The Chicago Chronicle from Chicago, Illinois • 33

THE SUNDAY CHRONICLE CHICAGO: MAY 3 1890 -FORTY-EIGHT PAGES 33 IViURDEB HIS MANIA none should have an Intimate knowledge of the intricacies of the place The "castle" is 1C2 feet long and 53 feet wide and has three stories and a basement It concealed a labyrinth of tortuous passages secret and airtight chambers and a room of steel thickly lined with cotton batting and abestos to stifle the shrieks of victims From the second floor a death shaft was constructed to lower bodies into the cellar from whence a hidden passage led to a sealed chamber The cellar contained two large vaults of quicklime and a hidden tank filled with a deadly oil Then there was a first-class crematory for reducing bodies to ashes When Holmes erected this peculiar building he said he was going to keep world's fair roomers on the second floor on which there careful He is very persuasive when he likes" One of his lawyers said: "His voice is gentle and kindly He speaks in even tones and ooks you squarely in the eyes" His manner is uniformly pleasant and courteous and his language choice and refined He is a good conversationalist and there is an air of earnestness and truthfulness about him that would gain him friends readily outside the prison walls Before his trial he impressed almost everybody with his innocence and sincerity It was hard for anyone to hear the man talk and watch the beautiful play of his features and believe that he was the most consummate villain of the age His assurance and confidence never left him He seemed frisky young students He had his flirtations and his little "whirls" but it was noticed that he kept his head coot during all periods of college excitement and was never forgetful of what is termed "the main chance" He was for Homles first last and all the time and fellow students who thought to get the better of him in any little deal either in business or pleasure were woefully disappointed BEGINS HIS SWINDLING Outside of the university this part of Holmes' career is rather obscure There seems little doubt however that it was at Ann Arbor he began his marvelous operations against insurance companies He was careful not to let his beautiful young wife know of this shady work She was working loss signed by Hiram Campbell A Yates Holmes Henry Owens and Williams These were the names of the supposed incorporators of the building but it developed that Yates and Campbell were mythical personages and that Henry Owens was a colored man employed by Holmes and Williams was Minnie Williams his alleged wife Fire Inspector Caine worked three months on the case but not enough evidence was gathered to convict Holmes of arson The companies refused payment of his claims and took up their policies GAS GENERATOR FRAUD It was in this same building Holmes worked the gjs generator scheme He retired from the public gaze for a time and when he returned to the world announced that he vision was made with the widow who then disappeared for good ANOTHER INSURANCE DEAL Another story of hia insurance deals at Ann Arbor implicates a-young doctor The latter had his life insured for $12500 Holmes and he came to Chicago and the doctor died according to arrangement Holmes secured a cadaver shipped It east as the body of his friend and secured the insurance money which he divided with the doctor This precious pair were in partnership for several years it is claimed and succeeded In swindling a number of life Insurance companies out of from $5000 to $20000 each by the substitution of bogus bodies for those of men holding life policies Holmes was very skillful at this work even in those early days He was bold and cunning in his dealings with the insurance companies and was invariably successful and he was apparently loyal and loving to the brave little woman who was straining every nerve to help fit htm for an honorable profession It was this very success however coupled w-ith the ease with which he found ordinarily shrewd people could be bamboozled that urged him to a wider and more heinous field of operations Compared with his later crimes his activity at this period was innocent and harmless He had not then imbrued his hands with blood nor acquired that lust for murder that formed the horrifying feature of his subsequent operations RETURN TO GILM ANTON Holmes completed his medical course of study and left Ann Arbor in 1S81 With his wife he returned to Gilmanton and alter spending considerable money provided by hi father-in-law he entered the medical class of the university at Burlington Vt About this time a son was born who is now 15 years old For three or four years the man appeared to live a quiet and respectable life He studied hard was fairly attentive to his family and gave promise of becoming a valuable citizen Misfortune seemed to come upon him however for at one time he was without money and taught school for a living at Mooers Forks Clinton county He first went there as a nursery agent for a firm in Maine and not doing as well as he desired applied for and obtained the position of district schoolteacher Here his liking for the fair sex again became conspicuous He passed himself off as a single man and proposed marriage to several good looking young women He ran up a big board bill and left suddenly never to return Some persons think his presence in Mooers Forks was a blind that he was even then