Pod Insights Infamous America HH HOLMES Ep. 4 | “Deadly Game” About this episode In Philadelphia, Holmes carries out the life insurance scam, but not the way his partner, Benjamin Pitezel, expects. When Holmes runs into unexpected obstacles while trying to collect the life insurance money, he orchestrates a dizzyingly elaborate crosscountry trip involving the Pitezel family. Along the way, Holmes eliminates members of the family one by one.
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Transcript 0:11 Speaker 00 At 10:30 PM on the night of September 2nd, 1894, H.H. Holmes and his wife Georgiana boarded a train in Philadelphia. In the case of Holmes, they were making a quick getaway. In the case of Georgiana, she probably didn't know what was happening. They had been in Philadelphia for only a month before Holmes told her abruptly that his business in the city was done. He had used the story that he was a copy machine salesman, but somewhere in the back of Georgiana's mind, it must have felt strange that they were leaving so soon after arriving, again. Philadelphia was the third city in four months from which they had left with great haste. They had rushed out of Fort Worth, Texas in June.
0:55 Speaker 00 Whether Georgiana knew it or not, they left because Holmes was wanted for horse theft. They had hurried north to St. Louis, where Holmes and his longtime accomplice Benjamin Pitezel set up a variety of scams. But Holmes had been arrested for fraud twice in July, which forced Holmes and Georgiana to head to Philadelphia. It's impossible to know exactly how Holmes explained everything to Georgiana, but he was a masterful liar. Whatever he told her, she believed it. She never thought he was guilty of the things for which he had been arrested or the things he was rumored to have done. At that time, on September 2nd, the rumors did not include any substantial talk of murder, but they would very soon. About 12 hours earlier,
1:40 Speaker 00 Holmes had killed his associate, Ben Pitezel.
1:47 Speaker 00 For years, Holmes and Pitezel had been talking about committing life insurance fraud. The plan was for Pitezel to take out a life insurance policy on himself. Then he and Holmes would fake Pitezel's death. Holmes would dig up a recently buried body from a graveyard and stage a scene which made it look like Ben Pitezel had died an accidental death. Ben Pitezel would go into hiding while Holmes created fake documents and navigated the payout process with the insurance company. They had talked about trying the plan in Chicago, and then Fort Worth, and then St. Louis, but circumstances had forced them to leave those cities so abruptly that they never found a chance.
2:28 Speaker 00 Ben Pitezel had purchased the life insurance policy from Fidelity Mutual Insurance, but they hadn't gone any further than that. Then, in Philadelphia, on the morning of September 2nd, Holmes decided he was going to go through with the plan. But instead of faking Ben Pitezel's death, he killed the man for real. He went to Pitezel's small rented office on Callow Hill Street and probably encouraged Pitezel to drink a lot of alcohol. When Ben passed out, Holmes forced the man to breathe chloroform fumes, which killed him. Holmes used a flammable liquid to create a scene which he hoped would look like Pitezel died in an explosion. Holmes and Georgiana left Philadelphia that night.
3:10 Speaker 00 They headed to her home state of Indiana, where Holmes hoped he could organize the payout of the life insurance money. Two days later, a customer stopped by Pitezel's office and discovered the dead body. Instead of being the beginning of a huge payday for Holmes, it was the beginning of his worst problems. The life insurance policy was for Benjamin Pitezel, but Pitezel had rented his office under the name BF Perry. The name was an alias, and now neither the police nor Fidelity Mutual knew who the dead man was. Fidelity wasn't going to pay the life insurance money until it confirmed the identity of the dead man. Fidelity required a family member to identify the body.
3:54 Speaker 00 That very understandable requirement forced Holmes to embark upon an incredibly complicated and dangerous game. The life insurance fraud had changed. It was no longer about faking Ben Pitezel's death to collect the insurance money. It was about convincing the insurance company that Ben Pitezel's death was accidental rather than murder. And at the same time, Holmes had to convince Ben's wife Carrie that Ben was not dead, that he was alive and in hiding according to the original plan. As the situation grew more complex, the game grew more deadly for the Pitezel family. Eventually, Holmes decided they were more trouble than they were worth.
4:47 Speaker 00 From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling the story of H. H. Holmes, the con artist and murderer whose crimes during the Chicago World's Fair became the stuff of legend. This is episode four, Deadly Game.
