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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 7: The heinous bloodlust of doctor H. H. Holmes is notorious,
Speaker 7: but only Harold Checkters. Depraved tells the complet least story
Speaker 7: of the killer whose evil acts of torture and murder
Speaker 7: flourished within miles of the Chicago World's Fair. Destined to
Speaker 7: be a true crime classic, this authoritative account chronicles the
Speaker 7: methods and madness of a monster who slipped easily into
Speaker 7: an a bright, affluent Midwestern suburb where no one suspected.
Speaker 7: The dapper, charming Homes alternately posed as doctor, druggist and
Speaker 7: inventor to snare his prey, was the architect of a
Speaker 7: labyrinth castle of horrors. Holmes admitted to twenty seven murders
Speaker 7: by the time his madhouse of trapdoors asphyxiation devices, body shoots,
Speaker 7: and acid vats was exposed. The seminal profile of a
Speaker 7: homegrown madman in the era of Jack the Ripper. Depraved
Speaker 7: as also a mesmerizing true detection tale of two detection
Speaker 7: long before the age of technological wizardry. The book they
Speaker 7: were featuring this evening is Depraved, the definitive of true
Speaker 7: story of H. H. Solmes, whose grotesque crime shattered turn
Speaker 7: of the century, Chicago, with my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 7: author and professor Harold Scheckter. We have a problem with
Speaker 7: I emailed Harold earlier today. We'll give Harold a few
Speaker 7: minutes to connect. There is Hello, good evening, Harold, welcome
Speaker 7: to the program.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, thank
Speaker 8: you for that introduction. That was a great introduction.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much. Welcome back to the program. And
Speaker 7: again I have to say that True Murder was designed
Speaker 7: to feature books like this, Harold. This is fantastic book
Speaker 7: about a fantastic and diabolical killer at a time that
Speaker 7: a story that many people still don't know. And I
Speaker 7: applaud you for this book. It's just fantastic. Of course
Speaker 7: I read it before I read it again. I will
Speaker 7: read it again. It's fantastic. It's not to be a
Speaker 7: true crime classic. It is a true crime classic.
Speaker 8: Well, I appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about when you wrote Depraved. Okay, Well, I
Speaker 7: wrote give us the Conditions.
Speaker 8: At that time, well, you know, I had a as
Speaker 8: you mentioned in your introduction, I have been a professor
Speaker 8: of American literature at Queen's College in New York. Queen's
Speaker 8: College is one of the senior colleges of the City
Speaker 8: University of New York, and I've been a professor there
Speaker 8: for quite some time. Actually, I'm sort of now looking
Speaker 8: at retirement. But somewhere along the line, I began writing
Speaker 8: true crime books, the first of which was a book
Speaker 8: called Deviant about Edward Geen, the inspiration for Norman Bates
Speaker 8: and Psycho and Leatherface and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo
Speaker 8: Bill in Silence of the Lambs. And then I followed
Speaker 8: that up with a book about Albert Fish, very heinous
Speaker 8: cannibal pedophile of the nineteen twenties and thirties. So and
Speaker 8: you know, at the time, actually thought of myself as
Speaker 8: somewhat immodestly having invented a new genre of literature because
Speaker 8: I thought of it less as true crime than true horror,
Speaker 8: because I was interested really in writing about American criminals
Speaker 8: who had, in their own time almost achieved the status
Speaker 8: of these mythological monsters. You know, their crimes were so extraordinary.
Speaker 8: So I can't quite entirely remember what led.
Speaker 7: Me to H. H.
Speaker 8: Holmes, although it might well have been a correspondence that
Speaker 8: I started when I was writing Deviant with Robert Block.
Speaker 8: Robert Block was, of course the author of the novel Psycho,
Speaker 8: and while I was writing Deviant, I was in touch
Speaker 8: with him, and I asked him at one point why
Speaker 8: he thought people were so fascinated by ed Geen, and
Speaker 8: he replied that it was because they had forgotten about
Speaker 8: Albert Fish that had led me to my second book.
Speaker 8: But you know, in studying Block's own work, I came
Speaker 8: across a novel he had done called American Gothic, and
Speaker 8: American Gothic is based on the story of HH. Holmes,
Speaker 8: so you know that led me to look into the
Speaker 8: Homes case. At that time there was one other book
Speaker 8: on Holmes. Well, I have to amend that there was
Speaker 8: another nonfiction true crime book about Homes called The Torture Doctor,
Speaker 8: which was basically assembled out of a bunch of newspaper
Speaker 8: clippings and so on. Anyway, So I think that's pretty
Speaker 8: much that combination of things, the Robert Block connection, my
Speaker 8: interest in writing about again these larger than life American monsters,
Speaker 8: you know, all of that, all of that came together,
Speaker 8: and in my own teaching, you know, I am a
Speaker 8: have been a professor of nineteenth century American literature Hawthorn, Melville, Poe,
Speaker 8: and so on, So you know, I've always been interested
Speaker 8: in nineteenth century Gothic. So you know, all these things
Speaker 8: kind of came together and led me to the homes case.
Speaker 7: Yes, fantastic. Now, you opened this book with talking about
Speaker 7: what they called the greatest calamity of the age, which
Speaker 7: was the Great Chicago Fire destroyed Million Dollar Courthouse, among
Speaker 7: other things, where Lincoln was held in state.
Speaker 8: You say, well, destroyed.
Speaker 7: Yeah, tell us about the Chicago fire and who was
Speaker 7: also observant at eleven years old about this fire and
Speaker 7: the destruction that ensues.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Well, I mean, the you know, the Chicago fire,
Speaker 8: you know, was this huge catastropheme in Chicago at that time,
Speaker 8: you know, Chicago had built up very very quickly, really,
Speaker 8: you know, it had just begun as a few shacks
Speaker 8: on the ors of you know, of Lake Erie, but
Speaker 8: you know it it grew into this metropolis very very quickly.
Speaker 8: But it was basically all constructed of wood and in
Speaker 8: eighteen I can't remember the precise year, eighteen seventy one maybe,
Speaker 8: but you know, this conflagration started. You know. The myth
Speaker 8: is at a cow owned by this woman named Missus O'Leary,
Speaker 8: you know, kicked over some lantern. Nobody exactly knows how
Speaker 8: it started, but you know, in a very short time
Speaker 8: basically the entire city was reduced to ashes and it
Speaker 8: rebuilt itself very very quickly. But you know, but but
Speaker 8: you know, the news spread all over the country, really internationally,
Speaker 8: and I begin my book with a description of the
Speaker 8: fire and the news making its way to this little
Speaker 8: town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, where H. H. Holmes, who
Speaker 8: was born Herman Mudget, you know, read about it like
Speaker 8: everybody else. You know. One problem with writing about serial
Speaker 8: killers of the distant past going back to the nineteenth
Speaker 8: century is not a lot of reliable documentary information about
Speaker 8: their childhood, because of course there's nothing special particularly about
Speaker 8: their child. You know, people only became interested in their
Speaker 8: childhood after they became notorious. So you know, Holmes himself
Speaker 8: wrote an autobiography, and you know, different people have poked
Speaker 8: into his background. But you know, it's certainly very very
Speaker 8: typical of serial murderers that they, you know, have a
Speaker 8: certain pyromaniacal streak to them. So you know, it wouldn't
Speaker 8: be surprising if you know, Homes was particularly titillated, you know,
Speaker 8: by stories of the fire.
Speaker 7: Certainly, now you also talk about not a lot of information,
Speaker 7: but you talk about some important information. It certainly points
Speaker 7: us in the right direction of where some of his influence,
Speaker 7: of some of the influence came from. And you talk
Speaker 7: about bullying at school, and you talk about his delicate stature,
Speaker 7: you say was you know, and you talk about the
Speaker 7: real traumatic event that seemed to shape him quite a
Speaker 7: bit was the preserve heads and amputated limbs with these
Speaker 7: bullies that were getting him. So I'll let you explain
Speaker 7: what you did find in the regular brutalization by his
Speaker 7: father and his mother, So bullying at home, bullying at school,
Speaker 7: and tell us about this very traumatic thing event with
Speaker 7: the skeletons and the limbs.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, again, according to his own account, one
Speaker 8: of the formative traumatic experiences of his boyhood occurred when
Speaker 8: uh that there was the town doctor had a mounted
Speaker 8: skeleton in his office and which homes you know, is
Speaker 8: very very terrified of, and supposedly, you know, some school bullies,
Speaker 8: having found this out, you know, forced him one day
Speaker 8: when the doctor was out of the office but the
Speaker 8: door was open, Uh, you know, forced him in, uh
Speaker 8: and kind of locked him in the little cabinet with
Speaker 8: a skeleton. You know. Again, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 8: substantiate many of these stories. To some extent, one has
Speaker 8: to extrapolate a little bit from what one knows, you know,
Speaker 8: about the various influences that shape the psychology of criminals
Speaker 8: like Holmes. But you know, that was certainly, you know,
Speaker 8: a story that seemed to ring with a certain amount
Speaker 8: of authenticity, uh, and one that Holmes himself placed a
Speaker 8: lot of weight on, you know, when he was again
Speaker 8: recalling the you know, the sources of his own evil.
