Morbid: Episode 461: H.H. Holmes Part 5

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Hey Weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Alayna.

And this is Morbid.

It is the conclusion to H.H.

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 dare boss letter again.

So let's go.

Let's, let's go down that path all over again, go right down that path again.

So I'm just going to catch you up really quick.

So this man has now killed Benjamin Pytzel and his kids, not all of them, at least three

of his kids.

He's definitely going to kill the lady.

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 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 think you're kind of at all really like saying Pinkerton.

Pinkerton.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

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 going to 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.

That's the way we do it.

It's the proper.

This is how we do it.

Noss.

Noss is how?

So let's talk about the theories about him being Jack the Ripper.

Let us.

Mostly.

So he has an ancestor named Jeff Mudgeit.

Remember, his name is Herman Webster Mudgeit.

How could I forget?

Jeff is like his great, great, great, great grandson, you know, like one of those.

I'm not exactly sure.

I'm not exactly sure.

Or something.

Yeah.

And he firmly believes that H.H. Holmes is Jack the Ripper.

H.H.

Well, you are.

You're all over me right now.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

Firmly believes that H.H.

Holmes is Jack the Ripper.

They are the same person.

He is the grandson.

Yeah, the great, great, great grandson.

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 or nefarious

where you'd be like, why are we believing this man?

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, oh, wait, I didn't want the moment to pass sometimes.

I don't put up a finger to stop you.

And the moment passes.

Yeah.

You know, I get it.

Now, he presented a ton of evidence.

He did a Ted Talk in Vancouver, I think it was.

He presented a bunch of exhibits.

A lot of them are pretty interesting.

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 HH Holmes to his

lawyer, and it was near 19 or 1888, and he was talking about how much he wanted to go

to London.

OK.

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.

Holmes was exactly five, seven.

He was technically a doctor.

I feel like, you know, yeah, I feel like five, seven is also like kind of on the shorter

side.

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.

Everyone needs to remember, and I hammered this idea in 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.

Probably.

So like, I don't know if we can really look at 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.

I would 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?

Well, 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 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 jobs.

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.

I feel like John lay between me and that person.

I'm good.

If they can't, I better move back.

It reminds me of Gilmore girls would I can bring it back there all the time.

Always.

Either not a Sabrina.

When Logan is talking about like measuring distance through crowpogs, because that's

like a Yale thing.

It's like this many crowpogs to this thing.

I'm like this many jobs.

Shut up, Logan.

So yeah, you know, there's that.

I feel 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.

And then you say, Hey, HH 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.

Sure.

I mean, a lot of other people are too, but like, sure, HH Holmes is a Scotland yard 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, Scotland yard 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.

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.

Yeah.

But I too don't know about that.

You said in one of these that like people have 1800s faces, like old timey faces.

That man does not.

That was not an old timey face.

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 H H Holmes's photo, people think it's a great comparison.

Okay.

And to which I say, no, what?

Because I don't think it's a good comparison at all.

In my opinion, um, the lip bothers me a lot.

He has a very full bottom lip H H Holmes's 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's five foot seven, he's of this age, he's of this weight, he has a luster,

he has high cheekbones, they would have seen that full lip.

That would have been one of the things you 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 H H Holmes?

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, is you can't really focus

on someone.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

It's like, it's really just a focusing thing.

Gotcha.

Like one eye might drift a little bit.

Okay.

So I don't know if anybody would have been close enough to him to see that, besides until

they, and they would have been dead.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But again, and the other thing is that Holmes 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 Holmes does too, but like, again, they're not very, I don't really

think they are.

I wouldn't sit there and be like, wow, look at those cheekbones.

Yeah.

You know, I think he kind of looks a little bit like a bass at home.

He does a little bit.

Yeah.

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 theory surrounding Holmes being one in the same with Jack, say that maybe Jack's

crimes were actually the beginning of Holmes's 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.

He 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 they would, 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 that.

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, which 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 US 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 Holmes in Chicago or in the United States.