5:12 Speaker 00 Unfortunately for Holmes, the curious case of B. F. Perry's death became national news. Before Holmes could travel to St. Louis to set the story straight, news of the alleged explosion reached Pitezel's wife, Carrie. She knew her husband was using the name B. F. Perry in Philadelphia, and she was understandably distraught by the news of his supposed death. But the key, for Holmes, was that she didn't know if it was real. Holmes left his wife Georgiana in Indianapolis and took a train to St. Louis. When he arrived, he went to work convincing Carrie Pitezel that everything had gone according to plan. Her husband was alive and well and hiding in a safe house. Holmes instructed
5:56 Speaker 00 her to follow his lead in order to protect Ben and to keep herself and their children out of trouble. He just needed her to come to Philadelphia and tell a simple lie. She needed to identify the dead body as her husband, and then they could collect the money and they would all be rich. But the shock of the situation had overwhelmed Carrie Pitezel. She had fallen ill and was in no state to travel. Holmes persuaded Carrie to let 15-year-old Alice Pitezel go to Philadelphia for the identification. Before they left, Holmes introduced Carrie Pitezel to a lawyer named Jeptha Howe. Two months earlier, when Holmes had been in jail in St. Louis for mortgage fraud, he had befriended the
6:39 Speaker 00 train robber Marion Hedgepath. Holmes told Hedgepath about his plan to commit life insurance fraud. Holmes knew he would need a shady lawyer in order to succeed, and Hedgepath had recommended Jeptha Howe. Now, Jeptha Howe, H.H. Holmes, and Alice Pitezel took a train to Philadelphia.
7:03 Speaker 00 On September 22nd, three weeks after Ben Pitezel's death, Holmes, Howe, and Alice Pitezel walked into the coroner's office. Holmes had told Alice part of the truth. Her father was dead, and she needed to identify his body. That way, her identification would be authentic. Ben Pitezel's body, which had already been buried in a potter's field under the name Perry, was exhumed for identification. In an attempt to hide the decay, a newspaper was laid over most of Ben Pitezel's face. It covered everything but his teeth. Alice Pitezel was crying uncontrollably as she entered the examination room. And even with a limited view of his face, she confirmed that the dead man was her father.
7:48 Speaker 00 With the confirmation, Fidelity Mutual wrote a check for $10,000 to pay Benjamin Pitezel's life insurance policy. It had taken more work than Holmes expected, but the plan succeeded. Until he learned there was another problem. The check was made out to Ben's wife, Carrie Pitezel. Now Holmes would have to take the check back to St. Louis so that he could tell Carrie to sign the check over to him. But he couldn't take Alice with him because she knew that her father was actually dead. And Holmes needed Carrie to continue to believe Ben was alive, so she would give him the check. The situation was becoming stupidly complicated, and it would get worse. Holmes left Alice Pitezel in Philadelphia
8:32 Speaker 00 with instructions that she was to travel to Indianapolis on her own. He said he would collect her family from St. Louis and take them to Indianapolis to meet her. Five days later, Holmes met Carrie Pitezel in St. Louis and gave her the good news that the insurance money had come through. Holmes claimed he would use the money to settle Ben's debts, and he convinced Carrie to sign the check over to him. Holmes cashed the check and left her with less than $500 of the $10,000. Next, he convinced her that she was in no condition to care for the four children who were still at home, which included an infant son. Holmes persuaded Kerry to let him take 12-year-old Nellie and 8-year-old Howard with him so
9:16 Speaker 00 they could keep Alice company. Holmes said he would take the children to Indianapolis, where his cousin, Minnie Williams, would take good care of them until they could safely see their father. Like all good lies, there was a little truth in it. He really was gonna take Nellie and Howard to Indianapolis to reunite with Alice. But Minnie Williams wasn't his cousin, nor was she able to take care of anyone because Holmes had killed her and her sister a year earlier. Kerry Pitezel didn't know that, of course, so she consented to the request. The eldest Pitezel child, 16-year-old Desi, would stay with Kerry to help her take care of the baby. And Holmes would take Nellie and Howard to be with Alice until the whole family could
9:59 Speaker 00 be together again at some unspecified time in the future. Sadly, there would be no reunion for the remaining members of the Pitezel family.
10:13 Speaker 00 When Holmes left St. Louis on September 27th with Nellie and Howard Pitezel, he took the kids to Cincinnati for a couple days and then to Indianapolis. There, Nellie and Howard reunited with Alice, and that was when the real shell game started. Holmes booked a room for the three Pitezel children and one for himself and Georgiana in the same hotel. But Georgiana didn't know about the kids. Holmes made sure to keep the Pitezel children separate from his wife. For the next 10 days or so, they all lived in the hotel. With Georgiana, Holmes played the role of affectionate husband. He took her out to dinner and to the opera, and out to visit her mother in a suburb south of the city.