Speaker 7: Very similar to Jeffrey Dahmer, I find too. He also
Speaker 7: had this early fascination with understanding the anatomy of animals
Speaker 7: and doing experiments, you.
Speaker 8: Know, that's a good point. Yeah, well, you know that's
Speaker 8: a good point. I mean, you know, there is obviously
Speaker 8: a necrophiliac quality to a lot of these kinds of
Speaker 8: serial killers. You know, they really are in life with
Speaker 8: death and with dead things. You know, there's some there's
Speaker 8: some very very obviously profoundly aberrant, uh you know, urged,
Speaker 8: you know too, you know, to be in proximity with
Speaker 8: dead bodies and death. So you know, I think that
Speaker 8: that was certainly, you know, the case with Holmes. I mean,
Speaker 8: he wasn't literally a necrophile in the way Dahmer was.
Speaker 8: But again they're they're certainly as you're suggesting, you know,
Speaker 8: a necrophiliac, a necrophilia quality there.
Speaker 7: Now, early on we see the again the deviant and
Speaker 7: criminal mind of of H. H. Holmes. And and he's
Speaker 7: an intelligent guy. As you write in the book, he
Speaker 7: becomes his intellect is noted. He becomes what people consider
Speaker 7: a sort of an upstanding person. He's charming, he has
Speaker 7: that those abilities. He's a good talker, he's he's smart guy.
Speaker 7: And you talk about this his first I guess scam
Speaker 7: that sets forth the kind of blueprint for what he's
Speaker 7: gonna do. Later is this doctor E. S. Holton in
Speaker 7: his drug store? So tell us what he does in
Speaker 7: Englewood and what does he do to get his first
Speaker 7: foray into gues medicine and and also a business.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, Holmes, you know, was a physician, he
Speaker 8: went to medical school, he had worked as a doctor,
Speaker 8: worked as a pharmacist in Philadelphia for example. Just to
Speaker 8: backtrack for a minute in terms of what you started
Speaker 8: to say, you know again, Holmes is you know, very
Speaker 8: classic case. You know, you know of a psychopathic killer
Speaker 8: who is able to project this very very convincing and
Speaker 8: you know, even charismatic persona, and underneath it, you know,
Speaker 8: of course it was this you know, kind of hollow man,
Speaker 8: you know, a person lacking any capacity for empathy, lacking
Speaker 8: any conscience, you know, somebody who just really perceived other
Speaker 8: people is objects that could be manipulated and exploited, you know,
Speaker 8: for his own desires and perverse pleasures. So so yeah,
Speaker 8: he got you know again in that respect, you know,
Speaker 8: he's very much like someone like Ted Bundy for example.
Speaker 8: You know, not every serial, you know, I think Silence
Speaker 8: of the Lambs in particular has led to this. Well,
Speaker 8: many Hollywood films you know, conception of serial killers as
Speaker 8: being these mass her minds, which is not true of
Speaker 8: most serial killers. But you know, they, you know, many
Speaker 8: of them are very very obviously cunning and clever, you know,
Speaker 8: and some are very very smart. Bundy is one example
Speaker 8: of that, and and HH Holmes was another. But yeah,
Speaker 8: he arrived in Chicago, and he made his way to
Speaker 8: what was then a suburb of Chicago called Englewood, and
Speaker 8: I guess was scouting out the neighborhood with various nefarious
Speaker 8: plans in mind, and happened upon this drug store that
Speaker 8: was at that time run by a recently widowed woman
Speaker 8: named Halton, and Holmes introduced himself and was hired on
Speaker 8: by her as a much needed assistant. And after a
Speaker 8: while he persuaded missus Halton to sell him the store,
Speaker 8: and she agreed to do that with a proviso that
Speaker 8: she could stay and live in the Abovestairs apartment she
Speaker 8: had shared with her recently deceased husband, which Holmes agreed to.
Speaker 8: And then shortly thereafter, she disappeared mysteriously and was never
Speaker 8: seen again. And Holmes just you know, told people in
Speaker 8: neighborhood who inquired after her that she had gone off
Speaker 8: to live with relatives in California, even though she was
Speaker 8: not known to have any relatives in California. So yeah,
Speaker 8: that's how Holmes got a foothold in Englewood.
Speaker 7: Now how does he he meets this Mrta Beltnapple? Why?
Speaker 7: Mary's so she doesn't know his background? But tell us
Speaker 7: about this union?
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, yeah, Holmes met man, married Murda. They
Speaker 8: had a daughter together. What he didn't tell her was
Speaker 8: he was already married to a woman named Clara back
Speaker 8: in Gilmington, New Hampshire. So it was a big a mismarriage.
Speaker 8: Holmes had never bothered with a nicety of a divorce.
Speaker 8: And one of the things I point out, you know,
Speaker 8: in in my book is, you know, homes seems to
Speaker 8: have harbored some actual human emotions for Mrta since she
Speaker 8: was one of the you know, few women he was
Speaker 8: ever involved with that he didn't end up killing, but
Speaker 8: she did become somewhat of an impediment to him in
Speaker 8: in the in Englewood, in the pharmacy. Uh. And so he,
Speaker 8: you know, he got her to move in with her
Speaker 8: parents at some distance, you know, and he would visit
Speaker 8: her on a regular basis. But he kind of wanted,
Speaker 8: but he did want her out of the way so
Speaker 8: he could pursue well, among other things, other women and
Speaker 8: also put some of his other plans into action.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about his charm and this flirtatious nature,
Speaker 7: and of course he's not only looking for women, but
Speaker 7: he's looking for what women can do for him literally.
Speaker 7: But he does set in another plan. It's just it's diabolical,
Speaker 7: but very and very cunning in business where he leases
Speaker 7: some land across from this drug store. So tell us
Speaker 7: this fairly ingenious ruse here what he does to this
Speaker 7: person through this sale of the pharmacy and then him
Speaker 7: opening another one. So tell us about this.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean that's getting a little ahead of the
Speaker 8: story because that's you know, after the construction of the building.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I mean he did you know, Holmes managed
Speaker 8: to unload his the halt In Pharmacy. Should I then
Speaker 8: become the hh Holmes Pharmacy on some poor unsuspecting sucker,
Speaker 8: you know, a young pharmacist who is looking for his
Speaker 8: own store, and you know, Holmes by then had this
Speaker 8: thriving clientele. You know, Holmes told him he was moving
Speaker 8: away and you know, would sell him the store, and
Speaker 8: he'd have this great business. And then Holmes, you know,
Speaker 8: immediately went and opened a far bigger and more luxurious
Speaker 8: pharmacy right across the street and basically drove this other
Speaker 8: guy into poverty. But you know, very typical of Holmes's behavior,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean, Holmes, as I said, you know,
Speaker 8: like all of his breed completely lacked anything remotely approaching
Speaker 8: a conscious or any ethical sense.
Speaker 7: So yeah, you right that At around the same time
Speaker 7: in eighteen eighty eight, Jack the Ripper appears in England.
Speaker 7: You include this obviously because this is just the historical
Speaker 7: context and the background. It's important to the story. But
Speaker 7: what do you think JH. Holmes was thinking about the
Speaker 7: very first I guess person in the world that achieved
Speaker 7: a kind of fame that maybe J. Holmes might be
Speaker 7: interested in.