So that is an interesting thing.

Little Harry 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 that he could have been using one of his like hundred, like his 40 aliases.

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 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 Holmes on that ship, but there was a lot of Holmes.

This could be any Holmes.

Again, the time period, intriguing, very intriguing.

The fact that we can't find a lot about Holmes during the 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 Mudgeit uses.

And again, I'm not like Jeff Mudgeit might be 100 percent 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 heavily used term, slang term in England at the time.

It was used, but it was used more on America.

I was going to say maybe they just want to broaden 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 belonged to Holmes.

They compared some of the handwriting analysis.

Again, I saw the comparisons.

I'm not wowed by the comparisons.

No, when you showed them to me, I wasn't either.

But they claim that the handwriting analysis said that it was like a 97 percent match or something wild.

If it is, that's fascinating.

But 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 going to read you because we because I think we need to take a little trip back

to the Dear Boss letter for a second, because I have a lot of reasons

why this doesn't make sense that it was H.H. Holmes.

OK.

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 horse and shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled.

Grand work, the last job was.

I gave the lady 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, haha, the next job I do.

I shall clip the ladies ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly.

Wouldn't you keep this letter till I do a bit more work than 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.

Ha, so many things, so many things.

Yeah, I went over in the Jack the Ripper episodes

about how this is not Jack the Ripper.

I mean, when you were saying it, I was like, wait a second,

because I thought that we had determined it was not.

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, 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 Catherine Edo's, 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, the day 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 White Chapel 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.

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 looks at a news agency.

And he wrote, George Sims wrote,

the fact that the self postcard proclaimed assassins 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

portrays an inner knowledge of the newspaper world,

which is certainly surprising.

Everything therefore points to the fact

that the jokest is professionally connected with the press.

And if he is telling the truth and not fooling us,

then we are brought face to face with the fact

that the Whitechapel 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 a very, very valid point

that is this 100 percent betrayed somebody with an inner idea

of how the press and news work.

And honestly, in Whitechapel, especially at the time,

the layperson 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.

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 that goes up my butt.

This is a medically minded person.

H.H. 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 an in conclusion, this is fucking stupid.

I just broke for a second.

You you should in conclusion.

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So his fake surprise and being like, I had to switch to red ink.

Like that's just over the top and dumb.

Yeah, like it's just not real.

One, if we're claiming this is really Jack the Ripper, it doesn't even line up.

Even if we don't know who that is, we know he knows he's going to know what blood does.

He's seen blood in the most waggling in front of him, probably.

So it's really not shocking.

And then if you're claiming this guy is H.H. Holmes, who even wrote this letter,

that doesn't make sense.

And then if you're saying that H.H. Holmes is Jack the Ripper

and that this letter is real, I'm sorry.

I cannot 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 ex when he was he had an execution date.

He 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 four thousand 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 he fucking loved it

because he knew he was going to die anyway.

So he wanted his legacy to be that he 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?

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.

And I think he would just be like, let's go.

And he would have been able to live longer.

And he would have been able to talk about it more.

He would have fucking loved to talk about.

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 something that can sound like a gavel, right?

Did that hurt, though?

No, it didn't.

But so if you believe that they are one in the same,

I support your freedom of thought.

Alina says you're wrong, but you're wrong.

And I'm right.

That's the way it is.

Just Capricorn things.

So there's that.

And you're wrong.

You're right.

And that's it.

I don't think people are going to think I'm such an asshole.

What's that was breaking news?

Alina's an asshole.

So let's get back to 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 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 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, blub, blub, blub.

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 Park.

It really is.

What are you wearing, Gary from Fidelity Mutual?

Well, the thing is the Pinkerton agents and Detective Gary,

neither one of them had authority in Canada.

So 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.

Yeah.

But this time the the agents arrived in Toronto

and Holmes and Georgiana had already left

and were on their way to meet Carrie Pytzel in Ogdensburg, New York,

where they had told her for the hundredth time

she would be meeting her husband.