deeply immersed in criminal practices and wanted a quiet resting place in which to evade the officers of justice and plot more mischief His wife was living at Alton with her parents and Holmes visited her off and on and was kind and affectionate in deportment But shortly after the school episode he deserted her for good His movements are shrouded in mystery for a year or more after his desertion of his wife He is supposd to have gone from New Hampshire to St Paul where he started in business earned the respect of his neighbors and got appointed receiver for a restaurant But it seemed impossible for him to resume an honorable career He stocked the restaurant with goods on credit sold them all and walked off with the proceeds leaving his bondsmen to settle FAILS IN ONE ATTEMPT It was about this tiie that Holmes fixed upon Chicago as a place of- residence and that one of his attempted crimes failed He CIGRAND hard to enable her husband to push his studies and enter the medical profession and he did not wish to discourage her efforts in this direction One of the peculiarities of this criminal was his loving and affectionate demeanor toward the women whom ho ensnared While they were alive and he had use for them he was the most chivalrous and considerate of men He resorted to all expedients to spare them pangs of jealousy and keep them steadfast in their trust of him Even when self-interest compelled him to "remove" some of his flames his prelim- ments when they fully realized the swindle that had been perpetrated One of Holmes' customers called at the store one night after banking hours Ha had a number of small bills which he asked to exchange for large ones to send to a creditor out of town No Holmes had no large bills but he could furnish a check for the amount and take the money Then tha customer could indorse the check and mail it Would that do? The transaction was made the check mailed and in a few day3 it came back with the information that Holmes had no funds in the bank on which it was drawn The amount was $178 and tha customer is still waiting for Holmes to pay him the money In one of the rooms of the "castle" he had an office He purchased a fine safe for this room and several months after it was delivered the company sought to collect ther amount due Holmes refused to pay and when they sent men to bring back the safe they found the room so altered that there was no window or door large enough to admit of its removal Holmes assured them they could remove the safe If they wanted to but threatened them with a lawsuit if they marred his building The company made him a present of the safe It was here also the Tobey Furniture Company came in contact with Holmes Ha bought load after load of elegant furnitura and when he failed to pay for it the Tobey company became suspicious A watchman was sent to the house to see that the goods were not removed Day and night he watched and reported that not a piece had been taken away Then when Holmes refused to pay for it vans were sent down to take it back to the store Then men went into the house searched it from top to bottom and found not a single sign of the furniture The company secured a search warrant but with no better results Finally Henry Owens the colored man in Holmes' employ who worked on the building when It was constructed showed the agents of the firm a blind partition which when demolished revealed a room walled up entirely so that In reality it was no room at all In it was all of the furniture where Holmes had stored it It was removed and the negro received $25 for his information As a sort of "side line" Holmes duped an Aurora man out of $900 in a restaurant deal He furnished a place opposite his drug store opened the restaurant and when tha Aurora man came along sold it to him Then the people from whom Holmes bought the stufC came along seized it all closed the place and the Aurora man went home without his $900 It Is estimated that Holmes cleared from $25000 to $50000 as a result of these operations while a resident of the quiet town of Englewood WILLIAMS SISTERS' FATE SLAUGHTERED BY HOLMES Apart from the crime for which he has to die the greatest Interest centers in Holmes' dealings with and murder of women in Chicago The man had a wonderful influence over women There was something in his manner toward them that few were able to resist Mrs Pietzel the heart-broken widow of his former partner in crime whom he killed to secure the money for which his life was insured thought Holmes was a hypnotist He certainly exercised a marvelous influence over that poor woman and her unfortunate family The judge in charging the jury in Philadelphia said: "Truth is stranger than fiction and if Mrs Pietzel's story-is true it is the most wonderful exhibition of the power of mind over mind I have ever seen and stranger than any novel that I have ever read" A woman journalist who watched the trial closely and made a special study of this feature of Holmes' case declared that the very presence of the man breathed a magnetic something that was inexplicable What was there in that pale slight almost insignificant-looking man she asked to attract so many women? How was it that even when they knew him to be a liar and a cheat they clung to him with a devotion that many a good man never receives? How did they begin to love him so? Does nature herself throw out no danger signals by which