Castle Murders
His victims, killed over a period of years and not for money alone, must be numerous and preferably female, and he must do unusual things with their bodies; he must inhabit a gloomy, forbidding dwelling, and he should be of a scientific bent. The master of the murder castle possessed all these qualifications and more. Magnificent swindler, petty cheat, mass murderer, he was a man of nimble, tortuous mind. He pyramided fraud upon fraud. Young, good-looking, glib, he mesmerized business men and captivated and seduced pretty young women, at least two of whom he married bigamously.
Physician, student of hypnotism, dabbler in the occult, gentleman of fashion, devious liar, skillful manipulator of amazingly complex enterprises, he died on the gallows when he was thirty-five, his crimes exposed accidentally by the vengeful suspicions of that most despised figure in crime, the police informer.
O n September 4, , a caller, thinking it strange that the door to the little office at Callowhill Street in Philadelphia should be locked, enlisted the aid of Policeman George Lewis of the Eighth District; he forced the door and found the body of a man who apparently had been the victim of an explosion.
H. H. Holmes
Burns disfigured the face and left arm. Near by lay a pipe, several matches, and a broken bottle which apparently had contained some inflammable fluid similar to benzine. Though decomposition and fire made positive identification difficult, the dead man apparently was B. Perry, the tenant of the office. In his pockets were letters, presumably from his wife, though the bottom portions, including the signatures, had been torn away; they indicated that Perry had come to Philadelphia recently from St. Louis and that his wife was still there but expected to join him shortly.
Neighbors knew him only as that new inventor fellow; they thought he had been conducting experiments of some sort, but nobody had heard an explosion in his office during the past few days. And that was that. Louis claiming that B. Perry was Benjamin F. Pitzel, whose life was insured by the company.
To Philadelphia came a pair of professional men representing the widow: Holmes, her friend, and Jephtha Howe, her attorney. Pitzel had been too ill to come in person to establish identification. The body was exhumed. Holmes identified it calmly, Alice fearfully.
6: Holmes "Murder Castle" - Holmes "Murder Castle" | HowStuffWorks
It was removed to another cemetery. Presently Fidelity received a letter from Mrs. Pitzel expressing her gratitude that the claim had been paid so promptly; it was said that the company used the letter for promotion purposes. And there the matter might have ended had it not been for one of those amazing indiscretions which even the most accomplished of criminals commit. Brooding in a St.
Louis jail was a notorious train robber, Marion Hedgepath, alias Hedspeth. Nearly two months after the finding of the body in Callowhill Street, Hedgepath sent a note to Police Chief Larry Harrigan offering to disclose details of a plot to defraud a Philadelphia life insurance company. He hinted at murder.
Howard planned to insure the life of B. Howard said he had perpetrated similar frauds at other times. Presently Howard was released from the jail, where he had been held briefly as a swindler. The plot progressed beautifully until Howard refused to permit Mrs.
Pitzel to go to Philadelphia to identify the body. Attorney Howe suspected, too late, that Howard had double-crossed Pitzel and had actually murdered him instead of substituting a body. After the insurance was paid, Hedgepath said, Howard left Mrs. At any rate, Chief Harrigan communicated with the Fidelity company, which called in the police and the Pinkerton private detectives. The prison rooms had rudimentary alarm buzzers to alert him if anyone tried to escape. The basement of the dwelling reads like a horror movie.
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Investigators found a surgical table in a room spattered with blood. There were jars of poison and boxes of bones.
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Holmes had his own crematorium, vats of acid and two lime pits that could dissolve a body in a matter of hours. Chutes from the prison rooms slid bodies directly to the basement. In a stroke of luck, Holmes was arrested eventually for an insurance fraud scheme. The murders were revealed when police conducted a search of the castle.
He was hung for his crimes but never showed any remorse. He claimed to be possessed by the devil.