10:56 Speaker 00 With the kids, he was a guardian or a protective uncle. But it wasn't easy. In the beginning, with the kids separated from their mother and knowing their father was dead, they spent most of their time crying in the hotel room. They wrote letters to their mother and gave them to Holmes to put in the mail. After a while, they grew frustrated when they didn't receive replies. And that was, of course, because Holmes never mailed the letters. Strangely, he didn't dispose of them either. He kept them in a metal strong box which he carried with him. The only communications Kerry Pitzel received were from Holmes. He assured her that all was well and that she would be reunited with her family soon.
11:37 Speaker 00 In due time, Kerry Pitzel would join the traveling circus which Holmes commanded, and she would be painfully unaware of the crisis with her children.
11:51 Speaker 00 On October 5th, about a week after the Pitzel kids started staying at the hotel, Holmes rented a small cottage in Irvington, a suburb outside Indianapolis. The cottage was in a secluded area with no immediate neighbors. That same day, Holmes bought a large wood stove and installed it in the barn next to the cottage. Next, Holmes dropped off his surgical instruments at a repair shop for sharpening. On October 8th, before he and Georgiana made a trip to visit her mother, he picked up his instruments. Two days later, on October 10th, while Alice and Nellie wrote letters to their mother, Holmes took eight-year-old Howard from the hotel.
12:32 Speaker 00 Holmes took Howard to the Irvington Cottage sometime around 6:00 PM that evening. Holmes made eggs for dinner. He spiked them with poison, and he fed them to Howard Pitzel. The exact combination remains unknown, but Holmes appeared to use a mix of cocaine and chloroform, though a half-empty bottle of cyanide was also found in the barn. There was more than enough poison to do the job. In a matter of minutes, Holmes had killed Howard Pitzel. Now, Holmes needed to get rid of the body, and things were about to get very dark. Presumably, using his newly sharpened surgical tools, Holmes dismembered the body of eight-year-old Howard Pitzel.
13:15 Speaker 00 Holmes hastily buried some of the body parts, and he shoved the rest in the wood-burning stove in the barn. At 9:00 PM, roughly three hours after Howard was last seen alive, Holmes left the cottage in Irvington. The next day, he put Georgiana, Alice, and Nellie on a train to Detroit.
13:35 Speaker 00 Somehow, he kept the girls separate from his wife, like a master juggler who can keep several objects in the air at the same time. No one knows for sure what he told the girls about their missing brother, but he likely claimed Howard was staying in Indiana with Holmes' friend Minnie Williams. It was a common tactic with H.H. Holmes, which deepened the mystery and the confusion of his story. He often used his victims' names in his lies, as if he had turned them into characters in his macabre drama. And now, if he hadn't already, Holmes would add Kerry Pyzel, Desi Pyzel, and baby Wharton Pyzel to his traveling circus. With constant movement and different lies told to different people,
14:18 Speaker 00 it's naturally hard to track all the players. But if Holmes hadn't brought the Kerry Pyzel group to Indianapolis, he certainly brought them to the next destination of Detroit, Michigan.
14:34 Speaker 00 On October 14, 1894, Kerry, Desi, and baby Wharton arrived in Detroit. Holmes, Georgiana, Nellie, and Alice had arrived two days earlier, and Howard Pyzel had been dead for four days. Holmes had instructed Kerry to meet him in Detroit because she had grown increasingly insistent about seeing the rest of her family. He registered the new trio at a hotel under a false name, and he told Kerry to keep a low profile while he worked to arrange a meeting with her husband. As far as Kerry knew, her husband's safety still hung in the balance, so she remained reluctant to go to the police. She was still hanging on to the idea
15:15 Speaker 00 that Holmes and Ben Pyzel had successfully pulled off a life insurance scam, which required Ben to hide for a lengthy period of time to make sure there were no lingering investigations. But her anxiety about the situation grew each day. Meanwhile, Holmes' lies could make a person dizzy. Holmes told Kerry that her other three kids were in Indianapolis. In reality, they were just a few blocks away from her in Detroit. Holmes told Alice and Nellie that Howard had stayed in Indianapolis, and their mother Kerry, sister Desi, and baby brother Wharton were now in Illinois with their grandparents. He told all the Peitzels that he was working diligently and discreetly to reunite
15:59 Speaker 00 the family, but he was actually planning to reduce their number again. On October 15th, just one day after the Kerry Pitezel group arrived in Detroit, Holmes rented a house on the outskirts of the city. In the backyard, he dug a hole for the bodies of Alice and Nellie Pitezel. But before he could go any further with his plan, he received a tip from an old contact in Chicago. His acquaintance said that private detectives hired by Fidelity Mutual Insurance Company had found a way to navigate Holmes's lies and fake identities. They were on their way to Detroit, and the train journey would take no more than a day.