tha imperiled may be warned? Can evil masquerade as good and not disclose a sign of the cloven hoof? Many women daily meet men who look as harmless and as innocent as Holmes did Are these women exposed to dangers of which no hint can be given until some direful catastrophe lays every hideous secret bare? How does such a man gain ascendancy over woman's nature? Holmes partially answered this question himself during his trial for life When Miss Yoke the last victim whom he trapped into a fraudulent marriage took the stand to testify for the commonwealth Holmes whispered to his lawyers: "Let me handle her I will work upon her emotions" But the unhappy woman seemed unable to look her betrayer in the face She was evidently aware of the strange power he possessed and although for the first time since his arrest he shed tears and seemed to feel keenly his terrible position to realize how cruelly he had wronged the woman before him she never once raised her eyes in his direction ONE WOMAN'S IDEAS According to the woman critic already quoted that phrase "I'll work upon her emotions" was the keynote of the man's success with women As she thought upon this matter she herself felt a confusing mixture of sensations that alarmed her Was the mere presence of the man working upon her emotions? She found it almost impossible to believe that the neat-looking gentleman in the dock whose eyelashes swept his face in a droop almost childlike in Its tenderness was the ruthless destroyer of loving and devoted women But listen to the words of this woman writer describing tha spell of his manner: Then I sat and tried to study him as I gazed at him I tried to put behind me the knowledge ot his crimes and tried to Judge him say as a gentleman who had just been presented to me His manner is perfect and that is such a charm A man with the deferential yet dignified bearing has a strong weapon where women are concerned A' man like that makes each woman to whom he pays court feels that she alone is the bright power before whom he bends It is tact sublimated allied to an unrivaled knowledge of feminine nature and it touches a most vital point personal vanity She may know evil of him but he says to her: "With you I am good" Few women can dare that with impunity A man has two one to show the world and one to show the woman that he loves A great poet lived many years before he thought this and said it but in the land of lov women have thought this always if they do not say it and bad men have known how to take advantage of the mistake I thought that his voice with its low cadences its almost caressing intonations and inflections must be his strongest point until he turned on ma his eyes They are perfectly wonderful He turns them in that almost indifferently languid way which he has assumed for the courtroom but sha who runs may read their possibilities They belong to a certain class but they ar9 wondrous In their way Not the class either known to poets and novel-reading girls as the bold foroeful kind In them is a more Insidious power the steady intentional gaze in whose depths a woman may read the lightest thought and smile or discover the passions of a relentless animal and lose her soul "I'll work upon her emotions" said Holmes As I looked at the woman about whom this was said I understood her averted face and downcast eye Ho had deceived her most foully his crime against her was the one unpardonable crime between man and woman and yet she turned away her eyes Was it aversion or a fear of a return of old emotions? Who can tell? "I'll work upon her emotions" Ah mel A woman need3 to get very near her God when a Holmes says that of her MINNIE WILLIAMS' STORY In his alleged confession Holmes exhibited some feeling in regard to the awful fate of the two Williams girls Minnie Williams whom he pretended to make his wife was a handsome and virtuous young woman having considerable property in Texas Holmes asserted he met her In New York in 1888 where she knew him as Edward Hatch but when he met her again In Denver in 1S93 she does not seem to have recognized her former admirer At any rate she answered an advertisement for a stenographer and came on to Chicago where she was introduced to him again as II Holmes and engaged as stenographer in one of his fake concerns Minnie Williams is described as a southern beauty of a singular type and with a keen intellect Her fortune has been variously estimated from $10000 to $75000 She belonged to Midlothian Tex When quite young her parents died and Dr Williams of Dallas an uncle sent her to the Boston conservatory to be educated The younger sister Nannie went to another uncle Rev Black of New Orleans La editor of the Methodist Christian Advocate who afterward took her to Jackson Miss II Holmes the Man of Blood and His Hideous Crimes Absolute Indifference to Human Life Shown in His Career True History of the Operations of This Great Assassin His Record Traced From Birth to the Shade of the Gallows Visit to Moyamensing Prison Where He Now Awaits His Doom The Chicago Castle and Its Facilities for His Atrocious Work HOLMES CAREER OF CRIME ARCHCRIMINAL OF THE AGE On Thursday morning next unless something unlooked for occurs to check the course of justice the world will be rid of the arch-criminal of this age Holmes the multimurderer bigamist seducer resurrectionist forger thief and general swindler will be taken from his