's like, soon there's not going to

be many left.

My gosh.

And they're all like in the middle.

Yeah.

Like the Midwest happening.

But Holmes and Pytzel bought, found a buyer for the drug store.

But in order to buy the store, the man had to take a loan from a supplier.

And when he did this, he had to promise that supplier that they would be his main supplier.

That was kind of the part of the whole thing.

That makes sense.

And that was in exchange for the money they were going to pay.

The problem, however, was that Holmes already had a mortgage on the store, which meant that

any additional mortgage on the same property would have been illegal and invalid.

So when the new buyer became aware of the situation, he immediately alerted authorities.

And he was like, this guy is trying to fucking scam me.

And Holmes was arrested on fraud charges.

Girl.

Oops.

And this is in St. Louis, St. Louis.

St. Louis, St. Louis.

This is when he was, so he bought this drug store, had no intention of running it properly,

did all the same shit, bought it with worthless notes, bought the fixings for it with all

bullshit credit that he wasn't paying.

And then he turns to sell it to somebody illegally and he doesn't think that this person, he thought

he was so much smarter than everybody around him.

That was, it's very, it's pretty par for the course with serial killers.

I feel like they always think they're smarter than everybody and no one's going to outsmart

me.

And it's like, you're a fucking idiot.

It's narcissism.

You're not smart.

No.

You're cunning and you are a shithead, but you are not smart.

Right.

Like there's not, you're an idiot.

And it's like, and you're greedy, you're gluttonous and it gets, and it's going to catch up to

you.

It will always catch up.

And it does because this guy who was buying the pharmacy was like, fuck you, you're trying

to swindle me, you dick.

So he called the authorities and boom.

Authorities.

Authorities.

Hello.

This man's trying to scam me.

This man is trying to swindle me.

I like, sir, this is St. Louis, Louis.

Why are you got an accent?

Like, are you all right?

But this is not great Britain.

Like a fake like transatlantic accident that like doesn't exist.

He's like Madonna.

Yeah.

What's, what's going on right now?

So is this like a bit?

He's like, no, I'm really, I'm really upset.

Hey, weirdos, before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming, I wanted to let you

know that Wondery's shocking true crime podcast over my dead body is back for a fourth season

that will literally give you literal goosebumps.

The newest season covers the story of Mike Williams.

It was Mike's six wedding anniversary when he set off on a hunting trip into the gator-infested

swamps of North Florida.

He figured he'd be back in time to take his wife Denise out to celebrate, but he didn't

come back.

Friends and loved ones feared he met his fate through bad luck in a group of hungry alligators,

leaving his young family behind.

Except that's not what happened at all.

And after 17 years, a kidnapping and the uncovering of a secret love triangle, the truth would

finally be revealed.

Enjoy Over My Dead Body, Gun Hunting, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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So he was in jail for two weeks and was finally bonded out by Georgiana.

Oh man.

That's why I say.

Yeah.

I don't know what Georgiana knew.

You know, we knew some things though.

We say about Georgiana.

Hmm.

Hmm.

I say, I'm just going to scratch my chin a little bit about it.

I'm not going to say she, I don't know what she knew because I'm not in Georgiana's head.

I'm going to put my sunglasses on, roll up my window and say, I don't know her.

I don't know her, so I don't know.

But the day she bonded him out, they went to the train station and were intending to

flee right back to Chicago.

But you're wanted there too, brother.

And what they were going to do there was regroup, kind of formulate the next part of

a giant fucked up plan, but their plan was not going to happen because before the train

even left the fucking station, they were stopped by a police sergeant and the police sergeant

said that he was afraid the proposed trip would have to be postponed and then he placed

homes under arrest again after he literally just got out like that morning, literally

like got out, walked to the train station and they were like, no, sir, like back to

jail.

This is monopoly.

Starting to news reports at the time, Georgiana, quote, protested in the most indignant manner

and became almost hysterical and denounced the arrest as persecution, Georgie, calm down.

So off he goes back to jail and they set bail at $800, which at that point was $50,000 at

present.

They were like, you're fucked up and we're not letting you out of here.

No one had that cash at the time.

So Georgiana went to Indiana and retrieved the deed to some of the land she was going

to be inheriting, and that was going to be accepted as sufficient collateral.

Okay.

It was, it's old timey.

They were going to hand over a deed to land.

Makes sense.

He was released from custody the next day.

Damn.

So he had only spent a couple of weeks in jail before that, but he made some networking

moves once he was in there because we know homes always is closing.

Just working on a pyramid scheme, even in the walls of the prison.

He's an idiot, but he's a hardworking idiot.

Cunning.

He was connected with other inmates and he started getting them into future schemes with

him, like promising them things that he couldn't deliver.

Of course.

One of these convicts was a outlaw and bank robber named Marion Hedgepeth.

Holmes told him about his scheme to defraud the insurance company by faking Pytzel's

death, passing off another body as his, and then he was like, we're going to flee the

country after that.

Because I've kind of used up a lot of these states and I should probably get out.

Now, according to Hedgepeth, Holmes offered to bring him in on the scheme, but he was

like, no, I'm good.

Like, even he was like, I think you're dumb.

Like, I don't think this is going to work out for you.

There was something about Holmes that he was concerned about and like, there was also like

a pesky little detail that Marion was serving a 25 year sentence.

So like, you don't really know how we're going to cut you into this.

He wasn't going to be scheming outside of those walls anytime soon for a while, but

he did direct Holmes to a very morally gray lawyer by the name of Jep de Hau.

This lawyer agreed to help Holmes and Pytzel pull off the insurance scheme once they arrived

in Philadelphia.

That'll get you debarred.

He was morally gray, maybe an understatement, the morally corrupt, very unscrupulous, I

would say.

Oh, I loved that word.

That's a good word.

Unscrupulous.

But Hedgepath later told reporters, quote, I am now convinced that he would sooner or

later have murdered me had I been able to accompany him on his intended trip abroad.

Which one said this Hedgepath 25 year sentence.

Yeah.

I was like, I don't think you had to worry.

You weren't getting out of jail.

My God.

But so on July 29th, Benjamin Pytzel left St. Louis, St. Louis, and he told his wife,

just covering my bases, he told his wife he was taking a brief trip to purchase some

lumber in Chicago, but he was actually headed to Philadelphia where he was going to meet

up with Holmes.

Yeah.

Now, meanwhile, as soon as Holmes was bonded out of jail, he and Georgiana left St. Louis,

St. Louis and headed to Philadelphia to meet with Benjamin Pytzel.

