Depraved Page 8

  If Nannie had come to Chicago harboring doubts about Holmes, they soon disappeared, melted away by the force of his radiant charm. Within days of her arrival, she was already referring to him as “Brother Harry.”

  On July 3, 1893, Brother Harry took his “girls” to the fair.

  Though Minnie had already attended the Exposition with Holmes a few weeks before, she was giddy with excitement as she made her way around the White City again. Nannie, like virtually all first-time visitors, seemed overwhelmed by its sheer size and spectacle.

  The trio spent a delightful day at the Exposition, squeezing in as many experiences as time would allow. They strolled along the spacious esplanades of the Court of Honor; wound their way through the seemingly endless galleries of the Art Palace; floated in a gondola along sparkling canals; marveled at the world’s largest gold nugget and the life-size statue of Lot’s wife, carved from an enormous block of salt; rode the Ferris wheel; visited the aquarium; viewed Thomas Edison’s Tower of Light; dined on Bavarian cuisine; and in the evening watched a spectacular fireworks display from the roof of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building.

  The next morning, at Holmes’s prompting, Nannie wrote a letter to her uncle in Jackson, describing her trip to the fair and apprising him of another, even grander adventure upon which she was about to embark. “Sister, Brother Harry, and myself will go to Milwaukee,” she wrote, “and will go to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, by way of the St. Lawrence River. We’ll visit two weeks in Maine, then on to New York. Brother Harry thinks I am talented. He wants me to look around about studying art. Then we will sail for Germany by way of London and Paris. If I like it, I will stay and study art. Brother Harry says you need never trouble any more about me, financially or otherwise. He and sister will see to me.”

  Later that same day, Holmes proposed to Minnie that she remain behind at the flat, attending to some pressing household chores. Meanwhile, he would take Nannie—who had yet to set foot inside the Castle—over to Sixty-third and Wallace and give her a guided tour of his building.

  After the fairyland splendors of the Exposition, Holmes’s Castle must have appeared drab, even a bit dingy, to Nannie. Just three years after its construction, the building already gave off a vague air of decay.

  Still, it was a substantial piece of property. Clearly, her brother-in-law-to-be had done well for himself.

  That afternoon, Holmes’s Castle would have seemed utterly lifeless and abandoned—the ground-floor shops closed for the holiday, the upstairs rooms vacant while their tenants were off at the fair, reveling in the July Fourth festivities. By the time Holmes finished leading Nannie around the dim, labyrinthine passageways, she must have felt slightly disoriented.

  As they got ready to leave, Holmes paused abruptly, as though struck by a sudden realization. He needed to fetch something from his vault, he explained—an important business document that he kept stored inside a safe-deposit box. It would only take a moment.

  Grasping Nannie by the hand, he led her toward the vault.

  A short time later, Holmes reappeared at the flat. Nannie was not with him. He told Minnie that he had decided to treat both his girls to dinner at a restaurant on Stewart Avenue. Nannie was waiting at the Castle. They would pick her up on the way.

  Minnie hurriedly changed her clothing, chattering excitedly all the while about their impending trip to Europe.

  When she was ready, Holmes offered her his arm. Then he led her away to join her sister.

  13

  In the remarkable character of his achievements as an assassin we are apt to lose sight of Holmes’ singular skill and daring as a bigamist.

  —H. B. Irving, A Book of Remarkable Criminals

  (1918)

  H.H. Holmes was in love.

  He had met Georgiana Yoke in March 1893, but during the months of his involvement with the Williams sisters, he’d been unable to pay her anything more than an occasional visit. As soon as Minnie and Nannie disappeared from his life, however, he began to pay her serious court.

  A petite, twenty-three-year-old blonde, Georgiana was not conventionally pretty. She had a sharp nose and chin, and her blue eyes were so large that a few of her cattier acquaintances described them as “disfiguring.” But a lively intelligence shone in those eyes, and the gaiety of her smile seemed to radiate from some deep core of well-being. She was one of those women whose vibrancy invests them with so much charm that even their imperfections seem appealing.

