Depraved

by Harold Schechter

  The policy was made out to the wife and when the money was put in the bank, then Howard stepped out and left the wife to settle with Howe for his services. She was willing to pay him $1,000 but he wanted $2,500. Howard is now on his way to Germany, and Pitezel’s wife is here in the city yet, and where Pitezel is or whether that is Pitezel’s body I can’t tell, but I don’t believe it is Pitezel’s body, but believe that he is alive and well and probably in Germany, where Howard is now on his way. It is hardly worth while to say that I never got the $500 that Howard held out to me for me to introduce him to Mr. Howe. Please excuse this poor writing as I have written this in a hurry and have to write on a book placed on my knee. This and a lot more I am willing to swear to. I wish you would see the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company and see if they are the ones who have been made the victim of this swindle, and if so, tell them that I want to see them. I never asked what company it was until today, and it was after we had some words about the matter, and so Howe may not have told the proper company but you can find out what company it is by asking or telephoning to the different companies …. Please send an agent of the company to see me if you please.

  Yours Resp., etc.

  MARION C. HEDGEPETH

  In the company of a police stenographer, Gary promptly set off for the city prison, where he took a sworn statement from Hedgepeth that was essentially a recapitulation of the letter.

  Armed with both documents, plus a rogues’-gallery portrait of the swindler H. M. Howard, Inspector Gary returned to Philadelphia that night. The following morning he met with the officers of Fidelity Mutual in President Fouse’s office and reported his findings. Unwilling to admit that they had been suckered, Fouse and his colleagues scoffed at Hedgepeth’s accusations. The outlaw, they argued, was obviously trying to pass off phony information in a cunning bid to have his sentence reduced.

  Gary acknowledged that—in addition to striking back at Howard for cheating him of his fee—Hedgepeth was undoubtedly looking to curry favor with the authorities. But Gary insisted that the story must be true. The letter contained information that Hedgepeth could only have learned from one of the conspirators—the bit about the tardy insurance payment, for example.

  Fouse found the latter point hard to refute. Frowning, he asked to see the picture of H. M. Howard. As soon as he laid eyes on it, the color drained from his face.

  Looking back at him from the photograph was the personable physician whose decency and kindness had impressed Fouse so favorably several weeks before.

  Early the next morning, Inspector Gary and a colleague set off from Philadelphia, having been authorized by the officers of Fidelity Mutual to use every means at their disposal to track down and apprehend Dr. H. H. Holmes.

  29

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  —Nursery rhyme

  By the time Gary and his partner embarked on their man-hunt, Holmes was already gone from Indiana.

  He had returned for the girls on the evening of Wednesday, October 10. Alice and Nellie had filled the days since Howard’s departure with their usual pastimes—drawing pictures, reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, playing with their few simple toys. Sometimes, they would do nothing but sit and stare through the window at the life that flowed along the busy street outside. At other times, worn down by the tedium and isolation, they would lie in each other’s arms and weep.

  Finding them in tears, the hotel chambermaid, a middle-aged German woman named Caroline Klausmann, assumed that they were orphans, grieving for their lost parents. Her heart went out to the stricken children and she yearned to offer words of comfort. But speaking no English, she could only gaze at them with compassionate eyes.

  When Holmes checked Alice and Nellie out of the Circle House that night and brought them to the train station, they must have felt like prisoners sprung from solitary. They had no way of knowing that they were simply being transferred to another cell.

  * * *

  The following day, Georgiana received a long-awaited telegram from her husband, in which he asked her to meet him immediately in Detroit. On Friday morning, she left her parents’ home in Franklin and boarded a train. The ride lasted all day and by that evening, she was in the grip of one of her “sick headaches.” Shutting her eyes, she tried to sleep but was disturbed by the sudden sensation of another passenger sliding onto the vacant seat beside her. When she turned her head to look, she was startled to see her husband.

  He pulled her close and kissed her brow. What a wonderful surprise! he said, laughing. Evidently, they had been riding in separate cars all day without realizing that they were sharing the same train. He would never have spotted her if he hadn’t decided to get up and stretch his legs.

  When they arrived in Detroit an hour later, Holmes secured a suite at the Hotel Normandie, registering as “G. Howell and wife, Adrian.” Georgiana, still suffering from her migraine, took to bed immediately. She was lying in the dark with her eyes shut tight when she heard the door creak open and her husband slip out of the suite.

  He had ridden beside the two girls until the train was an hour away from its destination. Then—inventing some cock-and-bull story to explain why he couldn’t be seen arriving with them—he had taken his bag and moved to a different car. The girls were to get off at Detroit and wait until he came to fetch them.

  Alice and Nellie had followed his orders and were sitting slumped on a bench inside the station, satchels at their feet, when he showed up just before midnight.

  Transporting them by cab to a hotel called the New Western, Holmes rented a room for the girls, signing them in under the names “Etta and Nellie Canning.” Then he hurried back to the Hotel Normandie, changed into his nightshirt, and quietly slipped into bed beside his sleeping wife.

