little pepper I may want some day. I would send the dirty clothes, but
they were taken to dry. Tell Mama NOT TO OPEN the little bundle I gave
her the other day, but to keep it just as she received it. With many
kisses to you all. Good night!--From your affectionate
"FATHER."
"P.S.--My tongue troubles me yet very much, and I must have bitten it
in my distress the other night; it is painful and swollen, affecting my
speech. Had Mama better send for Nancy? I think so; or Aunt Amelia."
"Couple of coloured neck handkerchiefs, one Madras."
This letter, which shows an anxiety about his personal comfort singular
in one so tragically situated, passed through the hands of the keeper
of the jail. He was struck by the words underlined, "NOT TO OPEN,"
in regard to the small bundle confided to Mrs. Webster. He called the
attention of the police to this phrase. They sent immediately an officer
armed with a search warrant to the Professor's house. He received from
Mrs. Webster among other papers a package which, on being opened,
was found to contain the two notes given by Webster to Parkman as
acknowledgments of his indebtedness to him in 1842 and 1847, and a paper
showing the amount of his debts to Parkman in 1847. There were daubs and
erasures made across these documents, and across one was written twice
over the word "paid." All these evidences of payments and cancellations
appeared on examination to be in the handwriting of the Professor.
After an inquest lasting nine days the coroner's jury declared the
remains found in the college to be those of Dr. George Parkman, and that
the deceased had met his death at the hands of Professor J. W. Webster.
The prisoner waived his right to a magisterial investigation, and on
January 26, 1850, the Grand Jury returned a true bill. But it was not
until March 17 that the Professor's trial opened before the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts. The proceedings were conducted with that
dignity and propriety which we look for in the courts of that State.
The principal features in the defence were an attempt to impugn the
testimony of the janitor Littlefield, and to question the possibility
of the identification of the remains of Parkman's teeth. There was a
further attempt to prove that the deceased had been seen by a number
of persons in the streets of Boston on the Friday afternoon, after his
visit to the Medical College. The witness Littlefield was unshaken by a
severe cross-examination. The very reluctance with which Dr. Keep
gave his fatal evidence, and the support given to his conclusions
by distinguished testimony told strongly in favour of the absolute
trustworthiness of his statements. The evidence called to prove that
the murdered man had been seen alive late on Friday afternoon was highly
inconclusive.
Contrary to the advice of his counsel, Webster addressed the jury
himself. He complained of the conduct of his case, and enumerated
various points that his counsel had omitted to make, which he conceived
to be in his favour. The value of his statements may be judged by the
fact that he called God to witness that he had not written any one of
the anonymous letters, purporting to give a true account of the doctor's
fate, which had been received by the police at the time of Parkman's
disappearance. After his condemnation Webster confessed to the
authorship of at least one of them.
The jury retired at eight o'clock on the eleventh day of the trial. They
would seem to have approached their duty in a most solemn and devout
spirit, and it was with the greatest reluctance and after some searching
of heart that they brought themselves to find the prisoner guilty of
wilful murder. On hearing their verdict, the Professor sank into a seat,
and, dropping his head, rubbed his eyes behind his spectacles as if
wiping away tears. On the following morning the Chief Justice sentenced
him to death after a well-meaning speech of quite unnecessary length and
elaboration, at the conclusion of which the condemned man wept freely.
A petition for a writ of error having been dismissed, the Professor in
July addressed a petition for clemency to the Council of the State. Dr.
Putnam, who had been attending Webster in the jail, read to the Council
a confession which he had persuaded the prisoner to make. According to
this statement Webster had, on the Friday afternoon, struck Parkman on
the head with a heavy wooden stick in a wild moment of rage, induced by
the violent taunts and threats of his creditor. Appalled by his deed,
he had in panic locked himself in his room, and proceeded with desperate
haste to dismember the body; he had placed it for that purpose in the
sink in his back room, through which was running a constant stream of
water that carried away the blood. Some portions of the body he had
burnt in the furnace; those in the lavatory and the tea-chest he had
concealed there, until he should have had an opportunity of getting rid
of them.