  For a strictly raised young lady from a small Midwestern town, Georgiana possessed a bold and adventurous spirit. She had moved from her family home in Franklin, Indiana, two years earlier, determined to experience the glamour of the great metropolis before settling down to marriage. She was working as a salesgirl at Schlesinger & Meyer’s department store when Holmes first saw her.

  Little is known about their courtship, though it evidently proceeded at a rapid pace. Holmes was fervent in pursuit; she was beguiled by his ardor, smooth manners, and charm. A physiognomist, noting the dimension of her eyes, would have ascribed a high degree of perceptiveness to Georgiana—and for the most part his assessment would have been correct. But even so discerning a woman as she failed to see through Holmes’s attractive facade.

  By early fall, they were already engaged. Like all lovers, the two spent many tender moments together, learning all about each other’s lives. In Holmes’s case, of course, virtually everything he told Georgiana was a lie. Both his parents, he claimed, were dead—his mother of some unspecified disease, his father of a foot injury that had developed into lockjaw. His siblings, too, had all passed away at an early age, leaving Holmes “the last of his race.”

  His closest relative was his mother’s brother, a childless bachelor named Henry Mansfield Howard, who had a special fondness for his one surviving nephew. He had promised to bequeath Holmes all his property, but only on one condition—that Holmes assume the name of his uncle, who (as Holmes put it) “had no son of his own to perpetuate the family appellation.”

  Georgiana seems to have accepted this story unquestioningly. She could never have guessed the actual reason for the elaborate lie—that her betrothed thought it best to commit polygamy under a new identity. As H. H. Holmes, he was already married to Myrta Belknap of Wilmette, while under his real name, Herman Mudgett, he was still legally wed to Clara Lovering of Tilton, New Hampshire.

  The wedding was set for the winter. In the meantime, Holmes told Georgiana, he had some out-of-town business to attend to.

  With his enemies closing in on him, the Castle had become not a stronghold but a trap. By the time of his engagement, Holmes was already plotting his escape. The building and all its contents would have to be abandoned.

  But Holmes was not the sort of man to let so much valuable property go to waste. He was possessed of a monstrous audacity. Even as the victims of his financial deceit were uniting against him, he was busily contriving still another fraud.

  Sometime close to midnight on a crisp Saturday in October—just a few weeks after Georgiana Yoke accepted Holmes’s proposal of marriage—the top floor of the Castle burst into flames. Holmes was not present at the time, having left his confederate Pat Quinlan alone in the building with explicit directions, a bucket of coal oil, and a box of friction matches. By the time the fire company arrived and extinguished the blaze, the entire third floor had been destroyed, though the damage to the second story was minimal and the ground-level shops were essentially unharmed.

  Holmes—who had taken out close to $25,000 worth of fire insurance with four separate companies—immediately tried to collect on his policies. An investigator named F. G. Cowie, however, had gotten wind of Holmes’s increasingly dubious reputation. Inspecting the premises, he uncovered highly suspicious evidence, including signs that the fire had sprung up simultaneously in several different places—a strong indication that it had been deliberately set. For unexplained reasons, Holmes escaped criminal charges, though his claims were, of course, rejected. />
  But Holmes knew of more than one way to bilk an insurance company. Disappointed but undeterred, he immediately inaugurated another swindle. The plan he had in mind—considerably more complicated than his arson fraud—required a willing and trustworthy accomplice.

  In his faithful lackey, Benjamin Pitezel, he had the perfect stooge.

  Long before he decided to set his new plan into motion, Holmes had laid out its details to Pitezel. A large insurance policy would be taken out on Pitezel’s life. After allowing a few months to pass, the two men would stage a violent accident. Pitezel would go into hiding while a badly disfigured corpse was substituted in his place and identified as his remains. The insurance company would make good on its policy and the two men would split the proceeds.