16:42 Speaker 00 Holmes abandoned all his plans for Detroit and immediately booked train tickets to Toronto, Canada. Toronto was another day's worth of travel to the Northeast, and now he had the enormous task of shuffling three groups of people in a race to stay ahead of the detectives. He had Georgiana, who didn't know about either group of Peitzels. He had Alice and Nellie, who didn't know about Georgiana or the other members of their family. And he had Kerry Pitezel's group, who didn't know about Georgiana or the other kids. During the chaos of moving between trains and hotels, Holmes likely didn't know the full picture which had developed behind him. Three months earlier, while Holmes had been in jail in St. Louis, he met a train robber
17:26 Speaker 00 named Marion Hedgepath. Holmes craved the respect of the well-known outlaw, so Holmes told Hedgepath about the life insurance idea and asked for the name of a lawyer who could help with the scam. Hedgepath gave Holmes the name of Jeptha Howe, the lawyer who eventually helped Holmes complete the fraud. In return for the name, Holmes owed Hedgepath $500. After weeks passed with no sign of the money, Marion Hedgepath wrote an angry letter to the chief of police in St. Louis. On October 9th, the day before Holmes killed Howard Pitezel, the chief received the letter which outlined the life insurance fraud.
18:09 Speaker 00 By sheer coincidence, a detective for Fidelity Mutual was in St. Louis at the time. The police chief told the detective about the letter, and the detective visited Hedgepath in jail. Hedgepath gave a sworn statement, and the detective took it to his bosses in Philadelphia. The consensus at Fidelity Mutual was that Marion Hedgepath was probably lying, but they needed to be sure. So, they did what most major companies did at the time: They called the Pinkertons.
18:46 Speaker 00 While the Pinkertons had worked to untangle Holmes' web of lies and find his location, Holmes had killed Howard Pitezel and moved everyone in his orbit to Detroit. Now, with the news that the Pinkertons were on their way to Detroit, Holmes moved everyone to Toronto. But even for a master juggler and liar like Holmes, the burden of managing his travelers had pushed him to his breaking point. In Toronto, on October 20th, he decided to relieve himself of two of his burdens. As he had done in Irvington, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, he rented a house to act as his crime scene and cover for his activities. He didn't bother to buy a stove or sharpen his surgical tools.
19:28 Speaker 00 He simply borrowed a shovel from a neighbor and dug a grave in the basement. Five days later, he led Alice and Nellie out of their hotel. There are no reliable details of what happened next, which is probably for the best. Newspapers later spun sensationalized stories of Holmes trapping the girls in a trunk and using toxic gas to kill them. But it's more likely he spiked their dinner with poison, like he had done with Howard. Holmes buried the girls next to one another in the grave in the basement. He attempted to burn their clothes, but he didn't finish the job. He fled the scene in a rush, leaving behind half-burned clothing and some of the girls' belongings.
20:11 Speaker 00 Later that day, October 25th, Holmes told Carrie Pytzel that the reunion with her husband wouldn't happen in Toronto either. He said they needed to leave town again, this time to Burlington, Vermont. Holmes was heading back to familiar ground, the home of the University of Vermont where he had enrolled in medical school 13 years earlier. He moved Georgiana, who was still clueless, and the Carrie Pytzel group to Burlington, Vermont. He rented a house for Carrie, Desi, and baby Wharton Pytzel. As usual, he promised Carrie that her husband would soon join her. But after a week in Burlington with no sign of Ben, Carrie Pytzel demanded to see her husband immediately.
20:54 Speaker 00 In a heated conversation with Holmes, Carrie threatened to leave for Indianapolis to get her remaining children, where she believed they had been that whole time. The smooth liar that he was, Holmes again blended fact and fiction. Holmes told Carrie a story about the children going to Toronto. He talked about the girls wearing their warmest clothes, and he gushed about Alice growing up so quickly and preparing lovely dinners. A few days later, Holmes gave Carrie a fabricated letter from her husband. The letter claimed Ben had finally been able to see their kids in Toronto, but it failed to satisfy Carrie Pytzel. She continued to ask questions, and she grew increasingly suspicious that Holmes was lying.