I hate that.

And 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 would be there.

And then they were like, yeah, just kidding.

Kills me. I know.

It's so sad.

But when the Holmes and Georgiana arrived in New York,

he immediately let Carrie know, 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 going to see Ben.

He has shuffled her everywhere.

It's she's come from Canada down to New York again.

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 because you would think

at some point she'd be like, what the fuck 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 happen to see.

It's like the episode of Full House where Michelle falls off the horse.

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 to be like he 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.

Oh, that's people had figured shit out.

But he didn't know by who he didn't know the Pinkerton's were involved

and he didn't know Detective Gary was involved and he didn't know when

and 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.

Right. 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 it.

He'd already claimed the money for the insurance payout

and he killed the three Pytzel children.

So there was really no reason to continue this.

He could have just abandoned her and left other than she she did know a lot.

That's true. But he would have been like, who's going to believe you?

Like what they've 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. No, I believe you.

Yeah. No, on November 5th, I believe you.

On November 5th, Holmes left Carrie Pytzel in Burlington

and he took a thousand dollars from Georgiana, his wife.

And he traveled to Gilmonton, New Hampshire, where he was from,

where Claire is, where his son Robert is.

Now, remember that he had sent the letter to his brother.

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 Selser,

those newspaper accounts were probably very embellished as fuck,

meaning Clara and Holmes had not seen each other in 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.

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 big of me 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. When 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 Mudgeit.

Totally. Now, it's funny because he speaks

about this time very strangely for him.

And when he wrote about it, OK, it's like a motion filled strangely

about his return to New Hampshire, he said, here are many changes that take in 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.

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.

That definitely seemed real.

I was and like, I'm like, but then you just continue to.

It's very weird.

No one gets stopped 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, 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 makes sense for him.

The only thing I can think of is that he, 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 have a couple more

memories with his parents and Clara.

See, that's that'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

Mudgeit again. Right.

And he was like, maybe if I leave homes behind, I leave all these other

aliases behind, I leave Howard behind all this.

I'm Herman Webster Mudgeit.

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.

And 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 over time.

Truly.

You know, yeah.

But then so we said, 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?

What was was the plan that initially?

And you were like, this isn't going to work.

Maybe like maybe you saw that fucking tree and you were like, oh, shit.

Yeah, change things.

Maybe it gave him like maybe he was very introspective in that moment.

He's like, the name has been obliterated on the tree.

I can never come back to Herman Webster Mudgeit.

So I just like to like go forth.

I really am gone.

I really am H.H. Holmes.

But the only thing I could also think of, so another thing.

Yeah, like his child, his first born was a son.

And that was like fucking huge.

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 a son?

Like, yeah, 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, 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.

OK, so he was taken 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 that's a big fucking 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 didn't need to.

You would think that they would want to.

I know. November 17th, 1894, Holmes left the boarding house

to go for a nice little morning walk.

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 do-miss.

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 would 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 both the focal and they told him

that he was coming down to speak to them at the station.

I love it.

Now, at first, Holmes 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, 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 Forest Perry.

See, that's better.

Forest Perry from Fidelity Mutual.

Yeah, it makes sense.

He confronts him for faking the death of Benjamin Pytzel.

And he was like, oh, good.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'm technically not up for murder.

OK, so he just confessed.

He was like, OK.

So he said, quote, went to Philadelphia with Pytzel,

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 Pytzel.

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 Pytzel.

He said, oh, no, no, we put a person there in his place, right?

But that person was already dead.

We're just we're just frothing 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 Kerry Pytzel and which I mean,

he kind of was sort of, yeah.

And in his first confession to Deputy Superintendent Hansgum

of the Boston police and John Cornish of the Pinkerton Detective Agency,

he claimed that Benjamin Pytzel was still very much alive.

He said, 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 Pytzel 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, not even a man, who he murdered

was such a was such an alcoholic

that he didn't feel comfortable leaving those children with him.

Wow. And he gassed those girls in a trunk.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

And poisoned.