cell in the Moyamensing jail Philadelphia Pa and hanged by the neck until he is dead The career of this man Is without parallel in the annals of crime Other criminals there have been who could count their victims by the score and whose boldness audacity and cruelty have startled and shocked society but there is no record of one who compared with Holmes in the variety ingenuity and heartlessness of his crimes In his latest confession he claimed to have murdered twenty-seven persons Among his victims were young girls and innocent children as well as men and women who stood in the way of his plans or whose death could minister to his greed of money He allowed no one to block his blood-stained road to wealth nor was he particular as to the means necessary for the removal of obstacles Cords or knives poison or fire suffocating streams or the deadly lead pipe were all familiar to his ruthless hands He would just as soon roast children in stoves as smother them in trunks He had a predilection for chloroform but did not object to nitroglycerin or dynamite when they would best aid his fell purposes and one of his favorite modes of disposing of women who readily succumbed to hi3 gentle manners and wheedling tongue was to entomb them in the vault of his famous "castle" in Englewood and asphyxiate them with noxious gases Nothing was too horrible or too brutal for Holmes to perform He was absolutely without pity or conscience where his sordid interests were Involved Custom made murder to him a property of easiness and he went about his red-handed tasks with a spirit of lightness and good nature that disarmed suspicion and made detection almost impossible It was his avarice indeed that tripped him at last Had he kept a financial promise to a fellow prisoner in the jail at St Louis who introduced him to a lawyer to facilitate fraud on an insurance company the murder of Pietzel for which he was tried and condemned to death might never have been discovered and the world would have remained in ignorance of the superlative wickedness of this "monarch of murderers" LIST OF "CONFESSED" MURDERS The list of murders "confessed" by Holmes comprises the following: for Robert Leacock of New Baltimore Mich poisoned Dr Russell killed by a blow with a chair at the castle Mrs Julia Connor and her little daughter Pearl Connor criminal operation and poison Mr Rodgers West Morgantown Va killed by a blow with an oar while fishing Charles Cole struck with a piece of lead pipe in the castle Lizzie a domestic suffocated in the vault at the castle Mrs Sarah Cook and unborn child suffocated In the castle vault Mrs Mary Haracamp of Hamilton Canada suffocated in the castle vault Miss Emmeline Cigrand of Dwight suffocated in the vault Edna Van Tassel of Chicago poisoned Robert Latimer an employe slow starvation in the vault Miss Anna Betts Chicago poisoned Miss Gertrude Connor Muscatine Iowa poisoned Mr Warner of the Warner Glass Bending Company boiled in oil and steam in the kiln at the castle A young Englishman an associate chloroformed A woman boarder at the castle chloroformed Minnie Williams poisoned Nannie Williams suffocated In the vault Baldwin Williams shot at Leadville Col A man name forgotten killed in Chicago during the fair Benjamin Pietzel chloroformed in Philadelphia Howard Pietzel poisoned and body cut to pieces and burned in a stove at Irvington Ind Alice and Nellie Pietzel suffocated in a trunk at Toronto Ont OTHER UNSUCCESSFUL EFFORTS In addition to this horrible catalogue Holmes says he made unsuccessful attempts on the lives of other persons notably three young women who worked in his confectionery store on Milwaukee avenue The detectives who investigated the colossal murderer's career assert that Holmes willfully expanded his list of murders to fool certain newspapers His story of the murder of Pietzel and his children is at variance with known facts and has been discredited in police circles To an official in Philadelphia he admitted that he had been "faking" "I have been accused of killing almost every person who has disappeared during the past ten years" said he "and I knew they would swallow any sensational story I might write Of course there is a good deal in the -confession that is not true but the newspapers wanted a sensation and they got it And I got well paid for it" But however he may have exaggerated Holmes told enough truth to bear out his terrible reputation APPEARANCE OF THE CRIMINAL In personal appearance Holmes is anything but a desperate murderer He is a medium-sized Blender man with a clean cut delicate profile and long lashes shading full and mild blue eyes Before his arrest eighteen months ago he was erect an'd manly in bearing but a slight stoop has come with imprisonment and the convict pallor gives him a ghastly look His head is shapely and well proportioned and the face thin He has small ears and rather a large nose and his chin is well molded and strong Up to a few weeks ago he wore a full brown beard which gave him the appearance of a college professor or an artist but since his conviction he has shaven and wears only a mustache which is heavy inclined to be sandy and well kept His hands are small and soft to the touch' His hair Is brown and thick and he parts it on the right side His eyes are wonderfully expressive They not start or shift but look persons steadily in the face during conversation which they