  Georgiana felt much better in the morning. Explaining that his affairs might keep them in Detroit for a while, Holmes checked them out of the hotel and into a boardinghouse on Park Place. When the proprietor inquired as to his profession, Holmes—evidently enjoying a sly joke—replied that he was an actor.

  Holmes hauled their luggage to their room and helped Georgiana settle in. Then—following his usual modus operandi—he went off in search of a secluded house.

  At roughly the same time in Galva, Illinois, Carrie Pitezel was packing a trunk for herself, Dessie, and the baby hi preparation for their imminent trip to Detroit.

  In obedience to Holmes, she had journeyed to her parents’ place on Friday, October 5. For six days she had waited with mounting anxiety for word of her husband’s where-abouts. Holmes’s letter had finally arrived on the eleventh. Ben was in Detroit, it said. She should plan on traveling there in the middle of the following week.

  Desperately lonely for her husband—and pining for Alice, Nellie, and Howard—Carrie had decided to defy this directive, wiring Holmes to expect her on Sunday the fourteenth. She did, however, comply with another of his orders—to destroy his letter as soon as she finished reading it.

  When Carrie’s train arrived in Detroit on Sunday afternoon, Holmes was waiting on the platform. Had he been capable of the emotion, Holmes might have been shocked by Carrie’s appearance. As it was, he experienced a sense of mild surprise at how pinched and feeble she looked, as if the strains of the preceding months had propelled her into old age. Dessie, who cradled baby Wharton in her arms, followed her mother off the train. Gathering up their luggage, Holmes led them to a carriage.

  During the ride to the hotel, Carrie grilled him about the other children. How were they getting on? And why hadn’t she received any letters from them?

  “They are in Indianapolis, in the care of a very nice widow lady,” Holmes assured her. “They are probably too busy with their school duties to write to you, but I am certain you will hear from them soon.”

  “What is the name of this widow?” Carrie demanded. “I am not in the habit of letting my children stay with strangers without knowing who they a
re.”

  Holmes took his bottom lip between his teeth and furrowed his brow. “It is a peculiar name,” he said after moment. “I cannot think of it just now.”

  “Cannot think of her name?” Carrie exclaimed. “How did you find this woman?”

  “My wife’s parents intend to move to Indianapolis from their current home in Franklin. I agreed to help them find a house. One of the real estate agents I consulted provided me with the widow’s name.”

  “But when will I see my children?” Carrie cried.

  Holmes patted her hands. “Very soon. Once you have finished visiting with Benny, I will take you to Indianapolis. My wife’s parents will not be ready to move into their new house for several months. In the meanwhile, you and the children are free to live there without paying rent.”

  Somewhat mollified, Carrie closed her eyes and leaned her head against her daughter’s shoulder until the carriage arrived at Geis’s European Hotel.

  When Holmes registered them as “Mrs. C. A. Adams and daughter,” Carrie pulled him aside and asked why he had given a false name.

  “It is safer this way,” he answered. “You need not be so proud to keep your own name.”

  Then—leaving Carrie and the children in the care of the housekeeper, Miss Minnie Mulholland—Holmes hastened away.

  Miss Mulholland showed the new arrivals to their room. As she headed back to the front of the hotel, the housekeeper wondered what in the world could be troubling the poor woman. She had never seen a human being who looked more bowed down with care.

  Not long afterward, Holmes checked Alice and Nellie out of the New Western Hotel and transferred them to a boardinghouse at 91 Congress Street run by a woman named Lucinda Burns.

  There, on that same afternoon, Alice sat down and composed a letter to her loved ones in Galva. It was the last letter she would write.

  Dear Grandma and Grandpa,

  Hope you are all well Nell and I have both got colds and chapped hands but that is all. We have not had any nice weather at all I guess it is coming winter now. Tell mama that I have to have a coat. I nearly freeze in that thin jacket. We have to stay in all the time. Howard is not with us now. We are right near the Detroit River. We was going on a boat ride yesterday but it was too cold. All that Nell and I can do is draw and I get so tired of siting that I could get up and fly almost. I wish I could see you all. I am getting so homesick that I don’t know what to do. I suppose Wharton walks by this time don’t he I would like to have him hear he would pass away the time a goodeal.

  Everything about this letter is almost unbearably heart-breaking. There is, to begin with, Alice’s simple reference to her brother— “Howard is not with us now”—whose ominous significance she could not possibly have known. There are the small cries of loneliness and boredom—the only complaints she had ever permitted herself in her letters-that so poignantly convey the misery of her physical confinement and long separation from her family. There is the terrible fact that, at that very moment, her mother, her older sister, and the baby brother she ached to see were lodged in a rooming house only a few blocks away, though Alice would never know of their proximity.

  And then—perhaps most distressing of all—there are the remarks about her jacket.

  For Jays, Alice and her sister had been begging for warmer clothes. Holmes kept promising to buy them a new winter wardrobe. He was lying, of course. From his point of view, such a purchase would be a complete waste of cash.

