For one thing, Holmes’s insistence that he had undergone such a frightening physical metamorphosis that he was “thankful I am no longer allowed a [looking] glass” had no basis in fact. His jailers and visitors attested that—except for his Vandyke beard, which he had shaved—his appearance hadn’t changed at all since his trial.
There was an even more troubling anomaly. Immediately after the confession appeared, a number of his presumed victims came forward to refute his claims. These included the supposedly incinerated Mr. Warner and Holmes’s former employee Robert Lattimer, whose death struggles had been so graphically described. A third “victim” was known to have died in a train wreck. At the same time, Holmes was strongly suspected of having done away with other tenants of the Castle whose names he had failed to include in his confession.
District Attorney Graham offered the most convincing explanation for these inconsistencies. “The confession,” he told reporters, “is a mixture of truth and falsehood. Holmes never could help lying.”
Whether Holmes’s lies were compulsive or calculated, they had the effect of insuring that his crimes would forever be surrounded by mystery and ambiguity. Like the bone pile found in the Castle cellar, whose jumble of human and animal remains made it impossible for the police to sort out the truth, his final statement was as much camouflage as confession.
53
No Respite for Holmes.
The Devil is Going to Get His Due.
—Boston Globe, May 2, 1896
Even with death approaching, Holmes’s audacity remained undiminished. During the last week of April—shortly after he had publicly confessed to the murder of more than two dozen people—he applied to Governor Hastings for executive clemency. The governor declined to oblige.
Holmes was undeterred. For a man who claimed to view his coming execution as a boon—a release from his days and nights of “self-reproaching torture”—he seemed desperately eager to gain, if not a pardon, then at least a temporary reprieve. On April 30—exactly one week before his scheduled hanging—he sent a letter to Thomas Fahy, Carrie Pitezel’s Philadelphia attorney. In it, Holmes laid out a complicated financial transaction relating to the encumbrances on his Chicago property. Holmes assured Fahy that he could work out a deal with his creditors that would yield at least $2,000, which he proposed “at once to place in escrow for Mrs. Pitezel’s benefit,” In addition, he offered Carrie “one-third of what we can realize from [the sale of] the block at Sixty-third Street.”
The only catch was that these matters couldn’t be resolved for several weeks—until the eighteenth of May at the earliest—which meant that Carrie would have to intercede on his behalf by petitioning Governor Hastings for a respite.
Holmes concluded his letter with an extraordinary remark. “I have tried to make matters as easy for Mrs. Pitezel as I could,” wrote the man who had slain her husband and three young children. “I would also beg Mrs. Pitezel to remember that, while she may think me unfit to live, I am certainly unfit to die, and in return for what I can do for her, should like an opportunity to read and otherwise try and prepare myself for death.”
When Carrie—recognizing this proposal as a flagrant bribe—refused to rise to the bait, Holmes made one last bid for borrowed time. He composed another, even more remarkable, letter, this one to his old nemesis, Detective Frank Geyer. In it, Holmes claimed that his recently published confession contained an inaccurate version of the murders of Alice, Nellie, and Howard Pitezel. “I continue to accept responsibility for the children’s deaths,” he wrote, “and yet I myself did not kill them. I had a confederate and directed him to do the job.” Holmes offered to aid Geyer in the apprehension of this mysterious “confederate” in exchange for a reprieve.
But Geyer, like Carrie Pitezel, wouldn’t bite. He was determined to see Holmes swing and had no intention of putting off that satisfaction.
By Wednesday, May 6, Holmes, the master schemer, had finally run out of ploys. And out of time.
Holmes had concluded his letter to Carrie by pleading for “an opportunity to read and otherwise try and prepare myself for death.” The reading he referred to was, of course, the Bible.
Back in November, on the day his death sentence was formally passed, Holmes had been interviewed by a reporter from The Philadelphia Public Ledger, who asked if he intended to seek succor from “spiritual advisers.” Holmes had shaken his head emphatically in reply. “I am a fatalist,” he declared. “Whatever is to be is to be. I have no worries about the hereafter.”