Along the way, they stopped in Indiana to visit Georgiana's mother, where Holmes told

her they were going to be traveling to Germany to look after his uncle's property.

Woof.

She shouldn't be alarmed at all if she doesn't hear from Georgiana for a while.

He was fully planning on murdering Georgiana and she was fully planning on spending the

rest of her life with him, even like in his outlawish ways.

Yeah.

Now, Georgiana did stay behind in Indiana a little bit, just for a little while, just

like visit with family while Holmes went straight to Philadelphia after this to start

the whole scam.

So Benjamin Pytzel got to Philadelphia on August 17th, 1894.

Within a couple of days, he opened a business and it was a patent business under the name

B. F. Perry.

Another earliest.

Another.

Another one.

Yeah.

This is what Holmes had told him to do.

Once he'd established himself, the plan was that how the unscrupulous, the morally

gray lawyer was going to help them get a fresh corpse that was similar looking to Benjamin.

Why does this lawyer have a corpse connect?

Not real sure.

A lot of people had corpse connects back then.

Yeah, we don't love that.

The plan was to place this body, this lookalike corpse in the patent laboratory in the building

that he owned, then cause an explosion in the building, disfiguring the corpse so much

that they could pass it off as Pytzel's body without a lot of suspicion.

And then once they'd faked his death, Pytzel was going to go into hiding and Holmes and

Pytzel's wife, Carrie, would split the $10,000 insurance payout.

Yeah, right, baby.

Holmes has taken that full 10.

Sounds great.

But are you?

Yeah.

On the morning of September 1st, the doorbell rang at the apartment Holmes was sharing

with Georgiana and he went downstairs to open the door.

And it was the police.

He came back inside and he told Georgiana that the man at the door was from the Pennsylvania

Railroad Company.

He said he had been working with them on a contract to sell copiers because remember

he had a weird copier business at one point.

No, I literally forgot that.

It was a fake copier business, like ABC copiers or something like that.

But he's like, oh yeah, he's this guy, he's like, works for the railroad company, just

like, you know, we have a contract, we're going to sell copiers.

That's what he told Georgiana.

That's why I say I don't know what Georgiana knew.

She knew some things, but he would lie to her about a lot of things.

Because later Holmes told investigators that this man was actually Benjamin Pytzel at the

door and he had come to tell Holmes that unfortunately his youngest child, Wharton, was sick and his

wife had asked him to actually return to St. Louis, St. Louis and help with the children.

Yeah.

So he was like, I can't do this scheme with you.

I have to leave and take care of my kid.

This was really going to fuck up Holmes's plans and immediately he made the decision

that Pytzel was not leaving Philly.

Oh, shit.

So this man comes to Holmes and says, my youngest child is sick and Holmes is like, you're

not leaving and I'm going to make sure.

Do you think that he was worried that Pytzel was starting to freak out and was going to

like alert authorities?

He was probably worried of that and he was pissed.

Yeah, because his plan was fucked up.

One thing about Holmes was like, don't double cross him, don't fuck with him, don't fuck

with his schemes.

If you even show slight backing out or even valid reasons, even if you're saying, my kid

is sick, I got to leave.

He's like, betrayal.

Like he immediately looks at that as like, you don't value our shit here as much as you

should.

I know other people like that too.

Yeah.

That don't understand when your kid is sick.

Yeah.

And then they're like, betrayal.

Fuck you.

Betrayal.

I'm going to fuck you over now.

Put that on a list somewhere.

Exactly.

It's crazy.

So that's exactly what happened was he was like, oh, your kid is sick.

I'm going to fuck your world up now.

And it's like, oh, okay.

He's just trying to go home and be a dad.

But okay.

But like fuck him, right?

Yeah.

Fuck him.

So he was, I think he was just really fucking mad that he fucked up his plan and he figured

that actually killing Benjamin would probably be easier than faking it at this point.

And since he was mad already, he was like, I want to kill him now.

So then you have to worry about his whole family, which I have a feeling he will.

Yeah.

He's not too worried about his whole family.

In his later confession, Holmes said that Pitzel sent, quote, discouraging letters purporting

to be from his wife that caused Pitzel to begin drinking heavily.

Okay.

Um, then he claimed that on the second September, um, yeah, September 2nd, he showed up at

the BF Perry laboratory and found Pitzel in a drunken stupor.

That's what he's claiming in this confession.

So the next day he said he was upset about his wife and what was going on.

And then we found him in a drunken stupor at the laboratory.

And he said, quote, this was an easy matter as I was acquainted with his habits and so

sure was I of finding him thus incapacitated, that when the day came upon which it was convenient

for me to kill him, even before I went to his house, I packed my trunk and made other

arrangements to leave Philadelphia on a hurried flight immediately after his death.

Wow.

So he's literally like, it was very convenient for me to kill him the next day because I

knew he was so upset about his child that he was going to be drunk at the laboratory.

And I was already on my way out.

I was already ready to kill him.

So I figured I'd just pack everything up and be ready to go.

You got a friend.

Yeah.

Like, holy shit.

Jesus Christ.

So according to the confession, Holmes said he entered the, he entered the building.

He went to the second floor and that's where he found Pitzel passed out.

He said, quote, only one difficulty presented itself.

It was necessary for me to kill him in such a manner that no struggle or movement of his

body should occur.

That's the only issue, not that you're murdering your longtime friend and associate.

Basically in father of five.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Basically he had to kill him and make it look like an accident or suicide instead of murder.

And that was his concern.

So he tied his hands and feet and then he soaked his entire body in, like in, um, I think

it was bent.

It was a benzene.

It was like some chemical.

And then he just burned him alive.

Yeah.

That'll look like suicide.

Burned him alive.

That's so horrific.

He burned this man alive.

Like, didn't light the building on fire.

Just burned him alive first and then was going to light the building on fire.

So didn't even bother to light the building on fire and leave.

He burned this man alive in front of him.

I feel like he had to have done something like so fucked up like that to somebody before.

Like more, obviously putting somebody in that enclosed room is fucked up, but even like

more than that, cause you don't just burn your fucking front and associate and just

be like, move on.

Well, moving on.

In his confession, he said, so horrible of this torture that in writing of it, I've

been tempted to attribute his death to some humane means, not with us, not with a wish

to spare myself, but because I fear that it will not be believed to that one can be so

heartless and depraved.

So do you think he really did do that then, or do you think he's bluffing?

He definitely did.

He definitely did.

It's like, it's like proven.