Actually, he didn't live and he lied about.

Yeah, 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 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 and you're drunk and just one, just the boy.

But I'll take the other.

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 exactly?

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 not true.

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 where they said, OK,

so you brought that body from here to here in a trunk, you said,

that body that was supposed to be Benjamin Pytcell's like double.

OK, how'd you 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, it 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.

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 Pytcell 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, like 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 Pytcell in Burlington, Vermont.

She was probably like, what? 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 P the Boston cop and the Pinkerton detective.

And she wasn't super forthcoming, unfortunately.

Well, she was probably scared. She sure was.

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 Pytcell is dead and that he met his death at the hands of Holmes.

So although she may have had some knowledge of the scheme to defraud the insurance company,

detectives were pretty short, pretty quick,

that Carrie Pytcell didn't play a part in the actual crime.

OK. 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.

Jepta, how the lawyer? I forgot about Jepta.

That nefarious and unscrupulous lawyer.

Is it Jepta, how or Jepta?

No, it's Jepta, how? 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.

Wolf. He released a statement saying,

I do not believe that a fraud has been committed.

I believe the body identified by Pytcell's 15 year old daughter was that of her father.

The marks of identification were perfect as to how Pytcell 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, but on November 19th,

a Philadelphia grand jury indicted homes and how 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. Pytcell.

Who's that again?

Who that is is no one.

Investigators made an oopsie.

Who that is is no one.

And Charles A. Pytcell 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.

So who that is is no one.

So there's that.

There's the that of it all.

So there's that.

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The following day, they were extradited to Philadelphia to stand trial.

So homes killed Benjamin Pytzel.

So that meant correct.

He couldn't have left the three missing children with their father.

No.

So now the question became where the kids.

Where the fuck are Alice and Ellie and Howard Pytzel?

Yeah.

So the missing Pytzel 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 homes 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.

And in Texas, people suddenly suddenly started connecting their loved ones,

many and nanny Williams with this man and were stressing the fuck out.

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 out.

This shocked them all and none of them could get ahold of her.

The Chicago Tribune reported it is certain nanny 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 times homes reached Philadelphia on the 21st of November,

he started talking about Minnie too, because they were bringing her up.

Right.

According to the Philadelphia police detective Thomas Crawford,

one of the somebody who was transporting homes from Boston to Philadelphia,

he said he talked a lot.

I was just going to say, imagine being that guy.

Oh my God.

And you just have to hear him.

He's told the bizarre story about 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 Pytcell 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 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 she signed over the deed to the Texas properties to homes in Pytcell,

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.

False.

The story he spun about 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 older one was just jealous of the older one,

so she beat her with a stool.

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, Minnie.

He also had another known associate named Kate Durkey,

who he didn't kill.

And he would, it was also her sometimes that he would say was Minnie.

And these women were just like, yep, it's me and Minnie.

That's the thing, like what?

Now eventually enough stories had come forward

to allow investigators to conclude that Minnie 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's story about Minnie and Minnie 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 in 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 figure out maybe

where they're missing Pites L children more along his path.

By then, investigators had learned a ton more about Holmes

and they learned that he had 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.

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 with all of this, they're trying to find these kids

and it's becoming so complicated

that it must have been so frustrating.

And just 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.

It's been exhausting.

Everyone.

Now, Holmes was no help.

And his stories were becoming more and more inconsistent.

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, Kerry Pites L.

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 reference in the letters,

Geyer was able to trace a pretty accurate route

of Holmes' travels with the kids from Indianapolis to Canada.

Holy shit.

So they use those letters from the kids.

And in a town outside Cincinnati,

they talked to a bunch of shopkeepers

and they showed them a photograph

of the man identified as Holmes.

And they were like, yep, we know that guy.

And then they said he was traveling

in the company of a young boy

who was later identified as Howard Pites L.

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,

rent at 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 worked with the Toronto Police Force

and they helped him trace Holmes' 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 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.

Oh, shit.