  In another few days—if everything went according to his plan—Alice and Nellie would no longer be bothered by the cold.

  * * *

  By Monday, October 15, Holmes was ready.

  He had located and rented a house—a small, secluded place at 241 E. Forest Avenue on the outskirts of the city.

  He had dug a hole in the rear of the cellar—four feet long, three and a half feet wide, three and a half feet deep.

  But on Wednesday the seventeenth, before he had a chance to consummate his scheme, a wire arrived from a Chicago associate named Frank Blackman. Holmes did not like what it said. Once again—as in Cincinnati—he was forced to abort his plan at the eleventh hour and find a different place to do the job.

  When Holmes got back to his room that evening, he surprised Georgiana by announcing that—as a way of expressing his gratitude for her unfailing devotion—he had decided to take her to Niagara Falls. They would travel by way of Toronto, where he had a little business to take care of—a matter of renewing some contracts on his copying machines.

  Early the next morning, while Georgiana packed their things, Holmes excused himself to run an errand. Outside, he headed straight for Geis’s hotel, where he found Carrie and her children installed m a gloomy back room that faced an alleyway. Carrie’s face brightened with expectation when she saw Holmes at the door. But her hopeful look faded as soon as he opened his mouth.

  It pained him to say it, but she would have to wait a little longer to see Benny. “I have searched all over Detroit for a vacant house where the two of you can meet,” he grumbled. “But I cannot find a suitable place. Benny cannot take a chance on being seen. By now, there might be people looking for him.”

  “What am I to do?” Carrie cried despairingly.

  Holmes filled her in on the latest plan, which he and her husband had worked out last evening. Carrie and Ben would have their rendezvous outside the United States. Ben was already on his way to Canada. Carrie, Dessie, and Wharton were to follow on the eleven-thirty A.M. train to Toronto. Holmes already had their tickets. When they arrived that night, they were to wait at the depot until Holmes came to fetch them. He himself was leaving for Toronto at nine A.M.

  Carrie’s whole body sagged with dejection and fatigue, and Dessie let out a dispirited groan. Giving her daughter a little rub between the shoulder blades, Carrie asked Holmes if it was necessary for Dessie to come along. “She is so tired,” Carrie said. “Perhaps she can go down to Indianapolis and stay with the others while I travel up to meet Benny.”

  Holmes took a moment to consider this before shaking his head. “You will need her to take care of the baby while you go and see Ben.”

  Nodding resignedly, Carrie accepted the tickets that Holmes pressed into her hand.

  Holmes’s next stop was Luanda Burns’s boardinghouse. Alice and Nellie listened despondently as Holmes told them what they must do. Before leaving, he pulled another pair of train tickets from his pocket—these for the following morning—and turned them over to the girls.

  Then he rushed back to his room, where he found his wife ready and waiting.

  Arriving in Toronto around suppertime that night, Holmes took Georgiana to a hotel called the Walker House, registering again under the name Howell. A few hours later, he left Georgiana in their room and returned to the Grand Trunk Station, where he found Carrie Pitezel occupying a bench alongside her eldest daughter, who cradled the dozing infant in her arms. Both mother and daughter looked thoroughly drained and distraught.

  “Where have you been?” Carrie cried as Holmes approached. “We have been waiting here nearly an hour and a half!”

  “I have only been in Toronto a half hour myself,” said Holmes. “My train was late.”

  “I don’t see how it could be three hours late,” Carrie replied bitterly. “You told me you were leaving at nine.” By then, however, she felt too fatigued to argue. “Where is Benny?”

  “He is hiding out in Montreal. I am to rent a house here in Toronto where the two of you can be together. As soon as I have found a place, I will send word to Ben and he will come down at night to meet you.”

  Carrie, who had expected to find her husband waiting in Toronto, looked as if she were about to cry.

  “You will be happy to hear,” Holmes said quickly, reaching into his jacket and extracting a folded sheet, “that I have received a letter from the children.”

  Carrie snatched the paper from his hand and scanned it eagerly. Almost at once, however, her mouth formed itself into a deep
frown. “I cannot read this,” she exclaimed.

  “Of course not,” Holmes said, chuckling softly. “It is written in cipher. As a precaution.” Plucking the letter from her fingers, he began to read it aloud. “ ‘Dear Mamma, we are well and going to school. We have plenty to eat, and the woman is real good to us.’” Holmes looked up from the letter, smiling.

  “Is that all?” Carrie asked.

  Nodding, Holmes folded the note back into quarters and returned it to his pocket. Then he grabbed up their luggage and led them to the Union Hotel, not far from the place where he and Georgiana were staying. Checking them in as “Mrs. C. Adams and daughter,” Holmes promised to call on them the next day with more news of Benny.

  Holmes, however, did not keep his promise. Instead, he spent the day sight-seeing and shopping with Georgiana. At eight that night, after dinner at a fashionable restaurant, he escorted her back to their room. As his wife slipped out of her overcoat, Holmes said he felt too “full of pep” to retire and thought he might go for a short, postprandial walk.