aid with their lights and shades His voice is low and soft like a woman's and he uses It well Its tones emphasized by the earnest action of his tyes are captivating and convincing and would win attention anywhere The prison keepers soon fell under their spell Superintendent Perkins said to Ths Chronicle writer the other day: "He has a wonderful voice It's the oiliest and slickest that I ever listened to He'd make you Relieve that black is whita if you were fcot MOYAMENSING PRISON TASSEL had perfected an invention for generating gas from water at a cost of 9 cents per million cubic feet This received wide publication in the newspapers and one of the local gas companies investigated It Holmes showed the machine in his cellar with great secrecy He had a gas meter attached to show the amount actually consumed and then connected all the jets in the building and kept them burning night and day The gas company's representative watched everything carefully spending considerable money on it and finally recommended the generator to such an extent that Holmes was able to sell it to a Canadian for $20000 When the machine was taken out the gas company discovered that Holmes had made an excavation in the cellar tapped the mains and used the company's own gas in his machine This clever fraud was enough to send him to prison but in some manner he again escaped the meshes of the law MINERAL SPRING FRAUD Then his famous "mineral spring" fraud developed After the gas machine was-removed Holmes decided) the hole under his cellar was too valuable not to be utilized and he dug further down tapped the city water mains and ran the pipes through his soda fountain in the store above Then by means of chemicals to color it he sold Lake Michigan water as "mineral spring'" at 5 cents a glass The people of Englewood purchased the water alleged' to have curative powers and Holmes was able to clear several thousand dollars before the fraud was discovered It might be incidentally remarked that the Canadian who bought the "gas generator" died of a broken heart and that several good citizens of Englewood said things not permissible in church when they found they had been duped wTIth the mineral water THE DRUG STORE SALE FRAUD Another equally clever scheme was developed when Holmes sold the drug store to a Mr Jones of Peoria When Jones came to town he paid a clerk in the store to watch the sales before buying the place agreeing to pay Holmes his price for the store if the sales came up to the mark claimed Then Holmes set to work to get his price and he got it He sent his typewriter friends and every person he could find to the store to buy toilet sets patent medicines boxes of cigars expensive perfumeries and other articles which bring a good profit to the druggist He furnished the money and the sales went even above the limit ha had named Mr Jones of Peoria was well pleased and WILLIAMS Holmes sold out making a big profit even though he had bought nearly the entire stock himself to swell the daily sales After the transfer was made the goods were found in a cellar across the street and Mr Jones of Peoria found that he had a white elephant on his hands in that drug store which would not pay clerk hire without some such gemius as Holmes to boom things Holmes and Jones had a lawsuit over some real estate involved In the sale of the drug store but as usual Holmes came out victorious "SILVER ASH" CURE Still another of Holmes' schemes was hia "Silver Ash Cure" for inebriates There were In Englewood) many bibulous souls who were anxious to reduce their appetite for liquor so Holmes fixed up a cure and succeeded in getting several hundred dollars from the Inebriates and most of them are Inebriates till though they enjoyed a few sober mo EDNA VAN are a large number of small rooms He had a number of guests but most of them remained only a short time His own office was on the third floor and in passing from his drug store to his office he had to go through one or more of the rooms But he had not only secret chambers and deadened apartments the whole building was covered with electrical devices to warn him when anyone walked over the floors of the second or third story When Minnie Williams was living with him as his wife in apartments over the drug store she was piqued by the visits of other women to Holmes and set about to watch his maneuvers with them Holmes penetrated her design with his accustomed shrewdness and deceived her in a most ingenious manner He removed one of the steps on the stairs leading from the store to their apartments above and under it put an electric push button with the necessary battery and wires" and connected it with a buzzer in the store Consequently whenever Miss Williams started out to spy on Holmes she had io step on the electric button and the cunning scoundrel had immediate warning of her proximity He would then rush his female visitors into the cellar where some of them afterward left their fieshless bones and greet the jealous woman from behind the counter in the most suave and innocent manner conceivable As said before the fellow wished to spare his paramoursany' passing pangs Of jealousy If lie was not ready to kill them when the green-eyed monster first invaded their breasts he always had some scheme ready to lull their suspicions and keep the lamp of their affections beaming steadily upon himself It will be recalled that