And just asked if they recollected ever renting a house

about that time to 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 Geyer 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, 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, can you imagine if you're not 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 about that?

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's just some random loose dirt in there?

There's nothing in there.

Stop, thank you.

No, that was not cool.

Fuck you.

Now, while Geyer was retracing Holmes's-

Whoa.

Whoa.

Just throwing your posse across the room, Chica.

I was like sliding across the desk.

You were playing like air hockey with it all the time.

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.

So I launched it into the sun.

Now, while Geyer was retracing all the movements in Canada,

Holmes was on trial in Philadelphia

for conspiring to defraud the Fidelity Mutual Life Association

of $10,000 by producing a dead body

and representing it to be the corpse of Benjamin F. Pytzel.

That.

That's what he's on trial for.

I'm not going to type all that.

Holmes 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 them.

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' 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' picture in the papers.

And he was definitely the one who rented this house for his widowed sister.

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.

So I forgot about that.

Geyer was like, OK, cool.

And so he went to the owner of the house,

the one who rented it to Holmes,

and they positively identified Holmes as the man who'd rented it.

And they said, by all means search that house.

Yeah, no problem here.

So Geyer 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 Geyer said, and after going down about one foot,

a horrible stench arose.

So they were convinced this is it.

So Geyer 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,

Beatty Humphrey.

Beatty Humphrey, the local undertaker.

He should be.

Yeah, absolutely.

No other career path for me.

I will not question that ever.

No, Beatty Humphrey for life ever.

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 put 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 put into two separate coffins,

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 Pytzel,

the third child, were never discovered.

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' 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 Pytzel children were killed by a man named Hatch.

I thought you're 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.

In a very disreputable character, Mr. Hatch

was apparently a friend of many 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, disreputable mythical man.

Named Hatch.

Yeah.

And he had instructed Hatch to take them with many to Europe.

Everybody's just hanging out in Europe.

Totally.

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've 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 tack more on.

Chicago was looking for evidence of many nannies remains at the castle.

And on July 19th, two detectives who were looking through 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 formally owned and worn by many Williams.

Wow.

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 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 tabloid kind of reporting.

And they were a little bit more willing to exaggerate and fabricate.

You know what'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 article 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 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.

Exactly.

I think this would have been the time he would have been like,

by the way, 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 like sensationalize the whole thing,

because how can you not?

When Julia and Pearl Conner'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' credit.

Mrs. L. L. Conner 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. Conner 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.

So factual.

But it's just the way they presented is 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 don't know any of that.

You just asked for that in as like drama.

And like, how would you even prove that?

Exactly.

Like, why would you write that if you can't prove it?

Like, 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.

Yep.

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 Holmes and Emmeline Segrand.

And they were able to attribute her disappearance to him.

Investigators and reporters had also been digging into Holmes' personal history.

And that's where they learned about his fascination with dissection and chemistry.

And obviously, those 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 Pytzel.

He entered a plea of not guilty.

And when the judge asked, how will you be tried, Holmes said, by God in 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' own story.

Cue up Ashley Simpson.

Exactly.

The book was an alleged chronological history of Holmes' 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 losing it at the end?

No, I don't think he was losing it.

I think he was very much together.

I think 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' defense attorneys were 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.

I really have plans that day.

I can't do.

I can't move my meaning.

Please.

Craven.

Give me a free check.

Damn it.

And it got so outrageous, I guess,

that the judge apparently threatened sanctions against the lawyers.

Holy shit.

He said if they leave the court, they will be punished,

as lawyers are punished for disobedience.

So cancel your fucking plans or do in a trial.

They weren't able to 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.

It doesn't.

They were like, we don't really know how to defend this man.

So 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

pipe 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 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 all very prevented and 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 Pytcell's body, he was called to testify.

And on the stands, on the stand, Holmes grilled him about Benjamin Pytcell'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.

He 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.

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So on the third day, Holmes's 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 Pytzel,

but Benjamin Pytzel 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 Kerry and Desi Pytzel.