  The plan was simple in concept but a good deal trickier to pull off. Among other things, its success depended on the acquisition of a substitute cadaver. But Holmes—who had long experience in such matters—insisted that he would have no trouble in that regard.

  Indeed, he already knew exactly how and where to obtain the perfect corpse for his purposes. But this was a detail that he thought it prudent not to share with his accomplice.

  And so the scheme was launched. On November 9, 1893, the Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, insured Benjamin F. Pitezel’s life in the sum of $10,000.

  Holmes’s efforts to burn down his Castle finally lit a match under his creditors. In mid-November several dozen of them banded together and retained a lawyer, who presented Holmes with an ultimatum. If Holmes did not immediately come up with nearly $50,000 to settle his accounts, a warrant would be sworn out for his arrest.

  The bill Holmes had been running up for over five years had finally come due. But of course, he had no intention of paying it.

  On November 22, a physician named E. H. Robinson ran into Holmes on Van Buren Street and engaged him in a brief conversation. That same day, Pitezel dropped by a local jewelry shop and chatted with its owner.

  It was the last time either Holmes or his minion was seen in Englewood.

  From tune to time over the next year, Holmes would show up in the Chicago area for a brief visit with his wife, Myrta, and their young daughter, Lucy.

  Pitezel would never return again.

  Blood

  Money

  14

  It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.

  —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  Given his educational background, it is not surprising that Dr. Holmes was a highly literate man who appreciated good writing and possessed his own facile skill with a pen. Like millions of Americans, he relished the books of Mark Twain and bore a special affection for the character of Colonel Beriah Sellers, the grandiose schemer of The Gilded Age. Though he could chuckle at Sellers’s extravagances, Holmes nevertheless seemed to identify with Twain’s creation, referring to him fondly on various occasions. In the wildly enterprising Sellers—symbol of the get-rich-quick spirit of the day—Holmes evidently perceived a kindred soul.

  In the months following his flight from Chicago, however, Holmes’s real kinship seemed to be not with Colonel Sellers but with another of Twain’s characters. Moving from state to state, working increasingly desperate frauds, he and Pitezel seemed like citified versions of the Duke and Dauphin—those small-time scalawags from Huckleberry Finn, who rove around the countryside, fleecing yokels, “skinning” orphans, and staying just one step ahead of the law.

  Sometime late in January 1894, the two of them showed up in Texas. By then, Holmes had acquired another wife. On January 9, under the name of Henry Mansfield Howard, he had married Georgiana Yoke in Denver, Colorado, the Reverend Mr. Wilcox officiating.

  Nearly a year would pass before Georgiana was forced to confront the bitter truth about Holmes. Until then, she persisted in seeing him as a prosperous businessman whose interests required him to travel throughout the United States. When Holmes proposed that they combine business with pleasure by honeymooning down in Texas, Georgiana—who took tremendous pride in her new husband’s success, as well as in her own role as helpmeet—agreed without hesitation.

  Shortly thereafter, Holmes and his bride arrived in Fort Worth, accompanied by Benjamin Pitezel.

  As far as Georgiana knew, Holmes had come to Texas to take possession of a valuable ranch bequeathed to him by his Denver uncle. In reality, he and Pitezel were there to milk as much money as possible from the property Holmes had finagled from his former mistress Minnie Williams.

  Given his larcenous intentions, Holmes considered it prudent to adopt yet another identity. Checking into the fanciest hotel in Fort Worth, he registered himself and Georgiana as Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Pratt. Pitezel took the adjoining room under the name Benton T. Lyman. When Georgiana asked the reason for the ruse, her husband had a ready explanation.

  Through business associates in Fort Worth, he had learned that a group of squatters had taken possession of his uncle’s unoccupied ranch. Holmes was now faced with the unwelcome task of evicting them. Though squatters’ rights received more serious recognition in the South than elsewhere, Holmes had no doubt that his efforts to reclaim his lawful property would ultimately succeed. Still, certain precautions were necessary. He was dealing with desperate men—and down here in Texas, a bullet was still a traditional means for settling such disputes. As a result, Holmes thought it best to proceed under the protective cloak of an alias.

