The Devil's Dozen Read Free Page B

deliberate and cold-blooded villain than the central figure in this story.” A judge concurred, viewing the case from start to finish as “stranger than any novel I have ever read.” Indeed, this true story is among the best illustrations of how an intrepid investigator runs down every lead, ponders the impact of every clue, and will not give up until he has exhausted every avenue.
    Notorious turn-of-the century serial killer H. H. Holmes.

Missing Children
    The case began in Philadelphia. On September 3, 1894, a man looking for a patent dealer on Callowhill Street ascended the stairs to an office. A stench filled the air and appeared to grow worse on the second floor. When the caller spotted a decomposing corpse with a blackened face lying on the floor, he fetched the police.
    They arrived and found that the victim’s head, chest, and right arm were badly burned, and a match and a broken bottle of chloroform lay nearby. It appeared that he’d accidentally struck a match near an explosive solvent.
    The victim was identified as Benjamin F. Pitezel, and when his wife, Carrie, was notified, she requested the life insurance payment from Fidelity Mutual of $10,000. However, an imprisoned convict informed the company that the whole thing was a scam; someone else’s body had been substituted for that of the alleged victim. His warning came too late. A man named H. H. Holmes had already brought Pitezel’s oldest daughter, Alice, to identify the body and settle the claim.
    Given these details, an officer for the insurance company tried unsuccessfully to track down Holmes, so officials hired agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to go after the scoundrel. These more experienced investigators followed Holmes’s trail from state to state, gathering information about his numerous frauds, thefts, and seductions. They learned about insurance scams years earlier in Chicago that had provided him with sufficient funds to build a three-story hotel. As they built their case, they realized that Holmes, whose real name was Her-man Mudgett, was among the most successful and versatile swindlers they had ever come across. If he hadn’t gotten greedy and brought his schemes too close to home, he’d have still been in business. But this time, they believed they could get him.
    The agents followed his trail through Chicago, Detroit, Ontario, New York, and New England. Finally, they caught up to Holmes near his childhood haunts in Vermont. They put him under surveillance and gave the information of his whereabouts, along with that of Carrie Pitezel, to police. On the afternoon of November 16, H. H. Holmes was apprehended in Boston as he prepared to board a steamship. The arresting officers told him he was being charged with the theft of a horse in Texas, so he surrendered easily, probably amused, because he knew he’d committed much more serious crimes. So did they, but they did not let on that he’d soon be extradited for murder charges to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
    Detective Frank Geyer, who became famous for tracking Holmes’s victims down.

    Philadelphia Detective Thomas Crawford arrived with an arrest warrant for both Holmes and Carrie Pitezel, but she alerted them to her missing children. The travelers had split into small groups to evade detectives and Holmes had taken three of the Pitezel children with him. Yet they were not with him now. Holmes claimed they were in the care of a woman, Minnie Williams, who had already sailed for England. He admitted to fraud, saying Benjamin Pitezel was in South America, and agreed to return to Philadelphia.
    Further investigation over the next few months revealed that even the scammers had been duped: Pitezel, a supposed scammer, was indeed the victim. Holmes said that Pitezel had decided to commit suicide, but it seemed more likely that he’d been duped. Investigators surmised that Holmes had persuaded Pitezel to get insured and use his family to collect the money after his