Yeah.

So once the body was sufficiently disfigured and basically burned beyond recognition,

Holmes claimed that he removed the bindings from his wrists and ankles.

And then he said, he quote, poured into his stomach, one and one half ounces of chloroform.

So that at the time of the post-mortem examination, the coroner's physician would be

warranted in reporting that the death was accidental.

What?

So once he'd burned the body, Holmes threw things around and ransacked the room to make

it look like an accidental explosion had caused damage to the remains.

Then he went further and he had like a detailed narrative to the scene.

He broke the bottle of chloroform and benzene that he had used, then left an extinguished

match near the spilled liquid.

So it made it look like Pytzel had attempted to light his pipe too close to the flammable

liquids and caused an explosion.

That actually is like, like I would never think to do something like that.

It kind of worked.

It makes sense.

Like it was a, this is what I mean.

Like he's a fucking idiot, but he's, but he's cunning, but unfortunately he's smart

when it comes to fucking terrible shit.

Street smarts.

Yeah.

Now with Pytzel dead and murdered and the scene looking to be an accident, he rushed

back to the apartment and told Georgiana that he closed the deal on the copiers and

they would be leaving for Indianapolis immediately.

So he'd already set that, that whole thing up.

Like, oh, I closed that deal that I told you about yesterday.

And in his mind, he's like, yeah, I closed the deal.

He also, also told her that if anyone asked, she should tell them that they were bound

for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Okay.

And he explained this by saying that the St. Louis, St. Louis stuff wasn't fully

settled.

And if too many people knew where they were, he could be arrested again.

So off the, and she was like, okay.

So off they went that evening and they boarded the 10, 25 p.m.

train to Indianapolis.

You have to imagine she probably was scared of him.

Oh, for sure.

And that's probably why she didn't, if she didn't question things.

She wasn't going to ask.

She was just like, you know what, I don't want to be part of this.

Let me keep my nose clean.

Now, two days later, Pytzel's body was discovered by Eugene Smith, who was a local

inventor in the area who'd been in to talk to and see BF Perry, Pytzel, a week or so

earlier.

Now he had stopped in to speak with Perry a few times since the man had opened the

patent laboratory and he was really excited because they had kind of talked

about him making money off of some of his inventions.

Now they're going to patent some of them.

So the morning of September 4th, he tried to walk into the patent office to speak

to him, but the door was locked.

This was strange to him because it was during working hours.

So he called the police.

They sent officer George Lewis and he broke down the door.

He found Benjamin Pytzel's rotting body on the second floor of the apartment.

And as far as anyone knew, BF Perry was last seen alive on Saturday, September 1st.

That's when the last people had seen him alive besides homes.

Um, I think it was a delivery boy that had brought a message that day.

That was the last person who had seen him.

Um, that message that was brought to him, it's like even worse because that was a

telegram they believe from Kerry Pytzel informing them him of Wharton's illness.

So they think the last person to see him besides homes was that little message boy,

the telegram boy, and that telegram was the real telegram saying that Wharton was sick.

Oh no.

It's just like really sad because he was trying to get home to that child.

Um, Pytzel was discovered, quote, lying on his back on the floor with his right

hand clasped over his heart and what appeared to be blood about his head.

Um, given the way that the scene looked to detectives, it was pretty much assumed

that he had been holding in his right hand a bottle of benzene and was in the act of

lighting his pipe when a terrible explosion occurred knocking him to the floor.

Uh, the body was bred in for an autopsy in the corner.

He was not so sure he could not identify the cause of death.

He was like, I can't say for sure what this cause of death is.

I feel like it could be something else.

Um, why, why did he pour chloroform into his stomach?

I think it was like, I don't know if it was because it meant like, um,

it would look like he inhaled the chloroform when the, when that happened.

He did it too close to the liquids.

Okay.

Or maybe he was trying to make it look like a, um, suicide as well.

Like maybe it would muddle the findings a little bit.

Okay.

There was an inquest in the corner.

Dr. William Scott testified, quote,

I went to the house expecting to find a man burned to death or blown to death by an explosion.

Instead we found the face discolored and distorted or full of pools.

The odor was terrible.

His tongue was swollen and stuck out of his mouth and red fluid issued from his mouth.

Any little pressure on the stomach or over the chest here would cause this fluid to flow more rapidly.

It just didn't make sense to him as it was being presented as an accident.

Right.

He said the state of the room didn't really jive with him either.

He thought it was very staged.

It didn't look like an explosion caused everything.

He said it looked like somebody had just thrown shit around.

Yeah.

But it was the chloroform in the stomach that actually set off the most alarm bells.

I had a feeling because it's just random as fuck.

So yeah.

So, um, as a coroner, he was aware that if Pytzel had ingested the chloroform before his death,

the harsh chemical would have caused a lot of irritation to the stomach lining.

But when the stomach contents was observed, there was no irritation.

That's because it was put in his body after his death and it was clear.

Now Scott couldn't be certain what specifically had caused the man's death because it was so

badly disfigured, but they were pretty sure it happened suddenly and was not the result of an

explosion.

Now, despite this testimony by this coroner, the jury delivered, quote,

a verdict of death from inhalation of flames or from some poison, the character of which is unknown.

I can understand why the jury was confused because there's just so many elements to that to understand.

Well, and what's worse is his body was held at the morgue for a few days,

and then it was just buried in an unmarked potter's grave.

Oh, because nobody knew that he's not.

Nobody knows he's Pytzel.

So at the time, it's kind of seeming like his plan is going to work here

because he's going to be able to use this, right?

So while this was all happening and a jury is trying to determine whether this man they

know as B.F. Perry was murdered or killed by accident, Holmes is on his way back from Indianapolis

to St. Louis, St. Louis now, where he's going to meet Carrie Pytzel because remember, she was there,

she was trying to get Pytzel back to St. Louis, St. Louis, and she knows about the plan.

Now, unfortunately for Holmes, word of Pytzel's death had reached the family before he could get

there to break the news, and he found Carrie Pytzel inconsolable.

Like inconsolable.

I can't imagine.

Now, Holmes decided, because people knew that he was using that alias, so it was getting around to his family.

People back home, yeah.

So Holmes decided to just lie to Carrie and insisted that her husband was actually alive,

and that he was in hiding until they were going to be able to get that $10,000.

So he was basically like, no, this is the scheme.

No, the plan is going in court.

Like, don't worry that we want you to believe that it was him, that's the whole plan.

But they said, we need to get the $10,000 first.