In this statement Professor Webster denied all premeditation. Dr. Putnam
asked him solemnly whether he had not, immediately before the crime,
meditated at any time on the advantages that would accrue to him
from Parkman's death. Webster replied "Never, before God!" He had, he
protested, no idea of doing Parkman an injury until the bitter tongue
of the latter provoked him. "I am irritable and violent," he said, "a
quickness and brief violence of temper has been the besetting sin of my
life. I was an only child, much indulged, and I have never secured the
control over my passions that I ought to have acquired early; and the
consequence is--all this!" He denied having told Parkman that he was
going to settle with him that afternoon, and said that he had asked him
to come to the college with the sole object of pleading with him for
further indulgence. He explained his convulsive seizure at the time
of his arrest by his having taken a dose of strychnine, which he had
carried in his pocket since the crime. In spite of these statements and
the prayers of the unfortunate man's wife and daughters, who, until his
confession to Dr. Putnam, had believed implicity in his innocence, the
Council decided that the law must take its course, and fixed August 30
as the day of execution.
The Professor resigned himself to his fate. He sent for Littlefield and
his wife, and expressed his regret for any injustice he had done them:
"All you said was true. You have misrepresented nothing." Asked by the
sheriff whether he was to understand from some of his expressions that
he contemplated an attempt at suicide, "Why should I?" he replied,
"all the proceedings in my case have been just... and it is just that
I should die upon the scaffold in accordance with that sentence."
"Everybody is right," he said to the keeper of the jail, "and I am
wrong. And I feel that, if the yielding up of my life to the injured
law will atone, even in part, for the crime I have committed, that is a
consolation."
In a letter to the Reverend Francis Parkman he expressed deep contrition
for his guilt. He added one sentence which may perhaps fairly express
the measure of premeditation that accompanied his crime. "I had never,"
he wrote, "until the two or three last interviews with your brother,
felt towards him anything but gratitude for his many acts of kindness
and friendship."
Professor Webster met his death with fortitude and resignation. That he
deserved his fate few will be inclined to deny. The attempt to procure
blood, the questions about the dissecting-room vault, the appointment
made with Parkman at the college, the statement to Pettee, all point to
some degree of premeditation, or at least would make it appear that the
murder of Parkman had been considered by him as a possible eventuality.
His accusation of Littlefield deprives him of a good deal of sympathy.
On the other hand, the age and position of Webster, the aggravating
persistency of Parkman, his threats and denunciations, coupled with his
own shortness of temper, make it conceivable that he may have killed his
victim on a sudden and overmastering provocation, in which case he had
better at once have acknowledged his crime instead of making a repulsive
attempt to conceal it. But for the evidence of Dr. Keep he would
possibly have escaped punishment altogether. Save for the portions
of his false teeth, there was not sufficient evidence to identify the
remains found in the college as those of Parkman. Without these teeth
the proof of the corpus delicti would have been incomplete, and so
afforded Webster a fair chance of acquittal.
The Mysterious Mr. Holmes
"The Holmes-Pitezel Case," by F. B. Geyer, 1896; "Holmes' Own Story,"
Philadelphia, 1895; and "Celebrated Criminal Cases of America," by T. S.
Duke, San Francisco, are the authorities for this account of the case.
I
HONOUR AMONGST THIEVES
In the year 1894 Mr. Smith, a carpenter, of Philadelphia, had patented a
new saw-set. Wishing to make some money out of his invention, Mr. Smith
was attracted by the sign:
B. F. PERRY
PATENTS BOUGHT AND SOLD
which he saw stretched across the window of a two-storied house, 1,316
Callowhill Street. He entered the house and made the acquaintance of Mr.
Perry, a tall, dark, bony man, to whom he explained the merits of his
invention. Perry listened with interest, and asked for a model. In the
meantime he suggested that Smith should do some carpenter's work for him
in the house. Smith agreed, and on August 22, while at work there saw a
man enter the house and go up with Perry to a room on the second story.