  Georgiana seems to have swallowed this story without blinking—as she would a hundred other lies her husband would feed her over the course of the next ten months. She was not an especially gullible woman, and her readiness to accept Holmes’s most brazen fabrications says a great deal not only about his smooth plausibility but about the self-deluding nature of love.

  Posing as Pratt and Lyman—two wealthy Northerners who had decided to resettle in Fort Worth—Holmes and Pitezel set about fleecing a score of local bankers and businessmen. Minnie Williams’s property consisted of a large, vacant lot on the corner of Second and Russell streets, not far from the Tarrant County courthouse. Employing the scam that had succeeded so well in Chicago, Holmes commenced construction of an imposing three-story office building on the site, acquiring materials and furnishings on credit, issuing fraudulent notes for the labor, and using the deed as collateral for a string of substantial loans.

  By the end of two months, the pair had managed to defraud an assortment of creditors—including a prominent attorney named Sidney L. Samuels and the Fanners and Mechanics’ National Bank—out of more than $20,000.

  Another embezzler, having made such a killing, might have taken the money and run. But it was in Fort Worth that a certain foolhardiness began to surface in Holmes. Like other psychopaths, he had always possessed a craving for risk and a brazen disregard of danger. Now, his characteristic audacity was turning into sheer, self-defeating recklessness. He began to commit serious mistakes.

  Sometime in March, by means that remain obscure, he and his partner managed to purloin a freight-car load of blooded horses, which they shipped off to Chicago. This time, their larceny was discovered. Holmes and Pitezel found themselves facing a charge that Texans did not take lightly—horse theft.

  With the law only a step behind, the pair—with Georgiana in tow—fled Fort Worth in the middle of the night. How Holmes explained this abrupt, nocturnal departure to his new bride is a matter of conjecture.

  Her devotion to him never wavered—not even in St. Louis, where her faith in his fundamental rectitude was truly put to the test.

  In the six months following their flight from Fort Worth, Holmes and Pitezel remained constantly on the move, gradually migrating eastward by way of major cities: Denver, St. Louis, Memphis, Philadelphia, New York. By then, they had resolved to put their life-insurance scam into effect and were searching for the most convenient place to stage it. Along the way, they took whatever opportu
nities they could find to work the occasional fraud.

  In St. Louis, Holmes’s increasingly careless behavior finally caught up with him. There, he found himself in an unwonted situation—one that he had managed to avoid during all the years of his varied criminal career.

  He landed in jail.

  It happened in July. Settled briefly in St. Louis, Holmes—still going by the name of H. M. Howard—took advantage of the time by attempting one of his favorite swindles.

  First, he located a tidy little pharmacy whose owner was eager to sell. Holmes purchased the store for a modest down payment, promising to come up with the balance in one month. As soon as the place was in his possession, he stocked it with supplies acquired on credit from the Merrill Drug Company.

  Holmes then immediately turned around, sold off the entire inventory, and made out a phony bill of sale for the store itself to a fictitious party named Brown. When his creditors attempted to collect their money, Holmes coolly explained that the store no longer belonged to him and recommended that they get in touch with its new owner, Brown.

  Apparently, Holmes believed that he could effect a leisurely escape from the city while his creditors blustered and threatened. If so, he made a serious miscalculation. On July 19, 1894, the Merrill Drug Company filed a charge with the St. Louis police, and Holmes was arrested and jailed for fraud.

  Ten days later, Georgiana bailed him out. Holmes must have offered a convincing explanation for his arrest, since she seems to have regarded it as a gross miscarriage of justice.

  As for Holmes, he saw the whole experience as a happy twist of fate. Something had happened to him in jail that struck him as wonderfully fortuitous.