21:39 Speaker 00 Holmes sensed he was running out of time. Shortly after the incident with the fake letter, he asked Carrie to go down to the basement of the rented house. He said she would find a bottle of nitroglycerin near the potatoes. He instructed her to carry the bottle up three flights of stairs to the attic. As the primary component of dynamite, nitroglycerin was highly explosive and notoriously unstable. If the bottle broke or even shook too violently, it could cause an explosion. Carrie Pytzel complied with the first part. She went down into the basement to get the bottle, but she was nervous about moving it to the attic, though it seemed she wasn't worried about moving it herself.
22:22 Speaker 00 The elderly man who owned the house stored things up in the attic, and she was worried that he might knock it over during one of his trips. So she left the bottle in the basement and thwarted Holmes' attempt at murder.
22:40 Speaker 00 After the roundabout attempt to kill Carrie Pitzel failed, Holmes was running out of options. He was tired, paranoid, and ready to be finished with the Pitzel clan forever. He told Carrie Pitzel that her husband was very sick. Holmes said Ben's drinking had landed him in the hospital in Toronto, where he had been with the girls. Holmes first suggested Carrie go visit her husband, in case he was near death. Then, Holmes offered to go in her place, so she could stay with her eldest daughter Desi and the baby Wharton. Carrie Pitzel burst into tears. She was buried under exhaustion and confusion, and she agreed it was best to let Holmes check on her family in Toronto.
23:24 Speaker 00 Holmes told his wife Georgiana that he was headed to a business meeting in Massachusetts. So, for the record, he was in Vermont at the time. He told Carrie Pitzel he was going to Toronto. He told Georgiana he was going to Massachusetts. And in reality, he went to his hometown of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, to see his first wife Clara. Of all the moves Holmes had made over the past year, that was the strangest. In just one year since he left Chicago, he had been in Fort Worth, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Toronto, Burlington, and many other cities along the way. Maybe he was burned out, but whatever the reason, he was going home.
24:14 Speaker 00 On November 5th, in the middle of a severe snowstorm, Holmes showed up at Clara Lovering's doorstep. She was still technically Clara Mudgeet, and Holmes would later claim that he had tried to obtain a divorce, but the paperwork never reached Clara. So, they were still married, while he was married to Myrna Belnap in Chicago and Georgiana Yoke, who was currently in Burlington, Vermont. It had been 11 years since Clara had left Holmes in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was finishing medical school. Their relationship had fallen apart, and she had taken their son Robert, who was now 15, and returned to New Hampshire. Now Clara couldn't believe her eyes.
24:56 Speaker 00 Most people in Gilmanton, including Holmes' parents, assumed he was dead. But despite Clara's history with Holmes, she welcomed her long-lost husband with open arms. Holmes explained his absence with another absurd story. He claimed that six years earlier, he'd been in a train accident which gave him amnesia. He narrowly escaped death, but he couldn't remember who he was or where he was from. In that condition, he had met Georgiana. He claimed she had persuaded doctors to perform an operation which saved his life. After that, he fell in love and they got married. Recently, he had miraculously regained his memory and immediately returned to Clara.
25:40 Speaker 00 In a shocking testament to Holmes' powers of persuasion, Clara and his parents believed the whole story. It appeared as though Holmes was trying to abandon everyone he had previously met and to rejoin his old life. But with Holmes, his true motive was always hard to know. No sooner had Holmes persuaded his family that he was back, than he told them he had to leave again. He said he would return soon, but he needed to take care of some outstanding business. Whatever the business was, it wouldn't happen. From a distance, Fidelity Mutual Agents and Pinkerton detectives had watched the unlikely reunion of Holmes and his old family.
26:21 Speaker 00 After weeks of chasing Holmes across North America, they had finally caught up to him and placed him under surveillance. When Holmes returned to his hometown of Gilmanton, the detectives realized that H.H. Holmes was actually Herman Mudgett. The Pinkertons weren't able to arrest Holmes in New Hampshire, but the next stop on his whirlwind tour would be his last.
27:02 Speaker 00 Next time on Infamous America, detectives finally capture H.H. Holmes to fulfill a series of outstanding warrants for fraud-related crimes. But they have no idea the true extent of his crimes. When the newspapers learn some of the truth and many of the lies, the stories turn truly outrageous. As his legal saga begins, Holmes becomes a legend. That's next week on Infamous America.
27:36 Speaker 00 Members of our Black Barrel Plus program receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Andrew Messer. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.
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