Speaker 8: Well. Part of the reason I included this stuff about
Speaker 8: Jack the Ripper, although one reason, as you say, was,
Speaker 8: you know, it was such a sensational crime story at
Speaker 8: the time, was at the time I wrote the book
Speaker 8: which was published, and I believe in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 8: you know, Holmes had been pretty much totally forgotten. I
Speaker 8: mean now, of course, thanks largely to Eric Larson's book.
Speaker 8: You know, many many more people are aware of him,
Speaker 8: but you know, it was very, very fascinating to me
Speaker 8: at the time, and it was something that his contemporars
Speaker 8: noted that you know that that you know, there was
Speaker 8: this internationally infamous serial killer at large in England and
Speaker 8: here in America, there was a you know, a serial
Speaker 8: murderer who is every bit is terrifying as Jack the
Speaker 8: Ripper in certain ways, even more so, you know, and
Speaker 8: he had largely been he'd largely been forgotten at that point.
Speaker 8: As for Holmes, you know, Holmes clearly at the end
Speaker 8: of his life, you know, craved the kind of notoriety
Speaker 8: that Jack the Ripper had achieved. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 8: there's no record of exactly what he thought about the
Speaker 8: Whitechapel crimes while they were taking place, but it was
Speaker 8: you know, again, Homes like many serial killers who have
Speaker 8: this kind of megalomaniac streak in them, you know, certainly
Speaker 8: wanted to be remembered once he was caught, you know,
Speaker 8: a as a world class criminal on the order of
Speaker 8: Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 7: Yes, now you also talk about ben Epitizl if that's
Speaker 7: the right pronunciation, and an important character in this story
Speaker 7: as well. And he marries a woman named Carrie Canning,
Speaker 7: and they settle in Chicago and answer an ad for
Speaker 7: work as a carpenter. What is this project? And tell
Speaker 7: us about this meeting between the two.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's hard to know how to pronounce the name.
Speaker 8: And I probably knew it at some point. I think
Speaker 8: it was Pitzel. And the reason I knew it at
Speaker 8: one point and it's a function of my age that
Speaker 8: I forgot a lot of stuff. But I but when
Speaker 8: I was writing the book, I actually got to know.
Speaker 8: In fact, my book is dedicated to her Pizel's granddaughter,
Speaker 8: who provided with a lot of family information. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 8: but Ben was you know, he was a handy man,
Speaker 8: he was an alcoholic. Uh. He responded to an advertisement
Speaker 8: for from homes Homes at that point, you know, is building,
Speaker 8: you know, the the edifice that would ultimately become you know,
Speaker 8: infamous as his quote unquote Howard Castle. Uh. He was
Speaker 8: hiring a lot of people, but there was something about
Speaker 8: Ben Pizel, we'll call him that homes again. Immediately recognized
Speaker 8: some kind of person that he would be able to
Speaker 8: manipulate for his own purposes. You know, Pisel became his minion. Really,
Speaker 8: Pipsol became his right hand man, and ultimately, you know,
Speaker 8: the victim that you know brought brought Homes down. But yeah,
Speaker 8: but Tizel was, yes, I guess his minion, you know,
Speaker 8: is the most accurate way to describe him.
Speaker 7: You talk about his behavior as a businessman. On the
Speaker 7: on the surface, people see this enterprising, charming, wealthy businessman.
Speaker 7: But meanwhile, this this structure should have taken six months
Speaker 7: but has taken eighteen months.
Speaker 8: Why is that?
Speaker 7: What is his business behavior?
Speaker 8: Well, again, you know, they're probably a number of different factors,
Speaker 8: but one appears to have been in that Homes would hire.
Speaker 8: He just hired this incredible number of work. And he
Speaker 8: would apparently hire a workman to do, you know, put
Speaker 8: up a wall, and then fire the guy, you know,
Speaker 8: and then hire somebody else to do a little job,
Speaker 8: and then fire the guy and so on and so forth.
Speaker 8: And you know, apparently he you know, the rationale for
Speaker 8: this was a he didn't want anybody to have any
Speaker 8: really firm sense of what the interior of the castle
Speaker 8: is ultimately going to look like. So, you know, instead
Speaker 8: of hiring a contractor to handle the whole job. He
Speaker 8: became the contractor himself, you know, and we're just hire.
Speaker 8: As I said, you know, scores and scores of workmen,
Speaker 8: you know, each one assigned to do one little task
Speaker 8: and then get fired. And then the other thing was,
Speaker 8: you know that homes would have a guy do whatever,
Speaker 8: you know, put up a wall or you know, lay
Speaker 8: down a floor or you know, construct something, you know,
Speaker 8: put up some ceiling rafters, and then complain that he
Speaker 8: didn't like the job and fire the guy without having
Speaker 8: paid him. So he both saved a lot of money.
Speaker 8: But again he was also able to keep the interior
Speaker 8: design of the castle a secret from anybody who had
Speaker 8: worked on it.
Speaker 7: Tell us a little bit more about this three floors
Speaker 7: structure that you described, this unique castle and it's unique layout,
Speaker 7: but also you talk about this massive kiln that he
Speaker 7: has installed in the large zinc tank. Tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit more about all this installed there. And you have,
Speaker 7: interestingly a comment from one of the workers.
Speaker 8: To yeah, well, you know, theior from the outside, you know,
Speaker 8: the castle just looked like this very very impressive block
Speaker 8: long office building. The first floor was rented out to
Speaker 8: various legitimate businesses. There was homes his own pharmacy, and
Speaker 8: there was a jewelry store, and you know a number
Speaker 8: of other businesses. But the you know, the remainder of
Speaker 8: that consisted of this labyrinth of you know rooms, some
Speaker 8: of which were you know, just normal rooms that could
Speaker 8: be used as you know, hotel rooms and so on,
Speaker 8: but there were all kinds of weird and bizarre and
Speaker 8: grotesque architectural features. There were oh, shoots that led down
Speaker 8: to the basement, and stairs that led nowhere, and rooms
Speaker 8: that were lined with asbestos, and you know, another room
Speaker 8: that was a sound proof fault, and you know, there
Speaker 8: were pipes leading from Holmes's office, gas pipes leading from
Speaker 8: a control panel in Holmes's office that would feed gas
Speaker 8: into other rooms. There were peopoles and some of the
Speaker 8: doors that allowed a person outside to look into the room.
Speaker 8: As you say, the basement was equipped with all manner
Speaker 8: of strange and bizarre and sinister equipment. There was a kiln.
Speaker 8: I think what you're referring to was a comment of
Speaker 8: one a workman who helped install it, you know, who
Speaker 8: said jocularly that it seemed like the kind of thing
Speaker 8: you'd find in a crematorium. There are various vats that
Speaker 8: could contain acid. There was an operating table, you know,
Speaker 8: the basement the cellar of the castle, as more than
Speaker 8: one observer commented, you know, resembled something like a medieval
Speaker 8: torture chamber more than a conventional seller in an office building.
Speaker 8: So yeah, you know, the castle again, once the authorities
Speaker 8: ultimately entered in and began exploring it, you know, just
Speaker 8: seemed like something out of you know, a gothic horror novel.
Speaker 7: So yeah, you talk about something that's important in this
Speaker 7: story as this incredible walk in vault that he never
Speaker 7: pays for. They try to confiscate, but he claimed he
Speaker 7: threatens to assume him if he destroy his building taking
Speaker 7: it out of there, so it stays and it becomes
Speaker 7: his favorite instrument of torture.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Well, he had this vault installed and then he
Speaker 8: built the room around it and you know, left the
Speaker 8: door too small for the vault to be removed. So
Speaker 8: when he neglected to pay for it and the company
Speaker 8: threatened to take it out, you know, he said, you sure,
Speaker 8: go ahead, but if you do any damage to my building,
Speaker 8: I'm going to sue you. So it ended up just
Speaker 8: staying there, and there's various evidence that you know, he
Speaker 8: ended up using it again as a torture chamber in
Speaker 8: which he would immure his victim and allowed them slowly
Speaker 8: to starve and suffocate to death while he listened, you know,
Speaker 8: to their frantic efforts to break out.
Speaker 7: What we didn't talk about yet is that the reason,
Speaker 7: the business reason, the more than business reason for this
Speaker 7: was the Chicago Worldfare. Being business savvy, H. Holmes decided
Speaker 7: to build this structure so he had again, like you say,
Speaker 7: hotel type rooms when this exposition happened for six months
Speaker 7: in Chicago before that, when the crowds were really receptive
Speaker 7: to the building itself and what the enterprising nature of
Speaker 7: this guy they thought. Tell us about about renting those
Speaker 7: rooms during that time, well.