Once we get that from the insurance, then he'll come out of hiding.

And then he said, but don't in order to do that, someone has to go to Philadelphia

and claim the body as Benjamin Pytzel.

Okay.

He's so fucking evil.

He is.

So Carrie-

Giving her hope that she's going to find her husband again.

Yeah.

Now, Carrie was concerned about traveling to St. Louis, from St. Louis, St. Louis to Philadelphia

because her child is sick.

And also he didn't want her to go there because that could muddle some things.

So he was like, who can we get that can be like a little bit down a level from Carrie.

A little more innocuous.

So Holm convinced her to send in Pytzel's teenage daughter, Alice, in her place.

I knew he was going to use a kid.

And he even claimed that the girl could stay with his cousin,

No.

Minnie Williams.

No, no, no, no, no, no, she's dead.

Yep.

Well, she was in Philadelphia.

No.

This way he could still stay on track to get the money from insurance.

But in the meantime, Jepta Howe, the gray.

Why are there so many characters?

I know.

The morally gray lawyer.

The morally corrupt Jor-Howe.

He started drafting documents that would give him power of attorney over Carrie,

that would be necessary to claim the entire $10,000 for Holmes.

Not a POA.

Nope.

So six days after his death, Fidelity Mutual Insurance received a telegram reporting that

the dead man from Philadelphia known as BF Perry was probably Benjamin Pytzel.

This is so much.

How did you even fucking research this?

It's insane.

And they said Benjamin Pytzel has actually a large insurance policy with your insurance company.

So the death was still looked at as suspicious.

So agents at Fidelity Mutual were like,

we would like a little more information before we pay out this policy.

Right.

So they looked further and saw that the only other name listed on the policy was H.H. Holmes.

His actual name.

His actual name.

So they went about finding Holmes.

And to do this, they sent a letter to Myrta in Wilmot.

His whole life?

Myrta's still alive.

Yeah, she's still alive.

Right.

Okay.

I don't know what happened there.

But after a little bit of a delay, Holmes did get in touch with Fidelity Mutual.

I don't know if Myrta just called him and was like, hey, I just got this letter.

Was he like, do you know it?

Was he keeping in touch with her?

I think he was.

So she was still under the guise that they were married?

Only a little bit.

I think it was one of those things where it was like they,

she probably knew that he was gone.

Yeah.

But like, it's weird.

Okay.

But after a while.

Yeah, exactly.

Myomai is correct.

Now, Holmes replies to the Fidelity Insurance Company and tells the agent that he'd only

just learned that the body was in Philadelphia.

So he said, I'll go there immediately and we will identify this man and get back to you.

Okay.

Now, again, Holmes wouldn't allow Carrie to identify the body and Carrie really

didn't want to leave her kin anyway.

And she probably wouldn't have wanted to see that body.

Yeah.

So he told the, he told the insurance company that he, she was too ill to come.

Okay.

And you know, he was going to have to go, but they were like, no, you can't just go.

And that's when they were like, you need to bring a family member.

And he was like, I'll bring Alice.

Especially because he's the one listed.

So of course he's going to be like, yeah, that's him.

Yeah.

That's totally fine.

On September 20th, Holmes met Alice Pytzel and Jeb to Howe in Philadelphia.

And she wrote a letter to Carrie, her mother later.

And she said of meeting Holmes, she referred to him as Mr. Howard.

She said, quote, I don't like him to call me babe and child and dear and all such trash.

She's like, fuck this guy.

She thought he was a pig.

Yeah, he was.

Like she knew right away.

She had his number.

Yep.

A few days later, Alice and Howe, the lawyer show up at the Fidelity Mutual Office,

Holmes joins them there.

And they all provided the agents with like some like notable like things that would,

that would basically identify, but yeah, exactly.

I was trying to think of the word that would identify.

This is Benjamin Pytzel.

OK.

Things of this were like he had a mole on his back.

He had a scar on his leg.

He had a twisted fingernail that had occurred out of an accident.

Oh, that's interesting.

And he had very unusual dentition.

He had a lot of spaces in his teeth.

Oh, OK.

So a lot of very particular things.

Is dentition just what your teeth look like?

Yeah.

I've never heard the word like that.

Really?

Yeah.

It's a nice word, it feels like.

Dentition.

Dentition.

You have nice dentition over there.

Anything that ends in shun, I always feel,

has a nice like the body had been exhumed now.

And when they got to the cemetery, it had been moved to a shed

and was it being examined by Dr. Mattern?

Nice.

In the shed.

And that happened a lot.

That happened a lot with Jack the Ripper case.

I know, I remember you just always being like,

yeah, the body in the shed.

Yeah.

And the coroner is just doing an autopsy in a shed.

Viving in the shed.

Dr. Mattern was the other coroner who was with Dr. Scott

that did the original autopsy.

By that time, his remains were in an advanced state

of decomposition.

One would think.

And they were given the description,

the unique marks on the body.

But Mattern insisted the state of the remains

kind of made it impossible to positively identify the body.

At one point, the doctor couldn't find the big scar

that they were talking about that was supposed to be on his leg.

Holmes was present for this.

And he got frustrated and impatient.

And he grabbed the leg, apparently.

Rubbed the flesh so that the burned layer of skin moved away.

And then revealed the scar.

He's a fucking monster.

And then was like, do you see?

This is Benjamin Pytzel.

We told you.

Like, it was pissed.

And was like, here it is.

I figured it out.

Like, oh my God, who does that?

Show us how many hungry you are without doing that.

Who's among us?

Does that.

Not I.

Not even the coroner was willing to do that.

He was like, no, OK.

But at that point, they were like, all right.

And poor Alice being there and having to see that.

That's her father.

Yep.

And they were like, OK, cool that you think it's him.

Alice, what do you think?

You're the determining factor.

If you say this is not your father, it's not.

She must have been scared.

Yeah.

So apparently, again, Pytzel had that unique set of teeth.

So a lot of spaces which were very easily identifiable.

And apparently Dr. Mattern was the only one

who actually gave a shit about Alice.

And they had to present this body to her

and have her look at the teeth.

And they said, before doing that, he removed, quote,

as well as he could everything that was repulsive from the mouth.

And then he asked Alice to look at the teeth.

And she said she looked into his mouth

and she told the doctor that the teeth, quote,

appeared to be like her papa's.

And then she left the shed immediately.

That's horrific.

Now the agents from Fidelity Mutual waited a full day

and then they let Alice and Howe know

that they found Alice's identification satisfactory.