hundreds of persons who came to Chicago to visit the fair disappeared mysteriously The theory has frequently been broached that they fell into the clutches of Holmes Many went to the "castle" it was argued in answer to delusive advertisements and never found their way out again It was intimated that he built the place close to the fair grounds so as to gather in such victims by wholesale and after robbing them disposed of their bodies either in his quicklime vats In the mysterious tanks filled with death-dealing liquids or burned them in his elaborate retort The large quantity of bones found in the basement seemed to bear out this theory but Holmes declared at the time the investigation of the horrors of the "castle" was in progress that many of the bones were soup bones from the restaurant This was ascertained to be the fact but was not their pres- ANNA ence among human bones another evidence of the devilish ingenuity of the man? He was familiar with detective methods and seemed always ready for any contingency Might not the soup bones have been purposely so placed to confuse possible searchers and break the force of any evidence of this kind that might turn up? It is only fair to the demi-devil to say however that he has lately! shown a disposition to gloat over his manifold crimes and wickedness and that if he had perpetrated the wholesale slaughter suggested he would not have hesitated to inserts the fact in his last confession as a further proof of his degenerate nature or moral idiocy as he is pleased to term his passion for murder CASTLE BADLY DAMAGED Soon after Holmes moved into this building a fire took place and it was badly damaged Holmes disappeared but a few days later the underwriters received a proof of EMELINE thoroughly open and frank in everything he did and said Not until you left his presence and analyzed his statements did the fact dawn that the man was a born hypocrite and dissemblerand that lies bold ingenious stupenduous wicked were part of his common stock in trade VARIED LINE OF CONFESSIONS Holmes began his remarkable series of confessions from the first moment of his arrest and he changed their tenor to suit his varying fortunes He tried to trick and deceive everybody with his soft plausible statements until he found that he was injuring his cause and then he turned swiftly round and accused himself of almost everything save the murder for which he is to be hanged Finally he confessed to that and more than a score of other cold-blooded crimes and the general verdict of his keepers today is that he is the most adroit scoundrel and consummate- liar that ever entered a prison But to fully appreciate the audacity and devilish skill of this demi-devil it is necessary to review his terrible career of crime which he entered upon calmly and deliberately and pursued diligently to its awful end HOLMES' EARLY CAREER NO HEREDITARY TAINT Those who look for hereditary taint in hardened criminals will be disappointed in the case of Holmes So far as can be traced his forbears were reputable hard-working citizens whose sole ambition was to lead a quiet industrious life Herman Webster Mudgett for that is the real name of this man of many aliases was born in Gilman-ton on May 16 1860 His parents who are still living did their best to train the boy properly He was reared under the auspices of a Christian home and surrounded by elevating and refining influences during the formative period of his life But Holmes as it is best to call him now early gave signs of "smartness" and pained his parents by showing a disposition to get "the best of it" whenever he could The boy was a great reader and sharp at figures and his education progressed so satisfactorily that he was able to teach school when he was 15 years old At this stage of Ms career neighbors say there was nothing radically wrong with young Holmes He evinced a high degree of seltishness but that it was argued comes naturally to children in these days and nobody was harsh enough to predict a bad end for the clever young school-teacher His fondness for the fair sex which has figured so largely in his extraordinary career of crime manifested itself very early While a schoolboy he experienced several attacks of the tender passion and at the age of 18 he began his wonderful matrimonial experience by marrying Clara A Loverlng a beautiful young woman of Alton whose parents were wealthy and kindly disposed toward their precocious son-in-law As appeared natural at the time Holmes desired to push his fortunes on assuming the responsibilities cf a married man In his native place the opportunities for advancement were too limited for his ambitious vision He wanted a college education he told his bride so that he might enter one of the professions and his wife was proud that he looked so carefully to the future Her parents were willing to assist Holmes and he and his w-ife left New Hampshire and went to Ann Arbor Mich where the young husband entered the university There are various stories as to his life there Money did not seem plentiful enough and it is said Holmes compelled his wife to work at hair dressing to pay her expenses and add to the funds which still came from New Hampshire At the university Holmes made rapid progress and did not seem wore than most MINNIE inary work to that end was smoothed with soft speeches and sweet smiles "Please go into the vault my