Speaker 8: You know, room sort of premium that anybody who had
Speaker 8: a spare room could make some money renting it out.
Speaker 8: Homes did evidently use his castle to be a World's
Speaker 8: Fair hotel. I'm going to say something now that might
Speaker 8: disappoint some of your listeners and yourself as well, which is,
Speaker 8: you know, it's not as you know, there are many, many, many,
Speaker 8: many stories and myths about H. H. Holmes, some of
Speaker 8: which you know, I think my own book helped to perpetuate.
Speaker 8: You know, it's not at all clear to me how
Speaker 8: many fair goers met fair ends at Holmes's Castle. You know,
Speaker 8: they're all there are all kinds of rumors and stories,
Speaker 8: so so you know, I I don't feel in highly
Speaker 8: comfortable making any claims about that. I tend to think
Speaker 8: that probably far fewer, if any, fair goers were murdered
Speaker 8: at the castle, partly because you know, in my various
Speaker 8: researchers research, as you know, I didn't really come across
Speaker 8: a lot of cases of people reporting their relatives missing
Speaker 8: who had gone to the World's Fair. You know, there's
Speaker 8: no doubt that homes killed people in the Murder Castle.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's absolutely true. But how many World's Fair
Speaker 8: goers ended up being victims there, you know, it is
Speaker 8: a very very open question.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I mean we don't need numbers. I mean
Speaker 7: the horror itself of the potential for this guy to
Speaker 7: be able to kill anybody, drop them down on a shoe,
Speaker 7: gass him in the room. Yeah, and he wanted to
Speaker 7: take advantage and steal from people. That's throughout this book.
Speaker 7: He's primarily a thief, if nothing else at well, first
Speaker 7: and foremost a thief.
Speaker 8: Absolutely that's absolutely true, and you know it's entirely possible.
Speaker 8: But you know, some of these stories that two hundred
Speaker 8: people met their death their I mean, you know a
Speaker 8: lot of those things are very very exaggerated. But you're
Speaker 8: completely right that you know that the castle was was
Speaker 8: you know, partly constructed, you know, to be a kind
Speaker 8: of death factory, no question about that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, incredible. Now we get back to the charming j
Speaker 7: Holmes and he meets this Julius smythe who's eighteen and
Speaker 7: you say, you write, strikingly, strikingly beautiful. He's married to
Speaker 7: a man maker, itchlis Ned, and he's a watchmaker of
Speaker 7: the little business. Tell us how it comes to be
Speaker 7: that they meet and have an affair, have a relationship.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean her husband, you know, became aware of
Speaker 8: the availability of a place for a jewelry shop and
Speaker 8: in the in the first floor of the Castle Homes,
Speaker 8: who was much taken with Julia's attractiveness, you know, is
Speaker 8: happy to happy to have happy to have them move
Speaker 8: into the space homes in very short order, had seduced
Speaker 8: Julia Ned. You know, by all accounts, was you know,
Speaker 8: a sweet but ineffectual human being and not a very
Speaker 8: good provider. You know, Homes again was this dynamic, charismatic
Speaker 8: figure who never had any trouble seducing and winning over women.
Speaker 8: So yeah, Julia became his mistress. You know, everybody in
Speaker 8: the neighborhood seemed to be aware of that, except for Ned,
Speaker 8: who was either willfully blind or just sort of totally oblivious,
Speaker 8: although even he finally caught on and he left in
Speaker 8: short order. So yeah, Julia became Holmes's mistress. She had
Speaker 8: a daughter named Pearl. She and Pearl moved into the castle,
Speaker 8: and she became pregnant by Holmes and demanded that Holmes
Speaker 8: marry her, and Holmes agreed, but on the condition that
Speaker 8: she allow him to perform an abortion on her, because
Speaker 8: he didn't want another child. So she agreed, and evidently,
Speaker 8: I mean, all the evidence suggests, you know, that Holmes
Speaker 8: murdered her, murdered the child, Pearl, and then stripped her
Speaker 8: corpse of all its flesh and had her skeleton mounted
Speaker 8: by some guy he knew who had been a workman,
Speaker 8: a guy named Chappelle who had been a workman for
Speaker 8: him and who knew something about mounting skeletons. And then
Speaker 8: Homes made a little extra money by selling the mounted
Speaker 8: skeleton of his ex lover to a medical school.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and this all occurred on Christmas Eve when they
Speaker 7: were planning to do the abortion by himself. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 7: I have a height of evil. It's amazing. Now he's
Speaker 7: always coming up with scams and schemes and he continues
Speaker 7: with that, but he's also in pursuit of young, beautiful women.
Speaker 7: So he bumps into somebody who he meets Emmeline Segriint and.
Speaker 8: She's twenty four.
Speaker 7: And he meets people that are women that are innocent.
Speaker 7: He meets women like Julia that was more ambitious and
Speaker 7: less naive and threatening. But he meets this innocent woman,
Speaker 7: uh or part part of me, Piezzel type. Pizel meets
Speaker 7: Emily Sagrin And so how does Holmes get involved in there?
Speaker 7: And what ensues?
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, I mean Pizel had gone off to one
Speaker 8: of these There was something called a gold cure for
Speaker 8: alcoholism back then, which was obviously this quack science, but
Speaker 8: you know, people people believed in it back then, and
Speaker 8: Holmes went off to one of these Kihley institutes. Kighley
Speaker 8: was a doctor who excuse me, who had invented the
Speaker 8: supposed cure, and that's where he met Emily Segrand too,
Speaker 8: I think, was working as a type astir secretary there,
Speaker 8: and he came back raving about her beauty, and Homes
Speaker 8: brought her to Chicago, you know, lourded to Chicago with
Speaker 8: this offer to come work for him, and again, you know,
Speaker 8: she very quickly fell under his his spell and became
Speaker 8: his lover, and then again within a short order, Homes
Speaker 8: you know, decided to dispose of her, you know, Homes
Speaker 8: after he was caught, you know, became known as this
Speaker 8: bluebeard killer because one of his most striking characteristics, you know,
Speaker 8: was this tendency to seduce and then murder, as you
Speaker 8: were suggesting, you know, a whole string of young women,
Speaker 8: and Holmes was somebody who, on the one hand, was
Speaker 8: doing this as many blue beard killers do. Well, it
Speaker 8: was really all blue beard serial killers. You know, they
Speaker 8: usually do it out of combination of profit and sexual sadism.
Speaker 8: You know, if Holmes could make some money off of
Speaker 8: one of his victims, either by you know, marrying them
Speaker 8: or getting engaged them and having them sign over all
Speaker 8: their property to him, or take out a life insurance
Speaker 8: and make him the beneficiary.
Speaker 4: You know that.
Speaker 8: You know that was great. And then you know, if
Speaker 8: he could derive some intense, sadistic sexual pleasure from slowly
Speaker 8: killing them, you know that was that was another there
Speaker 8: was another benefit to his crimes.
Speaker 7: What I found was profound is again he uses the
Speaker 7: walk in vault. Yeah, just before we go to talk
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Speaker 7: this devious and what he does as a result of this, again,
Speaker 7: this sadistic nature. What does he do as a result
Speaker 7: of this enjoyment of the walk in vault scam?
Speaker 8: Well? Uh, I mean are you referring Well again, he
Speaker 8: lures Emmeline into the vault, locks her in, and then
Speaker 8: spends time listening to her horrible shrieks. Uh, and you
Speaker 8: know all the agony that she's going through, you know,
Speaker 8: while he is pleasuring himself. If that is what you
Speaker 8: are referring to. Yeah, but again you know that, you
Speaker 8: know this characteristic of serial murders. You know, there are
Speaker 8: a lot of definitions of serial murder. Some people talk
Speaker 8: about it just in terms of quantity. You know, if
Speaker 8: you kill x number of people, your serial murder.
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Speaker 8: But you know, I mean mob hitman. Aren't serial murders,
Speaker 8: you know, serial murder in my understanding of it, and
Speaker 8: I think Holmes fits his profile, you know, is what
Speaker 8: used to be called lust murder. And when you think
Speaker 8: of all the people we think of as these classic
Speaker 8: serial killers Gacy and Dahmer and Bundy and the night Stalker,
Speaker 8: and you know, going back to the nineteen thirties, like
Speaker 8: you know, the the Weimar era as serial killers, you know,
Speaker 8: they're all extreme sexual status, you know, who derive their
Speaker 8: highest form of sexual ecstasy, you know, from tormenting and
Speaker 8: torturing other human beings, you know, and Holmes clearly was,
Speaker 8: you know, fit that profile absolutely.