So typically, these kind of claims are very slow

and methodical to be processed.

But for good reason.

Lawyer Howe there, he appealed to the agents

and he said the Pytcells are very poor.

They have a sick kid.

They could use the money as soon as possible.

Can you expedite it?

Yeah.

So after a little discussion,

they agreed to pay the claim immediately

and they took out any of the costs

that they had to use to identify the remains.

You know everyone in that Fidelity office

was like, what the fuck is going on here?

They were like, some shit is going down.

The break room was popping off at lunch.

The water cooler was bubbling.

The coffee was filled to the brim.

They were all like something stinks here.

You want to go to the pub later to talk about this shit?

Seriously.

So right away, a check was written to Carrie Pytcell,

but that check was given right to Holmes.

And the check was in the amount of $9,715.85

because they took out the costs

that they had to use to exhume and identify the body.

But back then, that must have been so much money.

A lot of money.

So with that check, Holmes immediately boarded a train

for St. Louis, St. Louis,

and he was going to deliver that check to Carrie,

but have her immediately give the money back to him.

So he wrote a letter to the company also, by the way,

and he wrote it as Carrie,

thanking them for the prompt payment.

And they used that letter in promotional materials

for a little while.

Oh my God.

Yikes.

They used a fucking letter from H. H. Holmes.

They had no idea.

Holy, no.

Now, Holmes' plan had always been to claim the money

from the insurance scam and then flee to Europe.

Right.

And that's where he was, you know, none of the creditors.

Nobody was going to be able to get him there.

So it's strange that during this return trip from Philadelphia,

he sent a letter to his brother in Gilminton

to let him know that he would be returning to Gilminton

in the coming days.

I didn't even remember that he had a brother.

Yeah.

Holmes told his brother he'd been on a trip to Minneapolis in 1888,

and when he was there, a train crashed,

and for the six years that followed,

he'd been suffering from amnesia.

Incorrect.

And he said he'd regained his memory,

and he was planning to return home

to just resume his life with Clara and Robbie.

What is this about?

What?

Because he had, like, no, he didn't have any plans to do that.

No, he had no plans to do that.

Because he just poured on a Tuesday.

Just be the dick.

Now, when Holmes arrived in St. Louis, St. Louis,

with the money from the insurance payout,

he gave $2,500 to Jeppe de Hau as payment.

I'm surprised he knew that.

And he only gave $500 to Kerry,

and he said that the remaining $6,700 for himself

was because her husband had to owed him money

and had outstanding debts, and that was,

he was going to take it.

What a piece of absolute dung.

Yeah.

Cow dung.

And she just had to accept it.

Elephant dung, how about that?

Now, what's worse is Kerry's husband, Benjamin,

now has to be in hiding,

and they have to go get him out of hiding,

but he's still in hiding right now,

and she's got five kids that she's trying to support

that now she has, like, almost no income doing.

Right.

So she's panicking.

She's like, I can't do this.

Oh, my God.

And Holmes, like, you know what?

It might be better if I took your 12-year-old Nellie

and your eight-year-old Howard,

and they could come live with their sister Alice

in Indiana for a little while,

and they can be looked after by my cousin, Minnie Williams.

Who's dead?

Until Benjamin comes out of hiding,

and then you can all rejoin together.

So what you're telling me is he was like,

I'm going to kill these kids.

Now, Kerry Pytzel agreed,

because she probably had no other choice at that point.

Because she's desperate, yeah.

And on September 27th,

she transferred custody of Nellie and Howard to Holmes.

And he sent a telegram to Alice in Indianapolis,

telling her to be ready to leave the following day,

because they were going to go stay in Indiana.

They were going to go stay with Minnie Williams.

Now, on September 28th,

Alice met Holmes and her two younger siblings

at the train station in Indianapolis,

and the four of them went to Cincinnati.

Okay.

I know.

Now we're in Ohio.

Once there, he registered at the Atlantic House

under the name Alexander Cook,

and he got the kids settled,

and then he wired Georgiana

and asked that she come to join them all.

So he explained that he had come into some money,

because remember, Georgiana was staying

with some family in Indiana.

So he explained that he had come into some money

from someone purchasing the land in Fort Worth.

Okay.

I know there's a lot.

That's what I mean when I say,

I'm not cramming everything into one episode,

because there's enough with just this.

No, there is.

Just enough places, enough people.

He's traveling everywhere.

Do you see my eyes every now and again,

just like adding it up in my head, like,

okay, that's where we are.

And that's why I'm like,

it just needs to be consumed in bits

so that you can understand where he is at any given time.

No, I'm happy about the way that you're doing it,

because I would turn off at some point

and just be like, I don't know.

That's it.

This one's different from Jack the Ripper,

obviously in a lot of ways, but like in very layer.

Jack the Ripper was at least like Whitechapel.

We are in Whitechapel.

We're in fucking Massachusetts.

Then we're in New Hampshire.

Then we're in Ohio.

Then we're in Philadelphia.

Then we're in so many other places.

Colorado, Chicago, Texas, Indiana, Cincinnati, St. Louis.

See, what I knew of the H.H. Holmes story

was just the murder.

Just Chicago.

Like that's all I knew.

Because he's known as like the Chicago serial killer.

But really, he was the everywhere killer.

He was.

Now it was at this time that Holmes was becoming

really paranoid.

I can, as you can imagine, a lot is being piled on now.

And I feel like he let too many people in on this game.

Way too many people.

He's done it across way too many states.

He's caused way too many wires to cross.

He's been in jail a few times now.

Yeah.

He's starting to crack a little bit.

And according to Adam Seltzer, who we linked that source

in the show notes, Holmes claimed that he received tips

that detectives were on his tail.

Right.

And it was starting to get to him.

I don't know how much he knew, whether he was, you know,

just operating purely out of paranoia or he was actually like had the facts.

But he was being pursued by a lot of different agencies.

I believe it.

And now the Fidelity Mutual Insurance Company

was added to that list because now they were like,

something's awry here.

Now what made them feel that way?

So I'll tell you.

So in early October, the lead detective with the Fidelity Mutual Insurance

Company, W.E. Gary, got a telegram.

This telegram.

Not a telegram.

Not a telegram.

This telegram was from Lawrence Harrigan,

who was the chief of the St. Louis St. Louis Police.

This telegram from the chief of police was letting him know that a prison prisoner

in St. Louis St. Louis had come forward with information that basically

alluded to the fact that the Fidelity Insurance Company

had recently been defrauded in a big way.