dear" was his usual request in bland tones while he was making a charnel-house of the Chicago castle "I think you will find the receipt there Bring it to me darling and we will soon have the tangle fixed" And the confiding creatures smiled back as they hastened to obey his behest Then the steel door clicked the poisonous gas was turned on and the foolish women were soon locked in the cold embrace of death But Holmes had not yet tired of his first wife and he continued fooling her to the top of her bent It is said there were quarrels and threats of parting on both sides but the wily wretch cajoled the women into loving WILLIAMS confidence again and they kissed and made up He was not able to renounce the money supplies from New Hampshire to say nothing of the welcome addition to their income earned by hig wife It was not long however before Holmes conceived his plan to swindle insurance companies He was between two and three years in Ann Arbor and during that time he worked his favorite scheme with great success FIRST "DISAPPEARANCE" One of the stories is that a young woman followed him to the university town and entered suit against him for breach of promise The legal proceedings were withdrawn and a "brother" of Holmes married the woman Then in due course Holmes was taken violently ill and the brother came to nurse him He recovered and the brother was stricken and died it was asserted But that night a body on the way to the dissecting-room disappeared the brother slipped out of town the face of the body was discolored beyond identification by the aid of chemicals and later on Holmes recovered $5000 Ufa Insurance on the death of his brother A 01- was hard up for cash and got himself insured for $20000 as Holmes Then he went to Providence I livedat a hotel for a few days and looked around for a likely body to represent his own corpse He was wearing a beard then Having procured a body that answered his purpose he took it out in the woods and cut off the head Then he got shaved went back to the same hotel registered under another name and asked if his old friend Holmes was there He was told that Mr Holmes had gone out early in the morning and was expected to return soon Holmes sat down and waited a long time for himself and then went away In the course of a few days the body was discovered iand he came forward and identified it as that of his friend Holmes whom he had come to Providence to see But the suspicion of the insurance company was aroused and he skipped out to avoid arrest HOLMES IN CHICAGO MURDER AS A PROFESSION It was here in Chicago that Holmes achieved much of his awful pre-eminence in blood and crime He dabbled in almost every known criminal'pperation and adopted murder as a regular business To put a man or woman to death was no greater crime in hiseyes than to rob or forge or steal In all of which arts he was an expert In fact he seemed to consider murder the easiest means for accomplishing his ends He built his notorious "castle" with a view to engaging in wholesale butchery In it there were mysterious stairs secret chambers kilns for cremating purposes and iron vaults in which to suffocate people who crossed his patch or whose disappearance could help him to money and other property So far as women were concerned he was a veritable Bluebeard He fascinated them with his mild blue eyes and plausible tongue and when he was tired of their charms he dispatched them rapidly and deftly in his horrible vault Some of their bodies he destroyed with quicklime and acids others he had articulated and sold for cash and yet others fetched a price for use on the dissecting table The man was thrifty in every respect He found a source of profit in the bodies of those victims which he was not compelled to utterly destroy He did not confine his crimes to his own charnel-house Any place was good enough for him to commit murder in and it did not require much Incentive to imbrue his hands in blood Money and property- were incomparably more valuable in his eyes than human life but sometimes he would quietly kill a woman to prevent her getting jealous of some new charmer who had ensnared his susceptible heart It is rather difficult to trace the various performances of this archcriminal His numerous confessions have been silent in regard to common crimes dilating mainly on murder and attempted murder and he seems to have wanted to draw a veil over certain periods of his life But Holmes is known to have taken up -his residence in Chicago in 1877 when he became a clerk in a drug store on Sixty-third street near the site of the castle He committed bigamy in January 1S88 by marrying Myrta Belknap under the name of Harry Howard Holmes On Feb 14 of this year he filed in -the superior court of Cook county a bill for divorce against his wife Clara A Lovering Mudgett praying that their marriage be dissolved and on June 4 1891 this suit was dismissed for default of appearance of complainant In 1888 he bought the drug store in which he worked from Mrs Holden who had great difficulty in getting the purchase price from him HIS FAMOUS "CASTLE" Most of his schemes were worked from the "castle" which lie started to erect before the world's fair This building was designed as a regular murder factory Holmes planned himself and engaged his own workmen taking care to change ikcm frequently so that Some time after Minnla graduate rraduated in Bos.