As the weeks went by, however, a change seemed to come over him. He became increasingly introspective. Coiled in a corner of his cell was a heavy iron chain used to restrain unruly prisoners: the free end was linked to a leg manacle, the other attached to an iron staple in the floor. One day, shortly after the publication of Holmes’s confession, a guard looked through the bars of the cell and saw the chain laid out in the shape of a cross. A few days later, Holmes announced that he had converted to Roman Catholicism. By the final week of his life, he was receiving regular visits from the Reverend Father Dailey of the Church of the Annunciation.
And indeed, after he failed in his last feverish efforts to gain a reprieve, Holmes seemed possessed by a newfound serenity. On the night before his execution, he sat at his writing table until just past midnight, composing letters to relatives, business associates, and the surviving family members of several of his victims. At twelve-fifteen A.M., he laid down his pen, arranged his papers into tidy stacks, and began to undress, folding his clothes with his usual care. After performing his nightly devotions, he stretched out on his cot, turned his back to the light glowing dimly outside his cell door, and was asleep within minutes.
He slept soundly until six the next morning when the day watch, John Henry, came on duty.
“Harry!” the guard called softly through the bars of the door.
Holmes stirred slightly.
“Harry, it’s time to get up.”
Rousing himself, Holmes sat up and greeted the guard. “Is it six already?”
“Yes. How do you feel?”
Holmes considered the question a moment. “Pretty solemn.”
“Are you nervous?”
Smiling slightly, Holmes rose from his cot and stuck his left hand through the bars of the door, fingers spread. “See if I tremble.”
Henry would later tell reporters that the hand was “as steady as an iron bar.”
After ordering a breakfast of toast, eggs, and coffee, Holmes began to dress “as unconcernedly” (according to Henry’s account) “as a man might do who had a thousand more toiletries to make before he died.”
It was traditional for condemned men at Moyamensing to go to their deaths in a new suit of clothes. Holmes, however, had refused to follow this custom. Instead, he put on an outfit he had worn many times before—a light gray serge suit with lapelled vest and cutaway coat. He did make one modification. In place of his collar and tie, he knotted a white handkerchief loosely about his neck.
By then, Samuel Rotan had arrived, looking considerably more agitated than his client After greeting the young lawyer warmly, Holmes sat him down for a last, earnest talk. The subject was Holmes’s burial plan.
His career as a corpse peddler had left Holmes with a terror of ending up on someone else’s dissection table. This was not an idle fear, since several prominent physicians had already declared their interest in autopsying the brain of the extraordinary criminal. There was also good reason for Holmes to believe that his body might prove irresistibly attractive to some ghoulish huckster, intent on putting it on public display. Rotan had recently been approached by one such individual, who had offered him a considerable sum—-as much as $5,000, according to news reports—for the remains of the world-famous “Murder Demon.”
Holmes had devised an elaborate scheme to protect his corpse from grave robbers. He was determined that his body would never be violated, either by the probing tools of science or the prurient gaze of the crow
ds.
At that very moment, an enormous crowd was gathered outside the great, grim walls of Moyamensing, although they had no hope of seeing the actual execution. Admission to the hanging was strictly limited to ticket holders. Requests had poured in from as far away as San Francisco—over four thousand in all. Only sixty tickets had been issued, however, each filled out with the witness’s name.
The bulk of the crowd had come simply to be part of the great event. A line of city policemen was there to keep order, but the crowd was generally well behaved—laughing, chatting, exchanging crude jokes. A holiday atmosphere prevailed.
At precisely nine-thirty A.M., the small doorway set into the great wooden gate creaked open. Clutching their tickets, the witnesses forced their way through the crowd, then filed past the ferret-eyed gateman into the damp prison yard. In the end, at least twenty unauthorized individuals—relatives and friends of various prison workers—managed to gain entrance, bringing the total number of witnesses to slightly more than eighty.