I knew that motherfucker was going to come forward

and try to get some shit off his 25 year sentence.

Yeah.

Right.

It was from Marion Hadsberg.

Yeah.

Homes with cellmate.

Why would you not think like if you're going to tell anybody,

tell somebody with like three years so they have something to look forward to.

But this guy's got nothing to lose.

He doesn't give a shit.

And everything to gain because he's giving information.

Exactly.

Thinking like, oh, let me help you out and get a couple of years off my sentence.

Yep.

In the letter, the telegram gave all the details of a scheme that Holmes had told him

about how they were going to fake Pytcell's death for money.

And at the time, he had offered Hedgepeth $500 for his part in it,

which would be to recommend an attorney of ill repute, which he did.

Hedgepeth claimed that he really didn't think Holmes would attempt it.

He thought he was just like, I'll talk.

Bluffin.

But then a few weeks later, his lawyer, Howe, told him, quote,

that he had never heard of a finer or smoother piece of work and that he was sure to work.

And it was sure to work and that Howard H.H. Holmes was one of the smoothest

and slickest man that he had ever heard tell of.

So Howe was already singing his praises like weeks later.

So Mary and Hedgepeth likely felt compelled to inform authorities of this,

just to get something out of it, obviously.

He was also salty because he was never given his $500.

And it seemed to him like every one of the schemers had just got what

they needed from him and then abandoned ship.

Right.

He's like, I got snacks to buy on this commissary.

So he was out to fuck them over.

But detectives did believe him in the details he gave.

And the superiors at Fidelity Mutual,

they thought actually that Hedgepeth may be lying.

And a few days had passed before they finally were willing to believe this.

And that they were like, you know what?

We're going to give W.E. Gary the detective for Fidelity Insurance.

Thank you.

They're going to give him approval to pursue Holmes.

But it took a few days for them to like investigate it

because they had just paid this out.

They don't want to believe that they just got fucked over.

Yeah, that's a lot of money.

So they looked into it and they were like, I think this guy is telling the truth.

Yeah, what'd you say?

It was like $9,000, right?

Yeah, it was a lot of money.

It was almost 10.

It was actually almost 10.

It was 9,700 I think somewhere in there.

Round up.

But Holmes had been lucky that his previous issues with the law

were under so many aliases.

And there had been so much time between them

that they were kind of tough to connect the dots.

But this scheme was so fresh and so big

that it was much easier to trace.

And he had left too many missing pieces.

So now Detective Gary is on Holmes' tail.

And he-

Why is Detective Gary so funny?

Detective Gary is hilarious.

I think all I can think of is Gary from Below Deck.

Yeah, and no, any, like Mr. Gary, like that's Detective Gary,

it just doesn't sound right.

But now Holmes is having to shuttle the Pytzel children

all over Cincinnati for the remainder of this time.

And then he ships them to Indianapolis for the first few weeks of October.

And in Indianapolis, Holmes and Georgiana checked into some like

very fancy, like swanky hotel.

Like penthouse situation.

And yeah, and they had the Pytzel children at a hotel down the block.

And they registered them as the canning children

when they put them in the hotel.

Weird.

A few days later, he moved them again,

this time to the Circle House,

which was another hotel in the city.

He's like shuttling them everywhere.

They must have been like, what the fuck is going on?

They were so con-

Like, they were like, what the fuck is happening here?

Like, I just want to go home.

And Alice, I feel like, was on to him a little bit.

Oh, she was like, what the fuck is going on?

Now, even though he was on the run from many,

like law enforcement agencies, many a multitude,

he made time during this whole thing to attempt another scam.

What?

While they were in Indianapolis,

Holmes and Georgiana began touring properties with a realtor.

This realtor thought that they were a couple

who wanted to buy a house in the city.

Yeah.

Holmes had told the realtor that his wife had inherited some property

and they were planning to trade the title to that property

for something in Indianapolis that he could then sell for cash.

Okay.

This sounded insane to me when I read it,

but apparently the bank had already approved this exchange,

like in reality.

Weird.

The problem, however, was that the offer had an October 10th expiration date.

Okay.

And the property wouldn't have officially been accessible

to Georgiana until her 25th birthday,

which was not until October 17th.

Oh, shit.

So Holmes abandoned the realtor and never went through the plan,

but he was planning to try to go through this

before it was going to be legal.

And after he was arrested,

the realtor who was scammed here told the press quote,

Holmes was a good looking fellow,

but had a kind of uneasy look in his eyes.

So he tried to fuck over this other person while he's on the run,

like the heat is on.

The heat is like, the heat is on.

It's more than on.

Yeah, it's real on.

Well, while he toured the city with Georgiana

trying to set up some other schemes,

the Pytzel children were just spending their time in a hotel room alone.

That's so sad.

And during this time,

they were writing daily to their mom in St. Louis at St. Louis,

and they were concerned because they never received anything back.

And on October 6th at one point,

Alice wrote to her mother and said,

Why don't you write to me?

I've not got a letter from you since I've been away,

and it will be three weeks day after tomorrow.

Carrie Pytzel had been writing to her children.

She had written back to every single letter.

Holmes just kept them.

What?

You just kept them from the kids just to fuck with the kids.

Why would you even do that?

Because he's an actual monster.

Evil.

Yeah.

So, in October,

that's so sad.

They're mourning the loss of their father,

being shuttled to all these new places,

and now they think their mom just abandoned them.

Holy fuck.

Like, it's awful.

He is like truly torturing them.

And I feel as though it's going to escalate,

and I just can't believe that's their last days.

Yeah.

Holmes went to a realty.

Why could I never say realty?

Realty?

Realty?

Realty.

Realty.

Why can I not say that word?

That tripped me up in the West when I think.

I don't know. It did, yeah.

Right?

Some people say realtor, but it's just realtor.

I think.

Realty.

That's what it is.

Realty.

A realty office.

It's losing all meaning, but yes.

It really is.

I don't know, sorry, everybody.

I don't know why my, like, my brain knows it,

but my mouth won't say it.

Say a real estate office.

A real estate office in Irvington,

which is a suburb of Indianapolis,

and he started making arrangements to rent a house

called the Lancaster House.

It was a small cottage on Union Avenue.

I would not rent that house.

He got very hostile,

which was rare for him to do in public,

because remember, he is Mr. Cool,

calling, collecting it now at this point,

because he was demanding the keys be given to him now.

And he was like, I'm in a big hurry.

I need them now.

I'm not going through any of the shit I have to go through,

like, lost his mind.