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Speaker 7: better way to cook. We last left off, Harold. We
Speaker 7: were just talking about the illustrious HH Holmes, and he's
Speaker 7: just destroyed a couple young women. Does he do next?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, at some point again you know, homes
Speaker 8: because he never paid any of his bills, had built
Speaker 8: up this incredible army of creditors. At some point, things
Speaker 8: were getting very very hot for him in Chicago, I
Speaker 8: mean in terms of the women that he murdered. He
Speaker 8: did get engaged to an heiress named Minnie Williams who
Speaker 8: had all this property in Texas that Holmes persuaded her
Speaker 8: to sign over to him before he murdered her and
Speaker 8: her sister who had come for a visit. So again
Speaker 8: Holmes had murdered a whole bunch of women. Holmes had
Speaker 8: recently again gotten bigamously married, or well, had pretended to
Speaker 8: get married. He led many Williams to believe that they
Speaker 8: were going to get married. But then hers I said,
Speaker 8: before that happened, and became the beneficiary of this property.
Speaker 8: So he and but with all these creditors closing in
Speaker 8: on him and some of the relatives of the women
Speaker 8: that he killed, beginning to wonder what had happened to
Speaker 8: these young women. He decided that things had gotten too
Speaker 8: hot for him in Chicago, so he absconded with Pizel,
Speaker 8: and they first went to Fort Worth, Texas, ran some
Speaker 8: scams there, apparently got involved in some horse stealing enterprise
Speaker 8: and had to get out of there barely escaped with
Speaker 8: their lives, and then made their way back east where
Speaker 8: they were going to pull off a scam, an insurance
Speaker 8: scam that Holmes had contrived.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you talk about this, an incredible plan with Pizel
Speaker 7: to do an insurance scam to fake his death. But
Speaker 7: at some point Holmes is arrested and meet in jail
Speaker 7: an infamous train robber, according to the papers, Marian Hedgepeth.
Speaker 7: So tell us about this faithful meeting and then we
Speaker 7: can talk about this fantastic and unbelievable death insurance. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, you need to talk about the scheme scam a
Speaker 8: little bit first to put the meeting with Hedgepeth in context.
Speaker 8: So this is something that presumably Holmes had done before
Speaker 8: when he was a medical student in Michigan. You know,
Speaker 8: the idea was that they were going to ensure Pizel's
Speaker 8: life for ten thousand dollars, which, of course, back then
Speaker 8: was an enormous sum of money, and they would fake
Speaker 8: Pizel's death and Homes would obtain a corpse from one
Speaker 8: of his various medical connections, and they would substitute this
Speaker 8: corpse for Pizel and then collect on the money Pisel.
Speaker 8: You know, they would take out this insurance on Pizel
Speaker 8: and make Homes, Pisel's wife the beneficiary carry and.
Speaker 7: And so.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So that was the plan, but in order to
Speaker 8: accomplish it, they needed the participation of a shady lawyer.
Speaker 8: So Holmes was in Saint Louis with the woman he
Speaker 8: was at that point weed to and found himself in
Speaker 8: jail with this very, very notorious outlaw named Marion Hedgepath,
Speaker 8: who at the time, you know, was you know, basically
Speaker 8: as infamous as somebody like Jess James. You know, he's
Speaker 8: been totally totally forgotten. I mean, I think one of
Speaker 8: the reasons I speculate is because his name is so
Speaker 8: un memorable. But in any case, you know, somehow, I
Speaker 8: think Holmes was very impressed by Hedgepath's owned criminal celebrity
Speaker 8: and shared this plan with Hedgepeth and also asked Hedgepeth
Speaker 8: if he knew of any lawyer who might be interested
Speaker 8: in coming in on this scheme. And Hedgepeth, in fact,
Speaker 8: did he knew a guy named a young guy named
Speaker 8: Jeff the Howe who is a very very unscrupulous young lawyer.
Speaker 8: So yeah, So, so Holmes enlisted Jeff the Howe to
Speaker 8: be part of this insurance scheme. And then Holmes and
Speaker 8: Pizel made their way to Philadelphia where they were going
Speaker 8: to pull office con And they chose Philadelphia partly because
Speaker 8: it was the home of the insurance company that had
Speaker 8: issued the insurance on Pizel's life, and they thought it
Speaker 8: would just be easier ultimately to resolve the whole thing there.
Speaker 7: So tell us how this plan evolves here. They do
Speaker 7: have Carrie involved in this. She knows, she doesn't want
Speaker 7: to know, but she knows what's going on. But she's
Speaker 7: leary of j Holmes to a certain degree. She hasn't
Speaker 7: seen them that many times, but she's still leary of them.
Speaker 7: So tell audience more of this plan that a lot
Speaker 7: of people, including Pizel himself, has to accept as going
Speaker 7: to happen, Yeah, by virtual of J. Holmes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well again, you know, the plan was, and as
Speaker 8: you say, Piitzel how to share it with Carrie for
Speaker 8: a number of reasons. I mean, she was going to
Speaker 8: ultimately be part of it. And also he wanted to
Speaker 8: reassure her that if she read of his death in
Speaker 8: the newspapers, that you know, not to be concerned because
Speaker 8: it wasn't really him. So again, the plan was, Pizel
Speaker 8: takes that ten thousand dollars on his life. Carrie is
Speaker 8: the beneficiary technically, although of course Holmes plans to relieve
Speaker 8: her of all the money when she gets her hands
Speaker 8: of it. The plan is that they would set Pizel
Speaker 8: up in some kind of little business in Philadelphia. They
Speaker 8: decide they'll set him up in a patent office, and
Speaker 8: they are going to stage some kind of accident that
Speaker 8: will make it seem as though Pizel has been killed,
Speaker 8: and it'll be an accident that will also leave Pizel figured.
Speaker 8: And in the meanwhile, Holmes will get hold of some
Speaker 8: kind of medical school corpse cadaver, you know, from from
Speaker 8: one of his cohorts, and they will substitute that cadaver
Speaker 8: for Pizel, and then Pizel, you know, Carrie will come
Speaker 8: and collect on the insurance, and you know, Pizel will
Speaker 8: meanwhile have gone off somewhere, and you know, then they'll
Speaker 8: all get together and split the proceeds. You know, was
Speaker 8: the general plan. Again, Holmes had apparently pulled off some
Speaker 8: kind of similar insurance scam one time before. However, what,
Speaker 8: of course Pizel doesn't know, and of course Carrie doesn't know,
Speaker 8: nobody knows really except Holmes, is that Holmes has no
Speaker 8: intention of getting a corpse to substitute for Piesel. He
Speaker 8: intends to kill Pizel and then collect on the money.
Speaker 7: Now, if that's not the worst thing you ever heard.
Speaker 7: She also have three children, and so to be able
Speaker 7: to split up the children, yeah, and take the children
Speaker 7: from the mother, the willing her, this untrusting woman to
Speaker 7: give up her children. What's the bruise he gives to
Speaker 7: her for the reason they need to split up with
Speaker 7: the children, and then tell her.
Speaker 8: Well, you know that's yeah, as you said, I mean,
Speaker 8: that's really the worst for me, you know, the most
Speaker 8: horrific part of the whole home story. Yeah, So Holme's
Speaker 8: murders Pizel and you know, burns his face and you know,
Speaker 8: tries to disfigure him. He then shows up, well, he
Speaker 8: has been in Philadelphia, shows up at the office of
Speaker 8: the insurance company, identifying himself as a friend of Pithel.
