In this classic column (Did Dr. Henry Holmes kill 200 people at a bizarre “castle” in 1890s Chicago?), Cecil mentioned Holmes was caught because he didn’t get rid of Pitezel’s body; yet according to Crime Library, the body was supposed to be found. (For the $10,000 insurance jackpot.)
The insurance company hired Pinkerton only because Marion Hedgepeth engaged in a little tattle-tale about the scam. It’s true that, once Marion sang about the plan, they thought the body might be Pietzel’s (and not some random cadaver–which, by the way, makes an excellent band name), but no article that I’ve read thus far has indicated that they were suspicious beforehand.
So yeah, it’s technically true that if Holmes had gotten rid of the body, he probably wouldn’t have been caught that time, but that’s just glossing over the details. And, you know, it effectively negates the insurance fraud scheme. (Besides, why not go a bit further and suggest that if he didn’t want to get caught, he probably shouldn’t have killed in the first place. And really, to a serial killer, what fun is that kind of ganglion gobbledygook?)
While the story told on Crime Library/Court TV is entertaining, I notice that it was written by Connie Fillippelli, who the site says “… is a graduate student in Columbia College’s Fiction Writing Program.” I am in NO WAY implying that she didn’t do a good job of research, as witnessed by the cites in her bibliography, merely noting that she kinda fleshed out the article with dialogue and who knows what else.
It would be interesting to read some of the books upon which she drew much of her research.
Oh, true. In many of it’s articles, I’ve found that Crime Library’s authors tend to throw in some personal views and overly-dramatic writing when they should be just straight-up reporting the known facts (which probably doesn’t make them the best cite for me to challenge a Straight Dope column; just one of the easiest and most readily available through a click of a mouse) but it still seems to me that Cecil either got it wrong at the end of his article, or just summarized rather sloppily.
Assuming, as you say, that Ms. Fillipelli created the dialogue (an assumption with which I am not uncomfortable), that doesn’t mean she created a false downfall for Holmes. In fact, The Crime Web also asserts the insurance fraud notion.
H.H. Holmes, the film also agrees with the other two cites, but I’m not relying on it for factual information. I’m posting it because it has better pictures of the people and places involved than the other web sites.
Hmm. With the insurance fraud scheme, the actual fraud being not the wrong body but committing a murder. Cecil does seem to omit the whole insurance fraud situation.
The two sites have somewhat different renditions of the timeline, and of Hedgepeth’s role.
This just astonishes me:
How the hell did he manage to pull that off and nobody notice? I can see in a day without credit cards there would be less to connect people to his hotel, but still a guy produces bodies for medical schools (and occassionally articulated skeletons) and nobody bothers to check him out? And this:
Now assuming that he did kill a hundred or more people like some of the articles say, my guess (without having actually read any of the books) is that he was ridding the world of both poor people (because who cares about them, eh?) and people coming from out of town.
The out-of-towners probably hadn’t written home yet (or if they had, the mail was somewhat slower those days–although not by much, I’m sure :)), so their families (assuming they had any) might not have gotten word of their arrival for a week or two. And there’s no guarantee that she/he had mentioned a new job (might not have had one yet), or even if she/he did, if that job was with Holmes. In which case, and in that time, Holmes could have killed the person and sent the body on without the family being the wiser.
As for the medical schools checking him out: they might have assumed that he was just robbing graves like some other cadaver-producers out there. At any rate, it wasn’t like the medical schools were as well-regulated as they are now.
Do a search on “grave robbing” and “19th century” Google-style and you’ll find that a lot of papers point out that even medical students dabbled in a bit of cemetary five-finger discount. (And two feet, a nose, a coupla eyes, etc…)
So, if they checked him out as a routine process, then they would have had to check everyone else out, too. And I think that their demand for cadavers were enough to quell most suspicions.
That said, I’m coming up with this crap from both the top of my head and some cursory Googling. So, if others want to contradict me, clarify some points or just point and laugh at my nescience, please feel free to do so.
Many of Holmes’ murders took place during the great Colombian Exposition in Chicago. It was a giant “World’s Fair” event, commemorating the 400th anniversery of Colombus’ discovery of the New World.
Millions of people poured into Chicago, & anybody who had spare rooms to let could pick up a bundle of loot. Holmes tortured, murdered & robbed his guests, then either sold their articulated skeletons to medical colleges, or destroyed them in his private crematory, or his acid baths.
Please remember–this was the 19th Century. Police Science was new, rare, & virtually unheard-of beyond the East Coast. And communications technology was so crude that it was virtually impossible to find any missing person, under any circumstances.
Well, if 50 or so people from out of town disappeared in less than a year, an in a relatively small area of Chicago, I don’t think the police would automatically write it off, even in that day and age. Just my two cents worth.
And, how were they to know that all the people disappeared in a relatively small part of the city?
Nobody but Holmes knew they were staying with him.
There was no telephone service to “phone home & let them know we got in safe”.
In a flood of millions of visitors, 50 or 100 “gone missing” wasn’t too unusual for the era, especially when you consider that bankrupts would “skip” out on their creditors, & start a new life under a new name. Very popular choice, then.
In many places, divorce was either illegal or regarded as shameful. So people just “disappeared” instead.
And there was no attempt to coalate information by the police, back then. That falls under the heading of “police science”. Most cops were just mopes in uniform with clubs. The prerequisite for being a detective in the 19th century was literacy. And good hand-to-hand skills. That’s it.
And Holmes had been caught in various frauds & swindles many times before, but no cops were ever called. Partly because of the mistrust for the police that many immigrants felt (& still feel), & partly because of the local corruption problems.
No–if Holmes hadn’t gotten greedy in his scams, he might have gone on for years longer.
I’m loath to mention it since I haven’t read it, but The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson deals with this whole Columbian Exposition/serial murderer thing.