And the realtor, there you go.

Later said, quote,

I remember the man very well,

because I did not like his manner.

I felt that he should have had more respect

for my gray hairs.

That's amazing.

I love that.

They're like, respect your elders.

He's like, I'm old.

I don't know why he was mean.

But a few days later, Holmes had a large oak stove

delivered to Lancaster House,

because he did rent it,

and also dropped off a case of surgical tools

in town to be sharpened.

A large oak stove and sharpened surgical tools.

That sounds normal.

So everything's fine.

In the afternoon on an early October,

Holmes brought Howard Pytzel

in his trunk of belongings.

Howard is the 10-year-old son.

Belongings to the Lancaster House.

And according to his confession later,

they arrived a little after 8 p.m.,

and Holmes called Howard into the house.

And he told him that he had to go to bed at once.

And then he said he gave him the first,

the fatal dose of medicine.

And he said, he like poisoned him.

Yeah, essentially.

And he said, as soon as he had ceased to breathe,

I cut his body into pieces

that would pass through the door of the stove

and by the combined use of gas and corn cobs

and proceeded to burn it with as little feeling

as though it had been some inanimate object.

What?

That was his own confession.

That's a 10-year-old.

I poisoned this 10-year-old boy

and I cut up his body and then put him in a stove

and I felt such little feelings about it

that he might have been,

well, it's been an inanimate object.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So it's most likely that he had poisoned his food

to kill him.

That's what everybody thinks.

Of course, sweetie.

When they searched the property after he was arrested,

they found a bottle of cyanide, an amount of wolf spain,

and there was also, he had purchased a cocaine solution

from a pharmacist a few days earlier.

Once he had disposed of Howard's body,

he went back at the train station by 9 p.m.,

so that all happened within an hour, according to him,

and he got his mail and he boarded a train for Chicago.

So the next day, and I don't know what he did there,

but he returned to an Annapolis the next day,

and he got Georgiana and the other children

and put them on separate trains.

Georgiana on one, children on the other, bound for Detroit.

We're going to Michigan.

So when they, when they were going to Michigan.

I'm like, why are we going another place?

When they arrived in Detroit,

Holmes checked himself and Georgiana into the hotel Normandy

under the name G. Howell and Wife.

I love that back then you didn't need a name as a wife.

You were just wife.

Wife, yeah.

And then went to like, we don't need your name.

And they went a few blocks away and checked Nelly and Alice

into the new Western hotel.

Then the next day they moved them to a boarding house

run by a woman named Ray, May Ralston.

Holmes was definitely starting to fray at the seams.

He was starting to come apart.

The children were starting to lose it, being alone all the time,

not understanding where Howard is now,

not understanding what's going on.

He's dragging them all over the place,

leaving them a whole loan for days at a time.

Alice wrote letters to her grandparents.

In October 14th, she wrote,

we have to stay in all the time.

Howard is not with us right now.

All that Nell and I can do is draw.

And I get so tired sitting that I could get up and fly almost.

I'm getting so homesick that I don't know what to do.

I wish they had just run away.

Now a day after she sent that letter,

Carrie and Wharton Pytzel,

Wharton was the younger son that was sick.

They arrived in Detroit and checked into a hotel

just a few blocks away from the boarding house

where they didn't know that Alice and Ellie were staying.

Holy shit.

Holmes had written Carrie telling her to come there,

where she could finally be reunited with Benjamin and her children.

Oh my God, what the fuck is wrong with this guy?

He's fucking awful.

When they got there, he goes,

oops, sorry, can't reunite you yet

because it's like too heavily populated here,

so you're gonna have to wait a little longer.

Oh my God, he is just fucked up.

A few days after coming to Detroit,

he rented a small house on East Forest Avenue,

which he told the landlord was for his sister and her children,

which he was probably gonna pass Georgiana and the kids off.

He then dug a four foot by three foot hole in the backyard.

Okay.

Neighbors noticed.

So this was clearly where he was intending to kill Alice and Ellie.

No one is sure why,

but he decided not to murder the girls there at this time.

Instead, he told Carrie Pytzel

that Benjamin was waiting for her now in Toronto, Canada,

and she should travel there.

And he was going to,

and so he sent Alice and Nelly back to Indianapolis,

where they were gonna be waiting for them

when she and Benjamin returned from Canada.

Canada.

Okay.

This is when Carrie was like-

What the fuck is going on?

What the fuck is going on?

And she was concerned.

And this is when she was like,

where the fuck are my kids?

Like, where are they?

And he was like, don't worry,

they're being cared for by a widow lady,

but he wouldn't give any more details.

Yeah, that sounds totally fine.

Now, as all of this is unraveling,

and he's losing complete control of this situation, clearly.

I also just feel like he's going insane at this point.

It seems like he's going mad,

because he's just doing, like, none of this makes any sense.

It's chess moves that make no sense at all.

He's just sending her up there.

He's sending- he doesn't know what he's-

He was just making a bunch of lateral moves.

Yeah, and he was definitely intending to kill Nelly and Alice

in that house in Detroit.

Then he didn't.

I don't know why.

I wonder if one of the neighbors like came by or something.

I wonder if a neighbor saw him digging your right

and was like, hey, what are you doing?

What's that about?

And he was like, oh, nothing.

But Detective Gary had enlisted-

Why is that so funny?

And Detective Gary is like the real MVP here,

because he got the Pinkerton Detective Agency on the case,

and they had made a lot of progress in finding homes.

They'd narrowed him down to the Detroit area.

And this is why I believe maybe he left,

it could have been that he was planning to kill them.

Or the police were coming in hot.

But I think they came a little hotter.

Sure.

I don't know how aware he became of that situation,

but thinking now, the fact that he moved so quickly out of there,

it seems like he may have been.

He was tipped off somehow,

and that's probably why he abandoned the whole plan.

Maybe he saw some kind of police presence.

He could have.

So they made it to Canada, and as soon as they got there,

homes checked Kerry and Wharton into the Union House

under the name Mrs. Adams.

Then he disappointed them again,

and he said, oh, you just miss Benjamin.

He said Benjamin had received word of detectives

looking for him in the city,

and he had actually fled to Montreal now.

Oh my God.

And Holmes then returned to the train station.

So he got Alice and Nellie at the train station

and brought the girls to the house he'd rented on Vincent Street.

And he told the neighbors he had rented this one

for his sister as well,

who was going to be coming from Hamilton, Ontario.

And this is a different house than the one for you.

Different house.