A few days later Smith called at Callowhill Street to ask Perry about
the sale of the patent. He waited half an hour in the shop below, called
out to Perry who, he thought, might be in the rooms above, received no
answer and went away. Next day, September 4, Smith returned, found the
place just as he had left it the day before; called Perry again, but
again got no answer. Surprised, he went upstairs, and in the back room
of the second story the morning sunshine, streaming through the window,
showed him the dead body of a man, his face charred beyond recognition,
lying with his feet to the window and his head to the door. There was
evidence of some sort of explosion: a broken bottle that had contained
an inflammable substance, a broken pipe filled with tobacco, and a burnt
match lay by the side of the body.
The general appearance of the dead man answered to that of B. F. Perry.
A medical examination of the body showed that death had been sudden,
that there had been paralysis of the involuntary muscles, and that the
stomach, besides showing symptoms of alcoholic irritation, emitted a
strong odour of chloroform. An inquest was held, and a verdict returned
that B. F. Perry had died of congestion of the lungs caused by the
inhalation of flame or chloroform. After lying in the mortuary for
eleven days the body was buried.
In the meantime the Philadelphia branch of the Fidelity Mutual Life
Association had received a letter from one Jephtha D. Howe, an attorney
at St. Louis, stating that the deceased B. F. Perry was Benjamin F.
Pitezel of that city, who had been insured in their office for a sum of
ten thousand dollars. The insurance had been effected in Chicago in the
November of 1893. Mr. Howe proposed to come to Philadelphia with some
members of the Pitezel family to identify the remains. Referring to
their Chicago branch, the insurance company found that the only person
who would seem to have known Pitezel when in that city, was a certain
H. H. Holmes, living at Wilmette, Illinois. They got into communication
with Mr. Holmes, and forwarded to him a cutting from a newspaper, which
stated erroneously that the death of B. F. Perry had taken place in
Chicago.
On September 18 they received a letter from Mr. Holmes, in which he
offered what assistance he could toward the identification of B. F.
Perry as B. F. Pitezel. He gave the name of a dentist in Chicago who
would be able to recognise teeth which he had made for Pitezel, and
himself furnished a description of the man, especially of a malformation
of the knee and a warty growth on the back of the neck by which he could
be further identified. Mr. Holmes offered, if his expenses were paid, to
come to Chicago to view the body. Two days later he wrote again saying
that he had seen by other papers that Perry's death had taken place in
Philadelphia and not in Chicago, and that as he had to be in Baltimore
in a day or two, he would run over to Philadelphia and visit the office
of the Fidelity Life Association.
On September 20 the assiduous Mr. Holmes called at the office of the
Association in Philadelphia, inquired anxiously about the nature and
cause of Perry's death, gave again a description of him and, on learning
that Mr. Howe, the attorney from St. Louis, was about to come to
Philadelphia to represent the widow, Mrs. Pitezel, and complete the
identification, said that he would return to give the company any
further help he could in the matter. The following day Mr. Jephtha D.
Howe, attorney of St. Louis, arrived in Philadelphia, accompanied by
Alice Pitezel, a daughter of the deceased. Howe explained that Pitezel
had taken the name of Perry owing to financial difficulties. The company
said that they accepted the fact that Perry and Pitezel were one and the
same man, but were not convinced that the body was Pitezel's body.
The visit of Holmes was mentioned. Howe said that he did not know Mr.
Holmes, but would be willing to meet him. At this moment Holmes arrived
at the office. He was introduced to Howe as a stranger, and recognised
as a friend by Alice Pitezel, a shy, awkward girl of fourteen or fifteen
years of age. It was then arranged that all the parties should meet
again next day to identify, if possible, the body, which had been
disinterred for that purpose.
The unpleasant duty of identifying the rapidly decomposing remains was
greatly curtailed by the readiness of Mr. Holmes. When the party met on
the 22nd at the Potter's Field, where the body had been disinterred and
laid out, the doctor present was unable to find the distinctive marks
which would show Perry and Pitezel to have been the same man. Holmes at
once stepped into the breach, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves,
put on the rubber gloves, and taking a surgeon's knife from his pocket,
cut off the wart at the back of the neck, showed the injury to the
leg, and revealed also a bruised thumbnail which had been another
distinctive mark of Pitezel. The body was then covered up all but
the teeth; the girl Alice was brought in, and she said that the teeth
appeared to be like those of her father. The insurance company declared
themselves satisfied, and handed to Mr. Howe a cheque for 9,175 dollars,
and to Mr. Holmes ten dollars for his expenses. Smith, the carpenter,
had been present at the proceedings at the Potter's Field. For a moment
he thought he detected a likeness in Mr. Holmes to the man who had
visited Perry at Callowhill Street on August 22 and gone upstairs with
him, but he did not feel sure enough of the fact to make any mention of
it.
