Henry Howard Holmes - Case Study Example

Henry Howard Holmes Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was the alias that Herman Webster Mudgett was known of. He was one of the earliest serial killers in America whose tale is documented. At the time of the World’s Fair event held in 1893 in Chicago, Holmes had designed and built a hotel for himself with murder being the main motive of the venture. He named his hotel The Castle. During its construction, Holmes worked as the supervisor of the construction and is reportedly known to fire the construction workers before they could work for a week. Such employment practices ensured Holmes retained the secrets of The Castle. The second floor of the castle consisted of sinister guest rooms equipped with trap doors, peepholes, chutes leading to the basement, and moving walls. The chutes led to either a vat of quicklime or acid, or to the incinerator. The rooms were fire resistant padded with asbestos lining (Larson 4). Holmes is known to have committed most of the murders he allegedly was responsible for in the hotel. It was confirmed that Holmes actually committed four murders while he made confession of having committed twenty-seven. It is speculated that he may have committed as many as two hundred murders. Some of his victims were taken from the World’s Fair, which took place about two miles away from his hotel. Holmes is reported to have killed his victims either by pumping poisonous gas into the rooms as guests slept or by poisoning them with chloroform after sneaking into their rooms through the trap doors as they slept. He disposed the bodies by carrying them to the chutes. Apart from the guest rooms, the Castle had a torture room equipped with an elasticity determinator, which he used to stretch his victims to death (Schechter 13). In a jewelry store on the first floor of the castle, Holmes employed a man as the manager. According to Ramsland, the man had a wife, about six feet tall. She ended up having an affair with Holmes that led to divorce from her husband. She later got pregnant and was convinced by Holmes to have an abortion. Holmes offered to perform the abortion. Later on, Holmes sold a six-foot tall skeleton of a woman for $200 to Hahnemann Medical College. In another incident, a woman named Emmaline Cigrand fell in love with Holmes. They arranged for a marriage; however, Holmes suffocated her to death in a vault, in the Castle, on the day the marriage ceremony was expected to take place (Schechter 37). After a case of murder that had occurred in Philadelphia in 1894 was discovered, the case of Holmes started developing. The police were informed of a scam that had recently occurred by Marion Hedgepeth, who had once shared a cell with a man named H. M. Howard, and had given Howard the name of an attorney to assist in committing an insurance fraud. The scam involved another man called Benjamin Pitezel, who was assisted by Holmes to get a $10000 life insurance cover from Fidelity Mutual Association in Chicago; and would later fake his own death in an explosion in the laboratory in order to claim insurance compensation. Holmes had informed Pitezel that they would use a cadaver to fake the death. Holmes tricked his accomplice into heavy drinking before soaking him in benzene and burning him to death. He then extinguished the fire and poured chloroform into the stomach of Pitezel’s body. Holmes then altered the scene to create an impression that the death had been caused by an accidental explosion (Geyer 63). In order to collect the money from insurance compensation, there was required a family member to identify the body. Since Pitezel’s wife was sick, Holmes took his daughter for the task. Pitezel’s wife was unaware of her husband’s death. The money was to be shared among several participants in the scam, including Hedgepeth, but Howard schemed and made off with the money. A detailed letter written by Hedgepeth about the scam was passed on to the insurance company, where it was realized that the Howard in question was actually Holmes. Hedgepeth offered the information to the police voluntarily as revenge against Holmes for failing to pay him his part of the deal (Geyer 69). After Pitezel’s daughter assisted in identifying her father’s body, she never returned to her mother. Holmes then went to Pitezel’s wife claiming that the girl was with her father, and that the father wanted the other two children as well. From there henceforth, Holmes housed the three children in rented houses and ensured there was no communication between them and their mother (Schechter 81). A representative from the insurance company who had earlier on expressed suspicion over the scene of death, reexamined the case, where the body had been discovered at a street in Philadelphia after receiving the information from Hedgepeth. The body had been found in a rigor mortis state, burned with chemicals in the face and exposed to the sun to such an extent that it was difficult to positively identify the person. However, Holmes who had come to the scene in company of Pitezel’s daughter had used certain characteristics to identify the body as that of Benjamin Pitezel (Larson 69). According to Ramsland, The insurance company hired a detective agency to track him down and investigate him. The investigation unearthed information on thefts, numerous frauds, past insurance scams and schemes from which he had obtained enough funds for building the Castle. Holmes was later arrested in 1894 in Boston as he attempted to leave the country in a steam ship. In 1895, Holmes was charged for conspiring to defraud the insurance company. Following directions from his attorneys, Holmes pleaded guilty to the charges, which carried a lighter sentence. In the case, Holmes alleged that Pitezel had committed suicide and that he had been responsible for making the death to look like it was occasioned by an accident in order to fraudulently collect the insurance money. Since the children’s whereabouts were still unknown at the time of the case, the sentencing was delayed. While in jail, Holmes managed to charm the guards to the extent that he was allowed special concessions. He was allowed to put on normal attire, but most importantly he had access to the daily newspaper. At the time, scenes of crime were completely open and the press had full access to them. The management of all the scenes of crime associated with Holmes’ criminal acts was so open that the press and everyone else including Holmes had direct access to the evidence gathered by the police and detectives. Holmes was able to adapt his defense with time as he learned about the investigations done by the police on the crimes he had committed. Frank Geyer, a detective, attempted to locate the children of Pitezel that had gone missing. Holmes explained to the detective that he had the children taken to