Besides a score of newspapermen, the spectators included such prominent figures as Dr. N. MacDonald, the famous criminologist from Washington, D.C., Sheriff S. B. Mason of Baltimore, and Prof. W. Rasterly Ashton of Philadelphia’s Medico-Chirurgical College. Also in attendance were Detective Frank Geyer and L. G. Fouse, president of the Fidelity Mutual Life Assurance Company.
For fifteen minutes or so, the group milled about the cobblestoned courtyard, where executions were conducted in earlier times. Moyamensing Prison had been constructed in 1771, and above the entranceway hung a grim reminder of that bygone era—part of an antique English gibbet. Puzzled by the rusty, iron-hooped device roughly shaped like a human being, one of the younger reporters asked about its function. He was told that long ago—in a presumably less civilized age—the bodies of the hanged were placed inside those cagelike contraptions, then suspended from high poles at crossroads until nothing but skeletons remained.
Suddenly, the door to the prison office opened. Among the fourscore witnesses were twelve sheriff’s jurors, there to certify to the time, place, and manner of death of the prisoner. The jury members included three ex-sheriffs and four doctors. By a curious coincidence, another juror—Samuel Wood, a yarn manufacturer of Germantown—had also been a member of the jury at Holmes’s trial.
The dozen men were summoned into the big prison office, where Sheriff Clement—a white-whiskered man in a frock coat purchased specially for this occasion—administered the oath. Afterward, the rest of the spectators were admitted to the office. For the next ten minutes, they stood about restlessly, eyeing the wall clock and filling the room with tobacco smoke.
At precisely ten o’clock, Sheriff Clement’s assistant, Mr. Grew, appeared in the room. “Hats off, gentlemen,” he commanded. “And no smoking. Witnesses will please form a double line, jurors in front, and head towards that door.” He gestured toward the doorway he had just come through, which opened onto the main cellblock of the prison. “You will please preserve perfect order.”
Hats were removed, cigarettes and cigars extinguished underfoot. The eighty men silently arranged themselves into a double column. Then the solemn procession moved through the far doorway and into the cellblock, shoe soles scuffling on the asphalt floor.
Sunshine poured down from a big skylight, illuminating the long, whitewashed corridor with its triple-tiered cells on either side. Halfway down the corridor loomed the gallows, surrounded by a group of uniformed guards. Approaching it, the witnesses suddenly broke from their line, jostling for the best positions from which to view the execution.
More than fifty men had died on that particular gallows, which dated from the decade before the Civil War. Its railed platform stood eight feet above the ground and was painted so dark a green that it looked almost black. It might have been a speaker’s stand—xcept for its double-doored trap and the crossbar overhead from which dangled a surprisingly slender length of rope. In the clear light, the spectators could count the seven spirals of the hangman’s knot above the noosed end.
After their indecorous struggle for the best vantage points, the witnesses grew silent. Sparrows trilled in the outside courtyard as the tense spectators gazed upward, scanning the three tiers of heavily barred cells for the one that held Holmes.
After polishing off his breakfast, Holmes took paper and pen in hand for the final time and composed a brief note of gratitude to Rotan. When Fathers Dailey and MacPake arrived a few moments later, Holmes gave himself into their care. The two priests had just finished administering last rites when prison superintendent Perkins and his assistant, Alexander Richardson, appeared at the cell door.
“Are you ready?” Perkins asked the kneeling prisoner.
Holmes nodded once and got to his feet. Clasping a crucifix in both hands, he stepped into the corridor, Perkins and Sheriff Clement in front, the two white-robed priests at his sides, Rotan and Richardson bringing up the rear.
Clustered in front of the gallows, the spectators could not see the solemn party approach from the opposite side. But they could hear the chanting of the priests—a mournful drone that grew louder every moment. Suddenly, shoe soles scraped on the wooden steps of the gallows and Sheriff Clement and Superintendent Perkins materialized on the platform. A moment later, they moved briskly to one side, making room for Holmes.