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.

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 any more.

When she looked at Holmes, she seemed not to even see him.

Like she was just dead.

I mean, she had been through it at that point.

And then to have all those fucking letters to read when she lost all of her children.

I can't even fathom that.

And 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.

That's like to know that they were in that kind of thing.

Like you poison 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,

the things that made Holmes such a successful criminal,

like such a successful killer and con man and frotter,

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 had made such a complicated and incoherent set of stories and lies

that they were kind of just like, 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.

Of like clean case from beginning to end.

And they were like, you're just bizarre.

But you've confused me.

And he probably seemed like a madman at that point.

Oh, 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.

The mysterious strangers like Hatch taking the children to Europe

and Benjamin Pytzel 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.

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. Pytzel told upon the stand be true,

and there seems to be no reason to doubt it,

no novel that was ever written contains a story as thrilling

as that which she 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 awful.

Oh, at the end, he should have literally been like,

Wait.

He should have dropped the gavel.

And then like, you are now dismissed.

Right.

Get out of here.

Go.

Go on.

Get.

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 damn.

End of statement.

They'd be working overtime.

This is what's funny.

So they returned to 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.

Like 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.

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 your fault, my gosh.

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, he literally looked at them, went, no.

And then he looked at Holmes and said,

you will be hanged by the neck until dead.

So, bye.

Holmes' 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 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 going to 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 call.

You can't say like, next week?

No.

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.

They were like, open.

I don't want a deadline.

No.

And they were like, well, your client's going to 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.

And George Graham and Holmes' 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' defense argued that a lot of the testimony used to convicts Holmes,

and this is quite a stretch.

I was like, wow, you guys did do your own work.

They pull a muscle.

They said that it came from his wife, Georgiana 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 George 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?

And it's just like, oof.

Yeah, you tried.

Guess that bigamy came back to bite you, my guy.

It 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 was imposed upon.

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, Holmes was now going 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.

He's throwing that shit up to like 200 and something,

but he's not going to include the White Chapel.

No.

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 like 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.

He gave detailed accounts in this confession

of the murders of Julia and Pearl Connor,

Emily and Segrand, Minnie and Annie Williams,

the whole Pite Cell family.

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 at least two of the people he claimed

to have murdered, Kate Durkey and Robert Leacock.

They were still alive.

They were found to be alive.

Stop it.

And fine.

Stop it.

Stop it.

So.

I knew it.

So this motherfucker, he would say any murder people

are still alive.

He was definitely going to claim the Jack the Ripper murders

if it had ever been planted in his head.

Hondo.

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.

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 $7,500 for that confession.

And what was he going to 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 going to point

to 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 going to 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 this money you can't spend.

Yeah.

Like, I'm 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.

I hope.

I hope.

Um, what's the first one?

Clara Clara.

Clara, I hope she got it.

And there's also Myrta with Lucy.

That's over in Chicago.

I hope they split it.

I hope it was like the end of The Other Woman

and they all went on vacation together.

Yeah, there you go.

They all went on vacation together.

Yeah, I know.

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 it's over.

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?

Or is today the 7th?

It's the 8th.

Oh.

Okay.

And weird and weird and weird because I have,

in 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 of days before.

Oh, that's weird.

And I literally wrote in my notes like weird.

I'm writing this a couple of days before.

And I was writing this end part yesterday.

On May 7th.

And I didn't even realize that.

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

and the May 7th thing came up

and I was like, oh, shit, tomorrow.

Wow, that's weird.

That's weird.

That's weird.

Tourist season is creepy.

Chillies.

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 Pytzel 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 of 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.

Come on.

Hi for my neck.

It was just a couple of brawns.

It was just a couple of brawns, everybody.

Like, oh my God.

When asked if he had anything to say before he was going to hang.

Oh, 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 and my execution.

I only want to say that the extent of my wrongdoings

and 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 Pytzel family,

the three children or father, Benjamin F. Pytzel,

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 is all.