The house had been rented on a six-month lease,

and the neighbors later told investigators

they thought it was real strange

that the man had rented the entire house,

yet he only had a bed frame, a trunk,

and a mattress a dog wouldn't even sleep on.

What does that mean?

So Holmes then got Georgiana at the train station,

and they went off to Niagara Falls,

where they stayed one night in the Imperial Hotel

before they went back to Toronto

and checked into the Palmer House Hotel as H. Howell and Wife.

Oh, the Palmer House is super haunted.

There you go.

Probably from him.

Probably.

So on October 24th,

Holmes went to the house on Vincent Street

where he put Nellie and Alice.

He borrowed a shovel from a neighbor,

telling him,

I'm going to fix a place in the cellar to hold potatoes.

The fuck?

And he went into the basement of the house

and dug a fresh grave.

No.

After he did this,

he went back to Carrie Pytzel and told her,

oh, shit, Howard's not there yet.

And he said, oh, you got to go to Ogdensburg, New York,

because Benjamin had fled there now.

At this point, I'd be like,

you're not sending me another fucking place.

Nope.

But he put Carrie on the train.

But she also misses her husband.

And she's just trying to get her family back together.

God.

Puts Carrie on the train,

and he went back to the Vincent Street house.

Holmes was strangely, when he confessed to this,

he was less sensational than he normally is.

Really?

The story of Nellie and Alice's murders

is less dramatic and less like,

he was less excited to tell this story, I feel.

In his confession,

he said he had taken a large trunk

to the house on Vincent Street.

He'd cut a small hole in the trunk

large enough for a hose to fit.

Uh-huh.

This is pretty awful.

It sounds like it will be.

He wouldn't explain how,

but he got both girls in the trunk.

Alive.

Alive.

And he, quote, ended their lives

by connecting the gas with the trunk.

So he gassed them in a trunk.

Holy fuck.

Once they were killed,

he opened the trunk and he found them,

in his words,

quote,

their little blackened and distorted faces.

Oh my God.

So he then took them out of the trunk,

he stripped them of their clothing,

then buried their bodies in the grave

in the basement in the Vincent house.

Oh my God.

And he said, quote,

without a particle of covering saved the cold earth,

which I heaped upon them with fiendish delight.

That's the only time he got like,

he just gassed two children to death

and then buried them in fiendish delight.

I don't know how he dies,

but I hope they did something brutal to him.

Well, and what's worse is,

so you listen to that story

and you're like, that's fucking terrible.

Yeah.

But Adam Selser,

he says there's a problem with that story.

And he said he did kill these little girls.

Of course.

But that house on Vincent Street

was not set up for gas.

And so he says the claim of poisoning them with gas

was probably not true unless he did it somewhere else.

Okay.

And then what's worse is that he was like,

he probably poisoned their food like he did Howard,

but then he just told this story.

That's even worse.

Which is even worse.

And he's like, I don't,

no matter what he killed,

brutally killed two little girls

and buried them in the basement.

Right.

But the fact that he is making up

a grosser story from something that's even gross,

like still gross is like,

you just wanted to tell that story?

Like what the fuck is wrong with you?

Well, I wonder if it's like almost he can't,

now that he's in prison and he knows he's got God,

he can't kill anybody anymore.

So now he's killing people differently in his mind.

Yeah, like he's living vicariously through his own fantasies.

Exactly.

So he's just going with it.

Exactly.

It's like, wow, dude.

That is, yeah.

What the fuck did he have?

Yeah.

What was wrong with him?

What was going on with him?

Now the next day he returned the shovel to the neighbor

and then he stuffed the girl's clothing

in any belongings they had into the chimney

and put a fire in the fireplace

to try to burn them all.

So sad.

But unfortunately for him,

he'd packed the items too tightly into the chimney.

So large pieces of clothing were still in there

even after the fire went out.

Oh damn, and he didn't realize it.

No, also the stupid idiot hadn't even been very thorough

when he gathered up their belongings

because he had ended up leaving

several of Alice's belongings,

including a bag out in the apartment when he left.

And you can't imagine she even had that many belongings

at that point.

Exactly.

By the time the new tenants arrived a few days later.

Oh my god.

They found the random clothing scraps

and remnants left behind,

but by this point,

Holmes was back and he had already left Toronto

and he wasn't coming back.

And is he, sorry,

is he the landlord of that house or no?

He just rented it.

No, he just rented it.

Just to do that.

Now eventually this man would tell so many stories

about the missing children.

It would be almost like,

it's like, it's something out of fiction.

He would say Benjamin,

Benjamin, the father was in South America.

He told Carrie the kids were in South America.

He told them now they were in Chicago,

in Detroit, they were in England.

They were anywhere else, but reality.

He was just driving her insane slowly.

Yeah, he was trying to drive her insane.

And that is where we're going to leave parts for.

Fuck you!

Are you, I did not see that coming.

Because.

What?

Because he should have stayed in Canada.

And he didn't.

Okay, I don't want me to know that.

Once he returns to the United States,

that's when shit is going to go down for him.

And I don't want to start the going down process.

No, I got that.

I would like episode five to just be us all high-fiving

and the fact that this motherfucker gets got.

Oh, I can't wait to hear how.

Cause I actually, I don't have any idea how he gets caught

or what happens to him after he's caught.

So this is him.

He's leaving Toronto.

He's leaving Canada.

He's coming back to the United States,

like a big fucking idiot.

He has killed kids in Canada.

He's killed kids in the United States.

He has killed women in the United States.

He has now killed a man in the United States.

And he's coming back.

And the Pinkerton Detective Agency guys,

they are on his fucking tail.

I'm so excited.

They're right here.

He would have been much better off staying in Canada.

Oh, thank goodness he didn't.

Thank goodness he's a fucking idiot.

I'm so glad he is.

So we're going to talk about his arrest.

We're going to talk about the trial.

We're going to talk about the wild confession.

And we're going to talk about the theories

that he is Jack the Ripper, which I don't agree with.

But we'll talk about it.

But the theories, when you put them out there,

you can understand why people are interested at least.

They are slightly compelling.

Okay.

But very interesting.

And we're going to talk about his execution.

It's all coming in part five.

It's all happening, Sheena Shea.

The end.

The climax of this series is part five.

My goodness.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you go all around the world

doing H.H. Holmes type shit.

Because like, don't keep it so weird

that you're Detective Gary.

Yeah.

Just be a detective.

Keep it that way.

In a world full of H.H. Holmes is be a Detective Gary.

And with that, we leave you.

Okay.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.