Speaker 8: Somebody who can help I Pithel at that point was
Speaker 8: going under a pseudonym home shows up, you know, an
Speaker 8: acquaintance of Pithels. He's going to be very very helpful
Speaker 8: to the insurance company and helping them identify this person. Meanwhile,
Speaker 8: he goes back to Saint Louis, tells Carrie, you know,
Speaker 8: who has read about the presumed death of her husband
Speaker 8: in the newspapers. You know, not to worry. It's not
Speaker 8: really Ben. Ben is fine. He needs to take one
Speaker 8: of their oldest child or second oldest child, I think,
Speaker 8: back to Philadelphia to help identify the body. And he's
Speaker 8: going to take a of other kids with him to
Speaker 8: keep her company. Anyway, as you said, over the next
Speaker 8: few months, once Holmes has collected all the money, he
Speaker 8: takes these three Piesel children with him of this incredibly
Speaker 8: tortuous odyssey. And meanwhile, he keeps Carrie completely separate from
Speaker 8: her children. He's promising Carrie that he's going to reunite
Speaker 8: her with Ben and the other kids. But he's constantly
Speaker 8: keeping her on the move. He has the three kids
Speaker 8: in his possession that he keeps constantly on the move.
Speaker 8: At that point, he had basically decided that he was
Speaker 8: going to kill the entire Pisol family, and and he was.
Speaker 8: He was creating a kind of a trail that nobody
Speaker 8: he thought could possibly ever trace. And every time he
Speaker 8: promised Carrie that she was about to be reunited with
Speaker 8: her husband and children, he would come up with some
Speaker 8: excuse why they couldn't get together there or then, and
Speaker 8: that they had to keep moving, and so on and
Speaker 8: so forth. And in the course of this odyssey, and
Speaker 8: again this was the most heinous of all of Holmes's crimes,
Speaker 8: he ended up murdering the three Pithel children that were
Speaker 8: in his charge. All the while, again you know, telling
Speaker 8: Carrie that the kids were fine, she was going to
Speaker 8: be reunited with them in any minute. You know, Ben
Speaker 8: was fine, she was going to be reunited with her husband.
Speaker 8: Of course he was long dead and buried. And then
Speaker 8: Holmes actually made an effort to kill Carrie and her
Speaker 8: one remaining child by leaving some nitro glycerin in a
Speaker 8: jar in her possession, which he had asked her to
Speaker 8: move with the expectation that it would blow her up.
Speaker 8: But through a variety of circumstances that didn't happen.
Speaker 7: You're right. At the same time that luck seems to
Speaker 7: be changing for the worst for aj Cholms and somebody
Speaker 7: named Gary who's the chief investigator. He always remained vicious
Speaker 7: even though his company paid out the claim. And this
Speaker 7: is a fidelity mutual. So he started his career as
Speaker 7: a cop, as you write. So he starts poking around
Speaker 7: and wants to speak with his lawyer. So tell us
Speaker 7: about how that develops.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, there was one insurance investigator, as you said,
Speaker 8: that remained, you know, that remained very, very skeptical. But
Speaker 8: across the turning point for Holmes came when Marion hedgepath
Speaker 8: I read about the death of Pizel in the newspapers,
Speaker 8: and he realized that this former cell made of his
Speaker 8: homes had actually gone ahead and pulled off this scam.
Speaker 8: You know, I don't know if I I don't know
Speaker 8: if I mentioned it in my book, probably not, But
Speaker 8: it's a little bit like you know what finally led
Speaker 8: to the arrest of of the two guys in in
Speaker 8: Cold Blood. You know, one of the cellmates, you know,
Speaker 8: knew about this scheme, and you know that, you know
Speaker 8: that one of the in Cold Blood killers, Dick Hickock,
Speaker 8: you know, he was always talking about never really thought
Speaker 8: he was serious, and you know, then read about the
Speaker 8: death of the Clutters. You know, something very similar happened here.
Speaker 8: Marion Hedge Peth, you know, just thought this guy Holmes
Speaker 8: was full of hot air, and then he reads about
Speaker 8: you know this, you know this, this supposed accident in
Speaker 8: Philadelphia and paying out of all this insurance and you know,
Speaker 8: he realized that it was H. H. Holmes, and you know,
Speaker 8: he contacts the insurance company again for the same reason
Speaker 8: that the guy in called Blood did, hoping to get
Speaker 8: some kind of clemency. So yeah, so that's when that's
Speaker 8: when the authorities, you know, get on Holmes's trail.
Speaker 7: It's interesting that you talk about the Pinkerton's getting on
Speaker 7: his trail and begin hunting him.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, And the Pinkertons finally track him down just
Speaker 8: before he's about to leave the country and put him
Speaker 8: under arrest. And of course Holmes thinks that he is,
Speaker 8: you know, just being arrested for this insurance scam. So
Speaker 8: you know, he's very cool and you know, and pulls
Speaker 8: out all his charm and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: But but it quickly becomes, well it before too long,
Speaker 8: becomes very very clear to Holmes that you know, what
Speaker 8: the authorities really believe is true and why he is
Speaker 8: really now in custody is because they suspect correctly as
Speaker 8: it turns out, you know, that he has done away
Speaker 8: with the pipes of children, and they put one of
Speaker 8: their ace detectives, a got named Guyer, on the trail
Speaker 8: of the children.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about also he is arrested. How long
Speaker 7: does it take for the media to go ob on
Speaker 7: to elements of the.
Speaker 8: Story, Well, I mean the media, you know, you know,
Speaker 8: immediately in Chicago they start looking into homes' background and
Speaker 8: before too long, you know, they're hearing all kinds of
Speaker 8: dark rumors about the castle, and they you know, enter
Speaker 8: into the castle and it's then they discover all of
Speaker 8: its most bizarre and sinister features.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: And you know, within very very short time, the you know,
Speaker 8: the castle, all these newspaper articles about this Gothic castle
Speaker 8: of horrors that exists in Englewood. You know, start to
Speaker 8: dominate the newspapers, you know, and homes, you know, starts
Speaker 8: to become portrayed as this figure of larger than life evil.
Speaker 7: As opposed to what he does at the end. Well later, anyway,
Speaker 7: how does he proceed in terms of innocence or owning
Speaker 7: up to crimes, giving authorities any kind of real information?
Speaker 7: How does he how does he work there?
Speaker 8: Well? I mean, you know, he he he, He confesses,
Speaker 8: you know, to the most minor crimes that he can
Speaker 8: possibly infested, you know, and each time the authorities present
Speaker 8: him with some overwhelming evidence that he had committed something
Speaker 8: more serious, you know, he might admit to it, but
Speaker 8: come up with some excuse to mitigate his guilt. You know,
Speaker 8: Holmes was very very sharp, very very clever. You know,
Speaker 8: he would constantly come up with stories that you know,
Speaker 8: he had farmed out the Pizel kids, you know, to
Speaker 8: various people he knew, and they were fine. And you know,
Speaker 8: he denied at first that Pizzel was dead, but then
Speaker 8: when confronted with the incontrovertible evidence that the corpse in
Speaker 8: Philadelphia really was Ben Pizel, you know, he claimed that
Speaker 8: Pizel had actually committed suicide. You know, so he was
Speaker 8: very very very slippery about things for a very long time.
Speaker 7: Sure, now you talk about that they had some evidence.
Speaker 7: Obviously they found a job born in the incinerator, in
Speaker 7: the crematorium, in the kilns. There was some evidence. And
Speaker 7: again you talk about him making retractions from himself. Those
Speaker 7: story keeps changing. Tell us about a couple of the
Speaker 7: features briefly that dominated that trial, some fascinating things that
Speaker 7: the prosecutor brought forth at court. Tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about.
Speaker 8: That, well, I mean, the main feature of the trial
Speaker 8: that was so fascinating. And here again, you know, this
Speaker 8: is very very similar to Ted Bundy, is you know,
Speaker 8: Holmes decided at some point to represent himself and he
Speaker 8: really did for a little while a very very impressive job.
Speaker 8: But again, as with Ted Bundy, you know, Holmes ultimately
Speaker 8: ended up proving the maxim You know that, you know,
Speaker 8: the defendant who decides to represent himself as a fool
Speaker 8: for a client because he very very very quickly became
Speaker 8: came to the limit of his you know, of his
Speaker 8: of his medical of his medical knowledge. In terms of
Speaker 8: the prosecutor's evidence, You're going to have to prod my
Speaker 8: memory a little bit because I'm not entirely sure what
Speaker 8: you have in mind.
Speaker 7: Well, it was just that they brought skulls into the right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yes, that made a very
Speaker 8: very large impression on the juror, on the jurors. I
Speaker 8: mean that's something that you know, one has read about
Speaker 8: in other trials too, And yeah, bringing bringing human remains
Speaker 8: of victims to show the jury always has a lot
Speaker 8: of impact.