England and were under the care of somebody he knew. The detective sought the assistance of the Scotland Yard in England who reported back that the street where the children were allegedly living did not exist in the first place. Three weeks into the investigations, detective Geyer was able to locate the bodies of two of the children in Toronto, Canada. After another five weeks, Geyer discovered the body of the third child in Indiana. The search for the children revealed a lot about Holmes, including the fact that he was a killer. After exploring the Castle in Chicago, police found a bloody nose, a few complete human skeletons and fragments of human bones in the incinerator. In response to the discovery, Holmes claimed the victims had either committed suicide or had been killed by another person (Ramsland 119). The discovery also aroused public interest, who wanted more information on the crimes that led to the deaths. Journalists and authors set out to investigate previous deaths with the curiosity of finding any links to Holmes. Police in Chicago Illinois, estimated about 150 deaths attributed to Holmes. Chicago and Philadelphia had a struggle with each demanding to put him to trial first. The first trial was done in Philadelphia and lasted five days (Ramsland 121). On the first day of the trial, Holmes asked the court to allow him give his defense. His attorneys left the courtroom, after he dismissed them; at the time he was questioning the pool of jurists that were likely to determine his case. Holmes made an attempt to eliminate all the jurors who had hinted as having been reading the case’s development in the newspapers. However, the judge dismissed his criterion as an improper cause for challenge. At the time, the Supreme Court had not yet examined the pretrial publicity (Geyer 135). Graham, who was the district attorney at the time, opened the case by explaining what had followed after Benjamin Pitezel died. He explained the long trek that Holmes had subjected the Pitezel family in a bid to ensure his wife and children did not meet with each other; and that the wife was still unaware that Pitezel had died yet the children knew about it. Holmes was accused of killing the child who confirmed her father’s death to ensure she would never tell her mother of what she knew of the death. He had killed the other two children, since they had stayed with the first one and, therefore, were likely to have been aware of their father’s whereabouts. Holmes was also accused of killing the wife of Pitezel in order to successfully obtain money from the insurance company following Pitezel’s death (Geyer 139). According to Ramsland, many curious lawyers and law students were attracted by Holmes defense. He was described as being ‘remarkable’ and ‘Vigorous’ by the inquirer from Philadelphia. In the defense, Holmes showed spite to the district attorney and deference to the judge. At a point in the case, Holmes wanted an analysis to be done on the liquid alleged to have been used in poisoning the children. He offered to perform the analysis himself. Holmes created the impression that he was prepared to exonerate himself using scientific evidence. However, Holmes was unable to twist the case in his favor or even sway the testimonies given by witnesses in his favor. His demeanor during the case was a great blow to his defense. For instance, when giving gruesome details, Holmes remained very composed; after a detailed description of Pitezel’s corpse, Pitezel suggested the court should adjourn for lunch. All the professional witnesses in case ruled out the possibility of Pitezel having committed suicide. Either, Holmes did not present professional witnesses to impeach the formers’ conclusion. To make the matter worse for Holmes’ defense, he had already ruled out the possibility of an accident in his previous defense (Geyer 144). Following his failure in the first day of the case’s proceedings, Holmes recalled two of his defense attorneys. After the attorneys’ return, Holmes only cross-examined one witness, Georgiana York, who had been his most recent wife. The prosecution was determined to show and proof everything that had transpired following the murder of Pitezel. However, the judge ruled that the trial was to be limited to the murder of Pitezel. The district attorney, therefore, built a case that sought to answer three questions: “The first question is: Is Benjamin F. Pitezel dead? The second is: Did he die a violent death? And the third question is: If he died a violent death, did he commit suicide or was he killed by the defendant? ” (Larson 115). The answer to the first question was given by the defense counsel, which admitted that the body of Pitezel was actually the one found in the house. The answers to the other two questions were provided by the doctors who had carried out the autopsy on Pitezel’s body. Dr. Leffman explained that a person who had taken chloroform could not put themselves in the position that Pitezel’s body was found in. He further gave an explanation that chloroform, if taken by a person while still alive, inflames the stomach. Since the deceased’s stomach did not show any signs of such irritation, the chloroform had been administered after death (Larson 119). Superintendent Linden and detective Geyer testified Holmes’ admission to them that the day Pitezel died, he had been in Pitezel’s house; that he had afterwards burned the body to make the death look like it was from an accident rather than an act of suicide. The defense counsel admitted that the accused had actually been in the house on the day Pitezel died, and that he had arranged the body to make it look like it had been involved an accident (Geyer 151). The jury was duly instructed about the nature of reasonable doubt from the circumstantial evidence. After the district attorney made two hours of closing submissions, the jury deliberated. They did not find any reasonable doubt and, therefore, the H. H. Holmes was convicted with first-degree murder. After he had been found guilty, Holmes appealed the case but the appeal was rejected. He then wrote a confession, in which he initially confessed to have committed 100 murders but later reduced the number to 27. Some of his confessions were false as some of the victims in the confession turned up alive. In May 7, 1896 Holmes was executed by hanging. He retracted the confessions he had made just before he was executed. Works Cited Geyer, Frank. The Holmes-Pitezel Case: A History of the Greatest Crime of the Century. Salem, Massachusetts: Publisher’s Union, 1896. Print Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003. Print Ramsland, Katherine. H. H. Holmes: Master of Illusion. Crime Library, 2005. Web. 25 Nov. 2011. Print Schechter, Harold. Depraved: the Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer. New York: Pocket Publishers, 1994. Print Read More