Stepping up to the railing, the great criminal gazed serenely down at the crowd. In the strong morning light, his wavy hair appeared almost blond, as did his long flowing mustache. The witnesses were struck by the neatness of his attire: his brushed suit, creased trousers, polished, square-toed shoes. Holding his crucifix before him, his expression calm and untroubled, he looked like a clergyman about to deliver a homily to his Sabbath congregation.
“Gentlemen, I have a very few words to say,” he began in his silken voice. “I would make no remarks at this time were it not for my feeling that by not speaking I would acquiesce in my execution by hanging. I wish to say at this instant that the extent of my misdoing in taking human life consists in the killing of two women. They died at my hands as the result of criminal operations. I only state this so that there shall be no misunderstanding of my words hereafter. I am not guilty of taking the lives of the Pitezel family, the three children or the father, Benjamin F. Pitezel, for whose death I am now to be hanged. This is all I have to say.”
Later, one of Holmes’s intimates—an attorney, R. O. Moon—revealed that, on the day prior to the execution, Holmes had confided to him that the “two women” were Julia Conner and Emeline Cigrand.
After making this astonishing statement—essentially an utter retraction of the sworn confession he had published only a few weeks before—Holmes bowed politely and briefly embraced Rotan, who turned and hurried down the scaffold steps, clearly overcome with emotion. Holmes, meanwhile— hitching up his trouser legs to preserve the creases—knelt briefly between the chanting priests.
Rising again, he handed his crucifix to Father MacPake and positioned himself directly over the trap. Assistant Superintendent Richardson leaned toward him and whispered something in his ear. Nodding, Holmes removed the white handkerchief from his neck, fastened the top button of his coat, then held his hands out in front of him.
Richardson swiftly drew one of Holmes’s arms behind his back, then the other. The audience heard a sharp click— handcuffs closing about the condemned man’s wrists. Then Richardson took something that looked like a black satin bag and pulled it over Holmes’s head.
“Make it quick, Alex,” Holmes said, his voice muffled by the fabric.
Coolly, Richardson slipped the noose around Holmes’s neck, lifting up the bottom of the black hood to draw the rope tight. By then, Sheriff Clement and Superintendent Perkins had melted out of sight. The priests were still kneeling by the top step, intoning the Miserere.
Pulling out his white pocket handerchief, Richardson gave a signal that the spectators couldn’t see. Almost at once, a bolt clicked and the trapdoor crashed open.
The black-hooded figure plummeted, bounced upward, dropped again, then spun slowly at the end of the taut-drawn rope, its head cocked grotesquely to one side. Its fingers clenched, its chest and shoulders heaved, and its feet jerked in a weird, rhythmic motion, as though the dangling body were walking in the air.
“My God,” a deputy sheriff named Saybolt gasped, then fainted into the arms of the man standing beside him. Several other spectators blanched and turned away.
As the body spiraled in a shaft of sunlight, the prison physician—Dr. Benjamin F. Butcher—stepped onto a little stool provided by a guard and placed his ear against Holmes’s chest.
“Still beating,” he announced.
Though the force of the fall had broken Holmes’s neck and yanked the noose so tight that the hemp was embedded in his flesh, his heart continued to work for another fifteen minutes. From time to time, his body would shake and his limbs twitch convulsively. Finally, the movements subsided.
At precisely 10:25 A.M.—Thursday, May 7, 1896—H. H. Holmes was pronounced dead.
In the opinion of the sheriff’s jury, death had come “instantaneously.” The hanged man, they declared with authority, “had not suffered any pain.”
In the end, after years of being demonized by the press—denounced as “Satan or one of his chosen monsters”—Holmes was granted not only human status but even a measure of respect. Trumpeting his execution in their morning editions, newspapers from New York City to San Francisco made note of his fortitude and courage in the final moments of his life. But it was The Chicago Tribune—a paper that had spent months accusing Holmes of the most diabolical acts—that paid him the ultimate tribute.
Holmes had met his death, read the headline, “like a man.”
Epilogue
The Holmes Curse
Depraved Page 39