I would have been like, that is all.

Nope, wrong.

That's all.

He Miranda Priest lead 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 open, he dropped five feet.

Oops, that was supposed to break his neck.

Did not do that.

Karma's a bitch.

Adam Seltzer writes,

there were contortions for a minute.

The body spun, the legs swaying

as though he was trying to break the rope.

The fingers opened and closed,

two spectators fainted.

After a few minutes, the body settled.

Shit.

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 room 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.

What 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 fucking up.

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 in there.

Fucking asshole.

And they had to do it.

I can't believe he was buried in a fucking church cemetery.

Yeah.

I'd be like, he's the actual devil.

Yeah.

Before he was executed,

Kerry Pytcell's lawyer, Thomas Fahey, I think it is,

he thought that when he died that he would leave a portion

of his assets to the Pytcell family

because he was like, I thought he was going to 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 for somebody.

Well, I'm like, Thomas, you ever play craps?

Because I don't know if you'd be great.

Thomas?

I don't think you should.

You ever play craps?

You shouldn't enter a casino, Thomas.

Don't.

A betting man you are not.

Well, I'm feeling lucky today.

Yeah.

So once his body was placed in the vaults,

the 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. Pytcell.

I fear now that 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 Pytcell family.

Why didn't he leave the money to her?

Yeah, exactly.

So he fraud it or 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 fade it 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 it's, I mean, it's all very convoluted

and you don't know what's going on here.

But I exactly know.

It was probably a lot of factors involved in here.

And that's why I say, you know what, Georgiana?

Bye.

Yeah.

Go live the rest of the life.

See you never.

Just bye.

Go exist.

Right.

Murda, Murda 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 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 Mudgeit.

I love it.

We got like Clara Mudgeit.

Murda Holmes.

We have Murda Holmes.

And Georgiana Yoke.

Yeah.

And then Georgiana didn't get it.

So Clara Mudgeit actually was able to avoid actually

speaking to the press or anything 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.

Yeah.

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, right.

I feel like we can, though.

I feel like we can.

Probably.

I feel like it's going to come.

We're going to hit more.

I feel like we don't know the extent of what he's done.

I could see that happening.

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 its due diligence,

I think we could learn more.

Probably.

But in August of 1896, way back then, the murder castle

mysteriously caught fire again and it burned to the ground.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's gone.

And I think now there's like a post office on its where it was.

Should have been like a park there or something.

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 what?

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,

yeah, just be like a fun little like look back on it

to see if anybody has any things about it.

But that is the tale of H.H. Holmes, Herman Webster Mudgett.

And now, good job.

I'm going to sleep.

Nighty night.

Good night.

See you.

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 kids.

Poor all of them.

It's just really sad.

Pearl.

Yeah.

Feel bad for Carrie.

Feel bad for everybody.

But that fucker is gone now.

I know.

I wonder what ever happened to Carrie.

Yeah.

I know.

Couldn't find anything.

She probably just she was probably

getting me the hell out of here.

Oh, God.

But wow.

That was terrible.

In conclusion, he is not Jack the Ripper.

That's wild.

Yeah.

So you guys have been wanting that one for five years,

I'd say.

And I've been waiting for the time.

I just knew it was going to be a real deep dive.

So I wanted to give it the time it required.

Yeah.

He was from New Hampshire, right?

Yeah.

My next case that is occurring is also in New Hampshire.

Wow.

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 that.

Our city was like, mm, that's true.

That's true.

I just felt like that he had his feet on my ground.

But Anne, it was also our city who was like, mm,

that sounds great to arrest him.

I'm so I'm like, bully down with that.

Well, like, let's do it right.

But you're going to have to get me another warrant

so I can keep that fucker so we can extradite his ass.

Boston strong, baby.

Just saying Boston was like, do your job, OK?

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 going to revisit it again with some other case.

She says probably, but she means definitely.

Forever.

Forever.

Jesse and the Rippers.

Yeah.

Whoa.

All circle.

Bye bye.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.