In the prison at St. Louis there languished in the year 1894 one Marion
Hedgspeth, serving a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment for
an audacious train robbery. On the night of November 30, 1891, the
'Friscow express from St. Louis had been boarded by four ruffians, the
express car blown open with dynamite, and 10,000 dollars carried off.
Hedgspeth and another man were tried for the robbery, and sentenced to
twenty years' imprisonment. On October 9, 1894, Hegspeth{sic} made a
statement to the Governor of the St. Louis prison, which he said he
wished to be communicated to the Fidelity Mutual Life Association. In
the previous July Hedgspeth said that he had met in the prison a man
of the name of H. M. Howard, who was charged with fraud, but had
been released on bail later in the month. While in prison Howard told
Hedgspeth that he had devised a scheme for swindling an insurance
company of 10,000 dollars, and promised Hedgspeth that, if he would
recommend him a lawyer suitable for such an enterprise, he should have
500 dollars as his share of the proceeds. Hedgspeth recommended Jephtha
D. Howe. The latter entered with enthusiasm into the scheme, and told
Hedgspeth that he thought Mr. Howard "one of the smoothest and slickest"
men he had ever known. A corpse was to be found answering to Pitezel's
description, and to be so treated as to appear to have been the victim
of an accidental explosion, while Pitezel himself would disappear to
Germany. From Howe Hedgspeth learnt that the swindle had been carried
out successfully, but he had never received from Howard the 500 dollars
promised him. Consequently, he had but little compunction in divulging
the plot to the authorities.
It was realised at once that H. M. Howard and H. H. Holmes were the same
person, and that Jephtha D. Howe and Mr. Holmes were not the
strangers to each other that they had affected to be when they met
in Philadelphia. Though somewhat doubtful of the truth of Hedgspeth's
statement, the insurance company decided to set Pinkerton's detectives
on the track of Mr. H. H. Holmes. After more than a month's search he
was traced to his father's house at Gilmanton, N. H., and arrested in
Boston on November 17.
Inquiry showed that, early in 1894, Holmes and Pitezel had acquired some
real property at Fort Worth in Texas and commenced building operations,
but had soon after left Texas under a cloud, arising from the theft of a
horse and other dubious transactions.
Holmes had obtained the property at Fort Worth from a Miss Minnie
Williams, and transferred it to Pitezel. Pitezel was a drunken "crook,"
of mean intelligence, a mesmeric subject entirely under the influence of
Holmes, who claimed to have considerable hypnotic powers. Pitezel had a
wife living at St. Louis and five children, three girls--Dessie, Alice,
and Nellie--a boy, Howard, and a baby in arms. At the time of Holmes'
arrest Mrs. Pitezel, with her eldest daughter, Dessie, and her little
baby, was living at a house rented by Holmes at Burlington, Vermont. She
also was arrested on a charge of complicity in the insurance fraud and
brought to Boston.
Two days after his arrest Holmes, who dreaded being sent back to Texas
on a charge of horse-stealing, for which in that State the punishment is
apt to be rough and ready, made a statement to the police, in which he
acknowledged the fraud practised by him and Pitezel on the insurance
company. The body substituted for Pitezel had been obtained, said
Holmes, from a doctor in New York, packed in a trunk and sent to
Philadelphia, but he declined for the present to give the doctor's name.
Pitezel, he said, had gone with three of his children--Alice, Nellie
and Howard--to South America. This fact, however, Holmes had not
communicated to Mrs. Pitezel. When she arrived at Boston, the poor woman
was in great distress of mind. Questioned by the officers, she attempted
to deny any complicity in the fraud, but her real anxiety was to get
news of her husband and her three children. Alice she had not seen since
the girl had gone to Philadelphia to identify the supposed remains of
her father. Shortly after this Holmes had come to Mrs. Pitezel at St.