Speaker 7: Sure, certainly, And of course the media was in a
Speaker 7: friend over this. However, as you say, a few months later,
Speaker 7: you know, you say, it's not he had Holmes had
Speaker 7: lots to say, something to say the day his trial ended,
Speaker 7: but was not his final word. And you say a
Speaker 7: few months later he would issue a very different statement
Speaker 7: and its publication would send shockwaves across America.
Speaker 8: Right, yeah, Well, you know, at the time, I think
Speaker 8: when I wrote the book, you know, and this has
Speaker 8: become something of a cliche to say, but you know,
Speaker 8: but it really was, you know, like the O. J.
Speaker 8: Simpson trial of its time, you know, was covered so
Speaker 8: extensively in the national press. You know, I mean the
Speaker 8: only difference again between then and now is they didn't
Speaker 8: have cable TV. But you know, if they had it
Speaker 8: would have been twenty four to seven news coverage. But Holmes.
Speaker 8: But you know, once Holmes was convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 8: death and had nothing more to lose, he was persuaded
Speaker 8: to write a confession. Again, you know, very hard to
Speaker 8: know how much of it was accurate, how much of
Speaker 8: it was embroidered. I mean, some of it certainly was embroidered,
Speaker 8: because some of the victims that he claimed to have
Speaker 8: killed later showed up alive. But you know, partly to
Speaker 8: satisfy the audience he had been paid a fairly sizable
Speaker 8: amount of money to address, you know, and again partly
Speaker 8: because as is not a typical with serial murderers, you know,
Speaker 8: he you know, he wanted to be remembered, you know,
Speaker 8: as one of the greatest criminals of the age. He
Speaker 8: wrote a confession in which he claimed to have murdered
Speaker 8: twenty seven people altogether, certainly would have made him, at
Speaker 8: the time the most prolific serial murderer in American history,
Speaker 8: and you know, far out stripping you know, the number
Speaker 8: of tracks the rippers victims.
Speaker 7: What people may not know too, and what I would
Speaker 7: found shocking when I first read any of what was
Speaker 7: written by Holmes was how eloquent and articulate, how good
Speaker 7: a writer he was. And and when you talk about
Speaker 7: you know, you don't know the veracity or the accurateness
Speaker 7: of some of the claims because you say some people
Speaker 7: were walking around. Yes, it certainly is very very believable,
Speaker 7: and it would be no reason not to believe his
Speaker 7: his attitude towards the murders and these crimes.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Well, you know, Holmes was a very educated man,
Speaker 8: and so and sense the literacy of this confession is
Speaker 8: not surprising. You know, one also doesn't know if there
Speaker 8: was some meditorial hand at work, but in any case, well,
Speaker 8: in general, people were more literate back then. You know,
Speaker 8: you know, you read the letters of even somebody like Pizel,
Speaker 8: who is just sort of a common labor and you know,
Speaker 8: they're like way more illiterate than like what most of
Speaker 8: my freshman composition students are capable of writing nowadays. So
Speaker 8: you know, so in that sense, it's not surprising. But yes,
Speaker 8: as you say, you know, the attitude that Homes displays,
Speaker 8: you know, very very typical of serial killers who you know,
Speaker 8: have this megalomaniac streak to them, and you know, and
Speaker 8: they and they really you know, They really derive a
Speaker 8: lot of gratification from you know, from the you know,
Speaker 8: when they're finally caught, and sometimes even before they're caught,
Speaker 8: you know, from having the spotlight placed on them, you know,
Speaker 8: and from having the world see them as these you know,
Speaker 8: as these notorious figures. I mean, you know, these infamous figures,
Speaker 8: these figures who are going to you know, as Holmes has,
Speaker 8: you know, go down in history. Really you know, they
Speaker 8: you know, they get a lot of pleasure from that,
Speaker 8: and you know, sometimes there's a kind of competition, you know,
Speaker 8: there's a kind of rivalry. You know, there are people
Speaker 8: who you know, want to be remembered as being even
Speaker 8: more evil, you know than the last infamous serial killers.
Speaker 7: So, oh yeah, absolutely, what he does I'll ask you
Speaker 7: to tell our audience what he does resort to Because
Speaker 7: the biggest boogeyman of the time and still to a
Speaker 7: certain degree, but especially at that time, was the specter
Speaker 7: that crimes could be attributed attributed to possession or something.
Speaker 7: So in that vein, what does Holmes do in his.
Speaker 8: Well, I meat, he claims, you know that the devil
Speaker 8: was in him. If that's I assume that's what you're
Speaker 8: referring to right. Sure, you know, again hard to know
Speaker 8: how sincerely he believed that, and how much he was
Speaker 8: playing to his audience or in a way how much
Speaker 8: you know the thing partly the thing about Holmes also
Speaker 8: is that, I mean, the media was also using him
Speaker 8: for variety of purposes, as the media tends to do.
Speaker 8: You know, they were using him to sell newspapers obviously,
Speaker 8: But you know, there's often how shall I say it,
Speaker 8: You know, sometimes it's a kind of often a kind
Speaker 8: of you know, hypocrisy that's work in the popular media
Speaker 8: in the sense that you know, they you know, they
Speaker 8: want to they want to titillate the audience with all
Speaker 8: this lurid, sensationalistic stuff, you know, but they do it
Speaker 8: often under the guise of moral edification or moral instruction.
Speaker 8: So you know, they're they're both you know, having their
Speaker 8: cake and eating it too. You know, they're getting to
Speaker 8: exploit all these horrible crimes of homes well the same time,
Speaker 8: you know, presenting him as somebody who was in the
Speaker 8: grip of the devil. Uh and you know, sort of
Speaker 8: a moral religious lesson there, you know, about what can
Speaker 8: happen to a human being who falls too far strays
Speaker 8: too far from the path of righteousness. So so again
Speaker 8: you know that statement of homes, you know, very very striking,
Speaker 8: but again hard to know how much he really believed that,
Speaker 8: how much again that was put in there or suggested
Speaker 8: to him or whatever.
Speaker 7: The sum that he was paid was very handsome, some
Speaker 7: like you say, for the time especially, wasn't it seventy
Speaker 7: five dollars something significant like that?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, well, you know I believe was a Hearst
Speaker 8: newspaper that published was confession. And yeah, it was very
Speaker 8: very typical. I mean since I you know, I've written
Speaker 8: a lot of true crime. This was my third true
Speaker 8: crime book, and I've written many since then. And what
Speaker 8: I have discovered since was it was very very typical
Speaker 8: of Hurst and other and Pulletzer too, his main competitor
Speaker 8: in in you know this yellow Press wars as they
Speaker 8: called it back then. You know, whenever there was a
Speaker 8: very very sensational murder case to pay you know, the
Speaker 8: killer once they were caught for confession. Sometimes the confessions
Speaker 8: were just concocted, you know, by one of the you know,
Speaker 8: Hurst writers, and you know the guy you know, the
Speaker 8: the criminal mail or email you know, would sign his
Speaker 8: name to it or authenticate it. I think probably Holme's case,
Speaker 8: he did write it himself for the most part.
Speaker 7: M yeah, he was set for execution. Was there anything
Speaker 7: particularly out of the ordinary.
Speaker 4: On that d.
Speaker 8: You'll have to tell me what you have in mind.
Speaker 8: I mean, the main thing you know about Holmes' execution,
Speaker 8: you know, is his stipulation, you know, that his corpse
Speaker 8: be interred, you know, within a concrete fault that would
Speaker 8: make it inaccessible to grave robbers, which is very very interesting.
Speaker 8: I think there was a sign of several things. One
Speaker 8: was the recognition of his own notoriety. You know, it
Speaker 8: was a time when there was a time when you know,
Speaker 8: these dime no dime museums, you know, would attract customers
Speaker 8: by having body parts of notorious murderers. So homes might have,
Speaker 8: you know, worried about that, you know, as somebody who
Speaker 8: had made use of corpses himself throughout his career, you know,
Speaker 8: homes you know, probably didn't want to end up, you know,
Speaker 8: in that way either. So I don't know if that's
Speaker 8: what you're referring to in terms of yes, I was.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's yeah, incredibly incredibly unique.
Speaker 8: Well, I'm sorry, ahead.