Louis, and taken away Nellie and Howard to join Alice, who, he said,
was in the care of a widow lady at Ovington, Kentucky. Since then Mrs.
Pitezel had seen nothing of the children or her husband. At Holmes'
direction she had gone to Detroit, Toronto, Ogdensberg and, lastly, to
Burlington in the hope of meeting either Pitezel or the children, but
in vain. She believed that her husband had deserted her; her only desire
was to recover her children.
On November 20 Holmes and Mrs. Pitezel were transferred from Boston
to Philadelphia, and there, along with Benjamin Pitezel and Jephtha
D. Howe, were charged with defrauding the Fidelity Life Association of
10,000 dollars. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia Holmes, who was
never averse to talking, was asked by an inspector of the insurance
company who it was that had helped him to double up the body sent from
New York and pack it into the trunk. He replied that he had done it
alone, having learned the trick when studying medicine in Michigan. The
inspector recollected that the body when removed from Callowhill Street
had been straight and rigid. He asked Holmes what trick he had learnt in
the course of his medical studies by which it was possible to re-stiffen
a body once the rigor mortis had been broken. To this Holmes made no
reply. But he realised his mistake, and a few weeks later volunteered
a second statement. He now said that Pitezel, in a fit of depression,
aggravated by his drinking habits, had committed suicide on the third
story of the house in Callowhill Street. There Holmes had found his
body, carried it down on to the floor below, and arranged it in the
manner agreed upon for deceiving the insurance company. Pitezel, he
said, had taken his life by lying on the floor and allowing chloroform
to run slowly into his mouth through a rubber tube placed on a chair.
The three children, Holmes now stated, had gone to England with a friend
of his, Miss Minnie Williams.
Miss Minnie Williams was the lady, from whom Holmes was said to have
acquired the property in Texas which he and Pitezel had set about
developing. There was quite a tragedy, according to Holmes, connected
with the life of Miss Williams. She had come to Holmes in 1893, as
secretary, at a drug store which he was then keeping in Chicago. Their
relations had become more intimate, and later in the year Miss Williams
wrote to her sister, Nannie, saying that she was going to be married,
and inviting her to the wedding. Nannie arrived, but unfortunately a
violent quarrel broke out between the two sisters, and Holmes came home
to find that Minnie in her rage had killed her sister. He had helped
her out of the trouble by dropping Nannie's body into the Chicago lake.
After such a distressing occurrence Miss Williams was only too glad of
the opportunity of leaving America with the Pitezel children. In the
meantime Holmes, under the name of Bond, and Pitezel, under that of
Lyman, had proceeded to deal with Miss Williams' property in Texas.
For women Holmes would always appear to have possessed some power of
attraction, a power of which he availed himself generously. Holmes,
whose real name was Herman W. Mudgett, was thirty-four years of age
at the time of his arrest. As a boy he had spent his life farming in
Vermont, after which he had taken up medicine and acquired some kind
of medical degree. In the course of his training Holmes and a fellow
student, finding a body that bore a striking resemblance to the latter;
obtained 1,000 dollars from an insurance company by a fraud similar
to that in which Holmes had engaged subsequently with Pitezel. After
spending some time on the staff of a lunatic asylum in Pennsylvania,
Holmes set up as a druggist in Chicago. His affairs in this city
prospered, and he was enabled to erect, at the corner of Wallace and
Sixty-Third Streets, the four-storied building known later as "Holmes
Castle." It was a singular structure. The lower part consisted of a shop
and offices. Holmes occupied the second floor, and had a laboratory on
the third. In his office was a vault, air proof and sound proof. In the
bathroom a trap-door, covered by a rug, opened on to a secret staircase
leading down to the cellar, and a similar staircase connected the cellar
with the laboratory. In the cellar was a large grate. To this building
Miss Minnie Williams had invited her sister to come for her wedding
with Holmes, and it was in this building, according to Holmes, that the
tragedy of Nannie's untimely death occurred.