Speaker 7: What I was. What we talked about too, is the
Speaker 7: the idea of the AJH. Holmes was dominated and and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, wagged the dog basically put forth the you know,
Speaker 7: made money for these papers and drove the industry at
Speaker 7: that time, and then these names disappear, I.
Speaker 8: Mean, and so yeah, well it was very interesting to
Speaker 8: me at the time, the fact I have a little
Speaker 8: you know, PostScript at the end of my book, you know,
Speaker 8: speculating about why Holmes had been you know, forgotten, whereas
Speaker 8: somebody like Lizzie Borden, let's say, you know, had remained
Speaker 8: a mythic figure, you know. And obviously, as you say,
Speaker 8: I mean, now you know, Holmes has come, you know,
Speaker 8: Holmes come back. He's you know, he's a big thing.
Speaker 8: Although I think, you know, I think at the time,
Speaker 8: you know, Homes, I think one of the reasons Homes
Speaker 8: was so incredibly notorious to at the time of his
Speaker 8: crimes was because he embodied the shadow side, the dark
Speaker 8: underside of the era in which he lived, you know,
Speaker 8: which was this late nineteenth century Gilded Age where there
Speaker 8: was this you know, mania for money getting, you know,
Speaker 8: and Homes seemed like the personification of that of that
Speaker 8: you know, desire, you know, taken to this pathological extreme,
Speaker 8: so you know, and the serial sexual part of the crimes,
Speaker 8: you know, was something I don't even think his contemper
Speaker 8: has really noticed so much, you know, because even when
Speaker 8: they spoke about him as a Bluebeard, it was more like,
Speaker 8: you know, yeah, he was killing this woman for his money.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: It wasn't until our own age, you know, when we
Speaker 8: you know, became back in the eighties and nineties and
Speaker 8: so on and so forth, you know, much more conscious
Speaker 8: of serial murder as a you know, kind of form
Speaker 8: of sexual sadism and sexual homicide. You know, if you
Speaker 8: know the nature of home, this other aspect of Holmes's crimes,
Speaker 8: you know, became very very apparent. So I think for
Speaker 8: a long time he was forgotten, you know, because to
Speaker 8: some extent, if he was remembered at all, you know,
Speaker 8: hate to use the word, but it was almost like
Speaker 8: they're kind of quaint Victorian kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 8: where's the sky was killing women for money. So anyway,
Speaker 8: that's my theory.
Speaker 7: Well, what I mentioned is that I found it interesting too,
Speaker 7: is that Martin Martin Sorcese's project, the next big project,
Speaker 7: you know, the leading men in Hollywood. Leonardo DiCaprio will
Speaker 7: bring Jhilmes to the big screen. And I've been telling
Speaker 7: a couple of people again, So the people that refuse
Speaker 7: to read books and won't want to find out about
Speaker 7: this story, I think, will we'll get it through that
Speaker 7: via that route. I think it'll be a big movie,
Speaker 7: and I think it will be I think will people
Speaker 7: uncover and discover how incredible this story is.
Speaker 8: It really is, And.
Speaker 7: I don't even think that anybody even really capitalized on
Speaker 7: this story and took it to a fictional end. And
Speaker 7: it's good because they haven't, you know, taken it and
Speaker 7: done it and redone it so many times. So I
Speaker 7: think it's still the story still intact, hasn't had that
Speaker 7: Hollywood fictionalization yet. So hopefully they'll retain as much of
Speaker 7: the story, because who needs to fictionalize a story about
Speaker 7: AJH Holmes?
Speaker 8: Certainly, Yeah, well, the Scarsese book isn't Scarceise movies based
Speaker 8: on Eric Larson Steven in the White City, so you
Speaker 8: know it's not going to be presumably fictionalized. You know
Speaker 8: the thing that Larson did, you know was a wed
Speaker 8: the home story to the story of Daniel Burnham, you know,
Speaker 8: the guy the architect of the World's Fair. So if
Speaker 8: you read Devil White City, you know it alternates between
Speaker 8: the two, you know, and that was a very very
Speaker 8: sort of clever thing to do, partly because it gave
Speaker 8: a sort of cultural cachet to the home story. So,
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm curious to know what proportion of the
Speaker 8: Scorsese movie will be devoted to Daniel Burnham, what to H. H. Holmes.
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm assuming that it won't be just a
Speaker 8: flat out a true crime movie about Holmes. I mean,
Speaker 8: maybe it will be, but I mean, if it is,
Speaker 8: it won't be true to Larson's book. So anyway, I
Speaker 8: have to.
Speaker 7: See, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You said this was your third book,
Speaker 7: and you've gone on to write i know, probably over
Speaker 7: twenty What did you learn that you used in other
Speaker 7: books from this very very prolific and unique and incredibly
Speaker 7: how he seems to have combined a lot of aspects
Speaker 7: of serial murder way way way before this time without
Speaker 7: any other influence. It would seem.
Speaker 8: Not entirely sure what you're asking. I mean, you know,
Speaker 8: one of the things that I learned in writing the book,
Speaker 8: just in terms of writing books like this. You know, again,
Speaker 8: the challenge for me as a writer of historical true
Speaker 8: crime books, you know, is to take mountains of you know,
Speaker 8: dry documents, old newspapers and you know sometimes you know,
Speaker 8: in trial transcripts and you know, police accounts and so
Speaker 8: on and so forth, you know, and turn it into
Speaker 8: a gripping, compelling, hopefully page turning narrative. And I think
Speaker 8: the Homes Book was you know, important to me in
Speaker 8: that sense because you know, the way I structured it
Speaker 8: in order to maintain you know, narrative drive and suspense
Speaker 8: and shock and so on and so forth. You know,
Speaker 8: that was very helpful to me in writing subsequent books.
Speaker 8: You know, it was useful to me. I mean, the
Speaker 8: first two books I wrote before this book, you know,
Speaker 8: one was a game book that was in the that
Speaker 8: was in the set in the nineteen fifties. The book
Speaker 8: on Albert Fish was set in the nineteen thirties. So
Speaker 8: the Homes Book was the first book I wrote, you know,
Speaker 8: going back into the eighteen hundreds. So of course one
Speaker 8: of the things I learned is that there were serial killers,
Speaker 8: you know, back in the eighteen hundreds, you know, and
Speaker 8: of course that ultimately led me to you know, my
Speaker 8: first two books. I don't think the book on Yen,
Speaker 8: in the book on Fish, I don't even think I
Speaker 8: used the term serial murder. As I said, I didn't
Speaker 8: even think of myself as writing true crime back then.
Speaker 8: You know. The Homes book was the first book I
Speaker 8: wrote that I thought of this person as a serial murderer,
Speaker 8: and it kind of led me to really immerse myself
Speaker 8: in the whole history of serial murder. And you know,
Speaker 8: what I ultimately discovered was that it's you know, because wave,
Speaker 8: they're back from the eighteen hundreds. In fact, it's probably
Speaker 8: been a feature of human culture since there were human beings.
Speaker 8: Probably even our pre human ancestors, you know, committed crimes
Speaker 8: like that, or committed acts like that, they wouldn't have
Speaker 8: been considered crimes. So yeah, I mean, and asked your question,
Speaker 8: I mean, it was, you know, a book that I
Speaker 8: first really began learning a lot about the phenomenon of
Speaker 8: serial murder.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I just I could just imagine the effect.
Speaker 7: I mean, you did work on ed Gain, like you say,
Speaker 7: and Albert Fish, and that most people need a mental
Speaker 7: shower after doing any projects like that, And then you
Speaker 7: get to a j Chilms was I just think is
Speaker 7: the most fascinating killer of all time. I just I
Speaker 7: can't believe that I didn't know about this for so
Speaker 7: many years. So thanks to you in this book Depraved,
Speaker 7: and thank you very much Errol for coming on and
Speaker 7: talking about this. For those that might want to look
Speaker 7: at your work or do you have a Facebook page website,
Speaker 7: tell us about that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's a website, Harold Checkter dot com. There is.
Speaker 8: I'm not a Facebook person, but you do have a
Speaker 8: Facebook page that people can communicate with me through. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and books you know, available on Amazon. So yes, and
Speaker 8: thank you very much for having me on again. It's
Speaker 8: always a pleasure.
Speaker 7: It's always a pleasure, Harold. Thank you very much, and
Speaker 7: you have a great evening, and I know I will
Speaker 7: be talking to you again real soon. Thank you. Connect